Sonny92's Reviews
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.
The adventurer's hands trembled as they reached to open the Black Tomb, final resting place of some ancient, unnamed king, buried with untold treasures, so the stories said. Yet as he prised open the lid, his anguished shrieks filled the air, for he was deceived and his Doom was sealed, for the tomb was the resting place of the Electric Wizard, who had lain there since it had been his Time To Die. And rushing from their tomb, with immense force, freed once more upon the earth, pulverizing the ears of all who heard them, were the mighty riffs of the Electric Wizard.
This is the recording of that terrifying event, left as a warning to all seekers, that one man's treasure is another man's Doom.
A five-track, 38 minute EP (why not just call it an album and have done with it?) that truly lives up to the atmo-sludge tag and starts off strong, but gets better and better as it proceeds, building up to the climax of the twelve-minute closer, the awesome Wave After Wave. A crushingly heavy atmosphere perpetuates throughout, but this is no stilted sludge-bomb, maintaining velocity as it is driven forward thanks to the thrusters provided by Thomas Hedlund's kinetic drumming. The only real niggle is the loss of impetus that results from the still air surrounding the Mark Lanegan-featured track Inside of a Dream, but it's not a bad track and does provide a counterpoint to the furious, raging behemoth that surrounds it.
Overall an organic-sounding album that feels forged by the laws of Einsteinian physics and possesses a planet-killing potential energy. Me, I just had to jump onto Bandcamp and get myself a vinyl copy - it deserves that at least.
In 1980 Judas Priest unleashed their first "live" album. Now, I put live in inverted commas because, as every savvy metal fan knows, the album features such extensive overdubs that it has become sneeringly referred to as Unleashed in the Studio. This is, however, somewhat irrelevant as the album, no matter what, kicks all kinds of fucking ass, OK?
I first saw Priest on the Stained Class tour and they appeared much like any other Seventies band of the time, all flowery shirts and denims. Fast forward a short time to the Killing Machine tour, from which this album is garnered, and the band had undergone a huge aesthetic overhaul as they adopted and pioneered what was to become the new (thats NEW not nu-) metal uniform of studs and leather (and, coincidentally, doubling the price on all their merchandise in a somewhat cynical cash-grab off the back of their new-found popularity as the NWOBHM gained traction and TV appearances playing Take on the World which is mercifully absent from this LP).
Anyway, I digress. The album marks a full stop of what was, in my opinion, Priest's finest years, covering their first five albums and prior to their 1980's downward spiral. The album features supercharged versions of most of their most popular tracks up to that point, being generally faster and more hard-edged than most of those tracks' album versions, pretty much dispensing with any remaining rock influences and totally metallizing their sound. I remember, as a first listen, that by the time the band had ripped through Exciter, Running Wild and Sinner I was reeling and pumped with adrenaline - and then they launch into The Ripper - holy hell!
A couple of covers follow that are fine, but Fleetwood Mac's best song, Green Manalishi, is a menacing-sounding affair and here JP's metal version is inferior to the original. I would have liked to hear Starbreaker and Dissident Aggressor replace these two tracks, then we would have had us an album for the ages. The original single LP closes with a trio of classics from Sad Wings of Destiny - a soaring Victim of Changes, a rampaging Genocide and then an almighty headlong charge through Tyrant for a chaotic finale.
My original UK vinyl copy also came with a 7" EP featuring another three tracks, a couple of "newies" in Rock Forever and Hell Bent for Leather and a great version of Beyond the Realms of Death that really should have been on the album proper.
So to summarise, although it has a couple of minor issues, this is one of the best metal live albums your money can buy and is an interesting testament to a band that was in a period of transition to a more confident self at the time of recording and in the process becoming a metal icon.
After tempting us with a couple of terrific EPs Hulder finally unleashes her debut full-length - and it doesn't disappoint. Godslastering sounds fantastic - no longer the lo-fi, raw black metal of the early releases, this really packs a wallop. Straight out the gate with the riffs of the first couple of tracks, Upon Frigid Winds and Creature of Demonic Majesty, you realise that Hulder is gonna kick your ass - and leave you begging for more! The addition of keyboards has filled out the sound without distracting from the brutal black metal assault, in a similar way to early Emperor (in fact Lowland Famine has a section that sounds very much like I Am the Black Wizards). Hulder's vocals are impressively ragged and savage-sounding, yet also allow for the lyrics to be clearly heard. There's a little bit of a respite from the battering with the acoustic/dungeon synth of De Dijle and the gentle intro to the album's best track, A Forlorn Peasant's Hymn, but mainly this is full-on second-wave worship of particular quality.
Dread Sovereign were formed in 2013 and are the brain child of Primordial frontman A.A. Nemtheanga, who plays bass as well as providing vocals, the trio being completed by guitarist Bones and Conan drummer Con Ri (Johnny King). Musically, Dread Sovereign inhabit the borderland where doom metal meets traditional heavy metal that is inhabited by the likes of Cirith Ungol, The Gates of Slumber and Grand Magus. They alternate between doomy, slower material (She Wolves of the Savage Season, Viral Tomb) and uptempo anthemic metal (Nature Is the Devil's Church, Devil's Bane) all wrapped up in occult imagery and lyrics. The songs are strongly constructed and this album contains some of their most memorable material to date - the promo track Nature Is the Devil's Church, for example, is almost impossible for any red-blooded metal fan to get out of their head after hearing it even just once. There are some nicely integrated solos that aren't merely an excuse for Bones to show off, but really add some great atmosphere to the tracks and Nemtheanga's voice is perfectly suited to just this style of metal. The production on AW is also a big step up from the muddier sound of their earlier releases and provides an increased depth that seems to make the tracks more immediate. Disappointingly, the album closes on a cover of Bathory's You Don't Move Me (I Don't Give a Fuck) that is remarkably similar to the cover of Venom's Live Like an Angel, Die Like a Devil that closed the previous album For Doom the Bell Tolls and isn't really necessary.
Midnight Spell are a five-piece Floridian traditional heavy metal band and Sky Destroyer is their debut full-length, released on CD by new Polish label Iron Oxide Records. I actually enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to. It takes most of it's cues from the best bands from the NWOBHM - Maiden, Saxon, Angel Witch, Diamond Head etc and incorporates further influence from speed metal for an exuberant and exhilharating ride. I find too many trad metal albums are ruined by the vocal histrionics of power metal wannabe singers, but Paolo Velazquez has got a great tone to his vocals that constantly brought to mind Geddy Lee on Rush's heavier material like Beneath, Between & Behind and Bastille Day. The songs are anthemic with decent riffs and the solos aren't overblown or too frequent. There is an instrumental at the mid-point that is a little bit clunky, but this is the only real reservation I have. Obviously Midnight Spell aren't in the business of revolutionising heavy metal, not really bringing anything new to the table, but it is difficult to resist the infectious enthusiasm that leaks from the speakers during this fun forty minutes or so. Energetic and unpretentious metal that is made purely for enjoyment's sake - and there's nothing wrong with that, amigos.
Gatecreeper's third album weighs in at eight tracks with a measly 18 minutes runtime - and eleven of those are taken up by the final track, so as you can imagine, this really is an album of two halves. The first seven tracks are ever-so brief bursts of aggression (the longest being a mere 73 seconds) their mix of Discharge and Bolt Thrower feeling like death metal machine gun bullets rapid-fired to your brainstem that will leave you reeling so that when the death doom sledgehammer that is Emptiness hits you won't know what fucking day it is! My only real criticism is the disappointing ending of Emptiness - it just kind of.. stops!
Funeral Winds are basically black metal fundamentalists heading for thirty years of existence in one form or another, the current of which is as a solo project of founder Hellchrist Xul. This is real old-school, early second wave, snarling, savage black metal, driven by pummelling blastbeats that fans of early Mayhem, Immortal, Darkthrone etc will recognise only too readily. Hellchrist Xul's croaking vocals are similar to Abbath on the early Immortal albums and is a style I particularly enjoy hearing I must admit. I guess the title refers to the album's attempt to distill black metal down to it's purest essence and it would be hard to argue than it hasn't been successful in doing so, now whether that has any relevance depends on your point of view. Personally I don't rate it as highly as previous album, Sinister Creed, but I feel it still has a place here in 2021 if only to remind us that there are still artists who don't give two f*cks about trends or fads and only want to create a blasphemous, hellish racket and I'm right behind that.
The thought of a two-hour avant-jazz album had me positively sweating with dread. But this isn't that album at all I'm absolutely thrilled to report. Yes, sure there are avant-jazz elements present, obviously, but I consider them merely icing, the heart and soul of this album is the percussion and it's ritualistic and tribal rhythms that call to something buried deep in the human psyche. I'm a big fan of ritual ambient artists like Draugurinn and Forndom, but this is on a different level completely. I must admit though that I did wonder how it got tagged as metal until the third section at least where it's drone metal credentials kick in. I still have some issue with the solely jazz sections and it is a long album, but these are minor gripes as this is something truly outside my comfort zone that I absolutely love.
Borgne's take on atmospheric black metal as expressed on Y, the Swiss' latest album, is not a paeon to the sweeping majesty of the mountain peaks of his homeland, or to the natural world in any way, but rather it paints a picture of an industrialised dystopia straight out of the nightmares of William Gibson or Phillip K Dick. Borgne's black metal is tranformed by industrial-sounding drum machine and electronics into a menacing and bleak vision, made even more sinister by an overarchingly ominous atmosphere born of doom metal. Coupled with his desparate snarling vocals, this is not a hopeful record, rather one that seeks to come to terms with an industrial and martial future that lacks the human touch and, aptly for current events, feeds on isolation.
ItCoS' fourth full-length is an album of groovy, doomy sludge metal that dabbles in a number of other genres to add a bit of variation, such as the Raining Blood-style thrash riff at the end of ten-minute opener The Fool's Journey, the southern-rock / country influence on The Chasm at the Mouth of the All and the acoustic rock of closing track Prima Materia. The heavy sludge base is suitably dense with thick, cloying riffs and the other influences are integrated well. My chief reservation is with the vocals. There's nothing really wrong with them really, they just don't appeal to me all that much, except on the aforementioned Prima Materia where they are less earnest and more relaxed.
I love Cardinal Wyrm - they are one of the great underappreciated doom metal bands operating currently and I have been a massive supporter of theirs since their early days This, their fourth album, however, is a bit of a letdown and may well be the first of their albums I don't purchase a physical copy of. In an attenpt to expand their sound and stretch out, they have released an album that is certainly more ambitious compositionally, but has ended up sounding a bit confused and less focussed. It's not terrible by any means and tracks like Canticle and Abbess kick all kinds of ass and retain plenty of their bombastic doom sound, but it just doesn't maintain momentum and wanders a bit, especially early on. Not a disaster by any means, but a step down from previous releases. Pity, I was really looking forward to this one.
Atavist are a Mancunian death doom band, formed by Winterfylleth's Chris Naughton, who reformed in 2016 after being on hiatus since 2007. Their latest full-length and first since reforming, contains four lengthy tracks totalling a runtime of 58 minutes of funeral doom-inflected death metal. Opener, Loss, begins in a wistfully melancholic way with a guitar strumming away gently before being joined by a violin, possibly the most mournful-sounding and much-underused weapon in any potential doom metal arsenal. Of course, the weight is increased when the band kick in with some crushing chords and Matt Bartley howls of his unfathomable loss, only to return to gentle melancholy as the violin refrain takes over once more. This contrast between the wistful introspection of the gentler sections, whether expressed via lone strummed guitar, violin or piano and the heavier, angrier doom-laden sections is what lies at the heart of the track and is handled superbly as the emotional resonance rises and falls over the whole sixteen and a half minutes.
Second track, Struggle, is unremittingly grim with suitably weighty riffs, the contrasts in mood here expressed via the tracks' tempos which vary from slow to spine-crawlingly ultra-slow. Self-realisation opens with a riff that anyone who is familiar with Chris Naughton's work in Winterfylleth should recognise, the black metal style of the riff is offset by the plodding drumwork for a menacingly effective atmosphere as Matt Bartley unleashes a black metal-inspired howl. The track then grinds to a funereal crawl after a few minutes as the doom-laden depression reasserts it control over the proceedings.
Final track, Absolution, is the albums longest and is the album's catharsis, sounding less desperate and almost as if there is some kind of light at the end of the tunnel. Even though the tempo is still slow, the guitar melody overlaying the track sounds almost hopeful and despite a certain deep-grained melancholy, the track gives the album a somewhat upbeat finale.
Yatra's second album of the year is basically a classic stoner doom/heavy metal hybrid that sounds more extreme than it is due to guitarist/vocalist Dana Helmuth's blackened shrieking vocal delivery. Don't be fooled, this isn't blackened doom that sounds like the doors to hell have opened, it is more old-school metal than that, One for the Mountain even has a bluesy groove going on! It's still mighty heavy though and a damn good listen.
Carrying on the stellar work from 2015's The Dreaming I, Naas Alcameth (aka Kyle Spanswick) has produced another album of challenging, yet still immensely listenable, atmospheric black metal. Compositionally exceptional and atmospherically menacing, this is exactly the kind of modern black metal I enjoy the most. Ambient passages in BM albums usually provide some respite from the blasting, but here they just serve to ramp up the menace to even higher levels - for proof hear how Succubare builds the demonic haunting vibe up until all hell is let loose on Ephialtes. The blasting, such as on standout Pnigalion, takes the (demonic) form of huge, great walls of sound that you don't merely listen to - they invade your ears and swarm your brain like the infestation of flies in The Amityville Horror that so put the shits up Rod Steiger! For me the only album that has created a comparable, albeit very different, black metal atmosphere this year is Paysage d'Hiver's Im Wald and that is pretty good company to be in I can assure you. In common with The Dreaming I this also has one scary-looking cover that perfectly illustrates what you are about to hear within the enclosed grooves and the overall package is a superb exercise in creating a great horror movie experience in music form.
As a proviso, I know and understand that their are ideological questions surrounding the beliefs of Akhlys and I get it that people are turned off their music as a result, but this is often the case in black metal and I have learned to separate artist from art so this is purely a judgement based on the music alone.
Firstly, I was drawn to this after seeing the cover on the homepage and decided to give it a spin, so thanks to you Ben for adding it when you did.
This 2018 album was CHRCH's second full-length album and, for me, a step up from their still impressive debut. One of the most striking strengths of CHRCH's music is the simplicity of the melodies and I don't mean that in a negative way. Despite the lack of complexity they are delivered in such a way that the effect is shattering. The opener, the twenty minute Infinite Return for example, begins with a really simple melody picked out by guitar with very little distortion to produce a beautifully clear sound, accompanied by Eva Rose's clean-sung vocals for a gorgeous, calm opening that we all know just can't last. As guitar and vocals are joined by the drums, beating out a distant-sounding militaristic tattoo, the ominousnous builds like gathering thunderheads. The guitar becomes increasingly insistent as the vocals get more desperate-sounding until the storm hits around the seven-minute mark and the riff crushes all before it as Eva shrieks and snarls and the drums hit the fore like a seven-pound sledgehammer. Around the midway point the maelstrom passes and a similar, but more hesitant-sounding, melody to the one at the beginning of the track is picked out and the calm returns, albeit now with a lost innocence as notes of dissonance insert themselves into this gentle refrain. This too cannot last and another, albeit more triumphal and anthemic, crescendo is reached, as if the victims of the first have now become the perpetrators of this second atrocity. What an opening twenty minutes - possibly one of my favourite slabs of doom metal ever - and a real high mark for the rest of the album to follow.
Second track Portals weighs in around the fifteen minute mark and kicks off with a weighty riff from the outset, but despite this it manages to become increasingly heavy as the track buids, filling all available space and threatening to collapse under it's own weight. Again this main riff is quite simple, but is deployed in such a way that it seems to be more complex than it actually is as the listener's mind grapples with the crushing weight of it. The vocals once more run the whole gamut from ethereal and angelic to savage and demonic. The soaring, distorted guitar solo towards the end of the track feels like the Comfortably Numb solo being torn apart and destroyed by the mass of an errant supermassive black hole.
Final track Aether is the shortest at nine and a half minutes and has a riff and tone that sounds remarkably like Warning's Watching From A Distance album, at least until the last couple of minutes anyway, which are just utter madness as everything must go!
Before concluding I must make mention of Adam Jennings drums, they sound phenomenal and as good as any doom drum performance I can recall. In fact, the production as a whole is superb and is a major factor in the success of the album.
This has jumped right in as one of my absolute favourite doom albums. To use a sporting analogy, it sounds like an album where the band have "left everything on the field" and absolutely given it everything. If I had any criticism at all it would be very minor - with the epic Infinite Return up front, the rest of the album is overshadowed slightly. I would have liked to hear the running order of Portals; Aether and closing with Infinite Return ending the album with a real triumph. FFO Sub Rosa, Warning, Pallbearer and any "no fucks to give" doomhead. If you have any love at all for real doom metal then you need this album.
L.A. three-piece Merciless Death were part of the 2000's thrash revival and this was their debut album. Originally self-released it was reissued with much-improved cover art when the band was signed by Heavy Artillery. It features enthusiastic thrashing with some infectious riffs but, in truth, it is heavily front-loaded with the first three songs sounding much better than the rest of the album. By track four, Burn in Hell, the cracks start to show and, for me, this is the worst song on the album. The remaining tracks are kind of OK, but being brutally honest, they sound shoddy. The riffs get laboured, the solos are weak and Andy Torres' vocals become even more ragged - and they weren't great to begin with. The band just sound so enthusiastic that I feel bad knocking them, but ultimately they come across as just another Exodus, Exumer wannabe without the chops. the brilliant Ed Repka cover doesn't help either as it raises expectations for the music which it fails to fulfil.
I am far from any great authority on death metal, there are huge swathes of releases I am not that keen on, it's obsession with brutality, coupled with some of the more distasteful imagery and at the other end of the spectrum, the constipation of technically obsessed DM leaves me mostly unimpressed. I do love a good old-school release however, in the vein of Autopsy, Morbid Angel and the like. I've paid scant attention to Incantation previously, only having heard their debut and their latest albums before (both of which I did enjoy). So I went into this expecting something pretty decent, but man, this is earth-shatteringly brilliant death metal of a kind I hear too infrequently. It takes the OSDM sound and couples it with more ambitious songwriting that involves multiple changes in tempo during each track from battering brutality, through medium-paced riff-fests to death doom crawls. The vocals are archetypal abyssal growls that have, presumably, helped to define what a death metal singer should sound like, the guitars have a perfect filthy solidity to their tone that buzz and batter like a chainsaw crossed with a sledgehammer. The one thing that really stood out for me though, was the supergnarly bass sound. That growling bass guitar during Ethereal Misery is absolutely insane and has got to be one of my favourite pieces of basswork ever. All this is before we even get to the sixteen minute closing epic, Unto Infinite Twilight / Majesty of Infernal Damnation, a proggy (in a good way), sixteen minute death metal saga that doesn't try to impress with technical flashiness, but rather the quality of the songwriting and the searing intensity of the bands performance. I'm also guessing here that this track was a big influence on Blood Incantation and their similar epic on their Hidden History of the Human Race album (another DM fave of mine coincidentally).
I love it when an album comes out of nowhere and grabs me by the throat like Diabolical Conquest has done. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and, even after only a couple of listens, I reckon this is a five star classic and one of my all-time favourite death metal albums.