Blind Golem - Wunderkammer (2025)

Country: Italy
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 1 Dec 2024
Sites: Facebook

"Wunderkammer" is a German term that translates to what we steampunks know and often make ourselves as a "cabinet of curiosities", but it literally means "room of wonder". This second album from one of my favourite new hard rock bands, Italy's Blind Golem, is a little of both but more the latter, I think. That's because this sound is always big, that patented seventies mix of heavy organ and wah wah fuelled guitar, and wouldn't fit at the cabinet size. Also, cabinets of curiosity have an inherent variety to them, each piece being wildly different from the next, whereas this plays in an relatively consistent fashion.

As with their fantastic debut album, A Dream of Fantasy, which was my Album of the Month here at Apocalypse Later in January 2021, the influences are obvious and English. The primary one is a gimme, given that the band grew out of a Uriah Heep tribute band called Forever Heep, and most of the best parts of this album are the ones that sound the most like them. There's a cover here in and amongst the original material, but it's an emphatically deep cut, Green Eye, recorded for the 1972 Demons and Wizards album but not making the final cut. It's generally findable as a demo on expanded deluxe versions of that album, deep in the bonus tracks.

Some Kind of Poet opens up very Heep with a simple riff and that glorious seventies organ sound. It stays slow and simple during the lovely guitar solo in the middle of the song and there's a tasty drop into a mellow section during the second half that turns into a bass run and then a wonderful keyboard solo. Golem! opens up like the purest Heep too, both in the slow intro and then the fast bounce, and, of course, there aren't really any tracks anywhere on this album that don't remind somehow of them at some point. Because Green Eye is such an obscure deep cut, I initially took it as a Heep influenced song rather than a cover. It features some bounce, but not as much as Born Liars before it, and it stubbornly refuses to blister along even though it could easily take off.

Oddly the first influence I heard this time out wasn't Heep but Rainbow, because they're all over the transitions in the opening song, Gorgon. Those are Rainbow transitions from the Dio era, but How Tomorrow Feels brings a later Rainbow to mind, the riff more reminiscent of the Bonnet era. Last time out, I heard plenty of Deep Purple, albeit mostly in Hammond organ solos from Simone Bistaffa, but there's not as much of that here. He focuses more on that Ken Hensley organ sound from early Heep, which was always his primary go to influence. I find it surprising that the Purple touches are all in the keyboards but the Rainbow touches in the guitarwork, given, of course, that Ritchie Blackmore was the guitarist in both bands.

If there's a third influence here, then the Rodney Matthews cover art can point the way. That's a notably Magnum-esque cover, ironically with just as much serpent as The Serpent Rings. Magnum came out of the Uriah Heep tradition in the seventies, dating back further than most people are aware, but they forged a new sound from it that was progressively less based in power chords and Hammond organ and more on the melodic hard rock vocals of Bob Catley. There are songs here I'd place at the point where Magnum started to diverge, like How Tomorrow Feels. Sometimes it's an older school Heep song. Sometimes it feels more like where Magnum went with that sound.

I adored A Dream of Fantasy in 2021 but found that it was a little off balance. The first half was an absolutely peach that I called "the best 1975 album I've ever heard that wasn't remotely written or recorded in 1975." The second side was pretty damn good too, but it couldn't match the first, a 7/10 instead of a 9/10. This follow up is far more consistent, more like an 8/10 throughout. The best songs are as great as the best last time out, especially when they nail that bouncy Heep groove in songs like Golem! and Born Liars, but also in many of the builds, keyboard solos and vocal hooks. Is the spaced out approach of Just a Feeling better than the epic nature of Endless Run or the heavy simplicity of Some Kind of Poet? Who knows? They're all great.

Crucially, though, the worst songs are the sort of songs you wouldn't expect to see next to a word like "worst". Every song here is worthwhile, right down to the substantial outro, Coda... Entering the Wunderkammer, which opens with unusual a capella harmonising vocalisations which keep on even after the instrumentation joins in, until it all wraps up with a cool jam. There's a hint toward that when It Happened in the Woods kicks off too, merely with words rather than vocalisations. It all works. Are these the least songs on the album? Perhaps. Are they at all unworthy? Absolutely not. They're well worth your time.

And that's why, even though I'm staying with an 8/10 for this album, I'd call it a better album than its predecessor. Sure, it's a little slower out of the gate, Gorgon unable to match Devil in a Dream, and its peaks aren't either as high or as clumped together, but the least song here is a step up on that 7/10 second half of the debut. The album as a whole is a gift that keeps on giving and it could be the easiest 8/10 I give out this year.

I've often found that tribute bands are often just as able as the original bands that they cover, the only component they lack being songwriting because their songs are inherently written for them. What I'm hoping is that more of these bands start to write their own songs too, because some of them are going to prove, like Blind Golem, that they're damn good at it.

Opeth - The Last Will and Testament (2024)

Country: Sweden
Style: Progressive Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 22 Nov 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

It ought to be clear to one and all that Opeth have been one of the most consistently imaginative and genre-flouting bands in the rock/metal scene over the past few decades. For those not paying attention, they started out as a progressive metal band back in 1990 and gradually veered into the much calmer but still imaginative prog rock genre. Mikael Åkerfeldt gave up his death growls back in 2008 after their Watershed album and there have been precious few metal elements within the past couple of albums. Nonetheless, their previous release, In Cauda Venenum, was a highlight of my year in 2019. Well, now the heaviness is back and so are the death growls.

Well, it's not quite that simple. Sure, it's heavier, even before we hear that first death growl, but it remains varied. There are subtleties everywhere here and various vocalists play roles in a story. After all, this is a concept album and Åkerfeldt is playing a dead man, a bitter one, making a harsh voice entirely appropriate. He's the patriarch of a family and he's dead but his children, three of them, have assembled to hear his last will and testament, which unfolds in seven tracks given the names of paragraphs rather than anything friendlier. The living characters, whether the children or the executor, have different clean voices.

First the vocals are sung clean with emphasis. Then they're growled, in alternation with a spoken approach. The music around them changes accordingly, much of it versatile prog metal but some of it still clearly prog rock. Overall, it's much heavier than the past few albums, but there are long sections that don't touch metal at all. For instance, among the guests, who prominently include a large string section, the London Session Orchestra Strings, there are a few contributions by one of Åkerfeldt's idols, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. He delivers spoken word on four tracks and flute on two, §4 and §7.

The first long pastoral section isn't his, but it is on §4, the father explaining to his twins that they aren't his. They're the product of his wife, who predeceased him, sleeping with another man after they couldn't get pregnant together. It's the harp of Mia Westlund that takes the forefront when these twins are floored by the news, then Anderson's flute takes over as they question everything they knew about their lives. The shocks will continue to unfold and Åkerfeldt almost feels gloating as he gets this off his chest in a far heavier section. Much of this song returns to instrumentality, though, as two worlds fall apart.

It's fair to say that we don't know a heck of a lot about these children. We don't know how old they are or what their characters are. I got far more of an impression of the father, who's already dead when this story begins in legal flashback, than I did of the kids. §1 doesn't even mention how many children, just children plural. We learn in §2 that there's one that was born to a maid and brought up as one of his own children. She's a daughter. §4 suggests that his wife felt that, if he could have a child with the maid, then she could have a child with another servant. And that child turned out to be twins. So there are three, all raised by the parents as their own.

It's in §5 that the daughter inherits everything. She's his blood and the others aren't, even though none of them apparently knew this coming in. That's the sort of person he is. This speaks to who he is lyrically, not to who they are. Instrumentally, much of it speaks to him too, the heaviest sections generally representing the sheer force of his will manifesting from beyond the grave. However, an abundance of variety intersperses these sections and only some of that is the father. Much of that represents represents the emotions of the children reacting to the news these paragraphs brings them. I found that I felt for all three of them, even in theoretically happier sections like the end of §6 when the daughter comes into her inheritance and the father tries to be generous and caring.

Thus far I've talked a lot about the lyrics, because they're kind of the point. All the music exists to bolster the words with mood in ways that go far beyond the typical song. It's hard to establish the instrument as a force when it's effectively restricted by the emotion of moments. Of course, these musicians are excellent, as we know from earlier albums. However, it's new fish Waltteri Väyrynen who shone for me. There are wonderful rhythms here and teasing percussion. I know him from his work for Paradise Lost and this is very different indeed, but he does a pristine job.

He doesn't have a lot to do on the closer, A Story Never Told, the only track given a name instead of a paragraph number, because the reading is complete and this comes afterward. It's a ballad, with no heavy moments at all and delicacy dancing in the aftermath of that. There's a twist to the tale. It's appropriate that this dead patriarch, clearly a force of nature, doesn't get the final word. That goes to the guitar soaring in presumed happiness after it's all over. His final words were, in Latin, God, Father, King, Blood, which shows how much he was full of himself. Now, the king is dead. Long live the queen, who may not be at all full of herself if that guitar is anything to go by.

I liked this album on a first listen, but it took a few more, along with a reading of the lyrics, to fully grasp what it was doing. That's pretty routine for an Opeth album, of course. Now it's pretty clear, I can appreciate what it does and why. I like the return to both metal and death growl, though I'm also very happy that both aren't toggles, rather tools to be used when appropriate. The best growl is on §1, delivered with commanding intonation, and that's surely the best track here. I dug §4 and §7 too though, because of how much they do and how well they do it.

This rocked the end of year charts and that's probably fair, but I don't think I liked it quite as much as its prominent flagbearers. There are some who didn't get it but I'm not among those. I think it warrants a safe 8/10, not quite up to its hallowed predecessor but with textures beyond it. Maybe I might reconsider that later, if I come back to it at all.

Red Lloyd - Duke (2025)

Country: Germany
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 10 Jan 2025
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website | YouTube

Here's something interesting. It's enjoyable too, but it's more interesting than enjoyable, which is unfortunate. Apparently Red Lloyd is Frank Altpeter, who sings and plays keyboards in Moore and More, a German tribute band to Gary Moore. I haven't heard them but they won't sound anything like this. This is a prog rock album, a tribute in a sense to the Genesis of 1980, because Altpeter saw them release Duke and envisaged a concept album about a mediaeval nobleman that, needless to say, was not what Duke was.

So, forty years later during the COVID-19 pandemic, he wrote what he thought it would have been back in 1980 before he actually bought a copy and heard something else. He then recorded it in as authentic a manner as he could, researching the instruments that Genesis used and then locating working examples of the same to play. This is a glorious starting point for a concept album, at once inspired by and yet still not at all based on an existing work by someone else. That provides plenty of leeway too, so this both sounds like Genesis in 1980 and doesn't. Certainly, Altpeter's voice is far deeper than Phil Collins's and sounds especially dissimilar when he gets emphatic on songs such as Ponderings and Duke's Rise. Throughout, the instrumentation is a lot closer.

The concept is relatively clear, of a good and honest duke who's betrayed by his men and vanishes into the desert. While he gets all introspective there over a long period of time, his legend builds back home and a rumour grows that he'll return. However, rather bizarrely, the copy I'm listening to has the tracks presented in a completely different order to what's listed on Bandcamp, one that oddly seems to flow better. It made me happier to see that mine is the stated order on Red Lloyd's official website.

Now, why Bandcamp shuffles these tracks, I have no idea. It would seem to make sense to put Duke Intro at the beginning, for instance, given that it features narration and sound effects to get this album underway, and Duke's Return at the end, as he may or may not show up to make the faithful happy. That's what my order/Red Lloyd's website order does. Bandcamp's doesn't. Either way, the concept flows loosely, so maybe we can shuffle these tracks around without ever losing sight of the general idea.

It's probably fair to point out here that Duke isn't my favourite Genesis album and this isn't up to its standards. However, there's still value here, Altpeter generating some pleasant grooves to fall into, some capable story songs that succeed in keeping our attention and, above all, instrumental sections to get lost in. There's nothing wrong with his voice but I preferred the instrumentation, a majority of it courtesy of Altpeter but with additional guitarwork from an old collaborator, Daniel J. S. Lewis, and Günter Schlünkes, who plays guitar and bass for German prog rockers Riven Earth.

Of course I have no idea whose guitar is whose. I can just call out how lovely it is on Crosses, City of Broken Toys and Ponderings, to give just three prominent examples. The latter two are highlights for me and Tonight is worth calling out too for other reasons. It's the one that gets catchy. There's nothing here on the level of Misunderstanding, let alone Turn It On Again, but occasionally there is a serious attempt to mimic that sort of hook. It's most obvious vocally on Tonight and otherwise on City of Broken Toys and Duke's Rise.

Interestingly, City of Broken Toys starts out with a guitar reminiscent of the Alan Parsons Project, but just before the two minute mark, it shifts to being about as close as this album gets to Genesis in 1980. Duke's Rise reprises that but the other way around, starting out close but veering away as the song runs on, Altpeter delivering his story in a more vehement voice than Collins ever had. My Time Will Come does it too, driven by an excellent beat and authentic keyboards.

And so this is as it was perhaps always doomed to be, a full length concept album born of a musing that trawls in some wonderful stories and not a lot more. After all, I have written a lot more about what this album aims to do than I have about what it actually does. However, that's telling in itself and it's why I started out by saying that it's enjoyable but more interesting.

I could talk about how the concept is never fully wrapped up, left for us to continue in our heads as we wonder if the duke does return or not. I could highlight that some of the tracks are just there, most notably for me Duke Intro, which is a tame intro for the album (or for The Duke's Lament, depending on the version). It doesn't matter. What I've said here covers what it needs to.

Sheygun - Burn the Fuse (2024)

Country: Armenia
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Dec 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Sheygun don't quite represent a new country for me here at Apocalypse Later, but so far I've only reviewed one album from Armenia before, which was very different, given that Narrow Gate play progressive metal and Sheygun hard rock. Both hail from Yerevan, the nation's capital, but that's about it. I'm reviewing it as a 2024 album because it is one, but one that only just crept in right at the end of the year, on New Year's Eve Eve after the critics had finished summing up 2024. That's a dead zone for bands and this one deserves to be noticed.

Initially, I got an agreeably sleazy feel from this album. The openers, 69 Beauty and Get Up, seem to be influenced by bands like Hanoi Rocks and very early Mötley Crüe, with the latter betraying some AC/DC moments too. That continues into Chevy, though the vocals of Mos oddly remind of a rock-era Suicidal Tendencies. And then No Regrets opens up with a riff and beat clearly borrowed from the Scorpions' The Zoo. I was singing along with the guitar part that isn't there. I guess that means that these guys are old school, focused primarily on the eighties.

I'm not entirely sure who does what, but they're a five piece band that grew out of four friends in Yeghegnadzor, south of Yerevan, who got serious and added Arman on drums. Mos is both vocalist and bassist, while Varo plays rhythm guitar, which leaves Arthur and David contributing in ways I'm unable to explain. Surely one of them's the lead guitarist, but I'm not sure about the other. There aren't obvious keyboards here. A third guitar? Or is he the real bassist and Mos helps out on that front? Inquiring minds want to know.

I especially want to know because the bass player gets a couple of notable runs early in the album, one midway through Get Up and the other as the intro to Chevy. Neither of them require technical genius, which extends to everything the band does, but a bad player can screw up the simplest riff or run and whoever plays bass here doesn't. It's all good stuff and it highlights that every member of the band is playing their part and doing it well.

That leads me to point out that most of these songs come across with a live feel, even though the album was clearly recorded in a studio. I don't know how much they rehearsed beforehand or how long it took them to record, but it feels like they merely plugged in one day and let rip, blistering their way through seven tracks in the skimpy thirty-five minutes that the album runs and that was that. Of course, given that, they sound like a magnetic club band. I don't know how it would play in a stadium but I'd be paying a lot of attention in a tiny club.

Now, I say mostly because there are a couple of tracks that stand out from the norm. Everything I said above covers the first three, along with Hoyden and WTF is Going On, so five out of seven.

The first exception is No Regrets, which changes up the vocals completely. Suddenly we're almost in psychobilly territory, which I wasn't expecting. It's a much longer song too, running seven and a half minutes when only one other track nudges past five, and it lost me on a first time through. It kept me on the second because, rather than inadvertently tuning out, my ears caught on to what really counts as an epic jam. It's stadium material after all and they're jamming out the song to a moment still to be determined like signature songs tend to do. I'm thinking Freebird, Green Grass and High Tides, Whipping Post, that sort of thing. This isn't quite that epic and it's more subdued, but it has the same approach and could easily extend for another five, ten, fifteen minutes.

Whether I was focused on No Regrets or not, Hoyden grabbed me by the throat, because it's one of those songs that simply aches to get down to business and blisters from the outset. You can get lost in No Regrets or get detached from it but you can't ignore Hoyden. It's a good old fashioned eighties rock song, not so sleazy this time, more back to basics, with an excellent guitar solo in the second half from whoever's handling the lead guitar that I wish I could credit. WTF is Going On is a fresh dose of energy at the tail end of the album, but it's too repetitive to rank with Hoyden.

The other exception is Let's Go to the Room, which I feel I should underline isn't a bad song. There isn't anything wrong with the songwriting at all, but it feels much sparser and thus much weaker than everything else on the album. I don't know if it was recorded at a different time by someone who thinned out the production or if that was a deliberate decision made during the sessions the rest of these tracks were recorded during, but it doesn't work for me. What exacerbates that is a particularly odd decision. Given that it sounds weaker, why place it right after Hoyden, the most balls to the wall song on the album? All the decisions around this one seem wrong.

Fortunately, I was able to adjust eventually and listen to it on its own merits, but that sparseness took me aback on every listen. And, of course, the rest of the album kicks ass. I'd love to sit down in a bar in Yerevan with a pint of Armenian beer and watch the crowd's reaction as this wild bunch hit the stage. I'm sure that they'd all go home suitably drained and reenergised.

The Halo Effect - March of the Unheard (2025)

Country: Sweden
Style: Melodic Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 10 Jan 2025
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

This is only the Halo Effect's second album, but they have a solid lineage, having been founded by guitarist Niclas Engelin after leaving In Flames. He'd been a touring guitarist for them as early as 1997 and he'd filled in for founder member Jesper Strömblad on multiple occasions before joining in an official capacity in 2010, initially as a temporary stopgap but soon confirmed as the full time guitarist. Ironically, Strömblad is the second guitarist in the Halo Effect. Peter Iwers, who spent a decade in In Flames, plays bass. Drummer Daniel Svensson had seven years in In Flames. The only member who doesn't have a history with In Flames is vocalist Mikael Stanne, who's the vocalist in Dark Tranquillity instead. That's quite the melodic death metal background for a "new band".

This is very smooth melodic death and it washed over me a few times before I started to focus on what they were actually doing. Conspire to Deceive is a textbook melodeath song but it's so clean that we can be half a dozen tracks on before that truly registers. Detonate has a particular catchy guitar hook that I could imagine in a melodic rock song and that's something that happens often, especially on What We Become and March of the Unheard. Change the tone and the voice and the former could easily be a melodic rock song. Alternatively, a melodic rock band could cover it in the style for which they're known and the structure wouldn't remotely need to change.

There are a few notable things to call out, once we listen enough times to catch everything.

For one, there are some lovely intros. Some, like on Conspire to Deceive and Forever Astray, come through the work of a guest musician, Örjan Örnkloo of Misery Loves Co. on synths. I don't believe he's an official member of the Halo Effect, but he flavours their sound substantially. Others, as we might expect, are delivered on guitar. On Our Channel to the Darkness, that's an acoustic guitar and it's both delicate and tasteful. What We Become and The Burning Point do the same thing but with more typical electric guitar. A Death That Becomes Us combines approaches, utilising electric guitar and synths.

For another, much of this unfolds at midpace, but the moments when the band speed up are very tasty indeed. That primarily means parts of Our Channel to the Darkness, whose transition from the slower pace to the fast is particularly effective. I'd call this out as a highlight for a number of reasons, starting with the delicate intro and continuing with the faster pace, but those synths do fascinating work in the second half and the riff/hook is very effective.

Those hooks are a third note, because hooks tend to be vocal and these are played on guitar. They ought to count as riffs but they do exactly what vocal hooks do so I'm thinking of them that way. Of course, Mikael Stanne doesn't go there for the most part, because he's singing in a harsh voice, a well intonated growl that gives him plenty of opportunity for nuance but not quite so much for an array of melodic rock hooks.

However, there is a clean voice here, increasingly during the second half of the album, and I have to assume that it's mostly him, varying his delivery. I may be mistaken, but I don't think it appears until Forever Astray eight tracks in, returning on Between Directions. The only guest voice that I see listed belongs to Julia Norman, who's very apparent on a predominantly instrumental piece, Coda, which closes out the album with vocalisations rather than words, and not very apparent at all on March of the Unheard. Back to Stanne, though, if it is indeed him duetting with himself, he has a rich clean voice that could easily sing lead in another band.

The final note is that another addition on the second half is a string section, albeit a small section as they come, just a cello played by Johannes Bergion and a violin played by Erika Almström. They are also on March of the Unheard, which somehow escapes me every time I listen to it, but are not ignorable on Between Directions. They provide the intro, for a start, but the also sit behind the vocals during the verses, with the guitar absent. The violin dances with Stanne's clean voice often. Finally, both cello and violin reappear on Coda, which is Stanne-free.

Overall, this is a very easy album to like. It starts well with highlights like Conspire to Deceive and Our Channel to the Darkness and remains highly consistent throughout, even as it diversifies what it does in the second half. The question is always going to come down to how well it sticks. That I'm not sure about yet. It feels like it ought to stick well but I somehow tune out on some of the songs every single time. They're not bad songs. They just lose me as if they're coated in some impeccable non-stick surface and I just slide away. With both those aspects in mind, I'll stick (ha!) with a solid 7/10.

Ian Hunter - Defiance Part 2: Fiction (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 Apr 2025
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

You'd never know from this album that Ian Hunter is eighty-five frickin' years old, especially with a song as absolutely killer as People to open up. Damn, that's a catchy "na na" chant to kick off a new album, as if we're back in 1974 and Mott the Hoople is still in business. Hunter certainly is, spitting out cynical lyrics with glorious intonation that land tellingly. I found myself singing along with this song on my very first time through and all the more on further listens. It's about everyone being a consumer of marketing. "We know what people want," claim the marketroids. "No you don't!" we chant in response. This is a fantastic song to start but it's also easily the standout track.

Much of the rest of the album follows the precedent of the title track, which is a singer-songwriter song in the old style. It feels notably weaker than People initially, but it grows as it goes, getting under the skin before it's done. Arguably the quality of the songs will depend on this factor. Those that get under our skin are the strong ones that will grow with repeats until we wonder why we'd doubted them to begin with. Those that don't will feel weaker and lessen the album overall. What seems particularly important is that that's going to be a personal thing. I can absolutely imagine that the songs that don't get under my skin may well get under yours.

Hunter's voice is as recognisable as ever and, while his voice may be a little rougher now than the rough it's always been, it's still glorious and his delivery is just as fantastic as it's ever been. He's feeling these lyrics and passing that feeling on to us without any trouble at all. What's more, few songs are worthy of comparisons because they generally feel like Ian Hunter songs. He sounds like Bob Dylan on a lot of What Would I Do without You, a song on which Lucinda Williams joins in and her voice has changed considerably since I last heard it. Otherwise, the delivery on This Ain't Rock and Roll sounds like a Steve Earle story song, but that's about it. Everything else is Hunter.

I can't get much further in this review without pointing out that this is the sequel to Defiance Part 1, which came out in 2023 and which I haven't heard. Like that album, this one features a core set of musicians but also a heck of a lot of guests. I wasn't remotely surprised to find that Joe Elliott is there on backing vocals, as he's worshipped Hunter for decades, but he's not particularly obvious. He's on People, along with both Robin Zander and Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick. Brian May heavies up Precious, Jeff Beck and Johnny Depp both contribute guitars to The 3rd Rail and the late Taylor Hawkins plays drums on four tracks, including Hope, with Williams and Billy Bob Thornton helping out with the vocals.

I appreciated many of these contributions, but none are blatant, Williams's voice on What Would I Do without You being easily the most obvious. Whatever these luminaries contribute, Hunter's voice and lyrics remain in the spotlight. Of course we're supposed to listen to the lyrics on singer-songwriter songs but that doesn't mean that we always do. We do here, even if we don't know what Hunter's singing about. The 3rd Rail, for instance, is a notably sad song that I have to assume refers to a news story back home that I must have missed, having hopped the pond a couple of decades ago.

The most obviously Ian Hunter songs are People, with its Mott the Hoople glam rock drive, along with This Ain't Rock and Roll and Everybody's Crazy But Me, with its simple but very effective riff in the time honoured Keith Richards style. The former seems pretty straight forward, dissing on modern music, but I wonder if it actually is. After all, disses on modern music aren't remotely new and I wonder if Hunter is cleverly nodding to the fact that, a century ago, someone was probably complaining about how the work songs mentioned in the first verse simply aren't like they were back in the old country. The latter is neatly sardonic, as we expect from Hunter.

Amidst all the singer-songwriter material, Precious and Kettle of Fish are heavier songs, courtesy of Brian May on the former and Rick Nielson returning on the latter. I like the variety of intensity and it feels like Hunter does too. He relishes telling stories in songs like The 3rd Rail and Hope but he really gets his teeth into hooks on songs like People and Precious. When he starts Everybody's Crazy But Me with a characterful "'allo, 'allo, 'allo", we struggle to believe it's over half a century since Mott the Hoople split. Talking of openings, People begins with "It's the gospel according to whichever channel you're listening to", which is almost as great a beginning as the "na na" chant before it.

What that means is that some of this is immediate, most obviously People, but none of it is tough to get through. With repeat listens, everything grows and some of it considerably. There's a lot in play here and it's well worth trying to figure out what Hunter's singing about, even on songs that outwardly seem straightforward like This Ain't Rock and Roll. And that in turn means that I really need to take a listen to Defiance Part 1. I grabbed a copy in 2013 but never got to it. Obviously that was a mistake.

Katoaja - What We Witness (2025)

Country: Finland
Style: Progressive Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 6 Jan 2025
Sites: Facebook | Instagram

Here's another progressive metal album that covers a lot of musical ground, but it does it with a lot more coherence than the Blood Incantation album that I reviewed yesterday. It isn't extreme, so the breadth of palette isn't as substantial or the shifts as jarring, but it still covers a heck of a lot of ground. That begins with the opener, Nothing and Nothing More, which is definitely a lot of something, especially when the keyboards get seriously interesting at the end of the first half.

This song runs a breath over ten minutes and is entirely instrumental for the first couple. It starts out elegant, then turns jaunty with a core vocal that gradually gets less annoying. Are there two singers here or just one? There seem to be two singing core, even before someone starts singing clean. Regular readers know that I'm not much of a fan of shouty vocals. They certainly have their place, adding aggression to any song, but I've always found them fundamentally limiting, because that's pretty much all they can do. Unless a band is planning to only be a blitzkrieg of aggression, it stifles creativity.

Katoaja solve that problem by varying the vocals considerably. This song starts out shouty but it goes clean. Other songs do both too, in different quantities. The Sinking Cathedral adds whispers, which gradually grow in emphasis. Stoic features milder vocals, which oddly stay at the same level throughout the song. They embrace folk melodies in Nangijala. There's even a harsh voice in The Source that approaches a death growl, as well as a breathy clean voice. What this means is that the album and the songs on it can't be defined by one vocal style and that's especially important with someone who typically shouts. The second vocalist is bass player Matias Ärrälä, but most of this has to be the work of Juho Kiviniemi, who's admirably versatile.

Of course, the musical style varies with the vocal style, as we'd expect for a prog band and that's a good thing and a bad thing. The beginning of The Sinking Cathedral is absolutely my thing, with its slow build on organ, intricate guitar and those whispered vocals. Unfortunately, the middle of the same song isn't my thing at all, with limiting core vocals and modern guitars that masquerade as percussion. It grows substantially over its five minutes though, with some gorgeous keyboards, an impressive bass and a tasty guitar solo still to come.

Every song here has at least one thing worthy of note and often that becomes a plural. Nangijala wends its way into folk melodies a minute and a half in. What We Witness opens up teasingly with slow keyboard swirls and tasteful piano, then it erupts into life with a jagged rhythm. The ending of The Source is utterly delightful, with the keyboards dancing around airly over a heavy backdrop. They're the work of Unto Luoto and, while he's far from the only talent in this band, he's the one who caught my attention the most.

The Great Under is particularly fascinating because of him. The music is heavy and driving and the vocals, when they arrive, are aggressive core vocals again. Yet the keyboard melodies are straight out of the new wave, the sort of thing we'd expect on Ultravox songs. It's like Luoto is playing on a completely different song to the other four musicians in the band, but it works. The keyboards are a way to temper the aggression without caging it and, rather bizarrely, it all works together with wonderful effect. In fact, this may be my favourite song on the entire album.

If there's a competitor for that title, it's What We Witness, not only because it's the instrumental and they always tend to stand out for me on albums with core vocals. However, this particular one does a lot. I didn't expect it to stay instrumental, for a start, its eruption into jagged rhythm when I expected the vocals to kick in, appropriately core at this point, but they never do. The song waxes and wanes, with a heavy section in the middle and an an introspective one during the second half. It's a gift that keeps on giving.

My other highlight, much of The Sinking Cathedral aside, is The Source, which leaps into metalcore from the outset but with the vocals varied, this being where that near death growl shows up. The keyboards are what shift the tone, as they do so often on this album, leading it into a traditional prog section, a soft midsection and that delightfully airy ending. There's a lot in this song, which runs almost eight and a half minutes. It's prog metal, metalcore, prog rock and prog metal again in turn, with each section moving seamlessly into the next.

All in all, I like Katoaja, who were ambitious with their debut album but pretty consistently nailed it. By now, the average Finn must be in three bands, because Finland is punching so far above its musical weight that it boggles the mind. I don't know whether these five musicians arrived from other bands or play in multiples, but it doesn't sound like this is their first rodeo. I'd definitely like to hear more.

Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere (2025)

Country: USA
Style: Progressive Death Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 4 Oct 2024
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Here's an album that's made a lot of top ten lists for 2024, unsurprisingly given how much buzz has surrounded Blood Incantation lately. I reviewed their previous album, 2019's Hidden History of the Human Race, in January 2020 because it had similarly made so many end of year lists. The general consensus of the critics is the same for each: they're both masterpieces that move death metal in new directions. What's odd is that I found myself happy to agree with them last time but not this. There are the roots for a masterpiece here, but it just doesn't hold together for me.

There are two tracks, The Stargate and The Message, presumably broken up over the two sides of the vinyl release, and each of them is broken up into three parts named Tablets. That's hardly an unusual approach, but I can't figure out why any of them are separated the way they are. Tablet I of The Stargate, for instance, features three utterly distinct parts that aren't separated at all yet the ambience that ends Tablet I flows right into Tablet II as if there shouldn't be a gap. I can't see what Blood Incantation are trying to do.

By utterly distinct, by the way, I mean utterly distinct. Tablet I starts out with bubbly synths but a jagged guitar quickly joins in as if this is a Voivod album. Thirty seconds in, it's clearly technical or progressive death metal and that settles down within the next minute and we're off and running at pace. It's all good stuff and it's building. However, it all falls away at the two minute mark, so it can veer into something completely different.

Suddenly it's funk. Or reggae. Or soft rock. Or jazzy space rock. Maybe it's all those things at once, rather like a lively krautrock piece with a touch of Journey, especially once a keyboard solo shifts the feel firmly into space rock. Eventually, it evolves into Pink Floyd, a Dave Gilmour clone rocking out in a guitar solo. This is a wild and very interesting three and half minutes. Again, it's all good stuff, entirely instrumental, but if I have no idea why it's there at this point in this song.

What's more, it doesn't end with Tablet I. It just erupts back into prog death at the five and a half minute mark, rather abruptly too, as if someone realised that the radio station had changed from the metal station to the krautrock station and tweaked the dial back again. This closing section is, you guessed it, all good stuff. Everything here is well played and clearly placed very deliberately. I merely have no idea what it's supposed to achieve. I get the feeling that it's supposed to take me to a particular place but it doesn't. I'm stranded in the airport terminal wondering which of these planes to catch.

If the end of the part prompts the decision, then it's that krautrock plane to Berlin, as Tablet II is almost entirely told in that instrumental vein, merely with added samples for flavour. In fact, it's so krautrock that there's a guest musician here and it's Thorsten Quaeschning, the current leader of electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream. That isn't particularly shocking, because it sounds like a track of theirs all the way until it turns into pastoral folk rock three minutes in and eventually gets to a heavy prog metal section, sans the usual death components, at the end. That's a genre even a musical chameleon like Tangerine Dream hasn't tried out yet.

I could keep going at this level of detail throughout all three tablets of both songs, but there's no point. The same wild shifts happen and, while every section sounds great on its own, none of it has any reason I can figure out. What's that ethnic instrumentation on Tablet III, in front of the tribal drums? I have no idea but it sounds good and makes no sense. Why does Tablet II of The Message veer into jazz out of nowhere? Why does Tablet III open up in a clear thrash metal section, a nicely powerful one at that until the death growls show up and minimise it? Why does that shift into the same pastoral flute and soothing folk prog as the middle of Tablet II of The Stargate? I don't know.

It feels like I should like this. I tend to appreciate bands subverting genres by merging them in odd ways. I tend to love extreme metal bands dipping into unusual rock territory, especially with ethnic instruments to mix it up even more. I tend to like being bludgeoned here but soothed there. That's joyous to me. But it has to make sense. There has to be a reason for it to happen, lyrical or musical or whatever. Set a scene and paint it with music so I can see what it is. It seems like this is trying to do that but it doesn't know how.

And that's why, as beautifully played as this is and as fascinating as its musical shifts are, it simply doesn't work for me as an album. Hidden History of the Human Race was an easy 9/10 for me, even though I don't dish those ratings out like candy. This has to be a 6/10 because it makes no sense to me at all and I've listened through enough times for a sudden realisation to feel long overdue.