I haven’t heard Black Metal like this in a while. At one point, almost every Black Metal band had a keyboardist and they all played in a style similar to Emperor or Dimmu Borgir. Now, everyone wants to sound like Darkthrone. I wouldn’t call this Symphonic Black Metal because the keyboard structures aren’t all that complicated, and while they do play a significant role in Voin Grim’s sound, they are there primarily to lend atmosphere. Musically, this is album has a bit of both Emperor and Darkthrone on it. The guitar playing is similar to old Darkthrone or Mayhem (Deathcrush era) in style. The guitar parts are a bit hard to make out, though. The keyboards are dominant here, so when they come in, the guitars get buried. And I mean completely buried. When the keyboards are going, the guitars literally become inaudible. All you hear are keyboards and drums. This brings us to the second thing that’s wrong with this album’s production. It sounds muffled. It’s like listening to a record from the other side of a wall or a closed door. You can make everything out to some extent, but it’s as if the sound is being absorbed or diffused. The music on Immerse Into Nocturnal Splendour is pretty good, but could seriously benefit from a good studio engineer. Since this is a self-released album and there is only one member in this band (Vojfrost, who plays everything), maybe money was an issue. Personally, I would have rather seen Voin Grim release an EP with two or three really well-played songs that have great sound, than a full-length album that sounds like shit. This doesn’t sound like complete shit, but the poor production calls attention to itself. Maybe someone will give Voin Grim a recording budget and we’ll be able to hear what this band is really capable of.

Suicidal Black Metal… the Wormed way. That’s right, curious reader. Phlegeton, vocalist for what many consider the most over-the-top brutal and insanely technical Death Metal band in the cosmos, has a SDBM side project, and Memories of Sorrow marks an extremely impressive debut. Believe it or not, I always sensed an underlying worship of Negativity hidden deep inside Wormed’s whirlwind of mind-boggling speed and fretboard trigonometry. And whenever devotion is pledged to my beloved Goddess, homage paid to the mighty Katatonia is never far behind. Rest assured, the melodies of “Through This Slit” ring through like Brave Murder Day on acid. In addition to a very formidable Black Metal cackle, Phlegeton also gets to show off his drumming skills. He may not be Riky, but to say he knows his way around a blastbeat and a double-bass pattern would be an understatement. David Perez (ex-Neverdie) completes the duo by handling everything but drums and vocals; his miserable icy riffage unleashing downcast bitterness on “I Prefer So” and “I Want to Hear You Scream,” his subtle backdrop of haunting piano serving to enhance the overall sadness throughout. It would not surprise me at all to discover some Thranenkind, Heretoir, and maybe even a little Self-Inflicted Violence dwelling within these Spaniards’ playlists. Meanwhile, “Now I Remember” resumes the Katatonic invocation, yet also utilizes Scandinavian Second Wave frost and chanted Rotting Christ-like ambiance. Memories of Sorrow kills happiness dead —now I feel like cutting my wrist— and possesses a higher quality of musicianship than many records of this ilk are graced with. Of course, that should come as no shock considering the personnel. For all intents and purposes, skip the first track. “They Look at Me” is an awkward 6-minute soundcheck compared to the melancholy mastery the rest of the album has in store.

This album is a tough one for me to review. Steve “Zetro” Souza is a guy with a lot of Metal history. Not all of it is good. I’m one of those old Thrash fans that associates Zetro with the decline of Exodus. He may have been a nice guy (and certainly more stable than Paul Baloff, who epitomized all the insanity that was Exodus at the time), but he was the wrong person to front a band known for out of control violence and mayhem. Some of us also associate Zetro’s departure from Legacy as the turning point in that band’s history. For those not old enough to remember, Legacy recruited Chuck Billy, changed their name to Testament and became one of the more successful Bay Area Thrash bands. Now, I’m not a Zetro hater because I have a personal grudge against the guy. I don’t. Zetro tries his best, but his vocal style is a love-it-or-hate-it affair. If you hate his singing, you’re going to hate whatever band he’s in because his voice is front and center. There’s no escaping it. He sounds like a Thrash version of Brian Johnson (AC/DC), for those who’ve never heard him. His style is an acquired taste, to put it diplomatically. I’ve been trying to get into it for almost twenty years and I’m still not a fan. Like it or not, Zetro brings all that baggage with him to Hatriot. As a new band, the most experienced member here is Zetro. He has literally been in the Metal scene longer than most of the rest of his band have been alive. And get this: two of the members of the band are his kids (Cody and Nick Souza, the bassist and the drummer). Talk about a family affair. Musically, I found this LP to be a bit generic. This isn’t a sin because in this day and age, it’s tough to be original - especially in Thrash. The playing on Heroes of Origin is executed competently enough, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was listening to recycled Exodus riffs. This essentially sounds like Pleasures of the Flesh or Fabulous Disaster, in terms of style and substance, but with a more modern production. If you liked those albums, you’ll like Heroes of Origin. My personal favorite track was “Shadows of the Buried” because it had slower and heavier parts. The others were good, but this one stood out. The main reason for that was because it didn’t sound like something that Exodus would’ve done. Exodus was never big on being slow or heavy. They were all about fast and brutal. I think that the biggest hurdle Hatriot is going to have to overcome is the comparison to Exodus. It’s a big shadow to get out from under. Bonded by Blood is still the album to beat when it comes to brutal Bay Area Thrash. Anything associated with Exodus or Bay Area Thrash in general is going to be compared to it. Zetro’s vocal style still hasn’t won me over, but I’m willing to give the devil his due. He gave it 110% here. He’s positively venomous in his delivery. If anything, he’s even more pissed off now than he ever was when he was fronting Exodus. Now, if he can get the rest of his band up to speed, Hatriot will fucking kill. One side note before I end this review: the album art sucks. If you see this at your local record store, don’t let it be a deterrent to purchasing this album. The music on here deserved better. If you love Thrash, you’ll kick yourself in the ass for passing this up just because you thought the album cover looked stupid.

“THEY HAVE NO VOCALIST ANYMORE! TED KILLED HIMSELF SIX YEARS AGO! IT WAS REALLY BRUTAL, FIRST HE CUT OPEN ALL HIS ARTERIES IN THE BALLS AND THEN HE HAD BLOWN OFF HIS BRAINS WITH A CUMGUN I FOUND HIM AND IT SOUNDED FUCKING GAY, THE UPPER HALF OF THIS ALBUM WAS ALL OVER THE ROOM, AND THE LOWER PART OF THE BRAIN HAD FALLEN OUT OF THE REST OF THE ALBUM AND DOWN ON GYLVE’S BED. I OF COURSE GRABBED MY HAMMER IMMEDIATELY AND MADE SOME CRUMBLES,WE’LL THROW THEM WITH THE LAST MAYHEM LP. I AND HAMMER WERE SO LUCKY THAT WE FOUND TWO BIG PIECES OF THIS ALBUM AND WE HAVE HUNG ON NECKLACES AS A MEMORY. TED KILLED HIMSELF BECAUSE HE ROCKED ONLY ON THE TRUE OLD BLACK METAL ALBUMS AND LIFESTYLE. IT MEANS BLACK CLOTHES, SPIKES, CROSSES AND SO ON. YOU KNOW, BANDS LIKE OLD HELLHAMMER BATHORY AND SO ON…BUT TODAY THERE ARE ONLY MAILMEN IN MAILMAN SWIT AND SKATEBOARDS AND HARDCORE MORAL IDEALS, THEY TRY TO LOOK AS NORMAL AS POSSIBLE. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BLACK, THIS STUPID PEOPLE MUST FEAR BLACK METAL! BUT INSTEAD THEY LOVE SHITTY BANDS LIKE AGENT STEEL, SAVAGE GRACE,FATES WARNING,BLACK FLAG AND ALL THAT SHIT! ! THEY MUST TAKE THEIR SOUND TO WAHT IT WAS IN THE PAST! DEAD DIED FOR THIS CAUSE AND NOW I HAVE DECLARED WAR! ! I’M ANGRY, BUT AT THE SAME TIME I HAVE TO ADMIT THAT IT WAS INTERESTING TO BE ABLE TO EXAMINE A BLACK METAL BAND IN RIGOR MORTIS.
DEATH TO FALSE BLACK METAL OR DEATH METAL! ! ALSO TO THE TRENDY DARKTHRONE PEOPLE…AARRGGHH! !”

This album would be pretty good except for one thing: the vocals. They suck ass. I mean big time. Imagine a Black Metal band with an 80-year-old Slavic woman as the lead singer. Or better yet, Gollum from The Lord of the Rings wailing away about how he lost the ring, but in Russian instead of English. That’s how this sounds. Other than the wailing 80-year-old Slavic woman or Russian Gollum, the music on Anguish is really good. Echo of Emptiness is stylistically similar to old Burzum mixed with some early Emperor/Graveland, but with more acoustic guitar and better sound. I’m hesitant to call this Folk Metal because it doesn’t have the same vibe as most bands in that genre. There is some Slavic Folk influence, particularly in the acoustic parts, but other than that, this is pretty much straight-forward Atmospheric Black Metal. What saves this album from being absolute crap is the fact that most of it is sparse on the vocals. There are songs on here that go several minutes without any singing at all. However, when the vocals do come in, everything is ruined. What Echo of Emptiness really needs is a good singer. Immortalis, the guy who currently does all of the screeching (as well as handling the guitars and writing the lyrics), just doesn’t cut it. His vocals on this album were pure torture to sit through. This would probably have been an eight if it had better singing (or even none at all).

Old School Swedeath… the Polish way. Ladies and gents, I realize there’s a plethora of bands doing the NWOOSSDM thing at the moment. Shit, even I lost count months ago. But if you only give one of these bands the time of day… well, it should probably be Demonical… But if you only give two of these bands the time of day, the second one might as well be Ulcer. Much like Demonical, this isn’t some band of wide-eyed newcomers reveling in nostalgic flesh to kill time between Walking Dead episodes. These are the guys from the mighty Deivos wrecking Heavy Metal Pedal havoc in the name of the elder gods, and you need to fucking hear it. Grant Us Death just might be the truest modern-day replica of the Sunlight sound ever achieved. It’s absolutely astounding. A time capsule instantly transporting the listener back to the glory days of ‘90 and ‘91, when Sweden’s Big 4 were launching their first wave of perennial classics, and when Tomas Skogsberg and Dan Seagrave were both extremely busy men. The dual-vocal attack of Angelfuck and D.ssipline (Blaze of Perdition, Oremus) ensures a varied approach that owes as much to Clandestine as it does to Left Hand Path. Sometimes the duo get carried away, as we’re often subjected to suspect screams of the awkward variety, and they might overdo the Matti Karki-on-“Bleed for Me” spoken bits at times. But overall, the addition of a second vocalist serves to set Ulcer apart slightly from the ever burgeoning stream. Musically, the band —rounded out by Angelfuck’s Deivos cohorts Szwed (bass), Wizun (drums), Mscislaw (guitar), and Abusiveness/Exmortum guitarist LucaSS— doesn’t always feature songwriting as memorable as their powerful sound. However, raucous highlights such as the opening 1-2-3 punch of the title track, “Devilspeed” and “Bloodpainted Salvation,” the infectious-chorus-bearing “Devitalized,” and the impossible-to-resist-throwing-the-goat-head-while-listening-to “My Lord Has Horns”— \m/ —are going to make most songs seem like filler by comparison. When they hit their stride, Ulcer are unD-beatable. Originality-seekers, let it go for 43 minutes. Auto-erotic asphyxiation shouldn’t be your only guilty pleasure.

Ah, Suffocation… One of the most successful, revered, and downright imitated staples in the realm of brutal Death Metal. A new release from these scene giants is an event for the Death Metal lifer, and one that somewhat begs the question of how necessary a review even is. You either love Suffo and will track down Pinnacle of Bedlam at all costs, or you’re some fag/whore who doesn’t care about Suffo and therefore shouldn’t be acknowledged as a human being. Either way a review is academic. Still, that hasn’t stopped any Metal scribes so far. I’ve seen everything from “their best since Despise the Sun” —which certainly caught my attention as that’s likely my most listened to recording from these legends— to “highly evolved” to “super different” to “for fans of Dying Fetus.” HA! Well, I don’t know how “evolved” this is considering these guys have been at the top of their game since the beginning, and I’m not sure if this is better than Despise the Sun —maybe they meant “best drummer since Despise the Sun” as Dave Culross is back on board— although it is significantly better than 2009’s arguably phoned-in Blood Oath. Perhaps its greatest strength is that it really isn’t all that different. Why mess with success? The band’s signature Waltzing pummel, blastbeaten fury, and breakdown savagery sound as terrific as ever. There might be Death Metal vocalists who are as good as Frank Mullen, but there’s no one better. You can pick the man’s intelligible roar out of 666,666 growlers and he’s in fine form here. The album might not have the same high-memorability factor as post-reunion gems like Souls to Deny and the self-titled LP —all that really stands out after my first dozen spins is Mullen’s pronunciation of “cycles” (“sigh-cools”) on the opener and those wicked clean guitar flourishes on “Sullen Days”— but their instantly recognizable sound and unmatched technical prowess are memorable enough on their own to keep me coming back for more again and again. That’s why I only dominate Suffocation pits.
Note: no points added or subtracted for the bonus DVD, which features pro-golf tips from Carl Weathers and some of Barefoot Contessa’s favorite recipes. Just kidding, it’s the dreaded “making of” companion piece. I think I already know how the album was made. These guys went into the studio for a couple months and fucked shit up while someone pressed “record.” Why not some live footage and/or videos instead?

After Jerry Only’s somewhat lackluster vocal performance on 2011’s otherwise enjoyable big return, The Devil’s Rain, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to hear a new live album, presumably without any studio magic to support his voice. And one that features zero Danzig-era songs? That’s a tough sell, even to a Fiend Club lifer like me, and really seems like a stupid move. At just a cunt hair (remember those, anyone?) over 40 minutes, this set wasn’t that long anyway, so a few classics to beef it up seems so obvious that there must have been a reason, either legal or financial, that they weren’t included. Why there are only a handful of Graves-era songs (half the 14 cuts are from The Devil’s Rain) is another mystery. As would be expected, Only’s singing here is… not the best. I hate to be mean to Jerry, because he really tries hard, and all these songs are energetic, but there are a hell of a lot of rough edges, and not just vocally. The recording, for example, is clear enough, but all the guitar is on one side/channel/speaker, and all the bass (which is distorted and loud) on the other. I’ve played bass for a quarter of a century, and I love it. There is no such thing as too much bass! But mix the fucking sound together! Total separation of every instrument is a terrible idea. And even that might be okay if the playing weren’t so sloppy. The band clearly wanted this particular show because it was done on Halloween (in NYC), so I suppose that using a different recording was out of the question, but even if they didn’t want to do any studio overdubs (which admittedly does kinda seem like cheating, and in any case isn’t very Punk), a different mix (hell, any mix!) could have made quite a difference. As it stands, the best sounding song here is probably the cover of “Science Fiction/Double Feature.” Yeah, the Rocky Horror song. It may sound as if I hate Dea.d. Alive!, and that’s not the case at all. After, let’s say, thirteen spins, I more or less got used to the unmix, slop, and vocal issues, so more than anything else, it’s the missing songs that really bring this album down. Live Misfits with no “Last Caress,” “Where Eagles Dare,” “London Dungeon,” a dozen others, or especially “We Are 138”?! They should have included some of those early songs, no matter how many bags of kitty litter Danzig demanded for them.

Hopelorn is one of those bands that comes along and surprises you. I was expecting a Goth Metal album based on the cover art, but this isn’t even close. Rami Stalnacke, the sole member of Hopelorn, has been doing this band since 2008, but only started releasing music in 2011. So far, all of Hopelorn’s material has been self-released. I don’t know if this is intentional or not, but it seems strange to me that a band has this much output and still remains unattached to a record label. This is Hopelorn’s first full-length album, prior to which there were two EPs: Golden Fields, Black Wings (2011) and Tuonen Musta Joki Virtaa Sydamessani (2012). I don’t have the two EPs, but From Withered Branches has made me want to track them down. This is some kick ass stuff. The best way to describe this record is Swedish Black/Death Metal. It’s Black Metal, but produced as if it were old-school Swedish Death Metal in the vein of early Entombed or Dismember. That means a thick, brutal, Sunlight Studios guitar sound that hits you hard, just like Left Hand Path did. Amidst the punishing guitar riffs are atmospheric elements, melodic riffs, acoustic guitars and minimalistic keyboards. The additional elements add some much needed variety to Hopelorn’s sound. One of the problems Death and Black Metal bands face is monotony. I can’t tell you how many CDs I’ve owned that were essentially ten different versions of the same song. From Withered Branches is far from monotonous. There is plenty of variety and interesting musical parts, but none of it comes at the expense of the mayhem and destruction that is being dished out throughout the course of this album. Hopelorn is definitely a band to look out for.

When it comes to traditional Doom Metal, it all boils down to how good your singer is. That’s an awful lot of pressure to place squarely on one contributor’s shoulders, but that’s the inherent nature of the beast. After all, we probably wouldn’t even be having this discussion if it had been Frank Stallone doing the vocals on Black Sabbath. This newest installment in the perplexing Scion Audio Visual EP series is actually my first taste of this group who hail from just a few hours south of Metal Curse headquarters, but given their unashamedly clear-cut intentions, these five songs are probably as good a place to start as any. Musically speaking, these Hoosiers are as sure-handed as anyone at the Sabbath-worship craft. The aptly-titled “Death March” begins the ceremony with slow-motion, heaviness-enhanced Iommi homage. Everything is expertly executed right down to the all-pro, prosthetic-fingertip solo. “Driven Insane” staggers into Stoner Doom territory, yet still firmly emulates the masters of reality… that is until the song speeds up at 3:31 and the ensuing riff sounds way too much like “You Really Got Me” by The Kinks. “Son of Hades” and “Dragon Caravan” are there to remind us that Bluesy Rock structures are indeed the roots that grow beneath the Black Sab foundation, while “Of That Which Can Never Be” closes the EP out at the more funereal pace of its opener. So let it be written, so let it be done, The Gates of Slumber are as adept as the next Electric Wizard in line at invoking the feel of Birmingham’s dark sons. Unfortunately, it’s all rather irrelevant (please see first sentence of review). Karl Simon isn’t the worst Doom singer I’ve ever heard, but I can’t honestly say he’s good enough to warrant middle-of-the-road status, either. He flat-out sounds like a bloated, off-key Gene Simmons. That’s fine if you’re doing “I Love It Loud” at the local Karaoke pub, but for material this gloomy, it’s a real shot in the foot. Factor in some occasionally goofy lyrics and vocal patterns on the more up-tempo jams, and we now have a formidably insurmountable hindrance. A shame considering how many of the-best-Black-Sabbath-riffs-Black-Sabbath-didn’t-write are wasted. Frank Stallone might actually have been a step up in this case.

This album is literally painful to listen to. I don’t even know if I can call this garbage music. This is “experimental” music, apparently. At least, that is what the band wants us to think. I find that the “experimental” tag is put on any form of music that is essentially unlistenable, placed there by talentless hacks who want to be snobbishly highbrow. If there are any song structures or coherent playing on this entire album, I would be seriously surprised. This is a mish-mash of random guitar playing by someone who is tone-deaf, gurgling Swamp Thing vocals, a drum machine set to “blast” speeds and assorted other weirdness that is best described as headache inducing. I sat through five “songs” of this horrid noise before I couldn’t take anymore. This utter shit makes Anal Cunt sound like fucking Uli Roth in comparison. Cultus Enim Satanas should come with a case of 40 oz. bottles of malt liquor and some horse tranquilizer because that’s what it would take to get through the entire thing - and it’s only twenty-two minutes long. Avoid this like it was plague-infested. I rated this a one, but even that seems too high. It’s records like this that make me wish we were able to give ratings in negative numbers, because there is literally nothing redeeming about this album.

We’ve all waited in line at the drive-thru of our favorite carcinogenic fast food chain, eagerly awaiting our deep-fried death, only to get it home and realize that those abominations of gene pool disintegration forgot a vital part of the order. Most likely the one thing that you went there for in the first place. Well, I just stopped at Relapse Burger to get the new Devourment combo meal, and those bastards forgot my fucking slam! I specifically asked them to supersize the slam and add extra pit riff! I don’t know what this is, but it’s not my Devourment. Is it possible the folks at Relapse’s pressing plant accidentally switched Conceived in Sewage with whatever boring slab of regurgitated endurance test Misery Index is putting out this year? It sure sounds like it. It’s not like this is the worst Death Metal album ever made, it’s just a mind-numbingly boring one, and that’s never been the Devourment way. Considering the band’s pioneer status —influencing about 99.9% of today’s slam movement— it’s perplexing to me why the biggest album of their career in terms of label support is an exercise in going through the brutal motions. Thankfully the lyrics remain their trademark gore-drenched perversity, but Mike Majewksi’s vocals sound tame compared to past efforts, and musically the band is on Suffocation clone autopilot. I can’t even tell these songs apart. This doesn’t sound like the same band who just four years ago unleashed the carnivore, let alone butchered the weak or molested the decapitated. Production from Erik Rutan ensures that the dullness sounds terrific, but it’s all just lipstick on a corpse, really. If you blindfolded me and forced me to guess who this was, I’d probably say “brutal Death Metal band #4976.” Exactly the same kind of mundane mediocrity that Devourment used to put to shame with breakneck groove so irresistible it could get a paraplegic moshing. It could be that by trying to distance themselves from their crop of clones, they’ve lost the very thing that made them so imitable in the first place. Here’s to hoping they regain that mojo before it’s too late.
Goddammit!! I said, “no lettuce!!”

This is the U.K. Abyssal, as opposed to the nearly twenty other groups out there that had the same name or a variation of it. For a band that has only been around since 2011, they have a very mature sound. When I first saw the cover art for this, I thought that it was going to be yet another generic Necro Black Metal album. This isn’t Necro Black Metal at all. In fact, it’s Doomy Black/Death Metal more than anything else. The guitars are heavy as fuck, and the vocals are low-pitched Death Growls instead of the standard raspy shriek. Abyssal has more in common with Imprecation or old Corpse Molestation than they do with Burzum or Darkthrone when it comes to heaviness and brutality. The song structures are still reminiscent of Black Metal, though. If Corpse Molestation played an album’s worth of Burzum covers at half-speed, they would sound quite a bit like what Abyssal is doing. Dissonant riffing and dark atmosphere are everywhere on Novit Enim Dominus Qui Sunt Eius. The music is churning and sometimes hypnotic in its delivery (hence the Burzum reference). It makes for a bit of an unsettling experience, but ultimately I found it far more satisfying and interesting than if they had stuck by the usual conventions regarding Death or Black Metal. I would have liked to see Abyssal incorporate more Dark Ambient into their style, though. The music is already dark, but I thought that the inclusion of more horror soundtrack elements could have added another layer of evil to their sound. The U.K. has been producing some criminally underrated Black and Death Metal bands lately, and Abyssal is one more that folks should definitely check out.

Someone once told me in an interview that the good trends ought to be referred to as movements, and when it comes to the current Converge-meets-Entombed Hardcore boom spearheaded by the likes of Trap Them and Black Breath, I couldn’t agree more. It seems this trend movement is unstoppable, now proven to have the long-range ballistic capability to pervade Mother Russia. Somehow Russian Hardcore just sounds more hardcore than any other type of Hardcore. You try doing the pick-up-change in one of those huge, furry coats! Given the genre-defying quirks and oddball nature that so many of Russia’s extreme music exports have had in the past, The Occult just might be the most focused and dead serious group of individuals that side of the pond since the KGB. The Deathwish and Southern Lord camps may want to take note: as far as addictive combinations go, The Occult’s pairing of Jane Doe and Wolverine Blues is right up there with cocaine and baking soda. It’d be downright foolish for anyone to deny the Converge influence abound on Omega. That crazed intensity is evident right off the bat on opener “Reflection,” with its relentless spasms of tension and release, jagged breakdowns, and feedback-drenched, zombified Sludge riffs. Fatal circle-pit histrionics ensue on the raging sneak-attack of “Blind Flock,” the angst-ridden groove of “Ode to Death,” the D-beatdown of “Love Is the Only Truth,” and the All Out War/Arkangel stomp of “Dead Hopes,” while “Path ov the Damned II,” “Iscariot,” and the title track serve as the slow(er)-burning Death ‘n’ Roll conduits for Entombed’s festering slime. It can be argued that Dima’s vocals are little more than a serviceable-yet-basic Jacob Bannon impersonation, but his go-negative-or-go-home lyrics are much better read than dead. With the nanosecond-long attention span of most folks today, this Swedeathcore uprising may already be old news, but The Occult do it as well as anyone.

Have you ever listened to an album where one track is so out of place that you just stop and say, “What the fuck happened here?” This is one of those albums. The first three tracks are pretty much what you would expect from a band called Frostbitten. It’s straight-forward Black Metal in the Darkthrone/Burzum vein. The guitars are a bit thicker and fuzzier, but stylistically this is by the numbers Black Metal with no surprises. Then track four, “Altar of Luna,” kicks in, and it’s… Stoner Doom, complete with Black Sabbath/Trouble inspired guitar playing and melodic clean vocals. After that, the album is pretty much back to being straight-forward Black Metal. That one track is so out of place that it makes you wonder what Frostbitten was thinking when it came time to put the LP together. Even the placement on the album is strange. It’s literally right in the middle, sandwiched between a bunch of Black Metal songs. I could have excused it if this had been a bonus track, but those generally come at the end of the album. Another thing about “Altar of Luna” is that it’s hands-down the best song here. That’s what makes it weirder. It’s well played, heavy and a hundred times more memorable than anything else on this whole LP. Personally, I think Frostbitten would be better off playing Stoner Doom instead of Black Metal because their attempts at Black Metal were pretty generic and essentially forgettable. When you consider that they have a considerable amount of releases in their back catalog, that’s not a good thing. This is their second album, and there are three EPs, and two demos out there, too. Maybe a name change and a different musical direction is in order.

I love it when bands take my advice. HA! Okay… in all seriousness, I don’t honestly have delusions of such grandeur, but if you recall my write-up on Epoch two years ago, you know that I proposed, in praise of the LP’s best track “Half-Light Eternal,” that “…the lighter, more mellow side of Fen… might just be the right direction for them to go in.” Well, I got my wish in the form of this UK outfit’s third full-length effort, and Dustwalker is all the better for it. That’s not to say they’ve trimmed all of the Black Metal aspects from their sound. On the contrary, opener “Consequence” sets the stage with embittered Blackened rage, while nearly all ten minutes of the aptly titled “The Black Sound” sizzle with slow-to-mid-tempo gloomy grimness. But the band’s somber, desolate, Post-Rock underpinnings are most responsible for what is remembered and ultimately what will bring the listener back for more. It’s the hopeless beauty of clean-vocal-dominated tracks like the epic-length “Hands of Dust,” with its suspended animation Shoegaze and slow-motion blizzard of wistful melodies, and “Spectre,” featuring an acoustic Alt-Rock sensibility that wouldn’t sound entirely out of place on a Fleet Foxes record, that truly steal the show. Again, these songs and others owe at least a little something to the euphoric feel of the ethereal “Half-Light Eternal.” Another Epoch carry-over is the grainy, unpolished, live-sounding production. While its organic nature does serve to complement the earthy concept and atmosphere of Dustwalker, I can’t help but wonder what magic a cleaner, bigger sound might reveal when it comes to all-pro songwriting of this caliber. For instance, Alcest certainly don’t use a shoebox and a series of extracted incandescent light bulb filaments to record their albums, and I think those results speak for themselves. My only other gripe —besides the Special Edition bonus track being an instrumental outro… cool, thanks— is the occasional awkward shouting or yelping. That shit ruins the moment worse than a whistling snot during a French kiss. Angry-in-traffic-meets-burn-victim yelling has absolutely no place whatsoever in music this graceful. It’s a small hindrance that can be overlooked, but big enough to keep this from total perfection. While the 2009 debut LP The Malediction Fields remains my personal Fen fave, Dustwalker easily takes the Silver.

This is not the Swedish Tiamat. This is a Russian band that is apparently unaware that the name Tiamat is already taken. In other words, they’ve been living under a rock since 1991. Honestly, a quick Google search is all it takes to discover that not only is there already a band out there called Tiamat, but they’ve been around for over twenty fucking years! As much as some people dislike Johan Edlund’s music these days, the Gothic Metal that the TRUE Tiamat is pumping out is ten million times better than this Russian pretender’s debut album. Sadness of Yggdrasil is horrible. The music is essentially generic Black Metal that is as bland and lifeless as you can get. I’ve heard every riff on this album somewhere before and none of said riffs get better after the hundredth time you hear them. Seriously, if I wanted to listen to recycled riffs from Under a Funeral Moon over and over again, I’d listen to Under a Funeral Moon. It’s not as if that album is out of print. The worst part is the vocals. Somewhere underneath layer upon layer of reverb is a howler monkey being tortured to death. It literally sounds like someone took a microphone into the monkey house at the fucking zoo and then added reverb. If this guy is saying any words, I’d be genuinely shocked. It’s incoherent animal noises as far as I’m concerned. And they’re annoyingly high pitched. Worse than that, the sheer amount of reverb has made the “vocals” so loud that they drown out the rest of the music. Add this to the boring lifelessness of the music itself and you get an album that just exists to irritate you. I wouldn’t even use this CD as a coaster because it’s unworthy of carrying the weight of a can of diet soda, let alone anything better.

It isn’t everyday that I get to hear a band from Iceland. It’s even rarer to hear a band like Kontinuum. Metal-archives.com has this group tagged as being Progressive Post-Black Metal, but as far as I’m concerned, Progressive Black Metal and Post-Black Metal are essentially the same thing. Let’s just say that they aren’t your typical Black Metal band. You can clearly tell that there is some Black and Viking/Folk Metal influence in Kontinuum’s music. It may not have the same feeling or aggression as Black or Viking/Folk Metal, but you can see the lineage. Earth Blood Magic is mostly straight-forward Metal without much of the weirdness that I usually associate with Progressive music. The song structures aren’t overly complicated, and for the most part, everything works. There are a couple tracks, “Red” being one of them, where things don’t go as well as they should. The best stuff comes early on, with the first half of the album being far more interesting than the second. The second half of Earth Blood Magic is slower and less Metal. The arrangements are more Classical and they don’t work as well. Being that this is the band’s debut album, I’m going to cut them some slack. The ideas they have are pretty ambitious. I’ll give them credit for trying and being different but still, this is a hit-or-miss affair.

My level of interest in Hatebreed has been on a slow-but-steady decline since their classic debut in 1997, and I think it’s becoming clear as to why. It certainly isn’t the quality of the music. Simplistic streetwise Hardcore doesn’t get more top shelf than this, and the band that put the ‘Core in the early ’00s Metalcore explosion deserves every bit of success they’ve earned. Look no further than the raging 2-minute opener “Put It to the Torch” for an anthemic example of how it’s done. Admittedly, The Divinity of Purpose is nowhere near the intensity and ferocity of the old days, but who among us thirty-and-forty-somethings is still going as HAM as they were in 1997? I know I’m not. Speaking of aging, Jamey Jasta’s voice is just about shot. A couple decades of pure, torn-throat yelling has taken its toll, as this is easily the least serrated his scream has ever sounded on Hatebreed wax. Check out tracks 6-11 to hear hints from a guy who’d rather be singing pretty. But Jasta’s deteriorating vocals aren’t really the problem, either. Even as a shell of his former self, he still does a serviceable job given the bare-knuckle bombast of the chugging backdrop. I think the problem is I keep getting older, but Jasta’s part-pep talk/part-fortune cookie lyrics stay the same age. Dude, love ya bro, but I’m not a troubled 13-year old girl. I’m a middle-aged working class nobody. Enough with the “when the going gets tough…” self-help jargon. I eat, sleep, shit, jack off, and work… okay, not particularly in that order, but PSA slogans like “Sometimes standing for what you believe means standing alone / Own your world, it’s in your hands / Tearing me down won’t ever raise you any higher / End the fight before the fight ends you” isn’t doing anything for someone whose life is essentially over. At this point, Jasta’s endless stream of positive rhetoric just makes me want to strangle puppies. At any moment, I’m expecting the next lines spouted to be: “GIVE A HOOT, DON’T POLLUTE!! A PENNY SAVED IS A PENNY EARNED!! DON’T COUNT YOUR CHICKENS BEFORE THEY HATCH!!” Seriously, man. I still have love for Hatebreed, probably always will. But at the end of the day, I am another “dead man breathing” whether I want to be or not, and I’ll be reaching for lyricists more willing to accept that fact instead.

At ease, Suicidal Black Metal devotees. This isn’t a new offering of sadness from A. Morbid. This is the other Hanging Garden, the Doom band from Finland. Although, At Every Door may still contain some worth for the misery-addicted lifehaters among us. I suppose any band inclined to name themselves after a Cure song is going to possess some inherent leaning towards the depressive side. This Hanging Garden are practitioners of the Saturnus school of thought: whisperspeak softly and carry a big growl. They believe nothing brings out a bestial Doom growl like spoken or whispered bits. They also believe in long songs, keyboards, big riffs, and a pervading atmosphere of romantic dreariness not unlike the immortal early works of Celestial Season. However, their real ace in the hole is a very convincing style of clean singing that I feel may eventually propel them near the top of the Gothic Doom heap. It is the clean vocals that truly complement those brutal roars, and provide the album’s most memorable moments. The music follows the temperament of the varied vocal approaches, as loud and quiet trade off in equally morose fashion. Passages of subdued melody and reflection wait for explosions of distorted rage bearing mournful dirge. At times the band is a little rough around the edges —the Industrial ambiance that begins “Wormwood” feels somewhat awkward, though the song is later redeemed by an infectious clean-sung hook— and tracks that extend past the 6-minute mark tend to drag a bit —the band exhaust the back-and-forth of the poetry recital and gruff lament to mind-numbing effect on mini-epic “The Cure” (see what they did there?), while it’s even harder to stay focused on 10-minute closer “To End All Ages”— but they have all the tools, along with a ton of potential. I’d personally like to see them scale back some of the melodrama and up the bleakness factor to a Katatonic level a la Rapture. They definitely have the talent to pull it off.
Favorites: “Ten Thousand Cranes,” “Ash and Dust.”