This was a very difficult album for me to review simply because this is not at all the type of music I normally listen to. And, for that matter, this is not music the average reader of Metal Curse would likely listen to, either. Arise from Thorns plays somewhat Folk-influenced Melodic Rock with dreamy melodies and Pop sensibilities. Imagine, if you will, a much lighter version of The Gathering minus the metallic edge. This band does have a lot going for it though. Keyboard-driven atmospheres combine with acoustic guitar melodies to create interesting, varied-tempo songs that have a certain catchiness to them. Singer Michelle Loose has a lovely and enchanting voice, and her vocals breathe vibrant life into the 14 tracks on Before an Audience of Stars. No complaints on the production. Everything sounds very well done. Michelle’s vocals complement the music perfectly, never overwhelming it. Proper restraint was used with the keyboards as well. They never become so loud in the mix as to drown out anything else in the music. All in all, Arise from Thorns is a talented band that knows how to write good music. Although I did find the music to be soothing, this is just not my cup of tea. However, those of you looking for something a little different might want to give this a try.

Awful production: muddy, low, hissy. I can’t stand that shit. I also can’t stand it when bands ask you to review their vinyl LP with “gatefold cover and killer artwork,” but what you get is a shitty dub tape with a photocopied piece of paper insert. With these two strikes against them, the music here would have to be pretty fucking awesome to salvage a respectable review. No chance. This is more of that symphonic, trollish, avant-garde Black Metal that was an original idea seven years ago. Or at least I think so. The production is so ridiculously bad that it’s hard to make anything out but wanker keyboard arrangements and Popeye talking. This gets about ½ of a motion light going on the stereo and it seriously sounds like it’s coming from the house two blocks down rather than out of my speakers. “Majestic opus” my ass!

Thrashy Death Metal, with some melancholic overtones. That statement brings the first Desultory album to mind, but this really a different approach to more or less the same idea. And then there are badly done “clean” vocals… I wish that people would just stop trying to do what they can’t. But, that might make this sound worse than it really is, because actually it’s pretty good.

I’m not sure if it’s these goofy riffs or the staccato vocal phrasings, but this is fucking annoying, and embarrassing to listen to. I remember liking this band’s first album or two, back in 1904, but I quickly lost interest. Now, after not hearing anything from then until now, I’m glad I missed out. This disc is like every bad idea I’ve ever made fun of all rolled into one big lump of cliche-powered horseshit. Dorky riffs? Check. Butt Rock singer who thinks he is “tough,” but gives in to singing all “sweetly” on their “power ballad”? Check. Lyrics that would have already been so used up as to be unintentionally humorous by 1973? Check. Repeating the song title a million times in a row in every song? Check. Cock Rock song right in the middle of the album? Chec… Wait a second! What the fuck was that?!? Oh man, this is just ridiculous.

Angra certainly know how to inject the right amount of variation into their brand of Power Metal. There are tracks with a great melodic flow where the power and emotion really shine, and there are a few slightly more fast-paced songs that let loose some aggression. There are also a couple of nicely-done ballads that manage to keep the listener intrigued despite their much slower pace. Rebirth is a fascinating concept-album, but I won’t give away the plot. Let’s just say that Angra tells a great story through some of the finest Power Metal in the scene today.

This is a weird combination of a few oddly staccato “Nu-Metal” riffs with more traditional Power Metal riffing and structures, a “guitar whiz,” a sappy vocalist who sounds like he might like to be Queensryche’s squealer, and just horrible keyboards that would make even the most totally lame ’80s New Wave bands laugh their asses off. Destroy the embarrassing keyboards and muzzle the singer, and this might not be too bad. As is, I am left wondering why such a good drummer would bother jerking off with these guys.

This is a Chicago Death Metal band with a decidedly “melodic” European edge to its style. However, that’s not to say that this is wimpy in any way, because this band expertly fuses intensity with catchiness in a way I suppose somewhat similar to early In Flames. In other words, to quote a certain bad motherfucker, this kicks rectal padding.

The mighty Swedes are back with their tried-and-true formula of hard-hitting Death Metal. The Crusher presents 9 new tales deeply entrenched in Viking culture and Norse mythology. Cleverly written songs and addictive guitar riffs are typical of an Amon Amarth album, and this one is no exception. As always, Johan Hegg’s unparalleled battle-roar is backed by ferocious drumming and soaring, shredding guitar melodies. Just as with its predecessors, The Crusher was recorded at Abyss Studios. This new recording initially didn’t seem to pack quite as much of a punch as previous efforts. Its full impact didn’t really hit me until about the third or fourth spin. I am now convinced this is easily the band’s best effort to date, and a true masterpiece of Death Metal. By the way, the version of this release I received features an impressive cover of Possessed’s “Eyes of Horror.”

All Else Failed failed. Noisy, incoherent Metalcore with pathetic vocals. Don’t waste the dough.

For those of you who never got to hear the rather badly underproduced Serpent Lust Arts demo by this band, their style might come as a bit of a surprise. Akrabu is the brainchild of Vampyr Scorpios of Crimson Moon fame and like all of the other bands on Memento Mori, Akrabu is Dark Ambient rather than Metal. The main instrument on this album is an acoustic guitar and the playing style reminded me a lot of the latest album by Melechesh (Djinn). Like Melechesh, Akrabu incorporates the Mesopotamian/Arabic scales into a good part of their music and this album has a very Middle Eastern feel to much of it. The vocals range from whispered incantations to strange drugged out singing to spoken passages. The atmosphere is almost universally dark and mystical at the same time. When you consider that this was recorded in a 4-track studio, this sounds fucking great. You get that dark feeling and at the same time, the sound is polished enough so that everything comes in clearly.

What we have here is basically every 7-inch EP the band recorded between ‘89 and ‘93. Includes material from splits with Social Genocide, Violent Headache, Man Is the Bastard, Psycho, Audiorrea, Kompost, and Nyctophobic. This also features the recordings of Anti-Death and Massagraf, two lesser known AG-related projects. If you’re an Agathocles fan, you know what to expect, and you certainly don’t need my loser ass telling you to buy this. If you’ve never heard AG, just imagine the filthiest, rawest, most untamed Grindcore you can think of… now imagine that, but drunk on Ripple. This might actually be the best type of release for a new listener to start out with. Sure, a lot of these recordings sound like shit, and quite frankly, a few songs are nothing more than little noise farts, but this still serves as an excellent 41-track retrospective on one of the most influential bands the Crust/Grind genre will ever know.

Considering how intertwined this band is with Metal Curse magazine, it probably shouldn’t be reviewed by me or anyone else on the staff, but since I bought a copy (yes, I paid money for this…), I figured that I’d throw in my two cents about what I think of it. Adversary has always had a more melodic side to them than most Death Metal bands and Forsaken seems to highlight that aspect with the myriad of catchy, Thrashy riffs on display here. They also have a live drummer in the form of Bob Burns (another long-time associate of Metal Curse magazine, just look at all the covers he’s done…). Unlike The Winter’s Harvest, there are no keyboards and no Industrialized drumming, a-la drum machine. This sort of takes away a bit from their identity though their music is still just as good. One thing about Adversary is that though they are melodic, they aren’t overly so. There is still plenty of brutality to go around on Forsaken and that’s always a plus. The playing on Forsaken is tight and Ray rages away like the bastard offspring of Johnny Hedlund (the singer from Unleashed for the brain dead out there) and Evil Chuck (R.I.P.). Forsaken is more stripped down and Doomier in style than I was expecting, and though I liked the debut album better (I’m a sucker for atmosphere and this doesn’t have the same identity as the debut), this still gave me a healthy dose of whiplash and a concussion that should end my career as a crash test dummy.

One of these living abortions is related to one of the queens in Korn. And even if that were not the case, this still might be the worst things I’ve heard since Uncle Kracker. “Yo, you dealin’ wit da shit facta!”

Look, I don’t care how awesome the music is, if your vocalist sounds like a fucking Fraggle, you’re probably better off keeping your recordings at a safe distance from the general public.

As one of the few bands officially sanctioned by the Church of Satan, Acheron’s history has been long and storied. This CD compiles a lot of old demo material, mostly tracks from before their debut album, Rites of the Black Mass. The oldest tracks are from 1989 and the last three, tracks from the demo for Those Who Have Risen, were recorded in 1993. The sound quality, naturally, reflects the demo status of these songs. The resulting rawness does nothing to harm the actual listenability of the songs, though. I was a bit disappointed that no mention of where these songs came from was made in the band bio that was included in the inlay. Another disappointment was the lack of intros to their songs. One of the things that distinguished Acheron from other Death Metal bands from Florida was their inclusion of atmospheric interludes and segments of the Black Mass or other Satanic rituals / ideologues (the 9 Satanic Statements on the Hail Victory CD, for example). This is almost pure Death Metal with the only real atmospheric bits coming in at the end (when they had a keyboard player). For fans of the band and lovers of old-school Florida Death Metal, this is a real must.

This CD is a “remastered” repress of their “kult” release on IG Farben a couple years ago. If you own the original, you’re really not getting a whole lot of new stuff with this re-issue. The packaging is definitely a step up from the original but musically, the only new track is the intro, “Leben Ist Krieg, Krieg Ist Leben”, which was composed and recorded by Rob Darken of Graveland/Lord Wind. Musically, Absurd is still working that Skinhead Punk/Black Metal hybrid that they’ve been playing since their demo days. Their sound kind of mixes Skrewdriver and Bathory with catchy hooks and memorable riffs. The sound has improved only marginally, having been cleaned up but truthfully, it is still lacking in the guitar department. In fact, outside of the solos, it sounds like this album was recorded with a drum machine and a bass guitar. I’m kind of hoping that Absurd can produce a really good album that would justify their position in the scene but honestly, they’re more hype than ability. Maybe if they can keep their asses out of jail long enough, they might be able to do that. Being a Nazi in Germany might have been OK in 1938 but in this day and age, it’s a pretty tough proposition. If you can buy this cheap, it might be good for a tidy sum on eBay.

Italy’s Aborym returns with their sophomore effort, featuring ex-Mayhem (and current Tormentor / Plasma Pool) vocalist Attila at the helm for the vast bulk of this album. The first Aborym disc saw Attila appearing only as a guest vocalist, but this time he’s there for every song except the cover of Burzum’s “Det Somme Engang Var.” If he had a problem with the band’s choice of cover tunes, I can fully understand why he didn’t participate in the recording of that particular song. The cover is pretty faithful to the original, packing in a lot of that Burzum atmosphere and dark, evil feeling. The other songs are atmospheric as well but in a different way. Musically, Aborym incorporates a lot of keyboard-driven atmospheric parts with some occasional Techno-Industrial drumming, some samples and a heap of fast and furious guitar-work. The speed on this album is fairly close to what bands like Baltak or Kult Ov Azazel are doing (hyperspeed for the most part, with the occasional slowdown) though they never stay in “blast” mode for very long. The main attraction for me is Attila’s vocals. This guy just sounds plain fucking evil and everything he’s done (with the exception of the last Tormentor album which was musically bad, not vocally) has really been worth picking up. Oh yeah, this album is supposedly infused with “theta waves” so if you feel strange after listening to it, it’s not something in your pot that’s causing it.

Mid-tempo Industrial Black Metal featuring Atilla Csihar, whose vocals haunted the classic Mayhem LP, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, way back when Black Metal wasn’t lame. These guys experiment way too much with the synths and Homo-Rave effects. Wasn’t Black Metal supposed to be primitive and barbaric? The overdone mechanized vibe of this record ruins what is a fairly solid vocal performance from good ol’ Atilla. His demonic snarl cannot rescue the album from it’s from it’s revoltingly fake atmosphere.

It seems almost strange to think that Abigor has been around for over a decade. Their newest effort, Satanized, sees them still blasting out the raw Black Metal, but tempered with some slower tempos, keyboards and almost Thrashy parts. I guess Abigor has never been one of my favorite Black Metal bands, but this album has increased their rank.

I don’t know if I would classify this as a new album or not, because only four of the six tracks on this are studio recordings (the other two are live cuts) and the whole thing is pretty short - even if you include the live material. Like previous outings, this CD has a lot of raw Bay Area Thrash influenced riffs mixed in with the Bathory-esque stuff and the songs are short and to the point. You don’t get any 10-minute epic tracks or long keyboard intros/interludes from Abigail. These guys just come in, beat the shit out of you and then leave. If there’s one thing I found “wrong” with this CD, it’s the abruptness of the whole thing. You get a fast and furious ass kicking and by the time you realize what hit you, it’s over! There’s just enough to get you banging your head but not enough for you to get whiplash. I sure hope this is a precursor to the next full-length Abigail album because this has me interested in hearing what’s next.