GHOST BRIGADE: “UNTIL FEAR NO LONGER DEFINES US”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Aug 292011
 


(Andy Synn reviews the latest album from Finland’s Ghost Brigade, and after that we’ve got the new official video for “Clawmaster”.)

Finnish gloom-merchants Ghost Brigade return with their third album, Until Fear No Longer Defines Us. Befitting its beautiful artwork, the album has a full and evocative sound; lush, melancholy melodies shimmering like starlight atop mountains of heaving, Neurosis-esque riffage, while subtle keyboard embellishments (provided once again by Swallow The Sun’s Aleksi Munter) provide unobtrusive, yet unashamedly progressive undercurrents.

Compared to its predecessors, this record is more exposed and more wide-open, less claustrophobic and confined, yet in many ways just as oppressive in its heavy, dark atmosphere. Colder and more sombre than the albums that came before it, it is as if, stepping outside of their self-imposed isolation, the architects have become aware of the vastness of the sky above them and of the oppressive, stupefying insignificance of themselves in the grander scheme of things.

Opening with the acoustic ode to woe that is “In The Woods”, the album throws a curveball right from the off, skilfully adept fingers plucking out elegant melodies from weeping nylon strings as vocalist Manne Ikonen breathes life into a tale of sorrow and broken dreams with his clear and sophisticated vocals. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

GUILTY AS SIN: “PSYCHOTRONIC”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 292011
 

Guilty As Sin is a three-man band from the Boston area who were nice enough to send me a digipack CD of their latest album, 2011’s Psychotronic. This album is the band’s fourth, and I discovered that I already had on my iPod their last release, III, which came out in 2010. I’m pretty sure I didn’t get around to hearing that one, because I think I’d remember the band’s sound, now having listened to all of Psychotronic.

I originally picked this band as one of the listening experiments for yesterday’s MISCELLANY post, but instead of stopping at one or two songs, per the rules of that game, I got sucked into the whole album. If I’d included my impressions in that MISCELLANY post, it would have turned out even gargantuanly longer than it already was. So, I decided to include my thoughts about Psychotronic in this separate piece.

When I started into Psychotronic, I thought I’d just pick the first song on the album and have that be the basis for my MISCELLANY impression. That first track turned out to be a Moog-ish synthesizer piece that sounded like two scary electronic beings having a conversation. So, of course, I couldn’t stop with that. The next four songs flew by in a blaze of punk rhythms spliced with thrash mayhem and hardcore vocals. I liked that shit quite a bit, so I continued to listen — and then I hit a total surprise at the sixth track, “Addicted To Cyanide”. It’s a long instrumental propelled by chug-heavy riffage, thrash-guitar chords, and weaving/soaring solos that got my addled head whipping. It’s a guitar lover’s head-trip.

Well, fuck, I really couldn’t stop with that. What would come next?  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MELODEATH WEEK: ALLEGAEON

 Album Reviews  18 Responses »
Aug 292011
 

(TheMadIsraeli has cooked up a week-long series devoted to modern melodic death metal, featuring one band each day, beginning with Colorado’s Allegaeon.)

If you were alive, and in your early teens, in the 90’s, you more than likely found your entrance into metal via melodeath or melodic death metal.  Like I or Islander did, you probably heard bands like In Flames, At The Gates, or Soilwork, and were absolutely floored by the musicianship on display and the idea that something could be both melodic and a total steamroller at the same time.  This stuff was THE SHIT if you were a 90’s kid, or even an early 2000’s kid. I don’t think there is any disputing this one.

Melodeath, though, is now seen by many as the stagnant and lazy metal genre of choice.  Thousands upon thousands of poor At The Gates and In Flames imitators and the advent of melodic metalcore have given melodeath a bad rap from which, quite frankly, it still doesn’t seem to have recovered.  This is a real shame, because there have been some killer melodeath albums released, particularly in the last 5 years.

So it’s now melodeath week.  I will review a recent/modern melodeath album for every day of the week if Islander can keep up that pace of editing.  The criteria are as follows…

1: Must have been made in the last 10 years

2: I will TRY TO AVOID well known acts, although I am pre-emptively saying The Absence is getting an exception.

So with that said, let’s get started shall we? Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: MEANKIND

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  29 Responses »
Aug 272011
 

(In sympathy with our brothers and sisters on the East Coast who are enduring Hurricane Irene, our second post of this Saturday is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the free EP from a Hungarian musical hurricane called Meankind.)

Who exactly is this dynamic duo who dare to call themselves Meankind?

That’s right.  The most boss of metal duo’s ever.  Extreme high-speed death metal offered in short doses on this band’s debut EP 22.Zero is what you get.  Meankind can do melodic, atonal, brutal, grooving — you name it, and Meankind will write a riff that will suit your needs. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: OBLIVIONIZED

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Aug 272011
 

Oblivionized could hardly have chosen a better name for themselves, because that’s how you’ll feel after listening to their debut EP, Abhorrent Evolution. It’s music made for those times when you’re in the mood for head-whipping self-destruction. Fair warning: it’s also the kind of song collection that causes me involuntarily to spew forth a froth of mixed metaphors. So, the English majors in the audience may want to take a sedative before reading further.

This is demonic deathgrind. I listen, and I think about being backed against a wall with a firehose spewing sulphuric acid at full force, straight at my unprotected self. Massively distorted guitars that shriek and crush. Cleaner guitar leads that slither like fat white worms that haven’t had their fill of coring yet. Gut-rumbling bass picking that’s faster than a famished cheetah on the trail of a doomed antelope with blood in the wind.

Bullet-paced drumming that may possibly be the most riveting sound on the whole fuckin’ album. Vocals that sound utterly deranged — a cacophony of shrieking and roaring, the sound of people being torn apart mixed with the gory growls of whatever supernatural things are doing the tearing, and the eating. Abhorrent Evolution is super-charged metal at a hyperdrive pace, a tech-grind portrait of the 7th Circle of Hell, music with the sensibilities of a ravenous demon horde set loose after a milennial imprisonent. And more metaphors. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

ENOCHIAN THEORY – “EVOLUTION: CREATIO EX NIHILO”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  4 Responses »
Aug 262011
 

(Andy Synn takes us into the weekend with his review of the first album from the UK’s Enochian Theory.)

Hello again ladies and gents, here’s another taste of something a little different that barely comes under the site’s remit, yet I feel will appeal to the more expressive and open-minded of you all the same.

Enochian Theory are a UK prog band of expansive ambition and mesmerising melody where majestic cleans rule the roost and growled vocals are definitely the exception, rather than the rule. Very much art for art’s sake, the enigmatic complexity of each song’s serpentine structuring is offset by the soaring, infectiously melodic vocals of frontman Ben Harris-Hayes, whose emotive delivery and harmonious, scintillating lyrical expositions contribute to making the album that rarest of things, both an immediate pleasure and a long-term investment of impressive quality and intriguing depth. The candid, at times even painfully raw, nature of the singing gives the whole expansive, captivating affair a recognisably human element which serves as an anchor point no matter how convoluted or complex the music may become.

When absorbed in the album itself, I actually struggled to compare it directly to any external influence, so distinctive is its sound, although links can be drawn, very favourably, to fellow British prog luminaries Anathema and Porcupine Tree, along with the solo works of PT’s own Steven Wilson. Yet of greatest interest to the readers of this site will be the sonic connections to the emotionally complex solo work of Devin Townsend, the raging ambience of latter-day Isis, and the mind-bending instrumental excursions more commonly attributed to Tool. Yet Enochian Theory themselves are very much a singular entity, these comparisons barely scratching the surface of what the three-piece actual sound like in full-flight.   (more after the jump .. . .) Continue reading »

REVISITING THE CLASSICS: “FORBIDDEN EVIL”

 Album Reviews, Revisiting the Classics  18 Responses »
Aug 262011
 

(TheMadIsraeli, who originated our now-continuing series of look-backs at metal classics, provides this latest installment, focusing on the 1988 debut by California’s Forbidden.)

Thrash metal in a lot of ways IS metal to me.  It’s the genre that, when I think about metal, I gravitate to automatically.  The energy, the frantic rage and desperation, THE FUCKING SPEED AND THE RIFFS!  It’s always astonishing to me when I meet a metalhead who doesn’t like thrash.  That’s like not liking pizza, or beer, or the combination thereof.

Forbidden was a thrash band I’d always heard about but never bothered to check out, dismissing them as a cult band who were viewed as being more legitimate than the more popular thrashers because they simply weren’t mainstream.  Boy was I wrong, and it took one unexpected circumstance to open my eyes: My girlfriend at the time made me check out Forbidden’s music.  Yes people, my girlfriend at the time had better music than I did, AND was hotter than I was, AND was more talented.  Hopefully, I’m on my way to catching up, at least on the quality of music I have.

Forbidden Evil is the typical fan favorite, as well as mine, but for good reason.  Consisting of a badass set of pipes by the name of Russ Anderson, a fierce guitar duo in Craig Locicero (one of my fav guitarists of all time mind you) and Glen Alvelais, Paul Bostaph on drums, and Matt Camacho on bass, Forbidden were poised to take the thrash circuit by storm with the release of this album. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SCIENCE OF DEMISE: “SUBMERGE”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Aug 252011
 

(TheMadIsraeli has another discovery for us, and another free download that we’re hosting for an impressive young band from Gothenburg, Sweden.)

100 Knives Inside drummer Nikolaj Sloth Lauszus messaged me one day and told me he had some friends of his he wanted me to check out.  USUALLY when a band member wants me to check out a band they’re friends with, the band typically sucks.  And hard.  However, Science Of Demise is a whole other case entirely.

As in a fucking awesome one.  This is Science Of Demise’s debut LP Submerge. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

ANALDICKTION: “SLUTS”

 Album Reviews, Phro's Posts  36 Responses »
Aug 252011
 

(Would you wanna run into these dudes in a dark alley? I think Phro would. Yes, we have a guest-review from the tentacle master hisself. Which means that if you have children, they need to be locked up in the next county before you read this. And if you don’t have children, well just write that off the list of your life goals. My anus feels raw just reading this.)

12:24…12:24…12:24…12:25…

The red glow of the alarm clock filled my room like an over-sized cock slapping you in the face.  It wouldn’t go away, and it wouldn’t let you forget that it was there.  And it kind of made my head hurt.

I closed my eyes again and rubbed them—wait.  Why were my hands covered in warm…liquid.  Oh, god, I thought, not a-fucking-gain…what the hell happened here??

I slowly rolled onto my belly and felt something poking my hip.  It felt squishy.  I assumed that was not good.  After sighing dejectedly, I pushed myself to my feet and attempted to find the light switch.  The moment light bathed the room I vomited like a dog chewing on grass.

Let’s back up 24 minutes.  (more after the jump . . . oh yes . . . much, much more) Continue reading »

VADER: “WELCOME TO THE MORBID REICH”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Aug 242011
 

(NCS writer TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album from Vader, but I can’t resist tossing in my two cents at the end, too.)

Vader is a band I hold very dear. They were a band who captured me late in my metal history but have since become an essential staple, and a Top 10 band of all time for me.  By my lights, no one else in death metal plays with such speed and venom, while carrying it off with a sense of imperial might and regal dignity.

I’ve been looking forward to Welcome To The Morbid Reich like you wouldn’t believe. Every time this band drops a new album, they stomp out the competition, and the only members of the death metal elite who can even begin to compete are Dying Fetus, Suffocation, and Immolation. Yes, we now have Fleshgod, yes, we now have Revocation, but neither of them have the cred, the PERFECT 10+ album discography, and the musicianship that Piotr Wiwczarek and whoever he recruits into the line-up lately manage to generate. (He’s a hell of a recruiter, too. I mean, this guy had Krzysztof Raczkowski behind the kit. One of the greatest drummers extreme metal ever saw (R.I.P Doc).)

I’m here to tell you this is probably Vader’s best work since the mighty De Profundis, the thrashier onslaught of The Beast, and the cacophony of brutality that was Impressions In Blood. To sum it up for you…

THIS ALBUM WILL TEAR YOU TO SHREDS! (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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