Sonny92's Reviews
Wolves in the Throne Room (WitTR) were formed by and revolve around brothers Aaron and Nathan Weaver in 2002. They are from the Pacific Northwest of the US and are considered to be the progenitors and prime movers of the niche sub-genre of atmospheric black metal known as Cascadian black metal (named for the Cascade mountains, a range that extends from British Columbia to northern California and which the band call home). They are also the first US black metal band that managed to make any real lasting impression on me. Sure I'd listened to a few prior to the Brothers Weaver - Absu, Agalloch and Nachtmystium had all been given ear-time, but none had really got their hooks into me until this 45 minutes of atmospheric black metal nirvana forced it's way into my CD player courtesy of a like-minded metalhead I worked with at the time.
Two Hunters is the epitome of what atmospheric black metal strives to achieve, utilising the savage and harsh sound of black metal in such a way, through repetition and subtle chord changes, that the result is something beautiful and even, dare I say, transcendental at it's best. The music truly does evoke the awe-inspiring and imposing might of the United States' northwestern wilderness (admittedly I have never been there, but I have watched enough National Geographic channel documentaries to have some idea of the impressive scale of the region). From the slow build of the opening post-metal instrumental, Dea Artio, right through to the ending of the eighteen-minute epic I Will Lay Down My Bones Among the Rocks and Roots and it's haunting female vocal, this album absolutely drips with an atmosphere that most others can only dream about getting close to recreating, despite many trying.
After the gathering thunderheads of Dea Artio's ominously building post-metal fade into the aether, the band launch into their trademark wall of sound, built from successive layers of bass and guitar and underpinned by the metronomic drumming and crashing cymbals of Aaron Weaver that signal the beginning of Vastness and Sorrow, a track that manages to convey a feeling of both vastness and sorrow quite sublimely throughout the entirety of it's twelve minutes. For the early part of third track, Cleansing, we are treated to the ethereal beauty of Jessika Kenney's clean, sirenic vocals over a ritualistic soundscape as Aaron's drums beat a primal rhythm to act as a gentle interlude and introduction to the track which ultimately explodes with full force. An interesting point is that on the double vinyl versions of the album, the introduction is greatly extended, taking the track from almost ten minutes to nearly sixteen and allowing an even more gradual build with a more ambient, choral opening.
After Cleansing we are treated to the album's epic closing track I Will Lay Down My Bones Among the Rocks and Roots, my personal favourite and one of the best titles for an atmo-black track yet written. This eighteen minute modern saga tells the tale of a future apocalyptic conflagration that engulfs the Earth, yet the song's protagonist, a woodland spirit of the natural world, takes refuge in his sacred grove, awaiting the time when he (or she) can return and begin the land's great renewal. Again, running counter to accepted black metal aesthetic, this is a track that ultimately has a positive outlook with it's theme of death and rebirth and the necessary clearing out of the old to make way for the new. Everything on this track screams epic, with it's heaving and melodic depiction of global disaster and the ultimate rebirth, signalled once more by Jessika Kenney's heart-rending final vocal as it heralds in the New Day.
Two Hunters is WitTR's masterpiece, one of the finest USBM album's ever commited to disc and is one of the absolute best atmospheric black metal releases, to be held up alongside the likes of Drudkh's Blood in Our Wells, Ulver's Bergtatt: Et eeventyr i 5 capitler and Burzum's Hvis lyset tar oss in the atmo-black pantheon.
As a postscript, aside from the extended version of Cleansing, the vinyl editions of Two Hunters have an extra track in side 4's To Reveal, another sixteen minutes of sublime black metal, very much in keeping with the rest of the album. I'm assuming that the vinyl version is the full Two Hunters experience as envisioned from the album's outset, as both the extra track and the extended intro to Cleansing sound fully integrated in this version and, presumably the original CD version was edited to allow for a less intimidating runtime.
This seems, upon a first listen, to be quite a complex black metal album with it's strange song structures, their stop/start nature, the chants, the disparate array of percussive elements and the keening guitar soloing, but under all this dissonant chaff there is actually a real old-school beast of an album that harkens back to the likes of early Mayhem and Darkthrone with some killer 90's BM riffs (the one in the middle of Wherein a Messenger of the Devil Appears was a real "gotcha" moment for me). The fact that this crazed, schizoid black metal concept album is the product of a single person (Bestial Devotion, drummer of Gainesville's Negative Plane) is amazing, as it sounds far more like it has the kind of dynamic that can only really come from a full band.
The album is comprised of four tracks, each weighing in at a length of eleven to thirteen minutes, that tell the story of Christian martyr St. Achatius, who was tortured and beheaded in Byzantium during the early 4th century for refusing to recant his faith. The busy nature of the tracks, the lo-fi aesthetic and heavy distortion, does invoke an atmosphere that illustrates the relentless nature of the venerable saint's trials at the hands of his torturers, not allowing a moments respite, similar to the modern tales of unrelenting torment meted out in places like Abu-Graibh. The interspersing of the tracks with occasional chants and (more frequent) bell effects suggests the poor Achatius steadfastly clinging to his faith despite this onslaught against his soul from the more dissonant elements.
At first listen I wasn't exactly over-enamoured by this, as it seemed like it was wantonly disjointed and felt like an attempt at some kind of avant-garde black metal collage, but subsequent listens have allowed me to recognise that underneath it is quite a primal black metal record that hasn't actually strayed all that far from the genre's earliest roots. I've bought in to it's jagged, sharp-edged structure and the disconcerting effect it has on the listener, like a painting or picture that is viewed from a weird perspective. The result of all this is a real one-off of an album that I have heard very little to compare with (this of course may be a failing of my own and perhaps there are loads, but I don't think so). Yet another album that proves black metal is still a long way from having run it's course and can still turn out original releases of exceptional, thought-provoking quality.
First off I've got to say the production on this album is first rate - the sound is crystal clear and every instrument can clearly be heard - in particular there are a couple of early moments when the bass shines throught to great effect, at the end of opener Falling Fast and during the chorus of Reborn in Flesh. The guitar sound is crisp and the drums have a great "snap" to them.
The songs themselves are fairly aggressive death/thrash, borrowing heavily from the Kreator template and in this comparison is sowed the seeds of TA's destruction, because compared to the Teutonic giants this will always come off second best. The songwriting is decent, if not earth-shattering, but to be honest it's virtually impossible to sound original playing a fairly limited style of metal like thrash after nearly forty years of the genre's history.
The vocals, whilst being mainly well-suited to the style are just too similar on every track. A slower track like the first half of Dead Souls for example, would really benefit from a different vocal style - Daniel Altwegg's delivery seeming to limit what is the album's standout track. In fact Dead Souls is the track that gives me some hope for the band as technically the members are all exceedingly proficient, but it seems like the songwriting (along with the vocals) are limiting them. However Dead Souls proves that they have it in them to write excellent thrash metal and if they can produce more in this vein then they can yet put out a great album.
As it is, this is good, if somewhat predictable, aggressive thrash metal from a band I feel are capable of more and I seriously hope they manage to take that extra step up.
The first thing that strikes me about this album is the somewhat unconventional tone of the guitars for a black metal album, sounding more akin to the tone of old-school death metal such as Autopsy, even down to the "looseness" of the playing. Add to this the ritualistic rhythms of the drumming in many places that give the album a genuine occult atmosphere and you do indeed have a unique black metal experience that, despite this, is still very much in the realms of black metal - the vocals in particular are especially tortured and unhinged-sounding (the deranged howls during The Passion of a Sorceress are indeed something to behold). In fact vocalist Urian's performance is possibly one of the most disturbed and disturbing I've heard since Silencer's Death Pierce Me - from demonic growls to piercing shrieks and the afore-mentioned demented howling this sounds like an artist on the edge (of sanity!)
There is a nice variation in pacing of the material, the creeping, crawling of Vintage Black Magic owes as much to doom metal as it does black metal and as such it adds an extra level of heaviness to the song. In fact the album as a whole feels more like a bludgeon than the usual sabre-like slashing and slicing of conventional black metal, even on the faster, more feral-sounding tracks like Festival of Devotion.
Overall this album is a great attempt to do something a little different with black metal that feels like the band have stamped something of their particular personality on the recording that goes beyond mere entertainment and into the realm of genuine self-expression (and presumably some kind of personal catharsis). What's particularly great about it for me as the listener is that I can't for the life of me pick out one particular favourite track - they are all brilliant, each in it's own way.
My Threnody are the solo project of Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Jefferson Brito. This, his debut album, was recorded in his home studio and, to be honest, it sounds little better than a demo recording which, for this type of symphonic metal, is really going to adversely affect how successfully it comes across. An anomaly of the production is that the numerous gentler sections actually seem to sound louder than the heavier parts, which detracts from the effectiveness of both. It seems to me that Mr. Brito's songwriting ambitions are considerably greater than his ability to deliver them. He seems to be one of those doom artists who think that the best way to express loss and mourning is to throw the kitchen sink at it, keyboards that are laid on with a trowel, obtrusive sound effects, simulated classical instruments, variations in vocal style and gentle/heavy transitions that feel forced rather than organically flowing one into another. It's almost like the guy has too many ideas and wants to cram as much as possible into his hour's runtime without allowing any to become fully formed. With so many ideas, there are some that actually sound like they may make for a decent song if allowed to develop a little further and it's a shame that they are crowded out. I feel that sometimes these solo projects would be better as a full band where they can bounce ideas off each other and allow for a bit of self-editing. Sometimes less really is more.
Ultimately, I am no big fan of this type of symphonic doom even when it's done well, so this shoddy-sounding morass of competing ideas and underdeveloped songs really doesn't move me like good doom metal should and in a crowded field this has too many superiors to warrant too much attention.
I've recently been extensively revisiting Anthrax's earlier stuff and whilst Spreading The Disease and Among The Living still retain their classic status for me, I have had a huge about-face with the subsequent two albums, State of Euphoria and Persistence of Time. I was originally much better disposed towards State of Euphoria with it's catchier choruses and less so to PoT's denser material. However, I feel time hasn't been too kind to SoE, whereas Persistence of Time has aged much better. Neither are as good as the previous two albums and I feel the main reason for this is the fact that there are less by way of backing vocals (particularly Scott Ian) that helped to beef up Joey Belladonna's performances on those earlier releases. Joey is a perfectly fine singer, but lacks the vocal presence to carry off such aggressive thrash in isolation, sounding a little weak as a result.
SoE comes across as a bit throwaway now and, to be honest, in places a little silly, fuelled I'm sure by the "success" of I'm the Man. PoT, however, whilst not having as many great songs as Among the Living is much more akin to the 1987 classic and songs like Blood and Gridlock wouldn't feel out of place next to tracks like A Skeleton in the Closet and Imitation of Life. There is some filler and I think it peaks with Gridlock - Intro to Reality, H8 Red and One Man Stands failing to match the preceding highs and sounding a bit vanilla. It does go out strong with Discharge, but overall the latter half is ordinary.
It is a more mature-sounding album than State of Euphoria, but just doesn't have enough killer tracks to justify higher ratings. Would have been much better if they had trimmed the length to about 40 minutes and lost some of that Side B filler.
First, let me put this album into some kind of context. In 1979 I finally got my first motorcycle, a Suzuki T250 Hustler which, with a top speed in excess of 100mph was a bit of a beast for a 17-year-old kid. Now this new-found freedom just happened to coincide with one of the most exciting things to happen so far (after the acquisition of said motorbike) in the life of that 17-year-old heavy metal fan - the onset of what later became known as the NWOBHM (we didn't call it anything, it was just our lives!) Anyway, I'd regularly hop onto that bike and, with a few mates, take the 15 mile trip to the nearest hall that allowed metal and rock bands to play, to see the bands I was familiar with - Sabbath, Priest, Motorhead, UFO, Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy and the likes. It was around this time that these big(ger) names started being supported by bands not much older than ourselves that were actually pretty exciting, bands like Angel Witch, Girlschool, Marseille, Samson and (to finally get to the point) Saxon. These young bands were generating some real energy and doing an absolutely brilliant job as warm-up acts, pushing the headliners all the way. The problem was that after witnessing them live and in their element, when you got hold of these new band's records they actually seemed a bit flat and sadly disappointing, with a very few exceptions - Angel Witch's debut, the first two Maidens and this underrated gem.
The first Saxon album is, in all honesty, a bit crap and I know the majority of fans prefer Strong Arm of the Law but, along with the other three albums I mentioned, this is the absolute essence of what the NWOBHM meant to me as someone who was there. I mean, how can a budding biker not be taken by the opener, Motorcycle Man and the entire album has a feeling of freedom that really resonated with me at the time and I still have a strong emotional attachment to. Where it scores over the other Saxon albums is that it manages to capture the energy that I remember from when they used to open for Motorhead (they were one of the new bands Lemmy took under his wing) in a way their others didn't.
There's some great riffs on display here (Wheels of Steel is absolutely killer), Biff Byford never sounded better, Pete Gill and Steve Dawson propel the songs like a supercharged V8 and Paul Quinn and Graham Oliver are devastating. There are some genuine classics, the title track, Machine Gun, Motorcycle Man and, of course, one of the first heavy metal singles to get airplay on daytime Radio One in England, the superb 747 (Strangers in the Night) with it's searing intro and oddly affecting tale of a plane about to crash. Seriously, if you're a metal fan and have never heard this album, do yourself a favour and remedy that as soon as possible. Anyway, thanks for indulging an old metalhead and his reminiscences and really, check this out.
This EP, released as a single-sided 12" of 500 copies on Rise Above was only for sale at the Rise Above Records 20th Anniversary Show on Dec 13th 2008. It's single, eleven-minute instrumental track is a big departure for Electric Wizard as they dip their toes into the waters of ritualistic drone, particularly coming as it does in a fairly conventional period for the band, between Witchcult Today and Black Masses. There is very little variation throughout the entire eleven minutes, it's stand-out features being the heavily ritualistic-sounding drums and the eerily ominous organ. Jus Osborne's guitar is present, but very heavily buried down in the mix, so you have to work a little to hear it.
This certainly won't be to everyone's taste and has divided even die-hard Wizard fans, but I quite like the way you can get lost in the track and, to such end, it's eleven minutes may even be a bit short. It makes sense for the band to release this as a stand-alone EP rather than part of an album, although I think it would have made a great intro to Black Masses. Probably more likely to appeal to metal heads who dig on drone than straight-up stoners, but you never can tell!
I love MSW's releases under his Hell banner and a proportion of this album is in very similar vein. This latest album was written over a period of five years and is a very personal album for him as it deals with his brother RAW's ten-year fight with addiction and the toll it has taken on the wider family. What we have here then is four tracks of visceral emotion in which MSW lays his (and his family's) soul bare.
Opener "O Brother" is instantly recognisable to any fan of Hell, but with a twist as it initially features a female vocal section before MSW himself takes over in his usual anguish-ridden vocal style. This is followed by the short instrumental "Funus" that is a gentle piano and violin piece of only three minutes duration. "Humanity" begins in brooding style with a gently strummed guitar before a heaving riff kicks in with accompanying soaring vocals. The song then dips and soars from introspection to fuming anger, superbly dragging the listener along with it on this emotional rollercoaster. The final, eponymous track is almost twenty minutes in length, although I hesitate to call it epic as that implies a certain bombast and that's not what this is about. The sorrow, helplessness and bitterness felt by the loved ones around and affected by a person dealing with addiction are laid bare for all to hear, from the resignation and sadness of the tracks post-metal first half to the seething resentment of the sludge-drenched latter half.
This is metal that is at once vulnerable and vicious, as MSW illustrates musically a spectrum of emotion from concern and compassion to frustration and resentment and in so doing has released an exceptional album and one I wasn't expecting at all. The already well-respected (by me anyway) MSW has gone up even higher in my estimation after this incredibly powerful release that really speaks from the heart and should resonate with anyone who has had any experience with addiction or the addicted.
The first five star album of 2020 for me.
Holy Moses were formed in Aachen in 1980 and featured soon to be husband and wife Andy and Sabina Classen on guitar and vocals respectively. As such they were one of the very earliest of the teutonic thrash / speed metal acts. Between '80 and '86 they put out quite a few demos before releasing Queen of Siam in May of '86 on the newly formed Aaarrg Records.
Queen of Siam is quite a fun record with it's thrash still retaining some of the NWOBHM stylings that was a feature of the very earliest thrash and speed metal releases. Obviously Sabina's vocals are a focal point with female singers being such a rarity in the male-dominated world of thrash. Her vocals are of harsh nature with a creditable growl and she even comes up with a pretty convincing impression of Lemmy on Roadcrew, a song that is a tribute to Motorhead.
Musically it doesn't do anything flashy, there's not a great number of solos or guitar hero histrionics, the rhythm section is solid enough and there's a variety in song tempo from the slower NWOBHM influenced stuff to the full-on thrashers. They even successfully repurpose one of my all-time favourite riffs, the killer from Bad Brains' Big Takeover, on the track Queen of Siam.
As I said earlier, it is a fun album and it does have a place in the Teutonic Thrash story, but it certainly isn't essential and by the time of it's release the rest of the German scene was of a far more aggressive and energetic nature and had mainly moved on into more extreme territory.
The black metal equivalent of Enya or an insufferable new age music CD that bored suburbanites play whilst doing fucking Pilates or some such shit. I can't even imagine who it's aimed at because those types wouldn't be able to stand the shrieking and black metal fans should hate everything else about it. I can smell the sandalwood and see the life-energy emitting crystals from here. Is this really where black metal has ultimately ended up. I thought that KFC ad was bad, but this is just ridiculous. I'm glad I listened to it at work, because if it had been in my own time I would have been REALLY mad! The one star is for the cover, by the way.
I am always suspicious of bands that are the darlings of the metal press, as Nevermore certainly were at one time. Mags like Kerrang!, Metal Hammer and Terrrorizer always seemed to be the bitches of the record labels and would schmooze whatever crap the labels were pushing at the time. This is why I spend so much of my time mooching in the metal underground listening to obscure shit no one else cares about I suppose. I have no objection to popular bands, I just like to discover them my own way, not have them pushed into my face by some music press hack at the behest of a record label marketing exec. Furthermore I had somehow garnered the impression that Nevermore were some kind of Dream Theater clone (which certainly didn't help endear them to me).
Anyway, encouraged by positive reviews on this very site, I took the plunge and so, This Godless Endeavor is my first experience of the band. While it is undoubtedly true that they are more Dream Theater than Dream Death, luckily they eschew the endless technical wankery I associate with that bunch of insufferable prog metallers. At first listen I wasn't all that impressed I must confess. Having approached the album from the perspective of a member of The Pit, I was expecting a lot more on the thrash front, but the album seems to contain very little true thrash. I would say it's more akin to the thrash-derived power metal of early Iced Earth. So I then came at it from a different perspective, with more of an open mind to the prog elements. Now my current yardstick for progressive metal are albums like Blood Incantation's Hidden History... and Venenum's Trance of Death, both of which exhibit a degree of visceral aggression which contrasts the intellectual progressiveness and gives a more complete experience in my opinion. This Godless Endeavor does exhibit a little of this primal aggression, but it feels stilted and constrained compared to the more cerebral aspects of the album, which are still the main focus. However, even I must agree, it is done very well, there are some quite memorable, well-written songs and the performance is excellent. I can certainly hear why many people are fans, but it doesn't quite hit the intangibles for me. Sure, I'll nod my head in appreciation at a riff, a solo or a vocal melody but at no point did it make make me want to shout "FUCK YEAH!!" and I think the very best metal should do just that.
An excellent, early ep from Norway's Aeternus, that isn't just blood and guts black metal, but a more subtle offering. Opener, Black Dust, is the stand-out for me. With it's Black Sabbath-referencing opening and brilliant blend of black, death and even doom, it's a glorious celebration of dark metal. Next up is Victory, with it's faster tempo it is a more typical mid-90's black metal offering. Third track, Raven and Blood, is another monster of a song, with a number of changes of pace as it switches from out-and-out black metal to a more death metal sound. The record then closes with a short folky passage that rounds the ep off nicely. Overall, the song writing is excellent, on a par with such BM legends as Enslaved and Emperor, and the execution is equally terrific, making it one of my favourite nineties black metal ep's and this from a time when there were some bona fide classics coming out, with which it justifiably stands shoulder to shoulder.
Metal is the object of much sneering from the elitist arbiters of cultural worth, probably due to it's blue-collar origins and appeal and general lack of liberal bias. In the past it may well have brought some of this dismissive attitude on itself, but since the turn of the millenium there have been a number of metal bands who are not content to merely rehash the same metal tropes and to elevate their work beyond a mere collection of songs, but rather to use their musical songwriting to produce pieces that can be considered as being actual art. Isis are one such band, emerging from the sludge metal scene, they began adding layers of atmosphere and more subltle sonic textures to the sludge-inspired heaviness, until, by the time of Panopticon, the album was more like an aural oil painting, composed of varying shades and textures of sound to make an imaginative and atmospheric whole that transcends the restrictions of the scene that originally spawned them.
At times meditatively calm and gentle, at others febrile and raging, the light and shade of human emotion are laid bare in musical form, this interpreting of the human condition being one of the central tenets of what makes good art. This, in common with the rest of Isis' work (and atmospheric sludge in general) is not really for the casual listener and is one of those albums where you get more out, the more you are prepared to put into appreciating it.
Now I'm not claiming this to be any revelatory work of unparralelled genius, in fact I actually prefer previous album Oceanic, but I think that albums like this can only enhance the reputation of metal music in the wider world outside the genre's diehard adherents and as such should be heralded as taking metal to a new level of cultural significance.
I have had an on/off relationship with Sepultura. Their Chaos AD album was my very first CD purchase and is an album I am still extremely fond of. However, their Roots and Against albums did little for me and I lost interest in the band. Beneath the Remains was released four years prior to Chaos AD and is a different-sounding record to that 1993 album. Based heavily on the Metallica / Megadeth sound BtR is classic 80's thrash metal with heavy, powerful riffs. A lot of people claim a death metal presence in here as well, but apart from maybe the vocals I'm sorry, I don't hear it. Igor Cavalera is a fantastic metal drummer and here puts in an exemplary performance behind the kit, propelling the songs along as much as Max and Andreas Kisser's riffs. The production was handled by Scott Burns and is excellent, Igor in particular benefitting from his expertise. Max Cavalera's vocals are powerful and are uniquely his own - being one of those singers you recognise immediately wherever you may hear him. The songs are fairly complex and the playing reasonably technical, but they still gallop along at a pace without becoming stacatto or disjointed as can happen with overtly technical metal. The 'A' side's four tracks in particular are exceptionally strong and the 'B' side doesn't quite maintain the momentum completely successfully, but this is just a matter of comparison and it's five tracks are still pretty damn good.
South America long remained a bastion for thrash metal even beyond the point where the rest of the world seemed to have abandoned it. Sepultura and this album in particular, are probably the main reason for that as bands from that part of the world attempted to emulate their local heroes and kept the thrash flame alive in the mountains and river deltas of the south american continent. That as much as anything pays testament to the value of the band and this album in particular.
When it was released in 1986, Slayer's controversial third album left Tipper Gore and the PMRC, along with other "moral arbiters", frothing with indignation at it's brutal and blasphemous imagery, but most especially because of one song, the opener Angel of Death and it's alleged glorification of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. I am of the opinion that this was purely a shock tactic used by the band, in the same way they utilise violent imagery on other songs like Piece by Piece and Postmortem and is no indication of any Nazi sentiments held by any member, as they have on many occasions attested.
Controversy and lyrical content aside this was at the time probably the most shocking and brutal introduction to any record up to that point. Initially the album flashes by in a killing frenzy, from Tom Araya's opening scream, via King and Hanneman's weaponized solos and Dave Lombardo's jet-propelled drumming, right up until the closing thunderstorm a mere 28 minutes later, leaving the unsuspecting listener breathless and stupefied, instantly demanding another listen to confirm that what you just heard was real. In an interview at the time I remember the band saying that during rehearsals the album was weighing in at around 34 minutes, but with the aggression and energy they put into it at the time of recording it ended up at just over 28 minutes! Despite the pace of the songs, the production allows every note to be heard distinctly and a large degree of respect has to go to Rick Rubin and Andy Wallace for such a brilliant job done.
Ultimately, this is one of those rare albums that defined what metal is and is firmly ensconced in the top few albums of most metalheads, or certainly those who were around at the time of it's release. Sure, with the explosion of extreme metal genres there are certainly more brutal and/or intense albums out there, but they don't have Reign in Blood's legendary status for a very good reason - the songs just aren't as fuckin' good. Angel of Death, the duo of Altar of Sacrifice and Jesus Saves and the apocalyptic Raining Blood. These are all-time classics and need no justification! Reign in Blood is an album that still sounds as vital and thrilling as it did over thirty years ago and that is no mean feat, my friends.
Make no mistake, Kreator's second album Pleasure to Kill, has only one purpose - to Thrash you to within an inch of your life and to this end it's mission is immensely successful. PtK is a vicious and raw assault on the listener with an aggressiveness few thrashers have ever equalled, much like the previous year's Seven Churches, Possessed's proto-death album. In addition to Possessed's classic, the influence of tracks like Death Is Your Saviour and Pleasure to Kill can be heard throughout the early albums of Death, Morbid Angel and the rest of the first wave death outfits.
While I find it hard to look beyond Reign in Blood as the pinnacle of Thrash intensity, this is one of those very few that comes really close (Dark Angel's Darkness Descends being the other) with several songs that certainly wouldn't feel out of place on Slayer's masterpiece. The riffs are neck-breakingly savage, the drumming brutal and the solos are crazed, while Mille and Ventor's shared vocals are both sublimely suited to this more aggressive style of Thrash.
I have seen any number of reviews complaining about the lack of variety on offer, but that isn't really the issue here. As I said at the start of the review, this album's sole intention is to facilitate your attempt to try to break your neck in a headbanging frenzy and if you want a more nuanced and varied album then this was probably never meant for you anyway. A genuine Thrash classic and a headbanging masterclass.
Exodus' debut, released back in 1985, is their best by quite some way in my book (although I do have a bit of a soft spot for 2004's Tempo of the Damned too). Really pacy and dynamic riffing with some pretty hot solos and sing-a-long choruses put this up on a par with many of thrash's early classics. For some reason Bonded by Blood isn't considered as indispensible as other early thrash classics by everyone however. There are probably a couple of reasons for this, the drums are merely functional and Paul Baloff's crazed vocals aren't to everyone's taste, but the real reason is probably due to hindsight and the fact that Exodus' subsequent output reached neither the level of this debut or of their contemporaries' later releases (Master of Puppets and Peace Sells.. were still in the future back then, remember) and so the band as a whole are not spoken of in the same breath as the likes of Metallica, Megadeth and even Testament, although I think this is a better album than any Chuck Billy's crew put out. Bonded by Blood, Metal Command and Strike of the Beast are chugging classics that stand against anything from the time. But, goddamn... that cover is still fuckin' horrible!
I used to avoid Boris like the plague, but took the plunge with this album after seeing the constant raving about it - and now it's possibly my favourite drone metal album. Essentially a single 44 minute piece split into five parts, Part One is made up of the usual huge, droning, sustained chords most associated with drone metal before segueing into a very laid back second section (and the albums longest) that begins very post-rock and spacey-sounding then starts building in intensity (and volume!) before, finally, the vocals kick in. Part Three continues the theme and vocals of the end of Part Two, but also features an awesome, ultra-amped guitar solo before ultimately breaking down into the noise and feedback-drenched chaos of Part Four. The short fifth and final part heralds a return to the laid back theme from Part Two, albeit overlaid with residual feedback from Part Four. This is an album that is as much a sensation to be experienced as much as a piece of music to listen to, with it's changing and contrasting aural textures that seem to be intended to be listened to at volume. Anybody unsure about drone metal should probably start with this classic. If this don't do it for ya, then drone probably ain't for you!
As the godawful winter of 1984 was about to turn into 1985 my musical heroes were, quite frankly, starting to suck. Sabbath had released Born Again the year before, Brian Robertson had fucked Motörhead up, the stalwarts of the NWOBHM were fading fast, Priest had been in decline for ages and hair / glam metal seemed to be the only shitty game in town as far as metal was concerned.
Then, on a whim, I picked up a copy of a various artists metal comp called Hell Comes to Your House in the desperate hope of finding something on it that didn't blow. Most of it wasn't very good, but then I heard IT. IT being Metallica's Creeping Death and IT blew my fucking mind! That one hit of Bay Area genius was the heaviest thing I'd ever heard and was all I needed to turn me into a thrash junkie. Suddenly things were looking up!
Of course, I went out and bought the album that spawned this awesome song as soon as was humanly possible - infuriatingly I did have to wait until the next day when the shops opened and then, even more infuriatingly, another week or so because the crappy local record shop had to order it from the wholesalers (kids today, you've never had it so good with your fancy internet-thing!) So in the meantime I drove everyone nuts playing Creeping Death over and over again until I had the hallowed album itself in my now clammy, shaking hands.
Anyway, enough with the context and on to the music. Metallica's debut, Kill 'Em All was and is, a great, raw slab of break-necked thrashing mayhem. Ride the Lightning, however, showed a quantum leap in songwriting ability, providing more than just high speed riffs to bang your head to. Sure, if you wanted that, this had it - Fight Fire With Fire and Trapped Under Ice to name just two provided that in spades. However, with tracks like For Whom the Bell Tolls and Fade To Black, the band showed they weren't afraid to rein the rampaging tempo in and slow the tracks down to allow them room to breathe and exhibit how the foursome's songwriting was rapidly maturing.
The aforementioned Trapped Under Ice and Escape kick off side two and both are good songs, but in the context of the rest of the album, I feel they are a step down in class, but all that is completely blown away by the album's closing brace - Creeping Death and it's telling of a vengeful god's infanticide against the pharoah and his people, followed in short order by instrumental The Call of Cthulhu and it's reference to a very different god. These two tracks back to back still stand as the epitome of thrash metal to me.
Master of Puppets is a slightly more consistent album in terms of songwriting quality, but this record stands as a monument to the coming-of-age of thrash metal as a genre and, for me, a personal landmark on my road of metal discovery.
I've got a lot of time for Dave Mustaine. He is a seriously cynical bastard and I see him as a bit of a kindred spirit in that respect. Forming Megadeth after inevitably getting kicked out of Metallica (can you seriously see Dave taking shit from Lars for long, because I can't), he went on to release three or four of my all-time favourite thrash albums. Although almost everyone cites Rust in Peace as the classic Megadeth album (and a damn fine one it is too), this and it's follow-up, So Far, So Good... have a lot more meaning for me, coming out as it did while I was navigating a divorce at the tender age of 24 and, feeding into my somewhat jaded view of life, Dave's sneering cynicism really chimed with me, particularly on Wake Up Dead and Peace Sells - "If there's a new way, I'll be the first in line, but it better work this time" - too fuckin' right, Dave!
Most of the rest of the tracks' lyrics are based around the prevalent pulp-horror themes of 1980s straight-to-video movies, although the lyrics are of secondary consideration to how neck-wrenching the thrashing is. It's not all-out war like Slayer and it's not as compositionally accomplished as Metallica at around the same time (Master of Puppets), but almost every track is a classic to my ears (except the inevitable cover and even that's one of their better ones) and I will never, ever tire of this record.
The Ruins of Beverast are a solo project begun in 2003 by Nagelfar's ex-drummer Alexander von Meilenwald after the band split in 2002. This is his fifth album under that banner, released in 2017 by Ván Records and featuring six tracks with a runtime in excess of 67 minutes (but don't most doom-based albums nowadays?) It is an album that melds several styles into a coherent and natural whole, be it death and funeral doom, atmospheric black metal or ritualistic tribal ambient stylings. The songs aren't of the kind that feature, say, a doom bit here, some ambient there and a bit of black metal tagged on for good measure, but rather, AvM skillfully forges the disparate parts into a single unique entity that flows organically, in interesting directions. The lyrics involve shamanistic exhortations and observations and are emphasized by the paganistic nature of the musical compositions to create an atmosphere redolent with the ritualistic practices of human pre-history, particularly accentuated by the drum patterns and subtle synth work.
As the listener, this album made me genuinely feel that I had been transported to another time and place and witnessed practices no longer remembered by modern man but buried deep within the psyche of all of us, maybe waiting to be reawakened by just such a piece of music. Definitely one of the more interesting and unique albums out there that should appeal to any fan of paganistic black metal or extreme doom metal (or anyone who just enjoys originality in metal music).
I've got to admit to never having been a huge fan of My Dying Bride. Their whole Gothic Romantic persona never really did much for me, reminding me overmuch of Cradle of Filth's gothic schtick. Their doom seemed less based on mournful melancholy borne of emotional suffering and more of lethargy and world-weary boredom brought about by excessive debauchery, laudanum and absinthe intake, in the manner of Anne Rice's vampire Lestat.
Anyway I put this on my player and set off for a walk with my dog, finding myself ten minutes or so later in the local churchyard, dating back to the eighteenth century, the gravestones being terribly overgrown. I didn't make a conscious decision to go there and had been there a few minutes before the suitability of the setting to the music I was listening to dawned on me.
Now I don't know if this is some fanciful notion or not, but in this somewhat sombre setting I finally felt some connection to and appreciation of MDB's brand of doom. Obviously this is aided by the fact that this is evidently one of their best albums, with songs like The Raven and the Rose and it's energetic death metal vibe (possibly my favourite song of theirs) and the epic dichotomy of the title track. The album as a whole feels like some kind of subdued operatic tragedy and now my preconceived perceptions have been shed, MDB's poetic style makes much more sense to me. Consider me a convert!
Death metal pioneers Possessed return with their first album in a third of a century and, you know what, it's pretty damn good. Easily the best of the slew of new 2019 releases from 80s and 90s thrash and death stalwarts such as Exhorder, Destruction and Death Angel. This is probably a bit more of a thrash album than the band's original couple of releases, but it is high-powered and exhilharating thrash that occasionally allows it's death metal DNA to show through. Jeff Becerra's vocals aren't the best, but to be honest, they never were. However, the songs are memorable, the playing is energetic and the album has a vitality you would be hard pushed to expect from a band well into it's fourth decade.
An album so chillingly cold that you can almost feel the frostiness seeping from the speakers. The iciness is relieved only by the female vocals that are sparingly employed. Nice variation of tracks from blasting blackness to virtually funeral doom (Space Funeral). Closes with a haunting version of Bach's Air on the G String that sounds as if it's playing from an interstellar probe as it heads into the deeps of space.
Superb songwriting, faultless musicianship and excellent production make this album essential listening in the funeral doom canon, like a kind of funeral Blackwater Park. Managing at the same time to be both ethereally haunting and oppressively heavy, they strike a perfect balance, succeeding where so many fail. The album feels like a solitary, moonlit walk through long-abandoned, ancient ruins. Epic, without being overblown, this is a masterpiece.
When they came onto the scene with this, their debut release, Candlemass were mercilessly derided by the mainstream music press (and even by a significant portion of the metal press), at least by those who chose not to ignore them entirely, yet this album still stands the test of time and is one of the seminal doom records, along with Sabbath and early releases from the likes of Saint Vitus, Pentagram and Witchfinder General. This is the album, however that gave doom it's epicness, with huge-sounding classics like Solitude, Crystal Ball and Under the Oak rendered even more awesome by Johan Lanquist's brilliantly OTT vocals. Candlemass were also hugely influential in making Scandinavia a real stalwart of the doom scene.
If you can get the remastered 2CD set, the second live disc, recorded with Messiah on vocals in 1988 in the birthplace of Doom (Birmingham, UK), would be a worthwhile release in it's own right and makes this an unmissable album for any doom fan.
Being quite a literal-minded person I have historically had a bit of a problem with particularly avant-garde or experimental releases and it is only in the last few years that I have started to come to grips with the more outre black metal exponents, such as Deathspell Omega, and started to appreciate them for their skill and originality.
To my ears Paracletus is a very dense, yet abstract release, the aural equivalent of a fistful of metal shards or splinters of glass. It is musically jagged with the various instruments at times sounding like they are playing in opposition to each other, but then suddenly coalescing into a pummelling, throbbing entity as the various members come together with a unified purpose before darting off again in their own directions. This is one of those albums that if someone asks what your favourite track is, it is impossible to answer because the work really has to be considered as a single whole, the integration of the tracks within it and the album's development throughout it's runtime is key to it's success. This is obviously a more cerebral style of black metal than, say, Immortal or Marduk, but it still taps into some deeply-seated dark instinct within the human psyche and is every bit as primal as any number of lo-fi blast-a-thons or satanistic rituals and is arguably even more seditious than those more obvious attempts at portraying that deeply buried essence of humankind's darkest emotions.
Sure, some of the more avant-garde sounding sections are still a bit of a struggle for me, but the payoff when the band do hit that sweet spot and come together in black metal nirvana are even more effective emerging from the twisted, jagged wreckage of those more abstract passages. I'm sure those of you who do enjoy more challenging and technically adept metal will probably gain even more out of it than I, but it still conveys more than enough emotion and passion to satisfy my demands in this respect. It is obviously an album that appeals to a huge cross-section of BM devotees as at time of writing this it is sitting on RYM with almost a 4/5 average from almost 6000 ratings, testament indeed to DsO's skillful execution and powerful songwriting.
In my admittedly very limited experience, I find that industrial metal's need to emulate the dehumanising nature of technology often results in quite stilted-sounding music (bands like Static-X for example). It's as if the need to replicate the machine-like rhythms ends up becoming victim to that very dehumanising trait that the music seems to be railing against. For me the success of Demanufacture is that it is still quite an engaging listen, allowing a glimpse of the unquenchable essence of humanity despite the towering banks of computers and machinery threatening to overwhelm it, being led particularly by Burton C. Bell's vocals, the human centre of the album. On the Skynet/Matrix side, Dino Cazares' crisp and hefty guitar riffing is the very epitome of the technological domination of the battle space of each of the album's eleven tracks, the machine-like rhythms seeking to subsume the last core of humanity into the machines' hive mind and the synths just add to the isolation of the atmosphere, like a wind blowing through a landscape of huge automated factories - as far as the eye can see it's all straight lines and right angles with no natural curves or irregularities
So what the fuck am I talking about? Basically there are some killer catchy, almost anthemic, metal tunes on display here - Self Bias Resistor, Dog Day Sunrise and Body Hammer especially come to mind and the final minute and a half of Pisschrist still sets the hairs on the back of my neck on end - "Crown of black thorns, Human skin, ripped and torn, Where is your saviour now?" It has been a very long time since I last played this record, or any even remotely like it I guess, but despite all the water that's passed under that particular bridge, Demanufacture is still a pretty good listen and playing it now it feels a bit like a call from an old friend you've not seen for ages and didn't realise you missed as much as you evidently do.
I personally believe that the very best atmospheric extreme metal is not so much music that you listen to in the same way that you would tradtional metal like Iron Maiden, Slayer, Morbid Angel or Candlemass I believe, rather, that it is music you need to open yourself up to and allow it to become part of you, the quality of it being determined by how successfully the music meshes with your own psyche. To this end certain artists are supremely capable, Tobias Möckl of Paysage d'Hiver for example is a master, and The Ruins of Beverast's Alexander von Meilenwald is another I would venture to add into that select group.
TRoB is in essence a black metal project, but he also often ventures into the realm of doom metal, in particular funeral doom in the case of Rain Upon the Impure. He likes to slow down the blasting black metal to a crawl and when he does probably illustrates better than anyone the correlation between atmospheric black metal and funeral doom. For me, these two sub-genres have always been two sides of the same coin anyway, both capable of having a very similar effect, albeit arrived at in a very different way. He also seems to have a penchant for choral effects, whether it is the christian orthodox chants made familiar by Batushka, viking-style chanting in the vein of Hammerheart-era Bathory or the Gregorian chant featured in the title track.
Make no mistake, this is a very long album at almost 80 minutes, but it never once becomes tedious and as soon as it ends I am more than ready to take the trip again. The five tracks (excluding the two interludes) by virtue of their length, are allowed to develop and build to a maturity that lesser talent's works lack. They are in no way long for the sake of it, the tracks not reverting to the repetitive, hypnotic effect of a lot of atmo-black, rather they are each as long as they need to be to weave whatever tale and convey whatever atmosphere AvM is striving for and personally I wouldn't want him to trim any of them. The music is incredibly dark and dense, the sheer weight of the material feels like some overwhelming natural force of star-crushing magnitude and AvM's vocals are some of the most evil-sounding in metal which are thrown into sharp relief when set against the choral effects. Whether it's the heaving dirge-like intro to Soliloquy of the Stigmatised Shepherd or the blasting of 50 Forts Along the Rhine, the atmosphere is equally menacing and sinister - almost relentless in it's pulverizing effect.
What I like about The Ruins of Beverast is that, unlike so many other black metal solo projects, Alexander von Meilenwald does not feel the need to spew his every musical thought out into the public domain, but rather takes the time to work on his material until it is of sufficient quality to be unleashed on the unsuspecting black metal hordes. One listen to any of his albums tells you that the tracks are well-crafted and polished (in a compositional sense, not necessarily polished sounding) and are the product of a particularly creative mind who knows exactly how to get the most from his chosen medium. Rain Upon the Impure is yet more proof to me that, despite the many unoriginal and frankly quite dull acts, black metal is one of the most exciting and varied metal genres, still more than capable of issuing surprises aplenty. As a footnote it is also scientifically proven* that a Vincent Price sample makes an album about 12% more awesome.
(*not actually true)
Sadly, for me, the UK has had a dearth of kick-ass thrash metal releases over the years, especially during the eighties and nineties. Sabbat, Onslaught and Sacrilege are the only ones I can bring to mind that were worth listening to. However, I can now happily add Hydra Vein and their glorious debut from 1988, Rather Death Than False of Faith, to that exclusive list. It is a riotous celebration of aggressive thrash in the vein of the Teutonic Titans like Kreator, Sodom and Exumer, with some terrific hooks and riffs that are genuinely memorable and liable to induce a frantic head nodding at a moment's notice. The production is sloppy and the band may not hit the perfect note every time, but I personally find this adds to the album's appeal and the energy and enthusiasm are infectious. Songs like Rabid, Crucifier, Harlequin and Guillotine are classic 80's thrash fare and stand up really well compared to a lot of their more celebrated peers. Sadly the band only managed one more album, 1989's After the Dream, before splitting in 1990. The production and the abysmal artwork aside this is a lost thrash metal classic and an album that really deserves a larger audience.
I always though Portugal was a nice sunny place, but Lisbon's Sepulcros have laid that belief to rest as there must be something very dark lurking there for the band to tap into in order to produce an album this dark-sounding, because what we have here seems to ooze up from unfathomed abyssal depths before exploding to the surface and covering everything with a pall of utter and impenetrably dark bleakness. In other words, ridiculously sublime old-school death doom that often borders on funeral doom, particularly on my favourite track, Magno Caos which should appeal to all Esoteric fans out there.
The album's production is heavily built on the old-school cavernous sound, which may even be a little bit overdone because at times it just sounds a little too distant. Sérgio Batista (ex-Blacksunrise singer) has a great line in deathly, guttural growls and sounds extremely menacing. The drums sound particularly prominent throughout, especially on the faster death metal sections, and the guitar sounds a little subdued as a result, although this does mean that the overall sound is more rumbling and indistinct, adding yet another layer to the menace of the atmosphere. The pacing of the tracks is such that they never become dull monotones, with funereal dirges suddenly exploding into breakneck blasting.
For me this a really solid example of the hybridisation of extreme doom metal with death metal and, despite it being one of the older forms of extreme metal, it still has the ability to produce engaging and interesting albums. On the evidence of Vazio I think Sepulcros may be a band yet capable of producing a modern extreme doom classic release sometime in the not-too-distant future, but for now I'll settle for this.
Although, as I'm sure most of you know by now, my poison of choice tends to be from the more extreme elements of the metal world, I often put on a new album of traditional metal and am more often than not surprised by how much I still love this style of music. War Cloud are another band who hark back to those heady days of the early eighties with their NWOBHM influenced, good-time metal - the album's eponymous track is a classic NWOBHM anthem released forty years late. They even have an instrumental, Tomahawk (my favourite track in the album) that brings back fond memories of songs like Maiden's Transylvania or Death Angel's The Ultraviolence. I give thanks to the Metal Gods that there still exists bands who can put a smile on my face with simple, unadulterated, kick-ass metal. Horns all round!
Even at this early stage of the two bands' nascent careers, it is abundantly obvious that both outfits were a cut above the rest of the black metal community, both in terms of musical proficiency and song writing ability. Although this split is subject to the usual inferior recording quality of most early BM releases, it is clear that here were two bands that would have the imagination and skill to break out of the box and evolve the genre, thus giving it a secure future as more than just a niche offshoot of the metal world. However, for all the song writing complexity and technical ability on offer, these tracks still speak to the primal in us, as all the very best black metal does. A seminal release in the annals of black metal, the best split release of all time and one that provides not only some of my favourite black metal tracks, but some of the very best metal ever burnt on to a silver disc.
Wampyric Rites are an Ecuadorian black metal three-piece formed in 2019 who are associated with the Pure Raw Underground Black Metal Plague circle that encompasses a number of black metal outfits from Latin America. Following a bewildering number of EPs, demos and split releases, The Eternal Melancholy of the Wampyre is their debut full-length album. This is raw, chaotic and uncompromising black metal with howls and screams for vocals that I hesitate to call evil-sounding as that is a much overused descriptor in black metal, but it certainly is aggressive and dark and calls on the spirit of the early second wave legends to be sure. At it's best when at it's most breakneck and chaotic, this is a quite impressive debut album.
After originally checking out this, the Polish duo's third release, when it was released in 2015, I gave it a 3.5/5 rating and wrote a short (and admittedly somewhat sniffy) review on RYM along the lines of "Everybody seems to think this is the BM album of the year, but it isn't, it's just OK". I've never returned to it since, nor any of the band's other releases neither, until now. But I've got to admit that listening to it with fresh ears, I enjoyed it a lot more than I did six years ago.
This is not the kind of album to make the hearts of the "trve cvlt warriors" race, it is far more likely to have their fingers clicking away on their keyboards in disgust because it is well-executed, well-produced and, most blasphemously for black metal, it has exceedingly catchy moments. Well, fuck those guys, I am willing to endure their meaningless scorn, as I'm sure M and Darkside are also, because this is great. It neither falls into the camp of atmospheric nor melodic black metal as such, but it is heavily informed by both sub-genres. I love the tone of the riffing, Darkside's drumming is exemplary, the tracks invoke a suitably icy atmosphere and Mikołaj Żentara's vocals have that croakiness to it that I really enjoy hearing and particularly associate with Immortal's Abbath. On the downside it is a little bit samey, but there are some genuinely terrific tracks - I and V for example. The old chestnut of the band's political affiliations also rears it's ugly head, but if that is a deal breaker for you then you're probably not a big black metal fan anyway. Personally I no longer pay any attention to the political ramblings of musicians - if musos are your window on political affairs then you're probably fucked anyway.
This is the kind of black metal album I would put on when I don't feel the need to be challenged too much and just want to hear some damn fine black metal tunes (kind of how I do with the aforementioned Immortal). Sometimes it's great to just kick back and enjoy an album without thinking too much about it. This may sound like damning with faint praise, but it really isn't. There absolutely is a place in black metal for album's like this - not every album needs to set your nerves on edge and freeze your soul.
Is it metal enough? Absolutely.
Is it dark enough? Not for everyone, but it certainly has it's moments.
Should you check it out? Definitely.
Another band with which I have been unacquainted until now and yet another decent French black metal outfit. Our gallic cousins really do produce a lot of the better and more interesting modern black metal bands, I have to admit. Peste Noire, certainly on the evidence of this release, favour the lo-fi approach, albeit not as lo-fi as the commentary around this album would have you believe - the album does have some production values and I've certainly heard worse (or is that better?). The vocals are of the desperately shrieking type, reminiscent of those employed by some of the more demented depressive black metal outfits, that tap into something primal and horrifying in the human psyche, although this certainly is no DSBM album. Bizarrely and somewhat atypically for most black metal, there are a significant number of guitar solos on the album that may have come straight from the Gary Moore songbook which, in addition to the deranged vocals, contribute to the strangeness of the record and the sensation that things are not really what they are expected to be.
From all that I've read about the band there are members who seem to have some quite reprehensible views, a common pitfall for followers of black metal unfortunately and I guess that may colour how some people may receive the music. Putting all that aside, this is certainly a bit of a curveball as far as orthodox black metal goes and, for me personally, not a completely successful one - those solos for example just stick out like a sore thumb. Decent but no classic and I'm not sure if I would return to it that often, although the odd track like Spleen holds a lot of appeal for me.
One of the main reasons I love modern black metal is that despite all the cookie-cutter copyists and plagiarists there are still bands that manage to surprise me. I was familiar with Ireland's Altar of Plagues via their 2011 album Mammal, which was a good record but didn't leave any especially lingering memory for me and hadn't really forced it's way into my list of top BM albums. So anyway, now we come to 2013's Teethed Glory and Injury which has most definitely registered itself into my black metal consciousness. I'm not sure I can do the album justice with a review, but I'l have a crack at it. Teethed Glory and Injury is most assuredly a black metal album, in fact more specifically an atmospheric black metal album, but it is also much more than that. Into it's blackened body the band weave various other influences such as industrial metal, atmospheric sludge and post-metal that results in a most progressive sounding record. I have also seen it labelled as avant-garde metal and while I can definitely understand why, I think it is too accessible and coherent to be so tagged.
The cover art seems to perfectly sum up the mood and atmosphere, a desperate and frustrated aura pervades the whole album. This is not the beautifully flowing atmo-black of Saor or Panopticon, this is a jagged, broken affair that doesn't extol the glory of the natural world, but seethes and rages against the world of man, the industrial interjections disturbing the flow of the more natural sounds of the black metal musings to a seemingly intended effect. This isn't the album's only trick though, there are tracks that draw on atmospheric sludge and post-metal to add another layer of despair and isolation. Whereas a lot of atmospheric black metal is airy and expansive, the muddier, sludgy production of this makes for a more claustrophobic and debilitating experience than your average WiiTR clone.
The musicianship is great and I think I must make mention of the depth of the bass tone and the ubiquitousness of Johnny King's drumming that sounds so natural, despite the variety of the tracks. The guitar work and vocals are both suitably intense and the electronics are deployed to devastating effect.
The band split-up after the release of this album and I can understand why. Following this album up would be a thankless task indeed and, after seemingly pouring their hearts and souls into this, meant that as a band they had nowhere else to go. Talk about going on the top of your game!
The album that fulfills all the hysterical paranoia of parent's fears of drugs influencing their offspring's minds and causing them to turn to more drugs, sex, satanism, even more drugs and insanity - Reefer Madness brought to life. I'm sure it gives Jus Osborne a warm feeling inside to think what a record like this must do to the sensibilities of the so-called moral arbiters of the world and their hypocritical outrage must be like nectar to him.
Musically Dopethrone takes the template for stoner doom laid down by Sleep, slows it down then makes it exponentially heavier and lyrically more outrageous to produce the gold standard against which other stoner doom albums are measured. The tracks are all thick and miasmic like a smoke-saturated trip through a narcotically altered dreamscape, super-heavy jams that derive from some kind of psychedelic black hole where time is slowed, perceptions are altered and the music's thundering, hypnotic riffs take control, forcing the listener's head to nod, body to sway and mind to roam.
Electric Wizard are a band who revel in and glorify the partaking of narcotic substances, so are probably not for you if you subscribe to the straight edge, just say no philosophy of the morally superior. Personally it's been a long time since I was involved in any kind of drug scene, but a blast of Dopethrone is all it takes to relive those heady days of bongs, booze and b-movies. This album is a true counterculture classic and an album any stoner (or ex-stoner) metalhead should return to regularly for a required fix.
Beauty is in the eye (or ears) of the beholder, or so they say and Agalloch are another of an ever-growing list of bands that I struggle to hear what makes them so revered in the metal community. I accept that the failing is wholly mine and I would never try to convince you that you are wrong and I am right. Now, don't misunderstand, I can plainly hear that they are a talented bunch, but in the main their music fails to move me as it evidently does others. That said, there are times, paticularly on this album, when I can perceive their brilliance, but for me that is when they are at their "least metal". The intro They Escaped the Weight of Darkness for example, is a lovely piece of music in it's simplicity, the lone cello providing a melancholy counterpoint to the peaceful field recording of birdsong and a babbling brook. I am less impressed by their brand of atmospheric black metal when in full flow, it somehow lacks the aggressive edge I prefer leaning more heavily towards a post-metal sound. The reedy guitar on Into the Painted Grey, the album's most black metal track, I had a particular issue with as it just sounded too thin and weak and The Watcher's Monolith was a track particularly guilty of diplaying gothic tendencies which seldom sits well with me. On the positive side, I think John Haughm is an excellent black metal vocalist, sounding just the right shade of ragged and savage.
The album's standout track is also it's longest, the seventeen minute epic Black Lake Niðstång, it's ominous tympanic opening giving way to a melodic section with whispered vocals that is derived of doom metal's atmospherics as Haughm's vocals become increasingly desperate until the track comes to a climax at around the ten-minute mark. From this point on the track then becomes even better as the synths take over and allow a real atmosphere of ominous anticipation to build until the track explodes into it's cathartic final minutes. Unfortunately, after the triumph of Black Lake Niðstång I found the rest of the album to be an anti-climax, it's post-black metal leanings taking over to such an extent that I couldn't really engage it at all from that point - and I did try, believe me.
I truly can understand why many people dig on Agalloch, at times they sound great to me too, but too often I just don't feel their music is aggressive or vital enough for black metal, but if you love your atmo-black tempered by post-metal trappings then Agalloch are one of the prime movers, but you know that alreasdy don't you?