God Dethroned - The Judas Paradox (2024)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Black/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 6 Sep 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Twitter | Wikipedia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simone Simons - Vermillion (2024)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Aug 2024
Sites: Wikipedia

Vermillion is the first solo album from Simone Simons, best known as the lead singer of Epica and the former lead singer of After Forever, of course both symphonic metal bands. If it might initially seem to answer the question of what Epica might sound like without a harsh male co-vocalist, it's a little resistant to answer that because it's really not a Simons solo album; it's a collaboration of Simons and Arjen Lucassen, the mastermind behind Ayreon. She provides all the vocals and he all the instrumentation, except for guest appearances on both fronts, and both shape it.

The most interesting song is the first one, which quickly impressed me and just as quickly flustered me. It's called Aeterna and it feels heavier than Epica with Lucassen providing a real crunch. Part of that heaviness is the tone but much of it is the pace, because it's slow, symphonic doom, with a tasty middle eastern flavour laid over it. The instrumentation is higher in the mix than I'd expect for a solo album from a symphonic metal singer too. Then it adds a choral backdrop that reminds of Therion, some hints at industrial and then a real shift into electronica. It's fascinating stuff.

The album as a whole is varied, so Aeterna doesn't entirely set the stage for what's to come, but it does in one crucial respect. The instrumentation is often fundamentally simple, surprisingly so for something that dips into prog, but the songwriting is just as often not. In other words, there are a lot of complicated songs here that are played simply, which feels odd but helps to focus attention on Simons's clear soprano, whatever else is going on. Now, remember this when I talk about all the cool things Lucassen does behind her!

My favourite song after Aeterna is probably Cradle to the Grave, surprisingly because the guest on this one is Alissa White-Gluz of Arch Enemy. I've never been a particular fan of hers, as capable as she is, preferring her predecessor Angela Gossow and not much liking the Agonist, her metalcore band. However, she does a strong job here, lending her harsh voice to be a counter to Simons in an impressively patient manner. Had she duetted throughout, it wouldn't be as good a song, but she chimes in when and only when her particularly texture is warranted and it works gloriously.

I'm not going to even try to rank the remaining eight songs, but they cover a lot of ground.

Some start softly, like In Love We Rust, Fight or Flight and Dystopia, but they ramp up eventually and in very different style. In Love We Rust combines clean vocals and pulsing electronica, powers up, powers down, powers up again and ends up almost like a commercial gothic metal song. Fight or Flight features some delicious guitarwork from Lucassen that's oddly almost an aside and the elegant violin of guest Ben Mathot. As it finishes, Simons duets with herself in operatic Tristania fashion. Dystopia is soft and patient with occasional prog flurries to stir it up and a tasty guitar solo from Lucassen in the second half.

Others power up quickly. Weight of My World alternates between a heavy guitar/bass combo and light electronica. Most obvoiusly, The Core starts up heavy, with Mark Jansen, Simons's former co-vocalist in After Forever, on shouty growls, making it almost sound like elegant metalcore. That's almost appropriate given the song title, but that's not what it's about. Like White-Gluz on Cradle to the Grave, he's a texture behind her when needed, but he starts the song out and is much more prominent.

And then there are songs so different that they're either not metal at all or only touch on it when they feel like it. Vermillion Dreams, presumably the title track, starts out with avant-garde notes and unfolds as soaring vocals over pulsing electronica. I like the melodies in this one but it finds its metal escalation very late, making it as much new wave as symphonic metal. R.E.D. features some flamboyant synths and its punchy opening gives way to something more gothic, like heavy darkwave. And, talking about gothic, I was expecting the closer, Dark Night of the Soul, to be a gothic metal song, what with the presence of piano and cello, but it's really a chamber ballad because it's entirely piano and cello behind Simons's vocals.

All in all, this is an interesting album, one that suggests that Simons is trying to stretch her music into new directions that aren't likely to be viable in Epica. I often appreciate that sort of thing but don't always enjoy it. I did here. For what could be fairly classified experimental, it's an accessible album that's often commercial. While I'm still looking forward to the next Epica album, given that I gave 2021's Omega a highly recommended 8/10, I both appreciated and enjoyed this side journey.

The Dame - II (2024)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Apr 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Prog Archives | Twitter | YouTube

Into the Wastelands starts out with a fuzzy guitar that made me think this might be stoner rock, even if it came labelled as prog. But then the lead vocal of vocalist Marian van Charante kicks in and prog suddenly appears to be a fair description. She's a charismatic vocalist who sings with relish. I now understand why so many other singers seem to missing out on intonation because she has all of it. Her delivery is theatrical and feels like it comes from jazz and musical theatre, but she has power that's straight out of rock and it makes for a heady combination.

I should add that this is the second album from the Dame, but it's their last with van Charante. It's been years in the making so, even though she's left the band and new singer Elianne Ernst has stepped in to replace her, it's still van Charante on this album, as it was on the Dame's debut, Losing Sight of What You Want, six years ago. I don't know what Ernst sounds like, but it feels like van Charante has stamped her personality onto this band, who are a varied bunch, I'm guessing, given where the music behind her goes.

Into the Wastelands is an ambitious opener, nudging past twelve minutes and it travels through a lot of musical territory in that time: playful pop rock, imaginative prog rock, a trippy psychedelic midsection and even a couple of heavier parts at points where the guitars flirt with metal crunch. There's a patient guitar solo seven and a half minutes in and a far more ambitious one either side of nine. This piece does a heck of a lot in those twelve minutes. And then All in Good Reason does something completely different.

In fact, the constant here is change, because, while some of these songs share sonic components and some actively lead into others, none of the six tracks on offer really sound like each other. It's consistent in tone, so nothing ever seems jarring, except the fact that van Charante often sounds as if she wandered into the studio from a smoky jazz club and wants to take a stab at rock music, especially on All in Good Reason and Momentary Inn. However, that's really a one time problem. Either you don't get it, in which case this isn't for you, or you're on board immediately and firmly open to the potential of what it might do. I'm in the latter camp.

Even though All in Good Reason sounds like dark jazz, I kept catching a Black Sabbath influence in the structure. Ozzy could sing this. Sure, it would sound completely different but it would fit what he does too, at least until it gets overtly musical theatre. Momentary Inn wouldn't. Two thirds of the way in, All in Good Reason turns into prog metal and van Charante, who I presume is Dutch, is suddenly very English. Momentary Inn shifts between delicate jazz piano and overt prog song. All that Rumbles opens with similarly delicate piano but there's also a driving electronic beat pulsing at us and that totally changes the feel.

That leaves Overwhelming Silence and Disentangling, which initially seem to be connected but go to very different places. The former is the quietest song on offer in one sense, being entirely voice and piano, but it's also the most vehement, because van Charante seems to be unburdening and there's a lot to dump. It's a subtly powerful piece. The latter initially continues that but it's nine minutes of growth and it builds substantially over that time. My favourite guitar solo comes during the finalé of this one, though I'm also rather fond of the one midway through Momentary Inn. Disentangling is also the epic of the album, even if it's shorter than Into the Wastelands.

And, given that I've only mentioned van Charante thus far, naturally so as the most unusual element but a single piece in a puzzle nonetheless, I should cover who else made this. Those solos are courtesy of Stephen de Ruijter, who handles the lead guitars here, with van Charante handling rhythm, acoustic and electric. The delicate piano (and indeed other forms of piano, given where else it goes late on Momentary Inn) is the work of Thijs de Ruijter, including a late section of All that Rumbles that moves into New Order territory. And that leaves Michel Krempel on bass, who may be most obvious on heavier sections but is also a key part of All That Rumbles, which relies on him even when everyone else steps back.

I like most of my new music to sound original but that's tripled for prog rock. It's supposed to be a progressive genre that explores new sounds and new combinations of existing ones. What I hear from the Dame is something I haven't heard anywhere else, so they're doing this right. I'd love to hear their next album to see where they're going to take this sound with Elianne Ernst.

Robby Valentine - Embrace the Unknown (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Melodic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 21 Oct 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

I came to this album knowing nothing except that Robby Valentine is Dutch and he records melodic rock, which I'm always keen to review because I get sent far more metal than rock and I like to keep a balance here. What I quickly found is that melodic rock is both an accurate label and one that doesn't remotely cover it to the degree needed.

He's all over the musical map, in a very deliberate manner that echoes the approach of Queen and it's very difficult not to hear their sound all over his. In fact, if you don't realise how much Queen is in what he does on on the opener, Break the Chain, then Life is a Lesson four tracks in takes care to staple a copy of A Night at the Opera onto your forehead so you can't avoid it. It doesn't shock me, reading up on his career after listening to this album, that he's recorded an array of Queen tribute releases. Any other comparisons I could conjure up, like Jason Bieler, share the same influence, so it really goes back to them.

What's important is that he does this very well indeed. In addition to writing the music and lyrics, he plays all the instruments and sings all the vocals, except a few overlays like the harmony vocals of Johan Willems on Never Fall in Line, a scream on Roll Up Your Sleeves that seems like a sample and a chorus deepening Break the Chain. This is emphatically all his work, not merely as a musician and a performer but as a creator too. He has a singular vision of what he wants to do, which I think likely starts with something small like a phrase, a melody or a rhythm, and builds it into something majestic.

Sometimes, as on Roll Up Your Sleeves, it's all three of those things at exactly the same time. The first thing we hear is a snippet of lyric a capella, but it's chanted in a very particular rhythm using a very particular melody and the instrumentation promptly picks up on that. The drums and guitar then echo it, drop into a solo bass doing the same thing, then the elements combine and we have a song out of nowhere, with Valentine adding details here, harmonies there and escalations to flesh out and polish the piece.

It's definitely a highlight because its hook is so catchy and it never drifts far away from it, but other songs are content to travel much further. The opener, for instance, changes often. Break the Chain starts symphonic, becomes arena rock, gets poppy and then progressive, and shifts on a dime from Journey to Queen to Styx. That chorus of voices adds action and samples underline that, initially a snippet of the Shelley poem The Mask of Anarchy and later brief and surprisingly grounded clips of speeches by conspiracy theory whackjob David Icke. There's a heck of a lot to digest in this one but it's all seamlessly delivered.

Don't Give Up on a Miracle seems overly simple by comparison but it's just a well formed pop song with a catchy hook bolstered by harmonies and orchestration. It's telling that the guitar solo isn't remotely close to the front of the mix, because, if Valentine is effectively playing every member of Queen, Brian May seems to be the one he identifies with the least. There are definitely moments in Break the Chain that sound like a May guitar, but Valentine's guitarwork here generally feels a little more contemporary in style and the most room he reserves for a guitar solo, which is on the closing title track, there's more Dave Gilmour there than May.

Of course, as a vocalist as well as a multi-instrumentalist, Valentine doesn't skimp on his Freddie Mercury. He's everywhere here, perhaps most prominently on Shadowland, but both John Deacon and Roger Taylor are often present too, perhaps both most obviously during Roll Up Your Sleeves. While the influence is so overt that I'm sure he's embraced it by now, this being at least his tenth album of original material, not counting tributes and other covers albums, it also makes for easily his most immediate songs. You can't get more immediate than Roll Up Your Sleeves and others like Don't Give Up on a Miracle, Life is a Lesson and Shadowland aren't far behind.

The catch to that is that his least Queen inspired pieces take more time to grasp. Show the Way is a decent track but it's also a subtle one that takes its time and so it ends up fading in comparison to most of the other tracks. Embrace the Unknown is a tasty closer and it's the longest song here, but it also takes a more subdued and elegant approach, so it doesn't leap out at us the way those with the killer hooks do. Clearly I need to check out more of what Robby Valentine's done over the past forty years or so, because he makes excellent music and he has a serious back catalogue.

Legion of the Damned - Poison Chalice (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Thrash/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 9 Jun 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Within Temptation - Wireless (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 19 May 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Pinterest | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Talking of mixing pop and goth and metal and a whole bunch of other genres, the most successful example of that that I've reviewed here at Apocalypse Later is probably Within Temptation's 2019 album, Resist. It felt like a gamechanger to me at the time, taking their symphonic metal roots to new frontiers. Now, that was an age ago, pre-COVID, and I haven't heard its tentacles in much that I've reviewed since, but maybe I'm not paying enough attention. It could easily be said that there's some of that album in Arogya's sound and there's certainly plenty of it here too.

I wondered if I should actually review this, for reasons that I'll get to, but decided to because I like the opening title track a lot. It marries the light and heavy incredibly well, with a crunch that's not far off industrial strength bludgeoning the backdrop while Sharon den Adel delivers effortless pop melodies with a rock voice. She's a fascinating singer, because she can shift between tones or even styles just like that and she takes some interesting decisions about how to do that here. I've called out her Celtic lilt before and it's very much in evidence on this EP, but it's also kept in reserve for a moment where it's needed.

It's even more overt on Don't Pray for Me, the other new song here, with all sorts of Celtic lilts and harmonies, den Adel cutting off words for effect just like Dolores O'Riordan. There's also a neatly folky echo effect at points and there's a recurrent sample to keep the song trendy. It does quite a lot and the overall effect is solid. I wouldn't call this one as strong a song as Wireless, which is why this isn't called the Don't Pray for Me EP but it's a decent song nonetheless, with a good emphasis play. Again, den Adel is the best aspect of the song, taking it in all sorts of different directions but always coming back to the point.

So far so good, right? Well, there are downsides. If I'm readingly correctly, there are three guitars in the band nowadays, not just Robert Westerholt, who's a founder member, but also Ruud Jolie, who joined in 2001 and new fish Stefan Helleblad, who arrived in 2011 alongside the new drummer Mike Coolen. However, it's next to impossible to distinguish between them. They each merge into a single guitar sound that seems to be there primarily as texture. There are no solos and what might approach them is the work of keyboardist Martijn Spierenburg and whoever's providing a violin, a sound that may well more keyboards.

And I technically lied when I said that these were new songs. They weren't on Resist and I obviously can't speak to whether they'll be on the next album, whenever it arrives. However, I felt that Shed My Skin was a bit cheap because it combined one new track with two prior singles, bulking up with instrumental versions of all three, and this, while seeming to be more expansive, echoes that and doubles down. Both Wireless and Don't Pray for Me were released as standalone singles and what pads out the EP to five tracks are the three songs from the Shed My Skin EP. Again, all these show up in instrumental versions too.

That means that four of the five songs on offer here were standalone singles, three of them were on the Shed My Skin EP and the same three also showed up on The Aftermath EP in live versions. Nothing's actually new. I have to add that Within Temptation have released two other new songs since Resist, but they are nowhere to be seen here, so this doesn't even do a solid job of collation. I'm starting to get quite a sinking feeling that the next album is going to have nothing new on it, because every track will be previously available in multiple different releases, singles and EPs and whatever.

So I think I'm going to swear off looking at Within Temptation EPs. Let's just say that this one's an improvement on Shed My Skin because the best two tracks here are the ones that weren't on that and the worst, Entertain You, hasn't got any better since then. However, that means that each of the five songs is less than its predecessor and that's quite a downward spiral. It starts excellently with Wireless but ends poorly with Entertain You and that journey down is inexorable. I'm also not sure how to describe this because symphonic metal doesn't apply any more.

Arjen Lucassen's Supersonic Revolution - Golden Age of Music (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 May 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter

It's impossible to listen to this without noticing the nostalgia that infuses it. Arjen Lucassen, if you don't recognise the name, is a Dutch multi-instrumentalist who was born in 1960 and is best known for his long running progressive metal project Ayreon, a revolving door through which many of the greatest names in the genre have wandered. This is his first album as Supersonic Revolution and it looks very specifically back to the seventies, both in the sense of the musical styles of the time and how he personally interacted with it as a teenager.

SR Prelude sets that tone with an instrumental minute and a half that reminds of Deep Purple, Yes and ELP. The Glamattack emphasises Purple but clearly adds Rainbow to the mix and further songs trawl in more influences as needed. Odyssey is lighter and spacier and while it doesn't sound like a Hawkwind song, they can't be ignored. They Took Us by Storm is heavier, placing us in Black Sabbath territory. Fight of the Century often feels like a musical number and, with Jesus Christ Superstar in the lyrics of an earlier song, it's easy to see that approach here.

Almost everything is the seventies, by design, including a very notable seventies organ sound that mostly reminds of Jon Lord's work in Purple but occasionally Ken Hensley's time in Uriah Heep, as on The Rise of the Starman. However, there are glimpses of the eighties that followed, not least in the guitar flourishes of Timo Somers, which sound much more like Yngwie Malmsteen than Ritchie Blackmore. It's there in the voice of Jaycee Cuijpers too, who's halfway between Ronnie James Dio and Graham Bonnet, emphasising one over the other as needed.

The lyrics focus on the seventies too, most obviously in Golden Age of Music, which namechecks an impressive list of names, or at least hints at them. I'm a decade younger than Lucassen but I found rock and metal through the Friday Rock Show on which Tommy introduced me to all of it at once, so I was hearing the Purple Mark II classics at the same time that they got back together for Perfect Strangers, Rainbow from both eras at the same time as Dio and Alcatrazz, the British Invasion and the NWOBHM at exactly the same time. Steely Dan and Venom were both just rock bands to me.

But Lucassen was a decade earlier, so he had less of that to absorb at once, whenever he found the genre, and could focus more on just the new stuff the seventies brought, which started with glam and prog rock and moved on from there. Golden Age of Music explicitly references Radio Caroline and Farrah Fawcett, along with songs or albums by Rainbow, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Jesus Christ Superstar, Alice Cooper and Thin Lizzy. Those are easy references to catch (though I didn't get the "shorts by JCB" line), but other songs are more opaque, maybe because they're hybrids. I thought The Rise of the Starman would be about David Bowie, but it seems more Marc Bolan.

The most telling lyrics arrive in the closer, Came to Mock, Stayed to Rock, in which Lucassen speaks to gatekeeping. He's a rocker, the narrator of this song, who doesn't want anyone to change that, but the ubiquitous they drag him to an Abba show and an opera, both of which he thoroughly digs, against his expectations. However, it ends with suggestions that there's pressure on him to think of those as guilty pleasures and that it's his turn. Can he drag you to one of his shows or are you a little too closed minded for that experience, you Abba and opera fans? He might play this, with its sassy funky intro.

I liked this album from the outset because I love that seventies organ sound and I especially love it when it shows up with twenty-first century production technology. Everything's worth listening to, even if you like Abba and opera, but there are clear standouts. Golden Age of Music is the obvious one, because it's the most effective earworm I've heard in months. I woke up this morning to "This is Radio Caroline. Evening all. Hope you're doing fine" playing inside my skull. I'd call out the other golden song, Golden Boy, too. It's more subtle but it nails its groove, feeling oddly like a Yes track played by Purple. I can't not mention They Took Us by Storm too, which is Sabbath heavy but with a quintessential Purple organ intro, even if it's more Perfect Strangers than Machine Head.

What matters on an album this tailored to nostalgia though is connecting with listeners who share that mindset. I'm just a little too young for that but it worked anyway. If you were born in 1960 and grew up listening to rock music, I'd be interested in how close this comes to taking you back there.

Phlebotomized - Clouds of Confusion (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Progressive Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 26 May 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

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.

Floor Jansen - Paragon (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Pop/Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 Mar 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

I'm not sure what country to list here, given that Floor Jansen is Dutch, lives in Sweden and fronts a Finnish band. This is a solo project though, so I guess I'll go with the Netherlands. It's her first of likely many and it isn't surprising to see its release, given how much publicity she got from singing on a Dutch singing show, Beste Zangers, with most of the songs she sang, in a wide variety of styles and languages, going viral on YouTube. She's been touring solo as well and clearly relishing being able to sing a wider range of material than she can in Nightwish. So this was inevitable.

From the outset, it's as much pop as it is rock, but it ought to play well to both audiences. This isn't as soft as, say, Mike Tramp's For Første Gang album last year, but it features plenty of ballads. The approach seems to be to trawl in some of both sides of the pop/rock boundary on as many songs as possible. My Paragon, for instance, kicks off the album with a poppy bounce but rock drums. When Floor needs to soar, Floor soars and she has such power to bring to bear that that always becomes rock, even on a pop song. Hope is an intimate ballad but it isn't soft, even without drums.

All that said, it's fun trying to think who might have sung these songs if Floor wasn't around. They aren't covers, but they all could be if other artists feel an urge to tackle them. I could hear Carole King singing Hope and a few wildly different singers taking on Come Full Circle. Would Irene Cara do a better job than Meat Loaf? Storm would go to Billie Eilish without any doubt. Some would be difficult to cover, because of Floor's range. She goes low on Me without You but she soars later on, so it would take someone with the vocal chops of Lara Fabian.

And, of course, that's much of the point of this album. Nightwish are a symphonic metal band, the flagship band in the genre, and there's always a lot going on in Nightwish songs, even if you ditch the orchestration angle. I wouldn't say that Floor has to battle to be heard in Nightwish, because her voice leads the way, but she's one of many talented musicians in that band, all of whom shine because Tuomas Holopainen writes music that gives all of them opportunity to do so and they all have the chops to meet the challenge. Here, it's all about her and her voice.

Probably the biggest reason for it being a success is that she never seems like she's showing off on any of these songs, even though she absolutely is. She dials it down so that she can ramp it up and she's impeccable with both of those approaches. I don't know who performs behind her here, but I would call them thoroughly capable but eager not to steal the spotlight. The result is that I would be surprised if some of these songs—and it could be any of them—start to show up on vocal talent shows, with ambitious contestants adding what Floor thankfully doesn't: an intricate R&B run here and an octave leap there just to impress the judges.

The one they might pick first is Fire, which is an especially strong closer. Floor initially plays it soft, with piano accompaniment, but there's orchestration and a dynamic beat hinting at where she'll take it and, damn, she takes it further than anyone who hasn't experienced Floorgasms is likely to expect. There are moments when she explodes into power and the band joins her and it's moments like those that have judges on their feet applauding with their mouths open. Of course, anyone on one of those shows who can do it justice deserves that response, but they'll have to be damn good to take it beyond Floor. As we might expect. I mean, c'mon.

What's telling is that this is the sort of album that I'm not likely to like. It's far from as varied as it could be, as anyone who's watched all her Beste Zangers songs will know. She only sings in English here, for a start. There are so many directions she could have taken this, but she chose to go for a pretty consistent and relatively straightforward pop/rock approach, but it wasn't to be safe. It's a sort of establishing shot, I think. Here's what she can do when doing what other singers with huge voices do.

What I think it might be is the establishment of a baseline in a studio setting for listeners who are not metal fans and may not know what Floor can do. Now this is out there, she can go beyond it. It isn't a bad album at all. I liked every song here but what I want to hear is the next album that will mix it up and test some of her limits. After all, when it comes to Floor Jansen, those limits are way beyond what most singers would consider. How far is debatable, of course, because I don't believe that she's reached them yet, but those who want that variety will need to go to Beste Zangers for some answers rather than here.

Altın Gün - Aşk (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 31 Mar 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I fell in love with this as soon as it started. If I'm understanding correctly, the core of Altın Gün is a pair of musicians who are Turkish by heritage but born in the Netherlands. That's Merve Daşdemir and Erdinç Ecevit Yıldız. Both sing lead but divvy up the songs between them, so that some are led by Merve's enticing female voice but others by Erdinç's deeper male voice. Both play keyboards as well, with Erdinç adding the saz or bağlama, which is an Anatolian lute. Between all this, Altin Gün sound exquisitely Turkish, to the point where this is world music at heart.

However, behind them are four Dutch musicians playing traditional rock instruments—guitar, bass and drums—and between them, they channel this world music through a psychedelic filter so that it comes out as an exquisite merger of east and west. The opener, Badi Sabah Olmadan, is a strong track, clearly psychedelic rock with a Hawkwind drive to it. It's not alone here in rocking it up, but the album often aims lighter with songs that could be seen as psychedelic pop or even a keyboard driven prog.

One of the key components to define which is the bass of Jasper Verhulst. On Badi Sabah Olmadan, he's a rock musician and he adds fuzz on Rakıya Su Katamam to shift from psychedelic rock over an easy border into stoner rock. However, starting on Su Sızıyor, he reminds me of a reggae bassist in that he relies on the guitar and drums to work a groove so that he can provide a riff to underpin a song. However, we can't just label songs based on what Verhulst is doing, because he goes with the reggae approach on Canım Oy, which is clearly psychedelic rock, even if it adds in plenty of Turkish disco at points.

The keyboards help shape genre too. Çıt Çıt Çedene throws Mike Oldfield style keyboards over the reggae bass, as if he'd set up a salon at his house and some Turkish musicians joined him to jam. It comes back on the closer, Doktor Civanım, which is the most western piece here with an electronic beat and the least overt Turkish vocals. I felt like I wanted to pull Crises off the shelf after this one, which is progressive pop through and through. However, other songs use the keyboards to take us on a wild cosmic trip, especially during instrumental stretches in the second half of songs like Dere Geliyor, and Çıt Çıt Çedene. Güzelliğin On Para Etmez feels like a Turkish folk song set against Pink Floyd keyboards.

For the most part, my favourite songs are the rockier ones like Badi Sabah Olmadan and Rakıya Su Katamam, but that's not always the case. When Dere Geliyor isn't taking us on a cosmic journey, it plays very minimalist indeed. We get Daşdemir's haunting voice but accompanied only by a sparse echoing guitar and keyboard swirls. It only leaps into action a couple of minutes in as hand drums provide the engines beneath an organic vessel of keyboards. And then there's Kalk Gidelim, which arrives out of the blue eight tracks in with a thoroughly different approach.

This is an exquisitely sassy song that sashays up to us with a serious purpose, bells shimmering in a sultry haze of sensuality. The melody is a delight and the beat even better. It never quits teasing us and we find ourselves effortlessly lost inside it, as if we dived in but never surfaced. Daşdemir has the lead again but, while she's as sweet as ever, she layers on seduction as if it's going out of style. It's hard not to read sexual metaphor into the point almost three minutes in when everything gets instrumentally frantic.

Generally speaking, there's a light heart at work here. There's sadness to be found in some songs, like Güzelliğin On Para Etmez, but precious little darkness. The most obvious is probably a theme that shows up after each instance of the title being sung on Leylim Ley, like it's call and response. Even there, it's a delicious darkness that teases us rather than threatens. Every time I listened to this album, which I did under different moods over a few days, it seemed clear that I left it happier than I found it. And with that thought, I threw the band's name into Google Translate to find that it means Golden Day. That makes sense, as does Aşk meaning Love.

They've been around for seven years, though I was surprised to find that Verhulst was the founder, seeking Turkish musicians rather than the other way around. This is their fifth album, suggesting a prolific work ethic. However, two of those albums came together, Yol and Âlem in 2021. At this rate, we ought to expect another one from them in 2025 and I'm already looking forward to it.

Heidevolk - Wederkeer (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 Feb 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

There are folk metal bands who are folk metal bands because they play folk instruments, bagpipes and fiddles and hurdy-gurdys. Then there are folk metal bands who are folk metal bands because they play metal but sing about folk subjects and that's where Heidevolk come in. They check all the boxes there: a name with a folk connotation—Heidevolk means People of the Heather in Dutch; a choice to write lyrics in their native language, those lyrics having a fascination with the history of their home region of Gelderland and wider Teutonic myths; and a vocal style that suits the subject matter, not just from lead vocalists Jacco Bühnebeest and Daniël Den Dorstighe but all the other band members who contribute backing vocals too.

All those vocals are deep, lending Heidevolk an acutely masculine feel, especially given that they stay clean and melodic, albeit rough to fit the mindset that this is music from regular people, not the elite. This is music for comrades to sing together in communal places, especially with a steady supply of beer in large tankards. Drink met de Goden (Walhalla) is only the best example, not the only one, which shouldn't surprise, given that the title translates to Drink with the Gods. I may not be tall enough to feel like I could join in, but I think I have every member of the band on length of beard and, for the first time ever, that seems important. The kilt ought to give me bonus points.

I liked this album immediately. It's heavy but not fast, as if it rarely feels the need to speed up. The sound is exquisitely clean and everything is deep. The drums are at the front of the mix but they're never in the way. The guitars are prominent too, though they're clean enough to scythe through a more troublesome mix than this one. The vocals feel buried to exactly the right degree, except on tracks where they just take over. Schildenmuur, for instance, sounds like a work song, even if it's an attempt to keep time for a blacksmith rather than a road crew. There's nothing to accompany the singers there but hand drums.The intros to Hagalaz and Oeros do the same thing.

There are folk instruments here too, but they're not prominent, that angle covered primarily with voice. In addition to his mike duties, Bühnebeest plays the accordion, but that's only really obvious on one song, Ver Verlangen, and even then it's deep like everything else, not the lively instrument we hear in Korpiklaani or the quirky one we hear from Weird Al Yankovic. There's a flute, but only on Klauwen Vooruit, provided by Fabi, who's Fabienne Kirschke, who's best known for singing and playing folk instruments for Brisinga and Storm Seeker, usually hurdy-gurdy and recorder.

Those are the only ones I'm seeing credited, but there's definitely a horn of some description that announces the arrival of Oeros, a wonderful plodder of a song that guarantees to move your feet and your neck. There seem to me to be violins on there too, as indeed there must have been on De Strijd Duurt Voort and will be immediately again on the title track. Maybe there are others that I missed. Like the accordion and the flute, these are obvious enough that they won't escape us but not so much that they feel like any particular song would seem stripped if they were removed. The only instance where I think that would be the case is the violin on the title track.

Wederkeer means "again", which the band are interpreting as a return or a revival, which has two meanings. One is that they're back after the longest gap between albums in their discography, as it's been five years since their previous album, Vuur van verzet in January 2018. The other takes a different form, namely an invitation by Heidevolk to take a break from the deluge of mass media and look inside for a change. That's a quintessential approach for folk music, which usually does it in a far more subtle way, with ethereal vocals and pastoral instrumentation.

Needless to say, Heidevolk don't do either of those things. What they do is connect us to the power of the land. Never mind the power of electricity that connects us to so much, they want us to feel a connection to the land that infuses us with power just as we return that to the land. What they do they do with emphasis and inexorable might. They're not a speed metal band whizzing around the battlefield picking off targets at will. They're a slow but unstoppable behemoth making its way to its next stop, shrugging off obstacles as if they were nothing. Just check out how IJzige Nacht kicks into motion. That's pure undistilled emphasis. My muscles grew just listening to it.

The One - Sunrise (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 Jan 2023
Sites: Facebook | YouTube

Timothy van der Holst is primarily known as a jazz musician in the Netherlands, where he's made a slew of albums with bands like the Jazzinvaders, and he's dabbled in soul and Afrobeat, but he was a prog fan growing up in the eighties, listening to the pioneers of the previous decade. It feels like he was always going to make a prog album eventually and this happens to be it, with him playing a majority of the instruments—drums, bass, piano, synths—and British vocalist Max Gilkes on board to provide a voice to the music. Fellow Brit Frank 'Fish' Ayers wrote all the lyrics and added spoken word and slide guitar, while Edwin in 't Veld handles the guitars.

The Thoughts of Light is a thoroughly atypical opener, because it's an instrumental and it's a rigid piece, mathematically constructed and angular in its nature. The keyboards do add some curves at points and there's a pleasant guitar solo lightening the mood, but it sets a very different scene to the one that the album delivers, starting out with Time Out, which immediately puts us in mind of the Alan Parsons Project. From strictness, it softens up completely to play out with feel, brooding bass providing some weight under Gilkes's smooth voice. It doesn't do a lot but what it does is all notable, so that we listen to the vocals lead the song but take the song with us when we go.

I like Time Out a lot, but it's The Past Haunts Again after it that sold this album on me. It's a piano that kicks it off, doing the same job as the bass on the previous song, but the vocals aren't quite as smooth, making this a tasty midpoint between the angular and the smooth. There's definitely lots of the Alan Parsons Project again but there's a hefty side of neoprog, something that will creep in more and more as the album runs on, and it ends with spoken word over a cello-like bass, dancing flutes and whirling keyboards. Suddenly we're in Hawkwind territory, after a nine minute journey. It's easily the longest track on offer and it's a consistent gem.

That neoprog reaches its peak much later in the album with Between You and Me, which bounces along like Marillion. The title track that closes out, starts out like early Marillion too, with drums that punctuate in a particularly recognisable way—they've been there throughout the album as a form of punctuation, but these will feel familiar to fans of Marillion's debut—though it shifts into David Bowie territory. I believe that van der Holst is primarily a drummer, so I do find it interesting that I should focus on his bass and piano work more than his drums, but he resists the urge to show off on the latter throughout, which must be tough for someone used to jazz.

The other obvious influence I can hear is Pink Floyd, but it's the one that I feel is least successful. I should emphasise that the pieces that go there sound good, but they don't have the bite that they need to truly work. Remember feels like the Floyd filtered through Marillion, but it's a short safe instrumental, even if it ends up in a sort of Barclay James Harvest coda. The latter infiltrate Lets Laugh too, which has a little bounce to it, but The Time Stands Still goes even more pastoral with a layer of flutes and ethereal sections that sound good but don't enforce themselves, especially on an album with more vibrant songs to steal our attention.

All in all, this is an elegant prog album. While it's on the lighter side of the spectrum, with smooth, easy on the ear vocals from Gilkes and its instrumental workouts never take over fully, there's still depth to be found in the musicianship, much of it van der Holst's. It covers a lot of ground too and I would very much like to hear another album from the One, even if he decides to call it the Two on a second release, especially if he writes more songs in the epic vein of The Past Haunts Again.

Delain - Dark Waters (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 10 Feb 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Symphonic metal is clearly thriving in 2023. It's not the end of February yet and I've already taken a listen to strong albums from Beyond the Black, Twilight Force and Xandria. Well, here's another one from Delain, though this is easily the poppiest and most commercial of the three. It's a fresh start for them after six previous albums, because bandleader Martijn Westerholt took a chainsaw to the line-up, ditching everyone else, including the longest serving guitarist and bassist the band has had, along with lead vocalist Charlotte Wessels, who had sung on everything released up until that point. He supposedly planned to make it a solo project with guests but instead it became just a new line-up.

Westerholt continues, of course, on keyboards and orchestrations. In to join him are two old hands and two new fish. The old hands are guitarist Ronald Landa, who played on their second album and wrote a couple of its songs with Wessels, and Sander Zoer, their longest serving drummer, who left in 2014. The new fish are Diana Leah on lead vocals and Ludovico Cioffi, who I believe will be their bassist going forward but who only provides some harsh backing vocals this time out, the bass on this album provided instead by a guest, Epica's Rob van der Loo.

Of those, Leah is the most obvious, because she's easily at the front of the mix and she delivers an overtly poppy lead vocal that's all about hooks. It's not quite so obvious that a listener unfamiliar with Delain might assume that this is her solo project, but it's not far away from that, because it's a serious effort for anyone else to steal our attention whenever she's singing. They're lowered in the mix to give her more prominence and raised again when she's done for a while, which actually helps us focus on them when the focus shifts back their way.

If we can juggle the elements, then Leah shifts between pop and rock while the music follows suit but from rock to metal. She's definitely lighter than every other aspect of the band's sound right now, even when it's at its lightest and, when it heavies up, it leaves her quite a distance behind. It ought to go without saying that the heaviest songs are the ones with harsh male vocals, but there aren't many of those, the most obvious being The Quest and the Curse, which also benefits from a heavy prowling riff, but even that song's a trade off because it lightens up when it shifts back over to Leah.

If this intensity clash sounds like a problem, I should underline that it isn't. Sure, it's odd to listen to a symphonic metal band where the lead singer doesn't contribute to the symphonic sound, but Leah has a strong voice and she delivers some excellent hooks that keep us engaged. It's left to a combination of orchestrations and choral vocals to keep this anchored in symphonic territory, the pair of approaches shining on The Cold and especially Invictus, which also benefits from two guest vocalists, both Finnish. Paolo Ribaldini is actually on three songs here but Mark Hietala only joins him once. He's a heavyweight presence, having given Tarot three decades and Nightwish two.

While I don't dislike anything here, my favourite songs all come on the second half, when the choir is busiest and Landa is most successful at introducing heavy riffs. The Cold is the closest Leah gets to symphonic and the choir is all over it. Moth to a Flame starts out with Leah poppy and a capella but it finds a tasty and notably urgent metal riff. Then there's Invictus, musically strong and with those guest male vocalists. The album wraps up with Underland, with more choir and another big riff from Landa. Sure he delivers on The Quest and the Curse and Tainted Hearts too, but it's that combination of choir and guitar that gets me every time.

I can only guess at why Westerholt took such drastic action in 2021, but this is a fresh band with an entirely fresh sound and that sound is good. It's almost deliberately aimed at multiple audiences, close enough to symphonic metal that die hard fans of the genre will dig it but with enough pop in Leah's vocals to trawl in a new fanbase. The longer I listen to Moth to a Flame the more I hear Pat Benatar and that's hardly where Wessels came from musically. It's almost as if Westerholt heard Lady Gaga singing for Metallica at the 2017 Grammys or maybe got into Babymetal and decided a pop/metal hybrid would work for Delain. And hey, maybe he's right.

DeWolff - Love, Death & In Between (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Soul/Funk/Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 3 Feb 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

Only yesterday, I reviewed the new Mono Inc. album, which was a new entry to the German album charts at number one. Today, I'm reviewing the new one from DeWolff, which I see was a new entry to the Dutch album charts at, guess what, number one. Their previous album, Wolffpack, which got an 8/10 from me back in 2021, only reached the second spot, held from the top by the Foo Fighters. There's something very positive going on over there in Europe. Checking other countries tells me that the top two albums in Finland in mid-January were VV and Turmion Kätilöt, both of which I've reviewed, even if I can't find newer data. Suddenly I'm a chart watcher.

I'm going with an 8/10 for this album too, even though it's a sprawling sixty-eight minute dive even further into genres in which I have little background. Wolffpack mixed its psychedelic rock and its southern rock with heavy doses of the sounds of the seventies: especially funk and soul, but even a little disco. This does the same but the ratios are different, keeping a rock base mostly intact but venturing far deeper into soul, funk, gospel and blues. Last time the balance was often between a laid back Lynyrd Skynyrd and Stevie Wonder, but here it's more like John Kongos and Nina Simone. There's a lot of Sinnerman here but with many nods to far less epic music too.

It starts of as it means to go on, as if we're tuning into a seventies soul show. Are you ready for the Night Train? It feels like an MC has given the cameraman approval to pan over to the stage, where DeWolff are about to erupt into motion. And they do exactly that, because this was apparently an entirely live recording, not in the sense of performing on stage but in the sense of recording right into the machines as a band without any overdubs added in post-production. This is precisely what they played in the studio and it feels vibrant for having that approach.

There are only three members of DeWolff, Robin Piso and the van de Poel brothers, but there are a host of others contributing to this one. I count eight of them, whether they're providing bass to the sound, adding vocals or guitar or keyboards, or jumping in with flute, trumpet or trombone as needed, with a special mention here due to Nick Feenstra for a fantastic saxophone solo to finish up Message for My Baby. Sometimes they sound like a trio, plenty of space between the band and the floating Hammond organ cloud behind them. Sometimes they become a full on party.

Because the album is so long, there are a dozen songs on offer, even with Rosita clocking in at the surprising length of sixteen and a half minutes. Only Wontcha Wontcha otherwise reaches the six minute mark, so this isn't bloated, especially given that that one is one of the party songs, finding its way into a full on carnival celebration in song form around the halfway mark. Rosita simply has more to tell and it does that in a set of movements that continually grab us into its mindsets. It's grabbing for us at the five minute mark when it goes quiet and introspective. It's grabbing for us halfway through when it turns into a revival meeting.

Pablo van de Poel, the guitarist in DeWolff and one of its vocalists, has talked about how deep the dives were that they were taking into old soul, gospel and classic R&B, checking out bands like the Impressions, the Clovers and the Soul Stirrers, along with bigger names we might remember such as Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and the Staple Singers. He's also mentioned attending a sermon by Al Green at his own church in Memphis, which he describes as "a life-changing experience, musically." This is Pablo and DeWolff treating music as religion, hurling emotions at the tape recorder to be recorded as waveforms.

There's a lot here, far more than I can do justice to within a sub-thousand word review. I must say that certain songs leapt out at me, but also that none of those that didn't are filler. The weakest song here is strong, merely overshadowed by its company. I gravitated towards the blues songs, a delightful guitar from Pablo van der Poel on Will o' the Wisp and even more delightful Hammond organ from Robin Piso. Mr. Garbage Man is a nice slow blues tune and Gilded (Ruin of Love) is laid back glory in four minutes. I liked the party songs too, when the band went full on church gospel or Caribbean carnival or just John Kongos groove.

There's so much here to enjoy, even if I can't tell you the derivation of much of it, and it's full of an obviously live energy. Congratulations to DeWolff on that number one on the Dutch album charts and I hope you stay there for quite a while yet.

Vanaheim - Een Verloren Verhaal (2022)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Epic Folk Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 4 Feb 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | VK | YouTube

There are a bunch of albums listed as the best of the year, in various genres, at Folk N Rock and I'm likely to review a couple more of them this month, but I ought to start with their Folk Metal Album of the Year. For 2021, that went rather predictably to Jylhä, because Korpiklaani happened to have an album out, but, for 2022, it went to a debut album by a Dutch band I'd never heard of, Vanaheim by name, and, even though I'm a huge Korpi fan and Jylhä was a good album, this is a far worthier choice as an Album of the Year.

Vanaheim play epic folk metal out of Tilburg and they've been doing it since 2015. They've put out a couple of EPs over the years but this is their debut at the full length and it's a peach. They're on the heavy side for the genre, with rough vocals from Zino van Leerdam that are melodic and well intonated but wouldn't be out of place on a melodic death metal album. The guitars are powerful and the drums fast but these six songs are just as unmistakably folk as they are metal, so much so that the four that also appear in "folkestral" versions do exactly the same job without the benefit of being plugged in, except for the keyboards.

Let's just say that I'd love to see this band live in a rock club and I'd love to see them perform at a renaissance festival. Now imagine the heaviest group that you've seen at the latter kicking off an album with a song that's a tasty combination of Viking metal, power metal, symphonic metal and melodeath. No, it wouldn't usually work, would it? It does here. This opener is Uit Steen Geslagan, or Knocked Out of Stone, and it runs for ten minutes as a magnificent introduction to what Vanaheim do. Not only is it really good, but it sets up the template that the band seem to like working from.

It's a bombastic epic sound that might be fast or might be slow but always heavy and in your face. It's easy to imagine the band leaning forward on stage, as if there's a storm raging between them and us and they have to turn up even further so we can hear them through the wind. It's a vibrant sound that we could take into battle, the vocals harsh and emphatic and the beat incessant. But there are respites. Every once in a while, they decide to let us all breathe, so drop into a quiet and folky section for a while before ramping right back up to speed through a seamless transition.

These folk sections vary immensely too. Uit Steen Geslagen has three of them and they're wildly different. The first is fiddle and hand drums, before a flute joins the fray. The second is a waterfall piano tinkling against a roaring fire. The third, almost at the end, is accordion and Jew's harp and a genial party of backing voices. They're all engaging and fun, they each bring something new to a song and they all keep an overarching melody moving along.

All the full on songs are long, but the next couple are a little shorter than this one, over and done in seven minutes and change. They're Onbevangen and Reuzenspraak and they're both strong too. I like the dropdown in the former, this time with whistles, but there's one in Reuzenspraak that's sheer joy. I think that's a harp or maybe some sort of lute, accompanied by handheld drums and a wave of keyboards that somehow doesn't feel anachronistic because this is epic metal and it's the way to add emotional swells. That's the symphonic side of Vanaheim, because van Leerdam is the only vocalist and no sopranos wander in from the wings.

The album wraps with the truest epic, Gevallen in de Nacht, the other two tracks being interludes. Well, maybe Verloren is a ballad, the sort that needs no translation to renaissance festival stage. The vocals are rough but heartfelt, both from the lead singer and the group who back him up. It's got a killer ending too, one that leaves our palate well cleansed before Gevallen in de Nacht kicks in with a dramatic intro. Once again, it's a strong song, because nothing lets this album down. It's excellent when it's quiet and introspective and we sit craving steaks on stakes. It's excellent when it's in your face and we want to get a pit going. It's just excellent, period.

If Vanaheim are this good on their debut, not to mention how powerful, versatile and mature they are doing what they do, how good are they going to be in a couple of albums time? This could well be the truest folk metal album I've heard in a long time and I'm going to be playing it a lot.

Thammuz - Sons of the Occult (2022)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 28 Oct 2002
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Thammuz is an ancient shepherd god of the Mesopotamians, who's referenced in both the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible. As the son of Enki and the primary consort of Ishtar, he shows up in a few ancient cults. That seems rather appropriate for this Dutch stoner rock band, as some of the songs here, starting with Guayota, feel like they could be a suitable musical backdrop for cult activity in a movie. You don't have to be in a pharmaceutically altered state of mind to visualise some of those scenes.

I haven't heard Thammuz before, but they hail from Gelderland in the central eastern part of the Netherlands on the German border and this is their second album after Into the Great Unknown. I liked it from the outset because the opening track, Electric Sheep, is an instrumental belter to kick things off and Sons of the Occult adds a commercial edge through the vocals of, well, someone. I'd give you a name but I can't find a line-up, merely photo suggestions that they're a four piece. That surprised me, because I had a feeling that they would be a power trio, given how much they enjoy instrumental tracks and sections.

As much as I liked those two tracks, though, the album grabbed me with Guayota, which is far more patient, much more ritualistic and a good deal more imaginative. It's instrumental but controlled cleverly. The rhythm section creates a dense backdrop and the guitar decorates it. For a while, the mindset it follows dominates the album. Each track starts out soft but resonant with an intro that catches the ears but builds into something more intense. Some have vocals, which tend to play in a supportive role, but I would listen to this band even without them. The nail their grooves early and milk them well.

Those grooves often play in the same ballpark. Guayota is mystical, as if we're listening in from an opium den and sharing a hallucinogenic dream with everyone else there. Had a Blast is darker but accepting, the subdued vocals fitting the feel. Dumizid's Descent is a cross between the two, once again instrumental. Peyote is softer and sparser, which adds more of a cosmic feel to proceedings, a feeling that we're floating somewhere, maybe way out there. It heavies up, of course, because a sense of urgency is never too far away on any song here. It's certainly there on Insomnia, which is a fascinating closer because the calm vocals contrast with the frenetic energy of the music.

I haven't mentioned Death Songs and People from the Sky, because they ditch the intro approach and nod back to the more traditional stoner rock of the opener. They're good but they're not at all as noteworthy as the rest of the album. What's most noteworthy is Self-Taught Man, which takes a very different approach indeed, one that I keep coming back to. I honestly couldn't tell you if I like Guayota and those other songs from my previous paragraph more than this one or vice versa. They certainly sit apart.

Self-Taught Man has a jaunty groove from the outset that's unlike anything else here, a groove I'd almost call rockabilly but set firmly within a stoner rock framework. The music takes a step back to let the vocals lead the way, for the only time on the album, kicking back in when the song warrants some emphasis. And those vocals are much more overt, which shifts them from a passive croon to a commanding lead, sounding like a cross between Nick Cave and Glenn Danzig, with a serious side of Jim Morrison. That means that they're dark but tantalising. It's a fascinating song.

I should track down the Thammuz debut because I like this band and I'm intrigued as to where they came from sonically. I'd like to know what's new this time out to see which direction they're taking going forward.

Within Temptation - Shed My Skin (2021)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 5/10
Release Date: 25 Jun 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Pinterest | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I was surprised by how much I liked Within Temptation's most recent album, Resist. I know the band as a symphonic gothic metal outfit, but there wasn't much of that on offer in 2019 with songs owing a lot more to modern western pop music, merely with a heavier, more bombastic industrial beat behind it. I would say that this EP continues that musical shift but the songs aren't as interesting as highlights on that album like Endless War or Holy Ground. There's less dynamic play on offer, Sharon den Adel is less adventurous and the songs just feel more sedate. The best thing about it is the cover art.

Shed My Skin is the best of the three songs here, the other two being the band's previous two singles, The Purge and Entertain You. Shed My Skin is lively and driven by its vocals and a Paradise Lost-esque shift in its chorus. As the cover suggests, this song is a collaboration with the German metalcore band Annisokay, but it's not that metalcore in its sound. The industrial beat from Resist is still here but the drums are cleaner, almost serving as the lead instrument. The others are a little buried, except for a resonant metalcore section early in the second half that's actually pretty cool.

I'm far less fond of the other two songs, though Entertain You has its moments. It has a more stripped down and bass heavy sound when it starts, but it drops into a pop song in the diva style. Googling the song to find out that the male voice belongs to Daniel Gibson, I stumbled on an astute comment about den Adel needing to pull a Gwen Stefani and go full on pop diva. I can see that option and this is a song that sits firmly in between that and the symphonic metal that the band used to play.

What I like about Entertain You is even more applicable to Shed My Skin and what I don't like about it is even more applicable to The Purge. With the exception of the admirably clean drums and the poppy vocals, which feature that Irish lilt I noted on Resist a couple of years ago, it feels like everything else is blended into just a tone. It doesn't matter what any of the other instruments are doing and they're doing nothing more than a set of sustained notes on the keyboards would provide.

These three songs are pretty short, running only about a dozen minutes, so the band padded out the running time to EP length by adding instrumental versions of the songs. That's an odd move because, without the vocals, there's not a lot here. I find myself listening to a lot of instrumental albums lately with a set of drawn out twelve minute jams, but the twelve minutes here feel drawn out to double that because there's very little to hold our interest.

I'd give Shed My Skin a 6/10 on its own because it's enjoyable enough, even if it isn't up to the standard of Resist. However, the other tracks aren't up to the standard and the instrumentals drag it all down, so I'll have to drop to a 5/10 for the EP as a whole. That's quite the drop from a highly recommended 8 for Resist only two years ago. Hopefully the next album will be more interesting.

Anneke van Giersbergen - The Darkest Skies are the Brightest (2021)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Folk
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 26 Feb 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Anneke van Giersbergen, former lead singer of the Gathering, returns with an atypical release that's a soft acoustic singer songwriter album. It's apparently inspired by the Japanese artform of repairing a broken object, often ceramic vessels used in the tea ceremony, with precious metals, the point being to treat things that are broken but repairable as merely going through stages of their lives and even celebrating the imperfections. This had ramifications in van Giersbergen's own life and it apparently helped her immensely.

Well, I say it's a soft acoustic singer-songwriter album. Much of it certainly is, van Giersbergen's voice reminding of Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins, but even purer than the former and with more soul than the latter. There are strings here in addition to the acoustic guitar and hand drums, such as on Agape, the opener that features the title in its lyrics, and The End. I'd suggest that these feel new rather than old, but then both Mitchell and Collins were always contemporary to their times. Maybe this will feel old a decade or four from now. Of course, some songs, such as Losing You, which omits the strings, are timeless.

The structure of these songs is more interesting, though, and many songs, starting with the deep and meaningful My Promise but firmly underlined with the poppy I Saw a Car, reminded me of Rickie Lee Jones in their subtle quirkiness, and once I recognised that, the entire album took on that flavour, if to different degrees. My favourite song here fits this well too and that's Keep It Simple, with a subtly sassy groove, stripped way down from what's on Hurricane, and some neat cello and even neater vocal harmonies.

Talking of Hurricane, it's so overtly played that it isn't really soft at all, even if it remains technically acoustic. Halfway through, after Coos Zwagerman joins on trumpet, the groove expands to remind of Kate Bush and that's never a bad thing either. This is a busy acoustic song with vehement drumming from Martin Bosman but it's glorious. The brass is a great touch. The bouncy Survive is overt too but still acoustic.

This isn't what I expected from a solo Anneke van Giersbergen album, but it's a really strong release. I know a lot of people think of acoustic releases as being a very particular sound that's rather confined in its emotional reach, but that really doesn't have to be the case. Quite frankly, it doesn't have to be the case on a singer songwriter album featuring a single person on voice and acoustic guitar, because there are a lot of textures that can be drawn on, but this is a fantastic album to repel that thought, as it's full of admirable variety without ever feeling the urge to plug in.

And this also makes me wonder how a lot of symphonic or gothic metal singers might sound in a very different context. One of the reasons why Floor Jansen was so fascinating on the Beste Zangers show was because she sang in so many different styles. That show really ought to reach out to the agent of Anneke van Giersbergen, because she'd be perfect for it too, between what she's done in the Gathering and what she's done across this album.

And how pure can a voice be? What she sings on Losing You is so pure that it's a frozen morning in the sun before anyone's touched it. It's utterly pristine. This album may not be at all what Gathering fans are used to from her, but it's a fantastic album. I hope they check it out.