Sonny's Forum Replies

BlackLab - In a Bizarre Dream (2022)

I've been a fan of the Japanese stoner metal duo since their debut ep which saw light of day in 2017. They've come a fair way since those early days and have grown in confidence, with their sludgy stoner metal taking on a certain punkish swagger as they raise two fingers to all the naysayers. Coincidentally I have been listening to the new Boris album also this week and the two do seem to compliment each other pretty well. They aren't exactly the same, but they both utilise a riotous expression of stoner metal, Boris drawing on noise rock and hardcore, BlackLab using sludge and punk to achieve a similar aim. In a Bizarre Dream is the more "metal" of the two albums but is a bit less anarchic than Heavy Rocks.

There are some killer cuts here, the opening riff to the single Abyss Woods is a real doozy for example and Yuko's guitar work in general is a treat as she fires off riffs and solos with equal abandon. Her vocals aren't bad either, her harsh howls are nerve-shredding and her cleans have a grungy punkishness to them. Meanwhile drummer Chia provides creditable support, having to propel the tracks forward solo with the duo not electing not to employ a bassist (which also adds to the punky diy sound of a track like Dark Clouds.)

The driving Crows, Sparrows and Cats features Stereolab's Lætitia Sadier on lead vocal which adds a different dynamic, she sounds a bit like Nico on the Velvet Underground album, which has a softening effect to the track, making Yuko's heavily distorted guitar sound less aggressive and more trippy. Sometimes the duo throttle things back, such as the crawling Evil 2, but in the main they attack the material with a hefty dose of aggression and leave the impression that these two are seriously not to be fucked with. This is stoner metal for sure, but not in a laid-back, groovy style, but in an, in-your-face, fuck you if you don't like it assured manner.

4/5

On this subject, I'm working on a top 100 metal albums list, but I want to provide commentary for each entry.  Is there a special place where I can create a separate thread and post a few at a time until it's done over the course of a few days so people have albums to talk about for each post?  Or is the general chat section good?  I plan on doing this the same way people on Movieforums post their top 100 movie lists, and I'm doing it this way on Metalforum too.

I think you are probably best starting a new thread under the general chat tab, Rexorcist.

Alright I'm wrong - Hell III is heavier.

One of my all-time favourites right there.

Hi Ben, could you please add BlackLab's new album, In a Bizarre Dream.

If I was forced into a particular answer off the top of my head, Rexorcist,  I would have to suggest bands like Hell, Thou, Sunn O))), Earth, Ufomammut and definitely Electric Wizard.

It's a hard question to answer but I'd suggest that almost my entire top ten would come from The Fallen. I don't think terms like "brutal" & "extreme" are the same thing as "heavy". To me that term is about suffocatingly thick down-tuned riffs that make your insides shake so subgenres like Drone Metal, Sludge Metal & Doom Metal would certainly feature fairly prominently in my list.

Agreed.

Thirded!!

Nice. Mine's not all that different from yours, although I need to check out that Funeral Orchestra album (and add it to the site!). One correction though; the wonderful Return to the Void is by Shape of Despair, not Swallow the Sun.

DOH!!

I still need to check out the Ataraxy album as I quite enjoyed their previous one and I also need to listen to the Thou/Mizmor split.

The year is shaping up a bit better now after a slow start and the Fallen end of year list should look a bit better than I originally feared.

Been doing some catching up on this year's Fallen releases so here's an update to my Top Ten of the year to date:

1. Messa - Close
2. Epitaphe - II
3. Mournful Congregation - The Exuviae of Gods: Part I EP
4. Shape of Despair - Return to the Void
5. The Funeral Orchestra Funeral Death - Apocalyptic Plague Ritual II

6.Tzompantli - Tlazcaltiliztli
7. Temple of Void - Summoning the Slayer
8. Boris - Heavy Rocks

9. Night Hag - Phantasmal Scourge
10. Friends of Hell - Friends of Hell

Mares of Thrace and Deathbell fall out of the top 10.

Boris - Heavy Rocks (2022)

Another Boris album, another slab of noise-drenched, riotous stoner metal. The Japanese crew just sound like they were having so much fun when they recorded this album. Some of the tracks here are just so insanely energetic and anarchic they sound like they have produced the perfect soundtrack to a riot. There are songs that poke their heads above the general mayhem, such as the industrial dance-beat affected Ghostly Imagination, the ominous, sax-laden Blah Blah Blah or the closing piano-led (Not) Last Song, but mostly this is an album to break stuff to! I know we are all supposed to stroke our chins and think deeply then write reams of crap because it's Boris, but fuck that, just slam it on, bounce around the room and have some fun.

4/5

Tzompantli - Tlazcaltiliztli  (2022)

Tlazcaltiliztli is an album of thick as molasses death doom riffs and awesome bellowing growls for vocals that sound like a wounded bison and remind me somewhat of Japanese death doomers Coffins. Whilst the bulk of the album consists of this crushingly brutal assault on the listener's sensibilities there are also some really cool indiginous Mexican folk interludes that make for something a bit different and are undeniably an interesting diversion. The death doom side of things isn't the most earth-shatteringly awesome or original metal you are ever likely to hear, but it is authentic and it's chugging riffs are heavy as fuck and if you are a fan of extreme doom metal then that, along with the more interesting indiginous music interjections, should at least merit you checking it out (just don't try spelling it!) Me, I'm always a sucker for anything that sounds like it was derived from the early Autopsy sound, which this assuredly is, so for me this is a big thumbs up.

4/5

Until Death Overtakes Me - Prelude To Monolith (2008)

For my money, funeral doom metal is possibly the most primal of all metal genres. The immense crushing weight it conveys speaks of the unimaginably massive forces that shaped our world and, indeed, the universe itself back in the furthest aeons of time. There is also a form of funeral doom that is less heavy but, in a way, is almost spiritual in what it calls to within those willing to receive it. When I say spiritual, I don't mean in a, for want of a better word, "god-centric" way. This type of spirituality predates any man-made anthroporphism of the forces at work and instead speaks to an interconnectedness with the flow and essence of these inconceivable forces and energies that is buried deep inside all of us.

Until Death Overtakes Me's Prelude to Monolith is exactly one such release. It's iteration of funeral doom is not going to leave you gasping for air like an Esoteric or Ahab album, for it's touch is not quite as pulverisingly massive. Rather, it draws on dark ambient for inspiration and weaves it throughout it's sixty-eight minutes with the effect of leavening some of the sheer weight with lighter, more ethereal threads. There is a "booming" nature to the drum sound that is suggestive of tympani drums and that always adds an esoteric (small "e") atmosphere and that is reinforced by the sometimes barely perceptible rumble of the vocals. Overlaying this is a thin keyboard drone that is reminiscent of Thergothon's Stream From the Heavens. The whole effect makes for a remarkably relaxing-sounding album that cradles and croons rather than overwhelms the listener, allowing them to touch the infinite, if only for a mere heavenly hour!

4/5

Thanks Ben. I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about funeral doom. It is one of my absolute favourite styles of metal and has some utterly sublime practitioners. But because it is based on fairly simple principles there are some very amateurish-sounding attempts at it. I think the true skill with funeral doom is taking these simple basics and producing music that feels profound and speaks to something deep inside the listener. I understand that it's not going to be for everyone, but I personally think it is one of the most affecting and personal of all metal genres. 

I haven't listened to Until Death Overtakes Me before, so I'm looking forward to hearing this one.

Japanese female stoner doom duo BlackLab are back with new album In a Bizarre Dream released by New Heavy Sounds on 19th August.

A single from the LP was released earlier in the year, called Abyss Woods and it's an ass-kicker:

Just ordered my vinyl copy from Bandcamp!!

French funeral/death doom outfit Monolithe have a new album out this autumn called Kosmodrom.

They have released a ten-minute single from it [spoiler alert - it is great!]

From YouTube:

Monolithe presents a new song: "Soyuz".

Lasting 10 minutes, "Soyuz" is an excerpt from the band's new album "Kosmodrom" to be released in the fall of 2022.
The song narrates the crash of the Soyuz-1 spaceshuttle in April 1967, killing its passenger, cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov.

"Soyuz" and the rest of the album tell the tale of intrepid pioneers, explorers, discoverers and the dangers and sacrifices inherent in their leap into the unknown, may it be voluntary or not, through the metaphor of real historical events related to the space conquest on the Soviet side.

To avoid any potential ambiguity, Soyuz and the album this song is taken  from have absolutely no relation to the current dramatic geopolitical situation, nor are they an ode to the Soviet era. The concept, music, lyrics and visuals were created between spring 2020 and the very beginning of 2022.

Finnish traditional doomsters Spiritus Mortis have a new album out September 16th via Svart Records on CD & vinyl.

The single from the album is called Death Charioteer:

Come To Grief - When the World Dies (2022)

Conventional sludge is musically not the most nuanced or complex of metal genres in the main, focussing more on bludgeoning riffs and aggressive vocalisation to present an atmosphere of alienation, frustration and down-right discontent with the world. Come to Grief don't buck that trend at all here, presenting an album that is based largely on quite basic doom metal riffing. Although it is fundamentalist in principle, it has a great, full sound that allows the riffs to expand to fill all the available space. The vocals too are fairly typical for sludge metal, but they are suitably aggressive and angst-ridden and sound authentically aggrieved. The very first verse of the album reads, "I never write about love, It's something I've never felt, Others laugh, enjoy life, I'm just a miserable fuck". So it's pretty obvious that we're not in "shiny, happy people" territory here - and, being the incurable miserablist that I am, that suits me just fine. As an aside, the vocals on that track, Life's Curse and also on Bludgeon the Soul / Returning to the Void are handled by guest vocalist, Converge's Jacob Bannon.

Ultimately what we have here is an album of straight-forward sludge metal done exceedingly well that doesn't do anything unexpected or seek to push boundaries, but that successfully conveys a feeling of frustration and resentment both musically and lyrically and as such must be considered a success. The downside of course is that, although worth hearing, it is far from an essential listen and so may ultimately become lost in the crowd, which is a great pity.
4/5

Since there aren't many posters, I'll tell you what I had in mind for the Horde: rats.  They brought the black plague, and a group of rats IS called a horde.

Plus, rats are fucking rad.

Good call.

Epitaphe - II (2022)

Epitaphe's debut album, I, was one of my favourites of 2019 and earned itself a five-star rating in the process. So we are now three long war- and pandemic-riddled years on and the French death doomers have unleashed their sophomore, II, upon us (with huge anticipation from me). Luckily for us all their lack of imagination in the titling of their albums is the only area where they are deficient on the imagination front.

Once more the band employ a symmetry in the tracklisting as they did on the debut with a couple of three-minute, gentle instrumental pieces book-ending three nineteen-minute epics. II seems to be primarily tagged as progressive metal, but I am not entirely sure if that tagging is appropriate, chiefly because I don't know if a huge percentage of usual progressive metal fans would love this. I think of it more as death or death doom metal release that has some progressive tendencies, particularly in the songwriting department, rather than an actual prog metal release. The progressiveness here doesn't amount to overindulgence or technical showiness that bedevils so many releases labelled as prog metal, but is merely a convenient label to describe the convoluted songwriting. One thing is for certain, Epitaphe certainly employ an impressive arsenal of extreme metal tropes to achieve those songwriting aims. Vocally they run the whole gamut from deep, rumbling death metal growls to clean doom metal singing to harsh sludgey howls, back to soft, clean vocals similar to Mikael Akerfeldt's cleans on a track like Face of Melinda. Musically there are brutal death metal riffs, thick, sometimes melodic doom metal riffs, subsonic OSDM riffing and a plethora of blastbeats. All this multitude of weapons in the Frenchmens' arsenal are skillfully deployed with some excellent songwriting that, despite all the twisting and turning, is still fundamentally heavy as fuck! These lengthy tracks are not the slow-build, increasingly formulaic musings of the atmo-sludge wave, but tracks that rise and fall less predictably, ranging from intense explosions of brutal death metal savagery to calm and serene pastoral sections and artfully displayed technical prowess.

II is not an album for the impatient metalhead, but is a technically impressive (in both songwriting and performance) release that does not skimp on sheer aggression and heaviness when the music calls for it, but also contains plenty of nuances and variety. More challenging extreme metal releases can often, by their nature, be quite alienating with a tendency towards dissonance and angular song structures, but Epitaphe, much like Mikael Akerfeldt's Opeth before them, produce complex and challenging music that doesn't alienate the listener, but rather entrances and mesmerises them. This latest album should definitely cement Epitaphe's reputation as a metal band of immense ability and one of which to take note.

4.5/5

Hangman's Chair - A Loner (2022)

I must admit that this is my first exposure to French gothic metallers Hangman's Chair, so I was unsure what to expect. Well this isn't the gothic death doom of My Dying Bride or Swallow the Sun, but is a much cleaner style of doom metal altogether. It utilises contemporary melodic doom structures and overlays them with a clear, ringing lead guitar tone and clean vocals which in effect comes across as a metallised version of gothic rock bands like The Cult et al. With it's oft-catchy choruses, clean vocals and melodic riffs it is perhaps a little more commercial-sounding than I would usually be comfortable with, but I would be lying if I said I didn't find anything I enjoyed here.

Oh, and is it just me or does the lead singer often sound like Alison Moyet?

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!