Johnskibeat

Album Review: Horisont – Second Assault

2012-05-18T12:10:00.001+01:00

Somewhere along the 250km of roadside that connects the Swedish cities of Örebro and Gothenburg, they must have discovered some manic tear in the space-time continuum. It’s just one theory to make sense of the two cities’ rapidly-expanding retro scene. Combined, they are able to boast an array of hirsute bands like Witchcraft, Graveyard, Burning Saviours and Horisont – the subject of this review. Each of those are successfully selling their own individual recipes to the same flashback-inducing space-cake. The crazy, tie-dye-wearing fans that are mopping it up can be found swinging their flares like it’s the Seventies all over again.

Horisont’s biography describes their sound as being “heavily influenced by 1970s hard rock groups like Black Sabbath, UFO, Thin Lizzy and Scorpions”; indeed a mouthful, which their wonderfully self-deprecating Facebook page sums up for us as “New Wave Of Swedish Old Man’s Rock”.

As you delve through Second Assault, their sophomore album, you’ll certainly pick up plenty of the aforementioned influences as well as some that they don’t acknowledge. On the magnificent “Crusaders Of Death” you’ll get a big hit of laid-back blues, echoing the shuffle of bands like King Crimson and Wishbone Ash, whilst the very first spin of the opener “Time Warrior”, had me jumping to the conclusion that they’d merely reworked Deep Purple’s “Speed King”. Most certainly, the band’s mark is branded deep onto its surface.

With so many different influences running side by side, the songwriting is a bit of a rocky road. There are clearly some tracks that hit you harder than others. The hearty groove on “Watch Them Die” grabs you by the nuts, but the title-track is a little too dull and the chaotic structure of “Spirit” merely leaves you a bit dazed and confused. At different moments my nostrils burned with pungent whiffs of Uriah Heep’s prog, the sheer power that lurks within Nazareth and even some hints of early-Whitesnake thrown in for good measure.

Axel Söderberg’s vocals are naggingly high-pitched and urgent and take some getting used to. The production keeps them crisp and crunchy so that they stand shoulder to shoulder with the scuffed, pitching riffs and tight, wild leads of guitarists Charlie Van Loo and Kristofer Möller. Sadly, it’s partly this abrasive clarity of sound that ends up being the album’s Achilles heel. The tracks stab at you like insect stings, each taking their influence from a different source.

The multi-directional approach, with the guitar tone changing with each track, means there isn’t a stylistic grab that binds them all together (take the muffled connective padding that all Graveyard’s tracks seem to tote, as an example of a single-minded style that achieves this), so you’ll find it tough to attach yourself to the whole caboodle. There’s also the fact that the rhythm section is intermittently relegated in the mix by the howling vocal and strings. I, for one, certainly found myself preferring the softer, buzzed-out tracks where the waves of lead abate and the bass and drums pop back to the surface in the way that those little colored buoys do when the ocean becomes subdued.

It’s funny. There is one particular American retro band they remind me of very much and that’s Danava; another band who suffer from trying to take a little too much from everyone else to throw into the pot without offering enough of themselves. I expected to dig Second Assault a lot more than I did which, despite my misgivings, is by no means a bad album with one or two sweet, rumbling cruisers and incisive cuts but, sadly, Horisont’s bigger picture is a far blander prospect than the emotion-soaked class displayed by some of their rivals.

Also online @ The NewReview (with samples) = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/horisont-second-assault

Album Review: Royal Thunder – CVI

2012-05-17T12:26:00.000+01:00

Remember the magnificent shootout finale of the Western The Good, The Bad And The Ugly? Remember the slowly-ramped tension as the combined charisma of Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach sashayed into a sun-parched circle, their characters goaded by either greed or honour into a Mexican stand-off. The building drama as the camera flicked from the revealing long-shot to close-ups on the guns of each man before switching to achingly linger between each of the trio’s headshots. The sweaty forehead and panicky, flitting eyes of “Tuco” (The Ugly), the distrusting sneer and dark glances of “Angel Eyes” (The Bad) and the timeless cool and wedged cheroot of “Blondie” (The Good). The importance of Morricone’s nail-biting musical score to that scene was paramount.

The scene is replaying in my mind’s eye as I’m listening instead to the three-and-a-half minutes of agonisingly torpid, steadily-building drum rolls, the ballooning bass, the dulcet chimes and Wild West string-bends of the track “Blue”, from Royal Thunder’s debut album CVI. There are four crescendos in total here and at the climax of the last, when two of the guns fire and one of the men falls, the vocal kicks in. It makes for an interesting alternative to Morricone’s ultimately irreplaceable masterpiece.

There’s most definitely a kind of dark potency which lurks within Royal Thunder; they create mood music to inspire waking dreams such as these. The band boast an array of different styles and each roughly manages to inhabit its own character within that sun-parched circle. There are soft, emotion-inveigled, crystal-clear slowies like the “Sleeping Witch” and “Minus”, crawling, sludgy proggers like “Parsonz Curse” and “Shake And Shift”, and stone-cold rockers where the galloping drums and rolling riffs drive the music forward as the vocals suddenly begin to lose control like they do for “Whispering World” and “No Good”. Someone’s going to win this shoot-out and it’s probably going to be messy.

Mlny Parsonz’ vocal range is a huge part of what creates these factions. The fact she can go from the bluesy “Parsonz Curse”, where her vocal is at its most masculine, to the crystal clear femininity and gentility of the opening to the psych-tweaked “Drown” is jaw-dropping. One minute she’s summoning up the earthy, yet piercing quality of Robert Plant or Wolfmother’s Andrew Stockdale, using it to fend off the band’s slides back towards doom-mongering plod, and the next she’s flicked a switch, brushed off the dust, and turned herself into an Lennoxian angel (a reference to the crystalline vocal of Eurythmics’ Annie Lennox for those knowledge-seekers amongst you).

There is a small problem with CVI and the root of it lies in the way it divides its time. The top-half of the album is fast and loose, daring and boldly antagonistic, whilst the bottom-half is dark and laconic, drawing deep on the pipe of peace, blowing smoke rings around your head in an attempt to woo your soul out to play. You may equally enjoy both halves but, for the rest of us, we will tend to veer towards preferring one over the other. “South Of Somewhere” is a microcosm of this – it spends four minutes building softly from dustbowl winds, through chimes and lullabies, before ditching the ephemera to snap into a minute of howling punk rock. It’s insane.

Yet, Royal Thunder are startlingly talented. Their songwriting is ground-breakingly good because they aren’t afraid to take risks with it. CVI may not feel like an interconnected album as much as it feels like an eclectic cast line-up from a movie, but every character is fully-realised and absorbingly rich in detail. So, if you don’t completely buy into the simple beauty of “Minus”, then you surely won’t ignore the nine-and-a-half minutes of keen riffs, barbed hooks and scorchingly progressive fire that all lurk within “Shake And Shift”. There’s my gun-toting hero, right there; now I recommend you go check this out and find your own star.

Also online @ The NewReview (with samples) = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/royal-thunder-cvi

Album Review: El Doom And The Born Electric – Self-Titled

2012-05-02T08:46:00.000+01:00

Ole Petter Andreassen is El Doom, Norwegian artist, producer and founding member of death n’ rollers The Cumshots and stoner poptarts Thulsa Doom, two wildly different-sounding bands. I must admit I was intrigued then, when his Born Electric project plopped onto my desk with the information that he had collected around him a sort of a “Who`s Who of the Norwegian progressive/jazz scene. We have Norwegian Grammy-awarded bass-player Nicolai Eilertsen (Elephant 9), drummer Haavard Takle Ohr (El Cuero), Hammond wiz Ståle Storløkken (Elephant 9) and guitarists Brynjar Takle Ohr (El Cuero) and Hedvig Mollestad (Hedvig Mollestad Trio). Unfamiliar names but, as early listens prove beyond a doubt, all incredibly adept at their art.

Across the 53 minutes of their debut’s running time, there are some straight-forward tunes, like the indignant howls that haunt ‘With Full Force’ and the threaded hooks and melting heart of ‘The Lights’. However, the lengthier pieces reveal the band’s true colours and penchant for throwing everything into the pot and liberally stirring. Take ‘Fire Don’t Know’. It bursts forth with a bumpy camel ride of a guitar riff that unbalances you with its thunderous grunt, threatening to throw you off before El Doom can pour out his tremulous David Bowie meets Neil Arthur (Blancmange) vocal. Obscure 70s/80s references aside, the nine-minute blazer, wrapped around a malleable, prog rock wall of sound, crescendos and abates its way through careering psych and driving stickwork, vibrating wodges of Hammond and reverb-heavy guitar solo.

Thought that was good? Get a load if ‘It’s Electric’. It’s the strait-jacketed madman within; the forceful bass bullying it’s way to stand side-by-side with El Doom. It’s the sound of The Melvins channelling Rush through Mastodon’s insane set-up. The blue hints, oddly offer up the kind of tonal flourishes that Mark Morton brings to Lamb Of God to mind, and the dying licks of Spanish guitar slap on nothing but a huge grin to your gurning face.

‘The Hook’, naturally, stands out a mile. The sheer panic within Doom’s quavering vocal almost loses the plot; chaos defined. Matching it there is a blitzkrieg of guitars that dive down into cloud before reappearing to continue the dogfight. Volume knobs are toyed with and the jarring chords begin to collapse in on themselves as the production calls it a day and fades them out well before their time is up. Still, there are some sublime riffs lurking within all this. The best of which is the sinuous lick that marks out ‘Subtle As A Shit House’ and will see you strapping on the air guitar and screwing your eyes up in reverie. Sure the track falls into a pit of classic rock posturing but you’ll buy into it to get back to that sublime riff once more. Oh, and you want a spot of Soundgarden-esque grunge? Look no further than the 11-minute wanderlust of ‘Red Flag’.

All tracks covered then, we have learned that to appreciate El Doom And The Born Electric’s debut, an open mind is an absolute must. For those fans of all things rock who are willing to dig into something a little more jazzy and a lot more progressive than they are used to, will be handsomely rewarded.

Also online @ Ave Noctum

Album Review: Torche – Harmonicraft

2012-04-28T10:05:00.001+01:00

Take a look at that gaudy, pink artwork. Flying cartoon newts (some friendly, that burp rainbows, and some not-so friendly, who belch dark clouds and lightning bolts) that fly around a sky dodging falling candies, chocolate bars and bubbles. I’m not even going to speculate on what that one down the bottom of the picture could be happily licking.

Compare it to their previous releases’ similarly cartoon-esque but most definitely bleaker pictures and you’re seeing images that clearly represent the band’s shift in musical styles. It’s true. Listen carefully to the sludge-infected monstrosity of their eponymous debut album and its much acclaimed follow-up, Meanderthal, which earned the band their “stoner/doom pop” label, and you can hear exactly how they came to arrive at this point and with that artwork.

I’m not going to beat around the bush any further. Harmonicraft is their cleanest, most melodic album to date and it’s release will continue to divide stoner, prog and post-metal fans in the way that Torche have always sought to do. They begin as they mean to continue, with 2 and 3-minute walled sections of rumbling bass that jimmy along cyclical riffs fired through distorted guitars. The band’s sparkle and main selling point here is that from somewhere amidst it’s hammering crush is the echoing, clean vocal of Steve Brooks. In an even purer form than heard previously, Brooks is your upbeat guide through the heaviosity, firing out his minimalistic lyrics, serenading his audience through the thick and the thin. Be it via the medium of punk rock for “Walk It Off” and “Kiss Me Dudely”, the grunge-soaked swagger of “Reverse Inverted” and “Letting Go”, or the chugging rock n’ roll pound of “In Pieces” and “Skin Moth”.

The songs are still trench-deep and busy enough to make your ears pop when they throw in a sudden shift in depth. It’s the yank-up into the guitar arpeggios and neck-snapping drive of “Snakes Are Charmed” you need to watch out for. It’s one of those moments where you know a band has nailed down something truly special. The hairs are standing up on the back of my neck now just thinking about it. They almost repeat the trick with the slow, neck-snapping groove of “Roaming” and the catchy-as-fuck rotating riff of the title-track – I reckon this is what being trapped inside Torche’s own washing machine is like, going round and round with those soiled tour threads.

With its track-by-track homage to looped riffery, Harmonicraft is, undoubtedly, a mood album. You flick it on, it invigorates you for 38 minutes, and then you move along. It’s not something you can easily dip in and out of. Each track feeds beautifully on to the next as subtle shifts in rhythm mean you simply roll with every single one of its punches. The down side of course is that they will face rows of pointing fingers who don’t buy into such a concept. For instance, there are several moments where the song demands more from the band than they’re willing to give. It’s not the first time we’ve heard them proffering only one and a half minute tracks and it’s hard not to feel aggrieved when a track you dig crashes to a halt with a sense of incompletion; the wish left unfulfilled. Would it work if you stitched all the tracks together by a series of chord hangs? I doubt it. Done this way, it can leave you with the vague impression that you’re being pitched too. The nay-sayers will be suggesting that if they really are an ideas factory, then why do so many of their imaginings sound similar? Ah, the trappings of being so clever, so innovative and so skilled are that your public will always question your motifs and demand more of you.

So, sure, at first glance it may seem that Torche are driving towards melding churning pop and gutsy groove together à la Queens Of The Stone Age, yet deeper inspection shows they have also begun to loop back in on themselves. There are songs here that brush-up against the kind of moods that Mastodon’s current work is offering and given the frowning, doomier finale that lurks in “Solitary Traveler” and “Looking On” (think Pilgrim meets High On Fire), we can see they are still keeping all their options open. End of the day, whatever their critics may say, Harmonicraft is a genre-bending original and I’d recommend it any day of the week. Without bands like Torche showing innovation like this, there’d be an awful lot of uninspired and uninspiring music out there.

Also online @ The NewReview

Album Review: Anathema – Weather Systems

2012-04-27T13:21:00.000+01:00

This collection of brothers and friends, the Cavanaghs and the Douglases from Liverpool, have spent the last twenty-odd years receding from bellow to mellow and now instead of touring with war machines like Cannibal Corpse you’re more likely to find them gracing the bill with soft-hearted, introspective proggers like Paradise Lost or Porcupine Tree. Weather Systems, Anathema‘s ninth studio album is yet one more step towards complete purification and the final draining of their metal blood. Using similar methods to those used on their last release, We’re Here Because We’re Here, the band slowly add layer upon layer of emotion to reach that moment of true impact, and by doing so manage to make their point in the most subtle of ways.

The two-part ‘Unforgettable’ is something of an ambitious introduction; the first part weaving an upsurging, acoustic guitar arpeggio (an instrument you’ll hear plenty of) around Vincent Cavanagh’s velveteen vocals, and the second a piano-led, melancholic boy-girl duet which brings in more of Lee Douglas’ high-pitched, crystalline singing. Sitting up front the tracks feel like a bit of a sore thumb; the kind of demanding songs that would be far easier to swallow further down the playlist.

The rising panic of tracks like ‘The Storm Before The Calm’ and ‘The Gathering’ certainly get the heart racing. The former features an abrupt change of tack, lifting the pace under a deluge of white noise and programmed industrial touches, and the latter needs the reassurance of a few sideways glances at the bigger picture. It gets them by rubbing shoulders with ‘Lightning Song’, whose violins and acoustic guitar tug at the heartstrings only to walk us – smack! – into the punch of a muted electric guitar strike.

With each track linking back to the central theme, the album forms one steady circuit of the bases to form an enigmatically absorbing home run. You’ll identify with the central character of the piece when he picks up the baton, running with it across the dark inferences of tracks like ‘Sunlight’, ‘The Beginning And The End’ and between the hackneyed monologue of a near-death experience that weighs heavy upon ‘Internal Landscapes’.

Everything is, of course, open to interpretation, but having recently suffered a family bereavement I couldn’t help but see the album as the slow death of a confused and pained soul; a record that I found in some ways upsetting, as the emotions are still raw. Some of the lyrics may be honest but they seem to cut so deep. Viewed at different moments, though, the music proves complex enough to contain a less brutal side and offers several rays of light, so I may come to take comfort from it in the future.

Weather Systems is most certainly a bold move by the band, an attempt to lay bare, with honesty, the emotions that emanate from the subjects of loss, regret, pain and death. As singer Daniel Cavanagh has rightly pointed out, “This is not background music for parties. The music is written to deeply move the listener, to uplift or take the listener to the coldest depths of the soul”. A mission most definitely accomplished.

Also online @ TLOBF

Album Review: North Atlantic Oscillation – Fog Electric

2012-04-25T16:41:00.000+01:00

Somewhere in between the two land masses of Iceland and the Azores, far out to sea, there is a series of fluctuations in air pressure which kick-start a phenomenon known as the North Atlantic Oscillation. It dictates the strength and direction of storms across the surrounding areas and is, naturally, of great interest to European weather girls and boys (or, more obtusely, meteorologists). Why you’d want to name your band after this oddity is beyond me, but at least now you can point at the telly when you spot rubbish weather combined with westerly winds and say “Ooh, look, that’ll be the NAO” and all your chums will be impressed.

When I first encountered this Edinburgh duo (they expand to a quartet for gigs), between the releases of their Callsigns EP and their debut Grappling Hooks, they had rallying hook-laden rock bursting forth from upbeat electronica. Quite how they got from that outstanding and giddying introduction to this soft-hearted, ambient psych-cum-prog shoegazing is a puzzler. But here we are all the same. The busy re-structuring with multiple instruments in action, sometimes all at once, combined with Tony Doogan (Super Furry Animals, Mogwai, Belle & Sebastian)’s tight, dynamic production has left the already-hazy, multi-layered vocals relegated somewhat – and that’s a shame.

The front-end of Fog Electric is most startling, as peeking softly through the backwash from the determined force of ‘Soft Coda’, the tracks ‘Chirality’ and ‘Mirador’ emerge like two pieces of rotting driftwood. With their synth sweeps, high-pitched vocals and twinkly, jazzy washes, memories are triggered of some of the quirkier tracks by those artsy, twee ’90s pop-rock bands like Teenage Fanclub, Jellyfish and Scritti Politti. But nothing can quite prepare you for the atrocity that is ‘Empire Waste’. Those almost gentle beginnings and endings are blown away by thoughtlessly tacky programmed beats as the eloquent vocal is stuffed through the gaping maw of some vast computer, emerging as a volley of robotic bleatings.

Yet the white flag is spared as ‘Savage With Barometer’ rises above its scarred, ever-present soundscape to wrap a meaty bassline around a cajoling set of cymbals, and brush a determined eloquence onto the surface of the piece. ‘Expert With Altimeter’, with its slow build to something more instantly recognisable (think E.L.O. meets Editors) follows suit with 4-4 beats, rock rushes and peaked vocal harmonies. Then, treading gently down once more to the shore to stand in the ebbing surf, the piano-led drift of ‘The Receiver’ and the sublime acoustic guitar backing of ‘Downhill’ leave us becalmed; contemplative once more.

Even though the album’s subject matter, according to singer Sam Healy, concentrates on “searching for meaning in a scientific, post-religious world”, the oceanic theme is ever-present, following the band through the lyrics, album and song titles. It proves that despite this new injection of chaos, they are still following the same compass-bearing in their heads. Yet everything about this album feels as if it contradicts this. Even the little programmed gimmicks – a vinyl pickup rip here, a spot of tinnitus-inducing warble there, all of merely passing interest – mostly seem disconnected from the music.

It’s been a bold effort by the band to step out of their comfort zone and they should be applauded for scoring one or two broadside hits, but there are far too many disappointing splashes for us to realistically believe that they didn’t get too self-absorbed in their project and, consequently, a little bit carried away with themselves. Maybe next time out, they’ll aim for a sunnier destination we can all reach and, at last, we’ll be able to enjoy a share of their treasure booty.

Also online @ TLOBF

Album Review: Skyharbor – Blinding White Noise: Illusion & Chaos

2012-04-24T09:50:00.000+01:00

For a landmass as vast as India, a country with over 1 billion people living in it, the number of times you come across one of their metal bands isn’t all that often but there is now a rapidly-growing scene. The furore surrounding New Delhi’s Skyharbor is indication that the world stage is primed and ready for the floodgates to open. Why Skyharbor have been one of their breakthrough acts isn’t clear, but their global sound and the fact they have sunk their teeth into such a vogue genre must be factors.

Nailing a worldwide release for their double-disc debut album, Blinding White Noise: Illusion & Chaos, can’t have been the smoothest of rides (“four years of epiphanies and disappointments” according to brainchild/guitarist Keshav Dar) but it’s easy to see how they got there in the end when you see which label they are gracing (Basick) or cast your eyes down the number of international guest appearances. Also bear in mind that these contributions are from guys who offered their help, not vice-versa. Guys like ex-TesseracT vocalist Dan Tompkins, whose pin-point tone is so obviously the key to the Skyharbor door-lock and consequently ends up singing on 80% of the album, and guys like ex-Megadeth axeman Marty Friedman who contributes to two tracks.

The majority of the content is made up by the Illusion disc and, honestly, it’s a delight to finally hear a modern progressive metal record that is happy to dip its toes in the waters of djent, but doesn’t feel the need to obstruct the flow of the songs with incessant levels of palm-muted hammering or flood you with wave upon wave of ambient wash. The band has allowed for a very organic writing process. Left unencumbered by heavy-handedness or complex mathematics the natural rhythms are left to flow and create instantly recognisable patterns. The production has followed suit and swapped hard, angular tones for a softened, more emotive backline that has put the vocal upfront and undominated. “Dots” is a straight-up joy, “Catharsis” is a brilliantly-layered puzzle with an undemanding solution, and “Celestial” burns with unambiguous, anthemic ambition (listen out for Friedman’s blistered, falling riff and Amogh Symphony’s Vishal J. Singh’s quixotic solo).

Any pent up anger that comes from holding back their instincts is released within the howling confines of Chaos. The band rip into the music with vigour, winding up the pace of their attack and rolling around in distortion and syncopation like pigs in muck. Sunneith Ravankar (Bhayanak Maut) is let loose to roar almost continuously through “Trayus” and “Aphasia”, but it is the split-personalities of “Insurrection” which invigorate the most as, like a spinning compass, the befuddling rhythm finally settles on a direction, both in its more turbulent and calmer guises. Throughout Chaos you get the sense that the heart of the album is still there, latent in the background, desperately fighting to burst through the surface as and when it can. And yet I am left with mixed-feelings about this segue into crushing heaviness. There are several bands who have mastered this kind of polyrhythmic, invasive bedlam already, so whilst it provides a deathly foil for the life-giving properties of it’s sister disc, to some extent it feels a little like the band are laying out their abilities to merely impress; an over-exaggerated evil, perhaps?

Illusion is far more beguiling and there is one particular work of art that sums up everything that is brilliant about Blinding White Noise. With intertwined rough and smooth layering pouring like colors out of “Maeva”, it’s a composition that, whilst forming just one more mountain top in a rolling range of peaks, is a piece of music that seems to transcend faceless labels. You simply couldn’t get away with calling it a “track” or a “song” without doing it an injustice, so I haven’t. At its core lies a series of spine-tingling change-ups that provide the platform for Tompkins to soak us in gloriously sweet emotion. His magnificent tone and eloquent words seem such a fitting place to end this review, so I’ll hand you over to him… “It’s so damn hard to let go / But take a chance / And survive, come together, embrace life / This is India!”

Also online @ The NewReview

Album Review: Tombstones – Year Of The Burial

2012-04-20T11:16:00.000+01:00

Hailing from Norway, Tombstones refer to their music as Norweedian Doom which doesn’t give you much of a clue to quite how dark and dirty they are actually prepared to get. They are purveyors of chillingly doomy, stoner-riddled sludge. They roll around in the stuff releasing noxious emissions left, right and centre.

Following the unleashing of Volumes I and II, Year Of The Burial is their third album in four years, so they aren’t slow in dishing out slabs of bollock-jangling power and this is like listening to Acid King meets Acid Witch with a good dose of Bongzilla’s weighty grunt thrown in.

With dissonance and sustain applied in biblical amounts, each blissed-out down-tuned chord strike gently warps and twists but never quite reveals itself. The qualities of that mile-thick buzz are best heard in the opening long down-strokes of ‘Egypt’, a track that sidesteps from an epic crush into a stone-cold driving groove.

Whether they’re zoning out for the slow burns like ‘Quintessential’ and ‘Unveiling’ or gently chugging along for the rollers like ‘Sabbathian’ or ‘Silent Voice’, that buttock-clenchingly deep buzz rumbles ever onwards; the unstoppable force. It’s a sound that just seems to improve exponentially the higher you wind the volume up. Set it to “deafening roar” if you want to really rattle your windows.

If you suddenly become aware of someone shouting at you, it’s probably not Mrs Haggis from No. 74; rather, it’s the lead vocalist. Sounding like he’s standing alone at the back of some vast cathedral, Bjørn-Viggo Godtland’s cries out to the rafters, summoning forth any and all evil spirits from their hiding places. His crystal-clean wails are strangely stark against such a mucky foreground, and you’d probably be able to understand him, if it weren’t for the lavish amounts of reverb that have been applied. Recorded live in an Oslo studio in the midwinter, it’s the little indiscretions and that sudden contrast that leaves you feeling, wonderfully, like you’ve stumbled on a forbidden, gothic black mass.

Somewhat disappointingly, the tracks do all seem to blur into each other after a while, but the stoner swagger of the title-track is a solid attention-grabber. It steps up the pace to awaken the guitars from their reverie and, as they cough out malignant riffs, Godtland drops pitch to a sneer and spits forth black wads of dread. Venomous and bristling with murderous intention, it’s a vaguely-cosmic, grim venture into yet more dark corners.

At a miserly 39 minutes, it does feel a little short. It takes that long to settle into the sluggish pace of the songs, so all too quickly you stumble on the classic denouement, ‘Sabbathian’. It features a steadily hammering chug-and-chant that carves its way through, predictably sourcing the creator of heavy music for one last heavy-lidded, disembodied ramble down the dark path. Strangely, it’s the perfect finale for an album that, by beginning slowly and ending with plenty of bang, serves as a fitting tribute to glorious doom in all its multiple forms.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2012/04/tombstones-year-of-the-burial-soulseller-records/

Album Review: One-Way Mirror – Destructive By Nature

2012-04-19T11:58:00.000+01:00

Hands up who likes cheese. We all like cheese, right? We have our favorites too, possibly a mature Cheddar, a gooey Brie, some holey Emmenthal or a few slices of burger-lovin’, good-old processed American. The stuff is so moreish it deserves its own food group.

When it comes to music though, if it’s cheesy there’s plenty of folks are gonna turn their noses up and walk away. Perhaps, it’s their die-hardened old school, true or cvlt moralistic standpoints, perhaps it’s the fact that cheesy music tends to come with a whole charade of gimmicks that puts them off (e.g.; bands that wear coordinated outfits or those that sell weird, often vaguely pornographic, merch), or perhaps they’ve been burned in the past by former musical loves turning bad on them. They may even have had a sense of humor bypass. Me, I love cheese and think it’s almost essential to have a couple of cheesy bands in your collection. Hell, stick on some lounge or some nu-metal and you’ll find me swinging from the nearest obscenely-ornate chandelier.

This, naturally, brings me to the enigma that is those crazy Frenchmen One-Way Mirror. Having previously reviewed the band’s eponymous debut, I thought I knew what was coming with their latest effort, but was a little shocked all the same. With Destructive By Nature, there’s still plenty of cheese on show here – even that sumptuous artwork looks like squeezy-cheese. It’s a veritable smorgasbord of the stuff; a pastiche of yellows, off-whites and blues; a cloud of faint aromas that suddenly burst into noxious whiffs. It’s heavier than before and they’ve most certainly expanded their overt range of production and post-production techniques. The whole focus here is on the incredible diversity of vocal styles booting you regularly in the ears ranging from single, double and treble-layered vocal, gang and crowd chants, obscured sections, electronically-tweaked gargles, fuzzed bits, bass-boosted parts, grunts, screams, cleans and scratched on/off versions. Trust me, if you had a one-way mirror you’d want to have it in their studio, so you could, without hurting the bands feelings, pull the kind of incredulous faces you will be pulling when you hear this. It’s along the lines of Figure Of Six getting chewed on by Threat Signal for doing a Mnemic impression.

Take the opening few bars of the album as an example. Put simply, they use it to introduce themselves. Literally. The kick-drum pads out the timing… “One!” (crowd roar) “Way!” (crowd roar) “Mirr-or!” (crowd roar). Cue big electronic sample and in bursts Rouxel’s full drumkit. Cheesier than a ball of edam. Oh, and they’ve got a press release to match – “This album is not unlike shrapnel as it will embed itself in your system upon explosion. Some songs will make the fans bang their heads while others will simply decimate them altogether”. A wonderfully ludicrous claim and, I’m sorry, but I beg to differ.

This all feels like a bit of a step backwards. I kept listening for the addictive qualities that tracks like “Destination Device”, “As You Are Now”, “Empty Spaces” or “Sockracer”, from their debut, had in spades. That “stand up and pump your fist” hook or the “sing your heart out” anthemic lyrics to kick in, but I kept coming up with shoulders shrugged and bottom lip protruding. The groove through tracks like “Face To Face” and “Straight Into The Wall” have a sinister underbelly but there’s just no firey contents inside whilst the stinging bitchslaps of “Soupracer” and “Deadly Shores” is all fire and no subtlety. It’s almost like, by creating reverberating highly-strung walls that dive into charred chugs and by boosting Perdicaro’s rumbling bass-drive, they’ve lost the ability to punch out kick-ass lines to go with it. The verses are virtually obliterated by theatrical posturing and there’s no simple-structured switch up from there, meaning that the choruses come and go without sticking in your noggin.

They do have a bit of a crack at mixing it up. The uber-heavy thrash that blisters the surface of “Wasted Years” is a welcome addition, there’s a memorably pained howl in the verse of “Inner Symphony” and there’s a couple of sweet soaring choruses in “Unexpected” and “Made In Vain”, where their softer side comes through. Sadly though there’s just too much overlap and too much filler here. It’s a shame as they suckered me in with their yummy debut, where the contrast between rough and smooth, hook and drive, was pretty much bang on. If you’re new to OWM then, remember, the whole thing takes some getting used to (and this certainly improves with age) but if there’s nothing that grabs you on that first spin, it’s unlikely you’ll return for another nibble.

Also online @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/one-way-mirror-destructive-by-nature

Album Review: Heart Of A Coward – Hope & Hindrance

2012-04-16T11:44:00.005+01:00

Back when Sylosis were a raw old-school thrash-cum-metalcore tour-de-force; back when Jamie Graham was crushing all with his death metal vocal and his uncanny ability to work a crowd into a frenzy, no-one could have foreseen just how musically far apart the band and their frontman could end up. Now, without him on board, Sylosis have honed their thrashier roots into a more technical, more melodic, altogether glossier end product, and seemingly stand worlds apart from the band that Graham has now joined, Heart Of A Coward. And yet, here amongst the mathematical grousing of the guitars, the portentous breakdowns and Graham’s indignant howls, there are moments where the singer steers his voice back to a familiar nagging attack to match his new bandmates’ switch up to swaggering ‘core or shredded thrash; he’s definitely moved away from, but clearly hasn’t forgotten, his roots.

Heart Of A Coward’s debut album has been almost two years in the making, with the band jumping through more hoops than a San Diego dolphin, but at last the finished product is upon us and it certainly seems keen to impress. Let’s just say Hope & Hindrance (a clear reference to their multiple tribulations), covers many, many bases. Take “Shade”, which grabs at a piece of everything leaving the track bulging with content. The shadow: the spitting bellow of Graham’s “You’re nothing but a fucking traitor / Suffer, bitch”. The sparkling ray of light: his soaring cleans (re-recorded by Graham after original second vocalist Timfy James left mid-recording) – “What have you become? / You’re nothing.”

More shade. There’s that aforementioned, antagonistic thrash, plenty of gang chanting trying to wedge itself into your memory banks and maniacal progressions a-plenty; progressions of the sort that seem happy pitching Graham’s thick death vocal into wailing guitar, and that into epic soundscaping. Follow that up with some Meshuggah-esque hammer, as palm-muted battery meets Graham’s agonized, lycanthropic baying, for “Nightmare” and you’ve stumbled on the album’s dark heart. Of course, that all walks hand in hand with the hardcore fury, gang chants and crushing breakdowns that lurk within the monumental crush of “Around A Girl (In 80 Days)” and the first four machine-gunned minutes of “Break These Chains” (before it fully loses the plot for the remaining three and resorts to the equivalent of a slowly-recycling brick in a tumble dryer over a looped playback of Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxygene).

More sparkle. There’s the twinkling riff that melts the heart of the title-track and the sudden bursts of TesseracT-ish dappling that fall at regular intervals throughout, mostly when you least expect them. Also, the dedicated ambient wash that the, appropriately titled, “Light” offers and the soft-touch melodics that litter the crystalline, wickedly-barbed choruses of “All Eyes To The Sky” and “We Stand As One”. I’m still struggling to believe how well Graham combines that mellifluous clean tone into the impressively cantankerous grot that more regularly flies from his gob, but for some reason it all seems to gel effectively.

Word of warning: this album definitely needs a fat-assed sub-woofer and plenty of volume to really blossom. I discover this after listening to it for the first week with naff iPod ear buds. Imagine my surprise then when I finally run it through my big-balled sound system. The opening rumble of “Motion” (this may have been retitled “Killing Fields” by the time you get it) makes the crockery rattle before dashing it all to the ground as Graham’s scarred roar kicks in. And, with the line “Smoke, mirrors, we won’t get out a-LIVE! We won’t get out a-LIVE! We’ll never be the S-A-A-A-AME”, I’m in pieces with the china.

Certainly, Hope & Hindrance is eager to please. Of course, the problem with all this to-ing and fro-ing between stylistic content is that the music takes a long time to bed in. It’s certainly a grower this one. I’ve been playing with it for a couple of weeks now and I still haven’t found its true value. It’s got heart, though, and like the recently-released debut by The Safety Fire, it’s bursting with potential. Yes, this baby packs more punch than a Klitschko brother and the balance between its light and dark sides is, pretty much, bang on. Sure, there’s still plenty of rough edges, fine and dandy for a debut, but if they can tighten their belts and nail the songwriting by upping the riffage quotient, applying a touch more gusto to the choruses and giving their vessel a more purposeful sense of direction, they’ll be true lionhearts in this reviewer’s eyes.

Note: This is an edited version of my review, following the release of a PR statement regarding the recording of the album. The original appears online @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/heart-of-a-coward-hope-hindrance

Album Review: Ufomammut - Oro: Opus Primum

2012-04-03T11:14:00.003+01:00

Doom is a genre which, to the untrained ear, can seem so simple and yet remains so complex that it has prompted Wino, one of doom’s most prolific artists, to claim it took him “15 years just to stay in tune”. One of the more expansive exponents of the genre, Ufomammut, have been eking out their laconic anthems of oppressive dread and invigorating power since 2000. This time around the Italian demons of doom and their unidentified flying mammoth (“mammut” being the Italian for “mammoth”) are back with a bold double-album release, the second part of which, Oro: Opus Alter, is due for release later in the year.

All of the band’s albums have a theme and Oro is no different. With a double meaning, encapsulated in its title, Oro combines the Italian palindromic word for “gold” and the Latin translation of “I pray” or “I speak”. The album itself delves into the concept of knowledge, power, fear and the human mind’s ability to distil those emotions into the kind of expensive bling you might find dangling from Mr. T’s bulging neck.

From the very first sounds of their aircraft powering down for ‘Empireum’, and the initiation of a steady speaker-to-speaker series of thrums and warbles, we are sucked from our burnt-out husks of lives and cast adrift into our own warped psyches by the music. The track builds from this point through emerging tom-thuds and snare-rolls, walking us down the spine of a twinkling riff, until we reach a battering crescendo of distortion, white noise and eventual overload.

Blacker, more menacing and far less captivating than the above are the tracks ‘Aureum’ and ‘Infearnatural’. The former drags us backwards through mud before hammering fuzzball chugs and dying vocals at us for 12 minutes or until we scream for mercy. It’s the more dastardly twin of those corpse-painted souls Primordial performing to the badgering rhythms of St. Vitus. With so many false endings it doesn’t seem to want to die, no matter how many times we hit it. The latter treads the same path with an even more sinister, all but obliterated, loop of spoken words.

‘Magickon’ returns to reprise ‘Empireum”s central riff, driving it through a couple of key changes, buzzing us back into oblivion. Hidden deep in the background are a series of vocalisations, a second track which only seems to become apparent when it begins to whine as it slowly sets about eating its own form. With ‘Mindomine’ venturing further into a wasteland of psychedelics, as monastic chanting leads us back towards Ufomammut’s penchant for cosmic drone, it’s something of a relief to spy the glowing exit sign.

Repeated plays allow a deeper connection to the changes of mood, the whole lysergic journey revealing itself as a maniacal descent into hell and back. Certainly, the message regarding the strengths and fundamental weaknesses of the human soul are potently clear. Despite my many reservations against repeating such a trip, it’s a message that I, somewhat worryingly, look forward to revealing further when they bring us the second half of the story.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2012/04/ufomammut-oro-opus-primum/

Festival Review: Hammerfest IV - The Hammer Of Thor

2012-04-02T11:14:00.007+01:00

Hammerfest Four: The Hammer Of Thor. As you can imagine with a title like that it’s got to be the work of men who’ve worn far too many animal furs and supped too much mead for their own good. It comes as no surprise then, to learn that the event is the work of the UK’s “metal-as-fuck” print (and online) magazine Metal Hammer and the organizational team behind the Hard Rock Hell festival. What they’ve invented and honed over the years is an event that is more than just a music festival. With the luxury of a roof over your head, minimal security constraints, multiple bars and ample recovery periods free from having your ears obliterated (should you so need them), strangers, of all ages, come to be united by their love of heavy music (and, inevitably, heavy drinking).

Within minutes of arriving, I hear brain-mangling tuneage blasting from the cracked doors of every visible chalet, I witness Captain America wrestling Spiderman to the ground and I’m soon being followed by a ten-foot Satan, a built dude dressed like the front-cover of Mastodon’s The Hunter and a rather attractive young woman on stilts, seemingly being eaten by an alien. It’s hard not to be moved by such scenes of complete metal immersion.

It’s not long before I’m banging my head along with the rest of my brethren as Trucker Diablo (3.5/5) let loose a volley of earth-shattering bottom-end groove from the depths of the on-site pub, the Queen Victoria (otherwise known as the third stage). The beer flows as an array of beards, of varying lengths, bob up and down with their owners and horns are thrown to the sky. Moving on to Chimaira (4/5), I quickly find myself reeling around the main stage pit as vocalist Mark Hunter peers down at his people, belching forth tracks from the band’s stunning new album The Age Of Hell. As the “Year Of The Snake” digs down to its earth-shaking dropped breakdown, the crowd slo-mo crunch together and time folds in on itself. It’s the peak of their show but, as it comes mid-set, it leads to the band coasting from here onwards.

Paradise Lost (3/5) follow up by ducking from goth-rock melodics into brooding doom and back again whilst, on the second stage, late additions Falling Red (3/5) dish up lashings of make-up and hairspray to go with their mile-wide stances and classic rawk. It’s not my cup of tea but the choons have got balls and, out front, there’s a sprinkling of gurning faces, so they must be doing something right. Headlining tonight, Anthrax (4/5) are clearly here to bring tha noize (sorry) and frontman Joey Belladonna works the gathered masses like a pro. A blazing “Indians” is the moment when the seated-VIPs can no longer resist and arise to begin rocking out with those who have been throwing shapes and hurling bodies for the duration.

With the excellent Evil Scarecrow (4.5/5) whipping up a storm of comedy and metal, those who survived the headliners begin to filter through and the lunatic quarter of Hammerfest begin to show their faces. Grown men in foil-covered cardboard boxes wade into the pit prompting plenty of laughs and pointing fingers as cries of “what the fuck is that?” hail from vocalist “Dr. Rabid Hell” (yes, really). One minute the band are lashing us with “Blacken The Everything”, a classy, post-apocalyptic powerhouse of a track, the next they are unleashing “Robototron” which reduces us to tears and has us dancing in squares. Even Lawnmower Deth (3.5/5) can’t top that, so I slip into the shadows to seek out the refuge of my chalet and my mattress.

As the sun rises on scenes of carnage, I find myself transfixed by men, still drunk from the night before, headbutting each other, one leaping from great height onto a stack of mattresses, and a few hardy souls swapping it all for a brisk walk along the nearby wind-blasted beach to scrawl rude pictures and words into the sand.

Back with the music and the blundering wake-up call comes fittingly from a duo called Oaf (3/5). Their first note is a foghorn in my cochlea. It threatens to empty the pub in one foul swoop, but it’s not long before “He Who Strums & Shouts” is settling into a devilishly heavy groove. AR (4.5/5) pick that vibe up and churn it into a barrage of driven, technical metal. Yet it is the fragmented vocal exhortations of vocalist Jhon Isaac that really fire this band into life. They initiate all manner of contortions to Isaac’s body and face, they inspire wild hopping from foot to foot and prompt bassist Simon Edwards to lead the crowd into taking part in the shenanigans. By the storming “One Day”, we are bellowing the word “spatula” back at the band, giving ourselves whiplash and grinning from ear to ear.

Over on stage two, Mortad (3.5/5) keep the party going with plenty of gruff screams à la Angela Gossow from the back-arching vocalist Somi Arian, whilst the main stage is padding its way through the uninspiring power metal of Germany’s Wizard (2.5/5) and the sleep-inducing, crown-of-thorns agonizing of Hell (2/5). That is until the devoted hit the battering ram that is Amon Amarth (3/5). Losing something in translation from the smaller stage, tonight they only really connect with the anthemic “Guardians Of Asgard” whilst the majority of tracks tend to lose their identity amidst an impenetrable wall of echoing guitar.

Wonderfully, Skindred (5/5) correct the balance as Benji Webbe orchestrates a packed house to swing their shirts above their heads, turn themselves into jack-in-the-boxes and dance until they drop. Ragga metal becomes a true force tonight, not just something to cleanse the palette, and, inevitably, it’s the bucking grooves of debut album Babylon that litter their set. From “Selector” and “Set It Off” to “Nobody” and “Pressure”, the build to the encore is one pile-driving monster to the next. By the time they sign off with the gargantuan “Stand For Something”, cosying up to The Prodigy’s “Breathe”, and the bullet-to-the-brain that is “Warning”, the crowd have melted into puddles and the world is on its head.

What a finale then to the most wild of weekends. The music may have finished us off but it was the sense of fun that will have us writing next year’s event in our diaries. The knowledge that those attending will be freely opening their chalet doors and inviting us inside to discuss their love of music is the key. There can be no doubting here, that the organizers have succeeded in marrying the word “metal” to the word “community”.

Also online (with more photos) @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/show-reviews/hammerfest-iv-prestatyn-uk

Album Review: Mencea – Pyrophoric

2012-03-27T09:46:00.002+01:00

If this album really is pyrophoric it could, as I understand it, spontaneously ignite, so I’d better be pretty sharpish writing this review, hadn’t I? Straight down to business then. Greece’s Mencea are the death metal tipping point where complex progression slams hard into fist-flailing groove.

Since their formation in 2008 they’ve been diligently marrying Meshuggah’s mathematical nous to Gojira’s bludgeoning walls of noise. Their debut, Dark Matter, Energy Noir, gave us our first taste of the robust, bass-loaded power that these Athenians were capable of, and offered plenty of food for thought at a time when bands of this ilk were a little thinner on the ground. Now, with this sophomore effort having to go the extra mile to impress, they’ve decided to produce, mix and master the album themselves, opening up the mix to allow for a heightened sense of melodic drama. So, with Pyrophoric offering us a new vocalist and drummer, as well as much wider access to their full range of moods, have they maintained enough of their raw grunt to really stick it to the man?

Well, with the opening arpeggio of “Phosphorous” walking smack into Vlasis Ziouvas’ barking, guttural vocal and a cascade of bottom-end chugging, they prove well capable of the feat. Behind the picture of rage they are painting here, there is plenty of filling and framing taking place as sweeping keyboards build up the layers to paint an expansive portrait of light and shade.

“CCC” may drag their Gojira-worshipping side to the fore as Bertrand Rothen lays down a pummelling rhythm, but it soon gives way to a brittle, yet beauteous Textures-esque soundscape. Following up, “Elders” picks up the baton and runs further with it, digging harder into the groove to hit you with aural images of what can only be described as an army of faceless robots marching into some futuristic machine-on-man battle.

Mencea manage to jumble their component parts to create real m-e-n-a-c-e by injecting darkness into much of what they do as they go sniffing around a black metal vibe. It lurks deep down in so much of the album, forever threatening to grind any standout hooks into dark smears. It’s there in “Hounds” yanking down hard on the track’s jangling, industrial electronic touches, and it’s there again in the wild twists of “Beheading”. Here amidst unsettling swarms of guitars, which thread their way through a plethora of disparate sections into the title-track’s swagger and kicker of rolling toms and sibilant guitar, the band hit a late creative peak. Closer “The Dead”, with its vein-popping Cavalera-esque bludgeoning, is a feast fit for a king.

With 8 tracks skipping by in 36 minutes, the album is a couple of songs shy of being the full enchilada, but it still packs enough of a meaty kick to give your brain matter a good shaking for a while. Consider this: the other feature of a pyrophoric substance is that it can produce sparks when struck and considering the smothering, warm production on show here, at no time, do Mencea quite manage enough of those sparks to truly set the world on fire. Don’t get me wrong, this is one spicy meatball but, once they have properly roughed up their edges to find the kind of ear-scraping menagerie of sound that some of their peers have managed, they’ll truly be a force to be reckoned with.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2012/03/mencea-pyrophoric-indie-recordings/

Album Review: Black Breath – Sentenced To Life

2012-03-15T09:05:00.002Z

To find an album that sets off the same kind of emotions and sensory reactions that you’d experience when seeing the band up close and personal is a very rare thing. The last album I felt this way about was Black Breath’s perfectly-titled debut Heavy Breathing. With its gritty, damaged production values and hammer to the skull attack, all it took was the volume knob to be yanked to the right and eyes to be squeezed shut and suddenly you’d find yourself flinching from the imagined flailing of arms. Your blood pressure would rise, beads of sweat would be summoned forth and heart palpitations would have you clutching your chest until you’d be forced to open up those lids and dial back the sound. Inevitably, then, you might expect this sophomore effort from Seattle’s sonic battering ram, Sentenced To Life, to have the potential to do the same.

From the off, “Feast Of The Damned” sees the band sucking up a reversed soundtrack before spitting it back out in a hail of sputum as the raging, low-end, fuzzed wall of chugging guitars produce what can only be described as a deep, continual growl. The cantankerous punk spirit of the vocals and gang-chants do the rest sending you barrelling straight into the title-track where the band get their full rock on. It’s from this point onwards that Black Breath find new ways to break you.

It’s not a wholly new concept for them but, even more so than on their debut, Black Breath are keen to surprise by switching their method of attack to come at you from two different sides. They are either compacting crushing hardcore into a speeding rock n’ roll ball and scorching a d-beat-happy crust brand onto its surface, or they are slipping on a death-mask and swaggering their way into the arenas of doom and black metal. It’s like hearing Kvelertak driving Autopsy-sized nails into Entombed’s coffin.

Tracks like “Forced Into Possession”, “Mother Abyss” and “Doomed” offer you the chance to get your pump on as the band feverishly burn through their own style of step-on, step-off thrash mania. Often the drum patter is so rapid and the buzzsaw guitars so all-consuming that they begin to outgun even themselves. At some points during “Of Flesh”, before a sharp break for a slow-dance of spinning harmonics, the music seems ready to shake itself apart and they lose that vital level of intensity for a while. Thankfully, they regain composure quickly by winding it back to a mid-tempo chug – don’t think it’s your chance to rest easy though, as before long they’re back tearing your head off and spitting into the bloodied hole.

The real magical element of Sentenced To Life though, comes when Black Breath reveal their dark side. Tracks like “Home Of The Grave” drops down for the chorus to an almost swampy, smeared, loping crush as vocalist Elijah Nelson manages to twist his scorched, atonal delivery into a screaming weapon of mass destruction. With a title like “Endless Corpse” inevitably getting its black on, letting slip the moaning soul of a dying guitar, it’s our first real taste of how they can mash d-beat battery into something even more menacing. There’s a sharp breakdown where a warbling riff takes centre-stage amidst a wall of fuzz that steadily crescendos to agonising levels.

They climax by stepping yet further away from their bread-and-butter. “The Flame” brings to the fore a feisty hardcore vocal, a diamond riff, steady chugs from the depths of hell, and a swaggering blues-flecked confidence. There’s even a memorably giddy riff to revel in. This is essentially gutter rock, yet the chunks of fuzz lift it above all-comers. Think of it as sounding like a steroid-abusing, puffed-up Black Cobra or a more insane sibling version of Nails. The scream near the end is from the charred throat of Satan himself. “Obey” is even blacker, crustier and more inherently evil. It is crawling with raw power, pumped out by some unholy force. Fuck, this is heavy. The sudden flick to clean is a nod to their more raw and wild side – almost a signal of the change as a solo comes screaming in.

Having learned how the album was jammed through in a matter of days, it’s a surprise to find the album hammering so hard on so many doors. God City studios maestro Kurt Ballou still keeps it down and dirty having, once again, resisted the temptation to produce the album to within an inch of its life (those 10 tracks dive in and out of your lugholes in just over 30 short minutes). However, with the introduction of more bleak trudgers to balance the squalid d-beat batterers, that signature live feel was never going to be as intense. Yet, rather than disappoint, Sentenced To Life has you reeling just as hard, only with a bigger smile on your face, thankful for a chance to breathe more easily; to fully soak up the see-sawing brilliance of a band at the top of their game.

Also online @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/black-breath-sentenced-to-life#comments

Album Review: The Safety Fire – Grind The Ocean

2012-03-14T09:49:00.002Z

Formed in 2006, The Safety Fire, like fellow UK-based TesseracT did, have taken their sweet-assed time to getting around to releasing their delayed debut album. You know what they say though – “if it ain’t delayed, it ain’t djent”. It’s certainly unfortunate that Grind The Ocean arrives, just as the dial on the ‘djent-o-meter’ has ventured into the red ‘Saturation’ zone, but luckily these Cockneys aren’t just polyrhythmic heft and no trousers and have some neat tricks up their collective sleeve to warrant anyone’s attention.

They open with the crushing caterwauling of “Huge Hammers”. With the video having been plastered over numerous websites, there are many who will be familiar with the track’s madly scribbling arpeggios. They smother the listener, climbing up and down the walls as a boxed-in Sean McWeeney bellows himself hoarse to offer a counterpoint to snatches of vocal harmony; these babies are the delicious goo in that savagely hot pop-tart you were burning your lips off on earlier. Jarring lyrics like “Black beak, weapon to pierce, delirium scribbles” and “Piece of flesh in my eye, what’s not mine doesn’t hurt” had me hooked and the sharp mix working in tandem with their hardcore edginess is a factor that will help the band stand out from their rivals.

The Mureau meets Circles double-action of “Floods Of Colour” offers up the chance to properly compare McWeeney’s tirades and serenades. The former, with their lack of tonal variation and damaged, grating quality, sometimes find McWeeney over-reaching, at the edge of his range, whilst the latter are prettily effective and delivered with panache. For those who’ve followed the band since the release of their Sections EP it’s a shock to hear him sounding so polished. In the negative column, electronically-tweaked spot-welds on those cleans mean the vocal harmonies occasionally flirt dangerously close to sounding auto-tuned.

Two offerings from the EP pop up here in the form of the solo-trimmed (yet still writhing) “Sections”, with Martin Goulding (Linear Sphere) and Pin (SikTh, Aliases) guesting, and “DMB” which gets a face transplant, even though (from what I can tell) it’s musically identical, to become “DMB (FDP)”. The band insist DMB “doesn’t really mean much” but FDP “means a lot”. The latter acronym could stand for anything from Flat Display Panel to Flood Damage Prevention but, speculating wildly, I’m going to plump for “filho da puta” which is Portuguese for “son of a bitch”. It’s certainly still got the kind of smack in the face that might prompt such an utterance.

There are moments where the band drift fully into post-rock mode, initially hooking you in, but ultimately these tracks seem to lose their way. “Anomalous Materials”, for instance, drifts through the ether like a lost soul whilst the circling riff of “Seagraves” is but a half-thought. The band also seem to have a bad habit of getting trigger-happy when it comes to flicking switches, tying themselves in knots attempting to cram both action and relaxation into one space. Witness the challengingly-muddled “Animal King”. Strong and familiar at its opening, the track minces itself into a lather with plain old bad songwriting. It’s the musical equivalent of a dropped dinner, as the hard-edged, mathy spasming of your main course leaks into the softly-padding ambience of your dessert.

It’s odd having had only their grim-faced EP to listen to for so long so it’s yet another surprise to find both the sumptuously light “Circassian Beauties” and craftily airy title-track are where The Safety Fire sound most comfortable. Having nicked back the pace without compromising their music’s honest approach, McSweeney, who at no point pushes too hard, masterfully croons his way through the verses, punches in with the mega-catchy riffs, owns the choruses and then easily struts back and forth as the guitars, bass and drums jink their way through complex sequences of technically-astute attack and release.

End of the day, this doesn’t really feel like djent at all. You could argue, with their combination of hardcore and progressive soundscaping, they don’t even qualify for the confines of the genre at all. The last bombshell is to discover that Grind The Ocean, as innovative as it may be, is stuffed full of promise yet, ultimately, ends up falling short in so many areas. However, with so much of their unique personality being stamped on their music like this, The Safety Fire are still most certainly a band to keep a close eye on for the future.

Also online @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/the-safety-fire-grind-the-ocean

Album Review: Soulfly – Enslaved

2012-03-09T10:20:00.003Z

Sepultura is Max Cavalera’s teddy bear. It’s clear he not-so-secretly wants it back and he’s going to bloody stomp around until he gets it.

Ever since he joined forces with drumming brother Igor and Soulfly guitarist Marc Rizzo to form Cavalera Conspiracy in 2007, his songwriting has regressed – power is in, style is out. He appears to be dragging both bands back through time in an effort to recreate his best work with Sepultura. Cavalera Conspiracy’s latest album, Blunt Force Trauma, drew multiple comparisons with both Sepultura’s Chaos A.D. and Arise and, now, new Soulfly drummer David Kinkade (Borknagar, Arsis) has happily described this eighth Soulfly album as “Arise on crack”. Of course, many might find this quote thrilling (obviously Kinkade’s intention), but I’m afraid it’s activated my hypersensitive cynicism chip. Let’s face it, the differences between Max Cavalera’s projects have never been exactly numerous, but it starts getting ridiculous when his own band finds it easier to identify their new album with a whole other band’s back catalogue.

A legend Max may be, but his vocal delivery and songwriting is becoming just too formulaic and indicative for his bands not to all sound like one another. It’s all aggressive delivery, blast-beats and gang-chanted inflammatory words; words like, I don’t know, “Intervention” (from Enslaved), “Dictatorshit” (from Roots) or “Thrasher” (from Blunt Force Trauma). Three songs, three different bands, one style of writing. Of course, all this pontificating would count for shit if this album rocked like a bastard. So does it?

Well, the hellfire that is unleashed from the beginning certainly shows they mean business. Crawling panic gives way to hints of black Viking metal in the startlingly effective introductory piece, “Resistance”. Then “World Scum”, featuring the demonic bellowing of Travis Ryan (Cattle Decapitation), attacks the subject of the atrocities performed by mankind with Max’s usual brand of directly astringent lyricism in effect – “Hiroshima, Nagasaki, brutality”. Along the same lines, “Redemption Of Man By God”, featuring the vocal of Devildriver’s Dez Fafara is even feistier.

Kinkade and new bassist Tony Campos (Aesino) pretty much set fire to everything they touch which, if you’re a fan of battering thrash, should get those pits spinning nicely. Sadly though, the hellishly quick tempo too often results in over-simplification, and doesn’t allow space for much of that famous tribal influence to kick in. Punch is in, refinement is out. In fact, unless you merely want brawn and no brain, it’s easy for boredom to slip in having heard this all before so many, many times.

In the past, Soulfly have always been the most likely to seek adventure but there’s only mere hints of that here in the tailored sound effects (rattling metal during “Chains”, gunfire and marching during “Legions”), Rizzo’s guitar solos (even these have shrunk from their former glory) and, most notably, for the track “Plata O Plomo” – a Hispanic version of Cavalera Conspiracy’s “Warlord” with tassels on. It all serves as a makeweight for the missing instrumental “Soulfly VIII” whose obligatory excellence only features on the album’s Special Edition. The small section of Spanish guitar is exactly the reason why, in the past, I have preferred Soulfly over Max’s other bands who simply walked along the path of least resistance – moulding hardcore and thrash into an oversimplified, twisted death metal shape.

Of course there are both high and low points. The fighting duo of “Gladiator” and “Legions” are a microcosm of the album’s successes and its failings. The former has a solid crack at grasping the theme of slavery, breaking the pace, shifting rhythms to inject much-needed structural complexity and diversity, whilst the latter rips it and grips it only to thrash itself up into a repetitious, cyclical frenzy.

In automotive terms, this is like hearing the band forget they are driving a vehicle with a manual gearbox. They are ignoring the stick-shift and simply pumping their foot on the gas, making the engine whine like a wounded animal. When they do crunch through the gears, some of the decisions taken are head-scratchingly odd – why “American Steel” tries a limp, warbling, psychedelic guitar effect after running into a brick wall is beyond me. It’s completely at odds with what’s gone before it.

If you’re looking for a reason why Enslaved is a step backwards for Soulfly though, try “Revengeance” on for size. It’s a bit of a personal vehicle for Max and his family, featuring all three of Max’s sons, and is a tribute to his other son who died in a car accident back in 1996. It doesn’t feel much like a part of this album; a vitriolic stand-alone with several clashing vocal styles. With little personal quirks featuring throughout, it’s hard to know quite how to react to it.

The main trouble with Soulfly creating these heavier, less risky albums is that they are slowly making themselves redundant and, as a by-product, potentially putting fans out of pocket. We’re beginning to ask ourselves, “Why should I buy the new Soulfly when I can buy the new Cavalera Conspiracy and get more-or-less the same album?” Let’s face it, you’d always pick the one with Igor in, right? It wouldn’t be so much of a problem if Soulfly continued to pump out stone-wall classics but following the lapses in quality displayed by both Conquer and Omen, the band really had to nail this one… and they haven’t. Plain and simple. So, Andreas Kisser, please give Max his teddy back; it might just save his Soulfly.

Also online @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/soulfly-enslaved

Album Review: Meshuggah – Koloss (Nuclear Blast)

2012-03-05T10:23:00.004Z

As a late arrival at the Meshuggah table I find, at times, that I can be driven nuts by their overbearing attack and often flat, uneven grind. Their music may be bulging with slap-in-the-face aggression, something that is overwhelmingly exciting when witnessed live, but it’s a feature that requires a little more craft when brought to bear on an album. Too many times, all for the sake of an addictive hook, stand-out riff or crafty lyric, they seem to allow tracks to be dragged down into the deep. It’s here in these submerged waters that I lose them, only hearing the sound of repetitious, over-familiarity echoing from undefined sources coming from somewhere above the waterline.

For a band that’s birthed a whole genre of wannabes I’m clearly in the minority here. It’s exactly this level of adoration that adds extra pressure to each Meshuggah offering as they strive to stay ahead of the game. One glance at seventh long-player Koloss shows they aren’t afraid of going the extra mile to please. I mean, just look at that album art. It’s all a bit reminiscent of some of Tool’s more-innovative covers with its mind-bending 3D digital rendering. Stare too long at the image and your brain begins to hurt. That took Luminokaya Lab a whole nine months to create so could feasibly contain the entire World Wide Web within its multitude of brassy squiggles! So, if Koloss can cause pain on a visual level, how does the album stack up sonically?

Well, “I Am Colossus” is typically pin-point accurate and easily as deeply-furrowed as Nothing’s “Stengah”. As an opening track, it’s a beast. Instantly, they concentrate on one rumbling chord and ping it repeatedly you, loading everything into the steady, syncopated rhythm whilst Jens Kidman meshes his monotone, scorched earth vocal to it. Meshuggah are sending out a clear message of intent. “Palm-mute this, you mothers… JUN… JUN… JUN… JUN… JUN JUN…”. The guts of it are so deep that when the guitars let loose, the strings are dropped so low, you need to strain to hear the changes. It’s skull-crushingly heavy.

“The Demon’s Name Is Surveillance” is a speed-freak, light on its feet next to the elephantine “I Am Colossus”. The whirling vortex created by the continuous double-kick of Tomas Haake drills ever downwards. He’s back with more pummelling crush for “Swarm” which will make your skin creep. Behind the thunder drums, the crawling guitars go batshit mental to recreate the sound of a billion insects screaming out of the sky to poison and devour you. You won’t forget this one in a hurry, already a future classic, and as such it eats Machine Head’s recent insectivorous offering, “Locust”, for breakfast.

These are the kind of tracks we expect from Meshuggah; it’s when you dig deeper that you begin to find their mixed bag of tricks. There’s the Primussian slapped funk of “Don’t Look Down” which gets a harder, dirtier make-over for “Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave It Motion.” Check out that spiralling solo and those semi-distant atmospherics on the former, or that trippy, warbling guitar on the latter and tell me these psychos don’t pay attention to their surroundings.

“Behind The Sun” finds them stretching each note, grinding them into a murky wall of sound, generating a backdrop that sounds as complex as their cover appears. The band appear to be sucking up a doom/black metal quality to go with their vindictive death metal patter and they save some of that primordial darkness for “Demiurge”. However, be warned, this one’s a real howler of a track if you’re seeking a similar spark. It’s so lacking in charm you may as well listen to the sound of your own heartbeat through a stethoscope for six minutes instead.

And that’s Koloss in a nutshell. For every blinder, you get a duffer. So, whilst “Marrow” lurches and energises with its pinged guitar slaps overwhelming alongside clean, scrambling solos and fuzzball chugs, you get the bafflingly, mighty attack of “The Hurt That Finds You”. With tightened snare and bags of crunch, it’s a song so sharp it hurts and yet it’s all for nothing when it seems the destination is Nowheresville.
Judging it from afar, it’s easy to spot the dirge-like hammering and prolonged sections of extreme technicality of Nothing running through Koloss, and yet the band still find time for the kind of dark, mesmeric groove and changes of tempo that you’d associate more readily with obZen. And yet, there’s something new here; something infinitely more enigmatic; a dangerous edge bordering on a barren, post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Whether that is something that will inspire their legion of admirers remains to be seen but, considering how the metal scene has so easily fallen back in love with mood-metal, I can’t see it hurting them.

There, and I didn’t use the D-word… not even once.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2012/03/meshuggah-koloss-nuclear-blast/

Album Review: O.S.I. – Fire Make Thunder

2012-03-04T11:43:00.002Z

Working from home is every man’s dream. Wake up, crack a beer, watch some daytime TV, do some work for a bit, wash the car, a bit more work, fire up your non-specific games console, a bit more work (if you haven’t been sucked in by Skyrim‘s charms yet again), then down the pub until bed. That’s (allegedly) how the Office Of Strategic Influence (O.S.I.) operate.

Of course, O.S.I. is a band and not a government office, so there’s no need for us to get our knickers in a twist. O.S.I.‘s main men are prog-rock Wunderkinds Jim Matheos (Fates Warning, Arch/Matheos) and Kevin Moore (Chroma Key, ex-Dream Theater). There’s is a long-distance partnership. Both the writing and recording for fourth album, Fire Make Thunder, (in fact, all except the final overdubs and mastering process) is done at each musician’s respective home studio. Even the drums get a home-recording – this time at sticksman, and final piece in the puzzle, Gavin Harrison’s house far away in London. With their various other projects all ticking over nicely this is clearly an arrangement that works to their advantage.

Following their frankly stunning debut album (so good it warranted a recent re-release) they have been steadily churning long-players out on a regular basis. Their last couple have seen the band produce subtler, more mellow albums that stand accused of sacrificing hooks for emotion, but Fire Makes Thunder aims to correct that imbalance. Tracks like “Cold Call”, “Guards” and “Big Chief II” all wallow hard in the groove and serve up plenty of riffs and catchy lyrics that had me helplessly mumbling along whilst en-route to my various destinations, headphones askew from gently nodding in time. Others like “Indian Curse” or “Invisible Men” drop the pace and spark moments of deep contemplation with their crafty use of psychedelic, synthetic layering.

It may yet become tiresome, but the currently innocuous recycling of riffs and lyrics is a wonderful feature of the band. It ties tracks and albums together and draws comparison with the exquisite way Porcupine Tree do the same. Good examples here are the way “Guards” continues on from “Cold Call” by linking it back using lyrical content; or when “Invisible Man” picks up its big, heavily-fuzzed riff halfway through, it immediately recalls a riff that was used to great effect in “Bigger Wave” (from 2006′s Free). All these neat touches means the album flows beautifully from piece to piece, diligently threading emotional responses together. There’s true method in their madness, y’know.

The deft instrumental, “Enemy Prayer”, with its rinsed-out lead and bucking bass, rocks its listener from pillar to post with sections of delicate piano, wild tremelo and driven guitar, and stands up as one of their finest moments. Other album highlights can be find in the dreamy, waterfalling riff, background wash and dynamically-clipped vocal of “Wind Won’t Howl” and in the searing guitars which streak across Moore’s rich, menacing delivery (curiously reminiscent of Oasis’ Liam Gallagher) during “Guards”.

“Cold Call”, despite initially biting down hard with a fierce lick, after numerous plays, quickly gets repetitive and “Big Chief II” fails to initiate lift-off with a simplistically hard heart and with little else to stir the soul. However, despite these small failings, the album is an assured winner, proving that it’s not all beer, shits & giggles in the Matheos/Moore households, and heralds a welcome return to form for the band.

Also online @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/o-s-i-fire-make-thunder

Album Review: Avatar - Black Waltz

2012-02-18T12:54:00.001Z

Oozing pumping melodeath from every pore, Sweden’s Avatar are now on their fourth album and yet they are a band who have, up until now, slipped right through my fingers. Naturally, I was disappointed to discover they aren’t blue-skinned Na’vi from the planet Pandora but, having scanned the album title and proto-gothic freak on the cover, neither do they sound anything like Insane Clown Posse or the craptacular My Chemical Romance. In fact, there is a band that springs to mind when you add the album’s industrial overtones to their proclivity for thick black-make up, uniforms and all things Big Top, and that band is Rammstein. Now, that is a hard act to follow.

“All Is Lost” and “Torn Apart” kick off Black Waltz with the kind of rhythmic hammering you’d associate with a powerful steam locomotive haring down the rails. Sure, those metronomic drums fire up a sweet blazing trail, but it’s frontman Johannes Eckerström, in the engine cab, stoking those fires. Scouring his lungs for more and more power, he’s like a psychotic version of Randy Blythe (Lamb Of God).

With elements of Swedish compatriots The Haunted, Deathstars and Soilwork and, from across the border, Danish rockers, Hatesphere and Mnemic, they pile on the slick production and rip into their songs following a verse-chorus-verse pattern that brushes aside any overcomplicated sequencing or wild flights of fancy. Everything they’ve got is shoved whole-heartedly into the churning drum and bass, bottom-end groove. Tracks like “Blod” and “Smells Like A Freakshow” whack up the metal and, in doing so, become their fist-pumping anthems, whilst the nifty little riffs in “Paint Me Red” and “Torn Apart” add an addictive edge to spice up the deal.

With their simplistic construction and fondness for repetition, some of the tracks eke past the five-minute mark and, consequently, tend to turn a little sour – another case of over-egging a pretty straight-forward pudding. In the main, though, things are kept fast, fiery and attention-grabbing and the band have plenty of tricks up their sleeve to keep the album cannily varied.

“In Napalm” picks up a gothic bent as the band unite to deliver a whispered verse and accompanying chanted chorus, whilst the title-track goes even darker, riding snare rolls and walking us through a stageful of power-on, power-off, slow-quick theatrics (you have to check out the video, featuring circus act Hellzapoppin’, to really understand what’s going on here). Then, Avatar don a ten-gallon, chaps and chinks for “Let It Burn” and, from somewhere, find a dirty-ass blues groove and ride that buckin’ bronco for all it’s worth.There’s a few sticky moments, such as the 30 seconds of “In Napalm”s build that starts so quietly as to almost make it dead air, or the irksome twinkly chorus that kills the momentum of “One Touch”. Oh, and the near-as-dammit 10-minute, suck-it-up, harmonica-littered utter lunacy of “Use Your Tongue” wants bagging and tagging and throwing into a padded room. We’ll take it though for that killer line of “Good morning, good morning, good morning, rise and shine, rise and shine, rise and shine!”

I’m delighted to report, Black Waltz is a bit of a nutbar. The content seemingly rebounds off genres like a helpless pinball, but when it hits a bumper cap, it hits that cap with everything it’s got and that kind of commitment to the cause is a rare commodity. Yep, it’s a bit of a beast, so don’t be surprised to find Avatar breaking the machine with this one. Heck, they may not have anything like the wanton desire for destruction that Rammstein have, but you still wouldn’t want to be trapped in the same room as them. Hold on to your hats!

Also online @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/avatar-black-waltz

Album Review: Drawers - All Is One

2012-02-17T09:49:00.005Z

The sheer volume of music out there, divided into a plethora of disparate genres and subgenres, never ceases to amaze me. As lovers of the art form we are all sweeping our musical metal detectors across these heaving, sonic haystacks, searching for the tiny needles in each that prick our attention. The idea, of course, is that we collect enough needles from enough haystacks to satiate our own desire. As we grab our needles to knit our own musical sweater, it’s so easy to forget the vast weight of bands we either fail to pick-up on, or do so and discard.

Drawers are a band who, amidst the trend for those one-word, pluralised bandnames and the resurgent craze for atmospherics and big riffs, are in danger of not getting picked up. It’s clear from, “All Is One”, their debut album about a sailor’s journey to meet his nemesis, that the band have sucked up many different flavours of sludge and stoner metal to produce a hard, smothering sound that’s heavy enough to suffocate.

They start aggressively with both “Capuut Mortem Ocean” and “Black Queen” ripped with the grumbling guitar tone of High On Fire and enamoured with a touch of the dark power of Purified In Blood. “Grey Sailor” piles some of Corrosion Of Conformity’s hardcore feistiness into the mix, dissecting the rhythmic groove into spasming sections. Mostly though, you’ll be hearing plenty of the low-keyed progressive fury of Crowbar and Down, especially in tracks like “Ivory Lighthouse”, “Red Ballet” and “Muddy Smoke”, both in the Anselmo meets Windstein vocal and the weight of dissonance, dissolving the chugs into a singular sound.

Tracks like the short-but-sweet “Blue Keel” and the more expansive “Silver Hand” dig down into cleaner waters adding another brief layer with a more pinched, proggy quality a la Baroness or Isis. “Silver Hand”, in particular, is a winner having retained the driven punch built up from previous tracks to offer a taste of both worlds. Another cracker is the raw power-play, “Golden Adieu”, which simply refuses to cede ground to allow you room to breathe.

With quite a few recognisable influences up front and centre, the task of projecting their own stamp on the project becomes increasingly more important as the tracks roll by. Sadly, by “Purple Ride” and “Electric Seat”, Drawers have succumbed to towing the stoner metal line, mimicking Down almost to the last detail in an attempt to suck up some of their signature, grime-slicked, deep Southern groove, wobbling along the same path, facetiously mimicking their bow-legged gait.

It’s odd that an album whose song-titles feature an array of colours should seem so undeviating, but it’s an album that undoubtedly has an enormous heft to it. It’s for this reason that, despite its lack of variety and tendency to copycat, fans of any of the aforementioned bands should get a kick out of this. For the rest of you, as it stands, if your detector gets one whiff of these Frenchmen right now, it will simply short-circuit and Drawers will find themselves sliding back down to the bottom of that haystack.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2012/02/drawers-all-is-one-slow-burn-records/

Album Review: Band Of Skulls - Sweet Sour

2012-02-16T10:25:00.004Z

Southampton’s Band Of Skulls are a band on the cusp of something special. Their debut album, Baby Darling Doll Face Honey, nicely egged on by a couple of impact single releases, took them to some exciting places, and this latest long-player is already receiving some high-profile attention. Radio 1 has been blasting out the promo singles on a regular basis and, tuning in, it’s pretty easy to see why.

A quick glance at bassist/vocalist Emma Richardson’s Rorschashian inkblot artwork, this time around, is your first indication that Sweet Sour is going to rock harder than their debut. It has developed into something far more sinister than the blossoming glory of their debut. I’ve fallen into her trap by assembling its imagery into either a dissected, bloodied chicken corpse or, possibly, an Alien facehugger about to impregnate the viewer. Whichever it is, she’s nailed the album title in one startling image.

Certainly, the top end of Sweet Sour is all about the crunch. Guitarist/vocalist Russell Marsden has said “We wanted to write material that’s primed for where we’d got to. Beefier songs for bigger stages”. They are certainly that, with tracks like ‘Bruises’ and ‘Devil Takes Care Of His Own’ loaded with lurching, grimy riffs that pepper the songs with crafty precision, the rhythm ensconced in a methodical structure of attack and release.

They may be pulling the now-familiar shapes of rock bands past, but they have avoided the trap of merely echoing the mould that bands like The Vines or Jet once slid themselves into. Instead, BOS simply refuse to pile it all into the mix at once. Rather, enigmatic gaps in the music are added, the tonal quality becomes a malleable presence, and the pace is slowed to a crawl. It’s this kind of skillful songwriting that bolsters the effectiveness of the repeated lines which become the addictive hooks to be nailed home. It’s rock with added nous: the kind last seen active in the inventive minds of The Black Keys and Nine Black Alps.

Take the the boom-boom-tiss and falling arpeggio string taps of the title track or the steady two-chord repeater-riff that pads its way through to the key hushed strapline of ‘Devil Takes Care Of His Own’. Think Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock n’ Roll’ getting down and dirty with AC/DC’s ‘Back In Black’ and you’ll be half-way to understanding just how powerful these songs are.

Somewhat disappointingly, surrounding these top-end tracks lies a patchwork of hit and miss. ‘Wanderluster’ walks you down a dead-end of tentative echo and formulaic patterning before insulting you with a prosaic, posted-in chorus. ‘Lies’ crumbles beneath its own assuredness, circulating a couple of times before panicking and falling on the sword of brevity. Then, stepping back on the gas, they dredge up hints of The Subways with a soul-shaking groove, as memories of deliciously playful boy-girl harmonies are reignited, for ‘You’re Not Pretty But You Got It Goin’ On’.

The pace drops toward the album’s close, allowing the listener to sink back down within Band Of Skulls’ downier side. Tracks like ‘Navigate’, where Richardson beautifully steals the mic, ‘Hometowns’ and ‘Close To Nowhere’ all shift your perceptions of where this band fit in the wider scheme of things. Marsden recently nailed it with the words “Songs are your weapons. We’re the Swiss Army Knife of bands”. They can catch you napping with a real rocker like ‘Bruises’ or effortlessly disarm you with something like ‘Hometowns” whispered, yet super-sharp line “It’s just kids having more kids for fear of being alone” which comes from behind a veil of pastoral flute and gently tinkling stringwork.

As expected then, there’s some sweet and some sour; a description with a double meaning, applicable to both the album’s emphasis and its quality. Regardless of how fast the album grows and fades from your playlist, Band Of Skulls have cracked enough noggins here to really cause an industry ruckus. The countdown to lift-off has begun; twinkling in the distance, stardom awaits to receive them.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2012/02/band-of-skulls-sweet-sour/

Album Review: Fading Waves - The Sense Of Space

2012-02-12T10:50:00.005Z

I first became aware of Russia’s Fading Waves when I heard their impressive contribution to Slowburn Records’ split-EP with Starchitect. With the band’s brainchild, Alexey Maximuk, working his magic, both behind the production desk and in front of it, it was his talent for songwriting that most stood out. His stark concept and bleak lyrics struck quite a chord with my own dark side. Of the seven tracks on show, most were short, sharp and yet, ultimately, incisive. So, when it came to the announcement of the band’s debut album, The Sense Of Space, it was trepidation that replaced my inital excitement when I noted there was to be only five tracks, with four of those over nine minutes in length. Could Maximuk stretch his songs that far and still achieve the same impact and clarity of vision?

Well, The Sense Of Space tries a bit of everything, opening gently with fluctuating ambient pop, before exploring the wilds of post-rock and into the chaotic worlds of progressive, doom and death metal. As the album progresses, you can hear the tracks rebounding off a series of different markers; influences that prove just how deeply Maximuk is affected by his own emotional response to music.

The elegaic introductory piece, “Air”, scuffs up the dust of Renfro, Hammock and Cloudkicker, whilst “Flashes” (featuring the distinct, lilting vocal of Anastasia Aristova wending its way around shifting patterns) marries Mono’s sense of drama to the ethereal melancholy of Katatonia. You can almost hear the gearbox grind as they yank the stick and find a progressive metal punch to match the roaring cries of Alexey Morgunov. It’s No Made Sense meets Russian Circles via Isis. Then, the foot comes back off the gas as “Perforate The Sky” and “Through The Veins” drift into view, gurning and posturing as they infliltrate the more driven realms of Pelican and The Ocean.

There’s a damaged quality to the way Morgunov’s screams have been set back in the mix, with the scaling, hollow electrics brought forward to leave the rest fighting for attention in the middle. Each instrument is given its own degree of dissonance which adds dimension, granting the music this fascinating spatial quality. Sadly, the songs themselves are far less of a fascination; development is there but, when it does occur, it’s at an agonisingly slow pace.

One oddity I wasn’t quite prepared for is the higgledy-piggledy nature of the album. Although the concept of “air, senses of flight and endless space” seems easy enough to comprehend, the implementation of it is far harder to slot into place. Each chapter here, every soundscape, seems to come from other stories, other concepts – call me ignorant, but I certainly struggled to accept The Sense Of Space as a single work of art – its more musical crazy paving! The songs also feel overly lengthy, grinding their way down blind alleys, scrambling frantically at sheer walls. Fading Waves are clearly adept at creating invasive music, music that’s emotionally-draining, but apparently struggle to maintain a decent level of consistency. So, whilst I’m delighted to say this album flies it’s flag with pride, and is still worth a listen, it’s definitely a step backwards. I fancy a return to those hit-and-run tactics they seem so good at.

5/10

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2012/02/fading-waves-the-sense-of-space-slowburn-records/

Album Review: Overdown - Ethereal

2012-02-07T08:58:00.003Z

By pitching their sound somewhere between the tempestuous, polyrhythmic death metal of The Faceless, the melodic, punched pinballing of Textures’ latest and the fluctuating moods of Vildhjarta, Madrid’s Overdown are going have to engage their brains and flash some real skills to make themselves heard amongst the rapidly-expanding clutter of bands writing progressive and technical metal today.

There sure are some pretty decent tracks lurking in their debut long-player, Ethereal. “The Charm Of The Sirens”, for instance, is ripped with the kind of base-level addictive chorus that will see the crowd surging forward at their live shows – especially if Threat Signal’s Jon Howard makes an appearance, as he does here. It bursts forth from the wandering miasma of fascinating, spaced-out layering that surrounds it.

Tracks like “Genetic” and “Don’t Let Us Fall Into Temptation” match the scarring rawness of Julián del Sol’s vocal roar to the duelling guitar squall and well-timed mini-beatdowns. Sure, the click on the kick pedal is inevitably going to receive some hate, but the charged atmosphere of these bruisers will invigorate; veins will pulse on foreheads; we’ll be ready for action. And at the other end of the scale? The closer, “Gliese 581c”, is an oddity of gentile beauty.

Elsewhere, the main problem is the lack of track-to-track cohesion. Rather than an album, it feels like three EPs thrown together – 5FDP-lite ballads that give way to grim All Shall Perish ear-melters. In a nutshell, I give you “Shattered Breath”. It divides it’s time between serenading you and ripping your face off. It’s as if soft rock breathed out hard rock which breathed out a screaming metal bastard. It’s an utter lunatic of a track.

They even have a crack at cutting out the really heavy sections and leave us with the stumblingly morbid atrocity of “Rain”. Oh, and that track goes on for seven minutes – every time the track rolled around and the guitar solo kicked in, I found myself gnawing my own fingers, desperately resisting the desire to mash at the skip button. The segueing between the constituent sections of “Ether Ruins” is slightly neater but match it up to any tracks that the Basick brigade of Aliases, Visions or Circles recently managed and it falls short of impact.

They try all manner of electronic distractions, emotive pianos and squealing solos, even tricks like walking the sound from speaker to speaker, but nothing can seemingly save each track and, by design, this album from mediocrity. And their worst faux-pas of all? By opening the album with their weakest track, “Sumeria”. It opens with a formulaic, echoing, heartbeat thrum, and an oddly-warping arpeggio that skids into a technical metal smorgasboard ripped with tone-deaf screams and cleans. Given the spasmodic nature of the song construction, which in itself is unsettling, you are left with little but the gutless chorus accessible, so the listener clings to it desperately like it’s a sinking ship.

A well-read movie critic once eloquently described the first Transformers flick as the equivalent of director, Michael Bay, “beating his chest and waving his penis at us for a couple of hours” – a brilliant summation of a man who chose not to include a similar standard of character development, plot implementation or transition to that which he achieved in either The Rock or the Bad Boys movies. This pretty much sums up how I feel about Overdown and their album Ethereal. If the band has the skills but no dedicated plan on how to implement them, this is what you get. It’s maddening. Fingers crossed then, that for the next album, the Spaniards will spend as much time working their minds as they have working their willies.

Also online @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/overdown-ethereal

Album Review: Corrosion Of Conformity - Corrosion Of Conformity

2012-01-30T15:09:00.002Z

Pepper Keenan is another of those men with fingers in pies. If Down were the apple of his eye, then Corrosion Of Conformity would be his sweet, sweet potato. His determined commitment to one or the other inevitably leads to a clash of interests and, sadly, this self-titled album is missing his influence. Despite rumors to the contrary, the band have finally buckled after one too many album-less years and forged ahead to create a new opus as just a three-piece, with Mike Dean leading the charge on vocals. As a kind of makeweight, it’s a thrill to see drummer Reed Mullin back on board, so recreating the line-up that produced the band’s breakthrough album, Animosity.

If you follow the band’s timeline and line-up changes, it was inevitable that this release was always going to be a return to the days before Keenan helped tweak their sound. So it is that much has changed, one of the agitators being the harsher recording which has been stripped back to the barest of bones. However, what this shift of stance has done is kickstart that 80s punk/hardcore vibe which so set fire to their early career; back when their albums bulged with virile, feisty ragers that gobbed in your face. The trio have also found time to chuck in a 70s rock n’ roll vibe to boot, perfect fodder for Woody Weatherman’s hungry guitar, until they’ve reached, by hook or by crook, the crossroads where Terror meets Voivod via Orange Goblin, Black Sabbath, Saviours and Wolfmother. Yep, try sticking that lot on at once and see what you get.

For the old school metal warrior with a penchant for retrospection, this self-titled will be like being wonderfully dragged back in time. The flurry of hardcore aggression that crawls over “Leeches” and the snot-smeared punk attitude of “Psychic Vampire”, “River Of Stone” and “Rat City” (God only knows why Tenacious D’s “Car Chase City” keeps coming to mind when I hear this) properly kick out the jams to connect with the spirit of those early COC albums. Dean’s reverb-soaked vocal goes on to peak at cosmic levels for “Your Tomorrow” before reaching a disengaged, querulous low during “What You Despise Is What You Have Become”. It’s all an experience that may prove a little confusing for those newcomers to the band. Fear ye not though, my stoner friends, for there are still little moments of bliss to be found – here, within the wallowing, mellow blues of “The Doom”, then here, following the curiously Soundgarden-like swagger of “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here” (where Dean summons some fiery Cornell passion into his aging vocal cords), and here, attached to the luxuriant, twangy instrumental of “El Lamento De Las Cabras”.

Try comparing their last release and my personal favorite, 2005′s In The Arms Of God, with this collection though, and the whole charade begins to fall apart. Dean’s sharper, less-attractive howl is a tough thing to accept when you consider what might have been. That hole left by Keenan’s linear guitar skills and deep, throaty power (the perfect accompaniment to the band’s more recent shift to breathing forth heavy-lidded, dirty blues and gurgling psych soliloquies) is gaping. It’s all to do with personal taste, of course, but Keenan just seems the far stronger singer, even when it comes to smashing up the neighborhood and breaking the speed limit. With Dean dredging the music of times past, this just feels so… dated.

So it seems, then, that your level of enjoyment is probably going to be dictated by when you first fell in love with Corrosion Of Conformity. If you’re someone who prefers a dash of Pepper with your chow, then this crackerjack-strewn skid-pan might be a bit too much to stomach. However, if you’re a fan of that early-COC punch, then this will be exactly that, a shot in the arm.

Also online @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/corrosion-of-conformity-corrosion-of-conformity

Album Review: Lamb Of God - Resolution

2012-01-20T09:53:00.003Z

This month Lamb Of God’s enigmatic frontman, Randy Blythe, launched a campaign via his blog, Randonesia, to be America’s next President. Considering the timing of the announcement, with the release of the band’s new album Resolution just days away, it’s quite clearly a tongue-in-cheek PR stunt. The question here though is will the album prove as determined as his campaign?

Historically, these Virginian heavyweights rarely fall short when it comes to honing real quality. As their album output has developed from sinister slabs of misguided anger into a study in the art of attack, they have built up a portfolio of killer material second to none. Following the raw bludgeon of their early efforts, including most notably As The Palaces Burn, where speeding cantankerous hardcore was doused in that signature cyclical death metal groove, they went on to hit the motherload when they also threw anthem-fuelled hard rock onto the flaming pile. Cue the utterly masterful assault course of Ashes Of The Wake which fed us neatly into the instant addiction provided by, first Sacrament with those half-spat shards and endorphin-loaded hooks, and then Wrath with its exploratory flashes of brilliance and swaggering ability to create memorable monsters. Consequently, the longing for Resolution and the continuation of discovery has become steadily unbearable.

Resolution divides its time between disconsolately hammering your brains out with spiked aggression and then piping through deeply-rutted rhythms that toss and turn themselves into yet more hook-in-mouth bloodlust. It takes the old, uncomplicated malevolence of As The Palaces Burn and combines it with the hands-to-the-heavens glory of Sacrament and Wrath. All this means yet more of those verses that jaggedy-jaggedy-jaggedy along, before rockstar-pausing to explode with a wham-bam-thankyou-mam into the colossus that is the chorus. Randy Blythe owns these parts with his earth-shattering whoops and throaty rasps that invigorate with their intensity, each one containing coherent, slick lyrics that demand repetition and naturally provide the opportunity for plenty of heartfelt hollerbacks. When they grubbily fall flat it is disappointing to find these sequences flooding a track to bursting point yet again but, when they shed the dirt and fire on all cylinders, there is nothing in metal today that gets the blood pumping faster. Such is the fine line that Lamb Of God now find themselves treading, though only a true hater would dare suggest that, given their history and the talent on show, they are a one-trick pony.

We always knew he was a legend-in-waiting but, by actually getting fully-involved in the whole process of making an album (i.e.; not nipping off to indulge in his other projects whilst the band lay down the backing tracks), Randy has finally revealed his true value to the band by injecting more haranguing invective and raw-throated intensity than ever before. He warms hugely to his lyrics here, tugging at themes of self-destruction and isolation, with the album title left implying something much wider than just the political statement that the cover and a couple of the tracks suggest, and he delivers them with the conviction of a madman. The other tour-de-force here is Chris Adler. His rampaging drums do the work of two; an army of machine-gun peppering kicks loaded into a world of polyrhythmic intersplicing that will leave you gasping for air. He is a machine and with Resolution he finds yet another level to impress at.

Dug in amongst all this we get yet more progressive elements to savour. They lurk in tracks like “The Number Six” and “King Me” and add something spicy to the melting pot. The former plumps for gang chants and half-whispered messages (redolent of Faith No More’s “Crack Hitler”) whilst “King Me” is on a whole other level. There’s more portentous, hushed vocal but here it’s given an operatic backing (producer Josh Wilbur’s suggestion which should be roundly applauded) and the soaring dark heart, where Randy turns himself into an anvil-topped storm cloud, boiling and bubbling into a destructive twister that threatens to rip the top of your head off and suck out the contents, is mesmeric. When he finally blows himself out, you can actually hear the man collapse.

Other more intuitive tracks like the thrashy rumblings (where Megadeth meets Agnostic Front) of “Guilty” and “Visitation”, the hunk of molten metalcore that forms “Cheated”, or the jerky, bawled punk of “Invictus” provide solid, if unspectacular, padding to absorb the smack of the money-shots like “Desolation”, “Ghost Walking”, “The Undertow” and “Insurrection”. They may be the album weak points, but they aren’t those obviously jarring dips in quality that your average album carries around as bulk.

In fact, considering the quantity of variation within, from the long doomy opening blast, via the snatch of acoustic riffing, to the snippet of clean vocal harmony, there is much keep you coming back for further listens over and over again. In fact, you’ll be amazed to hear they’ve even managed to Crowbar in (pun intended) some bluesy stoner rock with “To The End”.

All this and yet the flow of the album is superb with parallel tracks linked together with re-worked riffs or just fiendishly simple wordplay and, with fourteen songs to run through, there’s plenty of bang for your buck. Okay, there is still the sense that they’ve held back, yet again, on really twisting our melons with something from left-field, and pound for pound it’s not got the star quality of say Ashes Of The Wake or Sacrament, but then it’s not lagging too far behind. An essential purchase, though? Well, put it this way, if I was an American citizen, I’d be voting for Randy!

Also online @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/lamb-of-god-resolution