Sonny's Reviews
After the opening blister of Ritual Impurity (Seven of the Sky Is One), although I cannot deny that it gets the blood pumping, I feared this would be one of those breakneck death metal albums where the emphasis on battering everything into submission renders it all a blur of indistinguishable, fever-fuelled noise. Luckily after that initial onslaught, the band slow the tempo a bit and the tracks come more into focus and is a far more enjoyable prospect as a result. Second track Propitiation has an extended build-up that reminds me a bit of the intro to Seasons in the Abyss, before exploding into a cracking, throbbing chunk of malevolent death doom. The album then continues with a trade-off between those manic, pummelling, fast-tempo bursts of energy and the hulking menace of the slower-paced doomy sections. John McEntee's vocals are undimmed by time and he still produces an archetypal death growl, despite his fifty years, that many try and fail to replicate.
So, in closing I've got to say that this is a pretty impressive album for a death metal band edging thirty years in the game, showing no dimming of the fire in their belly and a damn sight better than most of their peers have managed for many a long year!
I haven't really listened to Finntroll for about ten years, apart from the occasional blast of the Trollhammaren EP, after being very disappointed by their Nifelvind album, so appproached this album with no great enthusiasm. The fanfare overture opening track didn't reassure me much and my heart started to sink, but more fool me because it's actually a pretty damn good album after that, I would go as far as to say their best since Nattfödd. Finntroll's humppaa-influenced folk metal has a real fun quality to it, one of the few black metal albums you can actually imagine people jigging along to. It's easy to picture the band in a nighttime forest clearing, pissed as farts, dancing around a bonfire to this album. There a symphonic element to it provided by the keyboards and the odd blast or two, but mainly this is just good-time, fun, folk-heavy, black metal and as such is a return to what originally stoked my fondness for the band.
I must preface this review by admitting that I am no huge fan of Overkill, their longevity withstanding, I have always been underwhelmed by their recorded output. Having never seen them live, I am surmising that their live shows are the real source of their popularity. Anyway, the New Jersey thrasher's 1985 debut is a disappointing record in so many ways. The production isn't great and there's a muddiness to the sound that doesn't lend anything to thrash metal in general and this in particular. Secondly and more importantly, the band don't sound committed to the thrash ethos, large portions of the album sounding like Iron Maiden or Mercyful Fate demos. Now there's nothing wrong in sounding like either of those metal titans, but Overkill were always pushed as a THRASH band. When they do cut loose such as with Hammerhead, then they are pretty effective, despite the poor production. Thirdly, why end with a piss-poor cover of Dead Boys' Sonic Reducer, a classic US punk track? Sure they have stuck around for a long time, but weren't helped by this lacklustre debut, which is why they were never held in as high regard as some of their peers, being released as it was around the same time or after albums like Ride the Lighting, Spreading the Disease, Hell Awaits, Bonded by Blood, To Mega Therion and Seven Churches, against any of which it is a poor substitute.
Originally intended as a split album where each band covered the others tracks, Stygian Bough has become a much different (and undoubtedly more interesting) proposal. As everyone is aware I'm sure, Erik Moggridge, aka Aerial Ruin, provided some of the vocals for Bell Witch's Mirror Reaper. On this collaboration he has become an even more integral part of the set up and if ever a collaboration was meant to be then this is it. The two outfit's styles, though seemingly very different, actually combine perfectly to produce a truly unique atmosphere of wistful melancholy. The fact that Bell Witch generate their atmosphere without guitars, relying instead on Dylan Desmond's bass and haunting organ and piano from Jesse Shreibman, gives a different dynamic to their sound than some of the glacial, ultra-heavy riffs employed by other leaders in the funeral doom field. Their's is less a soul-crushing, hopeless despondency than a reflective, soul-searching acknowledgement of an inner melancholy and a cathartic coming-to-terms with it. Combining this with Erik Moggridge's gentle acoustic strumming and ethereally serene vocal style gives their music an even more beautifully heart-rending and emotional centre.
The album is basically three sections, spread over five tracks and little in excess of an hour of runtime, with the opening epic, The Bastard Wind, forming the first movement, the two-part Heaven Torn Low forming the second and the short Prelude and concluding track The Unbodied Air forming the third and final movement. The concept of the album is apparently expanded from the song Rows (Of Endless Waves) from Bell Witch's 2012 album Longing and deals with the tale of the ghost of a long-dead king, trapped in the ocean's endless waves, who longs to reach the land where he believes he will be reborn to rule again.
The Bastard Wind opens it's almost twenty minutes with an introspective first four minutes featuring Moggeridge's gentle acoustic guitar and sorrowful vocals before Dylan and Jesse dive in with their heaving waves of bass and drum crashing over the listener and leaving them lying submerged as if suspended in some giant sensory deprivation tank with only their own inner emotions for company. Part one of Heaven Torn Low, subtitled The Passage, is a lengthier example of Aerial Ruins particular style of melancholy neofolk featured in The Bastard Wind's opening that really is as gorgeous as it is haunting, it's thirteen minutes being one of the most exceptional examples of this style of folk I have encountered to date. Part two, subtitled The Toll, is the Yang to part one's Yin as the Bell Witch boys heave in once more, the pace slows, the atmosphere thickens and Erik's ephemeral vocals soar over the boiling morass they create. After the short instrumental Prelude, the album's closer The Unbodied Air begins it's epic twenty minutes and features the album's heaviest moments before calming towards the track's midpoint, then once more soaring to the album's final moments.
In many ways Bell Witch, particularly with this collaboration, have taken their cue from the likes of Patrick Walker's Warning and delivered a more vulnerable and consequently more affecting and personal take on extreme doom and for that I salute them and congratulate them on some of the most gorgeous extreme metal music to date.
Terrific nature-themed atmospheric black metal that celebrates the interconnection between the Sahara desert and the Amazon rainforest in an environmental cycle that acts as the lungs of the planet. Successfully creates a vision of the immensity of the forces involved with vast, sweeping soundscapes to rival the genre's best. The vocals are submerged in the mix as if heard from a great distance or from within the deafening whisper of the planet's natural forces.
A mention must also go to Brandon Zackey who guests on drums and turns in a fine nuanced performance, yet can still pummel the shit out of his kit when the need arises. On the evidence of this, West Maddox, the man behind Ovnev, appears to have the talent to stand alongside the likes of Andy Marshall and Austin Lunn as a champion of naturalistic black metal.
A two-track EP clocking in at a mere seven minutes, released after a three year wait following Ieschure's debut album The Shadow, is a brief affair, but is quality nonetheless. Opening track Cold Stars of Eternity is very much a black metal funeral dirge, with it's slow, ominous pacing, especially when Lilita shrieks (more than a little disturbingly) "Human bones and human flesh... Human heart was alive, Now is dead."
The EP's second track, In the Waves of Darkness, is even more unsettling with it's droning, noise-drenched background and double-tracked vocals that shriek desperately whilst simultaneously intoning the lyrics in an emotionless monotone. Feels like the kind of track that some noise / drone protagonists would drag out to twenty minutes or more, but is a very effective three minutes.
Purification released their debut, Destruction of the Wicked, in June of 2019. That album had a lo-fi aesthetic and a real stripped-back, no frills approach to doom metal. Fourteen months later and with an improved recording technique, the band have added a more psychedelic, early seventies, occult mask onto their doom-riden visage. This makes for a decent slab of metal and it certainly has some good moments, but I must confess that there was something about their previous doom metal fundamentalism that I just found more appealing.
Still, this is not an album to be sniffed at and may well appeal to a wider audience than their previous output due to the better sound and more popular occult metal atmosphere of the record.
Jupiterian is a four-piece behemoth that hails from São Paulo, it members going by the initials R, A, V and P. Protosapien is their third album, following three years after the fairly well received Terraforming. This album feels like such an advance from that still decent record that I can't help feeling that the band members must have encountered a black monolith somewhere down there in Brazil during the last three years!
Protosapien begins with a short intro, Homecoming, a dirge-like fanfare that sounds like it is announcing the arrival of a long-sought but dreaded god-king, which in a way it kind of is. The god-king in question takes the form of a sonic alliance between cavernous death doom and oozing, soul-crushing sludge metal that brooks no opposition to it's unholy assault on the ears, forcing all who hear it to bow down in supplication. Despite being a fairly short album of just over 35 minutes, this feels immense. The music doesn't compromise on it's heaviness yet is surprisingly atmospheric in a way that allows the mind's eye to conjure images of shattered landscapes, smoking ruins and immense, dreadful apparitions. The tectonic riffs will literally shake your walls and Thiago Oliveira's guttural vocals will bring them crashing down as they undermine their very foundations. Despite this intrinsic heaviness and the sludge-drenched slow tempo, there is still a memorable and even kind of melodic quality to the tracks - this is no monotonous trudge through to album's end, in fact Voidborne even contains some blasting that wouldn't be out of place on a black metal album.
2020 has been a damn good year for fans of ominous-sounding doom metal with great albums from the likes of Hell's MSW, Temple of Void and Convocation. Protosapien can rightly take it's place alongside those as one of the best doom-related releases of the year.
As with many visionary metal bands, Venom were derided mercilessly in their early days. I remember the UK music press (including Kerrang!) lambasting them at every turn as a band that couldn't even play their instruments properly. Of course, those same people have no recollection of ever having done so and claim to have been supporters of the band from the outset - hypocrites. Of course Welcome to Hell sounds sloppy, but that only adds to it's charm. The album took the speed metal of Motörhead, added some cartoonish satanic imagery (that later bands took FAR too seriously) and then went at it with a youthful enthusiasm born of the UK DIY punk scene. In fact, with his north-eastern accent Cronos often sounds like the legendary Mensi of The Angelic Upstarts.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in common with most of England's northern cities, was a grim place to grow up in the seventies and early eighties, but where the punks took out their frustration with songs about how shit everything was, Venom sought catharsis and escape through songs based on Dennis Wheatley books and Hammer Horror movies. Bold, brash and full of balls, this was an album that was made by a band who clearly did not give a damn what anybody thought about them. Often lumped in with the NWOBHM, I would argue this has far more in common with Discharge, GBH and The Exploited than Iron Maiden or Saxon, but they were too punk for the metal crowd and too metal for the punks, so for a long time had to plough their own furrow with only their diehard fans for company. The band's outsider cred is what probably endeared them to the even younger up and coming bands they influenced including Metallica, Bathory, Mayhem and the band probably closest to them in term of attitude, Darkthrone. I would argue that without Motörhead there woud never have been a Venom, but certainly without Venom there would not have been a black metal scene as we recognise it.
Of course the album shouldn't only be judged on it's historical importance. Any fan of high-energy, down and dirty speed metal, particularly in the vein of Lemmy and his crew should love tracks like the title track, Witching Hour, In League With Satan and my personal favourite, Live Like an Angel (Die Like a Devil). All hail Venom, the outsiders of the outsiders and the patient zero of extreme metal.
The Boats of the Glen Carrig is a survival horror novel written in 1907 by William Hope Hodgson, set in the early 18th century. In the novel the author purports to be one of several survivors of the sinking of the ship The Glen Carrig, who were cast adrift onto the open sea in two lifeboats and were confronted by monstrous creatures as they fought for survival. Ahab's fourth album is a concept album based upon the novel and continues the band's obsession with all things nautical.
They have developed their sound from the days of the phenomenal debut, The Call of the Wretched Sea and now feature more of a contrast between dark and light passages than the debut's unrelentingly bleak funeral doom. Boats.. owes as much to death doom as funeral doom and is consequently more uptempo in pacing than TCotWS at times. It also features several clean passages, both vocally and musically, that derive from post-metal outfits like Isis, that serve as contrast to the heavier, darker sections, throwing them into sharp relief and act as the narrator's conduit to the listener. TBotGC is a step up from it's predecessor, The Giant, which I felt had moved too far away from the crushing heaviness of the first two albums to inhabit a more accessible, post-metal landscape. Boats, however is a satisfying meeting of that clean, lighter sound, the debilitating, deep-sea pressure of the band's take on funeral doom and pacier, yet still supremely heavy, death doom.
The Isle sets the scene with a gentle, clean intro as the narrator, a passenger named Winterstraw, begins telling how the survivors have been adrift for five days after the sinking of the Glen Carrig, before erupting into an ominously foreboding passage of malignant death doom as land, in the form of the ill-starred isle, is approached by the unfortunate seamen, strange weeping cries emanating from it. The Thing That Made Search follows a similar structure, with a vocally and musically clean beginning as the narrator now tells of the sailors' rising fear, before Daniel Droste's voice changes to that of a growling demon and the monster riff kicks in as the lifeboats and their trembling human cargo are sought out and examined by some many-tentacled Lovecraftian horror. The track slows to a crawl in it's dying moments as the creature withdraws and sinks back into the depths.
Like Red Foam (The Great Storm) builds on the thundering riffs that went before and ups the pacing as a mighty, supernatural storm batters the ill-fated sailors. Red Foam is a song that could easily have come from a classic-era Opeth album, exhibiting the same songwriting skill and musical chops that Mikael Akerfeldt employed to devastating effect aroung the turn of the Millenium. Ahab return to their roots for the beginning of The Weedmen as the slowest section of the album oozes through the listener's inner ear with a slab of glacially-paced funeral doom, the sailors are washed up on the unnamed island and realise it is the home of the hideous Weedmen, the music invoking the mounting, unbearable fear and dread they feel as they come under attack.
To Mourn Job then returns to the structure of the first two tracks with alternating gently sorrowful clean sections and thunderous death doom passages as the narrator describes the aftermath and the sailors perform funeral rites and mourn the loss of one of their number, a young lad named Job, during the attack of the monstrous creatures.
Most versions, except the original jewel case CD, have a sixth track, The Light in the Weed (Mary Madison), which serves as a kind of epilogue, telling of the fate of the titular Mary Madison, wife of the captain of the doomed Glen Carrig. Now, seven years later and unable to deal with what she saw and felt she has become hopelessly lost, drink her only solace in a world that can hold such horrors, the track filled with melancholy and sadness for those affected, yet with also with a hopeful message that if one holds steadfast then you can deal with any "seas so grave".
I still hold The Call of the Wretched Sea in the highest regard as Ahab's best, but this is not so far behind, a beautifully crafted musical rendition of a classic horror tale that is expressive and subtle whilst still retaining the ability to crush with powerful and irresistibly heavy, doom-laden riffs. Ahab are one of the most accomplished of all funeral doom outfits with a songwriting prowess seldom bettered in the genre.
So let's talk about Scott "Wino" Weinrich for a while. Is there really anybody who better exemplifies the ethos of stoner doom metal than Wino? From his lead-heavy, bluesy, stoner riffs and cigarettes 'n' whiskey-soaked vocal delivery to his biker tatts, uncompromising attitude and well-documented crystal meth addiction, there are very few who could stand alongside this guy for sheer metal cred (maybe Lemmy, but that's about it).
Beginning his music career with not one, but two legendary doom bands in The Obsessed and Saint Vitus, after leaving the latter Wino formed Spirit Caravan, a stoner doom three-piece, releasing a couple of well-received albums either side of the Millenium. Spirit Caravan split in 2001 and Wino formed a new trio the following year called The Hidden Hand and that is where this album comes in. Divine Propaganda is the 2003 debut album of the new band, who went on to release two more albums before splitting in 2007.
The album kicks off in strong style, it's first three tracks laying out an impressive calling card. Bellicose Rhetoric and Damyata are trademark fuzzed-up stoner doom with a bit more of a groove going on than Saint Vitus or The Obsessed. Damyata is typical of Wino, a song about environmental disaster, not via a pathetic "why doesn't somebody do something" whine, but in a "we are all fucked" warning - "Oh, I feel the sky is cracking, oh, I feel the ice melting, oh I feel the mountains falling, oh, I feel the world dying". On third track, Screw the Naysayers, Wino even turns on his own fans, hailing his new band and urging everyone to get over the split-up of Spirit Caravan - "Caravan has slipped away, The Hidden Hand is here to stay, screw the naysayers". The track is only 72 seconds long and is basically a fuzz-drenched punk track, a legacy of Wino's time with the Obsessed when they used to open for DC hardcore bands like Bad Brains, Black Flag and Minor Threat.
At this point I should just say, this album isn't only about Wino, Bruce Falkinburg does a fine job on bass and backing Wino up on vocals and a particular shout out should go to Dave Hennessy who's drumming is absolutely first class, battering the shit out of his kit like a young Bill Ward or John Bonham.
The album continues to mix heavy, doom-laden stoner grooves with faster, trad metal and punk influenced tracks, occasionally throwing in the odd psychedelic or blues influence, such as on The Last Tree or Sunblood respectively, so there's enough variety on display to satisfy any fan of fuzzed-up metal and any die-hard fan of Wino and his previous bands shouldn't be disappointed.
Cinerous Rain are German multi-instrumentalist Eugen Kohl and Ecuadorian lyricist and vocalist David Freire who are both veterans of a huge number of metal projects. This is a seriously heavy album of atmospheric blackened death metal. It's buzzing, atmo-black riffing is wrought into a savage beast by alloying it with the undeniable brutality of death metal. The vocals are vicious-sounding muted shrieks, although the lyrics are a mystery, even the tracks names are merely roman numerals, so no clue there. This is a moot point however, the atmosphere is everything here and the atmosphere is incendiary. An impressive debut and I hope to hear a lot more from these guys.
Just for the record, Mesarthim haven't started making albums about social commentary. The Degenerate Era is, in fact, a posited astronomical era when the universe no longer makes new stars and is populated by "degenerate" stars like black holes, neutron stars and brown and white dwarfs.
First track, Laniakea (the name of the galactic supercluster that is home to the Milky Way) is the album's longest track at nearly 15 minutes and is a sweeping track that takes some interesting turns including a section that sounds like an 80's arena-rock riff and some gentle minimalist ambient synth work nestling in amongst the more usual expansive and symphonic atmo-black paeon to the awe-inspiring majesty of the cosmos.
The title track is a far more ominous-sounding affair with the doom metal pacing of the first half generating a portentous atmosphere illustrating the darker, colder condition of the universe during this "Degenerate Era". Mind you, around the five minute mark it lets loose with a real buzzing blast followed by a solo that inexplicably reminds me of Brian May (?!) and ending with a nice trance coda.
Time Domain, despite the urgency of the vocals is a melodic and particularly upbeat track. The nine minutes of Paradox follows a very similar template, yet sounds even more savage whilst still maintaining a pleasing melody. Final track 618 is more of a trance-led track and is a satisfying closer to the album.
Mesarthim proves once more to be a unique voice within the black metal community, his huge sweeping sonic canvases perfectly balance a tension between cold black metal savagery and a warmer melodic side with trance-influenced electronica that just works so well.
Mystras is a solo atmospheric black metal project of Greece's Nihilus Ayloss who is probably better known as Spectral Lore, the cosmic black metal project often found in collaboration with Mare Cognitum. Mystras has been begun as an outlet for a thematically different project, swapping the awe-inspiring majesty of the cosmos for medieval folk and tales of the medieval common man's fight for freedom from serfdom and the corruption of those who would set themselves above them. Mystras itself is the name of a fortified town in Laconia, Greece near the ancient city of Sparta that was the focus of a seemingly unending struggle between the Byzantine Empire and the Franks after the Fourth Crusade.
The albums fifty minutes are spread over five tracks of blistering atmospheric black metal interspersed with short interludes of medieval folk-based instrumental music. Under his Spectral Lore monicker I find that LÜÜP becomes a little bit rambling with some jazzy noodling that I never really enjoy, but here with Mystras he is far more focussed. His atmo-black is reminiscent of Panopticon or Winterfylleth, with sweeping atmospherics crafted to inspire the mind of the listener. The medieval interludes are nice, gentle moments that add a kind of context to the lyrical content of the longer tracks and have been produced with the help of a number of guest musicians. The medieval musical themes are used only sparingly within the main tracks, thus avoiding the kitsch of folk metal accusations - this is most definitely, first and foremost, a black metal album.
My particular favourite (and the album's longest track) is The Murder of Wat Tyler, a devastating indictment, both musically and lyrically, of the deception of the Crown against one of the leaders of England's Peasant's Revolt in late fourteenth century England, a period of history I am particularly interested in and it's nice to hear a metal band relating the tale. Castles Conquered and Reclaimed is indeed one of a rare breed in what is seen as the conservative world of metal that, in a similar way to Panopticon's Kentucky, addresses the struggles of the class of society that most often produces it's adherents.
For me this is Ayloss' best album to date. Although I like Spectral Lore, I prefer the focus and rawer, more aggressive sound he has achieved on this.
A fleur de peau part II was intended to be released and listened to as a single, sixty-five minute track, but has been split into two due to some kind of Bandcamp restriction on track length, apparently. The album features a guest appearance by Kim Carlsson of Hypothermia on vocals, with Déhà himself being responsible for everything else, as usual. The lyrical subject matter is pretty heavy, introspective stuff, the title of the track(s), Burdening Everyone, giving some insight into the mental condition of the song's subject. According to the album's Bandcamp page, it is "a tribute to those who, inexplicably, cannot express why they do not feel comfortable in the world" and Déhà once more proves himself a master of expressing the deepest emotions of the disconnected, doing so without sounding like a self-absorbed fool. Personally, I find a lot of DSBM to be insufferable, both musically and lyrically, but Déhà is cut from a far greater quality cloth than the herd. Musically, the album is medium to slow-paced black metal, rooted in atmospheric BM, with angst-ridden, desperate and hopeless-sounding vocals. There are passages of post-metal calm that allow for more measured moments of introspection for sure, but eventually the tortured railings of the song's protagonist erupt once more into desperate screams and shrieks and the music becomes ever angrier and more ominous. A great example of DSBM done right.
A number of fans disliked previous album, 2014's Striden Hus, with it's more melodic take on black metal, but I really enjoyed it, it has some good hooks with plenty of energy and is a lively affair. This, however, is a different kettle of fish altogether. It moves even further away from the black metal of it's origins and delves in a more rock-oriented direction. In doing so, I feel it has been robbed of any vitality that the black metal parts may give it. There's an attempt at a more progressive direction in the vein of Enslaved's prog-black, but there isn't really enough to grab hold of here and, as a consequence the songs feel bloated and just kind of slide past without making any real impact on the listener.
All in all this is a great disappointment as I have a lot of respect for Taake and I have no issue with them trying a new direction, but there are many bands who pull off better what I think Hoest and co. are trying to achieve here. It's not awful, but it's not particularly good either and, consequently, I do feel it is Taake's worst release. For band completists only.
Déhà has been a busy little bee so far in 2020. I guess with lockdowns and self-isolation he's channelled all his efforts into his art. This is his NINTH album of the year so far and is the third instalment of the "A fleur de peau" series. Whilst parts I had somewhat of a doom vibe going on and II made side roads into post-metal, this is more of a straight-up depressive black metal album. The album features four tracks and each has a guest appearance: Natalie Koskinen of Shape of Despair adds vocals to the opening track, Tim Yatras from Austere and Hauke Peters from Maladie appear on Hope for Twilight, Carlos d'Agua from Collapse of Light features on Thanatos and the Sea and Nils Courbaron from Sirenia guests on I Am Not Complete.
Musically the tracks veer from blasting, angst-ridden self-loathing to hopeful, soaring melodies that provide a nice textural contrast that works really well, despite the seeming dichotomy of these two competing atmospheres. The keyboards contribute a fullness to the sound over the black metal riffing and blasting that makes for a richer atmosphere than is usual in DSBM. Despite this, Déhà's vocals still manage to convincingly convey the desperation and anguish that is the cornerstone of the DSBM sub-genre.
Despite Déhà's profuseness during the past seven or eight months, there is no great detectable drop in the quality of his music and this is a very solid release.
Phobos Monolith was Mare Cognitum's third full-length album and, for me, is the one that elevated him into the upper strata of atmospheric black metal artists. This is the album where his music first consistently assumed the epic atmosphere that the great exponents of the genre produce. The best of the genre expresses respect and awe for the natural universe, usually in sweeping musical vistas evoking mountains, forests and the white expanses of frozen tundra, but Mare Cognitum are one of the bands that have recently turned their gaze out beyond our world to the vast reaches of space, along with others like Darkspace or Mare Cognitum's sometime collaborators Aureole and Spectral Lore.
Of the four tracks on offer, three are over thirteen minutes long and, although the obvious focus on hypnotic repetition is there, there is also a variation in pacing throughout the tracks, that stops them from becoming boring and samey, transitioning from pummelling, yet gorgeously melodic wall-of-sound blasting to more ambient, dream-like sections. This melodic nature has drawn criticism from some black metal devotees, but is so expertly handled that there is no hint of sugar-coating or cheesiness diluting the frantic riffing. It may make the album more accessible however which, I guess, will always upset the trve kvltists. The vocals are raw, but distant, as if heard from the depths of space beneath the prevalent radiation of the galaxy, intoning the lyrics that concern themselves with galactic Life, it's passing and the ephemeral, ever-changing nature of the Cosmos. The production is also another area where the band have taken a big stride forward, the sound is huge and all-encompassing, yet is clear as a bell, allowing every note to be heard.
To coin a phrase, Phobos Monolith was a giant leap for Jacob Buczarski that catapulted him into the black metal major leagues, where he remains. A real tour-de-force of epic, melodic and powerful black metal that any fan of cosmic BM should lap up.
Mare Cognitum is a solo project of Californian, Jacob Buczarski, one-time member of shoegaze band Spirit Lapse. He plays atmospheric black metal with a cosmic bent. This is his second release under the Mare Cognitum banner, following 2011's debut, The Sea Which Has Become Known and features six tracks spread over 50 minutes. The opener (and the album's longest track at twelve minutes), Collapse Into Essence, is epic, galactic-scale atmospheric black metal, reflecting the vast coldness of space and the uncaring, all-powerful forces that exist there, both actual and metaphorical. Second track, Pyre of Ascendance, is more of a traditional atmospheric black metal blastathon, harsh and savage, as are the remainder of the tracks. Sure, there are hints of it, but the epic-scale, truly cosmic sound of MC's later releases is still in development on this release, the majority being very well done, but somewhat derivative, atmo-black. Not a bad album at all - I always enjoy well done atmospheric black metal - but he gets better as he gets more ambitious.
A searing combination of atmospheric sludge and black metal that is dark, menacing and exceedingly heavy. Yet despite this it also has some great melodies, opener Fragments for example, has a fantastic, sweeping main riff completely born of melodic black metal. The five tracks all clock in between eight and ten minutes which gives them enough time to develop their individual ideas without overstaying their welcome or becoming boring. The vocals are largely of the harsh shouting variety, common to most sludge metal, although there are some clean vocals (which aren't the band's strong point to be honest). The five tracks exhibit a satisfying variety in pacing, each has a particular character and doesn't fall into the trap of becoming formulaic, successfully weaving the band's several influences together to create something they can confidently call their own that stands apart from the mundane and as such is a testament to their songwriting skills. If you are after something a bit different in the sludge metal world, then give this a spin.
This four-track EP is the debut release from this duo of US black metal veterans. It is manic, psychotic-sounding black metal, pummelling along for it's twenty-odd minute duration. The album's best is closer, Souls Void, a slower paced, eerie sounding track, that sounds a bit off-kilter, like the organ music at a sinister carnival in some fucked-up horror movie. I like it, but don't know how often I would be likely to return to it, as it isn't exactly earth-shatteringly original or substantial enough to warrant many listens over and above everything else.
The UK is not blessed with an overabundance of quality black metal bands, but Manchester's Wode are rapidly becoming one of them. Although the sound is more polished than most nineties black metal releases, this album's heart most definitely belongs in the early days of the second wave and unashamedly so. No genre-bending experimentation, no blackened this or that, just straight-up pummelling black metal like back in the day. And it's only half an hour long, for extra authenticity!
Female-fronted doom outfits are becoming ten a penny nowadays, but EMBR are a decent prospect. Crystal Bigelow's vocals are excellent and guitarist Mark Buchanan has a great "rolling thunder" tone, but the songs are nothing we haven't heard before and the couple of attempts at harsh, sludgy vocals were ill-advised. Still, there is enough here for fans of the whole doom-with-female-vocals genre to enjoy, myself included.
Battle Dagorath's sixth and latest album is a monster of cosmic proportions. It consists of eight tracks spanning 73 minutes of expansive and sprawling cosmic black metal interspersed with spacey ambient interludes that serve as a breathing space to allow the listener's mind time to settle before the next interstellar journey of discovery. The theme of the album seems to be the belief that some kind of spiritual nirvana can be attained by contemplation of the awe-inspiring majesty of the universe (and who am I to disagree?) Several of the tracks, particularly the longer ones such as Phantasmal Eye of Dreams and Conjuring the Starwinds, through the repetition of their themes and the overall expansive nature of their atmosphere, do possess a certain meditiative quality to them that allows the listener to float away in a kind of out-of-body experience and forget earthly cares as they traverse this metaphorical galaxy.
The production is crisp, allowing the sound to be particularly well defined - not a single note has been lost or buried. The black metal elements are cold and harsh, the keyboards filling out the atmosphere and the vocals are distant, yet at the same time, immediate and savage. This style of black metal obviously has it's roots in Emperor's back-catalogue and you can definitely hear hints of tracks like Cosmic Keys to My Creations & Times and The Majesty of the Nightsky in Battle Dagorath's music. If you are a fan of Mare Cognitum or Darkspace's style of space-themed atmospheric black metal then this should definitely appeal.
I'm not super-familiar with these Finns, but of their releases I have heard to date, this is my favourite. A tempestuous, yet melodic, black metal exploration of man's inner turmoil that takes the form of eight well-written and faultlessly executed tracks that revel in their furious savagery. Even so, they never lose their ability to connect with the listener and despite the subject matter of alienation and self-doubt it is a surprisingly accessible album.
These Polish thrashers have been quiet since releasing a couple of EPs back in 2015 and 2016, but four years on and they are here releasing their debut full-length, Behold the Realm of Darkness. There's nothing life-changing here, but what it is is old-school, flat-out Sodom-worship that draws on both punk and black metal to greater or lesser degrees. It's all fired off at 90 miles-an-hour with little time allowed to draw breath, but it is solid, energetic and aggressive thrash metal that doesn't disguise it's influences, but does have an endearing honesty about it.
This is the debut album from Brazilian Caio Lemos, by way of his one-man atmo-black outfit Kaatayra, the first of a couple of albums released under that moniker in 2019. I've got to say, I'm already a big fan, the material is varied and effectively atmospheric, influenced by tribal rhythms I presume are Brazilian in origin, with manic drumming, particularly on Valhacouto de lírios, when I thought he'd brought Animal from the Muppets in to guest! The only real downer for me was the first half of the final track which, for reasons known only to Kaatayra himself, takes the form of some crappy electronic house track.
What the fuck happened to Holy Moses between debut Queen of Siam and this, the follow-up? I'm guessing someone locked them in a room and played Kreator and Sodom albums at them twenty-four hours a day. Well, either that or they heard Sacrilege's Behind the Realms of Madness and realised that if they wanted to be taken seriously as a female-fronted thrash outfit then they had to up their game. Luckily, that is exactly what they did as this is a million miles away from the NWOBHM-influenced speed metal of that debut. This is gritty and aggressive, neck-breaking thrash with incendiary solos and an impressively evil-sounding, hardcore-influenced vocal performance from Sabina Classen that shits on the likes of Angela Gossow and co.
The album's ten tracks flash by in a head-spinning blur and seem over in a matter of minutes, although it does actually last a little over half an hour and will have you leaping for the replay button, particularly if you are familiar with the debut, as you may not be able to absorb what you just heard. I really don't think you can overstate the improvement this album made over it's predecessor and is such huge leap it has actually made me negatively re-evaluate my rating for the debut. If you are any kind of fan of Eighties thrash you owe it to yourself to check it out... NOW!!
For my money Exumer are one of the great underrated 80s thrash outfits. This is probably due to the fact that they only released a couple of killer albums before calling it a day in 1991 (although they did reform for a one-off show at the Wacken Festival in 2001, then going their separate ways until 2008 when they again got back together as they remain to this day) and the fact that they didn't originate any particular style of thrash themselves, but built on styles developed by others. Forming in 1984 (as Tartaros) in Frankfurt, thrash metal history has seen them overshadowed by their more illustrious countrymen, Kreator and Sodom, but believe me, although their albums don't have the originality and fire of a Pleasure to Kill or Persecution Mania, they can certainly hold their heads high in such illustrious company and are well at the head of the second tier of thrash bands that features the likes of Exodus and Testament.
Rising from the Sea is the 1987 follow-up to the previous year's debut, Possessed by Fire and received wisdom says that this is the inferior of the two albums. I, however, wish to disagree on this point. The first is a fine record, no doubt, with some killer tracks, but this is a more consistent album in my opinion. Sure, it's not the most original thrash record ever, borrowing particularly heavily from Slayer, that in itself being the sole reason I don't give this a five-star rating (the lack of originality, not them borrowing from Slayer!) That said though, of all the albums the mighty Slayer have influenced, this is certainly one of the best. New vocalist and bassist Paul Arakari sounds a lot more like Tom Araya than Possessed by Fire's Mem Von Stein, probably the main reason for the comparisons, although the similarities appear in other areas too.
Arakari opens first track, Winds of Death, with an Angel of Death-style scream and we're off and running. This isn't really an album of breakneck, headlong thrashing, but is more of a chug-heavy mosh-a-thon. The solos are of the piercing, shrieking, tortured-metal-sounding, weaponised type championed by Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King. The bass gallops along, despite not being dominant enough in the mix and the drums are effective but could do with sounding a bit crisper. The tracks themselves, despite not being super-original, are pretty memorable and are definitely very enjoyable, Rising From the Sea, Decimation and Shadows of the Past being the stand-outs. This is physical, not cerebral metal and isn't meant to be thought about too deeply, but to be experienced in a way that leaves the listener sweaty and knackered! Neither is it supposed to be highly technical, so what more can you really want from an old-school thrash album than to feel like you've had your ass kicked, at which this is supremely successful... and I for one love this shit.
Convocation are a Finnish duo comprising multi-instrumentalist Lauri Laaksonen of death metal outfit Desolate Shrine and vocalist Marko Neuman of Dark Buddah Rising. They play epic and funereal death doom with great heaving, sorrow-drenched riffs and vocals that range from rasping, black metal-style shrieks to the more usual gutteral growling of traditional death doom and occasionally MN's unique, quite high-pitched clean style.
The album's four tracks span 45 minutes and as such are afforded the time to expound on their bleakly ominous atmospheres. The first two tracks, Martyrise and The Absence of Grief are fairly typical and really well done examples of this kind of epic death doom, taking their cue from bands like My Dying Bride, but shorn of the gothic overtones, which is just fine by me as I think it makes for a more pure doom experience. Third track, Misery Form, however, is a bit more ambitious, after it's unsettling intro it settles down into similar style to it's predecessors until just after halfway when it takes a more esoteric (small "e") turn and ends up sounding a lot like last year's Waste of Space Orchestra album, Syntheosis, of which Marco Neuman was part. Final track, Portal Closed, is an instrumental that again begins in conventional doom manner but which segues into a more reflective and calm finale, as if the listener has ultimately reached some place of tranquility after the myriad trials that previously beset them.
I really enjoyed this album, it's core of epic death doom is elaborated on just enough to sound fresh and new, whilst still retaining what makes death doom so appealing (to me anyway) in the first place.
A four-track EP, inspired by spring and summertime that opens with a wholly new track entitled Doom for the Red Sun, which doesn't sound as you may expect from the title. It is a doomy-sounding track, but it is wholly acoustic and does have a certain ritualistic and rustic quality. Folky wicca doom that's more than a little Wicker Man. The second track, La sella del Diavolo, dates from the band's Cult of Black Friars sessions and is a fuzzy, psych-doom instrumental that drives along like an open-top motor down a country lane on a sunny day. Astroflower is a cover of an old track from guitarist and vocalist Kjxu's old band Wild Duck, another chunk of fuzz-drenched psych-doom that doesn't do anything special but does have a really satisfying tone. Final track The Hound of Harbinger God is remastered from a 2015 split 7" with fellow Italian doomsters, Bretus. This is a more straight-up doom offering of nearly nine minutes. It's a decent slab of doom, but for some reason it feels like the remastering has left the track feeling a little hollow. All in all not a bad way to spend half an hour, but the opener is the stand-out for me.
Chrono.naut was a track from Electric Wizard's earliest days, when they were still called Eternal, and has also appeared on a split with Orange Goblin, but this release was a 10" EP released on Man's Ruin Records with the track split into two. Side one is the more structured part of the song, and it's stoner doom would even sound familiar to fans of later Electric Wizard releases (although it is a little muddy-sounding). Side two is a big contrast, a surprisingly mellow, laid-back, pychedelic jam that should be accompanied by copious amounts of acid and a Liquid Len lightshow. This second section may not really appeal all that much to fans of the later material, unless they are also big fans of hallucinatory, psych-jam bands (and why wouldn't they be?)
Listening tip: makes a for a great comedown if played straight after the drug-fuelled rampage of the Supercoven EP. Play the two back-to-back for a killer ride!
While I really like some of Electric Wizard's post-2003 output, particularly the trio of We Live, Witchcult Today and Black Masses, where they really made their name was in the heady days of the Jus Osborne, Tim Bagshaw, Mark Greening three-piece's extended stoner jams. This EP was originally released in 1998 on Bad Trip as a limited edition 12" of 1000 copies. Jammed between Come My Fanatics and Dopethrone this goes even further down the stoned-out, trippier-than-thou road than even those mighty stoner classics, with only two tracks for it's 32 minutes this is throbbing and pulsingly hypnotic doom metal with enough chemical enhancement to anaesthetise an elephant.
Side A, Supercoven, relates a Lovecraftian tale of the summoning of ancient evils that is a slow build through layers of smoke-wreathed, plodding doom until the listener is forced to confront those malicious entities that have sat in wait through countless aeons and the song kicks up in pace and hits you with a tripped-out wall of sound. Strangely Jus Osborne's voice on this sounds like a cross between Kurt Cobain and John Lennon on Helter Skelter (so no drug connotations there, then!)
Side B, Burnout, is a pacier affair, it's doom taking on a distorted Hawkwind Space Ritual vibe (so, again, no drug connotations there either). As the lyrics intone, "imprisoned within my brain, dried and burnt out, chemical stained", Bagshaw and Greening keep pounding away and provide the huge sonic backdrop for Jus to just go ahead and do his thing, man, jamming like his life depended on it.
This is the satanic, drug-damaged bastard biker offspring of the 60s and 70's psychedelic movement come home to roost. There ain't no Nirvana to be reached here, this is stoner nihilism run riot and is where the real Electric Wizard stand up to be counted.
Melechesh is a Hebrew/Aramaic word meaning King of Fire and the band began in Jerusalem in 1993 as a solo project of Ashmedi before expanding to a three-piece in 1994. The band's black metal is based on Assyrian occult themes and caused them much grief with the authorities in Israel where they were accused of "dark cult activities", ultimately leading to them relocating to Europe in 1998.
The Epigenesis is the band's fifth full-length album and was originally released in 2010. It's eleven tracks weigh in at a whopping 71 minutes, but I never really noticed the album's length (always a good sign) due to the high quality of the music on offer. I would hesitate to call this folk metal as only a couple of tracks feature traditional instruments heavily, but it's black metal most definitely has rhythms and patterns more commonly associated with Middle Eastern music. The majority of the album comprises medium-paced melodic black metal incorporating influences from progressive and technical death metal and along with those traditional rhythms helping to build up quite an effective atmosphere - you can almost smell the hookah smoke as you approach one of the regions dusty and ancient monuments to people and deities long forgotten, invoking images similar to those of Max von Sydow in Iraq at the beginning of The Exorcist. There is an epicness on display here that speaks of the esoteric history of the lands of the band's beginnings and the long-forgotten occult origins that have since been replaced by more modern monotheistic religions.
The album kicks off with a couple of killers, the memorable riffing of Ghouls of Nineveh then the thrashiness of Grand Gathas of Baal Sin with it's war-chant ending make for a top-notch start. Sacred Geometry takes up the torch and runs with it, pulling in influences from tech-death to add to the arabic rhythms of the track's black metal root. The Magickan and the Drones is one of the most savage-sounding tracks on the album, it's riff has an edge that could dismember the listener if they are caught unaware and Mystics of the Pillar is an epic monster with a slower pacing and a heavier arabic-folk influence, particularly in it's middle section.
At this point the first of a couple of traditional-sounding arabic folk tracks is encountered, serving as a respite from the unrelenting heaviness of the album's first half an hour or so, this gives the listener chance to breathe and take in the atmosphere. Defeating the Giants is the album's shortest track and with a thrashing chug added to it's black metal savagery it buzzes round your head like a swarm of locusts. Now where most black metal album's would be thinking of calling it a day at this point The Epigenesis ups it's game and the final four tracks are possibly the album's best. Two guts and blood crackers in Illumination: The Face of Shamash and Negative Theology are followed by the second arabic folk track, A Greater Chain of Being, that perfectly sets up the epic, twelve-minute eponymous closer.
It must be said, the production on this is fantastic, every track and instrument is crystal clear so that the production process doesn't get in the way of the music's impact. Interestingly, the album was recorded in Istanbul and Ashmedi admits to recording the vocal tracks naked at night because "I wanted to feel as primal as possible to fairly represent the vocals."
Melechesh are most definitely one of my favourite modern black metal bands, their songwriting and mucisianship are superb and they certainly refuse to tread the same old furrows as some of their contemporaries. I love all the band's albums, but this is definitely my favourite, it's incorporation of other musical elements and an overall more technical and progressive feel are a departure from their earlier sound and feel like a band growing and stretching themselves whilst losing none of their bite. To produce an album that is at once savage, primal, complex and atmospheric is one hell of an achievement and I for one can't get enough.
I love the blending of middle eastern traditional music with metal. Al-Namrood's Saudi folk music is alloyed with manic and ascerbic black metal for one hell of an exhilharating and atmospheric ride. Singer Humbaba, sounds an awful lot like Serj Tankian and I can't shake the notion that System of a Down might well sound something like this if they turned their hands to black metal.
Mammon's War was released fully thirteen years after previous album, Messiah of Confusion, during which time Count Raven had split and reformed a couple of times leaving Dan Fondelius as the only remaining founding member. Luckily for us this was no ill thought out and cynical attempt to relive former glories and resulted in the band's best album in my opinion.
It may be a bit obvious and lazy (albeit correct) to state the fact that this sounds an awful lot like 1980's Ozzy Osbourne and there are several tracks that could be compared to tracks on Ozzy's debut solo effort, Blizzard of Ozz, although without the amazing guitar antics of a Randy Rhoades, obviously. This similarity is apparent from the off with the opener The Poltergeist sounding very much like Steal Away (The Night) and second track The Scream coming on like Mr. Crowley. The album's overall vibe is more doomy than Eighties Ozzy for sure, especially on tracks like The Entity and the crawling, despondent-sounding A Lifetime. Interestingly, bridging these two doom-ridden heavyweights is the synth-driven title track that certainly wouldn't have felt out of place on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and would probably have been preferable to Who Are You.
To Kill A Child sounds like a deeply personal song for Dan Fondelius, describing a father's tough decisions to make about his suffering child, which is followed by the acoustic track To Love, Wherever You Are, the two songs combining to provide the emotional heart of the album. Magic Is... is a return to the vibe of the first couple of tracks and is as much trad metal as doom metal. The subsequent Seven Days is most definitely doom metal though, but is one of the weaker tracks on the album despite featuring the only guitar solo of any substance. The album is closed out by another synth-driven track, Increasing Deserts, that along with the previous track leaves the album with a bit of a weak ending for me. At getting on for seventy minutes, I think the band would have been better advised to give these last two tracks a miss and would have put out a better album because of it. I think in future I'll just eject the CD after Magic Is... and pretend that's the album they meant to make!
My ignorance knows no bounds and Inquisition are another band that I have had little interaction with, other than their 1998 album Into the Infernal Regions of the Ancient Cult that I quite liked. Anyway, fast forward twelve years to this and the Colombian/US three-piece had become a duo, controversial main man Dagon providing guitar, bass and "vocals" (we'll get to that later) and Incubus the drums.
The music is mainly savage, visceral black metal with pummelling drums and brutal riffs that has quite a full sound for BM making it feel like it was recorded by a death metal producer. The songs flash by and the overall aesthetic is one of overarching cosmic evil. The obvious exception is Desolate Funeral Chant, which as you may have guessed from the title is more in the vein of blackened doom metal with a slower tempo and a more ominous atmosphere than the rest of the album. The most problematic aspect of this release (aside from the questionable morality of at least one of the members) is the previously hinted at vocal performance. It has been most often compared to Abbath's croaking delivery style, but I don't think it is as good as that. The words aren't really sung, but intoned in a little-changing monotone that sounds like a chain-smoking evil goblin with a sore throat. In other words they are an acquired taste and I'm not sure if it's one worth acquiring.
Anyway, to summarise, the music is great, the vocals are certainly unique, albeit divisive and there's a huge moral cloud hanging over the band, making it an interesting listen that leaves you with an ambiguous and uncomfortable feeling after.
As -(16)- close in on thirty years of existence, they sound as pissed off as ever. This isn't the mere grumblings of grumpy old men, but the savage apoplexy of true rage at the state of things. The band's more veteran status has allowed their anger to become more focussed, no longer is this the general adolescent rage of bored and pissed-off teenagers, this is well-targeted, venomous exasperation. Musically this is loud and heavy down-tuned sludge riffs wrapped up in hardcore punk attitude and raging anger - anger at others (Harvester of Fabrication, Kissing The Choir Boy), anger at self (Agora (Killed by a Mountain Lion), Acid Tongue) and anger at the world in general ( Screw Unto Others). When trying to explain that the band attempted to inject some positivity into the album, guitarist and vocalist Bobby Ferry said "The best we could come up with is loving your dog so much, you'd end up killing yourself if the dog dies." Yet despite Ferry's claim, there is a sliver of positivity, particularly on Candy in Spanish and Summer of '96 where the lyrics refer to the hope that a broken man's children can give him and his wish for a better life for them, although even this is tinged with regret for his own desperate existence.
So, even though the album is almightily heavy and raw, seething with barely contained rage, it is also conversely quite an emotional experience, especially if you can identify with any of the lyrical themes, that may leave you feeling drained.
Colosseum were formed in 2006 by Juhani Palomäki and Janne Rämö, both members of Finnish doom outfit Yearning, in order to explore doom's slowest and most monolithic sub-genre, Funeral Doom. Unfortunately they split in 2010 after three brilliant albums when Juhani Palomäki committed suicide at just age 32.
This album is a gorgeous testament to the man's art, an amazing album that is as close to funeral doom perfection as it is reasonable to expect, in my opinion. The atmosphere created is one of immense majesty, overlaid by a mournful sombreness made more poignant by the fate of the band's driving force. Feels like walking through a long-abandoned and ancient, yet still impressive, city such as the one featured in Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness or the ruins on the sacred island of Delos in Greece. A huge weight of history and accomplishment forgotten and dimmed by the passage of time, it's previous might and majesty now only remembered deep within the stone wrought by masons and sculptors long-gone.
The riffs are heaving and slow as you would expect, albeit certainly not the slowest tempo in funeral doom and the keys add a substantial layer to the atmosphere without swamping the sound at all. A number of guest musicians contribute classical instruments such as violin, cello, flute and trumpet for an even richer and more deeply mournful atmosphere. For me though, it is Juhani Palomäki's voice that really sets Colosseum apart, I absolutely love the timbre of his vocals, that deep, rasping growl that shakes you to your core is one of the most doom metal voices ever caught on record.
This album does seem to be the least well-liked of Colosseum's three full-lengths and I'm sorry for being so out of step, but this is one of my all-time favourites being both immaculately heavy and yet still remaining accessible due to it's generally shorter and relatively melodic songs.
I first crossed paths with RATM after catching the Freedom video on MTV and it's exposure of the injustices against Native Americans as personified in the heinous miscarriage of justice against Leonard Peltier (shit, some things never change...) Anyway the video had such an effect on my subconscious that when I saw this in my local CD store I grabbed it without thinking. I don't much like rap, apart from the odd album like Straight Outta Compton and It Takes a Nation of Millions so I've never given it much ear time and rap rock like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers leaves me cold, so this was a bit outside my comfort zone.
But, hell, this is one great record - angry and intense, but not in a misdirected "hit out at everyone" kind of way, but in an invigorating, energetic and focussed tirade against those who deserve it. I can't in all honesty say if I would dig this to the same degree without the political message, but I think the music is strong enough in it's own right to command respect. Testify, Calm Like a Bomb, Sleep Now in the Fire are all stone-cold classics as far as I'm concerned and the lyrical content elevates them even higher. This album is every bit as relevant today as when it was released over twenty years ago and that is a hell of a testament to it's passion and power.