Sonny's Reviews
Gorgeous nature-inspired atmospheric bm. You can almost smell the spray from the forest waterfalls and feel the breeze from the highland mountainsides. The folk instrumentation is incorporated effortlessly and organically into the mix to enhance the atmosphere. Well worth your time if you are a fan of Saor, Elderwind, WiTTR etc.
Blut aus Nord are one of those bands who seem to attract a lot of pretentious twaddle, but the simple fact is that they are a very accomplished black metal band who like to develop their sound, are unafraid to incorporate influences from outside the BM world and don't like to stand still. This album seems to have ruffled a few feathers, being a bit more accessible than a lot of BaN's material, but f**k that, this is a damn fine melodic, atmospheric, black metal album with some psychedelic influences (although not too much) even featuring some nice choral moments. The music is soaring and sweeping and the production is spot on. Sure it is superficially akin to a number of modern atmo-black releases, but the sheer songwriting and technical superiority of the band are evident from the get-go, elevating this far above the general BM hoi-polloi.
Atlantean Kodex try to plough the same furrow as epic doom bands like Solstice and Cirith Ungol, but they haven't the songwriting skill of either of these bands and end up turning out hour-long albums of bloated heavy metal that just kind of blurs into one long LARP soundtrack. It does have some decent moments, but few and far between and the whole is just too damn long.
Death doom with some melodic black influence, akin to early Anathema or Katatonia, I prefer my death doom a bit more guttural and abyssal-sounding. This is a little too clean for my taste, but if you're a fan of the early doom days of the aforementioned bands then there's probably a lot for you to like here.
An amalgamation of the blackest of metals and sludge with a strange, unsettling atmosphere which was seemingly enhanced by being recorded in an abandoned house near to Stockholm (I hope any others nearby were also abandoned or heavens knows what the residents would have made of the unholy cacophony issuing forth). I think this is a release that will take more than a couple of listens to properly sink in and I'm still on the fence with it. It is far from an easy listen, sometimes the aggression feels a bit too much, but I really love some of the sludgier tracks, such as Wormwood Star. One to keep coming back to I think and much respect for daring to step outside the BM-by-numbers artificial confines so many feel compelled to obey or lack the talent to transcend.
I can't believe it's been over forty years since I first saw these guys (supporting Motörhead on one of their '78 or '79 tours if I remember rightly) as a trio (mainman Kevin Heybourne with bassist Kevin Riddles and drummer Dave Hogg [Day Vog]) playing what would become one of the most recognizable sounds of the NWOBHM. After providing the best track on the legendary Metal for Muthas comp, they released their 1980 eponymous debut, one of my all-time favourite albums. Unfortunately the rest of the 80s weren't kind to AW, constant personnel upheavals and a couple of lacklustre albums resulted in the band disappearing from view. Fast forward nearly three decades and The 'Witch released As Above, So Below a return to some kind of form and a shot in the arm for any long-standing fan of the band. So, here we are in 2019 and AW turn in their best and heaviest album since that seminal debut, more focussed than As Above, So Below and with a production job that would have absolutely killed forty years ago. This is hi-octane heavy metal and any band of young bucks would be proud to have put out an album as exhilharating as this, yet alone a band now well into their fifth decade! Long Live Metal!!
Epic, but definitely not overblown, doom metal from Swedes Isole on this their seventh studio album (and first for five years). The clean vocals are the right side of the epic fence, however on several occasions they do employ puzzlingly redundant growled vocals. The guitar tone is full-on and suitably doom-laden, with many Iommi-esque riffs and the rhythm section is solid and forceful. Should appeal to any fan of scandinavian doom metal.
Apocalyptic death doom with abyssally echoing guttural vocals and thundering, pounding rhythms like the hordes of hell unleashed.
Werian's debut full-length weaves three blackened-doom tales of animistic shamen warriors invoking their gods and crushing all their enemies before them. Their interpretation of blackened doom doesn't just involve some doomy slow bits and some faster black metal bits, this is a genuine hybrid of doom and black that both makes the doom feel more aggressive and the blackness more earthy. Then, woven about this black/doom chimera, are influences of shamanic ritualism and psychedelia that allows for a truly unique doom experience. It all comes to a sublime head on the mighty, seventeen-minute-plus March Through Ruins, a track that is fast becoming a real favourite of mine. Additional kudos for recording the album live in the studio - how many bands would dare to do that these days?
Husband and wife drum and bass doom metal duo, Year of the Cobra, have produces another great atypical doom metal album. There's a nice variety of tracks on offer from the revved-up, punky title track, the creepy, sinister-sounding future Hallowe'en favourite, Demons and the crawling doom of the opener The Battle of White Mountain - and that's just within the first half of the album! The second half is a little more straight-up doom, until final track In Despair insinuates itself into your brain, closing the album in a Mogadon haze. Then it's a case of "well there's just time for one more hit" and spin it up again!
Relentlessly heavy and monolithic doom metal, it's low, slow riffing and mournful, yet strong, female vocals smother and subsume everything before them like a river of molten lava oozing across the landscape of your music-listening mind. With it's five tracks weighing in at over an hour's running time and it's uncompromising sound, this isn't aimed at the casual or new doom metal fan, this one is for die-hard Doomheads and The Red Widows are a great new name that deserves to be added to the likes of Pallbearer and Windhand in the realm of "Orthodox" Doom Metal.
Husband and wife team Karyn Crisis and Davide Tiso, with the help of Skinlab's Fabian Vestod on drums, release their second album as Karyn Crisis' Gospel of the Witches. It's doom-tinged gothic metal projects an aura of sinister rural occultism that speaks to us of rituals performed in wooded groves to commune with the ancient, hidden gods of the natural world. It has a pleasing variety in it's twelve tracks, from full-on doom metal with both clean and harsh vocals from Karyn, to dreamy piano-led ethereal pleadings into the aether. A female-voiced occult doom album that does actually sound occult.
A wall of fuzz and feedback from those cheeky chappies Sunn O))). This time their three quarters of an hour seems to be taken with recreating the sound of a star preparing itself for going supernova. Come on, you know what to expect from Stephen and Greg and this is that and it won't change your opinion of the band one way or the other.
I love female-fronted doom and heavy psych, but I have always been reluctant where Jex Thoth have been concerned, probably due to the vast quantity of negative comments regarding the band that have wormed their way into the back of my brain. Anyway, after finally giving them a chance, I'm glad I did. I just can't see why so many have taken against them. Their retro sound is great - psychedelic flourishes over a doomy core - and Jex has a terrific voice.
I am a huge fan of these HPL-obsessed Frenchmen, their sludgey atmospheric black metal sound appealing to both my love of all things doom-ridden and of blackened horror. Another fifty minutes spent in their company as they weave their tales of cosmic, lurking terror is one of life's great pleasures. Their songwriting gets better, as does their proficiency and production - this album sounds great, allowing the music to expand, even as it pummels the senses with it's aggressive assault. The vocals sound ragged, as if the singer has damaged his vocal chords from shrieking at the terrors he has been forced to convey to our ears. A great release of cosmic horror most aptly released in the week running up to Hallowe'en - darkened aeons await!
This latest from Monolord, their fourth full-length, kicks off in familiar style with the opening riff of The Bastard Son. It soon becomes apparent though, that there are a few slight changes on this album. The vocals are mixed a bit higher than their usual disembodied, washed-out sound, although they still can't be accused of being "in your face". Also at about the halfway point, the opener's heavy, plodding riff gives way to a cleaner section that kind of marks time for a couple of minutes before returning to the earlier heaviness. Next track, The Last Leaf, is probably as near as a band like Monolord get to being "catchy" with it's psych-doom influence. Larvae is up next and is probably my favourite track, with a gentle opening and quirky-sounding riff that gradually gets heavier until it's gritty, filthy-sounding ending, that is the best moment on the album. This is followed by the album's two weakest tracks, Skywards and All Alone Together, but faith is restored by the title track, which is a doom(ed) monster and a great ending to the album with it's dirge-like, painfully mournful sound.
I understand that a band like Monolord probably feel the need to stretch out a bit by album four but, to be honest, I loved them just the way they were so, consequently, this is my least favoured of their albums. It is by no means a bad album and many will enjoy the expansion of their sound, I'm sure, but I still think Vaenir will stand as their tour-de-force.
Runemagick's latest is an album of throbbing death doom with more than a hint of menace. I have seen several references to Celtic Frost regarding this album and I can see why - the vocals have more than a hint of Tom G. Warrior's death growl and the chugging guitar on a number of the tracks is easy to compare to the swiss masters. Proper devastating metal with a clear, yet crushing, sound and great songs. This may well be my favourite Runemagick album so far.
Hermóðr's Rafn is another prolific member of the black metal community who knocks out releases like some people update their Twitter feed and, in common with the Twitterati, not everything he puts out is worth your time. This fifteen minute, single-track EP though, is one of his better efforts. A pleasant, nature-themed slice of uplifting atmo-black that won't live overlong in the memory, but while it's playing is a positive listen.
A black metal exploration of the world of astrophysics, without the friendly faces of Neil deGrasse Tyson or Brian Cox to assure us that the universe isn't the hostile, uncaring place that it really is. Strigae's origins seem to be unknown, but their brand of atmo-black is very Germanic, feeling more remote and fatalistic than the nature-themed bands that make up a large proportion of the genre. Well worth the time for any BM devotee.
We are all able to experience, to some small extent, the seemingly endless Siberian winter and it's snow and ice thanks to this impressive slice of russian atmo-black from duo Grima. Strong songs and nice pacing, with a couple of gentle interludes that end each of the album's two halves. Good stuff.
Beginning with a comparitively gentle instrumental intro, the album then launches into it's ultra-heavy, doom-laden sludge, throbbing with menace, but also somehow managing to convey a sense of hope as it does. It's dual clean / harsh vocals, complex, though crushing instrumentation and esoteric lyrical themes make me believe this is the sort of album bands like Mastodon wish they could make.
This is fundamentalist, doom metal orthodoxy, stripped down to it's absolute essence and yes, indeed, purified by the excision of any extraneous influences to leave exposed a doomed, yet defiant, soul.
This is a quite stunning debut album from Poland's Rosk. It's fifty minutes comprises four tracks of progressive blackened sludge that exhibit an impressive songwriting maturity that takes most bands many releases to achieve. Likewise, the musicianship is impeccable and their sound is very satisfying, with the faster sections presenting a huge wall-of-sound, yet it is still possible to hear all the elements and nothing is swamped. The quieter parts are crisp and clear and the whole has been expertly produced. Overall, an excellent addition to the progressive extreme metal canon.
These atmospheric epics have a cinematic feel to them like the soundtrack to a black metal Lord of the Rings.
A.S.M., or Antichrist Siege Machine to give them their full name, as you may suspect from a band with a name like that, play blasphemous and unholy-sounding war metal, coughed up from the darkest depths of the abyss. It's quite loose-sounding for war metal, with a heavy influence from late old-school death metal, but it sounds filthy as hell.
I must admit that about halfway through the first track, Promise of the Polis, I was thinking "oh no, another unlistenable pile of 'dissonant' shite". But after that initial blitzkrieg, it settles down to be a very solid album of edgy black metal with dissonant elements. There are some great riffs further in and the drumming, in particular, is impressive throughout. I found myself getting more and more into it as the album progressed and on second listen even the opener didn't seem quite as much of a racket as it did first time through.
A sublime blend of black, death and doom metal that makes for a varied and textured release, all bound together by those eerie, disembodied, blackened growls. It's an interesting time to be an extreme metal fan at the moment, with the blurring of the lines between the various extreme genres and the ever-increasing maturity of the song-writing that's giving us some great albums, of which this is a particularly fine example.
An album of thoroughly modern, albeit old-school, black metal that explores the concept of Be’er Shachat (Pit of Corruption), the idea that we live a cyclical existence of destruction, purification and rebirth. This is a strong release that illustrates exactly what BM is about at this point of it's development, whilst still allowing it's origins to be heard.
Mizmor's exploration of the existential conundrum that is man's insistence on trying to impose meaning on an existence that is ultimately meaningless, manifests itself as a suitably angst-ridden and hopeless-sounding miasma of blackened sludginess. Sheer futility exudes from the grooves of the record, the weight crushing out all lightness from the album's sound and sending the listener to the place occupied by the cover's hooded figure as it reflects endlessly on this soul-sapping paradox.
Devil Master's debut full-length album sees them rip through thirteen tracks of blackened thrash-punk brimming over with vitality, aggression and horror.
Really enjoyable blackened metal that, above all else, reminds us that metal can actually be fun to listen to!
By now everyone knows the story of the implosion of Батюшка [Batushka] and the ridiculous situation of two iterations of the band releasing albums close together. To be honest, to me, that's just so much bullshit that belongs in the pages of some worthless metal rag - what's really important is the music. Litourgiya was a refreshingly original release in the black metal world with it's combination of BM and liturgical chants, but now we have two interpretations of how this idea evolves. This, Krzysztof Drabikowski's version, takes the route of a greater emphasis on the metal aspect and incorporating the chants in a more subtle way. The result is a mighty fine melodic black metal album in a more orthodox sense, the chanting adding an additional dimension to the sound. Although I love the original album, this is a very good follow-up and should appeal to anyone who did enjoy Litourgiya (and loves melodic BM in general).
A riotously noisy blend of black, industrial and noise metal that is guaranteed to get your neighbours banging on the walls - although you're unlikely to notice!
Elegy sees Dead to a Dying World weaving beautifully atmospheric tales from the darkside, blending black metal with post-rock and even doom metal elements. The layers of sound include Hammond organ, Eva Vonne's viola and several guest musicians, including the cello of Tim Duffield, Thor Harris on percussion and several guest vocalists - in addition to the dual male/female vocals of Mike Yeager and Heidi Moore, Bell Witch's Dylan Desmond, Swans' Jarboe and Emil Rapstine of The Angelus all make vocal contributions.
The occult doom vibe of the debut has gone along with the departure of ex-Cathedral stalwart Gaz Jennings, to be replaced by a more hard rock oriented traditional metal sound. Luckily it's still a quality set of tunes on offer, and Johanna's vocals are still great.
What a gorgeously crafted album of atmospheric black metal. The three tracks on offer here, blend atmo-black with elements of dark folk, post-metal and doom into an utterly heart-breaking cry from the soul for times, people or places long gone.
Witchsorrow are nothing if not consistent. Anyone familiar with the band will know what to expect from this, their fourth album, Hexenhammer. For the rest of you, they are a no-bullshit british doom metal band that are almost fundamentalist in their adherence to the basic tenets of doom. After a few listens I would probably have to say this is my favourite, feeling just a bit more dynamic than their previous releases.
Witchsorrow are a band who make no-frills English Doom Metal and make no apologies for doing so, in the manner of a doom metal Motorhead. I'm sure this makes them the bane of a lot of modern metal fans, but it also garners them a small, but loyal, following. Sure this album isn't noticeably different to either of the previous two, but I'm sure they don't care (and neither do I) so more power to 'em!
I was a fan of Green Lung's Free the Witch ep, but this is a step up - a really assured debut full-length from a band who are obviously learning quickly. This is from the lighter end of the stoner doom spectrum, with it's quaint woodland imagery and more obvious hard rock influence, but don't be deceived, it still kicks as much ass as you could want!
An album of stonerized thrash metal that isn't bad on the stoner front, but the thrashing just doesn't convince, the aggression has been blunted if you will! Still, it's got a lot of people buzzing, so maybe it's just me.