Burzum : " Umskiptar"

Varg Vickernes is back.the man the myth the legend, Americans built in their minds as a black metal Charles Manson. This album is devoid of any sensationalism, the fresh out of prison novelty has worn of and the elder statesman of Norwegian black metal is now making music for the sake of making music. This album is a companion piece of sorts to a book Varg wrote called Sorcery and Religion, an exploration into Norse folk lore and mythology . The lyrics taken from the poem Völuspá are once again sung in Varg's native tongue.
Umskiptar means metamorphosis, a fitting title because it steps further way from black metal or what we traditionally think of as Norwegian black metal. This is going to be a sticking point for fans of pre-incarceration Burzum and for those who thought "Fallen" wasn't kvlt enough. If you have read or watched interview where he is allowed to actually talk about music this should not come as a surprise, in numerous interviews he compared "Fallen" to classical music. Bookend by two pieces of minimalist ritualistic ambiance, there is really only nine songs here.
The first real song "Joln" ...or deities, is classic post-incarceration Burzum, the guitar is both abrasive and droning. The vocals have a very ritualistic feel, a heavily reverbed mike makes them sound like an invocation, which given the lyrical content is fitting, harsh vocals space these chants out, there is a weird clicking in the middle section where the drums drop out . Suppose a click track of sorts, I put my head to the speaker to see if my ears were playing tricks on me. There are alot of subtle sounds on this record and best listened on headphone. A far cry in the production from when Varg asked for the shittiest microphone they had.
"Alfadanz" the elf dance follows, after a piano intro launches in to pretty straight forward mid-paced metal riffage,accompanied by more chanting, which is a theme of the album as , the "clean" vocals here are less sung and more recited in almost a conversational tone. While I like this song, it trudges in pace more than what you would expect from Burzum and reminds me for some reason of Carpathian Forest.
On "Hit Helga Tre" or the sacred tree... the plodding thunder continues, this time in a more compelling manner as it's layered with tremolo picked guitar.
"Aera" or honor, brings harsher vocals back to the table, the angry thrash guitar is still pretty straight forward and more blatant than what I from Varg these days.
"Heair" or esteem...brings to mind the breakdown section in "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" the this is not your father's Burzum continues on "Valgaldr" this might be Var's prog song as it goes from a waltz to almost a depressive black metal feel as it descends into a more solemn dirge.The doomish depression continues on "Galgviar". This songs comes close to being a ballad, I like the guitar melody but very different from what I think of Burzum .Varg's baritone lament is more more emotive than his vocals on "Fallen" . The slow dissonant guitar creep along making it a song i don't see making the transition over to my Ipod. To be the albums longest track "Gullaldr" never really builds into anything, the guitar has too much space to make the song flow.
I'm on board for 7 of the 9 nine pieces I consider songs,though the album is growing on me, I don't think I will latch onto it as I did with "Fallen". Take into consideration I'm a pretty big Burzum fan , who is down with the maturation of post-pokey Varg when I give the album a 7 out of 10
and yes this the beginning of my my scoring since I get requests for that sort of thing

Alcest / Deafheaven

While there is a funny story within a funny story about this show, we can skip all that and go straight to the rocking as there was plenty to be had. With Speedwolf playing the after-show, the crowd was a weird mix of two divergent schools of hipster metal. The main show was post-rock/hip-black metalists, if such a subculture exists outside of Brooklyn Vegan, this was it , then the thrash/punks no big frame glasses just beards and denim vests, funny enough all the participants of this scene were not even born when"Practice What you Preach" was released but are quick to call Alcest fans poseurs ...now there's some Irony Maiden. But being the tough guys they are that crowd milled about and the overall vibe was very relaxed for a metal in comparison to the Deicide crowd.
UberChriist first up sounds much less like the want to be Darkthrone live, while the harsh vocals were a disappointment from what I have heard of their Studio, the addition of bassist Lamar from Wolves and Jackals was a wise choice as he holds them down better for the guitar to explore more ambient territory, live the came across more High On Fire than the raw black metal kvlt stuff they are supposed to be parodying ,but much improved you can see where their real identity begins now.

Deafheaven was up next and the crowd for these guys was even much different from the crowd for Alcest, as it seemed more like a hardcore show with out the windmilling and kickboxing dances.Deafheaven with out a doubt stole the show. They had an intensity to them that could not be denied. Front-man George Clarke's stage presence makes up for his one dimensional vocal attack. The playing was spot on with a shimmer slaps you and then shakes you while the cathartic exorcism explodes into the ether on waves of delay and distortion. Either I'm going deaf or I expected them to be louder.

Alcest took the stage with an understated meekness about them. The mix they got did not do their style any favors and the mix played against their strengths which are the vocals. Neige's lighter upper register singing floated against the grain and the bass and drums dominated, the reverse of their albums where guitar and vocals have the spotlight. So from one perspective live showcased another element of their sound the recordings don't.Their set was a well balanced mix of the old and new giving a fair representation to their many facets.The guitar parts were executed as with expected finesse but needed a boost as on their albums the fairy land melodies ring out in such a way it carries you away before you miss the bite most metal has.The heavier sections towards the second half of the set really stood out, the drummer was really smacking his snare on the blast beats rather than playing gravity blasts, there were several builds that did capture their awe inspiring sound and enjoyed their set but left wanting to seem them louder in a environment more fitting to their capabilities.

Heidevolk : Batavi

With Tyr's last album not doing much for me, I really needed was for these Dutch Viking LARPers to set up their game. Let's get my little political qualm out of the way first with these guys and get onto the music, and it's more for the fact we have the record straight, guys the Dutch were only Vikings in the sense that they were part of the territory covered during the Viking expansion movement, I history classes in America but they should in the Netherlands, so describing this band as Viking metal we are really just saying it has more balls than run of the mill folk metal...works for me moving on.
Every metal band will tell you their next album will be their heaviest yet, Heidevolk would not be telling you a lie, every thing here is stepped up. The production the most notable and the vocals really benefit from this. They are double tracked and bellowed out from a booming baritone, see kids you don't have to growl to sound heavy. Now the war chants in the back ground will prove rousing anthems to raise your beer to in the parking lot at Renn-fest, they might one day seem obnoxious to me but for now they don't detract from my listening.
One thing this album gets points for is that in the days of the Ipod where most listening is done on shuffle, this album proves a smooth cohesive journey front to back, no songs I would feel should be excluded from the Ipod,though considering summer has come early, I won't really need to feel like I'm galloping through the snow covered hills til next fall, so it will stay on the hard drive for air conditioned listening.
I have noticed by the acoustic guitar on the 6th song,the more melodic feel was welcome departure as the songs start to take on a similar feel and this is due in part to one of the albums strong points mentioned earlier the vocal production, which gives every thing a similar feel as all the songs are sung in dutch so lyrical content doesn't distinguish them. However even with in that , their are peaks and valleys, the rare appearance of harsh vocals and variations to the guitar attack. The drums while improved performance wise often have the same driving feel as if the double bass is trying to out run a dragon.
The 6th song is an instrumental interlude of sorts and leads back into more of a power-metal type guitar attack, any way you slice and dice this it's more epic on a budget than most of your bigger label releases of this sort of thing, it's very honest and while I don't believe their cosplay, I trust these guys to bring the metal with little pretense. Also they get credit for using their native tongue and folk melodies with out sounding like they are frolicking at the shire with Korpiklaani.
This going to be brutal enough for everyone, but if you like mid tempo power/folk/epic/viking whatever the hell you want to call this then these guys are worth checking out.

Catching up with the Jones

ok it's starting to either trickle out or catching my attention, this is a similar fashion to how i catch my self wetting the bed...how i dream about wetting the bed, so in other words here are the abysmal hymns... you might wanna cop a listen to if you are looking for some new metal, some of these just got lost in the shuffle with my writing for Global Domination such as our first entry on the list which I have an article pending with Global Domination

1-Sigh - In Somniphobia- A progression from Scenes from Hell, though it's a progression away from Black Metal, which I'm still split on and not sure I am on the band wagon with this being hailed by some as a perfect album, there is some great playing on it and perhaps it needs to grow on me

2-Drudkh- Eternal Turn of the wheel-another one on the back burner for GD, still ingesting this one, unlike Sigh this is a turn to a more classic black metal feel, I can say I like it better than the Old Sliver Key team up they did with Alcest, faster and more venomous a step away from the folk metal undertones
the souls

3-Alcest- Les Voyages de l'Âme...or the journey of souls , Neige's more accessible work at first it struck my as bland until repeat listens , though a few songs the drumming and cadence of the octave chords remind me a little of the Foo-fighters. It is better than anything you will find on rock radio however.

4-Abgail Williams - Becoming ...OK you guys are there , stick with this bands wagon, I had dismissed this band as a death-core band who wanted to sound like Dimmu ... and then they went and made this nice slab of dark sonic nightmares...good work guys now a full length like this and I will forget everything that came before

5-Goatwhore- another great turn around from a band whom I wanted to like due to their Acid Bath past, but their style of blackend death metal bored me on previous releases , this takes a direction more akin to Skeleton Witch but angrier and spitting hell-fire back up at Jehovah, good qualities to have in metal along side some thrashier riff-age

6-Cormorant- Dwellings ...ok this got alot of praise at the tail end of last year and falls under the category of just slipped past me though I was aware of it's release as guys like Anthony over at the Needle Drop and Angry Metal guy both spoke highly of it. When playing it at band practice the other night one of the guitarists thought it required a wolf to ride while listening to...and perhaps it may, it takes the Opeth/Enslaved progressive death/black metal and spins it around add a dose of epic to it and rocks out, it deserves to be listened to by any discerning ears for the metal

7-Mournful Congregation- Book of Kings- this came out in november the review quickly covered at GD and I haven't gotten a chance to writing anything on it ...Doom with a capital D, when you thought it couldn't be done with any more aching beauty than Loss, these Australians came behind them and raised the bar, If i had more time along with the Comorant album it might make me re-think my top metal releases of 2011, the guitar cry out for you to kill your self like sirens from the grave, I love napping to this albums and I mean that In the same way that I used to go to sleep to " Venus in furs " , it makes me want to float off into the after life on a bunch of pills, I can't listen to this album enough

8- Semargl- Satanic Pop Metal - so this does reek of Hot-topic, in some ways it makes me think of if H.I.M had gone black metal, it's metal cotton candy, well made pure sugar

9-Heidevolk- Batavi - just got this one , it rides in ...yes on a wolf , a bigger one than Comorant, a dire wolf straight from Game of thrones and conquerors all the problems of the previous album's production, sounds more polished which in turn makes them sound more epic and that is what they needed.

10- Xiu Xiu- Always- ok it's not metal, but it's dark and bleak, granted electronic and quirky, not too mention the lead singer is flaming as the nine hells but it's good music for those wishing to venture outside of the chugga chugga

What Maiden Should Play

While I am far beyond stoked for the show June 23rd and the fact is not going to have any thing from after "Seventh Son" for once I would like a band to deviate from it's greatest hits and play the deeper cuts that people who have already seen them before want to hear, lets face it we are the loyal fans who have been helping with their mortgages back in the days when people bought albums, don't you know if people still bought them Maiden would not be touring as much as they have since the market took a decline back in 2006. So here's my wish lists set lists for ten bands who I think could stand to drop the greatest hits tours .

Iron Maiden

1-Invaders
2-Wrathchild
3-Sea of Madness
4-Back in the Village
5-Total Eclipse
6-Still Life
7-Killers
8-Alexander the Great
9- the Prisoner
10-Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Judas Priest

1-Delivering the goods
2-Don't go
3-Riding on the Wind
4-Stained Class
5-Never Satisfied
6-Eat Me Alive
7-Dissident Aggressor
8-Beyond the realms of death
9-Island of Domination
10-Devil's Child

Slayer

1-Killing Fields
2-Aggressive Perfector
3-Die By the sword
4-Black Magic
5-Necrophiliac
6-Behind the Crooked cross
7-Altar of Sacrifice
8-Temptation
9-Spill the blood
10-Seasons in the Abyss

Alice Cooper

1-Go to Hell
2-Roses on white lace
3-Halo of flies
4-The ballad of Dwight Frye
5-Is it my Body
6-Scarlet and Sheba
7-Cold Ethyl
8-It's Hot tonight
9-Steven/ the Awakening
10-i love the dead

Kiss

1-I've had enough ( into the fire )
2-Parasite
3-Keep me comin
4-Hotter than Hell
5-Charisma
6-a Million to one
7-Thrills in the night
8-She
9-100000 years
10-the Oath

Black Sabbath

1-Hole in the sky
2-Tomorrows dream
3-Hand of Doom
4-Megalomania
5-Killing yourself to live
6-Snowblind
7-Sleeping Village
8-Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
9-Into the Void
10-Never say die

Rush

1-2112
2-Circumstances
3-Red Sector a
4-The Necromancer
5-Ghost of a chance
6-Witch Hunt
7-Red Lenses
8-Cygnus X-1 Book one
9-Something for nothing
10-Sub-divisions

Deep Purple
1-Stormbringer
2-Maybe I'm a Leo
3-Child in time
4-Dealer
5-Into the fire
6-Place in line
7-No one came
8-You Keep on movin
9-Woman from Tokyo
10-Perfect Strangers

Nine Inch Nails
1-Mr. self destruct
2-1,000,000
3-Heresy
4-Dead souls
5-Happiness in slavery
6-Kinda I want to
7-the Becoming
8-My violent heart
9-Even deeper
10-Eraser

Alice in Chains
1-Rotten apple
2-Sea of sorrow
3-Last of my kind
4-Down in a hole
5-All secrets known
6-I can't remember
7-Junkhead
8- Angry chair
9-Get born again
1O-Would?

Sound Garden
1-Birth ritual
2-Hands all over
3-Gun
4-Beyond the wheel
5-Jesus Christ Pose
6-Mood for trouble
7-Searching with my good eye closed
8-No wrong no right
9-4th of july
10-Big dumb sex

Pallbearer- sorrow and extinction

Underwhelmed by the Arkansas doom band’s 2010 demo, I still felt there Pallbearer had potential. This measure of faith rested on the hope of better production and time spent in the studio to give reflection on the nuances of song writing. On the very first listen of “ Sorrow and extinction” Welcoming morose passages of clean guitar welcomed me, as it dripped with morose melody giving previous doubts I had on their demo a proper burial.

The white elephant in the room on dividing metal message board is singer Brett Campbell. Neither a growler or an Ozzy homage, he stands out in the genre. I first heard Brett on the guest spot on Loss' “Despond” album.He is not trying to be the second coming of Ronnie James Dio, sometimes allowing his voice to crack in more of a stylistic element that lack of range. He displays at time a measure of akin to Eric Wagner of Trouble without the Jesus or the boogie or bell bottoms. He only become forceful on the 6 minute mark of "Offering of grief," the majority of the album he evokes Rob Halford's crooning mid range found on the first four Preist albums. The vocals well mixed into the music to plead to the thunder head of riff age rolling in on you.

One unique quality of their music is there isn’t an overabundance of Sabbath worship. If traces are found any where it would be in the drumming. These guys have huddled around the bong to both Solitude Aeturnus and Candlemass. Where doom or stoner rock purposefully hearkens to a more retro sound, here the elements of dated cheese thrown out of the fridge before the mold grows.These epics of a darkening horizon cast fresh light on the darkness. The challenge for any doom band is to keep it varied and interesting while plodding at a dying lumber. The guitars carry a rock n roll fuzz to them, keeping their sound from being what is categorized as funeral doom.


The guitars have an experimental edge to them rather than just use the riff to dig into the dig with sheer heaviness they know when to let the chords ring with a sense of majesty. The lead playing catches your ear not defaulting to the thematic melody of the song but venturing out in angular fashion past the minor fifth harmonies. The bass lead in to " The legend" accents the fact there isn't a weak link to this band, song also appeared on the demo ,displaying growth invested into it’s re-recording. They know when to pick up the pace into a mammoth chug, and give space for a solo to blaze out of the crescendo. The closer required a second listen, the oddly layered guitar solos at the end dragged me back in as the swell in a fade of synth echo. The first release of 2012 that has really rock my socks off .

Liturgy- and odd looking glass of metal in Atlanta

This started off as just a review of the Liturgy show I went to last week but giving a little more thought to the experience as a whole, it raised a few questions I feel need to explored.
Lets go ahead and get the elephant out of the room , which is the dreaded " hipster " tag and the controversy , Hunter Hendrix riled with his manifesto. The two issues go hand in hand because , if Hunter never opened his mouth in a manner that might be construed as suggesting this band is too elitist to be thought of in the same way as Norwegian black metal, then he would not have a-drawn attention to him self , which happens to be in the territory of self promotion a major key to being an artist independent or otherwise and b-fallen into separating himself from metal. It's pretty clear listening to the "Reannihilation" album, these guys have given Burzum more than a few spins and it's fair to say Darkthrone has made their playlist as well. Liturgy wears the shadows of the influences but brings influence from bands like Swans, Lightning Bolt, and Sun Ra to the table, so even at the risk of delving into noise they aren't looking to play it safe. So what I took away from all of his rambling , is they aren't looking to ape a style that has been done and want to do their own thing, now unless you have a small mind that is unable to progress beyond "Blessed are the Sick" then I don't see what's the problem with that.

Liturgy's 2011 release ”Aesthethica” remains one of my favorite albums of the year so the bar set high for them with a year of anticipation built around seeing the band live. Less than thirty minutes at the Masquerade I was informed Liturgy’s bassist and drummer had dropped off the tour and they would be preforming with a drum machine. With this in mind the fact the show had been moved into the Purgatory stage, made a little more sense as would the crowd of under fifty people.

Ok, lets get clear on this it made sense that it was moved to Purgatory due to low turn out ...what doesn't make sense is the low turn out. To get labelled as a hipster band I saw three or four people I would qualify with that label. So you are going to tell me all the metal heads who are into forward thinking metal where at the nostalgia fest that was Anthrax and Testament? If I think back to the Agalloch show, it was well attended and a different demographic than the Testament crowd, but more straight forward in their approach than Liturgy who is huge in New York. So does this mean experimental and metal only work in new york? Or more likely is Atlanta behind the curve when it comes to where metal is going.

It was a fact the creative clock is turned back the further outside of 285 you are proven once again by Tifton, Ga’s When Pain is King, who opened the show with a brand of Myspace metal I remember being much more adventurous in say 2004. I'm sure they killed it in the cafeteria at the Tifton high talent show, but Atreyu's days are dead and gone a fact even Atreyu is in acceptance of.

One of Atlanta's better bands Scarab followed them. While their blend of rocked out math-rock was more appropriate, I wouldn't say they are metal.The hints of blast beats recalled something more akin to Estradasphere in the days when they band dipped into the occasional metal outburst or falling closer to an instrumental version of the whole rock against rock movement that came out of California spear headed the Secret cheifs 3 and Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum with winding deviations in song structure complimented by remarkable use of creatively employed chops. I think given the circumstances Scarab stole the show and as a band whose rhythm section dominated the songs to a band lacking one would proved a jarring transition.
So why were Tifton's finest on the bill when a black metal-ish band would have made more sense, though now i think of it Überchriist, is the only one of those that comes to mind and a very tongue in cheek in their approach. So does this mean to only expect retro thrash and sludge once word gets back to New York don't waste your time going through atlanta on tour, and the message boards lament when Atlanta is passed up for city's like Mobile,

Liturgy’s main man Hunter Hendrix went about this gig if it were business as usual, more daunted by the meager crowd than the logistics at hand Hunter Hendrix was business as usual, though more than likely reminding him self to tell Krallice to skip atlanta once he ran into Mick Barr. He spoke only to announce themselves and their last song. He stood alongside guitarist Bernard Gann and let the quality if this bands music I find most compelling take center stage ...their guitar tone.

Rather than rely on the murky tremolo picked distortion their create a sonic clamor . their guitars ring like a cacophony of bells. The closest comparison in their sound would be found in their admitted influence of the Swans. To have such a unique guitar sound, i expected to see them encircled by pedal boards, this was not the case as became evident they create this using only the blur at the end of their wrists.

The impressive display of guitar playing aside , no attempt to replicate drum sounds. The lap top lurching behind Hunter only followed the albums patterns, spit out lo-fi drum sounds, that often blipped into a squeal. I am all for experimentation, but they are not Godflesh so it lacked lacked the power the album conveyed .The two guitarist played their parts spot in, with the only other deviation in the a capella sections of the looped clean vocal chants to lead into the sets opener and closer. Hendrix’s raw black metal shreikage was by his request buried in the mix .Later in their set he even asked not to hear themselves in the monitors.

Bernard Gann told me after the show that he found playing with something as rigid as the programed drums to be freeing. I hope this was not a cryptic hint at what to expect from the duo in the future. The pound of the angular rhythm section accented the horrid beauty they crafted so well on last year’s release. I admire them for working against adversity, and saw this as an intimate guitar clinic, while enjoyable as a once in a lifetime performance of circumstance I hope to see the band ... though in a different, return to form they deserve and when a band like Ulcerate skips Atlanta just remember word travels fast in New York.