Fleshgod Apocalypse - Veleno (2019)

Country: Italy
Style: Symphonic Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 May 2019
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Remember in Back to the Future when Marty McFly convinced the younger version of his father that he was from outer space by simply popping an Eddie van Halen tape into his Walkman and blaring it at his target? Well, I couldn't help but picture a fresh version of that scene when listening to this album.

Imagine waking up from a decades-long coma and the first thing you hear is Fury, the opening track to this album by Fleshgod Apocalypse. Even the name of the band could blow their minds, but this one track would convince them that they had someone been abducted by aliens and are now residing on an alien planet.

It's extreme stuff but not in just the usual ways. Sure, it's a blitzkrieg of noise but it's full of strings and piano and choral voices. Where a band like Therion might craft that into a catchy metal number, this band layer them instead until we wonder if we're listening to three different radio stations all at once.

Initially, it's hard to figure out exactly what we're listening to. All the traditional instruments leap into Fury like boats into a maelstrom, the drums at hyperspeed from the very beginning and the guitars following suit. The vocals are death growls, low enough in the mix to be another instrument. Then, only ten seconds in, Francesco Ferrini starts wild runs up and down his piano keyboard and ten after that, a choir joins in for good measure. It's almost too much and this will be an assault on the senses for many.

But there are points where it really works. Of all things, a triangle kicks off a section a couple of minutes in that grounds what's going on here. It's like the clouds depart and we see a shining sky full of angels and death. I loved it but this isn't first time listen stuff. It needs three or four to really grasp what Fleshgod Apocalypse are actually doing and to start to appreciate it.

This approach continues on Carnivorous Lamb and Sugar, with other nuances. There's a female voice that speaks partway through the former but it's so buried in the mix that it's a sort of ghost, just like the strange laughter that kicks off the latter. The clean male voice that joins Carnivorous Lamb sounds like he's shouting from another studio through the wall. The piano that steals the early sections of Sugar and the guitar that takes heed later on sound like what Mussorgsky might write to accompany the flight of witches over a lake of fire.

In other words, this is death metal but it's not only death metal and adding 'symphonic' to the beginning of the genre doesn't cut it. This is wildly, uncompromisingly experimental in nature and it feels much more appropriate to compare it to the output of a jazz rebel like John Zorn as a death metal band like Deicide or Arch Enemy. There are similarities but the goal just isn't the same.

And, if we survive the thirteen minute onslaught of the first three tracks, we're thrown something completely different. The Praying Mantis' Strategy sounds like dark Enya with an oddly compelling metronome behind her, the final pair of delightful piano notes launching us into Monnalisa, a slower, more gothic piece initially driven by strings, piano and drum fills, with a decadent and narrative clean vocal from Paolo Rossi. It moves into Tristania territory a couple of minutes in but refuses to stay in any one place for long. There's a glorious contribution from soprano Veronica Bordacchini but it ends very differently.

There's so much in Monnalisa to detail that it's hard to give an impression of what it feels like, but it's a song that you feel as much as hear. The same goes for The Day We'll Be Gone, which features a notably wild pairing of soprano and harsh male vocal. Like always, it's done for effect but the effect sought is different here. This feels like a battle between good and evil for supremacy, because the voices both sing as leads and often at the same time. Veleno is an operatic interlude, a piano solo that does nothing outrageous but carries portents of what's to come.

Oddly, what's to come turns out to be a symphonic take on Rammstein's Reise, Reise, which ends with metronome and squeezebox, and a whispering gothic orchestral take on The Forsaking, originally recorded on Agony, the second Fleshgod Apocalypse album.

I have to call out special praise for whoever produced this, because it's the densest music I've heard but I can still hear everything I need to hear. With the amount of stuff thrown into this, that's a real achievement. Certainly the drums fit better into the mix than on previous albums. What results is something that's perhaps best described as an acquired taste. I have no doubt that this isn't for everyone, not even amongst the fraternity of death metal fans.

After a few listens, I have to say that I admire what Fleshgod Apocalypse have done here, especially given that most of it is the product of one man called Francesco Paoli, who contributes the lead vocals, all the guitars and the drums for good measure (yes, he has colleagues to do some of this live). Rossi adds bass and clean vocals, while Ferrini is responsible for piano and orchestration.

I can also say that I like it, but I really can't say how much. I think I need to listen to this album another couple of dozen times to grasp that.

L7 - Scatter the Rats (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Grunge
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 May 2019
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This year has seen a whole slew of unlikely returns to the studio, running the musical gauntlet from death metal pioneers Possessed to Italian prog rock legends Banco del Mutuo Soccorso via seventies rock icons Black Oak Arkansas, but somehow the most unlikely is L7. Grunge is old enough now to fall into the nostalgia sweet spot but it hasn't and, frankly, it hasn't even shown any signs of returning to favour. L7's return doesn't look like being the spark to a trend but it could be, because this is a pretty fun album.

While we might think back at grunge sounding all downtuned and depressing, that's never been what L7 are. I'd describe this as pop punk, if I could keep inappropriate ties to bands at the more commercial end of that genre out of the picture, like the Offspring and Green Day. That's not what this is. It reminded me a lot more of early Adam and the Ants. Many songs here, especially Uppin' the Ice, feel like the grandchildren of Cartrouble and Physical (You're So) and others from the Dirk Wears White Sox era.

On Scatter the Rats, L7 do what Adam Ant did so well back then, singing no end of catchy tunes over simple hooks that all have a grungy twist to rock 'n' roll roots but are coloured through little responses from guitars and effects. Add in some Ramones and some Blondie and maybe some Bangles on Holding Pattern and this is as much a throwback to 1979 as it is to 1992 and that made for an interesting ride. What's different, of course, is modern production and pissed female vocals. Ouija Board Lies wouldn't sound too different if it was recorded by Adam Ant and Debbie Harry.

It's hard for a while to determine which the catchiest tracks are, but I'm pretty sure that Fighting the Crave has to top the list. It's driven by a delightful bass riff from Jennifer Finch and a callout style vocal from, I presume, Donita Sparks. It's worth mentioning here that this version of L7 features the entire classic line-up that existed from 1986 to 1996 and ever since they got back together in 2014 after thirteen years apart.

Album opener Burn Baby and Uppin' the Ice are the most obvious candidates to battle Fighting the Crave for the catchiest song here, but most of the rest aren't too far behind. Everything here is at least mildly catchy and I have to include Proto Prototype in that, even though it has the simplest and most repetitive riff I've heard in a long time. Stadium West relies on a catchy vocal line and meows, of all things, because it flaunts another simple riff that needs enhancement.

The majority of the songs here run from two and a half to four minutes, the band clearly not interested in anything that isn't short, sharp and to the point. The only exception to that is the title track which closes out the album, which is wilder and punkier. I quite liked it but it's a little out of place with the ten tracks that preceded it.

It's good to see L7 back and on form too. After all, grunge grew out of a rejection of the artificial music that was dominating the mainstream. Few would disagree that what's in the charts today is even more artificial than what was in the charts as the eighties became the nineties. Most songs are written by the same two or three songwriters and, hey, we have autotune now to make musicians cringe.

I'd dearly love for someone to crash that party and I'd grin like an idiot if that someone turned out to be a band of women in their fifties singing lines like, "My love is like a garbage truck." Let's turn the charts into a Celebrity Deathmatch between L7 and Justin Bieber with music winning.

Death Angel - Humanicide (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 31 May 2019
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Those who have followed my reviews from the beginning of the year will know by now that I discovered metal in the early days of speed and thrash and they were my go to subgenres. I bought The Ultra-Violence when it came out and played it incessantly. I wasn't as fond of the next two albums but I was sad when the band ceased to be in 1991, especially as I hadn't got round to seeing them live yet. I finally got that treat in 2012, early in the current band's line-up, which has remained stable since 2009.

They rocked on stage and so does this album, but it took me a second listen to really grasp it. My first time through, in the wee hours of the morning, was decent but not great, highlighting traditional stuff in a notably clean mix. It played at mid tempo more than I'd like, but it had some surprising textures, like the piano-driven coda to Immortal Behated. I knew I liked it and a couple of songs stood out, but it didn't knock my socks off.

This morning, I revisited it and heard a completely different album, except for that clean production which is easily my least favourite aspect. Maybe I wasn't with it last night or maybe this just isn't as immediate an album as, say, the new Flotsam and Jetsam or Exumer albums, which were obviously great from moment one. It doesn't really matter. It's good stuff and, a couple of listens later, it's very good stuff.

It starts off fast, with a double whammy of Humanicide and Divine Defector. The first is intricate and the second is blistering, firmly in the sort of territory you might expect to find Kreator, but they're both fast. While I love Death Angel for their musicianship and really miss the instrumentals they treated us to on the first album, vocalist Mark Osegueda is clearly on top form here, hurling out the lyrics like his life depends on it.

Aggressor is traditional Death Angel, but I Came for Blood really isn't and this track stands out more than any other. It's like Death Angel attempting Motörhead, which I now realise sounds rather like Midnight or early Nuclear Assault. It's different from moment one, but the chorus makes it sound even more different because it's reminiscent of Electric Six. Yeah, that caught me by surprise too! Now, if someone had floated Motörhead covering Electric Six, I'd have thought them insane, but this has real energy and power to it and it may well be my favourite song on the album.

There are plenty more fast thrash songs to come with decent solos from Rob Cavestany and wild spitting vocals from Osegueda, that highlight a slightly punkier feel than I remember from Death Angel. Old school fans will not be disappointed. However, there's more than that here.

Immortal Behated is progressive thrash, with a commercial chorus, and it's interesting stuff, even before the extended coda. Cavestany and Ted Aguilar shine, but the whole band contribute highlights. Osegueda aims for cleaner vocals on Revelation Song and the band slow down a lot too. In fact, this isn't really thrash at all, it's a hard rock song with hints that the band know how to thrash too. Of Rats and Men adds a Savatage vibe to the fray, a relatively safe expansion of sound.

And then there's The Day I Walked Away, which wraps up the album. Again, it plays slower but adds surprising elements. The verses carry a gothic feel, and by gothic here I'm talking about Bauhaus or maybe Type O Negative, not gothic metal like Paradise Lost or Lacuna Coil.

These three songs are an odd way to wrap up a thrash album, but they're not bad songs and they don't really feel out of place, just a little jarring. I applaud the band's attempt to vary their sound without leaping onto another bandwagon and alienating their fanbase in the process the way that a number of other bands have done in the past.

There's a lot here to digest and that's a good thing. The only bad thing is the production which is very capable but very clean. Humanicide should have blistered more and it's the production not the band or the songs that's the cause of that.

Darkthrone - Old Star (2019)

Country: Norway
Style: Black Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 31 May 2019
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Well, this was a surprise for me, but probably won't be for most. I remember Darkthrone from their early Peaceville albums, as they shifted from being a European death metal band to the black metal for which they became known. I think I have Soulside Journey as a white label test pressing. Well, Fenriz and Nocturno Culto have apparently changed their sound quite a lot over the years and many albums since. Holy crap, I believe this is their eighteenth studio album in under thirty years and it doesn't sound like Soulside Journey or A Blaze in the Northern Sky.

Old Star clearly bears the hallmarks of Norwegian black metal, especially on songs like Duke of Gloat, where the only shock to a black metal fan would be the notably slow drumming. I Muffle Your Inner Choir kicks off the album in black metal style too, even if the vocals are a little more death than black and the drums refuse to acknowledge the existence of hyperspeed. It's good old wall of sound stuff though, merely a more patient black metal than we might be used to.

I Muffle Your Inner Choir slows down halfway through as well, becoming more of a heavy metal track than a black metal track. Never mind death from which the band was born, it's not extreme at all for a while except for when the vocals join in again. It's slow and steady but the moment we wonder if it's thinks about doom, it speeds up. To me, it felt like a throwback to the era before hyperspeed drumming, when bands like Bathory and Celtic Frost tested boundaries before some of these newer techniques came along.

This old school mindset is impossible to miss on The Hardship of the Scots, which begins with a riff that reminds of Y&T, of all people, albeit notably downtuned and apparently recorded in an aviary. This song really ponders on whether it should play with doom but it doesn't and, perhaps more telling, it isn't doom/death either because there's no melodic guitar line tempering the deepness.

It even brightens up a few minutes in, with an odd perky doom section, just as The Key is Inside the Wall does after about a minute. Is this a new genre that Darkthrone are inventing? Perky doom. I kind of like it! It's downtuned but riff driven and it chugs along with that dark vocal, as if Hellhammer were covering Judas Priest. I even caught a death grunt at one point and a lyric or two about Satan, who's fallen rather out of style nowadays. It has a rough production too but it's never muddy like the more luddite minded of the black metal bands prefer.

I liked this album but I wonder how much of that like is because it's rather different from what I was expecting, how much because it reminded me of what was deemed extreme midway through the eighties and how much because it does a good job whatever it is. I have a feeling it's a mix of all three and I'm not sure if that allows me to rate this appropriately. I've listened a few times but I feel like I should come back to it later in the year to see if I still like it.

I should especially look backwards, because my knowledge of Darkthrone is a dozen albums short and I haven't listened them since the mid nineties. They continue to slow down their output, even if that generally means an album every two or three years now instead of six in seven, so I should probably look at the last couple, The Underground Resistance and Arctic Thunder and see if that provides me with some context.

Diamond Head - The Coffin Train (2019)

Country: UK
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 May 2019
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Clearly I haven't been paying attention, but Diamond Head, whom I'd come to believe reformed and broke up every other Tuesday, only actually split up twice. What the heck do I know?

Well, I knew that the classic era ended in 1985, after one of the greatest rock albums of all time, Lightning to the Nations, and two other overlooked gems. They got back together in 1990, when the Metallica connection was at its peak, released a new album, Death and Progress, and promptly vanished again in 1994. I remember buying that album, full of wild anticipation, on its release.

What I didn't know was that they, meaning core members Sean Harris and Brian Tatler, reformed again in 2000 and the band has stayed in place ever since, albeit with a changing line-up. Harris left in 2004 and a gentleman by the name of Nick Tart attempted (and, according to the fans, failed) to fill his shoes over the succeeding decade and two further albums. He eventually gave way to Rasmus Bom Anderson in 2014 and that's who sings on this and another album, simply called Diamond Head, three years ago.

So Anderson sings and Tatler plays lead guitar. Andy 'Abbz' Abberley handles the rhythm guitar, as he has since 2006. Karl Wilcox is the band's drummer and has been since 1991 and that first reformation. That leaves Dean Ashton as the new fish on bass, having only joined in 2016. And with all that done, let's leap into how great this new album is!

Well, it's not great, sadly, but it does have great moments and it's pretty decent as an album, once we address the mix. There's so much sibilance that I had to turn the 16 KHz range totally off on my equaliser and the midrange up a bit too. I hate when I have to do that, but hey.

At least the songs are good. Belly of the Beast, the single which opens up the album, is a real belter that's impossible not to enjoy immediately but which gets better on each revisit. The title track is even better. It's a fantastic old school Diamond Head song, especially from the three minute mark, with excellent guitarwork and strong vocals from Anderson, who's from Denmark but doesn't appear to have sung for anyone else.

That's tracks one and three. In between them and The Sleeper in slot six (it has an intro at five), are a pair of songs that are only less impressive by comparison. Otherwise, they're solid tracks and the latter ably finds some of that build that the band were always unsurpassed at. Steve Harris once called them the new Led Zeppelin and that's mostly apparent in their ability to construct songs out of the ether that build and grow and evolve but each differently.

The Sleeper is the third highlight, featuring some fantastic riffing from Brian Tatler. The opening sounds Metallica-ish, which is circular logic at its best, given that Metallica got their entire early sound from that first Diamond Head album. This intro sounds more like Black-era Metallica but the rest of the song builds as Diamond Head do.

For those who come in wanting another Lightning for the Nations, I should emphasise that that's not what this is. While there's a lot of old school Diamond Head in songs like The Coffin Train and Death by Design, the latter ably highlights how 'old school' here means Canterbury. Hey, that was 1983; it's old school. And, while I'm a Lightning to the Nations man just like a majority of you, To the Devil His Due may just be my favourite Diamond Head track of all time and that was on Canterbury. I'm happily on both sides of that argument.

The album's problem, beyond the mix, is that later songs start to drop into the background, not by being poor, because they're all good, but by failing to keep up the standards of the first half. The best songs are Belly of the Beast, The Coffin Train and The Sleeper and the two in between them follow in their wake. That leaves four songs that are decent but just not as good as what preceded them and that's never the best way to wrap up an album.

An old show business mantra would have the punters always wanting more. By the time The Sleeper finished, I was ecstatic that Diamond Head are not only back but back on form. By the time the album finished, I realised that I was wondering what I'd been so ecstatic about. So I replayed the album and went through the same cycle. And again. And again.

This is solid stuff from the modern incarnation of a legend. No, it's not a new Lightning for the Nations, but then what is? It tries more to be a new Canterbury and, for half its running time, it does a pretty good job.

Blackstone Puppets - Breakdown (2019)

Country: Greece
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 25 May 2019
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Well, this wasn't what I was expecting! Blackstone Puppets are a hard rock band from Thessalonika in Greece and I was intrigued to see what they would sound like. What I found was a kind of cross between Tank and Girlschool, a NWOBHM mixture that took me completely by surprise! Now I'm intrigued as to how those sounds coalesced in Thessalonika for a band who didn't form until 2016 to pick up on.

The best track, to my mind, is the one that kicks off the album. It's Beer in My Veins, which begins with Tank style guitars from Kirk and BB and then adds Girlschool vocals from Alice. While she, as the frontwoman, is easily the most obvious aspect to Blackstone Puppets, the rest of the band really constitute a fierce backbone for her to sing over.

They're notably tight and more than willing to jam for a few minutes midway through a song, swapping guitar licks and even letting Lucky's bass take a spotlight for a while. The remaining band member is Woodie, who's a patient but very capable drummer. No insult intended to Alice, but I could easily listen to these guys just jam without any vocals at all.

Fortunately, Alice is a strong addition to the band too, especially when it kicks up the tempo. She's at her best when rocking out on Beer in My Veins, soaring on Super Power Vein and especially getting wildly emphatic on Hopes & Dreams. Sadly she doesn't do as well on Forsaken, as it's a slower song and crooning just isn't her thing.

This often reminded me of a Friday Rock Show session, not only because it features four tracks that rack up almost twenty minutes between them, but because the point seems to use those four tracks to introduce them to the world at large and show off what they can do. Accordingly, the four songs are agreeably varied. Forsaken isn't a poor song, even if it's the weakest on offer, and I enjoyed the bluesy guitar and arena rock power chords.

While I saw Beer in My Veins as the standout track from my first listen, I have to highlight Hopes & Dreams too. It closes out the album in particular style, with a showcase performance from Alice and a glorious ending that's surely designed to trip up DJs who start talking over it because they think it's over. It stalks really well and it blisters when it's ready.

As far as I'm aware, Blackstone Puppets haven't released much else. There's a single (and associated video) from 2017 called Stoned Alice, the original name of the band which is unrelated to the lead singer's name as she didn't join until afterwards. This appears to be their debut otherwise. It's good stuff and I look forward to seeing what they're going to do next!

Osatia - All in Time (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Post-Hardcore
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 31 May 2019
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Those of you following my journey through the whole spectrum of rock music at Apocalypse Later will be aware of my complete lack of understanding of what the genre called post-hardcore actually is. The releases I've reviewed haven't helped much, verging from the schizophrenic screamo of Famous Last Words to the schizophrenic prog of Borders of Byzantium. There's more to it than schizophrenic, I'm sure.

The core of the genre seems to be an experimental approach to the energy of hardcore, which means that singers don't always scream and their music veers from pop to metal and back, sometimes within the same song. Osatia fit that bill nicely, sounding rather like a progressive pop band with vocals from a singer, Alex Pasibe, whom I was rather shocked to discover is male. That's no dig, by the way. His vocals are high and feminine but very capable and they're the best advert for Osatia, even if there are tinges of autotune.

That hardcore energy is definitely there, but there's nothing else here to remind of hardcore. Pasibe is a alternative rock singer, delivering clean vocals, even when he screams, which isn't too often. The drums are playful but driving and there are a wealth of electronic textures behind the band that flavour what they do.

Frankly, the biggest problem with the album is that it's short. Unlike the Vader EP I reviewed on Friday, this is supposedly full length but it doesn't even reach the half hour mark and it boasts only seven three or four minute songs with an acoustic version of We Care for good measure. That's a mini-album in my book.

Oddly, it's this acoustic track that defines the album. Rather than being a translation of a song into an acoustic style, as is so often the case, it's very much the regular punky We Care, two songs earlier on the album, merely quieter and softer, which ably highlights how any heaviness apparent in Osatia's sound is just another layer that can be easily taken away without damaging their material in the slightest.

Maybe that's why I'm thinking of this as Taylor Swift meets U2 but given a crunch and an energy through prominent drumming and power chords. That goes double for songs like The Inevitable, which is a heavy pop song in the same way that Babymetal play heavy kawaii pop. Personally, I much prefer Osatia loud and energetic and the opening couple of songs epitomise that.

First up is the title track, with its jangling melody and crunchy bedrock. It's emphatically in your face stuff, taking its "Keep on fighting!" lyric to heart, even when it quietens down. Atlantis is even better, a dissonant guitar and a melodic keyboard combining to make a tasty backing for Pasibe. It's energetic but experimental too and it's easily my favourite track on the album.

The middle of the album sounds very similar to me except for The Inevitable. Lose My Number, Anxiety and We Care all play at a similar pace and with a similar outlook. If you like one, you'll like all of them and, frankly, you'll like the rest of the album too. On the flipside, if you don't like the first one you find, this isn't going to be for you. Wasting My Life gets a little more screamo to wrap up the core album but it's not out of place.

And maybe this highlights the other negative side, that its experimentation is rather consistently applied and not particularly deep. Sure, it has the energy of hardcore and it has a neat combination of sounds, especially with the keyboard layers, but that's as experimental as it gets. So much for my latest definition of post-hardcore! All in time, I guess.

Cracked Machine - The Call of the Void (2019)

Country: UK
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Apr 2019
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The first 9/10 album of the year for me was an instrumental psychedelic rock album from Turkey, Uluru's Acrophilia. This is the closest thing to it that I've found since and, while it's neither as good nor as wild, it's a strong album that I enjoyed a great deal.

Cracked Machine come from the West Country of the UK and this is a follow-up to 2017's I, Cosmonaut. I haven't heard that album yet but this is a strong and varied release that suggests that I should go find it. The track names look like different languages but they really represent a set of mythical dragons or serpents from an intriguing set of cultures. That's a cool idea but I didn't feel an exploration of those cultures in the music.

Jormungandr is the closest to the Uluru album, a heads down jam built on a solid set of riffs. As you might imagine, Jörmungandr is a serpent from the Norse Eddas, the World Serpent who grew so large that he was able to wrap himself around the entire planet and grab his own tail. It's also a really good piece, the most up tempo and in your face track on the album, but it's also relatively simple and straightforward compared to what's to come.

Illuyanka is a lot more thoughtful, starting with a spoken word intro in a language I don't recognise but is presumably Turkish, given that Illuyanka was a dragon slain by the Hittite sky god. It builds slowly but surely but remains much more meditative than its predecessor. The story of this dragon is sad because of the sacrifice involved and some of that is easy to find within the music.

Kirimu is a lot more progressive, with a fantastic swirling riff, far more overtly psychedelic than the opening tracks. While the guitar has been the focal point thus far and it gets wild here, the bass refuses to play second fiddle here (if you'll forgive the mixed metaphor) and the drums shine. The dragon this time out comes from the Congo, the master of the deep forest in stories of the Nyanga people. He's a scary beast, with seven heads, seven horns and seven eyes and, while I didn't get a lot of African vibes from the song, the drums of coming closest, I did get a scary vibe.

These tracks get longer as the album runs on, five minute songs becoming six and then seven, eventually wrapping up with an eight minute epic. That gives the band more opportunity to explore their subject, though I struggled often to find connections. Yamata no Orochi, for instance, is all about a Japanese dragon with eight heads but I didn't hear anything Japanese in the music. I enjoyed the track, which lets the synths come to the fore, rough enough to perhaps suggest a shakuhachi flute but I'm really stretching there.

I love the idea of an instrumental album all about mythical dragon creatures but I'd have loved the result more if there had been more exploration of the cultures involved in the music. As it stands, the Japanese track segues for me right into the Persian track, Azi Dahaka, named for a dragon king. Both tracks are great but I just don't hear what I'm expecting to hear given the context.

And really that's where I have to go with this album. Never mind the theme, just lie back and let the music wash over you. Blazej Gradziel's drums are a real highlight for me because it sounds like he's hitting those drums really hard and he refuses to merely underpin his bandmates for the whole album. I liked the synthwork of Clive Noyes too, which often act as a sort of audible fog machine, adding atmosphere while Bill Denton's guitar swoops and swirls. That leaves Chris Sutton on bass, who is worthy too, whether setting a tone or taking the focus.

Talking of atmosphere, the most atmospheric song on the album is Typhon, a serpentine giant in Greek myth. Noyes sets the scene with his synths before bass and guitar battle for dominance. Without the drums, this evokes a pit in a forest which might just be a portal to somewhere fantastic. With drums, it feels more ritual in nature, so maybe a portal to feed with sacrificial victims. As the rhythm escalates, we wonder if those victims are going to start coming back.

Vritra, the Vedic personification of drought, wraps up the album with more of the same as Typhon, especially from Gradziel. It's another standout track for me, though a little simpler than Typhon, highlighting that there's post-rock in the line-up of Cracked Machine influences as much as space rock and psychedelic freakouts. Again I have to highlight the drumming, especially as the album fades out.

I liked this a lot and I've run through it half a dozen times already. It's a lively trip and I look forward to throwing it onto my headphones late one night in the dark. What it isn't is a cultural exploration of serpent myths, which is a shame. To throw a mixed compliment into play after a positive and negative, while it certainly isn't as good or as varied as Acrophilia, it's the closest I've found over the last five months and that's something.