Sonny's Reviews
An impressive debut release by this Icelandic black metal outfit. The ambitious songwriting and excellent musicianship remind me of 1990's Enslaved, with an almost progressive feel to some of the tracks. Saying that, they can also let rip with some good old black metal fury, as evidenced on the opener Songur Heiftar. Definitely a band to keep an eye on.
Lord Vicar are one of the "Guardians of True Doom", featuring ex-members of Reverend Bizarre, Revelation, Count Raven and Saint Vitus and this is their best album to date. Kicking off with the seventeen-minute epic, Sulphur, Charcoal and Saltpetre, this goes on to deliver 70 minutes of ass-kicking, gut-crunching doom metal that could level entire city blocks! Powerful and mournful, this is classic scandinavian doom metal.
This live recording features complete reproductions of two of Kauan's recent albums, 2013's Pirut and 2015's superb Sorni Nai. The musicianship and sound recording are excellent, as is the source material and I do love a good live album, but I can't really imagine why you would particularly listen to these versions over the studio originals. It does perfectly illustrate what an accomplished band Kauan are, though, as the performance is pretty much faultless.
Haunting and atmospheric Post-rock from Russia, in the form of a concept album telling the story of the Dyatlov Pass incident - the mysterious disappearance of a group of hikers in the Urals in the. 1950's. This really is an excellent album, encompassing aspects of doom, black metal and softer instrumentation, in particular a beautiful and affecting piano sound that is woven through the majority of the album and even, for me anyway, leaves a more lasting impression than the louder more "metal" aspects of the album. A real triumph of multi-layered, thoughtful music and a definite must-hear.
While Darkthrone retain the roots of their black metal origins, they don't release out and out black metal albums anymore (nor have they for a very long time). Their latest, Old Star, sees them move into more doomy territory. Sounding like a cross between Bathory and Black Sabbath they have unleashed some of their best riffs in ages. A mention must also go to the meaty production job on this album, producing one of the best-sounding albums of their career (and which also suits the more doomy material on offer here).
Blut aus Nord are a band I enjoy, yet strangely haven't listened to anything like enough, so I come to this side project of BaN's Vindsval (admittedly drawn to it by Dehn Sora's enigmatic cover art), not really sure what to expect. What I got was an album of intelligent industrial post-metal that does seem to justify it's existence as a side project release, whilst still retaining the influence of the band that spawned it.
This is a little overblown for my taste. Vocalist Jennie-Ann Smith seems more suited to a gothic metal band in the vein of Within Temptation or Nightwish than a doom outfit, her voice sounding too theatrical. Maybe Leif Edling wanted a female Messiah Marcolin for this band, but I don't think it works particularly well. Don't get me wrong, this album has some good moments, particularly during the more psych passages and some decent enough songs but, for me, it just misses the mark.
A blackened death assault that hits like a jackhammer to the sternum. I prefer my death metal a bit looser and more old-school, but if you're into intense and aggressive modern DM then this may be right up your street.
This is probably my all-time favourite pagan / atmospheric black metal album, from England's best black metal band. The music is stirring and epic and speaks of ancient battles, majestic peaks and mist-shrouded fens. Winterfylleth have put out some great records in the past decade, but this, their debut, still stands, like an ancient druidic standing stone, as their finest monument to England's long-forgotten history.
Walknut were the brainchild of Anton Svyagir (aka StringsSkald) who is a Russian multi-instrumentalist that has been a member of a number of bands including stoner doom outfit Old Sea and Mother Serpent. Inexplicably, Graveforests and Their Shadows is Walknut's only release and as the status of the band seems to be "defunct" it is likely to remain so. I say "inexplicably" because, as an example of atmospheric black metal, this is just so fucking good!
Graveforests.. is a black metal album that heavily relies on it's recreation of an icy and frigid atmosphere. Here that atmosphere is everything as there is actually very little else going on - and I don't say this as a criticism - but the songs are fairly simple affairs that rely on repetition and the layering of the raw, distorted guitar sound to create the required effect. For me the simplicity of the songs isn't a failing, but is actually the album's strength, allowing the atmosphere to become key. Where others feel the need to inject their songs with arbitrary tempo changes, sudden folk-driven interludes or shoegazey ambient breaks, Walknut hold their nerve and just allow the frigidity of the tracks to envelop and ensnare the listener like a winter blizzard. StringsSkald's vocals take the form of ragged shrieks in a similar vein to many DSBM vocalists, but here they pierce the frostiness of the music with a yet colder desperation that deepens the intensity of the frozen atmosphere. Walknut's is a world of black and white and a numbing iciness that is almost unbearable to a mere fragile human, similar to the musical world of Paysage d'Hiver, and is not one that should be entered into lightly. Personally, I love this stripped down style of atmo-black which can trace it's roots back to some of the earliest Burzum recordings and Graveforests and Their Shadows is an album of particular quality in this frostiest of sub-genres.
Much like previous release, Pure, this is progressive metal forged from elements of Doom and Black metal. Similar in sound to Vertebrae / Axioma-era Enslaved.
As you can probably tell from the name, The Great Old Ones are a band who's atmospheric black metal is usually Lovecraftian themed and based around the Cthulhu Mythos. This is again the case on this, their third full-length release. Their brand of quite aggressive atmospheric black effectively suggests the gibbering insanity of the minds of Lovecraft's gods of madness and the vocals have an intangible quality, as if heard echoing from the dark void between worlds. Of course, ultimately it's all about the music and even if you have no interest at all in Lovecraft's tales of horror, this is still a damned fine album.
Apparently this album, with it's 1984-ish dystopian concept has kicked off a shitstorm on comments sections everywhere, with accusations of nazism being thrown at the band. I'm not really familiar enough with them to judge, but from what I've heard it seems like they have at least one pretty reprehensible member. Leaving all that aside, however, musically this is excellent, progressive BM that is both exhilarating and demanding. Recorded live in the studio with plenty of changes of pace, it is an impressively complex, multi-layered piece of music. Probably best taken as a whole it feels more like a suite than an album of separate tracks. Recommended for any fan of modern, intelligent black metal who isn't too phased by controversy in their black metal (and let's face it, if you love black metal you're probably familiar with at least some level of controversy in music).
Very consistent traditional doom metal - not as awesome as their debut album, but there's plenty to enjoy here for devotees of the epic side of doom metal - particularly tracks like The Lost Garrison and the galloping Beyond the Westward Path.
Great album of meaty trad doom that reminds me why I got so into this music in the first place. Epic-sounding songs, amazing riffs and vocals that will never be considered great, but fit the music so well. There's also a nice trade-off between the melodies and the heaviness that results in a more positive sounding album than is maybe usual in doom.
2004's Inferno is, in my opinion, Lemmy & co's best album since the classic lineup of Fast Eddie and Philthy Phil passed into metal legend. It may be the heaviest album they ever produced with Lemmy and Mickey Dee on fine form. However, the most striking aspect is Phil Campbell's searing guitar work, possibly the best a Motörhead guitarist has ever sounded on record.
F**k, I miss these guys!
I've got to confess to being somewhat disappointed in this release from the polish death metal titans. It seems to have lost something in the over-polished (no pun intended!) production. Just doesn't grab me like it should.
Varg Vikernes is one of the most controversial characters in metal, but he most definitely produced one of the two best black metal albums ever made (ironically, the other being De Mysteriis) with the most anguished-sounding vocal performance you will ever hear. Even if you consider Burzum the artist seperately from Vikernes the man, the question that then remains is, could anyone else have released such an angst-filled, desperate sounding record that reaches right into the darkest, bleakest reaches of the human soul? Probably not, after all, if you want an insight into what it is to live in hell, then you don't ask someone who lives in heaven, do you?
Truly epic celtic-tinged black metal from the supremely talented Andy Marshall. A little less airy and more down-to-earth than his previous releases, but still superb. Featuring guest vocals from Alcest's Neige on opener Forgotten Paths and the heavenly-sounding Sophie Rogers on Bròn (along with bagpipes from Kevin Murphy) this is Saor stretching out and in the aforementioned Bròn we may arguably have Saor's tour-de-force.
With amazing artists like Andy Marshall and Austin Lunn, the oft-derided black metal solo act is really showing what is possible if you have the talent.
With this, the follow up to his brilliant debut, Roots, Andy Marshall cements Saor's position as one of the premier Pagan / Atmospheric Black Metal bands. Comprising five lengthy BM soundscapes that conjure up scenes of a celtic warband running to battle across wind-blown Caledonian moorlands, that are at times blistering and at others hauntingly poetic. An absolute triumph of the genre and one of the best albums of 2014.
This unexpected ep from Austin Lunn features a couple of tracks left over from his previous two albums that he has released as a tribute to the magnificence of the northern lights. The Crescendo of Dusk is from the Scars.. sessions and is a thirteen minute track of Panopticon's trademark soaring, life-affirming atmo-black that is every bit as good as the tracks on that album. The Labyrinth is from the Autumn Eternal session, but sounds like it should have been on Scars Part II as it's a serene acoustic folk track with virtually spoken clean vocals. This is an indicator of just how dominant Panopticon are when a couple of left-over tracks wipe the floor with nearly every other effort from the nature-black metal scene.
Austin Lunn is possibly the premier exponent of atmospheric black metal currently (certainly in North America) and this release is a real event in the scene. The first album, of this two-album set, showcases Panopticon's usual flawless take on the genre.
The second album of this double release expands on Austin Lunn's obvious love of his roots music - bluegrass and american folk. As with everything else this guy touches the songs are great. The only reservations I have are that the folkier songs expose the (minor) shortcomings in his vocals.
Stunning modern black metal album. Way more variety to the record than we have come to expect from the genre. From blistering Atmospheric BM to bluegrass banjo picking to acoustic ballad, this is an album of real contrasts and a very welcome addition to an, at times, over-conservative genre.
This is the album where Lemmy announced his transformation from mere crew member aboard the space ship Hawkwind, to all out metal overlord of battle station Motorhead. Where his audience had shifted from the acid-dropping, pothead hippies that worshipped his former band mates, to the speed-loving and bourbon-drinking outlaw fraternities of bike gangs and renegades. For proof you need look no further than the title track and particularly The Watcher, two songs Lemmy wrote and recorded with Hawkwind. Here they appear as, I imagine, Lemmy always envisioned them, stripped of space rock pretensions and presented in raw, undiluted loud and dirty rock'n'roll form. As the rock press were fond of quoting at the time (from Philthy Phil, if I'm not mistaken), " if Motorhead moved next door to you, then your lawn would die!"
But, on a personal note, this is the album that made me realise that I had found MY band and, in Lemmy, someone in the music world who could genuinely be looked up to and admired for their integrity and attitude. So long, man, and thanks for all the great memories... Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister RIP
I love this album, almost as indispensible a thrash release to me as Master of Puppets or Reign in Blood. Re-recordings of most of IE's early catalogue with superior singer Matt Barlow on vocals. An awesome hybrid of classic-era Metallica and Judas Priest, this and follow-up Something Wicked This Way Comes mark the high water mark for the band. After that IE descended into power metal cheesiness and irrelevance. Luckily this will always stand as a monument to how great Iced Earth could be.
Angel Witch are one of my favourite bands of the NWOBHM era. They were taken under Lemmy's wing and supported Motorhead many times in the late 70's and early 80's, when I was fortunate enough to have seen them live five or six times. Their debut is still one of my favourite albums and, in my opinion, their contribution to the original Metal for Muthas LP, Baphomet, was the stand-out on that album (up against a brace of Maiden tracks).
These super-raw demos are a great insight into the early days of the band and are worth getting to hear just how exciting they were back in the day.
Saint Vitus are back, reunited with original vocalist Scott Reagers and with a new bassist, Pat Bruders, four-string-wielder with Down. Personally, I prefer Wino's voice to Reagers' but that doesn't mean that Scott is a poor singer, on the contrary, his vocals still suit Saint Vitus just fine. I love Dave Chandler's guitar sound and it kicks right in on opener, typical St.V doomfest Remains and all seems fine with the world. There's a nice variety to the nine tracks on offer, old-school doom like the aforementioned Remains, Wormhole and Last Breath, a quite, gentle track with Reagers singing about some kind of torturous hell, which then leads into a couple of quicker, ass-kicking heavy metal tracks in Bloodshed and 12 Years In The Tomb, the bluesy Hour Glass, creepy-sounding City Park and the hardcore punk of closing track, Useless (yes, that's right, I said hardcore punk!) A common factor to a number of the tracks is that several feature a psychotic-sounding lead break and overall the band feel more aggressive than usual, but this is a solid album and a sigh of relief can be breathed all round by those who give a damn about doom metal and one of it's stalwarts.
On their first five albums Saint Vitus were the masters of the old showbiz adage of "leave them wanting more", with their albums typically clocking in at only about 35 minutes. This is the shortest (32 mins) and, in my opinion, their best. There's no superfluous noodling or padding out (a trap too many Doom bands fall into), just half a dozen absolutely top quality tracks of Traditional Doom, complete with Wino's unmistakable, whiskey-soaked vocal delivery that is absolutely perfect for this style of doom. A track like Bitter Truth gets me every time, so slow and crawling that it gives me a feeling like an icy hand creeping up my spine every time I hear it.
Received wisdom is that the previous albums are better, but I disagree - where Saint Vitus are concerned, THIS is the shit!
Recorded in 1992 by Finland's Thergothon but not released until '94, a year after they split up, Stream From the Heavens represents the primordial ooze from which the funeral doom genre pulled it's hulking bulk. Taking Winter's pioneering death doom and slowing it even further, to a barely perceptible heartbeat, this was the origin of doom metal's most melancholy of all sub-genres. The production is quite poor, but doesn't affect the album overly. The music is minimalist and glacially slow with subdued, sustained guitar chords and plodding drum beats, but there are some interesting tonal variations, such as the thin-sounding organ that occasionally brings to mind the theremin sound often heard in 1950's science fiction movies and the trade off between the growling, sulphurous main vocal and the reedy and washed-out clean vocal (that weirdly sounds like The Velvet Underground's Nico if she was male!)
I think it's fair to say that although funeral doom has advanced (certainly technically) in the 25 years since it's release, this is a truly original album in the development of extreme metal and there has never really been a release quite like it neither before nor since.
A titanic behemoth of an album. Exceptionally mature atmo-sludge / death doom that really does feel like it has pushed the genres forward. Underlying most of the tracks, particularly the duo of Citadel and Howling Lands, is a ritualistic rhythm that feels particularly primal and earthy. Most of the songs mete out a fair amount of punishment, as you should expect from any death doom album worth it's salt, it is, however, anything but relentless, as in Stillness which begins as a gentle acoustic composition, building ominously to a howling guitar that doesn't sound a million miles from Dave Gilmour on Comfortably Numb and Blood on the Lupines, an almost dreamlike tale of a wanderer's ill-fated path to a cursed village and the warning he receives there. None of the tracks are as monolithic as is usual for this kind of extreme doom, with a progressive edge to most of the songs that weaves them through with a little more colour than you may expect. Don't misunderstand, this album also crushes like you wouldn't believe, check out Citadel, The Atavist's Meridian or the title track and tell me this doesn't slay like it should! Any fan of extreme doom metal should grab this future classic immediately.
This may be WITTR best album yet, and if not, it's certainly their best since 2007's Two Hunters. I had almost given up on the band, but this is a welcome return to the blistering, nature-inspired black metal of a decade and more ago from one of the prime movers in the Cascadian BM scene. There's a couple of quieter interludes featuring swedish singer Anna von Hausswolff. Neurosis' Steve von Till provides the clean vocal and plays acoustic on second track The Old Ones Are With Us, but mainly it's classic WITTR, with lyrics encompassing themes such as blessings for the mountain rivers, the celebration of the end of winter and the coming of spring and characters from Norse mythology. Unexpectedly briliant!
For me, Winter's one and only full-length passes all the tests of a truly classic album - it seems to reveal something new on every listen and still feels fresh almost thirty years after it's initial release. Although I've always considered it a really good album, I have grown to love it more on virtually every listen, to a point where it is now one of my all-time favourites. It is super-downtuned almost to point of becoming sub-sonic. John Alman's vocals sound like Tom G. Warrior and on the couple of quicker sections, Servants of the Warsmen and the first section of Destiny, there is a real Celtic Frost vibe to the music.
An early contender for Greatest Ever Doom Album, possibly only topped by Warning's amazing Watching From A Distance.
I've let it be known before that I preferred the rawness that Paul Di'Anno brought to Maiden's sound over the more polished vocal histrionics of Bruce Dickinson, because I just prefer that almost punky, aggressive style. There's no denying, though, that the switch from Di'Anno to Dickinson made Maiden far more palatable to the music press and, consequently, far more popular amongst the young fans who were getting turned onto metal (in England anyway) at this time. Number of the Beast was a decent record with a couple of excellent tracks that was symptomatic of a band forging a new direction and still finding their feet, but despite this it sold massively and catapulted Maiden to the top of the metal tree. The follow up may, therefore, have been problematic, but Steve Harris and co. ironed-out (sorry!) the uneveness of NotB and turned in my favourite post Di'Anno Maiden album, Piece of Mind. Some real classics here, Revelations, Die With Your Boots On and the awesome gallop of the Charge of the Light Brigade-themed The Trooper are all firm favourites. In fact, the first six tracks are one of the best sequences of songs I've heard on a heavy metal album. Even the three final, supposedly lesser, tracks with their fantastical 1,000,000 Years BC-style lyrics are very good songs. With this and the subsequent Powerslave, for me, Maiden hit the high water mark of the Bruce era and sadly were never this good again.
Listen, you f***ers, Paul Di'Anno kicked f***ing ass and if you really need convincing then try Murders in the Rue Morgue, Another Life and the title track from this, Maiden's best album. No vocal histrionics, just balls out, from the heart, metal / punk snarling. It's obvious that here was a young metal band who weren't scared of sounding how they wanted to sound, melding metal bombast with a punk rock attitude that marked them out as head and shoulders above the NWOBHM pack. Do you really think there would have been a Number of the Beast or Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (yawn) if this and the debut album had never been released? No, thought not.
Offputting though the ridiculous vocals are on opening track Roses of Winter, it's worth working past them to get to the rest of this cracking trad doom album from Italy's legendary Paul Chain. Chain's vocals on the rest of his tracks sound a bit like Pete Townsend (no great recommendation, but they don't detract from the great music at all). However, the album really picks up in the second half when Lee Dorrian takes over vocal duties and finds another gear with Chain's guitar work and Dorrian's vocals proving to be a doom marriage made in heaven.
Paul Chain's solo debut is well worth it for the title track alone, sends shivers up my spine every time I hear it. Highly original, if sometimes a bit hit and miss. If The Sensational Alex Harvey Band had been a doom band, then they would probably have sounded like this.
A chimeric melding of death doom and death metal that has got to be one of the heaviest records I've ever heard. Reminds me quite a bit of Winter's awesome Into Darkness (recorded three years after that 1990 classic, I'd be very surprised if these Finns had never heard it prior to recording this). Recorded originally as a demo, the sound is down and dirty, only adding to the excruciatingly weighty atmosphere. If you've any time at all for punishingly heavy music, then this is a required listen.
Another album of quality doom from Subrosa, complete with their trademark, slightly off-kilter atmosphere. There's just something ever-so-unsettling in their sound, particularly the vocals and the violin, as if you're in the presence of someone slightly unhinged who may become dangerous at any given moment. The musical equivalent of Carrie White!
With this, their third full-length release, Subrosa have put out an album of half a dozen towering megaliths of sound that really capture the essence of what Doom is all about. This is no hackneyed rip-off of all the great bands that have proceeded them, Subrosa truly do have a unique sound. Titanic, yet fresh-sounding riffs form the basis of their sound, overlayed with sometimes slightly off-key elements, such as some of the vocals and the violin, which have a disconcerting effect on the listener. All this, coupled with thought-provoking lyrics, ensure that, although most of the tracks clock in at over ten minutes, they never become boring.