Apocalypse Later Music Reviews: progressive metal

Showing posts with label progressive metal. Show all posts

Thursday, 20 February 2025

Dream Theater - Parasomnia (2025)

My youngest is ecstatic that drummer Mike Portnoy is back in Dream Theater, because he wasn't in the band when we saw them supporting Iron Maiden in 2010. His return coincides with a return to form and a return to a more emphatic mindset with stronger drums and heavier guitars. How much of that is his work and influence is open for debate, given that he only wrote one of the six songs. Guitarist John Petrucci, however, wrote three of them and vocalist James LaBrie the other two. Add an instrumental intro and a sample driven interlude and this is a generous seventy plus minute album that's surely the best and most authentic release Dream Theater have put out in a long time.

After that instrumental, In the Arms of Morpheus, which is enjoyably patient but inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, even at over five minutes, the opening single Night Terror sets the stage very well indeed. It's patient too, running a breath shy of ten minutes and covering a lot of ground in that time. By this point, we've come to expect long instrumental sections that provide various band members with showcase opportunities and, in between them, a vocal section or two that hopefully find and milk strong hooks. We don't get all those things as often as we'd like but it does happen. And it happens here.

The first two minutes of Night Terror are relatively basic for Dream Theater. There's a churn that reminds of Anthrax. Beware the walking dude, right? But then Portnoy plays a patented Portnoy run and we're firmly in business. The vocal sections are decent and the hooks good, but it's when the band starts to jam that things really comes alive. Petrucci doesn't show off too much on this one but does make his presence known. Portnoy has that early moment. Keyboard wizard Jordan Rudess gets plenty of solo time in the second half, one of which is a virtuoso moment. Petrucci is tasked with following it but it's his more sedate soaring that works best.

In short, it all works and that bodes very well for the rest of the album, which I'd say lives up to the challenge. The worst aspect is probably the half hearted attempt at a concept. This isn't a concept album in the traditional sense because these songs don't progress us through a story. However, it does have a concept, merely a thematic one in which the songs explore the same subject matter in different ways, namely the parasomnia of the title, or in less fancy language, the weird disruptive crap that happens in our sleep, like night terrors and an inability to tell if we're asleep or not.

The worst moments for me were the samples, not only in the interlude that's built on samples but within other songs. We're conditioned to see samples that last more than a moment as narrative material and that can work great on a true concept album. Just look at Operation: Mindcrime, an album that I'll come back to shortly. Here, though, there is no progression so the samples have to serve only as ambience, which they don't do when they take over a song like Midnight Messiah at the beginning, so we wonder if that's all we're going to get.

Fortunately it isn't and Midnight Messiah moves on to become an actual song. I particularly enjoy the chorus, when the pace ratchets up, the guitar is vibrant and the hook absolutely spot on. It's a sort of Deep Purple plays speed metal vibe like Space Truckin' with modern production values, but the verses are more sedate, as if a band with this amount of shared technical ability is choosing to play in slow motion.

And that goes double for Bend the Clock, the most atypical song here, which feels far more like a Queensrÿche concept album song (I told you I'd get back to Operation: Mindcrime) than a Dream Theater one. The whole album has been notably heavier but this piece tones all that down for seven minutes and change. Mostly I'd call that a bad thing but the saving grace is Petrucci's extended solo during the second half, which is the tastiest such anywhere on this album. It gets virtuosic towards the end—really, says, the sarcastic devil on my shoulder; on a Dream Theater album?—but it never loses its feel. Even at its most intricate, it builds on melody first and foremost. It's an utterly delightful solo.

But enough of what isn't typical. There's much here that is. A Broken Man starts that, getting all jazzy and sassy around the six minute mark. It's more complex and progressive, the solos there of course but with much more focus on structure and innovative songwriting. Dead Asleep follows in its wake at greater length and even more success, doing much in its eleven minutes. It starts out like an orchestral take on the Tiger Lillies with acoustic guitar, but grows into modern metal with much decoration by Judess's keyboards. It ends in a peaceful Mediterranean lull.

And, much later, after everything else, there's The Shadow Man Incident, the album's true epic, a nineteen minute workout that makes the nine, ten and eleven minute earlier pieces almost seem insubstantial. It may not be the best song here but it's the one that fans will gravitate towards, as it gives abundant opportunity to every band member to showcase their talents and they all have a lot of fun living up to that. It has a classical opening that reminds of Holst's Mars and escalates in wonderful style at seven minutes and change, but it's the instrumental section in the second half that takes it and this entire album home.

Welcome back, Mike Portnoy. With no disrespect to the highly capable Mike Mangini, who did the business for thirteen years, Dream Theater feels whole again.

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.

Tuesday, 28 January 2025

Innocence Lost - Oblivion (2024)

I couldn't find a Best of 2024 list for South American metal, but what I did find tended to include a lot of mentions of a band from Rio de Janeiro called Innocence Lost, who play a mixture of power, prog and symphonic metal, so I thought I'd take a listen. They're hardly newcomers, dating back to 2007, but this is their debut album. I guess that means they've been working on material for a long time and probably playing live shows. They did release an EP in 2012, but that was it for recorded output until a string of singles in the 2020s. Three out of five of them made it onto this album.

What's immediately obvious, once Of Man's Fall, the movie trailer of an intro, is done, is that this is emphatically metal, in red ink with two underlines, without ever becoming extreme. The closest they get to extreme are the drums of Thiago Alves, because he has a lot of gears and he gives the impression that he could shift up another couple at any moment without any worries at all. When he's playing slow, which is often, it feels like he's playing in slow motion. However, even though he does find higher gears at points, he never goes full on extreme.

Nobody else comes close, but the mindset is always metal, with the bass prominent in the mix and often at the expense of the keyboards. That feels unusual for a few reasons. For one, I frequently have to point out in metal reviews how the bass is lost in the mix, but far fewer where it buries the keyboards. I can't remember the last time I pointed that out when the keyboard player happens to be a founder member. That's Aloysio Ventura, who provides keyboards and occasional vocals. The other founder member is Mari Torres, the lead vocalist. Everyone else, including the bassist, was brought on board more recently, around the time that they started putting out singles.

What they provide is interesting music, definitely progressive but rooted deeper in power metal. The symphonic element is there from the outset too, in the choral swells on Dark Forest, and it's never far away, but it always plays second fiddle, as it were, to the power and the prog. The female vocals are clean but very powerful. Torres has a strong set of lungs on her and, while there's a lot of nuance in what she does, she doesn't hold back much. When the Light Fades Away opens up like a ballad, so I wondered how she would sound with some restraints on. She sounds great, though her accent does show here—she sings in English throughout—but she doesn't keep the restraints on for long.

The thing is that everyone else follows suit. The guitar of Gui DeLucchi doesn't solo as often as we might expect but, when it does, it sears, not least in a prominent section on When the Light Fades Away. This sound feels like there's two guitarists, not in the sense that they're duelling but in the sense that there's so much bite. However, there's just DeLucci, which means that he's really giving it some. The same applies to Ventura's keyboards, so often a tease in the background but once in a while a tasty solo instrument, like during the second halves of City of Woe and Downfall.

And then there's the bass of Ricardo Haquim, so prominent that it would dominate this sound if it wasn't for Torres. In many ways, it serves double duty, both in the traditional role of the bass and as a substitute for a rhythm guitar. Check out the beginning of Downfall to hear it shift between those two modes. It's usually up front and powerful, but there's a completely different texture to it at the beginning of When the Light Fades Away, where it turns liquid and subtle and very tasty indeed. It's liquid during the intro to Fallen too, but not remotely subtle. Overall, it helps to bring a more modern touch to the sound.

It's hard to pick out favourite tracks on this album, though When the Light Fades Away has to be in and amongst them. Regular readers know that I rarely pick ballads as standout tracks and, in fact, I'm far more likely to call them the least worthy on any album, but this one has class and variety without any hint of cheese. Dark Forest is up there too, because it's a real statement of intent, in many ways the album in microcosm. Downfall is a strong contender too, because it has everything this album does best in there somewhere. Then there's The Trial, with a bunch of male narrative sections that come close to duetting with the female lead vocal. It's a very interesting song.

And it's a consistently strong album throughout. The intro did nothing for me at all and I'd like to have heard more extended solos, both on guitar and keyboards, with the bass down a little so we can hear more of both, but what's here is all good stuff. It's all heavy power metal that's happy to get right into our face, but with the added depth that comes from the prog angle and, to a lesser degree, the symphonic one. It's a very good debut. I'd love to hear what they come up with next.

Thursday, 16 January 2025

Opeth - The Last Will and Testament (2024)

It ought to be clear to one and all that Opeth have been one of the most consistently imaginative and genre-flouting bands in the rock/metal scene over the past few decades. For those not paying attention, they started out as a progressive metal band back in 1990 and gradually veered into the much calmer but still imaginative prog rock genre. Mikael Åkerfeldt gave up his death growls back in 2008 after their Watershed album and there have been precious few metal elements within the past couple of albums. Nonetheless, their previous release, In Cauda Venenum, was a highlight of my year in 2019. Well, now the heaviness is back and so are the death growls.

Well, it's not quite that simple. Sure, it's heavier, even before we hear that first death growl, but it remains varied. There are subtleties everywhere here and various vocalists play roles in a story. After all, this is a concept album and Åkerfeldt is playing a dead man, a bitter one, making a harsh voice entirely appropriate. He's the patriarch of a family and he's dead but his children, three of them, have assembled to hear his last will and testament, which unfolds in seven tracks given the names of paragraphs rather than anything friendlier. The living characters, whether the children or the executor, have different clean voices.

First the vocals are sung clean with emphasis. Then they're growled, in alternation with a spoken approach. The music around them changes accordingly, much of it versatile prog metal but some of it still clearly prog rock. Overall, it's much heavier than the past few albums, but there are long sections that don't touch metal at all. For instance, among the guests, who prominently include a large string section, the London Session Orchestra Strings, there are a few contributions by one of Åkerfeldt's idols, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. He delivers spoken word on four tracks and flute on two, §4 and §7.

The first long pastoral section isn't his, but it is on §4, the father explaining to his twins that they aren't his. They're the product of his wife, who predeceased him, sleeping with another man after they couldn't get pregnant together. It's the harp of Mia Westlund that takes the forefront when these twins are floored by the news, then Anderson's flute takes over as they question everything they knew about their lives. The shocks will continue to unfold and Åkerfeldt almost feels gloating as he gets this off his chest in a far heavier section. Much of this song returns to instrumentality, though, as two worlds fall apart.

It's fair to say that we don't know a heck of a lot about these children. We don't know how old they are or what their characters are. I got far more of an impression of the father, who's already dead when this story begins in legal flashback, than I did of the kids. §1 doesn't even mention how many children, just children plural. We learn in §2 that there's one that was born to a maid and brought up as one of his own children. She's a daughter. §4 suggests that his wife felt that, if he could have a child with the maid, then she could have a child with another servant. And that child turned out to be twins. So there are three, all raised by the parents as their own.

It's in §5 that the daughter inherits everything. She's his blood and the others aren't, even though none of them apparently knew this coming in. That's the sort of person he is. This speaks to who he is lyrically, not to who they are. Instrumentally, much of it speaks to him too, the heaviest sections generally representing the sheer force of his will manifesting from beyond the grave. However, an abundance of variety intersperses these sections and only some of that is the father. Much of that represents represents the emotions of the children reacting to the news these paragraphs brings them. I found that I felt for all three of them, even in theoretically happier sections like the end of §6 when the daughter comes into her inheritance and the father tries to be generous and caring.

Thus far I've talked a lot about the lyrics, because they're kind of the point. All the music exists to bolster the words with mood in ways that go far beyond the typical song. It's hard to establish the instrument as a force when it's effectively restricted by the emotion of moments. Of course, these musicians are excellent, as we know from earlier albums. However, it's new fish Waltteri Väyrynen who shone for me. There are wonderful rhythms here and teasing percussion. I know him from his work for Paradise Lost and this is very different indeed, but he does a pristine job.

He doesn't have a lot to do on the closer, A Story Never Told, the only track given a name instead of a paragraph number, because the reading is complete and this comes afterward. It's a ballad, with no heavy moments at all and delicacy dancing in the aftermath of that. There's a twist to the tale. It's appropriate that this dead patriarch, clearly a force of nature, doesn't get the final word. That goes to the guitar soaring in presumed happiness after it's all over. His final words were, in Latin, God, Father, King, Blood, which shows how much he was full of himself. Now, the king is dead. Long live the queen, who may not be at all full of herself if that guitar is anything to go by.

I liked this album on a first listen, but it took a few more, along with a reading of the lyrics, to fully grasp what it was doing. That's pretty routine for an Opeth album, of course. Now it's pretty clear, I can appreciate what it does and why. I like the return to both metal and death growl, though I'm also very happy that both aren't toggles, rather tools to be used when appropriate. The best growl is on §1, delivered with commanding intonation, and that's surely the best track here. I dug §4 and §7 too though, because of how much they do and how well they do it.

This rocked the end of year charts and that's probably fair, but I don't think I liked it quite as much as its prominent flagbearers. There are some who didn't get it but I'm not among those. I think it warrants a safe 8/10, not quite up to its hallowed predecessor but with textures beyond it. Maybe I might reconsider that later, if I come back to it at all.

Thursday, 9 January 2025

Katoaja - What We Witness (2025)

Country: Finland
Style: Progressive Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 6 Jan 2025
Sites: Facebook | Instagram

Here's another progressive metal album that covers a lot of musical ground, but it does it with a lot more coherence than the Blood Incantation album that I reviewed yesterday. It isn't extreme, so the breadth of palette isn't as substantial or the shifts as jarring, but it still covers a heck of a lot of ground. That begins with the opener, Nothing and Nothing More, which is definitely a lot of something, especially when the keyboards get seriously interesting at the end of the first half.

This song runs a breath over ten minutes and is entirely instrumental for the first couple. It starts out elegant, then turns jaunty with a core vocal that gradually gets less annoying. Are there two singers here or just one? There seem to be two singing core, even before someone starts singing clean. Regular readers know that I'm not much of a fan of shouty vocals. They certainly have their place, adding aggression to any song, but I've always found them fundamentally limiting, because that's pretty much all they can do. Unless a band is planning to only be a blitzkrieg of aggression, it stifles creativity.

Katoaja solve that problem by varying the vocals considerably. This song starts out shouty but it goes clean. Other songs do both too, in different quantities. The Sinking Cathedral adds whispers, which gradually grow in emphasis. Stoic features milder vocals, which oddly stay at the same level throughout the song. They embrace folk melodies in Nangijala. There's even a harsh voice in The Source that approaches a death growl, as well as a breathy clean voice. What this means is that the album and the songs on it can't be defined by one vocal style and that's especially important with someone who typically shouts. The second vocalist is bass player Matias Ärrälä, but most of this has to be the work of Juho Kiviniemi, who's admirably versatile.

Of course, the musical style varies with the vocal style, as we'd expect for a prog band and that's a good thing and a bad thing. The beginning of The Sinking Cathedral is absolutely my thing, with its slow build on organ, intricate guitar and those whispered vocals. Unfortunately, the middle of the same song isn't my thing at all, with limiting core vocals and modern guitars that masquerade as percussion. It grows substantially over its five minutes though, with some gorgeous keyboards, an impressive bass and a tasty guitar solo still to come.

Every song here has at least one thing worthy of note and often that becomes a plural. Nangijala wends its way into folk melodies a minute and a half in. What We Witness opens up teasingly with slow keyboard swirls and tasteful piano, then it erupts into life with a jagged rhythm. The ending of The Source is utterly delightful, with the keyboards dancing around airly over a heavy backdrop. They're the work of Unto Luoto and, while he's far from the only talent in this band, he's the one who caught my attention the most.

The Great Under is particularly fascinating because of him. The music is heavy and driving and the vocals, when they arrive, are aggressive core vocals again. Yet the keyboard melodies are straight out of the new wave, the sort of thing we'd expect on Ultravox songs. It's like Luoto is playing on a completely different song to the other four musicians in the band, but it works. The keyboards are a way to temper the aggression without caging it and, rather bizarrely, it all works together with wonderful effect. In fact, this may be my favourite song on the entire album.

If there's a competitor for that title, it's What We Witness, not only because it's the instrumental and they always tend to stand out for me on albums with core vocals. However, this particular one does a lot. I didn't expect it to stay instrumental, for a start, its eruption into jagged rhythm when I expected the vocals to kick in, appropriately core at this point, but they never do. The song waxes and wanes, with a heavy section in the middle and an an introspective one during the second half. It's a gift that keeps on giving.

My other highlight, much of The Sinking Cathedral aside, is The Source, which leaps into metalcore from the outset but with the vocals varied, this being where that near death growl shows up. The keyboards are what shift the tone, as they do so often on this album, leading it into a traditional prog section, a soft midsection and that delightfully airy ending. There's a lot in this song, which runs almost eight and a half minutes. It's prog metal, metalcore, prog rock and prog metal again in turn, with each section moving seamlessly into the next.

All in all, I like Katoaja, who were ambitious with their debut album but pretty consistently nailed it. By now, the average Finn must be in three bands, because Finland is punching so far above its musical weight that it boggles the mind. I don't know whether these five musicians arrived from other bands or play in multiples, but it doesn't sound like this is their first rodeo. I'd definitely like to hear more.

Wednesday, 8 January 2025

Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere (2025)

Country: USA
Style: Progressive Death Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 4 Oct 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

Here's an album that's made a lot of top ten lists for 2024, unsurprisingly given how much buzz has surrounded Blood Incantation lately. I reviewed their previous album, 2019's Hidden History of the Human Race, in January 2020 because it had similarly made so many end of year lists. The general consensus of the critics is the same for each: they're both masterpieces that move death metal in new directions. What's odd is that I found myself happy to agree with them last time but not this. There are the roots for a masterpiece here, but it just doesn't hold together for me.

There are two tracks, The Stargate and The Message, presumably broken up over the two sides of the vinyl release, and each of them is broken up into three parts named Tablets. That's hardly an unusual approach, but I can't figure out why any of them are separated the way they are. Tablet I of The Stargate, for instance, features three utterly distinct parts that aren't separated at all yet the ambience that ends Tablet I flows right into Tablet II as if there shouldn't be a gap. I can't see what Blood Incantation are trying to do.

By utterly distinct, by the way, I mean utterly distinct. Tablet I starts out with bubbly synths but a jagged guitar quickly joins in as if this is a Voivod album. Thirty seconds in, it's clearly technical or progressive death metal and that settles down within the next minute and we're off and running at pace. It's all good stuff and it's building. However, it all falls away at the two minute mark, so it can veer into something completely different.

Suddenly it's funk. Or reggae. Or soft rock. Or jazzy space rock. Maybe it's all those things at once, rather like a lively krautrock piece with a touch of Journey, especially once a keyboard solo shifts the feel firmly into space rock. Eventually, it evolves into Pink Floyd, a Dave Gilmour clone rocking out in a guitar solo. This is a wild and very interesting three and half minutes. Again, it's all good stuff, entirely instrumental, but if I have no idea why it's there at this point in this song.

What's more, it doesn't end with Tablet I. It just erupts back into prog death at the five and a half minute mark, rather abruptly too, as if someone realised that the radio station had changed from the metal station to the krautrock station and tweaked the dial back again. This closing section is, you guessed it, all good stuff. Everything here is well played and clearly placed very deliberately. I merely have no idea what it's supposed to achieve. I get the feeling that it's supposed to take me to a particular place but it doesn't. I'm stranded in the airport terminal wondering which of these planes to catch.

If the end of the part prompts the decision, then it's that krautrock plane to Berlin, as Tablet II is almost entirely told in that instrumental vein, merely with added samples for flavour. In fact, it's so krautrock that there's a guest musician here and it's Thorsten Quaeschning, the current leader of electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream. That isn't particularly shocking, because it sounds like a track of theirs all the way until it turns into pastoral folk rock three minutes in and eventually gets to a heavy prog metal section, sans the usual death components, at the end. That's a genre even a musical chameleon like Tangerine Dream hasn't tried out yet.

I could keep going at this level of detail throughout all three tablets of both songs, but there's no point. The same wild shifts happen and, while every section sounds great on its own, none of it has any reason I can figure out. What's that ethnic instrumentation on Tablet III, in front of the tribal drums? I have no idea but it sounds good and makes no sense. Why does Tablet II of The Message veer into jazz out of nowhere? Why does Tablet III open up in a clear thrash metal section, a nicely powerful one at that until the death growls show up and minimise it? Why does that shift into the same pastoral flute and soothing folk prog as the middle of Tablet II of The Stargate? I don't know.

It feels like I should like this. I tend to appreciate bands subverting genres by merging them in odd ways. I tend to love extreme metal bands dipping into unusual rock territory, especially with ethnic instruments to mix it up even more. I tend to like being bludgeoned here but soothed there. That's joyous to me. But it has to make sense. There has to be a reason for it to happen, lyrical or musical or whatever. Set a scene and paint it with music so I can see what it is. It seems like this is trying to do that but it doesn't know how.

And that's why, as beautifully played as this is and as fascinating as its musical shifts are, it simply doesn't work for me as an album. Hidden History of the Human Race was an easy 9/10 for me, even though I don't dish those ratings out like candy. This has to be a 6/10 because it makes no sense to me at all and I've listened through enough times for a sudden realisation to feel long overdue.

Thursday, 9 May 2024

Vanden Plas - The Empyrean Equation of the Long Lost Things

Country: Germany
Style: Progressive Metal
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 19 Apr 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | YouTube

I've heard a lot of Vanden Plas on Chris Franklin's highly recommended Raised on Rock radio show over the past few years, because he's a big fan of theirs, but they're another band who released a debut in the mid-nineties, when I was too busy with real life to focus on new rock and metal, and they didn't cross my path when I found my way back. They're a German band, from Kaiserslautern near the French border, and they play a highly commercial brand of progressive metal that's just as ambitious and complex as we might expect but fundamentally rooted in melody. This counts as their eleventh studio album and their first since The Ghost Experiment, which came out as a pair of albums in 2019 and 2020.

There are six tracks here and they're all strong, but a few listens firms up that they can be ranked relatively easily. The best are the longest, Sanctimonarium, which runs just over ten minutes, and March of the Saints, the epic of the album that wraps it up at almost sixteen. Next are the shorter tracks, My Icarian Flight, The Sacrilegious Mind Machine and They Call Me God, which sit in the six to nine minute range. Finally, there's the opening title track, which is the weakest of them, rather surprisingly.

That's because it's not really an opening song, just an opening track. It's a kind of an intro, but an odd one that lasts eight minutes, which is longer than two of the five actual songs. It's truly more of a sampler, running through what those five songs are going to do later in the album. Most of it unfolds instrumentally, with the vocals kicking in with what feels like a chorus and turns out to be from the closer, March of the Saints. The second line is the title of the song. It's enjoyable but it's not particular coherent because it's inherently a patchwork piece.

My Icarian Flight is a coherent prog metal song and it builds well, but it's quickly overshadowed by Sanctimonarium, which is where the album truly finds its feet. The Sacrilegious Mind Machine, on the other side of that epic, suffers in the same way, being a highly enjoyable song that we'd praise in isolation, should we hear it on the radio, but clearly losing out in comparison to the song that it happens to be next to on this album.

Like everything here, Sanctimonarium features elegant melodies over a punchier backdrop that I read is heavier than Vanden Plas's more recent albums and more like what they did on their early ones. I'm certainly interested in checking out their 1994 debut, Colour Temple, based on that note, to see if it holds true. That backdrop falls away somewhat during verses to emphasise the vocals of Andy Kuntz, which is an approach I don't always appreciate but is done so well here that it's almost a textbook in how to do it right. There's a wonderful calmer section four minutes in that features a flurry of activity nonetheless.

What else is new here is the keyboard work of Alessandro del Vecchio, the session player who's on pretty much every album released by Frontiers nowadays. Vanden Plas have rarely changed their line-up, Kuntz and the Lill brothers, guitarist Stephan and drummer Andreas, have been in place since the band's formation in 1986, while bassist Torsten Reichert joined as long ago as 1990, four years before their debut. However, Günter Werno, their keyboard player since 1990 left in 2023, so Del Vecchio has joined in his stead.

What I'm reading suggests that Del Vecchio has followed Werno's lead relatively closely, with the slight exception that he favours older keyboards. Certainly I'm hearing plenty of seventies organ on Sanctimonarium in the time honoured Jon Lord style, along with the more modern equivalent. He certainly doesn't favour that approach exclusively, so it's more of a delight when it shows up, a section on The Sacrilegious Mind Machine lovely behind rhythmic guitarwork. I believe the strings on They Call Me God are really his keyboards mimicking strings, so he's certainly staying varied.

The Sacrilegious Mind Machine and They Call Me God are excellent second half songs, enough so that I can't really choose between them. Initially, I easily favoured the latter, even though its first half plays out like a melancholy ballad, starting soft with piano, those keyboard generated strings and a half-whispered vocal from Kuntz. He escalates joyously in the chorus, emphasising just how good his intonation play is and Stephan Lill ramps things up midway with a searing guitar solo. On further listens, though, the former keeps getting better and now I can't pick between them.

Of course, I'll pick Sanctimonarium and March of the Saints over them every day, because they're absolute gems that underline how Vanden Plas only get better with the breathing space to grow their songs. The riffage here is more reminiscent of Iron Maiden than on earlier songs. There's a gorgeous drop in intensity six minutes into the latter and an impeccable ramp back up, this time in two stages as a sort of tease. Eventually, it returns to some of what we heard on the opener and it works far better when it's the ending of a longer song that's already been substantially developed.

So this isn't a perfect album, but it's a damn fine one. I initially rated it 8/10 because of the three tiers of quality, but ended up increasing that to 9/10 when I realised that the "lesser material" of My Icarian Flight, The Sacrilegious Mind Machine and They Call Me God really constitute a trio of 8/10 songs. Their two longer compatriots warrant 9/10s and they're twenty-five minutes between them. Only the opener really lets the side down and it's hardly a poor track. So 9/10 it is. If you're one of those Dream Theater fans who wishes they'd spend more time knocking out catchy gems in the Pull Me Under vein than extending their instrumental workouts, you should check out Vanden Plas. They may well be your new favourite band.

Thursday, 21 March 2024

Persefone - Lingua Ignota Part I (2024)

I've never heard Persefone before, but they've been around long enough to still have a MySpace page, having been formed back in 2001 with seven albums to their credit thus far. They hail from Andorra, a new country to Apocalypse Later Music because it only contains about 80,000 people, few of whom are likely to be in metal bands. In fact, only two of the six musicians here are locals, with three more from neighbouring Spain and one from Portugal, but, just on their own, they're enough to drop the ratio of rock musicians to people to 1:40,000, which is pretty decent. I'm sure I'm also only just scratching the surface of what's going on in Andorra too.

They're a progressive metal band who sound very modern, especially in early tracks, which means that the aspects of modern metal that I like the least are here in djenty rhythms and shouty core vocals, but there's a lot more here than that, especially as the EP grows. There are five tracks on offer, though Sounds and Vessels is clearly an intro to One Word, so it should really count as four. Those two are probably the most modern and also my least favourite, but they display a majestic build in an almost ritual way, the band especially focusing on one line as a mantra and growing it from whispers to screams.

The vocalist, Daniel Rodriguez Flys, is also the new singer in Eternal Storm, a fascinating Spanish melodic death metal band who have a new album out that I'm looking forward to hearing. He was not on their previous one, Come the Tide, which was my album of the month in September 2019, in my book, a level above the latest Tool album that Loudwire is touting the album of the year. He's a bit shouty here for my tastes but there's also a versatility to his voice that takes him into plenty of other styles too.

It's presumably his whispers that kick off Sounds and Vessels, building to shouts and then back, as the music behind him follows suit, initially piano and bouncy electronica until they bouncy turns ominous and the song launches into major crunch. Everything's jagged, as you might expect from a modern prog metal band, but it's also very controlled. That all expands further in One Word, as technical and jagged but with a lot more atmosphere behind it. It's all bigger and more, with fast sections and a deeper choral take on the chorus courtesy of what may be multiple voices and may be post production effects, probably both, emphasising how elegantly it all swells.

Most of what I like about One Word and not so much of what I don't like continues on into the trio of remaining songs. The Equable keeps the jagged rhythms but alternates its vocals between that shouty core style and a bulky clean chorus. There's lovely delicate guitarwork and an atmospheric keyboard to wrap it up. Lingua Ignota opens with that choral approach, a folky tune turning angry, and it works the fundamental contrast that so often drives Persefone between calm and confident and hurt and aggressive better than anything else here. Again, the ending is surely the best part, but here the ending stretches to a few minutes of the seven and a half that it runs.

And that leaves Abyssal Communications, which continues the flow of gradually weeding out the shouty aspects to their natural extreme, which is to cut out the metal almost entirely. This opens mellow, the vocals clean and pleading. It grows too, of course, as everything here does, but in the way we might expect from a new wave song rather than a modern metal song, but a suitably prog new wave song at that. Flys continues his shift from my least favourite aspect of the band's sound to my favourite. He finds some deliciously smooth notes here, all the more so because for them he ditches the hint of grit and edge that he employs on the rest of the song. It's fascinating stuff.

Regular readers know that, while I'm open to every aspect of rock and metal and actively seek out the newer and more unusual places that the genres visit, I'm not generally a fan of that particular modern metal sound that's epitomised in djent and core vocals, when that's all a band does. It's a limitation thing for me. Djent turns riffs into rhythms so removes the other cool things that riffs do and shouty core vocals usually aim for aggression above all but almost always feel artificial. As an entire sound, that's limiting, but as a particular colour paint on an artist's palette, it can be an opportunity for contrast when used appropriately against other colours.

And that's what I hear in Persefone's sound. The sheer movement from Sounds and Vessels, easily the most limited piece here, to Abyssal Communication, easily the smoothest, makes for quite the fascinating journey. Inevitably, my favourite songs are the ones partway, because it's never about the destination. I might go with Lingua Ignota over The Equable today but I might reverse that on another day. Both are diverse and immersive, two things that I ache to find in progressive metal, and Abyssal Communication serves as a comedown from both. I presume Persefone will release a Lingua Ignota Part II sometime soon and I'm looking forward to it.

Tuesday, 12 March 2024

Messiah - Christus Hybercubus (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday, 16 January 2024

Voivod - Morgöth Tales (2023)

Voivod have been around for four decades now, though my maths suggests that Synchro Anarchy was their fortieth anniversary album last year. However, it's here where they're celebrating, with an unusual project that works rather well. Only two of the eleven songs on offer are new, the title track and a cover version of Public Image Limited's Home, which sounds like a weird choice until it plays and suddenly it seems entirely natural. The rest are re-recordings of old songs, mostly with the current band but twice featuring a guest former member.

Re-recordings are always a dubious concept, but I like the results here because the track selection follows some interesting rules. For a start, there's nothing here newer than 2014, because the two albums in that timeframe featured the current line-up anyway, so there's no point to redux. There is also nothing newer than 2008, when Chewy joined on guitar to replace the late Piggy. There's no more than one track from any prior album, so this is a carefully curated sampler of older material, and it delves as far back as the band's contribution to the Metal Massacre V compilation.

That's Condemned to the Gallows and it's first, because these tracks are presented in chronological order, so allowing us to join them on a journey through their history as it happened, with consistent 21st century production values. It's also a real highlight that I'm not sure I've ever heard before. Metal Massacre V came out the same year as the band's debut, War and Pain, but this wasn't on it. I remember that album being a muddy mess of fascinatingly raw tracks, so I'm sure this is much cleaner than the original, but it still has a real bite to it. It chugs along quickly too, highlighting that punk attitude that they wore overtly during the early days. I like it a lot, but it doesn't sound a lot like what we tend to think of as Voivod.

There's nothing here from War and Pain but Thrashing Rage was on their follow-up, Rrröööaaarrr. It feels like a progression from Condemned to the Gallows, but it's still only partway to what they would become. It's another up tempo song, in your face but a little more controlled. However, it's only starting to adopt that unusual Voivod tone. It's Killing Technology, the title track of the third Voivod album, where that fully arrives, complete with robot voice and patented jagged guitar, all done in a neatly perky fashion. Snake's voice loses some rawness and melody is bulked up, even if it contrasts with that jagged guitar. It's much more science fiction.

For a while it continues in much the same vein. Macrosolutions to Megaproblems, from Dimension Hatröss, is Killing Technology but more so, with weird rhythms. Pre-Ignition is the closest song on this album to its predecessor, which is interesting to me, because I've always felt that Nothingface was a real shift for Voivod. That doesn't show here, at least on this one. It clearly shows on Nuage Fractal, from Angel Rat. Snake's voice gets cleaner than ever and the jagged guitar is polished in an odd way that makes this sound like Voivod are covering U2 and making the song their own.

Fix My Heart is where these songs become new to me. This one's from The Outer Limits in 1993 and it's a bouncy one with an interesting mix of sounds. There's certainly some Voivod in there, but it's not in the pure form. There's some grunge, some alt rock and some stoner rock in there too. It's an understandable shift for the time but I wasn't expecting it and I wasn't expecting it to go away on the very next song, Rise, which is much more old school, even if it's from 1997's Phobos. After that, I wasn't expecting it to come back for the one after, Rebel Robot, but there's definitely grunge in Snake's vocal here.

I should mention that he doesn't sing Rise, because this is where the guests come in. The vocalist on Rise is Eric Forrest, who sang it originally, because bassist Blacky had left in 1991 and original vocalist Snake followed suit in 1994, leaving E-Force to replace them both. He's older school, much rawer even than Snake revisiting the really early material. By 2003's self-titled album, Snake had returned and Jason Newsted had joined on bass, taking the nom de plume of Jasonic. He returns for this version of Rebel Robot too.

And then there are the new songs. Morgöth Tales is clearly a song about the band and its history and raison d être, dropping quite a few nods to earlier track titles. I like this one a lot because it covers a vast amount of territory. I like the serious ramp up in tempo, with a fast buzzsaw guitar. I like the drift into spacy prog rock. I like the back and forth between those two styles. And I like its prominent guitar solo. It looks back a lot but neatly patches everything Voivod into one new track.

Finally, there's Home, that PiL song, which I hadn't heard before but should, given the line-up the original boasted: John Lydon on vocals, the always interesting Steve Vai on guitar and Bill Laswell on bass, plus jazz musician Tony Williams on drums. I can hear some Lydon in the vocals, especially late on, but the song is an unusual trip and it's a stellar choice for a Voivod cover.

And that's it, unfolding in ruthless chronological order. The die hard Voivod fan will know all these songs, but they sound good with a 21st century production job. I must go back to that debut again to see how awful the production really was on it. I'm a Voivod fan but not that hardcore, so I knew half of this, meaning that the other half is new to me. Both halves are fascinating and it's great to hear this journey through their back catalogue in such consistent fashion. I learned a lot. What I'd have to end up with is that my favourite songs here are a couple of the earliest, Condemned to the Gallows and Killing Technology, and the newest pair. That bodes well for the next studio album.

Friday, 5 January 2024

Soen - Memorial (2023)

I found Soen on their fourth album, Lotus, and I liked them a lot. They've changed since then, with a steady move away from the Tool influence that was overt on that album to something much less progressive and much more mainstream, but still unmistakably Soen. These ten songs are simpler, especially in the bass and drums, but they're still powerful and the hooks are just as strong as ever, which is what this band does better than so many other bands: to maintain a serious level of power whatever they're doing, even at their most melodic. They don't just write hooks for their choruses, they put them in verses too and the riffs support that wonderfully throughout.

The increasing simplicity of the music, which suggests that progressive metal isn't going to cut it as a label for long, if this far, was one of the first things I noticed with this album. Another was its impressive production, which is crisp and clear and makes it feel like metal even when it's shifted down into mere rock music, which it does often, in the way that Metallica really played rock music for a while but it felt like metal anyway because of the tone and production. On occasion, the tone even seems similar. There's a ballad to wrap things up too, Vitals, and that maintains its power as well, even in its quietest moments.

I liked this immediately but not emphatically. It took a while to grow on me, partly because of the general approach that was obvious from the first track, Sincere, but also partly because the song after it, Unbreakable, was so obviously the standout. Everything else seemed to sit in its shadow for a few listens through. However, I gradually realised that, even if those songs aren't as obvious or as immediate as Unbreakable, they're all still damn good songs. And so, from liking it from the outset, this turned into a grower. I was going with a 7/10 until my fourth or fifth time through but it became clear that it's an 8/10. Maybe I'll keep going up if I listen long enough.

It's also a very accessible album. Soen fans are likely to dig it, even though they're clearly getting more commercial. It's telling that the most progressive sections are probably the guitar solos, as they sometimes remind of Dave Gilmour, especially on Hollowed, Sincere and Icon. However, Pink Floyd did the same thing that Soen are doing, gradually moving away from progressive to mainstream, so "most progressive" here isn't really particularly progressive. However, it's wide open as to the rest of the potential audience. I can see alt rock fans and nu metal fans liking this, for a start. The path to this sound seems obvious from Floyd, Opeth or Metallica, but also from Disturbed or Pearl Jam, perhaps even Creed.

Much of that is because they calm down a lot for verses. Songs will kick in hard with big metal riffs from Cody Lee Ford and often surprisingly slow drumming from Martín López, but whenever Joel Ekelöf is ready to sing, those riffs strip away or calm down so the vocal melodies stay paramount. Violence is a great example but it's far from the only one here. It makes it easy for us to dig light moments as well as heavy ones, especially as the power is always there regardless.

I say Ekelöf because he's the lead vocalist here, as he's been since the band was founded in 2010, and he's becoming the strongest aspect, if mostly because the complicated passages of songs on previous albums that kept us paying attention to bass, drums and even keyboards generally aren't here this time out. That gives Ekelöf even more focus than he already had as a stellar singer, but he shares that spotlight on Hollowed with a female voice, delivered by Elisa Toffoli, who's Italian but carries a subtle Celtic lilt at the end of phrases. It's not really a duet, because they alternate their vocals for the most part, but both shine on this one, surely the most emotional song here.

It's Hollowed that has the most overtly Pink Floyd inspired guitar solo and it's Memorial after it that has the most overtly Metallica inspired riffing, but it's not a heck of a lot of songs that send me leaping at comparisons. Does Incendiary shift into Alan Parsons Project territory? Sure, I could throw that out, but there's not a lot here that sounds like other people.

Put simply, this sounds like Soen to me, even if they're still evolving their sound with each album, and that's an especially refreshing thought because, while I thoroughly enjoyed Lotus, I heard it as a Swedish take on Tool. I heard that obvious early influence much less on 2021's Imperial, as it sounded like Soen but with Tool often coming to mind. Here I had to stretch to find Tool moments. This is the first Soen album I've heard that sounds almost entirely like themselves.

And now I need to stop listening to Memorial, because I must be on my tenth time through now. It keeps getting better and it's only the fact that Unbreakable remains unchallenged in my mind by anything else here that I'm not thinking about a 9/10. All these songs are excellent, so an 8/10 has to be fair. The question is whether that's enough or not. At this rate, the next album, perhaps due in 2025, may well be right from the outset.

Monday, 9 October 2023

Doomsday Astronaut - Djent Djinn (2023)

Country: Romania
Style: Progressive Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives

I've reviewed a few albums featuring Waqas Ahmed, a Pakistani guitarist living in Sibiu, Romania, but the earliest of them is a 2020 album called Doomsday Astronaut. Well, that name is back, this time used as Ahmed's brand. I say brand rather than band, because he's the only musician here for the most part, Marius Stremtan providing additional guitar solos on a couple of tracks and Roxana Amarandi a violin solo on Awaken the Pharaoh. Everything else, whether the guitars for which he's rightly known or the bass, keyboards and drum programming, comes courtesy of Ahmed himself.

While my favourite release thus far from Ahmed has been the Alpha Q album from last year, which was a band effort, the Marius Stremtan here presumably being the Marius there, this slots in next to it, above that original Doomsday Astronaut album and its 2021 follow up, A Perpetual Winter. It plays well to me because it finds a consistent sound and then gets imaginative with it. The guitar is a gorgeous sounding force on this album, weaving stories even without the benefit of a voice, each of the five tracks plus intro being firmly instrumental.

One success is that each of those tracks finds its own voice, even though their sound is consistent to those around it. Ahmed's guitar plays in the same tone on Awaken the Pharaoh, for instance, as on Yojimbo Unleashed before it and Groove Monkey after it, but it tells a different story, whether due to the ethnic feel that it generates at points, bolstered by the keyboards and violin, or due to some imaginative sections like the slow one towards the end. Yojimbo Unleashed is simpler, that guitar almost finding a bagpipe's drone at points as it takes its time playing fewer notes to move onward, and Groove Monkey brings a real attitude with it, as the most overt "look at me" track here.

Another success is that, even though all of these tracks use the same ingredients but conjure up an entirely new dish, it's tough to pick a favourite among them. I like all three of those tracks but for a set of different reasons. Yojimbo Unleashed is the most straightforward of them, but it boasts the most elegant sweep over a consistent drive, as if that piper was standing on top of a steam train as it powered through the countryside, the notes holding in its wake. As it's about the samurai of the title, he'll need extra hands to wield that and play the pipes, but he seems very capable.

Awaken the Pharaoh takes us to somewhere exotic and introduces us to smaller stories as it shows us around. It's more of a suite than a single piece and it takes us on a real journey. The idea is that a pharaoh has been brought back to life after five thousand years and the culture shock of what he must be experiencing looking at the change to his kingdom is there in the technology and the clear update to old themes. In a way, it reminded me of Beethoven playing in the mall in modern day San Dimas in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. It's old and new at the same time.

Groove Monkey has a sassy and funky outlook that reminds a lot of Steve Vai. It's a show off piece, but Ahmed has the chops to back up that attention seeking aspect. There are moments across the album when he clearly shreds but mostly he avoids simply hurling out as many notes as is humanly possible in favour of generating textures. Many of those textures are conjured up on guitar, but he uses keyboards to great success too without them ever taking over.

And while those three tracks lent themselves so easily to comparison, sounding consistent but also completely different, there are a couple of others bookending them. The same applies to them but not quite as much.

Born of Smokeless Fire is the longest track on offer at just over seven minutes and it sets the show into motion capably, working best as a summary of what's still to come. There's a slow section five minutes in that hints towards Yojimbo Unleashed and a change right after it that points the way to Awaken the Pharaoh, but, having set those ideas in motion, it's content to move on without doing much to explore them. That's what the later tracks are for and they do it substantially.

Premonition wraps up the album and varies the tone for the first time, a more introspective piece that works as an instrumental to let flow over us but also feels like it ought to work as a dance too. It's all about motion, as so much of Ahmed's music tends to be, but on a far more subtle scale than anything else here. For much of this one, he sounds a lot more like Gary Moore than Steve Vai, for instance, and it's a good way to wrap up an album.

By the way, I say "album" but this clocks in a little short, a minute and a half shy of Reign in Blood's length, which is my baseline for a short album, having famously appeared in full on each side of its cassette release. And that's the most obvious flaw here. Another track to nudge it over the half an hour mark would have avoided that, but, hey, if that's its biggest problem, it's a solid album.

Thursday, 27 July 2023

Аркона - Kob' (2023)

I'm no expert, but my understanding is that Arkona, or Аркона in their native Cyrillic, started out as a folk metal band with black metal elements but gradually swapped those elements around to turn into a black metal band with folk metal elements. That start was a couple of decades ago, in 2002 and, by this point, ten albums in, they've moved a little beyond both, to become something a little less classifiable. This could be easily called post-black metal or simply progressive metal with extreme elements.

As their albums tend to be, it's an hour long, so there's a lot of material to explore, but it's focused into a small number of long tracks. Kob', which I'm unable to translate, lasts for seven minutes and Razryvaya plot' ot bezyskhodnosti bytiya matches it, a name that translates into the almost Celtic Frostian Tearing the Flesh from the Hopelessness of Being. That's pretty black metal right there, I might suggest. Ugasaya, Mor and Na zakate bagrovogo solntsa surpass nine. I'm unsure what Mor means, but the others mean Fading Away, apparently common enough that it only needs one word in Cyrillic, and At the Setting of the Crimson Sun. Ydi, or Go, almost reaches twelve.

The bookends are neither folk nor black metal. They're dark ambient, brimming with atmosphere but half of it's whispered horror and the other half a visitation from Russian cyberpunk gods. It's a long intro, as well, over four minutes of it, to get us into a certain mood. The whispering continues throughout the album as a segue between each track. There's dark ambience within the tracks as well, often as what could e called interludes between parts but shouldn't be because they count as parts all on their own.

Part of this is because the keyboards that drive the more ambient sections are provided by Masha or Scream, the only founder member in the band, though both guitarist Sergei (Lazar) and bassist Ruslan (Kniaz) have played on all ten albums. She's the driving force in the band, because she's the songwriter and lyricist and she handles the lead vocals too, though it's hard to tell which they are, because she does so in a host of different styles, both clean and harsh, soft and strident, chanting and brutal. I'm guessing all the voices are hers except the most obvious male voice, which may be either Sergei or Vlad, who's provided many folk instruments since 2011.

I like the title track, which works through quite the dynamic range, but Ydi surpasses it effortlessly and only gets better with repeat listens. It begins with a soft guitar that's almost a brook babbling over the whispers. It escalates soon enough, with a strident vocal from Masha that's underpinned by neat melodies. It builds into a more epic black metal style, almost martial in its assault, like the band are playing this as they hurtle over a hill towards us, the drums galloping horses. Sergei adds a screaming guitar solo around the three minute mark and then it all turns into a threatening folk chant, like something from the Hu. There's so much here and we're still only four minutes or so in.

Much of what follows is made of black metal components, but it's misleading to suggest that it's a black metal song or indeed a black metal album. The drums are often very fast, but the guitars are rarely interested in simply generating a wall of sound. They're often sharp. Some of the voices are bleak, though others are far cleaner and folkier. It's often black metal, but it's approachable for it without becoming soft and it's approachable because of those folkier elements. I should note that Arkona don't toggle between the two approaches, rather combining them with fascinating effect, which often takes the form of chanting vocals floating over the hurtling drums.

The folk elements show up in other ways too, often without us expecting them. Late in Ugasaya, for example, there's a strong black metal section but it suddenly gets bouncy and, however versatile a subgenre it's proving to be, bouncy is not a typical black metal attribute. Then again, Ugasaya was almost synthwave as it opened. One of my favourite Russian musicians is a pop singer called Linda, who trawls folk elements into a more electronic style that's moved through a lot of genres. Masha isn't unlike Linda as this one starts out, though she moves a long way beyond her as it runs on. She gets there in Razryvaya plot' ot bezyskhodnosti bytiya too.

The dynamic play here is fascinating and the changes and shifts in emphasis are just as fascinating. That's why it's easy to think of this as progressive metal or at least post-black metal rather than a purer form, not that "pure" doesn't come with its own problematic impressions in this genre. The whole thing becomes problematic. Just don't think of this as black metal, even when it is. Think of it as prog metal because then, when it shifts off into synthwave or folk or whatever else, it's going to make a lot more sense. Sometimes, as with bands like Opeth, labels become unhelpful except as indicators of how varied an album truly is.

I like this a lot. It wasn't what I expected but it impressed me on a first listen and, as I delve deeper into these songs on repeat listens, it impresses me even more. For highlights, Ydi stands above all this but Ugasaya is stunning, Mor continues to grow on me, especially from its midsection onward, including some fascinating flutes, and, frankly, everything here is worthy. I feel like I should listen another half a dozen times before posting this, but I have other music to move onto. The curse of being a critic is that I can't spend long enough on any particular release. Here, I really want to. It's not a pool to dip into. It's an ocean to explore.

Wednesday, 21 June 2023

Phlebotomized - Clouds of Confusion (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, 19 June 2023

Anoushbard - Abandoned Treasure (2023)

I don't post many reviews at the 5/10 level or below. That's because I have no interest in being yet another hatchet job critic who just slates everything he doesn't like. There's much too much good music coming out now to spend time focusing on the bad, unless it's a disappointing release by an important name that warrants a warning. One rare 5/10 review that I did post was of Anoushbard's debut album, Mithra, but my rating wasn't reflective of songwriting, musicianship or uniqueness, rather of issues with line-up and production, most obviously that they didn't have a drummer and what I presumed was a drum machine didn't work in the slightest and sounded awful.

That left me in the odd position of recommending the band but not their album. The band seemed to be full of good ideas; had an intricate touch on the guitar, surely in part because both members were guitarists; and found a good balance between quiet sections and heavy ones. Once my review was done, I was happy to put that drum sound behind me but I wanted to hear more from the band. Well, fast forward three years and Sherwin Baradaran and Siavash Motallebi are back with a more traditional line-up. They've added Arman Tirmahi on bass and Nima Seylani on oud, an instrument I'm not used to seeing in metal. There still isn't a drummer proper but there's a guest playing real drums and a real producer capturing them with a good quality sound.

And so this is much closer to Anoushbard sounding like they should, which means that this is worth a lot more than 5/10. The question was always going to be how much. Well, this is easily a 7/10 and I thought seriously about a highly recommended 8/10. The guitars still sound great, with some tidy riffing and some elegant solos. The album begins with an elegant electric guitar over an acoustic guitar, which is an excellent touch. The bass is mostly there as a rumble and a depth to the guitars, but the drums are massively improved, so much so that they're exactly what they need to be, with dips into ethnic sounds too.

In true prog form, it all kicks off with a three part track, The Righteous Ardaviraf, which suggests a story about a journey to the next world because The Book of Arda Viraf was a Zoroastrian text from a millennium ago. Musically, it's an interesting piece, with Preparation the calm intro, a folky and proggy track with a clean vocal. There are no drums until a couple of minutes in and then they're a return to the unusual sound I compared to beating a wall with rushes sound on the debut, the one good aspect to the drumming on that album.

Journey ups the ante, making its quiet sections heavier, introducing the drums in traditional metal form and adding a lot of emphasis. It immediately reminds of Orphaned Land but Queensrÿche too and that means tasty songwriting even before the crunch hits fifty seconds in. Suddenly we're in a metal song but it's not content with staying there, mixing it up until the guitar solo at the end. It's wrapped up by Return, which stays with the Orphaned Land vibe, elegant guitars over tribal drums and a host of tight breaks. There's even a choral moment to wrap it up.

While there's metal in The Righteous Ardaviraf, it's far more prog rock than metal. That shifts with the next couple of songs, which are heavy metal with a serious side of up tempo doom. Destructive Spirit (Angra Mainyu) is more extreme, adding a harsh lead vocal in the form of a confident growl that speaks from a position of confident power. It's inherently commanding, especially in lines like "Your soul is mine!", but the guitars back it up. A clean backing vocal shows up eventually and it's a nice contrast. There's more of the same on Tower of Silence (Dakhma), which shines because of an exploratory guitar solo over solid crunchy riffs. There's some fast double bass drumming here but the guitars don't even attempt to keep up and that makes for an interesting effect too.

There are other tracks here, but the one that I'll call out as a highlight, up there with Journey, the second part of The Righteous Ardaviraf, is the title track. It opens with an unusual atmosphere, the oud of Nima Seylani soft and intricate but playing within an ambience that sounds like a sanctuary for birds, somewhat reminiscent of Staff Benda Bilili recording in the Kampala zoo. Once it finds a pace, there are soft, clean vocals and a brief but evocative electric guitar solo. As on Mithra, these musicians clearly enjoy setting up contrasts and the tender Persian oud music stands its ground in the face of crunchy modern metal.

I'm so happy that Anoushbard have managed to flesh out a line-up. Mithra underlined the promise they have as a band but they simply didn't have the infrastructure to be able to deliver that album in the form it deserved to have taken. This follow-up has that infrastructure: other musicians and a strong production. This is what Anoushbard should sound like and they sound very good to me, one more progressive metal band from the vibrant middle east, but this one hailing from a nation that not only doesn't support rock and metal but often actively suppresses it. I salute the dedication it must have taken to make this band and this album happen. That it's damn good is a bonus.

Monday, 12 June 2023

Avalanch - El dilema de los dioses (2023)

I had two things in mind when coming into this, which counts as the tenth Avalanch studio album. I miscounted when reviewing their prior effort, El secreto, because some of the thirteen I'd seen at that point are actually re-recordings of previous albums. One is that that album was a real gem, a rare 9/10 from me that was also the Spanish Album of the Year at the Headbangers Latino America site. It was my first by them but certainly not the last and I've eagerly awaited this follow-up. The other is that Avalanch seem to have a constantly shifting line-up, centred around guitarist Alberto Rionda, and there have been quite a few changes since the previous album.

In fact, there have been enough changes that they could well affect the sound of the band, so they would seem to be worth detailing here. Last time out Jorge Salán was a second guitarist, but he's no longer in the band, his only contribution here being a guitar solo on Ceniza, and there's no new second guitarist. Another departure is Israel Ramos on lead vocals, though he still sings Confianza ciega here. However, there's a replacement in José Pardial, who clearly saw Sentido and a ballad, Más allá de las tinieblas, as showcase opportunities to demonstrate his range. Also gone is bassist Dirk Schlächter, with Nando Campos replacing him.

And here's where I change "could well affect the sound of the band" to "absolutely does so", as the three changes all make a difference. Pardial has a lower and softer voice than Ramos, so the songs have a different feel in his hands. He mostly sings clean and pure, as you might expect for a power metal band with progressive leanings, but he turns on the vocal fry for emphasis as needed, most examples being on the quieter, more vocally oriented songs, like the showcase pieces I mentioned above. He has an impressive range and he sounds great, but also notably different to Ramos, with that comparison obvious in the latter's song, Confianza Ciega, directly following Sentida here. It's unsurprisingly the closest thing to El secreto here.

I'm sure the guitar sound has been driven by Rionda ever since Avalanch was formed, so what this album does on that front isn't wildly different from El secreto. However, without a second guitar, it feels a little thinner and less substantial. I'd also suggest that, once we get past the opener, which has a deep back end, the bass is a little lower in the mix and that serves to emphasise that change in guitars. Again, Rionda sounds great and I don't see fans walking away from the band because of this shift, but a direct comparison of the two albums leaves this one firmly behind its predecessor.

El secreto was a 9/10 and a Spanish Album of the Year. This is a 7/10 that occasionally reaches up to an 8/10. That means that it's good stuff and it's recommended, sometimes highly so, but I doubt it will pick up any awards as we move into 2024. It's telling that Confianza Ciega and Ceniza, a pair of kinda sorta throwbacks to the previous incarnation of Avalanch, are my highlights here, and I think I'd give the edge to the latter, perhaps meaning that the depth of guitar sound is more important to me than the change in vocalist.

Other strong selections would include Cuatro elementos, with elegant melodies over a far heavier backdrop and some stellar guitarwork from Rionda, and Tumbas y Reyes, because of its sheer drive and its hints at something much heavier than I've heard from Avalanch. The underpinning riffs are excellent and help build a darker tone, but it's Pardial's vocal that sells it to me. He relies more on his lower register, but soars out of it with style, but he also delivers a brief moment of harsh voice for contrast. It's only a single phrase, so this is hardly Avalanch moving into extreme metal, but it's thoroughly effective and it resonates. The title track after it feels even softer in comparison, even with a decent crunch to it.

And so I'm happy Avalanch are back and only four years after El secreto, given that album arrived after an eight year gap. I'm not entirely sold on the changes but the two new members have been in place for mere months, so I'm looking forward to them settling in over the next couple of years and being more sure of their new sound on the next album. This is good stuff, but the edges hint at something better to come.

Thursday, 20 February 2025

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