tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28059777892295694182024-03-18T02:48:14.469-07:00Apocalypse Later Music ReviewsHal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.comBlogger1484125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-11922062881921263302024-03-14T14:00:00.001-07:002024-03-15T22:16:17.504-07:00Sonata Arctica - Clear Cold Beyond (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Finland<br>
Style: Power Metal<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 8 Mar 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/sonataarctica" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/sonataarcticaofficial" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Sonata_Arctica/192" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metal Archives</a> | <a href="https://www.sonataarctica.info/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@sonataarcticaofficial" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tiktok</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/SonataArctica" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonata_Arctica" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/sonataarctica" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>I've been waiting for this one, apparently for five years now. I've always enjoyed Sonata Arctica to a degree, but I've never become a dedicated fan. Their brand of European power metal is easy to like but they've never really distinguished themselves to me the way some equivalents have, so a few of their earlier albums blur together in my memory with others by other bands. That thinking led me to their tenth album in 2019, <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2019/09/sonata-arctica-talviyo-2019.html">Talviyö</a>, so I wasn't expecting something special but I was still open to something that the younger me might have missed. What I found disappointed me, even as a casual fan. That didn't bode well.</p>
<p>Apparently, a decent amount of their fans had been disappointed with a gradual shift away from their roots to a more pop rock direction and, after listening to <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2019/09/sonata-arctica-talviyo-2019.html">Talviyö</a>, I could see why. I rarely give anything here at Apocalypse Later less than a 6/10 because, if it's bad enough to warrant a lower rating, then I'd prefer not to review it. I gave that a 5/10 and wondered if I'd even bother to listen to the next one, wrapping up my review with "Regular readers will know that there's a lot of great music coming out of Finland. I hope that Sonata Arctica find their way back into that category."</p>
<p>Well, fast forward five years and I checked out the next full album, just in case, and I'm very happy that I did so because it was clear very quickly indeed that the band either listened to their fans or found themselves joining them, because this is old school power metal from the very outset. I've read that lead vocalist Tony Kakko stubbornly resists that term, preferring melodic metal, which is fair enough, but it's power metal to most of us until they soften up like on the last album and, I guess, the few before that.</p>
<p>They don't soften up here until <i>A Monster Only You Can't See</i> six tracks in and, even when they do, the result is still worthy material. I liked that song, even before it perks up a little way in to turn back into power metal, albeit with plenty of hints at Abba in the melodies. <i>Teardrops</i> is a heavier song throughout but it has a softer ending and yet a very tasty one indeed. The slowest parts of the title track, which are much slower than most of the album, are also neatly heavy. The closest it gets to a ballad is <i>The Best Things</i> and nothing soft here feels inappropriate.</p>
<p>So, with this back to being roughly what we might expect from the band, the question becomes a matter of quality. How good is this? Are they back to their peak form? Have they rekindled a sense of energy to go with their sense of melody? And have they converted me into a dedicated fan, not just a casual one who likes them when he hears them but doesn't feel the urge to dip further into their back catalogue. The bad news is that I can't answer all those questions with a yes. The good news is that I can, at least, answer most of them in the affirmative.</p>
<p>For a start, this is clearly a much better album than <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2019/09/sonata-arctica-talviyo-2019.html">Talviyö</a>, which seemed likely from the opener alone, appropriately titled First in Line. While that remains an up tempo highlight with a bunch of excellent solos, <i>California</i> continued its approach, perhaps even faster again outside of one quirky slower part, and <i>Shah Mat</i> too, which takes a while to speed up but does so. <i>Dark Empath</i> is a little slower but it's a highlight for me, full of mood and emphasis, and, by this point, I started to realise that this was massively different from last time. It's like night and day and that's refreshing, even if I've only been waiting five years for it while the diehards have been waiting twenty.</p>
<p>So yeah, maybe they're back to their peak form. I wouldn't call this their best album, but it's much more likely to be talked about alongside <i>Winterheart's Guild</i> or <i>Reckoning Night</i> than something like <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2019/09/sonata-arctica-talviyo-2019.html">Talviyö</a> and that suggests pretty close to peak. I'm going 7/10 rather than a highly recommended 8/10, but I thought about it. Think of this as a 7.5/10. I can't remember the last time I found a Sonata Arctica song as vibrant as <i>Angel Defiled</i>, which kicks off almost like power metal built on harpsichord. The keyboard solo, presumably courtesy of Henrik Klingenberg, is a neo-classical joy, and the recurrent theme leads to a strong guitar vs. keyboard duel at the end too.</p>
<p>And that tells me that the band are enjoying themselves, meaning that I've gone with two yeses and a pretty much to answer my first three questions. So to the fourth. Did this turn me into a big Sonata Arctica fan? Well, not really, but I'm a lot closer than I've been and that surprises me. This is definitely my sort of thing, in much the same way that <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2019/09/sonata-arctica-talviyo-2019.html">Talviyö</a> wasn't and I hope that the band is truly on board with this new approach. They sound like they're having fun, even Kakko who sings a song like it would be sung live without post-production to turn it into something else. Maybe they truly are back on the same wavelength as their fanbase. If so, I'm looking forward to their twelfth album in a few years time.</p>
<p>And I'll definitely check that out, if partly to confirm they're not leaping backwards again.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-40470857646524153102024-03-14T10:00:00.026-07:002024-03-15T18:37:10.114-07:00Post Kaskrot - Sidi Sidi (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Morocco<br>
Style: Alternative Rock<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 22 Feb 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://postkaskrot.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Post.Kaskrot/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/postkaskrot/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnYJwoZyC3i7fmIschEns4g" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>Here's something interesting from Morocco that starts out experimental but quickly becomes a highly accessible hybrid of pop, rock and world music. That experimental opening is the intro, <i>I am Many Things, and Many Things I am Not</i>, which is a strange vocal melody against dissonant organ, ambient sound and what I presume are experimental keyboards. That leads into an alternate pop rock song about a dog called Douglas that's built out of friendly vocals, surf guitar chords and an array of Arabic melodies. It's part Cake, part <i>Walk Like an Egyptian</i> and part Frank Zappa, which is a strange but enticing mix.</p>
<p>What's odd is that neither of these pieces of music is particularly representative of the album. It starts to find its go forward stance with <i>Dragonfly Dragonflew</i>, which is a poppy song with a psych overlay that gradually takes over, reminiscent of sort of seventies singer/songwriters who liked to trawl in folk music and get a little weird with it, like the middle eastern flutes that show up during the midsection. There's theremin on this album too, I think, most obviously on <i>Yelele</i>, unless it's a saw. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing credits.</p>
<p>That psychedelic pop rock edge is never far away as the album progresses, but it's all deepened by the sort of approach that Manu Chao often took to make this not just a mere album containing a set of songs but a kind of experience. That's done through adding ambience, improvisation and a conversational approach to ephemeral material, like radio chatter, often between songs but also within them. That begins at the end of <i>Dragonfly Dragonflew</i> and only gets more frequent as the album runs on. By the time we get to <i>Sun Sun Sun...</i> at the end of the album, someone even asks a simple question: how would you describe this album in two words. The response? "God damn!"</p>
<p>Those were the two approaches I took away from this. It's structured like an Manu Chao album but the songs are subtler, his immediate earworm melodies replaced by more introspective material that veers between friendly pop and more abrasive alternative rock. However, there are points at which Post Kaskrot dip into a similar sort of musical territory as Chao, like the reggae sections of <i>Seapsyche Onion</i> and <i>Grace</i>, or incorporates other songs into the original material in a Chao style, like the refrain from <i>Frère Jacques</i> within <i>Donner Kebab</i> and a glimpse of the <i>Cops</i> theme tune in <i>Sun Sun Sun...</i></p>
<p>It all makes for a heady mixture, as if we're not sitting at home listening to an album unfold but in the studio in Rabat where Post Kaskrot were putting it together. For a release that has so much in the way of post-production to add all those radio segments and other snippets, it feels very loose, some songs so much so that whoever's in this band may have just been jamming them, with guests occasionally added if they happen to stick their head through the door at the opportune moment. There's Amygdala on <i>Sulfur Surfer</i>, presumably the powerful female voice, and Genue on <i>Grace</i>, a French musician who looks to be just as versatile as Post Kaskrot.</p>
<p>There's so much here that it's hard to pick out favourites. I dig <i>Seapsyche Onion</i>, one of the loose songs that we can just fall into like an ocean and let it just take us away. I like the up beat garage rock meets rockabilly approach to <i>Donner Kebab</i> too, easily the most bouncy song here. <i>Hejazz</i> is an exquisite piece too, finding a wonderful ethnic groove. I can explain why I like all those tracks, but I'm lost as to why <i>Yelele</i> speaks to me. It's a laid back piece but it's seeping into my soul for no reason I can figure. It ought to feel a little lost in between <i>Seapsyche Onion</i> and <i>Grief Tower</i>, but I fall for it every time through. It may well be my favourite song here.</p>
<p>I'm loving everything I'm hearing from North Africa, but I'm not hearing a heck of a lot. I'm sure there are a lot of bands doing interesting things and I need to find a way to plug into how I can not miss them as they put out new material. Case in point: this is Post Kaskrot's debut album but they put out an EP in 2020 called <i>Kastle</i>. Bandcamp credits Benmoussa Amine as the primary musician and songwriter, with Baha Ghassane also contributing. I have no idea if they're still the names here or not, but I like what I hear anyway. If you have open ears to where pop and rock can go in countries outside the norm, Post Kaskrot are well worth checking out.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-33258126563533473162024-03-13T14:00:00.000-07:002024-03-14T20:38:18.931-07:00Big Big Train - The Likes of Us (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: UK<br>
Style: Progressive Rock<br>
Rating: 8/10<br>
Release Date: 1 Mar 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/bigbigtrain" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/bigbigtrain" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> | <a href="https://vimeo.com/user45626227" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vimeo</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Big_Train" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYl-LJDxj2Uc4Tuc8HgdbUg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>Here's something new that I feel that I need to listen to a lot more to appropriately review it, but I simply can't put everything else on hold to leave it on repeat for the next week. Part of that is the fact that I don't know this band at all, so this sixteenth album for them is my introduction to them. They were formed in 1990, right before rock music shifted in a completely different direction and I was coincidentally shifting away from it after a decade of deep diving because real life knocked on the door and said hi.</p>
<p>However, part of it is that Big Big Train play deceptively deep British prog rock. It's all pleasant on a first listen, the tone very accessible. <i>Light Left in the Day</i> is a strong opener, the first song to get inside my brain, and there are hints of old school Marillion in some of its guitars and drum fills, an easy way to get close to my heart. However, the band's overall sound is more new school Marillion than old and even then not particularly often. There's plenty of Solstice here too, especially in the songs that have pastoral sections, like the opening of <i>Beneath the Masts</i>, with its dominant fiddle and delicate acoustic guitar. There's some seventies Genesis as well, especially on <i>Bookmarks</i>.</p>
<p>Talking of <i>Beneath the Masts</i>, it's the album's epic at seventeen and a half minutes, outstripping <i>Miramare</i> at a mere ten, and that means that there's plenty of opportunity to get imaginative. I would call its jazzy midsection the closest to traditional complex prog that the album gets, and it's one of the best sections in any of these tracks. Its closest competitor is <i>Miramare</i>'s midsection that hints towards choral music and space rock. However, even these proggy sections aren't enough to define the band's sound as they travel so much more musical ground over the hour and change that the album runs.</p>
<p>There's brass on both <i>Light Left in the Day</i> and <i>Love is the Light</i>. There's interesting percussion on <i>Oblivion</i>. There's pop music in <i>Beneath the Masts</i> along with the most overt prog. <i>Skates On</i> has a Beatles-esque vibe to it that also hints at ELO harmonies. And that's just to mention the first four tracks. There are four more to come, beginning with the ten minutes of <i>Miramare</i>, a host of which feature what sounds like a teasing xylophone and some of which bring back that brass. <i>The Likes of Us</i> is a long album, but it's a constantly inventive one, if we dig beyond its accessible surface as we really should.</p>
<p>I can't say where this fits within Big Big Train's broader body of work, as their die hard fans surely can. However, there have been changes within the band to suggest that this might be different in some ways. The two mainstays in the band have been the two founder members, Gregory Spawton and Andy Poole, but the latter left in 2018 after almost three decades. That leaves Nick D'Virgilio with the next longest tenure to Spawton, having joined in 2019 along with another couple of long term members, David Longdon and Dave Gregory. However, Gregory left in 2020 and Longdon died in 2021, prompting a host of relatively new members.</p>
<p>This is the first album for Alberto Bravin, their new lead singer, who does a great job at conning us newbies into thinking he's been with the band forever. It's also the first album for Oskar Holldorff on keyboards. It isn't the first album for Dave Foster and Clare Lindley, but they both joined since 2020, meaning that four of the seven members weren't there before COVID. That has to affect the sound of any band, especially one this versatile. I look forward to dipping into earlier albums as a way of seeing where they came from and how different this truly is.</p>
<p>In the meantime, I'm still digging into this one. That first impression of a pleasant and accessible sound held true on repeat listens, but a second time through deepened every track considerably and a third took me further again. <i>Light Left in the Day</i> was the most immediate track for me, but <i>Miramare</i> matched it on my second listen and <i>Beneath the Masts</i> keeps growing on me, as I start to see its bigger picture. However three listens just isn't enough to do this album justice. It's good stuff, clearly, enough for me to not feel hesitant about awarding it an highly recommended 8/10, but I can't imagine that it's let me in on all its secrets yet. I hope to be able to listen to it more to let it grow as it should.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-21089702875303438482024-03-13T10:00:00.001-07:002024-03-14T20:30:55.757-07:00Meanstreak - Blood Moon (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: USA<br>
Style: Thrash Metal<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 2 Feb 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/meanstreakband/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/meanstreak_official" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Meanstreak/1906" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metal Archives</a> | <a href="https://meanstreakofficial.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/MEANSTREAKNYC" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meanstreak_(band)" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@meanstreakofficial" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>Here's a name I haven't seen in a long while. Meanstreak may be better known today as the home of three women who happen to all be married to current members of Dream Theater, but, back in the eighties, they were just a thrash metal band and a pretty good one too, part of a a first wave of prominent American women in extreme metal, along with others like Debbie Gunn of Sentinel Beast and Ann Boleyn of Hellion and New Renaissance Records. Their only album came out back in 1988 and they had split up by 1994 but they appear to have reformed a couple of years ago with an initial single and EP to announce their return. It's great to see them back.</p>
<p>I remember them being faster than they are on this album, but I went back to <i>Roadkill</i>, which I've not listened to in years, and rediscovered that they were never the fastest thrash band from that era. However, <i>Rubberneck</i>, easily the fastest song here, is more comparable to their old material than the other three tracks here. <i>The Dark Gift</i> and <i>Oh Father</i> sound like thrash songs but simply have no interest in speeding up to thrash speeds, settling for technical heavy metal. <i>Giant Speaks</i> dips a little more into classic heavy metal, trawling in a little Black Sabbath to their slower paced thrash sound.</p>
<p>Needless to say, <i>Rubberneck</i> is my favourite song here, even if it doesn't approach the pace of the songs we might instinctively think cover the same lyrical content, like <i>Whiplash</i> and <i>Rattlehead</i>. I should add that it isn't about that at all, instead serving as commentary on the objectifying male gaze. However, I liked all four tracks a lot, partly because they manage to maintain an admirable intensity even on slower songs. To my mind, when thrash bands concentrate on the mid-pace, they often lose the intensity that thrash personifies. That doesn't happen here.</p>
<p>For instance, <i>Oh Father</i> stays stubbornly slow but in a claustrophobic way as if it surrounds us. It's never interested in generating many notes but all of them sustain and Lisa Martens Pace's bass is a thing of joy here, easily audible and powerfully relentless. <i>Giant Speaks</i>, which is the single off this EP, is the only chugger in the traditional sense. It's certainly faster than Oh Father but that's not the same thing as being fast.</p>
<p>These songs remain imaginative too. When other thrash bands slow down, they tend to play in the same way, just slower. Here, the slower pace gives the various members opportunity to do things that they either couldn't do or which just wouldn't work at speed. Bettina France, for instance, is able to endow her vocals with a lot of nuance here, playing with intonation to impart emphasis on how she wants to say something, not just on what she wants to say. On <i>Roadkill</i>, she was more like a typical soaring heavy/thrash metal vocalist. Here, she sings without losing any power.</p>
<p>And that's pretty much it, because this is only a four track EP running under twenty minutes. Only <i>Oh Father</i> exceeds five minutes and then only by one more. I hope the band get good feedback for this and a strong welcome back from the community too. They toured a couple of years ago as the support for John Petrucci's solo tour, which made sense if his wife Rena Sands, a founder guitarist of Meanstreak, was there anyway, but they deserve that sort of promotional push entirely on the merits of their music. I never got see them live back in the eighties and quietly assumed that that was never going to happen. Now it seems possible and I look forward to the opportunity.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-23456375226814731122024-03-12T14:00:00.002-07:002024-03-12T17:28:25.265-07:00Messiah - Christus Hybercubus (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Switzerland<br>
Style: Progressive Metal<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 1 Mar 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://messiah1984.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/MESSIAHthrashingmadness" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/messiahthrashingmadness/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Messiah/907" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metal Archives</a> | <a href="https://www.messiah-thrashingmadness.ch/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_(Swiss_band)" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia</a> | <a href="https://youtube.com/channel/UC2Oc5r5rOBPXyK43q5i_29Q" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>I'm pretty sure I've heard Messiah before, but I couldn't name what or when, so it doesn't matter. They're a Swiss band who started out playing death/thrash metal and have clearly evolved over a forty year period to the point where it's tough to describe what this, their seventh album actually sounds like. There's certainly death metal and thrash metal here, with certain songs leaping out to identify that way, but there's a lot more, enough that I'm going to back out of any one genre to label it simply progressive metal.</p>
<p>The death metal aspect is there from the beginning on the opening couple of songs, <i>Sikhote Alin</i> and <i>Christus Hypercubus</i>, but mostly in the harsh vocals of Marcus Seebach, debuting here as the replacement for long term vocalist Andy Kaina, who died in 2022. The music is mid-pace, so heavy metal more than thrash or death, but with driving elements that often hint that they're only one shift away from those more extreme genres. There are all sorts of odd moments too, like a quirky intro and a midpoint drop into an interesting vocal and drum section, that move it further into a prog metal mindset.</p>
<p><i>Once Upon a Time - Nothing -</i> changes that, because it plays fast and makes the thrash/death tag suddenly feel entirely appropriate. <i>Centipede Bite</i> is faster still, feeling unashamedly thrash and doing everything that thrash is supposed to do. So yeah, Messiah definitely still play in those old genres even if they don't do it all the time, rather like Voivod, another highly idiosyncratic band who ignore genre boundaries and create precisely what they want to create, however critics end up defining it. The music matters, the definitions not so much.</p>
<p>However, in between <i>Once Upon a Time - Nothing -</i> and <i>Centipede Bite</i> is a song as different from that pair as could be comfortably imagined and yet remain metal. It's <i>Speed Sucker Romance</i>, an ironic name given that it ditches the speed entirely. It's a slow song, the riffs doomy and the lead guitarwork conjured up through feedback squeals. It reminded me a lot of the Lee Dorrian track on Dave Grohl's <i>Probot</i> album, but this clearly benefits from more modern production values. It's not unwilling to throw out an homage too, as I presume the churn sound towards the end is a nod towards Black Sabbath's <i>Iron Man</i>.</p>
<p><i>Soul Observatory</i> and <i>Acid Fish</i> are fast but not frantically so, somewhere in between the openers and the faster tracks, meaning a fourth recurring tempo on one album. The pair of closing tracks, <i>The Venus Baroness I</i> and <i>II</i>, are obviously prog metal, with theatrical moments that make us feel like there's some sort of concept going on here, if only for a subset of the album that happens to be at the end without really ending the album. There's a quirky interlude after the blitzkrieg of <i>Centipede Bite</i> too that's entirely theatrical, <i>Please Do Not Disturb - (While I'm Dying)</i>, with an <i>Operation: Mindcrime</i> sort of feel, but heavier.</p>
<p>And so I wasn't sure what to think of this versatility on a first listen. Of course, I was drawn toward the faster tracks, <i>Centipede Bite</i> especially, but I got a real kick out of <i>Speed Sucker Romance</i> and <i>Acid Fish</i> too, so this isn't a repeat of yesterday's <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2024/03/judas-priest-invincible-shield-2024.html">Judas Priest</a> album, where the success of one approach had an effect on my enjoyment of another, done equally well. I just struggled to figure out what Messiah see as their mission statement. <i>Speed Sucker Romance</i>, <i>Centipede Bite</i> and <i>Please Do Not Disturb - (While I'm Dying)</i> are next to each other on the album but sound like three different styles, if not three different bands.</p>
<p>Maybe what puzzles me most is that they tend to shift tempos from one track to another far more than they do during them and that feels surprising. Maybe it shouldn't. Maybe the draw here is in what links all those different tracks rather than what separates them and I suddenly realise that I may be thinking far too much again. There is a consistent tone that rolls across all these tracks, so perhaps I just need to listen to a broader swathe of Messiah to find the defining theme. I have an abiding feeling that, like someone like Voivod, as overlooked as they often seem to be, they may well be a lot of people's favourite band.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-2257840797207572412024-03-12T10:00:00.001-07:002024-03-13T22:54:26.289-07:00Schubmodul - Lost in Kelp Forest (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Germany<br>
Style: Psychedelic Rock<br>
Rating: 8/10<br>
Release Date: 23 Feb 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://schubmodul.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Schubmodul/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/schubmodul/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a></p>
<p>I've been listening to this album, the second from German psychedelic rock trio Schubmodul, for a few days now and it's still as fresh as ever. They play entirely instrumental music, but there is voice here, just not in the form of a band member singing. There's a female voice on <i>Voyage</i> that seems to be a sample, but it must be a long sample, because she's back on <i>Renegade One</i>, <i>Silent Echoes</i> and <i>Ascension</i>. A male one joins in on <i>Revelations</i>, to provide a radio news broadcast update on a kinda sorta concept that the female voice built.</p>
<p>I have to confess that, after maybe twenty listens thus far, I still haven't paid enough attention to that voice to figure out exactly what's going on and whether this is a true concept album, but the gist is that we're underwater, as the title suggests. There's a vessel called Renegade One which is doing something down there in the depths but the narrator or whatever she is sounds corporate in her demeanour and I imagined her as an inspirational canned voice over the PA on this vessel who anyone who's used to it simply ignores, relegating her to a sort of background instrument within a broader ambience.</p>
<p>I certainly didn't get any particular mood from her, just from the music. Much of the album seems welcoming to me, from Voyage onward, as if we were born under the waves and are very happy to return there on this mysterious mission. <i>Emerald Maze</i>, easily my favourite track, is a much more dynamic piece that suggests exploration. It's a long track, only a whisper off ten minutes in length, but it does a lot in that time. Maybe it's doing all the exploration the album needs, so that we can get back to the mission on <i>Renegade One</i>.</p>
<p>Talking of <i>Renegade One</i>, this is the only track where an obvious influence leapt out. Schubmodul, which means Thrust Module, tend to play instrumental psychedelic rock but without any real focus on a particular style. There are points where this is soft and peaceful music that reminds of post-rock, but more where it's harder, driving music right out of stoner rock. However, the name that I couldn't ignore on <i>Renegade One</i> is Mountain, a hard rock band from the seventies I encountered first on a TV theme, of all things. It's that heavy part from <i>Nantucket Sleighride</i> that Schubmodul echo here, a little slower but with the same tone and heaviness.</p>
<p>Oddly, when we get to <i>Revelations</i>, the final track, that radio newscaster explains that this wasn't particularly welcoming at all. This vessel was off the books, doing dubious science that backfired on its captain and whoever else might have been on board during the mission. I don't believe that spoilers really mean anything on an ostensibly instrumental album, so I'll point out that it was on a mission to create an energy source out of manipulated kelp, only to find that it generated some sort of psychedelic substance that sent the captain insane. Even more oddly, it still feels like it's a welcoming piece of music, so maybe that was a good thing. The environmentalists clearly think so.</p>
<p>Concept aside, because it really doesn't matter, I liked this album a lot. There are only six tracks to comprise almost three quarters of an hour of music, so Schubmodul let their music breathe. There isn't a rushed track here, but nothing overstays its welcome either, even though much of it is built on rhythm, the drums often setting the stage for the riffs to join in. They also like their rhythms to be repetitive, but without reaching the sort of trancelike states that come with drone metal. The variations are constant but relatively straightforward and they feel utterly natural, as befits this setting in the entirely natural world we're exploring.</p>
<p>There's only one previous release that I can see, a 2022 debut album called <i>Modul I</i> that suggests an outer space motif in its cover art and track titles. Maybe that dips into space rock, something that this album doesn't even hint at. I'm intrigued to find out, especially because that particular release schedule suggests that we won't see a third album until 2026.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-3691664319242323172024-03-11T14:00:00.006-07:002024-03-12T13:17:29.438-07:00Judas Priest - Invincible Shield (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: UK<br>
Style: Heavy Metal<br>
Rating: 8/10<br>
Release Date: 8 Mar 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://judaspriest.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/OfficialJudasPriest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://instagram.com/judaspriest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Judas_Priest/97" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metal Archives</a> | <a href="https://www.judaspriest.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@judaspriest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tiktok</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/judaspriest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_Priest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/JudasPriest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>This is an important album for Judas Priest, for a couple of reasons. One is that it's 2024 and their debut album, <i>Rocka Rolla</i>, came out in 1974, so they're being identified as the first metal band to release albums half a century apart. I guess the validity of that depends if you count someone like Deep Purple or not. The other is that, regardless of how long they've been doing this, the previous Priest album, <i>Firepower</i> in 2018, was seen as a high point in their career, winning a whole bunch of end of year awards. How would they follow that up?</p>
<p>Pretty well as it turns out. This doesn't reach the same heights, but it's still a very good album on every front, as epitomised by its opener, <i>Panic Attack</i> and indeed the first three opening tracks. It kicks off very well indeed and we surely can't have got past the title track without wondering if it would match its predecessor in power and impact.</p>
<p><i>Panic Attack</i> is quintessential Priest, with solid riffs and powerful lead vocals. The guitar solos are gorgeous, one guitarist handing over to the other, then both teaming up for an absolutely joyous joint solo. I couldn't tell you which one is the work of Glenn Tipton and which Richie Faulkner, but I can't fault either of them. They both do wonderful work. Rob Halford hits all the notes he used to hit back in the day, even if, of course, he wasn't on that debut. There's also a some serious pace on Scott Travis's drums during the finalé. And that's everyone except the man who's been with them the longest, bassist Ian Hill, who joined Priest before I was born.</p>
<p>The title track is another highlight, adding an even more traditionally catchy chorus, something a Priest album is never short on, even on their least impactful releases. In between those two, <i>The Serpent and the King</i> is another excellent track. It's not quite up to its bookends but it's so strong that, had we heard it in isolation, we'd still be talking it up as an impeccable new Priest song. Any other spot on this album and it would stand out, but in between those two gems, it's just another highlight.</p>
<p><i>Devil in Disguise</i> is where it slows down, maintaining the power but ditching the speed. Those first three tracks don't emulate something like <i>Painkiller</i>, but they're all notably up tempo, reminding anyone not paying attention just how much Priest had influenced the birth of speed metal and, in its wake, thrash metal. <i>Devil in Disguise</i>, <i>Gates of Hell</i> and <i>Crown of Horns</i> are all happy to be pure heavy metal, without any need to influence a new genre. They chug along effortlessly and exude a studded leather archetype. Much of the rest of the album follows suit.</p>
<p>Those are all good songs, as indeed are all the others to follow, this running to eleven tracks all told. However, it's the faster tracks that stir up my blood, which generally means those three openers and <i>As God is My Witness</i>, where Halford remains slower than the instruments around him but just as powerful. These faster songs are sonic weapons, while the rest of the tracks epitomise the title, obviously capable of withstanding anything thrown their way but not interested in particularly dealing out any damage of their own unless absolutely necessary.</p>
<p>And so whether this is as strong as <i>Firepower</i> may depend on what you want from a Priest track. I might love a slow Priest classic like <i>Victim of Changes</i> with a passion, but it's <i>The Ripper</i> and <i>Electric Eye</i> and <i>Painkiller</i> I'd throw on to feel invulnerable. There's not as much of that here, those four faster tracks coming closest. The majority of these are a throwback to their more commercial material, such as <i>Breaking the Law</i> and <i>You've Got Another Thing Comin'</i>, but with a modern elegant edge to them. The best example here is probably <i>Crown of Horns</i>, a peach of a song that I'm sure the American audience will adore.</p>
<p>For my part, I love that song but I generally prefer those openers, so this album is wonderfully strong for me but doesn't live up to the promise it kicks off with.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-86587341101404300062024-03-11T10:00:00.001-07:002024-03-11T17:57:03.297-07:00Nick Johnston - Child of Bliss (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Canada<br>
Style: Instrumental Rock<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 8 Mar 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://nickjohnstonmusic.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NickJohnstonOfficial" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/nickjohnstonmusic/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://nickjohnstonmusic.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Johnston_(guitarist)" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRmm7T6mAm-QBNvnEaIl3AA" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>I hadn't heard of Nick Johnston before, but I wasn't going to pass up this gorgeous cover art. He's a Canadian guitarist on his seventh album and, for once, I can buy into everything on his Wikipedia page. He claims strong influences from a string of the usual names, like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eddie van Halen, Yngwie J. Malmsteen and Jeff Beck, but he also states that "I sound nothing like those guys" and he doesn't with the sole exception of Beck, whose touches I did catch once in a while. The influence that leapt out here for me was Joe Satriani, who's all over this material like a rash.</p>
<p>This album isn't as adventurous as Satriani's most recent effort, <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2022/08/joe-satriani-elephants-of-mars-2022.html">The Elephants of Mars</a>, which has a lot more versatility to it, playing in all sorts of unusual genres. This, on the other hand, is clearly instrumental rock music and it's happy to be instrumental rock music, with maybe a dip into folk in the title track and a hint towards metal on <i>Momento Vivere</i>. However, as content as Johnston is to remain within a relatively limited scope, this is absolutely going to play best to Satch fans, who I'd think would eat this up and ask for seconds.</p>
<p>Now Satriani is well known for being a technical virtuoso and it's clear to me that Johnston is too, but he doesn't flaunt it as much. When he talks about this particular influence, he talks about his sense of melody as an underpinning for everything else that he does and, from this album alone, I can see that that's what drives him. I haven't gone to YouTube to see what he looks like when he's up there on stage, but I firmly imagine him standing in a spotlight he likely doesn't realise is even there because his eyes are closed as he channels the music through his body. I don't picture him at the front of the stage winking at the audience as he nails something outrageously technical that lesser mortals just couldn't do in a month of Sundays.</p>
<p>However, it seems likely that he could do that should he ever choose to do so. To non-musicians like me, he sounds impressive, clearly talented but no showoff, so we focus on those melodies and how he builds them into something more. Put simply, we listen to his music. Most of it seems laid back, albeit not so far as someone like Eric Clapton who gradually gets more entrenched in soft rock as the years pass, outside his occasional ventures into pure roots. However, there are still moments in tracks like <i>Moonflower</i> and late in <i>Voice on the Wind</i> that I seriously doubt are easy to play, but which he makes seem exactly that.</p>
<p>My least favourite track is easily the first one, <i>Black Widow Silk</i>, not because it doesn't sound great but because it's over almost as it's begun and he oddly doesn't play through most of it. He's clearly not a guitarist who counts his worth by the number of notes that he plays, but I don't believe he reaches twenty by the halfway mark of a piece that only just nudges past two minutes. It's an odd choice to start out the album, because it's less an intro to the entire thing as an intro into a song we never hear, because the title track works off a completely different groove.</p>
<p>That title track may be my favourite, even though he once more waits a long while to join the fray. While the obvious draw here is his guitarwork, with <i>Momento Vivere</i> and <i>Through the Golden Forest</i> perhaps the highlights there, I got a real kick out of the backdrops that are conjured up for him to do his thing against and this may be the best. <i>Moonflower</i> comes close and <i>Black Widow Silk</i> too, but <i>Child of Bliss</i> is a piece to stand out both for the backdrop that's built for almost a minute before Johnston joins in and for his guitarwork once he does. Technically speaking, he was there before the guitars, because he's also responsible for the keyboards, which includes the tasty piano here that plays with an unusual drum sound.</p>
<p>While I'm a little late to the table after six albums I completely failed to notice, Nick Johnston is a clear talent who doesn't just know how to play the guitar, he also knows how to create interesting pieces of music. Of course, there's plenty of back catalogue for me to seek out should I wish, but I wonder what he sounds like in a band setting. That's possible too, because he's made two albums with Archival, for which he sings as well as plays guitar and piano. He's definitely a name I'll keep an eye out for in the future.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-47098353393097898452024-01-19T14:00:00.001-07:002024-03-08T21:38:09.826-07:00Autumn's Child - Tellus Timeline (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Sweden<br>
Style: Melodic/Hard Rock<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 19 Jan 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/autumnschildofficial/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRfBRQCq9NkcoZ7kvAWYmaA" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>I liked Autumn's Child's 2022 album, <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2022/12/autumns-child-starflower-2022.html">Starflower</a>, finding it a little heavier than Mikael Erlandsson's previous band, Last Autumn's Dream, so melodic rock that wants to grow up to be hard rock. I was eager to listen to their next album to see how much into the latter they would move, but, in quite the ironic twist, given that I pointed out in that review that they were likely to be rather prolific, I completely missed the fact that they'd knocked out three before it. This is the next in line, a mere three months later, so it's their fifth in five years, an even greater accomplishment because that period of time spans both sides of the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<p>It's sometimes a little heavier than Last Autumn's Dream, but it's not venturing any further into that direction than <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2022/12/autumns-child-starflower-2022.html">Starflower</a>, and it just as often veers into pop music. Like that album, though, it's rather varied in which influences the band are happy to display. <i>A Strike of Lightning</i> is a hard rock song rooted in melodic rock, with excellent guitarwork to open it up. <i>Gates of Paradise</i> opens with choral flourishes and ends in even more of a symphonic rock crescendo. And <i>Here Comes the Night</i> is almost pure AOR with a Graham Bonnet era Rainbow riff to kick things off.</p>
<p>These are all good songs. The catch is that they're increasingly familiar, <i>Here Comes the Night</i> so familiar that I can't not have heard this before even though it appears to be completely original. In fact, it's so quintessential that, in that parallel universe where I have indeed heard this before, it was probably called something generic like, say, <i>Here Comes the Night</i>. It's Cheap Trick over all else, but there's Rainbow there too and some seventies glam rock and even hints of Meat Loaf in the phrasing. It's infuriatingly catchy and it's an early highlight, even if it's devoid of originality in every way.</p>
<p>What I like about this album is that, while it's rarely particularly original, it doesn't remotely stay in one place. Those first three tracks are different and most of the rest follow suit, enough so that Autumn's Child keep us guessing at how varied they're going to get here. The influences I cited in the last paragraph mean that the Journey touches on <i>We are Young</i> shouldn't surprise at all and neither should the guitar solo, but the acoustic Latin-inspired guitarwork that's right before it in the midsection might.</p>
<p>The real surprises arrive with <i>Around the World in a Day</i>, because it's Journey via the Beatles, an interesting touch that would be a worthy Eurovision entry, now that they've adopted rock music, if only it wasn't six minutes long. That Beatles touch doubles on <i>Come and Get It!</i> late in the album. This is the Beatles playing a seventies glam rock song with harmonies by the Beach Boys. Closer <i>I Belong to You</i> is everything seventies all wrapped up into one: pop, disco, rock, funk, sappy ballad, all of it put together. None of these are quite as catchy as <i>Here Comes the Night</i>, but some of the better ones come close.</p>
<p>It's odd to listen to something so varied that's somehow always familiar, but maybe that's just an indicator of how many earworms there are here, regardless of how far into pop or rock this gets. There are points where Erlandsson and lead guitarist Pontus Åkesson seem to be rocking out like their lives depend on it, but others where they veer so deeply into pop music that we wonder how we didn't notice them moving out of rock entirely, occasionally into something truly wild like the unaccompanied harmonising section in <i>Come and Get It!</i> that I kept thinking might dip into barbershop quartet territory. I guess we're too busy singing along with these choruses, even on a first time through.</p>
<p>And that's where this ends up. At this point, I'm not sure what Autumn's Child are actually trying to do. They come from melodic rock roots, but sometimes they want to heavy up and go hard rock and other times they want to ditch rock music altogether and play perky pop music. What's telling is that they're consistently good whichever way they go, meaning that this is a very strong bevy of hook-laden songs. I'm just not sure who to recommend it to most. Cheap Trick fans, perhaps?</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-51829537911918858082024-01-19T10:00:00.001-07:002024-03-08T13:50:43.042-07:00Omnium Gatherum - Slasher (2023)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Finland<br>
Style: Melodic Death Metal<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 2 Jun 2023<br>
Sites: <a href="https://omniumgatherumlfr.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/omniumgatherumband" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/omniumgatherumofficial/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Omnium_Gatherum/3306" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metal Archives</a> | <a href="https://www.omniumgatherum.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/OGBand" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnium_Gatherum" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/omniumgatherumband" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>Slasher is only a four track EP that runs just shy of twenty minutes, but I was intrigued by Omnium Gatherum's 2021 album, <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2021/11/omnium-gatherum-origin-2021.html">Origin</a>, and wanted to see where they took that sound. I liked that album but I didn't love it and a good part of that was that it felt rather transitional. They'd lost a second guitarist and their melodic death metal sound had upped the melodic but lessened the death, a shift that left Jukka Pelkonen's harsh vocals a little adrift. It felt to me that there was a need for clean vocals, either to replace or enhance the harsh, but nobody was delivering them. So I wanted the next album to see where they went. Maybe this EP would suffice.</p>
<p>What it tells me is that I was partially right but partially wrong. Pelkonen continues to sing harsh here but he—I believe, but possibly someone else—also varies his delivery considerably. There are clean vocals here too, most obviously and tellingly in the opener, <i>Slasher</i>, and the harsh vocals are more varied, shifting into a crackling fireplace mindset on <i>Lovelorn</i> that takes the song into goth territory. So far so good for me as some sort of sonic soothsayer, but I hadn't realised quite where the resulting sound was going, a realisation that came when I realised how well the unlikely cover works here.</p>
<p>There are four songs on offer, three of which are originals. All of them betray Omnium Gatherum's roots but fit firmly into their go forward direction, which I'd compared on <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2021/11/omnium-gatherum-origin-2021.html">Origin</a> to Opeth's shift to prog rock. While the shift might be fair, the direction isn't because this isn't remotely prog rock in the slightest, that cover not of a Yes or Genesis track, let alone a deep cut from one of the obscure seventies crate diver discoveries that Mikael Åkerfeldt loves so much. It's of <i>Maniac</i>, the Michael Sembello song from the movie <i>Flashdance</i>. Oh yeah. And it sounds great!</p>
<p>And suddenly I see Omnium Gatherum in a new light. They're still a melodic death metal band but the three songs that aren't covers of disco/synthpop hits could believably be too. They all have an exquisitely perky feel, either entirely or for the most part, built from poppy melodies and hooks, merely heavied up into harsh vocals and crunchy metal guitars. There are bands whose gimmick is to turn pop music into punk or metal as routine, applying heavy filters onto TV theme tunes or pop hits from decades past. Suddenly I'm imagining a disco group whose sole purpose in life is to turn Omnium Gatherum songs into synthpop. I think they'd sound pretty good.</p>
<p>While the cover of <i>Maniac</i> works shockingly well, I'd suggest that <i>Slasher</i>, which isn't a far cry from it lyrically, is the standout track. I wonder if writing that prompted them to cover <i>Maniac</i> or if the act of covering <i>Maniac</i> flavoured everything else, especially <i>Slasher</i>. Sure, it kind of just ends with the mindset that it has nothing left to say, but it rolls and builds well and it has an excellent guitar solo from either band mainstay Markus Vanhala or new fish Nick Cordle, who's been touring with them for a while but officially joined the line-up in 2022.</p>
<p><i>Maniac</i> follows, with <i>Sacred</i> after that, another song very much in the same vein, with keyboards delivering the melodies so that Aapo Koivisto leads the way just as much as the guitarists or Jukka Pelkonen's voice, perhaps even more. He's the main reason that these songs sound so poppy and perky. And that leaves <i>Lovelorn</i>, which follows in the same sort of vein again but not quite so much. It's the heaviest song here and the most gothic, not only because of how Pelkonen shifts into dark and rumbling mode.</p>
<p>And that's it, because there are only four tracks on offer. I'm still fascinated by the direction that Omnium Gatherum are taking and I'm still eager to check out their next album, but this suggests that we know roughly what it's going to sound like. It sounds good too, even though reading back everything I've written about this EP suggests that it really shouldn't.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-20339417802945638732024-01-16T14:00:00.000-07:002024-03-06T21:35:09.390-07:00Orchestre Celesti - Cornwall! (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Italy<br>
Style: Progressive Rock<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 8 Jan 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://orchestrecelesti.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/orchestrecelestimotherpage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://federicofantacone.wixsite.com/orchestrecelesti" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=5391" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Prog Archives</a>
<p>I have no idea why this album is called <i>Cornwall</i>!, so have to assume from the track titles that it's a concept album, even though it's entirely instrumental. Orchestre Celesti is only one man but he's an orchestra here, either playing all sorts of different instruments or approximating them with a bank of synthesisers. He's Federico Fantacone and he's been releasing music under the banner of Orchestre Celesti since 2007. The name refers to the ancient Chinese art of training doves to fly in specific patterns with flutes attached to their legs, thus creating music together. This is the ninth album to carry that name, plus another collaborative effort with Lisa la Rue, and a bunch in a duo with Enzo Vitagliano as the Round Robins.</p>
<p>The goal of the project appears to have been to combine two very different styles of prog rock: the well known British kind that was so popular in the seventies and the Italian kind that was less well known but massively influential. I don't know if that's changed over the years, but I didn't catch a lot of British prog here. Where there's a British sound, as there clearly is on <i>The Song of Western Men</i>, given that it starts out with bagpipes and progresses into harp, it feels more like soundtrack material than anything Yes, Genesis or King Crimson were doing back in the day. Maybe there's a lot more from the Canterbury scene, but I'm no expert there. It's rather like a travel documentary that takes us round the beautiful sights of the British Isles.</p>
<p>What's more, other pieces of music betray different influences. While most of the soundtrack type material leans towards the orchestral style, as the project's name suggests, with the comparisons being to Hollywood names like James Horner or Hans Zimmer, <i>The Ballad of Elisabeth Raby</i> starts out just like something Vangelis might have conjured up. Sure, that takes us back to Europe but to Greece rather than the UK or Italy, and <i>From Pickaxes to Weapons</i> takes us out again, to Japan, in part because of the early strings, which heavily remind of Japanese folk music, but also a rippling brook of a piano, thoroughly rooted in nature.</p>
<p>While I don't hear a lot of British influence, at least this time out, I do hear a lot of Italian prog, a genre I'm still learning about. The opening track, <i>Cornubia</i>, for example, is a perky and jazzy piano piece until it drops into something clearly prog and very much soundtrack influenced, because it's all about mood. Even when the drums pick up a tempo, there are all sorts of instruments showing up in the background, as if to represent different characters. There are similar hints at a voice but it always remains instrumental, just an odd vocalisation here and there. It might occasionally hint at a more German style, but mostly stays Italian.</p>
<p>Even though that track and much of the album continues to seem like the score to a movie that we haven't seen, it's never far away from prog. There are neat changes and technical sections and all sorts of experimental parts in <i>Cornubia</i> and a whole bunch more in <i>From Pickaxes to Weapons</i>, the longest piece here at almost fifteen minutes. That gives it a huge amount of time to build and it's happy to take advantage. Some sections are very quiet, almost experimentally so, but others are built around quirky rhythms on what I presume is some sort of drum machine.</p>
<p><i>Ancient Dukes and Mythological Heroes</i> may be the most recognisably prog song here, especially once it reaches the two minute mark and launches into gear. What came before and much of what follows is built off solo piano and veers back to mood soundtrack, an approach that's impossible to ignore. The question really boils down to how successful this is as a soundtrack. Do we ache to see the movie, or movies, that this material imagines that it underpins, meaning that it's incomplete without the visuals, or do we enjoy it on its own merit, as many do with soundtracks that work as a musical achievement as much as accompaniment?</p>
<p>I wish I could come up with an answer to that. I certainly enjoyed this on its own merits, sometimes seeing footage from the nonexistent film a piece conjured up in my mind, most obviously <i>The Song of Western Men</i>, but often not. Mostly, I felt that it sounded like a soundtrack but didn't care what it might accompany; it was fine all on its own. And then there were sections, like that early part in <i>Ancient Dukes and Mythological Heroes</i> and the saxophone section midway through <i>Ritual Dance of Mermaids and Seals</i>, that didn't even feel like soundtrack material at all, just prog rock.</p>
<p>I guess that means that I never ached for the movie, so I'd lean much more towards success here. I certainly enjoyed the music, what it does and how I could fall into it. I also liked that it continued to feel fresh, whether on a first listen or a fifth and across quite a few days. Given that it's a highly generous album, running almost eight minutes over an hour, that's quite the accomplishment. I'd probably benefit from hearing more from Fantacone as Orchestra Celesti, but this was impressive as an introduction to his work.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-75036841460175852142024-01-16T10:00:00.000-07:002024-02-27T00:37:30.716-07:00Voivod - Morgöth Tales (2023)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Canada<br>
Style: Progressive Thrash Metal<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 21 Jul 2023<br>
Sites: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Voivod" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/voivodofficial/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Voivod/115" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metal Archives</a> | <a href="https://www.voivod.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://www.twitter.com/voivoddotnet" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voivod_(band)" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia</a></p>
<p>Voivod have been around for four decades now, though my maths suggests that <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2022/03/voivod-synchro-anarchy-2022.html">Synchro Anarchy</a> was their fortieth anniversary album last year. However, it's here where they're celebrating, with an unusual project that works rather well. Only two of the eleven songs on offer are new, the title track and a cover version of Public Image Limited's <i>Home</i>, which sounds like a weird choice until it plays and suddenly it seems entirely natural. The rest are re-recordings of old songs, mostly with the current band but twice featuring a guest former member.</p>
<p>Re-recordings are always a dubious concept, but I like the results here because the track selection follows some interesting rules. For a start, there's nothing here newer than 2014, because the two albums in that timeframe featured the current line-up anyway, so there's no point to redux. There is also nothing newer than 2008, when Chewy joined on guitar to replace the late Piggy. There's no more than one track from any prior album, so this is a carefully curated sampler of older material, and it delves as far back as the band's contribution to the <i>Metal Massacre V</i> compilation.</p>
<p>That's <i>Condemned to the Gallows</i> and it's first, because these tracks are presented in chronological order, so allowing us to join them on a journey through their history as it happened, with consistent 21st century production values. It's also a real highlight that I'm not sure I've ever heard before. <i>Metal Massacre V</i> came out the same year as the band's debut, <i>War and Pain</i>, but this wasn't on it. I remember that album being a muddy mess of fascinatingly raw tracks, so I'm sure this is much cleaner than the original, but it still has a real bite to it. It chugs along quickly too, highlighting that punk attitude that they wore overtly during the early days. I like it a lot, but it doesn't sound a lot like what we tend to think of as Voivod.</p>
<p>There's nothing here from <i>War and Pain</i> but <i>Thrashing Rage</i> was on their follow-up, <i>Rrröööaaarrr</i>. It feels like a progression from <i>Condemned to the Gallows</i>, but it's still only partway to what they would become. It's another up tempo song, in your face but a little more controlled. However, it's only starting to adopt that unusual Voivod tone. It's <i>Killing Technology</i>, the title track of the third Voivod album, where that fully arrives, complete with robot voice and patented jagged guitar, all done in a neatly perky fashion. Snake's voice loses some rawness and melody is bulked up, even if it contrasts with that jagged guitar. It's much more science fiction.</p>
<p>For a while it continues in much the same vein. <i>Macrosolutions to Megaproblems</i>, from <i>Dimension Hatröss</i>, is <i>Killing Technology</i> but more so, with weird rhythms. <i>Pre-Ignition</i> is the closest song on this album to its predecessor, which is interesting to me, because I've always felt that <i>Nothingface</i> was a real shift for Voivod. That doesn't show here, at least on this one. It clearly shows on <i>Nuage Fractal</i>, from <i>Angel Rat</i>. Snake's voice gets cleaner than ever and the jagged guitar is polished in an odd way that makes this sound like Voivod are covering U2 and making the song their own.</p>
<p><i>Fix My Heart</i> is where these songs become new to me. This one's from <i>The Outer Limits</i> in 1993 and it's a bouncy one with an interesting mix of sounds. There's certainly some Voivod in there, but it's not in the pure form. There's some grunge, some alt rock and some stoner rock in there too. It's an understandable shift for the time but I wasn't expecting it and I wasn't expecting it to go away on the very next song, <i>Rise</i>, which is much more old school, even if it's from 1997's <i>Phobos</i>. After that, I wasn't expecting it to come back for the one after, <i>Rebel Robot</i>, but there's definitely grunge in Snake's vocal here.</p>
<p>I should mention that he doesn't sing <i>Rise</i>, because this is where the guests come in. The vocalist on <i>Rise</i> is Eric Forrest, who sang it originally, because bassist Blacky had left in 1991 and original vocalist Snake followed suit in 1994, leaving E-Force to replace them both. He's older school, much rawer even than Snake revisiting the really early material. By 2003's self-titled album, Snake had returned and Jason Newsted had joined on bass, taking the nom de plume of Jasonic. He returns for this version of <i>Rebel Robot</i> too.</p>
<p>And then there are the new songs. <i>Morgöth Tales</i> is clearly a song about the band and its history and raison d être, dropping quite a few nods to earlier track titles. I like this one a lot because it covers a vast amount of territory. I like the serious ramp up in tempo, with a fast buzzsaw guitar. I like the drift into spacy prog rock. I like the back and forth between those two styles. And I like its prominent guitar solo. It looks back a lot but neatly patches everything Voivod into one new track.</p>
<p>Finally, there's <i>Home</i>, that PiL song, which I hadn't heard before but should, given the line-up the original boasted: John Lydon on vocals, the always interesting Steve Vai on guitar and Bill Laswell on bass, plus jazz musician Tony Williams on drums. I can hear some Lydon in the vocals, especially late on, but the song is an unusual trip and it's a stellar choice for a Voivod cover.</p>
<p>And that's it, unfolding in ruthless chronological order. The die hard Voivod fan will know all these songs, but they sound good with a 21st century production job. I must go back to that debut again to see how awful the production really was on it. I'm a Voivod fan but not that hardcore, so I knew half of this, meaning that the other half is new to me. Both halves are fascinating and it's great to hear this journey through their back catalogue in such consistent fashion. I learned a lot. What I'd have to end up with is that my favourite songs here are a couple of the earliest, <i>Condemned to the Gallows</i> and <i>Killing Technology</i>, and the newest pair. That bodes well for the next studio album.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-49020589356512654602024-01-15T14:00:00.002-07:002024-02-22T22:27:54.212-07:00Scanner - The Cosmic Race (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Germany<br>
Style: Heavy/Power Metal<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 12 Jan 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Scanner.Heavy.Metal.Band" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Scanner/267" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metal Archives</a> | <a href="https://www.scanner4u.de/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanner_(band)" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC529zD-Z_HXljE3-CzXdvUA" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>I remember Scanner from their excellent debut album, <i>Hypertrace</i>, back in 1988. They're another of many German heavy/power metal bands but they're one of the first, because they started out in 1977 as Reinforce, changing to Lions Breed in 1982—who released one album—and eventually Scanner in 1986. However, this is only their seventh studio album, for reasons I can't fully explain. As far as I can tell, they've never actually split up, though they have completely changed the line-up behind founder guitarist Axel Julius more than once.</p>
<p>They just took long breaks, I think, so this arrives no fewer than nine years after <i>The Judgement</i>, which showed up thirteen years after <i>Scantropolis</i>. I haven't heard those two, but this only seems like a strong release to make up for lost time for a few tracks, perhaps until <i>Warriors of the Light</i> three songs in. After that, it's still decent, but it loses the sort of strength it needed to keep fans happy after so many years.</p>
<p>Initially, it's great. <i>The Earth Song</i> doesn't reach <i>Warp 7</i> speeds, the track which opened up their debut, but it's an agreeably fast one. I actually remember Scanner being faster than they are, on the basis of tracks like that one. In 1988, thrash metal was my go to genre with speed metal right behind it, so I'd have eaten up songs like <i>Warp 7</i>, even if the rest of the album was a tad slower, in more of a power metal style. I'm all for that pace in 2024 too, but <i>The Earth Song</i> has more going for it than just speed. There's also a tasty guitar opening and a neat chanting section late on.</p>
<p>Just like their debut, things slow down after that but I'm more open to that now than I was then. <i>Face the Fight</i> is a real anthem of a song, high energy power metal with a hook-laden chorus that we're singing along with on our first time through. <i>Warriors of the Light</i> follows suit, maybe a tad less effectively because of a weaker midsection, but still very effective indeed. At this point, I was totally sold on this new Scanner, but they can't quite maintain that sort of stellar opening.</p>
<p>I say this new Scanner, because it's another mostly new line-up. Julius is still there, of course, as he has been throughout. Greek vocalist Efthimios Ionannidis is the only other member who's been in the band long enough to have performed on their prior album, having joined in 2003. Bassist Jörn Bettentrup is six years into his run with the band, but this is his first recording with them. Second guitarist Dominik Rothe and drummer Sascha Kurpanek arrived in 2023, presumably as a package deal, given that they've both played for Marauder and Taskforce Toxicator.</p>
<p>I should add that both those bands play thrash so I'd say that this material must feel slow to Rothe and Kurpanek, even with a few fast sections here and there, like the opener to <i>Scanner's Law</i>. It's fair to say that there are a number of points where the latter is the fastest aspect to the band, on that song particularly. Of course, I wish they'd speed up a bit more in general, but they play power metal well. Nothing quite matches <i>Face the Fight</i> in the anthemic chorus department, but a bunch of other tracks do try, <i>Scanner's Law</i> among them.</p>
<p>Others fall a little short for me. <i>Dance of the Dead</i> has its moments, but it doesn't seem to be too sure about what it wants to be. It starts out with a Dio vibe, before finding another big chorus, but there's some grind in between the verses. Each section works, but they don't all work together. <i>A New Horizon</i> kicks off with some lovely guitar, turning an Outlaws-esque riff into a layered power metal setup, but it falls into routine. It's the song I wanted to speed up the most, even if I liked its slower guitar. I liked the folk vibe midway through closer <i>The Last and First in Line</i> but the rest of the song around it isn't quite as enticing.</p>
<p>The most frustrating song is <i>Space Battalion</i>, again one that moves through a number of sections that all work individually but somehow not together. The reason for the frustration is that it kicks off relying on a rather well known riff that's lifted from Megadeth's <i>Symphony of Destruction</i>. It isn't quite the same, and it's a much busier song around that riff, but it's so recognisable that I'm singing along with Dave Mustaine before I realise that he's not there.</p>
<p>If I'm sounding acutely negative here, I don't mean to. I enjoyed this album and it's great to hear something new from Scanner. I remember Hypertrace and enjoyed its follow-up, <i>Terminal Earth</i> in 1989, but I don't believe I've heard the four albums in between that pair and this one. I should, not least because of the variance in line-ups. It seems that at least one of them had a female vocalist. However, it promises much for three neatly different tracks and the rest of the album simply can't live up to that promise.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-50095006817616635242024-01-15T10:00:00.002-07:002024-02-27T00:26:41.300-07:00Greta van Fleet - Starcatcher (2023)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: USA<br>
Style: Hard Rock<br>
Rating: 8/10<br>
Release Date: 21 Jul 2023<br>
Sites: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/gretavanfleet/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/gretavanfleet/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="http://gretavanfleet.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/GretaVanFleet" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Van_Fleet" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX2_tsfS1lWaNg26UUuWrxA" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>Two thoughts struck me quickly the first time I heard this, the third album from the Frankenmuth, Michigan rockers. One is that it's good and consistently so. The other is that it isn't a patch on its predecessor, <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2021/04/greta-van-fleet-battle-at-gardens-gate.html">The Battle of Garden's Gate</a>. Those two thoughts stayed with me through a second, a third and a fourth listen. Everything sounds good, from the opener, <i>Fate of the Faithful</i>, which is a strong way to start, to <i>Farewell for Now</i>, which is just another song rather than a memorable epic that closes everything out. However, not once did this awe me in the way that the previous album often did.</p>
<p><i>Fate of the Faithful</i> plays up the Led Zeppelin comparison that has hung over the band's shoulders like an albatross, as if they're leaning into it now instead of trying to fight it. Last time out, I heard a lot of Geddy Lee in the vocals of Josh Kiszka and other influences as unusual as world music from Africa. Here, it's mostly Zep, Kiszka reminding of Robert Plant in more ways than just flow. <i>Sacred the Thread</i> opens up how John Bonham would. <i>Meeting the Master</i> opens up how Page would. It's all there in the details of the songs, not just their sweeps.</p>
<p>On <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2021/04/greta-van-fleet-battle-at-gardens-gate.html">The Battle of Garden's Gate</a>, the most overt influence from Zeppelin was in the maturity of the songwriting, something that still leaps out whenever my local classic rock station plays them and I realise all over again how mature they were, trawling in wildly different sounds to use as they put together a serious body of work in a such a short time. Here, most of this has roots in that body of work, building new songs from its sounds.</p>
<p>What that means is that, while every one of these ten songs does sound like Zep, it doesn't follow that <i>Starcatcher</i> sounds like a Zep album. It doesn't, because it's not remotely as diverse. There's a little folk here in some of Josh or Jake's quiet moments and no discernible world music at all. It seems fair to say that every one of these ten songs works with the same sonic template instead of searching for a new one each time and finding it.</p>
<p>That lack of diversity this time may be why all these songs sound good but none of them stand out in the way that <i>Broken Bells</i>, <i>Tears of Rain</i> or <i>The Weight of Dreams</i> did on the previous album, to name just three. I'd call out <i>Sacred the Thread</i> as my favourite track, as the vocal melodies are so effortless and so effective that the entire band falls into a wonderful groove. <i>Fate of the Faithful</i> is up there too but that's probably my entire favourites list right there in two songs.</p>
<p>That doesn't mean that anything sucks. Drop the needle anywhere on this album, whether at the start of a track or just throw me in halfway and I'm going to be listening through the whole thing again a couple of times, enjoying every single track. In other words, this isn't a bad album; it's just not its predecessor and that's a bigger problem than it perhaps should be. It meant that, while I enjoyed another impressive ten tracks from Greta van Fleet, I couldn't quite lose an abiding sense of disappointment.</p>
<p>Is that fair? I don't have a problem with bands effectively borrowing another band's sound if they create good music out of it. I've reviewed a couple of bands here at Apocalypse Later who started out as tribute bands, but evolved to the point where they released new music that naturally took on the flavour of the covers they'd been playing. Of course, Blind Golem's <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2021/01/blind-golem-dream-of-fantasy-2021.html">A Dream of Fantasy</a> has Uriah Heep at its heart. Of course, <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2020/06/fragile-golden-fragments-2020.html">Fragile</a> sound like Yes. I don't believe that Greta van Fleet were ever a Led Zeppelin tribute band, but it's easy to imagine that they were and they evolved to write their own music in that style. That seems fair to me.</p>
<p>But is it fair to be disappointed by an otherwise excellent album just because it doesn't reach the scarily high bar set by its predecessor? I'm in two minds about that. Had I not heard <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2021/04/greta-van-fleet-battle-at-gardens-gate.html">The Battle of Garden's Gate</a>, I'd surely think more of this one. However, it doesn't do a lot of what made the last album so outstanding and that would hold true even if this was the first thing I'd ever heard from Greta van Fleet. So I'll leave it with that thought. It's good stuff. I enjoyed all ten songs and did so just as much on my fourth time through as my first. I'm giving it a highly recommended 8/10. That said, it's also a step backward for this band, a reminder that not everyone can hit the peaks every time out and that maybe they've lost track of why they're such a great band.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-64642160887575300572024-01-12T14:00:00.002-07:002024-02-18T14:05:26.695-07:00Magnum - Here Comes the Rain (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: UK<br>
Style: Hard Rock<br>
Rating: 8/10<br>
Release Date: 12 Jan 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://magnumband.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/magnumbandpage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/magnum_uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="http://www.magnumonline.co.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/magnumonline_" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnum_(band)" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia</a></p>
<p>For fans of classic British rock, the second week in January every other year has become when the new Magnum album will drop and they delivered once again this year, following 2018's Lost on the Road to Eternity, 2020's <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2020/01/magnum-serpent-rings-2020.html">The Serpent Rings</a> and 2022's <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2022/01/magnum-monster-roars-2022.html">The Monster Roars</a>. Sadly, this year's album was overshadowed by the death of founder member and perennial songwriter Tony Clarkin a mere five days before its release date. He's been a fixture throughout my musical life, as Magnum were one of the first bands I heard when I stumbled onto rock and metal in 1984 through <i>The Friday Rock Show</i> and, courtesy of their album <i>Chase the Dragon</i>, then a fixture on that show, were also one of my early favourites.</p>
<p>That was their third and this is their twenty-third, if we exclude the two by Hard Rain that Clarkin and Bob Catley released during the brief gap between the two incarnations of Magnum, but it's a strong one, from the very beginning. I gave its two predecessors an 8/10 and this is an even easier 8/10, surely my favourite of the three. It touches on each of the things that Magnum do incredibly well and so it works not just as an album but also as a reminder to anyone who hasn't heard them in far too long that they can still do everything they used to do and just as well.</p>
<p>The first three tracks highlight that wonderfully. <i>Run into the Shadows</i> is a lively rocker with just a hint of edge to Clarkin's guitar and highly recognisable melodies in Catley's vocals. I enjoyed it on a first play but it's grown on me nicely with more listens. The title track grabbed me immediately, though, with that slow but powerful groove that's pure Magnum and the effortless way it prowls forward is quintessentially them too. <i>Some Kind of Treachery</i> slows down further as a ballad, led by Catley's glorious voice. It's not as crystal clean as it used to be way back in the day; the passage of decades has added a little grit but that doesn't hurt his delivery of ballads because it gives him a little more emotional emphasis.</p>
<p>I liked all three of these, the title track the most, and I liked <i>After the Silence</i> too, another rocker, after them, but the album elevated for me with <i>Blue Tango</i>, which is when I knew this was likely to be another 8/10. There are ten tracks here all told and they fall naturally into sections of four, three and three for me. Those first four are a strong way to kick off the album, reminding us of what Magnum do and do better than anyone else. The next three serve as serious emphasis, upping the ante a little with magnificent effect.</p>
<p><i>Blue Tango</i> is an obvious highlight, a heavy song for Magnum built on a glorious driving riff that's right out of the Deep Purple playbook. It's rooted in good old fifties rock 'n' roll, not just bulked up by guitar but also the keyboards of Rick Benton, who channelled Jon Lord for this one. I love heavy seventies organ and it's great to hear it deepen a song like Blue Tango. <i>The Day He Lied</i> is another emotional song relying on what has always been their strongest aspect, how they set slow grooves effortlessly into motion and build them with characteristic melodies. This riff is exquisitely simple, just a few notes but, when Magnum play it, it's like the hills and valleys of a whole nation distilled down to its purest essence.</p>
<p>And then there's <i>The Seventh Darkness</i>, just about defeating <i>Blue Tango</i> to be my favourite song here. It's certainly the jauntiest on offer, kicking off with a sassy trumpet by Nick Dewhurst which continues to punctuate the song for an elegant sense of emphasis. That's a highlight but so is the saxophone of Chris Aldridge that duets joyously with Tony Clarkin's guitar in the midsection. It's a pristine rocker, this one a little faster than usual, albeit not as driving as Blue Tango.</p>
<p>And then there's the final set of three songs that I believe stand alone, just like every track here, but also fall into what feels like a thematic section. <i>Broken City</i> begins with distant explosions, as if we're in a war zone, and its story is told mostly through voice, the guitar replaced by strings and a tasty harp. There are no clues in the lyrics as to which city Catley is singing about, which is surely deliberate, as it continues that way through the final two songs, <i>I Wanna Live</i> and <i>Borderline</i>. It's all of them, even though the latter opens with a middle eastern flavour.</p>
<p><i>I Wanna Live</i> is quintessential Magnum pomp with another earworm chorus and a wonderful solo from Benton's keyboards late in the song. <i>Borderline</i> is punchier and oddly seems reminiscent of Oasis in the vocal melodies, but, appropriately enough, it has some excellent and prominent solos from Clarkin on what may well be the final track that we'll ever hear from him. It wasn't planned, of course, especially as I believe his passing was sudden and unexpected, but it's touching anyway.</p>
<p>I have no idea if Magnum will continue without him. Musicians have come and gone over the years and that's par for the course for a band who have been around over half a century, but it's hard to imagine them without either Clarkin or Catley, who have been there throughout. Given that most of their songs were written either entirely or primarily by Clarkin, it's especially tough to imagine what new songs might sound like without him at the helm. However, if this is it for new material, I have to say that they've left a magnificent body of work for any new fan to discover. RIP, sir.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-9050489215785803422024-01-12T10:00:00.038-07:002024-02-17T14:53:14.657-07:00Metal Church - Congregation of Annihilation (2023)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: USA<br>
Style: Heavy/Power Metal<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 26 May 2023<br>
Sites: <a href="https://metalchurch.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/OfficialMetalChurch" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/MetalChurchOfficial/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Metal_Church/371" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metal Archives</a> | <a href="https://metalchurchofficial.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/metalchurchis1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Church" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia</a></p>
<p>Metal Church's previous studio album proper, <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2019/01/metal-church-damned-if-you-do-2018.html">Damned If You Do</a>, was the first album I reviewed at Apocalypse Later, on New Year's Day six years ago, and it was a great way to start, as a high point in their already stellar career. Since then, all we've seen from them is a strange compilation, <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2020/04/metal-church-from-vault-2020.html">From the Vault</a>, which was decent but, given how it was built, an inevitably patchwork affair. That's not because they've been sitting on their hands, though. There's a very good reason for a long period of inactivity and that's the untimely death of vocalist Mike Howe, in 2021. RIP, sir.</p>
<p>Howe was a powerful singer who fit the Metal Church style perfectly, even though he was always up against it because of whose boots he was filling. Original vocalist David Wayne was one of the most recognisable vocalists in metal at the time and nobody's ever quite managed to match him. Howe was able to sing in the same style without being forced into copying him and he brought an impressive new era to the band. Both of them are seriously missed. And, of course, that just puts any new singer into an even harder situation. Not only does he have to follow Wayne but he also has to follow Howe.</p>
<p>That new singer is Marc Lopes, who's also the current singer for Ross the Boss and Let Us Prey. on top of a four year stint with Meliah Rage. I'd found him a little much on the most recent album for Ross the Boss, <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2020/03/ross-boss-born-of-fire-2020.html">Born of Fire</a>, and Let Us Prey is a metalcore band, but he seems to be very much at home in Metal Church. He reminds of Howe a little more than Wayne, but he's obviously paid lots of attention to both while not trying to mimic either. He's clearly confident here, delivering some sustained power screams on the title track and <i>Pick a God and Prey</i> that underline why they hired him to begin with.</p>
<p>Coincidentally, those two are highlights, after a decent opener, <i>Another Judgement Day</i>, that never quite manages to grab me. <i>Congregation of Annihilation</i> has the first earworm chorus and the latter opens just like the band always should, with that patented combination of chug and power that they made their own long ago. It always boggles my mind how effortlessly they deliver power. When thrash bands slow down to do this, they sound like they're wussing out and I can't wait for them to speed back up. On a Metal Church song, it's the most powerful thing ever. The same applies to the mellow section on <i>Children of the Lie</i>. When other bands do this, they lose their power. When this band does it, they remain just as powerful as they always are.</p>
<p>Lopes is in playful mode on <i>Children of the Lie</i>, moving from one speaker to the other and back as he spits out lyrics. Some of my favourite tracks this time feature that playful mindset, especially a bonus track, <i>My Favorite Sin</i>, because the playfulness there isn't just Lopes, in probably his finest performance on this album, but also the guitars of Rick van Zandt and Kurdt Vanderhoof. This one gets seriously jaunty for a power metal song. Why this is a bonus track, I'm not sure, because the album runs just under fifty minutes with this and the excellent <i>Salvation</i>, which close things out a lot more effectively than <i>All That We Destroy</i>, which would technically be the closer otherwise.</p>
<p>I'm wary of calling out any other personal highlights, because this is a grower of an album, so the tracks I'd call out now may end up not being the ones that stay with me most. It's probably safe to place <i>Pick a God and Prey</i> above everything else, but what follows is likely to change, because this wasn't an immediate album for me, growing substantially on repeat listens. Many of the growers come midway and late in the album, as the more immediate material comes quickly, after the odd opener that still hasn't impressed itself on me.</p>
<p><i>Me the Nothing</i> and <i>Making Monsters</i> at the heart of the album are two strong growers, as is <i>All That We Destroy</i>. They didn't leap out on my first time through, but started to make their case on a second and felt strong by a third. In between is a something rather different, <i>Say a Prayer with 7 Bullets</i>, which is a bouncy creature indeed, sounding rather like Metal Church covering an AC/DC track that we've never heard before. I'm not sure why that works so well, but it does.</p>
<p>And so, after four times through, I think I need to move on to my other review for the day. This is a new Metal Church, with a new lead singer, but it's still fundamentally the old Metal Church with a recognisably old Metal Church sound. Lopes fits in well and I see no reason why the fans shouldn't adopt him immediately. As always, the power this band effortlessly generates is what makes them special and it's here just as much as it always has been. This may not be <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2019/01/metal-church-damned-if-you-do-2018.html">Damned If You Do</a>, let alone <i>The Dark</i>, but it's not a bad follow-up at all and it's a very good one indeed if we factor in what's happened between them.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-39420440769611072562024-01-11T14:00:00.001-07:002024-02-15T17:57:53.228-07:00Technology of Death - Skutočný nepriateľ (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Slovakia<br>
Style: Thrash Metal<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 11 Jan 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://technologyofdeath.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/technologyofdeath" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/technologyofdeaththrash/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@technologyofdeath" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>From something highly unexpected to something acutely familiar. I've never heard Technology of Death before, because this is their debut album, but I've heard this brand of thrash metal plenty of times. They hail from Slovakia, where they formed in 2019, and they don't do a lot that could be called original, but they do it very well indeed and it's one of the particular brands of metal that I can simply never have enough of: fast thrash with clean but rough vocals.</p>
<p>They start us out by giving us a false sense of security, because the intro, inevitably entitled <i>Intro</i>, is a minute of intricate acoustic guitar duet, and then the first track proper, <i>Nenávisť</i>, begins with the sort of repetitive chug that gives me sinking feelings. Clearly the guitarists here, Šuro and Andy, are highly capable, but I wondered about whether they'd speed up or keep this a chug fest. It's an entire minute before drummer Rasťo ups the pace and fortunately they mostly stay at the faster speed. When they slow down, it's more for reasons of dynamics than to try to make the pit churn.</p>
<p>The vocals come from bassist Tomáš, who probably thinks of himself as a bassist more than a lead vocalist, but he spits out lyrics in Slovak with admirable attitude and urgency. There's not a lot of polish on his voice but his rough rhythmic delivery works perfectly with this style of thrash, a fast but straightforward approach that's guaranteed to clean out your system, leaving you knackered but also rejuvenated. This often felt very German to me, with their ruthless efficiency and rough delivery, Kreator or Sodom generally speaking but with Destruction coming out too in the guitar solos. It doesn't shock to find out that the first track title, Nenávisť, translates to Hate.</p>
<p>I liked the first three tracks—<i>Nenávisť</i>, <i>Koniec</i> (<i>The End</i>) and <i>T.O.D.</i> (presumably just <i>Technology of Death</i>)—but <i>Depresia</i> felt like a step up with a gorgeous riff and a nice drop into a bass solo, with a just as nice shift back up into top gear again, and <i>Sabbath Bloody Sabbath</i> following it very well. That's not the cover that we expect it to be, by the way; it's an original song that merely adopts a thoroughly recognisable title for no apparent reason. These are the sort of blistering songs that make me wish I was three decades younger and more able to dive into the pit and lose myself for three and a half emphatic minutes.</p>
<p><i>Skutočný nepriateľ</i> is strong too, firmly reminding that this isn't all rooted in Teutonic thrash. The vocals never sound like John Connolly, but the music behind them often reminded me of Nuclear Assault, that punky crossover edge on top of technical thrash. Of course, as I type that, this track shifted firmly into Iron Maiden territory, so it's probably fair to say that there's no obvious single influence here. And that's a good thing. This may sound familiar generally rather than conjuring up some sort of Slovakian spin on thrash metal, but it's still accomplished stuff that feels like it's effortless but still meaningful for the four musicians who founded the band and still comprise its line-up today.</p>
<p>So this sounds great to me. If you're a thrash fan generally, you're going to dig this. I like it here in a studio recording and Technology of Death sound precisely like the sort of band I want to stumble into a club and hear on stage. Trust me, I'm not going to be propping up the bar while they're on. I think the telling questions are going to come down to how much you value originality and how well it's all going to stick in the brain. I'm a big fan of originality and I'm not finding any here, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing because the musicianship is excellent and the effect is pristine. So, it falls to how memorable the songs are and that's not something I can answer yet. Ask me in a few days.</p>
<p>Whether they do or not, it wouldn't shock me to find myself coming back to this. It's fast, powerful and uncompromising. It's also highly consistent without the songs blurring into each other. This is the sort of thing I often throw on to cleanse my palate after an underwhelming release or if I need to reset after an unexpected gem. This is the sort of album that steals my focus away from what's stuck in my brain and also gifts me what energy I need to shift onto something else. I'll also run it by my son too, because this is the sort of thing he loves to listen to while he's walking home from work. I think he's going to dig this one too.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-57622784227236779112024-01-11T10:00:00.002-07:002024-02-15T17:38:51.917-07:00Hexvessel - Polar Veil (2023)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Finland<br>
Style: Psychedelic Folk Rock/Black Metal<br>
Rating: 6/10<br>
Release Date: 22 Sep 2023<br>
Sites: <a href="https://hexvessel.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hexvessel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/hexvesselband" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Hexvessel/3540531232" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metal Archives</a> | <a href="https://www.hexvessel.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://hexvessel.tumblr.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tumblr</a> | <a href="https://www.twitter.com/hexvessel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/Hexvessel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>Well, here's something that I totally didn't expect. My last experience with Hexvessel was with an album called <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2020/05/hexvessel-kindred-2020.html">Kindred</a> in 2020, which became my Album of the Year, just nudging out <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2020/12/solstice-sia-2020.html">Solstice</a>. Both of those albums were folk music, though former took that into psychedelic rock but the latter into progressive rock. It's a haunting album and I've gone back to it often since, as well as checking out a few odd earlier tracks on YouTube. I haven't listened to earlier albums yet, perhaps with a little fear that they might not be up to <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2020/05/hexvessel-kindred-2020.html">Kindred</a>'s incredibly high standard.</p>
<p>Well, this follow-up, their sixth studio album, is hard to compare because it adopts their style into a completely different genre, namely black metal, and it's a fascinating shift that I'm still coming to terms with. The black metal is in guitars, now exclusively Mathew McNerney's domain because I don't see Jesse Heikkinen in the line-up, which are no longer acoustic psychedelic folk but a full on wall of sound bleakness. The change is from pastoral meadow or maybe sparse desert to nighttime blizzard, literally day to night. However, neither the vocals nor the drums follow suit, except for an anomalous couple of moments.</p>
<p>That means no blastbeats, except for <i>Eternal Meadow</i> and <i>Homeward Polar Spirit</i>, which are both as frantic as we expect from black metal drumming. Otherwise, Jukka Rämänen keeps a slow beat, which fits the bleakness but carries a little more inherent warmth. It fits reasonably well, because it means we pay attention to mood more than we might usually for black metal and there is some variation there. It also forces us to slow down while we listen, which helps us pay closer attention to the voice, which delivers lyrics rather than serving as another musical instrument.</p>
<p>And yes, that means no harsh vocals, except for the very end of <i>Older Than the Gods</i>, where there are hints at something harsh. This is less successful to my thinking, because these approaches are almost mutually exclusive. What made McNerney's vocals special on <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2020/05/hexvessel-kindred-2020.html">Kindred</a> was how much sheer nuance he was able to infuse into songs. Even when other instruments did something interesting, I was always listening to the words he was singing and feeling them in the way he felt them. It was a highly immersive storytelling technique and individual words carried powerful meaning. Here, he seems to do the same thing, but I just couldn't hear that nuance. I mostly couldn't hear words. The lyrics may be as meaningful but I couldn't back that up or give examples.</p>
<p>So the overall effect is very different. What preserves from the psychedelic folk sound is a strong sense of ritual. It was easy to fall into rhythms and flows and those remain powerful, if not of the same level of impact. McNerney's voice stands out best on <i>Crepuscular Creatures</i>, where all that nuance is still evident, but <i>A Cabin in Montana</i> is the track that easily carries the most impactful groove because the beat works perfectly with the voice. It's mostly on these two songs that I was able to catch lyrics. "Who speaks to the world?" "Freedom!"</p>
<p>Elsewhere, I like that overall effect as a sound but not how it plays out over the whole album. It's fascinating to hear what I still think of as psychedelic folk music drenched in feedback and with an entirely clean voice almost battling it out for dominance with an abrasive guitar. However, over a full album, this is generally too opaque, too distant and too dense, except in rare moments, like a snatch of something special at the very end of <i>Listen to the River</i>, as the wall of sound fades away and we hear what was behind that curtain.</p>
<p>Of course, I have to wonder if this is a one-off experiment or an indication of where Hexvessel are going. As the former, it's certainly interesting and, on occasion, it works rather well. Some tracks continue to grow on me, even if I have to pay serious attention to figure out why. <i>Ring</i> is one, with some excellent guitarwork underneath the wall of sound. As the latter, though, it seems unlikely to me that this approach will work long term. It's inherently limited and, as such it's missing a lot of what I find special in this band. By a lot, I mean far too much. I guess only time will tell.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-447414860651132042024-01-10T14:00:00.002-07:002024-02-14T21:21:04.011-07:00Chimeras - Silent Cries in the Stifling Haze (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Hong Kong<br>
Style: Atmospheric Doom Metal<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 6 Jan 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://chimeras.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/chimerashk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/chimeras.hkofficial/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Chimeras/3540449674" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metal Archives</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/chimerashk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> | <a href="https://www.weibo.com/p/1005056502103335" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Weibo</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV8clSbbdZBwkCVK5ichdkw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>I've only reviewed one album from Hong Kong thus far at Apocalypse Later, from a one-man post-black metal project called <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2020/11/voyage-in-solitude-through-mist-with.html">Voyage in Solitude</a>, so it's about time I reviewed another. This is a band, who put out a demo and a single in 2018 but are debuting at the full length here. They play doom metal with an aching atmospheric mood but in a way that isn't always as slow as we might expect. Also, both lead vocalists are female, one lead and one backing, but one sings clean and the other harsh, depending on what a particular song needs in a particular moment.</p>
<p>The lead singer is Fraise Tam and she sings entirely clean on <i>Devoidness</i>. This is elegant doom that builds patiently with quietness and spoken vocals until crunch arrives two minutes in, even then a crunch that's tempered by a soft piano melody over the top. The song is slow and Tam's vocals are haunting without moving far into gothic. There's melancholy in the keyboards and pleading in the guitars. This fits an established doom metal template well enough, but there are points where it's surprising because it speeds up further than we expect.</p>
<p><i>Hidden Label</i> adds the harsh voice, which I'm guessing belongs to guitarist Winnie Manka but I'm unsure isn't also Tam at points. Even on <i>Mind Deception</i>, where the two voices duet, it could be a couple of tracks from one singer combined. Another element that shows up on <i>Hidden Label</i> is an affinity for symphonic flourishes, presumably courtesy of Andy Shun Hung's keyboards. This never truly becomes symphonic metal, but it starts to hint in that direction here and moves closer still on <i>The Seven Doors - Barbe Bleue -</i>.</p>
<p>This is where the album coalesced for me, the contrasts between clean and harsh vocals and also between slower aching drive and symphonic flourishes, Tam reaching especially high and Manka staying low. There's a real epic feel to this one, even though it's no longer than <i>Devoidness</i> and a minute or two shorter than the next couple of songs, <i>Mind Deception</i> and <i>Order of Chaos</i>. There's a gorgeous clockwork section a minute and a half in and an excellent guitar solo too, proving that Chimeras aren't merely able to generate mood, they can be innovative with it too.</p>
<p><i>Mind Deception</i> may be their oldest song, given that it was their 2018 single and it also featured as half of their demo, which is interesting to me, because it's easily the slowest song here, kicking off that way right from the outset and not speeding up until after the halfway mark of eight and a half minutes. It drops into a peaceful midsection before that with spoken vocals—well, whispered vocals—and sparing but melodious keyboards, before picking up that emphasis and chugging on for a while. Eventually it slows back down and ends with some elegant keyboard work to take it all home. It's my favourite song here apart from <i>The Seven Doors - Barbe Bleue -</i>.</p>
<p>That leaves two, because it seemed logical for me to run through this one uncharacteristically in order because of how it changes, gradually introducing new elements as it goes. <i>Order of Chaos</i> starts out very much like the last couple of songs, but speeds up considerably a few minutes in to almost blister along for a while. This never becomes thrash metal or anything like that, but it's a speedy pace indeed for doom and it stays there for a surprising upbeat minute, leaping headlong into it from another slow keyboard section. This is the real epic of the album and it's a tasty one, with a fascinating midsection, again much of it courtesy of Andy Shun Hung.</p>
<p><i>Winged Psyche</i>, however, refuses to do almost anything that's gone before, not even approaching metal at any point. It's hardly an outro as a six minute plus song, but it's sung entirely clean and the guitars are either acoustic or quiet electric. From atmospheric doom metal, this shifts firmly into Wishbone Ash territory. That's not a bad thing, of course, and it's a good song, albeit more of a showcase for Tam than for the guitarists. It's just unexpected and what you feel about it may be in part due to whether you like being unexpected forty minutes into an album.</p>
<p>I liked this. It seems to me that Chimeras are still figuring out precisely what they want the sound of the band to be, possibly because these songs were likely written over quite a period of time. At least <i>Hidden </i>Label and <i>Mind Deception</i> are at least six years old, potentially up to eleven, as the band formed as far back as 2013. I don't know how often they play live, but I hope they write more frequently going forward, so we can hear an entirely new album that represents exactly who they are at that point in time.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-57643351067393840412024-01-10T10:00:00.002-07:002024-02-14T19:54:38.614-07:00Roz Vitalis - Quia Nesciunt Quid Faciunt (2023)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Russia<br>
Style: Progressive Rock<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 26 Oct 2023<br>
Sites: <a href="https://rozvitalis.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063632533952" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=1836" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Prog Archives</a> | <a href="https://vk.com/roz_vitalis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">VK</a></p>
<p>I like the title of this album, which is Latin for <i>Because They Don't Know What They're Doing</i>. Of course, they do, because Roz Vitalis have been around since 2001 and this is their eleventh studio album. I've seen the name often, because they were founded by my favourite Russian harpsichord player, Ivan Rozmainsky, who was a one man band until expanding in 2005 to a group setting. This is much more modern than his chamber prog band <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2023/10/compassionizer-tribute-to-george.html">Compassionizer</a>, who were named for an album by Roz Vitalis, not least through the use of a lot of electric instrumentation. However, there are a couple of songs here feturing his Compassionizer bandmates.</p>
<p>Like Compassionizer, this is entirely instrumental progressive rock, but it's guitar led just as much as it's keyboard led, courtesy of guitarist Vladimir Semenov. This is highly varied, from the opener, <i>Bait of Success</i>, which is fundamentally riff-based and the guitar is only one of many instruments working that riff, to <i>Premonition</i>, which rocks out with full on guitar solos. One in particular soars in patient fashion, reminding a little of the Alan Parsons Project. <i>Walking</i> starts out in the Mark Knopfler style, another song that often reaches for a heavier guitar. However, the need isn't just heavy here and often calls for a quieter acoustic guitar instead of an electric one.</p>
<p>While Rozmainsky does play harpischord here, his keyboard work is also varied, from a quiet piano interlude called <i>Fountain</i> (and a quiet piano outro called <i>Nocturne</i>) to wilder space rock sections on <i>Premonition</i> and more traditional electronica on <i>Wides</i>. He plays a metallophone on <i>Walking</i>, which is a xylophone with metal bars, just like a glockenspiel, in a section that comes right out of a harpsichord solo and segues straight into rock guitar. He's a sort of glue here: even when he's not performing on a lead instrument, he still controls where the song is going as a composer and links sections with his keyboards.</p>
<p>Where clarinet is also a lead instrument in Compassionizer, Roz Vitalis is happy to stick to guitars and keyboards. However, there are other instruments here, many of which get moments to shine on <i>Bait of Success</i>, which often feels like a round robin giving each of them a chance to play with the core riff. It's played on guitar and it's played on keyboards, of course, in a variety of different ways. However, it's also played by flute and also on trumpet, which adds something new to the sound. Flute and trumpet lead the way on <i>Daybreaking</i> for quite a while and it's delightful.</p>
<p>I've liked each of the Compassionizer releases I've tackled thus far, but it was clear from the very first track of the very first album that they have no interest in being like anyone else. That was an entirely new experience for me, introducing me to chamber prog, and it's fair to say that they're a prog fan's prog band. I don't want to call Roz Vitalis commercial, because they're still doing their own thing, but they are far more accessible. Most of this music flows, sometimes very organically in a Philip Glass-esque way on <i>Bait of Success</i>. Much of it is up tempo and highly engaging. Sure, a part of the musical audience isn't going to go for instrumental music or for prog in particular, but it's easy to imagine a random fan coming into this blind and skeptical and leaving a clear fan, especially with songs like <i>Daybreaking</i> and <i>Wides</i>.</p>
<p>It gets more challenging eight songs in with <i>The Man Whose Wings Were Cut Off</i>, which is many of the things the album was up until that point but also a lot more. It's happier to be jagged at points, playing with less obvious rhythms and flows. It features heavier drums and some heavier guitar, but also drops into very delicate ethnic instrumentation, like rubab and doira with a harpsichord backdrop, because this is one of those songs with the whole of Compassionizer on it, even though most members of Roz Vitalis are still here too, bass player Ruslan Kirillov excepted.</p>
<p><i>Premonition</i> is the epic of the album at just over nine minutes and it's a good track, but <i>The Man Whose Wings Were Cut Off</i> does more in under eight. It's far less accessible but it's also teasingly complex after listening to so many smoother, less challenging songs, and we almost pay attention all the more because of that. <i>Beautifulness</i> is a midway point, half challenging and half accessible, with obvious moments for Leonid Perevalov's bass clarinet, but it doesn't seem to have as much of a coherent identity. Moments strike me but I keep returning to <i>The Man Whose Wings Were Cut Off</i> instead.</p>
<p>While I've heard a lot of Rozmainsky's work in Compassionizer, this is my first experience of what I guess is his primary band, Roz Vitalis. I like this a lot, but it's easy music to like. It's a different side to Rozmainsky and he's often dominant, but Semenov is just as often dominant on guitar and I'm drawn to that. I believe Alexey Gorshkov is a guest here, but his trumpet stood out for me too, as a wonderful additional voice in this instrumental mix. It's been five years since the previous album from Roz Vitalis, presumably to give Rozmainsky time to build Compassionizer and they've never gone that long between albums before, so I'd guess we'll see another one sooner than 2029.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-26191178500856376292024-01-09T14:00:00.001-07:002024-02-12T23:57:26.852-07:00Panzerchrist - All Witches Shall Burn (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Denmark<br>
Style: Black/Death Metal<br>
Rating: 6/10<br>
Release Date: 5 Jan 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/panzerchristofficial/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://instagram.com/panzerchristofficial" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Panzerchrist/2864" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metal Archives</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerchrist" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia</a></p>
<p>Panzerchrist have been around for a long time, formed in 1993 and with a steady stream of studio albums, seven of them between 1996 and 2013. They play death metal that's blackened massively, so it's fair to expect plenty of both those genres from them. It took them ten years to knock out an eighth album, <i>Last of a Kind</i>, which I completely missed last July when I was swamped with events. That may be because of line-up issues, because there are only two long-standing members in the band nowadays.</p>
<p>That's Michael Enevoldsen, who founded Panzerchrist, but changed roles within it over time. His initial instrument was drums, which he played on their first two albums, and he also contributed keyboards. He isn't even on their third album, <i>Soul Collector</i>, though he wrote half the songs, but he switched to bass at that point, which he still plays to this day, keeping keyboards as a side role. Frederik O'Carroll is on his second stint with the band, but he's put in over a couple of decades in total. Everyone else joined in 2023, so were brand new on <i>Last of a Kind</i>.</p>
<p>That's Danny Bo Pedersen on guitar, Sonja Rosenlund Ahl on vocals and Danni Jelsgaard on drums, though he left the same year and has been replaced going forward by Ove Lungskov. I'm guessing that Pedersen and Ahl came as a double act, after their previous band, Arsenic Addict, split up in 2022. Both are strong here, with Ahl perhaps most obvious, not least because she also happens to be the first female lead singer Panzerchrist have had across a whole series of vocalists.</p>
<p>I haven't heard <i>Last of a Kind</i>, but I'm rather intrigued by it now, because this EP moves through a heck of a lot of territory. <i>Sabbath of the Rat</i> is what I expect from them, furious drumming over a set of chord progressions from the guitars and raw vocals leading the way. It's a good opener and it features an elegent slower section in the second half. This song is on <i>Last of a Kind</i>, though I'm not aware of whether this version is changed in any way, given that it isn't the EP's title track. In fact, there isn't one, so it feels like a deliberately varied presentation without focus being meant to be given to any one of the tracks.</p>
<p>That variety comes in with <i>Stone of the Graveless</i>, which starts out pure industrial then adds slow and heavy riffs over the top. This is doom metal at the front but industrial at the back, with Ahl a breathy death metal voice over the top of it all. It's unusual and, even before the band moved on to two further tracks that do different things, I started to think about Celtic Frost, not because it sounds like them but because, like they famously did, it feels like Panzerchrist are choosing to do exactly what they want to do, whether people expect it or not.</p>
<p><i>Stone for the Graveless</i> does speed up, with a fascinating mix of fast double bass pedals and slow beats, but it retains a somewhat different feel, especially as the industrial sound never entirely leaves. It takes over again early in the second half and, while it's hard to tell, I think it remains in place even when the furious drumming kicks in over the top. The guitar gets more interesting in the second half too. Eventually, with a minute or so left, it becomes more traditional for a while, but it never stays there. There's always something interesting coming.</p>
<p>And, as if by magic, <i>Satan is Among Us</i> is something else that's interesting. It opens almost like an avant-garde classical piece, dissonant strings and dancing flutes. The drums bring in the band and we're back off and running, with Jelsgaard's frantic feet and Ahl's raucous voice. Again, the tempo is never a set thing and it continues to evolve over its five minutes. <i>Stone for the Graveless</i> passed six and is really starting to grow on me. This one isn't as much, as the changes seem clumsier. I'm pretty sure there's a male voice joining in at points to duet but I'm not seeing a credit for one, so it may all be Ahl. She certainly has the range for it to be her throughout.</p>
<p><i>She's a Witch</i> wraps up the EP and it's the point at which the keyboards start to show themselves, with an atmospheric horror movie type intro. Ahl actually sings on this one, rather than relying on her death growl, and it starts to feel a little like a theatrical setup that someone like Alice Cooper might use as a live show intro, with a quirky female voice and a church organ. What surprises here is that the intro runs on past a minute, two minutes, three minutes and we suddenly realise that there's not much left, so this is what we're getting. It's the song.</p>
<p>So, there's a serious versatility here, well beyond what we might expect from a blackened death metal band. I'm suddenly intrigued by what might be on <i>Last of a Kind</i>, noting that the one song here that's also on there is the one and only traditional piece on offer. Maybe the other three are what the band created during their sessions for the album and realised weren't ever going to fit. Maybe the album sounds this thoroughly diverse. I may have to go back and find out. I'm going to go with a 6/10 here, but that's because it doesn't feel particularly coherent and because the first two songs seem to be in a different league to the second two.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-22068114053669111582024-01-09T10:00:00.005-07:002024-02-12T23:58:16.147-07:00Spidergawd - Spidergawd VII (2023)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Norway<br>
Style: Hard Rock<br>
Rating: 9/10<br>
Release Date: 10 Nov 2023<br>
Sites: <a href="https://spidergawdnorway.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/spidergawd" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/spidergawdofficial" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://spidergawd.no/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/spidergawd_band" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a></p>
<p>While they may have the least inventive album titles since Chicago, Spidergawd instead choose to pour invention into their music and this is another immense album from them. I gave <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2021/12/spidergawd-spidergawd-vi-2021.html">Spidergawd VI</a> a 9/10, so they were up against it to match that this time out. I've been away from writing music reviews for a couple of weeks as I nailed down a film zine with a particularly urgent deadline but I listened to this a lot over that time and it keeps getting better. It was always going to be at least an 8/10 but I'm enthused by it enough to warrant another 9/10.</p>
<p>I think it was the instrumental section late in the second track, <i>The Tower</i>, that's what started me onto the path to a 9/10. The opener, <i>Sands of Time</i>, is a strong song to kick things off, but it's not a particularly unusual one, with a sort of Magnum-esque effortlessness. It's very commercial with a clear arena rock influence, often with a Sammy Hagar era Van Halen vibe to it as well, but it's very tasty too. It's impeccably written and impeccably performed. It just doesn't carry much in the way of invention.</p>
<p>The invention I expect from Spidergawd arrives with a delightful carnival-style intro to <i>The Tower</i>, almost in a way that Dire Straits might do, though their opportunity for this one would have been <i>Tunnel of Love</i> and they went a different way. A minute in, it finds a proggier vibe but with riffing like Tank. This is an impeccable groove and it only gets better when it shifts into that instrumental section late in the song, which is gorgeous, starting a trend that continues unabated over the next few songs.</p>
<p><i>Dinosaur</i> is better again and it's a great example of a song that grows on repeat listens. It may be my favourite of the first seven tracks, though <i>Bored to Death</i> comes close. That has another neat galloping groove and another great instrumental section, this one longer too, though there are backing vocals floating over the top at points. These are sublime songs and the saxophone I tend to expect from Spidergawd nowadays shows up early on too. I had missed that, because it's not as prominent on this album until we reach the closer. I kept catching glimpses of it but it vanished in most instances as if it was never there to begin with and I was merely dreaming.</p>
<p>As we shift into the second half, <i>Your Heritage</i> and <i>Afterburner</i> continue in much the same vein, especially the latter. Every one of these is a good song while it's being sung, Per Borten I believe handling that perhaps exclusively here, as I only see Hallvard Gaardløs credited on bass. He does an excellent job and I don't want to cast any shade on his mike work, but every one of these songs also elevates when it evolves into an instrumental section. This band, with Borten again leading the way on lead guitar, find magnificent grooves as easily as falling off a log and grow them well enough that I found myself wondering what an instrumental Spidergawd album might sound like.</p>
<p>I believe <i>Your Heritage</i> is the first single this time out and that may make sense. It's close to being the shortest song here at just over four minutes—only <i>Afterburner</i> is shorter—and it's the one I'd call closest to their Thin Lizzy style, in the riffs and also in the solo. It's another good one, because there are no songs here that aren't good ones, at the very least, but it's a long way from the ones I'd call out as favourites.</p>
<p>Before I get to the closer, because that's absolutely my favourite, above the various gems I called out on the first half, I should mention <i>Anchor Song</i>, because it's the only other song here. There's a real weight to its intro, which is the heaviest moment on the album. The song proper calms and emulates the tone of much of the rest of the album, but there's also a slight alternative vibe to it as well. It also features another fantastic riff. But to that closer.</p>
<p>It's called <i>...And Nothing But the Truth</i> and it's the epic of the album, even though it's only a little longer than five minutes and not close to the six minutes of <i>The Tower</i>, itself hardly long when we start talking prog. This one ratchets everything up to eleven and unfolds as an absolute peach of a closer. It starts out with the saxophone of Rolf Martin Snustad and builds through acoustic chords reminiscent of Pink Floyd to a more emphatic version of everything we've heard thus far. Borten's more emphatic with his vocals and even more emphatic with his guitar, delivering my favourite of many favourite guitar solos. There are maybe six songs here, out of eight, that absolutely blister through their last minute or two, but this one has to end an album rather than just a song and it's easily up to the task.</p>
<p>So, yeah, this is a second 9/10 in a row from me for a Spidergawd album. They're less proggy than even I'm used to and I only came in with <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2019/02/spidergawd-spidergawd-v.html">Spidergawd V</a>. However, they're still absolutely on top of their game and this is highly recommended Norwegian hard rock indeed.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-64807592201898659542024-01-08T14:00:00.002-07:002024-01-26T00:31:23.876-07:00L'Âme Immortelle - Ungelebte Leben (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Austria<br>
Style: Darkwave/NDH<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 5 Jan 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/LAI.official" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/lameimmortelle_official/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27%C3%82me_Immortelle" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAmFUdazLSQwDqVN5QJC7cw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></p>
<p>Here's another band new to me who may not be to you, given that they've been around since 1996 and this is their fifteenth studio album. L'Âme Immortelle, which translates to Immortal Soul, are an electro-rock band from Vienna whose sound has apparently changed over time and back again. Initially, it seems, they played darkwave, but gradually got heavier and moved into NDH, a genre I still know far too little about, even though I do know <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2022/09/rammstein-zeit-2022.html">Rammstein</a> and have now heard <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2019/02/oomph-ritual-2019.html">Oomph!</a> and an array of others. However, later on in their career, they apparently started moving back again.</p>
<p>All I know is what I hear on this album, which feels less like what I know as darkwave and more like NDH lite. All the elements I expect from NDH are here, except the crunch doesn't have the impact that I'm used to. They have all the setup that Rammstein have, and some of it has edges, but every time Rammstein would kick in hard with a huge back end, L'Âme Immortelle don't. Part of that has to do with them fundamentally being only two people, Thomas Rainer and Sonja Kraushofer, both of them vocalists with the latter the lead singer and the former also playing keyboards, which I'm presuming are the only backdrop to the voices. The beats are presumably programmed on a drum machine.</p>
<p>Its absence of that crunch means that this often reminds me more of eighties new wave, especially as Kraushofer sings with a pop voice. Rainer provides some darkness when he opens his mouth on the opener, <i>Was Wäre, Wenn</i>, because he has a harsh edge to it. However, he shifts to new wave as well on <i>War of Silence</i>, which is lighter again. It might be NDH without the oomph, if you'll excuse that pun, but it's also darkwave without the dark. It wouldn't have surprised me to discover that I heard this track a few decades ago and simply forgot. The heavier songs here are the ones where Rainer sings more, such as the title track, which he kicks off and which plays out as a duet.</p>
<p>The only song where both Kraushofer and Rainer sound dark is <i>Nie genug</i>, even though it picks up quite a jaunty pop beat. He's certainly darker than she is on this one but she plays along more and the result is irresistible. The fact that it also features plenty of dynamic play too is just a bonus. It probably helps as well that it's bookended by two of the poppier songs in <i>Push</i> and <i>Nur für euch</i>. I should add that I like both of them, even though it's mostly the heavier songs that stood out to me on a first listen and even more so on repeats, with one notable exception in the closer that I'll talk about next.</p>
<p>Kraushofer moves into more of a musical theatre style for <i>Regret</i>, initially a ballad but one that's built a lot further than ballads tend to go. There's musical theatre throughout the album, but it's most overt in the final track, <i>Widerhall</i>, which means <i>Echo</i> and is as creepily atmospheric as what we heard from Till Lindemann in the piano version of <i>Mein Herz Brennt</i> and for many of the same reasons. She simply commands our attention, even though the musical backdrop unfolding behind her is notably subdued except for one brief section two thirds of the way in. It's easily my favourite piece here, all the way to its delightfully underplayed finalé.</p>
<p>If that suggests that there's a heck of a range here, then I'm doing my job right. Initially, I wanted to figure out if this was rock or pop, which seemed like it would depend on which mode the band is going here, heavier NDH or lighter darkwave. What I found was that there are songs that have to be called pop, whether <i>War of Silence</i>, which is old school new wave, or <i>Own Ways</i>, which feels like something off a David Lynch album. However, there are songs that are clearly rock and they're not just the heavier ones. And, of course, there's the musical theatre aspect, which isn't usually what I tend to appreciate but which is right up my alley here. This is dark and expressive musical theatre.</p>
<p>That genre-spanning depth kept me listening to this for a few days to try to figure out its secrets. I know I like it but I think I have to be German or Austrian to grok how appropriate this combination of genres feels and I'm not. However, I'm finding it fascinating so I'll continue to dive into NDH and electro-rock when I can.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-91262472585701270862024-01-08T10:00:00.002-07:002024-01-18T21:39:59.129-07:00Girlschool - WTFortyFive? (2023)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: UK<br>
Style: Hard and Heavy<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 28 Jul 2023<br>
Sites: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/GirlschoolOfficial/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/girlschoolreal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Girlschool/1506" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metal Archives</a> | <a href="https://girlschool.co.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Website</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/girlschool" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> | <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girlschool" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a>
<p>I was diving into CoKoCon prep when this album came out late last July and lost the opportunity to listen and review, but I wasn't going to lose out on doing that in my catch-up January. I remember Girlschool well from the eighties, though I wasn't around early enough to see them start. I was on board by <i>Running Wild</i> and had caught up with their earlier records by then too, courtesy of them being played on the <i>Friday Rock Show</i>. They were never the most innovative or virtuosic band out there but they never tried to be. Like their frequent tourmates and collaborators, Motörhead, the point was to just play rock and roll.</p>
<p>They do precisely that here on what appears to be only their thirteenth studio album, seven years after <i>Guilty as Sin</i> in 2015, and some of these songs sound just like classic Girlschool, merely with a 21st century production job that's agreeably heavy and clear without being entirely clean. There's always a level of grit in a Girlschool song, even one with the catchiest hook. There's a lot of grit on this album and there are plenty of great hooks, from the very outset on It Is What It Is, which is a strong opener.</p>
<p>The best aspect is exquisitely simple: Girlschool stick to the tried and true approach and turn out a bunch of songs that rock. That's it! You don't need a critic like me waxing lyrical about this aspect or that when that's all they care about doing. It's enough to point out that they do it very well and that, while this is decent on a first listen, it gets better with each repeat. There's nothing fancy in the songs that gradually leaps out for us to notice. It's just down and dirty rock 'n' roll played with a metal edge and an eye to oomph and melody.</p>
<p>However, the worst aspect is pretty much the same thing, not because taking this straightforward approach is a bad idea—it isn't—but because there is one song that feels a little different and it's so impressive that it ends up reminding us that there could have been more songs like this one but there aren't. That song is <i>Cold Dark Heart</i>, which has a real character to it. That's a wonderful riff to underpin everything, even though it's not particularly complex, but the melody, which is hardly complex either, got totally under my skin. It's easily the highlight of the album, but ironically, the rest wouldn't seem like they were missing something if it hadn't been included.</p>
<p><i>Cold Dark Heart</i> isn't a particularly deep song lyrically but it also sets a mood with its story, which few of the other songs do. Most of them are lyrically unadventurous, settling for routine concepts, like <i>It Is What It Is</i>, <i>It's a Mess</i> and <i>Up to No Good</i>. They're all about exactly what you think they're about and nothing more. I started to look ahead and think what <i>Into the Night</i>, <i>Are You Ready</i> and <i>Party</i> might be about. And yeah, they were.</p>
<p>The only song that might need a little introduction is a classic call out to their fans, <i>Barmy Army</i>, which was the name of the Girlschool fan club way back in the day and still describes the diehards. The only song that tries to dig a little deeper into a substantial subject is <i>Invisible Killer</i>, but it's a song about COVID that would have been spot on three years ago but now feels a little past its due date. It certainly doesn't add anything to the conversation in 2024 when there are probably plenty of important things still to be said.</p>
<p>And suddenly I'm feeling negative, which wasn't my intent. I seriously doubt that you're reading a review of a Girlschool album for innovative music or incisive lyrics. You want songs with huge riffs, catchy hooks and an overriding sense of fun and that's exactly what this album delivers. This is an impressive album indeed from that standpoint and while I can happily say that <i>Cold Dark Heart</i> is a little more metallic, <i>It's a Mess</i> is poppier and <i>Believing in You</i> goes for more of an AC/DC hard rock vibe, there isn't a duff track anywhere to be found.</p>
<p>It also ends well and in particularly touching fashion. Sure, the final track, a cover of Motörhead's <i>Born to Raise Hell</i>, featuring guest appearances from Biff Byford of Saxon, Duff McKagan of Guns n' Roses and Phil Campbell of, well, Motörhead, does nothing new with the song, but it has no need to. What's important is that the previous Girlschool album came out on 13th November 2015, which was a day after we lost Philthy Animal Taylor, a month before we lost Lemmy and a couple of years before we lost Fast Eddie Clarke. That's the entire classic line-up of Motörhead, who were closely connected to Girlschool for decades. I won't pretend I didn't shed a tear listening to this cover.</p>
<p>It's also a firm reminder that, while we all miss Motörhead, we've also missed Girlschool but they are still with us. That's still Kim McAuliffe on vocals and guitars and Denise Dufort on drums, the roles they've played since moment one in 1978. On bass is Tracey Lamb, on her third stint with the band, her first coming back in my day in 1987. The new fish is guitarist Jackie Chambers, who has almost a quarter of a century with the band under her belt, more if you count the years when she was writing with them. This is the old Girlschool, WTFortyFive years in, and they sound as good as ever. Cheers, you lot!</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805977789229569418.post-6418138063961841862024-01-05T14:00:00.002-07:002024-01-16T18:52:39.562-07:00Black Sky Giant - The Red Chariot (2024)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style>
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<p>Country: Argentina<br>
Style: Psychedelic Rock<br>
Rating: 7/10<br>
Release Date: 1 Jan 2024<br>
Sites: <a href="https://blackskygiant.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bandcamp</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/blackskygiant" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/black.sky.giant/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a></p>
<p>Black Sky Giant, one of my favourite South American psychedelic rock bands, tend to knock out an album every January, occasionally adding another later in the year, and here's their 2024 release, a year to the day since <a href="https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2023/01/black-sky-giant-primigenian-2023.html">Primigenian</a>. I say "their" but I still know nothing about the band, which is very possibly one highly talented multi-instrumentalist recording in his basement somewhere in Rosario, Argentina. Whoever's responsible, I'm a confirmed fan of theirs because this is the third emphatically reliable release in a row that I've heard from Black Sky Giant.</p>
<p>As I've mentioned in my previous reviews, they play a form of lively psychedelic rock that's always in motion. I don't think I've heard a single track by them where I feel like I'm sat in one place just looking at some sort of spectacle; I always feel like I'm being transported through that spectacle, usually on the surface of some alien planet. While there's always a space rock tag on the album's page on Bandcamp, the same caveat as ever applies. Sure, I'm out there somewhere when I hear this, but I'm firmly planted. I'm not travelling through the cosmos, I'm travelling through the cool desert geography of a very large rock in space. I have no idea which planet I'm on but it's not this one.</p>
<p>This is more of the same, but with a few more tweaks. One becomes obvious on the title track that opens up the album, because it does so like an eighties goth song perked up in the early industrial era, before it develops into another psychedelic journey. <i>A Timeless Oracle</i> goes back to this sound too, as if it's a Bauhaus song played at double speed. It's an odd feeling, as if we're looking at this landscape through frosted shower glass rather. It's definitely more mechanical than anything I've heard from the band before, but it never trumps the organic feel that's inherent throughout. It's there on <i>Submerged Towers</i> too, so it's definitely a slight direction shift.</p>
<p>I like all three of those tracks but I like <i>Path</i> better. This one begins with a heavy chord and moves on slowly. As I mentioned, Black Sky Giant's music is always about motion for me but it's rarely this slow. It's steady too, as if we're unafraid of anything that shows up in our vision and from any side, given that the guitar darts around like it's playing every inquisitive animal on this planet. Even at the three minute mark when it gets dangerous and we speed up and that fauna gets agitated, we still feel safe because we're armoured. Two and a half minutes later, it all calms down again, as if we've passed the danger area or perhaps simply made friends with whatever was in it.</p>
<p>Danger is a rare creature in Black Sky Giant's music. <i>Illuminated by Reflection</i> is more typical for them, because there's all the exploration without any of the danger, either apparent or ignored. It's a more joyous trip, even when it bulks up late on. And that's how the album works through its second half. If there's danger, it's weird western danger, which is wild and unexpected and harder to plan for, so we just maintain an element of awareness wherever we go but don't overly concern ourselves with what might be out there.</p>
<p>I've praised the bass a lot on previous Black Sky Giant albums and every instrument does its job on this one, but, especially as the album moves towards its end, the guitar comes to the fore in ways that deserve credit. Everything here is instrumental, so it could be said that the guitar is soloing all the time on every track, but it's often playing a part. On <i>Electrical Civilization</i>, it feels open, as if whatever Moebius-esque vehicle we're travelling in has an open top and we're standing up and expressing our pleasure to our surroundings. I almost suggested that a passenger stood up to play guitar but I've never felt like there are passengers in these Black Sky Giant vehicles; I'm always on my own, revelling in the isolation.</p>
<p>Even more than <i>Electrical Civilization</i>, <i>Augury</i> is the first track where the guitar solo feels as much like a guitar solo as it does some sort of living being or emotional outburst. It's very tasty indeed, even though it's overshadowed by the best guitar on the album, which is on the closer, <i>In the Sight of the Mountain God</i>. This is the epic of the album, which isn't unusual for a closer, but it's only six minutes long, which doesn't seem particularly epic. However, it does bring back some of the weird western flavour that is never far from Black Sky Giant's sound.</p>
<p>And so this is a third 7/10 in a row for Black Sky Giant at Apocalypse Later. They certainly work in a very specific niche but they've nailed it and I relish these return trips to wherever it is that they're taking us.</p>Hal C. F. Astellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807389103456317098noreply@blogger.com0