At ease, Suicidal Black Metal devotees. This isn’t a new offering of sadness from A. Morbid. This is the other Hanging Garden, the Doom band from Finland. Although, At Every Door may still contain some worth for the misery-addicted lifehaters among us. I suppose any band inclined to name themselves after a Cure song is going to possess some inherent leaning towards the depressive side. This Hanging Garden are practitioners of the Saturnus school of thought: whisperspeak softly and carry a big growl. They believe nothing brings out a bestial Doom growl like spoken or whispered bits. They also believe in long songs, keyboards, big riffs, and a pervading atmosphere of romantic dreariness not unlike the immortal early works of Celestial Season. However, their real ace in the hole is a very convincing style of clean singing that I feel may eventually propel them near the top of the Gothic Doom heap. It is the clean vocals that truly complement those brutal roars, and provide the album’s most memorable moments. The music follows the temperament of the varied vocal approaches, as loud and quiet trade off in equally morose fashion. Passages of subdued melody and reflection wait for explosions of distorted rage bearing mournful dirge. At times the band is a little rough around the edges —the Industrial ambiance that begins “Wormwood” feels somewhat awkward, though the song is later redeemed by an infectious clean-sung hook— and tracks that extend past the 6-minute mark tend to drag a bit —the band exhaust the back-and-forth of the poetry recital and gruff lament to mind-numbing effect on mini-epic “The Cure” (see what they did there?), while it’s even harder to stay focused on 10-minute closer “To End All Ages”— but they have all the tools, along with a ton of potential. I’d personally like to see them scale back some of the melodrama and up the bleakness factor to a Katatonic level a la Rapture. They definitely have the talent to pull it off.
Favorites: “Ten Thousand Cranes,” “Ash and Dust.”

In this age of digital piracy, when downloaded albums are catalogued and forgotten by the hundreds on a daily basis, only a band as undisputedly awesome as Rotten Sound can get away with putting out 6-song/8-minute EPs that must be owned at all costs. Seriously, the record ended before that first sentence was finished, but it kicked my ass like a North Side King backstage — quick and easy. Fuck Vin Diesel’s gay porn franchise, this is the real fast and furious. If there’s anything negative to say about these ferocious Finns, it’s that they render all other Grindcore bands obsolete and weak. They’re almost bad for the genre in that sense. Yes, the perfect is still the enemy of the good, and if your favorite Grindcore band is The Thing, Rotten Sound is the fucking Hulk (and last I checked, puny rock man couldn’t even take gray Hulk, bitches). Sure, they owe a whole lot to Nasum, but someone had to pick up that torch, and there was only one band strong enough to lift it. Rest assured, no group short of Nasum can lay a finger on what Rotten Sound does within the confines of Grind. Even with this stopgap teaser they annihilate the mere notion of competition. Everyone else’s Grindcore record this year just turned into Purity Dilution Part 106. This is a strategically crafted mini-assault as well. The odd-numbered songs are all burners. Jackhammering spine-disintegrators that showcase the inhuman drumming talent of Sami Latva. Dude plays at the speed of electricity! The even-numbered songs have all the hooks. That breakneck groove these guys effortlessly blend in through that ominous, Left Hand Path-with-some-of-that-deer-spray-Ray-Lewis-uses guitar sound. My only complaint is obvious: much like 2010’s Napalm, this just isn’t enough Rotten Sound. No one has ever said, “Man, I wish I could score a really small amount of blow.” Similar situation. Luckily there’s a new full-length on the way this year. In the meantime, shell out for this EP. Go all in and get the CD/t-shirt/etched-vinyl/bologna sandwich/autographed jams/Lament Configuration replica package. This is the only Grind band worth it.

To me, Nightfall has always been a band who’ve just slightly missed the mark. Perhaps overlooked, or more likely overshadowed by the Black Metal giants of their native Greece, I feel as though they did not leave the imprint they’d set out to. Our Editor will vehemently disagree, but I was never all that impressed by their Holy releases in the mid-to-early ’90s. Good records, not great ones… certainly nothing I remember 20 years later. My only real memory of Nightfall is a bad one — that batshit wacky Lesbian Show misadventure. However, it’s never too late to make amends. I thought the band showed legitimate promise of rebirth with Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, or whatever the fuck their last one was called, but Cassiopeia just might be the best thing they’ve ever done. No exaggeration, kiddies. If album #9 isn’t their finest hour, it’s at least their most well-rounded one. It seems they’ve hit their stride by settling into a very engaging mid-pace not unlike Rotting Christ circa A Dead Poem. A mid-pace from which they comfortably yield infectious melodic hooks, all-pro solos, and highly refined symphonic accentuation. Two decades in the game have honed the gruff bark of Efthimis Karadimas into a professionally precise weapon. By far the best he’s ever sounded, and by far the band’s most coherent and endearing songwriting to date. They’ve shut the door on those notorious oddballisms and have let in a rich flow of melodies to take their place. Melodies that permeate the regal headbangability of “Phaethon,” the darkened pummel of “Colonize Cultures” (replete with sick-ass breakdown), the shout-along pomp of “Hubris,” and the dejected majesty of “Akhenaton.” But “Stellar Parallax” is hands down the greatest song they’ve ever written. An ethereal battle anthem on a level of sincerity and sorrow they’d yet to achieve until now. Not all the bugs have been completely worked out, though. Songs like “Oberon & Titania” and “The Reptile Gods” feel jumbled and poorly transitioned. “Astropolis” could use a hook, and —despite some fantastic drumming— “Hyperion” is more like “Hyperi-yawn.” Still, Cassiopeia is the sound of a band rejuvenated, refocused, and above all, determined. I won’t be forgetting this one.

Some albums are just difficult to review, no matter how much you like them. Fuck the Universe is one of those. I’ve been trying to figure out what to say about this for months, and even after approximately 666 listens, it never got any easier to articulate my thoughts beyond “I like it!” To steal a phrase, Blizzard’s Heavy/Speed Metal is so old school, it’s pre-school. That and the bad mix (too-loud vocals, too-quiet everything else, no audible bass) should have doomed this record to one-listen oblivion… But there is just something about this group of German blasphemers that makes me want to keep playing Fuck the Universe over and over on endless repeat. Maybe it’s the old coffin spirit, which almost subtextually hides within the music, or maybe it’s the lyrics -even the occasionally goofy lines. Perhaps mostly it’s how instantly memorable these songs are, and how the band manages the nearly-impossible feat of making them (the songs, I mean) seemingly immortal, too. I’d like to check out an alternate mix, with the drums turned up enough to make out more than the snare and a cymbal, and the guitars even louder, but… I don’t know if that would work. Somehow this album’s flaws might kind of make it better, which may not even make any sense. All I know for sure about this record is that the whole is inexplicably greater than the sum of the parts, and… just like Blizzard, I came to fuck the universe.

When I got this to review, I thought that it was a “Best Of” because a lot of the tracks were from older albums. The material the label sent us to review is actually just from the audio CDs that accompany the live DVD. I hate it when labels do this. A major part of this release is the DVD, and that wasn’t included. How the fuck am I supposed to review something like this? That being said, the review here is only for the audio portion. From the material I’ve seen on YouTube (mostly the official promos that the band put up), the video looks pretty awesome. At some point, I’m going to have to track it down because I really want to see it. This is the whole concert, from the intro music to the end, unedited and as it was played. This could have easily been cleaned up in the studio, but it wasn’t. The audio on this isn’t perfect. In a live situation, things rarely ever are. A case in point, the guitars are almost completely inaudible during “49 Theurgy Chains” and “Rise of the Shadow.” The drums and keyboards completely drown them out. They only become prominent when “Sing Ling Temple” (the third song) begins. At that point, things start sounding really good. Chthonic really kicks ass live. I got a bit lost during the band’s crowd interactions, mostly because I don’t speak Chinese. From what I understand, the actual concert was filmed in Taiwan (where the band is from), so it stands to reason that they’d be speaking to their hometown crowd in their native language. The band’s playing was tight all of the way through Final Battle at Sing Ling Temple, which is what you expect from an official release. Outside of the minor sound issues that I expect at a live show (such as not having the guitars turned up enough during the opening two songs), this was a flawless set. I like the fact that this was an unedited concert, because for me, it simulates what it actually sounds like if you’re at the show. If you’re a fan of Chthonic already, this is definitely something you will want to have. The newer stuff from Takasago Army meshes seamlessly in with their older material and all of it flowed really well together, even the Pgaku flute solo. If you liked Takasago Army, you’ll definitely like Final Battle at Sing Ling Temple. If anything, Chthonic sounds better live.

When I saw the cover of this album, I thought that it would be Goth Metal. It has that washed out color and the cursive script that so many Goth Metal bands use. A Sound of Thunder also has a female vocalist and song titles like “The Nightwitch” and “The Day I Die” on their album. Those are usually clues that you’re going to get tinkling harpsichords, frilly shirts and songs about running mascara. A Sound of Thunder does have Goth Metal elements in their music, but I wouldn’t call them a Goth Metal band, at least not strictly. Their sound veers from hard driving Rock & Roll (“Kill That Bitch”), to a dark and heavy Black Sabbath groove (“The Day I Die” and parts of “Murderous Horde”), to straight-out Goth Metal (“The Nightwitch,” “Calat Alhambra” and “This Too Shall Pass”). You never really know what you’re going to get from one song to the next. All of the tracks on Out of the Darkness are good, but there is a serious lack of consistency between them. When you go from a Goth Metal track with fantasy lyrics and atmospheric music like “The Nightwitch,” to a hard rocking ode to killing the “other woman” and dumping her body behind a Pizza Hut, like “Kill That Bitch,” it throws you for a loop. Out of the Darkness is a good collection of songs, but as an album, it’s a bit too disjointed for my taste. The different styles are not the problem. The problem is that the songs don’t flow well together. On their own, they all rock. Together, this sounds like a compilation album with no direction. Given how different some of these songs are from each other, a few of these tracks clearly don’t belong. “Kill That Bitch” is a great Rock anthem, but it sticks out like a faithful-to-the-original cover of The Cure’s “Pictures of You” on a Napalm Death album. The other, more Rock inspired tracks are less anomalous, but when compared to the Goth Metal style of the others, they also stick out. And then there’s the track order… With all of those styles jumbled together, any consistency you might have gotten is lost. If the more Rock oriented songs came first and things gradually became more Goth Metal inspired, you could see where A Sound of Thunder was going. Maybe I’m just being too much of a perfectionist, but I really thought that the track order and song selection needed work. Maybe their next album will do it for me, but Out of the Darkness shows a band that can write deadly songs, but still needs work putting things together to form a deadly album.

They say in baseball that it all evens out. For every line drive or frozen rope you hit right at someone, a bleeder will squeak through or a duck fart will drop in no man’s land. Relatively speaking, 2012 seemed like King of Asgard’s year from this spectator’s standpoint. Constant Music Choice bombardment, satellite radio airplay on an almost daily basis, and a music video in heavy rotation on Fuse and Havoc had my inquiring mind wondering what the fuck the big deal was. Then I learned that this group features Karl Beckman (guitar/keyboard) and Karsten Larsson (bass) from the legendary Mithotyn. The criminally underrated Viking Black Metal horde who scored not one but two of 1998’s best albums (In the Sign of the Ravens and King of the Distant Forest), yet never got the recognition they deserved and fizzled around the turn of the century. That’s when the old baseball adage occurred to me. To be fair, King of Asgard’s sophomore outing for Metal Blade is considerably harder hit than a mere “duck fart.” The epic riffcraft on “The Dispossessed” and “Bound to Reunite” is passable enough to remind us of vintage, pre-stardom Amon Amarth, while mid-paced scorchers like “Gap of Ginnungs,” “Nordvegr,” and “Up on the Mountain” at times reveal a hook-laden swagger not unlike Kvelertak minus the party vibe. “Plague-Ridden Rebirth” gives us a taste of Blackened Mithotyn-like fury, and “Harvest (The End)” rides a quirky gallop to semi-greatness, but both tracks are ultimately too drawn out and boring to achieve standout status. In the end, …to North is a quality, Viking-themed Melodeath record that sorely lacks a battle anthem. Good but not great, and no match at all for the borderline-suicidal majesty of Mithotyn’s past triumphs. However, I wish King of Asgard all the success and popularity in the Nine Worlds. For Beckman and Larsson, it’s better late than never.

Eye of Solitude has only been active since 2010, but this is their second full-length album and third release overall. Prior to this LP was an EP entitled Awoken by Crows, which was originally self-released in 2011, but later officially issued by Kaotoxin in 2012 with an additional song. That additional track, “Awoken by Crows,” was re-recorded and included on Sui Caedere as the opening cut. If you’ve heard Eye of Solitude before, then you’re not going to be surprised by what you get here. Sui Caedere continues in the slow, melancholic, atmospheric Doom/Death Metal style, but the song structures this time around weave more Dark Ambient into their sound. Where Awoken by Crows had a more straight-forward Doom/Death approach, Sui Caedere has an almost Horror soundtrack feeling. Some of the songs, especially “Those Who Don’t Return” and “Depths of a Sick Mind,” have interludes where the atmosphere is heightened by the Dark Ambient inspired instrumental parts. Though the songs are long, clocking in at a minimum of six minutes, the band uses melody and atmosphere to great effect. If there is a weakness in this group’s sound, it is in the vocal department. Daniel Neagoe has a growl that sounds like Cookie Monster gone Goth. It’s dark and mostly fits the music, but his tonal range is very narrow. It isn’t quite monotone (think: old Incantation), but it’s pretty close. The way this is produced, his vocals tend to be dominant. They don’t drown out the guitars, but they are near parity in terms of volume. I thought that there were times when a different vocal style or vocalist could have lent some additional atmosphere to the track. Overall, though, this is a solid release of heavy, atmospheric Doom/Death that fans of Thergothon, Chorus of Ruin, old Morgion or Kostnitsa will probably enjoy.

Gather ‘round, kids. Uncle Ychoril is gonna tell you a story about the old days of Metal. Way back in the days before Death Metal, long before the likes of Doris Yeh (Chthonic) and Angela Gassow (Arch Enemy) were even jailbait, there was one true Metal Queen. That was Doro Pesch, the lead vocalist of Warlock. Back in the ’80s, I knew guys who literally spent close to thirty bones to get a poster of her imported from Germany. I wasn’t one of them. Thirty bucks was way more than I could conveniently afford for a poster. Doro Pesch was the hottest real Metal chick there was. Lita Ford didn’t count because none of the music she played was really Metal. It was L.A. Butt Rock played by a chick, which made it marginally more acceptable because she was the best looking Butt Rocker out there. That was until Lorraine Lewis of Femme Fatale showed up and made everyone realize that Lita Ford looked like a man with breast implants. It’s easy to be hot when your competition is Blackie Lawless - literally. But I digress… Doro Pesch was hot in the ’80s. Unfortunately, this is 2013 and Doro is on the wrong side of forty years old (I’m being generous, mostly because I’m there too). The glamour shot photographs and the paintings of her in epic poses (and wearing some pretty revealing outfits) that adorn her album covers can’t hide the fact that she’s old enough to be somebody’s grandmother now. Even though she is still in pretty good shape physically, it’s been a long time since Burning the Witches and True as Steel. One listen to Raise Your Fist is all it takes to tell that her voice doesn’t pack the same punch it did three decades ago. She might not be twenty years old anymore, but I could’ve closed my eyes and pretended if she could still let it rip like she did on True as Steel. There are times when she comes close, though. Most of the songs on Raise Your Fist are pretty rocking. As far as her solo output goes, this is the best Doro album in ages - maybe ever. Songs like “Raise Your Fist,” “Rock Till Death” and “Revenge” are easily the best she’s done in her entire solo career. Where this album fails is in the ballads. The worst one has to be “It Still Hurts,” a duet with Lemmy. How do you fuck up a duet with the voice of Motorhead? You have Mister “I’m So Bad Baby I Don’t Care” sing a ballad that amounts to, “I’m sorry I hurt you, baby, please don’t hate me forever.” That’s a sin against five or six different kinds of extreme music. If you want sappy shit like that on your album, get that fag from H.I.M. to sing it. Lemmy is one of the few remaining Metal Gods on Earth. You don’t relegate someone like that to second string on a sappy love song. If I wanted to hear sappy love songs, I’d listen to Taylor Swift. I could’ve handled a song like “It Still Hurts” if it had been indignant (“I’m going to saw your dick off, you cheating asshole!”) or had lyrics about her mailing him dead animals. Instead, it just droned on and on and on for what seemed like forever, never building but lingering in the air like a really bad fart. On the whole, the ballads make up only a thankfully small portion of this album. The rest of this is a solid slab of Traditional Metal that longtime fans of Warlock will surely enjoy.