Sonny's Reviews

Holy Moses were formed in Aachen in 1980 and featured soon to be husband and wife Andy and Sabina Classen on guitar and vocals respectively. As such they were one of the very earliest of the teutonic thrash / speed metal acts. Between '80 and '86 they put out quite a few demos before releasing Queen of Siam in May of '86 on the newly formed Aaarrg Records.

Queen of Siam is quite a fun record with it's thrash still retaining some of the NWOBHM stylings that was a feature of the very earliest thrash and speed metal releases. Obviously Sabina's vocals are a focal point with female singers being such a rarity in the male-dominated world of thrash. Her vocals are of harsh nature with a creditable growl and she even comes up with a pretty convincing impression of Lemmy on Roadcrew, a song that is a tribute to Motorhead.

Musically it doesn't do anything flashy, there's not a great number of solos or guitar hero histrionics, the rhythm section is solid enough and there's a variety in song tempo from the slower NWOBHM influenced stuff to the full-on thrashers. They even successfully repurpose one of my all-time favourite riffs, the killer from Bad Brains' Big Takeover, on the track Queen of Siam.

As I said earlier, it is a fun album and it does have a place in the Teutonic Thrash story, but it certainly isn't essential and by the time of it's release the rest of the German scene was of a far more aggressive and energetic nature and had mainly moved on into more extreme territory.

The black metal equivalent of Enya or an insufferable new age music CD that bored suburbanites play whilst doing fucking Pilates or some such shit. I can't even imagine who it's aimed at because those types wouldn't be able to stand the shrieking and black metal fans should hate everything else about it. I can smell the sandalwood and see the life-energy emitting crystals from here. Is this really where black metal has ultimately ended up. I thought that KFC ad was bad, but this is just ridiculous. I'm glad I listened to it at work, because if it had been in my own time I would have been REALLY mad! The one star is for the cover, by the way.

I am always suspicious of bands that are the darlings of the metal press, as Nevermore certainly were at one time. Mags like Kerrang!, Metal Hammer and Terrrorizer always seemed to be the bitches of the record labels and would schmooze whatever crap the labels were pushing at the time. This is why I spend so much of my time mooching in the metal underground listening to obscure shit no one else cares about I suppose. I have no objection to popular bands, I just like to discover them my own way, not have them pushed into my face by some music press hack at the behest of a record label marketing exec. Furthermore I had somehow garnered the impression that Nevermore were some kind of Dream Theater clone (which certainly didn't help endear them to me).
Anyway, encouraged by positive reviews on this very site, I took the plunge and so, This Godless Endeavor is my first experience of the band. While it is undoubtedly true that they are more Dream Theater than Dream Death, luckily they eschew the endless technical wankery I associate with that bunch of insufferable prog metallers. At first listen I wasn't all that impressed I must confess. Having approached the album from the perspective of a member of The Pit, I was expecting a lot more on the thrash front, but the album seems to contain very little true thrash. I would say it's more akin to the thrash-derived power metal of early Iced Earth. So I then came at it from a different perspective, with more of an open mind to the prog elements. Now my current yardstick for progressive metal are albums like Blood Incantation's Hidden History... and Venenum's Trance of Death, both of which exhibit a degree of visceral aggression which contrasts the intellectual progressiveness and gives a more complete experience in my opinion. This Godless Endeavor does exhibit a little of this primal aggression, but it feels stilted and constrained compared to the more cerebral aspects of the album, which are still the main focus. However, even I must agree, it is done very well, there are some quite memorable, well-written songs and the performance is excellent. I can certainly hear why many people are fans, but it doesn't quite hit the intangibles for me. Sure, I'll nod my head in appreciation at a riff, a solo or a vocal melody but at no point did it make make me want to shout "FUCK YEAH!!" and I think the very best metal should do just that.

An excellent, early ep from Norway's Aeternus, that isn't just blood and guts black metal, but a more subtle offering. Opener, Black Dust, is the stand-out for me. With it's Black Sabbath-referencing opening and brilliant blend of black, death and even doom, it's a glorious celebration of dark metal. Next up is Victory, with it's faster tempo it is a more typical mid-90's black metal offering. Third track, Raven and Blood, is another monster of a song, with a number of changes of pace as it switches from out-and-out black metal to a more death metal sound. The record then closes with a short folky passage that rounds the ep off nicely. Overall, the song writing is excellent, on a par with such BM legends as Enslaved and Emperor, and the execution is equally terrific, making it one of my favourite nineties black metal ep's and this from a time when there were some bona fide classics coming out, with which it justifiably stands shoulder to shoulder.

Metal is the object of much sneering from the elitist arbiters of cultural worth, probably due to it's blue-collar origins and appeal and general lack of liberal bias. In the past it may well have brought some of this dismissive attitude on itself, but since the turn of the millenium there have been a number of metal bands who are not content to merely rehash the same metal tropes and to elevate their work beyond a mere collection of songs, but rather to use their musical songwriting to produce pieces that can be considered as being actual art. Isis are one such band, emerging from the sludge metal scene, they began adding layers of atmosphere and more subltle sonic textures to the sludge-inspired heaviness, until, by the time of Panopticon, the album was more like an aural oil painting, composed of varying shades and textures of sound to make an imaginative and atmospheric whole that transcends the restrictions of the scene that originally spawned them.
At times meditatively calm and gentle, at others febrile and raging, the light and shade of human emotion are laid bare in musical form, this interpreting of the human condition being one of the central tenets of what makes good art. This, in common with the rest of Isis' work (and atmospheric sludge in general) is not really for the casual listener and is one of those albums where you get more out, the more you are prepared to put into appreciating it.
Now I'm not claiming this to be any revelatory work of unparralelled genius, in fact I actually prefer previous album Oceanic, but I think that albums like this can only enhance the reputation of metal music in the wider world outside the genre's diehard adherents and as such should be heralded as taking metal to a new level of cultural significance.

I have had an on/off relationship with Sepultura. Their Chaos AD album was my very first CD purchase and is an album I am still extremely fond of. However, their Roots and Against albums did little for me and I lost interest in the band. Beneath the Remains was released four years prior to Chaos AD and is a different-sounding record to that 1993 album. Based heavily on the Metallica / Megadeth sound BtR is classic 80's thrash metal with heavy, powerful riffs. A lot of people claim a death metal presence in here as well, but apart from maybe the vocals I'm sorry, I don't hear it. Igor Cavalera is a fantastic metal drummer and here puts in an exemplary performance behind the kit, propelling the songs along as much as Max and Andreas Kisser's riffs. The production was handled by Scott Burns and is excellent, Igor in particular benefitting from his expertise. Max Cavalera's vocals are powerful and are uniquely his own - being one of those singers you recognise immediately wherever you may hear him. The songs are fairly complex and the playing reasonably technical, but they still gallop along at a pace without becoming stacatto or disjointed as can happen with overtly technical metal. The 'A' side's four tracks in particular are exceptionally strong and the 'B' side doesn't quite maintain the momentum completely successfully, but this is just a matter of comparison and it's five tracks are still pretty damn good.
South America long remained a bastion for thrash metal even beyond the point where the rest of the world seemed to have abandoned it. Sepultura and this album in particular, are probably the main reason for that as bands from that part of the world attempted to emulate their local heroes and kept the thrash flame alive in the mountains and river deltas of the south american continent. That as much as anything pays testament to the value of the band and this album in particular.

When it was released in 1986, Slayer's controversial third album left Tipper Gore and the PMRC, along with other "moral arbiters", frothing with indignation at it's brutal and blasphemous imagery, but most especially because of one song, the opener Angel of Death and it's alleged glorification of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. I am of the opinion that this was purely a shock tactic used by the band, in the same way they utilise violent imagery on other songs like Piece by Piece and Postmortem and is no indication of any Nazi sentiments held by any member, as they have on many occasions attested.
Controversy and lyrical content aside this was at the time probably the most shocking and brutal introduction to any record up to that point. Initially the album flashes by in a killing frenzy, from Tom Araya's opening scream, via King and Hanneman's weaponized solos and Dave Lombardo's jet-propelled drumming, right up until the closing thunderstorm a mere 28 minutes later, leaving the unsuspecting listener breathless and stupefied, instantly demanding another listen to confirm that what you just heard was real. In an interview at the time I remember the band saying that during rehearsals the album was weighing in at around 34 minutes, but with the aggression and energy they put into it at the time of recording it ended up at just over 28 minutes! Despite the pace of the songs, the production allows every note to be heard distinctly and a large degree of respect has to go to Rick Rubin and Andy Wallace for such a brilliant job done.
Ultimately, this is one of those rare albums that defined what metal is and is firmly ensconced in the top few albums of most metalheads, or certainly those who were around at the time of it's release. Sure, with the explosion of extreme metal genres there are certainly more brutal and/or intense albums out there, but they don't have Reign in Blood's legendary status for a very good reason - the songs just aren't as fuckin' good. Angel of Death, the duo of Altar of Sacrifice and Jesus Saves and the apocalyptic Raining Blood. These are all-time classics and need no justification! Reign in Blood is an album that still sounds as vital and thrilling as it did over thirty years ago and that is no mean feat, my friends.

Make no mistake, Kreator's second album Pleasure to Kill, has only one purpose - to Thrash you to within an inch of your life and to this end it's mission is immensely successful. PtK is a vicious and raw assault on the listener with an aggressiveness few thrashers have ever equalled, much like the previous year's Seven Churches, Possessed's proto-death album. In addition to Possessed's classic, the influence of tracks like Death Is Your Saviour and Pleasure to Kill can be heard throughout the early albums of Death, Morbid Angel and the rest of the first wave death outfits.
While I find it hard to look beyond Reign in Blood as the pinnacle of Thrash intensity, this is one of those very few that comes really close (Dark Angel's Darkness Descends being the other) with several songs that certainly wouldn't feel out of place on Slayer's masterpiece. The riffs are neck-breakingly savage, the drumming brutal and the solos are crazed, while Mille and Ventor's shared vocals are both sublimely suited to this more aggressive style of Thrash.
I have seen any number of reviews complaining about the lack of variety on offer, but that isn't really the issue here. As I said at the start of the review, this album's sole intention is to facilitate your attempt to try to break your neck in a headbanging frenzy and if you want a more nuanced and varied album then this was probably never meant for you anyway. A genuine Thrash classic and a headbanging masterclass.

Exodus' debut, released back in 1985, is their best by quite some way in my book (although I do have a bit of a soft spot for 2004's Tempo of the Damned too). Really pacy and dynamic riffing with some pretty hot solos and sing-a-long choruses put this up on a par with many of thrash's early classics. For some reason Bonded by Blood isn't considered as indispensible as other early thrash classics by everyone however. There are probably a couple of reasons for this, the drums are merely functional and Paul Baloff's crazed vocals aren't to everyone's taste, but the real reason is probably due to hindsight and the fact that Exodus' subsequent output reached neither the level of this debut or of their contemporaries' later releases (Master of Puppets and Peace Sells.. were still in the future back then, remember) and so the band as a whole are not spoken of in the same breath as the likes of Metallica, Megadeth and even Testament, although I think this is a better album than any Chuck Billy's crew put out. Bonded by Blood, Metal Command and Strike of the Beast are chugging classics that stand against anything from the time. But, goddamn... that cover is still fuckin' horrible!

I used to avoid Boris like the plague, but took the plunge with this album after seeing the constant raving about it - and now it's possibly my favourite drone metal album. Essentially a single 44 minute piece split into five parts, Part One is made up of the usual huge, droning, sustained chords most associated with drone metal before segueing into a very laid back second section (and the albums longest) that begins very post-rock and spacey-sounding then starts building in intensity (and volume!) before, finally, the vocals kick in. Part Three continues the theme and vocals of the end of Part Two, but also features an awesome, ultra-amped guitar solo before ultimately breaking down into the noise and feedback-drenched chaos of Part Four. The short fifth and final part heralds a return to the laid back theme from Part Two, albeit overlaid with residual feedback from Part Four. This is an album that is as much a sensation to be experienced as much as a piece of music to listen to, with it's changing and contrasting aural textures that seem to be intended to be listened to at volume. Anybody unsure about drone metal should probably start with this classic. If this don't do it for ya, then drone probably ain't for you!

As the godawful winter of 1984 was about to turn into 1985 my musical heroes were, quite frankly, starting to suck. Sabbath had released Born Again the year before, Brian Robertson had fucked Motörhead up, the stalwarts of the NWOBHM were fading fast, Priest had been in decline for ages and hair / glam metal seemed to be the only shitty game in town as far as metal was concerned.

Then, on a whim, I picked up a copy of a various artists metal comp called Hell Comes to Your House in the desperate hope of finding something on it that didn't blow. Most of it wasn't very good, but then I heard IT. IT being Metallica's Creeping Death and IT blew my fucking mind! That one hit of Bay Area genius was the heaviest thing I'd ever heard and was all I needed to turn me into a thrash junkie. Suddenly things were looking up!

Of course, I went out and bought the album that spawned this awesome song as soon as was humanly possible - infuriatingly I did have to wait until the next day when the shops opened and then, even more infuriatingly, another week or so because the crappy local record shop had to order it from the wholesalers (kids today, you've never had it so good with your fancy internet-thing!) So in the meantime I drove everyone nuts playing Creeping Death over and over again until I had the hallowed album itself in my now clammy, shaking hands.

Anyway, enough with the context and on to the music. Metallica's debut, Kill 'Em All was and is, a great, raw slab of break-necked thrashing mayhem. Ride the Lightning, however, showed a quantum leap in songwriting ability, providing more than just high speed riffs to bang your head to. Sure, if you wanted that, this had it - Fight Fire With Fire and Trapped Under Ice to name just two provided that in spades. However, with tracks like For Whom the Bell Tolls and Fade To Black, the band showed they weren't afraid to rein the rampaging tempo in and slow the tracks down to allow them room to breathe and exhibit how the foursome's songwriting was rapidly maturing.

The aforementioned Trapped Under Ice and Escape kick off side two and both are good songs, but in the context of the rest of the album, I feel they are a step down in class, but all that is completely blown away by the album's closing brace - Creeping Death and it's telling of a vengeful god's infanticide against the pharoah and his people, followed in short order by instrumental The Call of Cthulhu and it's reference to a very different god. These two tracks back to back still stand as the epitome of thrash metal to me.

Master of Puppets is a slightly more consistent album in terms of songwriting quality, but this record stands as a monument to the coming-of-age of thrash metal as a genre and, for me, a personal landmark on my road of metal discovery.

I've got a lot of time for Dave Mustaine. He is a seriously cynical bastard and I see him as a bit of a kindred spirit in that respect. Forming Megadeth after inevitably getting kicked out of Metallica (can you seriously see Dave taking shit from Lars for long, because I can't), he went on to release three or four of my all-time favourite thrash albums. Although almost everyone cites Rust in Peace as the classic Megadeth album (and a damn fine one it is too), this and it's follow-up, So Far, So Good... have a lot more meaning for me, coming out as it did while I was navigating a divorce at the tender age of 24 and, feeding into my somewhat jaded view of life, Dave's sneering cynicism really chimed with me, particularly on Wake Up Dead and Peace Sells - "If there's a new way, I'll be the first in line, but it better work this time" - too fuckin' right, Dave!

Most of the rest of the tracks' lyrics are based around the prevalent pulp-horror themes of 1980s straight-to-video movies, although the lyrics are of secondary consideration to how neck-wrenching the thrashing is. It's not all-out war like Slayer and it's not as compositionally accomplished as Metallica at around the same time (Master of Puppets), but almost every track is a classic to my ears (except the inevitable cover and even that's one of their better ones) and I will never, ever tire of this record.

The Ruins of Beverast are a solo project begun in 2003 by Nagelfar's ex-drummer Alexander von Meilenwald after the band split in 2002. This is his fifth album under that banner, released in 2017 by Ván Records and featuring six tracks with a runtime in excess of 67 minutes (but don't most doom-based albums nowadays?) It is an album that melds several styles into a coherent and natural whole, be it death and funeral doom, atmospheric black metal or ritualistic tribal ambient stylings. The songs aren't of the kind that feature, say, a doom bit here, some ambient there and a bit of black metal tagged on for good measure, but rather, AvM skillfully forges the disparate parts into a single unique entity that flows organically, in interesting directions. The lyrics involve shamanistic exhortations and observations and are emphasized by the paganistic nature of the musical compositions to create an atmosphere redolent with the ritualistic practices of human pre-history, particularly accentuated by the drum patterns and subtle synth work.

As the listener, this album made me genuinely feel that I had been transported to another time and place and witnessed practices no longer remembered by modern man but buried deep within the psyche of all of us, maybe waiting to be reawakened by just such a piece of music. Definitely one of the more interesting and unique albums out there that should appeal to any fan of paganistic black metal or extreme doom metal (or anyone who just enjoys originality in metal music).

I consider Reverend Bizarre to be the epitome of what I would term "true" doom metal. Their slowed down Sabbathian riffs and eschewing of any frills results in a stripped-to-basics sound that is shorn of any pretentiousness and has since been taken up by bands like Pallbearer and Procession. In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend, released in 2002, was the Finnish trio's debut and ultimate statement of their doom metal philosophy. It's six songs span an hour and a quarter, ranging in length from five to twenty minutes and are ploddingly slow so, consequently, not for the faint-hearted or doom metal newcomer. Albert Witchfinder's (Sami Hynninen) vocals are functional, but his tone perfectly suits the mood the band are trying to create. Thematically, we're talking Edgar Allen Poe, Vincent Price, Roger Corman territory, so nothing too serious and the only thing about the band that isn't "heavy"! If you love downtuned, extended metal dirges that make no pretense of being high art and are slightly tongue-in-cheek lyrically, then RB should definitely appeal.
As an aside, if you can get the double disc version packaged with the Return to the Rectory EP that weighs in at a whopping 140 minutes (and features the classic love song to Christina Ricci, Goddess of Doom) then definitely go for that as it's more of the same - doom metal nirvana!

I've got to admit to never having been a huge fan of My Dying Bride. Their whole Gothic Romantic persona never really did much for me, reminding me overmuch of Cradle of Filth's gothic schtick. Their doom seemed less based on mournful melancholy borne of emotional suffering and more of lethargy and world-weary boredom brought about by excessive debauchery, laudanum and absinthe intake, in the manner of Anne Rice's vampire Lestat.

Anyway I put this on my player and set off for a walk with my dog, finding myself ten minutes or so later in the local churchyard, dating back to the eighteenth century, the gravestones being terribly overgrown. I didn't make a conscious decision to go there and had been there a few minutes before the suitability of the setting to the music I was listening to dawned on me.

Now I don't know if this is some fanciful notion or not, but in this somewhat sombre setting I finally felt some connection to and appreciation of MDB's brand of doom. Obviously this is aided by the fact that this is evidently one of their best albums, with songs like The Raven and the Rose and it's energetic death metal vibe (possibly my favourite song of theirs) and the epic dichotomy of the title track. The album as a whole feels like some kind of subdued operatic tragedy and now my preconceived perceptions have been shed, MDB's poetic style makes much more sense to me. Consider me a convert!

Death metal pioneers Possessed return with their first album in a third of a century and, you know what, it's pretty damn good. Easily the best of the slew of new 2019 releases from 80s and 90s thrash and death stalwarts such as Exhorder, Destruction and Death Angel. This is probably a bit more of a thrash album than the band's original couple of releases, but it is high-powered and exhilharating thrash that occasionally allows it's death metal DNA to show through. Jeff Becerra's vocals aren't the best, but to be honest, they never were. However, the songs are memorable, the playing is energetic and the album has a vitality you would be hard pushed to expect from a band well into it's fourth decade.

An album so chillingly cold that you can almost feel the frostiness seeping from the speakers. The iciness is relieved only by the female vocals that are sparingly employed. Nice variation of tracks from blasting blackness to virtually funeral doom (Space Funeral). Closes with a haunting version of Bach's Air on the G String that sounds as if it's playing from an interstellar probe as it heads into the deeps of space.

Sabbathian riffs and 70's classic hard rock combine on this, Magic Circle's third album. One of the most Zeppelin-influenced doom albums I've heard - check out the No Quarter-like organ of Gone Again and the Bron-Yr-Aur clone Bird City Blues. Vocalist Brendan Radigan sounds like a hybrid of Ozzy and Dio, making this a must for Sabbath fans of both eras. A solid, well-executed trad doom release.

Superb songwriting, faultless musicianship and excellent production make this album essential listening in the funeral doom canon, like a kind of funeral Blackwater Park. Managing at the same time to be both ethereally haunting and oppressively heavy, they strike a perfect balance, succeeding where so many fail. The album feels like a solitary, moonlit walk through long-abandoned, ancient ruins. Epic, without being overblown, this is a masterpiece.

When they came onto the scene with this, their debut release, Candlemass were mercilessly derided by the mainstream music press (and even by a significant portion of the metal press), at least by those who chose not to ignore them entirely, yet this album still stands the test of time and is one of the seminal doom records, along with Sabbath and early releases from the likes of Saint Vitus, Pentagram and Witchfinder General. This is the album, however that gave doom it's epicness, with huge-sounding classics like Solitude, Crystal Ball and Under the Oak rendered even more awesome by Johan Lanquist's brilliantly OTT vocals. Candlemass were also hugely influential in making Scandinavia a real stalwart of the doom scene.
If you can get the remastered 2CD set, the second live disc, recorded with Messiah on vocals in 1988 in the birthplace of Doom (Birmingham, UK), would be a worthwhile release in it's own right and makes this an unmissable album for any doom fan.

Warning's masterpiece is not only my favourite Doom album, but one of my absolute favourite albums of any kind. Patrick Walker eschews all of the macho posturing that is so often part of Metal and offers us a recording that has come straight from the heart. The melancholy and longing are almost palpable and unremitting - there are no upbeat tempo changes to relieve the emotional pain. For me, this album is the truest expression of the Doom aesthetic and is a worthy addition to any real doom fans collection.

I am quite the fan of the short-lived Aussie war metallers, but with only two full-lengths to their name I wouldn't say they are my favourite war metal band. The more prolific Archgoat probably take that title, but Bestial Warlust did release my favourite war metal album, that being 1995's follow up to this month's The North feature, Blood & Valour, which is still my only five-star rated war metal album to date.

Vengeance War 'Till Death is a brief burst of blasphemic violence. With it's seven tracks clocking in at a mere 31 minutes it is an unrelenting salvo of blastbeats, frantically manic riffing and howling roars that is so murderously intense that half an hour is more than sufficient a runtime to satisfy the deeply primal instincts that live deep within us. Bestial Warlust must be one of the most aptly named bands in all of metal, their monicker perfectly summing up exactly what the band deliver. War metal is always a visceral and almost physical experience and few encapsulate this call to the animal side of us better than these guys. The production plays a massive part in the success of Vengeance... being filthily noisy and distorted enough to give it that seat-of-the-pants, chaotic sensation, whilst maintaining sufficient clarity to allow the individual contributions to be discerned and prevent the whole from descending into one godawful messy blur.

The drumming is a withering machine gun stream of blastbeat bullets that is testament to the indefatigable power of skinsman Markus Hellcunt and is prominent without swamping the guitars. The riffs are each distinct, which is not always true of many war metal releases whilst maintaining the supercharged and frantic pacing the genre requires. The solos screech like tormented souls, obviously having roots in the Slayer school of six-string torture, but taken to the absolute extremes where even Kerry King feared to tread. Bloodstorm spits fire and venom in a torrent of vitriolic howls and roars that encapsulates the sheer demonic evilness of war metal's blackened heart and leaves no one in any doubt as to which side of the "eternal struggle" tha band's music sits.

I am not going to pretend for one minute that this is going to appeal to most metalheads, I understand that war metal is an acquired taste, but for those who worship at the filth-strewn altar of extreme black and death metal, this is damn close to as good as it gets. In fact I have got so heavily into this album over the last day or two that I am going to up my otriginal four-star rating by half a mark.

Kaatayra is one of the solo projects of brazilian multi-instrumentalist Caio Lemos who released his debut under the name in 2019 and went on to release 5 full-length albums in two and a half years. "Toda história pela frente" ("All History Ahead") is the fourth of these, being released in August 2020. Kaatayra plays atmospheric black metal infused with Caio's native brazilian folk music that makes for a refreshing change and adds a nice twist to the genre, bringing a different aesthetic to the music away from the euro-centric folk most usually encountered within the genre. Gone are the frigid, icy soundscapes more readily associated with european and north american black metal, to be replaced by a warmer, more celebratory atmosphere, where the natural environment is not so much a hard and inhospitable setting which must be endured, but a life-giving and nurturing domain that is to be acclaimed.

"Toda história pela frente" consists of three lengthy epics and was Kaatayra's most black metal album up to that point. I also think it was the album where he best integrated the black metal and acoustic elements together, with a noticeble increase in consistency as his songwriting matured. Not that I am saying there was too much wrong with his previous albums, but there was sometimes a jarring feeling that the two disparate elements were being forced together rather than the tracks evolving the relationship between the metal and the folk-led in a more organic way as they do here. Sometimes he takes a completely fresh approach to black metal and even plays the riff on acoustic rather than electric guitar, complete with accompanying blastbeats which works surprisingly well. Elsewhere he weaves some nice synth-led ambient threads into his musical tapestries, with an especially soothing section coming in the latter part of opening track, the 17-minute, "O Castigo Vem à Cavalo", giving the listener a moment or two of calm which lends an even greater impact to the final climactic blackened explosion.

When Caio let's the black metal side of things rip, then he sounds more savage and visceral than he had at any point up until this, with his ragged shrieks, frantic tremolo riffing and pummelling blastbeats providing an aggressive, red-blooded assault on the listener's ears with the opening minutes of second track "Toda mágoa do mundo" being the prime example. Yet, despite this, there is a rhythmic quality to the riffs on even the most vicious sections that prevents the tracks from sounding spiteful or hate-filled, but rather impart the notion of a more wholesome "nature red in tooth and claw" ethos instead. The latin rhythms of the folk-led parts are also one of the major distinctions between this and the vast majority of the atmospheric black metal pack. The euro-centric folk incorporated by most black metal acts oftentimes gives a menacing, ritualistic and even occult vibe to proceedings, but the dance-oriented latin rhythms deployed here make for a much more positive and celebratory atmosphere.

I don't think I can give this more praise than saying that, in certain respects, it reminds me of Austin Lunn's Panopticon. Similar to Panopticon it has taken the local folk music of the artist that sits outside the scope of black metal that we are used to and has incorporated it in such a way as to impart a different, more positive and human ethos into what can so often be a misanthropic and negative style of music, giving the listener an entirely different experience of black metal than they may have expected.

What the fuck is going on in Chile nowadays? It must be something in the water or the mountin air! They seem to have captured the spirit of extreme metal better than almost any other local scene on the planet as we hit the 21st century's quarter-way mark. Churning out album after glorious album of extreme metal nirvana, the area of Chile centred on the capital Santiago and nearby Valpairiso leads the vanguard of the world's Trve Metal Hordes seeking to conquer the despised Legions of the False. OK, all good-natured hyperbole aside, there is definitely a healthy and burgeoning metal scene centred around Chile's capital that is currently pumping out some of the most exciting and aggressive metal to be found on the planet, in my opinion.

Invocation are yet another relatively new band throwing their hat into that swirling maelstrom of a scene with this their debut full-length, which follows a couple of EP's released in 2018 and 2020. They are a three-piece from Valparaíso, the three members only going by aliases, bassist Sense of Clairvoyance, drummer Sense of Clairaudience alongside guitarist and vocalist Sense of Premonition. Unusually for the chilean scene, the three don't appear to be members of at least five other bands, with Invocation being their only outfit from what I can tell (but who knows).

The Archaic Sanctuary is a fairly brief affair, it's eight tracks clocking in at under 35 minutes, with most hovering around the four minute mark. Invocation play a traditional form of death metal, but one that has a sharp-edged savagery derived from blackened edges with an overall filthy tone and a demonic darkness that reminds me somewhat of war metal aesthetics, albeit slower and cleaner. The riffs are heavily distorted buzzbombs that come thick and fast, varying from ripping burnups to hulking, mid-tempo, chuggier affairs. The solos are fairly functional with no self-indulgence or flashiness to distract the listener from the relentless assault the riffs are subjecting them to. Drum-wise, Sense of Clairaudience has a busy and energetic style with an impressive array of blasts and fills at his disposal and a ready willingness to deploy them, but despite the manic energy he displays, he doesn't swamp the riffs. Possibly the snare is a little too present at times and may occasionally distract, but not that much and it certainly isn't a big deal. The vocals are probably the most black metal aspect of the sound, with a harsh, barking roar that reminds me of Marduk's Legion and which sharpens up the bludgeoning edge of the guitar tone and the drum battery.

In truth The Archaic Sanctuary doesn't do much that most extreme metalheads haven't heard before and may leave those seeking the latest Ulcerate-worshipping opus being dismissive, but this is a band who understand the fundamentals of extreme metal and who have served up a withering and pummelling experience for any ardent moshpit denizen to lose their shit to in the knowledge that it will not let up even for a second.

Coffin Curse are a chilean duo comprising guitarist, vocalist and bassist, Max Neira and drummer Carlos Fuentes. Both are members of Lovecraftian death metallers, Inanna and although this is my first exposure to CC, I am quite a fan of Inanna (and chilean metal in general), so positive vibes all round going in. The Continuous Curse is the duo's sophomore full-length, coming four years after the debut, a significant amount of that time presumably taken up working on Inanna's 2022 album, Void of Unending Depths, before they could get to work on this.

The Continuous Nothing is forty-odd minutes of energetic, old-school death metal with a no-frills approach and as such, is exactly my cup of tea. I like CC's unfussy approach here, they just get on with delivering bludgeoning riffs backed up by really solid rhythm work. The basswork is thick and well presented in the mix, as is quite often the case with chilean metal of all genres, while Carlos' drumming is a big feature, being busy with all manner of fills and blasts, whilst mainting excellent timing and driving the tracks along at a fair old clip.

Max's guitar work is mostly about the riffs. To be sure there are solos, but they aren't really that big a deal, they are decent enough, but are functional and are not an aspect that particularly stands out. Producing riffs is most definitely what Max is about and at this he is very accomplished indeed, the album's runtime being absolutely chock full of 'em. The album has an inbuilt aggressiveness about it that leans towards the early brutal death metal bands, but the riffs also have a melodic accessibility alongside a fair bit of tremolo riffing that tempers that brutality somewhat and which, combined with a "looser" approach ensures that it sits well within the realm of the old-school rather than the brutal. Max's vocals are in the deep, gurgling, growling style with which I am sure we are all familiar, but which he delivers with conviction.

So, overall, The Continuous Nothing delivers no surprises to anyone even remotely interested in death metal. But Max Neira is an astute writer of riffs and the duo's delivery brings out the best of a tried and tested formula that is admirably heavy and threatening-sounding. If you are just looking for some good, old-fashioned death metal for a headbanging frenzy session then Coffin Curse have the prescription you need, but if you are looking for challenging brain food instead, then maybe look elsewhere.

Black Hole District is french doomsters Monolithe's tenth album and marks yet another step in the band's musical and conceptual development. There is a narrative structure to the album, with the story taking influence from science fiction sources such as Blade Runner and Dark City. The story's protagonist, living on an Earth that faces annihilation due to the Moon having left it's orbit and falling inwards towards the planet, discovers, by a convoluted series of events, that he is in reality an android, not a human and this discovery looks set to cost him his life as the powers-that-be seek to terminate him for his knowledge.

The band have always made a "thing" of the track timings on their releases, which ties into their concepts, with Black Hole District's ten tracks alternating between one-minute instrumentals and exactly ten-minute long main tracks. Thankfully, as is always the case with the band, the specificity of the track timings doesn't feel forced and they never feel over-extended or truncated to accomodate these timings. I have a feeling that the band see themselves as storytellers every bit as much as musicians nowadays and, to this end, they have incorporated even more progressive elements into their music to the point where the progressive and the doomy are now held in perfect balance. This balance allows them the freedom to convincingly weave epic science-fiction tales without compromising on the inate heaviness of death doom metal, which is still, despite all the progressive flourishes, the heart and soul of Monolithe's sound.

A new element they have brought in, presumably specific to this story, is 80's style synths, in particular they have used the Yamaha CS-80 popularised by Vangelis, who is particularly influential here, especially (but not exclusvely) on the one-minute interludes which act as intros to the five main tracks, each one sounding like a snippet from the Greek's Blade Runner soundtrack. They have also brought in guest vocalist Frédéric Gervais of french progressive black metallers Orakle to provide clean vocals alongside new guitarist and vocalist Quentin Verdier's deathly growls, which gives the album a nice textural variation, vocally. Alongside the vocals a number of spoken word sections serve to advance the story and act as introductions to the events of the main tracks.

All this is the vision of the main man behind Monolithe, guitarist and keyboard player, Sylvain Bégot, who is the person solely responsible for all the band's songwriting and lyrics since their earliest days. I think that Sylvain's single-minded control of the artistic input imparts a cohesive consistency to Monolithe's output that may have become diluted by more diverse inputs. It has been obvious since the first album that, similarly to Ivar Bjørnson with Enslaved, Bégot's vision has always been beyond the boundaries of the genre conventions within which he works, even as he has no wish to completely set those conventions aside. He has now become exceedingly effective in how he weaves the doom and progressive aspects together and produces legitimately progressive doom metal as a result, with very few peers in the field. He is now able to convincingly produce a cinematic version of doom metal, that is able to impart the emotional and atmospheric highs and lows of great cinema. The poignancy of the closing track, "Those Moments Lost in Time", for example, is heart-wrenching, despite the heavy, looming main riff, as it references the Blade Runner death scene of Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty.

Black Hole District may not be unrelentingly heavy enough for some death doom acolytes, but for doomsters who love a cinematically conceptual tale, musically well-told with exemplary musicianship and songwriting then Monolithe are very much at the head of the pack. Although Blood Incantation will take all the plaudits for 2024 in this field for their new album, I don't think anyone should dismiss Black Hole District's claim to progressive extreme metal's science fiction concept album of the year.

I really don't know how to tag Oranssi Pazuzu anymore. The avant-garde metal tagging assigned to their latest seems a bit of a cop-out for material that sits outside the scope of existing genre understandings, especially as I generally find avant-garde metal to be unlistenable, which this patently is not. But, in reality, I can't currently come up with anything more appropriate. It seems that these Finns are so far ahead of their time that it is questionable if their music is even earth-based anymore, sounding like the kind of stuff I would expect them to be listening to in the more unsavoury areas of the gigantic space orbitals of Iain M. Banks' twenty-fifth century Culture civilization.

The black metal aspect of their sound is merely vestigial at this point, surviving only in the harsh, shrieked vocals and the psychedelic element so prevalent on their last couple of albums is also consigned to history for the most part. I always felt that the psychedelic component gave them a bit of warmth and even hope, but Muuntautuja feels like a more depersonalised and bleak affair. Oranssi Pazuzu have leant heavily into atmospherics for some time now, but here they go even further, taking elements of noise, sludge, electronica and drone to weave tracks that are all about the texture and atmosphere rather than any kind of song and, as such, are far more akin to post-metal than they have been before. Atmospherically, Muuntautuja gives off dystopian sci-fi vibes within a threateningly malevolent industrial landscape, sounding as if influenced by the more pessimistic science fiction writers such as Phillip K. Dick and William Gibson, in whose worlds the overly mechanised "system" oppresses the spirit of those living under it.

The opener "Bioalkemisti" kicks off with a throbbing drum and bass line accompanied by Juho Vanhanen's throat-shredding shrieks and from the very beginning it is evident that things have taken a turn for the darker. Frantic riffing and siren-like synths join the affray and the track becomes more and more apocalyptic and menacing with machine-like industrial stylings that scream "Dystopia". The title track feeds further into this narrative with it's trip-hop beats and spacey electronic embellishments, especially when the robotic spoken word section kicks in early on, dehumanising the atmosphere even more before it explodes in a frustrated-sounding, heavier, sludgy industrial second part. I don't want to do a track-by-track runthrough, but highlight the content of the first two tracks to try to impart some flavour of what to expect from Muuntautuja. The heavier sections are loaded on bass and distortion which pushes the instrumentation in a noise-driven direction, with a favourite trope here being overlaying these heavy sections with a tinkling piano and Juho's manic shrieks. The lighter electronic parts are based on hypnotic, industrialised beats that can occasionally come off as almost ritualistic, as if in praise of some almighty Machine God and I feel that the layering of these heavier and lighter sections is fundamental to the success of the album. Pacing and tempo also varies massively from hulking, sludge and drone-like parts to frantic blasts of unhinged mania that provide further stark contrasts in atmospherics.

Ultimately, no amount of words I can spew on to this page will give you an adequate picture of what Oranssi Pazuzu have served up with Muuntautuja, so you owe it to yourself to fire it up and experience the album firsthand. I must admit I am unsure where to place this in OP's discography. I think it is an endlessly fascinating release that has seen yet another redefinition of the band's sound, but is it better than the amazing Värähtelijä and Mestarin kynsi albums? For the time being I am going to proffer a "no", but that does not by any means infer that I don't like this, because I love it. It's just that I am unsure how much just yet. One thing is for sure, every new Oranssi Pazuzu release is an event worth getting yourself up for.

Oslo's Abhorration are a four-piece death metal band with members (or ex-members) of bands such as Nekromantheon, Purple Hill Witch and Condor, amongst others. They play an old-school style of death metal that contains a noticeable thrash metal component, played with an infectious energy that makes it feel new and fresh, rather than a tired harking back to "olden days".

Flying straight out of the blocks, spitting fire and venom, Abhorration make their intentions known as the title track that opens the album kicks off in brutally vicious manner before settling down into a more controlled, thrashy riff. The ensuing thirty-six minutes sees them continuing in much the same manner, switching from pummelling and adrenaline-fuelled death metal blasting to groovier, and fairly melodic, thrash-like riffing with each of the six tracks taking this approach to a greater or lesser degree. Into this maelstrom, at the drop of a hat, the band throw a seemingly endless stream of searingly intense guitar solos. The soloing comes very much from the King / Hanneman school of tortured howls, only guitarists Arild Myren Torp and Magnus Garathun use them more frequently and they last longer. Magnus is also the band's vocalist, his style being a harsh, barking style that has a bit of a black metal edge to it. The rhythm section is quite busy, drummer Øyvind Kvam in particular being all over things and this increases the chaotic, seat-of-the pants adrenaline rush that most of the album's runtime provides.

The obvious touchstone for an album such as Demonolatry is early Morbid Angel and Altars of Madness more specifically, and that is a lofty parent to emulate, but I think these Norwegians have given it a good go and have produced a lively and adrenaline-fuelled blast from the past that doesn't feel out of place here in the third decade of the twenty-first century either.

I first became acquainted with Exciter around the middle of 1985 when I picked up a copy of a Music For Nations comp, Hell Comes to Your House, from my local record emporium. That compilation changed my metal-listening life for ever. It wasn't because of Exciter's Violence and Force which was track two (or even Manowar's Blood of my Enemies which opened the album and which I already knew), no it was the opener of side two, Metallica's Creeping Death which shattered my worldview on what heavy metal meant. I fucking hammered that track over and over, at least until I got a copy of Ride the Lightning anyway and then I fucking hammered that too! Sadly for Exciter that meant they never really got a look in and were just "some other band on that comp with Creeping Death on" and so I never really paid them much mind.

So let's fast forward the best part of forty years and now I'm here finally giving Canada's speed metal trailblazers' debut album the attention it properly deserves. Originally going by the clunky moniker Hell Razor, they later took their permanent name from the classic Judas Priest track and that's a decent choice because the track Exciter does bear a lot of the hallmarks that Exciter the band were going for. They play high energy, get-out-of-our-way speed metal that may sound quite generic now, but considering this was released in '83 there wasn't a huge amount of stuff in similar vein before it. Taking inspiration from NWOBHM bands like Venom, Maiden, Diamond Head and, of course, Motörhead tracks like Overkill and The Hammer, Exciter just wanted to crank it up and strive for a kind of extremity by playing as fast as they possibly could.

While you would get no argument from me that this was an earth-shaking release at the time of it's release, just before "Kill 'Em All" and a full six months before "Show No Mercy", it just doesn't have the kudos of others from the time. Despite it's missing link status bridging the gap between the NWOBHM and the just-emerging Bay Area thrashers, it was quickly overshadowed, thus condemning Exciter to the role of supporting characters rather than leading men. This is a great shame because there are some exhilharating tracks on offer here, "Stand Up and Fight", "Under Attack" and "Cry of the Banshee" are supercharged headlong metallic charges dessigned for god-tier headbanging action. Unfortunately, the rock 'n' roll-like nature of the title track misses the mark for me, "World War III" feels like a very lacklustre workout and the attempted epic track "Black Witch" doesn't play at all to the band's strengths.

Still, all things considered, this must be counted as a fairly important album in the history of metal, it's importance maybe being greater than it's actual quality, but it still has some really good stuff on it, even though it may occasionally fail to hit the heights or consistencies of it's contemporaries. 

I lived in ignorance of the existence of these german speedsters until getting an earful of their track "Realm of the Impaler" from this, their latest album, on the Guardians playlist for November, where it leapt out at me from amongst the stuff I wasn't already familiar with. This is the band's fourth full-length and it appears that they already have quite an enthusiastic and loyal following, which I am sure this latest will only increase.

Sentinels is an album of infectious speed / thrash metal that leans heavily towards the speed side of that equation, with a strong link back to Maiden-esque heavy metal and early USPM. There is a lively enthusiasm about Vulture that suggests a particular love for the wider culture of metal worship, beyond the mere riffs and notes and deep into the core of the band's very being. This is definitely not thoughtful and contemplative metal, rather this is metal to be experienced and lived, each track a joyful and triumphant expression of metalhood.

Hi-octane riffs, scorching solos and sing-along-at-the-top-of-your-voice choruses are the order of the day here. Vocalist Leo Steeler reminds me a fair bit of Exodus' Steven Souza with a raggedness to his normal vocals and a tendency to shift into a higher register at a moments notice. In fact early Exodus are a fitting comparison for the band as a whole, Sentinels ticking a lot of the same boxes as Bonded By Blood. The rhythm section of drummer Stefan Castevet and bassist Andreas "Irön Kommander" Axetinctör are really solid and maintain the propulsive momentum of the tracks with a tight and precise adhesion. Occasionally, especially during the solos during "Realm of the Impaler", the bass moves more to the fore and takes on a Steve Harris galloping quality, the twin guitar soloing not being the only touchstone with the Irons. The production is excellent, as is so often the case nowadays, and everybody gets to shine in their respective roles, due to top-knotch clarity.

You will be seriously struggling to find a more exhuberant celebration of metal than tracks like the aforementioned "Realm of the Impaler", "Death Row" or "Oathbreaker" and as a dyed-in-the-wool metalhead it is very difficult not to listen to Sentinels without a smile on my face and a yearning for a moshpit in my heart. An album like this reminds me very much how and why I got into metal in the first place in much simpler times, so very, very long ago.

I felt compelled to check out Eternal Sorcery after hearing the track "The Silence of Heaven" on The North monthly playlist and enjoying it massively. One of Nine are a Tolkien-obsessed, US four-piece with names such as Pharazon the Golden and Gurthang the Black Sword who play a modern and melodic style of black metal, but thankfully, despite the silly names and fantasy-based concepts, they don't succumb to the cringeworthy cheesiness often associated with such elements and if you didn't know anything about them or read the lyrics you wouldn't guess that was what they were about. The album is quite brief, it's eight tracks running for less than 35 minutes and it is very proficiently put together. As there is little to no information available on the band, I have no idea if they are a brand new unit or a band of seasoned professionals, but they certainly sound like they know their way around the black metal block.

The songwriting is excellent, with riffs that are at once darkly vicious and memorably melodic whilst the atmospheric elements the band use are artfully deployed. Aside from a short ambient intro the synths are very subtlely applied and the folk elements only appear relatively briefly, with a gentle acoustic guitar ending to the otherwise furious savagery of "The Silence of Heaven", a lute-like plucked intro to "Moonlit Sacrifice" and another short acoustic piece, "Wrathful Rebirth", providing an interlude before the epic intensity of the album's closer and longest track, "A Hunter Rides The Night". Though brief, these gentle interludes and intros do a great job of providing contrast and context for the heaviness and aggression of the band's black metal without overdoing it. Alongside this there is also a degree of variation of pacing throughout the album with the band unafraid to drop the tempo occasionally, such as in the middle section of "God Chain", both of these techniques preventing the tracks from merging into predictability.

The production is very modern, with almost absolute clarity, providing the guitars with a bell-like quality which, alongside the cymbal crashes gives the sound a sharp edge, whilst also providing a nice depth that allows the bass and drums to anchor the riffs with a really solid foundation. The vocals are of the washed out, as-if-from-a-distance shrieks and howls variety, adding a dispiriting and cheerless aspect to the album's overarching atmosphere that references the hopelessness of those opposing the great evils the lyrics expound upon. Technically the band are exceedingly competent and tight-knit and sound like they have been playing together for years.

Overall, this is a fantastic slice of melodic black metal which reaches back to influences such as Dissection and Emperor and which is polished and savage, professional and visceral and scratches all my modern black metal itches.

I must admit that I am a bit disappointed that the doom metal legend that is Albert Witchfinder is no longer a friend of hell, his position as vocalist having been superceded by Nifelheim's Per "Hellbutcher" Gustavsson. However, having come to terms with the album's lack of Sir Albert, I must admit that Hellbutcher's vocal style actually suits the band's sound pretty well, not diverging that much from Witchfinder's. That sound, as you may guess from the band name which of course references Witchfinder General's second album, is a throwback style to the early days of traditional doom metal as epitomised by the likes of WG, Pentagram, The Obsessed, Paul Chain and the likes. As such, this sits very much in that area of doom metal that resides nearest to old-school, Sabbathian stoner metal with hooky riffs and catchy choruses, the album even having the audacity to begin with a tolling bell.

To be honest I have heard so many albums like this that trade on the same old traditional doom metal tropes without bringing anything new or particularly exceptional to the table that I am starting to think that maybe I have reached my lifetime limit for such genre-conforming releases and am beginning to tire of each one just a little more than the previous. There really isn't that much to say about God Damned You to Hell and if you have had your ears anywhere near the occult-themed traditional doom metal scene over the years, then I am sure you will be familiar with what is on offer here. Think Reverend Bizarre, but with considerably shorter songs or With the Dead and you would be in the right ballpark.

In all honesty, there really isn't much wrong with this if you are in the market for what they are selling, it is entertaining enough with quite catchy doom metal riffs, hokey, occult-based lyrics and some reasonable guitar solos and at one time, not so long ago, I would probably have lapped this up, but it doesn't do anything remotely special and I find myself increasingly looking towards more extreme and genuinely dark material (as opposed to the theatrical darkness displayed here) when I am seeking my doom metal fix nowadays. I have got to confess that I am feeling a bit bummed out that I have had to shit on this a bit, but I'm really not feeling it, so it is what it is.

There must be something skulking in those Louisiana swamps that is poisoning the water, how else can you explain the sheer vitriolic venom of the output of its premier sludge metal acts such as Eyehategod, Acid Bath and the Baton Rouge crew here in question. Thou's version of sludge metal is as confrontational and rebellious as the harcore punk that spawned it's more slothful and threatening offspring. Umbilical, conceptually and autobiographically, examines a life lived outside the accepted societal norms, but which is still constrained by an inner morality and the existential implications of living such a life. So a million miles from the wizards and dragons metalheads are stereotypically painted as being obsessed with then!

The album, I am sure it goes without saying, this being Thou we are talking about, is ludicrously heavy as you would expect. The cranky, oozing riffs are massive, hulking motherfuckers and despite really being too sharp and crunchy to truly be called crushing, they are anyway, with those ponderous drumbeats just adding extra weight and force to the mountain that has taken up residence on your chest. Meanwhile Bryan Funck unleashes hell with vocal tirades that are so savage and visceral that you fear for the longterm health of his vocal chords

This is not an album that is monolithically slow and doom-ridden, though, as the band incorporate influences ranging from death metal, metalcore, grunge and crust punk into the swirling maelstrom of misgivings that threatens to sweep the listener away like a metal tsunami of righteous indignation. "The Promise" and "Panic Stricken, I Flee" both have ridiculously catchy melodies that could have come from Alice In Chains or Soundgarden if they weren't so damn filthy-sounding and the riffs during the one-two mid-album punch of "I Feel Nothing When You Cry" and "Unbidden Guest" are as energetic as those spewed out by any young metalcore crew. The drumming towards the end of the latter is also worth special mention, it being an impressive artillery battery of percussion that sounds like a Celtic tribal warband preparing for battle and lays to rest the lie that doom metal drummers can't really play.

Of course, Thou are still capable of showing us their slower, more hulking side with "Lonely Vigil", "House of Ideas", "I Return as Chained and Bound to You" and the closer "Siege Perilous" lumbering out of the speakers with huge crashing waves of sonorous sonic devastation. This is not a sludge album that is built upon endless layers of atmospherics and build-ups in the quest for the ultimate climactic payoff, but very much refers back to the roots of sludge metal being composed of songs that have something to say, both musically and lyrically, delivered with a bruising and ascerbic irascibility that very much appeals to the contrary and grumpy old bastard in me. This is a seriously heavy record that Thou have delivered, interesting both for it's musical diversity in what can become a repetitious field and also it's lyrical and conceptual musings.

Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force is the sophomore effort from the Brian Ortiz-led Tzompantli, coming fairly hot on the heels of 2022's debut Tlazcaltiliztli. I had a lot of time for the debut and it's brutal-sounding Autopsy-influenced version of death metal, so went into this with a great deal of expectation. Thankfully the debut was no fluke and this is even better in my opinion, being a more-rounded and, with it's greater length, a more developed release. What distinguishes Tzompantli from their Autopsy-worshipping peers is that Brian Ortiz digs deeply into his Indiginous American heritage with its death whistles and pounding, tribal rhythms which manages to imbue an already brutal sound with an even greater level of vicious savagery. This is death doom that is red in tooth and claw, you can almost smell the blood as war club and spear do battle. Ortiz has brought in a number of new members to help out with the folk instrumentation, with the band swelling its ranks to a whopping ten musicians, but it was well worth it as the folk elements have been incorporated seamlessly into the overall sound and give it an extra dimension that enhances it's inherent brutality.

From what I can gather the album's concept tells of the historic indiginous American tribes' ultimately doomed struggle against european invaders. From the portentious omens of forthcoming doom displayed in opener Tetzahuitl, the ritual exhortations to the Ancestors of "Tlaloc icuic" and the brutal, chaotic, war-like pounding of "Chichimecatl" or "Tetzaviztli" right up to and including the final heartbreaking sorrow of defeat as expressed in the lengthy closer, "Icnocuicatl", the concept is gloriously expounded upon, but the narrative is handled so adeptly so as not to compromise the music in any way.

Getting down to Tzompantli's core sound reveals a penchant for old-school doomy death metal that is not exactly rare nowadays. I often see Japan's Coffins referenced in relation to Ortiz's band and, as far as the band's fundamentals go, I think that is a fair comparison. That said though, I think the adroit handling of the folk instrumentation and the careful attention to the atmospherics gives Tzompantli enough of a distinguishing feature to make them stand apart in a crowded scene. Exactly how brutal-sounding this is cannot be underestimated, with its throbbing, ultra-heavy riffs, ritualistic tribal rhythms and Ortiz' wounded bull-like, bellowing roar, at it's heart this is savage and primal OSDM with a hefty death doom component that is threatening and exhilharating in equal measure and will bludgeon its way under your skin, remaining in memory well after the final notes have faded.

Released shortly after the murderous Pleasure To Kill, this three-track EP encapsulates Kreator in a blissful 18-minute riff fest. It opens with a reworking of "Flag of Hate" from the debut album, Endless Pain, which illustrates how far the band had already come, this version being much tighter, faster and more aggressive, with the increased production values certainly helping massively on that front. The other two tracks, "Take Their Lives" and "Awakening of the Gods" are longer affairs which see the band in a more expansive mood than the straight-ahead, charging neck-wrenching of "Pleasure To Kill". The songwriting on these two tracks sees the band maturing and starting to move in the direction that would culminate with Coma of Souls, unafraid now to revert to slower tempos at times and to exhibit a lot more control over their impulse to just let rip, so that when they do, I think it is far more effective in this more controlled environment. Of course this increasingly professional and mature evolution comes at a price, with the sheer exuberance and brutal aggression of their early material, particularly Pleasure To Kill, being held in check here. Now, I am sure there are plenty of fans who lamented this direction, but surely Kreator couldn't just keep ploughing the same ultra-violent furrow ad nauseum and needed to display some kind of musical development by this point. No matter what came after, PTK would always still be there, so why would they need to keep remaking it?

Anyway, the two longer tracks see Kreator expanding the scope of their songwriting, possibly influenced by albums like Metallica's Ride the Lightning or To Mega Therion. "Take Their Lives" kicks off at a more measured tempo than we had come to expect from Kreator with a chugging riff that is afforded a nice sharp edge by the production and which accompanies Mille's bile-spitting, barked vocals perfectly, before it kicks up a gear and Mille unleashes a shred-tastic Kerry King-on-steroids guitar solo. A breathing space is then allowed for as the trio hit the eye of the storm and build anticipation with a jagged guitar line before letting it fly once more while Mille tortures another howling solo from his six-stringer. The final track, "Awakening of the Gods" is one of my favourite Kreator tracks, it has several riffs that just go so hard it's unreal and the Slayer-esque solos are devastating slashes of sonic thuggery that should carry a health warning.

I may have gone overboard and made more of the songwriting changes than is justified because this isn't Opeth, this is still Kreator and it is gloriously bitter and vicious teutonic thrash that still has enough to get you wrenching that neck of yours, don't you worry. It's just that that isn't all that Flag Of Hate is about and, sure, the songwriting isn't super sophisticated, but I think they had made good progress on that front here and hit a nice balance between their earlier violent aggression and a more developed song progression. Look I like Pleasure To Kill as much as the next thrash-head, but I think credit should be given where due and here Kreator added a new dimension to their established brutality.

Ataraxie are a french five-piece who play funeral doom metal with a large death doom component that is at once mournful, morose, agonised and crushingly heavy. Le déclin is their sixth full-length and coming five years after 2019's Résignés, they show themselves a band not to be hurried, neither in the frequency of their releases or in the execution of their artistic vision. As is usually the case, Le déclin has a massive eighty-plus minute runtime for it's four tracks, the shortest of which is a slight sixteen minutes in length, once more illustrating the band's commitment to allow their music to go wherever it will. These four tracks are the embodiment of despair, bereft of levity, the atmosphere is unrelentingly grim, with huge, towering and monolithic riffs provided by the band's three guitarists, punctuated with howls of pain and anguish. This is indeed the stuff of nightmares. While there are undoubtedly passages that are instrumentally lighter, such as the opening minutes whilst the title track builds, atmospherically this is very dark with even the musically lighter moments feeling introspectively maudling and bereft, with the protagonist sounding as if his grief has thrust him to the very edge of insanity.

I would posit from listening to Ataraxie, justifiably I think, that they are big fans of England's Esoteric. Le déclin illustrates exactly how adept they are, just like the Englishmen, at delivering punishing and crushing doom metal that not only lumbers along at leaden tempos, but can also explode into blasts of inutterably violent death metal fury at a moments notice. Vocalist and bassist Jonathan Théry also possesses a deep howling growl that sits very close to Greg Chandler's boulder-splitting vocal style, thus deepening the positive comparisons to the funeral doom legends further. Technically, these guys are top-drawer, with a precision and efficiency to their playing that makes it feel like not a moment of the eighty minutes is wasted and the production is excellent with a clarity and depth that allows free reign to the band's inate crushing heaviness without drowning out the subtle touches that help propel them to the upper echelons of the genre.

The songwriting is top-knotch. These aren't monilithic dirges, but fully-formed narrative journeys with each song undergoing progression with several transitions in atmosphere and tempo throughout their lengthy runtimes, leaving the listener (well this one, anyway) with the impression that they have just undergone a profound journey through a world of pain and suffering allowing either identification with, or some understanding of, it's fundamental effects. The simple fact is that funeral doom metal is not for everyone and even within the ranks of it's practitioners, despite it's (undeserved) reputation for simplicity, there are masters and apprentices. I'm not sure if Ataraxie could ever have been properly labelled as the latter, but Le déclin has most definitely confirmed them as the former. I don't make this claim lightly, but I would honestly have to claim this latest offering from the Frenchmen to be the finest funeral doom metal album since Esoteric's 2019 triple album, "A Pyrrhic Existence" and that is heady praise indeed.

Sincerest Misery is the debut full-length album from this Indianapolis four-piece who were formed by and are centred around guitarist and vocalist Chuck Brown, ex-drummer with Gates of Slumber. They play a conservative and orthodox version of traditional doom metal, tracing a direct line back to early practitioners like Pentagram and Pagan Altar. This is mainly all about crunchy-sounding doom metal riffs and dolorous, melancholy atmosphere with little room for fancy embellishment or out-of-genre experimentation. The album contains nine tracks, including an unsurprising, closing cover of Sabbath's "Electric Funeral" and has a total runtime topping seventy minutes which, to be honest, is bulked out with a couple of filler tracks in addition to the unnecessary cover.

As far as their version of traditional doom metal goes, AoS are unfussy and effective. The rhythm section is functional and you will hear very little by way of fancy drum fills or complicated basslines. In fact, the bass is very subdued in the mix and the production as a whole is quite lightweight and could do with some serious boosting of the bottom end. The production does allow for good clarity and a sharpness to the guitar sound in particular, which enhances the "crunch" of the distorted riffs. Chuck Brown's vocals are quite reedy and thin-sounding and I could understand why some may not particularly like them, but personally I think they work well here because they sound world-weary and downbeat which suits the mood of the instrumentation well. The soloing is the only area in which Apostle of Solitude allow themselves any real indulgence, with some soaring lead work that occasionally tips over into psych / stoner territory.

As I stated earlier, I think the album is too long and, especially with this being the band's debut, I believe that if they had concentrated on their core sound rather than including the very average instrumental "The Dark Tower" and the tedious noodling of the eight-minute-plus "This Dustbowl Earth", whilst also skipping the Sabbath cover, then they would have had a heavier and more concise representation of their orthodox doom metal vision, making it much more likely to cause a splash in the trad doom world than it did. Make no mistake, tracks like "A Slow Suicide", "Warbird" and the fourteen-minute title track especially are like food and drink to hardcore doom metal fanatics and are top-quality expressions of the art, but the album as a whole feels like it waters down their effect, exacerbated by the paucity of bottom end in the production. Shame really, because there is a truly great trad doom album in here waiting to get out.

There's no two ways about it, Windhand are my favourite female-fronted doom metal band. Sure, there are a myriad of others that I enjoy immensely and sometimes I even think someone may rival Dorthia Cottrell and the guys, but then I actually put on a Windhand release and I am once more assured that, indeed, they are the real deal and blow away the opposition.

Eternal Return was the band's fourth full-length and the third with the classic lineup of vocalist Dorthia, guitarist Garrett Morris, drummer Ryan Wolfe and bassist, Cough's Parker Chandler. Windhand had not changed their style noticeably since the self-titled debut six years earlier, but Eternal Return did mark a slight evolution of their sound. The fundamentals of the band's sound are still present, the tight and impressive rhythm section of Chandler's thick, driving basslines coupled with Wolfe's thunderous drum fills and eternal cymbal crashes, Morris's titanic, lumbering and heavily distorted riffs oozing from the speakers and Dorthia's siren vocals, seducing and beckoning the listener from the aether of whichever plane of existence she inhabits. This time round, though, there has been a slight tweak or two. "Grey Garden", despite sounding like business as usual, actually has a grunge-like quality to it as well, particularly in the vocal melodies which comes on like Kurt Cobain at his most vulnerable-sounding. That is followed by "Pilgrim's Rest" which is a psychedelic ballad that sounds like it might have been a cover of a track that originally came out in 1967 (it isn't). Elsewhere, the three-minute interlude "Light into Dark" allows Garrett Morris to display his psychedelic credentials with a space rock-y, trippy instrumental piece and his solo during Red Cloud is another rocket fuel-injected cosmic trip.

But now let's set all that aside because Windhand are at their best when they are at their doomiest and heaviest and there are plenty of these instances on Eternal Return. Whether it's the pomp of opener, "Halcyon", the crawling, heaving thunder of "Eyeshine" and closer, "Feather" or the more uptempo and catchy Diablere, when they hit the doom button, then Windhand absolutely crush it and all the female-fronted pretenders to their crown to boot.

When I was first getting back into metal, around the turn of the millenium, I had a very good friend who wasn't much of a metal fan, but was heavily into the female-fronted symphonic metal scene and through them I became interested in the Finns with the striking, classically-trained lead singer who, along with Italy's Lacuna Coil, seemed like the only ones in this style who seemed worth the attention. My first exposure to them was through their debut "Angels Fall First" album which had a number of tracks that impressed, particularly "Elvenpath" and "Astral Romance". Subsequent albums "Oceanborn" and especially "Wishmaster" always had a track or two that I enjoyed, "The Pharaoh Sails to Orion" on the former and the title track and "The Kinslayer" on the latter. By the early 2000s I was bathing in the dubious glories of more extreme metal genres like black and doom metal, yet I was still interested enough in new Nightwish material to take note, but unfortunately I thought 2002's Century Child was a dip in quality, so by the time of the release of 2004's "Once" I was not really that interested. However, videos for "Nemo" and "Wish I Had an Angel" saw me being dragged back in by Tarja's charismatic presence, to the degree that I actually bought the album on CD while I was in town one weekend.

Now, I would be lying if I said that this was high on my list of all-time great metal releases, but I would be lying just as much if I claimed to dislike it completely. I have a natural aversion to overblown metal genres in general and symphonic metal in particular, but no one has ever rivalled Tarja-fronted Nightwish in the genre and every other band in this field so obviously wants to be them that they must have been doing something right. The operatic orchestration and synths may well be what draws people to this style of metal, but for me, it is the surprisingly heavy, yet melodic riffs, Tarja's vocals and their ability to write memorable tunes that are the beating heart of Nightwish and which none of their rivals can remotely match. There is a nice variation in pacing and atmosphere on "Once", from heavy and bombastic to reflective and wistful which manages to keep me engaged for the total runtime. The band are obviously well-versed in their instruments and the clarity of the production allows them all their space to impress and in Tarja Turunen they have probably the singularly most accomplished and physically striking frontwoman in the history of metal.

It may do my metal street-cred no good whatsoever (as if I could give a shit), but I happily chuck "Once" into the CD player now and then when I just want to hear some entertaining metal solely for enjoyment and to feel uplifted and not to think about too deeply.

World Below are a relatively unknown name outside of diehard swedish doom metal fandom. Formed in 1999, they involve veterans of a plethora of swedish metal bands such as Scar Symmetry, Grave and Carnal Forge, among many others, and have released three full-lengths to date, of which Repulsion is the third. They are still mooted as a going concern, but have been silent, at least as far as recorded material goes, for almost two decades now.

Repulsion is made up of five lengthy tracks with a 50+ minute runtime. Musically it has it's feet firmly planted in the eighties and early nineties and the old-school traditional doom metal of Pentagram, The Obsessed and lesser-known lights like Revelation with plenty of Sabbath-y moments, particularly during opening track, "Monsters in the Closet", with it's Ozzy-like vocals and "Children of the Grave" aping riff. Whilst the first half of the album sit firmly within the traditional doom metal sphere, the second also contains a significant stoner rock component and the album as a whole makes a nod or two in a progressive direction, particularly the epic twenty-minute, closer, "Monument", giving the second half more than a passing resemblance to the work of prog-stoner bands like Merlin.

The songwriting is very good, with the tracks all developing nicely, feeling like they are actually going somewhere and the technical aspects are very accomplished. The riffs are suitably heavy and mournful, the rhythm section of drummer Ronnie Bergerstål and bassist / vocalist Mikael Danielsson are unfussy and direct, providing solid footing for guitarist Jonas Kjellgren to launch some very satisfying solos, his Tony-Iommi influenced guitar work being the focal point for almost all the album's best moments.

It may well be that Repulsion is not going to satisfy the doom fan looking for bleak as hell, crushingly heavy, ultra-slow riffs and mournful, heart-achingly bereft vocals and the inclusion of some old-fashioned, rock-based riffs may further tip the scales against it, but if you are willing to forgive it it's perceived transgressions then it contains some fantastic lead work and memorable stoner doom riffs coupled with epic and skillful songwriting that may just persuade you of it's undoubted merits.