Saxy S's Reviews

Protest The Hero are back with their first full length album since Volition from 2013 and a lot has changed around them in that time. I have always enjoyed this band, and not just because they were from Whitby, Ontario. No, Protest The Hero were a very unique band in the metalcore subgenre; they had the odd time signatures and overarching concepts to their albums, which has a lot of similarities with both mathcore and progressive metal, but they did it with an incredible knack for memorable songwriting, hooks, and personality.

Now, Protest The Hero joins the ranks of Sum 41 of Canadian bands getting into American politics. While it is not for me to tell them whether or not to get involved in this polarizing issue in 2020, Palimpsest is a hybrid album; one that combines songwriting from Kezia and Volition era PTH albums to create a new aesthetic. One that I really like and would never have expected to work as well as it did.

The songwriting on this album is super impressive. The technically demanding guitar parts with sweeping passages, fast guitar strumming and pummeling breakdown riffage is all packaged together in a package that one would expect, now that this band has been going strong for just over two decades now. The harsh screams of older albums are back and Rody Walker shows off his technical prowess by being able to switch back and forth between the two with relative ease and on a dime no less! Unfortunately, the bass does get the short end of the stick from time to time, and their are a couple of moments where the bass is nowhere to be found. One of the bands greatest strengths was their bass/guitar independence, and it seems like that has diminished over time. You know, the worst part about Volition era PtH.

But even with all of that said, I would still say that this is Protest The Hero's best record since Fortress with it's melodies and compositions. But the juicy stuff is in the content. A Palimpsest is, by definition, "a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain." Some have likened this to the colonization of America by Europeans during the fourteenth/fifteenth centuries, which is a fair argument. But It also feels very indebted to the modern era; where certain people have become so divided that they have to secede from the country in order to feel better about themselves. The laws of the land do not apply to them anymore, so they will just create their own, and invent new rules over top of the old rules.

This is a great return to from for Protest The Hero and it shows them reinventing the wheel once again. It seems like this band is trying to etch its way out of metalcore, but they have only become more consistent with it. Fortress will probably always be my No. 1, but this might just give Keiza a run for its money.

I am not an expert when it comes to doom metal with an obvious death metal flare, but of the few albums I have heard in this vein, especially over the last year, I do respect the genre and thanks to groups such as Officium Triste and Hanging Garden, I have found some pretty good music in this vein. And so I was very intrigued to hear this new record from Xibalba, and what I ended up with was some pretty good, but objectively flawed, album.

For starters, the sound of this album reminds me a lot of Tomb Mold in the compositions and some of the production. The vocals are incredibly deep and the guitar patterns are very much of the rhythmic variety instead of a melodic one. Unlike Tomb Mold, Xibalba do not mudden the vocals, but they also don’t mudden the percussion either. The drums are prominent and can become a little bit overwhelming on the more aggressive, death metal sections.

That’s another thing they borrow from Tomb Mold. Compared to their contemporaries in the subgenre, Xibalba takes the tonal implications of their subgenres and uses them both as an integral part of their musical timbre, as opposed to simple death metal growls over slow, brooding pieces. And the shorter pieces do play into some of these songs’ benefit; by having shorter tunes with death metal tendencies, they do not overstay their welcome. But when the album ends with thirteen minutes of unbreaking doom metal with the two parted “El Abismo”, I was waiting for a crack that never came.

I guess I can see the appeal for an album like this with its influences more directly on display, but it can make for a strange listen. Some of the ideas are executed well, while others just sound forced. As an overall enjoyable experience for me, it was good, but I’ll probably just stick with the more melodic tendencies of Officium Triste.

The debut album from END is pure, unfiltered, hell of the most direct metalcore variety. Typically metalcore albums don't make waves in my section of the metal spectrum, but I feel I need to make an exception for this.

And part of the reason why is my personal disinterest in the genre, and mathcore in particular. Too many times I've heard metalcore bands that use the whacky time signatures and tempo changes to show off a technical proficiency that would kill in a live setting, but ends up sounding forced and the overall tunes sound like they are devoid of any inter-connectivity or subsequent themes. END actually manages to take that unhinged madness and turn it into something that makes a lot of sense as a framing device. This albums lyrical content is entrenched in Gothic themes, nihilism and rage and to some extent, I get it. While the poetry is mostly vanilla, it serves as a decent framework for the music itself and I can appreciate that.

Unfortunately it's one of the only things I can really get into on this album. Just because I appreciate the frenetic nature of the lyrics and how it meshes well with the mathcore style, that doesn't mean I have to like it! The songs are held together with a shoestring, they have very little in the way of melodic ideas and hooks to make them memorable at all, many of the hardcore and breakdown ideas are repeated multiple times on the record, and the vocals suffer from a lot of post-compression. I mean, I didn't like it on Code Orange's last record, but at least it kind of made sense there.

If you fall into the demographic that would enjoy this hellaish soundscape and crushing breakdowns, I imagine you will find a lot more enjoyment out of this than me. END's Splinters from an Ever-Changing Face is a straightforward metalcore album that will get the people moving at a live show (when we can finally go to those again), but doesn't really do anything else for me outside of some visceral songwriting.

My relationship with Converge, and Jane Doe in particular, is...complicated. For starters I didn't hear this album when it was originally released in 2001. My initial exposure was in 2004/5 as I was learning about the metalcore subgenre through bands like Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall, and later on, Protest the Hero. I found Converge's music to be very alienating and obtuse, but somehow also completely unmemorable. Which I find odd today since Converge is almost always paired with The Dillinger Escape Plan as champions of mathcore in the 21st century, and I like those guys.

So I went back to this album with relatively fresh ears not too long ago to see if my opinion has changed and whether or not the massive amounts of critical acclaim this album receives is justified. And my findings came back with a resounding...meh. I understand that being in the moment most likely makes an albums cultural impact more significant and I understand if that is the case for Jane Doe, but I still find the record very forgetful.

Let's start off with what really pisses me off: the songwriting. The tunes on this album are composed with very little connectivity, if any at all, and because their are no discernible melodies to latch on to, after a while the songs start to blend together. The very little variation we get from the mathcore formula feel tepid and hardly worth writing home about. What riffs we do get are almost all broken up in the most simplistic mathcore formula you can imagine. I mean some tunes are fine; I genuinely enjoyed "Heaven in Her Arms" as the albums most well thought out piece, "Hell to Pay" also serves as a decent slow down song that attempts to add some melodic phrasing into the mix.

I wish that the mixing didn't sound like liquid ass! This album has a serious problem when it comes to the low end and bass presence throughout the project. I've said it before and I'll say it again: just because you have down-tuned guitars, it doesn't mean you can't have a real bass line. The percussion sounds muddy on the first half of this album, but does make some modest improvements from "Heaven in her Arms" and beyond. The vocals from Jacob Bannon are blown out in the mix to all hell and back. Good luck understanding ANYTHING that is said on this record without a lyric sheet directly in front of you. And that leaves us with just the guitars, which have their moments for sure, but without the aforementioned bass or a decent vocal counterpoint, the guitar riffs just fall flat.

I'm being overly harsh on this record even though I don't think it's completely terrible. There are a couple of stronger moments during the middle portion of this record that save to being at least a passable record. But my criticism is more pronounced since so many people praise this as the crowning achievement in the subgenre, when Dillinger Escape Plan were doing it a lot better at around the same time as Jane Doe was released! The band got significantly better during the 2010s as they began to adapt more post-hardcore sounds into their music, but as it stands, Jane Doe is an album that I may appreciate, but hardly enjoy.

Falkenbach are a German based viking/black metal band and this album, Heralding: The Fireblade is the bands fourth studio album. Released in 2005, they were trying to create a modern version of the classic Bathory sound from the 1980s. 

And having not heard this album prior to it being added to the featured release for June 2020, I thought it would be a good a time as any to dive in and see what we had on our hands. After all, I am a pretty big sucker for this brand of pagan black metal, complete with folk influences.

And what I ended up getting was a solid release from this group that does not leave me with a whole lot to say, but is a very great record, one that needs to be heard by many more ears.

To make up for the Bathory comparison at the beginning, while that is certainly a viable comparison to make, Falkenbach sound surprisingly more like the early stages of a band such as Enslaved, where the cold black metal elements are much more pronounced and the folk metal contributes more to the overall black metal sound, rather than being it's own separate entity.

And those elements are superb. I love folk/pagan elements incorporated into black metal and all I could think of while listening to this was the grandiose, enthralling sounds of Saor. The guitars have a brilliant texture that is wall of sound-esque, the incorporation of flutes, fiddles and horns as melodic counterpoint to the vocal melodies are wonderful, and while the bass part doesn't get nearly as much deviance from the rhythm guitar, the overall mixing sounds heavy and the low end is very strong. These tunes all have a powerful foundation, making them sound just as epic as the tales that are being told through the lyrics.

Toss in the fact that this album clocks in at a brief forty-one minutes, and it feels like it could have been elongated just a little bit longer, it should come as no surprise that I really enjoyed the heck out of this. Certainly a sleeper project, but one in which fans of the bombastic, epic nature of a Saor, Bathory or even early Enslaved should give a listen.

Last month I wrote a review for Darkthrone's famous 1992 album A Blaze in the Northern Sky and how it was the catalyst in the rise of black metal during the 90s. Unsurprisingly, a lot of Scandinavian bands followed suit. Also surprisingly, a lot of those groups never received the same clout as those bands, even though, subjectively, they made far more interesting music.

That was certainly the case for Ved Buens Ende..... a Norwegian black metal band that was willing to traverse towards the near absurd in their music. The band stuck around for over two decades, but their full length studio albums were limited to...just one; this one! And it is quite absurd, almost teetering to the point of being pretentious for its own sake. But the strangest part about it all is...I kind of enjoy it?

And coming right out of the gate, you may wonder where the black metal comparisons come from. The first two tracks "I Sang for the Swans" and "You, That May Wither" have almost no affiliation with that genre. They are much more in line with what we might call "post-metal" in the modern era; lots of wall of sound guitars, some pretty strong melodies from both the lead guitar and vocals, fluent, diverse bass lines not confined to the rhythm guitar, and percussion that is not overwhelming, but still has plenty of opportunities to be pummeling and can throw you off guard.

With all of the odd time signatures and weird scale progressions used, you would be well within yourself to label this as some form of progressive/avant-garde metal. And while these ideas continue further into the record, something odd happens on "Den Saakaldte": blast beats and screeching vocals make their debut, and they persist on basically every tune the rest of the way. And while I do like the black metal influence that is here, those vocals just sound beat down and weak. I found them to be very reminiscent of the most recent Oranssi Pazuzu album that came out earlier this year. In fact, you could probably make that comparison based on the rest of the album too.

Composition wise, this album does a good job of splitting the difference between booming melodic phrases, and harsh, alienating dissonance. The dissonance is not simply added to these tunes to make you feel uncomfortable, they always work towards something bigger. They build tension and uncertainty, only to release it in a black metal assault and it's very much appreciated. Unfortunately, some of the tunes are not as well composed and feel like a fruit platter; not that any of the ideas are bad on their own, but they aren't mixed well together. It's not an album for people who just want their black metal riffage and to be done with it. You have to be willing to take the time and give it your full attention.

But in summary...look I was looking for an odd sounding metal album and that what Ved Buens Ende..... delivered. What I ended up getting that I was not expecting was an avant-garde black metal record that pushed the proverbial boundaries, in a genre that had only been revitalized maybe three/four years prior. I enjoyed what I heard, even if this is an album that I probably won't return to very often.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

It feels weird to talk about Rage Against The Machine in the modern day. For one, I was very young and impressionable when I first heard the band, and I was all for the "anti-authority" message found within their music. It's the kind of music that angst-filled teenagers would easily flock to as a safe method of releasing anger against their parents, as well as other systems, such as their school, bullies, and other family. Now, over twenty years removed from the release of The Battle of Los Angeles, my view of the world has changed. To keep it brief, I wondered if this album would still hold up.

So I decided to give it another spin. That turned into another, and another, and one more just for good measure. The Battle of Los Angeles is one of my favourite records of all time, and a gold standard when it comes to political commentary and how to do it right.

And while I do really enjoy the self-titled record, that album does feel like a angst-filled teen. This album is much different. It's more refined, both in its content and the music itself. And for themes that are not dissimilar to those found in hardcore punk, one might wonder how the cleaner production and tight knit lyrics would work.

From a production standpoint, these tunes sound superb. Every single song on this record has a definable hook from Tom Morello, a punchy as f*ck bass line, drums that are played with so much force, I start to wonder how many heads Brad broke in recording this. The overall sound feels dampened, but the quality of each members contribution is fully displayed with excellence. And Zack's vocal work is is great as well; the shouting lyrics are clear and precise, but they are not as ear piercing as they appear to be on previous records, specifically the self titled debut. For as violent as Zack can get on a tune like "Sleep Now In the Fire", the vocals are within a definable comfort level; his voice does not sound strained.

I think that the compositions are wonderful. I already discussed how each tune has an instantly recognizable hook from Tom Morello, but credit to Zack for also having some awesome, anthemic leads as well. For a funky record such as this, bass is key, and Tim's part is given more than enough deviance from the guitar parts to make both stand out from each other. It starts right out of the gate with "Testify", carries on with that killer riff on "Calm Like a Bomb", and is relentless the rest of way, through "Sleep Now In the Fire", "Voice of the Voiceless" and "Ashes In the Fall".

But I brought it up off the top and that's the lyrical content on this thing. I'll keep it brief so that I don't piss off too many people (and in this day in age, that might be pushing it). This album, more than any other RATM record, highlights the groups incessant activism towards socialism. They want to see the system crumble as systemic injustices happen all around them, but in their place, promoting their own authoritarian views. They would never admit to this explicitly, but "Voice of the Voiceless" is where you can clue in. The same phrase is used by radical left wing groups like antifa today. 

Why is this important? Well in order to appreciate the music itself, you have to remember that this record was released in 1999, during the last years of Bill Clinton. The album in entitled The Battle of Los Angeles, a majority Democrat state today, that flipped with the election of Clinton in 1992. So this album is an indictment of unjust systems, and they hold nothing back. They go after everyone, and fair enough. It allows for this music to feel universal, as hard as that might be to believe. Because the anti-authority messages are so revolutionary, it makes our "liberal" politicians look weak in comparison. It's also music that stands the test of time; how appropriate given our current situation.

As a whole, I love this record. It's got the grittiness and anger that you expect from the D.I.Y. camp of hardcore punk, but refined to be presentable and sound phenomenal at the same time. This is the band at their "A" game and has stood the test of time. 

Type O Negative were not a group that I grew up with, but in hindsight, they would have fit right in. I enjoy the new wave sound of the 1980s, and the arrival of darkwave with Dead Can Dance were one of my favourites. And Type O Negative fit right in from a lyrical perspective, although with a predominantly doom metal sound. I caught on to this band super late, and I don't think I've heard this album since the passing of Peter Steele in 2010/2011.

So I've gone back and listened to it and man is it great! I really enjoy how well this album holds up by today's standards, and how influential it proved.

But I have to begin by talking about this album's bad parts, and trust me, they are unavoidable. None of these songs are finished...literally! Oh, the songs themselves sound complete, but every single track on this album ends prematurely without allowing their final notes to reach their desired conclusion, or lead in to the next track. Now, this may have been an issue of being under a time constraint; this album came out in 1996 and had to deal with time limits on CD's and vinyls. Valid argument, then explain to me why the album begins with thirty-eight seconds of static on "Bad Ground" a twenty-one second, untitled intro, and another nine second, untitled outro. I will at least give track 12 (I'm not writing all of that title down!) for being somewhat of a musical idea. These should have been cut. Even by the standards of the time, this is unacceptable.

Outside of my issues with the actual album, we can now talk about the music, which is excellent. When the album begins properly, "Love Me to Death" is an absolute joy to hear, no matter how many times I listen to it; the shoegaze elements are among some of the best in doom and sludge metal. Unfortunately for me, those elements take a backseat for the more traditional doom metal sound on "Be My Druidess", but is still a very solid tune with an awesome hook.

"Red Water (Christmas Mourning)" is literally a Christmas song with Gothic implications. I love how the bridge quotes the melody from "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", but the tone gives it a very different feel. While songs like "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend" and "Cinnamon Girl" are shorter, more accessible songs, the atmosphere does not go away. Meanwhile, "Die with Me" and "Wolf Moon (Including Zoanthropic Paranoia)" are longer, and more deliberate, but still sound great, especially the guitar work.

The Halloween-esque organ that persists throughout this entire record gives it that truly gorgeous eeriness that a lot of Gothic metal bands seem to lack. Think along the lines of the best tracks of Marilyn Manson. The bass lines are straightforward, as you would expect from a doom metal album, while the drums have their moments, but most of the time is left to basic timekeeping. This is all because of the lyrics and Peter Steele as a performer. His vocal timbre is very similar to that of Glenn Danzig, but much lower and drone-like. I can't explain it any more than that, you have to hear it!

In the end, I can see why this is considered by many as the pinnacle of Gothic metal. The music is haunting and dark, the songs are deliberately slow and brooding, Peter Steele's vocal's are what you might expect out of a satanic ritual! This is fantastic stuff and it still holds up today, even if the production and composition have some...questionable motives.

Unreqvited is a solo blackgaze project from Ottawa and this record continues a very quick release cycle for the artist and I found it to be quite enjoyable.

There is a keen eye and ear for dynamic swell and using it as an integral part of the songwriting. I really enjoy how these songs develop over time and, in the case of “Crystal Cascade”, perform the inverse; starting as a hectic atmospheric black metal piece, before cooling down for its relaxing conclusion. None of the tunes on this album feel forced, the longer tracks are balanced well with some well thought out ideas, and even the ambient soundscapes like “Heart of the Spectral Mountains” and “Dreamer’s Hideaway” are given the same razor focus and have some excellent build and tunes themselves.

The production is solid. Lots of wall of sound guitars, some pretty hefty bass lines, percussion elements that don’t sound overblown during the faster passages like on “Crystal Cascade”, and some pretty sweet orchestral elements as well. I will admit that some moments such as “Everwinter” do fall flat, but “Innocence” and “The Permafrost” have some really great orchestral elements. The vocals on this album are insignificant, since they are placed very far in the back of the mix, but consist of mostly screams and howls. I’m hesitant to call them good, but they don’t distract from the solid instrumentals on display here.

I really liked this new one from Unreqvited. It is certainly an acquired taste, but if you want to get lost in some very pretty post-metal/atmospheric black metal soundscapes, then you should check this out.

The new record from Australian progressive metal band, Caligula’s Horse is here and I enjoy what I heard here. However, it is worth noting that this band does seem to be falling into a formula and it does have me worried about their future.

For starters, this album does sound excellent. The mixing is very strong; the low end is very prominent throughout, allowing for the guitars, vocals and additional harmonic/melodic instruments to soar with a lot of power and precision. From a songwriting perspective, Caligula’s Horse are one of a handful of groups that have managed to incorporate djent breakdowns without losing hooks, and that is prominent here on “Slow Violence” and “Autumn”.

But I quickly realized that, while the hooks are nice, they do lack the immediacy of In Contact. This album also suffers from having a very similar formula to that record as well. The shorter tracks have better thought out song structures, while the closing track “The Ascent” is nearly eleven minutes, when it could have been easily broken up into three or four separate ideas. In short, they are not connected together very well.

Throw on top of that two bonus covers that are even more flushed out than the best tunes on the album and you get an interesting listen. Probably my least favourite release by Caligula’s Horse so far, but still enjoyable. They still have a unique sound that separates them from many of their contemporaries in modern progressive metal. I’m just worried about their artistic future.

As I have mentioned before, there has been a thrash metal revival happening for quite a while now. One only needs to look at recent outputs from Kreator, Testament, Overkill and Death Angel to see that. But it also has a strong simmering underground scene, with bands like Havok, and Power Trip. But if you look a little deeper, you'll find thrash metal's outliers; the ones looking to push the genre boundaries to their limit.

This can been seen through output from Revocation, Vektor, and the band we are talking about today, Cryptic Shift. This debut album from this band from Leeds is as complex of a thrash metal album that you might ever hear, complete with death metal vocals, odd time signature changes, lots of bass, and an opening track that is longer than the rest of the album!

Now a quick reminder that I am not the biggest fan of technical thrash or technical death metal. I believe that it can be done well, but more often than not, bands will simply resort to blazing fast tunes and technically demanding parts, without any musical substance. And on Visitations From Enceladus, that feels very much the case. But I do at least appreciate what is on display here. I can hear plenty of good ideas that just don't feel like they were executed properly.

And let's start right out of the gate with "Moonbelt Immolator", a twenty-six minute opener that should have been reduced to about three/four separate tracks, perhaps connected together as apart of a larger piece. I don't mind long songs, but when the movements are disjointed from one another, and it feels like you are ending in a different place than the one you started in, it feels unfinished. I resort to songs like Dream Theater's "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" as benchmarks as to how elongated pieces should be done.

But outside of the overall form, the piece itself is pretty good. For a twenty-six minute piece like this, and I can reasonably only find three/four break points, that really impressive. The riffing is very good, the percussion modulates in and out of thrash/death metal, but never feels overwhelming. The bass presence on this entire album is fantastic; you can hear that strong low end at almost every moment, and the vocals do sound like very traditional death metal vocals and fit the mold very well; very reminiscent of Atheist or early Death.

The remaining three tunes are far more enjoyable for my taste; shorter tunes but keep an idea throughout the tracks runtime to give them all a sense of connectivity and fluidity. Some of the melodies on "(Petrified in the) Hypogean Gaol" and "Planetary Hypnosis" sound really good in the guitars, while the main hook of "The Arctic Chasm" is a slower, almost doom riff with progressive tendencies. I like the riff and it does keep the flow of the song going very well, but without a real melody to latch onto, it does hold that tune back just a little bit.

But as a whole, Cryptic Shift are a fairly new band and this debut record has them still trying to iron out their kinks. They don't want to be arbitrarily cast as "Vektor wannabes" and their is enough unique value here to keep them out of that descriptor. However, when it comes to extreme/technical metal, Vektor still has the better tunes, and Ulcreate's Stare Into Death and Be Still  from earlier this year is more connected. Still, if you need a new technical thrash metal album, without all of the caveats that come with listening to Vektor, Cryptic Shift is a bandwagon you should all get on early.

This Paradise Has Passed

It pains me to say it, but Paradise Lost's best years are behind them and this album is proof of that. And that sucks, because I really enjoyed albums like In Requiem and The Plague Within. But with this? It feels tired, played out, and lacking in basically any melodic song structure that were this bands selling point for years.

And the album starts with "Darker Thoughts", which I thought was a very good opener, but it set a poor first impression since outside of a couple of mid album highlights, this album feels so redundant. And the bands not even ripping off themselves; instead they go for these rhythmic chugging patterns with palm muted strings. The synths that open up "Forsaken" sound dated, while the strings that pop up near the end of "Ending Days" did add some nice dynamic flare, but those moments are few and far between.

The guitar melodies and solos, which were once the bands selling point, are reduced, although they do sound good. But like with most doom metal albums (even the good ones), it goes on way too long, the back half of this record is utterly forgettable, and while the dual vocals of Nick Holmes are still impressive, neither his screams or clean singing are performed with the same level of commitment as previous records. Swallow The Sun and Officium Triste made great, forward thinking doom metal records last year. Maybe you should check out those records instead. 

So far in the year 2020, I’ve learned that there are a lot of folk/atmospheric black metal bands that I’ve needed to discover. It started with Dzö-nga and their stellar record, Thunder in the Mountains, a sureshot contender for a very high spot on my year end list. Bands such as Skyforrest and Olhava also released new albums this year and sooner or later I’m going to have to check out the new Winterfylleth album. But as it stands, here is the newest album from New Zealand rockers Sojourner.

And this is a tough album to discuss because while I think it is a solid record, it does have some very obvious faults that need to be addressed. For starters, this is the third atmospheric black metal album I’ve heard this year with alternating male and female voices. This time around, the male vocals are given exclusive access to the screams and growls, while the female vocals are always clean. And yet for some reason, the vocals are pushed further into the back of the mix in favor of the instrumentals.

And while the music is good, it does suffer from many of the issues that plagued Skyforrest’s A New Dawn earlier this year; specifically in the guitars. The dynamic of the guitars is practically non-existent. When you have tunes like “Talas”, which show restraint through calm pianos, symphonic elements and percussion and Chloe Bay’s sweet vocal timbre, the drastic alteration to bombastic, open chords in the guitar is jarring.

But the album is very good if you can put aside the recurring issues. The implementation of flutes, synths and strings throughout this record are incorporated very well, in both the soft and louder portions. “The Monolith” has some great male and female vocal counterpoint, “The Deluge” uses a great guitar line as a musical motif and builds upon it throughout the song’s runtime, and “Fatal Frame” has some pummeling riffage to break up an album that is quite relaxed for a black metal record. Once again, I’m getting more Skyforest vibes and less Dzö-nga here.

What it all boils down to is an album that I really like, but don’t love. The production issues that are right there at the front are too obvious to omit, and great songwriting can only prop an album up so much.

Trance metal eh? Granted, I know next to nothing about this genre. From what I can gather, it's a sub-genre of metalcore that derives itself on it's electronic elements, in a similar way to way The Devil Wears Prada would have done many years ago. Unlike TDWP, Trance metal is more concerned about the catchy hooks, consistent tempos and, typically, uptempo energy. So that leads me to Amaranthe, a Swedish metal band whose 2014 album, Massive Addiction is one of the more popular albums in this sub-genre.

And I think it needs to be said that Amaranthe are pretty good at stabilizing a decent hook. Sure, the album may sound repetitive as hell, but on their own, these guys have some really catchy tunes. I especially enjoyed the sounds of "Digital World", "Unreal" and the closer "Exhale". While some of the other songs are still pretty decent, they seem very redundant and fade from memory very quickly, especially the first half of this album.

So why don't I like this more? As I already mentioned, the songwriting is serviceable, but it does get pretty ridiculous when you are halfway through the album and have heard almost no artistic growth until "Over and Done". I also am not the biggest fan of the synth choices used here. Just like TDWP, they are usually tinny and piercing, or they are pushed so far back in the mix that this just starts to feel like a straight metalcore album.

My other problem is style. Like I said, I'm basically a n0ob with trance metal so take this all with a grain of salt, but isn't the concept of "trance" a state of hypnotism and heightened consciousness? I had originally thought that trance metal was a genre that incorporated elements of wall of sound tactics similar to shoegaze. But when I listen to Massive Adidctive, I don't get any of that. I'm not getting lost in this music like I would with say... a pagan black metal album.

Maybe I'm not getting the full picture here, but I can't deny that this album does have some strong moments. To me, this feels like the kind of music you turn when at a party full of metalheads, and you want to turn on something that everyone will like, but no one is intently listening to the music. It feels like background noise. Not bad background noise, but lacking in any emotional impact.

A couple of weeks ago, I brought up the prospect of a thrash metal revival during the late 2000s and has been incredibly prominent in the 2010s in my review of the last Testament album. That observation was made primarily because of album releases by all big four thrash metal bands in a rapid period of time from 2015-16.

As is always the case, there will always be copycats, which brings us to Warbringer. They are a more recent entrant in the thrash revival scene who received some attention from me in 2017 with their album Woe to the Vanquished. I thought it was pretty bland and mostly forgettable. And now with Weapons of Tomorrow, nothing has changed.

I don't know how many times I have to say this, but I'll continue to say it until these bands figure it out: thick rhythm guitars is NOT an excuse for leaving out a prominent bass line! Many of these songs lack any forward momentum without it and the tracks feel like they just keep going without evolution because the guitars are never given the room or space to build upon their foundations. "Heart of Darkness" is the only track that understands this and the shape of that song is rewarding and exciting.

The music itself is pretty lacking in originality. Warbringer are wearing their influences plainly on their sleeves and some of these tunes don't even try to disguise them. "Defiance of Fate" is clearly trying to be "For Whom the Bell Tolls", "Power Unsurpassed" jacks the breakdown riff from Slayer's "Angel of Death" almost identically, while the rest of it sounds like it could be substituted with nearly any Megadeth album with vocals straight from Exodus.

Outside of a couple of decent moments that draw heavier influence from black metal and a pretty good one-two punch to round out the album with "Notre Dame (King of Fools)" and "Glorious End", I've heard a lot of this before. And it comes included with all of the troubles and issues many newer thrash bands have been dealing with for the better part of a decade. Testament have proven that you can have hooks and still make thick music. Maybe these guys should pay more attention to the right people.

I think that it often gets overlooked that Black Metal was once an elaboration of the original hardcore punk scene from the 1980s. And this genre's earliest trend-setters were bands such as Venom, Hellhammer and Bathory, and each can be easily debated whether or not they were a punk/thrash metal band, or the originators of the black metal sound.

It wasn't until 1992 that Darkthrone would release A Blaze in the Northern Sky and would change the black metal sound forever. They did it by incorporating more trends that were popular in the death metal scene, which was also in its early stages around this time.

And I do respect A Blaze in the Northern Sky for what it represented for the genre at this time and pushing it to where t is today, but looking back on this album years later, I'm not its biggest fan.

But let's talk about what it does. I already mentioned the death metal tendencies, making it heavier than early black metal. Song lengths are elongated, the harsh vocals have picked up the screeching timbre as opposed to screams. The album is dark and dissonant and noisy. And while I do respect that as a black metal trend, it isn't one that I particularly like.

I enjoy a good dissonant song/album, as long as the dissonance is used properly. Such as to highlight a moment of anger, anxiety or fury. With A Blaze in the Northern Sky, dissonance is used almost regularly, while the albums more melodic moments ("In the Shadow of the Horns", "Where Cold Winds Blow", etc.) are reduced and kept towards the end of each track.

Now this is where I might hope that the production could help save the less than ideal songwriting, but it's all so muddy and compressed. Yes, there is plenty of bass, a trend that I wish more black metal bands from the second wave would have used. But the guitars sound so cheap fuzzy. I thought this album was supposed to be pummeling and raw. These guitars don't deliver the punch that others in the genre would provide.

It also doesn't help that the percussion is also mixed pretty poorly as well. The drums are constantly fading in and out of time, and this becomes most apparent when Fenriz is playing blast beats. I understand that the band is trying for a D.I.Y. setup and having it sound rough is par for the course in early hardcore punk. But this is 1992. We were getting much better mixed extreme metal albums from Death and Atheist just one year before.

I feel awkward reviewing an album like this. I see its appeal among the heavy metal community as one of the genre's most influential pieces of work, and how its presence paved the way for all of the different branches and forms that black metal would take over the coming years. But I still don't see it as a great album. The bad production and the poor song structure leave this as just mediocre for me.

I like to think that enough time has passed for me to believe that their are more people who are familiar with Sólstafir as a post-metal band and not as a black metal one. And it's clear to see; those early albums are not received well even by today's standards, and like with many strains of extreme metal, many of their fans abandoned them after their more accessible pivot.

Now calling Köld "accessible" is using the term incredibly loosely. This album is long and with only eight tracks, includes some very slow and brooding pieces. It's obvious that these guys are coming from the atmospheric side of black metal with the use of guitars as melodic instruments and pleasant harmonies. In addition to brooding song structures, this album does a lot of borrowing from sludge metal as well. I think that "Necrologue" is the album pushing the bands sound to the limit of what could possibly constitute as metal.

Unfortunately, a lot of these tunes tend to be extended beyond what they should be. And it starts on the opening instrumental, "78 Days In The Desert", which sounds more like an amalgamation of fractured ideas pushed together without cohesion or direction. And that continues on "Pale Rider" and "Necrologue" as well. Fortunately the album does get slightly better later. I like the melodic ideas that are present on tracks such as "Köld" and "She Destroys Again", and for as long as "World Void Of Souls" is, the composition of that song is excellent, the buildup is painstakingly slow, how it diverts your expectations by anticipating an explosion of sound, but not getting to that point until absolutely necessary. When the drums entered, I literally took a sigh of relief knowing that the band were not going to leave me hanging! Unfortunately, despite its best efforts, "Goddess Of The Ages" did not resonate with me in the same way.

Now from a sonic perspective, the album is produced quite well. The wall of sound guitars are usually fruitful and energetic (with the exception of the tinny effect on "Necrologue"). The percussion is pretty decent and only provides authoritative punch on occasions. Blast beats are practically non-existent on Köld and have been replaced with what sounds like more traditional punk grooves. The bass is prominent in the mix and during the albums highest points, give these tunes great forward momentum and don't drag. And the vocals are pretty good. Imagine if Tom Araya went for a more melodic vocal delivery, and spent way too much time with Elder's Nick Disalvo (how appropriate).

While I did enjoy Köld, I won't go so far as to call it a classic. There are some great moments to be found within this album, but is held back by some of post-rock and post-metal's worst traits, particularly in the songwriting. For as "cold" as this album claims to be, I believe that Sólstafir could have sunk even deeper.

As most of you know, I am a giant sucker for throwbacks to the classic heavy metal sounds of Black Sabbath. And with this new album from Cirith Ungol, they have taken the Black Sabbath sound and turned it into something a little heavier, and modern, but still effective nonetheless.

This group has been around for a long time, but Forever Black is the bands first full length album in nearly thirty years! And this band has learned a lot since the early nineties in their sound. For one, the hooks are much more grounded than previously and the compositions are very well put together. The transitions between sections are fluent and smooth. The instrumental parts are quite solid, splitting the difference between riffage and melodic interplay. The bass work is mostly very well done and the vocals are howling and powerful, but are probably the albums weakest feature. It is nice to hear some harsher vocals screeches instead of Ozzy-esque vocals, but they can be a little too much at times.

Between albums like Spirit Adrift's Divided By Darkness and this new one by Cirith Ungol, it is safe to say that this revival/modernization of the traditional doom metal sound is very much alive and fruitful. I can easily see this album growing on me further in the coming months, as Spirit Adrift did last year.

Tool are one of music most complicated acts to talk about. Their music can be defined under so many different genres of music (not just metal), and yet with each genre identifier, there are hundreds of people ready to rebuke your argument one way or another. They seem like the kind of band that make heavy metal, even though they seemingly resent making it. Tool is not music meant for the simple mind, but rather for those looking to be taken on a journey; one through drastic twists and turns, and usually culminating in a terrifying ending.

And that statement could not be any more true with the bands 2001 magnum opus, Lateralus. Having gone back and listened to it again for this review, I realize that my opinion on the album may be shaded by rose coloured glasses and I'm willing to accept that. But let me be clear, this album is the bands best. And there are very few albums across any genre that can live up to the ridiculous amount of thought and care that was put into this.

With few exceptions (Fleetwood Mac's Rumors, Deep Purple's Machine Head, Iron Maiden Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and maybe Opeth's Still Life), I can't recall a single album that I have listened to more during my lifetime. I think that part of that has to do with this album's framing. Lateralus is the first album of Tool's that begins experimenting with post-metal and the guitar work from Adam Jones is stunning. I absolutely love the unison melody in the final portions of "The Patient", the slow build and melodic dominance of "Reflection" and "Parabola" with it's excellent composition.

Of course, when it comes to Tool albums, bass is essential. And Justin Chancellor has never sounded better. I don't believe the band has ever been able to make the bass serve this much importance since. Everyone already knows the great hook on "Schism", but don't forget about "The Grudge", "Lateralus" and "Ticks & Leeches".

Maynard James Keenan's performance on this record is second to none. His vocal timbre fits with every song brilliantly. "Schism" is one of the albums simplest tunes, and Maynard's vocals reflect that. On "The Grudge" and "Lateralus", tests the range of his pipes. And speaking of testing the pipes, Maynard delivers a gripping display on "Ticks & Leeches"; I never thought I needed a screaming Maynard, but here we are!

Beyond the sound of the album, Tool are telling a story throughout this album. It's cryptic, mysterious and introspective; one that tests its listener to listen to every single note that is being played. Why? Because every note has a purpose; nothing is tossed in "just for show". As Maynard so eloquently proclaims during one of he title tracks pre-choruses: "Reaching out to embrace the random, reaching out to embrace whatever may come". But it isn't. "Random" is only perceived by the listener. Just like the Fibonnaci sequence in which Lateralus gets its name, the numbers may seem random, but they are simply an expansion on the previous numbers. It's why "The Grudge", "Reflection", "Ticks & Leeches" and of course "Parabol" and "Parabola" make sense; the themes from the beginning always return to the forefront, even when it seems like the tune is about to descend into total chaos.

When I compare this album to one of my other favourite progressive metal albums, The Human Equation, this album is deceptive and ever fruitful, whereas Ayreon's epic can quickly run out of new items to listen for. Not here. Since every note serves a distinct purpose, it's nearly impossible to dissect every orifice in one playthrough. As a result, it can be a daunting listen, and not just because it's nearly eighty minutes. But since this album introduced me to progressive metal as a sub-genre, I have to praise it for it's uniqueness, even two decades later. In summary, this album turned me into a prog snob. So thanks Tool, for whatever that means.

Oranssi Pazuzu have always been a group that has dabbled with psychedelia in their sound, but with the release of this new album, Mestarin kynsi, the band seems to have taken the full plunge into the world of psychedelic tendencies in their music that will be alienating to most.

Oranssi Pazuzu have essentially put themselves in a very selective category of black metal that consists of a band such as Schammasch; music that is still clearly black metal, but has been malformed and turned into something very different than that genre tag entails. These songs are broken up by extended minimalist and drone passages which are complimentary of the quasi-black metal sound. I do enjoy how some of these passages are built and naturally grow over time. The heavier sections are crunchy and super dissonant, helped by Jun-His’ howls that harken back to a young Ishahn during the days of Emperor.

Unfortunately, with an album such as this, the production does seem to get in the way of the compositions themselves a few times. When you have an album trying to be this alien and dissonant, it is no wonder that volume does suffer, and some of the guitars are arbitrarily increased in the mix, rather than being given organic, dynamic swell from the performers, rather than the mixing board. In addition, those going into this album expecting a relentless black metal experience… you are not going to find it here. The fundamental core of the black metal sound is practically non-existent until the final track. The rest of the album, as I mentioned earlier, has all of the elements of black metal, but is distorted in a way that makes it almost unrecognizable.

As a result of this, I think that the people who will find Mestarin kynsi the most alienating are fans of Oranssi Pazuzu, or black metal fans in general. As someone who was unfamiliar with this group prior to this, I can say that in terms of dissonance and uncomfortability, I’ve heard far more gripping stuff, even within this niche subgenre. But I still cannot deny its quality.

As most of you know, I have never been truly appreciative or gripped by the technical side of death metal. I have always viewed it as an excuse for bands to play really fast, without any song structure or composition, to go along with some pretty terrible production that ramps up the volume to eleven without justification.

So I was a little nervous checking out Ulcerate and their new album, Stare Into Death and Be Still. I was told to start out by listening to heir very successful 2009 album, Everything Is Fire before embracing this. And I was intrigued. It was still tech death, but not in the traditional sense of the word. For one, it was pretty melodic, and the production didn't sound like ass. But the album was held back by its songwriting.

So it's been over ten years since that album and what has Ulcerate delivered here? A pretty sweet sounding tech death record where the post-metal elements that were only fragmented before, are highlighted with more frequency, even if I can say that this is certainly not my forte.

For starters, the production on this record is spot on. The percussion sounds tasteful and not like a brick wall of sound, drowning out everything that may come in its way with abrasive trigger bass drum. There are slower, atmospheric sections in which the guitar leads have plenty of room to breathe, which are complemented by pummeling heavier sections with some insane drum work from Jamie Saint Merat. The vocals are big and soaring and match with the instrumental palette very well. I think the bass could be more present throughout the entire record, as it could have made some of these tracks much more open and free.

Which does lead me to my biggest issue with this album: the songwriting. While the fine line between progressive metal and technical death metal is very thin, this is still a progressive metal album at heart. And it suffers from many of my quibbles that I have had with modern progressive bands in the past. Specifically, tracks that sound like long form collections of ideas rather than having a universal connector. As a result, tunes that started off with a lot of promise ("The Lifeless Advance", "Drawn Into The Next Void", etc.) lose steam about halfway through and seem to just end without any resolution.

This doesn't make Stare Into Death and Be Still a bad record. The pure sound of this record is some of the best produced and sonically pleasing technical death albums I've heard in quite some time. But if Ulcerate could include some inter-connectivity in these tracks, they could be something truly special. As it is, they are still teetering on the cusp of greatness.

I have made the controversial claim in the last few years across multiple platforms that Testament have been making better thrash metal albums in the 21st century than all of their contemporaries in the big four. I don't think anyone will argue that statement with Metallica, but I've seen many people argue Megadeth and Slayer. Fewer people argue for Anthrax, even though I believe that they are closest. I really enjoyed Brotherhood of the Snake from 2016 and with this new album, Titans of Creation... well, it certainly sounds like a Testament album. Which is a good thing, since the album is well produced, has some pretty good hooks on tracks like "Dream Deceiver", "Ishtar's Gate" and "Code of Hammurabi", and the bass actually plays a presence on many of these tunes. Granted, I do believe that the rhythm guitar does take too much presence in the mix, frequently drowning out the low end. And Chuck Billy's vocals are sounding more like Mudvayne's Chad Grey than ever before (take that for what you will).

This album does run long (seems to be a theme with recent thrash metal albums) and at certain moments it can be quite redundant. But overall, I found this album quite enjoyable. It isn't as memorable as Brotherhood of the Snake was, but when comparing to other recent thrash albums from Death Angel and Sepultura, this is still solid. I struggled on this rating, but I feel confident that this album is on the cusp of greatness, but falters due to heightened expectations.

Nightwish have always been near the top, if not number one, on my list of essential symphonic metal bands. I still stand by Wishmaster as being their best album, and even after the departure of Tarja in the mid 2000s, Annette Olson was able to hold her own, and together they released Imaginaerum, which should go down as one of symphonic metals best records of the 2010s. Unfortunately, something so fine could not last forever. Enter Floor Jansen for 2015’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful, a decent record, but far from the heights this band has seen in the past.

Now it’s been over five years since then and now we have Human. :||: Nature. and man I feel let down by this. For as long and unbalanced as Endless Forms Most Beautiful was, you would think that after five years the band would have fixed those mistakes. But they didn’t; Floor Jansen’s vocal timbre is stronger during her belting portions, but her low end is painfully lacking in bass and grit that Tarja and Annette naturally had. The background vocals aren’t as dynamic as previous records, and speaking of which, Marko Hietala’s howls are practically non-existent. And the hooks just don’t split the difference between the heavy crunch and melodic dominance as the band has previously done, and what Epica is doing right now (please come back to us Epica, we need you!).

And as for the second half of this project, there isn’t a ton to say about “All the Works of Nature Which Adorn the World”. It’s pleasant for sure, and it reminds me in a sense of the direction Panopticon went on the second half of their record The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness, but as a long symphonic epic, I would have expected some closure or at the very least, some sort of connecting idea to bring this entire piece together. In short, this piece did not need to be collected together in the way that Nightwish intended.

But at the end of the day, the moments that do stand out are what makes Nightwish such a household name in symphonic metal: anthemic, melodic, gritty, truly “epic”. But Human. :||: Nature. does not have a lot of it. And because the album doesn't feel like an evolution of the last album, I can't help but feel really let down by this.

Funk Metal is a genre that has been left behind by far too many metal fans since its glory days back in the early 1990s. One of the genres most niche chambers is also one of its most exciting with its sick bass grooves, infectious melodies and fat production. I say all of this because when it comes to early funk metal, Primus is the band hat I am the least familiar with. I knew a couple of their songs through appearances in video games like Guitar Hero, but everything I heard left me very little interest to check them out any further.

So I went back to check out the debut record from this group and what I ended up finding was something interesting for sure, but probably not in the good way. For starters, where bands such as Faith No More and Living Colour were releasing groove and melodically focused music, Primus were much more experimental. In fact, I kept referring to elements of math rock coming through in the distorted guitar melodies, and Les Claypool's "acquired" vocal timbre that isn't that far removed from black midi's recent album Schlagenheim from just last year. As a result, this album doesn't have many memorable riffs or melodies to pull me back in.

But I can't really take this album seriously because Primus doesn't really take themselves all that seriously either. The album starts with a ride cymbal playing a very familiar pattern that you should easily recognize as "YYZ", but Primus kills it before the guitar riff can enter before the album starts with "To Defy the Laws of Tradition". The song "Too Many Puppies" literally has Claypool alternating with the band where he shouts "Too many puppiiiiiiiiiiies" over and over, which, may I add, is completely unreasonable; there is no such things as too many puppies!

I don't mind tunes like "John the Fisherman" and "Spegetti Western", but the album ends with "Harold on the Rocks"; which is decent, but ends with one of the most played out endings in all of music, only to really end the album with "To Defy", a thirty-eight second coda that goes for a fade out ending. It's jarring and weird, but this is Primus so I wasn't surprised.

In the end, Primus were an interesting group and a unique one for sure, and that is fully on display with Frizzle Fry. Whether or not you end up liking this will be fully dependent on how seriously you take it. And even then that might not be the case! I ended up feeling lukewarm more than anything because I know what the giants of funk metal had to offer and this just didn't live up to those expectations.

Honest question before we start this review proper: besides the self titled debut record from Black Sabbath (or Paranoid, it's a toss up really), has their ever been a more influential heavy metal record than this one? I'm not talking about the best albums in the genre; the ones that have the largest audience and have reached the most ears. It's really difficult to imagine what heavy metal might sound like today if bands like Iron Maiden never existed, or at the very least, never created The Number of The Beast.

And it is absolutely deserving of all of the attention it has received throughout time, critical acclaim and now me gushing over it, even if I still think that at this point in their careers, Iron Maiden hadn't even begun to scratch the surface of their potential.

And how can I not start by talking about the production and the importance of bass. Steve Harris is one of heavy metal's most underrated and most important bass players. The amount of space that he is given throughout this album is remarkable. His sound is clear and pronounced throughout the album on tracks like "The Prisoner", "The Number of the Beast", and "Gangland". His foundations are superb and is rewarded with some amazing bass solos during the bridge on "The Number of the Beast" or just extended fills before the choruses on "Run to the Hills". When he isn't soloing, Harris is not confined to a basic root note pattern that is being duplicated by the rhythm guitar.

And those guitars sound crisp and precise on tracks like "The Prisoner" and "Hallowed Be Thy Name". Meanwhile, Bruce Dickinson is one of heavy metal's most iconic voices and the way that he howls the melodies to these tunes is fantastic. In time, Dickinson will learn how to sing with composure, but on this album, the loose nature of his timbre fit in surprisingly well in front of the very clean mix of the instrumentals.

As for the songwriting itself, I could go on for days talking about The Number of the Beast. "Run to the Hills" only rivals "Master of Puppets" as heavy metals most iconic choruses. The title track modulates from a quieter odd time signature introduction into a common time thrasher and the transitions between the two is pulled off to near perfection. Even the solos are mixed well. "The Prisoner" does this as well with just enough unique qualities to make it standout from the other. "Children of the Damned" is the album's first great banger, and the album ends with pure melodic bliss with "Hallowed Be Thy Name".

"Invaders" has some decent moments with its wonderfully crafted verse sections, but that chorus is... something. It's a jarring transition that stands out for sure, but not in the way that Iron Maiden was probably intending. It's also the opening track so it can leave a bad taste in your mouth if your not expecting it. I also didn't really mind "Gangland"; I don't see why most people almost universally consider this as the albums lowest point when "Invaders" is still here and the opening track no less.

In terms of criticism, there is very little. One of the greatest parts about the community surrounding heavy metal is that the very best of the best gets propped to the top while underwhelming music is nearly universally shunned. And The Number of the Beast is completely deserving of the title of "heavy metal's most influential album". I know people who don't necessarily listen to heavy metal, but they know Master of Puppets and they know The Number of the Beast. This community is alright in my book.

Of all the trends that have come out of the ever expanding world of progressive metal, the one that I can't fully come to grasp with is djent. Djent is a genre that can always feel so lazy and devoid of any character and whose only unique trait is the technicality of the song structures, and everyone playing the same part in unison with one another. I have always seen djent as a progression of the very groove laden moments of metalcore.

And with that, we need to talk about Meshuggah and how I have never been their biggest fan. The technical proficiency in the songwriting and performances does not hide the fact that their music is incredibly empty. Which leads us into this EP (perhaps a single) I, a twenty-one minute "epic" that doesn't live up to the expectations that such a word would invoke. Simply put, this feels like a collection of ideas from the chopping board that have been placed together with no attention to how they work; implying no transitions or any sense of greater connectivity.

The first ten minutes of the song call upon those groove heavy elements of metalcore/djent and does nothing with them; their is no melodic flare, no sense of direction, and no inter-connectivity. It makes the first half of this song a chore to get through with nothing to grasp onto. When a solid groove comes in at the 10:30 mark, the song picks up some momentum. Not much, but it's a start! The addition of tremolo "melody" at 11:30 is pretty, but it is never elaborated on further. Instead, we get another technical chugg-chugg-chugg riff at 12:00. I will say though, the track ends very solidly from around 14:40, when we actually get a musical idea, that is elaborated on, expanded and given some girth as the group builds up towards the 17:00 mark, where the melodic phrase is distorted carefully into a heavy, and groovy conclusion.

Meshuggah have always had issues from a production standpoint as well. This is loud and ferocious at times, most notably at 1:30 when the mixing is blown out by Jens Kindman's vocals, not helped at all by open, palm-muted guitar chugging, and Tomas Haake relentlessly attacking his cymbals and bass drum. Outside of this hellish soundscape, the rest of the song does get better, but is still held back by the clipping percussion, mostly in the bass drum, one general problem that almost all djent artists deal with because of the genre's very percussive nature.

As a whole album, I by Meshuggah is not revolutionary. In fact, it further encapsulates everything I despise about modern progressive metal: songs that are way too long that are not deserving of it, heavy percussion built sound, and lacking in any hooks, melodies or phrases to latch onto. It also explains many of my general complaints with djent as a genre and why I may never truly become a fan. Meshuggah will always have an audience for their pure, unrelenting heaviness and dank grooves, but lack any substance outside of that to make them household names in the heavy metal community. 

Olhava are a blackgaze band from Russia and already this album is starting very similar to the Skyforest album from about a month ago. This one is a little bit different however, whereas Skyforest were incorporating symphonic elements into their music, Olhava are giving us ambiance and drone like tendencies throughout Ladoga, their newest album.

And while I do appreciate a good Panopticon clone with some very pretty sounding black metal, it really fails to deliver in many of the same ways that drone metal has failed to keep me engaged in the past. Here specifically through enormous tracks that don't elaborate beyond a single idea. Whereas Panopticon always develops their songs and modulates them through their run time; never allowing them to become stagnant, before bringing all of these ideas together near the conclusion for a chaotic conclusion. Ladoga has very little of that.

While their are some very sweet ideas on display on "Trembling Night", they overstay their welcome and become tiresome after a while. "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" does a better job at this with a swell that takes place over an almost painful amount of time, so that the release hits with more gravitas.

The mixing on this album is pretty decent. Like I mentioned off the top, this is black metal very much influenced by the likes of Panopticon; a very muddy mix where no instrument part gets pushed to the front. The vocals are pushed the the back of the mix, the percussion and rhythm guitars are mixed together, while the slower sections do bring in some lead guitar and very solid bass work. When the mix gets a little louder however, the bass does seem to lose some of its grandeur behind the rhythm guitar. Melodic phrasing also seems to take a backseat as well. Track like "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" and "Ladoga" have much better second halves after introducing melodic ideas in their softer bridge though.

The ambient sections that are interspersed between the heavier black metal material is present on the "Ageless River" interludes.  These tracks call upon heavy synths, guitar feedback residue from the previous tracks and even some field recording, such as on "Ageless River III". These moments are a welcome change of pace following the relentless nature of some of the remaining tracks on this album. But on their own, I don't think anybody will un-ironically return to these moments as album highlights.

This is absolutely an album that can be defined as "dreamlike". This is black metal that you can just listen to and zone out with for over an hour. As such, I can understand why some people might not appreciate this album as much as those (like myself) who are more welcoming of the atmospheric side of black metal, and the stylistic changes that lead it towards blackgaze. Simply put, if you are not a fan of this genre, this album will not change your mind. Otherwise, turn the lights down, roll up a spliff or get yourself an alcoholic beverage, and just let the music take you away.

*EDIT* had to fix a bad autocorrect in the first paragraph which replaced "ambiance" with "abstinence". Yeah this album shows restraint, but not like that!

Emerald Seas is a serviceable symphonic metal record from a band that has thankfully made some solid steps in the right direction after their pretty terrible debut record, Solveig from 2017.

For one, the production has seen a fairly sizable increase in quality. It’s still not great; the guitars still sound tinny, the bass is far from existent throughout the project, and the symphonic elements still sound a little slap dash at times. But, Adrienne Cowen’s vocals are now emphasized in the mix and sound good most of the time, and the melodic passages of guitar, such as solos, are also vastly improved from before.

The compositions are more streamlined and memorable and the group does have some pretty decent melodic ideas that they are attempting to portray. Songwriting is better, but Adrienne needs to stop soaring to these highest of highs that she can’t hit with consistency. Most of the time they sound rough, but she’s also screaming on the record so why doesn’t she just do that? Then there is whatever the hell was going on in the bridge of “Drowner of Worlds” and the less time we spend talking about it the better.

A decent improvement from the band, but still a long way to go if they want any chance of catching up with symphonic metal giants like Epica and Nightwish.

BTW, nice lick on “Bury You”. I wonder if these guys have ever watched an Adam Neely video before. Yes, I know I’m a memer, sue me.

It has become seemingly more difficult every year to take progressive metal seriously. It seems as if every year, another group releases an album that is simply Dream Theater lite, is arbitrarily tossed into the "progressive metal" category and most people eat it up. I thought the term "progressive metal" was coined for a genre that wasn't normative or derivative; it was forward thinking.

So why are we stuck talking about Psychotic Waltz and their new album, The God-Shaped Void? This album is entirely dependent on nostalgia of other progressive metal records in order to maintain relevancy. Except that's not entirely true, Psychotic Waltz have apparently been around since the mid 1980s and The God-Shaped Void is their first studio release in almost twenty years. This isn't original or memorable outside of a couple of decent hooks on "The Fallen" and "Sisters of the Dawn".

It certainly isn't saved by production, which has the bass playing so softly that any momentum that this band is going for is muted, and not just because of the slow tempo choices. "While the Spiders Spin" is probably the only decent sounding instrumental, since it primarily employs alternate lead guitars and the bass is forced into pulling it own weight. The rest of the album is chugging guitar riffs that double the bass, rendering the low end mostly useless. Percussion is adequate and these vocals are very drawn out and tired. The implementation of flute during the second half is commendable, but the performance is weak. I understand why, but it would have sounded much better if someone knew how to mix properly.

I guess that this album has enough decent moments on it to make it slightly above average, but even then, I feel like I'm being generous.

So here’s something I didn’t expect. A new album by a band which I have only ever heard from in passing. And I actually enjoyed what I heard. That’s not the surprising part; anybody who knows me knows how much I enjoy my post-metal. The surprising part is how big this group has gotten since their 2016 album Air. This new self titled album is receiving massive critical acclaim alongside the fanbase. So I decided to check it out and see if it holds up to that surprising 2016 debut.

And I’m here to tell you that it certainly does. This is the sort of new fresh take on post-metal that the genre has desperately needed. A knack for melodic songwriting, mixed in with some very stellar clean singing and a towering performance behind the drum kit.

So why don’t I like this more? Well I think that question can be narrowed down into three main parts, which we will get into as they become significant, but let’s start by talking about that songwriting. Many of these tunes have very simple melodies that are usually carried by the lead vocalist, but always have a countermelody, usually played by the tremolo picking lead guitar. And those countermelodies are typically more interesting than the vocalist. Take the opening track “A New Color”, where the vocals sound like they are being forced into the back of the mix. It allows for those sweet melodies and solo to really be heard and admired, same goes for “Fault”. Guitar solos are very few and far between on this album, but when they happen they sound beautiful.

Also on the subject of songwriting, I really love how Astronoid is able to incorporate other metal genres into their brand of atmospheric post-metal, such as the guitar melodies that borrow from progressive metal bands like Periphery on “Breathe”, or the straight up thrash metal elements on “I Dream In Lines” and “I Wish I Was There While the Sun Set”.

And that brings me to my first big problem: the incorporation of those ideas are flimsy. Yes, Astronoid have developed their own sound and I am okay with that, but when you have tracks like “Lost” or “Beyond the Scope”, that attempt to create a hybrid sound in the first half and then return back to the tried and true formula of Air. Many of these ideas just feel aborted for the dreamy atmosphere, it feels like a letdown. It’s the problem that I have with a lot of bands going the way of Imagine Dragons; don’t pull any punches!

Which leads me to my second issue with this record, the use of dynamics. And the fact is that there really aren’t that many at all. Most of these tracks are brooding heavy tracks with all instruments playing at all times to leave the listener in a dream trance, which it certainly does do that, but maybe having a quieter section here and there would make those thunderous sections more worth it. There is some dynamic edge on a song like “Fault”, but as I mentioned before, those dynamics are left behind in the first half for that atmospheric vibe. One of the better tracks on the album is “Ideal World”, as it is more involved than anything else and really requires the listeners attention.

My final big issue with this record is the lyrical content. Mainly that there really isn’t anything to say about it. The lyrics are very minimal and spoken in broken sentences or phrases, which leaves me with very little to compliment. How can I appreciate your lyrical themes if they are pushed to the back of the mix so they can’t be heard anyway, and when I do find the lyrics, they don’t say anything at all? It’s really a letdown and pushes this album out of the territory of greatness.

So, while I do still like the album, there are some major issues with this record that need to be addressed in the future. Which beg the question: where does the band go from here? Seriously, I’m genuinely curious. Because a lot of atmospheric bands have to try something new in order to stay relevant without becoming the music that I use to help me sleep at night. Astronoid is fortunate to have melody in their back pocket and a great percussionist to keep them going for a while. If Astronoid wanted to create a straight up black metal track, they could do it, they just need to work at staying on track. And add in some more direct storytelling, maybe finding some outside help, and you would have a progressive metal band that could be a force to be reckoned with. I would bet money on this band being huge very soon.

I like to think that I am pretty well versed when it comes to hardcore punk music. So what happens when you take the heavy aggression of hardcore punk and add a  black metal tinge to it? Well you'd probably end up with a band like Kvelertak. This is my first time ever stepping into the genre that I will dubiously call "Black 'n' Roll" so I was hoping for an interesting experience.

And what I ended up getting was an album that I was mostly expecting and mostly enjoying. This is aggressive, hardcore punk with just enough tonal dissonance and instability to make it a pretty interesting hybrid of the two genres.

To be fair however, it seems disingenuous to call this album a hybrid album, since Black Metal's influences are derived from hardcore punk. This album truly feels like one of the next logical steps for the genre to take in the vein of classic Black Metal artists like Venom. It has pummeling riffage, the bass, while not a prominent force on this record, does provide a much needed ground work for the rest of the ensemble to carry on. The percussion work is mostly standard timekeeping, occasional fills and sometimes quick thrash time or blast beats. While the vocals will be the most difficult to appreciate, depending on where you are approaching this album from. Given that this is the Metal Academy, I'm sure most of us don't mind. They are strong, powerful vocals with a crisp and clear delivery, making for some excellent, emphatic moments.

When the album takes a clear black metal pivot, it is sparse, but effective. The guitars take on your traditional tremolo picking patterns, usually atonal, while the drums pummel away at some blast beats. Usually, I might criticize an album for having them feel out of place, but on multiple playthroughs, they didn't seem to bother me. The transitions are very well executed. I also really enjoyed the bridge on "Fanden ta dette hull!" paying tribute to another of black metal predecessors: thrash metal. I know it seems crazy to say this, but this genre may be as close as we get to "mainstream black metal"!

It isn't perfect though. Mostly in the production. I noticed the sound of the percussion, specifically in the cymbals, sounded very buzzy and really took me out of the experience from time to time. Also, this album does tend to drag a little long near the end. The last two tracks in particular. They are still good songs, but they seem to run out of ideas after a while and the group comfortably rests in a black metal sound the rest of the way.

But overall, I was impressed by this novel sound. I can tell it is still in the early stages of development as Kvelertak tries to figure out how much black metal is too much, and that may be a fine line that this group as well as others may never find. But still, props to the band for trying and creating a pure, raw, hardcore punk album. 

I don't typically do Funeral Metal or Depressive Suicidal Metal because most of the music found within is exceptionally nihilistic, but lacking any of the higher stakes. But the newest album from Drown, the brainchild of Markov Soroka has been received favorably in the early stages, so I decided to check it out.

Okay, so this album is the continuation of Unsleep, a project released in 2014 that supposedly tells the story of drowning at sea as our main characters (Mother Cetacean & Father Subaqueous) watch and we get their reaction as they lose their son. One thing I will say right out of the gate is that while Subaqueous is certainly the harder album to digest, I also think that it's slightly better than Unsleep. The songwriting has vastly improved and the instrumentals are able to tell an ever evolving story through melodic motifs and phrases repeated and modulated. And this isn't just through the individual movements, but across the two parts as well. I was very impressed to hear how the opening idea from "Mother Cetacean" was modulated and contorted into the bridge of "Father Subaqueous". I also enjoyed how, more so on "Mother Cetacean", the track picks up intensity through it's run time, making for what could be a painful listen, a lot more bearable.

However, there is something to criticize and that is the vocals. These tracks are delivered in the third person perspective, with the exception of the final lines of "Father Subaqueous". As a result, I don't understand why Soroka uses filters on his vocals to make him sound like he's underwater. If this was a first person telling, fair enough, but I had a hard time understanding anything that Soroka was saying. When I look on recent death doom metal albums that I have enjoyed (Songs From the North, The Boats of the Glen Carrig, The Death of Gaia, The Plague Within) each album has clear, crisp vocal deliveries from their vocalists. I would expect on a funeral metal album like this that vocals would take prominence, just as they would from any Emo band or Depressive Suicidal Metal.

As a result, I found this album to be a little tedious. Not bad by any stretch, but not an album you can just pick up and play. And as I mentioned off the top, it is lacking in any of the higher stakes, since it is told from a third person perspective, rather than being delivered straight from the source. Still, the music is strong enough on its own to save this album from mediocrity. Tread lightly upon these waters.

I really enjoyed how this album flowed and how it was able to sound unique to this new group. I can hear a spattering of death metal elements through some of the guitar riffs and the lead singers vocal timbre, but it sounds fresh and exciting, not in your typical melodic death metal sense. I've seen people bring up elements of psychedelic rock and while I can somewhat agree, I think that Post-Metal is probably the more accurate term for this. There are even a handful of slower, brooding sections that could be an extension of the death doom genre, which I also appreciated.

The sound of this album is crisp and poignant. The bass is emphatic at driving the tunes home and the melodic and harmonic phrasing of each tune is commendable. Don't have all that much to say about this except that it is an excellent post-rock/progressive metal album that has been well received early on. Highly recommended.

I was very impressed from what I heard from Fluisteraars and their newest album, Bloem. This ensemble out of The Netherlands is playing some truly gorgeous sounding black metal, which some excellent mixing to boot. I am all for the exceptional bass presence that is on display here. The guitar melodies are soaring and emphatic, and while the vocals aren't the greatest, they do provide some decent counter-melodies to the lead guitar.

That being said, this album does have one pretty alarming problem; it's snooze factor. While these tracks are very nice and provide an excellent sound palette, some tracks ("Eeuwige Ram" and "Maanruïne" in particular) do carry on with just one idea for an extended period of time without doing anything with them. As a result, these tracks do get quite repetitive and can lure you into a dream state with the albums atmosphere.

That being said, good production and musicianship does make up for it in some places, so I can't not recommend this for those looking for a nice atmospheric black metal adventure. Or if you are looking for something to help put you to sleep.

Well I'm finally caught up on new mainstream releases and finally have some time to relax and listen to some of the best that metal supposedly has to offer. I mean it's not like I have anywhere to go at the moment! The first album I listened to was a debut record from French black metal band, Cénotaphe, and I found this album to be pretty bland and poorly mixed.

For one, there were plenty of moments throughout this record where the guitar, bass and drums are lost and out of sync with one another. My guess is that it makes for a more raw experience, but to me it just sounds wrong and that Brume wasn't listening to his own parts while recording the rest. As for the vocals, I am not much of a fan. These screeches are more like howls and the singer seems unable to hold his breath. There are a couple of clean moments on the record, but they are typically sung as a plainchant and it doesn't sound very interesting or unique.

The songwriting is pretty lackluster as well. There are ideas here and sometimes they are exemplified, but too often these ideas are only used as an introduction before transforming into pretty standard black metal riffage. These contrasting ideas never feel like they are molded properly and just give me the impression that most of these songs were half finished, so they decided to add a completely new one to increase the track lengths.

This album feels much longer than the forty-six minutes that it is allotted. Even the good ideas that are here don't really stand out among the best in black metal so far this year. It feels very pedestrian and might intrigue you if you enjoy the traditional black metal sound, but not for me.

Kayo Dot is the brainchild of Toby Driver and Choirs of the Eye is the debut album from the group, released in 2003. I did not become familiar with the group until very recently with their 2019 album Blasphemy. And I was completely underwhelmed by what I heard. For one, the bass was non-existent, making the really long tracks on that album feel even longer, since they had no forward momentum.

Now I can say that when the band started out, they had less of that problem. But at the same time, they were very much out of the mainstream as this album is jarring as hell! There is a lot of dissonant tones and ideas that are recurrent throughout the album in which, if you are not prepared for them, can make for an uncomfortable experience. But I do believe that the band was able to pull off most of it pretty well.

For starters, when this album gets heavy, whether it be near the outro of "The Manifold Curiosity" or basically the entirety of the finale, "The Antique", Kayo Dot can throw down some impressive grooves and ideas, even if that might not be their end goal. The instrumental work is stellar on this record, the incorporation of horns and strings as melodic instruments creates a welcome change of pace, and the bands control of dynamics is impressive. And the production doesn't get in the way of the dynamic swells either; they feel natural and rewarding.

While I don't think that there is one particular "bad" song on the album, the second track, "A Pitch of Summer" does highlight most of this albums most perplexing moments, such as the use of extended pauses that constantly made me wonder if something was wrong with my playback device! Or the very minimal development of ideas. Granted, this happens less throughout the rest of the project because "A Pitch of Summer" is the shortest song, but it takes a painfully long time for "Marathon" to get started and it could have been trimmed down.

Am I in love with Choirs of the Eye? No. While the genre of "Avant-Garde" music is up to interpretation, there are plenty of ways in which the genre can be executed well. And Kayo Dot deliver one of the more unique heavy metal records you may ever hear. However, the reason it is called "Avant-Garde" is just that: it's vanguard. It's a plethora of different genres (not just metal) all mashed together into one. And you're enjoyment of this record will be if you can handle the madness.

Spectral Lore & Mare Cognitum are both solo black metal artists who decided to team up and create an absolute mammoth of a record in order to create a modern, metal version of Gustav Holst’s The Planets.

And yes, that comparison does have a lot more in common than you think: Mars is subtitled as the “Bringer of War” and “The Warrior” in their respective suites and in both cases, it is the loudest and most aggressive piece in the work. Venus is the “Bringer of Peace” and “The Priestess” respectfully, and while both parties subtitle Neptune as “The Mystic”, it is clear that Spectral Lore & Mare Cognitum took a lot of influence from Holst’s Neptune in the creation of Pluto, from the ethereal nature of the entirety of Part I, and of course, the outro to Part II.

Beyond the comparisons, this album is a lot of work. And it has to do with the simple fact that there are two different artists here making two very different styles of black metal. Spectral Lore is making music with more blackgaze tendencies, while Mare Cognitum makes music that is more technically demanding and perhaps, even more melodically driven. As a result, if I ever do come back to this album again, it would be for the Mare Cognitum tracks over Spectral Lore, as Spectral Lore’s tunes are a lot less interesting.

That being said, “Pluto (The Gatekeeper Part II - The Astral Bridge)” brings both ideas together into one grand finale, but the jarring change of pace with the electronic to acoustic percussion, high screeching vocals to devilishly low gutturals, and soaring tremolo strumming guitars to downtuned, chugging riffs, makes for a very disjointed closer, even if I do appreciate what the duo was going for here.

This is an album that has a lot of excellent ideas, but only some of them are executed all that well. I know that I will be checking much of Mare Cognitum’s back catalogue after this, but I can't say the same for Spectral Lore. The album’s length along with alternating styles certainly make this feel like an intergalactic journey so props for that. But for me, I’ll remember this trip for it’s memories; I don’t think I’m going to travel all this way again for a while.

Code Orange are a metalcore band from Pittsburgh who made waves on my radar back in 2017, when a number of rock/metal critics who I follow rated Forever surprisingly well; even going so far as to include it on their respective AOTY lists. But then I came here and noticed it was far more controversial than it would seem. So I checked it out… it was pretty good. Granted, I was certainly not the target audience for that album.

And so when I heard Underneath, I thought that the album could have been better and was absolutely a step down from their previous effort. Why? Because Code Orange seems to have doubled down on the electronic/industrial elements, and it does make for a fairly enjoyable, if somewhat jarring project.

And this group is playing into two styles. The first is the heavy breakdown influence of metalcore, and an industrial element not dissimilar to a band such as Fear Factory. And I like the Fear Factory influence on this album more, simply because the industrial elements are not pushed to the front of the mix to create peak dissonance. I would say the same thing about the worst moments on clipping.’s last album There Existed An Addiction To Blood.

I prefer this music when (I assume) Reba Meyers takes over lead vocals because those tunes typically have a distinctive hook or melodic idea that is then contorted into some pretty nasty stuff. I like it more than when (again, I assume) Eric Balderose is on lead as the songs feel more like heavy mathcore such as Converge; kind of ironic since this album is not produced by Kurt Ballou.

I didn’t mind this album, even though some of the production choices infuriated me. However, unlike what I said in my review for I Let It In and It Took Everything by Loathe a few weeks ago, this album could have been much better and streamlined if the band knew how to incorporate both of these sounds together into the same tracks, rather than isolating them into their respective tracks.

Every few years I am always perplexed when I see a new Body Count album released and the leadoff single/cover get tossed into every new metal playlist on spotify. And I wonder how they even got there. It was quite obvious to me that during their 2010s revival and the album Manslaughter that this was a comedic act; not meant to be taken seriously. They modernized the song “Institutionalized” by the Suicidal Tendencies for god sake!

Anyway, here’s the album Carnivore and I can tell that albums like this are gonna get eaten up by the meatheads of the world with its over the top hyperviolence. But then this album has two very strange moments of contemplation. The first being a cover of “Ace of Spades” by Motorhead, the other is “When I’m Gone” featuring Amy Lee, dedicated to Nipsey Hussle and the overall message of the song is bizarre. I guess in the context of the album it fits, but it isn’t much of a dedication song. More of a “You’ll only care about me when I’m dead” song, a very selfish, nihilistic way of looking at it.

Jamey Jasta does some guest vocals on “Another Level” which did not fit at all over the slow groove, he would have fit better over a song such as “No Remorse”. An Ice-T as a performer is very bare bones with this hyper aggressive beatdown stuff. Not reinventing the wheel in any way, but again: novelty act. They don’t need to invent anything.

What it all boils down to is a pretty weak album overall. The album is called Carnivore because it is the blandest meat and potatoes metal album I’ve heard in quite some time. No need to feast on this meat for very long.

I don't listen to very much in the way of this brand of virtuoso, neo-classical guitar music, but I have heard enough of it that when I saw this album appear as one of the monthly listens, I felt I had to review, however brief this may turn out to be.

Jason Becker's debut album was released when he was only nineteen years old and I can kind of tell. While his performances are very impressive, showing off an unprecedented virtuosity of his instrument, the songs themselves are little bit more than your standard power chords, occasional synth backgrounds, very simple percussion, and a bass that could have recorded in a different studio, in a different country! All the focus is on Becker, but as an observer, it can get overwhelming at times; all I'm saying is, an instrumental break would be nice every now and again.

I do really enjoy how this album manages the neo-classical elements, specifically in the compositions. Becker and the rest of the ensemble know the basics and even some more of the advanced harmonies of classical music; lots of sweeping dominant/diminished arpeggios as well as a real understanding of major/minor chord progressions. That being said, I do have to criticize the first half for not really getting how these sorts of showman pieces work in a truly classical idiom. Later on, on tracks like "Eleven Blue Egyptians" and "Opus Pocus", an actual melodic idea is formed and gives Becker something to play off of rather than just wankery. But the first half, tracks such as "Perpetual Burn" and "Mabel's Fatal Fable" are not memorable in the slightest. And while I do like what Becker was going for on "Air", that song too devolves into a wank fest with no melodic momentum.

The ability was there and on full display with this album, but honestly, this feels like what every kid who just got accepted to a college/university jazz programs solos sound like: lots of notes, not a lot of substance. If I'm comparing this to the virtuoso, neo-classical guitarists that I know more about (Steve Vai, Eric Johnson, Paul Gilbert), I could take it or leave it.