Denner/Shermann - Masters of Evil (2016)

It wasn't long after the Satan's Tomb EP that Denner/Shermann would drop their first (and only) full-length album, with a cover even MORE reminiscent of the Mercyful Fate classic sophomore. So the idea this projects is that maybe they'd be getting a little more archaic in sound to resurrect the legendary vibes we are still all feeling off that 1984 staple (which, let's face it...you shouldn't have the right to VOTE if you don't own a copy of Don't Break the Oath). And maybe the music pulls that off, but only about 1-3% more than the prior EP. Nope, this is still a hybridization of the guitar duo's heavy, distinct grooving metal guitars interspersed with the more uppity, energized style of power metal that came out of the US scene in the 80s, and the intensification of Judas Priest in 1990...

Which is nothing to scoff at, in fact it's a great fucking idea, and to their credit, the Masters of Evil pull it off for the majority of this 42 minute run-time. Though they might seem slightly less frenetic than a few on the EP, these tunes are better structured, and Sean Peck is even more reserved, in fact this is one of my favorite of his performances ever on a studio album. He's got the pitch, the fierceness, and yet he reins it in at any opportunity, never losing himself off the top. He's a great compliment to the riffing might being manifest below him, and yet when necessary, like in the bowels of "Son of Satan", or the chorus of the title track, he lets go this amazing Halford scream which had me laughing and weeping tears of joy in unison. In fact, the mix and some of the lines he projects remind me a lot of Rob, just with the different natural timbre to his voice. Snowy Shaw is once again great on the mix, though I don't think his beats stand out from the other instruments as much as the EP (a good thing). 

I also really enjoy the penchant for lurching into some "Carmina Burana" operatic moments, as if you'd just stepped into the heavy metal equivalent of The Omen, it just spices up what is otherwise a fun record with rolling riffs like "The Wolf Feeds at Night" or the title track. Not every riffing pattern is legendarily catchy, but there's clearly a ton of effort that went into this one, and the performances are set at just the right momentum to let the shrill vocals shine, which has always been one of Michael and Hank's fortes (the rest is history, right?) Masters of Evil is no Don't Break the Oath, but it's a damn good time which takes the DNA from that masterpiece and then combines it with some of the metal which followed it, like a Jurassic Park of heavy/power metal. A well written record that I haven't gotten tired of in a half-decade, but sadly another swan song from a project that was probably cut down too soon. I mean, if they took this material and then cultivated it even further, who knows what limit they might have crossed. But I'm happy to take what we've gotten.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]

https://dennershermann.com/

Denner/Shermann - Satan's Tomb EP (2015)

I can't have been the only one excited when this new collaboration between Michael Denner and Hank Shermann was announced. It had been a good 19 years since they worked together on Mercyful Fate's Into the Unknown, and another couple years added to that since their last truly GREAT Fate work on Time, so I think a project such as this was overdue. Add in their fellow alumnus and prolific metal superstar Snowy Shaw on the drums, and some artwork and occult aesthetics which mirror their formative years of Don't Break the Oath, and the frothing of the fandom would reach pure rabies. It was probably too much to ask that they could also hook in one Kim Bendix Petersen, because then it would have to have become a proper Mercyful album, but they did end up with US power metal crooner Sean Peck...

And he's a capable singer, having fronted a lot of the albums his Cage, and other acts, though I can recall a tendency to go a little too overboard. Thankfully, he's rather restrained here, sounding pretty nasty at his mid-range but then keeping his highs in the range of Harry 'Tyrant', who come to think of it, would have also sounded quite nice on this. The only issue is that his presence thrusts the music itself into a little more of a USPM space, which isn't what I expected. Don't get me wrong, lots of the trademark groove and lead harmonies you'd expect from Denner and Shermann are prevalent here, but the voice and the way the tunes are put together don't always mirror that classic Danish vibe. You get a little Painkiller riffing structure (especially in "New Gods"), and then a few of the lower, leaden heavy parts do tread dangerously close into more of a groove metal thing. That said, for the majority of the four tracks and 21 minutes of material, this is pretty damn exciting, with Shaw and the lead guitars in particular giving kickass performances, and Sean getting to flex those pipes with plenty of personality over new territory.

I do feel some of his chorus lines never quite end up where I want to be note-wise, and there's just a fraction of try-hardness, but nowhere near as much as a Tim 'Ripper' Owens-fronted album, and Peck is genuinely, insanely talented. If you direct that voice properly, you've got an intimidating weapon, and I think for the most part, they do here. I even like the few surprises in store that escalating sequence deep into "New Gods" with the backing choir vocals hovering in the mix. Ultimately, Satan's Tomb does play out like a combination of Mercyful Fate and USPM like Cage, Jag Panzer or the Bruce Hall-fronted era of Agent Steel, and I have absolutely no problem with that. Maybe this is what Liege Lord would have sounded had they originated out of Copenhagen? If nothing else, a strong promise of what this project might pull off with a little more effort.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10]

https://dennershermann.com/

Mercyful Fate - Time (1994)

While I don't take exception to records like Into the Unknown or 9, which manage to channel most of Mercyful Fate's positive qualities, it's 1994 and Time which delineates the border for me between the Danes' 'timeless' (oh boy, I did not plan that) works, and those that really don't strike much of a chord with me when I'm scanning through the albums I wanna upload to my iPhone or whatnot. While it holds nothing on my unholy trinity of Don't Break the Oath, Melissa and In the Shadows, it is the last album that I can listen to entirely without ever really needing to skip any weaker tracks, the last one chronologically which I feel an urge to actually experience in sum. It just manages to maintain that sinister air of mystery that surrounded the band (and King's solo career) through the 80s, and for all intensive purposes it sounds like a record which belongs to that era...rather than being smack dab in the middle of a decade in which a group like this one only managed to thrive off its legacy rather than any new string of cult classic material.

Structurally, it's not a far cry from In the Shadows, in that it relies so heavily on mid-paced songs and extremely melodic, almost anthemic vocal lines from King, but at the same time it's both smoother and less ambitious. The lyrics still convey the themes of mysticism and horror, from the familiar ground of "Witches' Dance" which wouldn't have felt out of place on King Diamond's The Eye, to "The Mad Arab" which is a direct tribute to H.P. Lovecraft's recurring Abdul Alhazred. Diamond sounds perfect here as he shifts between his ghostly falsettos and impish lower pitches, in fact he throws a lot of the 'character' into his performance that many would probably equate more with his solo band, and I think of the whole Fate canon this is likely the greatest aesthetic 'crossover' between the two. Nary a tune passes without some memorable vocal passage, and it doubles down on how you take a listen to an album like Dead Again, or the pathetic The Graveyard and wonder where all this magic disappeared to in such a short time? Time might not have all the band's hits, but it is surely determined to make itself memorable throughout the 47 minute duration and it largely succeeds.

Another real strength here is how with these largely mid-tempo tunes the Denner/Shermann duo can lay into all manner of their great, groovy riffs, as well as the mildly progressive bent they often take with their riffs, just so that they eclipse the utter simplicity of audience expectations. Lots of great, doomy moments here with the drums shuffling along like graveyard creepers as King emits some exotic and pained vocal narration, and like In the Shadows before it, or the first decade of solo albums, the entire affair seems like its just focused on the listener experiencing this one in some mental moonlight, haunted landscape, tower or manor if the real thing isn't available. The title track with its organs and freakish harmonized lullaby vocals seems like it might have stepped out of a session for Them or Conspiracy, down to how it just sails right into those dreamy guitar melodies and chorus. Synthesizers, wah-wah and other effects are thrown in tastefully, and although I didn't have the same problem with the drums on its predecessor that some seemed to, I think Snow Shaw's beats here might prove a little more durable and evenly mixed to support the guitars and vocals. Sharlee's bass is perfectly supportive and steps away just as often as it needs to, with a great tone that hovers right above the kick.

The contrast between the lucid vocals and dirty riffs of "Mirror", unforgettable anthems like opener "Nightmare Be Thy Name" and "Witches' Dance"...this one just never quits playing to its strengths, and it's still a pleasure to experience 27 years later. Like many of his solo efforts, this one's also a perfect Halloween listen, and was released in that very month upon arrival. It's 'classy' of course, this one isn't about the blood and guts but the evergreen themes of Gothic, occult or even cosmic horror that will still send a chill down your spine at any age, regardless of the melodic breezes on which they are carried. It may not be a masterpiece, but it's great, and it STAYS great. At the risk of broken record status, I have to reiterate how these first four Mercyful Fate full-lengths, along with the first 5-6 King Diamond represent one of the most enduring bodies of work in my whole music collection. Seasonal or otherwise, they don't seem to age a day to when I first came across them from the raw, ripe ages of 10-20 years old. I cannot thank King and both his crews enough for the countless hours of enjoyment and escape they've written. Even my idiosyncratic Country lovin' big city significant other has fallen under these spells.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10] (prayer in unknown tongue)

https://mercyfulfatecoven.com/

Konkhra - The Freakshow EP (1999)

As Konkhra maneuvered through the 90s, they started weaving a lot more groove and direct rock & roll influence into their sound, not unlike other European bands Gorefest, Entombed, Desultory, and so forth. While some of them were able to successfully meld the styles together, at least after some growing pains, these Danes struggled to make much of a dent. Albums like Spit or Swallow and Weed Out the Weak continued to get progressively dumber, and I'd say The Freakshow EP might have been the lowest point for them, although the Come Down Cold full-length also features some of the tracks here and others like them, so that was arguably the more substantial crisis than a throwaway short-player like this one.

Essentially this is bluesy hard rock & roll with a lot of similarities to Black Label Society, or Pantera's later 90s material, and it definitely tries to ape a lot of the swagger of the latter. Guitars are pretty standard stoner rock fare, with wah wah pedal sprinkled on liberally. The riffs are far from the worst, and there are some leads or flashes of melody throughout that aren't bad for 90s alt metal, but it's the vocals mixed with the music that really kill it for me. Gone are the gutturals and snarls, having been replaced by a 'hwaaaaaahhh' 'yeaaaaah' gravelly pitch which is just nowhere near as cool. I mean maybe if Anders Lundemark was playing in a low down dirty raw blues band and tried belting out these sorts of vocals it might actually sound pretty good, but here it's just goofy, and even if you can believe it emits more passion or character than just the cookie cutter growls of yesteryear, I'd argue that character sounds like a morbidly obsese Phil Anselmo about to go coronary, or someone doing a bad L-G Petrov impression while cocked out of his mind at the corner bar.

Although the music isn't terrible, just tune in to the two covers of "Prowler" and "Orgasmatron" to see how vapid the original compositions are by comparison. Hell, the latter tune has barely anything going on with it, and never has, but it's still better written than Konkhra's new originals, and the vocals sound pretty horrible trying to ape Lemmy with that lower, creepier register, which lazily lopes alongside the zipping, bluesy leads and super primitive chord repetitions. Musically the tunes are played pretty close to the belt, but there are better covers of them and these certainly don't tack on much value to what is a pretty lame release altogether. Even divisive death 'n' roll records like Swallow the Snake, Soul Survivor, or Vermin's Millennium Ride are far superior to this one. And I don't want you to think I just look down on this hybrid of sounds, hell I enjoy every album Entombed has ever made except the two in 1997-1998 (which just took the rock thing too far), but Konkhra's contribution to the niche were weaksauce.

Verdict: Fail [4.25/10]

https://konkhra.com/veryfuckingmetal/

Konkhra - The Facelift EP (1994)

After Sexual Affective Disorder, Konkhra decided to ditch the freaky death metal artwork and enlighten us to their fetish for beautiful women with handguns, first turning the firearm upon the audience (The Facelift EP), and then back upon herself (Spit or Swallow). Very clever, I see what you did there, blokes. When it comes down to the songwriting, however, The Facelift is quite in line with the album before it, only it feels like a fire has been lit beneath the Danes as they seem to opt for a more uptempo and energetic approach to the bludgeoning death metal. I mean this did come out before Slaughter of the Soul, and it's nowhere near on the level of quality writing as an album like that, but it feels like a band similarly possessed of wanting to mete out more exciting fare than what they'd been getting up to before it.

And at four tracks and 14 and a half minutes, you probably want to keep this material concise and engaging just because you don't have much space to experiment. Konkhra launches "Drowning (Dead Dreaming") and "Facelift" itself straight at you, two ragers that feel like they've been picked and accelerated from the crop of tunes embodying Sexual Affective Disorder. Definitely a little bit of D-beat-like fury propelling them, especially the title track, but affixed with a lot of the brutal low end chugging guitars which feel punishing and nihilistic for their lack of any real melodic value. There are some leads here, and as usual they're a bit too flimsy, however I will give some credit that I was able to better hear them than on the two prior releases and it's a step in the right direction. The drums are agile and effective, while the bass has this great, fat tone warbling along under the oppressive palm muting which is probably the best it had sounded so far. The vocals are still decent in either the guttural or snarl intonations, but oftentimes I felt like they were just bobbing along on the sea of highly destructive chugging which creates such a percussive blitz that nothing can compete.

"Warzone" gets a little slower, but just as chug-heavy, with some sections where you can really hear that bass guitar come out on its own. This one is meant for brawls to break out at gigs, so to that degree it's effective, although obviously less exciting than the others. Lastly you get a 'live' version of "Basic Facts of Life", which sounds almost too perfect, and here you can even makeout the little lead guitar effects even more, which are pretty cool to balance off against the bass and drum grooves. This is another utter mosh-fest, almost with the street hardcore backbone to it, and to be honest was my favorite track here, although it's all really primitive, caveman aggression. Again, like with Sexual Affective Disorder, this isn't one I'm going to recommend based on good licks or songs that will become your favorite in the death metal medium, and possibly not recommend at all, but if you do really like the basics delivered with pounding, crushing force, you could do much worse.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

https://konkhra.com/veryfuckingmetal/

Konkhra - Sexual Affective Disorder (1993)

Sexual Affective Disorder was not about to transform Konkhra into your new favorite death metal band of the early 90s, but it's clearly a more coherent and effective effort than the Stranded EP before it, transforming the Danes into an outfit slightly more deserving of your respect. The style isn't much changed, as it's still among that class of older death metal which wears its thrash influences on its sleeve, but here even that takes on a more oppressive vibe as it is performed with a concussive, clinical force. While the EP at times felt sloppily or hastily assembled, the songwriting here is more taut and brutal, neither the most technical or nuanced among a broad field of European candidates, but not taking any prisoners. Also, who could forget that strange cover, by noteworthy Danish artist Michael Kvium, with its the twisted knots erupting forth from this creepy's psyche? Simpler than what other bands were using, but quite uncomfortable nonetheless!

To me this album most feels like a hybrid of Dutch bands with the first few Cannibal Corpse albums of the Chris Barnes era. Aggressive thrash rhythms intensified with blasting drums and a thick as fuck, saturated tone. Sometimes that is to the album's detriment, as the non-pummeling guitar lines are far too overwhelmed by the central rhythmic battery. The leads, which are nothing special to begin with, just sound like insects buzzing past your ears. However, you won't really have too much time to mourn the loss since the record will keep kicking and slamming you in the chest with its destructive low end. The drum performance here is far tighter, and the riffs flow fairly well into one another, and even though they're not supremely catchy, they at least always feel exciting, like they are right on the edge of being more memorable but just never got that final push in the writing phase. A few brutal death techniques like pinches and squeals are also incorporated, though once again they can be drowned out a little by the bludgeoning impacts of the instruments honed almost entirely in on how this material is going to come across in a mosh pit.

Vocals also sound a little better, still a mix of the visceral snarls and lower growls, but there is better sustain on some of the lines, it just sounds more bloodthirsty and dangerous. I could swear there are even a couple cases where they belch out this really deep guttural and it's hilarious. Though the use of dynamics is far from perfect in the structure of the songs, it's a lot better than the prior release, and there are some really intense moments here like in "Evilution (Exordium Expired)" where they are just firing on all cylinders and those guitars and drums and growls just punch you the fuck out. I mean if this album had...better leads, or a better mix on the leads, and just a few catchier overall riffs, I feel this easily could have been one of the cult death metal albums everyone kept worshiping for so many years later. It's just not quite there...but it aspires to be, and for that reason I'd probably rate this as one of the better albums in their whole catalog. If you're into early Sinister, Gorefest, Cannibal Corpse or Malevolent Creation then this is one you might want to visit if you haven't already heard it. Despite the production failures, its got a crushing confidence about it.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

http://www.konkhra.com/

Konkhra - Stranded EP (1992)

I can remember a time when Konkhra was poised to be one of the Danish representatives to that class of European death metal bands that broke out fairly big in the 90s...Hypocrisy, At the Gates, Dark Tranquillity, Dismember, Entombed, and so forth. The band has endured for 30 years, with a few notable gaps in productiveness, but they haven't quite reached the same level of stardom as so many of those peers that would go on to labels like Earache, Nuclear Blast and Century Media. I fault it partly to the fact that their sound seemed to my ears to drag in a little bit of blander groove metal influence as the decade rolled on, not distastefully so, but enough that they were kind of straddled for a spell between the realms of the more death metal diehard audience and the tribal mosh krews.

However, during their formative years, Konkhra was in fact a more formally death metal outfit, as you might be able to tell from the first few covers to their releases. Stranded was their first 'pro' release after a couple demos, a six-track EP of churning, chugging low end death metal with the exchange of guttural and snarl inflections that were made popular by Carcass and Deicide, although the Danes don't quite sound the same in terms of how they put their vocal lines together, and even add in a few bits like some spoken word alongside the roiling riffs. I can certainly hear a bit of Chuck or Martin van Drunen in some of the growls, but then others go with the deeper guttural. There's a sort of confusing, chaotic underbelly to this release which I actually quite dig, only it's let down by a pretty bland set of guitar progressions which just don't ever seem to manifest in the memorable riffs that were the hallmarks of so many of the groups we celebrate from the era. Several are informed by thrash chugging that collapses into sloppy tremolo picked parts, but while the spirit is there the songs simply aren't.

There are some weird noises flushed through some of the material here, like in "Stranded" itself, or "Deathwish", which I couldn't quite figure out as either some sort of badly mixed lead guitars or special effects. The tracks occasionally grow a little more coherent as the EP progresses, like "Lustration of the Need", but even then you're just not getting top shelf riffing. There are a few other highlights like the magma flow of the bass in "Spread Around", and I almost felt like one or two of the riffs in that one were going to deliver, but sadly the ideas here just weren't all that brazen, bold or interesting even by 1992 standards. Compare this to something like Invocator's Excursion Demise, which had come out the year before, and was a lot more thrash-oriented, but this material can't even hold a candle to that. So Konkhra was off to a cluttered, rough start with Stranded, a product of its time that doesn't hold up with the possible exception of the murky core that generates nostalgia for old basement and garage death metal demos when the medium was a lot more 'innocent'. But, like many things with age, this band will only get better before it gets worse.

Verdict: Indifference [5.5/10]

https://konkhra.com/veryfuckingmetal/

Artillery - The Face of Fear (2018)

I always want to root for a band like Artillery on the basis that they once provided me with an album so good that even thinking about it results in astonishment. I'm talking about 1990's By Inheritance, of course, a standard of accomplished power/thrash riffing and furious energy that to this day has never been surpassed in my estimation. Sure, there have been other artists to evolve the style in some other impressive parallel, but this remains one of my absolute favorite metal efforts 30 years later. Not to marginalize the Danes' first two records, which were great markers on the road, but there's a reason why the band has more or less been trying to remake their magnum opus for a few decades now and just not seeing the same success.

I can't knock all their output, because albums like B.A.C.K. and even When Death Comes had their moments, but since that time the band has lapsed into a cycle of endlessly diminishing returns, not albums that lack for professional production or competent musicianship, but in producing the kind of passionate, inspired craftsmanship that was led so much by brothers Michael and Morten Stützer and their insanely intricate riffing. Nothing they've put out was really bad, but records like Legions and Penalty by Perception seemed to me like going through the motions. Is The Face of Fear, the 9th full-length offer, going to right the ship? I'd say it is, to an extent. There's nothing fundamentally different about what the band has assembled here. They've still got Michael Bastholm Dahl creating his more melodic, power metal vocal passages over a riff-set that certainly dwells in a similar aesthetic space to By Inheritance, and he's definitely become comfortable here. Sure I preferred Flemming the most, even for his flaws he just had such a wild presence, but Dahl's range and delivery are tight enough here that he feels like a natural over the tunes, with some nice reverb echoing his voice over the meaty rhythm guitar onslaught so vital to their music.

Speaking of those guitars, they don't come even close to hitting that 1990 wizardry, often settling into some more banal groovy thrash riffs, but there are plenty here that sound like something new the two have come up with instead of just repeating themselves, such as in the strutting "New Rage". You'll hear plenty of parallels here, like how parts of "Thirst for the Worst" seem reminiscent of "Terror Squad" with the flow of the chords, but I'd say a good 30-40% of the album feels like a breath of fresh air, even if it isn't insanely catchy. The drums are quite good, the atmosphere of the album is also on point with the balance of aggressive lower end guitars and Dahl's soaring presence. There aren't really any throwaway tunes, although the album does go a little soft through the power ballad "Pain" and its ensuing instrumental "Under Water". But they correct course there, with one of the more blistering cuts "Preaching to the Converted", nearly worthy of By Inheritance with an Eastern flair to the guitars, and then a pretty solid re-recording of their old demo track "Mind of No Return" which, lets be honest, crushes its predecessors.

In sum, it's a solid package, with decent lyrics, artwork, production, and songwriting that at least compelled me through a half dozen or more listens in the last couple years, something I cannot say for its director predecessor. In fact, this is the second best album in the 'modern' reunion era of Artillery that starts with When Death Comes. I was a little torn up at Morten Stützer's tragic passing last year, and I can't imagine the band is ever really going to sound the same going forward; but as they're apparently continuing, I really hope this album will push them in the right direction. I would be ecstatic to hear them produce some godly late-career masterpiece like Voivod has done.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

http://www.artillery.dk/home.php

Artillery - In the Trash (2019)

In the Trash is not Artillery's first flirtation with a compilation of their demo and pre-signing material, but it thankfully differs from the 1998 anthology Deadly Relics by including the one full demo that wasn't available there, as well as the Terror Squad demo which was dropped between their first two albums. And I think that's going to be the major draw for anyone who wants to acquire this, the fact that the two collections complement each other, maybe rubbing a few toes together but not planting themselves firmly down on one another's feet. Having said that, the appeal will still find itself limited for anyone who had grown accustomed to or fond of the brand of more elaborate, technical power/thrash that the band had evolved into with the magnum opus By Inheritance, or the later albums which bite from that same fruit but don't quite match the same sweet taste. By that token, this might not even be all that charming for fans into their earlier, more straightforward albums Fear of Tomorrow and Terror Squad, coming before the Stützer brothers had taken on both guitar positions and found that brilliant rhythmic lockstep that would define their sound henceforth.

We Are the Dead is the band's 1982 demo, and moves along at a generally mid-paced gait, brash, chunky and raw, although not terribly produced for such an early tape. It features the band's original vocalist Per Onink, who has an everyman, punkish vibe about him that is occasionally struck with some howls or higher pitched screaming attempts, but much less impressive than his any of his numerous successors through the decades. Still, it's got an honest quality to it that doesn't detract entirely from the listening, and the guitars are so fuzzy, heavy and loud over the pulpy bass lines and slap of the drums that there's a rude, drunken charm to it all, like these guys were recording the demo late at night in a rehearsal space after sharing a 24-pack. Some of these songs like "Mind of No Return" have gotten revisions as recent as The Face of Fear in 2018, and have become a little more functional within the band's overall discography, but I just thought it was amazing evolution to hear them on this material and then pop in the flawless By Inheritance, one of my favorite thrash albums (or albums in general) of all time, and heard how the riffs evolved into something really original and brazenly melodic from these decidedly humble origins.

On the other hand, some of the other recordings here, from a few years later in 1984, are quite good. "Bitch" has a real thunder about it, slightly less crude than the first demo, with much more aggressive and over the top vocals and superior thrash riffs. The Terror Squad demo is a rehearsal demo for the album, and thus some of the most raw shit on the collection, but you can already hear how the band's riffing had progressed into its forward-momentum excellence, and with Flemming coming in on the vocals its a whole lot more fun, even though I'd probably stick to the Terror Squad full-length itself if given the choice. Overall, I think I dug this one quite a bit more than Deadly Relics, which I simply have never really needed to revisit since writing about it, much preferring just to spin the albums again. I'm not saying this one will fare much better, but I think it flowed a little better, even with slightly less material present. Look, if you ask me about Artillery I'm pointing you straight at the first three albums and not necessarily in that order, the demos amount to nothing when compared with the effort that went into much of the Danes' legacy to date...this is a middling collection or reprints that don't offer even a fraction of the reward, but if you're hardcore about collecting your favorite band, or you're just into the historical curiosity, you could do worse.

Verdict: Indifference [5.5/10]

https://www.facebook.com/ARTILLERY.DK

Mercyful Fate - Into the Unknown (1996)

Into the Unknown might be one of the duller looking albums in the Mercyful Fate catalog, but not the worst of them. This marked a point for me when the band's inspiration seemed to be drying up and they were releasing albums to seemingly fill out a contract, or at least that's what a tour through their 1996-1999 material feels like. Nothing they put out was necessarily bad, but a lot of the riffs and ideas felt like mere retreads of others you'd already heard between Fate and the King Diamond albums. And that's really the greatest crime committed on Into the Unknown, which might be one of the more ironically titled albums I've come across, because this one is as straightforward and unsurprising as they get, sort of a mix of Don't Break the Oath, In the Shadows and then Time's production values, updated to their day.

Now you might say that even an average Mercyful Fate record is still probably better than a lot of other metal out there, and I have no argument against that. This is one I can enjoy sitting through because for what it lacks in creative development it compensates for in the energy level. The band is firing up a set of classic MF licks, with enough grooves to sate the fans of their earlier 90s material but a classic feel to the leads and harmonies which kicks me back a decade. The rhythm guitars are some of the simpler patterns they've scribed, with a leaden, chunky tone to them that keeps them hammering above the thick, embedded bass lines which sound pretty fuckin' rad on their own. The leads are modest but worthwhile, and they alternate between a mid-paced gait and the slower grooves from tunes like "Listen to the Bell" which sound like outtakes from In the Shadows (the song even has a line 'deep in the shadows...'). The drums sound good, and the band still knows how to structure a verse-chorus transition quite well, and there are clearly a handful of riffs here like the opener to "Fifteen Men" which I think are pretty damn awesome.

King himself sounds quite good, perhaps not as jazzed up or intense as his performances on the earlier albums in both his mainstays, but he does some cool falsetto counterpoints, and still can deliver some chorus parts that stand out from the rest. The lyrics here deal with cool subjects like Caribbean pirates and other period horror which helps expand out King's lexicon of chills, even if the music might in places feel a little dumbed down or redundant with cuts from In the Shadows and Time. I also got a kick out of the intro, "Lucifer", which is a chanted bastardization of "The Lord's Prayer". Cheesy, indeed, and the most useless track on the album, especially when you consider some of the great intros he's had before, but you just have to get a kick out of King Diamond thinking this was such an edgy idea in 1996. All told though, this is a solid record that I wouldn't necessarily break out unless I was really sick of the first four, except if I wanted to hear one particular tune. Certainly better than its follow-up, but not as timeless or inventive as I'd have hoped.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10] (This is your time, not mine)

https://mercyfulfatecoven.com/

Tongues - Hreilia (2017)

I listen to and enjoy droves of metal records each years, across a wide spread of the subgenres, but few and far between are those that can even for a few minutes deliver me some sort of a genuine creep factor. The full-length debut of Denmark's Tongues is one such case, a highly atmospheric black metal experience which effectively weaves in elements of doom and death metal to create an experience which alternates between haunting, paranoid and frenzied. While there are a lot of bands experimenting with hybrids of these stylistic niches, Hreilia succeeds where so many others falter or plane out because these gentlemen are masters of scripting simplistic but hypnotic guitars and bass grooves that bore down through your temples into your memory box.

I could tell you that I picked up fragments of Canadian alienists Antediluvian or Mitochondrion here, or perhaps scraps of the dissonant French masters Blut Aus Nord and Deathspell Omega, and all of that would be true; but the psychedelic submission and trauma of Finland's Oranssi Pazuzu is perhaps the closest equivalent, though Tongues don't rely strictly on such exotic walls of atonal sheen in terms of songwriting. Hreilia is intelligently set up by the slow, evil, subliminal grooving of the track "Perennial Waves", behind which you can make out all manner of scaling and falling ambiance that gives the impression you're in the wake of some midnight atrocity, the victims' remains cooling around you, bathing in the lunar rays, much like the cover. The album can grow much more savage, with faster blasted parts that rely on busier progressions of chords, but it's generally the rule that the material remains slower or mid-pace, extremely bewitching and atmospheric, and they play around more with the riffing structures and bass lines that actually matter, while using a guttural lead vocal as a constant that helps rein in and bind the material to a sense of bleak oppression.

Synthesizers are used tastefully throughout, whether in some of the shorter instrumental pieces or to accent the metal components with heightened, fell grace. They also use a saranji, an incredibly atmospheric Eastern stringed instrument which by itself can create all manner of depth and drama, and it balances off against the harsher sections of the albums smoothly. The mix is a fraction oblique, sacrificing polish for a more dingy and alien feel that better serves the blend of instruments, but this all works really well as a package alongside the crude, creepy colors of the artwork and the arcane symmetry of the band's logo, or the imagery of cosmic/weird horror and dread which permeates the lyrics. One of the strongest and most sinister new voices I've heard on both the Danish scene and the I, Voidhanger roster in some time, Hreilia is a record which is not immediately impenetrable, but still picks up accumulative value the more you listen through it, with its spooky and subduing licks that massage and violate your mind in equal measure. Euthanasia for happiness.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10] (seraphs become larvae)

https://www.facebook.com/tungerne

Force of Evil - Black Empire (2005)

Force of Evil was a project I had pretty high hopes for back when it was active, largely because I hadn't been truly satisfied with a lot of the later Mercyful Fate and King Diamond material, save for 9 and the Abigail sequel, so hearing a 'supergroup' that would bark up that same, twisted tree was promising. That the project was almost entirely comprised of alumni from those two Danish greats was an even greater reason to be excited...Denner. Shermann. Patino, and Holm. Three of those names I'd follow off a cliff, even with the possibility of impending disaster. Well, Black Empire is not quite a disaster, and superior to the eponymous record from 2003, but it does have one obstacle in vocalist Martin Steene that it can never seem to shake...

I'm not saying Martin Steene performs poorly here, this is a guy with more than capable lungs who simply seems to lack focus. When he's on point, as he is occasionally in his mainstay Iron Fire, he delivers a kinetic, frilly, unique pitch that might have distinguished him among the crowded Euro power field. I just think he goofs off too much, or he goes overboard, attempt to ape a lot of different vocal styles and exhibit his range, and some times the screams get a little try-hard when he's going full King Diamond or Ripper Owens mode, which is unnecessary over a lot of this music. I get that he's got the Mercyful Fate guys in the band, and maybe there was a particular set of expectations that this was some sort of proxy for them, but Black Empire only really comes together when he's just absorbing the music and complementing it with his mid-range and pacing, whereas on tunes like the titular opening he's just all over the place trying to develop a more orchestrated, schizophrenic performance that just loses me entirely. This happens on roughly 50% of the album.

Vocals aside, the music here is generally consistent, varied and interesting enough that the listener's attention won't lapse too long. There is a good deal of straight-ahead, mid-paced Germanic power metal rocking, mixed with a lot of the dingier, haunted grooves of the Shermann/Denner team that one would have come to expect from 90s Mercyful Fate fare like In the Shadows or Time. A lot of cool, cleaner guitars and audible bass hooks (like in "Days of Damien") help to round off the metal edge, and you can tell the band put a lot of thought into their choices, attempting to find a common ground between that reunion Fate era, and Steene's own band. However, while the music is well enough written, I often found that the grooves lacked the atmosphere and memorable chords that were so important on much of In the Shadows, replacing those traits with a more modern polish that doesn't do much for me. When they pick up the pacing towards power metal, the riffs also just seem to fly by without sticking to me.

The production sounds great, even when Steene is performing his theatrics, the tone of the rhythm guitars has a nice, clear cut to it that beautifully sets up the leads, and allows the drumming and the bass to hover through. The songs are all paeans to various horror stories or films, and they don't just stick with the safer choices either...Damien and Texas Chainsaw Massacre are paid tribute, but there are also tracks here devoted to movies like Candyman or In the Mouth of Madness, to name a few. "Disciples of the King" is just dedicated to Stephen King in general. Heavy metal and horror movies have had a relationship for all the decades they've existed together, but I often find that the music just feels too bright and glorious to truly convey the themes expressed in the lyrics. Like those other Danish legends which supplied the band's lineup, Force of Evil does focus a little on getting this right, with mixed results...the moodier sequences with the cleaner guitars are quite well done, but often erupt into lackluster melodies and riffs.

The cover art also looks pretty hot, but I'm not sure that it has much to do with the music. A pretty package, all told, but not really living up to its potential. With all the great Fate albums between Denner and Shermann, this one doesn't hold a lot of appeal, not even against the middling Dead Again. Or if you'd like to see more hard hitting material from the duo, their latest collaboration for the album Masters of Evil has better riffing than what you'll find on the two Force full-lengths. This is far more than a trainwreck, committed to its subject matter, and competently executed, it just doesn't add up to something I've ever wanted to listen to repeatedly.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10] (it's a long walk in the dark)

Mercyful Fate - 9 (1999)

Dead Again did not leave me with any huge expectations for its potential successors. It wasn't a terrible record, but the next rung down on a ladder of compulsion that started off high through the magnificent comeback In the Shadows, and then slowly scaled downwards with each subsequent effort over the 90s. But when the buzz about and artwork to 9 seemed to point to a revival of their sound on the legendary Don't Break the Oath, I admit to a degree of giddiness, since that remains my absolute favorite of the Fate canon in both songwriting and the mood that its sharp, gleaming studio production evokes in me every time I hear it.

Sadly, this was just nowhere near as good as the Danes were in their prime, opening with a dryer, if stylistically loyal track, before admittedly starting to hit closer to the mark further into its playtime. I had a much stronger reaction to it when it was initially released, but have felt any fire for it cooling off in the intervening years, despite it looking pretty snazzy. Roughly 4/5ths of the lineup had the collective ability to knock this one out of the furnace, with the exception of drummer Bjarne T. Holm, and even he had been around for the two records before this (which is not exactly cause for praise, I know). Ultimately, though, this is about an EP's worth of reasonably strong material diluted by an equal amount of tunes that don't work nearly as well, and approximately nothing anywhere that can even approach 1994's Time in terms of raw catchiness and construction.

The production is not exceptional, but it's solid...a bulked up Don't Break the Oath with a deeper end, which sounds good on paper but can't overcome the redundant feel to a number of the songs. The band shifts between faster paced heavy/power metal numbers like the opener "Last Rites", and the huge Wead and Shermann just about perfected on In the Shadows, as in "The Grave". These latter are coincidentally my favorite moments on the record, anchored by D'Angelo's lines and really driving home the dynamics as they erupt into faster paced segments, leads and King's falsetto shrieks. Drums are workmanlike, and the rhythm guitar tones are perfectly adequate and clear with enough chug to the lower end mutes that they feel fulfilling. Diamond's voice is a xerox of his finer years, capable of effortlessly harmonizing and capitalizing on that disparity between the soothing mids, the screams and the narrative, lower range...the only issue is that most of the individual lines here just don't feel as memorable as they were on the first five solo discs or the first three Mercyful Fate full-lengths.

Far be it from me to claim that the formula was 'tired', here, it's more likely that these particular assemblies of beats and notes didn't glue themselves to my ears like their predecessors. There is no sign throughout 9 that they've lost any of their competence or drive, though it would be difficult to claim anything here was really that ambitious either, especially not the lyrics to songs like "Sold My Soul" and "9" itself, which seem like no effort was spent. It might seem like I'm coming down hard on an album that I essentially find 'good' when I sum up all its parts. There's not seriously wrong anywhere. This is a step above Dead Again in most departments, and has some quality leads and a couple tunes I crave from time to time, but it's not even qualified for consideration when I want the 'full experience' and have records like Don't Break the Oath, Melissa, Fatal Portrait and The Eye lying about my flat.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10] (time has disappeared into an unknown evil)

http://www.kingdiamondcoven.com/site/

Artillery - Penalty by Perception (2016)

I was such a massive fan of Denmark's Artillery in their late 80s streak, leading up to the almost unparalleled By Inheritance, that it is impossible for me NOT to compare any of this 21st century reunion period to those first three seminal works. That's not to say I'm opposed to all the newer material; in fact I thought When Death Comes was an excellent comeback, despite the new vocals. But since that point, their material seems to have begun a downward spiral, which at best provides a tired doppelganger of the glory days, and at worst sounds like an entirely different band who just weren't on that same level as they once were. The last two records, while competent and well-produced, evoked a diminishing level of interest from me, and while Penalty by Perception doesn't exactly set a new low, I fear that it also doesn't offer much of a redeeming value if you're seeking either their technical power/thrash mastery, or their earlier, rough around the edges charm circa Terror Squad.

To be clear, Penalty by Perception is very much identifiable as an Artillery album. The brothers Stützer's distinct, uplifting riff style is present through the majority of the playtime. But since that has long been one of the two highlights of the band, it's also one of my disappointments. At its fastest and most frenetic, the guitar progressions here just feel like they're retreading By Inheritance or the prior post-reunion material, only with a lot less zest, and certainly less creativity. They can still sling an axe, of that there is no question, and yet the absolute over-the-top sense of melody and drive is lacking. The palm mutes are polished and chunky, especially in slower to mid-paced pieces like "Mercy of Ignorance", but the riffing level is at best a few steps below their prime, and lacks the raw and rugged appeal of a Fear of Tomorrow or Terror Squad. Tunes like "Rites of War" and "Live by the Scythe" sound like I've heard them before, only they've been paraphrased for less excitement, and at almost no point did a sequence of notes here stick out in my brain for more than a song's duration.

I'm also just not into Michael Bastholm Dahl's vocals in this band. He's a seasoned singer with a solid voice, largely mid-to-high range with a few flights north of that, but he just sounds too clean and tidy, even over these guitars here, which themselves lack some charm. What made the early albums work was their sense of aggression helmed by Fleming Ronsdorf's angry bark, and once By Inheritance arrived it was the contrast of frenetic melodic elegance with those same crude vocals. Here he just sounds like he could be singing over any other power/prog metal hybrid. That's not to say he entirely lacks an edge when he needs one, or that they don't complement him with some backing shouts and so forth to flesh out the variation ("Deity Machine"), but most of the time the performance just fell flat with me, too studied and restrained for the music to ever reach viral. Otherwise, the drums and bass are fine, the production is like a meatier modern take on the first couple albums, my disconnect really just comes down to the songwriting.

Penalty by Perception is still not a 'bad' album, per se, and they remain distinct among many of their younger, pizza thrashing peers, simply by virtue of them writing in this power/speed/thrash hybrid. I'd probably place this on the same level of its predecessor, Legions, a solid but unremarkable disc, one that I just didn't derive much enjoyment from due to the sterility compared to past brilliance.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Artillery-The-Official-Page/200465503336769

King Diamond - Dreams of Horror (2014)

Should a release like Dreams of Horror really even exist in 2014? King Diamond and Mercyful Fate might stand beyond criticism in the eyes of many fans due to their respective legacies and longevity, but in the age of Bandcamp, YouTube, Torrents, etc. when most people can't even be bothered to purchase new original music, how will a compilation of previously recorded material fare? The fact that the tunes here are 'handpicked' by King Diamond doesn't really matter for me, that's been done a hundred times by various bands/musicians and any claims to the contrary are hyperbole. 'This is the first time a band has EVER cared enough achieve this monumental accomplishment!' Get stuffed. The fact that they are considered the 'ultimate versions' of these songs is also irrelevant. No, my friend...my friends, the 'ultimate versions' of these songs are the ones that the fanbase experienced as they were being recorded and released since the 80s, that stuck with us and entertained us for decades. Or, really, fans of ANY age who first took an interest in and tracked down the first legendary five records, which still stand head and fucking shoulders above anything this musician has released in his solo act since 1990.

Now, there is some novelty here in that they've managed to score the licenses to include the old material from Roadrunner/Warner. So while there have been comps before, this one is the most 'complete'. Yet it really just seems that KD and Metal Blade have gone out of their way to snake-oil this collection as the 'studio versions of a live set', as if that is supposed to render some legitimacy to purchasing more music we already own and take the individual tracks out of their respective stories. How about if we want to experience a live KD set, we just go to a goddamn live set? In reality, while the mastering on these tunes might sound crystal clear and evenly distributed across various eras of the band, it's just another pocket picking with a collage of prior album covers, high production values on the package, the same old same old from a major metal label which is just not going to dupe anyone except 'gotta catch 'em all' collectors or the who might mistake it for a new collection. So it's your basic set up of several songs taken from each of their studio albums, the career retrospective anthology, with the first disc consisting of their career hot streak from Fatal Portrait (1986) to The Eye (1990), and then the vast majority of the second disc, with a few exceptions from The Spider's Lullabye and a handful more, being almost entirely avoidable. I mean, there are tracks from the horrendous The Graveyard on this thing, which no amount of studio wizardry can transform into quality music, so I find it nigh impossible to consider this the ultimate representation of the King Diamond catalog.

Any and all points I give here will be for the work put in remastering the songs, which retain a lot of their original crystalline clarity, in particular King's falsetto lines and the elegant, wistful leads that characterized the better half of their discography. Clearly they took some time doing this, and were intent not to just reproduce the material 100% off the older printings. I'm not entirely opposed to re-recordings of stuff with modern, evolved sounds just for fun (like a few German thrash legends have done successfully), but this is not one of those cases. That said, I still do not find these to be superior to experiencing the songs in their original format, in among their neighbors which helped relay the narrative of each of King's horror sagas. Sure, you can have favorite KD tunes and put together a playlist for yourself, but removing "The Family Ghost" and "Black Horseman" just isn't going to cut it for me when I want to immerse myself in Abigail. If it's a live show, and they want to pick and choose for the set, that's fine, but I just don't need to plunk down the dough on something which doesn't feel authentic. I'm not sure if this was some sort of contractual thing with the label, but I wish any effort expended towards this had simply been put into new material, because it's been well over a decade since they were turning out material I actually enjoyed (Abigail II, The Puppet Master) and I know on some of that I'm probably even in the minority.

Really cannot recommend this whatsoever unless you absolutely must own every single item with the logo on it, to the extent that you're like a KISS collector maniac, only for one of the other face painted rock stars. Or maybe if you're an audiophile who loathes some of the original recordings, but then you'll be left hanging since there are only snippets of the total backlog included. Granted, there's a little more here value than in your average, soulless big label anthology, in that someone or several persons sat on their duffs and tweaked a few knobs. So I doubt I'll slap a massive zero on it, but as such a huge fan of all that unforgettable music Petersen and LaRocque released through the 80s and earlier 90s, I can only implore the new listener to experience their legacy within the proper perspective. The proper context. You want to support the band? Start at Fatal Portrait. BUY Fatal Portrait. And then the next, and the next. Go to a show. If you can't, try and check out a video of a gig (I don't believe there are many official DVDs you can choose from). I can't wait to hear a new album personally, and I do hope it's a triumph, the best thing they've done in 25 years (specially after King's triple-bypass surgery). But this just isn't going to tide me over, and I find it pretty useless since there is just no chance I'll listen to this over the albums. And if I want a playlist for driving, I can always just press 'Shuffle' on the first six.

Sparkly backwash is still backwash.

Verdict: Why Bother?! [2/10]

http://www.kingdiamondcoven.com/site/

Mercyful Fate - Dead Again (1998)

Much as The Graveyard proved the nadir to all those things King Diamond, an uninspired and pitifully bland paragon of career exhaustion, so too does Dead Again prove for the King's off and on alma mater Mercyful Fate. Now, to be clear, this is nowhere near as bad as The Graveyard, an album I have actually had physical altercations with, broken up only when the authorities arrived and took us both away in handcuffs. Dead Again does have a handful of choice moments, scattered throughout the track list, but even those sometimes sound like partial retreads of ideas the guitarists had pretty much perfected in the past. The best I could say for this work as a whole is that it's a competent, high 'average', but it marked a clear declination in the quality of the Danes' musical ideas, part of which I'd attribute to the front man having been so busy for just so long, kicking ass I might add. In the Shadows was a superb comeback, Time was still quite memorable, Into the Unknown solid, and then whoosh...the steam ran out (thankfully not for the followup to this).

The riffing progressions were still distinctly Shermann/Wead, with a huge emphasis on groovier patterns as heard in cuts like "Torture (1629)", "The Night" and "Crossroads". Personally I found the guitar tone and production of Dead Again in general to be solid, a little on the dry side but fully evocative of those moonlit, classy horror aesthetics that the King had always invested himself into with both bands. The producer here was involved with In the Shadows, and King did a lot of the mixing himself, so it's not a coincidence that this is thematically and atmospherically a spiritual successor to the 1993 reunion epic, with a lot of those grooves that just storm in and cut out against the lighter material ("Since Forever", etc). The problem for me is just that the songs lack the extra, intangible 'something' which made for such a hot streak from the time Don't Break the Oath had arrived all the way to efforts like Time and The Spider's Lullabye. It's not an ineffably lazy round of tunes like one will find on the painfully sterile Graveyard, which had a mix like a Tupperware party in Prude county, but for whatever reason the songs just don't connect with me quite like most of the albums that were released before it.

Sharlee D'Angelo's performance here is solid in tone but rather forgettable, I often feel like a few more interesting grooves in his own playing might have supplemented the rhythm guitars with the 'edge' I needed to carve them into my memory. The leads are in general pretty bleak, you can perceive all the shredding and technique the guys are capable of meting out, but emotionally the breaks all seem rather phoned in and fit to order the song structures rather than the phantoms and haunts which underscore many of the lyrical themes. The drums sound good, mostly laying out standard hard rock rhythms since a lot of the material is fairly mid-level on the energy and momentum scales. As for Diamond himself, he gives the usual versatile performance, but doesn't seem to imbue a lot of the individual lines and stories with the same level of personality you'd remember from Melissa, or Don't Break the Oath, or even Fatal Portrait. On a technical level, most elements that went into this recording don't sound out of place or digressive from the three full-lengths before it, but once you get beneath the surface it just seems a bit hollow...

Even on the ambitious 14-minute title track, which is a jumbled mesh of mundane progressive rock swells, corny narratives and a few seconds of the most inspired and excellent harmonies to be found here. Others, like "Fear" start off really ripe and then grow progressively less compelling, while a tune like "The Lady Who Cries" is rather a dud that I struggle to remember at all. What I find most curious is that I find King Diamond at its heights and lows to be better and worse than Mercyful Fate. Abigail and The Eye just marginally surpass Don't Breath the Oath in my estimation, though I realize that's not the Officially Approved Opinion™; but on the other hand, records like Give Me Your Soul... and the dreaded Graveyard aren't fit to spit-shine Dead Again's inverted crucifix. So, as gloomy as I might have made my position seem in the opening paragraph, it's a testament to this band, that even the album I'm least likely to appreciate in their catalog, still isn't entirely a drag. In fact, this would make a pretty solid 4-5 track EP if all the better licks and vocal hooks were abridged. But it remains In the Shadows' less attractive younger sister, safe to propose to if you blew it when you were dating the original, but in the back of your mind, you'll always be wondering where that might have led if you just weren't such an asshole... And, yeah, I realize 'sister' is probably a bad choice of words when discussing the Mercyful/Diamond canon.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10] (I'm drifting still)

http://www.kingdiamondcoven.com/site/

Tongues - Thelésis Ignis EP (2014)

Unwilling to conceal themselves completely under one genre or the other, Denmark's Tongues straddle the border between the death and black metal genres, the former coming through largely in the growled vocals, the latter via the blasted drumming element and spurts of rollicking, warlike chords whipped up into a frenzy I imagined to be redolent of the mid 90s fervor of a number of their European forebears, whether as 'A-list' as Mayhem or lesser revolutionary like Belgium's Enthroned. What separates this duo from the usual grist for the mill, however, is the very organic tone which they've applied to their guitars, as well as the atmospheric and wildly unpredictable liberties taken within their compositions. Obeying the rules here, shattering them elsewhere, Thelésis Ignis is, if not a masterpiece, then at least a lesson in see-sawing between expectations and experimentation.

It's not so avant-garde as to slap you in the face, but Tongues likes to fuck around with both purely ambient passages and those created by dropping out the steady thrum of metallic percussion to let a few guitars drudge on in desolate oblivion, or to implement all these strange, atonal zipping guitars and dissonant chords which don't always seem to align themselves so closely with the firmer rhythm guitar riffs found elsewhere in the tracks. Not to mention how the vocals bounce back and forth between the aforementioned guttural, lots of layered howls, trad black metal rasps and then some really gruesome exhibitions of excess as early as the first tune "Void Meditation", a 10-minute piece through which most of the ideas I've already mentioned are cycled, but was also ironically the one I enjoyed the least here. "The Will of Fire" has more a more compelling, irreverent structure where the riffs are a lot more interesting, the vocals meshed into these patterns where they howl above the fray like someone having left a window open at night in a hillside asylum when the wind picked up. "Last Grip of the Hand of Guilt" pursues a more disjointed, doom-laden pace with these huge backing guitars that fuzz out at the top of their frequencies...

And the closer, "Bloodline of the Blind" is this yawning, apocryphal ambient piece with droning, deep vocal incantations and a wonderfully wrought palette of backing sounds, steady drips and tones that seem as if I'm listening to them in some extradimensional cathedral. That deep gut-felt vocal does grow monotonous, but that was actually hands down my favorite part of the album, to the point that I almost wished they'd distributed more of this ambient bliss throughout the longer metal cuts. But either way, Thelésis Ignis is far more interesting than your usual cut & paste Scandinavian black/death, with a resonant, fulfilling but unnerving production to it which doesn't necessarily obscure it's more subtle touches, but gives you plenty to think about on multiple listens. The riffs were a little mixed in quality, some compelling and some blander and less rewarding, but I mentioned the two bands in the first paragraph for a good reason: if you enjoyed the weirder deviation the former explored on records like Ordo ad Chao/Esoteric Warfare, or the more recent, atmospheric iteration of the long-standing Belgian fiends, or maybe even some of the stranger output of the last decade's Swedish black metal orthodoxy, then these are Tongues worth wagging.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10]

https://tongues1.bandcamp.com/

Woebegone Obscured - Marrow of Dreams (2013)

Though I laud these Danes for expanding greatly upon the sounds of their 2007 debut Deathstination, I still found myself having several hangups with a complaint I usually lodge against doom metal albums which overstay their welcome: if you haven't got enough material to really swell out a track between 13-20 minutes in length, then it might be better to chop them down. Not that there's anything particularly terrible in how Woebegone Obscured 'pad' out the intended epics, but as a sort of transcendental, 80 minute listening experience, this one often seems more empty than full. 'Empty' in the way that a lot of doom metal bands feel this genre needs to feel, perhaps, but hardly conducive to a mesmerizing or compelling auditory escape, so as much as I attempted to engage with the naturalist imagery of the packaging in contrast to the dreary glories of the compositional style, I just never sunk into that next level of immersion.

That said, Marrow of Dreams is an acceptable listen if you're in the mood for just something slow that might sort of fade off into the background, mood music for glade-gazing and cloud-counting which maintains a fraction of the gloomy edge of its predecessor. In fact, this is sort of like a 'life' alternative to the 'death' of the debut, and conveys its sense of sadness and expression in brighter shades than that crushing murk. There are still some pretty pure death/doom tunes like "In Suffering Darkness Dwell" which border upon the funereal, but even there the glacial melodies or cleaner strings woven throughout have an almost abstract notion of warmth that permeates the dusky, drawn-out chords. With almost no exceptions, I greatly preferred the more spacious and ambient-imbued passages of the album, where the strings really breathe, or where the cleaner melodic vocal tones reign supreme, or perhaps you'll hear a natural sample or two, but this is not exclusive, since the chugging and growling is almost inevitable, and it's almost constantly mundane in construction with no real creativity beyond the fact that there are often other atmospherics measuring off against it. Intuitive and simplistic as a rural trail, but lacking thrills or surprises around any corner.

Even though they occasionally drift into awkwardness, the variety of the vocals is actually a stronger point, with the more ethereal, tonal voices balanced against death/doom gutturals and a slightly higher rasp, it seems like there are multiple personalities in contemplation against the mourning naturescapes. The guitar melodies are also quite solemn, like a slow rain on tree leaves as it crashes to a forest floor, sort of reminded me of what I liked so much about Paradise Lost's amazing Icon record, only nowhere near as catchy or concise. This blend of slower, almost folkish doom atmosphere also had me reminiscing over the Yearning debut With Tragedies Adorned, a little known Finnish album which conjured up a comparable, rustic sense of environment with rays of sun glaring off hillsides and woodland canopies. Alas, where those works had the benefit of tighter songwriting, this one just tends to drift along the river for far too long, never quite losing sight of its purpose, but nevertheless rambling on inoffensively. It's not a bad album, but perhaps a little more indulgent in its vacuity than I was prepared for, and as a result not much about it stood to memory, very few moments inspired me to return to them repeatedly.

Verdict: Indifference [6.25/10]

https://www.facebook.com/woebegoneobscured

Phantom - Incendiary Serum (2013)

I've seen the Danish Phantom described as a hybrid of black and doom metals, but despite a few of the moderately paced, monastic chord progressions often associated with the Gothic doom style, this really fell to the former side of that equation more often and not. I'd deem their debut Incendiary Serum an attempt at elegant, atmospheric black metal with rather passionate, grisly horror inspired lyrics, very well produced albeit with a few rather predictable contemporary riffing passages that remind me of the usual suspects, i.e. mid-to-late 90s Satyricon, Dimmu Borgir, and possibly even a little Morgul in how they construct their ambiance with the very simple chord patterns or tremolo rhythm guitar progressions in mind. It's neither the most savage or grandiloquent disc in this style of extreme metal, but ultimately its tasteful, partially absorbing and there's one particular aesthetic choice that I found compelling...

That, of course, is the use of ambient sounds which really fill out the mix. Whether that's some ghostly little nuance, or a sample of something natural, even the preacher used in "The Sickening Sermon", which might have seemed a little obvious a choice, but wasn't something I'd heard much of lately. At any rate, this addition really gives Incendiary Serum a sort of 3D panorama of sound, with subtleties that made even the more banal metal components seem fresher than they might otherwise have proven. It's a small thing, really, and Phantom might not approach it as some technological wonder of production, but you have to wonder why so much of music hasn't evolved more in this direction. I understand that there's a natural adherence to core rock instruments in the field, but I think the human mind is really capable of translating these lavish environmental sounds into the riffing and growling, traditional experience, and I for one am ready. Usually when you attribute 'ambiance' to a band, you're talking specifically of passages in the songs that are scripted to that effect, or the surplus of atmosphere created by repetitious, resonant chords, but here it is a more literal, subtle distraction that intensified my overall reaction to the music.

Otherwise, this is vaguely symphonic with lots of pianos and grandiose synths that enforce the airy, 'phantasmal' rhythm guitars which are more or less a standard slew of genre tropes with a few more interesting, memorable variants spliced in. There's a slight berth of dissonance or psychedelia in how they compose, whereas the momentum of several songs recounts modern Rotting Christ (Triarchy of the Lost Lovers and beyond), with some threads of golden melody grafted onto the starlit night-sky mood that so many of the songs evoke. Shades glimpsing off some ancient battlement at the firmament. Lyrics are sufficiently creepy, more so than the songs. Death and black rasps intertwined, with not a lot of distinction among many other acts, but clearly some grotesque emotional attachment to the subject matter. The mix of the drums also felt really fantastic, and the cleaner bass lines helped create a 'classier' depth of sound than you'd find on your average basement black metal effort, for better or worse. Ultimately, this was an album I spun through a number of times, and semi successful, but it was that sparse ambient subtext that was the prime draw, and even then they could have used it more pervasively and I wouldn't have disapproved. A decent album. Another Danish band to watch, and with a stronger song set and some more creative guitars, potentially one to follow.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (inanimate but breathing)

http://phantomdk.bandcamp.com/

Exmortem - Nihilistic Contentment (2005)

If Nihilistic Contentment suffers from anything at all, it's that the album seems to settle for being a perfect hybrid of the two before it. That's not to say it's at all bad, quite the opposite; it simply doesn't bring anything new to the formula, with the guitar tone jerked straight off Berzerker Legions and the more interesting, adventurous riffing of Pestilence Empire. But for those potential listeners who might have found the fourth full-length to be a little murky and ominous in production, this is a far more brazen boot to the ass with a lot brighter tones and perhaps a more equivalent mesh of drums. Which is a good fit for what might have been their highest profile recording to its day, out on Earache's fledgling subdivision Wicked World which had once scored great efforts by new blood like Decapitated and December Wolves. I was pretty happy with this when it first came out, but as the years pass it simply doesn't stand to memory as much as the records which bookend it...it's quality enough to add to that impression that Exmortem was a truly consistent band, never once plunging into the mediocrity that hovers over the death metal underground like a cloud of smog...too bad more people just weren't paying attention.

Just because I don't hold it in the highest esteem of the Danes' career, don't mistake that for lacking some substance. In truth, the weirder riffing passages that shone through on Pestilence Empire are even more pronounced amidst the blasting surges. It may have (and remain) the most thoughtfully composed album they put out, and it often reminds me of a mix of Morbid Angel's Blessed Are the Sick and Covenant with a bit of Gorguts' later 90s absurdity circa Obscura. There's a lot going on at any one given time, and Smerte really varies up his own vocals with a mix of the guttural barks and a harsher, higher pitch that resonates more with what he does in Horned Almighty. Variation is paramount, with a pretty even range of full on blasted components, zipping and zooming atmospherics and slower, amorphous grooves which are loaded with deft and seamless double bass patterns. You absolutely get a lot of that sliding jerkiness (i.e. "Symbols of Inhumanity") found on left field death metal recordings where the constant transitions were well-meaning, it's not exactly random placement but you do feel like you'll be getting into one part and they're off to another before it fully develops. Still, Nihilistic Contentment seems like the most technically ambitious of their outings, even if the techniques just seem to be emphasized from particular tracks on its predecessor. It wasn't necessarily anything 'new', but they were clearly attempting to open that tear in space/time and make it such.

Actually liked that weird, jarring percussion/piano interlude "Swamp of Decadence" and wished it were longer, or that they would have promoted similar atmospheres elsewhere on the album, which would have certainly made this stand out more against the crowded genre in which it got lost. Production-wise, while my own preference might be for Pestilence Empire or their swan song Funeral Phantoms, this was the record that most death metal or brutal metalcore fans would most appreciate. The meat of the rhythm guitars is just dripping with fatty juices, and the more intricate guitars feel coiled, springy, and organic, very much in line with Obscura or From Wisdom to Hate. Bass is likewise voluptuous, while Galheim's drums here are just unbelievably tight and one of his overall better performances; bittersweet, because it was his last recording with Exmortem, but he certainly didn't let his bandmates down. Nihilistic Contentment is just this really tightly wrought showcase for the entire band, if they had gone further into atmospheres or written the tunes just a little more strangely, I'm sure it would be talked about alongside your Gorguts, Immolations, and Ulcerates, though the Danes wouldn't ultimately dwell on this specific sound. That said, definitely not a boring ride here; better than Dejected in Obscurity or Berzerker Legions and worth tracking down if you skipped it upon release. Six good albums, some a little better than others, not one a disappointment. Exmortem. May they go down in history with a little more respect than initially received.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10] (absurd posturing of the deformed)