Category: Album Review

East of the Wall- NP-Complete

So, this thing came out waaaayyyy earlier this year.  However, they only released the damn thing digitally and on vinyl.  I am one of these dorks that switched to CDs in 1990 and I am fully invested in the format at this point.  There’s honestly no looking back unless they just stop making the damn things altogether.  Well, it looks like this nightmare scenario just might ending up coming to fruition.  So, after patiently waiting for months on end, I just bit the bullet and bought the digital copy.

So, enough about me and my tortured existence.  How’s the damn album?  Well, I have to say that it is pretty damned skippy.  This is album number five for East of the Wall.  My only exposure to them was their last release, Redaction Artifacts, from 2013.  I remember being pretty impressed with their post-metal sound on that album, but honestly, it is one of those albums that I haven’t played much since it first came out.  I seem to remember their sound being quite a bit more harsh than the music contained on this latest album.  The new album feels more prog oriented than post-metal in the vein of Intronaut or Mouth of the Architect, which are kind of who this band originally reminded me of.  The vocals on the latest album are more of the clean variety than the harsh side and the instrumentation throughout feels more confident and focused than the last album.  Seriously, the music on here can easily rival some of the heavy hitters in the progressive metal field.  It’s just a really slick and well-crafted set of songs.

4 flip flops out of 5

Imperium Dekadenz-When We Are Forgotten

If you’re wondering about the odd spelling of their name, these dudes are German.  Specifically, they claim to hail from The Black Forest region of Germany.  Yes, a black metal band from The Black Forest.  It does not get anymore metal than this.  Everyone else can just quit.

So, this was my first exposure to Imperium Dekadenz and I’ve got to be honest that the name alone didn’t really inspire much confidenz in the material contained on this album.  But there was just something about the album cover and the title of the album that drew me in.  And I’m glad that I did because this is a slab of black metal performed in the manner that I prefer my black metal served.  This isn’t your blast of frozen blastbeats, icy drill bit riffery and Satanic lyrics.  What you have here is a very smart and mature sounding album that focuses more on building these bleak and dreary atmospheres.  There are passages on this album that are simply beautiful.  I mean, don’t get me wrong.  This thing is dark.  But it’s more dark in a morose and melancholy manner where the focus is on death, loss and despair than on being evil as fuck.  This is black metal all grown up in a manner of speaking.  The music is simply very creative and reminds me in a way of Agalloch.

Not only is this probably the best black metal album I’ve come across this year, but is also probably going to end up being one of the better albums to come out this year period.  Give these guys a shot.

4 flip flops out of 5

Cloudkicker-Unending

Cloudkicker is basically a bedroom project from the fertile mind of a dude named Ben Sharp.  Cloudkicker is one of those bands that has a serious underground cult following and is given credence by the number of established metal musicians that count themselves as fans.  Hell, the guys in Intronaut so loved this guy’s music that they agreed to act as his backup band so he could go out on a tour around the States.

Things have been quiet on the Cloudkicker front for some time and it was a surprise when Sharp dropped this new set of songs out recently.  What you have here feels more like an EP than a full fledged full length.  It contains five proper songs with a couple of short interludes.  It basically falls in line with past Cloudkicker output in that it’s instrumental fare in the style of post-metal.  Kind of like a more laid back version of Russian Circles.  Good layers and atmospherics.  Should be a perfect album for your more introspective moods.

3.5 flip flops out of 5

Killswitch Engage-Atonement

Killswitch Engage has always occupied a weird space for me.  On the one hand, they craft some really intricate guitar riffs and can generally write really hooky melodies that easily worm their way into your brain.  On the other hand, they are primarily one of those early aught American metalcore bands that has always been just a little hit and miss with me.  Generally, metalcore bands just don’t offer anything substantive in my opinion.  However, Killswitch is one of the metalcore bands whose albums I have found myself enjoying in the past.  So, in a way, I guess take this review with a bit of salt.  If metalcore be your thing, then this album is probably going to do wonders for you.

So, the last two Killswitch albums saw the return of original vocalist Jesse Leach and I think both of those albums have probably been my favorite period for this band.  So, my hopes for this new album were favorable.  However, I can’t say that the band has really capitalized on their past momentum on this latest album.  First, the album just feels breezy.  I’m not entirely sure how long it is, but it’s one of those albums that just flies by and seems to end shortly after you first put it on.  Second of all, Killswitch has always had a bit of an emo-type streak in their sound, especially when it comes to lyrical content and the clean choruses that most of their songs contain.  This latest album really plays up this emo feel in songs like I Am Broken Too and I Can’t Be The Only One.  Granted, compared to non-metal music, this album is still heavy as fuck.  But, in the metal world, some of the passages in these songs just sound more like something you would hear in the indie pop world than from a metal band.  And, at the end of the day, that’s really the conundrum that this band presents for me.  Cool riffs.  Heavy guitars.  Nice gutturals.  But, the weak choruses and lyrics just sort of lose me and temper any true enthusiasm I feel for this album.

3 flip flops out of 5

Horseburner-The Thief

I’ll admit it.  I kind of based this purchase solely on this album cover.  Very Baroness-esque in its look.  And you know what?  I’m the big, big winner.  Because Horseburner has release a very capable proper debut album.  I say proper debut, because I really don’t know a lot about these guys.  It looks like they self-released two albums prior to this one, but this is the first to get a label release.

It’s nice to see another band join Byzantine in the ranks of metal bands hailing from the lovely state of West Virginia.  The sound contained on here reminds me in places of Baroness, in others of Crowbar and still in others of Mastodon.  It feels like every song on here has it’s own distinct personality and/or influence.  The aspect that feels like it changes the most from song to song is the vocal performance of drummer Adam Nohne and guitarist Jack Thomas.  I honestly can’t tell if the vocals are a joint venture or if they are trading off from song to song, but the vocals just feel as if they are specifically crafted to whatever sort of vibe they are going for on each song.  It really works for the diversity of the presentation on the whole and keeps things interesting.

Anyway, cool new band of the scene.  These are dudes to keep an eye on.

4 flip flops out of 5

The End Machine-The End Machine

Man, there was a time when this album would have been a big fucking deal.  The End Machine is the original lineup of Dokken, but instead of Don on vocals we have Robert Mason, formerly of Lynch Mob and currently of Warrant.  This album actually came out back in March, but was so far under the radar that it made out without me noticing it.  And that’s a fucking shame.  In junior high and high school, I was a huge Dokken fan.  George Lynch was just everything you wanted in a metal guitarist.  I always had fantasies about what the band would be like if they could ever just get rid of Don and his notoriously weak vocals.  Well, here it is.  And like so often is the case, the fantasy just fails to live up to expectations.

Bottom line:  This is just a sad sack of an album.  And it’s really surprising because Lynch has been putting out some really creative and quality stuff of late with his collaborations with Doug Pinnick and Ray Luzier in KXM and with Corey Glover in Ultraphonix.  Here, however, it’s like the band has tried to recapture some of that 80s metal sound, but they are trying to present it what sounds like an attempt at putting a mature/adult rock spin on it.  The result is just a vanilla flavored slab of limp sounding songs that contain no inspiration or spark.  The whole thing just sits there like a slug.  And it’s not for lack of talent.  Mason sounds great on the mic and Jeff Pilson’s backing vocals are as strong as they ever were.  Mason’s work harkens back to the second Lynch Mob album that he was on, but his performance is just wasted by a lack of good songs.

Shit, man.  If you were going to go this route and basically reunite the Dokken band, why not just go all in.  Just own your legacy and put out a blistering 80s style guitar barnburner.  That’s what we want to hear.  Not this watered-down half-assed dad rock.  If you want to something in this vein that is done in a much better manner, go pick the Lynch/Pilson release Wicked Underground.  That was a cool, but laid back album of songs that were somewhat in the same vein as The End Machine, but they just had hooks for miles and some really crunchy guitar highlights.  Leave this one alone.  Just go put on Tooth and Nail instead.

2 flip flops out of 5

Russian Circles-Blood Year

It doesn’t really feel like it, but it has been three years since we last had new material from Russian Circles.  I think it is probably because these guys never seem to stop touring.  It just feels like they are always around in some capacity.  I think that’s why it feels surprising to me that it has actually been three years since the last album.

The instrumental dudes from Chicago have picked right up from where they left off on their last release.  Russian Circles just has this particular sound that is purely theirs.  I’m not sure how they pull it off, but their instrumental landscapes are just interesting sonic journeys.  The latest album shouldn’t be consumed piecemeal.  Like all of their other work, it works best viewed as a single piece of music with each track comprising a different movement rather than a collection of separate songs.  This latest album is one of their stronger efforts in my opinion.  There is a focus and a driving energy behind this one that just propels the album forward.  It feels as though the creative space it came from is a little darker than past albums.  This is a special one and one that you shouldn’t ignore.  Go buy a physical copy of it today.

4.5 flip flops out of 5

Wormwood-Nattarvet

Can you imagine Pink Floyd playing black metal?  There are places on this latest Wormwood album that give a bit of a glimpse of what that would sound like.  I’m not saying this is the black metal Dark Side of the Moon or anything, but there are pieces placed here and there on this album that make me wonder if David Gilmour didn’t lay down some guest licks on here.  Seriously.  I’m going to post the song The Isolationist at the end of this post and you tell me if there aren’t parts on here that don’t remind you of Floyd.  Maybe it’s just me.

Anyway, this is a slab of fairly pagan-influenced black metal from Sweden with about half of the lyrics in Swedish and half in English.  Nothing on here is as abrasive as your traditional Scandinavian black metal.  This album reminds me a little more of some of the black metal coming out of the U.S. these days than of the European strain of black metal.  Overall, there is a lot to enjoy about this record.  It varies greatly in its presentation from song to song.  I’ll mention The Isolationist again.  This album probably won’t end up being album of the year for me, but The Isolationist may end up being my favorite song of the year.  This is just epic and melodic black metal done properly.  I just cannot get enough of this song.  Just a beautiful piece of art.

4 flip flops out of 5

Tomb Mold-Planetary Clairvoyance

Tomb Mold came blasting out of nowhere (well, Canada, to be exact) with last year’s Manor of Infinite Forms.  I absolutely fell in love with that album from the very first spin.  It was death metal as death metal should be.  Aggressive, but not to an abrasive extreme.  Crisp and inventive riffs throughout.  And it appeared as if I wasn’t alone in my sentiment regarding this band because the positive buzz surrounding them just continued to grow as the year went on.

So, capitalizing on the positive energy and response from the last album, Tomb Mold regroups and puts out their next slab of destruction in a year’s time.  The new album kind of solidifies in my mind that Tomb Mold is kind of like a Cannibal Corpse-type band with a bit of the aggression turned down and with the concept being less focused of grind/gore and focusing more on a sci-fi bent to the proceedings.  I think the Cannibal Corpse comparison really comes from the hideous death-gurgle of vocalist/drummer Max Klebanoff (yeah, singing death metal drummer…fucking nuts, right).  It just sounds like Max is Corpsegrinder’s soulmate as far as vocal stylings go.  All in all, I don’t feel as though the latest album quite reaches the impact of Manor of Infinite Forms.  It’s strong and is very much a solid release that should further propel Tomb Mold’s burgeoning career forward, but it just doesn’t have that certain unique spark that the previous album had.  It’s a very slight criticism because the metal contained on here is still really good and blows away a great majority of the death metal coming out today.  These guys are one of the bright new stars.  Jump on the bandwagon now.

4 flip flops out of 5

Torche-Admission

Torche has an AC/DC kind of vibe.  Not really in their core sound, per se.  But more in that Torche isn’t really going to surprise you much with their output.  You can pretty much expect them to provide you with a solid listening experience, but don’t expect a ton of diversity in their foundation of sound.  Bright, bouncy fuzz.  That’s Torche in a nutshell.  If you dig on hooks for miles in your songs that have an almost pop-tinged simplicity, Torche is the band for you.

I say simplicity and I don’t mean that as a dig at all.  Torche has managed to craft a sound that is deceptively basic.  You’ve got your rhythmic drum/bass/guitar patterns with Steve Brooks’ understated and almost monotone vocals over top as usual.  But, goddamn, once it worms its tentacles into your brain, I’ll wager that you won’t be able to let go.  First listen, my impression was “Hmmm, alright.  Not shabby.”  By third listen, I’m completely hooked and am humming and bee-boppin’ along to the whole shebang.  Now, I still don’t think this latest platter rises up to Harmonicraft or Restarter, but it is definitely in the same area code as those albums.

3.5 flip flops out of 5