DEMONICAL: “CHAOS MANIFESTO”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 302018
 

 

(We present DGR’s review of the latest album by Demonical, which is out now via Agonia Records.)

Considering the various skulls, demon bones, and other awesome metal ephemera in the album art gracing the front of Demonical’s Chaos Manifesto it is probably a strange situation to open with the idea that, with this album, the comfort-food nature of the Swede-death genre and its effects on your reviewer have been firmly established. There’s something near instantly recognizable in the genre’s chosen pacings and structures that feels immediately familiar and speaks to the lizard segment of one’s brain, so much so that just about any band who embrace the mid-to-high tempo thudding nature of the music are bound to at least put on a decent live show, and, with a genre whose foundations and blueprints are so solidly in place at this point, those who merely follow it with a checklist can at least kick out a decent disc.

Which just makes it all the more difficult for a group to stand out from the pack or, given their aims, to make an album that at least ranks as a “solid good time”. Demonical, a group born from the hiatus of another Swedish purveyor of mid-tempo thudding death metal (Centinex) and now with a lineup that includes a pretty healthy chunk of the newly reactivated version of the aforementioned group — three of whose members were made official in 2017 — have released what could be considered the most straight-shooting Swede-death album of 2018 so far. In Chaos Manifesto there are no pretenses, no real attempts at breaking genre conventions, just a solid eight-track, thirty-six-minute slab of death metal that gives metal fans across the variety of the circle-headbanging genres something to salivate over. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: VAELMYST — “EARTHLY WOUNDS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Apr 172018
 

 

(On February 14th of this year, Vaelmyst released their debut EP, with cover art by Travis Smith, and now we present DGR’s review of this promising first release.)

 

This will always be something of a private entertainment given my residence in California, but sometimes the location of a band and the music they play can prove to be equal parts interesting and amusing. When you think of Southern California, oftentimes you get the gussied-up, made-for-tourism brochures-picture of the area in your mind. The usual checkboxes: nice weather, attractive people, palm trees galore, and glorious views of miles-long beaches. What you don’t expect are the heavy metal groups that appear from time to time with a distinctly European flavoring.

While that region doesn’t have a monopoly on the sound, you’d be forgiven upon listening to Vaelmyst’s first EP, Earthly Wounds, for assuming their location is somewhere a little bit more melancholy and with a whole lot more snow, rather than the wide concrete expanse of Los Angeles.

The new band, which counts amongst its members Ronny Lee Marks, Tom Warner, Jeff Martin, Jonathan V (artist-behind-the-curtain in a variety of Fredrik Norrman projects, the recent October Tide, for instance), and session drummer Mike Ponomarev, traverse multiple spheres within the melodeath genre on Earthly Wounds, with each of its five songs drawing from different inspiration than the one before it. Earthly Wounds has a solid through-line, but the different prongs of it point in multiple directions, which gives the sense that Vaelmyst are still trying to zero in to one overall sound. Continue reading »

WEED PRIEST: “CONSUMMATE DARKNESS”

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Apr 092018
 

 

(DGR prepared this review of the latest album by Weed Priest from Galway, Ireland.)

 

I’ve been hinting at writing this one for a very long time — considering that this album hit on October 31st, 2017, and I didn’t mention it other than to say I was looking into it in December. In the annals of reviews of mine that I have deleted and restarted numerous times, this one has to be up there. Considering that we’re now in early April, the album is very much up there as one of the ones it has taken me a very long time to forge ideas about.

Put simply, it’s because I am not the doom guy around here. Your doom expert around these parts is our very own ruler of the early morning post Comrade Aleks. Not only has he put together a near-ceaseless and well-constructed series of interviews with different musicians across the genre and issued them here (and elsewhere) for some time now, but he has also written a tremendous book. Continue reading »

AUGURY: “ILLUSIVE GOLDEN AGE”

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Mar 192018
 

 

(The Canadian death metal wizards in Augury will be releasing a new album on March 30 via The Artisan Era, and today we present DGR’s extensive review of this eagerly awaited new work.)

 

This first third of 2018 is proving to be an insane time for groups coming back from the obscure voids of space to which they had retreated, and the angular prog-tech-death madness that Augury specializes in is the latest example of that trend. Prior to the March 30 release of the band’s upcoming album Illusive Golden Age, the gap between their previous two releases Concealed and Fragmentary Evidence was a little under five years. When Illusive Golden Age sees the light of day via The Artisan Era, that previous gap will have been eclipsed, as Illusive Golden Age comes sailing in at a little under nine years since Augury’s last disc.

Through Illusive Golden Age’s eight songs, Augury basically pick up right where they left off. By the opening notes of its title song, there is absolutely no need to make guesses about whether this is an Augury disc or not — everything is served up on an incredibly dense plate from moment one, and from there Augury zig-zag through an increasingly complicated obstacle course, purpose-built to leave its listeners with the equivalent of auditory whiplash. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD BY DGR (PART 3 OF 3): VENOM PRISON, RIVERS OF NIHIL, WILD HUNT, PESTILENT REIGN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Mar 052018
 

 

(This is the third and final part of DGR’s round-up of selected new songs and videos that appeared over the last couple of weeks. You can find Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.)

 

Venom Prison – Devoid (Live)

The last time we checked in with Venom Prison was in late January, to spread the news of the February 23rd Prosthetic Records re-release of their 2016 album, Animus, and the group’s music video for the song “Immanetize Eschaton”. That deluxe edition of Animus is now out with five live songs added to it as a bonus disc, and the group unveiled a live-shot video for one of those songs, “Devoid“, right around that time. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD BY DGR (PART 2 OF 3): INFERI, ALKALOID, VALE OF PNATH, IHSAHN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Mar 052018
 

 

(This is the second part of DGR’s round-up of selected new songs and videos that appeared over the last couple of weeks. You can find Part 1 here.)

 

Inferi – Behold The Bearer Of Light

Right now, the hyperspeed tech-death, melodic-death, black-death, everything-kitchen-sink-and-broken-down-freezer-in-the-backyard metal crew of Inferi are out on the road, touring with Aethere, Alterbeast, and Grindmother as part of Alterbeast’s Feast album release tour. It’s been four years since the group’s last incredibly packed album The Path Of Apotheosis, but those moments of silence shall soon wane as the group have an upcoming April 21st release in the form of Revenant. Continue reading »

WAKE: “MISERY RITES”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Feb 282018
 

 

(Here’s DGR’s review of the new album by Wake from Calgary, Alberta, Canada.)

 

Some albums take a while to review. On a personal note: I’ve always been the type to really want to listen to a disc a ton, really learn what each song is about, how it flows, get a general sense of what informed the disc, before writing about it.

Going from a first glance often feels like criminally short-changing bands sometimes, although by that same token the first impression can also be an immensely valuable take on things in a world where time is incredibly limited, and some — like many of our readers here, given the constant refrains about how much music we post — have limited listening time. So it doesn’t hurt to have a sense of immediacy in the delivery.

And therein lies the opposing side of the “album that takes a while to review”. You have the ones that are so up-front, so immediate, the kind that grab you by the throat and ragdoll you around the room so quickly that you can’t help but almost immediately lock-in with the group’s chosen sense of ferocity. The urgency with which the material is delivered becomes the driving force behind it.

Those album’s don’t take nearly as long, because as a listener you can recognize every aspect and every weapon deployed from moment one, and from there the experience becomes more about how a band uses them and with what amount of lethal auditory force. And that brings us to the recently released Misery Rites, by Canadian noise-heavy grinders Wake. Continue reading »

DAGON: “BACK TO THE SEA”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Feb 272018
 

 

(Michigan’s seafaring Dagon have set sail again after seven years ashore, and DGR follows along in their wake like a gleeful porpoise with this detailed review.)

 

Few albums out there start with a song quite as victorious as Dagon’s Back To The Sea does. Its title track is an anthemic opening number, leading off the lengthy excursion back into the world of nautically themed melo-death from the Lansing, Michigan based group after a seven-year absence. Holding more thinly veiled symbolism than one might expect from a band who’ve made their headway in the metal scene by pulling tales from mythology, the history of piracy, and general apocalyptic tales of the ocean, the song “Back To The Sea” quickly throws aside all pretention in favor of a quick-moving guitar part and a constant refrain of “going back, back to the sea!”, which is an event that has been a long time coming for fans of the band.

The comeback disc is a hard trick to execute, but after a succesful crowdfunding campaign (which we posted about here, mostly to get folks some foam shark fins because the merchandising opportunity amused us) the group, who had developed a bit of a cult following after the release of their 2009 album Terraphobic and its followup EP, 2011’s Vindication, have managed to do just that. Back To The Sea contains 13 songs of hydro-powered, lead-guitar-charged melodeath led by a combo of cat-shrieking highs from drummer Truck and hefty low growls from bassist Randall, and while it’s not exactly breaking the mold genre-wise, it proves to be a whole hell of a lot of fun. Continue reading »

AFGRUND: “THE DYSTOPIAN”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Feb 202018
 

 

(We present DGR’s review of the new album by the Swedish/Finnish trio Afgrund, which was released last month.)

 

There’s already been a couple of victorious return-from-the-ashes releases so far in 2018, and one of the earliest — after a long period of silence — was on January 5th, courtesy of Swedish/Finnish grind collective Afgrund.

Still somewhat embroiled in a dispute with others in their history over who owns the name has resulted in potentially two versions of the band existing. The three-piece group presented here consists of founding and long-time members Andy, Pat, and Panu, who among the three of them were with the band in one form or another from their first releases up to the 2012 album, The Age Of Dumb. On January 5th, this group returned under the Afgrund banner with a new album, eleven tracks jammed into a little over twenty-three minutes, delivering a dark and pessimistic fiery blast of grind-and-punk under the title The Dystopian.

The Dystopian feels like Afgrund returning home in more ways than one, not only because the lineup consists of founding members but also in the way The Dystopian moves and what it consists of. It sounds like Afgrund knocking down all of their old favorites all over again, reaching into a comfortably familiar bag of tricks in order to dispense high-speed blasts and yells about the world of today. The Dystopian is Afgrund performing a delicate balancing act, viewing the world through a current lens yet throwing themselves back in time in order to effectively restart the band. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD BY DGR (PART 2): THE KENNEDY VEIL, MEMORIAM, NECROPHOBIC, DARKEST HOUR

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Feb 052018
 

(This is the second part of a new-music round-up compiled by DGR. You can find Part 1 at this location.)

 

The Kennedy Veil – Bloodletting North America Full Set Live

We ended the first part of this collection with a live music video from Rotting Christ, and speaking of live shows, let’s check in with a Sacramento death metal crew who also wound up with a recorded live show in 2017. This one is courtesy of The Kennedy Veil, whose label Unique Leader recently uploaded the twenty-some-odd-minute full set from when the band were on opening tour duties for the tech-death-packed Bloodletting North America tour, which saw them playing alongside the likes of Origin, Archspire, Dyscarnate, and Defeated Sanity. Continue reading »

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