Ravn - Svartedans (2024)

Country: Norway
Style: Folk/Black Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Oh, I like this band! They're from Trondheim, Norway and they play relatively straightforward folk metal with clean female vocals in front of a traditional heavy metal line-up: twin guitars, bass and drums. What there aren't are fiddles, bagpipes or hurdy gurdys, though I'm very happy to hear a nyckelharpa to open Syndera and thus the album. However, that's the only song on which it shows up, as it's courtesy of a guest appearance from Mathias Gyllengahm, best known for Utmarken, a folk metal band from neighbouring Sweden.

What that means is that the folk aspect of Ravn isn't a layer of instrumentation, as it sometimes can be; it's who they are, like, say, Bucovina. They're a heavy band, make no mistake, playing heavy metal throughout and dipping into black metal on occasion, but they're a heavy band playing folk music, even if it happens to be new and they wrote it. That nyckelharpa lays down a melody that's promptly echoed by vocalist Hildegunn Eggan and the band behind her happily bolster whatever she's doing, at least until the very end of the album, when they fade away on Hulderlokk, leaving her to finish out in haunting a capella.

I like the band but I really like these vocals. I don't speak Norwegian, so I don't understand any of the lyrics she's singing, but she has a fantastic crisp delivery that suggests to me that she has an impeccable intonation. My sister's most of the way to fluency in Norwegian now so I should send a copy of this over to her and see how she does with it. I recognise the pauses in between syllables from when she speaks Norwegian, but she doesn't do it remotely as well as Eggar and I'd hazard a guess that most Norwegians don't either. She also throws out a couple of what I'd have to describe as squeals on Krig that I absolutely adore.

Musically, the black metal is shifted to the centre of the album, so the opening pair of songs are all folk metal without that flavour being apparent. Syndera is an excellent opener, patient and heavy with folky melodies and those characterful vocals. Krig (or War) is better still, my favourite of the eight tracks on offer. It's slower but even heavier, with rumbling drums behind the verses, a strong bridge that oddly reminds of Iron Maiden, even though this is a very different style indeed, and a wonderful melody in the chorus.

The black metal shows up initially in Svartedans, which appropriately translates to Black Dance. It isn't as overt here, restricted to an intro that isn't fast enough or dense enough to thrill die hard black metal fans but clearly drawn from that genre. Then it drops into a melody and we're clearly back in folk metal again. That hint in Svartedans shows up with a vengeance in a pair of tracks that feature guest harsh vocals from Mikael Aasnes Torseth of Trondheim black metal band Keiser. The band dive firmly into his genre to meet him on Mare, then jump back into folk metal when Eggan takes the lead. It's an interesting dance. The two approaches merge in the chorus for Fimbulvinter, which is even more interesting.

And then Torseth departs and Ravn use Svik to come down from their black metal interlude. There are hints of black metal in this one, but it's mostly folk metal again, with a keyboard intro that's a lot like Enya, incorporating what I presume are synths manipulating a vocal sample. It's a livelier song than most of the folk metal songs here but it's not as fast as the black metal ones. It thrives on momentum but the final two tracks avoid that, going back to power chords and slower, heavier riffing.

They're also not new songs though I assume they've been re-recorded for this album, given that a "(2024)" appears after both their names. They were each released as a single, Evighet in 2020 and Hulderlokk in 2021. I like both of these, but Hulderlokk, arguably the most folky song here, is very good indeed, my second highlight after Krig. I don't know what it means, Google Translate giving me only Hole Lid, but I adore its majestic folk melodies and riffs, full of pauses and attitude, all the way to the da de da vocalised sections and that lovely outro.

So I've just found another favourite band, which makes it all the sadder to add that they went on hiatus on 12th August, only a couple of weeks before releasing this second album on the 30th. I'm not sure of the details why, but it's the old classic of "irresolvable disagreements about the way forward". Of course, there are two very clear directions on show here, one to folk metal and one to black metal, so the obvious guess is that these disagreements tie to that but I have no evidence whatsoever to back that up. It's just the obvious guess. If so, it's especially unfortunate because I like how the two merge here. There's a good balance to this album and a lot of that is through an overt shift from folk to black and back again, starting and ending with the purest folk elements.

The good news is that there's a previous album, I mørke natt from 2018, which is still available on Bandcamp, so I'll be happily checking that out when time allows.

Simone Simons - Vermillion (2024)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Aug 2024
Sites: Wikipedia

Vermillion is the first solo album from Simone Simons, best known as the lead singer of Epica and the former lead singer of After Forever, of course both symphonic metal bands. If it might initially seem to answer the question of what Epica might sound like without a harsh male co-vocalist, it's a little resistant to answer that because it's really not a Simons solo album; it's a collaboration of Simons and Arjen Lucassen, the mastermind behind Ayreon. She provides all the vocals and he all the instrumentation, except for guest appearances on both fronts, and both shape it.

The most interesting song is the first one, which quickly impressed me and just as quickly flustered me. It's called Aeterna and it feels heavier than Epica with Lucassen providing a real crunch. Part of that heaviness is the tone but much of it is the pace, because it's slow, symphonic doom, with a tasty middle eastern flavour laid over it. The instrumentation is higher in the mix than I'd expect for a solo album from a symphonic metal singer too. Then it adds a choral backdrop that reminds of Therion, some hints at industrial and then a real shift into electronica. It's fascinating stuff.

The album as a whole is varied, so Aeterna doesn't entirely set the stage for what's to come, but it does in one crucial respect. The instrumentation is often fundamentally simple, surprisingly so for something that dips into prog, but the songwriting is just as often not. In other words, there are a lot of complicated songs here that are played simply, which feels odd but helps to focus attention on Simons's clear soprano, whatever else is going on. Now, remember this when I talk about all the cool things Lucassen does behind her!

My favourite song after Aeterna is probably Cradle to the Grave, surprisingly because the guest on this one is Alissa White-Gluz of Arch Enemy. I've never been a particular fan of hers, as capable as she is, preferring her predecessor Angela Gossow and not much liking the Agonist, her metalcore band. However, she does a strong job here, lending her harsh voice to be a counter to Simons in an impressively patient manner. Had she duetted throughout, it wouldn't be as good a song, but she chimes in when and only when her particularly texture is warranted and it works gloriously.

I'm not going to even try to rank the remaining eight songs, but they cover a lot of ground.

Some start softly, like In Love We Rust, Fight or Flight and Dystopia, but they ramp up eventually and in very different style. In Love We Rust combines clean vocals and pulsing electronica, powers up, powers down, powers up again and ends up almost like a commercial gothic metal song. Fight or Flight features some delicious guitarwork from Lucassen that's oddly almost an aside and the elegant violin of guest Ben Mathot. As it finishes, Simons duets with herself in operatic Tristania fashion. Dystopia is soft and patient with occasional prog flurries to stir it up and a tasty guitar solo from Lucassen in the second half.

Others power up quickly. Weight of My World alternates between a heavy guitar/bass combo and light electronica. Most obvoiusly, The Core starts up heavy, with Mark Jansen, Simons's former co-vocalist in After Forever, on shouty growls, making it almost sound like elegant metalcore. That's almost appropriate given the song title, but that's not what it's about. Like White-Gluz on Cradle to the Grave, he's a texture behind her when needed, but he starts the song out and is much more prominent.

And then there are songs so different that they're either not metal at all or only touch on it when they feel like it. Vermillion Dreams, presumably the title track, starts out with avant-garde notes and unfolds as soaring vocals over pulsing electronica. I like the melodies in this one but it finds its metal escalation very late, making it as much new wave as symphonic metal. R.E.D. features some flamboyant synths and its punchy opening gives way to something more gothic, like heavy darkwave. And, talking about gothic, I was expecting the closer, Dark Night of the Soul, to be a gothic metal song, what with the presence of piano and cello, but it's really a chamber ballad because it's entirely piano and cello behind Simons's vocals.

All in all, this is an interesting album, one that suggests that Simons is trying to stretch her music into new directions that aren't likely to be viable in Epica. I often appreciate that sort of thing but don't always enjoy it. I did here. For what could be fairly classified experimental, it's an accessible album that's often commercial. While I'm still looking forward to the next Epica album, given that I gave 2021's Omega a highly recommended 8/10, I both appreciated and enjoyed this side journey.

Delving - All Paths Diverge (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Aug 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Delving is only a band when playing live. In the studio, it's one man, Nicholas DiSalvo, who's best known for being the guitarist and vocalist in the psychedelic/stoner rockers Elder, who hail from Fairhaven, Massachusetts but are currently based in Berlin, the one in Germany not the many in the States. This is a side project of his to find a home for the many song fragments and ideas that he generates over time, being "an almost obsessive songwriter, working on music every day". The first Delving album was a product of the pandemic, collating material created before it, but this follow-up is work that originated since then.

He wrote everything and performed almost everything, the only other musical contributions that get a credit being Fabien de Meno on some keyboards (Rhodes and upright piano) and his Elder colleague Michael Risberg providing "additional guitar ambience" on one track, Zodiak. If all that suggests that this might be a very Elder-sounding release, that's only true if we consider how that band has changed over the past couple of decades. They used to be a stoner metal band, but they softened up considerably when they recorded The Gold & Silver Sessions in 2019 to sound more like a prog/psych band who veer often into krautrock and they've mostly stayed there since, on Omens and Innate Passage.

Certainly, for all the guitar vehemence in the second half of Chain of Mind or early in Zodiak, this is primarily driven by the keyboards and that's often all there is. Just check out the funky start to New Meridian to see that. This track is almost world music filtered through krautrock, the core of it reminding of Jamaican steel drums, of all things, but with an electronic beat layered over the top and building keyboard layers. It evolves, of course, but the keyboards continue to lead the way, even when bass and drums arrive to take major parts. It's one of my favourite pieces of music here and very possibly the top of the list.

It's also entirely instrumental because DiSalvo never uses his voice and I'm not upset about that. I don't dislike his vocals for Elder, but I get so immersed in their long instrumental sections that I'm never particularly happy when he opens his mouth to remind me that I'm listening to a song rather than floating peacefully in the spaces between the stars enjoying the distant scenery. With vocals completely absent here, I remain blissfully immersed throughout, only brought out of it after an hour and two minutes when silence takes over if I haven't got the album on loop.

And immersion is the chief success here. It's very easy to get lost in this album, to lose track of the rest of the world as the music takes us somewhere else. If that's what DiSalvo is going for, then he nails it here. The catch to that is that it means that the album works best as an album rather than as individual tracks. Either you'll like it or you won't. Picking a favourite track or favourite section of a track is going to be much harder.

For me, New Meridian is the only one that does something different to the rest of the album. It's the lightest piece and the most keyboard-centric, until the bass kicks in halfway. However, it's also the most active. Everything else is about presenting an atmosphere and leaving us be to float on through it. This one feels more like some amorphous alien creature that's playing with us and has every intention of making us join in with its games. That's especially true for the first half but it's there in the second half too.

Other than that, I'd maybe call out The Ascetic, because I like how jagged it feels, even though it's ended in surprisingly abrupt fashion. Others might plump for Zodiak, which is a little heavier with that extra guitar ambience, making it the closest to a latter day Elder song, but it's also easily the longest piece here at thirteen and a half minutes. With that said, it changes around the eight and a half minute mark, letting the guitars fade away into the distance and switching back to keyboard atmospheres.

All in all, this is a solid 7/10 all the way but I'm starting to wonder about whether it deserves more than that because I've been listening to it for about four days solid. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. Let's see how I think about it while listening to something else.

Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks - True (2024)

Country: UK/USA
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 23 Aug 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website - Jon Anderson | Official Website - Richie Castellano | Wikipedia - Jon Anderson | Wikipedia - Richie Castellano

There's some history here to kick off with. Jon Anderson is the former lead singer of Yes, of course, last heard on 1000 Hands: Chapter One, a thirty years in the making album finally released in 2019. He's backed here by the Band Geeks, which are a project of Richie Castellano, currently working as the rhythm guitarist and keyboard player in Blue Öyster Cult. Band Geek started as a podcast but grew into a band that covered songs on YouTube, with a constantly changing line-up of friends and guests. Anderson appreciated their covers of Yes songs enough to tour with them covering classic Yes tracks. That collaboration has now reached another level with this album of original music.

So, it's not Yes, but it absolutely sounds like Yes and not only because it prominently features Jon Anderson's iconic voice. There are overt Yes moments all over the album like a rash, starting with the phrasing of True Messenger, but especially including the bass work on Shine On, the beat early in Counties and Countries and the acoustic guitar intro to Make It Right. Clearly these musicians love Yes and not just because they're backing Jon Anderson. The era isn't singular but is mostly a combination of late seventies and early eighties Yes, a point when the songs were shorter and far more commercial in the main.

That era is backed up by occasional hints at what Anderson did in Jon and Vangelis, Counties and Countries veering into a Vangelis-esque fanfare and some of Anderson's vocal approach from that project. However, it isn't for long and the song clocks in at a breath under ten minutes, so we've generally forgotten those moments by the time we get to the end, with a prominent jazzy keyboard solo that isn't remotely like anything Vangelis might produce. Anderson merely has a lot of history to draw on and clearly not everything here sounds like his best known material with Yes.

I should mention that not every song is long, with Counties and Countries the shortest of only two worthy of that description, the other being Once Upon a Dream, a sixteen and a half minute epic. In fact, three of the nine tracks are done under four minutes with four others ranging from four to six. Some of them are even relatively straightforward for prog rock, Shine On the most obvious of those, regardless of that elegant basswork from Castellano.

Even though the songs take different approaches, the album is consistently strong, though there are clear highlights. I'd call out Once Upon a Dream as the best of them, and I'll cover that shortly, but I like Make It Right a lot too. It's a slower, more deliberate song but it has a gentle majesty to it. Even when it ramps up somewhat in its second half, it keeps that majesty in the way that a band like Magnum almost patented. It's another simpler song too, without much that's progressive, but it's highly effective nonetheless, all the way to the gospel moments at the end. It's a song that we feel rather than marvel at, even if there are moments of the latter.

The gentleness of Make It Right also continues into Realization Part Two, one of the three minute songs, which also adds a mild African flavour. It's only hinted at in beats and late vocal harmonies, but it could easily be funked up and jazzed up to fit fairly on Paul Simon's Graceland album. If I had to pick another highlight, it would be True Messenger, which opens the album as it means to go on. It's a strong opener, but I'd rank it after these highlights but above everything else.

I should emphasise that none of the lesser songs let the side down. I can't say I'm a huge fan of the closer, Thank God, for instance, even though it opens like a Police song, but that's partly because it can't hope to do much in comparison to the sixteen and a half minute epic before it. And that leads me back into Once Upon a Dream, which is likely to be everyone's standout track, ironically given that much of the album's success is in starting and finishing things in far fewer minutes.

I love the vocal rhythms that open Once Upon a Dream, which hearken back to some of the songs on 1000 Hands originating in Anderson's vocal exercises. He has a great choice of words for their sounds and, while I'm not expecting vocal coaches to react to a song this long, I'd love to hear what they might have to say about this opening. Of course, there's time enough for a lot more than just vocals and it stands up to that expectatoin. There's a Rainbow-esque guitar solo early on and an angelic midsection with copious use of triangle, not to forget a particularly wild transition in the thirteenth minute. It's a gift that keeps on giving.

And that holds true for the album as a whole. I'd say that this is better than 1000 Hands, but not by much, maybe not by enough to get a higher rating from me. Should I round a 7½ up or down? Going up would mean it sitting on my Highly Recommended List for the year. I think I'm OK with that. The most important thing, thinking on a grander scale than just one album, is that this is easily better than the most recent Yes album, The Quest from 2021. And I see that Alan White has left Yes, so it has to be said that Steve Howe is the only long term member left. Maybe those reunion calls could get somewhere. And, on the basis of this, maybe they should.

Black Wings - Whispers of Time (2024)

Country: Italy
Style: Melodic Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | Twitter | YouTube

Black Wings are showing on Metal Archives as having split up, after an active spell between 2005 and 2011 resulted in one album, 2008's Sacred Shiver. But hey, here's a 2024 album, of what seems to be entirely new music, performed by two of the same musicians and three new ones. Facebook seems to suggest that it was recorded in 2010 before the band split up and was rescued from the vaults by one of the studios in which it was recorded, Sonika, in the band's home town of Ferrara. Having not heard Black Wings before, I'm very happy to hear them now, though I'm sad they are no longer together.

It seems appropriate to start some catch up at Apocalypse Later after a tough few months dealing with real life issues. They're fourteen years late with this album. I've only been away since June.

The album came to me as melodic heavy metal, which is fair, I guess, but they mostly play a sort of European power metal that veers into melodic rock, hard rock and traditional heavy metal. It also gets epic, with a cinematic intro in Opening the Gates that shifts from demonic spoken word to an enticing, almost bouncy, Danny Elfman-esque theme, and a less successful closer that runs far too long. That's Back to Consciousness and it combines narration, elegant piano and orchestration.

While Strangers to This World (Like You) is emphatically a melodic rock song, driven not by guitars but the keyboards of Alessandro Duò, most of this does give Claudio Pietronik the traditional lead guitar role for heavy metal alongside the powerful vocals of Diego Albini, and not one of the seven other tracks feels comfortable lumped into melodic rock. The opener, Cold is the Wind, is a suitably lively track with good strong vocals and lively riffs, especially after a brief drop to piano midway, those riffs wrapped in effective orchestration. This is a statement of intent and, while that intent is briefly interrupted by Strangers to This World, it holds true for much of the album.

Cold is the Wind is definitely one of my highlights, but there are others. Calling to a Fool ups the power again after Strangers to This World and Albini is especially eager to deliver, but it elevates through a unexpectedly loose and jazzy midsection that kicks the song back into gear through an excellent pair of solos, one on guitar from Pietronik and another on keyboards from Duò. Talking of blistering, the most blistering heavy metal here is the guitarwork during the second half of The Sense of Emotions. It's a powerful song anyway but that guitar is gorgeous. I should also call out The Story Ain't Over, because it finds a particularly strong groove in the second half, both before and after Albini hands over to the instrumentation.

While those are my highlights, the remaining songs don't really let the side down. Another Sun is a capable song with a lot of Iron Maiden to it and even more of the European power metal bands who came into being because of them. It would be a good song on any other album, but I can't say it's as good as the songs around it. Whispers of Time is more generic for a European power metal song, even though it's the title track. It's decent, but it doesn't stand out the way those highlights do. And Waiting in Heaven slows things down considerably, opening like a ballad but powering up in its later stages. It's the least effective of them all for me, if still enjoyable.

The worst song for me is easily the closer, which isn't really a song at all, just a five minute outro that dips back into cinematic territory, as if it's wrapping up a concept album. Maybe it is, but I'd not caught any link between songs otherwise. Its only vocals are narrative and it never manages to find a focus instrumentally for me. Sure, it sets a mood but it's not the mood I wanted from an outro to a power metal album. Even on a third or fourth time through, I never wanted to skip any of these songs, even the partial ballad, but the outro lost me first time around and got more and more annoying with each further listen.

Without an active band behind it, I guess this only has a couple of possibilities to live up to. One is to enhance the reputation of a band who are no longer together, and I'd suggest it succeeds there. I haven't heard Sacred Shiver, so I can't say if this is better or worse or even remotely similar, but it seems like a valid rescue from the archives. The other is to introduce people like me to a band who might, even individually, benefit from fresh attention. Is this good enough to prompt a reunion? It probably isn't, but it's a quality addition to the resumes of everyone involved, whatever they may be doing nowadays.

Evildead - Toxic Grace (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 4/10
Release Date: 24 May 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I liked United States of Anarchy, Evildead's comeback album in 2020, and actively talked up certain aspects that I'll quote right now: "it's full of unashamedly old school fast and heavy thrash" and "a great mix of technical proficiency, angry attitude and raw speed, just how I like it". The reason I'm bringing that up now is because I can't remotely say the same things about this follow-up, a fourth album overall for the Los Angeles thrashers, and that's highly disappointing.

It takes a little while to realise how disappointing but, the longer the album runs on, the more we can't avoid the conclusion that Evildead have seriously lost their way this time out. I hope they can correct course for their next album, because it shouldn't be a particularly difficult task. They were in fine fettle four years ago. What's changed since then?

Initially, it's not too bad. F.A.F.O. kicks off well, with a capable intro suggesting an imminent ramp up to fast thrash speeds but it never quite gets there. It keeps hinting that it will for quite a while, but we gradually realise that it's content to just chug along while Phil Flores tries to sound angry without the same level of effort he put into the previous album. Reverie starts out fast but calms down and Flores shifts into an almost hip hop vocal approach. He's not rapping per se, but he spits bars here, punctuating their last words, as often as he spits out lyrics.

Neither of these are bad tracks, but neither is what it could be, so we're still hopeful at this point and I remained hopeful even after a chugger like Raising Fresh Hell that's nothing but filler three tracks in with a poor chorus. There's some speed in Stupid on Parade, but only very briefly, even if drummer Rob Alaniz doesn't quite get the memo, and its brevity sparks a sinking feeling that only grows with the album, pausing only temporarily in Subjugated Souls during the first of the album's two real examples of excellent fast thrash that hurls out energy. The second arrives at the end of Fear Porn nine tracks in, with only a cover still to come at that point.

I talk a lot about songs on albums that I merely like on a first listen but appreciate more and more each further time through. These growers tend to sound good but carry depth that comes clearer in repeat listens and often those become my favourite songs on those albums. I have to say Stupid on Parade is the antithesis of that. I didn't like it on a first listen, with its chugging tedium and its manipulated vocals, but repeat listens make me realise just how bad it is. That's not a good thing. Neither is not wanting to listen to it again after three times through.

And so it goes. Subjugated Souls may be the best song on the album, musically speaking, but it's a rather awkward song lyrically. Now, Evildead have never been the best lyricists and even the prior album was hardly impressive from that standpoint, its songs hurling vitriol at all the usual thrash suspects like politics and religion. I can get past that for the most part, but this one feels like it's punching down instead of up, a product of old men bitching about a younger generation. That it's got some fair points to make and it's better lyrically crafted than the previous few songs doesn't make it feel any less cringeworthy.

So there's a delicate and tasty intro to Bathe in Fire? We know that Juan Garcia is a killer guitarist even if he doesn't try particularly hard this time out. The guitar solo on this song is easily its best aspect, because it's another mid-tempo chugger with an even more lazy Flores vocal delivery. He speaks some of these lyrics, chants others and adds more post-production manipulation. This was the point where the sinking feeling stuck. World ov Rats hints at energy with its opening riff and bassline. Fear Porn has that second blistering section that feels great until we realise how little the album has left to go. Poetic Omen does nothing. None of them are highlights, though.

In fact, there are no real highlights. I'd plump for Subjugated Souls musically, but the lyrics don't help its case. That probably leaves F.A.F.O. as the best original song, which it really shouldn't be, and the best song the cover that wraps things up. It's The Death & Resurrection Show, taken from Killing Joke's self-titled 2003 album, and I rather dig it, but it doesn't feel like it belongs anywhere on this album. Evildead covered Planet Claire by the B-52s on United States of Anarchy, so maybe they ought to release an unusual covers album. I'd be up for that.

How things change over such a brief period. Four years ago, I was glad to see Evildead back and I praised their vitriol and vitality. They felt rejuvenated and ready to play a part in the burgeoning thrash scene. Today, I'm finding the best of their new material average and the worst thoroughly disappointing, and thinking about them as a covers band. That's not a good career trajectory.

Sykofant - Sykofant (2024)

Country: Norway
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 31 May 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Prog Archives | Tiktok | YouTube

I don't review every album I'm sent as a submission, but I do review most because they tend to be very strong indeed and this prog rock album from Norway is no exception. Now, I was sold on prog rock album from Norway, because, if there's a country outdoing Poland in that genre right now, it has to be Norway. However, this is very different from any of the other bands I'm being shocked by, like Motorpsycho, Wobbler and Shamblemaths, partly because it combines a couple of eras that I don't usually hear merged.

One isn't too surprising, because it's early Pink Floyd, not the famous stuff but the stuff that came right before it. There's a Floydian patience to the first four minutes of Between Air and Water and both the vocal melodies and the first guitar solo flow like Floyd too. When it returns to this sound in the second half, the bass gets ominous in a simple but highly effective manner that reminds of the Floyd's Empty Spaces. This is very tasty indeed, so I was far from unhappy when a very similar bassline shows up at the very end of the album, to wrap up Forgotten Paths.

However, the other is highly surprising because it's far more recent, namely the nineties, but in a couple of different ways. One is a jagged prog metal approach that reminds very much of Voivod, as is obvious in the third section of Between Air and Water. The other, however, is the commercial sort of American alternative rock that I wasn't expecting to hear on a Norwegian prog album. It's all over the melodies on the opener, Pavement of Colors, and, for a prog album that's as sonically complex as we might expect, that and other songs often find a grungy level of lo-fi simplicity that was fascinating to me. Points in Between the Moments reminded me of Clutch.

It's not merely those two eras, because Strangers in particular ventures all over the musical map, but they're the two that kept coming back for me. Pavement of Colors develops from a funky start with a wonderful bassline, through jangly guitars to almost a Tank guitar tone as it wraps up. That would constitute a highly versatile song except Between Air and Water has three times as long to explore three very different approaches, and Strangers, at just over ten minutes, has everything beaten hands down on that front. This is prog rock, after all, and a prog rock album isn't supposed to stay in the same place.

There are other surprising shifts in style that caught my attention. The first half of Monuments of Old finds a Rush vibe for a while, which makes sense, but it evolves into something far more Black Sabbath, which is far more surprising, and that evolves into almost a jazzy take on Megadeth, not a phrase I ever expected to use in a review. Strangers, always the song to outdo everything else, is happy to follow a section full of middle eastern flavour with one out of a spaghetti western. Then, just to put the icing on the cake, it goes almost ambient in its second half.

In short, there's a lot here because Norwegian prog rock bands never rest on their laurels. While this is a debut album, it's a generous one at only a few minutes shy of an hour, and its six tracks do a huge amount. I've listened through half a dozen times now, which is enough to firm up personal favourites. Between Air and Water was an immediate favourite, but Strangers beats it every time through. It's a fascinating song, my favourite sections sounding like Voivod covering Led Zeppelin with a couple of vocalists. The ambient section that kicks off almost eight minutes in really ought to spoil the song but it works as a sort of interlude to calm us before Forgotten Paths takes things home.

Everyone does their job, as tends to be pretty essential for ambitious prog rock albums, but I keep coming back to Sindre Haugen's bass. It's not always there and it's not always doing things of note but it's there often enough and doing things of note often enough to stand out for me. There are two guitarists, Emil Moen and Per Semb, and I don't know how they divvy up lead and rhythm, but the solos are often excellent. I particularly like the one a few minutes into Forgotten Paths, while it's almost a pop song, and the longer one during the second half, when it's become something far more versatile.

They're also as frequently responsible for the jazzier sections as the drums of Melvin Treider, who is notable for just how much he does without ever seeming to steal any sort of spotlight. They also dip into other genres, from the jagged prog metal of Between Air and Water to a blues slide and jaunty near reggae late midway through Forgotten Paths. And that leaves the vocals, which come courtesy of Moen on lead but Semb and Haugen prominently backing him up. There are points on songs like Pavement of Colors that need two voices to unfold properly.

I haven't heard an average Norwegian prog rock album yet, which is telling. This doesn't reach the heights of Shamblemaths or my favourite Motorpsycho album, Kingdom of Oblivion, but it's above the very high bar the country is setting, up there with strong albums from established bands like Leprous and Mythopoeic Mind. Thanks, Sykofant, I hope Norway keeps those wonderful prog rock albums coming!

Lee Aaron - Tattoo Me (2024)

Country: Canada
Style: Pop/Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 26 Apr 2024
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I'm always fascinated by the latest Lee Aaron release, because she has no intention of staying in a single musical genre. Back in the mid eighties when I first heard her, she was singing heavy metal, but softened up into hard rock later in the decade. She's moved through pop, blues, jazz and even swing, shifting back to rock with 2016's Fire and Gasoline. I noticed in 2021, giving Radio On! a 7/10 and its follow up, Elevate, a highly recommended 8/10. I believe this is her sixteenth album and it's happy to do something very different again, comprising a set of eleven highly varied covers.

Covers albums are often inconsistent and highly varied ones all the more so and I have to say right out of the gate that this is definitely one of those. However, the best material is excellent and the opening track plays much better to me than the original. Now, it's one of two tracks I didn't know coming in and the one where I didn't even know the band who recorded it, so Aaron's version was the first one I heard, but I did follow up with the original on YouTube. It's the title track, Tattoo, a song originally recorded by the 77s much later than their name suggests. It's a solid opener that I could happily have believed was an original.

It's not the best song here, that being her take on The Pusher, but it's not far behind it and much of the reason is that it feels like she's taken a song she loves and she's rocking it up with her band who clearly appreciate it too. Another that fits the same bill is Even It Up, the song by Heart, from their Bebe le Strange album in 1980. It's an obvious pick for Aaron and she does it justice, with the help of a band who clearly mean it too. The best and worst thing about this album is that she isn't interested in just recording these obvious picks.

It's the best thing because there are songs here that I wouldn't have imagined would fit Aaron but she tackles them anyway and makes them work. Many of these show up at the end of the album in a quartet by Hole, Elton John, Elastica and the Undertones, but I'd throw in the Alice Cooper cover too. The best of them is Connection, the only Elastica song I know, which is a fundamentally bouncy alt pop song. Especially given all the negative notes I'd jotted down on the way to that one, I would have thought it would be a notable failure, but it isn't. In fact, it's one of the biggest successes of the album, even if it doesn't try to add anything to the original.

It's the worst thing because the less obvious choices don't always work, in part because Aaron has little wish, it seems, to stamp her own authority on them. The best covers in my mind are the ones that grow into something new in a fresh version. Johnny Cash's famous take on Hurt is surely the best example nowadays. It's not that he does it better than Nine Inch Nails, it's that he does it in a very different way and sells it so well that even Trent Reznor says that it's Cash's song now. Aaron has so much variety in her musical background that she could have reinvented these songs in wild ways, if she only chose to do so. For the most part, she chose not to.

The first example is Are You Gonna Be My Girl, the famous Jet single, and Aaron doesn't do a bad job by any metric I can conjure up but it somehow feels wrong anyway. It feels like a karaoke song, as if she's singing live to a recorded backdrop that doesn't seem any different from the original. I would be blown away if she did this at my local karaoke spot, but I'm disappointed by its inclusion here. The same goes for Go Your Own Way, the Fleetwood Mac classic, and Teenage Kicks, the old Undertones gem, famously John Peel's favourite song. She does her job, but there's no reason for these covers to exist. She doesn't add anything.

The songs in between the best and worst are ones like What Is and What Should Never Be, Is It My Body and Malibu. The latter was a real surprise, because it's a Hole song and I'd have thought that Aaron's approach to music was inherently differently to theirs. I'm not a particular fan of the song but this is a strong version of it. The other two have moments, especially early on, where they fall into that karaoke mindset, Aaron's delivery just not right. She brings a sultry approach to Robert Plant and attempts Alice Cooper's sneer, but both fail. However, when those songs ramp up, she's able to gel with the band and suddenly it all works. The longer these run, the better they get.

With a quick mention of Elton John's Someone Saved My Life Tonight as the worst track here, not because Aaron does anything wrong but because I can't stand the original to begin with and she doesn't change my mind on that with her version, I'll get to The Pusher, which is wonderful. What has to be said first is that she seems to be covering the Nina Simone version, even though it was a Hoyt Axton song made famous by Steppenwolf, and that's a good thing because this approach is a real gift for Aaron's vocal talents and she feels more natural tackling this than anything else.

So it's a mixed bag, almost inevitably so. I appreciate Aaron stepping out of her comfort zone with a few of these choices, not that she has a particularly restrictive comfort zome. She surprised me with the Hole and especially the Elastica songs. However, the best songs are primarily the easier choices, Tattoo and Even It Up and especially The Pusher. I just wish she'd have tried to make these songs her own, rather than merely demonstrating that she can sing them. Of course she can! She's Lee Aaron. But I'm going to leave these wondering how What Is and What Should Never Be would sound like as a swing song, even though that's not what she and her band deliver here.