Los Lonely Boys - Resurrection (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 2 Aug 2024
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

Los Lonely Boys is made up of three brothers, the Garzas, and this is called Resurrection because it's a reunion. When Jojo Garza left in 2019, they went on hiatus, but he came back in 2022 and so they're back in business again. As they hadn't released an album for a few years before that split, this ninth album comes a decade after its predecessor. It's not only a good one, it's an agreeably versatile one, as fans might expect, because they're well known for combining rock 'n' roll, blues, country, soul and Tex-Mex into a commercial sound all their own.

The surprising song for me was the opener, Wish You Would, because the obvious influence here is the Beatles, who didn't venture much into the genres listed above. It's a rock song more than pop, but it's written exactly like Lennon and McCartney would write it and there are whole sections of music simply drenched in the Merseyside sound.

As if to counter that, it's followed by I Let You Think That You Do, which is far more ZZ Top, not just rock over pop with a powerful guitar solo, but firmly rooted in the blues and obviously flavoured with the Lone Star state. This is a song that you simply can't imagine originating from any other location, launched with harmonica and unfolding with pure Texas dirt. It wouldn't shock me if they recorded this outside in the desert with nothing in sight except for tumbleweeds and armadillos stomping their toes, except that I think they really moved all those into a roadhouse and recorded it there instead.

Much of what follows sits in between those two sounds, at least until we get to the majestic closer, Bloodwater, which returns us firmly to the blues.

Initially, it's lively in a party sense, a string of songs that are easy to dance to and often shift into a Spanish verse or two. Dance with Me is sassy and soulful, a quintessential Latin song, right down to strong brass and a Cuban beat. It takes a lot to not move to this one and, with different filters, it could be a Latin pop single. Send More Love is a textbook example of laid back country rock, with a timely hook in "This world is going crazy! Can you send more love?" Natural Thing is an engaging ballad, with a strong guitar.

As we move into the second half, things remain lively but shift more into rock 'n' roll, starting with Can't Get No Love, which is such straightforward piano and guitar driven rock 'n' roll that Elvis has to have sung it at some point. Painted Memories adds a strong dose of Latin flavour and country too, but remains just as fundamentally rooted in rock 'n' roll. Hooked on You is as different again as it can be without ever leaving that genre, sassing it up into a punchy pop rock song.

In between those three is See Your Face, which is a smoocher of a song even though it's not overt ballad material. The ladies have been dancing all the way through, but they will drag in their men for this one. But hey, let's leap past that and relish in the closer.

Bloodwater is a soft blues song with a very tasty intro indeed, shifting from dirty into smooth with effortless charm. It's somewhere in between Jeff Healey and the Neville Brothers, I think, with an excellent and patient organ providing the perfect backdrop. There are a number of strong guitar solos on this album, including on I Let You Think That You Do and Natural Thing, but this leaves all of them in the dust. This isn't just a Henry Garza solo, it's a magnetic gem, somehow laid back but still soaring, more B. B. King than Stevie Ray Vaughan. It's the jewel in an already glorious song, easily my favourite song, ahead of the very different pairing of I Let You Think That You Do and Dance with Me.

It's also a patient closer. Everything on this album is three minutes and change except for the final two tracks, because Hooked on You wraps up just a little early and this one stretches out into five langurous minutes. Of course, it has to be the final song, because nothing can follow it, except for a decision to listen to the whole album over again. Which I'm about to do once more. This is a good album by any criteria but it's an especially good return for a band who have been out of the studio for ten years and on hiatus for a few of those. Welcome back!

Amras Numenesse - Death of Innocence (2024)

Country: Turkey
Style: Symphonic Black Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 25 Aug 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

Amras Numenesse isn't only a band, it's also the name of its only member, who provides the vocals and all the instrumentation, though the soaring female vocals within the orchestration suggests a use of guests or samples. Amras is a very busy man, having knocked out no fewer than a dozen new albums since 2018, but oddly none before that going back to 1997 when Metal Archives credits this project as being founded. Maybe that's when he was born. Judging from photos on Facebook, he's bolstered by other musicians on stage, but I believe it's just him in the studio.

Death of Innocence is his second for 2024, after Cyclical Process in January, and it's far better than I might expect for such prolificity, especially given how capably the metal instrumentation meshes with whatever's happening in the background in a symphonic vein. In fact, the orchestration often introduces a piece, like the opener, Rise from the Ashes, then takes a back seat to the traditional metal instruments: harsh voice, bass, guitar and frantic drums. Sometimes, it stays prominent, as a more crucial part of the song, starting on Revenge.

On Revenge, Amras almost takes a back seat to the orchestration and choir, letting them provide the melodies that float over the bedrock he lays down and delineate the piece. As I Am God starts out, bringing in a horn section on top of the strings, I wondered all the more where Amras got this texture from. I have to assume that a one man black metal band in İzmir, one of the most westerly towns in Turkey, peeking across the Aegean at Athens, can't afford a full choir and orchestra. It's highly effective, so I presume he's either creating it with synths or using samples. Inquiring minds want to know.

However, he's doing it, I'd also like to know the order in which he composes. Does he generate that orchestration and then bulk it up with metal instruments and vocals, or does he write with guitar, deepen it with bass and drums and then add the backdrop later? Either way, it works and keeps an otherwise relatively straightforward extreme metal album interesting. These songs wouldn't all sound the same without the orchestration, especially given such a flamboyant keyboard intro to kick off Uniting the Gods, but they'd come a lot closer to it than they do now.

That's because the guitar tone is consistent throughout and so's Amras's voice, which is a rich and resonant deep growl with a strong sustain. I have no idea what he's singing, of course, but he has what seems to be good intonation, so I found myself paying close attention to it more than I would the typical black metal vocal. Sure, it's just another instrument in the mix, but it's a commanding one rather than merely a texture. In fact, it may even be commanding in the English language, as the song titles certainly are, but it remained impenetrable to me, at least until the chorus of the closer, Fuck Your God.

Revenge probably remains my favourite track, even after a few listens, but I am God after it comes pretty close, and I'm rather fond of Demigod, which even adds a slight ethnic flavour. Most of this could have come from almost anywhere, the orchestration quintessentially European in approach but the extreme metal universal. However, Demigod occasionally dips into something that sounds more obviously Turkish. Clearly this isn't folk metal, but it was a tasty hint at something I'd like to have heard more of. Maybe it's more obvious on another Amras Numenesse album, given that one benefit of being a one man band is taking the sound wherever you like without musical differences creeping into play.

This is my first Amras Numenesse album. Coming in almost entirely blind, knowing only what I saw through some brief research on Metal Archives, I was mostly interested in how a one man Turkish symphonic black metal band might sound. I wasn't expecting it to sound this good or this abiding, but it only grew on me over a few listens. Maybe that's the death of my innocence. I know what it sounds like now and, while I'm not likely to explore all twelve of these albums (thus far), I am very intrigued to pick out an early one and see how it compares to this.

God is an Astronaut - Embers (2024)

Country: Ireland
Style: Post-Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 6 Sep 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Tumblr | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

This is the third God is an Astronaut album I've reviewed over the past four years and I don't have much of an idea of what they're supposed to sound like. Maybe that's the point. They've said that each album is who they are at any particular point in time and that seems fair. Ghost Tapes #10 is an angry and pessimistic album, textured but grey, as if the band had no idea what was what after COVID-19. A year later, Somnia took a very different attitude, reimagining older material in calm manner, driven by keyboards rather than guitars. This one does both but more besides.

Apparition starts out softly and trawls in Indian sounds, as if it's going to be krautrock with sitars, but ends up in sections far heavier than I expected. They never quite reach doom metal but they're a lot closer than I ever expected an Irish post-rock band to get, especially after Somnia. There are other heavy sections on this album, most obviously the title track, which has a couple of sections with frantic drumming that are reminiscent of black metal underneath floating melodies. It's an avid stalker at points.

However, there's also much that's soft, starting with Falling Leaves. Moments of the sitar sound echo on from the opener, but they're more fleeting. Everything's all less urgent, much more laid back. It's telling us that it has no idea what's going on in the world that might make Apparition so angry, but it's good over here doing its thing. Here, have a beer. Or maybe a gin and tonic. There's a sense of elegance to it, after all. Realms is slow but dense, with layers of sound shifting over each other, somewhat like a Vangelis piece played at half speed on a church organ.

I should add that there's a prominent guest on Realms, prominent enough to warrant a featuring credit, but not on church organ. She's Jo Quail and she's a cellist, but we have to pay attention to realise that on Realms. It's far more overt on Prism, which opens like a horror movie theme, quiet and sinister. This one could easily have been on Coil's Unreleased Themes for Hellraiser. Quail's an excellent addition to the roster for this album, because it shifts primarily between keyboard parts and guitar parts, which works but gets a little familiar. Adding her cello is a whole new texture.

I like Realms a lot, enough to count it as one of my highlights, but it's very different from the rest of them. Hearts of Roots feels warm and welcoming to me, mostly because of Niels Kinsella's bass, which gradually became a real focus for me over repeat listens, but also because of the keyboards, here in piano mode. The title track, at ten minutes easily the longest piece here, contrasts dreamy noodling with an urgent overlay. It seriously grows in stature, its second half glorious and intense.

Then there's Oscillation, featuring another lovely bass line with patient drums under a shrieking guitar that's right out of an industrial complex. Is that an anglegrinder? After a couple of minutes, that fades out and it's even more peaceful than it would have been without that introduction. The bassline only gets better when it gets more complex. This one ought to have got at least a little bit annoying after a few listens, given that anglegrinder sound, but it doesn't and it gets better each time through.

Those are my four highlights, but there are nine pieces of music here and I haven't mentioned two of them. Odyssey comes early and isn't the journey that its name might suggest, but it does play a lot with contrasts. One moment, it's all silky smooth with soothing vocalisations—of course there are no words here—, the next the guitars leap back into the fray with their fists up and ready. The Indian sound returns at points too and it's odd how often that shows up without ever particularly flavouring the album. That leaves Hourglass to close out, which is a pest of a piece, relatively less than what came before until it's kept at us enough to pay attention to what it's actually doing.

And so this is a much more versatile album than its two predecessors, unwilling to commit to only one mood. Sometimes it's angry, sometimes calm, sometimes both at the same time. At its best, it's an immersive treat; at its worst, it's still very listenable. It's easy to get lost in it and that's no bad thing. It's probably my favourite of the three that I've reviewed, but not by so much as to land a higher rating, I think.

Spell Garden - Witches Coven Vol. 2 (2024)

Country: Brazil/Argentina
Style: Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
Sites: Instagram | Metal Archives

It's only been twenty months since I reviewed Spell Garden's self-titled second album, but here's a fourth, neatly highlighting in the process how I missed the third, The Sage, which was released last June. This is presumably a sequel to the first, Witches Coven, from as long ago as October 2022, so meaning that this a fourth album in only two years. Spell Garden have been busy! Actually, they've been really busy because they've been finessing their line-up too.

Nicolás Díaz still provides clean vocals, but Juan Topini has taken over from drummer Allan Caique on harsh, often guttural vocals. Raphael Santos is still there on guitar, but Hugo Villela has joined him to bulk up that sound. Ivan Clemente has come in on bass, which Santos provided on previous recordings, as double duty on top of his guitar. And Caique is gone, replaced by George Gomes. So now the trio that recorded the first two albums (and very likely the third as well, but I can't track down credits) has doubled in size.

The resulting sound is seriously beefy, now that I'm listening to a download (YouTube simply fails to do this justice). The bass is very low and the rhythm guitar right down there with it. While the intro, Children of the Earth, opens up with instrumental psychedelic doom, Demiurgo shows us a go forward direction, starting out with that downtuned doom but drifting into death, like playful drums on the intro had hinted. Topini's vocals are the most overt death element but the tempo is often much faster than we usually expect for doom.

Betrayal highlights how Spell Garden aren't just going to play fast all the time. There are plenty of slower sections here, even if it isn't all that way, and this one adds a churning section with a tolling bell and a choral backdrop just to emphasise how this won't ever leave Black Sabbath behind, even at pace. I tend to like the slower sections more than the faster ones, but I especially like how they shift from one to the other. It's also worth mentioning that the fast paced sections still sound very much like doom rather than death, even when Topini gets extra guttural. He turns that approach up on Salem and goes all the way on Leviathan, which makes the song much sludgier than it would be otherwise. Make Me Burn is sludgy too, without needing the vocals to take it there.

My favourite song this time is easily Carrying Hate, mostly because of a glorious riff that could be transplanted into a prog metal song or even a thrash metal track, all laid over a flurrying base of death metal. The harsh vocals are there, leading the way, but there are plenty of clean vocals on this one too, almost adding a punky aspect. That ought to clash with the guitar theme, with what isn't far away from a middle eastern melody, but it works wonderfully for me. The only negative I have with this song is the way it ends, as if it wasn't quite meant to.

In fact, that's the most obvious negative for me across the album, because it's not uncommon. I'd suggest it starts with Demiurgo, the first song proper, and never quite goes away, Make Me Burn another obvious example. They aren't the most imaginative band in the world at the other end of songs, but the intros work when they show up, like on Betrayal, and the songs that go straight into riffage, like Leviathan, work even better.

That's because the most obvious positive for me is the same as on their self-titled album, namely how effortless some of these riffs seem. Leviathan is easily the slowest song on offer and it has a relatively simple riff, but it's a very effective one that's impeccably heavy. That Spell Garden can shift from the achingly slow riff and overdone guttural vocals on Leviathan to the vibrant pace of Relentless with more traditional clean vocals highlights admirable versatility. Of course, both of these tracks are appropriately named.

And that's before I mention that the vocals on The Fall start out female and clean, surely courtesy of a guest I'm not aware of, who then contrasts neatly with the harsh male vocals of Topini. Or the final track, Sol de Agartha, which is notably more psychedelic than anything else here. I called out how their self-titled album shifted from doom metal into stoner rock on occasion and that doesn't happen anywhere as much here, other than on this closer, which is very tasty, even adding a violin and a flute for good measure. There's a lot here over almost fifty minutes, even before the bonus live tracks.

For my part, I prefer the slower doom to the pacier death, but I like both approaches. Relentless is my favourite track here after Carrying Hate and that's one of the liveliest songs here. I'm also very fond of the psychedelic rock approach of Sol de Agartha, so that's three styles right there. I'm also more fond of clean vocals on tracks like Relentless and Witches Coven than harsh vocals on earlier songs, but I don't dislike Topini's death growl at all. The more guttural he gets, the less I like it, even if the extreme version of that on Leviathan fits the heaviest riffing here.

But hey, that's what this album is likely to be for listeners. There's so much here that there's likely to be songs that any extreme metal fan likes a lot but others that they don't so much. I've pointed out mine. Yours might be different and that's fine. I wonder how that will help bulk up the fanbase for a clearly prolific and hardworking band still searching for the boundaries of their sound.

Thanks to Raphael Santos for sending this album over to me. Tudo de bom!

Fleshgod Apocalypse - Opera (2024)

Country: Italy
Style: Symphonic Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 23 Aug 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

This sixth album from Italian symphonic death metal mainstays Fleshgod Apocalypse is well titled. Sure, it opens with an aria, Ode to Art (De' Sepolcri) to showcase the soaring soprano of Veronica Bordacchini, who's worked with the band as a session and touring musician since 2011 but became a full time member in 2020, serving not only as their female vocalist but as their clean vocalist, as long term bassist and previous clean vocalist Paolo Rossi left in 2023. However, the best adjective to use to describe Fleshgod is "more" and that works just as well for opera. Each is grandiose and overdone and larger than life and that's kind of the point.

I've always appreciated how Fleshgod can throw so much at the wall and yet have it all stick. They seem chaotic in the extreme to anyone who's never heard them before, but a few listens allows us to realise what's going on. We almost need to train our ears to acknowledge what they're doing. On this album, either my ears are finally fully trained or it's a little bit more accessible than has been the case, especially on certain songs.

For instance, the first song proper is I Can Never Die, which is typically frantic stuff but it's easy to dissect after a couple of listens to see this as an unholy merger of alternative rock, symphonic pop and death metal, with plenty of orchestration. It moves from one of these to another consistently and eventually does it all at once. There's a late section when it whisks through hyperspeed death metal, hard rock guitar solo, soaring opera and symphonic pop in a highly memorable minute and then combining them all together. It's as accessible as I've heard Fleshgod (at least until Till Death Do Us Part arrives at the end of this album, but I'll get to that).

Other songs aren't quite as obvious. We can deconstruct Pendulum to a degree, but it's never as simple as we think we can make it. What's going on a mintue in, for instance? There are points in this song where the intensity drops completely away to leave clean female vocals over an alt rock instrumentation, but then the harsh male vocals offer an almost sarcastic commentary. And then there's piano, that gets truly wild towards the end of the song. Bloodclock opens up with harp and finds its way through intense technical death metal to musical theatre, delivered in a snarling rap, and then powers up with choirs and orchestration. These aren't as easy to work out.

What's telling is that I'm struggling to choose my favourite tracks, not because none of them stand out for special mention but because they all do. At War with My Soul opens heavy and choral like a Therion song, but speeds up the drums and builds male and female vocals and instrumentation in a common direction. That's unusual for Fleshgod but it works. Morphine Waltz is European power metal merged with avant-garde musical theatre, all driven by a possessed pianist and framed as a technical death metal song. The whispered "trust me" on Matricide 8.21 points the way to the alt rock approach that reaches the staccato riffing and the almost rapped vocals. Every song needs a special mention becaues it does something different.

And that holds even more true for Till Death Us Do Part, on the other side of Per Aspera ad Astra. It starts out slow and heavy, not as slow as doom metal but insanely slow for Fleshgod. Drummer Eugene Ryabchenko, who we can believe has eight limbs to maintain these tempos, must feel like he's playing this song in crazy slow motion. It's slow like a slow Black-era Metallica song, but then it drops into symphonic pop with vocal melodies more like Evanescence. They rinse and repeat a few times before escalating in emphasis but never truly in speed, even when it gets a little faster in the second half. I like it a lot but it's surely the least Fleshgod song I've heard Fleshgod do.

Usually it's easy to explain what a band sounds like by comparing them to others. On albums past, we could often compare Fleshgod to Septicflesh because both combine overtly classical music with extreme metal so tightly that they become one thing. However, we can't do that any more and I'd find it even harder than usual here. Sure, there's opera and death metal. Those are givens. What remains includes Emilie Autumn, Avatar, Evanescence, Disturbed, Carl Orff, Therion, Meshuggah... it's a list of names you probably didn't expect to see together, let alone mentioned in a review of what is still technical symphonic death metal, with drums that often reach black metal speeds.

I liked Fleshgod's previous album, 2019's Veleno, but I didn't like it as much as a lot of critics, who rank it among the best symphonic metal albums of all time. This one I like more. It's accessible for Fleshgod, but it's still wildly extreme when compared to pretty much everyone else on the planet. Nobody's going to dismiss this by suggesting that they've sold out, but it's easier to deconstruct than usual and it features a host of more recognisably modern aspects in its sound. And I'm liking it just as much on a seventh time through as I did on a first.

Snarm - Till the End (2024)

Country: India
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 29 Jul 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

Here's another submission from India. I'm always happy to see these, given that it's a huge nation with a huge musical heritage, but so little of it ever seems to fit into the rock and metal vein. This particular band are Snarm, from Guwahati in Assam, and they call what they do progressive glam/arena rock. It's especially heartening to see a female drummer, which feels odd to call out in 2024 with so many entirely female bands or female musicians playing every instrument imaginable in a wealth of different genres, but is still pioneering in India. So kudos to Arju Begum; may you break that glass ceiling.

Unfortunately, she's part of the most obvious flaw but it isn't her fault. Every time the first track proper, Someday Somewhere, kicks in, my brain screams at me that the production is too thin. Her drums ought to be much beefier than they are and so should the bass of Anurag Gogoi. However, I do have to acknowledge that I'm listening on YouTube, because I don't have an album download. I have no doubt that there's compression involved so this isn't quite how the album should sound, but I found it relatively easy to adjust anyway. By the time that Sky High arrives at the very heart of the album, I've almost forgotten the thin production and I'm just listening to the music.

Initially, it's the arena rock aspect to their sound that's most obvious. Someday Somewhere plays in radio-friendly territory, even at five minutes in length, with AOR vocals from Tsooraj and a tasty fluid guitar solo from the band's founder, Shihan Bhuyan. Rarest of Pearls follows suit with softer vocals and a seventies rock feel. Till the End is good old fashioned hard rock that doesn't seem to do anything flash but flows really well and seeps into our soul because of that. It's the title track and it's the first obvious highlight the album has to offer. No Rain Can Wash Away is a ballad that shifts from delicate piano and soft orchestration to power ballad midway through. Again, there's some tasty guitarwork when it's time for Bhuyan to solo.

Sure, there's a little of their progressive edge late in Rarest of Pearls and there's definitely some glam rock on Someday Somewhere, but these don't come close to dominating the album, at least until One More Lonely Night shows up as the bonus track. That's pure glam rock with metal edges. It's a slick and commercial single but it doesn't really do anything that any other slick commercial glam rock single does, so it ends up feeling like a single that would surely get airplay but wouldn't be particularly remembered after its moment in the spotlight is up.

Mostly, this plays to me like good old fashioned hard rock, mostly seventies but with touches that are pure eighties, and enough AOR to make it totally viable as arena rock. And, while the first half is pretty solid, the second half ups the ante considerably. While Till the End is excellent and all the more memorable with each further listen, Sky High is easily the album's highlight for me. It starts out like another piano-driven ballad, but kicks in hard after a minute to become a seventies hard rock stomper. Sure, I'd like a beefier sound for the bass and drums on one, but it's a gem anyway, right down to a delightful drop into flamenco guitar with handclaps during the second half. Other than that section, somehow it feels Japanese to me, like Bow Wow covering Iron Maiden.

I didn't identify any particular influence on Till the End or Sky High, though there are elements of a lot of different bands discernible. The overt influences kick in after them. This Rock 'n' Roll Ride opens up with a guitar riff that's surely borrowed from Maiden's Back in the Village, but it has a strong Deep Purple sound otherwise. Rain and Thunder features lots more eighties metal guitar, but then it gets Michael Jackson funky and then shifts into European power metal, just in a hard rock framework. It's like Uli Jon Roth covering Helloween. Then there's Reignite, an interesting ballad that's not only folky because of an overt flute. Its sweep is reminiscent of Rainbow Eyes by Rainbow but with Mark Knopfler guitar and a vocal melody that I know I should recognise.

Oddly, while these three songs are the easiest to locate sources for, they're three of the best that the album has to offer, Sky High and Reignite above Till the End and Rain and Thunder for me and This Rock 'n' Roll Ride and No Rain Can Wash Away behind them. That's a lot of songs to call out on an album that's an intro and eight songs, plus a bonus single, which bodes well for Snarm's future, as they develop their own style and hopefully lead the way for Indian hard rock in the 2020s.

This is an easy album to like and also a comfortable album to listen to a lot. There are albums that sound amazing on a first listen, only to fade away after a few more times through; and albums that don't sound like much at all until we dig into them and realise just how amazing they are. This is an album that sounds good immediately and continues to sound good however many times we listen. I doubt it'll top anyone's lists of the best albums of the year, but it's an album even jaded critics are likely to pull back out every once in a while as a reliable old favourite. Thanks for sending this one over to me, Shihan!

Rosetta Stone - Under the Weather (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Gothic Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Wikipedia

Rosetta Stone are a gothic rock band from the second wave, formed as far back as 1988 but with a surprisingly skimpy output for that long life. Their debut album was An Eye for the Main Chance in 1991 but this is only their fourth regular studio release since then, with two others that may count depending on your personal definitions. Either way, they don't release new albums often but this one follows Cryptology by only four years.

They're very much a pop-oriented goth band who used to feature jingly guitars that have morphed into electronica over the years. I haven't heard them in decades, so my memory may be letting me down, but they sound very electronic now, the three participants (for want of a better term) easily distinguished but all highly prominent. The vocalist is Porl King, who used to play guitar, but likely didn't this time out, and keyboards, which I'm sure he still does. Vocals aside, he's overshadowed a lot of the time by Madame Razor, the drum machine that almost defines the band's sound now.

That leaves Karl North on bass, who reminds of Peter Hook from Joy Division and New Order, both of which would seem to count as obvious influences. Many songs here find Joy Division vibes, not least Words to That Affect, but they're always flavoured by the drum machine, which makes them more electronic and thus more reminiscent of New Order. The bass isn't the first thing that grabs our attention, but it gradually grows until we simply can't ignore it, at which point I found myself actively following it, whatever else was happening.

The best bassline here is surely on Coherence, seven tracks in, but the more we focus on the bass, the more good basslines show up, starting with the opening title track, also the first single. It's a crucial note that my favourite songs are the ones with my favourite basslines. The beats work for me, in the sense that they contribute a needed and worthy aspect to the overall sound, but they don't play better to me on any one song than any other. King's vocals work for me too, but in that same sense. Occasionally, he delivers a line in a catchier fashion, like the choruses to We Turned Away or All the Devils, but he fundamentally does the same thing across all these tracks.

So this became almost entirely about the bass for me, starting most of the way through my first listen, with only the occasional keyboard riff helping to elevate one song over another, as on We Turned Away. That means that Coherence remains my favourite song, because it has my favourite bassline, but then it's probably Host and All the Devils, along with Under the Weather. This feels weird to me, because I can't remember another album where the bass dictates my appreciation this much, so I tried to figure out why.

I think it boils down to Rosetta Stone having such a stripped down sound, which is unusual for the sort of band that's survived for almost forty years intact. With the vocals telling stories and the drums merely keeping beat, it would normally fall to the guitars or keyboards to drive the songs forward, but they don't seem to want to do that. The keyboards are there but they feel more like decoration than rhythm and, if there are guitars at all, I mistook them for keyboards. Thus it falls to Karl North to play his bass like it's a rhythm guitar and a bass put together. It also means that a song is a song, because there's nothing in the instrumentation that can really apply emphasis.

And that's fine, but I tend to prefer my gothic rock denser in sound, whether it's the gothic rock of the Sisters of Mercy or the gothic metal of Tristania. Rosetta Stone aren't interested in density of sound and actively seem to avoided any possibility of crunch. So, while they still sound gothic, they remind me more of Joy Division than the Sisters, but still not as dense, meaning that, while I liked this, I always felt there was something missing.

Ravn - Svartedans (2024)

Country: Norway
Style: Folk/Black Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
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Oh, I like this band! They're from Trondheim, Norway and they play relatively straightforward folk metal with clean female vocals in front of a traditional heavy metal line-up: twin guitars, bass and drums. What there aren't are fiddles, bagpipes or hurdy gurdys, though I'm very happy to hear a nyckelharpa to open Syndera and thus the album. However, that's the only song on which it shows up, as it's courtesy of a guest appearance from Mathias Gyllengahm, best known for Utmarken, a folk metal band from neighbouring Sweden.

What that means is that the folk aspect of Ravn isn't a layer of instrumentation, as it sometimes can be; it's who they are, like, say, Bucovina. They're a heavy band, make no mistake, playing heavy metal throughout and dipping into black metal on occasion, but they're a heavy band playing folk music, even if it happens to be new and they wrote it. That nyckelharpa lays down a melody that's promptly echoed by vocalist Hildegunn Eggan and the band behind her happily bolster whatever she's doing, at least until the very end of the album, when they fade away on Hulderlokk, leaving her to finish out in haunting a capella.

I like the band but I really like these vocals. I don't speak Norwegian, so I don't understand any of the lyrics she's singing, but she has a fantastic crisp delivery that suggests to me that she has an impeccable intonation. My sister's most of the way to fluency in Norwegian now so I should send a copy of this over to her and see how she does with it. I recognise the pauses in between syllables from when she speaks Norwegian, but she doesn't do it remotely as well as Eggar and I'd hazard a guess that most Norwegians don't either. She also throws out a couple of what I'd have to describe as squeals on Krig that I absolutely adore.

Musically, the black metal is shifted to the centre of the album, so the opening pair of songs are all folk metal without that flavour being apparent. Syndera is an excellent opener, patient and heavy with folky melodies and those characterful vocals. Krig (or War) is better still, my favourite of the eight tracks on offer. It's slower but even heavier, with rumbling drums behind the verses, a strong bridge that oddly reminds of Iron Maiden, even though this is a very different style indeed, and a wonderful melody in the chorus.

The black metal shows up initially in Svartedans, which appropriately translates to Black Dance. It isn't as overt here, restricted to an intro that isn't fast enough or dense enough to thrill die hard black metal fans but clearly drawn from that genre. Then it drops into a melody and we're clearly back in folk metal again. That hint in Svartedans shows up with a vengeance in a pair of tracks that feature guest harsh vocals from Mikael Aasnes Torseth of Trondheim black metal band Keiser. The band dive firmly into his genre to meet him on Mare, then jump back into folk metal when Eggan takes the lead. It's an interesting dance. The two approaches merge in the chorus for Fimbulvinter, which is even more interesting.

And then Torseth departs and Ravn use Svik to come down from their black metal interlude. There are hints of black metal in this one, but it's mostly folk metal again, with a keyboard intro that's a lot like Enya, incorporating what I presume are synths manipulating a vocal sample. It's a livelier song than most of the folk metal songs here but it's not as fast as the black metal ones. It thrives on momentum but the final two tracks avoid that, going back to power chords and slower, heavier riffing.

They're also not new songs though I assume they've been re-recorded for this album, given that a "(2024)" appears after both their names. They were each released as a single, Evighet in 2020 and Hulderlokk in 2021. I like both of these, but Hulderlokk, arguably the most folky song here, is very good indeed, my second highlight after Krig. I don't know what it means, Google Translate giving me only Hole Lid, but I adore its majestic folk melodies and riffs, full of pauses and attitude, all the way to the da de da vocalised sections and that lovely outro.

So I've just found another favourite band, which makes it all the sadder to add that they went on hiatus on 12th August, only a couple of weeks before releasing this second album on the 30th. I'm not sure of the details why, but it's the old classic of "irresolvable disagreements about the way forward". Of course, there are two very clear directions on show here, one to folk metal and one to black metal, so the obvious guess is that these disagreements tie to that but I have no evidence whatsoever to back that up. It's just the obvious guess. If so, it's especially unfortunate because I like how the two merge here. There's a good balance to this album and a lot of that is through an overt shift from folk to black and back again, starting and ending with the purest folk elements.

The good news is that there's a previous album, I mørke natt from 2018, which is still available on Bandcamp, so I'll be happily checking that out when time allows.