Metal Church is a band I haven’t kept track of very much since the ’80s. I was a big fan of The Dark and the self-titled debut, but after David Wayne left the band, they kind of dropped off of the radar for me. Occasionally I’d hear a track or two from them over the ensuing years, but nothing through the ’90s and into the 2000s impressed me enough to check them out again. This is, quite literally, the first Metal Church album I’ve listened to in its entirety in almost three decades. Comparing it to the legendary The Dark probably isn’t fair, but that’s my last reference point for their music. Generation Nothing isn’t bad. Even compared to The Dark, it doesn’t sound horrible, but the music is just missing that rawness and intensity that the early material had. Ronny Munroe does his best to sound like David Wayne, but his delivery makes him sound more like Udo Dirkschneider to the point I thought I was listening to Accept half of the time. Musically, Generation Nothing is fairly basic “by the numbers” Heavy Metal. There’s nothing here that Metal Church hasn’t done before, and while there aren’t any tracks that blatantly suck ass, none of them stand out. There’s no “Ton of Bricks” or “Watch the Children Pray” to be found here, and that’s what this LP desperately needs. There isn’t a song that instantly gets your head banging and makes you say “Fuck Yeah! Turn this shit up!” when you hear it. Traditional Heavy Metal is really at its best when it has that hook or standout melody. It’s what people remember after the album is over, and Generation Nothing is lacking in that department. Even after repeated listens, my reactions were the same: this is okay, but just doesn’t have what it takes to really be a good album, let alone a great one.

I’ve never been to Norway, but the winters there must be brutal for the country to produce so much dark, bleak, and cold music as it does. Throne of Katarsis is a band that embodies all three of those characteristics. The Three Transcendental Keys is as dark, as bleak, and as cold as Norwegian Black Metal comes. This LP has that Burzum-esque droning style melded with raw and dirty Transylvanian Hunger-era Darkthrone, plus dark, dismal melodies, and howling, reverb-laced vocals thrown in to make things even more evil sounding. I admit that the style isn’t exactly groundbreakingly original. I’ve been listening to Scandinavian Black Metal for twenty years now and I’ve heard a lot of bands. Throne of Katarsis might not be doing anything different or unique, but they know how to squeeze the most out of what they have. If you want to make this kind of Black Metal, old Burzum and Darkthrone is a good place to start. The Three Transcendental Keys is a pretty harrowing affair, mostly due to the heavily reverb-laden guitars and vocals. If there’s one thing that keeps it from greatness, it’s the droning style. Some might like it because the somewhat ambient nature of the music lulls you into a weird hypnotic state - and it is pretty mesmerizing at times - but if you’re paying attention, the repetitive structures get kind of boring. As a side note, one of my friends told me that this LP is one you shouldn’t listen to while taking any hallucinogenic drugs. I haven’t tried it, and I don’t recommend it, but apparently the experience isn’t good.

While Hell’s 2011 debut, Human Remains, was a tribute to the deceased founder of the band, David Halliday, Curse & Chapter marks a new phase. Human Remains featured only old material, and while the new lineup took some liberties with those songs, they were essentially faithful to the originals. Curse & Chapter shows Hell returning as a full-fledged band that wants to produce new and original music. I was initially wary of this because it’s always dicey when a group reunites without one of the core members. Most of the time, it’s a cash-in on a familiar name with the remaining guys either rehashing older material again or putting out new stuff that’s a pale shadow of classics. Curse & Chapter, though, shows that the band has the chops to be able to pull this off. The overdone theatrical nature of their music - especially David Bower’s vocals- might be off-putting to some, but the net result is that their songs are never boring or “same old shit” sounding. In a way, they’re kind of like a NWOBHM version of Cradle of Filth, complete with the atmospherics, blackened tongue-in-cheek lyrics and over the top delivery. The music on Curse & Chapter is still solidly in the realms of the melodic NWOBHM style, but the newer influences do stand out. Even when things get a bit “out there” in terms of the playing, they keep going back to that Metal foundation that grounds them. I enjoyed listening to this LP quite a bit, mostly because it expands on the older material and brings in some interesting new sounds. It’s never a dull moment with these guys. David Bower is a big part of that with his “William Shatner of Heavy Metal” style vocals. I can’t honestly say that there’s another singer like him. Likewise, Hell has a sound that is distinctly their own. If there’s any downside to this album, it’s that it doesn’t compare to seeing them live. I’ve watched clips of the band’s live show and it’s quite a spectacle. Once you see David Bower on stage dressed like Satan himself, and wielding a trident that sprays sparks all over the place, hearing the music without the visuals seems a tad bland in comparison. Still, this is a very entertaining record, and if you’re a fan of some good old-fashioned Heavy Metal, it is sure to satisfy you.

Having grown up in San Francisco, Bay Area Thrash is something that I’ve known about and followed for most of my life. While I was never one of those people who religiously went to The Stone or to Ruthie’s Inn, I did know about and listened to most of the bands in the local scene. As such, Death Angel and their peers were a fairly large part of my youth and young adult life. I first discovered Death Angel not long after The Ultra-Violence was released. One of my friends was a huge fan of theirs at the time and I heard that LP at least once every time I was around him back when I was in high school. Thrash was getting big in those days, with Metallica leading the way. MTV was starting to play Thrash videos and major labels were signing Bay Area bands left and right. As things grew more and more commercialized, you could slowly see a lot of local groups changing, and Death Angel was no exception. I remember them attempting to become more commercially acceptable on Act III, and at some point they even started calling themselves D.A. because Death Angel wasn’t radio-friendly enough. They eventually disappeared, dissolving back in 1991, with members forming other bands like The Organization (also known as “The O”), Swarm and Big Shrimp. Death Angel reformed in 2001, though with only two of the members from the ’80s lineup remaining (Rob Cavestany and Mark Osegueda). The new team is rounded out by three scene veterans: Will Carroll, Ted Aguilar and Damien Sisson (all three of whom are also members of local Thrashers Scarecrow, Ted and Will were also in Warfare DC together). The Dream Calls for Blood is the latest album by this revamped lineup, and while the novelty of Death Angel being comprised of family members is gone, the band is more focused, and the desire to appeal to MTV and mainstream radio is nowhere to be found. Though they’re never going to recapture the feeling and energy of The Ultra-Violence, the Thrash on this record is definitely potent. It’s reminiscent of other Bay Area bands, blending a bit of Exodus with some Vio-Lence and a little old Metallica into their already established sound. No new ground is broken, but the music still does plenty of damage to the vertebrae in your neck. All of these songs are mostly hard-driving, speedy Thrash with just enough melody to hook you in and get your head banging. The only one that really doesn’t fit is their rendition of “Heaven and Hell,” but that’s a digipak-only bonus track, so I don’t really count it. It’s a good cover, but the song is slower and heavier than the others, making it stick out as an oddball. As a bonus track, though, it’s definitely worth an extra dollar or two if you’re a fan of the band. Even if you only have the option of buying the regular version, it doesn’t disappoint.

I always hate researching a band with a name like Astaroth. Going online and searching for the right one is always a pain because there are literally dozens of groups out there with the same name or some variation of it. This particular Astaroth comes from Oslo, Norway, and they’re Black Metal. To further add to the confusion, there is also another band from Laksevag, Norway, with the same name, but they’re Death Metal. Anyway, Chaosatanas is the debut release by this Astaroth, and while I didn’t find it very original, I did notice that, for whatever reason, I’ve been listening to this album a lot. It kind of reminds me of old Dark Funeral and Marduk at times, but the music here is far more versatile than that. Astaroth isn’t one of those bands that plays fast all the time. They know how to inject some melodic, and occasionally thrashy, guitar-work in with the all-out speed assault, making their music much more effective. It also helps that most of the songs kick ass, too. “Abyss” and “Xeper-I-Apep” had my neck making all kinds of noises that I don’t think are healthy. There were a couple dud tracks, “The Chosen” being the most obviously sub-par, but on the whole, this was a pretty solid debut. While there is room for improvement, Chaosatanas shows a band with some impressive skills. If their next LP is full of songs that are on the same caliber as “Abyss,” “Grace of Earth,” and “World Enslaved,” they’ll be responsible for a large number of neck injuries and we’ll be forgetting that there are a dozen other bands out there with the same name.

Ad Baculum is a band that, in theory, should be pretty good. The sole member, Meugninousouan, was the vocalist for one of Brazil’s earliest Black Metal hordes, Mystifier. He’s been in the scene for ages, and having been in and around extreme music for most of his life, he should know a thing or two about creating evil Black Metal, right? Sadly, this isn’t the case. This is his second Ad Baculum LP, and though I haven’t heard the band’s 2011 debut, Blackness Doctrine, if what’s on Abstract Abysmal Domain is any guide, I didn’t really miss much. Though the music on this album is somewhat reminiscent of Mystifier, the main problem with it is that it’s pretty boring. It’s severely lacking in heaviness, brutality and menace. Basically, it sounds neutered. The guitars are sterile, and the best way to describe them would be to say that they’re like someone revving a chainsaw but with most of the bass sucked out of the recording. The drum sound is likewise lifeless, with a trashcan lid snare and light switch bass drums. There’s no energy in the playing at all, even when the speed kicks up to “blast” levels. The drumming is fast, but mechanical, and could very well be a simply programmed drum machine. And then there are the vocals… Meugninousouan has a very monotone style, and his delivery is one of the problems that fucks up everything. He doesn’t know how to mesh his singing with the rest of the music, the result being that there’s no “flow” to it. The vocals ramble away, absolutely oblivious to all else that’s going on, sounding like Meugninousouan reading us a dissertation on Satanism in a growly monotone while a band is rehearsing in the room next door. It’s that disconnected. Unfortunately, the only things going for this LP are the Mystifier connection and a cool band logo. Other than that, it’s essentially a waste of time and money.

Though Cult of Fire hails from the Czech Republic, their influences are not what you would expect. This isn’t your typical Black Metal LP by a long shot. The band’s basic Bathory-esque assault has been copiously augmented by inspirations culled from Hindu mystical traditions, literature and music. There’s lots of chanting, Indian musical instruments, and song structures that are not normally found in European Black Metal all over this album, and those are the things that give Cult of Fire a sound that’s pretty unique. I like how the band was able to incorporate outside ideas into Black Metal in a way that’s still dark and evil sounding, but at the same time has a different atmosphere from the others in the genre. What makes this so good is the fact that Cult of Fire has melded Indian/Hindu mystical imagery and sound into their music in a way that sounds natural. None of the additions to the basic Bathory-influenced Black Metal style sound tacked on or out of place. As an added bonus, it also kicks all kinds of ass. For a band that uses Hindu mystical influences, this is remarkably aggressive, which is something that I didn’t expect. When I see anyone involved in the Hindu religion, they’re usually the most passive, mellow people imaginable. Cult of Fire, though, rages like a psychotic wolverine hell-bent on shredding you into little pieces. I’m definitely looking forward to hearing more from this group because their music is an interesting twist on the Black Metal style that’s both distinctly different from other bands in the genre and induces extensive amounts of neck damage at the same time.

Canto III, the latest LP by England’s Eye of Solitude takes a bit of getting used to. Unlike their previous output, the band goes for a more varied approach this time around. While everything is still mostly in the realm of Atmospheric Doom/Death Metal, there are times that a faster and aggressive Death Metal style is used, which never seems to work as well. Eye of Solitude excels at slower, more melodic and atmospheric stuff. The speedier bits of this album are more of a hindrance than a help for a band like this. There is a segment in “Act I: Between Two Worlds (Occularis Infernum),” and also one in “Act II: Where the Descent Began,” where the drumming goes into blast mode. The drums are a bit too loud and artificial sounding, especially the bass drums, which have an unnatural tone and seem to be triggered. When Adriano Ferraro starts blasting away, he literally drowns out the two guitarists completely, reducing that part of the song to a blast beat drum solo. Obviously, this ruins the carefully crafted atmosphere, and when the large part of your appeal is the atmospheric element, that’s always bad. Thankfully, Eye of Solitude doesn’t do that kind of thing very often. Most of the time, the music is oppressively dark and depressing; feelings that the band is able to conjure up quickly and effectively. They’re so good at what they do that even with missteps like the blasting drums in the early part of the album, they’re able to recover almost immediately and hit back just as hard, if not harder. If you’re looking for dark and brutal Death Metal with tons of atmosphere, Eye of Solitude is a band that reliably delivers the goods. If you’re into bands like old My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost or Atmospheric Doom/Death in general, this LP should definitely be on your short list of releases to pick up.

I’ve listened to Candlemass since their 1986 debut LP (Epicus Doomicus Metallicus) and while I would never consider myself a rabid fan of the band, I’ve always found something worthwhile in each of their releases. When I heard that bassist Leif Edling had a new project that was in the Doom vein, I had to check it out. While Avatarium isn’t exactly Candlemass, they do have some strong similarities. The main differences between the two bands are that Avatarium has a female vocalist, Jennie-Ann Smith, and the music is decidedly more Hard Rock-inspired, where Candlemass was, of course, more Metal. This doesn’t stop Avatarium from being heavy, though. Much of this album sounds like a cross between Trouble and Candlemass, but with strong doses of Stoner and Psychedelic Doom thrown in to make things interesting. Jennie-Ann Smith doesn’t have the lungs of Messiah Marcolin or Robert Lowe, but her voice fits the music far better than a more operatic singer or a banshee-wailer would have. She has something of a Bluesy style that has the versatility to work with both the Hard Rock/Psychedelic stuff and the harder-hitting Metal parts, giving the band a wider range of music to explore. For a debut release, Avatarium is very interesting. While listening to this, I wanted the band to go further into the Psychedelic Doom direction, mostly because the lyrics are pretty “out there.” There are times when that element does come in, but it’s never as pervasive as I thought it should be. Still, the music is potent enough to satisfy most fans of straight-out Doom Metal in the vein of Trouble or Cathedral. It’s an impressive effort and hopefully Avatarium will continue on as a full band. With Leif also in Candlemass, I would hate to see this be a one-off project.

Sometimes all the pieces come together exactly the right way and the whole is inexplicably greater than the sum of its parts. This happens when Ghosts at Sea slows down and gets gloomy, as in the flawlessly ominous dirge “The End of Days.” I always listen to whatever I’m reviewing several times, in an attempt to understand it as well as I am able. Hymns of Our Demise was not at all difficult to decipher. It’s 21st century Black Metal with the appropriate and expected speed and atmosphere, plus more than a little Doom injected into its veins, very well done and certainly interesting enough, but not exactly astonishing. Except for the aforementioned stunner “The End of Days,” which I could not help but continually repeat 18 times. There are other moments of such excellence throughout the album, especially in “The Weight of 1000 Suns” and sparsely scattered within the fourteen-minute closer, “Through the Shadow That Bind Us,” but only once does this Indiana/Kentucky team achieve full-song perfection. The United States isn’t exactly a hotbed of quality Black Metal (with a few notable exceptions, of course!), and I think that I can count the number of premium USBM bands from right here in Indiana on one cloven hoof, so obviously I’ll be keeping an ear on Ghosts at Sea. Will this despondent duo find a way to more seamlessly integrate different tempos? Or perhaps drop the faster stuff altogether and fully embrace the crushing despair of a glacial pace, which works so well for them whenever they do it? Hymns of Our Demise feels a bit disjointed, but the potential is clearly here for its follow-up to be a true masterpiece.

Ekove Efrits hails from Tehran, Iran, and is the primary band of Count De Efrit, who is also the sole member of Silent Path. The difference between the two is that Silent Path is more depressive and droning, where Ekove Efrits is far more experimental. I’m tempted to call the band’s style Post-Black Metal, but I don’t know if that would fit, either. This is some weird shit. You can tell the influence of bands like Burzum and even the likes of Moonspell and Katatonia in here, but the music takes that foundation and goes wild with it. There are elements of Ambient, Goth/Industrial, Techno and Trip-Hop all over the place, making this a very interesting listen. You never know quite what you’re going to get from one song to the next. It isn’t weird for the sake of being weird, though. There seems to be a method to all of the madness, so to speak. Even though there are disparate musical influences going into this, it somehow makes sense in an atmospheric/emotional way. The music is dark and melancholic, diving into Goth territory most of the time, but never quite going over the edge into Suicidal/Depressive realms. I think fans of Gothic Metal will get the most out of Nowhere, mainly because the music is more in line with what fans of that genre are looking for. People requiring something more straight-forward or aggressive will find this too strange and too passive. I enjoyed this LP because it was so unpredictable on one hand, yet fairly predictable on the other. You know what you’re going to get, but you don’t know how Count De Efrits is going to give it to you.

I consider myself to be a big Kataklysm fan, and despite not being completely blown away by the band’s previous album, 2010’s Heaven’s Venom, I was still very anxiously awaiting this new release. A few seconds into the first play-through and my mind wandered, without anything drawing my focus again until the digipak-only bonus track, a cover of “The American Way,” which seems just as timely now as when Sacred Reich wrote it nearly a quarter century ago, although stylistically entirely out of place here. Another dozen spins and the regular-edition closer, “Elevate,” worked its way into my brain as well, and now after weeks of countless additional tries to cram the rest of this into my hippocampus, it’s kind of happening, despite the occasional imperfect riff (I’m looking at you, “Under Lawless Skies”). The impeccable recording/production helps, I think, and Maurizio Iacono’s growls, shrieks, and roars are as amazing as ever. Waiting for the End to Come combines all the necessary high-quality ingredients the right way, and is a tremendous accomplishment, but as with the aforementioned Heaven’s Venom, something’s absent… an element that I can’t describe. From an unknown Death Metal band, this album would be close to a ten, but Kataklysm have set the bar, and my expectations, so high that perhaps it’s impossible for even the godz of Northern Hyperblast to reach them anymore. I suppose that’s not fair. Reality seldom is.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about Satan’s Wrath, mostly from folks who missed the campiness of old Heavy Metal. Perhaps he best way to describe this band is to say that this is what Grim Reaper would sound like if Cronos from Venom took over vocal duties and wrote all of the lyrics. It’s musically far more in line with traditional Heavy Metal in the NWOBHM style, though not in the same quality as bands like Iron Maiden, Angel Witch or Hell. It’s melodic and the sound is very much old-school Heavy Fucking Metal the way I remember it from back in the early ’80s. Vocally and lyrically, though, this is pure Venom worship. It’s over the top Satanic, but in a campy way that makes this hard to take seriously. I don’t normally go for bands like this, mostly because they tend to be one-trick ponies. I’ve listened to dozens of groups in a similar vein, and once you’ve heard one album by a band like this, you generally don’t need to buy any more because they all sound the same. I went back and checked out Galloping Blasphemy, the debut album by Satan’s Wrath, and sure enough, the two are very similar in style and substance. Listening to them back to back, it sounds as if Aeons of Satan’s Reign took a step down in the production department. Galloping Blasphemy is sonically a lot more powerful, sporting heavier guitars and a fuller production than its successor. If you’re curious about Satan’s Wrath and don’t already have the debut, I would recommend Galloping Blasphemy over this one for the simple reason that it sounds better. The two records are very similar in terms of the music, but the tie breaker is the production. If you already own Galloping Blasphemy, you can safely pass on this one because you’re really not getting much that you haven’t already heard.

When I heard the self-titled demo from Finland’s Shadecrown, I was seriously impressed. It isn’t often you find a band that takes the time and the effort to create a demo recording that has both well-crafted songs and excellent sound. While I enjoyed the music immensely, I was disappointed that it was so short. At three songs and under fifteen minutes, it was over far sooner than I wanted it to be. I needed to hear more, and to my surprise, my wish has been granted far sooner than I expected! Shadecrown has unleashed a new four-song EP with more of what I was craving. Like their self-titled demo, Chained is dark, heavy and melodic. The sound is, once again, excellent, with a production that rivals releases by the top bands in any genre of Metal. I seriously wish more bands had sound this good, because being an old and admittedly jaded Metal fan, I want to hear the music presented in the best possible light. What good is having a guitarist or a bassist if you never hear him? Every instrument on Chained is clearly audible and properly balanced so that no one dominates the recording. The songs, likewise, are well written and have both power and melody. The music is slightly more Death Metal oriented this time around, giving the songs a bit more punch in the brutality department, but the melodic guitar-work and the atmosphere still infuse everything with a dark and somber feeling that reminds me at times of old My Dying Bride. One of the reasons I loved early My Dying Bride was because they were punishingly heavy and brutal, but there was an underlying beauty amidst the carnage that you can appreciate as the disks in your neck make more snap, crackle and pop noises than a bowl of Rice Krispies. Shadecrown has that quality as well (my chiropractor sincerely appreciates this, as you can imagine) and it’s why I was so excited to hear this. If there’s one flaw with Chained, it’s that there still isn’t enough here to satisfy my craving. Like their debut release, this is over far too soon. Twenty minutes of Shadecrown isn’t enough for me. I’ll definitely be waiting to hear more from this band, and if they can maintain this level of quality, they’ll be a top player in this genre.

As much as I respect Ihsahn for his work with Emperor, Peccatum and Thou Shalt Suffer, his solo material has always been tough for me to review. I say this because Ihsahn was one of the guys who were at the very point of the Black Metal spear that pierced the stagnating Death Metal scene and deflated it like a cheap balloon. I would listen to the original Emperor/Enslaved split CD for hours at a time because it had that darkness about it that I want in Metal. I don’t idolize Ihsahn, but my level of respect for him is very high. Ihsahn’s solo work, though, is something that I don’t want to think about. For starters, I hate Progressive Metal. There are a few bands in the genre that I tolerate, but for the most part, I’d rather spend the rest of my life deaf than listen to it. That being said, Das Seelenbrechen is horrible. Even by Progressive Metal standards, it’s almost unlistenable. The songs are disjointed, unmemorable, and though things might make sense from a technical perspective, the structures are so fucked up that you literally have to be on some serious medication before any of this shit works. There’s very little consistency in the music and each song seems to go off in its own direction, making this album sound like a mix tape made by someone with ADHD. This kind of music is worse than navel gazing wankerdom. At least that has a point: It’s just a musician masturbating with his chosen instrument, showing off to his musician friends and writing music that only other wankers want to listen to. As stupid as that is, at least I can understand it. This LP is just experimentation for the sake of experimentation. It’s fucked up, weird and lacks any sort of musical direction. At least Samoth stuck with extreme Metal and produced some good stuff with Zyklon (his work with The Wretched End is less impressive, but still far better than this…). Das Seelenbrechen is just complete and total crap. I don’t say this often, but I want that 49 minutes of my life back.

I’ve never been a big fan of England’s The Meads of Asphodel. The best way to describe these guys is to say that they are Experimental Black Metal. Everything about them is a bit odd, from their “We escaped from the set of Monty Python and the Holy Grail” outfits to their music. I don’t think there’s a song on this entire record that doesn’t veer sharply into what-the-fuck? territory at least once. The Meads of Asphodel is one of the few bands that can go from “This is totally fucking awesome!” to “This is totally fucking awful!” and then back again in one song. I can’t truthfully call this Progressive Black Metal or even Post-Black Metal. It’s just Black Metal with a lot of weird shit mixed into it. Personally, I wonder if the music is intentionally done the way it is for the sole purpose of irritating listeners. The group seems to exist just to push people’s buttons, and apparently thrives on the shock factor. The Nazi/Holocaust concept of Sonderkommando is freaking people out left and right. But they need the controversy, because on its own, the music isn’t exactly going to push album sales. It’s too eccentric, and though there are some good parts on this record, they’re just that: good parts. They aren’t even good songs. They’re sections of songs that you wish were longer. I honestly think that, if they wanted to, The Meads of Asphodel could write an album that fucking shreds and shows the entire world that they know how to snap necks like nobody’s business. This just isn’t it.

This is the CD version of Into the Pantheon, which is a live concert recording. There is also a DVD/BD available, and if there is a choice, I recommend getting the video because a live performance is usually 50% audio and 50% visual when it comes to the experience. As good as the audio is, you obviously get much more if you have the visual portion as well. The concert was recorded live at Wave Gotik Treffen (WGT) on June 11, 2011, so it isn’t exactly new. According to the information that I have, this was the band’s first actual live performance. Given that, it’s a very good concert. The sound, of course, is stellar. The songs range from early Folk/atmospheric Black Metal-era material to their more recent Neo-Folk sound. The older material has been reworked so that it fits the band’s current direction, though to be fair, it didn’t need much reworking. Empyrium has always had more of a Neo-Folk/Dark Ambient style to begin with, so their transition from Metal to Neo-Folk wasn’t that big of a stretch. Initially sounding a lot like old Ulver, mostly from the Kveldssanger and Bergtatt period, the newer work is more in the vein of other bands like Sol Invictus, Din Brad (ex-Negura Bunget) and The Soil Bleeds Black. If you’re into the Neo-Folk or a longtime fan of the band, this is well worth checking out. They even play two new tracks here, “The Days Before the Fall” and “Dead Winter Ways,” both of which are solid incentives for interested folks to pick this up. I’ve been a fan of Empyrium since their 1996 debut album, A Wintersunset… and I really enjoyed the audio portion of this. I’m definitely going to pick up the video version, because as much as I like the audio, I still feel as though there’s something missing each time I listen to it.

I’ve always had mixed feeling about Profanatica. They were one of the early US Black Metal bands, spearheading the movement along with Masochist, Necrovore and Demoncy. Sporting an obviously Death Metal-influenced style (Profanatica’s original lineup had all been members of Incantation), they were sort of unique among the other groups in the US at the time. While their music wasn’t especially great, they were more known for their outrageous behavior, blasphemous and sexually explicit lyrics, and their tendency towards appearing in promo photos nude (covered in fake blood). Although I respected the band for being there at the very beginning, I wasn’t a big fan of their music because it never really stood out. Even after reforming back in 2001, they’ve never produced an album that I would consider “great.” Thy Kingdom Cum, the band’s latest release, revels in chaotic riffing and one-dimensional drumming. The songs have an underlying “sameness” about them that makes sitting through this kind of difficult. At some point during my repeated listens, I would lose track of which song I was on because I really couldn’t tell them apart very well. The riffing is remarkably similar in style on each song, and Paul Ledney has one standard drum fill that he constantly reuses. It’s the same one he’s done for decades. The main thing, though, is that nothing stands out. None of these songs grab you by the throat and demand your attention. None of it is horrible, but at the same time, there are plenty of bands out there that are delivering better than this on a regular basis. I’m admittedly old and jaded. I’ve been listening to Metal for over thirty years and it takes a lot to get me excited, and Profanatica just doesn’t do anything on Thy Kingdom Cum that I haven’t heard from them already. The formula they’re operating off of might be tried and true, but their brand of Black Metal is long on blasphemy but short on interesting music. Outside of the amusement you’ll get from reading Paul’s “I ejaculate on the face of Christ” lyrics, this has little to recommend.

Some consider The Ruins of Beverast to be one of the best kept secrets in Black Metal right now. Though former Nagelfar (the German one, not to be confused with the Swedish Naglfar) member Alexander von Meilenwald has been writing and recording music under the name of The Ruins of Beverast since 2003, the band has remained something of a cult phenomenon. Though he has produced three critically acclaimed full-length LPs prior to this one (the split releases and compilations were less well received), widespread recognition has been on the elusive side. Considering how good Blood Vaults is, I doubt that this will remain the case for very long. This is quite possibly the heaviest Black Metal I’ve heard since the last time Tom Warrior/Gabriel/Fischer released something. It’s borderline Doom/Death in sound and production, giving the music a warmer and fuller treatment that greatly adds to the grim and malevolent air that hangs over Blood Vaults like a thick fog. That dark atmosphere is heightened by the use of copious amounts of acoustic guitar, clean and occasionally effects-laden vocals, and even some tribal drumming. Seriously, this is some sick and brutal stuff. When I want to listen to something dark, brutal and heavy, this is the kind of music that I want to hear. The whole package seems to indicate that this is a concept album, but a quick reading of the lyrics doesn’t really tell me what the story is beyond some disjointed parts that loosely fit together thematically. It doesn’t help that a fair sized chunk of the lyrics are in Latin, a language of which I have only a limited amount of knowledge. Concept album or not, it is one of the best releases this year. I don’t give perfect scores very often, but from my perspective Blood Vaults earned every point of it by delivering a record full of dark and punishing Metal that has both melody and brutality. It’s a delicate balancing act to pull off, but I felt that The Ruins of Beverast was able to do it.

This is a Punk/Thrash Crossover band that was formed by Joel Grind (Toxic Holocaust) and Yasuyuki Suzuki (aka Barbados) of Abigail as a side project that recorded new material every time that Joel was in Japan. This record was originally released back in 2008, but this version was remastered by Joel and reissued with bonus tracks that essentially make it a compilation of all of their material, except for the band’s 2013 EP, Green Tea or Die. As you can tell from the titles of this LP and their new EP, this project isn’t exactly serious. It’s one long ode to having a good time (getting drunk off your ass, partying and trying to get laid) set to some Punk-infused Thrash Metal music. Please note that this is traditional Punk and not Hardcore. When most folks hear “Punk/Thrash Crossover,” they think of bands like D.R.I. or Corrosion of Conformity, but this sounds nothing like that. It has more in common with old Venom/Bathory than it does with anything in the Hardcore/Thrash Crossover or Metalcore genres. The Punk influences are mostly from the British scene, drawing heavily from the likes of The Exploited, English Dogs and even the Sex Pistols, giving the music of Tiger Junkies a rawer, primal edge that does more to capture the group’s energy than a clean, over-polished approach would have. The playing is a bit sloppy in places, but if anything, it adds to the sense of Punk intensity that the band feeds off of. This is a fun album that gets your head banging and isn’t afraid to laugh at itself once in a while. If you like your Thrash Metal raw and energetic, the Punk-fueled Thrash of Tiger Junkies will definitely appeal to your tastes.