Arakain - Jekyll & Hyde (2019)

Country: Czechia
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 16 May 2019
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website

I've never heard of Arakain before, but they're hardly new. They formed in Prague in 1982 and, unlike most bands from that era, kept going throughout the intervening years with a reasonably consistent line-up. Guitarist Jirka Urban is the only remaining founding member, but two of his colleagues have been there since 1986. Original vocalist Aleš Brichta left after a couple of decades but Honza Toužimský is coming up on a decade and a half himself. The least consistent role is drummer but new fish Lukáš "Doxa" Doksanský joined back in 2006, so he's already on album six.

This is their nineteenth studio album and it's a strong one even over fifty minutes in length. What's most interesting to me is how they manage to make the album sound so consistent, given that there are many obvious influences in play. Sure, the dozen songs fit in a consistent range from three and a half minutes to exactly five. Sure, Toužimský's vocals certainly ground it too but he doesn't dominate the mix to the detriment of his bandmates. But they throw their net widely, wider than the British hard rock classics of the seventies.

I should emphasise here that Arakain tend to move frequently between heavy metal and power metal elements, but there's a lot more here. Most blatant is the intro to Kiss's Detroit Rock City that appears late in Znal bych rád, a surprising nod for reasons to which I'm not privy. To co chceš mít is more like Savatage and Síť is reminiscent of Pantera, except for its commercial chorus. Kompromis and Sny dávají křídla shift into Metal Church territory, though the latter veers oddly into hair metal at points and even ends on a sort of acoustic note.

Jen vaše ruce is the most overtly different song on offer, partly because it kicks off with a different vocalist, presumably Lucie Bílá, but because it's much more of a hard rock song than a metal one, the only one on the album. The title track wraps up the album in clear metal fashion with a doomladen Black Sabbath feel. That's a heck of a lot of different sounds shoehorned into a heavy/power metal box but there's not a one that feels out of place, not even Jen vaše ruce.

Arakain sing in Czech, which I don't speak. Google Translate gives me a set of generic song titles, like Not Yet, I'd Love To and Just Your Hands. I'm intrigued as to what that's all about. Síť apparently means Network, Hřích means Sin and Signály, amazingly enough, means Signals. There's little in these names to help me figure out what they're singing about. The only hint I have to mindset is a slight look to the dark side, with songs like Sixth Sense and the title track. Who knows?

I liked this album, even without knowing what they're singing, but I didn't like it the way I might expect to like a nineteenth album, especially in this odd year of 2019 when everyone and their dog are appearing out of the ether with a vengeance. I liked it enough to wonder what their earlier albums are like. I see that they may have started out a little closer to thrash and that fits.

The biggest problem the album has is that, even though the band are on the case throughout and the music kept me alert a few times through, but it's difficult to identify one killer track to highlight. Perhaps that's why the album feels so consistent: it's good stuff but it's consistently good stuff that avoids great as much as it avoids poor. If you twisted my arm, I'd say that Šestý smysl or Sixth Sense is the highlight, but I may well call out a different track tomorrow.

Roaring Empyrean - Cosmic (2019)

Country: Iran
Style: Funeral Doom Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 8 Jun 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Instagram

There were a few reasons why I added music reviews to Apocalypse Later this year, on top of the book reviews I've been writing since 2014 and the film reviews I've been writing since 2007, but one was discovery. Everything at Apocalypse Later revolves around discovery and I wanted to see what was out there in the musical landscape of 2019 that I didn't know about. After all, modern music sucks, right? Nah, I wasn't buying that. What was I missing?

One discovery was Roaring Empyrean, a one man project from Iran that merged funeral doom with new age music, a counter-intuitive recipe that I couldn't imagine working but which somehow did. Well, Amir Asadi aka Doomed Shinobi, the one man who creates this intriguing music, found my review of Monuments and sent me a copy of his new EP, Cosmic. I've been looking forward to that point where a band I've reviewed releases new product so I can explore their growth. This EP marks the first repeat 'band' here at Apocalypse Later.

Monuments aimed to create soundscapes to evoke majestic creations, whether they were created by man or nature. This EP continues in that vein, each of the two instrumental tracks combining the slow and plodding beat of funeral doom with the swirling atmospheric joy of new age, a heady mixture of which I'm getting rather fond. It's often background music, easy to listen to and easy to be distracted from, but never for long as there are odd elements to draw us right back in again. Everything here is built from contrasts, even how we interact with it.

While the general approach is similar to Monuments, I'm also hearing a wild and abrasive edge on both tracks that goes beyond the clashing that we got on Mountains of Torment last time out. It's there in the metallic dissonance found in the second half of Pillars and it's especially there on Gates, from its very beginning, a gritty, almost industrial vibe underneath the new age electronica, like a Nine Inch Nails layer on music more overtly influenced by Tangerine Dream.

Of course, that makes it all the more eye-opening to suddenly catch a melody that's notably reminiscent of Abba's Lay All Your Love on Me, merely slowed down to the tempo of funeral doom. I'm enjoying the Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares vibe and focusing on that dark and jagged underlay when suddenly there's an Abba melody. The world of music is a glorious thing.

These two tracks are long, as you might imagine for instrumental tracks that serve as soundscapes. Pillars runs almost ten minutes and Gates almost nine, which is a decent amount for an EP. They develop and they end without ever outlasting their welcome, even on a fourth or fifth time through.

While I liked this, I think I liked Monuments more. If there's a flaw, it's a really odd one. The cover art is of a galaxy and the EP's title is Cosmic, so I presume this is aimed at taking us on a journey into space. I have to say that I didn't get that from the music at all. The darker edges took me to darker, more hellish places, which isn't a bad thing at all, but perhaps isn't what Asadi intended.

I enjoyed this and am eager to hear what he might conjure up next. In the meantime, this EP is available at Bandcamp for the paltry sum of one dollar (or more, if you're so inclined), so I highly recommend that you pop over there and pick up your copy.

Gong - The Universe Also Collapses (2019)

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

Here's another name from across the decades and one with a notable history that's still being forged, even after all its most prominent members are no longer with us. Gong were formed in a Paris commune in 1967 by Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth, who passed away in 2015 and 2016 respectively. After they left the band in 1975 (albeit not for long), Pierre Moerlen continued on as a jazz fusion band, but he died in 2005.

The line-up has changed more times than can be comfortably imagined and now features nobody who was involved at any point during the first four decades of the band's history. That's weird, but it doesn't mean that the musicians are new fish. The old hand nowadays is Fabio Golfetti, their Brazilian lead guitarist, who joined Gong in 2007 but also continues to lead his own prog rock band, Violeta de Outono, which he formed in 1985. Gong was one of his key influences from childhood so leading the band now must be a real blast.

Now, I've listened to a lot of seventies prog rock and I've enjoyed much of what I've heard, but I've never managed to get into Gong, whose influential Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy of albums still seem impenetrable to me. This album, ironically, seems far more accessible to me than legendary releases like Camembert Electrique which influenced the current members.

There are four tracks here, of wildly different lengths, but they betray a commonality in each being constructed from intricate little riffs that flow into each other like tesselations. This is an album for pattern spotters or listeners with OCD because those patterns vary just a little and are often the ground over which the saxophone of Ian East soars like an alien bird.

Forever Reoccurring is a twenty minute opener, because that doesn't seem at all odd when you're Gong. It starts softly, pulsing slowly into action with echoey vocals from Kavus Torabi. This is Gong in space rock mode, patiently building with a little escalation here and a new layer there, along with a looped vocal that runs behind a good chunk of the track.

There's a lot here, maybe appropriately given that the lyrics seem to have us singing together while the universe collapses. If this were 1970, there would be a host of different names for the different movements, some led by vocals and some led by different instruments. Like the universe, though, it plays well together and seems somehow timeless. Those twenty minutes last a lifetime but are over before we know it.

Oddly, Gong follow a twenty minute track with a two minute one, which is a decent piece for its length, but we blink and we're into My Sawtooth Wake, an even more ambitious take on the ideas in the first track but compressed into a mere thirteen minutes. It's two thirds in when it comes most alive with a driving riff and an explosive solo from East's saxophone. It's good throughout but, after that wild midsection, it fades somewhat.

The final track is The Elemental, which runs a short seven minutes and has the wrong mindset to wrap up this album. It's not a bad track, but it's the safest on the album and it was never going to stand out after the couple of earlier long tracks, as playful and experimental as they were. It does end well though, with a minute or so that sums up what's gone before but with a telling repeated lyric, "Remember there is only now."

Gong, it seems, are a going concern: inventive, fearless and somehow fresh, perhaps revitalised by an entirely new generation of musicians inspired by the Gong that came before them. Surely this was the goal of Daevid Allen's e-mail to the band asking them to continue on after his death. They've done him proud.

The Rods - Brotherhood of Metal (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 7 Jun 2019
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website | Wikipedia | YouTube

The Rods may seem like yet another older band to resurface in 2019, but I'm seeing that they've back for a while and this is their third studio album since they reformed in 2010. Their heyday, of course, was from 1980 to 1987. Like L7, they reformed with their classic line-up intact: guitarist David Feinstein, bassist Garry Bordonaro and drummer Carl Canedy on drums. Canedy and Feinstein are founding members, while Bordonaro only missed their debut album in 1980.

It's good to see that these guys are as good as they ever were, but both the best and worst things about this album are that they're very much like they used to be. The good side of that is that they were and are rather talented, a straight ahead heavy metal group with solid musicianship and notably good solos. The bad side is that what was fashionable in 1981 often seems acutely clichéd in 2019.

This album kicks off with a great example of both in its title track. Brotherhood of Metal is a solid slab of old school heavy metal. It has a long piano-driven intro, then kicks in hard and, well, runs through a whole slew of clichés. This is very much for the "armies of denim and leather" and, while it's nowhere near as embarrassing as what Manowar get up to nowadays, it slides a few slots down the same scale. I was OK with it on first listen, thinking that its biggest flaw was that it was a little too long, but a second time through elevates the cheese factor.

And that keeps on coming. The cheese is there in abundance on Everybody's Rockin', which could have been written in 1984. It's there on Louder Than Loud, because of course it is, but it is kind of the point on that track. It's there on Tyrant King too. And Party All Night. And Tonight We Ride. And... yeah, it's there on pretty much all the songs on this album. This is a great choice to play heavy metal cliché bingo to and you can pick any song with similar results.

The good news is that, however clichéd it gets, it's played very sincerely and very well. The riffs are strong, the solos are worthy and the vocals do exactly what they need to do. The influences are worn on the band's sleeves too, with Judas Priest being the most obvious. Everybody's Rockin' could be a Priest song, merely with different vocals. Smoke on the Horizon could be too, even though it adds the heavy organ sound we expect from Jon Lord (and it adds it in gloriously). Add in the Manowar/Virgin Steele mindset of the opening track and you're pretty much set for the rest of the album.

Brotherhood of Metal runs to eleven tracks (hey, this one goes to eleven) and they're all consistent in both quality and cheesiness. The other song that I'll highlight is Party All Night, because Feinstein stops playing on the verses to give Bordonaro's bass the lead. He does a fantastic job but that's not the point I want to make.

I'd been impressed from the very outset about how easily I could hear the bass on this album. In fact it felt almost offputting that there was a bass in the mix, because producers tend not to be capable of acknowledging that the bands they work for even include a bass player. The Rods, of course, feature Carl Canedy in their line-up and he's a producer of note when not performing, so I have no doubt that he's the reason behind the laudibly audible bass.

I found metal in 1984, just a little late to be a big fan of the Rods. I'm sure that, had I been born in the US instead of the UK, I'd have picked up their older albums quicker, but I heard them and liked them. I like this as well and recommend it, but it's going to seem outrageously cheesy to anyone who weren't metalheads in the early eighties. The real question is whether you care or not.

Fleshgod Apocalypse - Veleno (2019)

Country: Italy
Style: Symphonic Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 May 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Remember in Back to the Future when Marty McFly convinced the younger version of his father that he was from outer space by simply popping an Eddie van Halen tape into his Walkman and blaring it at his target? Well, I couldn't help but picture a fresh version of that scene when listening to this album.

Imagine waking up from a decades-long coma and the first thing you hear is Fury, the opening track to this album by Fleshgod Apocalypse. Even the name of the band could blow their minds, but this one track would convince them that they had someone been abducted by aliens and are now residing on an alien planet.

It's extreme stuff but not in just the usual ways. Sure, it's a blitzkrieg of noise but it's full of strings and piano and choral voices. Where a band like Therion might craft that into a catchy metal number, this band layer them instead until we wonder if we're listening to three different radio stations all at once.

Initially, it's hard to figure out exactly what we're listening to. All the traditional instruments leap into Fury like boats into a maelstrom, the drums at hyperspeed from the very beginning and the guitars following suit. The vocals are death growls, low enough in the mix to be another instrument. Then, only ten seconds in, Francesco Ferrini starts wild runs up and down his piano keyboard and ten after that, a choir joins in for good measure. It's almost too much and this will be an assault on the senses for many.

But there are points where it really works. Of all things, a triangle kicks off a section a couple of minutes in that grounds what's going on here. It's like the clouds depart and we see a shining sky full of angels and death. I loved it but this isn't first time listen stuff. It needs three or four to really grasp what Fleshgod Apocalypse are actually doing and to start to appreciate it.

This approach continues on Carnivorous Lamb and Sugar, with other nuances. There's a female voice that speaks partway through the former but it's so buried in the mix that it's a sort of ghost, just like the strange laughter that kicks off the latter. The clean male voice that joins Carnivorous Lamb sounds like he's shouting from another studio through the wall. The piano that steals the early sections of Sugar and the guitar that takes heed later on sound like what Mussorgsky might write to accompany the flight of witches over a lake of fire.

In other words, this is death metal but it's not only death metal and adding 'symphonic' to the beginning of the genre doesn't cut it. This is wildly, uncompromisingly experimental in nature and it feels much more appropriate to compare it to the output of a jazz rebel like John Zorn as a death metal band like Deicide or Arch Enemy. There are similarities but the goal just isn't the same.

And, if we survive the thirteen minute onslaught of the first three tracks, we're thrown something completely different. The Praying Mantis' Strategy sounds like dark Enya with an oddly compelling metronome behind her, the final pair of delightful piano notes launching us into Monnalisa, a slower, more gothic piece initially driven by strings, piano and drum fills, with a decadent and narrative clean vocal from Paolo Rossi. It moves into Tristania territory a couple of minutes in but refuses to stay in any one place for long. There's a glorious contribution from soprano Veronica Bordacchini but it ends very differently.

There's so much in Monnalisa to detail that it's hard to give an impression of what it feels like, but it's a song that you feel as much as hear. The same goes for The Day We'll Be Gone, which features a notably wild pairing of soprano and harsh male vocal. Like always, it's done for effect but the effect sought is different here. This feels like a battle between good and evil for supremacy, because the voices both sing as leads and often at the same time. Veleno is an operatic interlude, a piano solo that does nothing outrageous but carries portents of what's to come.

Oddly, what's to come turns out to be a symphonic take on Rammstein's Reise, Reise, which ends with metronome and squeezebox, and a whispering gothic orchestral take on The Forsaking, originally recorded on Agony, the second Fleshgod Apocalypse album.

I have to call out special praise for whoever produced this, because it's the densest music I've heard but I can still hear everything I need to hear. With the amount of stuff thrown into this, that's a real achievement. Certainly the drums fit better into the mix than on previous albums. What results is something that's perhaps best described as an acquired taste. I have no doubt that this isn't for everyone, not even amongst the fraternity of death metal fans.

After a few listens, I have to say that I admire what Fleshgod Apocalypse have done here, especially given that most of it is the product of one man called Francesco Paoli, who contributes the lead vocals, all the guitars and the drums for good measure (yes, he has colleagues to do some of this live). Rossi adds bass and clean vocals, while Ferrini is responsible for piano and orchestration.

I can also say that I like it, but I really can't say how much. I think I need to listen to this album another couple of dozen times to grasp that.

L7 - Scatter the Rats (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Grunge
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 May 2019
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

This year has seen a whole slew of unlikely returns to the studio, running the musical gauntlet from death metal pioneers Possessed to Italian prog rock legends Banco del Mutuo Soccorso via seventies rock icons Black Oak Arkansas, but somehow the most unlikely is L7. Grunge is old enough now to fall into the nostalgia sweet spot but it hasn't and, frankly, it hasn't even shown any signs of returning to favour. L7's return doesn't look like being the spark to a trend but it could be, because this is a pretty fun album.

While we might think back at grunge sounding all downtuned and depressing, that's never been what L7 are. I'd describe this as pop punk, if I could keep inappropriate ties to bands at the more commercial end of that genre out of the picture, like the Offspring and Green Day. That's not what this is. It reminded me a lot more of early Adam and the Ants. Many songs here, especially Uppin' the Ice, feel like the grandchildren of Cartrouble and Physical (You're So) and others from the Dirk Wears White Sox era.

On Scatter the Rats, L7 do what Adam Ant did so well back then, singing no end of catchy tunes over simple hooks that all have a grungy twist to rock 'n' roll roots but are coloured through little responses from guitars and effects. Add in some Ramones and some Blondie and maybe some Bangles on Holding Pattern and this is as much a throwback to 1979 as it is to 1992 and that made for an interesting ride. What's different, of course, is modern production and pissed female vocals. Ouija Board Lies wouldn't sound too different if it was recorded by Adam Ant and Debbie Harry.

It's hard for a while to determine which the catchiest tracks are, but I'm pretty sure that Fighting the Crave has to top the list. It's driven by a delightful bass riff from Jennifer Finch and a callout style vocal from, I presume, Donita Sparks. It's worth mentioning here that this version of L7 features the entire classic line-up that existed from 1986 to 1996 and ever since they got back together in 2014 after thirteen years apart.

Album opener Burn Baby and Uppin' the Ice are the most obvious candidates to battle Fighting the Crave for the catchiest song here, but most of the rest aren't too far behind. Everything here is at least mildly catchy and I have to include Proto Prototype in that, even though it has the simplest and most repetitive riff I've heard in a long time. Stadium West relies on a catchy vocal line and meows, of all things, because it flaunts another simple riff that needs enhancement.

The majority of the songs here run from two and a half to four minutes, the band clearly not interested in anything that isn't short, sharp and to the point. The only exception to that is the title track which closes out the album, which is wilder and punkier. I quite liked it but it's a little out of place with the ten tracks that preceded it.

It's good to see L7 back and on form too. After all, grunge grew out of a rejection of the artificial music that was dominating the mainstream. Few would disagree that what's in the charts today is even more artificial than what was in the charts as the eighties became the nineties. Most songs are written by the same two or three songwriters and, hey, we have autotune now to make musicians cringe.

I'd dearly love for someone to crash that party and I'd grin like an idiot if that someone turned out to be a band of women in their fifties singing lines like, "My love is like a garbage truck." Let's turn the charts into a Celebrity Deathmatch between L7 and Justin Bieber with music winning.

Death Angel - Humanicide (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 31 May 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twtter | YouTube

Those who have followed my reviews from the beginning of the year will know by now that I discovered metal in the early days of speed and thrash and they were my go to subgenres. I bought The Ultra-Violence when it came out and played it incessantly. I wasn't as fond of the next two albums but I was sad when the band ceased to be in 1991, especially as I hadn't got round to seeing them live yet. I finally got that treat in 2012, early in the current band's line-up, which has remained stable since 2009.

They rocked on stage and so does this album, but it took me a second listen to really grasp it. My first time through, in the wee hours of the morning, was decent but not great, highlighting traditional stuff in a notably clean mix. It played at mid tempo more than I'd like, but it had some surprising textures, like the piano-driven coda to Immortal Behated. I knew I liked it and a couple of songs stood out, but it didn't knock my socks off.

This morning, I revisited it and heard a completely different album, except for that clean production which is easily my least favourite aspect. Maybe I wasn't with it last night or maybe this just isn't as immediate an album as, say, the new Flotsam and Jetsam or Exumer albums, which were obviously great from moment one. It doesn't really matter. It's good stuff and, a couple of listens later, it's very good stuff.

It starts off fast, with a double whammy of Humanicide and Divine Defector. The first is intricate and the second is blistering, firmly in the sort of territory you might expect to find Kreator, but they're both fast. While I love Death Angel for their musicianship and really miss the instrumentals they treated us to on the first album, vocalist Mark Osegueda is clearly on top form here, hurling out the lyrics like his life depends on it.

Aggressor is traditional Death Angel, but I Came for Blood really isn't and this track stands out more than any other. It's like Death Angel attempting Motörhead, which I now realise sounds rather like Midnight or early Nuclear Assault. It's different from moment one, but the chorus makes it sound even more different because it's reminiscent of Electric Six. Yeah, that caught me by surprise too! Now, if someone had floated Motörhead covering Electric Six, I'd have thought them insane, but this has real energy and power to it and it may well be my favourite song on the album.

There are plenty more fast thrash songs to come with decent solos from Rob Cavestany and wild spitting vocals from Osegueda, that highlight a slightly punkier feel than I remember from Death Angel. Old school fans will not be disappointed. However, there's more than that here.

Immortal Behated is progressive thrash, with a commercial chorus, and it's interesting stuff, even before the extended coda. Cavestany and Ted Aguilar shine, but the whole band contribute highlights. Osegueda aims for cleaner vocals on Revelation Song and the band slow down a lot too. In fact, this isn't really thrash at all, it's a hard rock song with hints that the band know how to thrash too. Of Rats and Men adds a Savatage vibe to the fray, a relatively safe expansion of sound.

And then there's The Day I Walked Away, which wraps up the album. Again, it plays slower but adds surprising elements. The verses carry a gothic feel, and by gothic here I'm talking about Bauhaus or maybe Type O Negative, not gothic metal like Paradise Lost or Lacuna Coil.

These three songs are an odd way to wrap up a thrash album, but they're not bad songs and they don't really feel out of place, just a little jarring. I applaud the band's attempt to vary their sound without leaping onto another bandwagon and alienating their fanbase in the process the way that a number of other bands have done in the past.

There's a lot here to digest and that's a good thing. The only bad thing is the production which is very capable but very clean. Humanicide should have blistered more and it's the production not the band or the songs that's the cause of that.

Darkthrone - Old Star (2019)

Country: Norway
Style: Black Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 31 May 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Wikipedia

Well, this was a surprise for me, but probably won't be for most. I remember Darkthrone from their early Peaceville albums, as they shifted from being a European death metal band to the black metal for which they became known. I think I have Soulside Journey as a white label test pressing. Well, Fenriz and Nocturno Culto have apparently changed their sound quite a lot over the years and many albums since. Holy crap, I believe this is their eighteenth studio album in under thirty years and it doesn't sound like Soulside Journey or A Blaze in the Northern Sky.

Old Star clearly bears the hallmarks of Norwegian black metal, especially on songs like Duke of Gloat, where the only shock to a black metal fan would be the notably slow drumming. I Muffle Your Inner Choir kicks off the album in black metal style too, even if the vocals are a little more death than black and the drums refuse to acknowledge the existence of hyperspeed. It's good old wall of sound stuff though, merely a more patient black metal than we might be used to.

I Muffle Your Inner Choir slows down halfway through as well, becoming more of a heavy metal track than a black metal track. Never mind death from which the band was born, it's not extreme at all for a while except for when the vocals join in again. It's slow and steady but the moment we wonder if it's thinks about doom, it speeds up. To me, it felt like a throwback to the era before hyperspeed drumming, when bands like Bathory and Celtic Frost tested boundaries before some of these newer techniques came along.

This old school mindset is impossible to miss on The Hardship of the Scots, which begins with a riff that reminds of Y&T, of all people, albeit notably downtuned and apparently recorded in an aviary. This song really ponders on whether it should play with doom but it doesn't and, perhaps more telling, it isn't doom/death either because there's no melodic guitar line tempering the deepness.

It even brightens up a few minutes in, with an odd perky doom section, just as The Key is Inside the Wall does after about a minute. Is this a new genre that Darkthrone are inventing? Perky doom. I kind of like it! It's downtuned but riff driven and it chugs along with that dark vocal, as if Hellhammer were covering Judas Priest. I even caught a death grunt at one point and a lyric or two about Satan, who's fallen rather out of style nowadays. It has a rough production too but it's never muddy like the more luddite minded of the black metal bands prefer.

I liked this album but I wonder how much of that like is because it's rather different from what I was expecting, how much because it reminded me of what was deemed extreme midway through the eighties and how much because it does a good job whatever it is. I have a feeling it's a mix of all three and I'm not sure if that allows me to rate this appropriately. I've listened a few times but I feel like I should come back to it later in the year to see if I still like it.

I should especially look backwards, because my knowledge of Darkthrone is a dozen albums short and I haven't listened them since the mid nineties. They continue to slow down their output, even if that generally means an album every two or three years now instead of six in seven, so I should probably look at the last couple, The Underground Resistance and Arctic Thunder and see if that provides me with some context.