Apocalypse Later Music Reviews: alternative

Showing posts with label alternative. Show all posts

Friday, 21 February 2025

Lacuna Coil - Sleepless Empire (2025)

I ended my review of Lacuna Coil's 2019 album, Black Anima, by suggesting that I used to be a big fan back in their gothic metal days but their sound had shifted musically over the years to a point where it just wasn't for me any more. Well, I like this tenth album a lot more than that ninth, so maybe I was wrong about that. Most of its limitations are precisely the same as last time out but there are more instances where they break through them to do something more interesting.

As always, my favourite aspect of modern day Lacuna Coil is the clean vocal approach of Cristina Scabbia, which hearkens back to their gothic days more here than on Black Anima. She soars all over this album, perhaps most notably on Sleep Paralysis, the catch being that it's hard to focus on the music behind her. It's there but it's generally just a texture for her to soar over. It's like it unfolds in black and white but she soars in colour. It takes exactly the same role for Andrea Ferro, her male counterpart, but his harsh voice is always far less effective, weaker not through being bad but through being generic. It becomes just another texture for her to play against.

While Scabbia is enjoyable throughout, there are a few points that echo the intro to Venificium on the previous album by doing something much more diverse and interesting. The first arrives with Gravity, where Ferro joins Scabbia in a chant that sounds like it's in Latin and sounds rather like something that might have appeared on an early album. In Nomine Patris opens in a similar manner but with more of a pagan edge. That's only the beginning to why that song is easily my favourite here. Scabbia's melodic choices and a slower pace remind strongly of their early days, even if the instrumentation shifts inevitably away to their modern sound.

My least favourite aspect is the fact that the instrumentation is fundamentally bland across the majority of the songs, but here that serves well to highlight where that's not the case. There's a clear element of electronica on Oxygen and Scabbia's shout at the outset is manipulated. It has noticeable tempo shifts and an actual riff we can focus on. There's another of those, albeit in a more modern staccato style, on the closer, Never Dawn. Oxygen even drops away entirely at the three minute mark to leave Scabbia a capella. It's a good touch.

Gravity gets even more interesting. After that opening chant, there's even more electronica and there are strings in there too, albeit presumably generated by Marco Coti Zelati's synths rather than an actual string section. When the vocals kick in, they're sassy like nu metal taking on tribal music and it's both vocalists in duet. That tribal element is dotted over a few songs, whether in a vocal chant, most obviously on Never Dawn, or through more interesting synths. The same song sounds like it features a didgiridoo early on. I wasn't expecting that on a Lacuna Coil album.

There are two songs featuring guests, which often tends to mean standout songs, but not on this album. Hosting the Shadow features Randy Blythe of Lamb of God, another massively successful modern band that tend to leave me dry live or in the studio andthis song works that way. At least his nuanced harsh vocals demonstrate how limited Ferro is. It's almost mindboggling that he was a founder member of the band who carried all the vocal duties for two years before Scabbia was brought on board. Then again, back then they didn't sound like this. In the Mean Time adds Ash Costello from New Years Day, who I don't know and won't be checking out because of this.

Instead, I'll throw out another compliment I wasn't expecting to trawl out. As I mentioned earlier, it's always the vocals of Scabbia (and, to a lesser degree, Ferro) that drive Lacuna Coil's sound in their modern incarnation. Everything relies on Scabbia's melodies or the contrast that Ferro can bring to bear and the music is just a crunchy texture behind them rather than something that we can enjoy on its own merits. Because of all that, this becomes vocal music and there were plenty of tracks on Black Anima that felt like pop songs fed through a modern metal filter. That's really not the case here, which I'd see as a good thing. The only one that plays that way for me is I Wish You Were Dead, which could have been by any of the modern pop divas with a different filter.

So, as much as I've talked up limitations, I liked this a lot more than I did Black Anima. I gave that album a 6/10 and this easily deserves a 7/10, even from me, not remotely being part of the target audience for this band any more. In fact, I'd go further and say that I enjoyed it, even though I'm still acutely missing the gothic elements, solos and instrumental sections and guitars—this is so bass heavy that I only heard the guitars on a few tracks, Scarecrow best highlighting how Zelati's bass was doing the job of the guitar across most of the album. Now, let's see what my son thinks of it, because he's much more of a fan of Lacuna Coil's modern sound.

Tuesday, 24 September 2024

Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers - I Love You Too (2024)

Country: Australia
Style: Alternative
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Sep 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Wikipedia | YouTube

I'm always on the lookout for what's coming out from down under and here's a gloriously named band who I'm listing as alternative but play a cross of pop and rock with a garage rock mindset and sometimes a punk urgency too. Their first album, released last year, was called I Love You, so this is naturally I Love You Too. I don't think I'm quite ready to declare unconditional love for them yet but this is bright and engaging and agreeably varied. It's very easy to listen to and its energy has an agreeably positive effect on the day.

That begins with I Used to Be Fun, which opens up the album with a perky form of energy, but it's Treat Me Better which really elevates the album. In fact, while I could (and will) pick out a host of favourite tracks, this one sits above them all. It starts out calmer but builds with serious effect in immaculate fashion. I love how this one bulks up and shrinks down again. It's a more imaginative song than the opener and it plays with some neat contrasts. The guitar tone as it bulks up is very tasty too, courtesy of Scarlett McKahey.

The bad news is that nothing else here matches Treat Me Better. The good news is that nothing is particularly interested in trying because the other songs have other things to do. The heaviest is a forty second track called Cayenne Pepper which rather hilariously, is artificially bulked up. Twenty seconds of it constitutes a slice of studio reality. The second half is a blitzkrieg of a punk song. The lightest is Your House My House, which is entirely unplugged, mixing vocals and acoustic guitar. If that gives a particular impression, I should add that the vocals sound like everybody in the band is harmonising together and the guitar is almost hiding in the background.

As you might imagine, songs like that rely on their melodies and hooks and, quite frankly, so does everything here. That holds for a pop rock song like I Love You, which is infuriatingly catchy with a kick to it. It holds for the songs that find and milk their grooves, like Backseat Driver, I Don't Want It and Kissy Kissy. The latter especially reaches a big singalong at the end, which somehow works even though some of those singing appear to be cracking up at the same time. And it holds for the odd tracks, like Never Saw It Coming, which is soft enough to feature strings, acoustic guitar and yet more harmonising. The lyrics are more visceral and the contrast is impressive.

The lead vocalist is Anna Ryan, whose Aussie accent shines through even when she's singing. It's a flavour for these songs that's unmistakable on a bunch of them, especially Backseat Driver and I Don't Want It. She also handles rhythm guitar, but McKahey handles lead. She's the primary way that these songs get different tones, hulking up for the powerful songs, coating everything in grit and grunge or finding a melodious chiming tone that almost reminds of surf music on mid-power songs and either dropping into acoustic mode or vanishing entirely on the softer poppier tracks.

That leaves Jaida Stephenson on bass and Neve van Boxsel on drums. As the rhythm section, they aren't there to do anything flash but the former manages it anyway on a few tracks. There's some wonderful prominent basswork on Backseat Driver and I Don't Want It. Everyone joins in on songs that need communal vocals and I believe van Boxsel occasionally sings lead as well. It always feels redundant to call out how a band works together because, of course, everyone in the line-up plays a part. However, there are bands dominated by vocals and others dominated by guitars. Here, it's very much a team effort; nobody dominates because everybody shares the spotlight throughout.

With acknowledgement to a couple of guest groups, Softcult and the Linda Lindas, who guest on a track each, I'll cheesily riff on the title of the final song, We Thought It Would Be a Good Time But It Was a Bad Time. It might have been for the singer or the character she's portraying in that song but it isn't for us. This is a good time album. Even at its grungiest, it's a happy album and would be even if there weren't so many glimpses of how much fun the band were having when they recorded it. It's not just the first half of Cayenne Pepper or the laughter in Kissy Kissy, it's all over the place, starting with the end of the opener. These are riot grrls with more than one meaning to riot. And this is a good time.

Wednesday, 8 May 2024

Pearl Jam - Dark Matter (2024)

I was born in 1971, so my formative musical years were the eighties, from the early post-punk days when my favourite artist was Adam Ant to my thrash years in the second half of the decade, where Nuclear Assault had taken over that mantle, via an incredibly varied ride through NWOBHM, hair metal and the various nascent forms of what became extreme metal. I'm also English, so my idea of alternative rock is the journey the eighties took from Bauhaus through the Wedding Present to the Stone Roses rather than what the US produced a decade later. In other words, I'm not really a part of the target audience for Pearl Jam.

However, all that said, I rather enjoyed this. I can listen to the big hits well enough, but they don't wow me. My favourite experience with Pearl Jam was the blistering stripped down version of Bob Dylan's Masters of War that Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready performed at Dylan's 30th anniversary concert. I'm not sure what I expected from a quintessential nineties band in 2024, but there's a lot here and very little of it fits with what I thought I might hear. That's a good thing in my book, just in case you're new here.

Scared of Fear bursts out of the gate like a hard rock song, with a real urgency to it. It may well be my new favourite of their original songs. That continues into React, Respond, which has an almost punky edge that's clearly alternative but kicks it like hard rock too. The bass of Jeff Ament is very prominent here, so much so that it leads the way for serious chunks of the song. The chorus is just as vibrant and bouncy as I tend to think Pearl Jam aren't. And, while Wreckage is softer, more laid back, that bounce never quite leaves the album. This is a much happier album than I ever expected it to be.

Upper Hand may be the epitome of just how upbeat it gets. It's not happy, not precisely, but it's a heck of a lot closer than the opposite. And, with that note that underpins this entire release, I can start throwing out names, because I heard a lot of other people here that I didn't expect from the band with a professionally downbeat singer like Vedder at the mike. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for his vocal talents and have no problem with depressing delivery. Leonard Cohen's first two albums are among my favourites, as are Joy Division's. However, I don't think of him as a singer who can be happy. It's simply not an emotion he channels. This proved me wrong.

It's also worth mentioning that he has such an iconic voice that he stamps his authority over every song he sings, whether it's Pearl Jam's or not. However, he drifts into territory already owned and I could easily hear these songs sung with different, just as established voices. Won't Tell is alt rock in the sense that U2 are alt rock. Can any of you remember that far back into the annals of musical history? Something Special has a pop mentality to it that prompts me to imagine Amy Winehouse singing it. Got to Give reminds me of Bruce Springsteen and the closer, Setting Sun, feels like it's a laid back seventies pop song with a country tinge, maybe something that Neil Diamond could sing, without changing the acoustic guitar and orchestration. And then the Boss could cover that.

Some of it remains entirely alternative in the particular sense that Pearl Jam helped to define in the nineties. React, Respond starts that and Dark Matter continues it with emphasis. This one's a far more edgy song than React, Respond. It's Vedder's vocals and Matt Cameron's drums that do it for me on this one, but much of it is driven by Jeff Ament's bass, just like React, Respond. Of all the alternative songs here, though, I think Dark Matter is the one that rings truest to what I was expecting, an edgier and more modern take on what they did back in the day. However, the one I'd pick over the others is Running, which is so full of energy that it's almost punk. It's absolutely not what I expected from them, but they do it very well indeed.

So I enjoyed myself and I'm continuing to do so five or six listens in. The songs get stronger and the feelings that this is upbeat and versatile don't go away. Now, I'll always pick the eighties over the nineties and my grounding is always going to remain British, which may explain why I tend to enjoy a lot more of what I hear from European bands today than American ones, whatever the genre. It has to be said right here though that this surprised me, enough that I ought to dive into the Pearl Jam back catalogue, which is a lot more substantial than I expected. I know of their nineties stuff, even if I haven't heard it all, perhaps up to 2000's Binaural, but this is their sixth album since then for twelve overall and maybe I'm finally getting on board. I wonder when I should have started to pay attention.

Wednesday, 1 May 2024

About Us - Take a Piece (2024)

Country: India
Style: Melodic/Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Apr 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram

I reviewed the self-titled debut album from About Us in 2022 and pretty much everything I said in that review holds true here. Most notably, they have a truly bizarre mix of styles that sometimes works really well and sometimes leaves me wondering why. This sort of mix simply isn't done and for good reasons, because the fanbases for some of the different styles on offer here tend to hate the other styles. However, they've doubled down on this sort of thing since that debut, so it must be working for them.

They start us in relatively easy, with an opener in Come to You that's half heavy/power metal and half melodic rock. Their base style remains melodic rock, which is why they're on Frontiers, but it's fair to say that I doubt anyone else on Frontiers sounds like this. There are plenty of bands on that label who play melodic rock and plenty more who play power metal and perhaps a few that sound like both put together. However, I can't name another one who adds nu and alt metal into the mix, as About Us promptly do on Endure.

Come to You is fundamentally a melodic rock song with the sort of melodies we expect built on the sort of structure we expect, but it's bulked up with beefier guitars and notably fast drumming. I'm pretty sure Yanni Ennie is using a double bass approach here, which I don't believe I've ever heard in a melodic rock band before. Sochan Kikon takes on an escalating metal vocal at the very end of the song too. Endure, though, is melodic rock with a Hot Topic filter laid prominently over it like a blanket. Renlamo Lotha and Pona Kikon shift their guitars to rhythmic monotone riffs and djenty chords and both Sochan Kikon and whoever's adding backing vocals go trendy harsh. However, the solos are back to power metal again.

Legion mixes those approaches, building from an elegant power metal intro to djenty verses and back into power metal choruses, the melodic rock not as clear but still there in the structure, and the majority of these tracks continue to mix these approaches in different amounts. Fire with Fire is more melodic rock but with grungier guitars and Sochan Kikon singing clean but with more grit and, at the very end, another metal scream. EVH is bouncy hard rock with much more prominent keyboards from Renbomo Yanthan, so it's AOR with a little crunch. This one could easily be heavy Journey. Beautiful Misery is melodic rock that ramps up to power metal but with those alt metal touches when that sort of middle finger attitude is warranted.

About Us hail from Wokha, which is so far to the northeast of India that it's far closer to Myanmar than the majority of India, so I wonder what their local music scene sounds like. It's not the usual home for a rock band of any description, so maybe rock fans there are more accepting of this sort of wild mix. If Journey and Blind Guardian and Avenged Sevenfold are all simply rock bands there and a notable change from Bollywood soundtracks and traditional Indian music, then a band like About Us makes total sense. Here in the west, where trad metal and alt metal have two separate fanbases, especially outside the US, About Us make us wonder a lot more.

What I can say is that they're highly capable. Sochan Kikon sounds effective whatever style he's adopting at any particular moment. Check out the guitar solos in Reels for Eternity and Hope to see what a double act like Lotha and Pona Kikon can do. Ennie impresses throughout, even if it sometimes feels as if he'd be more comfortable in an extreme metal band. Yanthan rarely takes the spotlight, which holds true for bassist Soren Kikon, a third Kikon in this band, but they both deliver exactly what they need to do to support these songs.

I'm going with another 7/10 here, as I did with the About Us debut. This feels a little heavier over a forty minute stretch but it hasn't lost its melodic rock roots, especially with a thoroughly melodic song like Fortitude wrapping things up, even if Sochan Kikon gets edgy at points and there's a nice slow and heavy section early in the second half. My least favourite songs are the ones that venture deepest into the nu metal approach, Endure and Legion among them, but they stay varied too, so I'm not desperately upset. Later songs, like Hope and Beautiful Misery, strike a better balance for me, mostly unfolding in traditional melodic fashion but with the occasional edgy texture.

What I don't hear yet is something new coming out of this merger. It still sounds like a merger of two very different sounds coexisting on the same album. Maybe, if About Us keep knocking these albums out, they'll find a way to make the two sounds feel like one, at which point they'll certainly have staked out a very new claim within the genre. Best of luck to them!

Tuesday, 9 April 2024

Reach - Prophecy (2024)

Country: Sweden
Style: Alternative
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 29 Mar 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Tiktok | YouTube

Reach have been around since 2012 but I'm not finding a heck of a lot of information about them. They hail from Stockholm and this is their fourth album, following The Promise of a Life in 2021. It came to me labelled as melodic hard rock and their Bandcamp page tags them alternative rock, but, only four songs in, I realised that labels and tags aren't really going to be particular helpful. They're all over the musical map and they're clearly happy about that.

Let me explain. The title track opens up the album as hard rock with a strong nineties alternative edge. It's entirely understandable why they supported H.E.A.T. on a couple of tours, but it's also a little heavy for that gig. However, as if hearing that note, Little Dreams is softer, more of a heavy pop approach that we could stretch to call melodic rock. It has a real bounce to it and the bass is a thing of joy. A Beautiful Life kicks off like a TV theme tune, only to launch into rock with the guitar pretending to be the drums for a while but then adding a grungy edge when it all bulks up.

But wait, as they say, there's more. In the second half of A Beautiful Life, there's a western vibe I might expect from an outlaw country rockabilly band that doesn't quite overwhelm the pop rock elements that could compare to a Cheap Trick. The end is almost steampunk in its look backwards into what could be taken for a harpsichord sound. Save the World kicks off with a playful guitar as if it's aiming to be a dance number and suddenly I'm thinking Stray Cats as a comparison.

It's a huge shift from those verses to the chorus that leaps right back into heavy arena pop, which isn't the end of it either, because then they go symphonic in the second half in a way that's mostly reminiscent of Queen. What does this band not do? Well, Queen could be seen as a key influence, though more for their musical chameleon act as for any particular moments, like that one, as it's a rarity. Perhaps the better general comparison would be The Darkness, acknowledging their own Queen connection, because Reach are clearly more modern than Queen and whoever handles the lead vocals likes dipping up into a falsetto just like Justin Hawkins.

Eventually I changed my tag to alternative for want of something to call this, but that's notably limited and shouldn't be seen as a be all end all to their sound. When I've reviewed the Darkness, I've gone with hard rock and that's just as fair. I could switch those and not mislead. And that's not to forget the funk in a song as hard rock as Psycho Violence, which is different to the Red Hot Chili Peppers funk that kicks off Who Knows. Just don't expect any song to sound like any other and you may really dig this. It'll certainly keep you on your toes. I haven't even got to Grand Finale yet, not the final song but another sonic leap into symphonic rock/metal. It's also another theatrical level above what's already been highly theatrical.

You'll notice that I haven't mentioned any band members yet and that's because I'm not sure who is actually in the band. Bandcamp states the music is credited to Ludvig Turner, Marcus Johansson and Soufian Anane, while Turner also wrote the lyrics, so I'm guessing he's the singer. Discogs has him as guitarist and vocalist, with Johansson on drums and Soufian Ma'Aoui on bass. I presume he is the same Soufiane as Anane. Others have been involved but I couldn't tell you if they're still in the band or if they ever were, so I'll stick to these three for now. More information would be very welcome.

I like this album because it's hard not to like this album. It's entirely schizophrenic, sure, but I'm a particular fan of albums that venture all over the musical map without ever sounding like a band has betrayed their roots or gone a step too far into something that just doesn't fit. Queen's Sheer Heart Attack and Saigon Kick's Water are firmly in my list of most frequently replayed albums and this feels a little more consistent than either. Just tread carefully if you try to label it.

As to highlights, that's a how long is a piece of string question, because it's what I'm listening to at the time you ask. Mama Mama is a stormer of an opening single, so that's potentially the best of many good places to start. I do like A Beautiful Life, Psycho Violence and Grand Finale too, so they should get a special mention too. But, ask me tomorrow, and I might go with three different ones instead.

Wednesday, 3 April 2024

The Great Alone - Perception (2024)

Country: Switzerland
Style: Alternative
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 Jan 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

Here's a fascinating debut album from Switzerland, which is most of what I know about The Great Alone. I don't know where in the country they're from and I don't really know who's in the band, a couple of names being all I can find: Murielle and Vincent. Clearly that's Murielle singing, so does that mean that Vincent handles all the instrumentation or do they split that up between them? I don't know and I'd love to, but for now, they're Swiss, this is their debut album and it has a unique sound that I rather like.

As they've stated in interviews, they take the sheer power of metal but present it through a rock structure. The result probably counts as alternative, but that's not alternative like, say, Nirvana or REM; it's alternative like Evanescence or a less theatrical In This Moment. Murielle sings clean and she has some serious power to bring to bear but there's a weight to the music behind her too, even when it's held back, as on songs like Cell, Quiet Place or Horizon, the latter of which has the most effective softer section here, I think.

All this, and occasional piano, brings a gothic feel to this material too, but not so far as to label it gothic rock or metal. There's merely a gothic flavour to their particular brand of alternative rock, just as there's an operatic grandeur at points without it ever becoming symphonic metal. Illusion may be the most overtly gothic track here, but the opener, The Call—which may be intended as an intro and may be the first track proper but which really works as both—has a Sisters of Mercy vibe to it. Whatever else it is, it's a statement of intent, but with a ruthless bass, tasty rhythms and an ethnic vocalisation in the background.

I wish I knew who plays the bass here, because it kept on impressing me throughout the album. It's right there on The Call forging the groove but it's there to open up Beyond Dreams too, with some tasty rhythms too. What this one does that points the way to everything to come is escalation, the one thing that the Great Alone do better than anything else. There are a host of tracks, beginning with this one, that have softer sections that build back to something heavier. Stars and Storms has a magnificent build. Cell has a strong second half, including two builds, one to the three and a half minute mark, then another after a complete drop to piano and texture. Quiet Place builds strongly too. These escalations are everywhere and they're always impeccable.

The problem some of these songs have is that their first halves, inherently softer, subtler and with more nuance than the builds that take them into something more, don't always survive the builds. They become the something before the magnificence rather than the first half of a song. That may be a little unfair, but I got so caught up in the second halves of so many of these tracks that I lost a grip on how they got there.

The most notable exception to that is the standout track for me, which surprisingly isn't the well crafted Beyond Dreams or indeed Mania, the next on the album, which continues in the same vein but with a neat drop down to something more ethereal three minutes in. Both are highlights for me, but it's Icons that steals the show, because it has a build but also has a unique sound from the outset and it totally nails its first half.

It's an angry and progressive song, compared to everything else here. Murielle has serious power and she can vary the intensity of a piece with panache, but, like the music behind her, she's always crafting material so that it's the best it can be. And that's great, but on Icons she goes far beyond that to send a message. She's angry here and whatever it is that she wants us to know, she sells it absolutely. There's even a subtle Dolores O'Riordan lilt at a couple of points and, frankly, if you're aiming to sell anger, a hint at Irish is never going to hurt. The music behind her, which starts out as a commercial take on industrial, backs her up absolutely and once again there's a joyous bassline during a neatly progressive section early on. It's a peach of a song.

While I liked this album a lot, in its details and in its sweep, Icons perhaps underlines how it could be a little more than it is. What I liked about the rest of the album was the craftsmanship of the songwriting and the technique of the musicians. It's impeccably done and when it adds an unusual touch or texture, it's even better, like the drops in Horizon and Cell, the gothic piano that opens up Illusion and the opening of Reverie, with a solid riff emerging from the darkness, where it sounds like monks are chanting low. However, it's so slick that it can lose some of its emotion, even during those magnificent builds. Icons nails the emotion.

And that's why this is a really easy 7/10 for me that made me consider an 8/10, but I can also easily see that with a little more rawness and a little less gloss, their next album could easily land a 9/10. I'm eager to see what they come up with next.

Thursday, 14 March 2024

Post Kaskrot - Sidi Sidi (2024)

Country: Morocco
Style: Alternative Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 22 Feb 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Here's something interesting from Morocco that starts out experimental but quickly becomes a highly accessible hybrid of pop, rock and world music. That experimental opening is the intro, I am Many Things, and Many Things I am Not, which is a strange vocal melody against dissonant organ, ambient sound and what I presume are experimental keyboards. That leads into an alternate pop rock song about a dog called Douglas that's built out of friendly vocals, surf guitar chords and an array of Arabic melodies. It's part Cake, part Walk Like an Egyptian and part Frank Zappa, which is a strange but enticing mix.

What's odd is that neither of these pieces of music is particularly representative of the album. It starts to find its go forward stance with Dragonfly Dragonflew, which is a poppy song with a psych overlay that gradually takes over, reminiscent of sort of seventies singer/songwriters who liked to trawl in folk music and get a little weird with it, like the middle eastern flutes that show up during the midsection. There's theremin on this album too, I think, most obviously on Yelele, unless it's a saw. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing credits.

That psychedelic pop rock edge is never far away as the album progresses, but it's all deepened by the sort of approach that Manu Chao often took to make this not just a mere album containing a set of songs but a kind of experience. That's done through adding ambience, improvisation and a conversational approach to ephemeral material, like radio chatter, often between songs but also within them. That begins at the end of Dragonfly Dragonflew and only gets more frequent as the album runs on. By the time we get to Sun Sun Sun... at the end of the album, someone even asks a simple question: how would you describe this album in two words. The response? "God damn!"

Those were the two approaches I took away from this. It's structured like an Manu Chao album but the songs are subtler, his immediate earworm melodies replaced by more introspective material that veers between friendly pop and more abrasive alternative rock. However, there are points at which Post Kaskrot dip into a similar sort of musical territory as Chao, like the reggae sections of Seapsyche Onion and Grace, or incorporates other songs into the original material in a Chao style, like the refrain from Frère Jacques within Donner Kebab and a glimpse of the Cops theme tune in Sun Sun Sun...

It all makes for a heady mixture, as if we're not sitting at home listening to an album unfold but in the studio in Rabat where Post Kaskrot were putting it together. For a release that has so much in the way of post-production to add all those radio segments and other snippets, it feels very loose, some songs so much so that whoever's in this band may have just been jamming them, with guests occasionally added if they happen to stick their head through the door at the opportune moment. There's Amygdala on Sulfur Surfer, presumably the powerful female voice, and Genue on Grace, a French musician who looks to be just as versatile as Post Kaskrot.

There's so much here that it's hard to pick out favourites. I dig Seapsyche Onion, one of the loose songs that we can just fall into like an ocean and let it just take us away. I like the up beat garage rock meets rockabilly approach to Donner Kebab too, easily the most bouncy song here. Hejazz is an exquisite piece too, finding a wonderful ethnic groove. I can explain why I like all those tracks, but I'm lost as to why Yelele speaks to me. It's a laid back piece but it's seeping into my soul for no reason I can figure. It ought to feel a little lost in between Seapsyche Onion and Grief Tower, but I fall for it every time through. It may well be my favourite song here.

I'm loving everything I'm hearing from North Africa, but I'm not hearing a heck of a lot. I'm sure there are a lot of bands doing interesting things and I need to find a way to plug into how I can not miss them as they put out new material. Case in point: this is Post Kaskrot's debut album but they put out an EP in 2020 called Kastle. Bandcamp credits Benmoussa Amine as the primary musician and songwriter, with Baha Ghassane also contributing. I have no idea if they're still the names here or not, but I like what I hear anyway. If you have open ears to where pop and rock can go in countries outside the norm, Post Kaskrot are well worth checking out.

Wednesday, 8 November 2023

Within Temptation - Bleed Out (2023)

I've been disappointed with Within Temptation of late, but much of that seems to be because I've been reviewing their EPs. I need to stop doing that and focus on their albums; in the meantime I'd better review in this in two different ways.

From my usual perspective, based on what I've previously heard, this is automatically problematic because I've heard half of it already. Bleed Out contains eleven tracks, seven of which have seen a previous single release, but they've also been included on a progression of EPs. Initially, Entertain You and The Purge were released as stand alone singles, but then they were included on the Shed My Skin EP, along with that song. That trend of including all the new songs up to that point on each new EP, along with one more, continued through the Don't Pray for Me EP, Wireless EP and Bleed Out EP. Thus, Entertain You and The Purge are showing up here for the sixth time. That's nuts. I'm officially done with Within Temptation EPs.

I haven't been as fond of all these new songs on the EPs either but even my least favourite of them sounds a little better here on a full length. Why, I don't know. The main problems I have with them still hold true but they feel somehow better in a relatively consistent full length environment. The vocals work for me throughout, Sharon del Adel getting poppier on most of these songs than even their previous album, Resist. However, there are points where she'll ramp up to something a little closer to the symphonic metal with gothic edges that they're mostly known for. What's important here is that I find that I don't favour one or the other, as they work well as a range.

However, while the light end of the band, epitomised by the vocals, is poppy, veering not only into modern American pop and Celtic lilting, on songs like Don't Pray for Me, but even a sort of floaty tentativeness on Cyanide Love that feels hauntingly Japanese because of its rhythms, the heavy side, that often felt industrial on Resist, continues to morph more into metalcore. I rarely found distinguishing marks between those three guitars, because they exist to combine into a tone, one that's inherently limited, often monotone and rhythmic, so doesn't interest me much. They could have been replaced by a simple keyboard line.

Certainly the keyboards of Martijn Spierenburg become the only instrumental source of melody, very welcome too as the forty-seven minutes run on. My favourite song is easily Worth Dying For, because it feels like an actual song, with dancing keyboards, a strong vocal performance and an honest to goodness guitar solo. There are precious few of the latter anywhere on this album, as it doesn't seem to be important to the band any more. That it also features some effective dynamic play is a bonus. Other potential highlights like Ritual, The Purge and Don't Pray for Me are all let down by the guitars.

Frankly, the only time that guitar tone worked for me is on Cyanide Love, as the contrast between the vocals and instruments reaches its most overt. Del Adel is so light here that she floats in the air in an almost kawaii manner, but the guitars churn in slow and heavy metalcore chords, so deep that they flirt with sludge metal. That one stands out here, because nothing else dares to be that light or that heavy. Putting the two approaches together is fascinating. Is this where the band will end up if they continue travelling down the road they're currently on?

Somehow I don't think so. I think they're more likely moving towards more songs like Shed My Skin and Entertain You, which feature guest vocalists. The former is upbeat and very commercial, with a chorus that reminds of a commercial era Paradise Lost track, but it heavies up during the second half. I kinda like it but I kinda don't at the same time. The latter is a loud pop song, something that I could hear Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga doing, merely with a different filter. While den Adel finds a strong vocal line, it's easily my least favourite song on the album. And that sums things up for me, which makes it hard to rate.

I'm totally on board with den Adel's vocals because she takes quite the journey across these tracks, always remaining interesting, whether she's fluttery or soaring. If I were just rating her, she's 8/10 for sure. The keyboards are massively important, maybe a 7/10, as this would be a wildly different album without them. The guitars are tedious and boring, so much so that I truly wish they weren't there, a 2/10 or maybe a 3/10 if I'm lenient because of that guitar solo. The songwriting is between those extremes and I'm going to go with a 6/10 because of that. That's compared to the 8/10 I gave Resist.

Now, let's see where the next album falls. It could be another 8/10 because they're interesting at this point in their journey, whether I happen to think it works or not. It could be something dismal though. I hope it's the former.

Monday, 16 October 2023

Dogstar - Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees (2023)

Somehow I've never heard Dogstar before. I know the name because I'm a film guy and I'm set for a runthrough of Keanu Reeves's First Thirty films for a forthcoming zine. Of course, I knew that he also moonlights as the bass player in Dogstar. It's merely that I haven't actually heard their music before, even though this is their third album, arriving a heck of a long time after its predecessors, which came out in 1996 and 2000. What I found out immediately in opener Blonde is that they play a very pleasant form of alternative rock, so pleasant that I wondered about where the boundary between rock and alt rock truly is. What side of that arbitrary line are they on?

Now, I don't really care, beyond wanting to slap a vaguely appropriate label into the detail section at the top of my review and to get a grip on where they're coming from. I guess they're alternative enough to count, but only just. Bret Domrose's guitar is just a little bit jangly and his vocal is just a little bit edgy, but only so far as to compare to U2 and Tom Petty and I mean Jeff Lynne produced Tom Petty rather than rockier early stuff. They don't even reach Pearl Jam degrees of alternative early on, let alone the Melvins or the Swans.

The first song that really felt alternative was Overhang, starting with Reeves's bass intro that's an excellent imitation of Peter Hook's. However, while there's definitely plenty of Joy Division in this song, right down to the guitar feedback, it's perkier in the chorus than anything Ian Curtis sang. It still plays unusually dark for this album, though, which is as optimistically cheerful as Reeves tends to be in interviews. The only other edgy moments arrive late in Breach, the closer, which plays with a grungier feel throughout and an unusually harsh backdrop behind certain sections.

Unfortunately, those two songs aswide, the adjectives that come to mind all sound like left handed compliments. This music is nice music, pleasant music, inoffensive music. Yeah, sounds awful, right? Well, the most important thing here is that it isn't. Sure, it's not remotely challenging music but it sounds good and it feels like it has substance and meaning behind it. It's not surface music, even if it's nice, pleasant and inoffensive. It's also well worth repeat listens, which nice music tends not to be because we forget it as soon as it ends. This stays, whether it's due to the melodies, the grooves or the hooks.

And, again unlike most nice music, those do vary across tracks, which find identities of their own to distinguish them. There's a harmonica on Dillon Street that works especially well when Domrose's guitar starts to wail behind it. There's a neat middle eastern flavour to the midsection on Lust, the result I think of a synthesised sitar rather than a real one, but effective nonetheless. Sleep is most overt in its plumbing of early U2 for its vibe. It could be a cover, even though it isn't.

The other song that seems like it ought to be a cover is Lily, because it plays like a pop song in rock clothing. I even found myself thinking about who might have sung the original with its completely different filter and it's broad enough that two of the names I came up with are Leonard Cohen and Cyndi Lauper, maybe the former handling the verses and handing over to the latter for choruses. I can't fail to mention Tom Petty there too, but Domrose channels him on much of the album, which he clearly doesn't Cohen and Lauper. Again, it's an original song.

The result is that I suddenly feel the urge to check out those earlier Dogstar albums, which I never had a yen to do before, even as a fan of Keanu Reeves's films. It wasn't that I don't buy into actors also being musicians, because so many pop musicians whose music I can't stand have become oddly impressive actors. It wasn't that I thought they were some real world attempt to create Bill & Ted's music. I just assumed they played alternative rock in an American style and it wasn't likely to be for me. Now I know that they play alternative rock in an American style but I enjoy it greatly. Even if it counts as nice, pleasant and inoffensive.

Tuesday, 16 May 2023

Therapy? - Hard Cold Fire (2023)

I remember Therapy? from their early days but only in passing. They were a prominent member of a new crop of British rock bands who showed up at the point that Kerrang! shifted alternative and Tommy Vance left the Friday Rock Show and I drifted away from mainstream rock music. And so I've not heard their rise to prominence, their drift away from it and their reaffirmation as a force to be reckoned with once they got old enough to sit apart from the trends. I had no idea that they were still a band, but they've kept going throughout and this looks like their sixteenth studio album. So it's about time I took a listen.

This is a short album, only just nudging past half an hour, because the average runtime of its songs is pretty close to the standard radio friendly three minutes. If that suggests a punk mindset, then you'd be absolutely right. This is alternative rock with all the energy of punk but little of the more downbeat seriousness that I've always caught in American alt rock of the same era. It doesn't feel like a band wallowing in grungy self loathing, even on a song like Joy which could easily have been called No Joy. This is a band who want to rock and just prefer to do it in an alternative framework.

I can see why this approach didn't connect with me in 1991 or 1992 but it's quite interesting in 2023. I hear a lot of pop punk here, but it's grittier and more down to earth than anything I've heard by Green Day or the Offspring. It's not so reliant on hooks, but the hooks are there. Oddly, I also hear Metallica here, but not in any of the usual ways that bands tend to employ to channel them, such as their crunchy guitar tone or James Hetfield's vocal style. However, I kept hearing moments of Black-era Metallica in shifts and breakdowns, and especially in escalations and backing vocals.

I guess the lesson is that they're happy with keeping toes in a bunch of genres, so much so that it's hard to determine what drives them the most. This isn't metal but there's a lot of metal here. It's more punk than it is rock and it often sounds like it wants to be pop music, but never to sound that soft or clean. To Disappear is so grungy that it's close to sludge, but it's stubbornly up tempo so it doesn't sound remotely like any sludge band I've heard. Andy Cairns's guitarwork often plays with dissonance and feedback, to the point that there's a subtly experimental edge.

Talking of Cairns, he's also Therapy?'s lead vocalist and he takes the opportunity to sing in a whole slew of styles. His go to style is a clean punk voice, like you might expect from pop punk, but it has more raw edge than any of the usual suspects in that genre, especially given that he clearly likes a variety of post-production jobs to suppress or torture his voice for effect, to meet a mood or a tone that he's driving with his guitar. He also has a theatricality to him that renders him the centre of attention, whatever else is going on. He even dips into sections of almost spoken word on Mongrel, which has quite a creepy effect.

While I respect a lot of punk musicians, I've always been too much of a metalhead at heart to see a punk-driven album like this as my particular cup of tea, but I'm happy I listened to it and I wonder if it'll stay with me and, if so, how much. I certainly loved the opener, They Shoot the Terrible Master, and if that isn't an esoteric yoga position it should be. I loved its urgent verses and its earworm of a chorus, from its opening drunken a capella rendition onwards. I dug Mongrel with a weaponised take on feedback and its relentless bass. Ugly is a real trip, from its weirdly folky opening.

My eighties brain still thinks of the nineties as new and it seems odd to find that its leading lights are celebrating their thirtieth anniversaries. It seems especially odd to discover that they weren't just there to jump on a trend but to help create one, so explaining their longevity. All power to this bunch of Northern Irish lads who have stuck to doing what they want to do throughout. So this isn't my favourite genre and I have next to no background in Therapy? and their peers to bring to bear. I can still see that this is clearly a good album.

Wednesday, 10 May 2023

Tryo - Iodine Clock Reaction (2023)

Country: Czechia
Style: Alternative
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 30 Mar 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website

I haven't heard Sustainable Gardening, the 2021 debut from Czech band Tryo, but their Bandcamp page suggests that it was an indie/art rock album. Two years later, they've moved to what they're calling "darker and rawer music" on their follow-up and it's certainly an interesting sound because it's a hybrid of completely different eras of music.

The earliest is a pastoral folk sound that's very sixties. It's there mostly on the second side, in the quiet parts of Haze, early in Unity and especially on Home. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a couple of sections on Haze are pure krautrock, right out of the early seventies. The core sound is a clear derivative of the mid eighties, when post-punk and new wave were at their most interesting, and the early vocals of Šimon Podrazil are right out of eighties alternate rock, because they're so clean in delivery. However, everything's phrased as soundscapes, owing much to the post-rock and shoegaze genres of the nineties and noughties, but with vocals delivered over the top.

Given how confusing that sounds, I should emphasise that it all merges together rather well and it opens up with the most conventional of the six songs on offer, Droplets. This one was writen in 2015 when Tryo seem to have been a more conventional band, but it's been massively changed, mostly a new song built on the bones of the old one. Karabach is edgier, but more commercial too somehow and it reminded me of the way that Paradise Lost got retro-new wave, merely slower and subdued, so that it's clear to us that, unlike them, Tryo were never a metal band who calmed down.

Tree is a decent song but it's a little lost in between the commercial edge of Karabach and the wild experiments of Haze. It works well as a transition between the two but it works in isolation as well, finding a delightful groove early and milking it for over seven minutes. That doesn't stop it being a little overshadowed though, because Haze quickly takes over, not just grabbing our attention but chaining it to a bed and having its wicked way with it.

Haze is where the "darker and rawer music" really comes into play, because it's a tasty exercise in contrasts. It's softer initially with some of that sixties folky psychedelia but, when it ramps up, it's not holding back. It does that twice, the first time feeling rather like a nightmare descending upon a soft, dreamy soundscape, not unlike a late escalation in Tree but more. That nightmare passes, but it returns and the wheels come off, with Hynek Čejka soloing on drums and Podrazil's guitar a seriously abrasive weapon. Only Čejková's bass keeps us grounded as we move through it to come out the other side intact but changed.

What's telling is that it's hard to pick highlights here. Droplets is the most conventional. Karabach is the most commercial. Haze is the most experimental. Home is the most pastoral. Those are easy adjectives to assign, but it's not so easy to pick the best or even my favourite. I like Karabach a lot, but I recognise some of those chord changes so it has an unfair advantage. Haze is the most overt song here, enough so that it climbs out of the middle of the album to slap us across the cheeks and cry, "Me! Me! Me!"

At the end of the day, I might have to consciously ignore its attentions and call out the subtle songs with their impeccable grooves, wich to me means Tree and Home. It's not an easy call, but that's a good thing. It felt like the album had depths from the very beginning, on those more immediately accessible tracks, but it takes a few listens to truly grasp how much it's doing and to appreciate its subtleties. I'd never have called out Tree and Home on my first listen, but they grew on every fresh listen until they staked a serious claim to being what the album's about.

Here's where I'd normally say that Tryo are a fascinating band who are new to me, so I should look back at their earlier material. The first half of that holds true, but I don't think I do want to check out Sustainable Gardening at this point, because I don't want to suddenly find them conventional. They're not here and that's why I like this so much. I think I'll sit back and wait for the next one.

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.

Friday, 21 April 2023

Host - IX (2023)

Country: UK
Style: Alternative
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 24 Feb 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter

Mentions of Paradise Lost in my review of the Black Harvest album yesterday prompted me to take a look to see what they're up to lately. I'm up to date with their primary releases, having reviewed their 2020 album, Obsidian, but they've apparently been indulging in some side projects, guitarist Gregor Mackintosh in particular. He'd already formed one side band, Vallenfyre, who played death metal and put out three albums, but they split up in 2018, the same year he formed Strigoi to play a crustier form of death. Now, to shift in an opposite musical direction, he's teamed with Paradise Lost vocalist Nick Holmes to go back to their synthwave era with Host.

I have no idea why the debut Host album is called IX. Of course, the seventh Paradise Lost album, a synth-driven release, was called Host. Of course, the band have famously disowned their eighth as it was not their musical vision at the time. While they absolutely stood by Host, they called out the interference of their record label in the making of Believe in Nothing as removing their control of their own music. Therefore, I could see this being an alternate history follow-up to Host, as if they had never made Believe in Nothing, but that would make this VIII rather than IX. Maybe they're a little more onboard with it nowadays and see this as a continuation of the sound from those two.

While I've been a Paradise Lost fan since their demo days, I never really took to their EMI albums. I adore One Second, which was just as commercial, but Host and Believe in Nothing felt much more sanitised and this follows suit. There's little warmth here and little emotion, Holmes remaining in a more subdued voice throughout. There are escalations, because Paradise Lost is always great at escalations, playing softer or less dense sections of songs and then launching into magnificent hooks like a xenomorph erupting from the chest of its, well, host. However, they're often subdued too, as if these are demo versions polished enough to hand over to the rest of the band to add the bass and real drums but not yet ready for release.

The earlier songs do this most obviously, especially the opening trio—Wretched Soul, Tomorrow's Sky and Divine Emotion—which all fit that demo mindset. What's odd is that they're clearly good songs. This isn't Mackintosh and Holmes writing lesser material. It's more like they're distilling an array of good songs down towards their essence, excising the crunch and stripping away the tones they invented for doom/death and gothic metal. If that sounds like Paradise Lost lite, then that's precisely where I'm at with about half of these songs. I want to hear the finished versions with all the power restored that the band deliver time and time again. In the meantime, I'm hearing the recognisable melodies and key changes so quintessential to their sound.

However, the others, especially late in the album, including the closing trio—Inquisition, Instinct and I Ran—feel more complete. They're also good songs, but they feel more like they were meant to be driven by synths and play in a softer, more impersonal way. I Ran is elevated by a tasty guitar solo, but I never felt like these later songs needed a guitar. They work as they are, including those patented Paradise Lost escalations, without the usual means to deliver them. The earliest of the naturally keyboard-driven songs is Hiding from Tomorrow, especially while it grows, which it does with some serious style.

And so this is half successful for me and half not so much, but the songs remain good throughout. I wonder if they'll tour as Host or incorporate some of these into Paradise Lost sets, perhaps making them heavier and more substantial as full band songs. Maybe they'll do neither, but they'll keep at this approach on the side. It certainly feels like this is a continuation of an earlier sound that they miss as much as something new that they want to explore. The only way to really do both of those things is to keep going and see where it takes them.

And, while I'm always going to prefer their other eras, as epitomised by Gothic, Draconian Times and One Second, not to forget Obsidian, over their EMI albums, I'm happy to tag along and see if this side project ends up generating something to stand alongside them. It hasn't yet and part of that is that the imagery accompanying this release seems highly appropriate because it takes all the colour out of a notably colourful band. If that's the point, then they've succeeded but I feel it needs something new to replace it.

Thursday, 30 March 2023

Coridian - Hava (2023)

I haven't heard Coridian before, even though this is the last in a set of four themed releases about the elements: two EPs, Oceanic and Caldera, to cover earth and water, then two full length albums, Eldu and Hava, to cover fire and air, specifically wind. However, they've sold me on their sound here even though I wasn't convinced on a first listen. It's very clean and modern and doesn't easily fit in only one bucket. I'm not even sure whether it's rock or metal, because it straddles the boundary so well. I'm calling it prog metal for the sake of a label, but there's more here from alt rock and post-rock than any of the usual suspects from prog metal. Dream Theater this isn't.

There's also a very American flavour here, but not so far that it turns me off, probably because it's so good at layering textures and because it's never exclusive. State of Mind, for instance, feels like post-everything. It's American post-grunge but also British post-punk and some post-rock textures fleshing it out. It's built on a System of a Down kind of riff but some commercial era Paradise Lost in breakdowns and with everything smoothed and polished to the exact shade of brushed steel on the cover art. The vocals are in between, full of melodies I'd expect from the Foo Fighters but with a grungier edge and even a drop into softer Coldplay territory at points.

That's an interesting mix and the rest of the album continues to play in that sort of area, but with odd departures here and there. It was initially awkward for me because I have a feeling the major influences are often going to be ones I don't know. Rakshasa adds a screamed backing vocal right out of emo, for a start, and that's not a genre I know, mostly because I'm not a fan of that style of vocals, but it works here because it's just another texture rather than a deliverer of fake emotion.

The contrast between the clean vocals of Dity Maharaj, which remain in front, and that scream by Michael Murphy of Written by Wolves, makes for a neat texture. The same goes in a very different way for the other guest vocal, by Jessie Booth of Ekko Park on Redefine, a tasty duet between two different but compatible vocal tones. I ought to check their bands out too, given that both of them are prominent and successful and I haven't heard anything by them before. It seems notable that Booth isn't the vocalist in Ekko Park though she guests here in that role. She's their guitarist.

I mention fake emotion not as a dig towards emo music, but because there's a further paradox for me here. Everything feels carefully constructed, as tends to be the case with prog, but it's battling hard to feel organic, the way that the best alt rock does. However smooth this felt, there's always a hint of grunge in the sound and I think that's what keeps it music to make us feel something, not just admire. Emo is all about making us feel something and it never works for me, because it feels manipulative. This doesn't. I feel that Coridian feel their own music. It's honest and I can easily see them on stage totally lost in the flow of these songs, even on their hundredth time through them.

The first half is solid, but I like the second half even more. It kicks off with Wicked Game, a song we all know that comes out of the blue. Maharaj's voice gets smoother here and Nick Raven's bass is a lot more obvious. It's not Diana Ankudinova but it's a tasty cover. I adore the opening to Coexist, a hint at Tool, I think, but I also adore the fact that the song proper maintains its high standards to become easily my favourite here. It's one of those songs that would sound great in a tiny club in a rundown corner of Auckland but just as great echoing over sixty thousand people at Eden Park.

I should mention The Unkindness too, because, as an atmospheric instrumental, it isn't the sort of song that I'd expect to mention but it's absolutely worthy of it. It isn't the only such piece here, as Algorithm is a capable intro and Exist is an interlude late on the first side, but this one is the best, because it serves both as a perfect buffer zone serving to help us down from Coexist's grandeur to become ready for the rest of the album and as a a worthy instrumental on its own merits. The last three songs are strong too, including the album's epic closer, Naya Din.

I've been listening to this album for far too long, because I have others to move on to, but it caught my attention. It sounded decent but not my sort of thing. The more I listened to it, the more it got its hooks into me and, after a month of mostly 7/10s, I have to bounce this one up to an 8/10.

Monday, 27 March 2023

Godsmack - Lighting Up the Sky (2023)

I haven't heard Godsmack in forever. I'm trying to remember if I've heard them since I Stand Alone, their contribution to The Scorpion King, but I'm coming up empty. I guess I've lumped them into an unwanted category in my head with a bunch of early nu metal bands and that's unfair, because the Godsmack sound was always hard rock, even if it was built on a commercially grungy base. I have no idea if they were ever nu metal, but I've never given them much chance to persuade me otherwise.

This is certainly a hard rock album, but with a crunch to the guitars that comes from commercially minded metal. To my surprise, the most obvious comparison here is Metallica, if we try to think of what they might sound like as a rock band—and, yes, they're still a metal band, even if you believe they wussed out with the Black Album. Everything about the sound here is big in the Metallica way and Sully Erna's voice often pays homage to James Hetfield. Even when Godsmack crank down the power to deliver what could almost be described as a ballad in Growing Old, it comes across like a Metallica take on Audioslave's Like a Stone.

That said, for something that sounds so quintessentially American and modern, there are a bunch of moments here that bring much older bands to mind. There are glimpses of Thin Lizzy here, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, even someone like UFO. They don't direct the style, but they're there in solos and bass runs and chord changes and it tells me that this isn't a band who came out of nowhere to play trendy American music and didn't care about what went before. Even on a song like Truth, which is carefully constructed to sound powerful to kids who haven't listened widely enough to understand what power can be, there are still looks backward that I appreciated.

I'm not a big fan of that song or that approach, which looks as much at the S&M albums Metallica did with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra as the Black Album, but the album as a whole is far more likeable and far more nuanced than I expected. I like the opener, You and I, even after the 22 second evolving power chord that kicks it off, as if this was ever going to be a Sunn O))) album. It's a stalker of a song and there's a lot more power in this one than Truth can even dream of. There's a funk edge to it as well that helps give it character and it drops the riff in between lyrics to give a stronger emphasis to the vocals. It's a great way to kick things off.

I have other favourites too. Hell's Not Dead feels very familiar, because it flows along gloriously on a relentless AC/DC base with a thrust that reminds of Motörhead's Killed by Death, especially as it runs towards its conclusion. The only pandering to the modern is the staccato riff early on and that doesn't bring the song down, just underlines how much better it is when the band stop doing it. I'm very fond of Let's Go too, because of its midsection, which is wonderfully loose and groovy. There's an excellent atmospheric solo from Tony Rombola, but I dig the bass here too. This is something I'd not expected on a Godsmack album and I love it.

The other end of the ranking for me isn't actually Truth but Red White & Blue, which rubbed me the wrong way. Generally speaking, I like these songs or I don't because of what they do musically with Erna's voice being just another instrument. However, this one appears at first glance to question the idea of blind patriotism, which seems to be highly topical in 2023, especially given events right now. The first verse states: "I never thought I'd say one day I'd question my faith to a country that made me who I am today". Yet, when we get to the chorus, it becomes exactly what it questions in a big turnaround: "The only colors that stand true are the red, white and blue, so I stand by you." Adding politically charged lines like "Just don't you tread on me" don't help either. Is this a parody of patriotism? If so, it's not very clear about it.

Fortunately there's not a lot of that here. For the most part, this is a pretty good hard rock album for Godsmack to go out on, as they're suggesting that it will be their last studio release. I had very little expectation going in, but it surpassed it and I found that I enjoyed it, even with the veneer of alternative rock draped over the top, especially on Erna's voice. He sounds good, but he also feels like he's carefully controlling it to maintain some sort of post-grunge credibility that doesn't need to be there. If they just want to rock, then they should just do it.

Wednesday, 22 February 2023

Avatar - Dance Devil Dance (2023)

My youngest son, whose tastes often match with mine, especially when it comes to thrash, is a big fan of Avatar and that's a discrepancy between us. I've never quite got their thing, because they made a conscious decision to shift style in a way that feels off to me. I wouldn't say they sold out, a claim some might make, but they definitely moved to a carefully created commercial sound with a carefully created commercial image to match it. This ninth album isn't quite that straightforward, though, because they're all over the map and it makes the whole thing feel fresh.

The title track kicks off the album with a very modern sound. The riffs are simple but urgent, with a strong beat behind them, and there's an interesting counter sound to the riffs introduced that's almost Asian. The rough modern vocals are only the first vocal approach of many here, Johannes Eckerström demonstrating some serious versatility as he shifts style to fit whatever a song might be doing at any particular point. He often shifts between clean and harsh in the same songs, with On the Beach perhaps the most obvious example, delivering the verses in a clean rock voice, then shifting to a gurgly harsh growl for effect.

I like this variety, even though I don't always like the style in play. My 6/10 rating is because not all these songs enforced their presence. Even after half a dozen times through, a few still haven't got past names on the playlist. I couldn't tell you what they sound like. However, a few were absolutely able to grab me. On the Beach was probably the first, not because of the vocals but because of the guitars. This is a heavy song to start with, the opening seagulls giving way to a pretty boring riff in the modern style, but an industrial grind shows up behind it to make it interesting and then some calypso funk appears behind the verses, which is fascinating. The song ends with a guitar trying to be a music box and succeeding.

My favourite has to be Gotta Wanna Riot, which is a quirky and fun pop metal piece, right down to Eckerström's rolling Rs and the earworm harmonisation theme that we might expect from Abba or the Beach Boys. It's almost a pop punk piece but played metal all the way. I had a blast with it, even though I'm not as sold on Hazmat Suit, which tries to reach the same goals, unsuccessfully to my ears, because it ends up as one of those supposedly aggressive pieces that are too cute for us to buy into that. There's also a chant that sounds like a dance DJ trying to get a crowd moving.

The Dirt I'm Buried In is a sassy number, with some excellent clean vocals from Eckerström and some almost Police-esque guitars. It didn't take long for me to appreciate his vocal shifts, but songs like this one underline it. He runs all over the map here, from pop to rock to metal, from clean to harsh and where harsh might mean death growls or hardcore shouts, even some bleaker parts that nod towards black metal. I expect theatricality from him but that didn't really show up until Train, the most unusual song here, which hints at soft reggae but goes to a place that's like Nick Cave trying to mimic Iggy Pop. It's another fascinating song.

Clouds Dipped in Chrome may be the most interesting, because it's the heaviest piece here, but it also finds very different moods. It starts out almost crust punk, with furious drums and a grinding guitar, but then shifts to a stylish heavy metal guitar for texture and a powerful rock vocal behind it. It's a sort of hybrid of Crass, Venom and Pantera, with something traditional trying to burst out of it. At points Eckerström goes emo but at others he goes air raid siren. There's nu metal in here too, which I usually hate, but it's such a fascinating mix that I have to remain fascinated.

And so there's a lot here, whether you're into the carefully created commercial Avatar mindset or not. I'm still tempted to go with a 7/10 because I enjoyed a lot of this, but it seems unfair to bands I gave that rating who made much more consistent albums. This is strong and fascinatingly diverse when it's on the ball but forgettable when it's off it. There's definitely 7/10 and 8/10 material this time out, but a bunch of 5/10 songs too. If I used halves, I'd be happy with a six and a half. If you're a fan, add at least a point to that.

Wednesday, 8 February 2023

Pyramid Suns - Reflections (2023)

Country: Malta
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 13 Jan 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

I'm calling this album progressive rock for the sake of a label, and there's certainly a lot of prog in it, but it covers a lot of ground, albeit mostly without getting too anything. It's always restrained, as if the band is camped out on a subway platform playing for tips and there are noise ordinances against too much volume that they must heed. I'm carefully avoiding the word soft, even though it sprang quickly to mind because that carries many implications and most are not applicable here in the slightest. This isn't surface music. It's music to dive into and explore. Just not very loudly.

The prog is most obvious in the drums of Luke Briffa, who may be the only change that the line-up has ever seen having joined in 2020. He drives the shifts in time signature and everyone's happy to follow his lead. It's easy music to listen to but Briffa kept me on the hop. Every time I thought I was being lulled into a false sense of security, he'd change it up again and I'd find myself focusing on a new rhythm. Songs like Dust don't play it simple from the outset and only get more complex with time. On occasion, it's almost like Briffa is soloing on his drums without ever getting flash.

The most urgent song here is probably the first one, The Desert, which sounds like it's a post-punk number with some anger left over from before it was post-anything. That mindset continues for a majority of the album with an array of influences popping out to say hi at odd moments. I caught a little Joy Division at points in the bass of Keith Fenech and some Ultravox in the subtle electronic rhythms in songs like Instinctive Lust. It's fascinating to catch little glimpses of bands when songs shift approach. I just wish I could remember all of them. The unusual percussion in Interlude feels very familiar but I can't place it.

The loosest song is surely Groove Academy, which flirts overtly with funk, that bass suddenly a far cry from Joy Division, and turns into jazz fusion. Cold Wind feels much more regimented than it is entirely because it follows Groove Academy. Leave the album and come back directly to that song and it feels tight, but keep the album playing so it rolls from Groove Academy into Cold Wind and it's almost military in its strictness. It's a vibrant song though, with hints of the Police underneath it pushing it forward.

Given the bands I've thrown out as comparisons thus far, it must seem surprising if I throw out the Allman Brothers Band on The Fool, but it's not a wild departure from the rest of the album. Their country-tinged southern rock translates here into a sort of post-punk Tool, which is wild. I think I'd call this one my favourite track, though Violet would fight it for that title, meaning that this ends on a couple of real high notes. Violet is the most psychedelic rock song on offer, but there's also a Jimmy Page vibe to the riff, a blues based No Quarter echo with its hints of the middle east, even though it's accompanied by didgeridoo rather than an Egyptian string section.

It's a fascinating sound and it's a fantastic way for this album to wrap up after travelling to all the places it's been up to that point. I presume Pyramid Suns have been collecting these sounds for a while now, because they've been around since 2014 but this is only their debut album. I have little idea what sort of rock scene there is in Malta, which is a relatively small country, and it wouldn't surprise me to find that there's just a music scene with diverse bands playing multiple genres at the same gigs. If this is an example of the product, the first album I've reviewed from Malta, then I'm intrigued as to what else is going on there.

Thursday, 26 January 2023

Ardours - Anatomy of a Moment (2022)

Country: Italy
Style: Alternative
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 8 Jul 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

When I asked the Melodic Rock Merchant himself, Chris Franklin of the Raised on Rock radio show, to pick a blatant omission from my reviews in 2022, he gave me a couple of albums to choose from: Manic Sinners as his rock pick and Ardours as a metal pick and, as always, he chose well, because I thoroughly enjoyed both. However, while Ardours do have some serious metal credentials, given who put it together and who they've played with, I wouldn't call this particular band metal.

They were founded in 2015 by a couple of Italians, Mariangela Demurtas and Laurent Kris. She's a vocalist, most recently for Norwegian gothic metal band Tristania, though she didn't join till 2007 so isn't on my favourite album by them, World of Glass. Of course, they sadly split up last year, but there are a couple of Tristania albums out with her voice leading them. Kris is a guitarist, who put almost a decade into Italian black/gothic metal band Cadaveria as the Lynchian pseudonym, Dick Laurent, with a couple of albums and a whole string of singles to his name. They both have other bands, but this is a fascinating side project for both with this their second album.

I'm calling this alternative, partly because it's genre-fluid, moving from new wave to straight rock and back, but always with at least a tinge of the gothic, and partly because it avoids committing to one side of the ever-flexible rock/metal boundary. This is far more rock than metal and sometimes more pop than rock, but Kris's guitar especially ventures over to the metal side on occasion with a rpiping solo now and again to keep the door open to their collective roots, like on Identified and Chasing Whispers. It's a tasty mix. Would I have liked it to be a little heavier? Sure. Do I care that much? No. This is already good stuff.

I've only mentioned two people thus far, as they're the core of the band, but I believe that Tarald Lie, the drummer in Tristania, is involved here too, presumably playing drums. However, I have to wonder how many songs he's on, because these drums often sound like they've been programmed rather than played. That's most obvious on the title track and early in Dead Weight, as the album shifts into clear electronic mode. Dead Weight begins with programmed drums but then seems to move onto a regular drumkit and there are points where both seem to be happening at once.

Someone's certainly playing keyboards too, because they're the first thing we hear when Epitaph for a Spark opens up the album, but I don't know if that's Demurtas, Kris, Lie or someone else. It's done very well though, enough so that this would work if the guitars and whatever drums are real were removed entirely and this became goth-tinged electronic pop music. It's the keyboards that provide the melodies here to underpin Demurtas's voice and this album is at its best when they're doing that incredibly well. I do like Epitaph for a Spark, but Insomniac is the song that has stuck in my head the most, with Identified not far behind it.

The elegant Secret Worlds, which wraps up a killer opening quartet with patient melody and some lovely vocal runs, is another highlight but then we shift into less immediate material. That's not to say that the rest of the album isn't good, because it is, but it's more subtle and worthy of deeper exploration.

Initially, I wasn't particularly fond of that approach, hitting us with three catchy gems straight off the bat and a more elegent gem, then asking us to dig deeper, but over multiple listens, I think it's a pretty good approach. It merely relies on us not quitting when the hooks calm down after Secret Worlds. If we keep listening, we'll be rewarded, especially once we've cycled through the album a time or three. Unannounced eventually joined my highlight list, though I didn't really notice it on a first time through. And that's why this album keeps getting better for me. Thanks, Chris!

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