Tortuga - Deities (2020)

Country: Poland
Style: Psychedelic Stoner/Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Jan 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

One of the countries that surprised me in 2019 by the quality and diversity of its music was Poland with bands as varied and impressive as Monasterium, Velesar and The Matter of A, so I'm eager to keep on exploring Polish music in the new year. Here's the second album from Poznań's Tortuga, who describe their sound as "psychedelic stoned doom". It's certainly a lot more rooted in psychedelic rock and stoner metal than Monasterium, but it's still doom metal at heart.

Deities isn't a concept album per se but it's themed around the elder gods of cosmic horror legend H. P. Lovecraft and, as the Archpriest of Chaos in the First United Church of Cthulhu, I salute that and I salute the glorious cover art by Too Many Skulls which is absolutely gorgeous.

A few other aspects became quickly obvious as common factors.

One is that a majority of the album is instrumental. Technically, only two of seven songs on offer are instrumentals (Shining Sphere and Defective Mind Transfer), but there really isn't much singing going on. Esoteric Order is seven and a half minutes long but it only contains four lines of lyrics. The others have more, Galeón de Manila even unfolding in Spanish, but not one of them has much. The two vocalists are also the two guitarists and it's clear that they think of themselves as guitarists first. It's actually possible that there's a higher word count in the samples and narrated intros than in the lyrics.

Another is the prominence of the bass guitar. This first manifests during a glorious intro to the first track proper, Esoteric Order, which is as jaunty as stoner doom gets. It's guitar free for a whole minute and really makes a strong impression. The bass thankfully never goes away but it returns with a vengeance on Black Pharaoh II, surely the standout track here. Most of the time when I mention the bass in album reviews it's to complain that it isn't audible or to be happy that it is. This is my second review this week alone to compliment the fantastic bass work, here delivered by someone by the name of Heszu.

The third is less surprising and that's that this is a heavy album. Tortuga play monolithic doom in that it's very heavy but also uncomplicated with an avoidance of flourishes. The guitars are particularly economical, playing as few notes as needed to generate the necessary doom and despair. While there are nods to psychedelic rock and stoner metal, not least in the fuzziness of the guitars, the result is doom, slow and heavy with wailing solos.

For Elizard is particularly stupid but it's a lot of fun too, given that it introductes us to Yig, a snake god, who Tortuga define as completely hating Godzilla, "this other fucking lizard". Vocals are delivered in gaps between minimalistic riffs or over another gorgeous bass run. The song is solid, as dumb as it is, and I can't resist a chorus that reads, "Yig hates Godzilla. Fuck you, Godzilla!"

Doom metal just can't succeed without riffs and the riffs here get more and more crushingly heavy as the album runs on. For Elizard has a very nice one, but there's a heavier one in Defective Mind Transfer and then Black Pharaoh II ups the ante yet again. Three times. Midway through, the band add a solo onto the riff and it seems as delicate as the foam on top of a tsunami wave that's already above us and ready to crash down. However, Black Pharaoh II also features an amazing section where the drums get all jaunty midway and rework the perspective of the riffage magnificently.

The first time the riffs really calm down is for Trip, which is the odd man out on this album for a few reasons, not least that it's a lot quieter and subdued in the mix. It's also the one track that's more psychedelic than it is doomy, perhaps appropriately given its title.

And then there's Galeón de Manila, the inexplicable final track, which takes longer to end than the third Lord of the Rings movie. Fundamentally, it's a five minute song with a two minute intro and, without any attempt to kid, a nine minute outro. There are bands who spend their careers building up their skillset until they can finally write a nine minute epic and Tortuga throw a nine minute outro onto this song like it's nothing, which it mostly is.

It made me wonder if the album was written live and recorded chronologically because this outro is the sort of thing that probably felt like a great idea during the trip of the previous track. If the band had cut ten whole minutes of soft but escalating pulses out of this one, they'd still have racked up a respectable three quarters of an hour, all of which would have had purpose. I have no idea why they went nuts at the end here.

Ignoring that, this is a solid album. It's as simple and straight forward as psychedelic music ever gets, anchored by cavernous riffs and hindered by few words. I like it, though I like its bass guitar even more.

Tom Keifer Band - Rise (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 13 Sep 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

It may not be trendy to admit it, but I didn't dislike the hair metal era, as cheesy as it got, and there were some seriously good bands hiding behind all the make-up and spandex. One of my favourites was Cinderella, who were a lot deeper than their airplay suggested. Whether they ever actually split up or just stopped doing anything for long periods of time, such as when lead vocalist Tom Keifer suffered paralysis of the left vocal cord, is debatable, but they haven't released a studio album since 1994's Still Climbing.

Certainly, Keifer has continued on as a solo artist, releasing a solo album, The Way Life Goes, in 2013 to consistent acclaim and adding this second last September, credited not to Tom Keifer but to the Tom Keifer Band. I planned to review it during Name November but I ran out of slots on the calendar and left it until now. Looking back, it's far better and far more consistent than the Neil Young album, so it's a good choice for a final January catch-up.

Cinderella were always more overtly rooted in the blues than many other hair metal bands and that's apparent here, but Keifer draws from wider sources to vary this eleven tracker, perhaps because it clearly draws from the Rolling Stones a great deal, Keifer really trying to emulate Mick Jagger on Waiting for the Demons and especially Taste for the Pain, quieter rock songs with a Stones vibe to them.

On the stormer of an opening track, Touching the Divine, Keifer sounds a lot more like Brian Johnson, that memorable scream as in your face as ever. The band don't sound like AC/DC much but there is a strong similarity in how the finalés to many songs here layer, with lead and backing vocals duelling with a guitar solo and everyone involved bringing added emphasis to what they do. Check out the end of Untitled to see what I mean, then go back to For Those About to Rock (We Salute You).

While the first couple of tracks are up front rockers, just as metal as they are rock, Waiting on the Demons shows that Keifer is going to play with the boundaries of the genre. It emulates the Stones approach to balladry with an emotional, swaggering lead vocal over acoustic guitar. The slide solo guitar in the middle is a delight. It's also telling that the album wraps with what can only be described as country rock in You Believe in Me. Hey, the band is listed as being based in Nashville.

Perhaps the oddest track here is Untitled, because it somehow features both an eastern and a southern vibe to it, like an Egyptian band resident in the blues bars of Alabama. The slide guitar shines again too and I should add a note that I'm not sure who to credit for a lot of what goes on here. Is that Keifer himself, given that he's certainly playing guitar as well as singing on this album, or is it Tony Higbee? I have no idea.

Similarly, whose is that soulful backing vocal that really elevates the end of the stellar title track and pops out to be noticed at odd points in Touching the Divine, among others? Is that Keifer's wife, Savannah, credited on vocals, percussion and piano, or is it Kendra Chantelle, on vocals and percussion? I have no idea here either, but whoever it is sounds rather like Joss Stone, which isn't a bad thing at all.

As is entirely appropriate for someone who didn't just front Cinderella but wrote most of their songs, this is both an immediate album, full of strong riffs and stronger hooks, and a deep one, worthy of exploring over multiple listens. I thought about giving it a solid 7/10 for now with the knowledge that I might need to up it to an 8/10 after a few more listens, but I kept it playing while I pondered on that and decided to go straight to an 8/10. I think Keifer is getting better than ever.

Stabbing Westward - Dead & Gone (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Industrial Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 3 Jan 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

2019's trend of bands crawling out of the woodwork with their first release in forever is apparently set to continue. Stabbing Westward were darlings in the nineties, landing heavy rotation with their Wither Blister Burn & Peel album in 1995; touring with the likes of Killing Joke, the Cult and Depeche Mode; and making the soundtracks of movies like Mortal Kombat, The Faculty and Johnny Mnemonic, as well as a True Blood season finalé. However, their fourth, self-titled, album didn't reach the studio's expected sales and so they split up in 2002. This is their first release in nineteen years.

I was born in 1971 so I'm a child of the eighties rather than the nineties, and the latter is when a lot of the alternative music crossing the Atlantic from the US prompted me to drift away from the scene. I'm much happier with Stabbing Westward and other major nineties bands returning with new vibrant music in the twenties outside the mainstream, meaning that they can do what they do and do it well without it swamping everyone doing something else.

While many fans who saw Stabbing Westward reform in 2016 for their thirtieth anniversary with two of the three founder members on board, surely wanted a full album, they're still happily welcoming this skimpy EP as something more than nothing. It includes three new tracks and two remixes, so it's a tease as much as a release. However, the three new tracks are pretty good, mixing the dance beats and industrial crunch they're known for with good hooks and the usual angsty lyrics. "I failed to realize I'd found everything in you," is just the first line of the first song.

Whatever you think of industrial pop music, the tempo escalation from verse to chorus in Dead and Gone is a statement of intent. The band are back and they're feeling it. This is urgent stuff and, dare I say it, deserves a pit to erupt at gigs because it's that sort of moment. This song reminds more of Depeche Mode than Rammstein, but it's a lot heavier than the former and has a chorus more comparable to the latter.

Cold continues the angst with a song about unrequited passion that kicks off with a surprising eastern flavour. That works really well and ably compares the emotional desolation of a failed "I love you" moment with a geographical desolation, all sand and wind and emptiness. It's catchy as all get out too, a worthy candidate for serious airplay, but it doesn't ditch that heaviness for commerciality.

Crawl is where the band turn the heaviness down a notch. It's a slower song that uses the power more for emotional weight than urgency. In its place is a clockwork riff that nods to the surprising niches they're finding of late. I see that they were a big hit at Dark Side of the Con and rolled over into the organiser's other event, Steampunk Con in New Jersey, alongside Victor Sierra, Rasputina and others. We live in interesting times.

I'm a lot less fond of the remixes, one of Dead and Gone and one of Cold, feeling that the glitchy manipulation only serves to remove most of the urgency from the original songs. So the Cold remix has a more overt dance beat? Shrug.

I'd give the three original songs a 7/10, because they all find that magic balance point between power and commerciality. Stabbing Westward are really back, not just throwing something new out for the cash. This feels like the band is a priority again and they have something to say. Frankly, that's a higher rating than I expected to give, but I'm happy to be surprised with a good set of songs. That said, those three songs only rack up a dozen minutes and I'd be feeling generous if I gave the remixes a 5/10, so let's split the difference and give the EP as a whole a 6/10.

Avalanch - El secreto (2020)

Country: Spain
Style: Melodic Power/Progressive Metal
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 29 Mar 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Metal Archives | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I've been collating various end of year lists to see how they gel with mine and to see what I missed. One particularly interesting one I found was a top sixty Spanish metal albums (meaning from Spain rather than Spanish language) apparently across all subgenres from the Headbangers Latino America website. I've reviewed four of those, from Azrael (#32), Mind Driller (#28), Salduie (#15) and Eternal Storm (#2), so I knew I should take a listen to number #1, which is this album, El Secreto (The Secret in the English language version) by Avalanch, who hail from northern Spain. Hey, any album that can beat out Eternal Storm must be a fantastic album indeed!

They're new to me but they've been around for a very long time. They appear to have started out as Speed Demons as far back as 1988. The changed their name to Avalancha a year later but switched again to Avalanch when they put out their debut album, La llama eterna (which is The Eternal Flame, not The Eternal Llama) in 1997. They've been busy ever since, El Secreto being their thirteenth studio album. The line-up is mostly new, though, as nobody pre-dates 2016 except lead guitarist Alberto Rionda, who was a founding member.

If I tell you that that line-up includes musicians who have played for Rage, Gamma Ray, Yngwie J. Malmsteen, Axel Rudi Pell, Tony MacAlpine, Tarja, Mägo de Oz and Jeff Scott Soto, then you've probably figured out that they play a sort of virtuosic power metal with progressive edges. I should add that most of those credits were racked up by drummer Mike Terrana, who has played for all but two of those and at least as many more, though guitarist Jorge Salán played with Mägo de Oz and Jeff Scott Soto and bassist Dirk Schlächter also played for Gamma Ray. Terrana is clearly a busy man.

It's strong from moment one, El oráculo opening with a serious bombast and technical aplomb, staccato drumming segueing into riffs. It's very patient, knowing how much power it carries, especially with a keyboard swell behind it, and it delays upping the tempo until it's good and ready. When it does, it's a delight and above all the stellar musicianship, the voice of Israel Ramos soars. He sounds excellent on the English language version but he's a little more natural and unrestrained in his native Spanish.

If El oráculo is an intricate and powerful and seemingly effortless opener, Demiurgus continues that trend. It's crunchy and powerful but delicate when it wants to be and it's endowed with serious class. We start to understand why Avalanch are topping an end of year poll, though I'm sadly not seeing El Secreto on any of the others I'm looking at, in either language, and it has to be said that, when Korn and Slipknot both make four of those lists, it's not difficult to see that many compilers don't have much musical depth and spring for the popular crap. Eternal Storm did make one list, at least, but critics do seem to set their horizons wider the heavier the music gets.

Just to mix things up completely, El Caduceo is a ballad for a while but it combines an elegant power metal style with the layered harmonies and sheer playfulness of Queen. It has a fantastic intro and, when it heavies up a minute in with riffs that sound like Dream Theater covering Led Zeppelin, it's as tasty. I have to praise the backing vocals here, as if to keep up the trend of each song showcasing one of the musicians briefly: El oráculo had a great run on the drums, Demiurgus passed the baton to the guitarists and Katarsis hands it on to the keyboard player.

I have to say that this is a grower of an album. The first time I listened through, I was impressed but none of the songs stood out. I was catching a section here or there instead: the instrumental midsection from Luna nueva, the exquisite intro to Alma vieja, the end of El peregrino. The second time through highlighted that the reason is because they're all so consistently strong. It's one of those albums where every damn song is a highlight and those are precious albums indeed.

By the fourth or fifth time through, this had become a favourite and I knew that I had to go back to Eternal Storm to see how that 9/10 from me squares up against the 9/10 this one was going to get too. The Dream Theater album last year went for shorter, catchier songs without losing the intricacies of prog metal. I mostly wasn't impressed but I now realise that this is what I want from that sort of approach. Now where's the opening slot for Avalanch on the next Iron Maiden tour?

There's clearly a lot of great music coming out of Spain. In addition to the bands I did review last year from the Headbangers Latino America list, none of whose inclusion I can argue with, I'd highly recommend Sechem (technically released at the very end of 2018) and Mileth, as well as rock bands Pölisong and Moon Cresta, all of whom got a 7/10 from me in 2019. Like Eternal Storm though, this is clearly above them and I can only be happy that I have twelve prior Avalanch albums to catch up on, even if none of them featured this exact line-up. Life is good.

Armadura - Nuevas tierras (2020)

Country: Bolivia
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 7 Jan 2020
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Tumblr | Twitter | YouTube

Let's notch off another country on the growing map of bands reviewed here at Apocalypse Later, because Armadura hail from El Alto, right next to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. They play heavy metal rather than folk metal, but JC Mamami provides a folk element by adding a variety of wind instruments as an enticing backdrop and as a frequent alternating solo with the more expected guitars. And the intro that kicks off the album, Qhantati, is about as close to the sound an Andean Danny Elfman might create as I've ever heard.

Armadura aren't new, having been around since 2005 and still featuring four original members within their six-man line-up. Drummer Chelo Borda joined in 2009, ahead of their debut album, Premonición two years later. Mamani is the new fish, having joined in 2015 before their follow-up, AJAYU, a historical concept album about an indigenous revolution led by Túpac Katari in colonial Bolivia. This is album number three and it sounds very good to me even when Mamani isn't bringing that extra folk element to proceedings.

The first regular song is Elegia heroica, an appropriately bombastic title for a song that highlights that Armadura's heavy metal comes with more than a little taste of power metal too. The back end is crisp, Borda providing a tight beat and Marco Sanchez Martinez getting a lot more opportunity on his bass than most metal bassists dream of. They make this upbeat and the flutes add a spiritual edge.

In between, the instruments we tend to think of most with heavy metal do a solid job too. The vocalist is Boris Mendez Cossio, who used to shifted from drums to just vocals in 2008 and he has a strong voice, albeit not one that dominates the way we might expect for heavy/power metal or for the symphonic metal that Destino dips its toes into. He's happy to support the songs and leave the fancier moments to the twin guitarists, Ivan Mendez Cossio, surely some relation, and Franz Thamez Rossel.

I liked the album from the beginning, but it takes a while to really warm up for me. Extinción and Imperio feel like filler, until Martinez starts showing off with a big bass run in the latter before handing over to one of Mamani's flutes. The flourishes of these two and their interplay at the end give the song much more of an impact than what's gone before. It certainly ends much better than it begins.

Martinez gets to introduce the title track with another cool bass run and there's a bombast here that fits the band really well, with a nice keyboard swell and a neatly teasing riff building into a catchy chorus. And it's here that things really start to work for me with every one of the six musicians doing interesting things and passing the focus back and forth between them. From here the songs find a host of impressive new sounds.

La senda del guerrero has a neat groove that reminds of a metal take on Kate Bush's Mother Stands for Comfort. Del norte replaces the metronome drums of that song with a more tribal approach, which is fascinating when mixed with a jazzy piano; it also adds a conversational vocal midway like Armadura are playing in a café. Fruto Ancestral (Mamá Jatha) is as close as they get to folk metal, courtesy of a fantastic guest female voice, prominent flutes and what sounds like a ritual opening dance. Destino starts out all symphonic.

While the best songs are clumped in the middle of the album, the interesting sounds continue to the end. Valor may feature the best guitar solo anywhere on the album but it's the way that the flutes chug and riff as well as solo that grabbed me. Sendero eterno kicks off with elegaic piano and seamlessly adds guitar and then flute over the top. Lago sagrado starts out industrial goth and progresses to swirling prog keyboards.

There's a lot here to unpack once it gets going and it surely highlights why Armadura have been doing so well in Bolivia, landing all sorts of gigs that seem particularly unlikely for a metal band: the launch of the live launch of the first Bolivian satellite, the anniversary of the US embassy and the passing through of the Dakar rally. It sounds like they're not just a solid metal band but a cultural phenomenon in Bolivia. All power to them!

Wolfmother - Rock 'n' Roll Baby (2019)

Country: Australia
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 29 Dec 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Tumblr | Wikipedia | YouTube

Not everything I'm reviewing from 2019 this January was culled from the end of year best of lists. New releases continue as if rolling from the end of December to the beginning of January had little meaning and Wolfmother, the fuzzy hard rockers from Sydney, Australia dropped this on 29th December. It only runs twenty-three minutes so I'm not buying that it's the new album. I would call it an EP or a mini-album, given that it features seven songs.

It's roughly what you might expect from Wolfmother, sounding like the early seventies as proto-hard rock bands figured out what the new genre was going to sound like, but with a modern stoner rock edge and hooks everywhere. As always, it's part Sabbath, part Beatles and part Zeppelin but fitting very well alongside a modern band like the Darkness. There isn't really anything new here at all.

But, my goodness, it's catchy! I had it playing on repeat over much of the weekend and the result is that I've been waking up with Hot Night jamming in my head. With its stop/start chorus, it's punchier than anything else here and the whole thing is punchy, primarily courtesy as always of the main man Andrew Stockdale, who's responsible for vocals and guitar. The latter remain upbeat and fuzzy, though the level of fuzz varies substantially from track to track; the solos are short and in your face; and the vocals are full of hooks even when he's singing a verse.

I'm unsure about who the other musicians are here, as I'm seeing conflicting information as to who's in the band nowadays. Hamish Rosser seems to be the drummer again, after a couple of years with the band early last decade. Who plays bass and keyboards depends on where you look. And, scrolling down the Wolfmother Facebook page, I'm seeing a lot of suggestion that the musicians varied from song to song. It's Rosser on drums on Kick Ass but Lucius Borich on Rock 'n' Roll Survivor and at least seven people have played with Andrew Stockdale in Wolfmother in 2019.

Let's just say that it all sounds good, but more like a collection of songs than an album. I don't know if it's just that ever-varying level of fuzz on the guitar, but the mixing levels seem to keep changing too, as if this is a product of multiple musicians across multiple recording sessions. At the end of the day, the constants are the quality, the upbeat tone of the songs and the utterly generic lyrics. What might you imagine songs like Rock 'n' Roll Survivor, Hot Night and Kick Ass talk about? Yep, you're exactly right.

What impressed me most is the variety and the consistency. Even with a mere seven songs on offer, none of which last past the four minute mark, I have at least four highlights and, each time I listen through again, I'm tempted to add another one to that list. Wolfmother fans certainly won't be at all disappointed in anything but the overall length and the band may well keep on finding new fans with this material.

Higher is a heavy stoner rock song. Stockdale has said that he was driving around LA listening to Fu Manchu when he wrote it. Rock 'n' Roll Survivor is stoner rock too but much closer to that Black Sabbath original sound. Kick Ass brings in that most seventies of instruments, the Hammond organ. Spanish Rose is a fuzzier Uriah Heep. And, with Hot Night a playful stop/start rock song, that's a lot of variety in the first five tracks, but it gets wilder over the last two.

Freedom is Mine carries a layer of distortion over the vocals and it results in a strange combination of hard rock, glam rock, garage rock, psychedelic rock and punk rock. Is there a rock that isn't represented somewhere in the song? It's kind of like Iggy Pop singing a Beatles song with Queens of the Stone Age behind him and that's not a bad thing.

Special Lady adds an electronic disco beat to proceedings and it really goes there with a funky robotic voice effect partway through. However, the guitar fuzz remains and it still sounds like Wolfmother, even if it's a little more experimental than usual. When the disco robot voice comes back for a second shot, it's during a notably Iron Maiden-esque solo.

This is a glorious way to start a week and I wonder how long these songs are going to keep playing in my head first thing in the morning.

Rage - Wings of Rage (2020)

Country: Germany
Style: Heavy/Power Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 10 Jan 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Never mind the bands from way back who went away but have come back recently with new material, I have a special admiration for those bands from way back who never went away at all and Rage are one of those. Sure, Peavy Wagner has been the only founder member left since 1987 and they're now on their fifth long running line-up, Marcos Rodriguez and Lucky Maniatopoulos both on their sixth year with the band, but they've never quit.

I remember Rage from the eighties and they're one of the first bands to come immediately to mind when I think of heavy power metal. Those early albums on Noise Records, like Reign of Fear and Execution Guaranteed, weren't the best examples of the genre ever recorded but I enjoyed them and bought a few when they came out. I'm a little shocked at how far out of date I am though. This is, I believe, their twenty-fifth studio album and they've done rather a lot in the thirty years since I've been paying attention.

I leapt at this because I wanted to hear a band I liked back in the eighties doing something new with modern 21st century production. It sounds great and the mix is decent. I'd have liked a little more definition to the bass but I guess it's hard to lose it entirely when the band in question is a trio. The opening tracks are up tempo without being thrash, heavy without being death, powerful without losing melody. It's a really nice balance.

True, the opening track, has absolutely everything I want from a heavy power metal song. It's exactly what I wanted to hear in 1987 when technology just couldn't make this sound possible. Let Them Rest in Peace sounds more up to date with modern riffs opening it, but just as we think Rage are going down a Pantera road, we realise that the tone, in everything from the guitars to the backing vocals, has that warmth that power metal is so fond of. It's very European.

I ought to see what my son thinks of this album as, while it has zero plans to blister like Kreator or Destruction, it has a similarly huge sound and it's not exactly slow. Lucky Maniatopoulos, in particular, feels like he's rather keen on venturing into thrash at points on songs like Tomorrow, HTTS 2.0 and Wings of Rage, though the band never quite follow him across the border from power metal except for Don't Let Me Down which is speed metal at points.

As its subtitle suggests, Shadow Over Deadland (The Twilight Transition) is a break point six tracks in. The five that precede it are all lively and up tempo numbers full of riffs and hooks and solos and everything that we might expect from heavy power metal. This one's there to calm us down for a moment before the band add an orchestral backing in A Nameless Grave. I should note here that their 1996 album, Lingua Mortis, is remembered as the first metal album to be recorded with a symphony orchestra and they've kept that up ever since, albeit on only one song here.

Wings of Rage isn't short, clocking in only a few minutes less than an hour, but it never outstays its welcome. I'm many albums behind but the ratings on Metal Archives are a little lower over the past decade than they were before that. Maybe this a return to form because it sounds solid to me. Sure, there are highlights, so not everything is of similar quality, but there isn't one bad song here among a dozen.

The two albums prior to this one, The Devil Strikes Again and Seasons of the Black, were made with the exact same line-up so I'm keen to check them out. I've had this one on repeat today. It still feels as fresh as it did when I first pressed play but I want more. Fortunately, there's a lot of Rage that I haven't heard for me to catch up on. Let's hope it's as good as this.

Lingua Ignota - Caligula (2019)

Country: United States
Style: Avant-Garde
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 19 Jul 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Wikipedia

This isn't metal in any definable way, but it features on at least five best of 2019 metal lists and in the top ten of four of them. It's performance art as much as it's music but it's not the unapproachable noise that you may be imagining from that term. It's raw and it's visceral and it's heartachingly real, a sort of therapy for musician Kristin Hayter, a survivor of domestic abuse who describes her songs as "survivor anthems".

At times, this is sheer noise. On her Bandcamp page, the lyrics for Day of Tears and Mourning read simply "[INCOMPREHENSIBLE SCREAMING]". Sure, it has quiet organ music to start but it gets very dark very quickly and her vocals resemble black metal shrieks, albeit over a plodding and ominous beat rather than hyperspeed blastbeats. Do You Doubt Me Traitor has a full on assault on our senses, Hayter primal screaming into the void, transforming the words of her abuser into fierce art.

At other times, it's exquisitely beautiful. Hayter was a church cantor who's classically trained in piano and voice and a number of songs here feature a polyphony that I recognise as Bulgarian from Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, a glorious album of world music that led the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir to places they never expected to go, from Xena to Kate Bush via The Tonight Show. This style is especially obvious as the album begins on a song called Faithful Servant Friend of Christ.

Sometimes, the beautiful and the noise merge, like on the utterly brutal and unforgettable If the Poison Won't Take You My Dogs Will. Hayter chants, the beauty fragile and cracking over a soft drone, but when she reaches a Kyrie Eleison refrain towards the end of the song, that being the Greek for "Lord have mercy", a curtain of noise descends over her in a way that any extreme metal band would dearly love to emulate. There's a similar curtain in I am the Beast and before Do You Doubt Me Traitor gets visceral, it's a heartfelt invocation.

What amazes me is how well read Hayter is musically. She's only in her mid-thirties and she didn't find rock music until a cousin left behind a copy of Nirvana's Nevermind. Yet, even in high school, she was listening to Ornette Coleman, Cattle Decapitation and John Zorn. "It's not too difficult", she's said, "to get from Nine Inch Nails to [Einsterzende] Neubauten to Merzbow." That's true, though most people aren't going to make it all the way! I wish I could mention influences like Klaus Nomi, Diamanda Galás and Nick Cave on more reviews. She even performs throat singing on Sorrow! Sorrow! Sorrow!

It's impossible not to be affected by this album. I popped it on, expecting to listen to a couple of tracks and head to bed. Instead, I devoured it and let it devour me, finally dropping at six in the morning. Hayter's mantra in Spite Alone Holds Me Aloft is "betray me" and she wrings more emotion out of those two words than you can comfortably imagine. And that's before shifting to "kill them all". The album wraps up with I am the Beast, a sort of vicious madrigal, in which the mantra becomes "all I know is violence".

Frankly, Caligula shocked me, not just as statement but as musical vision. I may have encountered a lot of experimental noise albums, but it's a rare one that I'll go back to or even finish. This is something as brutally impactful as it is entertaining. It's certainly not going to be for anyone but it's a lot more accessible than it might seem. The dynamics are amazing and it will make you read up on Hayter's background. The combination will tear out your heart and leave it bleeding in your hand. It's the most vital piece of avant garde music I've ever heard in my life. And it loops, because the saddest thing about abuse is that it's a cycle and the music reflects that.