Apocalypse Later Music Reviews: death metal

Showing posts with label death metal. Show all posts

Friday, 31 January 2025

Flint Knife Murder - Pretayug (2024)

Country: India
Style: Folk/Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 7 Sep 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

I like the idea of the website Metal Has No Borders, because that's one of my guiding principles at Apocalypse Later too, so I paid attention to their Best Folk Metal Album of the Year list. It included a trio of albums, Ryujin's self-titled in the bronze tier, Vorgrum's Summit of Dreams in silver and a third EP from Flint Knife Murder in the gold. That's an album from Japan, another from Argentina and an EP from Shillong in the Meghalaya province of India, so far to the northeast that it's past a majority of Bangladesh but not quite so far as About Us, in Wokha, Nagaland.

I don't know that I'd call this my folk metal release of the year because there are highly apparent limitations, but it's a fascinating EP and I'd love to hear more. For a start, it's both folk metal and death metal at the same time, so much so that I can't decide which way it went. It doesn't seem to be folk metal that's been crunched up into death and it doesn't seem to be death metal that's had a huge amount of folk elements overlaid. It feels like it's inherently both genres and both of them are integral to the sound. My favourite part comes at the very end of the opener, Nartiang, with a death metal crunch and a delightfully sticky beat, but a telling folk wail overlaid.

The beginning of Likai that follows comes close, sounding like a field recording of a folk melody in the jungle opening it up, then shifting into the guitars of death metal but the percussion of folk music. I have no idea what's being hit or what it's being hit with but it sounds glorious, with those riffs underneath it. There's a glorious combination of chant and heavy metal riff in Dharmapala, not for the first time. Angulimala opens with a wonderful riff and that folk percussion joins more traditional metal drums for a fascinating sound, that's like hand drums as a full kit. There's some sort of melodious lute halfway that I can't identify but which sounds glorious. The solo is excellent too, again somewhere between folk and heavy metal.

My problem with it is that the death metal angle, when it's isolated from the folk elements which happens occasionally, feels relatively routine. The riffs are good but they don't vary much and I'm not a big fan of the harsh vocals, whether they're death growl or hardcore shout or somewhere in between, because they fall into the common trap of working as texture but without intonation or much nuance. Fortunately, there are a lot of different styles of vocals here and such sections are never particularly long. There are folk chants, dark whispers, clean rock vocals, shouty vocals and harsh growls, each of which adds an element, as does the narrative element on Dharmapala.

I'm only seeing two names associated with Flint Knife Murder, though there may well be more at this point in their career. They formed in 2014, Siddharth Burea on vocals and guitar and Saptarshi Das on vocals and bass, but those are not the only instruments in play here, even if some of it was created digitally on synths. There are no credits for this EP at Metal Archives and it's not on their Bandcamp page. Angulimala is, presumably in an earlier version, but with nobody else listed. An earlier version of Likai is also on their Bandcamp with a guest vocal credited to Tiara Kharpuri.

I've listened to this rather a lot as I've chipped away at my book reviews for the month and I have to say that it's growing on me. It doesn't seem to work well as background but it rewards an active listener, because there are depths here that float past unnoticed if we're not paying attention. A couple of songs, Likai and Dharmapala I believe, feature some tasty bass runs that deserve kudos, but a lot of the nuance is in the songwriting. Dharmapala in particular has both a ritual element to it and a storytelling element.

Maybe that's why it's my favourite song here. It's slower and less overtly death but it does a huge amount with its seven and a half minutes. For something that fits so well as folk/death, there's a strong prog aspect to this one. I adore when the eighties heavy metal solo kicks in and it matches the deep ritual chanting perfectly. I have no idea what's going on but there's a movie's worth of something in this piece. The more I listen with serious focus, the more I find that each piece here has that to at least some degree.

I wonder when they'll get round to issuing a full album. They've put out EPs in 2020, 2021 and now 2024, so they're not without material. I guess it's just a matter of time. I'm looking forward to it.

Wednesday, 25 September 2024

God Dethroned - The Judas Paradox (2024)

I didn't dislike God Dethroned's eleventh album, 2020's Illuminati, but it didn't have many edges to it. I called it "extreme metal that you can take home for tea with your mother". This twelfth starts out in the same vein, The Judas Paradox slow and patient with easily intelligible lyrics and nothing particularly extreme, but Rat Kingdom ramps up the tempo and adds some of those edges. I really like its stop and start mindset that gives it some serious punch and the blackened flavour that has been missing so often lately is very much there. It's still my favourite song on the album, but there are some other surprises in store that elevate it a little over its predecessor.

My biggest problem with The Judas Paradox is how slow most of it is. There's no requirement for a death metal album to be fast; just go back and listen to some of the groundbreaking albums from back in the day; there's a lot of ground in between, say, the debut Autopsy and the debut Cannibal Corpse. There's no requirement for a black metal album to be fast either, given how many genres it's cohabiting with nowadays. However, we do tend to expect black/death to be fast and this often isn't, starting with that very patient opener.

Rat Kingdom changes that, bringing in blastbeats, barrelling riffs and frantic melodies. There are points where it doesn't feel particularly extreme, but plenty where it does. The Hanged Man sits somewhere in between the two, returning us to lyrics about Judas but with fast drums behind the slower, melodic riffing. Black Heart is more elegant, ditching the edges but keeping the drums, in a song that starts out as full doom with chiming bells and atmosphere. And so it goes, songs often heavy metal as much as anything more extreme, however harsh those intelligible vocals happen to be, but speeding up again every time we notice.

It's fair to say that I wanted a lot more of this album to be fast and, when it was fast, to be faster. I ended up listening far more than I expected to, because of a crazy week, and I found that I became very comfortable with it. And that's a real double edged sword when it comes to extreme metal, a return to that "extreme metal that you can take home for tea with your mother" quandary. From one side, comfortable means that they're doing something that's easy to get to know and become friends with. I made friends with this album after a couple of times through.

However, comfortable also means that it's inherently not that extreme. Every time I get to Hubris Anorexia seven tracks in, which blisters right out of the gate, I feel shocked, as if a nun just farted. Broken Bloodlines opens in a similar way three tracks later, with a real punch, even if that becomes quickly defused by what's layered over it. Even when it gets extreme for a moment, that moment passes soon enough, whether replaced or defused.

Getting to know an album like an old friend, though, means that the details pop. The Hanged Man elevates because of the guitar solo in the middle. Kashmir Princess elevates because of the section deep into its second half that drifts unexpectedly into psychedelic rock. I wasn't expecting that just as I wasn't expecting the drop to mellow midway through Hubris Anorexia. Hailing Death elevates because of how catchy it is, even though the riffs and hooks aren't particular complex. There are a few subtleties in apparent down moments too that are more complex and just as enjoyable.

And so God Dethroned seem determined to make their hybrid of black and death metal just about as accessible as they can get without losing the tag of extreme metal. Like its predecessor, it's the epitome of unoffensive, a cute puppy of an extreme metal album that may end up serving best as a gateway into extremity. There are eleven tracks here, some of which aren't extreme at all and a few of which go there at points. However, the vocals are always intelligible, even though they stay harsh throughout, and every aspect of the music is fundamentally built on melody.

Maybe you can test this out on an unwary nibling who's open for a new musical experience. If they turn out to be good with The Judas Paradox, try Hailing Death on them. If they're good with that too, then move up to Broken Bloodlines. If they're good with all eleven, up to and including Hubris Anorexia, then they're ready to move up a grade and you have a real exploration to plan.

Friday, 6 September 2024

Spell Garden - Witches Coven Vol. 2 (2024)

Country: Brazil/Argentina
Style: Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
Sites: Instagram | Metal Archives

It's only been twenty months since I reviewed Spell Garden's self-titled second album, but here's a fourth, neatly highlighting in the process how I missed the third, The Sage, which was released last June. This is presumably a sequel to the first, Witches Coven, from as long ago as October 2022, so meaning that this a fourth album in only two years. Spell Garden have been busy! Actually, they've been really busy because they've been finessing their line-up too.

Nicolás Díaz still provides clean vocals, but Juan Topini has taken over from drummer Allan Caique on harsh, often guttural vocals. Raphael Santos is still there on guitar, but Hugo Villela has joined him to bulk up that sound. Ivan Clemente has come in on bass, which Santos provided on previous recordings, as double duty on top of his guitar. And Caique is gone, replaced by George Gomes. So now the trio that recorded the first two albums (and very likely the third as well, but I can't track down credits) has doubled in size.

The resulting sound is seriously beefy, now that I'm listening to a download (YouTube simply fails to do this justice). The bass is very low and the rhythm guitar right down there with it. While the intro, Children of the Earth, opens up with instrumental psychedelic doom, Demiurgo shows us a go forward direction, starting out with that downtuned doom but drifting into death, like playful drums on the intro had hinted. Topini's vocals are the most overt death element but the tempo is often much faster than we usually expect for doom.

Betrayal highlights how Spell Garden aren't just going to play fast all the time. There are plenty of slower sections here, even if it isn't all that way, and this one adds a churning section with a tolling bell and a choral backdrop just to emphasise how this won't ever leave Black Sabbath behind, even at pace. I tend to like the slower sections more than the faster ones, but I especially like how they shift from one to the other. It's also worth mentioning that the fast paced sections still sound very much like doom rather than death, even when Topini gets extra guttural. He turns that approach up on Salem and goes all the way on Leviathan, which makes the song much sludgier than it would be otherwise. Make Me Burn is sludgy too, without needing the vocals to take it there.

My favourite song this time is easily Carrying Hate, mostly because of a glorious riff that could be transplanted into a prog metal song or even a thrash metal track, all laid over a flurrying base of death metal. The harsh vocals are there, leading the way, but there are plenty of clean vocals on this one too, almost adding a punky aspect. That ought to clash with the guitar theme, with what isn't far away from a middle eastern melody, but it works wonderfully for me. The only negative I have with this song is the way it ends, as if it wasn't quite meant to.

In fact, that's the most obvious negative for me across the album, because it's not uncommon. I'd suggest it starts with Demiurgo, the first song proper, and never quite goes away, Make Me Burn another obvious example. They aren't the most imaginative band in the world at the other end of songs, but the intros work when they show up, like on Betrayal, and the songs that go straight into riffage, like Leviathan, work even better.

That's because the most obvious positive for me is the same as on their self-titled album, namely how effortless some of these riffs seem. Leviathan is easily the slowest song on offer and it has a relatively simple riff, but it's a very effective one that's impeccably heavy. That Spell Garden can shift from the achingly slow riff and overdone guttural vocals on Leviathan to the vibrant pace of Relentless with more traditional clean vocals highlights admirable versatility. Of course, both of these tracks are appropriately named.

And that's before I mention that the vocals on The Fall start out female and clean, surely courtesy of a guest I'm not aware of, who then contrasts neatly with the harsh male vocals of Topini. Or the final track, Sol de Agartha, which is notably more psychedelic than anything else here. I called out how their self-titled album shifted from doom metal into stoner rock on occasion and that doesn't happen anywhere as much here, other than on this closer, which is very tasty, even adding a violin and a flute for good measure. There's a lot here over almost fifty minutes, even before the bonus live tracks.

For my part, I prefer the slower doom to the pacier death, but I like both approaches. Relentless is my favourite track here after Carrying Hate and that's one of the liveliest songs here. I'm also very fond of the psychedelic rock approach of Sol de Agartha, so that's three styles right there. I'm also more fond of clean vocals on tracks like Relentless and Witches Coven than harsh vocals on earlier songs, but I don't dislike Topini's death growl at all. The more guttural he gets, the less I like it, even if the extreme version of that on Leviathan fits the heaviest riffing here.

But hey, that's what this album is likely to be for listeners. There's so much here that there's likely to be songs that any extreme metal fan likes a lot but others that they don't so much. I've pointed out mine. Yours might be different and that's fine. I wonder how that will help bulk up the fanbase for a clearly prolific and hardworking band still searching for the boundaries of their sound.

Thanks to Raphael Santos for sending this album over to me. Tudo de bom!

Thursday, 4 April 2024

Necrophobic - In the Twilight Grey (2024)

Necrophobic have been around for a long time, having formed as far back as 1989, and this is their tenth album. They're widely regarded as having a discography unusually consistent in quality and this isn't a huge distance in style from their debut, The Nocturnal Silence, that's now thirty years old. They're usually categorised as black/death metal and both those elements remain in obvious quantity from the outset, but I've always heard good old fashioned heavy metal in their sound as well and that may be a little more obvious here than last time I heard them, whenever that was. I don't recall.

Mostly, I see that in how clean everything feels and how that affects slower sections. For instance, the openers, Grace of the Past and Clavis Inferni, are generally fast songs. Anders Strokirk sings in a harsh voice, one that takes from both the black metal shriek and the death metal growl, to end up somewhere in between the two. Joakim Sterner plays the drums at black metal speed and the guitars of Sebastian Ramstedt and Johan Bergebäck mostly match it with the black metal wall of sound approach. However, there are points where both drop into a slower section and suddenly it all feels like heavy metal rather than anything extreme.

As Stars Collide is a great example of a song that never really speeds up, so remains slower than the two openers throughout. There's also a nice churn to it, so there's an obvious opportunity to manifest the death metal aspects of the band, but they don't really seize it. It's there to a point, but Tobias Cristiansson's bass never deepens it far enough for the death to really take hold, slick production keeps it very clean and so it feels like an up tempo Iron Maiden section, merely with a harsh vocal over the top. When Strokirk steps back for an instrumental section, it's easy to forget we're listening to an extreme metal band.

At the other end of the album, Maiden return on the title track, because the melodies as it wraps up feel reminiscent of synth era Maiden, merely with faster drums and that harsh voice. The song after it, the bonus track on some editions, is a cover of W.A.S.P.'s The Torture Never Stops, and it's completely at home with the original material before it. In fact, while it's heavied up through the harsh vocals, it's also deepened but slightly softened by added keyboard textures. It's actually an excellent cover but it helps to underline the roots of the album in eighties heavy metal. Tellingly, Stormcrow isn't much different, even if it's more frenetic. Even the chorus sounds familiar.

Perhaps the most death metal song here is Shadows of the Brightest Night, but it still feels more black than death and adds some progressive metal in there too to make the result rather perky. It's an impressive song and it continues to be for seven and a half minutes, the longest song here outside the eight minute title track. I'd call both of them highlights, suggesting that Necrophobic are at their best when they let their songs breathe. Both of these find wonderful grooves and are able to milk them so that the longer running times don't seem longer at all.

As I wrap up this review, I keep wondering if readers will interpret what I've said as suggesting an overt softening of the Necrophobic sound and I want to underline that that's not what I'm saying. This is heavy, often extreme stuff and the band haven't remotely forgotten their origins. It's just that, if we let it flow over us, we can leave with the impression that it isn't as extreme as it really is. Compare this to Belphegor, Vulcano or Behemoth and it's not going to seem quite as vicious or quite as as raw. It's going to feel slick and even commercial. However, it's just as frenetic and just as powerful. And it's going to feel more accomplished, because the slickness is in the songwriting too. The more I listen to this, the more extreme I really it is and the more I like it.

Tuesday, 12 March 2024

Messiah - Christus Hybercubus (2024)

I'm pretty sure I've heard Messiah before, but I couldn't name what or when, so it doesn't matter. They're a Swiss band who started out playing death/thrash metal and have clearly evolved over a forty year period to the point where it's tough to describe what this, their seventh album actually sounds like. There's certainly death metal and thrash metal here, with certain songs leaping out to identify that way, but there's a lot more, enough that I'm going to back out of any one genre to label it simply progressive metal.

The death metal aspect is there from the beginning on the opening couple of songs, Sikhote Alin and Christus Hypercubus, but mostly in the harsh vocals of Marcus Seebach, debuting here as the replacement for long term vocalist Andy Kaina, who died in 2022. The music is mid-pace, so heavy metal more than thrash or death, but with driving elements that often hint that they're only one shift away from those more extreme genres. There are all sorts of odd moments too, like a quirky intro and a midpoint drop into an interesting vocal and drum section, that move it further into a prog metal mindset.

Once Upon a Time - Nothing - changes that, because it plays fast and makes the thrash/death tag suddenly feel entirely appropriate. Centipede Bite is faster still, feeling unashamedly thrash and doing everything that thrash is supposed to do. So yeah, Messiah definitely still play in those old genres even if they don't do it all the time, rather like Voivod, another highly idiosyncratic band who ignore genre boundaries and create precisely what they want to create, however critics end up defining it. The music matters, the definitions not so much.

However, in between Once Upon a Time - Nothing - and Centipede Bite is a song as different from that pair as could be comfortably imagined and yet remain metal. It's Speed Sucker Romance, an ironic name given that it ditches the speed entirely. It's a slow song, the riffs doomy and the lead guitarwork conjured up through feedback squeals. It reminded me a lot of the Lee Dorrian track on Dave Grohl's Probot album, but this clearly benefits from more modern production values. It's not unwilling to throw out an homage too, as I presume the churn sound towards the end is a nod towards Black Sabbath's Iron Man.

Soul Observatory and Acid Fish are fast but not frantically so, somewhere in between the openers and the faster tracks, meaning a fourth recurring tempo on one album. The pair of closing tracks, The Venus Baroness I and II, are obviously prog metal, with theatrical moments that make us feel like there's some sort of concept going on here, if only for a subset of the album that happens to be at the end without really ending the album. There's a quirky interlude after the blitzkrieg of Centipede Bite too that's entirely theatrical, Please Do Not Disturb - (While I'm Dying), with an Operation: Mindcrime sort of feel, but heavier.

And so I wasn't sure what to think of this versatility on a first listen. Of course, I was drawn toward the faster tracks, Centipede Bite especially, but I got a real kick out of Speed Sucker Romance and Acid Fish too, so this isn't a repeat of yesterday's Judas Priest album, where the success of one approach had an effect on my enjoyment of another, done equally well. I just struggled to figure out what Messiah see as their mission statement. Speed Sucker Romance, Centipede Bite and Please Do Not Disturb - (While I'm Dying) are next to each other on the album but sound like three different styles, if not three different bands.

Maybe what puzzles me most is that they tend to shift tempos from one track to another far more than they do during them and that feels surprising. Maybe it shouldn't. Maybe the draw here is in what links all those different tracks rather than what separates them and I suddenly realise that I may be thinking far too much again. There is a consistent tone that rolls across all these tracks, so perhaps I just need to listen to a broader swathe of Messiah to find the defining theme. I have an abiding feeling that, like someone like Voivod, as overlooked as they often seem to be, they may well be a lot of people's favourite band.

Tuesday, 9 January 2024

Panzerchrist - All Witches Shall Burn (2024)

Country: Denmark
Style: Black/Death Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 5 Jan 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Wikipedia

Panzerchrist have been around for a long time, formed in 1993 and with a steady stream of studio albums, seven of them between 1996 and 2013. They play death metal that's blackened massively, so it's fair to expect plenty of both those genres from them. It took them ten years to knock out an eighth album, Last of a Kind, which I completely missed last July when I was swamped with events. That may be because of line-up issues, because there are only two long-standing members in the band nowadays.

That's Michael Enevoldsen, who founded Panzerchrist, but changed roles within it over time. His initial instrument was drums, which he played on their first two albums, and he also contributed keyboards. He isn't even on their third album, Soul Collector, though he wrote half the songs, but he switched to bass at that point, which he still plays to this day, keeping keyboards as a side role. Frederik O'Carroll is on his second stint with the band, but he's put in over a couple of decades in total. Everyone else joined in 2023, so were brand new on Last of a Kind.

That's Danny Bo Pedersen on guitar, Sonja Rosenlund Ahl on vocals and Danni Jelsgaard on drums, though he left the same year and has been replaced going forward by Ove Lungskov. I'm guessing that Pedersen and Ahl came as a double act, after their previous band, Arsenic Addict, split up in 2022. Both are strong here, with Ahl perhaps most obvious, not least because she also happens to be the first female lead singer Panzerchrist have had across a whole series of vocalists.

I haven't heard Last of a Kind, but I'm rather intrigued by it now, because this EP moves through a heck of a lot of territory. Sabbath of the Rat is what I expect from them, furious drumming over a set of chord progressions from the guitars and raw vocals leading the way. It's a good opener and it features an elegent slower section in the second half. This song is on Last of a Kind, though I'm not aware of whether this version is changed in any way, given that it isn't the EP's title track. In fact, there isn't one, so it feels like a deliberately varied presentation without focus being meant to be given to any one of the tracks.

That variety comes in with Stone of the Graveless, which starts out pure industrial then adds slow and heavy riffs over the top. This is doom metal at the front but industrial at the back, with Ahl a breathy death metal voice over the top of it all. It's unusual and, even before the band moved on to two further tracks that do different things, I started to think about Celtic Frost, not because it sounds like them but because, like they famously did, it feels like Panzerchrist are choosing to do exactly what they want to do, whether people expect it or not.

Stone for the Graveless does speed up, with a fascinating mix of fast double bass pedals and slow beats, but it retains a somewhat different feel, especially as the industrial sound never entirely leaves. It takes over again early in the second half and, while it's hard to tell, I think it remains in place even when the furious drumming kicks in over the top. The guitar gets more interesting in the second half too. Eventually, with a minute or so left, it becomes more traditional for a while, but it never stays there. There's always something interesting coming.

And, as if by magic, Satan is Among Us is something else that's interesting. It opens almost like an avant-garde classical piece, dissonant strings and dancing flutes. The drums bring in the band and we're back off and running, with Jelsgaard's frantic feet and Ahl's raucous voice. Again, the tempo is never a set thing and it continues to evolve over its five minutes. Stone for the Graveless passed six and is really starting to grow on me. This one isn't as much, as the changes seem clumsier. I'm pretty sure there's a male voice joining in at points to duet but I'm not seeing a credit for one, so it may all be Ahl. She certainly has the range for it to be her throughout.

She's a Witch wraps up the EP and it's the point at which the keyboards start to show themselves, with an atmospheric horror movie type intro. Ahl actually sings on this one, rather than relying on her death growl, and it starts to feel a little like a theatrical setup that someone like Alice Cooper might use as a live show intro, with a quirky female voice and a church organ. What surprises here is that the intro runs on past a minute, two minutes, three minutes and we suddenly realise that there's not much left, so this is what we're getting. It's the song.

So, there's a serious versatility here, well beyond what we might expect from a blackened death metal band. I'm suddenly intrigued by what might be on Last of a Kind, noting that the one song here that's also on there is the one and only traditional piece on offer. Maybe the other three are what the band created during their sessions for the album and realised weren't ever going to fit. Maybe the album sounds this thoroughly diverse. I may have to go back and find out. I'm going to go with a 6/10 here, but that's because it doesn't feel particularly coherent and because the first two songs seem to be in a different league to the second two.

Wednesday, 22 November 2023

Nashgul - Oprobrio (2023)

Country: Spain
Style: Death Metal/Grindcore
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 29 Sep 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives

For a band who mix death metal with grindcore—and shift from one to the other and back in most of these songs—I have to say that Nashgul chug gloriously. That's why some of these tracks actually became earworms for me; when was the last time that happened with a grindcore band? There's a repeated slowdown in Protocolo Deus that has stayed with me, the simple but highly effective riff in Sewers Across gets me every time and there's a real bounce to songs like Rexa Vesania that tell me that they're really punk standards that we haven't heard before that have been given energy and pace beyond our expectations.

Initially, this was all about that mix for me. I've heard a lot of bands who claim to mix death metal with grindcore but few actually do. For the most part, they're either death metal bands who speed up enough to be called grindcore or grindcore bands who slow down every once in a while to churn. Nashgul are that rare example of a band who honestly merge the two because precious few of the sixteen tracks here are just one or the other. They listened to both sides of Scum and weren't quite sure which they preferred more.

Most of them feature frantic sections of grindcore, with vocals so distorted that we can't identify what language is being used—Nashgul are Spanish, hailing from A Coruña in the far northwest of Galicia, but most of these song titles are in English, with what looks like a couple in Spanish, a pair in Galician and two more in Latin—but most of them also feature solid death metal riffing with a voice that's closer to a death growl. Crucially, they shift back and forth constantly between these two sides of their sound with the two vocal styles not necessarily divvied up how we might expect. And then there's that edge of much more traditional punk that occasionally takes over.

Opener Quien puede matar a un niño, for instance, is primarily grindcore, with that deep vocal as unintelligible as words as the faster early Napalm Death tracks, sounding more like gargling with bleach than an attempt to deliver lyrics. The Fake, which is almost entirely spent at frantic speed, reminds of The Kill, with the accompanying pitch shift in the vocals. However, there are drops into growly death metal and into a bouncy old school punk with regular shouted vocals, albeit without any associated drop in energy. Even when they play slow, which they do surprisingly often for what many would hear as grindcore, Nashgul are full of energy, always ready to shift up a gear or three.

Flay Off works the other way round, starting out as an overtly death metal song that occasionally speeds up and adopts those grindcore touches. There's also what I presume is a sample to kick off and it gives the song a different flavour, as if this was political punk. Surely the most unusual intro is on Los que deben seguir muertos, which starts out with prowling electronica, hardly something I expect from either death metal or grindcore. It's almost John Carpenter-esque and it doesn't last long, but it flavours that song just as that sample flavours Flay Off.

And, just to continue flouting our expectations, there are songs that rely so much on the chug that they trawl in genres we simply don't expect. Sewers Across may play mostly in death metal but it's almost doom at points. Buried, But Still Alive, plays in doom too, but with punk feedback overlaid for a while and drumming from Iván that's often much faster than any other aspect of the song. It counts as the joint-longest song here at 3:14 and that's because it's all instrumental churn, Alex a notable absence on this one. While Nashgul do ramp up to grindcore speed often across the album, he's always its most extreme aspect; when he isn't there, the result feels far less extreme.

Oprobrio was a submission for review, so thanks to the band for sending this one over. It's been an odd couple of weeks here at Apocalypse Later, mostly because I've been concentrating on getting a bunch of books ready for publication, so I've had this playing on and off for far longer than tends to be the case. What's telling is that it hasn't got old at all and grindcore has a habit of doing that quickly. I adore the infusion of energy that the genre brings, but it's rarely memorable because it tends to rely so much on that effect. This works as an energy shot of grindcore, but it also works as slab of music to sit down and enjoy.

Nashgul are hardly a prolific band. They've been around since 2001 and they've been featured on a lot of split singles over the years, but this is only their third album, after El día después al fin de la humanidad in 2009 and Cárcava in 2016. A seven year album release schedule isn't ambitious but it works when the quality and versatility are this high. I may not want to wait another seven years to hear their next album, but I'll do it. This is good stuff.

Friday, 28 July 2023

Legion of the Damned - Poison Chalice (2023)

Here's another album from a band I've reviewed before that does pretty much the same thing in pretty much the same way. Legion of the Damned are Dutch and they've been around since 2005, a further thirteen years before that as Occult. They play a hybrid of thrash and death metal that's a lot more focused on the thrash side of that, with a little death as a texture, mostly in the vocals of Maurice Swinkels. Last time out was Slaves of the Shadow Realm in 2019, their seventh album, and that makes this their eighth.

I haven't heard that since reviewing it, but most of what I said about it holds true here. However, I clearly like it a little more than its predecessor, because this is a 7/10 for me rather than the 6/10 I gave to that one. Their biggest drawback is that the songs are so similar in approach that they blur together into a solid clump of metal that cleans out our systems for three quarters of an hour and then ends.

Maybe they're doomed to that middle ground where they're clearly very good at what they do but what they do is so invariable that a stronger album will be a 7 and a lesser one will be a 6. They're just too good and too consistent to drop any lower but too unwilling to vary their formula to climb any higher. And, while I'd usually see that as a negative, it can sometimes be a positive. There are days when I want to sit back and close my eyes and deep dive into the music, eager to hear things I have never heard before. However, there also days when I just want to show up to a gig and let the band bludgeon me into oblivion for an hour. Legion of the Damned seem like a good choice for the latter.

What that means to the listener is reliability. Every song here, and there are ten on offer, blisters along at a thrash pace and ought to generate some serious activity in the pit. Maybe Skulls Adorn the Traitor's Gate is a little faster and a little more emphatic than the rest, but it's a close call. I'd definitely call out the solos in the middle of this one as the most furious on the album though. It's an impeccable song that reminds me just how much I love thrash metal, as if I'd ever forget. On the other end of a very short spectrum, maybe The Poison Chalice closes out with a little less emphasis and a little more atmosphere. For a while, it's more Seasons of the Abyss than Reign in Blood, but it ramps up to the usual tempo soon enough.

And while that comparison is fair, it speaks specifically to the distance between a band's extremes rather than between that band and this. The sound here is always Teutonic, so Kreator are the key comparison rather than Slayer or anyone else American, and when they move away from a Kreator sound for a moment, it's only to go as far as Destruction. The only real difference is the added dab of death, which is there in the tone being a little deeper and in the added growl in Swinkel's voice.

For an album almost inherently devoid of anything interesting for a critic to say—either you'll love this or you won't—that's about it. There's nothing much else to add. So there's a softer intro to the opener, Saints in Torment? It doesn't matter. When the intro's done thirty seconds or so in, Legion of the Damned leap immediately up to full gear and stay there pretty much throughout. Do I have a favourite track? Not really. Maybe Skulls Adorn the Traitor's Gate because of those killer solos. It seems fair to call out Progressive Destructor too as so quintessential Teutonic thrash that it almost felt like I knew the vocal cadences on a first listen. It's a textbook.

Bottom line: this is good stuff. It's just the same good stuff throughout. Do you care?

Wednesday, 21 June 2023

Phlebotomized - Clouds of Confusion (2023)

There are few bands out there right now who merge the brutality of death metal and the delicacy of light melody better than Phlebotomized. This is their fourth studio album and their second since reforming in 2013 after sixteen years away. The other one was 2019's Deformation of Humanity and that was one of my early 8/10s here at Apocalypse Later back in my very first month, January 2019. I listed that as doom/death, while noting that it tended to be faster than most doom/death I hear. There's still some doom/death here, but this is a faster release again, with points reaching thrash speeds. Is it as good as its predecessor? Maybe not, but it's still a damn good album.

What I like the most about Phlebotomized is that they've found a way to be three different bands all at the same time, while making it seem like the most natural thing in the world. They find a mix of the brutality of death metal, the elegance of prog metal and the delicacy of melodic rock, each of those elements present in quantity in pretty much every track here. It doesn't feel like it ought to be an effortless mix but Phlebotomized make it seem natural.

The brutality is primarily there in the vocals of Ben de Graaff, which are consistently a deep growl that finds a little bark at points. It's also there at the back end when the band are shifting, with a rumbling bass and pounding drums. However they tend to shift more into the elegance, especially during guitar solos and what I'd call orchestration, even if that's all generated on Rob op 't Veld's keyboards. There are points where this swells up like symphonic metal and finds a depth in sound that's deeper than the already expansive seven member line-up might suggest.

That leaves the delicacy and that's there in a host of ways. It's there in the piano on the intro, Bury My Heart, and a host of other songs later. It's there in the grand sweep of the melody in Alternate Universe. It's there in the choral swell behind the narration on Lachrimae, one of an odd couple of tracks to build up to Destined to Be Killed, alongside the heavy and pounding Desolate Wasteland. It's there in hints and swells and textures and melodies and we're never that far away from one of them. Everything here is melody, just as everything is heavy, whether it's doom/death heavy or an upbeat thrash heavy.

And I've mentioned thrash twice, which is odd for a doom/death band, but Phlebotomized have an obvious goal of stretching that genre way beyond its traditional boundaries. The doom/death may be most obvious in the second half of the closer, Context is for Kings (Stupidity and Mankind), but I would suggest that it's more often present with a perkiness that shifts its tone, like on Death Will Hunt You Down. Other songs up the tempo to different degrees until we get to Destined to Be Killed, which they're pushing a video for. It's heavy from the outset, but with op 't Veld's melodies dancing like sprites over everything else. However, it shifts firmly into thrash for the chorus, enough to quickly remind of Kreator. Of course, there's still an elegant prog metal guitar solo in the middle that turns into a surprisingly bouncy sound for something so heavy.

I liked this album on a first listen but it wasn't as immediate or as emphatic as its predecessor. I've had it on repeat for a day or so though and it keeps on growing on me. Every song, except perhaps those two sub-minute long oddities, has fleshed out and established itself as its own track, worthy of standing on its own two feet, even if they tend to look over at their peers with a knowing wink. It all plays consistently but with versatility and that's a neat trick to master.

Destined to Be Killed is definitely a highlight here, but Pillar of Fire may have nudged past it in my personal esteem. That's a real grower and it may demonstrate the most seamless amalgam of the three different styles the band plays, the heavy death, elegant prog and delicate melody, down to the spoken word section. The other track that won't leave me alone is the awkwardly titled A Unity Your Messiah Pre Claimed, which kicks off with quirky jazz and builds into a swaggering song, with a high riff that almost sways along.

And so this matches the last album and may exceed it, so I think another highly recommended 8/10 is due. The downsides aren't particularly negative, but Desolate Wasteland doesn't add anything, Death Will Hunt You Down is a less successful version of Pillar of Fire, if still a good song. I'm not a huge fan of the two Bury My Heart tracks either. They're good, one intro and one instrumental at double the length of the intro, but they're not up to the highlights. But hey, that's two 8/10s now. I want to hear the next album already.

Tuesday, 7 February 2023

Memoriam - Rise to Power (2023)

Country: UK
Style: Death Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 3 Feb 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Twitter

Memoriam are a British band who have been building quite a name for themselves through a five album stretch, this being the fifth, across only seven years. They only formed as recently in 2015, apparently as a tribute to the late Martin Kearns of Bolt Thrower, but they got up to speed quickly with For the Fallen in 2017. Then again, nobody involved is remotely new to the business.

Vocalist Karl Willetts was the lead vocalist in Bolt Thrower for a couple of decades. Guitarist Scott Fairfax has played with Cerebral Fix and is also in Massacre right now. Bass player Frank Healy was also in Cerebral Fix, as well as a whole string of major bands: Annihilator, Benediction and Napalm Death, to name just three. Drummer Spikey T. Smith has even more bands on his resume, including Sacrilege, English Dogs and the Damned, and he arrived in 2020 to replace Andrew Whale of Bolt Thrower in the only line-up change thus far. Clearly it's about time I paid attention to what they do.

And what they do shouldn't surprise after band names like those, because this is clearly metal on a British punk framework. Willetts's vocals work for death metal, as they should, but they'd work in a punk band too without any shift in approach. There's a texture to Fairfax's guitar that's right out of crust punk, just better produced. Smith is clearly comfortable with speed, but he's playing much slower than I expected much of the time. Total War is a great example of both tempos, with some early sections almost doom speed but faster sections ready to leap into action.

And, of course, the lyrics are all social commentary. Total War doesn't need any explanation and it shouldn't take much imagination to figure out what Never Forget, Never Again (6 Million Dead) is about. Almost every one of these song titles, from I am the Enemy and The Conflict is Within to All is Lost and Rise to Power via Annihilations Dawn, is clearly riffing on our polarised society, politics hindering rather than helping. I'm shocked that they're still on Twitter. I thought they might have been the first band that I'd find on Tribel.

I've never delved too deeply into the British punk scene, beyond seeing the early days on television and experiencing it live through the emergent grindcore scene in the late eighties. I saw Healy in 1990 in Bradford playing for Cerebral Fix, though Fairfax hadn't joined yet. But I listened to a lot of the bands who came out of those eras and either formed metal bands or turned metal for a while. For instance, Cerebral Fix were supporting Napalm Death, who were shifting from grindcore over to death metal at that point. I saw Bolt Thrower a couple of times in 1989 and 1990 and, even back then, when Whale was playing with blastbeats, I felt they had a foot firmly in both worlds.

It's been a while since I've listened to Bolt Thrower, but this feels like a fair sequel. It may be more thoughtful in terms of riffs and runs and fills, but it may be just more obvious given the benefits of twenty-first century production values. They didn't have this tech to work with back when they put out Realm of Chaos! Notably, while this is much better produced than early Bolt Thrower albums, the music doesn't lend itself to crystal clear mixing. There's still a sludgy sound to what they do, as there was in Bolt Thrower, even live when they were a wall of sound.

I liked this album on a first listen. A whole bunch of moments stood out the first time I heard them, from the unusual but memorable choir of samples building up the message "I am the enemy" that oddly introduced Never Forget, Never Again rather than I am the Enemy, onwards. Looking back, a majority of them tie to the guitarwork of Scott Fairfax, not least the doomy gothic guitars in I am the Enemy, the intricate intro to The Pain and the echoey doomladen guitars late in All is Lost. The more I listen to this clearly death metal album, the more I hear Fairfax playing doom and it works.

The catch is that it doesn't really grow from that first listen. It always sounds good but it falls into the background somewhat and I keep finding myself ten minutes further in than I thought. Paying attention, I might call out the title track, which grows with repeat listens, but the rest steadfastly refuses to do that, which is surprising given the talent involved and the buzz they're generating. I would call this a decent album but not a special one. If this is your thing, then add a point, but you would need to be a die hard fan to rave about this one.

Tuesday, 31 January 2023

Atrocity - Okkult III (2023)

I do like when Metal Archives list a band's genre as "various". Atrocity started out as a grindcore band called Instigator but shifted to death metal with the name change. However, after a couple of albums, they brought in a wide variety of other sounds, Metal Archives listing "hardcore, goth rock, folk and industrial" as a start. Wikipedia adds that they even found their way into disco and acoustic material. Of course, the entire band also plays symphonic metal as Leaves' Eyes, with a female vocalist added when functioning in that mode.

They seem to have shifted back to death metal for their 2013 album Okkult and they've remained there for Okkult II in 2018 and now Okkult III in 2023. It's a tasty brand of death as it kicks off with a long intro to the opener Desecration of God, full of choral ritual, chattering creatures and searing guitar. And, of course, a solid riff to launch into the song proper. However, for a band with such an outstanding range, this is surprisingly traditional. It's good stuff that grew on me substantially on a second listen, but it's not particularly surprising stuff.

That's not to suggest that there are no notes to be made, but even when they venture into a fresh genre, it's still done within a death metal framework. Born to Kill, for instance, is such old school death that it's close to thrash metal, merely downtuned further and with a harsher vocal. Atrocity hail from Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart, not crazy far from Destruction in Weil am Rhein, which is also in Baden-Württemberg. I would never confuse the two bands, but there are clear similarities, especially during the instrumental midsection, with solid chugging and effective guitar swapping between speakers. Of course, Alexander Krull's vocals are very different to Schmier's.

There's a gothic flavour on Malicious Sukkubus, introduced through more choral work but also an overt use of keyboards. There are a pair of guest vocalists on this song too, both female and both known primarily for symphonic metal, but there's little of that, if anything, discernible here. One is Elina Siirala, who is the band's lead singer nowadays when they're Leaves' Eyes. The other is Zoë Marie Federoff is an Arizona local who currently fronts the international project Catalyst Crime and has also recently joined Cradle of Filth. Maybe there's some of the latter in the theatricality that opens the song, as if it's setting the scene in a horror movie trailer. Either way, it sounds like one sings in a harsh voice and the other provides more of a spoken word approach.

The closer, Teufelsmarsch, also has a different approach due to the guests, mostly Misstiq, who's an Australian keyboardist known for YouTube videos in which she creates keyboard takes on -core songs. She adds an almost industrial flavour to this one, which opens with what I presume is the military march of the title. It ends up feeling quintessentially German, even though that edge is added by an Australian. It's also telling that most of the different textures that show up here are due to keyboards, even though Atrocity are clearly the guitar band we might expect.

Oddly, given that I usually gravitate to the more unusual songs on an album, my favourites on this one are more traditional pieces. That I'm fond of Born to Kill doesn't surprise me, because of my thrash background, but I rather dig the meat of the second side too, which is the traditional place to throw the filler, something that's thankfully absent here. I'm not entirely sure why I feel drawn to Faces from Beyond, Lycanthropia and Cypka, but it might be that they just get down to business and do it well without being diverted into anything fancy.

After all, if you're not going to do something new, then do something old really well and Atrocity do that here. It's a solid, reliable death metal album, done with agreeable pace and with some of the songs stretching a little by adding keyboards to shift the atmosphere here and there.

Monday, 23 January 2023

Obituary - Dying of Everything (2023)

While Barely Alive rips out of the gate and it's not the only song with a fast section here, this new Obituary album joins the Autopsy album from late last year as a firm reminder that I've forgotten what the original death metal bands sounded like. I saw both of them live back in 1990 but I moved on from the genre pretty quickly and apparently three whole decades went by while I blinked. I'd forgotten just how much doom metal there was in Autopsy's sound and I'd also forgotten just how much Celtic Frost there was in Obituary's.

John Tardy's vocals aren't even a growl, which is practically mandatory nowadays in death metal. Instead he sings clean but with a tortured voice that often reminds of Tom G. Warrior and others who sang in what felt like a demonic voice in the eighties. That's only underlined during what I'm going to have to call a spoken word section in Dying of Everything, because it seems to be spoken by a demon. The point is that it was an extreme voice when Obituary started out. It seems almost tame in 2023.

I've read comments by younger fans who don't understand how bands like these can even be seen as death metal, simply because they don't conform to their expectations of the genre. I don't buy into that at all, because I remember how extreme Autopsy and Obituary were in 1990 and they're still true to their core sound. This was death metal and it's still death metal to me. These are some of the bands who created the genre and heritage is important.

Also, this is heavy stuff, even if the second half of Without a Conscience and the beginning of My Will to Live, to cite just two sections from ten songs, are as solid for slow headbanging as anything that Status Quo ever conjured up with their famous three chords. Of course, this is downtuned and far heavier than Quo, but the comparison isn't unfair in those section. The clearer nod is to Celtic Frost, because it's not only in Tardy's vocals but in the tone of the guitars and the churn of many of these songs.

Talking of heavy, another band that came to mind here is Metal Church, especially late in My Will to Live after Tardy has finished singing and the band keep the piece going as an instrumental, the remaining vocalisations almost serving as sound effects. There's Metal Church there in the power chords, in the mosh chug and in the guitar solo. It's slow stuff but it's somehow melodic and heavy at the same time. I kept waiting for David Wayne to start singing.

This is only Obituary's eleventh studio album but, with this one, they've now released more since reforming in 2003 than in their original run from 1988 to 1997. The line-up has remained steadier than most metal bands, with three founder members staying the course throughout from a brief spell as Xecutioner in 1984 to the beginnings of Obituary and all the way to the present day. Tardy is one and his brother Donald on drums is another. The third is Trevor Peres on rhythm guitar.

That leaves two newer members but Terry Butler, who joined in 2010, is only the band's third bass player, and Kenny Andrews, is the fourth lead guitarist. He joined in 2012, so has a decade behind him, and both these later acquisitions are playing on their third Obituary album. They both seem highly comfortable and they both do the business, even if I'd have liked some more solo work from Andrews here. These songs tend to go for that old school bludgeoning rather than adding much in the way of decoration.

That's not to say that there isn't anything unusual here. War has an intro that's, well, war. It's not groundbreaking in the slightest but it adds a different texture, especially as it isn't just confined to the intro. There's also a surprising drop into an acoustic guitar, even if only for a heartbeat or three. it works well. The most unusual song is The Wrong Time, which sounds fascinating from the very beginning. There's a simple and memorable drumbeat, in the vein of Reign in Blood, but it's accompanied by what sounds like maracas and hints at a Satanic orchestra, before it launches into high gear thirty seconds in.

In short, I like this a lot more than I expected to, albeit not as much as the Autopsy album from the end of last year. These new releases in an old style remind me of how much I've forgotten and how much I really ought to go back and ground myself afresh in where death metal came from. I'm too used to what it's become in all its various directions. I moved on from it in the early nineties when it seemed like it was stagnating. Hindsight tells me that it moved on too and it's a lot more varied than I've given it credit for.

Wednesday, 18 January 2023

Necrosin - Necrosin (2023)

Country: Bahrain
Style: Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 7 Jan 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives

I've bumped into death metal from the unlikely source nation of Bahrain before, through a Smouldering in Forgotten album, but I like this more, even though, at only twenty-four minutes, it's what they call an EP and I'd call a mini-album. It's old school death metal, so much so that it reminds me of a few of the first death metal bands I heard, like Possessed and Morgoth, when the genre was still growing out of thrash and figuring out what it was going to become.

Necrosin mostly play a bouncy form of death, which is on show immediately in the opener, As It Is Above, So It Is Below, which leaps into the fray with such punk urgency that I wondered briefly if it might be a Black Flag cover, but it develops into a more chuggy death metal song with some neat changes when it gets to the guitar solo. Under a Violent Moon follows in much the same vein and that was enough to cement the opinion that this is a death metal band who would play well to an overtly thrash metal audience. Sure, they're downtuned a little and Möhämmëd Tael sings with a harsh voice but it's not a million miles away from a lot of early thrash bands.

For all that punk urgency, which was always a part of thrash too, they're surely more influenced by metal, because of the instrumental sections. It's not particularly progressive, but the changes are highly capable and they shift in and out of sections seamlessly. There's speed metal at the start of Banners of Hate and a hard rock breakdown halfway through to set up a strangely slow solo with a Metallica-esque backing. It's an interesting shift between styles that works well. There's plenty of Iron Maiden in the progressions late on as well as midway through Enslaved, when they highlight a fondness for the Powerslave era.

The most unusual song has to be the closer, Beneath the Waves (The Hymns of Decay) which flows well from Enslaved until we suddenly realise that Tael is singing clean. At least, I presume it's him, though Mahmood al-Ansari is credited for backing vocals, on top of what he does behind the drum kit. I'm not seeing a bassist listed and, for the most part, I can imagine that there isn't one, but it does seem like someone's there playing at a lower pitch at points behind Tael's guitar. Maybe I'm just imagining it. Maybe that's what shapes the sound a little differently to normal for death.

Anyway, Tael starts harsh, as he's been across the previous five songs, and he stays there for much of the song. When the tempo drops soon after the three minute mark, though, it transforms into a heavy metal song, a little progressive and a little power, but ultimately just rock music. There's a four note melody here that reminds me of the intro to Robert Plant's Big Log, which is about the last thing I thought might ever come to mind when reviewing a death metal EP from Bahrain. It's like the intensity is deliberately shifted down through the gears, so we can politely move on. It's a surprising ending, but I rather like it.

I like Necrosin more the faster they go, but they're not bad in chug mode either. Bow to Me sounds great early on, but it's slow. It promptly ramps up and it's all the better when it's got momentum behind it, but it's easily my least favourite song because it keeps slowing down again. It's capably done, so fans of that slower, chugging approach ought to dig it, but I was waiting for it to kick back into gear every time. My Necrosin is the faster, earlier stuff. Whenever I start again, I'm refreshed by the speed and urgency, but lose that as it runs on, focusing instead on the unusual aspects.

Best of luck to Necrosin though. Bahrain doesn't look like the most oppressive state in that part of the world, but it can't be the easiest job in the world to play death metal there. I appreciate their dedication to keep it at and to create something as strong as this, whether we call it a mini-album or just an EP.

Wednesday, 28 December 2022

Autopsy - Morbidity Triumphant (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 30 Sep 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Wikipedia

Here's an album I missed at the end of September, which I should address before I run out of year. No conversation about the origins of American death metal can exclude Autopsy, even though the band hail from California rather than Florida. I'm way out of date with them, given that I last saw them live in 1989, headlining over Paradise Lost at the late and lamented Queens Hall in Bradford a couple of weeks before I saw Obituary and Morgoth at the same venue. Looking back, they were my first death metal headliner, as Morgoth a few months earlier were supporting Paradise Lost, downstairs in the Cellar Bar.

Needless to say, those were early days for death metal and I was thoroughly enjoying a new form of sonic brutality. The heyday was still to come—this was a couple of years before Mental Funeral, though Obituary were touring to support Slowly We Rot—but I bored of what would soon become known as brutal death metal pretty quickly, shifting over to the newer melodic death metal when Dark Tranquillity put out Skydancer. All of which is a roundabout way to point out that I'm hardly a guaranteed fan of the genre but I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to.

It's Autopsy's ninth album, arriving seven years after Skull Grinder, which wrapped up a busy time for them. They had reformed in 2009 after fourteen years away and they knocked out four albums from 2011 to 2015, before this fresh gap. I haven't heard any of those, but they feel invigorated on this one, so maybe the higher ratings at Metal Archives suggest that they used those years well.

What I'd forgotten over the decades is how much doom there was in Autopsy's sound, along with the death. This is very much death/doom in that particular order, as against the doom/death that I've loved for so long from bands like Paradise Lost and Anathema. While the latter tends to be an identifiable sound, this is a shift between two modes, one fast and frantic, the other a slow churn. It feels good in 2022 to hear that old combination with the benefit of 21st century production and it's far more interesting to me than the full on, always frantic approach of, say, Cannibal Corpse.

For instance, Stab the Brain leaps right into the fray with abandon, as do later songs such as Born in Blood and Knife Slice, Axe Chop. However, they're never going to be mistaken for Skin by Skin or Final Frost, which are guttural sludgy doom for a while, before they decide to go frantic. It's almost like they're giving the pit a rest. Churn to this one, then take a moment to feel and breathe before we ramp right up again and you'll be churning again. The Voracious One and Tapestry of Scars add a cleaner feel to the doom, starting out reminiscent of Cathedral.

The most frantic sections, whether in fast songs or slow ones, tend to arrive with guitar solos. Eric Cutler and Danny Coralles may take it slow for a lot of sections in songs, but they always blister on solos and the rest of the band always speeds up to match them. Otherwise, there's little rhyme or reason why a song might go from fast to slow or slow to fast. I can happily praise the variety that's on offer while being puzzled as to why the songs change they way they do.

It's as if whatever these musicians feel like at any point in time drives that particular section of a song and they're all very much aware of what they're each doing, like this is a complex jam session. Everyone tries to catch each other out but nobody ever does and there's a particular pickup back to speed in Knife Slice, Axe Chop that's so tight that it had me grinning. This is a fast song from its first moments but it slows down to a crawl midway with a solid plodding doom riff, first on bass and then echoed on guitar. When it ramps back up is a thing of festering beauty.

The only real song that doesn't either speed up or slow down is Maggots in the Mirror, because it doesn't have time to do that. None of these songs are long, most of them wrapped up in three or four minutes and change, and the longest, Tapestry of Scars, doesn't quite make it to five minutes. However, while Knife Slice, Axe Chop manages two tempo shifts in its sub-three minutes, Maggots in the Mirror has to be content with just blistering through because it's over and done well under two minutes after launching itself through the starting gate. And it's a highlight.

I liked this a lot. It reminded me of those early years when this was a new style that was confusing a lot of metal fans. After all, Autopsy's debut in 1989 came only a decade after Motörhead had hit everyone for six with Overkill. The sheer change within those ten years is hard to fathom. Now, in 2022, with death metal a genre that's split and split again into countless forms, this feels fresh in a way that I didn't expect it to be. Sure, it looks backwards rather than forwards, but it reminds us that death metal is supposed to be heavy as well as fast. I think a lot of bands have forgotten that in the assumption that they just need to downtune and growl and be done. They should dissect an Autopsy album and this seems like a perfect place to start.

Thursday, 15 December 2022

Defleshed - Grind Over Matter (2022)

Country: Sweden
Style: Death/Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 28 Oct 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Wikipedia

Album title notwithstanding, this is not grindcore. This is thrash metal with a serious side of death and it hails from Uppsala in Sweden, courtesy of a band who are back in business after a long time away. Lars Löfven formed Defleshed in 1991 and they put out five albums before calling it a day in 2005. Well, they reformed last year and here's the first studio offering from the band, featuring a line-up that's picking up where it left off on their previous effort, Reclaim the Beat no fewer than seventeen years ago.

I can't remember if I heard Defleshed back in the day. I probably did, but nothing particular comes to mind. I like this album though and I liked it as soon as it kicked in hard. This is a fast and furious album that sits maybe halfway between thrash and thrash/death. It reminds the most of Teutonic thrash stalwarts like Kreator and Destruction, whether we're talking the pace, which is frantic, or the rough but clean vocals of Gustaf Jorde. If you like them, you'll probably like this, right down to the phrasing of the instruments as they shift from verse to chorus.

However, Jorde's bass and Löfven's guitars are tuned quite a way down from either of those bands and there are strong hints of a death growl in that vocal too, especially early on with Bent Out of Shape, even though it remains entirely intelligible throughout. The result is a death/thrash hybrid that brings a band like Vader to mind but it's not quite so brutal. I'd place Defleshed a little closer to Kreator than I would Vader, if you drew a line between the two and asked me where. It feels like thrash immersed in death rather than the other way round.

The worst thing about the album is that there's very little variety between the eleven tracks that are included here. The only real change is that, however many times I listen through, it appears to have more death early on than it does when it finishes, as if the density of the sound shifts across half an hour and change. It may be merely illusion, as our subconsciouses acknowledge its balance between genres, but then again it seems to run me through that cycle again when I hit repeat. In reality, it's highly consistent, each song following a very similar template.

The best thing is that it's an excellent template to follow and the production helps it succeed. This is a power trio, with Löfven the only guitarist, Jorde doubling up on vocals and bass and new fish of long standing Matte Modin behind the drumkit. That means that we can easily hear everyone and they combine into a furious sound that's rooted in Löfven's strong riffing, which is a constant plus, with Jorde's dynamic vocals over the top and Modin a windmill of activity at the back.

Almost every song begins with a similarly sounding power chord, which explodes up to full speed in no time flat with Modin having full control over that accelerator pedal. Then Löfven establishes a riff good enough to take us through the three minutes or so each of these blitzkriegs lasts. Before long, Jorde's voice takes the spotlight so he can spit out a pretty straightforward lyric in English. We can understand everything he says but we don't care. We're focused on his intonation and the riffing that's carrying us through the song. And then it's over, because this isn't epic music. Even the longest songs here don't make the four minute mark.

Why I still get surprised at just how much energy a trio can generate, I have no idea, given that it's been almost forty years since I heard Ace of Spades and Black Metal and Just Like Something from Hell, but there's still a wonder there I never get when there's one more musician in the line-up. It seems fair to say that Defleshed generate a lot of energy. Set up a small club right at the centre of a reactor, wait for the pit to kick in and the result could power Sweden.

Maybe not every song is as relentless as Staring Blind or Blast Beast, my personal picks from this tasty bunch of eleven as a standout, but none of the others are far behind. In fact, the band only pause for a breather twice, during the intros to Blood Well Spent and Last Nail in the Coffin, both of which are back up to full intensity by the fifteen second mark. Defleshed simply aren't hanging around here. They've been gone for fifteen years and it feels like they're trying to make up for lost time. I'm actually tempted to give this an 8/10 but I think it needs a little more variety. If you don't care about that, then this is an 8/10 for you.

Welcome back, folks. This is as reliable as it gets and I want to see you on stage soon blowing away the headliners with sheer energy.

Monday, 5 December 2022

Goatwhore - Angels Hung from the Arches of Heaven (2022)

So my son arrived home with food and I only just heard him call because I had the new Goatwhore album on loud. A new Goatwhore album, he commented, perking up, because he's been a fan ever since I took him to see them back in 2006, supporting both Venom and Celtic Frost.Then he said, "I hope it's better than Vengeful Ascension." Well, I can't say if it is or not because I haven't heard it, but what I read about it now suggests that it was a bit of a departure for them, slowing down and changing producer. Die hard fans seem to have liked it, but not as much as they wanted, criticising the songwriting and production.

That producer, Jarrett Pritchard, is back and his work here, alongside Kurt Ballou, does the job for me. Not all songs pop equally, but this certainly didn't feel like a slow and uncharacteristic album. In fact, once we get past the pointless vaguely demonic intro which we've heard a thousand times before, Goatwhore hit us hard with the fast and uncompromising Born of Satan's Flesh. They carry as much of a punch now as they've ever done, at least to my ears. Sammy Duet's guitars are a real highlight, as always; the drums blister, courtesy of new fish Robert Coleman; and the vocals are an enticing mix of dark and rich death growl and bleaker, more acidic one that's ably intonated, thus with a level of theatricality, if not so much as Dani Filth.

The Bestowal of Abomination kicks in just as immediately and just as emphatically and it remains at that level for the most part, even though there are slightly slower sections that never lost my interest. Other songs play up the speed factor too, as Goatwhore have always had roots in thrash metal, even if they're generally listed only as black/death nowadays. There's a solid thrash slam to Death from Above, which is older school underneath the hood but with all those extreme modern layers firmly still in place where the world can see them.

Some songs do calm down a little, starting with the title track, but I'm only talking about the pace, because that one's just as lively and intense as its faster predecessors. Maybe there's a slowdown late in the album, because Weight of a Soulless Heart is definitely slower and so is the closer, And I Was Delivered from the Wound of Perdition, which runs well over a minute longer than everything else, so I presume they were going for a more epic feel. These aren't my favourites, though, as I'm fondest of Goatwhore when they're in my face. I'd go with Nihil, in between those two, every time.

After that opening pair and Nihil, I'd highlight a set of tracks at the heart of the album because the guitars get quite the workout on them. That set would start with Death from Above, with its bludgeoning Venom style guitar, and continue through Ruinous Liturgy, with another barrelling riff that I could listen to all day, to Victory is the Lightning of Destruction and Voracious Blood Fixation, with even simpler but still thoroughly effective riffs.

It's not just the riffs either, though it's especially the riffs; it's the solos as well. While I never have complaints about Ben Falgoust's vocals, what makes me happy here and on any Goatwhore album, beyond the band's unsurpassed name, is Sammy Duet's guitarwork. I always want more of it than I get, but I always love what I do get. The best of what I get this time seems to be right at the heart of the album to wrap up the first side and get down to business on the second.

I think I need to borrow Vengeful Ascension from my son to see what he's talking about, but I have a feeling he's going to see this one as a return to form. Well, most of it. There is lesser material on offer but even the filler songs have good riffs. Let's just ditch the demonic intro next time, folks? I would say that had got old a decade before you formed Goatwhore and I see that you're celebrating your 25th anniversary this year.

Monday, 10 October 2022

Behemoth - Opvs Contra Natvram (2022)

Legendary Polish extreme metallers Behemoth have been around for over thirty years now, which makes them kind of an institution. Given that everything Nergal has got up to in that time, from a series of trials for blasphemy for ripping up a Bible to his stint as a coach on The Voice of Poland, it becomes difficult not to see them that way. However, this is only their twelfth studio album, their release schedule hovering around every four years right now.

I remember enjoying them in the mid nineties and whenever they've crossed my path in the years since, but it's been a while since I've heard a full album from them, so Post-God Nirvana was rather unexpected. It's a neat, if long intro, rather like a Coil layer applied to Heilung, though it's heavier than either with a buzzsaw guitar eventually showing up to underline that. It's a slow and chanting piece to kick things off. And an angry one. There's a lot of anger on this album.

And then Malaria Vvlgata explodes out of the gates like a TGV from a tunnel, dominating all in its path. Behemoth may have shifted in style from pure black metal to become pioneers of the black/death metal hybrid style, but I'm out of date with where they've ended up on that spectrum. This album plays to me far closer to black than death. It doesn't feel at all like blackened death metal. Maybe we could call it deathened black metal, but that's just clumsy and I'd plump for black metal pure and simple. It's fast and it's furious but somehow the guitar solo still manages to add a level. This one has energy to spare.

The Deathless Sun adds a few symphonic and choral elements that continue to elevate the album. The choral side isn't front and centre but it shows up at points to add texture, whether at the start of Ov My Herculean Exile or later in Thy Becoming Eternal, where the voices are almost teasing in a back and forth with Nergal. There's a repeated keyboard swell in Off to War! that feels acutely like a summoning. These do background things but they all add to the whole.

However, Nergal still feels angry. It sounds like he's still combining a black shriek and death growl but adding a cry of frustration to the mix. It doesn't hurt that the lyrics echo this. "I am nothing." "I am no-one." This cry is especially obvious on the closer Versvs Christvs, which is, of all things, an almost whispered ballad for its first minute and change. When it heavies up, because of course it does, it doesn't get fast immediately and that transition ably highlights how angry Nergal is here.

And that anger works wonders. The more frantic a song is and the more Nergal emotes, the better it plays to me. The sheer energy of Malaria Vvlgata is difficult to match but the beginning of Neo-Spartacvs manages it. And, quite frankly, liking the fastest material isn't that surprising to me as a thrash fan at heart. However, I found myself connecting more with the consistency that arrives in the second half, from Disinheritance to Thy Becoming Eternal. On the first side, I'm listening to an impressive set of individual songs. On the second, I'm listening to an album.

And I think that's what Nergal and co. are aiming for. There's still death metal here but it's clearly not the priority that black metal is. However, this is far from a return to their early years. It's a lot more commercial and accessible than the early Behemoth ever were, even though they show how they can still absolutely rip on faster sections and songs like Malaria Vvlgata that don't stop for a breather. I like this more mature black metal Behemoth and look forward to their lucky thirteenth album in another four years.

Friday, 23 September 2022

Dir en Grey - Phalaris (2022)

Dir en Grey are one of those infuriating or joyous bands, depending on your perspective who are impossible to categorise, which should make it no surprise if I tell you that they come from Japan, Osaka in particular. Just wrap your ears around Schadenfreude, the opener on this, their eleventh studio album and first since 2018's The Insulated World. It starts out quirky and alternative; turns gothic, even operatic with a male lead vocal that suddenly sounds female; crunches from rock into metal; and then goes full on extreme with death growls over a downtuned backdrop that's happy to match. After that, it only gets more complex, with technical progressive metal.

So yeah, they're a symphonic gothic metal band. They're a progressive death metal band. They're an experimental alternative rock band. And they're not uncommonly all of those things at once. It shouldn't shock if I highlight that the band's favourite albums include records by Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, David Sylvian, Pantera and, well, the Beatles. All of those bands can be found here and a whole lot more, across a multitude of genres, but they're all subsumed into a unique Dir en Grey sound. The most obvious is probably Pantera.

Schadenfreude, the pleasure generated by seeing someone else's troubles, is an ambitious track to open up here, which I'm sure is the point. It's a breathe shy of ten minutes long and it rides the intensity levels like a rollercoaster. There are points where it's almost music box quiet, but points where it's metalcore intense. The band leader is Kaoru, who plays lead guitar, but the wildcard of the band, who matches every instrumental shift, is vocalist Kyo, who reminds of a Japanese Mike Patton. He doesn't just sing in multiple styles, he vocalises in even more. To my mind, it's the best thing on this album, whether as a song or as any particular part of one.

In a way, if you like the sheer variety in this one song, you may like this album too because it does a similar job across fifty-plus minutes. However, it's not really that simple, because Schadenfreude's long enough to do those things but also short enough for our brain to acknowledge it as an entity of its own. The album is the former but not the latter, so we inevitably break it down into a bunch of eleven individual songs and most of those are not long enough to do what Schadenfreude does, so have to succeed or not with smaller sonic palettes.

The other song that is long enough to sit alongside Schadenfreude is its bookend at the other end of the album, カムイ, which translates to Kamuy, a divine being in Ainu mythology that exists in a state of spiritual energy. It's a strange track, not as fast or urgent as Schadenfreude but with a lot of fascinating texture. There's a tango in there and a whole lot of subtle operatics from Kyo that I found delightful. It's not quite as varied as the opener but it's just as grand and it highlights that the current Dir en Grey really need room for their songs to breathe.

By the way, that's not unusual subject matter for this band, who have generated controversy with their videos. The album title this time out references a torture device, the Brazen Bull, an ancient Greek statue built from bronze in which victims were burned alive, their screams manipulated into sounding like the bellowing of a bull. It was commissioned by Phalaris, a Sicilian tyrant, hence the album's title.

The video this time out is for The Perfume of Sins, which is a mostly up tempo death metal number that gets more complex with its orchestration overlays. It's not my favourite piece here by a long shot, but the video does feature the Brazen Bull and a whole slew of other torture devices amidst other dark imagery. It feels deviant for the sake of being deviant though, carefully tailored to its iconography, and that lessens the impact. It's not raw enough or visceral enough. It's deviant chic and that feels odd for Dir en Grey, given how wild Kyo can get.

I'm fonder of songs like Utsutsu, Bouga o Kurau, because it's far happier to be its own thing. There are all sorts of elements to this one that I recognise, but I haven't heard them in this combination before and the jagged beat ensures that it remains a fascinating collection of fragments that has a groove all of its own. Ochita Koto no Aru Sora also walks the line wonderfully between frantically out of control metalcore and tight death metal riffing.

And, excluding the epic bookends which are easily my favourite tracks here, this is what I like best about Dir en Grey, a feeling that everything's going totally off the rails but somehow never quite does, because it's all planned and very carefully and skilfully executed. It's a pretty decent album for their twenty-fifth anniversary. I didn't like everything, but I appreciated what I didn't.

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