Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Vulture : "Sentinels"










I recently reviewed the new Atrophy album which really rocked out, and made me want to check out what is going on with Thrash today. This German band is doing the opposite of what Atrophy did, they are looking back at the sounds of the past and paying homage to them. Most notably old "Haunting the Chapel" era Slayer with "Bonded By Blood" era Exodus. Complete with the falsetto yodels.  Where Atrophy was a band from that era that was blending the sounds of today's music to create something that felt more vital, than this band who in their opening song comes across like a tribute band. 

I can appreciate the fact that this singer has more personality than most and is pretty much hitting the notes. Where a band like Steel Panther does this thing as a joke, I think these guys are dead serious. They are not just embracing the cheese of the era, but worshipping it., If you are into guitar solos they have them coming out of their ears, and are every bit as cheese-laden as those from 1986. The sound of the 80s can be dialed in using the right equipment, slathering everything in big reverb. Writing songs as well as those bands is another story. There is almost a Scorpions or Aceept-like feel to "Realm of the Impaler". They might be on Metal Blade, but this feels more like Combat Records.  There is a cool harmonized guitar part that reminds me of early King Diamond. 

He is certainly an influence in how they approach the falsetto scream leading into "Draw Your Blades' . The taunt verse riff owes more to Megadeth. Thus the cross-breeding of the two makes Flotsam and Jetsam, especially in how the gang vocals are handled. "Where there's a Whip there's a Way" just kind of thrashes along a more generic path. There is a weird instrumental song, that is well executed, but confusing in what they are trying to accomplish with it. "Death Row" is more straightforward forward, Exodus worship. "Gargoyles" is a little darker, but mostly straightforward thrash, which is also where "Oathbreaker" falls, though it is marginally catchier. The last song has some of the best riffing, though the vocals follow more of an Exodus cadence. I will give this album an 8.5, which is more than generous given the derivative nature of what they do. Metal Blade drops this April 12th. 


DARKO - "Greyscale"

 




This UK band blends the punk of the 90s with the punk of today. The vocals range from forceful shouts that navigate the songs with hooky ease, to growls and actual singing. This brings a more Boy Sets Fire mood to the songs. Some technical riffs weave around the impassioned singing. 'Aggro" feels like it racing down the middle of the road is like if AI was asked to write a hardcore song from the late 90s. Sure they are skilled musicians, but hit or miss when it comes to actually writing songs. 

"Aux II" has winding rock riffs thrown against growled vocals that are more metal than hardcore. The little melodic guitar passage works well, but the album might be too overproduced for its good, I would have mixed it more like a Coalesce album. Perhaps that is part of my problem with it is that it is too upbeat. Things could be darker and angry for sure. The lyrics seem like they are inspired by people arguing about politics on Facebook, 

"Lowest Hanging Fruit' sounds like a faster more tech metal version of Boy Sets Fire. I prefer Boy Sets Fire to what these guys are doing as it feels darker due to the rawer more honest expression, where it feels like these guys are just trying too hard. They might be more convincing doing something more metal like say Finch. That said they are skilled at what they do, it's well executed, and they pulled off what they were looking to do in terms of overall sound so I will give this album an 8. It is being dropped on Lockjaw Records on May 17th. 


EIVØR : "ENN"






There is a difference between exploiting and embracing your culture. This Nordic siren might sing in her native tongue of Faroese, but she is not pulling out folk instruments to play Viking. She owes more to the ethereal darkwave acts of the 80s than any neo-folk. Ironically she is on tour with Heilung who are marketing geniuses despite their primitive shtick. The ambiance is thick on the opening track of her newest album, but by the second song, you can hear that she is not just about capturing a sound, she is capable of writing songs. It's closer to the dance floor than Enya, but there is a slight new-age meditative quality, even to the more sultry moments. It's an odd release for Season of Mist. 

When the electronic elements are in place to give the songs a backbone to anchor them then the results are quite stunning. Her voice is powerful and capable of doing most of the heavy lifting, but the more help she gets from the accompaniment the better. When things are stripped down more minimally to just her singing with a piano, there is not enough going on to anchor in. Some of this has to do with the way she uses her voice as an instrument rather than the support beam of the melody. The title track finds her diving deeper into the atmosphere. Her voice is certainly capable of creating the otherworldly feel. Once again the more electronic elements ground the song. 

The vocal production is pretty immaculate, this is highlighted in "Livsandin". It feels like an Everything But the Girl song from the  90s but with more depth.  First-time guitar really stands out on this album. This holds a great deal of common ground with Lydia Ainsworth. " Upp Úr Øskuni" is the wildest witch moment that has guttural vocals used in a throat singing style not unlike Heilung.  Unlike Heilung her songwriting remains the focus rather than trying to perform some primal heritage ritual. The last song "Gaia" basks in the ethereal. It focuses more on its floating mood than being a gripping song, it does feel a little like a requiem.  This is a solid album of electronic-minded atmospheric pop, I will give it a 9. 


My Dying Bride : "A Mortal Binding"







The band's 14th full length, stays true to who they are, without being predictable. You never know what side of these guys you are going to get, anything from morose doom to the dark vein of death metal they helped create to melodic goth rock with major depression. This album seems to be uncertain as well. It starts off with compact punchy death metal, and then the second song gifts into their more sorrowful take on doom. Both work well. The wailing tones of the violin weeps over the low-end crunch. Guitar solos are well paced and deliberate with every not counting to draw out the melodies. While Aarons's growl on the first song is not as guttural, his sung vocals are more refined. In both cases, the vocals are really well produced and mixed. 

"The Second of Three Bells" starts off in melancholic doom, and builds into punchy death metal. The doomy passages have a more majestic atmosphere to them ."Unthroned Creed' is one of the album's best songs. The guitars ride a taunt groove, as the vocals have room to emote their hooks . the drumming gracefully navigates the time changes. The 11-minute epic "the Apocalypist" is sprawling in a manner that only a few bands do well, these guys being one of the few as the twists and turns keep your interest. But still, 11 minutes is a lot to digest. 

"A Starving Heart " is one of those songs that even before the vocals come in you would know is My Dying Bride. Aaron is singing from his depressed place that I love and only two minutes into the song I am sold. The distinct phrasing of the riff that opens the closing dirge "Crushed Embers" is another moment that bears the band's fingerprints well. The pleading croon of the vocals is where his voice sits best. They are masters of pouring on the sorrow, which is a quality that sets the doom genre apart from other kinds of metal. Say all you want about sub-genres in metal but there is no way what they are doing could be considered or confused with anything aside from doom. It carries a mournful beauty that this song clearly defines. I will give this one a 9.5, and see how if sits on me, it is hard for me to think of the 11-minute sprawl as perfect, keeping this album from being perfect, though it might grow on me, but 9.5, is better than what most doom bands are doing these days, and preserves their legacy well. This is dropping April 19th on Nuclear Blast. 


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Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Einstürzende Neubauten : "Rampen"

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These legends have been at it for 44 years. These guys are one of the first industrial bands, and I would say the genre owes more to them than Throbbing Gristle. The opening track is over ten minutes and the aggressive nature of what they do is dialed back, but it is not gone. Granted these guys are not young angsty punks anymore. If you are wondering why there is no more yelling on this album that is the reason. Though they have admittedly gone in another direction. The album's title refers to their fetish for live improvisation. This album captures that experimental endeavor, though the band's intent is to create pop music for aliens. These are intelligent men who know such beings are not from other planets but this music is for parallel universes, the interzones that lie in-between worlds. This makes perfect sense as they are crafting vibrational frequencies here.

They show many sides on this album. The first song has a jamming groove that they play with for ten minutes, but it works. The second song is the lead single, and it's weird, but more of a fully functioning song from these guys, almost like a Negro spiritual. It's one of the songs that I have to listen to several times to fully absorb. Then there is "Pestalozzi' which feels like Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, never have I heard Germans sound so British. After that, they turn around and prove they are really Germans with "Es koente sein " which is a spaced-out neo-folk of sorts. This is where the album feels like they are more into sounds than songs, as this continues on "Before I Go" which is back in Syd Barrett's acid-laced zip-code.

"Isso Isso" has more groove to its somewhat more solemn mood. The album as a whole is more contemplative than confrontational. "Besser Isses" works off more of a groove that they jam out, not unlike the first song but more intentional. "Everything Will Be Fine" sounds more like what you might expect from these guys if you were expecting something more on their droning experimental side. "the Pit of Language" tries to be more of a song, but drones on one melody, for what they do this works. "Planet Umbra" finds them jamming for almost nine minutes. It flows and throbs like a mix of kraut rock and dub. "Tar and Feathers" is more ambient and does less for me. 

"Aus Den Zeiten" is a gradual build that hypnotizes you. The vocals are mostly spoken. It's dynamic even amid its drone. The song after it works off a more ambient and minimalist noise vibe. They keep with the minimalism but move in a more folk direction for "Trilobiten" where the percussion is barely a meager patter underneath it. The last song finds them painting the sonic scope with a bleak atmosphere even thicker, though it does not have the dynamics of other songs on this album. This album shows the range they cover, it captures where they have arrived as a band well. I will give it an 8.5, as it leans more on the droning minimalist side, more than the organic grooving I appreciated earlier in the album. It still serves them well as a testimony to their length career. 


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Monday, March 25, 2024

Alpha Wolf : "Half Living Things"

 



This Australian band's name came up when doing research on the phenomena of metalcore bands that are really nu-metal bands. On the first song of their new album, it is easy to hear where this line is crossed. It is also understandable why their name is popping up on this year's rock festival lineups. They remind me of Attila. They are big dumb fun. If these guys are your favorite band you are probably the coolest kid in the trailer park. But you might also have one friend who is a Juggalo. When they pour on the speed things feel a little rushed and like they are not playing to their strength. "Haunter" has more groove, but blends the creep hop elements that make up nu-metal, until they momentum. He screams about how fucked up of a person he is, which contrasts with the more ego-driven lyrics.

They bring Ice-T on, and while I love the "Orginal Gangster" album, and his older work like "Power". It sounds dated and the last time anyone thought he was hard was before he ever played a cop on TV. It is hard to take "Cop Killer" seriously after that. His verse is really just an accent, but still hard to take seriously. There is a more melodic element to "Whenever You're Ready" which has a sung chorus, which is kinda pop punk. "Pretty Boy" has more growled and screamed vocals, that lean them in more of a metal core direction. The groove is what wins me over with it. 

They use a more mathy djent-like syncopation on "Mangekyo". I like the lyrics as I can relate to the line "What god ever gave a fuck". I feel that one.  But musically it sounds like a metal-core breakdown on wheels. There is a machine-like feel to the riffing of "A Terrible Day For Rain".  This song feels like they are playing it a little safe, and it sounds like every other band doing this sort of thing, "Feign" is a little darker, and flows better than the previous song. "Garden of Eyes" continues to work on the djent machine's grinding groove. To the point that it almost feels like dub-step in places. The vocals sound like a more feral version of early Deftones. The title track is more rapped than screamed, until the chorus. There is almost a Mudvayne element to their sound here. 

At over five minutes the last song is the album's longest. The first forty-five seconds, being the build-up into that could have been scaled back. There is a more cinematic feel to it, but it's not as hooky as most of the other songs. The sung vocals play a larger role. But they are not all that hooky. I would have been more into this when I was younger if this had come out at the same time Korn had.  I will give this one a 9, as it is a great deal of fun. Sharptone might have a hit on their hands when it drops April 15th, as I can hear where the appeal of this lies, and they are one of the more polished bands doing this. 



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Sunday, March 24, 2024

Civerous : "Maze Envy"









The album cover looks almost identical to "Domination" so how can I not go into this expecting this to sound like where slime might live? Morbid Angel might be an influence, but to this band's credit, they are taking things in a more dismal direction. The growls are lower and make no attempt to form hooks. The vocals exist only to create a perverse layer of humanity being defiled with each wretched utterance. It is more of a vibration than anything that really bears being paid attention to. The way the riffs are phrased does have a machine-like grind similar to the genre Morbid Angel helped create. But most death metal bands formed after 2000, have a hard time not admitting to a Morbid Angel influence unless they are an Entombed tribute band.  The sheer heaviness they hit you with makes it hard to no be impressed with what they are laying down here, so it is not until the second song that you can ask if they can actually write songs or if are they just sadists looking to beat the shit out of your ears with their riffs. 

Perhaps one of their weaknesses as a band is dragging things out for too long, rather than knowing when enough is enough rather than just beating you with redundancy. Over half the songs are over the eight-minute mark. The only two songs under three minutes are just interludes. The growls hold more purpose and authority in the second song. The riffing is more jagged as the song carries more of a stomp. Some parts do blast off into the abyss. At under five minutes, it might be the most accessible song on the album.It feels more like Post- Vincent Morbid, in how the riffs shift over each other.  By the time we reach  "Levitation Tomb" clean guitar tones are being used in actual songs and more melodic depth is introduced. This helps separate them from the death metal pack. They also creep in some more technical aspects, but without relying on wanky guitar. 

The title track is interesting, as it has a more angular feel. The term death doom gets thrown around in regards to these guys and this feels like the first song that warrants that comparison. Also, the first passages are dark enough to touch a similar sonic space as black metal bubbles to the surface of this song. They contrast this with clean guitar tones bathing in the atmosphere. This makes the more intense blasting of other passages more bearable. The last song keeps leaning into the more morose doom side. There is a wider range of emotional responses rather than the angry pounding that Death Metal is known for. They do make their way to the in-your-face kind of blasting that is obligatory for the genre these days.  In some ways, this feels like it owes more to funeral doom in this regard. I will give this album a 9, as it works much better than most death metal these days without having to compromise much of the heaviness. Being released on 20 Buck Spin. 


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