This is album number three from California’s Warbringer, yet another band that is trying to bring Thrash back. While I admire the sentiment - Thrash did play a huge role in my Metal upbringing as a San Francisco native - the actual album leaves me wanting. This whole album sounded like Dekapitator, the side project of Matt Harvey from Exhumed. When Dekapitator was doing it (starting back in 1996), it was fairly fresh and new because nobody else around here was proudly hoisting the banner of Thrash Metal like they were. Warbringer isn’t bringing anything new to the table, and this is three albums into their career. They could do note perfect covers of “Hell’s Metal” or “One Shot, One Kill” and nobody would be able to tell that Warbringer was doing Dekapitator covers because the two bands sound so similar. I like the band’s enthusiasm, which did translate fairly well into their music, but their lack of originality hampered their efforts. Worlds Torn Asunder doesn’t suck. If you’ve been around the Metal scene for as long as I have, though, you’ve definitely heard everything on this album before - probably more than once.

This is the first full-length in ten years for Germany’s Night in Gales. They’ve been unsigned for the entire time, producing only a “tenth anniversary” EP and two demo recordings between 2001 and 2011. I don’t remember much about this band other than that their music was melodic Death Metal. They were kind of lumped in with bands like At the Gates, In Flames and Eucharist, but they never achieved the level of fame that the others did. Musically, they have a lot of guitar harmonics and atmospheric riffs, which makes this album an interesting listen. The inclusion of classical instruments, such as a violin in “The Tides of November,” adds an extra layer of atmosphere, but their use is as an inconsistent garnish. The focus is on the guitars - and for a band like this, that is usually where the focus should be - but the extras distract from an otherwise solid harmonic attack. You kind of wonder why the extra instrument is there because it only shows up on occasion, not as the focus of the song. If I were using a “guest instrument,” I’d build the song around it and feature it prominently, otherwise there isn’t much point in including it. Another distraction was that the vocalist is a bit too loud. When you’re a guitar harmony based band, you want to make sure people can hear them. The vocalist occasionally drowns the guitars out and that could have easily been avoided. Other than that, this is a very solid album. It isn’t totally fucking awesome (The Somberlain and Storm of the Light’s Bane are still the albums to beat as far as I’m concerned), but if you like melodic Death Metal, you’re not going to be demanding your money back if you buy this.

Take Agalloch’s atmosphere and channel it through Alcest’s ethereal approach, now add a vocalist who could convincingly front any Indie or Alt Rock band worth mentioning, and you have the best description I can offer of this nearly-impossible-to-categorize beautiful music. Stylistically Scotland’s Falloch are all things and no things. The light and the dark. Fear not true life-haters, a blasting Black Metal beast does lurk within, and while it may only reveal itself sparsely, it adds yet another dimension that this duo can transport sorrow to and from. I am reminded of Novembre’s bravery and genius in the sense that Falloch also exquisitely blend a framework of Extreme Metal with total emotive sensibility. They throw genre, category, and stylistic trappings to the wind and play straight from the broken heart. Andy Marshall is a great singer, I don’t know if they would’ve pulled it off with a less capable vocalist. This simply must be heard, a review can’t really do it justice. The album’s only minor flaw, aside from two somewhat bland instrumentals, is that it never tops its own first track. “We Are Gathering Dust” might be the Song of the Year. What is the point of living and dying? Hardly a discredit to the band that they wrote one completely perfect song and just happened to place it in front of four nearly perfect ones. Bravo!

This band used to have two former Massacre/Death members in it (Kam Lee and Terry Butler) but Kam Lee has since left. In his place is a new vocalist, and boy does he ruin this album for me. Musically, Denial Fiend is old-school Death/Thrash in the Florida vein. Vocally, the new guy, Blaine Cook, is very different from Kam Lee’s brutal Death-growl. He sounds pretty demented but not in a good way. I couldn’t listen to this for more than one or two songs at a time because this guy’s voice makes you want to pop your eardrums. Yes, it is original and distinctive but I never want to listen to this LP again. It’s that fucking irritating. They could fire this guy and get Jerry Lewis to sing for them and it would make this album 100% more listenable. 2011 is apparently the year of shitty vocals. There seem to be a lot of bands that have vocalists with styles that are not merely inappropriate for their style of music, but actually make the album worse because they clash so badly. Denial Fiend is a classic example of this. With Kam Lee, this might have been a bit generic but I could at least listen to it. With Blaine Cook, this album is essentially unlistenable.

I’ve never been a big fan of Punk in any form. I will admit to having some albums, mostly from that era when I was trying to get my head around the whole Grindcore phenomenon (which, for the most part, was just a more chaotic and extreme form of British Hardcore). That being said, I’ve never had much exposure to Amebix, who were always filed in the Punk/Hardcore section. Add to this the fact that this band hasn’t released a full-length album since 1987 and you can see why I don’t have much history with them. I checked out some of their back catalog online (YouTube is a great way to listen to this kind of stuff without illegally downloading anything) and when you compare Sonic Mass to the older music by this band, it sounds completely different. The only thing that is comparable is their 2010 EP, Redux. The album starts off with a somber ballad called “Days” and this segues into the more hard-driving material. The hard-driving stuff still doesn’t compare to their old “angry Punk Rock” era work, though. This album has elements of Hard Rock, Heavy Metal and even Neo-Folk (in terms of lyrical content), all blended together. I’ve listened to this LP about a dozen times already and I’ve yet to get tired of it. Motorhead looms large as an influence here, far more so now than on their earlier releases. This is a well put together album that flows very well from one song to the next. You can tell that the band put a lot of work into putting this album together and by the time I hit “Knights of the Black Sun,” I was almost sad that this had to come to an end. Sonic Mass is getting a lot of play, and while I still like the new Chthonic album better, I’d still put this one in my top ten for the year.

I didn’t want to bring it up, but this EP makes it clearly undeniable. More evident than ever on this 27-minute song is the continuing deterioration of Aaron Stainthorpe’s voice. It’s sad, and not the kind of sad I’m in search of when it comes to these Doom legends. He starts off with his Death snarl. The same Death snarl seemingly not long ago I was so pleased to see return to the My Dying Bride aesthetic. Yet it’s not the same. Call me a contrarian, but please take it away again. It sounds pitiful. Almost as if he’s mocking himself! Unfortunately the warbly moan that greets us next is no better. Not sure what the desired effect is here. I don’t even know how to describe it. An elderly, senile, out-of-key Peter Gabriel? Probably not even that good. At about 11:15 it should be noted that his singing improves somewhat. That is to say he actually begins singing. Still, a listen to any of the classics in this band’s storied back catalog reveals a shell of a legend here. It should be dually noted at about 11:15 I’m already tired of listening to this wretched thing. There’s nothing wrong musically with this record. It’s traditional My Dying Bride, violins and all. A style so revered, so often copied. Traditional? Yes. Respectable? Indeed. Heavy as they’ve sounded in a while? Very much so. Memorable? Sadly not. The closest it comes to being memorable is a very “Cry of Mankind”-esque guitar melody that fades out before an intermission close to halfway through. Which begs the question, why not just make this a 2-song affair? But it’s no matter. At roughly 19:45 during the second act of this cruel play, Stainthorpe unveils yet another vocal style that is so obnoxiously horrid that I have to stop now. This simply isn’t my My Dying Bride. I never believed it possible that the prospect of a forthcoming full length from these guys would result in a mere shrug of the shoulders, but it’s true. 34.788% is sounding pretty damn good right about now.

According to Metal Archives, this band has been around since 1989 (yes, they formed twenty fucking years ago!) and this is their first full-length album. I’m not sure what took them two decades, but here it is. Do you want adventurous songwriting? You’re not going to find it here. Do you want an album full of songs that all sound different from each other? Try the new Hammers of Misfortune. Do you want an album that rips your head off from the get-go, blasts away like the drummer had a bomb strapped to his body that would explode if he went under 300 BPM, and has lyrics about Satan, black magic and more Satan? Then this is for you! Embalmed is from Mexico, but they may as well be from Ross Bay, Canada (home of the legendary Blasphemy). This is the absolute worship of Canadian War Metal in the vein of Blasphemy, Conqueror and Revenge. Exalt the Imperial Beast is brutal, primitive and absolutely bestial. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Yes, it’s fucking brutal as all hell, but it’s also one-dimensional. It may as well be ten different versions of the same track. If all you want is straightforward mayhem and chaos, then that isn’t a problem. The biggest hurdle that Embalmed faces is the “you only need one of their albums because they all sound the same” trap. Their next album will be the one that determines whether this band has the skills to be able to expand on this or not. If they can’t, then Exalt the Imperial Beast will be the only Embalmed album you need to get to know everything about them. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait another 20 years to find out.

I discovered this band earlier this year when a friend told me I’d like them (come to find out he meant the other Hanging Garden, from Finland). After some Youtube investigation, I tracked down a copy of 2009’s How Will You Live Your Life Today? and I haven’t looked back since. It’s the embodiment of Suicidal Depressive Black Metal. The complete worship of Negativity and the soundtrack to love fading. I’ve listened to it every day since. It came to me at a very low point in my life, and since I’ve been listening to it, I’ve stopped going out to bars with friends, stopped going to shows, stopped fucking my ex, stopped partying, stopped doing nearly everything short of wanting to die. Is it the fault of that bleak album or a mere coincidence? I might never know, but I haven’t ruled out cutting myself just yet. Not only have I fully embraced this band, but in a relatively short time they’ve turned me on to many other similar artists. One of them being the equally life-hating Happy Days, whose 2009-2010 output is some of the genre’s finest. Why all this background info? Because on Goodbye Love… Hello Heartache…, A. Morbid of Happy Days went from being the drummer of Hanging Garden to doing everything but the drums. Who knows what has become of Creature, the original mastermind behind this project. I’m guessing suicide, but that’s purely based on listening experience. Musically there is no change. Beautiful melodies of pain. Pure depressive misery in all its glory. Morbid can turn the simplest guitar melodies into tears in your eyes and standing hairs on your neck. It’s also recorded better with fewer hiccups (fans of the first album will know exactly what I mean) and great use of samples (another one of Morbid’s traits). My only question is Morbid’s vocals here. He is using his high-pitched howl almost exclusively (fans of Happy Days will know exactly what I mean). It’s part hound-dog, part my-mom-crying and it’s going to take some serious getting used to. Imagine Varg’s vocals on “Ea, Lord of the Deep” but with no grime, just the falsetto. Creature’s vocals were more standard Black Metal, albeit sadder, and Morbid’s are normally similar. Why he chose such an unorthodox approach for this relatively orthodox style is beyond me. What’s more puzzling is he teases us with his standard Black Metal voice only once on the album, at the end of leadoff track “Where I Belong.” Why not mix it up? We know you can. I still love the record for its chilling suicidal radiance, and I’m hoping I’ll get used to the howling with repeated listens, but if I ever wanted to give something a 10, this was it. Compared to the first album it just isn’t quite as good, with only the vocals to blame.

Some people seem to absolutely love this “band” and defend its useless existence. By “some people,” in this instance, I mean “brain-damaged sheep, easily manipulated by marketing and other such propaganda.” The kind of people who have tattoos of flaccid penises on their foreheads. The kind of deluded oxygen-wasters who have convinced themselves that their own conformity is rebellion, somehow.
I’ve always avoided the ridiculously named Sunn O))) for many reasons, chiefly because my cerebral cortex is still mostly functional. But also because this isn’t actually music. It’s a droning, motionless, drum-less, unbelievably boring scam masquerading as art that the talentless hack Stephen O’Malley uses to separate fools from their money. In fact, everything that O’Malley does is worthless bullshit, and the fact that he claims to be a graphic designer is ridiculous. That anyone actually believes him is infuriating, but that’s how the world works.
Having never heard the original 2000 pressing of this testament to the stupidity of mankind, I was oddly looking forward to reviewing this reissue, if only to destroy it. I sat down and listened to as much of each of these four long tracks (about 15 minutes each) as I could stomach. There is so little going on here that I assume that the vinyl version of this album consists entirely of four locked grooves. I’m disgusted to think that I may have just given someone such an idea.
This review has already given too much space to the unworthy, and I kind of wish I’d just gone with my first thought: Sunn O)))? More like HIVV +)))!