I was a fan of Vile back when they did the Vile-ation demo tape and Stench of the Deceased. They were a brutal Cannibal-Death Metal band (Cannibal-Death Metal = Cannibal Corpse worship) back then and they did it well. When you saw them live, they tore your fucking head off. After Juan Urteaga left the band to concentrate on running his recording studio, Vile slowly began changing their sound in a more technical direction. I kind of lost track of them after Depopulate (mostly because they don’t do live shows around here much anymore) so I was surprised to find out that they were still around and producing records. Their style has changed into a more straightforward Death Metal style that isn’t hyper-technical but it does have technical elements to it. They’re trying to evolve things into a more “mature” sound while still retaining their Death Metal style. The result is kind of a mixed bag, but it is mostly successful. The music and the playing have slowed down considerably and the guitars aren’t as tuned down or distorted. That allows you to hear what they’re playing more clearly. Listening to this clinically, I wanted the guitars to be a bit louder and the playing more forceful. I’m a Metalhead. I want it loud and ferocious. This was measured and focused delivery. When you consider Vile’s past, I was a bit disappointed that this album never kicked it into high gear and got fucking brutal. Still, it was well executed and had some interesting elements that you pick up on after multiple listens. If they can go for the throat on the next album, they’ll fucking kill.

Is that fucking cowbell that I hear? On a Death Metal album? What the fuck? Clearly, Parricide has a drum wanker behind the stool. The cowbell and the fact that he drowns out everyone else except for the vocalist makes this obvious. Drum wankers are rarer than guitar wankers, but they do exist. Hellhammer from Mayhem, for example, is a drum wanker. They’re technical drummers that want to hit you over the head with how well they can play. That means arranging things so that the drumming is hyper-technical and the album has to showcase that in some way. There are brutal, down-tuned guitars on this album, but making any sense of the riffing is impossible because the majority of the time, you can’t hear the guitars clearly behind the guttural vocals and the drummer blasting away. This is, to use a phrase I haven’t in a while, a blast-beat Rap record. It’s essentially all vocals and drums. If I wanted to listen to a Rap album, I’ll pull out AK-69’s The Red Magic . At least that intends to be all bass and vocals. And there isn’t any cowbell. There aren’t any stupid samples in what sounded like Polish/Russian/some Eastern European Slavic tongue either, which brings me to my second gripe. I don’t know if this is a concept album, but almost every other track was an interlude where some old lady was shrieking something and since I don’t understand Polish (or whatever it is - I assume it’s Polish because, according to Encyclopaedia Metallum, this band is from Poland), I have no idea what this is about or why it’s here. All I know is that it irritates me. I wanted to hit the stop button after the second track and listen to something else. I can’t imagine spending money on this album, particularly after listening to it. And the cover art… This release has “You don’t want to buy this” written all over it. I don’t think I’d even take it if the label gave it to me free for purchasing something else that was worthwhile. Skip this. You’re not missing anything. I have an addiction and that addiction requires more Metal, not more cowbell.

This demo occasionally seems to be little more than an excuse for guitarist (and bassist and singer) SL to call down the guitar solo thunder, and things can dissolve into somewhat of a blur at higher tempos. But his solos are generally interesting, which is no easy task, and when Wall slows down so that you may better appreciate the stylistic juxtapositions and weird dynamics, these songs can be impressive. There are some decidedly rough edges, and things often seem unfocused, but that’s to be expected when a band tries this many different ideas (every Extreme Metal style, and some not so Extreme, you can think of): not everything is going to always work out. It will be interesting to hear how Wall of the Eyeless evolves over the course of a few recordings. I can easily imagine them going all Prog Metal, but I hope they find another path. I was going to say that the recording and/or production can also be slightly unpolished at times, and then I pulled my head out of my ass and remembered that Sony didn’t give SL and Simon (drums) a dump truck full of money to record this; they had to do it themselves. It’s amazing to think back about what demos (tapes at the time) used to sound like when I first started Metal Curse in 1990. If I had heard Through Emptiness back then, my head would have exploded. Check out the song “Wall of the Eyeless” for perhaps the best realization of this band’s potential.

Exmortis main-man Brian Werking has suffered through lineup problems since this band’s inception. At one point, twenty years ago, the rest of the guys all mutinied and tried to take the name with them, eventually changing it to Horror of Horrors, but for a while there were two Exmortises. After a few tracks on tributes albums around the turn of the century and a pair of demo/rare tracks compilations earlier in 2011, Werking finally appeared to be ready to bring back Exmortis full time, and I could hardly wait to hear it. Once again, a stable lineup was apparently not possible, and from what I can tell, it seems as if Werking had to record everything himself for this short EP, and it sounds like it, with what appears to be a (well programmed) drum machine and no audible bass. Discounting the intro and outro, there’s really only about 14 minutes of music here, and that’s not much to go on. I don’t have any complaints about this long-awaited return of Exmortis’s decidedly Thrashy Death Metal, but even after 443556 listens, it isn’t really sticking with me after it’s over. A beefier production would have helped, but in any case, this EP feels more like a taste of things to come than anything else. Hopefully Werking can recruit a stable band to back him up and return soon with the very first full-length Exmortis album in the band’s nearly 25 year existence.

It has been a decade-and-a-half since the last Shub-Niggurath album, 1997’s amazing The Kinglike Celebration (Final Aeon on Earth). In the interim, there have been demo/EP compilations (actually, kind of the same one three times, with or without various bonus tracks), and two splits consisting of rehearsal songs from 1990. So, I had long ago assumed that this wretched world would never again know the majesty of any new material from the Mexican Death Metal masters. It feels good to be wrong sometimes! Julio Viterbo (The Chasm, ex-Cenotaph) has at long last reignited the black flame of this band, and brought original Shub drummer Paco back with him. I just don’t get good news like this every day, and was absolutely overjoyed to discover it. Admittedly, I was also slightly concerned that original vocalist Arturo “Transcosmic Blasphemizer” Alvarez had been replaced, but no one could ask for more than what the new screamer, Carlos Lopez (ex-Ancient Gods, Thy Only Forgotten), delivers with his tormented, raspy, roar. It so completely fits the ominous, eerie atmosphere of the music, that I almost want to say that he’s better than Arturo, but that hardly seems possible. And speaking of the music, there is the perfect amount of Black Metal influence, perhaps slightly more than before, to make this Death Metal onslaught unique, and instantly recognizable, to me at least. It sounds as if Julio has been perfecting these riffs for a decade, as there is not anything even slightly resembling a flaw to be found on this album. If, upon learning of its existence, you didn’t immediately feel the need to hear A Deadly Call from the Stars as soon as humanly possible, then you simply don’t matter.

The only thing you really need to know about this recording is that it features Neige from Alcest on vocals. Seriously, if you didn’t know that and you just read it, and you didn’t immediately go “add-to-cart” somewhere, then you’re a fucking loser. There is no other god, Neige killed him. Think of your favorite vocalist, right now, Metal or otherwise… Now, unless you thought of Jonas Renkse, realize he/she isn’t a tenth as good as Neige on a bad day. This is a treat on so many levels for the man’s following. Not only does it prominently feature his harsh, Blackened screams (much less often used for Alcest these days), but it’s also my first time hearing him sing in English as opposed to his native French. His hauntingly beautiful clean voice is present here as well, and Lantlos mastermind Herbst (guitars/bass/lyrics) uses it masterfully to elevate his meandering Post-Metal aesthetic to heights that the likes of Mastodon and Isis can’t even smell. Much less melodic and ethereal than Alcest, this German duo (Herbst and Felix Wylezik on drums) strive for a more brooding, downtrodden yet aggressive approach. The faster and slower arrangements always gravitate back toward the calm, mid-tempo sea of grey. Proof that Neige can conquer any atmosphere. I will admit that it’s difficult not to think about how mediocre this would likely be if it weren’t graced by his talents. Luckily for we mortals, it is, and therefore essential.

You know, I often wonder who writes press releases and promo literature for Metal bands. I read the press release for this album and the amount of shit information in it could have qualified it as Godzilla’s used toilet paper. “Violentor combines the speed and rawness of Motorhead with the dark and poisoning sound of Venom”? That’s a funny way of saying that Violentor sounds like Kill ‘em All era Metallica. When I hear “inspired by Motorhead and Venom,” I expect something bass-heavy and brutal. Both of those bands have very distinctive sounds, and to compare Violentor to them is deceptive. Having an audible bass guitar doesn’t turn you into Venom. This is not to say that Violentor sucks. They don’t. They just have someone clueless writing their press releases. This album actually blows by pretty quickly. Violentor starts off blazing fast and doesn’t really let up until the last song is over. The downside to this is that a lot of their songs sound the same. Half the time, I couldn’t tell where one song ended and the next one began. The fact that you couldn’t hear the guitars very well didn’t help. They have a loud bassist and a loud vocalist, but the guitarists are buried underneath somewhere. Maybe it’s to hide the fact that all of the audible riffs sound like they were rearranged parts from old Metallica songs. I spent a lot of time thinking, “Hey, that sounds like…” and the next thing you know, I’ve rattled off all of the song titles from Kill ‘em All and even a couple tracks from Megadeth’s Killing Is My Business… album. Violentor has some good influences, but they just need time to develop their own style and sound. Their hearts are in the right place, but they just don’t have the chops yet.

“Anaal nathrach, orth’ bhais’s bethad, do che’l de’nmha.
Anaal nathrach, orth’ bhais’s bethad, do che’l de’nmha.
Anaal nathrach, orth’ bhais’s bethad, do che’l de’nmha.
Anaal nathrach, orth’ bhais’s bethad, do che’l de’nmha.”
After 6(66) long years, Vore has returned! These Old School Death Metal wizards have always known the charm of making the most memorable riffs imaginable, and Gravehammer is simply exploding with them. I defy you to listen to more than nine seconds of this album and not start banging your head and violently thrashing around. Halfway through the first track I’d already annihilated everything in a two-mile radius! I would point out the strongest song here, but picking only one is impossible, although the combination of the title track and its follow-up, “The Claw Is the Law,” is perhaps the most potent one/two punch since Fat Man and Little Boy. And it’s not just the riffs that are malignant. The drumming is utterly flawless; intense when it should be, but otherwise giving the guitars and vocals the room they need to do their sinister work. Speaking of the vocals, Page’s somewhat understandable roar has always been the deadliest weapon in Vore’s unstoppable arsenal, and is brutally ferocious here. Gravehammer’s amazingly clear, powerful recording and production put it over the top as Vore’s crowning achievement thus far, cementing their place in the vaults of eternity.

Crossover is a strange band. They’ve been around forever (founded in 1997) and this is their latest full-length album, their third overall. The first half of this LP is absolutely unlistenable. It’s a giant ball of ideas that doesn’t mesh well. The song structures are all fucked up and it sounds like they threw everything up against the proverbial wall to see what would stick and then used everything. Once you get to the sixth track, though, things improve. The songs still have some problems, but nothing like the first five. “Proplasma of Bow” sounds like they wanted to be Cradle of Filth. “To Amasi of Egypt,” the seventh track, has an odd electronic intro bit that sounds horrible but otherwise continues the vibe of the previous song. The best track on this whole album had to be “Father North” [a translation of the actual Greek title -Editor], which was so much better than the rest of the songs that I would have scrapped the remainder of this and just released that one as a single. That song by itself is a ten. Everything else is crap, with the first half of this album being so bad that I rate it in negative numbers. This release has the worst case of schizophrenia that I’ve ever seen. It’s like they literally didn’t know what to be. “Father North” is a great song, but it isn’t worth buying this album just to get it. This is the reason so many people used Napster back in the day. They wanted one song and didn’t want to have to pay $20 for it. If you can download just this one song from iTunes, I’d say go for it and flush the rest of this album down the toilet with the rest of the shit.

This band is from Turkey, but if you just had the audio to go on, you’d swear that they’re German… Kreator/Destruction worship abounds as Thrashfire blazes through 12 songs of speedy Thrash that could have come straight off of a Teutonic Thrash tribute compilation. Did I say Thrash enough times there? I probably did. The thing is, that’s what Thrashfire is all about. If you’re looking for influences other than Thrash, you’re not going to find any here. One of the problems that Thrashfire has is that they operate primarily in the high speed realm. Most, if not all, of their songs sound similar. Outside of the different guitar solos, this could easily be twelve different versions of the same track. The main culprit is the drumming. When you’re blasting away through a dozen tracks, unless you do some serious tempo changes between them, it gets very hard to distinguish between songs. Some of the songs have stupid titles and lyrics, but given that the band is from Turkey and shamelessly aping German Thrash, I’d say that they’re going to get a free pass from me on that. My German is bad and my Turkish is worse. Unless you’re a native English speaker or you have some seriously homoerotic lyrics (accidentally, hopefully…), I’m generally not going to deduct for bad lyrics. I’ll give them credit for trying and for having some decent influences. Being a Thrash band from Turkey isn’t likely to be the easiest thing these days, particularly with the country slowly becoming more and more Islamic. The Sharia Police doesn’t take too kindly to Metalheads. Still, a band ultimately lives or dies by the quality of their music. This is good but not great. There is a ton of potential here but they just have to find their sound.

To say that Lamentations of the Ashen is boring and slow is like saying that Stalin might have killed a few people. It’s the understatement of the decade. If Varg from Burzum had decided that he wanted to do an album of his favorite Sunn O))) covers during the time period in which he recorded Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, this is pretty much what it would sound like. It has the same minimalistic characteristics of Burzum but at 1/10th the speed. Interest in the music is lost about five minutes into the second song. The first track, “…of Wraiths in White,” is just an intro (clocking in at a little over five minutes), so most listeners would suffer through that in hopes that things not only pick up but get better. Sadly, that doesn’t happen. It just continues to drone on and on and on. This album is about as exciting as being paralyzed from the neck down. I had to listen to this in chunks, taking in one song a day in hopes that the boredom generated by the music wouldn’t cause me to fall asleep in the middle of it. Even doing that, this was borderline torture to sit through.

For Zobibor’s first official release (the band’s only previous material is their Sodomatic Rape 2006 demo), this short (13 minutes) four-song EP has a fairly good sound. The guitars have a little more low-end in them than the average Black Metal band and they also have audible bass guitar on here too. Musically, this is fast and furious Punk-influenced Black Metal with some kick ass guitar soloing. I was never a big fan of guitar solos (I’m still not) but when a band does something well, I’m going to point it out. The soloing is pretty deadly. It hits hard, sounds well thought out and doesn’t degenerate into guitar wankery like so many solos do. I don’t know what took them five years to release new material, but this is enough to get me interested in hearing more from them. One of the problems with a short release is that there isn’t a whole lot to judge them on. I don’t have the demo (according to Encyclopaedia Metallum, it was limited to 50 copies) so I can’t say if they’ve progressed any since 2002, which is the listed year of their founding. This is short, tight, well-produced and it also serves the purpose it was probably intended: to get you interested in hearing more.

I must have done something to piss Ray off, because he has once again sent me something to review from Sleazy Rider. That label seems to have a knack for finding and releasing albums by the most raging homosexuals ever. Everything I’ve ever heard from this label has sucked Godzilla’s giant mutant reptile penis, and Monster 5 is no exception. For those of you who’ve never heard of Theodore Ziras before (and unless you’re an employee of Sleazy Rider, you probably haven’t), he’s one of those guys who is supposed to be an awesome guitar player, but all he ever produces is unlistenable, obnoxiously pretentious guitar wanker albums that only fags who like to masturbate with their seven-string, 24-fret penis extensions could enjoy. I had to suffer through eleven tracks of pretentious guitar wankery that made me want to kill every guitarist and burn every guitar ever made. Theodore Ziras made me listen to Japanese Gangsta Rap for three days straight because it was the furthest thing from a guitar album that I could find. I had to physically stop myself from booking a flight to Greece just to cut this guy’s hands off. Of course, knowing guitar wankers like I do, this loser would learn how to play guitar with his fucking feet and I’d have to make a second trip out there to cut those off, too. The only possible audience this might have is with other guitar wankers. For them, this album would be like buying the contents of a storage locker at an auction for $20 and finding a treasure trove of gay porn inside. For everyone else, this is a form of pain and suffering that even a Miley Cyrus / Jonas Brothers / Selina Gomez triple-bill couldn’t equal.

My first impression of On the Wings of Time is that there is a lot of groove on this album and they have a nice, thick, heavy guitar tone. In fact, the guitars are the loudest thing here. They drown out pretty much everything else. This is a guitar-based band so that isn’t actually bad. In fact, you’d want it to be that way. The thing is, when you have a bass solo (such as on the song “Darkness & Disguise”), it really sounds weird when the solo kicks in and it’s conspicuously quiet compared to the guitars. The vocals are also pretty low. This isn’t generally a problem, but there are times when you can’t understand the singing because the guitars drown it out. When you have a vocalist who is singing in a clean voice and in a way that you can generally understand what he’s saying, it distracts and unless you have a lyric sheet, the song sounds disjointed. You know he’s saying something, but you just don’t know what. Musically, this is very groove-laden. The riffing is memorable and it gets your head banging in time with the music. Still, even with that, the album is a bit overwhelming. The songs are almost all over five minutes each. One clocks in at about three minutes (“Weightless”) but there are two that clock in at over nine minutes (“Valley of the Kings” and “The Sleeping Prophet”). Taken in small doses, Black Skies is fairly deadly. Trying to listen to this album from beginning to end, though, is a pretty daunting task.

Three minutes into this and I was already bored. That’s never good. Beating one riff into the floor over and over again doesn’t make it more interesting. The fact that it’s not brutal, aggressive or even heavy doesn’t help either. This is so passive that it makes This Empty Flow sound like Bonded by Blood-era Exodus. Hunter is about as interesting as watching paint dry and I have the distinct feeling that I’m not on the appropriate hallucinogenic drugs to make this album worthwhile. The final track, “Never Land” is supposed to be a Sisters of Mercy cover, but it sounds nothing like the original. Then again, I don’t think taking two riffs from Sisters of Mercy and beating them to death for thirteen minutes qualifies as a cover. A desecration, maybe, but not a cover. Heirs is referred to as “Post-Doom” in their press release, but this isn’t Doom. Some of the members of this band may have wanted to play Doom at some point, but my guess is that they sucked so bad that they had to put the word “post” in front of it to sound like they intended to be this pointless. Hunter sounds like background music for those shitty art house films that try to be all “bleak” and “symbolic,” but are essentially exercises in deconstructed masturbation. How this band made it to a second release - and found a label to release it - is beyond me.

Let’s see… Brutal, down-tuned guitars? Check. Guttural, monotone vocals? Check. Originality checked in at the door? Check. Flesh Throne, you are cleared for takeoff. It’s nice to know that someone still thinks aping Incantation is a great idea, because I’m sure Darkthrone and Burzum are getting kind of sick of being blamed for all the shitty, sub-par Metal music that’s out there. Flesh Throne is essentially cookie-cutter Brutal Death Metal that huge numbers of bands produced back in the early ’90s when Black Metal was still “underground.” Going against the trend is admirable, but ultimately you live and die by how good your music is. Onslaught isn’t horrible. It’s just unoriginal. The songs chug along at a steady pace, pounding your face in like a giant pile driver. The vocals are utterly bestial and guttural to the point of unintelligibility. All things that have been done to death. There aren’t any blatant technical mistakes, but nothing here pops out and says “now that was fucking cool!” (A sin that Incantation committed any number of times, too). For a jaded Metal fan like me, generic Death Metal gets my dick about as hard as watching an hour of Masterpiece Theater on PBS. Since Masterpiece Theater is essentially the anti-Viagra, Onslaught sits firmly in erectile dysfunction city. Unless you absolutely must own every Death Metal release, you can skip this and not miss out on anything.

I didn’t know anything about Ptahil prior to hearing this, but I definitely like the band’s brand of Black Heavy Metal. These guys are Old School and you can really tell that they have a lifelong Metal background. If Black Sabbath was brutally raped by Slayer at a Celtic Frost concert, the resulting abomination child would sound a lot like For His Satanic Majesty’s Glory. This is some brutal, bass-heavy, neck-snapping, gets-your-head-banging-from-the-first-riff, Satanic as fuck Heavy Fucking Metal. This is what I wished Grim Reaper sounded like when See You In Hell came out (not that See You In Hell sucked, but I wanted it to be heavier and more evil). Honestly, this is one of those albums that you listen to and wonder why it doesn’t come with a fucking neck brace. The only thing comparable would be if Usurper did an album covering Hell, Grim Reaper and Brocas Helm songs.

Grindy Death Metal bands like Dead don’t do a lot for me. One of the reasons for this is that a lot of times they do something that makes it impossible to take them seriously. A song titled “Tits”? Really? You guys must get laid less often than Anal Blast. The rest of the song titles and lyrics are equally lame, too. Maybe I’m the wrong person to do these kinds of reviews because I take listening to Metal music seriously. When I listen to it, I want my head torn off. I want things brutal and occult. I want Satan himself coming out of my speakers to rip my soul from my body. If I want humor with musical accompaniment, I can listen to a Weird Al CD and get all the laughs I need. Musically, this is pretty competently executed, but the “humor” parts don’t help. The brutal Death/Grind is hard-hitting, but the shitty lyrics, stupid samples (such as in “A Beer” or “Short but Slim”) and general lack of seriousness brings this down. Joke bands only go so far before the novelty wears off, and for me the novelty of Dead wore off almost immediately.

Several factors impede my ability to digest and enjoy Prog Rock. The fact that I can still produce and maintain an erection, relationships with non-fictional people, heterosexuality, employment, etc. So when it comes to an album like this new Dark Suns, the best I can do is to offer you an analogy. Let’s say Mikael Akerfeldt from Opeth and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez from The Mars Volta are hanging out at Mikael’s apartment, locked in a deep dispute over which Comus song has the best ukulele solo, when all of a sudden Omar says, “Hey Mikey, you wanna fuck me in the ass?” “Sure,” Mikael responds, “why the hell not?” So Akerfeldt begins to pound Omar’s ass with reckless abandon. It’s at this point Omar realizes he hasn’t taken a shit since his all-natural, organic, vegan falafel this morning, but by now it’s too late as he feels his bowels involuntarily releasing. Mikael continues punishing Omar’s shit-spewing mangina with so much fury that he tears his anal wall and Lopez begins to bleed. This excites Mikael more than a 29-minute John Myung bass solo, and no longer able to hold back, ejaculates violently into Omar’s battered opening. At the exact minute he cums, Akerfeldt screams at the top of his lungs, “I’m liberated from the shackles of Metal!!” He now slowly unburies his member. “Keep it in there! Keep it in there!” Mikael commands. And Lopez does so just long enough for Akerfeldt to kneel down and felch the blood-semen-vegan excrement out of Omar’s asshole. “Don’t be selfish,” Lopez pleads, as Mikael then spits the mouthful of cum, blood and shit into his mouth. This causes instant nausea which results in Omar vomiting all the goods onto the ground. Luckily Mikael is able to scoop up most of the vomit-semen-blood-shit mixture with a Camel 10” picture disc. He salvages as much as he can and tosses into his favorite blender, the one James LaBrie got him for Christmas the year before. He then adds shaved coconut, almonds, pecans, lemon zest, steamed raisin skins, some pineapple juice, a splash of O’Doul’s and 9 whole onions to the concoction. But something’s still missing. He makes a quick phone call to Fred Wilpon, who happens to owe him a huge favor. Lo and behold, several hours later all 25 men on the active roster for the New York Mets arrive and each take turns ejaculating into the blender. Some of the younger players fresh out of college who still have acne even pop their whitehead and blackhead pus into the cocktail just to give it that little extra kick. Now all it needs are some of Mikael’s “special ice cubes” (Steven Wilson’s frozen urine), and the blender is set to puree for about 90 seconds. Akerfeldt pulls out a chilled glass, the same one Neil Peart made him when they took that glass-blowing class together last summer, and pours it to the brim, topping with all-natural, organic, sugar free, vegan whipped cream and a cherry. The contents of the glass are this new album from Dark Suns. And to listen to it is to drink up. Bon appetit!

I was prepared to ruthlessly make fun of this album based purely on the gayness of the band photos and idiotic moniker. Is it “September 7th,” or am I actually supposed to say “Sep-seven-ember”? I was also briefed on their style not being Metal, which isn’t a huge problem for me personally, but we here at Metal Curse tend to prefer… I don’t know… Metal? But, I decided to give it the old college try. Sure enough, album opener “View Into Blur” doesn’t waste any time disappointing. I can’t stand the piercing rhythm of Boris Pillmann’s vocal delivery. Musically the band is hard to pigeonhole. This is the kind of music that the vague description of “Alternative” was invented for. Pillmann’s singing is equally hard to describe because he reminds me of so many vocalists. He sounds kind of like Arlo Guthrie, or maybe Billy Joel. Perhaps a young, hillbilly Elton John? Actually he reminds me most of a singer from an old Punk band called The Robots, but since I’m sure all of about 7 people have actually heard them, I realize that comparison does nothing for you. Still, you get an idea. The album eventually does reveal him to be a great singer. Pillmann’s only flaw might be an occasional Southern drawl not unlike Scott Weiland’s on the first Stone Temple Pilots album. Peculiar as Sep7ember hail from Germany. Their big hit, “I Hate NY,” is up next. A better song, but a little too happy for me, however, this chorus begins to expose just how powerful Pillmann can be. Next up is “Run,” the album’s first stab at poignancy and sincerity and it works surprisingly well. This is the first song I’m able to fully embrace. It’s followed by “One Thing,” which is hindered by the aforementioned redneck voice vibe. But even this chorus will grow on you if you let it. The real highlight of Strange Ways… is the middle of the album (tracks 5-8). The heartfelt resonance of “So” and “Bitterness” comprise some of the best Indie Rock since Interpol’s Antics LP, while “Rocket to Somewhere” and “Carpets” hint at the best Grunge I’ve heard since Kurt Cobain dyed his hair red and refused to do interviews. Speaking of Cobain, Pillmann has a similar lyrical philosophy, i.e. using words that fit the verses and make the songs catchier as opposed to always needing to make sense. The rest of the album isn’t quite as good. “Gods Are Laughing” also suffers from that damned hillbilly drawl and overuse of the Wah-Wah pedal (note: any use of Wah-Wah pedal is overuse of Wah-Wah pedal… let it go). “Superhero Smash Hit Wonder” sounds like some kind of modern U2 filler with lyrics as bad as the song title suggests. “Remaining Days” is an anti-racism song. Really? Racism’s over, guys. People hate themselves these days, not others. “All Quiet” is a moving but energetic tune which serves as a fitting album closer since the actual last song is just a lackluster acoustic version of “So.” In summary, I am simply torn. This is a record that is only 54% good, yet I can’t stop listening to that damn 54% over and over and over again. It’s not even remotely Metal, but it’s seriously fucking addictive. You’ll just have to decide for yourself, but don’t say I didn’t try to warn you.