I seem to remember many years ago Ray playing me some of this band’s early works and thinking it was halfway decent, if not a tad unremarkable, Black Metal. Or perhaps that was the Shining from Norway? No matter, neither band is really good enough to warrant a second thought. I do get the impression from the composition alone that these Swedes are genuinely disturbed, and that their suicidally depressed leanings are not an act. Musically this isn’t terrible either, although I do tend to like my suicidal Black Metal bands a bit more suicidal. The real problem here is the vocals. Main man Niklas Kvarforth has no vocal talent whatsoever. His gruff vocals sound like an 80-year old Matti Karki, and his clean voice is 10th rate Ville Valo at best. The fact that the lyrics are not in English does not help his clean vocal cause, either. They could learn a lot from their buddies in Lifelover who pull off this style 50 times better with somehow even less vocal talent. You can do wonders with sheer vibe and feeling alone. Alas, with better vocals, this could’ve placed more in that C+ to B- range, but as is there are just too many quality bands playing this style at a higher level to give a fuck about Shining.

Well, fuck, I should have known that 2009’s return to a more pure Black Metal sound, with the album Above, was too good to last. But I dared to hope that the Samael guys had come to their senses and would stick with that style from then on. I just remember the glory days, damn it! I suppose that I’m making this new album seem like a shit sandwich, and that’s not at all the case. It’s just disappointing to hear these Swiss virtuosos go back to a more Industrial take on Metal, no matter how good they are at it. And they are amazing. There is a hell of a lot to like on this album, including some aggression scattered throughout these songs, like sane people in Indiana: rare but appreciated. Vorph’s generally excellent vocals are, as always, worth mention, too. Mostly, however, Lux Mundi is more about precision and atmosphere than intensity, and that would be fine if I could just get Above’s awesome ass-kickery out of my head for 666 seconds to fully enjoy it.

A little background is in order here. Satan’s Host was started in 1986 by Jag Panzer’s singer, Harry Conklin (under the stage name Leviathan Thisiren), when he decided to do something a little more Satan-positive. Less than two years later, after only one album (Metal from Hell) and an EP (Midnight Wind), he’d had enough, and left to join Titan Force (the band, I mean, not the team of misfits who pilot the Titan Maximum super-robot, which would have been much cooler). Everyone figured that Satan’s Host was over. I mean it was his band and all. Well, him and guitarist Patrick Evil, who reformed SH in 1999 as a Black/Death Metal band with L.C.F. Elixir on vocals. Why did Patrick use the same name for what was stylistically a completely different band? No idea. And now, after more than a decade with five full-length albums, an EP and a DVD of Black/Death Metal, Elixir is out and Conklin is back in. And, yes, Satan’s Host has returned to being Power Metal, or perhaps more accurately, traditional Heavy Metal with really aggressive drumming. What will they do when performing live now? Just not play any of the Elixir-era songs, which comprise the vast majority of the band’s catalog? Or is Conklin going to Power Metalify them? I feel pretty safe in thinking that he’s not going to try to sound like L.C.F. Elixir. All that aside, taken completely by itself, By the Hands of the Devil is solid Heavy/Power Metal, with a tremendous production and the aforementioned aggressive drumming helping Patrick Evil’s riffs considerably. Conklin even does some interesting vocal tricks occasionally, like the excellent multi-tracking near the middle of “Before the Flame.” The bonus track (unknown which versions/formats have it) is a kind of re-imagining of The Beatles “Norwegian Wood” that’s so different from the original that I almost started a flame war on metal-archives.com for daring to refer to it as a cover song.
I had a difficult time figuring out this album, but if you can tolerate Conklin’s vocals, and don’t mind the stylistic flip-flopping, it’s worth the confusion.

Not sure what this bullshit stopgap EP is all about, but it seems to be on some kind of Dodge Dart record label. Probably comes free in a box of cereal or with however many KY Jelly proofs of purchase. As is always the case with Enslaved, it sucks total ass but everyone will absolutely adore it. Thankfully there are only five songs to suffer through, so let’s begin to dissect. First off, I think this is some kind of concept EP about the first gay Vikings and their lives of secrecy in fear of persecution, as the first song seems to depict a dialogue between the homosexual Vikings (clean vocals so soft and faggy I imagine them sung into a baby’s spread asshole), and the angry hetero Vikings (basic Black Metal vocals). I could be completely wrong, but that’s the only way I could make the song even partially interesting. Track two is the perfect virtuoso mixture of early Bathory and John Tesh, while the next two cuts are 12 minutes of instrumental filler, the first of which sounds like a washing machine on spin cycle while a man whispers. Now if that doesn’t define breathtaking, mandatory, genius, and not to mention sexy, I don’t know what the hell does! I could be mistaken, but I believe the last song here is a Folk spin on a Manwell cover. Not “What What (in the Butt)” of course, but one of his older, more underground, songs. Overall, this was easily the most enjoyable recording to listen to in all of Enslaved’s 20-year career. Look for 6 new releases from them before year’s end.

I want to start with what’s good about this DVD, which was recorded live in Sydney, Australia in 2009: it sounds great. Okay, it’s only stereo audio, and not the 5.1 channel Dolby Digital or DTS surround sound I was expecting, which is somewhat disappointing, but what’s here, as I mentioned, sounds great, and is very crisp and clear. Unlike the video. Holy fuck is the video ever over-compressed, with notable pixelation and compression artifacts. It’s not enough to ruin things, but it can be distracting. This is clearly a low-budget (although multiple-camera) recording, and after watching it, I was surprised that it’s even anamorphic widescreen, but thankfully it is. The cinematography… well, I’m sure they tried their best, and I’ll leave it at that, since I don’t like saying anything negative about a legendary band like Malevolent Creation. And the band does deliver the intense Death Metal, as one would expect, making this an enjoyable experience, just far from a perfect one. As with any live album, I wanted to hear a couple songs that weren’t included, but time is always limited, so I understand. And this is a great live set, with an emphasis on the band’s early career. But that said, these guys need some fuckin’ quality control. In addition to the video/audio issues, the track list on the DVD cover is wrong, omitting three songs on the disc (“Monster,” “Multiple Stab Wounds,” and “Homicidal Rant”), and misnaming another (it’s “Manic Demise,” not “Man’s Demise”). The audio from this was released separately on CD as Australian Onslaught in late 2010, and it’s possible that the unlisted DVD songs were actually edited off of that release to keep the duration short enough to fit on a single CD… Malevolent Creation deserves a better DVD than this, and maybe one day it’ll actually happen. In the meantime, we’ll have to take what we can get.

I have listened to this album over and over, literally dozens of times, trying to sort out what to say about it. I’ve been a huge fan of this legendary Spanish Goregrind band from the very beginning, and was overjoyed to discover that they had signed to Relapse. It’s a step up for Haemorrhage, which I had hoped would also mean a larger recording budget. Apparently that was not the case. The songs are amazing, and as well-written and memorable as ever, which is no surprise, since that’s the band’s trademark, after all. Check out “911 (Emergency Slaughter)” and “Hospital Thieves” for examples of how to write flawless songs. Now if only Relapse had coughed up the money for a recording to do these masterpieces justice. The drum sound is… sub-optimal, let’s say, and is made worse by the mix, which buries the drums altogether at higher tempos. It’s hard to hear the blast beats! That’s just insane, and obviously diminishes the intensity, as does the under-distorted guitar tone. I firmly believe that this is somehow not Haemorrhage’s fault, because these guys (and gal!) are fucking awesome. Remixed and remastered, Hospital Carnage could, and probably would, be a 10, as is…

It can be argued that these Masshole once-Mathcore/once-Alt Rock titans aren’t technically Metal and therefore not suitable for the “pages” of Metal Curse, but if you want to pretend that you don’t like anything but Metal, then I’m going to pretend I’m Darth Vader and choke you with my thoughts. It’s a moot point really since White Silence - their first full length in six years since the thoroughly unnoticed Perfect Pitch Black and first in eight years since the brief major label success of Antenna - pretty much is a Metal album. The problem is it isn’t a very good one. The first two songs are so uncharacteristic of the band at any phase of their career, I had to double check to make sure I put the right CD in. It’s noisy, sloppy, aggro-Sludge like Cursed or Old Man Gloom, or something similarly horrible beyond words. A far cry from peaking at #169 on the Billboard 200. “Sing My Loves” is an epic track that really saves this album from complete worthlessness. Not quite the technically ferocious Metalcore the band started out playing, nor the Radiohead-inspired Alternative style they would eventually evolve towards, but a perfect balance in between. Imagine The Beatles playing Doom Rock! Unfortunately there isn’t much else on the record to savor. “Summit Fever” is a heavy but hummable number that wouldn’t sound too out of place on Creative Eclipses or Jupiter, but that’s about it. Even the acoustic tracks that echo past solo efforts of frontman Stephen Brodsky sound uninspired and thrown together with no emotion. Hopefully this is just one of those clear-the-cobwebs kind of records that sometimes need to exist after a long hiatus and the creative juices will start stirring again soon, but overall, White Silence fails on just about every level. While I’ve got this rare chance to bark about Cave In, I want to take the opportunity to apologize to the band for never printing the interview I did with them a decade ago. My zine [The truly excellent Portrait of Defiance -Editor] went under due to the gayness of the internet and me not being rich. Secondly, to every person at every music mag I’ve ever read that talks about the solid but criminally overrated Until Your Heart Stops like it is the greatest album in the history of time: when it comes to heavy Cave In, Beyond Hypothermia is WAY better. Suck it.

It’s astonishing when you stop and realize how quickly time flies. Consider that Sweden’s Vomitory have been at it for well over 15 years! It seems like Raped in Their Own Blood just hit the shelves yesterday. These Swedes have always been a serviceable source for high quality, grinding Death Metal, churning out albums at a workmanlike pace, yet somehow always lacking that pure anthem. That “Maze of Torment,” that “Twisted Truth,” or that “Reborn in Blasphemy.” Well with album number eight, they have shed much of their trademark speed and brutality in search for that anthem, and the end result is their best effort since the aforementioned debut. Maybe it finally just hit them - boy, we sure do listen to Realm of Chaos and The Rack way more than that new Abysmal Dawn - because the shift towards melody and dynamics at slower tempos is undeniable and more than welcome. Sure there is still speed and of course it is heavy as fuck, and it’s not like they never wrote a decent tune in the past, but with Opus Mortis VIII, the riff comes first. “Regorge in the Morgue” opens the album with a catchy two and a half minute stomp that wouldn’t sound out of place on your favorite Ribspreader album. The next song to grab you by the balls is “The Dead Awaken,” which may finally be the achievement of their anthem. It is without a doubt the best song they’ve ever written, powerfully showcasing all the band have up their sleeve in a quick 5 minutes. Follow that up with “Hate in a Time of War” and it’s Slayeresque clean intro, and you’ve got quite a one-two punch mid-album. “Shrouded in Darkness” is the last song to leave an impression, paying homage to the greatness of Bolt Thrower with war hymn melodies intact over that slow crawl. Every band claims that they’re the most proud of their newest material at the time, and in Vomitory’s case they damn well should be.

This reissue of the 2005 EP is as about as essential as a reissue can get. Not only was the original pressing limited to just 1000 copies, but Neige has actually re-recorded the two epic tracks and included them with the originals. As for the material, it is Alcest, which is to say it is equal parts uplifting and heartbreaking Shoegazer Black Metal. Just like the two nearly flawless full lengths he’s put out since this EP, sorrowful yet beautiful melodies, the perfect mix of soothing clean and harsh Blackened vocals, occasional speed but mostly mid-paced to slow tempos, and pure sadness. Not much can touch Alcest when it comes to sadness, save for Jesu and Katatonia. The odd thing is, a look at the English translation of the lyrics (sung in French) reveals that the majority of the subject matter isn’t really the kind of negative, frostbitten prose you expect with something this suicidal. They’re actually quite innocent, positive lyrics. Not “positive” in the Jesus-fucking vein, I must add. Neige (French for “snow”) is a nature lover, very nostalgic and seemingly tied to mysterious events of his childhood as the lyrics, his interviews, and more thoroughly, the extensive liner notes of the reissue explain. Still, uplifting music I often find to be the most depressing, especially when this man can manipulate a melody at any tempo to the point of simultaneous goosebumps and teardrops at will. The only factor keeping this from absolute perfection is that the re-recorded 2011 versions blow the originals away. Not a lot has changed except for a much higher quality production and superior drumming (Neige played all the instruments including the drums on the original EP), but there is no comparison. Still, I’m glad the originals were included as any completist would be. Hard to find much fault with anything this guy does really.