I hadn't heard the third full-length from this Scottish NWOBHM act before but this week's experience with 1992's "Hypnosis of Birds" has been unanimously positive as well as quite surprising. You see, I wasn't much of a fan of Holocaust's 1981 debut album "The Nightcomers" which is by far their most well-known release. It was a very basic, rough-&-ready heavy metal affair that's light-years away from the sophisticated progressive metal we find here. There are some hints of Holocaust's roots to be found here & there (see the first half of the opening title track or the re-recording of the band's signature piece "The Small Hours" which Metallica covered on their 1987 "Garage Days Re-Revisited" E.P.) but, for the most part, Holocaust have moved on creatively with only guitarist John Mortimer remaining from the lineup that delivered the debut. Mortimer also handles the vocals this time which are admittedly nothing special. It's the instrumentation that's the real win here with some of this material reminding me a lot of more popular progressive metal artists like Mastodon, Devin Townsend or Dream Theater. Unfortunately, there are no genuine classic of offer but the quality is consistently strong enough to make "Hypnosis of Birds" a great listen nonetheless, even if the production is a little rougher than you'd generally expect from a prog record. This is definitely my new favourite Holocaust release, over-taking the fairly underground 1980 "Heavy Metal Mania" E.P. which I quite like. And by the way, please ignore the RYM tagging which includes Avant-Garde Metal & Heavy Metal, neither of which are relevant.

For fans of Voivod, Anacrusis & The Thought Industry.

More divine steers have been slaughtered sacrilegiously, but not ever like this…

He decapitates the bovine, wrings its blood, severs the withering vessels and excavates the flesh and any obstructing bones. He places the steer’s head upon his, raises his fists to the sky in triumph an holds a bone in his right hand and stomps and looks down on everyone else, showing that every album before it, whether thrash, death or even black metal is inferior to it. 

Seriously this album is something fucking else. The songs are very assorted and there is a wide variety of riffs, speed, and the structure of those songs in many ways. They all use the same elements but is masterfully arranged in unique ways to give different tastes. For example, Massacre fucking will stab your ass to death immediately upon opening up the album. Chariots of Fire also uses a blazing fast pace, with the guitars sounding like an actual wildfire, or a buzzing flaming army of thousands of charioted hellish knights which fall upon Earth to destroy humanity by driving the destruction of a nuclear war. Equimanthorn at the beginning half is very quick, aggressive and almost war metal like. I mean it was a massive influence on war metal (with bands like Revenge covering it), but then turns into a very catchy, slow and crushing drum beat that match the rhythm of the guitar in a groovy way, but a groove only unique to black metal. Its a hellish groove, which is not happily catchy, but it makes you march in a coordinated mass towards the inferno of hate. 

Enter the Eternal Fire is one of the greatest and most unique songs in metal, both in sound and thematic intention. It is consistently praised, and universally loved as a staple in black metal and in metal as a whole. But those aspects are not what I’m mentioning here. The uniqueness of the riff, which has literally no resemblance to any other metal song at all, because of the feedback loop of the entire riff biting itself back like a self eating snake. What I mean here is that the riff has a tie and varies a lot in pitch very quickly, between the sparsely laid out power chord posts and the unique one or two open string picking is what makes the song sound very unique, awesome, and hellish, and this is not even including the icy, raw, and serrated guitar tone. Its orchestral, an evil metal orchestra done right. Its like one of the perfect songs that should be playing during Dante’s journey in the Nine Circles in one of his Poems “Inferno”. The lyrics of the song sound like an in-depth tour of a man’s descent in Hell, and absolutely like some Satan worship of willingly giving up yourself to go to Hell in some cheesy corny song. In fact the Devil is never mentioned once in this song. The person in question in the song is being forced and hypnotized with the constant call of his name and is drawn into the fire, seeing and hearing the bodies and voices crying in pain. He will enter the eternally burning fire.  

Call from the Grave is very heavy, like a cargo vessel, Jon Brower Minnoch, Sagittarius A heavy. Okay maybe not that heavy, but it is a very dark, warm, groovy and a shock mondo VHS film kind of atmosphere, like observing an autopsy. It has that magnetic, distorted ragged almost fluid like electronic bass sound when the strings on Quorthon’s guitar are rolling down each of the bars. The main riff of this song is such that it only sounds good in this, setting, atmosphere and album. The guitar sound is unlike any other and so is the song’s riffs. The lyrics also are quite haunting, considering the fact that the mastermind of this masterpiece is gone. 

I mean this is the greatest black metal album ever. Forget about the overrated “Storm of the Light’s Bane”, “Filosofem” and absolutely abysmally garbage “black shoe gaze” albums that you’ll for some reason find on that stupid black metal ranking list in “Rate Your Music”, (which is an absolute garbage joke of a website). But besides that, I think that this album is important to not just black metal, but metal as a whole. This album destroys any other band in the 80s, and it is the greatest example of what an evil sounding album should sound like. Its primordial, cold and hot on the extremes, fast, brutal, aggressive and malicious. This is a perfect album, anybody would be shitheaded pillock to not consider this a flawless record of extreme music. It is not rooted in any previous genres because it created a new sound entirely, with some little footing in thrash metal, but it is breaks from that as a whole. I mean enough has been said here, I personally love this album and have it on a CD, so its playable in the car stereo, this album is addicting truly!

Elder's next on my 2026 goals, so I figured I might as well get through any Elder albums I haven't gotten through yet. I don't really have much to say about this except that this album is perfect for the Monster Magnet fans if you like your stoner and psych drawn out. The album's songwriting is straightforward, never outgoing with wild solos and sticking to the melodic variety and essence. But since Elder is habitually monolithic, this means we're in for a series of epics. Now for some, typically myself, this may be a problem if they don't expand enough. But it tweaks around with post-metal ambience and gritty sludge, occasionally going vocal. Because of both the melodies and the lyrics, the album maintains that surreal wonder that any good psych album needs, and the lyrical style makes up for the otherwise decent vocals. Totally not standing out at all. While the album FEELS the same throughout most of its runtime, and many of the tricks they pull have been done before by other artists, they still manage a good number of tricks and directions. And thanks to a careful collective of genres that work very well together (maybe too well), the album checks a lot of boxes for rock fans. And the best thing about the album is how hard-hitting they are. If this is a rock album instead of metal, it's really no surprise while some people think of it as metal. We're not dealing with a simple-minded mislabelling akin to AC/DC here. They push the buttons of are-hitting with much of what they're doing. So while the compositions aren't the most brilliant, it's difficult not to get behind them and feel like your space trucking through the galaxy with an uzi on your hip, even when the album's sound gets more contemplative.

Well, I liked this one. It got a little more surprising as it went along, the stoner vibes were quite enjoyable, and it bore great stoner metal energy even when it wasn't being a metal album. Glad I finally got around to this.

89

1997’s ‘Magic’ is the sixth studio album by German guitarist Axel Rudi Pell. Closely following the same formula as its predecessor, 1996’s ‘Black Moon Pyramid’, it’s a fine slab of European hard rock, similar in sound and style to artists like Yngwie Malmsteen, Rainbow and Journey.

Admittedly, this has been on my playlist for well over a year, and I’ve struggled to really think of what to say about it. I’m pretty sure this happened with the aforementioned predecessor too, because Rudi Pell albums can tend to be quite repetitive and follow the same formula. That’s not to say they’re bad though, as they are of a consistently high standard, just that some are more memorable than others.

It’s worth noting that this is the last release to feature American powerhouse vocalist Jeff Scott Soto, due to conflicting schedules and overall burnout. Perhaps this was a move that would ignite a new spark of inspiration for the band with their next release, because follow-up album, 1998’s ‘Oceans of Time’ is probably one of my favourite releases from the German guitarist.

Still, there’s some great tracks here, including ‘Playing With Fire’, ‘The Clown is Dead’, ‘Turned to Stone’, ‘Magic’, ‘Nightmare’ and closing track ‘The Eyes of the Lost’. Overall though, if you’re new to the music of Axel Rudi Pell, I think there are certainly better albums to check out, and if you’re already a fan, you’ll know exactly what to expect, and I don’t think ‘Magic’ disappoints.

Flame, Dear Flame get advertised as “epic doom”, going as far as to describe themselves on their Bandcamp page as “monumental, crushing epic doom”. I don’t agree, for the record, but that is not me dismissing FDF as not being a good band. Their repertoire is varied enough to make Aegis interesting and at times unexpectedly gentle in fact. This gentleness is not just by virtue of the classical female vocals alone. Aegis is a very well-tempered musical experience. I will go as far as to say that whilst I acknowledge the impact of the vocals, I could cope without there being as much of them as there is. Their central position in the proceedings is certainly a solid enough anchor to weight your focus from, yet the guitars and percussion are subtly nuanced with heavy metal, traditional doom and an almost black metal shroud on at least one occasion.

It is clear to see why FDF have toured with the likes of Smoulder. However, I feel FDF are niche in terms of those vocals, which I am sure would have provided a great contrast to the more aggressive style of Sarah in the live setting. However, I am more a fan of the energy behind the vocals of say Sara Bianchin of Messa, a woman who has range and variety alongside an obvious yet never imposing presence. Like Messa, the guitar work in FDF is worth writing home about. David Kuri embraces the doom aesthetic probably best out of the band, stirring genuine melancholy in his melodies whilst equally able to assert weight in his riffs. Drummer, Jan Franzen puts in one of those performances whereby you do not necessarily notice him all the time, yet his spacing in the instrumentation is always perfect. Again, referring to the band’s bio on BC, they describe the drumming as “restrained” which is a great description.

Overall, for me at least, Aegis just potters around in the same space for too much of the album. Not that I want it in bucket loads, but there is no sense of dynamics. Just as my ears get pricked up by a suitably heavy riff, the album drifts away to a far too clean and eventually ordinary sounding place. I can’t deny the beauty of Maren Lemke’s voice but I just feel that it guides the direction of the album into an altogether too soft a space.