Sonny's Forum Replies

Stygian Crown - Funeral for a King (2024)

Stygian Crown are a new one on me. They are a five-piece, Los Angeles band playing epic doom metal with twin guitars and a female vocalist, which is a combination I think works very well. Funeral for a King is the band's sophomore full-length, following four years after their self-titled debut. They take their cues from the usual sources, Candlemass, Solitude Aeternus and the more recently successful acts like Smoulder and Crypt Sermon. The riffs possess a nice crunchiness in sound, being both chunkily solid and memorably melodic, with the band being unafraid to change into a quicker tempo, "Bushido" and "Beauty and Terror" being particular examples of tracks in a more traditional metal, bordering USPM, rather than doom metal style. The plodding pomposity (in a good way) of the band's titanic epic doom forerunners is the general order of the day, though and they have a solid grasp of what constitutes good epic doom, with a full sound, theatrical songwriting and powerful vocals. Singer Melissa Pinion has a strong voice and is well able to command the space, in true Messiah Marcolin or Rob Lowe style, with a soaring performance that is never threatened by the thick and meaty guitar sound, but which meets it head-on.

There are a couple of interludes in a more stripped-back style that provide a contrast to the ostentatiousness of the band's signature sound. "Let Thy Snares Be Planted" is a short instrumental piece with piano and strings in a classical style and the balladic "Blood Red Eyes", which also features piano and strings, sounds a bit like a track Tarja and Nightwish may have been at home with. All in all, this is a decent album that displays a great understanding of the epic doom genre and which is technically sound with a powerful lead vocalist. As such it is a worthy addition to the recent slew of releases in the resurgent sub-genre and whilst still punching a little below the weight of the true titans, Candlemass, Solitude Aeternus and so on, with tracks like "Scourge of the Seven Hills" and "Strait of Massina" I would suggest they are heading in the right direction. Definitely worth your time if you are into the more epic side of doom metal, especially if you are a fan of female vocals in the genre.

4/5

I would have been very surprised to see a Joan Baez cover tagged as metal. Still, stranger things have happened!

Ulcerate are one of those names I see around that are held in very high regards in certain circles, yet who I always run a bit scared of due to their reputation for technicality and dissonance. I see that I rated their "The Destroyers of All" album with a 3.5 about three years ago, but don't remember much about it if I'm being honest, so I may have to give them another go and a new album may be as good a reason as any.

I checked out Rush's 1975 third album "Caress of Steel" this morning & found no trace of metal. It's a progressive hard rock record.

i think it's pretty safe to say that Rush, great band that they were, have never made a metal record. 

NEW DARKTHRONE ANNOUNCED

Titled "It Beckons Us All" it is due for release on 26th April.

Tracklist:

01. Howling Primitive Colonies

02. Eon 3

03. Black Dawn Affiliation

04. And In That Moment I Knew The Answer

05. The Bird People Of Nordland

06. The Heavy Hand

07. The Lone Pines Of The Lost Planet

I've posted this here, because I don't know which clan it will sit in. As Nocturno Culto reportedly says "I have no idea what genre we are, and have really not cared much about it, but I know for sure it's metal."

And that's good enough for me.

Thanks Andi. I'll put them on my list for checking out.

My Top 10 releases for February 2024:

1.Darkspace - Dark Space -II [Atmospheric Black Metal / Drone Metal / Industrial Metal]

2. Spectral Voice - Sparagmos [Death / Funeral Doom Metal]

3. Necrowretch - "Swords of Dajjal" [Black Metal]

4. Contaminated - "Celebratory Beheading" [Death Metal]

5. Fange - Perdition [Industrial Metal / Sludge Metal]

6. The Obsessed - Gilded Sorrow [Stoner / Traditional Doom Metal]

7. Obsidian Tongue - The Stone Heart EP [Atmospheric Black Metal]

8. Monovoth - Pleroma Mortem Est [Funeral Doom Metal]

9. Unaussprechlichen Kulten - Häxan Sabaoth [Death Metal]

10. Morbid Saint - Swallowed by Hell [Thrash Metal]

An update to my Top 10 January 2024  releases:

1. Mourning Dawn  - "The Foam of Despair" [Atmospheric Sludge Metal]

2. Departure Chandelier - Satan Soldier of Fortune [Black Metal]

3. Hauntologist - "Hollow" [Atmospheric Black Metal / Post-metal]

4. Narbeleth - "A Pale Crown" [Black Metal]

5. Sovereign - "Altered Realities" [Technical Thrash / Death Metal]

6. Deconsekrated - "Ascension in the Altar of Condemned EP" [Death Metal]

7. Drown in Sulphur - Dark Secrets of the Soul [Deathcore]

8. Inquisition - "Veneration of Medieval Mysticism and Cosmological Violence" [Black Metal]

9. Malist - "Of Scorched Earth" [Black Metal]

10. Lair - "The Hidden Shiv" [Sludge / Doom Metal]

Saxon and Sepulcher drop out.

Monovoth - Pleroma Mortem Est (2024)

Monovoth is the solo project of argentinian multi-instrumentalist, Lucas Wyssbrod, and Pleroma Mortem Est is the sophomore full-length under the banner. It is an album of instrumental funeral doom, comprising six tracks and with an overall runtime of a mere 38 minutes, which is slight indeed for a funeral doom release. In a nutshell that previous sentence sums up the issues that I personally have with this. First off, six tracks for a measly 38 minutes! The funereal and doom-laden atmospheres for top-knotch funeral doom require  expansive build-up and layering with the extensive runtime being a pre-requisite for the sense of an inescapable, soul-crushing doom awaiting all of us at life's end. Secondly, instrumental funeral doom just doesn't work completely for me. With such downbeat and morbid instrumentation as that produced by top-tier funeral doom practitioners, I believe a human connection, such as the wholly human sound of vocals, is an absolute requirement in order to mitigate the hopelessness of the music and to place the human condition, as posited by the funeral doom ethos, into context.

The actual individual pieces here show a lot of potential and it is obvious that Wyssbrod is plenty familiar with the big names in the field, as he unleashes dizzyingly towering chords of immense weight interspersed with passages of self-reflective melancholy, but their brevity and lack of vocals suggests to me a series of musical ideas waiting to be worked up into full pieces and not actually an album of finished work. I really would like to hear these ideas expounded and expanded upon with a truly anguished-sounding vocalist on board because there is really some good stuff here, in seed-like form.

3.5/5

Hi Ben. Yes, sorry it's me again! Could you add argentinian funeral doom act Monovoth please?

Drown in Sulphur - Dark Secrets of the Soul (2024)

Deathcore and I are not the most comfortable of bedfellows, I could count the number of the sub-genre's albums I have heard on the fingers of one hand and I have actually enjoyed even less than that. So I went into Dark Secrets of the Soul expecting little and knowing the sum total of fuck all about the band. Turns out they are an italian, corpse-paint wearing, four-piece and Dark Secrets of the Soul is their sophomore full-length, following 2021's Sulphur Cvlt.

Well, I will just kill off any suspense and say it straight out up front - actually this isn't half bad at all. I know, right. What the hell is up with me? Well it appears that I might actually be a secret deathcore fan and I didn't even know it myself! I think where deathcore wins over other core-related subgenres is within the vocal department, which is where I notoriously struggle when faced with conventional metalcore releases. I don't especially dislike metalcore instrumentally, but the vocals often irritate me intensely, so the inherently more grizzled and guttural vocal requirements of a death metal sub-genre tones down the "screechiness" (for want of a better word) I struggle with so much in metalcore and results in something much more palatable to my ears. Another trick the band have up their sleeves is that they have included a perceptible influence from symphonic black metal, with synths imparting a sense of pomp and circumstance and mitigating some of the harsher elements of the metalcore aspect of the band's sound. Eclipse of the Sun of Eden, for example, has a really noticeable black metal influence from bands like Anorexia Nervosa or Dimmu Borgir that complements their deathly metalcore sound so well.

The band aren't afraid to change gear away from metalcore aggressiveness either with the balladic Lotus, which features the album's best guitar solo, sounding like the second part of Slipknot's "Vermilion" in places including the clean vocals. I'm no expert, but I reckon that despite all these variations from standard deathcore, there is still more than enough of that melodic hyper-aggression present to please the regulars whilst the other influences help to differentiate Drown in Sulphur from the pack and may even draw in newer listeners to the genre, like myself. I like the fact that italian metal bands in general are unafraid to take chances with their music and, for me, in this case, it has paid off big time.

4/5

Edit: I have just read Andi's review and learnt that, indeed, blackened deathcore is a thing, so I will have to check this phenomenon out further. Any further recommendations would be greatly appreciated as this album has intrigued me greatly.

Could you add the new Saturnalia Temple album, Paradigm Call, please Ben?

Will you be submitting anything for April, Ben?

Exhorder - Defectum Omnium (2024) [Sonny's take]

Exhorder, as all good thrash heads know, dropped the highly-regarded Slaughter in the Vatican way back in 1990, followed it up with The Law in '92 and then seemingly dropped off the face of the planet altogether. These two albums, however, lead to Exhorder, for better or for worse, being credited with inventing groove metal. As the band were big mates with Pantera, then this isn't too much of a stretch, although Exhorder's Kyle Thomas is quoted as saying that Pantera deserve all the praise for popularising the form as they worked much harder than his band. Now, in all honesty, I am not the biggest fan of groove metal and only a handful of albums have garnered any decent scores from me with Pantera in particular failing to resonate. So when Exhorder released the groove metal-oriented Mourn the Southern Skies upon their return in 2019 I wasn't particularly impressed, although there were plenty of commentators who took against it even more than myself, cursing it for not being Slaughter in the Vatican.

So here we are five years further down the road and Kyle Thomas and the guys are back with their post-return sophomore, Defectum Omnium, and this time they have long-time Cannibal Corpse guitarist Pat O'Brien on board. Now I don't know if I am just in a particularly good mood at the minute, or if this is a genuine improvement, possibly because of Pat's involvement, but actually this isn't half bad. A genuine energy and enthusiasm seems to ooze from every pore of this release, lighting a fire under the band and allowing them to turn in one of those late career successes that a select few bands are fortunate enough to produce. The album still sits nearer the groove end of the equation, but the riffs are so cool that their inherent grooviness in no way detracts from how absolutely badass they are, aided by a thick guitar tone that highlights their power.

There is also some decent variation in pacing with the surfeit of fast-paced aggressiveness countered by some slower, ominously hulking sections that preface even more fist-to-the-jaw sonic violence. The band are also unafraid to drop in a really catchy groove now and then, "Divide and Conquer" and "Taken by Flames" could both easily be released as singles, such is the catchiness of either track. Look, groove metal is never going to be a genre I salivate over and Defectum Omnium is probably not going to be in my top twenty albums of 2024, but respect where it is due, this has given me far more than I ever expected going into it and it's bloody-red-meat grooves have had me happily nodding along throughout the several listens I have given this so far. Although I absolutely agree that it could do with a little trimming, it is definitely an album I can see me slamming on when I feel that a bit of no-nonsense metal riffing and memorable hooks might lighten up my day.

4/5

Spectral Voice - Sparagmos (2024)

Spectral Voice consists of three of the members of Blood Incantation plus drummer Eli Wendler of Black Curse. The three alternate issuing material with the prog-death wunderkinds, meaning that it has been a full seven years since their previous release, the debut Eroded Corridors of Unbeing, was unleashed.

New album, Sparagmos, continues very much in the vein of the debut with an atmospheric approach to death doom that is derived by incorporating significant influence from funeral doom and atmospheric sludge metal. Containing only four tracks, three of which weigh in around the twelve-minute mark, Spectral Vein declare their intention not to be rushed in their song composition. Indeed, the focus isn't really on riffs or any kind of headbanging material, but rather on the building of doleful and ominous atmospheres designed to elicit an emptional response and impart a melancholy uneasiness in the listener. Of course, there are times when all the steady atmosphere building reaches a climax and then the band shift gear and drop into full-on deathly riff and blasting rhythms mode, dropping the hammer on moments of brutally devastating death metal riffage.

Vocals are provided by Wendler and he handles these duties exceedingly well, with a nice range of styles from gutteral growls to harsher-sounding, sludge-derived howls of fury which feed into the atmosphere-building of the chiming guitar chords and deep-rooted, booming basswork. The production gives the four tracks a nicely foetid and putrid sheen with an echoing, cavernous sound that has served death doom metal so well for the past thirty-five years and which has become the requisite for a certain species of death metal.

Overall, I think this is an album that is worth expending a bit of effort to get to know. Initially I wasn't especially impressed and didn't think that the tracks always held together so well, even though on paper I should be all over this. However, I am now on my sixth or seventh playthrough and the album has started to make much more sense, with the sometimes unsettlingly ominous and funereal atmospheres being the whole point and the contrast of the blasting riffs when they arrive feeling quite hard-earned and so much more rewarding as a result. I now consider myself won over bt Sparagmos' deathly charms.

4/5

You know what, Ben, on reflection it actually contains little to no metal, so ignore my request please. In fact I am going to RYM now to downvote  drone metal.

Interesting list this month, Ben. My first question has got to be "did Daniel really suggest the Equilibrium track?!" I mean, I quite dug it too, surprisingly (it felt very cinematic), but it seems most unlike him.

Some really good stuff on there - I've been praising the Necrowretch album already this month, so that was a great start. Praise the Plague and Sworn then backed that up brilliantly and things were off to a great start. Elsewhere Departure Chandelier and Naglfar were also big hits with me. Some misses were Theophonos (too noisy) and Farsot (too twee) and Bròn are a band I have never got along with, so the war metal of Revenge was well placed as an emetic to remove that bloated feeling I had after Bròn. Final mention is one of my own picks with Paysage d'Hiver. I really wanted to suggest Winter from the same album, but we have had that before. Eintritt in die Sphaeren... is a damn good backup to fall back on though, ain't it?

Good work, my friend and thanks for keeping it interesting.

Hi Vinny, my suggestions for April:

Agressor - "Bloody Corpse" (from "Neverending Destiny", 1990)
Celtic Frost - "The Usurper" (from "To Mega Therion", 1985)
Epidemic - " Insanity Plea" (from "Decameron", 1992)
Municipal Waste - "Waste 'Em All" (from "Waste 'Em All", 2003)
Mutilator - "Brigade of Hate" (from "Immortal Force", 1987)
Sabbat (JPN) - "Satanasword" (from "Karmagmassacre", 2003)
Toxic Holocaust - "War Is Hell" (from "Evil Never Dies", 2003)
Vektor - "Pteropticon" (from "Terminal Redux", 2016)

Hi Daniel, my suggestions for April:

Behemoth - "Here and Beyond" (from "Zos Kia Cultus", 2002)
Cephalic Carnage - "Zuno Gyakusastsu" (from "Lucid Interval", 2002)
Contaminated - "Cosmic Shit Show" (from "Celebratory Beheading", 2024)
Incantation - "Blasphemy" (from "Blasphemy", 2002)
Malevolent Creation - "The Will to Kill" (from "The Will to Kill", 2002)
Verminous - "Salvation by Extermination" (from "Impious Sacrilege", 2003)
Unaussprechlichen Kulten - "Die teufelsbucher" (from "Häxan Sabaoth", 2024)

5th April looks like a good day for us doom and stoner doom fans with new albums from Friends of Hell (God Damned You to Hell), Acid Mammoth (Supersonic Megafauna Collision), Temple of the Fuzz Witch (Apotheosis) and Destroyer of Light (Degradation Years).

Saturnalia Temple - Paradigm Call

Released 1st March on Listenable Records

Saturnalia Temple are a swedish doom metal trio led by guitarist / vocalist and founding member Tommy Eriksson and featuring a revolving door of bassists and drummers, the most recent of whom, bassist Gottfrid Åhman and drummer Pelle Åhman were long-time members of In Solitude (Pelle as vocalist). The band play a real fundamentalist style of doom metal which uses simple and repetetive, highly distorted stoner doom riffs taken straight from the Wino playbook, bolstered by a forceful bass presence which deliver a strong hypnotic effect upon the listener. The hypnotic riffs are usually accompanied at some point during each track by psych-tinged guitar solos of varying lengths which very much feeds in to a trippy, stoner atmosphere and which should really be accompanied by huge clouds of sweet-smelling herb smoke. All is not hippy-trippy love all round though as Tommy's vocals are derived from black metal tradition with a harsh, cracked, croaking style that is completely at odds with the hypnotic feeling derived from the instrumentation.

And that really is all there is to Paradigm Call. This is not sophisticated stuff, if you want convoluted songwriting, technical showmanship or musical experimentation then look elsewhere because this is for people who know exactly what ST are about and want to partake of that particular bong hit. Everything except the solos is real basic stuff, the production is quite raw and the band's intent to mesmerise the listener into a blissed-out state is obvious from the get-go. I'm all in with this and love the album's effect of blanketing the listener in huge waves of sound, which I find exceedingly relaxing. My only real bugbear is with the numerous fade-outs, a trope I am never a big fan of, much preferring bands to end their tracks properly, but overall it's a big thumbs-up from me.

4/5

I haven't listened to Locrian before, so will have to check this one out.

Obsidian Tongue - The Stone Heart EP (2024)

Released 2nd February (self-released)

I've been a follower of Obsidian Tongue for a decade or so now and am a big fan of their epic atmospheric black metal. The band is made up of multi-instrumentalist Brian Hayter and Raymond Capizzo who is drummer with Falls of Rauros and is Austin Lunn's live drummer with Panopticon. The Stone Heart is a three-track, twenty-minute EP and is their first release since 2020's Volume III.

The band play lush atmospheric black metal that utilises both cleans and harsh, blackened vocals. There has been a post-metal aspect of build-up and release creeping into their sound since their more straightforward early couple of albums and this works exceedingly well as a songwriting decision with more textural variation within tracks. Nowhere is this better illustrated than on the EP's main event, the almost nine-minute second track, Winter Child, which has become an instant favourite.

The title track opener begins in a gothic-like, almost gentle post-punk style with clean vocals before bursting into full-on black metal blast-a-thon with Hayter reverting to the ragged, full-throated shrieks he delivers so well. The sound is filled out with the addition of fairly subtle keyboard work that is well-placed without ever threatening to overwhelm or drag the track into symphonic cheesiness. The aforementioned Winter Child begins in similar vein to the title track, except that the clean-sung opening section has more of a viking metal feel to it and extends for half the track length. However when the duo drop the hammer on this one at midpoint it really cooks and sweeps away all before it in a wave of black metal fury. It possesses the kind of scope of a mid-era Enslaved track, although the duo still have a bit of a way to go to emulate the Norwegian Kings! The EP closes out with a nice enough, if somewhat superfluous, three-minute instrumental piece which would probably sound really good worked into a full song.

Here's hoping that The Stone Heart is merely a place-keeper and that a full-length in similar vein is in the offing without us having to wait another four years.

4/5

Hi Ben, please add the new Obsidian Tongue EP, "The Stone Heart". Thanks in advance.

Here are few of my hidden gems guys:

The Amenta - "Flesh Is Heir" (2013) Industrial death metal from Sydney, Australia

Glorior Belli - "Meet Us at the Southern Sign" (2009) French black metal

Gnaw Their Tongues - "Abyss of Longing Throats" (2015) Industrial black metal/noise from Suriname

I checked out the Glorior Belli album this morning and there is indeed plenty to like about it. But I couldn't shake the feeling that it was too restrained, almost as if they were holding back and there were times when I was hoping they would just cut loose and let it rip, but it never really happened. Still, the guitar tone and vocals were great and all the requisite black metal atmosphere was all present and correct. But I so desperately wanted to hear a bit of all-out black metal blasting from them, because I think it would sound awesome, particularly as a climax to a couple of the slower, more atmosphere-focussed tracks.

I've never got round to this one, but if the music is as atmospheric as the cover then it should be a treat.

Interestingly, RYM tells me that you rated this release back in December 2017 Sonny. Must have left a deep impression. ;)

To be honest, Daniel, 2017 might as well have been 20 years ago for all that has happened since. But, yes you are probably right, if it was that great I am sure I would have remembered it, or at least remember having heard it. That said, I gave it four stars so it must have appealed on some level. I'm actually really looking forward to checking it out (again) now.

After a slow start getting the melodic stuff and the cybergrind out of the way, things picked up quickly and from track 5 onwards things looked much better with the filthy sound of Cryptworm leading the way. I have never listened to Anal Cunt before, mainly because I always thought they were supposed to be a bit of a joke band, but I actually quite liked this track, so never say never. Excellent stuff from Deicide, Disbelief, Plague of the Fallen and, of course, Neuropath. Good stuff too from Terrorizer, Mongrel, Horrifier, Nihilist and Napalm Death, so plenty of ammunition for further delving into The Horde's archives. The last two, like the first four, left me a bit cold, but overall this was another sterling playlist, so thanks for this, Daniel.

Unaussprechlichen Kulten - Häxan Sabaoth (2024)

Released 2nd February on  Iron Bonehead

Well I must admit up front that this one has been a bit of a head-scratcher for me. Big fan as I am of the chilean metal scene, I have never encountered Unaussprechlichen Kulten before, despite their 25+ years on the scene, so I am unable to comment as to how typical a release for the band this is.

Häxan Sabaoth takes a long-established style of death metal and incorporates a number of other styles within that framework to construct something a little beyond the norm. The most striking aspect of the album is the lead guitar work, which often has a jangling, chiming tone and which leaps off into shred-like guitar soloing at the drop of a hat. There are certainly some killer riffs, such as the very first one you hear after the occult-sounding intro ends, which is an absolute beauty that serves to draw you into the album's meatgrinder of mayhem. This mayhem and chaotic atmosphere is where those almost demented-sounding guitar leads come in. The neo-classical-adjacent excesses of the soloing when laid down over the archetypal death metal riffs has a similar effect to my ears as disso-death, with the leads sounding out of kilter and at odds with the riffing and blasting that is going on down below. The guitars are certainly the main event here with the deeply growled vocals and, to a certain extent, the drums, being pushed down into the mix where they feel like they are acting merely as support to the six-string depravity going on in the upper echelons of the mixing board.

I have detailed the challenges I face with a lot of dissonant metal and the same issues rear their head here again in this slightly different context, making it an uncomfortable listen at times as I struggle to reconcile the lead and rhythm work. That said, this does seem to be an interesting way to insert some dissonance into a standard death metal framework, although, due to my limited knowledge of death metal, I am unsure of how rare this approach is and I would be interested to hear what true disso-death fans think of it. It could be that a release like this needs more time devoted to it than I feel able to commit to, but for me this is an album where I respect the intentions more than I enjoy the result. Don't get me wrong, it occasionally drops into a riff I can really get a hold of and then it is a really cool blast, with the later tracks such as "Dho hna formula" and "Die teufelsbucher" being the ones where this happens most often and as such providing an album that I personally feel is back-loaded.

3/5

Thanks, SS. I am only familiar with the first Angel Dust album, Into the Dark Past, but I really enjoyed it, so I will definitely check those two out. Your description of Novembre has intrigued me enough to guarantee them a listen too, but I will probably pass on the neoclassical one.

Edit: I have given Border of Reality a couple of listens whilst doing some work outside this morning and it would be a lie to say that this is my usual fare, but you know what, I actually really enjoyed it. "When I Die" is a prog metal classic and would make the album worthwhile for that alone, but there was plenty more to keep me entertained. The cover of Rainbow's Spotlight Kid is tons better than the original, for example. So nice one, SilentScream, I'm gonna call this one a winner and you are no longer the lone rater.

Hi Ben, can you add Khlyst and their solitary "Chaos Is My Name" album

Necrowretch - Swords of Dajjal (2024)

Released 2nd February on Season of Mist Underground Activists

France's Necrowretch are a four-piece centred around guitarist, vocalist and founding member Vlad and, despite them being around for over fifteen years now, I have never crossed paths with before. Swords of Dajjal is their fifth full-length with the title referring to an evil entity from Islamic tradition. Musically Necrowretch play a muscular form of black metal that contains a significant quantity of death metal DNA which gives it a more solid, denser sound than you would necessarily expect, whilst remaining emphatically within the black metal realm.

Drumming duties are handled by Nicolas Ferrero, ex-member of Fhoi Myore and Brutal Avengers, under the pseudonym N. Destroyer and he turns in an admirably controlled, yet powerful performance which is pushed to the fore at times and thunders like the rumblings of the very heavens themselves. The riffs are fast and frenetic in the main, but the band are also able to throttle it back and drop into a more doomy sound that feels more ominous than any amount of out and out blasting. There is some decent lead work, handled by guitarist Wenceslas Carrieu (as W. Cadaver), although it is submerged in the mix to a degree and doesn't necessarily cut like it could as a result. Vlad's vocals are of the ragged, savage, shrieking variety that so well define the archetypal black metal singer and are spot on.

I think that ultimately appreciation of Swords of Dajjal will come down to how the listener views the mixing of the album, with the drums most definitely having a more dominant presence than is usual and their booming and thundering presence may be too overwhelming for some, although I confess they are one of the reasons that I like this so much. The flipside of this is that, for some the lead guitar may be too overwhelmed and buried under this all-consuming battery and although the riffs are perfectly audible the solos are swamped. As I said, I quite like this thundering style and am well on board with how this has turned out with it being a visceral-sounding and energetic blast of black metal indulgence.

4/5

Hi Ben, could you add finnish funeral doom act Obseqvies and their sole album, 2018's "The Hours of My Wake", please?

The Flight of Sleipnir are one of the great hidden gems of doom metal in my opinion Vinny and have always produced consistently high quality material throughout their career.

Phil Swanson was the Hour of 13 vocalist for the album featured here and he has been in a ton of doom bands. Traditional doom metal bands don't always have the greatest of vocalists, yet weirdly I kind of like that about them. Swanson, Albert Witchfinder and Chritus of Goatess, Lord Vicar and Count Raven are three that spring to mind, but I really dig on all those bands and, for me, the questionable vocals work, kind of like when a degree of sloppiness in really raw black metal often works.

I didn't like the Funeral track much either and, like you, this was my first experience of Fudge Tunnel who were much better than the mental picture I had built up of them. I really enjoyed the Altar of the Stag track you submitted and the Dyatlov Pass Incident has always intrigued me, so that is an album I definitely have on my list to dig into.

Anyway, I'm glad you found some stuff to explore further and thanks for listening.

Hi Ben, could you please add quebecois black metallers Nälzer?

Could you add finnish doom band Earthbound Machine please Ben?

Stunning list this month, Vinny. It may actually be my favourite of all those you have produced so far, with not a single duff track to my ears, even Pantera didn't piss me off after so many great-sounding tracks and it provided a brilliant soundtrack to my Friday afternoon. Special props must go to the tracks from Shah, Armory, Deathwish, Sacrifice and Death Strike, the first three of which I am completely unfamiliar with. Honorable mentions to other unknowns, Mortal Scepter, Demonizer, Torture Squad, Expander and the SSS track (although I do know some of their stuff I hadn't heard this one). Always nice to hear some Testament, Sodom, A.R.G. and Sacred Reich as well. Nicely done, my friend and thanks a lot for all the effort expended providing a quality listen.

Hi Ben, sorry, I have another. Could you add italian solo funeral doom project Il Vuoto, please?

I've never got round to this one, but if the music is as atmospheric as the cover then it should be a treat.

Here is my original (brief) review of this and I must admit to being somewhat underwhelmed. Still, this was more than four years ago, so I will endeavour to re-listen to it during the month and see if my opinion has changed during the intervening, pandemic-ridden years.

 "Slumber were a Swedish band who released this, their only full-length album, in 2004. The band split in 2011, the members forming progressive metal band Atoma immediately afterwards. Fallout features melodic death doom metal with a hefty dose of symphonic metal trappings such as keyboards and choral backing vocals. The growling main vocals seem to buried down in the mix and are somewhat smothered by the clean-sounding guitar and the keyboards. There also seems to be an inordinate amount of cymbal mixed quite high that I found quite intrusive and distracting.

Generally, I find this gothic / symphonic version of death doom metal leaves me a little underwhelmed - I prefer my death doom to be more melancholy or abyssal-sounding and less bombastic. So whilst recognising that a lot of doom metal afficianados think highly of this, I've got to confess that it's not really for me."

3/5

Hi Ben, my suggestions for April:

Narbeleth - "On the Sight of Dusk" (from "A Pale Crown", 2024)

Rotting Christ - "Ad Noctis" (from "Genesis", 2002)

Xasthur - "Soul Abduction Ceremony" (from "Nocturnal Poisoning", 2002)

March 2024

1. Witches of God - "The Magician" (from "Into the Heart of Darkness", 2019) [submitted by Sonny]

2. Altar of the Stag - "Dyatlov" (from "Visceral Offering", 2024) [submitted by Vinny]

3. Fudge Tunnel – “Hate Song” (from “Hate Songs In E Minor”, 1991) [submitted by Daniel]

4. Draconian - "The Abhorrent Rays" (from "Arcane Rain Fell", 2005)

5. Hour of 13 - "The Crawlspace" (from "The Ritualist", 2010)

6. The Flight of Sleipnir - "Awaken" (from Skadi", 2017)

7. Spectral Voice - "Death's Knell Rings in Eternity" (from "Sparagmos", 2024) [submitted by Sonny]

8. diSEMBOWELMENT – “River of Salvation (My Divine Punishment)” (from “Deep Sensory Procession Into Aural Fate”, 1991) [submitted by Daniel]

9. Goatess - "Know Your Animal" (from "Goatess", 2013)

10. KYPCK - " Чёрная дыра" (from "Черно", 2008)

11. Black Wound - "Vermin Firstborn" (from "Warping Structure", 2023) [submitted by Vinny]

12. Funeral - "Yield To Me" (from "In Fields of Pestilent Grief", 2002) 

13. Earth – “A Bureaucratic Desire For Revenge Part 2” (from “Extra-Capsular Extraction” E.P., 1991) [submitted by Daniel]

14. Dukatalon - "Angels in Red" (from "Involuntary Action", 2020)

15. Loss - "Horizonless" (from "Horizonless", 2017)

Hi Ben, could you add dutch death / black metallers Lucifericon, please?

Hi Ben, could you add US stoner metal band Rifflord, please?

Could you add US one-man black metal act Void Ritual please, Ben?

I don't have enough technical knowledge to debate this, so will have to take your word for it, Daniel. I suppose in another five or ten years somebody will be telling me Ride the Lightning and Show No Mercy aren't metal.

Hi Ben, could you add US funeral doom project Lucian the Wolfbearer please.

Contaminated - Celebratory Beheading

Released 9th February on Blood Harvest

Contaminated are a death metal crew from Melbourne who have been around for more than a decade now, but who have only just got around to releasing their sophomore, following a full seven years after their debut, Final Man. The man behind the band is Lachlan McPherson who, amongst a number of other projects, is also behind grinders Rawhead, with Contaminated (like Rawhead) originally beginning life as one of his solo projects before being expanded into a full band after the release of his Pestilential Decay demo in 2014.

The band's debut was a cavernous-sounding, raw kind of affair and they have certainly taken huge strides production-wise with Celebratory Beheading. The sound is cleaner and clearer and although I would often see that as a downward step, I think it better fits what the band are trying to get across. The focus here is less on creating a foetid atmosphere than dealing out an object lesson in bruatality, less the lumbering menace of a threat unseen than the more immediate threat of a fist in the face. I guess that Lachy has brought across some of the inherent brutality from Rawhead's grinding, on which he had been concentrating in recent years, which has contributed to making Celebratory Beheading a much more aggressive and violent-sounding album than it's predecessor.

The individual tracks are quite dense, mainly due to a quite heavily distorted guitar sound and a powerful, pummelling drum performance from skinsman Christoph Winkler who is a member of several grindcore outfits such as Internal Rot and Incinerated, where he deals out blastbeats for fun. Vocals-wise, Lachy's bellowing is exceedingly aggressive and he often sounds like he could strip paint off your walls, if not actually tearing them down completely. It's not all hypercharged velocity, however and the band do like to shift down and hit a slower groove from time to time, to add some telling contrast to the more explicit violence of the hi-speed blasting, giving the listener time to gather themselves in preparation for the next blitzkrieg.

Ultimately, this is an album of no-nonsense, raucous death metal, with deathgrind leanings that makes no pretention to being anything other than that and successfully delivers on it's premise of out and out aural violence. Approach it as such and there is much to get your teeth into here.

4/5

Hi Daniel, sorry, I have forgotten, how much time are we allotted each month for The Horde suggestions?

I'm a big fan of 2021's "Feel" debut album from Los Angeles death metallers Apparition which we featured here at the Academy at some point so I'm planning to be all over the follow-up "Disgraced Emanations From a Tranquil State" which is due to be released on 22nd March.

I had "Feel" pegged at a creditable 4.5/5 and even bought a vinyl copy, so am looking forward to going another round with the Autopsy acolytes.

A new My Dying Bride album is in the offering, with it's release slated for April 19th on Nuclear Blast. There are several ratings on RYM, so I don't know if it has been leaked early, but only one track, Thornwyck Hymn, is available on Bandcamp so far. That track sounds pretty decent, with the ingredients you would expect from classic MDB all present and correct. Nice cover too.