Lucifer's Friend - Black Moon (2019)

Country: Germany
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 Apr 2019
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I've introduced myself to all sorts of bands this year at Apocalypse Later but most of them are reasonably new, either putting out their first album or consolidating on what they've done during the last decade while I've been getting more and more out of touch. What's really surprising me is bands of serious heritage that I've somehow completely missed out on, especially this one because the lead vocalist comes from the same town I grew up in.

They're Lucifer's Friend, a versatile hard rock band from Hamburg, Germany, though vocalist John Lawton is from Halifax in Yorkshire. I think I've only heard the name Lucifer's Friend in conjunction with their debut album from 1970, which has been mentioned in doom circles as a very early heavy metal release. I don't think I realised they got past that, but they did with no less than eight studio albums before they split in 1982.

They came back briefly in 1994 to record an album as Lucifer's Friend II, but reformed fully in 2014. This is their second album in recent years and I'm rather fond of it, even though it's all over the genre. Reading up on them, that's not too surprising because those albums include psych, prog rock, hard rock, jazz fusion, NWOBHM, heavy metal, whatever seemed like a good idea at the time.

The title track is good stuff, a seventies Deep Purple-esque song with an interesting use of saxophone, but it was Passengers that really made me pay attention. It's a very powerful piece, heavy on the organ like a Uriah Heep song from the early seventies, but with vocals more akin to Dave Hill from Demon. I realise that Lawton sang with Heep for a number of albums; he's an interesting man, it seems, singing gospel for the Les Humphries Singers and even presenting travel documentaries for Bulgarian television.

He's very strong here, especially on Passengers, but he's far from the only highlight. These songs grow and kick far more ass than they ought to, given that many of these band members are in their seventies. The double whammy of Palace of Fools and Call the Captain highlights Jogi Wichmann's keyboards, because these felt more like catchy eighties songs on an album that's most sourced from the sounds of the seventies. Call the Captain has that driving catchiness we know from Golden Earring where everything seems really simple until we realise just how much is going on in the song.

Lucifer's Friend really don't seem to want to stay in one style for long. I have to say that there's nothing here as Wagnerian as the album cover, but there's funk on Behind the Smile, blues on Little Man and bass-heavy AOR on Taking It to the Edge. There's good old fashioned guitar rock all over the place, but especially on Freedom, which showcases Peter Hesslein's guitar.

I have to say that, while everything here is sourced from the past, not one of these songs doesn't sound pretty damn good in 2019. The production is excellent and this would be a great follow-up after Living the Dream, last year's unexpectedly fantastic Uriah Heep album. Reading up on the band, it seems like they've had trouble defining what style they play, so it may be that this works so well because they gave up trying and just played all of them on the same album.

Whatever the reason, this is highly recommended. It's a solid 7 from me and I'm seriously considering upping that to another 8. This month just doesn't want to quit!

Amon Amarth - Berserker (2019)

Country: Sweden
Style: Melodic Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 May 2019
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Amon Amarth have been a force to be reckoned with pretty much since they got together way back in 1992 and especially since their Twilight of the Thunder God album broke them globally in 2008. This eleventh album demonstrates what they do well across a dozen tracks and ably highlights why they're support on Slayer's farewell tour right now. Many people are calling it their best work in years.

So why is it leaving me mostly dry? Well, I'm not entirely sure.

Certainly some of it is that the majority of the album feels comfortable and safe and that's not something I expect from my death metal. Even a melodic death metal album is supposed to have some level of evil to it, something that's abrasive and heavy and in your face. Raven's Flight does that here and I can absolutely see the pit exploding a couple of minutes in. There's also a heavy section in Mjolner, Hammer of Thor that meets that need.

But the rest feels far too comfortable. I listened to the new Possessed EP earlier today and it feels evil and passionate and energetic. By comparison, Johan Hegg's voice is getting warm and cuddly, as if he's singing songs like Shield Wall to his grandchildren around a log fire. There's an emphasis beat in Skoll and Hati that ought to be calamitous but it's underwhelming. Maybe that's a production issue but I doubt it because this sounds smooth and well mixed throughout.

In fact, maybe that smoothness is the problem because it highlights just how effortless this is becoming for Amon Amarth. They're so good at what they do that even the more intricate sections are seamless, to the degree that the band members appear to be hardly even trying. Songs like The Berserker at Stamford Bridge or Wings of Eagles are Amon Amarth telling stories by the numbers. I won't call this material easy to play but they make it seem like it's as easy as the alphabet song.

Now, I really shouldn't complain if any musician is just so damn good that he can play fast songs like Skoll and Hati or Wings of Eagles without even breaking a sweat, but I feel as if folk that good should keep challenging themselves. One reason why Metallica's ...And Justice for All was so great is because the band really weren't that good; they simply gave it their all and played their socks off, which elevated their skills to another level.

Fafner's Gold is a fantastic start to the album, because it's a varied and intricate piece, with highs and lows and all sorts of interesting moments. The problem is that it suggests that the rest of the album will follow suit and it just doesn't. Valkyria comes close, with a glorious breakdown using bass and drum that should never seem that effortless, and Into the Dark gets interesting at points. The rest of the songs are more like When Once Again We Can Set Our Sails, which just finds a pace and follows it for four and a half minutes until the next song kicks on and that's about it.

I feel like I'm being emphatically negative here and I really don't aim to be. This isn't a bad album and there are plenty of highlights. It's going to sell well and help bolster Amon Amarth's reputation as a major force in the modern metal landscape. But it's bouncy and comfortable and accessible and easy to listen to and death metal should never be that way.

Maybe it's time for Johan Hegg to finally bite the bullet and own up to his band playing Viking metal rather than melodic death. This would go down far better with a big drinking horn full of mead in an oaken hall with brothers and sisters in metal around vast benches. Perhaps that's all that's bugging me. It's just that I haven't felt that way about an Amon Amarth album until this one.

Asomvel - World Shaker (2019)

Country: UK
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 May 2019
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Now that every member of the classic Motörhead line up is jamming somewhere on the other side of the veil, it's especially good to see a third Asomvel album because it's as close as we're ever going to get to new Motörhead.

I honestly thought about not mentioning Motörhead in this review because Asomvel are surely fed up of the comparison by now and anyone who's heard them have no chance of not noticing for themselves, especially when lyrics are based on quotes by Lemmy, like the "if it's too loud, you're too old" basis for Railroaded.

I decided to keep it in because they aren't just clones and they fill that gap in many ways. Sure, they sound a lot like Motörhead, but the comparison goes a lot deeper than that.

For one, the first thing that leapt out after a few moments of the opening title track is how high Ralph's bass is in the mix. It's unusual in today's production climate but it sounds great and there are some fantastic moments, like towards the end of Smokescreen, where that bass weaves in and out of the guitar of Lenny Robinson to great effect. I do miss power trios where the bassist plays like his instrument is a lead.

For another, they write songs about generic topics but bring them character nonetheless. Most genres of metal have their go to subjects that never stay far away from lyrics but Asomvel couldn't give a monkey's. Lemmy wrote about whatever came to his Jack Daniels addled mind and that led to songs as vague but as universal as anything in rock music. Asomvel nail that tradition with songs like True Believer and Smokescreen, which may well be the, erm, truest Motörhead songs not written or recorded by Motörhead.

For three, they play with passion and energy like there just isn't anything better to do in life than play rock 'n' roll. I don't think there's another band on the planet right now who sound like they don't do anything else at all. They sound like they live and breathe this stuff and they'll carry on living and breathing it until the end.

And, for four, they're so damn reliable. The best thing about this album is that there isn't a duff track anywhere to be found on it. I've listened in entirety three times now and not one of these songs is getting old. Sure, I keep hearing bits of old Asomvel tracks here but they become new ones. Was that Full Moon Dog in Reap the Whirlwind? Frankly, I don't care. It's a new song, however reminiscent it is.

It's worth saying that none of these tracks stand out from the crowd the way that early classics like Kamikaze or Full Moon Dog do, but I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. It means that there's no obvious single but I think any of these songs could be a single. It also means that, when we come back to this, it's not going to be to listen to this song or that one, it's going to be to listen to the whole frickin' album.

I honestly can't remember the last time I heard another album on which my favourite track is always the one I'm listening to at any moment in time, only to promptly become the next one as soon as it's done. Perhaps, if you really twisted my arm, I'd plump for Payback's a Bitch but I might give you a different answer in ten minutes time.

Lemmy, Philthy and Fast Eddie are dead. Long live Asomvel!

Forgotten - Of Past and Passion (2019)

Country: Turkey
Style: Doom/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 Apr 2019
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After finding a speed or thrash album that just cleans me out spiritually and emotionally, I like to settle down with some good doom/death, not least because it feels even slower in comparison. After the blitzkrieg of Seax, I found that Forgotten really did the trick, this Turkish band finding a neat vibe over five songs of wildly inconsistent length, as introspective as its evocative cover art.

Apparently, they've been around since 1995, founded in Ankara by guitarist Tolga Otabatmaz. However, they broke up for nine years after only recording a couple of demos. Eventually, they got back together and put out an album, 13 Martyrs, in 2012. I'll be seeking that out, having thoroughly enjoyed a chillout to this long overdue follow-up.

Forgotten have three modes and the opening title track, almost nine minutes of it, demonstrates them all wonderfully.

Firstly, there's a quiet one featuring sparse guitars, patient drums and storytelling vocals. I say guitars (plural) because there are two of them. In isolation, I might suggest that Reha Kuldaşlı and Tolga Otabatmaz are just noodling, but their noodlings weave together very well so clearly they have a very good plan. I'm not sure how people can look inward together but it works for them.

Then there's a noisier mode, in which Serdar Güzelişler's drums get a good deal more emphatic, those guitars ramp up a few notches in power and Harun Altun's vocals follow suit, though not quite so much as we might expect. He has little intention of screaming or shouting at this point, but he does intensify his delivery.

Finally, there's full on doom/death, in which everyone ramps up the power and we feel the chug and the Paradise Lost guitars. Rather strangely, given that Altun introduces this section of the title track with a death grunt, he doesn't contribute much and lets the band behind him deliver the heaviness instead.

After a nearly nine minute track, we get a six minute one, Blue Rain, that does a similar job on a much less epic scale, and then one that runs less than three minutes, because it's an interlude, mostly on piano with some added atmosphere. I'm not sure how viable an interlude is on an album that only just exceeds half an hour, but I like Remnants of a Faint Memory.

Maybe it's there to settle us down for the longest track on offer, eleven minutes plus of The Serpent Once You Were, which to me is a real highlight. A heartbeat leads us in to an agreeable crunch and we're back in the early nineties with My Dying Bride. Altun is at his most evocative here and those twin guitars are achingly slow and full of melancholy melody. I appreciated how the bass let them set the mood and then joined in to deepen it.

While the title track has its peaks and troughs, as Forgotten switch from quiet to noisier mode and back again, before eventually launching into full on doom/death, The Serpent Once You Were starts higher and dips lower for a more emotional journey. It ends in whispers, which works really well for me as the backing music fades away. I have to say that this could easily have crossed the line into pretentious territory, especially with the flatlining heart beat to emphasise it, but it doesn't. It does its job well.

And, with the four minute instrumental called Lethargic to ironically spark things back up as the album wraps, we look back on a doom/death album that's dominated by its twin quiet guitars rather than its vocals or orchestration. Frankly, it's exactly what I was looking for today after the heady rush of Seax, but it's unusual enough to remark on. This is a very folky doom/death album, just as slow as you'd expect but in a quieter and more instrumental fashion. That's cool.

Seax - Fallout Rituals (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Speed Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 5 Apr 2019
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While I've happily been listening to a whole slew of recent thrash albums, many of which I've really enjoyed, it's been notable that thrash generally doesn't seem to be quite as fast as it used to be. I've been aching for an old school speed metal band that just slays the way their predecessors did back in the mid eighties and I haven't found one yet.

Well, now I have. After a brief intro, Rituals showed that Seax immediately were as close as I've come. Then Killed by Speed came on and I was grinning like a maniac. And then Bring Down the Beast made it a surety. This is what I've been waiting for and, while there may not be a better song anywhere to be found on this album, Seax continue to kick ass all the way to the very last track, the appropriately titled Born to Live Fast.

Now, as you may have noticed already, originality isn't particularly high on Seax's priority list, even though this is their fourth full length album. We get to Born to Live Fast via Interceptor, Winds of Atomic Death and Legions Arise, songs I'm sure I've seen on Razor albums of a few decades ago. Or were they Exciter albums? Maybe Living Death albums. I know all these titles have to have been used by other bands multiple times.

I'm pretty sure they weren't Agent Steel albums, a name that leapt quickly to mind after hearing Carmine Blades's voice for the first time. He's not quite as distinctive as the late John Cyriis but he does have fun trying to hit the same high notes and he really ought to stand out in 2019. Given how everyone seems to include some degree of death growls in their vocals, I'm really happy to hear someone who doesn't give a monkey's and will sear the sky with high pitched clean vocals that don't sound like Rob Halford.

Regardless of originality, Seax knows precisely how to blister and they do it throughout this album. Slow parts are for wimps! This starts out in high gear and spends forty minutes trying to figure out what's above that. They may well have a super-high gear because, every time I think they've reached maximum speed, they give it a little more gas and, sure enough, they have a little more ready in reserve. This one really does frickin' go to eleven.

As long as you can discount that lack of originality, there isn't a single duff track on this album. What's more, while every one of them is played at ludicrous speed, the tracks do delineate themselves through quality riffs, time changes and vocal melodies. Winds of Atomic Death isn't Legions Arise and neither of them are Feed the Reaper.

I think what impressed me most wasn't just that they play speed the way it was always intended to be played, but they clearly know their stuff. There may be a lot of Agent Steel here, but that's far from all. I heard a lot of German bands here too, especially early Destruction but Iron Angel too. I'm unsure as to how old the band members are, though Seax have been around for a decade and everyone in it has played in multiple other bands. If they weren't around in the mid eighties, they must have admirable record collections.

I'm seeing conflicting information as to who's actually in the band at the moment, but it looks like Hel and Razzle are behind the twin guitar assault that dominates this album while Derek Jay tries to keep up on drums. They do test him something rotten but he comes through apparently unscathed. This is definitely not 1984 Sodom; he keeps up! With Carmine Blades on vocals, that leaves the bass player to identify and that may or may not be Mike Bones. Whoever it is, he's audible because this album has a decent mix. It's great to hear a bassist's fingers dance all over the fretboard on Born to Live Fast.

This week has brought some blistering bands to my attention. Obscura Qalma got an 8/10 yesterday. I think Seax deserve the same because this is easily the best speed metal album I've heard in a long time. And I'm still in two minds about upping Cocaine Wolves to an 8 too, though I haven't done it yet. Those three bands are completely different in style and influence, but they all kick ass and take names and I'd love to see every one of them on stage. And I still have a Friday to go...

Eugenic Death - Under the Knife (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 15 Mar 2019
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I'm always happy to find a new quality thrash band and I'm especially happy to find one through a work colleague featuring in its line-up. We live in an interesting world.

Eugenic Death, who hail from Greensboro, NC, have been around since 2010 and their debut, Crimes Against Humanity, came out back in 2012. However, they apparently lost a couple of band members and never managed to replace them, which meant that this follow-up, begun in 2014, took another five years to see the light of day. Guitarist Jonathan McCanless performed double duty on bass and Geoff La Penta guested on drums.

Their press release suggests that their influences are all American, listing Violence and Demolition Hammer in addition to the obligatory Slayer, Exodus and Testament. I can certainly hear Testament and Exodus here and plenty of Demolition Hammer too (talk about an underrated band), but they sound more like a more clinical Forbidden to me. The point is that they're old school, even with a clearly modern production.

They're very much on the technical end of thrash with the first couple of tracks led by some precision drumming from La Penta, betraying his roots in a technical death metal band, Cynonyte, and reminding me of the clean drums of Matthias Kassner on the new Exumer album, unlike what that band had back in the day. These are faster songs but the band spends quite a lot of this album at mid-pace.

The third track, The Devil's Tower, is one of those mid-pace songs and it's long too, running over six and a half minutes, a length with which Eugenic Death seem very comfortable. It builds very well indeed and highlights that the band really don't need to stay at a blistering speed to get their point across. As much as I cherish a neck breaker of a song, I'd suggest this is what the band do best and I hope they move towards longer tracks whenever a third album starts to get developed.

They speed up again for Aghori Sadhus but I feel the need to prepare you for this one. It's only a five minute track, a good one but an oddly routine one for a track whose intro is almost as long and which gets its own number on the album. That intro is Hara Shiva and it combines the Indian female voice of Lavanya Narayanan with mridangam playing from Ajay Ravichandran which had me looking up just what a mridangam is (it's a double ended drum played with two hands). If I'm hearing correctly, only Jonathan McCanless joins them on this track.

Clearly the whole point is to have these ethnic Indian sounds put us in the right mood for Aghori Sadhus, which explores the wild and wacky world of a particular group of Hindu ascetics who seem to be obsessed by death, living in charnel grounds, smearing the ashes of cremated bodies on their own and drinking from human skulls, not to forget sitting on corpses to meditate to the new moon. I can't think of better subject matter for a death metal band and I have to wonder if the vocals of Keith Davis moved subconsciously more into growling territory because of that.

He does a capable job here, providing clean and intelligible vocals with a rasp that hints towards death growls but never quite gets there, even on a song like Aghori Sadhus about death. My problem with his voice, while it fits the need at hand with the appropriate confidence and strength, is that it isn't particularly remarkable and so fails to stand out from a growing crowd of modern day thrash singers. It's fair to say that I found myself a lot more focused on the interplay between McCanless's guitar and La Penta's drums, the bass being almost lost in the texture.

Arguably, the album does the same job as Davis. It's worthy and enjoyable but fails to stand out from the crowd. It ends well, with a fast paced title track slowing down to nothing like a vinyl record whose power has been cut, but that serves to highlight with irony that the track most worthy of conversation is Hara Shiva, the one on which the band don't appear. The best, of course, is The Devil's Tower.

I like that Eugenic Death are unashamedly old school and good at it, but I hope that when they hit the studio again for a third album, they aim to add a little more of their own identity.

Obscura Qalma - From the Sheol to the Apeiron (2019)

Country: Italy
Style: Blackened Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 5 Apr 2019
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I've been exploring less extreme territory over the last few days, so I felt like a dip into something more blistering today. Obscura Qalma, a blackened death metal outfit from Venice (in Italy, not California) seemed to fit the bill and this four track EP does its thing very well without outstaying its welcome. That gorgeous cover doesn't hurt either!

The band describe themselves as "blackened heavily orchestrated death metal" in the vein of Behemoth and Septic Flesh. They have the variety and talent needed to get away with that comparison too, though the mix does elevate the admirable assault of Res on drums above everything else. He's a bludgeoning drummer at heart, even if he's more than able to match the lead guitar with speed. I love how he ends Roots of Evil and I love how he doesn't just hit one drum hard to drive his beat, he hits about a dozen as if he has arms to spare. I'd bet his spirit animal is an octopus.

Below those dominating drums, there's an enticing noise going on. The voice of Sirius is a relatively clean death growl and he battles to be heard over choral sections that swell up behind him, especially on more overtly orchestral numbers like Apokalepse. There are two guitarists here and they're vicious in their approach, often reminding of power tools slicing through anything in play at any particular time.

None of these songs run long, Misanthropic Perception almost reaching five and a half minutes and nothing else coming close, so the EP feels short at almost eighteen minutes. However, there's a lot going on as it gets there and the mix makes it particularly immersive. We strain to catch everything and find that it won't leave us alone.

That goes double for tracks such as Haze of Reason, which refuse to set a pace. Every time we believe we know what speed they're going to be working at, they change it on us. It's fast and it's slow. It's mid-paced and it's ambient. It's everywhere at once and I couldn't get enough of it. It often feels like everyone in the band is playing a different song but they oddly combine into something very tasty. Or maybe they're all playing a few songs but they're being broadcast on close frequencies and we tune in and out of them at will.

I dug this from the beginning, Misanthropic Perception being an immediate highlight, but nothing comes close to Haze of Reason here. At points it's almost industrial, with those bludgeoning drums creating a wild rhythm and what sound like valves expelling steam. Then it goes ambient. Then it leaps back into galloping speed. Then it calms. Then it blisters. Then the choir joins in. I've listened to this track half a dozen times and I'm still not fathoming quite what it does. I just know that I love it.

And that, to a lesser degree, describes this EP. Sure, Obscura Qalma have a fondness for Behemoth but I haven't heard anything quite like this before and I see that as a good thing. Sheol is the Hebrew underworld and "apeiron" is a Greek word meaning "infinite" or "unlimited". That means that this EP is very well titled indeed. Now let's have a full album!

Cocaine Wolves - Second Scorching (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock/Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 22 Feb 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website | Twitter

This appropriately titled second album for Indianopolis rockers, the Cocaine Wolves, came out back in February but I've only just noticed it and I'm very happy that I did because they're both good at what they do and very happy to do what they do, regardless of whether it's trendy or not.

So, what do they do? Fortunately their Bandcamp page is pretty accurate, as these descriptions go. "The Cocaine Wolves exist at the intersection of punk rock, heavy metal, and riff rock." "Put Thin Lizzy, Judas Priest, and The Dictators in a blender and call the Muncie Department of Sanitation out to clean up the aftermath." Yeah, I can dig that.

And, for once, I agree with it. The opening track, You Been Had, kicks off like an old school Iron Maiden song (there's so much of The Trooper in it that I was singing along with different lyrics for a while) but it ends up as a punk singalong. The drums are more punk while the guitars are often a lot more metal.

This carries on throughout the album, with some songs more punk and others more metal and many of them moving from one to the other and sometimes back again. Banned in Muncie may not be as punk as the Bad Brains' Banned in DC but it's still clearly punk. PK Ripper is punk pop until it transforms into a metal song in the middle. The chorus of Good Times Only sees the band's vocalist chant along in punk style over a very metal guitar.

Now, many of you are thinking, "Hang on a minute! What sort of punk? What sort of metal?" Well, the Cocaine Wolves are rather versatile there too.

Their punk side is generally on the happier side, so punk pop rather than, say, extreme stuff like crust or grindcore. It's bouncy and upbeat music, full of rough melodies and 'woah woah' chants, but it's much more fun and much less ruthlessly commercial than anything on a Green Day album. Saint Aigner isn't a misspelled Metallica cover, it's a punk story song with an intro that could have been on a seventies Kiss album.

Their metal side is rooted in the late seventies and early eighties, very much in the NWOBHM vein. Comin' in Hot is like something Raven could have put out. 2017 (A Treatise of Human Nature) has a Tank feel to it with some blistering guitarwork to ramp up its running time (at almost seven minutes, it's two and a half minutes longer than anything else on the album).

However, they're clearly not interested in restricting themselves to those influences, adding in whatever else seems to fit the need at hand. Case in point: the title track ratches up the pace until it's close to being an old school speed metal song but with punk time changes and the inevitable "one, two, three, four" intro. I dug this one a lot. "Look out below!" indeed. I would dive to this!

While Second Scorching clearly isn't aimed at being anything groundbreaking ("We play for good times only," they sing on, well, Good Times Only), it's done very well and with absolutely no shame about the way it wanders back and forth between punk and metal. It walks that line really well too, with neither side being so overt that it would alienate the other.

Given that the Cocaine Wolves's first scorching was an album called Royal Feast back in April of 2010, I wonder why it took them this long to return to the studio but I'm happy they did. Now I need to track down that first album. And I'd love to see these guys play in a small club. When are you touring, folks?