Five Finger Death Punch

Five Finger Derpy Doo

If you’re wondering why it’s taken us so long to review this album, it’s because there simply wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to make listening to it seem like a good way to spend an hour. Despite putting it off with more pleasurable activities like trips to the ‘get kicked in the balls shop’ and countless plunges down the sandpaper flumes into the local swimming pool full of salt, finally I had to face up to my duty: My duty to you, my duty to the world and my duty as a miserable turd.

Chances are, American Capitalist will achieve the incredible feat of making you retch before you even hear it. The name lets you know that these good ol’ boys are proud not to be some sort of horrible Iraqi capitalist, and the cover indicates that this has granted them unlimited access to a yellow Lamborghini and two hoes. Pimpin’. When you do hear it, as a right thinking person you will move from the cover-induced dry heaves to the novel experience of ‘laughter vomit’, where your fits of disbelieving giggles are rudely interrupted by projectile sickness as Ivan Moody’s lyrics swerve from the hilariously deluded to the jaw droppingly nauseating.

American Capitalist (the song) is yet more of the piss poor WWE entrance music that for some reason it is still legal to distribute, with a tragically out dated smug-a-long chorus hastily slapped after every cringe-inducing, gruffly rapped verse. Somewhere around this point you’ll probably have the first spasms of all consuming anger; the searing flashes of light, the shooting headache and the clenched fists that are such an integral part of the Fee Fee Dee Pee listening experience. Under And Over It is the same exact song made marginally more turd by Ivan Moody getting all antsy about being regularly being called a prick and proclaiming that he’s so ‘big time’ now that it must just be people playa-hating. But! The clever lyricist lets you know that actually he’s also exactly the same as his fans and that it’s really their Lamborghini and hoes on the cover too! What a genius.

The Pride is a lot like Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start The Fire written from the perspective of a drunk, brain damaged redneck who is proud of such outstanding American innovations as the NRA, NASCAR and Playboy. It’s also a lot like getting your fingernails ripped out. I know I have said this in the past, but honestly, TRULY, this is absolutely the worst song I have ever heard, beating any other contenders that I have nominated during my reviewing career by a truly astronomical distance. This monumental defecation has to be experienced to be believed, though I solemnly warn you that listening to it may cause you to involuntarily shit out your own lungs with rage. About 17 seconds in I was swinging punches into the air to try and kill the music but it just kept on getting past my feeble defences and into my ears, the insides of which were already in excruciating pain from the repeated impact of my brain attempting to escape from the nearest exits.

Just as you think that the misery has plateaued, you find out that there’s a couple of ballads on here too. Remeber Everything could be the work of Nickelback. Coming Down could be Staind. They have acoustic guitars so that drunk hillbillies know it’s time to down their beer and grab their girlfriend by the tits so they can have a nice romantic moment together, and they have lyrics about wishing things could change and how it’s all caving in so morons can appear all vulnerable. Aww, bless, under Ivan Moody’s meat-headed, wife-beating, diminished responsibility exterior there is a sensitive side after all, and he’s not afraid of expressing it gruffly in his little white vest and shorts.

Don’t expect much more variation than this, however. It amazes me how they managed to make so few ideas stretch across the remaining 7 songs. Some of them are about revenge, others about having the last laugh and a couple are about eventually getting the upper hand. If this subject matter is a little too diverse for you then you’ll be reassured by the fact that they are literally all the same terrible Nu-metal song garnished with one or more of – horrendous crooned singing, hilarious growls or the worst Vanilla Ice style rapping since Vanilla Ice himself telling you how much he hates everyone and how terrible life is. There is less talent on show here than in a Chernobyl nightclub.

There is a remote chance that American Capitalist is a genius-level concept album conceived and written with the express intention of making me murderously angry. However, on the assumption that it isn’t, I can say that if you like this, then you, Sir, are worse than a Juggalo. If you can relate to its base level messages of overcoming adversity then you truly have never faced any adversity whatsoever in your life and you should wait until you turn 14, try to grow some pubes, and realise that your mum shouting at you is not the system keeping you down. If this is the uplifting soundtrack that gets you through a tough breakup then I hope you get knob cancer. It’s just a shame that we do indeed live in a capitalist society where 90,000 morons can buy this in one week and they are not ruthlessly hunted down and beaten to death by eugenics squads so that they can’t bring their horrible Five Finger Death Punch-loving children into the world. I hope something terrible happens to this band. I hope they die in the most comical way possible – perhaps their newly acquired heavy bling bling drowns them in their champagne filled jacuzzi, or they are caught by an Al-Qaeda cell and beheaded live online for being infidels who are trying to spread vile capitalist propaganda. But most of all… Most of all I hope I never have to listen to this fucking skyscraper of cunt ever again.

Machine Head

Oh, They’re Rated.

- Dude, how can Machine fuckin’ Head top The Blackening?
- Bro I have no idea, you can’t top it dawg.
- Yeah bro, killer killer album dawg, probably the best metal album of all time yeah?
- No doubt dude, and I must have heard, like, all 14 metal albums. There’s no way you can top The Blackening!

Personally I like to top my shit sandwiches with a vomit mayo and a dash of grated cock meat but each to their own. Machine Head will doubtless have their own ideas, presented for us now and probably involving a combination of awkwardly composed choruses and poorly conceived rapping. Though Robb Flynn‘s promises of classical guitar lessons and technical ecstasy have at least mildly intrigued me…

Unto The Locust begins with some highly pretentious a cappella vocals (in Latin no less) that, if nothing else, shows Machine Head clearly believe their own hype – despite said hype being bestowed by morons – and that, rather than just writing music that children can hate their parents to, they are now creating a Sonata in C# (Machine Head tune to C# as they wrongly assume this makes them automatically heavy). Not that there’s anything wrong with pretention and the inevitable rocking out on a lute that follows, as, in my opinion, a band can be as easily improved by a baroque frilly shirt here and a monocle there as it can be terminally crippled by donning a selection of PVC tracksuits.

Having now braced myself for the second coming of Rhapsody, and thoroughly looking forward to the beginning of the song sonata proper, Monsieur Flynn begins chanting “I am death! I am hell!” over a generic, boring riff. At this point I am primed and ready to flush this turgid fucker round the U-Bend when out of nowhere they turn back the clock and go all Vio-Lence on me, the sheer ferocious power of the riffs momentarily incapacitating my flushing hand and granting it a reprieve. My mind starts to race. Maybe the last ten years have all been a ruse and this is going to be the payoff to a great practical joke… Or Machine Head is actually now the code name for a top-secret thrash supergroup… Or… Or… Maybe i’m getting carried away. The Sean Killian guest spot I briefly envisioned (and popped a chubby over) never materialises and the chorus is a bit weak, but at least Señor Flynn doesn’t attempt too much of his ‘singing’, and the guitar solo, while brief, is as tasty as a tasty pie.

Still reeling from the shock of the old, Be Still And Know follows, starting with that riff that Iron Maiden do on Paschendaele, Flash Of The Blade and Wasted Years – which is nice to hear I suppose – and continuing with a boring chorus that an unwitting bystander could conceivably describe as ‘epic’, but is actually just slow. Admittedly, it’s good to see the riff from the Forbidden Evil outro get another airing, though it’s getting a bit threadbare after its 2007 appearance single handedly made the solo section in Aesthetics Of Hate really good, though it may be time to face up and actually write a new one. Still, it’s all been fairly promising so far.

Machine Head – Locust by Roadrunner Records

Locust, however, is as rancid, boring and disposable as it was the first time I heard it, bringing together all the very worst aspects of modern metal; The swaggering faux-Pantera groove of the verse, the achy-breaky breakdown, heartfelt clean segments and the ‘uplifting’ chorus, which of course is as uplifting as seeing your house, loved ones and worldly possessions being eradicated by a stray North Korean cruise missile. It’s like there’s a party in your ears and everyone’s brought a different, shite metal CD. This song is such an otherworldly powerful puddle of wet shart that when I looked down after listening to it, Its mystical powers had magically changed my attire to baggy jeans with wallet chain, New Rocks and a flame shirt.

Darkness Within is the mandatory trademark skidmark of cathartic teenage angst; again trying so very hard to be an epic but just coming across as boring from the tip of its massively turd-polished clean vocal effects to the ‘climactic’ finale. Honestly, if I ever hear that man tunelessly droning on about his terrible childhood again I swear I will father no fewer than 16 children and neglect each and every last one of them so fucking hard just to spite him.

This Is The End is easily in my top 97 Bullet For My Valentine songs of all time while Pearls Before The Swine is of such quality that it could have been filler on The Blackening – and it’s filler here too. Derp.

Who We Are has a chorus that you can instantly sing along to, though because you’ve heard it 37,521 times by other bands everyone will probably sing something different. If you’re wondering, I caught myself inadvertently crooning a faster version of Numb by Linkin Park over the top…* Try it. It works. That’s all you really need to know about it. Well, that and they use the phrase Into Glory Ride, which made me laugh.

Unto The Locust is not as bad as I’d expected, but is nowhere near as good as the guy in the Lamb Of God t-shirt will inevitably have you believe. Granted, I expected it to literally climb out of the CD player and vomit hot shandy up my nostrils, but at least it’s not Five Finger Death Punch. And, yes, it did manage to top The Blackening… Not by developing their ‘signature sound’ or by pushing back any established musical boundaries, instead they will draw much undue praise for simply adding in a little more of the traditional metal elements that made their old bands so much better in the first place. For all their grand ambitions and plaudits, Machine Head are an average modern metal band who have produced an average modern metal album. With terrible singing. I think it’s time to move on, kids.

*I will naturally be honour killing myself at the earliest possible opportunity.

Mastodon - The Hunter

Mastodung

It’s come that time again, folks. I’ve crawled out from under my rock to hurl incoherent abuse at another poor old metal band who’ve committed the cardinal sin of doing something different. So what have they done to get me riled up enough to pull my shit encrusted fingers from my battered ringpiece & bother my keyboard? Wearing the wrong shoes? Not knowing the correct dance moves to Warriors of the World? Have an incomplete 180gm vinyl discography of Manilla Road? Let’s find out, shall we?

We start off promisingly enough with the lumbering riffs of Black Tongue which are the closest they’ve come yet to recapturing the magic of Leviathan. A sudden change of pace shatters my hopes for another bowel-bothering classic however with the radio-friendly pop metal offering, Curl of the Burl. Sounding like a particularly dull Queens of the Stone Age, I’d rather eat a bag of dicks than sit through it again. Blasteroid carefully binds a great song & a shit song together like some sort of demented caduceus where one of the snakes is a stringy, anaemic turd. It’s yet another case of hits & misses for Atlanta’s beardiest. The same issue they’ve struggled with on the mostly great Blood Mountain & fairly average Crack The Skye.

The first half of Creature Lives was done by Pink Floyd in 79 & the second half originally performed as a camp fire sing-a-long by the recently lobotomised. Luckily the fantastic, crushing Spectrelight (Scott Kelly <3) harks back to the heady days of Blood Mountain & warms my cold dead heart for a few minutes. Things slump again on the bizarre Bedazzled Fingernails before fizzling out as The Sparrow meanders through Cynic territory. For a few moments, it threatens to nail it’s colours to the mast of progressive techdeath before wimping out & leaving a faint smell of urine in it’s trail.

The hiring of Mike Elizondo to produce The Hunter is as inexplicable as Bob Rock’s Metallica accidents & with production credits including Snoop Dogg & Natasha Bedingfield, he’s clearly the man for the job. The end result is far too clinical for a band of Mastodon’s sludgey roots. Then again, the guy’s played bass for Sheryl Crow. Top that, Matt Bayles.

It’s not a bad album. I don’t think Mastodon have it in them to release a bad album but what it is is overproduced, incoherent & fucking boring. Barring the opener & Spectrelight, there wasn’t one minute that I wasn’t wondering if I’d left the fridge open or locked the cat in the bathroom again. A second misstep from one of the only interesting metal bands to achieve mainstream recognition in the past decade. If Remission was their Ride The Lighting & Leviathan their Master of Puppets, then The Hunter is the Black Album. You’ll excuse me if I skip their Reload but I don’t think I’ve buggered enough orphans yet to deserve that specific form of aural molestation.

Anthrax Worship Music. Yes they do.

Songs of Praise

The accepted divergence point for Anthrax fans is the 1992 departure of charismatic front-man, Joey Belladonna. His firing marked a further shift towards darker, more straight-faced heavy metal which distinguished Persistence of Time from earlier material so the question is this. After 19 years in the thankless wastelands of solo recording, will his glorious return unite fans old & new in a golden era of peace, love & tongue-in-cheek thrash? Well, let’s find out, shall we?

Pointless Intro #32 passes easily enough & we find ourselves dumped in Earth On Hell. A dissonant wall of noise that gets boring in less than 20 seconds, I resist the skip button only so that you don’t have to, loyal readers. It was much better when it was called Be All, End All on State Of Euphoria. The Devil You Know is a timely step in the right direction. Traditional Anthrax mid-tempo chug reminds us all why Scott Ian is the best rhythm player in the big 4 whilst the infectious chorus allows Belladonna a chance to take on Bush on his home turf & you know what, he does pretty well. To save time, they’ve recycled the riff from Gridlock & passed it off as a punctuation fan’s wet dream in Fight ‘Em Til You Can’t. It is here we finally get something closer to classic Anthrax. Stop-start riffs, gang vocals & Benante’s meticulous drumming combined with a chorus that wouldn’t sound out of place on Among The Living.

Just as we are getting into the swing of things, I’m Alive brings things back down to earth with a bang. Sounding like Bush-era filler, it’s the last thing this album needs. They were pushing their luck at 65 minutes anyway. Things pick up again with In The End but the 2 minute church bell outro is massively unnecessary. Yes, we get it, you Worship Music. Worship music, church, very clever. The Giant piddles about somewhere between the 2 camps of fandom & it’s unlikely to please either.

Not content with recycling their own songs, Judas Priest is Sacred Reich‘s Crimes Against Humanity in everything but name. If Phil Rind isn’t getting royalties off this, then it is the biggest injustice since I lost out to Ricky Martin at the Latin Grammys for Best Pop Vocal Performance. Things end with a triumvirate of turds beginning on the disappointing Crawl before delivering some regrettable Southern groove in the form of The Constant. I’m not going to mention the hidden Refused cover at the end because I’m still trying to pretend it never happened so the last track is the overweight Revolution Screams which seems so totally lost & confused that it shambles on for a good 3 minutes past it’s welcome before someone mercifully puts it out of it’s misery.

Caggiano’s mix is inconsistent at best with the drums suffering particularly. Focus has fittingly been put on the vocals & at the ripe old age of 50, Joey nails every spot he’s given. My main complaint with Worship Music other than the shameless rehashing is the lack of any Belladonna-era trademark humour. Unless the ropey drum sound was all just very clever joke.

In answer to my initial question, no, this isn’t going to placate the Bush fans hoping for another croonfest after the brilliant We’ve Come For You All nor is it the old school speed thrash genius of the late eighties. No, Anthrax & Belladonna are two people who have aged considerably since their separation & are giving it another go for the sake of the kids bank balances. After 4 years of pissing all over their own parade, I suppose the biggest surprise is that this difficult birth didn’t give us a Morbid Angel. There are hits & misses, shitty production decisions & songs Joey wasn’t built to sing. It isn’t perfect but the boys have proved they are still worth your persistence & time (geddit?).

Origin

Origin-al Gangsta

Origin more or less set the benchmark when it comes to ridiculous death metal. Faster than an espresso fuelled gravity-blasting cheetah, their last few releases have established them as the most consistent purveyors of first class brutality and the go to men when you simply must have your internal organs scrambled into a lumpy red smoothie as soon as possible.

Pushing play on an Origin album is like that bit in The Matrix where a huge big headphone jack gets thrust into the phono socket in the back of Keanu Reeves’ head. It’s the same confusing, painful yet not entirely without its charms sensation of an overwhelming influx of information flooding directly into your nervous system. Entity’s first track, Expulsion Of Fury, sounds not unlike 1000 mechanical rats scurrying all over your body, desperately trying to scratch their way to your tasty kidneys… in a good way, of course. Purgatory is a 1 minute 26 second exercise in bludgeoning death, which may on the face of it seem like a short song, but just as soon as the opening riff hits you’ll already feel like your testicles are having square goes with a hammer.

Entity is comprised of a number of these brutally incisive short-lived onslaughts, though there are also some longer (yet no less brutal or incisive) 5-7 minute tracks, which, when spliced together and given a short, relaxing mid-album instrumental break (The Descent) gives the listener all the choice they really need when flicking through it on their iPod. Morbid Angel should probably take note that this is just about the only level of variation that Death Metal fans find acceptable, and even then, the instrumental break is actually more out of necessity than artistic intent, as I urgently needed the time to catch my breath after inadvertantly stripping naked and wrestling my coffee table during the last 30 seconds of Swarm.

Where I previously felt that Origin had a tendency to become bogged down in a swamp of complexity, there is an instant accessibility to Entity that instantly raises it above its predecessors, with songs like Saligia and Concieving Death being about as catchy as music this demanding can possibly be without accidentally destroying the universe. Where they were previously only a match for Nile in the speed stakes they now also compete in atmospherics, structure and honest-to-goodness riffs. In fact, they are only a name change to Tiber and a concept album about the Roman Empire away from probably being the most wanked-over death metal band in history. Make it so.

The album closes with the mighty one-two of Consequence of Solution and Evolution of Extinction, the former being an epic without ever veering off into self indulgent tedium, a feat it achieves by packing an entire albums worth of riffs, time changes, breaks, fills and general fucking aural mayhem into its 7 minutes. The latter is the perfect distillation of everything that has gone before, fading out and leaving you nicely positioned to plug it in to your skull one more time.

Entity is a death metal album that has enough arpeggios to feed Yngwie Malmsteen for a week and drumming that turns kits to dust but still understands that these technical achievements are nothing without massive ball-slamming riffs and, you know, actual songs. This is cutting edge, forward thinking and state of the art in and of itself with no industrial beats, rapping or Scooter tacked on. As Death Metal goes, this is just the ticket. The ticket to fucking party town.

Decapitated

Blasting Back

It has been a long, hard road to this release for Decapitated, who have been one of the most revered, innovative and creative Death Metal bands from their 2000 debut Winds Of Creation through to the slashing clinicism of 2006’s Organic Hallucinosis. When their tour bus crashed in Russia in 2007 it killed Vitek, one of the genre’s most promising young drummers (and brother of guitarist Vogg) and left vocalist Covan seriously injured, as well as leaving many doubting that we’d ever see the band release another album. It is true testament to Vogg’s perseverance and determination to continue his brother’s legacy that, less than four years – or a quarter of a Chinese Democracy – later, we have a new line up and a new album to hear.

Given the background story, I harboured concerns that the new material would fail to live up to the previously sky high standards that Decapitated had set, and, given the slightly bizarre, gramatically incorrect and decidedly non-metal title, I was actually a little apprehensive before giving it a first listen.

Luckily The Knife opens the album with a warping riff that soon kicks back into Decapitated’s trademark thrashy, groovy-without-being-shit riffing and a huge sigh of relief can be exhaled. The production is so crisp that it makes even the Cream Cracker-esque sounds of The Negation and Organic Hallucinosis seem comparatively soggy. While one has come to expect Vogg’s guitar tone to be drier than The Queen’s fanny, it seems that the never ending search for an ever-sharper aural experience may now have shed a little too much death metal beef. Nevertheless, by the time the guitar solo has darted through your ears, you should be under no illusions that Decapitated are back, firing on all cylinders and are setting about sodomising your face off all over again.

United, disappointingly not a Judas Priest cover, is instead a large piece of tasty death metal pie, full of delicious riff mince and blastbeat gravy. The title track is a hefty 8 minutes and 49 seconds, the double length allowing for a little more sonic diversification when compared to their past releases. A spacey, echoing build up gives way to an extravaganza of polyrhythmic riffing and blasting death, with a return to the intro’s picked guitar – a moody, dissonant passage that wouldn’t appear out of place on the last Opeth album – as a mid-song interlude. This emphasis on arpeggiated atmospherics rears its head again on A View From A Hole and the instrumental closer Silence, giving the album a more mature, solemn and introspective feel. Which is all quite understandable really.

However, you, Mr Beardy, should not be under the impression that this is some sort of teary-eyed, side-parting, scarf-wearing ambient shoegaze album. Homo Sum may alienate the more knuckle-headed death metal contingent with its promises of gay mathematics, but it, along with 404 and Pest, provides the the most natural steps forward from Organic Hallucinosis, proving that there is enough bludgeoning muscle here to not only offset the subtle sonic experimentation but to punch everyone reading this in the balls. Twice.

The new members blend seamlessly into the sound, with new drummer Krimh possessing a pair of feet worthy of following in Vitek’s hallowed footsteps, and, by taking many compositional cues from his predecessor, ensures that there is no gulf in styles that would clash with the band’s previous work. Vocally, Rafal Piotrowski sits somewhere between the still-recuperating Covan and original vocalist Sauron in that there is less of the former’s much-derided ‘hardcore’ style to the vocals but they do not quite reach the gutteral depths that Sauron plunged to on the first few albums. His biggest problem will undoubtedly be his lack of a traditional Polish one-name title, and I would like to suggest that he takes influence from the great one word artistes of the past when choosing it, then slightly mis-spell it in a death metal fashion. Something like Kscher, Prynz, The Artist Formerly Known As Prynz or perhaps Tchiko should suffice. I don’t even charge for this service.

Carnival is Forever may not be the best Decapitated album ever, but that it is here at all is the real story. Fans will eat this up like a fat man attacking an unguarded wedding cake, and it’s more than enough to remind even the most cynical observer that Decapitated are a still a force to be reckoned with. With this, they can rightfully retake their position as the torch-bearers for forward thinking death metal, placing themselves back at the cutting edge they first made their home a decade ago.

Morbid Angel

Poo Extreme!

8 years. 8 fucking years. Imagine if a loved one had been gone for nearly eight whole years then you had received word that they were due to make a return, so you looked anxiously at the days rolling by as the date approached. Each one seemed to grow longer as the big day drew closer. Finally, the day arrives and your dear, dear friend rings the doorbell. Excitedly you run to the door and open it, only to see that in the intervening years they’ve had a swastika and matching Hitler ‘tache tattooed on their face. You only have a fleeting moment to take this in, however, as 2 seconds later they’ve clubbed you over the head with a claw hammer and are now frantically arse-raping both your body and your cherished shared childhood memories on your own fucking doorstep. Imagine this. Keep the imagery in your mind and then – and only then – listen to Illud Divinum Insanus, the new and long awaited album from Morbid Angel.

Following your bog standard metal intro track, opener Too Extreme! blurbs out at you and your first reaction, I GUARANTEE, will be “what the fuck?”, maybe accompanied by an actual cartoon double-take and full-on eye-rubbing. Imagine the intensity, power and speed of early Berzerker, then entirely remove all intensity, power and speed so you’re left only with their flabby, artificial bass drum sound. Now loop it slowly and repetitively over and over and over and over and over and you’re halfway to the sound that this musical prolapse is achieving. Add in David Vincent shouting “Extreme!!!” and “We are your new religion!” over it like he’s trying to forcefully influence your opinion – which here is a lot like screaming “Fillet steak!” in someones face while force-feeding them mushed up dog turd on toast – and what may be guitars (I’m honestly not sure) that sound like merry-go-round music being played at quarter speed and there you have it. One eight year gestation aborted right onto your face.

Existo Vulgare is at least a Death Metal song, though it is underwhelming when compared to any of the greats or indeed fillers from the bands past. Blades For Baal is a significant step up and is finally something that Morbid Angel fans can get their teeth into, despite sounding like a fairly faithful rehash of the fast parts of Nothing But Fear from Domination. Funnily enough, in the sea of forced dance beats, rapping and industrial that comprise the majority of Illud… in an attempt to be ‘cutting-edge’ and ‘relevant’, this blast from the past is the freshest sounding track on the album.

I Am Morbid shows that not everything from 1995 stands the test of time quite as well, as the sub-Far Beyond Driven groove riff which ushers in this jaw-droppingly spineless attempt at commercialism is so incredibly poor that the fully fledged Disturbed song that follows it isn’t even a surprise. Honestly, this is Rob Zombie levels of shit. As a shitmus test, try going Uh-wah-ah-ah-ah over it in David Draiman style and you will see that not only does it work, it actually sounds better than David Vincent’s vocals. Remember when you thought that Morbid Angel’s slower songs were like God Of Emptiness or Where The Slime Live? Forget it.

10 More Dead features a riff at least reminiscent of the aforementioned slow classics and despite some really bad lyrics and ill-concieved gang vocals is boosted by a strong second half, but it’s hard to know whether the sorrow caused by the previous track is just making it seem better as it goes on. This theory is proved correct as Destructos Vs. The Earth/Attack begins and goes from sounding like the thankfully long forgotten Powerman 5000 to Marilyn Manson, a big mish-mash of industrial sounding nonsense that will have you desperately scratching at your face to try and get it off. But you just can’t, it’s already on there. Fuck! As the minutes – 7 of them – ticked by with the repetitive, monotonous droning of Destructos… I prayed that the Attack part was going to come in and, you know, attack things a bit. Sadly it’s merely a 20 second long piece that again sounds like The Berzerker. At least Tim Yeung actually gets to play the drums fast. Yay.

Nevermore, being the first song that surfaced from the album, has a familiarity to it that is so, so welcome after the harrowing experiences that have passed. It’s not a great track on its own merits, but yet again is elevated high above itself by virtue of its standing on a ladder in a field of manure. Beauty Meets Beast, while suffering from the bad title, bad lyrics affliction that is also troubling the album, at least continues the musical momentum, being another solid track with a rather awesome solo section that, with its slightly more melodic tendencies, would be right at home on Domination.

After those two tracks you could almost think you were listening to a Morbid Angel album. Sadly the next song, Radikult, is the worst song thing ever. EVER. Radikult? Oh yeah, cos da kidz is all saying radical, yeah? Cos it’s 1991 yeah? And cult means kind of evil, yeah? And the K means it’s more evil? Yeah. They are repping themselves about their longevity and popularity, which brings to mind the most vomit-inducing trappings of hip-hop, describing themselves as ‘Hardcore Radicals’ which, as well as being bite-your-fist cringeworthy and making them sound like a bad WWE tag team, is patently untrue. This song has to be heard to be believed. It’s like one of the most base level Nu-Metal tracks from The Burning Red being covered by Hatebreed with extra riffs borrowed from The Beautiful People. And it’s over 7 minutes long. And that’s David Vincent bro-rapping over it. Wait… is that David Vincent saying “Cop-killa”?

Stop… Stop… He’s already dead.

Profundis – Mea Culpa, as well as aptly being Latin for I’m really, really sorry, presumably an admission of guilt for the preceding cluster wank, is just a load of hardcore dance music fucking bollocks. The carnival guitars are back from Too Extreme! and by now I just want them to make it stop. Thankfully it eventually does and I will never, ever have to listen to it again… Now for the gruelling years of therapy it will take to make me forget the whole nightmare happened.

While I am a musical grump at the best of times, I honestly have nothing against bands trying to broaden their sound and add in some different twists – providing it’s done well and has artistic merit. This, however, is like Iron Maiden releasing a Reggae album, Nile dabbling in R&B or Chuck Schuldiner returning from the grave and faithfully covering Chico Time. Yes, musicians can do what they wish, but releasing an album with less than 5 tracks that are recognisable as Morbid Angel after an 8 year gap is just spitting in the face of the very fans who allow them to do this for a living. If Trey Azagthoth and David Vincent had written 3 more shit songs and released them all as a side project called Treyvid Vincenthoth it would just have been very funny, but to put this half-baked turd out under the Morbid Angel name is a tragic and potentially irretrievable folly. It’s incredible and worrying to think that during the writing, recording, mixing and promotion process no-one had the balls to speak out and say “Hang on a minute here lads, this is actually an ass load of shit”. Shame on you.

Come back St. Anger, all is forgiven.

Blowjob For A Gayboy

JFUK the Queef EP

Once upon a time I liked Job For A Cowboy.

After ditching the pig squeals etc on the Doom EP, they came into their own as an incredible Death Metal band, with the record Genesis, playing with lots of great bands and ripping faces off. Following that they released Ruination which wasn’t the greatest record, still it contained some good chunky riffage. The current release by JFAC goes to show that all the hard work has softly disappeared up it’s own sugar coated anus. The first track Misery Reformatory captivated me THAT much, that I checked my player to see that I was still on the same dragging song. Itching to fast forward past their new vocalist Dani Filth‘s wailing vocals and find some real meat. Well it turns out, if you’re looking for beef, you ordered a vegetarian option panini.

Many ‘tr00′ folk of the undergay or whatever scenes would scowl at this review. Like an open minded individual, I paid attention, listened to their first record and garnered an appreciation for what they were trying to do as a heavy, extreme band, trying to mature. The debut was immense. There was good riffs, progressive tendencies and beef. It came across overall as raw and intense, a younger generation finding their sound over a period of time. It happens to a lot of bands. I’ll try break this down as much as possible, but most of the EP follows the same structure of riff, riff, riff, breakdown riff, black metal bit, riff, riff. Riff. Or more or less, similar to this. Oh and the occasional burst of dramatic shredding that everyone is performing these days.

As the EP moves anally onto the second track, it shows no signs of becoming anything memorable. Nor does it show any signs of that dreadful drum sound letting up. Although masterfully played, John Rice‘s atomic clock style blasting sounds compressed and ugly. Sugar coated poo poo, is the best description. There must be a point in a musician’s life where they decide that this horrible clicky gated compression, flat line production is the best production. It’s not. It’s shit. Plastic Idols moves timidly along like the previous effort and then disappears like smelly fart that nobody wants to kick up a fuss about because it’s that embarrassing. Sizzling out of an arse crack with a certain amount of clarity before it fizzles out with a tear from the eye. The japs eye.

Execution Parade is more of the same dull boring riffage with continuous monotonous slabbery vocals that sound like that Cradle of Filth record, Pornography. There again, another solo. And aye, there we go, another one. Harmonised a little bit this time. Before I know it, the song has finished. Again, unmemorable and tedious, and it’s so far fried my brain to mince so that I have difficulty trying to listen to the whole EP again to gain a better insight.

The last song Signature of Starving Power, is my pick of the bunch, the intro is just a big fucking blast, straight to the point before it start thunderously roaring along. The vocals are considerably better aswell, as the previous songs sound like a crying retard who lost his 1998 Autumn/Winter edition of an Argos catalogue. Thank fuck there’s not a solo after 1:30 seconds of the song as it would have dragged it down the shitter again. If they wrote all their songs like this one, they would be sitting up there with better bands, they just have to change their name first. To Savagerectomy and get rid of the Fisher Price drum sound. Oh and the singer gargling semen on the first three tracks.

Unfortunately the final song can’t save this EP of brand new material from judgement. Though it does save me from rating it as a crust covered piece of excrement to just a casual slice. They need to get that Pakistani gentleman (Ravi the Daddy) they had back in the band. His hindu groove will save this band from being forgotten off the face of whatever queertini’s they are drinking. That last sentence doesn’t make sense. But I don’t give a sheaaat nigguh.

Arch Enemy

Shart Enemy

Straight off the bat, let it be said that intentionally misspelling words with perceived ‘more metal’ letters such as K, X and V is an abomination that should see you laughed out of town. Furthermore, Arch Enemy should be laughed out of town for their general conduct over the last few years, but who knows, maybe Khaos Chaos Legions, their 8th studio album, will be a watershed moment that redeems them…

Yesterday Is Dead And Gone follows an overlong introduction and hackneyed spoken word intro and is ostensibly intended to be a musical call to arms for their loyal, dribbling fan base. However, rather than being some sort of fist-pumping monolithic death metal anthem, manages only to inspire me to drop my jaw in disbelief at how incredibly lame this sounds. The guitars are about as lethal as a sharpened sponge – alternating between the sound of a £20 death metal pedal being run through the distortion channel of a 10 Watt practice amp and that of Rick Wakeman’s keyboard circa 1973. Add to that the incredible musical drag factor of Angela Gossow’s tired, croaky, one-dimensional rasping vocals and place them cumbersomely over a chorus so incredibly lightweight that it sounds like an excerpt from a particularly airy Journey B-side – only immeasurably shit – and you are getting a picture of what this abortion sounds like.

Bloodstained Cross at least comes out of the traps at speed – albeit riding on a riff as well worn as Joey DiMaio’s first set of leather y-fronts – but it is unfortunately saddled with another horrendous slow ‘sing-along’ chorus. Now, when the vocals sound like someone sifting through cuttings of possessed girl-child audio track from The Exorcist, it’s pretty hard to do anything but cringe at the mismatch here, let alone join in. Not that there’s anything wrong with horrible vocals, I mean I enjoy Demilich and flinch at an ill-concieved singing chorus as much as the next man, but when you are clearly attempting to pitch your music in with Bon Jovi as Arch Enemy now are, having a little vocal dynamism would be desirable. …Yes we know you are a woman and you’re doing harsh vocals. Well done. Now fuck off… It’s indescribably horrible and, just when you think that it can’t get any worse; there is some sort of neo-classical guitar interlude, which sounds a bit like Jason Becker… If you were to put a guitar in his hands today and record the results. I endure the chorus one more time and it’s over. Praise Allah.

Under Black Flags We March is a real rabble-rouser of a marching anthem. In fact, such is its power that it was used by the Japanese in Burma to make forced marches and railway buildings even more horrific and unbearable for their British prisoners of war. No Gods, No Masters is so bad that I had to actually find someone to ask for help to ensure I hadn’t been rape-drugged by an Albanian organ harvester and that my hearing this song wasn’t some sort of coping mechanism devised by my subconscious mind to try and compartmentalise the horror as he plucked the kidneys from my twitching torso. Despite reassurance to the contrary, I conclude that it must indeed have been a figment of my warped imagination, as no real band would have used “I am who I am, take it or leave it…” as a lyrical hook unless they were putting together an act for the monthly ‘Musical Theatre and Barbara Streisand appreciation night’ down the local confirmed bachelor club.

Cruelty Without Beauty incorporates some blastbeats into the mix, the first indicator that I am listening to a ‘death metal’ band, though this is again laden with more mainstream flavourings than any stream on the planet can conceivably handle without completely choking the local ecosystem. I will have to be careful here though, as, not wanting to give the impression of praise, the solo trade off at the end of the song could be described as ‘acceptable’. Cult Of Chaos, while correctly spelt, is similar, minus all the aforementioned redeeming features, and it has the incredible misfortune that when the blastbeats depart, it turns into a fully-fledged Hatebreed number. Honestly, 90% of the music here should have been dragged to a Zurich euthanasia clinic and been given a humane, clinical paving stone to the face.

Thorns In My Flesh sounds like a pretty tasty thrasher for the first minute or so, and, just as I tentatively begin to *gasp* enjoy it, the next pile of elephant period blobs out of the speakers in the form of another horrible, slow wah-wah pedal lead line accompanying a terrible melodic section. There must be some sort of law against this tedious bollocks… There are 2 more tracks on this album, but seeing as they’ve all been EXACTLY THE SAME SHIT up to now, I’m not going to waste your time by talking you through them. Just swap the track name for one of the other write-ups. Seriously, if Arch Enemy aren’t going to put any effort into writing the music then I’m fucked if I’m going to bother talking about it when I can just type shitcuntbollockswankturdinapittabreadfortea and have done with it.

I feel drained. This album has taken years off my life, sucked my very will to live and roughly fisted my soul, such was the vein-straining rage that it provoked within. If you must check this album out, be aware that while it is without doubt one of the most unintentionally hilarious attempts to incorporate a variety of influences and melodic passages into metal in history, it may very well consume your soul. A bit like going into a Scientology centre and doing some tests ‘for a laugh’ then finding Tom Cruise balls deep in your confused anus 20 minutes later. If you like music, steer clear. If you like the sights, sounds and smells of shit being squirted directly into your ears (or you like this t-shirt), then this is the album for you.

Cyvoid - Cyvoid EP

It’s a simple rule. Stick space in front of anything & it immediatley becomes cooler. Watch:

• Ship, pretty cool, Space ship, fucking cool.
• Lord, pretty cool, Space Lord, fucking cool.
• Balls, pretty handy, Spaceballs, fucking awful.
• Thrash, pretty cool, Space Thrash, I want to put my dick in it & make dirty little space babies.

Now, Cyvoid‘s line-up looks like someone trawled the gutters of Leeds on a Sunday morning for the first 5 unconscious musicians they could fine but they assure me it was slightly more intentional than that. With members from a fairly diverse collection of bands (The Plight, Send More Paramedics, Antares, End of Empires), it might come as a surprise that the end result is a such a cohesive, nuts-out thrashgasm.

Intro Revok features a dive bomb so long it would have Darrell Abbott shitting his coffin before giving way to the mid-tempo bass groove of Phenotype. Blade Runner-inspired Time To Die serves as an excellent demonstration of how to play a Kirk Hammett solo at 4 times the speed of light but it’s all over too quickly for me. I’m left with a good sized erection as they drop to half speed for a gang vocal-driven outro. Things are slowed down (slightly) for the chugging hardcore breakdown Idoru allowing them to explore Suicidal Tendencies‘ end of the crossover spectrum. Finally we are left sitting in the toxic feces, trashcan foetuses & dystopian nightmare visions of closer Landfill Gulag.

Clocking it at only 17 minutes, you are left begging for more. A cynic might accuse Cyvoid of being nothing more than SMP with a sci-fi fetish rather than a zombie one but that would miss out the thrashier aspect they bring to this filthy, crossover party. Whilst B’Hellmouth/Professor Oblivion‘s distinctive vocals don’t dissuade from this hypothesis, there is a solid foundation of Bay Area thrash that leaves the end result sounding like far more new intellectual property than a tribute. Inject some Killing Technology-era Voivod mental into that monster & you are looking into the eyes of the rectal bleed-inducing alternative to the sad, boring Exodus aping of the average thrash-revival 5 piece.

Children of Bodom

Children of Boredom

I honestly have no idea who buys a Children Of Bodom album these days, even though a startling number do. Their flamboyant melodic death/power metal wizardry has been gradually diluted with generic mass appeal riffs, downtuning, sweary shout alongs and mid-pace mediocrity since Follow The Reaper, to the stage where it’s hard for me to muster even a wet fart of enthusiasm for anything bearing their name. As is always the way, the recent years of decline saw CoB rise massively in popularity and, despite a plethora of increasingly ropey, keyboard dependant live performances, saw Alexi Laiho elevated to the rank of guitar god by the slavering morons on Yoo Toob. Well done, World.

Their 7th album opens with Not My Funeral and a stirring rendition of Lamb Of God’s only riff (which technically belongs to Testament) and already I fear the worst, like finding your child’s shoe next to the shallow grave that the sweaty beardy man with the mobile phone holster belt next door hastily dug during the night. Shovel Knockout, despite having one of the worst song titles in history, ups the pace to almost enjoyable levels, camping it up with neo-classical guitars and some massively plinky-plonky keytar accompaniment before another ‘groovy’ riff kicks in to remind idiots that they’re actually a tough, manly metal band, which is the signal for me to completely glaze over and contemplate and solve some of the profound questions of our time, like ‘what should I have for tea?’ (Baked Potato) and ‘Is it wrong to have another cup of tea?’ (Ooh, go on then you cheeky devil).

Pussyfoot Miss Suicide (what fucking brand of crack were they smoking when they came up with these titles?) is another mid-paced soup of bog standard metal riffing, while the title track is just plain boring. I really hoped that Ugly was going to be a cover of Six Feet Under’s song of the same name, just so I could witness the actual moment the universe reached its nadir, however it is sadly just another Children Of Bodom original, albeit one with a rather funky keyboard bit that elevates the song above ‘turd’.

By the time Was It Worth It? waddles, exhausted and wheezing over the finish line, I am convinced that these songs were actually intended to have been played at 1.5 or double speed and there was some sort of massive disturbance in the space time continuum, possibly caused by a malfunctioning top secret CIA weather machine, causing time dilation within the enclosed space of Children of Bodom’s studio which made their razor sharp, face melting takes seem like those of drug addled, ten-thumbed chancers. That trillion-to-one occurrence is really, really unfortunate because it makes a good portion of the album seem like an ass load of shit. Luckily this mysterious phenomenon didn’t seem to affect Northpole Throwdown, which sounds a bit like full-speed Slayer with added parp-tacular keyboards, which are probably (hopefully) coming to a Slayer album near you soon.

In the interests of journalistic integrity I listened to Hatebreeder again just to make sure that I hadn’t imagined Children Of Bodom being really fucking awesome in the past, but where they once made music that sounded like the soundtrack to a million deranged Japanese R-Type computer games, they now sound like the soundtrack to a film about Fast And Furious Vampire Teens starring Jason Statham. Which is probably exactly what they and their accountants intended. Verily this is the sound of fat, lethargic musical water treading from a band that really doesn’t give a shit any more. I put it on, pressed play, some music happened and then it finished. No more, no less. Now let’s get on with our lives.

While Heaven Wept

Heavens Above

While Heaven Wept more or less destroyed Leave the Hall with their last album, Vast Oceans Lachrymose. Quite literally in fact, as it left us unable to do anything but listen to it for a good 6 months, thus slowing our already moribund journalistic pace down to that of a drunk man walking through 3 feet of treacle. Imagine then our fear then when we get wind of a follow up being released so quickly, hot on the heels of Triumph:Tragedy:Transcendence, their excellent live album and last release for Cruz Del Sur before moving to Nuclear Blast, thus upping their output to the levels of late 70′s Judas Priest.

For the uninitiated, While Heaven Wept effortlessly craft the kind of music that the Knight Templar at the end of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade would have on his 11th Century iPod (For your information, this man and the personality I have imagined for him is my reference point when considering the merits of any epic metal, having already sought his wisdom on Atlantean Kodex), music worthy of an epic decade long journey, a coming of age or perhaps the fruition of a lifelong dream. It is irrefutable scientific fact that any moment in your life will be significantly enhanced by having them on in the background, instantly transforming your pathetic existence into a memorable scene from some sort of Oscar-grabbing blockbuster biopic.

It is surprising then that opener Hour Of Reprisal is not a 57 minute bible of epic metal storytelling but an immediate, up-tempo slice of heavy metal that gets right about your face and even incorporates a slight (very slight) black metal tinge into the relentless riffing, which in turn gives way to the headbanging intro of Destroyer Of Solace, another brisk slice of power that, powered by the uplifting vocals of Rain Irving, comes and goes before you’ve even had a chance to get fully comfortable on the chaise longue in your velvet epic metal leisure suit. Having been continuously surprised for a full 6 minutes and 47 seconds, we find ourselves merging seamlessly into the third track, Obsessions Now Effigies, and it dawns on me that this is, more or less, one long song split up into sections. However, for a band as unashamedly sprawling and grandiose as While Heaven Wept, you can’t help but feel as if you’ve been rushed through it and, while you’ve certainly enjoyed yourself, you wish you could have let things soak in a little longer, a bit like taking a sightseeing tour of a beautiful city while handcuffed to a particularly frisky Usain Bolt.

If you’re surprised by the immediacy and heaviness of the first three tracks, rest assured that the album hinges on the stripped down and emotional Unplenitude, a song that would have even a man of stone shedding small, pebble tears of emotion all down his granite face, paving the way for To Grieve Forever to exponentially up the doom factor. Its lethargic, dragging introduction is reminiscent of Mourning Beloveth at their most depressing, while Saturn and Sacrifice, amongst its perfectly formed power metal arrangements, displays the weighty menace of latter-day My Dying Bride. Finally you can slow down, settle in, relax and enjoy the long journey through some panoramic musical scenery, the likes of which album closer Finality has in abundance and, despite being laden with a chorus taken directly from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s bin marked ‘too saccharine’, gathers momentum over its 11 minute duration, soaring up and up and carrying you ever higher before abrubtly ending and sending you spiralling back down to earth like the victim of a tragic parachuting accident.

More accessible than their previous releases, yet offering enough depth and engagement to keep you coming back for more, Fear Of Infinity is a significant step forward for While Heaven Wept, demonstrating again why they are the kings of pomp and circumstance and one of Leave The Hall‘s firm favourites. Obviously we would have liked more than 37 minutes of music, but when it comes down to it, 37 minutes with Megan Fox is better than a long weekend with Lisa Riley. Probably.

Absolute Power

Absolute Priapism

Someone has written a love letter. A big soppy one, scrawled lovingly on pink crepe paper. Tenderly, they placed it in a time machine & sent it back to 1976 where it was opened by a young Robert John Arthur Halford. The letter simply read “Dear heavy metal. We love you. Signed, Absolute Power”. Oh & there were a few kisses. Now, supergroups of uber-producers & massively prolific metal legends paying tribute to the heavy metal gods might not be anything new so you might be asking “Why should we care?”. Well, when it comes from the heart & it’s this well written, there’s nothing better to get your denim clad penis bothering the neighbours.

I suppose it’s unfair to say this nowadays but your opinion on this album will doubtless be linked to the age old question. Hammerfall, yay or nay? The plucky Swedes might have been dribbling out sub-par piddle at the rate of a defective kidney for the last half decade but they are still your best reference point for Absolute Power. Simon Efemey’s vocals are exactly what we can expect from a post-puberty Joacim Cans whilst the choral outros of Sea Of Horns & the irresistible hooks of Secrets are reminiscent of a youthful, revitalised version of a sadly, long-pump band.

Raging Pursuer is about as Judas Priest as you can get without trading in all your clothing for some leather, studded Y-fronts & a tattoo of Glenn Tipton’s mum. Full Metal Roar has some guitar work even K.K. would be proud of whilst Faster Than The Speed Of Evil must certainly have been omitted from Painkiller due to a pressing error. I can see no possible way that it didn’t have a Tipton, Downing & Halford writing credit.

Refusing to ever sound like a side-project, a diversion or a  joke, the production & playing is unsurprisingly spot on based on the lineage. Warm, chunky tones, anthemic choruses & riffs that bury right into your soul to live forever like some kind of musical STI. Seriously, there’s enough metal here to armour plate the whole of Saxon twice & still have enough to make good start on Nick Barker’s left tit.

Negative Plane - Stained Glass Revelations : Photo by wkimagery.com *

Splayed Ass Masturbations

Why do I write reviews at silly hours in the morning when I should be going to my pit to have a danger wank versus the dark closet monsters. Fuck knows. All I can say about this band Negative Plane, is that they are fucking incredible. Take the best bits of Celtic Frost, all the reverb from every 90s Black Metal band & a fuckin’ massive church organ. What’s not to like?

A wee bit of history about the band, they’re from the USA, which is somewhat bewildering as most US bands of this calibre sound like a fat American eating a packet of children’s legs. They started in 2001, released a few demos I’ve never heard then released Et In Saecula Saeculorum in 2006 which is another slab of fucking reverberating spermgasm. The members go by the titanic pseudonyms of Nameless Void (Vokills and Guitars) and Bestial Devotion (Artillery).

You would expect that this band would be another ridiculous, bestial kvltgasm of an outing but it goes above and beyond. The wanks who blow their over-sized allowance buying everything on vinyl will make Mummy start up the Range Rover immediately for a lift down to the local indie store to buy this for sure but it’s  not be limited to, or stopped by the fact that they believe Negative Plane chose them. Stained Glass Revelations is above these kids who are, strangely enough, all under the age of 21 & think they are music’s first & foremost.

I hate to use this phrase but Stained Glass Revelations is one of those albums that’s an instant classic. From the word go, you are just submerged in a mass of occult Black and Roll with mental choirs & organs making the experience similar to blasting a load over a fresh child or fat chick. That’s something I highly recommend, give it a go. Immensely satisfying. The production is brilliant. They’ve recorded pretty much everything bar the drums in a big fuck off toilet or something. Despite this, it sounds vast, old & grim as fuck. Collectors would probably benefit by getting this on vinyl. When they’re old & the house stinks of shit because it’s smeared across the walls as they have spent their life hypnotised by Negative Plane’s amazing albums, this will still sound timeless.

I can’t think of a favourite track because all of them have ridiculously good riffs & a piano or an organ with a slut draped over it. The songs have length but they never get tiresome. Some clocking in at the 10 minute mark so this may NOT be the record to use as your rapage sacrificial soundtrack as your fellow kvltists may get a bit impatient & want a shot of your unwilling victim, THUS leading to some petty squabbling & by this point the kid has managed to escape the bonds tied by Clement because he is ALWAYS useless at securing the tarts. Fucking cunt.

Now these amazing cunts Negative Plane are coming to play Bannermans in Edinburgh & fuck knows where else but I highly suggest you check them out and get down to their shows. I’m away to my fucking scratcher. Work in 5 hours.

* Photo credit goes to the extremely talented wkimagery.com. Go check them out.

The Browning - Time Will Tell

• The Browning

• The Brown Ring

• The Rim Sting

• The Shitty Wings

• The Soggy Shits

• The Wet Farts

• The Ruined Underwears

• The Jobby Faces

Anaal Nathrakh

Passion (for teenage black metal vagina)

It’s 2:30 in the morning and I’m listening to the new Anaal Nathrakh record entitled ‘Passion’.

Anaal Nathrakh are your local cheeky chappies with a penchant for writing naughty blackened core riffs, that are ridiculously fast for no apparent reason. They have been spewing out more records in the last decade than the average teen mother fires out abominations. If you don’t know who Mick Kenney is, just leave it at that. Let’s have a wee listen and see if the Passion is there.

It’s immensely slick produced and highly triggered, more so than an NYC cop about to have a show down with some Hispanics of the local drug cartel. I hate it. It kicks off pretty sharpish, with a short clean intro before the mayhem of toilet fun consumes my ears and my mind encourages me to reach for the stop button on the stereo. I persevere. There are some great Emperor-isms in the music, but I can’t for the life of me think that this is complete generic nuggetry by the numbers and the evidence of any Black Metal influence is non-existent let alone grindcore.

There ARE some good points though, this is a great family record of course. The riffs are well executed and well played. The vocals are hilarious, sometimes sounding like a domestic abuse scenario. The song titles are you usual evil pish, I can‘t particularly distinguish each song because the vocals are continuously fucking tragic/laughable. ‘Post Traumatic Stress Euphoria‘? I‘ve taken a shite that is more appropriately titled than this garbage.

Black Metal used to be dangerous or at least scary sounding (ish), I’d get more thrill giving Ian Huntley my children for the weekend. The detuned dirge of this record is like playing with marshmallows in your lovely Costa hot chocolate. Tunes like Ashes Screaming Silence are more like gentle tickles on the ear rather than sonic devastation.

I really don’t like this record. It’s about as necro as the local Glaswegian graveyard filled with solvent abusers and vampires. Fenriz would not approve. If this is modern day extreme metal then we are extremely fucked, straight in the bum bum. There isn’t any passion (Irony eh!?) behind this record, there’s no attention to detail with the little things, everything is compressed to a flat line and the fucking vocal levels hitting the red to make it sound more extreme isn’t cool and just makes it all sound severely rushed. The snare is repetitive and sound replaced, cut and pasted, slapped, buggered bashed and sodomized into the utter shite it sounds. I’d take St. Anger’s drum sound over this.

Picture an extreme metal guidebook, they have covered nearly everything with this record. An album that isn’t needed, take a 5 year hiatus Anaal Nathrakh and come back with something more captivating. Cradle of Filth covered this stuff a decade ago, as did Emperor with the operatic stuff. Mick Kenney needs to burn a church or something. Death/Fiddler/Chunk core bands are writing better music than this utter fudgey poo, of course, there will be a bunch of folk saying, ‘Aww this is rapid, pyoor fuckin’ extreme and amazing’. They are cretins, don’t listen to them.

The Haunted

Haunted By The Fact They Didn’t Use To Suck

What the fuck? Seriously. What the shitting fuck? Remember Made Me Do It? Thrashy death metal, frantic yet memorable guitar work, Marco Aro‘s powerful vocal delivery, metronome-tight drum work. Well, take that thought & bin it. Unseen kicks off with Never Better which would have been better placed in a Nu-Metal’s Worst Moments list than the back catalogue of a band with so much pedigree they make Triple H look like feral, mixed-breed runt. To be fair, I can’t remember listening to anything they’ve put out since One Kill Wonder. The fact that I have a couple of those interim albums suggests two things. Firstly, they were nowhere near as good as OKW & secondly, they were nowhere near as awful as Unseen.

No Ghost is more reminiscent of Clutch. Groove-laden, bluesy hard rock doesn’t suit Dolving. In fact, it doesn’t suit any of the band. What the fuck were they smoking when they wrote this shit? Seriously. I’m going to have to use the word seriously again because I’m deadly serious. What the fuck happened to The Haunted? Catch 22 is a bad pastiche of Deftones meets Faith No More. The Bjorlers are having an identity crisis. The progenitors of melodic death metal have realised that whilst they created one of the most distinctive sounds of the ninties, other shit was going down & now they want to have a go at it. Imagine Jonathan Davis having a crack at the Gothenburg sound, Kurt Cobain‘s gangsta rap album. The cringe factor is comparable.

The Skull sees Dolving‘s seminal death vocals being replaced with a poor Maynard James Kennan impression by a pre-pubescent child whilst The City is screamo to a level so bad, I am unaware of any reasonable comparisons. There is one good harmonic on Them. That’s it. The single positive point of this whole album lasts less than a second. There’s an argument that this is a progressive album. That it might be a bit hit & miss as they try out new ideas. Well, it’s all miss & it makes Unit 731′s idea of the word experimental seem reasonable & humane.

I’ve thought about this for over an hour now & I really can’t work it out. What was going through the heads of some of the greatest minds in melodic death metal when they thought the world needed an incoherent, second rate genre-mash of an album? Maybe they figured they’d get in on the ground floor of the inevitable groove/nu-metal revival. Yes, that’s the feeling of dread you’ve all had for the past 6 months. It’s coming back with vengeance & it’s going to eclipse deathcore, djent & screamo. If that was the plan, then I wish them best of the luck with the sea of 12 year old pussy they’ll soon be swimming in. As for me, I’m digging in for another 5 years of mediocrity, embarrassment & baggy jeans. I’ve got my Triptykon vinyl & a thermos full of Asda Smart-Price gin.

Do your blood pressure a favour, skip this irredeemably awful contribution to the world of music. R.I.P. The Haunted.

DevilDriver

DishevelleDriver

- Be stuck in a lift with James Corden
- Eat a fresh shite
- Cut off my toes before cooking and eating them as cocktail sausages.
- Run a marathon in a pair of shorts made of sandpaper
- Talk to someone in leather trousers
- Be tied to a chair and forced at gunpoint to watch an entire episode of Loose Women
- Get violently raped
- Cut the skin off a buttock and fashion it into a primitive hat
- Wear a bumskin hat
- Be sellotaped to Chris Moyles for a day
- Listen to glam metal
- Tie a piano wire noose round my bollocks and jump out a window
- Use my arse cheeks as a rudimentary dart board
- Go mountaineering with James Corden

The above is a small selection from the long list of things I would rather do than listen to DevilDriver.

You see, angry man groove metal should have been laid to rest so long ago. As a genre it should have been taken out to a forest, shot in the head, thoroughly cremated and the remains scattered far and wide, with any surviving copies of Far Beyond Driven being looked back at with nothing more than a sigh and a knowing chuckle. However, this anachronistic machismo is still perpetuated by the vile likes of Leave the Hall ‘favourites’ 5 Finger Death Punch and DevilDriver, who, in any right thinking society would be laughed out of town long before their 5th album floated to the surface. Sadly for us, society today is a fucking shambles, with a moronic bovine populace that has seen fit to propel these fools to a position amongst the most successful bands in ‘metal’ today. I take all the necessary precautions to avoid contacting groovemetalitis and began the ordeal…

Beast opens with Dead To Rights, and initially it actually sounds a lot like the excellent Martriden, at which point I can actually feel my mind blowing a bit. But just as a little morsel of grey matter plops out of my ear hole onto my shoulder, DevilDriver, with their fists of ham, manage to immediately drown what was a promising section in a sea of grooving, bouncing riffage, compounded when Dez ‘yes that is a tattoo on my face’ Fafara unleashes his patented one-dimensional vocals over the proceedings. It’s quite astonishing to note that Mr Fafara has actually become a less versatile and dynamic vocalist since leaving Coal Chamber. It takes a hell of a man to go backwards from that starting point – well done Sir.

Following the conclusion of the initial lamentable snooze-fest we meet a half-dozen songs that seem to form some sort of adolescent rage themed story arc. They have titles lifted directly from the inner monologue of a 14 year old boy who is unpopular at school and decides that, rather than addressing his social shortcomings, will instead watch more mixed martial arts and perhaps pick up some tips that will benefit him when he next hits the pit AND ensure that his innate knowledge of brawling will put him at a huge advantage should he ever decide to physically confront the cooler kids (he won’t). We get Bring the Fight (To the Floor), Hardened, Shitlist, Talons Out (Teeth Sharpened), You Make Me Sick and Coldblooded all in a row for us to get thoroughly cathartic to. One young kiddy on DevilDriver cried all the water out of his body. Just imagine how his mother felt. It’s a fucking disgrace.

The unfortunate titles and lyrical gangstaism is a shame, as a lot of the music is actually surprisingly decent. There are some cool, if derivative, melodic death metal sections, some fucking tight drumming and a smattering of solos that would be capable of inducing mild-to-enthusiastic boners amongst guitaristas. I will, however, offer the band some constructive criticism so they can build on these moments:

The first problem here is an over reliance upon ‘groove’ without any musicality. The songs keep falling back on tedious sections with no flair whatsoever and, as every highly specialised metal subgenre proves, any music that is entirely reliant on one particular facet of music (see also Breakdowns, Brutal) renders it instantly dull and restrictive. Decapitated, among many others, have better grooves coming out of their asshole than appear on Beast, but as said grooves are incorporated into a far more interesting, diverse and rich musical tapestry, the Poles could not be remotely pigeonholed as being a groove metal band.

The second, and biggest, problem is simply Dez Fafara. Posturing tough guys like this need to fuck off and stop embarrassing themselves as it’s just too cringeworthy for my brain to fully comprehend. He comes across as pathetic, bitter, laughable and impotent all the way through this lyrical and vocal diarrhoea milkshake, bringing nothing to the proceeding but bad memories of a thankfully bygone age of meatheaded Fred Durstism. The four talented members of DevilDriver who write the music really should ditch the throwback vocalist, cut out the nu-metal riffs and, given time and effort, could confidently boast a band more than capable of being second support to Chimaira on their next tour.

Make a difference, make the change and together we can eradicate Groove by 2015.

Thanks.

Amon Amarth

Come On, Amarth

Amon Amarth have done more than any other to give rise to this lamentable trend of metal fans deciding that they are in fact Viking warriors, a strange affliction whereby any fat beardy with long hair and the iq of a child can consider himself to be some sort of warrior legend descended from a long line of Norse noblemen, rather than the sad loser that greets him in the mirror each day due only to his taste in music. In this respect it is fair to say that perhaps only Manowar have done more to make metal fans look utterly pathetic and even more like the socially inept virgins they inevitably are.

Like Manowar, Amon Amarth have forged their career on a strict formula and come hell or high water, they’re going to stick to it. In fact, such is the incredible rigidity of this formula that Amon Amarth’s releases since The Crusher make AC/DC sound like a more experimental, jazzy and avant-garde version of Ephel Duath in comparison. After the incredibly bold move of putting a guest guitar solo on their last album, what mind-blowing stylistic surprises are in store on Surtur Rising; A piano? A clean vocal? A spoken word intro? Holy shit, this could be intense…

Well, there are none really… The album is a collection of some fast Amon Amarth songs and also some mid tempo Amon Amarth songs that fans like Viking Joe (20, fast food operative) can windmill headbang to. Songs that sound like that one off Versus The World and, you know, that one with the tremolo picking. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. After all, no-one criticises Motorhead for sounding the same, Amon Amarth just have a defined and instantly recognisable sound of their own (and perhaps Bathory and Unleashed’s) that would have Viking Steve (28, IT consultant) choking on the mead (WKD blue) he glugs from his little horn on a string if they deviated from it even a shade.

Surtur Rising opens with War Of The Gods, which could best be described as a generic mid-paced Amon Amarth song, confirming fears that it’s business as usual, and Tock’s Taunt, a follow up to Hermod’s Ride To Hell that is nowhere near as good, and, like finding out that your increasingly emotionally withdrawn 8 year old son’s swimming teacher is a man called Gareth Glitter 6 weeks into his block of private one-on-one lessons, this sets the alarm bells ringing. Destroyer of the Universe features a poor-resolution photocopy of the Twilight Of The Thunder God chorus but little else, again leaving a new track sounding altogether flatter than its older siblings.

Slaves of Fear trots along with a nice epic feel to it, while The Last Stand Of Frej lays on the atmospherics like few other bands can. For Victory Or Death is just about the best song on here, providing us with the sort of relentlessly driving anthem that makes Amon Amarth the only true choice of music to exercise to. In fact, it is a scientific certainty that if gyms switched off their shite trance music and played wall-to-wall Amon Amarth there would be no need for steroids any more.

Potential body building applications aside, they have been perfecting this sound for a good decade now, and it could be argued that, despite a few weak tracks, Twilight Of The Thunder God was the most polished and honed expression of their craft to date and was certainly a commercial high-watermark that won them a lot of new fans like young Viking Kayshawn (14, student and avid Metal Hammer reader). Worryingly, Surtur Rising no longer sees their sound developing sound nor does it refine what has already been done, instead appearing to be a regressive step or a placeholder release at best. For those who have followed them for a while, the feeling that they’ve run out of ideas haunts almost every song like the ghost of M. Night Shyamalan’s career.

There is hope for redemption, however. The way the slowed down, sparsely picked outro of A Beast Am I merges into the string-tinged, doomy and aptly named Doom Over Dead Man provides the most original moment on here, and in closing the album gives me hope that it is a taste of a new found diversity to come.

Surtur Rising is by no means a bad album and i’m sure I’ll pop it on my iPod and listen to it a few times, but I guarantee you that three months from now I will not be able to name a single song from it. And unless your name is preceded by ‘Viking’, neither will you.

Obviously we here at Leave the Hall have long been aware of the genius of Death and their final album and as such can’t be bothered writing about the re-release of something that you will probably already own. Also you will notice we are extremely lazy. So, instructing you to purchase this if you do not already own it and sealing The Sound Of Perseverance with the official 5 Grimmett stamp of approval, Strachs decided it would free up more masturbation time if he delegated the review itself out to one of the many internet music critics who populate lesser sites…

Death

Death Show All How To Do It!!!!1

Death is a new fresh band sound for the millennia. This is their new album and it goes by the title of the Sound of Perseverance. I have had many listens of it in order to best convey to you the sounds and elements that are contained within, and hope to provide a true illustration of the music that is comprising of this compact disc.

The mainman and focus point of this hard rock warriors of steel is Chuck Schooldinner, who brings a dynamic and intimdating presents to the vocalisations in the style of Arch Enemy’s Angela Gossow. I think maybe she was a big influence on him. The guitar work is of a high standard and can perhaps be compared to the pioneers of the death metal genre Black Dahlia Murder or maybe again to the fabulous Arch Enemy. These guitar lines allow a heaviness while also providing our ears with some melodious elements, occasionally combining to give a sonic soundscape that is at once aggressive and yet also melodious. Opening track Scavenger of Human Marrow is a great opener that sets the president for the rest of the album and delivers the first blow of rock and metal on your ears. Voice of the soul uses a different kind of guitars to achieve a relaxing style of music that reminds me of Killswitch Engage and their instrumentational interluditions. Each song Death performed is different, these brought an invasion that I thoroughly admired, making the audience like a blitz! The best song is probably Painkiller, where Death expand their song writing skills to come up with a revolutionary sound that shakes you with the power of true metal defending of the faith, something that will give pleasure to us defenders of the faith true metal faith defenders warriors of the world steel leather metal fans. My advice to the band Death would do well to write more songs like Painkiller in the future.

Given the excellent surprise that this new album has given to my ears I will have no doubt to use this album on my iPod for a long, long, long time! The use of guitars, vocals, bass and drums is a fantastic original combination that works well on here. I think that it is now time for Death to move into the top bracket of death metal, with established favourites like metal masters Job For A Cowboy and Suicide Silence. Yes, I will rate it as highly as that along with those excellent, legendary bands. I am largely looking forward to the release of Death next album!

7/10

Omnium Gatherum

Killing My Erectium

Omnium Gatherum & I have a strange relationship. Sometimes they have me convinced they are the second coming, meticulously combining atmospheric, progressive structures with the aggression of a crossbow wielding, privately schooled nutcase. Seconds later though, I find them ruining things with a concerted In Flames impression or, god forbid, a keyboard-driven gay part (that’s a technical term for clean vocals). Anyway, this habit has been rearing it’s ugly head more & more often with too many melodic flourishes at the expense of some good, old fashioned brutality. The emphasis has been on the melo-, not the death, leading them dangerously close to that musical cul-de-sac that is “metal my bird likes”. Luckily, they’ve managed to make this one not suck. Until track 3.

Anyway, things begin with the crushing Everfields which, despite a rather boring melodic interlude, is a perfect example of what I love about them. Low, gutteral death growls act as a menacing undercurrent to a soaring, atmospheric slice of uplifting morbidity, even if the drum intro stinks of Phil Collins. At just over 9 minutes, it’s the first of the two epics that we were promised in news updates during the recording process & stands out as one of the best tracks Omnium Gatherum have ever done. Ego takes us slightly too close to modern In Flames for my liking but some catchy riffing from the perennially underrated Markus Vanhala saves the day.

Things go awry on the title track which kicks off with good intentions but around the 3:5o mark, everything gets a bit piss. The clean vocals & keyboards kill my erection quicker than a KFC bucket full of rat feces which is a shame. Things were going so well up until then. I was going to take the album out to a nice restaurant. Wine it, dine it, take it home & plunder it’s many cavities. Instead, Peter Gabriel & the keyboard player from Blessed By A Broken Heart turn up & shit on my dinner plans.

Things continue on very much in this vein, one minute gripping me with their undeniable mastery of moods & the next, slapping me in the face with a handbag full of soppy widdle. Some inspired shredding on Nova Flame is tempered with some Amorphis-lite keyboards & vocal delivery in the style of a man receiving a blow job off an experienced, transsexual hooker on the unforgettable-and-not-in-a-good-way An Infinite Mind. Thankfully, things end well with another 9 minute epic bookending the album. Deep Cold shifts from Gothenburg worship to Alcest effortlessly. This, combined with some cheeky harmonics & space rock guitar work, showcases OG‘s ability to create epic ambient soundscapes whilst retaining an underlying brutality capable of kicking a large farm animal to death.

Performance-wise, vocalist Jukka Pelkonen is on top form & this is by far his best effort with Omnium Gatherum, his growls being the heaviest thing on offer. As mentioned previously, Vanhala‘s guitar work is as glorious as usual & Dan Swanö‘s production has the sheen of an obsessive compulsive’s kitchen worktop. They are a band firing on all cylinders, it’s just a shame they are often pointed in the wrong direction.

Cerebral Bore are more serious than you. Except for Paul. He looks bored.

Ever Been Punted Really Hard In The Cunt?

I mean really hard. Like Frank Mullen took a run up & punted you square in the nads hard. Oh, and he did it repeatedly for 32 minutes? If not, then you are in for an experience.

It’s 4 years since the last Cerebral Bore release, The Dead Flesh Architect so it’s probably a good thing it’s not shit. Quite the opposite in fact. The Bore have been touring the world with some of the biggest names in brutal death metal, going through vocalists like Barrymore goes through pool boys & becoming a permanent attraction on the continental deathfest circuit. In other words, aye, they’ve not been slacking but thankfully they also found time to write a couple more songs.

As required by the Big Book of Brutal Death Metal, the album opens with a sample although, in a break from tradition, it’s taken from Trainspotting rather than A Serbian Film. It’s rare to get a chance to praise the compostion in a brutal DM release. It’s usually a case of throwing all the heaviest shit they’ve got at your face & hoping some of it sticks but Maniacal Miscreation buzzes, slams & blasts in all the right places. Guitarist, Paul, has a sack of riffs far more diverse & memorable than most & his stubborn refusal to re-use a single one is refreshing. Take note, Kerry King, you don’t have to hold onto each one of the 3 riffs you ever wrote like they are your beloved children. I’m of the opinion that brutal DM has the propensity to be as boring as watching a Snow Patrol album when done wrong so it’s a pleasant change that the album barrels along like a schizophrenic bull pissing lasers & fire from it’s massive death-cock. Everything the Bore do is underpinned by one of the best rhythm sections in the UK scene. Drummer McDibet’s precision blasting rarely lets up throughout. When it does, it’s usually to allow some filthy grooving or erotic bass fills from the more than capable fingers of Mr Rutherford.

Much verbal feces has been spouted from both sides of the retard-spectrum about new vocalist Som. This tends to swing from “Dur, wumin cnt do vokillzzzzzzzzzzzzzz” to “ZOMG, bst vokilist evarzzzzzzzzzzz, rrly leik her chebz!!!1!11!!!!” but put simply, she’s damn good. Heavily influenced by John Gallagher (Dying Fetus), she brings ultra-low gutterals capable of turning your scrotum into an internal organ & a great range of pig squeals, grunts & growls. Lyrically, the Bore stick to safe, non-controversial topics like everyone’s favourite Austrian DIY legend, Josef Fritzl & Jade Goody’s death by cancer so it’s a perfect Christmas present for your gran as long as she likes cancer & incest.

Epileptic Strobe Entrapment‘s staccato, machine gun drums & chaotic time signature changes do a decent job of simulating an seizure. Well, that’s my excuse anyway, I woke up covered in piss & saliva. The relentless bass line of Entombed In Butchered Bodies is a testament to the band’s stamina & talent even if parts are a bit too similar to the brilliant final track, 24 Year Party Dungeon. Flesh Reflects The Madness sees a Morbid Angel influence creep in & stands out as one of the highlights on the album. In fact, the album closes with it’s 3 strongest tracks. The title track is one of the slower numbers but that’s not to say that once it gets going, it doesn’t leave your ears looking like the tattered rectum of a child prostitute on the back streets of Athens. The slithering guitar work & manic bass of the closer is probably the most representative track of what they are all about as it blasts your ass cheeks apart before slamming so hard you can feel your vertebrae compressing, cracking & shattering. The inclusion of Glaswegian-isms throughout is genius, I’m fairly certain this is the first & last album to include the line “I’ll jab yer da!”.

Recorded & produced down at Foel Studios (Napalm Death, Godflesh, everyone who’s anyone), the album sounds far better than you’d expect from a self-financed debut. It’s pretty obvious why Earache picked these guys up & the album will be getting a re-release in the new year. Death metal release of the year? Tech-heads will complain at the lack of solos but for my money, it’s got to be up there.

* Editor’s Note – I started this review on 22 September, 2010. This makes me a massively lazy cunt but I reckoned I’d better finish it up before we do our top 10s.

Waking The Cadaver after reading this review

Beyond Chod

Waking The Cadaver is music for tough guys and I’m not sure I can cope with it. Being a civilised and educated man, the prospect of doing some mosh pit tai chi with their super-cool and tough fans while they unleash their patented brand of slammage fills me with fear. These maniacs are so nuggets they are ‘Beyond Cops’ and ‘Beyond God’ for god’s sake!

Oh no, wait. They’re actually a bunch of posturing virgin losers trying to be tough, producing bottom rung music for little boys who aspire to be tough. Their debut album, Perverse Recollections Of A Necromangler, was a disc so densely packed with shit that Steven Hawking had to rewrite 4 chapters of his new book in light of this new discovery regarding the compression of mass. Beyond cops and god they may be, but they’re not beyond the reach of Leave The Hall’s judgment. They will stand trial and they will be evaluated, with punishment to be meted out in the form of Grimmett.

The first thing that strikes you when you listen to this is that Waking The Cadaver are better than they used to be. Given, that is like saying the day you got a gang rape bum poking by AIDS ridden elephant smackheads 11 times was better than the day they completed the dirty dozen on you, but this isn’t as bad as I had expected. This only sounds like the worst hardcore band ever trying to play death metal, which is an improvement from the special school stylings of their debut. Opening with Beyond Cops (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean… stick to the cartoon violence, lads), the song goes raaaarr dun dun dun dun, raaaaar dun dun dun for a bit, then it does the same, only slower. Then a wee notey riff comes out of nowhere that isn’t completely moronic and like a ray of sunshine peeking out from behind the storm, it brightens up your life. Then there’s a bit of basic, uninspired tremolo picking, followed by another stock breakdown. The clouds are back. Yawn.

Reign Supreme is about the time the band got the top score on Guitar Hero out of all the bands they toured with. Actually it isn’t, but it would explain why they can’t play real instruments for shit and why all of their riffs can be performed with one finger on only 5 frets. Sadistic Tortures and Made In Hell are hugely unremarkable slices of deathcore that couldn’t have more appropriate titles if they were called “Sonic Diarrhoea Fresh From A Puckered Asshole pt 1 & 2”. The lyrics are atrocious too. I know no one’s going to hear them, but you’d like to think that they’d put in a little effort… Could they not beat “Face down in the john, is where you belong” as an opening line for Sadistic Tortures? Lord Worm they are not.

Boss Status tells of the time one of the band members got a little gold star on his McDonalds name tag, having managed to go an entire day without dribbling in the Big Macs. Terminate With Extreme Prejudice has another ok riff, something that might be passable on a Hatebreed record, before descending back into a mind-numbing dirge of fifth-rate vomit. It goes on.

This is not heavy music; this is merely what idiots think heavy music sounds like. Downtuning really low does not make it heavy. Guttural vocals are not heavy. Singing about violence and gore is not heavy. Frank Zappa could write heavier music than this with a kazoo between his ass cheeks, and in fact he probably did. If you buy this album you are making a statement about yourself; saying that when you dine out at the restaurant of sound and are confronted with the rich and varied buffet of death metal and grindcore music, you opt to eat not from the Michelin star chefs, the culinary geniuses and the avant-garde Heston Blumenthal selection. No, you opt to eat a piece of soggy, piss-saturated white bread baked by a child. A stupid, incontinent child. Just stop it for fucks sake, you’re only encouraging them.

Atlantean Kodex

The Golden Wow

Lets face facts, Manowar are an embarrassment now. I found Joey DeMaio’s reasoned discussion
of his thoughts on the new Battle Hymns MMXI recording to be a refreshing surprise from a man whose mouth has spewed more shite than the arsehole of an elephant with irritable bowel syndrome. Then about one minute in he declares that Manowar are going to crash the Facebook servers with their new official page, instantly reminding me why the man is the lifelong president of bell ends. His plan to completely blow Facebook’s mind involves asking the viewers to get 100 of their friends to join in. There are, however, 2 flaws with this: 1) No Manowar fan has more than a dozen friends and 2) It’s the most retarded statement in history. Anyway, the point I’m making is that Manowar have long since disappeared up their own brown eyes and, rather than feverishly creating new batches of epic metal anthems are happy releasing albums like Gods Of War (which featured more talking than music, and what music there was was a load of fuck) and wasting their time on an atrocious modern sounding re-release of something that sounded warm, natural and perfect as it was and, like your kids, is best left untouched.

It’s high time then for the new guard to don their finest leather posing pouches and mount a true metal take over. At the forefront are Atlantean Kodex, providing music as weighty as Thor’s ballbag and twice as cheesy, showing us what the Kings Of Metal would sound like if they erased their memories, Men In Black style, and began again today. The album opens with Fountain of Nepenthe – a 10 minute leviathan to ease you into the proceedings. With creaking galley sound effects, a riff that is more metal than an oil tanker full of titanium ball bearings and Markus Becker’s mournful yet upliftingly powerful vocals, this song is everything you need in your life and more. The following track, Pilgrim, is 12 minutes long and sounds a bit like Dark Avenger would if it was written by an old, grey haired Templar Knight who had fought in 1000 brutal battles using only his bare knuckles as a weapon before forging a guitar from the fear and pain of his enemies. It can only be described as a journey. A journey to boner city in the year 1100 and back again.

Temple Of Katholic Magick is another massively grandiose proclamation of medieval preposterousness, with some of the most incredibly overblown yet spine tingling lyrics ever committed to parchment. How can you not enjoy a man sincerely singing “Never yield! Never lay down your sword! Drive your spears through the heart of the Saracen hordes” over an arrangement of slow burning chords that are so majestic as to have all other chords curtseying before them in reverence. Disciples Of The Iron Crown is a far pacier affair, upping the tempo without losing the atmosphere, and Vesperal Hymn – despite featuring a line that sounds like “The salty wang of death”, just about sails the cheesy seas of medieval minstrel music that until now had belonged exclusively to Falconer. The Atlantean Kodex is pure, undiluted power metal, raping the living shit out of so called ‘epic’ bands like Rhapsody as its iron battalions and sorcerers gallop over your face, even taking the time to unleash some fabulous power metal gang vocals that reference the bands name towards the end of the song. Right now you’re probably thinking that the concept of power metal gang vocals sounds shit… But you’re so, so wrong.

This album has been labelled Doom, though it has little or nothing to do with that genre other than slow tempos and massively long songs. Like While Heaven Wept’s Vast Oceans Lachrymose before it, The Golden Bough cares not for genre boundaries. Instead it strides across the metal world like a loincloth-clad behemoth, liberally pooping life-affirming, fist-pumping metal anthems out across the landscape for its awestruck inhabitants to gaze at like apes before an obelisk. This is everything metal should be – as overblown and grandiose as possible, taking itself and its subject matter 100% seriously and never pussying out and hiding behind a veil of irony like the Dragonforces of this world. Manowar would be proud. In fact I deliberately avoided looking at a picture of the band while listening to this, instead happily believing that this album was written and recorded by men who make Aragorn, Son of Arathorn look like The Burger King. Men who ride an armoured horse to the studio and men who shit nuggets of pure machismo. This album will blow your pathetic mind.

Satan's Little Helpers

Imagine if King Diamond & Ray Davies set out to create the most fun doom album since My Dying Bride‘s much acclaimed covers album, Doom Goes Pop. That didn’t actually happen but it fucking should have. Anyway, Ghost‘s debut is a meaty slab of power-pop cum doom metal with tones warmer than my nutsack after a furious session with the latest issue of Reader’s Grans. Male readers should take note, this is the closest one can get to a multiple orgasm without very expensive, experimental surgery & remembering to sit down to piss as it’s the first album ever to feature simultaneous doom-gasms & moog-gasms.

Things begin predictably enough with a funereal church organ intro but any notion that this is a doom-by-numbers exercise are blown away by the bass-driven genius of Con Clavi Con Dio. Hypnotically catchy choruses on Elizabeth & Ritual will be ingrained in your mind long after senile dementia robs you of your name & the correct method to wipe your anus. The former’s chugging guitars are reminiscent of the early Judas Priest colliding with the rhythm section of Witchfinder General. Stand By Him has a chorus Cauldron will be kicking themselves for missing & lyrics about a Witchhammer so it’s probably my new favourite song ever. Outro, Genesis borders on Pink Floyd-ian space rock leaving you with a nice gentle comedown.

Musically, everything is so gloriously understated. The production has a sheen indicative of a painstaking labour of love rather than today’s usual approach of computer calculated levels. Ghost pull off schlocky, tounge-in-cheek satanism with aplomb whilst never stepping over the line into parody. At just over 30 minutes, Opus Eponymous is as short as it is sweet, completely bereft of the filler most bands are content to shove down our throats.

For the full effect, you should probably buy this on vinyl, head back to your brown wallpapered living room, slip into your most comfy bell-bottoms, turn on your favourite lava lamp & get lost in Ghost‘s righteous grooves. For once you can safely believe the hype without worrying that Public Enemy will come fuck up your shit.

Forbidden - Largest and In Chargest

Oh, Mega.

I am something of a fairweather Forbidden fan. I view their first two releases – Forbidden Evil and Twisted Into Form as two of the finest metal albums ever released into the world and, well, I couldn’t give a flying fuck about 1994′s Distortion and 1997′s Green. In fact I totally forgot about them until I was doing my usual thorough review research on Wikipedia. Luckily I hadn’t forgotten about the band themselves, and I had been seriously looking forward to their new album, believing it would be among the strongest thrash-reunion-comeback-albums™ released to date.

Regardless of reputation or expectation, you’ll probably file the fairly generic opening intro in the toilet marked ‘Arch Enemy’, but when Forsaken At The Gates sweeps (literally) into your ears, you will be forgiven for a wee nugget of poo rapidly escaping from your ring piece. As comebacks go, this opener is up there with Rambo 4.

Overthrow stomps heavily along without drifting into turgid groove metal territory, though the harsh vocals which crop up here and elsewhere will have some purists wriggling uncomfortably in their stonewashed denims. The modern flair and sheen that colours the album is strongly reminiscent of Nevermore, a connection made more notable by the presence of Steve Smyth, but one which is fitting given that Forbidden were progenitors of the highly evolved, melodic post-thrash sound that Jeff Loomis and company later made their own.

Adapt or Die is one of the weakest songs on the album, but is notable for Russ Anderson‘s first massively extended high note in many a long year, something that, when used correctly (as on the genius Step By Step from ‘Twisted…’) has the power to give me a full erection at 20 paces, yet here it seems rather forced and out of place, almost like an (admittedly awesome) afterthought. Luckily for me, yet unluckily the structural integrity of my pants, the patented scream is deployed perfectly in the outro to Behind The Mask later on in the album.

Actually, I should say much, much later in the album. Forbidden have obviously been taking advice from Exodus, who now apparently think that an album has to be a massively long exercise in listener stamina in order to be worthwhile. Well, I’d rather a band put out an awesome, teste-shrivelling 40 minutes of the leanest, best songs they can possibly conjour rather than forcing every last note they came up with during the creative process (including 2 minutes of babbling voices on Chatter) onto the album in the hope that 40 minutes worth sticks. It is a trend that must get to fuck immediately.

That said, you’ll struggle to find any total stinkers on here. While some tracks perhaps slightly outstay their welcome (almost every track is 5 minutes plus and not all of them justify it) or take too long to come to the boil, there will be a riff (or 6), hook or solo to grab you roughly by the pubes and get your undivided attention. Quality is spread nicely across the album, and that you can skip to the last few tracks and find songs as good as Immortal Wounds and the title track is highly commendable.

Some morons have derided this album as a woeful, non-thrash pile of Machine Head that totally betrays Forbidden’s ‘rich thrash heritage’, but they seem to forget that they have always incorporated straightforward passages, progressive touches and downright commercial leanings in their prior work, and this album is no different. Yes, Hopenosis is massively sell-out and rather cheesy, and taken on its own would probably have me moaning like Victor Meldrew in a Vietnamese massage parlour, but these brief slip-ups can easily be attributed to the understandable ring rust (Which can be nasty. You have to be careful in those parlours) of a band returning from such a long hiatus.

While it is not an unqualified success, we are thankfully excused the always embarrassing sight of seasoned veterans attempting to outdo their youthful efforts on comeback albums, and Forbidden, like Testament did with The Formation Of Damnation, have produced an album that should appeal as much to the new generation of young metal upstarts as to the sweaty, moaning, fat, surly, greasy, balding, lecherous old child molester in the ancient Slayer t-shirt demographic… And they shouldn’t complain, this just means there’ll be more lithe young boys for them to touch at gigs.

Forever Never

I Can’t Believe It’s Come To This

Allow me to elucidate you into the thought process involved in the creation of this EP if I may. The whole premise is as follows:

You know what Shaggy’s Boombastic is missing?

What?

Breakdowns!

Fucking breakdowns. The musical equivalent of Burberry, breakdowns were once a noble & calculated art form, only used where totally necessary. Now, unfortunately, they are dropped haphazardly all over the fucking place by befringed degenerates unable to master the art of the riff.

Essex’s Forever Never are a fun band. You can tell because on the cover of this EP, one is wearing corpse paint, one is wearing tennis gear, they look like they have a collective IQ of about 12 & their singer has a big face. Anyway, they felt it appropriate to cover 6 classics of varying quality, put it on an EP & force people to listen to it.

Starting on John Farnham’s late eighties mega-hit, You’re The Voice, things begin innocuously enough with a relatively straightforward play-through. There’s nothing massively offensive about the prince of pop’s Who Is It? either. Overproduction drains both the guitar & drums of any soul leaving them sound exactly like every other downtuned, ProTools’d to death, modern metal band but if being generic were the biggest complaint here, we could all go home a lot happier.

It’s on Still of the Night that they really up the shit-stakes. Taking on Coverdale isn’t an easy task & vocalist Renny fails to approach that majestic scream. It’s not until the 3’46” mark that the cracks really begin to show. It’s the first time they make an effort to leave their mark on the song. It’s a shame the mark is a shitstain in the form of ropey screams. Big Dave would be raging if he wasn’t nuts deep in a sexy teenager right now.

On Go West’s We Close Our Eyes, they channel the spirit of Alien Ant Farm but chugging guitars add nothing to the original leaving another forgettable moment. We find Benji Webbe of Skindred watching the Forever Never boys as they kick Shaggy’s 90s novelty pop hit to death. Webbe’s vocals are spot on but Boombastic was a shit song before this & will continue to be after. When not sounding like a shit Kid Rock they drop in breakdowns that the local special needs unit metalcore band felt too obvious.

Lupus faced R&B legend, Seal’s Future Love Paradise is the last track to be molested on this thankfully short EP. Seal would be within reason to sue the whole metal genre about now. The memory of Panic Cell’s recent reworking of Crazy fresh in his mind, Forever Never arrive with this. Removing every last drop of soul from a soul track is probably the most impressive feat on offer here.

What we have here is elevator music. Elevator music for Olly Sykes’ house. Oh & the lift is full of dog shit & semen.

Kyrbgrinder

Immediately, I’m split over this release. There is something very special about a good 3-piece. Rush, Motorhead, Venom, um, Hanson. Ok so it doesn’t always work but there’s something magic when it does. There’s no room for slacking when there are only 3 of you. Anyway, I have to temper this with the fact that Kyrbgrinder‘s vocals are handled by their drummer, Johanne James. As a basic rule, anyone who handles both vocals & drums doesn’t do either very well. When you are already using 4 limbs, adding singing to this is a bit of a stretch. Imagine Muhammed Suiçmez tap dancing for a whole Necrophagist set and you are there. Anyway, his drumming ability is not in question here. The man has been a member of the massively underrated Threshold since 2001′s Hypothetical & it’s fair to say he’s paid his dues.

No, the problem lies in elsewhere. Lying somewhere between the funky, bass-driven Living Colour & One Minute Silence‘s hybrid nu-metal prototype, their sound begs for a dynamic front man. Unfortunately James’s vocals are only really suited to certain sections and as the music swings from one end of the Heaviosity scale to the other, the vocals fail to keep up. Whilst the bass is noticeably absent of a few tracks, guitarist Tom Caris’s tone & talent more than makes up for it.

Cynical World kicks things off well enough with an up-tempo taste of things to come. Groovy, catchy guitar work & thoughtful lyrics. People Of The Free World acts like it wants to be the first single of the album but its brash, catchy chorus has nothing to back it up. That said, the break introduced by a shout of  ”Woah! The security has been breached!” is, in a word, genius.

It is on tracks like I Wish I Could, that things start looking up. The progressive edge, time changes & a catchy chorus work well together before Caris drops a solo of rather meaty proportions on us. Unfortunately, all momentum is immediately lost by Get Away, which lacks the hooks of it’s predecessor. One of the strongest tracks of the album comes in the form of a reworking of My Heart Bleeds from their debut album, Defiance. This update isn’t without it’s flaws, the solo is longer but far less interesting but as complaints go, it’s a minor one.

Asking a thrasher to listen to a Nirvana cover is a bit like asking Yoko Ono to suck off a man wearing a Mark Chapman mask but even without my pre-disposed hatred towards Seattle’s worst export, Heart Shaped Box doesn’t add anything to the album. It feels massively out of place among a collection of interesting, progressive tracks.

Kyrbgrinder shine when they are hammering out funky, technical rock but even at their best, they fail to overwhelm the senses. The esteemed metal journalist & dental hygiene agnostic, Malcolm Dome describes the album as so:

Cold War Technology is a really impressive mix that brings to mind Cynic meeting Voivod in a test tube being swished around by Baroness

Were Cynic & Voivod to meet musically, the world would implode in an blast of schizophrenic jazziness. Fortunately for our continued survival as a species, Mr Dome has not heard this album. Kyrbgrinder are a technically competent metal band with a truckload of potential. With some work on the song-writing, composition & a second guitarist, they could be massive.

Hail Of Bullets

“War. It’s Fantastic!”

The dominatingly high standard of Hail Of Bullets’ previous releases has had Leave The Hall collectively salivating for more with a fervour that can only be compared to the way Christianity fans felt after Jesus left them on a bit of a cliffhanger with the infamous faked death storyline back in AD 30. Having reviewed …Of Frost And War last year and awarded it a ballsy 4.5 Grimmetts, will the war-fuelled fire of creative genius still be burning bright in 2010?

To up the ante we find ourselves posted from the icy wastelands of Stalingrad and the Eastern Front to the sweltering inferno of the Pacific campaign. On Divine Winds, taking its name from the English translation of ‘Kamikaze’, covers not only the landmark battles of the theatre such as the bombing of Pearl Harbour and the battle of Guadalcanal, but also the events that led to war, such as the Mukden (Manchurian) Incident. Having said that, I am only assuming that they deal with these topics, not actually having access to the lyrics. For all I know Martin Van Drunen could very well be screaming about the pedestrianisation of Norwich city centre in his less comprehensible moments.

Intelligibility of death vocals aside, these Divine Winds hit with the force of a 16-inch round fired by Steven Seagal from the deck of the USS Missouri, Ed Warby’s production and Dan Swano’s mix taking the crushing tones and crisp production we’ve come to expect and tweaking them ever closer to perfection, ensuring that every note is well drilled in the lethal arts and honed to its maximum killing potential. However, as all popular music proves, a well produced album is useless if the music itself can’t punch its way out of Stephen Hawking’s house. This area, however, is where Hail Of Bullets really twist the bayonet, upping the ante in terms of song writing and composition beyond the already high levels laid out so far on their previous releases.

Grandiose introduction The Eve Of Battle is every war movie soundtrack combined into one, ushering us in with the sounds of falling bombs as we commence Operation Z, reminding us of their mission to stay true to the old-school death metal way like a fanatical Japanese soldier who refuses to accept the war is over and sits in his bunker for 30 years, featuring a classic combination of driving riffs, whammy bar solos and harmonic lead breaks. One thing is crystal clear straight away, Hail Of Bullets have upped the riff factor considerably, packing them in one meaty one after another until each song resembles a high quality Death Metal steak pie.

Strategy Of Attrition and Full Scale War continue the onslaught, marching relentlessly onward and adding those distinctive doom-influenced passages that have previously flavoured so much of Hail Of Bullets’ work on top of the aforementioned riff festival, the band slowing to the most funereal of crawling dirges on Tokyo Napalm Holocaust (which also wins the prize for best track name of all fucking time) and album closer To Bear The Unbearable.

It’s far from all doom and gloom though; if you don’t automatically headbang to Gualdalcanal or On Coral Shores you’re probably either dead or Tom Araya. Each track packs the sort of lurching, stomping mid-paced Death Metal groove that a million Six Feet Under’s working at a million recording studios for a million years could still never manage to pull off with this level of confident awesomeness, while Kamikaze fittingly ups the speed to dangerously thrashy levels which, when topped off with sounds of screaming engines and explosions, proves that this band are able to musically conjure up the perfect atmosphere for any given track or topic.

To make the saddest, most pathetic analogy of all time, On Divine Winds is Call Of Duty: World At War to …Of Frost and War’s Call Of Duty 2, further polishing the already pretty fucking shiny machine that was already pounding the world… like a battering ram. Hail of Bullets are probably the best no frills death metal band around at the moment and from the very tip of the concept down to the bottom edge of the artwork this album sees them further developing their sound into an unbelievably cohesive and compelling package. What i’m trying to say is… Get this or I’m going to tie a banzai scarf round my head and fly a plane laden with explosives into your house.

Lich King, Thrashing Is Their Business

Behave Yourself!

I’ve always been partial to a bit of Lich King. Toxic Zombie Onslaught was an enjoyable, low-fi homage to the thrash greats with some hilarious lyrics & the production of  a Mayhem live album. You can, therefore, imagine my surprise when I put World Gone Dead on. The vocals no longer drown out everything else, the bass is clear & the guitars sound meatier than Ian Watkins’ last snack.

Opening with an intro followed by the album’s weakest track seems like a strange gambit. Act Of War is more intense than a night in the woods with Raoul Moat but ultimately it lacks the panache & soul of previous albums. It does have an excellent SEGA-core outro though. I just copyrighted that so if Dragonforce attempt to use it, I can sue them until they can’t afford booze & have to suck off tramps for change in the bus station.

Thankfully, it is all uphill from there on. In accordance with recent thrash regulation 58 subsection D, there is an 80s action film tribute in the form of ED-209. A paean to the might of Robocop’s shiny robotic adversary, the King demonstrate exactly how to use a sample as ED’s machine guns turn to blasting drums & shredding solos reminiscent of Slayer before they went shit. A Storm Of Swords has all the groove of early Testament & could set off a circle pit in an mortuary.

The second half of the album is where Lich King’s new-found maturity really shines, straddling a note-perfect (possibly, who gives a fuck?) cover of Slayer’s masterpiece Aggressive Perfector. Grindwheel is a down tempo epic with some excellent guitar harmonies & a hefty doom break that should have bowels emptying for years to come.

Look at rainbows
Recycle cans
Mind your manners
Wash your hands

Behaver wins the Best Lyrics Of Any Thrash Song Ever award ending with a scream of “Behave Yourself!” & more Slayer-influenced fretwank. Closing with Lich King III (World Gone Dead), they pull out every trick in the book & proceed to choke you with it in a good way. The gang vocals of “All Hail The Lich King!” are sound advice as a massive breakdown gives way to a series of solos that show exactly how much they’ve improved. If you wrote them off after Necromantic Maelstrom or Toxic Zombie Onslaught, then you are a dumbass but give them another shot, it’s hard to believe it is the same band.

With World Gone Dead, Lich King have successfully made the hardest transition a metal band can make. They made the jump from novelty band kissing goodbye (passionately, on the lips) to the Brian Posehn & Van Cantos of the heavy metal bargain bucket. This album is proof that Lich King can play with the big boys of the new wave of thrash. Just don’t expect them to play nice.

Spiritual Beggars

Hmmmm, this Spiritual Beggars album is alright.

Brain Drill

Quantum Cat Ass Trophy

Brain Drill have shot to the summit of the mountain of technical death metal, threatening to actually complete music itself on their debut Apocalyptic Feasting (narrowly missing out by not calling it Apocalyptic Fisting) and now return with Quantum Catastrophe, 8 tracks of laidback, chillout groove that even your gran will be nodding her head to. No… Wait… I clicked the wrong button. Actually what they present here is the sound of your soul being agonizingly made flesh and then forced into a threshing machine by an evil hillbilly. It’s the sound of a mutant, radioactive orang-utan raping spree recorded, amplified 346 times and committed to compact disc. It’s the sound of the absolute, final word in brutality and metallic musical over ambition being sprayed into your face like a 2-second burst from a GAU-8 Avenger.

There are 8 tracks here so you have one for each day of the week and a spare in case you feel ambitious. For anyone but the most die-hard fan of brutal death metal, listening to this in one swoop will probably leave your anus looking like the waistband of Rik Waller’s most worn-in sweatpants, as the concept of ringing chords and anything less than 64th notes are disdainfully cast aside like a delivery of contraceptives in Africa.

Obliteration Untold picks right up where the last album left off, with the bass and drumming showing that this band, which is very much guitarist Dylan Ruskin’s baby, has not even broken stride with the recruitment of Ivan Mungia and Ron Casey (replacing Jeff Hughell and Marco Pitruzzella respectively) and only occasionally does the onslaught of sweeps, pick taps and gravity blasting let up and allow you to take a breath, which makes the experience a lot like being waterboarded by the CIA …Only a bit more intense. There is a little more variation on Beyond Bludgeoned, however, which is probably why it was chosen for their promo video. It’s unlikely to be bothering the charts anytime soon, though, as it still sounds like a guitar, some spanners and a lion in a warp speed cement mixer.

If you’ve ever wondered what the sound of 1000 babies being viciously raped by a kilopenis-toting nonce is, watch this.

Awaiting Immenent Destruction and Nemesis Of Neglect continue the form, and it’s fair to say that the album never once drops below 769 miles an hour. Which means it’s actually past your ears before you even hear it. While most death metal bands throw in a burst of speed or technical flourishes to their standard pace riffs and passages in order to add a little drama, precisely the opposite is true of Brain Drill, but this inverse approach works really rather well, striking a (marginally) more listenable balance than on their debut.

Mercy To None sounds like Cannibal Corpse on fast-forward, Entity of Extinction is like putting your face into a blender while someone forcibly puts the nozzle of a sandblaster roughly into your anus and turns the power to 10, and Monumental Failure, having been released as a teaser for the album some time ago, feels like an old friend. …If you’re friends with Jeffrey Dahmer and he’s just imbibed 3 litres of absinthe and partaken of a huge holdall full of crack and PCP, that is. The title track is the last to come, and clocking in at almost 11 minutes (without the ambient noise outro) it is essentially the Freebird of brutality, an epic that contains more notes and drum strokes than AC/DC have managed in their entire fucking career.

It’s hard to give this album an objective review as it really will be a case of loving it for the way it pushes everything above and beyond limits, or hating it for, well, precisely the same reason. Basically, fans will love it because it’s almost exactly the same as their last release, and sceptics will hate it. It’s really up to you, dear reader. So, having established that it’s either 1 or 5 Grimmetts, I duly declare it to be…

Haar

Haar’s About That Then

From the outset it is clear that this 2 year old Edinburgh band are not your typical bullet belt clad blasters, as a cursory glance at the CD player shows 3 tracks on clocking in at a weighty 26 minutes. With long songs comes a great responsibility to diversify, as anything featuring 9 minutes of wall to wall trve kvlt biscuit-tin drums recorded on a mobile phone in Gandalf’s corrugated steel garden shed would have me eating my laptop with rage. Luckily for me Haar paint a rich musical picture, using the time to conjour desolate landscapes where raw speed is balanced with doomy, progressive parts that occasionally bring to mind Agalloch’s heavier moments.

The EP begins with Whisper Serenities Eve (Mike Akerfeldt will be kicking himself he never came up with that name first), which nails their colours to the mast from the beginning, opening with a dirty great hulk of a riff before unleashing the blackened mist, but also featuring some nice technical flourishes that successfully manage to raise it above 92% of other black metal.

To Forgive An Enemy is an epic track that features far more expansive atmospherics and despite its length, is probably the most traditional sounding black metal song on the EP, the spacey refrain being a nice focal point that carrys the song along as the instrumentation twists and turns around it.

Without Form Or Void begins with a discordant riff, upping the grim factor another notch, yet amongst the spiralling tremolo picking and diminished chords it features the most melodic passages of the entire EP, which balance out to create an outstanding track.

The songs are well produced, providing enough warmth and depth to the songs to do the ambition of the music justice, without losing their raw black metal edge. From only this brief glimpse it is clear that Haar have real potential, and I look forward to hearing them further explore and develop the various progressive elements that make this release stand out (while maintaining their chilling black metal blast) in the future. Their total lack of spiky shin guard and corpse paint promo pictures taken in a snow-clad forest is a matter for another day, however…

Disturbed

The pale blue glow of the anti junkie UV lighting set the mood perfectly. David sat, dictaphone gripped tightly in his hand, placed between his legs, only inches above the shimmering water. A single groan, then a splash. It was over in seconds. A whole weeks cheesy pasta and Vimto evacuated into the ceramic cradle.

His whole body trembled with excitement. Dollar signs ran through his mind as he played back the recording. A platinum album? A Grammy? Certainly the most exciting thing ever to happen in the toilet stall of Frank’s Studs & Stallions gay bar. Little did he know that just last month, the actor who played Principal Belding in Saved By The Bell was violently beaten right where he sat. The man made it to the parking lot before he died.

David could barely contain himself in the taxi. Arriving home, he dashed to his computer and violently thrust the dictaphone up to the microphone he had rigged. Pro Tools opened even slower than usual, he thought. Or was it just the anticipation. Almost too tense to control the mouse, he clicked the record icon & pressed the rewind button, then play. Captured in digital glory, the chart topping plop. 2 seconds. He adjusted the playback setting. 1800 speed would be about right. No, too slow. 2500, closer. 2650, too fast. 2626. Spot on. The clarity was unbelievable. Immediately he opened his hotmail account, an erection bulging in his cheap nylon bondage trousers. The email he wrote contained only 5 words. “I shall call it Asylum.” *

Ass-ylum

Yes, that’s right, multi-platinum nu-metal titans, Disturbed are back with their 5th album. Now, I’ve always been partial to their first album, The Sickness. The album’s charm lay in its unintentional humour & the almost accidental way the band stumbled into genius choruses. Whilst their first major hit, Down With The Sickness intended to cover the issue of child abuse, it was in fact a hilarious, catchy pop metal tune that fills dancefloors in shitty metal clubs to this day. In an attempt to be taken seriously as a proper metal band, they’ve neglected to include any hooks at all this time around. Unfortunately, they don’t have the talent or creativity to stand on musical merit alone & the end result is an entirely forgettable collection of songs.

An unnecessary intro track leads into the title track where Draiman reminds us that he was always the only good thing about the band. His vocals sit high in the mix & their clarity & delivery is perfect. It is just a shame that the initial momentum grinds to a halt by track 3. Songs begin to blend together as the same formula is recycled again & again. Another Way To Die starts off well enough with a slow build-up before kicking into some groovy guitar work. It has the best chorus of the album & marks the one of the few positive points of the whole thing.

On the song Never Again, they tackle the ever popular topic of the Holocaust. Now, we’ve seen it handled to varying success/inappropriateness in black metal, thrash metal. Hell, even power metal had a go but if you are, like me, thinking that nu-metal doesn’t have the prerequisite maturity to take on something so serious, then you’d be right. Hearing Davey Draiman sing  “Exterminated by the Nazi war machine” the same way he delivers lines like “Get up, come on get down with the sickness” somewhat undermines the weightiness of the subject matter, which makes you wonder if he had to be talked out of putting in some of his trademark monkey noises in too.

The Animal does begin with some of Mad Davey’s trademark “Ooh Waka Waka Waka”s but without a memorable chorus, it just serves to highlight the flaws with this album. My Child is yet another mis-step as they examine the miscarriage of Draiman & his ex-partner’s child. It begins tastelessly enough with a newborn child’s cries but ending with the beeping of a heart monitor is a masterstroke of meatheaded insensitivity. I know Down With The Sickness managed to pull off the whole serious topic, silly song thing but it wasn’t intended & it definitely doesn’t pay off here.

Ending with a hidden track is the ultimate homage to 2002 when bonus tracks preceded by a couple of minutes of silence were all the rage but I really wish it had stayed hidden. Having hit on such serious topics as genocide, stillbirth, global warming & um, lycanthropy, they sign off with a cover of U2′s pop-rock travesty, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. If you can’t imagine what Disturbed covering U2 sounds like, lucky you! Keep it that way.

For anyone who’s read this far & is still in doubt about the calibre of creative genius we are dealing with, drummer Michael Wengren explained, on being asked the meaning behind the album name:

This is a good question. ‘Asylum’ basically has a dual meaning. Most people assume when you talk about an asylum it’s like an insane asylum. There are definitely some aspects of the music that would tie in with that. At the same time, asylum also has another meaning where it means a safe haven, a safe place. So it just seemed to really fit this body of work and what we stand behind.

It is unclear if he followed this up with a “Derp, derp, derp” but it seems likely.

Disturbed have taken their 1 redeeming feature, catchy hooks, & replaced them with a shot at a more mature sound. Imagine Trivium without the guitar ability, Mudvayne without the slap bass. Without their pop sensibilities, there is nothing left to elevate them above mediocrity. They should take a leaf from the Book of Durst. Don’t attempt to grow up, just dress like an overweight, 40 year old man-child & you’ll sell out shows through nostalgia alone.

* Initially I was planning on leaving my review at that. It was written on a bus in about 20 minutes. I feel I may have put in more effort than the band did on the album.

Stone Sour

Stone Shower

I am old enough to remember Slipknot’s early days. The buzz, hype and the mystique that surrounded them before they released their self-titled album – which I duly purchased – painted them as a bunch of total mental cases that wore the masks so they could do what the fuck they wanted and could anonymously replace each member if one of them quit or died. Their masks were a rejection of the mainstream and marked them out as something darker and less predictable than everything else Nu that was being shat out of 1999. So what happens when you remove those masks and renege on your initial statements of intent? Well on one level you retain the street cred of latter day Glen Benton, and on another you become Kiss circa 1983. Enter Stone Sour.

Stone Sour will forever be inextricably linked to Slipknot, like a massively effeminate Siamese twin conjoined to a slightly aggressive retard brother. I suppose, after the release of Iowa, resurrecting a more traditional hard rock act might have seemed like a good idea for Slipknot’s Corey Taylor and Jim Root (it wasn’t, their first two albums were fucking dog shit), but when Slipknot itself changes and becomes as lame and unthreatening as a dead puppy, what is the point in continuing with the side project that now sits in exactly the same space as the day job? I suppose you can drive that side project further into the middle of the road, pulling in behind such luminaries as 30 Seconds To Mars, Hoobastank and Kajagoogoo and settle nicely in that comfortable, beige lane of the musical motorway that any self respecting music fan would like to drive a tank down in the opposite direction.

Audio Secrecy, the third effort from Stone Sour, begins with an eponymous introduction track before they unveil their Mission Statement, which, rather than being the devastatingly original and jaw-dropping tour-de-force you might expect from a song so titled, actually appears to be that they have no idea what they are playing at, instead club footing their way around a mish mash of semi-competent metal riffing, out-of-place crooned clean vocals and ‘not evil enough to get us taken off any precious radio playlist’ screams… The solo is about passable. However, Digital (Did You Tell) is wholesale stolen from 36 Crazyfists 2002 Bitterness the Star album (yes, that cutting edge and relevant), and really only succeeds in making you wish you were listening to the awesome underwater vocal stylings of the original. Dying, which follows, is just a huge, steaming, fetid, swarming pile of reheated Nickelback.

Let’s Be Honest and Unfinished are a pair of unremarkable mid-tempo generic ‘upbeat and defiant’ rockers, either of which could conceivably be used as an entrance theme for a feisty female wrestler, which is actually a compliment given that most of the songs on here are too embarrassingly cheesy even to be used in an Eddie Guerrero tribute montage. One of the worst offenders here is Hesitate, which sounds exactly like When You Were Young by The Killers, only the chorus makes The Killers sound as urgent, vital and emotionally charged as a Napalm Death, Shining and NWA split EP.

My spirits were raised when I saw Miracles as the next track, hoping it would be a faithful cover of the brilliant Insane Clown Posse smash hit of the same name, however it was in fact another mournful, heartfelt ballad with lyrics ambiguous enough to be about nothing and everything… Or to be used as a nice piece of solemn background muzak in some godawful smash-hit US TV series, coming soon to Living TV. Obviously sensing that the listener may be tiring of ballads, the boys decide to crank it up a gear with The Bitter End, and what better way to get your average metal fan rocking again than with a riff fished from the deepest, darkest Nu Metal waters, where only Spineshank before them had dared to dredge?

But hang on guys, that’s us now gone 3 minutes and 34 seconds without a piss poor ballad. Better throw everything at this one, get the acoustic guitars out and really go for it. Make sure that you wring all the cod emotion you possibly can out of those softly arpeggiated chords, try and squeeze yet more blood from that dry, desolate ballad stone… But all that comes out is Imperfect.

But then again, squeezing something from nothing is all they have tried to do on the whole album. It is a cynical attempt to obtain money and Grammy nominations by projecting sentimental balladry and vague aggression onto a backdrop of paper-thin musical compositions, ostensibly to cater for the stereotypical ‘disenfranchised teenage’ lowest common denominator. This is heavy music for people that enjoy a little bit of Coldplay and perhaps listen to the new U2 or Red Hot Chili Peppers album when they’re really letting their hair down after a hard day at the estate agents office and a really spiffing game of squash with Quentin from HR.

It’s fucking bollocks.

The Absence

Absent No Longer

The Absence return after what seems like far longer than the 3 years it’s been since Riders Of The Plague, their 2nd album, pushed them to the forefront of the melodic death/thrash/music picture, establishing themselves as the smart alternative to the Arch Enemies of this world and becoming firm Leave the Hall favourites in the process. Naturally the question must be asked; after such a hotly anticipated build-up, will they choke like Michael Hutchence or gloriously unleash a pent up torrent of creamy metal musical ejaculate into our lives?

One thing is clear from the get-go on Enemy Unbound – Peter Joseph and Patrick Pintavalle can still play the guitar like men who have sold a ball to Satan, continuing and developing the fine axemanship that characterized From Your Grave and Riders…. These musical credentials are all over the delicate and overwhelmingly melodic Vertigo, which instrumentally welcomes us to the album and is swiftly followed by the reassuringly thrashy Erased, a song about Total Recall that is so awesome it will have Arnocorps sobbing into their steroids.

Deepest Wound features harmonies lusher than the pubes of a goddess and smatterings of solo spots that are at times reminiscent of Scar Symmetry’s space-age super-noodling, while Maelstrom and the mighty title track reach out and touch modern thrash perfection, every nuance of the onslaught being picked out and carefully polished to a glowing commercial sheen by the production (handled by the guitarists themselves) and Jonas Kjellgren’s excellent mix, giving you a boner that’ll have you bent double for a fortnight.

It’s literally impossible to keep this relentless pace up, however, as the listener would be so overwhelmed by the genius that their soul would prolapse and, inevitably, following 2nd instrumental Solace, the album does slip slightly into Absence-by-numbers in its second half. We’re presented with tracks that would have been strong standouts if featured on their first two releases, but are found slightly wanting when compared to the minge-blisteringly sexual opening tracks. That said, the slow-burning Wartorn and Hidden in White are not without high merit, both featuring yet more guitar majesty but giving the listener enough space to breathe and soak in Jamie Stewart’s brutal yet crystal clear vocals, which go a long way to keeping this album firmly anchored in the ‘hairy man metal’ category that we love so dearly and well clear of any shadow of poserdom that the huge melodies might threaten to cast.

This is an album that, while not quite fulfilling their vast potential, comes a ball hair’s width away and continues the Absence’s journey towards inevitable world domination. This is something I am convinced will happen for them just as soon as the ignoramuses that constitute 96% of the metal-buying public stop felching the nu-metal dangleberries out of Disturbed’s sweaty arse crack and realise that this is what modern metal should be – a rock-solid thrash foundation, death growls, melodies and enough guitar pyrotechnics on tap that, should the need arise, they can be used as some sort of musical Death Star. Next time they will release their definitive, no-holds-barred masterpiece and your face will be Alderaan.

Oh No, Udo-n't

Udo-n’t Know What You Are Missing

Two heavy metal superpowers have released albums this month. Iron Maiden’s fifteenth album, The Final Frontier is barely out of the shrink-wrap yet I find myself more excited about Accept’s latest effort. Whilst the 2 sample tracks Maiden were released to a very mixed reaction, Accept’s first single, Teutonic Terror was met with outbreaks of mass-orgasm. One town in North Germany was, in fact, washed away by a torrent of semen minutes after the premier of the video.

Anyway, Udo was too busy launching toys from his shiny, metallic pram to patch things up with Wolf Hoffman so Mark Tornillo of TT Quick has been brought in to replace him. Now, you may be asking “Who?” & that’s a fair question. TT Quick’s biggest claim to fame is probably that Helstar once supported them yet Tornillo’s voice is perfect for Accept’s brand of old school metal. Whilst he lacks the unhinged/full-on mental delivery of the legendary Dirkschneider he is, dare I say, more consistent.

Kicking of in suitably efficient, Germanic style, Beat The Bastards sounds like Motorhead being fronted Biff Byford. The Abyss starts out as a mid-tempo, rather standard Accept affair before someone accidentally inserts a soppy Guns ‘n’ Roses-esque interlude about how the world used to be pretty good. Thankfully, the duo of Hoffman & Frank stomp all over the sentimentality with some scorching guitar work, much like a pair of Gestapo officers going through a Jewish apartment block circa 1942.

They successfully out-Manowar Manowar’s latest efforts with the title track which features gang vocals reminiscent of classic era stuff like Aiming High & it has the words “metal anthem” written all over it. There are a couple of weaker tracks; Kill The Pain leaves me limper than Halford in a titty bar, Pandemic fails to capitalise on it’s initial momentum but there’s not a single turd in this heavy metal hamper. With only one song above the 7 minute mark, Accept avoid overindulging themselves. Closing with the brilliantly named Bucket Full Of Hate* Accept have, for the first time in over 20 years, released an album that has all the hallmarks of a classic.

Finding a new vocalist seems to have been only half the problem for Accept. What makes this album so brilliant is the hiring of Andy Sneap to handle production. He made the band sit back & reassess their back-catalogue before recording. The end result is a proper Accept album; the one we’ve been waiting for. It would have been great to see Hoffman & Udo back together but Blood Of The Nations is the strongest album they’ve released since 85′s classic Metal Heart.

Tornillo’s voice has only added to their trademark sound & whilst Sneap’s masterful touch is evident throughout, this album couldn’t be any more German without invading Poland. Then again, anything else would have been unacceptable.

* Dethklok must be kicking themselves for not coming up with that one

Iron Maiden

The Final Fun Tier

The release of a new Iron Maiden album has almost become more than simply music. Along with Priest and the other elder statesmen of the genre, every new release is an affirmation of the continuing health of a beloved musical institution and, by extension, metal itself. For a metalhead a new Maiden album should be greeted with the sort of rapturous masturbation usually reserved for a teenage boy that’s just flicked over to babestation for the first time, and so it was as a loyal acolyte that I made the pilgrimage to HMV to pick up a copy of The Final Frontier, Iron Maiden’s 15th opus.

Like every other fan expecting the galloping, rabble-rousing, boner-inducing call-to-arms that is a patented Iron Maiden album opener I did a double take when the echoing atmospherics of Satellite 15 started flowing from my speakers, in case someone had accidentally placed the wrong disc in the case. As it segues into the more familiar yet still fairly reserved title track it is abundantly clear that this is another step deeper into Maidens post-Brave New World brave new world, which is one where they feel no pressure to conform to fan expectation. Even lead single El Dorado eschews many traditional Maidenisms in favour of a distinctly prog-style intro and classic rock-sounding riffs, but it still has a chorus that will be in your brain days later, whether you like it or not.

Mother of Mercy follows, where the folk-tinged side of the band that has been emerging over the past few releases is far more clearly established, Bruce Dickinson’s weathered vocals adding a gravitas and an edge of desperation and urgency to the lyrics that elevates the song far above its purely instrumental merits. The same can be said for quite a few songs on ‘…Frontier’; as the song lengths grow and the once bountiful hooks that formed the backbone of their songs become fewer and further between, I find the vocal lines and delivery taking on a far more prominent role in the listening experience. Where the vocals were once carried along by the fast-flowing river of musical bluster, they now have room to weave and lead the way as on Coming Home, an expansive and uplifting track that should be a live favourite, and most prominently on the introductions to album highlight The Man Who Would Be King and classic Harris-penned epic closer Where the Wild Wind Blows, complete with emotional, emotive lyrics and melodies along the lines of Blood Brothers from 2000.

That these two standouts are the final tracks on the album illustrates the way it gathers momentum throughout, hinging on the swashbuckling The Alchemist – whose verses sound more than a little like Man On The Edge – and sees the band really kicking into high gear for the first time on the album, propelled by Nicko’s snappy drumming, radiating an energy that players half his age would kill for. As its final notes ring out we are now firmly heading downhill into epic territory, ushered in with the progressive Isle Of Avalon, complete with stunning mid-section shred work that showcases the triple guitar attack of modern Maiden to fine extent. Starblind sails effortlessly along with soaring vocals and driving, exhilarating riffs, while The Talisman is essentially a distillation of their last 4 albums into one 9 minute masterpiece, again taking in those folk influences in the intro, before bursting into life and galloping into the distance, not even slowing as they unleash a chorus that’s as good as anything they have ever put their name to.

This is Maiden the way they want to sound – the way they should sound. A band of wily veterans who realise they have nothing to prove in the speed or technicality stakes, just making the music that flows naturally from them, unspoiled by industry pressure or financial concerns. While they only occasionally sound like they used to in their spandex-worrying heyday, this is the logical conclusion to the Maiden journey, where the progressive, sprawling compositions are no longer consigned to life as album closers, instead the whole thing marches at a stately pace, unrushed, unfettered and unapologetically grandiose.

This might not be Iron Maiden’s last release, but if, as some suspect, it does turn out to be their swansong, the last thing we hear will be the sound of a band brimming with confidence producing music entirely on their own terms…Which is exactly the way Maiden should go out.

Avenged Sevenfold

Ride The Black Justice For Magnetic Puppets

Losing a founding member, drummer Jimmy Sullivan, came as a massive hit to the band with a trajectory & momentum unprecedented in the metal world for the last decade. Nightmare was already written when he passed away but 7 months on, I can’t help feel they went to the studio too soon to record this. I’m not one for guilty pleasures as demonstrated by my fanatical love of Basshunter, but if I were, Avenged Sevenfold would be one. I’m totally gay for Waking The Fallen & about half of City of Evil is brilliant.

Opener, Nightmare didn’t make the cut for the album but after Sullivan’s death, the song was reconsidered. It isn’t a bad song but despite a decent chorus & an average solo, it could do with being a couple of minutes shorter. Welcome To The Family has a majestically gay chorus that is more fun than kicking midgets down stairwells but it’s let down by shitty breakdowns in an effort to cover up the fact that the rest of the song is Metallica’s Sad But True. Danger Line opens strongly with over the top backing vocals & frantic guitar work before dropping into an Elton John style piano interlude then closes with a military trumpet & snare combo as we get a Guns ‘n’ Roses style whistle over the outro. The lyrical content on the futility of war & the death of soldier marks a shift towards more mature song-writing which would most likely alienate their key demographic if they were to ever listen to the words rather than writing them out verbatim on the back of their maths jotter.

Buried Alive begins slowly with twin guitar harmony wankery close to Metallica’s One before moving into Ride The Lightning territory for the solo then ends by ripping off That Was Just Your Life cunningly changing the words to “This is now your life.” This is the kind of embarrassingly obvious pilfering you expect from minor league support acts, cough, Godsmack, cough, not chart-topping, major-label bands such as Avenged. Natural Born Killer kicks off with tight double bass drum work as the guitars attempt to keep up with Portnoy’s feet. One of the heaviest tracks on the album, it’s also one of their strongest.

It isn’t until the second half that things really fall apart though.  From So Far Away on, Nightmare is an unfocused mess of balladry & solos that lacks any serious cohesion. The track itself is a horrible twangy, country ballad reminiscent of the vomit-in-your-mouth horror of Mama Said from Load. Surely, there came a point as they methodically went through their CD collection picking songs to copy when the reached Load & thought “This is literally the lowest any metal band can ever go.” At least, there should have been.

God Hates Us has a breakdown that not even Lamb Of God could be proud of whilst Shadows attempts an Anselmo but he doesn’t have the heroin-infused magic of Phil. As one of the slowest tracks on the album, Tonight The World Dies is actually pretty decent. A cheesy ballad complete with Slash-style solo that never outstays its welcome. Fiction was the last track Sullivan wrote, featuring vocal harmonies between him & Shadows. November Rain-style piano histrionics abound in an emotional affair that really should have marked the end of the album. Unfortunately, we get closer Save Me, another bloated ballad that begins with screeching guitars & kick drums similar to Eternal Rest but loses steam early on. The whole song could have been cut to the benefit of all involved.

No complaints can be laid at the guitar work. Brian Elwin Haner, Jr., to use his non-preposterous name, might be overrated but the boy can shred regardless of what Morons of the Internet ^TM have to say. Mike Portnoy was brought in to record the drum tracks based on the early recordings of Sullivan & he does an uncanny job replicating his style, proving once again that there’s nothing he can’t do behind a drum kit.

Suffering from what is commonly known as Kirk Hammett Syndrome, Nightmare is, much like this review, an over-long & self-indulgent affair with flashes of genius. In the hands of the right producer, it could have been a good album but at 66 minutes, their bag of tricks fails to cover up the fact that their strengths don’t lie in piano-driven ballads, breakdowns or Metallica covers. Avenged Sevenfold excel at writing cheese-laden metalcore with pop hooks & brainless, sing-a-long choruses. Instead, we all have to sit through Avenged Sevenfold’s painful puberty as they attempt to mature with their current audience but for what it’s worth, I’d recommend they stick to what they are good at.

Danzig - Deth Red Sabaoth

Def Wed Shabbah!

Glenn Danzig might have been keeping himself busy with Black Aria II but we’ve not had a Danzig album since 2004′s disappointing Circle Of Snakes & if we’re honest, we’ve not had a classic one since How The Gods Kill. Anyway, horror punk’s elder statesman is back aged 55 with long time collaborator Tommy Victor (Prong, Ministry) & Johnny Kelly (Type O Negative) handling guitar & drum duties respectively. Big Glenn himself takes care of the bass, production & he even has a crack at drumming on one track. Unfortunately he has fired his loyal spell checker who served him well since 1988. I guess he never fully got that fuck up back in 96 with Blackaciddevil.

Kicking off with Hammer of the Gods, it’s evident that Danzig is well & truly over his horrible industrial phase. Instead, he’s back to basics with scuzzed up guitars, searing solos, more pinch harmonics that strictly necessary & that 50′s rock & roll groove that he does so well. The opener is a meaty slab of classic era stuff with a brilliant doom break at around the 2 minute mark. Whilst I doubt the factual accuracy of the lyrics, Black Candy is a one of the best tracks they’ve recorded in 2 decades. On Ju Ju Bone, Glenn channels the most rapey of Elvis impersonators attempting, and failing, to outsleaze Bryan Ferry in an sleazing contest. The album peaks with On  A Wicked Night which starts off with Danzig at his crooniest before blasting into some of Victor’s most John Christ-like guitar work.

Deth Red Moon kicks off with an almost identical intro to Mother but never quite reaches the heights of greatness of it. The major weak point of the album is the 2 part, 10 minute epic Pyre of Souls which has a boring intro before stepping into a song that shows about as much development as a thalidomide baby’s arms. Thankfully Glenn cleanses our aural palette with closer, Left Hand Rise Above which again harks back to his earlier material as a slow burner with some crushing doom riffs. Anyone that thinks Danzig’s voice is failing needs to listen to this track & remember that they are speaking out of their horrid, distended anuses.

Victor’s guitar work is good for the most part though there are a few moments where it sounds like Malmsteen has joined your dad’s Status Quo covers band as his shred-for-the-sake-of-shred solos overwhelm everything else & seem out of place. The bass is almost entirely absent in the mix. Glenn has gone for a completely analogue approach to producing the album & to that end, recorded everything on vintage amps & mikes. The end result is a warm sound that some will find unbearably messy in this age of ProTools & Auto-Tune yet it fits perfectly with his trademark 50s sound.

Deth Red Sabaoth isn’t going to pick him up any new fans though at this point in his career, Danzig has made it pretty clear that he’s not making album for anyone other than himself. He has long maintained that he gives not one solitary shit about what anyone else thinks but for what it’s worth, I reckon Glenn has finally put out an passable follow-up to III.

Lube Gill Is Pee

Lube Gill Is Pee

Blue Gillespie describe their namesake as, and I quote:

“the band’s collective evil alter-ego. The lyrics are his mind, the bass is his foot, the guitar is his hand and the drum his heart.”

Frankly, I can’t comprehend a more horrible description so imagine my disappointment when, after fetching my best reviewing hatchet, I put on the album & rather enjoyed most of it.

Influenced heavily by Porcupine Tree, Tool & Sleep, Blue Gillespie’s brand of progressive metal is a stripped down version content to rely on sparse but atmospheric guitar work & technical drumming.

Opener Beat Oven is a dark, down tempo track that gets repetitive early on & out stays it’s welcome by a good 2 minutes. Sugarglass has an outro that would have many a nu-metal band jizzing into their backwards baseball cap whilst Tripout‘s groovy start gives way to a haunting melodic chorus & Sabbath style guitar work. Dodgy lyrics, particularly on Wiff & Black Waltz, delivered in the first person by the band’s eponymous character do little to upset the mood of the album as a whole.

Standout track Fingered is, for the most part,  little more than catchy chorus layered over a basic drum beat but that seems to be the magical formula they’ve been searching for. Blue Gillespie shine a lot brighter on the longer, more ambient tracks where their stoner riffs are allowed to linger like a P.E. teacher in the boy’s changing rooms. Closing duo, Paradox & Time Knot work so well as one song that one wonders why they were split in the first place.

The drumming shares similarities with Danny Carey but it lacks his superhuman foot-work. Torchwood star, Gareth David-Lloyd’s vocals at their lowest are reminiscent of Anselmo in the midst of his decade-long smack binge. Whilst that sounds like an insult, I’ll remind you that he put out every one of his best albums bar Power Metal whilst fucked on heroin. The band as a whole are extremely tight but it feels like they are still trying to define their sound in a field more densely occupied than an eastern European tenement.

Whilst they may have the worst name since punctuation-loving, proper case-hating nu-metallers (hed) PE, Synesthesia is a solid debut in a genre that is easily cocked up. There is so much to like about this band, even if their name & biography make me want to headbutt a pinata full of warm vomit.

Soilwork

A Croon With A View

Soilwork return, and with Peter Wichers back in their ranks and in the producer’s chair, fresh from working with Warrell Dane and twiddling Nevermore’s knobs, I approached this album with the tentative hopes of a horny ugly man at a blind nightclub.

With melodies so sickly that even Stock, Aitken and Waterman might call them wimpy poofs, I had the insulin on standby in case my blood-sugar level was too dramatically affected by Soilwork’s trademark melodic death metal stylings. Luckily the album opens with Late for the Kill, Early for the Slaughter and some straight-up, honest-to-goodness blastology, accompanied by an abrasiveness that hasn’t really been present since the days of A Predator’s Portrait. As predictably as night following day, the chorus comes in and starts softly massaging your nuts, however something is different… the vocals are not clean and the chorus doesn’t sound like a different song altogether. This is a true surprise finger up the bum for the Soilwork listening experience. The following track – Two Lives Worth of Reckoning – goes back to the tried and tested template, however, and features a chorus hook so silky smooth you could turn it into a pair of exceedingly comfortable y-fronts.

The album continues like this, with chorus-driven sing-along’s like Night Comes Clean sitting side by side with the really heavy, primitive sound showcased on King of the Threshold. Now, Soilwork have attempted this sort of thing before, notably on the last couple of albums, but it has always been fairly hit-or-miss for me and I would invariably end up listening to their older albums which offered one or the other instead. This, however, pulls the balance off with aplomb, and as a result is the first Soilwork album in a long time to really hold my interest. Though it does veer perilously close to the seas of shit, vapid, soulless, lifeless, toilet-paper thin, mawkish, cynical, fanny flap commerciality where Bullet for my Valentine dwell, Soilwork manage to deftly navigate safe passage thanks to their superior riffs and vocals. Rather than sounding twee and anaemic, Björn “Speed” Strid‘s vocals are as thick and luxurious as a swimming pool full of caramel, while the immaculate guitar tone and expansive drumming ensures that the instrumentals are suitably crushing to add a solid steel backbone to the crooning.

There are a lot of songs on here that could conceivably be Eurovision entries, and The Akuma Afterglow is probably the gayest song I’ve heard in my entire life, yet at no point did I feel like I was listening to drivel, I was just enjoying really solid, melodic metal. Over and above the instrumental superiority, Soilwork seem to bring an honesty and sense of feeling that elevates The Panic Broadcast above the (many) Killswitch Engages of this world. This sort of music is so easy to get very, very wrong indeed, and Soilwork are one of the only bands who can pull off Melodic Death Metal as modern and commercial as this without sounding like they’re after your little sisters pocket money.

The Panic Broadcast sees a welcome return for an influential songwriter and is a welcome return to their finest sparkling form; an album brimming with confidence, riffs and melody that will work deep inside your brain and have you nodding your head and singing along like an extraordinarily drunk man at a karaoke bar.

Fornost Arnor

Escaping the Abysmal

Hailing from the world capital of atmospheric black metal that is Colchester, Greg Chivers has gathered himself a very talented group of musicians. Combined with a diverse sack of influences, the end result is a powerful & intelligent, if slightly bipolar debut that owes much to Scandinavian masters without ripping off their trademark styles.

Melodic passages bring to mind the progressive black/doom stylings of Agalloch & The Morningside. Certain parts, such as ballad Her Face in the Water, are too much for my heroic manly exterior but they appeal so much to my inner overweight, teenage goth girl that you can forgive them. That said, the vocal harmonies are so fantastic that I may just put on some eye-liner & light some candles.

Fornost Arnor are, of course, happy to break the mood with brutal black metal more reminiscent of Åkerfeldt at his most pissed off. The effects can be more jarring than a road trip with Nelson Mandela’s granddaughter but for the most part, play off well against each other. Black metal has never been one to shun those without musical talent  but the sheer ability on here is astounding as is the production which only lets us down with a drum sound that could have done with a bit less compression. Gravity Denied is a brilliant showcase for Chivers’ guttural growls & Will Hall’s outstanding lead guitar work despite some questionable lyrics. Strength of the Heart follows suit with more guitar wank of the highest order.

Culminating on the 13 minute epic, The Tragedy of Delusion, Fornost Arnor present their magnum opus. A demonstration of their talent at crafting both the beautiful & the brutal, the final track gives them the space to move from one to the other. Their ability to generate a real atmosphere without resorting to the usual tricks i.e. nicking something off the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, is refreshing. Further vocal harmonies are provided by Elle Torry of Imperial Vengeance which, unlike Kerry King turning up at the studio unannounced BC Rich in hand, is the kind of seal of approval that actually means something.

Their debut lands at a time when the UK black metal scene is teeming with great bands & Escaping The Abyss puts Fornost Arnor very much within the top tier.

A Loathing Requiem - Psalms of Misanthropy

Mindblowing Requiem

Leave the Hall presents, Real Men of Genius.
Real Meeeen of Geeeeeenius! Mr Technical Death Metal Creaaaaatooor!
You’ve given us music that pushes the boundaries of human ability and musical notation, stringing together sweep arpeggios longer than the Chinese phone book.
Waaaaaaaaaanktaaaaaacular!
You know that on the internet some geek will say you’re a guitar noob no matter what you do, but still you persist on proving him wrong.
Yooouuuutuuubbbee Trollin’ Baaaaabbbyyy…
So we salute you Mr Technical Death Metal Creator…

Anyway, the world needs more men like Malcolm Pugh. Men who have no concept of social lives or even sleep, instead sitting in a room with guitar in hand, practicing and practicing until after many years and tens of thousands of hours of dedicated work it is time to release their technical death metal album. So, peeping out into the light comes A Loathing Requiem, looking to follow in the hallowed footsteps of Jim Malone and Muhammed Suicmez in the world of one man bandsmanship, a concept that has developed somewhat since Dick Van Dyke’s epochal one man band performance in Mary Poppins. As seen in this rare original draft of Fermented Offal Discharge.

Albums created by one person appeal to me, they have a single-minded purpose to them, an undiluted and pure vision of what they want to achieve, utterly unchanged by the committee thinking and compromises that bands have to deal with. It is clear that A Loathing Requiem has clear goals – Psalms of Misanthropy is bowel-worryingly heavy, a technical showcase that will pick you up in a whirlwind of notes and shit you out the other side looking like you’ve done 10 rounds with a polar bear. We are presented with texture and depth but never at the cost of sacrificing that essential murderous intensity.

The songs are of the frantic, fretboard-dancing blueprint so beloved of tech-death aficionados, but with some mind-bending time signatures (the dissonant intro to And Darkness Was Cast) and some atmospheric instrumental interludes that segue between raining blows of brutality and warp speed blasting. Just when I was starting to fear that Death Metal had been helplessly overrun by ‘core stylings and ghastly excrement like Annotations Of An Autopsy, we are given some sweet musical salvation. Surgically precise and tighter than a ducks arsehole, songs like The Carnage of Infinite Black and False Gods Render Death provide all the death metal you could need without ever outstaying their welcome – the whole album rips by in a shade over half an hour. Even the programmed drums sound natural, avoiding the temptation to create patterns and speeds that would have Flo weeping into his Kraft Dinner, which is a real credit to the programming skills of Mr Pugh (and possibly Drumkit From Hell).

It goes without saying that the solos are incredible, and with Christian Muenzner doing a guest spot on Architect or Arsonist (he gets around) the Necrophagist comparisons are obviously going to be drawn. As I said when reviewing Cosmogenesis by Obscura, Necrophagist are in danger of some major Chinese Democracy syndrome should their new album not come out soon and be something truly mind-blowing.

It is a testament to the quality of Psalms of Misanthropy that even the big daddies of the genre will need to be at their very best to top it.

This makes absolute sense as the first album for me to review for our forgotten or overlooked classics section, as the ratio of genius to actual recognition is so phenomenally high (approximately a billion trillion to one at last count). Toxik are the kings of the overlooked thrash bands, the ones that sat 2 divisions below the big 4 but no-one really knows why. They burned brightly at the end of the 80’s, releasing two albums before breaking up in ’92, though they have since reformed and I await new material like some sort of thrash metal gimp chained in their cellar. For some, Toxik’s first album, 1987’s awesome World Circus, is their finest, but for me it is all about 1989’s follow up – Think This.

Maybe it’s because I wank over technical and progressive music so much, but Think This just seems to stand out above the gathered masses of the thrash pack, making all but the most seminal of albums seem as appetising as a shit and aids sandwich with extra shit.

The driving force behind the genius is Josh Christian, a truly incredible guitarist. It is an indictment of the world we live in that a man of this talent was out in the musical wilderness until their recent reunion. He sits on top of this record like a fat woman on a small mans face, absolutely dominating proceedings with guitar chops that should have seen him hailed as the thrash Van Halen. Where many thrash guitarists of the time were content playing fast, tuneless chromatic diarrhoea *cough* Kerry King *cough*, he was really pushing the envelope with bags of harmonics, sweeps, taps and whammy bar madness. Check out the Greed solo. Check out the Machine Dream solo!!! He should be up there on a diamond-encrusted throne with Skolnick, Friedman and the other hallowed names of thrash lead guitar, or at the very least be spoken of in the reverent tones reserved for the likes of Watchtower’s Ron Jarzombek.

In fact, Watchtower is a definite reference point for Think This, as they also took the thrash blueprint and doodled all over it with an array of technical flourishes, yet where Watchtower could often find themselves bogged down, Toxik never lose sight of the straight-up thrill of ball busting, neck breaking thrash. Songs like Technical Arrogance more than matched the ‘tower and Coroner at their prog thrash game, while Spontaneous and In God also capture the melodic side of Annihilator at their very best. The greater diversity of styles showcases the soaring vocals of Josh Sabin, and though Mike Sanders may have hit greater heights on World Circus, I feel that the more rounded approach displayed on Think This perfectly encapsulates the strides that the band as a whole had taken. There Stood the Fence is a thrash ballad™ of the highest, cheesiest calibre, but simultaneously a walk through a post-apocalyptic wasteland ravaged by nuclear Armageddon (This is 80’s thrash after all).

In fact it at face value it is such an awesomely 80’s album, the use of samples to begin many of the songs ties the album into a loose concept about the state of the world heading into the 90’s, racism, life in the shadow of the Cold War and the potential dissolution of a society in future shock. Which might seem very dated if the music itself didn’t sound so fresh. Bookended by the incredible Think This and instrumental Think That, there are no bad tracks (they even pull off a Led Zeppelin cover along the way) as should-be-classic after classic fly into your willing face.

This is an album that no self respecting thrash fan should be without, truly a classic album that should have been far, far bigger than it was as it basically makes most bands pitiful attempts sound like the last fart of a dying man. If you’re not into Toxik, you are not my friend.

Parkway Drive - Deep Blue

Deep Poo

Ah, Parkway Drive. They’re another one of those bands that I had only heard of on the t-shirts of emaciated boys in skinny jeans. Now, I don’t want to generalise, but in my experience the music that they listen to is absolute, total, complete, 100% shart. I will, however, listen to this album with an open mind and willing ears, endeavouring to provide yet more unbiased reviewmanship for you, dear reader.

The album begins with Samsara, which consists of a minute of atmospheric noise build up then a breakdown. Yes, it begins with a breakdown. Well it’s good to see them utterly confounding my low expectations with such a devastatingly creative and original idea. This, as well as highlighting their crushing lack of compositional skill, also demonstrates that they have no concept of what a ‘breakdown’ is, as you usually need something to actually break from. 1 minute 45 seconds in and I already want to go on a shooting holiday to Cumbria.

Ah well, ever onward, and the second song, Unrest, is just really generic metalcore, the sort that actually makes you want to go to Skynet and travel back in time to murder At The Gates. You arrive naked in a sphere of light in 1990, sourcing some clothing and weapons before setting out to the Bjorler abode with the intention of blowing them away for their future crimes, only to be interrupted. Instead you explain to them the seriousness of what their pioneering sound would go on to inspire, before all uniting to go off together and blow up their studio for the benefit of mankind. This riff then goes into a half speed breakdown, then, lo and behold, quarter speed. It used to be that not being able to write riffs would have been a hindrance to your career, but apparently it is now all the rage and to take just one chord and play it at a variety of speeds is a sure-fire path to success.

This may shock you, but there are actually some decent parts on this album, and at times it could even be classed as enjoyable – in the same way one might take pleasure from a handjob given by the man that has just murdered your family. These parts might be forgivable if they were sprinkled sparingly on an album, as an element used to colour a solid song, but this album is built up from a bundle of little bits – a shout along here, a little tapping piece there… Any momentum that briefly seems to be gathering is quickly interrupted by some atrocious ‘gang-vocals’, a cringe-worthy pre-breakdown shout or yet another knuckle-dragging beat down and the album limps ever on. A mid-paced song, a slightly-quicker-than-mid-paced song, a delicate tapping or picked opening followed by mid-paced song and repeat.

I enjoy a bit of hardcore now and then and I like melodic death metal, but if you compare the contents of Deep Blue to the best in those genres this is just fucking shite, even compared to the relative mediocrity of Unearth, who did the whole breakdown metalcore thing so much better 10 years ago. What really boils my piss though, is that it’s the continued success of bands like Parkway Drive that prevents bands with a genuine potential for mainstream appeal like Insomnium or The Absence from getting the recognition and sales they deserve.

This album is metal music for people that hate metal, it’s for teenage boys that want to impress girls with their angry yet vulnerable taste in music, it’s metal for people that ‘listen to a bit of everything really’, but mainly it’s music for posers. Shit cunt posers.

Vinnie Paul's auction of his toilet comes with a free copy of Stamede to put in it

Hellnaw

super-
pref.

1. Above; over; upon: superimpose.
2. Superior in size, quality, number, or degree: superfine.
3. Exceeding a norm: supersaturate.

group
–noun

1. Any collection or assemblage of persons or things; cluster; aggregation: a group of protesters; a remarkable group of paintings.
2. A number of persons or things ranged or considered together as being related in some way.

Hellyeah are keen to remind us that they are a ‘supergroup’. Formed from such metal luminaries as Pantera, Damageplan, Nothingface & …. um, Mudvayne, Hellyeah’s brand of metal-tinged hard rock sold over 400,000 copies of their debut. In fact, the whole PR campaign around this album is desperate to remind you of these facts. All this implies two things: firstly, the PR company has actually listened to this album & secondly, 400,000? Seriously?

Stampede doesn’t bother messing with their self-titled debut’s winning formula: 12 generic metal songs about drinking, fucking & trucking. Hell Of A Time has the potential to be something more than average but rather than capitalise, they repeat the chorus about 400 times in 3:41 & it begins to grate around number 50. High point of the album is the Down meets Alice In Chains on a budget Order of the Sun. We also get a bonus live track of their previous hit Alcohaulin’ Ass, a proud member of the ‘lol wut’ school of song naming.

Better Man tries to wander into epic southern ballad territory but ends up wallowing somewhere closer to Staind than Skynyrd. In a spectacular display of  unintentional irony, this cautionary tale about the dangers of alcohol addiction & drunken parents fits really well in the middle of a collection of songs about partying. I hear the next album is going to be called Guns Are Fucking Cool & feature a ballad about Nathan Gale.

Musically, they take no risks & the end result is a bland sandwich of their respective sounds. There is a healthy level of cheese & that’s about the only positive to take from it. If an anemic Reinventing The Steel decided to recruit a nu-metal dream team that would lose a University Challenge showdown with Motley Crue, you’d probably end up with Hellyeah. Needless to say, Vinnie Paul’s stature adds considerable weight (as does his tits) & I have no doubt this will sell 400,000 copies through a combination of inbreeding, low IQs & nostalgia.

Hellyeah are a testament to the power of goodwill. Sometimes you have to march up to the orphaned child and say, I know your family is dead, but that drawing is fucking shite son. Chad Gray helpfully asks “Am  I Alive & Well, Or Just Wasting Space” on the song Alive & Well. Unfortunately for Hellyeah, it’s the latter. They are indeed a group & they do exceed a norm thereby meeting all the criteria of a supergroup. It’s just a shame they are supershit.

0.5 Grimmetts *

* The half Grimmett is given only because this isn’t quite as awful as War Is The Answer & I don’t want to devalue the humiliation of receiving a 5 Oli Sykes.

Grand Magus

Heirs To The Throne

A nightmare scenario: Joey DeMaio makes some modifications to his bass prior to a gig. He plays the first note & the resulting vibrations crack the earth open swallowing the band, stage & crowd. We now live in a world without Manowar. Who is going to fill their sizeable boots of steel? The answer can be found in Stockholm.

Grand Magus’s metamorphosis from average doom band to heirs to metal crown has taken little over a decade. As a serious contender for the title of Most Metal Man Alive, leather lunged frontman & guitarist JB demonstrates his impressive vocal range & delivers riffs the size of continents, all whilst oozing pure iron from every pore. There are no technical solos, no progressive tendencies, just a masterclass in fist-pumping metal.

Opening with I, The Jury, JB channels Dissident Aggressor-era Halford to embed the brilliant chorus deep in your brain stem. The title track is a perfect example of what happens when you take your big book of doom metal & apply every single lesson to a heavy metal song. By the end of the song,  you will most likely find yourself topless on a snow swept mountain peak swinging a warhammer.

Black Sails takes us firmly into Running Wild territory whilst Mountains Be My Throne harks back to their early days as the doomiest track on the album. It’s probably my second favourite mountain-based song about mountains after Manowar’s classic mountain homage, Mountains. Everything builds to a climax on At Midnight They’ll Get Wise, which bears all the hallmarks of a future classic.

Without resorting to hyperbole, I can safely say that there’s not a weak track, just 50 minutes of perfect, old-school heavy metal thunder. Now, with the backing of a major label, Grand Magus are set to take the world by storm, make sure not to stand in their way. All hail the Hammer of the North.

Nevermore

Quoth the raven, “Tis fucking good”

It has been a tough 5 years. This Godless Endeavor dropped almost exactly half a decade ago & it blew the world away. The complaints leveled (rather unfairly) at Enemies of Reality were rectified when they brought in uber-producer Andy Sneap. Nevermore enjoyed new heights of success culminating in a support slot for nu-metal lightweights, Disturbed. I wish I were kidding. After this trauma, Nevermore released the brilliant Year of the Voyager DVD then promptly dropped off the radar.

From the opening strains of The Termination Proclamation, it’s obvious, they’ve done it again. Majestic heavy metal that defies genre classification. Loomis’s 7 string mastery, Warrel Dane’s soaring vocals & an underlying appreciation of melody that is so often missing in metal today. And The Maiden Spoke is pure My Dying Bride-esque doom metal channeled through the twisted imagination of King Diamond. Ballad Emptiness Unobstructed is the outstanding track of the album with Loomis mostly taking a back seat to let Dane demonstrate his power.

Is this soliloquy or psychosis,
Or self hypnosis?

Moonrise (Through Mirrors Of Death) – Nevermore

The lyrics may have been carved from a single, massive block of edam & delivered in a manner fatal to lactose intolerants but it adds a level of accessibility to proceedings. For all the progressive touches & the guitar work that makes every bedroom guitarist cry into their Squier Strat, what makes Nevermore so special is the fact that they make great heavy metal that everyone with an IQ above 7 can appreciate. The Obsidian Conspiracy can sit happily within their canon of greats, somewhere between Dead Heart In A Dead World & their 2 masterpieces, This Godless Endeavor & Enemies Of Reality.

Special note should be made of the Limited Edition packaging which includes the rather ambitiously titled Play Guitar Like Jeff Loomis & a ton of artwork that really deserves framing.

Immolation - Majesty & Decay

A Glorious Epoch

One of Death Metal’s old guard, Immolation have always stood out from the crowd with their immense technical ability & their refusal to conform to traditional DM song structures. Having maintained a (relatively) consistent line-up compared to the revolving door policies of many of the scene’s bigger names, this has afforded Immolation the chance to hone their craft to unparalleled standards.

Everything you love Immolation for is present here. The anti-humanity sentiment, Ross Dolan’s inimitable vocal delivery & the palpable feeling of pure evil emanating from every note but this time there’s something more. It’s hard to pinpoint but despite the numerous time changes & the outrageous riff-to-song ratio, every second of this album fits together like a clenched fist in the rectum of a Dutch prostitute.

A short atmospheric intro & the sounds of crumbling masonry leads into opener, The Purge. A meaty slab of brutality on the subject of ridding the world of humanity. The first solo sets the bar high for the rest of the album. The tempo drops for the next track, A Token of Malice, with some more groovy riffs and yet another beastly solo. The album lumbers on like a colossus through the crushing title track up to A Glorious Epoch, the strongest track on the album.

There are times where the sheer technicality of this album will put off posers & moments where the doom-influences creep in putting off purists but if you fall into either category, you simply don’t deserve an album this magnificent. Initially, I was going to say that this is the best Immolation album since Close To A World Below but it’s not. This is the best Immolation album. There can be no debate. It’s an evil, brutal, technical masterpiece that leaves every DM release of the year with a lot of work to do.

Cancerous Womb

Smokin Joe Fritzl

This is the debut EP of one of Scotland’s brightest hopes – Cancerous Womb – who are gamely sailing the brown seas of Dimebag necrofellatio, scene kids and bands that think Lamb of God are cutting edge genius to deliver some actual Death Metal to our poor, tired anuses. Seeing as there are only 3 songs on this, I’ll do a track by track…

1 V.I.Paedophile
This is, of course, the greatest track name of all time, and it is coupled to one of my favourite Death Metal staples – the patented ‘reversed evil intro’. Morbid Angel would be proud. Once we flip back into the right direction we’re off with some polyrythymic force, and some excellent mid-paced action that touches my plums in all the right places. The song ends with a slidey riff and the repetition of the almost playground (apt) chant of ‘V.I. Paedophile!’ This section really should have a chorus of little kids chanting this in thrash gang vocal style though. Tsk.

2 Up To My Nuts In Guts
Well the start of this song reminds me very much of the intro of Invisible Control by Decapitated (definitely not a bad thing), and featuring some prolonged groove sections, again with some flourishes that hint at polyrythyms, showing a definite Meshuggah influence. The riff at 2:36 is the stand out moment from the demo, definitely worthy of stoving someone’s face in with a sledgehammer to and the rest of the song pretty much crushes from then on in.

3 Austrian Basement
This opens with another groovy passage to which I can’t help but imagine fat Goths dancing to but it then nicely chunkifies into some solid death metal aggression. We are treated to some more dissonant riffing with some excellently structured passages before out of nowhere there is a weird space out that sounds like the sudden onset of tinnitus, or worse, like a section from trance anthems. We also get our one and only solo, which is nearly all tremolo picking, presumably to add intensity, but to me this is something that somewhat detracts from it, as the atmosphere might have been better built with single notes. It also sounds rather lonely without a guitar track behind it, which is obviously to recreate their live setup, but doesn’t work so well in a crisper studio recording where backup is more conspicuous by its absence. Some fat ass palm muted chords behind it would have had me jizzing into an early grave.

Overall this is very promising, with some great passages, structures and riffs, well thought out vocal patterns and some large metaphorical hairy testes. The Austrian Basement EP comfortably puts them at the very forefront of the Edinburgh metal scene (even if that is like beating 50 bald men in a hair combing competition), and I think that with some further refinement they will be nicely poised for world domination. Or on the sex offenders register. Probably both.

…and winners of the hotly contested ‘Leave The Hall Demo Of The Year 2009′

Overkill - Ironbound

Old School Kings Put On A Clinic

Thrash metal’s recent resurgence has left us with a few shining gems in a sea of mediocrity & recycled Exodus riffs. Whilst we looked to the future & filtered the wheat from the chaff, the thrash from the trash, the Gama Bombs from the Eviles,  New Jersey’s finest were putting together a masterpiece. Overkill have never been particularly progressive, they never went down the death vocals route a la Testament, the penis-flavoured corporate rock sound of Metallica. No, they preferred to thrash the old way, hitting everything head on with their punk-influenced brand of musical destruction & have the odd stroke on the way.

Overkill might be in their 30th year now but Ironbound has all the energy & punch of a bunch of ADHD delinquents on a day-trip to Starbucks. Opener The Green And Black serves as a devestating statement of intent with just a touch Take No Prisoners-style Megadeth mixed in there. The title track follows & it’s classic Overkill to the core (minor pun intended). Whilst Blitz’s unique voice & DD Verni’s distinctive pick bass have always formed the backbone of Overkill’s trademark sound, new drummer Ron Lipnicki really shines driving the tempo to a crushing pace. It also includes some of the best, most technical solos they’ve ever produced.  Both Derek Tailer & Dave Linsk have raised their game since the last album & the end result is outstanding.

[*] The Head & Heart is a lumbering heavy track that gives the feeling that you are about to be charged by a particularly vicious bull whilst the following cut, In Vain is a blinding yet funky thrashfest. Killing For A Living follows a similar structure to Overkill’s older material but is played with a machine-like precision that adds an extra bite to things. Closer The SRC is a beastly ode to the underground, a place Overkill have happily been reigning for last 3 decades.

The mix was handled by the ever capable Peter Tagtgren who is rapidly becoming to go-to guy for beastly sound, especially when Andy Sneap is unavailable. I’d go as far as to say that this is finest album Overkill have released since Necroshine & already a contender for album of the year.

If you aren’t currently an Overkill fan, this album isn’t going to do anything to change your mind, but if you don’t like Overkill, what the fuck are you doing on this fucking website. Leave your address as a comment below & I will charter a fucking jet to your doorstop, punt you in the face, snap your dick off with a crowbar, set it on fire & chuck it at your mum.

[*] We would like to apologise. There was intended to be, in the original review, another paragraph here detailing some of the stand-out tracks on the album. Unfortunately our reviewer got side tracked when it occurred to him that there might be some people that don’t like Overkill. I present the intended paragraph here & if you are a non-Overkill fan, kindly ask you to fuck right off.

Blackie Lawless

Not Too Shabby-lon (Sorry)

A lot has happened since W.A.S.P. released their last truly great album, The Crimson Idol. A black democrat president is in the White House, Blackie Lawless has found god, oh & he’s now rocking the Mischa Barton/Yngwie Malmsteen coke bloat look. Currently, Blackie see’s himself as some sort of prophetic messenger predicting a biblical apocalypse at the hands of a single New World Order style shadowy organisation. As far as crazed conspiracy theories, it’s up there with David Icke but as an idea for an album I’ve heard a lot worse.

If you are wanting an epic concept album that will forever be considered the yardstick by which all metal concept albums (sorry, Maiden, Dream Theater) then stick with Crimson Idol. To be fair, this isn’t a true concept album, it’s a mix of spoken bible passages & songs on a theme in Blackie’s inimitable growl.

Babylon features the same lineup that gave us mediocre-fest Dominator but don’t let that put you off. Tracks Babylon’s Burning & Seas of Fire are W.A.S.P. doing what they do best; fast, catchy metal songs with awesome hooks. There’s also a cover of Deep Purple’s Burn that didn’t make it onto Dominator for licensing reasons but it fits better here & sits well with the theme of the album.

The album closes with an epic, slow-burning ballad, Godless Run, on the subject of Blackie’s past, his faith & it’s by far the strongest song they’ve released in the last 15 years. They follow this up with an brilliant cover of Promised Land by Chuck Berry & I get the feeling it may have been more than a minor influence on their classic track, Blind In Texas off The Last Command.

This is not a future classic but it is a solid album & a step in the right direction. W.A.S.P. may no longer fuck like beasts but Babylon proves they’ve still got what it takes to rock like motherfuckers.

Nile - Those Whom The Gods Detest

Those Whom Twats Detest

Nile albums generally transcend any predetermined preconceptions of what a listening experience is, instead crafting huge sonic landscapes that whisk you back 5000 years to the banks of the river from which they take their name, so that you can almost feel the Egyptian sun scorching your back, as some slave driver whips you harder to construct the Sphinx’s giant stone phallus (this may or may not exist outside of my mind). Luckily for us, Nile do not have magical time travelling powers or, to my knowledge, whips, and instead settle for scorching and lashing your face with their enormous metaphorical phallus of death metal on this, their sixth, album.

I must say it is very nice of Nile to pop up every couple of years to remind everyone that incredibly brutal death metal can be something other than lobotomised, gore-fixated fuckbaggery, and it is testament to their compositional ability that this album manages to be as technical as anything that will be released this year without ever seeming like you’re listening to ‘tech’ music. The sweeps are subtly applied, the riffs are complex yet memorable and the drumming is restrained, intelligently textured and, when it needs to be, fast enough to leave pretty much everyone else in the (Saharan) dust. Songs shift to and fro from monolithic slabs of doom to what having a swarm of bees in one ear and an artillery range in the other sounds like, all topped off with that trademark glaze of eastern instruments, huge string bends and unsettling droning notes from Sanders’ fretless guitar.

The issue of trademark sound is an interesting one, however, as I have noticed something of a backlash towards Nile of late for being ‘formulaic’ and ‘one-dimensional’. Now, I would usually be the first to give a band a kicking for this (see my previous review), but in their case it is more that they have created such a strong niche with their imagery and instrumentation that even their most experimental work sounds ‘like Nile’. Similarly, this phenomenon has never stopped me from buying a new Iron Maiden or Opeth album, as they are all free to develop within their own unique paradigm rather than stuck in a one dimensional rut.

This development is shown not least in the *gasp* non-Egyptian related opener ‘Kafir!’, which tackles the rejection of God in a more general sense, inspired by a race of people that lived in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan and were seen as infidels by the Islamic countries that surrounded them. I know this because… Karl Sanders’ liner notes have returned! And the ‘Kafir!’ notes even give a shout out to Exodus!

Elsewhere, the title track is an 8 minute titan that only Nile are really able to pull off, and the total fucking madness of ‘Kem Khefa Kheshef’ is a mindblowing example of how to craft a death metal song… My discussing individual tracks is a waste of time though, as if you’re not willing to listen to the whole shebang (while reading the liner notes) you can get the fuck out of town or die.

Slayer - World Painted Blood

World Painted Bland?

People often say that Slayer have never made a bad album, which might well be true, but they have certainly made a few mediocre ones. The nu-metal influenced God Hates Us All and Diabolus in Musica (see ‘Love to Hate’) were hit and miss at best, and it would be fair to say that Slayer haven’t made a really great album since Seasons in the Abyss nearly 20 years ago. So, regardless of what meat-headed Slayer fanboys will tell you, and there are plenty around to do it, they have almost as much to prove on this album as Megadeth did on Endgame, even if they didn’t fall far enough to release an album quite as smelly as Risk.

World Painted Blood begins strongly with the title track, featuring some nice Mandatory Suicide spoken vocals from Tom which is followed by Unit 731, though Slayer, while playing very fast, fail to make a song about a WW2 Japanese unit that carried out experiments that would have Josef ‘Angel Of Death’ Mengele saying “hold on a sec there lads, that’s a wee bit needless” sound quite as fucking evil as it should.

Hate Worldwide, with its fairly generic riffing and facepalm inducing lyric of ‘I deny, I defy, and spread a little hate worldwide’ (no prizes for guessing it was Kerry ‘I steal my lyrics from angry 14 year old boys diaries’ King that wrote this gem) isn’t a particularly great song, but he redeems himself with the following track, the thrashtacular Public Display Of Dismemberment, and so the album continues on in this fairly inconsistent manner, threatening to gel into a big, solid thrash face fucking but with little inconsistencies and here and there that derail the momentum and we’re left with another mixed bag. Like Christ Illusion before it there just isn’t enough here to keep me coming back for more, yes it’s fast and yes it’s aggressive, but it lacks the sprinkle of class that sets an album like Seasons in the Abyss apart from what they have presented here.

It seems to me Slayer are caught in a conundrum, not doing anything wrong (no singing choruses – check, no br00tal breakdowns – check) and with a rabid fanbase that will lap this up, they are comfortably stagnating. It’s no coincidence that the best songs on the last couple of Slayer albums have come when they’ve pushed themselves or added some experimental touches, some texture and light and shade to their work, but they far too often fall back into Slayer-by-numbers, or even worse, sound like a Diabolus… b-side, and frankly it’s just fucking boring now unless you’ve only just discovered them.

In all, World Painted Blood is a solid but unspectacular album, with some moments on it that will make you medically NEED to headbang, but with others that just leave you feeling a bit ‘meh’. World Painted Blood is not a bad album, I mean come on, everyone knows Slayer have never released a bad album, but I’m still waiting on their next truly great one.

Cormorant

Prog-tastic Contender For Album Of The Year

Pinning Cormorant down to a single genre would be about as productive & as easy as stapling a turd to the back of a particularly pissed off badger. However, if you really insist on having something to put in that tantalising “Genre” box in your iTunes, I’d say they play progressive blackened death metal.

Dark, crushing brutality mixes with beautiful melodic passages on pretty much every track. Influences range from Zao, At The Gates, Cynic all the way to Rush, Celtic Frost, Iron Maiden and a thousand other bands, yet each song sounds like something totally original & unique. Arthur von Nagel’s growls & screeches are reminiscent of the early black metal scene whilst his fretless bass work drives the whole album & really stand out in the production.

Opener Scavenger’s Feast builds from a slow intro up into a heavy Gothenburg sounding blinder before dropping into an epic hard rock solo then on to a classical guitar interlude before building again to more Slaughter of the Soul style savagery. One track that really stands out is Blood on the Cornfields which has an excellent NWOBHM melody & it tells the tale of Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion. Rarely for an album this heavy, the lyrics are really intense, well-written epics on diverse subjects that fit perfectly with the schizophrenic styling of the music.

Its hard to believe that Cormorant aren’t signed to a label or that they put this out as a self-funded release, especially when you consider they got Billy Anderson (Sleep, Mr. Bungle, Cattle Decapitation) to produce it. The production is flawless. I’ve tried to think of more to say on the subject but it’s actually so perfect that anything I say superfluous wank-fluff. Just listen to it!

It’s rare that I get such an intense feeling from an album. It happened the first time I heard Cynic’s Focus, Zao’s Funeral of God & Mastadon’s Remission. Its a magical feeling that usually leaves me with a hard-on & a bit of shit in my pants. I think Cormorant might be the best new band to come out of the Bay Area in a long time. Trust me when I say that this is an extremely special album & a definite contender for album of the year.

Onslaught - In Search Of Sanity

In Search Of Thrash Perfection

By 1989, Onslaught had established themselves as the biggest thrash band in the UK. Power From Hell was a rough, punk-influenced beast that, much like Venom’s debut, shocked the scene with its raw power. Two years & a line-up shuffle later, The Force was released to critical & public acclaim. The punk influences were scaled back for a more traditional thrash sound, longer songs & more structured riffing. Vocals for The Force were handled by then unknown, Sy Keeler. His guttural, snarling style added a whole new dimension to the band.

By 1986, Onslaught were set for worldwide thrash domination. Unfortunately, it was 3 years before the release of the next album. In these years, Onslaught’s new label had lost faith in Keeler’s vocal ability & decided to replace him. In a rare flash of brilliance, one which has not yet been repeated by a music label, they brought in a genuine metal god. Steve Grimmett had already made his name on the three legendary Grim Reaper albums. The label felt their new cleaner sound required a refined vocal style & that Grimmett was the man for the job.

Of course, any question over the choice of vocalist went out the window with a first listen to the finished article.

They kick things off like any sexual experience with five minutes of foreplay, in the form of an instrumental. This is followed by the sheer orgasmic joy of the title track. Heavy, Exodus-style riffing gives way to Grimmett’s awesome voice. The sound & subject matter are both reminiscent of Anthrax’s Madhouse.

If you want a thrash anthem, you are in luck because there are more here than in Metallica’s entire back catalogue. Shellshock, Lightning War, Power Play & Blood Upon The Ice are all fast heavy classics with brilliant guitar work from Nige Rockett & Rob Trottman and the best bass sound Onslaught have ever had.

There’s also a cover of AC/DC’s Let There Be Rock which sounds far better with Grimmett’s falsetto scream but the highlight of the album is the 12 minute thrash ballad Welcome To Dying. I am of the belief that there is no greater musical creation than the thrash ballad & this is one of the best ever. Grimmett’s vocals, Nige Rockett’s guitar work, everything about it is perfect.

This album receives so much hate, abuse, disrespect from almost all sides by uneducated, illiterate fuckbags who’s idea of good thrash consists of Rob Dukes era Exodus, Trivium & Linkin Fucking Park. The fact is this: Onslaught plus Grimmett equals an unmissable classic & one of the best albums of 1989.

Triaxis - Key To The Kingdom

Power Metal Perfection From The Valleys

Lets be honest: musically, we’ve not got a lot to thank Wales for. Tygertailz, Bonnie Tyler, Charlotte Church’s tits (anyone who mentions BFMV gets a free head wound) . That’s a pretty comprehensive list right there, but things might finally be changing. Hailing from South Wales, Triaxis are a female fronted power metal band who, hot off the heels of a, by all accounts, extremely impressive Bloodstock set have released a self-funded, self-recorded debut, Keys To The Kingdom.

Triaxis are a band that obviously love Maiden and their influence can be heard throughout the album, particularly on the faster tracks. There also plenty insane shredding solos that fans of Vai, Batio & melted faces. Special note should be made of the track Lies which is, and I’ll use a technical term here, epic-as-fuck!

The whole package is very impressive, even more so when you consider that it is all self-recorded. If I were to find one complaint with the production, it would be that some of the vocals on a couple of tracks don’t sound quite as polished as we’ve come to expect in this age of auto-tune & over-production but if the other option is to have all metal vocals sound like Kanye West, then I choose this every time. Comparisons between Triaxis & Holyhell are almost inevitable but the only one appropriate would be “Like Holyhell but not shit” or “Like Holyhell but 4 Kamelots better”.

The next stage for these guys better be a full tour of the European festivals circuit & maybe the UK power metal scene will finally be forgiven for inflicting ‘comedy’ frap-fest Dragonfarce on the world. Triaxis are poised to take the world by storm, that I will stake my anal virginity on. Seriously, buy this album now!

Megadeth - Endgame

Leg-Endgame

Dave Mustaine is a bit of a cunt. It is his biggest problem, but is also his best feature and my favourite thing about him. He is like a cartoon villain, constantly whining about Metallica, then saying how ‘over it’ he is and how he loves them all, before saying Lars is a rat faced little fuckrag that couldn’t drum his way out of a wet paper bag, or words to that effect. He had the all-time classic heel-turn of becoming a born-again Christian. He has given interviews about how awesome his new band line-up is, yet he is the only member of the band on the back cover of Endgame. He constantly winds people up and makes them angry, calling Kerry King a big fat shit head-tattooed inbred with gay sunglasses and no ability to play the guitar (or words to that effect) about 30 seconds before announcing a tour with Slayer. For the last decade and a half (at least), people could say that Dave Mustaine was all mouth and no trousers, but with Endgame he has now created and donned a large pair of solid gold trousers with ‘Suck ma plums’ embroidered on the crotch in neon lights.

Whether the back cover represents it or not, Endgame is made by the arrival of the master Chris Broderick on guitar, whose shredtacular talents have forced Mustaine raise his own game much like he did after Marty Friedman joined about 20 years ago. In fact, certain points on this album feel like Michael Angelo Batio, Rusty Cooley, Yngwie Malmsteen and Paul Gilbert doing a full-tilt bukkake session on your face… and Mustaine is sneering about something in the background. That is a beautiful thing. While there are moments that it seems an overload of notes per second is about to occur, the solos are generally well thought out and tasteful, if you like the taste of guitar rape in your face that is.

If you can manage to put the massive levels of guitar pwnage to one side (unlikely), the album sounds bizarrely like a mixture of Killing Is My Business… and Youthanasia, seeing extremely old school riffs meeting with some thoroughly melodic choruses on many of the songs, though some have a crunchier, modern stomp that some die hard thrash fans might find slightly too reminiscent of shite bands like Devildriver. It’s a small complaint though when you weigh it up as a whole, considering the last couple of Megadeth albums have had more filler than a fleet of cement mixers. In fact, the more I think about it, even the perennially wanked-over Countdown to Extinction had some dodgy tunes on it, so Endgame comfortably slots into the top tier of Megadeth albums, which in turn places it many miles above generic dog shit like Arch Enemy that passes for ‘classic’ style modern metal.

If Mustaine can keep this line-up together (and get fucking Vic Rattlehead back on the front cover!) then I firmly believe that they can go on to leave attempts at proper singing and grooviness and make the true successor to Rust in Peace. For now though, everyone should be grateful that Dave has still got an album of this calibre in him and is still angry enough at everyone else in the world to want to prove it. If you can avoid looking with a rose tinted view of Megadeth past, Endgame should be hailed as a god-like slice of genius. This is a definite contender for album of the year.

Sonata Arctica

Finland’s Finest Progress Pleasantly

If you are a fan of Euro-Power Metal, werewolves & stalking girls, then Finland’s Sonata Arctica are the band for you. A massive, orchestral sound with soaring vocals, heavy keyboards & fast, tight guitar solos combined to establish them, along with Edguy & Nightwish, as new leaders of the scene. However something changed with the release of 2007′s Unia. Gone were the driving bass pedals, the speed & a massive chunk of their cheesy catchiness. They had been replaced by a slower, more progressive sound with their most complex song structures to date. Needless to say, this was about as popular as a salad bar in downtown Glasgow.

The Days of Grays is a lot closer musically to Unia than it is to their first 4 albums. There are a few nods to the traditional Sonata sound, particularly on Flag In The Ground. The progressive elements introduced on the last album are still present but the whole album feels more light-hearted & straightforward than their previous effort. The heavy symphonic keyboard intro on Deathaura would fit better on a recent Dimmu Borgir album than it does here & its followed by some Nightwish style warbling before the album proper kicks in. After that, we get some more traditional Sonata keyboard & guitar solos whilst Tony Kakko’s vocals stand out as a career best.

There are also plenty slower tracks, Zeroes, Juliet & an excellent melodic interlude in the middle of The Dead Skin show than they are still capable of making the kind of dark ballads that made them stand out from the cesspool that late nineties power metal became.

This isn’t the return to form that some people had hoped for but its a step in the right direction. The pop hooks, outrageous solos and a lot of the speed are back but they’ve kept some of the darker, more intricate structures & themes from Unia. Its not a classic but, much like a sloppy handjob from a drunken teenage girl, you could do far worse than check out The Days of Grays.

Ivan Moody Bears The Cross Of Nu-Metal For All Of Us

Nu-Metal is the Answer? Oh No, Wait, It’s Not

What year is this? Is it 1999? Is nu-metal still considered a valid genre choice for aspiring musicians? Is it fuck. Five Finger Death Punch, or FFDP (worst abbreviation since Buh-Fuh-Muh-Vuh), play a bastard mix of late nineties nu-metal and early noughties metalcore. The music industry are, however, happy to sign anything that reminds them of simpler times when CD sales bought them mountains of cocaine, rather than the briefcases of cocaine they now have to make do with.

It’s impressive for a metal band to claim the title of Most Anachronistic Album in a year when Vera Lynn has had a number one album. War Is The Answer is FFDP’s second album and they’ve lost none of the qualities that got them voted ‘Best New Band’ by Metal Hammer. Yes, they are all there: The horrible melodic verses, the shitty breakdowns that even Lamb of God wouldn’t be proud of, the lyrics straight from “My First Book of Angsty Teenage Rhyming”, the kind of screams you’d expect from a toddler with its hand in a paper shredder.

I’m struggling to pick out any unique elements of this album. It is, end to end, an irrelevant turdfest but the title track does feature some terrible, Disturbed style spoken shit including the lyric “I will slap you so hard, it’ll feel like you kissed a freight train” and repeated rhyming of “cancer” with “answer”. They also kindly included a cover of Bad Company. Bad Company would be well within their rights to sue FFDP over, for it is without a doubt the worst cover of a song since this.

Not content with writing some of the most soulless, derivative music of recent years they’ve also gone down the old PR stunt route to shift a few more thousand copies of this abysmal semen-stain of an album. Guitarist Zoltan Bathory (real name apparently) was reported ‘missing’ 3 days prior to the launch of the album. Unfortunately our hopes of body being discovered were cruelly dashed when he was ‘found’ alive & well. Las Vegas police have no record of a missing person report but that’s most likely because he was sat in his hotel room wanking into a pile of dollar bills & SOiL albums.

I can’t recommend this album, even to those of you who love Lamb of God’s breakdowns or Drowning Pool’s awful choruses. This album lacks a single redeeming quality and on that basis alone, I’m sure it’s going to be among the top selling ‘metal’ album of the year. I’m going to start running an exchange program where anyone I meet wearing a FFDP t-shirt can exchange it for a set of stab wounds and some reconstructive face surgery performed with a size 10 Nike High Top.

Manowar

Theirs is the Kingdom of Steel

Reviewing a Manowar release in any conventional way makes about as much sense as reviewing anal sex. Manowar are, like anal sex, something you will try once and make a life-long decision regarding. To this end, I’m not going to waste my time explaining to you that they are the greatest band in the world, that seeing them live will change your life or that sometimes I have Eric Adams based wet dreams.

No, instead I’m going to advise you on whether its worth forking out £12+ on a 6 track EP, one of the songs being a re-recording of a previous song. At a rate of over £2 per new track, is this a bargain? Well, no, its not a bargain. Its not even reasonable, but Manowar are not a reasonable band.

The EP marks a distinct return to form after the last album which comprised mainly of filler & spoken word tracks. Instead, we get 4 suitably epic tracks on the subject of steel, honour and death in battle. Final track, God Or Man stands out as a an excellent future classic with some surprisingly good drum work from Scott Columbus.

They’ve also re-recorded The Crown And The Ring, one of their standout tracks from their classic Kings of Metal album and, along with a metric ton of fireworks, the song they close their live set with. The new metal version mixes out the orchestral backing in favour of a heavier guitar sound and it sounds as epic as the original.

Special note should be made of Father, a perfect acoustic ballad for those of us with parents who aren’t Josef Fritzl. There is a second disc which includes versions of this song in Bulgarian, Croatian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish & Turkish. For any other band, this would be a massive undertaking but Manowar probably translated and recorded the whole thing in an afternoon.

I’ll leave you probably the best lyrics ever written:

Hands that never take
Can only give
And because of you
I know how to live

Manowar – Father

I’m not going to bother telling you to buy this because if you are a Manowar fan you already own 2 copies and if you aren’t, then leave the hall, for you are a wimp & a poser.

Ravage - The End of Tomorrow

End of Tomorrow? Middle of the 80s Would Be Closer

Ravage play heavy metal. Not 90s heavy metal where it all got sensitive, not 00s heavy metal where it got all ‘core. They play heavy metal as it was meant to be played. Duelling lead guitars, galloping bass work & plenty high pitched screams. They play 80s heavy metal.

The album starts out with a fast but generic instrumental track before kicking things up a gear or two with Reign Fall. Iced Earth style guitar work & some awesome lyrics make for an excellent opener. Vocally, Al Ravage has a sound of his own. Excellent mid-range stuff perfectly suited to the material but entirely capable of the prerequisite screams as demonstrated on The Shredder & The Nightmare’s Hold. They even find time to slip in a  cover of Priest’s classic Nightcrawler *, but its location right in the middle of the album unfairly makes it seem like a linchpin placed there because someone wasn’t confident enough in the band’s own songwriting talents.

Much like fellow NWOBHM revivalists Cauldron, the biggest complaint you can make about Ravage is that they don’t really bring anything new to the table. However, when you’ve got guitar work this tight, songs that are as catchy as AIDS & the ultimate seal of metallic greatness (an Ed Repka album cover),  you can’t go far wrong. Add into the mix, a vocalist who has a unique raw quality that stands out in a sea of clones and you’ve got all the ingredients for a classic metal album that will have heads banging and necks dying.

Trust me when I say this; If you like heavy metal, you are not going to be disappointed with this album.

* There are a couple of ‘metal’ critics who seem to be unaware that Nightcrawler is a cover of a Judas Priest song. Being a metal critic and being unaware of the Painkiller album is a crime punishable only by a slow painful fire-based death.

Hail of Bullets - ...Of Frost and War

Hail and Kill

Hail of Bullets are a supergroup that play death metal. Death metal of the proper, old school, straight up, mid-paced blasting variety, which in these technical times can often sound like misty eyed revivalism or, even worse, just plain dreary and uninspiring. To pull it off you need to be doing something very special indeed.

Luckily, Hail of Bullets are doing just that. What they bring to the table is a total commitment to recreating World War 2 in your ears, in both music and lyrics, which cannot be denied or ignored.

While the classic DM onslaught is all well and good, it is the addition of almost doom-metal atmospherics on ‘…Of Frost and War’ that make it stand out from the pack, as tracks like Nachthexen and Inferno At The Carpathian Mountains see the band slowing to an icy dirge that perfectly encapsulates the dismal bleakness of the Eastern front. And Stalingrad was no place for shandy boy breakdowns, thank fuck. The lyrics are amazing too, basically a load of facts about various battles, technical terminology and information about defensive formations and counter attacks in the flank – war geek overload. These are delivered by the legend Martin Van Drunen (who, according to the irrefutable Wikipedia, has overcome the extremely un-metalhead-friendly condition alopecia) in the vocal style of someone who had spent months being bombed, scavenging for food and freezing slowly to death as they use their last remaining breaths to radio for help as the merciless enemy closes in. Instrumentally, the rest of the band are as tight as Dave Lee Roth’s posing pouch and the guitar tone evokes early 90’s Stockholm, making this all sound a bit like early Entombed having a quick rake through the Imperial War Museum.

In short, this album is fucking awesome. Basically the History Channel really needs to use this album as the soundtrack to a Stalingrad documentary. I’d wank.

3 Inches of Blood - Here Waits Thy Doom

3 Inches of Pleasure

Everyone’s favourite retro metal traditionalists/parody band returns with their new offering. It seems like they’re getting more traditional and ‘true’ with every album, though that isn’t necessarily a good thing as this, like their last album, falls a bit flat. Advance and Vanquish was so ridiculous and over the top as to be beyond criticism of any kind, even containing a trilogy of songs about Pirates that didn’t make me want to vomit diarrhoea for insulting Running Wild (unlike the tediously shit Failstorm). Then, sadly, 3 Inches of Blood made the fatal error of believing they were a proper band with some serious ideas and Fire Up The Blades was fairly wank.

The problem with their last album was that practically all of the core original members left and were replaced by proper beardy metal heads that weren’t just having a bit of a laugh trying to re-write Maiden and Priests back catalogue but more over the top as they were with the first two. Here Waits Thy Doom, however, scores massive points for not being produced by every generic shit metal fan’s favourite midget drummer, Joey Jordison, and was apparently mixed by someone with the surname Douches.

This album falls somewhere between the two in terms of quality, with the band finding an almost Grim Reaper-esque NWOBHM quality on many songs which is obviously amazing, especially ‘Rock In Hell’, about which Grimmett must be kicking himself that he didn’t use the title first.

A definite plus is the departure of the bell end that did the screaming vocals, because they sounded shit, gay and basically just blocked off the awesomeness of Cam Pipes’ ridiculous high notes, which themselves now have a rough edge no doubt brought about by the years of touring. While the riffs and solos are not quite as instant and in your face as they were on ‘Advance and Vanquish’, songs like Battles and Brotherhood, with its promises to ‒take the posers down” and the Manowarian themes of Fierce Defender and Call Of The Hammer are very welcome indeed, especially if you’re drunk, and as far as I can tell, the chorus of Silent Killer goes ‒Never seen, never heard, a sausage way of life!” Halford would definitely approve.

Municipal Waste - Massive Aggressive

Massive Aggressive? More like Massive Disappointment

Despite being the best thing to come out of Richmond, Virginia since Earl Hebner, the latest Municipal Waste album is about as bland & unremarkable your average Paul Anka album. At no point in my repeated listens of it did I want to down a beer, punch out a police officer and dive face-first through a plate glass window. Where is the fucking party?

It does have some highlights. Wolves of Chernobyl and Mech-Cannibal both feature inspired moments that should have the circle pits the size of France going. Upside Down Church starts out with a chunky intro before taking you into space on a rocket made of pure shred that the Bay Area titans of yesteryear would have been proud.

The guitar work is as tight as ever, Dave Witte’s drumming is on par with Slayer’s and the bass sound is awesome. The only issue I have with the production is that on a whole, the album sounds too polished. The Waste play crossover thrash and it’s a well known fact that all crossover should sound like it was recorded in a biscuit tin by 2 deaf crack addicts.

My major complaint with this album is that every song sounds like the last. There are only about 5 moments on the record that actually stand out. Its all filler, no killer.