Suicidal Black Metal… the Wormed way. That’s right, curious reader. Phlegeton, vocalist for what many consider the most over-the-top brutal and insanely technical Death Metal band in the cosmos, has a SDBM side project, and Memories of Sorrow marks an extremely impressive debut. Believe it or not, I always sensed an underlying worship of Negativity hidden deep inside Wormed’s whirlwind of mind-boggling speed and fretboard trigonometry. And whenever devotion is pledged to my beloved Goddess, homage paid to the mighty Katatonia is never far behind. Rest assured, the melodies of “Through This Slit” ring through like Brave Murder Day on acid. In addition to a very formidable Black Metal cackle, Phlegeton also gets to show off his drumming skills. He may not be Riky, but to say he knows his way around a blastbeat and a double-bass pattern would be an understatement. David Perez (ex-Neverdie) completes the duo by handling everything but drums and vocals; his miserable icy riffage unleashing downcast bitterness on “I Prefer So” and “I Want to Hear You Scream,” his subtle backdrop of haunting piano serving to enhance the overall sadness throughout. It would not surprise me at all to discover some Thranenkind, Heretoir, and maybe even a little Self-Inflicted Violence dwelling within these Spaniards’ playlists. Meanwhile, “Now I Remember” resumes the Katatonic invocation, yet also utilizes Scandinavian Second Wave frost and chanted Rotting Christ-like ambiance. Memories of Sorrow kills happiness dead —now I feel like cutting my wrist— and possesses a higher quality of musicianship than many records of this ilk are graced with. Of course, that should come as no shock considering the personnel. For all intents and purposes, skip the first track. “They Look at Me” is an awkward 6-minute soundcheck compared to the melancholy mastery the rest of the album has in store.

This album is a tough one for me to review. Steve “Zetro” Souza is a guy with a lot of Metal history. Not all of it is good. I’m one of those old Thrash fans that associates Zetro with the decline of Exodus. He may have been a nice guy (and certainly more stable than Paul Baloff, who epitomized all the insanity that was Exodus at the time), but he was the wrong person to front a band known for out of control violence and mayhem. Some of us also associate Zetro’s departure from Legacy as the turning point in that band’s history. For those not old enough to remember, Legacy recruited Chuck Billy, changed their name to Testament and became one of the more successful Bay Area Thrash bands. Now, I’m not a Zetro hater because I have a personal grudge against the guy. I don’t. Zetro tries his best, but his vocal style is a love-it-or-hate-it affair. If you hate his singing, you’re going to hate whatever band he’s in because his voice is front and center. There’s no escaping it. He sounds like a Thrash version of Brian Johnson (AC/DC), for those who’ve never heard him. His style is an acquired taste, to put it diplomatically. I’ve been trying to get into it for almost twenty years and I’m still not a fan. Like it or not, Zetro brings all that baggage with him to Hatriot. As a new band, the most experienced member here is Zetro. He has literally been in the Metal scene longer than most of the rest of his band have been alive. And get this: two of the members of the band are his kids (Cody and Nick Souza, the bassist and the drummer). Talk about a family affair. Musically, I found this LP to be a bit generic. This isn’t a sin because in this day and age, it’s tough to be original - especially in Thrash. The playing on Heroes of Origin is executed competently enough, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was listening to recycled Exodus riffs. This essentially sounds like Pleasures of the Flesh or Fabulous Disaster, in terms of style and substance, but with a more modern production. If you liked those albums, you’ll like Heroes of Origin. My personal favorite track was “Shadows of the Buried” because it had slower and heavier parts. The others were good, but this one stood out. The main reason for that was because it didn’t sound like something that Exodus would’ve done. Exodus was never big on being slow or heavy. They were all about fast and brutal. I think that the biggest hurdle Hatriot is going to have to overcome is the comparison to Exodus. It’s a big shadow to get out from under. Bonded by Blood is still the album to beat when it comes to brutal Bay Area Thrash. Anything associated with Exodus or Bay Area Thrash in general is going to be compared to it. Zetro’s vocal style still hasn’t won me over, but I’m willing to give the devil his due. He gave it 110% here. He’s positively venomous in his delivery. If anything, he’s even more pissed off now than he ever was when he was fronting Exodus. Now, if he can get the rest of his band up to speed, Hatriot will fucking kill. One side note before I end this review: the album art sucks. If you see this at your local record store, don’t let it be a deterrent to purchasing this album. The music on here deserved better. If you love Thrash, you’ll kick yourself in the ass for passing this up just because you thought the album cover looked stupid.

“THEY HAVE NO VOCALIST ANYMORE! TED KILLED HIMSELF SIX YEARS AGO! IT WAS REALLY BRUTAL, FIRST HE CUT OPEN ALL HIS ARTERIES IN THE BALLS AND THEN HE HAD BLOWN OFF HIS BRAINS WITH A CUMGUN I FOUND HIM AND IT SOUNDED FUCKING GAY, THE UPPER HALF OF THIS ALBUM WAS ALL OVER THE ROOM, AND THE LOWER PART OF THE BRAIN HAD FALLEN OUT OF THE REST OF THE ALBUM AND DOWN ON GYLVE’S BED. I OF COURSE GRABBED MY HAMMER IMMEDIATELY AND MADE SOME CRUMBLES,WE’LL THROW THEM WITH THE LAST MAYHEM LP. I AND HAMMER WERE SO LUCKY THAT WE FOUND TWO BIG PIECES OF THIS ALBUM AND WE HAVE HUNG ON NECKLACES AS A MEMORY. TED KILLED HIMSELF BECAUSE HE ROCKED ONLY ON THE TRUE OLD BLACK METAL ALBUMS AND LIFESTYLE. IT MEANS BLACK CLOTHES, SPIKES, CROSSES AND SO ON. YOU KNOW, BANDS LIKE OLD HELLHAMMER BATHORY AND SO ON…BUT TODAY THERE ARE ONLY MAILMEN IN MAILMAN SWIT AND SKATEBOARDS AND HARDCORE MORAL IDEALS, THEY TRY TO LOOK AS NORMAL AS POSSIBLE. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BLACK, THIS STUPID PEOPLE MUST FEAR BLACK METAL! BUT INSTEAD THEY LOVE SHITTY BANDS LIKE AGENT STEEL, SAVAGE GRACE,FATES WARNING,BLACK FLAG AND ALL THAT SHIT! ! THEY MUST TAKE THEIR SOUND TO WAHT IT WAS IN THE PAST! DEAD DIED FOR THIS CAUSE AND NOW I HAVE DECLARED WAR! ! I’M ANGRY, BUT AT THE SAME TIME I HAVE TO ADMIT THAT IT WAS INTERESTING TO BE ABLE TO EXAMINE A BLACK METAL BAND IN RIGOR MORTIS.
DEATH TO FALSE BLACK METAL OR DEATH METAL! ! ALSO TO THE TRENDY DARKTHRONE PEOPLE…AARRGGHH! !”

This album would be pretty good except for one thing: the vocals. They suck ass. I mean big time. Imagine a Black Metal band with an 80-year-old Slavic woman as the lead singer. Or better yet, Gollum from The Lord of the Rings wailing away about how he lost the ring, but in Russian instead of English. That’s how this sounds. Other than the wailing 80-year-old Slavic woman or Russian Gollum, the music on Anguish is really good. Echo of Emptiness is stylistically similar to old Burzum mixed with some early Emperor/Graveland, but with more acoustic guitar and better sound. I’m hesitant to call this Folk Metal because it doesn’t have the same vibe as most bands in that genre. There is some Slavic Folk influence, particularly in the acoustic parts, but other than that, this is pretty much straight-forward Atmospheric Black Metal. What saves this album from being absolute crap is the fact that most of it is sparse on the vocals. There are songs on here that go several minutes without any singing at all. However, when the vocals do come in, everything is ruined. What Echo of Emptiness really needs is a good singer. Immortalis, the guy who currently does all of the screeching (as well as handling the guitars and writing the lyrics), just doesn’t cut it. His vocals on this album were pure torture to sit through. This would probably have been an eight if it had better singing (or even none at all).

Old School Swedeath… the Polish way. Ladies and gents, I realize there’s a plethora of bands doing the NWOOSSDM thing at the moment. Shit, even I lost count months ago. But if you only give one of these bands the time of day… well, it should probably be Demonical… But if you only give two of these bands the time of day, the second one might as well be Ulcer. Much like Demonical, this isn’t some band of wide-eyed newcomers reveling in nostalgic flesh to kill time between Walking Dead episodes. These are the guys from the mighty Deivos wrecking Heavy Metal Pedal havoc in the name of the elder gods, and you need to fucking hear it. Grant Us Death just might be the truest modern-day replica of the Sunlight sound ever achieved. It’s absolutely astounding. A time capsule instantly transporting the listener back to the glory days of ‘90 and ‘91, when Sweden’s Big 4 were launching their first wave of perennial classics, and when Tomas Skogsberg and Dan Seagrave were both extremely busy men. The dual-vocal attack of Angelfuck and D.ssipline (Blaze of Perdition, Oremus) ensures a varied approach that owes as much to Clandestine as it does to Left Hand Path. Sometimes the duo get carried away, as we’re often subjected to suspect screams of the awkward variety, and they might overdo the Matti Karki-on-“Bleed for Me” spoken bits at times. But overall, the addition of a second vocalist serves to set Ulcer apart slightly from the ever burgeoning stream. Musically, the band —rounded out by Angelfuck’s Deivos cohorts Szwed (bass), Wizun (drums), Mscislaw (guitar), and Abusiveness/Exmortum guitarist LucaSS— doesn’t always feature songwriting as memorable as their powerful sound. However, raucous highlights such as the opening 1-2-3 punch of the title track, “Devilspeed” and “Bloodpainted Salvation,” the infectious-chorus-bearing “Devitalized,” and the impossible-to-resist-throwing-the-goat-head-while-listening-to “My Lord Has Horns”— \m/ —are going to make most songs seem like filler by comparison. When they hit their stride, Ulcer are unD-beatable. Originality-seekers, let it go for 43 minutes. Auto-erotic asphyxiation shouldn’t be your only guilty pleasure.

Ah, Suffocation… One of the most successful, revered, and downright imitated staples in the realm of brutal Death Metal. A new release from these scene giants is an event for the Death Metal lifer, and one that somewhat begs the question of how necessary a review even is. You either love Suffo and will track down Pinnacle of Bedlam at all costs, or you’re some fag/whore who doesn’t care about Suffo and therefore shouldn’t be acknowledged as a human being. Either way a review is academic. Still, that hasn’t stopped any Metal scribes so far. I’ve seen everything from “their best since Despise the Sun” —which certainly caught my attention as that’s likely my most listened to recording from these legends— to “highly evolved” to “super different” to “for fans of Dying Fetus.” HA! Well, I don’t know how “evolved” this is considering these guys have been at the top of their game since the beginning, and I’m not sure if this is better than Despise the Sun —maybe they meant “best drummer since Despise the Sun” as Dave Culross is back on board— although it is significantly better than 2009’s arguably phoned-in Blood Oath. Perhaps its greatest strength is that it really isn’t all that different. Why mess with success? The band’s signature Waltzing pummel, blastbeaten fury, and breakdown savagery sound as terrific as ever. There might be Death Metal vocalists who are as good as Frank Mullen, but there’s no one better. You can pick the man’s intelligible roar out of 666,666 growlers and he’s in fine form here. The album might not have the same high-memorability factor as post-reunion gems like Souls to Deny and the self-titled LP —all that really stands out after my first dozen spins is Mullen’s pronunciation of “cycles” (“sigh-cools”) on the opener and those wicked clean guitar flourishes on “Sullen Days”— but their instantly recognizable sound and unmatched technical prowess are memorable enough on their own to keep me coming back for more again and again. That’s why I only dominate Suffocation pits.
Note: no points added or subtracted for the bonus DVD, which features pro-golf tips from Carl Weathers and some of Barefoot Contessa’s favorite recipes. Just kidding, it’s the dreaded “making of” companion piece. I think I already know how the album was made. These guys went into the studio for a couple months and fucked shit up while someone pressed “record.” Why not some live footage and/or videos instead?

After Jerry Only’s somewhat lackluster vocal performance on 2011’s otherwise enjoyable big return, The Devil’s Rain, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to hear a new live album, presumably without any studio magic to support his voice. And one that features zero Danzig-era songs? That’s a tough sell, even to a Fiend Club lifer like me, and really seems like a stupid move. At just a cunt hair (remember those, anyone?) over 40 minutes, this set wasn’t that long anyway, so a few classics to beef it up seems so obvious that there must have been a reason, either legal or financial, that they weren’t included. Why there are only a handful of Graves-era songs (half the 14 cuts are from The Devil’s Rain) is another mystery. As would be expected, Only’s singing here is… not the best. I hate to be mean to Jerry, because he really tries hard, and all these songs are energetic, but there are a hell of a lot of rough edges, and not just vocally. The recording, for example, is clear enough, but all the guitar is on one side/channel/speaker, and all the bass (which is distorted and loud) on the other. I’ve played bass for a quarter of a century, and I love it. There is no such thing as too much bass! But mix the fucking sound together! Total separation of every instrument is a terrible idea. And even that might be okay if the playing weren’t so sloppy. The band clearly wanted this particular show because it was done on Halloween (in NYC), so I suppose that using a different recording was out of the question, but even if they didn’t want to do any studio overdubs (which admittedly does kinda seem like cheating, and in any case isn’t very Punk), a different mix (hell, any mix!) could have made quite a difference. As it stands, the best sounding song here is probably the cover of “Science Fiction/Double Feature.” Yeah, the Rocky Horror song. It may sound as if I hate Dea.d. Alive!, and that’s not the case at all. After, let’s say, thirteen spins, I more or less got used to the unmix, slop, and vocal issues, so more than anything else, it’s the missing songs that really bring this album down. Live Misfits with no “Last Caress,” “Where Eagles Dare,” “London Dungeon,” a dozen others, or especially “We Are 138”?! They should have included some of those early songs, no matter how many bags of kitty litter Danzig demanded for them.

Hopelorn is one of those bands that comes along and surprises you. I was expecting a Goth Metal album based on the cover art, but this isn’t even close. Rami Stalnacke, the sole member of Hopelorn, has been doing this band since 2008, but only started releasing music in 2011. So far, all of Hopelorn’s material has been self-released. I don’t know if this is intentional or not, but it seems strange to me that a band has this much output and still remains unattached to a record label. This is Hopelorn’s first full-length album, prior to which there were two EPs: Golden Fields, Black Wings (2011) and Tuonen Musta Joki Virtaa Sydamessani (2012). I don’t have the two EPs, but From Withered Branches has made me want to track them down. This is some kick ass stuff. The best way to describe this record is Swedish Black/Death Metal. It’s Black Metal, but produced as if it were old-school Swedish Death Metal in the vein of early Entombed or Dismember. That means a thick, brutal, Sunlight Studios guitar sound that hits you hard, just like Left Hand Path did. Amidst the punishing guitar riffs are atmospheric elements, melodic riffs, acoustic guitars and minimalistic keyboards. The additional elements add some much needed variety to Hopelorn’s sound. One of the problems Death and Black Metal bands face is monotony. I can’t tell you how many CDs I’ve owned that were essentially ten different versions of the same song. From Withered Branches is far from monotonous. There is plenty of variety and interesting musical parts, but none of it comes at the expense of the mayhem and destruction that is being dished out throughout the course of this album. Hopelorn is definitely a band to look out for.

When it comes to traditional Doom Metal, it all boils down to how good your singer is. That’s an awful lot of pressure to place squarely on one contributor’s shoulders, but that’s the inherent nature of the beast. After all, we probably wouldn’t even be having this discussion if it had been Frank Stallone doing the vocals on Black Sabbath. This newest installment in the perplexing Scion Audio Visual EP series is actually my first taste of this group who hail from just a few hours south of Metal Curse headquarters, but given their unashamedly clear-cut intentions, these five songs are probably as good a place to start as any. Musically speaking, these Hoosiers are as sure-handed as anyone at the Sabbath-worship craft. The aptly-titled “Death March” begins the ceremony with slow-motion, heaviness-enhanced Iommi homage. Everything is expertly executed right down to the all-pro, prosthetic-fingertip solo. “Driven Insane” staggers into Stoner Doom territory, yet still firmly emulates the masters of reality… that is until the song speeds up at 3:31 and the ensuing riff sounds way too much like “You Really Got Me” by The Kinks. “Son of Hades” and “Dragon Caravan” are there to remind us that Bluesy Rock structures are indeed the roots that grow beneath the Black Sab foundation, while “Of That Which Can Never Be” closes the EP out at the more funereal pace of its opener. So let it be written, so let it be done, The Gates of Slumber are as adept as the next Electric Wizard in line at invoking the feel of Birmingham’s dark sons. Unfortunately, it’s all rather irrelevant (please see first sentence of review). Karl Simon isn’t the worst Doom singer I’ve ever heard, but I can’t honestly say he’s good enough to warrant middle-of-the-road status, either. He flat-out sounds like a bloated, off-key Gene Simmons. That’s fine if you’re doing “I Love It Loud” at the local Karaoke pub, but for material this gloomy, it’s a real shot in the foot. Factor in some occasionally goofy lyrics and vocal patterns on the more up-tempo jams, and we now have a formidably insurmountable hindrance. A shame considering how many of the-best-Black-Sabbath-riffs-Black-Sabbath-didn’t-write are wasted. Frank Stallone might actually have been a step up in this case.