Mono Inc. - The Book of Fire (2020)

Country: Germany
Style: Gothic Rock/Metal
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 24 Jan 2020
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Sometimes perseverance is everything. Mono Inc. are a gothic rock/metal band from Hamburg who were formed in 2000 and seem to have been building a steady following ever since. This is their eleventh studio album and their first to top the German charts; their five albums since 2012 all made the top ten but a number one continued to elude them until now with Welcome to Hell peaking a slot lower in 2018.

They're an interesting band because they have a kind of power metal approach to gothic rock. While they list bands like the Sisters of Mercy, the Smiths and Depeche Mode as influences, I'm frankly not hearing any of them here on the opening title track. I'm hearing Clannad taking on an extra happy Power Quest song and removing half the notes; it's slower but just as melodic and many of those melodies feel Celtic. Drummer Katha Mia's vocals help that as well and it's the happiest damn goth music I've ever heard.

It stays happy but other songs do feel a lot more goth and it's when we get to The Last Crusade six tracks in that I realise why. It starts with choral harmonies and quickly finds a Sisters of Mercy groove. It's This Corrosion heavied up to fit on Vision Thing and with an actual human being providing an incessant drive like we expect from Doctor Avalanche. I suddenly dig the Sisters as power metal and a lot of the rest starts to make sense.

Louder Than Hell, for instance, felt goth the first time I heard it but I hadn't realised why until The Last Crusade. Katha Mia isn't a drum machine but she's as reliable as one on this song, just keeping a strong perpetual beat without doing anything flash at all. The melodies fit Andrew Eldritch as a power metal vocalist and the song ends up so gloriously catchy that I found myself singing along with it on my first listen.

While the Sisters are clearly a key grounding to Mono Inc.'s sound, they're not the only one in play. The single is Warriors and it's a sort of Manowar power ballad with Martin Engler's resonant vocals crooning over piano chords that eventually become guitars. The chorus, like so many here, features all four band members layering their voices for effect and it's a fantastic one, especially as Mia's female voice is instantly recognisable because of pitch. It's like a duet when this happens but more so and it almost commands us to singalong because it's welcoming us into a crowd.

And, as I start to imagine these Euro goths in animal skin loinclothes in a Ken Kelly painting, things get even more epic on Where the Raven Flies. It's full of glorious dynamics, ranging from quiet parts where whatever effect is on Engler's voice makes him sound like he's singing to us from the Victorian era to loud and galloping ones that are close to symphonic metal. There's a female voice that I presume is Mia's that soars around Engler like any Dutch soprano would soar.

There are another half dozen songs here because that's merely the first half and The Book of Fire runs a generous hour, even without the bonus song (the single version of the title track) and a second disc that features the whole album again in instrumental form. Mono Inc. don't skimp on this release and, amazingly, they keep up this level of quality throughout. That's impressive. I haven't even mentioned Nemesis yet and that's a ballad that's soaked into my bones already.

So I'll pause to point out that there's a concept in play here. We're in the dark ages where the mystical tome of the title chooses a young healer by the name of Aellin to be its new owner. This prompts a "persecution, sorrow and suffering" story, in which she fights for freedom. I have to admit that I'm apparently completely unable to focus on the words, even though Engler has a very clear voice. I'm just too caught up in the hooks.

I haven't heard Mono Inc. before but I've read that they aren't usually this heavy. I have ten albums to wander back through to find that out, because I really like this music. It's an odd combination, not just of rock and metal but of folk, goth and power and it's catchy as all get out. Congratulations, Mono Inc., on your first German number one album. May it be merely the first of many!

Anoushbard - Mithra (2020)

Country: Iran
Style: Progressive Metal
Rating: 5/10
Release Date: 7 Jan 2020
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I've heard a lot of interesting metal coming out of the unlikely country of Iran of late and here's another such album. It isn't the usual one man band as there are two this time out, but they're both guitarists which seems odd to me, even if one also sings. I enjoyed their work, but I didn't like the drums much, which I presume are programmed with a drum machine. They mostly seem glitchy to me, especially in scattershot mode.

What Anoushbard do best is to alternate between heavy and light sections. I wouldn't call it complex dynamic work because there don't always seem to be reasons for doing it, but I enjoyed both sides of that coin throughout.

The opener, for instance, Gates of Ctesiphon, starts out heavy like a death metal Iron Maiden (even if I can't place where I know that riff from) but, after a couple of minutes, it drops into an instrumental break that's middle eastern and neatly intricate. This alternation continues throughout the song until the odd ending, which I don't understand. It sounds like some sort of fireside interview, which makes little sense. I'm sure there's a good reason for it but I have no idea what that is.

Life Lady (Green Temple) alternates even more. Opening like a ritual with a refrain that sounds really metal ("I flayed his demons") but isn't really (I think it's actually "Life Lady's demons"), it goes all death metal, but then drops into a quiet section with clean vocals and intricate acoustic guitar (or is that some sort of Persian lute?). I have to say that the drumming at this point is glorious, sounding like someone's beating a wall with rushes.

And so we go. The heavier sections feel a little flat, because I don't think there's a bass in there at all and the drums are weird, but they're capable enough. The quieter ones are even better. I really dig the rhythmic approach to these sections. Many of them feature almost hypnotic repetition, as this band apparently never met a riff they liked that they weren't happy to use a dozen times for effect.

That sounds really negative, as if it sounds like I'm playing this on vinyl and it keeps skipping, but I'm thinking positively because I enjoyed it. To me, it's like a musician creating a sound and then looping it while he adds more layers to create a more complex piece of music. I don't believe that's what Anoushbard are doing but it feels like it often.

The Ward ditches the extreme metal sound for a NWOBHM style clean vocal, not early Maiden but a more generic approach that reminded me of Elixir. There's a lot more of that hypnotic repetition, though there's less alternation with only one quieter section which has some interesting effects layered over it. The alternation comes back on Inevitable Death which, as the title suggests, takes us back to an extreme sound. Again, it feels too clean, as if there's no bass at all, even if the vocals are death growls and the drums get extra fast.

I have no problem with the vocals here, though my favourite track may be the instrumental Haoma. The scattershot drums are annoying but the music behind them, whether it's acoustic and ethnic or electric and driving, has a lot to be said for it. I hope that Siavash Motalebi and Sherwin Baradaran, who are the musicians behind Anoushbard, get the opportunity to record this and the other material with an actual drummer at some point. Ironically, given that this is the shortest song on the album, I really didn't want it to end.

It did and it gave way to The Man Who Rides Through the Fire, which is more NWOBHM but much heavier and with some interesting backing vocals. Again, this would be a much better song with a real drummer and that's the problem with this album in a nutshell. Rather than enjoying the talented musicians, their intricate guitarwork and the interesting ideas they conjure up, I find myself hating the drum machine more and that makes this sadly feel more like a concept demo than a final work. There has to be a great drummer somewhere in Tehran. I hope Anoushbard find him.

Note: I'm rating this 5/10, which is low enough that I wouldn't usually post but those drums cost it at least a point, maybe another. The band's name is borrowed from a political prison in the Sasanian empire a millennium and a half ago, a place where people disappeared forever. I don't want this band to disappear so, while I'm not recommending this sound, I'm recommending the band behind it. I just want to hear them as they ought to be heard.

Those Damn Crows - Point of No Return (2020)

Country: UK
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 7 Feb 2020
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In New Wave of Classic Rock circles, it's hard to last a few days without a mention of Those Damn Crows. They're building a serious following in the old way: playing live as often as they can, including what sometimes seems like every festival in the country, and doing so with as much energy as they can muster. Back in the day, they called it paying your dues, but I shouldn't throw that many clichés into a single sentence.

They're from Bridgend in South Wales, a small town of 50,000 people that has punched above its musical weight, generating trendy bands like Funeral for a Friend and Bullet for My Valentine. In fact, the brother of Those Damn Crows guitarist Ian Thomas was the drummer for Bullet for My Valentine for nearly two decades. Surely there's something in the water because this band has the promise to be just as big as their more established peers.

They play clean hook-laden hard rock that has moments where the riffs think about being metal but never quite make it. King of Second Chances features an opening riff that reminds me of Megadeth, while Go Get It is driven by a dirty groove metal crunch. However, both are clearly rock songs rather than metal, with vocalist Shane Greenhall top in the mix and apparently unable to sing anything that isn't a hook.

There's such a high energy here that a comparison to Airbourne would be fair but they're a little lighter in tone, with Greenhall more influenced by the soulful side of rock vocals, from Paul Rodgers to Danny Bowes. In fact, I'd throw out Thunder as a good comparison too, though Those Damn Crows are more contemporary in their sound, pulling from a few eras of rock, metal and even a little pop punk.

This second album features a generous thirteen tracks that play consistently in quality, style and length, not one of them reaching the four minute mark. Who Did It kicks things off simply but effectively, going for energy without any frills. It's an obvious single, in the gimme territory for a few formats of rock radio. Set in Stone and Sin on Skin add levels though and may be my two favourite songs here. They're just as catchy as the opener but there are depths to them. Sin on Skin in particular lets Ronnie Huxford's drums shine at the gallop and the backing vocals add so much.

It also features a glorious riff that teases us from the background. This is rock that's driven by its vocals and its energy levels, but David Winchurch and Ian Thomas deserve a lot of credit here for playing so many deceptively simple riffs. Much of this works with power chords or pop punk chugging but when the riffs come out, they're as catchy as Greenhall's vocals and they're the foundation of these songs. They're not complex at all; check out Set in Stone, Send the Reaper or Go Get It and gasp at how simple but effective they are.

Those Damn Crows even pass the litmus test of hard rock albums, because the inevitable ballad doesn't piss me off and make me want to skip it every time through. Here, that's Never Win and, even though it's piano-driven with an overly sentimental orchestral swell behind it all, it sounds good and seems heartfelt without becoming saccharine. Most importantly, like every single song here, it doesn't outstay its welcome, doing its job and handing on to the next song in line.

I seem to be throwing out 8/10s like confetti this month, but this warrants a rating that high. There's not a single song here that even approaches the average and there are a whole bunch of standouts, including a few that I'd want to rewind the radio to hear again. Sure, it's a ruthlessly commercial release and it isn't the most original album I've ever heard, but hey, it's just damn good.

Snorlax - II (2020)

Country: Australia
Style: Blackened Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 Jan 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives

I would tend to doubt anyone who names their one man blackened death metal project after a pokémon but Snorlax is the heaviest damn pokémon of them all and that kinda fits this album. This is no nonsense stuff from Brendan Auld, who no intention of pandering to commerciality but who also has the pride to actually produce this music properly so that we can hear it. That's far from as common a scenario as it ought to be in a world where production sometimes means commercial and diehards feel the need to sabotage their own sound for reasons of authenticity.

This is Auld's debut album as Snorlax, even though it's confusingly titled II. He did issue a demo in 2018 and one song (not included here) on a split single with fellow Australian black metal outfit Drugoth last year. Giving both bands a listen, I much prefer Snorlax, who combine a slow guitar with hyperspeed blastbeats and mix up the vocals between the genres.

The opener, Infernal Devourment, ably sets the stage for what's to come with such frequent alternation between demonic growls and unholy shrieks that it almost feels like a duet between genres. The Bandcamp page says that guests do appear: Mathew Budge (of Consumed and Siberian Hell Sounds) on The Resin Tomb and Anthony Oliver (of Descent) on Impending Abysmal Wretchedness. It's worth mentioning that all three of those bands also feature one Brendan Auld in some fashion. If these are the only guests, Auld does a damn fine job of duetting with himself on other tracks.

Nothing here sounds pretty, each song rolling into the next with feedback or effects, but it all sounds dark and evocative. The opening couple of tracks are short, but The Chaos ov Iron Oppression shows that Snorlax are better at some length. Five minutes gives Auld room to set up a song, gradually deepen it by adding layers and then, after a minute and a half, pull out the stops and escalate with major effect. There's a lot of dynamic change here and it just hits the spot for me.

Mind ov Maggots follows suit, with a feedback-laden guitar intro echoing up quietly as a drone from the depths transitioning in a heartbeat to the full volume and full speed. There's despair and pain in this song and it's bitter but tasty. That intro alone is longer than The Resin Tomb, which is over as soon as it's begun but not in the condensed fashion of grindcore. It's just short. These longer songs have much more substance.

And it's that substance that makes the album for me. There are points, like the first half of Encapsulated Apocalypse, where we can just sit back so the music can wash over us like a tsunami wave and half the effect is from that impact, but it shines brightest (if that isn't an inappropriate way to talk about blackened death metal) when the assault lessens and we realise all the things that generated it to begin with.

It ends as roughly as it gets with Impending Abysmal Wretchedness, Anthony Oliver's voice even more evil than Auld's. It's not just the tone, which is agreeably disagreeable, but the way that his words drip venom and may often not be words at all but random demonic noises of dissatisfaction. Clearly I should check out Descent, for whom Auld is one of two guitarists. They put out an album, Towers of Grandiosity, a couple of years ago.

I've heard good things about Snorlax but also good things about the extreme underground in Australia, especially on the side of black metal. Clearly in my copious amounts of spare time (ha), I ought to be following up on more of the bands that Kelly Tee posts about on Facebook on a regular basis. Let's see how much more is up to this level of quality!

Sepultura - Quadra (2020)

Country: Brazil
Style: Groove Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 7 Feb 2020
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The older I get, the more I appreciate Sepultura. They've continued to grow and evolve over three and a half decades and I have respect for that even if they didn't always evolve into places I liked. They got more respect from me when I saw them live in a dive bar on their thirtieth anniversary tour and they performed as hard as they would have done at a festival. The audience was energised and the pit was lively. It was a good night.

And this is a good album, their fifteenth studio release and, in many ways, a conglomeration of all the styles they've worked through, like Medusa was for Paradise Lost. The most prominent is groove metal, of course, but it's no difficult task to find thrash, industrial and experimental, not to forget the tribal drumming they've become known for. That really comes out to play at the beginning of Capital Enslavement.

Isolation kicks things off at high speed. It's an out and out thrash number, with less hints of groove than symphonic metal, of all things, there being a few sections with choral backing. As thrash should be, it's pure energy and I dug it a lot. Means to an End maintains the energy but shifts it over to a groove metal framework, Derrick Green's vocals not changing much but enough to matter; instead of gruff clean thrash vocals, these are hardcore shouts. This song even finds time to get experimental in the middle.

Last Time does all the above within one song. Capital Enslavement does too, adding that tribal drumming intro and some electronica for good measure. It starts to feel like they band is continually adding layers to each further song. Ali firmly shifts to industrial with effects added early onto Green's voice and Eloy Casagrande's drums finding a neat, emphatic rhythm halfway through. However, it still finds its groove sections and its thrash moments, even an early Sepultura death growl towards the end.

The catch to this, of course, is that, while Sepultura have played in a lot of sandpits in their career, we aren't even halfway through the album yet so they're going to run out pretty damn quick if they continue this approach. I wonder if that's why Raging Void goes the way it does, being more of a scary loud pop song with a rambling solo. I wasn't sold on this one and maybe it's representative of one of those albums in the middle of their career that I'm not familiar with but, even though I kinda liked it, it feels rather like a roadblock to the album's build.

Fortunately, it promptly picks up again with Guardians of Earth, perhaps the most symphonic track on the album. It's almost Sepultura covering Tristania and that's not a combination I ever thought I'd write. The Pentagram buzzes rapidly through melodies kind of like it's an insane medley of imaginary TV theme tunes. I actually liked this instrumental a lot, not least because it gives the musicians, especially Andreas Kisser, opportunities to show off.

The song that really allows people to show off, though, is Agony of Defeat, which throws everything but the kitchen sink into one six minute song. It's heavy and it's soft; it's fast and it's slow. It features strings and middle eastern textures. It allows Derrick Green to flex his vocal cords in quite a few different directions. And the song really builds in layers until a fade on a single low piano note. It's the best thing I've heard from Sepultura in a long, long time and easily the best thing I've ever heard from Green.

What I haven't mentioned much is the experimental side to this album, which does a little during a lot of songs and a lot during a few of them. Autem is one of the more experimental tracks on offer, but Raging Void is up there as well and Fear, Pain, Chaos, Suffering does interesting things too, with guest vocals from Emmily Barreto of Brazilian alt rock band Far from Alaska.

All in all, there's a heck of a lot to work through here and it's well worth the effort. I haven't been too impressed with a bunch of Sepultura's recent albums, but this one is destined to be described as "the best since..." but with critics debating how far back we should go to find something better. It has to be the nineties at least, but there's a strong case for Arise or even Beneath the Remains. Now I really want to go see them live again!

Fleeting Arms - Fleeting Arms (2020)

Country: Canada
Style: Stoner/Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 17 Jan 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook

This is a really interesting album but it takes a while to realise just how interesting it is. For instance, it opens up with a song called On the Way Down that initially sounds like the sort of decent but unremarkable music on any number of alt rock stations nationwide. But then it hooks you in because your ears catch something and you realise that it's a little bit alternative rock, a little bit stoner rock, a little bit southern rock and every bit of it heavily rooted in the blues. I only took a few relistens to go from blah to dancing in my chair.

This melting pot approach makes it difficult to throw out decent comparisons and, even when they're overt, they're not particularly useful. For instance, a song like Soulless is so obviously inspired by quieter Black Sabbath songs like Planet Caravan or Solitude that it's hard to hear anything else. Singer Coal Riepma even follows Ozzy's vocal patterns, rising, diving or stretching just as he would. However, it doesn't remotely have that recognisable Black Sabbath doomladen tone, even when the crunch kicks in. Sabbath fans not dig this without that tone.

Fleeting Arms just refuse to fit in one easy bucket. On Day Trippin', which starts out playful with a jaunty bass riff setting the scene, Riepma ends up roaring like Angry Anderson but the song doesn't sound at all like Rose Tattoo. There's lots of Diamond Head on songs like Into the Sun and Demons Within but it's unfair to call either a Diamond Head song. Rust goes back to that quiet Sabbath groove but a few minutes later it turns into a hard rock Metallica. And, you guessed it, the song wouldn't fit with either band.

It's almost like this Edmonton band thought about strange combinations then wrote songs that met them as some sort of intellectual songwriting exercise. What would Bad Company sound like if they covered Black Sabbath? What would Diamond Head sound like if they arrived half a decade earlier and spent the entire time in the studio stoned out of their minds? How would ZZ Top sound with Eddie Vedder on lead vocals? What if Lynyrd Skynyrd had formed in 1989 in Seattle? All these scenarios and more came to mind at points during this album, like it's some weird game of musical mad libs.

But, most importantly, it all sounds great. It's good music to listen to at the bar, six drinks in, but it's also good music to lose yourself in a few feet from the stage, closing your eyes and letting your body move however it wants. It's surface music to listen to in the background, but it's also deep and engrossing music to explore with headphones. What's more, the songs are so varied, even within themselves, that there's plenty to keep us engrossed as we navigate what sometimes feels like the whole last half century of rock condensed into fifty minutes.

Fleeting Arms call what they play "hard blues stoner rock from the depths of oblivion" and I'm not going to argue with that. The blues is everywhere here but it's rocked up even when it's playing possum. The stoner mindset isn't a long way from anything they do, but comes out overtly at points, both mellow and wailing. Rock is a rather simple word for the breadth of influence that the band has, but the depths of oblivion ably captures that obvious fondness for early Sabbath.

I'd love to see this band live in an Edmonton bar, not only to hear them do this justice in a live setting but to watch how they immerse themselves in their own music. Rust is eight minutes long on this album but it's probably a fifteen minute jam on stage. How heavy does Demons Within get in front of people? How playful will Day Trippin' get with an audience to respond to it? Inquiring minds want to know.

Os Mutantes - Zzyzx (2020)

Country: Brazil
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 24 Jan 2020
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Genres are wonderfully flexible creatures. I've reviewed lots of psychedelic rock over the last year, from all over the world and ranging in style from Mooner to The Neptune Power Federation, from Ed Wynne to Uluru, from Children of the Sün to Superlynx. Surprisingly, many of those names are new but not all, the list also including Gong and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

Here's one more for the older psychedelic rock list: a legendary Brazilian outfit by the name of Os Mutantes who formed in São Paulo way back in 1966, when playing live with Caetano Veloso was deemed a revolutionary act. Twelve wild and greatly important years later, they split up, but the two brothers who founded the band, Sérgio Dias and Arnaldo Baptista, reformed it for the fortieth anniversary in 2006, albeit without original singer Rita Lee. Dias still leads the band tody almost 55 years on.

The songs on this album are fascinating, lively and engaging pieces, but it falls very much on the soft side, even if we don't compare to the blistering Vengeful Spectre album I also reviewed today. There's exotica in here, bossa nova, lounge music. You could even call it easy listening, though it's much too active a listen for that to be fair. And I think it's delightful, though overly safe. Os Mutantes spent a while playing prog rock but this isn't that Os Mutantes, as they're mostly content to play with psychedelic pop.

I don't know enough about Brazilian pop music to suggest comparisons, but I do hear a lot of western pop, most obviously the Beatles. The opening song, Beyond, reminds of the Beatles in psychedelic pop mode and Dias's voice has a plaintive take on John Lennon's. The Last Silver Bird is similar and, late songs emphasise the comparison. Window Mirrors is the Beatles with a bluesy mood. We Love You is the Beatles if they ever got funky. Void, at least for a while, is the Beatles in their trancendental meditation era.

Two of those hint at prog, The Last Silver Bird featuring vocal harmonies at one point that sound proggy and Void being easily the most prog this album gets, with experimental sounds and even a scat vocal section. Maybe we could add Mutant's Lonely Night there too, the longest song on the album (at only four and a half minutes) exploring some light seventies darkness. However, I should emphasise "light" there, because Os Mutantes don't seem to want to go to those experimental places much any more.

Instead, they shift more towards being a sort of Brazilian version of Austin Lounge Lizards, a musically and lyrically talented band who write fantastic parodies and other humorous songs, but sometimes getting serious. This comes out most here on the playful Candy, with its doo wop chorus, and the comedic songs. Gay Matters turns the usual lovey dovey subject matter onto its head: "I want to make you mine but you're gay." And the title track, named for the real last town in the American atlas, is a fun, if not particularly original look at Area 51: "They have sexual encounters of third kind."

While Os Mutantes are Brazilian, they chose to sing this album primarily in English, perhaps because they're based in Las Vegas nowadays, which explains that and the Area 51 song. There are only two songs in Portugese, showing up next to each other late on the album, and they do add a little more exotic flavour. Sadly, one loses some of its impact because its chorus of "por que não" will be heard by English-speaking audiences as "Pooky, no!" Of course, that's the sort of thing that this playful band might actually do by choice.

It's difficult not to like this, because it's so contagious, but it's hardly essential stuff. The most interesting song is the last one, Void, and that's over before it even gets to three minutes; at thirteen, it might have had a lot more to say. Quite a few major musical names, like Beck, Flea and David Byrne, are confirmed fans of Os Mutantes. I wonder if they'd be disappointed at how relentlessly safe this album is or happy that the band are back with a new studio album after seven years.

Vengeful Spectre - Vengeful Spectre (2020)

Country: China
Style: Black/Folk Metal
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 15 Jan 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives | Weibo

I wasn't expecting it but here's something special. Vengeful Spectre play an impressive combination of black and folk metal that works on both fronts. I just wish that I could praise the individual band members but there isn't a lot of core information on Vengeful Spectre's Bandcamp or Facebook pages and I won't trust Google Translate to attempt a page on the Chinese social media network Weibo.

This truly blisters as black metal, with strong riffs, decent solos, frantic blastbeats and a glorious lead vocal shriek that ably plays into the torment and pain of the album's war-based concept. I have no idea what the story is, but it unfolds over the six tracks on offer. It's much more black than it is folk, but there are Chinese folk instruments in play too, sometimes during the actual songs and frequently between them. In fact, the whole album opens peacefully but darkly as plaintive flutes waft over a landscape that surely resembles the cover art. The job's done but it took a serious toll.

The first song, The Expendables, is thoroughly enjoyable with what I believe is a pipa punctuating certain parts. I adore pipa and remember how much fun it was to get hold of a Wu Man album I'd been introduced to on the BBC World Service before the internet made it easy. However, as solid as this song is, Desperate War ups the game considerably. This is a real peach of a piece of music, everything that was good about the opener doubled in power, intensity and impact. This could be the single best black metal track I've heard in years.

Wailing Wrath starts and ends with a wind instrument that I can't place, but it sounds delightfully like a versatile conch shell and it gets a lead role in the brief interlude called Hermit. Wailing Wrath settles down a lot more than its predecessor, content for the most part to find a strong groove for ethnic instruments to dance around, but there are impressive bits here too.

And, at this point, I realised that I was well over twenty minutes in even though I felt like the album had only just begun. I was so immersed that I'd lost track of time completely. The only reason that I noticed at this point is because Hermit (and the subsequent long intro to Rainy Night Carnage) is a brief eye to the raging storm that is this album, allowing us a moment to gather ourselves before moving back into the fray.

If nothing here is up to the sheer majesty of Desperate War, then Rainy Day Carnage does at least come very close. While it's also more black than folk, it's the song where the folk instruments come out to play more and it's much more balanced as a black/folk song. There's more pipa and some flute and I'd love to know what else. That level adds strong atmosphere to this and other songs just as much as the constant rain and other sounds of battle that are often audible.

That leaves Despair and Resentment, which wraps up this story "of eastern swordsmen concerning war, conspiracy, betrayal and revenge". It opens calmly as if we're in the aftermath of everything but then everything kicks in, at a slower but just as heavy pace. There's acknowledgement of inevitability in this song, dealing with what everyone knew would come even as they hoped it wouldn't. That lead voice feels even more pained and that's exquisite.

I grabbed the opportunity to listen to this album more from the folk aspect than the black, so I ought to be disappointed that it's more focused on the latter than the former. I'm not. I adored this, because it blisters the way that black metal so often fails to do and the folk instrumentation is added into the mix effectively. I believe this is a debut album, which makes it an even more stunning achievement.

It's not perfect, even without knowing the story that's being told. There's a jagged transition from calm intro to full steam ahead on The Expendables that's only underlined by how smoothly the intros transition on later tracks like Rainy Night Carnage. I didn't feel the album ended with enough emphasis either, though again understanding the story might help a little. Those are far from big problems though and they hardly lessen the impact of a special album. This is fantastic stuff. Can we have the sequel next week?