Apocalypse Later Music Reviews: Greece

Showing posts with label Greece. Show all posts

Thursday, 14 December 2023

Varathron - The Crimson Temple (2023)

I could have sworn that I'd heard Varathron before, but as soon as Stefan Necroabyssious's vocals hit me on Hegemony of Chaos, the opening track proper, I realised that I haven't. They're a Greek band who helped to pioneer black metal in Greece, alongside Necromantia and Rotting Christ, in the early nineties. They were formed as far back as 1988 with their 1993 debut, His Majesty at the Swamp, credited to three musicians and a drum machine. They've bulked up over the years to be a five piece here, with Achilleas C sounding like more because of his keyboards, but this is only their seventh studio album. They're not exactly prolific.

Their particular brand of black metal is symphonic to my ears, though the album starts out with a vibrant intro with choirs, bagpipes and drums, as if Carl Orff was writing Viking metal. It suggests that this will be folk metal rather than black metal—and there are certainly folk elements spicing up the mix at points throughout—but Hegemony of Chaos kicks right into speedy black metal with a roar, initially sounding like the traditional wall of sound black metal style.

However, it does a lot more than that and, in doing so, points at where this album goes. One note is that, while it starts out fast and traditional, Stefan doesn't deliver in the typical shrieks. He has a notably theatrical voice that's rough more than it's harsh and projects more than it shouts, and doesn't really have an easy comparison. While it seemed out of place when I first heard it, I found that I adjusted almost immediately. It's a memorable voice, sinister rather than evil, and I like it a lot.

Another is that, while Hegemony of Chaos starts out fast and traditional, it doesn't stay that way. On this one, the verses are fast but the chorus slows down and adds orchestral swells to make the backdrop seem epic. There's a firm melody overlaid too that takes over, as the song slows down to highlight different aspects of the band's sound and the instrumental sections are slower again. It gets folky halfway through, with an ethnic lute of some description leading the midsection with a repeated rhythmic theme as its backdrop that continues until the end of the song.

So Hegemony of Chaos often slows down, Crypts in the Mist rarely speeds up and, the further I got into the album, the more I realised that there really isn't a lot of fast material here. Hegemony of Chaos, Immortalis Regnum Diaboli and Shrouds of the Miasmic Winds all have strong fast sections but there's also plenty on each of those songs that's much slower. I found myself thinking of how a lot of thrash bands have fallen into playing at two speeds, blisterers going fast and chuggers going mid-pace, with how often any particular band shifts between them an easy means of determining their audience.

In those terms, Varathron seem like a mid-pace black metal band nowadays, even if they ramp up occasionally to frenetic, that's where their elegance is and that's what makes them symphonic to me. This is a set of carefully composed tracks that use black metal components to tell stories and evoke moods. There's as much Iron Maiden on show here as there is Emperor, but the sonic toolkit is far more reminiscent of the latter, so that's where it falls. Stefan's voice is worth bringing up in this context too, because his theatrical approach would often work as well in other forms of metal as this particular one, which tends to be labelled extreme.

The guitars from Achilleas and Sotiris often follow suit, reminding as much of heavy metal bands as anything extreme. Check out how Crypts in the Mist ends and how Cimmerian Priesthood kicks off in its wake. This is heavy metal guitarwork, even if the tone is straight out of black metal. Outside of the few blistering sections, it's often only a fast beat from Haris that really keeps the extreme tag valid. If he slowed down and ditched his double bass work, then this might still remind of black metal but wouldn't play as extreme at all, more prog or even folk metal. To the Gods of Yore hints at doom metal.

And I have to come back to that folk metal aspect. It's not everywhere here, though it shows up on enough occasions to be notable. I don't know what instruments are being used, because I don't see any credits for them, but they're clearly ethnic and they add an extra flavour to this music when a song decides to let them in. Hegemony of Chaos is the first, but To the Gods of Yore goes there too and there's plenty more in Swamp King. I liked this aspect a lot and wish it had been utilised more often. It makes me wonder how Varathron arrived at this sound and how their next album will turn out, though it would be surprising if we see that any time soon.

Wednesday, 18 October 2023

On Thorns I Lay - On Thorns I Lay (2023)

On Thorns I Lay have been around for a long while, even if you haven't heard the name before, but they're not the same band they've been. They were founded in Athens back in 1992, with their first album released three years later, and they've experienced a slew of line-up changes, as tends to be the case. However, until their ninth album, Threnos in 2020, the band remained centered around a pair of founder members, lead vocalist Stefanos Kintzoglou, who also contributed bass until 2017, and guitarist Christos Dragamestianos.

That changed in 2021 when Kintzoglou left to reform the band that became On Thorns I Lay with a few former members. That's Phlebotomy, not to be mistaken with Phlebotomized, the Dutch death metal band. Maybe that's why this album is self-titled. Presumably Dragamestianos sees it as the fresh start the band needs, especially given that the rest of the line-up is very new. Vocalist Peter Miliadis, guitarist Nikolas Paraskevopoulos and bassist Kostas Mexis are each making their studio debuts for On Thorns I Lay here.

If you've followed On Thorns I Lay through those decades, you might be wondering what style they have adopted this week. They started out as brutal death metal, shifted to symphonic doom/death and then gothic metal, before eventually moving back to the doom/death style evident here. The new aspect is folk instrumentation, which I believe shows up here for the first time. There are lots of ethnic instruments on display here and the opener, Fallen from Grace, kicks off with ethnic voice and strings. However, it's still doom/death rather than folk metal, merely with new textures.

I'm a folk metal fan, so I'd be happy with more of the ethnic instrumentation, but it works well as a contrast, replacing the beauty and the beast vocal contrast from some earlier albums. This aspect isn't overused, but it is integral. One of my favourite sections in the album arrives late in Thorns of Fire when the heavy doom/death is accompanied by what I presume is some sort of zither. Many of the songs feature this contrast in some form, especially Crestfallen, both at the beginning and in the midsection, and Among the Wolves, both of which are favourites of mine.

The band's core sound nowadays is an elegant form of atmospheric doom metal, which is slow and crushingly heavy but full of melody, especially through the guitars. It's a rich and immersive sound that, at its best, feels apart from everything as if it's torn a hole in the space/time continuum and dragged us through to somewhere and somewhen entirely new. The death aspect comes mostly in a warm but harsh growled vocal from Miliadis, who I presume is versatile given that he also sings for a crossover thrash band, Double Square, and used to sing for a metalcore band, SlavEATgod.

The instrument that stood out the most for me was the guitar. I don't know how much of that is the work of Dragamestianos and how much his new compatriot, Paraskevopoulos, but the combination worked for me, whether they were soloing, providing melodic lines in a Paradise Lost style or even dropping into an acoustic or ethnic mode, using whatever other stringed instruments were sitting around. I've read that there were many of them, as many as fifteen different instruments, though I have no idea what or where.

The other aspect that deserves mention is that these aren't generally short songs but they're not epics either. Fallen from Grace opens up at just over eight minutes and Crestfallen exceeds it by a single second. The final three songs run seven minutes and varying degrees of change, with only a single track left to serve as the anomaly. That's Newborn Skies, which fails to reach five minutes, a strange and ironic fact given that it's the song with the most symphonic backdrop. We might think that that would be the epic but it isn't here and it's a fair length. The rest of the songs breathe nicely.

I'm new to On Thorns I Lay, as far as I'm aware, and I have to remind myself that this is a new start for them, but I'm interested in what they sounded like previously. The gothic tinges have been far more pivotal to their sound in the past, from what I read, and I've been a particular fan of beauty and the beast vocals since they were invented. Maybe I'll dip into their earlier work once I get back on track with reviews after the events of the past few months. In the meantime, I'm happy with the old school doom/death sound they have here, with heavier death growls and a teasing element of folk added for good measure. I like.

Tuesday, 25 April 2023

Elysion - Bring Out Your Dead (2023)

Country: Greece
Style: Gothic Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 17 Mar 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Wikipedia | YouTube

Elysion are new to me but they've been around for a long time, even though this is only their third album, arriving almost a decade after its predecessor, Someplace Later in 2014. They're prominent enough to have a Wikipedia page, but there's not much there. They're from Athens, built around a couple of guitarists, and they've held a pretty stable line-up since their formation in 2006. The only change since their early days is Andreas Roufagalas stepping on bass last year to replace founder member Antonios Bofilakis.

They play gothic metal, but with a very commercial, alt rock edge. This isn't old school gothic metal drenched in velvet and mahogany and with either a deep and resonant male voice or a beauty and the beast contrast. There's little here that's reminiscent of Tristania or Lacrimas Profundere. It's radio friendly gothic metal, like Evanescence but heavier, so maybe more like modern Lacuna Coil. It's built out of simple but effective crunchy riffs and led by a clean and powerful female voice that knows exactly how to turn on the emphasis. It's telling that this seems to be metal over rock, but I do not see a page for the band at Metal Archives.

Blink of an Eye is a strong opener that never lets up. Crossing Over adds more commercial sheen. Raid the Universe adds samples and more electronica. Those three, between them, provide the band's sound in a nutshell and all three of them sound good. This is a very easy album to listen to, as if an initial listen is actually a tenth or twentieth time through. I'm sure that's very deliberate through careful songwriting, because the music behind Christiana Hatzimihali's voice is thoroughly simple, designed to underpin her rather than to show off. Sure, Nikos Despotopoulos manages to carve a little space out of songs for decent guitar solos, but then it's swiftly back to the vocals.

Frankly, this lives or dies on those vocals and what balance Hatzimihali can find between melody and power. The verses are all melody and they build to the title or the chorus or whatever's there to stand out just a bit more than the verses, with Hatzimihali turning on that emphasis for effect too. As long as she does that, and she manages it consistently across the album, then this is good stuff and a whole slew of these ten tracks ought to find themselves friendly to radio stations.

The question you need to ask yourselves, if you're into gothic metal of any description, is whether that's enough for you and that's because there's not a lot more here. Blink of an Eye does tease a little, with a decent guitar solo and a teasing operatic voice soaring behind whispers at one point. I like the keyboard work that's mostly confined in the background to Crossing Over. Those are the first two tracks here, so it's all promising for a while, but there's not much else added after that, so, if you're looking for more than crunchy guitars and powerful female vocals, the songs will blur together somewhat. Was that a sample during This Time? I probably dreamed it.

And that puts this album in an odd place. Because it's so consistent in approach, these songs serve as variations on a simple theme and that means that, after a couple of times through, there was a lack of anything to keep me paying attention and it all faded into the background, maybe a guitar solo or vocal line pulling back here and there. However, the songs, as simple as they are, never got old, so that, even when this became background ambience, I was still listening on some level and it entertained me.

I ended up thinking of it like a dentist's surgery. You know when you're lying there, waiting for the numbing agent to work and all you can do is listen to the radio station to which they're tuned. If it's a good one, then you feel OK because whatever pain you're in will soon be gone and you can listen to good music until then. If it's a bad one, then you feel uncomfortable, as if you're being confined against your will and you're already failing to manage the ordeal even before the dentist arrives. This album would serve as a good radio station for my next visit.

Monday, 6 March 2023

Burgundy Grapes - Quadrella (2023)

Country: Greece
Style: Folk Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 Feb 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

This must be the quietest album I've reviewed yet at Apocalypse Later but it's a damn good one, a core of soft folky acoustic guitars surrounded by fascinating sounds from a variety of instruments played by guests. Burgundy Grapes ares at heart a duo, George Kolyvas and Alexandros Miaoulis, who don't list what they play, beyond those guitars and presumably the drums, as nobody else has a credit for that. They may well play more between them, but guests add wilder instrumentation to the mix too maintain a progressive edge: a double bass here, an organ there, even theremin or stylophone when needed.

The base sound is folk rock, often with a psychedelic angle, as if they recorded this in a park in San Francisco while under the influence of acid rather than at home in Athens, Greece. It's very quiet, as if every musician is deliberately playing their respective instruments very softly and trying not to breathe to put off the extra-sensitive microphones, but that doesn't mean that it's without an intricacy. It must be the easiest album in the world to put on and automatically like as background music, but it's well worth a deep focus from the listener to catch everything they're doing. All of it is engaging and fascinating.

Tickle Road is a soft opener, but Possibility Song is a darker counterpoint, quietly threatening and making us aware of our surroundings. Wander to Stride is more overtly folk, but it's not pastoral, even if I could absolutely imagine a flute soaring over it. Instead of adding that element, it drifts into Pink Floyd territory, if you remember the Meddle album. There are hints of organ and double bass that remain tantalising. While a gentle riff repeats over and over like waves, I was listening to the chimes or xylophone or whatever's tinkling in the foreground, almost as a solo.

Sometimes there seems to be an organic flow to the guitars, as if this was aimed at anyone who's into the first couple of Leonard Cohen albums but doesn't want to hear his poetry, focused instead on his rippling guitarwork. It reminded me of Philip Glass's Glassworks album, merely slowed and transcribed for acoustic guitar. Initially, the tone felt like acoustic Wishbone Ash, but that goes as quickly as it arrives, replaced by the subtly psychedelic folk angle. Dream Echo has African guitar melodies, again slowed down, but overlaid with a lap steel straight out of country music. I heard a lot of Norman Blake here too, but, yes indeed, slowed down and softened. Burgundy Grapes don't want us to get up and dance. They want us to sit around and listen, maybe join in.

What surprised me the most was how few of these eleven pieces of music feel like they could have been the backing tracks to singer/songwriter songs. Crystal Friend certainly does and I kept trying to imagine what sort of unique voice would surely join in any moment now. However, this remains entirely instrumental. The title track is another example, though I felt Crystal Friend would work with a tender female voice but Quadrella a more raucous male one, maybe not a full on Tom Waits but on the way towards it. He would certainly respond to the carnival beat and the theremin that kicks in too for an enticing touch.

But then we're back to pieces of music that feel like they were always instrumentals and couldn't be anything but. Sure, the baritone sax of Thodoris Rellos on Curtains does kinda sorta take the place of what a vocal might do, but it's meant to be instrumental. Most of them are driven by the guitars but a piano takes over on Green Door, almost duetting for a while and eventually taking over the piece. It's yet another reminder that this would work effortlessly as background music, just something a little breezy and natural to lighten your day, but it also rewards the listener who pays attention to see what's going on.

And that's where I'll leave this, because I have to move on to another album, as easy as it would be to just let this play out the week on repeat. I'd say that you need to be in the mood for this, but I'd correct that to say that, if you're not in the mood for this when you press play, you will be soon into it. It's a refresher of an album. Take one after lunch and it'll better your day.

Monday, 11 July 2022

Septicflesh - Modern Primitive (2022)

OK, I thought I knew Septic Flesh, as they were before 2008 with a space in their name, but it's very possible that I've confused them with someone else. No, not Septic Death, as I have them clear for sure. However, I was thoroughly surprised by the sound of this album, though, and more so than I'd have been had I actually heard some of their earlier material before. Going back to cherrypick the early stuff, I see that they've always played symphonic death metal but they've continued to boost the symphonic part of that as time has gone by, eventually sharing the stage in Mexico City in 2019 with an orchestra and a couple of choirs in a memorable concert I've been enjoying on YouTube.

By this point, which is their eleventh album, that symphonic angle has been so integrated into the band's sound that it's inseparable. This isn't strings behind a rock band any more, this is one band with a hundred members. I'd say that the best example of this is Coming Storm, but everything on the album is a good example and Coming Storm is just the track that plays with the dynamics best. And, I should point out, going full on symphonic beyond most symphonic bands is far from the end of their evolution.

For a start, there's a lot of ethnic sound on this album, starting at the very beginning with a neat and intricate intro to The Collector, which is not played on acoustic guitars. In addition to the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and the Libro Coro choirs and a long list of choral vocalists, I'm seeing credits for folk instruments like mandolin, flute, oud and bouzouki, each of which I'm aware of, but duduk and santur too, which I'm not; they're a wind instrument and a hammered dulcimer respectively. There's also a female vocalist who sings in a wavering ethnic style on songs like Self-Eater. Each of these folk contributions deepens the band's sound and they're often the best, most joyous part, like on Neuromancer.

For another, while the majority of vocals are still the effortlessly harsh vocals of bassist Seth Siro Anton, who sounds like he's not even putting on a demonic voice but just using the one that comes most naturally, the way they're balanced with the clean vocals of guitarist Sotiris Anunnaki V are a fascinating thing. Sometimes, it's the usual contrast between harsh and clean, which is purely for effect and the sort of thing we tend to expect in bands with that dynamic. However, here it's often something far more theatrical and the orchestration and some of the other musical changes on a dime play into that.

When listening through the speakers on my desk, I sometimes got the impression that there were things happening that I missed because I couldn't see them. Surely, this is music that's intended to be seen as much as heard, a true metal opera, and I wasn't sitting in front of a stage watching the actors play their parts. When listening through headphones, though this feeling was enhanced to become sometimes overwhelming. I wanted to know what these people were doing visually, what stories they were telling with their bodies as well as their voices.

While Coming Storm stood out for me above the other tracks, none of them let the side down. This is a solid album and one I enjoyed a great deal over a few listens. If there's a catch, it's that there are also bonus tracks on this limited edition and, well, I kind of dig those more. These are entirely orchestral pieces, i.e. they keep all of that side but ditch the band, and I'm pretty sure that they'll want me to think of them as worthy bonuses. Instead, I'm digging Salvation and The 14th Part a bit more than I'm digging the rest of the album, Coming Storm excluded.

However, the third of these bonus tracks is Coming Storm, done entirely with orchestra, and I think that I prefer the proper version more. So, perhaps the question should be phrased like this: where are the heavy versions of Salvation and The 14th Part, the ones with a band and vocals and all that jazz? Answers on the back of a postcard please...

Tuesday, 22 March 2022

King Mountain - Tempest at the Gate (2022)

Country: Greece
Style: Stoner/Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 Mar 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook

I've been stumbling upon all sorts of quality rock and metal coming out of Greece lately, even if it doesn't seem to be the product of any single coherent scene. Naxatras and Halocraft are only the latest to seriously impress me, with Acid Death and Soundtruck getting 8/10s from me in the past, along with Firewind, who I already knew about, of course. And so, always greedy for more, here's another Greek album, courtesy of another project of Stavros Papadopoulos, who I've encountered before in Universal Hippies.

If I'm counting properly, this is a fourth album for King Mountain with vocals and a fifth overall, as 2020's Beleaguered was entirely instrumental. Papadopoulos provides the guitar and vocals, with Chris Lagios, the drummer in Universal Hippies, behind the kit and John Christopoulos on bass. It's well within possibility that he's played with Papadopolous before in one of his myriad bands, but I couldn't tell you which. I just assume that the man is a scene all on his own.

Like Universal Hippies, King Mountain play stoner rock, as is patently obvious from the amount of fuzz on the guitar. However, this is a vocal album and Papadopoulos's voice underlines just much of Clutch there is in this band's sound. He delivers clean vocals that are deep, confident and powerful without overtly trying to be. Like Clutch, King Mountain builds its songs out of slow, solid riffs that are effortlessly heavy without ever really pushing towards doom. If it crosses boundaries, it's into grunge and southern rock, which I'd never seen as a sliding scale before. There are also hints at an influence in NWOBHM, both in riffs and solos.

For a while, it's pure stoner rock. Soul Sacrifice is a strong opener, a patient stormer of a track. The title track continues that, overloading the fuzz on its intro to worship the distortion, and it's only late in Burning Walls that it leaps into a gallop for some clear Iron Maiden guitarwork. That's neat energy to add into the sound of a band that tend to be heavy without being urgent. The same goes for the psychedelic opening to Break Away and for the way that it then grows into something not a million miles away from southern rock. There's grunge in songs like King of the Mountain and lots of blues too, which is crucial bedrock for King Mountain.

It's notable that the less expected sounds the band trawls in tend to be in the middle of the album. A few of these songs sound like Eddie Vedder singing for Clutch but thinking he's in Lynyrd Skynyrd and I'm not going to argue with that, especially when the guitar plays along. That Break Away solo is a real peach, even if there aren't any other guitars to interweave with. The resulting sound ends up as much akin to Black Country Communion as Clutch, albeit with a very different vocal style.

However, the openers are firmly in Clutch territory and so are the closers, which tend to turn out to be my favourites here. If Soul Sacrifice isn't my pick for the album's standout track, then Under the Blackened Sky is. This is the penultimate song on offer, with the similarly excellent Naked Souls on duty to close out the album, and I adore the guitarwork, which alternates between delicate almost spaghetti western soundtrack picking and a neatly heavy riff, not to forget another excellent solo. The drums are fascinating too, even if they're heavied up to the point of dissonance.

So, how many bands is Stavros Papadopoulos actually in nowadays and which one of them will issue an album next week? Inquiring minds want to know.

Wednesday, 16 March 2022

Naxatras - IV (2022)

Country: Greece
Style: Hard/Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 25 Feb 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

It's appropriate that this album begins with an instrumental called Reflection (Birth), because the band appear to have started out as yet another jam band trio, merely one based in Thessaloniki in Greece, but they evolved into something deliciously more along the way. This is a decent opener, a pleasant intro featuring sitar-like guitar, tinkling piano and hand drums shifting into a stoner rock guitar for an instrumental workout. What it isn't is a complete guide to what's still to come within the next three quarters of an hour, just as I would guess the nascent Naxatras probably weren't a good guide to what they'd be getting up to a decade into their career.

There's a lot here to explore. Some of the songs do fall into the style I expected from the combo of genre and cover art. Omega Madness is clearly Hawkwind influenced, for instance, built as it is of strong riffs and spacy keyboards, though Journey to Narahmon escalates that approach up to the next level, ditching most of the space sounds but maintaining that incessant Hawkwind bassline as it navigates through a lively, more urgent sonic landscape. It's songs like this that prompted me to listen through this album a whole bunch of times because I kept getting lost in its flow. And after all, journeys aren't supposed to be about destinations, even when they're to Narahmon, wherever that is. They're about what's on the way.

Other songs are journeys too, like the closer, Shape of the Evening, which feels like it's more likely to be a journey through the desert to Tombstone than to Narahmon. It's glorious soundscape stuff, patient and western, with danger never overt but always lurking somewhere nearby. The shorter tracks in the middle of the album, like Ride with Time and Radiant Stars, are glimpses of journeys too, especially the latter, its delightfully melodious bookends enclosing some searing guitarwork from John Delias. There's a lot of that here, though nobody lets the side down.

While Naxatras are still primarily an instrumental band and the majority of the ten tracks on offer here are instrumentals, the line-up does include a couple of vocalists, even if they also play guitar and bass respectively. Their vocal work shows up within The Answer four tracks in, after a gorgeous intro, and continues on in Ride with Time and then, most notably, Horizon, which is a true gem of a track, easily my favourite on the album. The instrumentation is blissful, from the Jimmy Page-like guitarwork early on through a moment just before the four minute mark that steals my breath on every single listen to a magnificent climax, but it benefits greatly from a confident vocal too.

Just to keep us on the hop, The Battle of Crystal Fields takes us in a surprising direction, one that seems very reminiscent of a Scottish folk tune. It's a lively piece that's as different from Horizon as Horizon is from The Answer or The Answer is from Omega Madness. I did mention that there's a lot going on here but every moment of it is well worth your effort in seeking it out. This is an easy 8/10 for me, but I'm wondering if I should up that to a 9/10.

Wednesday, 5 January 2022

Halocraft - A Mother to Scare Away the Darkness (2021)

Country: Greece
Style: Post-Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 5 Nov 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

One of the genres that's fascinated me the most since diving back deep into rock and metal here at Apocalypse Later is post-rock. I don't have a major background in the genre, so I'm learning and one of the places teaching me about it is a Facebook group called WherePostRockDwells, through which I've discovered a host of excellent albums. They recently published their top ten of 2021 and, above major names like Mono, Mogwai and God is an Astronaut, at the top of that list was this, an album from a post-rock outfit I hadn't heard of, who hail from northern Greece. They're Halocraft and this is their second full length album.

I enjoyed it immensely but, unlike many post-rock albums, it didn't take me anywhere. The babies gurgling at the start of the title track to kick off the album helped to infuse it with warmth but I'm pretty sure that would be the overriding feeling regardless. It's there in the guitarwork, which is welcoming; it's there in the bass, which is enveloping; and it's there in the grand sweep, which is a lively but comforting journey inwards. This isn't taking me anywhere, but it's making me feel very comfortable indeed where I'm already at.

And the album continues the way the title track started out, the variety primarily in pacing rather than stylistic exploration. It's always warm, whatever the pace, but Halocraft bring in sadness with sections that slow and feel more pensive. That's there as Small Victories begins and it's especially there on For the Son You Could Not Save, which plucks at the heartstrings even if we don't read its title first. Small Victories plays with its pace a lot, though, ramping up to energetic speeds often, the mood changing each time.

That's not to say that they don't bring in other sounds here and there, just that their core palette is happy to focus on a specific feel that underpins everything on offer. There's some reggae late in New Beginnings. There's some neat electronica early in The Machine that's quickly reminiscent of Tangerine Dream. There are echoey power chords on Through the Caverns that heavy the piece up a little and darker guitars that do likewise, without it ever becoming post-metal. Small Victories is a little Celtic with its melodies. But they're all variations on a theme really.

And so there's not a heck of a lot to say about this one, beyond it being excellent. You could pick a track at random, any track, and, if you like that one, you can be pretty sure you're going to like all the others. In fact, I'm pretty sure you're going to like everything anyway, unless you just hate all instrumental music or you despise post-rock in all its incarnations. This isn't ever going to convert a naysayer, but it's hard to imagine anyone not liking it. It's inherently likeable stuff, effortlessly melodious and ever-welcoming. It's a warm blanket of an album on a cold winter day.

Thursday, 9 December 2021

Gus G - Quantum Leap (2021)

This is at once the easiest and one of the trickiest reviews that I've written thus far at Apocalypse Later. On one hand, if you like what Gus G does with Firewind or whoever else, then you're going to like this. It's that simple. On the other hand, it's hard to quite get a grip on what he does here, because it isn't always what we might expect.

For a start, it's an instrumental album, so presumably a lot more like his debut solo effort, Guitar Master from 2001, than his other albums under his own name, which feature a succession of guest vocalists and other musicians. However, there is a band here, even if nobody's specifically listed in that way: a drummer, a bassist and a keyboardist, who play across the entire album, which lends it a consistent feel. The only actual guest in the sense we tend to understand is fellow guitar wizard Vinnie Moore on the final track, Force Majeure.

For another, even though the feel is consistent and I wouldn't hesitate to call it heavy metal from a grand standpoint, it drops clearly into hard rock territory rather often. Sure, there's a whole lot of shredding going on and it fits well alongside the eighties instrumental shred albums that were everywhere at one point in time, but it often feels older, like Gus peeled solos off old masters and laid them over new backing that obviously benefits from 21st century production values.

Sure, a song like Fierce reminds most obviously of Slayer, even though it's never quite that heavy, but Not Forgotten brings both Def Leppard and Gary Moore to mind. The latter shows up as often as the expected Uli Jon Roth to my ears, Enigma of Life a neat take on both. One of my favourites here is Chronosthesia, which mixes modern djenty palm muting with seventies styles of rock music like prog and jazz fusion. It's a fascinating mix. Judgement Day may feel most recent in stylistic terms.

Averaging everything out, I'd say that there's more eighties than anything else. Night Driver may be the most overtly eighties piece here, because it's smooth and backed with music that could be lifted from an electronic rock movie soundtrack. However, there's Iron Maiden on a few tracks like Force Majeure and Quantum Leap. It's there right out of the gate on the former, but recognisable on the latter, with sections clearly inspired by Flight of Icarus and Flash of the Blade.

And, for a third, for all the soloing that Gus G contributes, these feel more like songs than they do flights of instrumental fancy. The riffs are strong and serve as great bedrock, but there are quite a few sections where they're what the songs are all about. I never felt at any point like the vocals were missing, as if this was meant to be a vocal album and the vocalist just didn't show up, so Gus G went ahead and released the instrumental version. But, every time I listen through again, I find that thought rattling around my brain again.

And that leaves me thinking that while this isn't a lesser album because of its lack of voice, it's not outside the realms of possibility that it could be elevated with them. That's an odd thought for an instrumental album, but it abides. Everything here sounds great, but it may not sound complete. But hey, if you like what Gus G does with Firewind or whoever else, then you're going to like this. It remains that simple.

Thursday, 6 May 2021

Black Juju - Purple Flower, Garden Black (2021)

Country: Greece
Style: Doom/Stoner Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Mar 2021
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives

Sometimes it seems that the boundary between doom metal and stoner metal is so narrow that it can be difficult to put a band on one side or the other. Black Juju, who hail from Larissa, the capital of the region of Greece known as Thessaly, veer back and forth over that boundary so much that I guess that I have to call them both. Jaguar Paw opens up the album in classic Candlemass style but Hiawatha has a laid back vibe that feels more stoner metal and, when vocals kick in properly on V.F.T., they're on the stoner metal side too, even if they sometimes veer back towards classic Ozzy.

And yes, this is a vocal album. While Jaguar Paw is an entirely instrumental opener and the vocals on Hiawatha are restricted to the song's title repeated through Native American chanting, even though this is a five minute song, more traditional vocals do kick in eventually and I believe that singer Panos Dimitriou doesn't play an instrument as well. He sings in English, with a deliberately unpolished rasp that reminded me of Zodiac Mindwarp, sans all his Cult-like choruses. It gives this a rough edge but is still clearly understandable and without much of an accent either.

V.F.T. reminds me of Zodiac Mindwarp in other ways too, namely that the music is down and dirty and has tinges of punk and industrial, without ever moving into either genre. Starting a song by gargling in front of the microphone, as someone does on Soulstealer, is absolutely the sort of thing he'd have done too, as is the closing boast of a line proclaiming that, "I'm the coolest one in east and west, oh yeah." Thinking of this album as a doom metal take on Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction felt a little weird but I just can't unhear it.

Now, I doubt that these boys from Thessaly have even heard of the High Priest of Love, but they have been around for quite a while. If I'm understanding correctly, they were formed in 2000 as In Vain and became Black Juju in 2011. Also, three of the band were also in heavy metal band Denial Price, which was formed way back in 1986 and was briefly known as Shadow Axis. However, that longevity has little translation into relesaes. Denial Price only managed an EP and a few demos, In Vain never passed the demo stage and this is only the second Black Juju album, after Letters from My Brother Cain in 2012, even if there was an EP in between them. Clearly these folk aren't prolific.

Fortunately, they sound good. This may not be kept us waiting for nine years good, but I like it. It has plenty of lively attitude for a genre that's traditionally introspective and depressed, and it's clearly not afraid to play with tempos. Sometimes they get really slow, elongating their notes with powerful effect, but they just can't resist perking back up again afterwards. In this, they reminded me more of American doom bands like Pentagram and Trouble than anything European. Vagios Alexopoulos has a surprising sprightly touch and it rubs off on everyone else.

It's fair to say that my expectations were totally off here. Most obviously, I expected something much slower and doomier, and didn't get it. It's not even particularly introspective, though there's some of that on (A Song for) Sorrow, which is calmer, more intricate and much more melancholy than anything else here. However, I also expected something with more of a psychedelic edge, given the band's logo, cover art and album title. Again they surprised me. There's only a little of that to be found here, most obviously in the wailing guitar early in Acid King. This is also the most Ozzy that Dimitriou gets, but it has to be said that I caught some Dio in there too. He's clearly not a one era Sabbath fan.

However much this wasn't what I was expecting, I enjoyed it a great deal. I found the American doom influences fascinating, though Hiawatha may be seen as a little problematic there nowadays. This is a homage in many ways to the more upbeat American doom style and it's a good one. I haven't listened to Pentagram in forever and this prompted me to take a nostalgic side trip. Oddly, the European nods are found in the bookends, opener Jaguar Paw and closer Gloomy Sunday reminding much more of the Swedish style and early Candlemass.

Greece rarely disappoints me nowadays and Purple Flower, Garden Black is another winner. Check out Black Hearted River to see if this is up your alley or not. It's definitely up mine and that's my standout track, I think, with Gloomy Sunday and Soulstealer up there too.

Tuesday, 27 April 2021

Gynoid - The Hunger Artist Show (2021)

Country: Greece
Style: Sludge Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 Apr 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Here's something interesting from Greece. How many times have I said that over the last few years? I should thank Gynoid guitarist/vocalist Sypros Tsalouchidis as much for underlining once more just how vibrant the scene in Greece seems to be at the moment as for sending over his band's debut album for review, but I'm thankful for both. They describe what they do as both noise rock and sludge metal and that seems fair, even if it sometimes seems like the two genres are battling each other for supremacy in the Gynoid sound, albeit never to the death.

The Collar, which is the opening track proper, shows their commitment to metal, with strong riffs that are inspired, almost inevitably, by the Black Sabbath playbook. These musicians can definitely be tight when they want to be, which they are in the metal sections of The Collar and especially in Scissorman, which feels like a garage punk band covering Voivod. It's intricate and tricky and it's very tight except when it doesn't want to be tight at all. Sometimes Gynoid want to be really loose.

This is epitomised in breakdowns that sound like everything might fall apart but never does, because the band always know where they're going next and they're just keeping us on the hook. Usually these points are pause moments in songs when my imagination tells me the mobile musicians are prowling around, stirring up the pit by almost creating one themselves on stage. This works really well, but it's less effective when it's a whole song, like Garbageman (Apeman). In the briefer pauses, we know this is the calm before the storm and, sure enough, that storm promptly arrives all the more effective for the buildup. It never arrives on Garbageman.

The loose aspect is also epitomised in the vocals, which couldn't be any further from *insert favourite Sabbath vocalist here*. They're equal parts Serj Tankian, Jello Biafra and Fred Schneider of the B-52's, with perhaps a side of Blaine from the Accüsed, which boils down to very alternative and very punk. It fascinated me to see how the tight metal aspect found a way to co-exist here with the loose punk one, and I have to say it that way around because the punk side of this band's sound clearly couldn't give a monkey's about the metal side in the slightest. It drives Gynoid wherever the hell it wants, leaving the metal side to figure out ways to support it.

Sometimes they're so loose that the sound goes to very strange places indeed. My Mirror, My Master wraps up the album in a way that sometimes feels like that same garage punk band who was covering Voivod earlier is now taking on Crimson Glory but ending up more in Jandek territory instead, which is not remotely what I expect when I throw on a sludge metal album. I'm not sure if I like this song or not but Gynoid are never conventional or predictable and I know that I like that.

While it wasn't hard for me to identify favourite songs—Scissorman and Mannequin are my highlights with My Pet Worms and The Collar not too far behind—it was a heck of a lot harder to figure out what I liked about them most.

I like the fact that they're a trio, because it makes for a sparse sound with an incredibly obvious bass playing an important role, occasionally taking the lead. Panos Dedis often reminded me of Tony Sales, who was the utterly reliable bassist behind Iggy Pop when that singer was at his most unpredictable. I like the guitars on My Pet Worms a lot but I love the parts where the bass takes the lead. I like when Tsalouchidis riffs. I like the more unusual rhythms that Nikos Dimitriou finds on The Collar. But that's me.

In the end, I think whether you'll like this band or not will come down to whether you like the vocals. I can't say which are Tsalouchidis and which are Dimitriou, but they're wild and they're unrestrained. If you like the idea of sludge metal played by a punk trio with vocals that could go absolutely anywhere at all at the drop of a hat, so keeping you totally on the hop, then Gynoid might be the favourite band you haven't heard of yet.

Tuesday, 16 March 2021

Grande Fox - Empty Nest (2021)

Country: Greece
Style: Stoner/Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 Feb 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

Next up in my exploration of the apparently thriving rock/metal scene in Greece is Grande Fox, whose Bandcamp page says they play "space psychedelic stoner heavy rock". That's fair but maybe a little bit misleading, as there's another element missing from that description and there's nothing to hint at a very American sound. Sure, stoner rock came from the U.S. but, whenever I see both "psychedelic" and "space" in a genre, I think Hawkwind and they're not where Grande Fox tend to go, except perhaps on Brainstorm.

The heart of their sound is hard rock with enough fuzz on the guitar and enough of a psychedelic edge to count as stoner rock. There are southern rock tinges here too, most obviously on Hangman, and an alternate Nick Cave-esque groove early in Route 99. However, that missing element is highlighted by a prominent bass and clean but angsty vocals and that's nu metal, especially when a second voice adds to the depth of Rottenness of Youth and raises System of a Down along with more expected bands.

Nikos Berzamanis is the lead vocalist here and it's obvious that he listens to a lot of trendy American bands, not just because of his general vocal style but because of the way in which he crafts melodies and fills space. There's clearly plenty of pop, rap and punk in his voice, but somehow he fits in a hard/stoner rock outfit and fits surprisingly well. He's easily the most nu metal aspect in this band but I'm happy to say that he sounds good here, doesn't piss me off in the slightest and makes me appreciate just how versatile he can be. He's never trying to be someone specific; he's always experimenting with what might make a song sound different and that's never a bad thing.

Given how much music I cover from Europe and South America and other countries outside the U.S., it can't come as much of a surprise to find that I'm one of those old school fans who regards nu metal as more of a loud American pop genre than a progression of rock music down a particular track. I'm not a fan, generally speaking, though there are bands I appreciate. I like System of a Down and Rage Against the Machine as much as I don't like Korn and Limp Bizkit. If that's me just appreciating originality, it shouldn't surprise that I kind of like Grande Fox even when I don't.

And not everything here is for me, Overdose probably being the most obvious song I don't like, but it still features elements I do, like that neat Sabbath-esque riff that kicks it into motion. It's safe to say that more songs are absolutely for me. I particularly like the opener, Backstab, with its late drift into psychedelia; the space rock freakout, Brainstorm; and the genre hopping trip that is Brutal Colors. It isn't the only song here to find a funky vibe, regardless of whatever else it's doing.

This is a second full length studio album from Grande Fox, following Space Nest in 2016 and an EP in 2018 called Kulning. I liked a lot of this and I appreciated all of it and it's a particularly great example of how much musical invention is coming out of Greece nowadays. This is a more versatile album than other American-influenced releases I've reviewed by bands like Skybinder, Soundtruck and Dendrites, but it underlines once more a surprising trend for Greek bands to take their influences not from the rest of Europe but from across the pond in the U.S.

Tuesday, 9 March 2021

Nightfall - At Night We Prey (2021)

Country: Greece
Style: Melodic Black/Death/Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 Mar 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Twitter | Wikipedia

Here's another band who have been around for some time but are nonetheless new to me. Singer and bassist Efthimis Karadimas formed Nightfall in Athens, Greece way back in 1991 and the band put out nine albums before this one, apparently evolving as they did so through quite the variety of genres. Metal Archives says they started out as melodic black/death/doom metal, morphed into gothic metal or rock and then moved back to their roots. Wikipedia says that, along with Moonspell, which I know, and Inciuvatu, which I don't, they introduced a "Mediterranean way to black metal".

Whatever we call this, it's emphatic. After a dark piano intro with keyboards building behind it like a trailer to a horror film, the opening track proper tells us in no uncertain terms that the band mean to hit us hard. Perhaps it's because they've been gone for a while. They kinda sorta split up from 2005 to 2009 and again from 2013 until now, so some people are surprised to see them back. Maybe they want to underline that not only are they back but they're back with a vengeance.

This opening track is Killing Moon and everything in it is done with emphasis. Fotis Bernardo, a new fish on drums, especially means to really thump them hard and the production does a fantastic job of aiding him in that. The tempo ratchets up nicely too, so that we could often almost see this as thrash metal rather than the melodic death metal it's closer to. It really doesn't hang around, especially in a frantic midsection, but the tone is always a little deeper and Karadimas's voice growls and bellows.

I have to say that I like the faster sections more than the slower ones, but the band do both well and I can't complain about how heavy it all feels. Witches opens up like Seasons of the Abyss era Slayer and that's heavy indeed. However, when they speed up, like on Killing Moon and Darkness Forever, I found more of a Kreator vibe than anything off Reign in Blood.

Nightfall are more varied at slower tempos, adding in black metal on Witches, gothic metal on Giants of Anger and death metal on, well, pretty much everything else. There are other sounds here that may not come from any of them. Temenos has a vibe that's halfway between a heavy Blue Öyster Cult song and something by one of those black metal bands who abandoned the genre for something a lot more commercial like, say, Satyricon. Meteor Gods starts out with choral vocals that sound ethnic. Martyrs of the Cult of the Dead has a bombastic flavour from outside extreme metal, though it's extremed up.

In short, there's a lot here and I'm digging the way that Nightfall merge genres. The most interesting music I've heard over the last few years has been from artists or bands who ditch all traditional marks of boundaries and create whatever they want, whatever box or boxes it might end up in. Nightfall are clearly masters of that. These songs move back and forth between pretty much every flavour of metal without any of it seeming inappropriate. The title track can drop into a quiet melodic line or spoken word because it feels like it and suddenly we're remembering that there's progressive metal too. It's like they want to check off all the boxes and that's not a bad thing.

Now, it seems like I have nine Nightfall albums to catch up on. I've been finding some wonderful stuff coming out of Greece, but it's new. I like that there's still wonderful stuff from Greece that's old too, beyond what I already knew about.

Wednesday, 24 February 2021

Yoth Iria - As the Flame Withers (2021)

Yoth Iria is a new band, formed in 2019, and this is their debut album, but the two men involved have quite the history in Greek extreme music and black metal in particular. Bassist Jim Mutilator was one of the co-founders of Rotting Christ, back when they played grindcore, and he remained with them for a decade. He also co-founded Varathron and was part of their line-up for their first five years, but he's been gone from the scene for a long time, as a musician at least. The vocalist known here as the Magus was also in Rotting Christ, as well as Necromantia and Thou Art Lord, among many others.

All of which means that it's really not surprising when The Great Hunter is a decent opener. It's heavy and fast and black with a doomy drone in the midsection. It's nothing outrageous or innovative but it ably demonstrates that these folks still have it, even if they haven't been using it for a while. It's Yoth Iria, though, the second song, that really made my attention perk up. This one isn't heavy and fast and black, at least not in the way that we're expecting after that opener.

It's more interesting from moment one, with a vaguely middle eastern intro that defines the song, as that theme permeates the song, shifting from instrument. It heavies up, but never gets fast and never gets particularly black either, except for the commanding voice of the Magus, which is an archetypal black shriek and very consistent, whatever his tone. He narrates and chants and shrieks, with massive amounts of intonation, but it's all in done in that beautifully evil voice. I love the outro too, which is a gradually decreasing thing, dropping to bass and keyboards and then just those pulsing keyboards from guest musician John Patsouris.

And so we realise that this isn't just the decent new black metal album from a couple of old names. It's an album rooted in black metal that experiments to see what else they can do with the genre. It plays in doom, without getting weighty and oppressive, but also in traditional heavy metal, folk and gothic metal too.

For instance, while I can't particularly quantify it, I continually felt during Yoth Iria like I was hearing an Iron Maiden song translated into another genre. I think it's the storytelling style. Hermetic Code starts out with a riff worthy of Satyricon in their heavy metal days, but it becomes very folky during a dramatic black metal midsection and during the outro. That midsection also features those Patsouris keyboards elevating this music once more, and they're a constant reminder here that we're listening to something beyond pure black metal.

The Mantis builds on the Magus's narrative style in Yoth Iria and the midsection of Hermetic Code to get even more dramatic, with choir effects layered in for emphasis. By this point, it feels like there's something visual going on that I should be watching while I'm listening, like this is a soundtrack to a black metal opera. Again, though, the black is mostly in the vocals, the Magus stalking the stage in an impressive costume dominating our attention with the swagger of an Alice Cooper (or the god on the album cover), while the music is traditional in a Mercyful Fate vein.

The Red Crown Turns Black is faster and more traditional atmospheric black metal, though it doesn't quite become a wall of sound and it continues to expand beyond its genre, ending with more of those reminders of Iron Maiden, even though it features particularly galloping drums from JV Maelstrom, another guest musician, who was in Thou Art Lord with the Magus. The other guest that I've skipped over thus far is George Emmanuel of Lucifer's Child, who played guitar live with Rotting Christ for a majority of the previous decade.

I've run through each song thus far because they're all different and interesting in their way. Unborn Undead Eternal continues that, with a gothic feel laid over Celtic Frost bedrock, something that flows less notably into Tyrants, which at seven tracks into eight is the first song not to do anything new on this album, if we exclude the industrial effects at the very end. And that leaves The Luciferian to wrap up the album and that does quite a lot, even if it's the least engaging song for me.

So I'm not going to put down the bookends but they vanish on me. Every time I listen through, I get re-engaged by Yoth Iria and stay captivated until the end of Unborn Undead Eternal, at which point I drift away. That half hour in the middle is fascinating and 8/10 for sure. With the rest put back in, it's still a solid 7/10 from me.

Thursday, 18 February 2021

Zebu - Reek of the Parvenu (2021)

Country: Greece
Style: Southern Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 8 Feb 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives

Given how much quality music I've been finding coming out of Greece lately, I keep my eyes open for more and this one looked interesting. Metal Archives call what Zebu do southern metal, which is fair but not entirely true. Sure, there's plenty of sludge metal here—just check out Our Shame for sludge riffing—and stoner metal too, so southern metal works. However, there are points where they shift a little into neighbouring genres and, in at least one instance, a genre over from that, which is more of a stretch but still a welcome one.

For a start, there's some more traditional Black Sabbath type doom at points, not only in the riffing, which is especially obvious on Shattered Mentality and The Hunger, but deeper on songs like Burden, where it's obvious in soloing and breakdown sections too. There are points where the band speed up with more of a Pantera effect, especially on Hollow, so there's groove metal to be found here. And, almost at the end of The Skin I Wear, there's a section that speeds up so far we can only call it thrash.

I liked that thrashy section a lot but this band exist more naturally at a much slower pace and they're tight enough to make that work really well. If you look up Zebu's own description of their sound, they simply say that they play "heavy shit" and that's even more accurate than southern metal. It works to my thinking because they're naturally heavy without trying to overdo it. There's a lot of bass here, for instance, which doesn't mean that they downtuned everything and pumped up the spectrum's low end but simply that the bass is audible and given plenty of opportunity to be heard.

I like how they don't have to try. This could easily have been heavier but it wouldn't have had close to the same impact. Zebu can play a song like Nature of Failure with riffs they know are heavy and vocals that are rough without quite becoming harsh, but they can drop into a mellow section without fear it will make people think they're going soft. That one's the most obvious, with clean spoken word vocals, but there are a few others dotted around, often in folksy intros like on Shattered Mentality or Keys to the Gutter, where it's not just an intro but bookends. They don't make this sound soft, they just make it sound deeper and more mature and it's a better and more varied album for it.

I'd throw the vocals of Kostas Synatsakis in here too. He finds an odd balance between clean and harsh that's rather palatable. There's definitely an influence from hardcore, but he sings rather than shouts and it works. The balance isn't entirely consistent and he certainly gets rougher on The Skin I Wear to balance with the guest vocal he's duetting with, that of Katerina Kostarelou, who appears to sing with a stoner doom band called Bacchus Priest. I didn't catch all the lyrics because I was often absorbed by the music but, however rough he gets and however close to harsh, he's always intelligible.

I like Zebu even though they don't play my subgenre of choice. I like sludge metal instrumentally but often, as with Thou, hate the vocals. That applies to a lot of hardcore too: I love the urgency of it and really dig the cover art that -core bands are finding, but the vocals usually leave me dry. I like stoner metal but I'm kind of digging stoner rock more nowadays, because it can play in psychedelia far more. I like groove metal but much prefer the thrash that it grew out of. As southern metal is all the above thrown into a blender, it can be hit or miss for me.

And this one's a hit. I wouldn't call Synatsakis a new favourite singer, but I certainly didn't dislike his style, even though I was ready to, and it works well with what the band behind him are doing. I'd call out the bass work of Alexis Korbis for praise, but guitarist John Roupaliotis is no slouch, handling all the guitars here on his own, and neither is drummer Nicholas Rossis. They're heavy, they're tight and they're reliable. Job well done. If this is your genre, you ought to really dig this.

Tuesday, 17 November 2020

H2Ocean - The Horned Goddess (2020)

Country: Greece
Style: Groove Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 25 Sep 2020
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives

I haven't reviewed much from Greece this year, which state of affairs I should remedy because I found so many good albums from there in 2019. H2Ocean primarily play groove metal, with the harsh vocals we expect, but their particularly flavour of groove is a lot closer to the thrash that birthed the genre than most American bands, which fits my taste better. Some songs, such as Primeape, are thrash songs with a groove influence rather than the other way around. The vocals are angry and the bass is high in the mix, but those are thrash riffs and changes.

Frankly, the worst thing about this album is the fact that the colourful cover art might get me into a spot of bother when I share it on Facebook. Musically, it's strong, with nine songs doing much of the same thing with different riffs and vibes, and Makis Makoulas finds a good balance with his vocals. If you follow my reviews, you'll know that I'm not generally a fan of the shouty singing style that found its way into metal from hardcore. Makoulas primarily works in that style, rough and vitriolic, but he does it well and I'm good with it.

My problems with shouty vocals are twofold. One is that such singers often sound like they're trying to sound tough for the sake of sounding tough, rather than to fit with the music. Makoulas is on the right side of that, because it feels right with these riffs. The other is that it often means a monotone delivery, which just makes things boring. He partly avoids that, managing to get enough intonation into some of these songs to matter, especially The Chain and Absolution Through Demise. At points on these, especially on the latter, he almost finds an Icon-era Nick Holmes style.

Another aspect that I'd recommend H2Ocean adopt more often is the inclusion of a female vocal that mixes things up completely. Dehumanized isn't strong here just because of that approach, but it may well be what makes it the highlight of the album. I don't know who that voice belongs to, but it kicks in with a sort of gothic feel and becomes more world music later. This adds layers and Makoulas roars his way through the rest of the song as if he has twice the air in his lungs than the rest of us. It's neat contrast.

Behind him are only three musicians. George Katsamakis contributes guitar and he impresses a lot by infusing a style that's often just about brutality with plenty of technical thrash and plenty of slower old-school metal as well, a song like Change of Heart featuring almost NWOBHM era riffs. On bass is the gloriously named Herc Booze and he's very prominent, not just deepening the sound but echoing beyond it. That leaves Giorgos Kalavrezos on drum programming, though that isn't as electronic as it might seem. It sounds like a real drumkit to me and the rhythms remains interesting throughout.

And that leaves a song called My Everything to highlight. It's a groove metal ballad, which seems like an odd concept to begin with, even if the lyrics are dark with lines like "my love turns into hate". I'm finding that my tolerance for ballads is decreasing with each year that passes and, when this began, I really wasn't sure what to expect. However, this works surprisingly well. Katsamakis goes acoustic with style and Makoulas adapts his voice magnificently to a very different sound. This isn't just a ballad to tolerate, it's one to seek out and, on an album like this, that rather shocked me.

So, it's good to be virtually back in Greece. Unlike other surprising countries where I've found a scene that revolves around a particular style, like psychedelic rock in Peru and Portugal, Greek bands seem to be nailing whatever style they happen to adopt. Clearly I need to keep checking out what's coming out and telling you about it.

[Update: guitarist George Katsamakis kindly let me know that the female vocal on Dehumanized is by Mary Kay and the voice on My Everything doesn't belong to regular singer Makis Makoulas but to a guest vocalist, Fotis Benardo, the former drummer for Septic Flesh and now drummer for Necromentia and singer in SixforNine.]

Thursday, 21 May 2020

Firewind - Firewind (2020)

Country: Greece
Style: Power Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 15 May 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I've heard Firewind songs off and on for years on online radio shows such as the Wyrd Ways Rock Show and I've always liked their music. However, this may be the first time I've sat down and listened to an entire album. I still dig it. This is clean but strong, in your face power metal, led of course by the guitar virtuosity of Gus G. but with a solid lead vocal from new fish Herbie Langhans, the fifth singer Firewind have had over nine albums.

Welcome to the Empire is a great way to kick things off because it's a great example of what Firewind do so well. The riffs are heavy and urgent and the solos are intricate. The vocals are powerful and battle their way up through the instruments to stake their claim for dominance in the hook-laden chorus. The rhythm section is relentless but feels as effortless at this pace as the rest of the band. That's Petros Christo on bass, who's been in Firewind for seventeen years now, and Jo Nunez on drums, who's now in Lords of Black too.

The good news for me is that it isn't a one off. Only hearing great songs by a particular band on a radio show doesn't mean that their albums live up to that promise, but Devour may be even more fun than Welcome to the Empire, as the core riff is a memorable one and Gus G. is on fire, pun not intended, in the middle of the song. Sure, he can shred, but he tends to not go over the top the way that some (many? most?) shredders do. While this is his band, he knows that it really is a band rather than just a bunch of musicians who sit behind his fretwork flair.

Eleven songs with the impact of those two would be seriously impressive, so I can't be too surprised when Rising Fire and Break Away soften up a little, though only a little. They're still solid, hard hitting songs, but with less unyielding edges and more soft moments where the band can ease the intensity for a moment and Langhans can relax a little more.

I really do like how well Langhans's voice fits the music here. Sure, he's a talented and experienced singer but there are a lot of those out there. It's how the texture of his voice fits with that of Gus G.'s guitars that renders him such a perfect choice for Firewind. It's as if the vocals and riffs are partners in a joint assault and the rhythm section line up perfectly behind them both. It all feels right and natural like they've been playing together for years.

Eventually, Firewind soften up a lot, but they wait until the very middle of the album to throw out a power ballad. It's Longing to Know You and it's not bad at all. I'm not a big power ballad fan and I resist orchestral keyboard swells out of instinct. It's telling that, while this is my least favourite song on the album by a long way, it doesn't annoy me. Gus G. does well here and Langhans shows his range well too.

Having enjoyed everything else, I was concerned about the second half of the album, but it may be even better than the first. All My Life is a real gem, yet another slab of effortlessly classy melodic power metal. Space Cowboy is superb too, with a slightly more hard rock approach behind it. And Kill the Pain wraps things up with the most impact since the two openers. It kicks in like Motörhead, progresses into Accept riffage and ends up as quintessential Firewind.

As I mentioned, I've liked Firewind for a long time but I've never sat down and listened to a full album. I'm now very happy that I have. This is great stuff indeed and I'll happily spring for an 8/10 even with that power ballad.

Thursday, 12 March 2020

Electric Feat - Electric Feat (2020)

Country: Greece
Style: Hard/Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 Feb 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

I enjoy a wide range of different styles of music and almost everything that I review is recommended to some degree, but I don't think I've come across a band in a heck of a long time who feel as alive as Electric Feat. They're a psychedelic rock band from Athens (the one in Greece) and the video for The Caveman is a Terry Gilliam-style fever dream. It took me a while to discover who does what in the band, but the members go by monster pseudonyms: say hi to Dr. Nanos, Madam Manthos, Prins Obi and The Tree.

Oh, and they're like the bastard son of the Doors and Black Sabbath, which I really dig. Somehow I hadn't realised quite how the two bands connected, but it's impossible to miss here, because they frequently transform from one to the other and back again. Song of Disobedience starts out like the Doors but shifts into Sabbath and the vocals follow suit, though whoever's singing is still somehow Jim Morrison even when he grabs Ozzy's cape and structures the lyrics his way. The Lizard King and the Prince of Darkness? Suddenly it all makes sense.

It's Alright (with You) is psychedelic garage rock, rather like the Doors if Ray Manzarek had played bass instead of keyboards; there are no keyboards in this song but the bass is up front and overt. The band call this one "Alice Cooper-ian" and they're not wrong either. It stalks and struts like it's a performance as much as a song and we know that Coop is into garage rock from his Breadcrumbs EP last year. I'm imagining the costumes.

Lizard Queen continues this, just in case the title didn't give it away. The guitars jangle and the keyboards are completely absent (as they remain until Fogdancing late on in the album). There's also a neat homage to Whole Lotta Love with a recognisable but subdued riff and a canopy of drums and bizarre vocalising, but with a Tony Iommi solo over the top.

It's Song of Disobedience where the band slow down and really emphasise the Sabbath in them. Sabbath are there in pace, riffs and in lyrical structure and it's the first time that it's been this overt except for lyrical nods in the opener. And from this point, they really start to bounce back and forth between their two key influences: sometimes one, sometimes the other, often a combination of both.

The Caveman is so much akin to the Doors that I started to sing along with Roadhouse Blues until I realised it wasn't a cover. It grows too, with some progression that could almost warrant a guest appearance from Arthur Brown. I had the same problem with Leather Jacket, a Sabbath-infused song that's so reminiscent of N.I.B. that I had to cry out "Oh yeah!" at the right moment simply because it needed to be there.

I loved this cross pollination of sounds, because these two bands aren't as far away from each other in style or in time as we might assume without the benefit of a moment's thought. If it wasn't for the excellent production, I could imagine that Electric Feat were an unknown proto-metal band from 1970 who we're only just discovering now. They blew minds supporting the Airplane at Winterland and their jams with Iron Butterfly at the Fillmore are a thing of legend, right? I'd be into that alternate history.

Blackwood Secrecy is as garage rock as the band get. Bandcamp says that this album was "recorded (almost live)" in the Diskex studio and it's easy to buy into that. It sounds like they're playing on my desk in front of an audience of one and still giving it everything. This is the debut album for Electric Feat, I believe, but I'm hoping to hear more soon. They're too alive to wait long for a follow up and, my goodness, I want to see this band on stage!

Thursday, 9 January 2020

Andy's Game - Andy's Game (2020)

Country: Greece
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 9 Jan 2020
Sites: Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

I know very little about Andy's Game, but I like much of what I hear on this album. The Andy of the name is Andreas Chatzimanolis, who goes by Hatchma, a name he also gave to his studio. I can't find a website but it looks like he teaches guitar and composes for others on a freelance basis. It might not be too surprising that it took six years for him to finish this album, as I bet it was done in spare moments as time and money allowed.

While the name suggests a band, it's almost entirely a solo effort. He wrote everything; sang and played most of the instruments himself (with one guest, Thomas Andreou on drums); and produced and engineered the album too. I would think that's why we can actually hear all those instruments. It's easy for a mixer to hide the bass player but when the guy playing the bass is doing the mixing, it's audible.

Andy didn't grab me immediately. The weakest aspect is surely his vocals and the opening track, The Battle of Navarino, starts out as a vocal track. Only as it runs on does the solid riff really settle into our bones, the bass add a solemn note to proceedings and the guitar get really interesting, firstly with a surprising folky section, then with some fancy stuff and finally with a solid solo. I wasn't on board at the beginning of the track but I was when it ended.

For all those little fancy guitar moments, this isn't a show-off album. The best thing about it may be that this guitar teacher isn't just hitting every note on the instrument like he's the next greatest shredder celebrity, he's happy to showcase just what a guitar can do. He builds these songs from the ground up with riffs then adds in whatever else will work for the material. I admire his restraint as much as his talent.

I also admire his variety, though some of that may be due in part to the six year recording process. It's within the bounds of possibility that he saw a debut solo album as a great opportunity to perform a collection of songs in the styles of his idols. Never Say Die sounds like Deep Purple from its very first note and Silver Lights kicks off like a radio friendly Van Halen song, even if it becomes more of an upbeat Demon number. As they run on, they all become Andy's Game songs, though, as his voice doesn't follow the emulation.

Only one is an actual cover version, Ditch Queen being the Frank Marino song from his Juggernaut solo album in 1982, and I think it's a better, livelier and sleazier version than John Norum's. It's a real showcase for his bluesy guitar talent too. Other songs do feel familiar though, even if I'm unable to place them. Digital Wormhole isn't a cover, but it burrowed into my brain and made me think that I'd heard it before. It's a real grower of a track, starting out feeling a little empty but evolving into what might be my favourite song on the album.

It's as hard to place in time as anything here, though Hard Night is surely the epitome of that. Like many of these songs, it feels like something from the early eighties, when the NWOBHM was transitioning into something not so revolutionary. The vocals feel like they're from a working class punk who's evolving his sound into metal. And there's a solid seventies rock riff that feels highly reminiscent of Jimmy Page.

I believe Andy is Greek and his studio is somewhere in Greece, most of this is in English and he's entirely fluent. One song, however, the quirkier and more playful E.C.P. Ye, is in Greek so I have no idea what it's about. It's yet another different sound for the album, with keyboards that lend a world flavour to proceedings.

I'd love to read an interview with Andy Chatzimanolis to discover the roots of this album and why it sounds the way it does. Until I find one, I'll just sit back and listen to the whole thing again. It's at once so consistent and yet so varied in style. I like it. I even got used to his voice by the third or fourth time through!

Wednesday, 16 October 2019

Gentihaa - Reverse Entropy (2019)

Country: Greece
Style: Symphonic Death/Black Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Sep 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives

Nine months of deep dive reviews and I'm finding my go to countries. I still feel surprised that Greece is one of them, but it's proving to be the hotbed for a whole slew of interesting bands from across the rock/metal spectrum. I see that Gentihaa, who are based in Athens, describe their sound as "fantasy themed symphonic death/black metal". That's at once fair and overly limiting because I'm hearing a heck of a lot more here than that.

In fact, what leapt out at me first were the doom metal vocals of Andre, who somehow manages to not seem like he's in the wrong band. What he does fits a band style that refuses to be any one thing. On Empathy, for instance, which is the first song proper, half of it plays to his doomladen vocals while the other half wants to be metalcore. The guitars seem to be death metal and the drums play in that black/death combination style. It's probably fair to say that I was confused for a while here.

Vision is more of a doom metal song, even if the drums remain fast. Sneak on over to Candlemass's dressing room and lace a barrel of mead with speed and this is what might result. It's interesting stuff though I have to add that I wasn't sold until Metamorphosis three tracks in, which is wild. Going back to listen through again, the early songs are fine, just not what I expected. After Metamorphosis, anything seemed like fair game.

Again, it starts out like a doom metal song with blastbeats, but it refuses to stay there. It finds some weird time changes. It gets all shouty. Before long it sounds like Candlemass and Voivod jamming in the studio with a guest singer from a band like Shadows Fall. There's even a quieter section that's very much like Voivod channelling Pink Floyd. The keyboards swell while the vocals loop and it's all rather psychedelic, man. I dug it a lot.

There's some of that in Alpha too, accompanied by eastern string work and a very different sound. Its long outro is impeccably constructed and flows on to Beyond wonderfully. If it took a few songs to hook me here, I was hooked hard. Beyond ups the tempo seriously, emphasising the metalcore side of the band's sound, with the doom side present for texture. It even finds a rather theatrical sound late on. The band's Facebook page does add to that earlier description, by including "heavy guitar riffs, multi-dimensional vocals and diverse rhythms". I like "multi-dimensional". It fits.

But wait, there's more. Command slows down for an intriguing quiet section that hints at a Spanish sound, but spends much of its time loud and raucous with squealing guitars. Mastery starts out with a symphonic feel, not just because of the vocals but through the guitar build, but then ramps up to be a thrash song. Gentihaa never shift on a dime the way that, say, Mr. Bungle does, but they move through a host of genres without really acknowledging a boundary at any point. The achingly slow outro is fantastic too.

What surprises me most here is that Gentihaa don't appear to have recorded anything before, at least in this particular form. The band formed in 2015 but this is apparently their debut. Each member came from other bands, but even there the genres are varied. Vocalist Andre, for instance, sang for a melodic death band called Wings in Motion, a thrash/groove band by the name of Memorain and even a parody band called, get this, Sonata Antarctika. The variety here does explain a lot.

I for one am eager to hear more and not only because Gentihaa are one more interesting band from Greece. All of this is good and some of it is really great. It bodes well for a bright future.

Thursday, 14 December 2023

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