Sonny's Reviews
A lengthy album of stonerized doom and sludge metal that veers from heartfelt longing to dissonant aggressiveness and back again. Mike Scheidt's clean vocals are on top form and are filled with emotional resonance, never more so than in the opener, Ablaze, the album's best track in my opinion, with it's epic, yet sorrowful atmosphere. This is followed by The Screen, a song dripping with aggressive, sludge-drenched dissonance and the album's most angry-sounding track. In Reverie begins with a solitary bass line, before erupting into life with huge, heaving riffs that shake to the roots of the earth. Lungs Reach appears, at first, to be a gentle respite before exploding into a short, desperate maelstrom. The album's longest track at sixteen minutes is up next. Beauty in Falling Leaves is one of the more melodic tracks YOB have ever written and has an atypically hopeful and even joyous atmosphere within it's doom riffing. After the more upbeat emotion of Beauty.., Original Face is the polar opposite, with a death doom vibe that is more savage in it's uptempo pacing than is usual for the band and acts as a bridge between the album's two longest songs. Closing the album is the title track, which is another doomy stoner epic, nearly quarter of an hour long, which builds and builds to a psych-guitar crescendo.
With some nice variety in the tracks, the album's seventy-odd minute length doesn't feel at all excessive. A great example of an experienced band that can continue to turn out interesting and engaging records, despite working in a genre with fairly tight conventions.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2018
Spaniards, Proscrito, launch this, their debut full-length album onto an unsuspecting public and crush the life out of them with their super-massive black hole of death doom. Featuring powerful and abrasive doom riffs that owe more than a passing nod to Tom G. Warrior and Celtic Frost, with growling and howling deathly vocals tearing their way through the fabric of reality to haunt the waking hours of the poor misbegotten souls who happen upon this swirling maelstrom of death.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
This eponymous album is the debut release for these Hungarian doomsters. Whilst taking cues from bands like Windhand, Jex Thoth and co, their female-fronted occult doom doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, but also manages to avoid sounding too derivative. Singer Stragessa has an effective and well-controlled voice, with a decent range and no histrionics. The riffs are medium-slow, trad doom with some decent hooks, but could do with a little more heft. Keyboards are very subtly applied and don't swamp the music, so it doesn't get too corny or overtly gothic-sounding. Most of the tracks are in the 8 to 9 minute range, so the band allow plenty of time for the songs to develop and deploy some nice melodies within the riffs.
Probably won't have too many new fans flocking to the female-fronted doom banner, but should please existing fans of the style.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
Konvent are an all-female four piece from Copenhagen who play ultra-heavy, sludge-inflected death doom metal. Formed in 2015 and putting out a reasonably well-received four-track demo in 2017 the band now present their debut full-length album, Puritan Masochism, via Napalm Records.
Slow, heavily downtuned riffs with twin vocals combining deep, abyssal growls and harsh, desperate shrieks to provide a suitably ominous sound that has a vaguely unsettling effect. The production is perhaps a little too clean for this style of doom metal and the songs ultimately lack variety, but it is heavy as hell and, if taken for what it is, is food and drink for adherents to the death doom ethos - not every new release has to break the mould after all!
Genres: Doom Metal Sludge Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
Khazad-dûm's "Hymns from the Deep" is a musical journey into the depths of the dwarven mines of Moria from JRR Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring. The lyrics are from a poem based on the chapter "The Bridge of by Khazad-dûm" written by Myrddin Evans.
Khazad-dûm are a solo project of Dan Scrivener who plays all the instruments and sings the clean vocals, with help from Matthew Surry who provides harsh vocals which are supposedly from the Balrog of Moria. Slow, melancholy and cavernous as befits the setting of this part of Tolkien's epic, the majority of the album is funeral doom metal, with some dark ambient and even a little atmospheric black metal to add contrast. It successfully portays the morbid, dread atmosphere of the long-abandoned dwarven ruin and the malignant presence of it's most infernal inhabitant, taking Tolkien away from the folksy, hopefulness of Peter Jackson's movie portrayal and planting it firmly in the sphere inhabited by Lovecraft's eldritch, dreadful Elder Gods.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
Raw and ascerbic black metal, verging at times on war metal levels of intensity, that fair pummells and smashes itself along in a real old-school style. Without wishing to seem condescending, this is an impressive release considering that the band are from Iraq, a country with a reputation for being a hotbed for any number of things, but black metal isn't one of them. I don't know what it takes to make a black metal album in a country as war-torn as Iraq, but I'm sure it can't be easy, making this an achievement in itself. The fact it's frickin' awesome too is even more kudos to the band. War metal by people who have had to live that shit!
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
Romans Suum play traditional doom metal in the manner of Scandinavians Reverend Bizarre and Lord Vicar and Aussies Rote Mare amongst others. With deep and resonant riffs that are mainly ponderous and doom-laden, but occasionally break loose with some uptempo, raging riffing such as on Creatures from the Vault, the guitar work is crunchingly satisfying. Vocalist Marco Veraldi is a veteran of bands like Bretus and has a sonorous voice, intoning his morbid, death-obsessed musings sometimes with a resignation of inevitability and at others with a howling railing agaist fate, he also does a reasonable impression of Lee Dorrian's Forest of Equilibrium performance on Reaper Looks In Your Eyes. The bass and drums are functional and provide the mortar that hold this whole pile of rocks together without ever being flashy or showy, as any good doom metal rhythm section should.
This kind of trad doom album seldom holds too many surprises, especially for the more seasoned doomhead, but there is enough here to give the listener a taste of the band's own character. The songs are solid and well-performed and, personally, I'm always up for being hammered by another slab of decent doom metal.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
Markov Soroka, the main man behind Drown, is also the driving force behind atmo-black projects Aureole and Krukh as well as genre-bending Tchornobog. Drown is the banner under which Markov releases his funeral doom and Subaqueous is the second album he has released as Drown, following 2014's Unsleep.
It features only two tracks, but eack clocks in at over twenty minutes, so you are unlikely to feel short-changed. The album does have a concept as such, track one, Mother Cetacean, relates the sorrowful tale of a grief-stricken mother who has lost her son to the sea and, unable to live with her grief, decides to join him by wading out into the water and being dragged down to the watery depths, accompanied by a grieving whale whose young have also succumbed to the ocean's crushing weight. Second track, Father Subaqueous, tells of the ghost of the young man as he is imprisoned in the ocean's bottom and his horror as he perceives his mother's lifeless body dropping down to join him in his lightless grave.
The album does have a moderately quick tempo for funeral doom (although, obviously, these things are relative) yet it is still heavingly heavy, with thundering drums, cavernous vocals and distorted riffs, but there is also a lighter side to it with the chiming, melodiousness of some of the overlaid guitar work, especially on Mother Cetacean.
Markov Soroka is extremely adept at creating depressive and dark atmospheres and here he is aided by the production which was handled by Esoteric's Greg Chandler and successfully invokes the irresistible nature of the tidal ebbing and flowing of the oceans and the sheer weight of the countless fathoms of water, pressurizing the depths into a suffocating, airless doom.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
Murg's 2015 debut album is raw and rabidly harsh black metal that really cuts to the quick. It comprises eight tracks, clocking in at around 35 minutes, of relentless, pummelling blasting for the most part with vicious riffing and ragged, shrieking vocals. Yet despite the aggressiveness it still manages to maintain a degree of melody to the songs and isn't merely an exercise in discordance.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2015
At it's most intense, this is scorching Irish Black Metal with searing vocals that may well set your speakers ablaze. However, it's not just an all-out frontal assault, as a contrast there are also times when the album is more introspective and serene, but fear not, another blistering blast-beat is never too far away.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2017
Powerful riffing coupled with the barely contained angst and fury of Rae Amitay's vocal delivery make for an adrenaline-pumping half-hour that has barely been matched all year. The two or three short quieter interludes, such as the intro to Saprophyte and the piano break in To a Watery Grave only serve to highlight the aggression of the rest of the album. Definitely one of the metal albums of 2015.
Genres: Death Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2015
Saturnalia Temple have been a favourite of mine for some time now. Their psych-drenched doom metal is as uncompromising as it is trippy and it is early days yet, but this may well be their best album so far. Recorded completely on analogue equipment, Gravity is a throwback to the heady days of late '60s / early '70s psych rock.
First track proper, after a short intro, is the eponymous Saturnalia Temple which, if you didn't know better, you would swear was a psych-doom song from about 1968. I can't really explain why, but I get a kind of doom Velvet Underground vibe from this track. Next is the nine minutes of organ-soaked fuzzy doom, Gravity, with it's cracked and croaky vocals, which suggests that man is pulled down by his failings like a huge mass exerting it's pull on his soul and, despite the warmness of the guitar sound, it feels like an ominous and threatening track. The repetitive, ascerbic Elyzian Fields with it's black metal-style vocals is a kinetic ending to side one.
Between Two Worlds begins side two and, after a chaotic intro, kicks into gear and hurtles along like a long lost Hawkwind track from their Space Ritual days with echoing vocals Bob Calvert would be proud of. The distorted hyper-fuzzy oscillations and cavernous, disembodied clean vocals of Bitter Taste are a little disorientating, particularly on headphones and could well be some kind of sonic experiment on the human brain! Oannes also features the same vocal style and a similarly repetitively hypnotic guitar sound as Bitter Taste, albeit with a warmer, more bassy tone and Alpha Drakonis is basically an ambient outro to end the album as it started.
Once more Saturnalia Temple prove they are one of a kind and are not content to plough the same doom metal furrow as the majority of their contemporaries. Gravity has a cataclysmically reverberating bottom end and properly disconcerting vocals to give the listener the impression of having heard something genuinely either profound or blasphemous. More successfuly evokes the imagery and atmosphere of HP Lovecraft than any number of albums that deliberately set out to. Original, unsettling and ultimately, an extremely satisfying doom metal record.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
The album's opener, "Old Man Gong", is a twelve minute synth-heavy instrumental track, coming on like a killer Hawkwind/St.Vitus hybrid. "Pyramid in my Mind" is a piece of straight-up sludgy doom and is the only track on the album that features vocals. Next is my personal favourite "Wheelchair Druid". Opening with an amazingly heavy, yet melancholy, main riff which then gives way to a short, quieter interval before launching into an excellent, spacy guitar break, before returning to the heavy riffing for the remainder of this superb track. "Nephilim" has another powerful underlying riff, overlaid with a tasty synth and guitar icing. Closer, the thirteen minute "Entombed With The Pharaohs", is a bit more of a builder, starting gently and then amping it up steadily, this is probably the albums weakest track. Admittedly, this syle of space-inflected heavy doom has probably got limited appeal, but if it is your kind of thing, there can't be many better examples.
Genres: Doom Metal Sludge Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2015
Greeks On Thorns I Lay have been at this a long time, more than 25 years to be precise and this is the first album of theirs to cross my path. The album's seven songs clock in at 45 minutes and are mainly comprised of melodic death doom with gothic undertones. Slow, heavy, distorted riffs, growling vocals with mournful keys and a smattering of strings and female vocals for an overall moribund gothic doom atmosphere any fan of bands like My Dying Bride or Paradise Lost should enjoy.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
Blessed Death's second album is rough and ready thrash with speed metal influences. It certainly isn't the most technically adept nor original thrash albums you'll ever hear, but what it does have in spades is an infectious enthusiasm that is second to none. A significant number of the tracks clock in at less than three minutes and are belted out like Slayer on angel dust.
The factor that may be a problem for a number of people is vocalist Larry Portelli who's performance is insane, from the deepest of growls to the highest of shrieks sometimes without warning. However, I found his vocal performance strangely endearing, as if you can tell that he was really putting his heart and soul into it. You can just picture him completely losing his shit on stage and giving it his absolute all. It's a shame the band aren't better known, especially considering how well-regarded several less passionate outfits are.
Genres: Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 1987
Worm were originally a one-man outfit, hailing from the swamps of Florida and playing straight black metal, the band later expanding to a duo before releasing their debut album Evocation of the Black Marsh in 2017. This their second album, takes cavernous death doom combined with elements of funeral doom and desecrates it with evil black metal shrieks or growling demonic utterances. The production is a bit muddy and while this isn't always a problem with death doom, it does seem to rob this of a little of it's efficacy at times. The riffs are filthy and fetid, as they should be and the drums have an echoing resonance that contributes mightily to the abyssal atmosphere. Rotting Spheres of Sentient Blackness is a definite highlight with it's lethargic, corpse-ridden doom of death vibe and malodorous vocals that may leave the unwary gagging! So if you're a fan of doom metal that sounds like it's been disinterred after about three centuries then this should appeal.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
Godthrymm were founded by respected UK doom metal guitarist Hamish Glencross, ex-member of Solstice and My Dying Bride. This is the band's first full-length album after releasing a couple of well-received EPs, particularly 2018's A Grand Reclamation. The guitarist's sojourns in both bands have left their mark all over this album, combining the sorrowful mourning of MDB with Solstice's epic doom sensibilities, resulting in an album with one foot rooted firmly in the past of UK doom metal and the other reaching for the future and although it's sound echoes from the 90's it's influences combine to form a modern release nonetheless. Glencross' vocals have the requisite mournfulness, but also have a strength to them that suggest a spirit tested but not broken by the sorrows heaped upon it. Occasional female vocals add another layer of epic mourning to the atmosphere. The huge riffs convey a dark power that is infused with a sense of dread and yet a determination to prevail. All in all an impressive debut album from a seasoned doom metal warrior's latest incarnation that should appeal to any and all fans of UK doom.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
It is with some trepidation I approach an attempt to review Master of Puppets. I mean, what can I add to the volumes rightfully heaping praise on one of metal's all-time greatest releases? I have related elsewhere how I discovered thrash metal through Metallica's previous album Ride the Lightning and so when MoP was released I was looking forward to it with great excitement. Even that didn't prepare me for how awesome a record Metallica had laid before the metal world. The progression from RtL to MoP was every bit as impressive as from the debut to that classic.
Bookended by the two most straight-up aggressive tracks, Battery and Damage Inc., the album was a masterclass in jaw-dropping metal songwriting and flawless execution. Complex songs with one of the absolute tightest ever metal performances committed to record, this album single-handedly took metal to a whole different level. Master of Puppets itself may be the single best metal track of all-time, a perfect storm of controlled aggression and meaningful songwriting that is one for the ages. The crawling menace of The Thing That Should Not Be and it's Lovacraftian imagery of unspeakable evil should set your neck hairs on end. Welcome Home (Sanitarium) closes out side one and is as sorrowful a song as Metallica ever wrote, the despair and helplessness of the song's protagonist laid bare for all to see.
Side two kicks off with Disposable Heroes, it's galloping main riff has always been one of my favourites and Cliff's bass-playing here is fantastic. It's anti-war sentiment is also atypical for a metal band and yet another thing that set Metallica apart from the herd. Next up is Leper Messiah and despite still being a good song, I feel it is the album's weakest link. Orion is one of the great metal instrumentals, it's throbbing riff is a great foundation for the guitar work of Hetfield and Hammett. In light of future events, the bass line halfway through the song after the first pause brings a metaphorical tear to my eye every time I hear it, particularly when the mournful-sounding guitar solo kicks in over the top of it, almost like a portent of things to come. Damage Inc. closes out the album in violent style, both musically and lyrically.
It's easy to knock Metallica in hindsight and they rightly deserve a lot of the kicking they get, becoming a complete joke in later years with their rock star crap. But no matter what, they will always have made this album and no amount of Some Kind of Monster or St. Anger bullshit can change that. The sad passing of Cliff Burton had some bearing on the direction Metallica went in later years, of that I am sure, but this is as fine a memorial to that legendary human being and metal musician as it is possible to have. R.I.P Cliff. You have been missed.
Genres: Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 1986
Sadus and their Illusions album are, unfortunately, one of those bands with whom I have passed like ships in the night. I say unfortunately because it's frantic, headlong thrashing is right up my street, as they say. It incorporates elements of early death metal into the teutonic-inspired thrash of Kreator and Sodom in a way that is heavily indebted to Possessed's Seven Churches. One thing that really does stand out on Illusions, in a way previously unheard on a thrash release, was the bass playing of Steve DiGiorgio which almost seems to double as an extra rhythm guitar. Darren Travis' deranged, screaming vocals just sound demented (in a good way), as on the track Torture. The riffs are cranked to hyperspeed and the solos are searingly savage, in a Jeff Hanneman kind of way. With song titles like Certain Death, And Then You Die, Twisted Face and Fight or Die I think we can tell where the band are coming from. Despite hailing from LA, I guess these guys weren't hanging out on the strip with Mötley Crüe and L.A. Guns!
Any fan of the faster, more aggressive side of thrash and albums like Reign in Blood, Pleasure to Kill and Darkness Descends should certainly grab a copy of this. I don't think they would be disappointed.
Genres: Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 1988
Sabbat were and obviously remain, the UK's best thrash band (although if Sacrilege had made more albums like Behind the Realms of Madness that may not have been the case). I was completely floored by their debut, History of A Time To Come and it is still one of my favourite 80's albums. Dreamweaver was the band's second and, unfortunately, the last to feature frontman Martin Walkyier. As much as anything it was Walkyier's dense paganistic lyrics and singular vocal style that gave the band their identity. Sabbat's other main man was guitarist and now much-respected producer of bands such as Kreator, Nevermore and Arch Enemy, Andy Sneap.
Dreamweaver's thrash is of the fairly technical variety with a certain amount of complexity to the songs. Walkyier is also a verbose lyricist, I mean, most of these songs have a LOT of lyrics which are delivered relentlessly and occasionally feel rushed in the attempt to fit them all in, Walkyier spitting out words like a machine gun spits bullets. As such, this is a decent record and does thrash when it wants to but, to be honest, it isn't an album that deserves the reverence that a lot of people show towards it and certainly not as much as the debut, a record I still believe has more character than this, with it's tendency to become a bit samey.
Walkyier departed the band after this album due to a difference with Sneap over the more prog-oriented direction the guitarist seemed to be taking them towards and probably made the right decision. For me, if I ever feel the need for Sabbat (and I still occasionally do) it is History... I invariably reach for, not this.
Genres: Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 1989
Holy Terror were a short-lived LA thrash band that formed in 1985 and left a couple of great albums behind them before splitting in '89. Mind Wars was the second of these albums and is as much speed metal as it is thrash. As most people tend to comment, the production is absolute shit and the sound is muddied as a consequence. However, the poor production doesn't kill what is a ripping record nonetheless. The tempo is high, the riffs are turbo-charged and the solos shred like hell. The songs arguably share more DNA with Iron Maiden than Metallica, particularly 80's vintage Maiden, albeit much faster - check out the galloping bass lines of The Immoral Wasteland or the guitar sound of Fool's Gold for classic Maidenisms. Singer Keith Deen has got a decent snarl, but his high notes aren't always great and sometimes sound like he's straining to maintain, but his aggressive, almost punk style is very much his own, particularly excelling on the hardcore-influenced Do Unto Others. If you're up for some full-throttle, thrashing speed metal than you could do much worse than wrapping your ears round this underrated beauty.
Genres: Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 1988
Despite forming in 1985 and releasing their first album in 1990 I have never heard of Psychotic Waltz before listening to this, their fifth proper full-length and first since reforming in 2010. Now I'm no big prog metal nerd, but I actually enjoyed this more than I expected to. Sure it's a little more clean-sounding than a lot of metal I listen to, but the songs are quite engaging and are certainly well-performed. I quite often take against prog metal because of it's occasional tendency towards ego-stroking with band members striving to outdo each other in an ever more technical and sterile circle jerk. Happily this has none of those tendencies with the band all pulling in the same direction and presenting a coherent album of songs rather than performances.
Now this is never going to be a go-to album for me, but I found more than enough to like here and some of it is actually quite catchy (Pull the String for example). I would have no qualms recommending it to any prog fans out there who want to listen to some actual songs and not be drowned in technical wizardry.
Genres: Progressive Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
Germans Deathrow finally emerged from their fellow countrymen Sodom and Kreator's shadow with this their third album, Deception Ignored, taking technical thrash to new levels with it's progressive tendencies. Now, unlike most, I don't consider this to really be a prog metal album, it is most definitely still a thrash album, but it is a busy sonofabitch, third track Triocton, for example, could almost be termed thrash-jazz it's has so much going on. The playing is exceptional, guitarists Sven Flügge and Uwe Osterlehner trading riffs and solos like a pair of world class heavyweights and the drumming is outstanding and never misses a beat, no matter what other technical trickery is going on. Milo Van Jaksic's vocals are pretty decent, more akin to Joey Belladonna than the usual thrash growls, but on a couple of occasions his voice does sound a bit strained.
Now I have no wish to paint this album as all technical jiggerypokery and lacking in the thrash department because believe me my friends, this still thrashes like a mutha. Seriously, check out The Deathwish, N.L.Y.H. or Watching the World and try telling me these guys don't know how to thrash as hard as anyone. I have seen a number of reviews calling this album dull and, in all honesty, I really don't know what kind of adrenaline junkie you'd have to be to find this boring. You may not like it but boring it certainly isn't. I am often underwhelmed by a lot of technical metal, but this is just so damn infectious that I found it's technicalities exhilharating instead of offputting. Probably my favourite tech-thrash album.
Genres: Progressive Metal Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 1988
You know the one by that norwegian band with the drummer who goes bada-bada-bada-bada at 100 miles an hour for six or seven minutes, the guitarist who plays fairly boring basic riffs, a singer who shrieks like someone's taken a cheese grater to his balls and then every so often there's a bit of synth in an attempt to offer some variety? Well, this is like that, only not as good.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: EP
Year: 2016
S.O.D. or Stormtroopers of Death were a four-piece crossover band consisting of Anthrax's Scott Ian, Dan Lilker and Charlie Benante with Billy Milano of hardcore band The Psychos (and later M.O.D.) on vocals, formed as an outlet for the Anthrax guys' love of hardcore punk. I've always been partial to a bit of hardcore myself, Bad Brains, Sick of It All, Minor Threat and early Suicidal Tendencies have all released some of my favourite records and at the time I was well into Speak English or Die. But... that was a long time ago.
The album actually starts off pretty well kicking off with the instro March of the S.O.D. leading into Sargent "D" & the S.O.D. sounding a lot like hyper-charged tracks from Among the Living with punky vocals. In fact the album isn't all that bad until we get to Anti-Procrastination Song then things go downhill fast, it's six seconds presumably lampooning Napalm Death's You Suffer and from then on the juvenile humour takes over and things get tedious. What's that Noise? has, like a noise in it that's really annoying... geddit? Premenstrual Princess, Pussy Whipped and the oh so hilarious Ballad of Jimi Hendrix are cringeworthy. By the time you add in the pointless Hey Gordy! and Diamonds and Rust (Extended Version) your intelligence has probably been insulted enough for one record.
Genres: Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 1985
This is a surprisingly uplifting album, considering the subject matter seems so dark (at least judging by the song titles). Nicely crafted and well executed, I'm a bit of a sucker for this expansive modern atmo-black sound as performed by acts such as Saor and Alda and of which this is another fine example.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2014
These Russians' brand of atmospheric black metal has a distinctly Eastern European flavour that sets it apart, in that it doesn't overtly use acoustic folk sections like so many others, but the songs are imbued with the influence of russian folk music in their DNA. This results in the tracks being especially melodic, but the band temper this melodiousness with particularly desperate-sounding vocals. A mention must also go to the fantastic production of the album that allows all the instruments equal room to be heard rather than the all-out frantic blur more usual in atmo-black. Thoroughly modern black metal that is many times removed from Deathcrush and A Blaze in the Northern Sky, being wonderfully different to those classics and showing how black metal can evolve and progress when in the right hands. There are leaders and followers, I would suggest Sivyj Yar are the former.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
Each of the album's two tracks takes up a side of the LP and consist of droning sludge that has a structure both very basic and yet exceedingly effective. Both tracks begin with devastatingly heavy sections that lead to slower quieter passages where time barely seems to pass, before building to even heavier cataclysmic climaxes - classic extreme doom / sludge material.
Genres: Drone Metal Sludge Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Frayle's debut full-length album comes two years after the four-track The White Witch EP introduced the band to metal audiences worldwide. That ep's inclusion of a Portishead cover may have given some early indication of the direction the band wanted to go in.
The album starts off in pretty good shape, after a short intro, with the title track, 1692. It's riffs are huge, slow and cavernous as a marked contrast to Gwyn Strang's light and ethereal vocal style and this is a belter of a track. God of No Faith, however, seems a bit misguided in it's use of melo-death vocals which sound horribly out of place here, in what is otherwise a strong track. The rest of the album is pretty good, varying from hulking doom to trip-hop influenced Doomgaze of a kind that may be an attempt to woo a wider audience to the band's sound.
Overall, despite a couple of issues such as the aforementioned God of No Faith and the fact that Gwyn Strang's vocals are sometimes a little too sweet-sounding, I would hail the album a success and a bit of a step up from the EP.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
In the Hours Beneath is a cocktail made from equal parts good quality atmospheric black metal and post-rock, with just a dash of death doom to add a bit of spice, then shaken and served ice cold.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2016
Ukrainians 1914's debut is a blackened death doom journey through various aspects of The Great War with songs about Verdun, Gallipoli, gas attacks at Ypres and Zeppelin bombing raids on London amongst others. Interesting though I find these subjects as a military history buff, it's the music that counts and there is certainly no need for concern on that point. After the Long Way to Tipperary intro, Gasmask's downtuned death doom riff kicks in, and the assault begins. The album is peppered with several contemporary sound clips that serve as sharp contrast to the modern metal extremities being perpetrated. The majority is quite pacy death doom with blackened vocals and some black metal guitar work, but there is also some out and out blackened death as in second track Frozen in Trenches and Caught in the Crossfire. The riffs are killer - check out the main riff to Verdun - and the performanes are tight. A slight criticism would be that I would prefer a bit more bottom end to the production but, truly, this is a minor quibble. Imagine Bolt Thrower, Asphyx and Marduk all jamming together in remembrance of WWI and you might have some approximation of what to expect.
Genres: Black Metal Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2015
The 1980s thrash scene gave us some of metal's all-time great albums. However, I only found Overkill to be a functional thrash outfit and re-listening to this so many years on hasn't changed that conviction one iota. I have always found their medium-paced thrash to be uninspiring musically and their songs, in the main, are fairly bland. I dislike the oft-times screeching sub-AC/DC vocals and I can't shake the notion that what Overkill really wanted to be was a good old classic metal band in the vein of Priest or Maiden and jumped aboard the thrash gravy train to gain some exposure. Of course I have no proof that this was the case and may be doing the band a grave disservice, but from the evidence of their music this is the impression I get. Now, this isn't one of those truly awful records as they do have some talent and when they do get it right as on closing track Evil Never Dies their thrashing is not too bad. They seem best though when moving away from out and out thrash. The ten minute Playing With Spiders / Skullkrusher and it's almost doom metal pacing and the slower build-up of the Maiden-esque title track are when the album sounds best in my opinion. So the problem with Overkill for me is the apparent attempt to squeeze their square peg into a round hole.
Genres: Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 1989
I constantly vacillate between this and Reign in Blood as to which is my favourite thrash album of all time. I think it probably depends on my mood at the time. To Mega Therion holds a special place in the metal pantheon for me, however. I was a relatively new convert to thrash metal back in 1985 and picked this up mainly because of it's Alien-like H.R.Gieger cover, knowing nothing of the band itself, other than they were a Swiss thrash band (probably gleaned from a Kerrang! article, back when they still had decent taste).
After the bombastic intro of Innocence and Wrath, I was completely blown away by the downtuned riffs of The Usurper/Jewel Throne duo, which was the heaviest fucking thing I had ever heard at this point and sounded as if Tony Iommi had been possessed by some Sumerian demon that had been let loose upon the earth. Tom G. Warrior's evil-sounding vocals and trademark "death grunts" only adding to the impression. To my unsuspecting ears, this album was like a metal version of The Exorcist - and I had let it into my house!
Dawn of Megiddo is virtually doom metal and an early indicator of where CF would ultimately end up. Then from Eternal Summer, via Circle of the Tyrants and (Beyond The) North Winds to Fainted Eyes is a solid thrash attack that is a lot faster than it appears, the downtuning of the riffs making it seem less aggressively paced than it actually is. Tears in a Prophet's Dream is a short, eerie ambient soundscape that sets up closing track Necromantical Screams with it's huge-sounding tympani drums and weird spirit-like backing vocals it sounds like it should be played in some ancient, decadent emperor's court.
This really was completely unlike any other metal release I had heard before and cemented Celtic Frost as one of my favourite metal bands, despite several subsequent attempts to piss me off! A unique band and a true 80's classic.
Genres: Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 1985
This German thrash three-piece released their debut, Infernal Overkill in '85, the same year as fellow countrymen Kreator's Endless Pain and Sodom's In the Sign of Evil EP. That album wasn't anything like as good as those. A year later Destruction released the follow-up, Eternal Devastation, the same year as Sodom's Obsessed by Cruelty and Kreator's Pleasure to Kill, losing out miserably to their cohorts once more.
I used to like this a bit more (probably when I had less to compare it to), but now it just sounds shabby to be honest. There's a few good riffs for sure, but the guitar tone sucks, the playing is far too loose for really great thrash and the vocals are shockingly poor. Schmier's normal gruff singing is OK, but what the hell are those dumb squeals every other line? Instead of a really well-honed machine like the very best thrashers, Destruction sound more like a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs.
Genres: Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 1986
I'm no fan of this style of brutal / technical death metal. The staccato nature of most of the songs and the "wild boar on heat" vocal style leaves me cold, coupled with the OTT satanist aesthetic I really couldn't get into this at all.
Genres: Death Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2016
Prior to listening to this album for the 80's Thrash challenge, Kat had made little to no impact on my personal musical radar. Whenever their name came up I always vaguely associated it with The Great Kat and so consequently gave them a wide berth. And, in all honesty, despite missing out for many years on any number of great bands and albums due to preconceived prejudices, I really don't feel I've been deprived by avoiding Kat. This is mostly medium-paced thrash with heavy metal stylings that seems sorely lacking in great tunes and even at one point threatens to go into full-on metal ballad mode. It mostly fails to excite and I would firmly place this in the lower second-tier of 80's thrash along with bands like Flotsam and Jetsam. And no, this is nothing to do with the lyrics being in Polish as anyone who is even remotely familiar with my music taste will attest! Now I'm sure there are people who think Kat are the real deal and the Big Four are dirty poseurs and good luck to 'em, but this band and this album just aren't for me.
Genres: Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 1988
By the time of the release of their 1989 classic, Sodom had left their early Venom-worshipping satanic black / speed metal style behind and had turned to full-on thrash metal with an (anti-)war theme. Coming off the back of '87's awesome Persecution Mania, the classic Sodom line-up of Tom Angelripper, Frank Blackfire and Chris Witchhunter managed to maintain the momentum with yet another of Europe's all-time great thrash albums.
This is a perfectly executed record and every single participant is spot on in their performance. Angelripper's bass drives the songs along mercilessly and while his vocals, in common with most thrash singers, aren't going to give Rob Halford or Bruce Dickenson sleepless nights, they are perfectly suited to the tone of the album, with their gruff rasping style. The drums are clean, on-point and the fills are fantastic. Blackfire's thrilling riffs are precise and his solos incendiary, a really underrated guitarist in the metal world in my opinion. This is absolutely a band on top of their game. The songwriting is excellent, with tempo changes that add some variation to the tracks without detracting from the album's overall aggression. The Vietnam War theme has always resonated with me too, being a bit of a military history buff to boot, especially with the album being released hot on the tail of movies like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Hamburger Hill.
Genres: Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 1989
I have to admit that over the years I probably haven't given Testament the credit they deserve, dismissing them as just another Megadeth / Exodus knock-off. I'm returning to them now after many years and have to admit that this, their debut, is one hell of a great record. The riffs are classic thrash chuggers and Alex Skolnick's solos are scintillating and vibrant, guaranteed to make your neck hairs stand on end! Chuck Billy's vocals are great, particularly for a thrash singer, with a versatility few vocalists in the genre could equal. On the downside, the production could be better, the bass in particular seems to have got buried in the mix somewhere.
And then there's the songs. There's some anthemic tracks on here, such as The Haunting, Alone in the Dark and Do or Die, which surely has one of the most singalong choruses in thrash. There really isn't a duff track during the entire 38 minutes which, by the way, is virtually the perfect length for such a high octane thrash album. Just goes to show, it's never too late to re-evaluate music that may have previously underwhelmed you. Sorry guys!
Genres: Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 1987
I was a huge fan of Maine duo Obsidian Tongue's last full-length, 2013's A Nest of Ravens in the Throat of Time. Since that album was released Falls of Rauros drummer Raymond Capizzo has joined mainman Brendan Hayter as replacement for original skinsman Greg Murphy. The almost seven year wait certainly seems worth it as this is even more epic than Nest of Ravens. The black metal riffing is spot on and Hayter varies between his BM shrieks and calm, clean vocals, both of which are excellent and a cut above the majority of black metal acts. The production really adds a nice depth to the sound and the songwriting is spectacular, with plenty of textural and temporal changes, engaging the listener with genuine epic story-telling. For my money Obsidian Tongue are one of the great underrated black metal bands of recent times and deserve to be considered along with the likes of Panopticon at the forefront of the atmo-black scene.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2020
This album isn't going to rewrite the Black Metal rulebook. An album of straightforward Atmospheric Black Metal with no gimmicks, no folksy breaks, no haunting female vocals. What you do get is a collection of strong songs performed very well and if you're a fan of the genre there's a lot to enjoy here. The ideal accompaniment to a woodland stroll on a November morning.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2013