Sonny's Reviews
It takes some balls to make a metal concept album, especially when it consists of just one 37 minute track with an environmentalist message (and giant robots), but these guys have made a record that is not just one of my favourite stoner metal albums, but one of my all-time favourites. With some serious grooves and killer riffs it never becomes boring or repetitive. Also a special mention for Ed Cunningham's vocal performance that is probably not what this band are noted for, but here it really hits the spot. If you only ever buy one stoner concept album then make it this one.
Ogre inhabit the no man's land between doom metal and 70s style heavy psych / rock and never more so than on this album, opening with The Future, this is the first of the doomier songs, the other two, Blood of Winter and Cyber-Czar, taking up most of the second half. Hive Mind, Big Man and Judgement Day are a trio of bluesy, boogie-driven, hard rock tracks that definitely wouldn't be out of place on a 1970s heavy rock record, along with the heavy blues rock of King of the Wood. As much as I like Ogre I've got to say this album seems a little disjointed. Sure the individual songs are fine, but as a whole coherent album I'm not convinced.
A brain-meltingly heavy and pained descent through an existential hell that is as bleak and hopeless as anything you're likely to encounter this year. This is Zolfo's debut release since forming in 2016 and they've obviously spent a lot of those four years honing the material to an almost surgical edge. Great songs, assured performances and a hugely desperate atmosphere add up to a young band that have plenty to offer the sludge metal world.
Italians Bretus' 2012 debut is an album of quality trad doom that foregoes the quirkiness so often associated with italian doom metal in favour of a more hard-rock tinged effort. Neatly written songs that don't drag on unnecessarily, tightly performed with good riffs and a decent vocal performance all adds up to a praiseworthy effort.
Dark Angel's second album was released in 1986, the same year as Reign in Blood and it's very much in the same vein as Slayer's classic with it's turbocharged riffs and insane drumming. It's actually a little better on the fret-shredding solos front, although Don Doty's vocals are no match for Tom Araya's evil roar. The production isn't anywhere near as bad as some would have you believe, but it is a little muddy, although not enough to blunt the album's all-out assault on the listener's eardrums.
The four tracks that make up the first side of the vinyl release are a relentless blitzkrieg of thrashing metal mayhem that never lets up, not even for a second, lashing out riffs like laser beams, solos like lightning bolts and Gene Hoglan's thunderbolt drumming might even be better than Dave Lombardo's (I'm just saying). Side two dials the headlong dash back a little and slows the tracks down ever so slightly allowing the listener time to take it in a bit more rather than just trying to keep up. The eight and a half minutes of Black Prophecies shows that they aren't just one-dimensional breakneck thrashers, the uber-chugging of Death Is Certain (Life Is Not) is neck-wrenching and the final sprint through Perish in Flames has everything any self-respecting thrasher needs, crammed into less than five minutes.
Aggressive, exhilarating and evil-sounding this is as near perfect a thrash album as you will hear and one of THE albums that had such a huge influence on the nascent death metal scene. Further proof if it was ever needed that thrash peaked in '86.
Doomraiser have changed their sound a little with this, their fifth full-length. They have shortened their songs somewhat and have incorporated more of a psych influence, which has resulted in a slight lightening of their signature gloom doom, particularly during the first three tracks. Don't misunderstand, this is still very much a doom metal album, particularly the further into it you delve and it isn't a massive departure for the band but more of an evolution that may, incidentally, make them a little more accessible. Personally I liked them just fine before and with tracks like Terminal Dusk and Loathsome Explorer Interpolation the doom is still king in Doomraiser's arsenal, consequently there's plenty for existing fans even as the band reach out to new listeners.
Acid Mammoth indeed, both as heavy and as trippy as the name implies. Sounds like Electric Wizard jamming with Ghost, only heavier. Just like that trip you have when you're convinced that a black hole has formed in the centre of your brain - you know the one - only in album form! A giant magic mushroom cloud of an album - made out of real mushrooms! Anyway, you get the idea.
I have a long relationship with Judas Priest. My first album was Sad Wings of Destiny and I first saw them live on the Stained Class tour. This relationship has been a turbulent affair and, at times, it has become extremely strained. The four albums from Sad Wings.. to Killing Machine are as good as any in metal, but then things went downhill fast - the eighties best forgotten except for Defenders of the Faith, the nineties started well with Painkiller, but then... oh dear! Rob returned and the Priest put out a couple of bloated half-hearted attempts at rekindling the flame and I'd had enough. So here we are in 2020 and this has been out a couple of years now, so I thought I'd give it a go and, you know what, it's pretty damn good. Certainly their best since Painkiller in my opinion. There's some real stormers - the first three out of the gate really let rip and suddenly the years just roll away, Rising from Ruins, Flamethrower, Traitor's Gate all kick ass and, great news for all us aging bastards, this proves that there's life in the old dog yet!
New York trio Grey Skies Fallen's fifth full-length album combines epic doom metal in the vein of Candlemass or Solstice with gothic death doom as practiced by the likes of My Dying Bride or Swallow the Sun to forge a two-pronged crown of triumphantly morbid doom metal. The album has quite a progressive feel with it's changes in tone as it expounds it's future history of a dying world and the initial melancholy resignation of it's last inhabitants that ultimately transforms into anger at those who are seen as being the cause of this ruin. Of course this can be viewed as an allegorical comment on the seeming indifference of the powerful to the fate of mankind as a whole, focussing all their efforts instead to the maintenance of that power - and that is exactly what I think the band intended.
This is a skillfully assembled album that explores doom metal's ability to relate a concept and evince the variety of emotions needed to engage the listener with it successfully and as such must be considered a success.
Some bands that profess to be "technical" thrash hang their hat on their technicality and forget about what makes for great thrash metal. This often results in albums that, although being technically admirable, are somewhat sterile sounding and lacking in punch. Fortunately, this is far from true of Coroner and particularly this, their third full-length album. First of all this album thrashes like a motherfucker with Tommy T. Baron firing off red-hot riffs and rhythms that will set your head a-bangin' and your heart pumping. Those riffs are precise yet are still fired with a passion and aggression that is vital to decent thrash metal and the solos are incendiary with never a note sounding out of place. Ron Royce's rasping vocals are in the vein of "classic" thrash and his basswork is driving and busy, while Marquis Marky's drumming is exemplary throughout (although I would have liked to have heard it a bit higher in the mix).
Interestingly Baron and Marky were once roadies for Celtic Frost, presumably picking up a hint or two from Tom G. Warrior about making interesting yet exhilarating thrash metal records. Weighing in at only 34 minutes this is quite a short album, but I have no problem with that at all, this is a lean, mean thrashing machine and needs no padding. With superb tracks like Die by My Hand, Read My Scars and Tunnel of Pain there is more than enough packed into it's runtime to satisfy even the most demanding metalhead.
I clearly remember coming home late one Friday night and turning on the TV to watch a metal show that was showing on the UK's Channel Four back then, catching the video to Voracious Souls and being completely blown away. I subsequently managed to track down The Ultraviolence and it quickly became one of my favourite thrash albums with not a single dud track in my opinion. It's amazing to think that DA were still teenagers when they recorded it (drummer Andy Galeon was just 15).
The squealing intro to Thrashers kicks us off in supercharged style with a breakneck celebration of thrash itself and we never need to look back from thereon in as one frantic riff after another is torn off. I know vocalist Mark Osegueda isn't to everyone's taste, being a bit high-pitched for some, but I personally think his singing is perfectly fine. The riffs are dynamic and uncompromising, particularly the aforementioned Voracious Souls and the solos are searingly hot laser beams of sound, so what more do you want from an 80s thrash album?
Sadly, Death Angel were never this good again, but the vast majority of metal bands don't even get close to making one album this brilliant, so I'll settle for that.
Probably my favourite Voivod album, this marked the perfect balance point between their earlier anarchic, punkish thrash and their later progressive and technical albums. Snake's vocals would not sound at all out of place on an early 80s UK punk album by the likes of Discharge or GBH, the energy of the tracks also seeming to derive from the chaotic nature of punk, Overreaction being a particular example. The influence of post-punk and progressive acts however had taken a prominent grip on the band's songwriting and the songs were far from predictable with multiple and sudden changes in tempo and rhythm that never allow the listener to get comfortable or complacent as to the direction the songs are likely to take. The science fiction concept running through the album is another staple of prog the band embraced, not only telling a coherent tale throughout the album's runtime, but also a metaphorical critique of society as seen through the band's eyes.
This is a classic and uncompromising vision of thrash metal from a band who seemed immune to the lure of trends and were determined to play whatever the hell they wanted, wherever that may take them.
Sweden's Mindless Sinner have split and reformed a couple of times since their inception in 1981, their most recent hiatus ending in 2014. This is their second album since then and it harks back to the heady days of 1980's twin-lead-attack heavy metal as popularised by Priest and Maiden. Although there's nothing new to hear here it does have a certain infectious quality and I did find myself nodding my head and tapping my toes along with their anthemic-sounding metal ditties.
Calgary thrashers Hazzerd release their second album, Delirium, the follow-up to 2017's reasonably well-received Misleading Evil and I gotta say, this is pretty good too. Old-school thrash metal in the vein of Anthrax's better albums, but with a serious shredder in Toryin Schadlich whose solos come straight out of the Randy Rhodes shred-book. Good-time, hi-octane thrash for those with an inate love of all things heavy metal.
A long time ago I vowed never to waste my time listening to another Annihilator album, so I'm kinda bummed out that I've had to endure them one more time for a Clan Challenge, but I have taken one for the team and listened to the Canadians' debut once more to refresh my memory. I was hoping that maybe time would make me more amenable to it, but no, I still find it insufferably insipid. The recycled Metallica riffs, the boring drumming, the bland songs, the horrible vocals and weak-ass solos are all still as tedious as they ever were. I find it inconceivable that a thrash album can't raise any excitement in me at all, I can usually pick out something about a release that I like, but the sheer banality of this renders me incapable of enjoying anything about it - and this is probably their best album!
For me, depressive black metal is the toughest of the black metal genres to love. There are some truly terrible bands in the DSBM scene, so much so that it seems that every single person with a bedroom recording package who feels down or rejected has put a DSBM album out, irrespective of how much talent they've got. But, just occasionally, you can come across someone who has the songwriting ability and musical talent to successfully convey the desperation and hopelessness of true depression and, as such, is able to make an emotional connection to the listener - Gris are one of those few acts.
Their bleak lo-fi black metal accompanied by Icare's tortured vocals has an additional layer of melancholy provided by the subtle addition of strings, acoustic guitar and piano, the successful deployment of these being well beyond the skill of the average bedroom black metaller and another aspect that sets the duo well ahead of the pack in the DSBM field. Unfortunately, not being able to speak French (much) I had to run the lyrics through Google Translate and despite this, it is evident that Icare's words are heartbreakingly poetic pleadings for the end of his suffering.
This album is so ridiculously far above the rest of the DSBM pack that it transcends into something completely different, a real primal scream from the heart and a desperate plea for solace. The final instrumental track, a solely acoustic affair with only violin, cello, piano and acoustic guitar hints at the ultimate peace that the suffering singer has been searching for, however he may have found it.
My least favourite of Ahab's four albums released to date. My main problem with it is that the production seems to have robbed the "heavy" sections of any of that suffocating weight that the earlier albums displayed. There is also a much greater presence of gentle post-metal passages with sorrowful clean vocals as the band move further away from their out and out funeral doom beginnings. This isn't to say that this is a bad album, but it has to be viewed as an evolutionary step between the first two and Boats of The Glen Carrig, which is similar in style, but has a greater contrast between the lighter and heavier sections, being a much more successful composition as a result.
Anthrax are probably the least acclaimed of the "Big Four", being seen as a bit of a joke by some. Certainly they were the only ones who seemed to have much of a sense of humour, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, surely. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, with Among the Living they released one of the premier albums of the 80s thrash revolution.
Sure, it's song lyrics are mainly based around Steven King stories and comic books (and nuclear Armageddon and the treatment of Native Americans) but it has got kick-ass chugging riffs (the intro to I Am the Law is a killer), a love-of-life infectiousness that is impossible to resist and in Joey Belladonna arguably the best singer in thrash.
This time around Anthrax had really tightened up their sound, incorporating hardcore influences that probably came from the guys' involvement in S.O.D. and whereas Slayer used the influence of hardcore to make Reign in Blood even more evil sounding than previous albums, Anthrax used it to make the music more anthemic and fun.
I was lucky enough to catch Anthrax on the tour to support Among the Living when they visited the UK and it was one of the most brilliant nights I've ever had at a metal gig. These guys sure knew how to party back in the day. Unfortunately this was the crest of the wave for Anthrax and the only way thereafter was down, but while it lasted it was a hell of a blast!
This is a monumental album from the guys of Darkspace and not just in terms of length, although it does weigh in at nearly eighty minutes. Each of the seven tracks here are also of daunting length to those not used to the concept of long tracks that generate a certain atmosphere through repetition. Unlikely to appeal to those not already fans of extreme atmospheric metal then. What I think it does illustrate superbly well on several of the tracks, such as 3.11 and 3.12, is the connection between atmospheric black metal and funeral doom metal. Both use extended, repetitious songs and virtually incomprehensible vocals as another layer of atmosphere to convey the concept of the song, rather than to literally impart meaning through the actual words (if listened to without the benefit of a lyric sheet anyway). There are also a lot of thin, reedy keyboards which is a staple of funeral doom, as features on albums such as Thergothon's seminal Stream From the Heavens.
This isn't just an atmospheric black metal album, however. There's a couple of tracks where the riffs come to the fore in a more traditional black metal attack and there is also a lot of dark ambient influence. So, despite the album's length and repetitive nature of some of the songs, there is actually a lot going on here. The songs' are extremely well structured and it is evident that these guys really know what they are doing, which is no surprise considering Wroth is Paysage d'Hiver in his other guise.
Ultimately, this is one of those albums that you don't so much listen to as experience.
Competently performed viking metal in the vein of latter day Enslaved. However, sadly, I found it a bit bland and unable to raise the pulse or move me much in any way. The couple of albums I've heard from the band ('94's Niðr ok norðr liggr Helvegr demo and 2015's raunijaR) I enjoyed quite a lot, but their sound and songs now seem to have been overpolished and over-produced leaving it lacking the bite that, I feel, any decent black metal derived music should have.
Hyper-fuzzed stoner doom from Poland with the emphasis more on the doom than the stoner. Dopelord are one of the better stoned-out doom outfits around and although this isn't the best of their three albums to date, it's still pretty good. Riffs 'n' Spliffs, the cornerstone of every nutritious breakfast!
So, how would you imagine an album titled Magick Rites by a band named Dopelord sounding? Chances are you summoned up something pretty close to the reality. Saying that, although this breaks no new ground, it is actually a very good stoner doom debut in the vein of Electric Wizard, with some real heavy riffs and understated vocals. If you're a fan of the genre it's definitely worth a listen.
Ostensibly a Death Doom release this album is so much more than that. True, the majority of the album comprises a wall of sound of chugging, throbbing, tribalistic doom rhythms overlaid with inhuman death growls, but there are also lighter more progressive and even psychedelic passages that relieve and provide contrast to the crushing weight of the more doomy material. Most definitely one of THE metal albums of recent times and truly something a bit different in the oft-times stagnant-sounding doom scene. If you need convincing, then check out Nemesis or No Doom for the Wicked if you have any taste at all for extreme doom. Not for the fainthearted, though, clocking in at over 80 minutes this wil leave you in need of a stiff drink...
Heavingly sorrowful funeral doom, like the exhausted final breaths of some mortally wounded titan, waiting for death to take it. An image reinforced by the choral sections of last track The Silence at the End of Time as, seemingly, the end nears and the creature glimpses the angels come to escort it's soul to the afterlife.
Continuing on from where previous album RIITIIR left off, Enslaved cement their position as the premier progressive extreme metal band, occupying the throne vacated by Opeth when Mikael Akerfeldt left the world of extreme metal behind. The "trve" black metal afficianados may scoff, but Enslaved have always had more to offer than just blastbeats and demonic screams and in the last decade their albums have evolved beyond the restrictions of a single genre. Don't get me wrong, Enslaved were a great Black / Viking Metal band, but now are so much more and, for me, probably the greatest metal band active today. This album is, as always, technically brilliant and the songwriting is complex and satisfying but still maintains the heaviness required for any top drawer metal release.
The three lengthy epics of viking / black metal featured on this early ep exhibit the quality that was required to allow Enslaved to be crowned as the worthy successors to First Wave legends Bathory. Faultless musicianship and complex songwriting have always been what make this band stand out in the black metal world and both are on display even at this early stage of their career. These three tracks strike an almost perfect balance between Viking Metal's sense of the epic and second wave Black Metal's aggression, resulting in my absolute favourite early Second Wave ep.
Intensely dark sludge metal from Floridians Ether Coven that, apart from a couple of quieter, more reflective tracks, is suitably aggressive. The riffs are huge and intimidating and the vocals are desperate and savage-sounding in the main. The drums sound quite busy, but are a bit too muted and their sound is dulled by the production. However, when it hits the mark, particularly with the two longer tracks, This House Is a Tomb of Memories and The Burden of Loss, it is very impressive, but that said, it is too long at almost an hour, for an album of this intensity.
This is the debut album from Guangdong Province's 殞煞 (a.k.a. Vengeful Spectre). Now I've got to admit to being fairly ignorant as to the extent and veracity of the chinese black metal scene, but if this is anything to go by, then it's got to be in fairly good shape. I don't want to sound patronising, but this took me completely by surprise and it fuckin' rips! Ferocious sounding, well-written melodic black metal that also incorporates elements of chinese folk music in a really organic way that works fantastically well. In fact, I really can't believe how superbly the folk elements work, but the tremolo nature of chinese strings is absolutely made for black metal and I've always loved the sound of those bamboo flutes anyway. The singer shrieks and screams his way through the tracks in a manner that must have left his vocal chords in tatters come album's end. I have no idea what he's singing, but it sounds amazing and I'm sure must be something to do with honourable battle and all that - just check out the cover (which is also gorgeous). It may be a little overproduced for black metal, sounding very clean indeed, but it seems a minor quibble to complain that it "doesn't sound shitty enough for black metal" when the music just works so damn well. These Chinese Rocks - and I'm hooked!
A relatively short album of lo-fi atmospheric black metal from Deorc Weg's solo BM project with a couple of his usual dungeon synth interjections thrown in for good measure. It's rabid and ragged-sounding and blasts as hard as the winter winds it invokes. Apart from closing track The Veil of the Wintermoon none of the songs are over five minutes long, so they don't get the chance to become too repetitive and boring, knowing just when to take their leave.
Dukatalon were formed in 2006 in Tel Aviv, releasing their debut album Saved by Fear in 2009 and it has taken the band eleven years to release this, the follow-up. This is my first exposure to the band and I've got to say this is a good record, ticking all the boxes for any sludge metal release - ultra-heavy, distorted guitar riffs, pummelling drums and harsh, angry-sounding vocals that reference the genre's hardcore beginnings.
I can't imagine there being many more pissed-off sounding metal albums out this year, yet it still mainains a degree of melody to the riffs that stop it descending into the realms of an incoherent rant. I particularly like the Middle-Eastern vibe that finally shows through on penultimate track Angels in Red.
I have no idea what the metal scene in Israel is like, but if this release is anything to go by then it is in fine fettle.
Grin comprises the husband and wife duo of Jan and Sabine Oberg (of german sludge outfit Earth Ship) and play sludgy doom with psychedelic overtones. It's fairly straightforward stuff, but it has satisfyingly groove-laden riffs, nicely underpinned by Sabine's driving basswork and Jan's forceful drumming. The vocals range from angry-sounding sludge yelling to echoing, melodic, psychedelic intonations. It is heavy without being overbearingly crushing and the psych overtones add a positivity to the album's atmosphere. If I had to describe it in a couple of words, I would call it space sludge, a melding of the vastness of space psych with a dense sludge core.
Northern Ireland's Elder Druid's debut is a five-track ep of down and dirty, sludgey doom that sounds as if it was conceived in a contaminated swamp rather than on the streets of Ballymena - and I mean that in a good way..
Ballymena's favourite doom metal sons' second full-length album is, in my opinion, a big step up from their debut, Carmina Satanae. Their tight, groove-ridden stoner doom is contrasted by Gregg McDowell's blackened vocals that sound more as if they are being torn from his throat than actually sung. These songs are veritable monsters, the riffs are huge sludgy slabs of doom over miles-thick foundations laid down by the bass and drums, that crush all before them mercilessly and leave a wrung out husk behind. Where a lot of doom metal mournfully reflects on loss, Elder Druid seek revenge for it.
With the surety and songwriting chops of a true veteran outfit, Kawir relate the tales of ancient Greece's heroes and legends in a proud, paganistic celebration of their country's Golden Age. Apparently Adrasteia was the goddess of female revenge and the album takes as it's focus the heroic women of the old myths. I am not familiar with the band's back catalogue (yet) so am unable to comment as to where this album sits within their pantheon (pun intended), but taken in isolation, this is a superior slab of pagan black metal in a scene flooded with wearyingly mediocre acts. Sure, it's more than capable of a good blast, but there is so much more to it than that - the epic opening of the album as Tydeus sets the scene of sweeping coastal mountains and ships loaded with armed warriors seeking adventure, the folk-ritual of Colchis and it's guest vocal from Wardruna's Lindy Fay Hella, to name but two.
Despite Kawir's veteran status, this is not a band merely going through the motions, but sounds inventive and vital and is obviously the work of master craftsmen.
This is the second EP released by this Quebecois Stoner Doom trio and is my first exposure to the band. It's three tracks tell a tale of a wizard's flight through the cosmos to face and defeat the dragons of a desert world and his entrance into the spirit world following his death after defeating the great drakes. It kicks of with a great slab of groovy, fuzzed-up doom in Ascendant as the wizard departs on his cosmic journey and already I'm well into it. Twin Suns' ten minutes is a more plodding affair, leaning more heavily on the stoner aspect of the band's sound as derived from classic-era Sleep, Saint Vitus and Electric Wizard as the wizard's dragon-slaying saga unfolds. Closing track Prophecy is a real builder, rising to it's climax as the wizard meets a bong-smoking monk and then passes into the spirit world as foretold.
Proper stoner shit this one, reminds me a bit of Ogre as far as the stoner concept release goes and if that's your thing (as it is mine) you probably won't go wrong with this.
I don't have a problem with blackgaze as such, but sometimes it just seems that the fruit has fallen a little too far from the tree. The high level of production, clean sound and alternative rock influences of this album are a bridge too far for me, I think. I can't shake the feeling that this is meant for people who want something a bit "edgy" to put next to their Radiohead and Green Day albums. Hipster black metal may finally have become a trend and what was once a scene for extreme outsiders has gone the way of all things. I don't hate the music as such, it has some OK moments and is very competently done, but I'm greatly saddened that black metal is just another influence for Grammy-baiters to weave into their tepid compositions. Maybe I'm just being a miserable bastard, and I've never considered myself to be Mr. Kvlt, but this shit used to mean something to people.
Whilst dropping the overtly celtic influence of debut album Heimweh, this still reveals it, albeit more subtlely, in the songs' melodies (except for the last half of closing track Endless Night which feels like a blackened Hogmanay celebration). The production is a little muddy for a black metal release with a fair bit of echo on the vocals. The songs are well-written, however and I do like the drum sound but, for me, disappointingly, this is a step down from the debut, an album I'm a huge fan of.
This debut release from UK black metal outfit, Crom Dubh is a terrific example of celtic-influenced atmospheric black metal. I like old-school "true" black metal as much as anyone, but I also love the newer, less spiteful sounding, wave of pagan, nature-themed so-called "atmospheric" black metal of which this is a particularly fine example. The trap this genre sometimes falls into is of becoming all-atmosphere and no song, but this album does consist of actual songs, rather than merely musical "pieces".
In places the album is even in danger of becoming "catchy" and the bagpipe-evoking guitar sound reminded me bizarrely of 80's celtic rock band Big Country. Probably not an album for the black metal purists, but if your more open-minded about your BM then give it a try.. what have you got to lose?
Let's get one thing straight, this album is not depressing. How can something that sounds so amazing be depressing? The only depressing music is bad music and this is most definitely not that. Sure, this conjures up a melancholy atmosphere and may thematically tackle depressing or morbid topics that the majority of people don't wish to think about, but that does not a depressing album make.
The songs are slow, with heaving guitar and growled vocals, but there is also a lightness to the melodies provided by the violin, subtle keys and the female vocals. I love this contrast in sounds between the abyssal and the angelic that really great funeral doom excels at and this pulls that off fabulously well.
Fallen, the opening track, serves as a kind of overture, introducing the themes the listener can expect to hear over the next fifty-odd minutes and setting up the rest of the album magnificently. Tracks like Quiet These Paintings Are and ...To Live for My Death... have some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful melodies contrasting and accentuating the sheer despair you feel in Pasi Koskinen's anguished vocals as he growls out his impending and irrevokable loss.
Ok, maybe I have made it sound like a depressing album, but this truly is an album that manages to find and express the beauty that can be found in even the darkest of places, gifting the listener a knowledge that there are others who understand these feelings, making it not a source of depression, but a flickering flame of hope for any finding themselves in the depths of despair.
Wolvsepent were a duo from Boise, Idaho, comprising drummer and violinist Brittany McConnell alongside guitarist and vocalist Blake Green. Aporia:Kāla:Ananta, despite its forty-minute runtime, is officially an EP and marks the band's final release as it appears the duo have now gone their separate ways. It consists of a single 40 minute track that blends drone metal, ambient, and classically-influenced passages. It begins with an ethereal and cosmic ambient prologue that eases us gently into the piece. As this intro subsides, it is replaced by a plaintive, lone violin which then takes on a degree of urgency with a busy, whirling refrain as it is joined by Blake's percussion and low vocal croons, building in intensity to a crescendo - and then a sudden stop. By now we are fifteen miutes in and the plaintive-sounding violin of earlier returns, taking us by the hand and leading us into a metallic hellscape of heavily distorted drones and feedback that follows, like a stringed Virgil chaperoning a horrified Dante through a drone metal Inferno.
This is where the meat of the piece resides, where massive chords drone at funereal pacing, transformed by huge levels of distortion and tortured feedback, sparse and sluggish drumbeats pound like percussive shockwaves and the vocals become deep heaving groans, as if issued by some suffering titan of the deep. This isn't to say that the remainder of the album is just a heaving homogonous drone, though, as the violin paints some lighter streaks within these lumbering sonic thunderheads, but the gravitational vortex at the heart of this is as heavy as anything you would expect from Sunn O))) or their ilk. The piece finally ends with multi-layered dissonant violin that sounds like a demented calliope trailing off to take it's tale elsewhere.
There is no doubt that Wolvserpent are not for everyone, but the imagination within their sounsdcapes and the sheer sonic devastation they can wreak with what is quite a spare instrumental pallette is extremely impressive. At times sounding fragile and ethereal, like it could just float away, at others seismically slow and mountainously heavy, as if threatening to tear itself apart, this is a piece that takes the listener on a journey through time and space on a search for some kind of spritual awareness. Definitely one of those that is worth putting the time in with.