A Shadowplay for Yesterdays is the third album for England’s A Forest of Stars and their debut for Prophecy Productions. After reading the press release that accompanied this album, I had some serious misgivings about listening to this. When you refer to your band as a “gentlemen’s club” and “an exclusive brotherhood of Victorian Englishmen,” the hairs on the back of my neck go up and I immediately sense pretentious and overly dramatic Gothic Metal that’s heavy on the Goth and light on the Metal. In a way, this does partially describe A Forest of Stars pretty well. They are overly dramatic and pretentious, but they turned out to be far more Metal than I expected. I’ve heard this band being compared to Cradle of Filth because of their Classical influences, but unlike Cradle’s more Wagnerian tendencies, A Forest of Stars is more Baroque in style. The vocals are like listening to a bad actor reciting the lines of a horror production written by a fourth-rate hack that believes that he’s better than Mary Shelley at crafting true tales of Gothic horror. There’s more overly dramatic ham acting here than William Shatner’s entire body of work. What really saves this album is the music. It takes a little while to get going, but once A Forest of Stars hits their stride, this gets really, really good. A Shadowplay for Yesterdays sounds like one part Cradle of Filth, one part old My Dying Bride, one part Folk Metal, one part Baroque-era Classical with a ton of Victorian/Gothic atmosphere. Tracks like “Left Behind As Static” and “A Prophet for a Pound of Flesh” are positively epic. The hammed up vocals keep this from absolute perfection, but even with that, this is by far one of the best written records of the year. If this band released an instrumental version of this album, I’d rate it a ten because it’s that good. Maybe that’s something to look forward to in the future.

This Occult Rock fad —given wings by the recent success of bands like The Devil’s Blood, Ghost, and Blood Ceremony— generally produces hit-or-miss, love-it-or-hate-it results. From this spectator’s standpoint, it doesn’t seem all that difficult to slap a group like this together. Sure you need a frontperson who can flat-out belt, but once that’s in the bag all it takes is a basic 4/4 drummer and a couple guitarists capable of microwaving the right Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, and Mercyful Fate licks. Throw in a couple ’70s Porn moustaches, some crushed velvet attire, maybe an ankh necklace or two, couple skulls, couple candles, drag your dad’s Hammond organ out of the garage… BAM! You got your Occult Rock band starter kit right there. Needless to say, only the cream will rise to the top, and in the case of Jess and the Ancient Ones, I just don’t hear it. I’m guessing they heard The Devil’s Blood, backtracked a little, did their Coven homework and said, “fuck it, we can do this shit.” Or maybe they’ve been around forever. Don’t know, don’t care. The bottom line is their sound lacks authenticity. Lifting riffs and solos from every ’70s Hard Rock act known to man isn’t enough. There is no passion, no conviction, no emotion, no sincerity, and virtually no replay value. I find the biggest detractor to be the vocals of Jess Whatever-the-fuck-her-last-name-is. She does have undeniable talent. She has soul, she has range, she has hold, I’m sure she’d hold her own just fine as an American Idol contestant, but she sounds too much like an R&B/Gospel singer gone rogue. And perhaps not quite rogue enough, as even when wailing dark lyrics like, “black angel by my side / the Devil I see / the Devil I know,” she has me nowhere near convinced. Despite the strutting Journey hook, sprawling 12-minute epic “Sulfur Giants” is probably the closest thing to a highlight found here. But even that woeful standout chorus of “oooohh, I wish I’d never been born…” seems a little tongue-in-cheek. Whether Jess is a real witch or not is irrelevant. It’s this album that fails to cast a spell.

You know, there was a time when having Bill Steer listed in your band’s lineup meant that you were getting something brutal. This is not the case anymore. Gone are the days of old, where Steer was laying the groundwork for the entire Goregrind genre with albums like Symphonies of Sickness and Reek of Putrefaction. Since the split of Carcass, Bill has been stuck in the ’70s. The press release for this album lists the likes of Slade and Deep Purple as influences, which doesn’t put this band far away in influence and style from Bill’s other ’70s influenced musical project, Firebird. I wasn’t initially going to bother with this, but I’ve been on a strange musical kick as of late and have been listening to a lot of old Hard Rock albums that were from the ’70s and very early ’80s. My neighbors think I’m crazy. I go from blasting Dismember and Vital Remains to Rainbow, Black Sabbath and Elf (if you immediately knew that Ronnie James Dio was vocalist for all three of those bands, you are officially old-school). Gentlemans Pistols does share some commonalities with the bands listed as their influences. They are all in the Hard Rock genre, but unlike Deep Purple and Slade, Gentlemans Pistols doesn’t have any standout songs. It’s basic, paint-by-numbers Rock music, but without any strong hooks or memorable choruses. You can listen through this album a dozen times and the only song you’ll remember is “Heavy Petting,” not because it was awesome, but because that song sucked so much more than all of the others. As much as I respect Bill Steer for his work with Napalm Death and Carcass and for being the live second guitarist for Angel Witch, Gentlemans Pistols needs to be completely retooled if they want to be successful. They need good, memorable songs and a vocalist that doesn’t think that he’s the second coming of Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin’s vocalist, for those born in the late ’80s or ’90s). After listening to this album, I have to say that if I didn’t get it to review, I wouldn’t have paid a dime for any of these songs. The only one that stood out did so because it sucked more than the rest. A sticker on the front of this CD saying “Featuring Bill Steer of Carcass” might move a few copies, but I seriously doubt that any of those folks will ever buy another Gentlemans Pistols album based on what’s here.

I absolutely love the title of this EP. It’s not just a clever play on words, it’s a perfect summation of all that is General Surgery — the missing link between the classic Sunlight sound and all-out Carcass worship. At least that’s the case when the band is on, and I’m pleased to report that when it comes to this 5-song teaser, they are motherfucking on. While this 11-minute appetizer may not be the full-course follow-up to 2009’s Corpus in Extremis: Analysing Necroticism that we’ve been patiently waiting on for what seems like forever, it’s an all-killer/no-filler affair that will gladly do for now. The title track and “Ejected Viscous Mucus” storm out of the morgue like Nihilist jamming Symphonies of Sickness riffs. If this tandem doesn’t get your plasma pumping, you might be a cadaver. “Seizures” is just a 40-second Grindcore fart —which begins with an actual fart if I’m not mistaken— that serves as a brutal bridge to “Rhythmic Epidermal Clamor” and standout closer “Dark Cyanotic Hypostasis.” These two cuts also take pages straight out of the Walker/Steer medical dictionary to anthemic Swedeath effect. Admittedly, Like an Ever Flying Limb is over before you know it, but it begs for repeated listens. If this is any indication of the full-length to come, it won’t be a mere regurgitation of giblets, or worse yet, more microwaved uterogestation. Rather, the band will reach their massive killing capacity and send us all into the grave. If I may, a few working suggestions for the new album title: Where No Lysergide Composition Dwells, And Here I Die… Pyosisified, Across the Open C-Section, or perhaps The Head in the Sky Is Ours?

This is the first full-length record for the Ukraine’s Embrace of Silence, the follow-up to their Inspirational Songs EP. Leaving the Place Forgotten by God is a pretty punishing album. The brand of Doom/Death Metal that Embrace of Silence plays is kind of like the bastard offspring of Thergothon and My Dying Bride. It has the dark and heavy sound of My Dying Bride (including the occasional violin), but certain aspects, particularly the Swamp Thing vocals and the occasional delve into Black Metal territory remind me more of Thergothon. One odd thing I found about this album is that while none of the songs are exceptionally lengthy (the longest is almost eight minutes), they don’t feel like they’re all that long. I remember listening to this and thinking that the average song length was three to four minutes instead of five to seven minutes. Maybe my recollection on the length is skewed because they change things up quite a bit. Unlike a lot of Doom/Death Metal bands, Embrace of Silence doesn’t beat one riff into the floor or make a point of droning on and on and on. If this album has a weakness, though, it is in the more Death Metal oriented parts. The atmosphere they generate is ruined or weakened by the faster tempo, and the straight Death Metal bits that they do aren’t as distinctive. This isn’t a deal-breaker, though. There is still plenty of good stuff to counterbalance the small imperfections that Leaving the Place Forgotten by God has. For a first album, this is definitely above average. I’m looking forward to hearing future releases from Embrace of Silence with great eagerness. If they can build on this, we’ll be talking about these guys for years to come.

If there were ever a pair of demos that deserved to be reissued twice, it’s these two classic slabs from Sweden’s Evocation. If you don’t already own the Breath of Night reissue (2004’s Evocation), stop whatever pointless shit you’re doing right now and hunt this down immediately. The Ancient Gate and Promo 1992 are still to this day Evocation at their most vicious, vibrant, and bloodthirsty. This band was doing the Sunlight sound before the Sunlight sound was the Sunlight sound, and before idiots like me started using the term “Sunlight sound” to describe the Sunlight sound. Make sense? The Ancient Gate in particular is wonderfully drenched in Boss Heavy Metal pedal greatness, whereas Promo 1992 is a tad more polished, with hints of the At the Gates influence becoming evident. You could use comparisons all day long —traces of the real Big 4 (Entombed, Dismember, Grave, and Unleashed) echo throughout— but it just doesn’t seem fair in this case. Let’s not forget, these guys began penning tunes in 1991. The year that gave us arguably the best Death Metal ever recorded (and inarguably the best World Series ever played while we’re at it — even though the wrong team lost). It’s not like this was written yesterday. These guys are closer to progenitors than progenies, and if it weren’t for the decade-long hiatus that followed these demos, we’d probably be saying a lot more bands sound like them. The bonus material offered here doesn’t exactly put this over the top, but I suppose it’s the thought that counts. The four rehearsal tracks sound pretty rough. Not sure if they were using the prototype for the first 4-track ever made or recording straight-to-jambox, but either way it’s a bit grating. From a performance standpoint, however, the playing is airtight and passionately fierce. I love it when the isolated tremolo-picking swallows the practice space whole. As for “Genesis” (a new recording of a previously unreleased song from 1992), the notes might be from 20 years ago, but the composition and presentation of the song have been unequivocally altered to fit the band’s newfound, bouncy, Amon Amarth-inspired approach to aerobics class Death Metal. Compared to the morbid intensity and primal brutality of the demo material, it sticks out like a happy thumb. Essential nevertheless.

When I heard that Negru from Negura Bunget was doing a side project that focused on Romanian/Slavic Folk music, I was intrigued. I wasn’t expecting a Folk Metal band, so when I heard the actual music I wasn’t surprised to find that this isn’t Metal at all. Din Brad is a mixture of Slavic Folk performed using traditional instruments and synth pieces that are reinterpretations of traditional songs. The result is a bit hit or miss. Some of the tracks are dark and atmospheric, kind of like Lord Wind or Wojnar (though not NS like those bands). Others are bland and lacking the same atmospheric qualities. I would have preferred a more integrated approach. If Negru had incorporated the dark atmospheric keyboard stuff in with the traditional songs, this might have been an amazing album. As it stands, Dor is very schizophrenic. On one hand, it wants to be Dark Ambient like the aforementioned Lord Wind and Wojnar. On the other hand, it wants to be a straight-out Folk album in the traditional sense. If this had started out as that straight-out Folk album and gradually morphed into the Dark Ambient material, it might have worked out better. With the Folk stuff interspersed with the Dark Ambient bits, it never gains any consistency. Maybe Din Brad’s next album will be better. This one is okay, but I had expected far more from this band.

Y’know, it’s not like I expected a band this talented, imaginative, and Prog-obsessed to start kicking out the 3-minute Nirvana jams upon signing to Metal Blade last year, but I also didn’t expect this. I suppose I was just hopeful for a combination of the experimental flow of Colors and the more palatable anthems of the Alaska/Silent Circus era finely honed into a compact Metallic weapon. This is just errant creative diarrhea. In all my years of doing this, The Parallax II might very well be the most unreviewable album I’ve ever encountered. It’s essentially the same approach as last year’s precursor, the Hypersleep Dialogues EP, but those three cuts were more fluent with a much more realistic serving size. This bitch is 73 minutes long. I’m at a point in life where I don’t need anything to last 73 minutes. Not even fun stuff. Not sex, not a roller coaster ride, not a buzz, not a workout, not a massage… I don’t even wanna have to drive that long. Nothing short of a good movie, baseball game, or the ultimate career-spanning Katatonia live set needs to last 73 minutes. Shit, I can remember nights I didn’t sleep that long! Aside from lone album standout “Astral Body” and wacky circus-freak ditty “Bloom,” this LP only has two types of tracks: sub-2-minute intros/interludes/segues and 10-minute batshit insane marathons. Now, I’m no BtBaM novice. I’m well aware they’ve always had a penchant for epic-length songs. But they were good epic-length songs. These songs have 10,000,000 parts for the sake of having 10,000,000 parts. With a 7-page outline, I might be able to diagram the blocks and sub-blocks of this album that I find enjoyable, or at best tolerable, but forget about a traditional review. I could listen to this everyday for the rest of my life and still not be able to dissect it on paper. It’s too schizophrenic, too bipolar, too ADHD… clearly someone’s not taking their meds. This is a Grateful Dead concert on steroids. Total Prog overdose. I wanted Rock ‘n’ Roll and I got advanced nuclear physics. Just as an experiment, these guys should ditch the music biz for a couple years and get soul-crushing 9-5 jobs. See if they feel like listening to this jumbled chaotic mess for over an hour when they get home. Future Sequence is a Promethean roadblock on an otherwise worthwhile discography, and I fear it will only get worse. It’s just a matter of time before they go total Zappa. No thanks.

Due to a massive spike in spam comments over the last few days, I’ve turned on comment moderation, so all comments will have to be approved before they’re visible.
Hopefully this will only be a temporary measure and we can go back to normal soon.