Angel - Once Upon a Time (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 21 Apr 2023
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Wikipedia

I often say that everything driving Apocalypse Later is discovery. I love finding new bands to share with the world, which otherwise might not be able to find them, especially the way radio is here in the States. However, the last few years have highlighted to me that there are old bands long gone who are suddenly back and they count as discovery in two ways. For old fans like me, it's discovery of their return, a decade, two or even four since they last went into the studio. For new fans, who weren't around in their respective heydays, it's discovery ofwhy they were important and may still be important.

Angel are one of these, because they were a fantastic band in the seventies who had been unfairly relegated to a handful of footnotes in the history of rock 'n' roll: they had an ambigrammatic logo, meaning that it looks the same upside down as right way up; they were discovered by Kiss's Gene Simmons in a nightclub; and they deliberately wore all white at a time when rock bands, like Kiss, tended to dress entirely in black. The fact that they knocked out five albums, including a couple of classics, doesn't tend to be mentioned at all.

This is their second album back, which makes me happy because they'd got into a sort of cycle of a reformation and new album every twenty years. The last one was Risen in 2019 and it was solid, if too long. It was an impeccable classic at twenty minutes and would have been a peach at fifty, but settled for being decent at seventy-five. Maybe they realised that in hindsight because this runs a more manageable fifty-three and it's much better for not sprawling too far. It may not quite reach the pinnacles of that album but it's much more consistent throughout.

The heart of the band is Frank DiMino on lead vocals and Punky Meadows on guitar, both founder members. The others joined in 2018, so all played on Risen, and are still in place for this follow-up, because original bassist Mikie Jones passed in 2009, Barry Brandt presumably chose not to return for a third reunion after showing up for the previous two, and Gregg Giuffria probably has plenty of things to do with his time already, given that, beyond rock music in Angel, Giuffria and House of Lords, he became a businessman, running development companies, casinos and hotels.

The Torch and Black Moon Rising are a pair of excellent openers and, if you'd never heard of Angel in your life, you would absolutely assume from the former that DiMino sang in the seventies. They simply don't make those effortless hard rock voices any more and he doesn't seem to have lost his power. It boggles my mind that he ended up for a while singing in Las Vegas seventies rock tribute bands. I mean, his voice is absolutely perfect for that, but he deserves new material too and these are perfect for that. So's It's Alright, which is a smooth song to follow the funky Black Moon Rising and the rocking The Torch.

While The Torch may be the best song here, there are a few songs happy to challenge it. I found a few of them on the second side, songs like Turn the Record Over, rather ironically, and Rock Star, a song that loses out by featuring a riff more than a little reminiscent of Layla, but otherwise plays very well indeed. Following them, Without You isn't the ballad its title might suggest and it might be better than either of them, because, like It's Alright and others, it features some particularly energetic guitarwork from Meadows. He hasn't lost his magic either.

The most memorable song and another candidate for best is the title track, because it stands out immediately and consistently. It's a storytelling song that's not easily ignored and, more crucially, it works. It has a more elongated title than the album: Once Upon a Time an Angel and a Devil Fell in Love (And It Did Not End Well), a wonderfully catchy line that's only awkward as a song title. It's seamless in the song and the story, though I have no idea if it's truly based on the YA novel by Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone, or simply inspired by that line, which went viral. I'm guessing that the moaning of an angel in the second half isn't in a YA paranormal romance.

Also worth mentioning but for a different reason are the surprising pairing halfway through the album of Let It Rain and Psyclone. Let It Rain is the decent ballad of the two here, with the other, Blood of My Blood, Bone of My Bone, the only song I don't like here. Let It Rain plays pretty well as melodic rock but it's followed by the heaviest song anywhere on the album, which is not so much a heavy metal song as thinking seriously about it. It's easy to see that Y&T, who were formed rather surprisingly before Angel, saw them as a big influence, because this sounds like Y&T in their early-eighties heyday, right after Angel split up. DiMino and Dave Meniketti are even closer here than they usually are.

So, Angel are back and I'm happy. I can deal with a four year album release schedule. Bring on the next one! Call this a 7.5/10, though I'm still thinking about an 8. It's better than Risen but it doesn't soar as high.

Lumnia - Humanity Despair (2023)

Country: Brazil
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 Mar 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | YouTube

I've been fascinated by what's coming out of South America lately and symphonic metal seems to be one of their genres of choice, with this debut album from Rio de Janeiro-based Lumnia another good example of how they're merging and shifting genres down there to create new hybrids.

Fundamentally, this is symphonic metal, but the metal behind it is a fascinating mix of old school, like the doom riffs on Breathing Space, and new school, like the more modern flavour evident on Embrace Darkness. There's a clear gothic metal influence too, right from the outset on Breathing Space, but it's in the general approach rather than any specific element, even if there's violin and piano here and there and the band employ the use of beauty and the beast vocal contrasts.

The lead vocalist here is Odete Salgado, who mostly sings clean soprano, though she does dip down to a much deeper voice on Madness Interude and, if my ears aren't misleading me, even tackles a harsh style very briefly. Someone provides what sounds to me like a male harsh voice, but nobody is credited in that backing singer role. As male as it sounds, there are points where I wondered if it could also be Salgado, who demonstrates quite the range here, from soaring soprano to whispered texture and many points in between, including a much more nasal witchy tone that she puts on at points for a very specific effect.

Now, I don't believe she is doing the harsh voice, and it's clear in the video for Queen of Night that it's not her, but the thought persists. I think it's because she has an occasional habit of mirroring the male vocal but behind, so that she shows from the sides like a halo of light around an eclipse. It's not every time, but it's there on more than one song and it provides a little touch of class that resonates with further listens. I was a little jarred on my first listen by elements I didn't expect, so it took a few songs for me to get what Lumnia were doing. Once on board, this is worthy and varied.

Breathing Space is a good opener because it sets the stage for what's to come. Hugo Carvalho and Marcel Gil generate a very tasty churning riff to open up and then Salgado soars in. As soon as she arrives though, the male voice shows up behind her, as a dark echo. She's left alone to sing solo on most of the album, but the backing vocal is prominent on Breathing Space and it's interesting for being almost negative space, like a black hole swallowing the fabric of reality. It isn't quite trying to be a portfolio song, a band sampler in five minutes, but it almost works that way.

Humanity Despair is a more focused song and it's a good one. There's a nice use of bells during one transition and Salgado's nasal approach shows up here. Broken Glass adds some pace and I do like this band a little faster than their typical tempo. It does slow down again, later on, of course, and churns gloriously while Salgado returns to her nasal witch voice. These are all good songs and they help flesh out what Breathing Space suggested might be coming. With Madness Interlude adding different vocal textures, it's clear that the band thought carefully about how to order the songs.

As the album runs on, those songs only get more interesting though and I started to take the high level sweep of the band as a given while focusing on little details. There's a violin on Bitter Earth, adding texture behind an acoustic guitar. Pedro Mello gets a spotlight moment as Queen of Night kicks off to showcase his bass. There are unusual rhythms on Embrace Darkness, so giving Matheus Moura plenty of attention. Many of these are at the beginning and/or end of songs, but some are midway, like the neat guitarwork in the midsection of Bitter Earth, extending into the second half.

My favourite song for both intro and outro has to be Violet. The former is elegant, with piano and acoustic guitar setting the scene and Salgado's clear voice joining them. The crunch arrives soon enough, after only thirty seconds or so, and we're into the song proper. The ending is even quicker, with Salgado reaching a crescendo above the general build of the song and the male harsh voice showing up for a moment of neat contrast, only for both to drop away entirely to a minimal piano that sounds like drops of water. It's very tasty. The song in between isn't bad either.

The song I'd have expected to be my least favourite is Constellations, because it's clearly a ballad, but I had no problems with it. It starts off like, with angels singing far above Salgado, and it keeps on like a ballad too, with the male backing voice going clean for a change, almost a folk grounding behind Salgado's vocalisations. The melodies are strong and it moves along pleasantly enough. It does heavy up a little, a couple of minutes in, but it drops back down out of that soon enough, with little interest in doing anything that's been done elsewhere.

I haven't heard a killer symphonic metal album from South America yet, but I'm increasingly sure that there's one out there that I haven't found yet. In the meantime, this is another worthy entry to the genre from Brazil.

Ihsahn - Fascination Street Sessions (2023)

Country: Norway
Style: Progressive Rock/Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 24 Mar 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Fascination Street Sessions is only an EP rather than a full length album and its trio of songs count for only thirteen minutes of music, but I've heard a lot of buzz about this release and ought to take a listen. And hey, Ihsahn seems to be releasing all his new music as EPs lately, this being his third in five years since his most recent album, Àmr in 2018. I didn't review Pharos in 2020 but I did take on Telemark earlier that same year, so I guess I've set precedent.

Both those EPs featured three original tracks from Ihsahn, along with a pair of covers, each one of them an interesting choice that we might not expect from a pioneering black metal musician. The choices on Pharos were songs by Portishead and a-ha, while Telemark tackled a Lenny Kravitz song and an early classic by Iron Maiden. Those choices ably highlight how broadly Ihsahn is casting his musical net nowadays. Not only is this not black metal, even though he brings in a harsh voice on a couple of tracks; it's often not even metal, dipping frequently from a prog metal mindset to a prog rock one.

If we took that three/two combo as a template, Ihsahn chose to ditch it here. Instead we only get a pair of original songs, The Observer and Contorted Movements, along with one cover, this time of a song by Kent, an alternative rock band from Sweden, called Dom andra, or The Others. This take is a little heavier, but still clearly a rock song, and it doesn't otherwise bring anything new to it, so it's much more important here as a further guide to what Ihsahn is listening to and is impacted by than as a new piece of music. To me, it's an introduction to Kent.

It also plays more consistently as rock music than the two originals. The Observer especially has an impressive range, starting out prog metal, dropping down to prog rock and then adding emphasis by trawling in that black metal harsh vocal and leaping back to metal. It's all about emphasis. The initial verses are softer, delivered as prog, perhaps even alternative rock, but the ramp up is pure metal and, however many times it goes back and forth, that's where it ends up, in prog metal with a harsh voice.

It's a good song, but I like Contorted Movements even more. It kicks in with a guitar solo from the old school hard and heavy era, when bands had become heavy enough to stretch the boundaries of hard rock but weren't quite at the point heavy metal would become when it found a need to mark a delineation from extreme metal. It softens like Contorted Monuments, but the ramp up is much more subtle, the harsh aspects of Ihsahn's voice creeping in rather than just taking over, and the music behind it follows suit, gradually accelerating into high gear rather than shifting up a gear to snap into it.

And that's about it, because three songs isn't a lot to talk about. This is a good release, but it's not the killer that I'd been led to believe. It also feels skimpy as an EP, even if that's just because we've been spoiled by the previous two. By comparison, it's short and there's enough room to bond this material together. In many ways, it is three individual tracks in the same packaging rather than an EP that says something new. It's a 7/10 for the music, but I've dropped a point for the length.

But, with that, I have to wonder about what we might expect from an Ihsahn full length. He's never gone more than three years without one as a solo artist until now. A blip during COVID lockdowns is understandable, but he's definitely been busy with his music, knocking out more than an album's worth since Àmr. I wonder if he's seeking a new direction and isn't sure if he's found it yet. Frankly, whether he is or isn't, I'm still listening.

Shem - III (2023)

Country: Germany
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Apr 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Prog Archives

You know someone's not aching for commercial acceptance when they call themselves a collective of musicians performing improvisational sound pieces and then kick off their third album with an instrumental piece of droning space rock that lasts for sixteen minutes. It's called Paragate and it finds its groove quickly, with drones underneath and space rock chirps over the top. Gradually the bass makes itself more obvious and it moves into a more traditional space rock mode as it speeds up. It ends more like Hawkwind than it begins. It begins like krautrock, which is probably the most effective way to look at this.

We could easily call Paragate a test, because less open minded listeners aren't going to make it to the second song and that's probably fine, because this isn't for them. Anyone who does will find a song of an altogether different length, Lamentum not even making it to three minutes but doing what it does just as well as Paragate did over sixteen. That bass, courtesy of Tobias Brendel, finds its purpose easiest here; even though it only has a five note refrain, it provides the melody that's crucial to the piece, until the vocals show up to serve as a counter. There are no lyrics here, just an instrument that happens to be a human voice.

There's a Tangerine Dream vibe to these pieces that seems counter-intuitive, given that this is an actual band playing the usual instruments we expect a rock band to play: guitars, bass and drums, along with synthesiser work from Alexander Meese. Tangerine Dream weren't always just synths, but that tends to be how we think of them, and Shem try to achieve the same thing here that they did in the early seventies, as they shifted from purely experimental mode into the unlikely success of the Virgin years. Refugium, the twelve minute soundscape that wraps up the album is the most like Tangerine Dream, merely framed as a post-rock band.

In many ways, Refugium is a combination of the first two songs. It's pure soundscape, built on the sounds of space rock, but a long way from Hawkwind. The vocal here is buried so far behind any of the instruments that we wonder if it's actually a vocal. Again, it's all vocalisations rather than any attempt to deliver lyrics, but it could easily be a musical instrument mimicking a voice. For all I can be sure, it could even be a sample, but I'd guess at one of these musicians in the studio. That bass makes its presence known again, even though it's almost submerged under the synths, and it has an even more stronger focus on drones.

In between is my favourite piece of music, which is Restlicht. It's much longer than the short song and much shorter than the long songs, but that still leaves seven and a half minutes for it to build. It's a stalker of a piece that finds a new influence that I wasn't expecting in the slightest. Often, it sounds like listening to the Bad Seeds without Nick Cave's voice ever joining in. It drifts further to krautrock as it goes, finding an almost industrial texture five minutes in. It plays with intensity at this point, testing how intense something intense stays if it stays intense, if that makes any sense at all. Contrasts are difficult when we don't move from one thing to another. This is almost asking us to contrast what it does with everything else we know.

And there's some of this in Refugium too, which makes it all the more appropriate piece to wrap up the album, somehow more of an epic than the opener, even though it's four minutes shorter. It has the bigger build, for sure, and it's more of a journey. There are moments late on where we almost end up in a guitar solo, but Alexander Gallagher resists the urge to get that traditional. There's an industrial feel here too, but one generated by bass and drums rather than synths, so it plays out in a very different way.

I can totally buy into this being improvised music, but music probably improvised on themes that a band of musicians already had in mind. As such, it feels loose but also focused, because everyone's working from a common inspiration. I liked this on a first listen, even though that daunting sixteen minute opener is my least favourite track here. However, I like it all the more on further listens. It's fascinating music, even if it is improvised, and I'm eager to check out those previous two albums, II, as you might expect, in 2021, and before that, The Hill AC in 2018.

Metallica - 72 Seasons (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 14 Apr 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Tiktok | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

It still boggles my mind just how big Metallica got. It's not that they didn't deserve it—those of us listening early on knew that they were gamechangers—but that they've achieved a level of success that's unparalleled for heavy music. People will happily splurge on expensive Metallica tickets who have no interest in listening to metal because it's Metallica and I'm sure that will hold true even as they return to the thrash metal from those early years. I wonder what the naysayers who felt that the band had betrayed their roots when they went commercial with the Black Album think of this.

Now, it has problems so it's not a match for any of those original four releases, but it reaches their heights at points and does so in much the same way that they did. The opening title track is maybe a little cleaner in production than Master of Puppets but it wouldn't be out of place on that album and that's high praise indeed. Initial single Lux Æterna is the closest they've sounded to Diamond Head since Kill 'em All and it has all the energy that came pouring off their debut, which came out an almost unfathomable forty years ago this year.

That all suggests that this is aiming at nostalgia and that's partly true but the album is at its best when it's looking way back or looking forward. 72 Seasons took me back to the eighties and Tommy Vance playing something from an upcoming album on The Friday Rock Show and I couldn't wait for the show to finish so I could fast forward through my tape to listen to it again. I remember exactly where I was when I first heard One; it was that impactful a moment. But the intro to Sleepwalk My Life Away is new, a combination of prominent bass, unusual drum rhythms and memorable rhythm guitar, all building to Steve Vai-esque stunt guitarwork. It's moments like this that stand out here, but we have to wait until the end of the album for another one.

Of course, not everything is up to that standard. Sleepwalk My Life Away drifts on and other songs aren't as ambitious to begin with. Shadows Follow feels too long at six minutes, a problem that the album struggles with throughout, while Screaming Suicide feels too derivative of earlier Metallica songs. It's like It's Electric crossed with Through the Never. It sounds good but I still can't hear it as its own song rather than a couple of earlier ones. You Must Burn! is the first of a few plodders that I can take or leave. They do this well and there are points when it prowls menacingly, but mostly it just feels like it's played in bold print for no reason other than emphasis.

Those first half dozen tracks tally up thirty-six minutes and there are plenty of entire albums that wrap up sooner than that, but this one's not even half done. Perhaps because they spend so much time touring and the years add up between albums, they feel the need to make them generous. In this case, there are forty minutes still to come over a further six songs and it ends up feeling quite a lot, especially when they kick off with more plodders in Crown of Barbed Wire and Chasing Light. The biggest problem the second half has, though, is that it's much less versatile in approach than the first half, so that the songs blur together.

Now, it's all immediately recognisable as Metallica and it's enjoyable enough. It's certainly easy to listen to, but nothing stands out until we get to Room of Mirrors, which is a long way. This one's an up-tempo song that feels light on its feet and Kirk Hammett delivers a neat extended guitar solo, but it takes almost twenty-five minutes for the second side to get to it. I wonder if these songs are able to stand out if heard in isolation, like on the radio. Certainly I heard a teasing amount of Thin Lizzy in Too Far Gone? and I'll check that out separately to see how well it plays on its own merits. Is that going to apply to the other songs on the second side? I don't know yet.

And, sixty-four minutes into the album, Metallica start up Inamorata, which is the longest song on any Metallica album at over eleven minutes and it's worth waiting for. It's slower than the rest of the album, but it has quite the story arc. Initially, it's a doom metal song and a lively one too, and, whenever it threatens to descend back into plodding mode, it does something interesting. Around the five minute mark, it drops into mellow Black Sabbath and the build back out is a tasty one. It's something new from Metallica, even if it looks a long way back for its inspiration, and it's welcome.

And so, this is excellent when it's feeling extra-nostalgic and it's great when it's imaginative, but it isn't either of those things for long enough. It's a good album, don't get me wrong, but there are a few points where it threatens to be something much more than that but never sustains it.

Matt Elliott - The End of Days (2023)

Country: France
Style: Dark Folk/Jazz
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 7 Apr 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Wikipedia

Here's something fascinating. Matt Elliott is British but he lives in France where he's a noted folk musician in the neo-folk movement. His music is dark and melancholy and the one immediate and abiding comparison is to Leonard Cohen, but it doesn't take long to realise that this is something different. His voice, as we hear quickly on the opener, The End of Days, is whispery and beautifully broken just like latter day Cohen, but his hypnotic Spanish guitar rhythms is more reminiscent of Cohen's first two albums. That's an interesting pairing and it works very well indeed.

The biggest difference between Elliott and Cohen is that Cohen's songs were fundamentally about delivering lyrics, with the music, as glorious as it often was, serving to support that task. Elliott is a musician perhaps before he's a singer and poet, and he's keen on taking these folk songs into jazz territory, not just playing guitar but also saxophone, in a way that mimics a clarinet. One of the six songs on offer is an eight minute instrumental and the others feature long instrumental passages that work wonderfully on their own and somehow bring a strange focus onto the words.

Elliott is not the poet that Cohen was, though there are some wonderful phrases to suggest that he could be—"Sweep away the broken glass; some things were never made to last" begins Song of Consolation—and he has the brevity that the best poets find, discarding a thousand words to keep the one that matters. He's been a solo artist since 2003, previously known for indie electronica and remixes, usually credited as the Third Eye Foundation. I believe he's still active under that name, a primary band that's become over time a side project to his solo work in neofolk and dark jazz.

These two elements mix gloriously and the title track is a fantastic example. It starts out folk, just like a Cohen song, but the words don't stand out, maybe being an angry response to COVID, the guitar standing out far more and growing into jazz, as a sort of mad funeral dirge which is utterly gorgeous, not unlike the funeral procession for the elephant in Santa Sangre. It unfolds over ten minutes and they're ten unfathomably short minutes, even though it feels when they're over that we've just listened to an entire album, not just a single song.

January's Song takes us back to the folk. When the vocals arrive, they appear to be in choral form but it may well just be Elliott accompanying himself through echo and overlay. This is even more of a melancholy piece than the opener, but it's that rich sort of melancholy that Cohen mastered and which always lifts me rather than depresses me. It always tells me that times are dark but there's still beauty to be found and both are inherent in this music. There are precious few lyrics here, an isolated verse, but they seem to respond to COVID in succinct fashion. It's all about mood, the jazz swirling around the guitar like a tiny storm.

The most beautiful piece is the instrumental, Healing a Wound Will Often Begin with a Bruise. It's almost a vocal piece with the guitar providing the voice, because it's that sort of lead instrument, but it feels like an instrumental immediately. I was almost wary of Elliott's voice showing up but it never does, until the next song, Flowers for Bea, the twelve and a half minute epic of the album. It also has few lyrics, so after a a slow verse, it shifts into instrumental mode, driven this time by the cello of Gaspar Claus. Eventually there's a second verse that fades out in an echo, as if we're in an empty hall that still contains the ghosts of its years. It's all grief, but the emotions behind that do change over the dozen minutes.

There's a lot of emotion here, even when Elliott isn't singing, though his voice adds fresh levels to that emotion. Unresolved, for instance, is just a short piece to wrap up, but it's a sort of refusal to acknowledge that a loved one is gone. Never mind Flowers for Bea, which are exactly what you're thinking because she's gone, this one asks when she's coming back, even though she never will. I'm sure there's a word in another language to describe that feeling.

I like this a lot and need to dig back to see how Elliott got to this point. Not everything solo seems to be in this vein, but it may have moved more and more towards this dark folk/jazz hybrid. It may be that it's primarily for the Ici, d'ailleurs label in France. At this point in time, it's special. I feel a need to know when he got there.

Magnus Karlsson's Free Fall - Hunt the Flame (2023)

Country: Sweden
Style: Symphonic Power Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 14 Apr 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Wikipedia

The ever-prolific Magnus Karlsson, of Primal Fear fame, among a whole slew of other projects that have benefitted from his talents, usually as a guitarist and sometimes as a keyboardist, is back for another Free Fall album. That's his solo project, where he performs everything himself, except the drums, and whichever lead vocalists show up to guest on tracks. Anders Köllerfors plays the drums here, as he did last time out, on We are the Night in 2020. Lead vocals change on a per song basis, with nobody doubling up. I believe everyone's new to a Free Fall album too, which isn't typical.

As always, the style is power metal with clean vocals and virtuouso guitarwork, drenched in layers of keyboards. It's all capable stuff and the worst songs here are decent, simply unable to carve out a special place in our attention above their peers. Of course, with this multi-vocalist approach, the best song here may depend on which singer meets your personal taste in power metal the closest. As Karlsson is a constant throughout, I'll suggest that his most adventurous guitarwork is on Hunt the Flame and The Lucid Dreamer.

Hunt the Flame is the opener and it may well be the best track here, with six minutes on the dot to flesh itself out, excellent solo sections and a versatile vocal from Anders Köllerfors, best known for Crowne nowadays, I think, even though he's sung for Art Nation longer. He has a a very clean voice, so it's incredibly easy to listen to, but he has technique and power, showing off a little towards the end but impressing more with more subtle sections earlier in the song. It's countered well by You Can't Hurt Me Anymore, which is more commercial, less frenetic and more elegant, guest vocalist Jakob Samuelsson veering into arena rock for his melodies.

All these guests do exactly what Karlsson wants from them, though they do blur together a little, mostly working to very consistent approaches. Most are Scandinavian, the initial pair Swedish, as is Jake E of Chyra and Dreamland and, I presume, Kristian Fyhr, of Ginevra (wth Karlsson) and Perpetual Edge. I'm seeing a pair of Norwegians, Michael Eriksen of Circus Maximus and Terje Harøy of Pyramaze, and one Finn, Antti Railio of Raskasta Joulua, who gets the closer, Summoning the Stars, onto which he can stamp his authority. It's another strong song, perhaps not quite up to the opener but coming close. It's also the longest song here, suggesting that Karlsson nails those songs that have time to breathe, but not so long that it could be called an epic.

Other singers hail from further afield, starting with James Durbin, formerly of Quiet Riot and now of his own band, Durbin, who's American. I appreciated Durbin's debut album, The Beast Awakens, a couple of years ago, and he fits in well here, on an elegant song called Thunder Calls. I see Girish Pradhan here too, of Firstborne fame and lately Girish and the Chronicles, who get a lot of airplay on Chris Franklin's Raised on Rock show. And that leaves a couple of South American singers, both of whom shine here.

The first is James Robledo, a Chilean singer who fronts Sinner's Blood, and his song stands out for its hints at middle eastern melodies early on and for his delivery. It's Far from Home, which seems fair, and there's some grit in his voice that elevates it in my mind above many of his peers here. He works in much the same style but that grit feels like he's giving more and we can feel the energy, especially when he escalates. It's a good song too and that never hurts.

Best of all, though, is Raphael Mendes from Brazil, who's guested on a bunch of European albums before releasing anything in an actual band setting, his band right now being Icon of Sin. I love his voice, but I have to acknowledge that it's hardly the most original here, given that he could easily be mistaken for a certain Bruce Dickinson. His song here is Following the Damned, which would be less of a standout if one of the other vocalists here fronted it. It's a bit more symphonic, perhaps, but not a huge departure from other songs. However, he makes it his own as soon as he opens his mouth and suddenly we're listening to Iron Maiden as a symphonic band, which is neat. Mendes's sustain is fantastic and I'd love to hear him take on Hallowed Be Thy Name.

If you know Magnus Karlsson in any of his various incarnations—and, if you've been following my reviews at Apocalypse Later for a while, you'll have seen him pop up on a solo album called Heart Healer; an Allen/Olzon album, Worlds Apart, and a Primal Fear album, Metal Commando—you'll know what to expect from him. This is more of the same, without any disappointment, but it plays better for me as an exploration of a bunch of vocalists, most of whom I hadn't heard before.

One Horse Band - Useless Propaganda (2023)

Country: Italy
Style: Garage Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 7 Apr 2023
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I was planning to review the third album from John Diva and the Rockets of Love today, but I found myself digging too far into why it underwhelmed me to quickly acknowledge that, if I wrote a review, it would be the sort of negative review I try to avoid. Instead, I checked out a few others and came up short until this one, from a band from Milan who play an interesting form of garage rock. I came close to ditching this one too, because the opener, Santa Claus, doesn't start out like that at all, its approach more like an attempt to merge Tom Waits and Shane MacGowan into a cool unique voice. And that's fine, but it wasn't what I was looking for.

However, I didn't turn it off because I was interested to see where the album went, and it went in a very different direction a couple of minutes in and especially once Killing Floor showed up. This is where the garage rock kicks in, with a drummer who sounds like he only has three drums in his kit but he's happy to beat the crap out of each of them for us. The vocals are still deliberately whiskey soaked but far more emphatic and driving melodies rather than singer/songwriter introspections. The guitar rocks and the kazoo... well, let's just say that it sounds very much like someone's playing a kazoo here and I sure ain't judging because it sounds great, like a bunch of interesting musicians jamming in their garage.

As the album goes, it sounds like the band shift further backwards in time. Supersonic ditches the kazoo but keeps everything else and feels primal, like something the Sonics might have recorded a lot more decades ago now than is comfortable to think about. It's a Gimmick emphasises that they like looking back, because it sounds like a fifties pop song rocked up in loud but simplistic fashion, a sort of Dion & The Belmonts type of song. It feels unusual because whoever the lead vocalist is in One Horse Band sings the verses but leaves the chorus to a backing singer. Also it heavies up when we don't expect, which is another tasty touch.

As you might expect for garage rock, there's a punk sound here too and that's clear once we get to Useless Propaganda and Hello Charlie. That rough voice suggests traditional punk influences but a post-punk mindset in the melodies. I hear the Clash here, both original first album sound and later adventures beyond it. Of course, this isn't the only layer, because Useless Propaganda ends with a sort of Supremes refrain and Hello Charlie adds a trumpet to give it a more avant-garde edge. It's a heady mixture and it highlights how much energy there must be in One Horse Band's garage on rehearsal nights.

Now, the energy does drop at points for effect, because One Horse Band aren't a one trick pony. In Ice Cream, the power is stripped away in a flash to leave the singer returning to the Waits whisper on the opener, set against a loud slow blues backdrop, and I Sing opens up with a delicate folk tune that sounds like it's being played in a hip coffee house, before it launches into full on garage punk, just to shock the hipsters sipping their expensive artisan coffees. A Little More is delicate too, but it stays that way, even as it builds. It showcases a different side of the band but it's effective. What I find strange here is that I wasn't sold on the quiet voice on Santa Claus but I love it on Ice Cream and A Little More.

What this all adds up to is that, if I was wandering past the One Horse Band garage during one of their rehearsals, I'd absolutely stop and listen. I wouldn't think they were anything special initially, just good at what they do, but, as time would pass and song would move to song, my estimation of their worth would continue to increase. There's a lot more on this album than the initial approach suggests and it's all tasty stuff.

And, all that said, I've probably misled you, because the key word in One Horse Band isn't Band but One. That's because there's only one musician here, ignoring the trumpet Tom Moffet contributes to Hello Charlie, and he's called One Horse Band because he wears a fake horse head everywhere public, in the same way that Buckethead wears a fried chicken bucket. Oh, and yes, he performs as a one man band in the sense that he plays multiple instruments at the same time on stage. That's why the drum sound is so simple. And this is his third album.

So, what's his name and what's he's hiding? I haven't the faintest idea, but he sounds great. Which famous musicians live in Milan but are never seen at One Horse Band shows? Inquiring minds want to know.