Sonny's Reviews

Idolum is an absolutely sublime mixture of sludge metal and space rock, with a psychedelic edge that gives it an almost meditative quality. First and foremost, however, it is ridiculously heavy with an almost impenetrable wall of sound that rolls over you like a landslide. The guitar tone is extremely thick and, when combined with the heaving bass it has so much bottom end that it may well shake your teeth fillings loose. The vocals are distant-sounding and to some extent irrelevant as no one really listens to an album this tangibly heavy for poetry or philosophical insight, the vocals merely add mortar to the immense wall of sound assaulting the listener's ears. There's a lineage to this album that stretches back to Space Ritual-era Hawkwind and early Pink Floyd, but it has been fed through the gravitational field of a black hole to emerge as something transformed. I don't know if music this crushingly heavy should conversely be so relaxing, but there is something about it that is mantra-like and calming and that isn't just the drone-like extended final track, Void/Elephantom, but the heavier stuff too. If you like Electric Wizard but think they are a bit lightweight then give Idolum a try!

The version of Morbid Visions I have been listening to also has the Bestial Devastation tracks from the 1985 split with Overdose so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and cover both here. As much as I am a huge fan of the four albums from Schizophrenia onwards, I have never even listened to these earlier releases before now... and wow, what a treat they are! It is amazing to think that the Cavalera brothers were mere teenagers at the time, but the fearlessness of youth, I suspect, enabled them to produce a brace of releases that pushed the envelope of what was then considered extreme in the metal world.

First off, Max has got the best iteration of the death growl heard up to this point, being deeper and gruffer than most of the other frontmen of the time who's vocals still remained very much in the Tom Araya / Mille Petrozza barking style. The playing is a bit messy and some of the transitions aren't as smooth as people would like, but hell, they were still learning their craft and yet mananged to produce a fireball of furious riffing and incendiary soloing that gives a real insight into just how fucking awesome and ahead of the curve early Sepultura were. I am not a person who is impressed by flashy showmanship or technical wizardry (in fact, quite the opposite) so I may be better disposed to such an obviously flawed release as Morbid Visions because, for me, it succeeds by sheer force of will and energy in presenting something that is just so damn exciting I can't help but love it. This is heartfelt metal from a band of youngsters in it solely for the love of metal at this point and that ethos shines through really brightly on this debut album. It seems strange that this is never mentioned much in the conversation about early death metal releases because there seems to be plenty here that qualifies - Mayhem and War both sound very death metal to me and as a whole I would venture it is more death metal adjacent than Possessed's Seven Churches is. The production isn't great, the drums seem to be pushed too far to the fore, sometimes at the expense of the guitar and there isn't much by way of bottom end but, for me, this is only a minor issue and certainly isn't a deal breaker as far as future listening potential goes.

Bestial Devastations consists of an intro and four tracks, again the production leaves a lot to be desired (sounding a bit like Seven Churches production-wise) and the performance could be tighter, but all the tracks have great riffs and an infectious energy that true metal heads should find difficult to ignore. Both the split and debut full-length marked Sepultura out as a band who would most likely go places and were pretty extreme-sounding for 1986 and are deserving of being part of the conversation surrounding the development of death metal in the 1980s.

I wish I could say that I have been a fan of Seven Churches since it first came out, that it changed my metal world and set me on my path to extreme metal appreciation, but unfortunately I was never so cool that I got into underground metal as soon as it was released, especially as, at the time, I lived in the arse-end of nowhere in England's industrial north west where the metal underground was on another planet entirely and the metal community I was part of numbered only one - me. Anyway, despite coming to it late, it was still instantly obvious, even to me, that, given the date of release, this is one hell of an influential album in the evolution of death metal.

Possessed were born out of the rarified atmosphere of the early eighties Bay Area thrash scene and although their sound would indicate that they were heavily influenced by Slayer, they themselves always cited Exodus and Venom as their main influences (quite plausibly I suppose, if you think about it). They released a demo in 1984 featuring three tracks which would eventually turn up on Seven Churches, Evil Warriors, Burning in Hell and of course, Death Metal. After playing a few shows with them, Exodus got Metal Blade interested and the track Swing of the Axe (featured on their second demo and a blistering track in it's own right that sadly doesn't appear on Seven Churches) was featured as the opener on the compilation Metal Massacre VI. This track got the attention of Combat Records and Possessed were offered a deal, releasing their debut full-length in 1985. The rest, as they say, is history. Now, is this the first death metal album? Personally I don't think so as it still retains a huge amount of thrash metal DNA, but Possessed had definitely pushed thrash to it's limit and had introduced elements that would be expounded upon later by true death metal outfits like Death and Morbid Angel.

So to the album itself and after the Tubular Bells intro, The Exorcist bursts from the speakers like a wild animal, tearing through your eardrums with an aggression and savagery that had been unthought of at this point in '85. Sure Slayer were plenty aggressive, but this opening salvo from the new boys was on a whole new level and it becomes apparent very early on that there is to be no respite from this blitzkrieg until the last notes have played out. The production first off isn't anything like as clear as the majority of metal albums you would hear in 1985, it's slight echoey sound possibly being the first iteration of that quintessential cavernous sound that became so requisite of old-school death metal. The riffs are tore through at breakneck pacing and are ridiculously heavy, the soloing is straight out of the Jeff Hannemann school of blistering, psychotic-sounding and squealing guitar torturing. Jeff Becerra's vocals and satanic / demonic lyrics went even further into the extreme than Tom Araya, his half scream / half growl paving the way for more and more vocal extremity in metal as subsequent singers tried to sound even more "evil" than the Possessed frontman. The drums are more in keeping with the thrash metal zeitgeist, not really possessing the blastbeat-heavy pummelling of true death metal drumming and are one of the main reasons why I still consider this mainly a thrash album. But of course there's that final track and, much like Venom with Black Metal, the band are at least assured a mention in the death metal conversation having coined the genre name. Every track here is killer and still sound great now, closing in on forty (count 'em) years later. This album has every right to be mentioned alongside thrash greats like Reign in Blood and Master of Puppets for it's sheer aggression and an almost tangible evilness and whether it is death or thrash metal is moot because either way it is a classic metal album in it's own right.

Sadly, Possessed never approached this level of awesome again in my opinion, but does that really matter because what they produced here was a catalyst and a precursor to one of the most prolific extreme music genres in history and most definitely secured them a legacy and immortality beyond the vinyl grooves of a mere record into the collective folklore of metal - listen to early Morbid Angel and Possessed's influence is plain for all to hear.

Early 1980 I had just turned 18 and was mad into metal and heavy rock: Motörhead, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, UFO and Budgie to name but a few. The trouble was, these bands were great, but they were old guys - some were even in their thirties! Kids my age were all playing in punk rock bands and, I had to admit, those punks sure played with some fire and energy. Then the music press started buzzing about this young bunch of cockney upstarts playing heavy metal called Iron Maiden and my ears pricked up in interest. Meanwhile, I picked up a copy of the newly released Metal for Muthas and it was pretty obvious to everyone that Maiden were the stand out act on that compilation (although Angel Witch's Baphomet is fucking brilliant too) and their two tracks, Wrathchild and Sanctuary, were snarly and aggressive calls to arms. Then came the single Running Free which was a bit different to the tracks on MfM and had a bounce to it that made headbanging a cinch!

Anyway, fast forward to spring and Maiden's self-titled debut hit our local Woolies and off I go to procure a copy. The first thing that confronted the prospective purchaser of said wax disc was the intense stare, rictus snarl and punk haircut of "Eddie the 'Ed" daring us to buy this album or be a pussy and stick with KISS or Foreigner! Needless to say, I was all in and handed over my quid seventy-five or whatever it was back then and headed off home with no shortage of anticipation to hear exactly what Chris Welch and Malcolm Dome were making all that fuss about in the music weeklies.

So, needle hits vinyl and off we go with a degenerate tale of a flasher in the park called Prowler and those punks can kiss their arses goodbye. At last, a band of similar age to me playing with all the fire and venom and "fuck you if you dont like it" attitude the punks had co-opted, only this was fucking METAL!!! Second track Remember Tomorrow was a much slower and more subtle affair and this is where Maiden showed they had much more to offer than just punkish aggression and crass lyrics, Paul Di'Anno proved he had more than just a vicious, snarling vocal delivery and the twin guitars of Murray and Stratton unleashed hell with their incendiary guitar solos. At this point some of you younger fans may be saying "but Sanctuary is track 2" and on later CD versions it was, but that track was never on the original release. Remember Tomorrow is followed by the "hit" single Running Free and although I loved it at the time it has kind of paled for me in later years, but did serve as a great attention grabber for the band prior to the debut's release and, all things being relative, it is still a good song.

Next up and closing side one is one of the album's real highlights, Phantom of the Opera. Which already showed that Maiden had a bit more in their songwriting arsenal than the vast majority of bands sheltering under the NWOBHM umbrella, with Steve Harris in particular wanting to pursue a more epic and complex route than was the lot for most metal bands of the time and although Phantom is no Rime of the Ancient Mariner or even Hallowed Be Thy Name it is still a brilliant piece of nascent progressive heavy metal that doesn't trade complexity for heaviness, but keeps both intact and serves as one indicator as to why Maiden succeeded where so many others failed.

The instrumental Transylvania opens side two and allows the guitarists to showcase their skills with more of their soon-to-become trademark incendiary soloing, Harris' bass throbbing along underneath and Clive Burr setting the tempo with his fantastic, on-the-mark drumming skills. Transylvania subsides into the gentle intro to another somewhat atypical NWOBHM track, Strange World, where we actually get a kind of vulnerable, touchy-feely lyric and atmosphere that most metal acts would never even contemplate at that time. At this point Maiden ramp up the pace and aggression once more and are introduced to one of Harris' enduring lyrical characters, Charlotte the Harlot of 22 Acacia Avenue fame. Although the middle section and it's attempt at pathos is a little bit of a misstep for me, the track is otherwise heavy metal heaven. Rounding off pretty much as we started with a snotty-sounding, snarling piece of metal ass-kickery Iron Maiden firmly plant their flag in the ground.

Obviously the band later went on to dominate the world of metal, at least for a while after Di'Anno was replaced by Bruce, but I think it is testament to Di'Anno's performances and vocal style that the two albums he performed on are still massive fan favourites and, in truth, I have never heard tracks from the first two albums performed better by Bruce than they were by Paul, although, to be fair, he may well have conversely struggled with tracks that Bruce featured on. So, while Iron Maiden at the point of their first album were still on a journey rather than having arrived at  a destination, there can surely be no arguing that it was a trip well worth any fan tagging along on. To call the album the birth of a heavy metal legend is no hyperbole and is a defining moment in metal history.

Slaughtbbath are a three-piece blackened thrash outfit from Chile. They started out as a straight up, balls-out black metal band playing supercharged black metal with relentless fury, but for their 2019 album Alchemical Warfare (only their second full-length release, despite a plethora of splits and eps), they took a huge fistful of the thrash of the teutonic giants Kreator and Sodom and chucked it into the melting pot along with the furious black metal of their previous releases. They fire off riffs like rockets on Bonfire Night (or July 4th if you insist) lighting up the sky with fire and fury, tearing through track after track in an almost manic assault on the listener's eardrums. Their blackened thrash leaves little room for wanky showmanship, consequently there isn't as much focus on solos as a lot of thrashers may want and most of the solos are of the short, sharp shock variety as favoured by Slayer, but that is a small price to pay for such outright aggression and savagery. The only respite from the ceaseless onslaught is held within Rejoined Into Chaos when the band do slow it down a little, although they can't manage to restrain themselves for the whole track and unleash the most extravagant soloing of the album towards it's final fadeout.

Track titles like Ritual Bloodbath, Prophetic Crucifixion and Amulets of Carnage should leave you in no doubt as to where these guys are coming from. This is no touchy-feely metal as is becoming en vogue in some metal circles, this is pure unadulterated violence and horror, making no excuses and issuing no apologies for it. In other words, the foundation that thrash metal was built on and too many metal bands have forgotten about.

Arð is a solo project of Mark Deeks who, since 2016, has been the keyboard player for UK pagan black metallers Winterfylleth. Arð play a medieval-based, folk-influenced kind of doom metal that is, on the surface, a very different beast from Winterfylleth, yet if you are familiar with the Mancunians you will know that they are heavily involved with folk music, whether through their Harrowing of Heirdom album or Dan Capp's Wolcensmen project and the track The Green Cathedral on their The Dark Hereafter album is very much in the vein of the music on Take Up My Bones, albeit with blackened vocals.

I've got to say, despite initial reservations about an album tagged as doom and folk metal (no folk metal here), this has quite grabbed my imagination and is a very pleasant departure from a lot of the doom metal I usually listen to. Take Up My Bones' doom metal is very reminiscent of the kind of melancholic style often employed by any number of gothic doom outfits eager to follow in the footsteps of My Dying Bride et al, with contemplative piano, synths and strings woven into the fabric of the tracks, yet also containing the sweeping, soaring majesty found in some of the best atmospheric black metal from the likes of Saor, albeit within a doom metal context. The medieval folk elements are incorporated superbly well and sound sincere, thus avoiding the cheesiness so often (rightly) associated with any kind of folk metal. This is not the kind of medieval folk we would associate with The Lord of the Rings or fantasy scenarios generally, but a choral style of folk that has it's roots in ecclesiastical music.

The concept of the album is something to do with the relics of the bones of Saint Cuthbert, who was associated with Lindisfarne monastery and is the patron saint of Northumbria in the north-east of England where Mark Deeks makes his home. His remains were thought to be responsible for several miracles in medieval England and he was a big inspiration to King Alfred the Great in his battle against the Danes of ninth century England. The religious theme is realised by rich-sounding and nicely performed choral vocals that are very impressively produced and add to the overarching majesty of the music on offer. This is a very atmospheric album, weaving strands of melancholy and hope together into a gorgeous tapestry of sound. Arð aren't trying to squeeze the breath out of your body with huge, crushing riffs, but are rather trying to fill your soul with renewed hope.

As much as I love orthodox doom metal, it is nice to hear someone try something that is a little bit different and to eschew regurgitating the same old ideas. Take Up My Bones isn't a perfect album by any means, some of the tracks become a little samey and there is some limitation to how far a solo project and studio-generated effects can go, but I genuinely applaud Arð's attempt to produce something fresh in the doom scene and as long as artists like Arð can still serve up something of a surprise then doom metal is far from a spent force.

Fantastic! My old friend Sami Hynninen (aka Albert Witchfinder) is back with a new doom metal band, presumably named after Witchfinder General's second full-length. We've not heard much from the Reverend Bizarre legend since he left Spiritus Mortis in 2017, so when this came out of the blue I was exceedingly excited to have some new material at last. The reason I'm so fond of Witchfinder is that he truly "gets" doom metal and with his new band he seems to be mining the traditional doom scene of the eighties and early nineties with more than a few nods back to classic Black Sabbath. It seems to be no coincidence that the band are named after a Witchfinder General album. The new band is a four-piece which, as well as Witchfinder, features fellow Finn, former Impaled Nazarene and Sentenced bassist Taneli Jarva along with Cypriot tattoo artist and ex-Electric Wizard bassist Tasos Danazoglou on drums and completing the lineup is Greek guitarist Jondix.

The songs on Friends of Hell are fairly short and relatively punchy for doom metal, but this was not uncommon on early trad doom albums and is in sharp contrast to Witchfinder's material with Reverend Bizarre. Lyrically and thematically we are in B-movie, schlock-horror territory with song titles like Shadow of the Impaler and Into My Coffin, which again is very much par for the course with a lot of trad doom albums. The distorted riffs are pretty damn good, hardly original, but entertaining as hell with a really nice depth to the guitar sound. Albert Witchfinder has some limitations as a vocalist, but I actually think his voice really suits the material, as it did with Reverend Bizarre - not everyone needs to be a Messiah or Rob Lowe. The rhythm section isn't bad, although they don't shine through the mix as much as they could, this is only a minor niggle and is not a huge distraction.

All in all, if you are in the market for some new straight-up trad doom with a cheesy occult theme then you would be hard-pressed to find a better example than Friends of Hell.

MWWB (having abbreviated their name from the mouthful it was previously) return with an even more atmospheric album than 2019's Yn ol i annwn. Alternating between dreamily-voiced, atmospheric doom metal and futuristic synthwave tracks it feels like a sci-fi concept album. The doom tracks are understated, but no less effective for it, relying on building an atmosphere rather than crushing the air out of the listener with massive riffs, Jessica Ball's ethereal vocals soaring over the instrumentation like a siren call. Don't get the wrong impression, this is still most definitely doom metal, I merely want to state that laying everything to waste with mournful sonic heaviness isn't the music's sole intention. The Blade Runner-like synth-driven interludes are a nice touch and help give the album a definite identity and aid it in poking it's head above the crowded field of female-voiced doom metal. A nicely interesting release that gives doom metal fans something a little bit different to digest.

What an absolute killer intro to opening track, Lament the Death of Wonder, a track that combines doom metal with stoner and progressive rock for a roller coaster ride of a song. This momentum is dissipated a bit by ensuing track The Long Drowning that takes a little while to get into it's stride, although it does have a nice solo towards the end. The album as a whole has a greater stoner/psych/prog influence than their earlier material and there isn't anything inherently wrong with that, but it feels a little inconsistent at times. It's the heavier tracks like the aforementioned opener and Mythos that initially appealed to me most, but there is just so much variety to their doom/stoner template so it never feels like they are retreading the same path on every track and the more I explore the album the more I discover. The production is very good and has a nice clarity and performance-wise the trio are spot-on. Just occasionally I feel that the band resort to a bit of noodling for noodling's sake where I would rather them just get on with laying down another killer riff. The last couple of tracks really up the prog ante and are where things get really interesting, suggesting a possible new direction for the band which may make their next release very interesting indeed. Obsidian Sea are definitely a band who are spreading their wings with this latest release and more power to them.

The original Watching From A Distance is my all-time favourite album, metal or otherwise, and resonates with me on a level unmatched by any other release. This is a live rendition of the entire album performed at 2017's Roadburn Festival and is a faithful reproduction of that album with former bassist Wayne Taylor backing up Patrick Walker as second guitarist. The live interaction of both band and crowd is minimal which would get some people asking "What's the point, then?" The point is that this is an album with an unequalled level of emotional outpouring and intensity which the live setting has possibly rendered even more poignant as Patrick Walker pours his heart out. The fact that Walker's vocals are obviously a one take, one-shot deal he seems to wring even more heartbreaking intensity from them, as if the guy is actually reliving the tales he is telling us there and then. I would love to be able to say I was there and have the memory of that performance etched into my memory forever, but I wasn't and so this is the next best thing as I still get to embrace this wonderful performance of a seminal album.

For the longest time I believed that thrash metal held no more surprises for me. That, however, was before I had heard Demoniac's incredible 2020 sophomore release, So It Goes. Sure, I have been very impressed by the vitality of the contemporary South American thrash scene, but the albums I had heard to this point were in the main existing tropes, taken and sharpened to the point of lethality. Some excellent stuff that had rekindled my interest in new thrash metal material, but Demoniac have gone well beyond that and So It Goes is a complete revelation to my jaded sensibilities. They play intense thrash metal with blackened vocals and hints at progressive tendencies and with a technical proficiency that is exceedingly impressive. The opening couple of tracks illustrate that these guys can out-thrash the shit out of almost anyone currently playing thrash metal. Fast, vibrant riffing, snarling vocals and a rhythm section that will destroy your apartment block if they play within a mile of it, deliver everything you could ever want from a thrash metal album. Then, following the opening one-two salvo, Extraviado opens up with a.. jazz clarinet. This is a weird and wonderful kind of doom and jazz number that may well leave you scratching your head, but I personally think is a glorious curveball that lets you regain some composure before the next neck-mangler. Equilibrio fatal is another riff-fest of lightning-powered thrash that will remove the skin from any unprotected body parts as it hurtles from riff to riff and contains some terrific soloing and superb basswork from Vicente Pereira.

This then brings us to the second half of the album, which consists solely of the almost twenty-minute suite of the title track which is a thrash metal tour de force and the track where Demoniac really show their chops and leave the competition eating their dust. Riff follows riff, solos rise and fall, that awesome, crunchy bass keeps baring it's teeth, Javier Ortiz snarls and sneers his way through the lyrics and our old friend that crazy clarinet even makes a reappearance. This track is one of the most glorious, OTT celebrations of thrash metal you are ever likely to hear and with the searing power of the shorter tracks from side one makes for one of the greatest thrash albums I have ever heard. Believe me, if this was released in the late eighties this would still be held up as an out and out classic. If, like me, you thought thrash metal was dead then spin So It Goes and behold thrash's Lazarus-like resurrection.

I enjoyed French doom outfit Deathbell's debut album, 2018's With the Beyond, very much, it's female-voiced stoner vibe akin to Windhand and Alunah, bands I am a big fan of, so I have been anticipating a follow-up for some time now and at last here it is. Called A Nocturnal Crossing, the albums six tracks span a touch over forty minutes. It opens up with a great slab of uptempo stoner doom called The Stronghold and the Archer which gets the album off to a fantastic start and may well be my favourite track, it has a memorable melody and a strong central riff with some soaring keyboard work and singer Lauren Gaynor's vocals are strong enough to carry the song well. This is followed by Devoured on the Peak which is similar, but with more of a bluesy influence, a direction that Deathbell like to take fairly regularly with their doom and that will become even more pronounced later in the album. The single, The Ladder, at eight and a half minutes is the longest track here and is a bit more ambitious with more variation in pacing, some effective keyboard work and a nice guitar workout towards the end. The second half of the album continues in similar vein and closes with the title track, which is arguably the album's heaviest, it is another track with a blues influence and an extended guitar workout, although it does seem to end a bit abruptly.

There is an aspect to the band, I think the cumulative effect of the guitar work and the distant yet strong vocals that lend the tracks a kind of psychedelic-gothic edge but that doesn't detract from the stoner vibes either. There does seem to have been some progression since the debut with the band pushing at the boundaries of what they do, introducing a more progressive sound especially with a greater emphasis on the keyboards for example, without any serious wholesale changes to their overall sound, but coming at it with a freshness and ambition that makes it worthy of the four year wait. If you are a fan of female-fronted doom metal, such as the aforementioned Windhand and bands like Blood Ceremony then there should be plenty here for you to enjoy.

Konvent are an all-female four-piece formed in 2015 in Copenhagen, releasing their debut, Puritan Masochism in 2020. The debut comprised almost fifty minutes of sludgy death doom and was pretty solid, albeit lacking in variety. To be honest, this follow-up, Call Down the Sun, is very much in the same vein. The riffs have a Celtic Frost kind of vibe, being quite bombastic they invoke the atmosphere of a fading empire facing it's last days and are my favourite aspect of the album, the riff to Grains in particular is imperiously menacing-sounding. The vocals are alternately harsh sludgy barks and deep growls, the former being the most successfully employed, the latter I am not too sure about in all honesty, they lack the gruffness and abyssal depth of truly convincing death doom vocals. The tracks are quite samey and I sometimes found my attention wandering, which is never a good sign is it?

All in all Call Down the Sun is OK, but I couldn't really go any further than that. I would like to hear the band incorporate something a bit more diverse into their sound because, to be brutally honest, there are several others who do this sort of thing better.

I've been a fan of Italian doomsters Messa for some time now and I have been greatly anticipating the release of Close since it was announced towards the end of 2021. Well. now it's finally here did it merit all that anticipation? The answer has got to be a resounding yes from me. On Close Messa have taken what made Feast for Water the release it was and have expounded on it, yet they haven't lost touch with their roots in doom metal and, if truth be told, their doom sounds even heavier here than it did previously.

What sets Messa apart, however, is their willingness to incorporate other, often non-metal, styles into their doom material. Yes, other bands hybridise their doom with other genres like blues or gothic and black metal, but Messa incorporate even more diverse musical genres like dark jazz, middle-eastern music and even, dare I say, on the album's penultimate track, Leffotrak, grindcore! One of the reasons I like Italian metal so much is that Italian bands are never scared to try something different with what can be quite basic genres and progressive music seems to be very much part of the Italian rock and metal scenes and Messa fully embrace this quintessentially Italian ethos. Sometimes, however, it falls that some bands' ambitions outstrip their abilities to fully realise them, this is most definitely not an issue for Messa as they are consummately skilled in delivering their auditory vision. In Sara Bianchin they have arguably the finest female vocalist in doom metal (if not all metal), the power and quality of her singing leaves most other doom vocalists in the shade, if you need convincing listen no further than opening track Suspended and tell me I'm wrong!

The opener is one of the more straightforward doom metal tracks on offer, but it is so expertly paced and performed that it actually feels more complex than it is. It is here where it also becomes obvious that Messa haven't compromised their heaviness either for an increased diversity and complexity, as is further illustrated on Dark Horse which is a little bit bluesy initially, at least until it's Miserlou-like speedy breakdown around halfway through. This brings us to Orphalese that begins with a Middle-Eastern sound, reminiscent of some of the tracks from Hans Zimmer's Gladiator soundtrack, conjuring images of a Lebanese or Egyptian market scene, with Sara Bianchin's bluesy vocals soaring over it for a truly evocative and atmospheric track.

I don't intend to give a track-by-track rundown of the album, but if any album deserves one it's probably this. Whilst listening for the first time, I was genuinely excited to hear where each track would go as I had absolutely no idea, such is the variety of ideas on offer here. The performances throughout are excellent, whether it be Alberto Piccolo's guitar solos, Sara's vocals, the tightness of the rhythm section or the wind instrumentation of guest Giorgio Trombino and the production is crystal clear so that nothing gets in the way of the band's expression of their multifarous ideas. If there is any sense to the world then Close should propel Messa into the upper reaches of the metal universe and could well garner them exposure beyond metal circles. In truth I could spend all day heaping superlatives upon the band and this latest Meisterwerk, but why would you waste time listening to me when you could be listening to this instead?!

I know shamefully little about Chile other than it is very long, has a lot of mountains and is home to the world's driest desert, The Atacama, where there are many space observatories. The other thing I know is that the Chilean thrash scene is one of the more vital and vibrant iterations of the genre in these early decades of the 21st century. Bands like Demoniac, Critical Defiance and Ripper are but the tip of the Chilean iceberg and Parkcrest are another extremely talented bunch of thrashers. It does seem like quite a tight scene however, with Parkcrest guitarist Diego Armijo and drummer Nicolás Villanueva also playing in Ripper and vocalist/guitarist Javier Salgado playing in Critical Defiance and Hellish amongst several others. Formed in 2011, Parkcrest didn't release their first album until 2016's Hallucinative Minds hit the metaphorical Bandcamp shelves. Whilst being an energetic and raw album, Hallucinative Minds is far from the finished product, but did show some promise. So did the follow up, ...And That Blue Will Turn to Red deliver on that promise? Well, I would have to say that, by and large, yes it has and it is a massive leap forward when compared to the debut.

The first difference is that the production this time round is much improved from the debut and sounds powerful, yet has an impressive clarity that allows all the band member's contributions to distinctly be heard. The rhythm section of bassist Cristoffer Pinto and Villanueva are the particular benefactors of this improvement in production values. Pinto's bass throbs along, providing a super-solid foundation from which the others can weave their magic. Villanueva's drumming is possibly the biggest revelation for me on this record, it is furious yet controlled and is much more than just straightforward pummelling. His work here is reminiscent of Dave Lombardo and praise for a thrash metal drummer doesn't get much higher than that does it?

Of course, what we all turn to thrash metal for is the riffs isn't it and here Parkcrest certainly deliver, firing them off like they're going out of style from a seemingly inexhaustible supply. There may not be quite as many as on, say, Time Does Not Heal, but they certainly come thick and fast. Guitarist Javier Salgado doubles up as vocalist and his harsh, barking vocal style is particularly reminiscent o f Kreator's Mille Petrozza and, in fact, I have seen several plausible comparisons to Kreator, Slayer and early Sepultura and while they do take inspiration from these more aggressive purveyors of thrash, their sound is distinctly their own with a degree of technicality coupled with the aforementioned aggressiveness, this being a hallmark of the "Chilean sound" it would seem.

The songwriting is fantastic with several really great tracks on here, the opening duo of Impossible to Hide and Darkest Fear are a killer opening salvo and the instrumental Dwelling of the Moonlights may be my favourite thrash track since the early nineties. This is an album with a surfeit of riffs coupled with searing, meteoric soloing and a tempo that is unrelenting. I don't say this often but this is a modern thrash offering that is more than capable of holding it's own against all but the very best the genre has ever produced and Parkcrest comfortably sit in the vanguard of the latest thrash metal revitalisation.

I must admit it had been quite a while since I last listened to Axioma Ethica Odini, with Isa and RIITIIR being my go-to albums if I fancy a bit of late-era Enslaved so it was long overdue a revisit. After a strong run of albums from 2003's Below the Lights to 2006's Ruun, Enslaved released Vertebrae in 2008 and, for me, it was one of their weakest albums in quite a while, lacking any kind of punch at all. So this disappointment left me a little apprehensive for the release of Axioma Ethica Odini and the direction in which Enslaved appeared to be heading. Happily these fears are expelled within moments of opener Ethica Odini kicking in and it becomes apparent that this a completely different beast to Vertebrae. Ethica Odini contains more bite than the entirety of Vertebrae and is an excellent opening track. The black metal sections pummel the listener and sound more savage than Enslaved had for a while, as if the band had rediscovered their passion anew, and the clean-sung sections retain this viciousness whilst simultaneously coming off as quite melodic. Ultimately the song concludes in a gentle coda that then sets up the next track, Raidho very nicely.

The mood and methodology of the opener is continued throughout the album, with Grutle Kjellson's black metal vocals sounding more evil than they had for a while and being beautifully countered by the cleans, the black metal / prog metal dichotomy being at the very core of the album's success as the band switch seamlessly between the two contrasting styles. As had always been the case with Enslaved, the performances are quite exemplary - it was apparent very early on that Enslaved were technically a cut above most of their Norwegian contemporaries and they just continued to get better and better as time passed, becoming an ever tighter unit in the process. Special mention must go to Cato Bekkevold's performance on drums which is super-efficient but never less than spot-on.

There are some killer riffs here - Ethica Odini, The Beacon and Singular to name but three - are fantastic and the guitar sound is chunky and muscular - long gone is the weak sound from Vertebrae and the thin, tremolo-heavy sound of their early work. Keyboards are deployed exceedingly tastefully throughout the track listing. They are ever-present, but never swamp the sound or allow it to stray into symphonic metal territory. There is even a short, futuristic instrumental with a dystopian atmosphere (Axioma) in the middle of the album to provide a break from all the surrounding heaviness which is followed by one of the album's most interesting tracks, Giants. During this epic, Enslaved seem to draw on doom metal influences with a couple of the riffs and the track plumbs whole new depths of heaviness, sounding absolutely brutal when Grutle's black shrieks hit hard. The songwriting is never anything less than stellar and few progressive bands are as concise when it come to composition as Enslaved, they manage to explore and expand without wandering down musical dead ends or indulging in instrumental excess.

Axioma Ethica Odini is possibly Enslaved's heaviest later-era release and, along with subsequent release RIITIIR, mark a high watermark for their progressive metal styling, their more recent releases falling increasingly short of these two classics (despite still being pretty good records in their own rights, such is Enslaved's quality). In revisiting this I have got to admit to being even more impressed than I originally was and, even though I always liked it, I now consider this to be one of the bands premier releases and I will most definitely be returning to it more often.

Madder Mortem are a five-piece progressive metal band from Oslo formed by brother and sister, guitarist Birger Petter M. Kirkevaag and vocalist Agnete M. Kirkevaag, who are the only two original members still with the band. Deadlands was released in 2002 and I used to have a ripped CD-R copy I got off a friend at work when it came out, but that has long since disappeared in one of many clear-outs. I was a big fan of the album when it came out, but it has been a long time since I last heard it, so I thought it would be ripe for a revisit. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then and I have consumed a lot of music in the intervening years so how does it stack up now? Well, I must admit to not being as blown away by it now as I was back then, I guess my exposure to more and better progressive metal albums have taken some of the shine off this. Don't get me wrong, it is still an interesting album and certainly has it's moments, but it certainly isn't a prog-metal classic.

After a short intro track the album proper begins with the track I remember best, Necropol Lit, with it's groove-laden, doomy main riff it is still an attention-grabber of a track, although it doesn't satisfy in the same way as it once did. Next track, Omnivore, is much better and Agnete's vocals are really on full power on this track, which may be my favourite on the album. A lot of the albums riffs are of the chugging type that is often associated with nu-metal, and about which I am somewhat ambivalent - here they are passable in the main and work quite well in the context of the album and in combination with those terrific vocals. Generally the guitar work is pretty good, with both dissonant and melodic lead passages. The production isn't bad at all, the bass and drums get plenty of space in the mix and aren't swamped by everything else, Pål Mozart Bjørke's basswork in particular is exemplary.

Deadlands has quite a menacing, brooding, gothic vibe to it and gives off an almost cultish atmosphere. The songwriting isn't as complex as a lot of other progressive metal, but it does incorporate some nice temporal and tonal changes and the songs are very tight and efficient with very little technical showiness and window dressing, which is illustrated by over half the album comprising tracks around the five minute mark. The track I struggled with most seems to be one of the album's better-loved, Jigsaw (The Pattern and the Puzzle) which just lays the nu-metal vibe on a bit too thickly and nudges into my nu-metal red zone. Overall, it hasn't held up as well as I thought it might, although it is a fairly unique-sounding release and still has several tracks that are worth checking out.

I have been a massive fan of doom metal since the 1980s when it wasn't even called doom metal yet. I'm also quite keen on hardcore punk - Bad Brains and Minor Threat are two of my favourite bands. Yet until relatively recently I wasn't especially keen on sludge metal. Early forays into bands like Acid Bath left me cold and it actually wasn't until I heard Mastodon's Leviathan that I finally got switched on to sludge. I mention this merely as a long-winded way of saying that I haven't ever before listened to an entire Crowbar album. Now this seems relevant as the consensus on Zero and Below is that it's another Crowbar album, no more no less and while it is good, it is very much like all the other Crowbar albums. So, at least in that respect, I can come at it with a fresh perspective rather than the rather jaded view of those more familiar with the band's previous material.
It's forty-odd minutes is chock-full of groove-laden and doomy riffs, expertly executed. The vocals are great too - one of my main problems with sludge is the vocals which often just sound too shouty for my personal taste, but Kirk Windstein strikes a decent balance between angsty and tuneful, the laid-back, Louisiana whiskey and cigarettes influence filing the harshest edges off like a single malt compared to rotgut moonshine. There are several tracks that have a significant groove metal factor, such as the opener, The Fear That Bind You and Chemical Godz, but in honesty I prefer the slower, doomier material such as Confess to Nothing and pick of the bunch, the title track Zero and Below. The production sounds great - everything is clear as can be and any distortion is intentional.

Without really being able to compare Zero and Below to the band's earlier discography, this seems like a solid release that is plenty enjoyable without pushing any boundaries or threatening classic status and I know it sounds like damning with faint praise, but sometimes that is enough. It hasn't given me any particular urge to explore Crowbar further, but at least I now know that they are indeed a decent band and I wouldn't avoid them either.

Ihsahn (b. Vegard Sverre Tveitan), as I'm sure everyone already knows, was the mainman behind black metal legends Emperor. Even before Emperor had been put to sleep he had formed a progressive / avant-garde outfit called Peccatum, playing alongside his wife, vocalist / keyboard player Ihriel (who, incidentally, is also the sister of Einar Solberg of Leprous). At this point Ihsahn was way more interested in the progressive and avant-garde than in continuing to recycle the same old material in Emperor and so the band split in 2001. Five years later and Ihsahn was ready to release his first solo album, The Adversary which he put out on his own Mnemosyne Productions label in April of 2006. Now, personally, I was a massive Emperor fan at this time (and still am) and, to be honest, I really wasn't ready for Ihsahn's new direction and never really engaged with The Adversary at all, so despite giving it cursory attention I rapidly dismissed it.

So a couple of years passed and Ihsahn released a follow-up entitled angL, again released on Mnemosyne in May of 2008. I decided to give Ihsahn another go at this point and actually bought a very nice slipcard-enclosed CD copy which I still have. Sadly, I still couldn't really get to grips with this Ihsahn music that wasn't Emperor and the CD was put on a high shelf to be forgotten... until now that is. Thankfully, and in no small part due to the influence of my membership of Metal Academy, I have become more open to music that pushes boundaries and leads me out of my own personal comfort zone, which Ihsahn's music most definitely does, and listening to this afresh, I now have a much more positive connection to it than I had previously and, indeed, derived a great deal from it and some idea of why Ihsahn felt he could no longer be confined by the limits of Emperor.

Despite saying this, angL actually opens with a track (Misanthrope) that could easily have been released on an Emperor album without raising any eyebrows. However, second track Scarab reveals more of what solo Ihsahn is all about, a song that is far more progressive metal than black metal, despite his typical black metal vocals, with several twists and turns that also illustrate how his songwriting had developed and illustrate why he was unable to stay within the confines of a purely black metal outfit. The next track Unhealer has a guest vocal performance from a certain Mikael Akerfeldt, a musician whose quest for ever more complex musical expression is something I'm sure Ihsahn could identify with at this point. This is quite a melodic little number and suits Akerfeldt's vocals beautifully, with a nice light/dark contrast between gentler, clean sung parts and the heavier sections complete with Mikael's distinctive death growls that makes for a track that will sound familiar to Opeth fans.

Emancipation is a weird track, it is another melodic number, but it's verses sound, in a weird way, a bit like David Bowie and Robert Fripp and another nice melo-prog number. Malediction is another more black metal infused track, in similar style to the opener, Misanthrope that is reminiscent of some of the material on IX Equilibrium such as Curse You All Men! or An Elegy of Icaros. The Alchemist is another track that contains Ihsahn's clean vocals and I'm sorry, but he really does remind me of David Bowie with his intonation (and I don't think this is a bad thing - I love Bowie!) Some great guitar work on this track too that makes it a bit of a standout for me, although everyone else seems to hate it.

Elevator is a dark, disorienting track that feels like a journey into another dimension where up and down, left and right are indistinct as Ihsahn's crooning, cajoling voice anchors the song and provides a stable focus. Next up is Threnody and this starts off sounding very much like Benighted from Opeth's Still Life before opening up with some more nice guitar work. Closer Monolith is once again a more straight-up melodic black metal offering, although it does have a softer proggy centre, and it's weird that all three of the more black metal tracks on angL are the ones that begin with the letter "M" - not a coincidence I'm sure.
Mikael Akerfeldt's presence on angL is no coincidence either I don't think, as it feels like Ihsahn was trying to take a similar kind of direction with his own music as Akerfeldt was doing with Opeth at this point (Watershed was released the same year) and may have been keen on swapping ideas with Opeth's creative mastermind. This is certainly nothing like as difficult a listen as I remember it being, it is probably still 30-40% black metal and quite a bit of it is exceedingly melodic and, dare I say, even catchy, with the avant-garde being (thankfully) non-existent. I'd better move the CD from it's position on the highest shelf to a place where I can reach it much more easily as I think I'll be coming back to this one pretty damn soon!

Finland's Dawn of Solace was originally the solo project of Before the Dawn / Wolfheart multi-instrumentalist Tuomas Saukkonen and was put on hold in 2013 while he concentrated on Wolfheart. Since restarting Dawn of Solace in 2019 the band has also featured Mikko Heikkilä on clean vocals. Now, I am unfamiliar with the band's previous output and my natural aversion to most gothic metal made this a less than attractive proposal. However, I must admit to being pleasantly surprised by Dawn of Perdition. It manages to convey sorrow and mournfulness without resorting to over-the-top vocal and musical affectations, in fact I would say it is a very restrained album and that is to it's credit. On several tracks I was expecting some harsh death metal vocals to come in as Saukkonen ramped up the instrumental heaviness, seemingly having set them up, yet the duo held fast and stuck solely with Mikko Heikkilä's cleans and defied expectations and thus predictability. There's some nice build up and progressions during most of the tracks with the band not averse to acoustic-led passages to contrast the heaviness of the riffs. Keyboards are well utilised adding a layer of atmosphere and with some almost proggy flourishes for additional flair. An album like this is unlikely to ever make my AOTY, but I found this to be very enjoyable and it left me feeling like I had been listening to a less emotionally draining version of Moonflowers, Swallow the Sun's heartbreaking latest album.

A couple of live-in-the-studio acoustic versions of tracks from previous albums (Dead Air from The Darkness and Lead Wings from Waves) finish off the album and despite not being familiar with the originals, I thought these were really well worked and sounded great.

Well you know what they say, "There's no school like the old school". Now Night Hag may not be fully-fledged graduates of the death doom old-school but they sure as hell have studied the curriculum intensely. Despite reportedly forming in 2012, this is the Virginia three-piece's debut full-length, with only a 2018 EP and 2021 split (with Cryptic Brood) being released during the preceding decade. While the band don't do anything new or innovative with that old-school death doom formula, they do go all-in on the doom side of things and as such, this is crawlingly abyssal-sounding for large parts of it's runtime - with no complaints from me! I make no apologies for admitting to preferring the old-school as far as death metal goes and Night Hag claw back to the likes of Cianide, Ceremonium and Rippikoulu for inspiration and do a great job of reproducing that filthy early nineties death metal sound, with the caveat that Phantasmal Scourge's modern production values never allow it to reach the truly foetid and filthy sound that made those early nineties death doom releases such classic records. Imagine someone had taken Autumn Shade or A Descent Into Hell and scraped some of the mould and crustiness off them then you get some idea of what Night Hag have achieved here.

As I said earlier, the band certainly focus on the doom side of their death doom, especially during the early tracks on the album with the tempo almost verging on funeral doom at times (the title track for example) but they can unleash some pretty great quicker metal riffs too when the mood takes them - I love the banger of a riff at the conclusion of opener Slowly Festering in Rigor Mortis to name but one. The guitar tone has that satisfying crunch requisite of OSDM, downtuned and replete with heavy distortion and the vocals have that breaking boulder deep growl that should be familiar to any OSDM fanatic. In all honesty, the album is a track or two overlong, fifty-five minutes being a bit of a stretch, the classics always knew to take their leave around the forty minute mark - better to leave them wanting more than to oversatiate the listener, but this is a quibble really and the length doesn't affect the experience too adversely.

Look, if you've come to this looking for something new and innovative then keep walking because you are definitely in the wrong place. If, however, you know exactly what you want from modern old-school-influenced death doom then you should be right at home here. Should appeal to fans of modern death doom acts like Coffins, Atavisma and Druid Lord as well as the classic nineties acts.

Fragments of Lost Memories is a Japanese funeral doom project about whom very little is known. They may be a band or the product of a single musician, but Divagate is the third album released by the project in a little over a year, along with an eighteen-minute EP, so they are certainly in a very productive period currently. In common with both the previous albums Divagate contains four tracks, although this is considerably longer than the other two with all four tracks clocking in at over fifteen minutes each and the total runtime just short of 70 minutes. I have only heard the debut, Decadence, previously and found it to be a bit wanting, especially during the first two tracks, although the latter two showed some improvement. Luckily, Divagate is much more consistent and is a better album all round. The production is nice and clear and the music has a bit more heft than it did, certainly when compared to the first half of Decadence. I still wouldn't call it crushing in the manner of an Esoteric album, the second half of the title track for example is a very gentle piano-led piece that is particularly lightweight in comparison and, in truth, perhaps goes on a bit too long. 

The vocals are suitably Cthulhian with deeply growled, abyssal tones and are one of my favourite aspects of the album. The riffs are overlayed with some nice thin keyboards to add a layer of atmosphere but it doesn't at any point reach the levels of sheer weight and crushing intensity that the genre's best manage, feeling a bit more akin to gothic death doom for a fair bit of it's runtime. It also has a tendency to repetition, which I know may sound strange to those who may not have much experience of listening to funeral doom, but some of the music's motifs are stretched out just a little too long in my opinion.

Despite these reservations it is still a decent enough album and, like the debut, it improves during the second half, third track Nightmare having the heaviest main riff and closer, Mask, for me, being the standout track as it is the most satisfyingly funereal and complete of the four here. I'm sure FoLM may yet have a great album in them, but this still isn't it.

Released in 1994, Allegiance's debut was a bit late to the thrash metal party. By then the binmen were carting the empty bottles away and cleaners were mopping the pools of puke up from the moshpit floor. There was an explosion of exciting and blasphemous new shit coming from the icy wastes of Scandinavia and doom was spreading over the world. To release a debut of pretty standard sounding, albeit fairly well done, Bay Area worship at this point in time meant that Allegiance were never likely to make much of a splash beyond their own shores and prove the old adage that "timing is everything".

The album's temporal misfortunes aside, it is very well done and all involved are impressively competent musicians. The vocalist, for the most part, seems to utilise the intonations of Hetfield and Chuck Billy for that authentic Bay Area sound and the rhythm section is solid. It is the guitar work that makes this worth listening to however with some cool riffing and impressively executed guitar leads.

On the downside there are of course the sparsely used, but ridiculously out-of-place death growls which I'm surprised they stuck with because they sound so jarring in this context. Furthermore, I'm sorry to say that the songwriting didn't exactly overwhelm me either. Although each track is well perforrmed and is inherently fine, I didn't feel as if anything jumped out and grabbed me by the throat and at album's end I struggled to recall anything truly killer.

If it had been released six or seven years earlier it may have been able to stand proudly alongside second-rung stuff like Exodus, but even the titans of thrash were disintegrating into mediocrity or reaching beyond the genre's borders at this point in time, so D.e.s.t.i.t.u.t.i.o.n was always destined for relative obscurity it seems. I would love to be able to claim it is some kind of undiscovered and ill-ignored gem, but in truth I found it to be well-executed but unexceptional Bay Area worship that would struggle to find much purchase outside that scene's most ardent devotees.

I know I am supposed to bow down in obeisance and offer up my eternal gratitude that Cult of Luna have deigned to provide us with yet more proof of their superiority to us lesser beings in the form of their latest release. But, in all honesty, I just feel a bit... cheated.

I came late to the CoL party, only getting into them since joining Metal Academy and hearing that nearly everyone rated them very highly indeed. And, yes, they are a fantastic band and yes, The Long Road North sounds great. Yet somehow it has still left me feeling strangely empty. The reason why is that it sounds exactly how I expected it to. It is performed, written and produced to a ridiculously high standard, as is everything I've heard from the band and therein lies the problem. It feels like their music, despite being amazing, is so formulaic that you could remove all the covers from your CoL albums and just leave them on the shelf with Cult of Luna written on each in marker pen and it wouldn't matter which one you pulled out and put on the turntable as the experience would be the same.

I understand it sounds ridiculous to say that an album sounds great and then slag it off and I probably sound like a giant arsehole, but I genuinely feel disappointed in The Long Road North. I feel like I've pulled back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz and got wise to his trickery. I could, without feeling any sense of internal conflict, rate this album anywhere from 3.5 (any less would be churlish) to 5.0.

Reviewing it musically, I could go "blah, blah, blah slow build up... blah, soaring crescendo... blah, superb musicianship... blah, blah tight composition" but I can't be arsed if truth be told. For me, I think how highly I regard Cult of Luna albums will be in the order in which I heard them as I get a diminished return from each one, so Somewhere Along the Highway will probably always remain my favourite and possibly the only Cult of Luna album I will ever need.

If you don't share my misgivings then I would say, yes definitely go out and get this album because it IS indeed a very good one and you will love it.

This is truly one of the hidden gems of the early nineties' doom scene and is a record I can't believe isn't more popular among fans of traditional doom metal. Hailing from Frederick, Maryland, Internal Void were apparently pretty well-known in the Washington DC area, yet seem to have gained little traction outside the US capital's rarified atmosphere, which is a great shame as this album kicks all kinds of ass and, to these grizzled old ears at least, gives more highly-regarded releases from the time a run for their money if not actually whupping them into submission. Despite being in existence for since 1987, with a two-year hiatus around 2013, Internal Void have unbelievably only released three full-lengths of which Standing on the Sun is their debut.

Musically Ithe band sit somewhere between Black Sabbath and Saint Vitus and sound similar to The Obsessed, particularly the guitar work of Kelly Carmichael who's dirty riffs are obviously influenced by Wino. Carmichael also turns in some red-hot solos that seem to howl into the aether like a wounded beast and contain passing nods to both Tony Iommi and, I would dare to suggest, Rush's Alex Lifeson. Vocalist J.D. Williams often times sounds like Ozzy but at others sounds more like Wino but either way, his vocals are perfectly appropriate to this style of grimy trad doom. The rhythm section of future Earthride drummer Eric Little and bassist Adam S. Heinzmann, whilst not doing anything showy or overtly impressive, provide enough of a solid foundation for both Carmichael and Williams to launch their sonic salvos on unsuspecting metalheads' ears.

Standing on the Sun is an impressive slab of doom metal and contains enough remnants of Sabbath's heavy metal to perfectly illustrate what is meant by the traditional doom metal tag. There are some supremely heavy riffs and some that have a nice "groove" to them as well in a more stoner-influenced style. In fact, Kelly Carmichael has turned in one of my favourite guitar performances of nineties doom metal on this, with both his dirty riffs and psych-influenced leads really sticking with me. His intro to Utopia of Daze even apes the anticipatory build-up intro to one of my favourite tracks of all-time, The Stooges I Wanna Be Your Dog, before slowing it down and turning in yet another killer riff-fest.

So there we have it, if you are into old-school, Sabbath-influenced doom metal as practiced by Saint Vitus, The Obsessed, Count Raven or Pentagram then you really should wrap your ear'oles around this fantastic hour's worth of trad doom awesomeness.

During my latest expedition into the most far-flung corners of the Doomiverse I ended up in 1991 with the self-titled debut of Bostonian sludge/doom outfit, Upsidedown Cross. The band was made up of three members of punk/noise crew Kilslug including the weirdly-named Larry Lifeless on vocals, Cheez on bass and Rico Petroleum on guitar. The lineup was filled out with second guitarist Scott Vangel (aka Shoehorn) and, for this album at least, drummer J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. fame. A later incarnation also included the infamous Seth Putnam on bass.

Well, this is a bit of an oddball in the doom canon with it's amalgam of sludge, doom and noise rock topped off by Larry Lifeless' disconcerting vocal style. This guy is every bit as divisive as King Diamond or Cirith Ungol's Tim Baker with his apathetic, whining style that sounds like Bad Brains' HR coming out of general anaesthetic. Add to this the two guitarists' penchant for ditching any kind of riff and just taking off on their own discordant way at the drop of a hat and it all starts to sound a bit anarchic (although as someone once said, "This is Boston, not L.A."). At times the songs only seem to be held together by Mascis' drumming (which is far better than I would have expected) as he heroically tries to keep things moving forward. The lyrics are deliberately provocative and a bit immature sounding - Shakespeare or Bob Dylan would be unlikely to lose much sleep over them - and Larry Lifeless' delivery makes them sound like the ramblings of a genuinely disturbed human being. The band's live performances were apparently legendarily demented with tales of drink and drug-fuelled psychotic performances, especially from their loosely-hinged frontman that I can definitely believe if this is how they sounded on record.

I am not 100% sure exactly how I feel about the album in all honesty. I kind of applaud it's lack of concession to anyone or anything and it's anarchic flavour harks back to bands like MC5 and The Stooges (only tripping their asses off) which is always good in my book, but the vocals really aren't great, in fact after the first couple of lines of the self-titled opener I thought the guy was taking the piss it sounded that bad, and I sometimes wished they would just at least try to hold it together long enough for the riffs to sink in. I'm definitely glad to have checked it out and it had it's moments, but I wouldn't buy it and probably won't return to it much in future.

I really love Norwegian black metal, but I've got to say that the French do take some beating when it comes to the most unholy of metal genres. The list of fantastic French black metal albums keeps expanding and the latest to cross my path is Mütiilation's 1995 debut, Vampires of Black Imperial Blood. I can't in all honesty say why it's taken me so long to take the plunge with this, but I'm here now, so it's all good.

Anyway, Mütiilation were a member of the infamous Les Légions Noires and were the brainchild of Meyhna'ch (b. William Roussell) who would have been only about 18 when these tracks were laid down and I guess it takes the cockiness of youth to release an album that is such a "fuck you!" to pretty much everybody as a debut. This youthful lack of fucks-to-give is what black metal's second wave was built upon though, I guess. This is a boss-level second wave album and will most definitely not appeal to everyone. Its lo-fi, stripped down production will put an enormous amount of people off, I suspect, but for those who love this kind of nekro shit (myself included) then they will be in black metal nirvana. When the excess flesh is stripped away what we are left with is the beating heart of, for want of a better expression, true black metal. Without decent production, layered synths, folksy interludes and clean sung parts what becomes important is what really matters when black metal is distilled down to it's most essential elements - the riffs, the blastbeats and the harsh vocals and Mütiilation deliver these in spades. Meyhna'ch is quoted in the booklet to my version saying in September '94 "Today, black metal seems to be dead, trendies has (sic) taken everything in hands... and Black Imperial Blood is one fist in their pigfaces". So I think you can see exactly where this album is coming from and what it aims to achieve.

It must be said thet despite having such a raw, visceral sound what does shine through is Meyhna'ch's uncanny ear for a memorable riff such as those on Magical Shadows of a Tragic Past and Ravens of My Funeral to name but two. There are some nice pace changes throughout with several gloomy, depressed-sounding slower sections contrasting the brutality of the blasting, the track Eternal Empire of Majesty Death being a great example. Believe me though, when the blasting hits, it hits hard and should push the blood pressure of any metal maniac up to hypertensive levels. Meyhna'ch's vocal delivery is of the croaking style rather than shrill shrieking, but still gives me a sore throat just listening to him, such is the rawness of the delivery.

OK, there is some variation in the sound of the tracks, testament to the fact they were recorded at different times with four of the eight being from the previous year's Black Imperial Blood (Travel) demo but with such lo-fi production this doesn't really make a whole heap of difference. If you are into the rawer and more visceral side of black metal then Vampires of Black Imperial Blood is an absolutely essential release. Orginal copies are going for £148 on Discogs and it is well-sought for good reason.

I'm returning to this now after a gap of nine months from it's release as I failed to connect with it at all first time around due to it's technical edge, me not being the biggest fan of so-called "technical metal". Now that I have given it chance to settle in I am much better disposed towards it than I was last spring. Yes, there is a degree of technicality to the Dutchmen's thrashery, but it isn't as wanky as some technical thrash bands and the tracks still do what I like thrash tracks to do which is provide sufficient neck-wrenching aggression to facilitate headbanging overload. The musicianship is excellent and the songwriting is great, as I said, it does provide a degree of technicality but never loses sight of the fact that it is first and foremost a thrash metal record and ensures that it delivers on that front before incorporating the technicality into the songs.

I love Laurens Houvast's vocals, they are plenty aggressive and just the right side of ragged to give the impression of a singer pouring his all into his art. The riffs are sufficiently memorable and are tight as fuck with not a single note out of place, no matter how fast they are played and the soloing (always a bellweather in thrash metal) is impressively white hot. So with these thrash fundamentals firmly in place I am more than willing to overlook the odd bit of technical bollocks as it in no way detracts from what I turn to a thrash album for. Better late to the party than never to party at all I guess.

What is of particular interest is the incorporation of that old favourite of 70's prog outfits, the mellotron. It is actually utilised extremely well and doesn't impinge on or blunt the album's aggressiveness in any way. It is most obviously felt, I think, on Prospect of Immortality, which seems to be the track everyone is talking about due to it's slower pace and it's more diverse and even proggy feel. Ostensibly the album is a science fiction concept album, which is no problem for me at all as I love both sci-fi and concept albums, but in all truth I don't think this should be a deal breaker for those who don't as it still works merely as a damn fine thrash album. Nearly everyone is comparing this to Vektor and I will concede to those who know the work of the Arizonans better than I, but I prefer this to Vektor as this just thrashes harder.

So, to summarise my thoughts, this is a great thrash album that happens to have a bit of a technical bent and some interesting use of keyboards that enhance the band's thrash credentials rather than detracting from them. More of this, please.

Hellfekted are a three-piece from my home town, Stoke-on-Trent, in the UK and ply their trade in the area of aggressive blackened thrash. This is a style that has reinvigorated the thrash scene in recent years with, in particular, a number of very good bands and releases coming from Latin America and especially from Chile. So anyway, Woe to the Kingdom of Blood is Hellfekted's debut album and is one of the few blackened thrash albums to hail from the UK, Craven Idol being the only other real exponent of the style I am familiar with that hail from these shores.

Firstly, I've got to say, that cover is horrible but to be fair keeps well within the thrash aesthetic. The second problem I have is that there is something not quite right with the production. I have no technical knowledge of music production but the top end just doesn't sound right to me as if it's clipped or too compressed and the guitar tone and the cymbals seem to suffer markedly as a result. That said, the bottom end is great and Chris Brownrigg's bass in particular benefits from this, it's growling, crunchy rhythms often dominating proceedings. It is an exceedingly aggressive-sounding album, with a breakneck tempo for most of it's runtime and Liam Stubbs' savage and ragged black metal-styled vocals which sound like they are shredding his vocal chords to ribbons with sheer spite and hatred. I would like to have heard a few more solos as they are in fairly short supply here, although soloing don't seem to be Liam Stubbs' strong point - the one during Fractured for example is quite poor, the extended one during Omen of the Antichrist is a little better but is still subpar when compared to the thrash masters.  There are, however, riffs aplenty and pretty good ones they are too in the main. Hellfekted sound better the faster they play and aren't quite as convincing when they throttle the tempo back, such as on the title track where they just sound a bit off.

Overall I would say it's a decent, albeit flawed, slab of blackened thrash with two or three really good tracks such as Tower of Life, Stigma (DSBMthrash?) and Fire at Will that doesn't rival the leaders in the genre, but is still solid enough to warrant the occasional spin. I will look out for the follow-up with great anticipation and hope that they can iron out their technical issues and produce a blackthrash album good enough to put the UK back on the thrash metal map!

I am partial to a bit of darkwave and Chelsea Wolfe has been my favourite exponent of the genre for the best part of the past decade or so, since hearing her 2013 Pain is Beauty album. During that time her music has darkened and become relatively heavier and my appreciation of her style has deepened with each subsequent release. Consequently, unlike most Academy members I suspect, I have approached this as a fan of Ms. Wolfe and not of Converge of whom I know very little, having always been put off by the various -core genre tags associated with them. As a result, I was a bit apprehensive that Chelsea had got herself associated to a bit of a dud, at least as far as I was concerned. Thankfully, nothing could be further from the truth and this collaboration works exceedingly well. I have no idea if this is typical of Converge's sound or not, but if it is then I have done them (and myself) a grave disservice for all this time by ignoring them as they come across as very Cult of Luna-ish, which is always welcome in my book.

While the album is definitely a genuine collaboration, it does seem to be more of a metal album than Chelsea Wolfe would normally produce, so feels like Converge were the dominant side of the partnership with their music being tempered by Chelsea's presence rather than being an equally divided recording. This is no bad thing and I'm guessing this was the natural way for the album to come about, without worrying about ego and  preciousness, the music coming first.

From the opening track, the almost eight minutes of Blood Moon, it is apparent that Chelsea Wolfe's gothic darkwave influence acts as the perfect temper for Converge's withering intensity, providing the moments within the music that allow it to breathe and offer some introspection rather than merely deploying relentless aggression which, for me personally, is a big plus as I find the sustained intensive aggression of metalcore and mathcore to be insufferable most of the time, but these gentler, more reflective parts provide contrast and context to the whirling maelstrom and make it much more effective as a result. Don't be misled though, there are still plenty of great riffs and metal moments - I'm particularly fond of the riff towards the end of Coil as the track peaks from the extended build-up. Chelsea's influence can also be felt on the crawling, Soundgarden-ish Flower Moon which also has a great riff and crunchy guitar sound as it ramps up the intensity for a real stand-out track. Flower Moon is followed by Tongues Playing Dead which sounds more like I imagine Converge to usually sound and, I must confess, if the whole album sounded like this track then I would struggle with it. Lord of Liars is similarly intense, but the presence of Chelsea Wolfe's clean vocal and the whirlwind guitar work make this a far superior number.

Anyway I have no intention of producing a track by track breakdown, suffice it to say that Bloodmoon:I provides far more variety and interest than I originally expected and although I certainly wouldn't say it's a perfect album, the protagonists, despite coming from very different directions, work well off one another and have combined to produce an album that should appeal to a large cross-section of fans of metal and more mainstream taste alike.

I'd not even heard of this album until very recently and have only the very briefest of dalliances with it's protagonists. The cover is especially uninspiring and gives no clue as to what may be concealed within, so I wasn't completely sure what to expect. Anyway, it all turned out well, because it's heavy, metallized space rock is very much my sort of thing. This is real wall-of-sound stuff, a wall built of the ultra-heavy stoner doom of Sleep and Electric Wizard, cementing it to cosmic-flavoured post-rock, such as that found on Barrows' superb Red Giant album (which this predates by seven years, so may have been an influence on) then reinforcing it with some Hawkwind-style space rock. Some may sniff at the 'Wind comparisons, but the jam during Painful Burns Smoke as the Presence Sets Us Down in Supersonic Waves sounds so much akin to the sort of jams heard on the numerous live versions of classic Hawkwind tracks like You Shouldn't Do That and Brainstorm and The Overload has such a lot in common with The Age of the Micro Man on The Hawklords' 25 Years album that it is impossible to conceive that the UK's veteran cosmic travellers weren't a strong influence. Of course this is way heavier than Hawkwind ever were and certainly has also taken plenty of influence from the best of sludge and atmospheric sludge outfits like Neurosis, ISIS and even Eyehategod. In fact it is so heavy it feels like it creates it's own gravity well and may well be the densest stoner metal ever produced.

I like to think I have a decent imagination and I absolutely love albums that may not possess too much of a narrative of their own, but allow the listener's mind's eye to roam and create it's own narrative structure around the music. Supernaturals - Record One is absolutely one such album and, having listened to it a number of times, I can say it feels like a different journey each time I take it, filled with cosmic power and awe, from the thrusting propulsion of tracks like Infect One and Painful Burns... to the drifting in space, open-mouthed, witnessing of galaxy-wide supernovae sensation of Maestoso. This is absolutely an album in the stoner tradition and I can imagine it would probably take on a whole other level of meaning if listening was pharmaceutically assisted, but those days are long gone for me and I will settle for the raw, unaltered sonic trip as offered up in it's unfiltered form as it is a terrific slab of cosmic metal.

I'm not the world's biggest fan of Industrial Metal, maybe because I work in an engineering factory and have the dubious pleasure of listening to mechanical noise all day and so Industrial Metal feels a bit too much like work! For me the best kind of industrial music isn't totally alienating, but also has some humanity to it and I think Fange achieve that here with the sludge and death metal elements working in synergy with the industrial. The hot-blooded passion of the sludge metal vocals provide a searing counterpoint to the coldness of the machine-like death metal riffs. These death industrial riffs are also overlaid with atmospheric sludge lead work that once more lends it a more human face and the layers help to build an interesting atmosphere that speaks of resistance to the inevitable that is yet tinged with a fatalistic futility, anger and self-loathing.

This all makes for an album that is extremely heavy and confrontational and may not be to every industrial fans taste - this isn't Rammstein or Fear Factory, there are no melodic hooks to hang on to, in fact it has quite a negative atmosphere derived from it's sludge metal roots. It is quite short though, comprising just two 15 minute tracks and this definitely works in it's favour as it doesn't allow time to become jaded with the relentless pessimism and crushing heaviness of it's riffing. All in all this has got to be one of my favourite industrial releases of recent years so if you like industrial metal with a bit of sullen intensity then I would strongly recommend Pantocrator.

Nemesis would eventually evolve into the band that would become Candlemass, featuring Leif Edling as well as original Candlemass drummer Mats Ekström and guitarist Christian Weberyd. Four of the five tracks, all except closer Goodbye which is an Angel Witch cover, were written by Edling and he handles vocals as well as his usual duties on bass. I think it's safe to say that this ep shows why Leif didn't perform vocals for Candlemass, his range being far too limited to handle the epic nature of Candlemass' songs and in truth he struggles even here. While this is as much heavy metal as traditional doom, there is certainly enough on show to see where Edling was going with his songwriting and is a recognisable early step on his road to almost single-handedly establishing the epic doom genre. There are some terrific Sabbathian riffs, check out the one on opener Black Messiah - it's a real killer and the whole track is amazing, eventually being reworked as Incarnation of Evil on the 1988's Ancient Dreams album with Messiah on vocals. I would really liked to have heard Messiah have a crack at the vocals on this rawer, less well-produced version though, because even with Edling struggling it's still a brilliant song and sounds a bit more immediate than the Incarnation of Evil version.

In God We Trust finds Edling in speed metal mode with a track that could have been penned by Venom, except for the doomy middle section maybe. Theme of the Guardians has simple, but effective main riff that sounds like a staple of the then nascent trad doom genre and one that has been reworked and reinvented a hundred times since. The King Is Dead is arguably the most noticably a Leif Edling-written track, probably sounding the most like Candlemass with a great riff and sterling leadwork throughout from both Weberyd and Anders Wallin (who's contribution here seems to be the sum total of his recorded output). The Angel Witch cover is interesting I think in that it illustrates how Edling's songwriting was influenced by Kevin Heybourne.

In conclusion I found this to be an interesting release, particularly with it's importance in the early history of one of doom metal's most influential figures and even despite it's shortcomings, ie the poor production and weak vocals, it still contains some great tracks and should interest any adherent of early doom metal. As a footnote the 1990 release features a couple of 1984 Candlemass demos, Black Stone Wielder and Demon's Gate which show how quickly Edling and Candlemass were developing from the Nemesis tracks.

Coroner's debut, whilst still being almost universally lauded, has been overshadowed a bit by their better produced and more technically focussed releases that succeeded it. Whilst that is understandable as they are great records, this less polished and more reckless-sounding release should not be ignored by anyone who considers themselves a fan of either Coroner in particular, or thrash metal generally. For a debut release this is supremely confident sounding and the playing is technically adept to such a level that it puts a lot of their contemporaries to shame, the sheer pace of a song like Suicide Command would ensure it descended into a bit of a mess in less accomplished hands. The style for most of the album is pretty much straight-ahead, uptempo, neckbreaking thrashing, incendiary solos firing off with regular abandon at a thousand notes a minute. I also love Ron Royce's vocals, they sound a lot like Iron Maiden's Paul Di'Anno, a singer who, for me, embodies the power and aggression demanded of metal vocalists and sound perfect here.

1986/87 was arguably the high water mark for thrash metal and Coroner's debut is a release that is well at home in the company of those other legendary releases as well as being a really solid building block for their more technical and accomplished subsequent releases. Unfortunately this passed me by upon it's original release and it would be much later before I got into Coroner, which is a great shame as this would really have appealed to a 25-year-old me.

Interestingly, later editions of the album have a bonus track, Spiral Dream which was written by Celtic Frost's Tom G. Warrior who had a close connection to the band, even performing vocals on 1986's Death Cult demo and indeed, seems to have been a big influence on the band's style. One of the better and more accomplished debuts from the world of eighties' thrash metal and a great place to start if you want to explore Coroner's discography.

April 2018 and English epic doomsters Solstice released their third album, White Horse Hill, a mere twenty years after their previous, the classic New Dark Age, one of my all-time favourites. Mainman Rich Walker and returning drummer Rick Budby were the only band members common to both albums, Solstice having been through a staggering number of members over the years, including nine - yes NINE vocalists. Obviously there are some differences between the two albums, but the commitment to epic doom metal and the spirit of Old Albion remains a constant. However, I cannot for a minute pretend that White Horse Hill is anything like as accomplished an album as New Dark Age. For starters the production seems horribly muddied - sometimes the guitar lead just springs up unexpectedly out of the mire - and vocalist Paul Kearns seems to be struggling against this muddiness, overstraining to be heard, at least on the more epic sections, although he comes more into his own during the gentler parts such as For All Days, and for None or the quiet section of Under Waves Lie Our Dead. Furthermore the songs don't seem as strong as those on New Dark Age, they aren't bad, but there's no Cimmerian Codex, New Dark Age II or Cromlech here and the album just doesn't flow anywhere near as naturally as New Dark Age. Another thing I miss is the lyrical wordplay of NDA and the absolute requisite of reading the lyric sheet with a dictionary to hand! Somehow WHH seems so much more prosaic, although it's lyrics do invoke an image of Olde England fairly effectively.

On the plus side Walker and ex-Lamp of Thoth guitarist Andy Whittaker seem to have good chemistry and play exceedingly well off each other, the main riff and lead interplay of the title track is worthy of the price alone. Overall I would say that White Horse Hill is a decent album that has been eviscerated by a poor sound and could have been so much more than it turned out. Yet after a twenty year wait for a follow up to such a favoured release, I've got to admit to having been more than a little disappointed.

Drone metal, despite having a reputation for monotony and repetition can actually throw up some very interesting releases and, for me, Divide and Dissolve's Gas Lit is one of them. Now, Divide and Dissolve are new to me, despite releasing three albums since 2016. They are a duo comprising Australian Sylvie Nehill on drums and US-born Takiaya Reed on guitar and saxophone and are based in Melbourne. Their music is mainly instrumental and their themes are based around anti-opression, societal equality and the end of imperialism.

Their take on drone metal includes a reasonable amount of doom metal too, but also incorporates instruments more usually associated with classical or jazz music for a seemingly quite avant-garde experience, despite not indulging in the angular and disjointed mechanics of avant-garde music, but letting the disparate sounds flow one into the other in an organic and oddly satisfying way. One moment the horn sound is allowing for a dreamy, meditative sensation and then the massively distorted guitar and fairly primitive-sounding drum patterns gatecrash in with an angry battery of crushingly heavy chords that blow away any sense of peace or calm that may have been accumulated, only themselves to be replaced once more by the serene blowing of horns, as if to say "even this too must pass".

There are songs like Prove it and especially It's Really Complicated that are full-on, earthquake-like rumblings of sonic mayhem and I did enjoy them, but it is the songs that make most use of the dichotomy between light and dark, calm and anarchy that I found most interesting. There is also a track called Did You Have Something to Do with It that is basically just a spoken word recital with only a minimal instrumental backing, invoking the spirit of popular uprising against oppression and performed by painter Minori Sanchiz-Fung.

I know this album probably sounds a million miles away from what a large number of people get into metal for and may be dismissed by some as politically-correct, liberal-artsy bullshit but if you have a taste for the more unusual metal releases or want to try to get into drone then this, especially with it clocking in at a mere 33 minutes, may well be a decent place to start.

Grief Collector were formed in Minneapolis back in 2017 when Among the Serpents' Brad Miller and Signs of Reign's Matt Johnson decided to get together to play some serious doom metal. By 2019 they had come to the conclusion that they needed a credible vocalist and so managed to get ex-Candlemass and Solitude Aeternus vocalist Rob Lowe on board. The resulting trio issued a six-track, thirty minute EP to little fanfare or acclaim in April 2019.

Fast forward two years to summer 2021 and the release of En Delirium, the band's debut full-length. Featuring ten original tracks and a Dio-era Sabbath cover, the album clocks in at over an hour and is very much in the epic doom mould as you could expect from a band featuring a vocalist with Rob Lowe's track record. Comparison to previous Lowe outfits such as Solitude Aeternus and Candlemass is certainly appropriate, at least in terms of style, as was probably Miller and Johnson's intention when inviting him on board, Grief Collector being conceived to play exactly the kind of epic doom Lowe has mainly been involved with. I'm not so sure the comparisons hold up quality-wise however, Grief Collector being at least a rung down on the epic doom ladder from those titans of the genre. Sure, there's some decent riffs, guitarist Johnson fires off some nice solos and Lowe is as good as ever, but there just isn't the same level of quality as far as the songs go. There's not that much that will lodge irremovably into your brain like Candlemass managed so many times over their lengthy career.

The problem with playing metal of a fairly old vintage, such as traditional or epic doom, is that there are so many great albums out there that it needs something exceptional to worm it's way into the affections of the genre's adherents and possibly to usurp some of the old guard's material and while there is nothing inherently wrong with En Delirium this isn't the album that is going to knock over any of the classics. I don't want to give the impression that I didn't like this, because I most definitely did, but it will probably ultimately be filed under "solid, but no classic".

Stephen O'Malley and usual cohort Greg Anderson, have produced some of the most extreme doom metal known to man as well as founding one of the premier doom metal labels, Southern Lord and are probably most well known for being the driving force behind SunnO))). After their short-lived first project, Thorr's Hammer split and before loosening bowels with the aforementioned drone metal titans, these doom metal stalwarts were the integral members of seminal extreme doom outfit Burning Witch. The band also featured vocalist Edgemont Martin (aka Edgy 59) and bassist G. Stuart Dahlquist (aka G. Subharmonium) along with a couple of drummers (successively, not at the same time)!

I think it is pretty safe to say that seldom has doom metal been served up that is more extreme-sounding and gruelling an experience than Burning Witch. As if the titanic, world-destroying chords of O'Malley and Anderson weren't enough then the tortured and deranged shrieks of Edgy 59 are sure to push you over the edge. This is most definitely not comfortable doom metal, in whose all-encompassing embrace you can wallow and luxuriate - no, this is deliberately confrontational, difficult and just downright unpleasant-sounding in order to throw you off balance and make you feel ill at ease and feed your suspicions that something IS indeed rotten in Denmark. A track like Country Doctor is certainly only going to appeal to those who like their metal music to confront them with the distressing and difficult-to-love, although there are a couple of slightly more accessible and, at least relatively speaking, conventional tracks such as Sacred Premonitions acting like pieces of flotsam for the drowning listener to cling to. One aspect of almost all of O'Malley and Anderson's music that cannot be ignored is that it is written with an additional instrument in mind. That instrument is sheer, unadulterated volume. Throughout their careers their music is seemingly intended to be as much a physical sensation as an auditory one and can only really be fully appreciated within the context of extreme volume, which is another reason that they should be considered as genuinely inhabiting the most extreme end of the doom metal spectrum. Sure, high volume has played a part in metal for all of it's fifty year reign, but with these guys it isn't just an option, it is an integral part of their whole sound. 

Crippled Lucifer is actually available in a couple of versions, the original 1998 version being sub-titled Seven Psalms for Our Lord of Light, it is now available in an extended version which carries the sub-title 10 Psalms for Our Lord of Light. The original version contain seven of the eight tracks contained on the Rift.Canyon.Dreams and Towers EPs. The 2008 expanded version also contains the track Rift.Canyon.Dreams from a split release with Asva and Burning Witch's two tracks from their split with Goatsnake, which is pretty much the sum total of the band's recorded output and is the version I would recommend as the CD is a nice package altogether.

Whichever version you listen to, be sure that you are going to be subjected to a crushing, bleak-sounding, nihilistic version of doom metal, a million miles removed from Candlemass, My Dying Bride or Saint Vitus, that takes no prisoners, gives no quarter and, to be honest, couldn't even give a fuck if you like it or not. Be prepared.

I have a massive soft spot for Arkham Witch and I buy virtually everything they put out. It is their combination of doom-inflected heavy metal riffing, Lovecraftian horror and irreverent sense of humour that endear these Yorkshiremen (and woman) to me so much. I listen to an awful lot of extreme metal, but sometimes it's great to put something on that is just a load of fun and not too demanding on the old grey matter. I don't think that bands like Arkham Witch and Australia's Lucifer's Fall, who are very much in the same vein, get anything like enough credit for keeping the flame of good old, fun-loving heavy metal alive.

Three Bladed Doom (a purposely ridiculous title I suspect) is eight tracks spread over a mere thirty minutes and is a great length to put on when you just need a bit of a headbang with a smile on your face after another day of crap. With track titles like The Return of Klankenstein, Cult of the Dead and Droid Fucker you know you're getting the musical equivalent of a Roger Corman film rather than The Exorcist or The Shining and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. All hail these quirky Yorkies and long may they reign!

I originally became aware of Ophis via their 2010 album Withered Shades, but found it to be nothing special and promptly put the band out of my mind until hearing a track from Spew Forth Odium (Default Empty) on the Academy Fallen playlist for December (many thanks, Ben) and, in truth, I couldn't even believe it was the same band. This is right up my street as far as death doom goes, being crushingly heavy and filthy sounding, but having melodic enough riffs to make each track remain long in the memory. A lot of the album, but especially opening track Default Empty, sound a lot like classic era My Dying Bride, but with all the gothic pretensions stripped away. There is a desperation and yearning permeating the album that you can feel in the depths of your soul, as perfectly expressed during the melancholic, but majestic, Of Stygian Descent. Other tracks have a more aggressive stance with some powerful death metal riffing, Conflagration Eternal, for example, kicks off like something from early Incantation before slowing to a more deliberate pace as Philipp Kruppa's gurgling growl intones the futility and hopelessness of existence. This is exactly how I want my death doom to sound, morose but defiant!

Spew Forth Odium sounds fantastic and it is a fact that it is no longer necessary for death doom to have muddied production values in order to sound menacingly melancholic. It is a constant source of wonder to me how some bands can still sound so bereft of hope and filled with futility whilst remaining crystal clear, as is the case with Ophis' latest. The bass rumbles along, underpinning all and shaking the foundations like a seismic warning tremor, as Ole Fink's drums batter away, every cymbal crash or double bass kick heard in perfect clarity. 

Ultimately this is an album you have to surrender yourself up to and immerse yourself in, allowing the thick riffs to grab hold and drag you deep into it's cloying heart and if you do and are any kind of fan of death doom, then I seriously doubt you will feel short-changed by Spew Forth Odium.

On early listenings I had this pegged as a solid 4/5, but it keeps calling me back (when I should be clearing up my end of year lists!) and every time it does I get even deeper into it, to the point where I can't in all conscience give it anything less than five stars. What's more, I've now got it sitting as my Album of the Year, in a year which I feel has had some excellent releases, so that should tell you exactly how highly I rate it.