Sonny's Reviews
Mizmor's exploration of the existential conundrum that is man's insistence on trying to impose meaning on an existence that is ultimately meaningless, manifests itself as a suitably angst-ridden and hopeless-sounding miasma of blackened sludginess. Sheer futility exudes from the grooves of the record, the weight crushing out all lightness from the album's sound and sending the listener to the place occupied by the cover's hooded figure as it reflects endlessly on this soul-sapping paradox.
Devil Master's debut full-length album sees them rip through thirteen tracks of blackened thrash-punk brimming over with vitality, aggression and horror.
Really enjoyable blackened metal that, above all else, reminds us that metal can actually be fun to listen to!
By now everyone knows the story of the implosion of Батюшка [Batushka] and the ridiculous situation of two iterations of the band releasing albums close together. To be honest, to me, that's just so much bullshit that belongs in the pages of some worthless metal rag - what's really important is the music. Litourgiya was a refreshingly original release in the black metal world with it's combination of BM and liturgical chants, but now we have two interpretations of how this idea evolves. This, Krzysztof Drabikowski's version, takes the route of a greater emphasis on the metal aspect and incorporating the chants in a more subtle way. The result is a mighty fine melodic black metal album in a more orthodox sense, the chanting adding an additional dimension to the sound. Although I love the original album, this is a very good follow-up and should appeal to anyone who did enjoy Litourgiya (and loves melodic BM in general).
A riotously noisy blend of black, industrial and noise metal that is guaranteed to get your neighbours banging on the walls - although you're unlikely to notice!
Elegy sees Dead to a Dying World weaving beautifully atmospheric tales from the darkside, blending black metal with post-rock and even doom metal elements. The layers of sound include Hammond organ, Eva Vonne's viola and several guest musicians, including the cello of Tim Duffield, Thor Harris on percussion and several guest vocalists - in addition to the dual male/female vocals of Mike Yeager and Heidi Moore, Bell Witch's Dylan Desmond, Swans' Jarboe and Emil Rapstine of The Angelus all make vocal contributions.
The occult doom vibe of the debut has gone along with the departure of ex-Cathedral stalwart Gaz Jennings, to be replaced by a more hard rock oriented traditional metal sound. Luckily it's still a quality set of tunes on offer, and Johanna's vocals are still great.
What a gorgeously crafted album of atmospheric black metal. The three tracks on offer here, blend atmo-black with elements of dark folk, post-metal and doom into an utterly heart-breaking cry from the soul for times, people or places long gone.
Witchsorrow are nothing if not consistent. Anyone familiar with the band will know what to expect from this, their fourth album, Hexenhammer. For the rest of you, they are a no-bullshit british doom metal band that are almost fundamentalist in their adherence to the basic tenets of doom. After a few listens I would probably have to say this is my favourite, feeling just a bit more dynamic than their previous releases.
Witchsorrow are a band who make no-frills English Doom Metal and make no apologies for doing so, in the manner of a doom metal Motorhead. I'm sure this makes them the bane of a lot of modern metal fans, but it also garners them a small, but loyal, following. Sure this album isn't noticeably different to either of the previous two, but I'm sure they don't care (and neither do I) so more power to 'em!
I was a fan of Green Lung's Free the Witch ep, but this is a step up - a really assured debut full-length from a band who are obviously learning quickly. This is from the lighter end of the stoner doom spectrum, with it's quaint woodland imagery and more obvious hard rock influence, but don't be deceived, it still kicks as much ass as you could want!
An album of stonerized thrash metal that isn't bad on the stoner front, but the thrashing just doesn't convince, the aggression has been blunted if you will! Still, it's got a lot of people buzzing, so maybe it's just me.
A decent black metal album that certainly isn't breaking any new ground, but what it does, it does quite well. Unlikely to stand out particularly from the mass of black metal released this year.
Apparently this is the first of the band's albums to be recorded by Colin Marston and while it is undeniably an album of quality atmo-black compositions, I have reservations about the polishing of the band's sound which has toned down the urgency of the music and resulting in, for me, an album that feels a bit neutered.
An album of Post-Rock inflected Atmospheric Black that has a little more going on than a lot of their contemporaries. Veering from melancholic to discordant to blisteringly heavy, this is sufficiently interesting to stand out in the crowded scene of nature-themed black metal releases and, for me, is the band's best album.
Four tracks of thundering blackened doom with a real vitality, getting under the skin and taking hold like an itch you can't scratch.
This is DoG's fifth album and is an exploration of the philosophical idea that it is the finite nature of life that makes it worth living. This takes the musical form of atmospheric black metal in the vein of Saor or Winterfylleth. It's blasting is often counterbalanced by gentle, calming sections of acoustic recuperation before once more launching into their pummelling attack. The songs are nicely structured so that neither form overpowers the other and exist in a kind of balance, possibly representative of life itself.
It's a great time for fans of female-fronted heavy, psychedelic metal. MWWB are another brilliant band ploughing this furrow. Jessica Ball's dream-like voice soars over the density of the heavy riffs and the Hawkwind-style, spacey electronics. Atmospheric doom of a very high calibre indeed.
One of my favourite bands, that no one has heard of, is back with a hefty double LP of their trademark anarchic and demented stoner metal. There's a good variety of material on offer here, short, catchy and aggressive punky numbers, longer, almost doom-y tracks, heavy psychedelia, gentle acoustic breaks and some killer incendiary guitar solos. If you're unfamiliar with the band (and unfortunately most people are) then this is a great place to start. If you want to hear some good-time, crazed and energetic stoner metal that'll get you're feet tapping and your head nodding then give these guys a listen.
Heavily influenced by late eighties/early nineties Slayer (even down to the Hanneman-esque squealing solos) this ain't a bad dose of retro-thrash at all. The problem, of course, is in trying to emulate such legends, they are inevitably bound to come up short. Still, there's no harm in trying!
The banner of thrash metal still flies high over the southern half of the Americas and nowhere more so than Chile. Sins of the Damned are another in an increasingly long line of kick-ass Latin thrashers that are showing the rest of the world how to keep thrash fresh and exciting. With song titles like They Fall and Never Rise Again, Take the Weapons and Victims of Hate, the band rip through the album's seven tracks in 37 minutes of frenzied, yet focussed mayhem that allow you to travel back in time to the late 80's heyday even if only for a just over half an hour.
This, the latest album from one of the leaders of the currently in vogue space black metal movement, is another terrific slice of atmospheric music, so suiting to accompanying a flyby of the solar system that if it had been out thirty-odd years ago then they would have had Voyager I playing it as it went off on it's journey to the outer reaches!
Despite the demo-quality sound of the recording (or maybe because of it), this manages to be both atmospheric and exceedingly heavy Sludge / Doom Metal that laid the groundwork for their brilliant 2017 debut full-length, Cosmic Doom Ritual.
Gorge are a sludge / doom band from Connecticut who sing about the bloody and distant history of the North American continent. This tale of the earliest migrants into Alaska via the eponymous ancient land bridge from Eurasia is their first full-length release and, with a flash of inspiration, was recorded live deep within the heart of the Tariffville gorge. This has given the album a unique atmosphere, the sheer titanic enormity and timelessness of this geographical feature has lent it's gravitas to the crushingly huge riffs of the music these three delvers into prehistory have spewed forth like primordial lava oozing from the seas to form continents. A genuinely impressive debut release and one of the heaviest albums of 2019.
Despite forming in 2009, these French doomsters have only now in 2019 released their first full-length album. Presumably they have spent the previous decade honing their song-writing skills because these are not songs written by fresh-faced, naive young musicians. These, instead, are carefully crafted and expertly performed, with their ambitious vision of blackened death doom producing songs of variation and complexity on a level with any Tarkus or Close to the Edge of yesterday's prog visionaries. The albums layout is very symmetrical (intentionally or not, I don't know), the central third track and metaphorical eye of the storm is a gentle acoustic piece that provides a soothing respite from the intensity of the rest of the album. Second and fourth tracks, Embers and The Downward Stream respectively are both ten minute pummellers, that incorporate elements of dissonance into their death doom vibe that owes much to the icelandic BM scene. The opener, Smouldering Darkness and closing track Monolithe both weigh in around the twenty minute mark. These two tracks, however, are no monotonous lumbering beasts, but are vital and complex in their structure as the band forge their entire sonic arsenal into a couple of hugely satisfying and impressive epics. The album as a whole flows superbly well and has an almost narrative feel to it, as if illustrating a particularly profound tale.
As a side note, the digital version is inexplicably "Name Your Price" on Bandcamp, so no-one has an excuse for not owning a copy!
Melo-death-thrash that sounds like Vader run through a 90's-thrash filter. No bad thing in my book and I've heard a lot worse in recent times.
This cracking slab of historical black metal is, surprisingly, only just now seeing the light of day despite being recorded way back in 2010. I don't know why this would be, but it certainly isn't because of any lack of quality. It catalogues the fall and rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, a tale that undoubtedly has a kind of affinity with black metal sensibilities. The music is both ascerbic and melodic, dealing up just over half an hour of synth-enhanced imperialistic savagery and majesty.
This is one of two terrific thrash albums released on the same day, Kreator's Gods of Violence being the other, when usually we're lucky to get two in the same month. This harks back to those heady post- Reign in Blood days of the latter half of the 80's when a few thrash bands were beginning to evolve an even harsher, more brutal sound that would eventually mutate into death metal. I haven't followed the modern thrash scene too closely in recent times, but if this is indicative of what's on offer it's now time to return in earnest.
Another of the early nineties classic down 'n' filthy death doom albums. Super-downtuned, bordering on subsonic with one of the most guttural growlers in death metal. Winter, Autopsy, Cianide, Rippikoulu, Ceremonium - great times indeed!
Five tracks of blackgaze that triggers emotions of hope tinged with melancholy. Feels like when someone is undertaking a new stage in their life, filled with optimism yet thinking of a lost loved one and wishing they could share the experience with them - wistful black metal.
By now everyone knows the story of the genesis of Syntheosis, a collaboration between Oranssi Pazuzu (one of my favourite black metal bands) and Dark Buddha Rising (about whom, before this release, I knew absolutely nothing) for a Roadburn commision that was intended as a live only entity, but took on a life of it's own, finally resulting in this studio release. Musically it's extremely difficult to pigeon-hole, as can be evidenced by the disparate genre tags on this very site - I'll go with blackened, spacey, atmo-sludge, heavily-influenced by the 1970s, of particularly King Crimson, but there are also traces of Hawkwind and even Tangerine Dream in there. The three vocalists allow for great variety from gurgling black metal shrieks to the almost post-punk female-sounding singing on Wake up the Possessor and the twin drummers hammer out some extremely compelling tribalistic rhythms. I have found myself increasingly drawn towards albums that focus heavily on atmosphere and this certainly falls into that bracket, the whole feeling like the soundtrack to a journey through some unsettlingly dark dimension similar to the one visited by the Event Horizon in the film of the same name. I must admit that whilst listening to the album I found it extremely easy to imagine it being performed live and although this is an impressive listen, I can't help feeling it is even more so in a live setting. One of 2019's must-hear metal albums.
I feel certain there is a hefty tome to be written concerning the relationship between the tales of HP Lovecraft and metal. Doom metal in particular is suited to HPL's tales of lurking horrors and creeping terror, as it is most successful when creating an atmosphere of unease and melancholy.
Burial in the Woods are a solo doom metal outfit of Germany's Gerileme, a veteran of several underground doom and black metal bands such as Idisenfluch, Osteon and Ravnsvart and are one of the most recent bands to plough this particularly fruitful thematic furrow. This, the debut release under the Burial in the Woods moniker, consists of fairly orthodox, slow doom riffs in the vein of Lord Vicar, Apostle of Solitude et al with skirling guitar work layered on top and black metal-influenced low, shrieking vocals. There are several well-worn tropes of Lovecraft-related metal - chanted, ritualistic vocal sections and a liberal use of (seemingly real) church organ (particularly on the instrumental Ecclesia Dagoni) meant to exemplify the blasphemous rituals of the devotees of Dagon and others of the Cthulhian canon. This may all sound a little clichéd and underwhelming, but Gerileme has managed to weave these prosaic elements into a whole that has the, presumably intended, effect of producing an atmosphere of unseen horror and dread, blasphemous rituals carried out in delapidated New England fishing village chapels as befits the source material.
The twenty-four minute closing track, Gölgeler Alemi, is a reworking of a song from the solitary album by one of Gerileme's old band's Negatum which, other than the length, with it's lyrics telling of an unseen Purgatory for departed souls, doesn't differ greatly from the rest of the album either thematically or musically.I
These Parisian death doom merchants have been a favourite of mine since their Where Wolves Once Dwelled demo ep, but this has exceeded even my expectations. I mean, what kind of balls does it take to begin a debut album with a drum solo? Chthonic rituals indeed, the vocals gurgle up as if from some Lovecraftian charnel pit and the doomy riffs suggest long-forbidden rites of summoning. This is death doom with a real old-school vibe, taking the listener right back to the heady days of the late 80s and early 90s.
I know nothing of musical theory. I have no idea what microtonalism means. I don't know what a polyrhythm or a tempo ratio is. Adam Kalmbach (aka Jute Byte) does however and offers a baffling (to me, anyway) introduction to this album discussing how these things relate to this record, on the album's Bandcamp page. Of course, all this goes right over my head. However, what I do know is that all this makes for an original and challenging black metal record that breaks away from the endless imitators and plagiarists of the modern BM scene, going against the current trend of making black metal more accessible (and, presumably, profitable). This is not an easy listen and, I suppose, you'll either love it or hate it but, as such, it should be applauded for getting under people's skin and dividing opinion in a way that extreme metal and black metal, in particular, used to.
Thunderin', pummellin' death metal, kicking off with the killer "Beg for Life" that leaves us doing just that and doesn't let up until the closing notes of the incendiary "Heat Death" a mere thirty-eight minutes later. This is my idea of death metal, an album that references back to early 90's death, retaining some of the elements of thrash, but with a thoroughly modern ethos.
One of the better thrash albums to emerge since the early 90's sounded the death knell for the genre that changed the face of metal forever. It seems that South America has now become quite a hotbed for "the genre that just won't die" and these Chileans may just have trumped most of the other Latin neo-thrashers with their neck-snapping, fist-pumping debut. It's no hyperbole to claim that Misconception doesn't feel hugely out of place when weighed against early classics by the likes of Kreator, Sodom and even Metallica - the Cliff Burton-esque bass work of Ignacio Arévalo is of particular note. Throwing out incredible riff after incredible riff then melting your inner ear with his searing solos lead guitarist Felipe Alvarado must be absolutely knackered after this, which is probably why he keeps the vocals to a minimum (although they are perfectly fine). It will take a bolt out of the blue to produce a better thrash album this year. Count me impressed!
Aggressive and muscular thrash that also borrows from death and black metal, similar to the band's compatriots Blood Tsunami. There are very few tempo changes or variation, but a guarantee that your ears will be relentlessly pummelled for thirty-odd minutes which, as you know if you are any fan of thrash, is no bad thing. The downside is that the production sounds muddied and blunts the assault a little but, to be fair, this is a minor niggle. Recommended for fans of Kreator, Slayer, Sodom etc.
Andavald are another band to hail from Iceland's burgeoning dissonant black metal scene. This five-track album is book-ended by a couple of unsettling piano-led instrumental pieces, the meat of the album being three tracks lasting a bit over thirty minutes of well-written black metal. The album's slightly uneasy atmosphere isn't merely down to the dissonance employed on the tracks, but also the pacing which is, in the main, much slower than is usual for black metal. I really like the album's overall effect and prefer it to quite a few of it's more illustrious counterparts.
This is classic funeral / death doom material with the album's four tracks clocking in at a mammoth 83 minutes. Thematically, the album deals with the human race's apparently suicidal need to be the instrument of it's own destruction through unmitigated consumption of the planet's resources and pathological voyeurism. These themes are very much suited to the morbid and sorrowful atmosphere created by these french alchemists, the towering walls of sound washing everything away to leave the listener overwhelmed, exhausted and resigned to their fate, like the people of the album's cover queueing passively for their own execution. Absolutely recommended for fans of Esoteric, Evoken, Bell Witch et al.
With vocals straight from the early-Burzum "anguished, tortured soul" school of singing and a dissonant guitar that sounds like it was recorded in some long-forgotten subterranean crypt, Sortilegia summon the true spirit of black metal, unholy and disturbing!