Borknagar - True North (2019)

Country: Norway
Style: Progressive Black Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 27 Sep 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Why I haven't listened to more Borknagar, I have no idea. Sure, they started out around the time my life took me in other directions, minimising the time I could spend in the scene. The Friday Rock Show was over, Kerrang! had gone all alternative and I'd lost my connections to the cutting edge. So yeah, it makes sense that I wasn't paying attention at the beginning but they've been a prolific and major player ever since, with this being their eleventh album in a quarter of a century. I should have paid more attention.

As a fan of most genre-hopping, I like this a lot. The description I usually see, of progressive black metal, is highly appropriate but not quite as it's usually applied. This isn't black metal that just does progressive stuff. It alternates between progressive rock and black metal and often merges the two in a way that creates something very different. The opening track is a great example.

It's an eight and a half minute epic, because Borknagar don't tend to write short songs, and it's called Thunderous. It's powerful all the way through, but it begins with clean vocals, enticing ones over appropriately thunderous drums. They may not be quite as pure as Jon Anderson's but they remind a lot of his style and approach and they gain much the same result.

Then the black metal kicks in, as if another radio station has powered up on the same frequency, and those vocals go bleak and harsh. Midway through, the band move into a notably eastern instrumental section, oddly given the album is called True North and that's pretty much where Borknagar are from, being based in Bergen on the western coast of Norway opposite the Shetlands.

It's an intriguing mixture and it stays intriguing throughout the album. Up North kicks off at a gallop like a Uriah Heep song, before moving into more progressive territory. The Fire That Burns starts out extreme but gradually becomes a Yes song, which Wild Father's Heart is for almost all of its six minutes. Into the White is mostly progressive too, but there are some overt Black Sabbath dynamics going on too, especially towards the beginning.

Most of that is surprising to me because I haven't been paying attention but it might not be for you. What else is surprising is the balance between the progressive side of things and the extreme side. The vocals especially stay clean for most of the album, shifting into harsh black metal only as needed rather than the other way around which is more common nowadays. Sometimes it shifts at a certain point in the song, but more often that second voice just joins in for a few lines when that sort of contrast is needed.

There's also a folk element here, which adds another intriguing texture to the dynamics that are so key to what Borknagar do. It shines out at points in a number of songs, but is most obvious in the final track, Voices, which feels like a rural spiritual with darker orchestration. It may not be the best song on the album, without the opportunities for exploration that Tidal or Thunderous have, but it's patient and effective and it's surely the most evocative track on offer, a fantastic way to end the album. I could see it being sampled on a TV show during a particularly emotional scene.

In short, there's a lot here. This is an album to dive into and explore and it's still turning up new things for me on the fourth time through. The band have made some major changes, so I'm especially interested to go back to the previous album, 2016's Winter Thrice, to see how it compares.

While Øystein Brun, guitarist and only remaining founder member, continues on, his long standing vocalist, best known as Vintersorg, left earlier in 2019; while both lead guitarist Jens Ryland and Baard Kolstad, the drummer for most of this decade, both left last year. Those are major changes but I have to say that this album sounds both mature and fresh. Paying attention is a good thing.

Autumn Tree - Autumn Tree (2019)

Country: Germany
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 11 Oct 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

If I've been surprised by the continued rise of stoner rock in countries far away from its roots in California, I'm perhaps even more surprised about how southern rock is spreading across the globe. Autumn Tree aren't from Georgia or Florida; they're from Mannheim, Germany and I've noticed similar bands in nations like Russia, Greece and even Malaysia, places we should struggle to associate with Jack Daniels and the confederate flag.

Autumn Tree are very much a modern southern rock band, by which I mean that there's some Lynyrd Skynyrd and Creedence Clearwater Revival in their sound (check out the slide in the background during Lynda Q), but a lot less than more recent alternative rock bands like Black Stone Cherry, Alter Bridge or even Creed, though this outfit tend to be much heavier than Creed ever got. There's just a hint of country too, but completely from an anti-Nashville mindset. These aren't generic hunks in hats and they're never going to play the Grand Ole Opry.

They're modern and crunchy, with a prominent bass and a lively drummer, and their lead singer, Kai Lutz, clearly spent the nineties listening to grunge albums with the lights off. The quieter the band get, like some early parts of The Distance, the more it sounds like his voice is built of disaffection and near depression borrowed from singers like Chris Cornell. Sometimes, as on Promised Land, Lutz highlights that he listened to Metallica too, because that's a seriously James Hetfield chorus.

I do like Autumn Tree even more when they kick it up a notch and acknowledge that Metallica influence. Barman starts out slower but it ends up ratcheting up the speed and kicking serious ass. Kings of Rumble really threatens for a moment midway through but then slows back down again. And that's not unusual as the band often resist the urge to kick into high gear, staying more at a mid-pace and adding texture with effects pedals, as Velvet Revolver used to do.

I quite like that contrast of up music and down vocals and both do fall prey to the pull of the other on occasion without making it a habit. The question is always going to come down to how strong the hooks are, because these are all songs designed to be radio friendly without ever selling out. Almost all the eleven tracks are three or four minutes long, get down to business in no time flat and solidify their groove just as quickly.

I talk a lot offline about the need for content curators in rock and metal, people who can enable discovery for others in a world where everything's a click or two away but nobody really knows where to look. It's what I try to do at Apocalypse Later, explaining what obscure bands do and attempting with words to describe whether you're likely to be into them. With Autumn Tree, I just need to send you to YouTube, because any one song will tell you whether they're your sort of band or not.

If you dig it, whichever song that happens to be, you're going to dig all of this album and Autumn Tree are going to become favourites in your household. If, however, you don't, nothing else here is going to convert you. It's all about that tone. The vocals and guitars are either going to be exactly right for you or they're going to remind you why you hated the nineties, however much Skynyrd they sneak in. Let me know which.

Kobra and the Lotus - Evolution (2019)

Country: Canada
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 20 Sep 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

There's something acutely comfortable about Kobra and the Lotus and I wonder if that's why I haven't liked them more in the past.

They're a very easy band to listen to and there's something archetypal about their approach that makes them easy to feel at home with. For instance, this album kicks off with a brief intro, Evodem, which is close to the definition of anticipation in musical form, and then it kicks into the title track just like the band are leaping out onto stage already ratcheted up to high gear. It's a feeling that every band out there aims to evoke in its audience, but Kobra and the Lotus nail it without seeming to even try. Maybe it comes that naturally to them or maybe they work really hard at making us believe that.

They're also a good combination of the old and the new. There's a quiet spot in Evolution that sounds enough like Pink Floyd that old timers like me perk up our attention, but then we roll into Burn!, which is fundamentally modern with its vocal effects, deliberate pauses and patient riffs, almost melodic metalcore in its approach, yet it still feels right to older fans who tend to complain about elements like them. I think the message that comes through is that Kobra and the Lotus are a new band (a mere decade old, even with six albums to their name) who make new music in new styles but who always remain accessible to rock fans who predate them by decades.

As one of those older fans, I liked them from the first time I heard them a few years ago and I find it very difficult not to like anything they do, but I'm no die hard fan and, as you can tell, I'm still trying to figure out why not. I shouldn't complain about how they can sound so ruthlessly commercial while also kicking our asses. They even make a song called Get the Fuck Out of Here sound like it should be a radio hit. That's a glorious, deceptively simple riff and other bands should be jealous.

Really, whatever is sitting in my brain constantly making me doubt myself on this needs to shut up because this is a damn good album. Every single track does its job and a whole bunch of them could be released on their own merits for frequent radio play without ever losing their power. These are not safe ballads; they're all rockers that happen to just have strong hooks layered onto their strong riffs. In fact, it's hard to think which should be top of the list for single release. It was Burn! and that makes a lot of sense, but so would Thundersmith or Wounds or especially We Come Undone.

Why Kobra and the Lotus aren't household names, I have no idea. Kobra Paige has a powerful voice, in an era where the talent shows have made that almost mandatory, and she knows exactly how to use it to its best effect. Listen to her soar on Circus, for instance, where that voice sounds especially larger than she is, and then ponder on how surprising it should be that you aren't focused entirely on her because you're also listening to the music.

And that's probably the key. She's the band's focus because she's cute and blonde and she sounds like a million bucks, but those other guys behind her are so tight that they make her job so much easier. None of them were in the band when it began, back in 2009, and Ronny Gutierrez only joined last year, but they feel like they've all been playing together since the eighties.

The lyricism may be utterly different but, in many ways, Kobra and the Lotus are a modern day Dio. Everything seems easier and simpler than it really is, each song is hard enough to kick our ass but soft enough to play well to a mainstream audience and it's all led by a powerful and recognisable voice. I need to go back to their earlier albums, because I don't remember them being this heavy and this commercial at the same time. Maybe this album is exactly what they need to break through whatever biases some of us have inexplicably conjured up in the past. It's that good.

Jangar - Jelang Malam (2019)

Country: Indonesia
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Oct 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram

Last time I reviewed a psychedelic rock album from Indonesia, it ended up as my album of the month runner up for February. That was O.M. by Mooner and it featured much more delicate pop-flavoured music than this, the debut from a stoner rock band called Jangar, who hail from Denpasar on the island of Bali.

Their Facebook page is named Jangar Doom and there's certainly a lot of doom in the heavy riffs on offer. Just check out the one a couple of minutes into Proklamator, which Black Sabbath would be proud of. However, they're not the sort of doom metal band that wallows in sonic mud. They're happier, livelier and more energetic than any doom metal band I can think of, so I think they fit better into the heavy stoner rock category.

A couple of other things back that up. One is that there's a lot of blues in their sound, especially the guitar of Adi Sanjaya, who feels like he's leapt forward in time from the late sixties where he would have fit in well with a band like Blue Cheer. I'm loving these psychedelic albums lately that could easily have been recorded years ago, if only the technology in use back then could pump up the bass and bass drums the way that we can now.

The other is that the production is most notable for its apparent complete absence. What I mean by that is that I'm sure that nailing this particular sound was the result of careful configuration in the studio, but the whole album sounds urgent and in our face. It's as if this four piece band set up their instruments in a garage and jammed for an hour after someone pressed record. Jangar often sound like a garage band.

A lot of that has to do with the vocals of Gusten Keniten, which are raw in a punk way, where attitude is as important as style. There are points where I wondered if he was singing through a megaphone, like Rudy Vallée. The trio behind him do a lot to maintain that attitude too, whether they're throwing out doomladen riffs in the Sabbath style on songs like Negeri Nego and Proklamator or more Zeppelin-esque classic rock lines on others like MSG and Sangkala.

I have little to no idea what he's singing about because the song titles I'm getting through Google Translate are pretty generic. Konstan unsurprisingly means Constant and Proklamator means Proclaimer. Kami Tahu translates to We Know, Kesurupan means Trance and Sangkala is Trumpet. That's not much to go on and there's no translation given at all for Aum Cilengkrang and Haerath. I'm particularly interested in the former, because Pasek Darmawaysya keeps excellent time on the drums while seemingly going completely outside of it on the cymbals.

All I know from an interview I found at Unite Asia is that Jelang Malam is apparently about the twilight time between day and night when the worlds of life and death merge and what might have been black or white becomes simply grey. The material doesn't feel that sort of spiritual, except perhaps early in Proklamator when the music takes a back seat to a shared singalong or in Haerath, Pt. 1 when there's a deep spoken voice alongside the singing one, but I'd love to see the lyrics, if only I could trust Google Translate to give me a solid English equivalent.

Even with four prior Indonesian albums under my belt this year, I still know next to nothing about what's happening over there. I don't even know how new Jangar are. Sure, this is their debut album, but that doesn't mean that they haven't been playing together for years. They sound like they have. They've also brought in a couple of guests: Rian Pelor, who sang for Auman and sings for Detention, and Doddy Hamson, the singer for Komunal. Of course, that has little meaning for me at this point.

Right now, all I really know is that I'm enjoying what I'm hearing thus far from Indonesia. It seems that music there tends to include psychedelic and progressive angles, whatever the genre a particular band happen to play in. Jangar aren't Mooner, just as Circlet aren't Razorblades Terror. And elder statesman of the scene, Dewa Budjana doesn't sound like any of them. That's healthy. I'm interested to see if other similarities show up as I dive into more Indonesian music.

Lacuna Coil - Black Anima (2019)

Country: Italy
Style: Alternative
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 11 Oct 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

My son kindly took me to a Lacuna Coil gig here a few years ago and, while I enjoyed myself, it was telling that the band didn't play either of the songs I was really hoping to hear, My Wings and To Myself I Turned, both from the band's 1999 debut, In a Reverie. It would seem that songs like these simply didn't have any place in the setlist of a band that had moved far from their gothic metal roots.

This album emphasises that change, though I think it's heavier than the last couple of albums. I remember when Evanescence made it huge with Bring Me to Life but those in the know pointed out that they were just a trendy Lacuna Coil. Nowadays, it feels like Lacuna Coil are taking their influences from the bands that they had previously influenced, and that's a strange scenario to find myself in as an old fan of the band.

Sometimes it works really well. Layers of Time is almost extreme, certainly as heavy as this album gets, with intriguing melodies laid over a prominent bass and unusual drum rhythms. The contrast between the heavier general tone and some delicate vocals from Cristina Scabbia is very tasty indeed.

However, much of the rest sounds carefully produced to be just as extreme as the current state of music will allow without losing a mainstream audience. Tracks like Apocalypse, Under the Surface and The End is All I Can See are crafted cleverly but far too much, so that they hint sneakily at industrial influences while really being loud pop songs, perhaps the best definition of nu metal, which this is far too often. The latter could easily be a Depeche Mode song if it just quietened down a bit.

Unfortunately, I spent much of the album alternating between being impressed and being disappointed. Now or Never begins with a delightfully quirky intro but then it veers away into utterly routine nu metal, a slow melody playing over the top doing little to bring us back. It does get interesting again at the midpoint with Scabbia getting all shouty but in a punk way rather than a hardcore way, but it's too little too late. I was into it, but then I wasn't and then I was but then I wasn't.

The closest we get to old school Lacuna Coil is Veneficium, which kicks off with a choral chant and continues with cleaner male vocals. Black Anima, the title track that closes out the album, has its moments too, another of those slow melodies tinkling over the raucous backdrop. However, I wouldn't really call these highlight tracks, just more enjoyable ones for an old school fan.

And, really, that's the biggest factor in play here for me. Over a couple of decades, Lacuna Coil have moved from being slap bang in the middle of what I liked most all the way to where they're hovering outside what I like at all. They're a talented bunch of musicians and I'm happy that they're doing what they love, but it just isn't for me any more. This is far from gothic metal, being more like a third alternative and two thirds nu metal perhaps.

I wish them well but I suddenly feel old. Get off my lawn, you kids!

Assassin's Blade - Gather Darkness (2019)

Country: Canada/Sweden
Style: Speed Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 18 Oct 2019
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website | YouTube

Disappointed by the new Lacuna Coil, I went looking for a palate cleanser of speed and found this album from an international band. I believe that four of the five musicians are Swedish, including the two whose material prompted the band to get together to begin with, Peter Svensson and David Stranderud, so it's probably fair to call the band Swedish. However, the lead vocalist is Jacques Bélanger, of Exciter fame; he's from Quebec in French Canada and I'm pretty sure he hasn't relocated to Scandinavia, so they're international in scope for now.

They initially got together to release an album, Agents of Mystification, in 2016, which has a glorious steampunk/weird west cover. The process must have been a good one because they're back three years later for another album, an excellent one too. The opening track, Tempt Not (The Blade of the Assassin) is a sheer joy for speed metal freaks, very much in the sped up Judas Priest vein. Bélanger hits all those wild notes and the band behind him feel urgent and alive and passionate. This is for everyone in love with Painkiller and, well, the much earlier Exciter. You thought Bélanger's old band didn't take their name from the Priest song?

Priest are the most obvious influence throughout, though almost always their faster material because Assassin's Blade are fundamentally speed metal with little intention to explore dynamics in the vein of, say, Victim of Changes. There are slower songs, The City That Waits chugging along for a while at a mid-pace, and there are slower breakdowns in faster songs to keep a variety, so they're not balls to the wall all the time. However, even when they slow down some, they're still most reminiscent of Priest. Check out the intro to Gods and try to think of another band!

There are other influences in the mix here and there. There were points in Dream Savant where I thought I was listening to an old Iron Maiden song that I inexplicably didn't remember. Part of it is the guitar interplay but much of it comes, I think, from Bélanger singing at a certain pitch and reminding of Bruce Dickinson for a while more than Rob Halford. It's there a little in The City That Waits and The Ghost of Orion too. Those are two very different vibratos.

I enjoyed this immensely, but I'm biased towards old school speed metal. The biggest problem with the genre is that the music soon outstripped production quality, so a lot of those old albums sound thin in 2019. Of course, studio technology has progressed by insane degrees in the last forty years, so when a new band releases a new album in that old style but with modern production done right, it not only tweaks the nostalgia zones in my brain but makes me happy generally that the genre is alive and represented so well.

If there's a downside, it's that the songs, while enjoyable throughout, are not all as catchy as they could be. The riffs are solid throughout but there should be more killers. The hooks are strong throughout but, with the single exception of Tempt Not (The Blade of the Assassin), I'm not replaying them inside my skull after the album finishes. The solos are excellent throughout but, again, I'm experiencing most of them afresh each time through. The one exception there may be The Ghost of Orion, which is very tasty indeed.

I like this band though and I'd love to see them live. This is a no nonsense speed metal album and I treasure those. Bélanger dances through the octaves and his clear enjoyment doing that extends outwards to the rest of the band. I'm eager to check out Agents of Mystification and especially to see what a couple more years might bring. Assassin's Blade have huge potential and their third album could well be a classic.

Mike Patton & Jean-Claude Vannier - Corpse Flower (2019)

Country: France/USA
Style: Avant-Garde
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 13 Sep 2019
Mike Patton Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Wikipedia
Jean-Claude Vannier Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Wikipedia

To suggest that a Mike Patton album is interesting is rather redundant but I got a real kick out of this one, created in collaboration with French legend Jean-Claude Vannier. The latter seems to be regarded nowadays mostly for his work arranging music for Serge Gainsbourg, Francoise Hardy and other French legends, but he made plenty of interesting solo music too, including a wild 1972 debut album, L'enfant assassin des mouches, or The Child Fly Assassin.

The album was apparently constructed with the two men on either side of the Atlantic. Vannier conjured up ideas which he sent to Patton, who played with them and sent them back. Patton recorded in the States with his band, while Vannier recorded in France with an orchestra. Some snippets were previously written and recorded, but incorporated into new music, while most are new.

If that conjures up images of Frank Zappa's patchwork studio creations, that would be fair because there's certainly some Zappa here, both musically, on experimental songs like Cold Sun Warm Beer with its varied voices (Patton's remind of Captain Beefheart) and wilder instrumentation, and lyrically, on scatalogical songs like On Top of the World or Pink and Bleue, which starts out, "When I drink too much, I shit my pants."

There are other obvious influences here too and they tend to make themselves that way quickly. The opening track, Ballade C.3.3, for instance, has Patton sound rather like Nick Cave but the words come from Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol. I don't recognise any of the other lyrics but it would not surprise me if other songs took a similar approach. Hungry Ghost is full of dark poetry and A Schoolgirl's Day feels like a prose writing exercise.

Camion moves firmly into Tom Waits territory, with Vannier providing a set of odd instrumentation and Patton shifting into dark lounge singer mode. There's an old quote from Vannier that explains why this is natural. If I'd read it without context, I'd think that, "I've always been interested by the wrong side of the music, the wrong notes" would be a Tom Waits line, but it was Vannier.

There's a lot more Waits here than Cave, but there's quite a bit of both. I think the two combine best on Browning, a song about the gun, with the most involved delivery from Patton, who croons like Cave, whistles like Waits and even howls at points like Screaming Jay Hawkins. I love when artists that I admire start playing in territory mastered by other artists that I admire.

As ought to be inevitable with Vannier involved, there's also a particularly strong influence from French yé-yé music, about which I clearly know a lot less than I should. This was pop music but counterculture pop music back in the sixties, with much taken from English language rock 'n' roll. I've heard Serge Gainsbourg, Johnny Hallyday and others but, like Patton has apparently done lately, I should dig deeper.

There's French music everywhere here, but it becomes overtly at points, like in Insolubles, with Patton crooning to a backing of xylophone and accordion, or On Top of the World, a funky piece complete with handclaps and whistles, which nonetheless punks up at points in tone and lyrical content. There's a carnival organ on Hungry Ghost that could come from the Tom Waits influence or from France. It's great to see worlds collide here and suddenly make far more sense than they did previously.

As always with experimental albums, not everything works here but I dug it a lot. And, as always with Mike Patton, songs go to very strange and versatile places. One minute, we're listening to the operatic vocals of Anne Germain on Hungry Ghost, the next we're in the middle of what sounds like a domestic argument in Corpse Flower, which, I should add, is definitely not the flower on the cover. Why, I have no idea.

If your ears are always open for new sounds and your tastes are a lot wider than the regular rock and metal spectrum, you could do a lot worse than to check out this album. Let it be your gateway drug into the wonderful world of Mike Patton or, for me, that of Jean-Claude Vannier.

Morthifera - Apócrifo (2019)

Country: Argentina
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 11 Oct 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

I often like to end the week with a good old fashioned thrash album, because that's the best way to clean out my system for the weekend. This is a really solid one from Argentina that started good and then got even better. They've been around since 2010 but this is only their second full length album, the first being Basurero humano in 2016. They're very good at what they do and I hope that their supporting slot on the recent South American tour of Nuclear Assault brought that to a lot of new ears.

They're an unashamed thrash metal band because they don't tend to shift into other genres, though not everything is played at speed so they could easily be described as heavy/thrash. The opening song highlights that really well: Terapia de represión blisters early and late but slows for some very tasty sections midway, one of them led by a very prominent bass.

I'm impressed by everyone here, but Heber Rojas gets some very nice moments to shine on bass, most obviously in a solo run he delivers on Analepsis, the longest and most technically minded song on offer here. He keeps finding odd moments to elevate the material in ways we don't usually expect, like a solo on Odio heradado or a clever set of notes during a breakdown on Apostasía to enhance the song.

These musicians are notably proficient and willing to experiment a little at points, like in the short flamenco driven instrumental called Núcleo in the very middle of the album, appropriately because Núcleo translates to Core. I could see many describing this as technical thrash because Morthifera rarely take the simple options, even in slower sections.

However, while it's often complex stuff, it never loses its attitude. Daniel Perez sings and screams with punk attitude and there's often a real urgency to the music, that goes beyond thrash being inherently urgent. Just listen to Odio heradado, or Inherited Hate, which would feel like an angry protest song even if we didn't know what it was called. So, while Morthifera can be compared to a technical band like, say, Sieges Even, it's also fair to raise Nuclear Assault too.

As with any thrash band, the real test comes on stage. Audiences react to a sense of immediacy as much as quality and the best pits rely on charismatic delivery as much as the right tempo. On the basis of this album, I'd really like to see Morthifera live. They have all the musical components they need and I'm pretty sure they'll have the attitude to sell them to the audiences at shows too.

My favourite song here, apart from Analepsis, is Verso pollice, or Against the Police, which features a guest appearance from Wata, presumably the one who sings for Buenos Aires death metal band Matan S.A. Oddly, he adds what sound like black metal shrieks, among other vocal contributions, but I like the extra texture. This is a pit song without a doubt and I almost started one here in my office while I was working. It's good fast and it's great as a slow grind.

Not everything here is that great but there's nothing sub-standard here at all. The worst song is a good one and it's all uphill from there. This is a solid second album from Morthifera and I'll now eagerly seek out the first one and perhaps the famous Argentine metal band Lethal, given that I think that's what Morthifera translates to, perhaps in homage. Viva thrash metal sudamericano!