Top Titties

We’ve not written anything in ages because we are lazy & dead inside. Thankfully the end of the year has arrived giving us a chance to round up all those albums we really wanted to review but never got round to because…. I can’t even be bothered to think of an excuse. Sorry kids. Anyway, it has been a pretty spectacular year for music & here are the first 5 albums I could think of that may or may not have come out in 2012.

5 : Grand Magus – The Hunt

Grand Magus have slipped very comfortably into their new role as heir to Manowar’s throne. I can’t imagine any other band on the planet fit to wear Eric Adams’ leather girdle when he finally dies in valiant battle with 72 oz steak or loses a leg to diabetes. The Hunt is a heavy metal purist’s wet dream. No experimentation, no bullshit, just a denim clad power trio busting out old school solos & lyrics on such diverse subjects as swords, Valhalla & swords. Whilst it lacks the immediate punch of Hammer of the North, persist with it you’ll find not a single bad track.

4 : Neurosis – Honour Found In Decay

There is heavy & then there is Neurosis. While other bands piss about with the odd menacing riff, Scott Kelly & co set out to crack the planet in two through unrelenting walls of sound. Recent releases have seen a shift to a more sludgy sound with notorious genius/cunt Steve Albini handling production & it is business as usual in that respect. Tempos are allowed to build over vast distorted guitar work & only to crash back down to the ground once they’ve threatened the well-being of your home stereo equipment. Doomy apocalyptic post metal at its absolute best.

3 : Woods of Ypres – Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Light

The word tragedy is often overused but entirely appropriate here. Woods of Ypres were positioned to explode in popularity with the perfect level of hype surrounding them & an absolutely stunning album about to land. David Gold’s untimely death a year ago tomorrow lends poignancy to the brutally morbid yet tongue in cheek nature of the lyrics. The ultra-masculine might find fault with the fact that this is genius doom pop for girls but that’s ok because they secretly practice docking in the gym showers & masturbate whilst wearing their girlfriend’s underwear.

2 : Black Magician – Nature is the Devil’s Church

These dapper English gents wandered in from out of nowhere & dropped a bona fide masterpiece on our laps. Early Cathedral plus Jon Lord is a winning formula, it would appear. Managing to sound like a classic from the first listen is quite a feat; warm, deep tones & an organic production that owes more to classic prog than the modern doom template. There might only be 3 full songs & 2 instrumentals on here but the whole thing clocks in at over 40 minutes & peaks on the historical epic Chattox. Refined doom for the thinking man, now where did I leave my top hat?

1 : Baroness – Yellow & Green

Wah wah wah! It’s not heavy enough! It doesn’t sound like early Mastodon! I want my mum!

Baroness’s sprawling double album certainly has divided the fans. Half have heralded it as the greatest rock album of the past decade & the other half are morons. From the straight forward rock of Board Up The House to the haunting Eula, they manage to cover the whole spectrum of emotion in the 18 track run. The two halves beautifully mirror each other with each half with 9 tracks a piece. Beautiful, heartbreaking, emotional yet completely accessible rock music. I can’t imagine the levels of retardation required not to love this album.

Groan – The Divine Right Of Kings

I thought it was about time that I should not be asked to write a column but write one anyway and send it to Wimps and Posers and ask if they would post it up. So here it is. As the frontman of the UK’s premier Rock and Roll band I have nothing much to say and I’m sure you’re getting that impression already. Actually I do have a lot to say but so do schizophrenics and politicians and looks how we shun them. So feel free to shun me, I’m in great company.

On the 26th October GROANS sophomore album was released to world, some say it’s arrival on the HEAVY METAL scene was like Queen Cleopatra’s arrival in Rome, some say it was like Lord Jesus emerging from the vage of the Blessed Virgin Mary and some say it’s arrival was like a rotting chicken being excreted from the man-cunt of Jeremy Clarkson. Either way, it arrived.

What I find most ‘fun’ about releasing a new piece of highly conceptual art (believe me I have been on some groundbreaking and genre creating albums, check out the Ratz Ass – Radical Christ EP) is waiting for the reviews. Nothing upsets me more than getting 5/10, 5/10 is mild Cheddar, it’s the missionary position, it’s the 9 til 5, it’s the beige. Who wants to be beige? Not me, do you? Really? What I really like is bad reviews, the bad reviews where you can really smell the anger on the words, you can hear the rage rise as the sentence progresses. That person has been forced to listen to something that offends them for what is normally a superficial reason and I get the perverse satisfaction that for about 5 mins I have made them hate. I guess I don’t take great offence to bad reviews is because I know how little effort I put into my vocal recording. For instance for this album I recorded the vocals in our drummers bedroom while slowly getting more and more drunk as the day went on. Thus I became more blase about what was coming out of my mouth and being recorded to ‘tape’, “That will do darling, I’m not singing that again”. I wanted to get the vocals done as I was in a hurry. What was I in a hurry for? Why but a pub crawl through the delightful ye old ale pubs of St Albums. Yes, I’m a professional. The pub crawl did not disappoint! In one pub we saw a Blackie Lawless look-a-like murdering some Classic Rock covers. They were a proper band, we could tell because they had their guitars in STANDS! So I ask you, recording vocals in a bedroom or watching a Blackie Lawless look-a-like singing AC/DC song in a lower vocal range. I made the right choice. So you see when the bad reviews come through I tend to end up agreeing with them.

Now then, for this album the good reviews have been smashing, they have been wonderful. Some of the reviewers are hearing concepts in the album that are not even there. I like that, read into the album what you will. The people who are giving us good reviews tend to ‘get it’, they understand our vibe, they know that we are not taking piss, they know that we are enjoying ourselves, they know that we are honouring the majesty of HEAVY METAL and they know that we are meat and potatoes and don’t give a kitten’s piss what some guardian of Precious Metal thinks. STOP PRESS, I have just come up with name for the 4th (Yes 4th!) solo album, ‘Precious Metal’. Actually I think that there is an album called ‘Precious Metal’ it came out in the late 80s and had a lot of ballads on it. I think there was another album in the same series called ‘Soft Metal’, Jesus of the Christ, those were the days, Listening to Soft Metal, playing Kick Off on the Atari ST and wondering what girls tits felt like. My life today is very similar the only difference being is I now wonder what holding eight tits would be like, see I’m progressive.

I’m currently listening to a lot of classical music, I like to think it makes me more cultured. I can deal with Handel, he seemed to know what he was doing, also Bach, man that cat got the cream and drunk it all up. I bet in a few years time we will find out that they were both paedos, such is the current way of things. Other music currently giving the dog a bone is as follows, Bad Wizard, early Queen, Deep Purple Mark III, The Heavy Eyes and 80′s Prince. Remember when Prince was on the cover of Kerrang? Bold move, very bold, Metal Heads were even more close minded then than they are today, Imagine that?

Anyway, purchase THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS by GROAN… it’s ‘fun’.

Cheers
Mazzereth

Barshasketh – Sitra Achra

Wolves In Their Own Room

Naming a raw atmospheric black metal album after a popular brand of hot sauce would probably not be advisable unless you were Immortal so it is for the best that they didn’t. Turns out Sitra Achra describes the inner conflict between morality & base instinct in the Jewish mystical text, the Zohar. You wouldn’t get that level of fact checking in Metal Hammer now would you, my friends! So Barshasketh‘s second album, The No Feeling comes all the way from New Zealand with a brief de-tour through Scotland to pick up a full lineup.

Opening with the full on Mercyful Fate atmospherics, it becomes immediately apparent that Barshasketh’s musical ability far outweighs that of your average corpse-painted tremolo pickers. Through the Burzum-esque low fi knifed speaker cone fuzz cuts a clinically clean tone you would never expect. Malaise’s individual elements might be about as trad-black as you can get but the intensity & otherworldly riffing serves as more as tribute to Hellhammer’s unbeatable formula than the desperate rakings of a band with nothing in their music testes. The technicality & composition however, along with the truly bleak aura they generate, sets them apart from others in the genre.

L’Ange Du Meridien‘s initial intensity segues beautifully into Alcestian territory with haunting clean leads layered over frantic guitar work. Things end on the amazing Schlußstück, proving that they can slow things down to blackened doom tempos with Agallochian passages alternated carefully with break-neck riffing.  Inevitable comparisons will be drawn to the likes of WITTR, Peste Noire & Krallice but Barshasketh refused to let myopic fanboyism distract them from their goal of breeding something dark & raw yet technically competent & progressive.

Barshasketh tread the very precarious tightrope of raw black metal production by never straying too far from the biscuit tin for fear of angering Nokturnäl Pissfistör & his Norwegian-by-way-of-Surrey trve khums. Thankfully though they also never sacrifice quality for extra Tesco Kvlt Kard points & slip off into the realms of 56k modem guitar tones & gutpuke vokillz. This balance is most refreshing as I wade through a sea of Borgir vs Darkthrone clones & I struggle to work out side I hate more. Not really, Borgir can fuck off. Distractions aside, Sitra Achra is an intelligent, mature entry into a swamped genre. Stick a “Fenriz approved” sticker on this, it’ll be on Band of the Week any day now.

Born of the Bomb

It’s the one you’ve all been waiting for. Lich King‘s 4th thrash masterpiece is ready to blow up right in your face & we’ve got an exclusive stream of their cover of Agent Steel‘s Agents of Steel featuring Dave Carlino of Sonic Pulse.

The album drops tomorrow

Track listing :

1. All Hail
2. We Came To Conquer
3. Wage Slave
4. In The End, Devastation
5. Fan Massacre
6. Agnosticism
7. Combat Mosh
8. Axe Cop
9. Agents Of Steel (Agent Steel cover)
10. Lich King IV (Born Of The Bomb) featuring guest performances by Jay Visser and Patrick Lind of MORBID SAINT

Running time: 50 minutes

Check it out & get it ordered over at https://www.facebook.com/LichKingMetal & http://lichking.bigcartel.com/

You can also check out the other exclusive tracks at :

• Global Thrash Assault
• New Wave of Thrash Metal
• Nefarious Realm

Cunts, A Bunch Of...

Remember when things started with a riff? It seems the kids of today consider them an afterthought, a way of connecting their flashy solos & mindless breakdowns but consider this: You set out to make a lovely lasagne & everything is ready when, at the last second, you realise you’ve got no meat. You have neither the time nor requisite ability to fetch some nice lean mince so you make do with the only thing you can find in the house, dog faeces. From the exterior, things look good. The top is nice & crispy, the layers are perfect but none of this changes the fact that your base ingredient is shit.

Thankfully Gareeda haven’t been paying attention to anything that’s happened in the last decade. In fact, it is likely they haven’t left the house for any reason other than to top up on cheap lager, issues of Razzle & toilet roll. No, Gareeda start with a riff (usually one of Orange Goblin’s) & go from there. Opener Let Me Kill One More is an up tempo jaunt that doesn’t piss about with unnecessary intros or the like. The catchy, driving riff launches straight into an impassioned plea from our protagonist to let him have one final victim before dedicating himself to a life of monogamous domestic abuse. Drifting In & Out drops the pace but ups the groove stakes with a walking bass line that meanders its way through the laid back verse & the heavy yet infectious chorus. Likewise, you’ll have the refrain of Hundred Quid An Hour burnt into your memory after the first listen.

If memorable choruses are what you are in the market for, then you are in the right place. Unclean Yearning  is another contagious tale of regret wrapped around a melody reminiscent of Orange Goblin’s recent efforts.  There is variety on offer with the likes of doomy, lumbering instrumental number Lassies Like You which builds to a crushing peak before tumbling back down to earth in a sea of feedback. The pace picks up again for the brief but pleasant Crotch of Hell & we are left, as with any respectable evening, with some Whores At My Door.

Scarcely believable tales of drug abuse, sadomasochism & depravity are delivered in such detail that one can only conclude they are entirely biographical.  It is a shame that original lyricist/vocalist/chief cunt Tommy Concrete had to abandon his post due to touring commitments. That said, Stu Lillis does a more than adequate job filling his large & likely piss-soaked boots. For fans of Clutch, Monster Magnet & Motorhead, Gareeda swagger in with a belly full of beer, a sack of riffs & a ball sack in need of draining. They might not be rewriting the rule book with their debut but it is immediately apparent that they never intended too. This is the groovy, bluesy metal that your mum got rattled to in the toilet stall of a dive bar in Bootle & it, if the graffiti is to be believed, is still getting the job done today.

Dying Fetus

Reign in Thud

If you were to take all things as being 100% consistent, Leave the Hall should not like Dying Fetus one bit. With as much slam as a Hulk Hogan 20 DVD career retrospective and more breakdowns than the infamous 1978 Lada owners club winter trip across Siberia, they comprise everything that we have slated bands like Waking the Cadaver and Job For A Cowboy for in the past. However, one thing we are not is consistent, and anyway, it’s not poor old Dying Fetus’ fault that a bunch of utter, utter tossers have decided to take a good thing and spoil it now, is it? It’s a bit like that Swastika tattoo I have on my left bum cheek that is totally a Hindu thing but people completely take the wrong way due to the reckless and irresponsible actions of the Nazi Party.

Not that Dying Fetus are actively trying to distance themselves from such musical shenanigans, however. With Reign Supreme, they systematically set about upping the hook factor over and above anything that has gone before, seamlessly merging the brutality of prison rape with the catchiness of prison syphilis. While it may simply be a case of me reverting back to my well-worn teenage Hatebreed comfort blanket, the amount of bro-downs are never off-putting, balanced as they are by some ridiculously technical passages and the ever-intimidating vocal double team of John Gallagher and Sean Beasley; here sounding more and more like a pair of large dogs engaging in a gruffle-off. Now, some might say sounding like a slightly heavier, faster Biohazard is a bad thing, but they couldn’t be more wrong as that is the very definition of musical perfection.

Over the last few releases, the Fetus have been carefully paring back their sound and improving the production, a progression that is continued in crystal clear, straight to the point fashion here. Somehow, Reign Supreme is more frantic, technical and focused than anything they’ve released previously – the 2-minute opener Invert the Idols being a perfect example. How a trio can be so ridiculously heavy is beyond my mortal comprehension, having always thought YYZ by Rush was about as tasty as it could possibly get.

I also thought that Subjcted to a Beating was just the title of track two, but after listening to it, I realised it had in fact physically broken my jaw, ribs and given my nuts a black eye. My mistake. Revisionist Past begins with a lick taken from Jason Becker‘s spare arpeggio collection, meaning they can still justify their precious ‘Technical Death Metal’ genre tag on Wikipedia in the eyes of people with lots of strings on their guitars, and From Womb To Waste opens with a sample that lets everyone know they are still ‘brutal’ enough to talk about fucked-up drug babies. Real talk.

In The Trenches manages to have such fast double bass that it sounds exactly like the constant drone my washing machine makes on a 1200 spin, for which Trey Williams deserves credit, as one drawling noise caused by all instruments being played at imperceptible speed is surely the logical conclusion for the entire Death Metal genre. I for one can’t wait for it all to end so we can all just draw a line under it and move on to Post-Enya Hypnometal and Technical Somalian Reggaecore.

Perhaps one day this will come to pass, but until it happens, we will just have to make do with albums such as this, another ridiculously heavy outing that will surprise only the previously uninitiated, annoy some of the far-too-initiated, and will make the rest happy until their brain plops out their nose into the crotch of their sweaty, urine-saturated twat slacks. Oh yes.

Adrenaline Mob

Adrenaline Plop

“…. and you’ll let me play mediocre hard rock?” sobbed the pathetic figure sat by the side of the road, tattered trainers absorbing rainwater from the gutter. “I don’t have to play poly-rhythms any more?”

“Yes”, Russell reassured him, “I haven’t broken a sweat since we started.” Pulling himself to his feet, he dusted the basketball jersey off & climbed into the idling camper van.

“Ok but we get to cover Duran Duran!” he yelped excitedly. “And I want ice cream!”

Orlando grinned smugly. “Whatever you want, Michael. Now, we just need to go round Fozzy’s house & see if any of them are free.”

Remember Godsmack? No, well, Adrenaline Mob do. Not only do they remember them but it appears they might have erected a small shrine to them in their practice space & written “I <3 Sully Erna” on the back of their maths jotter. Opener Undaunted is taken straight from the late nineties school of defiant songs about an unspecified threat (possibly puberty) all set to Baby’s First Metal Riff ™. Were it not for the pedigree involved, they’d get themselves a C- & a note saying “must try harder” but we aren’t talking about some fresh-faced buffoons who just bought their first Stratocaster knock off. No, Portnoy regularly occupies the top spot in WURLDZBESTDUMMIST lists & Russell Allen can have both his balls in my mouth whenever he wants because he did this. Things slump even further with the abysmal Psychosane which appears to have been penned as the theme tune for a UFC fighter whose gimmick I can only assume is looking a bit like Zakk Wylde. There is no excuse for the lack of creativity on show here.

In fact, the album peaks on a Duran Duran cover & that is a phrase I never thought I’d utter. Regardless of what you think of Halestorm (in my case, it was “who?”), Lizzy Hale can sing & she plays off well against Allen turning Simon Le Bon’s adult contemporary classic into something for children. At least it is a change of pace from the middle of the road Black Label-isms. Elsewhere, we get the prerequisite ballad, Angel Skies which thankfully doesn’t outstay its welcome & the guitar work remains tastefully restrained throughout.

Closer Freight Train offers you a brief glimmer of light before dashing your hopes of a Nitro cover against the cruel, hard rocks of a generic stop-start riff from a man who recently learnt the pinch harmonic as he injects them haphazardly all over the shop. Technical competence will never overcome shitty songwriting, Mr Orlando. The sooner you learn this, the better off we will all be.

From the terrible Godfather inspired logo to the cover artwork (mobsters & cigarettes & skulls & shit), everything about this package stinks of a product well past its sell-by date. The most fun you can have with this album is to count the number of times big Russ screams “motherfuckin’” & then consult my catchily named “If you use the word Motherfuckin’ more than 0 times, you can fuck off” chart. Inexcusably average, this is the musical equivalent of fat guy wearing a Tap Out shirt.

Blaze Bayley Live at Bannermans

The Man Who Would Not Die

I’ve been fucking bored of heavy metal these days. I couldn’t even remember what I liked about it. Nothing could pull me out of this depression. Not Manowar’s first Glasgow date in 200 years, not a Priest-Maiden live one-two punch to my ear scrotum, not Joe Elliot performing Animal right at me personally. Shut up, he did. No, the thing that finally restored my faith in the mystical properties of denim & leather was a bald man in his late forties thrusting his beer gut enthusiastically into a half-filled cellar of sweat & beards.

It is a little known fact but Blaze Bayley is the first entity ever to survive solely on a diet of crowd participation. The reason the man takes to the stage every night like his life depends on it, and I have it on very good authority that he does play 365 gigs a year, is that he needs to. He requires a daily dose or he would turn to dust. When there’s no backstage area, it’s hard to make a proper rock star entrance but that couldn’t stop Blaze’s triumphant arrival through a sparse crowd to the opening strains of The Brave. Much talk has been made of the recent line-up changes but no complaints could be lain at the feet of the new guys featuring a young Glenn Benton who’s enthusiastic style gave the impression that he might want to murder the drum kit rather than play it. No, they were tighter than a Dave Vincent PVC number.

Blaze’s inspirational series of lectures on the subject of defiance & rebellion punctuated a set of 15 song about defiance & rebellion. There was also a cautionary tale of Bluetooth bringing about the downfall of man so watch out for that one, kids. Drawing songs from his 5 solo albums, Blaze is not a man to rely on nostalgia. That said, he’s well aware of what his audience are after & 6 Maiden songs leave all but the most die hard of Virtual XI fans sated. Whilst Futureal & Man On The Edge bring the unanimity of the whole audience, it is impressive to see how well the solo material goes down. This is due to the simple yet brilliant choruses of tracks like Kill & Destroy, Ghost In The Machine & of course, the pre-requisite woahohoahs that Maiden have sadly moved on from.

The crowd allows for no break before the encore & the band are back in action seconds later with the outstanding Blood & Belief. Closing with my favourite version of Infinite Dreams, The Clansman never fails to go down well north of the border. It is with a renewed vigour that you leave a Blaze gig, ready to give two fingers to the naysayers, defeatists & critics. I never thought we’d have to do this again but it’s time to dust off the 100 Grimmetts. Clichés be damned, Blaze Bayley is the spirit of heavy metal embodied. Gig of the fucking year.

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.

The problem that a lot of people say they have with The Prodigy is that they aren’t “metal” enough for Download. There seem to be two kinds of people who share this opinion – people who were too old to get into The Prodigy the first time round who clung onto their W.A.S.P. records as if it were a life vest in that ocean of no metal in the early 90s; and people who are too young or mentally undeveloped to believe that music without shredding guitar solos or any kind of “kvlt” following has any merit whatsoever.

An internet metal fan, yesterday

Denim and leather brought us together, but now the No Fun Club seems adamant that flimsy glowsticks will tear us apart.

Imagine if you will, that you have a seafood allergy. Now imagine that you went to a Chinese buffet and were appalled by the fact that the restaurant had the temerity to even serve prawn dishes. Then, instead of avoiding that which makes you violently ill, you stuff your anaemic, mardy face with prawns until you throw up all over Andy Copping and the internet, err… I mean the restaurant manager and the restaurant’s nice carpet.

Nobody forced you to eat those prawns. You could have had beef chow mein, a classic that you know and have loved for decades, had you just walked a little bit further around the buffet.

The purpose of this analogy, if it’s not patronizingly clear enough, is that festivals offer you choice. If you don’t like The Prodigy, that doesn’t mean that they’re the wrong choice for a festival. Anybody who has seen The Prodigy at Download in previous years will tell you that. Maybe Saxon headlining the second stage at the same time The Prodigy play will suit you better. Stop being angry because something you don’t understand is bringing other people pleasure.

The yin to this ever so narrow-minded yang (who I insist are in the minority, but are simply louder than the rest of us) is those of us who like to enjoy ourselves at gigs.

Last year, Feemo from Hospital of Death and I went to see doom supergroup Shrinebuilder in Manchester. We realised rather quickly that our messing around was drawing some rather negative attention and scornful looks from the members of the No Fun Club who seemed more intent on stroking their beards than actually having fun at the gig. Despite paying £18 for a ticket, Feemo and I left the gig and relocated to the pub. That last bit is important. Nobody was forcing us to eat prawns, so we fucked off.

A couple of weeks ago, Dan made a dubstep remix of one of our own songs. Though it split opinion, I’m eternally grateful that our own fans have the wits to be able to listen to it, decide it’s not for them, and move on. Compare that to one particular diehard Evile fan who, on hearing this remix, launched a diatribe about how electronic music takes no time or talent to produce. The next step for us was quite obvious…

A drum ‘n’ bass remix of one of Evile’s most popular songs. Enter the Rave!

For as long as there are people who take heavy metal too seriously, there should be people who deliberately take the piss and undermine them. A few weeks ago, Feemo and I were at an Evile gig in the very same room we saw Shrinebuilder. This time we were bouncing 15 year old boys to the ground as we did the robot through the pit all night. And wouldn’t you know, that drum ‘n’ bass remix proved to be incredibly popular with Evile themselves as well as with their fans.

People who like metal were more often than not the weirdos in school who stuck together because the only thing they had in common was that they lacked social skills, and liked heavy metal. What are my memories of my days in school before I was a rockstar God up to my neck in pussy? Acceptance. No matter how weird or rich or poor or lacking in friends or social skills somebody was, they would always be welcomed into our group of friends. Why do these same people now feel the need to ostracize others, whether they’re metal fans or bands, simply because they like something a bit different to what they themselves are used to? I still talk to my friends despite the fact that they listen to Static-X non-ironically.

Heavy metal is stupid. It’s ridiculous. It’s over the top. That’s the point. It’s not meant to be taken seriously. There’s something weird about festivals that turns the idiots who do take it seriously – shrinking violet metal heads who never leave their bedrooms – into dominant, obnoxious, kilt-clad, corpse-paint smearing morons insistent on drinking their botulism-ridden home brew from a foot-and-mouth infected goat’s horn, all whilst wearing a Jagermeister bandana as if it were symbolic of anything besides mental retardation or social inadequacy. There’s room for this kind of thing, but the people currently doing this do it seriously. They’re the ones upset by The Prodigy headlining Download. The perversity of the entire situation is that these idiots need to stop taking it all so seriously in order for metal to be taken seriously in general.

Until the question “How do you get 1,000 virgins into a room?” isn’t answered by saying “Book Manowar to play”, heavy metal needs to pull its socks up.

Excuse the seriousness of this column. Normal service will resume soon, the next Groanings On will talk about boobs, DOOM, reefers and double denim. I promise. Until then, rave on, pretty doomlings.
-Leigh

'kin Hell Fest - The Well, Leeds

Propah Bloody Messy Dahn T’t Yorkshire

Notorious Leeds-based troublemaker, Paulie P has put together quite the line-up. 13 of the UK’s heaviest bands come together for an all-day extravaganza of doom, death, black, grind, tech & slam. For only 8 of your English pounds advance, you can join the fun down at The Well on Saturday, 19th November. Doors are 12pm so get down early.

The final line-up is as follows:

• INGESTED (brutal DM / slam / core – Manchester)
• ASTROHENGE (metal / prog / classical / sludge / party / all! – London)
• KHUDA (epic / instrumental / riffage – Leeds)
• THE AFTERNOON GENTLEMEN (power violence / grind / crust – Leeds)
• SKULL BRANDED PIRATES (heavy metal / party times – Leeds)
• DIASCORIUM (extreme / tech / black / death – Leeds)
• FOETAL JUICE (old school grind / death / fun – Manchester)
• COLONEL BLAST (hc / metal / heavy – Chester)
• THE ATROCITY EXHIBIT (grind / crust / sludge – Northants)
• OBLIVIONIZED (tech / death – London)
• WIZARD’S BEARD (sludge / doom – Leeds)
• NINKHARSAG (black metal – Liverpool)
• DECAYED MESSIAH (mosh / DM / core – Leeds)

We’ll be making the trip down so we’ll catch you all there!

There’s sponsorship from Zero Tolerance Magazine, Give Praise Records, Eiger Music Studio & UK Extreme Metal plus some huge merch stalls so bring your pocket money. Email kinhellfest@gmail.com for any information & check out www.kinhellfest.webs.com for all the details.

Facebook event page:- http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=214767711898473

In the woods? Have keys? 14 years old?

Remember us?

Greetings, oh lowly reader. A mere 5 months ago, we in Black Sabbath brown-nosers Groan wrote the first of what we thought would be a regular column for Leave the Hall. Then, 4 months ago a combination of numerous factors, not limited to the fact that we all had a long distance relationship with each other, were all smoking a lot more weed than our doctors had prescribed us, and the fact that we were in Burnley, ended up with us endearing ourselves to the locals of that town by starting fights with them and having some sort of great rock and roll implosion less than a year after the release of our first album.

The reasons and the stories will, I’m sure, be different in all four of our autobiographies (though expect us to have more imaginative titles than Iommi’s recent release – “Iron Man: My journey through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath”. Has he just finished an SEO course or something?).

Ironic t-shirt? Yes, Dan (the artist formerly known as The Riff Wizard) is a student.

Since that time we’ve settled an almost entirely new lineup with some faces that will be familiar to you, the UK doom/stoner rock fan, and completed writing our second album, “The Divine Right of Kings”. We’re recording it ourselves and will hopefully have it out in Spring 2012. It’s basically the best bits of your favourite classic rock albums changed enough to stop us from being sued. There are enough mindless choruses to get you shouting along and pumping your fist on your morning’s commute. I’d go out on a limb and say that after thirty seconds of doing this, if you’re not covered in naked ladies, then everyone on your train will at least be shouting with you: “GODS OF FIRE! GODS OF FIRE! FILL ME WITH DESIRE! GODS OF FIRE!”. The next day, society will crumble as everybody will go to work wearing double denim.

Writing this is quite fun. It’s like our own little propaganda machine, but through the filter of a third party. Despite that third party being Leave the Hall, it still means that this sloppily put together, weed inspired column is slightly more credible and subtle than a “GET GORAN 2 PLY BLOODSTOCK 2012″ Facebook campaign that we set up ourselves.

With our next album already pretty much done, we’re thinking about making album 3 a double album about outer space. Is this allowed – or have we been listening to too much Hawkwind?

Until next time, WITHER ME DOOMS!

http://facebook.com/groanuk
http://twitter.com/groanuk
http://groan.bigcartel.com

Edit: We also just released a one off song that we’d never be able to put on an album called “The Gypsy and the Hag”. Check it out here… http://groan.bandcamp.com/

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.

Ken!

1. Us

Well, let’s start with the big one. We’ll be there. Yes, your favourite people in the whole wide world (shut up, we are) are going to set up camp, drink a few bottles of gin & go for a naked jog about the campsite. Probably the best thing you’ll see all weekend.

2. Forbidden

14 years ago, Forbidden dropped Green in our laps. Now, Brown might have been a more appropriate title so it was a pleasant surprise when 2010′s Omega Wave pissed on it from a considerable height. They could have done a Grave, chucked together some recycled riffs with less variation than the output of a particularly unambitious Breville sandwich maker. Bish, bash, bosh, 3/5, on with the groupies. Instead, Steve Smyth bringing an extra string to the mix & big Russ remembering he could shatter scrota with his highs, they reminded the world that a good reunion album doesn’t have to play it safe.

3. Primordial

Having just put out the best album of their career, we’ve got high hopes that Nemtheanga (Alan to his mates) & pals will make their UK open air debut one to remember. As long as we get Coffin Ships & Lain With The Wolf, I will do a celebratory jig.

4. Morbid Angel

This is going to go one of two ways. Either (and I’ll admit this is the less likely option), Evil D & chum(p)s will storm the stage to Immortal Rites before ripping everyone a new hole to piss from with Rapture. A blinding set of classics causes us to forget their recent effort & as they close with Where The Slime Live, everyone joins in a chant of “We forgive you!”. The other possibility is that they play the hour-long extended mix of Radikult as Vincent wipes his sweaty ringpiece on original vinyl pressings of Altars before stamping on them & kicking them into the crowd. There’s definitely no chance they will wobble from side to side with cold dead eyes & play an utterly pedestrian set featuring a couple tracks off the new album & a few hits. It just couldn’t happen….

5. Wintersun

The ironically titled Time has now been in production for longer than recorded history but their appearance at festivals around Europe hopefully means that Jari is approaching his majestic vision. That or his mum is sick of the smell of week old feces emanating from the basement. Mopped clean & shoved on stage, there’s exactly one new song in their current setlist so at this rate, we can expect Time in 2041. Unless the builders next-door start work again.

Check back soon for the imaginatively titled Five More Reasons Why You Should Be At Bloodstock which may or may not contain nude pictures of Dripback.

GWAR. Fucking GWAR

Panic Cell

My nigh-overwhelming feelings of excitement & glee turned to one of horror when I was met on arrival at the venue with news that Panic Cell would not be playing. It was with a heavy heart that I put my Luke Bell Collectible Pint Glass^TM & Luke Bell Collectible Codpiece^TM back in my Luke Bell Collectible Collectible Case^TM & lodged them safely in the cloak-room. Their time will come, Luke. I just know it. [Update : Panic Cell are splitting this weekend so their time won't come. Why, Luke, Why!?]

Clutch

In many ways, Clutch are a perfect distillation of rock today. Straightforward, bass-heavy rock & roll that’s perfect for fucking to (or would be if my advances weren’t rejected by every single member of the opposite sex). It’s just a shame they’ve been adopted by a crowd of checked shirts, trucker caps, fake glasses & self congratulating cuntery. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out most of them had bought their beards in Urban Fucking Outfitters. Never before have I wished more for a non-tragic, giant disco ball meet mosh pit accident in my life. Then again, maybe I’m just bitter.

Their back-to-basics approach is so at odds with GWAR’s that it’s hard not to question whether this line-up was put together just to get more heads through the door. Expect to see more of this as the audiences dry up & we struggle to fill the massive venues previous generations foolishly built. The 2012 Slayer & Placebo co-headline tour is already in the works.

Before anyone gets too excited Clutch did what Clutch do best & played some Clutch songs. Highlights, just for a change were 50,000 Unstoppable Watts, Elephant Riders & Neil Fallon’s almost too perfect facial hair. On the plus side, I’m almost certain I saw Tina Turner in the pit. A perfunctory set overshadowed massively by what was to follow.

GWAR

Judging GWAR on musical merit would make about as much sense as evaluating Jeff Becerra’s worth as a performer using his break dancing skills as a metric. That said, they have shown a dramatic improval technically on album so it’s a shame that it’s the muddy, indistinguishable mess they are notorious for that dribbles it’s way through the PA. Recent tracks & classics are pumped out in an indistinguishable noise soufflé but let’s not let that dampen our spirits. In fact, as you might have guessed, a good dampening was the reason most fans had left the house today. Opening to God Save The Queen, our beloved monarch took the stage & was promptly debreasted. As far as entrances go, it’s up there with the Wehrmacht’s trip to Poland in 1939. Although probably with a bit more blood.

A bizarre set-list combined hits with mid-album filler tracks no one has ever requested in the history of the universe. I can only assume it was compiled using a re-purposed National Lottery machine. Get Dale Winton to present it & I’d watch the shit out of it. Anyway, it’s GWAR; an exercise in spectacle. Dead animals are molested, monsters impaled & Lady Gaga gets used as a toilet.  A hurried encore of the ever-infectious Sick of You & the poncho-clad security are finally given the respite they’ve been waiting for. It’s not perfect, it’s probably not even good but none of it matters because there is only one GWAR & the world is going to be a drier, safer, more boring place when they finally hang up their prosthetic phalluses.

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.

Soilent Green

Fuck you, Glasgow. Seriously, blame the promoter, blame the venue. I don’t care but this is Soilent fucking Green & you can’t put together a crowd of 60 people on a Friday fucking night. Fuck you right in your lazy, sagging cunts. Anyway, a couple of overpriced pints later we are stood in front of the stage with enough room to swing a particularly large sack of donkeys just in time for London’s newest musical export.

DripBack

This might only be their third (or so, I lost count) gig but they are certainly no strangers to dingy, deserted venues & the smell of piss. Ex/current members of Ted Maul, Pure Negative, Labrat & Leave the Hall favourites, River Freshney, DripBack‘s brand of manky hardcore deathgrind is about as raw as you can get & leaves a palpable soggy feeling in your Y-fronts. Opener Kick Out Time is a fuckton heavier than the 5 Soilent Green fans attending expect & the blastbeat driven hardcore leaves them looking pretty disconcerted. Blowing through their entire EP, slowing only to dedicate a track to the one & only Nicholas Barker who seems to have been adopted by the Freshney boys as their official mascot/tour manager, their groovy grind & gang vocals get exactly 2 people moving. Short, sharp & very fucking dirty, it’s just a shame there’s no crowd to reciprocate & circle pit covered in handfuls of their own bodily fluids.

Soilent Green

Yes, it’s the band we all came for. All 8 of us. Actually I can count 2 people here just for DripBack so we are down to 6. I could go on for hours about this low turnout being a tragedy equal to that of the deaths of Glenn Rambo & Scott Williams but you’d probably just call me a cunt so let’s move on to the set. Opening with (relatively) new track Mental Acupuncture, the Green waste no time in flooding the venue with sludgey riffs, blastbeats & Falgoust’s distinctive low register barks. Sticking with Inevitable Collapse, the irresistible groove of Blessed in the Arms of Servitude finally sees a flicker of life from the sparse crowd but I’d still have their life-support machines turned off. It is Slapfuck taken from their debut that finally kicks the 6-man pit into action. A solid mix of classics & more recent efforts serves only to highlight their ability to deliver their intricate insanity live as the jarring sludge assault leaves a sweaty mess in the middle of the room. It’s just a fucking shame that, having been away from these shores for 11 years, one of the most influential bands in metal is met with such a wet fart of a crowd. Closer Antioxidant is followed by the kind of apologetic small talk you’d give the bereaved family leaving the funeral of a co-worker you had no feelings towards whatsoever as the band depart the stage & I don’t fucking blame them.

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.

Groan training their minions, yesterday.

A new column from your favourite doom-mongers!

For a band with their heads so far up the arse of the 1970s there’s not much that Groan can claim to be the first to do. However this may well be the first time that a band has collectively written a column. Ok, the first time that a band has collectively written a column for a website. The first time that a band has collectively written a column for Leave the Hall.

As bastions of journalistic integrity, Leave the Hall gave us the following brief: “The more irreverent, the better”. It’s almost as if they think a collective of marijuana enthusiasts need encouragement to be irreverent. Fans of focussed writing, brace yourselves for disappointment.

With the four members of Groan living in four different corners of the UK, a large part of our interaction takes place online, through Facebook in our secret band-only group called “Groanings On” (What a name!). Sometimes we’ll post gig offers there to check dates with each other, sometimes we’ll post links to download newly demo’d tracks, but a lot of the time we come up with ideas for song names like “Iron Muff”, “Cosmic Shakedown (Wrong side of the Law)” or “Devil’s Hotpantz”.

This is because we love classic rock, proto-metal, and everything that they’ve given us. The more outrageous and outlandish, the better.

What’s your favourite Black Sabbath album? We’ve been compared to early Sabbath a lot, but do you know which of their albums really shakes our boots?

BORN AGAIN.

The year is 1983. There’s a Conservative government. Trade unions are kicking off.  Moira Stewart looks exactly the way she looks in 2011. “YES! The new Black Sabbath album! With Ian Gillan! I can’t wait to listen! They have a song called ‘Stonehenge’ too. I bet that’s a Sabbath classic!”

Cue two minutes of the absolute worst, least atmospheric, synthesiser music you’ve ever heard. As our own Mazzereth decries: It’s a waste of a song title.

If we wrote a song called “Stonehenge”, it wouldn’t be a shitty attempt at creating atmosphere on an album. It would be about playing a gig at the ancient standing stones where a load of hot, nude ladies come and rub their boobs in our faces while their husbands (corporate bankers) have their minds expanded by seeing this to the extent that they burn all of their designer suits and sell everything they own to become gypsies. There’d probably be some really un-subtle play on words about getting stoned at Stonehenge too.

In fact, let’s make this happen. See you at Stonehenge next Saturday? Bring a woman. And a bag of stones (for the stoning).

Oh, and at Mazzereth’s insistence, we must sign off with the following:

We don’t have time for winners, we only have time for sinners.

http://reverbnation.com/groan
http://twitter.com/groanuk

The original version was one of the ballsiest rock anthems of it’s time, with lyrics such as ‘the fighting has begun’ and ‘death is just a heartbeat away’, and with Gary Moore’s epic, strong voice belting them out. Then, lo and behold, these finnish lads have to go and make it a softy anthem with Tony Kakko’s pussy vocals and the excessive amount of keyboards Sonata Arctica seem to have been putting into their recent albums. This is supposed to be a battle song, not a whingey poem. Gary and Phil must be spinning in their graves.

9. Throwdown – Becoming (Pantera)

Now Throwdown, just because you are a heavily noisy groove metal band does NOT give you the ability to do a good Pantera cover. You are not Pantera and you never will be. You would be more suited to doing limb-swinging hardcore than groove metal.

8. Six Feet Under – Jailbreak (Thin Lizzy)

7. Fightstar – Breaking The Law (Judas Priest)

Ok, an ex-member of the talentless excuse for a ‘band’, Busted, forming what he claims to be a ‘metal band’ but are actually just a sad attempt at alternative/nu-metal turning one of metal’s true anthems into a nu-metal/screamo song? In the words of Priest themselves – ‘ALL! GUNS! ALL GUNS BLAZING!’

6. Amon Amarth – Aerials (System Of A Down)

Now, shitty bands destroying classic metal tracks is one thing – but killer bands like Amon Amarth covering god-awful nu-metal tracks by SOAD is really taking the piss. You disappoint me, Johan Hegg. Make this the last time!

5. Norther – The Final Countdown (Europe)

Why, oh why did we have to have a good old fist-in-the-air 80s rock anthem turned into a gallopy finnish folk metal song? There was just no need! Maybe the guilt of ruining this classic is what caused Petri Lindroos to quit the band and join Ensiferum. And fucking rightly so!

4. DevilDriver – Wasted Years (Iron Maiden)

A song which a lot of Maiden worshippers (including myself) would describe as the greatest song Maiden ever done has been butchered into a growly mess by Dez ‘Please love me, i was in Coal Chamber’ Fafara and his bunch of Pantera wannabes. At least Thunderstone didn’t tamper with it in any way, shape or formwhen they covered it, you stud-faced wretch!

3. Wednesday 13 – Rock N Roll All Nite (Kiss)

Time to face the truth, little goth girlies – the Murderdolls are NOT a glam metal band! Just because Wednesday 13 is heavily influenced by glam metal (or so he claims) does NOT change the fact that he is a talentless image-based poser who spends more time worrying about how many different shades of red and black he has to wear on stage, and this less than average attempt to hide it proves it very clearly.

2. Killswitch Engage – Holy Diver (Dio)

The fact that there are mongoloids out there who thought that this was a Killswitch original is almost as blasphemous as the desecration of the late Ronnie James Dio’s signature classic. The addition of screamo vocals, the loss of the guitar solos and the cheesy attempt at an 80s-style vid make this one of the biggest pieces of infamy in metal history. We can only pray that when this band die, the spirit of Ronnie Dio will cast them out of metal valhalla and into the deep, dark, fiery AIDS pit.

And the ‘winner’ is…………………

1. Children Of Bodom – Pretty much every cover they have ever done!

The finnish sellouts known as Children Of Bodom have been known for throwing one or two completely pish cover song on each of their albums. But when they go and release an entire album of these shitty covers, you have to ask yourself “Did Alexi Laiho spend enough time in rehab?”. On this monstrosity of an album entitled Skeletons In The Closet not only have they completely desecrated a whole bunch of classics including Suicidal Tendencies’ War Inside My Head, Trust/Anthrax’s Antisocial and Bed Of Nails by Alice Cooper, but they even had the balls (and i say that loosely) to cover some of the most ridiculous choices of songs any metal band could ever think of, including Oops…I Did It Again by Britney “Big fat pig legs” Spears and She Is Beautiful by Andrew W.K.. And to think, these guys were actually serious about their music at one point. God help us all!

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

Black Wind, Fire and Steel, respectively.

The Crown and the Bullring

Man… Discovers Fire.
Man… Invents The Wheel.
Man… Builds The Printing Press.
Man… Creates Electricity.
Man… Splits The Atom.
Man… Lands On The Moon.
Man… Owar.

Some moments are destined to ring loud throughout the corridors of eternity, like distant echoes from the very birth of our universe. Some moments are so colossal in magnitude as to spin the entire viewpoint of humanity on its axis, forever altering the fundaments of mankind’s consciousness and forcing long-defined principles of thought to be completely changed. Some moments come to define aeons and provide the fables that will be passed on through the millennia by the songs, poetry and art of our children and the children of a thousand generations to come, the stories of which will give rise to a thousand religions. I can say honestly, without the slightest trace of hyperbole, that Manowar’s triumphant return to Britain after 17 years away is undoubtedly the biggest, most sensational moment in the history of the universe, multiplied by ten.

From the moment we were granted entry into the hall of the Immortals (Birmingham O2 Arena) we knew that this was going to be something quite incredible. Behind a mysterious black cloth of steel cotton supported by the gaffer tape of Isengard stood the drum kit forged from the steel of a thousand small motorbikes. Some speculated that the leftover steel was used to create a single much, much bigger motorbike, but this was never clarified. Thousands of fans poured in to the increasingly sweaty battle dome and marvelled in unison around the merchandise stand at the incredible foresight of Manowar, who had used their mystical powers of clairvoyance to look 20 years into the future at the massive devaluation of the pound and set their prices accordingly. And, lo, the faithful saw that it was good and did payeth £35 for a t-shirt.

A mere one hour and 45 minutes after the doors opened, the mighty Manowar emerged as the backdrop of the Kings was unfurled and dutifully set about preaching the merits of metal with all the subtlety and introverted understatement one might expect at a Nuremberg Rally, eliciting the sort of frenzied response not seen since Hitler’s ‘No Sleep ‘Til Hamburgsmith’ farewell tour of ’45. It was an incredible, heartwarming, life-affirming and uplifting feeling to be a part of a gathering of thousands of fanatical, identically-dressed white men chanting “hail” with their hands saluting proudly in the air. Not that there were any similarities to Nuremburg, of course. Instead of listening to the horrendous deluded ramblings of a mad dictator, here each and every person in attendance was left rapt in the cult of personality as the glorious dictator Joey DiMaio’s jaw-dropping, yet madly deluded and rambling bass solo rang, clicked and squeaked beautifully throughout our ears.

Manowar were, as you have probably read in all the newspapers, here to play through their epoch-making debut album, Battle Hymns, and the occasion was rightly greeted with the sort of religious fervour that theologians had thought only possible should Jesus himself return and offer a limited run of tickets for an intimate Q&A interspersed with readings of his dad’s hit book ‘The Bible’. Each song they played from the album seemed to gather momentum: Manowar gave way to an arousing Death Tone, which grew into a firm Fast Taker before a rock hard, twitching Shell Shock took us to the very brink and… Yes… Yeeeessss… the band and crowd literally climaxed at the greatness of Battle Hymn.

For most humans this would signal the glorious ending to a concert, lifetime or galactic empire. Manowar, however, still had time to fire out another 17 songs, 17 of which featured the words ‘Metal’, ‘Kill’ and ‘Steel’, which was enough to be confirmed as a new Guinness World True Metal Record by an oiled, loincloth-clad Norris McWhirter. The Kings Of Metal literally did not pause for the duration of the gig’s entire 135 minutes of steel, propelled relentlessly by an unquenchable thirst for the gift of true metal and fruity leather waistcoats. Sadly this meant we had to miss the intense power of a Joey DiMaio rant, which left a large number of the fans in attendence at a loss as to what direction to now steer their lives, having grown weary of their epic quest to annihilate the Facebook servers through the unlimited power of Manowarism.

By the time a rousing Hail & Kill and Black Wind, Fire and Steel had been thrust violently into our souls, they finished with a superb closing 10 minutes of Feedback arr. for Guitar & Bass. As Joey presented his snapped bass string to a young pleasure slave with a cheeky thrust of his leather posing pouch, it was clear that tonight he would again have no shortage of help saddling his horse as he drinks his last ale. The mighty Eric Adams again redefined the order of the universe by proclaiming that THEY WILL RETURN, and the warm glory of The Crown & The Ring allowed the exhausted warriors – many emotional and overcome with tears – to leave the hall with honour and pride, particularly one young girl clutching a guitar string who was sobbing something about kissing the ring and now being a slave… Not a wife.

Manowar may never return, but the memory of the night will take its rightful place high atop the mountain of human accomplishment, the sheer legacy of majesty being enough to cement their position as the foremost legends of all music forevermore.

Bonded By Blood & Lazarus A.D.

Bonded By Blood

There’s something highly interesting about mosh pits. From the sweaty sense of homo-erotic comradeship to the primitive establishment of alpha-male status, they are a BBC nature documentary series on evolution waiting to happen. Even without the reassuring gravitas of a David Attenborough narration, the sight of 2 fat men butting against each other like a pair of goats and then repeatedly scuttling away to take another run up is almost hypnotic in its simplistic charm. It would obviously take a musical performance of jaw-dropping charisma and super-tight musicianship to draw attention away from the mesmerising circus freak show festivities in the crowd, and, for the most part, Bonded By Blood duly provide.

Now touring their second album, BBB are in the perfect position to create a set that is wall-to-wall thrashgasm without any filler whatsoever, delivering a nipple blasting set of extraordinarily rapid thrash metal that means I am forced to avert my gaze from the primitive grappling and soak in the fluid solos and savage riffs emanating from the group of seemingly pre-pubescent young boys on stage. Their set was evenly divided between the two albums, though the familiarity of Immortal Life, Feed The Beast and Psychotic Pulse means they are most warmly received by the baying, if a little sparse, crowd. The new material, particularly the awesome Prison Planet and shredful Prototype Death Machine shows that they are evolving their sound (ever so slightly) away from cartoonish new-wave thrash, though they return for a brief encore (can supporting bands do encores?) of the massively childish Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before departing, safe in the knowledge that, cartoonish or not, they have just pre-emptively shat over Lazarus A.D.

Lazarus A.D.

Hitting the UK for the first time, Lazarus A.D. have found themselves set with an impossible task: try to keep up with the hyperactive Bonded By Blood for 24 dates around Europe. A single set was enough to leave this muscular, athletic (honest) reviewer panting like a Type 2 Diabetic after a waddle from his mobility scooter back to the KFC counter to ask for extra gravy. Unfortunately their latest effort, Black Rivers Flow, sees an increase in both the Southern Groove elements that set The Onslaught apart from it’s peers & a rather disappointing step into far more commercial territory. Anyway, tracks like Absolute Power & Last Breath still sound as fresh as they did in 07 but The Ultimate Sacrifice could have been a Trivium B-Side whilst Light A City could have fallen out of Bullet For My Valentine‘s big bag of mediocrity.

Much like those bands, the problem lies not in their ability but in their insistence to spoon feed us syrupy, mind-numbing choruses that should leave all but the simplest fans wondering how little respect the band have for our cerebral ability. A cynical, jaded mind might propose that Lazarus A.D. have realised the limitations of the thrash scene & set their sights on a far more lucrative market. This theory would certainly be backed up by the proliferation of  dodgy haircuts, Trivium shirts & foetus-faced individuals who’s bemused look suggested this may have been their first time out the womb, let alone first gig. If they want a piece of the commercially viable pie that BFMV, Machine Head & others currently dine on, that’s fine but I’m going to have to ask that they hand back their “Thrash Or Die” motto in exchange for something more suitable. I propose “Thrashin’ For The Cash In”.

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.

Evile Ones

Circle Of Tyrants

The questionable decision of putting Tyrants on 10 minutes after doors open meant that they began their set to an empty room, probably. I wouldn’t know, I was stuck behind a couple of junior Schrödingers who were trying to establish whether thrash was a subgenre of metal or not whilst their bags were searched for Glenns & books on quantum mechanics. Anyway, the second half of their set served as a timely reminder that they need get an album out. To a good majority of the crowd, these tracks are as well known as the headliners & the big sweaty man mess in the middle of room is indicative of their local hero status.

Mutant

Soo-pah-cum-poo-tah! Mutant‘s refusal to put out an album is a subject close to my heart. In fact, if this album doesn’t fly about the room dispensing blow jobs, shooting lasers & making pizza, I’m going to have a wee cry. And possibly a poop. Turbo Hyper Ultra Mega Power & The Rauncher are highlights of a face-melting set. Tighter than Mitch Lurker‘s jeans but nowhere near as atrociously, stab-inducingly shit, Mutant‘s live reputation is well deserved. A headline tour is both an inevitability &, much like a 15 year old girl, a source of way too much arousal to be legal.

Elimination

Amon Amarth want their riffs back.

Evile

Evile‘s meteoric rise to the top of the new thrash pile is nothing short of unprecedented & with that rise has come an unmeetable expectation that they are going to somehow overcome the limitations of heavy metal & reach a stadium filling, mid-ninties Metallica level. This is, of course, retarded. What Evile can do is pen a thrash anthem that’ll rip your balls off & force them violently up your anus. It is this proclivity that probably means we won’t see them selling out Hampden any time soon. It also means I’m not exaggerating when I say that Thrasher is the Toxic Waltz of this generation* &  there’s a very good reason why Ol was chosen as the guy to fill in for Destruction when Mike Sifringer had his hand kicked off.

The set serves to highlight the massive leaps Evile made in songwriting from Enter The Grave to Infected Nations. Whilst First Blood & ETG are very much straight-forward Exodus template plagiarism, A Plague To End All Plagues is the calling card of a technically brilliant, modern thrash outfit combining the old school influences of Puppets-era Metallica with a pioneering vision to carve out a sound of their own in a very stagnant genre. Closing with much missed bassist Mike Alexander’s Killer From The Deep, it’s a clear bookmark to the end of a turbulent, emotional chapter in the book of one of the most exciting bands in the UK at the moment.

* I have, at this point, been compelled by my own brain to remind you that every Black Talon song is the Toxic Waltz of this generation & the fact they weren’t main support on this tour was a gross oversight on the part of the organisers. These are facts.

Credit for the pictures goes to Emy “I’m not going to Leeds” McLeod.

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.

Hell - On Earth As It Is In Hell

Well, it’s only taken them 29 years but NWOBHM stalwarts, Hell have finally got round to putting out a debut album. First single, On Earth As It Is In Hell is a tongue-in-cheek (oh god, I hope it’s tongue-in-cheek) tribute to the metal anthems of yore. Combining a dress sense that makes Cradle of Filth look conservative & an average age of around 600, they’ve roped in Andy Sneap to lay down some Priestian riffs for them. Sneap was taught guitar by the sadly departed Dave Halliday, founder & original Hell vocalist. Comedy aside, the track is fairly sexy.

Dan Gapen - Lazarus A.D.

Lazarus A.D. have just put out their second album, Black Rivers Flow on Metal Blade & they are about to hit the UK with Bonded By Blood for a double headline thrash feast. With that in mind, we caught up with guitarist & vocalist Dan Gapen to chat about the album, tour, J-Biebz & animal cruelty.

Leave The Hall: I know it’s only been out a few days but how has the reaction been to Black Rivers Flow so far?

Dan Gapen: We think it’s been great. Sure you are always going to get a few haters but fuck them. The fans have been great and we can’t wait to party with all of them.

LTH: Stylistically, there’s been a noticeable progression from The Onslaught. You’ve never played straight forward retro thrash but Black Rivers Flow is definitely much more accessible & commercial. Was this a conscious decision or just something that happened as you wrote it?

DG: Well it’s obviously an evolution. We grew as musicians, and we grew as a band. We knew we wanted to experiment in the vocal department, step up the solos, and really just write a more well thought out and heartfelt record and I think that’s what we did.

LTH: You’ve worked with James Murphy on both albums. What’s it like working with a legend? Do you ever just sit back & bask in his glory?

DG: We have never met James in person. We track the album at one studio and just send it to James so he can mix and master the record. James does a great job he is top notch.

LTH: You are coming over here for a tour with Bonded By Blood soon. Who’s been the most fun to tour with yet? Anyone you’d like to tour with?

DG: Best tour hands down was with Testament. That was a tour for the ages. We will tour with anyone we don’t care, we just want to play shows and tear the fucking roof off.

LTH: We love nothing more than a thrash ballad. What are your top 5 thrash ballads?

DG: Too many great thrash ballads to just name 5. Besides I don’t want to piss anyone off cuz I left them off my list.

LTH: There are definitely not enough inter-band feuds going on in metal at the moment. Are there any bands you’d like to have a feud with? We’ll see what we can sort out.

DG: We don’t have any band feuds going on at the moment. Maybe we can start a feud with Justin Bieber he just needs to fucking go away.

LTH: What’s the last gig you went to?

DG: Haven’t really been to any gigs we aren’t playing. It’s really hard to cut away when you are on tour all the time.

LTH: Who would win a fight between Gary Holt & Gordon Ramsay?

DG: I’d have to say Gary Holt would kick that ass. Ramsay looks like a pussy

LTH: And lastly, what’s the largest animal you reckon you could kick over a set of goalposts?

DG: Dude, I can’t kick a football through a goal post let alone some animal’s stink ass.

Lazarus A.D. & Bonded By Blood are hitting European shores next month.

• 09/03 – London, UK – O2 Academy 2
• 10/03 – Bristol, UK – Area 81
• 11/03 – Milton Keynes, UK – Crauford Arms
• 12/03 – Leeds, UK – The Well
• 13/03 – Glasgow, UK – Ivory Blacks
• 14/03 – Nottingham, UK – The Maze
• 15/03 – Southampton, UK – Joiners
• 16/03 – Norwich, UK – Metal Lust @ The Brickmakers

Hot Damn!

Well, it’s now around 3 years since part 1 & people are probably thinking (correctly) that we are a bunch of lazy, amateur hacks with the organisational skills of an inebriated gibbon but here we go with the thrilling conclusion of our two part serial.

Sabbat

Sabbat‘s massively successful UK tour served to remind everyone that they fucking slay & it’s nice to see an appropriate turnout for them. Martin Walkyier forgoes his usual, mildly camp theatrics as they kick things off with A Cautionary Tale. Guitarist Simon Jones is in his usual attire, just one hood short of a gimp suit but Sabbat‘s somewhat questionable dress sense doth belie their collective abilities. One of the more creative bands of the eighties thrash scene, classics Do Dark Horses Dream Of Nightmares & closer, For Those Who Died are every bit as magical now as they were in 89 (probably, fuck knows, I was 4). It is the inclusion of their masterpiece Blood For The Blood God which distinguishes them as one of the bands of the festival for me. You can read this if you want to hear me gushing about it more if you really want.

Earthtone9

Earthtone9

Earthtone9 had the cheek to split up within months of me discovering their massively erotic brilliance & it’s something I never truly forgave them for. Anyway, 9 years on & they’re back to, in their own words, “play a handful of gigs to remind everyone just how good they were”. Well, they can safely consider that job done,  gleefully clubbing Leeds about the face with a solid selection from one of the UK’s most interesting back catalogues. In fact, despite the omission of indisputable classic Amnesia, they left me with all the giddy, post-pubescent joy that I felt back in 02. Tat Twam Asi is as mental & beautiful as ever whilst I Nagual Eye still kicks in the teeth of everyone in the front 3 rows. Their upcoming UK tour is going to be something very special. Oh & there’s a new song. If this doesn’t mean a new album, I’m going to post Karl Middleton a used prophylactic every day for the next decade.

Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost have found themselves in an unenviable position. If HIM were a gateway drug to the church of gothic doom metal, that £10 worth of grass you got off your brother’s dodgy mate & My Dying Bride were a kilo of fine Columbia coke, Paradise Lost would be half a gram of ketamine. Their back catalogue is, for me at least, as hit & miss as chili-induced bowel movement on the East Coast mainline but thankfully live, it’s a different story. Playing a healthy chunk off Shades Of God did a good job of maintaining my Earthtone9 induced chub-on. They tempered this with some more recent material which had a negative effect on the blood flow to my member but at least it prevented me from tomdaring* my jeans. Highlights of a varied set included The Enemy & As I Die before closing on the Eurovision-friendly classic Say Just Words.

Dillinger Escape Plan

First, an admission: On record, Dillinger Escape Plan have only ever left me limp & mildly confused, a bit like that night I took Angela Gossow home, so the prospect of a headlining set from them didn’t exactly fill me with joy. The ensuing set, however, forced me to eat my words in a manner not unlike Ian Watkins when presented with a fully erect phallus. Anyway, they played some songs which were pretty good but hats off to the fuckers, I’ve never seen any band going that mental without sounding like a special kids bus going down a cliff side. Apparently one of their songs is called Gold Teeth On A Bum, and I’m choosing to use the British meaning of the word bum so they get an extra Grimmett just for that. They finished with the one song I actually know, 43% Burnt, I added them to my Best Live Bands On The Planet list & then we went to get very, very drunk. True story.

Now, I know what I’ve done here is give absolutely everyone good reviews & I hate it just as much as you do. It’s a testament to the Damnation team’s skills & taste that they can book such a diverse line-up without picking a few bands that make me want to rip my balls off just so that I have something to plug my ears with. It’s definitely the most fun you can have in England in November without giving one of Motörhead‘s roadies a sloppy hand-job.

* tomdaring is a journalistic term referring to the act of prematurely spaffing one’s trousers whilst attending a live music event

Part One is here if you are half way there & need something to help you finish on.

Angered by Total Guitar’s hilariously shit Best Metal Guitarists poll, we thought we’d do a proper one for vocalists. Now get voting!

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

Haar's Top 10 Albums Of 2010

10. Grand Magus – Hammer Of The North

Easily the best true metal/Doom band around at the moment – this band can do no wrong! Perhaps not quite as amazing as Iron Will, but essential none-the-less. I was initially a bit annoyed when Grand Magus abandoned their doom roots but with their last two releases they’ve blown any doubts I might have harboured right out the water!

9. Grave Miasma – Realm Of Evoked Doom

Along with Diamanthian and Cruciamentum, one of the best old school DM bands to come out of the UK for ages. Realm Of Evoked Doom is both an EP and a reissue so I’m kind of cheating here. I couldn’t care less though as this is an essential release for all old school DM fans. It manages to conjure up some serious occult atmosphere, sounding like it was recorded in a subterranean cave. You’ll find no pig squeels or gravity blasts here, just good old evil sounding DM!

8. Castevet – Mounds Of Ash

Oooohhh I’ve chosen a trendy album! Like the excellent Krallice this is likely to be denounced by the true black metal warriors out there. Oh well, they’re missing out. The hardcore/post-hardcore influence is immediately apparent but really works in this case. In fact the sound is not a million miles away from Krallice in places but it has a thicker, heavier sound. Well worth a listen if you don’t mind a bit of cross-genre pollination.

7. Ghast – Terrible Cemetery

I was really looking forward to this EP after their masterful first album. Did it live up to expectations? Ohhhh aye! Another two tracker, it continues where the first album left off. The thing that really sets Ghast apart is that they sound like they’re about to fall apart at any second – everything is pushed to the limits. The drums, guitar and bass are all in time but you get the feeling they could implode at any moment. Combine this with some seriously tormented vocals and you’ve got a winner!

6. Abigor – Time Is The Sulphur In The Veins Of The Saint…

Following on from where Fractal Possession left off, these Austrians have unleashed another technical black metal masterpiece. The only real difference between this release and its predecessor is that the two songs are seriously lengthy affairs, both clocking in around the twenty minute mark. Hallelujah indeed!

5. Watain – Lawless Darkness

It seems that a lot of folk were disappointed by this release. I really don’t know where they are coming from. Sure, there are quite a few 80s hard rock influences coming through at points but when the riffs are that good, how can you complain?

4. A Forest of Stars – Opportunistic Thieves Of Spring

One of the odder UKBM bands you’re likely to hear. They dress in Victorian garb, drink tea and play a superb brand of post black metal. Their songs are almost always lengthy with long ambient passages and unpredictable structures. The use of keyboards is tasteful, never dominating the guitars and the use of violin adds that little something extra.

3. Burial – Dissidence

UKBM seems to be going from strength to strength and Burial is yet another band that provides further evidence of this. However, unlike the Winterfylleths and Wodensthrones of this world you’ll not find any heathen elements here. This is straight up death/black metal – brutal and relentless!

2. Nightbringer – Apocalypse Sun

Bit of a grower this one! I didn’t really rate this until a drunken, early morning listening session in Manchester. It’s a very intense listening experience with the blasts and tremolo picking rarely letting up but it never becomes monotonous. It’s definitely got that UGBM feel and just gets better and better with each listen.

1. Deathspell Omega – Paracletus

DsO are one of those rare bands that are consistently good….almost annoyingly good! After Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice I reckon this is their best effort to date. It’s got the dissonance and density that you’d expect from their second phase but at the same time it has some of the most memorable melodies you’re likely to hear. My favourite of the year.

Ten doesn’t seem quite enough for this year so I’d also like to plug The Mercian Sphere by Winterfylleth, Hooded Menace’s Never Cross the Dead and A Great Work Of Ages by Stargazer – both stunning albums!

Colonel Blast's Top 10 Albums Of 2010

Colonel Blast‘s “What on earth was all that shouting about” List. It’s been pretty hard coming up with 10 albums that were released in 2010 that really audially sucked us off big time. Diascorium tried to suck us all off but we flat out refused, between Paul Priest’s owly beak, Bernards carefully constructed tramp chic and Gareths “sideburns on a childs face” look there wasn’t an option we were willing to test with our mighty girth, we considered David Bond for a minute due to his wonderfully conditioned hair and pantene advert looks, but he wasn’t up for offering it up from behind so we weren’t given the option to pretend he was a woman. It doesn’t matter how good that hair looks, it’s still his face that it surrounds.

Anyway, in no particular order although the number one was on everybody’s list…

10 – Everything Everything – Man Alive

9 – Deathspell Omega – Paracletus

8 – Black Breath – Heavy Breathing

7 – Brain Drill – Quantum Catastrophe

6 – Daughters – Daughters

5 – Ion Dissonance – Cursed

4 – Rotting Christ – Aealo

3 – Impending Doom – There Will Be Violence

2 – Periphery – Periphery

1 – Dillinger Escape Plan – Option Paralysis

So there you have it, another list for you to look at and disagree with. Fuck off.

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.

Lich King's Top 9 Albums Of 2010

Coming up with this list revealed a sad thing about me- I didn’t even listen to ten albums this year. I didn’t even check out the new Iron Maiden… after Dance of Death I didn’t have the heart to pop back in on my erstwhile favorite metal band and hear what they’re not doing. I tend to be pretty monogamous to the classics and down on what’s happening these days in metal, so it’s rare for me to even try something new. Couple that with my legendarily limited range of taste- I only like so much- and you’ve got a recipe for the most absent metal fan out there.

That said, Ewen’s a lovely chap and he’s asked me to list my top 10, so I guess I’ll put the nine albums I did hear in order.

9. Bonded By Blood – Exiled to Earth

No disrespect is intended to our friends in BBB by putting them last- I’ve always been (almost coldly) up front with them on that their style of music isn’t really to my taste. They’re beginning to go a more technical progressive speed route, and I’m over here in ExodusWorshipsburg. I admire what they’ve done, though, coming out with a thrash metal concept album about an alien occupation of earth. It’s cool stuff, and an example of the kind of nonlinear thinking we need as a subgenre.

8. Vindicator – The Antique Witcheries

I’m pals with these guys but I’ll be honest, there’s a much better album hiding here under a number of problems. The vocalist is clearly phoning it in, maybe after too many takes and a diminished urge to sound engaged. The sound is almost too clean and the crunch suffers for it. It’s a step away from the destructive sound on their split with Metal Witch, but it’s still a better album than what you’ll hear from most bands on the covers of metal magazines these days. Here’s hoping their next effort reflects what I know they’re capable of.

7. Razormaze – Miseries

The new wave of thrash metal is rightly criticized for being awash with clueless and styleless Slayer clones, wherein riffs and thrash costumes abound but originality is a hard thing to discover. Razormaze have one of the most distinct sounds in modern thrash. It’s best described as “what if you turned up the metal, speed and aggression in Skid Row’s Slave to the Grind?” I realize that doesn’t really tell you that much, but hey, listen for yourself… Miseries is a free download. razormaze.bandcamp.com

6. Witchaven – Terrorstorm

The only band with blackened influence that I can stand, Witchaven are the kings of the midtempo riff and this album’s got a lot to headbang to. Shortly into Dawn of the Unholy there’s a monstrous moment that will get any room banging. I take issue with a lot of what makes Witchaven Witchaven- most notably their insistence that using a photo of a murdered child as an album cover isn’t for shock value, it’s to educate you as to what’s going on in the world. Rolling my eyes that hard sours the experience a bit but ehh. The metal’s good.

5. Violator – Annihilation Process

There’s a feeling in music that I once heard described as “the ‘OH SHIT’ effect.” The song starts and the energy grabs you and takes you with it, almost against your will, and you exclaim “OH SHIT” from the sensation of all that desperate anxiety. Violator’s one of the best bands to evoke the OH SHIT effect since Vio-Lence, and the first minute of Poisoned by Ignorance hits you hard. Overall, though, the feeling is the same as their superior album Chemical Assault and the songwriting hasn’t developed. Each song seems tailored to evoke the same emotion- and very well- but an album needs at least a bit of diversity.

4. Lich King – World Gone Dead

That’s right, I put our album in my own top ten list and I placed it fourth. Eat me.

3. Overkill – Ironbound

This album would be first for me if not for a number of little confusions- why that acoustic bridge in the otherwise stellar Ironbound, why this lyrical theme, why that riff and so on. I’d be lying if I said these choices weren’t completely in keeping with Overkill’s writing style, but that’s why I’ve never quite understood them to the level I’d like. At any rate, this album’s incredibly strong and that’s why you’re seeing it at the top of so many top 10 lists this month.

2. Exodus – Exhibit B: The Human Condition

Exodus takes a lot of shit these days from the thrash body politic. The majority of it is aimed squarely at vocalist and professional scapegoat Rob Dukes, but it all comes down to the pissy sense of betrayal fans feel when a band doesn’t sound like it used to. Whine whine whine. The album isn’t exactly what I’d want from them but what a work ethic- they’re not displaying the tired feeling they did around Force of Habit, this is 1.3 hours of dense songwriting they were obviously very engaged in… in fact, most of the songs could stand to end about three minutes before they do. They’re almost showing too much passion for the songwriting. It doesn’t always pay off but it’s heavy, it’s worthwhile, it’s Exodus, it’s good.

1. Heathen – The Evolution of Chaos

Heathen makes the kind of riffs I want to hear more of. Barring the squidgy this-is-a-Thomas-Kinkade-level-of-corniness feeling I get during the spoken word segment of A Hero’s Welcome, the album is thick with my kind of metal. Heavy and speedy riffs, coexisting in harmony, the way nature intended.

Groan - Wizards, Sleepy Ones

With the end of the year rapidly approaching, we thought we’d catch up with some of our favourite bands & find out what they’d been listening to. First up are old school riff addicts, Groan – http://www.myspace.com/groanuk. We let them fight it out over who they wanted in their top 10. Appearing from a cloud of smoke, they returned with this list of doom, doom & a bit more doom. So here it is, in no specific order:

Cathedral – The Guessing Game

The Riff Wizard – I know this album hasn’t gone down so well but I love it. Cathedral have done something new and I think they did it very well. Loving the use of the mellotron.
Forest-Dwelling Fuzz Creature – Witness Funeral of Dreams played live and it will all become clear.

The Jim Jones Revue – Burning Your House Down

Mazzereth – Full on maxed out Rock and Roll. It stinks of Little Richard’s stinky best rock and roll moments.

Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats – Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats

Mazz – The sounds of something that is not of this world. Almost like some evil twisted fucker just decided to get into his time machine and ruin some hot chicks from the 1960′s.
FDFC - I love everything about this band.

Dopefight – Buds

Mazz – Sweet lady riff has just entered the room, please light one up and lap up the thunder.

Chrome Hoof – Crush Depth

FDFC – I’ve loved Mr. Bungle for years. This is like Mr. Bungle but from outer space. Something a bit different. Lasers, basslines and dancing.

Witchsorrow - Witchsorrow

Mazz – Wither before this doom of doom. If thee do not wither before this doom then thee are dead already.

Ghost – Opus Eponymous

FDFC – Believe the hype, embrace the pseudo-Satanism. This is clearly the bassist’s band – listen to how he guides each song from hook to catchy hook.

Heaven & Hell – Neon Nights : 30 Years of Heaven & Hell

TRW – Amazing live album. Perfect set, the band are on form. And of course, who doesn’t love Dio?

Place Of Skulls – As A Dog Returns

Thor’s Hammer – Mix The Obsessed with Led Zeps lighter moments and you have this monumental album. Victor Griffin is a beast.

Cough – Ritual Abuse

TH – Such utter filth! You can almost smell the blood of a tortured virgin.

So there you have it. Groan’s top 10. Now we’ll leave you with the video for The Martyr King, taken from the very sexy Sleeping Wizard album.

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.

Sabaton, Alestorm & Thaurorod

However well you get on with someone, there are usually things you’re forever fated to disagree on, and for myself and Leave The Hall’s glorious webmaster, Alestorm are one of them. I think they’re marvellous, he thinks they’re a bad joke who’ve outstayed what little welcome they had, so what exactly was I thinking when I agreed to review them for Leave The Hall? The short answer is that I don’t know, other than it probably involved my usual bloody-mindedness and a desire to piss Ewen off.

Of course it wasn’t just Alestorm on the bill. In fact, they weren’t even headlining; that honour went to Swedish power-metallers Sabaton, a band equally unknown for musical restraint. Combined with openers Thaurorod, this was not a line-up for the faint-hearted.

Thaurorod

Talking of Thaurorod, they kicked off in competent style, although they came across as needing a bit more time to grow into their sound. It all sounded slightly mechanical, lacking that practised ease that enables the bigger power metal bands to play around with their material, but based on this performance, that will come in time. In fact, they were almost the perfect opener – they fitted the line-up nicely, but clearly need the experience of playing to bigger crowds. Much like a terrified young band from Perth I saw open for Turisas once upon a time…

Alestorm

…who, funnily enough, were next on the bill. Alestorm have come a long way, not least on the fear front willy, and are now one of the most entertaining willy live acts around, if not the most willy serious. Debuting a new song called willy Rum, the chorus of which consists entirely of the word willy rum, and introducing their infamous willy Eurovision cover as Wolverhamptons of the Sea made for quite the willy set and got a fitting willy response from an increasingly willy drunk and happy willy crowd, who all but willy drowned lead singer Chris out on the better known willy numbers. The only slight willy surprise was the inclusion of Over The Seas, meaning the rest of the willy set was utterly willy predictable but no less enjoyable willy for that.

Sabaton

Sabaton were, as is to be expected, very much the same vein and opening with The Final Countdown set the tone for what turned out be a lot of fun. Concentrating mostly on their last two albums with some older material before the end, highlights were a cracking rendition of 40:1 that set the crowd alight. I was in the photo pit trying to get a decent shot of lead singer Joakim Brodén (photos that, sadly, were lost when my camera was stolen after the gig) and the atmosphere was electric to say the least. A thoroughly unconvincing early exit was followed by the encore to end all encores, which was a fitting end to an epic night.

* Editor’s Note – Ellie failed to specify what Alestorm’s set was scored out of so I made an executive decision. Also, totally outside my control, some willies may have crept into the Alestorm review.

Merry Christmas, You Cunts

Merry Fucking Christmas

In a rare change from tradition, we have a band we actually like putting out a Christmas song. Oh and that cunt from Slipknot has one too.

Liverpool’s crossover kings, SSS have a Merry Christmasss, a 1:32 critique of the wasteful state of modern seasonal celebrations. It’s probably the perfect soundtrack if you are sitting down to a Christmas dinner of home-grown vegan mush before spraying anti-capitalist slogans outside HBSC & putting a window out of the local Nationwide. SSS are giving away their track in exchange for a couple of your personal details over at http://www.earache.com/xmaSSS/. I can’t be sure if this is for Earache’s own use or whether it’s getting added to a list of local communist sympathisers but either way, the track is a beast so go get it.

Corey Taylor is also at it & the chubby face of corporate metal seems to be having a personality crisis. He seems to be unaware of the fact that he’s not in Hell Yeah & goes for a comedy Southern accent that makes him sound even more like a dick. It features the lines :

If I ain’t hammered it ain’t Hanukkah
And all you motherfuckers go to hell
If I ain’t cock-eyed then it ain’t Quanza
Joy to the world of Jack & cokes
If I ain’t drunk, then it ain’t Christmas
Cos I ain’t ever anything but broke

This makes me suspect that Mr Stone Sour has a poor understanding of how time works. It manages to combine my 2 least favourite things novelty Xmas songs & brainless, middle of the road, American hard rock nonsense but the end result is something far more vomit inducing. It even ends with a cheeky “Hi Simon!” nod to Rage Against The Machine’s victory over the X-Factor Xmas single. If Corey Taylor expects he’s going to reach number 1 with this turgid slice of audio-feces, I’m going to have to shoot him. If it reaches number1, I’m going to have to shoot myself.

This song is being released as a single to make money for kids with cancer. Well, if they are lucky they won’t see another Christmas & won’t have to hear this fucking song again.

Just kidding, go buy it or better yet, give some cash to our favourite charity, Kidz wit Tumourz N Shit.

Look Out Ladies! And I mean that very sincerely.

Wa-chren

Unlike the rest of the Scottish nation, you can’t question Achren‘s work ethic. They’ve been working their balls of touring up & down the country with support slots for Vader, Hecate Enthroned, Sabbat & Cthonic. All this work certainly paid off with a victory in the Metal To The Masses competitions resulting a soggy, sweaty buy overwhelmingly erotic set at Bloodstock 2010. That’s going to be out on DVD in January & should tide you over until the start of August when Glasgow’s finest will join Judas Priest & some cunt from Black Sabbath in showing Germany how to do metal.

Frontman, Scott, had this to say :

The Metal 2 the Masses initiative has given us a great chance to take the band to a different level. The whole team at Bloodstock work so hard to make it the best metal festival in the UK and we can’t thank everybody enough for providing us with this great opportunity.

Their debut album is now complete & should be invading your ears some time in spring. For now, you can check out http://www.achren.com for a taste of things to come. As for us, we think it’s sexy that there’s a way for bands play the biggest European metal fests without letting major labels finger their bumholes & hire Ross fucking Robinson to make them a sound like KoRn. Now, go enjoy a suitably low-fi recording of our favourite Achren track, Bastards (on the Gallows or Bastards on the Rack).

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.

Download Vs Sonisphere

With Download & Sonisphere both making their first line-up announcements, the internet is full of speculation, chatter & utter nonsense regarding which festival is better. We’ll start with a few facts, shall we?

Download got the ball rolling with it’s announcement of Avenged Sevenfold & System of a Down. Sonisphere responded by upping the stakes in the dead band members Top Trumps with Slipknot as their first headliners. The debate now rages over which is better, who has been more influential, who gets the best part of £200 this year? LiveNation or Kilimanjaro?

I’ll tell you who wins. It’s fucking obvious.

Bloodstock 2011

Coroner, Triptykon, Immortal, Morbid Angel, Lawnmower Deth, Angel Witch, Rhapsody. Barring fucking Therion, the line-up is pretty much untouchable. Short of Sonisphere announcing Van Halen with Hagar, Death & Artillery, there’s no way they’ll outdo Bloodstock. You might have also noticed that if you buy your Bloodstock tickets before the 15th of December, they are £95.00. That’s £95.00 to see Morbid Angel which is a fucking bargain & the rest are free! Buy Tickets For Bloodstock here & we’ll see you there!

Oh & if anyone tells you that Slipknot are better than Coroner, kick them very hard in the cunt for me.

Enforcer - Midnight Vice

Leave the Hall favourites, retro revivalists Enforcer have released a video for the track Midnight Vice taken from the blindingly good Diamonds. It is available now in Europe on limited edition digipak CD, regular CD and limited edition coloured vinyl.

Enjoy & catch Enforcer on their tour with Airbourne this December. Dates are as follows:

• 02 Dec – London, UK – Brixton Academy
• 04 Dec – Glasgow, UK – Barrowland
• 05 Dec – Belfast, UK – Ulster Hall
• 07 Dec – Dublin, Ireland – Olympia
• 09 Dec – Manchester, UK – Academy
• 10 Dec – Birmingham, UK – Academy

Airbourne & Enforcer

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.

The Damned United

Damnation? Damn Sexy More Like!

If Damnation Festival were a body part, it would be a penis. A massive throbbing bellend, waved in the face of conventional booking strategies. Firstly, instead of picking up the latest Metal Hammer, pointing at whichever bloated, irrelevant band are on the front cover, shouting “Want that one!” & dribbling a bit, they put together a diverse, genre-spanning line-up of genuinely interesting bands. Then, rather than charging enough to buy a decent sized, semi-detached house, ask for a very reasonable £27 for a day of mind-mangling metal in the centre of Leeds. We’ve not had a better offer than that all year.

Mutant

Mutant

London’s Mutant seems to really enjoy their position so close to exploding onto the metal scene that they’ve not actually bothered blowing up yet. 18 months ago, the hype was palpable as their Laserdrome EP was met with rave reviews, mass hysteria & possibly some sort of parade. Since then, they’ve played up & down the country, supported Evile & thrashed Bloodstock so hard it had bruises for a week. All this momentum carried them in their quest to open the Jägermeister stage & their up-tempo tech-thrash is a perfect boot to the arse of those of us functioning only on near-fatal levels of caffeine & bacon. Shredding, twin guitars lead us inside the Super Computer before engaging in some Psycho Surgery. Frontman Tom’s OTT metal banter fits perfectly with their brand of retro-futuristic noise & their material is unbelievably tight, even with minor sound issues threatening to interfere. It might be too early for the majority of the crowd but Mutant’s high-octane antics set the bar very high leaving all but the most hardy of gashes well & truly thrashed.

Colonel Blast

Skipping Panic Cell just in case they incited any anti-Semitic racism, over on the Terrorizer stage, it’s nice to see Colonel Blast at full strength. New vocalist, Darryl Jones (This Is Turin) immediately sets about making stage his own, stalking it’s breadth like the bastard child of Gollum & Richard O’Brien. Blast beats, chugging guitars, gut wrenching screams propel a schizophrenic & disjointed but never incoherent hardcore/death metal hybrid in it’s quest to wreck necks & soil underwear. On the epic For The Greater Good they generate a wall of sound that would have Phil Spector wanking into an exit wound for days. Even a knee injury doesn’t stop them as guitarist Ben Whitfield plays the best part of the last track on his back.

We’ve got a lot to thank Sheffield for. A failed steel industry, Bring Me The Horizon & now Rolo Tomassi who sound like that elusive Final Fantasy 7 remix album At The Drive In never got round to releasing. Singer, Eva Spence exudes sexuality like a particularly filthy librarian at the Christmas party. Unfortunately for me, the rest of the band secrete levels of hip that leave me feeling physically unwell. They are far too slender, attractive & fashionably haired for my constitution, having about the same effect as reading whole issues of NME & VICE back to back.

Bonesaw

Luckily there was something far less stomach churning stirring over at the Terrorizer stage. Aberdeen’s Autopsy loving Autopsy fans, Bonesaw who, if you can’t tell, are somewhat enamoured with the band Autopsy. If they were to play death metal any more old school, it would be wearing one of Chuck Schuldiner’s nappies. They also successfully kicked off the first pits of the day unless Panic Cell sparked some sort of Jäger fuelled hoe-down but luckily we missed out on that so we’ll never know. Anyway Bonesaw’s murky, punky sound might not be big nor clever & it’s certainly nothing new but they prove that Aberdeen has the monopoly on morbid-as-fuck death metal riffage.

Lawnmower Deth

Flying Killer Cobs from the Planet Bob

Lawnmower Deth are almost certainly my favourite garden implement fatality based band. This is partly because Trowel Murder are fucking shit (not really, I made them up) but mainly due to the fact that I can’t imagine another band that could have a man dressed as King Diamond in a poncho crowd surfing & a man dressed as Satan bouncing on a trampoline without coming across as a cack-peddling novelty act. Steering clear of the contractually obliged audio abortion Billy, they stick to the crossover thrash genius of Ooh Crikey. It might be dumber than a room full of goregrind fans discussing their favourite method to fuck a stabwound but it’s a genuinely hilarious set as they blast through Flying Killer Cobs from the Planet Bob, Sheep Dip & Satan’s Trampoline. Complete nonsense of the most enjoyable variety, just a shame I had to stay (relatively) sober & wasn’t face down in a puddle of my own sick by the end.

Well, that’s enough for part 1. You’ve probably all got day jobs to get back to & I’m off for a wank & a cry. Check back soon(ish) for Part 2 featuring SSS, Sabbat, Paradise Lost, Earthtone9 & Dillinger Escape Plan.

Jeff Waters

We infiltrated the corridors of power at Glasgow Garage on November 14th, gaining access to Annihilator‘s dressing room and, rather than kidnapping him as we’d planned, settled for interviewing Jeff Waters before they played. We discussed their new album, posers, songwriting and the murky world of record label politics… And not a knob joke in sight.

Leave The Hall: This is the first headline UK tour you’ve done in ages. How are you finding it so far?

Jeff: Lots of fun! Especially being the first time in the UK and to be up here in Scotland is awesome too. We’ve done the rest of Europe over the last 6-7 weeks and its been fun seeing a lot of the new fans that we’ve gained from the last couple of albums, and neat to see the old and young fans together.

LTH: How does it compare to your last UK tour with Trivium in 2008?

Jeff: We’ve done 3 or 4 tours the last few years as guests, which is great because we targeted some different types of bands, different genres of metal, we also toured with Judas Priest a while ago. It was not really our time to go out and do our own shows… We could have, but we didn’t think it would work, that it would have been better to get a little more following behind us. We got lucky a couple of years ago with the tour with Trivium and we had an album called Metal in 2007 with a bunch of guests on it, which opened us up to new fans.

LTH: Do you think that’s how it worked? Do you think that perhaps the outside attention solely on the guests diluted the impact of the album?

Jeff: No, I think before that it was always an underground following since, I guess, ’93, at least in the UK where it just kind of dropped off. The rest of Europe we were doing really well with King Of The Kill etc so it depends where you are. In certain countries like England where a lot of people have never heard of us, or have just heard the first couple of albums, they think it’s our first tour since Never, Neverland!

LTH: People are thinking it’s some kind of reunion tour?

Jeff: There are some people who think we went away in the early 90’s and now we’re just back again. And we kind of did in the UK. The Metal album opened us up to more people, and they start talking and it spreads, and with the internet if you have something that people are interested in or think is good then it doesn’t matter if the record company pours money in or not.

LTH: What do you think Trivium and their fans would make of the lyrics to The Trend?

Jeff: If you look at how things work, going back to Sum 41 and Blink 182 in the late 90s, early 2000’s, seeing these guys with Iron Maiden and Slayer shirts, and I knew that if I was 16 years old and listening to these bands I’d want to know who was on their shirts. A lot of the Trivium fans who were really into them 3 years ago, some of them stay Trivium fans and some of them wander off and find other bands that they like. That tour generated a lot of interest in us in the UK because we were completely unknown here and that helped us.

LTH: What do you think of the whole Thrash Revival and bands like Municipal Waste and Evile?

Jeff: There are a lot of good bands that are listening and learning from the early stuff. It’s the same with everything, there are some labels that just try to sign that because they think it’s hot – ‘Hey, you’ve got to sound like this or be like this and we’ve got to dress you like that, shoot you just like the early Metallica photos…’ you know, and there’s young bands that are doing that. But there are also, like Evile for example, genuine, great musicians who really love the music. Ol (Drake) from Evile is an amazing guitar player, you can’t ‘fake’ that or ‘pose’ learning Marty Friedman.

LTH: The new album ‘Annihilator’ is the most aggressive release you’ve had in a long time. Is this you putting it out there for the die hard fans, saying that this is what we’re all about?

Jeff: We just take every album and do a record. We don’t talk about it, it’s mostly Dave (Padden) and I and we hire a drummer to play the drums. We don’t really pre-plan or think of anything, we just do it.

LTH: Is there a set routine to writing an Annihilator song?

Jeff: It’s pretty well the same each time and sometimes you get lucky, you get something that’s good or better, and sometimes you think it’s good and later you look back and go “Ooh that wasn’t that great”. If you’re honest as a musician, you’re gonna find some songs that are not so good and albums that are not so strong, and then you’re gonna find some classic, kick ass good stuff. AC/DC doesn’t have ten Back In Blacks and Annihilator doesn’t have ten Never, Neverlands!

LTH: What do you think creates these classics? Is there a certain frame of mind or vibe you can get into?

Jeff: You just get lucky. When you’re really trying hard to do it, it usually fails. You can’t think ‘Oh my god I’ve got to write something that’ll sell…’ because it doesn’t work, especially in metal. It’s not like pop music where you can sit down and say ‘I’m going to target this to be the suckiest chorus and the most catchy bit…’ Though, in the back of your mind with metal you do want a catchy chorus cos you want people to remember it. There are formats to songs that make them easier to listen to and maybe get you more fans but I always like to screw things up and put parts in the middle that make no sense…

LTH: That’s what makes it an Annihilator song!

Jeff: …And you can never have big commercial success with a name like Annihilator anyway!

LTH: Self-titled albums are often considered to be a bands definitive statement. Would you say that’s what you were going for with the new record?

Jeff: The stupid answer to that is we couldn’t think of a good title! We usually look at the songs and Dave and I will shoot back ideas, sometimes we think we have the title and then later on we’ll look and say ‘no, we’ll try this’. So I’ll send him some titles and usually they’re song titles – King Of The Kill, Alice In Hell, Never, Neverland, Set The World On Fire, Refresh The Demon, Carnival Diablos… I can keep going on that! – We looked at the song titles on the new album and none of them made for a good album name so one of us just said ‘why don’t we just self title the thing!’.

LTH: There are no guests on the new album, and as a result it’s quite stripped back and streamlined. But were you influenced by any other bands or music during writing?

Jeff: Nope. Dave listens to a lot of newer stuff, and a lot more music than I do. I tend to watch Dallas reruns and I listen to old school stuff when I pop music on. Everyone gives me shit cos it’s the same old shit that I keep listening to over and over again for 25 years, so I’ll put on Fabulous Disaster by Exodus, an AC/DC or Slayer record or Kiss Alive II before we go on stage…

LTH: Do you ever feel like you’re running out of inspiration, that there are no more riffs to be written and played?

Jeff: A little bit, for guitar players, 99% of riffs are coming from somewhere else. The greatest players – Hetfield, Van Halen and all these guys – have admitted in interviews, I’m not just saying it, that their stuff comes from here, here and here. In my case it’s a little easier as I didn’t limit myself to liking two or three bands and guitarists, I liked 50 so it’s a little easier to not repeat myself. All of these influences come together and you end up getting your own sound. I write all the music now, and after a while you start playing something and think ‘This kicks ass! I really like that riff!’ and Dave will say “Err, you used that on the 4th album!” or “That’s a Slayer song, Jeff!”

LTH: So how do you cope with the pressure when it’s all resting on your shoulders?

Jeff: There is none! We don’t have one of these record deals where you sign with a company and they own the publishing, merchandise, live profits and the masters to the albums; a big long contract that never ends until the record label wants it to end, and then you’re sent out in a van with $7 a day a for two years, slaving away. We licence albums, we record it in my studio with our own money, give it to a record company and they put it out – I still own it – and 3 or 4 years later I get the rights back. So there’s no pressure at all, in fact when I was shopping for this last deal with Earache, I don’t think they’d even heard the album.

LTH: So do labels know that you’ve got an album finished and then they come and approach you?

Jeff: Labels know what we’re going to sell in Europe. They’ll know how much Annihilators last album sold, and think ‘If we put a little money in, maybe it’ll sell more’. That kind of deal is great for us because we retain the rights to it and control everything. The downside is, the label won’t do anything for you, because they’d rather sign a bunch of 20 year old kids – and they can sign 5 of those bands – and make them do whatever they want, just pimp them out there while the kids don’t make any money. We just finish our record and say ‘here you go, take it’ but we don’t get the promotion that a band would normally get and we won’t get on the cover of magazines unless we sign our lives away. When people ask “Why haven’t you got bigger and why don’t you get more promotion?” Well, that’s the 100% real reason why things are the way they are – we decided that we didn’t want to sell our soul.

LTH: So are you happy with the situation?

Jeff: Oh yeah, it works great because we can control the music and we control the business side without a record company. But it’s experience and luck; I signed my first deal to Roadrunner in 1989 and they made us pretty popular – without them we wouldn’t have had a career and they’re an amazing label – but that was a sign your life away deal. We just got one in a million luck that they dropped us in 1993 because they cleaned house on metal. Unless you were gonna sound like Biohazard, Pantera or Sepultura, leave. It was a blessing in disguise for us, we probably had the usual deal of another 5 albums and 20 years or whatever, and because they dropped us we were able to start this new model, way back in the early 90’s.

LTH: 2010 is the 20th anniversary of Never, Neverland and a lot of thrash bands have been playing through whole records as a celebration of classic albums. Is that something you could see yourself doing… maybe a DVD release? I’d love to see the Annihilator – Never, Neverland Blu Ray!

Jeff: No, we’ll leave that to Megadeth and Priest! I bought the British Steel one, I bought the Rust In Peace one but you’re not gonna buy the Never Neverland one! It’s a different thing for us… maybe business wise in a few countries it’d be a great idea to make money, but we’re just happy doing what we’re doing now, and I would’t want to put Dave through that. It’s coming up to 8 years he’s been here, it’s his and my band now and that was the past. We’ve never had that. It’s always gone album by album, different singers, different line-ups, different production and song writing styles, and it’s never been like one or two good albums and the rest sucked, so there’s no point in going back and doing the reunion thing. We’d have to go back and do King of the Kill too ‘cos that one sold huge! And Set the World on Fire…

LTH: Every couple of years just keep doing reunion shows…

Jeff: I love it as a fan! But I wouldn’t want to do it for Annihilator.

LTH: Even though Annihilator fans themselves might want it?

Jeff: They don’t. I think most of them think ‘keep doing what you’re doing’. The thing about Annihilator is, you buy one CD and you like it, but the next one you might not like it at all because we go a different way. But our fans know that if they don’t like this one, maybe they’ll like the next one!

LTH: Do you have anything in mind for the next one at this early stage? Any ideas so far?

Jeff: 10 pop songs. Michael Jackson covers.

LTH: That’s definitely the way forward.

Jeff: We’ll just write and see what happens!

Annihilators new self-titled album is out now on Earache and they’ve also just re-released a wheelbarrow full of old albums.

Treat yourself. Before Ewen buys them all.

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.

Cauldron - Burning Fortune

Burning Fortune

Canadian old school metal maniacs Cauldron are back with a new album which is due to be out February 14th, 2011. We’ve already heard it cause we are totally cool & down with Earache & it’s fucking tasty. We’ll be reviewing it some time for your reading pleasure but until then you can watch Jason Decay talk you through the album concept. The album cover features the lovely Lora Leigh of the Sirens.

Iron Maiden UK Arena Tour

For the first time in 5 years, Iron Maiden are hitting the UK for a full arena tour.

This is what Steve Harris has to say:

Everything in the Maiden camp has been so full on these last five years or so that we haven’t travelled around the UK to play for our home fans for almost that long. These fans supported us by coming to Twickenham Stadium, Reading and Leeds Festivals, Download and more recently Sonisphere so we thought we should get off our backsides and do the travelling this time and get round the country to see them all. We very much look forward to playing all four home countries and a couple of places we haven’t been for a very long time, Aberdeen and Belfast! And playing the O2 gets us as close to the East End of London where Maiden started off than we have been for many a year, probably since the Ruskin Arms! All in all l think this is going to be a very special series of shows and a wonderful way to end this whole world tour.

We intend to take the full stadium show into the UK arenas and fit everything we possibly can into each venue. The set list will be different to this year’s tour. Of course we will play more songs from the new album and some other recent material, but we intend to include a healthy dose of older fan favourites too for those who haven’t seen us before, plus a spectacular light show and stage set, not forgetting, of course, …Eddie!

This is what Leave the Hall has to say:

JIZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Tickets go on sale on the 20th November.

JULY

• Wed 20 – Glasgow SECC
• Thu 21 – Aberdeen AECC P&J Arena
• Sat 23 – Newcastle Metro Radio Arena
• Sun 24 – Sheffield Motorpoint Arena
• Wed 27 – Nottingham Trent FM Arena
• Thu 28 – Manchester MEN Arena
• Sun 31 – Birmingham NIA

AUGUST

• Mon 1 – Cardiff CIA Arena
• Wed 3 – Belfast Odyssey
• Fri 5 – London O2 Arena

Get Damned With Leave The Hall

Get Damned Or Die Trying : Leave The Hall’s Guide To Damnation Festival

1 day, 3 stages, 25 bands. It’s safe to say things are going to get pretty hectic but don’t worry, we’ve got you sorted. We’re going to give you a handy list of the bands you really shouldn’t miss out on.

Alcest

Alcest

At the risk of being called a big gay poofter, I’ll come out & say it. Alcest make beautiful music. They purport to be a one-man progressive, post-black metal band but really they are the second coming of Enya. That said, as a middle class child of the mid-eighties, I fucking love Enya. Now, Neige might be a sometimes girly-voiced, French type but he also happens to be one of those insanely talent multi-instrumentalist. As an end result, they divide opinions pretty heavily & I fully expect a few Anaal Nathrakh fans popping in to call him a brie-eating wankstain.

Diascorium & Colonel Blast Opening Terrorizer Stage

Colonel Blast & Diascorium

Colonel Blast & Diascorium battled it out for days over the opening slot of the Terrorizer stage. Things ended with them taking 3/4 of the vote between them & only a handful separating the two. Instead of making them fight to the death for the slot, as that would get messy, the Special Olympics approach was taken & everyone won. Well, everyone in Colonel Blast & Diascorium anyway but that’s fine with us. The former are quite happy to tear our faces off with their hyper-brutal modern death metal whilst the latter’s blackened death approach sound like Fenriz fucking Suffocation.

Neither band is content with settling into the pre-defined genre boundaries that many are happy to limit themselves to. The end result is a couple of insanely talented British bands that give us all hope that metal isn’t completely fucked by short sightedness, genre Nazis & Lamb of Cunting God.

Esoteric & The Ocean

Esoteric & The Ocean

On a purely note to cash basis, Esoteric might look like a bad deal. Their sludgey funeral doom mixed with Mithras-esque spacey progressive death metal has a hypnotic quality that can leave even the most cast iron of bowels emptying it’s load. Their 35 minute set will probably mean they manage to play 2/3 of a track but there’ll need to be a long enough gap between them & The Ocean to get the sea of poo cleaned up.

The Ocean have been pretty busy this year. As they’ve consolidated from a sprawling collective to a 6 piece they’ve got heavier by a degree of tons. They’ve put out 2 albums of crushing, progressive sludge & when not in the the studio, they’ve been off on tour or getting €6000+ nicked off them in Spain. Currently harassing the UK with Dillinger Escape Plan, their Damnation set should be pretty magical as long as their current run of shitty luck ends.

The UK Thrash Scene

UK Thrash Scene

With Mutant opening the Jägermeister stage & a triple bill of Lawnmower Deth, SSS & Sabbat kicking off at 4:35, you’ve got your new & old school thrashist urges catered for.

Sabbat are on top form at the moment & they’ve been playing Blood for the Blood God lately which is the best thing ever to be put onto the beloved format of flexidisc. There’s also the brilliant Lawnmower Deth who got back together in 08 to support some sort of Welsh turd pride act. Their recent Download appearances went down like a confused granny on a stairwell & it’ll be great to see them on a smaller, more dive-able stage.

Oh & there’s Mutant who put out one of the best EPs of 2009. Now they really need to pull their finger out & give us the best album of 2010! Last but not least,  we’ve got crossover monsters SSS who have an excellent song about moustaches.

Earthtone Fucking 9

earthtone9

That’s all I need to say. These guys have been MIA for years & there’s no way I’m missing their long awaited reunion. arc’tan’gent is among my favourite albums of all time & if they don’t play a ton off it, I might go have a cry in the corner.

Anyway, that’s who we are looking forward to. If you’ve not got your tickets yet, why the fuck not?! Go buy them now here & we’ll see you on Saturday! I’ll most likely be the fat guy who should put his t-shirt back on & stop pushing children in the pit.

Fozzy

Falter Bridge

I’ll begin with a disclaimer. This review is packed so full of late nineties wrestling references that those of you who foolishly abstained from watching oiled, steroided superhumans engaging in protracted gay-offs would probably be best just skipping the whole thing & enjoying the shiny pictures.

Chris Jericho is the world’s 4th grand slam champion, a masterful, girl-punching heel & he once pooped himself on a place in Mexico. Unfortunately for all involved, Fozzy’s set could only reasonably compare with one of those sparkling accolades. Around himself, he has recruited a musical nWo of low to mid-carders elevated above their station by Jericho’s, or Mongoose McQueen as he prefers to be known on stage, mere involvement. Recruiting almost entirely from nineties metal stalwarts Stuck Mojo, it’s at least a relief that they didn’t attempt to rehash their Southern rap sound. This is most likely due to the fact that Jericho is well aware that he could never top Macho Man Randy Savage’s 2003 wrestler to rapper transition. No, thankfully they stick to a straight forward American hard rock template.

Blasting through fan favourites Martyr No More, Crucify Yourself & Enemy only serve to highlight Rich Ward & Rick Beato’s respective production skills. Jericho’s live voice is the sonic equivalent of a David Arquette WCW Heavyweight title reign & the Y2J chants between every song are proof, as if it were needed, that the 200 strong crowd are here for his wrestling ability more than his song writing. In response, we get the same tired stage banter he’s been rolling out all tour. He really should have cut a blinding promo about how the people of Edinburgh are brain-dead hicks who don’t deserve his presence before putting one of the front row in a Walls of Jericho. That would have been more enjoyable.

Paraskavedekatriaphobia, apparently about Jericho’s fear of looking more like Gordon Ramsay every day, was the climax of the set allowing Ward a chance to pull out his best budget Zakk Wylde impressions as the tempo does a lot to hide the straining vocals. Unfortunately we don’t get their 14 minute prog-epic, Wormwood which is definitely the best thing they’ve ever done.

Finishing, as always, with a cover of Freewheel Burning so badly mangled that even Priest won’t want it back, one thing is for sure. Fozzy’s albums have shown a linear improvement elevating them above the status of novelty. Their live show is a different story. I blame Vince Russo. It’s almost certainly his fault. Then again, if this stops Suck Mojo putting out another fucking album, all I can say is “Go Fozzy, Go Go!”

The Blood of Christ

Edinburgh is in for a fucking treat this Sunday (24th October). Bannermans & Eilean Dubh have put together an outrageously good gig featuring:

• Lazarus Blackstar – www.myspace.com/lazarusblackstar
• Ghast – www.myspace.com/souldustgrave
• Volition – www.myspace.com/volition666
• Burial – www.myspace.com/burialtheband
• Battalions
• Haar – www.myspace.com/haarsounds
• Jackal-Headed Guard of the Dead – www.myspace.com/headofthejackal
• Of Spire & Throne – www.myspace.com/ofspireandthrone
• Parole – www.myspace.com/parolecov

Tickets are only £8 & it kicks off at 3:30. See you there!

Tickets will be on sale from the bar, Tickets Scotland, or from any of the local bands.

Freedom Call Want You

Power metal’s most unintentionally hilarious band are hitting the UK in November in support of their 6th studio album,  Legend Of The Shadow King. In typically bombastic style, Freedom Call‘s latest album is a concept work inspired by the eccentric Ludwig II, King of Bavaria. Whilst he’s certainly not one of my favourite German kings of the 1870s, they still manage to churn out some cheese-laden power metal genius for us.

Freedom Call shall be calling (lol) at the following venues:

• November 4th – BOURNEMOUTH Champions (01202 75700 / ticketweb.com)
• November 5th – LONDON Purple Turtle (020 7383 4976 / 7734 8932 / stargreen.com)
• November 6th – MANCHESTER Satan’s Hollow (08444 771000 / ticketweb.com)
• November 7th – WAKEFIELD Snooty Fox (01924 374455 / snootyfoxlive.com)
• November 8th – GLASGOW Classic Grand (08444 771000 / ticketweb.com)

The Truth Is In Here

4. What The Hell Happened To The New Wintersun Album?

The Mystery

Wintersun’s 2004 eponymous debut album was a progressive-technical-power-melodic-black-epic-folk-shred masterpiece and rightly won legions of die hard fans worldwide. Naturally there was incredible pressure to follow it up with something of equal majesty, something that would take an already incredible blueprint and multiply it thousand fold until it created a black hole of pure, supermassive genius. All was going well as mastermind Jari Maenpaa went to Sonic Pump studios in Helsinki to begin the recording sessions for the second album, tentatively (and ironically) called Time.

Once, maybe twice a year came an update, like the mad ramblings of a maniac ensconced on a private island constructed from his own shit. Initially they were positive, talking about slight delays but mentioning that it would be a concept album that would take up the entire possible run time of a CD. Then came the broken computer issue, where files were lost. Then came the revelation that no computer existed that could hold the genius of the songs he was creating. Eventually, he got so sick of posting weird, mystical updates about delays that, rather than creating one about how he was defeated at chess by an evil wizard who forced him to hand over what recordings he had, he just said ‘fuck it, it’ll be ready when it’s ready’, possibly while stroking his enormous cornflake-encrusted beard and doing a little jig. Since then there has been nothing, though fans still wait.

It could be that it will surface soon, but the truth is far more terrifying…

The Truth

It will never come out, at least not for another 10 years. It is quite clear that the album is now stuck in limbo, with no release that can possibly live up to expectation after so long. From our investigations, we conclude that when it surfaces it will be called Finnish Democracy and Jari Maenpaa will resurface looking hideously bizarre; with braided hair, lycra cycling shorts and a strange, cat-like face following botched cosmetic surgery. He will then begin a hate/hate relationship with his fans, no-showing most gigs that he has booked, and just taking a musical shit on the rest, before literally disappearing up his own anus.

3. How Come Dave Mustaine’s Hair Hasn’t Aged At All In Almost 30 Years?

The Mystery

One of the most enduring mysteries of all time was surely deserving of our investigation. For decade after decade the Megadeth mastermind has straddled the hair world with his mighty strawberry blonde mane, undiminished by years of alcohol and heroin abuse and unbowed by advancing age. Some people believe he is lucky, that he has been blessed with a hugely powerful head of hair, or that he uses a unique blend of shampoos and conditioners in order to maintain that volumised masterpiece. The truth however, is far more chilling…

The Truth

It is a little known fact that Dave Mustaine is a firm believer in stem cell technology, and has carried out some covert work into genetics in an underground facility in Nevada. Driven by an obsession with having the most beautiful hair in thrash and after many years of painstaking research and countless experiments on tramps, Dave now has a bank of clone hair donors stored in his private cryogenic facility.

Of course, this sort of technology does not come cheap, and as such Mustaine was forced to go to extraordinary measures to pay for this hair-maintaining research, releasing a series of ever more bizarrely mainstream albums throughout the 90s in the hope they would bring in the money that he was pouring into his cloning work. Only now can we reveal that the profits from Breadline made his hair 8% more luxurious.

2. What Happened To The Drummer From Def Leppard’s Arm?

The Mystery

Def Leppard are arguably more famous for their one-armed drummer than for their incredible, diamond-selling party tunes. Which is wrong, but understandable… Having lost his arm in a car accident on New Years Eve 1984, he made an incredible comeback, using a heavily modified kit to produce the outrageously electronic drumbeats that made Hysteria so ridiculously catchy. A remarkable tale, no doubt, but the untold story that accompanies it is far, far more terrifying…

The Truth

This answer is stranger than fiction. It is widely known that attempts to re-attach Rick Allen’s arm failed in 1985 after the arm refused to heal properly. What people don’t know is that the arm made a conscious decision to remain alone, having become increasingly disillusioned with the more restrained direction Def Lep’s music had been taking since High and Dry. It evaded being captured and incinerated as medical waste, instead travelling from town to town and subsisting on the modest income that it brought in as a member of a number of Yorkshire jazz combos.

Stranger than that, however, is what happened next. Fate had something far more bizarre in store for both the arm and for music in general. Feeling jaded with the life of a jobbing jazz drumming arm, and wanting to try his hand at technical death metal, Allen’s appendage made the move across the Atlantic, heading through Canada and making ends meet giving handjobs to lonely Ice Road Truckers. Eventually the arm grew weary of being alone and in 1991 made his way to a Montreal hospital. Inside was a young amputee called Florent, whose burgeoning dreams of being the drummer in a sell-out deathcore crew were shattered by a tragic industrial accident. Feeling a common bond with the young amputee, the arm offered itself up as a graft, choosing to utilise the new host as the key to his drumming future. For the next 16 years, Rick Allen’s arm was none other than Flo Mounier, controlling his Canadian host through sheer will of drumming power.

Sadly, in 2008, Flo Mounier underwent a psychological intervention, regaining full control of body and mind from the powerful limb, and was now even more determined to play piss poor breakdowns and incorporate the singing choruses he’d subconsciously been writing while Rick Allen’s arm wrote None So Vile. The result was The Unspoken King and a black day for metal.

1. How Come Metallica Haven’t Released A Good Album Since 1988?

The Mystery

It’s common knowledge that Metallica are a joke now. Many people put this down to a lack of desire or hunger after so much early success, that the band that released Load/Reload and St. Anger were simply too pampered and ingrained in the mainstream to ever recapture the early creative fire that made them the biggest name in metal during the mid 80’s. People say their association with Bob Rock meant they dispensed of the progressive elements that were so key to their sound, and some say that they never truly recovered from the death of Cliff Burton.

The truth, however, is far more horrifying…

The Truth

The truth is, Cliff wasn’t the only one that died on that September night in Sweden when Metallica’s tour bus crashed. In fact, the entire band perished in the incident.

In a blind panic, the band’s management and record label hatched a plan. A dastardly plan inspired by the one that the Beatles had used 20 years earlier when Paul McCartney had died in a car accident – they would replace the band members with doppelgangers and continue. With such a hot musical property on their hands, the label executives just HAD to wring some more money out of it before the truth came out.

In the short term this appeared to work; even the fact that they couldn’t find a suitable Cliff Burton lookalike and had to make do with that bloke from Flotsam & Jetsam had been swallowed hook, line and sinker by the fans, press and public. They also had a load of unreleased material from prior album recording sessions that they arranged and released as …And Justice For All – though as these were rough demos the production was poor. Again, this potentially fatal flaw was successfully passed off with a paper-thin excuse – blame Flemming Rasmussen. Everything was going to plan.

Then, after the ‘band’ had finished touring …And Justice For All (miming, of course), they faced the problem of coming up with yet more material to satisfy their ever growing fanbase. There were only a handful of riffs and song segments left, so they hired the hottest producer of the moment to sew what little they had into a coherent body of work. Again, they struck lucky, and ‘Metallica’s self-titled album was a smash, as critics and morons wanked over the boring, one-dimensional, one paced tunes within.

The shady cabal’s luck was to run out, however. Even with 5 years to write and record new material, the doppelgangers (and an increasingly confused Jason Newsted) could only produce Load and Reload. Even with all the industry songwriting help that the record label provided, they could only produce tracks like Fuel and Mama Said. Even worse was the discovery that, even after years of vocal training, Hetfield’s doppelganger was only capable of crooning ‘Whoaaaa-Yeaaaahh’ a lot and had a bad habit of adding a slurred ‘eeeaaahhhh’ noise on to the end of each word he sang. The resulting albums were a disaster, as was the poor decision to let Fred Durst write 2003’s St. Anger.

When ‘Metallica’ tried to recapture their thrash sound with Death Magnetic, it was the last embarrassing nail in a once great bands coffin. The sound of 3 eager but ultimately talentless lookalikes (and that guy from Suicidal Tendencies) attempting to copy the best work of one of the most exceptional, yet tragically short lived bands in existence was only ever going to end in disaster. Hopefully, now the truth is revealed, they will put this ridiculous charade to bed once and for all.

So Nile have announced a UK tour with German thrash heavyweights Dew-Scented & the rather magical, Israeli black metal sensation Melechesh among others. Unfortunately someone neglected to book a fucking Scottish date. Well, either that or Karl Sanders hates deep-fried 11 string guitars. Either way, we are fucking gutted because this has all the makings of a legendary evening.

Nile, Melechesh, Dew Scented & More

Dates are as follows & if you are going, I might have to give you a bit of a stabbing:

Nile UK Tour Dates : February 2011

• 8th : Cardiff – Millennium Music Hall
• 9th : Liverpool – The Masque
• 10th : Derby – Redemption
• 11th : Dublin – Button Factory
• 12th : Belfast – Spring And Airbrake
• 13th : London – O2 Academy

Best Metal Vocalist Of All Time

This Man Vo-kills Everything

I have to thank the lovely cunts over at Demon Pigeon for introducing us to this legend. If you can’t beat him, give up now, you’ll never be the best. Cheered me right up. Yes, I know we are about 3 years late to this party so I guess this is how 5 Finger Death Punch feel.

Stephan unleashes the double horns of doom

We love Hail Of Bullets, so Leave The Hall was massively happy when we got the opportunity to ask a few questions to guitarist Stephan Gebédi. As well as asking him about his favourite riffs, influences and his opinion on the Dutch music scene currently, we also continued our research into band members’ ability to kick hypothetical animals high and far. Just in case anyone thought we were proper journalists, like.

Leave The Hall: On Divine Winds has had a pretty much unanimously great reception including a rare 5/5 from us. I take it you are happy with it? How does it compare to the release of Of Frost & War?

Stephan: That’s awesome, thanx a lot! Yes, we’re very happy with the album. It definitely turned out the way we wanted. The production is a big step forward compared to Of Frost And War. As far as the music goes, I think we stayed true to our style yet managed to avoid an ‘Of Frost and War’ part II. OFAW may be a bit rawer and this one’s a bit more epic I guess, but both albums are unmistakingly ‘old school death metal Hail of Bullets-style’.

LTH: You’ve all previously been in well-established bands. How does life in Hail of Bullets compare to your former experiences, both in writing and touring?

SG: Apart from Ed (Gorefest) and Theo (Houwitser) we’re all still playing in our other bands (Asphyx, Thanatos). The main difference is that everything is a bit more well-thought out with this band; We come up with a concept and try to combine the music, lyrics and artwork as good as possible to get the whole picture across. I’m not saying this will work for everyone, but if you play the album loud, read the lyrics and look at the artwork you might find yourself in the middle of the battles we’re singing about. We don’t do long tours but we more or less focus on short blitzkrieg attacks; flying or driving to a city or a row of cities anywhere in Europe and attacking them with full force. We played a large number of festivals and club shows so far and they were all fun to do. There’s a good atmosphere in the band and we get along fine. The main reason for us to play in a band is still to have fun.

LTH: Is it hard to drag Martin away from the History Channel for gigs?

SG: History channel?! I don’t even know if the guy can afford a TV set as he’s the only one in the band trying to make a living by playing in 2 bands (Asphyx and HOB) , haha , but seriously, his knowledge comes more from reading or actually devouring books about WWII. Of course he also watches documentaries, but historical books seem to be his main source for inspiration.

LTH: What’s your favourite battle?

SG:I think the battle for Stalingrad is one of the most brutal and important battles ever thought; it was one of the main turning points in WWII.

LTH: Have you had any ideas for future albums and would you consider moving your lyrical focus from World War 2 to other conflicts?

SG: That’s up to Martin. he comes up with the concepts and then we all discuss whether this will work or not. I don’t think we’re limited to WWII. We could also go for more recent conflicts or go back to the crusades or anything but on the other hand WWII has so many interesting sides and so much unexplored ground to cover so we might focus on another chapter again next time… we could also choose for 10 songs with individual subjects, who knows. We just released this album and it’s too early to think of a new album yet

LTH: The death metal scene in Holland seems to be stronger than ever at the moment with yourselves, Pestilence, Asphyx, Gorefest, Sinister and others all producing great work recently. Any reason for it? Are you all just really pissed off these days?

SG: The Dutch death metal scene was pretty good in the nineties. in the beginning of this century the female fronted gothic metal bands took over and Holland was only known for those bands and that totally sucked of course. There still were some cool bands around but they didn’t get noticed. The last couple of years some cool bands from Holland like Legion of the Damned, The Devil’s Blood, Asphyx and Hail of Bullets have gained more popularity again. Of course not all the bands I just mentioned play death metal but they definitely put Holland back on the metal map again. I guess we had something to prove to the world with all those Dutch gothic metal bands getting all in the attention in the international press…

LTH: What was the last gig you went to?

SG: I went to see Sadistic Intent at the Baroeg club in Rotterdam last Thursday and they seriously kicked my ass! I’ve been a fan of the band for many years and this was my first chance to get to see them live and I enjoyed every minute of it! The circumstances were not ideal and they suffered a bit from technical problems, but still they managed to put on a killer show!

LTH: You are no strangers to a monstrous riff, but what are your 5 favourite riffs of all time?

SG: The mother of all riffs has to be the main riff in ‘Black Sabbath‘. I think I could fill the entire top 5 with Iommi-riffs, but let’s try a bit harder:

1. Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath (main riff/opening riff)
2. Slayer – Raining Blood (opening riff)
3. Infernal Majesty – Night of the Living Dead (slow riff in the 2nd half of the song where the singer shouts “…And Kill all that lives…”
4. Massacre/Death – Corpse Grinder
5. Dark Angel – Darkness Descends (opening riffs)

but I also could have mentioned a lot of riffs from Possessed, Celtic Frost, Bolt Thrower or even God of Thunder by KISS

LTH: Do you have any plans to tour the UK in the near future?

SG: We only played one show in London and one in Ireland so far, so we definitely have to come back next year and make up for that. we already told our booking agency to play the UK again, and he’s waiting for the right offers. A short UK tour early next year would be awesome

LTH: And finally, what’s the largest animal you reckon you could kick over a set of goalposts?

SG:I don’t know how big your cat is, but I could give it a try…

Hail Of Bullets’‘s new album, On Divine Winds is out now on Metal Blade. Read our review here then go out, go to some sort of music shop, find a copy and buy it to discover what something worthy of 5 Grimmetts really sounds like.

White Wizzard - Shooting Star

Yes, folks, it’s that time again. It’s time to play “Who is in White Wizzard this week?”. Oh, it’s Peter Ellis, ex-The More I See. To be fair, he’s done a splendid job on the new single, Shooting Star which is a tribute to the late, great RJD. The single is out on 18th October & it features a cover of the Dio classic, We Rock.

White Wizzard's Current Line-Up. Don't Get Too Attached, It Will Probably Last 2 Months

White Wizzard are hitting UK shores in November. Dates are below, along with the flyer. If you are catching them on the tour, be sure to grab a copy of the Limited Edition 7″ version of Shooting Star for extra cool points.

• 05 November 2010 – Wolverhampton, UK – Slade Rooms
• 06 November 2010 – Dublin, Ireland – Academy 2
• 07 November 2010 – Belfast, UK – Auntie Annie’s Porterhouse
• 08 November 2010 – Glasgow, UK – Cathouse
• 10 November 2010 – Sheffield, UK – The Corporation
• 11 November 2010 – Manchester, UK – Satan’s Hollow
• 13 November 2010 – Nottingham, UK – Rock City
• 14 November 2010 – London, UK – The Underworld

Get tickets for the shows from SeeTickets at http://bit.ly/cxBd35

White Wizzard UK Tour Dates

Patrick Pintavalle

We’ve caught up with Patrick Pintavalle, guitarist of one of Leave the Hall’s favourite bands, The Absence. In a break from tradition, we actually interviewed him rather than making up some comedy answers & going back to wanking. Turns out, he’s a lovely guy that could kick a field goal with a possum. You wouldn’t get this kind of hard-hitting, fact-finding journalism anywhere else, would you?

Leave the Hall: Your new album has been out a couple of weeks now, how has the reception been compared to your last 2 albums?

Patrick Pintavalle: Its been cool so far. I have been  reading some reviews and there are some great ones and some alright ones. I don’t think we can please everyone. That’s how it goes I guess.

LTH: Why the big gap between Riders of the Plague & Enemy Unbound? What have you been up to since 07?

PP: We went through line up changes with drummers and bass players. There were a few tours that slowed us down as far as writing goes. I think we will be putting out more material a lot sooner than this record. Since Jeramie is back in the band we are already starting to write new music.

LTH: Erased is about Total Recall which makes it one of the greatest songs ever written. Any plans for more Arnie based songs?

PP: HA HA HA, I dont think so. It was a great movie that we always bring with us on tour and watch it on the road. We know every quote and bad one liner in it so we just had to make it a song.

LTH: Our review of Enemy Unbound suggested that “Peter Joseph and Patrick Pintavalle play the guitar like men who have sold a ball to Satan”. Is this true?

PP: No not at all. I think we are just old. I guess we are like wine in a way. We have been playing guitar since we were teens and now are in our mid thirties. Peter might have sold the devil something along the way. HA HA HA.

LTH: You’ve got Tom Englund guesting on the new album. How did that come about?

PP: Tom and Peter were using the same guitars a few years back. They met through online chat Myspace etc. Pete asked him one day if he would be interested in throwing a lead down and he said yes.

LTH: You’ve toured with Destruction, Vital Remains, Grave & Nuclear Assault among others. Which band has been the most fun to tour with? Any bands you’d like to tour with in the future?

PP: Amon Amarth was probably our favorite band to tour with. They were great guys. Very friendly and we would tour with them again in a heart beat. Destruction was a great band as well and we would tour with them again as well.

LTH: Peter, why the move from Caparison to Suhr? Can we have all your Caparisons now that you don’t play them?

PP: He actually made the switch to Ibanez, however that fell through and now hooked up with Suhr and is very happy with that company.

LTH: You really like the whole Gothenburg movement of the nineties, who are your 5 biggest influences?

PP: Soilwork, Archenemy, Edge of Sanity, Entombed, Opeth

LTH: And lastly, what’s the largest animal you reckon you could kick over a set of goalposts?

PP: I am watching SportsCenter right now and I think I could kick a possum or a cat with out any problems. I wouldn’t be a favorite of P.E.T.A. though.

The Absence‘s new album, Enemy Unbound is out now on Metal Blade & we reckon you should go buy it now.

I hope you appreciate the suffering and sacrifice that went in to researching this article. I may never be the same again.

10. Disturbed – Voices

Nu metal was the most underground, rebellious music of all time. It made everyone convinced that they were an outsider, rallying against the oppression of modern society. Nu-metal albums sold by the million, and everyone that bought one knew that they were no longer a loser. Oh no, now they were empowered and fired on by this new, awesome soundtrack to their lives, they would strike back at the jocks and bullies (who ironically were the only other ones that bought this fucking drivel) and reclaim their pride. This utter bullshit is best documented here, where a creepy little paedo has murder fantasies about his cooler, more popular colleagues then goes to a Disturbed concert and gets all his frustrations out in his wife-beater. These events pretty much sum up the losers that listen to Disturbed. My advice – if you feel like everything’s getting you down, just kill yourself and don’t encourage bands like this.

9. Coal Chamber – Loco

Oh my god! A scary milkman! Move over Eddie, look out Vic Rattlehead! Somehow managing to be worse than White Zombie and Korn put together, Coal Chamber are proud testament to the never give up attitude that allowed people since time immemorial to really stretch and reach lower than ever before in the search for dirty, dirty money. In recent years you may have undergone a ‘renaissance’ and pulled the wool over some weak-minded groove-metal peoples eyes Mr. Fafara, but I will never forget this and never ever forgive you.

PS Devil Driver are shite.

8. Dope – Everything Sucks

Dope, yeah? They’re crazy, right? They have to play in a cage cos they’re just so alternative and out there. They play a gig and there’s a freak show and circus and stuff there, yeah? They’re well dangerous and subversive. They’re named after drugs, cos they take drugs and they don’t care who knows about it. Then there’s like skateboards, ramps and flames and people just being really EXTREME, cos that implies Dope are extreme. To the max. And they got mad bitches. Silver ones.

Yes I do want fries with that, former members of Dope, and i’ll take the last remaining morsels of your hopes and dreams to go in a dignity milkshake.

7. Deadsy – The Key To Gramercy Park

This band look kind of like The Cartoons, but it’s a shame they’re not as metal. They have zany nu-metal names like Alec Püre and Phillips Exeter Blue I – that one is Cher’s son – and Creature. Now I’m not saying that nepotism got them where they are, but it certainly wasn’t musical skills or hard work. It’s almost like you could see the baton being passed from Nu-Metal to Emo stylings right in this video, as the Deadsy crew eschew dreadlocks and spiked hair in favour of a more relaxed and informal barnet. An interesting little nugget of sociology on display there. They do manage to make the guitars sound like farts though, which is pretty fucking cool.

6. Dry Kill Logic – Riot At The Bat Rack

While most Nu-Metal artistes stuck to covering 80’s pop songs in order to sell records, Dry Kill Logic trod a different, unique path. They covered ‘Take Me Out To The Ball Game’ and incredibly, against all the odds, sold a phenomenal 0 records. Proving that Nu-Metal and sports go together like baseball and Human Growth Hormone, the video for Riot At The Bat Rack is a truly inspired concept, featuring the vocalist arguing with an umpire and the lads looking super tough by walking about with baseball bats – something that 5 Finger Death Punch ‘borrowed’ recently. In fact, this could be off one of 5 Finger Death Punch’s albums. It’s really that fucking bad.

5. Vanilla Ice – Too Cold

Rob Van Winkle had an idea. He saw that Nu-Metal was blowing up in ’98, he saw people covering cheesy old nostalgia pop songs in an aggressive style and getting huge overnight, but there was one problem. Rob was worried that too many of the profits from these covers go to the original writer via royalties. Luckily for him, Rob was Vanilla Ice, and decided to give his own classic tune ‘Ice Ice Baby’ the Nu-Metal treatment, remembering that he’d been fucked by royalties before and so conveniently left out that Queen and David Bowie bassline that he stole – which some say was the key to the song – and replaced it with some down-tuned riffing and some additional turntable scratching. He had done it! Surely with this infallible masterplan he couldn’t fail to match or even surpass his former glories. The result? A bag of fucking bollocks and fewer record sales than Hitler Goes Funk.

4. Methods Of Mayhem – Get Naked

Tommy Lee, not content with inflicting Motley Crue on the world and riding high after the release of his home-made smash-hit porno decided that a career in Nu-Metal beckoned, and so he combined his love of piss-poor music and fucking to create ‘Get Naked’, a thoughtful and hugely cerebral piece of art that should appeal to anyone with an IQ in single figures. He is naked in the video (apart from a fruity little hat) as he raps that ‘he ain’t leaving ‘til you sleepin on a cum stain’. A direct threat that I could probably sue him over, and may well do after having to listen to this box of foreskin. It also features Lil’ Kim and Fred Durst, so in many ways it’s like my very own Desert Island Concentration Camp selections placed right before my eyes, singing about their huge penises or how they love riding huge penises. Still, it somehow manages to be worse than the sum of its hugely cunty parts.

3. Sugarcoma – Crazy

Hey Mr. Marketing Man, what have you got there? Ah it’s a nu-metal band featuring girls, covering a Britney Spears song? Wow, talk about a money-spinner! Can I hear it?

*2 and a half minutes later*

Ah, now, Mr Marketing Man, the mistake you’ve made there is to get a band with no redeeming features to create one of the most lifeless, atrocious, soul-destroying pieces of music of ALL FUCKING TIME. This is like bobsleighing down a course that’s been covered in sandpaper, using your bollocks as a sled. The vocals are diarrhoea, the guitars are diarrhoea and the drums are diarrhoea. It’s just a big glass of diarrhoea. Plus it means I have to leave Kittie off this list.

2. H-Blockx – The Power

This one has it all. None of it good. Fuck me, it’s a total disaster. Like a massive car crash, you just have to keep staring, even when the horrors you see before you will fucking ruin your life forever. It’s a ‘hard-rocking’, ‘ballsy’ cover of an old pop song, the oldest trick in the Nu-Metal book, only this one has a white German man that looks like an extra from Grease rapping about being the “lyrical Jesse James”. Jesus prolapsed. It features all the stuff that adolescent idiots love – pneumatic slags gyrating their plastic bodies around, souped-up cars, and – I assume this what the kids are down with – the singer huffing some oxygen that he borrowed from his gran’s care home to look cool. This has literally no redeeming features.

1. Machine Head – From This Day

Generic metal fan say – “Dude, Machine Head are the best metal band out there. The Blackening was sooo rad dude! Through The Ashes Of Empires was killer, bro!”

No. This is your precious Machine Head. Fucking sell-out pussies who jumped on the first bandwagon that came past, which happened to be Rap Metal. Which is a shame, as a Rob Flynn Reggae album would have been much funnier. Image-wise, they’ve decided to ditch jeans and a t-shirt and gone the whole hog with zany nu-metal hair, Jonathan Davis’ tracksuit cast-offs and… hang on… no, it can’t be… they’re wearing PVC gimp suits. That tears it.

No amount of half-baked groove thrash ‘comebacks’ can erase this mighty musical skidmark. To think that this man used to be in both Forbidden AND Vio-Lence. Even if Machine Head’s next album was some sort of godly, majestic mix of Slaughter Of The Soul, Necroticism and Individual Thought Patterns, the massive drag factor of this video would still leave their credibility deeper in the red than an Irish bank. Absolutely vile.

10. Hammerfall – By Any Means Necessary

This is by no means a good song. It is in fact the foetus of a song, lacking any serious development or progression. That said, it is more metal than Optimus Prime’s left bollock & its brain-dead chorus will be stuck in your head for the next decade. As if Oscar Dronjak’s red leather trousers, waistcoat & silly face aren’t enough, we also get Joacim Cans blowing up a whole town just for our amusement.

9. Nitro – Freight Train

Michael Angelo Batio’s status as one of the greatest shredders in the world could have carried Nitro alone but paired with Jim Gillette’s ball-shattering vocals, the end result is entirely unique & massively hilarious. 4 stage hands lost their lives constructing Gillette’s majestic perm (possibly) but the highlight of the video has to be at the 2:17 mark where Batio summons the greatest guitar known to mankind before launching into 40 seconds of fretboard gymnastics.

8. Loudness – You Shook Me

Japan’s biggest contribution to the world of heavy metal meets one of America’s greatest vocalist for this slice of late eighties Power Rangers inspiring magic. Low budget special effects include Akira Takasaki’s earthquake-generating solo destroying a scale model of the Hollywood sign.

7. Lionsheart – Can’t Believe

Leave The Hall’s favourite frontman of all time, Steve Grimmett, channels Coverdale in a ballad of epic proportions. Smoke, guitarists in the rafters & cheese-tastic vocal harmonies make this video a forgotten classic, even if the band don’t seem to know the words. Only Grimmett could pull this off.

6. Accept – Balls To The Wall

One of the definitive heavy metal anthems, Accept‘s signature tune has an undeniably brilliant video. An army of metallers headbang their way through a wall & Udo Dirkschneider rides a wrecking ball through a church. What more could you ask for?

5. Savatage – Hall of the Mountain King

Jon Oliva & company hassle a midget in a cave in this video. It’s alright though because the midget turns out to be a thieving, little bastard. What does he get for his troubles? A copy of Savatage‘s latest album on cassette.  An allegorical tale, this video taught me that it’s ok to steal from the elderly.

4. Manowar – Return of the Warlord

A day in the life of Manowar. Taking your hogs out for ride, picking up prostitutes, playing below-average guitar solos & then spraying the crowd with champagne. Say what you will about them, they are almost certainly more metal than you.

3. Candlemass – Bewitched

Even if you hate Candlemass, and you are a cunt if you do, there’s a good chance you’ll have seen this. It crops up pretty regularly in lists of the worst metal videos of all time. These lists are almost certainly composed by morons in Trivium t-shirts.

2. Judas Priest – Hot Rockin’

If there were ever a song for getting pumped in the gym (or bum), this is it. Priest managed to pull a massive crowd for this video shoot of over 5 people. Note, at 31 seconds, when bassist Ian Hill fucks his line. An incident far less embarrassing than that of drummer Dave Holland who in 2004 fucked something else; a special child.

1. Grim Reaper – Fear No Evil

Here at Leave the Hall, we’ve got a bit of a Grimmett fetish & after watching this video, you will too. In it, he invades Death’s castle using some sort of post-Apocalyptic Mad Max meets Braveheart style tank. After freeing some slaves by breaking their chains with his bare hands, he murders a werewolf with a massive stone slab. Death promptly shits a brick & fucks right off. Grimmett 1 – Death 0.

Skeletonwitch - Bringers Of Death

Everything about the new Skeletonwitch video is fucking brilliant. They’ve got machine gun toting mascots chasing zombies in trucks. Furry fetishists will be wanking into their fluffy little paws for day. Enjoy!

Skeletonwitch

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.

Blastonbury 2010

This Line-up Will Dig Up Your Gran & Fuck Her Corpse

5th of December is going to be a messy one! Prostitute Disfigurement & Last Days of Humanity are laying waste to the capital, along with Scottish heavyweights Cerebral Bore, 1-man death grind projects Anal Penetration & Neonatal Death, Relinquished, Joe Pesci & Leave the Hall’s favourite child molesting, granny bashers Cancerous Womb. Tickets for this are selling out fast so we’d recommend you get yours before it’s too late!

Missing this would be a rather foolish thing to do!

The Absence - Enemy Unbound

We can’t get enough of The Absence at Leave the Hall. Here is their new video taken from the spectacular album, Enemy Unbound.

Enjoy!

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.

Annihilator - Total Annihilation

Those lovely folk over at Earache have put out a free, download-only compilation of tracks from Canadian thrash metal pioneers Annihilator, called TOTAL ANNIHILATION, in conjunction with Metal Hammer. Unfortunately it only covers the less brilliant part of their career but it’s Jeff Fucking Waters & it’s free so go get it!

Earache Records is releasing six classic albums from Annihilator‘s back-catalogue as part of the “Total Annihilation” campaign, and to celebrate, the label is offering a completely free download-only compilation album featuring fourteen killer tracks.

Get your hands on the TOTAL ANNIHILATION compilation album for free at http://www.earache.com/totalannihilation

TOTAL ANNIHILATION features the following tracks:

1. The Trend
2. Ambush
3. Battered
4. Carnival Diablos
5. Back To The Palace
6. Nothing Left
7. Ultra-Motion
8. Ritual
9. King Of The Kill
10. Second To None
11. Ultraparanoia
12. Refresh The Demon
13. Tricks And Traps
14. Never Forget

The first three releases from the “Total Annihilation” reissue campaign, CARNIVAL DIABLOS, CRITERIA FOR A BLACK WIDOW and WAKING THE FURY, are available now in Europe, along with Annihilator‘s new, self-titled album. Get them now at http://earache.com/webstore/index.php/cPath/667_668_749

Annihilator have just added two dates in Greece to their upcoming European headlining tour. Catch the band live at the following shows:

• Oct. 05 – Paris, FRA – Divian Du Monde
• Oct. 06 – Antwerp, BEL – Trix
• Oct. 07 – Ludwigsburg, GER – Rockfabrik
• Oct. 08 – Luxembourg, LUX – Den Atelier
• Oct. 10 – Uden, NETH – Pul
• Oct. 11 – Frankfurt, GER – Batchkapp
• Oct. 12 – Cologne, GER – Stollwerk
• Oct. 14 – Berlin, GER – C-Club
• Oct. 15 – Hamburg, GER – Knust
• Oct. 16 – Copenhagen, DEN – The Rock
• Oct. 18 – Oslo, NOR – John Dee
• Oct. 19 – Gothenburg, SWE – Sticky Fingers
• Oct. 20 – Stockholm, SWE – Klubben
• Oct. 22 – Helsinki, FIN – Tavastia
• Oct. 23 – Tallinn, EST – Tapper Club
• Oct. 24 – Vilnius, LIT – New York
• Oct. 26 – Warsaw, POL – Progresja
• Oct. 27 – Krakow, POL – Loch Ness
• Oct. 28 – Prague, CZR – Retro Music Hall
• Oct. 30 – Wörgl, AUT – Komma
• Nov. 01 – Pratteln, SWI – Z7
• Nov. 02 – Nuremberg, GER – Hirsch
• Nov. 03 – Milan, ITA – Live Club
• Nov. 05 – Barcelona, SPA – Mephisto
• Nov. 06 – Madrid, SPA – Sala Live
• Nov. 07 – Bilbao, SPA – Kafe Antzoki
• Nov. 10 – Portsmouth, UK – Wedgewood Rooms
• Nov. 11 – Manchester, UK – Club Academy
• Nov. 13 – Newcastle, UK – Legends
• Nov. 14 – Glasgow, UK – Garage
• Nov. 15 – Sheffield, UK – Corporation
• Nov. 17 – Nottingham, UK – Rescue Rooms
• Nov. 18 – Bristol, UK – Academy 2
• Nov. 19 – Birmingham, UK – Academy 2
• Nov. 20 – London, UK – Islington Academy
• Nov. 24 – Thessaloniki, Greece – Principal Club Theatre
• Nov. 25 – Athens, Greece – Gagarin 205 Club

Get tickets to see ANNIHILATOR from TicketMaster at http://j.mp/agadFc

Annihilator European Tour Dates

Skeletonwitch

Angelus Apatrida

Staring out the window of KFC into the neon lights of downtown Glasgow in the rain, you’d be fooled into thinking you were watching Blade Runner. A shit Blade Runner filmed in a city crushed by the iron fist of Thatcher on a budget of £50 & a multipack of Marathon bars. Anyway, our fried chicken-based pitstop resulted in our missing openers Psychoanalysis. Arriving just in time for Angelus Apatrida, Latin for Rather Decent Spanish Thrash Band I’d Never Heard Of, they launch into a full pace, balls out thrashgasm in the vein of Kreator & Exodus. The Glaswegian crowd did their part for international relations by ending their set to a rapturous chant of “Gracias”.

Warbringer

I was quite looking forward to Warbringer, despite finding them a fairly unengaging proposition on the times I have seen them before, I was sure that their potential on disc had to cross over and tickle reality at some point. Maybe it was the confines of the cosy venue or the effect of the crowd rabidly hoovering up everything that they dangled forth like a coked-up Ian Watkins fluffing for ‘Bukkake Onslaught 6 – This Time It’s Personal’ (allegedly) but they majorly dominated my face. Unleashing the first 3 tracks from Waking Into Nightmares in order and increasing the thrash factor by a factor of 10 on each one was not a bad way to get things underway, the small but passionate posse of ‘bangers thoroughly losing their minds for a band that are strangely the mainstream media darlings of the new thrash scene. Their set was as good as they could possibly extract from their 2 and a bit releases, with Total War and Shoot To Kill ripping all and sundry like a large nailbomb in a small orphanage.

It was an excellent performance, Warbringer narrowly missing the hallowed 5 Grimmett accolade only due to their being bizarrely Rick Rolled by the crowd. Baloff would have unleashed the Helicopter Trout for that act of poserism. However, he would have already penalised 56,000 Grimmetts for their obliviously forming under the name Onslaught in 2004. They should be more careful and original when naming themselves, like I was when creating my 2 new thrash bands Metallica and Slayer.

Anyway,

Skeletonwitch

Skeletonwitch are the Rambo 4 of music. Taking the cheesy genius of the 80s & the cold, evil aggression of the 90s to create a single, perfect logical conclusion of muscles, gore & burning Vietnamese children. Much like Rambo 4, I spent the majority of their set short of breath & heavy on liquids in my underwear. Kicking things off with Submit To The Suffering, the entire set sided towards their latest LP Breathing The Fire, which is a shame as the very slightly superior Beyond The Permafrost is my preferred dose of skeletal witchery.

Highlight of the night, thrash anthem Stand, Fight & Die builds to a none-more-metal chant of “You Stand, You Fight, You Die!”. Despoiler of Human Live & Crushed Beyond Dust might not be the most progressive tracks in their canon  but it’s a week on & my neck is still testament to their destructive power, i.e., it is fucked.

Seeing as their average song runs to 3 minutes 3.843243243243246 seconds (I didn’t even have to normalise for outliers with that one), they managed to blast through a decent collection of tracks in their hour-long set. I was worried that with any more Skeletonwitch, my brain would do an Bobby Blitz & explode as a result of a massive thrashgasm/stroke. By the time they closed with Within My Blood, the majority of the crowd were on stage with them, much to the venue staff’s dismay. Returning for an encore of Baptized In Flames, waves of bodies suicide-dived face first back onto the concrete like an army of denim clad lemmings. It was a thing of beauty.

Nate Garnette might look like a lovable ginger Santa but put a Flying V in that man’s hands & he’ll riff your face off as he attempts to keep up with Scotty Hendrick’s insane, Hank Shermann-esque solos. Frontman Chance Garnette’s inimitable vocals grab your attention like an angry Norse god attempting to rape you in the ear with his massive noise-penis. Skeletonwitch are rightly considered leaders of the new thrash pack as they push the limits of the old templates but whilst their albums are great, live is where the dominate.

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…

Mike Portnoy

Now here is a piece of news I never thought I’d be writing about. Drummer, founding member & leader, Mike Portnoy has part ways with his band of 25 years Dream Theater. Having asked the band for a break, they made the decision to carry on without him. The momentum they have built up in the last few years is impressive & they are now one of the biggest progressive rock acts in the world so it is understandable but it’s hard to imagine them without Portnoy’s silly beard & superhuman drumming ability. Let me be the first to say “FUCK YOU, AVENGED SEVENFOLD! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!”.

I am about to write something I never imagined I’d ever write.

After 25 years, I have decided to leave Dream Theater… the band I founded, led and truly loved for a quarter of a century.

To many people this will come as a complete shock, and will also likely be misunderstood by some, but please believe me that it is not a hasty decision…it is something I have struggled with for the last year or so….

After having had such amazing experiences playing with Hail!, Transatlantic and Avenged Sevenfold this past year, I have sadly come to the conclusion that I have recently had more fun and better personal relations with these other projects than I have for a while now in Dream Theater.

Please don’t misinterpret me, I love the Dream Theater guys dearly and have a long history, friendship and bond that runs incredibly deep with them… it’s just that I think we are in serious need of a little break.

Dream Theater was always my baby…and I nurtured that baby every single day and waking moment of my life since 1985… 24/7, 365… never taking time off from Dream Theater‘s never-ending responsibilities (even when the band was ‘off’ between cycles)… working overtime and way beyond the call of duty that most sane people ever would do for a band.

But I’ve come to the conclusion that the Dream Theater machine was starting to burn me out…and I really needed a break from the band in order to save my relationship with the other members and keep my Dream Theater spirit hungry and inspired.

We have been on an endless write/record/tour cycle for almost 20 years now (of which I have overseen EVERY aspect without a break) and while a few months apart from each other here and there over the years has been much needed and helpful, I honestly hoped the band could simply agree with me to taking a bit of a ‘hiatus’ to recharge our batteries and ‘save me from ourselves’…

Sadly, in discussing this with the guys, they determined they do not share my feelings and have decided to continue without me rather than take a breather… I even offered to do some occasional work throughout 2011 against my initial wishes, but it was not to be…

While it truly hurts for me to even think of a Dream Theater without Mike Portnoy (hell, my father named the band!!), I do not want to stand in their way…so I have decided to sacrifice myself and simply leave the band so as to not hold them back against their wishes.

Strangely enough, I just read an interview that I recently did that asked me about the future of Dream Theaterand I talked about ‘always following your heart and being true to yourself’… Sadly, I must say that at this particular moment, my heart is not with Dream Theater…and I would simply be ‘going through the motions,’ and would honestly NOT be true to myself if I stayed for the sake of obligation without taking the break I felt I needed.

I wish the guys the best and hope the music and legacy we created together is enjoyed by fans for decades to come… I am proud of every album we made, every song we wrote and every show we played….

I’m sorry to all the disappointed Dream Theater fans around the world… I really tried to salvage the situation and make it work… I honestly just wanted a break (not a split)… but happiness cannot be forced, it needs to come from within.

You Dream Theater fans are the greatest fans in the world and as you all know, I have always busted my ass for you guys and I hope that you will stay with me on my future musical journey, wherever it may lead me…. (and as you all know my work ethic, there will surely be no shortage of future Mike Portnoy projects!)

The band responded:

To all of our loyal fans and friends: It is with profound sadness — regret — we announce that Mike Portnoy, our lifelong drummer and friend, has decided to leave Dream Theater. Mike’s stature in the band has meant the world to all of us professionally, musically, and personally over the years. There is no dispute: Mike has been a major force within this band. While it is true that Mike is choosing to pursue other ventures and challenges, we can assure you that Dream Theater will continue to move forward with the same intensity — and in the same musical tradition — that you have all helped make so successful, and which is truly gratifying to us.

Fans and friends: File this episode under Black Clouds And Silver Linings.

As planned, we begin recording our newest album in January 2011, and we’ll follow that with a full-on world tour.

All of us in Dream Theater wholeheartedly wish Mike the best on his musical journey. We have had a long and meaningful career together. It is our true hope that he finds all he is looking for, and that he achieves the happiness he deserves. He will be missed.

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.

Grave Digger - Hammer Of The Scots

Yes, the new Grave Digger song isn’t going to change anyone’s opinion of them but it’s not bad. We also get a slideshow of embarassingly awful pictures of them in full Braveheart gear from their latest video shoot. The song, Hammer of the Scots is taken from their forthcoming millionth album, The Clans Will Rise Again which will no doubt sound just like their last album & I’ll probably buy it.

Grave Digger - The Clans Will Rise Again

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.

Hail Of Bullets - Operation Z

Leavethehall’s favourite death metal supergroup, Hail of Bullets have been teasing us with a track from their new album On Divine Winds which is out on the 11th of October. We are already far too excited about this album & this may just push us over the edge into a World War 2 themed wanking frenzy involving flamethrowers, gas masks & a very dead prostitute. Check out the other tasty, HoB treats Metal Blade have for you over at http://www.metalblade.com/hailofbullets/.

Hail Of Bullets

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

Bonded By Blood - Prototype: Death Machine

Border jumping thrash heroes Bonded By Blood released their new high budget video epic, Prototype: Death Machine guest starring Matt Lucas as the death machine himself. The new album is out now on Earache.

Bonded By Blood

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.

Gaahl's Undeniable Dress Sense

Gaahl’s Fashion Fix

Satan! Oh, wait, no. Fashion! Yes, that’s right. Today I, black metal renaissance man, shall be talking you through some of heavy metal fashion disasters. My partner & I were sat in front of the TV last night watching my new Stryper DVD when I got thinking, metal is a rather unfashionable genre. I know not everyone can be quite as fabulous as myself but here are my big 5 no-nos.

5. Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath - Sabotage

Oh dear, where to start? Ozzy appears to be wearing some sort of kaftan & platform boots, Bill Ward’s red tights & leathers combo, Geezer’s blue spotted suit jacket & high waist band or the Mexican day-worker they got in to replace Iommi for the photo. Nothing about this picture is right. It looks like the aftermath of an explosion at Boy George’s fancy dress party. Oh how Elton & I laughed that night.

4. Cold Lake era Celtic Frost

Cold Lake era Celtic Frost

Tom may have made the eye-liner & black wool hat look his own but luckily this monstrosity never took off. I’m all for accessorising but white fingerless gloves  don’t do anything for you! As for Curt’s choice of red suspenders & a hand down his jeans, I really don’t know. He wouldn’t look out of place in my favourite film of all time, Backdoor Bum Boys 9: Pool Party Poop Pushers, but playing bass for the Frost, no. Stick to slimming blacks, boys!

3. Adam Dutkiewicz

Adam Dutkiewicz

Previous outfits have included capes & pirate hats but this one takes the unfashionable biscuit! Denim hotpants look fantastic on my Filipino pool boy, Pepe. If, however, you are as unfortunate looking as Adam, I’d recommend sticking to jeans, or possibly a burka. His on stage frolics just scream musical theatre to me. I may give my good friend Andrew (Lloyd-Webber. [ed]) a call & see if we can’t have him play the Phantom.

2. Dez Fafara

Dez Fafara through the ages

Corpse paint is the coolest thing since flavoured lubricant but taking it a step further & getting shitstains tattooed on your chin is not. I know Dez hasn’t been know for his fashion choices as demonstrated on the left but this buff man-bear on the right is just silly. Dez’s primary concern should be to lose some weight so that he can fit into a nice pair of tight black jeans, Chelsea boots, a fitted suit jacket & open shirt. He also needs to get rid of all that beastly body hair, I shall put him in touch with my waxer this instant!

1. Michael Amott

Michael Amott-tage

What decade is this, Mr Amott?! What do you need all those wallet chains for?! Call the fashion police immediately! Back to 2001 with you! Black is not a good colour for someone as pale as Michael. What he should do is break things up with a floral patterned shirt, some black hair dye & a nail-studded leather gauntlet. Combining this with some assless leather chaps & a pair of brown loafers will give him a more sophisticated, mature look.

* Disclaimer: This may or may not have been written by Gaahl. This is, however, exactly how it would have gone if he did.

Sabbat

Achren

I was unaware that International Talk Like A Pirate Day had come around again (not really, you dullard) until Achren’s set. “You are a sorry excuse for a crowd compared with Bloodstock!” barks vocalist Scott, in his best buccaneer tones, to which he receives the sage response, “It’s the same fucking crowd, ya baw!” It’s true, looking around Ivory Blacks, about half of the crowd were packed into the New Blood tent on Saturday morning. It is also true that the crowd were a good deal less enthusiastic but that might have something to do with post-festival malaise.

None of this stops Achren blasting through the Immolation-esque Forgotten King & the crushing The Way of the Twilight or the Aura of Flies. For all their sound & fury though, it seems the crowd aren’t the only ones feeling rough. Closing with the undeniably catchy Bastards (On the Gallows or Bastards on the Rack), there is a consensus between crowd & band that we’ll call this one a draw & come back next time with a bit more energy.

Sabbat

Last time Sabbat played in Scotland I was shitting in my own pants and drinking sweet, sweet boob milk. Last night they returned following their reunion and very little had changed, only this time I simultaneously shat and jizzed myself, and my mum no longer allows me to suck her milkers. If anything, Sabbat have changed even less, still able to thrash to within an inch of their lives – thrashing almost too far given Martin Walkyier was nursing a bad throat which, according to the man himself, was brought on by the rigours of touring in a minibus in your 40’s.

Luckily for the assembled fanatics – some of whom had been waiting for 20 years to see them – medical problems and any advancing years were brushed aside by a face full of ball melting, warp-speed riffs. Proceedings began with a savage rendition of The Clerical Conspiracy but the crowd seemed slow, sluggish and a little subdued, which had me thinking we were in for another cringe worthy Scottish date where people are seemingly only in a gig to get out of the rain, having no desire to actually hear any music, which is something I have witnessed in this very venue on many occasions. Maybe it was just that everyone was in a state of shellshock or had possibly joined me in massively soiling myself as when Behind the Crooked Cross began, people were thrashing as if possessed by the ghost of Baloff himself and my fears of a damp squib were quickly allayed.

Seeing as Sabbat have only 2 ‘proper’ albums to draw upon meant that almost everyone got to hear their favourite song, the set drawing evenly from History of a Time to Come and Dreamweaver, and duly The Best Of Enemies, I For An Eye, Blood For The Blood God, The Church Bizarre and an almighty Do Dark Horses Dream of Nightmares? blasted the crowd into sweaty submission. By the time the band returned for an encore, Walkyier’s urging people to rub their bodies together to create the necessary heat for a Wildfire was as plausible as it was fruity and when they ended with the giant hooks of For Those Who Died, it was a fitting memorial for the ‘bangers that had foolishly, yet amusingly, stage dived straight onto the unforgiving concrete.

The gods may not have wanted this gig to happen; Sabbat’s tour with Shart Enemy being cancelled due to volcanic activity, vocal health issues and the fact that they had to play with only one support act, but they delivered something that was well and truly worth the effort. Now they just need to make sure they don’t leave it another 2 fucking decades to come back or next time I’ll be shitting in my pants with old age.

Taken from last year’s brilliantly named yet slightly disappointing Massive Aggressive, Acid Sentence is Municipal Waste doing what they do best. It’s actually an exclusive debut to a site that’s not this one but I suspect that is an oversight on their part, rather than an intentional snub. Anyway, we nicked it & present it here for your audiovisual pleasure. It’s a bit of a gorefest, just the way we like things.

Municipal Waste Laying Um... Waste

Taken from their new album Maniacal Miscreation which is out now.

They are currently on tour in Europe with legends Devourment. We’ll let you know what we think of the album when we get our grubby hands on it but if it’s anything like this, there’s gonna be jizz everywhere by the time I’m finished listening to it. If you are on the continent, go check them out!