LAHMIA: “RESILIENCE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 132019
 

 

(Here’s TheMadIsraeli‘s enthusiastic review of the new album by the Italian melodic death metal band Lahmia, which was released on January 18 of this year by.)

 

I’ve been intensely busy and my attention diverted elsewhere, which sunk my original review plans.  Expect multi-reviews in the future for catch-up purposes.  However, I want to highlight today’s subject in particular.

I think it’s pretty hard for any sane metalhead to hate Amon Amarth. They are one of metal’s most consistent darlings; their brand of Viking-themed melodic death metal has been a staple of the genre for quite some time. Although, with that said, I think most people who like Amon Amarth aren’t Amon Amarth FANS who like the band’s whole discography from beginning to end.

When most people think of the band, there are probably many who first remember their run of albums from 2002 to 2008 — that being Versus The World, Fate Of Norns, With Oden On Our Side, and Twilight Of The Thunder God.  A lot of the band’s live-set staples, the majority, come from these four albums, and it’s the sound we most often associate with them.

There’s definitely a collective sense that Amon Amarth have been running out of gas since then.  Surtur Rising, Deceiver Of The Gods, and Jomsviking, while all good, didn’t hit the inspired, firing-on-all cylinders feeling that the previously mentioned albums did.  I’m not putting too much blame on the band for this — Amon Amarth is TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD, and fatigue of their own sound and diminishing returns are bound to set in. Continue reading »

CEREMONY OF SILENCE: “OÚTIS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Mar 122019
 

 

(Vonlughlio prepared this review of the new album by the Slovakian blackened death metal band Ceremony of Silence.)

It’s been quite a bit since my last small write-up and I was planning on something else, but I needed to write about Ceremony of Silence‘s debut album Oútis, to be released via Willowtip Records on April 5th.

The project is guitarist Vilozof and drummer Svjatogor – both already deeply-rooted in the Slovakian underground metal scene – who formed Ceremony of Silence in 2015. The duo spent countless hours immersed in freeflowing, improvised jams and writing sessions. As they continued, they developed the 7 chapters of this effort, which can be described as death metal with a dissonant/atmospheric feel that is evident, with blast beats that emerge rapidly out of nowhere and riffs that are in constant motion and very addictive. Continue reading »

DEVIN TOWNSEND: “EMPATH”

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
Mar 112019
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of Devin Townsend‘s new album, which will be released on March 29th by InsideOut Music.)

As much as we like to think of ourselves as being a cut above the average consumer of “popular” music, the truth is that the Metal scene is just as vulnerable to the same trends and biases, the same prejudices and predispositions, as any other style of music.

One of the most obvious (and most egregious) is our collective tendency to buy into the pervasive “cult of personality” surrounding certain artists, and become unwilling/unable to offer or accept even the slightest criticism of their work, sometimes to the extent of responding to even the mildest suggestion of fault with the sort of overblown outrage that serves mainly to remind people that the term “fan” is derived from the word “fanatic”.

Basically what I’m trying to say is that there’s no requirement that if you like a band/artist that you have to like everything they do.

But, as long as it’s done well, with honesty and integrity, you should at least be able to respect it.

Which, coincidentally (or not), is exactly the position I find myself in with Empath. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): HORCRUX, AT DUSK

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Mar 102019
 

 

The first Part of today’s column focused on individual advance tracks from forthcoming albums. This second Part includes brief reviews of two complete albums. There’s a full stream of the first one included below, and half of the songs from the second one. Both records display the more depressive colors of the black metal spectrum, though they’re more similar in mood than in sound — and both are gripping achievements.

HORCRUX

Released on March 8th, Loss and Grief is the second album by the Dutch black metal band Horcrux, but my own first exposure to their music. Actually, I should say “his music”, because it appears to be a one-person project.

As the album’s title suggests, the music is suffused with shades of gloom, which range from throes of painful turmoil to a kind of dismal, glowering hopelessness, from the tension of despair to the moaning exhalations of bereavement. as well as moments that betray a soulful yearning. Horcrux creates those moods through music that cross-breeds a range of styles — black metal of course, but also doom, sludge, and atmospheric post-metal. Continue reading »

VENOM PRISON: “SAMSARA”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Mar 062019
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Venom Prison, which will be released on March 15th by Prosthetic Records.)

So this weekend just gone I had the pleasure of seeing Bryan Adams playing to a packed out arena full of people, performing tracks from across his fourteen(!)-album back catalogue with all the verve and vitality of a man who has built his career, and his life, around a simple love of music.

On the surface, of course, the former’s uplifting pop-rock anthems have very little in common with the hideously abrasive assault of Venom Prison, whose second album is arguably an even more aggressive, no-holds-barred barrage of Death Metal fury than their first, but I find it interesting all the same to see how the basic building blocks of both artists’ music – guitars, bass, drums, vocals – are basically the same, yet the execution and end result are so strikingly different.

One thing that the two do have in common, however, is that their music undeniably comes straight from the heart (pun intended)… although in the case of Samsara it does so in a much more bloody and brutal way than anything which the (in)famous groover from Vancouver has ever released! Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DOOMBRINGER — “WALPURGIS FIRES”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  6 Responses »
Mar 062019
 

 

Everything about Doombringer’s new album Walpurgis Fires is sorcerous. One imagines hooded warlocks reciting conjurations over a smoking cauldron, transmuting a host of musical ingredients into a strange new potion that’s both intoxicating and poisonous. A metal musicologist would have a fine old time attempting to reverse-engineer what they’ve done and trying to document the formula, and we’ll do a bit of that here because their concoction is so unusually inventive.

But such a dissection would only go so far in explaining why the album is such a heady (and unnerving) experience; there is no good substitute for simply listening to it — which we’re giving you the opportunity to do today in advance of the album’s release tomorrow (March 7th) by Nuclear War Now! Productions. Continue reading »

MORO MORO LAND: SMIRENIE

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 062019
 

 

(This is DGR’s very enthusiastic review of the new EP by the Russian band Moro Moro Land, which was released on February 20.)

I enjoyed the hell out of the Russian group Moro Moro Land‘s 2015 EP Through. The combination of dark atmospherics, the smoke-tinged reverb-haze that seemed to surround the band, and the metallic-hardcore with which the band built that EP really struck a chord with me. To this day, Through remains a constant listen. While the “Something In The Way” cover plays it relatively straight, it also does a fantastic job of demonstrating the filter through which Moro Moro Land put their music. If you’re familiar with the original then you’ll hear how the songs prior to it were formed and then “painted ugly”, just to add a fine layer of dinge to an already heavy experience.

Which is why learning through our very own web site about the group’s followup Smirenie, four years after its predecessor, put me in two very distinct moods. I felt like an utter dipshit for learning through our own news about a band I had gotten used to regularly checking up on myself, and I was also incredibly excited — because if the Moro Moro Land crew could inch anywhere close to Through again, then the Smirenie EP was going to be something that would be very easy to recommend.

At a little over twenty minutes in length, if the question is whether you should give Moro Moro Land‘s new EP a shot, then the answer is relatively simple: Absolutely yes. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WHYTHRE — “STILLBORN WORLD”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 052019
 

 

If your ass has been dragging, beaten down and disgusted by the daily grind, strapped for sleep, short on cash, and your reservoirs of hope running low as well, we’ve got a sure-fire antidote for most of those ails. Granted, it won’t put any cash in your pocket (though it won’t demand any from you either), but it will make you feel a whole hell of a lot better. And if you’ve got a bellyful of rage you’d like to get out of your system, what you’re about to hear will provide some catharsis for that, too.

What we’ve got for you is a premiere stream of Stillborn World, the explosive new EP by Whythre, which is being released today as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp. It really will make everything better, at least as long as you’re listening to it. Continue reading »

WRETCHED FATE: “FLESHLETTING”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 052019
 

 

(Here’s Todd Manning‘s review of the debut album by Sweden’s Wretched Fate, released on February 22nd by Redefining Darkness Records.)

When Old School Death Metal made its initial comeback, there was a welcome focus on the kind of Punked-up, hyperprimitive violence as best exemplified by Autopsy and their ilk. This particular approach is certainly fruitful and, for many, will never grow old, but it’s great to see other acts dive into other Death Metal discographies and come up with material that, while not technical the way the term is used today, is certainly more accomplished than the aforementioned OSDM acts.

One such band bringing their particular brand of pain is Swedish killing unit Wretched Fate on their album Fleshletting, which just came out on Redefining Darkness. At first glance, this album reeks of their Swedish heritage in the best possible ways. Furious d-beats, check. HM-2 distortion, check. Graveyard stench, check. But there’s more to this concoction than just rehashing old Dismember and Entombed records. Continue reading »

SWALLOW THE SUN: “WHEN A SHADOW IS FORCED INTO THE LIGHT”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 052019
 

 

(DGR reviews the newest album by Finland’s Swallow the Sun, which was released on January 25th. All photos accompanying this review were made by Jussi Ratilainen.)

Of all the reviews that are currently piling up on this end of the internet spectrum — and every year there will always be a handful in this situation — Swallow The Sun‘s latest album When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light (released at the tail end of January) is one of those which has taken the longest to write — and not because you’re viewing the result of a drunken bet to see how many words we can fit onto a page.

There’s a whole swath of reasons for that: Continue reading »

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