Marillion - An Hour Before It's Dark (2022)

Country: UK
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 4 Mar 2022
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This is my first Marillion review at Apocalypse Later, so I should get this out there and then never mention it again. I discovered rock music in 1984 and Marillion were one of the first bands that I'd called my favourite. Script for a Jester's Tear is still one of my top ten albums of all time. B-Sides Themselves isn't far behind it. I know Grendel by heart. Those songs were all shaped by Fish, their idiosyncratic lead vocalist and the arbiter of their uniquely poetic lyrics. But, he's long gone. Sure, Steve Hogarth is still the new fish in the band, but he's been there since 1989, which is thirty-three years and counting. Fish only managed seven and he wasn't their original singer anyway. Let's get over this idiocy, people.

Now, I haven't kept up with Marillion the way I should have done. I couldn't name you the greatest songs of Steve Hogarth's era the way a friend of mine surely could, but I certainly enjoyed what he brought to Seasons End and I've heard and appreciated odd tracks here and there in the decades since that album. This is the first time I've sat down to listen to a full Marillion album since maybe Holidays in Eden and I'm seriously impressed. Sure, they've moved firmly away from the technical intricacies of Van der Graaf Generator and seventies Genesis to a more commercial sound, but it's still prog and it's still really good stuff. You Can Learn nails its groove and Murder Machines has a magnificent sweep.

The thing is that it's hard to compare this to anyone except Marillion themselves, which I can't do because I'm not familiar enough with their last few decades. To my ears, there's more Pink Floyd here than Genesis, but this certainly isn't a Pink Floyd album. There's Magnum in there too when Be Hard on Yourself kicks in, though it grows beyond that. Hogarth came to Marillion from a new wave background and, while I wouldn't say there's new wave here per se, there's certainly a dose of contemporary art rock in the current sound as well, a Coldplay or Radiohead element. Mostly, they're simply Marillion, which goes an awful long way to explaining how they've maintained such a dedicated fanbase.

There are two sides to this album, but I'm not talking the first and second halves for a change. The bookends are multi-part suites that aren't as epic as they might seem, in three, four or five parts. Reprogram the Gene may have the most delineated parts, but they only add up to a seven minute song. Be Hard on Yourself is nine, Sierra Leone eleven and Care a fuller, more fleshed out fifteen but, as I remember Marillion doing in the past, these suites are also individual songs tied together. I have no problem pulling a part from this song and a part from that as highlights.

The other side to the album are the songs in the middle, which are more coherent as single tracks and so aren't broken up at all. Why Marillion separated them like this, I don't know, but I like the approach, because Murder Machines is the clear standout for me here and, while I liked the early two suites, they felt like they were building towards this song as much as the brief intro listed as a separate piece, Only a Kiss. Three minutes into Murder Machines, we're floating on a sonic wave, every aspect of this band combining effortlessly into magic. I wanted this song to go on and on.

The other major song in the middle of the album is The Crow and the Nightingale, a real exercise in dynamic play. It's a wave too, but one that waxes and wanes rather than maintains. While I have no hesitation calling it the lesser of the two songs, it has a grandeur to it that makes me think it'll argue with me about that. It's still strong though and you'll never hear me complain when a song allows Steve Rothery to let loose on his guitar.

After that, the album tails off gradually with two suites that are softer in nature and so remind of how Pink Floyd built their Wish You Were Here album. An Hour Before It's Dark sometimes echoes that approach, putting the more straightforward songs at its heart, between its sprawling suites, but sometimes flips it on its head, making those sprawling suites clearly vocal. It's an interesting approach and it seems more meaningful the more I think about it. Which probably means that it didn't enter into the band's minds when they put it together.

I like this album, but it's a very easy album to like. On the surface, it's smooth and unchallenging, though there are depths to be found if you dive in and explore beyond the surface (a shoutout to Pete Trewavas's basswork on Maintenance Drugs right here). It's also wildly optimistic, shorn of its edges and infused with optimism. Reprogram the Gene's lyrics open: "I don't want to be a boy. I don't want to be a girl. I want to be happy, I want to be clever and no pain whatsoever." That's this album in a nutshell.

Kimaera - Imperivm (2022)

Country: Lebanon
Style: Symphonic Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 15 Mar 2022
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This is Kimaera's fourth album, but it's the first for me so I haven't followed their sound through a variety of evolutionary steps. It seems that they started out as a heavy metal band called Chimera that featured entirely clean vocals, changed name to play atmospheric doom/death metal and, in time, moved into symphonic death metal. I presume those changes weren't instant and they grew from one genre to another, which might explain why so many of them are still rattling around in a genre-hopping sound.

The symphonic aspect is there first, along with the most prominent ethnic music. The latter isn't a priority for the band, so what little of it shows up is generally confined to the background, but it's discernible at a few points in the opener, De Amare et Bellvm. I wanted more of it. The symphonic side of things is keyboard generated and a clear priority so continues throughout the album as an omnipresent default texture. The death metal joins in next, present in the chugging guitars and a deep harsh lead voice.

I believe that deep voice belongs to the band's founder, J. P. Haddad, who died of asphyxiation in a gas leak only a fortnight after this album was completed. If so, he must be a serious loss to the metal community in Lebanon, where they're from, because the Middle East isn't the most typical place to find metal bands, yet he was able to create one that obtained international acclaim and reached their fourth album. He sounds good too, the primary voice here being deep and rich and warm. Further male voices appear at points, one thinner but harsh and another clean. I presume both are also him. Certainly he also provided the rhythm guitarwork and the concept behind this album, which is centred on the Roman Empire. R.I.P., sir.

That subject matter may well have framed their use of genre here. It starts out bombastic, with a rampant and confident army at war, but it goes to other places too. The decadence of the empire surely manifests through gothic sections. I believe there are violins, or their synth equivalents, on the opener, but they're more obvious on The Die is Cast and VVV, with a melancholy piano joining them on the latter. Most of all, there's a turbulence in this music, which shifts style often in minor ways, as if the various musicians in the band represent constantly shifting different factions in an ever-changing empire. Certainly, there's a song here exploring The Ides of March. It really fits.

That turbulence is arguably the best and worst thing about the band. If you're someone who likes genre-hopping music, you may really dig this, with all its varied performance elements shifting to mirror where the lyrics or mood takes a particular song. The Grammys give out different awards for Best Song and Best Performance and I still don't really understand the difference, but I would call what Kimaera put on this album as a set of performances more than a set of songs. They don't flow like songs but they present like art, where everything has meaning. And, of course, if you're not a fan of anything I just said, you may have problems with this album.

I certainly like it but I'm not sure yet how much. I'm not usually a fan of musical theatre but this is only halfway to that because, sure, it's about the story but it's about the music even more. There are still riffs and hooks, even though the songs are too patchwork in nature to adhere to the usual structures, and they're often good riffs and hooks, albeit a lot more of the former than the latter. It's just that, as you get used to one, they shift onto another. The truest song here isn't theirs; it's Ya Beirut, a memorable version of Majida el Roumi's Beirut Set El Donya with Cheryl Khayrallah on guest operatic vocals.

I don't know what the future holds for Kimaera, given the tragic loss of J. P. Haddad. He's led this band for over two decades and, while nobody else in the line-up appears to be brand new, nobody has been there anywhere near as long as he has. There are no other founder members here and I don't know if any of them are ready or able to carry the torch. Only time will tell, but this does, at least, stand as a testimony to what Haddad and his compatriots achieved. When they're on point, they're really on point and you only have to check out Capvt Mvndi, surely the best song here and the album's epic, to discover that.

Zeal & Ardor - Zeal & Ardor (2022)

Country: Switzerland
Style: Avant-Garde Black Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 11 Feb 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

The much celebrated Zeal & Ardor really shouldn't work as a concept. Manuel Gagneaux had been in a few different pop bands when he asked the members of 4chan to give him two genres for him to combine for a song he'd create in half an hour. They gave him black metal and black music, so he combined extreme metal with African American spirituals, a ludicrous concept but one that, to everyone's surprise, actually worked. Having found that he was somehow able to release this as a serious project, he framed the underpinning idea as "what if American slaves had embraced Satan instead of Jesus?"

While the first Zeal & Ardor album was an entirely solo effort, he expanded into a full band in time for the amazing second album Stranger Fruit, even though only the band's drummer, appeared on the album with him. That's Marco von Allmen and it's the two of them here as well, even though a lot of what they do is samples and programming. This is a much more artificial album than the last one and deliberately so, with plenty of electronic manipulation and a lot of industrial grooves too. I think that's a mistake because, while black metal can work with drum machines, I don't believe that spirituals can work with anything except heart and soul.

That's underlined for me on Bow, which explores the spiritual side of Zeal & Ardor but with heavily artificial accompaniment. These aren't old black felons singing on a chain gang. They're sitting in a studio generating handclaps electronically and that doesn't work for me in the slightest. Sure, I can see a place in music for the static, dissonance and manipulative effects that are spread over this album like a rash, but not in a solo spiritual section. Going with that decision means that Bow is a failed experiment for me and it's not the only one here.

Some songs work really well but I'm pretty sure that which will depend on your tastes. Many have praised Run, the opening single, which is a an alternative rock/nu metal onslaught, but I wouldn't because it didn't do much for me. I'd call out Golden Liar as the highlight, which reminded me of a Tracy Chapman song written for the soundtrack of a western feature, complete with whistles and narration. It's the sort of song that will absolutely find itself playing behind the crucial finalé of a TV show. There's some of that in Church Burns too, but it has industrial layers to hinder that.

Another track that worked for me is I Caught You, which combines the call and response aspect of spirituals with alt rock. It's modern and trendy and wants to be both, but it transcends the limits that come with that to be a fascinating song. Death to the Holy does some of the same, but with a little less ambition, something that's otherwise all over this album and every Zeal & Ardor release.

I have every respect for Gagneaux doing things that aren't done just to see if they'll work and I'm often appreciative of a song, even if I don't actually like it. Erase is one of those. I didn't want it to heavy up, but it does with hardcore vocals and jagged guitars that end up dissonant and djenty. I didn't like it much at all but it was easy to appreciate Gagneaux's talent nonetheless.

Where he lost me this time out was on songs that feel disjointed. Emersion is the first of them. It shifts genre like a round of Whose Line is It Anyway, alternating between inoffensive electronica in a Moby or Enigma vein and what I guess is blackgaze, the black metal wall of sound with what I would think of as a post-rock melody. These aren't integrated into a single sound, something that Hold Your Head Low achieves. It's like moving the dial on the radio between stations and back. It even ends with still more inoffensive keyboard work that could be the theme tune to a kids show. Feed the Machine feels disjointed to me too.

And all this means a mixed bag. I adored Stranger Fruit and don't recall any of it not working. This has a bunch of stuff that works, led by Golden Liar, and a bunch of stuff that doesn't, chief among them Emersion. Most of it sits in between, with Hold Your Head Low and I Caught You high on that scale but Bow and Feed the Machine at the lower end. And that means only a 6/10 for me, a major drop from the previous album. But hey, let's see what Gagneaux does next. It's guaranteed to be interesting but, when you're playing with genres like this, not everything pans out every time.

Mud Spencer - Fuzz Soup (2022)

Country: Indonesia
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 21 Jan 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

The cost of entry to the music industry is lower than ever. Record at home and release online. You don't need an expensive studio, production team or record label any more. Those things may well help, but they're not necessities in 2022, and that makes it a lot easier for personal projects such as this to see the light of day. Mud Spencer is a one man stoner rock project from Indonesia that's so old school that it can't even be called stoner rock. It's heavy psychedelia, because that's what a lot of the comparable bands called themselves back in 1969, man.

Which ones? Well, Back to Origin sounds like the 13th Floor Elevators starting to evolve into Black Sabbath. The title track features lots of wailing guitar and wild keyboard chords but, under them, there's an older rock 'n' roll framework, so the song sounds like Canned Heat turning into Vanilla Fudge and eventually even into Hawkwind. The Shelter kicks off with down and dirty blues, played slow but with some vicious tambourine, then it grows into a ponderous monster that just wanders off to explore what proto-doom will become.

Remember when Jimi Hendrix decided he was fed up playing his own material on one of Lulu's TV shows and launched into Sunshine for Your Love instead? Quest for Fire feels like the opposite, an initial cover of a Cream track turning into the man behind Mud Spencer, Sergio Garcia, launching himself into the stratosphere instead, like early Hawkwind. The Cheating Mole feels like the same thing but starting from a different place in psychedelic funk. This one sets an infectious funky riff into place and then improvises all over it. It's Sun Ra jamming with the Specials.

Ride the Mammoth hints at ethnic flavour but expands into space rock and proto-doom. This one scoots along gloriously, like an animated Indonesian rocket ship hurtling through the cosmos. I'm reminded of a short film I screened last year at my Apocalypse Later International Fantastic Film Festival called The Prospector. It paired a solo independent space miner with heavy surf rock from an American band called the Shivas. This killer could have had a place on that soundtrack without any hesitation. Tumulus starts out ethnic too and then adds the surf and even spaghetti western soundtrack styling.

Does any of that help? Probably not. Let's just say that this is vibrant music that goes back in time a lot further than we might initially think, into blues, rock 'n' roll and pop, drags them all forward to the psychedelic late sixties and then splits what we know off into a parallel dimension where an imaginative decade of heavy music can grow into new directions. I'm reminded of steampunk as a mindset that thinks that we didn't get what we were promised, so rewinds history back to a point where we can start again and do it right this time. I have a feeling that this album is Sergio Garcia doing that with music. Everything is built on roots we know but it veers away from our timeline in 1969, as if the last half century of history was just an acid trip taken by some hippie at Woodstock.

Of course, regardless of how much surf and space rock there is here, this would have been a heavy album indeed in 1969. Garcia crushes on songs like Ride the Mammoth and Tumulus, and wraps up his album with a heavy plodder in Narcolepsy that out-plods even The Shelter. This one simply ends too, with no direction forward determined, as if it's challenging us to pick up the baton and take it further down the track. Is this heavy psychedelia as mission statement? Screw fame, man. All you have to do is play.

And, if you're Sergio Garcia, you'll record your heavy space jams on your bed, then wander outside and ride your trail motorbike up the Javanese volcano of Ciremai to mix it on your iPad. That's the freedom of invention, dude. I believe I just took the red pill. I'm staying in Wonderland and seeing how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Love/Hate - Hell, CA (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 11 Feb 2022
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I was never a big fan of Love/Hate's breakout hit, Why Do You Think They Call It Dope, but I adored the album it was on, Blackout in the Red Room, and especially its title track, which had a fantastic hook over a sleazy attitude. That album ended with a song called Hell CA, Pop 4 and Jizzy Pearl may still be living there on this new album, the band's seventh and first of new material since the previous millennium, as 2017's Before the Blackout was a collection of early demos and the EP planned for 2013 saw release under Jizzy Pearl's name for legal reasons. He's the only member left now from the classic era.

And, as surprising as it may seem in 2022, over thirty years after Love/Hate's debut and the death of the glam metal era, two unrelated events but ones that arrived only a year apart, this is sleazy heaven. One Hot Minute is so sleazy that it goes beyond that debut and the only comparison I can give is to the original mix of Mötley Crüe's Too Fast for Love. It's a real peach of an opener and an unmistakable statement of intent, so thoroughly drenched in crap beer and a whole smörgåsbord of bodily fluids that we can't help but feel transported to 1981 Los Angeles.

I love this sound, which is utterly no nonsense. It's actually well produced, but it's trying not to be. The goal is clearly to sound like they're on stage in a tiny LA club with sweat dripping off the walls and the production manages that. In fact, they even tease us with it. Gonna Take You Higher kicks off like a Poison-esque ballad, reeking of hairspray and MTV ambition, but then it winks at us and snaps into high gear, like it knows full what plays on MTV nowadays and doesn't care. It's happier in some biker bar in Hell, CA, population hopefully more than 4.

Jizzy Pearl is the only name in the line-up that I recognise and he's totally recognisable, given his bluesier take on early Vince Neil. He's a better singer and his voice is pitched lower, but he does a lot of the same things in the holy name of sleaze. He's also gloriously unpolished here, as if these songs were written on the way into the studio and they only did one take of each. That's not going to be the case, because I'm sure much of it is calculated and rehearsed and finessed, but he clearly had a lot of fun hiding that.

The other name I'd call out for mention here is guitarist Stevie Pearce. He doesn't do anything on this album that hasn't been done in glam metal before, but he nails it, whether he's delivering an overly simple but highly effective riff, wailing in the background or blistering through a solo. He's everywhere, so much so that there has to be a second guitarist here, though I'm not locating any references to one. Maybe he just recorded his rhythm duties separately to his leads, underlining a clever production job that sounds looser than it must have been. Certainly, Lonely Days are Gone, the album's closer, feels more produced, ironically given how raw Wanna Be Somebody is only one song earlier.

What's telling to me is that makes that closer my least favourite track, even though it does blister gloriously at points and wraps up with manic intent. Also telling is that it's hard to pick favourites because there are so many candidates. I could stick with One Hot Minute and Acid Babe, the songs that open the album, but I can't ignore the southern-tinged depth of When You Gonna Come Home. I like Bruised and Battered a lot too, which is mostly Guns n' Roses but with a strange tinge of U2 that isn't the negative it might sound like. If we want to talk negative, I'd go with that minimalist cover art, but it's annoyingly appropriate, because it's as stripped down as the music.

Welcome back, Love/Hate. I hadn't realised how much I'd missed you.

Deathbell - A Nocturnal Crossing (2022)

Country: France
Style: Doom Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 25 Feb 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | YouTube

There are a lot of reasons why I end up listening to this new album by someone I've never heard of over that new album by someone I've never heard of, but this reason's a new one on me. I couldn't not review an album by a band called Deathbell, though I now have to wonder where they sourced that name. It's also the name of one of my favourite books by one of my favourite authors and it's entirely coincidental that I reviewed it in March as part of my Guy N. Smith runthrough. That book wasn't published in Deathbell's native France, though other Smith books were, but then the band does sing entirely in English. Who knows? Maybe they're fans of the Korean horror movie instead.

The styles in which they play are entirely appropriate, because the Deathbell in the book brought doom to the people of Turbury when it was rung. This Deathbell have a fascinating take on doom, which starts out psychedelic on The Stronghold and the Archer and gets all bluesy in Devoured on the Peak, but always remains firmly grounded in doom. The songs are mostly long, four of six here over seven minutes, and they have a hallucinatory quality to them, one ably assisted by the occult feel to Lauren Gaynor's vocal, which is a little lower in the mix than we might expect and is largely built without hooks but with lots of sustained notes, almost like ritual.

What's perhaps most notable is the lack of Black Sabbath in the sound. It is there, because it kind of has to be with a doom metal band, but it shows itself much more sparingly than would normally be the case. It's there in some of the riffs, but the progressions and tones are very different. That isn't a Tony Iommi tone on the guitars of Bastien Commelongue and Frederic Bolzan, even though that's exactly what the majority of doom metal guitarists want to mimic. There's Hawkwind in The Stronghold and the Archer and a lot of early Pink Floyd in Devoured on the Peak, in the keyboards and the guitar builds. There's My Dying Bride all over a bunch of these songs too.

So Deathbell aren't interested in doing the expected, which I always appreciate. It doesn't matter how good you are, you're not going to out-Sabbath Sabbath, so try another approach that's yours and only yours. Precious few doom metal bands do that, but Deathbell too, not just by adding the psychedelia but by often upping the tempo beyond the usual for the genre and doing interesting things like dropping away entirely midway through The Ladder to a surprising pastoral scene. That shows off Gaynor's voice in ways that just aren't possible when the band is in full flight. She feels limited by the mix and the style until we reach moments like this one.

They also keep it varied, each song consistent with but different from the last. The Ladder is most introspective and also probably my favourite song here. Silent She Comes feels like a classic rock song doomed up, like Vanilla Fudge did to You Keep Me Hanging On. Shifting Sands adds an ethnic lilt to the vocals which I really like, along with some glorious heavy organ and a psychedelic guitar over the riff. There's an absolutely gorgeous slowdown in this one a couple of minutes and change in too. And that leaves A Nocturnal Crossing to wrap everything up.

All in all, this is an album for the discerning doom fan who isn't looking for purity of the genre but interesting things done with it. It's rather like its cover art, in that there's some traditional doom in there, like the gothic castle to the right, and hints of space rock, like the stars behind it, but it's colourful and full of change and emotion. That imminent dawn at the top left is about to take over from the ominous clouds underneath it but it hasn't done it yet and that's a tough combination to mimic musically. Deathbell are up to the task. And whatever the upside down archer hanging from a ladder to the heavens is doing is probably in here too. I presume he's the opening track.

This is a second album for Deathbell, following 2018's With the Beyond, and I'm intrigued to check that one out too now. I like this a lot for its unusual and immersive take on a genre I'm especially fond of, especially given that it was apparently recorded live, albeit not, I presume, in front of an audience. And hey, the band's name doesn't hurt either.

Voivod - Synchro Anarchy (2022)

Country: Canada
Style: Progressive Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 11 Feb 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

Back in 1988, Voivod released an album called Dimension Hatröss that was as ahead of its time as any of the celebrated proto-extreme bands but in a different direction to what early Voivod fans might have expected. I remember it shocking me, who had spun War and Pain over and over back in 1984. They followed up with Nothingface, an album that sounds today rather like a combination of Primus, Meshuggah and Pink Floyd, but which was released long before the advent of djent and that subset of metal. Voivod had become a prog metal pioneer and, while many bands copied parts of what they did, they still sound utterly unique. If I'd heard Synchro Anarchy entirely blind, I'd still have told you it was by Voivod within a few seconds.

And that's both the best thing and the worst thing about this album.

It sounds great to me, full of melodies created out of dissonance, ominous builds and that typical off kilter feeling that pervades every Voivod album. It never seems like they're playing what they should be playing, but it feels right anyway, rather like John Cage's prepared piano work, in which he sticks nuts and bolts and what have you under the strings of a piano so that playing it starts to resemble an entire gamelan orchestra. It isn't what was originally intended from the instrument, but it sounds unique and vibrant, just like a Voivod album.

The catch is that it's pretty much exactly what I expect from them and, while that might be great to say about Status Quo, it's not good to say about a pioneering prog metal band like Voivod. They are supposed to continually innovate and progress and shock us. As much as I enjoyed this, there's no innovation or progression to be found beyond what they were doing back in the nineties and so it didn't remotely shock me. If anything, it felt comfortable in a nostalgic way, like a reunion with a sound I haven't heard in a long while but always enjoyed.

Is it a deliberate throwback album? Suddenly, I realise that I'm notably out of date with them and I have no idea how to answer that question. I was there early, with War and Pain, but may not have heard anything more recent than The Outer Limits in 1993. That may seem like last week, but time shenanigans mean that it's almost three decades ago. They've released seven studio albums since and I have no idea where they took the band. Clearly I should catch up, especially as it might seem from this album like they took them in something of a circle to those pioneering albums from the late eighties.

What remains notable is that it's hard to determine influences. Holographic Thinking starts with a clear Black Sabbath riff, albeit with a completely different tone. There's some early Pink Floyd in the instrumental sections of songs like The World Today and the title track. Mind Clock speeds up in delightful fashion, hearkening not only back to the Discharge and Motörhead nods that were all over their debut album but to the golden age of thrash which they found themselves an awkward participant in. Mostly, though, this sounds exactly like Voivod.

Quest for Nothing in particular is quintessential Voivod and nothing else here is far from it. Rapid fire staccato drums alternate with sustained power chords in dissonant fashion, then it grows with complex-sounding guitarwork that probably isn't that complex, an obvious rumbling bass and the unique snarling rasp of Snake over it all. And, as dirty as its overall sound is, everything is actually as clean as a whistle. It's all in the tone, which they defined long ago and still own.

I'd call Quest for Nothing the best song here, especially given where it goes in the second half, the vocal shift into a sort of middle eastern punk and the galloping drums easily the most progressive section on this album, the exception that proves the rule. However, I must call out the guitar solo on Sleeeves Off as my very favourite part, because it's outrageous in how metallic it is in texture. It isn't particularly long but it sounds like Chewy carved it out of the air, which around Voivod has to be metallic because they're probably recording on another planet.

And so, I'm not sure what to think about this. I enjoyed it. The songs are strong and unmistakeably Voivod. The band are tight and clearly enjoying themselves. It's hard to identify a flaw, except the abiding feeling that this isn't a challenge for them. Could they have wandered into the studio and jammed for forty-eight minutes? Maybe not, but it doesn't feel like this was carefully crafted over a long period of time. It feels like what they do when they're awake, kind of like how Kevin Smith is able to just riff on Star Wars for an hour at a time whenever anyone brings up those two words in succession. It's just who he is. He doesn't have to try. And, I can't help but feel, neither do Voivod in 2022.

Seremonia - Neonlusifer (2022)

Country: Finland
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 4 Feb 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives

This is Seremonia's fifth album of fuzzy and doomladen Finnish psychedelic rock but it's my debut encounter with them and it surprised me. Never mind the garage stereotype, this is so lo-fi that it could have been recorded in a closet. Like garage rock, it's also massively urgent, as if most songs want to be finished ten seconds sooner than the previous take. And the vocals are fantastic, because they're hardly typical for the genre and Noora Federley doesn't sound like a typical lead singer, unless it's for a punk band in London in 1977. She has very little range and it really doesn't matter. I like this combination of styles as much as I wasn't expecting it.

And, talking of not expecting it, let's talk about Raskasta Vettä. This is the first epic of the album at almost nine minutes—the closer, Maailmanlopun Aamuna, is just under seven—and it's as slow and moody as the three songs before it were fast and frantic. It shifts gears completely, taking an interesting garage/post-punk approach to the extended psychedelia jams of the Doors. This is not the end, my friend, but it's an interesting take on it, its initial Hallowe'en vibe made creepier and more atmospheric by the presence of a prominent flute, courtesy of drummer Erno Taipale.

The rest of the album plays with those two approaches in different ways: the frantic garage band with a wildly fuzzy guitar and a dash of psychedelia being the first and the stoned psych band on a long slow trip being the other. My favourite from the first angle is easily the title track, with some strong bouncy riffs, an ever-active bass and some neat vocals that seem cut off for effect. There's also a swirl of keyboards that gets more overt as the song runs on and ends up bringing quite the Hawkwind vibe into proceedings.

Perhaps the most interesting song for me, though, is the one after it, Naamiot, which Google tells me means Masks, because of the balance of those two approaches. It feels like it wants to blister but something holds it back for the most part and so it falls more into the psychedelic trip mould. The result is short but sweet, clocking in at only two and a half minutes, but it stamps itself on our brains and stays there, even during the nine trippy minutes of Raskasta Vettä, as something with its feet firmly in DIY post-punk but just as firmly in psychedelia. However the other songs grew or evolved on me, I kept coming back to Naamiot.

Having not heard Seremonia's first four albums, I'm sure I'm way off base, but it feels like this one is the key to the band, or at least the band as it is right now. I ended up thinking of its balance as being a tantalising one between the psychedelia of the Doors, the hallucinatory groove of Hawkwind, the garage rock of the Sonics and the punk of early Siouxsie and the Banshees or maybe Penetration. When they speed up, they amp up the stoner rock fuzz and add some early Discharge urgency, but, as much as I tend to gravitate towards speed whenever I listen to angry music, it remains the more patient Naamiot and Maailmanlopun Aamuna that speak to me most.

This certainly isn't going to be for everyone, especially because of the production—or the lack of it. If you find yourself wondering what that weird combination of sounds is going to be like, I think you're already a fan of Seremonia and now you just need to hit play to confirm it. If not, then this album is never going to convert you and you probably shouldn't even try.