A band featuring both Sakis (aka Necromayhem) of Rotting Christ and Magus Wampyr Daoloth (aka The Magus) of Necromantia can only be awesome, but Thou Art Lord never achieved the level of recognition that they should have gotten. They’ve released a number of albums over the years, but aside from a cult following, they’ve always remained in the shadow of both Rotting Christ and Necromantia. When you consider how active Rotting Christ has been over the years, I’m honestly surprised that Sakis even had the time to spare for Thou Art Lord. The band has returned, though, with a revamped lineup and a new album. Vocalist Gothmog is back in the fold and they’ve recruited some new members in the form of El (guitars & keyboards) and Maelstrom (drums). This time around, the driving force behind the band seems to be El, who either wrote the music himself or split the duties with either Sakis or MWD. As with old Thou Art Lord, The Regal Pulse of Lucifer draws heavily on Rotting Christ as the musical influence. A lot of folks who’ve heard this LP say that this could have easily been a Rotting Christ release if Sakis had done the vocals instead of Gothmog. This is a valid point because the guitar playing here is very much in line with the traditional Rotting Christ sound. Still, that’s nothing new where this band is concerned. Even if you go back to their earliest material, they’ve always sounded like Rotting Christ to a greater or lesser degree. If anything, The Regal Pulse of Lucifer is a throwback to the older (Non Serviam era, maybe?) Rotting Christ sound with a bit of Necromantia thrown into the mix. While some folks out there haven’t been too keen on the newer Rotting Christ material (the last two albums have been in the love-it-or-hate-it category), most longtime fans should like this. There’s no weird shit, no Folk Metal or tribal drumming. This is just straight-out Black Metal in the Greek style. While I did like the last couple Rotting Christ records, I find myself liking this new album by Thou Art Lord a bit more. It’s not as polished and it has a darker, more evil sound to it. That’s what I’m looking for in Black Metal and this has it in abundance.

This is my first time hearing England’s Lychgate (formerly known as Archaicus), though I have heard guitarist/keyboardist Vortigern’s other band, The One, before. Having heard The One, I was expecting something more in that vein, but Lychgate sounds completely different. It’s still Black Metal, but it comes from the opposite end of the spectrum. Where I was anticipating something in the more raw and dirty Darkthrone style, this LP surprised me by being very clean and structured. Unlike The One, Lychgate is very technical. I’m not generally a fan of technical music, but I appreciate skillful playing when I hear it, and these guys are definitely good at what they do. I also like that while this is technical, it never degenerates into pointless guitar masturbation or weird-for-the-sake-of-being-weird navel-gazing Progressive Metal. The music is dark, melodic, and though it isn’t slow, it has something of a Doom atmosphere. My only real gripe is that the songs don’t have any memorable bits in them. It’s possible to be technical and memorable at the same time, but it’s not an easy thing to pull off. Having a hook or something that the listener can latch on to makes the song stick in your head. Lychgate doesn’t have any of that here. That being said, you really can’t remember any of the songs from this LP after it’s done playing. If these guys can work in some memorable bits, their next release could be lethal. As it is, this LP is still an interesting listen. If you like technical Death or Black Metal, you will probably enjoy the music that Lychgate is making.

I’ve read some extremely negative reviews of this album, which I find puzzling. What else could anyone expect from Broken Hope other than brutal Death Metal? And of course this is exactly what is delivered here, on the band’s return after a 14 year absence. Maybe I’m biased. I’ve always liked these sick bastards (and possibly every other Death Metal band in Chicago). I’ve got their demo tapes, my old band Adversary played some shows with them nearly two decades ago (never forget The Thirsty Whale!), and I’ve otherwise seen Broken Hope perform countless times. Not recently, obviously. Over the years, their 1991 debut, Swamped in Gore (supposedly the first-ever all-digitally recorded/mixed Death Metal record!), has emerged as my favorite of their albums, because although not the most brutal, it is hands-down the most memorable, especially the amazing title track and “Bag of Parts.” I had hoped that Omen of Disease would somehow combine the intensity and extremity of the band’s other albums with the slightly more straightforward approach of Swamped…, and that’s more or less what they did, wrapped in a clear-yet-thick production. And, when I say “they,” I mean mastermind Jeremy Wager, who reunited with bassist Shaun Glass (who was only around for two albums back in the old days: 1995’s Repulsive Conception and 1997’s Loathing), and recruited some unknowns (to me, at least), Chuck Wepfer and Mike Miczek, to fill out the guitar and drum spots respectively. Maybe Jeremy has spent the last decade-and-a-half training these new guys (when he’s not writing books), because they sound like old pros. No one could ever replace the late Joe Ptacek (rest in peace, brother) and his legendary bestial esophagus, but Gorgasm’s Damian Leski does his memory proud with monstrous bellows, roars, and growls. While not quite flawless, Omen… never goes too long without impressing. Check out the awesomeness about 2:20 into “Ghastly,” the opening riff of “Rendered Into Lard,” every second of the show-stealing “Give Me the Bottom Half,” and really most of the rest of the album. There are a few misfires, however. Maybe a riff here and there that doesn’t make 100% sense to me. And the hammy spoken-word final minute of “Rendered Into Lard,” which I assume is supposed to be creepy, but goes on far too long and is almost instantly eye-rollingly goofy. Anything else is just nitpicking, but that’s what keeps great albums from being perfect, and this is a great album. The “limited edition” digipak comes with two bonus live tracks (only about four-and-a-half minutes combined, and hopefully a live CD/DVD is coming next, anyway), and a “history of Broken Hope” DVD, which unfortunately I haven’t seen. It might be interesting, but it’s almost certainly a once-ever viewing even for me, so I don’t know if it’s really worth much extra money.

When I first heard Satyricon back in the days of Dark Medieval Times and The Shadowthrone, they were considered one of the leading voices in the post-Euronymous Norwegian Black Metal scene. While I never considered them to be top-tier, Satyr and Frost did produce some good music. After their third LP, Nemesis Divina, I started losing interest in them. They were going a different direction and I wasn’t much interested in the music that they were putting out. It’s been a number of years since I last heard Satyricon (outside of the odd listen to one of their first three albums), so when I saw this LP at my local record store, I decided to see what they sounded like now. Let’s just say that I was more than a little bit disappointed. Compared to previous Satyricon releases, this new LP is pretty bland. Satyr and Frost have gone back to a more orthodox Black Metal sound, but they’ve incorporated some slower traditional Heavy Metal riffing in with their worship of old Bathory. It’s more melodic and though the riffs are more memorable, the plodding speed and lack of intensity make this really hard to get excited about. I went back and listened to my old Satyricon albums for comparison purposes and the differences were pretty stark. Satyr and Frost sound positively sedated here. I used to criticize Frost’s playing because he tended to stick to only one speed: Warp Ten. Now, I wish he’d get fired up and start blasting away because I know he can do it. It almost sounds like they lost their fire. Even though the music is note-perfect, the lack of feeling or intensity sinks this. I actually felt sad while listening to it. And not because the music was so morose that it evoked that emotion. I felt sad because the music on this LP was so empty. It was like listening to a band that’s just going through the motions. They don’t have anything to prove to anyone. Satyricon made their mark on the scene years ago. I’ve heard this LP described as the band’s most introspective work ever. If it is, they obviously looked inside themselves and discovered that their souls were missing. I haven’t completely written Satyricon off, though. If they can find their lost intensity and put some feeling into their next LP, it might just be legendary. This one, though, definitely isn’t.

Iraq isn’t what I would call a hotbed of Black Metal activity. Most Muslim countries don’t take very well to this kind of music and the lyrical content that Seeds of Iblis has. Unlike your average anti-Christian Black Metal band, Seeds of Iblis is anti-Islamic. You don’t see too many of those bands, particularly from the Middle East. Saying “Fuck Jesus,” or burning a church in Iraq won’t get you killed. Saying “Fuck the Prophet Mohammed” will likely get you decapitated, though. Blasphemy is usually a capital offense, just ask Salman Rushdie about it. He wrote Satanic Verses ages ago and he’s still in hiding because that fatwa on his head is still in effect. Given that threat hovering over their heads, it’s surprising that a band like Seeds of Iblis can exist. Musically, Seeds of Iblis has kind of an interesting sound. They’re a raw and dirty Darkthrone/Burzum-inspired band that also incorporates a lot of Middle Eastern/Islamic elements to their music. I’m sure that their local mosque doesn’t appreciate them using Muslim prayer and other samples in their songs, particularly ones with names like “Islamic Lies.” I was initially turned off by the extremely raw sound on Anti Quran Rituals, but something about the atmosphere on this LP keeps me listening. It’s dark and twisted, going from raw, droning Black Metal to some echoing acoustic guitar with accompanying anti-Islamic prayer/chanting. I’ve always liked looking for obscure bands from oddball places in the world because every now and then, I’m rewarded with an LP that gives me a new twist on something familiar. Anti Quran Rituals does that for me. It stands out amidst the sea of generic Black Metal, and when you consider how oversaturated the marketplace is, that’s quite an accomplishment.

Live albums seem to be all the rage in the Power Metal scene these days. After enduring two hours and twenty minutes of Iced Earth, I discovered that Axel Rudi Pell had a live album, too. Live on Fire is their 2012 set from Essigfabrik, in Cologne, Germany. [The retail CD/DVD sets have a second disc featuring the band’s performance at the 2012 Rock of Ages festival.] In a way, this live set reminded me of listening to the Dio at Donington UK 1983 & 1987 live album in more ways than just one. I’ve always thought that vocalist Johnny Gioeli had a voice that was eerily similar to the late Ronnie James Dio. This is especially noticeable live. They have comparable accents and intonations. It always made Axel Rudi Pell sound like a Power Metal version of Dio to me. The other similarity between the Dio live CD and Axel Rudi Pell’s is the extensive use of medleys. In order to compress a whole array of songs into a short set, Dio would often play several songs mashed up together. I always hated that and wanted to hear the complete songs. A truncated version of “Holy Diver” never did it for me because I thought the whole song was awesome. It made portions of the live show seem like a DJ set instead of a concert. I might just be weird like that, but it gets my goat. Such is the case here on Live on Fire. The medley of “The Masquerade Ball” and four other songs was pretty good, but I would’ve preferred that each song get its own time instead of including a drum solo, keyboard solo and a jam session in the middle of “Carousel.” I’ve always found drum solos to be a waste of time (unless you happen to be Neil Peart of Rush) because they’re pretty uninteresting even by drum wanker standards. The one on Live on Fire is eight minutes of intermission. It’s enough time to go to the bathroom or go to the fridge for some food and still get back in time before the next actual song (“Mystica”) starts up. Maybe it’s more exciting on the DVD version of this (the label, as usual, only sent us the audio portion for review, and just half of even that), but I can’t see how it would be. The keyboard solo is marginally better, but it was still pretty pointless. The playing on this album is essentially spot-on otherwise. If you’re a fan of Axel Rudi Pell, you’ll definitely like it. As with most of my live album reviews, I always recommend getting the video version if there is one available (and there typically is one). The visual element adds a lot to a live recording. Concerts are as much about the visual aspects as they are about the music. When you just listen to the audio, you miss out on half of the show. If you’re a fan of the band, this is definitely worth it for the most part. The sound is great, and outside of the obvious filler material (the drum and keyboard solos), this is a solid release.

I haven’t listened to Clandestine Blaze in years. I got hold of their 1999 debut LP (Fire Burns in Our Hearts) when it first came out and I found it to be disappointingly predictable. Face it, if I can pinpoint exactly when the generic keyboard intro will end and the Lo-Fi generic Necro Black Metal begins without ever hearing the LP or the band before, that’s just fucking sad. Harmony of Struggle is the latest by Clandestine Blaze and I felt that enough time had passed for the band to have improved, and most importantly of all, to have discovered their own sound. Sadly, it often takes a band several albums before they find their identity and start producing quality music. Harmony of Struggle is far better and more original than their debut, which is always a good thing to notice right off the bat. They’re still a bit on the underproduced side, but the music is definitely worth a listen. Clandestine Blaze has gotten a bit slower and heavier on this release and the net effect is that they sound more like De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas-era Mayhem than Darkthrone. This is particularly evident on “Face of Granite.” Other tracks have a similar vibe, though the influence isn’t quite as noticeable. The use of keyboards and atmosphere add a lot to the music, too. There are moments when things are genuinely dark and brooding, like a creature locked in your attic that’s biding his time until he can catch you unawares. What keeps this LP from absolute awesomeness is the production. Harmony of Struggle has a snare tone that sounds like a metal garbage can lid. Also, the guitars could have been more powerful. They needed to be up in front and in your face, assaulting you like you owed the band money. Instead, they’re kind of in that middle area where they’re louder than the average “we sucked all of the bass out of our guitars” Necro Black Metal band, but they’re not quite loud enough to get out from underneath the garbage can lid snare drum when the speed kicks up. I hope Clandestine Blaze continues to go in this direction because this is some seriously good stuff that only needs a recording/production that will allow the music to kick ass to its fullest potential.

Researching Acherontas for this review was quite interesting. Though the band is from Greece, they don’t really have much in common with other bands from that area. Their sound was more in line with the old Norse Atmospheric Black Metal style (Emperor, Dimmu Borgir, etc.), though they were quite adept at weaving melodic guitar-work in with the keyboards. Amenti is quite different than any of their previous works. The Black Metal parts are still dark and melodic, though a larger portion of this LP is devoted to more Ritual/Ambient sections. One of the main reasons I wanted to listen to this is because Scorpios Androctonus (Crimson Moon/Akrabu/Sabnack) recently joined the band (in late 2012, I believe). This is his first album with Acherontas and you can see his influence. Scorpius is big into the whole Messo-Arabic Ambient/Atmospheric stuff and there is definitely more of that on this LP than ever before. There are parts of Amenti that sound straight out of an Akrabu album. The Ritual/Ambient elements of this album were particularly interesting to me because while the Black Metal was good, the ritualistic stuff gave this album more of an identity. Atmospheric Black Metal bands, while rarer than in the mid-’90s, are still fairly mainstream in the Black Metal scene as a whole. The incorporation of more ritualistic, Messo-Arabic sounds to the Acherontas style has made them far more unique than they had been before. This band had an already impressive back-catalog, but of their releases I like Amenti the best. It’s their most unique offering to date and the one that I end up listening to the most.

I was a fan of Aborym in their early days, particularly back when they had Attila Csihar (Mayhem/Tormentor) on vocals. Attila has such an evil voice that he can make even the most generic Black Metal sound unique and absolutely twisted. Aborym was already working the tag of “Industrial Black Metal” back then, but that came mostly in the form of mechanized drumming and some Industrial keyboard-work. Their post-Attila output was less than stellar, but still there were parts of Psychogrotesque that I liked. This album shows Aborym pretty much ditching the traditional Black Metal sound and going for a more Goth/Industrial approach. Now, I’m fairly open-minded when it comes to expanding the Metal sound. I’ve heard bands incorporate all kinds of different music into Metal, and while most fail miserably, there are some ideas that take hold and eventually grow into their own sub-genre. What I don’t like is when bands go bat-shit crazy and start incorporating weird shit just for the sake of adding weird shit. This is what Dirty sounds like. It’s Aborym being weird just to be different. Listening to this was hard because it took multiple attempts just to figure out what the fuck was going on. In a nutshell, this is Aborym trying their best to sound like a harsher version of Nine Inch Nails. It’s all Techno beats, effects-laden guitars and vocals, oddball sound effects and keyboard stabs. The Goth crowd might find this more appealing, but longtime fans of Aborym will likely find themselves scratching their heads and wondering when Trent Reznor joined the band. Another difference between old Aborym and what’s on Dirty is the lyrical direction. Where previously their lyrics were always Satanic, there is definitely more Anarchist political rhetoric and blatantly sexual stuff on this LP. I don’t know if this is because the musical direction has changed or if it’s because the band wants to find new fans from amongst the so-called disaffected youth who want something different because they want something different. Obviously, the band wants someone to like this LP, but that someone just isn’t me. Guys, you’ve lost me. I’ll always dig the old stuff, but this new LP is just irritating.