LACUNA COIL: “DARK ADRENALINE”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  8 Responses »
Feb 262012
 

(DemiGodRaven wrote this review. In a moment of weakness, I decided to post it.)

I have a sneaking suspicion that that is either the chemical compound for meth or caffeine. Either way, don’t trust it.

I understand this isn’t the most timely of reviews. I am easily distracted, much like a moth to a flame. Can you believe that I still have a review for Lamb of God’s Resolution in the works? Maybe I’ll save that one for when I have kids and the band have long since broken up.

Look, I know a lot of you guys have very high opinions of me and I appreciate it, I really do. I’m saying this up front because I know that a lot of you are going to turn on me over the course of this review, after some of the revelations about me that will come out. That’s fine, ‘Forgive them for they know not what they do’, and all that jazz. That said, the reason you’re staring at the cover art for the recently released Lacuna Coil disc, Dark Adrenaline, on our fine No Clean Singing site is because this album actually ain’t half bad.

I was one of the long-time fans who found themselves turning up their noses at the group’s previous release, Shallow Life, for focusing too much on being mainstream radio rock and just in general containing some really bad songwriting. Dark Adrenaline actually isn’t dramatically different, but the band have started to meld the darker, more bass-heavy sound they found on Karmacode with Shallow Life to create what is a pretty solid, guilty-pleasure rock disc. Continue reading »

THE BLACK MORIAH: “CASKET PROSPECTS”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Feb 242012
 

It’s not often I get an e-mail from a band that just says “For Your Damned Ears” with the band’s name and a web link . . . and that’s it. Well, really now, how could I resist? Especially when the band refer to themselves as “Road Agents of the Blast Furnace” or “a horde of highwaymen, hell-bent on Vulture Culture” (I found that out later when I visited that web link). The answer is, I didn’t resist.

The band’s name is The Black Moriah. They’re from North Texas and they “drink the spirits of past greats Bathory, Kreator, Motorhead, Slayer, [and] Venom,” or so though say, though I’m inclined to believe them.

They include former members of bands such as Absu, Bleed the Son, Psychiatric Regurgitation, and Aversion To Life. They’ve recorded and recently self-released a three-song demo called Casket Prospects, with the following track titles: “Casket Prospects”, “Chained and Confined”, and “Watch My Town Burn”. They got some skills. Looks like they may have some knives, too.

They can also rev the thrash engines into the red zone. The title track proves that, with vicious riffs, rapid-fire bass, snare-heavy drums with crashing cymbals, hard-driving pistons, a rusted exhaust pipe belching putrid smoke, and infernally blackened vocals. Irresistible headbang material. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ANTAGONIST ZERO — “NIGHTTIME HARMONY”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Feb 212012
 

Since this is Pancake Day, I thought we needed some fucking good Finnish pancake (naulan kantaan, vitun hyvä lätty) at NCS.

While fans of Finnish metal are still applauding or deploring the surprisingly strong showing of Turisas at this past weekend’s Finnish Metal Awards (reported here), I thought I’d follow my natural instincts and just dodge the whole debate. Instead, I’m getting my Finnish fix early this week by focusing on a band whose profile is considerably lower than the juggernauts who duked it out in the main categories at the awards show: Antagonist Zero.

This relatively new band from Porvoo (formed in 2010) is composed of former members of bands such as Coprolith and Cavus. They describe their music as “catatonic metal”. I wasn’t sure what they meant by that, but I liked the sound of it, since I feel catatonic quite often.

Early last month, the band released their debut EP, a three-song collection of dark, heavy, doom-influenced melodic death metal called Nighttime Harmony, and it’s really good.

The first song, “AZ”, allows a ringing guitar lead to weave a dark melody over pounding percussion, but after a short instrumental bridge, the song opens up with full power, reminding me of Insomnium, Before the Dawn, and Hypocrisy. Guitarist Ben Pakarinen’s massive harsh vocals are very much in the vein of Insomnium’s Niilo Sevänen and BtD’s Tuomas Saukkonen. This long song changes moods past the halfway point, with beautiful interplay between acoustic and electric guitar and with Ville Siikamäki’s Dio-style clean vocals making an appearance as well. The song treats us to another soulful guitar solo before a big shred-fest of a finish. Very cool song. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: PRAY FOR LOCUST — “INTO THE OCEAN”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 212012
 

Those with sharp memories may recall that we included Stockholm’s Pray For Locust in a feature about a month ago, spotlighting their excellent new video for a song called “Hang A Traitor”. The video may be new, but the song was taken from an album called SWARM that’s now more than 18 months old. But a few days ago Pray For Locust updated their discography with the release of a new EP — Into the Ocean — which is available for free download.

The music is part thrash, part hardcore, part groove metal. I imagined it as a gene-splicing of Lamb of God, DevilDriver, and Shadows Fall, with a few building blocks of latter-day Soilwork thrown into the chromosomes.

“Memories” kicks off the EP with pneumatic, grooving riffs, tight rhythms, and a squalling guitar solo. The song also introduces the listener to the two-part vocal tag-team of hoarse roars and screamo highs. “The Serpent v1” mixes things up a bit with Gothenburg-style melodeath riffing and and extended breakdown that puts the back end of the song on a slow burner. Continue reading »

SPAWN OF POSSESSION: “INCURSO”

 Album Reviews  22 Responses »
Feb 202012
 

Spawn of Possession’s Incurso is the musical equivalent of an enormously complex, alien planet-cracking machine working under a tight deadline.

With a globe-spanning reach, thousands of tightly integrated devices split mountains and toss them aside, jackhammer vast plains, uproot continent-wide rain forests and throw them into space, spin mighty rivers into whirlpools arcing upward into the atmosphere, spear the mantle with gargantuan kinetic maces that eject fuming magma into sky-bound plumes that turn the night sky into day, and deconstruct the puny works of humankind into their atomic components, segregating and storing them for some unfathomable future use.

And all of this happens at hyperspeed, the mind-boggling complexity of the matter-smashers directed by beings who may look humanoid, but clearly are not. They live their lives in an accelerated state of existence, a blur of insectile activity compared to which our most energetic efforts are the mere slime trails of slugs creeping pathetically by inches over days.

Sitting at the controls is a brutish overlord, communicating directly with the minds of a thousand machine operators, barking his wolfish commands almost more rapidly than the human ear can comprehend. Before our astonished eyes and ears, a hurricane of decimation methodically disassembles the world as we know it — and begins to build something alien and new. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: TETRAFUSION — “HORIZONS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  3 Responses »
Feb 202012
 

(groverXIII rejoins us with a review of the new EP from Louisiana’s Tetrafusion.)

I’m about to drop some knowledge, son. ACT LIKE YA HEARD.

OK, actually, this post is about a sweet free EP from a band called Tetrafusion, because I can’t stop fucking listening to it. Post begins . . . now.

The band I am about to tell you about goes against the very nature of this site.

Tetrafusion, a progressive/technical rock/metal band hailing from Shreveport, Louisiana, have clean vocals. In fact, they have exclusively clean vocals, with nary a guttural, shout, shriek, scream, or grunt to be found.

So, you may be wondering, why am I posting about them here? Well, my friends, Horizons (Tetrafusion’s recently-released EP, available for free and produced by Jamie King of Between The Buried And Me/The Human Abstract/Last Chance To Reason/White Arms Of Athena production fame) is fucking amazing, plain and simple. Continue reading »

VEIL OF MAYA: “ECLIPSE”

 Album Reviews  11 Responses »
Feb 202012
 

(Here we have TheMadIsraeli overcoming the hypnotic effect of those glowing green eyes and reviewing the new album by Chicago’s Veil of Maya.)

You guys have seen me talk about something called djeathcore a lot here at NCS.  It mixes the deathcore brawn with the djent sense of groove and ambience, and in some cases it exhibits aspects of melodic death metal, although in the last two years this has declined.  Veil Of Maya are undoubtedly the originators of the djeathcore concept, mixing technical, melodic riffing, deathcore chaos, and Meshuggah-like mind-fuckery.

My stance on this band has always been a very mixed one.  Their debut All Thing Set Aside was only okay.  I couldn’t even say it showed promise.  This is what made their next album, The Common Man’s Collapse, such a surprise and a revelation.  Out of the gate, the album mounted a compelling assault with vicious beat downs and intricate interweaving of melody and dissonance, and plenty of transitions to keep it interesting.

Then came the band’s third album [id]. It suffered from a bad mix, incoherent and directionless songwriting, and a patronizing length of 29 minutes (for full album price).  It seemed to me (and to others who are in my camp, although I can’t say how many they are) that VOM officially fell off the wagon already, killing their own promise before it became manifest.

The subject of today’s discussion is the band’s new offering, Eclipse — Veil Of Maya’s best work to date.  The problem of the mix is fixed (brought to you by Misha Mansoor of Periphery fame), the band has returned to their roots, and their songwriting has improved dramatically.  My only complaint is that the length is one minute shorter than [id]‘s 29 minutes, but this time it’s a small complaint in the face of all that’s good about the album. Continue reading »

PERDYASCHY IN DARKNESS – “SIBERIAN BLUES”

 Album Reviews  23 Responses »
Feb 192012
 

That’s a photo of legendary blues guitarist and singer Robert Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938), except it’s been altered with the addition of the Russian fur hat, the bottle of Stoli vodka on the bench, the forest background, and the flames (?).  It’s the cover of a 2012 album dedicated to Robert Johnson’s memory. The album is called Сибирский Блюз, and it’s by a Russian black metal band named Пердящий в Темноте. You may ask, “What the fuck?” And I will attempt to answer your astute question.

First of all, I’m relying entirely on Google translate for the English version of the band and album names in the title of this post (though the band name could also be “Perdyaschy In the Dark” and “Пердящий” (or “perdyaschy”) could mean “farting”, which would make the band name Farting In the Dark). Perhaps one of our Russian readers can weigh in on the accuracy of this rendering.

I have a little more information about the band and the album, but not much more, despite spending a ridiculous amount of time on internet detective work and Russian translation:

It seems to involve six people, one of whom now seems to be dead. The principal vocalist (the one who seems to be dead) dishes out everything from horrifying cracked-glass howls to falsetto operatics to Tuvan throat-singing. The two guitarists are assigned one stereo channel each on the recording. The drums seem to be programmed. The band seems to have released at least one previous album, with a translated title of In Vain (2010), and perhaps an earlier one called Transcendental Irrefutable Existence (2009).

Siberian Blues includes 12 tracks and runs for almost 1 hour and 20 minutes. It includes a Mayhem cover (“Freezing Moon”, except it’s called “Freezing Sailor Moon”) and other song titles such as “I Despise LaVey – Respect Lavash” and “Sinister Misanthropic Dristalovo Under the Pine Trees On the Mystical Moonlit Snow” (or at least that’s what Google translate tells me). The album may or may not be released by an underground Danish label called Hikikomori Records.

Okay, that’s about it. Now that we’ve got the sketchy facts out of the way, here’s the rest of the answer to that “What the fuck?” question:  The music is obviously created partly in jest, but it’s really an amazing accomplishment. In fact, though it’s an uneven work, it’s one of the most endlessly interesting albums I’ve heard all year — and where it’s strong, it’s very strong.

Continue reading »

THEMADISRAELI’S TOP 20 ALBUMS OF ALL TIME: AT THE GATES’ “SLAUGHTER OF THE SOUL”

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
Feb 192012
 

“We are blind to the world within us… waiting to be reborn.”

No more badass sentence could’ve been uttered to brace you for the impact of this album.

Five bands define melodic death metal for me: At The Gates, Arch Enemy on their first three records, Soilwork pre-Natural Born Chaos, In Flames on Jester Race and Whoracle, and Carcass on Heartwork.  If a band isn’t borrowing from these audio “how to do melodic death metal right” 101 manuals, I usually have no interest in their music.  While others were busy playing with themselves over how folksy or even poppy they could make their melodies, these three bands knew how to bring the melody, the darkness, and the intensity, all in a single package.

Obviously, you know who I’m talking about today: Slaughter Of The Soul is one of my top 20 albums of all time.

I’ve already touched on my love for this album in a prior installment of my Revisiting the Classics series (which I really need to get off my ass and continue). I labeled it with accolades such as “The melodic death metal standard”.  I still stand by this, although I do think there is more than one standard (and others will eventually appear on this list).  This album is vicious, fast (a must), memorable, and technical, all at once.

The riffs may not seem like much to some, but the intricacy with which they were crafted is to me simply self-evident. Such careful attention was paid to the melodies, which are tastefully direct and no-nonsense.  That guitar tone that sounds like the impact of a sledgehammer splitting a hunk of stone still gets me every time as well, not to mention the inhumanly tight playing of guitarists Anders Björler and Martin Larsson. Continue reading »

CATCHING UP WITH CHRISTIAN ÄLVESTAM

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Feb 192012
 

Since leaving Scar Symmetry in 2008, Christian Älvestam has become a one-man cottage industry. Actually, it may be more accurate to say that he and Finnish multi-instrumentalist Jani Stefanović have operated as a two-man cottage industry. Their results have ranged from okay to superior.

Both of them have joined forces in three bands: Solution .45 (okay), Miseration (very good), and The Few Against Many (superior). It won’t surprise anyone to know that my highly subjective one-word quality rankings increase in exuberance in direct relationship to the changing extremity of the music.

Solution .45’s last album, For Aeons Past (2010), is the closest of the three to the soundscape of Scar Symmetry — lyrical, melodic, slower-paced than the works of the other two bands, and featuring a roughly even mix of clean and harsh vocals. I gave it an “okay” rating simply because those aren’t the qualities I’m usually after.

Miseration, on the other hand, is almost dead center in my sweet spot. I reviewed the last album, The Mirroring Shadow (2010), here. I didn’t think it was ground-breaking, mold-shattering work, but I sure as hell enjoyed its marriage of big, fast, vicious, technical death metal, clawing tremolo-picked guitars, heavy groove, and razor-sharp production. Foregoing any semblance of clean singing, Älvestam instead gave his magnificent harsh vocals an album-length workout.

What I didn’t know about until yesterday (thanks to an e-mail from TheMadIsraeli) was the third post-Scar Symmetry project that Älvestam, Stefanović, and their bandmates have cooked up — The Few Against Many. For reasons I’ll explain after the jump, it’s the cream of the crop.

Now here’s what gives this recap some currency: As I learned from poking around Facebook yesterday, Älvestam and Stefanović are either writing or beginning to record new albums for all three bands, more or less at the same time! Continue reading »

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