Apocalypse Later Music Reviews: 2023

Wednesday, 17 May 2023

Tygers of Pan Tang - Bloodlines (2023)

The Tygers of Pan Tang have been around for a long time and they've long been one of those bands who show up on lists of criminally underrated metal bands, but they're on top of their game lately and it's surely time for them to reap some more mainstream success. Their previous album, Ritual, was their twelfth and it got a rare 9/10 from me; it only missed earning my Album of the Month for November 2019 because I'd reviewed the latest Opeth a week earlier. It featured a relatively new line-up, with only guitarist Robb Weir surviving from the old days and they're still not quite stable, it seems, with two further changes since Ritual.

First up was Francesco Marras, who replaced two-time guitarist Gavin Gray in 2020, and the guitars certainly sound tasty as the album begins. Edge of the World kicks off with a swirling of keyboards and a vague middle eastern flavour, before the riffs kick in and Italian vocalist Jacopo Meille joins the fray. This isn't remotely as fast and heavy as its equivalent from Ritual, Worlds Apart, but it's a peach of a song and it does rather a lot in only five minutes, even slotting in a Latin guitar early in the second half before some searing guitar solos. Marras is going to fit in fine.

Edge of the World sounds good on a first listen but it warrants a few times through to appreciate it properly and that's not uncommon on this album. It's a little less immediate than Ritual, with the exception of tracks like Fire on the Horizon that blisters out of the gate like classic Diamond Head and carries us effortlessly along with it. It's a fast song, which ought to fit new bassist Huw Holding down to a tee, given that he's also a member of Holosade right now. It's a tailor-made song for me and an instant favourite, but it's hardly the deepest song here. It does what it does and moves on.

There are plenty of deeper songs on offer. In My Blood follows Edge of the World's lead as another elegant grower. The hook reminds me of REO Speedwagon's Riding the Storm Out but the song as a whole doesn't. The same could be said for Taste of Love, which starts out like a ballad but grows substantially until we forget how it began, even though it only runs four minutes and change. The band get sassy on Light of Hope but never stop being heavy and there's another guitar solo that's worth praising, even if it's not as ambitious as some here. I like the ones on Kiss the Sky too.

Perhaps the most interesting song for me is Back for Good, because it feels rather like Sean Harris of early Diamond Head and Mick Tucker of Tank teamed up to record a glam metal song, halfway in between Great White and Skid Row. That's an odd combination of names to throw at one song, but that's how interesting the Tygers are getting. Meille doesn't always sound like Harris, but he has a tremendous range that doesn't seem like one. Everything he does here is consistent but there are points where he shifts into blues rock, hard rock, arena rock, melodic rock, you name it, without an interruption in that consistency.

Diamond Head do keep popping up as a comparison, but that's hardly a bad thing, especially when it comes to riffs. There's a lot of Mick Tucker here but there's also a lot of Brian Tatler and there is no better riffer on the planet than him. If the Tucker influence is most overt on Back for Good and Kiss the Sky and the Tatler influence is most overt on Fire on the Horizon, the rest of the album is often somewhere between the two, at one point channelled through an intermediary, because the album ends with Making All the Rules, which has Metallica guitar touches and we know where they were influenced. It's great to see that feed back in turn.

In short, I don't think this is quite up to Ritual but it's another excellent album from the Tygers. It's easily a highly recommended 8/10 but it's more of a grower so it's within the bounds of possibility I might up that later. It's a perfect example of an album that never feels short but never outstays its welcome, only just shy of three quarters of an hour, with ten solid tracks. Not all are highlights, but none let the side down and every one of them is well worth listening to in isolation. They're also all clearly Tygers songs but none sound like each other. It's almost a textbook for what a heavy metal album by an older name ought to sound like in 2023.

I've been a fan of the Tygers since I discovered rock and metal in 1984 but I'm finding that I'm more of a fan than ever with each successive new release. And can I think of a gig I'd rather see right now than a Tygers and Diamond Head double header? No, I can't.

Smokey Mirror - Smokey Mirror (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Heavy Psychedelic Blues Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 5 May 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Boy, have I been waiting for this album. The last gig I went to before COVID closed everything down was a psychedelic blues rock band from Dallas, Texas called Smokey Mirror and it's no hyperbole to suggest that they were the most devastating live band I've ever seen. What made that even more special was that they were technically there in support of local stoner metal band Loserfur and the venue, which was about the size of my front room, wasn't full and largely included members of the other three bands on the bill. My brief gig review on Facebook stated that "they gave it everything like they were playing in front of 20,000 people who had paid $200 to get in, rather than 35 people for $8 cover".

They were a trio then, with only an EP out, but they've bulked up to a four piece—Cam Martin has replaced Josh Miller on drums and Caleb Hollowed has stepped in on a second guitar—and signed with Rise Above Records. That's important because this band generated a sound that was hard to believe was generated by only three people and there are now four of them. Along with the boost in production values that comes with an important label, this ought to seriously blister and it very much does that, aided I believe by engineer Paul Middleton, formerly of seventies heavy rock band Blackhorse, also a trio, who did his thing at a studio that uses only vintage analogue equipment.

The result is that this feels authentically seventies, the sort of ultimate crate digger find, surely an album lost in obscurity because nobody could believe how intense it was in 1975. Imagine the most furious psychedelic rock from that decade, drench it in acid and stretch it out for forty minutes and change and you might have an idea what Smokey Mirror sound like. I thought of them on stage as a cross between Aeroblus and Black Sabbath, with some of Motörhead's ruthless heaviness and an intricacy from the Allman Brothers. That translated well to the studio, though there's not as much of the Motörhead as I remember.

They tellingly start with a crescendo, pause a moment and then launch into full gear with Invisible Hand, a song from their debut EP. There are three songs here that are previously released but all benefit from being re-recorded here, not just because of the production but because they're even tighter as a band now than they were, which is hard to imagine. The others are Magick Circle, also from that EP, and A Thousand Days in the Desert, which saw release as a single. All three are on a compilation CD I picked up from the band in 2019 which combined the EP, the single and a further song as a bonus.

Invisible Hand is a killer opener, an ambitious statement of intent, and Pathless Forest matches its intensity but with more obvious melodic lines. Both these songs blister, but Magick Circle blisters a lot harder, which is saying something. It ran to six minutes on the EP but it's eight here, even with a faster pace. The first four minutes there are done in three here, with a neat slower section before some feedback worship wrapped around a bass solo, and, eventually, of all things, a drum solo. It's a ballsy move to include a drum solo on a debut album, but it works because Magick Circle is easily defined as a showcase. The only thing more ballsy would be to kick off the album with it.

From there, it's new material for a while and wildly varied new material at that. I believe they put out Alpha-State Dissociative Trance as a single, which is fantastic because it's particularly wild and full of jazz fusion. It's a jagged and vicious sub-three minute blitzkrieg to cleanse our palates after an eight minute epic with a drum solo and, just in case we needed to cleanse our palates after that level of intensity, Fried Vanilla Spider Trapeze is old school roots rock, only a minute long but music that wouldn't be out of place on a Hot Tuna album. Nice harmonica too.

My favourite song here has to be Sacrificial Altar, another epic workout with a crescendo to start it into motion. I didn't know what Smokey Mirror meant when I saw them live, but then I read Ernest Hogan's books, especially Smoking Mirror Blues, and now I get it. It's a reference to the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca, their trickster deity, and, while Los Tricksters were a fictional band in Hogan's novel, it's not a wild stretch to imagine that they sound like Smokey Mirror playing Sacrificial Altar. It's a gem of a track, short at seven and a half minutes, and more perfectly formed than anything before it.

And, while that's enough for an 8/10 album already, we're not done yet. What's to Say underline a Black Sabbath influence, just in case we hadn't noticed it during much of the album thus far, but it does it at Sabbath's speed here, slow and doomladen, before the bass goes hyperactive and both guitars start to shred psychedelia. It's another strong song on an album full of strong songs and it has to be said that I wanted that to carry on forever. However, this avoids overstaying its welcome by wrapping up with a brief Latin solo guitar exploration called Recurring Nightmare.

And, because I can, I can then just start the album again. And again. And again. I've been eagerly awaiting this album for four years and it showed up better than even I expected it to be. Now I just need to stop listening to it on repeat because I have other albums to review.

Tuesday, 16 May 2023

Overkill - Scorched (2023)

14th April, 2023 was quite a red letter day for thrash fans, though it was also a curse for me due to my very deliberate policy not to duplicate genres within any week. Of course that was the day the new Metallica album dropped, but I was just as enthused seeing new albums from Holy Moses and Overkill. Of those three, Metallica may have found their way back to thrash after major depatures and Holy Moses took a long break, but Overkill have kept at it throughout, diversifying their style, sure, but never truly leaving it and they always deliver live.

I have to say that I wasn't convinced by the first couple of minutes of the opening title track. It was good but not great, which is what I thought of their previous album, The Wings of War. It wasn't a bad album but I wanted more from it, because I'm used to more from Overkill, who in a whole slew of ways are comparable to Therapy? Both have their roots firmly in punk and both firmly kept their musical integrity in the face of trend changes. However, Overkill were earlier, during my formative time with music, so they're ingrained in my musical identity; they emphatically turned to metal, a retained punk attitude notwithstanding; and I kept checking in with their new material even after I drifted away from music into the demands of adulthood.

The good news is that Scorched the song picked up for me, with a neat if surprising drop into Black Sabbath territory a couple of minutes in. I particularly dug the instrumental section in the second half, with a hyperactive bass from D. D. Verni and a tasty guitar solo from Dave Linsk. I'm still not sold on it as a complete track, even after a few listens, but it does a lot that's excellent. But Goin' Home is quintessential Overkill, right down to its gorgeous escalations and blitzkrieg of an finalé that will surely have your head banging in your office chair. The Surgeon picks up precisely where Goin' Home leaves off, Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth spitting out bars in his patented fashion. Suddenly, this album feels a lot stronger than its predecessor.

It's definitely a mixed album, but there's a lot that's good here and it isn't remotely all the same. Goin' Home and The Surgeon remain my favourite songs, but Harder They Fall is another stormer, even if the band mix up the tempo rather often. I do like my Overkill fast and every fast song here is a highlight. My other favourite, though, is Won't Be Comin' Back, which shifts firmly into power metal. It kicks off like Iron Maiden and gets even more interesting when the vocals show up. It's a new sound for Overkill and I like it. I like Wicked Place too, even though it's a stubbornly mid-pace song. There are a couple more drops into Sabbath territory and there's a neat cello to wrap up.

The other song worthy of mention is one that I'm not as sold on but it's far more unusual than the brief vocal experimentation on Won't Be Comin' Back. This one feels like a breather after a set of energetic thrash tracks, whether mid-pace or faster. Of all things, it reminds me of the Police for a minute, a much heavier approach to the Police but the Police nonetheless. It crunches in, naturally, but it stays slow, and drops back into the opening mindset as well. Kudos to the band for taking on something very different, but I wouldn't call it the success it could be.

I don't want to dismiss the other tracks, because there are a host of moments that stand out even on the lesser material. Twist of the Wick has some interesting phrasings, both on guitar and in the vocals, while Bag o' Bones has the sort of chantalong chorus that some bands would kill for. This is at its best when it's fast though, or shifting up and down between high gears, and a few songs are screaming out for one of Overkill's patented injections of speed. The one stylistic shift I'm eager to hear more of is the power metal explored in Won't Be Comin' Back that sometimes sounds like an old school NWOBHM influence but just as often more recent European power metal.

Where this leads me is an odd situation because I'm going to give this the same 7/10 rating that I gave The Wings of War. However, this is clearly a better album to me. I thought about a 6/10 when I rated that one and decided that it wouldn't be fair. Here, I often thought about an 8/10 but I don't feel it's at that level consistently enough to make that fair. So think of the previous album as a low 7/10 and this one as a high 7/10. This is something a rating out of 100 would solve but I'm not going there. Let's just say both these albums are worth your time if you're into punky thrash, but this is the one you should start with.

Therapy? - Hard Cold Fire (2023)

I remember Therapy? from their early days but only in passing. They were a prominent member of a new crop of British rock bands who showed up at the point that Kerrang! shifted alternative and Tommy Vance left the Friday Rock Show and I drifted away from mainstream rock music. And so I've not heard their rise to prominence, their drift away from it and their reaffirmation as a force to be reckoned with once they got old enough to sit apart from the trends. I had no idea that they were still a band, but they've kept going throughout and this looks like their sixteenth studio album. So it's about time I took a listen.

This is a short album, only just nudging past half an hour, because the average runtime of its songs is pretty close to the standard radio friendly three minutes. If that suggests a punk mindset, then you'd be absolutely right. This is alternative rock with all the energy of punk but little of the more downbeat seriousness that I've always caught in American alt rock of the same era. It doesn't feel like a band wallowing in grungy self loathing, even on a song like Joy which could easily have been called No Joy. This is a band who want to rock and just prefer to do it in an alternative framework.

I can see why this approach didn't connect with me in 1991 or 1992 but it's quite interesting in 2023. I hear a lot of pop punk here, but it's grittier and more down to earth than anything I've heard by Green Day or the Offspring. It's not so reliant on hooks, but the hooks are there. Oddly, I also hear Metallica here, but not in any of the usual ways that bands tend to employ to channel them, such as their crunchy guitar tone or James Hetfield's vocal style. However, I kept hearing moments of Black-era Metallica in shifts and breakdowns, and especially in escalations and backing vocals.

I guess the lesson is that they're happy with keeping toes in a bunch of genres, so much so that it's hard to determine what drives them the most. This isn't metal but there's a lot of metal here. It's more punk than it is rock and it often sounds like it wants to be pop music, but never to sound that soft or clean. To Disappear is so grungy that it's close to sludge, but it's stubbornly up tempo so it doesn't sound remotely like any sludge band I've heard. Andy Cairns's guitarwork often plays with dissonance and feedback, to the point that there's a subtly experimental edge.

Talking of Cairns, he's also Therapy?'s lead vocalist and he takes the opportunity to sing in a whole slew of styles. His go to style is a clean punk voice, like you might expect from pop punk, but it has more raw edge than any of the usual suspects in that genre, especially given that he clearly likes a variety of post-production jobs to suppress or torture his voice for effect, to meet a mood or a tone that he's driving with his guitar. He also has a theatricality to him that renders him the centre of attention, whatever else is going on. He even dips into sections of almost spoken word on Mongrel, which has quite a creepy effect.

While I respect a lot of punk musicians, I've always been too much of a metalhead at heart to see a punk-driven album like this as my particular cup of tea, but I'm happy I listened to it and I wonder if it'll stay with me and, if so, how much. I certainly loved the opener, They Shoot the Terrible Master, and if that isn't an esoteric yoga position it should be. I loved its urgent verses and its earworm of a chorus, from its opening drunken a capella rendition onwards. I dug Mongrel with a weaponised take on feedback and its relentless bass. Ugly is a real trip, from its weirdly folky opening.

My eighties brain still thinks of the nineties as new and it seems odd to find that its leading lights are celebrating their thirtieth anniversaries. It seems especially odd to discover that they weren't just there to jump on a trend but to help create one, so explaining their longevity. All power to this bunch of Northern Irish lads who have stuck to doing what they want to do throughout. So this isn't my favourite genre and I have next to no background in Therapy? and their peers to bring to bear. I can still see that this is clearly a good album.

Monday, 15 May 2023

Hawkwind - The Future Never Waits (2023)

Country: UK
Style: Space Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 28 Apr 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

Hawkwind have been around forever and, for the longest time, were the only band working in this space rock style. There are plenty more now, because half a century of leading a path will get you followers, especially over such a huge catalogue. If I'm counting correctly, this is their thirty-fifth studio album, if we count the albums released as Church of Hawkwind, Hawkwind Light Orchestra and Psychedelic Warriors. Of course, that also excludes pivotal albums like Space Ritual, in my book one of the greatest live releases of all time.

I'm out of date with Hawkwind, so I'm a little surprised at what I heard here. What they do is solid and smooth and apparently comfortable, even over an ambitious sixty-nine minutes, so I assume it isn't much of a stretch for the modern Hawkwind, even if it seems unusual to me. That starts with a ten minute instrumental opener, which I'd call ambient space rock, a warm up and an introduction at the same time. Skipping over The End for a moment, that continues with Aldous Huxley, a piece driven by its samples, surely of the man himself, so that it's almost performance art rather than a song.

I preferred They are So Easily Distracted to both of these, even though it takes a wilder genre shift than the opening title track, that ambient space rock track that's driven by keyboards and so feels like electronica, even though there's clearly a bass in there too. This starts out as lounge music, an odd thing to say but an accurate one, because it's initially all ambient noise and light funky rhythm and soon brings in soft jazz piano and saxophone, which makes the swirling space aura even more outrageous than usual. I'm well aware that that description suggests that it really shouldn't work but it finds a wonderful groove and we gradually forget that it's built on lounge music.

I'll go back to The End here, because that isn't merely a more traditional style for Hawkwind, it's a very old school traditional style done with a very old school raw level of production, surely with an eye for nostalgic authenticity. This song wouldn't have been at all out of place on one of those key albums from from the early seventies and could even have seen release as a single. Nothing else is that old school, but Rama (The Prophecy) walks a similar path, just with a much smoother modern production job, and there's some old school drive in I'm Learning to Live Today with a neat churning bass, even though it almost finds a reggae beat at points too.

It's good to hear that old school style, whether it's simple and raw like The End or taking it forward like I'm Learning to Live Today, but that's not the majority of the album. It goes about it in a set of different ways, but much of this seems to play with psychedelic rock in a variety of ways, whether it trawls in ambient, as on The Future Never Waits; acid rock, as on Outside of Time; lounge and soft jazz, as on They are So Easily Distracted; or even late sixties Beatles, like the piano section towards the end of The Beginning, an homage made even more overt by the refrain of "whatever gets you through the night".

While I was taken aback by some of this experimentation, from a band that I'm used to hearing set new boundaries but in very different directions, I liked this a lot. It's admirably varied, to a degree I don't recall from any Hawkwind albums from my era in the seventies and eighties, and that helps the length not feel too long. Hawkwind were always so good at finding grooves and that holds true here, even with only Dave Brock left from the classic era and Richard Chadwick on drums from the late eighties. Everyone else is reasonably new, having joined within the past seven years. Some of these pieces, especially the long ones that are either entirely or mostly instrumental, could have ended up too long had they not nailed their grooves and kept us in them throughout.

I've missed the last few Hawkwind albums, like All Abourd the Skylark, Carnivorous and Somnia, all released while I've been reviewing at Apocalypse Later, though I have tackled a couple by the late Nik Turner, their former flautist and saxophonist. After this, I'll definitely be keeping my eyes open for the next one, which, knowing them, is not going to be far away. They haven't missed a year since 2015, even through COVID, Carnivorous being an anagram of Coronavirus and that album recorded partly remotely and with fewer members. So, what's next, folks?

Crime Scene - Dark Tidings (2023)

Country: Belgium/USA
Style: Crossover
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Mar 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Instagram | Metal Archives

It's time for another transatlantic week, I believe, with each day covering something from the USA and something from the UK. This is something of a cheat because the majority of Crime Scene are from Antwerp in Belgium, including guitarist PC who put the band together to tackle songs he had lying around during COVID. However, while he's known for Toxic Shock, that's the Belgian crossover band of the present day than the German thrash band of that name that I know from the eighties and nineties, so the biggest name here is surely the vocalist, Jerry A from punk band Poison Idea, who are from Portland, Oregon. So hey, it counts.

This is definitely a lot more metal than Poison Idea, who demonstrated serious chops on guitar and bass for a punk band but never pretended to be anything but straight ahead punk. These musicians behind Jerry A lay down some controlled thrash metal, mostly at a slow to mid-pace but with some faster sections, so while his voice is recognisable, this doesn't sound remotely like Poison Idea. It's part of the point, I'm sure, because he's been doing a lot of collaborative work lately that doesn't play in the style he's known for.

I do prefer my thrash fast, but this pace works for Crime Scene and it works for the punk vocals laid over the top, which is precisely how they did this. The Belgian contingent recorded all the music in October 2020 in a studio in Laakdal, but Jerry A recorded his vocals completely separately, and at a different time, five thousand miles and six months away, in Portland in early 2021. I have no idea if they knew all each other beforehand or have got together since then to play these songs live, but I have to say that it sounds like they're one band in one physical space.

As a metalhead at heart, I'm always going to be paying more attention to those metal instruments than the punk vocals, but the Belgians are mostly content to sit back and play the supporting role, generating riffs and keeping the pit moving. Dave Hubrechts gets some decent solos but nobody's spending a lot of time in the spotlight. They're there to do a job and they do it well, cleanly in the technical, often chugging style of the Bay Area. They leave the attitude to Jerry A, who seems to be on point and in the moment throughout, whatever the lyrical content and some of that definitely speaks to neither being on point nor in the moment.

It's pretty clear that Never Stop, for instance, speaks to his time in Poison Idea just as much as the many other bands who found that they may have had all the talent in the world but came up short on discipline, losing themselves in alcohol or worse. It's not a hopeful song, kicking off with a dark line, "It looks like the same, same day when I drink myself to sleep" and doesn't get more positive as it goes. It's not an affirmation song, it's an illustration of a tough reality. It doesn't offer hope, just kinship, I guess.

And the rest of the EP follows suit, this comprising five tracks and sixteen minutes. Four are short but sweet at very close to the traditional three minutes and Never Stop wraps up the EP at almost four and a half, elongated by an emphatic ending that kicks in around the three minute mark and makes it seem like we're in a warzone, with sirens, feedback, smashing glass and repetition of the title that turns it into a sort of protest chant that we shouldn't listen to when our shadows hurl it at us. It's a powerful ending to a powerful song.

And that's about it, because sixteen minutes isn't a long time to do much out of the ordinary, with the genre not known for that anyway. This is crossover, thrash metal instrumentation with a punk vocal, so it's straightforward stuff, just done capably well. I haven't heard this style in quite a long time, because the trends are more towards more aggression, with heavier groove metal behind a hardcore shout. This is old school, like the early crossover bands I remember from the New York of the mid-eighties, and I like that. It's good to hear the style again as it used to be.

Friday, 12 May 2023

Anthem - Crimson & Jet Black (2023)

Here's another band I haven't heard in far too long. I remember Anthem from the mid-eighties as one of a slew of Japanese bands that suddenly became known to the west. Vow Wow may have hit biggest, because they moved over to England and changed their name from Bow Wow to fit better in an English speaking country, but Loudness did well and Earthshaker got noticed too. That was a good time for Japanese bands in the west and I picked up a few early Anthem albums from English record shops, four out of the first six, and they were all solid.

However, that only took me to 1990's No Smoke without Fire. They knocked out another one before splitting up in 1992, but they reformed in 2000 and, if I'm counting properly, this is their eleventh original studio album since. I say "original" deliberately, because their first album back was a sort of best of with Graham Bonnet stepping in as vocalist for one album only, Heavy Metal Anthem. A couple of decades later, Explosive!!: Studio Jam is exactly that, a COVID-era set of covers, with the support of Bonnet again along with current vocalist Yukio Morikawa.

This is a good one that showcases quite a range for a band who haven't changed their style much over the years, shimmying a little more into power metal from a heavy metal base. For a change, the representative songs aren't just the first few, but some of them are important to get a grasp on what Anthem do.

Snake Eyes is a stormer of an opener, very reminiscent of the sort of up tempo belters that Accept so often used to kick off albums. I like it a lot. Wheels of Fire isn't as heavy but it still rips and it's a much more accurate guide to what's coming. It's hard to define a Japanese flavour to heavy metal, especially when Yukio Morikawa sings in English, but it's there if we pay attention, especially in his vocal delivery on songs like this one. Roaring Vortex slows the pace a few songs in to give us a real churner of a track that ought to generate a serious pit. Its title is highly appropriate.

If you're getting an idea of what they do already, let me throw another few tracks at you to make that seem rather premature. Blood Brothers ups the tempo again after Roaring Vortex, but it's a lot sassier, almost like it's a glam metal song on speed rather than power metal done fast. I could hear a lot of bands covering this, but the ones who might do it justice are likely to sound different indeed. Similarly, Mystic Echoes sounds like a hard rock song translated into a metal style, a track that screams classic Rainbow. It got to the point where I started to imagine I was watching Ritchie Blackmore and listening to Ronnie James Dio or indeed, as it runs on, Graham Bonnet.

Oh, and then there's Void Ark, which is an instrumental showcase, especially for Akio Shimizu, who has a lot of fun demonstrating his chops on guitar. Oddly, he isn't the band member who played for Loudness—that's bass player Naoto Shibata, in between stints for Anthem—because I heard a lot of Akira Takasaki in the first couple of minutes. However, he shifts wildly into a sensitive emotional mode reminiscent of Gary Moore, which screams for our attention, and then shifts again into even more of a spotlight moment, with Shimizu's fingers shredding the fretboard.

All these things are Anthem and Anthem do all those things well. The best song here for me has to be Snake Eyes, which is a perfect way to start, but the most fun song is probably Master of Disaster and I had a lot of fun with Howling Days and Burning Down the Wall too. These are definitely more traditional metal songs but they're good ones nonetheless with top notch riffing and a thoroughly reliable rhythm section in Shibata, the only founder member left in the band, and drummer Isamu Tamaru, who's top notch throughout without ever showing off, yet another reminder of Accept.

What's perhaps most notable is that this doesn't feel like another album in a long string. Anthem are hardly reticent about stepping into the studio. This comes four yers after Nucleus, but that's a sign of COVID messing up everyone's schedules more than anything else. They haven't gone more than three years without an album since their reformation in 2000 otherwise. Maybe it's stronger than the last few, which I haven't heard, because they've had longer to put it together, but maybe they're just this good all the time. It's not groundbreaking, but it's damn solid throughout.

Mike Tramp - Songs of White Lion (2023)

Country: Denmark
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 14 Apr 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

The most recent Mike Tramp release I reviewed here at Apocalypse Later was an album of original pop songs, For Første Gang, which he sang in his native Danish, that only rarely felt like trawling in rock. It was the one before that, Second Time Around, that comes to mind here because it was a re-recording of a 2009 album called Mike Tramp & The Roll 'n' Roll Circuz, with all the same musicians, possibly because it was only previously released in Denmark and, hey, maybe there was some sort of rights or ownership issue. That's why Taylor Swift is re-recording all of her early albums.

This is another album that's like that, because it's a look back at the catalogue of White Lion, that late eighties band that brought him most success, with re-recordings of select songs, including the bigger hits. What's especially odd here is that he's done it before, with 1999's Remembering White Lion, which has seen release under a number of different titles too. There are five crossovers that are both on this album and that one, though the musicians are all brand new again, meaning that on those particular songs, Tramp is re-recording a re-recording with a third version of White Lion. Why, I have no idea.

The good news is that it all sounds great. White Lion were usually classified as glam metal, but the sound they had was always firmly rooted in hard rock and this is a more overtly hard rock take. The opening of Lady of the Valley feels like metal, all Marcus Nand guitars, but it softens up a lot more than the original and it doesn't just benefit from 21st century production values. Tramp's voice is wonderful here, as clear as ever but with a delightful hint of age. It's been a while since 1987 and I believe he's continued to mature that voice ever since. Maybe there's the answer. He wants to see those old songs sung by the voice that he has now and I can't blame him for that.

Lady of the Valley is one of the highlights here for me. I remember Pride from its original release, but I was getting more and more into thrash and other proto-extreme metal at the time and so my sister would have listened to it a lot more than I did. It's the most represented White Lion album in this retrospective, with five tracks redone compared to four from Big Game, a couple from Fight to Survive and only one from Mane Attraction. It prompts me to go back to the originals but that just highlights how these do sound better. Production has moved on and the only expectations now are Tramp's, not his record label's. The ending on this one sounds even more like Mountain and it does not fade out this time.

I remember Pride being a big album and Big Game followed suit. It shouldn't shock that the songs here from those albums sound good. What surprised me the most about this is that two of my five highlights are the pair from their debut, Fight to Survive. I'm sure that I heard that album back in the day but I don't remember it at all, just the two that came after it. Clearly I should check it out afresh because Broken Heart stands out here, playing like a heavier Bryan Adams song, if he had taken up hard rock, and All the Fallen Men is even better, heavier again with a neatly churning riff. I woke up this morning with this one playing in my head. Tramp relishes both.

I should highlight that Broken Heart opened up Fight to Survive and my other two highlights were also album openers, so suggesting that I like emphatic White Lion songs rather than ballads, which were a good part of their repertoire. Other fans may well go for hit singles like Wait and When the Children Cry first, but it's apparently the openers that get me going. Hungry opened up Pride and Goin' Home Tonight opened up Big Game. Everything else was apparently a bonus in my book. It's perhaps telling that Lady of the Valley wasn't an opener in 1987 but is here and it's easily the best song on the album for me.

I should confirm that those bigger hits sound good too, just in case you wondered if they didn't sit well with taste a few decades on. When the Children Cry is particularly strong, which is why it's at the tail end of the album to wrap it up, as indeed it did on Pride. Tramp's voice sounds fantastic on this version. Listening to the original, he was clearly trying for an effect and the fact that it was so popular merely suggests that he nailed it. Here, he's not trying for anything, that effect is simply there in his voice. There's a lot to be said for the flexibility of young voices but there's just as much to be said for the maturity of old voices that have been there and done that, but not broken. Nand provides a huge solo too, that's all the more effective for the contrast of soaring over a soft piano.

It's a bit of a cheat to give this an 8/10, given that it's effectively a best of album that reaps some benefits that a traditional best of album wouldn't have. Sure, they did it right, which is important, but it ought to be this good. White Lion were an underrated band in the eighties, painted into one of those media-friendly buckets that never quite fit them, and they're well worth checking out. It's fair to say that this would be a good starting point because of the better production and because Tramp's voice has never been better.

Thursday, 11 May 2023

The 69 Eyes - Death of Darkness (2023)

I'm sure there's something superstitious I could read into it, but Death of Darkness is yet another thirteenth album. My second review each day is always of a more established band than my first, a deliberate approach that allows me to cover new bands and keep up with the old ones, and this, by sheer coincidence, is a third thirteenth album in a row after Holy Moses and Kamelot. Tomorrow's will not be a fourth. I just checked.

This time, it's the 69 Eyes, a Finnish band who have only ever had one line-up change in their thirty-four year career, but who have moved through a number of genres in that time, starting out more in a glam rock style but moving gradually towards gothic rock, with occasional ventures over onto the other side of the ever shifting rock/metal boundary. This is gothic rock, in a western style, but it also delves rather palatably into pop music on the ironically named Gotta Rock. Sure, it's a rock song but most of it builds with a prowling bass that wouldn't be out of place on Michael Jackson's Thriller. Needless to say, lead vocalist Jyrki 69 doesn't sound remotely like Jackson.

He sounds a lot more like Andrew Eldritch nowadays, with a deep and deliberate voice that chants and echoes at us with a teasing hint of breathlessness. Last time out, on 2019's West End, one song in particular screamed the Sisters of Mercy and the same applies here. It's Call Me Snake and it's an upbeat song with a gorgeous groove and a memorable chorus. Call me Snake, Snake, Snake... It has to be said that I much prefer the modern 69 Eyes when they're upbeat and energetic, but that only really applies in full on two songs. Call Me Snake is the best of them but Drive isn't far behind and it doesn't surprise me to discover that it preceded the album last year as the lead on a three track EP, with Call Me Snake sharing its grooves.

They're at very different points on the album. Drive shows up after the broody opening title track but Call Me Snake doesn't arrive until it's called on to kick off the second side. That places it after Gotta Rock, as well as California, with a Cult-like drive, and a particularly notable track called This Murder Takes Two. It's notable for its guest appearance by Kat Von D, which works well, her voice contrasting neatly with Jyrki's, but also because it has an alt country murder ballad vibe, filtered through goth. It's quite a memorable piece, much more low key than Call Me Snake or Drive, but a highlight nonetheless.

Even with Call Me Snake kicking it off, the second side doesn't feel as strong as the first. The other standout there is Dying in the Night, which feels like a Billy Idol song, with an incessant drive from bass and drums, but with the guitar dialled way back. It's all vocals and beat, which isn't the worst decision on this song, but I did miss Bazie's lead guitar. It's there on Something Real, with another Billy Idol sort of vibe and a faster pace. The albums wraps up with Sundown and Outlaws, a further Cult-esque song and another slower song to showcase Jyrki's resonant voice and what I presume have to be guest synth melodies.

And so this is another decent album, as we might expect from the 69 Eyes, but it's not the killer it could have been. I should run it past some of my goth friends to see what they think of it. It may be that they really dig the slower material and relish every new release the band puts out. I like it too but the metalhead inside me always wants them to speed up. When they do, on songs like Call Me Snake and Drive, I'm in Heaven. Until Eldritch figures out how easy it is nowadays to self-release a full length album while retaining complete creative control, it's these songs that satisfy my need for new Sisters material. Only after those can I truly settle into the slower, more offbeat stuff on a modern 69 Eyes album.

Compassionizer - As Smoke is Driven Away (2023)

Country: Russia
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Apr 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Prog Archives

I've reviewed a couple of Compassionizer albums now and the Russian chamber prog collective are usually pretty concise with their songwriting, even if they split a song up over multiple parts. Each of the albums I've reviewed has featured just one long piece of music, the thirteen minutes of Bear Ye One Another's Burdens on An Ambassador in Bonds and the fourteen of Kramatorsk on Narrow is the Road; nothing else on those albums came close. Well, here's what I guess we should call an EP, because "single" doesn't seem to cut it when the one track on offer is twenty minutes long. As you might imagine, there's a lot going on in this instrumental, which is easily the most expansive I've heard from Compassionizer.

The other surprising note is in which instruments are dominant. Ivan Rozmainsky has always been the driving force behind Compassionizer and he's primarily a keyboard player. Sure, he does add a kalimba and a vibraphone here too, but much of what he plays is on various different synthesisers. As such, he's all over this track but mostly in the background for a change. He seems to be content this time out with providing an atmosphere for the track against which the lead instruments can perform. Sometimes that's minimal and sometimes more expansive but he's rarely the lead. Even when he's dancing around that vibraphone late in the piece like he's the whole twinkling night sky, there's a clarinet or a guitar there to dance with him.

Mostly, the lead falls to the clarinets, which have never been a typical rock instrument the way the flute became because of Ian Anderson, but which felt right on the first Compassionizer album and ongoing. Clarinets are such inquisitive instruments, almost the raccoons of the musical world They are always seeking out new truths or new absurdities and that makes them a flexible way to help us visualise music. The bass clarinet here is played by Leonid Perevalov and the rest come courtesy of AndRey Stefinoff.

And there is a story here, or at least a theme, for us to visualise. The concept here is all about "the Mystery of the Victory of Good over Evil". Certainly there's a general sweep from dark to light and from jagged, avant-garde rhythms and phrases to more beautiful, traditional ones. I would expect that the bass clarinet is playing a dark role here, whether it's meant to be specific or general, and what I presume is a soprano clarinet represents its eternal counterpart. However, if the piece aims at deeper storytelling like we might expect in thematically ambitious pieces in classical music, I'm not hearing it. This feels more abstract, so that we can all conjure up our own interpretations but never be far wrong.

Talking of rhythms, the drums are a player in this game too. Not everything features percussion, a state of affairs that may be in part because Serghei Liubcenco, who plays traditional drums, doira and other forms percussion, is also the guitarist and bassist on this piece, so he's wearing a lot of hats this time out. When the bass clarinet is dominant, the drums often back it up like an army, a show of force to overwhelm delicacy. His guitar is even more fascinating, showing up not to play a rhythm or a riff but perhaps to depict the power of chaos.

I wasn't intending to assign characters to the different instruments, like Peter and the Wolf, but I guess I'm kind of doing that anyway. Unfortunately, I don't have a cast list and there may not be a cast list, so I'm stabbing rather blind. For a start, there's a firm transition halfway through that's done on viola and I have no idea what that represents. Of course, it may not represent anything at all and so I'm never going to find that answer. The piece also drifts away and it feels like there may be a reason for that which I'm blissfully unable to see.

Of course, there's never been a requirement to make sense out of any piece of music, even if it has a conceptual theme. You can just back and enjoy. This is certainly an engaging piece that ought to keep fans of Compassionizer happy until their next album, but the longer the pieces they play, the more I feel like there are meanings to be found. Maybe there are no answers and Rozmainsky just likes prompting us to ask questions. And should that ever be surprising in progressive rock?

Wednesday, 10 May 2023

Kamelot - The Awakening (2023)

Not every power metal band from Tampa, Florida got stupidly caught up in the insurrection, but I don't think we can call Kamelot an entirely American band any more. Sure, Thomas Youngblood is still in place on guitar, as he's been since they were founded in 1987 as Camelot with a C, and Sean Tibbetts is there on bass, as he was briefly in the early nineties and has been since 2009, but every other member is European—vocalist Tommy Karevik is Swedish while drummer Alex Landenburg and keyboardist Oliver Palotai are both German—and only two of thirteen guests are American. It shouldn't be surprising that Kamelot probably sound more European than any other Florida band.

This is their thirteenth studio album but, like Holy Moses's thirteenth yesterday, it took a while to arrive, after the longest gap between albums that they've ever had. The Shadow Theory came out in 2018, so it's been five years. It's good to see them back but this does not feel like the first album back after a long break; it feels more like another album in a long string of them that's destined to end up lost among the rest. I enjoyed it while I listened to it and it's certainly professionally done, but none of these songs stuck in my brain, even if I thought that it might.

I found myself remembering moments rather than songs, especially intros, which are often strong points. Eventide has a quirky intro that's almost Victorian fantasy. One More Flag in the Ground is elevated by an opening vocalisation, presumably the "operatic ghost voice" of Kobra Paige, leader of Kobra and the Lotus and Karevik's fiancée. Opus of the Night (Ghost Requiem) also begins with atmosphere. Midsummer's Eve starts with Celtic folk, courtesy of Florian Janoske's violin, and an evocative soft section. Bloodmoon opens as folk too, a sort of eastern dance with a modern beat. Nightsky has synths and choral emphasis. The Looking Glass has electronica and melodious piano. And so on and so on.

It's not just the intros though. Cellist Tina Guo lends her talents to Opus of the Night and is better still on Midsummer's Eve. There are particularly strong melodies on One More Flag in the Ground and Nightsky. The Looking Glass gets neatly prowling in some sections. There are a couple of songs where the usually clean vocals get harsh, My Pantheon (Forevermore) adding in a fast section too that I absolutely loved. The other is New Babylon, featuring a couple of major guests lending their vocal talents: Melissa Bonny of Ad Infinitum and Simone Simons of Epica, a major band whose very name was borrowed from the title of a Kamelot album.

The problem is that these great moments don't necessarily make great songs. I'm on my seventh or eighth time through The Awakening in search of something that will make it stick but very little has. Of the traditional melodic power metal songs, I'd call out Nightsky, because its hooks seem to be much more likely to stick. It's not remotely original and neither is The Looking Glass, but they're both done very well indeed and ought to stand alone outside the context of the album, played in a radio show set or as discoveries on YouTube.

The only song I'd truly call a highlight though is New Babylon. It's has another of the strong intros that are everywhere here, a gloriously bombastic choral approach. It drops into electronica, with two of the three voices in play, and then builds, back to the bombast but with lead vocals soaring over it and eventually a harsh section. It has more emphasis than every other song put together, perhaps even counting the harsh fast section in My Pantheon. The guitar solos are a cut above the rest of the album too. Kamelot have released three singles thus far off The Awakening and this is not one of them. That probably explains as much as the rest of this review.

All told, it's not a bad album. It's just not a particularly good album either. I don't regret listening to it. I may regret listening to it so much trying to find something that clearly isn't there. However, it remained entertaining even after that many listens. It's certainly not a waste of your time, but it's mostly just there, providing a pleasant backdrop to your day, and Kamelot albums ought to be a lot more than that.

Tryo - Iodine Clock Reaction (2023)

Country: Czechia
Style: Alternative
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 30 Mar 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website

I haven't heard Sustainable Gardening, the 2021 debut from Czech band Tryo, but their Bandcamp page suggests that it was an indie/art rock album. Two years later, they've moved to what they're calling "darker and rawer music" on their follow-up and it's certainly an interesting sound because it's a hybrid of completely different eras of music.

The earliest is a pastoral folk sound that's very sixties. It's there mostly on the second side, in the quiet parts of Haze, early in Unity and especially on Home. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a couple of sections on Haze are pure krautrock, right out of the early seventies. The core sound is a clear derivative of the mid eighties, when post-punk and new wave were at their most interesting, and the early vocals of Šimon Podrazil are right out of eighties alternate rock, because they're so clean in delivery. However, everything's phrased as soundscapes, owing much to the post-rock and shoegaze genres of the nineties and noughties, but with vocals delivered over the top.

Given how confusing that sounds, I should emphasise that it all merges together rather well and it opens up with the most conventional of the six songs on offer, Droplets. This one was writen in 2015 when Tryo seem to have been a more conventional band, but it's been massively changed, mostly a new song built on the bones of the old one. Karabach is edgier, but more commercial too somehow and it reminded me of the way that Paradise Lost got retro-new wave, merely slower and subdued, so that it's clear to us that, unlike them, Tryo were never a metal band who calmed down.

Tree is a decent song but it's a little lost in between the commercial edge of Karabach and the wild experiments of Haze. It works well as a transition between the two but it works in isolation as well, finding a delightful groove early and milking it for over seven minutes. That doesn't stop it being a little overshadowed though, because Haze quickly takes over, not just grabbing our attention but chaining it to a bed and having its wicked way with it.

Haze is where the "darker and rawer music" really comes into play, because it's a tasty exercise in contrasts. It's softer initially with some of that sixties folky psychedelia but, when it ramps up, it's not holding back. It does that twice, the first time feeling rather like a nightmare descending upon a soft, dreamy soundscape, not unlike a late escalation in Tree but more. That nightmare passes, but it returns and the wheels come off, with Hynek Čejka soloing on drums and Podrazil's guitar a seriously abrasive weapon. Only Čejková's bass keeps us grounded as we move through it to come out the other side intact but changed.

What's telling is that it's hard to pick highlights here. Droplets is the most conventional. Karabach is the most commercial. Haze is the most experimental. Home is the most pastoral. Those are easy adjectives to assign, but it's not so easy to pick the best or even my favourite. I like Karabach a lot, but I recognise some of those chord changes so it has an unfair advantage. Haze is the most overt song here, enough so that it climbs out of the middle of the album to slap us across the cheeks and cry, "Me! Me! Me!"

At the end of the day, I might have to consciously ignore its attentions and call out the subtle songs with their impeccable grooves, wich to me means Tree and Home. It's not an easy call, but that's a good thing. It felt like the album had depths from the very beginning, on those more immediately accessible tracks, but it takes a few listens to truly grasp how much it's doing and to appreciate its subtleties. I'd never have called out Tree and Home on my first listen, but they grew on every fresh listen until they staked a serious claim to being what the album's about.

Here's where I'd normally say that Tryo are a fascinating band who are new to me, so I should look back at their earlier material. The first half of that holds true, but I don't think I do want to check out Sustainable Gardening at this point, because I don't want to suddenly find them conventional. They're not here and that's why I like this so much. I think I'll sit back and wait for the next one.

Tuesday, 9 May 2023

Holy Moses - Invisible Queen (2023)

I was a little surprised when I saw a new Holy Moses album being released in 2023, but I was also a very happy chappy indeed, because I loved what these guys were doing in the late eighties and I'd no idea at all that they were still around. It turns out that they continued until 1994, perhaps due to the changes wrought by grunge in the States not being quite so emphatic in Europe, and stayed gone until the new millennium, reforming in 2000 and adding five albums to the seven they put out during their original incarnation. However, this is their first in nine years, a long gap indeed for a generally prolific band.

Holy Moses play thrash metal in the Teutonic style, rooted in speed metal with rough but not harsh vocals. hardly surprising given that they're a German band from Aachen. I remember liking them a lot but I haven't heard them in decades and this reminds me just how unusual they were. For one, I remember them getting much more technical than many of their peers, with intricate guitarwork and instrumental passages that put them more in parity with Sieges Even and Mekong Delta than Destruction and Kreator. For another, they had a female vocalist, Sabina Classen, who's the one and only constant in the band throughout its lifetime.

Now, she wasn't alone, given that Doro was pioneering heavy female vocals with Warlock, but she was much rougher in delivery and became quite the pioneer, along with Ann Boleyn, Debbie Gunn and the late Dawn Crosby in the States. She's certainly one of the invisible queens of metal, from a time long before Angela Gossow shocked the world in 2000 when she took over as the lead vocalist of Arch Enemy, and she's sounding on the top of her game here. I ought to dive back into The New Machine of Liechtenstein after this review, with Finished with the Dogs as a tasty chaser. And then I should catch up with the far too many albums I haven't heard.

This sounds like Holy Moses from the outset, but a little more so in almost every regard. Classen is a little harsher than I remember, but not by much. Maybe she's just benefitting from 21st century production, given that the albums I loved are around thirty-five years old now and technology has moved on massively. The guitars, here played by Peter Geltat, seem more biting and more urgent, with possibly the same cause. Gerd Lücking keeps a little faster pace on drums, which is never bad in my book. I always like my thrash fast, even though Holy Moses manage midpace sections neatly as well.

The biggest difference between this and my possibly faulty memory is just how overt the basswork of Thomas Neitsch is. Like Geltat, he used to play for a thrash band from Berlin called Desilence, so may have brought him into the band, and they work together well. There are moments here where it sounds like he firmly believes that he's playing lead, which I'm never upset to hear a bass player do. The early gem is Cult of the Machine and he's all over that song like a rash, with a peach of an encore in Order Out of Chaos, before continuing in this vein throughout the album.

And, while I might prefer Cult of the Machine, Order Out of Chaos may be the defining song of the current state of Holy Moses. There are points where it feels like it's going to veer so wildly out of control that it's going to fail horribly any moment now, what with Neitsch soloing in one direction and Geltat in another, but it never does because these guys know exactly what they're doing and the result is something that had me throwing up my arms in admiration. It really is what it says on the label—order out of chaos—and that's the defining message of the album. Invisible Queen is a worthy and appropriate title, but Order Out of Chaos may have been better still.

There's a lot more to come, because the title track shows up next and that's only marks a third of the way through a dozen songs. What's more, there's an edition with a second disc that covers all the same ground but with guest vocalists. I haven't listened to it yet because I'm concentrating on the album proper, but I will because it features a teasing list of replacements for the one constant in the band, an interesting approach indeed.

The most obvious are fellow German thrash legends, Tom Angelripper and Andreas Geremia from Sodom and Tankard respectively, but Bobby Ellsworth of Overkill and Jens Kidman of Meshuggah get a track each too, and there's a string of modern female vocalists who owe plenty to Classen's blazing of the trail, like Marloes Voskuil of Izegrim (now Haliphron), Diva Satanica of Bloodhunter, Rægina of Dæmonesq and, most obviously, Dani Karrer of German thrash band Headshot.

Not everything is up to those openers and I'd say that the most obvious highlights all arrive early on the album, but nothing lets the side down and everything is enjoyable and refreshing, with so many other German thrash bands making firm departures from their sound lately. This sounds like Holy Moses throughout and it's agreeably uncompromising about that. Outcasts and Too Far Gone are the closest on the second side to matching the early highlights of the first. Like the Choose the Juice album before it, I think I have to go with an 8/10 here, because it's definitely closer to it than it is to a 7. And I think it's growing on me more with each listen. Welcome back, folks!

Choose the Juice - Meteoria (2023)

Country: Switzerland
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 10 Apr 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

I've been listening to this album a lot over the past couple of days while I work on book reviews and it's really got under my skin. It's psychedelic rock, for want of a single label when Choose the Juice work through at least half a dozen others—they call themselves a trippy alternative psych garage surf shoegaze tinnitus stoner space acid rock explosion, not unfairly either—but it's sublimely pure psychedelic rock because it feels organic, like a trip inside rather than outside. They're not taking me out to see the cosmos, they're drenching me in acid taking me inside my own brain.

It's patient stuff, featuring a notably high male voice that reminds me of the early seventies when certain singers favoured singing an octave or two higher than what everyone else might consider a norm. The singer is Mo Bernasconi and he also plays guitar here, as do two others, though both of them also have double duty: Andrea Kuster also plays harmonica, though I'm not sure if he does so much on this album—it's only overt on Acid Cowboy—and Andrea Künzle provides the synth work, which often dominantes the mood. And mood is everything here.

The Body Mind Split Orchestra may be the weakest offering for me, bizarrely for an opening track, until it unexpectedly but rather naturally trawls in folk music halfway and elevates itself. There are some very subtle harmonies here and I seem to hear more every time I listen. The guitar impresses late on as the song escalates and it's there right at the beginning of Photograph to set the tone, a sort of early Wishbone Ash delicacy but psyched up, as everything here is. This is a tasty song and I heard more early Ash on Sail too, an epic closer which has eight full minutes to build and knows just how to use them to their best advantage.

The Ballad of Cucumber Salad feels longer than everything else here, because it builds so well and from almost nothing, but it's actually the shortest at just over five minutes. It starts with a single soft drone and gradually layers on more and more until it's something completely different that's still a natural progression. Sail is the longest, albeit not by much, but it feels longer too. Much of it is exceedingly loose, but it reaches some wonderful intensity later, with a gem of a sustained note from Berlusconi.

Sail may be my favourite song here, but it faces tough competition indeed from Acid Cowboy, which isn't loose so much as it's carefree. It's constantly in motion and in an incessant straight line that's so typical of the deserts of the American southwest. The cowboy of the title, who's represented in musical form by Kuster's harmonica, sits back and enjoys the ride and doesn't appear to care much where it takes him. It's almost like the movement itself is the goal. Here's where elements such as surf and garage show up, not overtly but enough to remind me of the Shivas, a Portland surf rock band, who accompanied a different title character in Wade Chitwood's short film The Prospector.

That leaves the title track, which is may be the loosest piece of music here, appearing almost like a set of instruments playing in isolation but close enough to realise that they're utterly compatible with each other, including Bernasconi's vocalisations. Its organic bedrock reminded me of the Pink Floyd of the very early seventies, up to but including The Dark Side of the Moon, but thrown into more of a krautrock environment with maybe Hawkwind performing down the hall at the same time. Matheo Sabater is a jaunty accompanist here on drums and Nicolas Kölbener has more to do on bass as well.

Bernasconi's voice is there but it doesn't deliver lyrics and he was only a guitarist on Acid Cowboy, so that's a good chunk of the album that unfolds instrumentally and it doesn't seem remotely out of place. I think that's because, while he does sing on other tracks, I never really thought of him as a deliverer of lyrics, even though he sings in English in a very clear voice. I have no idea what any of these songs are about because I'm hearing that voice as an instrument and I'm enjoying it like the others, getting lost in the moods that Choose the Juice muster up.

This is an 8/10 for me, because the entire second side is comprised of highlights and I'm rather fond of Photograph as well, with its guitarwork hearkening back to Pilgrimage and Argus. It's music that I consciously listened to on every time through, because I was trying to figure out all its subtleties, but it works as a mood enhancer in the background too. I've been happier and more relaxed with it playing and that's never a bad thing.

Monday, 8 May 2023

Angel - Once Upon a Time (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 21 Apr 2023
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Wikipedia

I often say that everything driving Apocalypse Later is discovery. I love finding new bands to share with the world, which otherwise might not be able to find them, especially the way radio is here in the States. However, the last few years have highlighted to me that there are old bands long gone who are suddenly back and they count as discovery in two ways. For old fans like me, it's discovery of their return, a decade, two or even four since they last went into the studio. For new fans, who weren't around in their respective heydays, it's discovery ofwhy they were important and may still be important.

Angel are one of these, because they were a fantastic band in the seventies who had been unfairly relegated to a handful of footnotes in the history of rock 'n' roll: they had an ambigrammatic logo, meaning that it looks the same upside down as right way up; they were discovered by Kiss's Gene Simmons in a nightclub; and they deliberately wore all white at a time when rock bands, like Kiss, tended to dress entirely in black. The fact that they knocked out five albums, including a couple of classics, doesn't tend to be mentioned at all.

This is their second album back, which makes me happy because they'd got into a sort of cycle of a reformation and new album every twenty years. The last one was Risen in 2019 and it was solid, if too long. It was an impeccable classic at twenty minutes and would have been a peach at fifty, but settled for being decent at seventy-five. Maybe they realised that in hindsight because this runs a more manageable fifty-three and it's much better for not sprawling too far. It may not quite reach the pinnacles of that album but it's much more consistent throughout.

The heart of the band is Frank DiMino on lead vocals and Punky Meadows on guitar, both founder members. The others joined in 2018, so all played on Risen, and are still in place for this follow-up, because original bassist Mikie Jones passed in 2009, Barry Brandt presumably chose not to return for a third reunion after showing up for the previous two, and Gregg Giuffria probably has plenty of things to do with his time already, given that, beyond rock music in Angel, Giuffria and House of Lords, he became a businessman, running development companies, casinos and hotels.

The Torch and Black Moon Rising are a pair of excellent openers and, if you'd never heard of Angel in your life, you would absolutely assume from the former that DiMino sang in the seventies. They simply don't make those effortless hard rock voices any more and he doesn't seem to have lost his power. It boggles my mind that he ended up for a while singing in Las Vegas seventies rock tribute bands. I mean, his voice is absolutely perfect for that, but he deserves new material too and these are perfect for that. So's It's Alright, which is a smooth song to follow the funky Black Moon Rising and the rocking The Torch.

While The Torch may be the best song here, there are a few songs happy to challenge it. I found a few of them on the second side, songs like Turn the Record Over, rather ironically, and Rock Star, a song that loses out by featuring a riff more than a little reminiscent of Layla, but otherwise plays very well indeed. Following them, Without You isn't the ballad its title might suggest and it might be better than either of them, because, like It's Alright and others, it features some particularly energetic guitarwork from Meadows. He hasn't lost his magic either.

The most memorable song and another candidate for best is the title track, because it stands out immediately and consistently. It's a storytelling song that's not easily ignored and, more crucially, it works. It has a more elongated title than the album: Once Upon a Time an Angel and a Devil Fell in Love (And It Did Not End Well), a wonderfully catchy line that's only awkward as a song title. It's seamless in the song and the story, though I have no idea if it's truly based on the YA novel by Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone, or simply inspired by that line, which went viral. I'm guessing that the moaning of an angel in the second half isn't in a YA paranormal romance.

Also worth mentioning but for a different reason are the surprising pairing halfway through the album of Let It Rain and Psyclone. Let It Rain is the decent ballad of the two here, with the other, Blood of My Blood, Bone of My Bone, the only song I don't like here. Let It Rain plays pretty well as melodic rock but it's followed by the heaviest song anywhere on the album, which is not so much a heavy metal song as thinking seriously about it. It's easy to see that Y&T, who were formed rather surprisingly before Angel, saw them as a big influence, because this sounds like Y&T in their early-eighties heyday, right after Angel split up. DiMino and Dave Meniketti are even closer here than they usually are.

So, Angel are back and I'm happy. I can deal with a four year album release schedule. Bring on the next one! Call this a 7.5/10, though I'm still thinking about an 8. It's better than Risen but it doesn't soar as high.

Lumnia - Humanity Despair (2023)

Country: Brazil
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 Mar 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | YouTube

I've been fascinated by what's coming out of South America lately and symphonic metal seems to be one of their genres of choice, with this debut album from Rio de Janeiro-based Lumnia another good example of how they're merging and shifting genres down there to create new hybrids.

Fundamentally, this is symphonic metal, but the metal behind it is a fascinating mix of old school, like the doom riffs on Breathing Space, and new school, like the more modern flavour evident on Embrace Darkness. There's a clear gothic metal influence too, right from the outset on Breathing Space, but it's in the general approach rather than any specific element, even if there's violin and piano here and there and the band employ the use of beauty and the beast vocal contrasts.

The lead vocalist here is Odete Salgado, who mostly sings clean soprano, though she does dip down to a much deeper voice on Madness Interude and, if my ears aren't misleading me, even tackles a harsh style very briefly. Someone provides what sounds to me like a male harsh voice, but nobody is credited in that backing singer role. As male as it sounds, there are points where I wondered if it could also be Salgado, who demonstrates quite the range here, from soaring soprano to whispered texture and many points in between, including a much more nasal witchy tone that she puts on at points for a very specific effect.

Now, I don't believe she is doing the harsh voice, and it's clear in the video for Queen of Night that it's not her, but the thought persists. I think it's because she has an occasional habit of mirroring the male vocal but behind, so that she shows from the sides like a halo of light around an eclipse. It's not every time, but it's there on more than one song and it provides a little touch of class that resonates with further listens. I was a little jarred on my first listen by elements I didn't expect, so it took a few songs for me to get what Lumnia were doing. Once on board, this is worthy and varied.

Breathing Space is a good opener because it sets the stage for what's to come. Hugo Carvalho and Marcel Gil generate a very tasty churning riff to open up and then Salgado soars in. As soon as she arrives though, the male voice shows up behind her, as a dark echo. She's left alone to sing solo on most of the album, but the backing vocal is prominent on Breathing Space and it's interesting for being almost negative space, like a black hole swallowing the fabric of reality. It isn't quite trying to be a portfolio song, a band sampler in five minutes, but it almost works that way.

Humanity Despair is a more focused song and it's a good one. There's a nice use of bells during one transition and Salgado's nasal approach shows up here. Broken Glass adds some pace and I do like this band a little faster than their typical tempo. It does slow down again, later on, of course, and churns gloriously while Salgado returns to her nasal witch voice. These are all good songs and they help flesh out what Breathing Space suggested might be coming. With Madness Interlude adding different vocal textures, it's clear that the band thought carefully about how to order the songs.

As the album runs on, those songs only get more interesting though and I started to take the high level sweep of the band as a given while focusing on little details. There's a violin on Bitter Earth, adding texture behind an acoustic guitar. Pedro Mello gets a spotlight moment as Queen of Night kicks off to showcase his bass. There are unusual rhythms on Embrace Darkness, so giving Matheus Moura plenty of attention. Many of these are at the beginning and/or end of songs, but some are midway, like the neat guitarwork in the midsection of Bitter Earth, extending into the second half.

My favourite song for both intro and outro has to be Violet. The former is elegant, with piano and acoustic guitar setting the scene and Salgado's clear voice joining them. The crunch arrives soon enough, after only thirty seconds or so, and we're into the song proper. The ending is even quicker, with Salgado reaching a crescendo above the general build of the song and the male harsh voice showing up for a moment of neat contrast, only for both to drop away entirely to a minimal piano that sounds like drops of water. It's very tasty. The song in between isn't bad either.

The song I'd have expected to be my least favourite is Constellations, because it's clearly a ballad, but I had no problems with it. It starts off like, with angels singing far above Salgado, and it keeps on like a ballad too, with the male backing voice going clean for a change, almost a folk grounding behind Salgado's vocalisations. The melodies are strong and it moves along pleasantly enough. It does heavy up a little, a couple of minutes in, but it drops back down out of that soon enough, with little interest in doing anything that's been done elsewhere.

I haven't heard a killer symphonic metal album from South America yet, but I'm increasingly sure that there's one out there that I haven't found yet. In the meantime, this is another worthy entry to the genre from Brazil.

Friday, 28 April 2023

Ihsahn - Fascination Street Sessions (2023)

Fascination Street Sessions is only an EP rather than a full length album and its trio of songs count for only thirteen minutes of music, but I've heard a lot of buzz about this release and ought to take a listen. And hey, Ihsahn seems to be releasing all his new music as EPs lately, this being his third in five years since his most recent album, Àmr in 2018. I didn't review Pharos in 2020 but I did take on Telemark earlier that same year, so I guess I've set precedent.

Both those EPs featured three original tracks from Ihsahn, along with a pair of covers, each one of them an interesting choice that we might not expect from a pioneering black metal musician. The choices on Pharos were songs by Portishead and a-ha, while Telemark tackled a Lenny Kravitz song and an early classic by Iron Maiden. Those choices ably highlight how broadly Ihsahn is casting his musical net nowadays. Not only is this not black metal, even though he brings in a harsh voice on a couple of tracks; it's often not even metal, dipping frequently from a prog metal mindset to a prog rock one.

If we took that three/two combo as a template, Ihsahn chose to ditch it here. Instead we only get a pair of original songs, The Observer and Contorted Movements, along with one cover, this time of a song by Kent, an alternative rock band from Sweden, called Dom andra, or The Others. This take is a little heavier, but still clearly a rock song, and it doesn't otherwise bring anything new to it, so it's much more important here as a further guide to what Ihsahn is listening to and is impacted by than as a new piece of music. To me, it's an introduction to Kent.

It also plays more consistently as rock music than the two originals. The Observer especially has an impressive range, starting out prog metal, dropping down to prog rock and then adding emphasis by trawling in that black metal harsh vocal and leaping back to metal. It's all about emphasis. The initial verses are softer, delivered as prog, perhaps even alternative rock, but the ramp up is pure metal and, however many times it goes back and forth, that's where it ends up, in prog metal with a harsh voice.

It's a good song, but I like Contorted Movements even more. It kicks in with a guitar solo from the old school hard and heavy era, when bands had become heavy enough to stretch the boundaries of hard rock but weren't quite at the point heavy metal would become when it found a need to mark a delineation from extreme metal. It softens like Contorted Monuments, but the ramp up is much more subtle, the harsh aspects of Ihsahn's voice creeping in rather than just taking over, and the music behind it follows suit, gradually accelerating into high gear rather than shifting up a gear to snap into it.

And that's about it, because three songs isn't a lot to talk about. This is a good release, but it's not the killer that I'd been led to believe. It also feels skimpy as an EP, even if that's just because we've been spoiled by the previous two. By comparison, it's short and there's enough room to bond this material together. In many ways, it is three individual tracks in the same packaging rather than an EP that says something new. It's a 7/10 for the music, but I've dropped a point for the length.

But, with that, I have to wonder about what we might expect from an Ihsahn full length. He's never gone more than three years without one as a solo artist until now. A blip during COVID lockdowns is understandable, but he's definitely been busy with his music, knocking out more than an album's worth since Àmr. I wonder if he's seeking a new direction and isn't sure if he's found it yet. Frankly, whether he is or isn't, I'm still listening.

Shem - III (2023)

Country: Germany
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Apr 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Prog Archives

You know someone's not aching for commercial acceptance when they call themselves a collective of musicians performing improvisational sound pieces and then kick off their third album with an instrumental piece of droning space rock that lasts for sixteen minutes. It's called Paragate and it finds its groove quickly, with drones underneath and space rock chirps over the top. Gradually the bass makes itself more obvious and it moves into a more traditional space rock mode as it speeds up. It ends more like Hawkwind than it begins. It begins like krautrock, which is probably the most effective way to look at this.

We could easily call Paragate a test, because less open minded listeners aren't going to make it to the second song and that's probably fine, because this isn't for them. Anyone who does will find a song of an altogether different length, Lamentum not even making it to three minutes but doing what it does just as well as Paragate did over sixteen. That bass, courtesy of Tobias Brendel, finds its purpose easiest here; even though it only has a five note refrain, it provides the melody that's crucial to the piece, until the vocals show up to serve as a counter. There are no lyrics here, just an instrument that happens to be a human voice.

There's a Tangerine Dream vibe to these pieces that seems counter-intuitive, given that this is an actual band playing the usual instruments we expect a rock band to play: guitars, bass and drums, along with synthesiser work from Alexander Meese. Tangerine Dream weren't always just synths, but that tends to be how we think of them, and Shem try to achieve the same thing here that they did in the early seventies, as they shifted from purely experimental mode into the unlikely success of the Virgin years. Refugium, the twelve minute soundscape that wraps up the album is the most like Tangerine Dream, merely framed as a post-rock band.

In many ways, Refugium is a combination of the first two songs. It's pure soundscape, built on the sounds of space rock, but a long way from Hawkwind. The vocal here is buried so far behind any of the instruments that we wonder if it's actually a vocal. Again, it's all vocalisations rather than any attempt to deliver lyrics, but it could easily be a musical instrument mimicking a voice. For all I can be sure, it could even be a sample, but I'd guess at one of these musicians in the studio. That bass makes its presence known again, even though it's almost submerged under the synths, and it has an even more stronger focus on drones.

In between is my favourite piece of music, which is Restlicht. It's much longer than the short song and much shorter than the long songs, but that still leaves seven and a half minutes for it to build. It's a stalker of a piece that finds a new influence that I wasn't expecting in the slightest. Often, it sounds like listening to the Bad Seeds without Nick Cave's voice ever joining in. It drifts further to krautrock as it goes, finding an almost industrial texture five minutes in. It plays with intensity at this point, testing how intense something intense stays if it stays intense, if that makes any sense at all. Contrasts are difficult when we don't move from one thing to another. This is almost asking us to contrast what it does with everything else we know.

And there's some of this in Refugium too, which makes it all the more appropriate piece to wrap up the album, somehow more of an epic than the opener, even though it's four minutes shorter. It has the bigger build, for sure, and it's more of a journey. There are moments late on where we almost end up in a guitar solo, but Alexander Gallagher resists the urge to get that traditional. There's an industrial feel here too, but one generated by bass and drums rather than synths, so it plays out in a very different way.

I can totally buy into this being improvised music, but music probably improvised on themes that a band of musicians already had in mind. As such, it feels loose but also focused, because everyone's working from a common inspiration. I liked this on a first listen, even though that daunting sixteen minute opener is my least favourite track here. However, I like it all the more on further listens. It's fascinating music, even if it is improvised, and I'm eager to check out those previous two albums, II, as you might expect, in 2021, and before that, The Hill AC in 2018.

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