Nile - The Underworld Awaits Us All (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Brutal/Technical Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Aug 2024
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Here's the tenth album for Egyptian metallers Nile and pretty much everything I said about their ninth, Vile Necrotic Rites, holds here, except perhaps for the bits about diverse instrumentation. This is more traditional instrumentally and perhaps that's why it doesn't quite match that album, the unusual string sound on a delightful interlude called The Pentagrammathion of Nephren-Ka notwithstanding and whatever's going on in the coda to Under the Curse of the One God.

The most diverse element this time is vocal, with a whole slew of guest vocalists joining guitarist and lead singer Karl Sanders and the other members of the band who chime in occasionally with a backing vocal. Tellingly, many of these are female, though not from singers known for their work for other bands, and they don't usually sound typical for metal. It would be fairer to say that they sound like they've been borrowed from opera or musical theatre or jazz. A few are male and more expected for epic metal, on songs like True Gods of the Desert.

The unusual female vocals aren't frequent but they're always prominent when they happen and none of them feel like they ought to fit, even if they're all in time with what's unfolding around them. Of course, they do fit, even if the abiding impression is that they're being performed next door in another studio but someone opened an ill advised window so that they bleed through at the precisely perfect time. Then the window is closed again and they're gone.

The first arrives in Overlords of the Black Earth, as if an opera is determined to spring out of that black earth and the band are the titular overlords tasked with performing a ritual to stop it. I'm sure that's not what's happening in the lyrics, even if "we utter the words of power" does rather sound like opera. That returns on Under the Curse of the One God, even if it's just for a couple of lines, while the guitar is warping in fascinating fashion, and on Doctrine of Last Things, the title track and others.

I should call out this warping because it's a fascinating approach, most obviously on Overlords of the Black Earth but also to a lesser degree on a number of other songs. As if their sound wasn't already an intense thing, Nile have bulked up to a trio of guitarists: founder Sanders, plus Brian Kingsland, who was on Vile Necrotic Rites, and one of two new fish this year, Zach Jeter (the other is bassist Dan Vadim Von). I have no idea who's doing this warp guitar thing, but it's a wild and experimental idea that gives the firm impression that the rituals that Nile are performing are opening or closing portals with a quirky and esoteric effect.

Of course, it's still Nile and that means that it's uncompromisingly brutal but also very technical, so that there's never a dull moment. Stelae of Vultures is a powerful opener, but the second track simply erupts out of the gate and I wonder if those should have been swapped around, especially given that the second track is done and dusted in under four blistering minutes while the opener extends out to six and change. It does that appropriately, I should add; it just accordingly fails to have the same impact as the shorter, sharper shock after it.

By the way, I say "second track" so I don't have to keep saying Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes, a title so drawn out it even gets abbreviated in the lyrics. If my favourite songs are the ones with strange vocal additions and unusual effects and codas, like the triple whammy of Overlords of the Black Earth, Under the Curse of the One God and Doctrine of Last Things, I also keep coming back to the second track for the most blistering pace and impact anywhere on the album.

And, of course, along with everything else I said in my Vile Necrotic Rites review that holds true on this one, there's one statement that abides above them all. That's that I'm far less a fan of brutal death metal than I am most other extreme metal genres, but Nile are probably my favourite band to work overtly within that style. My biggest problem with brutal death metal is that much of it is unable to distinguish itself from the rest. Nile are the emphatic exception to that rule. I like this, just not quite as much as its predecessor.

Der Neue Planet - Schwerkraft für Anfänger (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Aug 2024
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This third album from Cologne's Der Neue Planet came to me as stoner rock, which is certainly one element of its sound, but it reaches a long way beyond it. The titles mostly suggest space rock, an obvious element from the opening synth drone. However, there's also plenty of post-rock in play, along with prog, psych, krautrock and other genres. At points, there are hints of surf music and a few soft backdrops that remind of lounge, for harder sounds in the foreground to contrast with.

I should explain those titles, because they're all in German, this being entirely instrumental music with no lyrics. The album title translates to Gravity for Beginners, which suggests that we're in the presence of those who might live without it but are coming to visit. That's not a bad way to look at the music within it.

The unwieldy Unendlicher Unwahrscheinlichkeitsdrive translates to Infinite Improbability Drive, a device in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which suggests that this track can and absolutely should go absolutely everywhere. It doesn't, perhaps inevitably, but it does go to a lot of different places. Instabile Weiße Zwerge meaning Unstable White Dwarfs, which is ironic as this piece has a section that's as close to traditional classic rock as anything else here. Galaktisch. Praktisch. Gut. or Galactic. Practical. Good. is less obvious in its intent, but it's a positive piece.

Phobos and Deimos, of course, are the moons of Mars, but they're brief interludes here that serve no other purpose because they're almost empty. If you listen to them in isolation you'll wonder as to where they were. Alpha Ursae Minoris is the star usually known as Polaris, the Pole Star or the North Star, a particularly useful star in navigation, at least in the northern hemisphere. That may suggest that it's the guide to this album, a notion backed up by the fact that it's at the very heart of it, being track four of seven, and the fact that it's the longest piece here at almost ten minutes. Does everything here appear in this one in microcosm? No, I don't think so, but it does seem to try.

That just leaves Lirum Larum Lapidarium, which isn't entirely Latin. A lapidarium is a repository of stones, usually with historical meaning, but I have no idea what the rest of the title means. Maybe that's why it's the most experimental piece here, starting out with soft, resonant acoustic guitar but ending as pure krautrock. All in all, these tracks make for quite the journey, but it isn't merely one journey, as so many psychedelic rock albums are, with each track continuing in the same vein as the rest; these are each individual pieces of music with individual goals, tones and moods.

While Unendlicher Unwahrscheinlichkeitsdrive ought to be the most varied, it may need to battle Alpha Ursae Minoris for that crown and everything else except the interludes might want a word too. It has the benefit of coming first to nail its claim into our skulls, though, and it's the one that delves into surf pop and soft psychedelia before finding some heavier stoner rock. Even though it plays light at points, it's Instabile Weiße Zwerge that feels like light is a motif. Sure, it builds too, as all of these songs do to various degrees, moving from soft to heavy or at least heavier, but it's positive in nature, as if these white dwarfs are still delivering light, however inconsistently.

Alpha Ursae Minoris takes that and runs with it. This is the one with the lounge-like backdrop for the pulsing bass and jagged riffs to dance all over. It's a delightful contrast, as if liquid is meeting rock, perhaps for the first time. Of course, the rock abides, however playful it gets and it gets very playful over nine minutes and change. Galaktisch. Praktisch. Gut. may well be my favourite piece of all, once again lighter early and heavier late, but even more so, reminding of west African highlife early and finding a sassy seventies hard rock groove in the second half.

There are many grooves on Lirum Larum Lapidarium, from the soft opening through arguably the most overt stoner rock, albeit with funky breaks, to the krautrock towards the end. It's maybe the least consistent in how it shifts between grooves, some of them layering tastily but others feeling more jagged and less effective. Sure, this stoner rock groove benefits from that keyboard groove being played over it, but that groove shifts to another without warning and we're taken aback.

I haven't heard Der Neue Planet before, but they have two prior albums out, Magrathea Erwacht, another Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy nod, and Area Fifty-Fun, from 2018 and 2022 respectively. It's abidingly clear that I should seek those out sharpish.

Moggs Motel - Moggs Motel (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 6 Sep 2024
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Given that Phil Mogg has fronted UFO for over half a century, it isn't surprising to find UFO within the sound of what I thought was his first solo album but may not be. It appears that it's the debut of a new band that he's fronting, Moggs Motel sans the apostrophe. It can't hurt that Neil Carter is the keyboardist and one of a pair of guitarists, a role he's served in a couple of stints with UFO, including now, if they're still officially together. I'm just happy that Mogg is still recording, given that he suffered a 2022 heart attack that prompted the cancellation of the final UFO tour.

He's recognisable here, of course, but he puts a bit more grit into his voice than I'm used to, so he ends up a little bluesier and dirtier and I like that a lot. It works well with the guitar tone and the driving nature of many of these songs. That starts with the opening track, Apple Pie, where he's more emphatic and almost vicious at points. It's not all about melody here, though that's present, of course; it's also about attitude, even when the song shifts into handclaps, when it gets sassier.

He's the only male vocalist here, I believe, but there's certainly a female voice in the background on a few tracks, one that sounds like it was born singing gospel. It's there on Sunny Side of Heaven, which is a driving rocker, but it returns on Princess Bride and especially Tinker Tailor, where things shift more into gospel without ever leaving rock behind, in ways reminiscent of Lynyrd Skynyrd on their 1991 album. It's not there throughout, though, which helps keep the album admirably varied.

The heaviest songs are the driving ones, especially Sunny Side of Heaven, but there's heaviness in the slower songs too, like Weather and Other People's Lives. I like Weather a lot, with its simple but effective riff, flamboyant guitar solo and relished vocal delivery from Mogg. More than anything, I like the sections where it drops out of the riff and does really interesting things. However, my favourite tracks are the ones that fit in between these two approaches and a lot of why comes down to the hooks.

I Thought I Knew You is more AC/DC than UFO in its riffing, but the latter is there in the melodies and the breakdowns. This is the first song that absolutely nails its chorus, Mogg falling into quite the effortless groove. The other one that manages it is Wrong House, which has a bizarre intro in Harry's Place, a minute long interlude that's clearly there to set a scene. It's driven by flute and it's certainly evocative but, as much as I like it, I'm not convinced it works to set up Wrong House. Tony Newton's excellent bassline does that much better.

The more Mogg finds those grooves, the more this reminds of UFO and it's never a long way away. While UFO could rock like nobody else, whether the lead guitarist was Michael Schenker or Vinnie Moore or any number of others in between, they were incredibly good at quiet moments too, not only in outright ballads, and that holds for Moggs Motel. Face of an Angel opens atmospherically in rain. Princess Bride gets elegant towards the end with some wonderful swells, elegance that's happy to roll right into the orchestration in Other People's Lives. Shane starts out with keyboards that are almost trying to mimic a harpsichord.

What's perhaps most telling is that, while I didn't have much trouble picking out some highlights, I Thought I Knew You and Wrong House standing out every time through and Apple Pie an emphatic opener however many times I run through the album, even with the heaviest song following right on its tail, everything else stands up to be counted too. There isn't a duff song here and there isn't an average one either, unless we question why Harry's Place is there. I liked this on the first listen but it didn't knock my socks off. Each further time through, it gets better and better until I really can't justify not including it on my highly recommended list for the year.

And that means an 8/10 rather than than a 9/10, because there are flaws if we look closely enough and, as I mentioned, it still doesn't blow me away. However, it's consistently strong across a dozen tracks, versatile enough for everything to delineate itself immediately and memorable enough to have me humming bars from it when I wander off to grab lunch. And, more than anything, it's the epitome of welcoming when I wander back. I've probably listened through a dozen times now and I haven't once felt the urge to even skip a single track. This is really good stuff and I hope Mogg will be healthy enough to tour in support of it.

Austral - Tierra del Fuego (2024)

Country: Chile
Style: Folk/Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
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Here's something interesting that opens in highly unusual fashion. The intro, Hain, plays out with throat drone and ethnic drums, as if it's setting us up for a Mongolian metal album. However, the Latin scholars among you will know that "austral" means "southern" and so this band accordingly hail from Chile, where Tierra del Fuego is the archipelago at the very southern tip of that nation and its neighbour to the east, Argentina, curling out into the ocean where South America looks at Antarctica. That's a very different part of the world indeed to Mongolia, even if we factor in that Austral are from the Chilean capital, Santiago, three thousand miles to the north.

However, that intro isn't misleading us. This came to me as thrash metal, but there's lots of groove metal in that sound and there's an ethnic component that simply can't be ignored. The vocals are chanted as often as they're sung and that goes as much for Nicolás Araya's lead vocals as anything in the background behind him. Luis González plays the sort of drumkit you'd expect for a drummer in a metal band, but there's plenty of other percussion going on and that often dominates tracks. That's courtesy of Jorge Saldaña, who's also credited on wind instruments, which are something I would expect on a folk metal album but not usually on a thrash metal equivalent.

And so there's folk drumming and chanting on Temawkel. There's throat singing on Kólyot. Is that an accordion on Kawésqar? Weynwayer opens with what sounds like a didgeridoo, accompanied by bass, acoustic guitar and a throat drone, and, while it's quite a heavy song, it's not metal at all. Volveré kicks off with acoustic guitar and flutes. It does bulk up, as we'd expect, but never turns into thrash metal, with the piano remaining just as prominent as the guitars. Fiu Fiu (Futaleufú) starts out in a waterfall, I think, with more flutes and a singalong, before temporarily turning up the power.

What all this suggested to me is that Austral's primary influence is Sepultura, hardly unexpected for thrashers in South America, but they're still focused on 1996's Roots rather than whatever the band has done in the almost three decades since Max Cavalera left. Even then, Austral took their influence from the folk aspects in Roots but ignored its nu metal flavour. No turntablists show up here, there are no guest appearances from trendy Americans and the result doesn't sound much like Soulfly at all.

That means that the experimentation soars supreme as they combine metal with native sounds. A song like Sigilo can start out like a heavy metal song, but in what sounds like a rainforest, with an array of ambient sounds behind the riffing. It develops with clean vocals, but finds moments that grow in emphasis to harsher voices. Midway, it drops into tribal drumming, acoustic guitar and a fireside singalong. Then it bulks up again into more overt thrash tempos and adds a throaty vocal that plays with drone. Sure, it's a long song for this album, at four and a half minutes, but it's not really a long song and it crams a lot into that running time.

The same, on a broader scale, applies to the album. There are a dozen songs on offer that total about three quarters of an hour, and Austral cram a lot into that running time. This came to me as thrash metal and I have to point out that it's often not thrash metal and sometimes not metal at all. Will that affect its success? Maybe, because labels shape expectations, but it doesn't mean that this is a failure. I found it fascinating. Sure, there's an obvious influence but it's no copy. The least metal songs, like Volveré and Weynwayer, don't sound like anything on Roots.

And, frankly, the songs that follow them, which are Ley sin Dios and Tierra del Fuego respectively, mark clear returns to metal, often thrash metal, and yet still don't sound entirely like Sepultura. I hear them, but I hear a lot of other bands too, even I'm not going to call them out as overt. Would it help if I suggested that, for a while, Weynwayer sounded rather like The Hu covering Bon Jovi? I don't think so. Would it help to throw out Manu Chao as a comparison on Fiu Fiu? Surely not. That isn't what these songs are doing, even if they hint at it at points.

What matters, I think, is that while there's plenty of thrash metal here, I think it would be better for me to call this folk metal. I recommend a lot of thrash albums to my son, who's a big thrash fan. I'm going to recommend this to him too, but because of what it is when it isn't thrash rather than when it is. He's not as experimental in his tastes as I am, but I think he'd like where Dualidad and Kawésqar would take him.

Los Lonely Boys - Resurrection (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 2 Aug 2024
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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!