Imperia - Flames of Eternity (2019)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 22 Feb 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Given that I'm virtually wandering through the Netherlands today, I thought I should wrap up with the new Imperia album, given that they're major enough to have a Wikipedia page (even if it's skimpy), four prior albums over a decade and a half with a pretty stable line up (the only changes have been the loss of a guitarist and keyboard player in 2010) and connections to Epica (singer Helena Iren Michael and drummer Steve Wolz used to be in Sahara Dust before it renamed to Epica in 2003).

Of course, while the band is based in the Netherlands, the individual members are from everywhere else, so I'm kind of cheating. Michael is Norwegian and Wolz is German. Guitarist Jan "Örkki" Yrlund is a Finn and bass player Gerry Verstreken hails from Belgium. So, nobody here is Dutch but hey.

I found that I want to like this a lot more than I did, given that it checks off most of my wants list.

It slams right into action from the outset with serious bombast on The Scarred Soul. Every single instrument wants to be big and they manage it, with orchestration behind them to make them even bigger still. None of this is remotely subtle (by the time the Spanish guitar shows up, the band have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the song), but it's effective. I like it.

And there are another eleven songs to go, because this is a long album, just under an hour's running time. They keep mixing it up too, not least through an array of styles that Michael is able to perform. The reason that Fear is an Illusion is notably heavier is partly due to her harsh death growls, but just two songs later, she's lifting her voice to operatic levels on Book of Love. She's versatile and talented.

So are the musicians behind her. They bulk up to crunch Fear is an Illusion, speed up to blister through Blinded and soften up for ballads like Beauty Within or the piano version of Mother that closes the album. Many songs are able to move from one style to another, Invisible Tears starting out as like a ballad as could be comfortably imagined, with airy orchestration, Spanish guitar and swelling keyboards, but getting progressively heavier and more emotional until the midpoint, after which it starts to soften back up again.

Imperia call themselves a symphonic gothic metal band, but there's certainly a lot more symphonic than there is gothic here. In fact, many tracks, especially during the second half, move into folk territory. Otherside kicks off with jaunty flutes and there's a solid violin solo in the middle. Beauty Within gets so folky that I wonder if a Renaissance Festival band was in the next door studio and popped in to jam. The Ocean's flutes aim at middle eastern flavours and that's emphasised when the belly dancing music kicks in.

While I do want a lot more gothic from my gothic metal bands, symphonic or otherwise, I'm fond of folk metal too. That's fine. So what went wrong? I think the problem is that a lot of these songs, while they're different in details and instruments and melodies, somehow feel very similar, especially in tone. These aren't bad songs, though the vocal rhythms on Beauty Within are oddly awkward; they're just doing the same sort of thing and that blurs.

There's nothing wrong with a song like Unspoken Words, for instance, and I liked its brief piano ending, but it feels better as it happens three songs into the album than it does in hindsight once we've got past twelve. I can't say I didn't like Flames of Eternity but I didn't miss it when it was done and that's telling for me. Usually there's a song or a texture or a melody I want to immediately return to. Here, I was fine with the silence, even if I wasn't upset at anything that came before it.

I don't think this is going to generate flames of eternity as much as it'll be consumed by them.

Into the Arcane - Sleepless We Lie, Thoughtless We Cry (2019)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Doom/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Mar 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives

OK, given that I've been spending a day in different European countries this week, you just knew I was going to end up in Sweden, right? Wrong! That's far too easy because there's far too much good stuff coming out of Sweden of late and I'm liking this concept so much that I'll surely come back to it shortly. Today, I'm listening to Dutch bands and first up are Into the Arcane, a doom/death band from Zeeland, whose debut album is interesting to say the least!

It's a concept album, with each track a chapter in the story, all introduced in the opening narration, Dr. Philips and the Arcane Disorder. We're in 1867 and he's found a global connection behind his investigations into "a string of weird and unexplainable accounts of madness and despair". It's the Arcane Disorder and this is a musical interpretation of those imaginary stories.

As a long term steampunk and co-founder of an adult Victorian oddities group, I was very happy to see this concept. The lyrics are relatively simple, but trawl in an agreeably broad range of fears, from relatively routine ones like night terrors and phantom limbs to truly outré ones like seeing everyone else as reptilian or not being able to breathe unless it's a conscious decision. I recognise a few, like Cotard's Syndrome and schizophrenia, but kudos to Erik Noten, vocalist and lyricist on getting the word "prosopometamorphosia" into the lyrics of a metal song.

Given that this is doom/death, of course, you'll have to read those lyrics as they're not always intelligible, even when they're sung in English (one song and part of another are performed in Dutch). I caught most of them and it has to be said that there aren't too many, even eight minute songs like the title track featuring a few short verses and a chorus of a single line. That's not an unusual occurrence here.

The music is relatively minimalist too, but that's not a bad thing. The band is small, three musicians on the usual instruments plus Noten on vocals, and they generally play slow but with feeling. There's a comfortable tone to the music, dark and deep but warm and often bouncy in a slow, aching way, so it's easy to snuggle up close to the material so that Noten can relate his tales of madness to us in theatrical snarls and growls. He's a beloved demon.

Like many concept albums, there are extras laid over the music. There are a few examples of spoken word during songs, including an excerpt from a study by David Rosenhan, On Being Sane in Insane Places, which I really ought to read. Eight people including himself were committed to psychiatric hospitals due to hallucinations that they'd made up for the study. Once inside, they behaved normally but were all diagnosed with disorders, forced to admit to them and blocked from release until they'd taken antipsychotic drugs.

Much of the effect here doesn't come from such excerpts but from relatively simple tricks that immerse us in the concept, things like audible breathing at the right moments. I also liked the way that some songs feature prominent guitarwork, if not solos then melodic leads, simultaneously with vocals. It added depth and texture and made the band feel larger. Also, Tijl Jacobs's bass is prominent and gets a number of memorable runs, especially on My Sane Asylum and Lijdensdruk.

The album is so consistent, in tone and idea and quality, that it's hard to pick out individual favourites from the tracks. I'm particularly fond of the sustained vocal growl in Lijdensdruk, but I also liked the slow burn of My Other Self and the texture of Thoughts on Breathing, among a whole slew of other moments on this album. Is any one of those three songs a standout over the others though? Not really. They're all just worthy parts of an enjoyable fifty minute piece of music.

Salduie - Viros Veramos (2019)

Country: Spain
Style: Folk Metal
Rating:
Release Date: 25 Feb 2019
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Five hours north of Alicante, where Mind Driller play their industrial metal, you'll find the city of Zarogoza which is home to the lively folk metal band Salduie, whose line-up also features multiple dedicated vocalists, albeit in a more usual combination of harsh and clean.

The most obvious difference, beyond subgenres, is that there are a heck of a lot more musicians in Salduie, perhaps partly because they're keen to explore the Celtic side of Iberian history and culture. That means that, in addition to the expected couple of guitarists, bass player and drummer, the band also feature band members playing an array of other instruments and not just at odd moments either.

The title track, which is just a two minute intro reminiscent of Therion and Tristania, includes bagpipes as a lead instrument. They're played by David Serrano, who's also responsible for whistles and dulzaina, a sort of Spanish oboe. Guitarist Victor Felipe also plays the Irish bouzouki and mandolin. Nem Sebastián has wind instruments to play in addition to singing and, whenever a song goes acoustic, Sergio shifts from drums to bodhran.

What impresses isn't that these instruments are in the line up, because this is a folk metal band, but that they're kept so close to the fore. A song like Oestrimnios, for example, spends a minute with folk instruments before metal ones take over. However, there's a flute solo to come and plenty of bagpipes and the whole thing pauses for an acoustic jig in the middle.

As I did with the Mind Driller album, I like the sheer range on display here and, also like that band, it's often a result of the vocals. I have no idea which melodic voice is which here, as there are three singers singing clean, but one of them is of high enough pitch to take the place of a female singer (or do we have a guest here throughout?). Diego Bernia is one of those three but I'm guessing that his isn't the high voice because he also provides the harsh vocals, which are often death metal growls.

It's interesting to hear this band travel seamlessly from the lively Celtic folk of the first half to lands of emphatic death in the second (speaking generally; songs like Diana, la cierva blanca, the last but one, are as folk as the band gets), but it's even more interesting to hear Salduie play both at the same time.

R.T.N.P. is a great example of that. For the first minute, it features airy flutes dancing over dark bass and urgent drums. Bernia's harsh voice changes this to emphatic death before it goes clean again with backing from winds. This to and fro is delightful and very capably handled, even when it goes to extremes: there's another very heavy section at the four minute mark, but it only prompts Salduie to go acoustic again for another energetic dance with flute and drum. Then both approaches play out together as if it's the most natural combination in the world. It's wild and intoxicating stuff.

It's not all folk and/or death though. R.T.N.P. is surrounded by a couple of songs that forgo death for power metal. Viriato does well but Kalakorikos is even better, complete with a spoken word section building to a wild roar of voices. If it wasn't so overtly Celtic, this would be a Viking metal song. I guess it still could be, as the Vikings harried the Celts a lot, but I'm not sure they extended this far south.

This was a fascinating album for me. I recently reviewed a Tuatha de Danann EP from Brazil, which taught me that Celtic isn't just an ethnicity nowadays; it's also a musical sandpit that anyone can play in. Salduie, however, aren't just chiming in with a Spanish take on Celtic; there's actually Celtic blood in the area of Spain known as Celtiberia, even if they stopped speaking their Celtiberian language in the sixth century. I have some reading to do.

I presume this means that there's less of a living tradition here than there is in Galicia, where Mileth explore Galician traditions in Galician. Kudos to Salduie for investigating their heritage and mythology in music and doing it so damn well.

Mind Driller - Involution (2019)

Country: Spain
Style: Industrial Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 22 Mar 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

As I traipse virtually around Europe, enjoying the wild diversity that's on offer in the worlds of rock and metal in 2019, I realise that I haven't had as many stops in Spain as I perhaps should have, so let's remedy that today with a couple of very different bands.

First up are Mind Driller, from Alicante, who play industrial metal with an overt NDH flavour, not least because some of the vocals are sung in German. I'm a big fan of the versatility of the English language but there are some things that can only be done in German and NDH is one. This album underlines that because the rest of the album is sung in English, as well as in different styles, and it definitely pulls that abrasive NDH punch.

Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Just listen to a song like The Last Drop to see how that style can blend and battle with other styles, weaving in and out of them in a fascinating way. Half of it is hard punching NDH, sung in German, but the other half veers into groove, gothic, nu, even prog. It's a heady mix but I have to say that I really dig it. It's like a stage duel between Rammstein and a wild variety of competitors, each darting in when they see an opportunity.

These different styles often come from the fact that Mind Driller have three dedicated vocalists in a band that only numbers six. That's an odd band line up. I believe that Dani N.Q. is responsible for the harsh vocals, including those in German, while V handles the clean male vocals. Certainly Estefania Aledo produces the female vocals, which are also clean but often powerful as she isn't there just to provide a sweet contrast to harsh.

With Pharaoh on bass and Reimon on drums, that leaves Javix to control a lot of the band's sound, not just through his guitar work but all the electronic components too, because he handles the programming, which is deceptive as to its importance. Songs like Zero impressed me with how much electronica there was but how little there seemed to be. In other words, he's able to do a lot without it seeming like he's taking over everything.

This is Mind Driller's third album and it feels accomplished, aided by some very crisp production. However, I have a feeling that this band's element is the stage, not least because they have a very distinctive image. To be part of the album's concepts about duality, as emphasised by the utopia/dystopia album cover and the intriguing video for Rotten, they've adopted a sort of post-apocalyptic new wave look with make-up that cuts each of them in twain.

Industrial is often seen in love it or hate it terms, but I sometimes think that's less to do with its pounding approach to music and more to do with a lack of variety in each band's sound. If you like one song, you're going to like the rest. If you don't, you're gone and you won't be back. Here, I was impressed by just how much Mind Driller manage to put into their industrial core sound. Kianda may be the best example of that, not merely contrasting hard and soft or English and German but also pop, rap and alternative with that industrial punch.

Listen to this once and you'll hear a lot. Listen to it again and more will emerge. Did I really blink and miss the carnival barker in Ritual the first time through or did it just not stand out for notice until I'd listened to everything else first? It really doesn't matter, but it helps to highlight just how much there is worthy of note here.

Mostly Autumn - White Rainbow (2019)

Country: UK
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Mar 2019
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Wikipedia

Following Green Lung's debut album, here's one from an established band, the progressive rock outfit Mostly Autumn, who formed in 1995 in York, one of my favourite places in the world. They've issued at least a dozen studio albums before this, with even more live ones, and they've built something of a cult following in that near quarter century.

The first thing to note is that White Rainbow is a very long album. It would run a full hour even without the 19:11 title track and 79:12 is pretty close to limits. The reason there's so much is that this is often patient stuff. It kicks off with a quiet instrumental and that mode keeps on well into the ten minute Viking Funeral. Vocals don't kick in until five minutes in.

When they do, courtesy of founding member Bryan Josh, it's obvious that the band's sound is rooted in British prog rock of the seventies, but at the more commercial end of that genre. I heard Barclay James Harvest in his voice and in the progression of the song, but his guitarwork is much more reminscent of Dave Gilmour from Pink Floyd. For all that it's patient stuff, the ten minutes of Viking Funeral whisk on by like they're half that. Once it's done, Olivia Sparnenn takes over as the lead vocalist for most of the rest of the album (Josh returns for Up and the title track) and her voice eats up the minutes as well.

Now, the repeated "Let it go" in Burn is unfortunate for a song with such a powerful female lead vocal, especially given the wintry cover art. I haven't even seen Frozen but I have heard that song. This one does go to other places but Sparnenn's voice is as crystal clear as Idina Menzel's and it soars just as well. It's odd for a prog rock album to suddenly reek of Disney.

Outside that track, they're very prog rock. While I haven't heard the band before, I have read comparisons between them and various legendary others.

Genesis are mentioned often but I didn't hear much Genesis here at all; none of Peter Gabriel's surreal experimentation and none of Phil Collins's pop stylings. Maybe there's some Steve Hackett in Chris Johnson's acoustic work.

I didn't hear Jethro Tull either, even if there's a strong folk element on offer, especially in instrumental sections with flutes and pipes. Even here, they're more Celtic folk in style than English. Really there's more Runrig here than Tull, but Mostly Autumn are too laid back to really warrant that comparison, even in more up tempo sections.

The most overt comparision is to Pink Floyd, because of Josh's guitar solos. If Viking Funeral didn't generate Dave Gilmour comparisons, Run for the Sun puts it beyond debate. Josh provides a long Gilmour style solo in front of Alex Cromarty's patient one, one two drums, which back him in a very Floyd way. Only one track further in, the same thing happens on Western Skies and that's not the last time on this album.

Otherwise, it's Barclay James Harvest or Camel that come to mind, especially on the quieter songs, such as the The Undertow and Gone, just with primarily female vocals. However, the seventies bands would have often kept the pace of songs like those slow, as Mostly Autumn do on Gone, but they more often up the tempo partway to introduce a more persistent drive. Even on slower songs, there's an eagerness that can be hard to hide and which runs out to play on faster tracks like Up, one of the more Floydian pieces on offer.

Perhaps they were saving their patience for the title track, which is epic. There's a lot going on here. I caught glimpses of Floyd, Toto and Tangerine Dream, even the Sex Pistols, which was odd, but it builds magnificently and doesn't feel remotely as long as it is. In fact, we get so used to it that the final track, Young, six minutes long as it is, feels like another part of the long song that preceded it.

White Rainbow is also notable for combining male and female vocals and doing it so well that it's suddenly surprising to find that this is the first point where it really happens at all. So there are surprises here, if few of them. It's an accomplished and mostly relaxing piece that will live or die on repeat plays. So far, it holds up well, but I'll give it a few more listens to see if it starts to fade.

Green Lung - Woodland Rites (2019)

Country: UK
Style: Occult Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Mar 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter

One of the surprises I received after starting to dig back into rock music at depth was the resurgence of occult rock, which sounds like it shouldn't even be a genre but has somehow become a burgeoning one. It occupies a distinctive space at the crossroads of a number of genres.

Most occult rock bands cite Black Sabbath as an overt influence, though the true originators were an American band called Coven, whose 1969 album called Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls predated Sabbath's debut by a year. A string of coincidences include the opening track being called Black Sabbath and the band's bassist being called Oz Osborne.

From Black Sabbath (or Coven, if you know them), it's hardly a long trek into either doom metal or stoner rock territory. Occult rock encompasses both and often adds a folk influence too (and that's traditional folk rather than folk metal) or a psychedelic one. Topping all that off is a focus on Satanism and the occult as an overt lyrical theme.

Green Lung are a quintessential example of occult rock. This debut album of seven new songs, none of which were on their EP from last year or their demo from the one before, is very much like early Black Sabbath with the heaviness toned down just a little by production, which makes it sound like the band are performing to us from the other side of the veil between life and death and that's subduing everything. However, the riffs are there, the vocal sneer is there and the psychedelic edge is there.

The most obvious comparison, though, are Cathedral, who chose to channel the Sabbath sound through a knowingly cheesy filter, especially with the copious use of clips from horror movies. Green Lung use samples on three songs here, plus the intro, and that helps them to be as clearly cheesy as Cathedral ever managed. However, Tom Templar's vocals are a little lower in the mix so the lyrics are accordingly a little less obvious until we pay attention.

And, when we do, we realise that Templar Dawn or Let the Devil In aren't too far removed in tone from, say, Cathedral's Hopkins (The Witchfinder General), even if there's nothing here as blatantly over the top as the doom exotica of Voodoo Fire. That's more obvious on the video for the catchy single Let the Devil In, which combines footage from films like Häxan, some nunsploitation and one of the Dennis Wheatley Hammers.

There's more folk apparent here and not only during the intros to tracks or the album itself, courtesy of a two minute Initiation. The folk tinges help set the scene for these five or six minute stories. It's no coincidence that May Queen is at once the most evocative song on the album and the one with the most folk on offer. It's hard not to imagine the band in a studio here; surely they're recording the song from a clearing in the middle of a wood.

There's more psychedelia too, especially a fantastic section three minutes into The Ritual Tree, which adds a whole new level to that song. Everything musical here is aimed at building moods. While Templar's vocals tell stories rather than conjure up ritual, the music does a pretty good job of the latter while he's setting the scenes. The combination is impressive.

I've seen a lot of wild praise for Woodland Rites and I can't say that I find myself sold to the same degree. The best debut album of 2019? Come on! We're still in March and I'd be surprised if it's the best debut of this month. It is, however, clearly an impressive album, mature and well crafted. For them to be this good on a debut bodes very well indeed. Now, just "open your heart and let the Devil in."

Monocluster - Ocean (2019)

Country: Germany
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 7 Mar 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

As the second half of my birthday present to myself, how about an album that has been recently shared on the Stoned Meadow of Doom YouTube channel, which is frankly mandatory for any serious explorers of stoner rock and metal. And, given that we spent all of yesterday on a virtual trip to Finland, let's stay in Germany today for Monocluster.

Monocluster are a power trio who describe their music as "stoner psychedelic death blues" and that sounds about as far up my alley as it's possible to get. The album is comprised of five lengthy trips, ranging from nine minutes to almost thirteen, so there's plenty of time for exploration and that's an appropriate word to use. Each track is a self-contained journey engaging on first listen but deserving of repeat visits.

They're from Cologne, three hours from the North Sea and a lot further from the Atlantic, whichever way they dance around the UK, so I'm unsure why the ocean is in their bones. However, like that ocean, there's a constant sense of motion here and an underlying power that's always there, even when it's not remotely interested in demonstrating just powerful it can be. It knows that we know and it does what it does safe in that knowledge. It's no show-off.

Oddly, because I adore to be bludgeoned by epochal riffs, what I like about this album most is the peace and patience of the quieter sections. Leviathan is a particularly peaceful but playful track, hardly the take I expected on the beast in the evocative cover art. The vocals are structured like a blues song, which is a strange thing to hear on a song like this but a welcome one. Like the ocean, the leviathan isn't to be messed with, but that doesn't mean it doesn't want to play.

There are epochal riffs here, so don't panic. We get those five minutes into Guns and Greed, which has an especially thoughtful vocal line. It's patient to begin with but it gets angry. There's some real vitriol when Chris spits, "Everyone is guilty and the game is rigged" and the riffs crash over us like tidal waves. A few minutes more and we could be in the middle of The War of the Worlds. However, there are far fewer epochal riffs than I expected. Ocean in Our Bones has some too, by the way, but in a different way. It feels like we're navigating the depths and the music plays like a sort of sonar, bouncing back at us off vast underground structures.

I should highlight those vocals, as few of them as there actually are in the grand scheme of Ocean. Records like this are often instrumental nowadays and this one has long instrumental stretches that sometimes make us forget that we ever heard a human voice. However, the vocals are no afterthought. Chris may do a lot more with his bass than his voice here, and just check out his patient bass on A Place Beyond as Jan's guitars and Ewald's cymbals build to a crescendo around him, but he gave just as much care and attention to his vocals and it's appreciated.

If A Place Beyond takes us out there, wherever there might be, Home brings us, well, home again to wrap up the album. It's hardly the expected return though and I wonder how to take it. If there's a sweep to the album in tone or message, it's a dark one. Our planet isn't a nice place and it's doomed, because of the actions of human beings. Some of this message feels like it's environmental in nature but much more of it is about the military industrial complex. War is coming. Everything will burn. We'll all die. So, why are we coming home? Why not stay out there on the ocean, which is in our bones, and play with the beasts of the depths? Maybe we have to come home because it's in our nature and the ocean will claim everything eventually anyway.

I like this and it's powerful stuff that I'll happily recommend, even if the definition of "powerful" here is hypnotic peace far more than it is crushing emphasis. That aids the journey, I think. And it really is a journey, maybe one that's cyclical until we decide to change it. Ocean is definitely one of those headphones in the dark at three in the morning albums and I very much look forward to exploring it further. I can easily see my rating going up.

Suicidius - Supremacy of Destruction (2019)

Country: Germany
Style: Groove/Thrash Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 8 Mar 2019
Sites: Facebook

It's my birthday so I thought I'd pause my global search for interesting rock and metal for some old stand bys. First on the list: let's find some German thrash!

Suicidius were formed in 2014 and this is their first album, after an EP last year called When We Come to Town. It starts out exactly what I was looking for but grows into something else besides. I enjoyed it.

Much of what I was looking for is evident on the opening title track. It demonstrates the band's cohesion and speed from moment one, coming out of the gates like a locomotive. It does take its time getting to where it's going though, the song being well over a minute longer than anything else on offer. This is good stuff! What's extra to my expectations is a groove metal overlay with a guitar that sounds rather like an industrial sander and vocals that remind more of Sepultura than Kreator.

I say overlay, because many of the songs here kick off very much like old school thrash, only to add groove metal elements like a mask. It isn't a full disguise, with the music changing halfway through, like they stopped being one band and became another. The thrash band I believe they started out as are always there, most evident in the drumming of Oliver Lenz, but that groove layer is added often, especially by introducing punkier vocals and shifting from technical thrash riffing to prowling bass.

There's definitely an attitude in the latter approach too, as if the band want to lash out at something with power rather than just destroy it with speed. They demonstrate a strong Motörhead influence on Thunder and back it up with Fuck It All, the first of two obvious message songs, the other being Fuck the System.

Valhalla moves in a different direction though. The drums go even faster and the vocals move into death territory. It's the other long song, for a band who seem to prefer three to five minute songs, at least, and this is six and a half. It seems like they needed the extra time to explore those extra subgenres. If it's a somewhat schizophrenic song, it's a good one at least, even if the cleaner vocals are a real stretch. It even ends with a melodic old school ending reminiscent of the Scorpions which leads right into the two minute interlude that is Legacy of Chaos.

Fuck the System turns out to be a completely different animal to Fuck It All. That was all aggressive punk, while this one is technical metal with a progressive edge. For a while it can't be sure if it wants to wear that groove mask or not but there's another neat thrash section three minutes in. I certainly prefer Suicidius as a thrash band but they're interesting as a groove band too and I think the groove side works best when it's not taking over. This applies as much for This is Hell as for Fuck the System.

The second half of the album is definitely interesting. Brotherhood has a power metal edge to it, which is strange because it's a change not only of type but tone. This is much more upbeat than anything else on the album, with the groove side adding a weight to proceedings. It's odd for a song to carry some of that weight but still overtly try to reach upwards, but I'm not going to say that it doesn't work. This World Dies plays in a lot of sandboxes too, as does End of the Light, which closes out the album.

All in all, this wasn't what I expected but that's not always a bad thing. It's certainly not the thrash album that it started out as, but it isn't the groove album it moved into either. It ends up being a marriage of two styles with others increasingly joining in as if it wants to stretch the poly concept in entirely new directions. All power to them.