This is my first time hearing this band, and from the promo materials that I was sent, this is their debut album. It sure doesn’t sound like it, though. The playing on here is exceptional. The riffing and song structures are fairly complex, but while the technicality is fairly high, this isn’t overdone. You never get the sense that things are going to degenerate into gratuitous guitar masturbation or navel-gazing Progressivism (which, in a sense, is a different form of masturbation). The sound on this LP is also exceptional. Fimmrot has a sound that even veteran bands on larger labels would envy. According to the bio, these guys used to be a Symphonic Black Metal band (originally under the name Moonwrath) and it’s easy to tell that this was one of their influences. You can spot the Emperor/Dimmu Borgir/Cradle of Filth influenced parts fairly easily, particularly on tracks like “Snowburied Memories.” They also have some Folk Metal and Power Metal in here too. I’m not really sure which segment of the Metal market that they’re aiming for but I think fans of Symphonic Power Metal (Stratovarius, Rhapsody of Fire, etc.) might enjoy this the most. The guitar-work, particularly on the solos, and epic sound on Fimmrot are right up their alley. It will definitely have less appeal to fans of Symphonic Black Metal because it lacks a Gothic atmosphere. The influence of that style is primarily in the song structure and the amount of Classical bombast there is. Black Metal fans tend to want a darker, more sinister atmosphere in their music and Fimmrot just doesn’t have that. The Folk Metal aspects are there, although not pronounced enough for the “Beer Tent at the Renaissance Faire” crowd, but fans of the new Finntroll album might like this, too. If there is a flaw in their music it’s the vocals. There are times when you wonder why they use the raspy vocal style so much. Clean vocals would’ve suited much of this album better. When you consider how much the music sounds like Power Metal, I was surprised at how little clean singing there was. There was never a point where the vocals and music were at odds with each other, but it was more a case where they were making something using carob instead of real chocolate. It might taste good with carob, but real chocolate tastes better. That isn’t a serious detraction and I did enjoy this LP quite a lot, though. I’m curious to see where these guys are going next so I’ll definitely be on the lookout for their next release.

I don’t know if Cnoc An Tursa can be considered part of the British Heritage scene. They share stylistic similarities and a love of their land’s ancient past with bands like Winterfylleth, Wodensthrone, and Forefather, but technically speaking, they’re not of British heritage. Scots are Celtic in origin, as opposed to the Germanic Britons, Angles and Saxons. Genetically, they’re closer to the Irish (also Celts, and technically their cousins) than they are to the Britons. That, and the centuries that they spent killing the British probably didn’t help either. The Giants of Auld is an exploration of the history, landscape and mythology of the Scottish Celts and their land. There’s plenty of cool stuff to write about without resorting to creating fictional alternate histories like Gloryhammer does. There are no dragons, wizards or invading armies of unicorns here. It’s more than a little nationalistic, to be sure. These guys love Scotland and it shows. They don’t, however, have much bagpipe on this album. I know that’s going to disappoint folks who only associate Scotland with kilts and bagpipes. I doubt that this album would have been as awesome as it is if they decided that bagpipes were the be-all-end-all instrument that encompasses all of Scottish music. Musically, The Giants of Auld is hard hitting but also very melodic. When I first heard about the band, I expected them to be more like Waylander or Cruachan (Tuatha Na Gael era), fusing Black Metal with traditional Celtic melodies and instrumentation. My expectation was that they were going to go for the traditional Celtic stuff as the emphasis (Beer Tent Metal, in other words). This LP doesn’t go there. The Giants of Auld is definitely more Black Metal in style, but of the melodic variety. The riffing isn’t very complex, but the melodies and atmosphere carry this album. Cnoc An Tursa leaves playing at the Renaissance Faire for other bands. This is some seriously epic stuff. The songs also show a lot of refinement. Everything flows well and the music is very impactful. The band was formed in 2006, but this is their debut album. Their only previous release was an untitled 3-song demo from 2008 (all of its songs were re-recorded for this LP). Hopefully, Cnoc An Tursa won’t take five more years to produce a follow-up, but if it’s of the same quality as The Giants of Auld, it will definitely be worth the wait.

When you’ve been listening to Metal as long as I have, you have lots of moments where you think you’ve heard a band before but you don’t remember them sounding like the album you’re currently listening to. Such is the case here. I could swear that I’ve heard Soulless before, but I thought that they were more in the Brutal Death Metal vein. In Death’s Grip is essentially a straight-out Thrash album. Of course, the reason I don’t remember Soulless sounding this way could be because I heard one of the fifty other bands (many of them still active) out there sporting the same name. This particular Soulless is from Ohio, and they have been active since 1997, having members that have been in a laundry list of other bands, ranging from The Spawn of Satan (Satanic Death Metal) to From the Depths(Black/Death Metal) to Son of Jor-El (Sludge/Thrash) to Mach II (Heavy Metal/Hard Rock) and just about everywhere in between. With a lineage like that, I was a bit disappointed in this album. I think a lot of the reason why was because I wanted things to get more brutal. The band members have plenty of Death Metal in their background and I kept thinking that they’d start bringing some of that into the Soulless sound, but they never took the next step from Slayer to Morbid Angel. Another thing I noticed while I was researching this band’s back catalog was that In Death’s Grip doesn’t really show any real progression from their previous LP, 2007’s Forever Defiant. You’re not getting anything that you haven’t already heard from Soulless before. This is still a very solid Thrash album, though. The playing is tight, and these guys know how to shred on their guitars. Maybe my expectations were a bit high for this. I’m an admittedly jaded Metal fan. I’ve been around the block so many times that they’ve named a street after me. I’m looking for something new and different, even if it’s just minor. Giving me more of the same, even if it’s good, tends to leave me feeling let down.

Sir Christopher Lee has got to be the world’s oldest headbanger. This guy is over ninety years old and he’s known more for being Saruman (The Lord of the Rings) and Count Dooku (Star Wars) than as a Metal icon. Still, he’s quietly very accomplished. He’s done songs with Rhapsody of Fire and Manowar, and has several releases of his own, including four full-length albums, and a Christmas single of him doing a couple traditional carols set to Heavy Metal music! This LP, the second one in his concept album series based on the life of Charlemagne, is as campy and as absurd as it seems like it would be. The music is pretty solidly embedded in the Traditional Metal genre with nods to Power Metal and occasionally to Hard Rock, as well. Even with the intermittent Power Metal injections, this is musically very unadventurous. Charlemagne: The Omens of Death is content to meander about in well-explored areas of the Metal sound. The draw here is Sir Christopher Lee’s vocals. His narration and singing are fairly good. He has a strong baritone, and while he is perfectly capable of doing something operatic, this album doesn’t really showcase his actual ability. His main problem is that the lyrics are fairly complicated and don’t lend themselves very well to singing. Remember the song “Alexander the Great” by Iron Maiden (from Somewhere in Time)? Remember how the singing was choppy and the vocals didn’t flow well? It happened to a lesser degree on “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” too. Imagine that problem stretching out through a whole album. Even though the content is fairly interesting (and, from what I understand, it is historically accurate), the record falls flat because the delivery really can’t maximize Christopher Lee’s vocal talent. At times, it sounds like he’s trying desperately to carry a melody with lyrics that are actively fighting against him. It’s like trying to stick a cat into a pet carrier when it knows it’s going to the vet. It’s painful to watch and even worse if you’re involved in the process. If you really want to hear him deliver the goods, check out his performance on “The Magic of the Wizard’s Dream” by Rhapsody of Fire. Charlemagne: The Omens of Death is an interesting concept, but as an LP, it doesn’t really work. This is one to buy for the novelty value alone.

Much like Judas Priest themselves, I am never satisfied. No matter how comprehensive a live album is, every time I want more. There are always a few additional songs that I wish the band had played. And when we’re talking about legends who have been defending the Metal faith for over four decades… well, it’s more than just a few. I’m going to resist the urge to make a vast list, because it would include nearly every JP song ever written, and at two-hours-and-twenty-minutes this is already one of the longest concerts I’ve ever heard of and features at least one song from every Halford-era album, so pointing out more than just a couple omissions seems like a total dick move. That said, I was a little surprised to not hear “The Ripper,” “Exciter,” “Screaming for Vengeance,” or “Defenders of the Faith.” But how long has it been since we’ve gotten “Starbreaker” live? It’s here, and the band goes absolutely all-out for it, as they do on every song. This version of “Diamonds and Rust,” for example, is utterly amazing, and a stand out in an ocean of solid gold. The band’s energy was, at times, beyond my ability to describe. Halford, especially, seemed to be holding absolutely nothing back and occasionally appeared determined to give more than he was able. The man is in his early 60s, and had to use a cane during parts of the show. I read somewhere that he was confined to a wheelchair for a while after this concert because he injured his (apparently already hurt) back contorting himself to reach the notes he needed. So, I am not going to give him a hard time about letting the crowd completely take over literally all the vocals for “Breaking the Law,” about two-thirds of the way into this marathon set. I’m sure that it comes off much cooler to be there live for something like that, but to just sit here and watch five thousand people singing was the only time I wasn’t completely enthralled. “Painkiller” followed, and was the final song before the encores. That may be an especially demanding one to sing, because Halford sounded exhausted and looked to be in pain for the duration. The momentary rest while the crowd chanted for more seemed to reenergize him, and he came back stronger than ever. Over the course of the night, Halford even unleashed a couple Death Metal style growls, the director humorously cutting to bassist Ian Hill looking surprised for one of them. New guitarist Richie Faulkner did a fine job of being as much like K.K. Downing as possible, and I think fit right in. No one can really replace K.K., but as I watched this, I didn’t miss him as much as I thought I would. The video and audio quality are, as one would expect, phenomenal. This may be the best looking (I watched it on Blu-ray in glorious 1080p) and sounding concert video of all time, although it is lacking special features in that it has none. I would have really enjoyed an interview, or… something. I’ve gotten used to there being additions to the live performance on these things, and the omission here is notable, but Epitaph is easily still one for the vaults.

Svart Crown is one of those bands that I’ve been meaning to check out for a while now. If you’ve heard me say this before, that’s because it’s true. There are tons of bands I’ve been meaning to check out. When you have a job that doesn’t have a fixed eight-hour a day schedule (I’m generally working more than 40 hours a week) and they don’t let you listen to Metal while you’re there, you have to make some sacrifices. Trust me, I’ve gotten in trouble with Human Resources once already, so anything heavier than Lady GaGa is forbidden in the office. And you should never tell any of your co-workers that you have a friend who has a band called Skool Sniper and that they have songs about Columbine and Newtown. I guarantee you’ll get hauled in by the behavior Gestapo in record time. Luckily, the freedom to listen to whatever the fuck I want to still exists in my own home - that is until the NSA decides that Metal is somehow subversive. But I digress. This is album number three for Svart Crown and from what I’ve been able to piece together from tracks culled from their older albums and from live footage (there are times when the internet is great for research and this is one of them…), these guys started out pretty much worshipping old Morbid Angel. They’ve steadily grown away from the basic Death Fucking Metal template and began incorporating more atonal riffing and some more progressive structures. Ultimately, though, this is still brutal, ugly as all fucking hell Death Metal. Some have criticized the band for not really changing the basic components of their sound. I kind of agree and disagree. They’ve evolved somewhat since Witnessing the Fall, but that evolution is nuanced and restrained. I think these guys didn’t want to radically alter their sound because that might drive away their fans. I’m not a fan of Progressive Death Metal. It all too often becomes an exercise in navel-gazing and wankerdom. Having overly complex songs that meander all over the place and lack brutality, aggression or memorable riffing might appeal to the fans of Dream Theater, but the average Death Metal fan doesn’t want to listen to that shit. If Svart Crown had gone that route, I doubt that a lot of their old fans would’ve put up with it. Profane tries to change, but not change at the same time. The result is an LP that has some more technicality, but less memorable riffing. While I liked Profane for what it was, I liked their older material a bit more. It wasn’t as original or as technical, but I could remember the songs after the album was over. I can’t say that I can do that with the songs on Profane.

If you’re a fan of Cascadian Ambient/Black Metal band Fauna, you probably have a good idea what this LP sounds like already. Fauna guitarist Echtra (the sole member of Echtra) originally recorded the music for Sky Burial in 2008, but this is finally getting released in 2013 with the addition of a DVD containing the first and only performance of Sky Burial in its entirety from December 2008. This is a review of the music only. Echtra doesn’t sound that far removed from Fauna, though the Black Metal elements are pushed further back. Where Fauna had atmospheric and acoustic parts mixed in with their droning Black Metal, Echtra is primarily focused on the atmospheric elements. The acoustic guitar and the keyboards are the most prominent instruments here. You can hear the electric guitars and the drumming, but they are pretty muted compared to the acoustic guitar. In many ways, this is a Dark Ambient album more than it is a Black Metal (or even Post-Black Metal). It does have elements of Folk Noir, mostly owing to the extensive use of acoustic guitar. One of the main commonalties that Echtra has with Fauna is the song structure. Both bands have songs that are minimalistic but also incredibly long. Sky Burial is forty-six minutes, divided into two twenty-three minute tracks that may as well be one long song. I think the division was there primarily so that this could be released on vinyl, because, digitally, telling where one song ends and the next begins is a bit hard unless you’re actively looking at your media player to see when things switch over. As you can imagine, the whole LP is pretty mellow sounding. It’s kind of in the same semi-dark soundscape style that Shadowlands by Klaus Schulze falls into. It’s great chill-out music that can be used as background ambience when listening to Metal isn’t appropriate. I doubt that the majority of Metal Curse readers will be into this kind of thing, but for those who are into Dark Ambient with a touch of Folk Noir and Black Metal influence, Sky Burial is an interesting album.

One-man band Frostbitten [named after the only member] returns yet again with a fourth full-length album this year. Yes, I said fourth. If you count Frostbitten’s other band, Los, this brings his total to six full-length albums in 2013 alone. That’s a lot of music. Danse! For Macabre Shall Come is Frostbitten in Black Metal mode once again. The last two records (The Void of Insanity and We Feared the Wrath of Lord Lucifer) were in the Doom vein, but this one is solidly Black Metal. Unlike previous albums, this one has more of a Burzum influence. The other ones were more raw and dirty Darkthrone styled, but Danse! is droning and minimalistic. This seems to suit Frostbitten’s more Doom-influenced style better than the fast stuff. The production here helps a bit because it’s got more bass in the guitars than most in this style. The drums still need work, though. I don’t know if a drum machine is being used or not, but the snare tone sounds very artificial. It’s like it has no resonance or depth. You get that sometimes with sampled drums. It sounds like someone banging on a piece of plastic instead of an actual drum. As with all of Frostbitten’s other albums, this one shows some promise, but that promise is ultimately unrealized because the songs are still on the half-baked side. I keep mentioning it about this band, but there is something to be said about quality over quantity. Pumping out six full-length albums in one year is quite an achievement, but if all of them are subpar, what good is that? Danse! For Macabre Shall Come has some interesting elements to it. I think Frostbitten has some talent in the Doomier side of Metal, be it straight-forward Doom Metal or Burzum-influenced droning and minimalistic Black Metal. His problem is that he’s focusing on quantity and shortchanging the quality, which is always a bad idea. I would rather hear one awesome Frostbitten album with great songwriting and sound, than a dozen that are mediocre with shit sound and underdeveloped songs, even if they do all have a hint of promise.

Talk about saving the best song for last! If this entire record were as perfectly gloomy and depressing as the stunning “Like Atlas” I might have to change the rating scale to go to 11. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how one looks at things, the venerable 1 to 10 scale is in no danger. The rest of Mors Viri is perfectly serviceable Death/Doom, occasionally recalling prime-era My Dying Bride with more than few hints of Paradise Lost (think Shades of God), Agalloch and late ’90s Katatonia. It’s all… fine. No major complaints, but also no “holy fuck, rewind that!” moments. There are a few oddly upbeat bits (the beginning of “The Wounded and the Dying,” for example), somewhat strange clean singing (check out “To the Gallows” and its, I hope, anti-religious lyrics), and what I can only describe as a spoken-word performance of a poem with minimalistic background music (“One with the Sea (Part II),” which features the return of the seagull from the much-heavier original “One with the Sea,” from the band’s 1997 debut LP, Ne Vivam, and is probably my second-favorite song here). Until the 10-minute album-closer started, I was likely not going to bother with this at all, despite it being the Dutch Death men’s first full-length in six years, and just check back in with Officium Triste whenever their next release comes out, since we are trying to write longer reviews than “Solid (mostly) growly-vocals Doom of wildly varying density, with a little weirdness, but little to really make it stand out.” And then “Like Atlas” slow-mo avalanched me after about 80 seconds of eerie, mournful build-up. I knew that I’d have to immediately listen to this masterpiece again (and again…) even before it hit the 6:30 minute mark and metamorphosed into total melancholy Katatonia worshipping perfection. And now… 666 plays later… I don’t want to stop…