IN MOURNING: “THE BLEEDING VEIL”

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Nov 302021
 

(DGR prepared the following review of the new album by the Swedish band In Mourning, just released on November 26th.)

In Mourning have definitely found a sound since the heady days of 2012 and their release of The Weight Of Oceans. Creating their own loosely conceptual lyrical universe, that album laid the groundwork for just about every release of In Mourning that followed it. While early works in the band’s discography would land them on the radar of prog-death fans – and I will go to bat for Monolith being an absolutely fantastic and underrated release – The Weight Of Oceans and its doom and post-metal influences would be where In Mourning would stake their claim.

Both 2016’s Afterglow and 2019’s Garden Of Storms continued along that path, acting as extensions of that musical world, sometimes wandering down a more death metal oriented path and sometimes going full avant-garde, as Garden Of Storms would reach its tendrils into every crevice it found. Now firmly ensconced in their corner of the progressive death metal world and with an even smaller gap between releases, In Mourning are with us once again with The Bleeding Veil, the group’s sixth full-length and the third release so far to contain seven songs in its track list.

Given that the throughline of The Bleeding Veil and its two most recent siblings is so similar, it’s interesting to see what paths In Mourning have decided to chart this time around. The Bleeding Veil is In Mourning in full focusing mode, as the disc takes all of the different directions that Garden Of Storms shot out and hones them down, refining them into a much more tied and tighter release. Continue reading »

LOCK UP: “THE DREGS OF HADES”

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Nov 292021
 

 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the new album by deathgrind superstars Lock Up, just released by Listenable Records.)

While everyone else was enjoying their holiday here in the States and those of us who worked retail dreaded the following day, your reviewer here was waiting patiently for that dreaded following day as well. Not because there was some innate urge to go trample someone in the charge to catch not only a potentially deadly disease but also a deal on a TV, but because that Friday also delivered to us an absolute bludgeoning of new releases to listen to. What this also provided was a fantastic case of genre-whiplash as Voices, In Mourning, and today’s subject Lock Up would also release their newest additions to their collective works.

The Dregs Of Hades is Lock Up‘s fifth full-length release in a pretty long career, but one that has seen newer releases becoming far more frequent than the gaps left between their second and third albums. It also has some new additions to the group. Notably, Nick Barker and his fantastic neverending drum fills have bowed out and Misery Index/Pig Destroyer drum-kit annihilator Adam Jarvis is in. Also, one of the changes that equally grabbed press was the return of Tomas Lindberg back into the fold on vocals – tag-teaming alongside Brutal Truth’s Kevin Sharp for an interesting hardcore punk tinge of gang shouts and dual-pronged vocal attacks to the group’s constantly hair-on-fire style of grind music. Continue reading »

A DGR REVIEW ARCHIVE (PART 4): DEVILS REEF, VAELMYST, DISKORD

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Nov 182021
 

 

(We reach the end of DGR‘s nearly week-long collection of reviews, in which he attempted to clear out the backlog of writing about favored releases before year-end Listmania descends.)

Devils Reef – A Whisper From The Cosmos

Even though the plague-times we live in currently mean that we have a whole army of musicians who effectively haven’t been able to do anything but be trapped at home, I still find myself very intrigued by the quick turnaround on certain releases. The Frederick, Maryland based crew of Devils Reef released their album Chosen By The Sea in January of this year and then early October saw the group return with five more songs in the form of an EP, A Whisper From The Cosmos – from one terrifying unexplored depth to another, it seems, just in the opposite direction.

There’s definitely some interesting stuff happening on A Whisper From The Cosmos. It seems that in the span of time between the two releases this year Devils Reef have really leaned into their influences and drew from a well that could see them being compared to Revocation and Alkaloid almost immediately. Makes sense then, that if you have a peek at some of the recommended releases by the band on their Bandcamp page, you’ll spot both Alkaloid’s Liquid Anatomy and The Outer Ones by Revocation among others. Continue reading »

A DGR REVIEW ARCHIVE (PART 3): BE’LAKOR AND MAYSALOON

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Nov 172021
 

 

(This is the third Part of a week-long series of reviews by DGR as he tries to clear out a back-log before year-end Listmania descends.)

Be’Lakor – Coherence

Australia’s prog-death long-form masters Be’lakor are now five albums deep into their career, with their latest record – and second for Napalm Records – Coherence releasing just a few days before Halloween this year. Despite the five-year gap between Coherence and its older sibling Vessels, there’s no sign whatsoever that Be’lakor are making any attempt to change what works for them.

Since 2009’s Stone’s Reach the run-times for their albums have consistently stayed within the fifty-five minute to one-hour range. Part of the experience has been listening to how the band try to earn their time with you, because in all honesty, with the absolute flood of metal that is out these days, it’s a pretty big ask that you invest an hour of your time with one specific group.

In Be’lakor‘s case though, they’ve nearly always earned the right to do so and have proven time and time again that their ‘no part left behind’ writing style can be made to work within the confines of the prog-minded melodeath scar that the band have carved into the Earth. Continue reading »

A DGR REVIEW ARCHIVE (PART 2): ZORNHEYM AND BROKEN GLASS SANCTUARY

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Nov 162021
 

 

(This is the second Part of a week-long series of reviews by DGR as he tries to clear out a back-log before year-end Listmania descends.)

Zornheym – The Zornheim Sleep Experiment

We do love a spectacle around these here parts, and the recent release of The Zornheim Sleep Experiment is certainly one of those. The group’s second album takes us back within their concept-album universe, guiding us into the darkened halls of a comically evil mental asylum and the psychological-horror-movie events that take place within it.

The Zornheim Sleep Experiment doesn’t step too far beyond the foundation laid by the group’s previous album Where Hatred Dwells And Darkness Reigns, but instead refines it a lot, at times aiming to be a little bit more bombastic and also allowing for a multi-pronged vocal attack to get a ton of mileage out of many a folk-metal-inspired chorus and hybrid melodeath and black metal movement. Continue reading »

A DGR REVIEW ARCHIVE (PART 1): EXHUMED AND GRAND CADAVER

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Nov 152021
 


Exhumed

 

(This is the first Part of a week-long series of reviews by DGR as he tries to clear out a back-log before year-end Listmania descends.)

With year-end season quickly approaching it’s time for the final sailing of the good review ship. This time, like every year, there’s a collective of music that’s been unleashed over the past few months – and earlier, because the search for new noise never really stops – that deserves to be written about.

Whether it’s a surprise release from a larger name or a ‘why did we never follow up on this’ way down the line, this attempt to briefly review a whole smorgasbord of metal releases that emerged over the last few months is an effort to get some names out there before year-end season fully takes over the website and yours truly does the annual exercise of numbering things for my own amusement.

Throwing yourself into the heavy metal maelstrom never stops being fun – especially when you emerge from the other side with no clear idea how you’re still standing – so who knows what else we might discover in the near future. In the meantime though, here’s the first installment of a huge batch of offerings that may please the musical hordes. Continue reading »

WHITE STONES: “DANCING INTO OBLIVION”

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Oct 282021
 

(Multiple listens and two months after the album’s release by Nuclear Blast, DGR now attempts to describe why the latest full-length by the Spanish prog-death band White Stones remains so fascinating.)

There are a few albums a year that I’ll fully own up to listening to and writing about here because they fascinate me. You can pinpoint those write-ups because I’ll often preface them with that exact statement. They’re albums where by the end of a long listening session I’m still not 100% sure where I stand on them, or they provide an indescribable difficulty in discussing why they continue to stick around.

Last year one of those albums was the Spanish death metal group White Stones‘ release Kaurahy. The Martin Mendez (of Opeth bassist fame) project’s first release was an amorphous number, one whose combination of folklore and prog-death sensibilities was hard to grasp on to. The darkened atmospheres and little light provided often felt like trying to kill a moth while it danced in and out of your flashlight’s beam, or like thinking you finally had a hold on a spiky ball and could grasp it only to have it turn completely smooth and move just outside your field of view again. It was, for lack of a better term, fascinating.

Not all of that album worked and it could at times come off a little samey and would blur together, yet an album that many were expecting to be a sort of prog-death masterpiece, given its pedigree, turning out to be an oddly discordant beast that was more often ugly groove than it was fully death was a surprising turn.

You can definitely find value in consistency though, and one year later the group behind White Stones return to us again, this time with an album entitled Dancing Into Oblivion, and save for a couple of notable changes it is once again a fascinating album. Continue reading »

FRONTIERER: “OXIDIZED”

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Oct 282021
 

(The mainly Scottish extremists Frontierer released their new album on October 1st, and DGR reviews it here.)

You probably could’ve sensed this one coming like a killer in a slasher film hiding just outside the frame, given how we salivated at the opportunity to cover anything the group did in the lead up to this one’s release.

Frontierer have made a name for themselves over recent years. The Scotland and US union of musicians – most of whom also play in Sectioned, who released my top album of 2019 with Annihilated – have burrowed impressively deep into the tech and mathcore scene. Conjuring old ghosts that could see the band being genre-blood-brothers with a group like Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza (whose last two albums are just relentless) as well as hybridizing influences from Dillinger Escape Plan, the off-kilter rhythms of Car Bomb, and the big, earth-shaking grooves of a band like Meshuggah is a damned lofty way to find yourself described. Yet the sound that Frontierer have forged for themselves on releases like Unloved and their newest album Oxidized is likely going to see them being mentioned in the same breath as those other names often. Continue reading »

INFERI: “VILE GENESIS”

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Oct 272021
 

 

(We present DGR‘s review of the latest album by Nashville-based Inferi, out now on The Artisan Era, with cover art by Helge Balzer.)

It’s a mantra often repeated when it comes to Inferi albums – and actually, to a much larger extent, the Artisan Era‘s artist roster as a whole, considering the label’s specialization – that Inferi releases are the sorts of albums that put the tech-death concept of “everything and the kitchen sink” songwriting to shame, the sort of releases where long after the first listen you’re still finding new things that will perk your interest.

Inferi’s latest album Vile Genesis is in that vein, with eight songs absolutely bursting at the seams with different elements, riff worship, frenetic leads, frenzied drumming, hefty bass work, and manic vocals that just constantly seems to be ratcheted up to 120% with absolutely no room to breathe. The band have long since made a name for themselves in the world of ‘we play fast’ but it’s still just as initially overwhelming as it always is.

You’d never think someone managed to figure out how to get a bulldozer to set a landspeed record, but somehow Inferi do it every time they put out an album. You put it on, get run over, and then you do it again and again as the music just whips past you. Which is likely going to be a pretty common occurrence among listeners because Vile Genesis has a lot of really good material to dig into and you’re going to be bowled over constantly doing it. Continue reading »

BETRAYAL: “DISORDER REMAINS”

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Oct 252021
 

 

(This is DGR‘s review of a new album by the German band Betrayal, which was released last April by Rising Nemesis Records.)

There are some albums that, no matter how late in the year it may be when we’re able to write them up, feel like we absolutely must do so, especially when we would otherwise have to explain why all of a sudden the album seems to appear basically out of nowhere on our year-end list. Betrayal’s Disorder Remains is one such album.

Disorder Remains was released six months ago in the middle of April, and I do expect it will be barreling onto my year-end list, despite our previous failure to talk about it at length (we did premiere a song from it in April). We’ve covered the German genre-splicing group in greater depth before, as their previous release Infinite Circle was an album that won a few of us over five years back, so if you’ve been with us a while you’ve likely seen the name. But with Disorder Remains the thrashier-prog-death hybridization that Betrayal get up to is elevated to a whole other level, playing out like the most natural evolutionary step the band could’ve made with their sound. Continue reading »

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