Cirith Ungol - Dark Parade (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Oct 2023
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Cirith Ungol have only been back for a few years now, having reformed in 2015 and played the first gig in their new incarnation in 2016, with four previous members of the band in the line-up, Jarvis Leatherby joining on bass at that point. However, they released a strong and very heavy album in 2020, Forever Black, and followed up a year later with a solid EP, Half Past Human. COVID over, it's time for another album and Dark Parade continues in the vein for which they're well known. I hope to hear more but the cracks are starting to show: Jim Barraza, who plays guitar again here has apparently left the band and I hear that they're about to retire from live performances.

I liked Forever Black a lot and relish any new release with Tim Baker's unmistakably raucous voice. There are bands who try to sound commercial and bands that try to sound extreme. Baker is more extreme than most of the latter and he isn't even trying. It's just how he is. It's a huge voice and it tends to feel louder than it is, however loud you happen to be playing his music. He hasn't lost any of his power over the years and, if anything, he's just as good today at sixty-seven.

This album isn't as good as its openers, but for a while it's an absolute belter. Velocity (S.E.P.) is an impressive opener, up tempo for Cirith Ungol with a guitar solo to lead off. It's precisely the sort of song to open a live set because, if the audience doesn't respond to this, then they're probably not going to respond to anything. Relentless is more like what I expect from this band, slow and heavy but with melody and drive. There's Metal Church in this one and Metallica but there's also plenty Accept. And yes, I'm well aware that Cirith Ungol predate all of those bands, having been formed as far back as 1971.

Nothing else matches those two, but there are some wonderful moments. There's a nice flamenco guitar on Sacrifice, not only as an intro but also within the song itself. Baker is on fire on that song too, its slow and impeccably heavy pace tailored to his recognisable raucousness. Talking of vocals, there's a joyous contrast on Down Below between Baker and an unknown female voice. It isn't the usual beauty and the beast contrast between a clean soprano voice and a harsh male one because it's a very different contrast between elegant calmness and unconstrained roar. The title track has a contrast all of its own, as it's a heavy one indeed mixing old school riffage with Baker's extreme voice, like Cronos singing for Black Sabbath.

Even the lesser songs shine at points. I'm not much of a fan of Sailor on the Seas of Fate, which has a monotone heaviness to it, but I'm certainly a fan of its instrumental sections, not just the pair of bookends but a stretch of a couple of minutes during the midsection too. Those are great changes and I could listen to that sort of thing all day. There's a gem of a guitar solo on Looking Glass, even if it feels a littleshoehorned into that particular song, and there are excellent riffs littered around the later songs, like Distant Shadows, Down Below and the title track.

This ought to play very well to existing Cirith Ungol fans, because it does everything they want the band to do and it does it well. Sure, it's a little top heavy, the pair of standout tracks being the two that kick it off and only Sacrifice, wrapping up the first half, coming close to them. It's that pair I'd certainly suggest to people who have never heard of Cirith Ungol before and want something very heavy indeed but not technically extreme. If they can deal with Baker's voice, then the band would have new fans, guaranteed.

However, the second half is much more for the die hards. If you relish the full immersion into Cirith Ungol's particular brand of achingly slow ultra-heaviness, then you'll be in heaven. If you're a little more picky about variety, it may become a little tiring because the four tracks do much the same thing in much the same way and they're all taken to the limit, because, as I said earlier, Baker has a habit of feeling louder than he actually is and the band happily follow suit. This isn't music to be played quietly but you'll need good speakers to keep turning this up.

I'm on board with the heaviness of the second half, if not for stellar songs, so I'm going with a 7/10. It's a weaker album than Forever Black, though, so unless you're also on board, you'll want to dock a point off that. Whichever side you end up on, I'm happy that Cirith Ungol are back and recording new material. They put out nothing in the seventies and four albums during their initial productive spell from 1981 to 1991. Now they're reformed, they're already at two and I'm looking forward to a third, even if they may need to find a new guitarist to replace Jim Barraza. I hope they find one.

Robby Valentine - Embrace the Unknown (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Melodic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 21 Oct 2023
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I came to this album knowing nothing except that Robby Valentine is Dutch and he records melodic rock, which I'm always keen to review because I get sent far more metal than rock and I like to keep a balance here. What I quickly found is that melodic rock is both an accurate label and one that doesn't remotely cover it to the degree needed.

He's all over the musical map, in a very deliberate manner that echoes the approach of Queen and it's very difficult not to hear their sound all over his. In fact, if you don't realise how much Queen is in what he does on on the opener, Break the Chain, then Life is a Lesson four tracks in takes care to staple a copy of A Night at the Opera onto your forehead so you can't avoid it. It doesn't shock me, reading up on his career after listening to this album, that he's recorded an array of Queen tribute releases. Any other comparisons I could conjure up, like Jason Bieler, share the same influence, so it really goes back to them.

What's important is that he does this very well indeed. In addition to writing the music and lyrics, he plays all the instruments and sings all the vocals, except a few overlays like the harmony vocals of Johan Willems on Never Fall in Line, a scream on Roll Up Your Sleeves that seems like a sample and a chorus deepening Break the Chain. This is emphatically all his work, not merely as a musician and a performer but as a creator too. He has a singular vision of what he wants to do, which I think likely starts with something small like a phrase, a melody or a rhythm, and builds it into something majestic.

Sometimes, as on Roll Up Your Sleeves, it's all three of those things at exactly the same time. The first thing we hear is a snippet of lyric a capella, but it's chanted in a very particular rhythm using a very particular melody and the instrumentation promptly picks up on that. The drums and guitar then echo it, drop into a solo bass doing the same thing, then the elements combine and we have a song out of nowhere, with Valentine adding details here, harmonies there and escalations to flesh out and polish the piece.

It's definitely a highlight because its hook is so catchy and it never drifts far away from it, but other songs are content to travel much further. The opener, for instance, changes often. Break the Chain starts symphonic, becomes arena rock, gets poppy and then progressive, and shifts on a dime from Journey to Queen to Styx. That chorus of voices adds action and samples underline that, initially a snippet of the Shelley poem The Mask of Anarchy and later brief and surprisingly grounded clips of speeches by conspiracy theory whackjob David Icke. There's a heck of a lot to digest in this one but it's all seamlessly delivered.

Don't Give Up on a Miracle seems overly simple by comparison but it's just a well formed pop song with a catchy hook bolstered by harmonies and orchestration. It's telling that the guitar solo isn't remotely close to the front of the mix, because, if Valentine is effectively playing every member of Queen, Brian May seems to be the one he identifies with the least. There are definitely moments in Break the Chain that sound like a May guitar, but Valentine's guitarwork here generally feels a little more contemporary in style and the most room he reserves for a guitar solo, which is on the closing title track, there's more Dave Gilmour there than May.

Of course, as a vocalist as well as a multi-instrumentalist, Valentine doesn't skimp on his Freddie Mercury. He's everywhere here, perhaps most prominently on Shadowland, but both John Deacon and Roger Taylor are often present too, perhaps both most obviously during Roll Up Your Sleeves. While the influence is so overt that I'm sure he's embraced it by now, this being at least his tenth album of original material, not counting tributes and other covers albums, it also makes for easily his most immediate songs. You can't get more immediate than Roll Up Your Sleeves and others like Don't Give Up on a Miracle, Life is a Lesson and Shadowland aren't far behind.

The catch to that is that his least Queen inspired pieces take more time to grasp. Show the Way is a decent track but it's also a subtle one that takes its time and so it ends up fading in comparison to most of the other tracks. Embrace the Unknown is a tasty closer and it's the longest song here, but it also takes a more subdued and elegant approach, so it doesn't leap out at us the way those with the killer hooks do. Clearly I need to check out more of what Robby Valentine's done over the past forty years or so, because he makes excellent music and he has a serious back catalogue.

Rolling Stones - Hackney Diamonds (2023)

Country: UK
Style: Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Oct 2023
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"I'm not angry with you," sings Mick Jagger on the opener, called Angry, but this album feels like the product of frustration, as indeed the title suggests, Hackney diamonds being the remnants of windscreens in the street after someone's broken into cars. The Stones haven't released an album of entirely new material in eighteen years and that's an entire generation. It's good to see them getting round to it at last and especially to see them feel so urgent doing so.

Keith Richards credits the death of drummer Charlie Watts in 2021 as the point that prompted the band to get serious enough to get the job done, though they had come close enough a few times in the years prior that Watts appears on two of these tracks, Mess It Up and Live by the Sword. Steve Jordan, who's worked with Richards on many previous projects and who stepped in on the No Filter Tour in 2021 when Watts was unable to play, takes over his drumkit otherwise, working in the same style.

As with their previous album, A Bigger Bang, this often generally stripped down and raw, as if they created this album live in the studio. There are even studio comments at the end of some of these songs that highlight just how much fun they were having. In the case of Sweet Sounds of Heaven, it feels like the song actually ends but Jagger and guest vocalist Lady Gaga are enjoying themselves so much that they build it back up again. It's an infectious feeling and it helps the album. There are no bad tracks here at all but some are definitely better and more memorable than others.

The truest Stones song is that opener, Angry, which is quintessential stuff from them. It has a good beat to kick off that leads into a good riff and a good vocal line. Of course, as with most of the best Stones songs, it builds considerably and they utterly own the groove they generate. After a couple of listens, good becomes great in each instance and it starts to feel like the sort of track that could end up on yet another greatest hits album. The other track I'd call out as traditional for the Stones is Whole Wide World, which works well if we play it in isolation but is otherwise overshadowed by Bite My Head Off right before it.

And that's the angriest, rawest and most surprising song here, certainly angrier than Angry and so much so that it verges on punk. It benefits more than any other track from a live in the studio feel, right down to Jagger urging on the surprise guest bassist, who's none other than Paul McCartney. The Beatles were never just a pop band and he covered a lot of ground with later bands like Wings, but I don't recall any time in which McCartney played anything this angry and raw. He fits it so well that I want to hear more in this vein from everyone involved.

The other big surprise here is how well Sweet Sounds of Heaven works. It's a spiritual, with Jagger leading the way but Lady Gaga matching him and taking over at points. She's not the only guest on this one, as the joyous keyboards are provided by Stevie Wonder and there are contributions from Ron Blake on trumpet and James King on sax, even if the latter is more prominent much earlier on a song called Get Close. King steals that song, to my mind, because Jagger's vocal lines aren't all free and easy, some of them feeling a little forced.

Given that I've already mentioned a punk song and a spiritual, I should add that other genres are represented here too. Dreamy Skies is a laid back country ballad, Mess It Up has a funkier edge and Rolling Stone Blues, which feels like a bonus track rather than a closer, is the blues cover you might expect, stripped down all the way to Jagger and Richards. They're all decent songs, but I wouldn't call any of them essential, unless you have a particular vested interest.

For instance, if you're an old time Stones fan, you might appreciate Watts being on Mess It Up and Live by the Sword. You might also appreciate that the bassist on the latter is Bill Wyman, who last recorded with the Stones during the previous millennium. They're both decent songs, the former a funky one and the latter more subtle but built well. You might also appreciate that Richards sings lead on Tell Me Straight, but he underwhelms, especially when contrasted with Jagger and Gaga in the following track. If you do, you'll want to go straight to them. Otherwise, you'll find the best of this album elsewhere.

Poludnica - Poludnica (2023)

Country: Slovakia
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 15 Sep 2023
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There are few things I like more than to discover a new folk metal band and here's one who play in the vein of Bucovina, a favourite of mine, though Poludnica aren't as heavy. They hail from Trenčín, which puts them quite a way from Bucovina because Trenčín is in the far west of Slovakia and Iași the far east of Romania, with a good chunk of Hungary in between. However, both play folk metal in the Balkan style with warm metal under the folk elements. Those are more evident here because they're not only explored in voice and melody but with folk instrumentation, primarily flutes and violins but also a harp.

Those are obvious from the outset, with the flutes of Zuzana Gregušová leading the way, as indeed they do on so many songs. They're a highly prominent instrument here, so much so that there may be as many solo flute sections as on guitars, often with the violins matching the flute melodies. In either case, the backdrop is a little subdued, the riffs certainly there throughout but low enough in the mix that we can almost believe that they're bleeding through from the next studio over, as the soloists and vocalists play in the primary one without walls to suppress them.

That backdrop is utterly reliable, whether it's chugging along at mid-pace, perking up for a song as lively as Medovina to prompt us to dance, even if we're sitting down, or ramping up the tempo for a belter like Slnovrat. However, it's always content to remain in the background, rather like a good friend whose presence elevates the day even if they're not prominent in conversation. The closest the riffing comes to the foreground is Krajiny, or Countries, a plaintive rock ballad, as if the lead is pleading his case, probably to a girl rather than a court, and so the lead elements are toned down. There are also wonderful bass runs on the opener, Za duše padlých, or For the Souls of the Fallen.

The primary lead element is the voice and there are three singers here. The lead for the majority of the album is Anton Chochlik, who sings in a rough but accurate tenor, almost always singing folk melodies rather than rock. The other two are backing singers, though one of them takes more of a prominent role in Medovina, or Mead. That's a lovely and lively song, as the title suggests, and it benefits from more of a female presence at the mike. At various points during other songs, these female voices echo the male, more like co-leads than backing vocalists.

I should mention that all these people work double duty. Chochlik is one of a pair of guitarists with Adrián Perrot, though I don't know how they divvy up lead and rhythm duties. Presumably both do both. The backing vocalists are Gregušová, who also plays the flutes and adds harp, most obviously on the title track, and Martina Oriešková, who also plays violin. It's these three who dominate the album, against that reliable backdrop. The guitarists do get solos, albeit not as many as we expect because they're divvied up with the flutes, and Vladimír Krabáč's bass only claims the spotlight on that opening track.

That leaves the thoroughly reliable Michal Košúth on drums, who perhaps shines brightest on the closer, Slnovrat, or Solstice, which feels celebratory and so gets more ambitious. He starts out fast and then gets interesting, both through fills and odd rhythms. While this is the only track where I found my attention specifically following what he was doing, his work feels effortless, whether he plays fast or slow, steady or intricate.

I'd love to hear more Balkan folk metal, which often feels as authentic as it gets, as their melodies feel old. The Celtic style is appropriately popular but it's also commonplace. More niche folk styles get attention as much for being niche as for being interesting, the Hu being one great example of both. Balkan folk metal sits in between, not as well known or as well heard but still almost seen as a default sound, less worthy of mention by those seeking something new and unusual.

While I may never find a Balkan folk metal album that connects with me as well as Bucovina's first, Ceasul aducerii-aminte, I'm eager to find something that comes close. This doesn't, but it's still an excellent debut and I look forward to the next album from Poludnica, especially now that I see that they've added a bagpipe player to their line-up.

Nervosa - Jailbreak (2023)

Country: Brazil
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 29 Sep 2023
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It's only been two and a half years since I reviewed Nervosa's fourth album, Perpetual Chaos, but a lot has changed with the band since then. Traditionally a trio, they were a four piece at that point, with Prika Amaral the sole remaining founder member. She's the band's guitarist and has been for its entire run but, soon after Perpetual Chaos, Helena Kotina joined as a second guitarist. Amaral was also the lead vocalist for year when the band was formed in 2010 and now she is again, as Diva Satánica left in 2022. The rest of the line-up shifted too, as bassist Mia Wallace has been replaced by Hel Pyre and Michaela Naydenova is the latest in a line seven drummers, Nanu Villalba showing up after Perpetual Chaos and gone already.

Given such continual flux—perpetual chaos, we might say—we might expect this to be transitional material as the new line-up, half of which wasn't even in place at the beginning of the year, figures out what they want to do and how they'll do it. Well, that's emphatically not the case. They kick in hard with Endless Ambition, sounding not unlike Kreator, and they demonstrate just what they can do with two guitarists in a couple of instrumental sections that I only wish were longer. The tempo shifts a lot with some neat escalations and that continues into Suffocare too.

Both these are excellent songs but Ungrateful ups the ante and absolutely blisters. It's fast out of the gate but it gets faster and then it gets playful. There's a lot here to enjoy, with buzzsaw guitar, frantic drumming and some neat tempo changes. It may well be the best track on the album, which is why it isn't too surprising that it slows down afterwards so Seed of Death can have an intro. The best Nervosa songs are the fast ones and Ungrateful has a real competitor in Kill or Die, which is a particularly vicious old school thrash song. And then Gary Holt shows up for When the Truth is a Lie to add extra depth to the guitar sound.

It's definitely the guitars that I followed most here. I love them when they're buzzing riffs through my skill. I love them when they get elegant, as they do on Seed of Death. I love them when they do something more unexpected, the solo on the title track sounding rather like what Brian Robertson was doing for Motörhead on the Another Perfect Day album. However, I also have to call out both Naydenova's drumming, which is appropriately varied but always top notch, whether she's raging on the fast songs or adding layers to slower ones, and the solid production. This album is far more in your face than its predecessor and the drums are perfectly placed in the mix.

Pyre does exactly what she needs to do on bass without ever stealing the spotlight, so that leaves Amaral's vocals, which are also more vicious than her predecessor's. Diva Satánica wasn't without death metal in her voice, but Amaral's is harsher but still enunciated. It never quite reaches death growl territory but it comes close at points, like on Gates to the Fall. Check out her introduction to Behind the Wall to see how vicious she gets, spitting out her lyrics with fury. It all works nicely with the vicious guitars for a real in your face sound. I like this new Nervosa.

Now, I've always liked Nervosa because they tend to play their thrash fast and furious, which is how I like it best. However, they don't stay in full gear throughout, mixing up the tempos to keep these songs interesting, and rarely dropping into chug sections. I'm starting to dread them on albums of late, because so many new thrash bands seem to be happy at a mid-pace, but there's a stellar chug on Sacrifice, aided by Amaral's rough vocals that keep it from feeling too soft. There's always some abrasion in her voice and that maintains an edge on these songs even on those rare occasions that they might lose it otherwise.

Given that there were a couple of guests on the previous album and I've already mentioned one in this review, I should add that there's a second guest on Superstition Failed in Lena Scissorhands, a Moldovan vocalist who sings metalcore/nu metal for Infected Rain and more traditional hard and heavy for American band Death Dealer Union. She brings a new angle to this album, without going too far beyond Nervosa's style. Holt, of course, plays into it perfectly, so Where the Truth is a Lie is just a Nervosa song with three guitars instead of two.

This is their fifth album and I'm already looking forward to their sixth. I just wonder who might be in the line-up at that point, in addition to Prika Amaral. Keeping this line-up would not be a bad thing.

Twin Temple - God is Dead (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Satanic Doo Wop
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 13 Oct 2023
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Here's a genre that I've never encountered before, but I don't see why it shouldn't be in scope for Apocalypse Later. Twin Temple hail from Los Angeles and play what their debut album's title called satanic doo wop. Yes, that's doo wop as in the vocal pop style from the forties and fifties that was inspired by barbershop quartets and made famous by bands like the Ink Spots. But it's Satanic and overtly so. Initially, we can't help but follow the lyrics and see this as a gimmick aiming to provoke a response, which, of course it is. However, this is Twin Temple's third album and they make this an enticing sound entirely apart from the gimmick, even if some moments lean towards the comedic, like the intro to Spellbreaker.

Part of that is because it's well written and well performed, by the duo of Alexandra and Zachary James, the former's delightfully sultry voice leading the way. Part of it, though, is in how the way in which they recorded it. For a start, they record in mono, because all their inspirations did, and it helps to age the sound. There's also a real dirtiness to it too that darkens even the perkiest parts, keeping the feel that this was originally released in 1950 but utterly buried until now. I believe the band records live, taking the best of a handful of takes of each song and that authenticity shines. It's also over quickly, wrapping up in under half an hour in a nod to history.

There are plenty of ties to rock music to call out, each of which helps explain why Twin Temple tour in support of bands like Ghost and Danzig. Opening track Burn Your Bible begins with a bell tolling in a storm, which always makes me expect Tony Iommi's guitar to follow up with an iconic riff, but, of course, it doesn't. Let's Have a Satanic Orgy isn't just doo wop, it's dark exotica, something that could easily have been recorded by Screaming Jay Hawkins, one of the true pioneers of metal. OK, Alexandra James doesn't attempt the hoots and hollers and animal noises that Hawkins peppered throughout his songs, but I heard them anyway. There's an actual guitar solo in Spellbreaker.

If the best aspect to this is how authentic the production sounds, all the way down to the dirty horn section and sleazy sax in Be a Slut, the next is how authentic the music sounds. Even if you dismiss this as nothing but a gimmick, you ought to acknowledge that these musicians aren't trampling on a genre, because they clearly know and appreciate it and have the musical talent to do this justice. "Why can’t you love Roy Orbison and hail Satan at the same time?" they ask and explore that over eight tracks that cover more ground than you might expect.

After that Sabbath style intro, Burn Your Bible sounds like a doo wop song and not a lot more, but it's very different to Let's Have a Satanic Orgy and both are very different to Black Magic, which is almost a Shirley Bassey song as it kicks off. Oddly, while seven of these tracks pop for me, meaning that the melodies and backdrop grab us as quickly as they need to in songs that rarely venture far beyond three minutes and don't always last past two and change, the one that doesn't is the title track that wraps up the album. It's the longest on offer here at four minutes and twenty and, even after a few listens, it always vanishes from my attention, sadly letting the album fade away.

I'm not sure what the audience for 21st century doo wop truly is, though I'd bet it's larger than we might expect, given how big the exotica and tiki scenes are. However, if Twin Temple didn't have a particular gimmick, I doubt they would have crossed my path and that of many other people. That they're damn good at what they do is what kept me and I look forward to seeing how long they can make this ride last before it becomes old and stale. Three albums in, it's still fresh and vibrant. God may or may not be dead but satanic doo wop is very much alive.

On Thorns I Lay - On Thorns I Lay (2023)

Country: Greece
Style: Atmospheric Doom/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 13 Oct 2023
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On Thorns I Lay have been around for a long while, even if you haven't heard the name before, but they're not the same band they've been. They were founded in Athens back in 1992, with their first album released three years later, and they've experienced a slew of line-up changes, as tends to be the case. However, until their ninth album, Threnos in 2020, the band remained centered around a pair of founder members, lead vocalist Stefanos Kintzoglou, who also contributed bass until 2017, and guitarist Christos Dragamestianos.

That changed in 2021 when Kintzoglou left to reform the band that became On Thorns I Lay with a few former members. That's Phlebotomy, not to be mistaken with Phlebotomized, the Dutch death metal band. Maybe that's why this album is self-titled. Presumably Dragamestianos sees it as the fresh start the band needs, especially given that the rest of the line-up is very new. Vocalist Peter Miliadis, guitarist Nikolas Paraskevopoulos and bassist Kostas Mexis are each making their studio debuts for On Thorns I Lay here.

If you've followed On Thorns I Lay through those decades, you might be wondering what style they have adopted this week. They started out as brutal death metal, shifted to symphonic doom/death and then gothic metal, before eventually moving back to the doom/death style evident here. The new aspect is folk instrumentation, which I believe shows up here for the first time. There are lots of ethnic instruments on display here and the opener, Fallen from Grace, kicks off with ethnic voice and strings. However, it's still doom/death rather than folk metal, merely with new textures.

I'm a folk metal fan, so I'd be happy with more of the ethnic instrumentation, but it works well as a contrast, replacing the beauty and the beast vocal contrast from some earlier albums. This aspect isn't overused, but it is integral. One of my favourite sections in the album arrives late in Thorns of Fire when the heavy doom/death is accompanied by what I presume is some sort of zither. Many of the songs feature this contrast in some form, especially Crestfallen, both at the beginning and in the midsection, and Among the Wolves, both of which are favourites of mine.

The band's core sound nowadays is an elegant form of atmospheric doom metal, which is slow and crushingly heavy but full of melody, especially through the guitars. It's a rich and immersive sound that, at its best, feels apart from everything as if it's torn a hole in the space/time continuum and dragged us through to somewhere and somewhen entirely new. The death aspect comes mostly in a warm but harsh growled vocal from Miliadis, who I presume is versatile given that he also sings for a crossover thrash band, Double Square, and used to sing for a metalcore band, SlavEATgod.

The instrument that stood out the most for me was the guitar. I don't know how much of that is the work of Dragamestianos and how much his new compatriot, Paraskevopoulos, but the combination worked for me, whether they were soloing, providing melodic lines in a Paradise Lost style or even dropping into an acoustic or ethnic mode, using whatever other stringed instruments were sitting around. I've read that there were many of them, as many as fifteen different instruments, though I have no idea what or where.

The other aspect that deserves mention is that these aren't generally short songs but they're not epics either. Fallen from Grace opens up at just over eight minutes and Crestfallen exceeds it by a single second. The final three songs run seven minutes and varying degrees of change, with only a single track left to serve as the anomaly. That's Newborn Skies, which fails to reach five minutes, a strange and ironic fact given that it's the song with the most symphonic backdrop. We might think that that would be the epic but it isn't here and it's a fair length. The rest of the songs breathe nicely.

I'm new to On Thorns I Lay, as far as I'm aware, and I have to remind myself that this is a new start for them, but I'm interested in what they sounded like previously. The gothic tinges have been far more pivotal to their sound in the past, from what I read, and I've been a particular fan of beauty and the beast vocals since they were invented. Maybe I'll dip into their earlier work once I get back on track with reviews after the events of the past few months. In the meantime, I'm happy with the old school doom/death sound they have here, with heavier death growls and a teasing element of folk added for good measure. I like.

White Canyon & The 5th Dimension - Gardeners of the Earth (2023)

Country: Brazil
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 4 Aug 2023
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I hear a lot of intros on albums nowadays and very few of them have any reason to be there. There are some that serve to grab our attention and some that tease us into what's to come, but it's not particularly often that I hear an intro truly nail both those things but Caminho das Pedras is a fair example of an intro that does both. It sets the mood with a hypnotic swirling sitar that takes us all the way back to the late sixties but adds contemporary touches too, before rolling on into the first track proper, which is the title track. We know what we're getting into, we're placed into the right mood to receive it and we flow on into the rest of the album. It's a great start.

Gardeners of the Earth lives up to the intro too. There's that prominent old school Pink Floyd bass that I remember so well from White Canyon's prior album, Spectral Illusion, and it continues that hypnotic groove. Quite frankly, the more hypnotic this band gets, the better they sound to me. My favourite track here may be Black Holes, which is stripped down to its essence, almost like a garage rock song played at half speed. The guitar is prominent and then the voices, but I end up falling for the drums every time. It's so hypnotic that we could believe the band performed it in a trance. Its closest competitor is Harsh Down, which has been playing in my head when I wake up, and Chapter V - Mental Universe isn't far behind that one.

I mentioned voices plural and should explain that there are two vocalists here, whose names are a mystery to me, but one is male and the other female and both get the opportunity to lead songs. I remember a gothic vibe from the prior album that's here too but to a lesser degree. It's there on the title track for sure, with the male voice taking the lead and the female voice bolstering it like an echo, and it's there in Ancient Secrets of Green Leaf, with the roles reversed. As they move into Howling Pines, though, with the female voice leading the way, and Fireflies Dance, which returns to both singing together, the vibe is firmly folky rather than gothic. Others drift between the two.

Now, whether they're folky or gothic, they're always psychedelic rock with an occasional dip into a more poppy sound. Fireflies Dance maintains the American hippie psychedelia that pervades the album, but it starts out like the Beatles at their most psychedelic and never truly loses that. I love the organ in Howling Pines too, which has that perky sound that tends to belong to the earlier pop songs recorded by bands that evolved into rock music in the seventies. There's more of that within Ancient Secrets of Green Leaf, along with more hypnotic drumming, and this one feels like it could be a fascinating reinterpretation of a Nick Cave song.

In other words, there's a lot here and the songs are neatly immersive. It was clearly going to be an album to recommend from the very beginning but it gets better as it runs on. Those favourites of mine start at the end of side one and roll through side two, all the way to InnerOutside, a fantastic closer that reminds of John Kongos writing and singing for Hawkwind. Then again, I expected a lot from this band because they got a rare 9/10 from me last time out for Spectral Illusion, back in May 2021, even though they lost out for my Album of the Month to a killer Flotsam and Jetsam release.

The challenge for them was always going to be to reach and maybe even exceed the standard that Spectral Illusion set. I wasn't initially sure that it matched it, as the album wasn't as immediate for me, but it was clearly excellent and it grew and continued to grow. It reached the point where it's perhaps only falling behind it because it's not my introduction to the band. Had I heard this first, I might have been blown away just as much as I was when I heard Spectral Illusion. As it is, I'm loving it almost as much. Now I just need to stop listening to it so I can move onto another review. That is not going to be easy.