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

Outside of the novelty factor of hearing a Black Metal band from Mumbai, India, Solar Deity doesn’t offer a whole lot that hasn’t been done before. The music is essentially built upon the foundation laid by bands like Burzum, Darkthrone, Judas Iscariot and other raw, simplistic, Black Metal bands from the early Second Wave. The riffing is fairly basic. Each song is composed of one or two riffs that are repeated over and over again throughout the duration. There is a bit of Indian influence here and there in the riffing style, but on the whole, they stick to the conventions. The standout track on this EP has to be the final song (before the outro), “Ceremonial Feast at the Black Temple.” The music on that track is definitely a cut above the rest. The lack of originality is easily apparent, but then most bands bypass the demo stage and go straight to their first album. With that in mind, I’m essentially treating this as a demo recording. These guys have some potential, but by sticking to convention, they’re really not doing anything to differentiate themselves from the massive horde of faceless Black Metal bands out there doing the same thing. At this point, the novelty factor is their main selling point. If they don’t deliver the goods on their next album, Solar Deity will be just another band lost in a sea of others just like them.

Funeral Doom, when done right, can be the most powerful style of music on the planet. Seemingly heavy-hearted since birth, it’s difficult for me to think of a band that has occupied my stereo more often than Shape of Despair over the last decade. However, when done incorrectly, Funeral Doom can also be the most boring thing imaginable. Finnish quartet Profetus have not yet discovered the secret to creating meaningful Funeral Doom, as …to Open the Passages in Dusk fails to captivate on any level. If all it took was to play at an inhumanly slow pace, they’d be in business, as play inhumanly slow they do. But that isn’t all it takes. To play at this (complete lack of) speed presents an enormous canvas. An enormous canvas that must be filled delicately and creatively with all of life’s pain and then some. The crushing weight of sorrow, loss and dejection must carry the art, with the denial of all hope as borders. Only then can the beauty of human suffering emanate from the density. Profetus’ indiscernibly uneventful compositions go nowhere slow. Waves of tediously uninteresting chord progressions rise and fall with no life, never reaching apex, never even gathering momentum, all the while guided by an equally painless organ. Anssi Mäkinen has an adequate dull roar —effective, if only by comparison to his tepid spoken bits— but, just like the music, it’s all too content to trudge anticlimactically through cyclical monotony. The clean singing on “Burn, Lanterns of Eve” isn’t very good, but at least it woke me up. Truth is, there isn’t a Doom growl bestial enough, nor a singing voice with enough passion and grace to save this hour-long descent into insubstantiality. Profetus do have some of the tools and could improve, but no Funeral Doom band can come to my pity party unless they remember to bring the pain.

With a name like Black Messiah, you would think that they were some Necro Black Metal band if you’ve never heard their music before. At the very least, you would think that they were Satanic. They’re neither of these. Black Messiah is a Folk Metal band and this is their fifth album. The Final Journey is a hit-or-miss affair that seems to follow a pattern. When they stick to playing Metal and leave the Folk stuff as a garnish, their songs kick ass. When they start playing Folk stuff and have the Metal part as a garnish, things tend to get hokey. The Final Journey is split into two halves. The first of which is a hodge-podge of songs that range from well executed Metal to “Renaissance Faire with electric guitars” music. The second half of the album is a concept piece called “The Naglfar Saga,” which is about what happens to dishonorable warriors after their death. This part of the LP is more consistent and the songs are also more focused on being Metal than Folk (though their fiddle player still gets a fair amount of time). That being said, the second half of the album is definitely better than the first half. I would have preferred to have everything more like the “The Naglfar Saga” than how The Final Journey ultimately came out. Some of the songs on the first half of this album are good, but the “Renaissance Faire” hokeyness drags this one down. The final 23 minutes of The Final Journey is where the best material is. If you can get through the Ren Faire shit, it’s fairly rewarding.

In late 2009, a friend made me a copy of Drudkh’s Microcosmos LP and told me, “Dude, you’ll love this shit.” In retrospect, I did not, in fact, love that shit, although it wasn’t bad at the time. It was a melodic Black Metal album with a strong melodic Black Metal focus mixed with hints of melodic Black Metal and occasional melodic Black Metal flourishes. A decent assembly of pretty, 10-minute numbers that was ultimately forgotten three years later. Having not thought much about these mystery men from the Ukraine during that span, it seems I missed out on their Handful of Stars LP which was rumored to be a drastic Art Rock style change. A shame, because good or bad I might’ve actually remembered that one. Back to doing what got them there, Eternal Turn of the Wheel is basically Microcosmos 2, which means… you guessed it… more melodic Black Metal. I will say, the production is slightly better, the playing a little sharper, and I love that flanged hook on “Breath of Cold Black Soil.” Thurios’ raspy bark is a bit more grating this time around. It doesn’t lend itself well to the band’s serene vibe, and the lyrics not being in English doesn’t help. Like Wolves in the Throne Room with significantly less head-up-ass, these guys are maestros at weaving fragile melancholy with blasting frostbitten grim, but the bottom line is that all these melodies just don’t hurt enough. Go suicidal or go home. People already want to die, so the hard part’s done for you. Drudkh are convincingly adept at creating atmosphere —nature-inspired, calm yet volatile, morose— but in the end it’s just another decent assembly of pretty, 10-minute numbers that will ultimately be forgotten three years later.

This is the first full-length Demoncy album since 2003’s Empire of the Fallen Angel, which is quite a hiatus. Ixithra, the sole member of Demoncy, has always had a knack for creating dark and evil music, and Enthroned Is the Night is definitely a dark and evil album. Though considered Black Metal, Demoncy has always had more in common with Death Metal in terms of style. When you consider that Ixithra was part of Profanatica during the early days of the USBM scene, that isn’t a surprise. Back when Death Metal was all the rage and bands like Morbid Angel, Deicide, Death and Cannibal Corpse were getting huge, there were only three US Black Metal bands that anyone was really aware of (Profanatica, Necrovore and, after Ixithra left Profanatica, Demoncy). All of them had a more brutal, Death Metal oriented sound. This is one aspect of Demoncy that hasn’t changed. This is heavy and brutal. One of the things Ixithra has been doing over time is combining his Dark Ambient project, Profane Grace, with Demoncy. There are a number of “interlude” tracks on Enthroned Is the Night that could be Profane Grace songs (or parts of them). Those are the eeriest and also the strongest tracks on this album. The Metal parts are dark and brutal, but the atmosphere on the interlude tracks stands out the most. The only weakness that I found on this album is one that plagues every band that ever wrote a song in the key of “brutal.” The tonal range that Demoncy operates in is very tight, resulting in songs that are brutal but similar sounding. If it wasn’t for the atmospheric stuff breaking things up, I could see how most would view Enthroned Is the Night as a compilation of ten different versions of the same track. Even with that, this is an album that is getting a lot of play on my stereo.

Arise from the ’80s and attack with the gay
The killing won’t stop until first wipe
We’ll bring you to Canada because we want to enslave
Hole will be frozen with fright
We’ll break through the crust, leave from our trailers
Protected by eternal Pabst
Lay down the laws from our moronic scripts
Bringing you nothing but Ass

Ass…. Metal
Ass…. Metal

Ruling your strip malls, controlling your towns
Entrapped in your worst nightmare
Piercing my ears with this horrible sound
Casting my elusive care
Jarome Iginla laughs, his needs are fulfilled
The Flames are now burning hot
Ass riffs are churning, the people are bored
Audio torture the reason we fought

Ass…. Metal
Ass…. Metal

Kill them fags

Now they take over and rule by Ass Metal
Enjoy their much hated stain
Halford’s cock’s what they want and they won’t settle
Until they drive you insane
Attacking the young by killing the old
Bleeding with every lame beat
Darkness has fallen when this record is sold
Claws will dig into your man meat
When the crowd doesn’t come and the hipsters don’t bite
Know that your career is at its end
Rendered fanless so scream out fright
Ass Metal gone with the wind

Ass…. Metal
Ass…. Metal

One of the more hidden treasures of the NWOOSSDM movement can be found in Spain where Barcelona’s Graveyard rest in festering slime. With only a demo, one proper full-length release, and a few splits under their belt, I hope to be forgiven for not being too familiar with the quartet. But if this 6-song EP —originally pressed on 12-inch vinyl from Doomentia last year, released on CD in 2012 by the fine folks at Pulverised— is any indicator, these Swedeath merchants are definitely capable of high quality, and I should get busy tracking down their back catalog (especially 2009’s split with the mighty Deathevokation). The Altar of Sculpted Skulls is not by any means a flawless recording, but they certainly know how to kick down a door. The opening title track is vicious and massive, boasting a fantastic replica of the vintage Sunlight sound. Dirty and rotten, like Saltrubbed Eyes cooked with Like an Ever Flowing Stream and baking soda, this song explodes with “Soon to Be Dead”-like urgency and a truly monstrous, sick-ass bass tone. Unfortunately the two songs that follow aren’t in the same league. These guys fall in love with a riff and then play it to death —an affliction I know all too well— which isn’t the best idea even if it’s a great riff… let alone mediocre ones that go nowhere. Still, even when the material leaves something to be desired, the vibe is always right. That early ’90s feeling is always undead and ever present. Instrumental “Cult of the Shadows” could serve as the outro to any classic, Autopsy-stained Swedeath masterpiece of your choice, yet it’s not an outro here. We also get the two tracks from the split with Terrorist as a bonus. Decent songs both, but nothing really comes close to topping the opener. The kind of track that mixtapes exist for. These guys may not have the chops to pull every song off, but they do play Death Metal the right way. File under “keep your eye on.”

My first reaction to this was “Wow, I didn’t know Dismember put out a new album!” When I checked my player again, I found that I was wrong and that this was Acephalix. Odder still, this band apparently comes from San Francisco and I’ve never fucking heard of them. I know most of the bands from around here and that struck me as strange. According to what I was able to find out about the band, they started out as a Crust band but morphed into a Death Metal band over time. Regardless of how they got there, they sound very much like old Swedish Death Metal. They have that Sunlight Entombed/Dismember sound down pat. The pacing is slower, though they never slow down to the point where they become Doom/Death like Asunder. The only real flaw that this band really has is that they sound a bit too much like old Dismember. You keep checking your player to see if you aren’t really listening to Like an Ever Flowing Stream. Still, this is some seriously brutal and heavy Death Metal. I like the fact that it gets your head banging almost right away and by the time you hit the album-closer, “The Hunger,” your neck is completely fucked up. Deathless Master should come with a neck brace.

It’s good to know that Kevin Heybourne, the founder and sole remaining original member of Angel Witch, still has it. While they were never as popular with the masses as Iron Maiden or Judas Priest during the heyday of classic Heavy Metal, they always had a special place in the blackened hearts of Bay Area thrashers. In a way, they were Heathen before there was a Heathen. They were a bit too heavy to be in with the more Rock inspired NWOBHM bands (Def Leppard, for example, was one of these bands) and they were too melodic to be in with the harder-edged bands (like the UK Warfare or Venom). They kind of existed in their own territory, which made it hard for folks to lump them in with other bands. As Above, So Below is more inspired by British Doom Metal (as opposed to the more Thrash oriented stuff from the more recent albums) but still with the melodic guitar-work that made Angel Witch famous. The pacing is slower than previous albums and it is definitely the heaviest stuff they’ve done in a long time. I would have liked a thicker, heavier, guitar tone to go along with this, though. The Black Sabbath influences are more prominent in the Doom-inspired tracks and I think a bass-heavy sound would have lent some additional weight to the songs. I’ve heard people say that this album is comparable to their 1980 self-titled debut, but I’m not sure that I agree with that sentiment. As Above, So Below doesn’t have the same feel as Angel Witch. With thirty plus years between them, As Above, So Below is a far more mature album. It’s much more controlled and effective. There’s less “flash” and more of an emphasis on hard-hitting Rock & Roll. The hints of occultism are still there, which is something that I also liked. While they were never known explicitly as an occult Metal band, Angel Witch had far more songs about occult topics than Iron Maiden or Judas Priest ever did. Between Angel Witch and the resurrected Hell, the darker side of NWOBHM is making a comeback and personally, I welcome it.

I’ve got to hand it to Relapse’s advertising department, they knocked out almost a whole sentence of this review for me. Gore fiends who have long been craving a new General Surgery album will have to starve a bit longer, because A Collection of Depravation is merely “a collection of the Swedish Gore-Grind outfit’s out-of-print singles, vinyl-only EPs, comp appearances, and a few unheard demos.” Thanks, guys. Shit, I could just slap a rating on it now and call it a day, but that wouldn’t be prudent. I feel it’s my duty to let everyone who dropped a load in their pants when they read that quote know that this is about as far from essential as a release gets. I do consider myself a fan of these guys, but admittedly I am a very selective one. I love the classic Necrology EP from 1991 and their breakthrough, magnum opus, 2009’s Corpus in Extremus: Analyzing Necroticism. However, the stuff in between I can live without, and this comp is pretty much all the stuff in between. It features all the material from their splits with The County Medical Examiners, Filth, and Machetazo, but good luck even telling these “songs” apart. It’s all just one indiscernible 90-second blur of noise after another that’s pretty difficult to stay awake through. I was able to make out the Carnage, Repulsion, and Carcass covers… barely, and there’s also a block of demo songs from Corpus that, while recognizable, pale in comparison to the mighty album versions. I think I know exactly why they went “unheard.” So, unless you absolutely must own everything that bears the General Surgery name, you really don’t need this. This will be a collector’s item that collects dust. I realize this is a completist’s wet dream —believe me, I have a plethora of releases just like this, and if there were anything even resembling quality here I wouldn’t be bitching like a 70-year old with kids on his lawn— but my days of owning something just for the sake of owning something are over. Save your dough, and more importantly your time, for the band’s new album, assuming they ever finish it.

I salivated at the opportunity to review this third album from Finland’s Soulfallen, as 2007’s World Expiration and 2009’s Grave New World were two remarkably solid albums to start a career with that went virtually unnoticed. Quite a shame, really. The band’s symphonic take on Doomy Melodeath may not be the most unique or original item on the menu, but a large portion of their material proved to be heartily memorable after repeated listening. But of course this is my luck we’re talking about, so it’s no surprise that The Promise of Hell significantly lacks it predecessors’ mournful glory and catchiness. Album opener, “The Birth of Newfound Death,” gets things off to a great start, combining headbangability and gloom in epic fashion. However, just as it seems they’ve picked up right where they’d left off, the album slips into a coma. Not a second’s worth of music is remembered beyond the first song, even after months of searching for anything even slightly resembling appeal. It’s not as though they’ve gone and written the worst album ever made —they haven’t wimped out, or drastically changed style, or embarrassed themselves with a myriad of genre cliches— they simply wrote one terrific song and phoned in the rest of the record. Whether at Death/Thrash speed or a Doom crawl, the riffs go nowhere, the synths are on auto-pilot, and the melodies don’t come close to hurting enough. “At the Heart of Dying” attempts to close things out on a heartfelt note with it’s swaying depressive dirges, but it’s far too little, far too late. A dreadfully mediocre statement from a band already mired in obscurity.

Metal supergroups generally tend to be hit or miss, but not so with this Finnish all-star team boasting members of Swallow the Sun, Amorphis, Kreator, and Moonsorrow. Their debut EP (2009’s Our Twilight) and LP (2010’s Curse of the Red River) weren’t monumental recordings, but they did hint at a ton of gloomy, Folk-tinged Melodeath promise. A strong balance of downtrodden yet epic, heavy yet graceful, with roughly equal parts standout material and filler. One had to figure with The Devil’s Resolve, the band was either poised for total greatness or ready to head the other way. It doesn’t take too many listens to determine the outcome. Following in the footsteps of Amorphis —the band’s most prominent influence— Barren Earth have decided to abandon the heterosexual constraints of Death/Doom in favor of rainbows, pretty flowers, sunshine, campfire ditties, Moogs, and the assholes of children. This album owes more to Disco than it does to Metal. Swallow the Sun vocalist Mikko Kotamaki’s deep and powerful Death roar is the only tie to extremity not severed, serving as a mere aberration here. Imagine KC & the Sunshine Band with occasional Death Metal vocals. Okay, so I might be exaggerating a bit, but there is absolutely no pain here. Noodling. Aimless. Forced dramatics. Prog for the sake of Prog. Just a white river of interchangeable musical arrangements that reek of happiness, fun times, dancing, and the lighter side of The Doors. And of course by purposely sounding dated, everyone will proclaim that they have progressed. Such is the irony of Prog Rock. Alas, with nothing more to offer a life of emptiness and misery, yet another band is dead to me. I will be avoiding them from here on out, as they will only continue to reflect the Amorphis lineage. Expect a forthcoming album of Gloria Gaynor covers.