Michael Schenker - My Years with UFO (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Sep 2024
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Michael Schenker has been busy over the past decade, with a string of albums from a whole bunch of incarnations of his band, whether it's Michael Schenker's Temple of Rock, Michael Schenker Fest or the good old Michael Schenker Group. Here it's just Michael Schenker, because there are a slew of guest vocalists and musicians to help out revisit his glorious early UFO days fifty years ago with a set of old favourites.

I don't tend to review albums in track order because there are usually better ways to handle them, but I feel like it's needed here because these are such well loved classics that it's going to be easy to get them horribly wrong, meaning that we go into each with both hope and fear and which that track turns out to generate will flavour the next. Fortunately it starts out rather well, even though there was plenty of risk involved.

That's because the first guest vocalist is Dee Snider, a huge talent but not a logical choice to take on a Phil Mogg vocal. However, he does a shockingly good job on Natural Thing, and Joel Hoekstra helps the guitar to feel nice and crunchy. Joey Tempest is much closer to Mogg's style on Only You Can Rock Me, perhaps only Kai Hansen coming closer on Rock Bottom. There's a subtle bass from Deep Purple's Roger Glover, who produced the first MSG album, and Derek Sherinian elevates the second half with his keyboard work. He's one of three musicians here who are present throughout and, while this is always Schenker's show, Sherinian shines throughout. Barry Sparks on bass and Brian Tichy on drums complete the core line-up.

So far, so good, but next up is Doctor Doctor, which is one of the really big ones. I certainly got the tingles when it kicked in and there's glorious guitarwork and lovely keyboards, but I wasn't a huge fan of Carmine Appice's rolling drums, which broke the flow for me more than once, and Joe Lynn Turner, who I'd have expected to have been a highlight going, is the least important aspect of the song, even though he does a good job. I preferred Mother Mary, with Erik Grönwall, lately of Skid Row and soon to be the vocalist on the next original Schenker album. He's decent throughout but excellent on the chorus. Schenker duels with Slash on guitar to take the song home and that's just as good as you're expecting.

This Kid's is a deep cut, the closer from Force It. It's the only song here where I wasn't immediately singing along. Biff Byford is another legend who doesn't remotely sound like Phil Mogg but wisely he doesn't try to and he sounds great against a forceful backdrop. Unsurprisingly it's a merger of UFO and Saxon but that's fine and the instrumental section with Schenker and Sherinian, taking a lead role, is joyous. That's five tracks and it's been impressive thus far. Schenker sounds excellent, of course, and the guest choices, even where they don't seem to make sense, mostly work.

So to Love to Love, the song I dreaded most here for a couple of reasons. It's one of the most iconic hard rock songs ever recorded, Steve Harris of Iron Maiden calling it the very best of them, and it's not one that should be messed with. That said, the guest vocalist here is Axl Rose and that hardly inspired confidence. I tried to maintain an open mind, because he worked in AC/DC far better than I expected and he does better here than I thought he would too, but not enough. This is Schenker's song with credit to Sherinian again and once more the ending is fantastic. My wife rang during the closing solo and I didn't answer. Some things should be kept sacred.

Talking of sacred, next up is Lights Out with one of the greatest guitar solos ever recorded, so far up the list that it was playing in my head while I was listening to Schenker and John Norum miss it here. Jeff Scott Soto brings the voice and he's too forceful. It's a decent cover but it emphatically isn't the original and I felt that far more on this track than any other. Fortunately it's followed by Rock Bottom, which is eleven minutes long, as it tended to be live, and that has to mean oodles of guitar. Kai Hansen impresses on vocals that are a slightly metallic Mogg, and also has a lot of fun with Schenker on guitar during those extended solos.

Turner and Appice return on Too Hot to Handle, the only guests to appear on more than one track, and they're joined by Adrian Vandenberg. Sadly, what I noted about them both on Doctor Doctor also applies here. Fortunately Let It Roll really rolls; in fact, it gallops. Michael Voss does a strong job with the vocals. Of all people, Stephen Pearcy doesn't do a bad job on Shoot Shoot either, even though he's another strange choice to tackle a Mogg vocal. I can't say it works for me the way that Schenker's guitar does but it's an interesting approach and the grit in his voice oddly works.

And so there are a lot of surprises here. Dee Snider and Biff Byford work wonderfully, even if they shouldn't, while Joe Lynn Turner oddly doesn't, even though he should. Axl Rose is easily the least successful guest but his bandmate Slash is one of my highlights, along with Kai Hansen, who really shocked me with his contribution, not because he's good, because I already knew that, but by how well he fit on a UFO covers album. Lights Out was the least successful cover for me, while Only You Can Rock Me may be the best and This Kid's was the most effectively different. Inherently, though, your mileage may vary.

Alkonost - Дар Саламандры (2024)

Country: Russia
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
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Alkonost are another of those bands who have been around for a long time without me noticing. They formed in Nabarezhnye Chelny in the Republic of Tatarstan in 1996 and have knocked out at least twelve albums, most of them in Russian but with a couple seeing additional release in the English language. This isn't one of them, but it comes a year after an Anniversary Edition of their debut, a previously cassette-only English language album, Songs of the Eternal Oak. The core of the band is founding member Andrey Losev, who writes the songs and plays guitar and keyboards.

What I'm hearing is that all those roles are fundamental here, making him the heart and soul of what this band does. The guitar is a heavy crunch that sets the fundamental tone for everything. It's a rhythmic guitar that's more interested in echoing a beat than delivering a riff and there are few guitar solos to be found. The melodies here are primarily the province of the vocals, which are provided by Ksenia Pobuzhanskaya, but the keyboards often emphasise her when she sings and in moments when she doesn't, they often take over from her.

If I'm reading things correctly, Pobuzhanskaya is the only other actual member of Alkonost, with an array of guests fleshing out the line-up for this album, even though some of them have credits on earlier releases. Vadim Grozov plays the bass throughout, but other duties are split up by song. I see three drummers, with Dmitry Bortsov possibly the most frequent presence, appearing on five of the nine tracks. There are two guest guitarists but only on a couple of tracks, both showing up on Северное сияние, or Northern Lights, and Pavel Kosolapov playing on Оберег, or Amulet, too. That leaves Andrey Tepper as the violinist on Оберег.

I liked this album pretty quickly, even though it plays out in a highly consistent manner, so it's hard to pick out favourite songs. If you like one, you're going to like all of them, but if you don't like the one you started with, nothing else is going to change your mind. Maybe Оберег is notably playful for a couple of minutes, that violin joining keyboards and vocals before the crunch joins in. Maybe the second half of Разожги огонь, or Light the Fire, elevates it through a strong hook, some free flying ethnic-sounding vocals from Pobuzhanskaya and some technical guitar changes. And maybe Солнце, or Sun, has an even better hook. Quite frankly, though, I could easily call out some aspect of every song to say something special about it, without it having any more meaning.

What that boils down to is that this plays best not as nine songs, but as a single forty plus minute slab of folk metal. It's a very easy album to listen to and I've listened to it for the past three weeks as I've been distracted away from music reviews by a hundred other urgent tasks until I finally got it down on virtual paper. However, it's felt just as good every time I've come back to it partly due to having a welcoming warmth to it. In fact, that welcome may be one reason why it reminded me of a song from a short film I've screened at events that's both gothic and steampunk, both highly welcoming communities.

Coincidentally, that film is also Russian, titled Corset and written and directed by Olga Twighlight in 2015, but the song, Set Me Free, is from a German electro-industrial band, In Strict Confidence. Listening to that afresh, the guitar crunch seems very similar to what I'm hearing from Alkonost and their use of keyboards isn't wildly different either, so it's hardly surprising to realise that I'd heard this as both gothic and steampunk, even though it's not really either. What's different are the vocals, because Pobuzhanskaya is emphatically rooted in folk music while In Strict Confidence remain stubbornly gothic.

And that means that, while Losev is the bedrock of this band, it's Pobuzhanskaya who becomes the one who gives it its identity. She only ever sings clean and in a folky voice that ranges from playful soprano down to sultry contralto. The latter is her default voice, but Оберег especially highlights both sides of her range, reminding me of a versatile Russian pop singer called Линда, or Linda, a singer who also dipped into both folk music and goth. I'd love to hear Alkonost cover anything off Ворона, especially the title track.

Clearly I should be listening to more Alkonost. On another day, I might have given this a solid 7/10 because it's a consistently enjoyable album. Today, I'm going with an highly recommended 8/10 as it's become quite the companion over a few weeks and it still feels just as good now as it did on my first time through. A lot of otherwise wonderful albums age quickly but this one feels just as fresh as it always did. I wonder if I'll find the same with their earlier material. I may need to find out. The title translates to The Gift of the Salamander, so, hey, thank you, salamander!

God Dethroned - The Judas Paradox (2024)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Black/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 6 Sep 2024
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I didn't dislike God Dethroned's eleventh album, 2020's Illuminati, but it didn't have many edges to it. I called it "extreme metal that you can take home for tea with your mother". This twelfth starts out in the same vein, The Judas Paradox slow and patient with easily intelligible lyrics and nothing particularly extreme, but Rat Kingdom ramps up the tempo and adds some of those edges. I really like its stop and start mindset that gives it some serious punch and the blackened flavour that has been missing so often lately is very much there. It's still my favourite song on the album, but there are some other surprises in store that elevate it a little over its predecessor.

My biggest problem with The Judas Paradox is how slow most of it is. There's no requirement for a death metal album to be fast; just go back and listen to some of the groundbreaking albums from back in the day; there's a lot of ground in between, say, the debut Autopsy and the debut Cannibal Corpse. There's no requirement for a black metal album to be fast either, given how many genres it's cohabiting with nowadays. However, we do tend to expect black/death to be fast and this often isn't, starting with that very patient opener.

Rat Kingdom changes that, bringing in blastbeats, barrelling riffs and frantic melodies. There are points where it doesn't feel particularly extreme, but plenty where it does. The Hanged Man sits somewhere in between the two, returning us to lyrics about Judas but with fast drums behind the slower, melodic riffing. Black Heart is more elegant, ditching the edges but keeping the drums, in a song that starts out as full doom with chiming bells and atmosphere. And so it goes, songs often heavy metal as much as anything more extreme, however harsh those intelligible vocals happen to be, but speeding up again every time we notice.

It's fair to say that I wanted a lot more of this album to be fast and, when it was fast, to be faster. I ended up listening far more than I expected to, because of a crazy week, and I found that I became very comfortable with it. And that's a real double edged sword when it comes to extreme metal, a return to that "extreme metal that you can take home for tea with your mother" quandary. From one side, comfortable means that they're doing something that's easy to get to know and become friends with. I made friends with this album after a couple of times through.

However, comfortable also means that it's inherently not that extreme. Every time I get to Hubris Anorexia seven tracks in, which blisters right out of the gate, I feel shocked, as if a nun just farted. Broken Bloodlines opens in a similar way three tracks later, with a real punch, even if that becomes quickly defused by what's layered over it. Even when it gets extreme for a moment, that moment passes soon enough, whether replaced or defused.

Getting to know an album like an old friend, though, means that the details pop. The Hanged Man elevates because of the guitar solo in the middle. Kashmir Princess elevates because of the section deep into its second half that drifts unexpectedly into psychedelic rock. I wasn't expecting that just as I wasn't expecting the drop to mellow midway through Hubris Anorexia. Hailing Death elevates because of how catchy it is, even though the riffs and hooks aren't particular complex. There are a few subtleties in apparent down moments too that are more complex and just as enjoyable.

And so God Dethroned seem determined to make their hybrid of black and death metal just about as accessible as they can get without losing the tag of extreme metal. Like its predecessor, it's the epitome of unoffensive, a cute puppy of an extreme metal album that may end up serving best as a gateway into extremity. There are eleven tracks here, some of which aren't extreme at all and a few of which go there at points. However, the vocals are always intelligible, even though they stay harsh throughout, and every aspect of the music is fundamentally built on melody.

Maybe you can test this out on an unwary nibling who's open for a new musical experience. If they turn out to be good with The Judas Paradox, try Hailing Death on them. If they're good with that too, then move up to Broken Bloodlines. If they're good with all eleven, up to and including Hubris Anorexia, then they're ready to move up a grade and you have a real exploration to plan.

Eyes - Auto-Magic (2024)

Country: Sweden
Style: Melodic/Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 6 Sep 2024
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This came to me labelled as melodic rock but Soldier of Love opens up the album as clear hard rock with thoughts about crossing that border into heavy metal. Its has a confident barrelling pace and it continues to shift wonderfully throughout its five minutes. Mysterious Ways is slower, moving to melodic rock, but the drums still have quite the punch to them; they're not fast but they're high in the mix. Until the End of Time has some glam to its opening, before it moves back to melodic rock and that's most of the variety we're going to find on this album. Or so I thought after one listen.

I should add that five minutes seems to be an important threshold for Eyes. Almost everything on this album runs between five and five and a half minutes, except Innocent Dreamer that runs ten seconds longer and Don't Stop the Night that's done in only four minutes and change. That's long for melodic rock, where songs tend to be those three golden minutes that radio stations would be happy to play before moving onto something else. These songs are all driven by melody and beat, most obviously through Peter Andersson's voice, but they stretch notably past that sweet spot for radio.

Soldier of Love is my highlight, but it's also the only overt hard rock song here in a sea of melodic rock with a prominent beat. The only other song that shifts like this one is What Money Can't Buy, with a nice slide riff. It's not as heavy, but it's growing on me fast. The guitars, courtesy of Joakim Sandberg, remind of a Deep Purple tone, possibly in part because the keyboards back it so closely. There's some Tank here at points too, though never quite that heavy. Like the opener, this would have played very well on the Friday Rock Show back in the mid-eighties.

I'm not sure who else is in the band, nowadays, because I can't find that information, but on their debut album in 2021, Perfect Vision 20/20, Andersson was the only member who wasn't formerly in Aces High. At least I think so. I'm seeing so many different details that often shuffle names around that I'm not sure who's who any more. Maybe this is Aces High, merely renamed to Eyes for some reason, like maybe they got mistaken for an Iron Maiden tribute band too often. If so, then Aces High released three albums that I'm aware of, going back to the nineties. Eyes have added two to that count.

Whoever's in the band and whatever its history, this album is capable stuff. Soldier of Love caught my attention immediately but nothing else followed suit, so I wondered if I should move on to find a different album to review. I stuck with it, though, and What Money Can't Buy enforced itself on a second listen. Then other songs started to make their presence known too and, the longer I listen, the more I like this album. Sure, I'd have liked it more if more songs had matched those two in use of power, but they're all growers and that's not a bad thing. The title track built next with its sassy riff and then the laid back Sailing Ships Across the Ocean with its tasty guitar solo. And so on.

Maybe one reason why it wasn't more immediate for me is because so much of it is fundamentally simple. Innocent Dreamer has a simple but effective riff. Any Way You Dream has an even simpler riff that's arguably even more effective. On a first listen, there was nothing I hadn't heard before. On a second or a third, they got under my skin because they're just performed so well. There's not a flash moment in their bones. Nobody's showing off. Nobody's stealing the spotlight, even in the guitar solos. That tends to mean that few moments leap out for special attention. I didn't end up with a lot of written notes after a first time through.

What gradually manifests is the realisation that these guys know precisely what they're doing and what they're doing is exactly what they need to be doing at any particular moment in time. All this eventually reminded me of comic book artists, like Will Eisner, who started out as cartoonists. They don't draw a lot of lines, which tends to makes their work seem simplistic, but they're experienced enough and skilled enough to draw exactly the right line in exactly the right place, so the resulting effect is huge. In music, Bad Company would be the epitome of that. All Bad Company have on this band is the fact that I know a lot of their stuff by heart. Eyes are still new on me.

And so I found myself listening again and again and again, each time playing better than the last. After a first listen, I was thinking about a 6/10. After a second, I realised that I should up that to a 7/10. After a third, there was no doubt. After half a dozen times through, I'm singing along with a song like Through the Night that hadn't grabbed me before and so I'm wondering about whether an 8/10 would be warranted. It's not all melodic rock now. It's neat tone in Auto-Magic. It's bounce in Through the Night. It's laid back elegance in Sailing Ships Across the Ocean. It's apparently the gift that keeps on giving. So, yeah, an 8/10 and a magnetic one because I don't want to move on.

Blitzkrieg - Blitzkrieg (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 6 Sep 2024
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Given how many NWOBHM-era bands have been reforming and releasing new material, I shouldn't be surprised to see Blitzkrieg added to that list. They were formed back in 1979 as Split Image, but renamed to Blitzkrieg a year later when Brian Ross joined on vocals. They released just one single before splitting up, but up and coming legends Metallica covered its B-side, also called Blitzkrieg, on their first Garage Days Revisited release, along with Diamond Head's Am I Evil? on the flipside of their Creeping Death single. And so Blitzkrieg reformed, released an album, split up, reformed, split up, reformed, knocked out three albums, split up, reformed and seem to mean it this time.

This is their sixth album since that reformation in 2001, though only Ross remains from that point or indeed any other before it, and their first since 2018's Judge Not! It's roughly what you expect from a NWOBHM band, though I do resist labelling 2024 releases that way because it was as much a point in time as a sound. 21st century production aside, You Won't Take Me Alive sounds like it's a song that could easily have been on a 1980 NWOBHM album, but nowadays it's just heavy metal. It's a powerful opener, with elegant guitarwork and clean resonant vocals, plus a drop in intensity midway that's very tasty.

Much of this is Brian Ross, whose vocal style is gloriously out of fashion but nonetheless precisely right for this sort of music. He doesn't scream (except for a rare exception like the one that closes Dragon's Eye), he doesn't growl and he doesn't shriek. He dishes out clean vocals that we can hear and easily understand and often includes a point in his lyrics. That's most notable here in If I Told You, flavoured by its opening sample, sparse riff and plodding bass to be a song about conspiracy theories, JFK, 9/11, Area 51 and the rest. If I told you, I'd have to kill you. However, his resonance is what makes his voice special. The only overt comparison I'd give is to Danny Foxx of Blood Money, who never made it out of the eighties, but he sang faster and with more urgency.

However, it's not all Brian Ross. The rhythm section of Liam Ferguson on bass and Matt Graham on drums, is rock solid, and the guitars sometimes have just as much voice as Ross. There are a couple of them here and I don't know which guitarist delivers which riff or which solo, but I get the feeling that they divvy them up. Certainly there are duelling guitar solos that suggest that both play lead at least at that point. They establish themselves early with the buzzsaw guitar that starts out You Won't Take Me Alive and seem to be simpatico whatever genre they move into, whether it's speed metal midway through Dragon's Eye, power metal on much of the rest of it or neoclassical shred in quite a few solos.

It's weird to suggest that one of those guitarists is Alan Ross, not because he's the son of Brian, a scenario with plenty of precedent nowadays, but because he's had the longest tenure in the band after his father, having joined as late as 2012, thirty-two years after Split Image became Blitzkrieg. Surprisingly, he's also the current vocalist in Tysondog, though I now realise that he didn't sing on their most recent album, Midnight, which I reviewed a couple of years ago, as that was their prior singer, the late John Carruthers. Ross's cohort here is Nick Jennison, the most recent arrival who joined in 2020.

And so this line-up, as recent as it is in context, seems like solid and strong bedrock for the albums to come. Ross is just as good as he's always been behind the mike, bestowing appropriate gravitas on these songs, even duetting acrobatically with himself on the suitably titled Vertigo. Jennison and Ross Jr. are a real highlight for me, bringing some consistent bite with their guitar tone. They can clearly play, as their solos ably demonstrate, especially the duelling ones. If they can conjure a set of more memorable riffs on the next album, they'll be unstoppable. And they're all backed up by a highly reliable rhythm section in Ferguson and Graham, who do the job without ever seeming to stretch themselves.

So what this comes down to is how memorable it's going to end up. I enjoyed all nine tracks, but I'm not sure how many are going to stay with me for long. You Won't Take Me Alive stays the standout from the very outset. That one's memorable. Otherwise it's moments that are memorable rather than complete songs. The frantic section midway through Dragon's Eye is one. The vocal approach in Vertigo is another. The drop late in of Above the Law fits that too, with acoustic guitar and flute but crunchy guitar punctuation and Ross remaining powerful throughout. There's also the hook to I am His Voice; the way they include the Halloween theme in their homage to that film, The Night He Came Home; and the epic opening to the operatic closer, On Olympus High - Aphrodite's Kiss. None of these songs are bad, but it's these moments that are special.

Mostly, I think what I wanted out of this album is something that Blitzkrieg don't want to provide, namely a little more speed. They have all the power they need, across the board, and they have a few moments of pace that are the moments that this material comes alive. More of those and I'd like it a lot more than I do already. Either way, it's good to see Blitzkrieg putting out new material and I look forward to their next album. Why this one was self-titled, I don't know. It's strong but it isn't a career-defining release.

Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers - I Love You Too (2024)

Country: Australia
Style: Alternative
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Sep 2024
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I'm always on the lookout for what's coming out from down under and here's a gloriously named band who I'm listing as alternative but play a cross of pop and rock with a garage rock mindset and sometimes a punk urgency too. Their first album, released last year, was called I Love You, so this is naturally I Love You Too. I don't think I'm quite ready to declare unconditional love for them yet but this is bright and engaging and agreeably varied. It's very easy to listen to and its energy has an agreeably positive effect on the day.

That begins with I Used to Be Fun, which opens up the album with a perky form of energy, but it's Treat Me Better which really elevates the album. In fact, while I could (and will) pick out a host of favourite tracks, this one sits above them all. It starts out calmer but builds with serious effect in immaculate fashion. I love how this one bulks up and shrinks down again. It's a more imaginative song than the opener and it plays with some neat contrasts. The guitar tone as it bulks up is very tasty too, courtesy of Scarlett McKahey.

The bad news is that nothing else here matches Treat Me Better. The good news is that nothing is particularly interested in trying because the other songs have other things to do. The heaviest is a forty second track called Cayenne Pepper which rather hilariously, is artificially bulked up. Twenty seconds of it constitutes a slice of studio reality. The second half is a blitzkrieg of a punk song. The lightest is Your House My House, which is entirely unplugged, mixing vocals and acoustic guitar. If that gives a particular impression, I should add that the vocals sound like everybody in the band is harmonising together and the guitar is almost hiding in the background.

As you might imagine, songs like that rely on their melodies and hooks and, quite frankly, so does everything here. That holds for a pop rock song like I Love You, which is infuriatingly catchy with a kick to it. It holds for the songs that find and milk their grooves, like Backseat Driver, I Don't Want It and Kissy Kissy. The latter especially reaches a big singalong at the end, which somehow works even though some of those singing appear to be cracking up at the same time. And it holds for the odd tracks, like Never Saw It Coming, which is soft enough to feature strings, acoustic guitar and yet more harmonising. The lyrics are more visceral and the contrast is impressive.

The lead vocalist is Anna Ryan, whose Aussie accent shines through even when she's singing. It's a flavour for these songs that's unmistakable on a bunch of them, especially Backseat Driver and I Don't Want It. She also handles rhythm guitar, but McKahey handles lead. She's the primary way that these songs get different tones, hulking up for the powerful songs, coating everything in grit and grunge or finding a melodious chiming tone that almost reminds of surf music on mid-power songs and either dropping into acoustic mode or vanishing entirely on the softer poppier tracks.

That leaves Jaida Stephenson on bass and Neve van Boxsel on drums. As the rhythm section, they aren't there to do anything flash but the former manages it anyway on a few tracks. There's some wonderful prominent basswork on Backseat Driver and I Don't Want It. Everyone joins in on songs that need communal vocals and I believe van Boxsel occasionally sings lead as well. It always feels redundant to call out how a band works together because, of course, everyone in the line-up plays a part. However, there are bands dominated by vocals and others dominated by guitars. Here, it's very much a team effort; nobody dominates because everybody shares the spotlight throughout.

With acknowledgement to a couple of guest groups, Softcult and the Linda Lindas, who guest on a track each, I'll cheesily riff on the title of the final song, We Thought It Would Be a Good Time But It Was a Bad Time. It might have been for the singer or the character she's portraying in that song but it isn't for us. This is a good time album. Even at its grungiest, it's a happy album and would be even if there weren't so many glimpses of how much fun the band were having when they recorded it. It's not just the first half of Cayenne Pepper or the laughter in Kissy Kissy, it's all over the place, starting with the end of the opener. These are riot grrls with more than one meaning to riot. And this is a good time.

Flotsam and Jetsam - I am the Weapon (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Heavy/Thrash Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 13 Sep 2024
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I bought Flotsam and Jetsam's debut album on original release in 1986 but I hadn't moved to their home town of Phoenix by then; I was on the other side of the pond listening in my bedroom in rural Yorkshire. Given that I've been in Phoenix for twenty years now, it's about time I caught them live and I finally did so earlier this year. They were as good as I'd hoped they would be, given that they were touring on the back of two of the best albums of their career, The End of Chaos and Blood in the Water. This is probably the least of the three, but it's still a damn good album worthy of being on my Highly Recommended List for the year. I've played it a lot today and it's as fresh as it was on a first listen.

My primary note is that it's less thrashy than usual, continuing in the vein of Blood on the Water in combining thrash with power metal and good old fashioned heavy metal. Gates of Hell blisters out of the, well, gate, courtesy of some frantic drumming from Ken Mary, but it doesn't show up until seven tracks in and, when it does, it makes us realise a lot of what came before it wasn't remotely as fast. Cold Steel Lights blisters early too, so the band are still willing to get fast, but they tend to slow down a little to bolster the melodies and hooks.

As I pointed out in my review of Blood on the Water, the obvious influences here are to bands like Iron Maiden and Queensrÿche, with occasional nods to bands a generation further back. There's a lot of seventies on Beneath the Shadows, where the bluesy bounce of the riffs reminds of ZZ Top's La Grange and the chorus builds like Deep Purple. Sure, it finds some Pantera guitar moments late but it's a look further back than usual for the Flots. By comparison, Maiden are everywhere here, most effectively on Burned My Bridges and Beneath the Shadows.

Those two are among my highlights this time out, along with Cold Steel Lights and it probably isn't a coincidence that these three have the most successful hooks. The verses are memorably melodic and the choruses are even catchier. They all build emphatically well too, reaching powerful grooves that take them home, usually with impressive use of backing vocals to deepen them further. Back in April, my highlight from their live set was The Walls, from Blood in the Water, even above all the classics I've been wanting to hear live for almost four decades. These unfold in the same vein.

That means that, while I'm an old school speed metal nut and prefer my thrash metal to be as fast as possible, I apparently appreciate the hooks that Eric A.K. hurls out even more and he has plenty of those here. It might seem like a gimme, but he dominates this album. Usually, I'm just as caught up in the guitarwork on Flots albums, but I found myself focusing on the vocals more this time out. And that's even though Michael Gilbert and Steve Conley deliver the goods yet again. They do just as much that's worthy on Cold Steel Lights as Eric A.K. but it's that melodic vocal line that's what I keep following. He channels some Ronnie James Dio on this one and that's no bad thing.

Given that I'm raving about yet another Flots album, I should explain why I think this is a little less than its two predecessors. One reason is that a couple of songs feel a little weaker this time out, a problem that didn't manifest on either The End of Chaos or Blood in the Water. I'm not as fond of Primal or Running Through the Fire. I'm not as sold on the bounciness of Kings of the Underworld either, with Eric A.K. spitting out words rhythmically on the beat, almost like an old school rapper, even if he sings rather than raps.

Another reason is that I kept hearing moments of other songs, which was occasionally distracting. It probably doesn't help that it started on the opener, A New Kind of Hero. Was that a nod to a riff in Anthrax's Madhouse? Was that a vocal progression from Whitesnake's Still of the Night? It's still a powerhouse of a song, exactly the sort of thing that should open a Flots album, and it closes wonderfully too. They always knew how to end songs, which many bonds never quite figure out. But those moments are there every time I repeat. There are similar moments on Primal and the title track that sound eerily familiar, even if I can't place them yet.

With acknowledgement to The Head of the Snake and Black Wings, which continue to grow on me with repeat listens, I'd call this another strong album from the Flots. It's a bit slower than The End of Chaos but just as melodic as Blood in the Water. It's a little less consistent than either, but even the worst songs aren't bad; they're just not up to the admirably high standard they're working to these days. It's an 8/10 release for sure and I'm looking forward to hearing a few of these songs in a live environment. However, I gave Blood in the Water one of my rare 9/10s and I find I can't do that this time.

Tusmørke - Dawn of Oberon (2024)

Country: Norway
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
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It might sound like a Christmas album for a few moments, but this is a neat melding of a number of seventies rock styles. Initially, the most obvious influence on the eighteen minute opening title track is Jethro Tull, not only because of the prominent flute; it's there in the structure and the vocals too. That evolves though, because it's not just folk prog. As it shifts into a long instrumental section, it also shifts into more neoprog territory, especially through the keyboards, and when it truly comes alive about eleven minutes in with a palpable middle eastern flavour, it's revelling in psych.

Contrary to the reputation of prog, Dawn of Oberon is a song that suddenly becomes difficult not to dance to. It's a decent song before this point, but it's absolutely glorious after it. It still feels lofi, as if it was recorded on a four track, but it's jaunty and beyond engaging. It practically reaches out to drag us out of our seats and feel the music instead of just hearing it. It continues to evolve from there too, venturing into space rock. Not for the last time on this album there's some Hawkwind in the sound too. If you ever wanted to hear Tull and Hawkwind jamming together, this may be as close as you'll ever get, even if the Tull half of that partnership gets the final word.

It's always an ambitious statement to kick off any album with a side long epic, but it works here. It means that we're under no false impressions about what we're getting into with Tusmørke (which is the Norwegian for twilight). Nothing else here is remotely that long and some of it takes a very different tack indeed, but it grounds us in what the band do: primarily folk prog but with journeys into psych and space rock. If we dig that long opener, we're going to like the rest of this album and, I presume, we'll enjoy much of their back catalogue. They were founded back in 1994 as Les Fleurs du Mal, became Tusmørke in 2009 and have knocked out a steady stream of albums since then. This is their eleventh overall and their fourth in four years.

Nothing else here touches the opener, but all six tracks feature something worthy of note. Born to Be Mild, as you might expect, dips into Steppenwolf at points, and remains firmly in that combo of folk prog and space rock, atmosphere swirling around everything like we're listening to light that reflects off a revolving disco mirrorball. Dwarven Lord is notably laid back, kicking off with lounge elements in the folk prog. When it escalates, it does so with the subtle warp they used on Born to Be Mild and further space rock touches. What ties dwarven lords and fairy queens to the chirping of synths, I have no idea, but it's a heady mix nonetheless.

Tusmørke sing in English on most of this album, Midsommernattsdrøm excepted, but it looks like that's a relatively recent thing and earlier albums are more likely to be in Norwegian. The singer goes by Benediktator and, like many singers who perform in multiple languages, he's just a little more effective in what I presume is his first. However, had I not known that the band hailed from Norway, I'd have assumed from his diction and intonation that he was a native English speaker. I'd call out the post production on the vocals here too, as they're manipulated midway through to be reminiscent of what bands like Gong were doing back in the day.

Oddly, Midsommernattsdrøm feels a little long at eight minutes while Dawn of Oberon doesn't at eighteen. Maybe that's due to its lazy feel, aided by ambient sounds like chirping birds or buzzing flies and the way the notes draw out more and more as the song runs on, as against something in an ostensibly similar vein like Pink Floyd's Grantchester Meadows. Even though there are obvious comparisons, the two sound totally different. People View does something similar, but with much more of a happy tone. It's not that Midsommernattsdrøm is sad, but People View is a celebration song, even when it's slow.

And that leaves Troll Male, which has a dreamy sound to it and uses a similar vocal punctuation in its later sections to, of all things, I Only Have Eyes for You. Now, we can talk about bands like Tull and Hawkwind and a whole bunch of Canterbury groups, but who had money on the Flamingos as a Tusmørke influence? It's at once the most jarring thing on this album, oddly so given all the space rock synths and some of the more experimental moments on this track and others, yet something that completely fits with the rest of the album.

I think it fundamentally plays to the sense of weirdness that Tusmørke are happy to adopt to make their particular hybrid of folk, prog and psych work. Folk is tradition and psych is subversion, so it's easy to see a clash, even though they fit together much easier than that. Prog just makes it all the more interesting musically whichever way that happens and the more imagination that goes into that, the better. Tusmørke are full of imagination, one reason why the Canterbury sound seems to be a fair comparison. I've often struggled with Canterbury bands because they dive too far off the deep end without any idea where they're going to end up, but that's not the case here.

In fact, I think what I like about this the most is that Tusmørke know exactly where they plan to go and use that imagination to get there. I haven't heard their previous ten albums so can't comment on how well this fits alongside them, but it's strong stuff that makes we want to explore further.