TFNRSH - Book of Circles (2025)

Country: Germany
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 17 Jan 2025
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

This album is so easy to just fall into that it's acutely hard to review it. The basics are that TFNRSH are an entirely instrumental German psychedelic rock band who hail from Tübingen. That name is a short version of "tiefenrausch", which means "deep noise", but they play highly accessible psych on this, their second album. Their first was self-titled and came out in 2023. Across both, they write long pieces of music, two of the four tracks here over eleven minutes and the shortest over seven and a half. I've listened to this maybe a dozen times now and it encompasses me every time until I realise I haven't written any notes and have to start over again, not that that's a hardship.

My favourite track is the opener, Zemestån, which features a simple but effective build. It finds its mood quickly with synths then adds a simple echoing riff. The drums join the fray a minute into the piece but the riff doesn't expand for another thirty seconds and it always catches me out with its patience because I'm waiting for it every time. It's a glorious build, going full crunch two minutes in and milking that groove. There is a drop back at the four minute mark but that's also when the drums start to roll and the guitar gets jaunty. The patience of TFNRSH is palpable because this is all about groove. The solo doesn't show up until seven minutes in and even then takes a while to truly shift.

WRZL is more experimental, with an opening that's hard stoner rock but with space noises in the background and leaping into the foreground too. Then it mellows out for a while with a delightful liquid guitar from Sasan Bahreini. He gets a fantastic solo in the second half. He's the only name I see credited on guitar, but the closer, Ammoglÿd, which is much more mellow throughout, plays in like the intertwining of two melodious guitars. They're initially backed by rain with an occasional contribution from Stefan Wettengl's bass. Drummer Julius Watzl gets a break for almost half the piece.

That leaves the third and longest track, Zorn, which is my least favourite of the four, in part because it's even more patient than everything else, taking a long while to get anywhere. Initially, it's a slow set of peaceful synth drones behind a long spoken word section. It's in German, so I have no idea what's being said for four or five minutes. At least Watzl is there to provide a quirky beat that's a single thread of interest. Maybe if I understood the narration it would be stronger, but it feels like the least substantial piece even without factoring that in.

Now, when it does kick in, almost at the five minute mark, it kicks in with emphasis. That's surely the most vicious guitar yet and it aches to cut through something. After a further ninety seconds, it drops into something more akin to Zemestån but with a more playful and less regimented vibe, so there's definitely plenty in the piece to enjoy but we have to wait for the narrator to finish his spiel before we can get to it. It's the only part of this album that I feel warrants a fast forwarding through, even though I haven't done that yet. The drums are enough to keep me, I guess.

By the way, while the band is based in Germany, song titles like Zemestån and Ammoglÿd appear to be Latgalian, which is a Latvian language. I don't know if any or all of the band members moved from Latvia to Germany or not, but those titles mean Earthquake and Environment respectively. It's ironic, I guess, that they be my favourite two tracks, given that there's no language anywhere in them except the titles. Maybe Zorn means something in Latgalian. Maybe it doesn't.

Any which way, this is a strong and immersive album. I don't know that it does anything unusual or particularly noteworthy. It's just thoroughly enjoyable and I could easily listen to it another dozen times. However, I need to move onto other albums, so I'll have to leave it for now but I'll definitely be keeping my eyes open for a third album from TFNRSH in a couple of years time.

Grave Digger - Bone Collector (2025)

Country: Germany
Style: Heavy/Power Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 17 Jan 2025
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

This is Grave Digger's twenty-second album and, because they continue to knock out albums every couple of years, it's the third I've reviewed here at Apocalypse Later. In 2020, Fields of Blood was a decent heavy/power metal album that warranted a lot of comparisons to Sabaton. In 2022, Symbol of Eternity was notably less successful, its songs enjoyable but unable to stick in the mind. This is a strong return to form and also to a faster and grittier sound that's often more reminiscent of the days when they were a speed metal band. It's not just the tempo, it's a more jagged edge to these songs.

Certainly, Bone Collector and The Rich, the Poor, the Dying open up fast and heavy. They're sung in English, as we expect, but it wouldn't be remotely difficult to identify the band as German, even if we'd gone in completely blind. I wonder how much of this is because there's a new guitarist on this album, Tobias Kersting, who joined both Grave Digger and vocalist Chris Boltendahl's heavy metal side project, Chris Boltendahl's Steelhammer, in 2023. Not all the edge is in the guitars, but I think it may well have started there. If so, thank you, sir.

Both tracks pass the test that the majority of the songs on Symbol of Eternity failed, namely that they're memorable. The chorus on Bone Collector sticks in the brain and I love the line in The Rich, the Poor the Dying that wraps up its chorus: "Money for nothing and death for free." Kingdom of Skulls opens with a tasty bass run from Jens Becker. When the album slows down with The Devil's Serenade, it escalates the hooks at the same time so it all works out. This is a strong song, but it's also the one that warrants the most obvious Sabaton comparison. I didn't hear them much on the opening trio.

The comparisons here definitely highlight the shift in tone. Sabaton were all over Fields of Blood but they're not here. This is edgier and, even when it slows down to chug, it has the gritty edge of German thrash bands like Destruction. Killing My Pleasure opens with a riff that could have been borrowed from early Iron Maiden but it's played with Destruction grit. There's a Destruction riff on Riders of Doom, which isn't a Deathrow cover, even though it's a slower song that's content to chug along rather than let rip.

Mirror Hate is reminiscent of Accept, a band who rarely stay away for long in the sound of German power metal bands. Some songs have a Motörhead vibe to them, both in tone (Boltendahl's voice has a similar grit to Lemmy) and in structure, like Forever Evil and Buried Alive. Graveyard Kings has a chant aspect to it that reminds of Manowar, though it's laid over that notably German style chug.

Another crucial note here is that, whatever tempo these songs choose, the album keeps shifting inexorably forward and it's over before we expect it to be. It's of relatively typical length at three quarters of an hour, but it feels shorter because the songs tend to get right down to business then give way to the next without hanging around past their due dates. Occasionally there's some sort of extended intro, as on Made of Madness or Whispers of the Damned, but those songs feel even more frantic afterwards as if to compensate.

The only song that doesn't adhere to that mindset is the closer, Whispers of the Damned. It's not just that extended intro, it's the fact that it's trying to be an epic track rather than a quick punch. It's well over a minute longer than anything else here and two longer than anything but Riders of Doom. It feels stretched, not least through a narrative section in the second half. And this isn't a bad thing. It's a good song. It just doesn't follow the same mindset as the ten tracks preceding it and that's noticeable.

So this is a strong album, a return to form after the weaker Symbol to Eternity and up there with Fields of Blood in quality. While I'm going to rate it the same at 7/10, I'll happily say that I'm much fonder of it because of the increased pace and grit, especially on the first half of the album. If I'm forced to throw out a flaw, it's that it's top heavy. My three highlights all sit in the first four songs, so all safely in the first half, which I presume would end with Mirror of Hate six tracks in, with the two longer songs on the second half. That's not much of a flaw though. All in all, this is the best of the most recent three Grave Digger albums.

Bonfire - Higher Ground (2025)

Country: Germany
Style: Hard and Heavy
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 Jan 2025
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

While the five years between 2020's Fistful of Fire and this marks the longest period Bonfire have gone without releasing a new studio album, they've certainly been busy in that time. They hired a new singer in Dyan Mair, best known for Greek power metal band AngelMora, and a new drummer in Fabio Alessandrini, who's played for everyone and we all know how good he is. The last time his drumming showed up at Apocalypse Later was about a year ago in an album by Todd Grubbs. This new line-up also re-recorded the band's first three albums, which came out back in the eighties in a very different era for production. Before the line-up change, they put out an "almost unplugged album" in Roots.

So they've been busy, but they're back to business with another new studio album, which I believe counts as their eighteenth, discounting re-recordings and alternate language editions. It does the job that Bonfire tend to do, which is somehow always heavier than I remember it being. They skirt the boundary between hard rock and heavy metal, often shifting from one to the other within the same song, and they do that very well indeed. I gave Fistful of Fire an 8/10 and, while I'm not going to follow suit this time, this is an easy 7/10 that I enjoyed consistently through multiple times. Not a single song had faded by the fourth listen.

To illustrate how they hover around that border, this album kicks off with I Will Rise, a bombastic hard rock song with an obviously metal pace and mostly metal guitars. That's followed by Higher Ground, with a more overt metal riff in the Accept tradition but still featuring plenty more vocal hooks and melodies. This is a catchy song indeed. Fallin' and Jealousy, both later in the album, are driving hard rock songs that dip over the boundary frequently, while Spinnin' in the Black finishes the album proper with an elegant hard rock vibe and a serious kick.

The lightest the album gets is When Love Comes Down, which is a power ballad, but power ballad in Bonfire's mindset means a song that rocks a lot more and contains much less cheese than your average power ballad. The heaviest is Come Hell or High Water, which features a strong riff right out of the Tony Iommi playbook and prowls along just looking for trouble. New fish Dyan Mair has a good time channelling his inner Tony Martin and he sounds very authoratitive indeed. He works well in this lower register.

He's also very able to hit much higher pitches, something he does in escalation moments all over the album, but I felt that he didn't seem comfortable hanging out up there in the heights on first single I Died Tonight. It's a poppier song that opens up almost like disco and soon finds grounding in a Europe-esque pop rock mindset, albeit with plenty of crunch behind it. It makes sense to take this one higher and Mair has the chops to do it but I much prefer him in the lower register aiming high only when a moment requires it.

Mair is a strong addition to the band who feels like he's been there all along. While this is his first new album, he has those three re-recorded albums in the bag too, so this is kinda sorta album four for him. Alessandrini is always impressive and he has plenty of experience in a whole slew of metal genres. It doesn't surprise that he's ultra-reliable here, though he hardly shows off at all. He just makes this seem easy, whatever the pace.

That leaves the longer term members, but only Hans Ziller dates back all the way to the beginning of Bonfire in 1986, let alone its days as Cacumen in the early seventies. As obvious as the vocals on melodic hard rock and heavy metal albums tend to be, his guitar refuses to give way entirely and I appreciated the guitarwork as much as the vocals across the album. The riffs on Come Hell or High Water and Lost All Control are glorious and I have no complaints about the ones on Higher Ground and Fallin' either. There aren't as many solos as I'd like but what we get are enjoyable. Frank Pané joined Ziller on guitar in 2014, the same year that Ronnie Parkes joined on bass. Both are still here and reliable.

The reason I'm going with a 7/10 here instead of the 8/10 I gave Fistful of Fire is because the songs don't stand out quite so much. I had three easy highlights there and a few hovering behind. Here, I'd only place Come Hell or High Water at that level, though nothing else lets the side down. This is a strong and reliable album that remains enjoyable across multiple listens. The new fish don't feel like new fish in the slightest. It's all good stuff and it bodes really well for the future. However, by comparison, it's just not quite up to the standards of its predecessor.

Red Lloyd - Duke (2025)

Country: Germany
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 10 Jan 2025
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website | YouTube

Here's something interesting. It's enjoyable too, but it's more interesting than enjoyable, which is unfortunate. Apparently Red Lloyd is Frank Altpeter, who sings and plays keyboards in Moore and More, a German tribute band to Gary Moore. I haven't heard them but they won't sound anything like this. This is a prog rock album, a tribute in a sense to the Genesis of 1980, because Altpeter saw them release Duke and envisaged a concept album about a mediaeval nobleman that, needless to say, was not what Duke was.

So, forty years later during the COVID-19 pandemic, he wrote what he thought it would have been back in 1980 before he actually bought a copy and heard something else. He then recorded it in as authentic a manner as he could, researching the instruments that Genesis used and then locating working examples of the same to play. This is a glorious starting point for a concept album, at once inspired by and yet still not at all based on an existing work by someone else. That provides plenty of leeway too, so this both sounds like Genesis in 1980 and doesn't. Certainly, Altpeter's voice is far deeper than Phil Collins's and sounds especially dissimilar when he gets emphatic on songs such as Ponderings and Duke's Rise. Throughout, the instrumentation is a lot closer.

The concept is relatively clear, of a good and honest duke who's betrayed by his men and vanishes into the desert. While he gets all introspective there over a long period of time, his legend builds back home and a rumour grows that he'll return. However, rather bizarrely, the copy I'm listening to has the tracks presented in a completely different order to what's listed on Bandcamp, one that oddly seems to flow better. It made me happier to see that mine is the stated order on Red Lloyd's official website.

Now, why Bandcamp shuffles these tracks, I have no idea. It would seem to make sense to put Duke Intro at the beginning, for instance, given that it features narration and sound effects to get this album underway, and Duke's Return at the end, as he may or may not show up to make the faithful happy. That's what my order/Red Lloyd's website order does. Bandcamp's doesn't. Either way, the concept flows loosely, so maybe we can shuffle these tracks around without ever losing sight of the general idea.

It's probably fair to point out here that Duke isn't my favourite Genesis album and this isn't up to its standards. However, there's still value here, Altpeter generating some pleasant grooves to fall into, some capable story songs that succeed in keeping our attention and, above all, instrumental sections to get lost in. There's nothing wrong with his voice but I preferred the instrumentation, a majority of it courtesy of Altpeter but with additional guitarwork from an old collaborator, Daniel J. S. Lewis, and Günter Schlünkes, who plays guitar and bass for German prog rockers Riven Earth.

Of course I have no idea whose guitar is whose. I can just call out how lovely it is on Crosses, City of Broken Toys and Ponderings, to give just three prominent examples. The latter two are highlights for me and Tonight is worth calling out too for other reasons. It's the one that gets catchy. There's nothing here on the level of Misunderstanding, let alone Turn It On Again, but occasionally there is a serious attempt to mimic that sort of hook. It's most obvious vocally on Tonight and otherwise on City of Broken Toys and Duke's Rise.

Interestingly, City of Broken Toys starts out with a guitar reminiscent of the Alan Parsons Project, but just before the two minute mark, it shifts to being about as close as this album gets to Genesis in 1980. Duke's Rise reprises that but the other way around, starting out close but veering away as the song runs on, Altpeter delivering his story in a more vehement voice than Collins ever had. My Time Will Come does it too, driven by an excellent beat and authentic keyboards.

And so this is as it was perhaps always doomed to be, a full length concept album born of a musing that trawls in some wonderful stories and not a lot more. After all, I have written a lot more about what this album aims to do than I have about what it actually does. However, that's telling in itself and it's why I started out by saying that it's enjoyable but more interesting.

I could talk about how the concept is never fully wrapped up, left for us to continue in our heads as we wonder if the duke does return or not. I could highlight that some of the tracks are just there, most notably for me Duke Intro, which is a tame intro for the album (or for The Duke's Lament, depending on the version). It doesn't matter. What I've said here covers what it needs to.

Michael Schenker - My Years with UFO (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Sep 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

Michael Schenker has been busy over the past decade, with a string of albums from a whole bunch of incarnations of his band, whether it's Michael Schenker's Temple of Rock, Michael Schenker Fest or the good old Michael Schenker Group. Here it's just Michael Schenker, because there are a slew of guest vocalists and musicians to help out revisit his glorious early UFO days fifty years ago with a set of old favourites.

I don't tend to review albums in track order because there are usually better ways to handle them, but I feel like it's needed here because these are such well loved classics that it's going to be easy to get them horribly wrong, meaning that we go into each with both hope and fear and which that track turns out to generate will flavour the next. Fortunately it starts out rather well, even though there was plenty of risk involved.

That's because the first guest vocalist is Dee Snider, a huge talent but not a logical choice to take on a Phil Mogg vocal. However, he does a shockingly good job on Natural Thing, and Joel Hoekstra helps the guitar to feel nice and crunchy. Joey Tempest is much closer to Mogg's style on Only You Can Rock Me, perhaps only Kai Hansen coming closer on Rock Bottom. There's a subtle bass from Deep Purple's Roger Glover, who produced the first MSG album, and Derek Sherinian elevates the second half with his keyboard work. He's one of three musicians here who are present throughout and, while this is always Schenker's show, Sherinian shines throughout. Barry Sparks on bass and Brian Tichy on drums complete the core line-up.

So far, so good, but next up is Doctor Doctor, which is one of the really big ones. I certainly got the tingles when it kicked in and there's glorious guitarwork and lovely keyboards, but I wasn't a huge fan of Carmine Appice's rolling drums, which broke the flow for me more than once, and Joe Lynn Turner, who I'd have expected to have been a highlight going, is the least important aspect of the song, even though he does a good job. I preferred Mother Mary, with Erik Grönwall, lately of Skid Row and soon to be the vocalist on the next original Schenker album. He's decent throughout but excellent on the chorus. Schenker duels with Slash on guitar to take the song home and that's just as good as you're expecting.

This Kid's is a deep cut, the closer from Force It. It's the only song here where I wasn't immediately singing along. Biff Byford is another legend who doesn't remotely sound like Phil Mogg but wisely he doesn't try to and he sounds great against a forceful backdrop. Unsurprisingly it's a merger of UFO and Saxon but that's fine and the instrumental section with Schenker and Sherinian, taking a lead role, is joyous. That's five tracks and it's been impressive thus far. Schenker sounds excellent, of course, and the guest choices, even where they don't seem to make sense, mostly work.

So to Love to Love, the song I dreaded most here for a couple of reasons. It's one of the most iconic hard rock songs ever recorded, Steve Harris of Iron Maiden calling it the very best of them, and it's not one that should be messed with. That said, the guest vocalist here is Axl Rose and that hardly inspired confidence. I tried to maintain an open mind, because he worked in AC/DC far better than I expected and he does better here than I thought he would too, but not enough. This is Schenker's song with credit to Sherinian again and once more the ending is fantastic. My wife rang during the closing solo and I didn't answer. Some things should be kept sacred.

Talking of sacred, next up is Lights Out with one of the greatest guitar solos ever recorded, so far up the list that it was playing in my head while I was listening to Schenker and John Norum miss it here. Jeff Scott Soto brings the voice and he's too forceful. It's a decent cover but it emphatically isn't the original and I felt that far more on this track than any other. Fortunately it's followed by Rock Bottom, which is eleven minutes long, as it tended to be live, and that has to mean oodles of guitar. Kai Hansen impresses on vocals that are a slightly metallic Mogg, and also has a lot of fun with Schenker on guitar during those extended solos.

Turner and Appice return on Too Hot to Handle, the only guests to appear on more than one track, and they're joined by Adrian Vandenberg. Sadly, what I noted about them both on Doctor Doctor also applies here. Fortunately Let It Roll really rolls; in fact, it gallops. Michael Voss does a strong job with the vocals. Of all people, Stephen Pearcy doesn't do a bad job on Shoot Shoot either, even though he's another strange choice to tackle a Mogg vocal. I can't say it works for me the way that Schenker's guitar does but it's an interesting approach and the grit in his voice oddly works.

And so there are a lot of surprises here. Dee Snider and Biff Byford work wonderfully, even if they shouldn't, while Joe Lynn Turner oddly doesn't, even though he should. Axl Rose is easily the least successful guest but his bandmate Slash is one of my highlights, along with Kai Hansen, who really shocked me with his contribution, not because he's good, because I already knew that, but by how well he fit on a UFO covers album. Lights Out was the least successful cover for me, while Only You Can Rock Me may be the best and This Kid's was the most effectively different. Inherently, though, your mileage may vary.

Der Neue Planet - Schwerkraft für Anfänger (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Aug 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Prog Archives | YouTube

This third album from Cologne's Der Neue Planet came to me as stoner rock, which is certainly one element of its sound, but it reaches a long way beyond it. The titles mostly suggest space rock, an obvious element from the opening synth drone. However, there's also plenty of post-rock in play, along with prog, psych, krautrock and other genres. At points, there are hints of surf music and a few soft backdrops that remind of lounge, for harder sounds in the foreground to contrast with.

I should explain those titles, because they're all in German, this being entirely instrumental music with no lyrics. The album title translates to Gravity for Beginners, which suggests that we're in the presence of those who might live without it but are coming to visit. That's not a bad way to look at the music within it.

The unwieldy Unendlicher Unwahrscheinlichkeitsdrive translates to Infinite Improbability Drive, a device in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which suggests that this track can and absolutely should go absolutely everywhere. It doesn't, perhaps inevitably, but it does go to a lot of different places. Instabile Weiße Zwerge meaning Unstable White Dwarfs, which is ironic as this piece has a section that's as close to traditional classic rock as anything else here. Galaktisch. Praktisch. Gut. or Galactic. Practical. Good. is less obvious in its intent, but it's a positive piece.

Phobos and Deimos, of course, are the moons of Mars, but they're brief interludes here that serve no other purpose because they're almost empty. If you listen to them in isolation you'll wonder as to where they were. Alpha Ursae Minoris is the star usually known as Polaris, the Pole Star or the North Star, a particularly useful star in navigation, at least in the northern hemisphere. That may suggest that it's the guide to this album, a notion backed up by the fact that it's at the very heart of it, being track four of seven, and the fact that it's the longest piece here at almost ten minutes. Does everything here appear in this one in microcosm? No, I don't think so, but it does seem to try.

That just leaves Lirum Larum Lapidarium, which isn't entirely Latin. A lapidarium is a repository of stones, usually with historical meaning, but I have no idea what the rest of the title means. Maybe that's why it's the most experimental piece here, starting out with soft, resonant acoustic guitar but ending as pure krautrock. All in all, these tracks make for quite the journey, but it isn't merely one journey, as so many psychedelic rock albums are, with each track continuing in the same vein as the rest; these are each individual pieces of music with individual goals, tones and moods.

While Unendlicher Unwahrscheinlichkeitsdrive ought to be the most varied, it may need to battle Alpha Ursae Minoris for that crown and everything else except the interludes might want a word too. It has the benefit of coming first to nail its claim into our skulls, though, and it's the one that delves into surf pop and soft psychedelia before finding some heavier stoner rock. Even though it plays light at points, it's Instabile Weiße Zwerge that feels like light is a motif. Sure, it builds too, as all of these songs do to various degrees, moving from soft to heavy or at least heavier, but it's positive in nature, as if these white dwarfs are still delivering light, however inconsistently.

Alpha Ursae Minoris takes that and runs with it. This is the one with the lounge-like backdrop for the pulsing bass and jagged riffs to dance all over. It's a delightful contrast, as if liquid is meeting rock, perhaps for the first time. Of course, the rock abides, however playful it gets and it gets very playful over nine minutes and change. Galaktisch. Praktisch. Gut. may well be my favourite piece of all, once again lighter early and heavier late, but even more so, reminding of west African highlife early and finding a sassy seventies hard rock groove in the second half.

There are many grooves on Lirum Larum Lapidarium, from the soft opening through arguably the most overt stoner rock, albeit with funky breaks, to the krautrock towards the end. It's maybe the least consistent in how it shifts between grooves, some of them layering tastily but others feeling more jagged and less effective. Sure, this stoner rock groove benefits from that keyboard groove being played over it, but that groove shifts to another without warning and we're taken aback.

I haven't heard Der Neue Planet before, but they have two prior albums out, Magrathea Erwacht, another Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy nod, and Area Fifty-Fun, from 2018 and 2022 respectively. It's abidingly clear that I should seek those out sharpish.

Delving - All Paths Diverge (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Aug 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Delving is only a band when playing live. In the studio, it's one man, Nicholas DiSalvo, who's best known for being the guitarist and vocalist in the psychedelic/stoner rockers Elder, who hail from Fairhaven, Massachusetts but are currently based in Berlin, the one in Germany not the many in the States. This is a side project of his to find a home for the many song fragments and ideas that he generates over time, being "an almost obsessive songwriter, working on music every day". The first Delving album was a product of the pandemic, collating material created before it, but this follow-up is work that originated since then.

He wrote everything and performed almost everything, the only other musical contributions that get a credit being Fabien de Meno on some keyboards (Rhodes and upright piano) and his Elder colleague Michael Risberg providing "additional guitar ambience" on one track, Zodiak. If all that suggests that this might be a very Elder-sounding release, that's only true if we consider how that band has changed over the past couple of decades. They used to be a stoner metal band, but they softened up considerably when they recorded The Gold & Silver Sessions in 2019 to sound more like a prog/psych band who veer often into krautrock and they've mostly stayed there since, on Omens and Innate Passage.

Certainly, for all the guitar vehemence in the second half of Chain of Mind or early in Zodiak, this is primarily driven by the keyboards and that's often all there is. Just check out the funky start to New Meridian to see that. This track is almost world music filtered through krautrock, the core of it reminding of Jamaican steel drums, of all things, but with an electronic beat layered over the top and building keyboard layers. It evolves, of course, but the keyboards continue to lead the way, even when bass and drums arrive to take major parts. It's one of my favourite pieces of music here and very possibly the top of the list.

It's also entirely instrumental because DiSalvo never uses his voice and I'm not upset about that. I don't dislike his vocals for Elder, but I get so immersed in their long instrumental sections that I'm never particularly happy when he opens his mouth to remind me that I'm listening to a song rather than floating peacefully in the spaces between the stars enjoying the distant scenery. With vocals completely absent here, I remain blissfully immersed throughout, only brought out of it after an hour and two minutes when silence takes over if I haven't got the album on loop.

And immersion is the chief success here. It's very easy to get lost in this album, to lose track of the rest of the world as the music takes us somewhere else. If that's what DiSalvo is going for, then he nails it here. The catch to that is that it means that the album works best as an album rather than as individual tracks. Either you'll like it or you won't. Picking a favourite track or favourite section of a track is going to be much harder.

For me, New Meridian is the only one that does something different to the rest of the album. It's the lightest piece and the most keyboard-centric, until the bass kicks in halfway. However, it's also the most active. Everything else is about presenting an atmosphere and leaving us be to float on through it. This one feels more like some amorphous alien creature that's playing with us and has every intention of making us join in with its games. That's especially true for the first half but it's there in the second half too.

Other than that, I'd maybe call out The Ascetic, because I like how jagged it feels, even though it's ended in surprisingly abrupt fashion. Others might plump for Zodiak, which is a little heavier with that extra guitar ambience, making it the closest to a latter day Elder song, but it's also easily the longest piece here at thirteen and a half minutes. With that said, it changes around the eight and a half minute mark, letting the guitars fade away into the distance and switching back to keyboard atmospheres.

All in all, this is a solid 7/10 all the way but I'm starting to wonder about whether it deserves more than that because I've been listening to it for about four days solid. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. Let's see how I think about it while listening to something else.

Vanden Plas - The Empyrean Equation of the Long Lost Things

Country: Germany
Style: Progressive Metal
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 19 Apr 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | YouTube

I've heard a lot of Vanden Plas on Chris Franklin's highly recommended Raised on Rock radio show over the past few years, because he's a big fan of theirs, but they're another band who released a debut in the mid-nineties, when I was too busy with real life to focus on new rock and metal, and they didn't cross my path when I found my way back. They're a German band, from Kaiserslautern near the French border, and they play a highly commercial brand of progressive metal that's just as ambitious and complex as we might expect but fundamentally rooted in melody. This counts as their eleventh studio album and their first since The Ghost Experiment, which came out as a pair of albums in 2019 and 2020.

There are six tracks here and they're all strong, but a few listens firms up that they can be ranked relatively easily. The best are the longest, Sanctimonarium, which runs just over ten minutes, and March of the Saints, the epic of the album that wraps it up at almost sixteen. Next are the shorter tracks, My Icarian Flight, The Sacrilegious Mind Machine and They Call Me God, which sit in the six to nine minute range. Finally, there's the opening title track, which is the weakest of them, rather surprisingly.

That's because it's not really an opening song, just an opening track. It's a kind of an intro, but an odd one that lasts eight minutes, which is longer than two of the five actual songs. It's truly more of a sampler, running through what those five songs are going to do later in the album. Most of it unfolds instrumentally, with the vocals kicking in with what feels like a chorus and turns out to be from the closer, March of the Saints. The second line is the title of the song. It's enjoyable but it's not particular coherent because it's inherently a patchwork piece.

My Icarian Flight is a coherent prog metal song and it builds well, but it's quickly overshadowed by Sanctimonarium, which is where the album truly finds its feet. The Sacrilegious Mind Machine, on the other side of that epic, suffers in the same way, being a highly enjoyable song that we'd praise in isolation, should we hear it on the radio, but clearly losing out in comparison to the song that it happens to be next to on this album.

Like everything here, Sanctimonarium features elegant melodies over a punchier backdrop that I read is heavier than Vanden Plas's more recent albums and more like what they did on their early ones. I'm certainly interested in checking out their 1994 debut, Colour Temple, based on that note, to see if it holds true. That backdrop falls away somewhat during verses to emphasise the vocals of Andy Kuntz, which is an approach I don't always appreciate but is done so well here that it's almost a textbook in how to do it right. There's a wonderful calmer section four minutes in that features a flurry of activity nonetheless.

What else is new here is the keyboard work of Alessandro del Vecchio, the session player who's on pretty much every album released by Frontiers nowadays. Vanden Plas have rarely changed their line-up, Kuntz and the Lill brothers, guitarist Stephan and drummer Andreas, have been in place since the band's formation in 1986, while bassist Torsten Reichert joined as long ago as 1990, four years before their debut. However, Günter Werno, their keyboard player since 1990 left in 2023, so Del Vecchio has joined in his stead.

What I'm reading suggests that Del Vecchio has followed Werno's lead relatively closely, with the slight exception that he favours older keyboards. Certainly I'm hearing plenty of seventies organ on Sanctimonarium in the time honoured Jon Lord style, along with the more modern equivalent. He certainly doesn't favour that approach exclusively, so it's more of a delight when it shows up, a section on The Sacrilegious Mind Machine lovely behind rhythmic guitarwork. I believe the strings on They Call Me God are really his keyboards mimicking strings, so he's certainly staying varied.

The Sacrilegious Mind Machine and They Call Me God are excellent second half songs, enough so that I can't really choose between them. Initially, I easily favoured the latter, even though its first half plays out like a melancholy ballad, starting soft with piano, those keyboard generated strings and a half-whispered vocal from Kuntz. He escalates joyously in the chorus, emphasising just how good his intonation play is and Stephan Lill ramps things up midway with a searing guitar solo. On further listens, though, the former keeps getting better and now I can't pick between them.

Of course, I'll pick Sanctimonarium and March of the Saints over them every day, because they're absolute gems that underline how Vanden Plas only get better with the breathing space to grow their songs. The riffage here is more reminiscent of Iron Maiden than on earlier songs. There's a gorgeous drop in intensity six minutes into the latter and an impeccable ramp back up, this time in two stages as a sort of tease. Eventually, it returns to some of what we heard on the opener and it works far better when it's the ending of a longer song that's already been substantially developed.

So this isn't a perfect album, but it's a damn fine one. I initially rated it 8/10 because of the three tiers of quality, but ended up increasing that to 9/10 when I realised that the "lesser material" of My Icarian Flight, The Sacrilegious Mind Machine and They Call Me God really constitute a trio of 8/10 songs. Their two longer compatriots warrant 9/10s and they're twenty-five minutes between them. Only the opener really lets the side down and it's hardly a poor track. So 9/10 it is. If you're one of those Dream Theater fans who wishes they'd spend more time knocking out catchy gems in the Pull Me Under vein than extending their instrumental workouts, you should check out Vanden Plas. They may well be your new favourite band.

Feuerschwanz - Warriors (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 19 Apr 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Tiktok | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I could have sworn blind that I reviewed the previous Feuerschwanz album, but apparently I didn't. Maybe I'm mixing them up with another German comedic mediaeval rock band turned serious folk metal band after signing for Napalm in 2019. This is their fifth album since that point, one arriving each year, even during the pandemic, but it's a little different for a couple of reasons. For one, it's mostly not new, being a sort of greatest hits of their Napalm era, plus a cover and a couple of new tracks, but reworked to serve as their first entirely English language release. Most of these songs are therefore recent but not new and only sung until now in German. Some feature guests.

Given that it's a decent album on a first listen, all delivered in a consistent lively folk metal style, but a real grower on repeats, it suggests that these recent Napalm albums have featured plenty of excellent material. What's more, the best song on offer is arguably one of the new tracks, The Unholy Grail. I say "arguably", because these dozen songs feature such a consistent approach that it's always going to come down to personal choice. Generally speaking, listen to any one track. If it works for you, then all twelve will; if it doesn't, none of the others are going to win you over.

Personally, I think The Unholy Grail flows the best with the most successful melodies. That's a huge chorus for sure. However, The Forgotten Commandment isn't far behind it, as the title track to Das elfte Gebot in 2020. Wardwarf, formerly Kampfzweg on the same album, is right up there too, as is the opener, Highlander, formerly on last year's Fegefeuer. All that said, I'm going off a succession of listens today. I may give you completely different songs toorrow. Right now, Song of Ice and Fire, also from Fegefeuer, is growing on me substantially and who knows what's going to follow it.

All told, I believe there are five tracks from Fegefeuer, a couple from Memento Mori in 2021 and a couple more from Das elfte Gebot. Then there's a cover, Valhalla Calling, formerly by Gavin Dunne, who goes by Miracle of Sound, an Irish singer/songwriter who creates music primarily about video games. That leaves the two new tracks, which I believe are Circlepit of Hell and The Unholy Grail.

The guests appear on the even numbered tracks, for some reason, and they're all vocalists, even if they play instruments in their own bands. The Unholy Grail features Dominum and Orden Ogan, in other words Felix Heldt and Seeb Levermann. Their power metal approach fits well here, because this is primarily clean up tempo folk metal. Chris Harms of Lord of the Lost shows up on Memento Mori, which means that there's a gothic undertone to it in the lively Sisters of Mercy vein. Hardly surprisingly, Francesco Cavalleri from Italian power metallers Wind Rose guests on Wardwarf, an obvious choice that works. That leaves Patty Gurdy on Song of Ice and Fire; she's apparently best known for hurdy gurdy covers on YouTube.

There's not a lot to say about any of these songs that couldn't be said about them all, namely that they get down to business quickly; deliver three minutes of melodic power with violin, hurdy gurdy and bagpipes an integral part of the assault; and get out of the way for the next one right coming behind it. The vast majority of it is sung clean and heroic in surprisingly unaccented English for a band known for singing in German for a couple of decades, but the backing vocals sometimes slip into a slight harsh delivery. Given that Feuerschwanz heavied up when they signed for Napalm, it seems telling that the crunchy metal guitars are fundamental nowadays, because their absence is obvious when they take a backseat for a verse during Memento Mori.

That said, there are some notable intros, most obviously Wardwarf, which launches neatly with a sense of both nuance and power, and Bastard of Asgard, which opens up rather like Iron Maiden taking on folk metal. None of the intros are long, as we might expect for three minute songs, but they set the stage well and continue to shape the songs after they bulk up. It's also worth adding that a number of these songs tie into pop culture, not only the Assassin's Creed influenced cover. Highlander is about that movie; Song of Ice and Fire is about that series, which you may know as Game of Thrones; and there's a memorable Lovecraft stanza in The Forgotten Commandment. It makes me wonder how many other songs tie to pop culture that I simply don't recognise.

And that's about it, I guess. This is strong stuff that sounds entirely like German folk metal even if we don't know that it's German folk metal. It tells me that I really ought to check out the previous four Feuerschwanz albums for Napalm, because I haven't done that even if I thought I had.

Leaves' Eyes - Myths of Fate (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 22 Mar 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

It's becoming increasingly difficult to list a country for Leaves' Eyes, who return here with a ninth studio album to follow 2020's The Last Viking. They were formed by Norwegian vocalist Liv Kristine and the line-up of Germany's Atrocity, but there are no longer any Norwegians in the band and, of six members, only three hail from Germany. The lead vocals are handled this time, as last, by Elina Siirala, a Finn; Joris Nijenhuis is a Dutch drummer; and the two replacements for Thorsten Bauer are an Italian, Andre Nasso on bass, and a German, Luc Gebhardt on guitars.

Wherever they're from, they sound excellent on this album. The songs feel a little heavier than on its predecessor but that's not because of any change in songwriting, more because the back end is beefed up a little in the production. It all sounds like it has a little more oomph to it, but what we hear on top of that is the same heavy symphonic metal. Well, mostly, because I'm hearing a little change in the approach too, not least all the folky touches on The Last Viking being restricted to a single track, Einherjar.

For one, even though the production makes this feel a little heavier than last time out, there are fewer harsh vocals from Alexander Krull, now the sole remaining founding member, after Bauer's departure in 2021. There are some on the opener, Forged by Fire, but he focuses on keyboards for Realm of Dark Waves and Who Wants to Live Forever, which become the baseline for this album. I was almost shocked when he leads out Hammer of the Gods, on which he has a lot more to do with his vocals. The same happens with Sons of Triglav, easily his most dominant vocal performance on this album. He's still there, of course, decorating other songs like Fear the Serpent, just less often.

For another, there's less of a choral sound in play this time. Again it's there and indeed it's there on the opener, which features some of the most memorable choral vocals here. There's more still to come in Fear the Serpent, Einherjar and especially Sail with the Dead, but the latter two close out the album and so it's missing far more often than I expected. In Eternity, which boasts a highly prominent woah woah chorus isn't bolstered by other voices the way it could easily have been. It was clearly a deliberate decision to relegate choral vocals deep below Siirala's clean but powerful lead, as well as Krull's occasional harsh vocal.

Now, that doesn't mean that Leaves' Eyes are moving away from symphonic metal. This is clearly symphonic metal through and through. Siirala may not soar all the time but she soars plenty and I'm very happy about how she breaks down when she wants to set a mood and when she wants to show off a little. She's a wonderful lead singer for this band and it's hardly surprising that she's even more of a focus than she was last time. Goddess of the Night is a showcase for her, covering both nuance and power, but my favourite moment is the very first word in Fear the Serpent which she delivers with impeccable relish.

It's probably not coincidental that Goddess of the Night is also the most orchestrated track, with delicate violins to match Siirala's delicate sections and more powerful ones to match her powerful ones. While I'd call out Hammer of the Gods and Forged by Fire as my favourite songs, along with the Viking metal infused Sons of Triglav, Goddess of the Night can't be ignored as a real highlight of the album. It's the softest, subtlist and quietest song here, however much it builds, but it's also perhaps the one we can least ignore. We can fall into the grooves of many of these songs and let them carry us along, most obviously Sons of Triglav and In Eternity, but Goddess of the Night has real demands on our attention. We are commanded to listen.

All that said, it shouldn't surprise that I like this album rather a lot. It's more immediate than its predecessor and it's more consistent, in addition to having that extra boost from the production. However, it's also not taking any risks. Decreasing those harsh vocals and choral backdrops feels like a backward step. Symphonic metal is a genre that's particularly easy to identify because the bands who forged it are so similar that they can sound interchangeable. Leaves' Eyes have always been a little different, obviously compatible and similar but never the same, perhaps inevitably given their origins in a gothic singer and a grindcore band. However, these changes feel like they may be moving them closer to the norm and that may be a mistake.

Rage - Afterlifelines (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Heavy/Power Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 29 Mar 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Rage are one of the few metal bands from the eighties to survive to the present day without any blips in service, having stayed together as Rage since 1986, plus another three more years before that if we count their time as Avenger. They've always been prolific as well, this counting as their twenty-seventh studio album, but they appear to be bursting at the seams with new material, so much so that I actually missed their 2021 album, Resurrection Day, after enjoying 2020's Wings of Rage enough to give it a highly recommended 8/10. I did cover Spreading the Plague, their 2022 EP, though, and I didn't want to miss this double album, their first such, even if I'm a month late.

After a deceptively soft intro, In the Beginning, they shift instantly to full gear for End of Illusions and Under a Black Crown and we're off and running. I talked about their particular balancing act in my review of Wings of Rage, how they're often "up tempo without being thrash, heavy without being death, powerful without losing melody." That phrase applies to these openers and to many others as the album runs on, such as one of my personal highlights, Dead Man's Eyes, which also adds a little death metal crunch. There are a few hints at extreme metal here that remain hints only, especially through harsh moments in songs like Dead Man's Eyes and Lifelines.

Other songs drop the pace a little, never too much, remaining heavy but maintaining their sense of melody. Afterlife, Mortal and Toxic Waves fit that bill and they're just as tasty as the fast ones. Waterwar shifts between the two modes, mostly staying in the slower mode but punctuating the verses with a neatly fast machine gun riff, almost a call and response with vocalist Peavy Wagner. This is another highlight for me, aided by a strong guitar solo from Jean Bormann. I've liked this new Rage with two guitarists, but Stefan Weber has gone on hiatus for health reasons, so they're temporarily back to being a trio for now, with Bormann handling both lead and rhythm.

The double album is broken up into two albums with different names, Afterlife and Lifelines. The former, from In the Beginning to Life Among the Ruins eleven tracks in, that includes everything I mentioned above except Lifelines, is consistently strong with a few highlights: Dead Man's Eyes, Waterwar and a third called Justice Will Be Mine, which is a clear single with an emphasised melody that's almost Celtic in nature and a neat slow heavy section in the build up to the finalé. Not everything is up to that quality but there are no bad tracks here and I wouldn't call any average either. All are good heavy/power metal songs, with some of them merely a little better than others.

The second album continues in the same vein except that there's an extra element in play that's a tasty addition. That's made obvious in Cold Desire, which kicks it off, beginning with sassy violins and piano that don't disappear when the song launches into the usual mode, those violins happy to hang around in the background to keep playfulness in power. And they continue on throughout the rest of the album, with orchestrations woven into the sound by pianist Marco Grasshoff. That isn't a new approach for Rage, who collaborated with the Prague Symphony Orchestra on Lingua Mortis in 1996 and continued to include orchestration from the Lingua Mortis Orchestra on later albums, like XIII, Ghosts and Speak of the Dead.

I'm all for that approach, for which Rage should be credited as pioneers, and there are a host of neat touches on this second disc that are emphasised or indeed created by the violins and piano. However, I found the songs a little less effective on the whole than on Afterlife. There are obvious exceptions, like Cold Desire and the highly ambitious Lifelines itself which are highlights for me, but there are fewer of them and the lesser material isn't as strong. I should call out Dying to Live too, which is a ballad that turns into a power ballad but, shock horror, sounds good to me.

Much of the reason Dying to Live works is the vocal performance of Peavy Wagner. He's never had the best voice in rock music in the traditional sense and I'm sure a vocal coach could find all sorts of little issues to highlight, but he has a strong balance between power and melody that any band like Rage need to thrive so I've never cared. However, he sells Dying to Live by endowing it with an emotional lead vocal through plenty of nuance. He continues that into The Flood and it's there on the final track, In the End, too, Bormann joining him for good measure.

In the end, I think I have to go with a 7/10 for this and feel a little guilty about it. There's a lot here that's worthy of an 8/10 but I don't think it's quite consistent enough over nearly ninety minutes to warrant that. There's well over an album's worth of really good material here, so I'm tempted but there are enough other songs here to pull it back down. Maybe I'd have gone 8/10 for Afterlife but a 7/10 for Lifelines, the result being the sort of 7.5/10 that I don't give out. Really, though, to keep me debating that after ninety minutes ought to tell you that this is worthy.

Sweet Ermengarde - Sacrifice (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Schubmodul - Lost in Kelp Forest (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 23 Feb 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

I've been listening to this album, the second from German psychedelic rock trio Schubmodul, for a few days now and it's still as fresh as ever. They play entirely instrumental music, but there is voice here, just not in the form of a band member singing. There's a female voice on Voyage that seems to be a sample, but it must be a long sample, because she's back on Renegade One, Silent Echoes and Ascension. A male one joins in on Revelations, to provide a radio news broadcast update on a kinda sorta concept that the female voice built.

I have to confess that, after maybe twenty listens thus far, I still haven't paid enough attention to that voice to figure out exactly what's going on and whether this is a true concept album, but the gist is that we're underwater, as the title suggests. There's a vessel called Renegade One which is doing something down there in the depths but the narrator or whatever she is sounds corporate in her demeanour and I imagined her as an inspirational canned voice over the PA on this vessel who anyone who's used to it simply ignores, relegating her to a sort of background instrument within a broader ambience.

I certainly didn't get any particular mood from her, just from the music. Much of the album seems welcoming to me, from Voyage onward, as if we were born under the waves and are very happy to return there on this mysterious mission. Emerald Maze, easily my favourite track, is a much more dynamic piece that suggests exploration. It's a long track, only a whisper off ten minutes in length, but it does a lot in that time. Maybe it's doing all the exploration the album needs, so that we can get back to the mission on Renegade One.

Talking of Renegade One, this is the only track where an obvious influence leapt out. Schubmodul, which means Thrust Module, tend to play instrumental psychedelic rock but without any real focus on a particular style. There are points where this is soft and peaceful music that reminds of post-rock, but more where it's harder, driving music right out of stoner rock. However, the name that I couldn't ignore on Renegade One is Mountain, a hard rock band from the seventies I encountered first on a TV theme, of all things. It's that heavy part from Nantucket Sleighride that Schubmodul echo here, a little slower but with the same tone and heaviness.

Oddly, when we get to Revelations, the final track, that radio newscaster explains that this wasn't particularly welcoming at all. This vessel was off the books, doing dubious science that backfired on its captain and whoever else might have been on board during the mission. I don't believe that spoilers really mean anything on an ostensibly instrumental album, so I'll point out that it was on a mission to create an energy source out of manipulated kelp, only to find that it generated some sort of psychedelic substance that sent the captain insane. Even more oddly, it still feels like it's a welcoming piece of music, so maybe that was a good thing. The environmentalists clearly think so.

Concept aside, because it really doesn't matter, I liked this album a lot. There are only six tracks to comprise almost three quarters of an hour of music, so Schubmodul let their music breathe. There isn't a rushed track here, but nothing overstays its welcome either, even though much of it is built on rhythm, the drums often setting the stage for the riffs to join in. They also like their rhythms to be repetitive, but without reaching the sort of trancelike states that come with drone metal. The variations are constant but relatively straightforward and they feel utterly natural, as befits this setting in the entirely natural world we're exploring.

There's only one previous release that I can see, a 2022 debut album called Modul I that suggests an outer space motif in its cover art and track titles. Maybe that dips into space rock, something that this album doesn't even hint at. I'm intrigued to find out, especially because that particular release schedule suggests that we won't see a third album until 2026.

Scanner - The Cosmic Race (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Heavy/Power Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Jan 2024
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website | Wikipedia | YouTube

I remember Scanner from their excellent debut album, Hypertrace, back in 1988. They're another of many German heavy/power metal bands but they're one of the first, because they started out in 1977 as Reinforce, changing to Lions Breed in 1982—who released one album—and eventually Scanner in 1986. However, this is only their seventh studio album, for reasons I can't fully explain. As far as I can tell, they've never actually split up, though they have completely changed the line-up behind founder guitarist Axel Julius more than once.

They just took long breaks, I think, so this arrives no fewer than nine years after The Judgement, which showed up thirteen years after Scantropolis. I haven't heard those two, but this only seems like a strong release to make up for lost time for a few tracks, perhaps until Warriors of the Light three songs in. After that, it's still decent, but it loses the sort of strength it needed to keep fans happy after so many years.

Initially, it's great. The Earth Song doesn't reach Warp 7 speeds, the track which opened up their debut, but it's an agreeably fast one. I actually remember Scanner being faster than they are, on the basis of tracks like that one. In 1988, thrash metal was my go to genre with speed metal right behind it, so I'd have eaten up songs like Warp 7, even if the rest of the album was a tad slower, in more of a power metal style. I'm all for that pace in 2024 too, but The Earth Song has more going for it than just speed. There's also a tasty guitar opening and a neat chanting section late on.

Just like their debut, things slow down after that but I'm more open to that now than I was then. Face the Fight is a real anthem of a song, high energy power metal with a hook-laden chorus that we're singing along with on our first time through. Warriors of the Light follows suit, maybe a tad less effectively because of a weaker midsection, but still very effective indeed. At this point, I was totally sold on this new Scanner, but they can't quite maintain that sort of stellar opening.

I say this new Scanner, because it's another mostly new line-up. Julius is still there, of course, as he has been throughout. Greek vocalist Efthimios Ionannidis is the only other member who's been in the band long enough to have performed on their prior album, having joined in 2003. Bassist Jörn Bettentrup is six years into his run with the band, but this is his first recording with them. Second guitarist Dominik Rothe and drummer Sascha Kurpanek arrived in 2023, presumably as a package deal, given that they've both played for Marauder and Taskforce Toxicator.

I should add that both those bands play thrash so I'd say that this material must feel slow to Rothe and Kurpanek, even with a few fast sections here and there, like the opener to Scanner's Law. It's fair to say that there are a number of points where the latter is the fastest aspect to the band, on that song particularly. Of course, I wish they'd speed up a bit more in general, but they play power metal well. Nothing quite matches Face the Fight in the anthemic chorus department, but a bunch of other tracks do try, Scanner's Law among them.

Others fall a little short for me. Dance of the Dead has its moments, but it doesn't seem to be too sure about what it wants to be. It starts out with a Dio vibe, before finding another big chorus, but there's some grind in between the verses. Each section works, but they don't all work together. A New Horizon kicks off with some lovely guitar, turning an Outlaws-esque riff into a layered power metal setup, but it falls into routine. It's the song I wanted to speed up the most, even if I liked its slower guitar. I liked the folk vibe midway through closer The Last and First in Line but the rest of the song around it isn't quite as enticing.

The most frustrating song is Space Battalion, again one that moves through a number of sections that all work individually but somehow not together. The reason for the frustration is that it kicks off relying on a rather well known riff that's lifted from Megadeth's Symphony of Destruction. It isn't quite the same, and it's a much busier song around that riff, but it's so recognisable that I'm singing along with Dave Mustaine before I realise that he's not there.

If I'm sounding acutely negative here, I don't mean to. I enjoyed this album and it's great to hear something new from Scanner. I remember Hypertrace and enjoyed its follow-up, Terminal Earth in 1989, but I don't believe I've heard the four albums in between that pair and this one. I should, not least because of the variance in line-ups. It seems that at least one of them had a female vocalist. However, it promises much for three neatly different tracks and the rest of the album simply can't live up to that promise.

Wanted Inc. - Dead for the First Time (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 5 Jan 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Tiktok | YouTube

Wanted Inc. aren't new kids. They've been performing under this name since 2010 and five further years before that as The Wanted. This is their fourth album, but it's my first by them, because the previous one, Embarrassment to the Establishment, dates back to 2018.

Frustratingly, it's a mixed bag from the outset. I was impressed from the outset because there's a tasty lead in to the opening track proper, Hostile Reaction, as a growing extended scream after the intro builds into the crunch. The catch is that the crunch feels quiet. Most albums I listen to tend to have a similarly levelled volume but this one needed to be turned up and, when I did that, it still didn't feel like it had the requisite crunch. The worst thing about the album is the production. Gradually I was able to adjust my ears but it's a weird feeling to listen to a new album in 2024 and have to compensate for the 2004 sound.

Often what that boiled down to is that I enjoyed what the band are doing, but wished I could hear them on stage as they're meant to sound. I wonder how many more songs would pop then than do now. The band sound very capable and, on my first time through, they alternated between feeling like a decent, albeit run of the mill, thrash band that were enjoyable enough but I could drift away from easily and a stronger thrash band who didn't want me to wander off so grabbed my attention back and told me in no uncertain fashion to quit getting distracted.

They did that a lot here. For every song that felt acutely routine, like Night Capturer, they followed up with a belter, in this instance Grilling the Globe. That's a fast song and I like Wanted Inc. at their fastest. The guitarwork blisters, courtesy of Hermann Weiß and Daniel Feuerer, even if both suffer from the production, and it remains strong even when they give way to a sample and then shift to chug mode to wrap up the song. Whatever speed they go on this song, they do it very right. Hannes Waschler, who has the longest tenure in the band, keeps a glorious beat too.

Unfortunately, Grilling the Globe remains the fastest track on the album, because I'd have liked to have heard a lot more at that speed, but there are others that blister, even at a slower pace. Mind Cleaner stubbornly stays midpace for far too long but, when it doe speed up, it's excellent. That's a common thread on this album, because I constantly wanted them to speed up and, every time they did and things felt right, they slowed back down again.

I should also mention that I tend to see Wanted Inc. listed as a thrash/death metal band, but I hear the first half of that consistently over the latter. I do see that Flo Schmöller is a new lead vocalist, joining this year along with Heiko F. Böhm on bass, and I wonder if his predecessor had more of an overtly death metal voice. There's maybe a hint of death growl in sustained syllables but that's a bit of a stretch. Mostly he sings in a traditionally rough thrash voice with more of a hint of shouted -core vocals than a death growl. He does the job but I wanted more edge than he had to offer.

This probably sounds like a negative review and I didn't intend it that way. A 6/10 from me is still a recommended rating. I try not to review albums that I don't believe are worthy, but I do wonder if Wanted. Inc's sound has changed over time. I found a lot of problems here but I also want to hear them live to see how they play on stage because I have a feeling I'd rather like them there without being hindered by this rather un-beefy production. I also want to hear how Schmöller sounds in a live environment. Of course, I'm a long way from Bavaria so I'm not likely to hear them live soon. I hope I get the chance at some point. In the meantime, I have three previous albums to check out.

Dice - Chronicles of the Last Self Thinkers (2023)

Country: Germany
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 21 Jul 2023
Sites: Official Website | Prog Archives

Every January, I alternate albums from the previous year that I missed, which is quite a lot in 2023 because I lost a few months to running events and struggled to pick up the ball after them, and an array of new releases from January. Here's the first of the former, because it was a submission I'd let slip past me last July. Dice are a German band who were formed back in 1974 but got prolific in 1997, knocking out an album every year since then, only three of those being live, but I didn't find them until 2019's Yes-2-5-Roger-Roger. After finding them, I apparently promptly lost them again, missing three albums in between that one and this.

Everything I said about that one holds true here. They play smooth prog rock, led by the guitar of Peter Viertel, who I could easily listen to until the cows come home, but with accented vocals from Christian Nóvé adding lyrics here and there, always in English. Nóvé also plays bass and provides a lot of keyboard texture, as well as writing and producing all the music, so it's his band as much as it belongs to anyone but I always come back to that guitarwork, which sits somewhere between Dave Gilmour and Steve Rothery.

It's the Pink Floyd side of that pair that's most obvious, at least in instrumental sections. At their best, as they are for much of the opener, Who Knows the Truth, and all of the closer, Chronicle 57 Blues Play, they remind of Shine On You Crazy Diamond once it gets moving, that tasty guitar on a real journey with a space rock edge overlaid through keyboards. These are smooth tracks that we fall into like a river and just flow along with. They feel utterly effortless and should last forever, as Gilmour's legendary Comfortably Numb solo tended to do on tour with him standing on top of that wall.

And Dice are at their best when they're smooth, to my thinking. It doesn't have to be restricted to instrumental guitar sections, as Nóvé's voice is able to merge with that mood, as indeed it does in Who Knows the Truth, a song that flows whether it's vocal or instrumental. However, whenever a song breaks that smooth approach, like I am the Only One with its jagged rhythms and vocals that demand more attention, the effect is lost somewhat. The song simply doesn't flow as well in that approach, even when Viertel is out there in the spotlight.

I should underline that one reason why these songs get so immersive is that they tend to be long. Both Who Knows the Truth and I am the Only One exceed twelve minutes in length, because Dice don't ever feel the need to wrap songs up quickly. Well, almost never, at least, because Chronicle 57 Blues Play is a five minute instrumental to wrap up proceedings. However, the other four songs range from over nine and a half minutes to just shy of thirteen. Dice prefer their songs to breathe, wisely giving Viertel opportunity to solo frequently and Nóvé occasionally too, on keyboards.

If the bookends are the standout tracks for me, there's much to enjoy on the four in between. The Steve Rothery guitar is most evident on I am the Only One. Some of the keyboards on Just Like the Lemmings approaches new wave, which is an interesting touch, the early parts of The Key echoing that with a delightful vocalisation from Ramona Nóvé and a later narration utilising unusual post-production. There's some piercingly clear guitar to open up Just Like the Lemmings too, for a first minute until Nóvé's vocal takes over and we're into that poppy new wave style, the guitar absent for a while and the keyboards ready to take the spotlight when it's time for a solo.

And that just leaves Freedom for My Soul, which isn't because it's the most noteworthy but for the precise opposite reason. It's the least noteworthy of the bunch, but just because it has nothing to say that's unusual doesn't mean that it isn't a decent song on its own merits. It is and that may be why it ought to be a good point of entry for those who haven't heard Dice before. If you like it, as you ought to if you're intrigued by the concept of smooth prog, then you're really going to like the rest of this album and the rest of what Dice do.

All in all, this isn't particularly inventive prog but it's highly enjoyable prog, especially if you like a guitar solo in the Dave Gilmour style that just runs on and on. I always see the vocals as the weak link in the sound, reminding me of a less urgent Uli Jon Roth, but they're never a problem. They're merely less sophisticated than the instrumentation, but just as honest. If you can cope with them like I can, there's a large and ever-growing catalogue of albums to enjoy.

Dune Pilot - Magnetic (2023)

Country: Germany
Style: Hard/Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Dec 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

I don't know a heck of a lot about Dune Pilot. They're a four piece hard/stoner rock band who hail from Munich, though you wouldn't guess the latter from listening to them. Not only is stoner rock a quintessentially American genre to begin with, they play it in a very American way, unaccented vocals delivered in English with an American turn of phrase. What's more, they often combine the stoner rock sound with a hard rock sound that reminds of Clutch, any British forebears mostly lost in abstraction. Maybe Black Sabbath are a little noticeable in Let You Down, but otherwise they're filtered through the expected American bands.

Which ones manifest pretty quickly. Magnetic is perky stoner rock with less fuzz on the guitar than I expected. The riffs are strong but the hooks are strong too. The vocals are clean but with a slight rasp for edge. There's plenty of Clutch here but some Kyuss too. Visions lightens up initially for an overtly psychedelic feel with vocals deliberately subdued for effect. Both build and a minute in we find ourselves back in that Clutch meets Kyuss territory, with some Monster Magnet thrown in for good measure as it gets heavier, that missing fuzz added right back in. This one bulks up generally, even if it drops back into a jaunty midsection, but it gets heavy at the end and then heavier again.

As the album runs on, the Kyuss influence starts to morph into a Queens of a Stone Age influence, a nuance I know but a telling one. Lumi goes there, but So Mad really goes there, especially late in the song. It has a swagger to it as it builds and eventually overlays a Queens of the Stone Age style melody over a fuzzy guitar and a glorious drum sound. The grit in the voice is getting progressively grittier but the hooks take over and we think about a single release. Dune Pilot like to be versatile, so Heap of Shards is more laid back, even with a relatively harsh clean voice, while Pied Piper is perky and Highest Bid comes right back to Queens of the Stone Age and Clutch.

I liked this a lot and I liked it quickly. The title track opens things up and, while it doesn't include all the aspects of Dune Pilot's sound, serves as a strong introduction to what they do. It has the hooks we expect from a stoner rock band like Queens of the Stone Age who have broken into mainstream awareness and whose catchiest songs hit the charts. It also has the emphasis of a more traditional hard rock band like Clutch, the power they can bring to bear always ready to go in the background even in a quieter song or section.

An obvious example is Take Your Lies, almost a ballad for this band, with one of a number of tasty bass intros—there's another one on Let You Down—backed by just a hint of atmosphere, before a liquid guitar joins in and softer, echoey vocals. It's definitely down a couple of gears from the norm for Dune Pilot but we never forget that there's gas in the tank and the band have their feet ready to hit the pedals. Eventually, of course, they do and it's like they never calmed down at all.

It's hard to pick out favourite tracks, not because there aren't standouts but because they're very different. I like Visions a lot because there's so much dynamic play in it and I like that sort of thing, especially when it's done as well as Dune Pilot do it. I like Let You Down because, even though it's under five minutes and not even the longest track on offer, it has an epic feel to it that's far from the norm here but very effective. Ultimately, I'd go for So Mad because it just flows so well. It has nothing that other songs here don't, but it does those things so well that it feels effortless.

I thought about a highly recommended 8/10 rating early here but the first half does shine brighter than the second. I ended up going with a merely recommended 7/10, but it's more like a seven and a half and, if this is your genre, round that right up to eight immediately. It's good stuff. I just wish I knew who was in the band so I could assign credit.