Amenra - "De Doom"

Right from the first song it is obvious they have continue to grow musically. The added the girl from Oathbreaker to lend her voice and it creates a more Swans like atmosphere. At most is a big word for this album as it is loaded down with it, the indulge themselves in ambiance and take their time getting to the meet of the matter. When they are in the song it is cool as hell but it takes a minute to get there. They were killer live when I saw them touring to support their last album to the point that they blew Voivod and Yob off the stage. I am not sure how this would translate as it would make for a great deal of dead air when they are doing these spoken word pieces. In fact the second song is just an ambient interlude but almost 5 minutes of one. 

It is a good thing they waste no time and come in crushing it on the song that follows, as I was at the atmospheric threshold of what would have worked for me. You know I love for things to be sonically heavy more than heavy metal, so the fact the bass is more burly and allows the guitars to play dissonant melodies works for me. Colin's clean vocals have really improved as he project more and is not singing in the fragile Sigur Rios like voice. They find a balance of atmosphere and song writing on "Het Gloren". It is a sprawling 11 minute song and maybe a minute of that fat could have been trimmed off. They lurch into a downtrodden take on sludge that I can get behind, even though it drones. 

This use of restraint is forgotten as they go back to somewhat ponderous ambiance setting the stage for spoken word. It does build out of this eventually , but it is a great deal of time wasted when metal is much better served when it gets to the point. I am not sure that we need six and half minutes of a 12 minute song , with poetry being read. I think we could have accomplished this in seven minutes and made for a better listen.  I will give this one an 8.5 as it is pretty stunning when they do lock in on the more moving heavy sonics, it is just inconsistent in that regard and seems like it would not be as powerful experience live

Death is June : Living Gate :"Deathlust"

When I introduced Death is June I mentioned how I am going to try and feature bands that go beyond the status quo tried and true death metal formula, but I had already reviewed one album that fell into the more traditional confines of death metal. This is that album. With members from Amenra, Oathbreaker and Yob, I trusted these guys to at least not bore. Death metal can just color with blood red so how they use their sonic crayons is important here. They have the sound and know how to play it, so the most important thing I am now listening for it what is different about what they are bringing to the table? Without question great amost progressive guitar playing, that makes me ask but can you write a song. Yes . They answer with the second song, allowing the guitar to bring more melody. I would not call them technical death metal as they are not just about the math of their riffs. The are very precise in their playing.

The growls accent what should be the chorus on "Roped". While it is not shaking things up it does present you with something that sticks to your ears more than if they were just giving you a full speed ahead beating. They do administer such a beating in this very song, but there is enough fine tuning to make it work for now. I think if they did not deviate from this formula I would become bored. The title track is more straight forward. The roared vocal fall into the same old same old from what we have heard a hundred times before. Are they good at what they are doing ? Yes. The guitar solo shines and spotlights their skills as musicians , but the quagmire they are creating finds them stuck in tradition even if that is what they are paying homage to. They continue down this hyper aggressive show of excessive force on "Heaven Ablaze" and I begin to get bored.


I am not a fan of having eponymous songs, but that is what happens here. They are more angular and less full frontal assulat on this one. Not sure the results are much better as it comes across rather opaque. The riff kind of collide with out much form or function in terms of song writing. A little more straightforward than the kind of death metal I might expect from Relapse. I guess it doesn't hurt to come with references from your previous projects. Given their previous projects they got my hopes up for something different. I will round this down to a 7 as it is well played , but if your bar is higher in terms of what you want in regards to actual originality in originals you will under stand my complaints. If you just want death metal and have little discernment they hit all the right notes and will become your favorite band.

the Top 10 Hardcore Albums of the Decade

The decade began before this blog was started , I can not just rely on sorting through previous reviews. I am just embedding video clips to support the reasoning for these albums to be listed as such, since I already did a best of the year list for each sub-genre. I broke up what was the punk / harcore list and made them two seperate lists. With most lists I am saying I am not going for the heaviest or fastest but  for what has the best songs . That is still true , but for harcore, I do lean toward the more mean spirited and the darker the better . There still has to be a melodic quality that makes this  worth listening to again and again.  Maybe these are not the hippest albums of the decade when it comes to this genre, but what matters more is the fact these are the albums I listened to the most when it came to this sort of thing. ; Any ways here are the Top 10 Hard core  albums of the decade.


10-Oathbreaker- "Rheia" -2016




 





9-Svalbard- "It's Hard to Have Hope"












8-Hexis-"Tando Ashanti"-2018 









7-Enabler - "Fail to Feel Safe" - 2015










6 -Birds in Row- "We Already Lost the World" - 2018





 






5-LLNN- "Deads "- 2018 












4-Phobia- "Generation Coward" -2019






 






3-Nails - "You Will Never Be One of Us"- 2016 












2-Code Orange - "Forever"












1-Converge - " The Dusk in Us"-2017





 

the Top 10 Black Metal Albums of 2016

Black metal continues to flourish in even the most obscure corners of the world like it is the new punk rock for a doomed generation. As we do every year here, the top albums are gathered from every sub-genre, veterans are being honored alongside new American bands who are taking risks to push their music into new places. What we don't have is just a collection of boring blast beats recorded in a trash can. So here are the top ten black metal album of 2016 for you to worship while you are stealing the baby Jesus out of the local Nativity scene.

 10- Nevoa- "Re Un "

The atmospheric black metal duo from Portugal that brought the masterful "Absence of Void' are back with a darker and denser offering this time around. In the last minute bellowing vocals come in after they have ridden a droning groove for the bulk of the song. There is a cleaner and more jangling guitar tone to the second song. Around the two minute mark it begins to gain speed. These songs are looser jams than what they gave us on the first album. When the vocals come back in to help build things to more of a boiling point , the guitar gets weirder and then they continue to ebb back and forth like a breeze between roaring thunder storms. This album is much more progressive than the first. This is both a blessing and a curse as it does push their brand of black metal into new places.

 http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2016/06/nevoa-re-un.html

9-Destroyer 666- "Wildfire"

 It's clear that early Slayer is engraved in this band's dna. I can hear a little Venom in the vocals, but right from the first falsetto scream it's showing you no mercy. The lash out with the chemical warfare of their riffs. They keep up the speed for "Live and Burn". The vocals are well placed. It's a forceful thrash narrative, snarled more than they are screamed or sung.


http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2016/02/destroyer-666-wildfire.html


8-Abbath- s/t

 Immortal has been slugging it out longer than Queensryche over who owns the rights to their name leading guitarist and front man Abbath Doom Occulta decided to just release this album under his own name enlisting Creature aka Kevin Foley who is Benighted's drummer to pound along with Gorgoroth bassist King ov Hell. So a Immortal / Gorgoroth super group is what we are looking at here. It is though the material on this album are the songs that were written as the follow up to the 2009 full-length "All Shall Fall". From the intensity of the first song, I'm ok with the shift away from what I normally think of as the Immortal sound.

 

7-Black Table- "Obelisk"

Blast beats do show up upon occasion, but are not the sole force propelling these songs, even when they are at their most raging. We have a dark hybrid of many styles meeting and none of them trying to be as cool as the other metal bands from New York work so hard at. Thanks to Billy Anderson this album sounds good. The production really complements the depth of their dynamics.They get things a sonically heavy as it is heavy metal with a juciey coat of  darkness draping it , so all the basis are covered here. They also cover way more ground in one song than half of the bands who drag things out for fifteen droning minutes. It's one of the more impressive metal releases I have heard recently.

    http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2016/10/black-table-obelisk.html

6-Urfaust "- Empty Space Meditation" 

This Dutch band is no stranger here, as they are one of my favorite weird black metalish projects.  The songs are all just labelled as meditations.  The first meditation is actually just atmosphere you might expect one to meditate to before they blast off into the 2nd meditation that is more snarling and finds them returning to the use of harshly screamed vocals. Keyboards hover over the blasting to create a darker web of cavernous macabre. The more traditional that I have come to expect from this project returns three minutes. It's sung a lighter higher than the more typical booming bellow from their chest voice. They slow out of the blasting into a sonically intense, but still melodic movement before returning to the storm of blast beaten madness. For me returning to it was a little formulaic, but the trve cvltists tend to like keeping simple so this one goes out to them.Overall this album is what you want from Urfaust. The band has added some new textures and layers. It might not be what you typically want from black metal, as they are not the heaviest black metal going, but they are certainly more thoughtful and than most and melodic in a way that doesn't seem like they are begging to be Opeth.



 http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2016/09/urfaust-empty-space-meditation.html

5-Darkthrone- "Arctic Thunder"


 Their 16th album opens with a song that debuted on the inner-webs "Tundra Leach" . This one churns at more of a Celtic Frost pace, even when it shifts into higher gear. Nocturno has more of a gurgling gruffness to his voice than we heard on "Underground Resistance". This is a heavier and darker album that takes us back to more of a "Circle the Wagons" like place. I have to ask myself when I want to listen to Darkthrone that is not from their classic era of second wave black metal am I going to reach for this album or "the Cult is Alive" ? Only time will tell, however Fans of the band will find this sit well next to their other work.

 http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2016/09/darkthrone-arctic-thunder.html

4-Inquisition- "Bloodshed across the Empyrean Altar beyond the Celestial Zenith "

Dagon lets the chords ring out with such eerie dissonance you know who this is right from the throttling descent into "From Chaos They Came". Drummer Incubus brings some sinister grooves and really lays into his high hat. Vocally...well it is what it is. The croaked vocals sound a little more relaxed on the opener while every thing else is amped up. "Wings of Anu" feels like it carries a similar vibe to it's throb as the opener, though perhaps dialed back a few degrees. Some of their best work to date.

 http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2016/08/inquisition-bloodshed-across-empyrean.html

3-Oathbreaker- "Rheia"

his band from Belgium opens their third album with an acapella vocal before blasting into a more furious take on black metal. A minute and a half in it ebbs back down into a similar vocal to the one that opened the album. The vocals continue to be one of the things that makes this album sound out. Sometimes the go spastic at other moments like the song "Being Able to Feel Nothing" they are very emotive. Emotion and feeling drove this album to the top of the heap.


http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2016/10/oathbreaker-rheia.html

2-Tombs- "All Empires Fall " 

What happens on Tombs new album should not come as a surprise considering how they have evolved with each album. The last album might not have been as dark as the previous, but Mike Hill and company continue to evolve. With the inclusion of Fade Kainer into the fold on "All Empires Fall" it made me think the industrial influence that has lurking under the surface would rise like Godzilla. This is not the case. They make it clear the metal isn't going anywhere. They kick the fucking door down with a neck crushing riff on the opening instrumental "the World is Made of Fire". They lash into something closer to straight up black metal for "Obsidian". It's not just full blast ahead. These guys have more tricks up their sleeves. Does Kainer's synths bring another sonic layer? Yes, but it doesn't compromise their sound.

 http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2016/03/tombs-all-empires-fall.html

1-Anagnoroisis -"Perpetia"

 The narrative these songs are woven around provides a more personal touch then most black metal band's allow themselves to create. There are no arctic wastelands or occult gibberish to hide behind. In some ways if it was not for the sonic storm cloud raging as this album's heart beat you might mistake this for hardcore.  The vocals keep their scathing snarl as a static coat of white noise to a similar effect as Deafheaven. Their approach to black metal is less atmospheric and the ambiance if of a more emotional nature. It is without question one of the better black metal albums I have come across recently and these guys have really stepped up their game when it comes to song writing. http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2016/09/anagnorisis-peripeteia.html

Oathbreaker : " Rheia"

Not sure why I waited around to check this album out. It's only been out a month, but I really feel like I have been missing out on something only three songs into it. This band from Belgium opens their third album with an acapella vocal before blasting into a more furious take on black metal. A minute and a half in it ebbs back down into a similar vocal to the one that opened the album. The vocals continue to be one of the things that makes this album sound out. Sometimes the go spastic at other moments like the song "Being Able to Feel Nothing" they are very emotive. Sometimes her delivery reminds me of Karyn Crisis since it is less refined than a singer like Julie Christmas. I can here these guys busting into something with more of a post-punk edge to it even against the shimmering tremolo of the guitar she is give to scream over here.


There is more of a gloom folk to the acoustic intro of "Stay Here". This draws comparisons to Chelsea Wolfe and proves that Caro Tanghe can really sing when she wants to. This is important to me as I think it is a quality all screamers should have in order to provide music with the needed dynamic range. Not being able to sing is the equivalent to a guitar only able to play the three lowest strings of their instruments, that makes them a bass player not a guitarist. "Needles In Your Skin" starts off with them going down the more darkly somber path of the previous song before blasting into something more abrasive. They prove they are not limited with just hitting you with blasting as powerful chug is summoned in this song's strongest moment.

They hit you with a very gripping melody on "Immortals". When it turns into a more pummeling maelstrom the stage was already set for this explosion. They dive back down into what proves to be one of the album's darker moments, it's pretty fucking breath taking.After an interlude of weirdness comes another sonic sprawl in "Where I Live". The melody is once again gracefully wedged into the raging storm of guitars around the vocals. "Where I Leave" is darker and more melodic, but not without menace. This song shows their ability to use restrain and allow the song to have a life of it's own. If you ever wanted to know what it means to serve the song this is an excellent example. The album ends on a more atmospheric side. This album deserves a 10 without question.