Amok – Necrospiritual Deathcore (2015)

Tagged as a death/thrash sort of cross-over band, Amok, at least in the present album, sounds much closer to hardcore stemming from the tradition of Discharge Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing and filtered along the line of Amebix Arise!. Some gestures of 80s heavy metal show up but only briefly and not prominently enough to turn this into one of the many kinds of  so-called “melodic death” bands out there. In Necrospiritual Deathcore a healthy, coherent mixture of different punk and metal expressions collide to form an enjoyable album.

Like any hardcore album worth its salt, we find fragments of speech taken from television or radio, snippets of urban audio, coughing, among the rough scream-barks of the vocalist. All this, combined with the great pains to which Amok goes to give this album musical variety despite the fact that the music is primarily percussive (and simple in its percussion). Commendable are the smooth tempo changes in the album that are never abrupt even though they change the music drastically. Voice and instruments conspire so that the “line” is never broken when going from a faster speed to a slower one. When it comes to accelerating, though, the punks show themselves.

On the other hand, given the simplicity (and I mean real simplicity) of each song and the fact that the album is a song-collection (rather than a concept album, or a greater work, or a set of variations), the staying power of this kind of record is very limited. Sounding like a more single-minded, less flexible Amebix, Amok Necrospiritual Deathcore will please and entertain, but there is little reason to continue listening to it when there are albums like Arise! lying around. All in all, it is a refreshing hardcore album with heavy and death metal colors done by expert musicians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBosT9rPRPk

No Comments

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Erik Rutan and Steve Tucker Issue Warfather Album Studio Update

warfather_band

Warfather has issued a studio update on the progress of the band’s as-of-yet-untitled sophomore album. Rhythm guitars, drums and bass tracks are completed. Vocals should be finished soon.

Warfather ‘s Steve Tucker (Morbid Angel) had this to say about the album’s progress:

“Working with Erik Rutan on this record is both an honor and an amazing experience. Erik knows death metal better than any producer or engineer on this planet! He knows how to get the best performance out of everyone who steps through Mana Recording studios’ doors. A true professional and a Legend!”

Producer Erik Rutan (Hate Eternal, ex-Morbid Angel) added:

“Recording with Steve and the guys on the new Warfather album has been fantastic! It has been a blast to be working on this monster album in the studio once again with my great friend and former band mate. The songs are heavy as hell and just outright awesome. We have some great tones and performances and I’m really excited about the whole process. We have just finished all the drums, bass and rhythm guitars. The massive foundation has been formulated. Now it is time to start vocals and solos and onward to the mix!”

www.facebook.com/pages/WarFather/240931366011521

Review of Warfather’s Orchestrating the Apocalypse

2 Comments

Tags: , , , , , ,

Deverills Nexion – The Sinister Tarot (2015)

deverills_nexicon_-_the_sinister_tarot

Here’s the problem with critiquing programmatic music: any criticism levied at a piece or album can be explained away, by its adepts or its authors, as a failure to understand the external reference points, or their connection to the music.

As its title suggests, The Sinister Tarot is based on a Tarot cycle, a subject on which this author is entirely ignorant; an ignorance that undoubtedly hampers his comprehension of the album. However, it is clear that Deverills Nexion have created a work that is meant to be experienced as a series of separate but ultimately related images, therefore, “development” as traditionally conceived is not to be expected.

This would not in and of itself be a problem if the individual songs, or “images,” were compelling enough on their own, regardless of whether or not one is acquainted with the program. This, however, is most often not the case. Songs tend to begin by establishing a sonic template, as opposed to a theme, and then wander around it for a while before fading away. These sonorities, though varied, are usually not very interesting on their own, or at best mildly so, consisting mostly of cheap synth pads and aimless guitar playing. These are occasionally enriched by other typical elements of the dark ambient palette, such as chanted vocals and nature samples. The unsurprising nature of the sonic range would again not necessarily be a problem were it not approached in so uninspired, almost idly derivative and predictable way.

Burzum’s Hliðskjálf used a similar set-up, and an even smaller sonic palette, but it worked because it was driven by truly remarkable themes, a feat The Sinister Tarot cannot boast of. The few melodies that do appear are unexceptional, lead to very little, and are easily forgotten. The album’s lack of strong melodic direction ends up looking like a technique with which to hide a lack of content: place the texture at the forefront of the music and let things glide quietly by. This is often a problem with ambient music, in which it stylistically accepted, and almost expected, for melody to be given the backseat. But the best practitioners of this style have always managed to overcome this challenge by using the texture itself as a compositional device; as an element to be treated and developed with as much care as melody or harmony. This is how artists such as Tangerine Dream create works of profound stillness and yet, simultaneously, of gripping intensity. However, this is not the case here. In fact, after a few songs dissipate slowly, one after the other, the listener is left with the worst possible feeling for an art form, such as music, that exists in time: that nothing has actually happened.

On the rare occasion in which a song does not end exactly where it began the transition is often unsatisfactory. These few instances of minimal development, such as in “The geryne of Satan” and “A Deverills man at the Bladuds Head,” are a case of too little and too late; tension rises momentarily only to disappointingly stutter back into the album’s habitual plod. The Deverills Nexion are definitely capable of writing some beautiful raw material, as evidenced by Ere the dancers depart and Bestride a corpse with my face, but even these tracks seem to simply sit there without accomplishing much, fidgeting impatiently. These moments of beauty sadden this particular author, as they are testament to the project’s potential, which, alas, remains but a ripple in a puddle.

5 Comments

Tags: , ,

Miscellaneous Turn-of-the-Century-ish Recommendations

british-tank-rolling-over-trench

In view of our recent emphasis on the fact that post-1994 metal landscape is a desert of creativity with very few well-realized projects, most of which were pretty underground efforts. By the turn of the century, death and black metal aesthetics had been absorbed into the mainstream mindset and so we can not automatically consider bands with said genre tags as underground. But the ones recommended below are, indeed, high-quality efforts (in the way of music writing) that were never hyped to any wide audience.

The turn of the century itself was one of the darkest moments in metal history when there was no relevant innovation being worked into metal. In place, a superficial re-mixing of styles done by the thousands became the obsession of scenes. Something had happened: Metal had reached its young adult life. Until now, childish enthusiasm and creativity had been enough for it to keep making discoveries. A spirit of rebellion  had propelled it in the search for a deeper romantic meaning that drove it forward. Once this bottomed out with with mid-nineties albums by projects like Burzum, Ildjarn and Summoning, it was evident that metal would have to rely on a refinement of its technical approach that could keep feeding the aesthetics needs of its spirit.

In the following recommendations, we have thrown some worthwhile non-metal releases that are also strongly recommended. The reader is encouraged to explore each of these with all their attention and in reflection of the trails that the golden era left that are only in recent years fully crystallizing into promising proposals for a real re-start and future based on the previously mentioned refinement applied to a study and digestion of the older spirit in order for the genre to continue. This future is precisely what metal needs and not a return to anything. The past is the past. Metal must look ever ahead if it is to be an artistic movement with life. This post is in part to honor those releases and to offer a glimmer of hope that although metal is suffocated, it is not dead.

Summoning – Stronghold (1999)

Mütiilation – Remains of A Ruined, Dead, Cursed Soul  (1999)

Worship – Last Tape Before Doomsday (1999)

Tenhi – Kauan (1999)

Jordi Savall & Ton Koopman – J.S. Bach, Die Sonaten Für Viola Da Gamba Und Cembalo (2000)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwxeE5LGgdA&feature=youtu.be

Paysage D’Hiver – Paysage d’Hiver (2000)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OgCIIqUzkI

Antaeus – Cut Your Flesh and Worship Satan (2000)

Immolation – Close to a World Below (2000)

Gorguts – From Wisdom to Hate (2001)

 

36 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , ,

VI releases De Praestigiis Angelorum preview track

vi_-_de_praestigiis_angelorum

VI, the French black metal supergroup comprised of members from Antaeus and Aosoth, has released the improbably-named “Il est trop tard pour rendre gloire. Ainsi la lumière sera changée en ombre de la mort.” sample track from De Praestigiis Angelorum, permitting a short review.

Like later Antaeus, this band is hollow. It is not outright fake, but it aims to control your mind by pleasing you with surface characteristics and missing what lies beneath. Much as the first Antaeus had possibility in that it attempted to upkeep some of the ideas of the past that worked, but never quite got there, and then the band backed off of that direction with later releases, VI has a strong surface of old school black metal — fast rhythms, the right minor-key riffs, the right texturing of melody and grinding — but at its core there is nothing. You might look at this as simply a better take on Deathspell Omega, but there is no transcendent passion in these songs, only a somewhat cynical knowledge of how to make music sound brainy and violent at the same time.

What propelled original black metal was a strong emotionality based in a worldview inspired by logical analysis, not social feelings, about human problems. VI reverses this with a song about the social feeling of belong in black metal and thinking how austere, relentless and different you are just for listening to this, and yet it has no substance. The band ably combines two riffs and variations for the initial part, then drifts off into a patchwork of ideas that fit together rhythmically but crush any chance for expressing a consistent or developing theme. What you get is like American beer: it has all the right ingredients, in the wrong order, with no idea uniting it all except to please the average fool for long enough that he will buy it again. Avoid this FMP/NWN release.

2 Comments

Tags: , , , , ,

Sammath to reissue debut LP on Hammerheart

sammath_-_strijd

Sammath unleashed its debut album Strijd in 1999 to not much fanfare. The black metal community had essentially collapsed under a wave of Dimmu Borgir/Cradle of Filth clones, and the underground had retreated to the Full Moon Productions board to re-style punk riffs as black metal and make boring music that is forgotten at this time. Almost no one wanted to simply keep their eye on what had worked and make it return.

As our review published at the time opined, however, Strijd succeeded because it conveyed both the elegance and violence of black metal, instead of becoming a top hatted children’s show satire focusing only on what the Thomas Kinkade fans of the world think is “elegant” (in America at least, every pretentious but incompetent person must have at least one Thomas Kinkade painting, Ansel Adams print, and dreamcatcher). Sammath brought back the ancient feeling, the meditative look at a life shrouded in darkness, and the misanthropy and intolerance for stupidity and lies that made black metal so satisfying in the midst of the lie-drenched 1990s.

Hammerheart Records has been focusing more of its attention on resurrecting classics and picking out modern bands with the same power, which seems to signal that the great metalcore trend is on the wane and people are looking for the kind of power they found in traditional metal genres, again. Strijd delivers this in high-powered generous doses but also maintains its introspective side, creating the perfect melancholic warrior album for a dying world. Although a date for the vinyl re-issue has not been specified, it is something to look forward to sometime in the latter half of 2015.

No Comments

Tags: , , , ,

Deverills Nexion releasing A Sinister Tarot on Ajna Offensive

deverills_nexion-the_sinister_tarot

Cult ritual ambient/discovered sounds band Deverills Nexion will release its upcoming The Sinister Tarot – A Musickal Working, Instruments Modern and Voice LP with a 12 page A5 booklet via Ajna Offensive later this month. Consisting of ritual formatting to instrumental and natural sounds, the music of Deverills Nexion fits in with bands such as Lull and Lustmord who create background ambient, although with an occult flair.

The LP will be distributed in Europe by The Sinister Flame (email them to reserve a copy), and is also available from the band website. The band describes the work with the following press release:

The Sinister Tarot is a variant of the “standard” tarot. It is described fully in the Order of Nine Angles’ key guide to practical Satanism, NAOS. Each track is an interpretation in sound of a specific card (from the major arcana only for the purposes of this “album”).

The musick herein can be seen as well as heard, being a spontaneous manifestation expressed through the magickal meditations of each element, associative and dissociative, linear or otherwise. The musick, like that of the individualized tarot cards of the sinister deck, being self-divined, self-made, self-sourced to a largely personal degree, still has immense relevance for others as it further informs and enriches the egregore of the Septenary path that is ONA.

With visualizations in sound of:
Col Cruachan, the hill of the wizard (1. The Magickian)
Forest tides (4. Lord of the Earth)
Inversely twisting oak gibbet (12. The Hanged Man)
The geryne of Satan (8. Change)
Sisters of the starry mere (10. Wyrd)
Ere the dancers depart (19. The Sun)
A Deverills man at the Bladud’s Head (20. The Aeon)
The glade of flowery broken skulls (3. Mistress of Earth)
Bestride a corpse with my face (14. Hel)
A curious long barrow view, one of many (0. The Fool)
Dawn’s flow (17.The Star)

No Comments

Tags: , , , ,

Blood Urn – …of Gory Sorcery and Death (2014)

cover

Blood Urn is a death metal project whose approach to the genre is one that can reinvigorate it while being very traditional. Superficially, a listener who only glances over the surface of …Of Sorcery and Death may incorrectly say this is an old school album, a modern euphemism for retro-acts or merely those who do not play the metalcore-based so-called technical death metal. It is true that this is an old school release, but only in the sense that it upholds the same ideals of the best of that era, including certain preferences in aesthetics as a reflection of an inner attitude — an idea that stands in contrast with the superficial selection of genres and expressions of modern bands that wear style as a change of clothes to pose as something they are not.

If we made the mistake of approaching this distinction like most clueless people do, that is, with a shopping list of the aesthetic characteristics that usually accompany a genre in order to identify it, we would definitely arrive at the same conclusions. That is why premises are as important as having good logic. Wrong premises and good logic only lead you safely to wrong conclusions. But if we start with the premise that those aesthetic characteristics are only the reflection of a spirit which is much more than intention or purpose but also crystallized significance, we will recognize that the shopping-list approach is at best a collection of hints and not a concrete definition.

Blood Urn …Of Sorcery and Death is a death metal (‘old school’ death metal is the only one, with various regional styles) album in the truest sense. A death metal at heart and in representation. The expressions that seem typical of death metal are used here in what can be accurately described as progressive without incurring in the fallacy that all disparate appending of music qualifies as such.  In accordance with death metal tradition, music builds up through structural devices: mainly through variation and manipulation of theme with a climax and a clear musical goal in mind for an end.  By musical goal we mean one as defined by traditional classical theory, not by the “good intentions” of the music writer. Intention and realization are two different and distinguishable things, something relativists and individualists would do well to keep in mind.

While varied in expression, Blood Urn manages to remain fairly coherent, choosing to tie different textures in a mix that also incorporates the riff-salad approach. In this, it is somewhat similar to the way Horgkomostropus Lúgubre Resurrección builds in a very typical death metal push and pull between structural theme-play and variation and contrasting ideas that are brought gradually into the fold, first as a splash of cold water to the listener and then in gradual integration through interleaving and recombination of sections and themes. It is important to say that in good death metal fashion, the limit of the contrasting ideas does not break away from the chosen style, which is the sin of many a pseudo-prog outfit. This conjoined approach of dealing structural development from a theme with one and then riff-salad with the other only to increasingly interleave them and sometimes ultimately fuse them into altogether different endings can be referenced in masterful albums such as At the Gates’ The Red in the Sky is Ours and is also the approach of Blood Urn to music composition, albeit with a much more humble and less-layered result.

No Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Kaeck releases new track “Akolieten van de nacht” from Stormkult

kaeck_-_stormkult_-_folter_records_august_2015

In preparation for their upcoming album Stormkult, which sees release on Folter Records worldwide on August 28, Kaeck has released a new track “Akolieten van de nacht” which shows the internal variation of this powerful album. Detouring more into classic black metal territory, Kaeck nonetheless give it a tour de force renovation with simple but powerful riffs in a contexture of ideas that creates a constant rush of discovery.

Folter Records has made Kaeck Stormkult available for pre-order in its digital shop. Having heard the album, I look forward to it being unleashed into the light like a demon escaping from hell, and bringing the typical intolerant occultism and vigilant Nietzschean Darwinism that defines the black metal genre.

3 Comments

Tags: , , ,

Classic reviews:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z