When I first saw this album’s cover art, I expected it to be Power Metal. It isn’t. There are Power Metal elements to this, but isn’t straight-forward Power Metal by any stretch of the imagination. This has a lot of Power Metal’s bombast but mixed with epic keyboard swaths, an operatic female singer who duels with a growly Black Metal styled vocalist and a very symphonic musical style. If you mixed Lacuna Coil with Cradle of Filth and added a hefty dose of Classical and a touch of Power Metal, you would get something similar to what Dusk and Darkness is doing. I’m a big fan of atmospheric music and Epic Escape had it in abundance. If you like Cradle of Filth, Lacrimosa or Gothic Metal in general, you’ll likely enjoy this album. Power Metal fans might also get a kick out of it, too. Those seeking anything more brutal or aggressive will want to look elsewhere, though.

Finland’s Omnium Gatherum just might be the best band to never release a truly great album. For instance, take their fourth and arguably breakthrough effort The Redshift. I don’t know if I listened to any song more than the emotive “Greeneyes” in 2008, yet aside from “A Shadowkey,” I doubt I listened to any of the other tracks more than once. 2011’s New World Shadows is another prime example. This time, a respectable handful of solid cuts, but mostly Melodeath filler. Album #6 from the sextet unfortunately does not buck this trend. Other than listen-to-on-repeat-for-days anthem “New Dynamic,” Beyond has little to offer but Proggy meandering and flat-out duds. Despite coming up at the same time, this band has often been compared to their countrymates Insomnium, and rightfully so as Insomnium —who now share lone original Omnium Gatherum member, guitarist Markus Vanhala— write consistently better tunes. One way to tell them apart is the passionate roar of OG’s Jukka Pelkonen. While his occasional clean croon tends to be hit-or-miss, I’m not sure any vocalist gets more range or conveys more emotion out of a Death Metal growl. But even this unique voice cannot rescue the record from its doldrums. Songs like the bouncy “In the Rim,” with its reflective clean-vocal break, the chuggy “Nightwalkers,” or the mournfully upbeat “Formidable,” with its Katatonic stomp, are certainly nowhere near terrible. They just don’t stick. Even the melody-rich “Living in Me,” with a chorus so lyrically relevant to my life at the moment, holds little if any replay value. These guys have all the talent in the world and broken hearts firmly in the right place, yet the fact remains that they do not write memorable songs the majority of the time. If they ever allow me to handpick their Greatest Hits compilation, I promise it will be a perfect 10. Until that day comes, they’re strictly a mixtape band.

This is album number four for Finland’s Masterstroke, but this LP seems to show a band either in search of an identity or with an identity crisis. My guess is that it’s the latter. Musically, Masterstroke sounds like they’re a Power Metal band that wants to play Thrash, but their Power Metal roots keep showing. The result is a fairly potent musical assault that is heavier than your average Power Metal band, but still having the blazing solos and strong hooks. Where Masterstroke hits a snag is in the vocal department. Vocalist/guitarist Niko Rauhala has a good vocal range, but he seems to want to prove how tough he is by attempting to sound like Chuck Billy (Testament). This isn’t a good thing when your music has this much Power Metal in it. Power Metal demands clean, melodic vocals. When Niko goes for that, especially when an anthemic chorus hits, it sounds awesome. Listen to the chorus for “Seed of Chaos” and tell me that shit doesn’t rock. When he goes for a more Thrash-oriented style, things become disjointed. There are parts where the vocals clearly don’t fit the music. There is a time and a place for Thrash-styled vocals, and apparently Niko hasn’t figured it out completely. When the music is melodic, the best course is to be melodic vocally. Face it, Judas Priest would suck if Tom Araya suddenly replaced Rob Halford. That’s kind of the equivalent of what is on display here. The playing is fine. Musically, this is some pretty solid Thrash-infused Power Metal. If Niko can figure out the vocal aspect, Masterstroke will truly kick some serious ass. As it stands, Broken is a good album that could have been great, but just fell short. I suggest listening to two Heathen albums and giving it another go.

It’s hard for me not to refer to Hate as Behemoth Junior in jest. Just like Behemoth, Hate hail from Poland and play otherworldly-fast Death Metal, but what I didn’t learn until seeing them open for Rotting Christ a couple years ago was that Hate also paint their faces white and wear leather dude-gowns… just like Behemoth. Next thing you know, frontman Adam the First Sinner will be microwaving his balls in an attempt to get cancer so he can beat it. Okay, in all seriousness, it really isn’t much of an insult being so closely compared to such an established, upper-echelon outfit. And to be honest, the Hate camp have somewhat distanced themselves from the clone conversation with this stellar new full-length. Yes, these guys still bring the speed and fury with the best of their countrymates, but Solarflesh is far from a pedal-to-the-metal-100%-of-the-time affair. It’s actually a very layered record, rich in dynamics and atmosphere, whereon songs are given room to breathe. As the moody arrangements shift, the lightspeed brutality sounds all the more explosive when used strategically in relative moderation. It seems they’ve figured out that waiting in line is part of what makes the rollercoaster ride so thrilling. Standout tracks such as “Eternal Might,” “Alchemy ov Blood,” and “Timeless Kingdom” begin as men before violently changing into werewolves, only to mutate elsewhere through a sea of the most evil mid-tempo hooks this side of Morbid Angel and the band’s dazzling start-stop magic. Meanwhile, they resist the urge to blast altogether on double-bass-fueled slow jams like “Sadness Will Last Forever,” “Endless Purity,” and “Mesmerized,” allowing the power of their sound, the precision of their playing, and AtFSinner’s all-pro roar to take center stage. I know it’s early, but the odds of anyone writing a better Death Metal song than the title track this year are slim at best. Just the definitive Hate cut. A pure anthem. Acoustic intro, buildup, blast furnace, a breakdown so wicked it gives me the chills every fucking time, blasted verses, twisted melodies, hook-laden chorus, creepy solo… total perfection. The Limited Edition bonus tracks are a mixed bag. You do get “Hatehammer” (another headbangable down-tempo gem), but you also get “Venom” and “Fall ov All Icons.” Two Ambient/Industrial instrumentals that combine for an awkward double-outro, which —along with relatively unnecessary intro “Watchful Eye ov Doom”— comprise the only filler found on this otherwise excellent monster of an LP. Nothing to make fun ov here.

After listening to this three-song demo, I have a hard time believing that this is not only the first release by this band, but that they’re a relatively new band (active since 2012, according to metal-archives.com). Shadecrown kind of reminded me of the first time I heard the Alone Walkyng demo tape from the Norwegian Hades (aka Hades Almighty). What does a Melodic Doom/Death Metal band from Finland have in common with a Black Metal band from Norway? They both released a first demo that had three songs on it and all of them kicked ass. This is a clear case of quality over quantity. Yes, the whole thing clocks in at around thirteen minutes. It’s short, but it’s also impactful. If I were a label owner, I’d be moving them to the head of the line in terms of who I wanted to sign. These songs are well written and well executed. The sound on this recording was great. For a self-released product, this is top notch. Musically, it is in the vein of bands like Chorus of Ruin, old Avernus or maybe old Morgion (back when they were more Death Metal). It isn’t crushingly heavy, but what it lacked in that department, they made up for it in atmosphere. If you like melodic, atmospheric Doom/Death Metal, this is some good stuff. My only real gripe was that it was so short. I liked this so much that I was seriously disappointed when it was over. Shadecrown is definitely a band to look out for. If they can produce a full-length that has the same quality as this demo, we’ll be talking about it for years to come.

It certainly is a treat to have this blasphemic Dutch horde back in action. Their 9-year hiatus created a void in the Death Metal world that Severe Torture just couldn’t fill. For those unfamiliar, Centurian rose to power in 1997 after the fall of Inquisitor, but their reign was all too brief. Only a classic debut EP (Of Purest Fire), a flawless debut LP (Choronzonic Chaos Gods) and its somewhat inferior follow-up (Liber Zar Zax) comprised their discography until now. While an 11-year gap between release dates would surely alter the sonic DNA of lesser bands, I’m pleased to report that this quartet hasn’t missed a step. The old vibe is alive and well, as Contra Rationem successfully sounds like the album they should have made after Chaos Gods. No surprise, really, considering this is essentially that same founding core. The only exception being the absence of original drummer Wim Van Der Valk, whose place oddly enough has been taken by original vocalist Seth Van de Loo, whose place has been taken by Prostitute Disfigurement vocalist Niels Adams. Honestly, if I hadn’t looked, I probably wouldn’t have even realized it, because the sound and approach feel so much like the old days. Morbid Angel has always been a major influence on Centurian —in fact, the band won many a Metalhead over with their ripping cover of “Blasphemy”— and on cue the opening Azagthothesque riffcraft and Sandovalian blastfest of “Thou Shalt Bleed for the Lord Thy God” are quick to remind us of this pleasant fact. This album is a half-hour of relentless brutality so swift and punishing that it crushes the listener into a fine mist. So much Satanic fury and virtuoso musicianship, it’s like getting beat up by Deicide, Angelcorpse, and Hate Eternal in an alley. My only complaint is that it’s over too damn soon! By the time the ash settles from the blastbeat inferno of “Adversus,” you’re already jonesing for that next Brunelle lead fix. Hopefully we won’t have to wait another decade for it.

Spektr has always been an oddball in the French Black Metal scene. They’re as much a Dark Ambient band as they are a Black Metal band. Most of their stuff only loosely falls under the Black Metal banner, with the majority of it sounding more like weird, experimental Death Industrial/Dark Ambient than Metal. The second track (“Teratology”) even has some odd Jazz drumming in there between eruptions of instrumental Black Metal. Structurally, this is very loose. Ambient music tends to be more about creating moods and soundscapes than composing coherent songs. If anything, Spektr is far better at creating a dark and depressive ambience than they are at playing Black Metal. The portions of this album that fall into the Black Metal category are very Necro (read: no bass in the guitars) sounding. When you consider that Spektr contains a member that is also in Haemoth, that isn’t a surprise. If you’ve ever heard anything by Haemoth, you know that Necro Black Metal is the order of the day. If this had just been a Black Metal album like Satanik Terrorism, I probably would’ve turned it off after the first song. The difference is that the Necro Black Metal is successfully intermixed with the Dark Ambient stuff to where the bass-free guitars don’t get irritating. Cypher is an interesting album that appeals almost as much to fans of Lustmord as it does to fans of raw and chaotic Black Metal. If you like The Devil (as I do), you’ll find that Spektr is very much in line with what they are doing, though lacking the stellar production and awesome guitar sound that The Devil has. Cypher is a bit more experimental, but if you like your Black Metal tempered with a healthy dose of Dark Ambient, you’ll enjoy this album.

Unlike a lot of these phonies out there, I’m not going to pretend that I’ve been listening to World Without God for 20+ years. I’ve never even seen an original pressing of Convulse’s legendary 1991 debut LP, so I’d like to know where everybody got one. However, since Relapse reissued that bad boy in 2010, I can’t say I’ve listened to any Death Metal record more often. It’s simply a masterpiece of crusty Old School Death. It’s Finland’s Left Hand Path, if you will, and surprisingly a great album to sleep to on low volume if you happen to be into that sort of thing. (I can’t be the only one.) Hardly the same band that followed up with the Stoner Rock disaster Reflections three years later. So, when I learned that the group had reunited in 2012 and were putting out a 7-inch that promised to be a return to brutal form, I was fucking psyched. Their first recording in 19 years? Their first potentially good recording in 22 years? I was beginning to wonder why people weren’t making a bigger deal out of this… then I actually heard it. DAMN! This is some boring shit, folks. I realize it has been a while, and sure it’s only two songs, but I mean this is booooring. This would also be a good one to fall asleep to, but for an entirely different reason. Rami Jamsa’s guttural growl doesn’t sound half-bad, but musically speaking, this is merely an autopiloted rehash trudging lifelessly through the mid-paced motions. Inner Evil is more phoned in than Righteous Kill. After two decades of nothing, we get twelve minutes of… nothing. Generic nostalgia for the sake of generic nostalgia. Maybe this is just a little warm-up to clear the creative cobwebs before unveiling the good album we all hope they still have in them, but even grading on that curve, this is still painfully mediocre at best.

I haven’t heard Black Metal like this in a while. At one point, almost every Black Metal band had a keyboardist and they all played in a style similar to Emperor or Dimmu Borgir. Now, everyone wants to sound like Darkthrone. I wouldn’t call this Symphonic Black Metal because the keyboard structures aren’t all that complicated, and while they do play a significant role in Voin Grim’s sound, they are there primarily to lend atmosphere. Musically, this is album has a bit of both Emperor and Darkthrone on it. The guitar playing is similar to old Darkthrone or Mayhem (Deathcrush era) in style. The guitar parts are a bit hard to make out, though. The keyboards are dominant here, so when they come in, the guitars get buried. And I mean completely buried. When the keyboards are going, the guitars literally become inaudible. All you hear are keyboards and drums. This brings us to the second thing that’s wrong with this album’s production. It sounds muffled. It’s like listening to a record from the other side of a wall or a closed door. You can make everything out to some extent, but it’s as if the sound is being absorbed or diffused. The music on Immerse Into Nocturnal Splendour is pretty good, but could seriously benefit from a good studio engineer. Since this is a self-released album and there is only one member in this band (Vojfrost, who plays everything), maybe money was an issue. Personally, I would have rather seen Voin Grim release an EP with two or three really well-played songs that have great sound, than a full-length album that sounds like shit. This doesn’t sound like complete shit, but the poor production calls attention to itself. Maybe someone will give Voin Grim a recording budget and we’ll be able to hear what this band is really capable of.