Adavänt - The Mystic and the Mountain (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 14 Jan 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | YouTube

I automatically threw Adavänt into the opening slot for today on my schedule thinking that they're a local band here in the Valley of the Sun. Sure, they're a damn good one, as I know from a few gigs over the last bunch of years, but that doesn't matter. Then it registered on me that The Mystic and the Mountain is their fourth album. They're not a new up and coming band any more. They're well and truly established and they deserve the top slot for the day.

I have the previous three albums, which are all decent, but this feels like a step up on the previous one, which came out five years ago in the before times. Mystic is a particularly good opener, and I fully expect it to become a set opener for live gigs. It builds in layers, starting with folky guitars on strident percussion, with a lute-like acoustic guitar soon joining them, then a ramp up with electric guitars and full on drums. There's a piano stretch then more drums to add to the existing beat and finally, a minute and a half in, some vocals. It's excellently done but apparently effortless. They're simply this good nowadays.

I should add that there are two vocalists in Adavänt. We hear Nathan the Ravenous first, who has a deep growl that doesn't have much in the way of intonation. It's fundamentally a texture rather than a lead. However, Charlotte the Alluring provides a high and elegant symphonic metal voice. I like her voice on stage but she keeps getting better and she's obviously relishing her sustain now. Later in the song, they both sing at once, not in unison but in contrast, with her soaring traditional metal melodic lines over his low drone. There's no gothic metal in their sound at all, but a beauty and the beast style works in folk metal too.

By the way, I'm not conjuring up nicknames here. Adavänt's musicians name themselves as if they want to become Red Dragon Inn characters and it lends them an easy uniqueness. So that's Justin the Fierce on guitar, Javad the Fearless on drums, Andy the Cunning on piano and keyboards and Ryan the Bard on flute and Irish bouzouki. Previous bassist Corey the Vigorous, who left in 2014, is back. Maybe he didn't think he was quite as vigorous as he turned out to be. [This paragraph has been edited: thanks to Javad the Fearless for updating me on the latest line-up changes.]

And the sound suggests that everyone ought to be vigorous. Folk metal is rooted in folk and folk is rooted in dance and Adavänt know that. Miss Maddie's Forge turns into a jig at one point and War Gnomes follows suit. Feast of Fiends and Pestilencia Swing are dances in the vein of Trollfest, with more of a polka thing going on, thankfully without goblin vocals on top. A Respite Round is always a dance, even when the vocals arrive. I tend to turn myself into a drum when listening to rock and metal, but some bands get me moving in other ways too. Adavänt had me bouncing in my chair on this album. No, I'm not going to get up and dance—I'll trip over something—but I'll happily dance in my chair.

Adavänt have always been tight on stage, at least since I've been paying attention and I first saw them live almost a decade ago, supporting Alestorm. However, they feel extra tight here and the breakdowns in many of these songs are exquisite. Most of the band will just stop on a dime to give one instrument a spotlight moment but, phrase delivered, they kick back in on the same dime. It's there right from the outset on Mystic and it keeps going. This isn't always keyboards, but Andy the Cunning does get a few spots. I have to call him out for his Hammond organ halfway through Lunar Cutlass, but the piano midway through Pestilencia Swing is gorgeous too.

The other technical touch I noticed here that I don't specifically remember from earlier albums, so should go back to check, is that there's some serious style to how they begin their songs. Some are pretty obvious in their intros, like the chimes that set up the mood on Miss Maddie's Forge, albeit very effectively, but some of it's just clever songwriting. There's a sweet opening to Lunar Cutlass that turns into a delightfully ominous build, with some flutes bringing some light to that darkness. Feast of Fiends kicks off with the inexorable monster march beat of Trollfest and that runs on into Pestilencia Swing.

The good news is that there are a lot of positives this time out o nwhat I believe is their strongest album to date. The better news is that there isn't much negative to counter that. I'm not entirely sold on the drum sound. It didn't bother me particularly but some of the drums sounded muffled to me on Mystic and on some later songs too. I can't pretend that Nathan the Ravenous's voice is remotely as versatile as Charlotte the Alluring's, but he works as a texture. Beyond that, with so many highlights, it seems a little more obvious than it should that a few songs don't match them, but that's far from the worst problem a band can have though.

And so I need to stop thinking of Adavänt as a local band who support the big fish when they come to town. I need to start thinking of them as a damn good folk metal band who have been playing a decade and a half now and put out four decent albums that keep on getting better. Let's see some folk come to town to support them.

Edena Gardens - Agar (2023)

Country: Denmark
Style: Space Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 7 Apr 2023
Sites: none

Here's something fascinating that I found labelled as space rock. I'm not going to say that it isn't a space rock album, because it really kinda is, but it isn't in the way you might expect. Hawkwind this isn't. I could equally see it labelled psychedelic rock, progressive rock or even, most appropriately, cosmic jazz. There's definitely a feeling of being taken out there, way out there, but we're not in a spaceship travelling in a nice neat straight line. We're in a cosmic maelstrom, being thrown about this way and that, but in an oddly delightful way.

I see Edena Gardens described as a supergroup, which I guess they are if you confine that term to a pretty restrictive framework of musicians who record for El Paraiso Records. That's a Danish label, put together by Jonas Munk and Jakob Skøtt of the psychedelic rock band Causa Sui and this is one side project for the latter. I haven't heard Causa Sui, though this tells me that I clearly should, but I hear a lot of jazz in his performance. He's clearly wearing his jazz hat as Forst kicks off the album, but he gradually shifts into a rock mode, eventually helping channel some early King Crimson for a particularly experimental closer, Crescent Helix.

The guitarist is Nicklas Sørensen, who plays guitar for krautrock band Papir but has also released a collaborative album with Munk. I haven't heard Papir either, but I see "deceptively minimalistic" a lot when researching them and that explains his guitar approach here. That leaves Martin Rude, a multi-instrumentalist who plays in a host of projects with Skøtt including the Martin Rude & Jakob Skøtt Duo, the Rude Skøtt Osborn Trio and the London Odense Ensemble. I presume he takes care of the bass here but quite possibly other instruments too.

What they conjure up here on their second album is something truly immersive. I don't know if any of the eight songs on offer were improvised or not. I'm guessing that they weren't, but it seems to be entirely believable that they were. Either way, they conjure up soundscapes that we can simply dive into. These are less songs and more moods to wear like the water from a shower. The cover art may suggest that everything's dark and tumultuous, but it's not always the former and rarely the latter. Sombra del Mar feels like a grey day into which the sun has suddenly decided to intrude. The Veil is plodding doom, almost like a Pink Floyd instrumental recorded at 45rpm but played at 33.

As that might suggest, your favourite piece here—and I should emphasise that everything on offer is entirely instrumental—is likely to be the one that resonates with you the most. For me, while I'd call all of them fascinating, the standout is Montezuma. It's another slow one, but it's a delightful exercise in contrasts. The bass goes low and echoes like it's stuck in an underwater pit, resonating with the gentle motion of waves. However, the guitar finds some beautiful tones, as if it's surfing on a lake sprawled above that pit. Somehow we're seeing both at once because six prior tracks by Edena Gardens had somehoe opened our third eye or something.

I have no idea where the band's influences are, but I hear a lot of diverse sounds here. At one end of the spectrum, I hear drone metal bands like Sunn O))) in the bedrock of songs like The Veil, but Montezuma only hints at that, drifting further towards the primal guitarwork of Neil Young when he's been rocking out for a while but then decided to get mellow. At the band's most soothing, I'm hearing Pink Floyd, especially in the keyboards, but the guitars aren't remotely Dave Gilmour. The name I'd throw out is Bill Frisell, remembering his work with Robin Holcomb and Wayne Horvitz on the Rubáiyát compilation to commemorate 40 years of Elektra Records.

But it isn't remotely that simple. There's post-rock here, alternative rock and stoner rock. Much of it could be described as prog rock, which segues into jazz and right back again, or krautrock, which covers both at once. How else should we describe Ascender, which feels like layers of water flowing over a fascinating set of drum rolls? And it's psychedelic rock above everything else, something I'd expect would be well worth playing through a pair of good headphones in the dark. Of course, the genre doesn't matter. At the end of the day, whatever we call it, it's a gem for anyone who likes to be immersed in soundscapes.

And now I want to dive into the El Paraiso back catalogue. It feels like a door has opened in front of me and I need to walk through it to see what's lying beyond. This may well be a peach of a gateway drug.

Tanzwut - Silberne Hochzeit (2023)

Country: Germany
Style: NDH/Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date:24 Feb 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

I liked Tanzwut's previous album, Die Tanzwut kehrt zurück, released two years ago, and I like this one too, which continues their gradual shift from medieval metal through NDH to industrial, even though this isn't really a new album. It's a celebration of an album, a sort of greatest hits package to commemorate a quarter of a century as a touring band, but each track is a re-recorded version from the studio. They've recorded a dozen albums but everything here is sourced from three very specific releases that came out before they'd found their way into a particular sound.

Now, to be fair, I wouldn't say that they've cemented their sound yet, each succeeding album a bit further down a musical path, but this deliberately takes tracks from their second, third and fourth albums and retells them in a style similar to what they play today. Labyrinth der Sinne is easily the most represented, with seven out of twelve tracks coming from that second album from 2000. That leaves three from their third, 2003's Ihr wolltet Spass, and a three song set from Schattenreiter in 2006. It's fascinating to see how varied these remain, even played with a consistent approach.

The first four set most of the tone for the album. Labyrinth, the kinda sorta title track to Labyrinth der Sinne, opens up and is immediately a highlight, bouncy and in your face throughout, bagpipes leading the melodic line over a driving NDH beat. It's worth reminding that five of seven members of Tanzwut play bagpipes and two are dedicated to pipes and shawms, so they're never far away. In most of this material, they hold back to serve as emphasis when the song needs it but then soar on top of everything else when it gets going.

Ihr wolltet Spass and Meer, both from the third album, add new elements. The latter is softer with a drop down from the typical opening to a warmer sound. Even when it ramps up in the bridge, the usual edges are still smoothed off. The former is a gem, dropping into Gogol Bordello-esque punky folk music. I'm sure I've heard some early Tanzwut but it's been so long that I can't remember the albums. This is the point at which I regretted that and wanted to dive back into those early albums to remind myself what they sounded like.

The fourth of the opening quartet is Was soll der Teufel im Paradies, another from Labyrinth der Sinne and the first of four tracks in a row to hail from that album. This one adds orchestration as a layer, mostly behind the sound but occasionally with strings taking the foreground. It ends with a tasty duet between pipes and strings, which is a fascinating touch and one exclusive to this track. Each of these four has its own unique touch, while staying true to the overarching sound. Most of what follows works with those approaches afresh, just in different proportions. That doesn't mean that there aren't other touches worth mentioning though.

Lügner is a stalker of a song, slow and heavy but with serious emphasis, so we're unable to ignore it. In its quieter sections, the pipes take a strong lead and the electronics trawl in some distortion for effect. In its more urgent sections, it plays up the NDH aspect to the band. There's Rammstein in all of these songs but none of them consistently sound like Rammstein with bagpipes. This one is closer than most, even though it sounds like a regular bagpipe band at points too, sans all metal elements. The one that plays my local renaissance festival has released albums that pair the pipes and drums with electronica and they're not unlike this.

The most unexpected touch comes on Im tiefen Gras. It starts with a guitar line that wouldn't be at all out of place in alt country and quickly develops into a psychobilly bounce. This is one of a trio of songs from Schattenreiter and it's the other track that makes me want to follow up by visiting the original. It suddenly seems odd that these two aren't from the most represented album, but that may not mean much. Then again, if there's a third, it's the urgent punk of Nein nein, another one from Ihr wolltet Spass, that closes out the album.

I'm not sure how essential this will be for Tanzwut fans who remember the originals. I'd have to go back to hear them again to comment and I want to do that free of motive. I'm not a die hard fan of the band, but I like what they do and I like this, even if it isn't essential. It's an odd marker for this live anniversary and I wonder why they didn't put out an equivalent recorded live. Maybe that will be next.

Altın Gün - Aşk (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 31 Mar 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I fell in love with this as soon as it started. If I'm understanding correctly, the core of Altın Gün is a pair of musicians who are Turkish by heritage but born in the Netherlands. That's Merve Daşdemir and Erdinç Ecevit Yıldız. Both sing lead but divvy up the songs between them, so that some are led by Merve's enticing female voice but others by Erdinç's deeper male voice. Both play keyboards as well, with Erdinç adding the saz or bağlama, which is an Anatolian lute. Between all this, Altin Gün sound exquisitely Turkish, to the point where this is world music at heart.

However, behind them are four Dutch musicians playing traditional rock instruments—guitar, bass and drums—and between them, they channel this world music through a psychedelic filter so that it comes out as an exquisite merger of east and west. The opener, Badi Sabah Olmadan, is a strong track, clearly psychedelic rock with a Hawkwind drive to it. It's not alone here in rocking it up, but the album often aims lighter with songs that could be seen as psychedelic pop or even a keyboard driven prog.

One of the key components to define which is the bass of Jasper Verhulst. On Badi Sabah Olmadan, he's a rock musician and he adds fuzz on Rakıya Su Katamam to shift from psychedelic rock over an easy border into stoner rock. However, starting on Su Sızıyor, he reminds me of a reggae bassist in that he relies on the guitar and drums to work a groove so that he can provide a riff to underpin a song. However, we can't just label songs based on what Verhulst is doing, because he goes with the reggae approach on Canım Oy, which is clearly psychedelic rock, even if it adds in plenty of Turkish disco at points.

The keyboards help shape genre too. Çıt Çıt Çedene throws Mike Oldfield style keyboards over the reggae bass, as if he'd set up a salon at his house and some Turkish musicians joined him to jam. It comes back on the closer, Doktor Civanım, which is the most western piece here with an electronic beat and the least overt Turkish vocals. I felt like I wanted to pull Crises off the shelf after this one, which is progressive pop through and through. However, other songs use the keyboards to take us on a wild cosmic trip, especially during instrumental stretches in the second half of songs like Dere Geliyor, and Çıt Çıt Çedene. Güzelliğin On Para Etmez feels like a Turkish folk song set against Pink Floyd keyboards.

For the most part, my favourite songs are the rockier ones like Badi Sabah Olmadan and Rakıya Su Katamam, but that's not always the case. When Dere Geliyor isn't taking us on a cosmic journey, it plays very minimalist indeed. We get Daşdemir's haunting voice but accompanied only by a sparse echoing guitar and keyboard swirls. It only leaps into action a couple of minutes in as hand drums provide the engines beneath an organic vessel of keyboards. And then there's Kalk Gidelim, which arrives out of the blue eight tracks in with a thoroughly different approach.

This is an exquisitely sassy song that sashays up to us with a serious purpose, bells shimmering in a sultry haze of sensuality. The melody is a delight and the beat even better. It never quits teasing us and we find ourselves effortlessly lost inside it, as if we dived in but never surfaced. Daşdemir has the lead again but, while she's as sweet as ever, she layers on seduction as if it's going out of style. It's hard not to read sexual metaphor into the point almost three minutes in when everything gets instrumentally frantic.

Generally speaking, there's a light heart at work here. There's sadness to be found in some songs, like Güzelliğin On Para Etmez, but precious little darkness. The most obvious is probably a theme that shows up after each instance of the title being sung on Leylim Ley, like it's call and response. Even there, it's a delicious darkness that teases us rather than threatens. Every time I listened to this album, which I did under different moods over a few days, it seemed clear that I left it happier than I found it. And with that thought, I threw the band's name into Google Translate to find that it means Golden Day. That makes sense, as does Aşk meaning Love.

They've been around for seven years, though I was surprised to find that Verhulst was the founder, seeking Turkish musicians rather than the other way around. This is their fifth album, suggesting a prolific work ethic. However, two of those albums came together, Yol and Âlem in 2021. At this rate, we ought to expect another one from them in 2025 and I'm already looking forward to it.

Those Damn Crows - Inhale/Exhale (2023)

Country: UK
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 17 Feb 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedi | YouTube

This third album shouldn't stop the rise of Those Damn Crows, because it's another strong album, even if I don't believe it's quite up to the standards of its predecessor, 2020's Point of No Return. It does reach those standards but not across the board, so this is a recommended 7/10 instead of the highly recommended 8/10 that I gave their previous album. It does much the same thing, knocking out a string of energetic but deceptively simple hard rock songs, full of hooks and destined to take a season ticket inside your brain. I don't do half points but you could think of it as a 7.5/10.

To my mind, This Time is Ready is when the album kicked into gear this time out but that's the fifth song. Wake Up (Sleepwalker) before it is pretty solid and interesting because it aims to do exactly what the title suggests. It's initially muzzled in post-production, as if we've been asleep but we're waking up in phases and we're stuck for a moment in that twilight zone between the two. Then it's happy to lift the muzzle, turn up the energy and bring us effortlessly back into the day. It feels like an excellent song to wake up to.

There are three songs before that one and they're all decent, but they didn't connect with me. The opener is Fill the Void, which barrels along with an electronic edge as if it wants to do a Powerman 5000 approach, but it's too smooth for that, ending up like an amped up Prodigy remix of a slightly slower song. Takedown ought to work. It's slower but just as urgent as the opener. I think it feels a little lacking because it doesn't build the way that most Those Damn Crows songs do, including the majority of what's still to come. Man on Fire does, so I'm not sure why it feels off. It seems to have all the necessary components but it doesn't have whatever Wake Up does.

And it's a long way short of what This Time I'm Ready does and that's because this one is a pristine grower. It's a little underwhelming when it kicks off, a soft song with an almost country edge, but it builds to a perfect hook of a chorus and there's all the effortless power that this band can bring to bear. Then there's the last third, which is glorious, almost finding a punchy Tool vibe as it takes us home. It's a peach of a song and, while it isn't technically a title track, it's as close as this album gets on that front, the title chanted behind the lead vocals.

And, after Wake Up woke us up and This Time I'm Ready got us ready, the album suddenly finds itself up there with the last one. I Am has a gorgeous groove to it, reminding me of a commercial Paradise Lost, which is weird because this is a long way from the Coridian album I reviewed before it. There, it was in moments but here it's in the grand sweep of the song. See You Again feels like a singalong song after about five seconds and it's exactly that. Both of these have that magnificent Those Damn Crows build too. Waiting for Me has some real character to it to close out the album, with some tasty bass from Lloyd Wood as it kicks off.

I've missed out two songs. Lay It All on Me is decent and I like Ronnie Huxford's drums as it wraps, but it's a lesser song to the others around it. However, Find a Way is my favourite song this time round. It boasts a particularly bouncy riff and I was moving so much to it that I started to miss the keys while I was taking notes. Shane Greenhall nails the vocal even more than he did on This Time I'm Ready and I Am. Once again, it builds, and even if it can't touch the last third of This Time, it's a better song overall.

The worst thing I can always say about Those Damn Crows is that they've never really carved out a firm sound of their own. The reason why they're so good is because they're talented musicians who consistently find that sweet spot where good musicianship and better songwriting meets palpable energy. They mean what they do and they always have and that's what resonates with people. They batter their way into our attention through sheer dedication and then their songs stay because of how memorable they are and, finally, get us moving because they're infectious. If that's what you want in an album, you can probably add a point to my rating.

Coridian - Hava (2023)

Country: New Zealand
Style: Progressive Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 10 Mar 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

I haven't heard Coridian before, even though this is the last in a set of four themed releases about the elements: two EPs, Oceanic and Caldera, to cover earth and water, then two full length albums, Eldu and Hava, to cover fire and air, specifically wind. However, they've sold me on their sound here even though I wasn't convinced on a first listen. It's very clean and modern and doesn't easily fit in only one bucket. I'm not even sure whether it's rock or metal, because it straddles the boundary so well. I'm calling it prog metal for the sake of a label, but there's more here from alt rock and post-rock than any of the usual suspects from prog metal. Dream Theater this isn't.

There's also a very American flavour here, but not so far that it turns me off, probably because it's so good at layering textures and because it's never exclusive. State of Mind, for instance, feels like post-everything. It's American post-grunge but also British post-punk and some post-rock textures fleshing it out. It's built on a System of a Down kind of riff but some commercial era Paradise Lost in breakdowns and with everything smoothed and polished to the exact shade of brushed steel on the cover art. The vocals are in between, full of melodies I'd expect from the Foo Fighters but with a grungier edge and even a drop into softer Coldplay territory at points.

That's an interesting mix and the rest of the album continues to play in that sort of area, but with odd departures here and there. It was initially awkward for me because I have a feeling the major influences are often going to be ones I don't know. Rakshasa adds a screamed backing vocal right out of emo, for a start, and that's not a genre I know, mostly because I'm not a fan of that style of vocals, but it works here because it's just another texture rather than a deliverer of fake emotion.

The contrast between the clean vocals of Dity Maharaj, which remain in front, and that scream by Michael Murphy of Written by Wolves, makes for a neat texture. The same goes in a very different way for the other guest vocal, by Jessie Booth of Ekko Park on Redefine, a tasty duet between two different but compatible vocal tones. I ought to check their bands out too, given that both of them are prominent and successful and I haven't heard anything by them before. It seems notable that Booth isn't the vocalist in Ekko Park though she guests here in that role. She's their guitarist.

I mention fake emotion not as a dig towards emo music, but because there's a further paradox for me here. Everything feels carefully constructed, as tends to be the case with prog, but it's battling hard to feel organic, the way that the best alt rock does. However smooth this felt, there's always a hint of grunge in the sound and I think that's what keeps it music to make us feel something, not just admire. Emo is all about making us feel something and it never works for me, because it feels manipulative. This doesn't. I feel that Coridian feel their own music. It's honest and I can easily see them on stage totally lost in the flow of these songs, even on their hundredth time through them.

The first half is solid, but I like the second half even more. It kicks off with Wicked Game, a song we all know that comes out of the blue. Maharaj's voice gets smoother here and Nick Raven's bass is a lot more obvious. It's not Diana Ankudinova but it's a tasty cover. I adore the opening to Coexist, a hint at Tool, I think, but I also adore the fact that the song proper maintains its high standards to become easily my favourite here. It's one of those songs that would sound great in a tiny club in a rundown corner of Auckland but just as great echoing over sixty thousand people at Eden Park.

I should mention The Unkindness too, because, as an atmospheric instrumental, it isn't the sort of song that I'd expect to mention but it's absolutely worthy of it. It isn't the only such piece here, as Algorithm is a capable intro and Exist is an interlude late on the first side, but this one is the best, because it serves both as a perfect buffer zone serving to help us down from Coexist's grandeur to become ready for the rest of the album and as a a worthy instrumental on its own merits. The last three songs are strong too, including the album's epic closer, Naya Din.

I've been listening to this album for far too long, because I have others to move on to, but it caught my attention. It sounded decent but not my sort of thing. The more I listened to it, the more it got its hooks into me and, after a month of mostly 7/10s, I have to bounce this one up to an 8/10.

Galneryus - Between Dread and Valor (2023)

Country: Japan
Style: Neo-Classical Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 14 Feb 2023
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I don't know why Galneryus aren't better known in the west. Maybe they just haven't played live a lot outside of their native Japan, but this is music ought to would play well in Europe. That most of the songs are sung in a combination of Japanese and English shouldn't matter at all. What should is that this is furious power metal with such a focus on the frenetic guitarwork of Syu, the one and only remaining founding member, that it could easily be classified instead as neo-classical metal. Syu shreds but he does it within a very power metal framework. Only the relatively brief bookends are instrumental but I'd happily listen to an instrumental version of this album.

The vocalist here is Masatoshi Ono, who's been with Galneryus since 2010 but also maintains a solo career, which has led him to perform the theme tunes to a number of anime series. He's clearly an immensely capable singer and the bonus track at the end of this album is a cover version of one of his own songs, but he has a constant challenge to make his vocals stand out above the guitars. He does good work from the opener proper, Run to the Edge, a nine minute epic, but he doesn't truly make himself obvious until Let Us Shine, ironically given that it's that song that also features the most outrageous guitar solo. Bravehearts allows him to break through too, but only 祈, the bonus track on which he covers himself, is truly a vocal piece.

Everyone else in the band acquits themselves well, Lea's drums perhaps the most obvious behind the guitars, but it all comes back to Syu. The album starts out with a guitar solo, literally fading in to a guitar workout that could well have been running for an hour beforehand. This is the intro, a short piece called Demolish the Wickedness! that's entirely instrumental. The other instrumental piece is the outro, A Piece of Souls, which is surprising because it's a keyboard piece, to give some time in the spotlight for Yuhki, who does good work throughout but, like Ono, is rarely the focus in earlier songs. He does get a few decent solos of his own, the one on Time Will Tell particularly tasty, with Taka's bass taking up the baton before Syu takes over once again.

Run to the Edge is not instrumental, but it often seems like it is, because the guitar takes over so well and so frequently that we almost forget that Ono is there to dish out lyrics. There are enough of them to make it seem like being in this band makes sense to him, but not so many that we would ever believe that this is music led by vocals. Even when he's in full flight on a song like Bravehearts where he soars like a pirate ship in full sail, we're still often listening to whatever Syu is conjuring up behind him, which usually tends to be frantic and dynamic. Only that bonus song is his, because it literally is.

I was sold on Syu's talent on the opening intro but he gets better as the album runs on until he's a constant backdrop and we start to take his contributions as the reality we live in and start to focus on the other things happening around him: Ono's vocals and the drops to quiet piano or keyboard atmosphere. He's so relentless on Let Us Shine, though, that he steals our attention back again, a solo that transforms into a videogame, like he's an ever-growing snake shimmying every which way to avoid touching anything and impossibly making it through the five hundredth level intact while we watch. It's a blistering solo and we have to remember to breathe throughout.

I'm not sure if I've heard Galneryus before, but they've been around since 2001, starting in Osaka but later moving to Tokyo. This is their sixteenth album, with no gap between exceeding two years, even during COVID. Had I been paying attention, I could have reviewed Into the Purgatory in 2019 and Union Gives Strength in 2021. Hopefully reviewing Between Dread and Valor in 2023 will keep them on my radar and maybe add them to yours too.

Peter Storm & The Blues Society - Second (2023)

Country: Portugal
Style: Blues Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 10 Mar 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

This band aren't remotely what they seem, which is not a bad thing. The one thing that the cover is clear about is that they're a four piece blues band and a good one as well. However, they're not an American band or indeed a British one, which seems to cover the majority of blues rock bands even today. They hail from Porto in Portugal, even though they sing in very clear English. And that's not because the very Anglo sounding Peter Storm happens just moved there, because Peter Storm has no part to play in this band, unless he's the dog on the cover. The vocalist and guitarist who clearly leads the Blues Society is João Belchior.

However, while he has a rich and warm voice with excellent inflection and he has plenty of time for his guitarwork to shine, Bino Ribeiro steals the album out from him only twenty-three seconds in. It's guitar that kicks off Write Down the Blues, though very possibly Ribeiro's rhythm guitar, but a few bars later, it's his harmonica that takes over. It's not omnipresent here, because Ribeiro has a percussion credit on top of those other two roles, but whenever it manifests, it's immediately the sound of the album for me.

For a while, there's a pattern in play. The Blues Society start out with a storming rocking blues and then slow it right down with a slow blues song, and they keep that alternation throughout the first half of the album. Write Down the Blues is the first rocker, just to get us in the mood, and Blame is the first slow blues, with a tasty groove, an elegant guitar and a haunting harmonica. Every time I start to think about how good Belchior is, Ribeiro wanders in and steals my attention right back. It would be fair to call Blame one of my favourites, a creeper of a piece with a Mark Knopfler vibe to the vocals and sometimes the guitar too.

Go Down and Play shifts back from subtle to blatant as a sassy up tempo piece even if it isn't quite the rocker Write Down the Blues was. It's more inexorable and there's that squealing harmonica to make me grin like a madman again. Then Meditation Blues lives up to its title, another slow but tasty piece. And, because you're seeing the pattern, the gloriously titled I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home Tonight ramps things back up again, adding some talkbox that works, even if it grounds the song in the seventies. What are the odds that 52nd Avenue will be a slow blues song?

Well, it isn't, just to mess with our minds, and the pattern shifts over the second half. However the songs order though, there are clearly two modes that the Blues Society mine well. The best of the rockers are early, I think, Write Down the Blues setting a high bar from the outset. However, when it comes to slow blues, all these songs resonate. Blame is an early highlight but I Told You (Not to Treat Me Wrong) may be even better. Never mind Mark Knopfler, this one trawls in Peter Green in especially its vocal approach and some in the guitarwork too.

The question I can't help but ask myself is which is the better approach of the two but I haven't got much reason to answer it. They do both well and even if, over a few listens, I might start to favour a few of the slow blues numbers over their rocking peers, I have no interest in being picky. In either mode, the songs succeed for the same reasons: Belchior's guitar (and, a little behind it, his vocals) and Ribeiro's harmonica. And even if I favour the latter without hesitation, the songs where it fails to show up at all succeed too. Just check out the delicate guitar solo that constitutes the first half of the second half of Meditation Blues. A harmonica wouldn't add anything to this piece because it's all it needs to be with that guitar. And, hey, it's all the more glorious when it shows back up on the talking blues, 52nd Avenue.

I'd have liked to have heard José Reis's bass more, but he's not interested in being flash. He stays back in the mix adding texture to the songs for the most part, though he dominates the early part of I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home Tonight. The remaining member of the band is Jorge Oliveira, who goes by Mister Shuffle, and he's a thoroughly reliable drummer who's exacty where he needs to be in the mix. He doesn't seem to shine initially but, the more we get used to what the album does, the more he stands out on repeat listens. He does a lot more on Blame than we think on our first listen. Everyone here is excellent.

I guess there's one more thing that the cover is honest about and that's that Second is the second Peter Storm & The Blues Society album. I bet you can't guess what their first was called! Of course you can and that means that you already know what title they'll slap onto the next one.