The 69 Eyes - Death of Darkness (2023)

Country: Finland
Style: Gothic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 21 Apr 2023
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I'm sure there's something superstitious I could read into it, but Death of Darkness is yet another thirteenth album. My second review each day is always of a more established band than my first, a deliberate approach that allows me to cover new bands and keep up with the old ones, and this, by sheer coincidence, is a third thirteenth album in a row after Holy Moses and Kamelot. Tomorrow's will not be a fourth. I just checked.

This time, it's the 69 Eyes, a Finnish band who have only ever had one line-up change in their thirty-four year career, but who have moved through a number of genres in that time, starting out more in a glam rock style but moving gradually towards gothic rock, with occasional ventures over onto the other side of the ever shifting rock/metal boundary. This is gothic rock, in a western style, but it also delves rather palatably into pop music on the ironically named Gotta Rock. Sure, it's a rock song but most of it builds with a prowling bass that wouldn't be out of place on Michael Jackson's Thriller. Needless to say, lead vocalist Jyrki 69 doesn't sound remotely like Jackson.

He sounds a lot more like Andrew Eldritch nowadays, with a deep and deliberate voice that chants and echoes at us with a teasing hint of breathlessness. Last time out, on 2019's West End, one song in particular screamed the Sisters of Mercy and the same applies here. It's Call Me Snake and it's an upbeat song with a gorgeous groove and a memorable chorus. Call me Snake, Snake, Snake... It has to be said that I much prefer the modern 69 Eyes when they're upbeat and energetic, but that only really applies in full on two songs. Call Me Snake is the best of them but Drive isn't far behind and it doesn't surprise me to discover that it preceded the album last year as the lead on a three track EP, with Call Me Snake sharing its grooves.

They're at very different points on the album. Drive shows up after the broody opening title track but Call Me Snake doesn't arrive until it's called on to kick off the second side. That places it after Gotta Rock, as well as California, with a Cult-like drive, and a particularly notable track called This Murder Takes Two. It's notable for its guest appearance by Kat Von D, which works well, her voice contrasting neatly with Jyrki's, but also because it has an alt country murder ballad vibe, filtered through goth. It's quite a memorable piece, much more low key than Call Me Snake or Drive, but a highlight nonetheless.

Even with Call Me Snake kicking it off, the second side doesn't feel as strong as the first. The other standout there is Dying in the Night, which feels like a Billy Idol song, with an incessant drive from bass and drums, but with the guitar dialled way back. It's all vocals and beat, which isn't the worst decision on this song, but I did miss Bazie's lead guitar. It's there on Something Real, with another Billy Idol sort of vibe and a faster pace. The albums wraps up with Sundown and Outlaws, a further Cult-esque song and another slower song to showcase Jyrki's resonant voice and what I presume have to be guest synth melodies.

And so this is another decent album, as we might expect from the 69 Eyes, but it's not the killer it could have been. I should run it past some of my goth friends to see what they think of it. It may be that they really dig the slower material and relish every new release the band puts out. I like it too but the metalhead inside me always wants them to speed up. When they do, on songs like Call Me Snake and Drive, I'm in Heaven. Until Eldritch figures out how easy it is nowadays to self-release a full length album while retaining complete creative control, it's these songs that satisfy my need for new Sisters material. Only after those can I truly settle into the slower, more offbeat stuff on a modern 69 Eyes album.

Compassionizer - As Smoke is Driven Away (2023)

Country: Russia
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Apr 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Prog Archives

I've reviewed a couple of Compassionizer albums now and the Russian chamber prog collective are usually pretty concise with their songwriting, even if they split a song up over multiple parts. Each of the albums I've reviewed has featured just one long piece of music, the thirteen minutes of Bear Ye One Another's Burdens on An Ambassador in Bonds and the fourteen of Kramatorsk on Narrow is the Road; nothing else on those albums came close. Well, here's what I guess we should call an EP, because "single" doesn't seem to cut it when the one track on offer is twenty minutes long. As you might imagine, there's a lot going on in this instrumental, which is easily the most expansive I've heard from Compassionizer.

The other surprising note is in which instruments are dominant. Ivan Rozmainsky has always been the driving force behind Compassionizer and he's primarily a keyboard player. Sure, he does add a kalimba and a vibraphone here too, but much of what he plays is on various different synthesisers. As such, he's all over this track but mostly in the background for a change. He seems to be content this time out with providing an atmosphere for the track against which the lead instruments can perform. Sometimes that's minimal and sometimes more expansive but he's rarely the lead. Even when he's dancing around that vibraphone late in the piece like he's the whole twinkling night sky, there's a clarinet or a guitar there to dance with him.

Mostly, the lead falls to the clarinets, which have never been a typical rock instrument the way the flute became because of Ian Anderson, but which felt right on the first Compassionizer album and ongoing. Clarinets are such inquisitive instruments, almost the raccoons of the musical world They are always seeking out new truths or new absurdities and that makes them a flexible way to help us visualise music. The bass clarinet here is played by Leonid Perevalov and the rest come courtesy of AndRey Stefinoff.

And there is a story here, or at least a theme, for us to visualise. The concept here is all about "the Mystery of the Victory of Good over Evil". Certainly there's a general sweep from dark to light and from jagged, avant-garde rhythms and phrases to more beautiful, traditional ones. I would expect that the bass clarinet is playing a dark role here, whether it's meant to be specific or general, and what I presume is a soprano clarinet represents its eternal counterpart. However, if the piece aims at deeper storytelling like we might expect in thematically ambitious pieces in classical music, I'm not hearing it. This feels more abstract, so that we can all conjure up our own interpretations but never be far wrong.

Talking of rhythms, the drums are a player in this game too. Not everything features percussion, a state of affairs that may be in part because Serghei Liubcenco, who plays traditional drums, doira and other forms percussion, is also the guitarist and bassist on this piece, so he's wearing a lot of hats this time out. When the bass clarinet is dominant, the drums often back it up like an army, a show of force to overwhelm delicacy. His guitar is even more fascinating, showing up not to play a rhythm or a riff but perhaps to depict the power of chaos.

I wasn't intending to assign characters to the different instruments, like Peter and the Wolf, but I guess I'm kind of doing that anyway. Unfortunately, I don't have a cast list and there may not be a cast list, so I'm stabbing rather blind. For a start, there's a firm transition halfway through that's done on viola and I have no idea what that represents. Of course, it may not represent anything at all and so I'm never going to find that answer. The piece also drifts away and it feels like there may be a reason for that which I'm blissfully unable to see.

Of course, there's never been a requirement to make sense out of any piece of music, even if it has a conceptual theme. You can just back and enjoy. This is certainly an engaging piece that ought to keep fans of Compassionizer happy until their next album, but the longer the pieces they play, the more I feel like there are meanings to be found. Maybe there are no answers and Rozmainsky just likes prompting us to ask questions. And should that ever be surprising in progressive rock?

Kamelot - The Awakening (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Melodic Power Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 17 Mar 2023
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Not every power metal band from Tampa, Florida got stupidly caught up in the insurrection, but I don't think we can call Kamelot an entirely American band any more. Sure, Thomas Youngblood is still in place on guitar, as he's been since they were founded in 1987 as Camelot with a C, and Sean Tibbetts is there on bass, as he was briefly in the early nineties and has been since 2009, but every other member is European—vocalist Tommy Karevik is Swedish while drummer Alex Landenburg and keyboardist Oliver Palotai are both German—and only two of thirteen guests are American. It shouldn't be surprising that Kamelot probably sound more European than any other Florida band.

This is their thirteenth studio album but, like Holy Moses's thirteenth yesterday, it took a while to arrive, after the longest gap between albums that they've ever had. The Shadow Theory came out in 2018, so it's been five years. It's good to see them back but this does not feel like the first album back after a long break; it feels more like another album in a long string of them that's destined to end up lost among the rest. I enjoyed it while I listened to it and it's certainly professionally done, but none of these songs stuck in my brain, even if I thought that it might.

I found myself remembering moments rather than songs, especially intros, which are often strong points. Eventide has a quirky intro that's almost Victorian fantasy. One More Flag in the Ground is elevated by an opening vocalisation, presumably the "operatic ghost voice" of Kobra Paige, leader of Kobra and the Lotus and Karevik's fiancée. Opus of the Night (Ghost Requiem) also begins with atmosphere. Midsummer's Eve starts with Celtic folk, courtesy of Florian Janoske's violin, and an evocative soft section. Bloodmoon opens as folk too, a sort of eastern dance with a modern beat. Nightsky has synths and choral emphasis. The Looking Glass has electronica and melodious piano. And so on and so on.

It's not just the intros though. Cellist Tina Guo lends her talents to Opus of the Night and is better still on Midsummer's Eve. There are particularly strong melodies on One More Flag in the Ground and Nightsky. The Looking Glass gets neatly prowling in some sections. There are a couple of songs where the usually clean vocals get harsh, My Pantheon (Forevermore) adding in a fast section too that I absolutely loved. The other is New Babylon, featuring a couple of major guests lending their vocal talents: Melissa Bonny of Ad Infinitum and Simone Simons of Epica, a major band whose very name was borrowed from the title of a Kamelot album.

The problem is that these great moments don't necessarily make great songs. I'm on my seventh or eighth time through The Awakening in search of something that will make it stick but very little has. Of the traditional melodic power metal songs, I'd call out Nightsky, because its hooks seem to be much more likely to stick. It's not remotely original and neither is The Looking Glass, but they're both done very well indeed and ought to stand alone outside the context of the album, played in a radio show set or as discoveries on YouTube.

The only song I'd truly call a highlight though is New Babylon. It's has another of the strong intros that are everywhere here, a gloriously bombastic choral approach. It drops into electronica, with two of the three voices in play, and then builds, back to the bombast but with lead vocals soaring over it and eventually a harsh section. It has more emphasis than every other song put together, perhaps even counting the harsh fast section in My Pantheon. The guitar solos are a cut above the rest of the album too. Kamelot have released three singles thus far off The Awakening and this is not one of them. That probably explains as much as the rest of this review.

All told, it's not a bad album. It's just not a particularly good album either. I don't regret listening to it. I may regret listening to it so much trying to find something that clearly isn't there. However, it remained entertaining even after that many listens. It's certainly not a waste of your time, but it's mostly just there, providing a pleasant backdrop to your day, and Kamelot albums ought to be a lot more than that.

Tryo - Iodine Clock Reaction (2023)

Country: Czechia
Style: Alternative
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 30 Mar 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website

I haven't heard Sustainable Gardening, the 2021 debut from Czech band Tryo, but their Bandcamp page suggests that it was an indie/art rock album. Two years later, they've moved to what they're calling "darker and rawer music" on their follow-up and it's certainly an interesting sound because it's a hybrid of completely different eras of music.

The earliest is a pastoral folk sound that's very sixties. It's there mostly on the second side, in the quiet parts of Haze, early in Unity and especially on Home. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a couple of sections on Haze are pure krautrock, right out of the early seventies. The core sound is a clear derivative of the mid eighties, when post-punk and new wave were at their most interesting, and the early vocals of Šimon Podrazil are right out of eighties alternate rock, because they're so clean in delivery. However, everything's phrased as soundscapes, owing much to the post-rock and shoegaze genres of the nineties and noughties, but with vocals delivered over the top.

Given how confusing that sounds, I should emphasise that it all merges together rather well and it opens up with the most conventional of the six songs on offer, Droplets. This one was writen in 2015 when Tryo seem to have been a more conventional band, but it's been massively changed, mostly a new song built on the bones of the old one. Karabach is edgier, but more commercial too somehow and it reminded me of the way that Paradise Lost got retro-new wave, merely slower and subdued, so that it's clear to us that, unlike them, Tryo were never a metal band who calmed down.

Tree is a decent song but it's a little lost in between the commercial edge of Karabach and the wild experiments of Haze. It works well as a transition between the two but it works in isolation as well, finding a delightful groove early and milking it for over seven minutes. That doesn't stop it being a little overshadowed though, because Haze quickly takes over, not just grabbing our attention but chaining it to a bed and having its wicked way with it.

Haze is where the "darker and rawer music" really comes into play, because it's a tasty exercise in contrasts. It's softer initially with some of that sixties folky psychedelia but, when it ramps up, it's not holding back. It does that twice, the first time feeling rather like a nightmare descending upon a soft, dreamy soundscape, not unlike a late escalation in Tree but more. That nightmare passes, but it returns and the wheels come off, with Hynek Čejka soloing on drums and Podrazil's guitar a seriously abrasive weapon. Only Čejková's bass keeps us grounded as we move through it to come out the other side intact but changed.

What's telling is that it's hard to pick highlights here. Droplets is the most conventional. Karabach is the most commercial. Haze is the most experimental. Home is the most pastoral. Those are easy adjectives to assign, but it's not so easy to pick the best or even my favourite. I like Karabach a lot, but I recognise some of those chord changes so it has an unfair advantage. Haze is the most overt song here, enough so that it climbs out of the middle of the album to slap us across the cheeks and cry, "Me! Me! Me!"

At the end of the day, I might have to consciously ignore its attentions and call out the subtle songs with their impeccable grooves, wich to me means Tree and Home. It's not an easy call, but that's a good thing. It felt like the album had depths from the very beginning, on those more immediately accessible tracks, but it takes a few listens to truly grasp how much it's doing and to appreciate its subtleties. I'd never have called out Tree and Home on my first listen, but they grew on every fresh listen until they staked a serious claim to being what the album's about.

Here's where I'd normally say that Tryo are a fascinating band who are new to me, so I should look back at their earlier material. The first half of that holds true, but I don't think I do want to check out Sustainable Gardening at this point, because I don't want to suddenly find them conventional. They're not here and that's why I like this so much. I think I'll sit back and wait for the next one.

Holy Moses - Invisible Queen (2023)

Country: Germany
Style: Speed/Thrash Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 10 Apr 2023
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I was a little surprised when I saw a new Holy Moses album being released in 2023, but I was also a very happy chappy indeed, because I loved what these guys were doing in the late eighties and I'd no idea at all that they were still around. It turns out that they continued until 1994, perhaps due to the changes wrought by grunge in the States not being quite so emphatic in Europe, and stayed gone until the new millennium, reforming in 2000 and adding five albums to the seven they put out during their original incarnation. However, this is their first in nine years, a long gap indeed for a generally prolific band.

Holy Moses play thrash metal in the Teutonic style, rooted in speed metal with rough but not harsh vocals. hardly surprising given that they're a German band from Aachen. I remember liking them a lot but I haven't heard them in decades and this reminds me just how unusual they were. For one, I remember them getting much more technical than many of their peers, with intricate guitarwork and instrumental passages that put them more in parity with Sieges Even and Mekong Delta than Destruction and Kreator. For another, they had a female vocalist, Sabina Classen, who's the one and only constant in the band throughout its lifetime.

Now, she wasn't alone, given that Doro was pioneering heavy female vocals with Warlock, but she was much rougher in delivery and became quite the pioneer, along with Ann Boleyn, Debbie Gunn and the late Dawn Crosby in the States. She's certainly one of the invisible queens of metal, from a time long before Angela Gossow shocked the world in 2000 when she took over as the lead vocalist of Arch Enemy, and she's sounding on the top of her game here. I ought to dive back into The New Machine of Liechtenstein after this review, with Finished with the Dogs as a tasty chaser. And then I should catch up with the far too many albums I haven't heard.

This sounds like Holy Moses from the outset, but a little more so in almost every regard. Classen is a little harsher than I remember, but not by much. Maybe she's just benefitting from 21st century production, given that the albums I loved are around thirty-five years old now and technology has moved on massively. The guitars, here played by Peter Geltat, seem more biting and more urgent, with possibly the same cause. Gerd Lücking keeps a little faster pace on drums, which is never bad in my book. I always like my thrash fast, even though Holy Moses manage midpace sections neatly as well.

The biggest difference between this and my possibly faulty memory is just how overt the basswork of Thomas Neitsch is. Like Geltat, he used to play for a thrash band from Berlin called Desilence, so may have brought him into the band, and they work together well. There are moments here where it sounds like he firmly believes that he's playing lead, which I'm never upset to hear a bass player do. The early gem is Cult of the Machine and he's all over that song like a rash, with a peach of an encore in Order Out of Chaos, before continuing in this vein throughout the album.

And, while I might prefer Cult of the Machine, Order Out of Chaos may be the defining song of the current state of Holy Moses. There are points where it feels like it's going to veer so wildly out of control that it's going to fail horribly any moment now, what with Neitsch soloing in one direction and Geltat in another, but it never does because these guys know exactly what they're doing and the result is something that had me throwing up my arms in admiration. It really is what it says on the label—order out of chaos—and that's the defining message of the album. Invisible Queen is a worthy and appropriate title, but Order Out of Chaos may have been better still.

There's a lot more to come, because the title track shows up next and that's only marks a third of the way through a dozen songs. What's more, there's an edition with a second disc that covers all the same ground but with guest vocalists. I haven't listened to it yet because I'm concentrating on the album proper, but I will because it features a teasing list of replacements for the one constant in the band, an interesting approach indeed.

The most obvious are fellow German thrash legends, Tom Angelripper and Andreas Geremia from Sodom and Tankard respectively, but Bobby Ellsworth of Overkill and Jens Kidman of Meshuggah get a track each too, and there's a string of modern female vocalists who owe plenty to Classen's blazing of the trail, like Marloes Voskuil of Izegrim (now Haliphron), Diva Satanica of Bloodhunter, Rægina of Dæmonesq and, most obviously, Dani Karrer of German thrash band Headshot.

Not everything is up to those openers and I'd say that the most obvious highlights all arrive early on the album, but nothing lets the side down and everything is enjoyable and refreshing, with so many other German thrash bands making firm departures from their sound lately. This sounds like Holy Moses throughout and it's agreeably uncompromising about that. Outcasts and Too Far Gone are the closest on the second side to matching the early highlights of the first. Like the Choose the Juice album before it, I think I have to go with an 8/10 here, because it's definitely closer to it than it is to a 7. And I think it's growing on me more with each listen. Welcome back, folks!

Choose the Juice - Meteoria (2023)

Country: Switzerland
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 10 Apr 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

I've been listening to this album a lot over the past couple of days while I work on book reviews and it's really got under my skin. It's psychedelic rock, for want of a single label when Choose the Juice work through at least half a dozen others—they call themselves a trippy alternative psych garage surf shoegaze tinnitus stoner space acid rock explosion, not unfairly either—but it's sublimely pure psychedelic rock because it feels organic, like a trip inside rather than outside. They're not taking me out to see the cosmos, they're drenching me in acid taking me inside my own brain.

It's patient stuff, featuring a notably high male voice that reminds me of the early seventies when certain singers favoured singing an octave or two higher than what everyone else might consider a norm. The singer is Mo Bernasconi and he also plays guitar here, as do two others, though both of them also have double duty: Andrea Kuster also plays harmonica, though I'm not sure if he does so much on this album—it's only overt on Acid Cowboy—and Andrea Künzle provides the synth work, which often dominantes the mood. And mood is everything here.

The Body Mind Split Orchestra may be the weakest offering for me, bizarrely for an opening track, until it unexpectedly but rather naturally trawls in folk music halfway and elevates itself. There are some very subtle harmonies here and I seem to hear more every time I listen. The guitar impresses late on as the song escalates and it's there right at the beginning of Photograph to set the tone, a sort of early Wishbone Ash delicacy but psyched up, as everything here is. This is a tasty song and I heard more early Ash on Sail too, an epic closer which has eight full minutes to build and knows just how to use them to their best advantage.

The Ballad of Cucumber Salad feels longer than everything else here, because it builds so well and from almost nothing, but it's actually the shortest at just over five minutes. It starts with a single soft drone and gradually layers on more and more until it's something completely different that's still a natural progression. Sail is the longest, albeit not by much, but it feels longer too. Much of it is exceedingly loose, but it reaches some wonderful intensity later, with a gem of a sustained note from Berlusconi.

Sail may be my favourite song here, but it faces tough competition indeed from Acid Cowboy, which isn't loose so much as it's carefree. It's constantly in motion and in an incessant straight line that's so typical of the deserts of the American southwest. The cowboy of the title, who's represented in musical form by Kuster's harmonica, sits back and enjoys the ride and doesn't appear to care much where it takes him. It's almost like the movement itself is the goal. Here's where elements such as surf and garage show up, not overtly but enough to remind me of the Shivas, a Portland surf rock band, who accompanied a different title character in Wade Chitwood's short film The Prospector.

That leaves the title track, which is may be the loosest piece of music here, appearing almost like a set of instruments playing in isolation but close enough to realise that they're utterly compatible with each other, including Bernasconi's vocalisations. Its organic bedrock reminded me of the Pink Floyd of the very early seventies, up to but including The Dark Side of the Moon, but thrown into more of a krautrock environment with maybe Hawkwind performing down the hall at the same time. Matheo Sabater is a jaunty accompanist here on drums and Nicolas Kölbener has more to do on bass as well.

Bernasconi's voice is there but it doesn't deliver lyrics and he was only a guitarist on Acid Cowboy, so that's a good chunk of the album that unfolds instrumentally and it doesn't seem remotely out of place. I think that's because, while he does sing on other tracks, I never really thought of him as a deliverer of lyrics, even though he sings in English in a very clear voice. I have no idea what any of these songs are about because I'm hearing that voice as an instrument and I'm enjoying it like the others, getting lost in the moods that Choose the Juice muster up.

This is an 8/10 for me, because the entire second side is comprised of highlights and I'm rather fond of Photograph as well, with its guitarwork hearkening back to Pilgrimage and Argus. It's music that I consciously listened to on every time through, because I was trying to figure out all its subtleties, but it works as a mood enhancer in the background too. I've been happier and more relaxed with it playing and that's never a bad thing.

Angel - Once Upon a Time (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 21 Apr 2023
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Wikipedia

I often say that everything driving Apocalypse Later is discovery. I love finding new bands to share with the world, which otherwise might not be able to find them, especially the way radio is here in the States. However, the last few years have highlighted to me that there are old bands long gone who are suddenly back and they count as discovery in two ways. For old fans like me, it's discovery of their return, a decade, two or even four since they last went into the studio. For new fans, who weren't around in their respective heydays, it's discovery ofwhy they were important and may still be important.

Angel are one of these, because they were a fantastic band in the seventies who had been unfairly relegated to a handful of footnotes in the history of rock 'n' roll: they had an ambigrammatic logo, meaning that it looks the same upside down as right way up; they were discovered by Kiss's Gene Simmons in a nightclub; and they deliberately wore all white at a time when rock bands, like Kiss, tended to dress entirely in black. The fact that they knocked out five albums, including a couple of classics, doesn't tend to be mentioned at all.

This is their second album back, which makes me happy because they'd got into a sort of cycle of a reformation and new album every twenty years. The last one was Risen in 2019 and it was solid, if too long. It was an impeccable classic at twenty minutes and would have been a peach at fifty, but settled for being decent at seventy-five. Maybe they realised that in hindsight because this runs a more manageable fifty-three and it's much better for not sprawling too far. It may not quite reach the pinnacles of that album but it's much more consistent throughout.

The heart of the band is Frank DiMino on lead vocals and Punky Meadows on guitar, both founder members. The others joined in 2018, so all played on Risen, and are still in place for this follow-up, because original bassist Mikie Jones passed in 2009, Barry Brandt presumably chose not to return for a third reunion after showing up for the previous two, and Gregg Giuffria probably has plenty of things to do with his time already, given that, beyond rock music in Angel, Giuffria and House of Lords, he became a businessman, running development companies, casinos and hotels.

The Torch and Black Moon Rising are a pair of excellent openers and, if you'd never heard of Angel in your life, you would absolutely assume from the former that DiMino sang in the seventies. They simply don't make those effortless hard rock voices any more and he doesn't seem to have lost his power. It boggles my mind that he ended up for a while singing in Las Vegas seventies rock tribute bands. I mean, his voice is absolutely perfect for that, but he deserves new material too and these are perfect for that. So's It's Alright, which is a smooth song to follow the funky Black Moon Rising and the rocking The Torch.

While The Torch may be the best song here, there are a few songs happy to challenge it. I found a few of them on the second side, songs like Turn the Record Over, rather ironically, and Rock Star, a song that loses out by featuring a riff more than a little reminiscent of Layla, but otherwise plays very well indeed. Following them, Without You isn't the ballad its title might suggest and it might be better than either of them, because, like It's Alright and others, it features some particularly energetic guitarwork from Meadows. He hasn't lost his magic either.

The most memorable song and another candidate for best is the title track, because it stands out immediately and consistently. It's a storytelling song that's not easily ignored and, more crucially, it works. It has a more elongated title than the album: Once Upon a Time an Angel and a Devil Fell in Love (And It Did Not End Well), a wonderfully catchy line that's only awkward as a song title. It's seamless in the song and the story, though I have no idea if it's truly based on the YA novel by Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone, or simply inspired by that line, which went viral. I'm guessing that the moaning of an angel in the second half isn't in a YA paranormal romance.

Also worth mentioning but for a different reason are the surprising pairing halfway through the album of Let It Rain and Psyclone. Let It Rain is the decent ballad of the two here, with the other, Blood of My Blood, Bone of My Bone, the only song I don't like here. Let It Rain plays pretty well as melodic rock but it's followed by the heaviest song anywhere on the album, which is not so much a heavy metal song as thinking seriously about it. It's easy to see that Y&T, who were formed rather surprisingly before Angel, saw them as a big influence, because this sounds like Y&T in their early-eighties heyday, right after Angel split up. DiMino and Dave Meniketti are even closer here than they usually are.

So, Angel are back and I'm happy. I can deal with a four year album release schedule. Bring on the next one! Call this a 7.5/10, though I'm still thinking about an 8. It's better than Risen but it doesn't soar as high.

Lumnia - Humanity Despair (2023)

Country: Brazil
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 Mar 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | YouTube

I've been fascinated by what's coming out of South America lately and symphonic metal seems to be one of their genres of choice, with this debut album from Rio de Janeiro-based Lumnia another good example of how they're merging and shifting genres down there to create new hybrids.

Fundamentally, this is symphonic metal, but the metal behind it is a fascinating mix of old school, like the doom riffs on Breathing Space, and new school, like the more modern flavour evident on Embrace Darkness. There's a clear gothic metal influence too, right from the outset on Breathing Space, but it's in the general approach rather than any specific element, even if there's violin and piano here and there and the band employ the use of beauty and the beast vocal contrasts.

The lead vocalist here is Odete Salgado, who mostly sings clean soprano, though she does dip down to a much deeper voice on Madness Interude and, if my ears aren't misleading me, even tackles a harsh style very briefly. Someone provides what sounds to me like a male harsh voice, but nobody is credited in that backing singer role. As male as it sounds, there are points where I wondered if it could also be Salgado, who demonstrates quite the range here, from soaring soprano to whispered texture and many points in between, including a much more nasal witchy tone that she puts on at points for a very specific effect.

Now, I don't believe she is doing the harsh voice, and it's clear in the video for Queen of Night that it's not her, but the thought persists. I think it's because she has an occasional habit of mirroring the male vocal but behind, so that she shows from the sides like a halo of light around an eclipse. It's not every time, but it's there on more than one song and it provides a little touch of class that resonates with further listens. I was a little jarred on my first listen by elements I didn't expect, so it took a few songs for me to get what Lumnia were doing. Once on board, this is worthy and varied.

Breathing Space is a good opener because it sets the stage for what's to come. Hugo Carvalho and Marcel Gil generate a very tasty churning riff to open up and then Salgado soars in. As soon as she arrives though, the male voice shows up behind her, as a dark echo. She's left alone to sing solo on most of the album, but the backing vocal is prominent on Breathing Space and it's interesting for being almost negative space, like a black hole swallowing the fabric of reality. It isn't quite trying to be a portfolio song, a band sampler in five minutes, but it almost works that way.

Humanity Despair is a more focused song and it's a good one. There's a nice use of bells during one transition and Salgado's nasal approach shows up here. Broken Glass adds some pace and I do like this band a little faster than their typical tempo. It does slow down again, later on, of course, and churns gloriously while Salgado returns to her nasal witch voice. These are all good songs and they help flesh out what Breathing Space suggested might be coming. With Madness Interlude adding different vocal textures, it's clear that the band thought carefully about how to order the songs.

As the album runs on, those songs only get more interesting though and I started to take the high level sweep of the band as a given while focusing on little details. There's a violin on Bitter Earth, adding texture behind an acoustic guitar. Pedro Mello gets a spotlight moment as Queen of Night kicks off to showcase his bass. There are unusual rhythms on Embrace Darkness, so giving Matheus Moura plenty of attention. Many of these are at the beginning and/or end of songs, but some are midway, like the neat guitarwork in the midsection of Bitter Earth, extending into the second half.

My favourite song for both intro and outro has to be Violet. The former is elegant, with piano and acoustic guitar setting the scene and Salgado's clear voice joining them. The crunch arrives soon enough, after only thirty seconds or so, and we're into the song proper. The ending is even quicker, with Salgado reaching a crescendo above the general build of the song and the male harsh voice showing up for a moment of neat contrast, only for both to drop away entirely to a minimal piano that sounds like drops of water. It's very tasty. The song in between isn't bad either.

The song I'd have expected to be my least favourite is Constellations, because it's clearly a ballad, but I had no problems with it. It starts off like, with angels singing far above Salgado, and it keeps on like a ballad too, with the male backing voice going clean for a change, almost a folk grounding behind Salgado's vocalisations. The melodies are strong and it moves along pleasantly enough. It does heavy up a little, a couple of minutes in, but it drops back down out of that soon enough, with little interest in doing anything that's been done elsewhere.

I haven't heard a killer symphonic metal album from South America yet, but I'm increasingly sure that there's one out there that I haven't found yet. In the meantime, this is another worthy entry to the genre from Brazil.