Dream Tröll - Second to None (2019)

Country: UK
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 12 Jul 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives | YouTube

Well, here's something special, for a number of reasons, only one of which is the fact that I'd highly recommend it.

Dream Tröll are based in Leeds, in northern England, and this is a follow-up to their debut album, The Knight of Rebellion. That was released in 2017 and this album is brand new, honestly released in July 2019, even though it has very little intention of acknowledging the new millennium. If it wasn't for the decent modern production, this would sound very much like it was made in the early eighties when I was a hop, skip and jump away in Halifax, a swift train ride from venues Dream Tröll might play.

And, as an old school metalhead who discovered rock and metal in 1984, this brings back so many memories. Most importantly, it doesn't just sound like a whole bunch of bands I remember from the hallowed pages of Kerrang! and my carefully recorded tapes of the Friday Rock Show, it sounds as good as any of them ever did and they're combined into a sound that somehow avoids what we might expect initially from the umlauted name and then everything else on offer, from the cover art to the promo photos, from the songs to the lyrics.

That's cheese and surely the greatest success this band have achieved is the fact that they're not cheesy at all when it's almost impossible for them to avoid it. They play traditional heavy metal with a NWOBHM mindset, a strong nod to power metal and a real taste for progressive rock. There's a point in The Lawmaker when I could have sworn I was listening to Marillion's Grendel. There are keyboards all over the place. The songs are long: the shortest of them over five and a half minutes, the longest over ten. And just listen to Chrome Skull Viper!

Beyond the song's title, which is so clichéd that I can imagine cover art, the lyrics sound rather like something Steel Panther might write in parody. "Transcending beyond worlds, through the howling vortex, the astral door reveals the chosen one. You want it! You got it! Dance with the chrome skull viper!" There's no way that this can't be embarrassing but it isn't. It's a damn good song and, while I really have to be in the mood to listen to Steel Panther, I'd happily listen to this album all day long. In fact I just did.

It's going to be fun trying to describe them because none of these songs are recognisable as any one influence, but many influences are overt. Let's just suggest that the band took every British heavy metal band from 1980 to maybe 1987, stuffed them into a blender, invoked the metal gods and hit the power, emerging fully formed as Dream Tröll. If I must focus closer, let's see the fundamental ingredients as Victim of Changes, Grendel, Kingdom of Madness, Lightning to the Nations and maybe even some Eye in the Sky, all wrapped up in the first couple of Demon albums.

There are no songs to highlight because every song is a highlight, complete with its own highlights. Legion is the epic but I'm not going to elevate it over The Lawmaker or Darkness Lies Within the Sun. Is Steel Winged Warrior a catchier song than Chrome Skull Viper? The Art of Death won't leave me alone and the other two tracks deserve mention too: Checkmate... Annihilate! and I Will Not Die Today. And those eight tracks, every one of which has its very own identity, almost reach an hour between them. There's no shortage of good material here.

In short, while this really ought to be awful, embarrassing, clichéd stuff, it may be the most fun I've had with an album all year. I adored every part of it. Now I need to look back to The Knight of Rebellion, which featured a smaller line-up (Paul Walsh has replaced Rob Stringer on vocals and they've hired an actual bassist, Paul Thornton, so Matt Baldwinson can stick to his guitar). In between was a three track EP, The Witch's Curse.

It's a good day. I've found a new favourite band!

Atomic Time - Out of the Loop (2019)

Country: Brazil
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 26 Jul 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website

A minute into second track Shooting Star, Roger Lopes started singing and it caught me completely by surprise. It just hadn't registered on me, after the first eight minutes, including the whole of Robot Can Lie, that Atomic Time weren't an instrumental band. They tie more to prog rock than anything else, but there's a jazz feel too and I was intrigued as to where the instruments would go with their interaction. I just wasn't thinking about words.

Perhaps the reason I'm reviewing the album is because Lopes, with his quiet and unassuming vocal, adds another level to the music, which is otherwise as much driven by the keyboards of Gabriel D'Incao as the guitar of his father Pedro. Add in drummer Silvio Serra, who has been playing alongside the elder D'Incao for over thirty years, and you have a band whose members know each other inside out and can therefore mix things up without shocking them. João Ribeiro is the bassist tasked with being noticed in this setup and he does an excellent job. Just check out the beginning of Grey Sky for just one of many moments in the spotlight.

The band's page on Bandcamp suggests that their influences are chiefly with the old school prog bands of the seventies, like King Crimson, Yes and ELP, but with a more modern tinge of Radiohead too. I'd add Vangelis here too, as I heard a lot of his style here, as the synths drive so much of this, from the very first notes. Radiohead makes a lot of sense though, because while the band are all quite obviously talented musicians, they're most interested here in setting a tone.

I tend to think of King Crimson as experimenters, Yes as songwriters and ELP as virtuosos, while Radiohead, especially on their best and least commercial albums, are about creating moods and textures that we haven't heard before, stretching instruments far enough that they have to invent some themselves. The moods here are generally laid back, but they're more important than the songwriting and the mastery of technique.

Those moods grow too, as the album runs on. If the first couple of songs are relatively grounded, introspective explorations placing us in the mindset of a small indie coffee shop stage, then Grey Sky manages to levitate the band through the roof; they keep on playing as they float away into the distance. Gabriel D'Incao is clearly finding things to do with his Moog that I haven't heard before and that's a very welcome sign to me. The most important thing, though is that, rather than stick to a healthy elevation and finish up a hot chocolate, I chose to float along with Atomic Time without thinking.

With all distractions evaporated, Rivers is utterly delightful, initially as a vocal track and then especially as an instrumental one. I don't know how I floated with the Moog while still somehow focused on what Ribeiro's bass was and wasn't doing, but there was a point where I felt like I was listening to each of these musicians simultaneously both apart and together. It's a real experience of a track.

And, quite frankly, there's something of that thinking in almost every track here, especially when we let the album replay. That goes even on relatively conventional tracks, like The Same, which does betray a lot more of that Yes influence. The whole album manages to become rather like a hallucination or a dream. Sure, it's easy to listen to but it's easy to listen to in the way that brings us out of our own skin because its skin is more comfortable.

No Time for Angels, the epic ten minute closer, is the one exception. It's as raucous and abrasive as the band gets, and while it's highly enjoyable, it works differently to the earlier tracks. Put simply, it forces us to pay attention, while everything else entices us in. I didn't like it as much for that reason. It didn't lose me by being a nightmare instead of a dream; it lost me by waking me up from my trance.

Fortunately, I could just roll right back into the trance through the magic of repeat play. I believe this is Atomic Time's first album but I'm already waiting impatiently for the follow up.

Prometeo - Aurora (2019)

Country: Peru
Style: Groove Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Jun 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Prometeo translates to Prometheus in French, Italian and Esperanto and many others, I'm sure, including Spanish, the language this band sing in because they're from Peru; they sent this in after I reviewed Coffin Rags and Regum. I love how scenes coalesce even when bands don't play in the same style. Unlike those groups who play black metal and hard rock/heavy metal respectively, Prometeo are a groove metal band.

And they're a good one. Colisión, the first track proper, kicks off with an absolutely textbook set of escalations, except it switches out the last step into fast thrash for a heavy groove instead. Prometeo play heavy throughout, often achingly so, and they play very tight too, but they resist that speed element, even though there are a whole slew of points where we think they're about to let loose.

I wonder how they would have sounded had they gone there. Profetas is a pit starter for sure and it's about as fast as they get. I think quite a few of these songs would sound more intense at higher speed, but they'd lose some of their heaviness in the process and that's not what Prometeo are looking for. Instead they use Luis Lopez's drums as a way to ratchet the intensity up and down as needed.

I'm not the world's biggest groove metal fan, but this is good stuff. To me, groove metal needs a tight sound, solid riffs and vocals that are both tough and melodic. That's not an easy set of attributes to fill, especially with as much of it reliant on good songwriting as good performance, but Prometeo have them all down. Check out the melodies in the title track, which always stays heavy even when the guitars and the vocals are getting all melodic. Intermisión does the same thing too, really well.

Part of it may be the fact that the band doesn't only feature two guitarists but two vocalists too. Percy Sonan and Christian Bjork handle the guitars in the expected sort of way, one holding down a riff while the other solos. The vocals are more interesting, because there's a male vocal and a female vocal but they're not always easily distinguished. Is that Beatriz Farfan leading the way on Yo but Leo Vannucci on most of the others?

Their collaboration leads to some really interesting sounds. Often they sing the same lyrics together for depth. On Treinta Monedas, that'll be Vannucci in front but Farfan right behind him like an improvisational echo. She's not a prominent part of the mix but she's there and she deepens the sound. What's more, on Intermisión, there's a whispery evil to the vocals which I presume is due to the two singers combining superpowers but it never leaves heavy or groove metal for a more evil genre.

Valientes is an odd one. I keep hearing old Paradise Lost songs in bands of late, but it's generally been the old doom/death Paradise Lost. Here, it's Draconian Times-era Paradise Lost because there's plenty of Once Solemn in Valientes, once it starts chugging, but always with the benefits of modern production. It's not just the guitars either but the vocals too, which feel reminiscent of Nick Holmes at that point.

I like this album, but I'd like to see them live even more. These guys ought to kick ass in a small club. Hopefully, now that they've been signed by the American label Rotten Brain Records in a two album deal, they'll get to play somewhere a little closer to me than Lima. Sure, they're just down the west coast, but there are nine countries in between.

Oh, and they have the best intro music I've heard in a long while. I really hope they come out on stage to Alea Jacta Est because it's a magnificent setup for a metal band.

Dendrites - Grow (2019)

Country: Greece
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 9 Jun 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Tumblr | YouTube

My virtual travels around the world over the last couple of weeks netted me a couple of interesting submissions for review and I'm always happy when my inbox sparks up with quality new music from bands from all around the globe. First up are Dendrites, yet another interesting outfit from Greece who don't sound like any of the other interesting outfits from Greece I keep finding. They're from Volos on the Aegean, home in antiquity to the hero Jason, but this bunch are a heck of a lot more laid back.

They call what they do "groovy southern stoner rock" and, for once, that's a pretty accurate description. In keeping with the overtly American influences that I heard in Voidnaut, Skybinder and Soundtruck, Dendrites often sound as if they're closer to Athens, GA than Athens, Greece. Thanasis Tiblalexis has a fluency in English that many people in the deepsouth don't have and that's not just regular language but profanity too, which isn't throwaway.

It does highlight a certain attitude to kick off an album with a song named Get the Fuck and then follow up with Bullet Dodger about "your sensitive son of a bitch". Then again, their debut album from 2016 featured a track with a name as subtle as Whiskey Preachin' Motherfucker. They feel like the sort of band who play gigs on Tennessee stages that are protected by chicken wire and love it.

What's notable is that both Bullet Dodger and the next song, Throwing Rocks, are regular vocal based tracks until, well, they're not, each of them ending but then carrying on with a couple of minutes more jamming. Stoner rock has never been a single thing and Dendrites bring a lot of different influences from those worlds. There's as much Hell Yeah or Black Label Society here as there is Kyuss or Fu Manchu. There's also a grunge influence in the way the vocal lines are phrased, as if they know and like melody but don't ever want to be seen as radio friendly.

While the album rocks for a while, the first three tracks playing relatively consistently, Dendrites cover more ground than that. Dreamhouse Pt. 1 is far too deliberate for me, rather like alt country on a forced tempo, but I love the liquid guitar of Giorgos Alexiou. This is psychedelic territory and it's interesting instrumentally if not vocally. I'm Gonna Fly, which wraps up the album, is even more laid back, so far that it features a saxophone. It's a trip and it's gorgeous.

Mostly, though, Dendrites stay in that grungy stoner rock mould with a southern edge, nailed home by Tiblalexis's accent. That's not shit creek he's stuck up, it's shit crick. They do this sound well, but it gets a little samey in the second half of the album. Bullet Dodger is a much stronger single than Leave Me Behind; and a song like River, with its wild solos, ought to sound great deep into a live set but next to one of the band's catchier songs.

With the exception of I'm Gonna Fly, the best songs for me are in the first half, not just the rockers that start things out but also Dreamhouse Pt. 2, which builds off an old school riff to feel like a much dirtier Cathedral, less doomy and less cheesy but even more psychedelic and wild. As much as I didn't like Tiblalexis's vocals on Pt. 1, I think he makes up for it on Pt. 2 because he really cuts loose on this one to wail with style.

I wanted to like this a little more than I did, but it's good stuff and it's another really interesting sound to come out of Greece. The southern stoner thing works and fans of the genre will dig this, but the looser the band gets, the more interesting they get. I wonder if they jam more on stage.

Children of the Sün - Flowers (2019)

Country: Sweden
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 26 Jul 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook

Here's a real gem that came out of nowhere and I still know almost nothing about Children of the Sün, who clearly have one foot firmly planted in the Summer of Love and the other striding into the early seventies. I know that they come from Arvika, Sweden and there are apparently eight members of the band, only two of them male, but I don't know what each of them do.

They talk up the sixties connection everywhere, it seems, raising Woodstock and adding, very confidently, that "No one since has managed to reincarnate the feeling of nature, soul and rock music, that was on that magical field north of New York, since. Until now." The thing is that they have something of a point and what's truly impressive is that they replicate the feel, not any particular artist's style.

While there's definitely a lot of late sixties here, most obviously in the brief intro and the title track, I'd suggest that there's more than a bit of seventies in their sound too though. Quite a few tracks are built like John Kongos did so memorably back in 1972, not least Her Game and Sunchild. While there's almost nothing modern at all, the production is definitely very 21st century so we wouldn't mistake this for a disc that someone found on a shelf after half a century and brought to the world's attention. There are effects here that would have blown people's minds back in 1968 too.

I try not to always talk through every track like I'm some match commentator but this album does invite it because each of them adds something different to the sound.

Her Game starts out like San Fran pop rock, the vocals initially reminding of Grace Slick until the whole thing evolves into a John Kongos song, right down to the looping chorus and the wailing backing vocals. Emmy is more of a vocal workout laid over a laid back Hammond organ. The Swedish accent isn't Janis Joplin's and the tone is much sweeter but some of the approach is very reminiscent. There are great transitions here too, where a voice or voices give way to or merge with guitars in a glorious harmony.

Hard Workin' Man is completely different and very interesting. It starts out with some funky beats and a vicious slide guitar, clearly a rock version of some old blues song we've never heard before, but flows completely naturally into a sort of psychedelic Beatles tune instead, eventually returning again. Sunchild has some world music in the vocal approach, overt in the a capella opening, along with some Abba and some Sandy Denny, a heady mix indeed, all again in the phrasing rather than the tone.

The title track is the most hippified song on offer, not only because it's named Flowers but because of its handheld percussion and that guitar line. The voice that comes to mind here is Dolores O'Riordan's, that recognisable Irish lilt working well on a Swedish voice. Like a Sound is odd as a follow-up because it's like a hard rock song that isn't sure how hard it wants to be. Every time it thinks about really rocking it up, it calms down again and stays pop. It's an interesting piece and a successful one but it oddly makes us think about what it could have been rather than what it is.

That leaves Beyond the Sun, complete with a plaintive harmonica somewhere in the distance. It's a singer/songwriter piece of the sort I'd expect to find on a Kate & Anna McGarrigle album. Well, until it really escalates into the hippie campfire singalong song that it felt like being all along.

I wish I knew who was doing what here, so I could praise everyone, but I can do that by just praising everyone anyway. This is a real throwback album but it's done incredibly well and without ever seeming to try too hard. It feels like the band just recorded this for themselves rather than some demographic or other. And it all works, really well. I've been playing it over and over all day and I can see myself coming back to it again and again, which is why I'm going to edge this up from the 8/10 I was expecting to my first 9/10 of August. Let's see if anything can top it!

Narnia - From Darkness to Light (2019)

Country: Sweden
Style: Power Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 2 Aug 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

When I decided to wrap up this first week of August with a couple of albums from Swedish bands, I honestly expected the high note I aimed to finish on to be from Narnia rather than Children of the Sün. After all, the latter are new, their debut album coming out of nowhere, while Narnia have been around since 1996, releasing six studio albums before they split up and another two after they reformed, with most of the same line-up too, only bassist Jonatan Samuelsson being new.

Album nine is certainly good stuff. It's melodic and it's catchy and it has enjoyable solos and plenty of riffing that feels a little safe because evil isn't a good sound for a Christian rock band. They do couch their preaching on tracks like Has the River Run Dry? and From Darkness to Light, though it is there if you listen carefully to the lyrics. On other songs, it's rather up front, especially on MNFST and I Will Follow. But hey, I review plenty of bands who write songs about Satan, Odin or their favourite elder god from the Cthulhu Mythos. I have no problem with a band who sings about Jesus.

I especially have no problem with a band who sings about Jesus when it puts songs as glorious (for want of a better word) as The Armor of God. It stands out well, kicking off with swirling keyboards and solid riffs but continuing with catchy vocals and catchier guitars to drive the song home. It's easily my favourite song on offer, even though it arrives after the opening track, A Crack in thy Sky, which is the single, and You are the Air That I Breathe, which probably should have been.

Those are good songs, but The Armor of God is better and has everything you could possibly want from a melodic power metal song, from killer riffs all the way to a soft piano outro. The only catch is that I was thinking about Sammo Hung rather than the son of God, but that's me. I'm a film critic too. On my first time through, it was my obvious highlight and I was disappointed that the other tracks were unable to match it.

In fact, on my first time through, I felt that the rest of the album fell a little too overtly on the side of safety, perhaps trying to be a bit nice, a great attribute for an evangelical Christian but not a great attribute for a power metal band. I'll have to go back to whatever early Narnia albums that I vaguely remember, because I thought they were heavier than this but not so steeped in prog rock.

On a second listen, however, I got into the album a lot more, because of a host of moments that started to stand out: some of the guitars in MNFST, a melody here in A Crack in the Sky and a prog rock section there in Sail On. Some that had leapt out on the first listen, such as the Hallelujah vocal midway through The War That Tore the Land, bookending a strong guitar solo, stood out even more. Some, like the instrumental sections within the rather Iron Maiden-ish From Darkness to Light, coalesced better. It's good stuff.

White metallers will already have picked this up, but you don't have to be religious to enjoy it. So the blind conformity in lyrics of I Will Follow might feel anathema to the rebellious nature of metal; it still sounds good and it's one of the weaker songs on the album. And, at the end of the day, sounding good is what matters.

Soundtruck - Voodoo (2019)

Country: Greece
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 31 Jul 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

If melodic metalcore band Skybinder play in a modern American style, that goes double for Soundtruck, also from Athens, who play southern rock. One of the highlights they raise across their web presence was opening an Athens show for Lynyrd Skynyrd in 2012. There's definitely some Skynyrd in their sound, but it's mostly more modern, even if the other names they list as influences don't get any newer than Blackfoot or Whitesnake, hardly fresh young things any of them.

They've been around for a while, even if they haven't recorded much, just a self titled album back in 2012, but there have been line up changes. If I'm reading things correctly, Billy Panagopoulos on guitar and Dimitris Lykakis on bass are the only ones to date back to that Skynyrd gig, having been with the band from the very start in 2008. George Kalaitzoglou, the drummer, and guitarist Greg Apostolopous joined in 2014, with vocalist Romanos Alexander the new fish, coming on board in 2017.

They feel very comfortable together, not just because they're tight but also because they're deceptively loose. Songs like Voodoo Woman are so loose that a band where musicians don't live in each other's heads would fall apart in no time. It's a real highlight here, not my favourite song but one to really appreciate nonetheless. Everyone gets their moment here, often all at once. During the solos in the middle, the guitarists play off each other, Lykakis patiently keeps time on bass and Kalaitzoglou keeps things very lively.

There's a heck of a lot here to enjoy, because Soundtruck never repeat the same song twice. Stay is a laid back blues rock song in the Blue Jean Blues style, but with smoother, more radio friendly vocals. Those vocals fit That Lady even better, as a hard rock song that would play very well indeed to a melodic rock fan. If That Lady plays it safe, The Calling has an edge to it, Lykakis's bass an ominous rumble, the guitars hinting at imminent menace and Alexander adding some danger to his voice.

Interestingly, those three songs come next to each other on the album, like a sort of progression. I like The Calling a lot, because Alexander's voice is so inherently friendly that it tends to take a little edge away from the band. This one, and the slower Wanted Dead or Alive-esque track that's The Train, restore some balance and they do it nicely. That last one's a western as much as it is southern.

With all that goodness in the second half of the album, I should point out that the first couple of tracks may be the best couple of tracks. Senorita is the catchiest and liveliest song here, played in a sort of Black Crowes meets Molly Hatchet style with an AC/DC midsection; it would be an obvious choice for a single. So would Heading Your Way, although it's a lot heavier and more reminiscent of the Cult. It's probably my favourite track here.

With only nine tracks on offer, that leaves The Wind is Blowing and Time to Change, the latter of which is easily the weakest song on the album, like a routine country song rocked up a little. It has a good solo but it's far too emphatically inoffensive to make me care. Would the album have been short at 37 minutes? It would have been a better album without it, albeit not enough to warrant an extra rating point. This is a strong 8/10 though to set August off running in style. Thank you, Greece, as always.

Skybinder - Trauma and Trial (2019)

Country: Greece
Style: Melodic Metalcore
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 20 Jul 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Regular readers will know that I was an old school metalhead rather than a punk and I've never been a huge fan of the shouty genres that end in -core. That doesn't, however, mean that I don't like any of it; it just means that I'm a lot more selective about what works inside my head.

And Skybinder, a metalcore band from Athens (Greece not Georgia), definitely work in my head, even though they're almost brand new. They were founded as recently as last year but they've been busy because this full length debut follows three singles and I have to say that it's pretty good. Sure, George Plaskasovitis has the vocal style we expect from metalcore but he does it well and he's able to include melody and intensity.

Metalcore is the most accessible -core genre to me, especially when it has that melodic prefix. It tends to mean that, while the vocals are are shouty and there's plenty of that monotone bass where it's trying to be a drumkit, there's a lot more to the backing music, which combines the energy of punk with the intricacy of metal. Guitarists Simos Xalarhs and Tony Makrogiannis have plenty of metal in their sound and it's agreeably mixed too.

While Fathoms sounds like a punk song with odd guitar runs, those runs are reminiscent of early Paradise Lost, adding a doom/death tone to the song. I really dug My Severance, which has a thrash mentality, a great melody and a set of interesting breakdowns, not to mention George getting even closer to a death growl. It runs only three minutes and change but it's very welcome. And, for something completely different, Leap of Faith starts out like an Iron Maiden song.

All these influences are there in the guitars. Tasos and Dimitris on drums and bass are clearly good at what they do but they do what we expect them to do, which isn't particularly inventive. They just underpin the songs so the guitarists can create textures and George can add energy to proceedings. My favourite songs here were always going to be the ones where the guitars had most to do.

The question is whether that's going to be enough for me to care about the album and, this time out, it is. I've listened through a few times and have yet to get bored or turned off. Even George mixes it up at points, like the whispered section in The Pretender, probably the most all-round imaginative song on the album, even if I do wonder how the end would sound without the guitars fading out with the rest of the band.

This is the sixth album I've reviewed this year from Greece and none of them sound remotely like each other. Skybinder probably have most in common with Voidnaut, also from Athens, not in the style they play but because they both play music clearly influenced more by American music than European. I wonder why Athens has a fondness for modern American music but it clearly does, as my next review will underline. I look forward to figuring out an answer.