Sonny's Reviews

A single sixty-minute track of ambient music that suggests the passage of the listener through the reaches of space, periodically interrupted by massive, heaving doom chords that imply the impact on the listener of the huge pull of gravity wells from passing planetary bodies. Atmospheric and meditative, albeit not for those with short attention spans or adrenaline junkies.

Without wishing to sound too contentious, I've got to confess to being underwhelmed by October Tide's brand of melodic death doom. Despite believing that Katatonia are not wholly deserving of the amount of adulation that gets heaped upon them, I have to admit that Brave Murder Day is a great record, in my opinion massively aided by the presence of Mikael Akerfeldt's vocals. But this, which is to all intents and purposes the follow up to that record as it was recorded by the majority of Katatonia's BMD lineup, is a bit of a damp squib to my ears. It's a highly polished and melodic album sure enough, but I far prefer death doom with a more sulphurous and fetid atmosphere, a sound that feels lived in and more organic. I don't feel the growled vocals add anything to the sound and in a couple of cases I think the tracks would be far more effective with clean vocals (All Painted Gold for example). The keyboards are lacklustre, seemingly interrupting a track for no discernible reason (the mid-section of Infinite Submission sounds like an ambient bridging track from a second-rate bedroom black metal outfit and interrupts the song just when it's got going). Like BMD this too has a gothic, synthpop track, Losing Tomorrow, that sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the rest of the material on the album as if the band felt we needed a respite for some reason.
Sure, it's not a terrible record by any means and maybe I'm being a bit harsh in some kind of unjustifiably knee-jerk way, but even after revisiting the album for the clan challenge I still stick by my original opinion that this is an overrated release.

Towering monolithic slabs of titanic sonic devastation, set to lay waste to all that dare turn their ears towards them. OK, maybe that's overstating it a little, but this is serious sludge / doom that's really not for the faint-hearted (two of the three tracks are over 20 minutes long). Brilliant cover too from Mariusz Lewandowski who did the artwork for Bell Witch's Mirror Reaper.

Pulverizing death doom with vocals courtesy of an eviscerated abyss-dwelling demon. It chugs and crawls, chewing up everything in it's path and leaving behind a nightmarish, barren landscape where dreams once dwelled.

It's hard to believe that a band who are now into their fourth decade can sound as vital as this. Their uncompromising death metal grabs it's listeners by the throat and shakes them unmercifully like a savage beast. This downtuned, throbbing, pulverising sound is impossible to resist for any fan of old-school death metal and is testament to a band who care not what anyone thinks of them.

A couple of tracks and fourteen minutes of thundering sludgy doom metal make up this debut ep from Vancouver's Seer. A good calling card and indicator of later releases.

This EP has been released as bonus tracks on later versions of Brave Murder Day and if you were unaware that they were originally released separately then you would almost certainly think they were part of the original album, being virtually the same in style and execution. Luckily, this is a very good thing and is consequently the band's last great hurrah.

I must admit to having a troubled relationship with Sweden's Katatonia as they don't always "click" with me, albums such as Last Fair Deal Gone Down leaving me cold. However, this is a whole different animal altogether and, for me, Katatonia's best - a situation vastly improved by the addition of Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt who's harsh vocals are second to none, for my money.
Kicking off with the ten-minute titan, Brave, a heaving death doom monster, Brave Murder Day is mostly comprised of uptempo death doom, Akerfeldt's growling, yet morbid vocals, fantastic, memorable riffs and soaring lead work. Slightly different in structure is 12, a song with a bit more of a progressive feel to it with changes in tone and texture throughout it's eight minute running time.
The real cuckoo in the nest of the album is obviously third track, Day, who's synthpop sensibilities stand out like a sore thumb (I have no problem with synthpop at all, but this song jars here).
Overall a strong example of second-wave death doom from a band who ultimately would feel the need to turn their back on the style and strike out for pastures new, consequently never really being this good again.

Blood Ceremony have beem one of my favourite bands since 2008 and the release of their eponymous debut, a record that arguably helped springboard the current (possibly overdone) trend of female-fronted occult and psych doom metal. This, the follow up to that terrific debut, kicks off in suitably occult style, with it's paeon to Pan the god of nature, being dominated by a soaring Hammond Organ.
The doom metal aspects of Blood Ceremony do play second fiddle to the more psychedelic, wiccan aspects of their sound, but I maintain that they still have enough of a presence to consider this a metal record, especially My Demon Brother and Oliver Haddo. Personally I have no problem with the more psychedelic leanings of the band, being a bit of an old psych-head myself, I like to hear a good, heavy slab of old-fashioned occult psychedelia with some Hammer movies-style demons and witches imagery thrown in for good measure. It must also be said that Alia O'Brien is a great musician, her vocals, keyboards and particularly her flute playing are distinctive and add a dimension to the music that others in this field lack.
Whilst I acknowledge that many of the metal fraternity are unwilling to claim BC as one of their own especially since the releases aftere this are definitely a lot more psych rock than metal, I've got to say that it's their loss as they're turning their back on a great band.

Glacially slowly paced, yet still recognizedly death doom metal. It rumbles and growls, at times almost on the edge of perception, at others it threatens to overwhelm, yet all the while hinting at a vastness and unknowable darkness waiting to consume us all. Imagine taking Winter's Into Darkness and slowing it down to about a third of the speed and you have an approximation of how this album sounds.

The album is based around the concept of an alien civilization that believes it must bring the universe back to it's primordial chaos. This civilization has a zealous need to destroy everything in order to achieve it's religious aim, believing that they are in their "Eighth Crusade". The concept also encompasses the other races' fruitless attempts to oppose these maniacal zealots. The band have compared this civilization's irresistible crusade against all life as analogous to our current climate crisis and the helplessness felt by individuals in the face of it.

The album's eight tracks are, cryptically, split into four instrumentals of four minutes duration each and four tracks with vocals lasting eight minutes each. The band have virtually abandoned the funeral doom of their early works at this point with the focus more on a progressive death doom sound that is reminiscent of classic-era Opeth (especially on third track, Dissonant Occurence, which is somewhat of a departure for the band).

The two parts of instrumental Ignite the Heavens at the heart of the album are where the band really lose their shit and go all out, illustrating the unstoppable might of the psychotic aliens, with wailing jazz-like sax, flute, cello and martial rhythms. The Great Debacle that follows this two-part instrumental is probably closest to early Monolithe in tone, with huge riffs and growling, menacing vocals, although it does feature a guitar solo from guest Victor Gnôle of Ethmebb that is more histrionic than Monolithe's usual style. This track and the ensuing Disrupted Firmament with it's effects-heavy clean vocals provide the climax to the album's concept as the defeated civilizations reflect on their fate and accept annihilation. Ending with part two of the opening instrumental, the loop is closed and, presumably the seeds for the Ninth Crusade are sown.

I love a good concept album and, for my money, this is a great one with terrific music and lyrics and a concept to rival space opera classics like the Expanse and Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth sagas.

Rainbow may not be the first name that comes to mind when discussing 70s metal but I believe Rising cetainly stands as one of the best metal albums of the decade. Let's face it, how can any album that features Ronnie James Dio not be considered metal, the guys a metal legend and, in my opinion, this is also Ritchie Blackmore's finest hour, even eclipsing his work with Deep Purple. Side one features four anthemic numbers including the classic Starstruck and great opener Tarot Woman, but the album really shifts up a gear on side two that features only two tracks, the epic Stargazer and my personal favourite A Light in the Black. Stargazer is an early precursor of epic doom, with it's tale of a megalomaniac sorcerer compelling slaves to build a tower to the heavens and is probably stolen by Dio's amazing vocal performance, but Blackmore holds his own with some great soloing. However, Ritchie really lays it out on Light in the Black, with a fast and frenetic performance that helped influence countless thousands of metal "shredders" for decades to come. Finally, I have to tip a nod to Cozy Powell's thunderous contribution, hammering his drum kit into submission in a way few could ever replicate. Rainbow went into a steep, terminal decline after this record, mainly due to Blackmore's desire to emulate David Coverdale and score Top Ten hits in the US, but this stands as a fitting monument to a short-lived partnership of amazingly talented musicians at the top of their game.

Old-school doom in the vein of early Candlemass and Mercy. Very well put together tunes, musically epic with huge riffs and solos inspired by classic metal. Unfortunately I'm not hugely sold on the vocals so, sorry, got to mark it down.

Ten short, sharp shocks to the spinal column and neck vertebrae, courtesy of Indiana's Wraith. Blackened thrash with a punky attitude and a huge debt to Motörhead all finished off with a cover of The Misfits' Death Comes Ripping.

One of the few releases that attempts to breathe new life into the ever-decreasing-circle-jerk that the atmospheric black metal world has become. Epic and varied, incorporating elememts of post-rock and crust punk into the metallic mix, recommended to ears tired of the endless inferior xerox copies of Agalloch, WIITR, Drudkh et al.

Whilst undeniably not one of the heaviest doom albums you'll ever hear, this does emphasise the rumbling doom aspects of the sound by allowing plenty of gentler, more melodic passages to provide a marked contrast. Another area atypical to most doom metal is the twin harmonised vocals that add another layer of melody and makes the album sound far more positive than most examples of the genre. Don't get the idea these guys are lightweight though - for sure this isn't Evoken or Burning Witch - but they are more interested in exploring the contrast between light and dark in the manner of progressive rock or metal rather than pounding out unrelenting misery and despair in another monolithic dirge.

This is an atmospheric album of introspective doom, although the melancholy is expressed via a lighter sound than the usual crushing heaviness of most examples of the genre. It utilises heavy riffs only sparingly - the first doesn't really appear until about quarter of an hour in. I would add this to the growing list of albums that I consider as "doomgaze", that is to say, albums that, whilst still being rooted in the doom genre, have a more wistful sound than is usual... and it's a pretty good one at that!

Excellent album of true doom, in the vein of bands like Reverend Bizarre that also incorporates traces of other influences such as the sinister industrial feel to second track Eternal Casket and the psychedelic bookends to Welcome the Night that sound like parts of a long lost Floyd track from their Saucerful of Secrets era. But don't let this mislead you, the doom aspect is most definitely prevalent and is superbly done. In fact, my only gripe is that, at 33 minutes, it is way too short.

The three tracks on this, Alkymist's second EP, deal with the post-apocalyptic vision of nuclear war, culminating in There'll Be No Resting which, a little like Ebeneezer Scrooge in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, reveals that all has not yet come to pass and an angelic/demonic vision warns what may happen if the human race doesn't change it's ways. Heavy stuff, even if taken as an allegory for the impending environmental apocalypse rather than all-out war, but the music succesfully reflects the weight of the subject, a black/doom parable for the modern age. This, along with 2018's Spellcraft Ceremony are, for me, fast establishing Alkymist as one of the great underrated outfits in both black and doom metal.

This album, in common with many funeral doom releases, is not for the faint-hearted. It's extreme length (101 minutes) and heavily introverted lyrics make it an inaccessible listen for many. But for the patient, who have maybe cut their teeth on more accessible extreme metal, this is a supremely rewarding listen and one of the premier doom albums of all time.
Whilst the lyrics are indeed introspective, focussing as they do on pain, loss and death, the music, despite being pulverizingly slow and heavy, also has a spacy expansiveness that acts as a counterpoint to the morbidity of the words and the desperation of the growling, howling vocals, evoking the majesty of the universe and outer realms, as if offering the listener an alternative to such morbid introspection.
Despite the length of the album and the reputation of funeral doom for being monolithic, this actually has quite a bit of variation, from earthy plodding to soaring majesty, and stupefying bleakness to visceral savagery. There's even some full-on uptempo death metal during the (relatively) short closer to disc one, Caucus of Mind.
The whole is an extreme metal band on top form, both songwriting and performance-wise, supremely confident in what they are doing and not willing to compromise in any way. It may be a fanciful thought, but after listening to such supremely satisfying extreme music as this, seemingly tapped in to the unspoken truths of life and the universe, it sometimes feels impossible to go back to (relatively) meaningless and unchallenging mainstream metal. This really is one of those albums that may genuinely change how you feel about the music you listen to.

Celtic Frost certainly had a turbulent existence. Forming after the break-up of seminal act Hellhammer, leading lights Tom G. Warrior and Martin Ian Ain seemed to have an on/off musical relationship, splitting and reforming the band several times. Despite releasing some of the defining records of the European thrash metal scene, particularly their Morbid Tales and Emperor's Return EPs and the brilliant To Mega Therion album, they seemed to be hell-bent on self-destruction. A little over a year after the release of the more experimental but well-received, Into the Pandemonium, Martin Ian Ain and drummer Reed St. Mark had left and the new lineup made a blatant grab for mainstream attention whereby they foresook the darkness that made the band what they were and put out a hair metal album, Cold Lake. This so alienated the existing fans that it looked like it was all over for CF and the band split. They reformed and released another underwhelming album, Vanity / Nemesis, before splitting again. Reforming yet again in '01 they put out a horrendous demo called Prototype that should have finished them off.
However, they stuck it out and in 2006 released Monotheist. At last an album worthy to carry the Celtic Frost name, Monotheist takes the darkness of the early thrash releases, slowing the pace down to a largely doom metal tempo and adds a heavy gothic atmosphere to the proceedings, resulting in their best album for two decades and laying the foundation for Warrior's subsequent band Triptykon. The production is very good, allowing all the instruments room to be heard, the songs are great, the riffs are heavy as hell and Tom's vocals are ominous and threatening.
Personally, I came to Monotheist a bit late, having long before given up on the band, but I guess quality wins out in the end and thankfully, this allowed Celtic Frost to bow out with their heads held high.

Slumber were a Swedish band who released this, their only full-length album, in 2004. The band split in 2011, the members forming progressive metal band Atoma immediately afterwards. Fallout features melodic death doom metal with a hefty dose of symphonic metal trappings such as keyboards and choral backing vocals. The growling main vocals seem to buried down in the mix and are somewhat smothered by the clean-sounding guitar and the keyboards. There also seems to be an inordinate amount of cymbal mixed quite high that I found quite intrusive and distracting.
Generally, I find this gothic / symphonic version of death doom metal leaves me a little underwhelmed - I prefer my death doom to be more melancholy or abyssal-sounding and less bombastic. So whilst recognising that a lot of doom metal afficianados think highly of this, I've got to confess that it's not really for me.

Exhorder's first new album since '92's The Law isn't as terrible a record as you would think reading the comments on RYM - it's a reasonably serviceable album of medium-paced thrash and groove metal. Now, is that good enough for a band who recorded Slaughter in the Vatican? I would suggest not and as a basis for the backlash against it, I totally get it. There is too much of a hard rock feel to the thrashing for the majority of the album, particularly the title track and the only song that even comes close to the quality of the first two albums is the penultimate track, Ripping Flesh, which, I believe, is possibly an old song anyway.
So, to summarise, it's OK, but I've listened to it a couple of times and will probably never bother again. It can only serve to diminish a (semi-)legendary band's reputation.

I'm not a huge fan of modern death metal, being as it either concentrates on being excessively technical or full of juvenile "brutal" imagery, but if this is the kind of album that is coming out of another area of the current DM scene, then count me in 'cause this is the shit! Progressive, but not full of technical wankery, with a spacey atmosphere at times reminiscent of the Waste of Space Orchestra album Syntheosis, this veers from old-school death metal riffing to space rock atmospherics without adversely affecting the out and out heaviness - it even manages to shoehorn a short section seemingly borrowed from The Dark Side of the Moon into the ludicrously long-titled eighteen minute closing track, Awakening From the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul), a song that will surely be hailed as a new benchmark for an ever-evolving branch of death metal. I'm always up for a bit of sci-fi imagery and some epic songwriting to get into and this has both in spades, coupled with a great production job and performance and we have a winner of the Best Death Metal Album of the Year award.

Selvans, on this their second full-length, continue to do for black metal what fellow Italian, Paul Chain, did for doom metal - make thoroughly exhilarating music with a hefty dollop of weirdness.

Gorgon originally split in 2001, but the name was revived by founding member Christophe Chatelet as a solo project in 2017. This is the first release since then, featuring Christophe on guitar, bass & vocals and a session drummer. It's pretty decent old-school thrashy black metal not a million miles away from where the band started, way back in the heady days of the early nineties.

First off, you've really got to admire Ardraos' technical ability, as he far surpasses the competency of your average black metal solo project. His songwriting is ambitious, to say the least, involving an interesting and complex interplay between the various instruments, particularly the guitar and drums. However, this level of complexity can often be difficult to reign in and the songs start to unravel as songs per se and become more like a technical exercise, or even worse, a case of over-indulgence and chronic Yngwie-Malmsteen-Syndrome. To be fair, only occasionally on this release does this happen and the overall impression is very positive, but the warning does need heeding, as I think Sühnopfer has a great album in him if he reigns it in a little (but not too much!)

Spaniards Totengott's debut is a three-track slab of death doom that also has a significant amount of Celtic Frost in it's DNA. I really like the old-school switching between death metal and doom but what really makes it for me is how they take that ancient egyptian / sumerian vibe that CF exhibited and incorporate it into their sound. Never more so than on the final epic, the 20 minute Doppelgänger, that takes many a twist and turn 'ere it's tale is done, coming on like an unholy alliance between CF, Autopsy and early Nile. Keep all your modern technical bollocks, for me this is Death Metal Heaven.

How does a band as long-lived as Destruction manage to keep things interesting within the tight confines of a genre such as Thrash Metal without alienating their existing fanbase? Well, as you doubtless know, the majority are unable to walk this tightrope successfully and Destruction are no exception. Whilst occasionally hinting at bygone day's glories, this is far more often a fairly tame affair, verging on downright boring as the songs melt into each other without ever grabbing the attention of the listener - an unforgivable sin for a thrash album. Let's be honest, 35 years is a longtime to be doing anything and Destruction sound like a band running on rails. Guess it's back to Eternal Devastation for me.

Brilliant album of prog-influenced doom from Italian band Midryasi. Memorable songs infused with that singular quirkiness that italian doom is well-known for. The prog influence is never more prevalent than on second track, Diagonal, almost sounding like it was taken from Porcupine Tree's superb Fear of a Blank Planet album. The overall feeling engendered by the album is more upbeat and positive than is usual in the doom genre, it even feels, at times, positively humourous. If you fancy a bit of prog / doom genre-bending then give it a try.

Midryasi's 2009 album, Corridors, is a fantastic slice of psychedelic-tinged doom, of a bombastic style at which Italian doomsters excel. The entire album is Doom Heaven, but special mention must go to closing track Another Hell Within, that is just so gloriously over-the-top, yet has a chorus The Misfits would be proud of. If you've never tried Italian doom then you could do much worse than start here.

This is good stuff! Although Caronte are from Italy, they eschew the quirkiness that is usually associated with Italian Doom in favour of a more straightforward approach generally favoured by the British and Scandinavians. They also have one of my favourite doom vocalists in Dorian Bones (no idea if that's his real name!) If you love Trad Doom in the vein of Windhand and the more focussed efforts of Reverend Bizarre, then this shouldn't disappoint.

Beginning gently with a lengthy intro track that lulls the listener before launching into a blistering death assault, the opening salvo is a one-two body blow followed up by the slower, doomier The Spell which rumbles ominously for it's 13 minutes. Only then do we get to the infernal heart of the album and the dark majesty of the epic Doppelgänger II: The Abyss, a journey into the underworld that takes the listener, like Dante being led by a death metal Virgil, down into a Doom Inferno. A brilliantly dark and menacing, heavily atmospheric, yet still crushing, album that feels almost like classic literature fed through a Marshall stack.

Crushingly suffocating funeral doom. The occasional lighter moments only emphasising the sheer weight of the majority of the album, like someone who is drowning breaks the surface for a brief gasp of air before being dragged down once more to their watery demise.

Vofa are a mysterious collective of Icelandic musicians from a number of different musical backgrounds who have combined to produce an album comprising three 12-minute tracks of bleak and sombre funeral doom, rendered even more frigid by a black metal edge that reflects the harshness of the landscape of the protagonists' homeland. Like the slipping into oblivion of a wanderer, lost and helpless, in the glacial wilderness as he surrenders to his fate.

I feared the worst for Alunah when frontwoman Soph Day bailed in 2017, only to be joined by guitarist Dave Day at the beginning of 2019. My misgivings were misplaced however on the strength of this, their latest album and first with the new line-up which saw Diamond Head bassist Dean Ashton on guitar join vocalist Siân Greenaway and rhythm section stalwarts Dan Burchmore and Jake Mason. If anything the new four-piece sound like a band revitalised and raring to go, their eight tracks of stonerised doom metal ringing clearer than ever before, thanks to the production of Chris Fielding. If this is any indication, then Alunah have secured a bright future, at least for the time being, anyway.

Proper Sabbath-like riffs (possibly the band's heaviest to date) are topped with Sophie Day's excellent vocals, intoning lyrics about nature and natural magick, much more interesting than the overdone "hail Satan" crap that far too many less talented female-fronted retro doom outfits keep touting. One for playing on the way to this year's Wicker Man ceremony, I should think.

As Was opens with a genuine progressive classic, On Forgotten Ways, a track every bit as good as anything the current masters of progressive extreme metal, Enslaved have been putting out over the last few years. It soars and swoops, featuring both clean and harsh vocals and some epic riffing that left me breathless. Although I consider this to be the albums best track, don't let me give the impression that the rest of the album is a let down, the excellent quality of both the songwriting and the playing is maintained for the album's entire 53 minutes, making this a must-hear for any lover of cerebral extreme metal.

The supremely talented Déhà does it yet again, releasing his third and best album of the year following his releases under his own name and as Imber Luminis. This is extremely heavy funeral doom that is, in the main, unremittingly bleak and oppressive, yet there is an underlying majesty to the sound that inspires awe rather than despair as if the listener is beholding the haunted ruins of an ancient, long-gone yet impressively powerful, race of beings.

It's Finnish traditional doom metal that anyone familiar with any of Phil Swanson's bands such as Briton Rites and Hour of 13 will instantly recognise. The songs aren't as good as those bands' but there's much to enjoy here for any lover of doom metal with clean vocals. They cite the NWOBHM as a major influence, which is evidenced by their obvious Witchfinder General appreciation.