Evals Mess - Born of the Flower (2022)

Country: Brazil
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 21 May 2022
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Here's an unusual setup from Brazil. Evals Mess isn't one band but three, who share a name and a logo. The line-up is mostly the same across all three, but they play different genres. Evals Mess, in this form, which is also known as Evals Mess Project, play prog rock. However, they heavy up into a thrash/death metal band, Evals Mess Insane, and also lighten up into Evals Mess Acoustic. Two of the three members of Evals Mess Insane play in Evals Mess Project but, while Andrey Cardoso has the same bass guitar slung around his neck, Sandro Maués shifts from drums to handle vocals and acoustic guitar. Samuel Wesley takes over on drums and Guilherme Andrili adds a second guitar.

This is my introduction to Evals Mess, so I haven't hear Evals Mess Insane yet, though I'm intrigued after hearing this. It's their third album and it's a generous one, almost making the eighty minute mark, though it's broken up over tracks of very different lengths, two under four minutes and two over ten. It's a rare album indeed where not more than two songs of the eleven on offer share the same minute length, but this is one. I like that the band are confident in letting them simply be as long as they should be, rather than cropping them down for better chances at airplay or extending them out with unnecessary sections.

It's a neatly varied album too, ranging from the poppy commercial prog of Cloistered through to a heavy midsection on Martyrdom that's arguably metal, albeit one nowhere near thrash/death in approach. Most of it sits in between, of course, rock rather than pop or metal, and thoughtful in a lot of its dynamic play. Witch's Fury was my early standout because of that. It grows magnificently during its eight and a half minutes, thoughtful and careful becoming intense and vehement. It's a given that I'm not going be to doing anything to invoke this witch's fury any time soon, if I can help it.

Of course, I'm sure she's fictional because this appears to be a concept album based on a novel by Sandro Maués, though I may not be translating the Portuguese properly there. It doesn't surprise me to find that this is a concept album, because it evolves like one, a shifting in tone and style as a change in the story requires it. It also explains how Maués can get so much emotion into songs like Witch's Fury, because he's not merely invested in these songs as a songwriter or performer, he was the creator of the characters whose stories they tell. He's this witch's mother and father and god.

While Maués sings at least primarily in English, I couldn't follow the story from his voice so got as much of its progression from the song titles, the sound effects and the general flow. It sounds to me like it's a period tale of hardship and restraint that eventually finds rebirth and freedom. The anger is met with boundaries, so the lead character dreams of peace and freedom. A melancholy tone that pervades many of the earlier songs gradually shifts into a darker tone and eventually a happier one.

I think those tonal shifts affect what the music appears to be inspired by. Cloistered is prog infused by sixties pop, a dream of something else. Many of the slower sections or indeed entire songs, like Redemption, remind of Queensrÿche's slower moments, though ramping up is done in a different direction. The opener starts out with a western pirate vibe that segues into a very Mark Knopfler guitar, which returns on Martyrdom before it heavies up, when Queensrÿche come back to mind. I caught odd moments here and there of Styx, Iron Maiden and Pink Floyd, though only moments. I can't imagine that there aren't Brazilian bands in here that I wouldn't recognise either; there's a rich South American scene that I've only dipped my toes into thus far.

What impressed me most here was how lush it felt without also feeling dense. There aren't thirty layers going on at once, even when there's orchestration, but it always feels like we're surrounded by interesting things happening, with the core thrust of the album moving through them. I think that's the main reason why this never feels too long, even at eighty minutes, a length at which I'd feel safe in saying most albums would struggle. This always has something to say. Twice through is almost three hours and it didn't lose my attention once. In fact, some of the most magnetic songs arrive late, like Death in Doubt, with its menacing post-punk overtones and strange rhythms, not to forget its perhaps subconscious nod to Knockin' on Heaven's Door.

It has to be said also that everything leads up to the thirteen minute epic kinda sorta title track, a gem of a piece called Anturiah, Born of the Flower. At this point, you probably know whether you'll be checking this out or not, so I'll just say that, if you do, it's the centerpiece of the album. I think I prefer Witch's Fury, just on a personal level, but everything this album does, it does it most on the final track. And I guess that means that it's the one you should check out on YouTube if you're still undecided. Enjoy.

Michael Monroe - I Live Too Fast to Die Young (2022)

Country: Finland
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 10 Jun 2022
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It feels like only about ten minutes since the last Michael Monroe album, One Man Gang, but it's a surprising three years and, as enjoyable as that one was, this feels more consistent and, dare I say it, more mature. And that sounds flippant of me, I know, but, while that patented Michael Monroe blend of punk and glam on offer here, the whole thing feels a little less rough and loose (crucially, though, not more polished) and more carefully thought out. The lyrics grabbed my attention last time out and they do so even more this time, starting at the very outset with Murder the Summer of Love.

That's a strong opener in every way, lyrically and musically, but things don't fade at all from there. Songs that, in other hands, could have become filler material, aren't here, merely taking different amounts of time to grow on us. I remember liking the up tempo songs more on that last album and they're surely the ones that caught me first here, like All Fighter and, most notably, Pagan Prayer, but then the sleazier, slightly laid back ones grew and eventually the ballad as well, an impressive piece in the style of Mott the Hoople that I came to really dig. Initially, it felt like an interlude but it's a real grower that has become one of my favourites. Notably, it's located right at the heart of the album and maybe that has meaning.

What I'm finding, on my fourth time through, is that every song here could well end up like that. It didn't initially feel like a great album, just a good one, but nothing fades and everything grows. I'd be as hard pressed to pick the worst song as the best one and that doesn't happen too often. Most albums have a standout or three and a couple of songs that don't live up to the rest. I'd have given you examples of both after one listen but not after three. Derelict Palace may take a little longer to stand out than the songs around it on the first half but it's just as worthy and the same goes for Everybody's Nobody. The former has a really cool groove and the latter stands out lyrically.

And, just like the Latin vibe on Heaven is a Free State last time, there are songs here that add an unusual angle to Monroe's tried and tested formulae. Sure, there are moments here that feel like they could have been on Two Steps from the Move, like the bridge in All Fighter, but there are also subtle shifts. Can't Stop Falling Apart isn't that far from his usual style, but somehow it's also half Steve Earle and half Status Quo, which is quite a cool collaboration. There's a laid back reggae vibe on No Guilt behind the alt rock and Dearly Departed is an electronic new wave song, but a very successful one. If Monroe made an album in that style, he'd find a whole new audience.

There aren't a lot of guests here and only one you'd expect me to call out. That's Slash, who shows up on the sassy title track to lend his guitar talents and to weave a solo. It's a neat team up but it's not the event that it could have been. The song is another good one, with a memorable and catchy chorus, and I'm not going to fault Slash's solo either, but it's just one of eleven tracks here. In fact, given where Dearly Departed goes after it, it doesn't hold our focus as long as you might think. It feels like another good Michael Monroe song, whereas Dearly Departed plays much more like the departure it suggests and its uncharacteristic synths seem more notable than Slash's solo.

I like this album a lot. It was always a good one and I never doubted that it would be another 7/10, just like its predecessor, but I don't think that's fair. This is an 8/10 album. It just doesn't slap us in the face with how great it is. The more I listen to it, the better it gets and the less surprised I feel about that rating.

Servan - Tales of the Forest (2022)

Country: Italy
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 25 May 2022
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I'm back in Italy again, it seems, this time in Trento in the south Tyrol for a folk metal album from Servan, who are debuting here in a rather schizophrenic fashion. I'm still trying to figure out quite what they're trying to do, because it seems to be two completely different things and one tends to cancel out the other.

Some of the time, they're a serious folk metal band. The evocative intro points the way, with flutes delivering plaintive melodies around bubbling brooks. Then it kicks in hard and fast, as Tiki Land is eager to convince us that Servan are a tasty mix of folk and death and thrash. There's a rough but not too harsh vocal and a separate clean vocal, so there's contrast and variety there, even before we factor in the constant contrast between chugging riffs and dancing flutes. The Forest continues in much the same vein, slower but with the same effect. It's good stuff.

But then The Goblins shows up and we realise that Servan, after they do a quick change into their superhero outfits, also make cartoon theme tunes. At least, that's the impression I got here, that flute playing a Pied Piper role as it leads a procession of goblins. Don't get me wrong, this is done well, like a more accessible Trollfest, only one reason why I immediately saw it animated, all those goblins walking in step, single file, with that odd skip that cartoon characters have to have. But it's not remotely serious and damn, it's catchy.

If The Goblins was the only example of this, then it would just have been a prominent track and we could get back to enjoying the serious stuff. However, it's not. This quirky, extra bouncy, animated processional music with cartoon goblin vocals shows back in Lovegati, only two songs later and on others as the album runs on. It's not the entire song this time but it's enough of it to matter and I can't help but feel sorry for Ode Agli Elementi. What's that, you say?

Well, it's the track in between those two. Listen to it in isolation and you'll see it as the decent folk metal song that it is. Listen to it on this album in between The Goblins and Lovegati and you'll lose track of the fact that it exists. There's nothing wrong with it, except that it's in the wrong place at the wrong time and it's hard to focus on flute melodies or guitar solos when we're focused instead on bouncing animated goblins. If The Goblins is the theme tune and Lovegati is the first episode, I guess that means Ode Agli Elementi is the first commercial break and that's not enviable.

After these two, I struggled with the album while appreciating both sides of the band's music. It's not that one angle is inherently more worthy than the other. It's simply that one overwhelms the other when they're alternated on the same album. The best songs, I feel, are the ones that play it seriously, avoiding that cartoon mindset, but keep the extra-bouncy melodies. Conjurers does that and, to a large degree, so does Drunk Troll. That title so obviously tells us it's going to be silly that it's almost a shock when the song isn't. These are more serious songs but you just won't be able to listen to something like Conjurers or the flute solo late in The Last Battle without your toes taking on a life of their own, tapping away like a lunatic.

It's probably fair to say that this is a problem now but potentially not down the road. Servan are a new band on their debut album. They're probably new to us and we don't have years invested into their sound. Ten years and four albums from now, we might expect this and appreciate both sides for the quality music they are. We might even cherish them for it, like we cherish Bad Brains for a career in hardcore punk that just shifts into reggae at points for no discernible reason. Right now, it's harder to do that, so let's see how they're received. There's some serious talent on display. I'm looking forward to watching them grow into themselves.

Septicflesh - Modern Primitive (2022)

Country: Greece
Style: Atmospheric Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 May 2022
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OK, I thought I knew Septic Flesh, as they were before 2008 with a space in their name, but it's very possible that I've confused them with someone else. No, not Septic Death, as I have them clear for sure. However, I was thoroughly surprised by the sound of this album, though, and more so than I'd have been had I actually heard some of their earlier material before. Going back to cherrypick the early stuff, I see that they've always played symphonic death metal but they've continued to boost the symphonic part of that as time has gone by, eventually sharing the stage in Mexico City in 2019 with an orchestra and a couple of choirs in a memorable concert I've been enjoying on YouTube.

By this point, which is their eleventh album, that symphonic angle has been so integrated into the band's sound that it's inseparable. This isn't strings behind a rock band any more, this is one band with a hundred members. I'd say that the best example of this is Coming Storm, but everything on the album is a good example and Coming Storm is just the track that plays with the dynamics best. And, I should point out, going full on symphonic beyond most symphonic bands is far from the end of their evolution.

For a start, there's a lot of ethnic sound on this album, starting at the very beginning with a neat and intricate intro to The Collector, which is not played on acoustic guitars. In addition to the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and the Libro Coro choirs and a long list of choral vocalists, I'm seeing credits for folk instruments like mandolin, flute, oud and bouzouki, each of which I'm aware of, but duduk and santur too, which I'm not; they're a wind instrument and a hammered dulcimer respectively. There's also a female vocalist who sings in a wavering ethnic style on songs like Self-Eater. Each of these folk contributions deepens the band's sound and they're often the best, most joyous part, like on Neuromancer.

For another, while the majority of vocals are still the effortlessly harsh vocals of bassist Seth Siro Anton, who sounds like he's not even putting on a demonic voice but just using the one that comes most naturally, the way they're balanced with the clean vocals of guitarist Sotiris Anunnaki V are a fascinating thing. Sometimes, it's the usual contrast between harsh and clean, which is purely for effect and the sort of thing we tend to expect in bands with that dynamic. However, here it's often something far more theatrical and the orchestration and some of the other musical changes on a dime play into that.

When listening through the speakers on my desk, I sometimes got the impression that there were things happening that I missed because I couldn't see them. Surely, this is music that's intended to be seen as much as heard, a true metal opera, and I wasn't sitting in front of a stage watching the actors play their parts. When listening through headphones, though this feeling was enhanced to become sometimes overwhelming. I wanted to know what these people were doing visually, what stories they were telling with their bodies as well as their voices.

While Coming Storm stood out for me above the other tracks, none of them let the side down. This is a solid album and one I enjoyed a great deal over a few listens. If there's a catch, it's that there are also bonus tracks on this limited edition and, well, I kind of dig those more. These are entirely orchestral pieces, i.e. they keep all of that side but ditch the band, and I'm pretty sure that they'll want me to think of them as worthy bonuses. Instead, I'm digging Salvation and The 14th Part a bit more than I'm digging the rest of the album, Coming Storm excluded.

However, the third of these bonus tracks is Coming Storm, done entirely with orchestra, and I think that I prefer the proper version more. So, perhaps the question should be phrased like this: where are the heavy versions of Salvation and The 14th Part, the ones with a band and vocals and all that jazz? Answers on the back of a postcard please...

Wucan - Heretic Tongues (2022)

Country: Germany
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 20 May 2022
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Shifting from a German band with world fame and six decades of history behind them to a German band that I hadn't heard of, I should mention that this is easily my pick of the two albums. This one is the third full length from a Dresden-based band called Wucan that I hadn't previously heard of, but it utterly floored me. They've combined a number of easily defined influences with others I'm sure are unknown to me and stirred them up into a very potent, very energetic new sound that I'd expect to connect with certain modern-looking audiences as much as other very old school ones.

The first obvious influence is Jethro Tull, because there's a flute from the opening of the opening track, Kill the King, and it's played in a fashion notably reminiscent of Ian Anderson. However, the song moves in other directions and the Tull influences don't really show up until later, with songs like Fette Deutsch, which owes more than a little to Locomotive Breath. While we may think of Tull as a quieter folk rock band (remember the surprise when they won that Grammy), they rocked out often, especially on stage, and it's their heavier numbers from them that show up most here.

In between that initial flute and the real Tull influence, Black Sabbath wander in to highlight their importance too. Don't Break the Oath has a riff that's so Sabbath that I even recognise it as a key change in Wheels of Confusion. Like Kill the King, it moves on elsewhere but it never truly forgets that Sabbath nod. It was here that I really started thinking genre, because this is psychedelic rock without any doubt, but it doesn't venture far into the usual genres that Sabbath set into motion. It's not heavy metal. It's not stoner rock. It's not doom metal. And it trawls in sounds that come a long way from anything that Tull or Sabbath put their name to over the decades.

And here I need to go back to the beginning, because there's so much more in Kill the King than an obvious flute. It has strong riffs from the beginning but funky changes too; searing vocals from an outstanding throat that promptly shifts into scat singing and other vocalisations; the tasty combo of bass runs and handclaps; and a real urgency that never leaves the album, even when it's willing to take a breather. That voice belongs to Francis Tobolsky, with whom I immediately fell hopelessly in love and admiration. What is it about German rock singers? Yes, Doro, you stole my heart first.

I should mention here that, while she's obviously listened to Janis Joplin on far more than a casual basis, her band was definitely paying attention to what Big Brother & The Holding Company did on the stage behind her as well. That sixties psychedelia, rooted in the blues of the past but pointing the way firmly forward to the new genres of the seventies, is everywhere here, as are some of the latter genres, most obviously funk but krautrock and disco too, especially on the closer, Physical Boundaries, a jam that takes us on a funky journey through the cosmos for twelve and a half minutes, like a combination of Can, Hawkwind and Funkadelic jamming at Monterey Pop with Ian Anderson as a special guest.

The funk was there from the beginning in Kill the King but the disco shows up on the two parts of Far and Beyond, combining that genre's incessant drive with a more recognisable rock one that I recognised from Magnum's Kingdom of Madness, probably not uncoincidentally another song to prominently feature a flute. Tobolsky owns everything she touches but Patrik Dröge lays down an impressive and very patient bass in Far and Beyond that thoroughly grabbed me long before that voice showed up to cement the deal.

The only track I haven't mentioned is the one I like least and, amazingly enough, that's the cover, because Kill the King is not the Rainbow song nor Don't Break the Oath the Mercyful Fate track. I haven't heard this one before, because it's Zwischen Liebe und Zorn, from a Soviet era band from East Germany called the Klaus Renft Combo. It wasn't even an album track, having been released as a single in 1972, not something I assume was heard widely in the west.

In this version, it's good (and it sounds even better when I listened on headphones) but it uses two singers, the other one male, and, quite frankly, anyone who picks up a mike alongside Tobolsky will inevitably be compared to her and just as inevitably lose. Whoever this is doesn't try to compete in the slightest, yet fails anyway and the song is lesser for it. It's why I didn't automatically go with a 9/10 here but I may well end up doing that anyway.

I absolutely must see Wucan live. They seem like the sort of band who could get an entire stadium audience to pay attention to them, even when everyone showed up to see someone else, and then utterly lift the lid off the small club next door. It's at times like this and when I first heard the Blue Merrow album in January that I wonder why I moved to North America. All the bands I'm aching to see live are back in Europe and not even in England either but over on the continent.

Scorpions - Rock Believer (2022)

Country: Germany
Style: Hard Rock/Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 25 Feb 2022
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I guess the question we're supposed to ask here is whether we're rock believers or not and it's the sort of question you expect to hear from the Scorpions. It's a cheesy cliché of a question, of course, and it could be argued that the Scorpions have become a cheesy cliché of a band, a caricature of a continent's worth of metal music that's rocking us like a hurricane, baby, but the thing is that the band is still seriously on the ball, even this far into their run. Rudy Schenker formed the Scorpions back in 1965, so they've been around forever, and they're still doing the job in a millennium that is somehow an impossible distance from 1984.

Gas in the Tank is a perfect opener, in that it's yet another generic rock song with clumsy lyrics but with a solid riff and a real drive to it, highlighting that these guys still feel the thrill of the music, even in their seventies. Could that ever be summed up better by the bridge in the title track, with its lyric of "our fathers came to steal but we came back to make you feel our love in every song we play." Yeah, we know who "our fathers" are there and stealing was hardly the worst of their many sins but we also know that the Scorpions meant this well and they're heartfelt in their feelings. In the parlance of this album, they're rock believers.

By the way, this particular bunch of rock believers has been consistent only for six years now. That memorably accented voice belongs to Klaus Meine, as it has for longer than I've been alive, given that he joined in 1969. The memorable lead guitar belongs to Matthias Jabs, a fixture since 1978, and he's the highlight here for me, as he so often is on Scorpions albums. The rhythm section isn't as longstanding though, Schenker excepted, and they're a quality international bunch who aren't listed strictly by their real names.

I haven't heard Pavel Maciwoda (short for Paweł Mąciwoda-Jastrzębski) before, their Polish bass player, but anyone who played in a thrash metal band called Virgin Snatch ought to fit well within the mindset of the Scorpions. He's slung their bass since 2004 and he's clearly a reliable fixture in their sound nowadays. On drums, though, is someone I've seen live a few times, pounding skins for Motörhead, because it's Mickey Dee (for Micael Delaoglou) making his album debut for the band. I may still hear his name in Lemmy's voice, but he fits well here, so much so that he and Maciwoda suddenly feel like they've always been there.

I haven't heard a Scorpions album in a long time, probably this millennium, because I drifted away around Eye II Eye in 1999 when they completed a shift into pop music. I remember their orchestral collaboration with the Berlin Philharmonic in 2000 but nothing since and it doesn't seem that I've missed much. Unbreakable got good reviews in 2004 and their back to their roots farewell release, Sting in the Tail from 2010, has its fans but the pair after that have got, shall we say, inconsistent reviews. Maybe I've reconnected with them at the right time because this feels honest and worthy from a band who are doing exactly what they used to do and loving it.

Sure, some of the songs are cheesy and they'll never be a band known for clever lyrics. "Scream for me, screamer" isn't going to win them a Nobel Prize for Literature, but it works here and a slew of tracks seriously kick ass the way the band used to way back in the day. Seventh Sun finds a cool vibe and I liked it immediately. It's a plodder but a very lively one. When I Lay My Bones to Rest is lively old school rock 'n' roll, perfect fodder for "the greatest drummer in rock 'n' roll" and the most up tempo song here.

There are quintessential songs too. Shining of Your Soul is a fantastic offbeat Scorpions track, with a neat and surprising reggae groove behind its crunchy riff. Klaus Meine's accent always soars so well on softer material but this is a rocker and a ballad all at once, something the Scorpions always did better than anyone else. And, as the album runs on, Peacemaker is a no nonsense rocker that could be spliced into any of their early eighties albums without anyone thinking it was out of place and the closer, When You Know (Where You Come From) isn't far way from the same comment, just as an epic rather than an overt rocker.

Sure, there are songs that are cheesy, like Gas in the Tank and Knock 'em Dead, and some that are just decent filler, like Hot and Cold and, well, Knock 'em Dead, but the highlights aren't restricted to the single, or even the three singles released thus far. This is a solid album that tells us that, in a career that's almost sixty years long, they still wanna rock and still know how to do it.

Wind Rose - Warfront (2022)

Country: Italy
Style: Folk/Power Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 10 Jun 2022
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Here's a surprise for me, substituting for what I'd planned to review today because, well, it wasn't up to snuff and I have no interest in being a hatchet man critic. My job at Apocalypse Later is based in discovery and this album was a discovery for me as it may be for you. Wind Rose hail from Pisa in Tuscany—yes, that Pisa—and they play power metal. This is their fifth album and the highest rated of them at Metal Archives, albeit with only one review thus far. They apparently started out with a more progressive form of power metal but gradually shifted into a more epic folk/power hybrid.

Frankly, I could also see the Viking metal label being thrown at them too, even if they're a little far south in Italy to be considered Vikings. The Mediterranean is rather different in temperature from the Baltic or the North Sea, after all. To me, this is power metal that's constantly underpinned by folk melodies and delivered in a rough but melodic singalong style by male voices that could easily belong to people wearing horned helmets, not that Vikings ever did, of course.

The key to the band's current sound may lie in the bookends to this album. It kicks off with a short two minute intro, Of War and Sorrow, that's epic and instrumental and full of folk elements. Then, fifty odd minutes later, it ends with Tomorrow Has Come, all acoustic guitars and hand drums and rough voices in folk harmonies. It underlines the observation that every track here is effectively a different take on Tomorrow Has Come, just heavied up, as indeed this one becomes around three and a half minutes in.

Sabaton surely have to be thrown out as a comparison, but with that Viking edge, as the vocals are rougher but just as melodic and singalong. Like Sabaton, they're singing about war but with more of a participatory mindset and they're doing it in in the form of shanties and folk epics. Draw a line from Alestorm to Sabaton and you'll find Wind Rose perhaps three quarters of the way over to the Swedes, having shorn the silliness and swearing but keeping the drunken singalongs.

And everything here feels like a drunken singalong, not in the sense that Francesco Cavalieri slurs his delivery, but because the setting is so inherent in the music that we can't help but imagine him singing in a oaken alehouse. In fact, he isn't just there, but standing behind an oaken trestle table with a large stein of beer in his hand and his cohorts singing along next to him. The folk aspects do underline all this too, because these songs are surely as good companions as that beer and just as inviting. When they're heavy, they're comrades in arms on the road. When they calm down, like in late sections of Army of Stone, they're warm pubs with blazing fires and buxom barmaids.

If it wasn't for that implicit welcome, the downside to this album would be that there isn't a lot of variety here. Frankly, if you like any one track here, you're going to like every one of them because they're all of a similar mindset. They don't tread exactly the same ground, though, and not one of them outstays the welcome, which is why the potential downside turns out to be one of its biggest successes.

In fact, I'll go a heck of a step beyond that. Every song is worthy on its own merits and could easily count as the track you'd want to play to catch a friend up in what this album is. I listened through a third time specifically with that in mind and it's so consistent that I simply couldn't pick one. It was always the one I was listening to at any particular moment in time, whichever one that happened to be. What's more, every time I thought maybe not this one, it would do something to enforce its place at the top of my list.

Maybe I feel reasonably safe in placing I am the Mountain just a little below the rest and it's hard to compare the closer to the rest because of two thirds of it being acoustic. So the highlight would be one of the first seven songs proper, from Army of Stone to The Battle of the Five Armies, and an acknowledgement like that means that this has to be a 8/10 with thoughts of going up to a rarely awarded but much coveted 9/10s. I've only given out two this year thus far and this is the closest I can remember of making that three, but I think the ruthless consistency of 90% of the album and a slight shift for the rest blocks that. Rating aside, grab some bottles of mead, some drinking horns and a bevy of friends and you'll have a grand old time with this. Slainte!

Lord Belial - Rapture (2022)

Country: Sweden
Style: Black Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 May 2022
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It's been a while since Lord Belial have released an album, mostly because they went on indefinite hiatus in 2009 when drummer Micke Backelin was suffering from severe tinnitus. After at least one gig in 2014 and an announced tour for the COVID years that I presume didn't happen, they're back for sure with this album, their ninth thus far and their first in fourteen years. Given how blistering the opening track, Legion, happens to be, I think the Swedish black metal pioneers may be a little happy about their return.

That they remain frantic for much of the album shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone. Micke's drumming is pinpoint stuff and, for a while, it's not particularly varied, content to just hammer an incessant beat at ludicrous speed. Legion and On a Throne of Souls are powerful tracks, but really ones to get us in the mood and underline the fact Lord Belial and indeed Micke Backelin are back. I did wonder for a while if we'd hear anything else, because what might work fine for a three and a half minute opener, or indeed the first couple of songs, isn't going to work for a fifty minute album.

Rapture of Belial, which I guess is the title track, is where it starts to vary. It's very fast at points, I should point out, but it varies the tempo frequently, often getting surprisingly slow, even shifting the beat a couple of times from Micke's drums to what I presume is the sound of an anvil being hit by a large hammer. I was a little panicky before this song, but it opened up wonderfully from here, almost like the openers were a solid and reliable stem to a flower and we work upwards to find the rest of the album the vibrant petals. A predominantly black flower, of course, and one inexplicably decorated by blood spatter, but you get the point.

I realise that I've now mentioned Micke four times thus far but nobody else at all, though the first was inevitable. The others are because he's rather high in the mix and he's so incessant over those first couple of tracks that it's a little hard to focus on the rest of the band. Well, that's his brother Thomas's voice fighting for attention and it's a neatly evil black metal voice without going full-on goblin shriek. Thomas also plays guitar, as does Niclas Pepa Green, meaning that there are three of the four founder members in place, only Anders Backelin, cousin to Micke and Thomas, missing on bass. All three members pick up that slack, but I wonder why he didn't join them this time.

To be fair, they do it well, not that it's particularly noticeable in the mix. It's certainly there on the quieter moments in Belie All Gods, where it shines in comparison to the routine death growl that's suddenly a counter to Thomas's black shriek. It's there as Evil Incarnate kicks on with slow but firm intent. This one ramps up, of course, but varies its tempo throughout and is likely to be my pick for standout track. There's a fight on for that slot though and oddly, the majority of candidates are in the second half of the album, which ironically it begins.

There's a grand epic feel to this half, with slower sections rampaging onwards and faster ones that elevate the mood. It often feels like early Dark Tranquility in its sweep but with all its rough edges smoothed off and the tone translated from melodic death to black metal, through the vocals, the impenetrable guitars and the faster drum sections. There are some fantastic delicacies within the layers of sound in Lux Luciferi and the melody of Infinite Darkness and Death ends up accentuated by what sounds like a harpsichord. The intro to this one is blissful too. Alpha and Omega does a lot of these things but with an even better guitar solo. Lamentations gets seriously choral.

Yes, this second half shines. It swells with emotional weight but dances with elegance. As ruthless the opening tracks were, I much prefer the slower, more nuanced tracks of the second half and I'm hooked all over again on each repeat listen. Raw purists may worship Legion, but this album kicks off for me with Rapture of Belial and really gets going with Evil Incarnate. From that point, it's an excellent album indeed.