Mothflesh - Machine Eater (2021)

Country: Malaysia
Style: Groove Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Dec 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives

While I didn't love it, I certainly liked Nocturnal Armour, Mothflesh's debut album, and a lot of my reasoning why was the sheer variety of it. Their core sound was a cross between groove metal and melodic death, with different songs starting in one of those genres and moving to the other. After hearing this follow-up, I went back to it to refresh my memory because this is very different. That debut is as I remember it, that groove and melodeath mix deepened by industrial and electronic angles. This follow-up ditches much of that variety and aims for a much truer groove metal sound.

That's certainly what they deliver on the opener, Dogmacore, with the rhythm section amped up a great deal so that we hear the drums first and foremost and the bass next after them, for a heavy and in your face sound that initially seems to be much of the point. They do it very well but it's just not my style of choice and, when Hexburn Ω started out exactly the same way as Dogmacore, I had to wonder if I'd just drift away from the album and not even review it.

Fortunately, Hexburn Ω gets a lot more interesting as it builds. Sure, it starts so consistently with its predecessor that it could even be a continuation of the same song, but there are points where it drops to solo bass that are pretty cool and the chorus adds vocal layering that's fascinating. It's just as heavy as Dogmacore and in exactly the same ways, but there's stuff in this one to grab me, that's for sure. I really dig that chorus. What other surprises are Mothflesh going to throw at me?

Well, not too many surprises, but they remain very technical for groove metal, a genre that tends to be more interested in being tight, angry and aggressive. That's the melodic death focus that's not entirely gone from the debut, even if the feel now is pure groove. There's an all too brief section partway into Reconstructing Fire that sounds wild and Ranveer Singh's guitars get interesting often. The back end of Mothflesh may remain incredibly consistent, but he simply isn't willing to just do the same thing on every track, for which I'm thankful.

The biggest surprise the rest of the album brought me was the presence of a clean voice, because that shows up on a few tracks to duet with the harsh lead. That harsh voice is the closest Machine Eater gets to the melodic death that was so prominent on the debut, and it's a good one, able to match the sheer aggression of the music but retaining flexibility enough to intonate. I like it most when the clean voice joins it on The Lotus Denial to duet, because the music gains some depth. It's even less of a layer on Myriagon, where it's a clear and frequent duet, and it shows up on Cyberpsycho too.

Quite frankly, from wondering whether I'd even finish the album, I ended up rather enthused with it. I can't recall another groove metal band that get this technical. I'm a fan of aggression, being an old thrasher, but, when aggression happens without contrast to give it perspective, it becomes boring to me. I still don't like Dogmacore, but this album isn't boring, however relentless it wants its aggression to be. Rather than adding contrast through dynamics, like the acoustic intros on a lot of thrash songs, Mothflesh do it by getting really technical and Singh and Eze Mavani have the chops to back that up. They're tighter here than last time and they're more technical. That added clean voice is a godsend too, especially on Myriagon.

And, just like that, I not only finished the album but happily listened to it half a dozen times to fully figure out what they're doing, and, even though I miss the variety of the debut, I have to give this higher marks. It's a better album by a better band. The real question in my mind is where Mothflesh are going next. Will this album be seen in hindsight as a step in between the groove/melodic death hybrid style of the debut and the purest groove that they'll end up in? Or is this the sound they're looking at long term, because, if it is, I'm intrigued as to what influence it could have. This could be one of those unexpected albums mostly ignored initially, not least because Mothflesh are from Malaysia, hardly the groove metal capital of the world, but gaining importance later as it ends up spawning a genre of its own. Is this one of those albums? Only time will tell.

Seklumpulan Orang Gila - Second Voyage (2021)

Country: Malaysia
Style: Alternative
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 25 Sep 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

This may be titled Second Voyage but it looks like it's Seklumpulan Orang Gila's third voyage at a full album length, after 2014's Bahtera and 2018's Dermaga. Before all those was a 2013 EP called Civilization is on Trial. And I was fascinated to hear what it sounded like because I haven't heard a Malaysian alternative band before, my experience here at Apocalypse Later limited thus far to a melodic death metal band called Mothflesh.

Their brand of alternative is an interesting one because it's surprisingly varied from the outset, a very contemporary and trendy American approach mixing it up with traditional ethnic music. For instance, the album starts with what we can only see as an intro, even though it must be a song of its own, a solo female voice performing in an overtly south east Asian style that I can only assume is Malaysian. That voice belongs to Shafa’atussara and it's delightful.

But then we leap into the album proper with the title track, which features as western a guest as Tim Lambesis, the much troubled lead singer of San Diego metalcore legends As I Lay Dying. He's appropriate here, because this is an up tempo song, with Lambesis's shouty voice combining with the snarly one of a band member and another that's not just clean but sweetly clean. That makes this quite the synthesis of styles, especially when you factor in whatever ethnic instrumentation is happening in the background. I'm not a big metalcore fan but I really like this.

Sailors of Sorrow follows suit in a strippd down fashion, losing the guest vocals and cutting down on the ethnic material without losing it entirely. The quiet section close to halfway suggests that it's really keyboards but it sounds like wind instruments. Whatever it is, it's a fascinating contrast to the edgy guitars, overt bass and lively drums, just as the clean pop voice contrasts neatly with the snarly hardcore one. There are times when this ventures into post-rock but it's primarily still alternative rock, often metalcore without much metal, if that makes sense. Memories does more of this.

But then the band switch sound entirely. Tugu Ugut feels like a dance song with the electronica on mute, but with that overt bass almost duetting with the vocals. It gets a lot edgier, almost finding its way into experimental punk, but never really speeds up. The fastest it reaches is a woah woah chorus. Like most songs here, it's just shy of four minutes, but it veers from dance to post-rock via pop and hardcore punk. It's a fascinating mix and the band keep varying the balance between the edgy and the traditional as the album progresses.

One of my favourite songs is Pelukan Angkasa, which introduces a clean female voice to that mix. I came back to this one after listening to the whole album the first time to see just how much it gets into its, you guessed it, just short of four minutes. It starts out as ethnopop, the keyboards aiming for a chiming gamelan sound. It erupts almost palpably into a heavier chorus. The female voice, of famous Malaysian singer Shila Amzah, is a welcome addition and the two combine explosively and grow with the song too. There are strings to underpin the emotions. It gets traditional as it finds itself only a minute from the end but then builds back up. It's a heck of a ride.

It's fair to say that not everything in this sound is up my alley, but my ears are always open to new syntheses of sounds and the end result here is fascinating to me. By the time Radicalism towards the end of the album shifted into new genres a few times in a short period of time, I even started to think of Mr. Bungle as a comparison. No, they're not that adventurous, but they are definitely adventurous and I haven't seen Kuala Lumpur as a hotbed of that sort of thing. The closing songs, Senja Yang Tua and We are Stronger Than Before, sound like different bands, but they're not out of place next to each other.

Sometimes, styles that I'm not particularly fond of can work really well as counterpoints and that is how the shouty hardcore voice plays here for me. I don't like celery either and wouldn't eat it as a snack but it can work in the right soup. The shouty voices and boy band vocals work in this wildly diverse soup, as do the strings in Senja Yang Tua, the wind instruments in Second Voyage and the fundamentally traditional vocals on the intro, Warkah Dari Rumah. It's quite the album and I'll be adjusting to it for quite a while. Which I like.

Mothflesh - Nocturnal Armour (2019)

Country: Malaysia
Style: Melodic Death Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 21 Jun 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives | YouTube

I have a love/hate relationship with melodic death metal, which somehow has apparently become the default sound of metal nowadays. On the one hand, the vocal style that comes along with it is inherently limiting, so bands have a tough job standing out from an ever-increasing crowd. Let's be frank: most melodeath bands sound like most other melodeath bands. On the other hand, a few still manage to find a way to bring something new to the table and they are worth their weight in gold.

Mothflesh stood a really good chance of being one of those few. I have to admit that I was drawn (ahem) to them because of their name, which is truly glorious. The wonderful cover art on this, their debut album, helped and it can't hurt that they hail from Kuala Lumpur. I just had to find out what a band like this would sound like and, while they hardly redefine the genre, they sound fresh and engaging to me.

Perhaps this is partly because they're clearly not interested in being just melodic death metal, taking it instead as a starting point to launch into a groove metal direction, hauling in other subgenres for the ride whenever it seems like a good idea. Their Bandcamp page states that they combine death, groove, industrial and thrash "to lateralise uncharted sonics".

A song like Swordfish, their first single, is a great starting point to hear just how diverse that gets. It's death metal for a couple of minutes with a thrash element or two, before it spins up Tool rhythms, sets a pit in motion with a groove section, hints at doom with a neat slow riff and then builds an alternative chorus, which remains at a consistent tempo, even when Tunku Shafiq hits hyperspeed on his drumkit, finally ending with a chanting outro. There's a heck of a lot going on in this song.

Frankly, if everything was this wild, I'd like Nocturnal Armour more than I already do, but the only other track to match it is the outro, Invertebrate, a two and a half minute instrumental with violins and electronica. Alternate universe versions of Mothflesh would have started their album with this and followed with Swordfish before blurring even more genre borders over thirty more minutes of tracks.

Sadly, that isn't what we get but what we do get isn't bad at all. It's just more straightforward. Some songs start out groove and then move into death, while others start out death and move into groove. Bufferzone adds a little electronica, but it's a groove song. Pleasure Principle adds a little power too, before thrashing it up and cycling back to groove. It's a good song and it's the opener to the album in this reality.

The other single is Skinless, which highlights just how deep the drum sound is on Nocturnal Armour. You'll need good speakers to avoid some distortion at the low end. It gets interesting a couple of minutes in but can't hold a candle (ahem) to Swordfish, even with a neatly layered finish.

I can't help but wonder after a couple of listens which songs were the first written. I kind of hope that Swordfish is the most recent because it would point the way to a truly interesting band and a very promising second album. It could be that it's the oldest song here, which wouldn't promise as much, as the band in that scenario are moving more mainstream and predictable. I guess we'll need to wait for the follow up album to find out.