Apocalypse Later Music Reviews: groove metal

Showing posts with label groove metal. Show all posts

Wednesday, 19 February 2025

Jinjer - Duél (2025)

I'm doomed to point this out every time I review anything with a predominant metalcore element but I've never been a fan of shouty hardcore vocals. They have a purpose and, when used properly, can meet that purpose, which is primarily to channel aggression. However, in almost all instances, they're an inherently limited vocal technique. If all you want to do is channel aggression, then you aren't very interesting. If you want to do more than that, then you need flexibility. And that's the reason I'm still reviewing Jinjer albums when I avoid most metalcore. They have plenty of that.

Well, OK, I missed their fourth album for some reason, which was 2021's Wallflowers, but the core point stands. And I'm back for their fifth after reviewing their third, Macro. Much of that flexibility comes from the astounding vocal talent of Tatiana Shmailyuk but I have to highlight Eugene Abdukhanov's five string bass too. It's a prominent instrument here, to the degree that often it seems like it's the lead string instrument rather than Roman Ibramkhalilov's downtuned guitar. It's right there at the front of every angry assault but it's also there in quieter moments, like the drop in the second half of Tantrum.

That's not to say that Ibramkhalilov has little to do. He's there throughout, of course, deepening the texture of this music; he merely doesn't get as many moments in the spotlight as your average metal guitarist might. There's some interesting guitarwork going on in Green Serpent, both early with vibrant accompaniment and late with a faux acoustic drop at the end. He gets a solo on Dark Bile, not a particularly expansive solo as they go but one nonetheless. Late in the album, he gets a thrash drive both late on Fast Draw and early on the title track, but also a moment of sassiness to bolster Shmailyuk's teasing clean voice at the beginning of Someone's Daughter.

And back to Shmailyuk. As so many YouTube reactors are finding, she can switch effortlessly from a clean melodic voice to a shouty metalcore voice that also contains a lot of growl. Now, she's wasn't the first female singer to tackle harsh vocals and she's hardly the only one doing it nowadays, but her harsh voice still stands alone. Most of those singers sound like they're female when they sing harsh and a few are indistinguishable from the male equivalent. Shmailyuk somehow sounds like she's male and female, as if she's singing both sides of a duet, especially on Hedonist. Some of that could be a production thing, but she does it live too.

As always, my favourite songs are the ones that really play with these two contrasting sounds and make them work together. For me, Tantrum and Rogue are decent early songs, the latter showing Jinjer's progressive side by playing with tempos, but Hedonist leaps out from between them to be the first highlight and Tumbleweed shows up next to be the second. It opens up doomy, but with a happier and quirkier mood in Shmailyuk's vocals, which are clean for half the song after staying in harsh mode for the whole of Rogue. Her harsh voice in the second half churns well with the music behind here, a sludgy growl rather than a standard shout.

They're both first half songs, as is Green Serpent, which plays nicely with emphasis, and they may remain my favourites. However, the second half doesn't feel lesser. It merely shines more through variety than a standout track or two. Dark Bile isn't Fast Draw and neither of them are Someone's Daughter or Duél. All of them play with the same components—that downtuned guitar and overt bass, those two utterly different vocal approaches—but they end up in different places that keep this album interesting in ways that most metalcore doesn't even dream of.

So Kafka is peaceful until it isn't and it finds its way home in a flurry of Ulasevich's drums and the angriest shout on the album. Dark Bile has a jauntiness to it and even a swing, just as Someone's Daughter has a sassiness to it. It reminded me early on of the YouTube reactor who compared her to Katy Perry during the opening section of Pisces only to have his expectations shattered as she shifted into harsh mode; she doesn't do that here until the second half. And Duél has a fascinating opening to make it feel deep even before it gets going. There's a lot in this song.

And so, once again I find myself enjoying a Jinjer album, even though I'm not a metalcore fan. I'm still listing them as progressive groove metal, because both those aspects constitute major parts of the Jinjer sound, but they're still metalcore to metalcore fans. To me, they show that the anger and aggression of metalcore can be preserved while diversifying the sound and stringing a series of varied tracks together across an album. That they don't truly sound like anyone except Jinjer is a bonus.

Wednesday, 11 October 2023

Prong - State of Emergency (2023)

Well, here's an interesting release. I found Prong early, when they played a raw form of crossover, that was often straightforward punk as it was thrash metal, but they had changed considerably by the time I could introduce my son to their music. He's a fan, but not of everything they've done, as there's such a variety there. I don't believe I've heard their previous album, Zero Days, from 2017, but it seems to have trawled in elements from across their career. This does likewise, though it has a real vicious streak as it kicks off that sadly fades away relatively quickly.

The vicious track is The Descent and it initially reminds heavily of Slayer in old school thrash mode, but finds more of a groove metal vibe as it grows. Moving from Slayer into Pantera ought to make a lot of fans happy but they're not done with just those influences. There's some of that old school hardcore here too and the following title track gets bouncy with industrial flavour that only builds with the song. Main man Tommy Victor, who still handles both vocals and guitars, almost becomes an MC on this one.

He does more of that as the album runs on, generally becoming less thrash and more groove with the industrial texture never far away. That holds mostly true, though Back (NYC) ten tracks in is an aggressive hardcore song that goes against the flow in a welcome fashion. Oh, and there's also a song called Disconnected that might just be there to mess with us, given that feels like a post-punk pop song by someone else that's given much heavier treatment here, as if it used to be a Depeche Mode song and Prong wanted to kick it into high gear.

As far as I can tell, Disconnected isn't a cover, but there is one of those here to wrap up the album and it's just as unexpected, because it's Rush's Working Man. It's a really good cover, feeling close to the original but run through a notably heavy filter for a sort of Sabbath does Rush approach. It's especially strong in its instrumental midsection, which, for all the aggression of The Descent and Back (NYC), is the most joyous part of this album for me.

The other element here that I should call out is what feels almost like a party atmosphere, albeit here and there rather than continual. One minute, they're partying on a song like Non-Existence, like Victor wants to jam with Anthrax on a metal take on a pop punk song; the next they're acutely serious, playing up a politically aware angle that's purer hardcore on a song like Who Told Me. The style shifts but crucially so does the attitude. On the livelier songs, they're chill and enjoying life. On the serious ones, they're back to being pissed at whatever the song is about. It can seem a bit odd that they can be so comfortable being both at once.

It feels to me like the more serious songs are going to be more popular with Prong's punk fans and likely their industrial fans too, as they're all about drive and message, though they're still pretty accessible to a thrash audience. However, those thrash fans may well prefer the livelier songs that play more with riffs and melodies. Let's see if those different fanbases receive it differently or if, by this point, Prong fans are just on board with all these musical elements because they've stayed with the band as they've travelled through all of them.

Certainly, as a thrash fan, I'm less impressed with songs like Obeisance, which work as bludgeoning rhythm, and more enthused with the blistering speed shown in the first half of The Descent or the musicality in the middle of Working Man. Then again, sometimes songs do shift focus, Compliant a prime example, and that can affect our reception greatly. Initially, it's very much shouty hardcore, a hard message over jagged punctuating rhythms that I'm not particularly fond of, but it gradually turns into a metal song with real flow that I can't fail to see as an album highlight every time.

And so this is a mixed bag for me. It's all done well, but I wanted more of how it started and how it ended up without as much of what came in between. It doesn't get old though, as fresh on a third time through as a first, so it's definitely strong material. If you can enjoy the shifts in genre, this is going to be a welcome new album from Prong, especially as it's their first in six years. Now, I need to find out how my son will receive it.

Tuesday, 22 November 2022

Machine Head - Of Kingdom and Crown (2022)

It's time for another history lesson, but hopefully a brief one. Robb Flynn, the vocalist and rhythm guitarist in Machine Head, founded the band in 1991 and has been the only remaining member of the original line-up since 2013, but there haven't actually been many line-up changes over a three decade period. Well, until 2019 when literally half the bend left—drummer Dave McClain, who had twenty-three years with the band, and Flynn's former partner in Violence, Phil Demmel who had a fifteen year stint on lead guitar—all because Flynn had unilaterally shifted the band's sound back towards nu metal for their ninth album, Catharsis, in 2018.

Now, I haven't heard Catharsis, but what I read about it suggests that I'd hate it. Certainly a huge amount of Machine Head fans hated it. The average rating from reviewers on Metal Archives is an embarrassing 18%, notably lower even than earlier nu metal-centric albums like Supercharger and The Burning Red, which at least make it into the thirtieth percentile. This return to a more groove and thrash metal approach currently sits at a much healthier, if not particularly desirable, 57%. It plays decently to me, but I'm far more of a thrash fan than I am a fan of groove or metalcore. This isn't a highly anticipated release for me, so it's actually better than I thought it would be.

As if to make a statement, the opener is an epic. It's Slaughter the Martyr and it opens with a long intro that's very much rock rather than metal, utterly unlike the Machine Head style. Eventually, it kicks in hard with swirling guitars and groove vocals, that raucous bellow that's half death growl and half metalcore shout. It's not my favourite style, but Flynn does it well and highlights just how versatile he is on this one. There's a point where he spits bars like he's almost rapping, the chorus shifts into power metal and the intro is all rock clean. He honest to goodness sings on this album, a choice that pays off in my book. The song is too long but, conversely, the longer it went, the less it seemed too long.

A strong opener leads into a couple more strong songs. Choke on the Ashes of Your Hate sounds as vehement as its title suggests, a powerful groove metal song. The guitars squeal, the vocals roar and the band are clearly very tight, even though half of them joined in 2019 and are appearing on a Machine Head album for the first time. Become the Firestorm follows suit, but with prominence given to the drums, which are fast and fond of fills. The bass rumbles too and the whole band is on fire. Halfway, it gets slow and djenty and Flynn almost tries for a Cronos-esque voice in a different genre. There's some neat melodic guitarwork from Wacław Kiełtyka and I loved the pace later as he delivers a more overt solo.

So far so good, but then we drift into a minute long dramatic scene, because this is supposed to be a concept album based around the Attack on Titan anime. Frankly, I hadn't noticed, because I was far more engrossed by Kiełtyka's lead guitar and, on that prior track, Matt Alston's drumming. It should be said that this album will succeed or fail on merits other than the concept. Maybe you'll gain something if you pay attention to the lyrics, but the album doesn't suffer if you don't do that. Well, beyond having to sit through three minute long dramatic scenes that feel out of place.

The real catch is that the album got away from me at this point. My Hands are Empty focuses much too strongly on a woah woah anthemic cheer which may work somewhat as a contrast to the song as a whole but it gets old quickly and feels artificial. The anger here is trendy metalcore anger, not the real thing which does, at least, return later. In the meantime, there are a bunch of songs that are just there. They're not bad songs per se but they're just more songs. In isolation—and I checked—they're loud and emphatic but, in the context of the album, they just fade into the background.

Things kicked back in for me late with the more overt thrash metal songs on the album. Maybe it's because Machine Head are only my third favourite Robb Flynn band after Forbidden and Violence, but Bloodshot feels more believably dangerous than anything else here. Rotten feels more thrash too but isn't up to the same standard. It seems that Machine Head fans aren't too fond of it, but I would call it out as my favourite song here, ahead of Choke on the Ashes of Your Hate, even if it's a long way from old school.

Arrows in Words from the Sky is an interesting closer with some heavy grinding sections and some soft clean singing sections too, but I think it's too little too late to prod me into upping my rating to a 7/10. I liked this more than I expected to, but it's still not really my thing. If it's yours, maybe it'll be a 7/10 for you. The bottom line is that it's far from Machine Head at their worst—even if I don't know Catharsis—but it's also far from Machine Head at their best.

Tuesday, 13 September 2022

Soulfly - Totem (2022)

While I was a big fan of early Sepultura with co-founder Max Cavalera, both the early death metal stuff and the later stuff that brought in tribal rhythms, I haven't been as fond of Soulfly, which he founded in 2007. Sure, they had an interesting genre-melding approach and they were far heavier than most of the alternative stuff I was hearing from the States at the time, but it didn't connect with me. Now, I haven't followed their career religiously, but I have heard a couple of albums and some odd other stuff here and there, enough to know that it just wasn't my sort of thing.

Maybe I should have kept listening, because this isn't what I remember at all. This is much heavier and often much faster, though there's still a strong focus on groove metal. The nu metal elements are gone, it seems, which I'm not upset about, and there are riffs that shift clearly from groove to thrash to death, which I'm also not upset about. It's an interesting mix and it's backed up by vocals that are definitely somewhere on that same road; they may be rooted in hardcore shouts but they don't feel remotely out of place on thrashy material and have a tinge of death growl to them too. I hear some Tom G. Warrior in that voice, especially on songs like Ecstasy of Gold. And all of this is a lot further up my alley than what I remember on earlier albums.

Of course, the tribal aspect is not neglected either and Cavalera's son Zyon is credited not only on drums but also Brazilian percussion. This is more overt on the later, more experimental tracks, but it's discernable on the storming opener, Superstition, and on others like Rot in Pain and Ancestors. I like this approach and, frankly I'd like to hear a lot more of it, but I'm hardly going to complain, as Soulfly are one of the few bands doing this at all. What's odd to me is how this doesn't particularly feel like folk metal at all, even though it kind of is because of that ethnic Brazilian sound.

Superstition is a blistering opener, more thrash than groove but the groove elements present add a bounce to it, so it feels upbeat as well as up tempo. It's over in three minutes and that's average here, if we factor out the five minute title track and the epic nine minute closer. That makes these songs all the more urgent, because they show up, do their thing and then vanish into oblivion (or a dead tone on The Damage Done), so another short, punchy song can do the same thing. I dig that a lot, even though it's clearly a punk influence and this is a lot more of a metal album.

Talking of The Damage Done, not everything here unfolds at a serious pace. The songs are always urgent and ready for the pit to respond, but this one focuses on that effect, its fundamental riff a perfect example of what a thrash band would call the mosh part of a song. Add the chanting vocal and the bouncy groove and the pit ought to love this one, but I dug the guitar solo just as much. It definitely counts as a song to feel as much as hear.

With a brief note to point out that the title track is longer and so has more opportunity for wilder, more interesting things to happen, that's a growing approach on the album's second half that the title track kicks off. Ancestors plays a lot with the Brazilian side of things and morphs into a sort of conversation with the spirits. Ecstasy of Gold is my favourite short song here, not least because of the repetition at the end of lines, something that's there from Superstition onwards but finds its greatest effect here. Soulfly XII is an interesting instrumental built around what could have been a thrash metal intro, but deepened with world and electronic sounds.

And that leaves the closer, Spirit Animal, which is particularly fascinating. It kicks off riddled with spooky effects, like a Hallowe'en ride, then finds a groove metal riff to ground it, adds a chant to colour it and only gets more inventive from there. By the seven minute mark, it's unmistakably a prog rock song, atmospheric and imaginative and we start to wonder about the instruments that we hear. Was that a saxophone? Certainly horns of some description. What's being done over the clean vocals? Are those layered effects in post or some sort of filter? Something, I'm sure.

I've listened to this a lot today, partly because it connected with me and I'm not used to that from Soulfly but partly because it's really interesting material. The first five tracks are worthy of a 7/10 but the second five are even better and I don't think an 8/10 would be unfair. As the latter amount to a lot more minutes than the former, I think that balances a 7.5/10 upwards. This may become as low on my highly recommended list as anything gets this year, just squeezing on as a rounding up but I do think it deserves to be on there. That surprises me but it is what it is. Now, what else have I been missing out on by Soulfly? I'm seeing suggestions that they ditched nu metal a while back.

Wednesday, 19 January 2022

Leave the Dead - The Cicada King (2022)

Country: New Zealand
Style: Thrash/Groove Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Jan 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Twitter

To follow last year's Leprous album, which continues their move far from metal, I threw on a Kiwi thrash album, or least what I thought was a Kiwi thrash album, the debut from Leave the Dead. It actually plays deeper than that because, while the thoroughly reliable backing band feel like they want to play thrash and do, it's at the midpace and slower, Morgz Timu often seems to be singing for a groove metal band. He's usually halfway between shouty groove vocals and more grounded thrash ones, but he moves either way as needed.

Long term readers know that I prefer thrash to groove and I prefer my thrash on the fast side, but I'm not averse to slower thrash or to groove. Leave the Dead are an interesting mixture of styles, but what really sells them to me is their engine room, which seems to me like an ultimate session band. The tone is pristine and they're just always on, whether the song wants them to riff or chug or get bouncy all of a sudden for a groove section or drop away for an interesting solo. The band is always at its best when that engine room is fuelled up and in full motion.

While songs like the title track take them a lot further into groove metal, the default is thrash at the mid-tempo with slower sections that are heavy metal pure and simple. In slower sections, like the end of the that title track, the band that leapt to mind for comparison is Toranaga. They were always on too and they shifted from riff to riff to riff so seamlessly that I'd get lost in them and, if Mark Duffy hadn't been such an emphatic frontman, I'd have forgotten he was there. I kind of did that with Morgz Timu here, because these chugging riffs own the album. The other name that I'd throw out is Death Angel, especially in faster sections, again because of the reliable way in which those riffs flow thick and fast. Leave the Dead have definitely heard The Ultra-Violence.

All that kicks in with the opener, Everyone is Dead, and just never quits. It works whatever they're doing, whether it's something as overtly simple as AOW or as inventive as Thorns. AOW has such a simple riff, that gets even simpler as it goes, that I surely must have heard it before, and there's nothing fancy to be found in the song at all, but that chug is just as engaging as on anything else here. The delightful riff on Thorns is far from complex either, but it's magnetic and solid as a rock. The faster drums from Colin Rennie underline it really well too.

And I really should call out these musicians for special mention, especially given that this is a first album and, at least according to Metal Archives, none of them have recorded for anyone else. I'm thinking we should start at the back with Rennie, who's as reliable a drummer as I've heard in the past few years and one who does a surprising amount of not just keeping the beat here. I may not be a huge fan of Morgz Timu's groove-infused vocals, but I love his basswork. He's right there with the drums throughout and he gets a few moments of his own on songs like Destroyed by the Sun.

That leaves two guitarists, Rob Black and James Miles, who are perfectly fine whenever they play a solo or step up to take a lead role, but they both just own rhythm. Arrival begins with a riff duel between the two, each speaker taking its side, and it underlines how much I'd happily sit back and just listen to them doing that, for extended periods of time. Imagine a Metallica that never hired Kirk Hammett away from Exodus but cloned James Hetfield to replace Dave Mustaine instead. I'd think, with groove vocals and more reliable drumming, they might sound like this. OK, they'd be a bit faster, but that's a preference thing.

And yeah, I'd like to hear Leave the Dead play faster, but I'm not going to complain about how well they play at the speed they do. They do this insanely well and I became a confirmed fan after only a few songs. A few more times through the album and I'm totally on board with whatever style the gods deem theirs. I'm just thinking of a song like Diamond Head's cover of No Remorse. It was at the mid-tempo for much of the song and it sounded great, riff moving into riff just like every song on this album. I adore that cover and, vocals aside, it's a solid comparison to what Leave the Dead do, except for one thing. The one missing tool in their toolbox is what happens in the final ninety seconds. And, if they add that into their sound, even only occasionally, they'll become unstoppable.

Friday, 17 December 2021

Mothflesh - Machine Eater (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, 26 November 2021

Pissing Razors - Eulogy Death March (2021)

I've been in love with the name of this band ever since I first heard it back in the nineties. Sure, it actually refers to a dose of the clap, but it's a perfect encapsulation of attitude in only two words and nobody can claim to be surprised if they see it on a poster, wander into a gig knowing nothing else and hear this music erupting out of the speakers.

I'm not as much a fan of their style of groove metal, but they do it well and they seem happy (if it can ever be appropriate to use that word in conjunction with this band) to be back. While this is a seventh studio album for them, it's also their first in no fewer than eighteen years. They split up in 2004, a year after their previous album, Evolution, and stayed away for a decade. They've been back since 2014 but this is the first full length product since, after a pair of 2019 singles, Crushing Grip and Left for Dead, both of which can be found on this almost hour-long return.

I didn't really hear the groove in groove metal until Chemical Burn, three songs in, which finds a neat vibe. The first two, and much of the album, are pure attitude, spat out by an angry band in a barrage of staccato riffs that highlight how tight they are. The long pauses between riffs in Unsee are a recipe for disaster if a cover band attempts them without being as tight as these guys are. I prefer the opener, In Spite of My Scars, which seems even angrier than the other songs here, but I have to call out Result of Virtue as the epitome of this approach.

It really builds its sound on an incessant and monotonous beat, using not just actual beats on the drums of Eddy Garcia but overt chords on Geo Gomez's bass and Mat Lynch's guitar too. It's a loud and brash and in your face approach, a promise of violence built on that bass-heavy post-Reign in Blood Slayer sound that Pantera made such a career out of. It's an acquired taste and I have to say that it's one taste that I never acquired. My favourites here aren't the pure Pissing Razors songs, so Result of Virtue is a way down my list, but I'd bet it's a favourite for the die hards, if not the top of their lists, the best thing here for them.

I got into this early with In Spite of My Scars, the opener, because it's so uncompromising right out of the gate and because it unexpectedly finds some middle eastern melodies as it develops. That's surprising and I like surprises like that. I really like the title track, which is a bit more adventurous musically, with lo-fi tribal drumming and backing vocals that quickly remind of Sepultura. It simply gathers up power and barrels along effortlessly during the late guitar solo, Joe Rodriguez's voice lending it even more of a Suicidal Tendencies feel.

And I got that a lot here, especially after the title track. Left for Dead and Pulverized both carry a Suicidal Tendencies vibe, mixing the raw speed and energy of their earlier material with a groove from later on. Rodriguez has a voice that sits in between clean and harsh, as raw attitude as these rhythmic staccato riffs, and raw in feel too. He uses a raspy shout, so it's harsh, but the rasp often dissolves into the music behind him, so often feels cleaner than it is.

The other influence here may manifest itself a little obviously, through a cover. The way that the band barrels along like some unstoppable force just looking for an immovable object to challenge it is most apparent in Wasting Away, which is a Nailbomb cover. They do this really well and this is a constant approach through the second half of the album, especially on Crushing Grip, which has a glorious start, with the drums trying something different and the bass right in the focus. But it manifests itself most clearly on the cover, so clearly they borrowed it.

It's fair to say that I liked the second half more than the first. It's faster, though the Slayer riffs do give way to DOA style slower parts. It's punkier. It's sassier. And, even when it's borrowing famous riffs from things like Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song for Nothing to Say, it's a lot more varied than the first half with its purer and more limited rhythmic guitars. In spite of a few highlights, I'd have gone with a 6/10 on the basis of the first half, but I have to increase that because of the second. It has to be at least a 7/10 and, if this sort of groove metal is your thing, maybe further. Welcome back, folks!

Thursday, 18 February 2021

Zebu - Reek of the Parvenu (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday, 7 January 2021

Gridiron - The Other Side of Suffering (2021)

Country: USA
Style: Groove/Thrash Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 1 Jan 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

After being dragged down by Hum, I wanted something fast and heavy to wake me up and kick my ass, so I ran through a bunch of thrash metal albums and EPs, most of which left me dry. The one to break through my ennui was this one, by Texan band Gridiron, even though it's not quite the sort of thing I was looking for.

Metal Archives call what they do thrash/groove metal, which isn't unfair, but Gridiron themselves call it metalcore. What won me over was the sheer ferocity when they're seriously shifting, because they carry some serious power and energy. Become is strong out of the gate, for instance, and then gets truly ferocious. Where's my socially distanced mosh pit?

Now, I'm an old school thrash fan—that's always been my go to genre—but I prefer it without groove on the side and with its vocals some degree of clean. The most overt metalcore elements here can be found in Zack Knight's vocal delivery, a mostly monotone shout that's easily my least favourite aspect to this album, but it sometimes gets closer to a death growl, especially when he's roaring, and he also sings clean, so there is some variety here.

He's also one of two guitarists in Gridiron and, without attempting to shift any credit away from the rhythm section which is admirably reliable, it's the guitars that dominate this band and the longer I listened, the more they stood out. I may not like Knight as a singer, but I'm a big fan of him and Josh Cross as guitarists. While I prefer the faster, more energetic sections in any song here, there are slow parts that I really like too, because of the way they merge a crushing heaviness with a strong sense of melody. In fact, while the fast sections got me on board, it could be fair to say the slower ones made me all the more interested.

Lazarus moves back and forth between faster and slower sections and it all works magnificently. Eyes Wide Shut and Afterlife shine because of the guitars and Blame It on the Fire is all about the guitars, with some uncharacteristic keyboards floating over them that at times hint at being a choir. This one is an instrumental, the only one on the album if we ignore the minute long intro, and I'd call it a fine example of what the rest of it could have been, if it didn't seem like a different genre. It's symphonic power metal, really, on a groove/thrash album, an approach telegraphed in A Sight to Behold.

Things shift back to normal with Wretched Earth and stay there. I kept on hating Knight's vocals but loving his guitars. I don't know how he and Cross divvy up their work, so I have no idea who deserves praise for what, but they both clearly deserve plenty of it. Eventually, I freed myself from their thrall long enough to also appreciate Rhannon Knight's drumming. I should have been caught up by it on A Sight to Behold, but I was certainly there by the last song, Of Blood & Bone, which is just as intricate. The bassist stuck in between these forces of nature is Mike Elsner.

I'd also love to know where Gridiron's influences are. They're clearly Pantera fans and I caught various American thrash bands too, but there are older sounds here as well and I'm not just talking about the inevitable Black Sabbath. I don't buy into them only listening to the obvious bands for their genres, Exhorder and Sepultura. I'm not up enough on the metalcore side to suggest comparisons, but Jesse Zaraska from Misery Signals guests here. It all sounds to me like they're pretty well read musically; in moments where I expected X, I often got Y and I appreciated that, especially on Eyes Wide Shut.

You may not be entirely my cup of tea and you weren't quite what I was looking for today, but thanks for improving my day, Gridiron. Oh, and I'd go 7/10 if it wasn't for the vocals. If you're into that style, add that lost point back on.

Tuesday, 17 November 2020

H2Ocean - The Horned Goddess (2020)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, 12 August 2020

Vicious Vision - Aïn (2020)

Country: Morocco
Style: Groove/Thrash Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 13 Jun 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives | Twitter | YouTube

When I noticed a new thrash album from a band from Morocco, I knew I had to take a listen and, while it's not quite as culturally wild as I hoped it might be or quite as vicious as the band's name might suggest, it does sound good and interesting to me and I'm happy to have learned a little more about African metal. The band have been around since 2006 but have roots in the golden age of Moroccan metal, which I'd love to hear more about.

Vicious Vision hail from Casablanca and Aïn is a letter of the Perso-Arabic alphabet. I wonder why they used it as the title for this album, given that much of it is sung in English and there are even samples of English news to introduce BodyFence. That does make it more accessible to me but I'm sure a cultural or linguistic detail is eluding me.

They play their thrash very much on the groove metal side of that subgenre, so they've surely been listening to a lot of Pantera. Surely they've paid a lot of attention to Sepultura too, both because of the ethnic sounds that a bunch of these songs overlay at points and because of the emphatic vocals of Joao Paulo Esteves which are clearly influenced by punk but still sound more metal than anything I hear in hardcore nowadays.

By the way, I should emphasise that the ethnic sounds sit under these songs, absorbed into them as background, because they rarely quite seem to actually be part of them. It's like the band happened to be rocking out on the street while a selection of other musicians happened by and they tailored what they were doing to match them, rather than the other way around. It makes for an interesting approach and, while it was a little offputting at first, I soon got used to it and dug it too.

I tend to prefer straight thrash to groove/thrash hybrid bands, but that's a lot to do with the more groove oriented bands being less imaginative on the whole. I still dig the more diverse groove bands, Sepultura surely being the most obvious, and Vicious Vision definitely on that list. I like that every song has common elements, helping to define the sound of the band, but each song still has overt differences and travels a different road.

Check out Burst into Chaos, for an example. The first half is straight ahead groove metal, decent but not outstanding, but then it shifts into a bluesy guitar solo halfway and then builds quickly into a fantastic sprint to the finish. I love how it kept me on its toes. Free of Mind does that too, as a staccato groove metal song until it isn't, with tribal drumming, some funky riffs, a lovely ethnic vocal midway during a breakdown, some excellent bass work from Hamza Chiaou and even a thoroughly unusual punk chant to wrap up. Oh yeah, these guys have imagination!

As a thrash album, this might not satisfy, because it rarely speeds up to a point where thrash really applies. This isn't a clean out your system album. As a groove album, it fares much better, always interesting and ready to add other sounds where they'll help, whether they be the ethnic underlays or an abiding habit to get down and bluesy. Bleeding Alone is like bluesy Pantera and I really like that.

I believe this is Vicious Vision's debut album, though they did release one of its songs as a single six years earlier. That's Sir 3allah, which feels both more vicious and more primitive than other songs here. It doesn't end so much as it deteriorates into static. El3ar is more primitive too and it gets really shrill vocally. I'm guessing these are older songs representing where the band came from rather than where they're going to. If so, I look forward to seeing how they'll develop further in the future.

Tuesday, 28 April 2020

Survival Zero - The Ascension (2020)

Country: France
Style: Groove Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 Apr 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

The guys in Survival Zero, who hail from Troyes, southeast from Paris, kindly sent me a copy of this, which I believe is their debut album. They're a five piece band led by twin guitars but they play their take on groove metal in a traditional way, achieving agreeable heaviness without losing their sense of melody. And that's good, because the the further a groove metal band shifts into nu metal, the less I tend to appreciate them. The closest Survival Zero get to nu metal is the backing vocal on Ascension, which still works well.

I certainly enjoyed this album, which is all the things you expect from the genre but with more besides. Those twin guitars, courtesy of Régis Bernard and Benoit Raguin are downtuned but go to a lot of interesting places. Lost in Eri is a really good intro, for something under two minutes, because it's a definition of sound, telling us what this is going to be and what it isn't going to be at all. It starts with an echoing pulse, like a depth reading, a surprising note over a rumbling that builds into a statement of intent, with the guitar line supreme. So many times here I was enjoying a song, only for a guitarist to add another melodic layer over the top and deepen the sound.

The rhythm section is fantastic. Pierre Touzanne's bass is a serious anchor here, often mirroring the rhythm guitar but sometimes rumbling beyond it, as on Degeneration and especially early in The Otherverse. I liked the drums of Thibaut Gugger perhaps more than anything else here, especially on the songs with more unusual rhythms for a metal drummer, such as The Coldspot and The Otherverse. These play in tribal territory, raising a Sepultura comparison that isn't otherwise particularly apparent.

That leaves vocalist Pierre Lebaillif, who I left for last because it's the vocals that often determine whether I'm going to like a groove metal band or really not. I like his contribution because he manages to find the agreeable midpoints needed to make his style work with this band. For instance, he has a clean but raspy shout and a sort of light death growl, both of which give him much more opportunity to enunciate and intonate than he would be able to manage with either approach full on.

The result of all this is that The Ascension is a notably deep groove metal album. I don't mean depth of tone because I could seriously throw a rock in Phoenix and hit a more downtuned band. I mean in depth of sound because the final element here that makes all this work so well is a progressive edge. I wouldn't call Survival Zero a prog metal band any more than I'd call them a reggae band, as they emphatically play groove metal, but there's a lot more focus on instrumental sections than I'd expect and there's a prog nature in the songwriting, even when Lebaillif is singing.

I had no conception, before listening to this, how prog and groove could mix but I like what Survival Zero have conjured up here. Sure, they're heavy, as you'd expect for a groove metal band, but there's a lot of dynamic play here to highlight the heaviness through contrasts with much lighter, more melodic material. It's cleverly written stuff and it's very tightly played.

I've talked a lot here about what I like on The Ascension. There isn't much that I didn't like, even though groove metal is hardly my go to subgenre. I liked the aspects I usually like in groove metal and I liked the aspects I'm usually more turned off by. Frankly, to highlight what I didn't like, I'd be forced to call out whatever that fluttery guitar is early on Foundation that made me wonder, every damn time, whether there was a sheep behind me wanting to be fed. And I'm listening in my home office.

Oh, and if I'm researching properly, Survival Zero have only been around for a year? That adds an extra level of impressive. What's the next album going to sound like once they've had a chance to play live together for a while?

Thursday, 26 March 2020

Külmking - Kõik kaob (2020)

Country: Estonia
Style: Groove Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 6 Mar 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

I'm seeing a lot of different labels for Külmking, who are from Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Their Bandcamp page tags them as death metal, folk metal and pagan metal; their Facebook page shrinks down to just the latter; while Metal Archives plumps for death/groove metal. On the basis of this album on its own, I'd lean towards groove metal as a descriptor of the sound myself, though with a strong death influence.

Presumably the pagan and folk angles are tied to the lyrics; the band's name is a "malicious spirit in Estonian folklore". It seems that Google Translate isn't too great with Estonian, as is evident just from attempting to figure out who does what in the band. It makes sense that Madis Velström takes care of "a hellish vocal" but Rain Parkman is apparently the man who handles the "grab drum heating", whatever that is. Searching for individual words, I see that Sven Põder is on "welding guitar" while Raiko Parts handles the "chisel guitar", but I could only get "eminent bass" for Mihkel Orek. Well, eminent is good, I guess.

Given descriptions like those, I'm surprised that this isn't more vicious in nature, but it's very controlled material. The musicians mostly concentrate on riffs and a succession of complex time changes to separate them, which is enough to make this a very djenty experience if not for the death influence and the reasonable pace. It does feel like the band could have taken this a heck of a lot further in many different extreme directions but they chose to avoid them all in favour of keeping the songs as tight as possible.

The band start off on Timuka tütar as they mean to keep going. Only the odd but intriguing intro really separates it from the other nine songs on offer. It's djenty for a while, that jagged guitar tone that makes it sound like a bass, but there's a thrashy guitar later on when the song gets moving. Madis Velström grunts and growls his way through, as if he's not entirely sure if he prefers death growls or hardcore shouts. He moves from one to the other a lot here. The approach works well as a companion to the guitar sound.

The lack of variety is surely the album's biggest problem, just as the tight musicianship is surely its biggest asset. Some songs feature faster sections that play closer to older school metal, but they always return to a staccato riff at some point. Jaaniöö is a great example of all of that, but it's also elevated by what I initially presumed was a backing vocal that's less polished but more characterful than Velström's lead because it's just singing, not playing the role of a singer. Other faster songs, like Libahunt, just play that staccato djent style faster.

I wished I knew who the backing vocalist is. He shows up again on Libahunt and at further points throughout the album and sings in a folkier style. I would never call this folk metal because it clearly wants to be modern and I don't hear any ethnic instrumentation at all, except for maybe a quiet moment late in Surm that is probably a guitar but sounds more like a lute. However, that backing vocal adds an extra element that, over a few listens, became the one and only identity I could take away from the album. When it's in play, the band sound like nobody else, only Külmking. When it isn't, they're just one more djenty metal band, however musically proficient they happen to be. And it turns out that the backing vocalist is the same Madis Velström who sings the lead. I appreciate his versatility.

I'm not a big fan of djent, so the fact that I like this is telling. I can't say I like it a lot but that may just be my personal tastes showing. It's as capable, as well written and performed, as anything with that sort of sound. I just happen to prefer the Külmking that Külmking seem to be trying not to be, the folkier band of songs like Kaarnakiwi with a different vocal style.

Friday, 7 February 2020

Sepultura - Quadra (2020)

Country: Brazil
Style: Groove Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 7 Feb 2020
Sites: Facebook | Flickr | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

The older I get, the more I appreciate Sepultura. They've continued to grow and evolve over three and a half decades and I have respect for that even if they didn't always evolve into places I liked. They got more respect from me when I saw them live in a dive bar on their thirtieth anniversary tour and they performed as hard as they would have done at a festival. The audience was energised and the pit was lively. It was a good night.

And this is a good album, their fifteenth studio release and, in many ways, a conglomeration of all the styles they've worked through, like Medusa was for Paradise Lost. The most prominent is groove metal, of course, but it's no difficult task to find thrash, industrial and experimental, not to forget the tribal drumming they've become known for. That really comes out to play at the beginning of Capital Enslavement.

Isolation kicks things off at high speed. It's an out and out thrash number, with less hints of groove than symphonic metal, of all things, there being a few sections with choral backing. As thrash should be, it's pure energy and I dug it a lot. Means to an End maintains the energy but shifts it over to a groove metal framework, Derrick Green's vocals not changing much but enough to matter; instead of gruff clean thrash vocals, these are hardcore shouts. This song even finds time to get experimental in the middle.

Last Time does all the above within one song. Capital Enslavement does too, adding that tribal drumming intro and some electronica for good measure. It starts to feel like they band is continually adding layers to each further song. Ali firmly shifts to industrial with effects added early onto Green's voice and Eloy Casagrande's drums finding a neat, emphatic rhythm halfway through. However, it still finds its groove sections and its thrash moments, even an early Sepultura death growl towards the end.

The catch to this, of course, is that, while Sepultura have played in a lot of sandpits in their career, we aren't even halfway through the album yet so they're going to run out pretty damn quick if they continue this approach. I wonder if that's why Raging Void goes the way it does, being more of a scary loud pop song with a rambling solo. I wasn't sold on this one and maybe it's representative of one of those albums in the middle of their career that I'm not familiar with but, even though I kinda liked it, it feels rather like a roadblock to the album's build.

Fortunately, it promptly picks up again with Guardians of Earth, perhaps the most symphonic track on the album. It's almost Sepultura covering Tristania and that's not a combination I ever thought I'd write. The Pentagram buzzes rapidly through melodies kind of like it's an insane medley of imaginary TV theme tunes. I actually liked this instrumental a lot, not least because it gives the musicians, especially Andreas Kisser, opportunities to show off.

The song that really allows people to show off, though, is Agony of Defeat, which throws everything but the kitchen sink into one six minute song. It's heavy and it's soft; it's fast and it's slow. It features strings and middle eastern textures. It allows Derrick Green to flex his vocal cords in quite a few different directions. And the song really builds in layers until a fade on a single low piano note. It's the best thing I've heard from Sepultura in a long, long time and easily the best thing I've ever heard from Green.

What I haven't mentioned much is the experimental side to this album, which does a little during a lot of songs and a lot during a few of them. Autem is one of the more experimental tracks on offer, but Raging Void is up there as well and Fear, Pain, Chaos, Suffering does interesting things too, with guest vocals from Emmily Barreto of Brazilian alt rock band Far from Alaska.

All in all, there's a heck of a lot to work through here and it's well worth the effort. I haven't been too impressed with a bunch of Sepultura's recent albums, but this one is destined to be described as "the best since..." but with critics debating how far back we should go to find something better. It has to be the nineties at least, but there's a strong case for Arise or even Beneath the Remains. Now I really want to go see them live again!

Thursday, 21 November 2019

Exhorder - Mourn the Southern Skies (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Thrash/Groove Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 20 Sep 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I have no interest in stirring up the controversy over whether Pantera stole their power groove sound from Exhorder and promptly succeeded greatly while the latter languished in unjust obscurity. I'll just mention that I've been struggling with Pantera for years, far more than any other major metal band and for a host of reasons, but I like this album a whole heck of a lot.

This is only the third studio album from Exhorder, though they were founded as far back as 1985, when Pantera were still a glam band. This is the first in 27 years, adding them to the growing list of important bands crawling out of the woodwork in 2019 with new material. And, like a surprising number of these bands, this particular material is really good.

It's also a lot deeper than I expected it to be and I mean in substance not in pitch. It's mid-tempo thrash for the most part, with some songs a little slower, but the groove element is less overt than on the prior album, 1992's The Law. Sure, there's still the highly prominent bass and many songs have the groove bounce that moves them away from pure thrash. However, everything works. The songwriting and the performance are both more mature by a massive degree. This is accomplished stuff and I clearly need to look into what the core band members have been doing elsewhere for the last few decades.

These are songs catchy enough to hook us in on a first listen but not catchy enough to sell us singles. However, they grow on further listens to become old friends. If we invest a little time into it, it pays back dividends. And that goes for every single song here. It doesn't matter if it's a faster one like Beware the Wolf, which is akin to Metal Church mixed with Exodus, or a slower one like Asunder, which exchanges immediacy for elegant power. There isn't a bad song among the ten here and there isn't a merely OK one either.

While the tone is consistent, each track has its own identity. Some of them blister, some stalk and some get under our skin. I've only listened a couple of times through thus far, but I'll be playing this a lot this weekend and I look forward to seeing what grows the most. For instance, Yesterday's Bones didn't grab me first time through but it may be the most impressive track of a second listen. It's a long song, running just over seven minutes, but it doesn't waste any of that time. The solo is great and the ending is too.

Initially, the most overt variety comes at the end of the album. The Arms of Man slows down enough that it's almost a lively doom song. Then it's Ripping Flesh, a re-recording of a song from their 1986 demo, Get Rude, which is the purest thrash on offer. It's at least twice the speed of anything else here, with Beware the Wolf the only other track even in competition. Guest drummer Chris Nail, who played on the original, is a whirlwind. Finally, there's the title track, a lush nine minute epic that benefits from a long, slow build. This trio couldn't be much more different but there's still a common thread.

Going along with the newfound maturity to be found everywhere on this album, the delivery of vocalist Kyle Thomas is a huge improvement. Yeah, there's a hint of hardcore shout in there, but he's using a clean thrash delivery with real power behind it. It's warm and rich and notably well served by a 21st century production job from Duane Simoneaux. We can't fail to pay attention to what he's singing because there's command in his tone.

Exhorder released this album exactly a week before the new Opeth and the two are worthy of mention in the same breath. This isn't as varied but it's more accessible without losing depth. It's a real treat and it's not helping with my task of picking my albums of the month in a week or so. October was tough and it looks like November is going to be hard too. This or Insomnium as the runner up to Opeth? Or Alcest? I'm going to need to start tossing coins.

Jinjer - Macro (2019)

Country: Ukraine
Style: Progressive Groove Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 25 Oct 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I've mentioned as recently as this week that metalcore doesn't tend to be my thing. Here's Jinjer to prove that every rule has an exception. Hey, there's been enough negative news about the Ukraine this week; let's find a positive side! Jinjer hail from Donetsk and temper all the shouting with some notable variety, hence the "progressive" label. Tatiana Shmailyuk screams very well, thank you very much, but she also sings clean here, often shifting back and forth surprisingly quickly. One of the other band members, though which I'm unable to say, adds death growls. I only assume they're not her too because they often coincide with her doing something else.

They're groove metal at heart but with such a heavy metalcore component that it wouldn't be unfair to call them metalcore too. Fortunately, the nu metal side that often comes with that is less apparent than it used to be, with a progressive edge becoming accordingly more obvious. That's most overt on the closing track, lainnereP, which, frankly, is different enough from the songs around it that it couldn't have been placed anywhere else on the album, but there's prog throughout if you listen. I, for one, feel that this is a major plus point in the band's evolution.

They're also now comfortable enough to play with unlikely genres, finding a way to fit them into regular songs without culture shock kicking in. Easily the most obvious example of this is Judgment (& Punishment), which kicks off like another bass-heavy groove metal song, but then inexplicably leaps into reggae territory before heavying up on the fly and getting all shouty. This shouldn't work but it does. It's highly unexpected but I have to admit that it's also highly effective.

Songs like Pit of Consciousness and The Prophecy and moments in others were most surprising to me by revealing that mixing groove metal with progressive rhythms and vocal lines can end up sounding like Voivod, who came out of the merging of prog with punk and metal. Sometimes different journeys end up at the same destination, I guess. I seriously doubt this was intentional.

The lesser songs for me here are the ones that don't add much prog, as they merge together and fade from interest. A lot of people seem enthused by the song called Retrospection, but it's most interesting for me for starting out in Ukrainian, which sounds really good on this material. It fades later for me, as do Pausing Death, Noah and others in the middle of the album. To me, the interesting songs are early ones and late ones.

In particular, I think the album ends really well. Home Back features a neat mellow section midway through that's rooted in soul and jazz, shifting into and out of it seamlessly. The Prophecy ratchets up the speed and that Voivod sound again for a while during the non-shouting verses. Then lainnereP does something completely different, playing up the prog and removing the heavier side entirely for narrated whispers, synths and a delightful bass.

Much of the success is due to Tatiana Shmailyuk, who's almost a textbook on how to use the human voice. She sings, she shouts, she growls, she whispers, she snarls, she screams, she skanks. She's fascinating to listen to whatever style she's using. While the band behind her are tight and talented, they're just not as interesting on half these songs.

I'm also not a particular fan of the drum sound. It's not drummer Vladislav Ulasevich, who does a fine job; it's that it often sounds like he's hitting a plastic ice cream container rather than what I presume is actually a high tom. Add that to the djeneral groove/metalcore tone and this often fights to do things that leave me dry.

In the end, the variety wins out. I have trouble even listening to a lot of metalcore albums, but I've run through this one three or four times now and, when it's interesting, it keeps my attention and my enthusiasm. Even when it isn't interesting, it doesn't annoy me and push me to turn it off, it merely fades from my attention until something interesting shows up.

Monday, 11 November 2019

Hellyeah - Welcome Home (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Groove Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 Sep 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I've read that Vinnie Paul recorded the drum tracks for the sixth Hellyeah album before he passed. However, he died in June 2018 and the band weren't supposed to start recording until November, so I'm not too sure about that. Frankly, it doesn't matter. Whoever's behind the kit here does the job well enough that we hardly notice because we're caught up in the songs that rely on these beats. Paul's live replacement is Roy Mayorga, from Stone Sour and Soulfly, though he hasn't been listed as an official member that I can see.

Let's assume that everything here is Vinnie Paul and that makes it a solid exit to remember him by. Certainly, the last track, a sort of hidden track that isn't hidden, is an opportunity for him to leave us with a final word. "Don't ever think it's not a good time," he tells us, because "a wonderful time is irreplaceable." Thanks, Vinnie.

Hellyeah are a band that I can enjoy, even though they're a lot closer to nu metal than I like. They bring in a lot more influences than most such bands: hard rock, heavy metal, southern rock, grunge, even country and end up with a rather energetic groove metal sound. Just listening to this album in my office was enough for me to picture the crowd at a Hellyeah gig in motion right behind me. "Welcome to the slamboree!" indeed.

They start out strong with a couple of punchy but catchy songs that could be obvious singles. 333 was the first of five released thus far with Oh My God the third, even with a slower grind. Black Flag Army is straight up groove metal with a prowling bass, punchy riffs and shouty vocals. It's effortless and exactly what Hellyeah do best so it's almost impossible not to respond to its call. Boy, however, is close enough to nu metal to cross the line for me. It has plenty of bounce and power, along with tongue tripping lyrics, but it isn't my thing, even after Black Flag Army threatened to convert me.

However, there's more variety here. The title track adds orchestration and a more unusual melodic line for Hellyeah. It's an odd mixture of Radiohead and Metallica and it's pretty cool. This mashup style comes back on Bury You too and, frankly, it's more interesting to me than the regular stuff even though I'm usually wary of overproducing bands who thrive on their raw edge.

The band's grungier angle is more overt later in the album. At Wick's End is built on a solid riff reminiscent of Powerman 5000 but it gets far grungier, delivered with a real sneer. Somehow this song also reminded me of Testament and Saigon Kick at their grungiest, say One Step Closer. I never expected to hear both of those in a single song, especially alongside Powerman. Perfect kicks off with an incredibly dirty guitar but instead of continuing into the swamp rock we might expect, it becomes a loud pop song with the best lyrics on the album: "You're as perfect as an apple with a worm and a bruise."

The biggest departure from the band's regular sound is Sky and Water, which is like a grungy Blind Melon playing country. There's so much grit in Chad Gray's voice on this song that we can't help wondering if the band put him (and maybe everything else too) through a filter. He sounds gritty anyway, of course, but that's ramped up to eleven on this one.

It's an odd song to end the album because it takes us away from the bounce. Sure, Sky and Water couldn't have been put anywhere else on the track list without creating even more upheaval but it does that even here at the end. While this isn't my go to music, I enjoyed the album and would have enjoyed it more had I left it on the bounce a track earlier.

Thursday, 8 August 2019

Volbeat - Rewind, Replay, Rebound (2019)

Country: Denmark
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 2 Aug 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives |Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Somehow I've managed to miss out on the varied joy that is Volbeat, a group from Denmark who have been around since 2001, feature a former key member of Anthrax in their line up and have little interest in playing only one style. Unlike the Roadside Crows album I reviewed yesterday, however, the shifting from one sound to another somehow doesn't remove coherence from the record.

I'll get to my surprising conclusion on that later. First, I'll introduce a few apparently disparate sounds that Volbeat keep returning to, so you can see how this builds.

For a start, there's safe alternative rock. Last Day Under the Sun could be a Bryan Adams song if it didn't have quite so crunchy a guitar tone. Rewind the Exit is perkier than Creed and less funky than the Chili Peppers but is reminiscent of both. Cloud 9 epitomises this approach, being overtly radio friendly with its harmonies and strong beats.

It also features a little rockabilly, the second sound in play. As you might expect, Pelvis on Fire is kind of like a punk rock Elvis holding court over a very different audience to the ones he thrilled in Las Vegas. Sorry Sack o' Bones does the same thing but it has a gimmicky edge, like the melody is taken from an alternate universe TV theme tune.

And then there's groove metal, when they decide they want to be heavier for a while. Cheapside Sloggers introduces this when it goes all doomy and starts into Metallica-style chugging guitars. The Everlasting is a bold red underline to that, easily the heaviest song on the album, with that chugging guitar sound accompanied by a more James Hetfield style vocal style.

That's not quite everything, because there are also tracks like Parasite, an abidingly polite 37 second punk song which cheekily became the first single, and When We Were Kids, which feels Irish, like a Flogging Molly ballad, but with some oddly classical riffage added in for good measure. However, those three styles cover the majority of what's going on here. This is rockabilly and alternative rock and groove metal. You know, because why not?

But here's the kicker... while each of the first few songs only play in one of those styles, as the album runs on they quickly start to merge them until everything surprisingly starts to sound like a safer version of the Michale Graves era of the Misfits, just without the expected associated focus on the schlocky horror sci-fi movies of the fifties. That begins with Die to Live, which is only experimental in the sense that the band decided they wanted to see if they could get a piano, a saxophone and the lead singer of Clutch on the same song.

And, to me, that averaging sound is really odd, but it's also weirdly blah. Like them or not, those first few songs aren't ones that can be ignored. If you like Last Day Under the Sun, you may not like Pelvis on Fire and that's doubled the other way around, but both are excellent examples of what they try to be and they'll both have a lot of fans. By the time we get to later songs such as Maybe I Believe, Leviathan and The Awakening of Bonnie Parker, it's all starting to sound the same and my main focus unintentionally ended up being to miss Doyle's guitars every time.

I didn't go to see Volbeat when they hit Phoenix last week as a supporting act on the Slipknot tour, but I have friends who went. I'll have to ask what they thought of the line-up, which is surprisingly diverse, even if we see Volbeat as just one style. They're clearly not Slipknot, but they're hardly Gojira or Behemoth either and none of those are remotely like any of the others. I'm all for breadth of styles but I do wonder who showed up to see whom on that tour and who was still playing when they left.

Based on this album, I'm intrigued as to what earlier albums sound like and there are six of them out there in the wild. I want to find out where these sounds came from, but sadly a lot more than I want to listen to this again.

Monday, 5 August 2019

Prometeo - Aurora (2019)

Country: Peru
Style: Groove Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Jun 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Prometeo translates to Prometheus in French, Italian and Esperanto and many others, I'm sure, including Spanish, the language this band sing in because they're from Peru; they sent this in after I reviewed Coffin Rags and Regum. I love how scenes coalesce even when bands don't play in the same style. Unlike those groups who play black metal and hard rock/heavy metal respectively, Prometeo are a groove metal band.

And they're a good one. Colisión, the first track proper, kicks off with an absolutely textbook set of escalations, except it switches out the last step into fast thrash for a heavy groove instead. Prometeo play heavy throughout, often achingly so, and they play very tight too, but they resist that speed element, even though there are a whole slew of points where we think they're about to let loose.

I wonder how they would have sounded had they gone there. Profetas is a pit starter for sure and it's about as fast as they get. I think quite a few of these songs would sound more intense at higher speed, but they'd lose some of their heaviness in the process and that's not what Prometeo are looking for. Instead they use Luis Lopez's drums as a way to ratchet the intensity up and down as needed.

I'm not the world's biggest groove metal fan, but this is good stuff. To me, groove metal needs a tight sound, solid riffs and vocals that are both tough and melodic. That's not an easy set of attributes to fill, especially with as much of it reliant on good songwriting as good performance, but Prometeo have them all down. Check out the melodies in the title track, which always stays heavy even when the guitars and the vocals are getting all melodic. Intermisión does the same thing too, really well.

Part of it may be the fact that the band doesn't only feature two guitarists but two vocalists too. Percy Sonan and Christian Bjork handle the guitars in the expected sort of way, one holding down a riff while the other solos. The vocals are more interesting, because there's a male vocal and a female vocal but they're not always easily distinguished. Is that Beatriz Farfan leading the way on Yo but Leo Vannucci on most of the others?

Their collaboration leads to some really interesting sounds. Often they sing the same lyrics together for depth. On Treinta Monedas, that'll be Vannucci in front but Farfan right behind him like an improvisational echo. She's not a prominent part of the mix but she's there and she deepens the sound. What's more, on Intermisión, there's a whispery evil to the vocals which I presume is due to the two singers combining superpowers but it never leaves heavy or groove metal for a more evil genre.

Valientes is an odd one. I keep hearing old Paradise Lost songs in bands of late, but it's generally been the old doom/death Paradise Lost. Here, it's Draconian Times-era Paradise Lost because there's plenty of Once Solemn in Valientes, once it starts chugging, but always with the benefits of modern production. It's not just the guitars either but the vocals too, which feel reminiscent of Nick Holmes at that point.

I like this album, but I'd like to see them live even more. These guys ought to kick ass in a small club. Hopefully, now that they've been signed by the American label Rotten Brain Records in a two album deal, they'll get to play somewhere a little closer to me than Lima. Sure, they're just down the west coast, but there are nine countries in between.

Oh, and they have the best intro music I've heard in a long while. I really hope they come out on stage to Alea Jacta Est because it's a magnificent setup for a metal band.

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