High on Fire - De Vermis Mysteriis

For once, High on Fire do not mince around with buildup at the start of an album. De Vermis Mysteriis (literally “book of worms”, was Bloch’s ficitonal Mythos tome of spells used to summon unworldly beings) gets straight into it on “Serums of Liao” and from there on out it’s smooth sailing. High on Fire are one of the most legendary bands kicking in the metal scene today, and the new album is here to solidly confirm that. The great thing about HoF is that they have been uncompromising in their style, and yet still always manage to show us a different facet of it with every release. Those of you who were disappointed by the increased accessibility of Snakes for the Divine will be glad to hear that HoF’s rough edge has fully returned and possibly in its most accomplished form yet. Certainly there are some of the group’s most blazing riffs of all time displayed, just check the second half of “Fertile Green” or “Romulus and Remus”. In fact, what we see here is an incredibly impressive stringing of great riffs, one after the next consecutively with very little letdown. Even many of the albums we love the most hold moments of tedium, or even wasteful filler, but not here. DVM ploughs on with the quality riffs until the end and almost never loses momentum. Another great thing about these guys is the way their breakneck pace somehow manages to perfectly conjure the great galloping of horses from your (my?) subconscious, an element that I believe gives it a more warlike character.

If you don’t know what to expect, you should - High on Fire are HUGE! Expect muddy stoner thrash with an epic vibe. For others, expect the same great song-writing and musicianship and expect more totally classic material. DVM fits snugly in with Blessed Black Wings and Death is this Communion as three of the best thrash or stoner metal albums of the millennium, but what we really see here is another chapter in a string of really great albums, all of which any true man wedded to metal must unequivocally own.

In short: In truth, an unnecessary review as this band is so awesome that everyone has either already bought the record or is currently saving pennies for it.

Standout tracks: “Serums of Liao”, “Madness of an Architect”, “King of Days”, “Romulus and Remus”

Score: 9.5

Split Cranium - Split Cranium

Surely, this album doesn’t need to long a review… Why? Well, Aaron Turner of Isis plays crust punk with Jussi Lehtisalo of Circle should be all you need to know, really.

But that’s not gonna stop me raving a little bit. Split Cranium leans heavily on the hardcore side of crustcore, or even rather the crustcore side of hardcore, rockin’ oldschool punk numbers that will, as suggested, dash you brains out. But don’t think that musicians as seminal as this are going to stick to the books ‘til the end of the line. The first minute of “Black Binding Plague” is nothing but noise, then WHACK raddest oldschool D-beat ever.  “Blossoms From Boils” starts out like classic hardcore punk, then drops and hits you for a full two minutes with a single rock’n’roll riff that almost sounds like “Thunderstrike” (ACDC), only twenty to thirty times less lame. “Retrace the Circle” basically closes the album on the same note, except it’s even more driving and epic. Turner’s vocals are straight out of Isis, and it’s a pleasure to hear them so prominently here, although they work best on the final rock-out. It seems to me at times they were possibly slowing optimum energization on other tracks if only a little. His post-metal drones and bestial hardcore growls add a modern element to a record that really has a very oldschool heart. In the end there’s no way you could call it a bad thing, but I think there is a slight clash there that stops this album from being the most effective it could be.

Clocking twenty-five minutes, the self-titled Split Cranium debut could definitely be labeled “short and sweet”. The band members could also possibly be accused of “letting their hair down” here, but certainly never blamed for it. There is no self-respecting lover of rock music who doesn’t do the same themselves. But these guys do it cooler than we do. These riffs are killer, and I always unconsciously wanted to see what it was like when these rocked the Kasbah a bit harder. Split Cranium is an album I’ve got down to more than once lately and I’m guaranteed to drink some beer to it again more than once. The question is: Will SC be a once off thing, or will this union have the chance to fully reach the potential that this record shows with blinding clarity?

In summary: Split Cranium keep it real, but branch out. A unique record in the punk scene, kind of like a crust’n’roll punk album with noise highlights. Highly recommended.

Standout tracks: “Sceptres to Rust”, “Retrace the Circle”

Score: 8.5

Nadja & Vampillia - The Primitive World

It’s probably not news to you that Nadja are a very prolific band. In ten years they have released twenty-nine full-length albums, eight EPs, and nine splits. A large amount of their output has been very high quality, but like most bands that create such quantities of music, once they get into the swing of making and living off of music it’s difficult for them to stop doing it, even if they have no fresh ideas. For a few years there it seemed like Nadja were making too many unnecessary collaborations with artists whose music was not necessarily a good pairing, making uninspired ambient or post-rock wanderings that had only small servings of character. A lot of people ceased to pay attention to them, but I’m pleased to say it’s time to start listening to Nadja again. This newest release, The Primitive World, sees the Canadian duo pair-up with eleven-piece Japanese “brutal orchestra”, Vampillia, a strange and indulgent new underground act that seems to be causing an awful lot of head-scratching around the place right now. Check out their extremely bizarre and hilarious film clip for the song “Heyoah” and see what I mean (don’t let the Sigh flashbacks irk you, this is nothing like it!).

The entire album centers around a massive track called “Icelight”, and this song is going to ruin your day in the best kind of way. It is a twenty-three minute beast of a drone metal track – slow, atmospheric, dark and long. It is filled with classic Nadja static, that kind of soft static you could drown in, and also: It’s totally metal, sporting pained roars and elephant heaviness. The other four tracks build up and release on either side of this monster; the first and last tracks are piano filler, “Northern Lights” is a triumphant prelude to darkness (think Jesu), and “Anesthetic Depth” is an ambient cool-down after the drone. Throughout all of this, Vampillia provide tastefully placed piano, strings and probably other things that do not intrude on the power of the drone, yet manage to sprinkle some melody on top of the sound torrent.

The Primitive World is a return to metal and form for Nadja, and a good thing for an as-of-yet-not-completely-accepted group like Vampillia, especially one who are trying to promote a very diverse image. If you are not a Nadja fan, this is a very good place to begin (amongst others), and for the fans already out there this regression will be welcomed. Let’s hope both bands realize what they’ve done and take notes for their futures.

In short: Great little drone metal album with powerful riffs and loaded sounds. Finally, another good Nadja work to add to the collection.

Standout tracks: “Icelight” of course

Score: 9.0

Taranis - Kingdom

Traditionally, Taranis is an iron age Celtic wheel-god, from back in the days when the Celts still controlled a lot of Western Europe. However, before the Romans came and smashed them around 50 BC, Celtic culture spread and influenced many peoples around the Danube, affecting places such as what is today Romania, Slovakia and Hungary, and their influence continues in the case of one modern-day Hungarian: Atilla Bakos, mastermind behind a new metal project of the same name as aforementioned god of the wheel. There are no notably Celtic musical elements to the music however, or Hungarian ones for that matter. Taranis opts rather for the path of a more homogenized, generic folk metal.

Bakos  released a lone demo under this moniker all the way back in 2000, and then split up three years later and it is only now since the one-man reformation last year that we get a second release, the full-length debut album Kingdom. One could simply say that Taranis create epic black metal, but the words folk, progressive, and symphonic all arise here. The album consists of four epic tracks lasting roughly ten minutes each. Taranis’ strong point definitely lies in his progressive, symphonic melodies, although this is also where he fails as well. While there are many well-written tunes to enjoy, their application is not always top-shelf. Although quite a well-produced album, the keyboard tones reek of old-school symphonic black and are just a bit cheesy and overused. The singing also loses some of its effect, as Bakos is inclined to a lot of passionate moments using clean vocals, and his voice swings somewhat out of control. I feel that the heartfelt sound he’s going for would be benefit greatly from a less dramatic sobriety and some more professional training or practice to really rein that voice in and only use as much of it as is needed. Although sometimes his voice can sound nice, other times its escalations really grated on me and tainted the song. Complaints aside, however, Kingdom is still an enjoyable album with some nice moments of beauty and grandeur, one that may even gain a cult following in some circles.

In short: Very epic but flawed and unoriginal progressive folk/black metal.

Standout tracks: Glory, Storm

Score: 6.5

Conan - Monoss

If we study the cover art of the new Conan album and read the title, we are suggested ideas of massiveness; great, lumbering giants. One could never blame Conan of false advertising here, as contained in its mere 40-minute runtime there are some of the fattest, thickest, most devastatingly heavy riffs you’re ever likely to hear in your life. These three Liverpudlians are here to take the crown, don’t be mistaken, as Monnos is an absolute hulk of an album. Stoner/doom is rarely this good, but apparently this is more than just regular stoner/doom. This is “caveman battle doom”, a term that somehow accurately describes the atmosphere of Conan’s music. Conan is only a very new band, having been conceived in 2006, and this being their first full-length album.

The first thing that you’ll notice is the guitar tone. Holy shit! you’ll say to yourself, that’s fucking heavy. The guitar is just so lush and bass-laden that it alternates between chords with incredible smoothness, creating grooves that naturally course through your spine, forcing you to nod your head. It’s just such a deliciously huge sound, like massive weight coming down from above, and so damn well-produced, too. The vocals are almost always wielded dually; soaring, droning harmonies that add a slight element of post-metal to the sound, reminiscent of Baroness or Isis, but less progressive, more stylistically focused. The first half of the album slugs it out with lazy mid-paced stoner riffage and on the final three songs of the album things slow right down, each song like an impossibly huge titan slowly rearing its unbelievable carcass into sight.  Golden Axe in the middle is quiet – a moment of peace between battles. Headless Hunter hits slow, but eventually culminates in the most colossally epic stoner dirge you can imagine. Invisible Throne slows down even more, ending the album on a point nothing short of drone metal, and one of such monstrous gravity at that. But Monoss is not hard to listen to. Its grooves are too powerful and its guitar tones feel too damn good, and when you’ve been hypnotized by the singing your body involuntarily enters a state of trance-like lull.

What I’ve been meaning to say here is that this is a total no-brainer for anyone who likes heavy, slow music, and this will be the gateway for a large younger generation of metalheads to begin their newfound love for that which lumbers. Monoss is a perfect of example of why 2012 is going to be such a great year in metal – music that really raises the standards of quality and extremity. ABSOLUTELY LEGENDARY. I want more.

In short: Conan conjure up the imagery of epic battles and gargantuan beasts, and it just happens to be the heaviest fucking thing you’ve heard in quite a while, doomed ones. Lap it up.

Standout tracks: All are incredible

Score: 9.5

Black Breath - Sentenced to Life

Modern hardcore. Modern thrash. Black Breath epitomize the collision of these two new forces of rock music, and add a dash of death metal just to ensure pure heaviness. Don’t expect much classic era thrashing (except in album art and lyrical themes, which is mad), but don’t expect any cop-out retreats to metalcore breakdowns either. It’s evident on Sentenced to Life that Black Breath have found out how to kick arse and are just going to do it, as this album continues on exactly where Heavy Breathing left off. It doesn’t suffer from this however, if anything this is a little bit more intense than the last record, and I reckon there should be at least one more album before this specific take on metal is exhausted.

Brutal thrash grooves and rhythmic hardcore vocals like knives flying from your sound system. Sentenced to Life is solid from beginning to end much like its predecessor, and once again the production is absolutely incredible. The production is so fucking good you can hook the shittiest little pocket speaker up to this and BB will still have your head banging, thanks to Kurt Ballou of Converge’s incredible skillz in the studio. Almost every riff is sick as all hell; driving, downright catchy hardcore thrash poundings. Vocals are pissed off as fuck, holding the anthemic hardcore spirit of the band intact through the periods of hard metal annihilation. Check out the sweet oldschool cover art as you listen to this and that brutal judge’s gavel will smash your face. It’s time for me to go and damage my neck further with another listening of this album. There is nothing left to be said, except: BUY.

In short: If you like this kind of music Sentenced to Life is going to kick your pathetic little arse.

Standout tracks: Home of the Grave, Endless Corpse

Score: 9.0

Year of No Light & Altar of Plagues Split

Here we are given a ten-minute song from France’s Year of No Light, a post-sludge/doom/whatever sextet, and a sixteen-minute song from Ireland’s Altar of Plagues, a band who has been getting a lot of acclaim recently for their post-sludge black metal fusion, so we know before listening that this is going to be far from traditional. From the back catalogues of these bands, I expected Year of No Light to be enjoyable yet unremarkable, and Altar of Plagues to bear the stamp of excellence. I turned out to be almost correct.

Year of No Light’s Møn is an instrumental piece of emotional sludge, strong melodies layered in rich sounds. A slow yet decisive track that builds up some fire toward the end, this song is like all of YoNL’s work in that Isis, Neurosis and Jesu can all be heard in it. However, the melody is simply rockin’ – slow, serious, but still grooving. Very cool, and rich effects too. I would have to say that this is one their best tunes, and that the band has been steadily improving their style over the years. Dropping the vocals permanently I think was a good idea, as their music is much less progressive than that of Isis or Neurosis, and the lack of vocals makes it’s trudging pace quite relaxing. If this band continues to work at their style they could make some great music.

Altar of Plagues are a great new rock band by any measure. Excellent song-writing and atmospheric black metal epics imbued with a sludgy heaviness are their trademark. Light Through a Tomb takes a slightly different formula, offering up a strong narrative structure. The song starts with a 7 minute blissful post-rock swelling, before distortion hits, and another four minutes of ominous chords before raging black metal splits the song open. This contrast is obviously a symbol of destruction and descent. A mere two minutes of chaos ensue before it boils abruptly down to a cold drone that peters out into nothing. This song structure places emphasis on close-listening in order to truly appreciate the different and relative parts, and it makes the actual BM all the more powerful and frightening for having only a short glimpse of it, as if it were some night-time horror that always left the majority of its form hidden.

In short: Two wins from the post-metal scene from me with this release.

Standout tracks: Both

Score: 8.5

Dodecahedron - Dodecahedron

One thing you’ll notice happen with this band is Deathspell Omega and Blut Aus Nord comparisons. I’ll get it over with right away. Deathspell Omega are the fire unleashed upon the land, the harrowing culler of souls, the ominous shadow over the dead. Blut Aus Nord are the enigma, the mouth of the abyss, the splendid beauty and fright of unknown deeper mechanics. Dodecahedron are insanity caused by severe sensual deprivation, a mesmerizingly delirious hallucination coming from a part of your mind you never wanted to know about, a creeping, introspective horror. So all three are black metal bands with a penchant for dissonant riffs, and this most recent of the three is definitely clearly influenced by its two older brothers, but it’s clearly the kind of influence that we want amazing bands like DSO and BAN to be having. Dodecahedron have their own complex take on modern black metal and this being a first album or release of any kind, I can only say that Dodecahedron obviously have the potential for a great career in the metal underground.

Dodecahedron does not focus on savagery; most of the album is mid-paced, instead focusing on creating unconventional harmonies and cold, alien atmosphere. Dissonance is the key. This album is almost always dissonant, it revolves around dissonance. Each conflicting chord that bursts from your speakers is like one of the pillars that support your mind falling down. The opening riff descends in uneven steps like a corpse rolling down a staircase, and from then on in the feeling of utter inward collapse only increases. ‘You can only walk further down the path of madness,’ Dodecahedron seems to leer at us. Lyrics are written with more skill than most; they speak philosophically about apocalypse, death/life and anti-religion, but they are written in such a grim and ethereal fashion that at first you don’t realize they’re talking about our lives on this crazy planet here today. Musically we are given a lot more in addition to this. All of the instruments are used in diverse and skillful ways, and there is a very progressive, narrative spirit to the band, featuring a couple of Event Horizon electronic moments, a D-beat, a fast riff to mix it up, a fleeting, ungraspable moment or two of light shining through the cracks of the darkness, and a beautiful gravitation of the entire album into the more traditional realms of cold Scandinavian black metal. This conclusion comes in a track of three parts, and it is totally epic.

In short: Every year, many metal bands make debut releases in the hundreds, but rarely do we see such a mature and focused debut as this, making me excited and for this I award the band extra points. Dodecahedron have started ahead and immediately rocketed to the forefront of the modern black metal scene with this absorbing and entrancing void. Buy or die.

Standout tracks: All three View From Hverfell tracks

Score: 9.0

Mauser - Isolation EP

Last year, Florida's Mauser released one of the best punk debut EPs of the year: End of the Line, a scathing crust-noise attack that punished rebellious souls across the world bigtime. After touring Japan, they’re back with another 7” called Isolation. Maybe I got a bit too excited about it beforehand, I was expecting that D-beat driven noise assault, but my first reaction was confusion as I waited for the music to develop. I listened to it once and thought, ‘Well that was pretty cool, very noisy hardcore, but I need another listen or two to plumb its depths.’ The second time I listened to it, I started checking my speakers and making sure the adjustments were correct, but by the end I’d realized Mauser had completely reformatted their sound. First of all, where the hell did the drums go? One of the defining and totally murderous elements of the previous EP was the belted out superspeed D-beats which were so prominent in mix. On Isolation, all I can hear is a frenzied clattering on the snare and tom toms, and a rumbling buried far deep where the kick should be. Is this D-beat at all? Impossible to tell when you can’t hear the beat, but most of the riffs seem to be hardcore. The noise is still layered over it all, but it comes at us like a swarm of insects now, as opposed to the piercing needles of static that frequently punctured the guitar tones on the debut. It is all in all a much more difficult and less enjoyable album to grasp than End of the Line, hard to tell if it is intentionally meant to be this chaotic and dissimilar or if it’s just sloppiness and fervor for output after initial success.

Having now bitched, I’ll say that Isolation is still pretty damn good for what it is: Angry, noisy, destructive hardcore. There are some killer riffs on here, but surely Mauser is capable of creating something with more clarity and depth than what we see here. But really, bring back the beats, Mauser. Don’t sink into the mass of pretentious noisers farting around out there in the ether.

In short: Viewed in its own light this is not bad, but it’s a bit of an unexpected disappointment after last year’s audio ransacking.

Standout tracks: Deterioration, Madness

Score: 6.0

Hail Spirit Noir - Pneuma

Hail Spirit Noir are an experimental black metal band from Greece, born out of another experimental black metal band from Greece: Transcending Bizarre?. This at first made me wary because Transcending Bizarre?’s work was lackluster progressive blackened thrash that showed no recognition of the need for tension and imbuement, rather settling for pointless proggy songs that were well-played and sounded okay but in the end were just a set of absorbed, regurgitated and randomly strung together segments of musical cheese. Also, it’s never really cool to dress up like clowns in the black metal scene, even if you’re Arcturus. As for this new project from two of their members though, I have to say, Hail Spirit Noir surprised me. As soon as Pneuma opens the sound is lush and rich, springing lightly from some psychedelic jam chords to a clean black metal riff (yes, clean), breaks off smoothly into a very technical jazz metal segway, and then clatters back into the psych jams with lots of old school synths, and we’re only 3 minutes into this album. The extremely catchy crooned chorus of Let Your Devil Come Inside caught me again – black metal’s never really been sing-along music, after all.

So it became apparent that this was going to be a different kettle of fish to Transcending Bizarre?, who I now saw as a completely different musical entity. It was soon revealed to me that HSH’s influences are from far and wide, one dominant force clearly being bands such as Enslaved, Deathspell Omega, Satyricon, Opeth and Ephel Duath (late period all), but a lot of old school progressive and psychedelic stuff such as Lizard are evidenced more than clearly, and all the oddities spring up in between these two poles. This will put off some diehard retards immediately, but for the rest of you, read on. Pneuma is a damn cool way to spend forty five minutes of your life. Many elements have been fused together artfully in a classic prog format, layers have been carefully selected and put together so that one can see shades of different musical genres at a single point in time of listening. The overall tone came off as a positive one for me, despite some prominently grim lyrics on Let Your Devil Come Inside and moments of chaotic dissonance (perfectly executed ones at that).

While Pneuma is brilliantly played, meticulously produced, and wonderfully experimental, what does it actually say? What is the concentrated idea or feeling of the band? Once the band fuses a more concrete and meaningful idea into an album they are going to create a classic, for now it is just a hell of a lot of very interesting fun.

In summary: This is a great debut album carrying an innovative little bag of tricks with its good musicianship. A must for any fans of experimental metal, Hail Spirit Noir give us what is probably the best example of actual 70s prog and black metal fusion.

Standout tracks: Mountain of Horror, Haire Pnevma Skoteino

Score: 8.5

Impiety - Ravage & Conquer

Impiety were one of the first of those brutal blackened death bands, way back in the early 90s, but they hailed from far off Singapore. Over the last twenty years the group has turned out an adequately prolific discography, this being their eighth full length in addition to a number of splits and EPs, but where have they gone with their sound? Debut was a fairly raw yet brutal black metal album, but it was the sophomore release that set their style and they have pushed on in almost exactly the same vein ever since, riffs increasing in complexity as the band’s technical skills grew, but always following the same formula: Super-fast, ripping war metal that never lets down. Last year with their Worshippers of the Seventh Tyranny the band detoured into progressive territory, a one song, nearly forty-minute sprawling epic of barbarism. Although there was little attention paid to detail and songwriting was as heavy-handed as it’s always been, this was the record that piqued my interest the most over the course of their career, but on Ravage & Conquer, the band returns to its tried and true (boring) ways.

Production is better than ever on this record; guitar tone razor sharp and drums cut beautifully through the onslaught of savagery. This is a double-edged sword because the guitar solos squeal far too clearly and cleanly for such an aggressive musical attack. In fact, lead guitars only succeed to fit in one time on Weaponized. Despite changing guitarists many times, poor old Impiety have never managed to secure a decent soloist that would complete their image of hateful blasphemy, although personally I’d be wary using any guitar solos when trying to make truly demonic music. This is the most technical offering of Impiety’s so far and I will give them credit for achieving some mesmerizing tremolo death metal riffage, but in the end I have to say I’m disappointed that Impiety haven’t continued to experiment with structure and bring more black metal into their sound as on the previous album, something they can do quite well. Instead, R&C suffers from Impiety’s era-old vice of never actually going anywhere, starting at exactly the same point it finishes on and remaining at that one point for all moments in between, a meaningless stringing together of riffs that could have been taken from any other influential death metal band.

In short: Impiety have taken a step back into their comfort zone. If you can’t get enough of their style then you’ll like this, but I found it challenged only my boredom, being a records that stands on its own two legs but stands straight down the line without even considering other avenues, a weary task for the listener who’s been hearing it for nearly twenty years (and not just from this band).

Standout tracks: War Crowned, Weaponized

Score: 4.5