Prophets of War - Plains of Desolation

This album is significantly interesting as it sucks you up in it's variety of sounds. You could listen to it straight through several times and still continue to find new things about it. It has a myriad of different influences on it's sound. From the blackened death metal vocals style to the melodic death metal with hints of death doom in the structure of the individual songs. Not that the album is an immitation. Far from it. This doesn't delve into the muddy pool of over used gothenburg death metal sound. What grabs you most about this release is the atmosphere. And to go into that I suppose I'll need to go into detail about the songs themselves.

Crippled was a perfect start to the album. A simple start off with tremolo picking and piano work cruising it's way around the percussion which continues just long enough before launching into some solidly heavy and thick palm muting. The keyboardist uses his instrument to create a dark and pervasive feel, much like the sound surrounding My Dying Bride's Vast Choirs on their original demo. The chorus brings back the tremolo picking with high screamed vocals crying out. The nice thing about this song is that each time the verse starts it gets heavier. The bridge straight after the second verse is catchy, which honestly is the whole feel of the song. This continues even when the bridge stretches into a simple solo and then works itself to a very gentle slowdown. What comes next is in my opinion the best bit of the entire song. A drawn out scream, some more lead guitar work that eventually leads into a particular pattern that becomes mimicked by the piano that then becomes the lead instrument. The piano manages to carry the song all the way to the end beautifully capturing a melodic and well crafted ending.

Regeneration starts off with a fast aggressive blackened melodic death feel. Fast riffing, lots of tremolo and high vocals with some growls thrown in inbetween. A good way to describe this song is if Crimson Moonlight simplified themselves and then changed their tone. About two minutes in it slows down to give you time to catch your breath. It's a song made of sections rather than using a stereotypical song structure. It doesn't use verses and choruses but rather goes from one section to the next. You won't hear the same thing done repetitavely which was cleverly done. Half way through the song it speeds right back up again, letting the lead guitar do some more work this time rather than both guitars just thrashing out the sound. What did surprise me was when the clean vocals made an appearance. The clean vocals didn't last long but were done well. The song ends with some eerie guitar work before finally coming to a close.

In Pursuit of Divinity was definitely my favourite track. The song launches off with some guitar riffing which somes to a bit of a death doom feel with it's merging atmosphere of keyboard, guitar, drumming and drawn out growl work. The vocals are the most intense bit of this area of the song as they don't let up, continually growling out the lyrics amongst the organ style keyboard work and surrounding guitars. Once again I was reminded of a moderately less ferocious My Dying Bride from their Vast Choirs demo. Half way through the song it calms down to some incredibly well crafted melodic work from both the keyboard and the guitars as well as the drums. Three and a half minutes in the song completely throws itself into a whole new atmosphere of passion. This turns itself into upbeat guitar lines and more aggressive vocals thrown into the mix.

Fallen Celestials follows the general mood of the album. Heavy melodic death metal with doom influence punctuated with melodic intervals. The song is more down tempo in general than the rest of the songs. Not to say it doesn't have fast sections, but they're swallowed more by the doom influence which presides over this particular song. Once again there's another melodic section which happens half way through the song which then works itself back into atmospheric heavy guitar work. By the end of the song we have both undistorted guitar melodies working amongst spoken word vocals, distorted guitar and keyboard lingering to the end. I personally found that this song was more of a background song. Better taken in if listening to it while doing other things.

Plains of Desolation had a slightly martial sound to it as it starts off with snare creating a marching beat while the bass pedals along next to it. As in other songs the other instruments launch in next to each other filling out the spectrum of the song itself. The keyboard plays a similar role in this song as it does in Crippled. Being a key piece of the melody while allowing the other instruments to accompany it. Over all the song was however my least favourite from the album. The ending of the song struck me as rather abrupt for the ending of such a well constructed and melodic album.

Over all. It's a well constructed album with tastefully done riffs, well layered atmospheres and sounds. It's a release you'd recommend to your friends looking for good, decent metal which takes you in and offers you an enjoyable 31 minutes of playing time.

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Terraphobia - Evilution

This album doesn't waste a lot of time getting into things. Aside from some intro wind and a little bit of guitaring that travels by itself for a short while, this album straight after launches into fast aggressive syncopated music. Fast drums, fast guitars and drums letting us know that this is a release that doesn't let up for any of it's listeners. And it's not just chunky thrash throwing us some macho metal that's fast without anything else to it's name. There's some great atmosphere that lies behind this music. Don't get me wrong, there's lots of chunky hooks and catchy riffs that fill out all of this release. But behind all of that there's guitar lead that travels through the music. Making sure that you're not just left with a face smash of brutality. You're left with a good dose of harmonies, vocals of pure wrath and some good ol' solos fast enough make sure that you're swimming in sound. There's even sections in some songs where it slows down a little, making sure you have a more appropriate speed for throwing your hair around while you hold your horns up high. This does however, come at a cost. By the third song I found myself checking to make sure it wasn't repeating one of the songs. All the sound is the same tones. Same distortion levels. Same vocal style. Although there were actually a few surprises thrown in. Fallen Hero was the first to break free from the same sound by having a melodic and slowed down middle section that was more soft than anything else.

The Unforgotten was the next song to introduce a new sound to the release. This song was more of a heavy ballad. Starting off slow and quiet, growing heavier all the time while still keeping to the same tempo. Also the vocals weren't as aggressive, allowing you to soak up more of the song's mood. And I'm not saying that every other single song sounds the same, no they don't. If you listen to each song you can hear the difference. What I am trying to say is each song sounds similar. It's much of a muchness to be honest. A good muchness. You can enjoy each song individually and quite a lot too. And thanks to the couple of differences this release was truly an epic release of ferocity leaving the entire album to finish with a slam. To be honest that's all that can really be said about the music in detail. Layered, fast, atmospheric, heavy thrash. Good. But not all in one sitting.

The artwork is entirely death/thrash influenced. With it's block text logo and skull over texture front design. All of the artwork is set in the same colours. Brown on orange, on brown on orange. Inside of the booklet you've got some sepia photos. One of a graveyard, and one of the musician himself, Michael Jelinic in a leather coat looking tough as nuts. The lyric pages each have their own pictures, each according to the theme of the song. Golgotha has the crucifix and a crown of thorns, Fallen Hero has an m60 machine gun and a skull wearing a military helmet.

You get the idea. I guess in this case the artwork firmly resembles the music itself. A lot of the same with some differences thrown in just enough to make it different.

Overall, I did really enjoy the release. The songs are extremely enjoyable, with good composition, audio quality and tight musicianship. However I wouldn't listen to the entire CD in one shot again, but would rather space it out piece by piece.

My Dying Bride - Evinta

For almost every decent band there's that album that most people view with a look of distaste. For Metallica, most would say it was their album "St. Anger." For Alcest it would most likely be "Cailles De Lune". For Amorphis it would have been the moment they stopped doing death metal that their releases lacked any substance. But as far as My Dying Bride goes, it's a bit unclear as to where they picked up, or where they let down. For those heavily into their earliest releases, "Towards The Sinister" and "As the Flower Withers," people would say "Turn Loose The Swans" was where MDB lost it. However, since MDB is best known for their gothic doom metal, let's say for now that was the album where they found their style and really launched off their career. That would lead us to say that "For Lies I Sire" was when they released a truly uninspiring release. The follow up to this being the "Bring Me Victory EP," which was the only song of any decency from the "For Lies I Sire" album, coupled with two covers, and a live song from their first ever demo. And then they gave us "Evinta."

This album had possibly one of the best beginnings I've heard for a very long time. Their song "In Your Dark Pavilion" was an incredibly haunting ten minute track. Launching off with some soft spoken word and elegant violins dancing around each other, female operatic vocals coming in and then fading out. Keys and synth working with each other to create some truly moving moments. Horns accentuated with percussion and organs, once again topped with more operatic sections and then piano coming on it's own before more strings and synth start filling out the background before moving on. All of this works within itself for a good first five minutes of the song. But the whole composition style suddenly changes once it hits the seven minute mark. It's like it stops trying to be a piece of oppression and suddenly becomes a lot more... free. Suddenly it's lighter with piano notes dancing all over the place, horns picking up the atmosphere among "high clouds" so to speak. As though a great big section of light has suddenly forced itself through dark and heavy overcast skies. The song starts picking up, building up, working itself to a very tasteful and incredible crescendo. But even still, it takes it's time to get there. Not forcing you to suddenly face it without some internal preparation. In come Aaron's vocals just when appropriate, saying exactly what needs to be said before suddenly... the song gently drifts itself to an end. After hearing this song... I gleefully anticipated the rest of the album, expecting great things. How wrong I was...

Track number two of disk one then came on. "You Are Not The One Who Loves Me." It started off with potential. Some rather moody piano chords being struck down with a moodiness only the depressed seem to really notice. Violins following that for a short while. After that comes a small piano section. Slightly flavourless, and not terribly inspired to any degree. Aaron starts some rather vague and meaningless vocals that don't really seem to follow any particular direction, story or anything really. The violin comes back, following the same tune it was doing before. Once that finished we get some truly second rate digitally created ambiance. To complete this particularly lifeless song Aaron decided to put in some more uninspiring lyrics not worth paying attention to. Not only are the lyrics rather bland, they don't even fit the particular song. This was to set the bench mark for the rest of the entire album.

Yes, this album does have some sections where the mood captures you and carries you to places of complete melancholic beauty. It does have sections where everything was composed perfectly. And everything holds it's own jewel of elegance. The real letdown is that almost all of those sections are held together by incredibly mediocre and forced sections of hollow sounding emptiness. Songs with irritating out of place harpsichord, horrible lyrics and badly created digital placements.

You hear a lot of influence from other well created neo-classical masterpieces. "Of Lillies Bent With Tears" has a strong resemblance to Ulver's "A Quick Fix of Melancholy," "In Your Dark Pavilion" has strong Dargaard elements to it. However, that doesn't necessarily work in this releases favour. Regardless of the fact that My Dying Bride re-used a lot of their famous riffs from earlier, popular songs in this three (or two disk if you didn't get your hands on the "deluxe" edition) disk abomination, it doesn't have it's own personality to the release. And by that I mean that this release has been so stretched by outside influences and tedious inserts that it doesn't have it's own soul. It's just a smattering of this and a splattering of that.

At this point, I'm just going to go right ahead and say it. My Dying Bride have finally lost it. And if the next release they have to give us is as mediocre as the compositions they've had to give us in the past three years, then it's pretty obvious they've given up the throne of UK gothic doom and it might just be time for an artist like My Silent Wake to come and hold the torch for the next few years to come.

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L.U.S.T. - L.U.S.T. & MRSA [Fuck off Underground Rock demo]

Me and a friend once had a black metal band. It really sucked, to be brutally honest. And after we ended out splitting up and moving in entirely different directions musically, we formed different bands. Me, into doom metal, and him, strangely enough, into glam rock. His band, The Skyrats were a band that was always on my "to see" list, while I never really bothered to attend any of their gigs. Every time that my friend would let me know where they were playing and how much it was, I'd often find myself saying "I'll be there," without ever actually making it. Eventually he informed me of a gig that I'd actually be 15 minutes travel away from on that specific night. Obviously, I decided to make an effort. His band was most amusing to see live, and I didn't regret attending at all. After checking out their set, I had a mosey to the merch table. That's where I found this release.

My friend was playing as an opening act for L.U.S.T.'s "First Tattoo" album launch, and considering the stickers and this demo CD were free give aways for anybody with a mood to grab it, I grabbed it. I didn't bother to stay for any of the bands that played after my mate's and quickly headed off for an entire night of pub drinking and general midnight shenanigans. It wasn't until about half a week later when I was finally home again and ripping new music to my computer that I finally took the time to check out this demo.

I was shocked. I was expecting cheesy, mediocre glam rock that wanted to be just like Nikki Sixx. Instead I got probably some of the best straight out punk rock I've heard in a long time. The lyrics were pretty simple, the demo opening to, "hey, you, fuck you!" But it was addictive. Catchy. Sexy and definitely enjoyable. There's really not much more to say about it than that, really.

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Prosthetic - DEMOlition

Rising from the country of Sweden comes the one man death metal project Prosthetic. The mind behind the music is none other than Mats Andersson. When considering that all the composition, recording, programming has been done by the one person, this small demo shows how immensely talented he is.

As mentioned, the sound to this music is fast. Fast and incredibly aggressive. To be completely honest, that would have to be the highlight to this demo. You really can feel the guitars, drums, bass and layered vocals attacking you as you listen to it. Prosthetic has the complete attitude of metal down pact.

Now that's the history and the atmosphere. Now we talk about the individual sounds this demo release has to offer (and it's individual songs). The guitars are a bit of a frenzy. This is a large part of what equates to the aggressive atmosphere. They rapidly propel their way through every single song giving absolutely no relief or rest. Each riff for each song is individual in it's own right. And due to this each song does actually have a different mood.

The first song "Duvjakt" is a rapid smattering of notes thrown into your face, making sure that you're not quite sure where this song is going, yet letting you know that when it gets there it's going to be a wall of sound in it's own right. Even the guitar solo has very little structure to it's name. It's not badly done. But neither is it entirely easy to digest.

The second song "Cykeltjuvar" is a lot more structured. Relying more on triplets within it's riffs. This makes it a much more catchy song as well. While I cannot really say much more than that to it, I would say this would be my favourite song from the "DEMOlition" demo.

"Egocentric" was a surprising addition to the demo. This one takes a step back from the brutal death metal feel by being given much more thrash orientated verse vocals. Meanwhile the chorus and bridge has quite a gothenburg melodic death metal feel to it. This makes it by far the most palatable song of the release. A stand alone track in it's own right, which, while having it's own sound, still lets itself fit into the midst of the former two songs.

"Scrambled Legs" picks up where "Egocentric" left off with it's thrash influence. In no way does this song resemble the death metal feel of the earlier tracks. All vocals are done in a thrash style, which syncopates with the guitar style. The track is the black sheep of the whole release. Apart from it's aggressive speed and attitude, it doesn't hold to the same composition style and it certainly doesn't really fit amongst the other songs. One could even say it sounds as though it was composed by a different band/project.

Despite all said above, there are a couple of things that find themselves consistent through this release. For anyone who knows their death metal, they should be able to hear a strong influence of Dimension Zero found throughout all the drumming present in these songs. In exactly the same way they keep up the "to ka to ka to ka" sound that can be found within every single Dimension Zero song. This makes sense, considering the unrelenting guitar riffs that create their own cacophony. It is strongly clear that a wall of sound was the desired effect for these songs. Along with the drumming that finds itself consistent throughout all songs, the vocals all have much the same style too. Aside from "Scrambled Legs" and the minimal amount of thrash vocals within "Egocentric" the majority of the vocals have a beastly like blackened death metal feel to them.

In synopsis, this demo is a mess. A splattering of all kinds of sounds and influences combined and compressed into four tracks of aggressive metal. It's in no way bad. WIthout a doubt this is truly a release worth spent the time getting your hands on, and it certainly shows remarkable promise for a first release of such a talented single composer. However, a bit more structure, a bit more attention and direction would certainly help make future releases a much higher standard.



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Monarch! - Sortilège

This year I had the opportunity to see Monarch! live for the second time as they toured Australia in 2011. And although I have no idea if they played the same set or not due to their guitarist passing out mid show the first time they toured here back in 2009, I did have the opportunity to buy this new release.

It was the same price as all the other merchandise full length CD's on the table, and considering how much of a fan I am of Monarch, I quickly purchased the CD without asking any questions. It wasn't until I was home and had put the CD into my computer that I found out this was not a full length but a single (or an EP as Encyclopaedia Metallum seems to consider it).

The track is not much longer than ten minutes and is in my opinion, a completely new direction for Monarch. While the release is still definitely drone doom, it is no longer sludge influenced but dark ambient. If there was any way to compare it, I would say this song is to Monarch, what "A Shaving of the Horn That Speared You" is for Sunn O))). A dark, eerie and almost haunting journey from the start of the song to the end. Unlike Sunn O)))'s song however, this song requires your full attention. If one was to put this album on and have it as background music for whatever activity one is up to, the song will be over before you know it and you'll barely even realise you were hearing it. However, once you pay attention to it you'll hear the feedback slowly creeping up in volume, shifting in sound as it suddenly becomes accentuated by the drums that step in and start a repetitous beat that continues for most of the song. The bass and guitar feedback move about each other and then the vocals come in, sounding as though they are being yelled from a great distance away. The song builds itself up at an incredibly slow and steady pace without really requiring any change at all. Once it reaches it's climax the drum pattern changes to something yet more simple again, and the diminuendo begins to gradually pace itself towards the end of the song.

I wouldn't say I prefer this release over their earlier work. I wouldn't say I prefer their earlier work over this one either. It stands on it's own, as a unique creation by Monarch. Had I known that this release would only hold a single eleven minute long song, I still would have bought it. And not only for the music either, the album art is exceptional. On the front cover is an image of a Devil's Curse being acted out in silver, black and white. Inside is some forest photography and a series of lit candles burning along with the band members named in simple font. While on the back is more candles, heathen skulls and people standing around. All in all artwork and the music go hand in hand, each perfectly resembling the other.

All in all this is a very tasteful release that is well worth owning and having in any drone doom fan's collection.



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Herlighet - A Warrior Never Dies

When writing a review that requires a rating I always remember where my points stand. 50% is for albums that are not bad but completely fail to be good at the same time. Something that was extremely mediocre, utterly forgettable because it was not good enough to be enjoyable. Or something not bad enough to remember for how awful it was. Anything above 50% means it had some good points to it, anything below that means it had elements of something wrong, whether that be bad composition, unbearable recording quality, or musician mistakes. Since I have given this release a 54% that means I consider it to be just above that mediocre standard.

There was nothing wrong with the songs that were on this album. The sound quality was very stereotypical of black metal. The musicians were tight. There were no sloppy sections where the band could have gone out of time or moments where a particular musician couldn't keep up and made a mistake. Even the vocalist has skill with his black metal vocals and his chants as well as spoken word sections. The female vocals that came in now and then followed the synth note and didn't waver at all. All in all this christian black metal band shows a lot of promise considering everything they did right.

So why such a low rating?

It was boring. Almost the entirety of the album was tedious, uninspiring, flat and emotionless. The composition of almost every single song was just an aggressive facepunch of nothing. Distorted guitars being picked rapidly, drums hammering away and synth coming in when appropriate. There was almost no atmosphere at all. No catchy riffs that were created to draw me back to listening to the song. There were no crushingly heavy sections designed to give me the chills and there was certainly no piano melodies to give me a musical dream like atmosphere.

In fact, the pianist was one of the worst bits about this band. Aside from when he was doing some truly uninspiring synth work, he was rapidly hammering out the same notes over and over. It was as though he found a chord he liked and continued to play only those keys for the rest of the song.

The only good thing about having this album, was knowing that I won it for free through a radio give away and did not have to pay for it.

Now, as for the album art? That was actually disgraceful. All of it was like a dirt brown smear kept in condition underneath the jewel disk case. It was also uneven. Open up the entire booklet and you'll find that after each fold the colour changes, giving it the look that sections of it were left out in the sun. As though the sun faded away what minimal colour they decided to give it. And that's not the worst bit. It's pixelated to all bloody hell. It's like they asked an artist if they could use his imagery for their front cover and then they stretched it to the size of the CD cover causing it to blur. Then, after they managed that, they used Microsoft Paint to create every page afterwards. Each single letter is made of pixel blocks, and the first letter to every song is a mess of cream white. I do know that the first letter is an attempt at making it look "mediæval" but considering the pixelation, the first letter becomes completely unreadable. This mess is carried on to the back art of the CD. While ripping the CD I accidently named the first song "Ely Over the Oceans" as I couldn't tell that the letter "F" was not an "E."

Along with all of this, the song titles contained some pretty bad grammar. Examples include "I Desire Drink Your Blood," "When Will Back The Morning?" and "Crying Out Knees To The Lord."

And yet despite all this, Herlighet is considered well known amongst the underground, christian black metal scene. With examples like this and other bands such as "From Ashes" "Synnöve" and "A.W.A.S." it's no small wonder people think christian metal is a pathetic representation of the secular scene.



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Dragged Into Sunlight - Hatred For Mankind

When I think of blackened doom I must confess the first bands that thrust themselves into my mind are Xasthur, Nortt, Make A Change... Kill Yourself, etc. All the good depressive black metal that one could possibly think of. However, this was anything but that same overused sound. In fact this album is quite the reverse in every way possible. Yes, it contains many levels of cold depressive black metal. But rather than letting itself be confined within that they've added crushing amounts of sludge and death influence to create a truly thick and painful feeling.

The first track started off with a voice over. And normally I really loathe voice overs in most music as almost always the band in question grabs a famous movie quote, or political figure speech that has questionable relevance to the song at hand and then tries to base the whole song around it somehow. However in this case the voice overs fit really well and didn't cause my mind to switch off to any degree. It wasn't even taken from anything so far as I knew. The whole album actually has many voice overs that interlace themselves throughout the songs and each one adds it's own piece of humanistic degradation. For example: 'You're an inhumane bunch of fucking living bastards and bitches and you're gonna get your asses nuked in the end.' This was one of the smaller, lesser voice overs at the start of the song "To Hieron." This is the kind of album that shows no respect towards it's listeners in order to create a very grungy feeling.

In fact, the longer this album went on through my playlist the more awed I was by how incredibly monolithic it was. With the incorporation of death and sludge metal into the mix of blackened doom, the voice overs, the lyrical content and atmosphere the album ended up with one bloody hell of a heavy, dirty, filthy sound that leaves you feeling as though your soul needs some good scrubbing before it could ever be considered clean again. The vocals are harsh and violently angry. They convey a pure sense of angst and vile desperation. During this the guitars and drums work together in a frenzied fury that leaves no opening for any peace of mind. In my opinion the two most outstanding tracks on this album would be "Boiled Angel, Buried With Leeches" and "Volcanic Birth." Both songs have an immediate and dark sensation to them that buries you in the purely disturbing thickness of this release.

Due to the sludge influence of this album there is a definite "core" feel to the album. But don't let that repulse you away from the release to any degree. If anything it adds to it making this quite a fresh sound for depressive black metal. There's plenty of blast beats and tremolo picking, chunky palm muting and fast leads to keep you entertained. Break downs are not a sound you'll find in here.

To wrap things up I have only this to say; this album truly, deeply impressed me. I have not been awed by a single release like this since I first listened to Anata's "The Infernal Depths of Hatred" or Shape of Despair's "Illusion's Play." Not that this release can honestly be compared to those in any way. It's not as melodic as "The Infernal Depths of Hatred" and it's not as atmospheric or honestly, even as depressing as "Illusion's Play." But the feel of the album itself was one of extreme impact. And it's not a feeling I will forget quickly.



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