Apocalypse Later Music Reviews: 2021

Showing posts with label 2021. Show all posts

Wednesday, 2 March 2022

Bevar Sea - The Timeless Zone (2022)

Here's an interesting sound from Bangalore that I wasn't expecting. Well, OK, I was expecting half of it because every stoner/doom metal band on the planet owes at least something to the original gods of heavy metal, Black Sabbath, and it's certainly Sabbath who are obvious here as this album begins with the title track. It's in the guitar tone, which is heavy but clean, and in the mix, which is rather surprisingly very seventies, with the guitar not as overt in the mix as tends to be the norm nowadays. The bass is effortlessly audible too. You don't even have to stretch.

It wouldn't feel like a 2022 album if it wasn't for the vocals. And, if this is mid-seventies Sabbath in its instrumentation, it's not remotely Sabbath in the vocals and that holds true regardless which lead singer you think of. There's no Ozzy at all to be found in Ganesh Krishnaswamy's delivery but there's no Dio either and no Tony Martin, not even an Ian Gillan. What I'd suggest to compare, if you can imagine this, is a proto-extreme metal voice, halfway between Cronos from Venom, albeit not as demonically acerbic, and Tom G. Warrior of Celtic Frost, sans death grunts.

Like both those singers, especially Cronos, Krishnaswamy has a wildly throaty delivery, and it's an extreme voice without ever venturing into death growl or black metal shriek. The key, of course, is that it's not seventies in the slightest, so there's a stylistic clash at the heart of this sound that's a fascinating dynamic. It took me by surprise, but I dig it. It makes Bevar Sea, on their third album in a decade, seem like they found Krishnaswamy in 1983 and hurled him through a time portal to a 1975 studio to jam on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, though I have to say I got used to the contrast.

Alpha None is a little heavier, adding some Headless Cross era Sabbath to that mid-seventies vibe and edges from Cronos to Warrior theatricality in the vocals. Krishnaswamy sings in English on all these songs and without an obvious accent, but his stylistic approach adds something playful that I don't think would be there if he sang clean. It's probably fair to say that there are points where he slips up a little and gets cleaner, but he never really gets to a properly clean heavy metal voice.

As if to move on through the history of heavy metal into doom, Sterilise the Divide starts slower in a strong chug mode, though it builds well and, after eight and half minutes, it ends far too quickly. The same goes for The Circle at nine minutes and Cadaver Awake at almost ten. This is because my favourite thing about the band is the effortless way they jam. Even if they never manage to leave their obvious Sabbath influence behind, they drift seamlessly back and forth on that sliding scale that runs from psychedelic rock to doom metal and never stop being interesting.

What makes that extra-interesting is that, when a song plays more psychedelic, usually during an instrumental section, they feel British. However, the heavier they get into their doom aspect, the more American they sound. I'd love to hear what influences this musicians have, beyond Sabbath, because it seems to me that they must listen to Trouble and Pentagram more than Candlemass. It seems to me that they ought to be older influences too, because this doesn't feel modern to me in any way except the way they're sliding that scale, except maybe some of the dissonant chords on Cadaver Awake, which feel almost djenty.

There are two prior Bevar Sea albums, a self-titled in 2012 and then Invoke the Bizarre in 2015. It's been seven years since then, but they've only seen one line-up change, Michael Talreja stepping in on lead guitar in 2016 to replace Rahul Chacko. Everyone else: Krishnaswamy, bass player Avinash Ramchander and rhythm guitarist Srikanth Panaman, are founder members, helping to form the band in 2010. I like this sound and wonder how they came to it, because I don't hear a lot of stoner rock or doom metal from India. What I have heard, however, is from Bangalore, because that's the home town of Diarchy too. Is there a scene there?

Friday, 28 January 2022

Loudness - Sunburst (2021)

I started out my traditional January look back at the albums I'd missed in the previous year with a double album of heavy metal with a demon samurai on the cover and an eight letter S word for its title that was released by a long established band. As unlikely it might seem, I'm wrapping up my 2021 catch up with a double album of heavy metal with a demon samurai on the cover and an eight letter S word for its title that was released by a long established band. The first one was Senjutsu by Iron Maiden, who were formed in 1975 with their debut album released in 1980. This is Sunburst by Loudness, formed in 1981 with their debut album released that same year.

Amazingly, this is also their 31st studio album, if I'm counting correctly, and three quarters of the band are founding members, though two of them have left and returned over the years, just like key members of Iron Maiden. They've all been in place since 2001, though, except for the new fish drummer, Masayuki Suzuki, who joined in 2009, after the death of Munetaka Higuchi, the original drummer. Guitarist Akira Takasaki has been the single constant all the way through, meaning that he's now been with the band for over forty years and he's still doing good work.

I have to say that, while putting out a double album of new music at this point in their career does suggest that they're simply bursting with ideas, this one took quite a while to grab me. The intro is there but there's not much more to say about it or about OEOEO, the opening track proper. It isn't a bad song and there are good hooks and riffs and changes in it, but it's hardly the most engaging track on this album to kick it off. It's when we get to tracks entirely in Japanese that they begin to remind us why they're such a legend of Japanese metal.

What's interesting is that these are varied songs. 大和魂, which translates to Yamato Soul, is the epitome of Loudness's traditional heavy metal approach, with solid riffs over which a lively guitar dives in to liven things up. It also features a strong lead vocal from Minoru Niihara. 仮想現実, or Virtual Reality, is a slower, grungier song, but a neatly heavy one nonetheless. It's almost an '80s vocal over '90s instrumentation, but there's no clash between the styles and the vocals do update at points. It's a really interesting pairing.

And then things get seriously good. Crazy World is a peach of a Loudness song, the first standout on this album. It gets right down to business and stays there throughout. Stand or Fall has a real character to it, even it borrows rather obviously from Paint It Black for its intro and refrain. As if they wanted to look backwards and forwards at the same time, the vocals shift almost to harsh by the end, linking the '60s with the '00s. The Sanzu River is slower and softer, though it heavies up in a Black Sabbath way towards the end. And disc one wraps with 日本の心, or Japanese Heart, yet another impressive no nonsense heavy metal onslaught, like Crazy World, albeit not as catchy.

Frankly, it could have stopped there and it would have been a good album, forty minutes of heavy and solid metal, let down only by a lacklustre opening. But there's a second disc still to come, with another three quarters of an hour and it kicks off wonderfully with a set of more hard rock based songs that look back to the band's early years. 輝ける80’s, or Shining '80s, is just as eighties as it might seem from that name; 天国の扉, or Door of Heaven, has a Van Halen vibe to it; and there is more than a little Gary Moore in the excellent ballad All Will Be Fine with You.

What's telling is that the songs here are varied too, but the styles feel more consistent, even if it all heavies up again halfway through the second side with the superb Fire in the Sky. At this point, we're thirteen songs in and it seems like the album just keeps on getting better. Hunger for More certainly has one of the snappiest riffs anywhere here and The Nakigari adds a bit of psychedelic doom into proceedings for what might be the most interesting song on the album. I wouldn't call it the most immediate by a long shot, but it's arguably the best of the sixteen songs on offer, if we pay attention and let it grow.

It's great to see that the legends of Japanese metal that I discovered in the mid eighties are still around. Bow Wow (Vow Wow when I discovered them) have been around the longest, but they are apparently not putting out new material; their most recent album was in 2005. I missed the album that Earthshaker put out in 2018, but I should check that out. And here are Loudness, the newest of the three, but the busiest, it would seem. And it's even better to see a band on their 31st studio album do such a great job across what's almost an hour and a half of music. Even with that shaky start, this is easily an 8/10.

Thursday, 27 January 2022

The Night Flight Orchestra - Aeromantic II (2021)

Back in the mid eighties, when I stumbled onto rock music, there was a genre that was frequently mentioned that seems to have vanished in the decades since and that's pomp rock. I haven't seen that term used in forever but the genre is still being played to this day and by few better than the Night Flight Orchestra, who emphatically explore it on this album, which is a direct sequel to their 2020 album, Aeromantic. Pomp rock is a particular flavour of melodic rock that's perfect for arena crowds because of its strong hooks and particularly its driving beats and prominent keyboards.

The usual suspects spring quickly to mind as comparisons, especially early on with the purer pomp rock tracks in the first half that scream Journey, Boston and Jefferson Starship. I heard Demon as well, especially on Violent Indigo, but that's accidental as this is such a quintessentially American sound; it's coincidence that Björn's Strid's voice has a similar clean rasp to Dave Hill's. Some songs are more like Journey, such as Burn for Me, while others, like How Long, really channel the Mickey Thomas era of Jefferson Starship. There's even some Alan Parsons Project in Change, because the NFO are channelling the entire era rather than any particular band.

And that's why, as the album runs on, we start to realise that it isn't just pomp rock. In fact, it isn't even just rock, because there's pop here too and all those seventies genres that were so obviously explored on Aeromantic. They're more combined here, so there's no clear dividing line between a more rock side and a more disco side, but the first half is definitely more rock and the second does shift more and more into pop, soul and disco. However, there's rock on the second side as well and disco on the first, the tracks blending in both directions. You Belong to the Night is Abba-esque disco meeting arena rock, but Midnight Marvelous is arena rock giving way to disco. I liked Aeromantic but I think I like this more because of that closer fusion.

It still surprises me that a band who sound like this would have such roots in metal, because this is a long way from what Strid and guitarist David Andersson play in Soilwork, or bass player Sharlee D'Angelo plays in Arch Enemy and Witchery. That extends to new fish John Lönnmyr, who joined in 2020 after Aeromantic; he also plays for melodic death/groove band Act of Denial, among others. It's refreshing to realise that musicians like these heard and clearly still have a passion for a band as utterly different as Cheap Trick, as that's who's channelled on the album closer, Reach Out, let alone whichever disco outfits they're emulating.

I know Cheap Trick but have almost zero depth in disco beyond my guilty pleasure of Boney M, so I couldn't tell you to whom they're paying homage on Chardonnay Nights. If we didn't catch the nod to disco on Midnight Marvelous, it's impossible to miss on this one, however much the melodies in it still remind of Mickey Thomas. I'm surprised they passed on the obvious opportunity to call this song Chardonnay Night Fever. I wonder how much the drums signal the direction, because it feels like they shift down a scale from analogue drumsticks on drums to digital electronic beats as the songs shift from rock to disco.

I often review albums that I highlight to my youngest son, especially on the thrash metal side, but this is one that I'll highlight to my better half, as she grew up in the States listening to most of the influences the Night Flight Orchestra obviously have. She probably saw most of them live and can probably tell me which funk and disco bands can be heard in the NFO sound too. Being English, I'm lacking in that era of American music, having largely grown up on homegrown bands instead, but hey, the Night Flight Orchestra aren't American either, even if they sound like it. They're from the Swedish town of Helsingborg, so I'm fascinated by how they first heard all this stuff. Certainly they know it well.

Wednesday, 26 January 2022

Downright Malice - Mechanica Temporis (2021)

Country: France
Style: Heavy/Thrash/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 Jun 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives

Yes, I'm following a heavy metal album with another heavy metal album, which is unusual for me, but this is a late submission for 2021 and I only have three days left to slot it in. Also, while Thorns was a traditional doomladen heavy metal album for Tony Martin, this is a heavy metal album that looks both backwards and forwards in an intriguing way, so I'm sticking with it. They're Downright Malice from Saint-Louis, which makes them French, but right on the border with both Germany and Switzerland. Maybe the diversity in language and culture that they must see on a daily basis, with Basel only a couple of miles away, is reflected in the diversity in genre in their sound.

Initially, they sound just like an old school metal band from the eighties, merely given production values from the 21st century to make everything bigger, not far adrift from Tony Martin's album. As the opener, also named Downright Malice, runs on, though, we hear what distinguishes them from a traditional sound. It's a lot easier to gallop if you factor in double bass drumming and it's easier to add an edge in 2022 when there's a second vocalist who delivers in harsh style. I've seen Downright Malice listed as heavy/thrash metal and the tempo does enforce that, but that harsh voice is from death not thrash and the resulting sound draws from all three of those genres.

I like that sound and I liked this album from the outset, but it took a while to grow on me. It's fair to say that the opener was decent but I liked this more with each subsequent song. You Can Pray is faster and features more engaging guitar and vocal hooks, not to mention a surprising use of piano late in the song. Malleus Malificarum, the celebrated old Hammer of Witches, adds a choral element to generate atmosphere early on and easily the best riffs thus far. This is a Maiden song with added harsh voice, their famous gallop in full effect here, up to speed metal tempo. It's a peach. And so we go.

While Virtual Reality is arguably a downstep in that escalation, given that it's a good song that's merely the first to not be better than its predecessor, the strong songs continue unabated. I love the crunch this band has, reminding of Metal Church, but Iron Maiden are never far from my ears and there are plenty of other names that crop up as comparisons here and there. This vocal hook is right out of Blind Guardian and that guitar shift is Seasons of the Abyss Slayer. The addition of a piano element to A Time to All brings a gothic vibe into proceedings, even as it stays heavy and fast. In short, there's a lot going on here. Just wait for the keyboard intro to Sin of Pride.

What surprises me most is how long Downright Malice have been around. Usually, bands who drop me a line to tell me about their album are new bands trying to get their name out there, on their first or second albums, often in response to me reviewing something else from their country. This band may well have noticed me for that reason too, but they've been around since 1987 and this is their fifth album. If I'm reading correctly, they've never split up but they're not exactly prolific, an initial album arriving in 1995, a decade passing before their second (with an EP in between) and a trio more since 2005.

The inevitable founder member keeping the band going is Didier Bauer on guitar, but bassist Aris and vocalist Cliff have been alongside him since 1991, over three decades now, long enough to be on every one of their albums. Olivier Riedel joined on drums in 2000 and second vocalist Cyrille at a point in time I'm blissfully unaware of. That does suggest, of course, that Cliff is the clean voice and Cyrille is the harsh one, but I'm happy to be corrected if need be. It's an interesting line-up, a pair of dedicated vocalists over a trio of musicians, but it works for them. They're both old school and new school, with the two mindsets conversing well and never clashing.

Clearly I have some catching up to do. I did hear some French metal bands back in the eighties, in large part because of Tommy Vance and the Friday Rock Show, mostly Trust, of course, but Shakin' Street, Sortilège and Vulcain as well, even Treponem Pal. I don't recall coming across Downright Malice before but I wish I had. Now I have some catching up to do!

Tuesday, 25 January 2022

Tony Martin - Thorns (2022)

Country: UK
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 14 Jan 2022
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | Wikipedia | YouTube

2022 has started out really strong for British hard rock/heavy metal with a string of solid albums in January. The 14th saw the new Magnum album, which is excellent, then the 21st brought a new Tokyo Blade. The 28th will bring a new one from Praying Mantis and, before that, here's another one from the 14th, from Tony Martin, the second longest serving vocalist in Black Sabbath, given that Ronnie James Dio's return in the 2000s was under the name of Heaven and Hell. There's even a new Lawnmower Deth album coming on the 28th too. The genre is thriving in its homeland.

This is roughly what you might expect from someone who spent ten years singing for Sabbath, but it doesn't start that way, because the opener is As the World Burns, as obviously a Metallica song initially as I've heard in forever. It's downtuned and up tempo, though it does settle down into the more expected traditional vibe. Given that the rhythm section is the former HammerFall bassist, Magnus Rosén, and the current Venom drummer, Danny Needham, perhaps I should be surprised more at how this doesn't power up more often. It mostly stays slow and heavy after this one.

Martin sounds good from the outset, but he nails some sustained notes in the opener that I'd call quintessential Sabbath. They're very impressive for a 64 year old! And that is the other thing that is thrilling me about these traditional British releases. The musicians in Magnum, Praying Mantis and Tokyo Blade are hardly spring chickens but they're all on top of their game at the moment to put out some of their best material in years. I'm glad to add Tony Martin to that list.

This is what the Sabbath website calls his "long delayed third 'solo' album" and there's been quite a gap between releases. His first, Back Where I Belong, came out in 1992 during a brief time away from Sabbath, while they reunited with Dio for the Dehumanizer album. His second, Scream, came out in 2005 and now, seventeen years on again, we have number three, apparently comprising ten years of work. That rings true for a long while, because this has a strong first half but it begins to wear towards the end.

As the World Burns is a strong opener. Book of Shadows has some real power to it, at 80% Sabbath and 20% Judas Priest. While Martin's voice leads the way, as you would expect, I was impressed by Rosén's basswork in this one and the preceding Black Widow Angel. There's a choral layer too and a decent violin from Martin that sounds deeper, like a cello. Book of Shadows is easily the longest song here, by over a minute, and it may be the best song on offer, even wrapping up with excellent narration from Laura Harford, who I expect is related to Martin, given that it's his real surname.

It's also notable that these three songs, along with the fourth, Crying Wolf, which is acoustic, are very different in approach and structure. They're all heavy and powerful, but none of them sound like each other and that aids the album no end. As the album ran on, though, I found the songs to be less memorable, though I should call out No Shame at All here as a highlight. I did like the way that the vocal line in Passion Killer echoes Chopin's famous Funeral March, so there's interesting material to be found late on, but there are also songs like This is Your Damnation, which sounds a lot like a rock cover of a disco song. It isn't, but that's what it sounds like.

In short, there's some great material here, if you're a fan of Sabbath with Martin—and, if you're wondering who he is because you only know Ozzy and Dio, then pick up the Headless Cross album at your next opportunity. However, it's a front heavy album, arguably its best four songs also the first four songs. The second half isn't bad, but it doesn't live up to the album's early promise and even the title track, that closes out the album, feels like too little too late. As an album, it's good stuff, but, as an album ten years in the making, it feels a little disappointing. It warrants a 7/10, I think, but only by the skin of its teeth.

Fans of the Dark - Fans of the Dark (2021)

Country: Sweden
Style: Melodic/Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 5 Nov 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram

So I asked the maestro of melodic rock, Chris Franklin, host of 10 Radio's Raised on Rock, what my most obvious misses were in 2021. What were the best albums in that genre that I didn't review at Apocalypse Later? He came back with a few, led by a trio of Scandinavian albums: Kens Dojo from Norway, Laurenne/Louhimo from Finland and Fans of the Dark from Sweden. I don't believe he put an order on these three, but he listed this one first, so I put it on and immediately recognised the opener from his show.

Now, Chris plays a lot of great material in every show, but there are usually a couple of tracks that blow me away and I jot them down for future investigation. Those are the cream of the crop, but I won't necessarily remember one of them in detail months later. The Ghost of Canterville was one of those that I did. Having heard it once a few months ago, I still found myself singing along with it on a first revisit. It's a memorable song with a memorable hook and, having now heard the rest of the album, I'm totally with Chris. Fans of the Dark are a memorable band and the self-titled debut that came out in November is a memorable album.

At eight minutes and change, The Ghost of Canterville is an epic opener, based on the Oscar Wilde short story, which immediately conjures up Iron Maiden comparisons. This is surely softer than a Maiden equivalent, led by what initially seems like an ethereal vocal from Alex Falk, but it's also an epic rock song, drawn from classic English literature by a band sporting a name appropriate for a Maiden tribute band. The more I listen to it, the more I hear similarities in its riffs, its changes and its hooks. The biggest difference is Falk's vocals, but he's playing to the song and is more than able to rock out at the right moments. It's a well constructed piece that reveals itself to be better constructed still when we analyse it.

And, if it pulls the instruments back while Falk is singing, Fans of the Dark follow up with a denser song that really rocks out in Escape from Hell, aided by the guest guitar talents of Ryan Roxie of Alice Cooper's band. It's a stormer of a track that ably shows how Falk can add rasp and emphasis into his voice for even greater effect. I mention him a lot here because he's the unique factor that elevates Fans of the Dark. The musicians behind him are excellent and the songwriting, primarily by drummer Freddie Allen, who put the band together, is fantastic, but we are not going to listen to instrumental sections here and immediately recognise them as being by Fear of the Dark. The vocals do serve that exact purpose though. Nobody else in rock music sounds like this.

There's something androgynous about them that reminds me of Freddie Mercury. They're clearly male vocals for the most part, but Falk is able to shift seamlessly into a female voice, like he does on Rear Window, just as he can go deeper, turn up that rasp and sound even more masculine. I'm utterly not surprised to see that he's also a drag queen as my drag queen friends shift their voices depending on whether they're in persona or not and it becomes second nature over time. Falk has a serious range too and it's clear, just from the opening couple of tracks, that he really knows how to add or remove weight from his voice to find the effect he's looking for. He gives a memorable performance here, even on the overtly silly closer, Zombies in My Class.

As much as Falk is the clear focal point for this band and Allen apparently wrote these songs with his voice very much in mind, the other members of Fans of the Dark are no slouches either. This is melodic rock, but it does heavy up too, on songs like Escape from Hell, Rear Window and especially Life Kills, which features the most overt Maiden midsection on the album (and it has a whole slew of competition there). Allen is the bedrock of the band and Robert Majd on bass is audible, with a single guitar in front of him, and utterly reliable. That guitar is Oscar Bromvall's and he seems to have been listening to a lot of NWOBHM on top of the AOR that always feeds melodic rock bands.

I can totally see why Chris focused so much on this. He's a die hard melodic rock fan and this works as a pristine melodic rock album. He's also happy to listen to heavier material if it maintains that melody and this goes there too. He likes epic songs and, while only The Ghost of Canterville really meets that here, many of these songs have epic in them, as adaptations of literature or film. The Alfred Hitchcock double bill on the front cover is echoed in two of the songs, Dial Mom for Murder and Rear Window. Add Falk's unique vocals on top of that and Fans of the Dark utterly stand out from the crowd. The songwriting is the cherry on top of this already rich cake. Thanks, Chris!

Monday, 24 January 2022

Mammoth WVH - Mammoth WVH (2021)

I was looking forward to this album last year, even though the quality of its music, which is always the most important thing, was doomed to be ranked below other considerations that shouldn't be important. There's a legacy in play here, because the WVH in the name of band and album stands for Wolfgang Van Halen and that's a heck of a legacy, beyond what his father Eddie could make his guitar do. The first Van Halen album changed rock history and is remembered as one of the great debuts of all time. What Eddie did on it blew minds the world over. And, of course, his band, which featured Wolfgang on bass for a surprising fourteen years, was massively successful for over four decades.

I can't imagine how hard it must have been to make this album, with all of that hanging in the air, but it's a good album, if perhaps not what we might all have expected. For a start, Wolfgang does not just play the bass here; he plays everything: guitar, drums and keyboards too. He even sings it himself. In this, he outdid his father, who only played guitar and sang backing vocals on that debut Van Halen record. Maybe it was important for him to outdo Eddie in at least one way, because the world was always going to be focused on what he does here on guitar and, as excellent as he is, it has to be said that, shock horror, his solos aren't going to set the world alight the way Eddie's did in 1978.

What Wolfgang wisely does here is to not play in the Van Halen style, whether you're talking old school party Halen with Diamond Dave or new school smooth Van Hagar. This is a hard rock album at points, with some fancy guitarwork on songs like Mammoth and You're to Blame, but mostly it plays as an alternative rock album, combining elements from various subgenres into a consistent Mammoth WVH sound. It's a lot smoother than I expected, perhaps mostly because of Wolfgang's soft voice, which is the most prominent instrument. Even on heavier songs, like Don't Back Down or The Big Picture, his vocals temper that heaviness and make this very accessible.

And that's where people are going to find themselves making decisions about the album. Clearly, Wolfgang Van Halen is a very talented musician and a pretty decent songwriter too, but that isn't enough to guarantee that we're going to like what he does. I have every respect for Taylor Swift, a very talented singer/songwriter, but that doesn't mean I'm listening to her albums. She's just not my thing and I'm not sure Mammoth WVH is either. It seems to me that Wolfgang is fonder of the softer, smoother, modern American alternative rock that some of his frequent collaborators, like Mark Tremonti of Alter Bridge, play, rather than the hard rock/heavy metal style that he himself played when he was in Van Halen.

My biggest criticism here isn't the variety of songs that many critics called out, because I hear an original and consistent sound across them and see that variety as a strong positive, but how safe they tend to feel. Much of it stems from his voice but it's there in the music too, because all these songs felt like he was holding back, perhaps deliberately, and I wanted to hear what he could do. I certainly preferred the songs where he seemed to push a little more, like Resolve, Mammoth and Feel, that push being on multiple instruments, but I left the album wishing he'd have done it more often.

I hear that the inspiration for Wolfgang playing all the instruments himself was Dave Grohl in the early years of Foo Fighters and that kept coming back to me, because I'm hardly a big Foo Fighters fan. I am a big Dave Grohl fan though, from pretty much everything else he does, whether it's the old stuff in Nirvana, the retro stuff in Probot or the new stuff like the Dee Gees. He's interesting whenever he does something different, but vanilla to me when he's at his most successful. And I'd extend that to Wolfgang Van Halen. I have a feeling that I'm going to love a lot of what he does in the future, but I'm going to like him least when he's at his most successful. And this was definitely successful. It's accessible and it fits what the mainstream wants right now.

I can't say I don't like this, because it's very easy to like, but I didn't love it and I doubt I'll return to it. I appreciated it more than I liked it, because Wolfgang is clearly talented, because he's walking his own road and because he's walking it really well. Sure, I dug more adventurous songs like Feel and Resolve, and I was fascinated by what he did here and there, like the way that his guitar felt a lot like an echo of the title in Circles. But, like Taylor Swift, this isn't really my thing. Maybe it will be yours. It's certainly very good.

Saturday, 22 January 2022

Lee Aaron - Radio On! (2021)

Here's an album I was looking forward to last year but lost track of due to events and so never got around to. I remember Lee Aaron from the early to mid eighties when she fronted a heavy metal band and then later in that decade when she went smoother hard rock. I know that she's kept on shifting gears throughout her career, moving into straight pop music, blues and especially jazz, a genre she found particular success in. I missed her return to rock music in 2016, which was Fire and Gasoline, but I didn't want to miss this one and I'm glad I didn't because it's a lot of fun.

Vampin' is a great opener because it's patient but engaging, hard but soft, rockin' but funky. It's a lot of different things all at once and it isn't just Lee Aaron's voice that shines. Sean Kelly turns in a sleazy rock riff to introduce the song and then finds a funky one to give it life. The shift is kind of like Mötley Crüe to Extreme and, later it goes to the blues bar, but Aaron herself finds a vocal line that works across the board. She's on top form here, sultry but powerful and she dominates, especially during the second half, which is a showcase for her. It's good when she isn't singing and there's some strong guitarwork from Sean Kelly, but it comes alive when she's back at the mike.

I call out the opener because it's a hard rock song on a melodic rock album. From here, things tend to soften up to the radio friendly melodic rock vibe that Aaron is going for here, everything vocals first and foremost and guitar the only other instrument getting a spotlight, Kelly delivering quite a few notable solos, my favourite perhaps being on Soul Breaker. Occasionally, a song might heavy up a little, like Mama Don't Remember and Soho Crawl, both of which remind of Heart, as indeed does Soul Breaker. Occasionally, one might soften up even more and turn into a ballad, as Wasted and Twenty One do almost at the end of the album.

What's interesting to me is that Aaron plays even more with vocal textures on the ballads, turning up the rasp. She's been singing for a long time now, in a recording career that reaches forty years in 2022, but I've never heard her explore so many textures on one album. So much of this features pristine intonation, but she rock 'n' rolls up whenever she wants to and every single nuance is very deliberate. I was prepared for any song to be paused so a YouTube vocal coach reactor could point out what she's doing in any particular moment.

Another thing I noticed is that some of these songs, especially the title track, feel like they're the creation of a blues singer who's recording a rock album rather than a rock singer returning to her roots. I wonder what genre she feels most comfortable in. Certainly my favourite songs here are a mix of genres, that sassy rocker, Vampin'; a melodic rock gem called Cmon; and a slow burner that kicks off the second side, by the name of Devil's Gold. This one's not really a ballad, even though it has to be slower than either of the real ballads here, and it has a western flavour. It sounds great on a first listen but it really gets under the skin and calls at us to return after the album is done.

This isn't one of those legendary comeback albums that rejuvenate careers, but it's enjoyable on a first time through and there are enough highlights to prompt us to play the whole thing again. I think it's a grower, but maybe a little front heavy, with most of the best songs in the first half and the ballads almost relegated to the end. It also benefits from the wild musical journey that Aaron has taken herself on over the past four decades, because, even from the outset, it's clearly never just another melodic rock album. Even when it's exploring ground that we know well, it's different because of what she brings to it. A belated welcome back to rock music, Lee!

Thursday, 20 January 2022

Skillet - Dominion (2022)

I worry every time I see a name like Skillet showing up with a new album. My mission is to listen to new music from across the rock and metal genres and around the world and, while it often makes me cringe, sometimes that means an American band who have been associated with nu metal at some point in the past, and I really don't wanna. I can dismiss a lot of it because I see nu metal as loud pop music more often than it's rock music and covering it can lead to predominantly negative review like Papa Roach's Who Do You Trust? There's too much good music out there for me to take time to review crap unless I'm warning as a public service.

But I've been surprised too. I've enjoyed some albums that I never thought I would or much more than I thought I would. The most obvious example is last year's excellent Chevelle album, which I have to admit to being completely shocked by, as it was utterly not what I expected, but I liked the Foo Fighters album last year and the Powerman 5000 a year earlier. This one turns out to be much better than the Papa Roach, but it's nowhere near the Chevelle. What's important is that it isn't objectively bad, it's just not my thing. If it's yours, then it's done well. Skillet know precisely what they're doing.

It opens with Surviving the Game, a catchy song that features aggressive guitars and chorus, but tempers that with some electronic tampering for effect, so it somehow ends up both aggressive and cute. This is the sort of song my kids were listening to when they were young teenagers, that almost had to end up as WWE entrance music, so Skillet have presumably stayed a little closer to the nineties than some of their peers. Then again, there's a clear use of autotune on the second song, Standing on the Storm, and that's more of a noughties thing, even if it came out only a year after Skillet were founded, in 1997. That's disappointing.

Much of what follows walks that awkward border between pop music and heavy music, with rock a kind of afterthought. The backdrop is almost always electronic or electronically enhanced and the melodies could easily be transferred to a pop song. However, there's a nu metal crunch on many of the songs and there are cool guitar solos here and there. Dominion is a great example of all those things at once and Surviving the Game features a lot of them. These songs half annoy me with the manipulations that seem unnecessary and half impress me because the band really knows how to shift. Dominion, for instance, reaches a drive that's comparable to the Sisters of Mercy, though it is not a cover of their song of the same name. It has a strong solo from Seth Morrison too.

Now, that may be the heaviest thing here and it's easily my favourite song on the album, but they work surprisingly well in a much softer mode, like on Refuge and especially Valley of Death, which isn't as annoying a power ballad as it feels like it ought to be. Skillet also occasionally shift into an alternative rock mode, toning down the nu metal crunch and getting all bouncy with clean vocals. The epitome of this is Shout Your Freedom, again not my thing but capably done nonetheless. It's fair to say that sentiment underlines the whole album for me. I don't like this, but I'm not going to tell you it's worthless because it isn't. I wouldn't turn the dial if anything on this album showed up on the radio and, depending on the song, I might well find my toes tapping along.

I'd even go so far as to suggest that it's a neatly varied album, none of these songs retreading the ground that others had already staked out. There's quite the range between songs like Dominion, Valley of Death and Shout Your Freedom, and others do interesting and unusual things, such as an experimental wild guitar sound on Destroyer and an African hum (and Celtic backing vocal) within Forever or the End that had me honestly smiling. I'd shut this album off more than once as I tried to figure out if I should review it, but I kept putting it back on and, by this late point on the album, I wondered if a band like Skillet were actually going to win me over. And, even though I don't see myself playing this again, they kind of did and that surprised me.

Velesar - Szczodre Gody (2021)

Like the Riverwood album that I reviewed earlier in the week, this is a very welcome follow-up by a band whose debut I adored here at Apocalypse Later, in this instance an eight piece folk metal band from Cieszyn in Poland called Velesar. Dziwadła made it onto my highly recommended list in 2019 and the band were kind enough to mail me a physical CD, which was much appreciated. Unlike the Riverwood album, which was brand new in January, this one's from last October, so I'm playing catch-up. It came out right before my film festival and I had it slotted into my schedule, but ended up returning to reviews a week later. Apologies for the delay, folks!

There are a lot of reasons why I really dig Velesar. They play lively folk metal, for a start, which is a sort of Achilles' heel for me, and they do it very well indeed, but there's more to it than that. They clearly have a lot of fun playing this music, which is pretty crucial in folk metal, and I would love to experience what they do live. But they also nail a lot of balances. They're uplifting, especially with two violins and one flute in their line-up, but there's a darkness to what they do too, which lends a majority of these songs depth. Similarly, vocalist and band founder, Marcin Wieczorek has a harsh vocal style that adds plenty of texture to the band's sound but not so much to call this extreme.

And, best of all, they have a way of sharing the spotlight between so many members that they all have something to do and that something is exactly the right thing for the song. As with the prior album, I liked this from the outset, from a palate cleansing intro and the neat riff at the opening of Zmora, but it was the third song proper that truly sold me on the band once more and, as I had it replay for the third time, I realised how much of a showcase it is for every member of the band. It's Ognie Swaroga, which Google tells me translates to Swarog's Fires.

If Zmora was heavy and Swaćba was bouncy, Ognie Swaroga starts out a little thrashy then settles into a song of trade offs. It starts with guitar and drums soloing at once, then the flute flutters in to join the fray. Everything feels like movement, as if each section is a different set of musicians in a sort of face off against another set, before shifting again and finding a new face off. It's a dance of a song, not in the sense of Taniec diaboła from the debut (or indeed Szczodre Gody on this one) but in the sense of musicians approaching each other and whirling away again. It doesn't matter if its violins meeting drums or violins and flute surrounding the singer, or guitar duelling with violin, it's all a glorious dance.

And I think it's this approach that makes Velesar such an enticing band. They rarely drop down to a single instrument; even when Dawid Holona's lead guitar is soloing in the spotlight, there's one of the violins there with him, and they all hand over to another combination. Zmora grew on me with a second runthrough but Ognie Swaroga remains a highlight and Velesar don't let the album slide at any point after it. I think my favourite moments come late, when the violin leaps into a break in guitar early in Śpiew juraty (szanta bałtycka) and when the flute does the same thing on Modły. Then there's the closer, Radecznica, which has a wonderful first half and an even better second.

Another reason they're so enticing is that every song begins like it's going to be an instrumental and we lose ourselves in the music but, when Marcin Wieczorek arrives, as he always does, even if it's not for a while, he never gets in the way. I've enjoyed a few albums this past year that would have been improved by losing the vocals, but this isn't one. Not only because I don't understand Polish (even if I've just been translated into it for a Guy N. Smith book), I began to see Wieczorek's voice as just another instrument in the Velesar orchestra. Like everyone else, he does precisely what he needs to do, then steps back to hand over to his bandmates, always ready to step back in again at the right moment.

And, talking of those bandmates, I really need to highlight the violinists here. There are a pair of them, but the credits suggest that they never work as a pair. Either it's Iga Suchara, as it is on five of these songs, or it's Ewa Kozieł, on the other half dozen. They're both great but I don't know why they don't appear at once. It often feels like they do, but that must be illusion. The only song that features both of them is Szczodre Gody, but the violin there is Kozieł's while Suchara sings. I have to highlight Katarzyna Babilas on flute as well, even if she doesn't get as much opportunity as the violinists, and Dawid Holona, who delivers a host of excellent solos.

But I'm gushing again. It's going to take something truly special to knock the mighty Korpiklaani off their throne as my favourite folk metal band, not least because they've been doing what they do for either two or three decades, depending on how you count, and they have eleven albums to their name. Velesar only got together in 2018 and this is only their second album, so they have a long journey ahead of them, but they ought to have a glorious time as they do so, especially with COVID hopefully retreating and gigs opening back up. Now, I want to hear albums three, four and ten!

Wednesday, 19 January 2022

Leprous - Aphelion (2021)

When Leprous were founded in 2001, they were clearly a progressive metal band. By the time that I go to their sixth studio album, Pitfalls, for review a couple of years ago, they'd shifted down into progressive rock and continued beyond it, that album almost pop music, with rock hovering at its dark edges, to take an almost reluctant lead for a few songs. This seventh very much continues in that vein, but there's an element of dark folk that leads the way from the outset and never truly vanishes. This is surprisingly close to Hexvessel, though it's simultaneously more progressive and more poppy.

On the opener, Running Low, and into Out of Here, it's dark folk and indie pop. There's Bowie here for sure but maybe some Cure too. It's never really goth, but it has an flavour of that to darken all the folk and pop sounds. And then, nine minutes into the album and two and half into Out of Here, it leaps into rock music. Leprous are happy not only to trawl multiple genres into their sound but to do it in a single track. And, with the electronica that kicks off Silhouette, we have no idea where this is going to take us, but we're up for the ride.

As with my review of Pitfalls, I should emphasise that this isn't a bad thing. Sure, I'm a metalhead and I like big chunky riffs and soaring operatic vocals, but I'm also a fan of music and I love to hear things that I haven't heard before. My early favourite is All the Moments, a magnificent ride that really works the dynamics. For all that it starts out with teasing rock guitar, this is a pop song for a long while, mostly a fascinating interplay between Einar Solberg's haunting falsetto vocal and the drums of Baard Kolstad. Way back in the mix are guitar, bass and, occasionally piano, but they are more of a hint than a set of participants. Eventually, it builds to give them, and the soaring cello, something to do, but it's still mostly voice and drums early and voice and piano late.

What was that track? Prog pop? Sure, why not. It's almost seven minutes long; they wouldn't allow that on a seven inch single back in the eighties. It's not an airplay sort of song. John Peel may have played it back then, but that's about it. And he'd be more likely to have leapt at Have You Ever?, a quirky dark pop song that moves in some of the same circles but with an electronica beat and wild keyboards. It's lively and quirky and engaging. The final track, Nighttime Disguise, is the closest it gets to old school metal Leprous, with harsh vocals that are all the more harsh because we've no option but to compare them to the clean falsetto Solberg uses for much of the album. There's life here for sure.

However, the more I listen to this album, the more I believe what I like the most is the exceedingly stripped down Leprous, the one that throws away the layers and the textures and goes minimalist to sear our soul. It's the dark folk Leprous and, if my favourite is still All the Moments, then I have to say Castaway Angels comes close to surpassing it. Maybe it will with enough listens. These songs play bleak and northern and fit with the album cover. I can almost feel the chill in that air, and I'm in Phoenix, Arizona, where it's a gazillion degrees already in February. Solberg may tell us "Never look back again", but I'm looking inward. I'm breathing slower, I'm finding peace and my focus is a palpable thing.

Like All the Moments, that song grows, of course, because there are dynamics everywhere on this album, but that just makes the fall away at the end even more acute. On Castaway Angels, that's a brief moment of calm indeed and it makes the song feel like we've searched every inch of our soul during it and we're ready to leap off the cliff. It's a good thing that it isn't the last track, with the closer perhaps the most busy song on the album, unless the alt rock of The Silent Revelation tops it with its perky, jagged guitars.

As with any Leprous album, there's a lot here. This is music for the adventurous. It never quite lets its roots in rock go, but it's often a pop album with the focus on vocal melody you might expect. It refuses to go all the way to pop, the vicious power chords on what I believe is the bass midway into Nighttime Disguise underlining that. These Norwegians continue to broaden their palette and I'll always look forward to another Leprous album. And I'll struggle with my rating, because it's never going to be anything but it's own thing and trying to rank it alongside anything else will fail. I'm of the mind right now that it's better than Pitfalls and I gave that a 7/10, so I feel an 8/10 is safe.

Tuesday, 18 January 2022

Rivers of Nihil - The Work (2021)

Having apparently missed the biggest progressive death metal releases of last year, the majority of which came out only a few months ago in September and October, I'm catching up quickly and it does seem that the genre is vibrant and insanely varied. Rivers of Nihil, who hail from Reading in Pennsylvania, have been around since 2009 but really made a splash with their third album, 2018's Where Owls Know My Name. This fourth is a mature release indeed, running just over an hour but channelling all sorts of rock and metal from the past half century. They're varied on their own but it has to be said that they don't remotely show off like First Fragment and they're not remotely as in your face as Archspire. Sure, your run of the mill death metal bands all sound the same but, up here at the top of the heap, that's utterly not the case.

Rivers of Nihil start out hinting at prog rock, The Tower being subdued introspection for over half its running time, with gentle saxophone and soft backing vocals behind the lead's. It does explode into harsh and loud but it's still being held back. There's definitely Pink Floyd here, as there is on a few other songs, especially Maybe One Day, but I honestly think I could suggest Radiohead as well and get away with it. Of course, that's not the case when they ramp up to full on metal, which they do on the next song, Dreaming Black Clockwork.

This one's heavy when it kicks off, with harsh death vocals over blastbeats, but the song moves to an industrial sound before falling away completely, leaving us grooving in an underground cave in the middle of nowhere with an introspective saxophone and vocalist. It's a wild shift indeed, from immersion into isolation, but a good one and the transition back into metal is neatly handled. The song grows in intensity, every shift driven by Jared Klein's drums, until it ends in a dissonant wall of sound finalé that sounds like a horde of demons all screaming at once, only to drop utterly away so Wait can begin with calming piano. This is pristine use of dynamics.

And so we go. Wait isn't metal at all, a mix of rock, prog rock and new wave that builds through an engaging stripped down jazzy guitar trade-off in the second half, which is almost the antithesis of death metal. Focus continues in that vein, before escalating to a more emphatic post-punk vibe, a tasty groove and memories of Paradise Lost's One Second album. Clean adds some neat synths as much as a contrast to the harsh vocal floating around them as neat on their own merit. Again, the feel is multiple genres at once, both the Floydian prog rock and the Paradise Lost new wave flows join to create something new, all wrapped up in death metal.

I like this mix of styles and should emphasise that I've only covered the first half thus far. It keeps going in that mixed vein throughout the second without ever dropping quality. If Focus may be my favourite song from the first half, Episode may be its equivalent from the second. It runs longer, a seven and a half minute piece that really knows how to breathe. It alternates between quiet bits that are a Floydian—lots of Dave Gilmour in the solos— take on that new wave Paradise Lost era, with heavier sections that are much slower than the usual Rivers of Nihil full on death approach, but still very heavy, with a great monotonous beat to make it hypnotic.

And if I stick with Episode as my second half favourite, I have to talk about Terrestria IV: Work in a completely different category. It wraps up the album and it's easily my favourite piece here, even more varied than earlier songs. It starts out like a György Ligeti choral work, finds its sweet spot and starts developing into a true epic. It's easily the longest song here, running eleven and a half minutes, and it's a patient piece that takes its time and builds for most effect. It's death metal often, but it's also contemporary classical, avant-garde jazz, prog rock and a slew of other genres.

It's a great summary of the ambition that drives Rivers of Nihil and why people are paying a heck of a lot of attention. To release an album that sees no problem with placing the relentless death metal assault of MORE? only three songs away from the Floydian alt-prog of Maybe One Day and, in the other direction, the post-punk new wave of Focus, underlines how confident this band is in what they do and how they do it. I'm impressed.

Monday, 17 January 2022

The Dust Coda - Mojo Skyline (2021)

I think I've been letting the side down! I've been trying to keep up with the ever-vibrant New Wave of Classic Rock, which has been thriving on the other side of the pond for the past few years and is not entirely absent in the States either. However, when I saw the best of 2021 list that the admins of the New Wave of Classic Rock Facebook group put together, I realised with horror that I've only reviewed three of the twenty-five albums and two of those were by American groups, Greta van Fleet and The Pretty Reckless. That's simply not good.

Well, top of that list was the second album by the Dust Coda, a London band following up on their self-titled debut from 2017, so let's take a listen to that, especially as they seem to have acquired a Wikipedia page already. That's impressive. I'm pretty sure I'd heard the single, Jimmy 2 Times, before the album came out, and it's a stormer, all about the Goodfellas character with an unusual speech impediment that meant repeating himself, repeating himself. It's a good single, elevated by a horn section to make it feel even sassier. But what about the rest of the album?

Well, I can easily understand one elevator pitch that's been often used to reference them: they're the best new rock band you've never heard of. That's because this is all good stuff, every song, but it's hard to listen to the whole dozen and then explain what the album sounds like. There are a lot of influences here, but they're varied and rarely dominant and Mojo Skyline doesn't fairly sound like any of them. It sounds like the Dust Coda and, in a decade's time that may be enough, but it's not right now because nobody's heard of them.

Now, we can hear individual influences on individual songs, but that doesn't help. Demon, with its memorable opening vocals, is definitely inspired by Wolfmother. Breakdown feels like it's a Stevie Wonder song covered by Aerosmith. Limbo Man happily channels AC/DC, not just through its rock solid riff. Lynyrd Skynyrd drip out of every pore of Dream Alight though it ends up more in Audioslave territory. But Mojo Skyline, album, does not sound like any of those bands. They're just the first ingredients in a heady new stew that refuses to be labelled anything except the Dust Coda and, I guess, NWoCR. We certainly can't call it "classic rock" because it feels too modern.

And that's both its blessing and its curse, because they're not the new anyone but they're not just a damn good covers band hiding in original material either. I love and respect that they're emphatically their own beast, but I don't really know what that is yet. For now, I'll enjoy for how good it is and how varied it is. And for how consistently good it is, given how varied it is, because it doesn't matter if the Dust Coda are rocking like AC/DC, jamming like Lenny Kravitz or crooning a ballad like maybe the Faces, it's guaranteed to be a good song regardless. They're all highlights.

And that's why this is the NWoCR Facebook group admins' album of 2021. It isn't mine but, whatever it sounds like, every one of these dozen songs is a good one. They may be the best new band you've never heard of but, with songs of this quality, they really should be able to elevate past that. Perhaps that will come when it's easier for person X who stumbled upon them and loves their stuff can tell friend Y that they should listen to them because they're... and finish that with something other than "damn good". For now, I'll stick with "the best birthday present I didn't know I got last year".

Friday, 14 January 2022

Archspire - Bleed the Future (2021)

Yeah, eagle-eyed readers will realise that I've already reviewed one technical death metal album from Canada that was released on 29th October, 2021 already this week and I'm supposed to mix it up. Well, whatever First Fragment's album was, and it was a heck of a lot of things, it really didn't play for me as death metal. Progressive metal, absolutely. Flamenco metal, sure. Technical in any description, of course. Death metal? Not so much. This, however, is nothing but. Archspire are on their fourth album of brutal death metal that's very fast and very technical and they couldn't be mistaken for anything else.

I haven't heard them before, but I've seen their name popping up all over the place, both over a period of time and in the 2021 end of lists. This album has shown up in five thus far and I'm still in process factoring others in. To highlight the scale of that achievement, only seven albums made it into that many lists and I happily gave Dream Theater, Gojira, Iron Maiden and Mastodon 8/10s. If this follows suit, that only leaves Cannibal Corpse with a 7/10 and Rivers of Nihil still to review. It's also notable that, on two of those lists, at Angry Metal Guy and Metal Observer, it snuck into the top five.

Of all the many bands approaching death metal from a technical or progressive angle, Archspire feel like they're one of the truest to the genre. They aren't spending half the album wandering in other genres. They aren't bringing in sounds from every which where. They're playing death metal and they're playing it incredibly fast and incredibly technically. And I mean that literally because it boggles the mind how fast and technical this gets. Sure, I've heard drummers this fast before and, I'm sure, vocalists this fast. However, Archspire start and stop songs on dimes with such frequency that they have to be insanely tight. This isn't just about keeping time with each other, it's about a need to do that at machine gun speed.

And I should call out Oliver Rae Aleron for special attention here. He doesn't play an instrument in Archspire, he just sings, and that's a tough job to truly live up to. Death growls are limited just in what they are, so it takes a really good vocalist to make them interesting and a special one to sound iconic enough to be either recognisable or invaluable. In my First Fragment review, I made the suggestion that David AB could have not shown up and I wouldn't have noticed. Aleron is such an integral part of Archspire's sound that, not only would they not sound remotely the same with him gone, they would sound notably lesser. He's the textbook for death metal vocals.

And what he does is to keep up with the drums of Spencer Prewett and the guitars of Dean Lamb and Tobi Morelli (and, on songs like Abandon the Linear, the obvious bass of Jared Smith). Which are not slow, trust me. We're beyond thrash metal speed here, into what tends to be reserved for black metal walls of sound, but it's death metal through and through and closer to brutal than it is to melodic. Aleron delivers his vocals in a fascinating way because they're a growl that he spits out as if he was rapping at high speed. Ever heard Rap God by Eminem? Or Godzilla? Aleron surely reaches similar syllables per second delivery speed at points and he's doing it in a growl.

Another fact I should call out here for notice is the fact that Bleed the Future is done and dusted a half hour in. Never mind these technical death metal opuses that bloat to the hour mark and even beyond, with a frequent resultant loss of interest in the listener due to sheer fatigue. This blast of brutal death starts as it means to go, finishes as it started and wraps up in half an hour. Not one of these eight songs reaches five minutes. It's as emphatically in your face as April's Cannibal Corpse album but it does a lot more than just bludgeon. I can tell the songs apart, for a start.

Drone Corpse Aviator, for instance, which kicks off the album, has a notable stop start approach, a cool call and response between voice and guitar and a delightful interlude in the middle that sees a reprise later on. All in four minutes. It's not a clone of anything else here, right down to the solo in the second half, even it carries a similar punch to other tracks here. Even its final moments are memorable. Golden Mouth of Ruin does some similar things, but the riffs and solos are different, the trade offs between instruments are different and nobody attuned to this sort of speed will be mistaking them. Abandon the Linear has some amazing bass runs. And so on and so on.

Favourites? Good question. I love the runs in Abandon the Linear, whether on guitar or bass. The title track is a spat out gem with another delightful drop away from frantic in the midsection and cool guitars taking it home. The rapid fire vocals on Drain of Incarnation are fascinating. And I do get a kick out of the voicemail introducing A.U.M. that asks for danger to be brought back into the music. Well, that's what Archspire do. This is up there with First Fragment, in its way, for technical insanity, but it also feels like a dangerous brutal death metal album. There's the difference.

Thursday, 13 January 2022

Shamblemaths - Shamblemaths 2 (2021)

Country: Norway
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 22 Oct 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

When it comes to prog, in all its various subgenres, the best reference site online is Prog Archives and it's possible to search their review database for the highest rated releases of any or all years. Take off all the filters and you'll see Close to the Edge by Yes at the top of the heap, with Genesis, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Jethro Tull and Van Der Graaf Generator also in the top ten. That's very British, not that I'm arguing with the list, but if you pop 2021 into the year of release field, you'll see a lot of foreign material: three Norwegian bands in the top five and only two British artists in the top ten. If you care, there are also three Italian bands and one each from Greece and Mexico.

But this one's at the top, a second album, as you might expect, from an eclectic prog band hailing from Trondheim, who suggest "not for the faint of ear" on their website. They're mostly one man, Simen Å. Ellingsen, whose day job is Professor of Fluid Mechanics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. With PhDs in quantum physics and political science, it's not surprising to find that he has a Wikipedia page, even if his band doesn't. Ingvald A. Vassbø has been his musical collaborator in Shamblemaths since 2019 and he plays drums and xylophone here. There are other guests here and there too, the most frequent being Eskild Myrvoll on bass.

Now, I've been discovering that Norway is a hotbed of modern prog lately, Motorpsycho easily my favourite thus far, but Wobbler, Leprous and a string of other M bands not far behind: Mythopoeic Mind, Magic Pie and Mantric for a start. Shamblemaths are the least accessible all of those, if the songs on this album are anything to go by, but they're from impenetrable. Even when they're on a complex kick, with Ellingsen's saxophones dancing around in crazy time signatures, it's still clearly a set of easily enjoyable moments. It's just when you put it all together into these pieces of music that they become a little challenging, especially on a first listen.

It's definitely music to explore and multiple listens really help that. It's so wildly original that any comparisons are going to fall wildly short, but there's definitely King Crimson in here, a Marillion nod here and there in phrasing and plenty of classical music too, D.S.C.H. being a common motif in the works of Shostakovich and this piece potentially being a couple of movements from his String Quartet No. 8, albeit mostly not played on strings. Prog Archives reviewers bring up Änglagård an awful lot too, a Swedish prog rock band I've not encountered yet, so fans of theirs should pay heed too.

There's so much here that it's hard to cite any particular standout. Every song stands out in some way. When the album finished, I realised I was sitting in my chair with my mouth open, because of how exquisite This River was, early with saxophones and late in vocal duet. I had to remind myself to breathe. It's definitely a highlight, but then so are Knucklecog and D.S.C.H. The true epic of the album is Lat Kvar Jordisk Skapning Teia, its nine very varied parts split over four tracks and eighteen minutes or so. Surely that's a highlight too, but there's so much in it that it's hard to see as a single song.

Even the shorter pieces are notable, the opening minute of drone and sax that is Måneskygge, or the more experimental two minutes of Been and Gone, dark and unusual sounds combining with a double bass to conjure up a sort of haunted jazz club. It could have preceded the jazzy chaos of the first track proper, Knucklecog, but it introduces This River instead, with its plaintive sax and calm piano and understated vocals, initially Ellingsen solo but then in duet with Marianne Lønstad, one of three female vocalists with beautiful voices who guest here. The other guest singer is Eivor Å. Ellingsen (age 6), presumably Simen's son, who gets part nine of Lat Kvar Jordisk Skapning Teia.

January at Apocalypse Later Music is both a beginning and an end for me, the start of music from a new year but the end of music from the previous one, as I catch up on what I should have covered and didn't, based mostly on research of year end lists. This is exactly why I do that, because I can't imagine missing something of this exquisite quality just because I had no idea who Shamblemaths were. This River alone may be the the most sublime nine minutes recorded in 2021 and that's just the coda to a pristine album.

Wednesday, 12 January 2022

Blue Rumble - Blue Rumble (2022)

Country: Switzerland
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Jan 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Instagram

Just to underline that not every psychedelic rock band has to arrive in the form of a trio, here's an amazing quartet from Zürich by the name of Blue Rumble. Hey, I hit the motherlode earlier in the month with Blue Merrow; why not try double dipping with Blue Rumble? Well, they're not as good as the Spaniards, but then precious few are. They are, however, still really good and I can imagine this debut album getting a lot of repeat plays here at Chaos Central. It reminds me of the type of obscure album I'd see pinned to the walls of second hand record store with crazy price tags next to them. The internet has made that sort of material available to the masses, but this album is even easier to find, given that it's downloadable from Bandcamp for whatever you want to pay for it.

It's very seventies psych, so much so that the acid almost drips off the screen while it's playing. I'd suggest a couple of comparisons that I can hear, but I think most of the influences are deeper and I just don't have the depth of background in obscure seventies psych to call them out. While this is easily accessible, as I've found most psychedelic rock to be, even if, like me, you're not listening to it under the influence of modern chemistry, it feels like it's going to find its true audience in niche communities who just live for this stuff.

The more useful influences I can cite are Deep Purple and Focus, though the first one that sprang to mind was Black Sabbath, because there's a mellow section in the opener, God Knows I Shoulda Been Gone that reminds of them in their more introspective moments. The Purple is apparent in the keyboard work of Ronaldo Rodrigues, who reminds of Jon Lord frequently, especially during a set of solo runs during Cup o' Rosie and then again on Hangman. The Focus is mostly in the guitar of Andrea Gelardini, who channels Jan Akkerman in his riffs, most obviously on The Snake. That's not Akkerman style soloing though, being closer to Dickie Peterson of Blue Cheer or Martin Pugh of Steamhammer, maybe even some Robin Trower and Alvin Lee.

The best and worst aspects of the album can be summed up in one song for me and that's Sunset Fire Opal. It's a decent piece for a couple of minutes, maybe not up to some of what had preceded it but decent nonetheless. Then it drops into a section that just blew me away, as if the music was the gem of its title and the sun hit it exactly right and it flared into life. It's a slow section, one in which the band live up to the rumble in their name. It's gorgeous stuff, held back but majestically so. There's Wishbone Ash in here but Fairport Convention too and we know it's a joyous calm that will build to a furious storm. It does erupt, somewhat, at the four minute mark but the midsection promises more than the finalé could deliver.

Now, Blue Rumble at their worst are still a damn good band. The finalé of Sunset Fire Opal is still good stuff, but it isn't what it could have been and there are other similar points where the band ably sets up more than they can provide. In fact, the next song, The Snake, fits this bill to a degree because it kicks off with a neatly vicious riff from Gelardini and continues on rather nicely, but it's reminiscent of Hocus Pocus and we know how wild that ended up. Of course, there are no insanity vocals here, because the whole album is instrumental, and the flute doesn't show up until Linda a couple of tracks on, but the keyboard runs that might have matched the riff are elsewhere. Now, I should emphasise that Rodrigues is still excellent on this one but it doesn't all come together the way it promises to.

That makes me wonder how long the various musicians in Blue Rumble have played together. It's long enough for them to get pretty damn tight and to hand off between instruments. That's not just the guitar and keyboards, by the way, as there's a great bass section from Sébastien Métens on Think for Yourself and even a drum solo from Harry Silvers on Occhio e Croce. But it may not be quite long enough to have got inside each other's skin yet and I'm looking forward to hearing that on future releases, where the guitars and keyboards can truly duel and trade sequences back and forth and the jams can truly come alive.

There's some of that here already, on pieces like Hangman, but I'm hearing potential as much as accomplishment. I want a second album and a third. Hey, I want the box set of the first half dozen. This is good stuff, but it's surely just the beginning for Blue Rumble.

First Fragment - Gloire éternelle (2021)

I don't read a lot of other music critics, though I try to keep up with the magazines to see what's in the release schedule and what's generating a lot of buzz. One site I do pop over to once in a while to see how they reacted to a particular album is Angry Metal Guy, because the critics there for the most part have zero interest in kissing any band's arse. They write longer reviews, they rarely feel biased and they don't dish out high scores like candy. Well, the Angry Metal Guy in charge of that rowdy bunch put this at the very top of his 2021 list, above Soen, Scardust and Aephanemer, every one of those responsible for a great 2021 album. I should check this one out too.

And it's truly wild, though I don't know how well it can justify its standard genre definition. There is death metal here, certainly, but it's mostly in the vocals of David AB. Even when they're playing at speed, which is often, they don't feel remotely like a death metal band. I'll buy neo-classical as a description far more, because this is virtuosic and it damn well knows it. Everyone in the band is apparently as happy to show off their substantial technical chops as they are to play actual songs. If they weren't so tight, I'd think that they didn't care about the songs at all, performing only for the technical difficulty and not caring about the artistic merit.

It's very easy for a listener to forget about any one of these songs too, because we get caught up in the notes. There are two guitarists here, Phil Tougas and Nick Miller, with Dominic Lapointe on bass often playing lead alongside them. A song like Pantheum may have some broader structure to it, but my ears heard it as a fox chase. I don't know if Tougas is chasing Miller or vice versa but one of them's chasing the other and he's doing it from beginning to end. Maybe they switch.

The bass of Lapointe overtakes both by the time it's all over, coming out of nowhere, but the point is that it's always all about these instruments. David AB actually sings on a lot of the song, but he had no reason to be there. He certainly wasn't singing lead for me and he never once grabbed my attention. Maybe he's part commentator but mostly he's just a spectator like the rest of us. He's not bad at what he does, but he could have wandered down the pub for a pint while the band put this song down on vinyl and I don't think I'd have even noticed. So much for the death metal in this death metal.

What I should have mentioned before now is that these guitars aren't just shredding in the way a shred guitarist tends to shred. I mention that and you think of Yngwie J. Malmsteen, which is fine. He's a great shredder and almost the definition of neo-classical nowadays, but that's not all that First Fragment are doing. Just check out the opening title track to see what I mean. Sure, it's neo-classical, but it's not Yngwie for a while. Never mind death metal, Tougas and Miller are duetting a flamenco piece here while Lapointe and drummer Nicholas Wells wandered in from the jazz club next door. This isn't metal and it isn't even rock. It's heavy world music, all castanets and slap bass, until almost three minutes in. Then it goes full on Yngwie.

The other thing to know is that there's a lot of everything here. Not only are there more notes in any one song than your average Dragonforce album, there are a lot of songs and they don't skimp on the running time. The title track almost reaches nine minutes and De chair et de haine does. If that wasn't enough, In'el is longer than both put together, almost reaching nineteen on its own. I could call out that song alone as overwhelming, but it's also the truest technical death metal song here. When the short ones are a lot to take in, that holds double or triple for the long ones. And then scale that up to seventy one minutes and change, the length of the entire album, and there's nobody on the planet who can take it all in. Maybe a five year old Mozart, but he's dead.

The crazy thing is that it works, just not initially and certainly not all at once. This is an album that will clobber you over the head until you're a pool of dribble on the floor. Only as you recover and realise that you didn't entirely dislike the experience, so tune back in and try to figure out what's actually going on, will you catch that there's more than technical genius here. I think what caught me first was Sonata en mi mineur, a six minute instrumental that's built out of flamenco guitars and orchestral waves. It's as far from technical death metal as you can imagine, but it's gorgeous. It's the realisation that the rest of the album is just more of the same, just faster, less accessible and with occasional death growls showing up to cheer it all on that prompts reevaluation.

So, yeah, this is a great album. How great I have no idea because I'll need to listen to it at least a dozen more times to properly grasp it, maybe more. It's technically brilliant, but it works not only as neo-classical metal but as jazz and funk and, damn it, a lot of this album frickin' swings. Really, my only complaint is that there are vocals. At all. I'm not complaining about the quality of David AB's contribution. He just doesn't need to be there, except maybe on the epic In'el. All I'm asking for is a second disc that's the same thing but entirely instrumental.

Tuesday, 11 January 2022

The Losts - Mystery of Depths (2021)

Country: France
Style: Dark Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 7 May 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives | YouTube

Thanks to Yann from the Losts for sending me a copy of their second album for review. I like this a lot, partly because everything in it takes me back, some of it a long way, but it seems like it can't have seen release longer than about five minutes ago (it came out last May). They call what they do "dark heavy metal" and it's a union of a lot of older styles into a powerful new mix. For a while, I found myself instinctively pulling out all the influences but eventually they just bludgeoned me into just listening without thinking. I'd love to hear the Losts on stage, because there ought to be some serious energy coming out of this band.

The first influence I heard was Iron Maiden, which is present in everything from the operatic vocal style of YGC through the guitars of DGC to the galloping back end of JCR and PPG. However, there is a density of sound here and that carried more of an early Metal Church vibe to it, with perhaps some Manowar in there too and a whole lot of Sword, if you remember them; the Losts could take on Sword's Outta Control and nobody would believe it wasn't an original song. Sword are riddled throughout Tattoo the Child, which is the lively opener the album needed.

If that suggests that they sound like a North American heavy/power metal band, that's not unfair but The Priests Control expands that list of influences back to the old world. There's one dissonant guitar chord that's American and contemporary, but everything else screams European and proto-extreme. It's Judas Priest and Mercyful Fate and Motörhead with Bruce Dickinson joining King Diamond and Rob Halford at the busy microphone. I really dig the bouncy riff this one has and it only gets bouncier as it goes, because the vocals update to a more extreme, almost black metal sound. The extreme metal cover art is misleading but not entirely.

In other words, there's a lot here to explore and that's before A Path to Arabia opens up an ethnic side to the band, In the Steam of Opium bears the clear marks of doom and Write My Name in the Light escalates the Judas Priest sound up to Blind Guardian epic stature. That sort of diversity is a constant, it seems. Revelation of the Losts is a singalong Teutonic power metal anthem, designed for big European outdoor festivals with large willing crowds. Inner Wounds, with its choral chorus and ethnic riffs, feels more like Therion. Pharaoh's Curse has an Accept-style riff to build it.

So, if the Losts aren't one band, are they all bands wrapped up together in an energetic tribute to what these guys were listening to back in their misspent youths? Maybe a little, I guess, but there is common ground here. The guitars are heavy but always traditional, the back end energetic and a little more willing to step into extreme. The vocals are, well, quite a lot of things, depending on the current need, but, at heart, they're almost always powerful and melodic.

Whenever the band aren't adding another new influence, they go back to a Priest/Maiden sort of hybrid, galloping along in time honoured Maiden fashion with vocals that often remind of Bruce, but with riffs and changes more reminiscent of Priest. This default mode is there in Until the End and The Drug I Miss and others. And it's never far away, even when something else is layered over it, always ready to serve as the bedrock for another exploration into influence.

I guess this all means that the Losts aren't the most original band to emerge from France lately—they're certainly not rewriting genre boundaries like Aephanemer or Gojira, but they are very good indeed at what they do and there can't be many other bands that are this much sheer fun. I'll certainly seek out their debut, ...of Shades & Deadlands, released in 2016 with a different bass player, but I'm also aching to see them live. Now, given COVID and the existence of the Atlantic Ocean, that may be tricky, but hey. One day.

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