The Wildhearts - Renaissance Men (2019)

Country: UK
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 3 May 2019
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

The Wildhearts came along at the point in time that I was drifting away from music for a while, dissatisfied with an apparent sideways step away from the traditional evolution of rock and metal. Had I kept on reading Kerrang! and listening to what The Friday Rock Show became, I'd surely have become a fan of the Wildhearts, because they came from the world of the Quireboys and the Dogs d'Amour, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. Main man Ginger Wildheart was the second guitarist with the former right before their debut and early drummer Bam came from and went back to the latter.

Sadly, the Wildhearts' debut, Earth vs. The Wildhearts, came out in 1993 and I'd cancelled my Kerrang! subscription by then, so I missed readers voting it the best of the year. Having devoured this ninth album, a return to the studio after ten years of side projects for the line-up that recorded the band's second album, P.H.U.Q., in 1995, I feel the need to catch up with it a quarter of a century late.

I'm late to this one too, but not so much. It's on Metal Hammer's top twenty metal albums of the year, appropriately described as "the coolest, loudest and snottiest rock album of 2019." It also tops the top fifty rock albums of 2019 at their sister magazine, Classic Rock, knocking Rival Sons into second place. And I'm now on the side of the Wildhearts too, because this is a real stormer of an album, clearly a rock album but a surprisingly heavy one that manages to consistently kick our ass even as it sets up singalong hooks and melodies.

There are so many influences obvious that, without knowing those eight prior albums at all, it feels like they're both looking backwards and forwards in an album that's a statement of intent. All four band members have spent much time in this band, even if mostly in combinations of three of them, and they can be considered the definitive line-up. This is a new beginning at a point three decades into their career.

Knowing the Quireboys and the Dogs d'Amour, I expected some glam here and I wasn't wrong. However, it's less old school Faces and more punked up sleazy Hanoi Rocks but, as befits a band from Newcastle, I would have imagined the band in outfits like they're wearing on the album cover rather than anything with multi-coloured tassels. This is a dream pub band who are good enough to never have to play in a pub again if they don't want to.

They're a lot heavier than Hanoi Rocks here though. Dislocated kicks off the album like Motörhead with some industrial torture in Ginger's vocal approach in the verses, though it turns into a crooning pop punk song in the bridge. The punk here is mostly down to earth basic Ramones style, like in Emergency (Fentanyl Babylon), though there's a visceral political statement there too. However, Let 'em Go is a raucous singalong more in the style of the Dropkick Murphys, something rooted in folk that can't be belted out loudly enough at a pub gig to outdo the audience singing along with it.

Diagnosis is perhaps the oddest song for me. At heart, it's a heads down no nonsense old school Status Quo boogie and it really blisters. However, with an utterly different production job, it could be a Def Leppard song. There's a universality to some of these songs that suggests they could be redone in completely different styles and still work really well. The Renaissance Men is another hard hitting rocker but I could imagine it covered by a ska band like Madness or a new wave band like Bow Wow Wow. "Arriba!"

And there's certainly pop music to be found here, as heavy and in your face as the production makes it all seem. The chorus of Little Flower sounds like a sixties pop song that's become a favourite on the football terraces. Even the lyrics play to the common people. Diagnosis rails against impersonality in healthcare, referencing the Elephant Man for effect. My Kinda Movie wants "Real time, real love, real life." Kudos to Ginger for putting Takashi Miike and Ingmar Bergman in the same line too. My Side of the Bed suggests racism and sexism don't thrive in the streets but in the pages of The Daily Mail.

I loved this album, through and through. The Wildhearts don't sound remotely subtle but Ginger writes clever lyrics. Every song is in your face impactful and deceptively loose but they're all carefully constructed with solid riffs and catchy hooks. The band sound like they could play any size venue but the smaller it is, the more legendary it would feel. If they don't split up yet again, it shouldn't be Earth vs. The Wildhearts, it should be The Wildhearts Conquer the World.

Wilderun - Veil of Imagination (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Progressive Metal
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 1 Nov 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube |

Wilderun, a progressive metal band from Boston on their third album, ranked number one on two end of year lists that I know about: from Angry Metal Guy and Metal Storm. Clearly I should check them out before I run out of January to do it. I like what I hear though there's so much going on that it takes a few listens to come to terms with the sheer ambition of this band.

Rather similarly to the Nektar album I reviewed yesterday, this is a lengthy affair, running six minutes over an hour but only including eight songs, the longest being the bookends at fourteen and twelve minutes respectively. Also like Nektar, this feels a lot shorter than it is because the music is highly engaging and immersive, not to mention varied.

The poetic aspirations of the songwriters are clear in the song titles, all vivid products of imagination that need insight to understand. Where is Far from Where Dreams Unfurl? Who are the Sleeping Ambassadors of the Sun? What were the fire and the rose When the Fire and the Rose Were One? Just to set the poetic nature of the album in stone, it opens with Doug James reciting Wordsworth and ends with him taking on Eliot.

In between those spoken word bookends is pure ambition. Just attempting the sort of thing Wilderun does here takes balls and the reason they're topping end of year lists is because they do a damn fine job of it. The best bucket to throw them into is progressive metal, but that isn't close to all of it. The Unimaginable Zero Summer moves from poetry into pastoral prog folk with an orchestral swell a few minutes in. Then it hits high gear just like that and we're firmly in symphonic metal territory, with the vocals combining an era or three of Therion, mixing lead death growls with a choral backing.

Clearly what Wilderun do best is dynamics, exploring peaks and troughs like this is classical music, but with rock instrumentation. Evan Anderson Berry is the lead vocalist and his range just within this opening song runs from death growls to a quiet introspective section to piano accompaniment which sounds like a musical number, albeit not a soporific Disney tune that would play to the lowest common denominator and land an Oscar in the process.

This opener is a fantastic song that never loses our interest, even at over fourteen minutes. O Resolution!, at a mere six, is even better still, with a confrontational choral section and orchestrations that underpin and elevate the riffs wonderfully. It finds time for dynamics too, what could easily be a cantata shifting into quiet singer/songwriter territory then adding heavy guitars without any apparent notion that these changes are unusual.

And so we go. A first time through Veil of Imagination will blur all these songs together, not because they sound the same but because they contain so much variety that it's easier to see them as many parts than a single song. Also, many of these songs end in a way that resembles the start of the next more than some of its own parts, so it's easy to hear this as one diverse piece of an hour plus than eight individual songs. All this starts to shift into form with each further time through.

There's so much going on here that I think I need another half dozen listens just to figure out what my own favourites are. Sleeping Ambassadors of the Sun is darker and more cinematic. Far from Where Dreams Unfurl is symphonic folk. The Tyranny of Imagination is a swaggering power metal song, heavier because of faster riffs and more death growls, but simultaneously lighter in orchestration and with some vocals swirling around in middle eastern style. There's even a classical section in the middle of When the Fire and the Rose Were One.

Wilderun hail from Boston and have only been around for less than a decade, conceived in 2008 but not properly formed until 2012. Veil of Imagination is their third album, following Olden Tales & Deathly Trails in 2012 and Sleep at the Edge of the Earth in 2015. Clearly I should check both of them out as soon as is humanly possible, because this is fantastic stuff.

Algebra - Pulse? (2019)

Country: Switzerland
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Sep 2019
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | YouTube

Most of the thrash bands I reviewed in 2019 were on the punkier side of the genre, with high energy levels and plenty of vicious speed. Algebra, on the other hand, are very much on the technical side. That means that while they do get fast on occasion, they're far more interested in playing at mid-pace and getting intricate with the riffs. In other words, there's a lot less of the usual Slayer influence and a lot more Watchtower and Mekong Delta.

That said, Algebra don't want to get entirely pigeonholed along with those bands who brought prog rock, classical or even jazz influences into thrash metal. Chaos Edy, which is a fantastic name, does that as a guitarist, with carefully constructed mathematical riffs, tight time changes and classical-infused solos, but his vocals are a lot cruder, reminiscent instead of the crossover bands that brought punk into thrash. It's an interesting mix and it makes the Sepultura cover that ends the album more understandable.

While Edy is the most obvious member of the band, a front man who plays the lead guitar and sings, I have to call out the others here too. Phil Void is a second guitarist who has to be just as tight as Edy and their interaction is seamless. That goes double for Tony Sharp on the drums, but he's easily up to that challenge. And I was very happy to hear how prominent the bass is on this album. I caught neat things that Mat Jass did on the opening track, Ego Destroyed, but he shines on the next one, Inner Constraints.

I love technical thrash, Sieges Even being a particular favourite, so I took to this like a duck to water. I loved the intros, with the mix of crunch and elegance on Manipulated Soul standing out. I loved the builds, so many riffs that they're impossible to count. I'd add early Death Angel to the influence list here, because I could easily see Algebra exploring these sorts of riffs and changes on ten minute instrumentals. There are points where I think Edy forgets to sing because he's so caught up in the music the band are making.

And, without trying to be rude, that's OK with me. Edy's vocals are solid but I'm not convinced that it's the best choice for the backing that he and his colleagues provide. I enjoyed the vocals while they were there, but had no feeling of loss when they went away and, when they lasted for a while, I started to wonder when they would stop again. If this came packaged with an extra disc that featured the same album sans vocals, that's the version I'd be gravitating towards.

Just listen to the instrumental section in Concrete Jungle and tell me that you're happy when it turns back into a regular song. Even better, dive into the eight minute title track, which does feature vocals and try to remember it as anything but an instrumental. It's a gem of a track, which spends much of its time as a melodic twin guitar workout, with a fantastic bass that is exploratory early on, prowling later and teasing later still, in front of a notable impressive set of frantic drumming changes.

Algebra hail from Switzerland and have been around since 2008, Pulse? being their third studio album thus far. It's been five years since the previous one though, Feed the Ego, and I hope that they don't wait five more to give us another. It's strong stuff with intracacies that deepen with each listen, even if it sometimes sounds oddly like a welcome throwback to a time when bands were looking forward.

Earth - Full Upon Her Burning Lips (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 May 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

The line-up of Earth, famously named for the original name of Black Sabbath, has varied considerably over the years, reaching five people on occasion but never, until now, dropping down to a duo. That's Dylan Carlson, the founder of the band and consistent leader throughout, with Adrienne Davis on drums, as she's been since the band reformed in 2001. Like any drone band, they're an acquired taste but they're more accessible than most and I've become fond of 2005's Hex and its follow-up, The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull.

This 2019 album, their ninth, doesn't grab me as much, but it's an enjoyable album for those into this sort of thing, with Carlson's guitar taking off on slow flights of fantasy and Davis maintaining a surprisingly light grounding underneath it on her drums. It must have been a constant temptation for her to cut loose and speed up the tempo but she steadfastly remains restrained all the way through.

Without any apparent commercial concerns, Earth almost deliberately make it hard for the uninitiated to get a grip on this album by kicking it off with a twelve minute track, Datura's Crimson Veils, almost like a challenge. You don't like this? Then you won't like the album. Make it through intact and there's another fifty minutes for you to enjoy.

The problem is that, while this track is capable enough, it doesn't do what it needs to do in my opinion to justify that track length. Sure, Davis does some interesting things with her cymbals but it quickly feels long and that isn't a good feeling to have at the start of an album. It's the third track, Cats on the Briar, where accessible nuances show up and this sounds like the Earth I enjoyed in the mid-eighties, albeit in even more stripped down form.

It's here that the album gets really interesting. The Colour of Poison mixes it up even more, almost playfully pausing guitar notes and runs for a minute or so until it finds a riff it likes and then runs with that until it wants to go back to playful pauses. Descending Belladonna highlights that Carlson isn't only playing guitar here; he's also providing bass, which is welcome for its presence at last. Davis brings in some interesting sounds, surely a combination of woodblocks and bells, and there's a glorious echoing sound I adore that really elevates the song.

That's three winners in a row, all running five minutes plus. The fantastic Earth that I remember is certainly here and, As always, the best way to let them in is to switch out the lights, turn up the volume and let this music take you somewhere, whether you're under the influence of illegal narcotics or not. I like the groove to be found in the eleven minute She Rides an Air of Malevolence but, if you don't find a trance state quick enough, it's not going to seem to end.

My other favourite here is Maiden's Catafalque, which at under three minutes is insanely short for Earth. Short it may be but it's an acutely inquisitive piece, a feel that's to be found elsewhere on this album but not in such a concentrated form. Davis has teetered on the edge of jazz throughout but she crosses the line here, I think, albeit in as restrained a fashion as she's been all the way through.

As perhaps Earth's most stripped down album thus far, this is certainly not for the uninitiated. Start out with Hex and work forward in time. If you're still listening by this point, then you're a fan and you're more than able to appreciate the slow and minimalistic sound with all its various nuances. If you're already a fan, this will still seem minimalistic to you, but it'll sound good to start with and still grow on you with every listen.

Revival Black - Step in Line (2019)

Country: UK
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 11 Oct 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

I've tried to keep up with the New Wave of Classic Rock here at Apocalypse Later in 2019 and, to see if I did OK, I checked out how the Facebook group of that name voted at the end of the year. Well, I reviewed four out of the top ten, as voted for by members, which seems pretty good, but only one more from the top twenty, as voted for by admins, which doesn't, especially given that that top twenty also contains another three albums as a bonus.

Only four albums made both lists and the most successful band were Germany's New Roses, members placing them fourth and admins second. I've already taken a look at Nothing But Wild, so I'll take a stab at the next most successful band on the list. That's Liverpool's Revival Black, whose debut album ranked sixth by the members and first by the admins. I should add that the members put the Kris Barras Band top of the list with Light It Up and also included my highest rated NWoCR album last year, Feral Roots by the Rival Sons, which was my Album of the Month for February.

While they play in a completely different style, Revival Black are a similar band to Decimator, the Brazilian thrash outfit I reviewed yesterday. Neither is particularly original or subtle, but they don't try to be. What they plan to do is kick our ass and keep doing it until their time is up and I'd say that they're both doing a fantastic job of it. I'd love to see both bands on stage because it feels like that's where they would thrive most.

The way Revival Black kick our ass is with an incessant, dense sound that's made all the more dense by a vicious slide guitar. I read that they used to be called Black Cat Bones, perhaps as an homage to the late sixties band of that name which featured Paul Kossoff and Simon Kirke, both later of Free. I hear plenty of that blues rock sound here, though this performs it on speed. It's kind of like a meeting of the soulful power of Bad Company, the sleazy eighties rock of Whitesnake and the blistering guitars of southern rock.

Many will focus on singer Dan Byrne, fairly because he has a real stormer of a voice. I hear plenty of Paul Rodgers in his voice, with David Coverdale in there a lot too and maybe even some W. Axl Rose. If I'm reading the history properly, he wasn't part of Black Cat Bones, joining the band as they became Revival Black. I don't know where they found him, but they should be really happy that they did.

All that said, it's hard to not see the guitarists as the band leaders. I'm not sure if Alan Rimmer is the only lead guitarist or if Adam Kerbache joins him in that role, but whoever unleashed the blistering solos on every track here is worth their weight in gold. Give You the World is a showcase, with those guitars starting and ending like Stevie Ray Vaughan and turning into Dave Hlubek of Molly Hatchet three minutes in. It's a guitarist rather than Byrne who kicks the album off too, just like they're Slash and this will be Revival Black's Appetite for Destruction.

There isn't a bad song anywhere to be found and I didn't find an average one either. Everything is either worthy single material or destined to become a live favourite. Midnight Oil follows the bluesy Whitesnake approach but amps it up. All I Wanna Do is like the drunken bastard son of Bad Company's Feel Like Makin' Love. No Secrets, No Lies and Silverline both kick off like they might have been Georgia Satellites songs and anyone who can rival that band in sheer energy is surely going to slay live.

I'd throw out my favourite tracks for posterity but I may elevate others on my next listen. I don't know enough yet to say whether it's really the best New Wave of Classic Rock album of 2019 but it has to be in fair competition for that title. It's certainly the hardest rocking NWoCR I've heard so far, which is a title worth fighting for in its own right.

This album is great on a first listen and it gets even better when we're familiar with it. I might wake up tomorrow with something from Step in Line playing in my head, but it might not be the vocals; it might be the bass of Jamie Hayward that brings us into So Alive or the guitar solo from Hold Me Down that sounds just like Rimmer or Kerbache is bending a lightning bolt.

And, if you're reading back home in Blighty, Revival Black are currently on tour around the UK with Scarlet Rebels in support. That's two of only four bands to make both the members and admins lists at the New Wave of Classic Rock Facebook group. It sounds like a gimme to me.

Diagonal - Arc (2019)

Country: UK
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 6 Sep 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Prog Archives

Before the internet, it was a lot harder to hear any sort of music that was deemed non-mainstream. What often happened was that kids would rifle through their elder sibling's record collection, run out of bands they knew and find albums like this. This is the epitome of something that a fourteen year old kid would find that way, vaguely enjoy without really grasping it, return it and go back to a safety zone band, then wonder twenty years on what that one album was that they didn't bother to tape.

It kicks off with 9-Green, which would be insane for that fourteen year old because it has so much going on. It's built on funky tribal rhythms, for a start, over which a David Bowie-esque voice holds court. However, the synths that show up don't do what we expect, being both melodic and dissonant, and the backing vocals feel unusual too, providing sounds rather than words. A jagged guitar solos over a swirling organ. What's going on here?

That fourteen year old will leave with the impression that every member of a large band was tasked to figure out something interesting to do with their respective instruments, maybe more than one interesting thing, so that some engineer could layer it all together to create a piece of art as much as a piece of music. And they'll forget it until it starts playing in their head twenty years later and they'll take a decade to track it back down again.

What else will throw that fourteen year old is that Diagonal don't define a sound in that first track that they then explore a little over the remaining seven. Stars Below is as soft as 9-Green is hard, an ephemeral sixties folk ditty with gentle vocal harmonies and a teasing saxophone that returns for a long solo during the eight minute long organ-driven Citadel. Yeah, this is a difficult place for a fourteen year old to start a journey into prog rock.

By the way, if you're fourteen years old and you love this anyway, then I'm in awe of your taste and I'll happily buy your first album when you make it.

Fortunately, I'm not fourteen any more and I'm not new to prog rock. A song like 9-Green remains original and intriguing, but isn't at all challenging now. A song like Citadel is a sheer delight and Nicholas Whittaker's sax is impeccable. Moving from that into The Spectrum Explodes is a wild exercise in contrast, starting out post-punk in a sort of Joy Division vein and then escalating into a blistering guitar solo in the same way that Fleetwood Mac did with The Chain. Oh, and it ends in a krautrock jam.

Everything here seems to be about tone and mood. Warning Flare moves from a gentle tone to that dense blistering guitar and back, amidst a whole host of exquisite sounds. There are maybe half a dozen different moments here where I almost squeed at individual notes Alex Crispin conjures up on the organ. I tend to do that more with solos or the unexpected results of layering sounds but hey, everything's built on notes and these are gorgeous notes.

That there's a lot of jazz on this prog album is obvious early, but Arc has a wandering nature that's all jazz. That leads into The Vital, which is all ambient, a synth cloud surrounding a light bass motif, that sax returning to flit around like a bird, lighter than air. And so to Celestia, which shifts us back to the folky feel of Stars Below, one part Simon & Garfunkel, three parts Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.

I found myself in the odd position of liking most of the songs here but not feeling that they made for a particularly coherent album, especially when it happens to be the band's first in seven years. Musically, it's great but I'm not a huge fan of the vocals, which are likeable and delivered well but fit so well on this set of varied tracks because they're so close to generic.

I would like to track down Diagonal's previous two albums, as I've read that they play more in the traditional prog rock arena of the seventies, with a Canterbury feel to them. That's here but not as overtly as I'd expected.

Smoulder - Times of Obscene Evil and Wild Daring (2019)

Country: Canada
Style: Epic Doom Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 26 Apr 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives

The problem with looking at published best of 2019 lists to see what I might have missed from last year is that almost everyone concentrates on American bands and ignores anything from outside those borders. That doesn't mean the albums they include aren't worthy: looking at them has highlighted bands to me like Blood Incantation, Baroness and Lingua Ignota, but it does mean that they're missing a whole heck of a lot of fantastic stuff from other places.

Fortunately, there are other lists. The guys over at MetalSucks seem to love Smoulder, who come from Toronto on the other side of one of those borders. I looked them up and found that lead vocalist Sarah Kitteringham also reviews metal, at Banger TV, and they have a special focus on international music as I do here. So hey, all credit to her and them for that and on to her band!

Smoulder play epic doom metal and this is their debut album, after a demo in 2018. Since this, they've also put out an EP which I ought to take a look at too, that features two new songs, a cover of Manilla Road's Cage of Mirrors and the three tracks from that demo. They aren't the most original band I've ever heard and they're more focused on passion than finesse, but wow, they frickin' rock! In a perfect world, they'd have been founded a decade earlier so that they could have supported Dio on tour.

The Michael Whelan cover and overblown title are more than a hint at what a wary traveller might find inside. This is unashamed fantasy, with songs set in the worlds of Michael Moorcock, George R. R. Martin and, best of all, the wonderful C. L. Moore. Yes indeed, there's a Jirel of Joiry song here! This is all conjured up in a style that will work very nicely for fans of Manilla Road, Cirith Ungol and Brocas Helm, not to forget Manowar, though this is a lot less cheesy and a lot more chunky, in large part because of an excellent mix job by Arthur Rizk.

Make no mistake, Smoulder have a huge sound anyway, with pounding drums and earthshattering riffs and real dedication in the vocals. This is old school metal to play as loud as it gets. I'd love to see this band live, partly to bury myself in their sound but also partly to if anyone has the balls to sit at the bar and shrug them off. I hope not. What Rizk does is make absolutely sure that they still sound huge on record and that's a whole other thing.

They simply storm into action here, with that Moorcock song, which is power incarnate. It's Ilian of Garathorm and it tells of the Eternal Champion in an appropriately mythic fashion. There's a universe where villagers recount stories, over flagons of ale, of an epic band who rode into town, destroyed with this one single song and promptly vanished into the mist, never to be seen again.

The Sword Woman slows things down a little, focusing a little more on doom while never losing the epic. Then Bastard Steel ramps it up faster, with a galloping drumbeat from Kevin Hester that makes us believe we're inside the world's largest mosh pit, which shimmers and becomes a battlefield. This is more epic and less doom, meaning that we've had all the combinations needed in the first three songs, with three more to come.

What follows doesn't vary that much, but it continues to rock, hard and in highly consistent fashion. There's a storm that heralds the Voyage of the Sunchaser, with a bass run from Adam Blake to set it on its way. And, after Shadowy Sisterhood, which is decent but unremarkable in this company, the album wraps up with a nine minute epic, Black God's Kiss, which tries hard but doesn't quite gel for me. It sounds good but it also feels long and it doesn't grab me the way that the earlier songs did, at least until it ramps up its tempo seven minutes in.

Given that I loved everything about the first half and at least enjoyed the second half, even if it felt a little lesser, this would be an easy 7/10 for me. However, rather ironically for something focused so strongly on fantasy, I'm going to give it another point for feeling so damn real. It's partly the production and partly the fact that this band obviously adores what they do and everyone involved pours themselves into this material. Horns ablaze!

Spirit Adrift - Divided by Darkness (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 10 May 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter

Spirit Adrift's third album made half a dozen of the best of 2019 lists I'm looking at, so the magic of statistics tells us that it's tied for the sixth best of last year. If that isn't enough of a reason for me to pay attention, I'll add that they're based right here in Phoenix, so I need to keep my eyes open for local gigs because I'd really like to see them live. I really like this sound, even if it's not remotely what I expected coming in.

When I've seen the name before, it's always come with a doom metal tag and I just don't buy that, even though there's certainly plenty of doom within the core of what Nate Garrett and his band do. This is heavy metal, too fast and too varied, in mood, style and tempo to simply count as doom. It starts out like Diamond Head, for a start, with a set of riffs and solos surrounding a memorably pounding drum rhythm. Also like Diamond Head, it's very eager to explore new ground.

It gets heavier, with an emphatic doom song in the title track, but it never loses its progressive edge, which takes over completely towards the end. For all that the vocals remind of Ozzy, it never quite feels like a Sabbath song and, by the time Angel & Abyss ends, it's obvious that Garrett's influences focus in as much on Ozzy solo as Ozzy in Sabbath. Four minutes in, it seems like the guitarist is auditioning to take over from Randy Rhoads in Blizzard of Ozz. There's even a patented Ozzy laugh to wrap things up.

There are wilder mixes here too. Born into Fire is another heavy song but it isn't doom. It's more like it was constructed from mosh parts borrowed from thrash songs, but without any of the faster material around it. There's also a contemporary feel in that the vocal emphases are rather like what I might expect from alternative rock or even nu metal, but applied to a traditional heavy metal style. It gets progressive late on too, so there are a heck of a lot of genres wrapped up in one song.

There's a lot running through the rest of the album too. Tortured by Time is a grower that slipped by me the first couple of times. It's nowhere near as catchy as Hear Her, which is another more overt, if up tempo doom song, but it's mature songwriting that weaves textures and, when it finally grabs our attention, it's impressive stuff. The album wraps with a prog instrumental, The Way of Return, which starts heavy but finds a Dave Gilmour solo sound, shifts to a very different but just as Floydian mellow guitar. Then it's a Tangerine Dream-esque synth section, before sounds combine to take us home.

For a band that really sound like a band, I'm surprised to find that it was one man for the longest time. He's Nate Garrett and he handles vocals, bass and guitar on this album, with Marcus Bryant on drums and Preston Bryant on keyboards (credited as synth and Wurlitzer). Kayla Dixon of Witch Mountain guests on Living Light, though not prominently. However, the first Spirit Adrift album, Chained to Oblivion, released only four years ago, appears to have featured Garrett on absolutely everything.

I haven't heard that yet but the word that springs out here is "mature". It's thoughtful and consistently interesting, moving from style to style in ways that are often surprising but still make agreeable sense. It's not the sort of thing that happens on debut albums but demonstrates that, by album three, the band is successfully growing and exploring their sound. That's a good thing.

Inculter - Fatal Visions (2019)

Country: Norway
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Apr 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives

A thrash group I belong to here on Facebook saw a lot of members post their top ten thrash albums of 2019 and Inculter often featured in those lists. I think the first one I saw also included the Dust Bolt and Exumer albums that I thought were excellent, so I was happy to take a listen to this one too. I have to say that I'm even happier to say that it's also excellent, an urgent and visceral album from Norway that reminded me a lot of early Slayer.

It feels old school immediately. The instruments speed along as if this is a race and there will be a prize for getting there first. The vocals are in a proto-extreme style from the early to mid eighties that hints at what death growls would become but just seems gruff, like Tom G. Warrior used to do on early Celtic Frost albums. The tempo varies greatly as well, with the speed metal sections giving way to slower, heavier ones.

Open the Tombs and Impending Doom are a great way to kick this off, like an early Slayer crossed with Possessed and maybe some Destruction too. Shepherd of Evil slows things down for a powerful intro before the guitars speed off to try to outrun the drums, like Sodom did so often early on. The riffs are excellent but the pace is just as important. This is thrash to clean you out and reboot your system, the sort I like the most. Hurl yourself into the pit and come out a different person half an hour later.

I enjoyed Fatal Visions from the outset, my biggest problem being how long it isn't. 34 minutes isn't short enough to complain and, in fact, it's about right for the era it's conjuring up, but it didn't seem like it was done as the final notes of Through Relic Gates vanish into the ether and I certainly wasn't ready for it to end. It was Endtime Winds that really got me to stand up and pay attention though.

For much of its running time, it's another frantic sprint with the vocals as reminiscent of Cal from Discharge as anyone else, the band following suit to make this a metal sounding punk song. However, it starts off slow and heavy, with a fantastic riff that reminds of Toranaga. It's gone by the time things speed up a minute and a half in, returning for the ending, but it remains in the brain throughout and it wouldn't shock me if I wake up with it playing in my head for the next couple of weeks.

Nothing else here matches Endtime Winds, but the album thrashes on unabated with another four songs that continue with the mindset of the first couple. Everything here is strong stuff, but the second half of the album does blur together because there's nothing different enough to stand out the way that Endtime Winds or even Shepherd of Evil do until the intro to Through Relic Gates, which is another heavy and slow churn with a decent riff.

I do like variety, but consistency isn't a bad thing when it's to knock out an impactful song and then follow it with a string of others that do much of the same. The core of the band is the dual guitarists, Remi and Lasse Udjus, who sprint along as if they're auditioning for a Slayer tribute band with no material newer than Reign in Blood. Daniel Tveit's drums fit that too, right down to the drum intro to Towards the Unknown. Remi also handles vocals and he deepens the band's sound with hints at punk and death. The bass of Cato Bakke is prominent in the mix and again adds a hint towards death.

I like this a lot. It's not remotely original and it sticks stubbornly to a particular sound that it wants to emulate. However, Inculter do that rather well. That means that I have another prior album to catch up on, as this is the band's second, following Persisting Devolution, which was released back in 2015.

Waste of Space Orchestra - Syntheosis (2019)

Country: Finland
Style: Space Rock/Doom Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date:
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives

Variety in source location as much as genre is one of my core principles at Apocalypse Later but trying to find an album that did really well with the critics last year that isn't from an American band can be troublesome. This album, however, made a couple of top lists of 2019 and topped one, a rather thoughtful and interesting list from Pop Matters. And, as it's an odd album from Finland, that's why I'm reviewing it today.

It's odd in a few different ways, beginning with the band itself, which is a unique creation. For a start, it's not one band but two, who merged when the Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands commissioned them to create and perform a ritual piece of music there in 2018. One is Oranssi Pazuzu, a psychedelic black metal band from Tampere and Seinäjoki with four albums to their name. The other is Dark Buddha Rising, a drone/sludge metal band from Laitila who have six albums behind them. Uniquely, the Waste of Space Orchestra includes every member of both bands, so two drummers, two bassists, three guitarists, etc.

I haven't heard either of those bands before, so can't extract their sounds from this musical merger, but I do like what I hear while acknowledging that it really isn't going to be for everyone. It's tough to describe the result, but it's an intriguing mix of space rock, drone doom and performance art. It plays consistently as a conceptual piece but brings to mind a versatile set of influences. Journey to the Center of Mass feels like krautrock for quite a while, a little like early Tangerine Dream, but Wake Up the Possessor is a heavy Hawkwind jam, while Infinite Gate Opening is an overtly ritual section of a piece that was designed with ritual in mind.

The album's page at Svart Records explains that it involves three beings and their quest for knowledge. The Shaman sees oppressing visions of the future. The Seeker searches for truth in unknown dimensions. The Possessor corrupts the others, manipulating them for his own purposes. They conjure up a portal during a ceremony, which sucks them into an alien dimension, "populated by brain-mutilating colour storms and ego-diminishing audio violence". Finding equilibrium, all three minds are melted into one collective consciousness.

You know, that sort of thing. What's amazing is that wild visions like that tend to sound wild on paper but the performance turns out to be a let down. How can anyone live up to that? Well, Waste of Space Orchestra do precisely that. While you wouldn't conjure up every detail of the story from a listen or three, the music does mirror it rather closely. It's clearly not just a ritual but a journey too and "brain-mutilating colour storms" is as good a description of a piece of music like Vacuum Head as any I can come up with. You don't have to be a synaesthete.

For all the black metal and sludge roots of the bands involved, this should play best to Hawkwind fans as the closest thing I can conjure up to compare it with is their double live Space Ritual album from 1973, not just because the title would be appropriate here too but because it features a sound both as dense and as trippy, because its songs were interspersed with electronica and spoken-word sections (some written by cult author Michael Moorcock) and because it was an audio-visual experience. This, of course, is heavier.

What impressed me from the outset was the use of melody. Void Monolith is a crushingly heavy intro, all those duplicated instruments layering to deepen the effect. However, there's a delicate melody woven through the whole song. The Shamanic Vision doubles down on that deep heavy sound, with two drummers going full tilt tribal and the voice of the Shaman howling into the void. It eventually finds a black metal blitzkrieg but there's a melodic cloud waving around everything. However heavy this gets, and it gets very heavy, there's always something melodic going on too.

The other important thing to note is that, while this is a studio recording that splits the concert piece into nine tracks, the breaks coming at logical points, this quickly becomes a single hour long piece of music. As such, my list of highlights isn't made up of songs but parts of them: the build-up in Journey to the Center of Mass, a hypnotic section towards the end of Wake Up the Possessor, the opening drums in The Shamanic Vision, the way Vacuum Head kicks in hard.

This certainly isn't going to be for everyone, just as neither band involved is probably going to be for everyone, but, if you're into the idea of a wild trip into the cosmos that encompasses space rock, black metal, drone, ritual chanting and electronic weirdness, then this is magnificent stuff and it's a must for anyone who wants to, as Bill Hicks said, squeegee your third eye. I recommend checking out the Pop Matters list in general. I only reviewed one album from their top twenty last year, though I've caught up with three more this January, and I only disagree about one. I'll be dipping into it further over the rest of the month.

Tom Keifer Band - Rise (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 13 Sep 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

It may not be trendy to admit it, but I didn't dislike the hair metal era, as cheesy as it got, and there were some seriously good bands hiding behind all the make-up and spandex. One of my favourites was Cinderella, who were a lot deeper than their airplay suggested. Whether they ever actually split up or just stopped doing anything for long periods of time, such as when lead vocalist Tom Keifer suffered paralysis of the left vocal cord, is debatable, but they haven't released a studio album since 1994's Still Climbing.

Certainly, Keifer has continued on as a solo artist, releasing a solo album, The Way Life Goes, in 2013 to consistent acclaim and adding this second last September, credited not to Tom Keifer but to the Tom Keifer Band. I planned to review it during Name November but I ran out of slots on the calendar and left it until now. Looking back, it's far better and far more consistent than the Neil Young album, so it's a good choice for a final January catch-up.

Cinderella were always more overtly rooted in the blues than many other hair metal bands and that's apparent here, but Keifer draws from wider sources to vary this eleven tracker, perhaps because it clearly draws from the Rolling Stones a great deal, Keifer really trying to emulate Mick Jagger on Waiting for the Demons and especially Taste for the Pain, quieter rock songs with a Stones vibe to them.

On the stormer of an opening track, Touching the Divine, Keifer sounds a lot more like Brian Johnson, that memorable scream as in your face as ever. The band don't sound like AC/DC much but there is a strong similarity in how the finalés to many songs here layer, with lead and backing vocals duelling with a guitar solo and everyone involved bringing added emphasis to what they do. Check out the end of Untitled to see what I mean, then go back to For Those About to Rock (We Salute You).

While the first couple of tracks are up front rockers, just as metal as they are rock, Waiting on the Demons shows that Keifer is going to play with the boundaries of the genre. It emulates the Stones approach to balladry with an emotional, swaggering lead vocal over acoustic guitar. The slide solo guitar in the middle is a delight. It's also telling that the album wraps with what can only be described as country rock in You Believe in Me. Hey, the band is listed as being based in Nashville.

Perhaps the oddest track here is Untitled, because it somehow features both an eastern and a southern vibe to it, like an Egyptian band resident in the blues bars of Alabama. The slide guitar shines again too and I should add a note that I'm not sure who to credit for a lot of what goes on here. Is that Keifer himself, given that he's certainly playing guitar as well as singing on this album, or is it Tony Higbee? I have no idea.

Similarly, whose is that soulful backing vocal that really elevates the end of the stellar title track and pops out to be noticed at odd points in Touching the Divine, among others? Is that Keifer's wife, Savannah, credited on vocals, percussion and piano, or is it Kendra Chantelle, on vocals and percussion? I have no idea here either, but whoever it is sounds rather like Joss Stone, which isn't a bad thing at all.

As is entirely appropriate for someone who didn't just front Cinderella but wrote most of their songs, this is both an immediate album, full of strong riffs and stronger hooks, and a deep one, worthy of exploring over multiple listens. I thought about giving it a solid 7/10 for now with the knowledge that I might need to up it to an 8/10 after a few more listens, but I kept it playing while I pondered on that and decided to go straight to an 8/10. I think Keifer is getting better than ever.

Avalanch - El secreto (2020)

Country: Spain
Style: Melodic Power/Progressive Metal
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 29 Mar 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Metal Archives | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I've been collating various end of year lists to see how they gel with mine and to see what I missed. One particularly interesting one I found was a top sixty Spanish metal albums (meaning from Spain rather than Spanish language) apparently across all subgenres from the Headbangers Latino America website. I've reviewed four of those, from Azrael (#32), Mind Driller (#28), Salduie (#15) and Eternal Storm (#2), so I knew I should take a listen to number #1, which is this album, El Secreto (The Secret in the English language version) by Avalanch, who hail from northern Spain. Hey, any album that can beat out Eternal Storm must be a fantastic album indeed!

They're new to me but they've been around for a very long time. They appear to have started out as Speed Demons as far back as 1988. The changed their name to Avalancha a year later but switched again to Avalanch when they put out their debut album, La llama eterna (which is The Eternal Flame, not The Eternal Llama) in 1997. They've been busy ever since, El Secreto being their thirteenth studio album. The line-up is mostly new, though, as nobody pre-dates 2016 except lead guitarist Alberto Rionda, who was a founding member.

If I tell you that that line-up includes musicians who have played for Rage, Gamma Ray, Yngwie J. Malmsteen, Axel Rudi Pell, Tony MacAlpine, Tarja, Mägo de Oz and Jeff Scott Soto, then you've probably figured out that they play a sort of virtuosic power metal with progressive edges. I should add that most of those credits were racked up by drummer Mike Terrana, who has played for all but two of those and at least as many more, though guitarist Jorge Salán played with Mägo de Oz and Jeff Scott Soto and bassist Dirk Schlächter also played for Gamma Ray. Terrana is clearly a busy man.

It's strong from moment one, El oráculo opening with a serious bombast and technical aplomb, staccato drumming segueing into riffs. It's very patient, knowing how much power it carries, especially with a keyboard swell behind it, and it delays upping the tempo until it's good and ready. When it does, it's a delight and above all the stellar musicianship, the voice of Israel Ramos soars. He sounds excellent on the English language version but he's a little more natural and unrestrained in his native Spanish.

If El oráculo is an intricate and powerful and seemingly effortless opener, Demiurgus continues that trend. It's crunchy and powerful but delicate when it wants to be and it's endowed with serious class. We start to understand why Avalanch are topping an end of year poll, though I'm sadly not seeing El Secreto on any of the others I'm looking at, in either language, and it has to be said that, when Korn and Slipknot both make four of those lists, it's not difficult to see that many compilers don't have much musical depth and spring for the popular crap. Eternal Storm did make one list, at least, but critics do seem to set their horizons wider the heavier the music gets.

Just to mix things up completely, El Caduceo is a ballad for a while but it combines an elegant power metal style with the layered harmonies and sheer playfulness of Queen. It has a fantastic intro and, when it heavies up a minute in with riffs that sound like Dream Theater covering Led Zeppelin, it's as tasty. I have to praise the backing vocals here, as if to keep up the trend of each song showcasing one of the musicians briefly: El oráculo had a great run on the drums, Demiurgus passed the baton to the guitarists and Katarsis hands it on to the keyboard player.

I have to say that this is a grower of an album. The first time I listened through, I was impressed but none of the songs stood out. I was catching a section here or there instead: the instrumental midsection from Luna nueva, the exquisite intro to Alma vieja, the end of El peregrino. The second time through highlighted that the reason is because they're all so consistently strong. It's one of those albums where every damn song is a highlight and those are precious albums indeed.

By the fourth or fifth time through, this had become a favourite and I knew that I had to go back to Eternal Storm to see how that 9/10 from me squares up against the 9/10 this one was going to get too. The Dream Theater album last year went for shorter, catchier songs without losing the intricacies of prog metal. I mostly wasn't impressed but I now realise that this is what I want from that sort of approach. Now where's the opening slot for Avalanch on the next Iron Maiden tour?

There's clearly a lot of great music coming out of Spain. In addition to the bands I did review last year from the Headbangers Latino America list, none of whose inclusion I can argue with, I'd highly recommend Sechem (technically released at the very end of 2018) and Mileth, as well as rock bands Pölisong and Moon Cresta, all of whom got a 7/10 from me in 2019. Like Eternal Storm though, this is clearly above them and I can only be happy that I have twelve prior Avalanch albums to catch up on, even if none of them featured this exact line-up. Life is good.

Wolfmother - Rock 'n' Roll Baby (2019)

Country: Australia
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 29 Dec 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Tumblr | Wikipedia | YouTube

Not everything I'm reviewing from 2019 this January was culled from the end of year best of lists. New releases continue as if rolling from the end of December to the beginning of January had little meaning and Wolfmother, the fuzzy hard rockers from Sydney, Australia dropped this on 29th December. It only runs twenty-three minutes so I'm not buying that it's the new album. I would call it an EP or a mini-album, given that it features seven songs.

It's roughly what you might expect from Wolfmother, sounding like the early seventies as proto-hard rock bands figured out what the new genre was going to sound like, but with a modern stoner rock edge and hooks everywhere. As always, it's part Sabbath, part Beatles and part Zeppelin but fitting very well alongside a modern band like the Darkness. There isn't really anything new here at all.

But, my goodness, it's catchy! I had it playing on repeat over much of the weekend and the result is that I've been waking up with Hot Night jamming in my head. With its stop/start chorus, it's punchier than anything else here and the whole thing is punchy, primarily courtesy as always of the main man Andrew Stockdale, who's responsible for vocals and guitar. The latter remain upbeat and fuzzy, though the level of fuzz varies substantially from track to track; the solos are short and in your face; and the vocals are full of hooks even when he's singing a verse.

I'm unsure about who the other musicians are here, as I'm seeing conflicting information as to who's in the band nowadays. Hamish Rosser seems to be the drummer again, after a couple of years with the band early last decade. Who plays bass and keyboards depends on where you look. And, scrolling down the Wolfmother Facebook page, I'm seeing a lot of suggestion that the musicians varied from song to song. It's Rosser on drums on Kick Ass but Lucius Borich on Rock 'n' Roll Survivor and at least seven people have played with Andrew Stockdale in Wolfmother in 2019.

Let's just say that it all sounds good, but more like a collection of songs than an album. I don't know if it's just that ever-varying level of fuzz on the guitar, but the mixing levels seem to keep changing too, as if this is a product of multiple musicians across multiple recording sessions. At the end of the day, the constants are the quality, the upbeat tone of the songs and the utterly generic lyrics. What might you imagine songs like Rock 'n' Roll Survivor, Hot Night and Kick Ass talk about? Yep, you're exactly right.

What impressed me most is the variety and the consistency. Even with a mere seven songs on offer, none of which last past the four minute mark, I have at least four highlights and, each time I listen through again, I'm tempted to add another one to that list. Wolfmother fans certainly won't be at all disappointed in anything but the overall length and the band may well keep on finding new fans with this material.

Higher is a heavy stoner rock song. Stockdale has said that he was driving around LA listening to Fu Manchu when he wrote it. Rock 'n' Roll Survivor is stoner rock too but much closer to that Black Sabbath original sound. Kick Ass brings in that most seventies of instruments, the Hammond organ. Spanish Rose is a fuzzier Uriah Heep. And, with Hot Night a playful stop/start rock song, that's a lot of variety in the first five tracks, but it gets wilder over the last two.

Freedom is Mine carries a layer of distortion over the vocals and it results in a strange combination of hard rock, glam rock, garage rock, psychedelic rock and punk rock. Is there a rock that isn't represented somewhere in the song? It's kind of like Iggy Pop singing a Beatles song with Queens of the Stone Age behind him and that's not a bad thing.

Special Lady adds an electronic disco beat to proceedings and it really goes there with a funky robotic voice effect partway through. However, the guitar fuzz remains and it still sounds like Wolfmother, even if it's a little more experimental than usual. When the disco robot voice comes back for a second shot, it's during a notably Iron Maiden-esque solo.

This is a glorious way to start a week and I wonder how long these songs are going to keep playing in my head first thing in the morning.

Lingua Ignota - Caligula (2019)

Country: United States
Style: Avant-Garde
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 19 Jul 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Wikipedia

This isn't metal in any definable way, but it features on at least five best of 2019 metal lists and in the top ten of four of them. It's performance art as much as it's music but it's not the unapproachable noise that you may be imagining from that term. It's raw and it's visceral and it's heartachingly real, a sort of therapy for musician Kristin Hayter, a survivor of domestic abuse who describes her songs as "survivor anthems".

At times, this is sheer noise. On her Bandcamp page, the lyrics for Day of Tears and Mourning read simply "[INCOMPREHENSIBLE SCREAMING]". Sure, it has quiet organ music to start but it gets very dark very quickly and her vocals resemble black metal shrieks, albeit over a plodding and ominous beat rather than hyperspeed blastbeats. Do You Doubt Me Traitor has a full on assault on our senses, Hayter primal screaming into the void, transforming the words of her abuser into fierce art.

At other times, it's exquisitely beautiful. Hayter was a church cantor who's classically trained in piano and voice and a number of songs here feature a polyphony that I recognise as Bulgarian from Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, a glorious album of world music that led the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir to places they never expected to go, from Xena to Kate Bush via The Tonight Show. This style is especially obvious as the album begins on a song called Faithful Servant Friend of Christ.

Sometimes, the beautiful and the noise merge, like on the utterly brutal and unforgettable If the Poison Won't Take You My Dogs Will. Hayter chants, the beauty fragile and cracking over a soft drone, but when she reaches a Kyrie Eleison refrain towards the end of the song, that being the Greek for "Lord have mercy", a curtain of noise descends over her in a way that any extreme metal band would dearly love to emulate. There's a similar curtain in I am the Beast and before Do You Doubt Me Traitor gets visceral, it's a heartfelt invocation.

What amazes me is how well read Hayter is musically. She's only in her mid-thirties and she didn't find rock music until a cousin left behind a copy of Nirvana's Nevermind. Yet, even in high school, she was listening to Ornette Coleman, Cattle Decapitation and John Zorn. "It's not too difficult", she's said, "to get from Nine Inch Nails to [Einsterzende] Neubauten to Merzbow." That's true, though most people aren't going to make it all the way! I wish I could mention influences like Klaus Nomi, Diamanda Galás and Nick Cave on more reviews. She even performs throat singing on Sorrow! Sorrow! Sorrow!

It's impossible not to be affected by this album. I popped it on, expecting to listen to a couple of tracks and head to bed. Instead, I devoured it and let it devour me, finally dropping at six in the morning. Hayter's mantra in Spite Alone Holds Me Aloft is "betray me" and she wrings more emotion out of those two words than you can comfortably imagine. And that's before shifting to "kill them all". The album wraps up with I am the Beast, a sort of vicious madrigal, in which the mantra becomes "all I know is violence".

Frankly, Caligula shocked me, not just as statement but as musical vision. I may have encountered a lot of experimental noise albums, but it's a rare one that I'll go back to or even finish. This is something as brutally impactful as it is entertaining. It's certainly not going to be for anyone but it's a lot more accessible than it might seem. The dynamics are amazing and it will make you read up on Hayter's background. The combination will tear out your heart and leave it bleeding in your hand. It's the most vital piece of avant garde music I've ever heard in my life. And it loops, because the saddest thing about abuse is that it's a cycle and the music reflects that.

The Drowning - The Radiant Dark (2019)

Country: UK
Style: Doom/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 8 Nov 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives

I've mentioned a few times that I was around when doom/death was created. I lived in Halifax, home to bands like Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, and I bought their work from the very beginning. I remember seeing the former live in Bradford before they had an album out, being surprised when a kid a year ahead of me at school who wore a Kiss T-shirt on non-uniform days got up on stage to drum for them.

However, while I kept up with those particular bands, my drift away from the music of the alternative nineties made me miss new bands like The Drowning, a Welsh doom/death outfit founded in 2003 whose fifth album was selected by two Angry Metal Guy reviewers as the best album of 2019 and one as maybe the best doom/death album of the decade. That's strong praise indeed. Of course I needed to check it out!

And, while I wouldn't praise it as highly as them (I rated three doom/death albums higher in 2019, though one was from the previous year: Phlebotomized, Eternal Candle and The Dead Sea), it's pretty damn good. I think my biggest problem with it was the mix, which feels off and sometimes empty. The guitars often let the music soar but the vocals of Matt Small keep it anchored to the earth. They're too prominent in the mix and the end result suffers for that. Also, Steve Hart's drums are a little too prominent as well and it often sounds like he's banging on a set of plastic tubs.

As such, The Drowning sometimes sound less like a doom/death band and more like a death metal band who play slower than usual. I should add here that slower doesn't always mean slow. Prometheus Blinded isn't particularly slow at all and the majestic guitars that open the next track, In Cold Earth, do a fantastic job of highlighting just how far the band had drifted away from doom/death. It's just a death metal song.

In Cold Earth, on the other hand, has a solid, aching weight to it and it's driven, like so much of this album, by the guitars of Mike Hitchen and Jason Hodges. They aim at a My Dying Bride feel more than a Paradise Lost one and they nail it. There are many points where I wish I could let the vocals fade away and, on this track, the drums too, which feel a little intrusive and overdone, so I can just listen to those guitars soar above the universe.

All my favourite moments here tie to those guitars. They're fine just doing business as usual, but there are moments when they shine even brighter and I found myself grinning. There's a great riff when The Triumph of the Wolf in Death moves into a quieter section and a fantastic doomy riff midway through In Cold Earth. The slowdown moments in All We Need of Hell are glorious (oh, hey, there's a bass in here too, courtesy of Richard Moore, who also suffers from the mix) and I'm talking the ones within the song as well as the grand slowdown that is it's end.

All this is to say that I enjoyed this but it didn't blow me away the way it blew away those Angry Metal Guy reviewers. That is, until we get to the last couple of tracks.

I Carve the Heart from the Universe is the longest track on the album, at a nudge over ten minutes, but it's a real gem, with the guitars doing joyous things, the drums delightfully restrained for a change and Small's vocals as versatile on this one song as they've been for the entire rest of the album. If it's exactly I wanted from this band, then Blood Marks My Grave is what I dreamed they might become. It's majestic from its first moment and it keeps on getting better.

These are how the definition of how to end an album. If the whole thing had been like these two tracks, I'd be raving about how magnificent it was too! For now, even discounting the production issues, I don't think it's anywhere near as consistent as it could be and only moments of genius here and there live up to the way the album ends. I'm happy to have finally found the band and I have four prior albums to devour. All hail British doom/death!

White Ward - Love Exchange Failure (2019)

Country: Ukraine
Style: Post-Black Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 20 Sep 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | VK | YouTube

I'm always interested in seeing how far genres can stretch and no genre has stretched as far lately as black metal, which has gradually embraced sounds that not one person listening to the first Bathory album back in 1984 would have believed possible. Part of that is because of the advent of post-black metal, which is what Ukrainian band White Ward play.

For three minutes, this is soft piano and teasing saxophone, not the sort of thing you might expect from a traditionally confrontational genre like black metal. Perhaps the cover art influenced me subconsciously, but I felt like I was walking through someone else city where I was at once out of place but somehow still safe and comfortable. Then it veers wonderfully into a vicious section because that's what black metal does best.

As this title track runs on, it continues to alternate between soothing and vicious and the result is something that's very difficult to ignore. As it ends, twelve minutes in, amidst warm and organic pulsing, we know that we've heard something of note and want to go back to the start so as to experience it afresh immediately. I resisted the urge for a change and continued on.

Very few bands have the sheer command of dynamics that White Ward have and I wonder if that's because they came to this style from the opposite direction to usual. Often black metal bands start out raucous and raw and grow into a more diverse, more nuanced, more elegant sound over time. I may be wrong and what I can see on their Facebook page suggests that I am but it sounds to me like White Ward started out as elegant and nuanced and added the black metal vehemence onto that.

Either that or they fit a couple of session musicians into their line-up far more completely than usual. It would beggar belief if Dima Dudko on sax and Stanislav Bobritskiy on keyboards just wandered into the studio one day and laid down the tracks that they were given. They're inherent to this music, a crucial and key part of it, yet I'm not seeing them listed as actual members of the band. Whole sections of these songs simply wouldn't be there without them.

Even for someone like me, who's got used to saxophones in places I wouldn't have expected them, there's a lot here. This is a long album, featuring four songs over ten minutes, interspersed by three shorter ones that still aren't necessarily short. The shortest track here is only just shy of six minutes, meaning a running time of over an hour. It's easy to get caught up with the flow of this album and lose track of time entirely. When it eventually wraps up, it's almost a shock because we're living in the world of White Ward.

I should add here that the world of White Ward isn't quite as soothing as it initially seems. The title track, which opens things up, is warm, welcoming stuff to begin with but it ends on a darker note. Later songs emphasise that even in the quieter sections. Dead Heart Confession opens in a room where a radio is broadcasting about the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer.

I'm not sure what goes down at the end of Uncanny Delusions and so also the album, but someone is clearly really unhappy about something, screaming her discontent. The band describe their music as "intensely deviant music of a noir share" and that's a neatly poetic way to put it. As welcoming as they often sound, there's a darkness below the surface if we pay attention.

I'm still in love with the Katharsis XIII album of dark jazz that I reviewed in October and this sits well alongside it. It's less jazzy but it's just as full of immersive depth and dynamic range. I'll throw this one onto the same device to listen to in the dark and see if it will stay with me as much.

Blood Incantation - Hidden History of the Human Race (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Death Metal
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 22 Nov 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives

I'm still collating end of year lists to see if there's any sort of critical consensus about what was greatest last year. What's obvious thus far is that this second album from Denver-based death metallers Blood Incantation was an impressive hit. Even though it was released in late November, it made eleven lists of the best albums of the year and topped one. By comparison, I'm not seeing anyone else on more than seven lists and the four on that many happen to include the amazing Alcest and Opeth albums, as well as the disappointing (to me) Tomb Mold album and one from Inter Arma that I haven't heard yet.

The first impression is that this is very old school death metal. It's low, it's downtuned and it features growly vocals that took me back to the early days of the genre. It's reminiscent of early Death and, if you imagine the vocals buried deeper in the mix, Morbid Angel too. As the opener, As Slave Species of the Gods grows, though, we start to realise just how much depth Blood Incantation are exploring here with a traditional four piece setup of vocals, twin guitars, bass and drums. Yes, that's four: Paul Riedl is doing double duty on guitar and voice.

The Giza Power Plant continues on as Slave Species of the Gods began and the two work very well as a pairing. They're deep and warm and rich songs. Even during the more traditional sections of up tempo death, every member of the band continues to do interesting things. Every time I hear these two songs, and I'm four or five listens through thus far, I catch something new and the whole thing draws me in deeper. This is immersive stuff.

Isaac Faulk's drums caught me first. I love how he blisters along at serious speed but has an equally seriously slow beat going on behind that. There are so many changes that it's a real adventure to keep up with them. Also, while this is predominantly old school death at heart, the second half of The Giza Power Plant ventures into doom/death, with slow guitar and bass over rampant drumming, and it does it really well. There are hints at thrash too, though the band never really go there as a sound.

I mostly see Blood Incantation described as simply death metal and that's no lie but nobody who listens through those first two tracks even once is going to avoid the words technical and progressive. The spaced out intro to track three, Inner Paths (To Outer Space), emphasises both in instrumental form. I did catch some vocal work at the end but there are no words, just texture on top of an already interesting track that's consistent with but travelling in wildly different directions to the opening pair.

Finally, there's what would, in the old days, be side two, because it's just one single song. It's called, and I kid you not, Awakening from the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul) and it's almost as long as its title suggests, over eighteen minutes. A mere five seconds more and it would count for half the entire album! That's what we might expect from Yes or Peter Gabriel era Genesis. But do we expect this sort of thing from a death metal band from Denver on the follow up to their debut album? No, we don't. This is seriously ambitious but they pull it off.

In many ways, it's the first half of the album reimagined in a single long, surprisingly coherent track, told in movements that roughly equate to a pair of tracks with an interlude between them and a long and varied outro to take us home. The first five minutes continue on in the old school vibe from the opening couple of songs, taking that old sound as a starting point and then progressing it forward, but the cosntruction is fascinating. The interlude is more spaced out stuff, with an electronic pulse that sounds like a Pink Floyd sample, but we wrap with doomy psychedelia. This really shouldn't work but it does and it does magnificently.

So is this the album of 2019? I've heard a lot of great music thus far and I look forward to a little more over the next month, so there are many albums competing for a title like that in my mind, but I can't deny that it really is up there with the best. I'll fight the other critics about the Tomb Mold album, which really disappointed me, but not about this one. It's astounding for a second album and now I need to track down the first, 2016's Starspawn, while waiting with bated breath for a third.

Baroness - Gold & Grey (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 14 Jun 2019
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I started out my music reviews here in 2019 by alternating a new album with one from the previous year and I plan to continue in that vein ths January. Throughout this month, I'll be reviewing a new album alongside one from 2019 that I missed out on and has probably received strong critical acclaim. I'm kicking off with the new Baroness album, released last June, because that's been especially well received by critics and recommended to me personally as well.

I hadn't previously heard Baroness but they're a band from Savannah who have apparently evolved their sound over the years from sludge metal to a sort of alternative prog rock that still carries a metal crunch at points but sounds really big in other ways. It's how the songs are put together as much as how they're played, but it's as hard to imagine Baroness on a tiny club stage as it is to imagine Pink Floyd in anything but a vast stadium.

What felt odd to me was how they were at once inviting but deep. On a first listen, I found the songs trying to grab me but failing because they're not that immediate. Prog isn't always immediate, of course, but a more obscure prog album can often be a challenge, sounding awful or even ridiculous until we get on the right wavelength and suddenly realise what genius it is. This isn't that sort of challenging, because it's friendly hook-laden stuff from moment one but there are a lot of other things going on, on multiple layers, so the challenge is to move back far enough to see the big picture.

While the first track is in your face with its highly prominent bass and an odd fuzziness that feels uncomfortably close to static, the majority of the album is introspective, its songs constructed with care. Never mind sludge roots, the 2019 Baroness makes me think of an alternative rock band with a fondness for riffs mainlining on the Beatles until they end up as a combo of Radiohead and the Foo Fighters. These are big songs but they try not to be and, even four or five times through, I still think of this as an hour long piece of music rather than a collection of twelve songs and five interludes.

I first heard about Gold & Grey when a friend mentioned it after I reviewed the new Opeth album. I can see a lot of similarities in something this prog rock being released by a band who didn't start as prog rock in the slightest, but beyond the odd changes and contrary layers that link them, this is often livelier and more bombastic. Sure, there are inwardly looking numbers like Emmett - Radiating Light, but the power chords of Tourniquet just have to be accompanied by big light shows on a huge stage.

What impresses most is that they can follow a song like that with the calm, almost plainsong vocals and soothing strings of Anchor's Lament without us feeling jarred. Even the wild and experimental opening to Throw Me an Anchor doesn't seem abrasive, because by that point we've fully come to terms with the fact that Baroness play from as wide a colour palette as John Baizley in his role as cover artist. He's also the lead vocalist and guitarist and sole surviving founder member.

I have a feeling that I'll be discovering more new things in this album by a fiftieth listen. It's fundamentally rock music, but there's just as much pop in play as there is metal nowadays. I like that Cold-Blooded Angels can seem to be the former only to grow seamlessly into the latter. It even throws in some space rock sound effects for good measure. Other songs feature nods to folk, experimental, jazz, psych, ambient and even new wave. Broken Halo is punk at heart until it launches into a keyboard solo. Can Oscura and Assault on East Falls would feel at home on a krautrock album. Many songs highlight a Pink Floyd influence but, at one point, Borderlines suddenly becomes Thin Lizzy.

While my friend prefers this to the new Opeth album, I'd go the other way. I liked this a lot and expect to listen to it a lot too, but it didn't feel as consistent for me and that periodic fuzz turned me off every time it showed up. I like fuzz, I should add; I just don't like this fuzz. I'm now eager to travel backwards to see what Baroness used to sound like and there are four prior colour-themed albums for me to track down. Thanks, Mike!

Cyaxares - Shahnameh (2019)

Country: Iraq
Style: Folk/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 17 Dec 2019
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I've noticed a lot of trends during this wildly exploratory year and one of them is the preponderence of one man bands in farflung climes. If anyone has kept a list, here's another one to add to it. Cyaxares is a solo project of one Mir Shamal Hama-faraj, who also sings for a thrash metal by the name of Dark Phantom. That's a five man band with all the expected instrumentation, but he took all that on himself here. I'm sure the female voice on The Whirling Sufi isn't his, but I believe everything else is him.

And it's interesting material, located somewhere on the boundary of folk and death metal. I've seen a lot of descriptions that emphasise the latter, like Mesapotamian death metal, Middle-Eastern death metal, Oriental death metal and Kurdish death metal. The folk element is obvious almost throughout, so it makes sense to me for Metal Archives to combine the two genres, listing Cyaxares as folk/death metal.

The more folk Cyaxares get, the more I like it, perhaps because Mir's vocals are easily my least favourite aspect (followed by the length of the album, a scanty half hour, even including the second version of Seraphim that appears here as a bonus). He has a capable death growl but, like so many death metal singers, he struggles to make that vocal be anywhere near as varied as the music that he plays around it. It's neatly buried on Temples of Fire, where it works well as an instrument, but the clean vocals, both male and female, on The Whirling Sufi add an extra level that I missed thereafter.

What impressed me most here was the versatility. While there's a consistent feel to the album, perhaps inevitably given that every instrument on every track is played by the same man, none of the songs here sound particularly like each other. Mir likes to combine softer intros with harder tracks, but the melancholy chimes that kick off Seraphim highlight how it isn't always lively folk dances that introduce these songs.

I liked both the straightforward, albeit rather bouncy, death of Temples of Fire and the lively folk of The Whirling Sufi, both songs finding strong but very different grooves. I liked the way both styles combine in The Anunnaki, which kicks off with a folky dance but evolved into a thrashy sort of death at a serious clip. It's hard not to move to some of these intros, The Horns of Hattin including perhaps the liveliest. I wonder if these are traditional melodies or new compositions by the man of the hour.

I wonder too how many instruments Mir plays here. Obviously, there are drums and guitars. There's a menacing bass during the intro to The Anunnaki and it underpins most of the album if you focus. I'm hearing flute, organ and a set of hand drums too, among others, and I wonder just how many instruments Mir plays or whether he brought in any other guests.

Regardless of the answers to those questions, I liked this a great deal and I'm happy to be wrapping up the decade with a review of something this good and this different. I just wish there was more of it. Take away that second, more emphatic, version of Seraphim and it's shorter than Reign in Blood. I'm thinking of tracking down those earlier EPs and seeing how long they extend this as a listening session.

I'm also certainly eager to hear anything else Mir is involved in. It looks like, in addition to Cyaxares and Dark Phantom, there's a death metal band called Torture Hymns which features Mir on all the instruments and a Syrian gentleman called Sami on vocals. We live in interesting times.

And, to update my original review, this is a more interesting album than I'd previously thought. Thanks to Jason Paul Lamtman of Ohio Entertainment Group for filling me in on the background. It seems that the two EPs that Cyaxares previously released were longer than they might seem on Bandcamp, as this is a compilation/rerecording of the best songs from them and all the songs that made the cut for this were removed from them on Bandcamp. And, with the band becoming just that with additional musicians in the US, I'm even more eager to see what Cyaxares comes up with next.