Sonny's Reviews
Sarastus are a Finnish black metal duo, Vardøger being the instrumentalist and Revanant is the vocalist and lyric writer.
Their old-school black metal sound and lyrical themes of nature, death and occultism won't win any new converts to BM, but for those of us who already love it, there is plenty to admire here.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Vastum are a band I'm coming to a bit late in the day and I have really been missing out. Modern death metal (with a few notable exceptions) usually leaves me underwhelmed, but these San Franciscans seem to have dropped out of a wormhole from the late 80s or early 90s with their loose, liberated style, the occasional tempo drop for a welcome doom death break and it's shunning of technicality, instead focussing on the crushing power of it's riffs to achieve the necessary levels of heaviness. One of, if not the, best death metal albums of the year.
Genres: Death Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Intense and emotional doom metal with heart-felt vocals from lead singer Rainbo that convey the loss expressed in the lyrical themes in a manner similar to Patrick Walker of Warning. The music isn't as unrelentingly mournful as Warning, but there are similarities in execution.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Classic heavy metal with just a touch of doom to add a bit of heft. Ass-kicking riffs and a vocalist that has a similarity to latter-day Ozzy Osbourne, there's a couple of solos, but nothing too showy. This mines direct from the motherlode of proper old-school metal - anyone who doesn't love this record doesn't love heavy metal at all!
Genres: Heavy Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Another slice of 80s-influenced trad metal that prostrates itself at the altar of Priest, Maiden, Mercyful Fate et al. The vocals are a little too histrionic for my personal taste, but it fair rips along and the songs are decent, if not exactly earth-shaking. Kicks off with the second best song titled Starbreaker and never lets go it's grip on the back of your neck.
Genres: Heavy Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
A collaboration between two well-established proponents of dissonant black metal, Iceland's Wormlust and Philadelphia's Skáphe. Searingly caustic dissonance and wilfully avant-garde compositions result in a particularly unsettling couple of tracks of modern, intelligent black metal.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
With a cover that brings to mind Screaming for Vengeance or Defenders of the Faith, galloping riffs and soaring vocals, this is familiar ground for any fan of 80s British metal albums like the aforementioned Priest albums or Maiden's Somewhere in Time. High velocity heavy metal, veering into speed metal territory at times this is heart-pumping and visceral music guaranteed to get that head a-banging!
Genres: Heavy Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
I had plenty of reservations about Ashbringer's debut, Vacant, but this is a hell of a step up from that release. I don't know if that is because Ashbringer are now a band proper, with the dynamic that entails, rather than Nick Stanger playing all the instruments without any third party input. Either way, Stanger's songwriting is far superior on this album with beautiful and epic atmospheric BM anthems that really are very impressive. I love it when an artist proves me wrong and I'm pleased to say that is definitely the case with Ashbringer.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2016
Cacophonous and eerie avant-garde black metal from a new extreme metal supergroup, that is mercifully short - any longer and a migraine would probably be ensuing! I don't hate it, but I don't love it either (except for the "vocals" which are suitably ghostly and creepy). I don't know - maybe it's a grower.
Genres: Avant-Garde Metal Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
NONE's latest bout of depressive black metal, despite the cover, is more about a coldness of the soul than an actual physical coldness. The kind of iciness and hopelessness that accompanies bouts of depression where, like an interminable winter, it sometimes seems as though the hope of spring will never come. The lengthy passages of minimalistic piano notes add to this frigidness in a way that is more effective than any amount of blasting could ever be. May be a little too successful in portraying the feeling of real depression for anyone familiar with that feeling to feel entirely comfortable with.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Excellent modern black metal that isn't just a tired old blast-athon, there's some very good songwriting involving a satisfying amount of variation of pacing. Don't misunderstand, this blasts like a mutha when it has to, but sparingly enough that the listener isn't worn down by relentlessness, but instead can engage when a kick-up in gear starts. They have a great guitar sound and Vargher's vocals are desperate and urgent without excessive shrieking. This swedish duo are fast becoming one of my favourite straight-up black metal acts of recent years.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Genres: Industrial Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Kostnatění has used this, his debut album, as a cathartic release for the obsessive thoughts of death which have plagued him for some time. This has resulted in an, obviously, heartfelt and intense release during which he has tried to convey some of the dread that these obsessive feelings have caused in his psyche. The dissonance and aggressiveness of the riffing certainly make it an uncomfortable listen and as such, must be hailed as at least a partial success in it's aims.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
There seems to be a lot of love coming this album's way at the minute, but I just don't feel it. I was a big fan of 80's gothic rock such as The Mission, The Cult and Fields of the Nephilim, so a band that combines the sound of such gothic luminaries with a metal edge should be right up my street. Unfortunately most of the songs aren't that memorable and made little impact after the opener, which did manage to pique my interest, just for it to subside after a couple more tracks.
Genres: Heavy Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Bitchin' death metal from Arizona with a heavy Autopsy doom vibe that I love to hear when things get deathly...
Genres: Death Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
As the opening track suggests, Anger Breeds Contempt and this album seems to have a surfeit of both anger and contempt, Rae Amitay's vocals seemingly loaded with both. Musically, this extreme metal hydra with it's triple heads of black, death and grindcore is muscular and aggressive, the LP's grooves positively seething with it's unashamed hostility.
Genres: Black Metal Death Metal Sludge Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Just like the cover, these three lengthy tracks (and a short outro) are gorgeous and menacing. With brilliant songwriting and great execution, this is black metal that has evolved beyond it's early lo-fi, satanic roots into a more nuanced and subtle beast. The songs are atmospheric, although I wouldn't really term this atmo-black, sounding at times desperate, at others majestic. The length of the tracks allows them to develop their ideas fully, especially The Serpent Sting, the Smell of Goat which resolves itself beautifully. I've been listening to a lot of black metal recently and while I'll always have time for old-school blasting this is a great example of how the best in the genre are developing.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
I've never been massively sold on Enthroned and there's nothing here on their 11th album to turn my head now either. Old-school black metal with better production and patchy songwriting that amounts to something very ordinary. It's not an awful record, but black metal has moved on and there are many better BM albums out this year.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Overly long with songs that verge on overkill and yet, there is something magnetically engaging about the sheer enthusiasm with which these Danes suffuse their black metal. Melodic it most definitely is, wearing it's classic trad metal influence on it's sleeve, it is easy to tell these guys are compatriots of King Diamond. The vocals are some of the easiest to comprehend without a lyric sheet that I've ever heard in black metal and the music is equally as easy to get into - dense, dissonant and challenging this isn't, but will it get your head nodding or your foot tapping? Yes it probably will and I challenge you not to be won over by the sheer exuberance of tracks like the magnificent The Transylvanian Dream.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Gorgeous nature-inspired atmospheric bm. You can almost smell the spray from the forest waterfalls and feel the breeze from the highland mountainsides. The folk instrumentation is incorporated effortlessly and organically into the mix to enhance the atmosphere. Well worth your time if you are a fan of Saor, Elderwind, WiTTR etc.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Blut aus Nord are one of those bands who seem to attract a lot of pretentious twaddle, but the simple fact is that they are a very accomplished black metal band who like to develop their sound, are unafraid to incorporate influences from outside the BM world and don't like to stand still. This album seems to have ruffled a few feathers, being a bit more accessible than a lot of BaN's material, but f**k that, this is a damn fine melodic, atmospheric, black metal album with some psychedelic influences (although not too much) even featuring some nice choral moments. The music is soaring and sweeping and the production is spot on. Sure it is superficially akin to a number of modern atmo-black releases, but the sheer songwriting and technical superiority of the band are evident from the get-go, elevating this far above the general BM hoi-polloi.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Atlantean Kodex try to plough the same furrow as epic doom bands like Solstice and Cirith Ungol, but they haven't the songwriting skill of either of these bands and end up turning out hour-long albums of bloated heavy metal that just kind of blurs into one long LARP soundtrack. It does have some decent moments, but few and far between and the whole is just too damn long.
Genres: Heavy Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Death doom with some melodic black influence, akin to early Anathema or Katatonia, I prefer my death doom a bit more guttural and abyssal-sounding. This is a little too clean for my taste, but if you're a fan of the early doom days of the aforementioned bands then there's probably a lot for you to like here.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
An amalgamation of the blackest of metals and sludge with a strange, unsettling atmosphere which was seemingly enhanced by being recorded in an abandoned house near to Stockholm (I hope any others nearby were also abandoned or heavens knows what the residents would have made of the unholy cacophony issuing forth). I think this is a release that will take more than a couple of listens to properly sink in and I'm still on the fence with it. It is far from an easy listen, sometimes the aggression feels a bit too much, but I really love some of the sludgier tracks, such as Wormwood Star. One to keep coming back to I think and much respect for daring to step outside the BM-by-numbers artificial confines so many feel compelled to obey or lack the talent to transcend.
Genres: Black Metal Sludge Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
I can't believe it's been over forty years since I first saw these guys (supporting Motörhead on one of their '78 or '79 tours if I remember rightly) as a trio (mainman Kevin Heybourne with bassist Kevin Riddles and drummer Dave Hogg [Day Vog]) playing what would become one of the most recognizable sounds of the NWOBHM. After providing the best track on the legendary Metal for Muthas comp, they released their 1980 eponymous debut, one of my all-time favourite albums. Unfortunately the rest of the 80s weren't kind to AW, constant personnel upheavals and a couple of lacklustre albums resulted in the band disappearing from view. Fast forward nearly three decades and The 'Witch released As Above, So Below a return to some kind of form and a shot in the arm for any long-standing fan of the band. So, here we are in 2019 and AW turn in their best and heaviest album since that seminal debut, more focussed than As Above, So Below and with a production job that would have absolutely killed forty years ago. This is hi-octane heavy metal and any band of young bucks would be proud to have put out an album as exhilharating as this, yet alone a band now well into their fifth decade! Long Live Metal!!
Genres: Heavy Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Epic, but definitely not overblown, doom metal from Swedes Isole on this their seventh studio album (and first for five years). The clean vocals are the right side of the epic fence, however on several occasions they do employ puzzlingly redundant growled vocals. The guitar tone is full-on and suitably doom-laden, with many Iommi-esque riffs and the rhythm section is solid and forceful. Should appeal to any fan of scandinavian doom metal.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Apocalyptic death doom with abyssally echoing guttural vocals and thundering, pounding rhythms like the hordes of hell unleashed.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Werian's debut full-length weaves three blackened-doom tales of animistic shamen warriors invoking their gods and crushing all their enemies before them. Their interpretation of blackened doom doesn't just involve some doomy slow bits and some faster black metal bits, this is a genuine hybrid of doom and black that both makes the doom feel more aggressive and the blackness more earthy. Then, woven about this black/doom chimera, are influences of shamanic ritualism and psychedelia that allows for a truly unique doom experience. It all comes to a sublime head on the mighty, seventeen-minute-plus March Through Ruins, a track that is fast becoming a real favourite of mine. Additional kudos for recording the album live in the studio - how many bands would dare to do that these days?
Genres: Black Metal Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
I've been a big fan of this Seattle-based doom duo since hearing their debut ep in 2015. Comprising bassist / vocalist Amy Tung and drummer Jon Barrysmith, Year of the Cobra are a unique voice in the world of doom. Of course they are influenced by the usual suspects, such as Saint Vitus, Sabbath et al, but they eschew the use of guitars, relying on bass riffs to drive the songs. They also seem to draw almost as heavily on a punk / garage rock aesthetic to define their sound as on a metal influence.
This is their debut full-length release and it's certainly lived up to my expectations for it.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2016
Husband and wife drum and bass doom metal duo, Year of the Cobra, have produces another great atypical doom metal album. There's a nice variety of tracks on offer from the revved-up, punky title track, the creepy, sinister-sounding future Hallowe'en favourite, Demons and the crawling doom of the opener The Battle of White Mountain - and that's just within the first half of the album! The second half is a little more straight-up doom, until final track In Despair insinuates itself into your brain, closing the album in a Mogadon haze. Then it's a case of "well there's just time for one more hit" and spin it up again!
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Relentlessly heavy and monolithic doom metal, it's low, slow riffing and mournful, yet strong, female vocals smother and subsume everything before them like a river of molten lava oozing across the landscape of your music-listening mind. With it's five tracks weighing in at over an hour's running time and it's uncompromising sound, this isn't aimed at the casual or new doom metal fan, this one is for die-hard Doomheads and The Red Widows are a great new name that deserves to be added to the likes of Pallbearer and Windhand in the realm of "Orthodox" Doom Metal.
Genres: Doom Metal Stoner Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Husband and wife team Karyn Crisis and Davide Tiso, with the help of Skinlab's Fabian Vestod on drums, release their second album as Karyn Crisis' Gospel of the Witches. It's doom-tinged gothic metal projects an aura of sinister rural occultism that speaks to us of rituals performed in wooded groves to commune with the ancient, hidden gods of the natural world. It has a pleasing variety in it's twelve tracks, from full-on doom metal with both clean and harsh vocals from Karyn, to dreamy piano-led ethereal pleadings into the aether. A female-voiced occult doom album that does actually sound occult.
Genres: Gothic Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
A wall of fuzz and feedback from those cheeky chappies Sunn O))). This time their three quarters of an hour seems to be taken with recreating the sound of a star preparing itself for going supernova. Come on, you know what to expect from Stephen and Greg and this is that and it won't change your opinion of the band one way or the other.
Genres: Drone Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
I love female-fronted doom and heavy psych, but I have always been reluctant where Jex Thoth have been concerned, probably due to the vast quantity of negative comments regarding the band that have wormed their way into the back of my brain. Anyway, after finally giving them a chance, I'm glad I did. I just can't see why so many have taken against them. Their retro sound is great - psychedelic flourishes over a doomy core - and Jex has a terrific voice.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2008
I am a huge fan of these HPL-obsessed Frenchmen, their sludgey atmospheric black metal sound appealing to both my love of all things doom-ridden and of blackened horror. Another fifty minutes spent in their company as they weave their tales of cosmic, lurking terror is one of life's great pleasures. Their songwriting gets better, as does their proficiency and production - this album sounds great, allowing the music to expand, even as it pummels the senses with it's aggressive assault. The vocals sound ragged, as if the singer has damaged his vocal chords from shrieking at the terrors he has been forced to convey to our ears. A great release of cosmic horror most aptly released in the week running up to Hallowe'en - darkened aeons await!
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
This latest from Monolord, their fourth full-length, kicks off in familiar style with the opening riff of The Bastard Son. It soon becomes apparent though, that there are a few slight changes on this album. The vocals are mixed a bit higher than their usual disembodied, washed-out sound, although they still can't be accused of being "in your face". Also at about the halfway point, the opener's heavy, plodding riff gives way to a cleaner section that kind of marks time for a couple of minutes before returning to the earlier heaviness. Next track, The Last Leaf, is probably as near as a band like Monolord get to being "catchy" with it's psych-doom influence. Larvae is up next and is probably my favourite track, with a gentle opening and quirky-sounding riff that gradually gets heavier until it's gritty, filthy-sounding ending, that is the best moment on the album. This is followed by the album's two weakest tracks, Skywards and All Alone Together, but faith is restored by the title track, which is a doom(ed) monster and a great ending to the album with it's dirge-like, painfully mournful sound.
I understand that a band like Monolord probably feel the need to stretch out a bit by album four but, to be honest, I loved them just the way they were so, consequently, this is my least favoured of their albums. It is by no means a bad album and many will enjoy the expansion of their sound, I'm sure, but I still think Vaenir will stand as their tour-de-force.
Genres: Doom Metal Stoner Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Runemagick's latest is an album of throbbing death doom with more than a hint of menace. I have seen several references to Celtic Frost regarding this album and I can see why - the vocals have more than a hint of Tom G. Warrior's death growl and the chugging guitar on a number of the tracks is easy to compare to the swiss masters. Proper devastating metal with a clear, yet crushing, sound and great songs. This may well be my favourite Runemagick album so far.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Hermóðr's Rafn is another prolific member of the black metal community who knocks out releases like some people update their Twitter feed and, in common with the Twitterati, not everything he puts out is worth your time. This fifteen minute, single-track EP though, is one of his better efforts. A pleasant, nature-themed slice of uplifting atmo-black that won't live overlong in the memory, but while it's playing is a positive listen.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: EP
Year: 2019
A black metal exploration of the world of astrophysics, without the friendly faces of Neil deGrasse Tyson or Brian Cox to assure us that the universe isn't the hostile, uncaring place that it really is. Strigae's origins seem to be unknown, but their brand of atmo-black is very Germanic, feeling more remote and fatalistic than the nature-themed bands that make up a large proportion of the genre. Well worth the time for any BM devotee.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
We are all able to experience, to some small extent, the seemingly endless Siberian winter and it's snow and ice thanks to this impressive slice of russian atmo-black from duo Grima. Strong songs and nice pacing, with a couple of gentle interludes that end each of the album's two halves. Good stuff.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019