Gwydion - Gwydion (2020)

Country: Portugal
Style: Epic Black/Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 13 Nov 2020
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

Now, here's an interesting mix of genres! The band's Facebook page suggests that they play epic/folk metal. Metal Archives calls them a symphonic folk/Viking metal band. In truth, I can hear all of those things and more. Pedro Dias's vocals take a lot of forms here, but one of them is clearly a black metal goblin approach and it's surely the most prominent. Unless there's a string of guests to back him up, I also heard him tackle melodic folk lines, death growls, even a traditional operatic heavy/power metal style, often at the same time. How many singers are on this album?

Certainly everything's epic. The opening track, Stand Alone, begins like the calm before a battle, with martial drums and swirling textured keyboards. It's a very visual intro and the mists are swirling too, perhaps somewhere in the Scottish highlands or the island that is Ireland, back a number of centuries. I see that the band's previous album was all about Vikings, but this is Celtic all the way through, from the band's name on down. After that intro, everything kicks off and we get bloody. Epic metal indeed.

Certainly, symphonic metal makes sense too. The keyboards of Daniel César, the sole band member to have been there at the beginning when Gwydion were founded, are omnipresent and they often take the role of strings. The band are more epic than symphonic and there are no female sopranos joining the fray, except on the final song, A Roda, but the two genres live in the same bucket and, beyond its being acoustic, that song plays well with everything else here.

At their core, though, they're a folk metal band and that's never more overt than in Battle of Alclud Ford. It's fast and frenetic, but it's led by folk melodies and sing-a-long lyrics. At points, it sounds like an Alestorm song but with a variety of different voices. I have no idea if they're all Dias or if the rest of the band are joining in on what is often a sing-along song. Was that Michael Kiske? Was that Bruce Dickinson? I doubt it but someone's trying to be both of them and not doing a bad job of it either. If the goal was to sound like everyone in a pub joining in over their pints, they nailed it. Unsurprisingly enough, Ale Mead and Wine is another drinking song but it features fewer voices and reminds more of Korpiklaani than Alestorm.

I like this music and it's easy to see that Gwydion kind of dig it too. This is their fifth studio album in a quarter of a century, though their debut, Ŷnys Mön, didn't come until a dozen years ago, but it's the first to be self-titled, which is usually a statement. Are they affirming that this is the true identity of the band at last, even though guitarist João Paulo left after recording it? Is it a new beginning or the summing up of their history thus far? It's certainly a generous album, with fourteen songs taking it a way past an hour in length. I never got bored, even across a few listens, but it could have been shorter without losing anything of substance.

Whatever Gwydion feel that it is, it's good stuff, notably varied because of all those voices, and neatly produced by Fernando Matias. I can easily hear Bruno Ezz's bass not because that end of the spectrum is pumped up but because the production is just so clear. I love production when I can listen multiple times and follow different instruments instead of just the vocals and the lead guitar.

I'm enjoying what I'm hearing coming out of Portugal, especially now I'm finding bands other than an excellent array of psychedelic rock outfits. Gwydion are very well established and yet they still have a sound that's not commonplace. I'm thinking of it as a mixture of Cradle of Filth and Korpiklaani, with whatever else they believe ought to add to a particular song, and even a few listens in, that still feels fascinating to me.

Pig Destroyer - The Octagonal Stairway (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Grindcore
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 28 Aug 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Wikipedia

Variety is the spice of life, I say, not that you hadn't figured out by looking at what I review here. I've listened to a lot of quieter music lately, relatively speaking, prog rock and post-rock and the elegant end of symphonic metal. I felt like a shift into high gear, even further than yesterday's Virus album gave me. So here's Pig Destroyer.

I like grindcore and not only because I was there early-ish trying to fathom out what the heck this new extreme genre was in 1988. Let's just say that my gig list that year started with a-ha and Gypsy Queen, progressed through Rick Wakeman to Metallica and ended up with an indoor festival headlined by a Carcass fresh from their first album release. It was Intense Degree who blew me away on that day (well, them and Paradise Lost, still in their demo days) and I started tuning into John Peel as well as Tommy Vance.

That said, I also know that grindcore is a relatively limited genre and so it's a periodic thing for me. I like getting my system cleaned out by a good grindcore album, but then I'll dive back into traditional genres that are more varied. So, my wishlist here was for something intense enough to really clean my clock after midnight. And, well, I don't think this really delivered, at least on that front.

Sure, it's loud and it's fast and it's heavy, but all grindcore is those things. This is slower than I really expected it to be, with the opening trio of songs a lot closer to later Napalm Death than early. Yeah, I hear punky vocals rather than death growls from J. R. Hayes, but I wanted a blur of speed and I didn't get that, except for about a minute of the opening title track.

This is a truck on a hill without brakes, which is heavy and powerful and destructive, but it isn't close to a rocketship. What's more, these three songs, the others being The Cavalry and Cameraman, total a skimpy ten minutes between them. The final track is longer than that on its own and it isn't remotely like this.

That's because the second half of this 25 minute EP isn't grindcore in the slightest. It comes from the experimental end of industrial, full of static and samples, something I might expect on an old album from Nurse with Wound or Current 93. News Channel 6 is an abrasive intro to Head Cage and they're a mere teaser to Sound Walker, the eleven minute epic that closes this EP out with an industrial drone. Igor Cavalera apparently guests on this one and I wouldn't have recognised that in a hundred years. I couldn't even tell you if he's guesting on drums or vocals or synths or what.

I should praise Pig Destroyer for surprising me. This isn't anything I expected from them and, frankly, it sounds like this is really a split EP with someone else. What's really odd is that the first half plays a lot closer to what I was aiming for, but the second half is what will stay with me. Those slow grindcore songs are decent but they didn't blow me away, though Cameraman is growing on me. Sound Walker, while it's not remotely for everyone, is a piece of music that grabbed my attention and refused to let go. That's a good thing.

And, having sought this out for a whirlwind of energy that I didn't find, I now find myself wondering if there's anything else like Sound Walker in Pig Destroyer's back catalogue. This isn't remotely what I remember from them early on, but they've kept busy since their formation in 1997 and I see an album a couple of years ago named Head Cage, even though there isn't a song of that title on it (though there is here). Maybe that tells me something. Maybe not. I should find out.

I am Waiting for You Last Summer - Self-Defense (2020)

Country: Russia
Style: Post-Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Jun 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | VK

In the mood for some unusual post-rock before I listened to the new Pig Destroyer, I sampled a bunch of albums before I found anything particularly interesting. Then this one showed up and I knew it was the one. I am Waiting for You Last Summer (talk about a band name designed for post-rock!) hail from Ryazan, three hours outside Moscow, and I don't know a heck of a lot about them. They appear to have three members, one of whom is Sasha Sokolov (not the Canadian-born Russian writer) and this is their third album. Sokolov also keeps himself busy with side projects and work for Hollywood trailers.

That latter makes a lot of sense, because this is highly cinematic but in a schizophrenic way. Certainly the album doesn't tell a coherent story, but I'm not convinced that many of the individual tracks do either. It's like they tell parts of separate much longer stories, broken up into highlights to hint at a bigger picture, while remaining engaging and dynamic. Boiling Point, for instance, sounds rather like the good five minutes of a Michael Bay movie but with the boring two and a half hours stripped away.

There is an overarching concept, the album's Bandcamp page tells us. It's "about what happens inside the mind of a person living in a big city in the era of ubiquitous digitalization." Or, as if to highlight the cinematic nature of the music: "The person is by themselves, surrounded by digital avatars." This suggests to me a world in which we pay little attention to the physical world surrounding us because our connections are virtual instead, making for crowds full of people who never interact in person. By extension, that suggests a barer, more fragmented world in which what we're used to seeing in shared spaces has been gradually shifted to individual digital overlays.

That's pretty damn cyberpunk and the music that follows does a pretty good job of detailing that, not least because it's almost entirely instrumental. The introduction, Brave New World, is calm and warm and empty, as if we're in our safe space. Then In Circles hits us from a dozen directions at once, like the flavours in the air if we stand in the middle of a food court and close our eyes. But in Neo-Tokyo.

Listening to In Circles is like travelling at speed through a thriving metropolis, with ambient sounds around us waxing and waning, erupting and vanishing, according to a whole host of external factors. The pulsing beat suggests we're not walking but riding in a vehicle with the windows open through a city that seems alive but only when we look down on it from above with timelapse photography so we appear as merely one streak of light of many. There's so much to unpack from this song. I heard bits of Tangerine Dream and Gary Numan and a host of others I don't recognise.

In Circles is only one of a few highlights here, and there's more Tangerine Dream to find on the closer, Renascence, but it's a fantastic place to start because it takes us out there, somewhere, anywhere, and we don't really return to ourselves until the album's over. It's a hard task for a band to do that when the listener is on headphones in a dark room, let alone on speakers in an office, but I am Waiting for You Last Summer manage it here with ease. No hallucinogenics needed.

Je Me Demande deserves mention too, not only because it's the only piece of music here to feature a vocal track, presumably courtesy of Gdeto, who's the guest on it. It's dreamy stuff from the outset and her voice adds to that feel. While there's rock all through this album, there's plenty of pop here too and this moves from the latter to the former with panache, dreampop to searing guitar solo.

Everything Ends takes a little while to build, but it's well worth the wait for it to get there because it functions as its own crescendo. It feels not only apocalyptic but inexorable, yet somehow not final, as it's not cut off at its peak. It does end but there are a couple more pieces of music to come, so it's only a temporary end. And the first of those is Boiling Point, my favourite piece here, a heavier one but an ethnic one too. The drumming occasionally reminded me of the Geinoh Yamashirogumi soundtrack to Akira, but it's industrialised up and with other melodies overlaid. It's interweaving layers and they're fascinating.

In short, there's a lot here and I look forward to shifting this one onto earphones in the dark.

Virus - Evilution Apocalypse (2020)

Country: UK
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 14 Aug 2020
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Oh hey, here's another blast from my past. I remember British thrash outfit Virus well from their first two albums and their Friday Rock Show session, though I never managed to catch them live. Somehow, I managed to miss a third LP in 1989 before the band split up a year later. They were on the rough side of thrash, with a dirty guitar sound, punky vocals and riffs that were designed for the pit. They played their thrash in high gear too and with surprisingly technical changes, so they reminded me of Nuclear Assault, an one of my favourite bands back then.

Well, it seems that Coke McFinlay, who was both the band's vocalist and lead guitarist, decided to try again in 2008, but struggled to keep a consistent line-up. This is the first new Virus studio album since 1989, though I see compilations and a couple of EPs, and given what's dominated the news this year, it seems highly appropriate for a welcome return of new Virus material. My initial thought is that Coke is picking up exactly where he left off.

These are fast thrash songs, with the band barrelling along with production thats just muddy enough to keep that old school punk feel. When they slow down to midpace, the riffs are good ones, with Rob Edwards working alongside McFinlay well. He's been with Virus since 2018 but Will Sheils on bass and Liam Hastie on drums are new fish this year. They've picked things up quickly, especially the latter, as recognisably Virus drums are more of a feel than a technique. It's not just about keeping the beat, it's also about keeping ahead of it. Virus drums are rarely slow, even when the rest of the band take it to a less vehement pace for a while.

Certainly this band seem to enjoy letting rip instrumentally. There are long stretches where McFinlay shuts his mouth and puts his guitar into serious action. I love these sections, such as the beginning of the title track, the end of Basement Conversion and much of Goat (Father, Scum, and Unholy). Perhaps it's these instrumental sections that led to my surprise.

That rougher, punkier edge led Virus to write shorter songs for the most part, not as a rule per se but just because that's how they came out. Here, everything's just a little longer, none of these ten songs clocking in at under four minutes and only two at under five. These songs are five minute songs or six minute songs, so they're hardly epics, but that's a notable change from the old days. It makes this the old Virus but a little more mature.

Well, sorta. If the cheeky wordplay obvious in titles like Goat (Father, Scum, and Unholy) and Multiple Wargasms isn't enough to highlight the humour at play throughout this album, let alone some of the lyrics, then surely Defective Detective has to. It isn't just a cover of the Inspector Gadget theme, because it's a whole song written from the perspective, I think, of the character's arch-villain, Doctor Claw, and, get this, it's the longest song on this album, but it's still a cover of the Inspector Gadget theme. Virus may be getting serious but they're still serious fun.

I've listened through this album a few times now and I'm still having a blast. I have a feeling that the lyrics to Thrashville explain its existence and the Cliff Notes version of that is that they miss that old school thrash feel so they decided to rekindle it. I'm behind that a thousand per cent and dearly hope that Virus get the opportunity to deliver this on stage and in future albums, taking over from COVID as the Virus to pay attention to.

This isn't the greatest album they'll ever release, not least because there are two songs here reworked from their 1988 album Force Recon, presumably as a bonus, but it's a good album nonetheless and I'm looking forward to the next one. It's not as good as the new Acid Reign, their first since 1990, but I think it's better than the Xentrix, their first since 1996. Now, who's going to come out of the woodwork next?

Qüassi - Mareas (2020)

Country: Argentina
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 9 Oct 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

One of the standard things we critics often do when reviewing music is to compare a particular album to other bands that you're likely to have heard, in order to give you a reference point. I'd do that here but I have no idea who to bring up.

Sure, there's a lot of prog rock here, but Qüassi, from Mendoza, Argentina, don't sound at all like Yes, Genesis or King Crimson, let alone anyone newer. They play entirely instrumental music, but that's not enough to suddenly bring ELP into the mix. There's a lot of psychedelic rock here, so maybe the comparisons should be to bands who mix those two genres, but I didn't hear early Floyd, Hawkwind or even someone like Ozric Tentacles. Perhaps the latter are the closest, but Qüassi aren't as organic and they're nowhere near as reliant on electronics, even on their spacier pieces.

There's a huge amount of jazz here as well, enough of it that I could understand them being described as a jazz band with firm prog influences rather than vice versa, though I don't get the impression that all these songs are improvised jams in the studio, though some songs are looser than others, such as Solitario Spider and Marea. I'm not suggesting that these pieces were planned out meticulously, but I tend to expect pure improvisation to have that recognisable jazz drum sound and the drums here are very confident in where things are going. I often wish I had a deeper grounding in jazz fusion and this is another of those times; I'm sure there are comparisons to be made there.

What I can say is that there are other sounds here, trawled in as needed for a particular song. Vortice could be defined as jazz prog but it's really a sliding scale that veers from lounge music at one end to space rock at the other. Trashilvania has a krautrock feel to it, combining drones and pulses, some of them harsh, into something musical, only for what I presume is a vibraphone to suddenly infuse it all with warmth. That makes for another wild contrast, something that Qüassi handle very well.

Solitario Spider, surely my favourite track here, is led by a melodious guitar that I'd expect to hear in Caribbean music. It repeatedly throws out a melody for the rest of the band to respond to in an array of different ways, which vary wildly. That guitar returns on Matematicofrustrado, which I expected to be a lot more complex given the name (it translates to Frustrated Mathematician), but is still one of my highlights here.

Amapolas is an exotic track, with Egyptian and Indian sounds in the hand drums (and sitar?), though it also finds recognisable melodies. Was that Ravel's Bolero? I think it was. It's an oddity that, given the presence of lounge here, this isn't remotely exotica, merely elements of world music brought into the jazz prog.

I have no idea who any of the musicians are in this band, though their Facebook band photo suggests that there are four of them. While they're all clearly capable, I want to praise whoever's playing vibes because they're a constant gamechanger on an already interesting album. The drummer also deserves special mention for ramping into an outrageous solo on Reverbi, almost without the rest of the band noticing, which is surreal. I like the bass here a lot too, especially on songs like Solitario Spider, when it prowls carefully but confidently.

I liked this a lot, even if it's not remotely easy to pigeonhole. If you like the idea of prog jazz psych, I doubt I need to say much more. If you have no idea what that might sound like and the cover art isn't enough to give you an idea, I recommend checking this album out to see.

Powerman 5000 - The Noble Rot (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Alternative/Industrial Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date:
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

It's been fantastic to see a host of new releases over the last couple of years from bands that I thought were long gone, whether because they split up years ago or because they epitomise an era that's long gone. Powerman 5000 firmly sit in the latter category, as they've never split up since their founding in 1991, but they're so close to what I think of as the sound of the US in 1999 that I'm surprised to find a constant stream of albums to their name. This is their tenth album and they've never had more than a three year gap between any of them.

This starts well, with a song called Cannibal Killers That Kill Everyone. It's precisely is what I expect of Powerman 5000: a Sisters of Mercy groove dirtied up with industrial texture but never losing its sheer catchiness. Even lyrically, it does just what I expect, with a chorus that runs "Cannibal rising, cannibal roar, cannibal pimps and cannibal whores, cannibal daughters, cannibal sons, cannibal killers that kill everyone." It's short and simple but it does its job well and suddenly I remember that MTV used to play music videos. Could this be the December level of our 2020 Jumanji game?

Then they shift into a trendier, more industrial sound. Brave New World features a stop/start beat, an array of electronic sounds in lieu of standard riffs and almost rapped vocals. Play God or Play Dead is similar sans the rap. Special Effects restores an incessant beat and plays with samples to end up oddly like Max Headroom covering Billy Idol. We Got the Beat is a Go-Go's cover, of all things, but it works in this much darker industrial metal context, if not as well as it could.

The other common sound here is old school goth/new wave. Black Lipstick is an overt homage to that era of the early eighties, namechecking Bauhaus. Let the Insects Rule plays with darkwave in the way that Adam Ant might have done, had his later solo career found an influence from Nine Inch Nails rather than Prince. Strange People Doing Strange Things reminds of Adam Ant too, but much earlier when he was coming out of the punk era and creating something new in that vibrant British indie scene of 1979 and 1980. Another name obvious from Strange People and Movie Blood is Gary Numan, a primary influence on Trent Reznor and clearly Spider One of Powerman 5000.

This is surprisingly strong and consistent and it ably explains to me why this band still exists. It may not be my genre of choice, but this is dark and energetic material that's impossible to ignore. It's well within the bounds of possibility that I'll wake up tomorrow morning with one of a half dozen of these songs playing in my head. They're about as infectious as the COVID-19 virus and I know which of those choices I'd prefer to take over society.

I've reviewed a lot of albums lately that look back at the eighties and that's not too surprising, given the current nostalgia point, but it does seem weird to find a band so identified with the late nineties to do the same thing. Play these songs to someone in isolation and they'd never guess that they were released in 2020; only strong modern production tells us that they belong in the 21st century. But it's a great reminder that, however often musicians look backward, music moves on when they do that and combine sounds and this album connected quite a few dots for me. Surprisingly recommended!

H2Ocean - The Horned Goddess (2020)

Country: Greece
Style: Groove Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 25 Sep 2020
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives

I haven't reviewed much from Greece this year, which state of affairs I should remedy because I found so many good albums from there in 2019. H2Ocean primarily play groove metal, with the harsh vocals we expect, but their particularly flavour of groove is a lot closer to the thrash that birthed the genre than most American bands, which fits my taste better. Some songs, such as Primeape, are thrash songs with a groove influence rather than the other way around. The vocals are angry and the bass is high in the mix, but those are thrash riffs and changes.

Frankly, the worst thing about this album is the fact that the colourful cover art might get me into a spot of bother when I share it on Facebook. Musically, it's strong, with nine songs doing much of the same thing with different riffs and vibes, and Makis Makoulas finds a good balance with his vocals. If you follow my reviews, you'll know that I'm not generally a fan of the shouty singing style that found its way into metal from hardcore. Makoulas primarily works in that style, rough and vitriolic, but he does it well and I'm good with it.

My problems with shouty vocals are twofold. One is that such singers often sound like they're trying to sound tough for the sake of sounding tough, rather than to fit with the music. Makoulas is on the right side of that, because it feels right with these riffs. The other is that it often means a monotone delivery, which just makes things boring. He partly avoids that, managing to get enough intonation into some of these songs to matter, especially The Chain and Absolution Through Demise. At points on these, especially on the latter, he almost finds an Icon-era Nick Holmes style.

Another aspect that I'd recommend H2Ocean adopt more often is the inclusion of a female vocal that mixes things up completely. Dehumanized isn't strong here just because of that approach, but it may well be what makes it the highlight of the album. I don't know who that voice belongs to, but it kicks in with a sort of gothic feel and becomes more world music later. This adds layers and Makoulas roars his way through the rest of the song as if he has twice the air in his lungs than the rest of us. It's neat contrast.

Behind him are only three musicians. George Katsamakis contributes guitar and he impresses a lot by infusing a style that's often just about brutality with plenty of technical thrash and plenty of slower old-school metal as well, a song like Change of Heart featuring almost NWOBHM era riffs. On bass is the gloriously named Herc Booze and he's very prominent, not just deepening the sound but echoing beyond it. That leaves Giorgos Kalavrezos on drum programming, though that isn't as electronic as it might seem. It sounds like a real drumkit to me and the rhythms remains interesting throughout.

And that leaves a song called My Everything to highlight. It's a groove metal ballad, which seems like an odd concept to begin with, even if the lyrics are dark with lines like "my love turns into hate". I'm finding that my tolerance for ballads is decreasing with each year that passes and, when this began, I really wasn't sure what to expect. However, this works surprisingly well. Katsamakis goes acoustic with style and Makoulas adapts his voice magnificently to a very different sound. This isn't just a ballad to tolerate, it's one to seek out and, on an album like this, that rather shocked me.

So, it's good to be virtually back in Greece. Unlike other surprising countries where I've found a scene that revolves around a particular style, like psychedelic rock in Peru and Portugal, Greek bands seem to be nailing whatever style they happen to adopt. Clearly I need to keep checking out what's coming out and telling you about it.

[Update: guitarist George Katsamakis kindly let me know that the female vocal on Dehumanized is by Mary Kay and the voice on My Everything doesn't belong to regular singer Makis Makoulas but to a guest vocalist, Fotis Benardo, the former drummer for Septic Flesh and now drummer for Necromentia and singer in SixforNine.]

Silentium - Motiva (2020)

Country: Finland
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 28 Aug 2020
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Wikipedia | YouTube

It's been twelve years since Finland's Silentium have released a studio album, but this one, their sixth, has finally arrived and it's a tasty offering indeed that hopefully points a way forward. Another dozen years would mean 2032 and that's too far away to even imagine.

They call themselves a gothic metal band but there are clear symphonic elements, not unusual for the land of Nightwish, and I think the symphonic metal takes over from the gothic here. There are plenty of recognisable aspects from a few other genres too; there's prog rock here and melodic rock as well, some world melodies on Circle, even some hints at death growls here and there, but what really struck me wasn't the heavy stuff at all.

What impressed me most on the opener, Truth, wasn't that lead singer Riina Rinkinen can handle the standard powerful vocals with apparently no effort, it was that she was also able to ratchet the power way down for quieter sections and even sound delicate in the process. The evocative cover art looks as if it features water, but Finland can be damn cold and in these quieter moments, I pictured icicles on a cold but crisp day with stunning resolution. I like power but power balanced with peace is even better.

And what impressed me most about the rest of the album is that Silentium keep doing this. There are similar sections on Vow and Safer/Easier is delicate from moment one, slowly but inexorably building into something just as elegant but far less delicate, until it bounces back down to the whisper during the midsection. This song feels exquisitely crafted, as if the band has been polishing it for the twelve years since Amortean and only now decided that it's ready to be heard. Some songs conjure up visuals for me, whether still or moving. This may be the first time I've seen a ballet in a song.

By the time Safer/Easier gave way to Vortex, another song to start peacefully, initially with solo piano and then what I presume is a cello, I realised just how impactful these quiet parts were. I found myself breathing shallower so as not to interrupt the delicacy. Of course, that's the point where Silentium do the exact opposite and ramp way up into high gear for the most frantic part of the album. It's here as well that keyboardist Sami Boman provides a rough but intelligible vocal as a counter to the soaring clarity of Rinkinen. Her voice becomes almost a keyboard line for Boman to chant over as the drums of Janne Ojala get ever faster and more theatrically devilish.

Vortex sits at the heart of the album, the fifth song of nine and it's a nine minute epic. These songs do trend towards length, the peak of that the eleven minute Tide, but there are a bunch of four minuters here too, so it's not a must for Silentium. I like songs that are short sharp shocks and I like songs that know that they need to breathe. None of these felt inappropriately short or long and, while the songs I see as standouts are the longer ones, I rather enjoyed Unchained with its choral backing too.

Tide is seriously ambitious. It's entirely capella for a minute and change, before piano and strings add to the effect. When it gets serious, it does so with real character, Ojala setting jagged rhythms in play for the band to mimic. It ebbs and it flows and it does rather a lot within those eleven minutes. It's a true epic, dwarfing Vortex and never feeling uncomfortable.

Friend is the only song that feels uncomfortable and that's because it's meant to. These titles give us precious little to go in with and this particular title ought to offer the most comfort anywhere here, but it's harsh and quietly industrial throughout its first half. Maybe our friend shows up to rescue us in the second half. If so, our friend is a neatly amorphous blob that expands and contracts at will. The visuals on this album do get strange and there are no lyrics to help us on this one.

This is a generous album, at almost a hour in length, but then there are twelve years to fill here. What I took away from it after a first listen was a strong sense of dynamic play, with the quieter segments as important, if not more so, than the louder, heavier ones. It's a very patient album. It's a careful album too and repeated listens deepen it. There's so much great and interesting symphonic metal out there at the moment. If you're into that sort of material, this is another treat for you.