Daniel's Reviews

I was really impressed with The Contortionist's debut album "Exoplanet" (4/5) when it was released back in 2010. In fact, I actually wore the t-shirt around for a couple of years there so I was really looking forward to seeing what the Indiana-based deathcore outfit had to offer when 2012's "Intrinsic" saw the light of day a couple of years later & I wasn't disappointed either. The pivot towards a more progressive & less extreme sound fit like a glove in my opinion & "Intrinsic" ended up being a really big record for me that year so I have to admit that it's always baffled me that people generally seem to regard it as a bit of a disappointment. I honestly can't fathom how any fan of progressive metal music doesn't really dig it to tell you the truth as it's so professionally put together & possesses an undeniable class throughout the very consistent tracklisting. Perhaps my original 4.5/5 rating was a bit extreme but I can find very little worthy of criticism here. The dreamy progressive metal stylings glide across your ear drums leaving a glistening trail behind them while the complexity in the song structures is as dazzling as it is effortless. The last three tracks are the clear highlights in my opinion & leave me with a really sweet taste in my mouth, particularly the wonderful "Cortical". I've always found the quality of closer "Parallel Trance" to be impressive too as it could easily have been drawn from a premium space ambient release.

There are a few more generic deathcore sections spread across the tracklisting which is probably the reason for me dropping my rating a touch but some the highlights of the album also come during the heavier moments too so I'm not complaining too much. Despite the obvious deathcore component, I'm not sure that there's enough of the band's original sound left to still be claiming that tag any longer though. This is a truly progressive metal record in every sense of the term so there's really no need for additional tags.

I originally favoured "Intrinsic" over "Exoplanet" but now I'm not so sure. They're both very strong albums in their own right with "Intrinsic" being a horribly underappreciated release from a band that wasn't capable of producing anything less than top class stuff. In fact, after this revisit I think I'd go so far as to say that The Contortionist are still the finest exponent of deathcore-based progressive metal that I've encountered & I'd take "Intrinsic" over similar feature releases like Slice The Cake's "Odyssey To The West" or After The Burial's "Rareform".

For fans of After The Burial, Slice The Cake & Kardashev.

While I never felt that Coroner's 80's material quite reached the classic status that is inevitably heaped on it, 1991's "Mental Vortex" really blew me away so I was very much looking forward to their next release "Grin" when it was released two years later. As with many people my initial response was somewhat confused. It obviously champions a more stripped back sound & was very different to the band's previous material. The raw & technical thrash metal of their early days is replaced with a mid-tempo crunch that sounds a little more simple yet still offers plenty of complexity in the arrangements. With each repeat listen the songs open up more & more & I find myself becoming heavily engaged. The production is really quite brilliant in that it accentuates the cold (& almost industrial) atmosphere. This material is much more focused on song-writing than riffs so "Grin" tends to be a real grower. Every time I revisit it the songs take a couple of listens to reacquaint myself with but the effort is paid off tenfold. Ron Royce's vocals have rarely sounded this potent & the musicianship is absolutely top notch throughout. Tommy T Baron's guitar solos are nothing short of breath-taking here. His style is much more in sync with Joe Satriani than Yngwie Malmsteen these days & that can only be a good thing as far I'm concerned. I'd go so far as to say that this is one of the great lead guitar performances in extreme metal.

There really isn't a weak song on "Grin". In fact, it's arguably Coroner's most consistent record, despite the fact that I slightly prefer the wonderful "Mental Vortex" for Coroner overall. "Internal Conflicts" & "Paralyzed, Mesmerized" are perfect examples of what the band was trying to achieve & are my personal favourites but "The Lethargic Age" & "Status: Still Thinking" aren't far behind. Strangely, the popular "Grin (Nails Hurt)" is probably the song that appeals to me the least but it's in no way poor. This is ultra-professional & highly mature progressive metal that sounds amazingly fresh even today. "Grin" is a stunning achievement & I've always considered it to be a fitting finale for the band although it seems that more material is on the way after their recent reformation. If it's anywhere near the quality of "Grin" then I'll be very pleased.

For fans of Gojira, Tool & Nevermore.

Crossover thrash & I have had a bumpy journey over the years. I generally like the big name releases but it's very rare that I genuinely love them. I think a lot of this is due to the overall simplicity of the song-writing & composition & this is never more evident than it is on D.R.I.'s sixth & final full-length. I first encountered D.R.I. through my best mate's older cousin via their highly regarded 1985 debut album "Dealing With It" when I was only about 13 years old. I have to admit that I didn't really get it at the time & I still don't today but as I ventured further into their back catalogue I found that their was a fair bit to enjoy in D.R.I.'s late 80's releases which were more in line with my thrash obsession so I kept a casual eye on them moving forwards with each successive release. I would guess that I haven't given "Full Speed Ahead" a listen since the mid-90's though so let's see if my gradually increased affection for hardcore-affiliated metal releases has finally allowed me to fully commit to a record like this one.

"Full Speed Ahead" may have been released in a decade that's regarded by many as a graveyard for thrash metal but you shouldn't expect D.R.I. to have gone all grunge/alternative on us because this record is exactly what you'd expect from them. The thing that I do notice is that it sounds much more restrained & controlled than their early material did. The thrash metal component was certainly very strong by this point in their career with the double-kick drumming being a primary feature. "Full Speed Ahead" is a hugely riff-based album that never tries to over-complicate things & leaves plenty of breathing room. This works a treat on the more up-tempo numbers which showcase the energy & vitality that D.R.I. made their signature over their decade-long reign but the slower, lengthier numbers tend to sound a bit flat & dull at times. D.R.I. are at their best when they're reminding me of the influence they had on Slayer (at least they are for me which is not surprising given my life-long lover affair with the band). Songs like "Drawn & Quartered" leave you with no doubt whatsoever as to where Slayer drew their inspiration for "Reign In Blood" from while the sub-one minute album highlight "Broke" offers up a searing ball of aggression that never fails to get my blood pumping. Front man Kurt Brecht has maintained every bit of his punk integrity with a charismatic (if fairly loose & unpolished) performance that won't disappoint fans of the band's previous work. But it's the drumming of Rob Rampy that's the key contributor here as he plays the most prominent role in the winning or losing of each individual track & shows himself to have a fair amount of chops in the process.

As with so many similar releases over the years, I've found this crossover thrash record to possess enough energy & fun to keep me interested without ever threatening to see me reaching for my higher scores. I find myself quite enjoying about two thirds of the tracklisting but the other third is pretty uninteresting to tell you the truth. The length of the album is also a bit excessive for a crossover release & I have to wonder whether D.R.I. would simply have been better off culling a third of the album & presenting a record of a more consistent quality. In saying that, I'm not actually sure that would have seen me scoring "Full Speed Ahead" any higher than I have as there simply aren't enough high-scoring highlight tracks for that. Ultimately, if you like crossover thrash then you'll probably find some enjoyment here but I'll be surprised if it makes too many top tens.

Let me just say up front that this is a release of high quality. I'd never heard of Slice The Cake prior to Saxy nominating this record for feature status but in hindsight this surprises me somewhat because they've got class flowing freely from every orifice. The band is essentially made up of a trio of talented individuals from all around the globe who have managed to produce an astoundingly ambitious & free-flowing record under the circumstances. Apparently it was recorded well before the release date too & was left to sit on the shelf for a number of years after the vocalist & the bass player & main song-writer had a major falling out. That's even more interesting because it's hard to imagine any of the band members not wanting to have this album hit some ear drums post-haste given the general professionalism in the composition & execution.

"Odyssey To The West" is generally touted as being a progressive deathcore record & that's a pretty apt description however it's worth knowing that the progressive metal portion outweighs the deathcore one fairly comfortably with the structures of both the songs & the riffs being far more ambitious than your average deathcore exponents can generally muster & the scope & variety of territory that's covered being a lot more impressive too. There are several vocal styles employed across the tracklisting ranging from spoken word to violent deathcore grunts & screams. There's clearly been an effort made to make a lot of the cleaner stuff sound a little bit unhinged & insane & it often reminds me of Korn's Jonathan Davis in this regard. It's also interesting that the RYM band page indicates that the drumming is programmed but if that's the case then I never would have picked it. It would have to have been a monumental effort to sit down & program the whole record beat by beat. I love the guitar solos which have clearly been influenced by Dream Theater's John Petrucci i.e. my all-time favourite lead guitarist. There's a djenty element to many of the riffs that's done extremely well too with the more complex rhythms being executed with the utmost ease & sounding far smoother than they would appear on paper.

It's hard to be critical of the consistency displayed across the fifteen tracks included as there are no genuinely weak moments. I definitely think the two cleaner balladish tracks are the weaker of the bunch although I also wouldn't argue with their inclusion as the album really needed them to break it up a bit given the lengthy 77 minute run time & that's the major weakness of "Odyssey To The West" in my opinion. Despite the undeiable quality of the material, the run time is simply too long which takes the edge off the whole thing a little bit during the back end of the record due to the listener's inability to take in this amount of complexity in one sitting & it subsequently tends to wash over you without a lot sticking during the first listen. For this reason, multiple listens are an absolute must in order to fully grasp the album as a piece of art.

Given the time though, "Odyssey To The West" has become one of the more impressive examples of the progressive deathcore sound. It doesn't quite reach the heights of The Contortionist's best work in my opinion but I'd probably take Slice The Cake over Born Of Osiris or After The Burial who don't have the same level of artistic credibility in my experience. Slice The Cake offer something a little bit different with musicality given as much focus as technicality & have succeeded in creating an intriguing & satisfying piece of work that will no doubt appeal to fans of the bands I've just mentioned.

Many of you are probably aware that one of the main reasons that Ben & I started the Metal Academy brand in the first place was to combat the atrocious bias displayed by the global metal market, particularly towards specific sub-sections of the metal audience. RateYourMusic is a prime example of this with their charts tending to be dominated by particular subgenres while others are unanimously panned more for being associated with their subgenre than for being a poor example of its type. Well, New Jersey slam deathcore outfit Waking The Cadaver have suffered from this affliction more than most & are widely regarded as one of the least popular bands on RYM despite being one of the more popular artists in the slam death metal scene. I wasn't familiar with their much-maligned 2007 debut album "Perverse Recollections of a Necromangler" before so I thought I'd challenge myself to see just how bad it could be. I forced myself to keep an open mind & made every effort to remove any preconceptions or bias from my mind throughout the process.

So what did I find? Well, let's start by stating that (despite the general consensus indicating otherwise) this is much more of a slam record than it is a deathcore one. Sure, there are breakdowns galore but those were common-place in the slam scene well before the deathcore kids adopted them which seems to have fooled a lot of the less experienced listeners out there. I mean if you don't like slam (which accounts for 99% of metalheads) then you'll stand absolutely no chance with this record & that fact alone will no doubt have contributed significantly to this album's demise. Secondly, Waking The Cadaver have some brutal & chunky riffs at times. That's a fact that needs to be recognized. But where the problems lie is in a) the completely indecipherable & overly gutteral (in the literal sense of the sound of water going down a drain) pig squeals that consistently go "Bbbrreeeeeeeee" throughout the album & b) the total lack of any drumming skills displayed by the man behind the kit who simply can't play a blast-beat to save his life & has this flaw exacerbated by one of those tinny, light-weight snare sounds that stands out very obviously in the mix. I could overcome the obviously generic nature of the Suffocation-style slam riffs & the super-predictable deathcore breakdowns if not for those two elements which leave a general stain on the album. It all just reeks of a band that weren't quite ready to record a proper release yet. I'm not too sure if they've since matured as musicians but it would have been interesting to see what this record sounded like if performed by someone more competent.

Is "Perverse Recollections of a Necromangler" really as bad as it's made out to be though? Look, if slam death metal & deathcore breakdowns aren't your thing then there's absolutely no doubt that your feelings will tend to align with the general consensus. In fact, you're likely to be repulsed by it with every fiber of your being. But if you like those particular subgenres of metal then this is really just another meaningless release in a scene that's completely flooded with them & it certainly doesn't deserve to be singled out merely due to it's being so focused on celebrating the elements that people hate about certain scenes. Personally, I can overcome some of those annoyances & see that there's some fun to be had here. Slam death metal shouldn't be overthought after all. Do I genuinely enjoy this release? No, not really. I love the intro track which sets the scene nicely but other than that there's really only one song that I find myself returning to i.e. "Type a Secretor". On the other hand though, this is far from the worst thing I've heard either because I'm an undeniable sucker for a chunky slam riff. I'd just encourage people to stick to their lanes when it comes to a record like this because its certainly not trying to change the world so comparing it with releases that are is a fruitless exercise with an inevitable outcome.

P.S. Tongue-in-cheek track titles like "Pigtails Are for Face Fucking" are certainly fun but do we really need to sit through 53 seconds of the band smoking bongs in the middle of the album?

I absolutely adored Killing Joke's self-titled 2003 album when we featured it in early 2021 so I was really looking forward to seeing what its follow-up had to offer (especially given that its arguably Killing Joke's most popular metal record) & it hasn't disappointed although it hasn't quite made the same impact as its predecessor. The production job is noticeably rougher &, even though this is apparently intentional given that the band felt their previous record was a little too clean, I do find the guitar tone to be a bit disappointing & the drums to sound a little flabby & thin at times. It took me a couple of listens to become accustomed to this but once I got my teeth into the song-writing it was pretty easy to overlook that flaw.

The first three tracks seem to be the clear fan favourites but interestingly (although hardly surprising) I find the less popular inclusions to be the real gems. If you only listened to those first three tracks though you'd likely be given the impression that "Hosannas From the Basements of Hell" isn't actually a metal record because opener "This Tribal Antidote" (the only track I struggle with here) sounds more like the band's early post-punk works than anything else while the title track & the heavily symphonic "Invocation" are much closer to industrial rock than they are to metal. But never fear because the album gets significantly heavier from that point on with an abrasive industrial metal sound taking over for the remainder of the tracklisting. If you're not a patient metalhead & you aren't into a more cerebral style of music then turn around & walk away now because Killing Joke's approach is very repetitive with these long tracks featuring relatively few changes. The aim is to get the listener into a consistent groove that builds in tension gradually over time. It either works for you or it doesn't & luckily for me I'm right onboard with music like this (perhaps helped by my techno days in this regard).

You can detect the post-punk component of Killing Joke's sound in the guitar arpeggios & tribal rhythms employed throughout while front man Jaz Coleman's grindy vocals & beautifully timed & placed keyboard lines are always very effective. You'll have to wait till right to the end of the album to hear the true potential in this material though with the last two songs ("Judas Goat" & "Gratititude") being utterly mind-blowing & the clear album highlights for me. I also love the lengthy "Walking With Gods" which sits in the middle of the tracklisting. It's hard to argue with the pure class that Killing Joke exude here & my hopes for another vitally important record have been richly rewarded, even if I do favour "Hosannas From the Basements of Hell"s wonderful elder sibling by a clear margin.

Another Running Wild album, another fairly flat & dull heavy metal record with poor vocals in my opinion. The production job is very 80's with a thin guitar sound but the bass is unusually loud in the mix & subsequently plays a more significant part than it might otherwise have. The guitar solos are entertaining & there are some cool heavy metal riffs included but (as usual) axe-slinging front man Rock 'n' Rolf is simply not capable of filling the shoes of a tier two heavy metal act. In fact, he spends a fair amount of the run time drifting in & out of key if you wanna get technical about it & the excessive reverb he's been drenched in doesn't help much either.

The tracklisting starts off with four of the weaker tracks on the album & doesn't really get going until the middle of the record with catchy heavy metal songs "Uaschitschun" & "Blown To Kingdom Come" offering me a lot more appeal than the earlier material while speed metal anthem "Warchild" has some really good energy about it. But it's (perhaps unsurprisingly) the instrumental piece "Final Gates" that represents the highlight of the album for me personally, despite really being more of a showcase for Jens Becker's bass guitar skills. You'll notice that I'm still yet to mention power metal anywhere here & there's a reason for that because (as with some of Running Wild's other material) I once again find myself struggling to pick up where people are finding the link. Of the ten proper songs included here seven of them sit firmly in the traditional heavy metal camp while "Into The Arena", "Warchild" & lengthy closer "Calico Jack" veer over towards a faster, more energetic speed metal sound but there are only ever hints at genuine power metal & not enough for a primary tag in my opinion. As usual the pirate references are purely to do with the lyrics, cover art & intro track & you can easily overlook them if you choose to (which I clearly do).

The long & short of it is that I just don't think Running Wild will ever be for me & I really struggle to see the appeal that people find in them. They just sound a bit flat to my ears rather than being genuinely bad so I always find myself reaching for a disappointing 3/5 rating with "Port Royal" being no exception. If I look at Running Wild's back catalogue, I'd suggest that I prefer it to the band's 1985 sophomore album "Branded & Exiled" & noticeably weaker "Wild Animal" E.P. from 1990 but I'd probably take 1994's "Black Hand Inn", 1989's "Death Or Glory" & their 1984 debut album "Gates To Purgatory" over this one even though I have pretty similar feelings about all of them. Perhaps I'm destined never to find a Running Wild record that I enjoy & I'm at peace with that as I've certainly given them a good Aussie crack.

I think it's fair to say that deathcore has got a really bad reputation in underground metal circles. It's notorious for being unintelligent, unsophisticated & frustratingly generic & those traits are admittedly not hard to find if you only look on the surface however I'm going to stand up & make a bold statement here today... I'm a fan of high quality deathcore & I'm not afraid to admit it. In fact, I think it's reputation is both overthetop & a bit unfair because if you look a little deeper you'll find that there's a side to the subgenre that offers plenty of appeal to the average extreme metal fan with California's Impending Doom sitting firmly in that space. I first discovered them back in 2012 when this fourth album came to my attention & it made such an impression on me that I found myself traveling back to explore the rest of Impending Doom's back catalogue. Their 2005 debut E.P. "The Sin & Doom of Godless Men" didn't offer much but all of their subsequent work is worth checking out if you like the idea of well-executed & professionally produced precision violence. "Baptized In Filth" remained their most impressive work however & I've thoroughly enjoyed this revisit a decade later.

Can Impending Doom be labelled as being generic? Well, you'll certainly hear most of the traits that the deathcore subgenre has made it's calling cards (breakdowns, single note riffs, gravity drops, etc.) but the sheer vitriol that the band are able to produce allows them to stand over the try-hards & push their faces forcefully into the turf. This is an unapologetically metal-as-fuck release right here & the band clearly don't give two shits about whether you like it or not. The death metal component is a little more significant than many other deathcore bands can claim with the regular use of blast beats & a bunch of angular riffs that remind me of Cannibal Corpse seeing my ears prick up. These guys certainly don't shy away from the more rhythmic & djenty riff structure that deathcore is known for either but thankfully their sound & execution are super-tight & ridiculously heavy which should be enough to draw in any self-respecting metal fan. But it's the brutal vocals of Brook Reeves that are the real highlight for me personally. He sounds positively scary & unhinged here, kinda like what I imagine Phil Anselmo might sound like if you stole his last bag of heroin. Just sheer, undiluted violence & aggression from start to finish so you'd honestly never guess that these guys are a Christian band if you didn't read it in the press. Yes, that's right. Just like 7 Horns 7 Eyes who claimed this month's The Horde feature release, Impending Doom are another bunch of Christians who enjoy the exhilaration of the most brutal metal they can muster & good luck to them I say. I honestly couldn't give a fuck what they do before going to bed at night when they can produce metal of this quality but I'd dare say it's cost them some of their credibility with the more narrow-minded & elitist punters out there.

"Baptized In Filth" isn't a perfect album by any means. It's certainly top heavy with the first four tracks being the best of the ten on offer & the cleaned-sung & more melodic second last track "My Light Unseen" standing out like a sore thumb in a tracklisting that's otherwise completely focused on brutality (is it just me of does Reeves sound a fair bit like a better version of Nickelback's Chad Kroeger on that track?). The quality never dips below a really solid base level though & the three track run from "For the Wicked" to "Deceiver" sits amongst the strongest I've heard from the deathcore subgenre. I can honestly say that I get really pumped up by this music & feel like it's the perfect way to get my aggression out. It's also worth noting that "Baptized In Filth" was one of a number of records that contributed to me wanting to work on this website with Ben in the first place. It's always frustrated me that certain genres of music unanimously seem to receive such poor ratings on RYM regardless of the merit of the release as a representation of the sound (for the record "Baptized In Filth" is currently sitting at a pathetic 3.08 from 150 ratings after a full ten years since release) & the fact that Metal Archives don't even consider this record to be metal enough for inclusion on their site but are happy for Rush & Scorpions to take part is mind-boggling. This made me want to help create an environment where fans of all types of metal can identify the best releases for their personal preferences &, low & behold, that's what we've done, isn't it? Anyway... I strongly urge any death metal fans out there who think they don't like deathcore to give "Baptized In Filth" a few spins. You may be surprised at the outcome.

While I've always had time for the Ulver's infamous 1995 debut album "Bergtatt: Et eeventyr i 5 capitler", I have to admit that it's never struck me as being as mind-blowing as other people seem to find it & I actually don't find myself returning to it all that often. I guess the folkier side of atmospheric/Pagan black metal probably isn't my strong suit but I've never doubted the album's credentials. I did quite enjoy their entirely folk driven sophomore record "Kveldssanger" from the following year though & found myself giving it a fair few spins over the course of the next year, predominantly when I was winding down or when my less metal-inclined friends & family were around. But let's be honest, if Ulver were ever going to really grab me it was going to be via their surprisingly grim & ultra-raw third record "Nattens madrigal: Aatte hymne til ulven i manden" which strangely saw the band regressing to the most primitive of black metal aesthetics.

I often see fans of your more underground & extreme black metal maxing lyrical about this record & yes there's a fair bit to like about it but there's also something that prevents me from letting it fully engulf me. There's very little doubt that it's a tribute to Darkthrone's unholy trinity because it takes exactly the same predominantly tremolo-picked route as "Transilvanian Hunger" & is presented with a very similar lo-fi production to "A Blaze In The Northern Sky" with Garm's fantastic vocals being the spitting image of Nocturno Culto's & the relentless drumming having almost no variety whatsoever. But there's something different about the use of melody here in that it evokes a more positive atmosphere which is a fair bit less imposing than that of Fenriz & co. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that some of the tremolo picked riffs possess a similar feel to a band like Deafheaven in that they're almost uplifting &, while that certainly works for Deafheaven's more polished offerings, it's not something that I'd suggest would usually be my cup of tea within the context of a much rawer black metal album. "Nattens madrigal"s filthy sound is certainly primitive but it's not always particularly dark or cold & that's something that places a cap on my enjoyment level a touch. It's also very heavily weighted towards the extreme ends of the tracklisting with the two best tracks kicking off proceedings, the quality level dropping a bit throughout the entire middle of the record & things taking an upward curve again at the end.

In saying all that, I do regard "Nattens madrigal: Aatte hymne til ulven i manden" as Ulver's most appealing metal record & did come pretty close to awarding a 4/5 rating, only to fall just short due to the inclusion of "Hymne VII - Wolf and Destiny" which doesn't do much for me at all. At it's best this is a very solid example of true Norwegian black metal but it just doesn't reach those heights consistently enough to see me regularly returning to it.

For fans of Darkthrone, Immortal & Gorgoroth.

Music can be such a personal & introspective thing at times &, as a result, can often draw very different reactions & emotions from not only different people but also the individual depending on what they're looking to achieve, what their expectations are, what their level of experience is & how they're feeling on the day. But rarely will you find greater extremes than my two visits to French atmospheric black metal solo act Murmuüre's sole self-titled release from 2010. When I first reviewed "Murmuüre" back at the time of release I was still fresh from my return to metal after a decade in the electronic wilderness & was keen to indulge in all of the sounds that I'd missed so much during the many years since my departure. That comprised mostly of heavily riff-based & quite brutal extreme metal with releases that took a more textured approach being something relatively new to me as this sort of stuff simply hadn't been around back in the 80's & 90's. As a result, I often found myself skimming over releases like "Murmuüre" & deciding that it was utter crap when the reality was that I wasn't really prepared to give myself the chance to see if it COULD be for me. It simply didn't fit inside the self-imposed box I'd created around my own ideals for what extreme metal should be. The outcome was a pitiful 1/5 rating & a horribly sarcastic single paragraph review that I'm now very much ashamed of. Well, fast-forward eleven years down the track & things have changed significantly in my world as I'm now prepared to give every release the time & respect it deserves before making my judgement & thank goodness I am because this release is nothing short of incredible.

Let's start from the beginning... if you go into "Murmuüre" expecting black metal in the traditional sense then you'll be sorely disappointed. It certainly contains traces of black metal but they're broken down & presented in more of a layered & textured way. To be clear, it's really a post-black metal record with traces of ambient & the genuinely avant-garde so it's nowhere near as likely to open up to you on first listen as the latest Immortal record. You really do need to spend some time resetting your expectations & coming to grips with the obscure, occult-driven sounds that this release is championing. Only once you've accepted that this is a very different release that doesn't conform to your pre-defined notions of what black metal should be will you put yourself into the head space to understand its true beauty. It also helps a lot if you're accustomed to the noisier side of ambient music because "Murmuüre" definitely draws as much influence from that niche subgenre as it does from metal. The electronic component is probably a little overstated in all honesty as this doesn't sound like something you'd usually refer to as "electronic" even if it does utilize similar tools & techniques. Nor does it have anything whatsoever to do with industrial music. It's far too organic for that & is therefore much more closely associated with sheer ambience with even the black metal screams residing deep in the background & being used more as an accompaniment than a focal point.

Another reason I found "Murmuüre" a little hard to get into on first listen is that the opening track "Primo vere" is arguably the weakest of the six on offer. It's not a bad track as such & I still quite like it but it's not as transcendent or ethereal as the stronger material that comes later on, particularly the last couple of tracks which are truly remarkable. There are two genuine ambient pieces included in "Torch Bearer" & "Disincarnate" which also happen to be the shortest & both are spectacular in their achievement of pure & entirely foreign soundscapes that wrap themselves around the listener before transporting them to unusual destinations that leave them simultaneously blissful & disoriented. The metal tracks on the other hand don't necessarily take the form of metal for their entire duration. They often spend half the track building up to the entrance of the tinny, noisy guitars with their ultimate entry signaling a transition into something entirely different to what you thought the track was originally intended to be. Dissonance is used quite regularly with some of the melodic content seemingly being intentionally twisted in discordant ways to further enhance the occult atmosphere, a methodology that I find to be a resounding success.

Ultimately, "Murmuüre" has embarrassed me in many ways. I'm disappointed that I was so short-sighted back in 2010 & hope that not too many people read my previous review which clearly showcased my ignorance & impatience as much as anything else. Releases like this one that try for something so different & unique should be embraced & given additional time to break loose of our own internal biases. The fact is though that if I wasn't so committed to my "minimum three listens" philosophy these days then this release may once again have slipped into the abyss of albums that haven't obviously ticked all of my musical boxes. Thank goodness it hasn't because it's a genuinely unique & enriching experience that I see myself returning to again & again in the future.

For fans of Menace Ruine, Mamaleek & Xothist.

The sole album from mysterious Czech Republic progressive/technical death metal outfit Lykathea Aflame seems to be very highly regarded within extreme metal circles these days. I first encountered it back in 2009 & remember finding it to be a very interesting listen but struggling to overcome a few obvious flaws in its make-up & that's still very much the case today. The sheer ambition that's become this album's calling card is remarkable to say that least & Lykathea Aflame deserve a lot of credit for taking the death metal sound to more obscure & unique places than the world was yet to experience. Much like South Carolina tech death legends Nile do with their Egyptian themes, Lykathea Aflame incorporate elements of their homeland's exotic local music scene to great effect with clean vocals making a nice contrast to some very deep, gutteral & monstrous death growls that I find to be one of the highlights of the album. There's an unusual positivity & a noticeably transcendental feel to this material that you won't find anywhere else & it's really up to the listener as to how they handle that as it's very much opposed to your usual grisly death metal atmosphere. I quite like it personally but doubt it'll ever compete for my affections with the darker death metal out there.

The death metal component is very brutal, consistently utilizing light-speed blast-beats similar to those which Flo Mounier has made a name for himself with Cryptopsy, but herein lies the challenge for me personally. You see, the production of the drum kit has significant issues with the kick drums sounding overly clicky, the ride cymbal being way too high in the mix & (most importantly) a very weak & high-pitched snare drum sound that does a great job of emulating a wind-up monkey playing on a tiny drum. Drummer Tomáš Corn does some really interesting stuff during a lot of the album & proves himself to be quite a capable & inventive skinsman in the process but his ability to synchronize his hands & his feet during his blast-beats leaves much to be desired & this combines with the weak drum sound to leave the more intense parts of the album sounding like someone has thrown a typewriter down a steep hill. He really does sacrifice control in the quest for sheer speed & this often leaves his transitions into the blasts sounding pretty jerky too, particularly as he often sounds like he's struggling to keep up with the guitars. As someone who is very fussy when it comes to rhythmic compliance ( I'm a former techno DJ as well as a brutal death metal musician after all), I struggle to cope with blemishes like these but at the same time I find myself captivated by the instrumentation around it, particularly the more creative keyboard & lead guitar melodies.

The rhythmic & production flaws make "Elvenefris" a frustrating record for me overall. It's got so much potential & sounds genuinely different to everything else that was around at the time but it's execution is simply too imperfect to be deserving of the adoration this release consistently draws from so many people these days. It annoys me that Corn's performance seems to be the most commonly praised element of the record too because he's the main thing holding "Elvenefris" up from having a much more significant impact on me. As it stands, this is an inventive & refreshing piece of work that's worth experiencing if you fancy something a little different.

For fans of Appalling Spawn, Nile & !T.O.O.H.!.

I was only previously familiar with Toby Driver's three most highly praised classics in Maudlin Of The Well's "Bath" & "Leaving Your Body Map" & Kayo Dot's debut album "Choirs Of The Eye" before taken on their brand new tenth full-length so I had no idea of what creative path he'd be taking eighteen years later. I actually never agreed with those records being labelled as "avant-garde" but 2021's "Moss Grew on the Swords & Plowshares Alike" is another story altogether. It's a weird & wonderful journey through sounds that appear to be completely foreign, sometimes welcoming the listener in & at others leaving them recoiling. It's incredibly ambitious but the vast majority of its run time seems to be so focused & fully realized making it a landmark record of truly avant-garde metal music.

There's a significant 70's progressive rock component on display here that I really dig. The complexity of the instrumentation is quite brilliant with the sheer psychedelia of some of the climaxes really hitting a sweet spot for me. I don't love the harsh vocals. They're definitely the weakest element in Kayo Dot's sonic arsenal however the clean vocals are the spitting image of Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour & hit a lot closer to home for this old Floyd tragic. That's not the only reference to the masters of timeless prog rock either with some of the atmospheres presented here having a similar feel & the unusual open-string guitar parts making reference to similarly Floyd-inspired Canadian progressive metal outfit Voivod. The way the rhythm section is incorporated within the more complex sections is nothing short of invigorating while the melodic lead guitar work provides a wonderful juxtaposition to the chaos ensuing beneath with the more intense Morbid Angel influenced metal sections providing a similar counterpoint for the smoother progressive meanderings of tracks like "Void in Virgo (The Nature of Sacrifice)".

This all amounts to a genuinely captivating & unique musical experience that's reinvigorated my appetite for the more avant-garde strains of metal music. How an album can sound so bizarre yet so intensely ethereal at the same time is a huge feather in Toby's cap. The closing drone passage of epic closer "Epipsychidion" & the slowly building psychedelia & crescendo of album highlight "Get Out of the Tower" are a marvel to behold. Don't get me wrong, "Moss Grew on the Swords & Plowshares Alike" is not a perfect record but it's certainly an intriguing & rewarding one that should be on the radar of all members of The Infinite. I think I still favour the Kayo Dot's classic 2003 debut album "Choirs of the Eye" over this one but there's not a lot in it & I think that in time this release will be spoken in the same terms.

For fans of Maudlin Of The Well, Voivod & Ehnahre.

P.S. Am I the only one that hears absolutely bugger-all gothic metal here? The open-string riffs sound like something that might have come from an early 80's goth rock artist like Bauhaus but doesn't the music have to actually sound gothic for a gothic metal tag to be relevant? Why is the RYM community so adamant about having this record tagged as such? I'd suggest that there's actually more of a post-punk influence personally. I can definitely hear where the post-metal references are coming from but it's only a small piece of the overall puzzle so I feel that an Avant-Garde Metal primary & a Progressive Rock secondary is the most appropriate tagging. 

I've selected a couple of video game soundtrack feature releases for The Sphere in the past & with mixed results it has to be said. Mick Gordon's "DOOM" has gone on to become one of my all-time favourite releases of any subgenre while I found Jamie Christopherson's "Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Vocal Tracks" effort to be a bit flat & lacking in appeal. When I noticed the similarities between the descriptions & praise being bandied around for Texas-based producer Andrew Hulshult's "DUSK" score though I was buoyed by the suspicion that I might be in for something more akin to the former & jumped at the chance to explore it with the group. What I hadn't noticed however was the enormous girth of this release which clocks in at over 158 minutes in duration &, given my stance on rating & reviewing releases on this site, this committed me to a minimum of eight hours of "DUSK" which initially seemed like an enormous mountain to climb. This feeling was only exacerbated by the fact that the whole thing is instrumental too. Thankfully though, "DUSK" is a high quality & extremely consistent release that ticks a lot of my boxes.

"DUSK" is much closer in tone to "DOOM" than it is to "Metal Gear Rising" although it's by no means a mirror image. There's not the same tension-&-release or the industrial techno influence. It's clearly a combination of industrial metal & various brands of ambient music though, not always dark ambient however. The horror synth reference is quite apt at times as this is clearly a soundtrack. I mean I don't think it would take listeners long to realize that had they not been informed prior to going into their listening experience. In fact, it's a little bit ambitious to categorize "DUSK" as an industrial metal release (or a metal release in general actually) because the metal component isn't as prominent as the ambient one with the simple chugging metal riffs often playing more of an accompanying role in the arrangements than a focal point. The guitar tone isn't wonderful & is probably the only criticism I have of Andrew Hulshult's efforts here.

For a 43 track soundtrack, "DUSK" remarkably only dishes out a few failures & these usually line up with the simpler metal based tracks. The lengths of the individual tracks are refreshingly long for a soundtrack too. I've been frustrated by the way that these sort of releases tend to cut their ideas short before they've had the chance to become fully realized in the past but that never feels to be the case here. In much the same way as Akira Yamaoka's "Silent Hill" soundtracks, I actually think I prefer Andrew's purely ambient pieces over his more instrumentally driven ones overall & the highlights generally come when he decides to emphasize the drama by pumping up the tension through the use of dark & grandiose choirs & ever-building layers of abrasive noise or by stripping things back to a minimal structure with deep & subtle synthesizers & a repetitive underlying pulse that beckons you to continue through the game. He certainly possesses a rare talent for creating emotionally engaging soundscapes but I found that "DUSK" required some initial commitment before it opened up, perhaps needing me to overcome my reservations about its length in order to open myself up to it's charms. This release may not be a match for the unwavering focus & creative genius of Mick Gordon's "DOOM' soundtrack but it's a high quality listen in its own right & one that I would imagine would have served its purpose very well.

For fans of Mick Gordon's "DOOM", Sonic Mayhem's "Quake" & Jamie Chrostopherson's "Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Vocal Tracks" video game soundtracks.

I ventured back to this old favourite from my youth over the last couple of days & found that it still hits the spot. I was majorly into the more brutal end of death metal at the time & the early rise of Suffocation had made a major impact on me so I was actively seeking out anything that could remotely rival the masters of brutal death metal. I found Cannibal Corpse's 1990 debut album "Eaten Back To Life" to be pretty fun without ever really commanding repeat listens but "Butchered At Birth" saw them upping the ante on the brutality significantly by dropping some of their early thrash influences, removing any semblance of melody & drawing forth the deepest & most imposing death metal vocals we'd heard to the time, not to mention one of the most grisly & iconic album covers & some seriously sickening lyrical content. It all added up to a welcome death metal feast for a rebellious teenager like myself.

"Butchered At Birth" is the first essential Cannibal Corpse album in my opinion. It starts off with one of the first genuine hits of the extreme death metal scene in "Meathook Sodomy" which still tears me a new one every time I sit through the swamp of sickening whammy bar noise that makes up the intro. The rest of the tracklisting is very consistent with no weak tracks although the second half of the album definitely sees the quality dropping off a little. It's pretty obvious that the earlier tracks are made up of the band's newer material as they're generally more sophisticated & you easily see that this was a band that was still developing its sound.

The instrumentation certainly isn't quite the finished product yet. The drumming is very repetitive & basic, the rhythm guitar performances can be pretty sloppy at times & the solos aren't exactly theoretically correct but there's an undeniable atmosphere of pure death about "Butchered At Birth" that just resonated with so many of the true death metal fans of the time. Unlike Suffocation's early works from the same year, this isn't a brutal death metal record per se. It's a classic old school death metal album with some seriously brutal vocals & if I'm being honest I think those vocals will ultimately dictate whether this release is a winner or a loser with you. They're the highlight of the record for me personally as I absolutely love their monstrous tone. Despite their indecipherable nature which was completely devoid of melody, Chris Barnes strangely managed to pull off some really catchy phrasing & the excessive violence & gore still rocks my boat to this day. It's just so extreme which is something that I crave in my life.

Cannibal Corpse would create better albums in the coming years but they'd rarely show this level of youthful exuberance. Over the subsequent decades they've become one of death metal's most recognizable, reliable & marketable forces but if you really want to know what they're about then this is the record you should investigate. "Butchered At Birth" changed many people's perceptions on what extreme metal could be, would massively influence the new brutal death metal movement I was about to become a part of & became a gateway for so many pimple-faced teenagers who are now life-long death metal fanatics.

For fans of Deicide, Cannabis Corpse & Monstrosity.

I think it's fair to say that "Kentucky" was never going to be something that I'd claim to be right up my alley but that's not to say that it's a bad record by any measure. I actually quite liked it in the end but there are a few things that hold me back from getting too excited about this coal-mining themed one-man black metal experiment. It's not a very dark black metal record with some of the more melodic sections possessing an atmosphere that glistens with a positivity that wouldn't feel out of place on a blackgaze release while the mining themes don't really seem to fit all that well within the context of such a cold, primitive & raw style of extreme music if you ask me. The other major obstacle I discovered is that the first few tracks do very little for me so the album doesn't really get going until track four in my opinion. That poor start meant that my first listen was a bit of a write-off as I was already pretty disappointed by track four & subsequently didn't allow the remainder of the record a decent chance of recovery. A couple of revisits have since seen me overcoming that issue & I've found that I actually get a fair bit of enjoyment out of tracks 4 through 9, particularly "Black Soot & Red Blood", "Killing the Giants As They Sleep" & "Black Waters" which are all very solid pieces of work in their own right.

In saying that though, I'm definitely not onboard with the few sections that see an instrument that sounds very much like a pan-flute or a recorder being poorly amalgamated within an extreme metal framework. That shit just doesn't sit all that well with this old metalhead but thankfully those parts are generally short-lived & are often followed by some of the better sections of the album. There's a strong post-rock influence scattered across the tracklisting too & those sections clearly sit amongst the most impressive parts of the record for me as I'm quite partial to an introspective interlude or two in my extreme metal. The vocal shrieks aren't amazing & some of the instrumentation isn't as polished as some but there's a good energy to a lot of the more brutal sections & the solemn bluegrass pieces are well executed & generally offer a depth, authenticity & integrity that allows them to feel more substantial than anything you'd find on your run-of-the-mill folk metal release. In fact, the consistent inclusion of folk music on this album initially left me confused as to why "Kentucky" is rarely labelled as Pagan Black Metal but I've since realized that it's the subject matter that's the roadblock there.

I think it's fair to say that I found "Kentucky" to be an intriguing if not all that enticing prospect on paper but hindsight has seen me admitting that it's over-achieved on its promise in practice. I'm not sure it's the type of thing that I'll be returning to all that regularly which mostly comes down to taste but it certainly has some artistic merit & deserves points for effort & ambition as much as anything else.

For fans of Saor, Wolves In The Throne Room & Skagos.

"Extreme Aggression" was the release that introduced me to Kreator shortly after release & I frankly fell in love it right from the offset. To be more accurate, it was really the video clip for "Betrayer" that first brought them to my attention & it's still one of the greatest thrash metal tracks ever recorded in my opinion. I gave the album a right royal thrashing during the subsequent years & it held the prestigious position of my favourite Kreator record for an extended period there too. That being said though, it's been many years since I revisited it & after reacquainting myself with its wonderful follow-up record "Coma Of Souls" recently I thought it was time to see where "Extreme Aggression" sits in grand scheme of classic period Kreator after all these years.

"Extreme Aggression" is a very similar record to "Coma Of Souls" in many respects. It's an absolute riff-fest & a total thrash-a-thon! In fact, you'll rarely hear a record that better defines what late 80's European thrash was all about in my opinion as there's an nasty edge to the vocals, guitar tone & riff structures that makes Kreator infinitely cooler than the vast majority of their competition. The band had gotten significantly tighter by this stage too, particularly in the rhythm guitar & drumming departments. The guitar solos still spend a bit of time in off-key territory however it all sounds very cool indeed, even more so to an early teenage me.

The musical evolution that Kreator had started with 1987's "Terrible Certainty" has been further developed here with the band showing an increasing maturity in the song-writing department. Mille's newly acquired real-life lyrical approach would branch further away from the death-laden horror of Kreator's early works & I have mixed feelings on that. It's not a major concern but I do think his voice in best suited to sheer violence & blasphemy but he certainly makes a pretty good fist of the vocal hooks on offer here. The band show a great pedigree in not only thrash but also traditional heavy metal at times with an increased focus on guitar harmonies that reminds me just as much of Iron Maiden as it does of Metallica. Drummer Ventor can be seen to show a little more restraint than we were used to from his mid-80's efforts. Here we see him placing a lot more emphasis on the song-writing by picking his moments more selectively. He'd further refine that technique (not to mention his technical skills) before the recording of "Coma Of Souls".

There are no weak songs included. "Don't Trust" is clearly the weakest link however it's still quite enjoyable thanks to the previously-mentioned quality of the riffs. The rest of the album is absolutely top notch though with four of the nine tracks reaching genuine classic status for me. The one-two punch of "No Reason To Exist" & "Love Us Or Hate Us" pretty much rewrites the manual on how to write a great thrash riff while the two-track run of "Some Pain Will Last" into "Betrayer" is as devastating as any in the band's discography. "Some Pain Will Last" is the slowest inclusion of the nine & features an atmosphere that reminds me a lot of the down-tempo pieces from Slayer's "South of Heaven" & "Seasons In The Abyss" albums while the light-speed electricity of "Betrayer" is bursting at the seams with vitriol & spite.

"Extreme Aggression" isn't a perfect record but it was a noticeable step back up into the big league after the solid "Terrible Certainty" & is an undeniable classic that made a huge impact on my life from a very young age. It may not sound as extreme as it did back in the day but it's certainly lost none of its appeal. Interestingly though, after 30 years of listening to these two records I think that "Coma Of Souls" may have just pipped "Extreme Aggression" in my esteem for the very first time. I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that I now rate this record behind three other Kreator releases (i.e. "Pleasure To Kill", "Flag Of Hate" & Coma Of Souls") because I can't escape the feeling that it deserves more respect than that given the important role it played in my both my childhood & my musical development. Perhaps it's just a clear sign that Kreator were miles ahead of the rest of the Teutonic pack during their hey day.

For fans of Sodom, Slayer & Destruction.

I wasn’t what you’d call an early adopter of Ukrainian atmospheric black metal exponents Drudkh as I didn't become aware of them until my return to metal in 2009 & by that stage they’d already released six or seven full-length albums. I seem to remember 2004’s “Autumn Aurora” being the first of their releases to grace my ears but it wouldn’t be long before I’d venture forward to their highly celebrated 2006 record “Blood In Our Wells”. I remember it leaving me quite impressed at the time & it subsequently got a fair few revisits over the coming weeks however I don’t think I’ve returned to it since so its finer details are a little bit hazy now to be honest. Hence this overdue revisit I guess so let’s see how it’s faired more than a decade later, shall we?

A well-executed ambient piece opens proceedings before the first waves of lush, sweeping black metal hit your ears & “Furrow Of Gods” begins very strongly, ably assisted by a clear, immersive wall-of-sound production job. Some well-placed keyboards provide further emphasis to a dreamy atmosphere that relies much more heavily on melody than it does on intimidation & blasphemy. Unusually for black metal, dualling guitar solos enter the fray & show the musicians responsible to be more than capable in that area. Unfortunately, the closing stages of the nine minute piece take a direction that I’m not terribly comfortable with as we see Drudkh experimenting with folk melodies within the context of their metal framework. I immediately put my guard up but thankfully the damage had already been done earlier in the piece & that kinda sums up my feelings on the album to an extent. There are definitely flaws here that I find a little off-putting but the overall package is impressive enough to overcome them. “When The Flame Turns To Ashes” is another example of this as it once again starts out very strongly but loses momentum towards the end of its eleven minute run time through the use of some melodic guitar work that could have shown more attention to detail given that the top strings are slightly out of tune. It’s by no means a bad track. It just doesn’t quite live up to its potential.

On the positive side though, “Blood In Our Wells” finishes very confidently indeed, firstly with the most surprising inclusion on the tracklisting in “Eternity” which sports a rockier first few minutes that seem to have been inspired by gothic rock artists like Sisters Of Mercy before returning to more serious territory in the back end. I found that opening section to be a little off-putting on first listen however subsequent revisits have found me giving in to its infectious & more up-beat nature. As is not unusual for me though, it’s the least popular of the metal tunes that has made the biggest impact on me with closing instrumental “Ukrainian Insurgent Army” dishing up some truly spine-chilling guitar arpeggios that owe a great deal of debt to Burzum. It was a great way to finish a very consistent tracklisting that offered no genuinely weak inclusions.

The blackened vocals of Thurios aren’t the most compelling you’ll find in the subgenre. They’re more serviceable than they are gripping but they get the job done well enough. I often find myself reaching for Rotting Christ as a point of reference across the course of the album & I think it might be Thurios’ vocal style that’s the main similarity. Vlad takes a restrained approach behind the kit so as to give the melodic guitar work as much room to breathe as possible & it works pretty well. I do enjoy his ride cymbal work but I don’t think it’ll surprise too many of you to read that I prefer a more exciting brand of extreme metal drumming than this. I guess I’m just taken outside of my comfort zone on a number of fronts really but Drudkh have still managed to win me over through sheer focus & quality of execution. I mean the folkier moments certainly detract from the overall experience for me a touch but they’re really not all that prominent or regular so the Pagan black metal tag is bit of a stretch. I've never been much of an advocate of flashy solos in my black metal either but they seem far more tolerable within the context of Drudkh's less aggressive & abrasive tone.

There's little doubt that I prefer a darker atmosphere than the one Drudkh are pushing here which almost hints at a dreamy positivity I’d usually associate with the blackgaze movement but somehow it all seems to hit close enough to the spot to still command a very solid 4/5 rating. At the end of the day I just think “Blood In Our Wells” is a quality extreme metal record. I don’t subscribe to the claims that it’s any sort of classic. It’s clearly a couple of steps down from the best work of the Burzums & Wolves In The Throne Rooms but it’s still a damn enjoyable experience that has a reasonable amount of success in creating a distinctly Ukrainian black metal sound built around melody & atmosphere.

For fans of Ygg, Winterfylleth & Wodensthrone.

Florida tech death/thrash legends Atheist's 1990 debut album "Piece Of Time" made a significant impact on me & was high on my rotation list at the time but as soon as their follow-up "Unquestionable Presence" was released I kinda forgot about it as the band's sophomore effort was a clear step up from the debut & an undeniable classic. It's been interesting to rediscover the point that Atheist were at in their creative & artistic journey with "Piece Of Time" this week as it's generally regarded as somewhat of a classic too.

The opening title track is an absolute belter & sounds exactly like the material from "Unquestionable Presence" which is a sure-fire indication that it was the most recently composed track included on the album. The other material sees them varying the amount of traditional thrash metal & more progressive elements & I'm willing to bet that I could piece together the exact order that the tracks were written because you can easily hear the band developing their sound over the course of the nine songs. For that reason, I've never found "Piece Of Time" to be quite the finished product however it undeniably represents a huge step up in ambition for the extreme metal movement. No one had attempted anything like this before & the more atmospheric & progressive parts of the album were a particular revelation that would be expanded upon significantly on later releases. Death, Cynic & Pestilence can all be found to be trying very similar things in the years that followed too & I don't think that's a coincidence.

The level of musicianship on display here is absolutely outstanding, particularly the shredding lead guitar work & Roger Patterson's super-interesting bass lines which take an up-front position in the mix. Kelly Shaefer's vocal delivery has never really struck me as being particularly "death metal" though & sounds more like a raspier thrash front man like Sadus' front man Darren Travis than it does Chuck Schuldiner. I probably would have preferred a little more extremity there to be honest but then again... that may have changed the feel of the album completely so it may be for the best.

Overall, "Piece Of Time" is a ground-breaking & highly influential debut that offers consistent quality & strong hints at the potential that was to be fulfilled in the coming years.

For fans of 90's Death, early Cynic & the more technical Pestilence albums.

When I first encountered the 2001 sophomore album "Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness" from Norwegian progressive metallers Green Carnation I was absolutely blown away. I simply hadn't heard an hour-long single-track album that not only kept me interested throughout but also flowed effortlessly through any number of different & equally impressive movements. In fact, it made such an impression on me that I saw myself reaching for full marks which is a very rare occurrence.

We're now a good twelve years down that track & I've finally gotten around to revisiting this progressive masterpiece & it's certainly an impressive release that oozes of class. I do have to say that it hasn't connected with me on the same level as it did before though, mainly due to the fact that when I consume it in one sitting I find several parts that don't appeal to me as much as others from a purely stylistic point of view but also because I don't connect with the vocals as much as I'd need to for this record to maintain its place in my Hall of Metal Glory. I do love the sheer ambition in taking on so many different musical styles in the one lengthy piece & it's quite astonishing that they've made it sound so natural & fluent.

"Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness" is a prime example of a release that only really needs the "progressive metal" tag because it celebrates the very essence of progressive music while not really fitting into any of your popular genres. Sure, you can definitely identify the influence of the Peaceville Three in the heavier & doomier riff work (particularly My Dying Bride) & there are even more smatterings of the gothic metal of Type O Negative however you're never left pondering as to what type of album this one is. Don't expect to be dazzled with obscure time signatures & technical gymnastics though. That's not the sort of progressive metal Green Carnation concern themselves with. They're far too busy creating wonderfully captivating soundscapes to worry about anything too showy & that approach has rewarded them with an timeless & enduring release that may not annihilate me like it did over a decade ago but still manages to have me nodding in appreciation of some fully realised potential.

For fans of In The Woods..., Novembre & Wolverine.

New York alternative metal four-piece Helmet first became known to me through late-night underground metal radio programs at around the time that their 1992 sophomore album “Meantime” was released & they were pretty hard to ignore to be honest. Helmet’s highly regarded 1990 debut album “Strap It On” had somehow managed to drift past without me even noticing however “Meantime” could not have come at a better time for the band as it was everything the grunge-obsessed rock market were wanting & they lapped it up big time. I kinda found myself watching from afar without ever making any genuine commitment but I developed a respect for Helmet that saw me regarding them as a talented & relevant band for the 90’s alternative generation. Interestingly though, I don’t think I’ve ever actively listened to one of their albums in full until now.

Given my fairly casual acquaintance with Helmet up until now, I was actually surprised to find that my familiarity with “Meantime” extended past the obvious couple of hits in “Unsung” & “In The Meantime”. I was also very familiar with “Give It” & “Turned Out” which turned out to be a big positive for the record's chances of gaining my interest early on. I wouldn’t say that there were any other genuine surprises in store for me though as Helmet had a very good grasp of their sound by this stage & I subsequently found “Meantime” to offer a consistent approach & level of quality throughout it’s relatively short 37-minute runtime. Although it’s been noted that the band seem to have two gears on this album with the more commercially focused & the tougher material being evenly spread, I have to admit that I feel that’s overstating things a touch. All of the ten tracks take a pretty similar direction as far as I can see with only the vocals taking a more accessible & slightly poppy direction on the tracks that are presumably being referred to. I think it’s a bit of a stretch to call that an obvious attempt at hit-writing to be honest as these songs are usually as hard-hitting as the rest of the album from an instrumental perspective.

Helmet’s base sound is very much based on the grungy tone of the time with the guitar sound reminding me a hell of a lot of Seattle-based grunge gods Soundgarden. There’s certainly a hardcore edge to things though with some of the riffs & vocal performances sporting a gnarliness that wouldn’t have seemed out of place on Nirvana’s rough-&-ready debut album “Bleach”. The big difference between Helmet & their peers though is how strongly they rely on precisely executed & often fairly complex groove-based syncopated rhythms within their riff structures. In fact, they remind me a fair bit of fellow New Yorkers Prong in this regard. What we have here is heavily riff-based music that sees all four band members honing in on the one idea & looking to maximise its value with the bass guitar lines of Henry Bogdan playing a major role in accentuating the band’s overall heaviness. If you’re familiar with English sludge metallers Fudge Tunnel then you’ll know what I mean although Helmet are admittedly more rhythmically ambitious. Despite the apparent complexity in some of the unusual time signatures though, this united focus on the riff does tend to make Helmet sound a little less sophisticated than it probably should as there’s not all that much to this album. Every song sports hard-hitting, groove-based riffs that are all beautifully executed but don’t offer a lot of in the way of emotional engagement & depth. The post-hardcore references that seem to gain traction with this album are pretty misguided as there’s nothing “post” about this material in my opinion. It’s as riff-based as you’ll find with little attempt being made to explore anything more atmospheric or textural.

Front man Page Hamilton is the clear focal point of the band & he opts for a shouty, hardcore-inspired delivery a lot of the time. He’s not the most talented of vocalists but often reminds me of a less tone-deaf version of Godflesh’s Justin Broadrick in that he’s more about attitude than he is technique. I have to say it works for him pretty well but I’d be remiss if I didn’t highlight that a more obviously talented front man could have taken Helmet to another level. I mean the fact that I get so many Soundgarden vibes from Helmet’s instrumentation is enough to highlight the obvious gap in class between the two bands & a lot of that comes down to the chalk-&-cheese comparison between a vocal god like Chris Cornell or Alice In Chains’ Layne Stayley & the serviceable performance Page puts in here. I do like the noisy approach to the guitar solos though. It adds a layer of intensity to proceedings just when the song-writing is starting to sound a little too easy on the ear.

Look, despite my minor qualms “Meantime” is a really consistent record. You won’t find a weak track amongst the ten included here with the quality ranging from pretty decent to very solid. In fact, I was a bee’s dick away from upping my score to a 4/5 but eventually decided that I didn’t connect quite as much with Helmet’s sound as I’d like which prevented me from finding any single track to be an alternative metal classic. Songs like “In The Meantime”, “Give It” & “Turned Out” will always get me feeling a little nostalgic for a simpler time but I don’t think I can say that this album competes with the top tier of the genre. It’s a consistently enjoyable listen that delivers exactly what it promises from the first seconds of the opening track. I just would have liked to see Helmet experimenting with a more cerebral & visceral sound on occasion. They definitely had their own thing going on though & it’s actually pretty hard to think of anyone that sounded much like them at the time which is a point worthy of respect.

For fans of Prong, Fudge Tunnel & Soundgarden.

P.S. How obviously did Kansas-based grunge outfit Paw rip off the opening riff from “Unsung” on their 1993 hit “Jessie”?? They’re pretty much exactly the same & neither are all that far from the opening riff from Alice In Chains’ “Them Bones” which came out a few monthly after “Meantime” either.

I've had an up & down experience with French blackgaze outfit Alcest over the years. I've always liked the idea of what they represent more than the actual result but have certainly given them more than their fair share of chances. I think the long & short of it is that I simply prefer a more dark & imposing sound so I often find myself feeling a touch outside of my element while their ethereal & uplifting brand of post-metal washes over me & that's still very much the case with 2016's fifth full-length "Kodama" although I've definitely seen myself feeling more comfortable & accepting on this occasion. Perhaps I'm simply softening up in my old age but I suspect otherwise.

I can see why Xephyr has selected "Kodama" for feature release status because I consistently found myself asking an obvious question during each listen. Is this a metal release? It certainly seems to be universally regarded as one on other metal-related internet resources & RYM has this album tagged as Blackgaze (152-9), Shoegaze (126-27) & Post-Metal (62-20) primaries with Post-Rock (127-10) & Dream Pop (101-23) secondaries. Now, that's all well & good but I'm gonna throw a cat amongst the pigeons here by claiming that there's not more than a couple of minutes of actual metal on the whole album & even then it's borderline. The inclusion of the occasional black metal scream does not tie a record to metal in my opinion & that's about the extent of it here. The instrumentation is absolutely in line with the modern Post-Rock model with several of the tracks drawing on Shoegaze for inspiration too. I'd be happy with Post-Rock as the sole primary but can see the logic in a dual arrangement as well. I'm just not hearing where all of these people are picking up the metal thing from as there's not a sign of it here. In all honesty, "Kodama" sounds much closer to Coldplay than it does to Deafheaven & that's not meant as a criticism. If it was played straight after a Sigur Ros record you certainly wouldn't feel startled & likely wouldn't miss a beat.

Musically, this is every bit an Alcest release. It's dreamy & melodic with the primary focal point being the layers of jangly guitars & the soft & unintimidating male vocals which see the listener being transported to a warm & positive world that's very much in opposition to the one we generally associate with a clan like The North. The consistency of the tracklisting is excellent with no weak tracks included & I find the whole experience to be very rewarding even if I do inevitably feel the craving for something more savage afterwards. It's often nice to be taken outside of your musical comfort zone by a quality artist that knows their craft very well & executes their plans with precision & that's exactly what we have here. "Eclosion" sees me drawing comparisons with latter period Anathema while the final track "Onyx" sees Alcest continuing their trend of finishing their albums with something a little different from the rest of the tracklisting, this time a darker & beautifully textured instrumental piece that I find to be the highlight of the album.

"Kodama" is not the sort of thing that'll I'll find myself reaching for all that often however it'll no doubt provide me with ongoing rewards whenever I do stumble on it while looking for something more specific. In fact, it's left me wondering as to whether I may have been too harsh on Alcest over the years. Perhaps a revisit of some of their earlier releases is required as God knows my taste profile has never wider & been more diverse than it is now.

For fans of Old Silver Key, "Melting Sun"-period Lantlôs & the self-titled Amesoeurs album.

Ben & I came across Swiss outfit Samael very early on in their recording career through their early 90’s releases. Those records pushed a fairly raw, simplistic & primitive yet still quite dark & atmospheric brand of Celtic Frost-inspired black metal that took a similar approach to that explored by the Greek bands of the time like Rotting Christ & Varathron. 1991’s “Worship Him” & 1992’s “Blood Ritual” were both reasonably enjoyable releases however Samael wouldn’t really peak until their 1994 career highlight “Ceremony Of Opposites” album that saw them taking a step up in the black metal ranks & in doing so entitled them to a lot of repeat listens during the next year or so. 1996’s fourth full-length “Passage” would prove to be a very different prospect though as it would not only see Samael stepping away from their black metal roots but it would also see them creating a new sound that is still very hard to categorize today. We'd gained a taste of this new direction a year earlier with the band's stop-gap "Rebellion" E.P. seeing Samael dipping their toes in the water to see how people would react however "Passage" would see them cementing their new identity. It would be one that would stay with them for the remainder of their career too.

The shadow of RateYourMusic.com has always hung over the Metal Academy website. I mean I can’t deny that it was the inspiration for the initial concept for our site & it certainly stills holds a very dear place in my heart. But if recent months have shown us anything it’s that there are significant gaps in its audiences understanding of metal music with their genre-tagging arrangement proving to be consistently inaccurate & “Passage” is a prime example of this. On RYM we see “Passage” being tagged with both Industrial Metal & Symphonic Black Metal as primary subgenres however that’s simply not an accurate depiction of what you can expect to hear on this record. Sure, there are some industrial metal tracks included on "Passage" however there are more that don’t really show much of a trace of anything industrial. In truth there are just as many gothic metal tracks included but that subgenre doesn’t seem to get a mention despite some clear similarities with the likes of Moonspell & Tiamat at times. Plus, claiming “Passage” to be a black metal release is a big stretch. There are a few tracks that show glimpses of the symphonic black metal sound & Vorphalack’s vocals still maintain his extreme metal bite however this isn't enough for a primary vote & “Passage” would seem well out of place at the top of the release charts for The North in my opinion. The only consistent element here is the symphonic component which is clearly evident on every track & is a major driver for the album as a whole. For this reason I see the Symphonic Metal subgenre as being the logical home for “Passage” & it’s unfortunate that this doesn’t really align with our Metal Academy clan structure given that Symphonic Metal currently resides in The Guardians i.e. our traditional melodic heavy/power metal clan. Thems the breaks though I guess & I’d much rather have our releases tagged correctly than worry too much about whether someone might misguidedly select a Samael track for The Guardians playlist.

Given my statements on the correct gentrification for “Passage”, this brings us to the quality of the music & the impact Samael’s new sound had on my overall enjoyment. The production is excellent as it presents Samael’s trademark simplistic riff structures in a chunky & up-front fashion that accentuates their heaviness while the symphonics are positioned well in the mix & never overpower the guitars. It’s a really professional sounding package to tell you the truth & was a big fat feather in the band’s cap. The song-writing is also pretty strong although this is where personal taste comes into it. I’m not at all surprised to see someone like Andi jumping all over “Passage” as he’s more of a fan of symphonic metal & gothic metal than I’ll ever be & it’s important that you have a good grasp of those two elements if you’re to fully understand the charms of this record. I can’t say that I’m completely onboard with the symphonic component if I’m being honest & that’s been a sound that I’ve always battled with no matter what the basis of a band’s sound might be. It’s only been the absolute elite acts like Emperor that have managed to overcome that stigma to gain genuine classic status from me personally but for every one of those there are dozens of artists that I’ve cast aside along the way. Don’t get me wrong. Samael are a class act. There’s no question about that. It’s just that I can’t help but feel a level of disappointment that their musical direction on “Passage” doesn’t suit me quite as well as it did on its predecessor & for that reason “Passage” would see me getting off the Samael train & giving subsequent releases very little attention until I started putting together the monthly The Sphere playlist.

Despite the undoubted quality of the performances & execution on display here, there are a couple of failures included amongst the eleven tracks. I don’t have much interest in “Moonskin” or the straight-up gothic metal of “Shining Kingdom” which both sound pretty flat to me. The rest of this material offers me a pretty consistent level of appeal however the stylistic direction sees me unable to push for classic status on any of the individual tracks. The Slayer influenced opener “Rain” is probably the best of them along with the equally strong “Jupiterian Vibe” & “The Ones Who Came Before” but none of them manages to quite get me jumping out of my seat. Vorphalack’s blackened vocals are very well done but I don’t think there are any hooks that have me repeating them in my head for days afterwards. He shows his Swiss heritage pretty clearly as you can often hear elements of Tom G. Warrior (Hellhammer/Celtic Frost) & Ron Royce (Coroner) in his delivery, only with a bit more of a black metal edge.

Overall, I’d have to say that I have a lot of respect for “Passage” as an ambitious & original undertaking from a band that were looking to do something fresh & different. If that was their goal then they’ve certainly achieved it & the fact that I find it so difficult to pigeon-hole "Passage" into any clear subgenre is a testament to that. In saying that though, I can’t deny that it doesn’t fit in with my personal taste as well as “Ceremony Of Opposites” did & I don’t think I’ll ever regard it in the same terms as Ben or Andi do. That’s OK though. Those differences of opinion are a big part of the appeal of music & art in general, not to mention websites like this one.

For fans of The Kovenant, Godkiller & early …And Oceans.

1997’s “Born Of The Cauldron” debut album from Atlanta-based US power metal outfit Cauldron Born is a very interesting inclusion in our September batch of feature releases as it doesn’t sit all that comfortably alongside its more traditional sounding heavy metal & power metals peers in The Guardians. In fact, it may well have been ostracized from the group & forced to sit & eat in the corner of the lunchroom in complete isolation. The main reason for this is its consciously technical approach that sees it fitting much more comfortably in our The Infinite clan. Fuck knows how it’s not already labelled as progressive metal because this record is about as progressive as you’ll find. I mean this fucker sounds like Yes got blind drunk & decided to become a US power metal band & I think it’s fair to say that the results are very mixed.

I really struggled with “Born Of The Cauldron” to be completely honest. With the exception of some of the ultra-underground & super-necro sounding extreme metal, my background as a musician sees me being quite picky when it comes to performance, execution & musicianship & these are clear weaknesses for Cauldron Born. Despite the fact that the song-writing & composition is extremely ambitious for a debut release, some of the band members aren’t even close to being up to the task at hand & it leaves a lot of this material sounding like a bit of a mess. The secret to writing captivating & impressive progressive metal is to present rhythmically & melodically technical instrumentation & vocal arrangements in a way that flows smoothly & still enables the song-writing to dig its hooks into the listener’s memory bank. In fact, your less technically inclined listener should almost not notice the technique on display & be able to enjoy the music for what it is i.e. actual music rather than a medium for showcasing someone’s talents. Unfortunately, Cauldron Born don’t seem to have any sort of understanding of this requirement & have subsequently presented us with some highly complex compositions that don’t flow & sound very jerky which leaves tracks like “The Sword's Lament” & “In Fate's Eye a King” sounding like a bit of a mess really. This may not have been such an obvious problem if drummer Bill Parsons could play in time however this is unfortunately not the case with his kick drum work being consistently behind the beat & guitarist Howie Bentley regularly struggling to keep in time with him. Howie has his own issues to be fair as he really wants to be a shredding guitar virtuoso but his chops aren’t even close to being able to pull off what he’s attempted here. Thankfully bassist Shawn Kascak is a bit of a star & manages to recover things slightly with his Chris Squire influenced bass lines constantly shifting through run after run of inventive melodic noodling.

Vocalist Danny White is your classic US power metal front man. His operatic style & clear higher register tone sound a lot like virtually every other vocalist from the movement but he has a much more challenging task in front of him than any of his contemporaries. Trying to layer a workable vocal hook over music this rhythmically complex was always going to be immensely challenging & he’s done a reasonable job of it, despite falling in a heap on several occasions due to the lack of fluency in the instrumental performances. And this really does highlight the problem with “Born of the Cauldron” because the best material is clearly aligned with the less complex tracks. Songs like “The Final Incantation / In the Dreaming City” & the doomy closer & album high point “Unholy Sanctuary” are a clear indicator of what could have been achieved if the instrumentalists had stayed within the confines of their technical limitations & focused on writing some strong riffs for Danny to work over. Sadly, there’s not enough of this & I found myself struggling to make much sense of “Born Of The Cauldron” for the most part. There’s no doubt that it’s a consistently interesting experience though & I was sitting on the fence between a 2.5/5 & a 3/5 rating for some time but at the end of the day I can’t deny that the moments when I can honestly say that I’m genuinely enjoying myself are too rare for me to go with the higher score.

For fans of Slauter Xstroyes, Deadly Blessing & mid-80’s Fates Warning.

I can still remember the circumstances around my earliest significant experience with Californian post-sludge metal masters Neurosis. My brutal death metal band Neuropath had been rehearsing for an upcoming gig in the mid-90's & a fan had dropped by to watch us play after having been impressed by what he saw at a recent show. He was a true diehard death metal fanatic & well & truly looked the part too. After we finished rehearsing, a few of us went back to his place for a few beers & at the end of that drinking session he traded our drummer a Neurosis “Enemy Of The Sun” t-shirt for his Gorefest one. I remember wondering why our drummer was willing to accept such a trade given that my understanding was that Neurosis weren’t even an extreme metal band (*insert gasps of horror here). It certainly tweaked my interest however many years would pass before I would truly give them the attention required to fully grasp the genius behind a band that has gone on to become one of my all-time greats over the last decade or so.

Listening to a Neurosis record can be a pretty imposing task, even for their most devoted fans. Their music isn’t pleasant on the ear. It’s dense, nihilistic & full of pessimism & you almost certainly won’t come out of the experience feeling better about the world than when you went in. However, the potential for music to take me to dark & foreign places is something that I find very attractive & “Enemy Of The Sun” certainly does that. It’s arguably one of Neurosis’ most inaccessible releases as it seems like the band had very few fucks to give at this point in their career. I mean they couldn’t have produced something with less commercial potential than this record. It’s almost devoid of melody, it’s instrumentation & arrangements are intentionally drawn out but are inherently chaotic & there’s even a 15+ minute tribal ambient piece tacking onto the end of the album which doesn’t offer much in the way of hooks or variation. Neurosis really couldn’t have repelled the try-hards more if their lives depended on it as the savagery & discomfort this album offers up is even a challenge for me & I regard myself as a diehard fan these days.

“Enemy Of The Sun” sees Neurosis expanding on the sound they’d developed with 1992’s classic “Souls At Zero” album which is my personal favourite of their entire back catalogue. As with that record, the band can be seen to be pushing out into a wide range of experimental & atmospheric directions but never lose their grip on a filthy brand of post-apocalyptic sludge metal. You can clearly hear the influence of industrial metal artists such as Godflesh & Ministry on the wonderful opening track “Lost” with its use of dark samples being a real highlight while there’s a trippy, almost psychedelic feel to the first half of the post-hardcore inspired “Cold Ascending”. There’s very little melody on offer most of the time. You’re far more likely to be engulfed by dark tribal atmosphere or dissonant noise with Neurosis’ hardcore pedigree still well & truly worn on their sleeves & it seems like the band have gone to great effort to avoid presenting the listener with anything remotely resembling a comfortable environment.

I’ve always been a hhhuuugggeee fan of the vocals on Neurosis records & “Enemy Of The Sun” is no exception although the mix perhaps doesn’t allow them quite as much power as we would get on subsequent releases. Don’t expect any sweet vocal hooks here. You don’t even get any of those more introspective & laid back folky sections that would pop up in later years. Here we see the multi-vocalist attack targeting your cranium with a sledgehammer for almost the entire duration of the album in a relentless barrage of hate & misanthropy which leaves the listener feeling noticeably drained at its completion. This mental & emotional exhaustion is definitely accentuated by the unusual inclusion of the lengthy “Cleanse” as the albums final destination. It’s intended to be hypnotic & it certainly succeeds at that however there’s possibly not quite enough substance to warrant such an extravagant run time. I’m a big fan of tribal ambient music however even I find it to be a little over-ambitious.

Ultimately, Neurosis’ biggest strength is also its biggest weakness when it comes to “Enemy Of The Sun”. There’s so much quality & maturity in these complex & downtrodden soundscapes however their perennial quest to pull the listener into their dark & intimidating world can backfire at times. The intentional chaos in the song-structures can sound a bit jerky at times with the transitions not flowing all that well while the consistent intensity of this music can leave the audience with very little to grab onto & can subsequently go over your head if you're not paying close attention. As with all of Neurosis’ back catalogue, “Enemy Of the Sun” definitely requires multiple listens to fully understand & even then it’ll continue to open up new doors with every revisit. I love it for what it stands for as much as what it achieves. It’s an uncompromising & downright depressive take on sludge metal & is completely beyond the capabilities of the rest of the metal scene. I admire Neurosis for celebrating their own monstrosity & delivering a record with such depth & ambition even if it doesn't sit amongst their finest work.

For fans of Isis, Cult Of Luna & Amenra.

English metal phenomenon Paradise Lost are one of those bands that I became aware of very early on in their recording career as their musical timeline closely matched up with own early extreme metal development. In truth though, I wasn’t exactly blown away by their 1990 debut album “Lost Paradise” as I was discovering so much amazing new metal music every week at the time. It wouldn’t be until the band’s sophomore album that I’d become convinced of their credentials as I found the atmosphere that 1991’s “Gothic” pervaded to be something very unique for the time. I’d subsequently follow up that positive experience by purchasing Paradise Lost’s third album “Shades Of God” on cassette the following year but would struggle a bit with the wishy washy production job. Regardless of this, my expectations for their “Icon” album were still pretty high when I picked up my CD copy around the time of release in 1993. It would represent the successful culmination of a transition that would see Paradise Lost finally moving away from their death metal roots & into a more accessible but no less effective gothic metal direction. It would also be one that would offer me even more appeal than their suitably titled “Gothic” album did too. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that “Icon” came as quite a shock on first listen though. Its vastly improved production job & crunchy guitar tone was a breath of fresh air however I wasn’t quite prepared for the James Hetfield style vocals & the stronger focus on song-writing. It would take me a week or two to adjust to the changes but over time I would grow to regard “Icon” as Paradise Lost’s most impressive release, even if I would stop short of placing it on the same lofty pedestal as Paradise Lost’s contemporaries My Dying Bride & Anathema’s best material. In truth I have always found Paradise Lost to sound a little simple in comparison but this brings us to 1995’s fifth album “Draconian Times” which is arguably Paradise Lost’s most celebrated release. I would pick up my cassette copy immediately upon release & would give it a few weeks of repeat listens to dig its teeth in, buoyed by my experiences with “Icon” which I’d found to be such a grower. The album cover immediately attracted me with its stunning use of colour giving me extra incentive to keep the album close at hand.

“Draconian Times” would see Paradise Lost returning with a new line-up for the first time following the departure of long-time drummer Matthew Archer. He would be replaced by Lee Morris from a relatively unknown Birmingham heavy metal band going by the name of Marshall Law & I’ve often wondered whether this had any impact on the result of the “Draconian Times” sessions given that this would be by far Paradise Lost’s most accessible release to the time. Although “Icon” was certainly a more palatable package for your average music fan, it still had an inherent darkness about it that I found particularly attractive. “Draconian Times” would see the band taking a similar approach but there’s little doubt that some of the material would offer an all-new level of accessibility that has a fair bit to do with the album’s generally obsessive fanfare. The band’s doom metal roots are still visible if you look hard enough however they’re presented with a stronger emphasis on melody & a distinct lack of riffs with the focus being pointed directly at the sort of catchy song-writing that the more traditional heavy metal genre had built its reputation on. The gothic component of the band’s sound isn’t as overt as on many gothic metal releases either although you can certainly hear the influence of artists like Sisters Of Mercy in the use of clean guitar melodies & deep male vocals. Perhaps the impact of those moments is just diluted a little by the rockier heavy metal influence that permeates some of the tracklisting.

There were parts of “Draconian Times” that had an immediate impact on me & repeat listens would see those track’s hooks digging their teeth in very deeply but there were certainly tracks that didn’t do much for me too. I tended to allow the strength of the highlights to guide my opinion though, seemingly ignoring my concerns around the rockier & more accessible inclusions in the hope that they’d eventually hit me in the same way as they seemed to everyone else. Front man Nick Holmes’ clean vocal style was initially a challenge for me on the “Icon” album but repeat listens would see me overcoming my initial hesitation & accepting his quest for new horizons. “Draconian Times” is a little different in this regard though & when I examine his performance closely in the modern day it’s pretty easy to see why. The darker direction of the “Icon” album would mask Nick’s failings a lot better than on some of the more commercially focused tracks on “Draconian Times” & this is one of the reasons that I struggle with those inclusions. “The Last Time”, “Yearn For Change” & particularly “Once Solemn” (which sounds like a pop punk stadium anthem to my ears) don’t do much for me at all & it was these songs that saw me reserving my adoration for quite some time before eventually committing to the album. Thankfully though, there are some seriously high-grade songs amongst the twelve on offer too though, only perhaps not the ones that most Paradise Lost fanboys will claim, mind you. And this is the crux of my “Draconian Times” quandary really. I absolutely adore some of the album but the fact that these moments are the ones that are generally regarded as the least impressive tracks by most fans is a sure sign that we’re looking for very different things. The A side is where the biggest ticket items can be found but I find the B side to be miles more impressive with “Elusive Cure”, “Jaded” & “Hands Of Reason” becoming huge anthems for me during the mid-90’s. There can be little doubt that these tracks are those that draw more heavily from Paradise Lost’s past which is a clear indication that I’m not quite onboard with the direction that the band (& the rest of the global metal scene) seemed to be travelling. Thankfully though, those stronger songs are so epic that I was able to allow them to cancel out the weaker ones & leave me with a positive overall impression.

Don’t get me wrong, “Draconian Times” is certainly a strong Paradise Lost album. Is it the pinnacle of their career though? Most underground metalheads will tell you that it’s not with “Icon” & “Gothic” tending to be the most common answers when I ask that question. “Draconian Times” is easily the most accessible of the band’s classic period albums though & it’s this easier listening quality that sees it being placed on a pedestal by the vastly increased fanbase it secured amongst an audience that was drawn into metal music via Metallica’s “Black Album” a few years earlier. There can be little doubt that I find it to be a bit of a mixed bag as far as overall quality goes & it’s hard to argue against it being a touch overrated however I can’t deny that it holds a strong position in the story of my youth as it contains a few epic masterpieces that will forever pull on my heart-strings & holds significantly more wins than it does losses.

For fans of Cemetery, Tiamat & late 90’s Katatonia.

I guess I fall into a unique category in that I’m one of the relatively few extreme metalheads that can actually stake a claim to having experienced Missouri-based death metal outfit Timeghoul’s early 90’s demo tapes in the format they were originally intended to be consumed & at a time when they were still relatively current. The tape trading scene saw me picking up literally hundreds of demo tapes like these which I’d progressively work my way through as I enthusiastically looked for the next big thing in extreme music. I can distinctly remember my first time listening to one of the two Timeghoul demos & it would be a mainstay in my Walkman for some time afterwards while the other tended to drift past without rewarding me with many longer-term memories.

The 2012 release of the very imaginatively titled “1992-1994 Discography” compilation saw Mississippi-based death metal label Dark Descent Records compiling the only two Timeghoul demo tapes (i.e. 1992’s “Tumultuous Travelings” & 1994’s “Panaramic Twilight”) into one six-track, 44 minute release that covers the entire recorded career of this much-heralded underground band & it showcases the development of the Timeghoul sound particularly well with the two releases possessing very different styles & production jobs. They also offer very different levels of appeal for me though it has to be said & the compilation served as a great reminder of why one of these tapes would have been so firmly etched in my memory bank while the other would have drifted away without having anywhere near the same sort of impact. Let’s take a look at the two individually.

“Tumultuous Travelings” is a four track affair that sports a much less appealing production job than its younger sibling but this can be easily forgiven as it was par for the course for first demos in the underground metal scene at the time. The track lengths are significantly shorter too, clocking in at an average length of around six minutes. You can easily hear that this was a transitional release as the band were clearly still finding their sound. Two of the four tracks are fairly traditional in nature & wouldn’t sound all that unusual to fans of the classic early 90’s US death metal sound while “The Siege” & “Infinity Coda” see Timeghoul experimenting with a more progressive sound & touching on similar territory to the likes of Atheist & Cynic at times. There are some doomier sections included here & there but these aren’t as frequent or as substantial as they would later become while the use of blast beats is also a little more prevalent. There’s a consistent quality to this material that sees me finding enjoyment in each of the four tracks however the weak production job unfortunately prevents it from having much replay value for me. The more progressive tracks are clearly the most interesting with the doomier “The Siege” being my pick of the bunch.

The highly regarded “Panaramic Twilight” demo sees Timeghoul returning as a much more ambitious & experimental artist than they’d first appeared & also donning a greatly improved production job. The expanded track durations provide an initial indication that the band had expanded on their earlier progressive leanings with the nineteen-minute run time made up of just the two lengthy tracks. Now we see Timeghoul fully incorporating the experimental sound they’d hinted at on “Tumultuous Travelings” & I’d actually go so far as to suggest that there’s an avant-garde edge to some of the more twisted sections. The use of clean vocals & atmospheric synthesizers adds an additional layer of interest while there’s a much stronger death/doom component with diSEMBOWELMENT & early My Dying Bride providing most of the influence. The song structures are still a little bit loose & I can’t help but feel a little disappointed that we never got the chance to see what Timeghoul might have done with a big name producer & a professional studio production job but there was certainly enough truly original extreme metal on offer to see me repeatedly devouring this demo for a couple of months afterwards. In fact, listening back to it now I’ve found myself unable to shake the feeling that I’m listening to an underground classic of sorts with the epic career highlight “Occurrence On Mimas” being a true underground gem.

When taken holistically, “1992-1994 Discography” really is a tale of two cities. It’s consistently enjoyable however the real meat of the release lies in the “Panaramic Twilight” demo with “Tumultuous Travelings” representing nothing more than an interesting precursor intended to showcase the huge potential that Timeghoul possessed even in their earliest configurations. Thankfully “Panaramic Twilight” presents the listener with an emphatic enough statement to make the whole compilation worthy of every death metal fans attention.

For fans of Blood Incantation, Demilich & Nucleus.

This might sound really strange but even though I’ve been familiar with Seattle’s Nevermore since the very beginning of their career & have generally regarded them as a class act, I’d never actually checked out their most celebrated release in 2000’s “Dead Heart In A Dead World” until now. In fact, it might just be the ONLY Nevermore album that I hadn’t checked out which is nothing short of mind-boggling. Don’t ask me why though because I have no idea. I guess circumstances have just conspired against me but better late than never. I didn’t get around to their amazing third album “Dreaming Neon Black” until a decade after it was released either but it totally blew me away & I still regard it as a genuine classic to this day so the idea of an even more highly praise-worthy follow-up was something that left me genuinely excited.

From the outset, there are a couple of things worth noting about 2000’s “Dead Heart In A Dead World”. Firstly, 1996’s “The Politics Of Ecstasy” & 1999’s “Dreaming Neon Black” were both dual guitar efforts however their fourth album would be the first Nevermore record since their self-titled debut where lead guitarist Jeff Loomis has been the sole axeman & this sees the band having never sounded more tight & focused. Jeff’s lead work is simply outstanding & is the clear highlight of the album with a lot of attention to detail having been shown in his note selection, tone, phrasing & the presentation of his lead work within the context of the production. It’s really paid off too although I struggle to see how this material would have been reproduced in a live environment without the assistance of a second guitarist. Perhaps they recruited one for the purpose. I’m not too sure.

The second thing worth mentioning is that “Dead Heart In A Dead World” would be the first Nevermore record to make use of seven-string guitars & this is important because not only has it changed the tone of the album but it’s also had a noticeable impact on the stylistic direction too. Don’t get me wrong. This is still pretty obviously a Nevermore release but the style of the riffs has moved away from the thrashier approach that was taken on previous works & has morphed into a heavily down-tuned & crushingly heavy groove metal monster that sounds a lot more like Pantera & Machine Head than it does Metallica or Slayer. It would seem pretty obvious to me that this is the result of Loomis having experimented with his new instrument & finding that a chuggier & more rhythmic bottom-string approach works a treat when trying to harness the additional lower register he now had available to him. Throw in a seriously tight & brilliantly executed rhythm section & present it with a vibrant & super-precise Andy Sneap production job & you’ve got a particularly potent metal arsenal on your hands. The only question is whether that particular sound appeals to you as much as Nevermore’s previous work. I think the answer to that is no for me personally. “Dead Heart In A Dead World” is certainly a high quality release in its own right & the tracklisting is not only extremely consistent but is also studded with genuine highlights. It’s just that those highlights rarely take me to the same stratospheric levels as the ones on its predecessor & I’d suggest that this is primarily a taste thing. Front man Warrel Dane does a great job at riding the wave of energy that the band were summoning but he can occasionally be over-shadowed by the ridiculous quality of the instrumentation going on around him. Drummer Van Williams has had an absolute blinder here & I particularly love his ride cymbal work. He really is a human metronome & Sneap has got the drum sound absolutely spot on for this type of music. In fact, the bass & drums are so tightly entwined & in sync that it’s hard to think of them as different instruments.

The end result of all of this is hard to categorize to be honest as it doesn’t seem to fit comfortably into any of the usual boxes. The common consensus seems to be that it sits somewhere between progressive metal & classic heavy metal though but I’d like to dispute that. If you put this album on next to Iron Maiden, Dio or Judas Priest then you’ll very quickly realise that they don’t have all that much in common. This music is much chunkier & heavier than 99% of the more conventional heavy metal bands you’ll find & the down-tuned tone & rhythmic approach to the riff structures sees it sitting much more comfortably under the groove metal tag. Is it progressive? Weeellll… not in the traditional sense of the term as it’s not particularly technical or spacey however I can’t deny that the clinical approach to the execution & the super-crisp production job give it a noticeably progressive feel & that’s enough for me to make a call on a progressive groove metal tag for this record. It reminds me of some of Devin Townsend’s records in many ways as I’ve often felt that his releases don’t sound particularly progressive but I fail to find any more suitable terms to describe them.

If you love impeccably produced & executed metal music then you’ll no doubt really enjoy “Dead Heart In A Dead World”. It’s a classy release from an extremely talented group of musicians who know exactly what they’re doing & go about flexing their creative muscles with an effortless charm. There are no weak tracks included but I can’t deny that there are a couple that don’t interest me as much as others (see “We Disintegrate” & “The Heart Collector”) which sees me stopping just short of reaching for my higher scores. The cover version of “The Sound Of Silence” was a real surprise though. I immediately assumed that I’d hate it given my general aversion for the original & similarly bad experiences with other attempts to tackle it however Nevermore's version takes an enormous amount of creative license in presenting itself as one of the heaviest inclusions on the tracklisting which results in it sitting just behind album highlight “Inside Four Walls” for my favourite track on a very strong & professionally put together release.

For fans of Communic, “Shadow Work”-period Warrel Dane & “The Year The Sun Died”-era Sanctuary.

To be honest this is the first time that I've been tempted to listen to a full Danzig record. I've obviously been aware of their existence since way back in the day as I was hearing "Mother", "Twist Of Cain" & "Long Way Back From Hell" all over metal radio programs but their style didn't really match up with my taste profile at the time so I've ignored them until now. In the interest of completism though, I thought it was about time that I corrected that glaring gap in my metal knowledge.

Now, let's get one thing straight right from the get-go, "Danzig II - Lucifuge" isn't a metal record & I'll be submitting a Hall entry later on today to indicate this. It's far more accurate to describe this a hard rock release. There are certainly metal influences being drawn upon in a few songs (see the early Judas Priest influence in songs like "Snakes Of Christ" & "Tired Of Being Alive" for example) but closer "Pain In The World" is the only track that I consider to be a legitimate metal track. In saying that though, there's definitely a doomy aesthetic to a lot of the material which is why this record is so often linked to our beloved metal genre. My best description of "Danzig II - Lucifuge" is to say that it builds its sound off the hard rock crunch of Bon Scott-period AC/DC & "Wheels Of Steel"-era Saxon, adds a taste of classic Led Zeppelin, layers the atmosphere of Black Sabbath's debut & Judas Priest's "Sad Wings Of Destiny" over the top & then scatters hints of late 60's blues rock & The Doors sporadically across the tracklisting. Glenn Danzig's Elvis Presely meets Jim Morrison vocal style is certainly unique but I'd imagine can be quite polarizing. I don't have any particular issue with his contribution here but find the instrumentation to be much more appealing which is a strong indication that the album would have offered me a little more enjoyment with a more traditional singer. I love Glenn's more subdued Morrison-esque moments (see the start of "Devil's Playground" for example) but struggle to connect with the more obviously Elvis-inspired stuff.

Look, "Danzig II - Lucifuge" is a pretty strong record overall to tell you the truth but I will say that I think the straight up blues & blues rock tracks let it down a touch. I don't really get much out "Killer Wolf (which sounds like AC/DC playing one of their early blues tracks) or the stripped back Stevie Ray Vaughan style of "I'm The One" & greatly prefer the heavier material (big surprise, I know). The warm 70's-focused production does a lot to enhance the authenticity of the music & I really enjoy it. I just don't think a Glenn Danzig fronted band is gonna be able to get me reaching for the higher scores. It's really that simple although it is worth noting that Danzig save their best for last with the ultra-deep traditional doom metal sound of "Pain In The World" thoroughly floating my boat. That monster sounds very much like an early Black Sabbath's take on Led Zeppelin's "Dazed & Confused" which can't be a bad thing now, can it?

For fans of AC/DC, Led Zeppelin & early Black Sabbath.

I think it’s fair to say that my relationship with Dutch outfit the Gathering got off to a particularly rocky start. I was tape trading with a couple of metalheads that lived in the Blue Mountains region of NSW (i.e. a couple of hours drive from where I live) in the early 1990's & both were obsessed with the new doom/death hybrid that had taken shape over the previous couple of years so I was picking up almost every global release of any note from that particular subgenre. On this occasion I’d been sent a cassette with The Gathering’s debut album “Always…” on one side & the self-titled debut E.P. from Germany’s Pyogenesis on the other. My interest in the death doom metal sound had already been well entrenched through bands like Paradise Lost & Winter however I struggled with “Always…” & decided fairly quickly that The Gathering weren’t for me. The news that they had gone for more of a gothic metal sound for their sophomore album only provided me with additional encouragement to keep my distance so I watched casually from afar as 1993’s “Almost A Dance” album crashed & burned with the underground diehards. However, the following year would see a new & exciting front woman heralding a new dawn for the band & 1995’s third album “Mandylion” would quickly become an underground classic. I was certainly aware of it at the time however I couldn’t quite muster the courage to entertain the idea of experimenting with a gothic metal release amidst the height of my extreme metal indulgence so I didn't get to it till many years later.

Now this takes us into the latter half of the 1990’s, a period with which I’ve been very open about my personal struggles & a time when I temporarily became disillusioned with the metal scene in general. By 1998 I’d decided to take my leave of metal altogether while I experimented with not only new styles of music but also with a new lifestyle. It would be a process of rebuilding for me & it was during this time that my brother Ben brought The Gathering’s 1997 fourth album “Nighttime Birds” to my attention. I was mostly listening to progressive rock, jazz fusion & trip hop at the time but there was something about The Gathering’s new sound that really hit a tender spot within me & began to mend the heart strings that I’d had so brutally torn & twisted by my broken de facto relationship. It would subsequently go on to become one of a few key records that helped to get me through those years &, as a result, holds a very dear place in my heart to this day. In saying that though, it’s been many years since I’ve mustered the courage to want to return to it & ever since we revisited “Mandylion” as a recent feature release I’ve been wondering just how well it would hold up without the emotional baggage that I was carrying with me back in the day.

Despite what many critics & fans will tell you, “Mandylion” wasn’t a perfect record. If you look at it closely you’ll find that it had its flaws. I went back to find out what all the hype was about in the late 2000’s & found myself being a little underwhelmed, despite recognizing it to be a very solid release & the point at which The Gathering would begin to define a relevant & artistically challenging sound. It wasn’t an immediate record for me as the most appealing material was so clearly held in the last few tracks so it took me getting used to the overall tracklisting before I could find some of the adoration that others seemed to feel for it. But in saying that, it was generally the first half of the album that was held up on a pedestal & I still fail to achieve those feelings. It was the deeper & more complex tracks that close the album that saw the band getting me close to pulling out my higher scores & “Nighttime Birds” takes this idea a little further again which offers me a greater level of appeal.

From the first seconds of opening track “On Most Surfaces (Inuit)” it becomes immediately apparent that The Gathering had satisfied some of my minor qualms with “Mandylion”. The production job & performances are vastly superior to its older sibling & there’s a more consistent level of complexity to all of the material. “Mandylion” was unquestionably a darker & heavier record than “Nighttime Birds” however the band’s new sound possessed a sophistication & class that represented a clear step up on its predecessor. The more generic & chuggy metal riffs have been replaced by more melodically expansive & atmospheric passages of musical exploration that have a dreamier quality to them that reminds me of The 3rd & the Mortal’s finest works. In fact, The Gathering’s transition in style reminds me a lot of that band’s musical journey over their first few releases in that they traded in some of their metal street credibility for a more ambitious approach which offered greater substance & depth. The simple Paradise Lost influenced guitar melodies are still intact but the execution is significantly better & the backing instrumentation is more fully realized which only increases their impact.

It’s interesting that the gothic component of the Gathering’s supposed gothic metal sound isn’t all that strong on this occasion. You can easily hear the influence of early 80’s goth rock bands like The Cure but there’s a lot more going on than that which makes The Gathering’s sound hard to categorize. They certainly don’t go overboard with the gothic theatrics like some of their competition do & that’s got a lot to do with their appeal for me personally. They have a progressive element to their sound that brings to mind Anathema’s later material even if they don’t sound all that much alike in my opinion. The fact that it’s not easy to categorize The Gathering into any clear subgenre is a feather in their cap actually as it’s a clear sign that they’ve achieved their own sound.

And this brings me to one of the most important elements in the appeal of a record like “Nighttime Birds” i.e. the stunning vocals of front woman Anneke van Giersbergen. Her performance carried the weaker moments on “Mandylion” & was the clear highlight of the record however on “Nighttime Birds” we see her reaching a whole new level with the material seemingly having been written to highlight her skill sets. The melodies & harmonies she achieves here are amongst the best I’ve heard in all of metal & the angelic hooks are greater in both number & impact. In fact, this record is the primary reason why I regard Anneke as the greatest female metal singer of all time & I can’t overstate the quality of her contribution here. The dreamier instrumentation is the perfect foil for her unique & powerful voice & the startling improvement in the technical proficiency of the musicians has enabled her to free herself of any shackles she may have maintained previously so that she can soar like a bird.

Unlike “Mandylion”, “Nighttime Birds” kicks off with one of the best couple of tracks on the tracklisting & the highlights come more regularly & consistently from there. The closing two pieces in the title track & “Shrink” are more devastating than the two wonderful closers on “Mandylion” with hooks that simply refuse to leave my brain & firmly command that I return to the album over & over again. There are no weak tracks included either. The more commercially focused & rocky “Third Chance” is certainly the least impressive of the bunch but even then Anneke manages to give it the oomph to overcome its more accessible direction. Plus, the middle of the album sports another couple of gems in “The Earth Is My Witness” & “New Moon, Different Day” which would be worthy of album high point status on most other albums.

Look, I don’t doubt that there’s an element of emotional & nostalgic attachment to “Nighttime Birds” that gives it an advantage over most of its competition but I can’t think of a gothic metal record that’s had as big an impact on me so I’m gonna go out on a limb & say that this is now my favourite release from that particular genre. I regard it as a genuine classic that has the unique potential to crossover into more commercial circles without losing any of credibility in the process. The fact that “Mandylion” will likely always be regarded as The Gathering’s finest hour is hard to understand for me personally as this album is so clearly superior in every way in my opinion.

For fans of Tiamat, The 3rd & the Mortal & Theatre Of Tragedy.

I was in dire need of some violence & brutality to revitalise my metal mantra when I finally returned to extreme music after a decade in the electronic music wilderness in 2009 & this requirement was promptly met in no uncertain terms by the 2000 third album from New Jersey grindcore act Discordance Axis. “The Inalienable Dreamless” unapologetically beat my brains in with a jackhammer & left me wondering if the entire scene had gone insane in my time away. Strangely, I haven’t returned to it since so a revisit has been well overdue for many years now.

In classic grindcore style, “The Inalienable Dreamless” comprises of a full 17 tracks but takes just 23 minutes to pummel you into submission. It doesn’t muck around either because this is some of the most ridiculously abrasive material you’re likely to find in extreme metal & this isn’t just due to the awesome blasting drum performance of talented skinsman Dave Witte whose amazingly powerful performance is highlighted by a brilliant understanding of how to use his ride cymbal to further accentuate his blast beats. Front man Jon Chang unsurprisingly screams his fucking guts out & there’s a spasmodic chaos to this record that borrows heavily from mathcore acts like The Dillinger Escape Plan in order to create an added layer of interest with the use of odd time signatures & more angular riff structures taking the album to new levels of interest & intrigue.

Despite pushing past the majority of its peers as far as pure savagery goes, this really isn’t your average grindcore record. It’s much more sophisticated than that & sports a production job that offers the perfect balance of clarity & extremity. The fact that I often find myself looking back at each track & wondering how the band have managed to stuff so much substance into such a short period of time is a sure sign of a superior grindcore act. It's worth mentioning that this is not the type of album that I feel like sticking on all that often though as it fits a very specific niche & does it particularly well to say the least as you’ll rarely find a release that possesses more energy, violence & chaos than this one. These are some of the primary requirements of good grindcore music too which makes "The Inalienable Dreamless" one of the most effective examples of its type. In fact, I’m gonna go so far as to say that it’s just slipped past Pig Destroyer’s “Prowler In The Yard” to snatch the honour of being my all-time favourite grindcore release these days so it should be essential listening for anyone interested in the genre.

For fans of Gridlink, Fuck The Facts & Antigama.

With all of the recent talk about the US power metal movement in The Guardians forum, I noticed that I hadn’t rated this highly regarded release from that particular scene, despite harbouring the distant memory of having given it a few spins over a decade ago now. Having sat through the album three times over the last two days though, I’m not so sure that my recollections are all that accurate as I can’t say that I’ve heard anything particularly familiar in The Lord Weird Slough Feg’s 2003 fourth album “Traveller”. There’s one thing that can’t be denied though & that’s the impressive pedigree of this band as they showcase a very solid understanding of several eras & movements that produced the fundamental building blocks of metal music in general.

Some of you may have read my recent whinge about how poorly the US power metal tag is used & defined. Well, “Traveller” is one of a relatively small percentage of releases that are genuinely deserving of the tag as it’s as metal as fuck & possesses a consistently epic atmosphere that rarely crosses over that dreaded cheese line. The warm rhythm guitar tone isn’t overly distorted & this restraint gives “Traveller” a noticeably 70’s feel that reminds me of Judas Priest’s classic material from the 1976-78 period. Black Sabbath is also strongly represented through several chunky doom sections that sit very much in line with some of the material from the Grand Magus record we featured recently. Iron Maiden & the NWOBHM receive more than the occasional dalliance too with the classic Maiden gallop & guitar harmonies being a major component in the Slough Feg sound although it has to be said that the harmonies in question often sound a little more dark & doomy than the Irons ever attempted.

Despite the obvious classic metal influences though, “Traveller” is categorically a US power metal release for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the riffs have an overarching weight to them that never veers from the metal course, even if they do occasionally head into territory that’s a little more melodic than I’d like. I mean there’s absolutely zero hard rock here & neither is there any hint of commercialism. These guys do what they do purely for the love of metal. Secondly, the vocals of Mike Scalzi (who also fronted San Francisco progressive metal outfit Hammers Of Misfortune at the time) have an epic quality to them that’s tailor made to encourage audiences to don their leathers & raise their metal claws to the sky in unison. To my ears, his tone sits halfway between the emotionally engaging styles of A.A. Nemtheanga (Primordial) & Vincent Cavanagh (Anathema) & the nasal story-telling of Manilla Road front man Mark Shelton & this really seems to work for Slough Feg as it provides further reinforcement to their whole ideal which appears to me to be a celebration of metal in general.

I can’t deny that there are some really attractive elements to the Slough Feg sound that I get a lot of enjoyment out of. The lead guitar tone offers plenty of shred & really highlights the skills of the musicians involved so the solos are always enjoyable. I also find the more organic rhythm guitar sound to be a refreshing side step from the usually heavily distorted one found in most modern heavy/power metal. It adds another layer of integrity/credibility & immediately saw my ears pricking up, particularly during the more crushing sections where those guitars have a lovely crunch to them. So I guess I generally like the band’s approach but the only problem is that I’m never quite onboard with Slough Feg’s overall musical direction. It’s just a touch too melodic for me & I’ve often struggled with the more epic sounding brand of heavy metal over the years. These concerns are probably responsible for me not being able to find any genuine classics amongst the twelve tracks included & are compounded by a three track run in the middle of the B side that leaves me completely cold (see “Gene-ocide”, “Curse Of Humaniti” & “The Final Gambit”). So overall I’m gonna place “Traveller” into the big box I keep at the back of my musical tasting room i.e. the one that I store records that I quite like but rarely find myself returning to.

For fans of Brocas Helm, Manilla Road & Eternal Champion.

I first became aware of Mexican outfit The Chasm through a South American tape trader way back in the mid 1990’s & didn’t mind their first couple of doom-laden death metal albums, particularly their 1996 sophomore effort “From The Lost Years…”. But it would be more than a decade before I’d return to the band & discover that they’d become somewhat of a cult artist in the underground extreme metal scene while I’d been busy indulging myself in the electronic music scene. 2000’s “Procession To The Infraworld” (arguably The Chasm’s most highly regarded work) would be the first of The Chasm’s classic period releases that I'd investigate & it didn’t make as big an impact on me as I’d expected upon first listen. Thankfully, I gave it some time & was warmly rewarded for my patience.

“Procession Into The Infraworld” isn’t the most clinical death metal record you’ll find. Instead, it goes for a much looser & more chaotic approach to both its production & execution. The musicianship isn’t amazing to be honest. Antonio León’s drumming is certainly pretty ambitious however the incredibly clicky kick drum sound is particularly unforgiving & showcases Antonio’s technical failings fairly obviously while the lead guitar work is performed at a pretty basic level & is one of the weaknesses of the album. The complexity of the song-structures is quite impressive though with The Chasm rarely sticking to the one riff for more than a few bars which gives the album an urgency that it might not have possessed otherwise. Daniel Corchado’s vocal performance offers great variety & a significant amount of menace which gives some of the less imposing tracks a little more underground credibility too. Those of you who are familiar with Incantation's "Diabolical Conquest" album might be pleasantly surprised at the alternative directions he takes here in comparison to the more consistently deep & guttural contribution he made to that particular late 90's classic.

Musically, “Procession Into The Infraworld” isn’t the most brutal death metal release you’ll find & it doesn’t have the darkest atmosphere either but neither of those comments should be taken as negatives. The Chasm’s more death metal inclined riffage sports a uniquely Mexican edge that’s got plenty of room for melody without ever crossing over into melodeath territory. It reminds me a lot of Corchado’s early 90’s band Cenotaph’s 1994 sophomore album “Riding Our Black Oceans” & also 2009’s “Sub Altris Caelis” record from fellow Mexicans Infinitum Obscure which was more than likely influenced by it. But if you allow yourself to ignore all of the genre-tagging you see online, close your eyes & focus on what’s really going on, you’ll notice something really interesting because at least half of the guitar work on this release sits more comfortably under the black metal banner than it does under a death metal one & I feel that this element is deserving of the "blackened death metal" label. There are loads of dissonant open-string arpeggios going on that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Satyricon or Burzum record & there’s a thrashy edge to some of it that’s not all that dissimilar to Immortal’s “At The Heart Of Winter” album too. But the major influence I pick up from “Procession To The Infraworld” is that of Swedish melodic black metal gods Dissection with the same sort of complex melodic movement being employed consistently across the tracklisting. It’s this ever-changing combination of accessible black metal melody & more meaty death metal chug that give this record its widespread underground appeal in my opinion.

On paper, “Procession To The Infraworld” isn’t exactly in line with my usual death metal preferences however it’s hard not to admire the integrity in its concept as it really is an unabashed statement on the strength of the underground extreme metal scene & it’s this characteristic that allows me to overlook its flaws. There are some really strong tracks included here but it’s really only closer “Storm Of Revelations” that sees me reaching tier one levels of admiration. The rest of the album is very consistent but the lack of precision & polish in the performances I mentioned earlier combines with a greater concentration on melody than I’m usually comfortable with to see me reeling my adoration in a bit. There’s no doubt that this is a strong record. It’s just not the classic that some people would have you believe it is.

For fans of Dissection, Cenotaph & Infinitum Obscure.

My nomination of the 1991 sophomore album from New Jersey artist OLD as our monthly The Sphere feature release was very much intended so that I could take a retrospective look at an album that I overlooked at the time. I’d become acquainted with OLD through their 1988 debut full-length “Old Lady Drivers” a short time before the release of “Lo Flux Tube” which was mainly due to the band’s link to the amazingly consistent Earache Records label. Unfortunately, the tongue-in-cheek brand of grindcore that the debut album presented me with hadn’t left a huge impression on me however I noticed that their follow-up effort seemed to be receiving an increased level of attention so gave it a casual once over. It didn’t hit the spot for me on that brief dalliance so I redirected my attentions towards releases that were more in line with my tastes at the time. Listening to the album now, I have to say that I’m not terribly surprised at this outcome given that I was completely obsessed with the darkest & most extreme death/black metal in the world back in the early 1990’s but there were also a couple of obvious obstacles for a young fella to overcome too. My musical palate is much better equipped to navigate those issues these days though so I think it’s time to see whether I’ve missed out on a rewarding artistic experience over the last three decades or not.

The first element that confronted me after pressing that little triangle on my iPhone screen is the weak production job & I was immediately reminded of the reasons for my having initially struggled with “Lo Flux Tube”. The guitars reside in a space that almost sounds like they’re in another room & have a very noisy & treble-heavy tone that reminds me a lot of early 80’s gothic rock & post-punk. In fact, those influences also play a role in the use of the bass guitar throughout the tracklisting with the bass being positioned quite forward in the mix even though it’s not afforded all that much actual bass from an equalization point of view. It took me a full listen to the duration of the album to become accustomed to production flaws but once I returned for my second visit I found that I was able to see past them & the album started to open up a bit. In saying that though, this is an unusually inaccessible record for other reasons too. To be more specific, the vocals of Alan Dubin (who was also in Khanate with band leader James Plotkin during the early 2000’s) take some getting used to as they amount to nothing more than a shrieking black metal scream that at first seems fairly out of place on top of the experimental noise going on beneath it. Again, this issue becomes much easier to deal with over time & I’m now a lot more comfortable with it but there’s no doubt it was a career-limiting move & I can’t help but think that these vocal & production traits are what prevented me from committing to “Lo Flux Tube” a good three decades ago now.

Instrumentally, the album openly highlights a couple of fairly obvious inspirations but utilizes them in a way that amounts to much more than simply being the sum of those influences. The first is that of English industrial metallers Godflesh with the consistent use of artificial harmonics & feedback over the top of mid-paced & mechanical sounding drum machine programming forming the basis of OLD’s sound. But it needs to be said that OLD take that sound to much more bizarre places than Justin Broadrick ever dreamt of with avant-garde Canadian progressive metal outfit Voivod playing a big part in the chaos that ensues at regular intervals across the tracklisting. In fact, it wouldn't be a stretch to claim "Lo Flux Tube" as a combination of "Streetcleaner" & "Dimension Hatross" really as there’s an unconventional & often alarming psychotic feel to the way that the riffs are structured & it seems like they’ve made a conscious decision to focus on messing with people’s minds as much as creating an enjoyable listening experience. OLD often employ the use of psychedelics in order to further dismantle the listeners mental state which works pretty well for the most part & is a characteristic that was always going to offer me a fair amount of appeal. It doesn’t always work of course but it’s hard not to admire the ambition even when things don’t quite gel.

“Lo Flux Tube” is undeniably a strange listening experience however it’s also an entertaining one with only the misguided instrumental psych-out “Dissassemble” failing to hit the mark. Its flaws were always going to prevent it from reaching the top tiers of the industrial metal genre however there’s a lot to take in here which sees it possessing a strong replay value that’s further enhanced by the sheer intrigue it offers with its avant-garde & cerebral approach.

For fans of Godflesh, Voivod & early Scorn.

This one has really surprised me. I wasn't expecting all that much going into it to be honest. I've had a very long relationship with Saxon after having first experiencing them through 1981's "Denim & Leather" album back in the late 80's & then exploring the remainder of their classic trio of 1980-81 records. It wasn't until Ben & I conducted the Metal Academy podcast three or four years ago that I took a focused look at their self-titled debut as well as the three records that immediately followed their classic period. The debut was the only one of Saxon's first seven records that I didn't have time for with 1983's "Power & the Glory" surprisingly becoming my personal favourite, closely followed by their 1982 live album "The Eagle Has Landed: Live" & 1980's legendary "Strong Arm Of The Law" record. Strangely, I've never gotten around to giving a single post-1985 Saxon release a chance until now however "Thunderbolt" has unceremoniously turned things on their head as I actually think it may be my new favourite Saxon release.

"Thunderbolt" is certainly the most metal Saxon release I've heard to date. In fact, it's a seriously metal record in general which was always going to be a feather in its cap with someone like myself. The AC/DC & Van Halen worship that was so prevalent on Saxon's 80's material is nowhere to be found while the Judas Priest influence has been beefed out significantly & is more focused on Priest's post-1970's material now. Bif Byford's vocals are surprisingly as strong as they've ever been & are a real highlight, as is the stunning lead guitar work of the ever reliable Paul Quinn & new kid on the block (well he's been there since 1995 but I've never heard him Saxon before) Doug Scarratt. There are a truckload of great riffs included & they're accentuated by a splendidly chunky production job that sees this release completely shunning any references to the NWOBHM. In fact, if this record came out of the USA then you'd be seeing it being labelled as US power metal, such is the weight of its riffage.

The tracklisting is impressively consistent with only the lacklustre & lethargic chorus of "Speed Merchants" failing to keep me entertained. The album opens with a beautifully executed & suitably imposing intro piece called "Olympus Rising" that sets the tone for the album nicely. Then you'll find yourself thrust into a world that's simply full to the brim with metal pedigree. The anthemic album high point "The Secret Of Flight" is as addictive as anything Saxon have done in their career while the dark majesty of "Nosferatu (The Vampires Waltz)" captured me from the word go. I'm not sure I really need the raw version of that track tacked onto the end of the album though. It may not include the synthesizers of the original version however it doesn't really add anything to my life. The less impressive tracks are generally those that take more of an old school approach that borders on speed metal. These are still fairly fun inclusions but are certainly less substantial than the more ambitious & noticeably meatier mid-paced material. On the other hand though, Saxon records have traditionally included the odd commercial dud & thankfully you'll find none of those on this occasion so it's hard to complain much.

I have to admit that I'm well impressed with just how relevant Saxon still sounded after 42 years of existence & that fact that they've managed to achieve a sound that's better suited to my personal tastes than their classic material was is a testament to that. I've always liked Saxon but I rarely loved them. It's nice to see a group of old codgers that aren't afraid to get with the times & are still so clearly influenced by great metal music.

For fans of Judas Priest, Accept & Grim Reaper.

Maryland-based avant-garde alternative metal outfit Dog Fashion Disco have been around for over 25 years now & I’ve seen their name floating about quite often in that time, usually in connection with their 2006 sixth album “Adultery” which seems to be regarded as their career highlight by a fair margin. The comparisons with Mike Patton & (in particular) Mr. Bungle have always intrigued me as Ben & I spent many an hilarious evening laughing our asses off to Bungle’s 1991 self-titled debut as teenagers in the early 1990’s. They certainly weren’t traversing an artistic space that I would usually have been interested in but god damn if they weren’t as fun as fuck & the same can be said for Dog Fashion Disco if this record is anything to go by.

Now let’s deal with the elephant in the room right from the get-go, shall we? Dog Fashion Disco really love Mr. Bungle & aren’t afraid to show it. In fact, “Adultery” is pretty much a variation on a theme that Patton & co. had already well & truly defined. However, it also has to be said that that statement isn’t something you hear all that often & there aren’t all that many alternatives for diehard Bungle fans in all honesty, particularly ones that are written, performed & executed as well as this one is. The film noir template they’ve based their themes around works beautifully & ensures that the listener is constantly being treated to new scenes & stylistic u-turns while always maintaining a wonderfully fresh energy & an uncanny understanding of a whole plethora of disparate genres.

Front man & band leader Todd Smith sounds a lot like Mike Patton most of the time. In fact, you could say that he’s a dead ringer for him but that doesn’t take away from the clear talent he has for a charismatic delivery of a whole bunch of different tones & techniques. There are a few jarring transitions here & there but they make perfect sense from a thematic point of view which sees you making excuses for them a lot of the time. I definitely enjoy the heavy alternative style guitar parts a lot & think that Dog Fashion Disco are at their best when they’re at their opposite extremes i.e. the chunkier & more up-tempo alternative metal material with the catchy vocal hooks & the much deeper film noir-driven ambience that sees me taking a swift chill pill or two.

The musicianship, song-writing & execution are all top notch & there are plenty of sections that leave me gasping at the sheer ambition on display. The consistency in the song-writing is also outstanding with only the country number “Desert Grave’ failing to engage me which is mainly due to my overarching issues with country music in general. The rest of the album ranges from pretty decent to very solid to absolutely mind-blowing with the peak of the album residing in the sexy stripped back lounge feel of “Private Eye” leading into the total banger that is “The Darkest Days” (i.e. the clear high point of the record for me personally). The themes are certainly intended to be in foreground but don't think that it's essential to follow them in order to enjoy the album. Lyrical content has never been something I've focused on terribly much & after giving this record a few spins I still have no idea what the storyline is about but it really doesn't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things because the music is of a high enough quality to easily stand on its own two feet.

Whether you’re a diehard member of The Gateway clan, a casual fan of alternative metal or simply a curious passer-by, “Adultery” comes thoroughly recommended from this jaded ol’ metalhead. If you ever feel that you need a time-out from the norm & are looking for a temporary escape to a dark & wonderful place filled with mystery & intrigue then Dog Fashion Disco may just have provided you with the perfect outlet.

For fans of Mr. Bungle, Stolen Babies & Polkadot Cadaver.

I didn’t have any prior experience with New York metalcore outfit Skycamefalling coming into this month’s feature release submission but have seen their 2000 debut album receiving consistently high praise from critics & fans over many years now so have been meaning to investigate it at some point. “10.21” is a lengthy undertaking clocking in at just over 63 minutes in duration however it never feels arduous & that run time is slightly extended by one of those needless four & a half minute periods of silence at the end of the tracklisting which only ends up resulting in a one-minute fading reprise of the closing number.

Skycamefalling’s sound is extremely well defined for a band that was only conducting their very first full-length recording effort & they’ve achieved a beautiful balance of consistency & creativity here to tell you the truth. They represent something much more than your generic metalcore fodder, despite the vocals of Christopher Tzompanakis sitting very much within the confines of the subgenre specifications. Christopher’s gravel-throated screams remind me quite a bit of Converge front man Jacob Bannon actually however the instrumentation is just as likely to draw from external influences as that of Jacob’s band. Unlike some of Converge’s more highly celebrated material though, “10.21” doesn’t offer the most imposing, urgent or extreme variety of metalcore you’re ever likely to hear. In fact, it’s pretty unintimidating is many respects & has chosen a very different tool set with which to slice its prey.

The production job of Jim Winters is a real highlight & on first listen you’d be forgiven for thinking that this album had only just hit the shelves last week. The guitar & bass tones are both warm & thick & maintain a suitable amount of heaviness without ever really feeling particularly metal. Sleepcamefalling actually sit much closer to the hardcore punk side of the metalcore equation than the metal one & that tone is well suited to the hardcore environment. Some of the riffs have a clear alternative rock edge to them too which is further complimented by the guitar tone & this results in even the more rocky & generic & sections presenting themselves in a lively & enthusiastic way.

As strong as the heavier tracks may be though, the most entertaining element of Skycamefalling’s sound is their use of post-hardcore experimentation with the majority of my album highlights aligning themselves with the band’s more ambitious undertakings & casting aside the heavy guitars & screamed vocals altogether. The opening intro piece is a great example as it sounds uncannily like something that Radiohead might have done. I always find myself waiting (even begging) for Thom Yorke’s nasal vocals to slither their way out of my speakers & into my eager ear cavities & it’s almost disappointing when one of the better heavy tracks “With Paper Wings” finally savages your expectations at its completion. Then you’ve got a lovely two-minute clean guitar driven post-rock instrumental that breaks things up nicely a few tracks into the album & the wonderfully epic ten-minute title track with its relaxed tribal rhythm & slowly building acoustic guitar work. You’ll rarely find a better example of the post-hardcore sound & it’s these elements along with the undeniable consistency of the tracklsting that sees my score sitting at such an impressive level.

Overall, “10.21” is fairly easy on the ears for a metalcore record. There are relatively few signs of the abrasive approach that the majority of their contemporaries pride themselves on however there’s simply not a requirement for it here as Skycamefalling have a much broader palate of influences to draw upon & have an acute understanding of the tools at their disposal & the dynamics required to keep the listener genuinely engaged. Throw in a tracklisting that’s completely free of blemishes & you get yourself a damn entertaining metalcore record that won’t disappoint its target audience.

For fans of Converge, Norma Jean & Cave In.

When I finally returned to the metal scene back in 2009 after a decade immersing myself in electronic music, I was very keen to see what my beloved death metal genre had evolved into. The late 90’s had seen my interest gradually starting to wane as death metal’s reign at the top of the extreme metal bubble had gradually started to burst however this hadn’t eroded my passion for the classics in the slightest so my curiosity was still high & I progressed into a period of frantic binging. Amongst the litter of pretenders & copy-cats, I stumbled upon the brand new sophomore album from New Zealand three-piece Ulcerate & was fascinated as to how a band from such a small & relatively local country had seemingly created such a buzz in the underground scene so I went into my first listen with an open mind & few expectations.

The first listen of a record like “Everything Is Fire” can be very challenging, even for the most hardened death metal fanatic. It’s an extremely inaccessible release & requires a level of patience to fully grasp. The first thing that hits you is the sheer density of the sound you’re presented with & it’s hard to believe the sonic assault you’re experiencing has come for just the three dudes. In fact, I’d be very surprised if most fans didn’t find their first run through the album to simply wash over them with very little actually sticking as the listener struggles to find something familiar to grab on to & that was very much the case with me. It was only on subsequent listens that the individual tracks started to open up & I began to realise why I’d struggled so much with it on first listen.

You see, “Everything Is Fire” is an extremely complex record. The level of technical skill required to create this music is astonishing. In fact, it’s so ambitious from a compositional & structural point of view that it often becomes its own worst enemy with its weakest moments proving to simply have too much going on for the listener’s brain to take it all in. It’s almost like the band members had too many ideas & tried to stuff them all into the shortest possible period of time. On some occasions this can come across as sheer genius while at others it becomes overpowering & sees the whole structure of the song-writing starting to break down. Thankfully though, the atmosphere that’s created has a darkness & a vitality that ooze of an elite class artist & this was enough to see me holding the album in high regard & placing it on high rotation for several weeks as I valiantly attempted to understand what was being presented to me.

As I would later discover, Ulcerate had begun life as a fairly generic technical/brutal death metal band & despite finding their 2004 “The Coming Of Genocide” demo to be much closer to my musical roots, I also found it to be pretty boring overall. Things would start to take shape with their 2007 debut album “Of Fracture & Failure” which kept me engaged with a little more ambition thrown into their sound however the stop/start nature of the song-structures made it sound a touch messy so it didn’t hold all that much replay value for me. Things would change drastically in the two years that followed though as “Everything Is Fire” is a very different beast & is very much the release that represents Ulcerate's coming of age. This time the band had harnessed the dissonant & chaotic brand of tech death that Canadian legends Gorguts had created earlier in the 2000’s but had combined it with the dark atmosphere of Immolation & some wonderfully engaging post-sludge influences that sound similar to Neurosis. So it’s essentially a concoction of a few of my very favourite sounds, all thrown into a blender & presented in a classy & refreshing way. That’s not to say that it’s all a resounding success though as the tendency to descend into overly complex muck is still occasionally at play here however every track has enough musical genius to comfortably transcend those obstacles.

It’s worth mentioning that the highlight of any Ulcerate record is most certainly drummer Jamie Saint Merat & “Everything Is Fire” is no exception in that regard, despite him  surpassing even these obscene levels of proficiency on subsequent releases Jamie's quite simply the most astoundingly talented drummer that I’ve ever witnessed in metal music & that includes all of the big names. In fact, when I saw Ulcerate live I found that I could happily have stood & stared at him playing completely solo for hours on end, such was the impression his incredible technique left on me. On this occasion, the clicky kick drum sound doesn’t do him any favours as it tends to highlight even the slightest blemish in a lightning-fast double kick run & that’s certainly not evident on subsequent releases however the sheer power & precision on display is mind-blowing. It’s really pretty easy to let Jamie’s performance overshadow the rest of the band but once you get comfortable with that element you’ll notice that the angular & twisting guitar work of Michael Hoggard is quite spectacular too & is further accentuated by an excellent tone that highlights every nuance whilst losing none of its menace. The use of more atmospheric post-metal sections is a master stroke &, despite all of the dazzling technical histrionics, I tend to find myself enjoying these parts as much as anything else on the album. In fact, it’s the two extreme ends of the Ulcerate sound that give me the most pleasure i.e. the sludgy, downtempo & wonderfully professional post-metal excursions & the more straight forward blasting parts. When they stick to those two extremes I find that everything comes together more consistently than it does when they’re trying to set new records for the amount of riffs they can cram into a few bars. Bassist Paul Kelland’s vocal performance reeks of Immolation’s Ross Dolan & tends to be pretty monotonous but that’s not such a bad thing within the context of Ulcerate’s sound as he provides some much needed consistency within all the chaos. This works better in the studio than it does live where he tends to sound a little samey.

To be honest, it took me years to fully grasp “Everything Is Fire” & for that reason I placed it behind each subsequent Ulcerate release which saw them further refining their sound to make it a more cohesive & generally palatable experience. I think that opening the album with the messiest & least impressive track in “Drown Within” probably wasn’t the wisest move either however spending some time apart has a tendency to see me going in with fresh ears & it’s resulted in me discovering the true genius in this album. It’s certainly not a perfect death metal record but there’s a wonderful consistency to the tracklisting & the overall class & ambition of the performances is a step up from 99% of their peers. What’s equally impressive is that the band have handled the production, engineering, mixing, mastering, artwork & layout entirely themselves so it’s a complete piece of art that’s the truest representation of what the band were trying to achieve. There’s definitely a case for saying that I really WANTED to love this record & perhaps that’s left me open to liking it more than I may otherwise have but I’m not sure that this matters in the grand scheme of things. Ulcerate may well have surpassed this supposed crowning achievement in their extremely solid back catalogue however this will always be an astoundingly dark & ambitious technical death metal release that will continue to bend my mind in unusual & uncomfortable ways for many years to come yet.

For fans of Gorguts, Baring Teeth & Artificial Brain.

You know what, despite my love affair with Bruce Dickinson’s incredible run of form with Iron Maiden throughout the 1980’s, I kinda ignored former front man Bruce Dickinson’s early 90’s solo albums. They weren’t exactly being hailed as modern-day classics at the time & my taste had moved into significantly more extreme areas by that stage so it wasn’t until 1997’s “Accident Of Birth” that I found enough encouragement to give Bruce’s solo work a chance & this was largely because of the mountain of praise his fourth album “Accident Of Birth” was receiving. The return of former Maiden buddy Adrian Smith on lead guitar was certainly a drawcard as well & the combination didn’t disappoint with many critics claiming the album as not only a return to form but one of the best metal albums of the year.

But those of you thinking that you’re in for a Maiden record under a different name better think again. “Accident At Birth” may feature those glorious higher register vocal hooks that we’re all so fond of however the instrumental component certainly doesn’t sound all that much like Maiden. There’s a down-tuned chug to the guitar tone that’s much more in line with the groove metal sound that was so popular during the 1990’s & the strong focus on melodic guitar harmonies is nowhere to be found. This was clearly a band that was looking to become relevant in a late 90’s market that had moved on from the classic heavy metal sound but still wanting to keep a foot in the camp of past glories through Bruce’s inimitable qualities.

I can’t say that the instrumentation is half as interesting as Maiden’s best work. It really does play a supporting role to the vocals which isn’t such a bad thing as Bruce is in fine form here but it does see the album’s potential to compete with his best 80’s work having a definite cap placed on it. The lead guitar work is obviously top notch & is often presented in a way that sees the solos creating crescendos that represent the climaxes of the songs. The strength of the album is in its general consistency & overall professionalism though. There’s only really one track that I struggle with in the fairly cheesy symphonic rock ballad “Man Of Sorrows” but the rest of the material ranges from quite enjoyable to genuinely mind-blowing. The two tracks that reside on the high side of that equation are “Taking The Queen” & “Welcome To the Pit” for me, neither of which sit amongst the more celebrated tracks on the album but I’m sure you’re all aware that I don’t run with the pack in that regard. Those are the songs where the chunky riffs hit me hardest &, more importantly, the anthemic vocal hooks grab my emotions in the most violent fashion. They’re prime examples of Bruce at his very best & I regard them both as sitting amongst the very finest heavy metal anthems of the 1990’s.

1998’s “The Chemical Wedding” album is generally regarded as Bruce’s best solo work & rightfully so in my opinion however “Accident of Birth” isn’t very far behind it with “The Chemical Wedding” winning out due to a greater quantity of genuine highlight tracks. They’re both very solid outings that do their level best to remind you of why you love classic Maiden so much but don’t quite hit you as hard or as long as those 1980’s albums from your youth did. But that’s not to say that these are disappointing records by any means, particularly if you’re a Maiden or Samson tragic. Both of them are high class efforts that should appeal to any fan of the classic heavy metal sound.

For fans of Iron Maiden, Dio & Halford.

Swiss atmospheric black metal solo project Paysage d'Hiver may be most well known for his 1999 self-titled demo however I've always questioned the validity of that particular release being his crowning achievement as I don't rate it amongst Wintherr's strongest material. 2020's epic "Im Wald" release is still my favourite after the second hour absolutely blew me away me away however 2001's "Winterkaelte" isn't far behind as it possesses one of the purest frost-bitten Scandinavian atmospheres you'll ever hear & doesn't taint it with ill-fitting clean instrumentation nearly as regularly as the self-titled.

This time we see Wintherr offering us six lengthy pieces that generally exceed the ten minute mark with the two strongest tracks opening proceedings. If you struggle with trance-inducing repetition then this won't be the release you're looking for but if you love nothing more than closing your eyes in pure darkness & being engulfed by a swarming mass of arctic winds then this will be right up your alley. The general ambience is further accentuated by well-executed field recordings that add further weight to the feelings of desolation & loneliness you'll inevitably be experiencing through the layers of guitars & distant drum pulses. It really does come at you in waves with Wintherr's insane screams being a real highlight. You would have to imagine that he would have completely burnt his voice out with this performance.

The last couple of tracks do see the quality dropping a touch which is mainly due to their faster tempos which see the drum machine becoming much more obvious & this element does take a little away from the atmosphere however it's not enough to see me pulled out of the foreign & intimidating place I've been transported to. The 79 minute run time is a little extreme too however the consistency of the tracklisting is excellent so it's very hard to argue against it, particularly when I don't have any problems taking in the whole release in one sitting.

All things considered, "Winterkaelte" is a glorious & majestic piece of black metal art that should captivate anyone regarding themselves as a black metal purist.

For fans of Burzum, ColdWorld & Darkspace.

It’s funny that I’d never bothered to give this little EP a go until now. I think much of the reason behind that stems from the idea of this release. I was a fan of Kyuss’ last three albums & the first few Queens Of The Age records but a short collection of odds & sods that didn’t make the cut doesn’t really sound all that appealing to me. However the extremely positive feedback I’ve read regarding its quality has enticed me to give it a shot at last. The six track EP (featuring three songs from each artist) was released in 1997 which was two years after Kyuss had split. Former Kyuss guitarist Josh Homme had formed a new band called Gamma Ray in 1996 but was later forced to change the name to Queens Of The Stone Age after threats of legal action from the German power metal band Gamma Ray. Some of that early Gamma Ray material has surfaced here.

The Kyuss material sounds very much like it was recorded during a single session. It features a similar bass-heavy production to their last album “...And The Circus Leaves Town” so it’s highly likely that these songs were recorded during those sessions. The EP opens with Kyuss’ version of Black Sabbath’s heavy metal classic “Into The Void” which Kyuss released as a single in 1996. The first three minutes are pretty faithful to the original but the major point of difference is that Kyuss have taken a completely different approach to the fast section in the middle. They’ve chosen to make it a more stripped back & casual affair with the drums being replaced by bongos. It develops into a cool little three minute jam session before things stop quite suddenly & return to the original format. The vocals are not as effective as Ozzy Osbourne’s or John Garcia’s usual style in my opinion. “Fatso Forgotso” was originally a B-side on the Into The Void” 7”. It’s a long, groovy stoner metal outing & Garcia’s vocals suit it much better than the cover version. The fuzzed out guitars are very appropriate for the style of the riffs. There’s again a changeup in the middle & another extended jam section which reminds me very much of 70’s fusion. The final Kyuss inclusion "Fatso Forgotso Phase II (Flip the Phase)" was originally included on the “One Inch Man” single from 1995 under the title of “Flip The Phase”. It’s a shorter, more up-tempo number that rocks fairly hard & again utilizes the fuzzed out guitars quite well.

The Queens Of The Stone Age material sounds very different to Kyuss. It’s in much more of an alternative rock style which is not surprising as the band have always leant further in that direction. The first two tracks were originally released as a Gamma Ray 7” single. “If Only Everything” & “Born To Hula” are both simple rock songs that lean heavily on Josh’s catchy vocal lines in contrast to the more riff-based medium that Kyuss prefer. Both songs are reasonably memorable. “If Only Everything” is in fact an early version of “If Only” which ended up on the debut QOTSA album. The final track on the EP is an instrumental piece entitled “Spiders & Vinegaroons”. The first four minutes feature some very atmospheric & trance-inducing psychedelic material which I consider to be the high point of the whole EP however things take a drastic turn after that with the introduction of some harsh electronic breakbeats that would sound more at home on an Aphex Twin record than a QOTSA one. It’s a weird way to finish the track & I can’t help but think that it was a bit of a waste after the first four minutes were so effective.

The EP was interesting as a whole however I find it hard to pick out any standout tracks. It’s very consistent & I genuinely get some enjoyment out of every song but it’s definitely lacking a couple of highlights. None of the six songs were good enough to make it onto their bands respective full-lengths (at least not in the format they appear here) & I think that says a little bit about their overall quality. I can’t say this is essential listening for fans of either band but there is definitely some merit for those willing to take the plunge. Both Kyuss & QOTSA are class acts & it seems that even the stray recordings they have lying around are of a very decent quality.