Sinira - The Everlorn (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Melodic Black Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 Jun 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

I talk about originality a lot at Apocalypse Later. One of my missions is to find music unlike anything that I've heard before and this is absolutely not that, so let's get that out of the way quickly. This is as close to a melodic black metal template as I've heard in a long time, appropriately given that Sinira's Bandcamp page is honest about this being "a homage and tribute to the Swedish titans who reigned proud and whose flames still burn bright." So, no, it's not original at all.

However, I also talk about quality and this is a thoroughly enjoyable melodic black metal album, with six long songs that wax and wane through frequent dynamic shifts, always maintaining neat textures. This is a one man band, with Knell, the talent behind Sinira, responsible for playing every instrument here except the piano on the final piece of music, and his technical ability is clearly excellent. He also wrote it all, produced it, mixed it and, no doubt, put the kettle on and swept the studio floor. Even if it doesn't tread any new ground, he ought to be proud of this debut.

What impresses me about this isn't his versatility, as black metal is full of one man bands, but his age. When Dissection released Storm of the Light's Bane in 1995, he surely failed to notice because he was busy being born. When Sacramentum released Far Away from the Sun a year later, he was likely trying to figure out how to stand up. Yet he clearly groks the genre, because this album does everything that it should. To add to the surprise, he hails from Nacogdoches, Texas, which feels natural for a pithy sort of writer like Joe R. Lansdale but hardly tops any list of hotbeds of melodic black metal activity.

I liked this immediately, because of its sound. Where Starlight Does Not Shine is fast, of course, but it also plays with the tempo and the transitions are neatly handled. In instrumental sections, the guitar is prominent with its melodies given wings to soar above everything else, even when it's not soloing. In vocal sections, it's lower to allow for Knell's dark voice to share the limelight. Gardens of Pestilence continues that, allowing a little more to happen with the drums, and so does The Everlorn.

The biggest problem this album has is that the songs are similar enough to blur together. I was never bored with them, but I often lost track of which one I was listening to, because, once Knell had found a sound, he stuck with it most of the way. The songs do delineate themselves a little over repeat listens, but they share a very similar approach, enough that I'd be telling you that this felt like a single piece of music, a generous one too at almost an hour long, if it hadn't been for Dawnless Twilight.

This is the sixth of those six songs and the longest of them. The others are long too, the shortest just shy of seven minutes and the longest almost nine and a half, excluding a brief interlude called Souls of the Flame and an outro called Omega XI. Dawnless Twilight, though, runs eleven and a half and is a magnetic piece of music for all of those minutes. It has a more epic sweep from the outset, doing what the other songs did but more confidently and more majestically. Then it adds some neat depths, near the four minute mark that elevate it even further, and again later. This one's immersive and it grows.

The catch to this song leaping out from its peers so firmly is that it underlined to me that, while this whole album is strong, it could always be stronger. If I'm enjoying it already, how much more will I in a follow up that does throughout what Dawnless Twilight does here? I don't expect a second album in the near future, because Knell has been careful to explain that being a one man band means that he's always going to take longer to create, but I'll be waiting for album two when it arrives. I'll give this a 7/10 but add a point to that if you're not fussed about originality.

Gentihaa - Reverse Entropy (2019)

Country: Greece
Style: Symphonic Death/Black Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Sep 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives

Nine months of deep dive reviews and I'm finding my go to countries. I still feel surprised that Greece is one of them, but it's proving to be the hotbed for a whole slew of interesting bands from across the rock/metal spectrum. I see that Gentihaa, who are based in Athens, describe their sound as "fantasy themed symphonic death/black metal". That's at once fair and overly limiting because I'm hearing a heck of a lot more here than that.

In fact, what leapt out at me first were the doom metal vocals of Andre, who somehow manages to not seem like he's in the wrong band. What he does fits a band style that refuses to be any one thing. On Empathy, for instance, which is the first song proper, half of it plays to his doomladen vocals while the other half wants to be metalcore. The guitars seem to be death metal and the drums play in that black/death combination style. It's probably fair to say that I was confused for a while here.

Vision is more of a doom metal song, even if the drums remain fast. Sneak on over to Candlemass's dressing room and lace a barrel of mead with speed and this is what might result. It's interesting stuff though I have to add that I wasn't sold until Metamorphosis three tracks in, which is wild. Going back to listen through again, the early songs are fine, just not what I expected. After Metamorphosis, anything seemed like fair game.

Again, it starts out like a doom metal song with blastbeats, but it refuses to stay there. It finds some weird time changes. It gets all shouty. Before long it sounds like Candlemass and Voivod jamming in the studio with a guest singer from a band like Shadows Fall. There's even a quieter section that's very much like Voivod channelling Pink Floyd. The keyboards swell while the vocals loop and it's all rather psychedelic, man. I dug it a lot.

There's some of that in Alpha too, accompanied by eastern string work and a very different sound. Its long outro is impeccably constructed and flows on to Beyond wonderfully. If it took a few songs to hook me here, I was hooked hard. Beyond ups the tempo seriously, emphasising the metalcore side of the band's sound, with the doom side present for texture. It even finds a rather theatrical sound late on. The band's Facebook page does add to that earlier description, by including "heavy guitar riffs, multi-dimensional vocals and diverse rhythms". I like "multi-dimensional". It fits.

But wait, there's more. Command slows down for an intriguing quiet section that hints at a Spanish sound, but spends much of its time loud and raucous with squealing guitars. Mastery starts out with a symphonic feel, not just because of the vocals but through the guitar build, but then ramps up to be a thrash song. Gentihaa never shift on a dime the way that, say, Mr. Bungle does, but they move through a host of genres without really acknowledging a boundary at any point. The achingly slow outro is fantastic too.

What surprises me most here is that Gentihaa don't appear to have recorded anything before, at least in this particular form. The band formed in 2015 but this is apparently their debut. Each member came from other bands, but even there the genres are varied. Vocalist Andre, for instance, sang for a melodic death band called Wings in Motion, a thrash/groove band by the name of Memorain and even a parody band called, get this, Sonata Antarctika. The variety here does explain a lot.

I for one am eager to hear more and not only because Gentihaa are one more interesting band from Greece. All of this is good and some of it is really great. It bodes well for a bright future.

Anifernyen - Augur (2019)

Country: Portugal
Style: Melodic Black/Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 9 Sep 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! Finally, I find a Portuguese band who don't play instrumental psychedelic rock! I should add that I've really dug those varied instrumental psychedelic rock albums. There's something in the water down in Portugal that makes that stuff work really well and I'm sure I'll be reviewing a lot more of it in the future. But for the first time this year, here's something else!

Anifernyen play melodic death metal but in a heavily black metal influenced style. Or hey, maybe they play melodic black metal with a death influence. I have to say that they balance these two disparate styles so well that it's hard to tell what the band's initial focus was. Even the name fails to tell that, as it would fit either genre. It's an ancient Breton way of describing Hell: "an ifern yen" translating to "a cold hell".

Surprisingly, given that this is their debut album, they were formed as long ago as 2003. It looks like they stayed together until 2010, issuing one EP, The Pledge of Chaos, in 2008. They reformed in 2016, with a new bass player and drummer. Ricardo Vieira also handles bass duties for thrash band Buried Alive. Hugo Almeida is clearly in demand, as he sits behind the kit for five active bands, including notably Inthyflesh, and he has another six under his belt from prior years, including, again, Buried Alive.

Almeida makes his presence massively obvious here, because the drums are a black metal blitzkrieg. They're tight and they're high in the mix. What's more, even if he plays slowly, relatively speaking, he continues to do very interesting things with his rhythms and fills. There's a lot of cymbal work going on too. He's very impressive and the rest of the group have to work hard to keep up with him.

Other than Almeida, most obvious here is Daniel Lucas, the lead vocalist. He displays a versatility with his voice that's needed for an album that works across two different genres. Frankly, if he hadn't been up to the challenge, this album would not be as successful as it is. He has a warm and enunciated death growl but he's able to shift it into a bleaker register when he wants to emphasise the black aspects. He doesn't shriek particularly, but he gets a lot harsher. I liked his whispering approach on Christendoom too.

As tends to be the case nowadays, we have to listen very closely to hear the bass, which contributes more as a layer than a separate instrument. It does make it through everything else at points, especially on Foreshadowing, and also on Christendoom, but it never makes it to the front of our attention.

There are two guitarists, Luis Ferreira and Diogo Malheiro, and they often fall into the mix too. The riffs are deep and dark and the solos a lot less frequent than I expected. Even the melodies are surprisingly subsumed by the backing though, when they really come out to play, they're solid. There are strong moments soloing on Graveborn, building Voleur D'âmes and contributing in a number of ways to standout tracks like Foreshadowing, Christendoom and Wormwood.

As if to show their disdain for genre boundaries, Anifernyen step away from the black/death style at moments. Emissary gets a little thrashy for a while and Foreshadowing starts out (and returns to) being very doomy. A number of tracks on the second half have a doom/death feel to them, regardless of pace. That really works for me. Oh, and if anyone doubted a Celtic Frost influence, the death grunt on Deadite ought to settle that.

And this album really works for me. I wasn't impressed on a first listen but a second sold it on me and it's got better and more immersive each further time through. It's good stuff indeed and it proves that there's more than a single musical style in play in Portugal nowadays.

Khaos Labyrinth - The Cold Universe (2019)

Country: Russia
Style: Melodic Black Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Jan 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives

Metal had a good year in 2018, with a lot of bands successfully blurring the different styles and creating new and vibrant sounds. Already, it looks like having a good year in 2019 too, with death metal taking the lead through the Phlebotomized and Soilwork albums, which together show how versatile death metal has become. Enter the Russian band Khaos Labyrinth to highlight how black metal doesn't have to make wild leaps to genres like gospel and bluegrass to move its cause forward. They look inward rather than outward but they still innovate.

The opening of The Great Deicide felt like old school thrash but with the traditional black metal bedrock added behind it. As it grew, it added in progressive elements, gorgeous transitions and some soaring solo guitar, with these elements often overlaid. Crucially, it all plays well together. Through the Ruins adds nu metal shouts as a sort of haka before leaping into the black. Cosmic Alchemy blisters until its first interlude, which adds an oriental flavour, then explored some fascinating territory for a while until blistering again to its ending. Depths without Stellar Light has a progressive Voivod feel to it with an absolutely fantastic stop a minute and change in.

What I think I like most about this album is how well this band layer their sounds. That came to mind during the intro, but became extra clear as the ending of Cosmic Alchemy gave way to the beginning of Cold. The guitarwork behind the verses of Cold underlined it in red ink because it's delightful and it's buried just deep enough below the hyperspeed surface to make us dive in to explore.

It sometimes seems really weird to acknowledge that Khaos Labyrinth is a trio, albeit one using an additional session drummer for this album. I'm guessing that much of this is because Skvld, who wrote two thirds of the material, doesn't only handle bass and vocals but also keyboards and samples. That could be translated into him taking some solid black metal, already interesting because of the solo work from Beorn, and then rendering it even more interesting.

Not everything's of the same quality here and the first half is generally superior to the second half, but the album rarely slips into the background. Each time it does, it promptly reenforces itself again with something special before we notice and we find ourselves back on board. Often, but certainly not always, this is due to one of the many quiet interludes within tracks, which are agreeably varied; they're there for us to take a breath but sometimes they take it away instead. Sometimes it's a transition or a temporary change in vocal style. Occasionally, it's something really odd like a scratchy effect towards the end of Rest in Sand, the longest, last and most untypical song on the album.

Short version of this review: there's lots here to catch the attention!

Khaos Labyrinth are certainly finding their style. They used to be Das ist Unrein, then Nebiroth, but they've been Khaos Labyrinth since 2011 and this is their third full length album with hopefully many more to come.