Sonny's Forum Replies

Mid-August seems like a good point for a review of the Fallen releases of the first half of the year.

So here's my TopTen Fallen-related releases of 2022 up to now:

1. Messa - Close

2. Epitaphe - II

3. Mournful Congregation - The Exuviae of Gods: Part I EP

4. Swallow the Sun - Return to the Void

5. The Funeral Orchestra Funeral Death - Apocalyptic Plague Ritual II

6. Temple of Void - Summoning the Slayer

7. Night Hag - Phantasmal Scourge

8. Friends of Hell - Friends of Hell

9. Mares of Thrace - The Exile

10. Deathbell - A Nocturnal Crossing

Temple of Void - Summoning the Slayer (2022)

Not exactly brand new, being a couple of months old now, but what the hell?

I've been an ardent supporter of the Detroit five-piece for some time now and previous full-length, The World That Was, was one of my favourite albums of 2020 and one I purchased on vinyl such was it's quality, so obviously I was really looking forward to Summoning the Slayer. So how does the latest album shape up in comparison to it's earlier brethren? My initial reaction was that Summoning the Slayer was a bit underwhelming, but subsequent listens have seen me modify that stance. I think that I was experiencing a case of reality being unable to live up to expectations, so was initially too harsh in my reaction. Summoning the Slayer takes the band's melodic death doom template from their earlier work and this time around go down a more gothic-led path than the spacey/psychedelic trip they took on The World That Was. I am often more than a little ambivalent towards gothic metal, so that may also explain my initial reticence regarding the new record I suppose. To the band's credit, they incorporate the gothic trappings exceedingly well and don't fall into the trap of overdoing it and tipping over into excessive theatricality than ruins so much gothic-flavoured metal for me.

The album starts off strongly with Behind the Eye, a fairly straight-up slab of cavernous death metal which is followed by possibly the highlight of the album Deathtouch which is where the gothic guitar work first makes an appearance. The lighter melancholic tone of the gothic lead guitar works in marked contrast to the heaviness and crunch of the riffing and the guttural growling of excellent vocalist Mike Erdody to provide an extremely satisfying blend of light and dark motifs. I don't want to oversell the gothic side of the album as this is still overwhelmingly a (fairly melodic) death doom album but the band do like to bring in elements from other styles into their songwriting, such as the space and psychedelic rock they utilised on their previous album. Ultimately it comes down to whether Temple of Void have the necessary heft behind them to convince as a death doom outfit and I think they illustrate once more that indisputedly, yes they do, being an exceedingly tight and proficient unit with superior songwriting ability. Kudos to them that they have no desire to keep trotting out the same LP over and over again, but whilst trying out new sounds refusing to abandon what appealed to their growing legion of fans in the first place. True, Summoning the Slayer may be more of a grower and less an immediate rush than previous releases, but those pesky increased expectations must come with the territory for any decent band I suppose and the quality does ultimately win out over any initial hesitancy.
4/5

Any suggestions for September Ben?

I'm pretty sure the so-called "Big Four" was a music press creation more than a label executive's. Kerrang! journalist Malcolm Dome originally coined the term thrash metal, so I wouldn't bet against him or another metal journo coming up with the B4 epithet. Either way, you are right Morpheus, no actual thrash fans at the time called them collectively by that name. I'm surprised it's stuck around as a label to be honest because all four bands (yes, Slayer included) had their issues as metal moved into the nineties. I guess it's just because they are the most recognisable names to Joe Public and probably was jumped on as a convenient marketing tool.

The Funeral Orchestra - Funeral Death - Apocalyptic Plague Ritual II (2022)

The Funeral Orchestra are a Gothenburg funeral doom three-piece that features Runemagick's Leif Nicklas Rudolfsson on guitar and vocals. I do have some familiarity with the band, but I have only previously heard their debut, Feeding the Abyss, which I dug quite a bit. Funeral Death - Apocalyptic Plague Ritual II actually comprises only one new track which is opener Funeral Death (The Rite Of Winter). The rest are re-recordings of earlier tracks and as such the band consider this not to be an album proper.

Anyway, on to the music itself. It's not the slowest example of funeral doom that you will ever hear, but the sound is pretty massive and it does a good job of crushing and smothering the listener with it's huge, sinister-sounding chords and oppressive atmosphere. There is an occult-laden ominousness to their sound that niggles away at the edge of awareness in an exceedingly effective manner, reinforced by chanted ritualistic-sounding vocals, such as during the superb Flesh Infiltrations or Apocalyptic Trance Ritual. The main harsh vocal sits somewhere between death and black metal, but doesn't sound especially abrasive despite that and the drums have a deep, booming quality that gives the impression of tympani percussion and sound like they are issuing from deep beneath the earth. The overall impression is one of a sinister cult performing forbidden rites in long-forsaken subterranean caverns, beseeching primordial deep-dwelling pit denizens to do their bidding.

I have got to admit to being a little disappointed by this year's doom metal output so far, but The Funeral Orchestra have certainly upped the ante with this and despite the fact that the band don't consider it a full album per se, it is still a stand-out in a fairly mediocre year for the fan of everything menacing, slow and crushing. I'm really looking forward to their next endeavour after this.

4.5/5

Hi Ben, could you please add The Funeral Orchestra's latest, Funeral Death - Apocalyptic Plague Ritual II.

Bog Body - Cryonic Crevasse Cult

Released: 20th May 2022 on Profound Lore

As anyone who is remotely familiar with my ramblings will tell you, I am always partial to some filthy, cavernous, Autopsy-style death doom, so I had some decent expectations for this, Bog Body's debut album. Alas these expectations were just castles in the sky as the reality is not as great as the premise, which is putrid death doom that rejects six-stringers and let's the four-stringed beast lead the way, plumbing new depths of cavernousness. The truth is that the lack of lead guitar means zero riffs, thus robbing the tracks of the requisite heft that doom metal demands and replacing it with a muted rumbling that doesn't truly pack much of a punch at all. Add to that the muted drum sound and the distant-sounding vocals and you have a death doom release that lacks any sort of presence and just flutters about at the periphery of your attention, coming off like a glorified basement demo. The two guys from Bog Body can count themselves rather fortunate to have scored interest from a major metal label such as Profound Lore, especially with the huge number of unsigned acts in the current crowded metal scene.

Cryonic Crevasse Cult is not a complete loss as a couple of tracks generate some interest, Ice Stained Kurgan and the title track for example, but generally, even for me, it was a bit of a slog and seemed much longer than it's actual 33 minutes run time. The sad thing is that with a decent guitarist, comfortable in the Asphyx/Autopsy style they would have a decent LP on their hands.
2.5/5

A mammoth is exactly what occured to me to represent the Fallen. A raven (Huginn and Muninn are both Odin's ravens in norse mythology) for the North, or alternatively a wolf. Death's Head moth for the Horde? Thresher (thrasher) shark for the pit.

Slayer - Hell Awaits (1985)

Hell Awaits was the very first Slayer album I bought as I expanded my thrash metal awareness beyond Metallica's first two albums. It is probably my least favoured of their first three albums. I love the youthful exuberance of the debut (and it contains The Antichrist) and Reign in Blood is the greatest thrash album ever. But even despite that, Hell Awaits is still a fucking top-tier thrash metal release and most bands can only dream of producing something this awesome.

When first listening to it all those decades ago it was, without doubt, the darkest album I had ever heard, with lyrics about hell, demons, serial killers and vampires, not in some tongue-in-cheek, Hammer Horror, camp-it-up style, but in red raw, visceral glee. Being the time, in the UK at least, of the video nasty laws banning "extreme" horror videos, it was hard to believe this was even allowed! Hell Awaits was most assuredly the biggest knee in the bollocks to the shiny glamour of the new romantics, hair metal and stadium rock that was proliferating in the mid-eighties and sowed the seeds, both musically and thematically, for much of the extreme metal that was to follow. This was most definitely an album and a band I could get behind.

Funnily, for a band as direct and in-your-face as Slayer, some of their most awesome tracks have an extended intro. I'm thinking Seasons in the Abyss, Raining Blood and, most pertinent to this review, the opener and title track, Hell Awaits, with the faded-in build-up and sinister backwards chanting of the intro. When the riff breaks and things begin in earnest, Tom Araya spills out words of an impending conquering of heaven by the hordes of hell, as if he was some old testament prophet in the throes of delivering demonically-inspired prophecy, fighting to impart the visions he has seen in a flurry of verbiage he can barely control. Add to this the increased intensity of guitarists Hanneman and King, their riffs bludgeoning metalheads worldwide insensible even as their solos left behing trails of blistering flesh, so white-hot were they. This was the first time I had heard solos so intense that it seemed like the Slayer duo had weaponised the art to the point that it could cause physical harm! Drummer Dave Lombardo had also grown exponentially in stature and confidence, although his tour-de-force was still an album away, and he and Araya's (very prominent) bass underpin and punctuate the two six-stringer's lethal assaults.

An interesting idea was ending the album with an outro that is the same as it began with, providing an ouroborous-like loop which reinforces the idea of eternity and the endlessness of the torments that await in hell. I think it is safe to say that this is an underappreciated album, which I am as guilty of as anyone. It feels like a quantifiably superior album to Show No Mercy with better performances, songwriting and production, yet I have a fondness for the debut that, irrationally, I don't feel for Hell Awaits on the same level - even whilst recognising it as a great album nonetheless. People are just weird I guess.
4.5/5

I agree that Spreading the Disease and Among the Living are better albums than any Testament produced, but Anthrax fell hard and Testament had better staying power.

If we were naming a worldwide Big4 then I would go Slayer, Kreator, Metallica, Celtic Frost with Megadeth and Sepultura marginally missing out.

Cool to see so many Testament albums reviewed here.  Way better than Anthrax ever were, nd it gets on my nerves that they made it to thrash's big four and Testament didn't.

I think one of the reasons is that the "Big Four" of thrash metal was eastablished very early on and Testament didn't release their debut until 1987, four years after Show No Mercy and Kill 'em All, by which time thrash had become very established as a genre and precedents had already been set. On the upside, in light of the demise in credibility of most of the Big Four, particularly Metallica and Anthrax, Testament may be better served by not being associated with them. Personally, I think Chuck Billy and co. are one of the more consistent thrash outfits and thoroughly deserve whatever accolades are awarded them.

I will not be making any suggestions for the playlist this month Vinny.

Hi Ben. I will not be submitting any suggestions for the September playlist.

Sorry, but this really doesn't do it for me. Listening to it, I felt like an oxy-junkie taking a couple of aspirin and hoping to get a fix. I don't hear very much doom metal here at all actually. There's heavy metal and power metal to spare, but doom? Not much at all in my opinion. In fact, it's not until the final track Memento Mori do I hear a riff that gets close to scratching my doom itch. On top of that I found the vocals hard to take, although musically the band seem accomplished enough, even doing a passable Iron Maiden impression at one point. The Roy Batty sample was the highlight of the album for me, so I guess it's just not my cup of tea.

2/5

Fair enough, but surely you don't actually think this is anywhere close to a power metal record? Your drug comparison seems appropriate, because you'd have to be on some to think that...

OK Morpheus, I'll not rise to insults, this isn't RYM. I am no expert on power metal as it doesn't appeal to me at all, so you may be right and I will concede that point, but I do know a bit about doom metal and to my ears there is precious little of it on this record. There seems to be a trend on rym of labelling any heavy metal record with a slower section or two or a downtuned guitar tone as doom. I listened to Ecclesia's 2020 album De Ecclesiæ Universalis also yesterday and that is another egregious example of an album labelled as doom metal which it clearly is not. Both of those albums would be far more at home in The Guardians than The Fallen. I would maybe ageee with Doom metal as a secondary at a push. Of course this is just my opinion and I have no wish to act as a gatekeeper for any genre, so if anyone else disagrees then I respect that.

Sorry, but this really doesn't do it for me. Listening to it, I felt like an oxy-junkie taking a couple of aspirin and hoping to get a fix. I don't hear very much doom metal here at all actually. There's heavy metal and power metal to spare, but doom? Not much at all in my opinion. In fact, it's not until the final track Memento Mori do I hear a riff that gets close to scratching my doom itch. On top of that I found the vocals hard to take, although musically the band seem accomplished enough, even doing a passable Iron Maiden impression at one point. The Roy Batty sample was the highlight of the album for me, so I guess it's just not my cup of tea.

2/5

My observations:

1. Sonny has likely listened to over 222 doom metal releases this decade.

2. Neoclassical Metal & Southern Metal are not a metal subgenres.

3. Ben has far too much time on his hands.

4. I am well behind on modern metal & are progressively getting more so.

I think it's only 221 and I don't know which I've missed!!

In truth it seems I've listened to just over 90 of those (although I've also listened to a lot with less than 50 ratings), so it looks like I have much work left to do!

No surprise that there are so many black metal albums. It seems every man and his dog are making bm nowadays. Some of them are even good!

I am surprised that there are only 115 post-metal releases because that seems to be the "trendy" (for want of a better word) genre of modern times.

August 2022

1. Goatsnake - "Flower of Disease" from "Flower of Disease" (2000)
2. Dusk - "Mourning Shadow" from "Dusk EP" (1994)
3. Cemetary - "Bitter Seed" from "Black Vanity" (1994)
4. Year of the Cobra - "White Wizard" from "...in the Shadows Below" (2016)
5. Evoken - "Embrace the Emptiness" from "Quietus" (2001)
6. Strange Horizon - "Fake Templar" from "Beyond the Strange Horizon" (2022)
7. Solitude Aeturnus - "Tomorrows Dead" from "Alone" (2006)
8. YOB - " Burning the Altar" from "The Great Cessation" (2009)
9. Acid King - "Four Minutes" from "Free EP" (2014)
10. Deathwhite - "Quietly, Suddenly" from "Grey Everlasting" (2022)
11. The Wounded Kings - "Bleeding Sky" from "Visions in Bone" (2016)
12. Unholy - "For the Unknown One" from "Rapture" (1998)
13. Corrosion of Conformity - "Pearls Before Swine" from "Deliverance" (1994)
14. Megadrone - "I" from "Transmission II: Jovian Echoes" (2022)
15. Lord Vicar - "The Temple in the Bedrock" from "The Black Powder" (2019)
16. Come to Grief - " Death Can't Come Soon Enough" from "When the World Dies" (2022)
17. Tzompantli - "Yaotiacahuanetzli" from "Tlazcaltiliztli" (2022)

Blut aus Nord - Disharrmonium - Undreamable Abysses

Blut aus Nord by way of Oranssi Pazuzu. Sonny, you need to hear this.

Thanks Saxy. I enjoyed the track from it that was featured on this month's playlist so I will definitely check it out.

I've been going over a couple of well-received releases from two of metal's big hitters that I have never been too sure about over the last day or two, just to try and tie down my feelings on them.

Judas Priest - Painkiller (1990)

Judas Priest were one of my favourite bands and produced a couple of my all-time top albums in Sad Wings of Destiny and Stained Class (with Sin After Sin and Killing Machine close behind). However, after the release of Killing Machine and the success of the single Take On the World something changed with Priest. To my mind at the time and an opinion I hold to this day, they sold out and selling units became more important than everything else. They took advantage of the upsurge of popularity of heavy metal here in the UK, since labelled the NWOBHM, by upping prices on concert tickets and merchandise, vitually doubling them on the Killing Machine tour compared to the prices on the Stained Class tour. Much as that irked me at the time that was as nothing compared to the commercialisation of their music signalled initialy by the British Steel album and it's focus on producing hit singles in the vein of US acts of the time in a blatant attempt to break into the American market. At this point I turned my back on Priest as I considered that they were taking the piss along with my hard-earned cash. My first wife bought the Screaming for Vengeance album but I didn't care much for it. Other than the title track and Electric Eye I thought it sucked to be honest and I didn't listen to another new Priest album for a very long time indeed.

Anyway, turning to Painkiller, I have always understood why it is so beloved of fans, following the execrable Turbo and Ram it Down pretty much anything half-decent would be an improvement and indeed it is, but I still maintain it is sub-par when compared to the band's earlier releases. Now I can hear your protests and you may as well save your breath because you will never convince me otherwise. "But Mike, Priest were barely even metal before Killing Machine" you might say, to which I will retort with the well thought-out counter-argument "bollocks!" There are some really good songs on Painkiller - Night Crawler, Between the Hammer and the Anvil and All Guns Blazing for example, but do any of these even touch, Sinner, Tyrant, Victim of Changes, Beyond the Realms of Death, Starbreaker, Exciter and more? Not even remotely in my book.

So the tracks are pretty good in the main, but a couple of things really kill my pig with Painkiller. Firstly it's the production which still retains a significant amount of that eighties sound beloved of AOR acts like Journey and Starship, particularly when there are keyboards involved, such as on the commercial-sounding Touch of Evil. The drums, whilst in themselves are pretty good, are too often made to sound like Phil Collins on his In the Air Tonight hit single. The other bugbear I have is Rob Halford's bizarre decision to sing a couple of tracks, including the opening title track which is otherwise brilliant, in a permanent falsetto when they would sound at least half as good again if he had just sung them normally.

Despite all this negativity, I do still rate Painkiller. The guitar work of Tipton and Downing is excellent with some great riffs and even better solos and even I must admit that the guitars benefit enormously from the production job. When Halford dispenses with the King Diamond-like enforced falsetto and sings naturally his voice still sounds great as well, so there is plenty to appreciate. I'm sorry though, but I just don't buy into the hype with Painkiller. As I said earlier, I get that it was an oasis in a sea of crap that was the Judas Priest of the mid-eighties onwards, but that is judging it against a pretty low-set bar. Personally, I rate it no higher than fifth best Priest album - it is solid, but it's not great. So sue me!

3.5/5

Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of A Seventh Son (1988)

The second of these re-examinations is well overdue. I bought SSOASS when it came out and still have the original vinyl, but it must be more than thirty years since I last played it. Well, I have got to admit that I have probably been a bit unkind to Seventh Son over the years as, listening to it now, it sounds like a much better album than I remember and of the two releases under this week's microscope it has fared the better of the two for sure. It is quite epic-sounding, as I suppose you come to expect with heavy metal concept albums. However, when compared to Maiden's later albums and particularly last year's Senjutsu, it is nothing like as overblown as when Steve Harris tries writing similar epic tracks nowadays and, in fact, back in '88 he managed to pack a lot into relatively short tracks which somehow feel longer than they actually are. There's some memorable, sing-along stuff here, Can I Play With Madness and The Evil That Men Do to name but two. The band are still on top form, a song like Infinite Dreams just gets better and better as it progresses, building and building with top-notch lead work and Bruce in fine form. I can't in all honesty give a valid reason as to why I was so down on SSOASS at the time, as listening to it now I can't for the life of me find too much wrong with it. I think the second half isn't quite as impressive as the first, but it is still decent and there's no reason why I shouldn't at least rate this as highly as previous album Somewhere in Time, an album I've always enjoyed immensely.

4/5

So this week's winner in Sonny's Battle of the Indecisive Releases is Iron Maiden by a good couple of lengths.

Here you go Sonny...

• Tzompantli - Yaotiacahuanetzli off Tlazcaltiliztli (2022)
• Unholy - For the Unknown One off Rapture (1998)
• Solitude Aeturnus - Tomorrows Dead off Alone (2006)

Thanks!

Thanks Ben.

The only Furia album I was familiar with before this was 2016's post-black metal album Księżyc milczy luty which I enjoyed mightily, so I was interested to hear this ep from seven years prior. Unlike the 2016 album this is very much a black metal release. It primarily takes the melodic approach to the genre, but mixes in several other subdivisions like atmo-black and black 'n' roll with a hint of post-black metal to boot. I found it massively enjoyable (in fact if I could speak Polish I'd probably even have been singing along) and the three tracks are certainly quite memorable. The only drag with it is that, at only fifteen minutes, it's a bit frustrating because you're just starting to really get into it and it's over, so you have to go fumbling for the restart.

4/5

Ben, if you have any suggestions for August's playlist can you let me have them by Saturday please

Marduk - "Dark Endless" (1992)

I've never been the biggest fan of Swedish black metallers Marduk's 1992 debut album & this weekend's revisit hasn't seen that position changing much. "Dark Eternal" doesn't have much to do with black metal to be honest. The band were still experimenting with the classic down-tuned Swedish death metal sound at the time & there are only a couple of sections that see the black metal genre being represented. I think some fans use Andreas Axelsson's screamy (& not especially effective) vocal style alone to make the link to black metal shriek but it's not all that different from At The Gates' front man Tomas Lindberg's approach & there's a lot more to black metal than that. There's actually significantly more doom metal on "Dark Endless" than there is black metal & the doom parts are really the best parts of the album in my opinion. The more conventional death metal material isn't all that special to tell you the truth & 1993's defection to black metal for their sophomore album "Those of the Unlight" was most welcome for me personally.

For fans of early Darkthrone, At The Gates & Absu.

3/5

Despite being a fan of Marduk in general, I was never much for their debut either. I own it on CD but very rarely play it. I also agree that it is principally a death metal release with little to no black metal present.

If you are into indie darlings like The Killers or Muse but wish they were a bit heavier then your wish may have been granted by Thornhill's Heroine. It starts off pleasantly enough but by the end of track three my attention was beginning to wander and I was quickly losing interest. It's not that it is a bad album, I'm sure it's very good at what it does, but it just doesn't chime with me on any level I'm afraid. My favourite track and the only one I really cared for was actually the quite sweet-sounding, short instrumental Something Terrible Came With the Rain. Like I said, not a bad record, just not anything I'm remotely interested in.

2.5/5

Hey Morpheus, I have used mp3 players extensively over the years and have found Sandisk players to be of really good quality. I have two of them and the first one is more than fifteen years old and still works perfectly. I used to use them at work and they took a bit of hammer there and still survived. The micro-SD slots also work fine. My problem was always trying to find headphones that would last. I don't have a smartphone, so I do sometimes get some use out of them, although I tend to use my Amazon Fire tablet and download off Spotify when away from home. I do however use USB drives in the car as the car stereo has a USB port. I know, what a Luddite, eh?!

It was a lovely warm summer day today so nothing felt better to listen to than The North playlist while I do some much-needed work on my patio and back garden. I didn't follow the tracklisting whilst listening so didn't recognise everything, but the playlist ran through nice and smoothly and I didn't ever feel like skipping any of the tracks. Of course my ears pricked up and I found myself working that bit faster whenever we hit a bit of war metal! Overall extremely enjoyable and made a mundane task most bearable. Nice work again Ben.

I must admit to being dismayed to see another Type O Negative album as this month's Fallen feature release. However, this isn't as bad an album as I had feared and there were several tracks I quite enjoyed, despite my inbuilt antipathy to the band. This feels more doomy than any of their other releases (at least that I have heard) and to some extent they seem to have shied away from the more commercial-centric, almost poppy material I have heard elsewhere, so that will always play into my favour.

That said, it still suffers from my usual bugbears about TON, namely their refusal to commit to any real heaviness. There are several tracks here that had the potential to be doom classics, yet they just seem to refuse to commit to true doom metal heaviness, shying away from a really crushing sound, the production being too airy for a top-level doom album. Despite toning it down, they still sprinkle their tracks with catchy passages or choruses and Pete Steele's vocals don't convince me at all and as such they end up ultimately sounding uncommited as doom merchants. I am fully aware that this probably puts me in a minority of one as everyone else seems to love TON and although this is the most appealing of their albums to me, that is still relative and this sounds like far from classic material to my ears.

Oh, and just fuck off with the Beatles medley.

3/5

I can't vote on this one, but wholeheartedly agree.

Well that was... unexpected. I'm a big fan of Pestilence's first three albums, but I had never listened to this last album of their first iteration before this month's feature. I am aware that it is an album that has split the Pestilence fanbase and is less well-regarded than their previous releases. I can understand why that is and if I had been a Pestilence maniac at the time I would probably have agreed. Of course I am more open-minded these days and more understanding of bands wanting to try new directions rather than forever recycling the same old tropes. But even so, it genuinely took me by surprise and marks a major departure for the band as they tried to produce a unique record that may have taken death metal in a new direction.

Even the tracks that sound most like Pestilence's earlier works sound different, coming off more like metal-era Killing Joke than Morbid Angel with a hint of an industrial sound to them - and that is only the beginning of the departure! I believe the band cited a number of influences for Spheres, among them Bill Bruford and I would suggest Robert Fripp too as I can definitely hear a King Crimson influence on tracks like The Level of Perception and Soul Search. The album as a whole is more progressive and technical than you would ever expect from a band with Pestilence's previous output, being far more ambitious songwriting-wise than almost any other metal band of the time.

All this is even before we discuss the short pieces that mark the band's biggest departure from the norm. Aurian Eyes is a classical strings-led short piece of chamber music, Voices from Within sounds like a piece from Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack album and Phileas is a gentle guitar piece. In addition the four-minute track Personal Energy is a love song to seventies English prog and my personal favourite, the title track, is a sublime mix of death metal and space rock. I'm not sure that I have heard another album quite like Spheres and certainly not from the early nineties and you know what, the more I listen to it the more I get into it. Departure for Pestilence it may be, but a dip in quality? I think not.

4.5/5

Deicide - Deicide (1990)

Deicide are one death metal band I have been quite familiar with for quite some time, mainly due to a workmate who loaned me their first three albums when I returned to metal in the late nineties. Led by the inverted-cross branded, religion-despising, bassist/vocalist Glen Benton and featuring the Hoffman brothers on guitar I found Deicide to be an intimidating proposal and, in all honesty, back then I wasn't particularly keen as I found them far too abrasive. So, it's a measure of how far my taste has changed in the intervening twenty-odd years as, listening to this now, I found an awful lot to appreciate and actually really enjoyed it in a fuck-everything kind of way.

On this, their debut, it is evident that Deicide had no intention of fucking around. Ten tracks and a runtime just a bit over half an hour, this is a release that hits fast and hits hard. The memorable  riffs are exceedingly tight with a really cool guitar tone, the drumming of Steve Asheim is devastating and precise and Glen Benton's vocals spit bile and venom at his preferred target of organised religion with a genuinely disturbing spite and evil-sounding growl. Deicide is an album that is trimmed of all fat and is made of nothing but muscle, bone and gristle, getting straight down to business and never diverting from the path of intimidating and scaring the living shit out of anyone and everyone. The Hoffamn's solos are not really anything more than functional, but this album isn't about anything as superfluous as fancy guitar solos - it is pure distilled essence of death metal and as such may actually be toxic if taken internally.

But seriously, Deicide have had quite an inconsistent career and Glen Benton hasn't always been the most likeable individual, but on their debut they instantly got to the very core of death metal, illustrating an inate understanding of what it meant and creating an absolute textbook release that could be held up as an example for future generation of death metallers. If a band were getting too pretentious or arty-farty for their own good then they could do worse than sit themselves down with a copy of Deicide to reconnect with the beating heart of death metal and shear themselves of any unwanted pretentions. All-in-all an exciting and dangerous-sounding album that is the sort of release that reminds me why I got into metal in the first place, all those oh, so many years ago.

4.5/5

This was quite a tricky playlist to programme, mainly due to the inclusion of a couple of monumental tracks that amounted to fifty minutes of the scheduled two hours and resulted in there only being eleven in total. I though the best way to handle them was to keep them well apart from each other, hence their appearance at either end of the playlist. Other than that there has been some issues with a couple of tracks not being available in certain areas on Spotify, although they were all OK here in the UK. Anyway here's my takes on this month's tracks:

1. Caronte - "Black Mandala" from "Church of Shamanic Goetia" (2014) [submitted by Sonny]
I love these underrated Italian stoner doom exponents and this is a great track from my favourite album of theirs.

2. Moonspell - "Dreamless (Lucifer and Lilith)" from "Night Eternal" (2008)
My previous experience with Moonspell wasn't very good to be honest, but I quite liked this slice of gothic metal when I heard it and thought it would fit in nicely here.

3. Epitaphe - "Insignificant" from "II" (2022) [submitted by Ben]
The first of those two monster tracks is a huge slab of progressive-tinged death doom that is a quite sublime extreme metal journey with an ever-increasing build-up and a satisfying climax.

4. Chelsea Wolfe - "16 Psyche" from "Hiss Spun" (2017) [submitted by Sonny]
I decided to follow the epic and titanic previous track with something a bit airier and Chelsea Wolfe's take on gothic doom seemed to fit the bill admirably.

5. Reverend Bizarre - "Burn in Hell!" from "In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend " (2002) [submitted by Sonny]
RB are for me the epitome of traditional doom metal and the opener from their debut LP was a brilliantly relentless calling card from these Finnish doom lords.

6. Mournful Congregation - "Mountainous Shadows, Cast Through Time" from "The Exuviae of Gods - Part I" (2022)
Gorgeous slab of funeral doom from this year's two-track EP by ridiculously consistent Aussies Mournful Congregation.

7. Kyuss - "Green Machine" from "Blues for the Red Sun" (1992)
I'm not the biggest fan of uptempo stoners Kyuss, but I do like this one and felt this fitted in rather well at this point and provided a striking counterpoint to the previous track and led well into the Ramesses track.

8. Ramesses - "Witchampton" from "We Will Lead You to Glorious Times" (2005)
Thick as fuck stonerized sludge metal from ex-Electric Wizards Greening and Bagshaw that can only be listened to loudly. I really dig this kind of shit.

9. Primitive Man - "This Life" from "Insurmountable" (2022) [submitted by Ben]
I must admit that I only know Primitive Man through a split EP they put out with Hell, but that was pretty damn good and they are a good fit with MSW's nightmarish Hell project. This new track is also extremely dark-sounding and bodes well for the (almost forty-minute) ep which I shall have to check out forthwith.

10. Doomraiser - "In Winter" from "Reverse (Passaggio inverso)" (2015) [submitted by Sonny]
The second Italian doomsters on this month's list are another massively underrated outfit. I love this track and it wipes the floor with recent releases from better-appreciated bands like Pallbearer and Monolord.

11. Earth - "Like Gold and Faceted" from "Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version" (1993) [submitted by Daniel]
My favourite track from an album that absolutely blew me away when I first heard it not so long ago. Meditative and contemplative metal that worms it's way into your psyche and overwhelms your senses. Although it is a daunting slab of drone metal I love having it on this month's list, although I suspect not everyone would agree!

Entombed - Left Hand Path (1990)

So, armed with my new-found knowledge of the Swedish death metal sound (thanks Ben and Daniel for enlightening me), I turn to Sweden's Entombed and their debut Left Hand Path. Now that it's been pointed out, the difference between the mainly US death metal that went before and the more heavily distorted sound produced by these Swedes is pretty obvious, even to my untrained ear. At the risk of being lambasted for such heresy, for me this increased distortion and the wall-of-sound it creates (the buzzsaw sound) is a large distraction from the riffs, which feel like they are buried under a thick layer that takes away from their efficacy. A further result of this is that the lack of definition in the riffs means that the songs then seem to blur into one another and rob them of their individuality. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for heavy distortion (you can't be as big a doom fan as me without it) but I really don't feel it particularly adds anything to the death metal sound and this lack of definition in the riffs robs them of their power to my ears. That said, this does not make Left Hand Path a poor album, but I found I had to approach it from the point of view of the overall effect of it as a whole rather than focussing on individual tracks, the diversity of which isn't massive. When taken as such it is a fairly evil-sounding release and that guitar sound does have a kind of hypnotic effect if you stop trying to differentiate the riffs and let it just overwhelm you, a lot like listening to the droning of a large (angry) bee colony.

The rhythm section seems pretty solid, if not spectacular and the growls are suitably gruff and threatening. The lead guitar work though is possibly my favourite part of the album and the solos seem to have lost the chaotic, Slayeresque aspect of so many predecessors and, in fact, sound far more like the work James Murphy put in on Death's Spiritual Healing.

Overall, I understand why Entombed are beloved by death metal fans, their sound was certainly a new direction for death metal at the time, but I prefer the greater clarity of the US sound or, at the very least, the all-in atmospheric representation of decay and death as peddled by the likes of Autopsy and Sempiternal Deathreign.
3.5/5

Hi Vinny, my suggestions for August are:

Pestilence - " Systematic Instruction" from "Malleus Maleficarum" (1988)
Deathhammer - "Thrown to the Abyss" from "Electric Warfare" (2022)
Hallows Eve - "Plunging to Megadeath" from "Tales of Terror" (1985)
Death Angel - "Voracious Souls" from "The Ultra-Violence" (1987)
Witchery - "Witching Hour" from "Witching Hour" single (2022)
Toxic Holocaust - "Nuke the Cross" from "An Overdose of Death... " (2008)

Don’t feel pressured to do so but with Daniel having a month off I am open to you adding more than your usual allotted minutes Sonny.  Fine if you want to stick with this though.

OK Vinny. When do you want any additional suggestions in by?

Hi Vinny, my suggestions for August are:

Pestilence - " Systematic Instruction" from "Malleus Maleficarum" (1988)
Deathhammer - "Thrown to the Abyss" from "Electric Warfare" (2022)
Hallows Eve - "Plunging to Megadeath" from "Tales of Terror" (1985)
Death Angel - "Voracious Souls" from "The Ultra-Violence" (1987)
Witchery - "Witching Hour" from "Witching Hour" single (2022)
Toxic Holocaust - "Nuke the Cross" from "An Overdose of Death... " (2008)

Hi Ben, I've only really been listening to my own CD classics in the car for my black metal fix this last month, so my suggestions for August are:

Darkthrone - "Crossing the Triangle of Flames" (6:13) from "Under a Funeral Moon" (1993)

Burzum - "Det som en gang var (14:20) from "Hvis lyset tar oss" (1994)

Overall an enjoyable listen, although I personally struggled with the tech-thrash trio after Pantera (although following them with that Voivod track was genius as all was then forgiven!). The rest was pretty kick-ass and Sick Boogie Murder deserves special mention for being so fucking off-the-wall. Nice job, Vinny.

Immolation - Close To A  World Below (2000)

A couple of days ago I was having a look at the Academy charts and thought I would start listening to some of the albums I haven't heard yet, starting with the current #1 and ...holy fucking shit!! I may well have finally found my all-time favourite death metal album right here, hiding in plain sight at the top of the Metal Academy all-time chart. I can't think of another album that sounds so efforlessly evil as this motherfucker. As much as I have found some great albums during my early death metal discovery project and also discovered several through monthly features etc, such as Incantation's Mortal Throne of Nazarene, this inhabits a whole new level. I am unable to summon a half-decent review just yet as I don't think I can do it justice, but it seems to feature the best of the old-school alongside later ideas and smashes a wrecking ball through what I understood death metal to be.

5/5 - but is one of those exceedingly rare albums that gives me the feeling I need to revisit all my other death metal ratings and drop them all at least half a star as the bar has just been irreversibly raised! Added it into my Top 20 at #15 initially (my top death metal release if you don't count Opeth), causing Ahab's Call of the Wretched Sea to drop out.

Here's my review:

The Chilean thrash scene is one of the more vital and vibrant iterations of the genre in these early decades of the 21st century. Bands like Demoniac, Critical Defiance and Ripper are but the tip of the Chilean iceberg and Parkcrest are another extremely talented bunch of thrashers. It does seem like quite a tight scene however, with Parkcrest guitarist Diego Armijo and drummer Nicolás Villanueva also playing in Ripper and vocalist/guitarist Javier Salgado playing in Critical Defiance and Hellish amongst several others. Formed in 2011, Parkcrest didn't release their first album until 2016's Hallucinative Minds hit the metaphorical Bandcamp shelves. Whilst being an energetic and raw album, Hallucinative Minds is far from the finished product, but did show some promise. So did the follow up, ...And That Blue Will Turn to Red deliver on that promise? Well, I would have to say that, by and large, yes it has and it is a massive leap forward when compared to the debut.

The first difference is that the production this time round is much improved from the debut and sounds powerful, yet has an impressive clarity that allows all the band member's contributions to distinctly be heard. The rhythm section of bassist Cristoffer Pinto and Villanueva are the particular benefactors of this improvement in production values. Pinto's bass throbs along, providing a super-solid foundation from which the others can weave their magic. Villanueva's drumming is possibly the biggest revelation for me on this record, it is furious yet controlled and is much more than just straightforward pummelling. His work here is reminiscent of Dave Lombardo and praise for a thrash metal drummer doesn't get much higher than that does it?

Of course, what we all turn to thrash metal for is the riffs isn't it and here Parkcrest certainly deliver, firing them off like they're going out of style from a seemingly inexhaustible supply. There may not be quite as many as on, say, Time Does Not Heal, but they certainly come thick and fast. Guitarist Javier Salgado doubles up as vocalist and his harsh, barking vocal style is particularly reminiscent o f Kreator's Mille Petrozza and, in fact, I have seen several plausible comparisons to Kreator, Slayer and early Sepultura and while they do take inspiration from these more aggressive purveyors of thrash, their sound is distinctly their own with a degree of technicality coupled with the aforementioned aggressiveness, this being a hallmark of the "Chilean sound" it would seem.

The songwriting is fantastic with several really great tracks on here, the opening duo of Impossible to Hide and Darkest Fear are a killer opening salvo and the instrumental Dwelling of the Moonlights may be my favourite thrash track since the early nineties. This is an album with a surfeit of riffs coupled with searing, meteoric soloing and a tempo that is unrelenting. I don't say this often but this is a modern thrash offering that is more than capable of holding it's own against all but the very best the genre has ever produced and Parkcrest comfortably sit in the vanguard of the latest thrash metal revitalisation.

Nah... I'll just listen to those tracks elsewhere. The irony of Mournful Congregation being unavailable to the Aussie audience though.

Maybe they feel they should get a better deal from Spotify in their own country, or perhaps they released the ep on a different label that doesn't have a deal with Spotify in Australia. Out of interest, can you see any of their other stuff?

I can see those two tracks in your Spotify playlist now that I'm on my usual work laptop Sonny but they're still not accessioble in my region. I've added them to the playlist.

I guess the vagaries of licensing deals are likely to be an issue from time to time. Luckily we don't seem to come up against it too often. It's an unfortunate coincidence that two consecutive tracks are affected this time and a bit of a shame as it eviscerates the list a to some extent. Sadly, as yourself and Ben are probably the only others who listen to it, this Pacific region issue will affect most of it's audience! 

Do you want me to substitute either or both of them?

For some reason I can't seem to see the Mournful Congregation track on Spotify Sonny. I also had to go with the German version of the Reverend Bizarre one.

That must be an Australian rights issue with Mournful Congregation because I have listened to it several times on Spotify and I ran through the whole playlist earlier this week with no problems. I found no issue with Reverend Bizarre either. Do you want me to change anything?

Saor - Origins (2022)

I have been a huge fan of Andy Marshall's Saor project since virtually it's inception and I own physical copies of all his previous albums (in fact I own both CD and vinyl copies of previous album Forgotten Paths) and I have rated three of his four albums as 4.5/5 or better. First glimpse of new album Origins was the gorgeous cover art which is one of my favourite covers ever. So, initial thoughts after a couple of listen-throughs are that I have got to admit to being horribly disappointed. There seems to be hardly any black metal here at all, the beautiful and stirring atmospheric black metal soundscapes Saor have become synonymous with being replaced by fairly pedestrian celtic and folk metal. I have made no secret of my dislike of folk metal and I'm gutted that one of my favourite acts has resorted to such a banal trope. I will persevere with it just because I have such huge respect for Andy Marshall and I would love to own a vinyl copy for that amazing cover alone, but for the time being I remain unconvinced.

3/5

July 2022:

1. Caronte - "Black Mandala" from "Church of Shamanic Goetia" (2014) [submitted by Sonny]
2. Moonspell - "Dreamless (Lucifer and Lilith)" from "Night Eternal" (2008)
3. Epitaphe - "Insignificant" from "II" (2022) [submitted by Ben]
4. Chelsea Wolfe - "16 Psyche" from "Hiss Spun" (2017) [submitted by Sonny]
5. Reverend Bizarre - "Burn in Hell!" from "In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend " (2002) [submitted by Sonny]
6. Mournful Congregation - "Mountainous Shadows, Cast Through Time" from "The Exuviae of Gods - Part I" (2022)
7. Kyuss - "Green Machine" from "Blues for the Red Sun" (1992)
8. Ramesses - "Witchampton" from "We Will Lead You to Glorious Times" (2005)
9. Primitive Man - "This Life" from "Insurmountable" (2022) [submitted by Ben]
10. Doomraiser - "In Winter" from "Reverse (Passaggio inverso)" (2015) [submitted by Sonny]
11. Earth - "Like Gold and Faceted" from "Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version" (1993) [submitted by Daniel]

The content of the list is fairly irrelevant as any list compiled by a corporate entity means FA to me. If I'm going to read a list of greatest metal albums I would much rather read one compiled by someone who actually gives a shit about metal in the first place - at least it's gonna be honest. The point I was trying to make is that metal was originally derided and scorned, when not just ignored, by the established music commentators. Compare this to the advent of punk rock when everyone in the music press wet themselves over it from the get-go because it was controversial and would sell copies -  which is the only thing that ever matters to these cultural vampires. 

In fact, here in the UK, metal and hard rock (that wasn't The Stooges or the New York Dolls) got even more of a hard time and was mercilessly derided. That is unti the advent of the NWOBHM when suddenly everyone in the music press - surprise, surprise - were smelling money and were suddenly lifelong mealheads. This was all in pre-internet days obviously when the only alternative to these charlatans was our friends and peers who helped each other to form and pollinate their own metal taste and so form bonds within a scene that no amount of corporate bullshit could penetrate.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I view Metal Academy as very much akin to that clique of friends and peers who helped shape my metal world in the face of outside derision and hostility, as represented not only by the corporate media, but also clickbait-addicted hipsters on other sites (hello RYM) who's sole purpose seems to be to deride metal and metalheads. So let's all keep on doing what we're doing and fuck those assholes who just don't "get it" because we don't need their scorn and we don't need their approval.

Sorry - rant over.

Well this was really interesting and a pleasant surprise. After the first few bars I thought we were in for another dissonant release of the kind I struggle with, but although this does dabble with dissonant elements, it has more going on than just that. Here Flourishing infuse their death metal with elements from outside of metal circles, post-punk and noise rock for example, and so provide, at least in my experience, a unique and refreshing take on extreme metal. The Sum of All Fossils is an album of contrasting textures, but that work together exceedingly well, be it the cloying and suffocating layers of their dissonant death metal, or the more expansive post-punk-inspired sections and the abrasiveness of the noise rock / post-hardcore passages. The transitions between these various textural contrasts are also handled masterfully. There was quite a few times when I was reminded of Akercocke's Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone album, particularly with how some of the transitions were handled.

The vocals feel a little buried at times, which isn't so much of a problem for the death growls (which often sound to be more of a black metal shriek), but the post-hardcore cleans sound a bit like they are fighting against the tide. The band's use of dissonance isn't especially overbearing, luckily for me as I find an excess of dissonance to be off-putting, but is tempered by the more melodic passages derived from the non-metal genres. Technically, it all sounds very much to my non-musician's ear like these guys know their way around their instruments and the songwriting is adventurous and exhilarating.

For me, this was a genuine revelation and although it isn't a perfect release for my particular sensibilities, it is one that has impressed me mightily and is definitely one I can see me revisiting in the future. An excellent choice for a monthly feature might I add, as I am guessing it is somewhat of an underground release that offers something a little different and is thoroughly deserving of greater exposure.

4/5

A few colleagues who came to Florida have since gone down with COVID upon return (I am not among the infected thankfully).  Florida was stupid hot (95 degrees Fahrenheit at one point) but was still a blast even though I had to work. Mad busy since getting back just over a week ago as been working in Scotland this past week so had little time to shake the jet-lag before getting out on the road.  Only this coming week to go then a long weekend in cabin near Snowdonia in Wales that has a hot tub so I will plonk myself in that for four days and enjoy some long overdue downtime.

Welcome back Vinny. Nice to hear from you. Enjoy your break.

What can I say about Quietus other than it is a sublime combination of funeral and death doom that comfortably sits very high on my list of all-time great albums. Evoken cannot be accused of being a band who rush things. Forming in 1994, debut album Embrace the Emptiness wasn't released until four years later with sophomore Quietus emerging another three years after that. In fact their twenty-eight years have so far only seen six albums released, so I think we can safely say that the New Jersey five-piece are a band who like to take the time to properly work up their newest material before unleashing it upon their fans. This meticulousness reveals itself in the extremely consistent quality of Evoken's published material and never more so than here with this hour of extreme doom metal nirvana.

5/5

Death - Spiritual Healing (1990)

Spiritual Healing is one of the two Death albums I was still yet to listen to prior to this (the other being The Sound of Perseverance). There is a certain degree of progression throughout all of the Death discography and here Chuck Schuldiner decides (for Death were a band in name only and were essentially Chuck and a band of hired guns, all band decisions taken by he alone) on a stylistic departure from the first two albums. Gone are the cartoonish, horror-themed lyrics and cover art of SBG and Leprosy and in comes actual horrors from the real world - drug addiction, mental health issues, even abortion and the death penalty all come in for scrutiny from Chuck's lyrical examination. This lyrical evolution being just one of several obvious indicators of his increasing maturity as a songwriter and his refusal to keep retreading the same ground.

Death had pretty much established and refined the definition of death metal with their first two classics, but it is clear that Chuck wanted more. He had ditched guitarist Rick Rozz because he wasn't willing or able to go along with that ride and brought in the technically more impressive Hallows Eve guitarist James Murphy. The songs on Spiritual Healing have a greater level of complexity than on the first two albums, not exactly progressive, but certainly not mere simplistic head-banging material, most consisting of multiple riffs, tempo changes and guitar solos.

The overall sound is much clearer than previously and the guitar tone is great with a chunkiness that allows the stellar riffs to hammer home but is also precise and clean allowing James Murphy's shredding solos to absolutely slay. His soloing is arguably the most enervating and melodic in all of death metal up to this point, sounding more influenced by classic heavy metal guitarists than the Slayer duo of Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King that most death metal guitarists of the time referenced. Chuck's vocals are great and sound better than ever here, his earnest gruffness exemplifying the best of death metal singing at the time. Terry Butler turns in a solid performance on bass and Bill Andrews comes in for his usual technical kicking by those who know better than I, but Spiritual Healing is all about those riffs and solos, the functional rhythm section merely providing a base.

I have pointed out recently that there were a few albums released around this time that were really solid workouts but which didn't live long in my memory after they had finished (Massacra and Carnage to name a couple) but that is an accusation that certainly can't be levelled at Death, the opener Living Monstrosity, the title track and my personal favourite, the convoluted Low Life with it's insane solos, all had enough personality to keep them running through my mind long into the night! All in all I loved this album and it is yet another key to the lock that was my previous misunderstanding of how amazing Death were as a legendary metal outfit and the influence that Chuch Schuldiner had on the world of death metal. In fact I find it almost impossible to reconcile where I now stand with my previously held beliefs about Death.

4.5/5

I forgot to post this on the thread when I reviewed it recently, so here it is now:

Carnage - Dark Recollections (1990)

OK, surprise, surprise Carnage are another death metal band whose existence I was completely oblivious to. It appears these Swedes had quite a short run, the band being formed by several members of Dismember who were joined by Michael Amott, future Arch Enemy mainman, originally playing grindcore. By the time of the release of their sole full-length, Dark Recollections, in March of 1990, they had lost their grindcore beginnings and produced an album of pretty lethal, out-and-out death metal. Now I have insufficient knowledge of the minutiae of death metal as to the differences between, say, the Floridian scene and the burgeoning Swedish scene (if someone could enlighten me then please do), but I can only assume this played a significant part in the latter (along with Entombed's imminent Left Hand Path debut album).

I love the guitar tone here, it's down and dirty enough but still has plenty of bite and the bass fortifies the sound as it seems to be prominently placed in the mix. Fred Estby's drum work, whilst being quite straightforward, is exceedingly effective and vocalist Matti Kärki has a great line in earnest bellowing. I have seen a number of complaints that this is merely generic death metal. Well, I disagree. There are some really nice riffs here and the lead work is rough but energetic, but more importantly, how can a death metal album that is one of the early examples, particularly of the Swedish scene, be generic? Surely the later albums these commentators are basing this judgement on are the generic ones.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that I am much better disposed to early death metal than the later, more technical or dissonant stuff that garners so much praise and this is a great example of youthful exuberance (the musicians were all in their teens still) made manifest. Sure it doesn't have the really memorable tracks of an Altars of Madness or any of the other releases from the big noises in the death metal scene of the time, but it does brutalise and batter with a relentless onslaught of dark and violent metal. And there is nothing at all wrong with that.
4/5

It's Entombed's "Clandestine" for me personally. Sonny 

I have actually owned Clandestine on CD for years. Weirdly though, it just seemed to appear in my collection and I had absolutely no idea where it came from! I had no recollection of ever buying it and I'm pretty sure I didn't borrow it from anyone either. In fact, until I found it on the shelf I hadn't even heard of Entombed before. Like I say, weird!