Category: Album Review

Amon Amarth-Berserker

My love for you is like a truck! BERSERKER!!

Would you like to making fuck?! BERSERKER!!

Yeah, that’s the first thing that popped into my head when I saw Amon Amarth’s new album was entitled Berserker.  Johan.  Bubby.  You realize that you’re going to lose some points in my review if you come out with an album called Berserker and you don’t even try to come up with a cover song of the Berserker song from Clerks.  I mean, seriously.  Would you like to suck my cock?! BERSERKER!!  How is this not included on this album?  Missed opportunity.  If Vikings possess the ability to feel shame, I certainly hope the lot of you feel it in spades.

At any rate, Amon Amarth has a new album.  And there are Vikings.  And there is Thor and his hammer.  And there is standing side by side with your brothers in the face of insurmountable odds.  And there is pillaging.  And there is glory.  And there is glorious death.  And there is also some mutant blood-thirsty uber-Viking called a Berserker.

So, you know, an Amon Amarth album.

This one doesn’t stray too far from Amon Amarth’s typical formula.  They are kind of becoming the AC/DC of the death metal world.  No real surprises, but what they do, they do really, really well.  This one isn’t at the top of the Amon Amarth catalog, but isn’t at the bottom either.  It’s just a typical album from these gnarly and hairy Swedes.  I will say, in addition to being upset with no Clerk’s Berserker rendition, I’m also a little bit disappointed in what really seems like a bit of plagiarizing of the main riff of Scorpions Sail of Charon during the chorus of Shield Wall.   I mean, nobody caught that in the studio before sending this off to get mastered.  Not good, man.  I’m going to have to dock you points for that as well.

3.5 flip flops out of 5

 

Spotlights-Love & Decay

Hey there, Spotlights!  Good to see you back on the scene with a brand new spankin’ album.  Spotlights are a little band from Brooklyn that I stumbled upon a couple of years ago when they opened up for If These Trees Could Talk.  After seeing them live, they released a little album entitled Seismic and I dug that one so much that I put it at #17 for my 2017 Best of Metal List.  These guys aren’t an extreme metal band by any stretch and they’re probably one of those bands that kind of straddles the definition of metal.  Their sound is kind of a mixture of grunge, post-metal, and shoegaze.

The latest album sees the band in a little less heavy territory than they explored on Seismic.  This album almost has more of a dreamy pop sensibility than the more grunge sound of the previous album.  From what I can gather, the album tackles the nature of relationships with a particular focus on the real life marriage of the two main band members of Spotlights, Mario and Sarah Quintero, and the pressures of being in a touring band together.  In light of the subject matter involved, it’s understandable that the sound on the new album is a little more intimate and a little softer around the edges.  While there are some choice moments on Love & Decay, I don’t feel that the material is a strong as the songs from Seismic.  There are heavy moments, but there aren’t any that really come close to capturing the infectiousness of the previous album.  Also, another complaint is that the dual vocals of Mario and Sarah seemed to be mixed way back in the final sound.  Their harmonizing was a cool aspect of the earlier album and I think it draws away from the material in not having their voices a little more showcased by the mix.

Fair or not,  I think my love of Seismic has kind of colored my initial view of Love & Decay.  Seismic was such a cool and unexpected album that it’s a hard act to follow.  It may be that my appreciation grows for Love & Decay the more time I spend with it.

3 flip flops out of 5

Helms Alee-Noctiluca

Helms Alee is a lighter shade of grunge than I think we normally see.  I’m not really even sure if this band fully qualifies to be categorized as metal or not, but honestly, where else would you place these guys?

This is actually the first album of Helms Alee that I have actually purchased and spent some significant time absorbing.  I had seen them open up for other bands over the past few years and I always dug their live set.  They are one of these three piece bands that has a really large sound in a live setting with all three members contributing vocals.  And after hearing their latest album, I really feel like this is one of those bands whose songs come alive more in a live setting than in the studio.  The album is not bad by any means, but I think only about half of the songs really left me with any lasting impression.  The twin female lead vocals of bassist Dana James and drummer Hozoji Matheson-Margullis provide a rich melodic tapestry in contract to the harsh vocals provided by guitarist Ben Verellen.  Also, a major highlight on the album is the dense rhythmic and downright Bonham-esque drumming of Matheson-Margullis.  The drumming on here is just huge.  Some drummers are known for their cymbal play or their skill in double-bass.  She brings the rhythm in some seriously creative tom fills that just propel each song forward.

Good, but not great album, but one I look forward to hearing in a live setting.  As I said, I think this album will coalesce more live than it does on the album proper.

3 flip flops out of 5

Lord Dying-Mysterium Tremendum

I’ll just come right out and admit it.  I discounted Lord Dying in the past.  Hell, I think I was even downright dismissive of their earlier work.  Sometimes that happens.  When you listen to a shitload of new music, you try to sift through the sheer mass of releases and try to find the few gems.  In the process, you may listen to a snippet of songs here and there and make a snap judgment on a band before giving them a fair shake.  After listening to Lord Dying’s latest, I think I may have missed the boat on these guys.

This is one of the richest and most lush albums to come out this year.  There are layers of originality and creativity at play here.  You’ve got touches of grunge, touches of stoner, touches of sludge and it’s all just woven together expertly into this amazing amalgam of awesomeness that is truly inspiring and infectious.  I especially love the combination of harsh vocals with some downright clean Beatle-esque clean harmonies.  These latter vocals were really unexpected and result in a really classy touch to their sound.  In addition, this album is just ordered perfectly with one song seamlessly blending into the next.  The entire album just feels like a cohesive whole rather than a collection of separate ideas.  It’s an “album” album rather than just a collection of songs, if you will.

Seriously.  Huge props to the hairy men of Lord Dying.  This is one in which you should be proud.  I, for one, am now about to revisit your earlier material.

4.5 flip flops out of 5

Fractal Universe-Rhizomes of Insanity

I think the neatest thing I just learned about this band is that they hail from Nancy, France.  Say it out loud.  It’s fun.  Nancy, France.

So you’ve got a tight little death metal outfit from France on album number two for their career.  I guess the normal inclination would be to compare these guys to fellow countrymen, Gojira.  Well, that was just be downright lazy.  These guys don’t sound anything like Gojira.  These guys are more in line with the massive amount of other slickly-produced technical death metal bands going today.  The sound is so polished on this thing that it is damn near sanitized.  And I think that’s honestly my biggest complaint here.  It’s too clean.  There’s just no rough edges at all and the whole thing just feels like it has been manufactured in a lab.  The talent in the band can’t really be denied.  It’s professional and delivered in a supremely talented fashion.  But, like a lot of bands that trade in this sub-genre, I just wasn’t left with anything to really hang onto after a couple of listens.  Memorability.  That’s really the one thing that this one lacks.  An hour after listening to it I honestly couldn’t really remember anything concrete from what I heard.  No tracks infectiously wormed their way into my brain.

Nancy, France.

3 flip flops out of 5

Dead To a Dying World-Elegy

I really wanted to like this record a hell of a lot more than I actually do.  The first snippet I heard sounded like some really cool atmospheric black metal awesomeness.  Combining that initial impression with the cover art on this thing and the fact that these are fellow Texans, well, my anticipation was fairly hopeful for this one.

Well, the album isn’t bad, but it doesn’t really soar like I had hoped either.  What you’ve ultimately got here is a combination of black and pagan/folk metal.  It feels like many of the songs have a very bifurcated nature in that the black metal portions and the folk metal segments feel more like separate interludes within the same song.  In a way, this separateness hampered the cohesion and flow of the album as a whole.  There are some promising moments contained herein and I think the band has some good ideas and a unique take on metal.  I’m hopeful that in the future their sound comes together a little more and delivers on the promise suggested here.  It’s just that they aren’t quite there yet on Elegy.

3 flip flops out of 5

Allegaeon-Apoptosis

Wow!  Man, I have been waiting for an album to simply lay me out flat and it has finally arrived.  We’ve had some decent releases up to this point in 2019, but none have really come close to reaching to pinnacle of metal nirvana.

Allegaeon is one member of what I consider the Big 3 of technical death metal (the other two being Rivers of Nihil and Black Crown Initiate).  These three bands have been crucial in me not completely losing faith in technical death metal as a sub-genre.  All three bands can blow any other band off of the stage simply on pure technical ability alone.  However, all three bands manage to carefully balance that thin line between self-indulgent musical wankery and using their technical prowess to further the goal of creating memorable music.

Now, last year, we saw Rivers of Nihil go completely off the map in trying a completely new direction (Prog!) and new sounds (Saxophone!) in their attempt to stave off complacency and stagnation.  Allegaeon has not gone to such lengths on Apoptosis.  Apoptosis feels more like a regathering of strength and a distillation of everything that makes this band amazing.  I felt like their last album, Proponent For Sentience, had a little too much focus on the technical aspect of things and, as a result, the album had a very sanitized feel.  It was good, but it wasn’t as memorable as Elements of the Infinite.  Apoptosis almost feels like a step backwards in a way in that it reminds me of all of the good things about Elements, but it just expounds and expands on those concepts.  Greg Burgess and Michael Stancel continue to amaze as one of the great guitar tandems of the 2010s.  Vocalist Riley McShane seems to be more comfortable in his role as frontman in this his second album at the helm.  He showed his clean delivery on their earlier cover of Rush’s Subdivisions and he brings some of these clean vocals to some of Allegaeon’s original songs this time around.  It brings just another element of diversity to the band’s sound.

This one is a banger from beginning to end and will probably end up on a few year-end lists.  All Hail Science, indeed!

4.5 flip flops out of 5

Inter Arma-Sulphur English

Yeah, this one is a hellscape in every possible manner.  This is one of those instances where the album cover does complete justice to the contents contained therein.  This is a primordial soup of metal.  This is the kind of metal made by cave dwellers at the dawn of man.  This is the music you will hear upon descending into the bowels of hell; each track starker and bleaker than the previous until you reach the end in total and absolute darkness.  Alone.  Helpless.  All hope gone.

So, you know, perfect for the soundtrack for a summer day at the lake.

I don’t know where they recorded this thing and I’m not entirely sure I really want to know where it was created.  The sound on here is cavernous.  Vocals, riffs and drum beats just echoing into a blackened void.  Inter Arma has always been a very dark band with a very sludgy and thick sound, but they really managed to tap into something downright primal on this one.  In a way, I’m not even really sure how to describe it.  Or if I can actually say that this album is listenable.  I mean, obviously, I’m joking about pulling this one out at the lake or a pool party, but seriously, this isn’t one you aren’t going to be jonesing to pull out on a Friday after work and crank like the first Van Halen album.  But, there is something here.  Something that is beckoning in all this bleakness.  There is something of substance here that is going to take multiple listens to fully understand and embrace.  This album is not going to be for everyone.  Shit, it’s probably not for a good 95% of the population.  But, if you’re not afraid to peer into the void, this might be an album you might want to check out.

You might want to check back with me by the end of the year and ask me again at that point how I feel about this one.  I think it’s going to take some time for this one to fully melt into my mouth.

4 flip flops out of 5

Wormwitch-Heaven That Dwells Within

Medieval Myth & Magic from the Great Wight North.  This is the manner in which the band describes itself on their Facebook page.  I had to look Wormwitch up on the interwebs because I honestly didn’t know anything about these guys before hearing this album.  Fantasy nerds from Canada blasting out some blackened encrusted death metal.  I can get down with that.  This one is different in that Wormwitch really feels like a rock ‘n roll band at heart and they have just added the black and death metal elements as some extra spice to the cauldron.  They kind of remind me of another really underground band from England called Ancient Ascendant, who just recently called it quits as a band.  I think Wormwitch is going to help fill the void left by those guys.

4 flip flops out of 5

Exumer-Hostile Defiance

Every time I come across this band, in my mind I scream in my best Halford voice, “Stand by for Exumer!!”  I don’t know why.  It makes no sense.  But that’s where my brain goes for some reason.

Exumer is one of these thrash bands that had a really short run with a couple of albums in the mid-to-late 80s and then went away.  And then they magically reappeared with a new album in 2012.  I have no idea what went on during the long hiatus or what ultimately brought a couple of the original players back together to reignite the old band and proceed with their career.  We’re on album number three since their reunion and the band is just clicking on all cylinders.  Hostile Defiance is a tight, no-frills thrash record.  Riffs for days on this one.  This damn thing would have fit right in during the formative years of thrash when this band was first starting out.  I, for one, am happy that the metal blood never truly went out for these guys because a nice solid thrash album is always appreciated in this corner of the universe.

3.5 flip flops out of 5