Thor - Ride of the Iron Horse (2024)

Country: Canada
Style: Hard and Heavy
Rating: 5/10
Release Date: 15 Mar 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

Apparently I'm late to the game again. I do know who Jon-Mikl Thor is and what he's done, so I'm not that far behind the curve, but his particular brand of way over the top hard rock/heavy metal antics were so quintessentially eighties in nature that I thought he'd hung up his metal hammer a long time ago. Instead, I keep bumping into his name in periphery. Last time he came up was when I read an excellent interview at the Rialto Report with his ex-wife, who was part of his band under the name of Queen Pantera. Before that, I rewatched Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare, a cheesy '80s movie that starred him and his band. It's pretty awful but not without its merits.

And, realistically, that tends to describe what Thor does. While other bands only lean into clichés while they're in vogue and then shun then afterwards, attempting to distance themselves from a very deliberate set of choices they made at particular times, Thor always leans into them. He does what he does and it's always utterly unashamed. That tends to make his music often cringeworthy but sometimes he hits the motherlode and suddenly there are songs that frickin' rock. You might not feel entirely comfortable saying so, but you'll know it and you'll keep spinning those records.

Why I'm late to the game is that he hasn't remotely hung up his hammer and he's celebrating fifty years in the music business. I'm not sure which band he first recorded with, but he played glam in the early seventies in a number of bands like the Ticks, Centaur and Iron Falcon. His first album as Thor was the Keep the Dogs Away in 1977 and, while he's certainly taken breaks over the decades, he's apparently been going strong in the new millennium, with twenty albums out since 1998, in a few instances two or even three in a single year.

So, how does his fiftieth anniversary album sound? Well, as you might expect from everything I've said thus far, it's a mixed bag. There are fifteen tracks here but they're all done before it reaches the fifty minute mark. While eight seem to be new, the rest are either demos or outtakes, likely a set of songs that either didn't make albums or would have been albums that didn't happen. While some absolutely rock out in the hard and heavy mode we expect, others take a different approach and it's hard to see how Thor expected them all to work together here. Patchwork doesn't cut it.

For a start, there are songs here that take it slow and provide a backdrop for almost spoken word vocal delivery. The opening title track is one and it made me wonder if Thor had lost the ability to sing. Peace by Piece takes this approach too, perhaps more appropriately a story song given that it's all about a book that publishers don't want, only for it to be buried in a time capsule and dug up a thousand years later when it ends war and brings the nations together. It's the destiny of Bill & Ted in literature form explained in a song that's brimming with pride. Never mind the critics, it's saying, do your thing and it might make a difference down the road when the world catches up.

I can't help but like these, but they're cheesy as all get out in a way that the Canadians seem to be so good at, having produced not only Thor but Anvil and Helix. Lightning Rod seems to be a full on embrace of cheese, sounding like a Rocky Horror song with a rap section, set against the backdrop of gothic rock. It's like a Sisters of Mercy cover band tackling Rocky Horror but needing to tap into some sort of trendy mindset to get hip with the cool kids. It works as well or as poorly as you might expect, depending on your point of view.

It's 5-0 Let's Go where Thor finally settles down to the hard rock that we know he can do so well. It isn't Thunder on the Tundra and it isn't Let the Blood Run Red but that's the guitar tone I want to hear on a Thor song and that's the pace too. There's a cheesy chant-along section that's catchy as hell and it all ends up being a hard rock cover of an imaginary Suzi Quatro song that celebrates an incredibly long career with vim and vigour. Thor clearly means this and it's hard not to get behind him. I was celebrating along with him and generating and whatever else the lyrics want me to do.

The biggest problem the album has is that there aren't enough songs like 5-0 Let's Go. Bring It On is an eighties-style stomper with more excellent soloing from Matt McNallie, John Liebel or both, to match what they contributed to 5-0 Let's Go. The best song here is either Flight of the Striker or Thunder on the Mountain, both of which are older songs. The former dates back to 1987 so is likely to have been from a projected fourth album that never happened because the band split up, while the latter is from 1979, so stuck in the eight years between the debut and its follow up. It features an absolutely killer seventies organ solo.

So that's four strong songs and there are other worthies to back them up. However, there are odd decisions here and there that take the album in different directions. Thor channels his inner Elvis on Unlock the Power and shifts alternative on No Time for Games with post production effects to emphasise that. 100% is an acoustic demo that we'd know dates to 1979 even if it wasn't labelled, right down to its handclaps. To the Extreme is a rap metal song from 1999 that's about Thor but I doubt actually includes him performing. I've mentioned Lightning Rod already. These all feel like B-sides for singles rather than coherent album material.

Thus this is a mixed bag. There are multiple songs here that I'd happily return to. However, there are also multiple songs that I don't need to hear again. Some of the cheese works well but some of it really doesn't. Clearly Thor can still sing, in his unmistakably overt fashion, but sometimes he's just not interested in doing that and so tells stories instead. Take from all that what you will. What I think it boils down to is that I'm happy Thor is still with us and making music fifty years on from a debut I can't identify, but he's never made a lot of the right decisions and gets lucky enough with songs here and there to make his mark. Here, he's somewhat lucky but just as often not.

Sweet Ermengarde - Sacrifice (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Gothic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Apr 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

Any goth worth his or her salt knows that Andrew Eldritch isn't remotely interested in recording a new studio album. That means that, if you want to hear new Sisters of Mercy material, you have to either go see them live—because he's still writing and performing it—or make your own. It's clear that Sweet Ermengarde did the latter and it shouldn't shock you if I point out that they hail from Germany because the Sisters have always been massive there. If you doubt me, check out the best live versions of Ribbons online; most of them were recorded in Germany.

It's impossible not to hear the Sisters as this album begins. Fragments has it and Faith Healer, the standout track for me, screams it from the rafters, even if it may owe almost as much to the Cult. As those influences might suggest, Sweet Ermengarde are at their best when they establish this sort of up tempo groove, which is why my favourite songs here are their up tempo ones like Faith Healer, The 5th Horizon and Viscera. There are points in The 5th Horizon where the guitar takes a break but the groove blissfully carries on regardless, as indeed these grooves do long after these songs are over. Lars Keppeler's bass takes over at one point in Viscera and exactly the same thing happens.

Oddly, given that, Sweet Ermengarde seem to prefer slowing things down a little and taking their songs in a gloomier direction. Most of the thirteen songs here are slower than the three that I've called out as highlights and the album slows down generally until the final two songs follow suit in very different ways indeed. I should emphasise that those grooves don't disappear, instead simply unfolding in slower fashion. The bass's moment in the spotlight in the slower Genesee is not light years away from its moment in the spotlight in the faster Viscera only one song earlier.

Of course, the effect is different. In the faster songs, we plug into the grooves and move along to them, even if we're sitting in an office chair listening at work. Even the most restrained listeners will find themselves tapping their feet to the beat, which, I should add, is delivered by a drummer here, Mischa Kliege, not a drum machine with a fancy name. In the slower ones, we don't do that. Instead we open ourselves up to their moods and let them fall onto us like warm rain, soaking into our essence and shaping our mood. They're slow and gloomy but not depressing, so their effect is affirming and enriching rather than bleak and suicidal.

That holds for everything up to Silent We Mourn eleven tracks in. Every track up to that one fits in one of those two moods and it would end naturally at that point as a decent fifty minute album, a third for Sweet Ermengarde, even if their line-up has changed considerably across each. Only two of five members made it from 2013's Raynham Hall to 2016's Ex Oblivione and only one remains in place for this album eight years on, that being Lars Kappeler on bass. Drew Freeman may be the vocalist now, for instance, but it's his debut with the band, because Kuba Achtelik was the singer in 2013 and Daniel Schweigler in 2016.

However, the album isn't over. There are two tracks left, the longest two on offer, and they skew the impressions of the album that we take away with us, on account of them being last. Embers Fall is slower again than anything else that came before and notably so. It's so slow that it becomes an acutely personal song as if Freeman is singing only to me. And, even though it takes a progression of gradual slowing down and runs with it, it also launches into something very different a couple of minutes in. Until now, the entire album has been gothic rock, but for twenty seconds, it's extreme metal, with frantic drumming from Kliege and harsh backing vocals from guest Nino Sable. Then it launches back into slow gothic rock, returning twice more for twenty second blitzkriegs.

And, if that sounds like a real anomaly, then there's Of Her Heart's Ocean, an eleven minute dirge to wrap things up. This is less a song and more of an ambient installation piece. It's achingly slow, it's full of atmosphere and it's peppered with occasional industrial ambience. It's not without its merits and my avant-garde tastes rather like it, but it's highly anomalous here. It feels like we've just been to a pretty decent goth gig, expended all our energy and now we're walking out of the venue. Except that, even though the door is right there, we never actually reach it because time has stretched and the building is ever so slowly twisting and contorting around us, as if it's ready to collapse and kill us all but, even with the light right there, we're not ready to leave yet.

That's a really weird way to wrap up an album that started out like the Sisters of Mercy, so I'd love to know exactly what the band had in mind. In the meantime, I hope they don't take another eight years to knock out another studio album. If they've found a stable line-up at last, maybe we'll see another one in the next few years. Oh, and kudos for the band name, which is a real H. P. Lovecraft deep cut.

Korpiklaani - Rankarumpu (2024)

Country: Finland
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 Apr 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Tiktok | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

This is album twelve for Finnish folk metal legends Korpiklaani and it couldn't be mistaken for any other band, even those who play in the same style. They've stuck with their core sound of late and, judging from the ratings I've seen on some of the albums I haven't heard, that's a good call. What you get here is bouncy folk metal with a galloping pace and full integration of metal instruments like guitars, bass and drums with folk instruments like violin and accordion. If you've heard Korpi before, then you know that already, of course, but with every album I hear, I'm surer that taking any one of those instruments away would utterly break this sound and it doesn't matter which.

Rankarumpu kicks off just as effectively as last time out, on 2021's Jylhä, but quicker because the opener gets down to business immediately. That's Kotomaa and it's the first standout track. It's a deceptively light song, given that it does everything a Korpi opener is supposed to do and it does it well. The only reason I say that is that Tapa sen kun kerkeet and Aita after it are darker, deeper and with more of a weight hanging over them. I like both, but the perkiness of Kotomaa is tasty.

At this point in their career, it's perhaps fair to point out that most of these songs sound like you might expect them to sound. None let the side down but a few fail to truly distinguish themselves. They're too good in isolation to call them filler, but they're happy to do only what they need to do without adding anything extra to the mix. It shouldn't shock that my favourite tracks here are the ones that do have something different to bring to the table.

Other than Kotomaa, the first of those is probably Mettään, which starts with an old school intro of power chords, then hands over to accordion and launches into a variety of gears. The chorus is as notable for its pauses as for its words and, right after it, is a thoughtful section that isn't quiet but is slower and more flavourful than what went before. It's a great example of a track that isn't content to do just one thing and it's all the better for it. Kalmisto does that too, because it slows down with strong effect, as does Harhainjen höyhen, which is a strong closer. Rankarumpu is even bouncier than Kotomaa and that may be appropriate for a title track, but Oraakkelit does it too.

Other than that, there's a plaintive violin that opens Viikatelintu and immediately stamps it with elegance, hardly the first word that springs to mind when Korpi come up. That's no insult, I should add. I've been a fan since their first couple of albums but I've always seen them as a sort of force of nature. They took the Finnish folk music that they used to play under the name of Shaman and drench it in vodka, strip it naked and chase it through the woods. They never intended to be subtle or elegant, but both can show up at odd points regardless and that fiddle that opens Viikatelintu is one such.

There's not a lot more to say, but I should add a couple of things. One is that this is less generous than Jylhä, whose thirteen tracks took it past an hour, but it doesn't skimp. It delivers a full dozen songs, even if they're done in just under three quarters of an hour. They're merely back to normal sort of length, I guess. The other is that there's been a line-up change, with Olli Vänskä joining on violin in 2022. He has a history with the band, having stepped in to cover for Tuomas Rounakari on a number of live dates in 2016 when that previous violinist fell ill. He previously played for Turisas.

Oh, and I'm going to miss them live this time around, though they're about to head through town on their latest tour with Visions of Atlantis and Illumishade in support. Check them out at the Nile in Mesa on 29th April. Fingers crossed, I should be in a position to see them next time in a few years after they knock out their lucky thirteenth album. I hope that's a killer. Neither this nor Jylhä are the greatest albums in their discography but they're far from the worst and they're consistently solid. Reliable Korpi is always a treat.

Grinded Grin - Charlatan (2024)

Country: Croatia
Style: Psychedelic Rock/Jazz Fusion
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 14 Mar 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook

Opening up a prog rock album with horsehead fiddle and throat singing is a plus for me, though it does sound rather like an orchestra warming up. Then again, that may be the point because this is just a quick seventy second intro. Masquerade, the first track proper, leaps headling into a wildly different vibe with a psychedelic guitar solo at the top of the mix and right in our face. A minute in, it steps back and we're in strange territory, appropriately so for prog rock. The drums are pure jazz. The guitar morphs into an exploring synthesiser. And then the throat singing returns as an overlay.

It's an interesting approach that reminds a lot of jazz fusion, because it's generally instrumental, that throat singing apart. However, it's clearly ethnic and I don't believe Mongolia is particularly known for its jazz fusion. The guitar is very prominent too, so loud in the mix and so psychedelic I'd almost call this stoner rock, a tag that is indeed listed on the album's Bandcamp page, along with avant-garde and alternative. Jazz and fusion aren't there, though, and there's no mention of this world music flavour either. Tellingly, progressive rock doesn't show up there either, so I'll think of it as psychedelic jazz fusion instead.

That world music changes as the album progresses, the contributions of Javier Morales left in the openers and the didgiridoo of Michele Fortunato only lasting into Deceptive Delirium, where the Mongolian flavour is replaced by the plaintive trumpet of Josué Garcîa. Ascent into Illusion turns to the saxophone of Vedran Momčilović to be its lead instrument and adds some weird percussion that sounds like woodblocks. The result is a sort of acoustic industrial jazz fusion track that I can't leave alone. After all the exploration of the earlier songs, this one feels repetitive and pounding, but it works wonderfully for me. Even at over six minutes, I didn't want it to end.

I should mention that every name I've mentioned thus far appears to be a guest, because they all show up for one or maybe two tracks and leave again. The band is a duo at heart, with Aleksandar Vrhovec playing guitar, bass and those idiosyncratic synths that tend to sound rather like a swarm of musical bees, and Linda-Philomene Tsoungui contributing drum loops. Of course, that's not the typical make-up of a duo, hence quite the list of guests. Looking back through their Bandcamp at earlier albums, it seems like there have been more traditional line-ups. Vrhovec is at the core of whatever they do.

In whatever form they've held, they seem to be prolific, this being their eleventh album since 2018 with six of those arriving between February and July 2021, one a month like a magazine. Those all seem to have a different mindset, most of them longer than this album but often boasting only a single track and never more than three. This batch of seven shorter pieces isn't typical for them, a twelve minute closure called Epiphany's Exposure notwithstanding. That length pales when faced off against the forty-one and a half of Terra, the only track on the album of the same name.

I haven't heard any of those earlier albums, but each piece of music here has its own character, an overall psychedelic jazz fusion feel throughout but explored in different ways each time, not least through a succession of dominant instruments, the Les Claypool-esque funky bass riff in Pinnacle of Illusion following the respective guitar, trumpet and sax of the first three tracks. The other pieces are less memorable for being ensemble works, though Epiphany's Exposure does find some focus during a squealing saxophone dominated second half when Sebastian Lopez finds the spolight. Until then, it was more of a Frank Zappa orchestral piece.

It took me a moment to understand what Grinded Grin were doing here, but I got on board pretty quickly and I find that I like this album a lot. Jazz fusion is a coin flip for me, as I find that I dislike as many albums as I like. It's a genre that can get very indulgent. However, it's also often led by a virtuoso guitarist and, while I cast no aspersions on Vrhovec's talents there, the spotlight shifts a lot here and rarely to the guitar. It becomes far more of a soundscape album, where Grinded Grin conjure up a new sound for a new track and hopefully take us to a new place. Like the Qilin album earlier in the week, this didn't transport me often but I appreciated those soundscapes anyway.

Now, how have I not heard of Grinded Grin before and which album in a bountiful back catalogue should I dive into next? After I dive back into the delightful Deceptive Delirium, of course. And Ascent into Illusion. And...

DragonForce - Warp Speed Warriors (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Power Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 15 Mar 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | VK | Wikipedia | YouTube

I reviewed DragonForce's eighth studio album, Extreme Power Metal, with reservations because I'd worried about whether they'd turned into a caricature of themselves, especially with a name like Extreme Power Metal. While that album seemed to start out that way, they did win me over during the opening track and I found myself enjoying most of it, at least up until the Celine Dion cover that seemed entirely unnecessary. So, I don't have quite as many reservations coming into this, their ninth album, though I have to still wonder if they've finally fallen prey to their gimmick. Well, they're still thinking about doing that but they're mostly not quite there yet.

This time, I was on board with the opening track, Astro Warrior Anthem, from the very outset, because it's a strong power metal song played at DragonForce speed with themes and melodies hurtling every which way and tasking us with focusing on them. It's obviously one of the best songs on the album and it makes a lot of sense to kick off with it. After a few listens, I wouldn't hesitate to call it my favourite, though I have a fondness for Space Marine Corp too, which has a subdued pace compared to most of these songs. Somehow the chants, which could easily have gone so far past cheesy to be ridiculous, work for me. Why, I'm not sure, but they do. DragonForce do anthems and this is a real earworm of an anthem. All together now: "No time to rest till we kill all the scum!"

There's another earworm right after it too in Doomsday Party, which is a heavy disco number that reminds a lot of Boney M wrapped up in power metal clothing. Once again, I like this one a lot but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that it really ought to be notably too cheesy to be taken seriously. Then again, Boney M are an old school guilty pleasure band for me, not only because I grew up on the cassette my parents kept in the car of The Magic of Boney M when I was a kid. And so there's a lot here that I like, even if perhaps I shouldn't.

Where the cheese starts to become a little much is Power of the Triforce, which I presume is about the Legend of Zelda videogame franchise. I'm OK with this one, which is otherwise a strong power metal song, but I did find myself rolling my eyes a little at where the lyrics went and how seriously Marc Hudson delivers them. And what was too much is Kingdom of Steel, which has a name like an AI-created Manowar song but feels like a heavied up Disney movie anthem. It has the slowest pace of anything here and it features a woah woah backing vocal that I could swear has been lifted off the Moana soundtrack. Sure, it's catchy, but its overblown orchestration is emphatically not for me.

The rest of the album inevitably falls in between the best stuff and the worst stuff. Songs like The Killer Queen and Pixel Prison are decent enough, not as memorable as Astro Warrior Anthem but not as cheesy as Space Marine Corp. They wrap up the album in the way we expect from this band and nobody buying it with full knowledge of what DragonForce do are going to be disappointed by them. Where that though comes into play isn't just a lesser song like Kingdom of Steel but a truly definitive one like Burning Heart.

And I have to end my review with that, because it's almost the stereotypical DragonForce song, so much so that it's less an actual piece of music and more of a challenge for the band to outdo what they so famously did on Through the Fire and Flames. The whole point of this song is to do more, a challenge indeed for a band who are a mandatory selection for new YouTube reactors who have no real idea what metal is. The only power metal song that comes up more often in that realm is the live version of The Bard's Song and Valhalla by Blind Guardian, for completely different reasons.

I honestly can't imagine a more DragonForce song than Burning Heart. It isn't merely those rapid fire melodies that were so effective on Astro Warrior Anthem. It isn't just that famous double act of Herman Li and Sam Totman "performing guitar histrionics", a term that has to be included here because "playing guitar" just doesn't cut it. It isn't only the telling fact that Gee Anzalone is able to steal some of their thunder by delivering a truly ambitious drum pace, especially early on. It's that Burning Heart is every note possible shoehorned into a breath under six minutes. It's a world record breaking attempt of a song and, to me at least, it's too much. And I'm a speed metal fan.

Take what you will from that. Some people will lose their minds to Burning Heart. I'll look past it to Astro Warrior Anthem, an insane DragonForce track that's also a damn good song and, even if I'm unable to fully express why, Space Marine Corp, which is a rollicking good time. Which camp are you in?

Reach - Prophecy (2024)

Country: Sweden
Style: Alternative
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 29 Mar 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Tiktok | YouTube

Reach have been around since 2012 but I'm not finding a heck of a lot of information about them. They hail from Stockholm and this is their fourth album, following The Promise of a Life in 2021. It came to me labelled as melodic hard rock and their Bandcamp page tags them alternative rock, but, only four songs in, I realised that labels and tags aren't really going to be particular helpful. They're all over the musical map and they're clearly happy about that.

Let me explain. The title track opens up the album as hard rock with a strong nineties alternative edge. It's entirely understandable why they supported H.E.A.T. on a couple of tours, but it's also a little heavy for that gig. However, as if hearing that note, Little Dreams is softer, more of a heavy pop approach that we could stretch to call melodic rock. It has a real bounce to it and the bass is a thing of joy. A Beautiful Life kicks off like a TV theme tune, only to launch into rock with the guitar pretending to be the drums for a while but then adding a grungy edge when it all bulks up.

But wait, as they say, there's more. In the second half of A Beautiful Life, there's a western vibe I might expect from an outlaw country rockabilly band that doesn't quite overwhelm the pop rock elements that could compare to a Cheap Trick. The end is almost steampunk in its look backwards into what could be taken for a harpsichord sound. Save the World kicks off with a playful guitar as if it's aiming to be a dance number and suddenly I'm thinking Stray Cats as a comparison.

It's a huge shift from those verses to the chorus that leaps right back into heavy arena pop, which isn't the end of it either, because then they go symphonic in the second half in a way that's mostly reminiscent of Queen. What does this band not do? Well, Queen could be seen as a key influence, though more for their musical chameleon act as for any particular moments, like that one, as it's a rarity. Perhaps the better general comparison would be The Darkness, acknowledging their own Queen connection, because Reach are clearly more modern than Queen and whoever handles the lead vocals likes dipping up into a falsetto just like Justin Hawkins.

Eventually I changed my tag to alternative for want of something to call this, but that's notably limited and shouldn't be seen as a be all end all to their sound. When I've reviewed the Darkness, I've gone with hard rock and that's just as fair. I could switch those and not mislead. And that's not to forget the funk in a song as hard rock as Psycho Violence, which is different to the Red Hot Chili Peppers funk that kicks off Who Knows. Just don't expect any song to sound like any other and you may really dig this. It'll certainly keep you on your toes. I haven't even got to Grand Finale yet, not the final song but another sonic leap into symphonic rock/metal. It's also another theatrical level above what's already been highly theatrical.

You'll notice that I haven't mentioned any band members yet and that's because I'm not sure who is actually in the band. Bandcamp states the music is credited to Ludvig Turner, Marcus Johansson and Soufian Anane, while Turner also wrote the lyrics, so I'm guessing he's the singer. Discogs has him as guitarist and vocalist, with Johansson on drums and Soufian Ma'Aoui on bass. I presume he is the same Soufiane as Anane. Others have been involved but I couldn't tell you if they're still in the band or if they ever were, so I'll stick to these three for now. More information would be very welcome.

I like this album because it's hard not to like this album. It's entirely schizophrenic, sure, but I'm a particular fan of albums that venture all over the musical map without ever sounding like a band has betrayed their roots or gone a step too far into something that just doesn't fit. Queen's Sheer Heart Attack and Saigon Kick's Water are firmly in my list of most frequently replayed albums and this feels a little more consistent than either. Just tread carefully if you try to label it.

As to highlights, that's a how long is a piece of string question, because it's what I'm listening to at the time you ask. Mama Mama is a stormer of an opening single, so that's potentially the best of many good places to start. I do like A Beautiful Life, Psycho Violence and Grand Finale too, so they should get a special mention too. But, ask me tomorrow, and I might go with three different ones instead.

Whitecross - Fear No Evil (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 22 Mar 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Wikipedia | YouTube

Here's another band who haven't put out an album in forever and I'm not sure why. The heyday of Whitecross was in the late eighties when the crossover success of Stryper proved that it wasn't an impossible contradiction to play Christian metal. They knocked out four albums between 1987 and 1989 and two more in the early nineties, but the only album since, 2005's Nineteen Eighty Seven, being primarily re-recordings of songs on their debut. So this is their first album in nineteen years but the first with only original material in thirty-two, following 1992's High Gear.

It's worth mentioning that the most recent three albums from their original run ended up with a Dove Award, which is the premier awards dished out by the Gospel Music Association. If that name raises an eyebrow, I should highlight that they've apparently redefined what gospel means in this sense. Whitecross don't remotely sound like Mahalia Jackson or Tennessee Ernie Ford. However, they do create music that meets the GMA's requirements for adherence to faith, which seems to be what counts most nowadays.

That's why there are songs here that are overtly Christian in outlook, Lion of Judah and Fear No Evil the most unmistakable among them. However, that's not everything here, because The Way We Rock is as lyrically generic as its title might suggest and others do their preaching in far more subtle fashion, building stories about people who find their lives lacking something or describing outreach to people who are struggling for some reason. They're still Christian songs but they may not immediately seem so unless you're paying attention. And, of course, you might not care.

Songs like The Way We Rock ought to fall flat as openers nowadays, because we've all heard that sort of lyric a thousand times and it had got old before Whitecross formed back in 1985. However, there's an element to elevate it here, which is the guitarwork of Rex Carroll, who co-founded the band and has remained in place throughout their existence, only missing a couple of years in the mid-nineties when vocalist Scott Wenzel took over and returning in 2000 when the band got back together properly.

His guitarwork carries a serious bite, lending this song the drive of something Dio might have put out in his early solo years. After Lion of Judah softens just a little, he steps into the spotlight for a raucous guitar solo appropriately named Jackhammer that's aware enough to avoid oustaying its welcome and so wraps up in a minute and a change. Carroll continues to be the highlight for me in almost every song, adding an edge even when new fish vocalist Dave Roberts, who joined in 2020, doesn't do so. He's a Dave Meniketti sort of vocalist, able to merge power and melody seamlessly but without as much soul to his delivery, with some Kevin Dubrow for good measure.

For the most part, the best songs are the up tempo ones where Roberts gets to soar and Carroll gets to blister. Jackhammer doesn't really set up Man in the Mirror, for instance, but Roberts has a powerful scream to do exactly that. Songs like 29,000 might have roots in the glam metal of the eighties but it's much heavier than that, pulling from regular heavy metal to drive forward with a serious emphasis, and it nods to the guitar shredders that took over a decade later, without ever getting indulgent. Carroll can shred all day long but he knows that these songs wouldn't be better for that, so he keeps that in check, adding edge when it's needed and going wild only when it's truly time for a solo or to bolster the build of a song to its finalé.

There are exceptions though, not to the quality but to the suggestion that it's only there in those up tempo songs. The most obvious is Blind Man, which sounds fantastic, even though it's built on mandolin rather than electric guitar. Roberts adds huge amounts of grit into his voice for this one and it works really well. Saints of Hollywood adds a southern rock flavour and Roberts shifts into Spanish at points, which works far more effectively than I would have expected.

I could even add Wishing Well to that list, because it's the power ballad of the album but doesn't annoy the crap out of me the way that so many power ballads tend to do. I wouldn't remotely call it a highlight but it's a decent song and I don't feel the urge to skip past it on repeat listens. One extra draw for Christian metal aficionados is that it apparently features three members of Petra, but that doesn't elevate it for me. The same goes for Carroll's acoustic two minute closer, Further On, which is just there.

All in all, this is a strong return for a band who have been absent from the studio for far too long. Much of it is the product a band full of energy firing on all cylinders, but they're not afraid to mix it up and, when they do, the results are varied. Of course, the Christian metal fanbase is devoted enough to not particularly care that much. It's a Whitecross album. They're on board already.

Qilin - Parasomnia (2024)

Country: France
Style: Psychedelic Rock/Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Jan 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

This album is a few months old now, so counts as less recent than I tend to prefer to review here at Apocalypse Later, but I enjoyed Qilin's debut album, Petrichor, so much in 2020, that I didn't want to miss out on its follow-up when it crossed my path recently. I also didn't want to wait until next January when I do catch up on what I missed from 2024, because I'd probably forget and then feel bad when I stumble onto it again, having missed my window.

Qilin are French and they play heavy instrumental rock that straddles the border with metal. You could fairly describe what they do as psychedelic rock but it's just as often doom metal and all the best pieces move between the two. That's one way in which this album echoes the debut. Most of the tracks are long and the band, which I believe remains unchanged from last time, allow them to breathe, which leaves room for a couple of modes. There's the heavy mode, with the bass turned up high and the guitars switching between cavernous riffs and wailing solos. And then there's the mellow mode, which is much softer and drenched in atmosphere.

The result is as immersive as last time out but oddly still mostly fails to work as a travel agent for me. What I mean there is that instrumental psychedelic rock often takes me places. Sure, I listen to it as music but it also sends me on a journey too. I have aphantasia so can't frame images in my head, but I still get impressions in the form of feelings. These albums often make me feel like I'm on another planet or drifting between the stars, to cite just two common examples. This doesn't, though it hints at it in those mellow sections.

Instead, it remains stubbornly music, but it's music that I really enjoy. It's heavy but melodic and it's immersive, as if it's so big that it surrounds me. It starts out achingly slow with three minutes of funeral doom called Ouro, that's emphatically an intro to set up the sound palette and lead us into the best track, Lethean Dreams. This isn't three minutes long, needless to say—it runs eight and half—and it builds carefully.

It begins mellow in the closest section anywhere on the album to take me somewhere. It feels like I'm in a huge echoing cavern, perhaps like the cover art, but I'm not the character walking towards it. I'm inside waiting. There's a real sense of patience to it, as if there's no reason to move at all, a feeling of centering where I settle down and wait for everything to come to me. And it does, but I sit, safe and still, in the middle of that cavern while the music changes around me. Even when the song ramps up into heavy mode, playing out like a force of nature, I'm not part of it. I'm calm and unaffected, but not unappreciative, as it rages around me. I listen and enjoy.

And I remain there for forty calm minutes, listening and enjoying, while the remaining four pieces of music play out, along with an interlude in the middle of them. It's odd to see an interlude, as it's not uncommon for the shift between heavy and mellow to effectively incorporate interludes as an inherent songwriting component, but Innervision is very mellow and introduces the heaviest piece on offer, which is the bludgeoning Hundred-Handed Wards.

I like Qilin when they're being mellow, though Innervision may be the weakest such section on the album. However, I like them most when they're raging and the swirl of tasty feedback that wraps up Hundred-Handed Wards is raging indeed. It's probably beaten only by the finale to On Migoi's Trail and the core of Lethean Dreams. I love how they generate maelstroums of energy and whip them around like ancient wizards, destroying everything in their wake yet never losing control of their tools of destruction.

These two aspects constitute the majority of the album, but there's one further touch I should let you know about, because it surprises me every time those waves of feedback in Hundred-Handed Wards feedback subside and Qilin launch into the final track. This is Boros and it opens up entirely like AC/DC. Sure, the bass is drenched in fuzz, but that's an AC/DC build if I've ever heard one. It's happy to not continue down that path as the piece grows and no vocalist shows up, whether Brian Johnson or anyone else, but it does still stay perkier than anything else on the album, even as the longest track here. It doesn't really slow down until about halfway through its nine minutes and it doesn't calm until six and a half minutes in.

And so that's Parasomnia, which refers to sleep disorders that crop in when you're not asleep but not truly awake either. Your brain is still only partially awake and that does seem to be the perfect time to let an album like this wash over you. That would be a way to start the day!