Behemoth - Opvs Contra Natvram (2022)

Country: Poland
Style: Black Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 16 Sep 2022
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Legendary Polish extreme metallers Behemoth have been around for over thirty years now, which makes them kind of an institution. Given that everything Nergal has got up to in that time, from a series of trials for blasphemy for ripping up a Bible to his stint as a coach on The Voice of Poland, it becomes difficult not to see them that way. However, this is only their twelfth studio album, their release schedule hovering around every four years right now.

I remember enjoying them in the mid nineties and whenever they've crossed my path in the years since, but it's been a while since I've heard a full album from them, so Post-God Nirvana was rather unexpected. It's a neat, if long intro, rather like a Coil layer applied to Heilung, though it's heavier than either with a buzzsaw guitar eventually showing up to underline that. It's a slow and chanting piece to kick things off. And an angry one. There's a lot of anger on this album.

And then Malaria Vvlgata explodes out of the gates like a TGV from a tunnel, dominating all in its path. Behemoth may have shifted in style from pure black metal to become pioneers of the black/death metal hybrid style, but I'm out of date with where they've ended up on that spectrum. This album plays to me far closer to black than death. It doesn't feel at all like blackened death metal. Maybe we could call it deathened black metal, but that's just clumsy and I'd plump for black metal pure and simple. It's fast and it's furious but somehow the guitar solo still manages to add a level. This one has energy to spare.

The Deathless Sun adds a few symphonic and choral elements that continue to elevate the album. The choral side isn't front and centre but it shows up at points to add texture, whether at the start of Ov My Herculean Exile or later in Thy Becoming Eternal, where the voices are almost teasing in a back and forth with Nergal. There's a repeated keyboard swell in Off to War! that feels acutely like a summoning. These do background things but they all add to the whole.

However, Nergal still feels angry. It sounds like he's still combining a black shriek and death growl but adding a cry of frustration to the mix. It doesn't hurt that the lyrics echo this. "I am nothing." "I am no-one." This cry is especially obvious on the closer Versvs Christvs, which is, of all things, an almost whispered ballad for its first minute and change. When it heavies up, because of course it does, it doesn't get fast immediately and that transition ably highlights how angry Nergal is here.

And that anger works wonders. The more frantic a song is and the more Nergal emotes, the better it plays to me. The sheer energy of Malaria Vvlgata is difficult to match but the beginning of Neo-Spartacvs manages it. And, quite frankly, liking the fastest material isn't that surprising to me as a thrash fan at heart. However, I found myself connecting more with the consistency that arrives in the second half, from Disinheritance to Thy Becoming Eternal. On the first side, I'm listening to an impressive set of individual songs. On the second, I'm listening to an album.

And I think that's what Nergal and co. are aiming for. There's still death metal here but it's clearly not the priority that black metal is. However, this is far from a return to their early years. It's a lot more commercial and accessible than the early Behemoth ever were, even though they show how they can still absolutely rip on faster sections and songs like Malaria Vvlgata that don't stop for a breather. I like this more mature black metal Behemoth and look forward to their lucky thirteenth album in another four years.

Razor - Cycle of Contempt (2022)

Country: Canada
Style: Speed/Thrash Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 23 Sep 2022
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Here's another blast from the past, this time from Canada, from the Ontario city of Guelph where I have some good old friends. Razor are kind of like good old friends too, given that my first Razor album was Evil Invaders back in 1985. I enjoyed them for a few years, nothing later matching that album but still enjoyable, but I lost track of them after Violent Restitution in 1988, as real life had sudden demands on my time. It was good to see their name crop up again as I thought they'd been gone for years. And they kind of had been, given that this is their first album since 1997, which is a quarter of a century. Welcome back, folks!

Nowadays, the line-up features two founder members. One is Dave Carlo on guitar, whose riffs are less biting than they used to be because he's warmed up his sound, but he's as good as ever and his solos still rip. The other is Mike Campagnalo, whose rumbling bass underpins the Razor sound and gives the rest of the band something solid to build on. He gets a few spotlight moments, whether that's during a pause for effect, where he rumbles along on his own, or in an intro like Punch Your Face In.

The new fish is Rider Johnson, who's on his second stint with the band, even though he didn't join until 2014. He's solid, whether playing slowly during the first half of Darkness Falls or at the more usual frantic pace of a speed metal band. In between is Bob Reid, who joined in 1989, so has been a mainstay in the band ever since I stopped listening. That's coincidence, of course, but it's telling, as he seems to be the biggest reason why this album is happening, being the driving force behind the Razor reunion in 1997, and my least favourite aspect to it.

He does what he does well, but it's not what I expect from a speed metal band. The lead vocalist in my day was Stace "Sheepdog" McLaren, who left because he'd lost his passion for being in a band, leading Reid to take over not only behind the mike but as the impetus behind the band continuing to function. McLaren had a wild voice that I'd say is more suited to the genre, rough and raw and as willing to scream as squeal or whatever other vocalisation is needed at any particular moment. To me, Reid has a more focused approach that's primarily aggressive, perhaps appropriate for a post-Pantera world.

That's backed up by the lyrics, which are primarily in your face aggressive and delivered with an in your face aggressive attitude. Remember the insane scream at the beginning of The Marshall Arts that was a statement of intent on the Violent Restitution album? That sort of thing isn't here because Reid isn't into that. He's into threatening to punch you in the face, whether that's conversationally in the closer, King Shit, or through the strictly regimented cadence of most of these songs. He fits with the lyrics, but the lyrics aren't exactly subtle, as you'll find in Jabroni, Punch Your Face In, All Fist Fighting, Off Your Meds, Crossed... well, pretty much all of them. This is fight music.

If what Reid does is your sort of thing, then you're going to be happy with this album, because he does what he does consistently throughout. If you came to thrash from punk, you may love this. If you came to thrash from NWOBHM, maybe not so much. I found that his approach led to an album that's one note and I wanted a lot more variety. It was at its best for me when it was instrumental, so my favourite song is easily the title track, being a couple of minutes longer than the norm, thus allowing for a couple of minutes of glorious riffing to kick it off and a strong instrumental section for solos in the second half.

After that, I'd probably go for All Fist Fighting, because Reid speeds up his delivery and makes it a lot more urgent and passionate. He still uses his rough but powerful punk voice but it feels real to me, instead of a rehearsed threat intended to prod someone into throwing the first punch. It's the difference between Anthrax with Joey Belladonna (or even Neil Turbin) and Anthrax behind Billy Milano. As much as I enjoyed Speak English or Die, I'm always going to go for the former and this is an album for those who want the latter.

So it's a 6/10 from me, I think. The band are solid and tight and still agreeably fast and I'm gleeful that they're back, but I think they've moved a little away from me.

Revival Black - Under the Light (2022)

Country: UK
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 Aug 2022
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Revival Black are only on their second studio album, but it's going to have a lot of eyes on it, as its esteemed predecessor, Step in Line, featured very high on a bunch of lists in 2019 and topped at least one, and I should add their live album did the same during COVID. How have they translated that success and critical acclaim into the always difficult second album? Well, pretty well, as it happens.

The songs are good, though maybe not quite as instant as last time, but I'm falling in love all over again with how loud they sound on record. You could play this one on low volume and it would still seem loud, because of how the production handles the guitar. I love how the producer managed to crank it up so far without it turning into distorted static. That guitar sounds like it's actually being played live, to the degree that I almost wandered off to the bathroom with that joyous ringing in the ears that's there when we leave a venue after a good gig. There's a moment in Broken Home that sounds like I was still at the gig, the band's sound filtered through the walls.

I particularly like this because every component to this band's sound is traditionally played clean, whether it's the soulful old Bad Company hard rock sound, the power chords out of classic rock or the southern rock edge that's obvious in Dan Byrne's vocals—he often seems a cross between the soul of Ronnie van Zandt and the nasal edge of Mike Patton—but the guitars as well. However, the production makes those guitars dirty enough that the band aren't really playing instruments but simply manipulating the energy in the room into a musical form, like glassblowers hurling liquid glass around until it turns into an object of beauty.

The only catch to what Revival Black do is that everything feels so condensed, as if these aren't the songs but the purest essence of them that they'll happily rehydrate when they hit the stage. Every song gets right down to business, does what it needs to do and promptly leaves, job complete. If a song has an intro, like Broken Home or Wrong Side, it's generally wrapped up in under ten seconds so that we can't accuse anyone of lounging around. Even Alan Rimmer's guitar solos, which are an overt highlight, are as lean and mean as possible. I wanted them to keep going, especially on Left of Me and Wrong Side. Maybe they will on stage.

All that means that only the side enders feel like they have room to breathe. Hemispheres starts out without the dense sound we've become accustomed to and it's incredibly noticeable, as if the silence is suddenly bleak. It's a ballad and it feels all the more emotional because the guitar isn't there to overload our senses for for a couple of minutes. Hurricane has a breakdown midway that feels like the band suddenly decided to want to slap their names on an epic. Of course, given that they're Revival Black, epic means five minutes rather than ten.

I like these longer songs and would love for the band to write more like them that have a sense of patience to them. They're really good at stormers, as the opening couple of tracks here underline. Believe is a fantastic opener and Take You Out follows suit but with even greater success, courtesy of a backing vocal that becomes a theme, phrased like a gospel chant that a preacher at a revival might use to stir us up. Is that coincidence, given the band's name? I doubt it. But as strong as the pair of them are and as much as I enjoy them every time through, it's the (slightly) longer songs I have to call out as the highlights.

And that means that this is another really strong album from Revival Black, but there are hints at what they can do beyond just kicking our collective asses with three and a half minute belter after three and a half minute belter and I want a lot more of that. In fact, I have a feeling that, a couple of albums from now, they're going to be seen in a slightly different light, one where their talents at writing songs will be acknowledged alongside their ability to own the stage whenever they get up and start playing. For now, it's almost strange to hear them without crowd noise.

Banco del Mutuo Soccorso - Orlando: Le Forme dell'Amore (2022)

Country: Italy
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 16 Sep 2022
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In keeping with the historical music played by Heilung, here's a new prog rock concept album from Italy that's based on a romance of chivalry written in 1516 by Ludovico Ariosto. Sure, that's notably new if we compare it to a hymn to a Sumerian goddess uncovered in a Syrian archaelogical dig but it's not that new, not really. I live in Arizona nowadays. We've only been a state for a century and change. It's hard for anyone here, who isn't Native American, to imagine the year 1516.

But never mind that, this is a new album from Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, a clumsy name for one of the giants of RPI or "rock progressivo Italiano". I adored their 2019 album, Transiberiana, a return to the studio for them for the first time in a quarter of a century. Three years on and they're back again, with another absolute gem. The line-up is the same as last time out, and that means one of the founding members, Vittorio Nocenzi on keyboards, along with a line-up that's mostly younger than the band, only drummer Fabio Moresco, another child of the fifties, predating the seventies. Banco themselves were founded in 1969.

And, with that said, where do I start? This is a sprawling album, running seventy-six minutes. You'd thought the last one was long at fifty-three? This one is too long, which brings it down a little, but it's bursting with imagination for the majority of its running time and kept me utterly on the hop. It's great to hear a prog rock band actually being progressive in the way that prog rock bands used to be way back in the heyday instead of just complex and virtuosic. In fact, it's so progressive that I haven't quite grasped the album as a single entity yet. It's a lot to take in.

Instead, I'm busy grasping some of the individual tracks. La Pianura Rossa is the first highlight for me, a bouncy and playful gem which unfolds in unnamed movements, shifting mood on a dime and doing all sorts of things in between the jazzy opening and the introspective piano at the end. The way multiple voices combine to become quite the party is wonderful and the presence of the brass section that punctuate things is even more fun. With a tango-esque rhythm, it felt like I should be dancing to it rather than just moving in my chair, but that would be hard even if I could dance.

While there's so much going on within the album for me to see it as a single work after a couple of listens, the individual songs often flow nicely into each other. That soft piano that finishes out La Pianura Rossa continues into Serve Orlando Adesso, which works as a fantastic interlude between its predecessor and the next bouncy gem, Non Mi Spaventa Più L'Amore, but also as a ballad in its own right. The vocals are fine, but it's the guitar sections that impressed me, one calm, the other searing. And that searing guitar continues into Non Mi Spaventa Più L'Amore, another prog tango with neat contributions from accordion and frantic piano.

Many of these early songs are delights. Le Anime Deserte del Mondo starts out like a fresh ballad but it builds and builds until it fades out into a gloriously old school keyboard solo from Nocenzi. I particularly liked L'Isola Felice too, even if it includes a brief autotuned section to match a pulsing electronic backing. Beyond the guitars and layers of keyboards, there's glockenspiel here too and even what may like a lap steel to kick us off, alongside waves and whispering. Norway may well be taking over as the new prog rock nation but Italy clearly won't let the title go that easily, even if a sleepy England seems content to watch them duke it out right now.

I preferred the first half to the second, but there are gems to be found there too. In fact, I doubt a few more listens will allow anything to depose La Maldicenza as my favourite piece here. It's a prowling gem that is not willing to be ignored. It's a storm of a track in a completely different way to how that would be normally meant. It doesn't drive incessantly onwards and destroy us, but it does rattle everything in its path. And, talking of rattling, I have no idea what the rattle is late in the first half but of the song but it's a wild sound amidst a whole bundle of wild sounds. What a piece! Oh, and I should add that the storm passes and the second half is a beautiful evocation of petrichor.

Italian prog tends to be less about a tie to folk music and more about a tie to classical music, even opera—hey, check out Nova Malà Strana if that perks up your ears—and there's a lot of classical in Nocenzi's keyboards and some less acrobatic opera in Tony D'Alessio's vocals. Some of these songs, starting with La Pianura Rossa, feel like they should have a visual element to them that I don't get when listening to an album. I don't think they could stage this entire thing as a rock opera, but the first half and some of the second would work with that sort of visual accompaniment.

The epic of the album is Moon Suite, hence why the planet Earth on the last cover has become the Moon on this one. I like it, but it's far from my favourite song here, playing to me like an attempt to write an Italian Yes song. It's more adventurous than Yes are nowadays and I adore some of the old school keyboard work Nocenzi throws into it, but I think I prefer the previous track that serves as a sort of intro to it. That's Non Credere Alla Luna and it features both a wailing saxophone and a Mark Knopfler-esque guitar. It may be my favourite song here after La Maldicenza.

The caveat to everything I've said is that I should underline that I need to listen to this more. It's a busy album and a long one and, as enjoyable as it is, I haven't scratched the surface after a couple of listens. This is easily an 8/10 but I may well up that to a 9/10 after listening to it more. Whatever I do, it's highly recommended, as is its predecessor, Transiberiana. This band are on top form right now and you should check them out.

Heilung - Drif (2022)

Country: Germany/Denmark/Norway
Style: Experimental Folk
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 19 Aug 2022
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If you haven't heard Heilung before, you should because a) they're a treat for the ears and b) you probably haven't heard anything like them before. They're variously described as a folk group, an experimental metal band and a ritual collective. They call themselves "amplified history", adding "from early medieval Northern Europe", but they've expanded far beyond that boundary, as one piece here ably highlights. It's called Nikkal and it's the oldest annoted music known to man, over three thousand years old and composed as a hymn to a Sumerian goddess. Nikkal was the wife of the moon god.

Really, they're just Heilung, because their sound is rarely comparable to anyone else. At the heart of what they do are the versatile voices of a couple of vocalists, a German tattoo artist called Kai Uwe Faust and a Norwegian prog rock singer named Maria Franz. Behind them on an orchestra of unusual instrumentation is Danish producer Christopher Juul and, between them, they conjure up a wild array of fascinating sounds. There are guests here too, a bunch of them, but I have no data to suggest what they do, so I'll just acknowledge that and move on.

Drif is their third studio album and its title means "gathering", a term that could be aptly applied to both the variety in the pieces of music on offer and to the cultures from which they're sourced. I believe most are sung in Proto-Norse, language so old that part of it cannot be translated, merely pronounced. Or maybe that's just a problem the internet has in attempting to render Heilung into English, so we can see that the opening song here, for instance, Asja, is a healing song, just as the band's name means healing.

My least favourite piece is in German, which is the eight minute epic right at the heart of Drif. I'll describe Keltentrauer as being performed because it's neither sung nor spoken, at least how you're probably imagining that meaning in a review. There's nothing wrong with it and it's highly evocative, but it also happens to be a poem delivered in German against accompanying music and sound effects of battle. It plays as a memorable experience the first time through but, unless we speak German, it turns into an overblown intro to a Manowar epic ongoing. I soon found myself skipping it. There's still a full fifty minutes of joy here without it.

I doubt many of us understand any of the other lyrics either but, unlike Keltentrauer where words are key to telling a story, it just doesn't matter on everything else. The music speaks volumes and we can tap into the mood and sentiment of each piece without problems, whether it's ethereal or aggressive. The ritual nature of some of them, with its inevitably repetitive chants may turn off a few listeners but anyone who feels music as much as they listen to it will fall into this album and be consumed by it, emerging a different person at the end.

It starts out gloriously with a piece called Asja. Faust delivers ritual throat singing with Rs heavily rolled and a beautifully resonant vibrato. Juul adds a slow beat to match the delivery of words. At first, the backing vocals are harsh and demonic but then Franz joins in with her high and ethereal melodic voice. This is a haka of a song, but one that grows as enticing as it is threatening. Anoana is just as tight and deliberate and it gives a serious effect. Franz has a very different approach on this one, shifting down octaves and moving down in the mix too. Faust is different as well, lighter and much more playful, in a back and forth conversational chant with himself.

These are resonant piees of music. Tenet is too but it gets strange. It starts out like a vocabulary lesson for kids, in palindromic form, then adds deep horns and mad growls and finally shifts into a humming motion to start the song proper. Urbani begins with what sound like crowing cockerels, before turning into a sort of military march or a piece recorded in an African village on a portable tape recorded by a roaming ethnomusicographer.

I found the first half magnetic from the outset but the second half took me a while. Nesso is quite the puzzle, because it features fascinating sounds that we can't ignore. Is that Faust or someone walking on gravel? Is that Franz or a musical bowl used like a bell? Maybe they're all conjurings of Juul using one of his esoteric instruments. Buslas Bann is a hypnotic chant with a deep male vocal that feels more repetitive than earlier ritual pieces and Franz doesn't show up.

And then we get to Nikkal, which I adore. The voices blend wonderfully and I just wish it was longer but it is what it is. We can't complain to the unknown composer, who's been dead for millennia. It's used here as a kind of intro to the closing epic, Marduk, during which Faust recites the fifty names of the Babylonian god of that name, in a ritual whisper against the backdrop of chimes and bowls. All I know here is that it isn't done in the order in the Necronomicon and it features more of those amazing rolling Rs. The side benefits of having a German vocalist!

Everything here is fascinating. Only Keltentrauer feels out of place and then perhaps only if you aren't fluent in German.

Andy McCoy - Jukebox Junkie (2022)

Country: Finland
Style: Glam Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 Aug 2022
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"This is the most colourful album I have ever done," says Andy McCoy, of this covers album, which I believe is his sixth solo effort, if we count a 1996 collaboration with Pete Malmi and the soundtrack to the half-fictional biopic about him, The Real McCoy, in 1999. The beauty of this one is that it's no runthrough of expected choices. I grew up listening to Hanoi Rocks so I know what they sound like and it would be trivial to conjure up a list of glam or rock 'n' roll classics that would be likely to be on the record but we'd be wrong ninety-nine times out of a hundred, as this is a deep dive indeed. In fact, I looked at the track listing and could still only place two songs.

One is China Girl, made famous by David Bowie who co-wrote it, but first released by Iggy Pop, the other co-writer, and it's that version that McCoy's covering here. The other one is Solo in Soho, the title track from Phil Lynott's 1980 solo album, which McCoy sasses up with female vocalisation and saxophone. They're both good versions, but they're not the best here. I'd be hard pressed to state which are, because this is a lively album through which McCoy brings new life to old favourites that he felt should have been hits or, at least, bigger ones than they happened to be. It's his deep joy of music that shines brightest here and it's there throughout.

The opener, I'm Gonna Roll, may be the closest to the Hanoi Rocks sound, but, like the majority of these songs, it was new to me. It was originally recorded by Rock 'n' Roll Band in 1975, but notably recorded by the Leningrad Cowboys in 1992, both bands Finnish like McCoy. It's a rollicking rock 'n' roll song and it's somehow surprising that Hanoi Rocks never covered it back in the day. Much less expected is 54-46 That's My Number, originally recorded by reggae band the Maytals in 1968. It's a song that McCoy keeps in its genre, though the vocals are more raucous.

Just to keep us on the hop, he shifts into pop music with Squeeze's debut single Take Me I'm Yours, from 1978, and then into a modern singer/songwrter style ballad, Miss Tennessee by Katie Noel, easily the most recent of these songs, originally released in 2020 with a featuring credit for Autumn Brooke. While McCoy is on half a dozen of these songs as a vocalist, in addition to slinging his guitar throughout, this isn't one of them. Jamie Hembree and Niki Westerback provide the male and female voices and I'd say they find the sweet spot between the smooth approach we expect from country and the raw one a rock album from Andy McCoy would warrant.

And so it goes, with that diversity in sound a key feature, though everything still plays consistently with the raw and emotional feel that Andy McCoy does so well. His guitar gets a workout on every track and everything seems like something that he'd have a blast playing live in a small club, with a variety of guests joining in for an even more fun time. Most are vocalists, with Sofia Zida maybe most notable for her performances, especially on Back to the Wall, which adds a Stevie Nicks vibe to a song by the Divinyls and a relatively faithful look back at Wanda Jackson.

That's one of the pop songs on offer, as is Hot Night in Texas, a heavier take on Moon Martin's Hot Nite in Dallas. There are rock songs here, of course, that we might know from original versions by people like Ron Wood (I Can Feel the Fire), the Climax Blues Band (I Couldn't Get It Right). There's a punk song, the UK Subs's Countdown, easily the heaviest thing on offer here. And there are even country songs by Juice Newton and the legendary Wanda Jackson, whose number Funnel of Love is the oldest by far, as a 1960 song. Then again, Lemmy loved her music as straight ahead rock 'n' roll and I'm not going to argue with him on that front.

I love covers albums where I don't know the originals, especially when they're deep cuts as joyous as these or those on Monster Magnet's A Better Dystopia last year. I love really unlikely ones too, such as Danzig Sings Elvis and the Die Krupps take on pop in Songs from the Dark Side of Heaven. It's the expected material that leaves me blah because my brain knows how those songs go and doing justice to them in a different fashion means something special, like Johnny Cash covering Hurt or Tori Amos taking on Raining Blood.

This is my sort of covers album, at once a glorious discovery of tracks I didn't know anything about, interpreted by someone who truly cares about them, and a new album of what appears to be new material by an artist I enjoy, because I don't have any of those reference points to stain it. And so, Andy, I hear that you narrowed this playlist down from a set of sixty or so. What else was on there and are you going to record any of them? Inquiring minds want to know.

Dub War - Westgate under Fire (2022)

Country: UK
Style: Ragga Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 Aug 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Official Website | Wikipedia

Here's a surprise in a number of ways! I remember Dub War from their early days on Earache, at a time when that label was far better known for championing the nascent grindcore movement, but the band went away a long time ago, with three quarters of the band moving forward as Skindred. Since they ceased to be, the musical landscape has changed massively and, in many respects, has finally caught up with what they were doing a few decades ago. But they're back, surprisingly so, and with a new album that's their first of new music in twenty-six years.

The core line-up is three quarters of the original one, but oddly not the same three quarters who formed Skindred. Here are versatile lead singer Benji Webbe who sounds like he's at least a dozen different voices here, guitarist Jeff Rose and bassist Richie Glover. Missing this time around is the drummer, Martin Ford, who usually went by Ginge, and he's replaced primarily by Mikee Gregory, who plays on seven of the thirteen tracks, but also a half dozen others on the remaining six. And it would be hard work indeed to conjure up a different set of drummers!

Roy Mayorga is diverse all on his own, given that he's known for Stone Sour, Hellyeah and Ministry, but there's Jamie Miller of Bad Religion and Mike Bordin from Faith No More. And, if that wasn't diverse enough for you, there's also Tanner Wayne from In Flames, Spike Smith from Birmingham death metal band Memoriam and Dave Chavarri of Ill Niño and Soulfly. They each bring something different to the table and it's fascinating to hear how different and yet how consistent the tracks are with such wildly diverse talents bringing the beat.

This is diversity is perhaps epitomised by the sole vocal guest, who takes over the second song for its second half. He's the late Ranking Roger, of British ska legends, the Beat, and he reimagines a famous cover song, War ina Babylon, originally by Max Romeo and the Upsetters, who were Lee 'Scratch' Perry's backing band. Here, the song is heavied up, of course, with a rock beat on overtly reggae vocals, especially during that second half.

If that sounds like a song about troubled times, you'd be right and that's what the album initially plans to be. The opening song, Blackkk Man, is a political one written in the wake of George Floyd's murder by Minneapolis police officers. It's told in the rap metal style of Rage Against the Machine with Benji Webbe more than up to spitting acerbic bars at us. It's also surprisingly catchy, which is one more reason why it was released as the first single (excluding the couple which saw release in 2016 as the original build-up to this release).

What's more, the title of the album and the cover art speak to the Chartist Movement, a working class protest movement in the mid-nineteenth century, and especially to the Newport Rising, the armed uprising of ten thousand Chartists who marched on Dub War's home town of Newport and demanded the release of some of their compatriots. The cover art is part of a mural created by a commissioned artist, Kenneth Budd, that was visible for thirty-five years under John Frost Square until it was demolished by the council in 2013, against public sentiment.

And, quite frankly, if the rest of the album was made up of protest songs and righteous anger, the return of Dub War would be more widely heralded. However, after the opening couple of tracks, it shifts into a more celebratory tone. Vibes in the Place mixes the rap metal vocals with the reggae vocals and adds an urgent metal take on dancefloor energy infusers with a DJ using repetition for emphasis. And, as we progress, this becomes unmistakably a celebratory party instead of an angry riot. This approach doesn't make the album any worse, but it removes some if its urgency.

To highlight that, my favourite song here, if it isn't Blackkk Man, is Mary Shelley, which was known as Making a Monster when it was released as a single in 2016. It's a sort of Halloween reggae song that starts out with Benji Webbe sounding like Ozzy and settles into a bizarre cross between Faith No More, the Misfits and whichever reggae outfit would be most appropriate to mention. I have a distinct lack of expertise there to bring to bear. I just know that I like it a lot and it's the Halloween dub reggae metal party song that you didn't know you needed.

And, at the other end of the extreme, my least favourite song here is Stay Together, a cover that's hard to justify, because it's of Al Green's Let's Stay Together and it feels acutely out of place on an album whose best angle is the sheer range of its musical direction. Yes, I'm pointing out that Westgate under Fire is at its best when it's mixing genres like cocktails and yet this one is beyond the pale. I think that's mostly because it doesn't try to mix anything at all. It's a cover that is happy to just be a cover, a little heavier than the original, sure, but otherwise rather like it, and so it sounds pedestrian amongst its peers.

The bottom line is that it's great to see Dub War putting out new music and it's a pretty welcome return, doing what they do best in a modern musical environment where they don't seem quite so out of time as they used to. Let's hope that it finds listeners who never knew them and are open to hearing them now. Maybe it's a little longer than it needed to be, but it's no less welcome for that.

Gogol Bordello - Solidaritine (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Gypsy Punk
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 16 Sep 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Here's something a little different: a highly international gypsy punk band from Manhattan. They have been a favourite of mine for a long time, with a number of songs on 2007's Super Taranta! on my internal playlist that I sing along to when I walk. Technically, they count as an American band, a product of the wild diversity that is New York City, but their sound is rooted in the Romani culture of eastern Europe and tends to be described as gypsy punk, because of its sheer energy and use of instruments like violin and accordion.

This is their ninth studio album and it's an important one because of its timing. The band's leader is Eugene Hütz, he of the wild lead vocals, acoustic guitar and occasional percussion, and he hails from Ukraine, which wasn't at war when the prior Gogol Bordello album, Seekers and Finders, was released in 2017. However, a couple of other key members—violinist Sergey Ryabtsev, who's been part of Gogol Bordello longer than anyone else except Hütz, and guitarist Boris Pelekh—are both Russian. They're therefore a perfect example of how the two countries can get along fine and put something new and vibrant into their shared culture. Reality isn't following suit.

And so it should surprise to find that this comments on the war. The cover art is white on black but for the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag, colours you'll also see as the backdrop if you visit the Gogol Bordello site on Bandcamp. There's also a reworking of Forces of Victory here, a song from Super Taranta! with guest performers, that was released as a single before this album came out. I should note that the singers helping out Hütz are Oleksandra Zaritska from Kazka, an electro-folk band, and Serhiy Zhadan, who isn't a singer at all but a writer, who collaborates with the ska band Zhadan i Sobaky. Both of course are Ukrainian and the lyrics are translated into that language.

I don't believe Solidaritine is a real word in any language. Here it's what Hütz calls an "imaginary substance that unlocks our empathy and our full human potential, which is supposed to unite us in overcoming our common problems." To me, it sounds like Gogol Bordello and it's a great way for a wartime album to kick off, even if I much prefer the next song, Focus Coin, about something as odd as cryptocurrency.

It does something that I adore Gogol Bordello for doing, which is to meld different genres into an impressive new sound. It's got all the energy that their usual gypsy punk has and it's impossible to listen without moving with the rhythm and tapping it out with your toes. It's a mix of ska and punk with an up tempo beat, some teasing ZZ Top guitar in the second half and and even soulful backing vocals reminiscent of Joss Stone. It would be my favourite song here if Fire on Ice Floe didn't show up much later on.

Focus Coin is more immediate, the sort of song that has you partying even on a first listen, but Fire on Ice Floe kept on getting under my skin with every time through until it was impossible to ignore how much it had got to me. It's subtle as it begins, quiet but for Hütz's vocal and wonderful work from new fishes Korey Kingston on drums and Gill Alexandre on bass, both new to the band in the past couple of years. The verses are chill in a way that only this band can be chill but the hook is an absolute peach and it just keeps building as other instruments join the fray. I picture it like a quiet dancefloor that ends up joyously packed.

After those two classics, there's a bit of a gap. My Imaginary Son really nails its grooves, both the hardcore sections and the ones with plucked strings, while I'm Coming Out is agreeably odd, with quirky lyrics referencing Zombie Lifestyle magazine, which I ought to check out, just in case is isn't a product of his imagination. Oleksandra Zariska returns on Take Only What You Can Carry, while H.R. from Bad Brains steps in to help out on The Era of the End of Eras, adding his characterful and personal touch to the song. Blueprint is a Fugazi cover, one that they play live often and righly so, because it has such a Gogol Bordello drive to it, all the way to the brass that dominates the end.

The beauty of what Gogol Bordello do is that their sound is such a vibrant patchwork of styles that my choices for standouts may well not be yours and that's fine. Their potent energy infuses every song but the particular recipes that each song uses for flavour are highly personal and will speak to different people in different ways, depending on what you and I and anyone else bring with us. I'm not going to catch them in Tempe at the end of the month, but seeing them live is certainly on my bucket list and I'll get there at some point. In the meantime, this.