This album should have been released in 1987. This is an album that would be a great companion piece to Last In Line. Or Heaven and Hell. Or Epicus Doomicus Metallicus. Or Psalm 9. You dig what I’m throwing down? Damn straight. I knew that you would.
There’s a reason for this. Sorcerer is a band with a somewhat strange career path. It looks like these guys formed in the late 80s in Sweden and put out a couple of demos that received some fairly decent press. Band members ended up going their separate ways before a proper album could be produced. Fast forward to 2010 to see a new version of the band put back together to play some festivals and then in 2015, they finally end up releasing a proper debut album. The end result was as if the band placed themselves in a time capsule and the resulting sound was straight out of the late 80s.
The Crowning of the Fire King is the follow-up to the debut album and it really fulfills the promise of this long-gestating project. You’ve got a serious old school doom blend of Candlemass and Black Sabbath riffs with the powerful Dio-like vocals of Anders Engberg overtop. These guys manage to walk that really fine line of being epic and soaring in scope without devolving into the land of melodramatic cheese in which some bands indulge. If you dig your metal in the traditional sense of the word, this is the album that will help you scratch that itch. I honestly haven’t been able to wipe the grin off of my face since the first listen.
2017 has been a busy year for Daniel Cavanagh. Mr. Cavanagh spends most of his time as the lead creative force behind prog darlings, Anathema. Anathema already released the very well-received, The Optimist, earlier this year. Now, it seems as though his creative well wasn’t completely tapped and he has released a solo album.
The new record sees Cavanagh in a quieter and less ambitious space than his main gig. The songs are very much in the same vein as Anathema but, they are stripped bare to their essentials. Some songs only contain piano and vocals. Others employ duets with a female vocalist (this time with Anneke Van Giersbergen of The Gathering fame). All in all, this is a nice release for those of you who are fans of Anathema and of Daniel’s vocals in particular. Album opener The Exorcist is one of those great tracks that could have easily been found on an Anathema release. I wish the remainder of the album lived up to the high standard set by the first track, but even though it does have quite a few emotionally charged moments, it doesn’t quite rise to the level of a superior album.
It’s rare to have a drummer be the focal point of a band. It seems to only happen in the prog or jazz worlds. Mike Portnoy, formerly of Dream Theater fame, is one of those drummers that prog nerds just lose their minds over. He’s the modern age version of Neil Peart. I can say this because I count myself as one of those worshipers at the altar of all things Portnoy. He is one of those drummers that has a distinct drumming “voice”, i.e. you know him when you hear him play.
However, since Portnoy and his Dream Theater mates went their different ways back in 2010, it seems as though he has been on a very scattered journey to find his musical voice. The sad thing is that the post-break up Portnoy and Dream Theater catalogs have both meandered between “meh” and downright terrible. Neither entity seems to have anything in the way of direction without each other. Dream Theater has sputtered into a self-indulgent shell of its former glory minus Portnoy. Portnoy minus the anchoring nature of the Dream Theater concept seems to be an overactive ADD suffering child who has been off his medication for some time. He’s gone from guest spots with Avenged Sevenfold and Twisted Sister, helmed all of Neal Morse’s solo albums, formed a proggy pop group Flying Colors, tried his hand at macho bro-rock in Adrenaline Mob and dabbled in flavorless blues rock with The Winery Dogs. Sure, there have been some decent albums come out of his collaboration with former Spock’s Beard frontman/multi-instrumentalist Neal Morse, but overall Portnoy hasn’t approached anything close to the albums produced during the seminal days of Dream Theater.
So, this brings us to Portnoy’s latest endeavor, Sons of Apollo. In an attempt to create a prog metal powerhouse to presumably be on par with Portnoy’s former band, Portnoy has partnered with ex-Dream Theater keyboardist, Derek Sherinian, bassist Billy Sheehan (ex-David Lee Roth, ex-Talas, Mr. Big, and current Portnoy collaborator in The Winery Dogs), guitarist Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal (ex-Guns and Roses fill-in for Slash), and vocalist Jeff Scott Soto (veteran metal and rock journeyman).
So, how does the finished product stack up? It’s OK. I really wish I could endorse it higher than that, but it kind of suffers from the same malady as a lot of the Portnoy projects. Portnoy’s drumming is on point. This is some of the more inspired drumming the dude has put together since he left Dream Theater. He’s definitely playing like he has something the prove. Sherinian is also a force on the keys. I was a big fan of the couple of albums he did with Dream Theater and of the keyboard sound that he brough to that band. Sheehan and Thal are both very capable musicians, but this is just Portnoy and Sherinian’s show. The guitars and bass just end up being more complimentary than anything else on this album. Soto’s vocals are a definite bright spot on the album. I hadn’t really heard much out of him since he sang on some of Yngwie Malmsteen’s albums in the 1980s.
Biggest complaint are the songs themselves. There are some catchy things throughout, but the entire album just lacks a cohesive narrative or any sense of an identity. It’s like the individual parts are greater than the collective whole. That is a flaw that will always act as a barrier that keeps a band becoming something great. I don’t really think the players were given enough time for this project to fully gel. There are hints of Dream Theater, Deep Purple, Dio and the like running throughout the songs, but I never really get the sense of what the Sons of Apollo are. This is one of the flaws that has run through all of Portnoy’s post-Dream Theater projects. They seem to be thrown together so haphazardly and so quickly that none really ever develop an identity. Dream Theater had that. You knew them when you heard them. I understand Portnoy’s need to distance himself from that past legacy and I admire that he hasn’t stood in one place since the break, but it would be nice to have him take a breather. Step back and focus on one of these projects and let it fully coalesce into something special. Sons of Apollo might be it. We are just going to have to see what they do in the future. I’m hoping future release get left in the oven a little longer to see if something truly badass comes out.
I need to give a bit of a caveat to this review before starting because I feel it is coming from a slanted viewpoint.
Oh, deathcore. Sometimes you surprise me. Most of the time, you just leave me hanging in disappointment for what could have been. It seems like bands that trade in this overpopulated sub-genre are all insanely talented. However, it just seems that channeling that talent into the mash-up of death metal and hardcore just results in a generic slab of aggression that just feels….well, pointless. There’s my caveat. I’m just not a real big deathcore guy.
Through the Eyes of the Dead are putting out their first album in around seven years. You would hope that all that time away from the studio would result in some creative ideas that have been allowed to fully gestate and that the final album would be full of inspired tracks. You’d think that, right? Well, it’s just not to be. As I said, these guys are talented as anyone out there. However, the final product just sits there. I feel like I’ve heard these blastbeats and downtuned riffs thousands of times. I can’t remember a single track that really stood out from the others on this album. Maybe it’s just because I’m of a certain age. If I was in my teenage years or early 20s, maybe this kind of metal would resonate with me a little more. I don’t know. I hate sounding harsh, but this is just a sub par album.
Spirit Adrift is a fairly new doom band from Arizona that started out as a side gig of Gatecreeper’s guitarist, Nate Garrett, but seems to be evolving into a full-time band. Their first album was basically Nate as a one-man band putting out a solo release, but he has enlisted a full coterie of musicians to help out on this new release. The result is a much fuller and richer sound than was found on their debut.
Spirit Adrift’s sound is somewhere between Pallbearer, Black Sabbath and a dash of old Trouble. Nate’s sorrowful clean vocals are supplied over a wall of distorted guitar sounds. The new album is a step forward for the band, but it still seems as though the band is searching to carve out a unique identity. There are a lot of bands coming out these days that are attempting to embrace the roots of doom and, as a result, a lot of them just get lost in the rabble. Spirit Adrift seems to be a band that is right on the edge of emerging from the rabble. They’ve got some good riffs and good ideas. It seems like if they just keep pushing and let these ideas gestate further that they have the talent to push this thing forward and join the ranks of Pallbearer in the upper echelon of modern doom bands.
It just seemed appropriate to go with a review of Exhumed’s new platter on Halloween. The long-standing gore obsessed death metal outfit went with a full-on concept record and it is actually perfect for your Halloween celebrations this evening. I especially love the old school exploitation horror movie inspired album cover.
The story centers on a true crime tale from Scotland in the 1800s where a medical school was having a hard time finding cadavers on which to conduct research. A couple of psychopathic cretins started murdering people and robbing graves to obtain bodies to sell to the school. Real heart warming tale. Alas, this whole episode ending up with a law being passed where people could legally leave their bodies to science to prevent any further profit driven murder sprees.
Musically, this one is pretty much straight ahead death metal. Exhumed are a little less brutal than some of their death metal brethren. There are catchy hooks aplenty on this one and the riffs just keep coming.
When thinking back to Led Zeppelin, it always seems like Jimmy Page was seen as the creative force and that Robert Plant was more the charismatic rock god. He had the looks and the pipes. He seemed more showman than behind the scenes player. However, if you look closely at both men’s respective catalogs since the ending of Zeppelin, I find it hard to ignore the creative genius of Mr. Plant. After spending a few years in the 1980s trading in the soft rock/pop world with Pictures at Eleven and Now and Zen, Plant has since found this perfect latter-year space in which he just keeps cranking out wistful soft blues with his cohorts, The Sensational Space Shifters. Long gone are the rock god wails of Immigrant Song and Whole Lotta Love. Replaced is an introspective vocal style that has been roughened by time. It marks a man confident in his current place and someone who is not solely trying to rely on his past glory. It honors his history and carves out a new place in which to still make a mark creatively.
If you were a fan of Dreamland or Mighty ReArranger, then you will find a lot to like on this album. Opener The May Queen and the title cut are vintage latter era Plant. There is also a duet with The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde.
If you’re looking for the bombast of Zeppelin, you should just go back and put on Physical Graffiti. If you’d like a picture of a legend embracing a new space, then you might give this one a chance.
So, this one is out there. If you’re a fan of traditional song structure and a more pop metal oriented direction in your music, you should probably just head for the door now because this one will give you fits. Punk rock fans, I can just see you shaking your heads. Those of you with a little more of an adventurous nature, buckle your seat belts and enjoy where this one is going to take you.
This is what can best be described as blackjazz. Blackjazz is a weird pairing of black metal and jazz. Dreadnought seems to be trying to perfect this rarely seen subgenre. The group is made up of two women and two men. So, already the dynamic is different from what you see in most bands. Also, each member of the band is doing some serious multitasking on the music they bring to the band. You’ve got one woman providing guitar and black metal style vocals along with breaking out a flute on occasion. The black metal vocals she provides are just amazing and are so expressive. As an aside, I really think that the world of metal needs more women trying out black metal vocals. I just find their style so much more captivating than the male black metal shrieks. You’ve got one dude on the bass and he also breaks out a mandolin from time to time. You’ve got the other woman on the keyboards and providing clean vocals. And finally, you’ve got the drummer who also provides saxophone. I’ve really got to see these guys try to pull off this shit live.
The album is made up of four extremely long songs that focus on an ocean inspired theme. The music is primarily in the black metal vein with some serious jazz-influenced interludes sprinkled throughout. There’s one passage in which there is a flute and sax duet that seriously belies that this is a metal album at all. I’d really like to say that the entire album works seamlessly because it is one of the more ambitious albums to come out this year. However, after a couple of listens, my impression is that it hits its high notes sporadically. That being said, I do think that this album is dense enough that it warrants multiple listens. This is a prime candidate to be an album in which my appreciation grows more over time. I like what they are trying to do here and I really want to see them succeed. Metal needs people like this to try to push the boundaries of metal into some interesting new places.
So, you’ve been in the dumps regarding Opeth’s move away from death metal and their full embrace of 70s era prog? Well, have no fear. Enslaved is here with a brand new album that will sate any longing you feel for forward-thinking death metal with a proggy twist. This latest album really captures the perfect balance of aggressive death metal with a lighter prog sound that was found in Opeth’s Deliverance and Ghost Reveries era.
This new album has a lighter touch than past Enslaved efforts. This is apparent from the melodic opening moment of album opener, Storm Son, with its birds chirping and horse neighing in the background. Once again, the lyrical contents look to contrast man’s relationship with nature. There’s almost a tribal aspect to the album as a whole. This album marks the introduction of a new keyboardist/clean vocalist in Hakon Vinje. He brings a little more dynamic range to the clean vocal portions of the songs than did previous clean singer, Herbrand Larsen. The combination of Vinje’s clean vocals with longtime bassist/death vocalist, Grutle Kjellson (he of the “demon gargle” vocals, as my non-metal listening sister described them), provide the perfect foil for Enslaved’s vision.
This latest album is a serious statement by Enslaved. I felt as though their previous release, In Times, was a little stagnant and a bit of a step back for the band. E represents the band finding their groove once again and re-establishing themselves as the preeminent death metal band going today. This is just so much more original than 98% of the metal coming out today. This is an album without fault.
The last and only time I witnessed Primus in concert was back in 1992 when they were touring off of the seminal Sailing the Seas of Cheese album and opened for prog legends Rush. I had just recently become a fan and I remember just being tickled by their combo of goofy stage presence and exquisite musicianship.
Flash forward 25 years and I’m just now getting to see a full headlining set by this idiosyncratic power trio. I’m not really sure why it took me so long to see them again. I’ve always been a fan. It just never seemed to happen. Primus is just a good ole’ fashioned slice of quirky Americana. Like something you would see in a traveling side-show during the 1920s. Come on out, boys and girls, to see the Bearded Lady, Yak Boy and Les play his Stupefying Magical Bass!!
Anyhoo, seeing them roll out the full stage show and a long set that even had an intermission was extremely gratifying. The first half of the set saw them roll through a good chunk of classic older material. It’s always cool when a band just says “fuck it” and opens with something a little more obscure as Primus did with set opener Those Damned Blue Collar Tweakers. Hearing Frizzle Fry live just transported me back to early college days. The second half of the set started with a full play through of the new album, The Desaturating Seven, which came across really well in the live setting.
DISPATCHES FROM THE VOID 