Category: Album Review

All Them Witches-ATW

I see what you are trying to do, All Them Witches.  You think you’re being clever in an attempt to get around my hatred for self-titled albums, especially those that aren’t debut albums.  But I see through your clever ruse.  ATW?  Really?  You think I can’t figure out that that stands for All Them Witches?  Well, the jokes on you, buddy!  I totally figured it out.

OK.  Thanks for indulging that bit of nonsense.

I’m new to the All Them Witches bandwagon.  From what I gather, this group of retro-rockers has been at it for a few years now and have released what is album number five with ATW.  This is a damn solid effort.  I have to say that the thing that impressed me most about this album is the diversity in tracks.  So many times, I will listen to an album and be left amazed at the homogenized nature of all of the songs.  I will have a tremendously hard time recalling individual tracks because they all tend to run together in my mind due to the similar structure of each.  Not so with this album.  Each track has its own vibe, its own character and its own story.  You’ve got a psyche influenced track.  You’ve a got stoner track.  You’ve got a straight ahead classic rocker.  You’ve got a bluesy track. You’ve got a grunge track.  And all of them are delivered with All Them Witches spin.  It’s just a really refreshing album to have so many distinct tracks rather than just ten songs which are just a rehash of each other.

I love everything about this one except for the title.

4 flip flops out of 5

Future Usses-The Existential Haunting

Yeah, I’m not exactly sure how to pronounce the name of this band either.  Is it pronounced like “uses”, but just spelled weird to make it seem “arty”?  Is it pronounced like a plural of “us”, as in us-ses?  That seems to make a little more sense.  Shit, I don’t know.  Artists are fucking weird.  Bonus points for the creepy as fuck album cover.

At any rate, this was a must listen of a release for me due to the presence of one Sacha Dunable, he of Intronaut fame.  Intronaut is another of those plethora of underground metal bands that can just do no wrong in my eyes.  This side project seem Dunable joining forces with ex-Mouth of the Architect guitarist Dan Wilburn and ex-Bereft drummer Derek Donley.  You’d probably guess based on the background of the players involved that this is going to be some sort of post-metal project.  And you wouldn’t be wrong.  No vocals on this one and it isn’t quite as heavy as the members’ main gigs, but the vibe on here is right in line with what you would expect from these dudes.  It’s atmospheric in places and doomy in others.  Overall, it’s kind of one of those albums that would be good to just have on in the background.  Soothing is what I’m trying to get at.

3 flip flops out of 5

Revocation-The Outer Ones

Back in the 70s, it seemed like bands never took any breaks.  It wasn’t unheard of for bands to release not one, but two full-length studio albums of original material.  There weren’t any of these double-digit year breaks between albums like you see with some of the bigger names in metal.  Revocation brings that old school blue-collar work ethic back.  This latest album is the seventh full-length LP released by Revocation in the past ten years.  They are a thrash death metal machine and I absolutely love them for it.

So, I’ve gushed about these guys before.  They remind me of old school Megadeth crossed with a modern technical death metal sound.  Dave Davidson should be this generation’s Mustaine.  He is just in a class of his own in terms of technical prowess and the ability to craft an innovative and catchy riff.  This latest album is right in line with what you would expect from Revocation, but it seems like the riffs are a little more harnessed or a little more focused this time around.  The album isn’t slow by any measure, but it just feels like things are a little less chaotic.  The results are a concise and extremely infectious album.  I know these guys have a solid underground base of fandom and I keep waiting for them to explode a little more in terms of mainstream metal acceptance.  Maybe this will be the album to fully blow them up.

4 flip flops out of 5

Voivod-The Wake

Voivod is just Voivod.  They are one of those bands that has truly invented their own little personal genre.  Not exactly thrash, not exactly punk, not exactly prog, not exactly space rock, not exactly NWOBHM (by way of Canada).  It’s a blender of all of the above set to puree.  The resultant gloppy mixture coming out is just Voivod.  It’s a taste you either dig or you don’t.

The latest album sees our Canadian heroes pounding out an album full of sci-fi meanderings and apocalyptic conspiracies as they are wont to do.  The music overall is frenetic and has that weird hollow sort of recording that is found on many Voivod albums.  In a way, it is kind of hard to fully describe a Voivod album if you aren’t already familiar with Voivod’s sound.  I go back to the beginning:  Voivod is Voivod.  And this is good Voivod.  Go check it out.

4 flip flops out of 5

Sumac-Love In Shadows

So, this the second album release from Sumac this year.  However, I’m not sure the first one can be characterized as a proper Sumac album.  That one was a collaboration with renowned noise merchant Keiji Haino and that album seemed more like a Haino propelled project that a real Sumac album.  That one also was unfortunately a mostly improvised mess with zero structure.

So, the dudes are back on their own and have produced something a little more in line with their previous works to date.  Sumac is a band that I really, really want to like.  But sometimes they really frustrate the fuck out of me with their intentional lack of direction sometimes.  Look, this is post metal.  I get it.  It’s going to be abstract and ambient and Aaron Turner is going to have passages where he just canoodles around with various noises and shit on his guitar.  However, the passages where the band comes together as a singular force and just starts pounding together are just so goddamned transcendent that I want to scream, “This!!!  Do this!!! This is the shit right here!!!”  I don’t know.  Maybe I just wasn’t in the correct frame of mind the first couple of times that I spun this one, but it just seemed that there was a lot of stuff on here where the ambient/canoodling portions outweighed the jammier portions of the album.  It could be that I’ll come back to this one in a month or so and I’ll think this shit is genius.  That’s the conundrum with this band.  They are their own weird entity.  All three guys are fucking geniuses and they are playing on a different level than a lot of the rabble of bands out there.  Sometimes a little simpleton like me just can’t wrap my head exactly around what they are trying to achieve.  But I’m trying.

At the end of the day, I think my final verdict is this:  this one has some really cool passages if you can make yourself wade through the muck.  It’s worthy of your time, but I still feel like The Deal and What One Becomes are both better albums.

3.5 flip flops out of 5

Dragonlord-Dominion

So many side projects…so little time.

Dragonlord is the long shelved black metal side project of Testament guitarist Eric Peterson and Dominion is the long gestating album that has been 13 years in the making.  This one is a labor of love by Peterson and it is a project that sees the light of day only by his pure force of will.  Peterson provides both the guitar work and the vocals.

Even though this album is primarily a symphonic black metal endeavor in sound, you’ll find yourself noticing touches of Testament-style riffs sprinkled throughout.  Minus the symphonic flourishes, the female and choir backing vocals and Peterson’s Shagrath-inspired vocals, there’s a lot on this album that feels more like a thrash album than a traditional black metal album.  Less blast beats and more groove, if you will.

Overall, this one is a fairly standard entry for a black metal release.  There are some positive notes throughout, but nothing really stands out to make this one stand out as anything other than just an average album.  I hate to say it, but I feel like this one is destined to slip into the subconscious after a month or so.  However, bonus points for Peterson going full Abbath with the corpse paint and spiked leather in the following clip.

3.5 flip flops out of 5

Emma Ruth Rundle-On Dark Horses

Going a bit off of the metal roadmap on this latest review.  Emma Ruth Rundle is kind of on the periphery of what would be considered traditional metal in any sense, but she brings a sufficient amount of darkness and some weird post-rock guitar work to still qualify for mention in this blog.  Plus, I really dig this album and this is my blog.  So, suck it.  I’m calling this metal.

I first became acquainted with Rundle when she opened up for Deafheaven a few years ago.  I knew she was in the band Marriages and figured it would be worth checking her out.  I was really drawn into the quiet intensity of her vocals and stage presence.  This performance led me to check out this new album.

In certain respects (and this may be an overly obvious comparison), but Rundle reminds me a bit of Chelsea Wolfe.  Rundle isn’t nearly as abrasive or confrontational as Wolfe, but she still inhabits the same sort of space as Wolfe.  Rundle incorporates a little more of a folk-vibe with her post-rock sound and this makes for a more personal and intimate sounding album.  This album feel very personal and raw.  Most of the music on here is acoustic with some very awesome sounding ambient electric guitar touches that really give this album some great texture.

Even though this isn’t a traditional metal album, it is definitely worthy of your time (especially for those of you more open-minded metal heads).  Put this one on during a rainy day and just sink into your couch.

4 flip flops out of 5

 

Kingcrow-The Persistence

This album cover looks like something Porcupine Tree or Steven Wilson would put out.  Which is kind of perfect because Kingcrow is kind of in that same sort of vein musically.

The first time I stumbled across these guys was back in 2015 when they released Eidos.  Eidos was one of my favorite releases of that year.  That album was a fresh shot of awesome into the progressive metal field.  Their sound brings to mind the latter era-Fates Warning or the stuff that Redemption has been doing for their career.  Interesting guitar parts, unique rhythms and cool keyboard accoutrements are the order of the day.  Plus, over top of the musical prowess, you’ve got the outstanding clean and powerful vocals of Diego Marchesi.  This guy knows how to emote vocally without verging into the melodramatic or overbearing that has been known to happen in this genre.  He’s kind of like a cross between Timo Kotipelto from Stratovarius and Ray Alder of Fates Warning.

The latest album is really close sonically to the previous album.  It seems like the guitar parts are not as aggressive as the last album.  The album as a whole has a mellower feel to me than the last one.  Overall, it didn’t have as great of an impact initially on me, but there is a lot to like on here and if you are a fan of progressive metal, this one is one to check out.

3.5 flip flops out of 5

The Skull-The Endless Road Turns Dark

When bands split into two separate camps and each in turn attempts to secure the “true” legacy of the original band, it’s always interesting to see how successful each camp is in its attempt.  It’s always painful to see bands’ original lineups fall apart, but sometimes it results in two separate bands that are equally cool in different ways.  Sometimes, you end up being surprised by which camp ends up putting out the more impressive post-breakup material.  This is the case with The Skull.

The Skull is one of the remainder bands that resulted from 80s-era Chicago doom band Trouble.  Back in the day, Trouble was one of the key underground bands of the doom scene.  More than anything, they were known for the double guitar attack of Bruce Franklin and Rick Wartell and the fact that vocalist Erik Wagner based most of their lyrical content on his Christian beliefs.

The Skull is basically Trouble minus Franklin and Wartell on guitar.  This latest album does the original Trouble sound justice.  This album is full of crunchy down-tuned guitars with Wagner leaving behind the high pitch screams of his youth behind and finding a nice lower register that fits nicely over-top the songs.  He reminds me a bit of how Robert Plant is approaching his vocal style as he gets older.  It just works well and I honestly like his vocals more on this record than I did on many of the earlier classic Trouble albums.

This album kind of impressed me because I always kind of viewed Franklin and Wartell as being the creative drivers of Trouble.  However, looking at the recent output of both of these bands, I kind of wonder about how much of Trouble’s creative direction was a result of Wagner instead.

Also, a fun fact from this one.  You know you have a serious underground album on your hands when the liner notes include a “thank you” to a truck stop for the extra days off to complete the recording of the album.  That’s fucking dedication to your craft.

3.5 flip flops out of 5

Pig Destroyer-Head Cage

I’ll admit that this is my first exposure to Pig Destroyer.  My background isn’t in the punk or hardcore scene.  So, there’s quite a lot of bands from the grindcore/crust punk scene that I’m just now exploring.  There’s a part of me that really digs this kind of music.  I really like the rage.  The energy.  The immediacy.  The unrelenting pummeling.  However, there’s the part of my musical history that still has a hard time with the short length of the songs.  I’ll find myself over and over just starting to get into the groove of a song and then, POOF, it’s over.  It’s like I’m used to settling into a 7 or 8 minute Iron Maiden epic.  These minute and a half blasters just leave me wanting a little more.  In some respects, grindcore feels like that eager little dude in high school who is having sex for the first time.  It’s sloppy and intense and awkward and it’s over in a minute.

So, where do I come down on Pig Destroyer on my first pass?  Well, pretty damn good actually.  It’s fucking rage personified.  It’s a perfect soundtrack for 2018.  The drumming on this thing is probably the thing that stands out the most for me.  It’s just so precise and holds the whole cacophony together just perfectly.  I’m not sure I’m ever going to be the biggest grind fan, but it definitely has its time and place in my collection.  I’m impressed enough with this album to go back and explore their earlier releases.  From what I’ve read elsewhere on the interwebs, it sounds like this album is a bit of a growth album for these guys.  Also, it really feels like this is one of those bands that is going to come across in a live setting way better than they do in the studio.  It feels like these songs really need the energy from a live audience to fully let them breathe.

3.5 flip flops out of 5