Dawn of Solace - Affliction Vortex

Country: Finland
Style: Gothic Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 14 Feb 2025
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Tuomas Saukkonen seems to be alternating his bands lately. The previous Dawn of Solace album, Flames of Perdition, came out in 2022, then Before the Dawn released Stormbringers in 2023 and Wolfheart issued Draconian Darkness in 2024. Now he's back to Before the Dawn for their fourth album and the third I've reviewed here at Apocalypse Later. For anyone new to all of these, he's a Finnish multi-instrumentalist, Wolfheart play melodic death metal, Dawn of Solace play gothic metal and Before the Dawn are in between, playing both.

This album follows closely from its predecessor, many songs starting out in gothic rock territory but building into a metal crunch. The metal is usually relatively slow and doomy, with occasional shifts in tempo like the glorious urgency midway through Invitation. The vocals are mostly clean, courtesy of Mikko Heikkilä, best known for Kaunis Kuolematon, but Saukkonen occasionally adds a harsh voice, starting on Fortress. I like both voices—Heikkilä's an elegant tenor, Saukkonen's a rich growl—but they're also highly compatible. Into the Light and Perennial put them into close proximity, Dream combines them and both work a lot better than the alternation of verses in Fortress.

In fact, Into the Light is the point where this album grabbed me. I'm used to these Dawn of Solace albums taking a while to take firm root in my brain. That happened with both Waves and Flames of Perdition and it happened here too. First time through, it sounded good but ephemeral, with nothing sticking. Second time through, Into the Light stood up for attention. Third time through, it s all started to take hold and I was relishing riffs and melodies like they were old favourites. Why it takes me a few listens with Dawn of Solace, I don't know, because that usually happens with much more complex music than this, but it happens nonetheless.

Whatever the reason, Into the Light is the first gem. Murder opens up capably enough but it also ends rather unsatisfyingly, just wandering out of the door as if it doesn't think we're paying any attention to it. Fortress is decent enough too, but seems to missing something. Into the Night is perfectly formed, with an achingly slow beat in the verses that stays achingly slow even when an entirely different beat leaps into action alongside it. Somehow it's doomy and urgent all at once and that makes it fascinating. Add a strong melodic line and those two voices working very nicely together and it becomes quite the track.

It's followed by another gem in Rival, which is so effortlessly elegant that it seems to be carved out of mahogany. If there's some My Dying Bride to be found in Into the Light, there's plenty of Paradise Lost in Rival, especially in the guitarwork during the first minute. Then it drops away to create a sense of space for Heikkilä's delicious voice to explore the way we expect from someone like Soen. And then everything builds powerfully, all the more so on Invitation, into gothic metal crunch like we'd expect from Lacrimas Profundere but with those hints at doom/death that come especially from Saukkonen's vocals.

Put all that together and the result a heady mix that's right up my alley. Everything that follows is decent at the very least, the first two songs being the weakest for me, but the best of them sit at the heart of the album, especially Into the Light and Rival but with Invitation on their heels. It plays consistently from there, with Perennial perhaps playing up the doom/death even more and the closer, Mother Earth, following suit with a minute and a half of soothing electronica tacked onto the end to fade out the album. Nothing here lasts past five minutes, including Mother Earth, if we discount that outro.

And so this is another strong album from Dawn of Solace that took me a few listens to fully grasp. I'll figure out why one day. For now, I just let it play and feel very little, let it play again and feel a little more, let it play a third time and suddenly it's right up my alley and I wondering why it took me so long to realise it. What are the odds that album number five, probably due after the next from Before the Dawn and Wolfheart releases, works exactly the same way? Pretty good, I think.

Pentagram - Lightning in a Bottle (2025)

Country: USA
Style: Psychedelic Doom Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 31 Jan 2025
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It's great to hear Pentagram again and with such a strong return. This is their first studio album in ten years and they clearly want to Live Again, given how bouncy the opener of that title is. This is doom metal for sure, but it's also a lot of other things. There's a punk attitude to a lot of it. There are all sorts of nods back to the classic rock era, not only to the seventies and eighties but back to the sixties as well. Bobby Liebling is on vocals, as we expect, having apparently cleaned up his act personally—part of the band's absence was due to his jail sentence for elder abuse—but the rest of the band is brand new, everyone else having joined in 2024.

Live Again is a strong opener, but it's not my favourite track here for a number of reasons. One is a very memorable repeated section that's lifted from UFO's Lights Out, just instead of rolling on as Michael Schenker solos, the riff is given a way to stop and start again. I wasn't expecting that on a Pentagram album, but it shouldn't be that surprising. Their particular brand of doom was always a fluid thing, trawling in influences from all over the musical map. Another is the odd drop right at the end of the song, which doesn't work for me, unlike every other drop on the album.

I should note as an aside, given that it's absolutely not a third reason, that I also mishear one line of lyrics every time. "I'm walking the tightrope," sings Liebling. "Never gonna fall, like a cat with Maine Coon paws." It's a great line, but I could swear blind that he actually sings "like a cat with Maine Coon balls." Now, that subtle alteration really says the same thing, but in a very different way, one that arguably features far more attitude.

The first half is very strong, with guitarist Tony Reed delivering a good solo on Live Again and even better ones on In the Panic Room and Dull Pain. There are more on the second half, in I'll Certainly See You in Hell and Lightning in a Bottle, but they're sparser. Liebling is also on top form here, not least on Lady Heroin, the album's standout track, which feels acutely heartfelt. He isn't singing a set of lyrics here; he's pouring out his soul.

Lady Heroin is an unusual song, because it truly revolves around the vocal performance instead of a killer riff. I've never shot up with heroin, but I wonder if the songwriting mimics what Liebling is feeling when he does. Initially, the music barrels along behind him, led by Henry Vasquez's drums, like a nightmarish rotoscope. Later it drops into a mellow section, as if the fury has abated and an element of welcoming calm replaces it. Eventually, it finds a doomy grind, as if the calm is always a transitory thing and that's the catch to the whole thing. Liebling starts out channelling Ozzy, as he sometimes does, and that returns during the mellow section, but he moves beyond that into some sort of dark soul outpouring far more bleakly and honestly than Glenn Danzig ever managed.

Given that it's as much psychedelic or even progressive rock as it is doom metal, I should point out that there's plenty of psychedelic rock here. The delicious drop in In the Panic Room is right out of psychedelic rock and the one in I Spoke to Death isn't far from it. I adore this drop, though it's only one reason why this is my favourite song. The opening riff is the best one on the album for me and it does have competition. I appreciate Vasquez's patience too, because I expect him to kick in hard much sooner than he does and he catches me out every time. This is the most traditional Sabbath-esque the album gets and that's not a bad thing.

Talking of old school influences, the second half kicks off with I'll Certainly See You in Hell, which is even older. It reminds me just how long this band's been active, Liebling and Geof O'Keefe putting it together in 1971, while this grandfather of ten was busy being born. It's doom with a strong punk attitude and a drive that comes straight out of Love. Remember Seven and Seven Is? Love put that out in 1966 and it's still inspiring new songs almost sixty years later.

I don't find the second half as strong, but that's an exception, as is the title track, which is calm in the verses and jaunty in the chorus. The tempo picks up, of course, but it's another good one. And then there's the other real surprise for me, namely the closer, Walk the Sociopath. It's a very slow song, which might sound redundant for a doom metal album, but remember this is a lot of things as well as doom. It's shockingly slow, in comparison to the ten songs before it. It does pick up late and it's a very good song, but it feels like an odd and surprisingly isolated way to wrap up.

All in all, this is a strong return for Pentagram and I'm going to go with an 8/10 but only just. Some of it is clearly not up to the quality of the rest, not necessarily filler material but songs that aren't ever going to hit as hard as the others around them. The new fish are great, not just Vasquez and Reed but bass player Scooter Haslip too, whose playing is easily delineated in this excellent mix. A more surprising note perhaps is that Liebling sounds fantastic here, given how much he's been his own worst enemy for a long, long time (and one to others too, including former bandmates). Lady Heroin may be his finest single performance ever. So it's more like a 7.5/10 but I'm rounding up not down.

Spell Garden - Witches Coven Vol. 2 (2024)

Country: Brazil/Argentina
Style: Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
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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!

Yaşru - Bilinmeze (2024)

Country: Turkey
Style: Doom Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 20 Apr 2024
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Yaşru have been around since 2009 and they play doom metal with occasional folk elements and an atmospheric overlay. This is their sixth album, but it's my first by them and I'm impressed. I do like my doom and I like it even more when it crosses into folk metal, as this does often. Both Dünya and Gün Batımında open with long intros of Berk Öner playing ethnic Turkish instruments and I'd be up for listening to both these songs even if they didn't eventually heavy up with metal crunch. There's also a clean vocal in the latter, and it becomes more frequent as the album runs on, making for an additional obvious folk element.

Initially, Öner, who sings and plays guitar in addition to those ethnic instruments, sings harsh, but it's a growl that aims for texture rather than aggression. Sometimes it's forceful and sometimes gentle, but it has a rich timbre that reminded me of Seigneur V. Sangdragon from Winds of Sirius, a French gothic metal band I wish had recorded more than one album. This approach continues to grow with the album too, perhaps most evident on the title track, when it's a gentle rumble that's happy to play with emphasis under the atmospheric keyboard overlay.

Dünya is a wonderful opening track, the longest song on the album at a breath over eight minutes and one that builds over that time. After that folk intro, it finds a groove and milks it, with Öner's voice gradually growing as it goes, initially buried so deeply in the mix that it seems to be more of a texture than a delivery mechanism for lyrics but eventually taking over as the focal point. Much of the groove comes from a repetitive riff, Öner's guitar merging with Ömer Serezli's bass, but an evocative keyboard layer keeps it constantly interesting.

I'm not seeing anyone credited on keyboards and it sounds far too electronic to count as another ethnic instrument, but those keyboards shape Yaşru's sound far more substantially than I thought on a first listen. They never seem to do anything flash, just add a slowly dancing texture over what the traditional instruments are doing. However, the resulting combination draws us into an almost trance state and we start imagining that it's doing things that I seriously doubt it's actually doing, like veering into choral effects. I'm pretty sure they're not there, but I kept hearing them anyway.

Bilinmeze translates from the Turkish as Into the Unknown and there's some of that here, Kozmik Yolculuk being roughly what you think it is, a Cosmic Journey. However, unknown here felt like the shadowy world of dream rather than the far reaches of space. These journeys aren't taking us just to somewhere we've never been, which the folk elements might suggest, but a different world on which the rules we're used to reality following simply don't apply. Certainly, time seemed to pass at a different rate while I listened. It's not a particularly long album, at just over half an hour, but it's at once over in a blink and substantial enough to last forever.

Maybe that's partly because Yaşru don't seem to vary what they do but actually evolve across the course of the album. Dünya has that ethnic intro, but it finds its groove and pretty much stays on it throughout, Kozmik Yolculuk following suit. When Gün Batımında shifts back to the ethnic intro approach, we think we're looping back to hear another Dünya, but it adds the clean voice that's a nudge further into folk metal. That returns on the title track and, by the time Son Nefes wraps up the album, appropriately enough given that it means Last Breath, we start to wonder how much of the vocals were clean. Over the first half of the album, not a heck of a lot. Over the second half, surely a far more considerable amount.

I liked Dünya immediately and I keep coming back to it, but the other songs keep growing on me. Bilinmeze is a full minute shorter and it seems to have a much simpler groove, but it won't leave me be. I fall into it every time through, never mind that I don't understand the Turkish lyrics and never mind how much more I notice Serezli's elegant bass runs on each subsequent listen. It's just hypnotic to me, perhaps even more than the album as a whole. So I'll call out Dünya and Bilinmeze as highlights, along with Gün Batımında, which means At Sunset.

Three highlights out of five means an 8/10, I think, and I don't want to move on to something else. This album is already becoming an old friend. I have a feeling I might be coming back to this often for feelgood purposes. I feel acutely comfortable in its company but it also refuses to let me think too deeply about it. It's one of those albums that will always be there, doing its thing regardless of what I might want but bleeding closer into my veins as it does so. Now I have five earlier albums to explore to see how Yaşru got to this sound. I look forward to the yolculuk.

My Dying Bride - A Mortal Binding (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Doom/Death Metal
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 6 May 2024
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I liked My Dying Bride's previous album, 2020's The Ghost of Orion, rather a lot, though it's proved a little polarising with fans. Some see it as the best thing they've ever done, while others, well, do not with vehemence. I wonder what the reaction to this one will be, given that it's less a follow up and more a reaffirmation of everything that this band does. Sure, as with that prior album, it's all fundamentally doom metal, but it's done with serious emphasis this time, almost as if they didn't mean it before and they really, really mean it now.

Lead vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe moved a little back into the band's original doom/death territory on The Ghost of Orion, but he doubles down here, practically spitting out his lyrics at the start of opener, Her Dominion. He stays harsh for much of this song and he follows suit on a bunch of other tracks, most obviously The Apocalyptist. Of course, he doesn't stay there throughout, shifting to a clean melancholy voice for Thornwyck Hymn and The 2nd of Three Bells, but returning to harsh when a song needs it. There's a neat alternation between clean and harsh on Crushed Embers as he duets with himself.

Maybe it's just the crisp production by Mark Mynett, but it feels like the two guitarists, Andrew Craighan and Neil Blanchett, both mean it all the more this time too. The riffing here is cavernous from the glorious staccato riff early in Her Dominion onwards. The slower metal gets, the more important the riffs become. The riffs on this album are consistently instant, few of them remotely complex and some slow enough to be sets of power chords, but every one nailing what it needs to do. For something completely different, there's an elegant duet between acoustic and electric guitars to open up A Starving Heart too.

Back to the production again, the bass of Lena Abé is easily distinguishable within the mix and it's far more than just an underpinning for the heaviness of the guitars. Of course, it does that and it does it deliciously, but it also does a lot more, especially in moments where the guitars step back and Abé often carries on, often serving as the change between sections. The drum sound is strong too and returning drummer Dan Mullins, who played with My Dying Bride from 2007-2012, joining at the same time as Abé, who never left, has a varied approach that's sometimes patient but also sometimes prominent, as on Unthroned Creed where he could easily have held back far more but adds a jagged rhythm instead.

That leaves Shaun McGowan, who's responsible for the vast majority of the gothic feel nowadays, not through his keyboards but through his violin. Those keyboards are there right from the start, adding texture behind the opening of Her Dominion, but we have to pay attention to hear it over most of the album. The violin, on the other hand, dominates whenever it shows up, which is often. It's a perfect instrument to echo the melancholy of Stainthorpe's clean vocals, but it works just as well adding that aching feel behind his harsh voice too on The Apocalyptist, and of course serving as a soloing instrument.

Apparently there was tension within the band while they were recording this, which ought to be a shame. We always want people to get along, but maybe that friction helped bring the vibrancy to this album that wasn't there last time out. Is it anger and frustration that fuels the attitude that pervades this album? I have no idea, but whatever it is worked a charm. Everything here is stellar. Of course, it tends to happen this way but my first 9/10 for the year came as recently as 29th April and yet here's another one on 3rd May. I loved it on a first listen but it just gets better on repeats.

Her Dominion kicks it off hard with angry harsh vocals and a vicious punch of a riff. Opening single Thornwyck Hymn and The 2nd of Three Bells shift back to the clean approach they ran with for lots of albums. All three are excellent songs, but Unthroned Creed raises the bar with a solid chugging riff and a catchy vocal line, the combination reminding of Candlemass. On my first time through, The Apocalyptist after it was my favourite of these seven tracks by far, but, on each return visit, Unthroned Creed threatens to match it.

That said, The Apocalyptist is gorgeous. It's the longest track here and it's the standout, its riffs simple but thoroughly effective, it's vocals blistering. Stainthorpe gets serious attitude into his death growls here and no less feeling in the clean ones. There's also a delightful violin during the elegant midsection and the song grows and evolves effortlessly, even though it travels quite a lot of ground over its eleven and a half minutes. A Starving Heart is an achingly slow counter with a vocal that moves from pleading to angry to commanding. Crushed Embers takes the album home with style.

This is a generous album at almost fifty-five minutes, even if it's slightly shorter than The Ghost of Orion, and it's consistently strong throughout. I'm half a dozen listens in now and, every time, I'm just as engrossed by every song as on my first time through. I liked its predecessor enough to give it a highly recommended 8/10 here, but this is easily a step up. I wonder how the folk who see that one as their best album thus far—I don't, by the way—will see this one.

The Obsessed - Gilded Sorrow (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 16 Feb 2024
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This may be an odd confession to make, but I don't believe that I've ever heard the Obsessed. I've heard their lead singer and lead guitarist, Scott 'Wino' Weinrich, because he fronted Saint Vitus in the late eighties and he appeared on Dave Grohl's overlooked Probot album. However, while he formed this band as far back as 1979, it only released some demos and a single before he joined Saint Vitus. After his time in that band, he reformed the Obsessed but their albums showed up in the early nineties when life was taking over from music for me.

If I ever heard them, it would be the track that was on Metal Massacre VI, but I don't recall it, so I get to finally catch up through their fifth album. The first three came out between 1990 and 1994 and four arrived another split and reformation later in 2017, soon before I started up Apocalypse Later Music. Clearly I need to go back to those earlier albums because I like this, not that it shocks me at all. What surprises me is that it took this long for me to catch up.

Well, there's another surprise in store with the opening couple of tracks, Daughter of an Echo and It's Not OK, because they're perky doom, downtuned but up tempo and I'd somehow got it into my brain that the Obsessed played more traditional doom but with punk influences. Maybe they did. I wasn't there. I like these tracks, though, which do have a punk energy to them but are played with metal precision. That punk energy extends to Wino's vocals, because the perkier a song gets, the more conversational he becomes in his delivery. Not everything adopts that approach here but it returns as an approach in Jailine.

That all changes on Realize a Dream, which starts out aiming to set a mood and shifts into more of a hard rock sound. The tone is the same, but the influence is less Black Sabbath and more the Cult, just slower, as if it's a single played at 33rpm instead of 45. Accordingly, Wino sings this song more than converses with us. Jailine is even more obviously Cult-inspired, with some Danzig in there for good measure and even a hint of Sisters of Mercy in the chorus too. It's all downtuned though and back to perky doom. It's a heady mixture and I like it a lot.

The title track is much slower and more overtly doom, with vocals that start out spoken word and endowing it with an epic wasteland feel. Maybe it and the similarly slow but bouncier Stoned Back to the Bomb Age and Wellspring are what I was expecting from the Obsessed. The former is bleak but the latter slow bounces with Wino returning to conversational vocals, loose but always firmly on point, even throwing in dismissive laughter in Stoned Back to the Bomb Age when the lyrics ask for it. It's not a happy song, raging against politicians.

There's more variety late in the album, with Lucky Free Nice Machine closing out like a hard rock guitar solo. It's only a minute long and it's entirely instrumental, Wino's guitar taking a moment in the spotlight but the rhythm section of doom bolstering him wonderfully. None of them are old time members, though drummer Brian Constantino was on that previous album, Sacred, having joined in 2016. Jason Taylor on rhythm guitar and Chris Angleberger on bass both arrived in 2022. Before it, Yen Sleep goes back to traditional doom, plodding along with just enough bounce to be engaging rather than bleak. It features my favourite guitar solo of any of these songs.

Oddly, though, given how much I like traditional doom and dip happily into funeral doom, most of my favourite songs here are the perky ones, most obviously It's Not OK and Jailine. I'm also fond of Realize a Dream and Yen Sleep, two very different tracks indeed. That means that, while I have finally heard an Obsessed album, I'm not entirely sure which of these sounds is their core one and I really ought to go back and dip into the earlier ones to see where this came from.

Qilin - Parasomnia (2024)

Country: France
Style: Psychedelic Rock/Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Jan 2024
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This album is a few months old now, so counts as less recent than I tend to prefer to review here at Apocalypse Later, but I enjoyed Qilin's debut album, Petrichor, so much in 2020, that I didn't want to miss out on its follow-up when it crossed my path recently. I also didn't want to wait until next January when I do catch up on what I missed from 2024, because I'd probably forget and then feel bad when I stumble onto it again, having missed my window.

Qilin are French and they play heavy instrumental rock that straddles the border with metal. You could fairly describe what they do as psychedelic rock but it's just as often doom metal and all the best pieces move between the two. That's one way in which this album echoes the debut. Most of the tracks are long and the band, which I believe remains unchanged from last time, allow them to breathe, which leaves room for a couple of modes. There's the heavy mode, with the bass turned up high and the guitars switching between cavernous riffs and wailing solos. And then there's the mellow mode, which is much softer and drenched in atmosphere.

The result is as immersive as last time out but oddly still mostly fails to work as a travel agent for me. What I mean there is that instrumental psychedelic rock often takes me places. Sure, I listen to it as music but it also sends me on a journey too. I have aphantasia so can't frame images in my head, but I still get impressions in the form of feelings. These albums often make me feel like I'm on another planet or drifting between the stars, to cite just two common examples. This doesn't, though it hints at it in those mellow sections.

Instead, it remains stubbornly music, but it's music that I really enjoy. It's heavy but melodic and it's immersive, as if it's so big that it surrounds me. It starts out achingly slow with three minutes of funeral doom called Ouro, that's emphatically an intro to set up the sound palette and lead us into the best track, Lethean Dreams. This isn't three minutes long, needless to say—it runs eight and half—and it builds carefully.

It begins mellow in the closest section anywhere on the album to take me somewhere. It feels like I'm in a huge echoing cavern, perhaps like the cover art, but I'm not the character walking towards it. I'm inside waiting. There's a real sense of patience to it, as if there's no reason to move at all, a feeling of centering where I settle down and wait for everything to come to me. And it does, but I sit, safe and still, in the middle of that cavern while the music changes around me. Even when the song ramps up into heavy mode, playing out like a force of nature, I'm not part of it. I'm calm and unaffected, but not unappreciative, as it rages around me. I listen and enjoy.

And I remain there for forty calm minutes, listening and enjoying, while the remaining four pieces of music play out, along with an interlude in the middle of them. It's odd to see an interlude, as it's not uncommon for the shift between heavy and mellow to effectively incorporate interludes as an inherent songwriting component, but Innervision is very mellow and introduces the heaviest piece on offer, which is the bludgeoning Hundred-Handed Wards.

I like Qilin when they're being mellow, though Innervision may be the weakest such section on the album. However, I like them most when they're raging and the swirl of tasty feedback that wraps up Hundred-Handed Wards is raging indeed. It's probably beaten only by the finale to On Migoi's Trail and the core of Lethean Dreams. I love how they generate maelstroums of energy and whip them around like ancient wizards, destroying everything in their wake yet never losing control of their tools of destruction.

These two aspects constitute the majority of the album, but there's one further touch I should let you know about, because it surprises me every time those waves of feedback in Hundred-Handed Wards feedback subside and Qilin launch into the final track. This is Boros and it opens up entirely like AC/DC. Sure, the bass is drenched in fuzz, but that's an AC/DC build if I've ever heard one. It's happy to not continue down that path as the piece grows and no vocalist shows up, whether Brian Johnson or anyone else, but it does still stay perkier than anything else on the album, even as the longest track here. It doesn't really slow down until about halfway through its nine minutes and it doesn't calm until six and a half minutes in.

And so that's Parasomnia, which refers to sleep disorders that crop in when you're not asleep but not truly awake either. Your brain is still only partially awake and that does seem to be the perfect time to let an album like this wash over you. That would be a way to start the day!

Chimeras - Silent Cries in the Stifling Haze (2024)

Country: Hong Kong
Style: Atmospheric Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 6 Jan 2024
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I've only reviewed one album from Hong Kong thus far at Apocalypse Later, from a one-man post-black metal project called Voyage in Solitude, so it's about time I reviewed another. This is a band, who put out a demo and a single in 2018 but are debuting at the full length here. They play doom metal with an aching atmospheric mood but in a way that isn't always as slow as we might expect. Also, both lead vocalists are female, one lead and one backing, but one sings clean and the other harsh, depending on what a particular song needs in a particular moment.

The lead singer is Fraise Tam and she sings entirely clean on Devoidness. This is elegant doom that builds patiently with quietness and spoken vocals until crunch arrives two minutes in, even then a crunch that's tempered by a soft piano melody over the top. The song is slow and Tam's vocals are haunting without moving far into gothic. There's melancholy in the keyboards and pleading in the guitars. This fits an established doom metal template well enough, but there are points where it's surprising because it speeds up further than we expect.

Hidden Label adds the harsh voice, which I'm guessing belongs to guitarist Winnie Manka but I'm unsure isn't also Tam at points. Even on Mind Deception, where the two voices duet, it could be a couple of tracks from one singer combined. Another element that shows up on Hidden Label is an affinity for symphonic flourishes, presumably courtesy of Andy Shun Hung's keyboards. This never truly becomes symphonic metal, but it starts to hint in that direction here and moves closer still on The Seven Doors - Barbe Bleue -.

This is where the album coalesced for me, the contrasts between clean and harsh vocals and also between slower aching drive and symphonic flourishes, Tam reaching especially high and Manka staying low. There's a real epic feel to this one, even though it's no longer than Devoidness and a minute or two shorter than the next couple of songs, Mind Deception and Order of Chaos. There's a gorgeous clockwork section a minute and a half in and an excellent guitar solo too, proving that Chimeras aren't merely able to generate mood, they can be innovative with it too.

Mind Deception may be their oldest song, given that it was their 2018 single and it also featured as half of their demo, which is interesting to me, because it's easily the slowest song here, kicking off that way right from the outset and not speeding up until after the halfway mark of eight and a half minutes. It drops into a peaceful midsection before that with spoken vocals—well, whispered vocals—and sparing but melodious keyboards, before picking up that emphasis and chugging on for a while. Eventually it slows back down and ends with some elegant keyboard work to take it all home. It's my favourite song here apart from The Seven Doors - Barbe Bleue -.

That leaves two, because it seemed logical for me to run through this one uncharacteristically in order because of how it changes, gradually introducing new elements as it goes. Order of Chaos starts out very much like the last couple of songs, but speeds up considerably a few minutes in to almost blister along for a while. This never becomes thrash metal or anything like that, but it's a speedy pace indeed for doom and it stays there for a surprising upbeat minute, leaping headlong into it from another slow keyboard section. This is the real epic of the album and it's a tasty one, with a fascinating midsection, again much of it courtesy of Andy Shun Hung.

Winged Psyche, however, refuses to do almost anything that's gone before, not even approaching metal at any point. It's hardly an outro as a six minute plus song, but it's sung entirely clean and the guitars are either acoustic or quiet electric. From atmospheric doom metal, this shifts firmly into Wishbone Ash territory. That's not a bad thing, of course, and it's a good song, albeit more of a showcase for Tam than for the guitarists. It's just unexpected and what you feel about it may be in part due to whether you like being unexpected forty minutes into an album.

I liked this. It seems to me that Chimeras are still figuring out precisely what they want the sound of the band to be, possibly because these songs were likely written over quite a period of time. At least Hidden Label and Mind Deception are at least six years old, potentially up to eleven, as the band formed as far back as 2013. I don't know how often they play live, but I hope they write more frequently going forward, so we can hear an entirely new album that represents exactly who they are at that point in time.

Green Lung - This Heathen Land (2023)

Country: UK
Style: Occult Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 Nov 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I came into this with high expectations. I liked Green Lung's debut album in 2019, Woodland Rites, and I loved their follow-up a couple of years later, Black Harvest. Well, it's two years on again and here's another one, as if to schedule. I like the cover, which is a neat taken on Penguin paperbacks. The green colour rather than the traditional orange is surely because of Green Lung's name, but I know they published with green covers too, albeit mostly for crime, if memory serves. I also liked the ethnohistorical prologue, as if the band's culture is being explored by the BBC half a century ago, with a combination of fascination and quiet establishment judgement.

It took a while for this album to meet my expectations though. The Forest Church is a solid opener but it's a little overt and with a riff/melody combination that annoyingly reminds of the Inspector Gadget theme tune, even if there's a great instrumental section in the second half. Maxine (Witch Queen) features a glorious organ line behind the riffs, but then turns into a pop song. It's overt as well and highlights how the band is pushing a gimmick, which takes a little of the magic away from me.

In other words, for a while, this is just as blatantly occult rock as their most obvious comparison, Cathedral, were blatantly doom metal. Now, the band as a whole, especially vocalist Tom Templar, play it straight, refusing to acknowledge that this is cheesy but also knowing that we can hear the nod and a wink. There was a lot of this on the debut album but not so much on the follow-up. I was hoping that they'd left it behind.

Fortunately, before long, they do. The Forest Church and Mountain Throne are solid openers, the latter being decent stoner rock bearing its Black Sabbath influence proudly. Maxine (Witch Queen) is pop music but it's a fun pop, always elevated by John Wright's organ. But then they get serious, with One for Sorrow taking things up a level and Song of the Stones adding a quality folk counter. Suddenly we're in the album we should have been in all along and the best news is that we remain there until it wraps with the epic Oceans of Time.

My favourite songs are the first two of those and it's not remotely surprising to see a comment on the album's Bandcamp page about how well these played on a small stage. One for Sorrow is a big song, dipping overtly into the Cathedral songbook to give us doom metal that's tempered for the verses. It's the first song here that feels like it means it, which infuses it with power, and a delicate keyboard line over crunching riffs late on is absolutely delightful. Song of the Stones is absolutely not a big song. It's a very personal song and it's an able folk counterpart to One for Sorrow.

I mentioned in my review of Woodland Rites that it felt like the most overtly folk song, which was May Queen, could have been recorded in a clearing in the middle of a wood, instead of within the walls of a studio. That very much applies to Song of the Stones too, which builds from a slow ritual hand drum beat and soft guitar into a real chant. It simply commands that we listen and it has to be magnetic played on stage in a small venue. If we close our eyes, we ought to feel the leaves.

The final three songs can't match that pair but they do play very well indeed. The Ancient Ways is a doom metal song that retains a folk rock feel. It feels honest and heartfelt and plays so maturely that it's a real grower. There's lots more Cathedral in Hunters in the Sky. Was that a death grunt to kick us off? I think it was. I love the drums behind the riffs during the midsection and there's an impressive organ solo too. And Oceans of Time is the epic I mentioned, going for that feel from the very outset, built with keyboard melody over a soft drone. It's the longest track here and it does a lot with its almost seven minutes.

And so this isn't the killer third album that I was hoping it would be, but it gets there midway, with a couple of absolute gems. The tracks after them feel mature and worthy, but those before them don't. I enjoyed them anyway, don't get me wrong, Maxine (Witch Queen) being highly infectious, but they don't feel like they belong on the same album. They're a level behind what follows them, if not a couple, and would surely have felt even more out of place had they been dotted amongst those other tracks. Every time I listen through this, it truly begins for me with One for Sorrow.

I guess that leaves Green Lung at a crossroads. They can go the cheesy route that Cathedral took, playing serious with over the top material, and become a gimmick band. They have the chops that would make that work, as these first three songs suggest. Or they can treat their occult mindset seriously and merge folk music with metal power like the rest of the album. Those songs right at the heart of the album underline how well they do this and the rest back up their ability. The key point is that, while either way would be valid, choosing both ways feels like a real cheat. Let's see where they go in another couple of years with album number four.

Mourning Sun - Bahía desolación (2023)

Country: Chile
Style: Atmospheric Doom Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 8 Dec 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | YouTube

Here's something really interesting. It came to me labelled as atmospheric doom metal, though I see that they've used avant-garde doom metal themselves. That's not unfair as the opening title track kicks off, but much of this moves a long way away from metal, if not necessarily from doom, a miasma of bleakness pervading the album whatever style it's adopting. Bahía desolación means Desolation Bay and it definitely feels like the people of this remote outpost want a horror movie to happen to them and are depressed that it hasn't yet.

Mourning Sun hail from Santiago in Chile and this is their second album after Último exhalario in 2016. The band clearly belongs to its vocalist, Ana Carolina, who has a singular vision of what she wants it to sound like. She's the only consistent point between that debut album and this one, and even though it was released as recently as 8th December, nobody else playing on it is apparently still in the band today. I see a different line-up documented, as of 2023 with Ana Carolina the only continuing name. Then again, there's a lot here that I don't believe is played by the people that I see listed.

That's because there are two angles to this sound that aren't coming from the regular line-up of rock instruments, the typical two guitars, bass and drums. There's orchestration here right from the outset on the title track and there are sections in songs that feel avant-garde classical, never foreground but often interesting in the background, whether it's piano or strings or horns. Given that the other angle is electronica, it's very possible that all that orchestration is generated from synths, but someone's playing them and I have no idea who.

In fact, whole swathes of this album play to me like electronica. Distant Pulse is only the first one, its first three minutes free of metal and most regular instrumentation. Ana Carolina's voice floats over electronica, clouds of synths providing the backdrop and a piano providing melody. The piano prowls in Deep Downward, No Escape too, which waits a long while to provide some metal crunch, unfolding for the longest time as a dark take on synthwave that isn't the traditional darkwave.

As the album reaches the end of its first half with Ecstatic Magellanism, I felt that the overall tone had shifted into post punk. The crunch shows up a couple of minutes in, as it tends to do on many of these songs, but Ana Carolina continues to sing an ethereal post punk that owes more to vocalists like Siouxsie Sioux and Lisa Gerrard than anyone in metal. She finds some power at the tail end of this one, stretching herself in a direction that she'd steadfastly ignored for four songs otherwise.

She's more vehement in Ad Misericordiam too, pleading from the outset, but she begins Substral Allure as if she's a singer/songwriter and delivers uncharacteristically standard rock vocals late in Inner Crux, as if she's suddenly turned into a diva performing in a talent show. And, of course, the next phrase shifts her right back to ethereal vocalisation. For someone who clearly has power, she consistently avoids using it, preferring that light and airy but somehow still substantial approach.

I'm talking a lot here about Ana Carolina because this is clearly her vision and she shapes it with a fascinating vocal performance to which everything else reacts. However, she's not alone here and the backing musicians, as patient as they must be given that they're only called for when needed rather than all the time, are required to make this work.

Hermaunt Folatre delivers a heavy bass in Distant Pulse that's all the more obvious because of the lack of guitars above it. Those guitars, played here by Rodrigo Morris and Ramón Pasternak, get a few moments to shine, like when they leap out of a keyboard haze early in Ad Misericordiam with jagged chords, or when they deliver melodies in Deep Downward, No Escape in the vein of British doom/death. That leaves Vincent Zbinden Carter on drums, who is as notable for not hitting beats as hitting them. It's fascinating to listen to Ad Misericordiam from his perspective, because there are so many things he could have done that he doesn't and they bolster what he actually does.

It's fair to say that this isn't remotely what I expected going in and it took a while for me to adjust to what Mourning Sun are doing. Halfway through Distant Pulse, I was pondering on how this could be seen as metal, let alone doom metal. There's a long electronic midsection to Ad Misericordiam where the entire band could have popped down the road for a pint without missing their moment. The same goes for most of Inner Crux. I wasn't expecting avant-garde classical textures either and moments of Vangelis and Dead Can Dance.

It haunts me though and I want to see how Ana Carolina built this sound. It's clearly time for me to seek out the debut. For now, I want to listen to this one much more. It's a fascinating, exquisitely original grower of an album.

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

Country: Greece
Style: Atmospheric Doom/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 13 Oct 2023
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On Thorns I Lay have been around for a long while, even if you haven't heard the name before, but they're not the same band they've been. They were founded in Athens back in 1992, with their first album released three years later, and they've experienced a slew of line-up changes, as tends to be the case. However, until their ninth album, Threnos in 2020, the band remained centered around a pair of founder members, lead vocalist Stefanos Kintzoglou, who also contributed bass until 2017, and guitarist Christos Dragamestianos.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mortal Blood - Fate's Overture (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Gothic Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 29 Jun 2023
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Following on from yesterday, here's another EP containing five tracks, though it really isn't, given that it's over half an hour in length. Dan Krell, the musician behind everything here, as composer, performer and producer, may well think of it as an EP but I'm thinking of it as a full length album. Maybe he sees it as not substantially longer than its predecessor, last year's Unholy Feast, which was three minutes shorter. I think my criteria nowadays is whether it's longer than Reign in Blood or not, so that counts as an EP and this an album. Is there a better guide?

Krell infuses this with an interesting sound from moment one. It's advertised as gothic doom and I can't argue with that, but there's a band that sprang out of this immediately for me that doesn't feature on the influence list on Mortal Blood's EPK and that's Celtic Frost. It's most obvious in the vocals, which are delivered in a tortured style that reminds me of their Monotheist album, a dying god sort of voice that has to be distorted because it's more vast than our comprehension, speaking to us from beyond whatever veil separates men and gods, even dying ones.

The music behind it isn't as slow or as bleak, though it does fit both of those adjectives, even if the drums constantly suggest that everything else should speed up. It's more patient than aching and the bleakness is tempered by richer guitars. It's the guitars that add a gothic feel, but even when they try to soar, the vocals chain them back down again, even if they're just rumbling rather than delivering verses. I never caught lyrics here but I got the mood immediately and the voice keeps it mired in that mood.

Speaking to Krell's cited influences, I can hear a bunch of them here. There's some Candlemass in the majestic drive of Fury and Sorrow. There's some Paradise Lost in the more gothic guitar parts from Fate's Overture onwards, especially A Monster Approaches. There's some My Dying Bride in the sonic assault during the second half of Fury and Sorrow and the melancholic flow of A Monster Approaches. If there's any Gorgoroth here, it's in the vocals. I'm not hearing much Mercyful Fate, Dark Tranquillity or Amon Amarth. This is less theatrical and more soundscape, crew rather than cast.

It's as a soundscape generator that it's most successful, an approach that brings us right back to a Celtic Frost comparison, with the vocals leading the way. Krell's voice stays tortured throughout, fascinatingly so. It's primarily that vocal that makes this so ruthlessly uncommercial, in a way that we might associate otherwise with black metal, but almost every other instrument follows suit, an exception obvious only for the drums, which mostly pander to convention with double bass. All the influences Krell cites maintained a level of commerciality in their sound, even if it was just through melody. Mortal Blood has no interest doing that, just as the Frosties never did anything that they didn't want to do, even if it turned out to be a misstep.

Now, I'm a big Celtic Frost fan, going all the way back to their Hellhammer days, so I'm on board for this approach. However, I like the first three songs a lot more than the fourth, A Hell Dream, though it is growing on me. It's a little less focused than the others, which anchor the searching gothic guitarwork with the tortured vocals. It finds itself late, but it takes a while and it lost me a little as it got there, with guitars that know exactly what they're doing but drums that feel unsure. The final track, Empower the Warrior, finds itself immediately but it has a different feel, even using the same component parts. It plays to me like a black/doom metal take on a punk song, simple at its heart but weighed down by textures.

I like this but I appreciate the unconventional and uncompromising. Krell has a particular musical vision and he's focused on that so emphatically and singlemindedly that it's almost surprising that he acknowledged the real world by releasing this material. It's going to find people and many will hate it. However, the few who appreciate its sound will also appreciate its integrity. Even when it's at its most commercial, perhaps on A Monster Approaches, it refuses to play ball with anyone but Krell himself. It is what it is and that's all that should matter. I dig that.

Grandma's Ashes - This Too Shall Pass (2023)

Country: France
Style: Stoner/Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 17 Feb 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Here's something interesting from France that taught me a new acronym. The genre here is up for grabs but I've seen FFOBR applied to it and I had no idea what that meant. It appears that Female Fronted Occult Blues Rock is a thing now and has been since at least 2015, when Doomed & Stoned journalist "Papa" Paul Rote put together a triple compilation of doom-stoner bands led by female voices, The Enchanter's Ball. I guess Coven have finally become leaders as well as pioneers, with a crop of bands in Rote's summation of the genre ones who have blown me away more recently, like Jess and the Ancient Ones, Wucan and Avatarium.

I'm not going to add Grandma's Ashes to that hallowed list quite yet, but I enjoyed this greatly and I can see it growing on me even more. They're folkier than any of the other bands I just mentioned but they range a long way, from the intro, À mon Seul Désir, which is mediaeval vocal harmonies, to something close to doom metal. Mostly, they sit in a middle ground that's sometimes psychedelic rock and sometimes prog rock but more often stoner rock. The shifts from calm folky harmonies to a raw stoner punk sound in a song like Aside, or, in the other direction, from heavy doom chords to a calm and even sassy pop sound on Caffeine are fascinating.

Frankly, everything here is fascinating. This is a debut album, though they released an EP a couple of years ago, and it's a startlingly mature mixture of different approaches. The vocals are mostly somewhere between folk and alternative pop/rock, whether they're aiming for traditional, jaunty or introspective. The guitars are the heaviest angle, with riffs right out of stoner rock and heavier bands. Borderlands ends by slowing down until it's almost recognisably Black Sabbath. The drums and, to a lesser degree, the bass represent prog or math rock, sometimes all the way into jazz, like on the saxophone assisted Interlude - Melt.

Reading interviews with the band, mostly for that EP, The Fates, highlights their influences, which are not remotely surprising. Guitarist Myriam El Moumni grew up in Morocco and so was exposed to copious amounts of African music but also grew up on classic rock before stumbling upon desert rock in Paris. Bassist Eva Hagen came up from British punk through stoner rock into a wider range of genres, like metal and prog. Drummer Edith Seguier favours math rock and prog metal. Myriam and Edith both studied jazz. All three sing here, but Eva is the lead, so I'm assuming the folky bits of the band's sound come from the dreamier aspects of desert rock.

I can't say that everything here worked for me, but that's almost inevitable with a release that's as broad in its reach. After all, this ranges from almost glitch electronica in Cruel Nature and that jazz saxophone on Interlude - Melt all the way up to doom metal in Caffeine. That's a serious range for a band on their debut album, but somehow they're able to collect all of those sounds into a single defining sound. If you played me carefully selected sections of half a dozen songs here, I'd say that they were by half a dozen different bands, but if you played me the entire songs, I'd see them as a single coherent band. That's impressive.

The catch is that it makes it tough to call out anything for special mention. What are my favourite tracks here? My cop out answer would be that you should ask me again after another few listens. I would, however, be surprised if Borderlands and Cruel Nature weren't in the shortlist, maybe with the closer, Lost at Sea, ahead of them. This adds experimental sounds into the mix and Eva's vocal is particularly emotional. Even though she sings mostly in English, I found it hard to focus on lyrics because I was too caught up in the emotional weight of the vocals which, like everything else here, have a considerable range, from fluffy soft to heartrendingly personal.

I know I like this a lot but I don't know how much yet. I need to come back to it a few more times as I get ahead of myself and free up enough moments to let it soak back in. So it's an 8/10 for now but it's not outside possibility that I'll shift that upwards at a later date.

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.

Spell Garden - Spell Garden (2023)

Country: Brazil/Argentina
Style: Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 22 Jan 2023
Sites: Instagram | Metal Archives

Well, this found me at just the right moment. Last week ended with albums that are clearly slick and capable and professional, attributes that bands strive towards, but they just left me dry. I'm talking especially about Ten and Xandria and I'm very happy to say that this second album by Spell Garden is the precise opposite and felt like a breath of fresh air. They're an international team up between one musician from Argentina and two from Brazil who play a form of doom metal that's not averse to dropping down into stoner rock and this is their second album.

Most crucially, even for a second album, it's not remotely slick. There are rough edges to be found all over this release, details that other bands would have polished smooth and gleaming, but they make this sound real. I felt this music and, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how technically brilliant you are, your job is to make people feel what you do. Spell Garden succeed magnificently at that. Ten and Xandria might impress stadiums with shows. I'd much prefer be at a club the size of my front room being deafened by Spell Garden with a stout in my hand.

Now, rough edges don't mean that Spell Garden are free of subtleties. While much of this appears to be a power trio plugging in and recording live in the studio, there are layers behind these three musicians. I don't just mean the swirling atmospheric keyboards on Mars Crimson Mountain which aren't surprising at all; I'm thinking of the violins on Lilith and the way that song drops into piano to finish up. The acoustic Spanish guitar during the intro, Daughter of the Storm, points the way to that sort of thing and it's over far too soon. It's important to note that the band don't overdo the textures. They're there when they're needed and then they get back to the crunch.

The biggest success here are the riffs, which come courtesy of Raphael Santos. These go way back to the early days of Black Sabbath in style but remind of latter days because they're so simple but effective. Back in the late eighties, I remember wondering how Tony Iommi could keep generating such effortlessly simple riffs over and over again. He'd already invented the genre and bands had been mining it for a couple of decades, but they'd all missed this simple riff and that one and the next one too. Somehow only Iommi and precious few others had access to more. Well, Santos can be added to that list. It's 2023, people. How has nobody conjured up riffs like those on Lilith, Spell Garden and Black Chapter before?

A less obvious success but a clear success nonetheless are the drums of Allan Caique. For much of the album, he's not doing anything flash, but I love the cymbal sound and he does delightful work with those cymbals on Dogma and Ritual of High Magic and especially during the breakdown late in Mars Crimson Mountain. I adore how the latter works its way to a logical conclusion, only for the cymbals to keep going until the band ramps back up and Santos launches into a brief guitar solo. It reminded me of some of what Michael Giles did on the first King Crimson album.

Less successful are the vocals, but I need to explain. Two musicians share vocal duties here and I'm not sure which is which, but there's a clean voice and a harsh voice. The clean voice shows up first, on Goddess Roots, the first track proper, and it's capable if hardly spectacular. It shows a lot more character on Spell Garden, because it's emphasised, rather like a heavily accented South American Iggy Pop recorded guerrilla style. The harsh voice is great when it's an accent, as on Spell Garden, but less effective when it's the lead, as on Black Chapter, because too much of it at any one time is a clear indicator of how limited it actually is.

And here's where rating systems prove frustrating. I gave Ten and Xandria 7/10s because both are highly capable releases that ought to please their respective fanbases. This is rougher around the edges with less clear mature songwriting and flaws that are easy to highlight, but I enjoyed it far more than either of those slicker albums. So, while I felt bad at giving those a high rating of 7/10, I feel bad at giving this a low rating of 7/10. So it goes. I guess this is where words come into play...

Faetooth - Remnants of the Vessel (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Doom Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 28 Oct 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Twitter | YouTube

Intellectually, of course, I know that not everyone in Los Angeles plays hair metal and pretty much everyone stopped doing that decades ago, but it still seems somehow surprising that this band of unusual doom metallers hail from that city. There's something northern about their sound, and it would make more sense if they were from Seattle. They have a dirty take on doom that's not quite sludge, even when they ramp up the distortion, and the vocals on Echolalia, the first full track, are flavoured with grunge, even if they're melodic and drenched in melancholy.

I should mention that I have no idea who's singing there because there are three vocalists in this band, each of which plays another instrument as well: Jenna Garcia the bass and both Ari May and Ashla Chavez-Razzano guitars. They have different voices, because there's a harsh one that shows up late in Echolalia and adds a whole new level. It's a sort of hoarse emission of pain, closer to the shrieks of black metal than the growls of death but a long way from either. The difference in these voices is mirrored in the intensity of the music to make this a highly dynamic album.

There seem to be two primary modes. The most common one is a slow and warm reflection, a sort of look back at darkness. This singer isn't out there somewhere buried in the snow fighting off the wild animals, she's safe inside with a fire blazing in the hearth, but whatever experience she went through damaged her and she's trying to deal with that. The other mode is when she can't do that and the harsh voice takes over, screaming out not in agony but in trauma. With the guitars aiming to mirror that shift, it adds a real bite to the impact of the album. It makes it feel like these songs aren't over when they're over. They're always hanging over our shoulder.

The slower, warmer sections can be beautiful. The opening to She Cast a Shadow is a delight, those two guitars combining to unusual effect and the bass wandering between them. That beauty isn't always on the way out when the crunch hits, though that harsh voice is always ready to leap in at a moment's notice and remind us that that's a serious darkness here. I love She Cast a Shadow, but I recognised the melody in the middle section—it's Yallah by Page and Plant—and it bugged me for a while until I figured it out. Now I know, this one's solid without being distracting.

I'm reviewing it because it Spin magazine decided that it should tie with Messa's Close as their choice for the number one slot on their Best Metal Albums of 2022 list. Given that I was massively impressed by Messa, I clearly should check this album out too and I'm happy I did. However, it's not the songs per se that grabbed me but the mood. The more effectively they calm and soothe us and the longer a song runs in that mode, the greater the impact when they crunch up and crush us.

I'd call out Strange Ways for waiting the longest to do that. It's almost five minutes in when it has enough of being calm and the ritual turns dark with cavernous slow chords. This isn't doom to sing along with. It's a doom that's come for us and we feel the draw in our soul. The deceptive ending is particularly destroying because everything is whisked away to be replaced not by peaceful respite but by a hollow emptiness. It's beautiful but it sears us, just as Saturn Devouring His Son does as it closes out the album with a welcome violin.

This is strikingly mature for a band on their debut who have only been around for four years. None of the musicians involved—the fourth is drummer Rah Kanan—have other bands on their resumes and that's a real shock. It seems that they found some sort of magic when they founded their first band and that means that Faetooth is definitely a name to watch. This is hardly mainstream, but it ought to have quite the impact on the doom metal scene, especially given how well they nail this sound. It's harsher than doom but smoother, for the most part, than sludge and others will follow suit in mining that middle ground for gold.

Messa - Close (2022)

Country: Italy
Style: Doom Metal/Progressive Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 11 Mar 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

Hank Shteamer summed up 2022 with a Best Metal Albums list at Spin and he cheated a little with two albums tying for the number one spot. However, Faetooth didn't make it onto anybody else's list, as far as I can tell, while Messa did, such as those at Brooklyn Vegan and Treble Zine. I'm new to Messa, but they're an Italian band usually defined as doom metal but with aspects of ambient and drone. There's definitely doom here, but it varies in ways that are unusual, and it often spins off into other directions entirely, sometimes at the drop of a hat.

Case in point: the opener, Suspended. It opens with a slow but rich wavering organ, like something Susannah and the Magical Orchestra might use to accompany a minimalist vocal cover. It powers up twice, with Sara demonstrating a serious versatility in her vocals over a backdrop that shifts in its intensity to match her. She can soar and she can croon. She can force her voice on us unwilling and she can soothe us with a teasing invite. It's good stuff, a lot looser than I expect from doom, but it impresses. And then suddenly, five and a half minutes in, this gets so loose that it's jazz.

No wonder Spin suggest that the album is reminiscent of Stevie Nicks, Danzig and Steeleye Span, a trio you wouldn't generally expect to see mentioned in the same sentence. There's an element not covered there too, which is world music. Many of these songs, starting with Orphalese, kick off in a world music vein, with ethnic instrumentation—Spin call out a use of oud and duduk, but that only scratches the surface—that's used in ethnic ways, not in translation to western rock music. It often seems eastern, but it's never quite that predictable.

And there lies much of the joy of this album. Like Mr. Bungle but in a less schizophrenic way, this is never predictable. Whatever a particular song is doing, we can't rest assured that it's going to be doing that three minutes later and we have no expectation that the next song will follow suit. The sheer versatility in play makes me hesitate to even slap doom metal onto this as a label. Sure, it's common to many of these songs and it may mark the roots of the band, but it's misleading, just as any genre would be. Progressive rock works just as well. The common factor here is music, pure and simple.

It's jawdropping to realise that a piece of music like Orphalese, heavy on world music components and without much in the way of drumming, especially during the first half, is sandwiched between a pair of heavier songs in Dark Horse and Rubedo. Dark Horse is a masterful exploration of tempo changes, shifting up and down without ever leaving doom, which is not remotely as simple as that might sound. Simply speed up doom and it's not doom any more. The mood has to be maintained and transformed through that tempo shift and thats why you don't hear much fast doom.

Rubedo may be the highlight of the album, though it's not clear cut with Dark Horse here and the pair of long songs halfway through, Pilgrim and 0=2. It definitely plays in doom too, but as a chance to contrast what almost feels like a deconstruction of a singer/songwriter folk piece, with heavier sounds that are clearly doom. Then there's a serious ramp up in speed halfway that takes us firmly away from doom and back in again. A thirsty guitar sears over a flurry of furious beats and it's all very unexpected and very impressive indeed.

I found myself separating the sound into vocals and instrumentation. There's such a strong focus on dynamic play that the electric guitars blend with bass and drums to form one half of the sound. Alberto does provide some great solos but, even there he's over on one side of a visualised stage with the other rock instruments, Marco on bass and Rocco on drums. Sara is on the other, almost in a standoff, teasing collaboration one moment and then dominating the next with an incredible breath control. With her are the acoustic and ethnic instruments, because they do much the same thing in their individual ways.

This album is like a tug of war between the two sides, an electric rock band rooted in doom but not averse to be versatile and an acoustic world music outfit who like tradition but aren't that averse to fusion. These songs pull one way and the other, a consensus sometimes being found but usually a more complex interplay. Quite where the punk blitzkrieg Leffotrack fits, I have no idea; it's almost a third competitor entering a two side dynamic and it's out of place. However, the jazz competitor joins the battle with abandon, especially late on 0=2 when a manic saxophone joins the wild guitar and steadily galloping beat.

In short, there's a lot to take in here and it's impossible to lump into one bucket but, if you have a taste for multiple genres and you don't restrict yourself simply to the rock spectrum, then this is a potential treat for you. If there's an obvious flaw, it's the album is long, running five minutes past the hour mark, and some of these songs are most notable for being between others, not remotely filler but not able to justify their presence quite so easily as others. That's nothing major though. I haven't yet skipped a song, however many times I listen through. This is majestic stuff.