Aborted - Vault of Horrors (2024)

Country: Belgium
Style: Technical Death Metal/Grindcore
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 15 Mar 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I guess Aborted should still be listed as a Belgian band, given that sole founder member and lead vocalist Sven de Caluwé is Belgian, but they're a pretty international bunch nowadays. What blew me away from moment one is the drumming of Ken Bedene, one of two Californians in the line-up, his fourteen year stint with the band making him the longest serving member who wasn't there at the beginning. The others hail from Iceland and Italy, but the latter is bassist Stefano Franceschini who left in 2023 after seven years on board. I don't believe he's been replaced yet but he does play on this album for presumably the last time.

Aborted are usually listed as technical death metal, which is entirely appropriate, but Bedene is a grindcore drummer when Dreadbringer kicks off the album. He doesn't stay there, but damn, he's fast. Of course, everyone else has to be totally on top of their game for this to hold together and I would be failing at my job if I didn't point that out, but it took plenty of effort to tear myself away from what he was doing, whatever anyone else was up to at any particular moment. I remember a gig in Bradford way back in 1988, with Carcass headlining during their demo days, at which I found myself hypnotised by the drummer of Intense Degree. He was so fast that I couldn't see his arms when he was in full flow because they were just a blur. That came quickly to mind here, though the majority of the speed seems to be in his feet.

After Bedene, it was de Caluwé who grabbed my attention with his vocals. He mostly delivers in a guttural death growl that's somehow clear enough for me to be able to tell that he sings entirely in English. However, like Bedene, there are points where he shifts up to grindcore speeds, others where he moves his pitch up to provide more of a black metal shriek and still more where there's some sort of post production done on his voice to give it a weirdly echoing effect. It's almost like he's inside such a small box that he'd have to be crushed into a cube to fit but which somehow lets his voice remain as huge and resonant as ever.

At least, I believe most of that is de Caluwé, but it's hard to actually tell, because there's a guest vocalist singing with him on every single track. Most are North American, with four from the USA and four from Canada, including Oliver Rae Aleron from Archspire on The Shape of Hate and Alex Erian from Despised Icon on Death Cult. However, there's also a Brit, Jason Evans from Ingested, on Insect Politics, the most overtly grindcore song here, and an Italian, Francesco Paoli from the mighty Fleshgod Apocalypse on Condemned to Rot. No wonder that one has a particularly dense sound. Generally speaking, the multiple voices helps this album considerably, adding a diversity that might not otherwise have been there.

The guitarists are Ian Jekelis and Daníel Konráðsson and what I found fascinating about what they do here is that they never seem to solo in genre. During the majority of these songs, they play at a quick pace because that's what everyone else is doing, and they add depth to the music. However, there are points where they play a lot slower, or at least whoever's handling lead at any particular moment does, and that adds a fascinating dimension. There are long sustained notes in The Shape of Hate and Hellbound, even though everything else around them is fast, and the solos, in most of these songs, tend to be almost traditional heavy metal solos, hardly extreme at all.

While those solos can be rather engaging, this is the exact opposite of easy listening. It's not just that it's very loud and very fast, it's that we have to pay a lot of attention to what's happening. It can be easy to get lost in some of these songs, like Condemned to Rot and Brotherhood of Sleep. Hellbound may the most immediately accessible. Death Cult has an almost singalong chorus, merely a simple and brutal one. The Golgothan is an attention grabber, because of electronic pulses as part of the beat, and there are deeper keyboards later in the song which add another element to the sound.

My favourites are the ones that are complex but not impenetrable, ones that I can grasp within a few listens but still have hidden depths that I can explore on further runs through. Dreadbringer has to be the most obvious, but The Golgothan is close and Malevolent Haze has an emotional arc to explore. It seems bigger than anything else here, perhaps appropriately as the closer, only the single that hinted at the album, Infinite Terror, after it as a bonus track. That's a good one too.

It's just hard to call out tracks after only five listens, though. This is material so dense that we just can't judge it properly until we've enjoyed its company for a while, bought it dinner and visited its parents. We have to dive in deep and explore it to find what it's truly offering. The whole album is still growing on me and I'm a little wary about only giving it a 7/10. I have a feeling that, in a week or two, I'd give it more, but I have to let it go right now so I can move onto other albums by other bands. C'est la vie.

Modder - The Great Liberation Through Hearing (2023)

Country: Belgium
Style: Sludge Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 17 Nov 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives

A couple of years ago, almost to the day, I reviewed the debut album from Modder, a sludge metal band from Ghent, which impressed me because it was entirely instrumental, and they kindly sent a copy of their follow-up over for review. It's a better album, I think, even though I'm going with the same rating, because it shifts the most routine song from the end to the beginning, where it works as a mood setter. Belly Ache doesn't do a lot, but what it does is crushingly heavy, an onslaught of sound to get us set. There are things going on under that brutal riffing but they're teasingly kept so deep that we have to pay serious attention to catch the nuances.

That continues into Gazing into Domination, with a little more variety, but it drops away a minute and a half in, just as Spasm did last time out, and suddenly everything's open. It's a rejuvenation, an affirmation of everything good in the world, as if we were confined into a tiny space for so long that we don't remember what we did before it, only to suddenly be surrounded by freedom. There have only ever been clouds and now there's blue sky. It takes a while to adapt, as if we're having to relearn how to see, but we do and, when the walls descend again, we're somehow more alive.

While the whole album is emphatically sludge metal, pairing the doom with a tinge of industrial and upping the distortion even further, there are other things happening here and there to make it rather interesting and, roughly speaking, every successive track does more. Those are beats we might expect from electronica to kick off Feral Summer and again on These Snakes, the latter with a military sort of echo. There are synth lines that feel like alerts or sirens under a few of the songs almost as a substitute for vocals.

Feral Summer also speeds up at one point to hint at thrash, which is impactful with this amount of distortion. The Devil is Digital slows things right down and allows the bass to climb out of the mire to play far more obviously, only to then ramp the tempo back up again with an industrial overlay. I might like Gazing into Domination more than I apparently should as track two, but otherwise, I'm more on board with each track than its predecessor, all the way to These Snakes, the closer, which is the most versatile and ambitious of the lot.

I like this one a lot. The beats are a constant companion for half the song and they provide a real atmosphere to it, reminiscent of djembe, especially during a section that's basically a hand drum solo. There's also something that's almost a vocal and very middle eastern in vibe. It does heavy up and simplify down at points but there are always fascinating things waiting around the corner. What's more, while other songs maintain their generally high level of intensity, this one gradually builds throughout and that works really well.

The band is mostly the same as last time out, only one change evident with Jamal Talibi replacing Maxime Rouquart on the second guitar, but they feel more assured. This is heavy stuff indeed and, if you want to be sonically assaulted, your wish wil be granted here, especially on Belly Ache, but it grows in variety and depth with each of the six tracks on offer until they're somehow playing world music, merely in insanely heavy fashion. I've listened through this album a few times now and each time follows that same arc, where I enjoy the immediate bludgeoning and then let it all grow over me until the end.

I like Modder over most sludge metal bands because they're fully instrumental, a sample here and there notwithstanding, and it's the vocals that tend to be the weakest aspect of sludge for me. At this point, I could actually see Modder adding a vocalist but in a very different style to every other sludge band. I'm thinking more like Jarboe with the Swans, but more ethnic. Get a middle eastern female vocalist on board, maybe add a hurdy gurdy and suddenly Robert Plant will be guesting as a vocalist over epochally heavy riffs. How cool would that be?

Edges - The End of the F***ing World (2023)

Country: Belgium
Style: Jazz Fusion
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 31 Mar 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

Edges may be a debuting band, but they're a project of a Belgian guitarist, Guillaume Vierset, who has a few solo albums out, along with others with Harvest Group and LG Jazz Collective, plus guest appearances for a variety of other Belgian jazz artists. As that might suggest, this is jazz, but it's a fascinating fusion album because Vierset started playing country guitar with his father, then went to school to study classical guitar and jazz, and diversified from there. He's brought folk music into jazz and a number of songs here play with electronica, rock and even punk.

The vast majority of the album is instrumental, the only vocal piece being the closing title track, a melodious song that's the longest on offer at five minutes but also the most underwhelming, with a lounge music base and almost a subdued Iggy Pop style vocal. It's a far cry from the opener, First Round, which is probably my favourite piece here, a jaunty jazz fusion piece with some fascinating rhythms. It gets a little experimental in its second half but nowhere near to the degree that other pieces will soon relish in. It's a very good entry point to the album.

Of course, if you don't have a background in jazz fusion and you dig this opener, you may be rather confused by Better Call Pam, perhaps my other favourite track here. It starts out as electronica, a pulsing synth that sounds like it's a machine trying but not quite managing to emulate the speech of a human being. There's plenty of glitch early on, but it settles into a comfortable groove, full of movement, as if the piece is walking down the road, all chill and laid back. As it builds, it gets more and more fascinating because the process of walking appears to become more difficult, the stride veering away from what's expected and muscles starting to seize and spasm. Somehow it manages to make it to its destination without tripping over its feet, but it's a constant challenge.

While we wouldn't know this without an explanation, apparently there's a story running through a majority of this album. The first two tracks feature a man declaring the end of the fucking world, a memorable title even with censoring asterisks, because he finds himself torn between a world that is rational and structured and sane and another world "where everything is blown apart". The rest of the album is therefore a struggle between order and chaos, some pieces more structured, but a few far from it. Just as this man thinks he's figured it out on Back, it's time for a Second Round.

And, even though First Round and Better Call Pam are my favourite pieces, I'd give Second Round a place alongside them as a highlight. It starts out delicate and introspective, but gradually finds its way into chaos, the dynamic shift between beginning and end surely the most pronounced that the album gets. In its way, it's the album in microcosm but the album doesn't follow such a direct shift. It wends and weaves and shifts from the world of order to the world of chaos and back again with a playful edge.

After First Round, the most approachable song may be AC Blues, which is tender and fascinating, a lounge music piece to presage the closer but one that doesn't need a voice and whose instruments are constantly interesting. The lounge feel threatens to soothe us into slumber, but nothing being played is willing to let us, so our attention never wavers and we stay very awake and listen actively. I'm reminded here of some of what I've heard from Bill Frisell with some Mark Ribot in there for a bonus.

I don't know any of the musicians, but Vierset played all the guitars and wrote the music, leaving a trio of others behind him. Dorian Dumont may be the most prominent otherwise, as the keyboard player and pianist. Anders Christensen contributes bass and Jim Black the drums, which, in keeping with the overarching concept, often shift from rock structure to free jazz chaos. They cover a lot of ground here, all the way from the punky vibe of I Love Triads to the minimalist, near ambient intro to the title track, simply called Intro, to name just two tracks next to each other on the album.

I may know a lot more about every other genre I've covered this week than I do jazz fusion, but this is a fascinating album that's perked up my day.

Crime Scene - Dark Tidings (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Killer - Hellfire (2023)

Country: Belgium
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 27 Jan 2023
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives

I remember a few bands called Killer back in the eighties. This is the Belgian outfit, who got some airplay on the Friday Rock Show in 1984, from their Shock Waves album, who are not to be confused with the Swiss band who were played a couple of years later, from their Young Blood album. These Belgians have moved through a number of styles, starting out as hard rock but moving into metal and shifting up to speed metal gears. This eighth album, also their first in eight years, is elusive in its sound because it trawls in most of their eras and some from band hiatuses too.

Argus Eyes is straight ahead heavy metal, but it's a disappointing opener because it's too clean. It has a decent riff but it fails to make an impression and the rest of the album, which happily adds a little dirt, quickly leaves it in the dust. It finds its feet with Money, which is an old school NWOBHM track. Cuts Me Like a Knife is the sort of blues-based hard rock number that I could imagine Deep Purple recording after Mark II broke up, but it also has a wailing guitar over the top that's clearly heavy metal. It's almost like two songs in one, the guitarist showing up to a different session and adding a new layer on top of what could have been a completed song, but I like it.

The album's predominant sound shows up in Rat Race, which barrels along like Motörhead or, with a little more accuracy, Tank. For a while, it tries to combine approaches—Different Worlds has the NWOBHM style but also that metal guitar over a bluesy rock base, Nightmare is NWOBHM over a blues base too and From Bad to Worse moves all the way back to hard rock, designed to be played loud in a small pub—but eventually it gives up the effort and settles into that Tank sound. And, to be frank, it's when I expected the filler material to start showing up that I really started to dig the album.

There's nothing particularly special about War at Home, Medicine Man and House of Glass, except that, sitting late on the second side with nine songs before them and the token ballad to come, it's generally expected that they be the weakest tracks and they simply aren't. Trouble is right before them and, while it's still NWOBHM, it happily hints at doom. War at Home adds an urgent tempo, albeit nowhere near speed metal. Medicine Man and House of Glass have nothing notable for me to call out. However, all four of these songs just sound right and they sound right together.

They're all basic heavy metal songs, with decent riffs and, with the exception of Trouble, a decent pace. They have decent hooks and they don't outstay their welcomes. They also all feature strong guitar solos from Paul van Camp, now as then generally known as Shorty. He co-founded the band in 1980 with drummer Fat Leo, who passed in 2012, and has remained in place throughout. Spooky isn't here though, the bass player who joined soon into the band's lifetime and stayed most of the way through—including a blues band called Blues-Express that Shorty and Spooky played in while Killer were on hiatus between 1991 and 1993 that I'm sure fuelled songs like Cuts Me Like a Knife here—because he left in 2010, shortly into their third run. So now it's Shorty on guitars and vocals, Jakke on bass and vocals and Vanne on drums. They're still a power trio.

It's clearly Shorty's show now and it's hardly a shock that he gives himself so many opportunities to launch into searing guitar solos, sometimes at serious length. They're in the Michael Schenker style but with a continual raw edge that I really like. In fact, I'm happy that he did prioritise these solos because they were the highlights of the album for me. I dug Rat Race anyway, but it's better because of its solos. Those songs late on the second side are all elevated by solos. I ought to point out that they're almost entirely done in the same style, so it could be argued that they're not far off interchangeable but I don't care. I loved them anyway.

I should also add that, if the 2023 Killer are far more a reliable mid-card band than a headliner, it has to be said that this is a generous album. For a regular price, you get a new album that comes close to reaching an hour and, in fact, does if you count the two bonus tracks. What's more, if you happen to be new to the band, there's a best of compilation on a included second disc. That's a lot of music and it's well worth the price. Welcome back to the studio, folks.

Neptunian Maximalism - Éons (2020)

Country: Belgium
Style: Jazz Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 26 Jun 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook

Neptunian Maximalism only made two end of year lists that I'm looking at, at Pop Matters and Treble Zine, but they were high in both of them and they sounded so wild that I had to check them out (and a record label that they record for too—I, Voidhanger, named for a Darkthrone track—who release what they describe as "obscure, unique, and uncompromising visions from the metal underground.") That does fit this release, which is metal, I think, though it's jazz first and foremost.

It's a rather daunting release, a triple album of experimental music from Belgium running two hours and ten minutes and covers Bandcamp tags as wildly diverse as "dark ambient", "drone metal", "free jazz", "heavy psych", "stoner metal" and "tribal", among others. The band include two drummers and one saxophonist, with Guillaume Cazalet covering everything else: bass, guitar, sitar, flute, trumpet... whatever he can find, it seems. Its press claims that it's the "quintessential mystical and psychedelic journey of 2020." Even having already reviewed the Oranssi Pazuzu album, I'm not going to argue.

What I will say is that, as wild as this is, and it does indeed dip deep into free jazz, it felt surprisingly accessible to me. Tribal drumming and pixie-like saxophone render the first two pieces of music lively, engaging and shockingly organic. Sure, Lamasthu slows things down to paint a sonic picture of a trip through Hell itself, dark and eerie from the outset but all the more eerie as the layers peel away with us left in near silence, punctuated only by demonic voices. At least that's what I heard. Its full title is translated from the French to Lamasthu: Seeder of the Primordial Fungal Kingdom and Infanticide of Neogene Monkeys. And yes, there's definitely some Ummagumma weirdness here, but this is heavier and freer and jazzier.

These titles do offer clues as to what's going on, or at least to what we ought to be thinking about as they play. These opening songs comprise a six track cycle called To the Earth. The full title of part one is To the Earth: Daiitoku-Myōō no ōdaiko 大威徳明王 鼓童—L'Impact de Théia durant l’Éon Hadéen, which includes three languages and two scripts: English, Japanese and French. So let's figure out what all that means.

The "odaiko" is the largest drum in a taiko performance of Japanese drumming; this one belongs to Daiitoku Myōō, one of the five Great Light Kings of Esoteric Buddhism. Google Translate tells me the kanji translate from the Japanese to Yamantaka Kodo, but Yamantaka happens to be a Sanskrit name for Daiitoku Myōō. Kodo has a double meaning: both "children of the drum" and "heartbeat", which is the primal source of all rhythm. The French means "The Impact of Théia during the Hadean Aeon", referring to an ancient planet that may have collided with the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, so creating our moon.

So we're delving into Japanese mythology and archeoastronomy. Nganga brings in African culture in primal times, the title belonging to a spiritual healer, and Lamasthu Mesopotamian, as she's the most terrible of all female demons. Ptah Sokar Osiris is an Egyptian composite funerary deity, while Enūma Eliš is the Babylonian creation myth. Clearly, there's a lot of birth and death here. We're also running through billions of years: two supereons, at least five eons and mere periods like the Carboniferous. What are Neptunian Maximalism telling us in this grand sweep of history and mythology?

Well, I'm glad you asked! "By exploring the evolution of the human species," the band "question the future of the living on Earth, propitiating a feeling of acceptance for the conclusion of the so called 'anthropocene' era and preparing us for the incoming 'probocene' era, imagining our planet ruled by superior intelligent elephants after the end of humanity." So there you have it. I think I need notes. It's all ritual, but it's heavily researched, multi-cultural, multi-mythological ritual that's explored in fascinating style.

To the Moon encompasses the next six pieces of music, with three of those being about Vajrabhairava, a third name for Daiitoku Myōō/Yamantaka, this time the name used in Tibetan Buddism. The reason why Yamantaka is important is because he destroyed Yama, the God of Death, thus stopping samsara, the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, which is the goal of the journey towards enlightenment. I guess if you're going to go with a concept, it's worth making it a deep one. I couldn't name one deeper than this.

Oddly for such a desirable goal, Zâr is doomier in nature with a lot more cymbals in play, aspects that continue throughout this suite. While much of this feels theatrical, the initial part of Vajrabhairava, The Summoning, is especially evocative. It seems like it should be performed live while demons roam the stage, speaking to us in dark voices. The final part, Oi Sonuf Vaoresaji!, is thoroughly theatrical as well, initially an assault of percussion, mostly sticks banging against each other rather than drums. It feels like there's an associated dance that I'm missing. Even when it calms down, it still feels like it's a soundtrack to something visual.

The third part of Vajrabhairava is the one that spoke to me, The Great Wars of Quaternary Era Against Ego. It's chaotic free jazz for a while, until the emergency of a driving trance-inducing riff that sounds like it's played on bass and emphasised by percussion. It persists but so does the chaos, like we're here to witness the age-old battle between chaos and order in microcosm.

That leaves four pieces of music to constitute To the Sun and they're generally longer and much more patient. With the sole exception of the previous track, Oi Sonuf Vaoresaji!, Eôs, the first part of To the Sun, is twice as long as anything thus far, at eighteen and a half minutes. It takes its time, pitting that exploratory saxophone of Jean Jacques Duerinckx against a set of dark textures, sans any percussion, and, when it evolves, it does so into a commanding presence, as if this were an avant-garde opera. The latter part of the song gets all trippy and psychedelic.

I'm not as fond of To the Sun generally. It doesn't seem to have as much purpose to it, Heliozoapolis a fifteen minute jumble of hesitant jazz drumming, sitar noodling and ambient spirituality. It does end well for me, but it's easily my least favourite piece of music here and the rest of To the Sun pales when compared to To the Moon and especially To the Earth.

But hey, given how generous this release is, it's still at least a full album more originality than most albums can boast and I'm comfortable giving it a solid 8/10. The best music here is easily worthy of the highest ratings I give out. Now, I need to come back down to Earth for whatever I can follow this with.

Bütcher - 666 Goats Carry My Chariot (2020)

Country: Belgium
Style: Black/Speed Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 31 Jan 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives

I almost didn't try this second album from Belgium's Bütcher because they're clearly not taking this entirely seriously. Unnecessary umlaut in the band's name? Check. Overplayed album title? Check, though it's a step down from its predecessor, Bestial Fükkin' Warmachine. Misspelled songs? Check. Stupid intro? Double check, as it combines Flash Gordon synths with unintelligible narration. Über-metal pseudonyms? Check times four. I wonder who guitarist KK Ripper's favourite band might be? I'll give you one guess and I guarantee you won't need another. R Hellshrieker, AH Wrathchylde and LV Speedhämmer have names so descriptive that I don't need to tell you their roles. And is that cover art the most metal thing you've seen in years or what?

But forty or so seconds into that stupid intro, it shifts over to exquisite metal guitar, like it's a warm-up for a guitarist who knows he's going to be playing at hyperspeed for the next half an hour and doesn't plan on breaking his fingers launching into the first track proper. That track is Iron Bitch (yeah, I know) but it blisters and I knew that I'd found a perfect antidote to the Stone Temple Pilots album I'm reviewing after this.

The vocals of R Hellshrieker's vocals are certainly over the top, rarely not delivered at a scream. They threaten to be bigger than the studio the band's recording in and I salute the producer's efforts because he manages to keep him high in the mix but not so much that he spends half his time in the red. He has fun with enunciation like Martin Walkyier, and, on the basis of what he does with a scream in Iron Bitch, he has some serious pipes. He's easily half Rob Halford and a quarter each Eric Adams and King Diamond with a hint of an effective black metal rasp to boot.

Iron Bitch does exactly what speed metal is supposed to do: blister into our ears faster than we expect and clean us out from the inside. It's Manowar on speed, NWOBHM on a faster tempo, Judas Priest a little beyond their fastest, all the things you might expect. It's also pretty damn good. As over the top as Bütcher obviously are, they're clearly talented musicians and they play their socks off here. They're not joking with their music. I loved this one.

What surprised me most is how varied this album is. No, it's not bringing in anything unusual but, rather than just ramp up the tempo to ludicrous speed and stay there throughout, like the speed metal band I expected them to be, this is really a love letter to the early years of extreme metal, taking not only speed metal to heart but everything else that surrounded it, with songs or sections of songs bringing to mind Razor, Mercyful Fate and Celtic Frost.

Not all of it is entirely successful. 45 RPM Metal is less a tribute to old school metal singles and more a decent attempt to sound like a Judas Priest song recorded at 33 RPM and played back at 45 RPM. It might kick off with a Tom Araya style scream but it's more speed metal and Hellshrieker finds that recognisable John Cyriis pitch on a couple of screams. Oddly, it's Sentinels of Death that actually sounds like Bütcher may have actually done that 33/45 trick, with the second half shifting in pitch like someone flicked that speed switch on the record player.

If old school extreme metalheads aren't sold on this from those two openers, then you're just not paying attention. And the album only gets deeper. Just check out the nine minute title track. It has an acoustic intro and a choir to make it epic right out of the gate. It builds much slower than the album has done thus far but just as surely. It drops inoto a folky acoustic moment midway and there's an exquisite slowdown seven minutes in. There are Maiden riffs early and early Dio late. And Hellshrieker is versatile here, joining the song like Dani Filth, shifting into King Diamond and ending up as a sort of conversational Martin Walkyier.

If we were only paying attention to the speed, that song surely wakes us up and we notice all sorts of other things going on. AH Wrathchylde is clearly a big fan of Joey de Maio and he gets to shine on both Face the Bütcher and its intro, Metallström, but in different ways. While Sentinels of Dethe is a very fast song, there's experimentation going on. Hellshrieker spits out his vocals at double speed and Ripper's guitar paints atonal textures at points. Viking Funeral draws from the Bathory playbook. There's a Celtic Frost churn under the late parts of Brazen Serpent. And it ends with an acoustic outro that wraps things up like we've just experienced a pagan ritual.

I threw this on just because I needed something insanely fast to counter the Stone Temple Pilots album but I found a lot more than I expected. This band are at least a thousand times better than anyone might expect from all those things I mentioned in my opening paragraph. They might seem to be the Steel Panther of epic metal but they're really talented and well versed musicians who combine genres effortlessly to create something contemporary and utterly engaging. I so need to see this band live. I pity whoever who has to follow them on stage.

Wheel of Smoke - Sonic Cure (2019)

Country: Belgium
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 29 Nov 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

I enjoyed this album from Belgium's Wheel of Smoke, which is a lot more laid back than the psychedelic rock I've been reviewing lately. Instead of being taken on a wild trip through the cosmos or whatever a particular band plans for us on a particular album, it felt more like I was experiencing it all at a remove. I never felt like I left my chair but I did imagine somebody else going on that trip. Maybe it's more of a dream than a trip. It feels safer.

You probably won't be surprised to find that the album consists of five long songs, ranging from just over five minutes to almost ten. The first surprise is that this veers relatively quickly into space rock territory, because the cover doesn't suggest that sort of approach. However, the title track, which opens up the album, soon finds itself in a Hawkwind vibe, down to the mildly buried vocals and some sound effects.

Sonic Cure is a good song. It starts out exotic with an indeterminate middle Eastern feel, perhaps closer to the cover art. The tempo speeds up a couple of minutes in to feel a little more urgent, but it's still relaxing in that dreamy sense. The vocals show up over halfway through and remain throughout; they're intelligible but I didn't really focus on words, content to let them roll over my like the instruments.

Brainshaker continues in the Hawkwind style, with an incessant riff setting the groundwork but surrounded by swirling keyboards and overlaid with guitar soloing. This one starts out with a delicate groove, like Hawkwind covering the Beatles, but it builds to recognisable Motörhead changes. There are no vocals here but the song evolves, repeating themes in different ways but in a planned fashion. This doesn't sound like a jam.

Beamed starts even softer, with some nice interplay between guitar and bass, but the guitar goes jagged without ever becoming jarring. Given that there's some Pink Floyd sound in the backing, that's perhaps understandable. While I enjoyed this and the earlier tracks, I was feeling a little apart from this, even though it ought to be immersive.

Then On a Wave shows up and Wheel of Smoke demonstrate what they do best. It features vocals again, but playful ones that seem to aim more for rhythm and sound than meaning. I'm not sure if they were subjected to subtle effects or they were delivered that way, but they sound integral. I caught words, which are surreal. "Aliens create electric cheese," someone chants, "surfing on a wave and feeling high."

It's not just the vocals though, as the vibe here is delightful with another neat interplay between guitar and bass growing throughout the song. While I may not have found myself transported onto a wave with the band, I certainly didn't want this song to end and I found it impossible not to move. It's so endowed with motion that I needed a moment to reorient myself to level when it was done, like a sailor stepping foot on dry land for the first time in a few months.

That leaves Electric I to wrap things up. It's the longest song on the album and it's agreeable enough, but it struggles to match On a Wave, which turns out to be the highlight of the album, even as the album as a whole starts to coalesce into a single entity. Listening to it, it feels like it's a set of individual tracks. Once it's over, it immediately feels like an album, with what sticks in mind applying to the whole thing.

I believe Wheel of Smoke are aiming at a heavy psychedelic rock sound but it never gets as heavy as I think they want it to. Maybe that's production, but I think it's more the inherently mellow vibe the band has. They seem relaxed and open to whatever's going to happen next, as if the music is happening to them as well as us. Rather than actively creating something to take us on an exotic trip, they passively set the wheels in motion and sit back with us to experience the album washing over us all.

That's an odd feeling to get but I can't say that it wasn't enjoyable. This is really hard not to enjoy. It's warm, friendly, comforting psychedelia at its worst and it's even warmer, friendlier and more comforting at its best. It's an album to wrap yourself in and feel better.

Elusion - Singularity (2019)

Country: Belgium
Style: Symphonic Gothic Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 28 Jun 2019
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website

I googled the best metal bands in Belgium and, while Elusion weren't on the first list that I found, Ancient Rites topped it and that's the former band of Domingo Smets, who founded Elusion in 2015 after well over a decade and three albums with them. Maybe once Elusion have recorded more, they might be on there too. This is their debut album, after an EP, Desert of Enticement, in 2016 and it's pretty decent.

Metal Archives tells me that they play symphonic gothic metal, which seems fair but there's a lot less gothic than there is symphonic. Evy Verbruggen has the clean operatic style that you might expect with a decent range and everything else is built around that, including the darker growls of bass player Kristof Degreef, which often seem to be intended as much to introduce or punctuate Verbruggen as to contrast her. He's far from a co-lead, showing up here and there only as needed.

Another aspect that shouldn't surprise is that Elusion are comfortable with longer length, conjuring up complex songs with layers to explore. Only four of the ten tracks here run shorter than five minutes and one of those is an instrumental outro. However, only one exceeds six minutes, Anamnesis, which lasts over eight and wraps up the album in suitably epic style.

I enjoyed the opener, Choices and Chances, but it was the next two that sold me on the album.

The Strive is the obvious single, with its bouncy riffs, a catchy lead vocal and a heavy midsection with Degreef's most prominent vocal contribution. It starts out cinematic, with swordfights and ominous humming, but ends with a round. It's adventurous and ambitious but still accessible. The band clearly like it too because there's also a remix version here that translates it to electronic darkwave.

The Tales That Trees Tell is less accessible but just as enjoyable. Degreef is a tease on this one, serving to set up Verbruggen nicely. The guitars of Smets and someone I believe is called Stijn, stalk behind them, as if to let us know to pay attention to the background. Especially towards the end, we hear hints of flutes dancing just out of sight, as if they're hiding behind the trees of the title. Both these songs feel visual and that's not uncommon on this album.

If the rest of the album isn't as good, that's just by comparison. I enjoyed each of the tracks in different ways, not least because they kept on adding new sounds. There are Egyptian drums on Reconciliation of Opposites, there's a harp on In Eternity and there's brass on Crystal Doubts.

Lovelorn has a waltzing midsection to get our feet moving and interesting clean gothic vocals that came out of nowhere but felt very much at home. We get a clean duet too and that harp to emphasise the visuals. Maybe this is the gothic aspect; I'm seeing grand balls in grand ballrooms, even if I'm not seeing vampires in the middle of the dance. In Eternity brings the harp to the fore and adds a spoken word section over strings. Again, it's gothic in the sense that it conjures up period visuals rather than that it sounds like a song a goth might like.

Reconciliation of Opposites is appropriately titled because it gets heavier again but leaves Verbruggen soaring sweetly above everything else. I'm much more fond of heavier Elusion than lighter, I like the rhythm section, which chugs along well, and I like it when Verbruggen really stretches her vocal chords, as she does most obviously on My War Within.

I liked this on a first listen but the middle of the album didn't seem to hold up to the bookends: the great two tracks at the beginning and the epic Anamnesis at the end. A second listen elevated them because there's depth in them to explore, but the standouts remain the same.