PANTHEON I: “FROM THE ABYSS THEY RISE”

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Jul 112014
 

(Andy Synn reviews the new fourth album by Norway’s Pantheon I.)

Now, strictly speaking, From The Abyss They Rise is a compilation album, comprising an EP’s worth of new tracks combined with a collection of rare tracks and early demos. For the purpose of this review I’m going to be focussing entirely on the EP itself, although that’s not to say that the rare/unreleased material is without merit – “Enter The Pantheon” (the band’s first ever demo) and their cover of Emperor classic “Thus Spake The Nightspirit” in particular are definitely worthy of your interest and attention.

These new tracks are the first Pantheon I have written/recorded with the involvement of new guitarist Aethyris (aka Shandy MacKay – Horizon Ablaze, ex-Absu, as well as live session work for both Melechesh and perennial NCS favourites Khonsu), and his impressive talent and pedigree certainly serve the band well on these five songs, adding a touch more proggy ingenuity and melody to the band’s acid-drenched Black Metal assault. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: BÖLZER — “SOMA”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  8 Responses »
Jul 102014
 

A deep rumbling noise could be heard rising up from the bowels of the interhole yesterday as the name BÖLZER! was simultaneously growled by reviewers who had just received their advance copies of the band’s new EP Soma. The degree of excitement that had been building in anticipation of the EP was phenomenal, given that before Soma this Swiss band had only released a grand total of six songs — three of them on 2012’s Roman Acupuncture and three on 2013’s Aura. I can’t think of many extreme underground bands who’ve made such a big splash in so little time on the strength of so few tracks. But on the other hand, this Swiss duo really don’t sound like anyone else, and that’s a rare achievement in this day and age.

I’ve admitted before that my attraction to Bölzer has bordered on the unhealthy. I listened to Aura so much that I began to fear an alien entity had taken up residence in my skull. I included “Entranced By the Wolfshook” on my list of 2013’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. After seeing the band at Maryland Deathfest, I waited in line so long to buy a shirt that I missed the next band’s entire set (but seriously, how could you not struggle for the chance to get apparel emblazoned with “THUNDER TONGUE BOLT FIST” on the back?). So yes, I was growling the name yesterday, too.

Well, I have good news and bad news about Soma. The bad news is that it only includes two songs — “Steppes” and “Labyrinthian Graves”. And that’s it for the bad news. Continue reading »

ORIGIN: “OMNIPRESENT”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 082014
 

(DGR wrote this review of the new album by Origin.)

Origin are a band who have some miles on them. In my case, they landed on my radar ‘long about the time Headbangers Ball gave their video a spin back in 2008 — I think? — and since then I’ve attempted to keep my eyes on them. However, the group stick to a pretty solid new-album-every-three-years schedule, so it wasn’t until 2011 that I got to really swoop into the whole zeitgeist of fandom with them after the release of Entity. With Entity, Origin really planted both feet on the ground as one of the bands who were going to take the concept of tech-death and push it to its very limits. Instrumentally, the whole album was a frightening affair — filled with a combination of technical pyrotechnics and insane speed capable of leaving listeners slack-jawed. That the album was essentially a three-man affair made the whole thing even more insane.

The issue with that album, though, is that for all its incredible playing and stunning technicality — believe me, it was insanely challenging from the first note of the over-the-top “Expulsion Of Fury” — it became something of a morass. You couldn’t really tell which song was which after a while, as one wall of notes after another came crashing down around you. Part of that could be written off, because it feels like the very purpose that drives Origin’s existence: to be the “most”. If they were going to go a full blown tech-death route in 2011, then Entity was going to be the “most” tech-death you could pack into one disc, and the result was a dense obsidian slab of it.

That’s why, with Entity as background, I became so interested three years later about Origin’s new disc Omnipresent. Where would the band going after something like Entity? Could they line up with earlier releases? Could they match Antithesis and its endless replay back in the Headbangers Ball 2.0 days on MTV2? All of these questions were valid, plus you now have the presence of a dedicated vocalist within the band. Surprisingly enough, on Omnipresent, Origin reign it in a bit . The stunning guitar playing, progressive writing, and insanely technical aspect of the band are all still present, but now you can actually distinguish just what the hell is going on, and in that sense Origin have created some of their most enjoyable music to date. Continue reading »

SPECTRAL LORE: “III”

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Jul 062014
 

 

The new album by Spectral Lore (III) has more facets than a passion-cut diamond, and it shines just as brilliantly. So much care and craftsmanship have been devoted to its creation that it’s one of those rare metal albums that rises to the level of a work of art — except it’s only partially a metal album. And therein lies much of its appeal.

With a run-time of almost 90 minutes, it’s the longest album I’ve listened to in years, which is one reason why this review comes later than I had originally planned. It’s also not an album that can be fully appreciated by listening to a track here and a track there, as time permits. It’s best heard as a whole (at least as I hear it — I have no inside knowledge about the artist’s intentions). Each song brings its own rich rewards individually — indeed, most songs are themselves dramatic sagas in sound — but when you listen without interruption from start to finish, you feel as if you’ve discovered secrets hidden from the eyes we use to observe our daily lives, as if the surface layers of our routine existence are being peeled back to reveal something more profound. The music seeks transcendence, an escape from the crushing weight of the world and its manifold tyrannies, and it comes very close to finding it.

The album is divided into two parts, denominated “Singularity” and “Eternity”, with four songs in Part I and three in Part II. With the exception of the album’s first song “Omphalos” (which is “only” 7 1/2 minutes long), the individual pieces are epic-length works ranging from roughly 11 minutes to more than 16.

Both within and across the songs, the music ranges from the vast and panoramic to the introspective and intimate. It moves from passages of disorienting dissonance to explosions of well-choregraphed mayhem, from warlike gallops to moments of shining benevolence and the glow of hopefulness. But whether the music is storming like a maelstrom, with blasting drums and ravaging waves of guitar distortion, or shimmering like a sun-lit stream, it’s almost always dense and richly textured, often to the point of being senses-flooding in the richness of its construction. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORTALS — “CURSED TO SEE THE FUTURE”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Jul 022014
 

Brooklyn’s Mortals have been turning a lot of heads as advance tracks from their new album, Cursed To See the Future, have been appearing around the web over the last month. But the time has finally come to unveil the album in its full power, as we bring you a stream of the work from start to finish.

The reason heads have been turning is that Mortals are so successful at unifying disparate strands of heavy metal into highly memorable — and viscerally potent — songs. Woven into their dark tapestries you will find strands of sludge, doom, black metal, and thrash. The result is music that’s massively heavy, massively headbangable, and almost always decimating to the core.

Elizabeth Cline clearly has a genius for concocting riffs, and Cursed gives her the chance to show the range of her talents. Bassist Lesley Wolf gets plenty of opportunities to shine as well, because her nimble yet concrete-heavy rumbling is never out of ear shot — and her voice rakes with steel claws. Not to be outdone, drummer Caryn Havlik turns in a highly varied (but always spine-shaking) performance that’s a big part of why this music is so damned interesting.

Continue reading »

BLACK THRASH: TRIUMPHANT, SLAUGHTER MESSIAH, DRUIDUS, GOATHAMMER

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  10 Responses »
Jul 022014
 

Relatively late in my life as a metalhead I’m discovering that I like thrash/speed-metal riffs best when they’re served up black on the outside and bloody on the inside. In this post I’ve collected some music from four underground bands that have been feeding that particular hunger.

TRIUMPHANT

Triumphant is the name of a band from Innsbruck, Austria, that used to be called Manic Disease. Their debut album, Herald the Unsung, was released in March of this year in vinyl by Heavy Forces Records and on CD by Cyclone-Empire.

My pal KevinP recently sent me a link to the album’s title track, and I was hooked from the opening seconds by the highly infectious and caustically blistering riffs that propel the music like a rocket. The song does have its off-speed moments, which are drenched in dark melody and surrounded by an aura of doom, and they’re part of what makes this long song so appealing. The vocalist, by the way, sounds like he has rabies — unhinged and biting. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: GODFLESH — “DECLINE AND FALL”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jul 012014
 

 

(DGR wrote the following review of the new EP by Godflesh.)

When a band like Godflesh decide to put out new material after an extended hiatus it is an important moment. Like At The Gates, Carcass, and Meshuggah as well, Godflesh have put put albums that have launched whole genres and sounds. Vast numbers of bands could trace their geneologies back to these bands based on their chosen genre. In the case of Godflesh it is a tree whose branches are many and whose roots run deep. They in particular have affected many bands who may not even be able to pinpoint the source of the influence. I’m not the hugest follower of Justin Broadrick, but even I recognize the name, as well as the work he’s done with Jesu over the years and his stint in Napalm Death, among his many other projects that have always landed on the periphery of my music listening’s vision. That’s why, when bands like this reform with new material, it is important.

There is a sense of the elder band showing the upstarts how it’s done, but there’s also the more anthropologically sound idea that you’re revisiting the very start of something big, something that feels pure. You know you’re hearing the music of a band whose sound inspired so many other groups years ago, the sound that launched a genre or two, the sound that so many bands latched onto, which over time was watered down or hybridized by others. In cases such as this, you really do hope that the progenitor group’s new material holds up. Not only that, you hope it holds up a mirror to the bands who have descended from them and were inspired by them, with the wish that it will either define or redefine a sound that has been lost or long since changed. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 48: SEND MORE PARAMEDICS

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Jun 302014
 

(In this 49th edition of THE SYNN REPORT, Andy Synn reviews the discography of Send More Paramedics.)

Recommended for fans of: Municipal Waste, Suicidal Tendencies, Exodus

The early part of this new century wasn’t exactly my favourite period when it came to the underground metal scene here in the UK. Not that there weren’t some great, hard-working bands out there doing their own thing (and doing it well!), but it seemed like every other band I encountered was desperately trying to be a sub-standard version of either As I Lay Dying, or Converge, but without an ounce of originality or integrity (while also essentially trying to be as dumb and needlessly confrontational as possible).

Now, that’s not the whole scene by a wide margin, but most of what was out there just wasn’t really clicking with me. However, there were definitely a few exceptions, and one of those was the sheer bloody-minded, self-declared “Zombiecore” madness of Send More Paramedics.

Part thrash, part punk, all crazy… Send More Paramedics rose from the grave in 2001, and were sent back into their deathless slumber in 2007, leaving behind a strange legacy of blood, brains, and bile… set to a soundtrack of rabid thrash riffs and punked-up aggression. The band actually reformed for a few reunion shows earlier this year, but unfortunately I couldn’t make any of them. So, instead, here is my tribute to the heathen masters of undead disaster. Continue reading »

ALLEGAEON: “ELEMENTS OF THE INFINITE”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Jun 302014
 

 

(In this post TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by Colorado-based Allegaeon, which is out now on the Metal Blade label.)

I really fucking like technical melodic death metal. I like melodic death metal in general, but when you’ve also got technical guitar showpieces that call to mind melodic lines written by great classical composers of old, it’s just a trip. Allegaeon have been on top of this particular game, as far as newer American blood is concerned.

I’ve really enjoyed the way these guys have played with their sound since they first began putting out music; the evolution they’ve undergone has been interesting to watch. Their self-titled EP was simply a solid, excellent tribute to the melodic death metal style as a whole, with the band wearing their influences on their sleeves. Their debut Fragments of Form and Function was a technical marvel for the style, while Formshifter took a grittier turn and turned up the focus on groove.

I have to admit, however, that while I loved Formshifter, I was slightly turned off by the heavier groove direction. While the music still had the signature Allegaeon tech-melodeath style going on, that aspect of the music was diminished to accommodate the magnification of groove. Which is why I am glad that Elements of The Infinite now exists. It proves that a band who I had honest fears might be stagnating into groove-driven drudgery were merely revealing a different shade of their sound. Returning with the technicality and full-frontal speed, Allegaeon have stormed back this time, not as a MELODIC death metal band, but as a melodic DEATH METAL band, if that makes any sense. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: VOLTURYON — “HUMAN DEMOLITION”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jun 302014
 

 

(DGR wrote this review of the new EP by Sweden’s Volturyon.)

Volturyon are one of those groups I came to incredibly late. I had heard the name before, but my attention wasn’t directed toward them until the guys who made up the band started appearing in other projects I had been listening to — in this case, drummer Christian Netzell, who at the time was playing in In Mourning, and vocalist Alexander Högbom, who turned up in October Tide. Later, bassist Oskar Pålsson from Coldworker would join their lineup as well, but I don’t know if he contributed to Human Demolition. It was, however, one of those coincidences that make the band seem like a death metal explosion built out of the most volatile chemicals that they could find.

The timing of my discovery would prove fortuitous because the band had started hinting at new material, yet I still had enough time to explore, and genuinely enjoy, their earlier works — just so I knew what I would be in for. However, what I hadn’t expected was that when Volturyon took just enough time to put out an EP, they were going to condense the very best of their sound down into four songs and a real quick intro — and genuinely surprise me with some of my favorite material to date.

Long story short, I knew Human Demolition was going to be good, but I did not think it was going to be this good. It’s one of the few discs this year that has left me with whiplash because I couldn’t resist whipping what is left of my glorious mane up and down in rapid-fire sync with the music. Continue reading »

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