King Baal - Conjurements (2021)

Country: Portugal
Style: Symphonic Doom Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 29 Jan 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

I like this album and, after having heard a couple of songs, was always going to review it, as I love the mixture of genres it employs and want to share it as widely as possible. The core of King Baal's sound is doom metal, though there are points where they speed up a lot further than I'd expect for doom. It adds symphonic elements, most obviously through the operatic vocals of Joana Carvalho, but doesn't really end up in gothic territory, even with Carvalho's clean female soprano serving as a neat contrast to Narciso Monteiro's harsh growl in a classic beauty and the beast setup.

That lack of gothic texture, even with spoken word portions over choral backing, led me away from all the expected comparisons in gothic metal and towards Nova Mala Strana, a nineties prog rock outfit whose style was so dramatic and whose lead vocalist was so overtly operatic that the prog faded in my mind until it felt like I was listening to opera. As a metal band, King Baal are a lot heavier than Nova Mala Strana, but I ended up in the same place. This feels like opera to me, the music there to support a narrative that's delivered by Carvalho and, to a lesser degree, Monteiro.

This feeling also led me to wonder if this is a concept album. I see that it was inspired by the writings of King Solomon and features plenty of Satanic sections, in both English and Latin, but I wasn't able to follow the lyrics deeply enough to get an overall structure out of it. Some songs feel like they're part of a broader narrative, like the excellent The Grand Judgement, while others don't seem to move a story forward, like Let's Murder Together, which is something of a love song, even with that title. However, it's still telling a story and I felt that I should have been listening while looking at that story acted out on stage.

I wonder how the flaws I'm seeing would become more or less important in that sort of environment. I wanted a thicker sound out of this mix, for instance, but that's in the context of being a metal album. On stage, with broader orchestration, it might work better. Also, while I enjoyed Carvalho's vocals, I'd have liked more sections, like in Touched by the Kiss of Lucifer, where she duets with Monteiro, if the story allows for it. Also, if she's going to stay in her high register, adding a second female voice, like a contralto, would enrichen this sound too, again if the story allowed for such a character. After all, if it wants to be dramatic, then let's go all out.

One flaw that wouldn't vanish is that the band chose to sing in English, which may be a good decision to appeal to a broader market. However, Monteiro has a strong accent when he speaks and Carvalho's is fluent and clear but still a little deliberate, so there were definitely points here where I wondered if it would have been smoother in Portuguese. But enough with the flaws! I liked this album, more than it probably sounds like I did.

While the vocals dominate, I adored the variety in the music behind them too. The dramatic approach led to a strong use of dynamics and this moves seamlessly from almost mediaeval sections, like choral parts and the harp that introduces Fragments, all the way up through doom to heavy metal and even what's close to death metal on songs like Geradiel. I'd love to hear more, but this is King Baal's debut album and I guess this has to do for now. It's unusual, it's enticing and it's fascinating.

Foo Fighters - Medicine at Midnight (2021)

Country: USA
Style: Alternative Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 Feb 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I've never been a big fan of the Foo Fighters, though this may well have converted me. I am, however, a big fan of their main man Dave Grohl, not just from what he did with Nirvana but with a variety of solo projects, such as Probot, and guest appearances, which are all over YouTube. He seems like he's a genuinely nice guy and someone who refuses to be pigeonholed because he appreciates a wide range of music and wants to explore it himself.

This is certainly a lot more poppy than I expected from the Foo Fighters. Grohl has compared it to a David Bowie album, Let's Dance, which is fair but limiting. There's plenty of David Bowie here, on the single Shame Shame and later songs like Chasing Birds and the title track, but it's not just Let's Dance. Shame Shame, for instance, sounds like Bowie covering Michael Jackson, which is an unusual sound I like a lot more than anything Jackson actually did.

It's infuriatingly catchy from moment one, with Making a Fire. This is power pop, a punky riff leading into Motown backing vocals and a stomping rock beat. It's the sort of song you find yourself singing along with on a first listen. Waiting on a War sounds Britpop to me, but it ramps up into another alt rock song, again like I expect from the Foo Fighters but poppier. Crucially, poppier here doesn't mean softer. This album has a big sound to it that trawls in soul, funk and pop to flavour its rock base.

A lot of it sounds familiar but in new forms. For instance, Cloudspotter kicks off with a sort of Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar, but stripped down and popped up. It turns into a heavier pop rock take on David Essex's Rock On with moments of UFO's Rock Bottom thrown in for good measure. The title track adds some reggae, along with some Mick Jagger and commercial era Tom Petty. Holding Poison is old school pop punk, like the Knack, and there's some of that on Making a Fire too. Oddest, No Son of Mine is an unusual song that sometimes feels like some hidden Metallica song translated into alt punk.

Most notably of all, it's all relentlessly upbeat. This was supposed to be released in 2020 but got put back a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It feels like it's an antidote to COVID, because it's hard not to leave it happier and more energised than we came in. Everything's big and brash and memorable. I didn't get up and dance to it, the way I did to the new Korpiklaani album, but many listeners will. It's a very danceable release, far more than anything I've heard from the Foo Fighters before.

And this makes me want to go back and find out what I've missed. I've heard some of the major singles but they've never really prompted me to dig deeper. This does. After all, everyone who played on this has been the band for quite a while. Bassist Nate Mendel joined in 1995, drummer Taylor Hawkins in 1997 and guitarist Chris Shiflett in 1999. Pat Smear was there at the beginning but left for a while; he returned in 2010. Even new fish Rami Jaffee, on keyboards, toured with them for a dozen years before officially joining in 2017. This can't have come out of nowhere.

Kaal Akuma - In the Mouth of Madness (2021)

Country: Bangladesh
Style: Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 18 Jan 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook

Here's something interesting from Bangladesh, courtesy of a death metal trio called Kaal Akuma, who are on their debut album. I'm not sure how new this material is, as at least one track was released as a single in 2019, the year they were formed, but it really doesn't matter because this is old school stuff, the sort of early death metal that was dismissed by many people, only to prove massively influential to entire subgenres. If I'd heard this in 1985, I'd have spun it alongside Seven Churches until the cows came home.

Excluding the final track, Yamantaka, which I'll get to later, the band seem to function in two modes.

The first is fast and heavy and it's how they tend to start out songs. Everything's tuned deep and low and it's delivered without compromise. They aren't the sort of band to banter with the audience, just get their heads down and launch into their next song without any fuss. The music very much does the talking and anyone listening is either going to drift away from the wall of sound unimpressed or let it seep into their soul as if it's a mission statement they've just bought off on. The tone is massively important and it's that old school evil tone, dripping in ichor, that still sounds so delicious to me.

The second is much slower, achingly slower, and it arrives in variants of extremity. Mostly, like in the middle of songs like Feast on Mortals or Master of Metnal, it manifests as relentlessly slow riffs in a similar tone, which only serves to make the sound more evil. I'd call it doom metal but the tone's still death, whatever speed it's unfolding as. Sometimes, though, Akif fully unleashes his guitar and solos so eerily and so consumed by wild feedback that this starts to resemble drone metal or what we could call ambient death. The end of Black Death Sacrifice fits that bill, during which I started to feel like I was the sacrifice, both before and after the act.

That's not what the lyrics say, of course, but that sort of narrative epic fits what Kaal Akuma do. There are only five songs on offer here, but the album doesn't skimp. The shortest song is the closer, which is still well over six minutes and the title track lasts almost ten. Lyrically, we're actually in interesting territory, approaching the genre's traditional overblown affectation for death through Asian plague, Lovecraftian horror and Mayan sacrifice. I should point out that Metnal is not the typo we might see it as; it's the name of the underworld for the Mayans of the Yucatan peninsula, equivalent to Xibalba to those further south.

And talking of death gods, as we apparently are, that brings us to the final piece of music, which isn't so much a song as an instrumental folk death ritual. It's called Yamantaka, which, as those who took a glorious trip with me into last year's Neptunian Maximalism triple album, is the Sanskrit name of the destroyer of death in Vajrayana Buddhism. I should add that this isn't as dark as it sounds, because it sounds frickin' dark; destroying death is the final step taken to end the cycle of rebirth and reach the state of enlightenment.

I adored this piece of music, which is the icing on the cake that is this album. It highlights that, while the band may remind of Possessed meeting early Bathory, there's an avant-garde mindset throughout that has to be traced back to Celtic Frost. That all those names are formative ones is telling to me.

I'm sure that today, this is just one death metal album in a swamp of death metal albums, struggling to make itself known, especially given its source. How many sixteen year old western kids are working through the Bangladeshi death metal scene right now? But I'm hearing this as something out of time, the sort of mid-eighties sidestep from the expected that went on to launch entire genres of music. It's primal stuff that feels like the beginning of something rather than the end. Maybe it will be.

Michael Schenker Group - Immortal (2021)

Country: Germany
Style: Hard Rock/Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 29 Jan 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

This seems like a really good moment to confess that I've never really delved into Michael Schenker's solo career, even though he's had forty years of it now. I've enjoyed everything I've heard and more of that material keeps creeping out to tap me on the shoulder and make me feel guilty, but when I found MSG at some point in the mid eighties, they just didn't connect with me and I haven't ever gone back to truly revisit. So I still think of Schenker as the guitarist in UFO who blistered on Lights Out, Force It and Strangers in the Night, even though I've also heard his work for the Scorpions, Contraband and others.

This isn't just a 40th anniversary of his solo career, with the self-titled Michael Schenker Group album released in 1980, it's also a 50th anniversary because the album wraps with a new take on In Search of the Peace of Mind, the first song he ever wrote, in the family kitchen fifty years ago at the tender age of fifteen. It first saw the light on Lonesome Crow, the debut album by the Scorpions in 1972, when he had turned sixteen, but he had technically debuted with them on stage five years earlier still, so he's been playing music in front of people for quite a bit longer than I've been alive. Immortal indeed.

It isn't surprising therefore that he felt the need to revisit his roots with a new studio album by MSG, technically the first since In the Midst of Beauty in 2008, as everything he's released in between had a different band name: either Michael Schenker's Temple of Rock or Michael Schenker Fest. And talking about roots, it isn't just that closer that goes way back; there are new songs here that could have been taken from various different stages of his career here, not least because there are plenty of singers on here like Gary Barden, Rob McAuley and Doogie White, who each sang in a different Schenker era.

For instance, the album blisters out of the gate with the glorious assault that is Drilled to Kill, which is half UFO but half Judas Priest, fast and heavy. It keeps one foot firmly in the hard rock genre, even if the other is happily heavy metal. Ralf Scheepers of Primal Fear sings this one and Devil's Daughter and I'm eager to hear more songs from this pairing! However, The Queen of Thorns and Roses feels as if it could have been on a Scorpions album than the song that actually was, which I should mention is a particular success in this version, with Barden opening up the vocals and Ronnie Romero taking the helm, with White and McAuley joining in too before it wraps.

It's getting to the point where Romero is on everything. He's already replaced Joe Lynn Turner in two bands—Rainbow and Sunstorm—and now he's on the same album, if not the same song, because Don't Die on Me features a Turner lead. It would feel tame after Drilled to Kill, but it finds its own prowling vibe and even an epic singalong chorus, during which I found myself swaying in my chair. With an odd sense of irony, Romero sings the song immediately after Turner's, Knight of the Dead, but he returns for the Dio-esque Sail the Darkness and Come On Over, though Turner manages to get the final word with Sangria Morte, at least as far as lead vocals go.

Schenker shines throughout, as you might expect him to do. All the guitars here are his, which means that when he's soloing, it's the bass of Barry Sparks riffing away rather than a rhythm guitarist. He's the only other consistent band member, though Steve Mann handles the keyboards on every song but the opener. The drumming is divvied up between Brian Tichy, Bodo Schopf and Simon Phillips. You've heard all of these before on albums by many bands, often MSG but also Whitesnake, Eloy, Lynch Mob, Toto and Dream Theater, which is a varied bunch indeed. They're in that many bands because they're that in demand, utterly reliable and talented musicians one and all.

There are no poor songs here, but some are clearly more notable than others, the bookends being the most obvious, even though they were written half a century apart. They're very different songs, with Drilled to Kill a fast, heavy and in our face nod to power metal but In Search of the Peace of Mind an epic born of the early seventies and rooted in its prog rock. It's the sort of song that "magnum opus" describes perfectly and Schenker says of it that, "This is the most important song of the last 50 years for me." Now, I really need to go back and visit more of those five decades than I have thus far.

Appalooza - The Holy of Holies (2021)

Country: France
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 5 Feb 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Twitter

Formed in 2012 in Nantes and on their second studio album, Appalooza are kind of a combination of everything I missed out on when I drifted away from music in the early nineties after most of a decade of deep diving into rock and metal. They claim to be half Alice in Chains and half Queens of the Stone Age and Them Crooked Vultures, meaning grungy alternative rock and stoner rock, but with a sense of creativity that adds to that particular very nineties mixture.

What I found is something a lot more creative than I expected from that description. For most of two songs, they are indeed the mix they suggest, maybe with a higher proportion of Alice in Chains than merely half but then, three and a half minutes in to Snake Charmer, with the song proper ended, they roll into something wild and completely different. It's a little bit surf, a little bit rockabilly, a little bit spaghetti western, and something I'd expect to be on the soundtrack of an outlandish cult movie like, maybe, Six-String Samurai.

As I worked through the album, I kept finding sections like that that blew my mind, often to wrap up individual songs and they're wildly varied. Reincarnation has a space rock coda. Conquest drops into a echoey guitar piece that starts very bare but gets increasingly complex. Azazael drops even further, to fade out entirely a capella. Nazareth and Thousand Years After are variants on this theme. The former doesn't switch but extends instrumentally until we're almost in a trance, one that extends thirty seconds into Conquest, as if Appalooza have zero regard for their advertised song lengths. The latter switches into an oompah section—I was waiting for Tom Waits's voice to show up—but eventually returns to the actual song.

These wild endings really shook up my opinion of The Holy of Holies. Usually, I judge albums on their songs: how good they are, how varied they are, how consistent they are. Here, the songs are good, all of them playing in the same alternative/stoner rock ballpark but without any of them sounding quite like any other, which is a much appreciated trick. How I wish so many other bands could master that! But the endings elevate everything, like they're a colourbox of interludes to keep us on the hop and visit each new song without still being tied to its predecessor.

Reincarnation pulls back from the thick sound of the openers so the guitar can become a psychedelic factor, teasing us more than bludgeoning us. Nazareth keeps that vibe and renders it more exotic, but adds progressive drumming in a Tool vein, which dominates. That rolls into Conquest too and returns in Azazael. Distress has a prowling feel to it, led by a glorious bass and enhanced by effective backing vocals and vocal play; it's like Saigon Kick heavied up the Peter Gunn Theme. Canis Majoris is a ballad really but, for this band, that means something unlike what you're expecting from a ballad.

I liked this from the outset, but not as much as I ended up liking it. It felt like a solid 7/10 until Snake Charmer shifted into its coda and, from that point on, it kept reinventing itself so effectively that my rating simply had to go up, even without anything particularly standing out above its peers. Maybe I dig Reincarnation and Distress more than anything else, but they're not objectively better; they just speak to me while others may speak to you. The sheer variety is a huge selling point and it tells me that, if the band's sound comes from Alice in Chains and Queens of the Stone Age, it's really the creativity of Them Crooked Vultures that shapes them most.

W.E.T. - Retransmission (2021)

Country: Sweden
Style: Melodic/Hard Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 22 Jan 2021
Sites: Facebook

For those who haven't heard of this band, W.E.T. is a melodic/hard rock supergroup on the Frontiers label, where the initials stand not for individuals but for the other Frontiers bands they're known for, each fundamentally Swedish. The W is Robert Såll, guitarist in Work of Art, with four albums on that label; the E is Erik Mårtensson, vocalist and guitarist in Eclipse, with seven; and the T is the American Jeff Scott Soto, who fronts the Swedish Talisman, with three. These aren't the only musicians here, of course, but they're the core of the band, and this is a fourth studio album for them.

What else you need to know is that this is impeccably good stuff. Soto handles the lead vocals here, as effectively as ever, whichever band he's singing for, so Mårtensson supports with backing vocals which are so good and so frequent that the eighties heyday of American AOR (think Journey and Survivor) is never far from our thoughts. Mårtensson also plays rhythm guitar behind Magnus Henriksson's lead, his fellow guitarist in Eclipse, and keyboards. Säll also plays both keyboards and guitar, with the line-up fleshed out with bass from Andreas Passmark of Royal Hunt and drums from Robban Bäck of Autumn's Child.

Even after a couple of times through the album, I struggled to pick out a single highlight, because it remains so consistently well done. Every song features solid riffs, catchy hooks and driving drums, to the degree that they could all be singles. My favourite one is generally the one I'm listening to at the time and my thinking ran roughly like this: "Yeah, this is the best song here! I'll jot that down. Hang on, this next song has a riff/hook/solo that elevates it. Maybe this is the best song here. Yeah, I think so. I'll write that down instead. Hang on..."

No, that's not strictly true. Sometimes I went through a variant of: "Maybe this new song isn't really up to the last one. It's softer/weaker/familiar and... hang on, that's a killer riff/hook/solo! Crap. This is just as good as the last one after all." At the end of the day, though, I failed to find anything better or worse than the previous song eleven times until the album started again and I suddenly realised I was still going in an endless loop. Maybe, if you tied me down and tortured me, I might go with What are You Waiting For, because, every time I think from the softer start that it'll be a weaker song only for it to win me all over again.

But then I'd feel bad about not highlighting the stellar backing vocals on Big Boys Don't Cry and The Call of the Wild; the gorgeous Ozzy circa The Ultimate Sin riff on The Moment of Truth; the jauntiness of The Call of the Wild; the killer choruses on Got to Be About Love and most of the other tracks; the Dio-esque majesty of Beautiful Game, the fantastic atmosphere as How Far to Babylon gets moving; a Robin George sense of style on Coming Home; the neat chug of How Do I Know and the sheer pomp of One Final Kiss. I guess that means that You Better Believe It must be the worst track here and it's still excellent.

So I guess the whole album is a highlight and I have a lot of catch up to do, not just to the prior three W.E.T. studio albums—there's a live one in there too—but a slew of Eclipse, Talisman and Work of Art albums and a whole bunch of others that Discogs tells me these musicians played on. Melodic rock can be a rabbit hole of a genre, especially when you end up in situations like this with a lead singer as the backup vocalist and a lead guitarist playing rhythm. W.E.T. has a surfeit of talent and, at least in this configuration, that sounds damn good.

And, all told, I think this ends up as the best melodic rock album that I've heard since at least Harem Scarem took my album of the month last March, maybe longer.

Nervosa - Perpetual Chaos (2021)

Country: Brazil
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 22 Jan 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

For those who like their thrash played fast, over quickly and with a tinge of death metal, Nervosa are exactly what you're looking for. They're a Brazilian band, formed in 2010, but with a new line-up that's notably international. Guitarist Prika Amaral isn't merely the only founding member; she's the only musician here to appear on their three prior albums, as she hired everyone else fresh in 2020. Vocalist Diva Satanica is Spanish and she also sings for Bloodhunter. Bassist Mia Wallace is Italian and played for The True Endless for a decade. Drummer Eleni Nota is Greek and also plays with Lightfold.

Amaral is a ferocious guitarist in the Teutonic style, so it's not too surprising when Schmier provides guest vocals on Genocidal Command, a song that could have been a Destruction original. Being a big fan of that band, it's telling that it doesn't seem remotely out of place amongst the other tracks here, even though he only guests on that one. The Destruction style continues throughout, songs like Time to Flight and People of the Abyss carrying the same blistering mix of speed metal precision and punk attitude. Nothing here reaches the four minute mark, but Time to Flight is easily the shortest at just over two and a half.

I don't believe I've heard any of the other members of the band before, in their other projects, but it seems to me as if Amaral knew precisely what she was doing when she brought them on board. I would expect that she headhunted them specifically for Nervosa, even though they're known for a variety of other styles. Lightfold is a progressive metal band, for instance, but Nota is a natural playing thrash; The True Endless were black metal but Wallace also fits here like she's only ever played thrash. Given how much death metal there is in Satanica's voice, it's hardly surprising to find that Bloodhunter are melodeath. It works well here, adding a darker depth to the frenetic thrash sound.

There is some variety here. Nervosa slow down at points, especially on Blood Eagle, and they're good at the midpace, even if they're better at full belt. Incidentally, that song's intro reminds very much of Tom Waits, which is not at all what I expected. Another guest vocalist, Erik A.K. of Flotsam and Jetsam fame, brings a different flavour to his song, Rebel Soul, though that never feels like a different band.

Mostly though, this sticks to the core style that runs throughout the album, which is fast and frenetic thrash. The best songs here, like Time to Fight, Genocidal Command and People of the Abyss, play out that way, even if some, like Under Ruins, vary the pace a little more. Fast and frenetic is what Amaral does best and the new fish help her do it, as does the excellent production by Martin Furia. People of the Abyss has such an uncompromising attitude that it's a serious shock to find that we can track every instrument on it without any trouble at all.

A little more variety would certainly make for a more interesting album and I believe Nervosa should be open to that, but this album succeeds at doing exactly what thrash metal was meant to do, which is to clean our clock for three quarters of an hour. It's no nonsense, heads down, uncompromising thrash that ought to generate some serious pits when gigs start to open back up again.

Korpiklaani - Jylhä (2021)

Country: Finland
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 Feb 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

The Clan of the Wilderness are back with their eleventh studio album and their publicity folk asked if I might like to take a listen and review it at Apocalypse Later. Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods? Of course, I leapt at the chance and it wasn't long before I was leaping around my office in a lunatic dance with myself. Leväluhta is as immediate as any Korpi song I've heard, even if it's reminiscent of reggae until it speeds up.

This is a generous album, its lucky thirteen tracks running just over an hour, and there's a lot in it to unpack.

The band start out strong. New drummer Samuli Mikkonen ably demonstrates his skill on the opener, Verikoira, playing what I can only call lead drums until all five of his colleagues have joined in. Power chords turn into riffs and the violin and accordion tease their way into play until, a minute in, we're suddenly in the opener proper at full pace. It's a good one too, packed full of memorable riffs, catchy choruses and a neatly cheeky midsection that gets better every time I listen to it. This song somehow works both as a song and a showcase for everyone playing on it.

Niemi is even more playful, as Korpi fans expect, but these are more substantial songs than they may appear on the surface. I'm used to these speedy and urgent songs that prompt us to leap up and dance around until the demons jump out of us, but these feel a little deeper than usual. I also found myself sitting back and admiring the transitions and the tones. And all that goes double for Leväluhta and a seductive reggae groove that seems oddfor Korpi but utterly appropriate all at once.

The problem with a song like Leväluhta is that it's really hard to follow. Mylly is a decent song, a slow and moody piece compared to what's gone before but a good one. However, it inevitably fades in this slot on the album. Tuuleton at least has a different approach to grab our attention back, starting out almost like a French chanson and growing into grinding epic folk. Mylly kind of gets lost in the wash and a few others do that here too. Such is often the curse of generous albums.

However, the benefit of generous albums is that we can deep dive into songs like these at our leisure, not just during a listen through the whole album but by focusing in on individual tracks. The livelier songs leap out, of course, like Verikoira, Leväluhta and Pohja, and more unusual songs like Pidot and Leväluhta and too, but the deepest ones assert themselves as we focus in. I particularly like Sanaton maa, a song that snuck by me on my first time through but gradually made itself more and more obvious.

It's a great example of how well the folk instruments have been infused into the Korpi sound. They've always had violins and accordions but I don't remember them being so well integrated. On the early classics, like Spirit of the Forest and Tales Along This Road, they were there but they often played the role of exotic texture or solo instrument. Here, they're as integral as the lead guitar, and that remains consistent throughout. They particularly shine on Sanaton maa, the violin of Tuomas Rounakari the lead instrument and the accordion of Sami Perttula adding much.

This is a solid album. I'd say that it's their best release in a while, but I suddenly realise that I haven't heard the last couple of albums, so I'll say that it's the best I've heard in a while. It's inconsistent but that may come with the generous length; a few lesser songs could have been cropped to tighten it up. However, it does everything I want a Korpi album to do but it does it a little deeper than I remember. I look forward to exploring it more.