I refuse to continue repeating myself with the same statements over and over regarding new Burzum albums, because, quite frankly, by the time I’m done, Varg will have put out seven new releases. Check my review archives of all post-lockup Burzum output for the intro to this one. The harrowing truth it all leads to is that each album gets significantly worse than its predecessor. After subjecting myself to Umskiptar, I don’t (want to) know how much worse it can get. This album is so unequivocally phoned in, and given the time allotted how could it not have been? There is no substance here. This doesn’t even sound like a Burzum record. A complete lack of vocal effort. Varg spends the overwhelming majority of Umpskiptar just talking, or whispering, or singing poorly. His barely used Black Metal voice a faint, gruff shell of its former self. The music is a complete detachment from Negativity. Each riff, woodblock tap, and piano note designed solely to make pirates dance. It all reveals an unfortunate powder keg of desperation, insanity, and, I fear, senility. Does the dictation on “Hit Helga Tre” not sound like a play made for schoolchildren? If this is what we’re in store for every three months, I believe a name change is in order. This isn’t Burzum, nor is it even remotely Black Metal. Sacrilegious. Horrible. Disposable. Pure shit. These are eleven, thrown together, lifeless, upbeat, Folk-y waltzes with a man reading poetry over them. A man who has either lost it or just needs to slow down. Quantity is beating the living shit out of quality at the moment. I’ve added one point out of respect.

This Oregon-based trio boasts two members of Winter of Apocalypse, the band that was formed from the ashes of Thy Infernal. That being said, this is nothing like Winter of Apocalypse or Thy Infernal. Weregoat is raw, filthy, chaotic as fuck Black Metal. It also sounds like it was recorded in a cave somewhere in the mountains with the amount of reverb these guys are using. The reverb does do one good thing for them, though. It makes the music sound heavier. It effectively mimics the bass-heavy audio tape sound that demo recordings used to have back in the days before file sharing, iTunes or inexpensive digital recording. Unholy Exaltation of Fullmoon Perversity has an almost Death Metal level of brutality, and the slower tracks, such as “Invoke the Black Oblivion,” sound heavy as fuck! The songs kind of remind me of Hellhammer or Von in that the riffs and song structures are fairly simplistic but effective. All of the songs get your head banging right away and though the they are all similar in structure, this EP is only about 25 minutes long. By the time you would be getting bored, it’s already over. It’s short, effective and also causes severe neck damage. In my book, that’s a good thing.

Naglfar apparently are never going to get the love and respect that their (often inferior) Swedish peers receive. I guess a resume boasting flawless, melodic Black/Death masterpieces like Diabolical, Pariah, and Harvest pales in comparison to the right gimmick, look, or an extravagant stage show. After a 5-year wait, Teras might be the most anticipated release of their career, with perhaps unfairly high expectations attached. Somewhat uncharacteristically, this is not a first-listen album. It does not immediately sizzle with the blazing speed, pure melodic genius, and suicidal majesty of albums past. Make no mistake, all of those elements are firmly intact, but it could be they spent that long hiatus practicing the art of subtlety. It isn’t really until the fifth or sixth listen that Teras begins to infect the subconscious. Arrangements that flew by unnoticed before begin to feel familiar, begin to become addictive. Another oddity for the band is the placement of standout tracks towards the latter half of the album. After the relatively unremarkable dirges of “The Monolith,” the album finally gets going with the triumphant glory of “An Extension of His Arm and Will.” Up next is “Bring Out Your Dead,” a solid mid-tempo anthem that succeeds at getting the horns raised and the head banging, followed by “Come, Perdition,” which is vintage Dissection worship circa 1993. All this leads to what might be the overall best song at track number eight, the ravenous fury and catchiness that is “Invoc(h)ate.” I won’t bullshit you, Teras can’t hold a candle to Pariah or Harvest, but how many albums truly can? It is, however, a solid effort, strategically crafted to get better as it goes along.

Oz comes from an era when this kind of music was just called “Heavy Metal.” To define the sound of Oz in modern terms, this is part old-school Hard Rock and part Power Metal. It has a very accessible sound but without that “party music” vibe that typified LA Butt-Rock from the ’80s. The thing about bands playing in the old Heavy Metal style is that the sound is very dated. Granted, a number of the songs on Burning Leather are re-recorded tracks from their back catalog, so a case could be made that they sound dated because they were written in a bygone era. Still, the old songs are almost indistinguishable from the newer tracks in terms of sound and style. I don’t even know if there is a place in the modern Metal marketplace for a band like Oz anymore. They don’t have the virtuoso guitar playing or the anthemic feel of modern Power Metal bands like Rhapsody, Iron Savior, or Hammerfall, and they have more in common, musically, with bands like Loverboy or Y&T than Iron Maiden, Judas Priest or Black Sabbath. “Turn the Cross Upside Down” is a solid Metal anthem, but that’s one song out of eleven (and it’s also one of their re-recorded older songs). If anything, Burning Leather fails in the most critical area: it doesn’t rock hard enough. This album lacks solid, head banging, fist pumping, Metal songs that get your blood flowing and the adrenaline running through your veins. Burning Leather tries to recapture a swagger that probably disappeared fifteen to twenty years ago. There are moments where that swagger makes a brief appearance, but unless someone ships these guys a case of Viagra, they’re fighting a losing battle against erectile dysfunction.

Say what you want about Chris Barnes, but dude has fronted two of the top six best-selling Death Metal bands of all time. Not that the announcement of a new Six Feet Under record is going to incite riots in the streets these days, but at least this isn’t Graveyard Classics 7: The Best of Sade. Truth is, from the moment you hit play, it’s evident that if the world of Death Metal had such a thing as a Comeback Player of the Year award, Mr. Barnes would be a lock. This is the best the dreadlocked pothead’s voice has sounded since the mid-to-late ’90s! Maybe it’s because he’s the sole original member now? Perhaps all the new blood provided inspiration to dig deeper. Or maybe he stopped hitting the bong just long enough to listen to his band’s output over the last decade and realized his voice had begun to sound like Chewbacca gargling an Ewok. Whatever the case, the man is back, and album number twelve is as vicious and energized as this band have sounded since their first three albums many moons ago. The newer cast of characters —including former Brain Drill bassist Jeff Hughell, former Chimaira guitarist Rob Arnold, former Massacre guitarist Steve Swanson, and former drummer for every band on the planet Kevin Talley— mix things up a little. There is some speed and technicality… yes, I said speed and technicality, and we are still talking about 6FU, but this is still simplistic, formulaic Death Metal at its predictable best. The aggression is back, the focus is back, and while you can still find traces of THC-aided groove, the plague of goofiness and the trappings of merely going through the no-frills motions are thankfully absent. Admittedly, the last half of the record doesn’t quite match the punch of the first half, but the remarkable improvement of Barnes’ vocals makes all the difference. Undead indeed.

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that this was Rammstein. Actually, I take that back. Rammstein is actually heavier and more brutal than this. This sounds like a cross between the most accessible elements of Rammstein mixed with the Futurepop styling of VNV Nation but without VNV Nation’s dark atmosphere. The most brutal aspect of Stahlmann is the vocals. They’re all in German, which automatically makes things more guttural and brutal. If there was one language that was tailor made for Metal, it’s German. Everything else is very Futurepop sounding. Outside of the harsh vocals (the vocalist really, really, sounds like the singer from Rammstein and I think that it’s intentional) and the electric guitar, this could easily be generic Pop music. The thing about Stahlmann that I disliked the most was the lack of aggression, or minus that, some dark atmosphere. This sounds like it was designed to appeal to fans of Pop music rather than fans of anything more brutal. Everything was candy coated and safe, as if this album was written by a marketing team that was trying to make this band as accessible and as uncontroversial as possible. Personally, if I wanted to listen to a band that sounded like Rammstein, I’d listen to the real thing. If I wanted to listen to something more in line with Futurepop, I’d listen to VNV Nation. If I wanted to listen to something electronic and harsh, I’d listen to Suicide Commando. Stahlmann, for all their slick and polished sound, really has no place in my CD collection.

19 years ago, Australia’s Disembowelment (or, as the band preferred to capitalize it, diSEMBOWELMENT) put one album out and then disappeared. 18 years ago, a 15-year old freshmen in high school purchased that album. That album was Transcendence Into the Peripheral, that freshmen was me, and I still pull that son of a bitch out once or twice a year (specifically to hear “Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory,” one of the greatest songs ever written regardless of genre or era). Nearly two decades… to say it has stood the test of time is a vast understatement, and as their sole full-length release, it pretty much had to. Disembowelment were never seen nor heard from again… until now! Okay… technically it’s only half of Disembowelment (drummer Paul Mazziotta and guitarist Matthew Skarajew), but to call this EP anticipated is like saying Belladonna is a moderately attractive woman. In 2004, Skarajew and Mazziotta began jamming the old stuff again under the name d.USK. When they decided to pen new tunes, they changed the name to Inverloch and the three cuts that comprise Dusk | Subside is our first glimpse into this new chapter. Well… I know it’s unfair to judge any band by the timeless masterpiece standards of Transcendence, but in this case it’s hard not to. These songs quite frankly don’t come close enough. The spirit and vibe of Disembowelment is definitely alive and well here, but the material itself leaves much to be desired in terms of memorability. “Within Frozen Beauty” is a dark, menacing Death Metal jam bookended by quiet breezes of ascension and descension, “The Menin Road” is a crushing Doom hymn revisited by the delicate beauty and spacious ambience of those clean guitar melodies, and “Shadows of the Flame” successfully meshes all of the above. The trouble is none of it sticks. Not even after the ridiculous amount of times I listened to it that first night, and that next day, or that following night, etc. I realize instant euphoria is a tall order —I couldn’t even fathom expectations this high— but it’s a bar they set for themselves. I do think they’ll reach it in time, as they effortlessly channel the magical feeling of old here, or at least I hope so. Then again, all hope is pain.
(Note: d.USK performed Transcendence in its entirety at Roadburn Festival this year! Can you say DVD? p.LEASE??)

The sole member of this band, Patrick A. Hasson, is also the owner of the label (First Church of the Left-Hand Path) so this may come under the banner of “self-released.” It is also the band’s third full-length album. For a third full-length, Auspicium sure doesn’t sound very polished. It is a cacophony of fast drums, ultra-distorted guitars and sometimes barely audible vocals - all with enough reverb added to make it sound like it was recorded underwater. Half the time, it seemed as if the guitars were playing two completely different things, and I don’t mean in a harmonic way. Everything just sounded like a massive ball of sound. I guess the best way to treat Auspicium is to think of this album as Dark Ambient/Industrial instead of Black Metal. That way, you can chuck things like “song structure” and “riffs” out the window and just rate it on the atmosphere. Auspicium does have some atmosphere, which is the only thing keeping this album afloat. All of the chaos and reverb gives this a weird feeling, and the inclusion of some echoing clean vocals and acoustic guitar has an almost hypnotic effect, especially if you listen to it in the dark. As Black Metal, this sucks. As Dark Ambient/Industrial, this is passable. It has enough atmosphere to compensate for the bad production, sloppy playing and messy song structures. If Auspicium ever puts out a fourth album, I say they ditch the Metal aspect and just go straight to playing Dark Ambient.

Join your faggot God
Christian faggot race
With open mouth He kneels, ready to give you head
He will swallow it all
Your filthy Christian seed
It ain’t no big surprise, this is how your God is like

God gives head in Heaven

Forced to fuck your God
He wants it up His ass
HEAVEN IS FOR FAGGOTS, a Christian paradise
Now your God wants blood
He takes you from behind
Christian assholes bleed in holy paradise

God gives head in Heaven

You pray to your God when in you’re in your bed. You want your God to come and take your pain away. Your Christian God will always say that He’s your friend, but I know for fact that all he wants is to give you head.

God gives head in Heaven
Amen