I loved "Grim Wisdom," so expectations are high for this one. The opening track has a more thrash feel, until things slow and get more moody and melodic as the song progresses. There is still a Life of Agony vibe going on, but they are covering way more ground sonically this time around and throwing down with more punishing accents to pound you with what some might consider breakdowns. "Maximum Suffering' sells the melancholy while rocking the fuck out, which is what I liked about Life of Agony, that winning combination works equally well here.
"Gilded Hatred ' highlights the fact that the melodies are punchier this time, but hold more hook, yet the band does not shy from balancing this out with a heavier drive. The title track carries a more deliberate stomps, as the riffs jerk you about with dizzying transitions. The songs are rather compact, so they are packing ample riffage into them. The gang vocals in "Equilizer' keep the hard core roots of the band present despite the more metallic bombast they are hitting you with this time around. It seems like the "Apocalypse Intro' which is an instrumental, should have been the first song.
"Impulse" has more of a punk drive to its energy. They split the difference for "Snake Oil God" and have the hardcore muscle balancing the thrashing guitars. The vocals are more of an aggressive though, find the croon that feels more like AFI here. They belted bellow of the vocals is perhaps running with the river in it's deepest shade of red on "Symbol of Mourning". The last song "Over Mine" is melodic to the point of being a power ballad, thought the vocals sound great on it and it works really well. I will round this one up to a 10 as it just needs a few listens to grow on me. Close enough to the first album, but shows an expansion of their sound in a direction that is both heavier and more melodic vocally. May 23rd Closed Casket Activities.
This Estonian metal band plays an industrial take on metal-core and nu-metal. The sung vocals on the opening track sit in the background with the more aggressive vocals being dominant, as the syncopated chugs drive the song. If Fear Factory had been a progressive band, they might have sounded more like this. The riffs bounce around odd time signatures, like djent bands one juggled. The raspy snarl of the vocals retains its command going into the second song, as the drumming takes on a more Slipknotted attack. The song grooves more as a whole. One thing is obvious: their drummer is really good. The songwriting is a tad busy, when grooving more might serve the song more effectively. I can hear the vague traces of Faith No More in their sound as well, though not as diverse sonically.
If you are keeping track at home, the bands I have cited as being the possible influences of this band are all from the 90s. There is a 90s metal thing being done, but it's produced and dressed up in a more modern context. "Out For Blood" has a more jarring motion. It attempts to be a nu-metal groove, but is a little too weird, as it's more angular than even System of a Down, with odd little techno melodies creeping up. There is a much more Meshuggah-like feel to "Darker Tides". The sung vocals are effective, but sit weirdly in the mix. I do appreciate that this feels dark. The more Meshuggahfied touches to the guitar are not impressive to me since I already own Meshuggah's albums and do not need anyone impersonating them.
"DINY" finds more synth-infused sounds becoming dominant, which is a direction I think these guys should pursue further, as it lends to a more melodic backbone in the songwriting. I already mentioned System of a Down in passing, but they are a pretty decent comparison for when this song explodes. "Near Dark" is all explosion, and the vocals are just kind of crooning around it, trying to find where they belong. Melody gets prioritized for "Ruin' and it pays off as it gives the harder, punchy parts something to be dynamically contrasted by. The thump of the bass finally catches my ear on this one. The winding chaos of some of these songs also feels a little Mudvayne.
"Idoldust" is more about the hammering jabs of guitar that bob back and forth. The sung vocals are more of a texture on this one, and they are not as compelling. It is also the first song where I begin to pay attention to the lyrics. "Void Resonance" stomps on the gas when it comes to industrial strength metal, the verses are the most interesting element, as it sounds the most original. The bass line also plays a larger role in this song. They dig into death metal a bit along the way. Yet their more melodic moments are the ones that win me over most. The album closes by taking a more rock n roll approach to this sort of thing, which does include jamming out a groove. I will give this album a 9, it's a great deal of fun and these guys pull it off skillfully.
This EP is a memorial of sorts that explores loss through the lens of a fantasy metaphor to obscure the processing of their feeling regarding a dog's death. The title track that opens the album is one of their most refined, and perhaps accessible songs yet, with a more metal approach that delves into little of their more grindcore spasms, though those are not far behind with the 49-second "From Dog's Mouth a Blessing" that carries more of a hard core stomp to the riff. Still, the whole song is run through a filter that gives it a more lo-fi distant sound as if it's being played from a radio that is still crackling with radiation from nuclear exposure.
"Corpselight" is more of an interlude despite being longer than many of the band's songs at two and a half minutes, though it just lingers on dark ambient noise, and shrieking that is mixed into the reverb to haunt it from an even greater distance. Things come together on the more angular rocking of "Lament of All Things," there is a punk edge to this that is more apparent than I can recall hearing from them in the past. "Mirrorhelm" is another ambient interlude that drones a bit.
"A Knight's Oath" is another surprisingly straightforward metal that is more death metal in its intentions. The sonic guitar playing keeps it from crossing over into death metal despite the drumming and vocals. The last song is a more deliberate sludge hammering. The vocals shift from lower death growls to his normal higher, almost black metal screams. The drums continue to press through the dense noise that the song builds into. I will give this album a 9. I appreciate the continued refinement of what they do, not sure if an EP needed interludes, but overall, I enjoy what these guys do, and it is consistent with that and not unlike where they went on their last album, perhaps a little darker mood given the subject. Out on Closed Casket Activities May 16th.
Listening to this album through headphones is recommended. This album is an event. It opens with a 21-minute song. You guys know how I feel about songs like this, and even Michael Gira could stand to trim the fat at times. "The Healers" sounds like what the band at a Pentecostal church might do when waiting on a word of the lord during the prophecy and prayer part of their tent revival. Given the title, I would not put it past Gira that this is the point. When the groove kicks in, they create a powerful dynamic that harkens back to the '90s golden years of the band.
Gira's vocals drop lower, but despite the resonance in them, it's more speaking in tongues combined with throat singing than the croon that was the powerful narrative of their best work. The thing you can count on these guys for is a hypnotic drone, and that is the mood it creates. It gets jammy about 11 minutes in, but the narcotic groove is pretty enthralling. 16 minutes in and everything is thrown into chaos and noise for a spastic burst. I rarely need a paragraph to talk about a single song, much less two of them, but here we are.
The shimmering ambient buzz that ends the first song bleeds over into "I am the Tower", which finds Gira back in his spoken word mania that marked the band's 2010 reformation material. Melody slowly unfolds from this that recalls the later part of their 90 output. The beautiful sonic material they lock into makes it worthwhile. This makes them who they are is the ability to make the drone pay off. They are one of the few bands that can deliver it like this. At 71, I am not really asking Gira to do more than he did after Bowie died at 67, so there is not a great reference point for how singing into your 70s should sound, taking Mick Jagger out of the equation. This is not the same rock n roll; in fact, it's supposed to be everything the Stones are not.
The title track is even longer than the first song, only by a minute, but a 22-minute song is still an ample investment of time. The first two minutes are intro ambiance that boils into darker rock dissonance. At the four-minute mark, they ring into the lush sonic purpose of their 90s sound, just without Jarboe, whose absence might be an understandable sticking point for some. But it's hard to argue against the expansive ache of the guitar melodies that unfold here, with Gira's spiritual vocal intonation acting like a Buddhist chant. Midway into the song, it breaks into a fragile lullaby. Further proof that post-rock would not exist without these guys. This flows into the band's more strummed folk side, but doused in the kind of ambiance they are known for.
The whispered cadence of Gira's vocals creates a creepy cultic chant that sounds like a surreal 60s horror movie soundtrack opens "Red Yellow" at under seven minutes long it's hypnotic groove that is more sustainable, and it crosses the line from sonic splendor into actual songwriting. The drums have almost a Led Zeppelin-like throb to them. This feels like the best song these guys have done in a few albums to me. "Guardian Spirits' mixes the experimental layers of sound from "the Seer" with their darker 90s feel. The vocals owe a little more to his "Seer" days as well. There is also a little bit of the industrial clanging from the earlier days, though not nearly as angry. The drumming gets intense as the song builds.
"The Merge" throws harsh noise at you that leads into a pretty cool noir bass line. Is it going to be another 12 minutes of cool? Well, we shall see. Brass and guitar creep in to join it. Jazz is incorporated more into this song than anything I can recall hearing from these guys. This I bookended by noise before things grow darker. They ride off this swelling wave of ambiance. In the last three minutes, it drops down to the lo-fi folk that is a staple of Gira's writing process. The last song builds from the post-rock like minimalism, riding the ringing tension of the guitars. At 19 minutes, it's the album's fourth-longest song. Approaching the three-minute mark guitars begins to make more ambient sounds. This continues to build for six minutes until it begins to sound like a song coming to life. They ride this for five minutes before ebbing down. They they building it back up again. It follows these peaks and valleys for the song's duration, with vocals more as a textural accent. In the last 3 minutes, he returned to the folk feel again. I will give this album a 9.5, as it is not their best work, but it remembers to employ similar moods that bring them closer to the more classic sounds of the Jarboe era.
This band proves that black metal is not Norway's only musical export. The first song is instrumental. Kinda math rocky, but the guitarist proves they have chops. The playing is very melodic. The production is rough around the edges, as it carries a boom. The drummer works for what they are doing, and it all falls into place, no complaints, even though instrumental music is normally not my thing. There are vocals on the second song, though they sit back in the mix. They are a plaintive croon that sits where it should in the song, with the nuanced picking of the guitars carrying most of the slack.
"Cheese Me Macoroni' crosses over into being outright progressive. The creeping riff weaves itself around itself and opens the door for the guitar solo to blaze out of. To their credit 'Treeline Siren" is the longest song at just over six minutes. There is more of a Pink Floyd-like feel to it. "Midway into the song, when the vocals surface, their cadence gives weight to my Pink Floyd theory. "1979" kinda of tick like a clock, but not in the moments that make up a dull day manner. There is some groove to it, but once again, more progressive than post-rock. The chill vocals to this song glide in for a short visit.
The last song cements them as a prog band. They are much closer to a mix of Joe Satriani and Pink Floyd than Explosions in the Sky or Russian Circles. The guitar playing is great. It's pretty intricate. Overall, this album is a fun listen that took a few spins to let sink in. I will give it a 9, as there is some great playing, most of the vocals are incidental, but creatively employed. If you like prog that flows and unfolds as it jams along, then these guys are worth a listen.
This Tampa band carries a more '90s feel into their industrial-tinged take on sludge. They allow for a dynamic ebb and flow. The coarse vocals bark out from the sonic swathe of guitars that carries a buzzing tension. The mood is more noise-rock, but a pumped-up, beefier take on the genre when it comes to the throbbing drone of "Mt Vermin". It's not as dynamic as the opening track. It is more chaotic and noisy as it progresses. There is a more aggressive palm-muted syncopation to "Obsese Variants". The verses hit almost more like Meshuggah. The vocals are roared in a more anthemic fashion on the chorus. But once again, it works more of the tension than the release.
'Labor" starts off with a stirring storm of tribalistic drums building like a storm. This is the first hint of their Neurosis influence, though it's given a hyper-drive tempo. When it comes to the weight of its sonic density, it might be the heaviest song thus far. To their bassist's credit, he is the engine of this machine as he grinds the point home. "Frank Stallone' brood a bit but does not really build up. There is more of a frantic chaos to "Pigs, Tu". When the bass anchors the song midway in things feel like they are finding their footing. The experimental spirit of this album should be admired, as it is something I like hearing in heavier music.
"Europa" is more intense and chaotic as it only goes for the throat in its rabid attack. I can understand why some might be into this sort of thing. "Barking Dog as a Plot Device' is almost more of an interlude at just under two minutes. It pounds at your ears with an overdriven fuzz to relish the noise ridden havoc it propagates. The longest song is last, which makes sense given the more Melvins-like thump of the chug they lock into. The vocals remain constant in the bellow that has belched all over the album. The second verse is wise to let the bass groove carry it. There is some dynamic ebb and flow to this one to balance this out. It converges into the kind of stomp most want from sludge. I will give this album an 8.5, I like the 90s vibes I am getting from this as the rough around the edges noise touches add an unhinged ambiance.
It's time for April's top 10 albums. Staying abreast of the month's highlights might help casual readers see what they missed and check these artists out. I am not writing little blurbs on them; I am just linking the reviews. Inclusion here does not mean that these albums have been released this month, but it is a list of new or upcoming albums I have enjoyed the most. I have albums in my inbox that are not coming out til July, so I am normally way ahead of the curve in this regard. They are ranked in order of what I have listened to the most. This month, there is a wide variety from Pop to Death Metal, so you may find your new favorite among them. Here are the Top 10 albums of April.
