AMG’s Unsigned Band Rodeö: Questing Beast – Birth

By Dolphin Whisperer

“AMG’s Unsigned Band Rodeö” is a time-honored tradition to showcase the most underground of the underground—the unsigned and unpromoted. This collective review treatment continues to exist to unite our writers in boot or bolster of the bands who remind us that, for better or worse, the metal underground exists as an important part of the global metal scene. The Rodeö rides on.”

In this year of 2024, artists on the rise have an untold treasure of heavy metal history and knowledge from which they may conjure works of the distorted and riffy kind. That’s how young acts like Questing Beast can come across with their self-imposed “power doom” tag without sounding too much like bearers of the odd torch who came before like Memory Garden or Morgana Lefay. Rather, Birth wears shades of power through vocalist Joe Harris, whose trained vibrato runs equal parts dramatic and powerful while still finding room to switch to a sorrowful tone. And the doom comes out to play through traditional lurching riffs, dry stoner drives, and extended harmonic melodies. But with Elder-like (or maybe a little more Lyle Mays to these ears) glistening interludes and shifting tempo structures, is this also prog? My oh my, what a journey Questing Beast has set forth for our hard-to-please Rodeö crew. But I think it’s a beast they can wrangle, at least this time around. – Dolphin Whisperer

Questing Beast // Birth [June 14th, 2024]

Kenstrosity: I am not known for being particularly picky when it comes to metal in general. However, for one reason or another, I tend to be more selective about the tried and trve ways ov heavy metal. Regardless of pedigree or outside hybridizations, when I see the “heavy metal” tag, I exclaim with much prejudice, “we’ll see about that!” Enter New Hampshire’s proggy heavy metal quintet Questing Beast and their debut full-length, appropriately named Birth. Unexpectedly crunchy grooves and frankly beautiful melodies characterize the majority portion of these pieces (“At Crater’s Edge,” “Growth,” “Titan’s Grip”). But, it’s the more consistent presence of palpable grit in the instrumentation, as companion to the smooth and crystalline pipes at the mic, which makes the magic of the record’s best moments (“The Comet’s Tale,” Beneath Red Leaves,” “Corruption,” “Call of the North”). Using this uncommonly well-realized formula as the basis for strong storytelling and musical composition, Questing Beast handily carve out a niche for themselves in the metalverse that makes the most out of their heavy metal heritage without trying to play strict homage to it. While many of their songs could use a bit more immediacy and the vocalist’s falsetto a bit more stable power, Questing Beast make a compelling case for themselves on their first try. Let’s see if they can follow through on album two! 3.0/5.0

Cherd: On paper, Questing Beast looks like a textbook case of multiple personality disorder. They refer to themselves as “power doom,” but their sound is a circus tent pitched over three rings of power metal, classic doom, traditional/epic heavy metal and progressive metal. And that’s not all, folks. “Corruption” includes the above PLUS a healthy dose of djenty deathcore. Remarkably, the band mostly pulls it all off. Their debut full-length Birth is best when it leans into the older styles of metal. “Titan’s Grip” is a fine epic heavy metal tune updated for contemporary ears. Meanwhile, “At Crater’s Edge” sees them sounding like a bouncier Candlemass. This comparison is especially apt because of classically trained vocalist Joe Harris, who hews closer to Johan Längqvist than to Messiah Marcolin. Harris’ powerful pipes and smooth-like-butter timbre, along with the clearly talented instrumentalists in this quintet, keep Questing Beast’s sound from descending into chaos. Things do go a bit soft in the middle of the record from a songwriting standpoint, but all the material before the first instrumental and after the second one is eyebrow-raising, invigorating stuff. 3.0/5.0

Itchymenace: Beast indeed! This album has a lot going on. There are elements of thrash, prog, death, classic metal and even some jazz. Unfortunately, this ambitious hodgepodge never coalesced in a way that I found compelling or enjoyable. Birth’s primary fault is a lack of a common thread or a narrative that ties it all together. I felt pulled in numerous directions, questing for a voice that would guide me through the disparate tracks. Instead, I got a lot of operatic wailing that never seemed to find its place within the music. Where bands like Iron Maiden or Judas Priest use this style effectively to balance the sonic frequencies across the mix, it feels like Questing Beast stole a vocal track from one album and tried to make it fit over another. I don’t know if it’s a shortcoming in the production, the songwriting, the performance or all three. Much of the lyrical content doesn’t help either. The call and response during “At Crater’s Edge” was about as silly as it gets without being Anvil. Musically, I can appreciate what the band is trying to do. The guitars are crunchy with a classic harmonic metal sound that I love. There are some good riffs and competent playing but that is not enough to make me want to put it on again. Hopefully there is life after-Birth. I wish I could give this a better score. 2.0/5.0

Why unicorn a band when they have their own mythical beast icon?

Mystikus Hugebeard: Birth is a righteous debut by a brand-new band that is already swinging for the fences. This album is, upon reflection, even grander than perhaps it might feel in the moment as you listen to it. During a typical spin, my focus is easily held by the crunchy, exciting riffs that dominate the tracklist, from the slower doom that opens “The Comet’s Tail,” through the energetic classic-metal-tinged guitars in “Beneath Red Leaves,” to the unstoppable pounding riffs of “Call of the North.” But the larger scale of Birth really creeps up on you. Complex rhythms (“Corruption”) and unconventional melodies (“Growth”) speak to Questing Beast’s admirable ambition, and they have the talent to pull off these progressive elements. It’s the bodacious, borderline campy vocals, rather, that make Birth feel epic and they cement the album’s lasting appeal for me. They’re full of righteous but tastefully applied vibrato, and the singer has the endearing timbre of an unrefined but uber-talented vocalist giving 110% that’s just hard to find these days. Some elements do betray Questing Beast’s green-ness in a more harmful way, though. Birth is crying out for some killer guitar solos to punctuate the riffs and further heighten the scale, but the few we get are underwhelming and come across as a bit sloppy, with the exception of “Beneath Red Leaves.” Furthermore, I think the drums can sound a little too sharp and could use a less distracting mix. Despite that, the broad strokes of Birth are a big success for me. Birth is the kind of hidden gem that’s exciting to discover, and leaves me with a big, satisfied grin on my face. 3.0/5.0

#2024 #AmericanMetal #AngryMetalGuySUnsignedBandRodeo #AngryMetalGuySUnsignedBandRodeo2024 #Birth #Candlemass #DoomMetal #Elder #IndependentRelease #IronMaiden #JudasPriest #Jun24 #LyleMays #MemoryGarden #MorganaLefay #PowerMetal #ProgressiveDoomMetal #ProgressiveMetal #QuestingBeast #SelfRelease #StonerDoomMetal

Stuck in the Filter: June 2024’s Angry Misses

By Kenstrosity

Managing this Filter is a full-time job. Or it would be if I paid anyone, or got paid myself. I doubt anyone in this godforsaken facility has seen a greenback in the last two decades.1 Nonetheless, I grabbed my clipboard and my flogger and I made my way to the lockers, where my dutiful minions await my first order of each day. It’d been a minute since we cleared out the ducts in the south wing of AMG Headquarters, so that’s where I ushered my team first. The poor souls shivered at the thought of tackling a highly neglected section of the system. But, as always, work needs doing and this is the work.

At long last, just when I started considering replacing my whole crew outright and leaving the current one for dead, they returned, battered and winded, but alive. And they brought wares! O blessed day! Without further ado, I bring you our June Filter!

Kenstrosity’s Medieval Mutton

Aklash // Reincarnation [June 20th, 2024 – Self Release]

Proving the unlikely flexibility of black metal as a medium, tales of knights, castles, and fantastical clashes of class marries with charred extremity so effortlessly that it comes at no surprise to me how UK Medieval melodic black metal troupe Aklash came to be. Kicking fourth record Reincarnation off with an incredible one-two punch, “Reincarnation” and “Communion with Ghosts,” Aklash’s melodic black metal-meets-Vulture Industries-meets-Modest Mouse-meets-Æther Realm concoction charms its way deep into my very being. These songs, burgeoning with lush compositions, incredible guitar work, and multifaceted personalities, evoke imagery of the ancient and the arcane so vividly that it often feels like traveling through time in an alternate universe of magic and mirth. The rabid “Babylon” takes this initial salvo and stabs yet another 1,200cc of pure adrenaline into my veins.2 As my neck swings and spirals with great velocity, giant mugs of mead spontaneously manifest in both fists. What is a sponge to do but imbibe? Against all odds, such infectious energy sustains into the magnificent closer “My Will Made Manifest,” making this record a wall-to-wall festival of sound. If it weren’t for a couple of frilly interludes and the teensiest spot of bloat in a couple of places, I could see Reincarnation growing into a year-end contender. In the end, it might do just that.

Thus Spoke’s Forgotten Findings

Cainites // Revenant [June 21st, 2024 – Scarlet Records]

It was once rumored across Eastern Europe that those who rebelled against the Orthodox church were cursed to become vampires after they died. Revenant, however, follows an Orthodox priest, whose induction into the class of bloodthirsty monsters happens irrespective of his religious devotion. Crafting a spooky tale with Scandinavian-inspired melodeath and flourishes of synthy blackened death, Italian duo Cainites strike a little like a less-polished Tribulation, but with bags of their personality. These guys know how to write a riff that shivers its way up your spine (“Theotokos,” “God’s Wrath,” “Redemption”) and dance around in your belly (“Darkness Awaits,” “Forgive Our Sins”), and damn, can it be catchy. Using a dueting mixture of growls and moaning cleans, choruses jam their way into your brain and don’t budge (“Vampire God,” “We Lost Our Sanctity”), amplifying the gleefully malicious bounce of the riffs with tongue-in-cheek melodrama. Solos have just enough yearning depth while staying grounded with a gritty tone, and not outstaying their welcome. The album generally treads the line well between camp and serious, discounting, perhaps, the extended spoken-word Bible recitation where God curses Cain (“Cainites”). In all, it’s a very good time and only grew on me the more I listened. One to check out for true fans of melodeath.3

Inherits the Void // Scars of Yesteryears [June 21st, 2024 – Avantgarde Music]

Scars of Yesteryears took me so much by surprise that I had to be informed by another staff member that it even existed. Having reviewed last year’s The Impending Fall of the Stars, and finding it quite an uplifting piece of melodic black metal, I was keen to see where the project had gone, musically, in the intervening time. The answer is nowhere, but that’s not entirely negative. This is still soaring (“L’effigie Du Déclin”), epic (“Scars of Yesteryear,” “L’eternelle Course Des Astres”), blistering (“Celestial Antler”), and sometimes beautiful (“The Endless Glow of Twilight”) meloblack. With lightning-fast and stormily dynamic riffing and enough of a melodic through-line to keep things going. The highs are not as high as they were on the previous record, the slower moments lacking the atmosphere and grandiosity that former work showed (though coming closest on “L’eternelle…” and “The Endless…”). However, the whole feels more consistent and steady, with the first half whizzing by on the tailwind of “Celestial Antler,” “The Orchard of Grief,” and “Ashes of Grievance”‘s bubbling energy, and the second dipping in intensity only to be saved by the final couple of tracks. Above-average, fiery meloblack, and worth taking for a spin even if it won’t be making any lists.

Dear Hollow’s Dumpster Disturbance

Bilmuri // American Motor Sports [June 28th, 2024 – Self Release]

Everyone loves easycore.4 In an alternative universe where easycore is a natural progression of pop country rather than pop/punk, it becomes an international treasure and that treasure is American Motor Sports. Of the crabcore alum of Attack Attack!,5 Johnny Franck is least likely to be featured on Octane Radio,6 as the Bilmuri project has been a means for musical exploration since his departure. Offering the most streamlined homage to the three M’s (‘Murica, memes, and the Midwest), get ready to crank your hog to ten songs of heartbreak, beer, and landscaping through arena pop country with needlessly heavy djent guitar riffs – alongside Franck’s signature insanity coursing through all the movements. From the deathcore-meets-honkytonk and sub drops of “Better Hell” and “Spinnin’ You Around,” the blaring and sexy sax solos of “2016 Cavaliers (Ohio),” “Straight Through You,” and “Drunk Enough,” the blazing fiddle of “Talkin’ 2 Ur Ghost,” to the Kevin James breakdown call out of “Emptyhanded,” Bilmuri creates an infectious blend of the safely predictable and the utterly apeshit. It features guest artists from country scenes (Dylan Marlowe, Mitchell Tenpenny) and indie pop spheres (Knox, Arizona) who all add yearning and theatricality to Franck’s already emotive performances. American Motor Sports is twenty-eight minutes of catchy melodies, scathing grooves, and tastefully tragic lyrics with a penchant for memes. We’re all supposed to hate it, but much to my assigned promos’ dismay and Steel Druhm‘s chagrin,7 I haven’t been able to listen to much else.

Dolphin Whisperer’s Maritime Musing

Houle // Ciel Cendre et Mis​è​re Noire [June 7th, 2024 – Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions]

We all know that black metal hits harder when it’s actually something else wrapped in a blackened and shrieking package. France’s Houle offers Ciel Cendre et Misère Noire as a one part Iron Maiden, one part Immortal, and two parts unstoppable siren screaming as vocalist Adsagsona shreds throat through each of the blazing numbers on this debut (minus the beer-swinging sailor intro). Her ear-stabbing cries tally high, and if it weren’t for her glottal punishments and accompanying guitarists’ breaks into tremolo melodies, tracks “Sur Les Braises de Foyer” and “Sel, Sang et Gerçures” could be instead the backdrops to something of the dark power metal world, replete with Maiden bass gallop and anthemic flair. She has a fine narrative croon too, but it’s her flagrant vocal flayings that sell the extremity of what Houle packs as ballast. With terraced guitar lines and thrashed-out drum breaks (“La Danse du Rocher,” “Mère Nocturne”), Ciel Cendre has the forward energy of battle and doesn’t let go to the very end, joining bands like Aorlhac and Passièsme in the modern melodic black metal field fit for castle raids. But as long-form closer “Née des Embruns” reinforces with calls of the ocean in its open and fade, Houle attacks from the sea. En garde!

Mark Z.’s Musings

200 Stab Wounds // Manual Manic Procedures [June 28th, 2024 – Metal Blade Records]

Following a rapid rise to fame during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ohio death metal troupe 200 Stab Wounds thrust their Slave to the Scalpel debut onto the masses in 2021. While I was about as mixed on that one as Felagund was, their second album Manual Manic Procedures has proven these wounds cut far deeper than originally thought. The beefy chugs that the band has become known for are still here in full force, but now they’re paired with sharper hooks and a heightened sense of maturity. On Procedures, you’ll hear acoustic plucking, immense Bolt Thrower riffing, grooves that will blow your guts out, and even some melodic death metal influence—and that’s just on the first song. The band also knows when to give you a breather, be it a well-placed atmospheric instrumental (“Led to the Chamber / Liquefied”) or an extended ride on a great groovy riff (“Defiled Gestation”). With a monstrous guitar tone, plenty of killer moments, and a track flow that’s smoother than liquefied human remains, Manual Manic Procedures feels like modern death metal coming into its own.

#200StabWounds #2024 #Aklash #AmericanMetal #AmericanMotorSports #Aorlhac #Arizona #AttackAttack #AvantgardeMusic #ÆtherRealm #Beartooth #Bilmuri #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BoltThrower #Cainites #CielCendreEtMisèReNoire #DeathMetal #DylanMarlowe #FrenchMetal #Houle #Immortal #InheritsTheVoid #IronMaiden #ItalianMetal #Jun24 #Knox #LesActeursDeLOmbreProductions #ManualManicProcedures #MedievalBlackMetal #MelodicBlackMetal #MelodicDeathMetal #MetalBladeRecords #MitchellTenpenny #ModestMouse #OfMiceAndMen #Passièsme #Reincarnation #Revenant #Review #Reviews #ScarletRecords #ScarsOfYesteryears #SelfRelease #StuckInTheFilter #Tribulation #UKMetal #VultureIndustries

Record(s) o’ the Month – June 2024

By Angry Metal Guy

As the summer sun scorched the earth, June delivered a cornucopia of crushing riffs, haunting melodies, and enough blast beats to rattle even the most hardened skulls.1 But finally, the time for the Record(s) o’ the Month for June has arrived! We understand there’s a certain impatience surrounding this, but to give you a peek behind the curtain here, the writers at AngryMetalGuy.com take great pride in the albums they reviewed being the Record o’ the Month. Thus, it’s important that we not hand out the award willy-nilly because we feel the writers should not be too easily rewarded. Such ease and timeliness make writers weak. And, you might be unaware of this, we aim to develop super reviewers; a class of reviewers with opinions and analyses so potent that your taste receptors will dance and sing upon checking out our recommendations.2

Long story short, these things take time. So, confidential details of our absolutely-IRB-approved-research aside,3 June turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable month with a couple of albums that I had trouble leaving off the list. But the top slot? You almost certainly should’ve guessed it. So, without further ado (and before impatience metastasizes into a tantrum4), we present you the Record(s) o’ the Month for June of 2024.

Enjoy the flame war and list-making competition!5

Calling Ulcerate anything other than the world’s premiere modern death metal act would be a mistake. Unlike some bands, whose meteoric rise makes them feel overhyped, Ulcerate has slowly and steadily gained steam since their debut in 2008. Having been a fan since 2009’s iconic Everything Is Fire, it has been exciting to follow their trajectory from a dissodeath band appreciated by the Trve Connoissevr to every release being one of the year’s most anticipated albums.6 Over time, Ulcerate’s sound has continued to develop, and that evolution has increasingly distinguished them from the pack. Cutting the Throat of God [purchase on Bandcamp], which was released June 14th from Debemur Morti Productions, is a powerful continuation of their journey, achieving a perfect balance between the dissonant intensity that defines their earlier work and a newfound melodic sensibility that adds depth (and more importantly, contrast) without sacrificing brutality. This album doesn’t just revisit the themes of existential dread and philosophical inquiry that Ulcerate has always explored; it deepens them, bringing a profound sense of urgency and emotional weight to their music. The atmosphere is suffocating, yet there’s a sense of catharsis in the sheer ferocity and precision of their compositions. As Thus Spoke gushed with glee, “Ulcerate’s greatest manifestations of existentially anguished, veil-tearing truth and ambitious composition” are contained within Cutting the Throat of God, making it perhaps the most profound work to date.

Runner(s) Up:

Crypt Sermon // The Stygian Rose [June 14th, 2024 | Dark Descent | Bandcamp] — In a year devoid of quality doom, Philly’s classic doom mongers Crypt Sermon brotherly shoved themselves into the spotlight with their third opus The Stygian Rose. With the Candlemassive sound heard on their past records intact, Crypt Sermon loads in scads of traditional metal elements and flirts with more extreme elements as they put on an atmospheric doom composition clinic. The band continued to refine, and master, a perfect blend of crushing doom riffs and soaring, majestic melodies that evoke a powerful atmosphere. The Stygian Rose is bolstered by a commanding vocal performance, that when paired with the band’s intricate, and heavy, compositions, raises the bar for the genre. As Steel Druhm enthusiastically exclaimed, “If this isn’t the doom album of 2024, someone made a merger deal with the Devil.“

Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System [June 28th, 2024 | Rotted Life Records | Bandcamp] — If I’m honest, I couldn’t take this record seriously at first because it’s named after the thing that a certain anarchosyndicalist is yelling as he’s forcibly grabbed by Arthur, King of the Britons7 in one of Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s most iconic scenes.8 Yet, Kenstrosity and I have an uncomfortable level of overlap musically—when he’s able to contain his enthusiasm for bad things—and so I decided to give Noxis the ol’ College Try. Fortunately for Noxis, and the readers here, the ol’ “College Try” means something different when you have a PhD. Thus, I dug deep into the Violence Inherent in the System and quickly realized that I had chosen wisely. Not only does Noxis play a delightfully energetic form of death metal that doesn’t feel like a direct homage to any scene or band, but Violence Inherent in the System is well-produced fun, and it contains the first ever—as far as I’m aware also the only—bassoon solo on a death metal record. What have we ever done to deserve the bounty of the scene?

#2024 #Blog #Candlemass #CryptSermon #CuttingTheThroatOfGod #DarkDescentRecords #EverythingIsFire #Jun24 #Noxis #RecordOTheMonth #RecordOTheMoth #RecordSOTheMonth #RottedLifeRecords #TheStygianRose #Ulcerate #ViolenceInherentInTheSystem

Neaera – All is Dust Review

By Dear Hollow

I’m not gonna pretend I’m Neaera’s biggest fan, but I was nonetheless brought hurtling back to my high school self circa 2010, when I came across their 2007 album Armamentarium and bought it on iTunes for $9.99 plus tax. Never mind that Omnicide – Creation Unleashed and Forging the Eclipse were out at that time, not to mention earlier material, but tracks like “Spearheading the Spawn,” “Armamentarium,” and “The Orphaning” were just too good. Well, I guess not good enough, because I never listened to Neaera again except to revisit Armamentarium. Until now.

I’ve heard Germany’s Neaera described as “what Heaven Shall Burn should have been” like ten years ago, but I’ve never quite understood that. Imagine twelve tracks of “Endzeit” from Iconoclast with slight variations and you’ve got Neaera. It’s that fusion of melodic death metal and metalcore with a penchant for violence and riffs that characterize your favorite straight-edge divine arsonist vegans and German metalcore at large.1 Since 2004, including a hiatus between 2015 and 2018, Neaera has honed its craft: walls of down-tuned tremolo, chunky breakdowns, warlike drums, and Benjamin Hilleke’s trademark shrieks. For eighth full-length All is Dust, it’s business as usual – however you choose to interpret that.

Pulverizing riffs are the name of Neaera’s game, so if you come with expectations of complete sonic melodeath/core saturation, you will not be disappointed. Opener “Antidote to Faith” is exactly what you can expect with All is Dust, with shredding down-tuned tremolo guiding the proceedings with slight melodic edge, the drums dancing from thrash-inspired speed and blackened blastbeats, while vocals vary from trademark shrieks, heavy barks, and growls. All is Dust is markedly rawer than its predecessors, adding a nice viciousness to tracks like the bouncy “Swords Unsheathed” and a greater emphasis on breakneck chugging and wild heart-wrenching melody in “Per Aspera.” “Edifier” is perhaps the best track here, recalling the act’s history with a hurricane of blasting riffs and groovy rhythms, while follow-up “In Vain” is a tastefully morose affair – the ruin after the storm. Like much of German metalcore, breakdowns are much more of a background element that rarely capitalizes, but adds a nice bite to tracks like “Per Aspera” and “Dividers.”

The main problem, especially compared to the act’s history, is that All is Dust’s rawer production by and large does little for Neaera’s generally one-trick pony Heaven Shall Burn worship. While Armamentarium worked well in razor-sharp precision and bludgeoning hugeness, both are lost in much of the proceedings herein, as the act’s composition formula involves building upon a single riff. Tracks like “Pacifier” and “All is Dust” feel both sloppy and lame, more varied and formidable vocals largely lost in the same-sounding muck. Another casualty, track lengths fall between the four- and five-minute range, which gives further breadth to tracks like the brutal “Edifier” but feels painfully long in “Pacifier” and “Render Fear Powerless” due to lack of direction. Furthermore, while closers “Dividers” and “Into the Hollow”2 attempt the brutality and breath attempt, largely fallen short compared to “Edifier” and “In Vain.” Ultimately, Neaera’s approach has not changed a bit in seventeen years, so those looking for movement and challenge in today’s music will be sorely disappointed.

Neaera’s “don’t fix what ain’t broken” approach has worked for its eight full-lengths and nearly three decades of existence, but All is Dust becomes a chore in its monotony. Yes, the wall-of-sound riffs are still a pleasant surprise in tracks like “Swords Unsheathed” and “Edifier,” and Hilleke’s vocals are more pronounced and rich throughout, but the muddier production and weaker bombast prove difficult to overcome – robbing the album’s teeth. Armamentarium is a return listen for me nearly constantly, but for the newest incarnation of Neaera, All is Dust is by and large a dirty disappointment.

Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Metal Blade Records
Websites: neaera.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/neaeraofficial
Releases Worldwide: June 28th, 2024

#20 #2024 #AllIsDust #BlackenedMetalcore #Caliban #FearMyThoughts #GermanMetal #HeavenShallBurn_ #Jun24 #MachinemadeGod #MelodicDeathMetal #MetalBladeRecords #Metalcore #Neaera #Review #Reviews

Orgone – Pleroma Review

By Dear Hollow

Pleroma is a kaleidoscope of colors and emotions, composed like an odyssey. It showers listeners with haunting arpeggios, winding riffs, and chamber instruments, adorned with a crown of myriad vocal styles both harsh and soothing, male and female – a far-reaching and royally ambitious sum and completion of its divine components. For an act that saturates its assault with all the decadence and bombast of a metal opera, Orgone is deeply entrenched in subtlety and restraint. Songwriting takes front and center, and nary a moment is wasted. It’s an exclamatory manifesto and toppling breeze of complete freedom and organicity – truly a religious pilgrimage of music shouted and whispered alike.

The act’s eighteen-year existence has been distinctly underground, its entire discography released independently and physical copies provided in limited runs. Adding to its obscure nature, it’s difficult to determine what style Pittsburgh’s Orgone professes exactly. Beginning as a technical deathgrind outfit with 2006’s debut EP Accumulator and 2007’s The Goliath, before drifting into more progressive death Opeth territory with the inclusion of acoustic and chamber instruments in 2014’s The Joyless Parson,1 Pleroma is even more elusive. With its sound recalling the hallmarks of post-metal, hardcore, technical death metal, jazz, and avant-garde, influences like Precambrian-era The Ocean, Diskord, Amia Venera Landscape, and Unexpect emerge – with the organic fluidity of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Language-era The Contortionist. In spite of all comparisons, Orgone exists in a league all its own.

What stands out particularly about Orgone is the act’s patience and restraint. While often an album momentum killer, Pleroma’s multiple instrumentals add uniquely graceful movements. The builds of the orchestral “Silentium” to post-metal “Approaching Babel” to the first metal attack of “Valley of the Locust” shows an impressive sense of crescendo and dynamics, likewise appealed in four-track run from the jazzy French lounge and female spoken word of “Hymne à la Beauté,” the ambient pulsing “Flâneurs,” the playful yet mournful elegy of “Lily by Lily,” and the more classical and cinematic “Ubiquitous Divinity.” While influences are scattered and seem contrived on paper, the songwriting and transitions are so fucking smooth, you would miss that they are separate tracks. Introductions of the metal attack are tantalizing in “Approaching Babel,” “Ubiquitous Divinity,” and “Mourning Dove,” hinting at the assault to come in successive tracks. Each track maintains its own identity in its respective genre pickings, but always in reference to the good of the whole – Pleroma truly. And all this is just the instrumentals.

Like the instrumentals, the metal tracks also exist on a slow and steady crescendo, not unlike the steady build of a master storyteller, as each successive track grows in intensity and fury. Letting multi-instrumentalist and Orgone mastermind Stephen Jarrett carry Pleroma’s movements through a brain-frying guitar and bass technicality that borders between intensely calculated and maddeningly unhinged, emphasized by his frantic hardcore barks, while percussionist Justin Wharton, in particular, shines in the ebb-and-flow dynamic of “Valley of the Locust,” both members highlighting passages of haunting strings and stirring vocals and blasting punishment through groovy complex riffs and dragged-out melodies that morph seamlessly between lush harmony and brutal dissonance. Eighteen-minute behemoth “Trawling the Depths” focuses on labyrinthine composition with herculean might, the heights of blastbeats and soaring riffs contrasting with passages of chamber acoustics and dark atmospherics, patiently guided across a scorched landscape. “Schemes of Fulfillment” offers the truest metal track here as well as album climax, as vocals are spit with a sudden ferocity that recalls Sleepytime Gorilla Museum’s “Helpless Corpse Enactment” alongside the heaviest riffs of the album. Finally, closing track “Pleroma” serves as the falling action – clean singing, meandering guitar, and scattered bass noodles giving a survey of the abstract destruction alongside brass explosions.

Pleroma is challenging, over an hour of content that requires multiple listens to unearth all its secrets. After a decade of silence, Orgone returns with a mighty hammer that is in equal parts evocative, progressive, diverse, and cohesive. Seamless transitions between the chamber elements and the more punishing passages with a unique melodic template that defies easy categorization all collide in a thoughtful and maddening, blindingly maximalist and bitingly minimalist interchangeably. Its more airy riffs can feel suffocating compared to a potential death metal crunch they could offer, but Orgone’s more exploratory post-metal edge makes Pleroma distinctly transcendent. “Pleroma” refers to the sum of divinity in the biblical New Testament, and Orgone’s Pleroma is divinely good.

Rating: 4.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Self-Released
Websites: facebook.com/orgone | orgoneus.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: June 24th, 2024

#2024 #45 #AmericanMetal #AmiaVeneraLandscape #AvantGardeDeathMetal #ChamberMusic #DeathMetal #Diskord #Hardcore #Jazz #Jun24 #Lounge #Opeth #Orgone #Pleroma #PostMetal #ProgressiveDeathMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #SleepytimeGorillaMuseum #TechnicalDeathMetal #TheContortionist #TheOcean #Unexpect

Amarok – Resilience Review

By Twelve

It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to review funeral doom for this site. Mostly, this is Cherd‘s fault; funeral doom itself is something of a rarity in our Promo Pit, and the guy has some sort of sixth sense that specifically tells him when it shows up. So it’s nice to sit back, relax, and listen to some low, slow, doom. Amarok, hailing from the United States, aren’t just a band of funeral doom, however—on Resilience, their second full-length release, they blend a whole bunch of styles together to create a dark, gritty, and towering work of music designed to appeal to the most morose of metal’s mortals. But how does it stack up to the crushing weight of expectation?

In typical funeral doom style, Resilience is primarily made up of four songs that each span between twelve and eighteen minutes. Many hallmarks of the style are present—slow, dramatic, drawn-out riffs, growling vocals, and the aforementioned long songs. Opener “Charred (X)” is perhaps the most funereal of the bunch, opening with slow, bleak passages that build carefully to a quiet interlude midway through the song. From there, the song builds and builds, slowly incorporating variations, breakdowns, and finally elements of black metal into the mix. Mournful guitar leads inject melody throughout while agonized vocals rasp, growl, and scream their way into a mournful edge for the song.

But even this “most funereal of the bunch” has that blackened edge, and this is where Amarok look to set themselves apart. Throughout Resilience, the band incorporates elements of doom, sludge, and black metal into their music, a choice that’s evident in the songwriting, production, and mix of the album. The guitars are crunchy with distortion, and in fact, one of the more memorable choices on “Ascension (XI)” is the way it heavily amps up that distortion towards the end of the song. By the time “Penance (XII)” reaches its conclusion, it has fully transitioned to a black metal song, with blast beats and tremolos emerging from the slow build which starts out firmly in funeral doom territory. Throughout, Amarok is careful to keep a morose atmosphere, an edge of gloominess to each song that allows the album to feel, ultimately, like a unified work of doom, despite its many influences.

Resilience hits a lot of the right notes in its sludge/doom/black/funeral metal blend, but it feels like an album that’s playing it too safe. Most of it follows a familiar structure, in which Amarok finds a strong melody to act as the primary theme for the song, and then, in true funeral doom style, repeats it, often with small variations to keep it from becoming stale. On “Ascension (XI),” however, the pattern just doesn’t stop repeating. Most of the song (and it’s an eighteen-minute song, the longest on the album) is that same riff. Despite the variations and impressive vocal performance, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the band found a strong melody and never fully moved away from it. Unfortunately, “Penance (XII”) follows a similar pattern with a riff whose timing and feeling are extremely similar. This hurts the album’s pacing and places several lengthy passages in a sort of “background noise” category, where the record hits a comfortable stride and stops doing anything exciting with it.

Of course, there are far worse things than for a song to be comfortably fine, and the ideas that inform these songs are strong ones. On the whole, Resilience is a good album, one that finds a strong catharsis as it blends several styles together in a natural and effective way. I may have a few issues with the songwriting, but I can’t complain about the way the leads make me feel, the strength of the drumming and vocal performances, or the clever way it does blend those styles. I look forward to seeing what Amarok do next—Resilience is a strong foundation to build on.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Vulture Print & Vendetta Records
Websites: amarok.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/amarokdoom
Releases Worldwide: June 28th, 2024

#2024 #30 #Amarok #AmericanMetal #BlackenedDoomMetal #FuneralDoomMetal #Jun24 #Resilience #Review #Reviews #SludgeMetal #VendettaRecords #VulturePrint

Sabïre – JÄTT Review

By GardensTale

I know we complain about promo sheets every so often around here. It’s a base necessity to vent our discontent for the sake of our sanity. We do become inoculated against minor offenses; talking big is expected, and misrepresenting the music is often the result of an overworked intern at the label hearing two minutes of a single and pounding out a blurb before his first round of coffee-fetching.1 But especially egregious examples warrant a round of the stocks with a basket of rotting fruit and eggs. Presenting, ex-Canadian Australian Scarlett Monastyrski and his band Sabïre, finally releasing his ‘much anticipated’ debut JÄTT a whole 14 years after he first got the idea.

You see, the promo sheet makes a big show of Sabïre bucking conventional genres. Monastyrski ‘simply played what came naturally on guitar,’ and developed it into something he dubbed ‘acid metal.’ It even calls Sabïre a ‘band with a hellbent determination to be different, break the mold, and shake up the status quo.’ For something made with such a strong desire to be unique, though, it really sounds an awful fucking lot like Monastyrski is imitating W.A.S.P. or Riot. I feel like the Scooby Doo gang, ripping the mask off acid metal and exclaiming: ‘It’s Old Man Trad!’2

If you saw the W.A.S.P. name-drop and immediately started pointing and screaming “GLAM!” like you’re Donald Sutherland (R.I.P.) in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, you’re not entirely wrong, as it’s definitely part of the band’s DNA, with the simple, straightforward riffs and anthemic choruses. Now, glam gets a bad rep which isn’t entirely undeserved, but Sabïre does try to mend some of the genre’s usual shortcomings. The music is not over-polished, and the faster songs even dare to get a little thrashy (“Pure Fucking Hell,” “Rip Rip KILL!!!”3). The vocals eschew most of the cheese-laden poppiness and retain a bit of bite, and though the songwriting pretty much follows all the tropes from the 80’s down to the details, they’re executed well enough to make for an enjoyable if unremarkable bit of nostalgia.

Except JÄTT approaches morbid obesity with a 70-minute runtime. That’s at least double the runtime it should have been, even when all the songs had been bangers, and they are not. Sabïre is not awful when the pacing is high, but when it goes down, so does any semblance of quality. “Ice Cold Lust” is what you get when you leave a KISS record in a bag with an old banana for a week. “Chained Down” is an excruciating mid-paced exercise in patience, with a chorus as dull as a brick painted in that green color Disney uses for its trashcans. Follow-up “The Shadow in my Heart” opens as a deeply awful ballad that just about makes me want to sink the entire continent of Australia beneath the waves, though the second half is not half as bad. The incredibly bloated intro, intermission, and outro total 10 minutes by themselves and add nothing at all.

I might’ve been tempted to pick the best tracks off for a playlist and ignore the rest, if it weren’t for the production, which seems to aim for retro and overshoots its target, landing on “no budget in the early 60’s.” Everything is drowned in enough reverb it might as well have been recorded in a sewage pipe, and there’s an aggravating crackle and pop present throughout the album. Along with the insufferable bloat and tired songwriting, it kills any interest I may have had in JÄTT. There is talent among the performers in Sabïre, I won’t deny that. But it’s not often the distance is this large between the promo sheet, with its inflated self-importance, distorted sense of innovation, and utter lack of self-reflection, and the actual product, whose at-a-glance serviceability is quickly and thoroughly eroded on full and repeat exposure.

Rating: 1.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Listenable Records
Websites: sabireacid7.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/sabireacidmetal
Releases Worldwide: June 28th, 2024

#15 #2024 #AustralianMetal #GlamMetal #HeavyMetal #JÄTT #Jun24 #Kiss #ListenableRecords #Review #Reviews #Riot #Sabïre #WASP_

Cruce Signatus – Cruce Signatus Review

By Eldritch Elitist

David Frazer is my kind of solo artist, and I mean that literally. From his social media and my occasional conversations with the Pillaging Villagers mastermind, it’s clear that his musical tastes overlap significantly with mine. Beyond that, though, he’s also all about metal. Many metal musicians cite their affinity for the genre as a mere slice of their musical diet, but Frazer seems to subsist almost entirely on metal, a regimen I relate to entirely. I raised an eyebrow, then, back when he outlined his next project for me: A multi-part conceptual work, one that he hesitated to categorize, but one that is more symphonic and electronic than purely metallic. Upon hearing the resulting product, I realized that I should always have anticipated Cruce Signatus’ eponymous first culmination would land home with me. That just leaves one question: What the fuck is Cruce Signatus, anyway?

It’s difficult and pointless to pigeonhole Cruce Signatus into any one genre, but stylistically I find that it fits snugly between the electronic baroque-metal hybrid of Keygen Church and the metallic synthwave of GosT. More theatrical than the former and less dance-y (and less batshit bonkers crazy) than the latter, Cruce Signatus finds its niche as both a cinematic soundtrack to a larger framework, and as a standalone, fulfilling metal record. It doesn’t earn its soundtrack qualifier just because it invokes moody electronic scores ranging from The Terminator to Stranger Things, but also because its thematic consistency implies connectedness even when themes are not being reprised and repurposed. As a contiguous experience, Cruce Signatus’ thirty-two-minute length feels perfect for its scope and lays a compelling groundwork for the three records due to follow in delivering a full two-hour composition.

That laying of groundwork, ironically, is also my main sticking point with Cruce Signatus. As an introduction to a larger work, it feels a bit limited in scope; its intensity is dynamic, but its tempo and tone are largely static. This inhibits some of the implied drama of the conceptual story, drama which was dynamic and unpredictable in certain Pillaging Villagers tracks, especially “The Count.” To Fraser’s credit, however, the lack of variety miraculously does not result in monotony. This record is consistently engaging and addictive, with a dozen or so moments from across its runtime worming through my head at any given time I’m not listening to it. The four movements comprising the album feature self-contained hooks and riffs which compound into clever payoffs as the tracks progress, with my favorite instance being the amped-up finale of “Lus Gladii.”

Cathartic songwriting is to be expected given Fraser’s pedigree, but his skills at electronic music production were unproven until now. Thankfully, the soundscape of Cruce Signatus feels fully realized and explosively vibrant; what it lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in flooding waves of colorful, gripping bombast. Even so, greater bass emphasis and better balance in general would have benefited the experience. This isn’t an ear-exploding affair on the level of GosT, mind you, but much of the record does feel piercingly treble-heavy. The exception to this rule is the climactic “Bellum Dei,” which eases off the high end and breathes life into Cruce Signatus’ heaviest elements. I’m invested in this project for the long haul, but I hope this track implies an allowance for later acts to feature a more even-handed mix.

Minor gripes with songwriting and production aside, I find myself once again enthralled with David Fraser’s vision. This project is deserving of significant attention; not just because of its inherent quality and inspired execution, but because its animated component, planned to accompany the entirety of the inevitable two-hour experience, is ambitious on a level I have not encountered previously in DIY music. Fraser proudly sports a “No AI” hashtag on the Cruce Signatus Bandcamp page, which serves to emphasize how vital a project like this is at this very moment. As the later acts of this epic are unveiled, I expect they will retroactively enrich this inaugural act further. As it stands today, my feelings towards Cruce Signatus are identical to my regard for this year’s Hand of Kalliach record: A nearly brilliant effort, and one that I feel confident will inevitably dovetail into a future masterpiece.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: n/a | Format Reviewed: Stream
Label: Self Release
Websites: crucesignatus.bandcamp.com/album/cruce-signatus | facebook.com/crucesignatusband
Releases Worldwide: June 6th, 2024

#2024 #35 #AmericanMetal #CruceSignatus #GosT #HandOfKalliach #InstrumentalMetal #Jun24 #KeygenChurch #PillagingVillagers #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #Synthwave

AMG’s Unsigned Band Rodeö: Brazen Tongue – Of Crackling Embers and Sorrows Drowned

By Dolphin Whisperer

“AMG’s Unsigned Band Rodeö” is a time-honored tradition to showcase the most underground of the underground—the unsigned and unpromoted. This collective review treatment continues to exist to unite our writers in boot or bolster of the bands who remind us that, for better or worse, the metal underground exists as an important part of the global metal scene. The Rodeö rides on.”

What is distance but an imaginary barrier between creative minds. At least in our (over)connected modern times, proximity does not define whether minds of similar metal inclinations can interact as a band. Such is the story of Ethan Gifford and Scott Skopec (Headshrinker, ex-Polyptych), who both hustled many moons ago about Chicago with a band, Dycanis, that never quite made it beyond demo and gig grind. Gifford then moved to Sweden, and Skopec continued his musical pursuits until they too went dormant. But riffs find a way and Brazen Tongue is a result, the amalgamation of two minds who share ideas hat have tunes in the world of Gifford’s new Gothenburg home, as well as the rip and curl of American thrash (and whatever else crosses their fancy). Throughout Of Crackling Embers & Sorrows Drowned, you may hear the sullen growl of Rapture, the bright quirk of Old Man’s Child, the anthemic melting similar to an act like Black Sites. But most of all, you’ll hear the efforts of two friends who made it happen. Does it make it happen for our crack reviewing team, though? Of the opinions of cranky elitists and socialites dour, you will soon know. – Dolphin Whisperer

Brazen Tongue // Of Crackling Embers and Sorrows Drowned [June 7th, 2024]

Dr. A.N. Grier: It’s been a hot minute since I’ve contributed to a traditional Rodeö piece. So, I guess I’ll grab the debut record from international melodeath outfit Brazen Tongue. I mean, I like melodeath, so why not? Though it appears this band has been around since 2016, this year is the first time we’ve seen any output from this two-piece group. Perhaps they needed to hunt a bassist and drummer down to round out the release. I don’t know. Jumping right in, the back-to-back “The Weight of Self” and “Metaviral” kick-off Of Crackling Embers and Sorrows Drowned on a good note with some solid melodeath mood and riffage. The latter track, in particular, sees the band in its true light, delivering vocals that recall Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe and solid melodic moments on the back half. “Last Train from Myrdal” is one of the better tracks on the album as it delves deep into melodic territories, incorporating clean guitars and big, booming clean vocals. But, it avoids being one-dimensional with its alternating calmness and pissed-off attitude. What is one-dimensional is “Beneath the Broken Trees.” Only when the pace slows and the build begins does anything of value surface on the track. “The Recidivist” also suffers the same ailment, opening with an annoying introduction that finally gives way to a hard-hitting chug and powerful chorus mixed with clean and growling vocals. Unfortunately, the song has a tough time deciding when to end and drags on far too long for what it’s offering. But the closer, “The Maddening Symmetries,” is the most frustrating track on the album. Clocking in at over ten minutes, nothing sticks until we arrive at the seven-minute mark. After this point, the melodic feels hit, climbing high before ending in hopeless depression. There’s plenty to like on Of Crackling Embers and Sorrows Drowned, and there’s plenty of potential. The band’s debut isn’t perfect, but I’ll keep them on my “potential” list when their next release rolls around. 2.5/5.0

Gardenstale: Brazen Tongue is a bit weird. Much of Embers and Sorrows is so frantically kitchen-sink, I’m reminded primarily of The Offering with Insomniummy growls. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: I loved Home, and when Brazen Tongue hits, it hits with a similar spark of inspiration, as opening combo “The Weight of Self” and “Metaviral” can attest. The riffs are never quite what you expect, pressing the dynamic quality of the performers who excel at keeping you on the wrong foot. The problem for Brazen Tongue is not a lack of inspiration, but guiding it consistently into great form. The Zornheym-esque bass choirs are a cool addition, but they are used haphazardly. Emotive doom centerpiece “Last Train from Myrdal” gets more unpleasant as it goes on, adding repetition and draining the album of energy, culminating in an aggravating fire alarm riff and a sudden unceremonious end. The band tries to get things back on the rails, but the epic closer swerves through its bloated runtime without frame or direction. Brazen Tongue is full of great performances and interesting ideas, which are most effective on short, fast songs where the band can skip over the bumps, but the longer and slower tracks invariably spiral out of control or get mired in their own ideas. A songwriting class or two would do wonders. 2.5/5.0

Thus Spoke: When I hitched myself to Brazen Tongue, I’m not sure exactly what I expected; after all, according to another staff member, I “don’t even know what melodeath is.” Nonetheless, my vague anticipations were more or less on the money. Twin guitar, energetic riff clamberings, generally mid-tempo, upbeat-feeling charges, a barking sort of vocal approach. Sprinkles of melancholy in the refrains but only to precipitate a turn to more uplifting, or alternately more sinister spidery stop-starting (“The Recidivist”) or chugging. Plus, a slower, doomier track with layered, softly cascading guitars that you can immediately imagine playing over a crossfade-filled montage from a 90s movie (“Last Train from Myrdal”). If this sounds incredibly vague, and non-committal, it’s because that’s exactly how Of Crackling Embers and Sorrows Drowned comes across. Perfectly serviceable, with some great moments, but totally unmemorable. Across its duration, there are examples of brilliant, energetic axe work and righteous riffery (“Metaviral,” “Beneath the Broken Trees”), and at points, resonant feelings of pathos (yes, even in “Last Train,” which I initially despised). But there are no moments that break the surface of the soundscape’s quite monotone harmonic themes and compositional patterns. No point at which—regardless of how much sound and fury the band apparently exude (“Walking the Parapets,” “The Maddening Symmetries”)—the music elicits anything more than a “yeah, it’s cool I guess.” It’s a no from me. But what do I know about melodeath anyway? Disappointing.

Iceberg: Of Crackling Embers and Sorrows Drowned is clearly a passion project for Scott Kopec and Ethan Gifford, because logistically, producing the debut album for Brazen Tongue sounds like a complete nightmare. The main duo live seven time zones apart, all composition was done via cloud-sharing, and every instrument was tracked in its own session. This hasn’t dulled the band’s compositional abilities however; there is a glut of quality material on this album. A blend of blackened thrash and Gothenburg melodeath—with shadows of Lamb of God groove metal thrown in there—OCE&SD is an in-your-face drag racer of riffs that rarely lets off the gas. The highlight here is the creative combination of guitar riffs and leads with contrasting rhythmic underpinning; see the openings of “Walking the Parapets” and “The Recidivist.” Album standout—proper Gothenburg sadboi “Last Train From Myrdal”—shows the band knows how to blend punishing atmosphere with resplendent orchestrals, even if it runs a bit overlong. And that seems to be Brazen Tongue’s Achilles’ heel; most every song here desperately needs trimming, and the overuse of individual segments is a chronic issue. Ten-minute closer “The Maddening Symmetries” is brimming with varied, epic, blackened material, but wore this listener’s ears out well before its conclusion. One can’t help but wonder if the geographical separation of Brazen Tongue played a part in the fine-tuning issues, but I hope the band keeps at it and watches their margins more closely; the potential here is vast. 2.5/5.0

#2024 #AmericanMetal #AngryMetalGuySUnsignedBandRodeo #AngryMetalGuySUnsignedBandRodeo2024 #BlackSites #BrazenTongue #Headshrinker #IndependentRelease #Insomnium #Jun24 #LambOfGod #MelodicDeathMetal #OldManSChild #Rapture #SelfRelease #TheOffering #ThrashMetal #Zornheym

Horseburner – Voice of Storms Review

By Mystikus Hugebeard

I believe that the words I used when Steel informed me that a new Horseburner album was in the bin were, quote, “About fucking time!” Sure, it’s only been five years since The Thief, and in the grand scheme that’s nothing. I’ve tried on plenty of stoner/sludge/doom groups during that wait (when I wasn’t listening to Conan’s Existential Void Guardian for the zillionth time) but through it all I kept coming back to Horseburner. So as far as I’m concerned, a new Horseburner couldn’t arrive fast enough. After my time with Horseburner’s newest release, Voice of Storms, I can say with confidence that it’s not only a solid album of great Horseburner-brand sludge-prog jams, it’s a fascinating step forward for a band committed to evolving their style.

Horseburner’s usual comparisons to Mastodon, Baroness, and Howling Giant still hold up, but Voice of Storms reminds me more of Mastodon than ever before. “Palisades” in particular immediately made me think of Once More Round the Sun the first time I heard it; the guitars fly through frantic noodling and big, satisfying riffs, the vocals are a harsh but melodious growl, and the drum fills are constant. Even the less hyperactive songs like “The Gift” and “Heaven’s Eye” have a great Mastodon-esque sense of dynamic energy and momentum. The overall sound of Voice of Storms is a bit cleaner this time, with the guitar’s grit toned down from The Thief. I’ve always loved the edge that grit brought to Horseburner’s riffs, but Voice of Storms still has a satisfying, sludgy fuzz that’s a joy to experience.

Where The Thief saw Horseburner zeroing in on their sound and taking bolder strides in their songwriting, in Voice of Storms Horseburner expands on their songwriting abilities by refining them. Some of their more frenetic progressive tendencies have been eschewed for a tighter scope and stronger focus on melody, and the result is an album of distinct, highly memorable songs. Just after a first listen, every song sticks out even at a cursory glance; the insanely catchy melody in “Hidden Bridges,” the frantic pace of “Palisades,” the big, beefy riffs contrasting the lightning-quick verse in “The Gift,” or the sprawling, epic escalation of “Widow.” These core motifs make the songs easy to latch onto and highly re-listenable, but Horseburner’s real achievement is how energetic the music is while never losing control. This energy plays into the themes as well; Voice of Storms is an allegory for the mistreatment of women throughout history. The energy feels almost impossible to contain like it’s fighting against the limits of the songs themselves, and it gives Voice of Storms an unrelenting but thrilling pace.

If Voice of Storms were a vacuum, there would be scant little to complain about. The latter half of “Diana” starts to recycle ideas without enough escalation to justify the runtime, and I’ve never quite connected with the interlude “Silver Arrow,” but I struggle to muster any real annoyance. But while Voice of Storms is the more consistent album, the high points don’t hit quite as high as those from The Thief. Because of the toned-down grit, heavy riffs like those in “The Gift” or “Widow” don’t have a similarly massive impact as something like “Hand of Gold, Man of Stone.” That thick, crunchy tone paired with the violent riffage made The Thief’s best moments downright electrifying; I never had a similarly rapturous moment in Voice of Storms as I did the first time I heard “Fathoms.” Still, if this were somebody’s first Horseburner album, they wouldn’t be missing some crucial piece of the puzzle. But the crunchier elements from Horseburner’s past are somewhat missed by a curmudgeonly fan like me.

I know this review is late as sin, but I wanted to get it out there because Voice of Storms deserves your attention. Horseburner could have just made another Thief and I’d have eaten it up, but Voice of Storms comes from a yearning desire to never stop changing and the results are great. Maybe sometimes a few things are lost in the churn of evolution, and I’d love to see some of Horseburner’s heavier sensibilities return in the future, but it’s difficult to ignore Horseburner’s achievement here. Voice of Storms is well-written, full of energy, and is Horseburner’s most consistent release to date; this is a vital album for Horseburner fans and for anyone looking for a refreshing slab of dynamic sludge metal.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Blues Funeral Recordings
Websites: facebook | bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: June 21st, 2024

#2024 #35 #AmericanMetal #Baroness #BluesFuneralRecordings #Horseburner #HowlingGiant #Jun24 #Mastodon #ProgMetal #Review #Reviews #SludgeMetal #StonerMetal #TheThief #VoiceOfStorms

Construct of Lethe – A Kindness Dealt in Venom Review

By Dear Hollow

Construct of Lethe embodies a constant limbo of underrating, often in cahoots with acts like Desolate Shrine or Lantern in that they lay delicate fingers upon dissonance and grime without diving headlong into them, oft sporting a blackened edge. Instead of buying into mimicry, Tony Petrocelly’s quartet Construct of Lethe has embodied a darkness all of their own, beginning with 2016’s Corpsegod, a raw and angular take on death metal, and perfected in 2018’s more triumphant Exiler, which was given the TYMHM treatment by the gone-but-unforgotten Kronos. First album in six years, A Kindness Dealt in Venom attempts to break their silence with an ambitious album designed as one continuous track with twelve distinct movements.

Construct of Lethe merely dabbles in dissonance and grime, but that doesn’t mean A Kindness Dealt in Venom is an easy or pleasant listen. Rather, there is a veil draped across its entire visage, ghostly and punishing in equal measure. Uncompromisingly bleak and haunting, it is an album you get lost in, and one you can be proud to blare at maximum volume, a challenger for fans of classic Morbid Angel, Immolation, or Hate Eternal, and for diehards of the more dissonant stylings of Noctambulist or Heaving Earth alike. Divisively more experimental and far more contemplative and divisive than its predecessors in a more pronounced doom presence and instrumental saturation, A Kindness Dealt in Venom nonetheless offers no reprieve.

Construct of Lethe first and foremost attacks their third full-length with a sense of menacing organicity and miasmic fluidity – with complete shredding in mind. You have your more predictable death metal affairs, touched upon by blastbeats and chunky riffs a la Morbid Angel or Bolt Thrower, in tracks like opening movement “Artifice” or “Denial in Abstraction,” but the true highlights are feats of songwriting that revel in a more slow-moving and ominous pace, as the dissonant jangling saturating “Contempt” and the pulsing tribal elements of “I Am the Lionkiller” inject palpable dread. Longest track “Bete Noir” is an easy climax, its nine-minute breath oozing through pulsing death/doom beatdowns of raucous percussion, thick bass, and a dynamic with disintegration in mind. Eating at the ears like a more insidious but deadlier pyroclastic flow, the percussion acts like the hammering of the anvil while the sliding interchange between Morbid Angel riffs and Immolation blasphemy in the soundtrack of madness. “Labyrinthine Terror” and closer “Tension – There is Nothing for You Here” exemplify this lethal fusion likewise, recalling more high-minded assaults like Labyrinth of Stars or Sulphur Aeon. Construct of Lethe expertly balances a dissonant death template with old school death shredding in an album that mightily succeeds in both.

Truthfully, there are no blatantly bad tracks aboard A Kindness Dealt in Venom, but the implications of its pacing and flow are questionable at best. Construct of Lethe’s first act up until “Denial in Abstraction” will have you believe that this is a pure death metal foray (like Corpsegod or Exiler) but when the second act begins you are unwittingly met with a series of build-ups with little capitalization. Tracks “Flickering,” “I Am the Lionkiller,” “Paroxysm as Pratmatism,” “Raw Nerve, Iron Will,” “Sacrosanct,” and “Tension – There is Nothing For You Here” are all instrumentals stacked in the latter half,1 and are likewise all incredibly brief affairs, the shortest “Sacrosanct” clocking in at less than a minute. I understand that Construct of Lethe composed this album as a single track with twelve movements, but this whiplash from instrumental to instrumental, with incredible dynamic builds leading to musical dead-ends, is a head-scratcher. It’s as if they included new vocalist Kishor Haulenbeek in the first half of the album then abruptly fired him before the second – even though the guy’s still employed. The flow is therefore problematic, as the first half of the album constitutes thirty minutes of the album’s forty-five. As “Bete Noir” stands as a potential SOTY, it puts all following tracks in its shadow – which sucks, because there are ten.

Construct of Lethe proves they are masters of their craft with A Kindness Dealt in Venom, but it’s almost entirely derailed by its odd tracklist. Especially when Petrocelly and company have never included an instrumental in Exiler or Corpsegod, it’s confusing why suddenly A Kindness Dealt in Venom features six of them – primarily in the second half. Don’t get me wrong, each track is fantastic, blending purist death metal with dissonant and avant-garde tendencies that never derail it due to organic production and songwriting. However, for an album that professes a cohesive whole, Construct of Lethe has never felt more disjointed. Bang your head while scratching it.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Websites: constructoflethe.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/constructoflethe
Releases Worldwide: June 21st, 2024

#2024 #30 #AKindnessDealtInVenom #AmericanMetal #AtmosphericDeathMetal #BoltThrower #ConstructOfLethe #DeathMetal #DesolateShrine #DissonantDeathMetal #HateEternal #HeavingEarth #Immolation #Jun24 #LabyrinthOfStars #Lantern #MorbidAngel #Noctambulist #OldSchoolDeathMetal #Review #Reviews #SulphurAeon #TranscendingObscurityRecords

Crystal Viper – The Silver Key Review

By Dr. A.N. Grier

I’ve been with Marta Gabriel and her heavy/power metal outfit, Crystal Viper, since their stellar 2012 release, Crimen Excepta. Not only is Gabriel an axe master, but her riffs and voice undoubtedly inspired similar power metal acts, like Unleash the Archers. But, Crystal Viper hasn’t been as consistent as they once were. The last few albums I’ve reviewed have ranged from disappointing to very good, including a Disappointment o’ the Year for 2019’s Tales of Fire and Ice. But, being a fan of her riffs, solos, and voice, I’m always looking to be surprised by a Crystal Viper record. Since its conception, the constant members of Crystal Viper have been Gabriel (previously Leather Wych) and guitarist, Andy Wave. Through the years, we’ve seen bassists and drummers come and go. This time, Gabriel has taken up the bass, skipping the middleman and getting right to it. But, being that our lead figure is now working with vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards, piano, and sharing songwriting duties, is this too much to hope for on The Silver Key?

On the surface, fans of the band will be pleased to know that nothing has changed between previous releases and The Silver Key. For the rest of you, continue to be posers. Gabriel doesn’t slow down and, with the help of her husband’s production skills, we continue to get dynamic releases that let the guitar harmonizations rise to the surface, allow the bass to make a presence, and smoothe the drums into the mix so they are their most-effective rhythm piece. You can also expect a tight, 40-minute record with ten, high-energy pieces that combine bangers, ballads, and soaring choruses. While you can’t expect much diversity in how the band crafts their albums, The Silver Key has a lot of surprises that completely floored me—not only on the first listen, but each one after.

After a soothing, spacey instrumental, the band wastes no time grabbing you by the balls and dragging you down the pavement with “Fever of the Gods.” This thing is a banger, suggesting a band having a Hell of a fun time pounding this one out. The riffs are killer, the vocals are powerful, and the melodic leads on the back half are a nice addition. Other heavy tracks into the blistering-fast riff and drum work on “Book of the Dead” and “Escape from Yaddith.” Both have the rolling riff style that brings to mind the relentless picking styles of Iced Earth and Blind Guardian, driving the songs with unforgiving speed. The first has a marching quality, much like “The Key Is Lost,” but without the fun, old-school qualities of NWoBHM. Instead, “Book of the Dead” has some nifty sinisterness in the vocal performance with a massive chorus, slick guitar harmonization, and solo work. “Escape from Yaddith” is a unique track for its speed and the shocking harmonizing guitars that sound like something from the first two Dissection records. Yeah, you read that right. And it continues into the closing track, “Cosmic Forces Overtake.”

On the power metal side, “Heading Kadath” and the title track are some of the best. The former opens with heavy-metal harmonizations before it dives into the power style of Unleash the Archers. The harmonizing guitars are the focus of this song, moving it along with great energy and a huge chorus. That said, the best chorus on the album comes in “The Silver Key.” After opening with a power metal intro, the band wastes no time delving into this massive, singalong chorus that repeats multiple times toward the end for maximum effort. Between the builds and climbs, it centers around a mid-paced groove and some gorgeous, passionate soloing after the song’s midpoint. Even the heavily sappy, piano-based follow-up transitions the album beautifully between this song and “Escape from Yaddith.” The only ballad on the album, “Wayfaring Dreamer” is a two-person show of piano and vocals that lets Gabriel explore every range of her voice without completely drenching it in cheese.

After years of absorbing the best and worst Crystal Viper has offered, I didn’t think they had it in them to create something as great as The Silver Key. For the first time in years, I haven’t felt this excited by Gabriel and co. since the good ole days. But, the performances are tight, Gabriel’s vocals are stellar, and the flow of the record works well. For the first time in a while, songs even carry themes and riffs from one track to another, building on the momentum and moods from previous tracks—specifically in the last three songs. The band also sounds as if they enjoyed writing and performing this material. That said, I wish there was as much bass as guitar because, from what you can hear, Gabriel does a fantastic job on the instrument. Doing so would, undoubtedly, make it a bit more powerful in the mix. Regardless, The Silver Key is a powerful album with plenty of fun moments, a good mix of moods, and great performances. I’m not gonna lie, I’m happy for them, and I’m happy for myself because I’m going to be listing this baby.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Listenable Records | Bandcamp
Websites: linktr.ee/crystalviper | facebook.com/crystalviperofficial
Releases Worldwide: June 28th, 2024

#2024 #40 #BlindGuardian #CrystalViper #Dissection #HeavyMetal #IcedEarth #IronMaiden #Jun24 #ListenableRecords #PolishMetal #PowerMetal #Review #Reviews #TheSilverKey #UnleashTheArchers

REZN – Burden Review

By Dolphin Whisperer

When choosing things to review, many of us choose based on genre affinity, name affinity, vibe affinity—just about any calling works.1 REZN’s whole concept of providing heavy shoegaze-laden psychedelic doom speaks deeply to me, even if the waters where music that self-describes this way provides an often less-than delivery, I accepted the band on their terms. With a DIY aesthetic that has built REZN a following over the past seven years, their hard work has paid off and brought them to the Sargent House family to release Burden more widely as a partner album follow-up to the critically good Solace. But with an experience that’s so entwined, the two cover arts even connected, can Burden prove an experience worthy all to its own?

Despite its lush guitar textures and breathy, dreamy vocal work—reminiscent both of the nasally drift of jam bands like Elder or the infiltrating snap of Smashing Pumpkin’s Billy Corgan—Solace felt like a smooth and level experience that was building to some sort of darker drama. In Burden, the opening chimes that give way to a present and grinding bass that rattles into industrial snare hits signal where Solace feared to go, or rather that to which it aspired. And as this tonal descent persists, Burden carves out a defined spot in the wobbling REZN discog with a glistening but rock-dragging edge. This act has gone a long way in using their pedal exploration and watery vocal modulations to define a sound that rings both true to the continually hazed-out scene of psychedelic doom while retaining a few traceable REZN nugs.

Most importantly, though, throughout Burden REZN maintains a sense of forward motion, which can be tricky in a lane that prides itself largely on “tone porn” and iterative sounds. Several jangles recall refrains from their previous work (“Indigo,” “Collapse” specifically), but the careful construction of each song as thicker and more hissing entity gives even similar characters an extra YOB-y edge—a little more earth in REZN’s air, if you will. And, much like those legendary long-form, slow-burn performers, REZN uses percussion that snaps from rock-driven and playful to heavy-handed doom crushing on the calculated and cascading roll of a riff. Only on “Bleak Patterns” does Burden wander about a mode that places too much value in a tempo-crawling repetition, which feels out of place among the fuller in frolic attitude that fills so much of the album.

Yet for all of this album’s immediacy in riff impact and success in moody hypnotism, a lack of sonically stunning and memorable peaks continues to define a REZN trend. The introductory puff that pulls through “Indigo” threatens the cool and calm demeanor that this band normally possesses with a welcome turbulence. Similarly too does the near-heroic guitar wailing that closes “Instinct” and the Pink Floyd-ian sax crooning that tags a dark side to “Soft Prey.” But, even after as many listens as I’ve sunk into Burden—probably too many given how comfortable the ride is—its space between these climactic posts becomes notably drifting and atmospheric in an attention-dropping manner. Undoubtedly, many of you dear readers and listeners are the kind of dreamer who may swirl about each modular oscillation or track the trajectory of each space-bound, dissipating lead. However, I find myself often rudely awakened from the peace of happening by the train whistle guitar squeal2 that screeches forth the call of the closing and fuzzed-out “Chasm.”

If it sounds like I’m being a touch tough on the exploratory and serene sounds that these Chicago psychmongers offer with Burden, forgive me—I never expected to be reviewing REZN three times now in the span of about fifteen months. But I do think that it is a marker of success that even in that tight calendar turn, REZN has managed to stay consistently good, if just a tad over-consistent. Burden, as each record in this quick sequence has, adds another fold into the inward-gazing reflections that this musical tribe prizes. REZN may not have re-aligned the stars with riffed-out yet atmospheric tone summoning, but they give me all the reason to still try and wait for whatever it is they do next.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Sargent House | Bandcamp
Websites: rezn.band | rezzzn.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/reznband
Releases Worldwide: June 14th, 2024

#2024 #30 #AlternativeRock #AmericanMetal #Burden #DoomMetal #Elder #Jun24 #ProgressiveRock #PsychedelicDoomMetal #Review #Reviews #REZN #SargentHouse #Shoegaze #SmashingPumpkins #Solace #YOB

Fellwarden – Legend: Forged In Defiance Review

By Mystikus Hugebeard

Fellwarden is the solo atmospheric black metal project of The Watcher, the vocalist and co-founder of Fen. Fen has enjoyed a solid chunk of praise over the years from the AMG council, and I myself have always regarded Carrion Skies as an exemplar of quality atmoblack. But it was not this promising pedigree that inspired me to claim Fellwarden, for I wasn’t aware of it on first contact. I was lead by my simple love for the gentler, atmospheric side of metal—a quality I’m told I share with Fellwarden’s previous reviewer, Emya. Emya did not look favorably on Wreathed in Mourncloud, Fellwarden’s previous release, citing it as dull, unmemorable yoga-metal. Perhaps a fresh set of ears is exactly what’s needed to yield a more favorable outlook on Fellwarden’s latest opus, Legend: Forged In Defiance.

As it so happens, I think Legend is Fellwarden’s best work to date. Musically, the formula is familiar both to the atmoblack genre as a whole and Fellwarden’s previous works. The blast beats, tremolos, and The Watcher’s slightly snarling growls sound, coincidentally, a lot like Fen, while the backing clean vocals construct a somber and expansive ambience similar to Saor or Sojourner. The harmonic interplay of the guitars and the vocals is very pretty, as has always been the case with Fellwarden (Fenwarden?), but what makes Legend’s music more engaging this go around is the small matter of a much more present, urgent mix. It’s the kind of production that basically unlocks the band’s potential, where the music finally sounds like it should. The guitars, previously a distant suggestion, are placed farther forward, giving them a satisfying immediacy even as the songwriting emphasizes the sweeping harmonies and the strength of Legend’s atmosphere.

On the topic of atmosphere, Legend is one of classical heroic fantasy, a tribute to the late David Gemmell’s fantasy series of the same name, and this fantastical influence translates to the music of Legend rather well, illuminating an unpleasant world that is pleasant to inhabit as a listener. Blood-soaked battlefields and pale, grassy hills are heard in the grim “Despair,” while the harmonizing guitars in “Renewed Hope” and “Desperation” exude a lonely, mountainous chill. There is a real richness to the atmosphere; the opening riffs of “Renewed Hope” convey the earnest masculinity of a typical sword-wielding hero, contrasting the mournful vocal harmonies of “Desperation,” “Serenity” and “Death” that illustrate the sorrow and loss inherent to a hero’s journey. The lyrics, while thematically appropriate, are a little harder to take seriously. Granted, I know the source material is the literary equivalent to a Boris Vallejo painting, but choice lines like “he needs to be able to know that he is a man” (“Renewed Hope”) or “a man must pass something on, otherwise he is useless” (“Death”) can’t help but induce eye rolls.

Rich though the atmosphere is, it’s typically more in the background as a foundation for the music to build upon. But the opener “Exultance” strikes the perfect balance between atmosphere and music in a way that heightens them both, and it dominates my recollection of the album. The melodies have an invigorating Highlander flair to them, while the subtle, vital detail of the forceful exhalation of the vocals further breathes life into that Highlander feel—it’s an exciting energy that the rest of the album sadly doesn’t follow up on. Considering Legend’s excellent production job, I wish the songs after “Exultance” leaned further into its urgency. It doesn’t help that “Exultance” is followed by “Despair,” whose grimdark baritone vocals don’t quite land and counteract the high bar set by the opener. The remainder of Legend isn’t exactly bad in comparison to “Exultance,” and it’s carried by the strength of The Watcher’s compositional ear for pleasant harmonies. But while Legend is well-composed and appealing, despite all the fantasy themes of masculinity and defiance, few moments truly excite the way “Exultance” does.

Not to outsource my reviews to our dearly departed writers, but I’d like to highlight something Emya said in her Wreathed in Mourncloud review that’s important when talking about Legend: “…Fellwarden has [not] yet released an album which lives up to their potential.” In many ways, Legend represents that potential being realized. The cleaner production enriches the music and allows the fantastical atmosphere to be enjoyed in all its nuance. However, an exciting song like “Exultance” demonstrates that there are depths to Fellwarden’s potential yet unplumbed. I look forward to what Fellwarden does next.

Rating: Good!
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320kbps
Label: Eisenwald
Websites: facebook | bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: June 14th, 2024

#2024 #30 #AtmosphericBlackMetal #BlackMetal #Eisenwald #EnglishMetal #Fellwarden #Fen #Jun24 #LegendForgedInDefiance #Review #Reviews #Saor #Sojourner #WreathedInMourncloud

Anvil – One and Only Review

By Itchymenace

What’s left to say about Anvil that hasn’t already been said? In 1981, when I was nine years old, listening to The Beatles and riding my Schwinn Stingray around the neighborhood, Anvil was busy unleashing their debut, Hard and Heavy. Now, here we are 43 years later. I’ve gone through many different bikes, but Anvil is still writing the same album. Like AC/DC, they’ve locked into a tried-and-true formula that keeps the fans coming back to the smithery. It’s taken a small army of AMG writers to keep up with the band’s output and this time, my number came up. As “delightful” Doc Grier said in his 2022 review of Impact is Imminent, “Once you’ve reviewed Anvil, you can’t get yourself to do it again.” As fun as this has been, I hope that’s true. I’ve probably listened to more Anvil in the past month than I have in the past 40 years. Most of what I know about them comes from the infamous 2008 documentary. The question, as ever, is “How has Anvil endured all these years?” Cue the flying V and let’s see what One and Only can tell us.

Is it ironic that the opening title track—a song all about being unique—contains some of the most generic riffs and sing-along tropes you’ll hear all year? I honestly can’t tell if their tongues are in their cheeks or if they’re being sincere. Such is the enigma that is Anvil. And yet, I’ve had that fucking song stuck in my head for a week so, who’s the real sucker here? I’ve learned that there are no complex layers to peel away with Anvil. It’s simply about dropping your inhibitions and rocking hard. Exhibit A(nvil): “Rocking the World.” Like Judas Priest’s “I’m a Rocker” or Metallica’s “Whiplash,” it celebrates the joys of touring and playing loud music to adoring fans—clearly the thing that keeps Anvil going above all else.

Lyrically, much of One and Only is the equivalent of a Tony Robbins webinar. It’s filled with vapid motivational speaker cliches that will appeal to only the most desperate of listeners. “Feed Your Fantasy” urges you not just to have your dreams, but to make them come true. Crazy, I know. “Heartbroken” assures us, in a slow and plodding sort of way, that grief shall pass. Even more painful is that every line must be followed by a predictably terrible rhyming couplet. Pairing “humanity” with “insanity” or “rules” with “fools” was already out of style in 1987.

Musically, this album is what you’d expect: plug-and-play riffs, formulaic song structures, and simple but catchy melodies. As “stately” Steel Druhm said in his 2018 review of Pounding the Pavement, “You always get a few fun tunes per release.” In this case, I’d go with “Condemned Liberty” with its pummeling opening guitar riff and “Fight for Your Rights” with its high-octane double-bass drive. A fun fact I learned while researching this album is that Steve “Lips” Kudlow was considered for the guitar slot in Motorhead. You can hear the influence in “Fight for Your Rights” and “Dead Man Shoes.” In his review, the Great Ape Boss also said, “What Anvil album would be complete without a few shit bombs?” In this case, there are plenty to choose from. Once upon a time, Lips used to sing songs. Somewhere along the way, he traded his slightly velvety pipes for a very uniform, staccato delivery that makes all the verses on One and Only sound the same. I guess in listening to “Gold and Diamonds,” the one song on the album that he attempts to sing, you begin to understand why he stopped.

The press release accompanying One and Only opens by referring to the band as “one of the most influential in heavy metal history” and that “authorities on the subject regularly vote Anvil among the top positions.” I’m curious who these authorities are and where they’re casting their ballots. Still, despite even the most cringy of moments—such as the opening lyrics to “Run Away”—Anvil continues to exude a contagious, almost mystical charm. That empathetic metalhead deep inside you wants to get your better judgment drunk on Molson and scream along. As “gregarious” Gardenstale stated in his 2020 review of Legal at Last, it’s “Anvil doing Anvil in the style of Anvil.” The same applies for One and Only. This is no Invincible Shield, but I give them credit for keeping the energy alive after all these years.

Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps MP3
Label: AFM Records
Website: Facebook.com/anvilmetal
Releases Worldwide: June 28th, 2024

#20 #2024 #AFMRecords #Anvil #CanadianMetal #HeavyMetal #Jun24 #Motörhead #OneAndOnly #Review #Reviews

The Eternal – Skinwalker Review

By Steel Druhm

In 2018, Aussie Gothic doom act The Eternal presented me with one of my most challenging trials as a music reviewer. Waiting for the Endless Dawn was a sprawling, meandering monster of an album running well over an hour, but the songs and morose atmosphere had a lot going for them. I agonized over whether the sheer length undercut the quality writing and in the end, I awarded it a 3.0. While I still stand by the criticisms I leveled, the album continued to infect my brain over the years and I realize I underrated it. Jump forward 5 years and The Eternal are back with another hour-plus dose of doom and gloom, posing all the same questions I battled with in 2018. Is seventh album Skinwalker well crafted enough to make an hour of mopey gloom palatable and digestible in one sitting or have they once again given the listener too much of a depressing thing? Getting Tomi Joutsen of Amorphis to provide guest death roars certainly works in their favor, but hard questions remain to test Steel‘s metal.

If you heard Waiting for the Endless Dawn, 10-plus minute opener “Abandoned by Hope” will feel very familiar. It’s a massive Goth doom piece littered with influences ranging from Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, and Tiamat, with heavy riffs and weepy flourishes paving the way for Mark Kelson’s soft, plaintive vocals. He’s the rare vocalist capable of sounding vulnerable and heartbroken but also ominous and creepy like Tiamat’s Johan Edlund. Tomi Joutsen’s deep death roars are sprinkled in as accents and work well offsetting Kelson’s glum crooning. The vocal hooks are ever-present and the song is unnaturally addictive, showcasing smart peaks and valleys and glossy, sticky guitar work. Is it too long? Absolutely. 7-8 minutes would have sufficed, but The Eternal go big and won’t go home. In sharp contrast, “Deathlike Silence” is a concise goth rocking gem with a sweet, earwormy chorus. It sounds like prime Lacrimas Profundere meets One Second era Paradise Lost and it gets in your head fast and sets up a successful bait shop. “Under the Black” works equally well, with touches of Viva Emptiness era Katatonia blending with Ghost and H.I.M. slickness, and the use of post-metal aesthetics adds weight and depth. “When the Fire Dies” may be one of my favorite Goth doom songs of the past few years, with the post elements again paying big dividends by extending the power of the frail mope rock.

Then come the patented doom marathon The Eternal feel compelled to deliver. “The Iconoclast” is 10 minutes and feels 12, but somehow it still works and forces you to make a grudging peace with its bloated excess. These guys possess a shrewd sense of the dramatic and understand the theatrical aspects of Goth doom. The way the song slowly builds suspense before the cathartic release is masterful. Mark Kelson is the downtrodden Ring Master of the ceremonies, guiding you from attraction to attraction with smart vocal placement and once again, Tomi’s death eruptions are the icing on the grave cake. There are segments here that remind of Ava Inferi’s stellar Onyx opus and there’s a fuck-ton of forlorn grief energy to be had despite the overstuffed package. Could it be 2-3 minutes shorter? Could Doc Grier be nicer? Both are stupid questions. Things close with another study in excess, 9-plus minute “Shattered Remains,” and yet again The Eternal use sage songcraft to rescue the freighter from the rocky shoals. The music is just heavy enough to satisfy and Kelson does his sadboi thing with grace and aplomb as Tomi leaps in and out dropping the death hammer. The chorus is instantly memorable and evocative, sure to harsh your mellow, and send you to the weepery. With no songs feeling uninspired, The Eternal again deliver an hour-plus of music you can wade through and still want more of despite the extra padding. No small feat that.

This is Mark Kelson’s show and the man delivers a vocal tour de force of Gothy unhappiness. His voice is perfectly-suited to the style and his ability to move from ominous baritone to higher register crooning conveys the rise and fall of emotion well. Richie Poate and Kelson are a formidable guitar tandem, adept at weaving heavy doom riffs with uber-sad trilling and weepy noodling. The icy post-metal aspects are well executed and highly effective in timing and placement. Tomi Joutsen is used sparingly but effectively to punch the heaviness upward. He’s not on every song so things never feel formulaic or forced. This a band that knows this genre inside out and knows how to pluck the heartstrings long and hard.

Skinwalker is 65 minutes of high-class depression bottled by professionals and hawked by grungy snake oil salesmen. The Eternal refuse to downsize and will not be rushed. If you have the patience though, they have the fresh Goth goods. If they ever learn to resist their fatter angels, they’ll drop a magnum opus that will shake the heavens. Until that day, Skinwalker will do just fine.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Reigning Phoenix
Websites: the-eternal.com | facebook.com/theeternal | instagram.com/theeternalofficial
Releases Worldwide: June 28th, 2024

#2024 #35 #AustralianMetal #AvaInferi #DoomMetal #GothicMetal #Jun24 #Katatonia #LacrimasProfundere #ParadiseLost #ReigningPhoenixRecords #Review #Reviews #Skinwalker #TheEternal #Tiamat #WaitingForTheEndlessDawn

Release the Titans – The Odyssey Review

By Kenstrosity

There are a lot of countries I automatically associate with power metal. Italy. The US. Germany. Canada, even. But not Norway. I associate that country with edgelord black metal, church burnings, brown cheese, and my roomie. And yet, here I sit, jamming Norwegian power metal outfit Release the Titans. Established in an unspecified year,1 and originally a one-man project spearheaded by guitarist/vocalist Pål Olsen,2 Release the Titans started dropping a cavalcade of singles from 2022 into 2023. Those who have listened to all of those already know this album pretty well, but I hadn’t heard a thing up to this point. So, I embark upon The Odyssey with fresh ears and an open mind.

My first impression of Release the Titans is that they at the very least understand their assignment. Righteous lead guitars, chunky but rapid-fire riffing, and lots of big arena energy abound. In each song, listeners can look forward to well-paced and lively tunes pulling influences from Helion Prime, Dire Peril, Brainstorm, and even Unleash the Archers. That’s good company to keep in this game. Pål Olsen is a beast on the lead guitar, shredding like his life depends on it. Sebastian Madsen does more than a respectable job on second guitar, chugging along with great rhythms and boundless groove, as bassist Iben Solberg works that low end with reliable consistency and finesse. Last but not least, drummer Geir Øivind Vågane drops massive beats and fills on a regular basis, driving the record forward with vitality and verve.

Clearly, Release the Titans have talent and skill, but their songwriting chops need further development in order to mingle with the genre’s biggest players. Many choruses, such as the one on opener “Dawning of Man,” shove to the forefront without ceremony or tact. Blunt force transitions like this one can work in the right context, but in this case this strategy always comes across as clumsy and unrefined. In other areas, Release the Titans appear unsure when to allow a song its natural end. “Exodus” and “Sea of Tranquility” both overstay their welcome with overlong concluding passages, extending each number’s life span a minute or more past due. However, the record’s biggest drawback is Pål Olsen’s vocal performance. Nasal, strained, and considerably distracting, Pål’s valiant effort to breathe fire into these songs instead invokes a cringe response or a bemused chuckle. The worst offenders in the former case include way off-key falsettos in “World Ablaze” and “Horizons Beyond.” In the latter scenario, I found myself entirely bamboozled when I misheard certain lyrics in “Sea of Tranquility” as “strange creatures are suckling me” when they actually read “strange creatures are circling me.” That said, with some more practice and training, Pål could very quickly become the vocalist this band needs to succeed. Or, if they were so inclined, the band could hire a new one and resolve the issue that way.

Listening past these misfires and miscalculations, a lot of material on The Odyssey holds promise. Bops like “Sole Survivor,” “Cygnus-X1” and closer “Into the Unknown” stomp and bounce with the best of them, and offer all of the adventurous spirit I expected from a record of this kind. Engaging, if not outstanding, cuts “God of War” and “Cryosleep” further deliver on Release the Titans’ premise of explorative, space-faring journeys with ripping solos, pumping grooves, and interesting riffcraft. Also commendable for a debut record, The Odyssey is cohesive and organized perfectly for enjoyable revisits by anyone with an affinity for the style. Finally, The Odyssey sounds pretty great. It might not break any molds for the genre, but all of the album’s constituent tones and textures are right, sit in a comfortable spot in the mix, and offer enough breathing room as to be pleasant to hear across the board.

As it stands, I can only really recommend The Odyssey to power metal’s most die-hard fans. There’s a lot of potential here, as the band members know exactly what to do with their instruments (with the sole exception of vocals) to make space waves. Unfortunately, those vocals are a major drawback to my enjoyment of this record, as are the abrupt chorus transitions and occasional bloat. Ultimately I’m disappointed overall, but also hopeful that, with more time to refine and develop their approach, Release the Titans improves.

Rating: Disappointing
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Self Release
Websites: releasethetitans.no | facebook.com/releasethetitansband
Releases Worldwide: June 21st, 2024

#20 #2024 #Brainstorm #DirePeril #HelionPrime #Jun24 #NorwegianMetal #PowerMetal #ReleaseTheTitans #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #TheOdyssey #UnleashTheArchers

Sons of Arrakis – Volume II Review

By Iceberg

Break out the questionable popcorn buckets everyone, we’ve got Dune-themed stoner rock inbound! Since 2019, Montreal quartet Sons of Arrakis have been preaching the Gospel of Herbert. Dropping Volume I in 2022, they made a quick turnaround with follow-up Volume II1 and this one managed to wriggle its way out of the sump like a determined sand trout. The promo language describes the band as “melange rock2 and cinematographic sci-fi rock,” but my eyes were drawn to the Black Sabbath and Queens of the Stone Age name drops. I could use some dusty, bloodshot grooves in my life, and what’s not to like about songs fawning over gargantuan, drug-dealing worms?

Sons of Arrakis pull their sound from a desert much closer to home: Southern California. Queens of the Stone Age and Them Crooked Vultures are clear influences here, especially with the slithering guitar lines that refuse to stay in one place long. But the biggest—and most contemporary—comparison I find would be King Buffalo, albeit with the prog dial turned down a few notches. Volume I saw the band flirting with stoner doom, but with the exception of a few riffs in “Blood for Blood” and “Burn Into Blaze,” most of what you’ll get here is psychedelic, stoner rock. Not that this is a negative, per se. If anything the riffcraft of Frédéric Couture and Francis Duchesne fares better than before, balancing rhythmic chug with leaping diversions and fuzz-driven divebombs. And befitting the gorgeous cover art, this record sounds excellent, especially Mathieu Racine’s all-natural drum kit, balancing perfectly against Victor Lepage’s rumbling bass and the warble-and-fuzz of the guitars.

For a relatively young band, Sons of Arrakis feel comfortable with both sound and direction on Volume II. Groove and swagger rule this empire of sand, often mid-paced and always lashed to an admirably constructed riff (“Scattering,” “Beyond The Screen of Illusion,” “Burn Into Blaze”). The verse of “Beyond The Screen of Illusion” echoes Mastodon’s “Blood and Thunder,” and “Metamorphosis” reminds me of Second Stage Turbine Blade-era Coheed. I adore the tone of their guitar leads, which are generally too short to call solos and are woefully underutilized on the whole (“Scattering,” “Metamorphosis”). Frédéric Couture sticks strictly to clean vocals, utilizing a reedy, nasal tone not unlike what one would hear in Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, and while this may be a polarizing choice, it works within the style. Only taking up a lean—near-starved—33 minutes of music, all the pieces should be in place for a pleasant excursion into the deep desert. So what’s the catch?

Sons of Arrakis rarely change gears from their tried and true formula, and this causes much of Volume II to congeal into a single, fuzzed-out amalgamation. Opening duo “Scattering” and “High Handed Enemy” contrast nicely, placing a mid-paced stone rock anthem against a more down-tempo, atmospheric number. But past that, tracks begin to blur together in both tempo and swinging groove (“Beyond The Screen of Illusion,” “Interlude I, ”“Retaliation”). This is also a good place to mention the two interludes contained herein, which add little to the conversation other than a really fun riff (“Interlude I”) and ethereal noodling (“Interlude II”). Closer “Caladan” is a beautiful piece for acoustic guitar and swirling, faintly menacing synths, but the denouement is unearned since its preceding track, “Burn Into Blaze,” never really reaches any heights that require descent. And finally—and this is mostly a personal gripe—nothing in the music or the lyrics really screams DUNE! to me, which is a bit of a letdown for a band with such a pointed name. Without the anchoring of the concept, and without any real peaks and valleys to the songwriting, Volume II comes off as a great collection of tracks, but not a cohesive album.

Volume II shows that Sons of Arrakis have all the tools to make a great record, but need to reach out of their comfort zone. There are some sharp riffs lurking in “Blood for Blood” and “Burn Into Blaze,” but they’re in the minority amongst their homogeneous brethren. Fans of the stoner and psychedelic variants should give this a spin, they may find more to love than I did. I’ll keep my eye out for the band’s future work, but I foresee this album fading into my rearview as a shimmering mirage.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: WAV
Label: Black Throne Productions
Websites: sonsofarrakis.com | facebook.com | Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: June 7th, 2024

#25 #2024 #BlackSabbath #BlackThroneProductions #CandianMetal #Jun24 #KingBuffalo #PsychedelicRock #QueensOfTheStoneAge #Review #Reviews #SonsOfArrakis #StonerDoom #StonerRock #ThemCrookedVultures #VolumeII

Illdisposed – In Chambers of Sonic Disgust Review

By Saunders

Since forming way back in 1991, Danish stalwarts Illdisposed have stood the test of time, still banging out albums some thirty-three years active in the scene. Playing an accessible style of chunky, groove-based death, marked with an accessible streak and a heaping supply of melody, Illdisposed possess solid instrumental chops, and at their best, an ability to combine chugging heaviness with addictive songcraft and headbangable grooves. Results may vary across their lengthy career, admittedly I missed 2019’s Reveal Your Soul to be Dead, but these weathered vets have cranked out some solidly respectable output. 1-800 Vindication was a really cool album back in the day, and part of a surging mid-career purple patch. However, with the dreaded Law of Diminishing Returns threatening to derail their twilight years, can Illdisposed channel their glory days on their fifteenth LP In Chambers of Sonic Disgust, or will this go down as another also-ran release in the stacked metallic landscape of 2024?

In Chambers of Sonic Disgust does not aim to reinvent the wheel or drift from the band’s well-worn formula, with the foundations of the modern Illdisposed sound melded in concrete. Long-time listeners may perhaps find comfort in what the lads have cooked up, though inevitably at this point in the band’s marathon, at times inconsistent career, mileage will vary. “Spitting Your Pain” kicks proceedings off with a solid bang, as chunky, hooky riffs and gruff vocals drive the song’s groovy, anthemic swagger. It’s fairly standard Illdisposed fare, but well executed and catchy enough to sustain interest. While not overly technical, the musicianship is tight and the experienced hands execute well, always keeping their groove-centric riffing and mid-paced bluster front and center. Likewise, the material is easy on the ear, in part due to an impressively dynamic master, inoffensively accessible streak, and bright melodicism bolstered by atmospheric synths.

Perhaps running low on song titles, “The Ill-Disposed” combines a menacing rumble with thundering double bass work, unleashing a straightforward, yet catchy anthem. In Chambers of Sonic Disgust offers typical Illdisposed energy and exuberance, however, the songwriting fluctuates from solid, moderately enjoyable hit-outs to material that’s stock, sometimes bland, and only fleetingly memorable. “For Us” offers glimmers of inspiration, its livelier, more dynamic arrangement spiking the usual mid-paced grooves with impactful riffing, thrashy undertones, and scorching solos. Amidst a handful of forgettable tunes, the album ends on a loftier note courtesy of closing duo “All Electric” and “Pain Suffer Me.” The former shoehorns orchestral elements and grand melodies to solid effect, while the latter channels some At the Gates-esque Gothenburg vibes, leaning into their thrashier, melodeath influences and jacking up the speed factor, an element sorely missing on the album.

Performances are solid and workmanlike, playing to the band’s riff and groove-heavy strengths, however, the lack of compelling material and lasting hooks creates an issue regarding staying power. Elsewhere, the songwriting would benefit from increased bursts of speed and urgency to break the predominantly mid-paced attack and formulaic trappings. Despite the aforementioned dynamic master and generally appealing sonic platform, the mix has some problematic and distracting elements. Although a reliably serviceable vocalist throughout their career, Bo Summer’s trademark gruff growls are distractingly pushed too far forward in the mix. Coupled with a lack of variety, the vocal performance occasionally grates and takes punch away from the guitars, which could stand to be meatier and more authoritative. In the end, the eleven tunes spread across the album’s shade under 45 minutes duration offer a mixed bag of entertainment, too often swaying towards the safe and bland end of the Illdisposed songwriting repertoire, leaving little more than empty calories when all is said and done.

Props to Illdisposed to continuing to fight the good fight after decades plying their trade in the metal underground. In Chambers of Sonic Disgust is by no means a bad album, nor is it the kind of later career album to demand attention or recall their glory days. The writing just isn’t quite up to snuff across the runtime to really hook the listener in and engage deeper interest. Aside from a handful of stronger cuts, In Chambers of Sonic Disgust lacks consistency and edge, while the vocal heavy mix grinds the gears, resulting in a serviceable, but ultimately forgettable experience.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 10 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Massacre Records
Websites: illdisposed.dk | facebook.com/illdisposed1
Releases Worldwide: June 24th, 2024

#25 #2024 #AtTheGates #DanishMetal #DeathMetal #Illdisposed #InChambersOfSonicDisgust #Jun24 #MassacreRecords #MelodicDeathMetal #Review #Reviews

Abysmal Winds – Magna Pestilencia Review

By Mark Z.

In the last few years, one of my favorite strains of death metal has been the “dark” variety. It’s not really a subgenre or even a wave, but more of a feeling that certain bands exude. I’m thinking specifically of groups like Cruciamentum, Mortem, Sadistic Intent, Grave Miasma, and other bands of their ilk. These are groups that offer a musty and ominous approach to death metal, groups whose atmosphere makes it feel like no matter how many times you listen to them, there is always something black and slimy lurking undiscovered in some hidden corner of the world they create. Thus, when I saw that Abysmal Winds describe themselves as “dark death metal” and count both Sadistic Intent and Grave Miasma among their influences, I couldn’t wait to check them out. Formed in 2020, this Swedish group brings experience from a whole host of obscure metal bands, with Avsky, Corpsehammer, and Omnizide probably being some of the bigger names. Following their 2022 demo Doom Prayer, the group are now releasing their debut album, Magna Pestilencia.

Listening to Magna Pestilencia, it’s obvious that Abysmal Winds have a particular affinity for Grave Miasma. Like that British group, these Swedes use a lot of groaning tremolos that writhe and hum beneath gruff growling vocals and steady driving rhythms. Things never get too aggressive, with the band instead focused on creating malevolent and cavernous compositions that still manage to have discernible riffs. In keeping with their origins, the group also have a distinct Swedish death metal flair, though that influence surprisingly comes from the drums rather than the guitars. Often, these songs are propelled by the same punky Swedeath beats used by Dismember, Entombed, and the millions of Swedeath bands that came after those two. They also throw in the occasional blast beat or slower moment, though things never get particularly fast or doomy.

The biggest problem with Magna Pestilencia is that it sticks very rigidly to its formula. Most of these songs simply cruise forward on mid-paced Swedeath beats, and the occasional blast beat or slower moment simply does not offer enough variety to make for a wholly engaging listen. By the album’s second half, I’m practically begging for some sort of crawling doom break, sinister melody, or big crunchy riff that will get my noggin moving. Interestingly, the intro song “Incantation” is actually the most distinct track here, with its basic cavernous melody at least offering something different. Perhaps because of the album’s rigid adherence to its formula, the record also never seems to feel as atmospheric or threatening as the band’s influences.

Fortunately, Magna Pestilencia does some things right. The 31-minute runtime keeps the record from overstaying its welcome, and many of these songs still manage to work in some pretty distinct riffs. Early highlight “Obliteration” shows just how effective the band’s formula can be, with its slow and strained chords sure to earn the appreciation of Grave Miasma fans. “Blood Prison” and “A Slumbering God” feature a faster pace, with “Blood Prison” especially standing out due to its winding main tremolo riff. The closing title track also ends the record well with its particularly harrowing riffs, as if you’ve finally reached the lowest point of some deadly cavern. Finally, the production works well, with splashy cymbals and a smooth sound that still manages to have a raw edge.

When I submitted my application to write here over a decade ago (!!!), the review I included as part of my application package was for Nunslaughter’s Angelic Dread, which I gave a 2.5/5.0. Today, I love that fucking record and would easily score it a point higher. I hope Magna Pestilencia enjoys the same fate. Even though I can’t heartily recommend this album to anyone who isn’t already a huge fan of the style, there’s something genuine about it that keeps me wanting to come back. While the score below reflects how I feel about it today, I have a nagging feeling that this could be the type of album that insidiously grows on you for years to come. If nothing else, it still leaves me very curious to hear what Abysmal Winds will give us next.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: I Hate Records
Website: facebook.com/abysmalwinds
Releases Worldwide: June 21st, 2024

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