Sonny's Forum Replies

I am already well acquainted with both Death the Leveller and Colosseum, so I will take the Alastis album, Ben. Over to you.

Leviathan is a solo project of Wrest (Jef Whitehead) who also releases albums as Lurker of Chalice. He is one of those artists I have heard of, but listened to, very little. In fact, Scar Sighted is the only album of his that I have heard previously, back when it was released in 2015 and in all honesty it didn't do a whole lot for me back then, so it's probably time for a re-evaluation. This is actually quite dense stuff as, after a short intro, we dive straight into The Smoke of Their Torment which feels like Deathspell Omega playing tech death. There is a significant death metal element present on quite a bit of the Scar Sighted, which gives it a thicker and beefier sound than you might normally get on a typical black metal album. Third track, Dawn Vibration, again features a beefed-up, but quite dissonant vision and you start, at this point, to feel that Wrest is probably working through some internal issues. Lucky is he to have the ability to utilise art to express his inner torments, because if these disturbing soundscapes had no outlet then heaven's knows where their creator would be, mentally speaking. A lot of the lyrics are as dense as the music, but a line from Gardens of Coprolite seems quite telling, "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up and like the wind our sins sweep us away" - not exactly the thoughts of one who is comfortable with their lot or who has a positive view of society as a whole!

I think I generally got more out of Scar Sighted this time round than previously, perhaps with more of an insight into it's creator, or maybe because I have become more open to dissonance than previously, although I can still only really take it in small doses. It probably says quite a bit that my favourite track is Within Thrall which is more of a straight-up black metal blast with a vicious main riff, closely followed by the title track which has more than a passing resemblance to funeral doom. Don't get me wrong, I did quite enjoy the more dissonant stuff, but it isn't a style of metal that moves me especially and I really didn't like the last track, Aphōnos, which was a step too far for me as I just found it tedious, so Scar Sighted would probably struggle to attain my higher ratings, although I can definitely hear why others more inclined to the style may find much to enjoy here.

3.5/5

January 2023

1. Monolithe - "Sputnik-1" from " Kosmodrom" (2022) [submitted by Sonny]

2. Candlemass - "When Death Sighs" from "Sweet Evil Sun" (2022)

3. My Dying Bride - "Symphonaire Infernus et Spera Empyrium" from "Trinity" (1995) [submitted by Daniel]

4. Saint Vitus - "Clear Windowpane" from "Born Too Late" (1986) [submitted by Sonny]

5. Spiritual Beggars - "Angel of Betrayal" from "Ad Astra" (2000)

6. Conjurer - "Basilisk" from "Páthos" (2022)

7. Mortiferum - "Incubus of Bloodstained Visions" from "Preserved in Torment" (2021) [submitted by Ben]

8. Sentenced - "Cross My Heart and Hope to Die" from "The Cold White Light" (2002)

9. Orodruin - "Ruins of Eternity" from "Ruins of Eternity" (2019)

10. Rapture - "This Is Where I Am" from "Futile" (1999) [submitted by Ben]

11. Pantheist - "Lust" from "Amartia" (2005)

12. Horn of the Rhino - "Reins of the Warlord" from "Dead Throne Monarch" (2008) [submitted by Sonny]

13. Doomshine - " Sanctuary Demon (Chapter of Prognosis)" from "The Piper at the Gates of Doom" (2010)

14. Cavurn - "II" from "Reheasal" E.P. (2017) [submitted by Daniel]

15. Greenmachine - "Golgotha" from "Mountains of Madness" (2019)

16. The Ocean - "Benthic: The Origin Of Our Wishes" from "Pelagial" (2013) [submitted by Daniel]

17. The Otolith - "Hubris" from "Folium Limina" (2022) [submitted by Sonny]

18. Procession - "To Reap Heavens Apart" from "To Reap Heavens Apart" (2013) [submitted by Ben]

Hi Xephyr, may I make a suggestion for February which is:

Acid - "Prince of Hell and Fire" from "Maniac" (1983)

Yeah, I have no problem with this, Daniel.

OK, so what, at one point as we passed from summer to autumn, felt like a very lacklustre year for doom metal, has picked up quite considerably and ultimately has produced some sterling releases, albeit the year as a whole is lacking depth of quality. My current top ten now looks like this and I would have no problem recommending any of them to a fan of Fallen-related metal:

1. Dvvell - Quiescent (10/10)

2. Messa - Close (9.8/10)

3. Monolithe - Kosmodrom (9.1/10)

4. Epitaphe - II (9.0/10)

5. The Otolith - Folium Limina (9.0/10)

6. Mournful Congregation - The Exuviae of Gods: Part I (9.0/10)

7. Shape of Despair - Return to the Void (8.8/10)

8. The Funeral Orchestra - Funeral Death - Apocalyptic Plague Ritual II (8.7/10)

9. Conan - Evidence of Immortality (8.5/10)

10. BlackLab - In a Bizarre Dream (8.2/10)

There are still a couple of releases I need to work up reviews for, such as Darkthrone's Astral Fortress and Spiritus Mortis' latest, but this is where we are at the moment.

The Otolith - Folium Limina

Released 21/10/22 on Blues Funeral

Initial thoughts after three or four playthroughs, although I suspect this is an album that will reveal itself more fully as I become more familiar with it:

SubRosa were one of my favourite 21st century bands, their three albums released in the 2010s being among the very best doom metal from that decade, More Constant Than the Gods in particular lodging itself very near the summit of my 2010s metal list. So it was with great disappointment that I learned of their disbanding in 2019 and the apparent loss of a singular-sounding metal band. However, three years later, in this winter of 2022, the bulk of Subrosa's members return with a new album under the name The Otolith, to much rejoicing from yours truly. Thankfully Folium Limina retains all the ingredients that made SubRosa such a compelling listen, be it Levi Hanna's thick, crunchy doom metal riffs, Sarah Pendleton's seductive vocals or the atmospheric and unsettling violin work of Sarah and Kim Pack overlaying proceedings. As with the classic albums, the tracks all clock in at around the ten-minute mark, so give themselves plenty of time to develop without becoming self-indulgent and overstaying their welcome.

Where Otolith differ from Subrosa is that they lean more heavily on post-metal / atmospheric sludge metal songwriting and it's reliance on building atmosphere, rather than a straight-up doom metal approach. They also feature harsh male death doom vocals as provided by bassist/vocalist Matt Brotherton who is also bassist and vocalist for atmospheric sludge crew Huldra, and I am guessing his presence in the band may be the influence for a more post-metal style of songwriting. It also feels like the classical strings take a more prominent role during Folium Limina's run time, often being pushed right up front rather than acting as a provider of atmospheric layering as was it's main purpose in SubRosa. These differences are not at all jarring however, and The Otolith are very much a continuance of the sterling work begun by SubRosa and I would be very surprised if any fans of the latter didn't enjoy Folium Limina as it still contains those idiosyncrasies that made SR such a compelling and singular doom metal act. Personally, I don't think it is quite up there with the very best of SubRosa, especially More Constant Than the Gods (not much is though), but it is certainly a strong follow-up to SR's final album, For This We Fought the Battle of Ages and is a very welcome continuation of the SubRosa legacy.

4.5/5

Candlemass - Sweet Evil Sun

Released 18/11/22 on Napalm Records

Thirty-six years on from the release of their genre-defining debut, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, Candlemass have come full circle with the return of Epicus vocalist, Johan Längquist. The band have featured some great doom metal singers over the years, particularly Messiah Marcolin and Rob Lowe, but it was with Längquist that they first made their name. Epicus Doomicus Metallicus was a seminal doom metal release and one of the genre's most important albums, to the extent that a whole subgenre was named after it and Längquist's contribution was integral to it's success. This all, of course, does not mean that Sweet Evil Sun is anything like as good as the debut, it demonstrably isn't. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since those days and Candlemass' style has actually changed very little, so a degree of stagnation is to be expected. That said though, neither is this the sound of a band going through the motions in search of one more payday, so consequently it sounds heartfelt, albeit quite generic. I would have no problem putting this on a par with Rob Lowe releases like King of the Grey Islands or Death Magic Doom and it is much better than the band's 1990's output.

This being Candlemass, even though it is mid-tier material for them, it is still better than a significant proportion of new doom metal releases - it is chock-full of terrific doom metal riffs (check out the crawling riff to Angel Battle as it transitions into a faster, Sabbathian killer and back) and catchy, singalong choruses (the title track and Scandinavian Gods in particular). Längquist's voice still possesses great power despite the passing of the decades and Leif Edling's former co-conspirator in Avatarium, Jennie-Ann Smith, shares vocal duties on the track When Death Sighs which, if memory serves, is the first time Candlemass have featured female vocals and makes for a really nice dynamic within the track, adding an additional dimension to Candlemass' traditional sound. When Death Sighs also features my favourite guitar solo on the album as Lars Johansson channels Tony Iommi circa his masterful Dirty Women solo.

My biggest criticism would have to be reserved for the production. There just doesn't seem enough bottom end and the album sounds overly trebly, which is never a good thing for a doom metal release in my book, and here I think it robs the tracks of some of their power and heft. Of particular irritation was the drum sound on Scandinavian Gods which threatened to derail an otherwise very enjoyable track. Overall though, I would have to admit to being somewhat surprised by the quality of a release from a veteran outfit which, in all truth, I held out very little hope for.

4/5

 

I've noticed that Monolithe have been linking your review on their social media platforms Sonny. You're a fucking global super star mate! Next you'll be dating Taylor Swift & partying with Paris Hilton.

As long as I'm back home in time to take the dog out for a walk before bed!!😂

Hooray, after a mere eleven days of sub-zero temperatures and no hot water, we have finally got a new boiler fitted. You sometimes take for granted the simple things like having a shower, but after washing in a bucket with kettle-boiled water for a week and a half, it feels like one of life's great luxuries!

It sounds like you are slowly succumbing to the melancholy charms of The Fallen, Vinny.

A track from the new Ahab album, The Coral Tombs, due out 13th January

Single from The Otolith's debut, Folium Limina. Otolith features several members from now-defunct doomsters SubRosa.

There isn't, in truth, a lot to choose from here is there, but here's my top 10:

1. Black Sabbath - "Paranoid" (1970)

2. Black Sabbath - "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" (1973)

3. Motörhead - "Motörhead" (1977)

4. Judas Priest - "Sad Wings of Destiny" (1976)

5. Rainbow - "Rising" (1976)

6. Black Sabbath - "Master of Reality" (1971)

7. Black Sabbath - "Sabotage" (1975)

8. Judas Priest - "Sin After" (1977)

9. Black Sabbath - "Vol. 4" (1972)

10. Black Sabbath - "Technical Ecstasy" (1976)

There's no doubting Black Sabbath's domination of 1970's heavy metal that's for sure.

That's interesting, because I don't always like to dissect an album over an intense period of repeated listens myself. I like to spin something a couple of times and maybe jot down a few initial thoughts then move on to something else for a while (or several something elses). If it has gained enough traction in my brain, then I will return to it and be a bit more active in my listening, hopefully then being able to form some more solid opinion on it. Of course, if it is something I have been anticipating or if it really grabs me immediately I might just hammer it to death over a couple of days and go from there - as was the case with the Monolithe LP.

I can't balieve that I had never noticed that Cardinals Folly weren't already on the site!

As much as I love Monolithe, I certainly don' t take it personally if someone else doesn't have the same view, so I wouldn't beat yourself up over it, Xephyr. It would be a sad and stale world if we all loved the same things and, hey, at least you gave it a chance!

Have you anything for January, Ben?

Messiah - Choir of Horrors (1991)

During my dive into the early years of death metal during my Voyage of (Re-)Discovery project, I happened upon Messiah's debut, the 1986 album, Hymn to Abramelin. Well, that didn't go too well and it held little lasting appeal for me as I found it to be a bit of a mess, Messiah seeming like a band with more ideas than they could bring together successfully. So five years later and four years after their sophomore Extreme Cold Weather (which I haven't heard) they were back with Choir of Horrors. Now this is much more up my street as they seemed to have decided what they wanted to do and concentrated on doing that well rather than throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks. What they do very well is a thrashy kind of death metal that reminds me a lot of Poland's Vader whose debut appeared a year after Choir of Horrors. The band playing on Choir of Horrors are unrecognisable from the one that produced Hymn of Abremalin, having seriously tightened up all round, both playing and songwriting-wise, and this is actually a really punchy slab of thrash/death that should appeal to any nineties extreme metal-loving, right-thinking person. OK, you've heard plenty like it since, but in context I think it is a great example of early nineties death metal. Really good songs, great vocals, a solid rhythm section and neck-wrenching riffs that appeal more to the physical side of extreme metal than the cerebral, which is what i signed up for in the first place!

Don't you find it amazingly satisfying when a band you have written off as terrible or not your kind of thing then ram it back down your throat and prove you wrong? Messiah have certainly done that here and I will most definitely will be seeking a copy of this to listen to whilst I bite into my huge slice of humble pie! Another winner for the review draft.

4/5

COVID finally caught up with me after 3 years of avoiding it.  Both my wife and I tested positive towards the back end of last week.  We have isolated since then even though only "guidance" to do so as opposed to any mandatory requirement in the UK.  Keeping an eye on my wife who has breathing problems anyway but to date she seems to be okay.  I am glad of the downtime in some respects but really conscious that work was starting to pick up this past couple of weeks and eager to get in amongst my emails as I know there's money to be made, however will look after our health first and be sensible.

That sucks. Get well soon both of you.

As Vinny knows I'm sure, it has been the coldest week for years here in the UK and annoyingly, my wife and I have had no heating or hot water since last Friday due to a broken down boiler and a useless boiler insurance company (yes, SSE, I'm looking at you)! Hoping it will be finally fixed tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath to be honest.

Hi Ben, can you please add the new Monolithe album, Kosmodrom. I think you may want to check it out too as it is excellent!

Monolithe - Kosmodrom (2022)

Released 25.11.22 on Bandcamp

Monolithe are not you typical death doom crew, it must be said. The Frenchmen have developed an increasingly progressive aspect to their death doom as their career has developed. They place great significance on song length - their first four albums were fifty-minute plus single track epics, 2015's Epsilon Aurigae and 2016's Zeta Reticuli both contained three tracks, each of exactly fifteen minutes duration, Nebula septem had seven, 7 minute exactly tracks and Okta Khora contained eight tracks of either 4:04, 8:08, 4:08 or 8:04 minutes duration. Kosmodrom continues this idiosyncratic tendency with, of it's five tracks, 1 and 4 are precisely ten minutes, 2 and 3 are 10:30 and the closer, Kosmonavt is exactly 26 minutes. Despite this significance that the band place on precision in track duration, I have never found it to be contrived or constrictive and their music never suffers as a consequence of forcing it into a strictly defined temporal space.

I think it is fair to claim that death doom is a pretty "earthy" style of metal. It often suggests abyssal subterranean chasms or huge, hulking mountain vistas. I know there are the lighter-feeling gothic exponents of death doom, but these still focus on quite primal emotions such as fear and loss. Monolithe however, look outwards and upwards for their inspiration and are one of the few producers of what I would call cosmic death doom. Previous album Okta Khora, for example, was a science fiction concept album about some highly advanced civilisation's unshakeable belief that they must force the universe back into it's original form by destroying everything in it. Not your usual death doom subject matter then? Kosmodrom takes as it's theme the early Soviet pioneers of space flight and the huge risks they faced and sacrifices they made to allow the human race to dream of attaining the stars - again, not exactly your typical death doom aesthetic.

This time around, though, Monolithe have leant more heavily on their earlier death doom style than was employed on their previous couple of releases, integrating the progressive elements within a death doom framework, rather than vice-versa. This may initially come off as something of a backward step, but the progressive elements are worked into the fabric of the tracks so intrinsically that the transition from full-on death doom to lighter, more progressive sections sometimes happens imperceptably, so there is, in reality, more going on within each track than may at first appear - Voskhod suddenly erupts in a clean, melodic riff with a throbbing, electronic feel, the twenty-six minute Kosmonavt takes includes a Cult of Luna-like building, post-metal section and during Kudryavka you suddenly realise you are listening to a Dave Gilmour-like Floydian section after it's hulking death doom beginnings and don't even remember how you got there!

If you are familiar with Monolithe's work to date then the opener, Sputnik-1, may seem to be a bit unexpected, it's heavenly female vocals (provided by Houston alt. pop artist London Lawhon) combined with Rémi Brochard's usual gruff growls, the huge, heaving, yet melodic, main riff and the overlaid keyboards may bring to mind My Dying Bride or the like and their gothic take on death doom and in truth I think it stands up to anything the Yorkshiremen have produced. However, rather than some corny gothic romance for subject matter, it's recalling of the aspirations of the people behind mankind's very first step into space exploration provides a theme I personally am more at home with.

As a whole package, Kosmodrom seems very complete and is so skillfully written and crafted that it throws a lot of recent death doom releases into the shade. Monolithe show that it is no longer enough to just keep knocking out slowed down death metal riffs and throw some deep growls on top to appease the death doom cognoscenti - there is so much more that the style is capable of and the Frenchmen, like those cosmic pioneers are forging onwards and upwards in order to expand the minds of the human race. Please don't misunderstand, Kosmodrom does not want for heaviness either. When it needs to be it is as heavy as you could possibly ever want, it just doesn't live or die solely on it's ability to shake the foundations. I would go as far as touting Monolithe as the death doom version of prime-era Opeth and that is heady praise indeed, so if you are in the market for intelligent, progressive extreme doom metal, then you really should give this a try.

4.5/5

Great conversation and some really good points made.

I think it must also be held in mind that music innovation isn't a hermetically sealed concept. It comes from an evolution and building upon of previously released material. It must be borne in mind that the most amazingly innovative or interesting metal would never exist without Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Death et al, as it is incremental adaptations of the basics that have given us whatever mind-blowing modern metal release is floating our boat today. My deep-dive into early death metal and it's mutation from extreme thrash taught me quite a bit about how a particular new genre could evolve from older styles. No Black Sabbath self-titled album, no Messa, Close, so to say that artists should just stop producing new works is obviously ridiculous.

Just because Nergal, me or whoever could be quite content with already existing music, doesn't mean future (or existing) metal fans should. Could we not have stopped music at the first Iron Maiden album, because it had come on such a long way from Rock Around the Clock and so why would we want anything more? The argument is clearly nonsense if one completely removes the commercial aspect. It seems to me that anyone getting into music nowadays, particularly metal, to make a living or become a star will almost certainly be disappointed, but does that mean they shouldn't. Just because a footballer is unlikely to play in the EPL, should he just give up and not turn up to play for his pub team every Sunday morning, or should he still don his boots because he loves the game and should the twenty people who turn up to watch stay at home because Lionel Messi isn't playing? Of course not, so why should musicians act differently. All they need to do is manage their expectations.

I too am a bit OCD as far as new releases go, or rather more specifically, Fallen-related releases, but I am willing to endure all the run-of-the-mill or worse releases I listen to if I keep turning up albums like this years Dvvell, Messa, Epitaphe or Shape of Despair - albums that will be added to my cache of all-time favourites. If an album is good enough I will buy it and spin it occasionally, if not I will let it go and probably not return to it again. It is in highlighting the exceptional and warning of the inexecrable that the reviews and posts on sites like this are invaluable, so if your new music listening time is limited, it might pay to do a little research first.

Just one question, Saxy - what does peak boomer energy mean? Is this some sort of meme from the inter-generational war that seems to be constantly waged on the RYM boards?

There are still a couple of big Fallen releases to go through before year end - namely the new Candlemass album, Sweet Evil Sun, and one I am really looking forward to, the new Monolithe, Kosmodrom.

Kryptograf - Kryptograf (2020)

Kryptograf are a Norwegian four-piece who were formed in 2019, releasing two full- lengths to date: this year's The Eldorado Spell (which I will have to check out at some point) and the subject of this review, their self-titled debut, released back in 2020 at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. The first observation that I must make, with Metal Academy being specifically a metal website, is that this is not really a metal album. I am not interested in the minutiae of genre dissection and have no real interest in discussions of the merits of genre tags on any given release, but this is such an egregious mislabelling that I feel I must highlight the fact. How it even gets close to a doom metal primary (17:1 before I voted) on RYM is completely beyond me. Apart from one track, Omen, which is trad doom and a dalliance with a Sabbathian riff during opener, The Veil, this is heavy psych and hard rock all the way, with the odd sortie into psychedelic rock. This does not in any way mean I don't like this album, in fact the contrary is true, but I feel the point needed to be made in a review on a metal website as I'm unsure if Kryptograf contains sufficient metal for a primary tag.

Laying to rest the belief that only ice-cold black metal can come from the home of Burzum's Varg Vikernes, the Norwegian town of Bergen, Kryptograf's psych sound is warm and fuzzy and feels more like a mushroom trip laying out on the grass on a warm July afternoon than a hike through the frost-bitten December forests of Norway's fjord's. There is a degree of diversity within the album's eight tracks with some up-tempo hard rock like the opener The Veil which kicks of the album in energetic style. Next track, Omen, is a creditable slab of traditional doom metal and, especially with a searing guitar solo, may be of most interest to Academy afficianados. This is followed by my favourite track, Seven, which is a brooding, spacey psych-trip with distant-sounding vocals and a serious psychedelic jam session as the guitarists take over proceedings and launch us on a trip of cosmic proportions. Crimson Horizon is a pretty catchy slab of stonerized hard rock that may well get your foot tapping as well as your head nodding and may be a hint that these guys may possibly be able to break out into a wider audience awareness. This is continued on Sleeper, which again has an earworm chorus that could well get stuck in your brain for the remainder of the day. Ocean is a gentle, chilled out acoustic piece that acts as an interlude before New Colossus which is another great slice of modern heavy psych that has it's roots firmly back in the early 70's. The closing track, the short Infinite, is nothing more than a throwaway outro, but rounds out the album well enough, I suppose.

All-in-all I would claim Kryptograf a roaring success, these guys very effectively invoke the heyday of heavy psych, the first couple of years of the seventies, most probably through a hefty diet of Scandinavian retro-rock revivalist bands like Witchcraft and as you all know by now I'm a big sucker for seventies' psych, so it's a big thumbs-up from me. I would be interested to know how "metal" other Academy members think this is though.

4/5

I think there are two totally different perspectives here. One is from the creator and performer of music and one is from the listener/consumer of same. As merely a listener, I will never know what it's like to produce music of my own (although I would dearly love to be able to) but I can imagine it being a marvellous feeling, no matter what anyone else thinks of it. I used to be a bit of a one for drawing, but never showed anyone else what I produced, I only did it to please myself,  so I can kind of appreciate the satisfaction of being able to produce a piece of art, be it music, visual art or writing with no expectation of acclaim or reward. As such, I would never subscribe to the view that even if you have the ability you shouldn't start a band or bother producing music at all, in fact I would go further and say if you have the skill then you absolutely should, as I am sure it would have a positive mental health impact.

From the  point of view of a consumer of music though, with the plethora of music available, particulary now when anyone can self-release their musical endeavours, it can sometimes feel like wading through a quagmire of uninspiring and tediously repetitive mediocrity to get to the nuggets that provide real listening satisfaction and inspire us and enhance our lives. So, these two aspects of musical production and consumption have two very different requirements, I would suggest, but whereas the producer of art doesn't necessarily need an audience, the audience most definitely needs a producer of art!

So, in conclusion, I would say: if you want to and have the ability to, then do it. Just don't expect me to listen to it if it's shit!!

I listened to Messiah's debut Hymn to Abramelin  for my deep dive into early death metal and didn't much care for it. Choir of Horrors seems very highly rated though, so I will give them another chance and take that.

I was quite taken with Krohm's 2007 album, The Haunting Presence, so I will take their debut.

Hmm.. Well I bought the Green Dragon release off Bandcamp back when it came out so am already familiar with it. I think I'll skip the gothic release and take Kryptograf as with doom metal and heavy psych as primaries on RYM it sounds up my street.

It's hard to argue against his point. The accessibility of listening to new stuff through streaming sources or any other facet you choose coupled with the sheer amount of tools to help bands self-release their stuff makes the landscape a bloated mess. Being around someone at work who listens to more of a variety of genres compared to me has really given me a better perspective of how much music is truly out there, since I've felt its hard to "keep up" even within the Metal sphere, let alone the rest of everything. When it comes to pursuing music as a career, I think he's right to use the aggressive language he's using because the harsh reality is that people literally can't shell out enough money for all the bands they may like. You find 20 or 30 albums you really enjoy throughout the year? 15 bucks for a CD, 30 bucks for a vinyl, that comes out to 300-600 bucks a year for one person spread across all these bands...it's a hard sell. I'm glad that I've found the right balance of how I listen to new releases that I'm still excited to go check out what just released or what I may have missed. 

How much "new" do we need is a tougher stance, and I can't say I agree because it feels contradictory or nihilistic to say that we don't need new music. While I completely understand not resonating with newer material, drawing a line in the sand and saying that new stuff after 2022 or any 'X' year specifically feels disingenuous. According to RYM's database, 1,102 Death Metal records alone were released in 1992 compared to 1,656 records released in 2022. Sure, the number went up, but 1,102 is still an astronomical number for one singular subgenre and is still a number that is unobtainable for the average listener, and that was 30 years ago! I don't think the logic holds up because telling everyone "Stop! We have enough Death Metal records!" in 1992 means we wouldn't have gotten genre defining releases like Symbolic, None So Vile, Obscura, Close To A World Below, and the list goes on. So why should wide-eyed kids stop making what they think is killer music in 2022 if a few select wide-eyed kids in 1992 were able to absolutely kill it? The cycle is gonna go on and that's what makes it exciting. 

I guess the answer is to be selective in what you listen to. Let's face it, 75% or so (minimum) of music is average at best. The remaining 25% is still a hell of a lot of music, but reviews and ratings from people you trust are a good way of refining your listening targets. 2022 is not alone in producing shit music, it's been happening since Bill Haley first rocked around the clock and isn't likely to end any time soon, so the trick is to dodge the turds and find the golden nuggets - and that's where Metal Academy comes in!!!

Sorry guys, I have failed in my Pit assignment this month. I have listened to the Blessed Death album several times but, in all honesty, I have hit a bit of a brick wall as far as writing reviews is concerned. I guess it's a bit like when an author gets writers block. I can't think of anything worthwhile to write - it all just sounds like shit (my writing, not the album). It's probably just a crisis of confidence and hopefully it will pass.

Sorry Ben, I haven't found time to review the Draft release for November. If I get time I will try to get it done early in December.

December 2022

1. The Obsessed - "Brother Blue Steel" from "Lunar Womb" (1991)
2. Darkthrone - "The Sea Beneath the Seas of the Sea" from "Astral Fortress" (2022) [submitted by Sonny]
3. MWWB - "Valmasque" from "Y proffwyd dwyll" (2016) [submitted by Ben]
4. Conan - "Levitation Hoax" from "Evidence of Immortality" (2022) [submitted by Sonny]
5. Spiritus Mortis - "Death's Charioteer" from "The Great Seal" (2022)
6. The Body - "Even the Saints Knew Their Hour of Failure and Loss" from "All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood"
7. Tiamat - "Carry Your Cross and I'll Carry Mine" from "Prey" (2003)
8. Daylight Dies - "Dismantling Devotion" from "Dismantling Devotion" (2006) [submitted by Ben]
9. Toadliquor - "(Opening Sections Of) Inter-Stellar Space" from "Feel My Hate - The Power Is the Weight - R.I.P. Cain" (1993) [submitted by Sonny]
10. My Dying Bride - "A Sea to Suffer In" from "The Angel and the Dark River" (1995)
11. Elder - "Gemini" from "Dead Roots Stirring" (2011) [submitted by Daniel]
12. Assumption - "Triptych" from "Hadean Tides" (2022) [submitted by Sonny]
13. Candlemass - "Solitude" from "Epicus Doomicus Metallicus" (1986) [submitted by Ben]
14. Khazad-dûm - "The Forsaken Palace" from "Hymns from the Deep" (2020)
מזמור. 15 [Mizmor] - "The Narrowing Way" from "Cairn" (2019)

It looks like it could be a good race for the Fallen album of the year this time around - Messa, Dvvell, Epitaphe, Shape of Despair and Mournful Congregation all have strong claims. I must listen to the Thou / Mizmor album too before long as that seems to be another well-regarded release.

I see you also have Bog Body as your least favoured Fallen release of the year Ben, as did I.

"Don't start any bands. And I'm not even kidding here. Don't do it. The world is overwhelmed with bands, with records, with albums. There's really no space there for anything. There's only seven days a week. There's too many tours around. There's too many shows. People don't have, and will have less and less money. So all the tours are suffering. Do you really wanna put another song on another album that no one will pay attention to? No, you don't wanna do that. Go find yourself a proper job. Finish university, travel and enjoy life. Don't do this."

The above quote is from Nergal of Behemoth fame and to a large extent I agree with this (not necessarily the touring part) but the constant new releases and side-projects and new bands to check out is just so exhausting.  Seeing the start of the end of year list threads made me think about this and I went off to find this quote that I had seen recently.

I won't pretend to not have any releases from 2022 in my collection (indeed a couple inhabit my physical collection) but the above quote really resonates with me that there's far too much out there to ever explore, examine and embrace (or not) so how much is enough?  How much "new" do we need?  Personally, if it all stopped now, if no more releases occurred and no more bands formed and all I had was the music I have now then great.  As long as I have the music I like to this point then what am I missing?

Anyway, feel free to discuss if interested.

Great thread Vinny and it is a question I often ask myself. How many times can I sit through another so-so album just because I haven't heard it before when I could be listening to an album I know I love? Well  the answer is "as many as it takes to get that same hit the first time you heard War Pigs, Overkill, Creeping Death, In the Shadow of the Horns, Raining Blood or whatever it was that floated your own particular boat, because you are a music junkie and that feeling is what you live for!!" This is not a sweeping generalisation, but it is how it is for me - and sometimes I hate myself fot it and just wish I could live with the 1500 or so albums I already own physical copies of and let that be an end of it, but as long as I have functioning ears that is unlikely to happen.

I can get that for Cult of Luna, I think since I much prefer their newer material over their older stuff (I gave Somewhere Along the Highway a 3/5, blasphemy I know), I'm still riding the high of not being quite tired of their style yet as I've found myself consistently going back to The Long Road North. 

Would you say that The Funeral Orchestra, BlackLab, and Mournful Congregation still deserve a listen for someone like me? I've heard good things about the Mournful Congregation release but I think it slipped by since it was an EP, so I'll 100% be finding time for that one. 

Mournful Congregation, definitely yes. It's 37 minutes long so EP is a bit of a relative term, but I think you would certainly find something to like here, Xephyr. BlackLab depend very much on how much you like stoner metal. If you are cool with Boris' stoner material then this may appeal. The Funeral Orchestra album only features one new track as the rest are re-recordings of older material, but it is all quality if you like ritualistic- sounding funeral doom.

It looks like we have a high degree of consensus on this year's Fallen releases, Xephyr, as your list does not look massively unlike my own. The Cult of Luna album seems like the main one that separates us and, to be honest, I think it is still a good album, but I am tiring of CoL's one-trick pony songwriting approach which is, basically,  build... build... build... build some more... RELEASE .

I may post a list in the lists section, but for now here is my Top 30:

1. Dvvell - Quiescent

2. Messa - Close

3. Epitaphe - II

4. Mournful Congregation - The Exuviae of Gods: Part I

5. Shape of Despair - Return to the Void

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

7. Conan - Evidence of Immortality

8. BlackLab - In a Bizarre Dream

9. Tzompantli - Tlazcaltiliztli

10. Temple of Void - Summoning the Slayer

11. Worm - Bluenothing

12. Boris - Heavy Rocks

13. Night Hag - Phantasmal Scourge

14. Friends of Hell - Friends of Hell

15. Mares of Thrace - The Exile

16. Deathbell - A Nocturnal Crossing

17. Cult of Luna - The Long Road North

18. Obsidian Sea - Pathos

19. Firebreather - Dwell in the Fog

20. Come to Grief - When the World Dies

21. Darkher - The Buried Storm

22. Druid Lord - Relics of the Dead

23. Ard - Take Up My Bones

24.Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard - The Harvest

25. Spiritus Mortis - The Great Seal

26. Ataraxy - The Last Mirror

27. Ufomammut - Felice

28. Dawn of Solace - Flames of Perdition

29. Hangman's Chair - A Loner

30. Fostermother - The Ocean

I've been loving this one as well, but I agree in that it's more of an appetizer for what they may have in store in the next year or so. "Bluenothing" is incredibly good but the rest of the tracks kind of just pass by, which makes it hard to judge considering it's still just an EP. I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the new direction as much as I am Sonny since although I still really liked Foreverglade, the bits and bobs they've added here are right up my alley despite veering away from their Death Doom roots. Looking forward to the next one for sure!

4/5 as well

My issue with a lot of neoclassical and guitar hero-like stuff has been that that is all it is, just guitar wankery for the sake of it. Worm however seem to be trying to incorporate it into an extreme metal genre in a way that I personally have never heard before and thus adding a whole new dimension to a genre that I enjoy massively but which is becoming increasingly set in it's ways. Looking forward to hearing how that direction turns out and fingers crossed Worm can make a success of it.

Worm - Bluenothing EP (2022)

Released 28th October 2022 on 20 Buck Spin.

I've been a fan of Worm for a while now and own physical copies of their last two full-length albums, so I went into this 26 minute EP with a degree of anticipation. Well, it seems like this is intended as a bridging piece as the band expand their ever-developing sound even further and marks a significant evolution in their musical development. This latest development seems courtesy of the addition of new guitarist Philippe Tougas (aka Wroth Septentrion) who has replaced Nihilistic Manifesto who was brought in for previous album, Foreverglade, and who has a mean line in guitar hero soloing techniques.

Bluenothing comprises four tracks, by far the longer of which is the opening title track, weighing in at eleven minutes, and which constitutes the highlight of things. It is again based on slow, death doom riffing with deep sonorous growls alternating with black metal-like shrieks for vocals, but it takes on a more expansive dimension with the addition of atmospheric keyboards and, most strikingly, some soaring lead work that seems derived from classic heavy metal or even neoclassical metal axemen, courtesy of Wroth Septentrion. There is a dichotomy at work on the track that comes from the heavy bottom end and growling vocals being heavily contrasted by the washed-out, airiness of the keyboards and the soaring nature of the lead work for a striking layered effect. I get a bit of a My Dying Bride vibe from Bluenothing without the cloying theatricality the Yorkshire gothic death doomers too often revel in.

The other three tracks risk becoming an aside when cast in the shadow of the opener, but Centuries of Ooze II, although shorter, is every bit as dramatic and impressive as the opener. In similar style it utilises the thick, crawling riffs and growling vocals of death doom to provide a base on which to build the track, overlaying this formidable bottom end with atmospheric synths, a clean, chant-like vocal refrain and more of those searing, soaring guitar licks. This does actually sound like an evolution in death doom and Worm seem to have succeeded in carving out a niche for themselves that few others are currently occupying.

The third track, Invoking the Dragonmoon, actually sounds like a demo of the band trying out the new guitar lead style and isn't much more than a bit of a neoclassical exercise in guitar hero hystrionics, but does kind of inform the listener of where the band are coming from and what they are intending to do with it. The closer, Shadowside Kingdom, has an extended atmospheric intro utilising synths, distant-sounding clean vocals, acoustic guitar and more of the new-style lead work before exploding at the halfway mark into a symphonic black metal blast, with more than a nod to the bands origins as a black metal solo project, perhaps as band founder Phantomslaughter says goodbye to that side of the project for good - who knows?

Overall this was an interesting listen as it seems to be teasing a possible new direction for Worm and whilst it has plenty of merit in it's own right, it has opened up more questions than answers and has made me even more impatient for a new Worm full-length to see where all this promise may yet lead us.

4/5

Assumption - Hadean Tides (2022)

Despite forming in 2011 as a duo consisting of drummer David Lucido and multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Giorgio Trombino, this is only Italian death doom outfit Assumption's second full-length, following 2018's Absconditus. Since the release of the debut the pair have rounded out their lineup by adding permanent bassist Claudio Troise and second guitarist Matija Dolinar to share the six-string workload with Giorgio. I think this is a good move, for while I respect multi-instrumentalists, I feel the full band dynamic nearly always works better.

A large proportion of Hadean Tides takes the form of funereally-paced death doom in the vein of bands such as the mighty Evoken with huge, crushing, glacially-paced riffs and Giorgio's impressive deep growls providing the vocal counterpoint. The pacing isn't monolithic though and the band will often break into an Incantation-like killer death metal riff to get the old noggin nodding or a quicker-paced doom section in the vein of a band like Coffins.

Of course, staying true to the idiosynchratic nature of Italian doom metal, the band throw in a couple of curveballs. First off, set in the very heart of the album is a six-minute ambient piece, Breath of the Dedalus, that sounds like it would be better-suited to a cosmic black metal album from the likes of Mesarthim or Mare Cognitum than a death doom release, yet here it sits like a black hole acting as an axis around which the rest of the album rotates... and somehow it works. The other, and possibly even more jarring curveball comes in the form of my favourite, the penultimate track, Triptych. It starts off weirdly with a lone bass line and Giorgio speaking the lyrics making it feel like a Doors track, in fact the whole song feels a bit like a death metal version of The End, with a similarly uncomfortable atmosphere to it and an even more dense and impenetrable lyrical content. Eventually it resolves itself into a classy, heaving death doom riff that is sustained for a short while after which it returns to the disturbing spoken-word approach of the earlier part before exploding into an all-out death metal blast which you can certainly imagine being accompanied by images of a water buffalo beheading! The tracks are generally shorter than on the debut (although the album overall is much longer) all except the closer, the fifteen-minute Black Trees Waving, which begins in funereal style, but which resolves into a great riff with some decent soloing whilst taking a couple of twists and turns along the way including a croaking clean vocal section.

Overall, Assumption take a tried-and-tested formula and reproduce it very convincingly whilst adding in just enough originality to assert their own identity and hopefully prevent themselves from getting lost in the avalanche of metal albums hitting the metaphorical shelves. It is one of those albums that should certainly make ears prick up, for good or ill, when heard. On the downside, I'm not sure why, but I don't  hear a huge amount of emotion or menace invested in it (something the aforementioned Evoken could certainly teach them about) and as such it does have a bit of a cold and sterile feel to it. However, I did find myself being drawn back to it's siren call several times and it did hold my interest with it's sometimes unpredictable structure, so I think I must label it a success.

4/5

If I'm not too late...

• Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard - Valmasque off Y proffwyd dwyll (2016)
• Candlemass - Solitude off Epicus Doomicus Metallicus (1986)
• Daylight Dies - Dismantling Devotion off Dismantling Devotion (2006)

No, I'll add them into the playlist when I complete it this week.

Ben, do you have any suggestions for December's playlist?

Last call for December's playlist suggestions Ben.

Spiritus Mortis - The Great Seal (2022)

Released 16th September 2022 on Svart Records

Spiritus Mortis are a Finnish doom outfit, formed in 1987 by brothers, guitarist Jussi and bassist Teemu Maijala. They have featured a number of drummers and vocalists, including Sami Hynninen, aka Albert Witchfinder of Reverend Bizarre notoriety, who handled vocal duties from 2009-17 and featured on the band's two previous albums. Despite such a lengthy lifespan, The Great Seal is only the band's fifth full-length. Now, I do enjoy a lot of what Spiritus Mortis do, but I have to concede that they are inconsistent. For me they have been unable to better 2009 's The God Behind the God, the presence of Sami Hynninen elevated the band to another level on that album, especially as it followed the exceedingly disappointing Fallen. 2016's The Year Is One was solid doom metal fayre which failed to ignite the same level of passion as TGBtG despite some decent work from all concerned.

So to current release, The Great Seal, which shows a marked change in style. Here the band have gone for a more epic approach, in the style of Candlemass, which has been facilitated by the addition of vocalist Kimmo Perämäki, formerly of power metal crews Masquerage and Celesty, to replace Sami. He certainly shows off his power metal credentials, particularly on uptempo opener Puputan, so if you are in the market for OTT epic vocals with your doom metal, then this may well be a dose of what you need. I suspect this is the direction the band have wanted to go in for some time, but have had to wait to recruit a vocalist with the skillset and vocal range to pull it off. Much as I love Albert Witchfinder's vocals and prefer them to Kimmo Perämäki's more overblown efforts, this style is technically beyond him and so Spiritus Mortis could never go in this direction while he was behind the mike. The songwriting also seems to have a more pronounced emphasis on melody with a number of the tracks on display here, Martyrdom Operation for instance, exhibiting an almost sing-a-long accessibility and as such it feels like they are aiming for a wider market than that allowed by their previous Reverend Bizarre-influenced trad doom approach. Although this is the case, they don't turn their backs on the traditionalists completely and as the album progresses, it seems to tend more towards the trad style, Khristovovery with it's Sabbathian second half and closing track Are You a Witch, for example, are very much in the vein of their previous material and as such have greater appeal to me personally than the more overblown tracks like Puputan and Martyrdom Operation. The driving short track Vision of Immortality especially, I can imagine being sung by Sami Hynninen, so his influence hasn't been completely erased from Spiritus Mortis' pallette.

It must be said that the band are very tight and the playing sounds technically solid with some mighty riffing and some cool soloing - check out the Sabbath-like riff at the mid-point of Khristovovery and the Tony Iommi-influenced solo that joins it. The rhythm section is functional without being much disposed to showiness and as such provides a solid base for the guitars and vocals to weave their more expansive and theatrical magic. Primarily, if you are more well-disposed to the bombastic stylings of epic doom over the straightforward approach of traditional doom then chances are you may get more out of this than I did. Don't get me wrong, I like a fair bit of what is going on during The Great Seal's forty minutes, but I must admit that I had to work at it over a number of listen-throughs and the album as a whole didn't click with me immediately and I had to find my way in via the trad doom-oriented tracks. I still prefer the two previous releases, but with my well-publicised Reverend Bizarre worship that will come as no surprise to anyone I suspect. With it's almost equal parts traditional and epic doom there is a risk that The Great Seal may fall between two stools, but I suspect the quality is such that doomsters of both persuasions will find enough to enjoy here.

3.5/5

My suggestions for December:

Critical Defiance - "The Last Crusaders... Bringers of Death!" from "No Life Forms" (2022)
Flotsam & Jetsam - "Hammerhead" from "Doomsday for the Deceiver" (1986)
Testament - "Legions of the Dead" from "The Gathering" (1999)

Ben, do you have any suggestions for December's playlist?

Buffalo - "Volcanic Rock" (1973)

The sophomore album from this seminal band from the beloved town of my birth in Sydney, Australia was pretty much regarded as heavy music royalty by the older metalheads when I was first getting into underground metal in the very late 80's. It's not a metal release as such although I'd suggest that the opening & closing tracks should qualify as they're not all that far off Black Sabbath. The rest of the tracklisting is closer to heavy psych & hard rock in my opinion but "Volcanic Rock" is a high quality release in its own right with no weak tunes included. Front man Dave Tice sounds almost exactly like my all-time favourite singer in Soundgarden's Chris Cornell & is the clear focal point of the album although the more stripped back, repetitive & psychedelic guitar work is a real treat too, especially the nine minute album highlight "Freedom" which is nothing short of mind-blowing. If you dig 70's psychedelic/hard rock & proto-metal then you can't go wrong with this record.

For fans of Sir Lord Baltimore, Flower Travellin' Band & Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell.

4/5

Another one of my favourite early 70's records. Heavy psych is a sorely overlooked genre.

Conan - Evidence of Immortality (2022)

Released 19 August 2022 on Napalm Records

I've not got much of a history with Conan to be honest. I checked out their debut Monnos a good few years back and didn't care much for it back then, so I went into their latest, Evidence of Immortality, with quite low expectations. Well, I don't know if it's the band who have changed much or me, but I really enjoyed this one and I suspect I will have to go back and re-evaluate my opinion of the Scouse doomsters.

Evidence of Immortality is ultra-heavy, slow-moving stoner doom with anguished vocals that sounds like the result of putting Ufomammut, Electric Wizard and Eyehategod in a blender. Any of the synonyms for crushing could be deployed to describe the album because, make no mistake, this is one heavy motherfuckin' slab of doom metal. There is precious little variety exhibited during the fifty minutes on offer here (at least until the closing track), but I'm pretty sure that if this is your bag then that is no problem for you whatsoever. The performance is pretty tight and Conan seem as capable musically as anyone in the stoner doom scene. The riffs are gargantuan and cavernous, the rhythm section move with the heartbeat of a dreaming Titan and the sludgy vocal bellowings are left to snarl their defiance into the face of an unstoppable force of nature.

Closing track, the fourteen-minute Grief Sequence does throw out a bit of a curveball with a monotonous riff overlaid with swirling, ambient-style keyboards which produce a funeral doom-like effect, at least intially. As the track progresses it gets weirder and more psychotic as effects are introduced that give it a hypnotic, illusory and tripped-out kind of atmosphere, like an acid trip that is just about to turn bad, but it may actually be my favourite track here because it is ridiculously effective at sucking you into it's insanity.

Overall, if you are a fan of Ufomammut or Electric Wizard (especially the earlier material) and dig music that makes you feel like you're being sucked into a black hole, then this should likely be right up your street.

4.5/5

Decayed -Resurrectiónem Mortuórum (1996)

RYM has got nearly sixty thousand black metal releases catalogued, so a perfectly valid question would be "Why the hell should I listen to Resurrectiónem Mortuórum when there is so much other stuff to check out?" Well, I would honestly have to reply "If you just want to hear some kick-ass black metal then there is no reason at all for you to listen to it particularly." That said, though, if you are interested in the development of black metal and especially in countries not considered hotbeds of the form, then there may be something of interest for you here.

Decayed are from Lisbon in Portugal, forming in 1990 and still going to this day, which is no mean feat I suppose, yet have never really made much of a splash in the wider world of black metal, at least as far as I am aware (none of the band's 32 releases on the Academy have any ratings). Resurrectiónem Mortuórum was their second album, released in 1996, and from the sound of it the band members were well aware of leading lights of the Norwegian scene such as Emperor, Dimmu Borgir and Immortal. They play medium-paced black metal in the main, with embellishments such as keyboards and the odd female vocal accompaniment. There is a reasonable amount of variety on offer so things don't get too stale too quickly and in addition to the more recognisable mid-nineties black metal of tracks like Darkness Falls or the pummelling Archdemon there is the gothic metal-sounding City of the Horned One, the haunting synth and spoken word of By the Candlelight or the black'n'roll of the band's reasonable cover of Venom's Countess Bathory.

The playing feels quite sloppy at times, the solo during the Emperor-like Thy Summoning sounds poorly executed and the drums in particular sound like crap and when they aren't performing blastbeats they are as dull as dishwater. Yet, even after saying that, there was something that kept pulling me back in. The vocals are pretty decent and are of the gruff shrieking style I quite enjoy and bassist/vocalist João Fonseca (who was guitarist for Moonspell for a couple of years in the mid-nineties) puts in a good performance throughout. The riffs aren't bad and do stick in the memory after a couple of listens and the synths add some nice touches to the overall atmosphere, being used subtly enough not to sound cheesy.

So to answer your hypothetical question from the start of my review, there is no particular reason to listen to Resurrectiónem Mortuórum and it will never top anyone's list of favourite black metal albums, but then again, neither is there a reason not to - It certainly isn't anything like as poor as I feared when I initially selected it for the review draft.

3.5/5

A few of you have probably seen me banging on about Chilean thrash metal for some time now and if you haven't yet been swayed by brilliant albums from the likes of Demoniac and Parkcrest then maybe Critical Defiance's sophomore may be the one to push you over the edge. Forming in 2013, Critical Defiance released their debut, Misconception, in 2019 to pretty good reviews and it was certainly one of my favourites of that year and has only risen higher in my estimation after repeated listens. Since the debut's release rhythm guitarist Felipe Espinoza has been replaced by Mauricio Toledo of Unholyness and more excitingly (to me at least) they have added a second lead guitarist, Javier Salgado, who is main man in Parkcrest as well as a member of Hellish and Mayhemic. Misconception was packed to the brim with great riffs, but the addition of Salgado on No Life Forms has pushed Critical Defiance even higher with some absolutely brilliant lead work to match. Don't get me wrong, vocalist / guitarist Felipe Alvarado did a good job on the debut, but Salgado brings a greater level of proficiency to the soloing on this latest album and without having to handle all the lead work himself it also frees up Alvarado - much to his benefit.

The tracks are generally shorter here than on Misconception and the band have raised the ante as far as tempo, intensity and technicality are concerned. So this all sounds like a No Life Forms is a superior album to the debut, doesn't it? Well yes... and no. All the above is true and it does make a really great modern thrasher for sure, but it just feels like the band have lost a bit of something from the debut that made it so awesome. The longer songs of Misconception made them feel more complete and gave them time to breathe, whereas some of the tracks on No Life Forms are just so short and intense that it feels like the band have omitted a vital ingredient from the songs' makeup, with them sometimes feeling a bit too dense. Don't misunderstand, I still love this new album and the addition of Javier Salgado is a real coup, but it feels like a little bit of the band's soul has been sacrificed in an attempt to produce the most brutal and intense thrash album of recent years.

All negativity aside though, Alvarado's vocals are savage, channeling a fist-fight between Mille Petrozza and Tom Araya and Salgado's soloing is superb. Riff follows riff with machinegun-like precision and the rhythm section are complete monsters. Drummer Rodrigo Poblete is never left wanting by the pace or intensity of the guitarists and bassist Ignacio Arévalo is imperious as his basslines reinforce and sometimes dominate the lead work and riffing. OK, so very few straight-up thrash albums are going to present much new to genre devotees, but I believe that had either of Critical Defiance's two albums been released in the mid to late eighties they would easily have stood out above 90% of the thrash of the time and even given some of the classics a run for their money. So obviously in modern days where even decent thrash albums may be in short supply, this towers over most thrash that has come out in the last few years. If you only listen to one 21st century thrash band then make it Critical Defiance.

4.5/5

I'll go with the Blessed Death album. I quite liked their 1987  Destined for Extinction album, so that will do for me.

After Ben and Xephyr's choices, the fact I am familiar with the Khors and Departure Chandelier releases and I don't fancy an hour of Xasthur I will take the Decayed album and hope I don't regret it too much seeing as it has only a 2.7 average on RYM.