Chat Pile - God's Country (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Noise Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Jul 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Wikipedia

There were a few clear winners in the 2022 end of year lists. Blind Guardian and Ghost topped two lists each. Messa made it onto nine different lists. Ozzy Osbourne managed seven, three of them top tens, marking a notable return to form. I'd reviewed three of those already and caught up with the fourth last week, but the other two bands who made it onto seven lists are ones I let slip by. In both instances, they also made four top tens and three top fives and topped one list, so there's an impressively broad acclaim for both of them. They're Chat Pile and Undeath, both American but a long way apart in genre.

Undeath play death metal out of Rochester, New York and It's Time... to Rise from the Grave was a second album for them, but Chat Pile, from Oklahoma City, are on their debut with God's Country, and that's just enough edge to prioritise them for me this January. They call what they play noise rock, though enough fans and zines have described them as sludge metal for that to stick too. I'm happy to go with noise rock, because this feels like a heavy form of alt rock to me, rather than any metal genre moving the other way, even at their heaviest on a song like Tropical Beaches, Inc.

Certainly the influences seem to be more from the rock side of the fence, even if some have fairly called out Godflesh. They're also more from the American side of the pond, even though Godflesh are English. The obvious comparison is the Jesus Lizard, especially with such a prominent bass, but all the proto-sludge bands are here, from the Melvins onward. These songs are mostly slow, with a thoroughly dominant bassline and a tortured vocal from a singer who's three slices into his wrists because everything about the world sucks but he's not quite sure if he's really committed to killing himself. "This is the sound of your world collapsing" chants Raygun Busch on Anywhere and that's a fair description of his band.

That's the core sound, but there are exceptions sitting on either side of it. Tropical Beaches, Inc. is the heavy song, with monstrous drums setting a much more frantic pace. I Don't Care If I Burn isn't far off spoken word, with a subtle beat and a weird sound effect driven backdrop that reminded of Tom Waits's What's He Building? It's utterly minimal, though Busch's emotional outpouring remains paramount. "You weren't supposed to see this," he screams at us on grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg, and it's hard not to believe him. He's certainly magnetic, a riven soul bared to the universe.

The song that stands out the most is the one that combines those three elements and that's Why. It's built on a slow and sludgy riff from guitarist Luther Manhole and underpinned by bassist Stin, with Cap'n Ron's cavernous drums matched by the repeated title so well that we keep chanting it even when Busch isn't, so he can veer off onto a spoken word rant. He's not delivering lyrics, he's just struck by the ramifications that spring from the very existence of homeless people and so he rages at the inhumanity of it all for three minutes and thirty one seconds. To be fair, he's probably still going, even after we moved onto the next song and the next.

And whether you're going to like this album or not is going to depend on whether you're eager to dive into an album described as above or whether you know you're not going to touch it even with someone else's ten foot pole. There are some subtleties if you care, like the Joy Division vibe that starts out Pamela, but there aren't a lot of them. This isn't a subtle album and the people who are likely to love it the most aren't likely to be interested in subtleties. I like subtleties so this isn't my sort of thing, but it's done well and I can see why it impressed certain critics. If you're a fan of the Jesus Lizard, add at least a point to my rating and maybe two.

Turmion Kätilöt - Omen X (2023)

Country: Finland
Style: Industrial Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 13 Jan 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Wikipedia | YouTube

Latest in the list of established bands I haven't heard of are Turmion Kätilöt, understandably so as I've never delved that far into industrial metal. I know what it is and I've heard plenty of the major bands but unlike a couple of friends, I haven't dived in much further. Hey, Jim! Hey, David! I'm sure that both of you have been listening to Turmion Kätilöt for ever. As the title suggests, this is their tenth album, so it's about time I paid attention. They've been around since 2003 and their output's been pretty consistent, always between one and three years between albums.

For all that this is industrial metal, it starts out with a beat more dance oriented than anything on the Shape of Water album I just reviewed, even though that's an electronic alternative band. This sounds like the Prodigy until it ramps up and suddenly we're almost in NDH territory. The Prodigy vs. Rammstein? Why not? However, I'm not sure if you can call it NDH when the band in question is from Finland. USK for Uusi saksalainen kovuus? Answers on the back of a postcard to...

The line-up is telling, not least because everyone has dance music-style pseudonyms. The surviving founder of the band, Petja Turunen, goes by MC Raaka Pee, though his voice is almost harsh, using metal terminology. He provides the lead vocals and Shag-U sings too. Behind them is a traditional metal band, with Bobby Undertaker on crunchy guitar, Master Bates (a Captain Pugwash nod from Finland?) on deep bass and DQ on often fast drums. That leaves Janne Tolsa, who as RunQ, handles the electronic side of the house: keyboards, synths and programming, which are all integral.

I liked this a lot more than I expected to. There's almost a folk metal vibe to songs like Gabriel and Vie Se Pois, but with traditional folk instrumentation replaced with electronics. It's heavy but it's vibrant, designed to make us move, and folk metal is fundamentally just a different form of dance music. I like those and others that incorporate unusual musical elements over the straightforward industrial dance songs that would work wonderfully in a club but don't stand out as much to me at home listening in my office.

With a quick nod to the downright 8 bit chiptune sound in Pyhä Kolminaisuus, the interesting ones come during the second half. Isä Meidän has a fascinating intro, shifting from a furious Slayer vibe into polite folk music. It ramps up into the band's core industrial metal sound, of course, but it ends with a clarinet solo, of all things, which I wasn't remotely expecting. Käy Tanssiin is fascinating too, with one section that shifts into Caribbean chill but with no change to MC Raaka Pee's harsh vocal. It's as if the singer from Trollfest broke some cartoon fourth wall and ended up scatting all over a CD labelled Caribbean Moods.

Not knowing any Finnish, I have no idea what these songs are about, but I did throw their titles at Google Translate and I'm surprised to see an apparent religious theme. Gabriel doesn't need to be translated, but Pyhä Kolminaisuus means Holy Trinity and Isä Meidän means Our Father, and a few others include references to blood and kingdom and truth, so maybe there's something else going on here and maybe there isn't. It doesn't remotely sound like Christian music but unblack metal is just as unlikely. Maybe it's anti-Christian music and that isn't a Crux Decussata in the cover art. It certainly seems like it would play better at wasteland events than churches.

Whatever it is and wherever it'll be played, I like this. It's infectious stuff. I guess that means that I've been infected. That works for me. Now, Jim and/or David, what have I been missing?

Shape of Water - Amor Fati (2022)

Country: Italy/UK
Style: Alternative
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 28 Oct 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

I try to keep up with the New Wave of Classic Rock, because there's so much wonderful new music being released under that banner, but I inevitably fail because I'm covering a broader spectrum at Apocalypse Later and there are only so many hours in the day. As such, I'm happy to say that I have already reviewed the top two albums on the NWoCR Facebook page's end of year list for 2022, The New Roses coming out on top with Revival Black right behind them. However, I hadn't even heard of Shape of Water, who landed the third place slot, and now that I've heard this album, I see why.

Long story short, they're not really NWoCR at all. They're fundamentally an alternative rock band, with the obvious comparison on that front being Muse. However, the base of their sound is in their keyboards, making them an electronic band, and that allows them to seamlessly move in and out of new wave, post-punk and straightforward pop territory as frequently as rock. They self-identify as gender-fluid, which sounds pretentious but is actually spot on. At this point, I shouldn't see any surprise in them being two Italians based in Manchester in the north of England. It makes sense.

The opening track, Starchild, highlights how hard it is to pigeonhole them. It only runs five minutes but it's all Capriotti for the first three, vocals over keyboards. Somehow it's both progressive and twee, like Philip Glass joining the Cardigans, but the organic dance beat introduced halfway, shifts into a higher gear with much more intensity, De Falco's guitars kicking in heavy and escalating into almost a Rage Against the Machine vibe. And that's song one of ten, though Falling follows it with an almost shocking conformity as a decent but traditional alt rock song except for the jazzy piano break halfway through.

The Snoot is where the NWoCR kicks in and kicks in hard with a solid seventies riff from De Falco. It grows in a few different directions from there, but it's a guitar song with a tasty guitar solo, even if Capriotti's vocal still sounds pop, even when he's rocking it up. Of course, being genre-fluid, they don't stay in rock for long, shifting straight into new wave for Don't Leave Me in the Dark, and the longer the album runs on the more interesting and versatile it gets.

My favourite songs all come late, starting with A Ghost in Manchester seven songs in. This is a post-punk song, I guess, built on pulsing synths, but the verses sound like a centuries old folk song in an utterly contemporary framework. There are bells and what I presume is a trumpet to punctuate it all and then, halfway through, it explodes into intense action only to drop quickly away into a solo piano break. Just in case Queen never sprang to mind, it makes a very deliberate nod to Bohemian Rhapsody to ensure that they do. It's a magnificent song and it stands apart from everything, not just the other songs on this album but everything. It's almost Ghost Town levels of different.

Everybody's Gone feels like the Beatles during its first half but it ramps up to a much more intense mentality with another tasty guitar solo from De Falco. It even finishes with a flourish right out of classical music. Terraformer is back to a rhythmic Philip Glass synth sound, then alt rock, but with a screaming saxophone and a guitar solo to match it. Suddenly Words in Eternity, which closes out, is notable for being not notable, as a conventional alt rock song in the Muse vein.

This album grabbed my attention from the beginning of the first song and it impressed me with its uncompromising versatility, but for three songs it shook me. Few bands can be that good and that consistently different across three songs. Frankly, the only two bands I can name who excel at that are Queen and Saigon Kick; check out Sheer Heart Attack and Water for two albums that manage that throughout. This doesn't manage it across the entire album but it comes closer than anyone else I can remember and they nail it for those three songs late on.

Because this is rarely NWoCR, ranking highly on a list with that particular focus seems odd, but it should rank highly anywhere. Shape of Water are now firmly on my "must listen" list.

Ahab - The Coral Tombs (2023)

Country: Germany
Style: Funeral Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 13 Jan 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

I'm happy to see a new album from Ahab, because they've been away from the studio from quite a long time, their fourth album, The Boats of the Glen Carrig, released in 2015. However, this is very different from the Ahab I remember, in a number of directions. I remember them playing funeral doom, shifting between ambient atmospheric passages and crushingly slow doom metal. A friend added their debut album, The Call of the Wretched Sea to the playlist in his car, after I gave him a copy, and it had quite the impact on his passengers!

On the face of it, this is a clear continuation of what Ahab do, because The Coral Tombs is another concept album fashioned from literature that runs long but with few songs, the majority of them reaching the ten minute mark. Sure, this is actually their shortest album, by about thirty seconds, but shortest for Ahab still means an hour and six minutes. This time the source material is Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne, which means we're not just out there on a broad ocean, we're underneath it. And, thinking of it as a complete chunk of music, it's clearly still doom.

However, the opening track, Prof. Arronax' Descent into the Vast Oceans, which was also released last year as the first single, takes its doom in a couple of very different directions to funeral doom. It starts out much faster than I'd have expected, Daniel Droste's cavernously deep vocals joined by Chris Noir of Ultha, who delivers a bleaker black metal shriek that I'm used to in Ahab. And then it calms down, all the way to an almost Floydian ambience. It's agreeably slow now, but the vocals at this point are entirely clean and rather resonant and they stay that way into the first recognisable funeral doom section almost four minutes in, only finding harshness a couple of minutes later as it all shifts into a guitar solo.

Now, none of that is inherently bad, merely unusual enough to be surprising. I rather like this new approach, which almost seems the textures of funeral doom as an element of progressive rock. I'm especially fond of that clean vocal, which at this pace feels all the more emotional, an outpouring of despair into a deep abyss, appropriate given the context, though I recall Prof. Arronax in a state of wonder as the Nautilus descended into the depths. Maybe I need to re-read the source novel. It serves as a pivotal book for the steampunk community, after all. I should keep it fresh.

Colossus of the Liquid Graves, the other single, is much closer to what I expect from Ahab, even if it wraps up in an almost unfathomable six and a half minutes. It's slow and heavy throughout, full of epochal power chords under a slow melody line. Droste effectively duets with himself, alternating between his usual deep and guttural harsh voice and that soaring clean voice so apparent on the opener. It's an excellent contrast, especially for this material, because it feels like the harsh voice is underwater, while the clean one soars above the waves waiting for the Nautilus to broach.

And so it goes. I'm not sure if I ever heard The Boats of the Glen Carrig, even though I'm a William Hope Hodgson fan, so I really should, but I believe I've heard everything before then, certainly the first couple of albums, and I don't remember this balance before. The Ahab in my memory are like the heavier sections here, albeit slower still, with some of the lighter sections there to serve as a contrast. However, I'm remembering a 10:1 balance rather than the 2:1 balance we get here. Long passages in many of these songs are neither doom nor metal and feel much more like an ambient take on prog rock.

Now, it still sounds good so I'm not complaining and it's arguably rather appropriate this time out because I vividly recall page after page of the Nautilus steadily moving along underwater while its new passengers marvel at the sea creatures they pass. Verne was clearly an effusive fan of fish, so whole sections of the book read like an exhaustive commentary by an author who has visited a big aquarium and is aching to tell us about all the colours. Many of those sections here unfold entirely instrumentally, so we don't have to put up with that commentary except in shades of sound, which I'm not unhappy about in the slightest.

For old school Ahab, A Coral Tomb may come closest in toto to what you're looking for. I'm tempted to call out the opener as my highlight, but I dug a lot of the ambient sections that remind of quiet instrumental Genesis, so I'm not going to turn my nose up at songs like Ægri Somnia either. This is likely to be a shock to many Ahab fans, but it's a really good album. Welcome back, folks!

Manic Sinners - King of the Badlands (2022)

Country: Romania
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 18 Feb 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram

Last January, I asked the genial Chris Franklin of the essential Raised on Rock radio show to pick an album that I'd missed from the previous year. He suggested the Fans of the Dark debut, which was a peach of an album, so I was eager to repeat that question this year. I'll be listening to a couple of albums that he's suggested, one rock and one metal, this month and here's the former. It's not an immense surprise to find that Manic Sinners are released through Frontiers, but they're putting a lot of good music out nowadays and you can hear plenty of it on Chris's show.

The band is based in Romania, though Toni Dijmarescu lives in Germany, and they're a trio with an immense amount of experience. Adrian Igrișan plays drums and keyboards here for the most part, though he's best known as the current lead singer and guitarist for heavy metal band Cargo, who have been rocking Timișoara since 1985. Dijmarescu is a session musician best known for multiple releases by Reșița Rocks and Călin Pop. That leaves Ovidiu Anton on lead vocals, who's newer but would have represented Romania in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2016, had their TV company's debs prompted them to withdraw.

Manic Sinners play a form of hard rock that's obviously rooted in the eighties but with a variety of influences from across the spectrum. The first one that leapt out at me was Whitesnake, because they're here in Anton's vocals and Dijmarescu's guitars, but Europe sprang to mind quickly too and there's often some Dio in Anton's phrasing. It's definitely a commercial sound and, while there are softer songs like Anastasia and Carousel, there are moments where they move closer to the heavy metal border. That's mostly through the guitars of Dijmarescu but surely the heaviest song here is Nobody Moves, in large part because Igrișan contributes a much heavier bass.

I liked the album on a first listen but it didn't knock me out, even though there are a string of good tracks to open things up. However, the more I listened, the better it got. Drifters Union and King of the Badlands aren't just good openers, they're excellent openers, and Under the Gun and Nobody Moves keep growing on me too, to the point where they're clear highlights. Most importantly, the album runs a generous fifty-five minutes but none of the dozen songs here let the side down. Not all are highlights but none are filler and that's impressive on a debut album this long.

Also impressive is how that statement holds true even on the softer songs. Anastasia is a ballad in the style of Europe; Carousel isn't but it's still softer and still more melodic than what's around it; and Crimson Queen is a brief but tasty guitar piece. Even A Million Miles, which starts with a woah and brings it back during the chorus, is solid, though it's almost the epitome of something that I'd expect Chris to like more than me. It's almost textbook melodic rock, the guitars keeping back but always being ready to nudge things forward with a riff, the beat politely urgent, the vocals soaked in soulful vocal fry. There isn't an original bone in its body, but it does what it does well.

And so, while I liked this from my first time through, I like it more with each listen and I'm a few in right now. There's nothing here to challenge the listener. There's little that's particularly original, though songs like Under the Gun and Nobody Moves add some more unusual elements that would never feel right on material that's content with being traditional. The former boasts a delightfully prowling intro and the latter, after another neat intro, includes some fascinating backing vocals in a folky choral style. Mostly, it's just melodic hard rock done right.

So, thanks, Chris once more for picking out another strong one for me. Now I'm looking forward to the other one all the more.

Beyond the Black - Beyond the Black (2023)

Country: Germany
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 13 Jan 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

Here's a fifth album for Beyond the Black, even though they haven't been in existence for a decade yet. They're certainly not hanging around, though it's been three years since its predecessor with COVID the likely cause for the delay. This feels exactly like the sort of album that might erupt from a band who have been restrained for too long and are aching to get back into the studio. They hail from a small German town close to the French border called Sankt Wendel and they play a form of symphonic metal that's built around the lead vocals of Jennifer Haben.

It's a relatively consistent and unadventurous symphonic metal sound, which may be a positive or negative depending on your tastes. These songs all tend to feature an urgent beat from drummer Kai Tschierschky, solid riffs from guitarists Tobi Lodes and Chris Hermsdörfer, with a warm tone to their guitars and a strong lead melodic vocal from Haben that seems effortlessly powerful but has little interest in stretching her abilities. I have no doubt that she can do more than she does here, but she didn't feel the need on these songs. I have no idea who contributes bass or keyboards but they must be session musicians.

The early songs are all consistently strong and set the stage well. Is There Anybody Out There? has all the elements listed above and a solid hook to stick in our brains. Reincarnation is better yet, as it builds from an ethnic atmosphere to a folky guitar and a playfully teasing vocal. However, there is also a surprising use of male backing vocals. They remind of the unneeded rap vocal that echoes Amy Lee's lead on Evanescence's Bring Me to Life, not because it's rap because it's guttural as we might expect from melodic death metal, but because it does exactly the same job and it's equally as unneeded. Free Me is more theatrical with some Nightwish-esque emphasis on the guitars but it plays in the same ballpark as the others, with another strong hook to sing along with.

The problem the album has isn't that it isn't good, because it continues to do what it does for half an hour more, but because it keeps doing it in much the same way and it drags at points. Winter is Coming is better than it might feel, as the fourth song in a consistent opening set, but it starts to fade a little from there. Into the Light can't bring anything new to the table so, even though it's a decent song, it fails to catch a hold. Dancing with the Dark starts out well with a nearly industrial vibe and a throat singing drone but it can't maintain that originality, even it remains a good song with a good solo. Raise Your Head adds some tasty wavering to Haben's voice but the song is lost in the mix too, even though it's another good one. And so it goes.

The only song that really tries to do anything different is Wide Awake, which starts out as a ballad and grows into something more. Hagen's voice is the highlight yet again, bringing musical theatre into the mix. That surprised me because I knew about her pop background as a member of Saphir, a girl band built around four separate winners of a German talent show for children. She certainly brings some of her pop training to this band but it's mostly there in the way she's able to let loose her voice to soar in ways that make talent show judges melt. That's a useful talent in a symphonic metal band too. I wasn't expecting musical theatre.

I appreciate that this is Beyond the Black rather than the Jennifer Haben solo project, but I'd like to hear the rest of the band step into the spotlight at points. These ten songs all wrap up within a minute of each other as if four minutes is too short but four and a half is too long. I'd like to hear a lot more intros, solos, interesting changes, moments for these clearly capable musicians to shine alongside Haben, who gets all the opportunities. Five minutes isn't unreasonable, maybe five and a half. That doesn't prompt sprawling epics that change who the band are. It just deepens it.

Def Leppard - Diamond Star Halos (2022)

Country: UK
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 27 May 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I didn't deliberately avoid this album last year, as I was just back from my research trip when it was released in May and it took me a while to catch back up again. However, I'd have gone into it with a few hesitations, because I was never the biggest fan of Def Leppard's commercial sound and I had even less interest after they shifted into pop music in the nineties and noughties. To be fair, I don't remember what Slang and X sounded like but I remember not liking them. That said, I'd also have gone into it with an element of curiosity because I would have discovered various things that I've discovered going into it right now.

For one, they've stayed together throughout in Rammstein fashion, enjoying side projects during down times for Def Leppard; the last personnel change was to replace Steve Clark after his death, which is so long ago that I recall Tommy Vance airing a tribute segment on The Friday Rock Show. I see that they've continued to release albums too, albeit at a slow and steady pace; this one comes seven years after a self-titled effort in 2015 and that seven after Songs from the Sparkle Lounge. I have every respect for both of those details.

And for another, they apparently veered back into rock music once the grunge era petered out, to find a sort of Queen-like versatility. That self-titled album, which I haven't heard, boasted a set of songs that could have been gathered in from every period of their discography, from the earliest NWOBHM years through overproduced superstardom to their poppier years. Maybe this why was why Classic Rock magazine picked up the Def Leppard torch and listed Diamond Star Halos as their very best album of 2022, because it takes similar aim at their back catalogue and their influences before it, while still somehow feeling fresh and looking forward.

Perhaps inevitably, I found this a little inconsistent, especially over an hour plus running time. It's strong from the outset, with a couple of notably seventies glam rock tracks, Take What You Want and Kick. The album title comes from a T Rex lyric, from Get It On, and there's plenty of T Rex to be found in Kick. As you might expect, with Joe Elliott at the mike, there's plenty of Mott the Hoople too and a different angle to that shows up late on Angels (Can't Help You Now), a softer but much more straightforward rock song in the vein of David Bowie and Ian Hunter.

The pop angle kicks in hard with Fire It Up, but that's a strong pop song. Sure, it's pop through and through, even with emphatic guitars, and I heard a lot of solo Adam Ant in the chorus, but it's the most delightfully infectious song on the album. I found this pop approach is less effective on later songs like Lifeless and Unbreakable, their electronic drum sound annoying when it's a focus and a stylistic clash when the guitars fire up, especially on the latter. Worse still is an unashamed ballad, Goodbye for Good This Time, complete with manipulative orchestration.

At the other end of the spectrum, there's some vicious old school Leppard here. SOS Emergency is the first of these, with an excellent guitar riff to kick it off. Sure, it's softer than the early days but it isn't out of place in that company. From Here to Eternity, which wraps up the album, has a clear old school vibe. This one nails its groove immediately and maintains it well throughout, even as a long song for Leppard at almost six minutes; nothing else makes it past five. Gimme a Kiss starts out relatively generic but it builds well.

Even though it pains me given its awful name, I'd call U Rok Mi my favourite track here. It's utterly Def Leppard in every pore, but it's stripped down to its quick so it feels rather like a rehearsal. It's a great reminder of how raw this usually overproduced band can be, and how their patented hooks are at the heart of everything. Frankly, I'd love to hear the rest of the album this stripped down. It doesn' need an unplugged set to get back to basics and this is Leppard agreeably back to basics.

The most unusual song here is surely This Guitar and it moves as far from the core Leppard sound as U Rok Mi stays as close to it. It's another ballad but closer to country. Alison Krauss provides an excellent backing vocal, but she never duets with Joe Elliott as I had hoped to hear, given how amazing it sounds when she does that with Robert Plant. Instead, it falls to Elliott to lead it and, in this mode, his voice has a softness to it that's highly reminiscent of Jon Bon Jovi. It's another overproduced song, swollen with orchestration and polished until it has so much gleam it's almost blinding.

So this is a mixed bag. There's some excellent material here and it isn't only the old school guitar songs; Def Leppard as a pop band can be excellent too. However, there are some songs that I have no wish to hear again. Every time I get to This Guitar or Goodbye for Good This Time, I feel an urge to go back to Fire It Up and Kick, with its handclaps and na na na chorus, to remind me why I'm still listening. In between those extremes, there are filler songs and other tracks that have something but not as much as those around them.

And so this is better than I expected it would be but not as good as that number one slot on Classic Rock magazine's Best of 2022 list would suggest. I've reviewed seven of their other top ten choices and another five from the next ten and I'd put all of them above this except maybe the Porcupine Tree album.

Finite Fidelity - Violeta (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Alternative
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 7 Jan 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

Like Messa, it's difficult to slap a genre on what Finite Fidelity do, though they're clearly playing in alternative rock as a base. They hail from Austin, Texas and I believe that this is their debut album, but they feel like they're veterans. Sure, the band was started at Austin School of Music and two of the four band members work in a music store, but t seems like they've been playing together this way forever and they've only now got round to putting down what they do on an album.

There's plenty of alternative rock on the opener, Yellow Sky, but it's far from alone. There's some older school rock 'n' roll in that one too, along with pop and rock, some progressive breaks and a surprising shift shift higher in the register of vocalist Scott Blanco. There's a little Spanish guitar too, but it's played on what sounds like a surf guitar instead. It's interesting and imaginative and if I was forced into citing just one band as an obvious comparison, I'd spring for Cake. While this is happy in shimmying into all sorts of wild directions, they're probably the most obvious influence throughout.

Hollow is funkier. There are moments that remind of the Red Hot Chili Peppers but there are Lenny Kravitz moments too and Beatles moments and others, while the song as a whole doesn't sound like any of them. There's punk towards the end and even a sort of college rock take on rockabilly, which is an unlikely combination that makes it another fascinating song. It's surely one of my favourites here, though this isn't the sort of album with clear standouts. These songs are coherent together but they explore such an array of approaches that which shine the most will likely always be due to personal connection over critical gimmes.

Merchant brings in some Tool and some world music elements, though it's far from as intricate as Tool. There's certainly a progressive element to what the band does, especially if you listen afresh with that firmly in mind, but it never serves as the focus, so it's not prog rock, it's just alternative rock that happens to be more progressive than usual.

Ghost is post-punk: a little Buzzcocks, a little Blondie and plenty more Cake. There's a psychedelic rock vibe on Mirage, which is a fascinating addition to the sound, especially as the versatility that is the most obvious constant suddenly reminds of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Las Armas en Flor reminds of the Clash, including some of the ethnic flavour they moved into later into their careers. There's more Red Hot Chili Peppers on Unabridged, but more Cake as well. They're never too far away.

And that's a lot of different flavours on one album, with more on the various other tracks that I'm not going to mention individually, but it never feels schizophrenic, like a band like Mr. Bungle can. Finite Fidelity always feels like musicians who really enjoy playing music each threw a solid stack of influences into a bucket, shook it up and collectively jammed on whatever they pulled out of that bucket in the morning. I like that idea. It means that this is commercially viable music but without commercial viability ever seeming like it was the point. I'm sure that these four musicians, with a day job each, wouldn't turn down success but it feels like they're here to play first and foremost.

They're almost a human equivalent to the material they play, in that, like these songs, they are all similarly capable and coherent when put together but they constantly shift the direction that the larger picture takes. Scott Blanco and Ryan Monahan are the founding members, the former as a vocalist and guitarist combo and the latter the drummer. Tim Moen joined soon after on bass and the new fish is Ian C.G. on a second guitar. They're a good band who play good and notably original songs, but I think it's their combination of relaxed confidence and infectious enthusiasm that gets through to me the most. I hope it's just the first of many albums to come.