Opvs Leviathan - I:O:I

Doing net research on Opvs Leviathan yielded little. All I could manage to gather was that the main guy behind it has been on the Colombian metal scene since 1992 but has only managed to make four releases – this full-length, one demo and two splits across three different projects. I can’t even remember the last time I listened to any Colombian metal, let alone which band it would have been, so this one was another random grab to check out something from the scene over there these days. I’m not sure why Opvs Leviathan hasn’t released anything in so long, but I hope it’s not because they spent years piecing together a masterwork that I’m about to slag off.

Opvs Leviathan play epic black metal, but it’s nothing that’s gonna tear you away from Wolves in the Throne Room very quickly (if ever). This band relies on little or no atmosphere, just stereotypical song structures and retro keyboards. Simple, generic, riffing which spans melodic black metal and folk does a decent job of supporting songs with an average length of seven minutes, although some transitions are handled with embarrassing clumsiness. What tears Opvs Leviathan apart is the dreadful lack of cohesion between the different instruments. The lead is simply awful, it’s the worst part, almost never getting on a level with the other instruments. Every time it comes in you just have to cringe at the blatantly obvious musical blunders being made. It sounds like his guitar isn’t even properly tuned. The noises used by the keyboards sound out of place and low budget. The bass holds things up with its clear tone, but my god it’s a ploddingly boring passage made though. The drums are undoubtedly the best thing: pretty high up in the mix with a nice chunky tone, they manage to make this barely listenable. This is all a bit of a shame really for example if we listen to a song like “Submerge’s in the Waters of Kaos”. It’s a catchy track that seems to merge and harmonize actually really well, which on a different album would have been probably damn effective. It’s evidence that OL are not without talent, but unfortunately something went horribly wrong in the piecing together of this talent. At the rate that Opvs release albums we’ll all be dead by the time they create a mature piece of music. Parts of I:O:I  make me really want to like Opvs Leviathan, but in the end the ambiguity that light threw on my view of the music pissed me off even further. I was not won over.

Bottom line: Epic black metal with a majority of sadly failing songs, I:O:I has a very awkward delivery but succeeds in some brief moments.

Standout tracks: “Submerge’s in the Waters of Kaos”

Score: 4.0

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Dark Elite - Enter the Void EP

I’ll be honest. The only reason I downloaded this EP was because it shares the title with what is probably my favorite movie of recent years, Enter the Void. The movie is an absolutely unprecedented, almost fully first person, psychedelic epic; unquestionably the most immersive celluloid trip man has ever made (check out the details here). But it has absolutely nothing to do with black metal. It remains unknown to me whether or not the band was influenced by the film (or even knows about it) but there are certainly no direct musical links. There is however four pretty cool black metal songs that, going in with absolutely no expectations, I did enjoy. It’s pretty standard stuff – black metal with the minimal thrash/death influences – but the riffs are good and I liked the eerie note it finished on, reminded me of Blut Aus Nord. The thing I like best about it though is the vocals. They have a feeling both mechanical and bestially organic, similar to groups like Red Harvest, and they are pretty evil. The band has smartly published this (their first release) for free download at their website, so download away and check it out! It’s not a bad little first shot at things, definitely opens room for expansion.

In short: Decent black Finnish black metal that is well worth the price (free). Not exactly industrial BM, but it has an industrial kind of vibe and is definitely recommended to industrial BM fans.

Standout tracks: “Sic Itur As Astra”

Score: 7.0


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Formloff - Spyhorelandet

Six years after an absolutely shocking debut album sees Formloff return a different band. It hits you when you see the cover art immediately, how very grim it looks compared to the gaudy motor stage show cover of the debut. They even have a trve black metal logo now! In fact, if it wasn’t for the cover art I never would have gone anywhere near this album after being so offended by the first one. The band probably deserves a new name in all honesty. 2006’s Adjo Silo saw this two-piece add vocoders of the infamous sort and asylum escapee-cum-indie rocker vocals (a terrifically heinous pair of things to have near each other) to songs that were basically cheap Solefald rip-offs, resulting in an all-around, generally insulting failure.

 But now that Formloff has realized that Skywalker was a douche they’ve crossed over to the dark side like all the other cool people, making one of the only possible moves they could have made in order to recover their stained dignity. For a band credited as part of the black metal scene (even if it’s in the avant-garde quarter), the new addition of actual musical components of black metal on Spyhorelandet helps to not piss me off instantly. We have blastbeats aplenty and certain grim quality for the majority of the listening, actually. Only two things really remain from the debut: One, a sensibility to create progressive and/or experimental music, and two, the accordion keyboard passages, which work in the colder climate of this sophomore release. Keyboards and synthesizers in general are much more subtle on this record. Gone are the crooning Norwegian pop artiste regurgitations of yore. There are very few clean vocals on Spyhorelandet and they are honest efforts. Formloff are still experimenting, or perhaps this release is where they’ve actually begun. Musical styles such as indie, progressive and jazz creep their way in without crossing any lines. There is also plenty of pace and time signature changes to keep things interesting as well. But it really all boils down to black metal in the end (thankfully). I myself, in spite of myself, found myself really enjoying every one of the songs on this album, some more than others but overall they are polished, atmospheric, and interesting. There is a lot of great really cold BM riffing on this album too – who would’ve known they had it in them? Apparently, however, this was the style of their earlier demo material.

I’ve got to give the band credit, it’s pretty impressive how they manage to make us forget all those bouncing, happy melodies on Adjo Silo and provide a work of quality black metal that actually sports bleakness and frost. Traditional black metal overrides and integrates the band’s experimental tendencies in a far smoother way than anyone was ever expecting. This is certainly the most surprising album I’ve listened to so far this year, the distance in quality being one of the greatest I’ve seen between two consecutively released records. I encourage the band to stick with it now that they’ve got it right. I encourage metalheads to listen to this album and give Formloff a second chance because Spyhorelandet shows they deserve it.

In short: Well-played “avant-garde” black metal that still has its spirit close to the core of true black metal. Not for fans of their first album.

Standout tracks: “Det Dritet Som Renner Ut I Ua”, “Drokkne I Ei Flo Ta Åske”

Score: 8.5

Manierisme - Everyone Has Two Sides

This one-man black metal project from Japan named itself after a period of rebellious and intellectual European art, but frankly this is about as intellectual as checking your petrol tank with a cigarette lighter, and if this is a rebellion I imagine it would be crushed quickly and silently by higher forces (not that it would inspire any rebels in the first place). This is raw black metal of the very obscure sort. Note how obscure is a neutral word with no positive or negative connotations and allow me to add plenty of negative ones. It’s basically the most tedious piece of brainmelting monotony I’ve heard in a long time. Classical influences are clear here, but the riffs remind me personally of symphonic music from a ‘30s or ‘40s melodrama (a very cheesy one) forced through a black metal filter far too quickly; not exactly a grim formula. I’m all up for genre fusion and experimentation, and even ungrimness, but it needs to be interesting. This is just so boring! Whining melodies which sound almost all exactly the same plod on through cacophonic production, oblivious to the listener’s excruciating boredom. Jekyll does some blurted out burps into the microphone for vocals. And that’s the way it rolls from start to end. But OH WAIT, I forgot! Everyone Has Two Sides gets some variation at one point when it decides to break out a cover of the James Bond melody. Seriously? That’s the break you give me to your incessant monotone record? What a joke. I’m giving some points to this only because I’ve unfortunately heard worse music in my life.

In conclusion: No.

Standout tracks: Not available as every song on this record is irritatingly similar.

Score: 2.5

Middle Eastern Metal - Part 2

Saudi Arabia, while generally known for its vast oil (money) supplies and the iconic holy city of Mecca, these days has a potentious metal scene despite the still strict Islamic cultural and social impositions of the country’s government. The past ten years or so has seen changes in Saudi Arabia though, and while still a far cry from the explosive European and American lack of censorship, it is currently freer of artistic expression than it’s ever been, opening paths tentatively into cultural diversity and even gender equality. In 2003, a piece in the Guardian on metal in Islamic countries reported that “Saudis aren’t really into rock and heavy metal”, but today if we look up SA on Metal Archives we are given a list of a fully twelve bands all playing extreme metal, mostly black and death related projects, while a number of other metal and rock related bands can be found through other avenues of the internet. Two of these groups who’ve recently been producing music are Creative Waste, SA’s only grindcore band, and Al-Namrood, who mix traditional elements of Middle Eastern music with symphonic black metal.

Creative Waste - Slaves

 

Creative Waste are a self-stated Nasum worship band from the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia. It’s good to see the nice open nature of their attitude though, as clearly their music does hold many debts to Nasum, the only real difference between the bands being the song structure which in the case of the Middle Eastern band often tends to be a bit longer like a traditional death metal song. Originality aside, Creative Waste are a musical wrecking ball. Slaves to Conformity displays three young musicians who have considerable skill with their instruments and a knack for dropping catchy grind hooks that ranks with the best of them. Ten songs run a solid thirty minutes, with guest drum work from Kevin Talley (current Six Feet Under drummer who’s known for his work with the likes of Dying Fetus and Misery Index). Every song holds consistently to the bar of the attention-grabbing opener “Divide and Conquer”, and blessed with crisp and crunchy production from beginning to end the album is a very listenable affair (at least to grindcore appreciators) that shows no concentrated weak spots or moments of disappointment.  The Orwellian cover art is classic grind/punk social commentary of the dark and unforgiving sort. While Saudi Arabia appears to be allowing more musical freedom than in the past, it must be noted that it is still difficult for bands to play live or acquire non-digital foreign musical goods, and of course on top of that the Saudi metalhead has to deal with aged political traditions of repression and oppression that apply to all citizens of the country. I hope that this makes the country a susceptible spot to the sways of a traditionally rebellious and notoriously political subgenre like grindcore, especially with the Internet sweeping globalization broadly across the planet’s most far out corners like it is these days. To me it doesn’t matter how many notes Creative Waste took from the books of Nasum, in fact personally I fucking love Nasum worship bands, especially if they know what they are doing. Slaves to Conformity is a ferocious little album and a kicking start to a scene I hope this band manages to create and influence.

In summary: If you like Nasum, you will like Creative Waste. A very solid slab of grindcore, and a band I can’t wait to see further releases from.

Standouts: “Kingdom of Fear”, “Slaves to Conformity”, “Cradle to Grave” and others

Score: 8.5

Al-Namrood – Kitab Al-Awthan

 

Black metal is everywhere these days, as any fool can see, and all forms of this once obscure musical style are being experimented with at rapid rates. Saudi Arabia is no exception. All of Al-Namrood’s music is about ancient Arabian history, and incorporates folk elements into their brand of symphonic black metal, using real Middle Eastern scales. The album opens with a symphonic introduction that, if you’ve never listened to Al-Namrood before, sets half the tone of the entire album. These symphonics – almost always in Middle Eastern modes – are strangely unsettling, like back when you first listened to black metal and it was still weird and alien and creepy in the way only obscure amateur shit can be. They are also invasive and sometimes grating against the other half of the album’s tone – raw Middle Eastern folk black metal with an incredible guitar tone, rocking mid-paced riffage and great vocals. Everything otherwise of the keyboards has a very organic tone, so the keyboards might put a few people off this one because when they come in they attach a synthetic kind of tackiness and weirdness to the music. This crudeness is weirdly effective sometimes, however, and I have to say it’s one of the only ways I could discredit the album. Riffs are perfectly fused amalgamations of folk and black metal, similar to Melechesh if they weren’t a thrash band, so when this is combined with those odd, finger-pounding keyboards (this dude plays the piano like he’s playing Street Fighter) and you can expect a pretty exotic sounding metal album. This is the best thing about Al-Namrood, really – they make something different that is a nice change to common metal customs practiced in other parts of the world.

In summary: An atmospheric cross of Middle Eastern and metallic sounds, Kitab Al-Awthan offers a different sound to most metal you will hear, and despite the sometimes clunky and irritating keyboards, an interesting and worthy listen.

Standout tracks: “Al Quam, Hakem Al Huroob”, “Bani La'em”

Score: 7.5