Full disclosure, Blessthefall are not my cup of tea when it comes to metalcore. When I was growing up with the genre, I stayed closer to the groovier side of the genre with bands like Trivium, All That Remains and Shadows Fall rather than the more scene side. A lot of these bands gained prominence during the 2010s while I was in university, during my metal purge. GALLOWS by Blessthefall certainly feels nostalgic for that time frame of bands like Silverstien and Pierce the Veil. And you know what? For a pretty short piece of run-of-the-mill 2010s metalcore slop, it actually isn't that bad.

I enjoy how songs like "Venom" and "Y.S.A.B." aren't totally generic buildups/breakdowns and choruses within this subsect of mainstream metalcore. The choruses themselves can be quite catchy like "Wake the Dead" and "Light the Flame", provided you can tolerate Beau Bokan's vocal timbre, both in his screaming and singing. The foundations are extra djent-y and sound like a lot of fun, especially the occasional melo death riff that sneaks it way in between the palm muted riffage. And the record does not become too redundant all at once. Guest features from Story of the Year on "Fell So Hard, Felt So Right" and Alpha Wolf on "Drag Me Under" break up the early runs of similar sounding key centers and tempos. While the closer "This Ends With Us" has some decent brooding to wrap up the record.

I mean, it's hard for me to not enjoy GALLOWS from Blessthefall. Yeah I doubt it will end up in my year end rotation for 2025, and the record has a couple of duds, but the few moments that stand out are a shining example for the target audience of a time once passed. For a style of music that I don't frequent/enjoy very often, this one caught me off guard.

Best Songs: Wake the Dead, Drag Me Under, Light the Flame

Dutch black metal quartet, Kaeck kick off their suitably named third album, (translated as) Horrible Welcome, with a horrible sounding track. ‘Door gespleten tongen bezworen’ (‘Conjured by Forked Tongues’) is a real dank sounding piece of black metal, punctuated by stabs of synths that could accompany crawling shadows in any Nosferatu flick in days gone by. These keys are a key component of the albums sound. Creating atmosphere against the barking guitar that growls like a pack of hellhounds, this adds authenticity to the sound most certainly. In using them, the album avoids embarking on a truly symphonic experience and can focus on generating a real sense of horror instead.

The downside is that it soon gets old. Now, I know that nobody listens to conventional black metal for masses of variation, but Kaeck are on their third album here and as much as I admire them for sticking with a tested format, the issue here is that the tracks soon all start to morph into one. Whilst I accept that the pace and tempo do alter throughout the record, the keys end up just droning on in the background. Sometimes, they aren’t deployed fully even and whilst this I could argue gives a bit of respite, it does unfortunately come across as if the keyboard player is just falling asleep and coming back in between power naps.

What starts out as a promising album therefore soon fades into obscurity, and I can’t help but feel a bit robbed. Even though I acknowledge that Kaeck can create a ghastly black metal sound, they just don’t do enough with it to hold my interest. After four tracks, I could guess the structure of the remaining three, very easily. If you like your bm to be based on pure repetition alone, then this one is most definitely for you. Ultimately though this gives very little reward otherwise. Fair play for trying to recreate those early 90’s eerie vibes but the authenticity of that over three decades after the event is questionable.

For the first ten or fifteen seconds of the new Afsky record, the listener can be forgiven for wondering just what the hell they have gotten themselves into. Bright sounding, female vocals kick off the opening track, sounding to all intent and purpose like some foreign pop group has sabotaged the expected black metal opus you have just clicked play on. Thankfully, it is but a ruse. Soon enough the familiar coldness sweeps into the sound as Afsky treats us to an epic opening tremolo, the kind that vibrates your teeth together as it goes on for the best part of two minutes. Fællesskab has a feeling of the grandiose to it from the off really. This cinematic edge to proceedings with explosions of riffs (check out ‘Den der ingenting ved tvivler aldrig’), howls of ghastly despair and rich, undulating melodicism all makes for one hell of a listening experience.

Possessing the earthy tones of Drudkh and the atmospheres of WITTR, Fællesskab might be Afsky’s best effort to date. Ole Pedersen Luk, to give him his proper name, once again handles everything on the record giving a fantastic acquittal of himself in the process. He drops in some traditional metal sounding moments along the way that sit effortlessly alongside the more traditional black metal fare on offer. Afsky’s high-pitched vocals are toned to bring the cold in at a second’s notice, and so when things get a little too far away from the black metal roots, he’s there with his shrill vocals to bring the temperature back down to a suitable level of tundra. The tremolos have a folk style to them, an almost warbling sound in fact, and as a result they seem to swirl in the air around the listener like bastardised songbirds.

With no track under six minutes in length, the forty-five minute run time feels full yet not bloated. Albeit far from a Marduk level of intensity, the record does have a sense of charging momentum to it. The pace of the attack that opens ‘Arveskam’ is a good reference point for this. There’s a balance to the tempo here that keeps the energy but introduces the melodies at the same time. Having referenced Drudkh earlier in the review, I would say this is a much better album than Shadow Play. It has a more direct approach, resulting in more potency in the riffing. The bell tolls of ‘Flagellanternes sang’ herald a superb, morbidly melodic bm track that is positively spellbinding. Fællesskab may not be the darkest, most glum black metal release of the year but it is the most exciting for sure. Four records in and Afsky is really hitting his stride with his maturing brand of black metal. I am unable to point out criticism on Fællesskab, making it a strong contender for AOTY in my book.

It took me a long time to fully appreciate the value of this album because Death was such a monument in the history of death metal that each work required quite some time to be digested in my soul. For the first impression, Spiritual Healing is quite mediocre, especially compared to the albums succeeding it. However, once you reclaim your mesmerized brain after the four albums the band put forward, you actually realize that Spiritual Healing is actually fed with so much raw emotion blended with old-school horror.

Lunatic asylums, hypocrite priests, medical nightmares, and a world full of conspiracies... A mind that is shattered between the morbidity of reality and the games of its own hallucinations.... This album is overall quite psychological as much as horrific. Rather than "healing", it is almost dissecting "spirituality". Both lyrically and musically, the album tells us how our spiritual existence and the material world surrounding it became a stage that degrades our physical and mental integrity, eventually "Altering the Future" within the world of "Genetic Reconstruction". Therefore, Spiritual Healing can be defined as the first album on which Death, or specifically Chuck Schuldiner (R.I.P.) starts to "philosophize" death metal themes. 

Years after this album, Schuldiner would say in an interview: "Reality is far more evil than a demon". Yes, Spiritual Healing is the beginning point of this realism.

In terms of the band's discography, Spiritual Healing plays a key role in the musical evolution of the band, as it was on this album that the first attempts at later experiments and progressive trends that would put Death into a legendary category were made. 

Musically, the highlight of the album is the lead guitar duels of Chuck Schuldiner and James Murphy. Such collaboration is exactly what makes the album quite melodic in both riff and solo arrangements, without sacrificing death metal identity.

It may not be one of the highlights of Death's career, yet it is definitely a "must-have", both for the band and for the fans.

Trivia: Chuck's vocals in this album are the favorite "Schuldiner vocals" for the ex-Morbid Angel frontman, David Vincent. If you carefully listen to the vocal style in Blessed Are The Sick, you can easily hear the influence.

I think it was possibly Knife’s debut album from 2021 which would mark the last time a speed/thrash metal record showed enough vigour and intensity to make me stop and take notice. For all the talk of regurgitation of old ideas, themes, styles and genres in modern metal, it is the likes of Vulture who give me the assurance that, if done well enough, the old-school can be worshipped and not come off as simple plagiarism. Whereas their fellow countrymen in Knife deploy a blackened edge to proceedings, Vulture are all about the shrieking, banshee wailing style of speed metal that you would associate with the likes of Razor or Exciter. Perhaps bordering on the power metal elements of Agent Steel also along the way, these Dortmund residents certainly know how to wear their influences on their sleeves.

Above all else, Sentinels is fun. It’s 80’s horror flick style album cover perhaps denotes a band with serious intent and I am not intimating for one minute that Vulture are a goofy band, more that they approach their art with a genuine enthusiasm, a passion that bleeds into their music. Leads soar over galloping riffs, vocals pierce the ears of anyone within a mile radius, yelled from lungs that swell with pride as they sing each lyric, and all the while the drums “thunk” along in the background. Never coming across as having much in the way of venom or bite, the drums are the most understated instrument on the record, to my ears at least. However, this is not necessarily a criticism as I think the production job does the sound real justice overall. Clean without being overproduced, the album has an atmosphere of a band playing live almost.

This is not my first venture into Vulture. I gave their 2019 album, Ghastly Waves & Battered Graves a four-star rating back in August of that same year, and I find Sentinels to be in the same ballpark of the ratings, albeit that I sense a step up in quality of musicianship, certainly in the leads department at least. I am not a massive fan of the hi-pitched vocals that are used here, although my tolerance of them during my listen through of this record was surprisingly good. It is the fiery riffs and blinding leads that reign supreme over the record for me though. The inclusion of an instrumental at track seven seems a bit of an odd choice if I am honest, and I struggle to fight the feeling that it is little more than filler, despite its best efforts.

Leave me with tracks such as the rampant ‘Death Row’ and I am much happier though. In fact, the section of the album that follows ‘Der Tod trägt schwarzes Leder’ is probably the stronger part for me. There certainly feels like an uptick in the quality for me over this backend of the record at least. Keep flying the flag for the old school fellas, it is appreciated.