Aura Noir - The Merciless (2004)

The Merciless was definitely the juncture where my attention to Aura Noir started to grow, from a mere appreciation to genuine interest. The sound has been tidied up to an extent, with a cleaner mix, and while I can understand how this would prove a turn-off from some listeners, there was just something captivating about the vibe. Songwriting would definitely lean further into the Celtic Frost, Hellhammer, Darkthrone sphere, even going so far as to make a reference in the opener's title, with Fenriz providing some guest vox! You can hear those primeval Swiss grooves in tracks like "Condor" and the awesome "Black Deluge Nigh", while the vocals continue to wield a heavy Tom G. Warrior intonation throughout; actually it's probably closer to Nocturno Culto's interpretation of that style, which I'm a huge fan of to begin with.

Note that they were doing this right before Darkthrone's own transformation towards exploring more speed, heavy metal and punk influences, but this doesn't quite come across like The Cult is Alive or Dark Thrones and Black Flags. It's somewhat a more streamlined version of the two albums before it, on cuts like "Funeral Thrash" or "Merciless", which flail about with an aggressive, thrashing abandon, but lack the sewer-like production aesthetics of Deep Tracts of Hell. There's nothing necessarily 'weaker' to the sound, no softening, it just feels much cleaner and like you're hearing a solid, organic performance in a rehearsal recording rather than the skin-peeling filth. The material does tend towards slower or middle pacing, but not so much as some of the later works. Riffs are nothing novel, but definitely drop some of the old Sodom and Kreator inspiration for more of that Hellhammer and perhaps some archaic Slayer if they were moving around half speed. Blasphemer/Rune Eriksen has returned for some guitars, having skipped the second album, and I think in this department the band does feel a bit stronger and more consistent, although there's nothing tremendously technical or nuanced here, they keep it pretty straightforward.

The bass still doesn't play a major role, usually buried beneath the rhythm guitars, but I do feel as if I can notice it slightly more, while the drums sound great as they shuffle through their grooves and the moderate blast beats they'll mete out to accompany one of the nastier thrash licks. I also really appreciate the continued commitment to having quality lyrics, as with the previous albums; in this way too they resemble the evolution of Darkthrone, albeit with slightly less of a tendency towards the tongue-in-cheek obscuring the deeper meaning...yes, a tune like "Funeral Thrash" is pretty much straight up silly self-flagellation of its genre, but then "Black Deluge Night" and "Black Metal Jaw" and others have a lot of great imagery in there. The Merciless isn't quite 'sea change' level for Aura Noir, but it definitely honed in and expressed the band's love of primitive thrash and black metal in a way that hooked me more than the first few attempts, which were good, but when I'm preparing my playlists of the band's material this is where I start to draw more selections.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]

https://www.facebook.com/auranoirofficial

Megadeth - The System Has Failed (2004)

The System Has Failed has an immediate punching weight to it that grabs your attention, which is all the more refreshing after a decade of doddering, listless albums that might not all have sucked, but could never cross the finish line. Even more compelling is that it's effectively a Dave Mustaine solo album with the Megadeth brand slapped onto it, a slew of guests joining in to fill out necessary roles like keyboards and the 'character' voices that lend some intensity to the subjects through the roles of newscasters, politicians, etc. In retrospect, what would really have been the difference? It sounds a hell of a lot like it could have been a natural successor to Youthanasia, and if I'm putting together a playlist for this band sometimes I pretend it's exactly that.

This one sets up by repeatedly clubbing you over the head with tasty riffs, often on a similar ballistic arc to the 'heavier' bits of Youthanasia, but it also hasn't abandoned some of the poppier sensibilities the band had started to explore 10 years before it. Thankfully, this manifests in some symphonic flirtations which complement a few of the tracks rather than obfuscating the metallic elements, or some smooth vocal harmonies that lend an eeriness to tracks like "Die Dead Enough" or "The Scorpion". The album is never peppered with a bunch of ballads or country nonsense, something you might expect from a Mustaine solo project after he'd previously dabbled with it. No, all the tunes here are varying shades of rock, from the more aggressive cuts reflective of the band's history, to something like "Something That I'm Not" that launches with a Zeppelin-like rhythm, or the moody, narrative "Shadow of Deth" with its melancholic, slow leads and strictly spoken word vocal inclusions.

Few of the tracks can even hope to rival the top tier Megadeth hits of the past, but with the exception of the aimless political ditty "I Know Jack", whose riffs would have been better spent elsewhere, this is one I can sit through in its entirety without much regret. The production is quite polished, but doesn't leech away from the grooves or intensity of the riffs. I actually liked how the synths presented here in tunes like "Back in the Day", they feel like you're sitting at a ball game and the organ/keys erupt and thus amplify the material rather than trying to consistently take over. The leads also sound really great throughout, and I know Chris Poland popped in to contribute which is fun, not only because of his skills, but because you know on some level there was some reconciliation, even if he's serving as more of a mercenary for the recording. The session drums and bass are adequate, though Dave Ellefson's presence is clearly missed, and will stay missed for several more albums.

Regardless of whatever it's original purpose was, The System Has Failed brought a little faith back to me that Dave Mustaine could pen a coherent set of tunes which I could keep coming back for. Don't get me wrong, I am almost never choosing this over the first six, but if I'm willing to reach for something a little fresher from the bench, this one can join the rotation, and it also spurred off a little Renaissance in the quality of the full-length Megadeth studio efforts.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

https://www.megadeth.com/

Annihilator - All For You (2004)

To paraphrase the wizened philosophers known colloquially as 'Beavis and Butt-Head', "This sucks...but it sucks in, like, a new way." I was not one to expect that Annihilator, a band steadily on the rise again, if not knocking them out of the park, to suddenly take another left turn into landfill territory, but All For You had other plans. There are numerous examples through metal history of band's dropping a singer with some edge, some bite, some character, for a much more generic and 'safe' sounding front man, Zach Stevens taking over for Savatage comes to mind, and then losing a critical dimension to their sound. That's not to say these new singers lack talent or proficiency or their own, in fact I think Dave Padden hits certain howls and pitches on this album that had me ancitipating more, but in general his performance just takes the band's potential serrated edge and smooths it down to a butter knife level of danger, one that betrays the psychotic lyrics and thematic continuation of the Alice saga that the cover promises.

This is a weird one, though, because as I hinted, there are a few passages and riffs here that really work. I realize that for some this is the nadir of the Canadians' career, but I have to give at least some credit that they are attempting some sort of fresh sound while incorporating the semi-technical thrash elements that broke them onto the scene. "Dr. Psycho" has a few in there, for example, or "Demon Dance" with that really killer opening rhythm and then the strangely hypnotic way Padden's voice is layered over the rapid fire picking progressions. This is often accompanied by more dumb, obvious lyrics and a few really awkward, angry lines where Padden just sounds like any bar singer reared on Machine Head and Pantera with his intonations, but if you could cut away all the chaff from the tasty bits, you might have a few decent tunes, though probably less than you could count on one hand. 

I've already covered the worst songs elsewhere on The One EP, the oafish title track or the acoustic ballad itself which offers little more than a passably ear-worming chorus, but there is another awful ballad here called "Holding On", at which point the whole affair just becomes embarrassing. Another offender is "The Nightmare Factory", which has a few lines on which Padden seems to be emulating Jonathan Davis of Korn or a bit of Burton's harsher lines from Fear Factory. It really just feels like his experience with the heavy genre is all taken from the Ozzfest lineup, though the end of this tune does at least have one cool riff sequence. If you cut out these four tracks completely, and then corrected some of the vocal lines, this would not be down in the dregs of the Annihilator discography. 

Mike Mangini makes another appearance behind the kid here, and I feel he's a little under-used considering the estimable talents he would then bring into Dream Theater. The production is glossy-clear and that also saps a little of the violence out of the faster parts, but Jeff's clearly still got the riffs, and All For You always works best at its most manically paced. In fact, the album really lives and dies with his playing alone, on the non-ballad tracks, and unfortunately there is just not enough of it to overcome all the shortcomings, and it is often spoiled by a vocal line here or a goofy idea there. I didn't hate this one as much as King of the Kill or Remains, but it's understandable why it is held in such low regard and just another symptom of the band's shaky, inconsistent, decades-long career. I only wish a few of the better riffs here weren't put out to pasture, but saved for the right record.

Verdict: Fail [3.75/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Annihilator - The One EP (2004)

The end of the Joe Comeau tenure in Annihilator was a bit of a disappointment; I thought Jeff finally had someone who really complemented his style (and vice versa), but just a few years after Waking the Fury we had a new vocalist in Dave Padden, and a new record en route, prefaced about a month earlier by The One enhanced EP, which is obviously intended to showcase the most commercial track the band had yet released. Yes, "The One", a total cheese ballad with laughable lyrics that comes off as some alt rock 90s band trying to write a hook in the vein of famous hard rocker ballads' from the decade before that. I guess you might dub this a "Silent Lucidity" for Annihilator, and to be fair, the chorus itself is slightly catchy, showcasing Dave's smooth, radio-friendly range which might be a bit of a shock to long time fans who heard this particular track before anything else on the EP or album...

Of course, you can also hear Padden's heavier vocals on the other tracks here, most notable the full-length title track which is knuckle-dragging chug-thrash with almost no effort whatsoever in its pursuit of an idea or chorus. This is really the dregs, one of the most boring cuts in the band's history, and when Dave hits his cleans for the chorus and bridge it just doesn't stick with me. Certainly when you look back at the history of this band and some of the ragers that they open album with, this is extremely out of place, and not in a good way. The non-album track, "Weapon X", which seems to liken the band to everyone's favorite Canadian mutant, is nothing to write home about with some cheesy, cliche lyrics, but it does at least pick up the pace and makes the new vocalist growl a lot more to earn his keep. That it's still so painfully average in a 90s groove/thrash way and still the best tune on the pure audio component of the release is trouble indeed for the album ahead.

As for the live video stuff, the music on "Alison Hell" and "Never, Neverland" still comes off pretty strong in that setting, and I'd say Padden actually comes off a lot better here than the new originals. Not that he can compare with his predecessors like Rampage or Pharr, but he clearly has a trained voice that can handle the screams and the more aggressive lines. He puts a bit of his own spin on things, but only to a reasonable level and with no disrespect. So sadly for me, the enhanced content was the best part of the release. "The One" is safe enough for your grandmother, but my gods is this whole thing a bummer after the potential explosiveness that was starting to snake back into the band's sound over the prior two full-lengths. 

Verdict: Fail [3.75/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Golem - Dreamweaver (2004)

Although I can't say for sure whether the band has ever really broken up, Dreamweaver was their third and most recent offering, now almost two decades old, and while it certainly shares some fundamental influences with its predecessors, the first time I spun this one I almost thought I was listening to a different band. It's got a similar sense of melodic acumen, but it's as if somewhere along the way, Golem started listening to a lot more brutal death metal in the early 00s, which translates into a more propulsive, ear-rupturing experience, and coincidentally takes them even further away from that Carcass comparison which dominated much of the debut and some of the sophomore. Dreamweaver is tense, clinical German death metal, and like the rest of their catalog, underrated.

The riffs here really churn along with syncopated, punchy rhythms, full of weighty melodies that aren't so obvious as their earlier writing. The new drummer obliterates the performance on those old albums, blasting effortless when necessary, and they basically possess all the weaponry of your standard issue brutal/tech death metal band, though where so many of those struggle to find a soul for their music, Golem is just left of center incorporating enough progressive and melodic components to keep you coming back. No, it's not Cynic or Atheist, but if you're into groups like Lykathea Aflame that can balance off that exoticism and atmosphere with the brutality, then this is certainly an album you will want to track down. It might even be a little forward thinking when you imagine bands like Fallujah or Rivers of Nihil were still coming down the road about a half-decade after this came out.

The vocals still consist of guttural and snarls, but they only superficially resemble their original influence, and feel more like a blunt object being dispensed over your head alongside those choppy rhythms. Leads are good, often emitting jazz/fusion or bluesy vibes, but even more interesting are the points where they'll just throw out these simpler, atmospheric guitars over the more complex battery ("Breeder"). The bass playing here is the best of the three albums, grooving and compelling on its own without always copying the guitars at a 1:1, and like the title demonstrates, this is perhaps the easiest of their albums to get lost in. I enjoy this one nearly as much as The 2nd Moon, and if they had kept putting out material along this path and evolving it further, they'd be one of our hugest death metal acts of this sort today. I guess there's still a chance!

Verdict: Win [8.25/10]

http://www.golem-metal.de/index.php

Skymning - Machina Genova (2004)

Skymning had really found its lane with Artificial Supernova, and if anything, Machina Genova takes them further down that direction with an even more electronic, industrial sounding evolution of the death and thrash metal which formed the basis for that sophomore. The cyber tendencies have now crept deeper beneath the flesh, with electrodes pumping through the band members' veins, and yet they manage to do this without switching over to exclusively electronic percussion or losing the impulsive death/thrashing of the guitars. It feels like a band that adapted its electronic personality, rather than an electronic band that just decided to punch a few guitars into its recording software. And it's still bloody exciting, arguably even more so than its predecessor, since there's a simpler, punkish energy to some of the guitar riffs.

Groove metal, industrial metal, a little thrash, Machina Genova exists at the nexus with an interesting hustle and flow to its percussion, and guitars that center in a lot on chugging rhythms and then lots of quirky techniques above them to represent circuit boards, assembly lines or whatever other mechanistic vibes are going through their brains. The bass has a great flow to it, occasionally reminding me of the mid to late 90s Voivod stuff with Eric, and this has the most interesting drumming of their catalogue because it's so adept at emulating more purely industrial bands. Lots of weird little riffs on tracks like "Scrapleech" and "Swallow the Holy Piss" keep the record pumping fresh, but there are also a lot of more familiar, thrashing rhythms, as well as a few that might teeter a little too much towards the nu metal sound, but never more than, say, Prong did, a band that continues to have some parallels to these Swedes, only over a much larger catalogue.

This is a very good album overall; it might not have left quite the impact on me as its predecessor, but I will certainly never argue that this was successful at mutating them even further away from their roots in a positive direction which kept them distinct from their Swedish peers. It's certainly a nastier and more pissed off sound than Artificial Supernova, but still maintains plenty of atmosphere and a few surprises that will keep you guessing what's around its welded corners. It's a bit of a bummer that the band decided to call it quits after this was released, but I can never fault them for quitting while they were ahead...there are no disappointments in their discography, and I think the small handful of folks who would track such albums as this down will be quite thrilled with what they discover.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

Soilwork - The Early Chapters EP (2004)

Soilwork did manage to take a small break in between Figure Number Five and Stabbing the Drama, perhaps curbing any real burnout from occurring as they were blowing up all over the world. In the interim, fans were treated to this confusingly titled EP, The Early Chapters, which would have led me to believe it was comprised of demos like the bonus disc of Figure Number Five had, but is instead of some random material put out purely for fans' sake, perhaps to rake in a couple bucks in the downtime. These sorts of releases often feel pointless in the long run, because there's no real aim or direction to how they're assembled, but at least this had a few tunes that felt exclusive at the time.

Speed has done a lot of covers, such as his more recent YouTube projects, and creating an entire awesome band (The Night Flight Orchestra) which feels like it might as well be covers, but here we get a few early examples as the band does their rendition of Deep Purple's "Burn" (with guest female vocals), and Mercyful Fate's "Egypt". The first is fairly mediocre, as the band sticks rather close to the original and then just smatters the raspier AtG vocals all over it, but the latter seems more ambitious, and the intensity of the drumming and riffing in that song does suit his screams and snarls a lot more. I also found the production of the instruments on the latter to be quite good, though the vocals could have been mixed on there better. Anyway, we at the very least know the Swedes had some good taste, and how could not to produce some of the albums they had already?

There's a demo for "Shadow Child" off A Predator's Portrait which honestly sounds good with the levels of the vocals, guitar and synthesizer, I might even agree with this production a little more than what ended up on the full-length. A live version of "Aardvark Trail" doesn't fare so well, the drums and guitars have enough volume but the overall sound seems rather hollow when the bass and rhythm guitars kick in. Lastly, there a vicious original called "Disintegrated Skies" which is solid, with a few nice dual guitar leads, but otherwise isn't really strong enough in its riffing outside the bridge to have made a splash on any of their full-lengths, so nestling it in here on a forgettable EP seems like the plan. And that's kind of the problem here, it's just not that strong...the Fate cover is arguably the best part, but nothing necessary to track down unless you can nab this as a bonus disc or part of some greater compilation down the road.

Verdict: Indifference [5.25/10]

https://www.soilwork.org/

Blue Holocaust - Twitch of the Death Nerve (2004)

I'd like to point out that giallos and other niches within the medium of cult horror films are known for possessing unique, chilling and quirky scores that really tend to stick with the viewer or listener and help them identify nostalgia for that period and style. As well-intentioned as many extreme metal bands are, and there's no questioning their great taste in the underground or the extremes of cinema, I feel that a lot of the basics of a style like grind or goregrind simply do a disservice to such themes since they come across as puerile and spastic bursts of generic riffs that are played fast simply because they can be. Sure, both of these things have 'extremity' in common, but the one doesn't really reproduce the palpitating dread and shock of the other, no matter how many samples you add, or how much your lyrics stick to the script.

The Blue Holocaust full-length debut Twitch of the Death Nerve suffers heavily from this. Basically there is or isn't some sample of distress from a giallo/slasher film, and then a subsequent eruption into about 30-60 additional seconds of insanely noisy chugging, hoarse distorted snarling and growling, and whirring beats that have no musical value whatsoever. And then it happens over, and over again, across 32 tracks in 37 minutes. Sore Throat or Scum without the humor or envelope-pushing of their day. Now I understand that this is a one-man effort, so I'm a fraction more forgiving than if it was a full band equally devoid of any real ideas, but it still sounds pretty awful, even in terms of just seeking a purely caustic and visceral experience. There is not a single riff of any distinction anywhere to be had, and I'm simply not one that can ironically look past that fact and heap empty praises on the material when it has nothing otherwise to compensate. One could very easily write a few hundred tracks like this by plugging in and pressing 'record', offering up some basic programming and just hacking out anything that automatically filters out to your fingers on the guitar strings. I've seen it lauded as 'extreme' or 'sickening', but it's not at all beyond the cover pastiche and the musician's taste in film.

There are single guitar passages off Scream Bloody Gore from 17 years earlier that are more evil and extreme than anything Twitch of the Death Nerve has to offer. Mortician occupies the same style, but at least actually sounds heavy and oppressive. This is only about as menacing as obnoxious radio static. Even the song titles are generally just taken directly from the films to which this album pays homage. "Deep Red", "Black Belly of the Tarantula", "All the Colors of the Dark", "Four Velvet Flies", "A Lizard in a Woman's Skin"...even the title track. I've seen them all, and they all possess a haunting vibe that none of this music does. I will give a little credit that the lyrics themselves, while pretty standard for the brutal death or goregrind niches, are more elaborate than the music, so I think even they get a disservice here. I kind of dig the logo, and that collage of murdered women on the cover gave me the impression this might actually sound evil, but it doesn't...it's dull distorted noise at high velocity, spastic paeans to themes it doesn't ever earn. That being said, there's a second album which was put out much more recently (2018) called Flesh for the Cannibal God. It's not a far cry from this one in terms of style and substance, but it's considerably more effective and utterly leaves this material in the gutter.

Verdict: Fail [3/10]

https://blueholocaust.bandcamp.com/

Rage - From the Cradle to the Stage: 20th Anniversary (2004)

As prolific as they've been through the decades, from lineup to lineup, one thing we can say for Rage is that they've never been the sort to deluge fans with a ton of audio-only live material every couple of years. Maybe a couple of bonus tracks here or there, but when they really go for such a product, they make sure it's something substantial, like their 2015 box set The Refuge Years, which contains a number of live CDs in addition to the remastered run of albums with their classic late 80s-90s power trio roster of Wagner, Schmidt and Efthimidias. They had also put out a handful of videos through the years, one of which was released as a counterpart to this particular double-album, From the Cradle to the Stage, a 20th anniversary of the band's foundation as Avenger, that includes a good selection of material covering much of their career.

This of course features their SECOND impressive power trio lineup, Wagner joined by seasoned skin pounder Mike Terrana and sleek guitar hero Victor Smolski, and it was coming hot off two of their better albums in some time, Unity (2002) and Soundchaser (2003) which had been the most excited I was for their material since the dawn of the 90s. It was recorded in Germany and features well over two hours of material, with a number of old favorites and other tracks that were running current to their tours. The performances of this lineup do a lot to 'package' the earlier material up to their 21st century aesthetics, so it sounds fairly consistent in the hands of this lineup. Peavy had lost some of his shrieking range through the 90s, so by the time this came out he certainly can't approach the older tunes with the same level of fanatical pitch, however when tackling a "Suicide" or "Invisible Horizons", he manages to make it work with the slightly less adventurous, limited range, and he can still go higher occasionally. The important thing is that the wild personality he generates with his voice is still here in spades.

Otherwise, the band sounds ferocious. The bass is thick enough and fluid, Terrana beats his kit like it tried to burn down his house and run off with his wife, and Smolski sounds just fantastic, with his frenetic, dizzying leads and even capturing a lot of the old flashy squeals and tricks of his forebears from the 80s. The guy is just fucking nuts, and as much as Peavy has always been good at picking his six-string slingers, it makes me really wish he was still with the band this last decade. Even in spots when I feel myself wishing there was a tight rhythm player to enforce the power of their material on the live, Smolski's penchant for flair totally fills that void. As for the production, it's quite clear, you get a healthy helping of the audience balanced against the guitars and percussion, while Wagner's howling still manages to sit right on top, even if by this point it might have been the weakest link in the band's entire execution. Terrana and Smolski both have extensive solo tracks which are a lot of fun, and you get a great balance of being hit like a truck on most tracks, or even enjoying some of their lighter, more sensitive material like "Back in Time" from their Ghosts rock opera album.

This was really my first exposure to a full-fledged Rage live recording, after being a fan for a decade and a half, and while it has a few vocal flaws, it's just a damn solid experience with the band coming off just as enthusiastic with the tunes from all their eras to that date. One of the better Teutonic power metal live offerings I've got lying around the place, especially because they've always had such a different sound than so many of their peers.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

http://www.rage-official.com/

Borknagar - Epic (2004)

I admit that I struggled to remember much of Epic before going back into it, or at least any 'highlights' of the album that have stood up to me against the greatness of so much in their discography. I can't say that Borknagar has ever released a bad album, but there are certainly some phases of their career I find more memorable than others, i.e. the first three albums or the two newest efforts Winter Thrice and True North with Vortex back in the fold. The solely Vintersorg-fronted material is not my favorite, but all of them are rewarding enough to listen through as I'm finding once again with an album I personally underrated for whatever goddamn reason that it just didn't sink in with me much at the time I first picked up the CD over at the local Bull Moose Music chapter.

Part of that was probably that it blends in rather well with Empiricism. The production on Epic is more prominent, as its title might imply, and the black metal vocals slightly more visceral, but the arsenal is much the same, proggy-infused melodic black metal that shifts between thundering blast sequences, frolicking mid-paced passages where the vocals shine, and folksy segues. Hedlund does continue to warm up and improve his vocal style here through multi-tracking, and delivering some more solid lines in the upper range of his comfort zone. As much as I wasn't feeling some of his singing on older albums of his career, it's absolutely certain that he brought his A-game with this new Borknagar venture, it remains some of his best work and helped spur continual growth through his other projects, particular his eponymous solo records which are generally quite good. Some of the rasping stuff can get a little bold or silly sounding in spots, but his cleaner vocal arrangements sound really good on tracks like "Traveller", or even where he's largely using them as backups for the snarls in "Resonance", etc. I think the band had also gotten a little better at making the symphonic sweeps sound more organic and natural within the tunes.

The group had whittled down to a four-piece here, with everyone handling multiple duties and really offering a showcase reel of their talents. I don't know that Asgeir Mickelson is as good a bass player as he is a drummer, and thus that instrument isn't quite as effective as it was on prior Borknagar albums, but he's got his moments, and even offers a little lead guitar. Lars Nedland continues to refine the progressive and orchestral aspects of the group's sound that were originally introduced by Ivar of Enslaved on the first few albums, and the acoustic pianos and guitars all over the album sound great. There's definitely a lot of shared songwriting duties which might make the album feel a little more chopped up than its predecessor, but everything still flows quite well together, and passionate tracks like "Cyclus" or "Sealed Chamber of Electricity" really floored me like they never had before. I think sometimes a group of this quality and consistency has a tendency to overwhelm me with what it offers, so I'm grateful that the style and production on this album holds up so well, that I can listen back on it over decades and continually discover what I'd been missing. It's still one of my least favorite efforts in their discography, but when the lower tier is still this good, who's complaining?

Verdict: Win [8/10]

http://borknagar.com/

Basilisk - A Joyless March Through the Cold-Lands (2004)

If ever an album title was destined to be a mission statement for the music contained within, this would be it. A Joyless March Through the Cold-Lands...the modus operandi of just about every one-man basement or bedroom act in the universe. Right? Hell, the 'one-man' in question here even dubs himself Vintyr. Okay, I'm exaggerating, and to that effect, I'm afraid to say that this album does not, in fact, feel very wintry at all. This isn't black metal for the forest or fjord, for the howling of wolves or the feel of your blood being frozen in your veins as you wander through the hibernal nightscapes bearing just a cloak, corpse paint, spikes and a replica sword you ordered online from your favorite fantasy film. This is actually a dimmer, danker, personal style of black metal which revels in its rawness and the negative emotions conjured through its composition and production choices.

Basilisk takes timid, programmed beats and echoing, spacious melodic guitar lines and then slathers them in some of the most impish, distorted, sick snarls and rasps you were likely to hear back in the mid-oughts. And despite how primitive and unprofessional it all seems, I have to admit that once in a while this stuff gets pretty alluring. There is barely any variation within the framework of a particular track, although between the different tunes the distortion and riffing style will occasional change it up with different levels of saturation. All roiling in the primacy of the form, but slicing the listener's ears up in a few different frequencies. The riffs themselves are extremely basic, occasionally cutting out for strangely atonal melodies or harmonies like in "The Force Inside the Opposites", before they shift back into mid-paced chord carvings. At the record's most vicious extremities, like "Bitter", Basilisk is definitely channeling some of its ancestors...A Blaze in the Northern Sky, Deathcrush, Under the Sign of the Black Mark or the first few Burzum efforts, but in some ways it can become even more simple and clearly the product of just the single demented mind letting all his guts spill out through the amps and microphone.

Now, I'm sure there is a large percentage of the black metal audience, which focuses highly on the musical proficiency and intensity of the drumming and guitars, which will now and forever feel that an album like A Joyless March Through the Cold-Lands sucks, but I rather appreciate that uncouth nature of the music...that personal exhibition of suffering that you hear a lot in these one-man acts. It's nothing exemplary or particularly memorable, but I tune in to albums like this because I want to feel like I'm walking along the edge of some abyss, and Basilisk, for all its flaws in audio and musical chops, certainly grants me that. I don't know that this one is quite melancholic enough for the pure depressive BM crowd either, but if you just want razor-raw riffing, atrocious vocals that splatter nightmare-stuff all over your lobes, and just enough of a rhythmic skeleton to propel its pitch black imagery forward, this is an obscurity you might wanna spend some time with. Plus it's also named after a cool mythological creature, for extra points.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

Calvarium - Assaulting the Divine EP (2004)

Counter to the stereotype that black metal is best listened to in the wintry months, I find myself more enraptured through the deepest, hottest months of the summertime, for at least then in addition to the other qualities I find in the genre, it gives me an escape from the season I admittedly hate the fuck out of. July, in particular, is the worst offender of the lot, so in the midst of the Fahrenheit spikes which break down any semblance of civility and fortitude others might describe of me in lighter climes, I find myself once again rummaging through the blackened discs, files and other detritus that have accumulated in my office for something that can temporarily estivate me from the surrounding blaze. This time I've stumbled across an untouched EP from Finnish obscurity Calvarium.

Now, while this particular project might not be well known, releasing only one album and this shorter successor, its members also play in, or have previously played in a who's who of other, comparable acts like Baptism, Horna, Black Death Ritual, Anal Blasphemy, Behexen, or the arena-touring, kid friendly Black Priest of Satan. By the looks of Assaulting the Divine, one is in store for a battering of traditional, newsprint black metal with few twists or surprises, playing it safe within a genre that conventionally relied on being unsafe. And that is the EP in a nutshell, a scathing 20 minutes of tremolo-picked, mildly raw black metal with not a single idea that anyone would ever mistake for being unique. That's not to write off Calvarium entirely, since this is a competent and obscene occult style of black metal which never really grows old for me, even though a great many of its proponents seem incapable of writing the evil riffs, gnashing vocal lines and atmospheres that chill enough to crack the flesh off the bones. These Finns are versed well enough in how to provide such elements, but simply don't ever excel at them.

I'd liken Assaulting the Divine to mix of Bathory and Horna, the former in the storming swagger of the excellently titled opener "Wrathpainted Hammer Upon their Weakening", and the latter almost everywhere else, with sibilant streams of submerged melodies and tinny blast beats driving much of the action. The production on the guitars reminds me of earlier Marduk albums, perhaps Enthroned off their first couple albums. I actually prefer the opening tune to the others, with its hoarse, bloodied rasp that escalates into a broader growl later in the verses, and the fact that I want to ride into battle just like it's Blood Fire Death all over again. "Through the Scars of Selfmutilation", despite its really excellent opening sample (which I couldn't quite pin down to a source), just felt like pretty typical charging glorious material without any standout riffs or truly abrasive feeling. The other highlight might be the black thrashing surge of "The Dark Blessed Elite", but if I were being honest I'd keep the first and last tunes, cut the two in the middle and then maybe find a place to keep that sample. It's just not all that interesting and half of the content is more sinister and memorable than the other, so it's essentially a solid single with some filler tunes.

That said, if you love this genre to a fault, it's really all here and issued with a relentless tenacity that will manifest some admiration. Clearly with this and the previous Skull of Golgotha we caught a glimpse of a group with the chops and experience to make some unsettling waves, but the roster instead decided to do that elsewhere with a myriad of other projects to keep them busy, and some that have borne superior, rotten fruit to this one.

Verdict: Indifference [6.25/10]

Van Helsing's Curse - Oculum Infernum: A Halloween Tale (2004)

Large-cast rock opera records have been quite the rage in metal for years now, popularized by acts like Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Ayreon and Avantasia just to name a handful. For the considerable repertoire of its constituents, Van Helsing's Curse seems to be one that was highly overlooked, the brainchild of Twisted Sister and Widowmaker frontman and American icon Dee Snider, to pay tribute to his love for Halloween and horror classics. A so-called 'soundtrack' to the holiday, metalized and populated with a roster that I hesitate to call a 'supergroup' beyond Dee himself, Al Pitrelli, and a couple unsung veterans like bassist Greg Smith who has performed with everyone from Alice Cooper and Vinnie Moore to Hellion and the Plasmatics. Much of the lineup here is instead comprised of ensemble musicians, with trombones, trumpets, french horns, strings and a slew of backing vocalists to further its operatic nature and narrative.

Speaking of the 'narrative', it's dictated by Snider himself, and one of the components of the album I found the most cheesy and imbalanced with the more swollen seriousness of the orchestration. To be frank, this sounds about as basic as a Trans-Siberian Orchestra album in terms of how uninspired and straightforward the guitars are, and how obvious the rest of the instrumentation plays out, only its got that wannabe John Carpenter feel to it that is often nigh indistinguishable from a lot of films that would bite off the Halloween score long ago (I think there's even a bonus track for a later edition of this which covers that very piece). That's not to say it doesn't hit some original notes, in particular the vocal arrangements and a few Al's guitar fills that you might not expect going in, but they're all washed out by the terribly boring use of plodding guitar mutes or chord progressions that require literally no effort except plugging in a guitar. The production of the record is expansive, often giving it the feel as if its being bounced off the ceiling of some epic cathedral, but most of my issues came with the fact that it's an extremely consonant, uplifting, never appreciably dark or creepy, and just how many times do I need to hear re-interpretations of the Halloween tune or the opera staple "Carmin Burana"? Oculum Infernum just does not go far enough into the thematic territory it so wishes to capitulate towards, and settles for far too many generic thrills.

It gets a little more exciting when you get Al jamming in the bridges of pieces like "The Child", but even then it sounds awfully familiar...like you've heard some other rock opera bands he plays with. Some of the horns blare out in an appreciably moody fashion, as in the swooning "Tortured Soul". The Van Helsing family theme throughout is flimsy at best, a kind of generic 'good vs' evil' scheme, pitting off the monster hunters with vampires and other beings reduced to 'darkness'. A whole lot of the lyrics are presented in Latin to adhere to the album's operatic nature and the ancient struggle it presumes to represent. And, sadly, the most evil sounding part of the whole affair is the "Black Sabbath" cover near the end, threaded with lots of little proggy and symphonic touches, and operatic vocals that don't exactly expand upon its inherent darkness, but still manage to transform the piece as most worthwhile cover do. Apart from the corny voices Dee is doing, in true horror-circus fashion, I actually think most of the instruments sound pretty clear and full, but apart from an occasional bass groove or pick-up in the drumming, some of them don't have much to do.

Now, I like Dee Snider, not only as a singer but as an outstanding human being. I still spin a lot of Twisted Sister stuff and I like a few tunes from his other projects. But this one was clearly a miss, not of gargantuan proportions, but the effort in putting it together just doesn't justify the results on the disc itself. You could take almost any random Therion record from the mid-90s or beyond and get a more effective experience in the same vein, and those can often feel genuinely gloomy and evil, where Oculum Infernum struggles. Heck, Music from 'The Elder' crushes this. I can't say it's a great soundtrack for Halloween when there are just so many others available, either quality horror scores, goofy dance songs, or King Diamond and Alice Cooper albums you could rock out to. So who is this for? I guess if you're a HUGE fan of Dead Winter De...I mean Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and you want a fractionally more 'dark' version of the same, or perhaps TSO to swap holidays, then this might scratch your itch. I just found the whole thing too obvious and uninteresting, and thus I'm not too shocked that the project had such a brief shelf life.

Verdict: Indifference [5.25/10]

http://www.vanhelsingscurse.com/site/

Exhumed - Platters of Splatter (2004)

I've mentioned a few times in the past that Exhumed was around for quite awhile before striking up their deal with Relapse which produced their debut Gore Metal, and Platters of Splatter does a hell of a job giving the ardent fan a comprehensive glimpse at not only those earlier demo years, but also a bunch of split material and unreleased tape that was woven around their full-length records up to this point. Clocking in three discs with nearly four hours of content, it's pretty much a dream come true for anyone who wanted to collect their split appearances, demos, and rarer recordings in one place, rather than the arduous trials of bootlegging and tape trading all the originals, what originals were still around. I should point out that this is not the 'complete' discography of the Californians, spanning 1990-1998, but it seems like it was at least a genuine stab at such, and exceptions probably have a good reason for their omissions, maybe sounding far too shitty or just lost to the ages...

Beyond the fact that it's just so massive, with over 70 tracks, it also features a lot of damn fun tunes that would not wind up on the band's better known studio efforts. In fact, you could probably pick out a dozen or so cuts on this that, if polished up, might have made for a great studio album themselves. The style is largely British goregrind-influenced (Carcass, Napalm Death), with a few tunes veering off into a thrashier territory, some others representative of a more old school US death terrain circa 80s Death and their like. Unlike a lot of other grind-evolved acts, Exhumed had a lot more structure to the material, with songs generally hovering around the 2-3 minute mark, not just 30-60 seconds of spastic excess but a very riffy take on the medium which took the more political overtures of earlier Carcass and transformed it into a serial killer streak inspired by serial killers and other staples of horror, both real world and cinematic. The Carcass naming conventions thrived in a lot of tracks like "Necrovores: Decomposing the Inanimate", "Dissecting the Caseated Omentum" and "Carneous Corneal Carbonization", but they also had some good old 90s brutal USDM silliness like "Necro Transvestite", "Oozing Rectal Feast" and "Bone Fucker".

As much of a treat as it is to hear tunes from the 92-95 demos, I think the strongest material is some of the split work like the whopping 11 cuts they did alongside Hemdale (In the Name of Gore, 1995), which are more or less full-blown Exhumed constructions that feel flush with the studio material they'd put out a few years later. There are also a few covers present here which are thankfully NOT redundant with the Garbage Daze Re-Regurgitated covers album they put out later. Granted, a few like Possessed's "Death Metal" just come across as cluttered, clamorous and forgettable, and other obvious choices like Carcass' "Exhume to Consume" are too close in nature to the originals and just nowhere near as compelling, but hearing them mince up King Diamond's "No Presents for Christmas" is worth a laugh or two, though I think the irony is self-evident and I might have preferred they left off the shrill vocal tribute and just went all out gore on the thing, making it 100% their own.

The second disc features a lot of the content, and some of it sounds bloody fresh despite the decade that had elapsed before they were released on this compilation. I think the one disc that just doesn't hold up to the rest is the third, featuring a lot of alternate and live radio recordings of tunes that are redundant to those you'll find elsewhere. Not that they sound bad in that context at all, but it's hard to pair up stuff like this with old, rare tunes I genuinely haven't heard and maintain my interest level. It's a solid close to the compilation, but personally I found most of the hideous highlights confined to the earlier discs. All told, though, this is a pretty thorough retrospective of a band that is honestly among the brightest and most visceral we've had in the states through the late 90s and 21st century, surely derivative but actually honoring their forebears and then putting some genuine, energetic spin on the formulas, not ignoring other inspirations in their metal canon and imbuing some thrash and melody in their momentum away from just Reek of Symphonies of Necroticism Part III.XS. Awesome band, and even though I'd make a line straight for their studio full-lengths first, if you did find this lying around at a decent price then it's packed with gut-sawing entertainment.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

https://www.facebook.com/ExhumedOfficial

Samael - Reign of Light (2004)

There was a brief window of time in which I had convinced myself that Reign of Light was a great follow-up to Eternal, Samael's first foray into a more uplifting, poppy and dare I say 'Romantic' sound which further distanced them from the occult roots of their primal, nasty black metal origins. Thankfully, I was deluded only for a few shorts months as the record began to almost immediately flake off its replay value, and then the forest was seen for its trees: Reign of Light is an attempt to take the ideas presented on Eternal to a more accessible level by ramping up the production standards (one of the few iffy traits of its predecessor), imbuing the music with a more overtly techno/EBM presence redolent of early 90s KMFDM, and, at least for the most part, dumbing down the lyrics and guitars to the point that they seem fixated on pandering to a Euro Goth metal crowd who was still willing to accept the band after they had long since begun to shed the underground black metal fans who represented their original audience.

I'm not going to say this is totally shit, because there are a few saving graces here or there that render it a pretty harmless effort, but when I look back over the Swiss band's career, this is the full-length I am least likely to ever reach for on my CD racks. In fact, I sold it a few years after it was released, when living space started to trump my completist/collector mentality. By and large, though, this is an album where the band had seemingly reached the creative end of their evolutionary cycle, morphing into something akin to a caricature of the albums preceding it, and having very little new on the table apart from the slightly unwelcome (or rather unsuccessful) endowment of cheap electronics and the attempts at exotic, Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian influence to some of the guitars and synth lines, prominent in tunes like "Telepath", which are structurally the highlights of the album but do suffer from some poor compositional choices and goofy lyrical delivery. And those are really the two major banes of Reign of Light as a whole: lots of mundane muted guitar passages representative of the second rate industrial metal of the 90s and the Neue Deutsche Härte dance metal that Germanic bands like Rammstein were capitalizing on. Samael was always predisposed to fail at such heights due to the snarled, strange vocals of Vorphalack, so it's almost pitiful to hear them try...

A lot of the tunes are meant to make you shake your ass at the club, which would be fine if they somehow stuck out to memory, but sadly that takes the form of transforming the glorious synth tones so resplendent on records like Eternal and the immortal Passage and then applying them to these pumping beats and vocal lines that occasionally seem so ridiculous that they fall out of meter when Vorph tries to wrap them around the drums and keys. A few songs here, like "As the Sun" are outright fucking embarrassing...like early 80s Olivia Newton John workout videos given a grimy EBM spin with the nihilistic rasping of the deranged Swiss man. I'm not necessarily averse to such contrasts, having played for awhile in an industrial/extreme metal hybrid band where I'd growl over late night radio house synthesizers or such, but those were usually tongue in cheek situations; whereas Samael is dead serious, seemingly unaware of how absurd they sound. You see, the reason why this record became such a quick 'sinker' is that it does actually have a few clever guitar riffs, at best recapturing that universal, unusual industrial metal warmth of Eternal, but when you break everything down, there are probably only 2-3 tracks worth sparing, if we could somehow change the lyrics...

Yeah they are pretty uneven here. I was willing to buy this newfound, smug, life-embracing happy happy Samael for one record, and one record only, but here it just becomes ridiculous on a cut like "On Earth" where they ramble off a long list of cities (presumably those where their fans reside) and attempt to bind the entire human race together in an orgy of sentiment. So, like that awful scene in the Matrix sequel where the Zionians were having a vast, multicultural passion-rave of release, all colors and ages of bodies roiling together in the sheen of aspirant supermodel sweat. Only the Fluke tune during that scene was far better than this song or really anything on this album. It's just fucking goofy, man...what happened to the "Jupiterian Vibe" or "Baphomet's Throne"!? I mean you know a band's running out of ideas when the lyrics consist of a series of 'shout outs', and there are all these other songs about 'our vibrations' and 'our souls' and how 'we keep growing' in our new world and all this other ambiguous philosophical pap that sends the hearts a-flutter, or in my case the heart a-shitter. Fuck, "Reign of Light" itself has some of the most cliche and excremental lyrics you'll ever see in posi-metal. Perfect for those who think Theater of Tragedy's electro hardpop records were anything more than catchy club rock (to be fair, those were really damn catchy...this is not, at least not often).

The cleanliness of the mix only serves to make Vorph sound even more goofy when singing a lot of these, whereas Eternal had the smokescreen of sounding a bit more raw and spacey, and Passage was brilliantly poetic, angry and humanistic. This is not a disc entirely void of its hooks, and I like a few of the guitar melodies as they appear in the bridge of "Moongate" or the "Jupiterian Vibe"-like "High Above", which alongside "Telepath" represent the trio of highlights here. The ethnic female vocals are put to sparse, decent use and the mix of programmed drums, multiple atmospheric levels of keyboards and guitars are very evenly balanced, but really even the best songs seem like retreads of the songs on the two albums before it, only friendlier for the whole family. Half the material is just as corny as the vocal-half of the Era One/Lessons in Magick #1 double-album which was released later by Century Media (but written around the same time as this material). And, really, if any of this sounds even remotely interesting, just go straight for its successor Solar Soul, which has a much harder hitting guitar presence alongside the vocals, but still features the same fancy for the exotic, Eastern synthesizer lines while feeling slightly less awkward overall.

Verdict: Indifference [5.5/10] (hungry for life again)

http://www.samael.info/Above/index.html

Samael - Telepath EP (2004)

Telepath is the sort of redundant waste of molecules I always rue seeing from my favorite acts, and yet by 2004, Samael had long been a band established enough that both labels and their own personal enterprises would attempt to con some of the audience for just a little extra scratch. What we have here is essentially what I dub a 'karaoke EP', with a number of tunes lifted directly from an upcoming full-length studio album and then mimicked with their own instrumental versions. "Telepath" is actually represented on this three times, the third being a remix of an already electronically propulsed techno/black metal track, but honestly there's just no fucking reason to have this unless you REALLY want to karaoke to "Telepath" and "Inch'Allah" with your friends at a faux-vampire key party in the comfort of your own posh living room...

I'll go into the studio tracks more with a review of Reign of Light, but "Telepath" more or less tries to grasp at the mystique of Samael's brilliant Passage record (and its followup Eternal) but apply it to a more directly danceable beat, which ironically has a bit of a Gothic/Middle Eastern mashup feel to it adorned in Vorph's salacious grumbles and some baseline chugging. Ironic because you'd expect that out of the song called "Inch'Allah", but wait...that track does it too, only the throbbing beat is affixed with some of the synthesizers the band used so well on Passage. The issue I have here is not simply one of style...I was fully willing to follow this Swiss band almost anywhere, but only that their sense of exploration has been dampened, cheapened for the Euro-goth in the corset on the dance floor and no longer a poetic light on the edge of an infinite span of darkness (i.e. Passage). The riffs in these two tunes are quite lacking, with or without the vocals, as presented, and they seem to have slowly gone from truly compelling guitar lines to banal bouncing chugs circa Rammstein. The remix is so bloody uninspired that I had long forgotten it was even here...

This was all mixed with pretty cutting edge audio and it might hold some appeal for that reason, but since the material is very much redundant with Reign of Light, a 'sinker' of an album which I for some reason enjoyed for a few months and then totally turned traitor towards, I can see no viable benefit to owning it beyond the aforementioned desire to bark out Vorph's lyrics yourself. The lyrics to the tune "Telepath", which I'll complain about at length elsewhere, are the sort of insincere, implausible sorts of 'positive outreach' affirmation ravings that you'd expect from a self-help tape, and sound incredibly cheesy coming from a band that used to sing about Satan and horror and evil on their first few discs. But I'd forgive that if the music was good...it just doesn't hold up, and not solely because of the aesthetic choices, but because the majority of the riffs and vocals are mundane and have little of the emotional gravitas I once felt so strongly from their music. Avoid this, and if you happen to see a copy of the digipack out in the wild, give it a swift kick for me.

Verdict: Fail [2.25/10] (format our comprehension)

http://www.samael.info/Above/index.html

Necrophagist - Epitaph (2004)

Those not sold on Necrophagist's game-altering debut Onset of Putrefaction probably won't think so highly of its inevitable follow-up Epitaph, but whether or not this really expands upon the ideas or musical prowess of its predecessor is immaterial: Muhammed Suiçmez made a lot of sound decisions for this which kept the formula fresh and relevant in an age when loads of bands were starting to exhibit the same impressive level of chops and performance, forcing technicality upwards and onwards. I myself do not break this one out nearly so much as the first album, but I certainly wouldn't have minded some if Muhammed were to somehow retroactively apply the efforts he went towards to grow the band to Onset's songwriting, and wouldn't find a lot of ground on which to argue with those who find this the superior of the two.

First and foremost, Epitaph is where Necrophagist became an actual band, or rather 're-emerged' as a band as it had been before the debut recording. The rhythm section was rounded out by an impressive trio of players, not the least among them guitarist Christian Muenzner and drummer Hannes Grossman, who would both also go on to impress in their other band Obscura (which I'll be covering more of after this one). They fit into Muhammed's musical vision as if it were there own, and naturally Epitaph benefits as a result. Having an actual drummer makes a major difference, even if Grossman arguably makes it all seem just as effortless as the programmed percussion. But I certainly thought the mix here made the snares and kicks stronger. In fact, despite the mechanical aptitude of each performance here, the entire production just feels warmer and more inviting, a mix of Arsis-style melodic death metal with the clinical pathos of brutal death...five years were not spent in vain. Stefan Fimmers (who would later go on to play in Pestilence) adds another level of fluency by weaving in bass-lines that aren't remotely as intimidated by the guitars as they might have felt when Muhammed played them himself out of necessity. While it's still the driving, deft melodies and rhythm guitars which compel and inform the listener through this, there is no longer that unevenness which knocked Onset down a few pegs.

Secondly, though there is a particular portion of Epitaph which feels like a mere retread of the prior album, just playing catch-up with a full roster of human band members, there are still minor nuances and picking techniques which are employed here differently than the debut. Necrophagist is generally about the details, though they're overt and easy to discern, and Suiçmez' well of ideas was clearly not depleted by this point, especially now that the bass is being contributed on a whole new level to support the flagrant surgical hammering of his note choices. Granted, we're talking maybe 15-25% of the content here, since so much does sound like a reflection of what had already been written in the 90s, but it did give hope that, should this have become a prolific entity with a more consistent recording catalog, there probably would have been some small degree of variation throughout. The leads here actually sacrifice a little fraction of their technique for more feeling, in some cases seeming like the easiest parts another musician would be able to pick up and play him/herself, and unlike what I might have expected, Epitaph's compositional level doesn't force itself so much further away from humanity...this is more stable, and at times, basic in structure.

However, as increasingly enticing as Necrophagist had grown by this album, there's enough material here which thrives off familiarity that I just never felt quite so impressed as the first time, and it's really only an album I break out alongside other bands like Cytotoxin, Beyond Creation or Arsis when I'm interested in hearing style over substance. Few tunes, if any here have the capacity to move one's spirit in any direction, beyond just satisfying his/her visceral response to the impressive, fluid instrumentation. Vocals are still quite average for the death metal medium, easily lost in a shuffle of other artists, and while these guys might be able to play a few circles around veterans like Suffocation and Incantation in terms of dexterity and technique alone, they lack the concrete brutality of the former and dissonant magnificence of the latter. In short, the Germans had become less distinct here than even the mechanical Onset, and that likely would have remained the case had they kept spewing out material through the 21st century. We've all been waiting a decade now for something new, but perhaps it really is better to have such a substantial hiatus if it means Suiçmez and company will have something more unusual and adventurous on offer once they reappear.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10] (when dawn and sunset coincide)

http://www.necrophagist.de/

Facebreaker - Bloodred Hell (2004)

Facebreaker is another of those 'slightly behind while simultaneously ahead of the curve' 21st century Swedish death metal throwbacks which formed about 15 years ago and started churning out records about half way through the prior decade. A little too late to be Bloodbath, but they arrived on my radar well before this current tsunami of Left Hand Path and Dismember soundalikes, along with some of the Rogga bands like Ribspreader. Comprised of a number of that scene's veterans, including growler Roberth Karlsson of Pan.Thy.Monium, Darkified, Edge of Sanity, the Bloodred Hell lineup took an approach to the style that had a more urban, tough guy aesthetic rather than the graveyard eeriness and atmosphere pervasive in so many of their peers, and as a result this does have a streak of straightforwardness that should appeal to fans of records like Grave's Soulless or Edge of Sanity's Cryptic. That's not to say it's at all unique, in fact this functions on a fairly generic set of chord progressions, death metal 101, somewhere between mid 90s Cannibal Corpse and the Swedish 'regulars' of that era, but it's probably one of the most likeable Facebreaker discs, and one that, apart from shifts in studio production, they never seem to deviate from even a decade later.

Obvious chugs and denser, repulsive chords definitely carry forth the borderline Entombed death & roll influence while seeming a lot like a meatier spin on 90s thrash; there are certainly some d-beat driven segments on the album ("Total Wasteland"), but as a whole they go for that real sense of groove balanced against a moderate death metal momentum. Normally such a stripped down, barebones style wouldn't contribute much to my enjoyment of an album, but the pacing of the tracks and the general quality of the riffs seem strong enough that I can listen to this 10 years later and still get as much value as I did in 2004, though it was never and should never be considered any sort of 'exemplary' entrant into the medium. But there's enough charm to Roberth's growling, even if he's not so distinct among peers, and the lead sequences here seem excitingly scripted (like the one in the bridge to "Crushed") that it reminds me often enough of why I got so into the stuff as a teen in the late 80s. A savage, honest crunch to the rhythm guitar, solid drumming, and a bouncing and repulsive bass tone that always hovers through the mix, it seems really that all the instruments are set here at an appreciable balance and that's one of its strongest points, really. They're also not averse to throwing out some cleaner guitars ("Hater") but these do seem a little more subtle and drowned by the crushing force behind them.

Ultimately, the Facebreaker debut is by-the-book, blueprint Swedish death metal which is  probably not going to convince anyone these days who has become jaded with the form. I actually include myself among that crowd, but happened to have heard this band long before most of the stuff that arrives in my promo box, and I can still throw this on with a little Jagermeister, some gore flicks and/or boob rags and have a pretty good time with it. I mean no insult when I say that this is like the equivalent of 'frat house death metal', a phrase that might be meaningless outside of my lacking American culture. The intention here might be some brutish, lowest-common-denominator death, but in knowing their limitations, these Swedes pull it off with some integrity. It's the kind of record where, if you just shut your mind off and lower your expectations, pretend your a teen again, or a kid, or whenever you first caught the bug, you'll find it amusing and moshable and the antithesis of pretentiousness. Absolutely for fans of Ribspreader, Paganizer, Mr. Death, Revel in Flesh, etc. A solid guttural expose for the next kegger, you might imagine if there were like a fraternity of student morticians they might get down to this late at night in their classroom/labs while the instructors remain blissfully ignorant. Beer bonging off body bags, party hats on cadavers, vuvuzelas waking the dead, Bloodred Hell, motherfuckers. This isn't Thug Life, it's Thug Death.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10] (nothing is my truth)

http://www.facebreaker.com/

Decapitated - The Negation (2004)

The final album from the classic Decapitated lineup (before Covan stepped in to replace Sauron) also happens to be the one I most struggle to remember. Both the cover art and production values of The Negation are superior to Nihility, but musically they seemed to continue a process of stagnation without abandoning the energetic musicianship. A lot of the riffing passages remind me quite a lot of Morbid Angel circa Covenant or the faster Vader blitzes, or more accurately an analog to Behemoth's death metallic tirades of the late 90s/21st century; sufficiently explosive and muscular, but lacking much real staying power once the percussive consistency has vacated the listener's brain. This album does indeed sound great through the speakers, and I kept waiting for those money shot guitar progressions circa the earlier albums to help fill out the intensity of the execution, but they never seemed to cu...show up. It's safe harbor to a number of retread ideas thickened with a little more meat.

For example, "Three-Dimensional Defect" has a lot of that pinpoint muted aggression circa "Spheres of Madness", only with more shredding in there; while a number of other tunes have opening riff salvos that almost remind me of new millennium Slayer material if it were to quickly be subsumed by Sandoval blast storms and picking punches that lack a lot of individual character. This is very likely Decapitated at its densest, and I do enjoy the guitar tone a lot here as it eschews the aridity of its predecessor, but as one seeking those winding, hectic but highly musical note progressions that defined Winds of Creation, I felt like this album often suffered from a lot of what might plague a band like Krisiun, that Morbid Angel or Deicide-inspired reliance on heavy brickwork without much clever or unique songwriting. Brutality and speed first, and a lot of insipid palm mute passages to which distinction is a foreign concept. The sword is mightier than the pen this time around, and the best I can say for it all is that Vitek's drumming certainly seemed to have continued to develop. This is probably his most intense performance over the four albums he was with the band, but without anything interesting to beat the skins to it just doesn't matter so much.

I have a hard time coming up with even a half-dozen guitar parts on this album that I'd consider keepers, like in "The Empty Throne" or "Three-Dimensional Defect" which felt like leftovers from the Nihility sessions, or a lick or two from the title track. Sauron sounds a hell of a lot like David Vincent on Domination, which is not a negative necessarily, but the guy would simply never evolve his gutturals into something that a hundred other guys don't already have covered (he's a little better on the second Masachist effort, Scorned, but still not unique. Lyrically Decapitated remain consistent, they've never been a gore band, so the song subjects deal with the constraints of our flawed beliefs, religions, human vices/impulses or civilizations as a whole, but then the music is just too rarely thoughtful to drive them home. They cover Deicide's "Lunatic of God's Creation", but unlike the Slayer tune on the debut, there's not much making it their own, because aside from a few production tweaks its exactly like the origin...stylistically dependent, and that post-bridge section seems to have directly translated into a handful of their own riffs on this album. The Negation is ultimately one of those albums which comes off as effectively brutal without much need for dizzying complexity, but after a decade of second chances, it just don't cultivate enough sticky chops to bother with.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10] (the myth of the reward)

http://www.decapitatedband.net/

Carnal Forge - Aren't You Dead Yet? (2004)

Aren't You Dead Yet?, not to be confused with Children of Bodom's Are You Dead Yet? the following year, or the Quarter-Facial Zombie Massacre, entirely unrelated, is a rather important effort on the Carnal Forge timeline. Not because of its significance to metal at large, mind you, because let's face it, this band had long been relegated to the lesser tier of Swedish exports; but because of its significance to the the band itself. You see, this was the final offering by the band's 'classic' lineup that had been meting out the blood, sweat and tears for a number of records, including Please...die!, which had been their best to date. More specifically, it would prove the last hurrah for vocalist Jonas Kjellgren, before focusing his attention on other bands like Scar Symmetry, in which he played guitar for awhile. Aren't You Dead Yet? also seemed to be the first album that put them squarely into the stock melodeath camp, exhibiting a lot more tiny, pretty guitar lines in amongst the rabid modern thrash median between Slayer and At the Gates which spawned their career.

Okay, when I say 'stock' I'm not implying that all of the Swedish bands sound the same, a sentiment I've seen expressed a number of times which is largely cow-patty...sure, a number of melodic death metal or older school Sunlight-tone death metal bands sound xeroxed from the originals, but this is by no means some trait unique to the country...why, the USA itself is ridden with doppelgangers across a number of styles, as is the remainder of Europe or the UK. Say what you want, but Hammerfall does not equal Opeth does not equal Entombed does not equal Candlemass does not equal Watain, and to assert otherwise is a statement of fuckwitted prejudice that screams to me 'I Hate Swedish Bands Because They Are Successful', and I've expressed in the past my feelings for this sort of overt, irrational, whiny faux-elitism, so to see so many bands of varying genres so often lumped together because of their nationalistic relativity is simply stunning. No, many of these bands got popular because they are good, or WERE good at some point; a judgement of value on a case-by-case basis just like any other scene. Yeah, a lot of them can tour, feed their families, and afford to have their records sound pretty sleek, but it's not some conspiracy. They're not out to 'get you'...the place has had great metal since the 80s, so no fucking surprise that it would pan out in all the subgenres later.
 
Now that I've gone on that tangential (but not irrelevant) rant: when the bitching is being applied to melodic death metal in particular, well then it might hold a fraction more weight, since that's a sound the region more or less pioneered or at least 'defined' after taking inspiration from records like Carcass' Heartwork, and a lot of the 'known' acts in the field are variations on a singular theme of fast-paced, eruptive and very often 'uplifting' material which is the stepchild of the tryst of death, thrash and trad/power metal. But it's not a lot different than brutal USDM, or German power metal, or whatever...I'm not holding grudges just because Darkane, Soilwork and Dark Tranquillity have some similarities; they've also got subtle differences that distinguish them one another, and an overall sound that was inspiring for the turn of the millennium and continues to be so, if in a smaller capacity than before because a lot of the 'mainstreamers' in the niche seem to be facing identity crises or just not writing good songs anymore. A record like Aren't You Dead Yet? does get lost in the herd because most of its ideas are those which have already been expressed by a number of these other artists, on records like Natural Born Chaos, Damage Done or Rusted Angel which were all exponentially 'fresher' and better visualized and composed.

Essentially, this disc is a ligament between the punchy, tightly-woven 21st century chug-thrash of the last four being meted out at an often high pace desperately clenched to its own ideas of momentum, to ensure that there might never be a dull moment, and then its all interspersed with clinical, brief tremolo picked phrasings or loads of melodic spikes that sing like candy to the ears of a listener who wants that contradiction...that contrast. Tunes like "Exploding Veins" play out like mid-paced nu school Exodus neck-wrenchers slathered in The Haunted style vocals, where others are parallels to fellow Swedes Terror 2000 who play more or less uppity racetrack/street thrash. The vocals here have a broader palate of growls and snarls than on the older works, so they seem more like a gang effort, but I don't always like them because the 'shouting' does feel like a typical generic, overbearing metalcore mob, if better inflected. Though all the instruments are quite clear, it's obvious that the guitars are the star of the show...the beats and bass-lines fail to function without some interesting note progression kicking into the listener's skull, and to be fair they do have some. It's not the best selection of quality riffing in their catalog, but this is certainly stronger than Firedemon or its own direct predecessor The More You Suffer, and I attribute that to the better leads as well.

But, again, Carnal Forge prove here that they've not really got a lot to offer that their local kin have not already delivered. If you've worn out your copies of The Haunted Made Me Do It, Slaughter of the Soul, or A Predator's Portrait, then this might make for a decent backup, but a sprinkling of quality solos and melodies, and a handful of tight and unpredictable rhythm patterns aren't enough to propel this one into the pantheon of the memory banks. Pacing and production are not at fault (it still sounds good a decade later if you're into this stuff), merely the fact that we've got a set of songs which are by all means well executed but still fail to stand the test of time. These guys are all excellent musicians and their professional, consistent resumes all point to that, but where and when it was released, Aren't You Dead Yet? did not make any sort of statement and might have been even further disregarded if not for the Century Media release. The bland digital photography zombie cover is uninteresting, the logo seems to have grown even worse with each new rendering of its font, the lyrics and titles just average, but I'd honestly place this in the 'top half' of their first six releases, trailing just slightly behind Please...die! in effectiveness and value.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10] (I finally found my place in eternity)

http://www.carnalforge.se/