The Dust Coda - Mojo Skyline (2021)

Country: UK
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 26 Mar 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I think I've been letting the side down! I've been trying to keep up with the ever-vibrant New Wave of Classic Rock, which has been thriving on the other side of the pond for the past few years and is not entirely absent in the States either. However, when I saw the best of 2021 list that the admins of the New Wave of Classic Rock Facebook group put together, I realised with horror that I've only reviewed three of the twenty-five albums and two of those were by American groups, Greta van Fleet and The Pretty Reckless. That's simply not good.

Well, top of that list was the second album by the Dust Coda, a London band following up on their self-titled debut from 2017, so let's take a listen to that, especially as they seem to have acquired a Wikipedia page already. That's impressive. I'm pretty sure I'd heard the single, Jimmy 2 Times, before the album came out, and it's a stormer, all about the Goodfellas character with an unusual speech impediment that meant repeating himself, repeating himself. It's a good single, elevated by a horn section to make it feel even sassier. But what about the rest of the album?

Well, I can easily understand one elevator pitch that's been often used to reference them: they're the best new rock band you've never heard of. That's because this is all good stuff, every song, but it's hard to listen to the whole dozen and then explain what the album sounds like. There are a lot of influences here, but they're varied and rarely dominant and Mojo Skyline doesn't fairly sound like any of them. It sounds like the Dust Coda and, in a decade's time that may be enough, but it's not right now because nobody's heard of them.

Now, we can hear individual influences on individual songs, but that doesn't help. Demon, with its memorable opening vocals, is definitely inspired by Wolfmother. Breakdown feels like it's a Stevie Wonder song covered by Aerosmith. Limbo Man happily channels AC/DC, not just through its rock solid riff. Lynyrd Skynyrd drip out of every pore of Dream Alight though it ends up more in Audioslave territory. But Mojo Skyline, album, does not sound like any of those bands. They're just the first ingredients in a heady new stew that refuses to be labelled anything except the Dust Coda and, I guess, NWoCR. We certainly can't call it "classic rock" because it feels too modern.

And that's both its blessing and its curse, because they're not the new anyone but they're not just a damn good covers band hiding in original material either. I love and respect that they're emphatically their own beast, but I don't really know what that is yet. For now, I'll enjoy for how good it is and how varied it is. And for how consistently good it is, given how varied it is, because it doesn't matter if the Dust Coda are rocking like AC/DC, jamming like Lenny Kravitz or crooning a ballad like maybe the Faces, it's guaranteed to be a good song regardless. They're all highlights.

And that's why this is the NWoCR Facebook group admins' album of 2021. It isn't mine but, whatever it sounds like, every one of these dozen songs is a good one. They may be the best new band you've never heard of but, with songs of this quality, they really should be able to elevate past that. Perhaps that will come when it's easier for person X who stumbled upon them and loves their stuff can tell friend Y that they should listen to them because they're... and finish that with something other than "damn good". For now, I'll stick with "the best birthday present I didn't know I got last year".

Magnum - The Monster Roars (2022)

Country: UK
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 14 Jan 2022
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

I wonder if I'm going to annoy fans with this review, because it took a while for me to warm to this album. Don't get me wrong from the outset, it's good stuff from one of the legends of hard rock in the UK who have kept on going through the highs and lows that come with industry trends and never stopped putting out good music. It's just that fans simply raved about this one and I had no idea why. It's a good album—that's obvious—and I enjoyed it from my first listen. But it isn't an On a Storyteller's Night, let alone a Chase the Dragon. I left it wondering what fans were hearing this time out that they didn't hear on The Serpent Rings almost two years ago to the day.

And I'm still wondering after a few more listens. Sure, Magnum songs tend to be good initially but grow on multiple repeats because they have a flow to them and we don't know that flow first time through. Each listen helps it seep a little deeper into our soul. Sometimes it's clear from the start, like on I Won't Let You Down, which has a strong beat, a stronger hook and some wildly supportive orchestration to bolster that flow, but usually it takes a few listens to really appreciate the flows, such as with the title track that opens the album. It's a grower of a track, just like Remember and All You Believe In after it.

But not everything is growing for me here. The Present Not the Past doesn't properly engage for me. It's decent stuff, but it's sandwiched in between the immediate I Won't Let You Down and the vibrant No Steppin' Stones, which feels like it's a live track and benefits from a major horn section. The Present Not the Past does what Magnum do and I enjoyed its riff and its flow, but I've heard a lot of songs like this one on a lot of Magnum albums and this one doesn't stay with me, especially with more obvious bookends like those.

In fact, No Steppin' Stones turns out to be one of the highlights of the album, building on its early vibrancy with some clever vocalising over neat basswork from new fish Dennis Ward. It also leads nicely into That Freedom Word, the first song of the second half, which opens with teasing guitar from Tony Clarkin. I like what fellow founder-member Bob Catley does here too. This band is half a century old this year and he initially sounds like his age is showing. He still sounds good, but there's more than just experience in his voice. It feels like there's a little tremor there too, but he only builds from there and, almost a minute in, he's rocking like he's still in 1978 touring for the debut album. He sounds as great as ever, with just a little rasp and tremor to underpin the emotion.

Rick Benton gets to introduce Your Blood is Violence on keyboards, which elevates the song early, but I'm not as fond of the songs that come after it. Walk the Silent Hours is good at what it does, but what it does is that slow Magnum song that's not quite a ballad but plays far closer to it than normal. Those power chords are quintessential Magnum but, like The Present Not the Past, it's a song that I've heard too often before and it doesn't stay with me. Most of the late tracks fit much the same bill, solid and reliable and things I've heard before, The Day After the Night Before the exception that proves the rule, carrying a pristine hook.

In fact, listening to this album, which I think does enough to warrant an 8/10, prompts me to revisit The Serpent Rings, because I remember that being better. Otherwise, I think I may just have to put this on pause for a while and haul Chase the Dragon back out again. I know it by heart but still. So, while this isn't a the killer Magnum album for me that it seems to be for a lot of fans, it's another really good one. They're knocking out albums in startlingly regular fashion, every other January (or close to it) since 2014, so we can almost check our clocks by them, and they've been really good for a while now. This is not a band resting on firm past glories. They're growing old exactly how an excellent hard rock band should and so rarely does.

Archspire - Bleed the Future (2021)

Country: Canada
Style: Technical Brutal Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 29 Oct 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Yeah, eagle-eyed readers will realise that I've already reviewed one technical death metal album from Canada that was released on 29th October, 2021 already this week and I'm supposed to mix it up. Well, whatever First Fragment's album was, and it was a heck of a lot of things, it really didn't play for me as death metal. Progressive metal, absolutely. Flamenco metal, sure. Technical in any description, of course. Death metal? Not so much. This, however, is nothing but. Archspire are on their fourth album of brutal death metal that's very fast and very technical and they couldn't be mistaken for anything else.

I haven't heard them before, but I've seen their name popping up all over the place, both over a period of time and in the 2021 end of lists. This album has shown up in five thus far and I'm still in process factoring others in. To highlight the scale of that achievement, only seven albums made it into that many lists and I happily gave Dream Theater, Gojira, Iron Maiden and Mastodon 8/10s. If this follows suit, that only leaves Cannibal Corpse with a 7/10 and Rivers of Nihil still to review. It's also notable that, on two of those lists, at Angry Metal Guy and Metal Observer, it snuck into the top five.

Of all the many bands approaching death metal from a technical or progressive angle, Archspire feel like they're one of the truest to the genre. They aren't spending half the album wandering in other genres. They aren't bringing in sounds from every which where. They're playing death metal and they're playing it incredibly fast and incredibly technically. And I mean that literally because it boggles the mind how fast and technical this gets. Sure, I've heard drummers this fast before and, I'm sure, vocalists this fast. However, Archspire start and stop songs on dimes with such frequency that they have to be insanely tight. This isn't just about keeping time with each other, it's about a need to do that at machine gun speed.

And I should call out Oliver Rae Aleron for special attention here. He doesn't play an instrument in Archspire, he just sings, and that's a tough job to truly live up to. Death growls are limited just in what they are, so it takes a really good vocalist to make them interesting and a special one to sound iconic enough to be either recognisable or invaluable. In my First Fragment review, I made the suggestion that David AB could have not shown up and I wouldn't have noticed. Aleron is such an integral part of Archspire's sound that, not only would they not sound remotely the same with him gone, they would sound notably lesser. He's the textbook for death metal vocals.

And what he does is to keep up with the drums of Spencer Prewett and the guitars of Dean Lamb and Tobi Morelli (and, on songs like Abandon the Linear, the obvious bass of Jared Smith). Which are not slow, trust me. We're beyond thrash metal speed here, into what tends to be reserved for black metal walls of sound, but it's death metal through and through and closer to brutal than it is to melodic. Aleron delivers his vocals in a fascinating way because they're a growl that he spits out as if he was rapping at high speed. Ever heard Rap God by Eminem? Or Godzilla? Aleron surely reaches similar syllables per second delivery speed at points and he's doing it in a growl.

Another fact I should call out here for notice is the fact that Bleed the Future is done and dusted a half hour in. Never mind these technical death metal opuses that bloat to the hour mark and even beyond, with a frequent resultant loss of interest in the listener due to sheer fatigue. This blast of brutal death starts as it means to go, finishes as it started and wraps up in half an hour. Not one of these eight songs reaches five minutes. It's as emphatically in your face as April's Cannibal Corpse album but it does a lot more than just bludgeon. I can tell the songs apart, for a start.

Drone Corpse Aviator, for instance, which kicks off the album, has a notable stop start approach, a cool call and response between voice and guitar and a delightful interlude in the middle that sees a reprise later on. All in four minutes. It's not a clone of anything else here, right down to the solo in the second half, even it carries a similar punch to other tracks here. Even its final moments are memorable. Golden Mouth of Ruin does some similar things, but the riffs and solos are different, the trade offs between instruments are different and nobody attuned to this sort of speed will be mistaking them. Abandon the Linear has some amazing bass runs. And so on and so on.

Favourites? Good question. I love the runs in Abandon the Linear, whether on guitar or bass. The title track is a spat out gem with another delightful drop away from frantic in the midsection and cool guitars taking it home. The rapid fire vocals on Drain of Incarnation are fascinating. And I do get a kick out of the voicemail introducing A.U.M. that asks for danger to be brought back into the music. Well, that's what Archspire do. This is up there with First Fragment, in its way, for technical insanity, but it also feels like a dangerous brutal death metal album. There's the difference.

Wilderun - Epigone (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Symphonic Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 7 Jan 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

I hadn't heard of Wilderun until they did so well on end of year lists in 2019 with their third album, Veil of Imagination, but it turned out to be a killer, so I was eager to check out their next one when it arrived too. Well, it's just arrived and it's another exercise in dynamic play, mixing acoustic singer/songwriter material and polite alternative rock with symphonic metal with harsh vocals. It's not a typical combination but they mix it well and the transitions between them are fascinating.

It takes multiple listens to fully grasp what Wilderun do, but I needed them this time out, because this isn't remotely as immediate as Veil of Imagination. It doesn't help that my least favourites sit at the very beginning of the album: an acoustic folk song called Exhaler and fourteen minute epic Woolgatherer. I much prefer Wilderun when they're doing interesting things and they don't have any interesting things to do on Exhaler. They do on Woolgatherer but I couldn't connect with it.

I much prefer where the album goes next. Passenger is far more engaging to me, even at a single breath under ten minutes, with some very tasty heavy sections, and Identifier is a quintessential Wilderun song, visiting both extremes of what they do and yoyoing back and forth between them. There are some memorable heavy bits on this one too and some memorable quiet bits when it all breaks away and the only thing left is an acoustic guitar. I especially like the merger sections with the band exploring both sides of what they do at the same time, with experimental keyboards as the conductor of the chaos. Those sections are wild!

As you might imagine, Wilderun are not afraid of long songs. Sure, they start off with a piece only four minute and change, but then it's fouteen, ten and twelve. Ironically, the next piece, ambient noises and distant radio signals, racks up fewer than three minutes but is called Ambition. Maybe the band have always wanted to write something that short. And this looks like the album's pivot because four tracks precede it and four tracks follow, but really all that's left is one piece in four sections, the two minute epic known as Distraction.

As with most of this album, it shifts from those alternative rock parts, with their soft clean vocals, to soaring symphonic metal parts, with death growls. And, as with most of this album, I didn't like the former that much. There's a mild melancholy to Evan Anderson Berry's voice, but he chooses not to wade in it, instead singing what he thinks are happy songs about it. They're not, but they're the antidote to the melancholy, which is what makes them interesting. The more extreme sections are far more interesting, even though the death growl is an inherently more limited approach. Do I appreciate how Wilderun can shift between these modes? Absolutely. Do I particularly enjoy it in Epigone? Not really.

Distraction II may be my favourite piece here. It's sassy from the outset, with funky rhythms and a funky riff over a drone and a seamless transition into a heavy lava flow of a song. It's tellingly not as versatile as Passenger or Identifier, but it still finds a way to make that lava flow swing, Berry almost crooning in one section. What's interesting here is that it never stops being heavy, even in the crooning sections, albeit not quite as heavy as it gets, reaching blastbeats and frenetic male choir by its finalé. That's not Wilderun's MO but it makes for the best piece on the album. What's more, the best quieter piece is Distraction III right after it, rich and emotional at its quietest and elegant and searing at its loudest.

I didn't like this much on a first listen, but a second drew out some of its highlights. I don't expect to judge a Wilderun album on a single time through but it doesn't seem to be growing on me any more than that second listen. A third, fourth and fifth just underlined Passenger and Identifier as complex gems and Distraction II (and maybe III) as the highlight. And so, while Veil of Imagination got a 9/10 from me, this one will need to settle for a 7/10.

Shamblemaths - Shamblemaths 2 (2021)

Country: Norway
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 22 Oct 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

When it comes to prog, in all its various subgenres, the best reference site online is Prog Archives and it's possible to search their review database for the highest rated releases of any or all years. Take off all the filters and you'll see Close to the Edge by Yes at the top of the heap, with Genesis, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Jethro Tull and Van Der Graaf Generator also in the top ten. That's very British, not that I'm arguing with the list, but if you pop 2021 into the year of release field, you'll see a lot of foreign material: three Norwegian bands in the top five and only two British artists in the top ten. If you care, there are also three Italian bands and one each from Greece and Mexico.

But this one's at the top, a second album, as you might expect, from an eclectic prog band hailing from Trondheim, who suggest "not for the faint of ear" on their website. They're mostly one man, Simen Å. Ellingsen, whose day job is Professor of Fluid Mechanics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. With PhDs in quantum physics and political science, it's not surprising to find that he has a Wikipedia page, even if his band doesn't. Ingvald A. Vassbø has been his musical collaborator in Shamblemaths since 2019 and he plays drums and xylophone here. There are other guests here and there too, the most frequent being Eskild Myrvoll on bass.

Now, I've been discovering that Norway is a hotbed of modern prog lately, Motorpsycho easily my favourite thus far, but Wobbler, Leprous and a string of other M bands not far behind: Mythopoeic Mind, Magic Pie and Mantric for a start. Shamblemaths are the least accessible all of those, if the songs on this album are anything to go by, but they're from impenetrable. Even when they're on a complex kick, with Ellingsen's saxophones dancing around in crazy time signatures, it's still clearly a set of easily enjoyable moments. It's just when you put it all together into these pieces of music that they become a little challenging, especially on a first listen.

It's definitely music to explore and multiple listens really help that. It's so wildly original that any comparisons are going to fall wildly short, but there's definitely King Crimson in here, a Marillion nod here and there in phrasing and plenty of classical music too, D.S.C.H. being a common motif in the works of Shostakovich and this piece potentially being a couple of movements from his String Quartet No. 8, albeit mostly not played on strings. Prog Archives reviewers bring up Änglagård an awful lot too, a Swedish prog rock band I've not encountered yet, so fans of theirs should pay heed too.

There's so much here that it's hard to cite any particular standout. Every song stands out in some way. When the album finished, I realised I was sitting in my chair with my mouth open, because of how exquisite This River was, early with saxophones and late in vocal duet. I had to remind myself to breathe. It's definitely a highlight, but then so are Knucklecog and D.S.C.H. The true epic of the album is Lat Kvar Jordisk Skapning Teia, its nine very varied parts split over four tracks and eighteen minutes or so. Surely that's a highlight too, but there's so much in it that it's hard to see as a single song.

Even the shorter pieces are notable, the opening minute of drone and sax that is Måneskygge, or the more experimental two minutes of Been and Gone, dark and unusual sounds combining with a double bass to conjure up a sort of haunted jazz club. It could have preceded the jazzy chaos of the first track proper, Knucklecog, but it introduces This River instead, with its plaintive sax and calm piano and understated vocals, initially Ellingsen solo but then in duet with Marianne Lønstad, one of three female vocalists with beautiful voices who guest here. The other guest singer is Eivor Å. Ellingsen (age 6), presumably Simen's son, who gets part nine of Lat Kvar Jordisk Skapning Teia.

January at Apocalypse Later Music is both a beginning and an end for me, the start of music from a new year but the end of music from the previous one, as I catch up on what I should have covered and didn't, based mostly on research of year end lists. This is exactly why I do that, because I can't imagine missing something of this exquisite quality just because I had no idea who Shamblemaths were. This River alone may be the the most sublime nine minutes recorded in 2021 and that's just the coda to a pristine album.

Blue Rumble - Blue Rumble (2022)

Country: Switzerland
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Jan 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Instagram

Just to underline that not every psychedelic rock band has to arrive in the form of a trio, here's an amazing quartet from Zürich by the name of Blue Rumble. Hey, I hit the motherlode earlier in the month with Blue Merrow; why not try double dipping with Blue Rumble? Well, they're not as good as the Spaniards, but then precious few are. They are, however, still really good and I can imagine this debut album getting a lot of repeat plays here at Chaos Central. It reminds me of the type of obscure album I'd see pinned to the walls of second hand record store with crazy price tags next to them. The internet has made that sort of material available to the masses, but this album is even easier to find, given that it's downloadable from Bandcamp for whatever you want to pay for it.

It's very seventies psych, so much so that the acid almost drips off the screen while it's playing. I'd suggest a couple of comparisons that I can hear, but I think most of the influences are deeper and I just don't have the depth of background in obscure seventies psych to call them out. While this is easily accessible, as I've found most psychedelic rock to be, even if, like me, you're not listening to it under the influence of modern chemistry, it feels like it's going to find its true audience in niche communities who just live for this stuff.

The more useful influences I can cite are Deep Purple and Focus, though the first one that sprang to mind was Black Sabbath, because there's a mellow section in the opener, God Knows I Shoulda Been Gone that reminds of them in their more introspective moments. The Purple is apparent in the keyboard work of Ronaldo Rodrigues, who reminds of Jon Lord frequently, especially during a set of solo runs during Cup o' Rosie and then again on Hangman. The Focus is mostly in the guitar of Andrea Gelardini, who channels Jan Akkerman in his riffs, most obviously on The Snake. That's not Akkerman style soloing though, being closer to Dickie Peterson of Blue Cheer or Martin Pugh of Steamhammer, maybe even some Robin Trower and Alvin Lee.

The best and worst aspects of the album can be summed up in one song for me and that's Sunset Fire Opal. It's a decent piece for a couple of minutes, maybe not up to some of what had preceded it but decent nonetheless. Then it drops into a section that just blew me away, as if the music was the gem of its title and the sun hit it exactly right and it flared into life. It's a slow section, one in which the band live up to the rumble in their name. It's gorgeous stuff, held back but majestically so. There's Wishbone Ash in here but Fairport Convention too and we know it's a joyous calm that will build to a furious storm. It does erupt, somewhat, at the four minute mark but the midsection promises more than the finalé could deliver.

Now, Blue Rumble at their worst are still a damn good band. The finalé of Sunset Fire Opal is still good stuff, but it isn't what it could have been and there are other similar points where the band ably sets up more than they can provide. In fact, the next song, The Snake, fits this bill to a degree because it kicks off with a neatly vicious riff from Gelardini and continues on rather nicely, but it's reminiscent of Hocus Pocus and we know how wild that ended up. Of course, there are no insanity vocals here, because the whole album is instrumental, and the flute doesn't show up until Linda a couple of tracks on, but the keyboard runs that might have matched the riff are elsewhere. Now, I should emphasise that Rodrigues is still excellent on this one but it doesn't all come together the way it promises to.

That makes me wonder how long the various musicians in Blue Rumble have played together. It's long enough for them to get pretty damn tight and to hand off between instruments. That's not just the guitar and keyboards, by the way, as there's a great bass section from Sébastien Métens on Think for Yourself and even a drum solo from Harry Silvers on Occhio e Croce. But it may not be quite long enough to have got inside each other's skin yet and I'm looking forward to hearing that on future releases, where the guitars and keyboards can truly duel and trade sequences back and forth and the jams can truly come alive.

There's some of that here already, on pieces like Hangman, but I'm hearing potential as much as accomplishment. I want a second album and a third. Hey, I want the box set of the first half dozen. This is good stuff, but it's surely just the beginning for Blue Rumble.

First Fragment - Gloire éternelle (2021)

Country: Canada
Style: Technical Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 29 Oct 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Twitter | YouTube

I don't read a lot of other music critics, though I try to keep up with the magazines to see what's in the release schedule and what's generating a lot of buzz. One site I do pop over to once in a while to see how they reacted to a particular album is Angry Metal Guy, because the critics there for the most part have zero interest in kissing any band's arse. They write longer reviews, they rarely feel biased and they don't dish out high scores like candy. Well, the Angry Metal Guy in charge of that rowdy bunch put this at the very top of his 2021 list, above Soen, Scardust and Aephanemer, every one of those responsible for a great 2021 album. I should check this one out too.

And it's truly wild, though I don't know how well it can justify its standard genre definition. There is death metal here, certainly, but it's mostly in the vocals of David AB. Even when they're playing at speed, which is often, they don't feel remotely like a death metal band. I'll buy neo-classical as a description far more, because this is virtuosic and it damn well knows it. Everyone in the band is apparently as happy to show off their substantial technical chops as they are to play actual songs. If they weren't so tight, I'd think that they didn't care about the songs at all, performing only for the technical difficulty and not caring about the artistic merit.

It's very easy for a listener to forget about any one of these songs too, because we get caught up in the notes. There are two guitarists here, Phil Tougas and Nick Miller, with Dominic Lapointe on bass often playing lead alongside them. A song like Pantheum may have some broader structure to it, but my ears heard it as a fox chase. I don't know if Tougas is chasing Miller or vice versa but one of them's chasing the other and he's doing it from beginning to end. Maybe they switch.

The bass of Lapointe overtakes both by the time it's all over, coming out of nowhere, but the point is that it's always all about these instruments. David AB actually sings on a lot of the song, but he had no reason to be there. He certainly wasn't singing lead for me and he never once grabbed my attention. Maybe he's part commentator but mostly he's just a spectator like the rest of us. He's not bad at what he does, but he could have wandered down the pub for a pint while the band put this song down on vinyl and I don't think I'd have even noticed. So much for the death metal in this death metal.

What I should have mentioned before now is that these guitars aren't just shredding in the way a shred guitarist tends to shred. I mention that and you think of Yngwie J. Malmsteen, which is fine. He's a great shredder and almost the definition of neo-classical nowadays, but that's not all that First Fragment are doing. Just check out the opening title track to see what I mean. Sure, it's neo-classical, but it's not Yngwie for a while. Never mind death metal, Tougas and Miller are duetting a flamenco piece here while Lapointe and drummer Nicholas Wells wandered in from the jazz club next door. This isn't metal and it isn't even rock. It's heavy world music, all castanets and slap bass, until almost three minutes in. Then it goes full on Yngwie.

The other thing to know is that there's a lot of everything here. Not only are there more notes in any one song than your average Dragonforce album, there are a lot of songs and they don't skimp on the running time. The title track almost reaches nine minutes and De chair et de haine does. If that wasn't enough, In'el is longer than both put together, almost reaching nineteen on its own. I could call out that song alone as overwhelming, but it's also the truest technical death metal song here. When the short ones are a lot to take in, that holds double or triple for the long ones. And then scale that up to seventy one minutes and change, the length of the entire album, and there's nobody on the planet who can take it all in. Maybe a five year old Mozart, but he's dead.

The crazy thing is that it works, just not initially and certainly not all at once. This is an album that will clobber you over the head until you're a pool of dribble on the floor. Only as you recover and realise that you didn't entirely dislike the experience, so tune back in and try to figure out what's actually going on, will you catch that there's more than technical genius here. I think what caught me first was Sonata en mi mineur, a six minute instrumental that's built out of flamenco guitars and orchestral waves. It's as far from technical death metal as you can imagine, but it's gorgeous. It's the realisation that the rest of the album is just more of the same, just faster, less accessible and with occasional death growls showing up to cheer it all on that prompts reevaluation.

So, yeah, this is a great album. How great I have no idea because I'll need to listen to it at least a dozen more times to properly grasp it, maybe more. It's technically brilliant, but it works not only as neo-classical metal but as jazz and funk and, damn it, a lot of this album frickin' swings. Really, my only complaint is that there are vocals. At all. I'm not complaining about the quality of David AB's contribution. He just doesn't need to be there, except maybe on the epic In'el. All I'm asking for is a second disc that's the same thing but entirely instrumental.

Purple AQP - Rise and Fall of the Inca's Empire (2022)

Country: Peru
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 11 Jan 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Twitter | YouTube

I try to mix up my review schedules, both daily and weekly, to ensure a firm variety of bands from across the rock and metal spectrum and around the globe. That can be tough in the first couple of weeks of January, when I'm restricted to what's been released this year thus far and it turned out that I reviewed a French heavy metal album and a Peruvian hard rock album today that aren't the musical distance apart I expected. The Losts are certainly metal and Purple AQP are hard rock but they do stretch into metal at points too. I'm going to stick with hard rock as my label,but they're a heavy hard rock, that's for sure. It doesn't shock me that they have a page at Metal Archives.

They're certainly in your face from the outset, with a clear emphasis on war as subject matter, an appropriate theme given the title of the album. I don't know that this is a concept album, but it's definitely themed. The lyrics seems to match the sound effects in intros and narrative moments, a collection of anger that affects the tone. I should mention here that the lyrics all appear to be in English, though the narrative bits aren't always. I have little Spanish but I don't think I need it on this one.

The core sound is an interesting one and I'm struggling to place it. Sure, the first band that sprung to mind were Motörhead, because Empire Arise opens rather like Deaf Forever, but that's not the direction the album goes, not really. There's some Tank too, but maybe that's just shared subject matter leading me down the wrong path. I read that the Purple in Purple AQP is apparently a nod to Deep Purple, just as AQP is their home town of Arequipa, but they're far from Purple clones. I'm not hearing anything Gillan or Blackmore here, for a start, except on the closer, Computer God, an obvious Blackmore riff leading into Gillan or maybe Accept territory.

Also, while the first half of the album plays very consistently, there are moments where they go in a surprising direction, like the vocals on Cross Keeper that are clean during the verses but find a deliberately extreme emphasis in the chorus. It's so wild that I wondered if there was an unlikely guest appearance. The second half brings plenty of surprises too. Forty Bitch has a sassy slant to it that's still hard and heavy but with a very different tone to everything that went before. Then The Sonar adds some Hawkwind, even some Yes, to proceedings, though the song evolves back into the usual approach.

What surprised me most is the discovery that this is a one man band, that man being Victor Calvo, who's therefore responsible for all the instruments and the vocals. I fully expected the band to be made up of different musicians who brought very different influence with them. In particular, the drummer often feels like he's playing in a metal band, but the guitarist and bass player are more than happy to stay with hard rock, the latter having a lot of fun on the instrumental Demon of the Dark. The vocals move a bit more between the genres, but mostly remain on the hard rock side of that boundary. Yet, they're all Victor Calvo. Why is he more metal behind a drumkit?

All these questions fascinate me, but they don't affect the quality of the album. This is interesting stuff and I enjoyed it. Sure, Forty Bitch seems a little out of place when it shows up and even more once the entire album has done, but it's not too far adrift. It's also a good song. Maybe it's newer, having first appeared on a compilation album last year. Six of these ten songs were on the band's 2019 demo, Empire Arise, so they're older. And that suggests that Cross Keeper is one of the new songs, with its nod to extreme metal. Suddenly I'm really interested in what a second album might sound like.