Wolfheart Archives - The Metal Pigeon

Overheating: New Music From Paradise Lost, Katatonia, and More!

So in the midst of random days blurring together, the amount of new releases worth talking about has built up quietly but considerably. And having had a lot of time on my hands recently, I have been listening to a lot of new music as you’ll see below. But I’m sure you can imagine that my mind has been occupied with the kinds of things all of our minds are occupied with recently —- namely, the news: the lockdowns, reopening phases, and as of late, the protests that are still happening all across this country and beyond. So my time management took a bit of a hit in the face of seemingly endless hours to drift around aimlessly, or to go for sanity-preserving drives out and about just to get out of the house. Thankfully, I’m back at work finally, and I’m quite grateful for that, and so here’s some long overdue housekeeping: Many uber-condensed reviews of recent new releases (and one from earlier in the year), all music that’s been on my rotation this past long, long month and a half.

And if you’re wondering whether at the half year mark I’ve noticed any kind of theme or trend to the year’s musical output —- the answer is not really, and maybe that’s because time has been so abstractly dilated lately that I’m just not mentally equipped to perceive that yet. My great hope right now (for more than just music reviewing reasons mind you) is that the next six months are “normal” relative to what we’ve just gone through, and that normalcy will allow me the luxury of thinking about these kind of fun ideas and not worrying about, well everything I’d been worrying about for awhile now. I hope you all are doing as well as you can, don’t be afraid to hit up the comments section below with updates on your lives as well as thoughts about the albums below. Social media is so toxic lately, that we all might be in need of a better refuge to vent and scream into the void.

Sorcerer – Lamenting Of The Innocent:

Finally, Sorcerer’s follow up to the excellent The Crowning Of The Fire King (a Metal Pigeon 2017 Best Album of the Year) is here in Lamenting Of The Innocent. I hoped that they’d carry on with their special mix of gorgeous, transcendent melody and ominous, all-encompassing Candlemass-ian heaviness, and it seems like they’ve decided to not fix that which wasn’t broken. This band has two main draws for me, one is the jaw dropping vocals of Anders Engberg who I first came to notice with his live vocal performance on Therion’s 2001 Wacken Open Air recording, and next the ex-Therion guitarist Kristian Niemann, who might be one of my favorite modern metal guitarists ever. His clear tone and richly melodic, flowing style was a perfect fit in Therion’s epic, expansive compositions and the same goes for his work in Sorcerer. Like Therion, Sorcerer lives and breathes in expansive, cinematic sound worlds, and you hear that on the title track, with its balancing of brutal, punishing guttural moments set against the backdrop of a cosmos-invoking, hypnotically swirling, melodic lead guitar. Niemann is an outright star on this track, his solo mid-way through built on unexpected figures and patterns, yet seamless and smooth. Its a stellar song, this album’s “Unbearable Sorrow” that I so loved from their last record, and its got stiff competition from “Deliverance” where Johan Längquist himself shows up as the guest vocalist. He does an incredible job alongside Engberg, particularly in their enjoined duet past the three minute mark in one of the album’s most emotional moments. Again, despite the beautiful cello accompaniment, somehow Niemann manages to steal the show on the instrumental side of things here, his melodic figures adding honeyed sweetness to the smoky, ghostly doomy balladry. This is a strong album throughout, no real dips or lulls, and Sorcerer is proving themselves to be a band that can transcend genres —- if you don’t normally enjoy doom metal, you’ll be surprised at the variety of tempos here, at the brightness of some of these sounds, and the unabashed bounty of melody that’s spilling over the sides here. Its doom metal put through a trad-metal filter, closer to the spirit of classic Candlemass than any of the newer styles that doom has morphed into over the years.

Paradise Lost – Obsidian:

It’s always interesting to consider what new releases will pop up at seemingly the perfect moment in relation to your life. As despite cooking up an Anti-Anxiety Power Metal playlist to combat all the mental fatigue I and many others are dealing with at the moment —- the truth is sometimes you just need something really dark and angry to work through these negative feelings in the most visceral way possible. Paradise Lost’s newest, the aptly named Obsidian, is a raw, bleak-toned, brutal and angry affair that’s loaded with memorably jagged, cutting riffs and Nick Holmes brooding, deadpanned vocals with plenty of those agonized death growls that punctuated 2014’s The Plague Within and Bloodbath’s recent The Arrow Of Satan Is Drawn. You might recall that I wasn’t too wild on the last PL outing, Medusa, thinking it a bit too meandering and not really digging the reversion to the softer side of the band’s sound. That’s why I was enthusiastically nodding along to the driving, grinding rhythmic riffing that came barreling out the gates with the album opener “Darker Thoughts”, possibly my favorite cut on the album. Guitarist Greg Mackintosh’s darkly sombre, melancholic tone infuses his lead playing, that’s at once dissonant and unsettling yet gorgeous and shimmering at once. Aaron Aedy is crushing on rhythm guitar, sitting in a pocket that’s slightly behind the beat and aloof with its fuzzy tone, yet capable of reaching forward with alacrity whenever the aggression needs to ramp up a notch. The single “Fall From Grace” might be a close second as a favorite however, with its measured pacing and downcast choruses opening up into an unforgettable bridge sequence where Holmes laments “We’re all alone”, which is simultaneously haunting, depressing, and cathartic to hear. There’s a slight nod to the band’s 90s era I’m hearing on songs like “Forsaken”, and a much more noticeable nod to old gothic influences ala Sisters of Mercy on “Ghosts” —- so the band keeps its overriding death infused heaviness tempered to some degree. But that merger is what makes Paradise Lost such an engaging band, as particularly of late they’ve proven that they can reintroduce heaviness into their sound and not lose that dramatic, haunted touch that defined so much of their work in the late 90s and early aughts. This is an excellent album, not quite as gratifyingly crushing as The Plague Within, but few albums are —- its definitely a step up from Medusa to my tastes anyway, and I guess I’m finding out that I prefer my Paradise Lost fix grittier, grimier, and darker than some.

Fellowship – Fellowship (Ep):

Nascent UK power metal upstarts Fellowship are making quite an impression with their debut three song self-titled EP, available on Bandcamp. I know you’re probably wondering why a band would be worth writing about who’s only a mere three song EP into their career, but it’s justified given the truly inspired results they’ve managed in just these short fifteen plus minutes of music. They’re perhaps a bit of an odd duck coming from the UK, as despite the Maiden-ish twin guitar setup, their sound is closer to that twinkly sound of bands such as Sonata Arctica, Highlord, and Twilight Force. But as their vocalist Matthew Corry has intimated himself in comments made on r/PowerMetal, there’s outside influences at work here, particularly in the vocal melodies where you hear his pop-punk roots emerging in the way he manages phrasing, delivery, and lyrical meter. That combination can be heard in the highlight and leadoff track “Glint”, one of the best songs you’ll hear all year. It’s a rare example of a deeply introspective take on self-empowering lyrics in power metal that aren’t too attached to fantasy tropes or lost in the miasma of metaphysical psycho-babble that we sometimes hear in certain bands (*cough*Avantasia). That chorus alone is the kind of spectacular moment that gives me hope for this band’s continued artistic success, because if this is what they’re capable of right out of the gate, the well of inspiration must be deep. Equally excellent is “The Hours Of Wintertime”, where I was blown away by the energy building mid-song bridge sequence (“…and now I’m left here fighting on my own…”) —- these guys are skilled at maximizing the potency of their best melodies and refrains, wisely avoiding the one and done status that I’ve noticed veteran bands sometimes doing when overthinking songwriting. I get a real Power Quest Magic Never Dies era vibe on the mid-tempo keyboard driven “Hearts Upon the Hill”, particularly in the rhythmic strut of its verses (in fact, I hear a lot of PQ in their sound, but it’d be presumptuous to call them an influence). The band recently released a music video for their cover of Elton John’s Disney classic “Can You Feel The Love Tonight?”, and the band makes it their own and thensome, lifting the song from syrupy balladry to an energetic, starry-eyed wonder. It’s a great sign, because truly creative bands know how to re-imagine the songs they cover, not regurgitate them.

Fairyland – Osyrhianta:

Fairyland’s long decade plus wait for a new album has finally come to an end with the release of Osyrhianta, a wildly symphonic album that see’s the band picking up where they left off. I mean of course, the line up is different, but with Fairyland that’s to be expected. I’m not going to go into who’s in the band from last time and who’s not, because it’s an entirely different lineup to Score To A New Beginning, which had an almost entirely different lineup to The Fall Of An Empire… you get the idea. The important touchstones to mention however is the return of former drummer now bassist Willdric Lievin, whose participation seems to have paved the way for the return of Elissa Martin on guest vocals on the wistful semi-ballad “Eleandra” (heh, sorry if I got your hopes up there for a second). On primary vocal duty is current Wind Rose vocalist Francesco Cavalieri (yes from the “Diggy Diggy Hole” band), an interesting choice to be sure, but I gotta admit he oddly fits into Fairyland’s opulent oeuvre quite well, his slightly gruff edged vocals lending a bit of grit and heft to the band’s grand, flourishing melodies. At the still beating heart of Fairyland is keyboardist Philippe Giordana, and his songwriting style is still geared towards regal, heavily orchestral keyboard melodies directing the flow of traffic, with guitar solos complementing things to spectacular effect —- check the :40 second mark of “Across The Snow” for a gorgeous demonstration of this synergy. This is definitely not riff-oriented power metal, with Fairyland staying true to their Rhapsody-ian cinematic roots than leaning towards any of the current crop of modern Italian power metal bands making waves lately. In that sense this sounds like a record out of the early to mid 2000s, albeit with a glossier production job. And back then I wouldn’t have enjoyed this (I became a fan of Fairyland’s stuff only recently actually), wanting a heavier, riffier take on power metal than what the Italians were dishing out at the time, but I’ve grown to appreciate this particular vein of the subgenre, and am enjoying Osyrhianta quite a bit. It’s a little top heavy, with the back quarter of the album sounding somewhat repetitive, but that could be a testament to the quality of those first seven songs being genuinely excellent. A fun blast from the past that sounds thoroughly relevant in the power metal landscape today.

Green Carnation – Leaves Of Yesteryear:

This is yet another one of those long dormant veteran bands springing back to life that’s been so frequent as of late. I’ll confess that this was a name I’ve heard before, likely from my MSRcast cohost Cary, but can’t remember listening to until now when I stumbled upon them a bit ago on Spotify’s new metal releases playlist. Green Carnation are a prog-ish, sometimes metal and sometimes hard rock band from Norway on Season of Mist records, which isn’t surprising given the label’s roster these days but very far removed from its extreme metal roots. Although not entirely far removed I suppose, as this is the longtime, on-going project of ex-Emperor bassist and ex-Carpathian Forest guitarist Tchort, who handles guitar duties here as well. His work here is far removed from his extreme metal work, owing more to the 70s prog-rock guitar rock of Deep Purple and Uli Jon Roth era Scorps. It’s a perfect partner to the slightly hazy, hard rock vocals of Kjetil Nordhus, who sounds a little more relaxed here than he does in his other gig as Tristania’s male co-vocal lead. The aforementioned prog dimensions of the band are most discernibly shown in the winding, often exploratory songwriting modes that take most of these tracks into eight plus minute lengths. Solos are allowed to blossom gradually, often to gorgeous effect as heard in “Leaves of Yesteryear”, and there’s often an uptempo yet unhurried balance going on in these songs that keeps you engaged, never checking out. I think the hard rock foundations of this band really do wonders to that end, because the most visceral and engaging factor that I enjoy about this album is its basic listenability. It’s that I find myself nodding my head along to the riffing, reveling in the awesome lead breaks that abound, and generally just rocking out to the catchiness of songs like the psychedelic soaked “Sentinels”, and the dirty blues-based edge of “Hounds”. This is tremendously satisfying, and a good one to check out if you’re in need of a dose of hard rock this summer.

Katatonia – City Burials:

The Swedish jelly to Opeth’s peanut butter in terms of bands who were once rooted in death metal but meandered out of it into something entirely more… cleaner we’ll say, Katatonia are back with yet another release that likely will frustrate longtime fans. The thing about Katatonia however is that I find their post-death metal experimentation and overall direction far more palatable and engaging than I do Mikael Akerfeldt and company’s recent outings. Katatonia have tended to describe their music not as a particular vein of metal, but as simply dark and heavy —- and even as they’ve continually lightened up the sonic aspect of their sound, those two definable traits have certainly never gone away. I was thrilled with how much I enjoyed 2016’s The Fall of Hearts, and I’m even more ecstatic to say that I might love City Burials a bit more. I think its accurate to say that this is ultimately a rock record with a metallic coating, because these songs are built more on rhythms and guitar figures that more loose, perhaps even spacier at times then your traditional metal based guitar approach. Songs like “Behind The Blood” have sly, slinky vocal hooks, where Jonas Renkse’s smooth but tortured voice eases from verse to chorus and so on with subtle inflections. That leads to eyebrow raising surprises whenever he elevates things with a shout or a yell, as in “Lacquer” when he raises his voice to an unexpectedly high pitch during the bridge sequence. But beyond Renkse’s hypnotic pull as a captivating vocalist, Katatonia works together as a whole —- this is as unified a band record as you might hear all year, all these elements working together towards a singular purpose, with no one really striving to stand out. Guitarists Anders Nyström and still new guy Roger Öjersson are laid back, restrained even, preferring minor flourishes even in lieu of having space for extended guitar solos. That might frustrate some listeners who want more of a livelier approach to things, and make no mistake, this is a laid-back album relative to, well everything else I’m reviewing in this article. This might be a mood based record for many, maybe even for me, as I do find myself listening to it in my grumpier, sadder moments.

Wolfheart – Wolves Of Karelia:

Finland’s most prolific blackened death-doom creator, Tuomas Saukkonen, has returned with the third Wolfheart record in the last three years, an incredible rate of output considering he also released a new Dawn of Solace record earlier this year in January. Wolfheart’s Wolves of Karelia is as full throated and impressive as the previous two, albeit in a more hammer-smash-face kind of way than the progressive metal experimenting of Tyhjyys, or the more emotionally resonant side of their sound displayed on Constellation of the Black Light. This new album is tied together with a lyrical theme (concept even?) focusing on the Winter War, a conflict that pitted Finland against the invading USSR at the dawn of World War II. Being a Finnish band, you can expect Wolfheart to bring perhaps a nationalist flair to its overview of this conflict, and indeed they do, never spelling things outright, but this is as close to Sabaton territory as they can come without loading up the keyboard lines and triumphant choruses. As Saukkonen bellows in “Hail of Steel”, “These lands belong to the north / These are the woods where wolves of Karelia rule”, and that’s kind of the theme we’re running with across these fittingly punishing, and straightforwardly brutal songs about defiance, the deathly cold, and the ravages of war. So on “Horizon On Fire”, the band’s more unrelenting, blistering side comes through, ditto for cuts such as “Born From Fire” and the album highlight “The Hammer”, as aggressive a song the band has ever done. I will admit that I longed for some more moments where we’d hear the Finnish melancholy influenced side of their sound, with the aptly named “Eye of the Storm” providing the only spell here. This imbalance makes Wolves the band’s heaviest album by far, but also prevents it from being among my favorites, as Constellation had more of that light and dark nuanced shading that I’ve come to love about Finnish bands.

Alestorm – Curse Of The Crystal Coconut:

It’s taken a long time to get to this point, where I’m actually reviewing a new Alestorm record. I’ve had a bit of a change of heart about this most ridiculous of bands, a perspective shift if you will, in large part due to talking to people who are fans of them and I suppose not taking myself so seriously either. Honestly Curse Of The Crystal Coconut was a breath of fresh air when I first heard it the other week, and these days anything that puts a smile on one’s face is greatly appreciated. I have no frame of reference in saying the following (given that I haven’t paid attention to Alestorm’s past few records apart from their debut), but some of these lyrics seem to be dripping with poison, aimed squarely at the band’s own fanbase. I’m thinking specifically of “Shit Boat (No Fans)” and “Pirate Metal Drinking Crew”, and they’re funny —- but yeah, I get the feeling that Chris Bowes might be a little over the band’s association with pirate imagery. Case in point is the lead off track and album highlight “Treasure Chest Party Quest”, where lyrics like “We’re only here to have fun, get drunk / And make loads of money / Cause nothing else matters to me” sort of say it all really. And here’s the thing, and this will sound judgemental, but I’ve see Alestorm live many times, I’ve seen their fanbase —- and truthfully, they kind of annoy me too. I get it. Moving on however, I will commend the level of musicianship here, there’s folk instrumentation aplenty, all very easy on the ears. There’s a rather astonishingly bold power metal moment on “Call Of The Waves”, with a truimphant chorus that surprised me by how stirring it is, so much so that I placed it on the Anti-Anxiety Power Metal Playlist. I’ll recommend this for a lighthearted goof if you need it, and I’m betting lately we all do.

Myrath – Live In Carthage:

Myrath had a tough break when the whole pandemic situation hit, caught in the midst of a tour and thus getting stuck in the country they were in when travel restrictions started being enacted all over Europe. I’m not clear on the details, except to note that the band members have only just begun to make it home over the past couple weeks here (its now early June). In the midst of this, the digital release for their Live In Carthage live record/film came out and I was listening to this pretty intensely in early April. I don’t normally review live albums, as I don’t tend to listen to most of them anymore, but I found myself making an exception for Myrath, not only because I was curious about live renditions of some of my favorite songs of theirs being present here —- but also because Myrath’s sound was part of the tonic I needed to stave off negativity and anxiety that I was experiencing at that time. So much of their sound is built on major keys, be it in Zaher Zorgati’s often euphoric vocal melodies, that veer from that gorgeous Arabic phrasing that I love, to ultra emotive hard rock/power metal informed delivery heard on gems like “Sour Sigh” and “Wide Shut”. And I dunno, just like Orphaned Land, Myrath infusions of pan-Arabic music into their particular blend of prog metal and hard rock just speak to me, it takes me out of my environment and plugs me into modern day locales near the Meditteranean —- the clash of old and new that seems to characterize the cityscapes of Tunis, Cairo, Jaffa, and countless other places. Where I live in Houston, a relatively young city, we mark the passage of time seemingly by the development of new shopping centers, strip malls, and fast food places. Point is, it’s music that seems to connect me to an older, far more dramatic old meets new merging, an escape, but one that’s firmly locked in our real world. As for this live recording, as expected it’s cleanly recorded and mixed, a little too clean for some perhaps, but I enjoy the balance of soundboard recording and crowd mic-ing that the band was striving for in the mix. During the last chorus of “Storm Of Lies”, Zorgati backs off to let the Tunisian audience carry it on their own, and they loudly bellow “…don’t let me goooo!”, creating a transcendent moment for a song that is a plea for connection and not being alone.

Darktribe – Voici L’Homme:

So some of you might remember that I talked about this album on the MSRcast back in January when we were beginning to talk about the early 2020 releases. This is Darktribe’s third album, and it arrived on January 17th, and while I listened to it quite a bit around its release, it kind of slipped from my rotation and the next few crazy months happened. So around a week ago I was going through all the 2020 releases I’d listened to so far and this album grabbed my attention again, and I’ve realized that I never wrote about it here, and honestly I haven’t heard a lot of people (even in power metal circles) talking about it and that’s unfortunate. Darktribe hail from France, an unusual spot for a prog-power metal band whose sound is akin to Kamelot. But despite their music sharing the major keystones of that band —- a four-piece band with one guitarist/one bassist that employs a focused, economical, thick riffs in the front with vocal melody driven songs approach, Darktribe choose to liven up their sound with an ample splash of Euro-power. You hear that subtle addition in tracks like the album highlight “Back In Light” and the title track. The former is smooth and understated, with vocalist Anthony Agnello’s rich, smooth tenor delivering a slyly catchy chorus via some effortless melodic phrasing and never really launching his vocals skyward until just before guitarist Loïc Manuello’s joyful solo built on an articulately phrased progression and a wild bit of furious Kai Hansen-ing to punctuate it’s tailing off. On the latter, Manuello cleverly mirrors Agnello’s vocal melody about a half beat behind, creating a reinforcing of that melody that elevates that chorus even more than Agnello’s captivating delivery of lyrics in French manage alone. His employing his native tongue is a nice touch, because he sounds so extra confident in delivering it, not to say that his English is flawed (anything but). DarkTribe have a biblical/religious conceptual and lyrical theme running through their work much in the same way that Theocracy does. Don’t let that be a stumbling block, this is one of the most artistically significant releases of the year, and it’d be a shame if it got forgotten because of it’s unfortunate release date.

Boisson Divine – La Halha:

There’s always a record that comes out of nowhere every year, increasingly from band’s I’ve never heard of before, that manages to sweep me away before I knew what hit me. This year, it’s the summer’s most euphoric, life affirming release from a folk-metal quintet from the Gascon region of France with an odd name and a truly unique take on the genre. Boisson Divine don’t do folk metal like we’re used to, with dark overtones and often folded into an extreme metal patchwork ala Eluveitie, Manegarm, and many others. Their approach to the style is a bouncy, bright, almost celebratory take on traditional Gascony folk traditions married to meat and potatoes heavy metal with splashes of power metal’s neoclassical tendencies here and there. The closest comparison to come to mind would be if Flogging Molly were from Gascon, and played metal not punk —- and to lean into the folk metal genre a bit, at times I’m reminded of the playful stuff that Otyg did on their two albums way back in the day (ie, more folk than metal but still hard-hitting stuff). The mood here is noticeably, I dunno how to explain it… laid-back is not right, but I guess to say these songs are without anger is closer to the truth. As the band explains on their Bandcamp bio, their lyrics can be about historical figures, heritage, and legends, but also about everyday things like rugby and feasts. They emphasize the latter as much on the music video for “Liberat”, as soulful and unforgettable a single you’ll hear all year. The band hikes through what I’m assuming is their native countryside, pitches up a campfire, and gets to eating, drinking, and playing —- and that’s kind of the vibe I’m hearing throughout this record, that of enjoying and savoring simple, fine things in a pure way. It’s strangely the sentiment that we all could use right now, when everything about life seems extraordinarily complex, and we’re all too stuck inside our own heads, being isolated from friends and fun. I needed this record.

November 4, 2018 2018, Amaranthe, Black Metal, Death Metal, Elize Ryd, Folk Metal, Power Metal, Uncategorized 13 Comments

Autumn Harvest Pt II: New Music From Thrawsunblat, Amaranthe, Brainstorm, Wolfheart and More!

The new releases are plentiful throughout October, and fortunately I’ve been better about keeping on top of them this year than I have in the past. Some of these are albums I’ve been looking forward to for most of the year, the new Wolfheart being chief among them. I will admit to being extremely curious about Amaranthe’s Helix, their first post Jake Berg release and debut of new clean singer Nils Molin (of Dynazty fame). Some of you might remember that I wasn’t that keen on their last record Maximalism, which saw Berg’s input and role greatly diminished and as a result led to his departure (which had the silver lining of resulting in a really fun record by Cyhra, his new band with Jesper Stromblad). And of course there’s a new album by Germany’s trad metal stalwarts Brainstorm, a band I’ve been a fan of since way back in the early 2000s during the Metus Mortis / Soul Temptation era. There’s something appropriately fitting about these guys delivering a new record this particular year when I think power metal is in the midst of a sweeping artistic resurgence, a reminder that there are still older bands who have stayed relatively consistent with their style when many of their peers started incorporating hard rock / AOR stylings. But does the new album stack up against the staggering amount of excellent releases by newer power metal bands? I’ll tackle that and other burning questions in the reviews below!

Thrawsunblat – Great Brunswick Forest:

I’ve written about Canada’s Thrawsunblat before, with the band’s 2016’s album Metachthonia landing on that year’s best albums list. Borne out of the incense smoke of Woods of Ypres, former Woods guitarist Joel Violette along with Immortal Bird vocalist Rae Amitay (here on drums) have been quietly releasing amazingly strong blackened folk metal records since 2013, and its been interesting to behold the range of this project, from maritime folk infused charm to blistering black metal fury. Their folk aspect is at once inspired by and very removed from the European folk that we commonly associate with the idea of folk metal, with Violette embracing his native roots of all things Canadian and pushing to the fore folk music of Northeast Canada and in particular the Atlantic coast. I’m only passingly familiar with that kind of music, but I gather that its related to that strain of New Englander lyrical folk song that I’ve found across the years, not quite sea-shanty material but musically joyous all the same. The black metal sieve that Thrawsunblat run this folk music through results in something that is rather unique across the folk metal landscape, one very different from other North American black metal artists that are mostly from the Pacific Northwest.

All that being said about the band’s rich folk influences, Great Brunswick Forest is a surprising album for Violette and Amitay to release right now as a followup to what was a roiling, furious black metal affair in Metachthonia. Picking up where the band left off from the plaintive maritime folk of “Goose River (Mourner’s March)” and the gorgeous gem “Maritime Shores” from the Wanderer album, the new record is an entirely acoustic endeavor, except that it doesn’t behave like the way you’d expect a typical acoustic recording would. That means instead of ballads and forlorn laments, these songs are uptempo, jaunty affairs, bright and bursting with chiming guitars, lively violins, and a swinging percussive attack. The album starts out with its most representative model of this in “Green Man of East Canada”, a song that owes its lyrical influence directly to folk music, with its tale of two strangers pausing to speak near a darkened wood. Violette is a sharp, nuanced lyricist, and you can tell that he really loves the vein of woodsy Canadian folk that he’s clearly tapping into here, relishing it with every line and stanza; “I’m no stranger to these lands, / Though they’re not my own. / I left with the changed tides / To call this Brunswick kingdom home”.

Things get more adventurous musically with the aggressively uptempo “Here I Am A Fortress” and the chaotic frenzy heard in “Thus Spoke the Wind”. The former boasts some tremolo-esque acoustic guitar patterns amidst the most traditionally black metal song structure on the album, and the cross pollination of style and instrumental medium is strange to behold at first, but its such a well written song that you become accustomed to the jarring juxtaposition quickly. A key component in making experiments like this one successful is the fiddle playing of one Keegan MC, who is all over this album and really becomes the musical glue and stylistic motif throughout. He has a way of engaging his instrument to create moments of dissonance that support the acoustic tremolo sections and give them a dose of ringing, electric vibrancy. But its Amitay who steals the spotlight in “Thus Spoke…” with her unleashing a battery of what you might term acoustic blast beats during the middle instrumental passage, pushing the way forward for tremolo style acoustic guitar riffs and slicing fiddle blasts to barrel forward in the album’s heaviest, most astonishing section. It was a little chaotic to make heads or tails of at first, but now the song is a favorite of mine, and I always seem to pay attention to that instrumental break.

The absolute show stealer of a song here however is “Via Canadensis”, where I think Violette sneaks in some subtle electric guitar throughout to add some muted crunch to what is a joyful, perfect slice of folk metal. I get a very strong Woods 5 vibe from this song, and musically it wouldn’t have felt out of place on that album where David Gold played around with contrasting musical and lyrical clashes. Lyrically though, this is Violette at his most positive, singing during the refrain “On we go — to the standing stones we’ve yet to raise!”, and that lyric takes on a mythic quality during the nearly a capella mid-song bridge. Similarly, I love the lyrical sentiment and supporting musical sweep that pins together the second half of “Dark Sky Sanctuary”, where Violette delivers his most smooth vocal melody yet in a hooky, Vintersorg-ian chorus. Like the folk metal legend himself, Violette’s vocals are probably going to be hit and miss for some, but frankly most of these songs wouldn’t sound right with another singer, having been attuned to his voice in the writing process. But “Dark Sky Sanctuary” is the exception, as I could hear this slice of folk-pop magic being sung by anyone and everyone, including a female voice (hopefully at some point YouTube will yield a cover version of this). This a magical album, particularly in its arrival at this time of the year when autumn is making its strongest entrance in years. I can’t predict where Violette and Amitay will take Thrawsunblat next, but I’m absolutely over the moon about where they’ve been throughout their career.

Brainstorm – Midnight Ghost:

So we all have our comfort foods right? Mine would be mundane but occasionally essential things like sourdough bread with real butter, soft chocolate chip cookies in bar form like my mom used to make, or whole wheat toast spread with peanut butter and a drizzle of honey with a cup of coffee —- actually this is starting to sound like the ramblings of one that has recently begun another bout of carb kicking (dammit). But thankfully here’s my metal equivalent of comfort food back with a new release to help take the edge off, as Brainstorm has been consistent in familiarity and quality for the better part of two decades now. Its a little over-simplifying to refer to them as meat and potatoes metal, because underneath those chunky riffs and earwormy choruses is a Nevermore-esque progressive technicality. Singer Andy B. Frank is one of the most underrated/overlooked vocalists in metal, capable of an operatic tenor, as well as a gritty, Jon Oliva-esque snarl perfect for the kind of heavier trad that Brainstorm specialize in. They’re a perfect “centering” band, for those times when you feel you’ve gone too far on the avant-garde/blackgaze/ambient/noise/funeral doom end of the metal spectrum or perhaps too far down the Rhapsody/Freedom Call side and need a reminder of metal at its most melodic AND heavy; so you queue up a classic like Soul Temptation or Metus Mortis (or better yet, this still exceptional live set at Wacken 2004 that is the epitome of everything wonderful about our genre) to get yourself right.

Its commendable that Midnight Ghost is the band’s twelfth release, as they’ve been knocking out records at far more regular intervals than most metal bands, at times even delivering two in back to back years. Whats absolutely astonishing however, is that this may very well be the most inspired and accomplished album they’ve ever made, in a recording career that started way back in 1997. Because the core of their sound hasn’t changed over their career, aside from a more welcoming embrace of the choral vocal backed chorus and a touch more symphonic keyboard dressing, I’m speaking to the quality of the songwriting. This is evident in the instant ear-worm gratification of “Ravenous Minds”, as classic a Brainstorm song we’ve ever heard with Frank’s vocals delivered with a sense of empowering belief. He has such staggering strength as a vocalist, singing here with a wildly confident display of his range, from gruff lows to Queensryche-ian highs in that spectacular chorus. At this point, Frank knows the pivot points around his vocals so much that you can hear that awareness reflected in the songwriting, particularly in that everything flows around his crafting of the vocal melodies. You hear it in the string and piano intro to “Revealing the Darkness”, the melody previewing Frank’s epic, arcing vocal during the chorus. Founding guitarists Torsten Ihlenfeld and Milan Loncaric rattle off a machine gun spray of punctuating bursts that are always book ended by a meaty riff to round out a verse section. Its that commitment to heaviness that separates Brainstorm’s dalliances with prog-metal from that of bands such as Dream Theater and Seventh Wonder.

Speaking of other bands, I can’t be the only one who hears a real Iced Earth Horror Show era meets Judas Priest Firepower vibe on “Jeanne Boulet (1764)”, from the aggressive, neo-thrashy attack to the “iter” ending of the lyric in the refrain, its a mash-up of sounds that are pieced together in a very different way for Brainstorm. Its been interesting to hear these influences pop up on this album and bleed through Brainstorm’s normally solid musical wall that they’ve spent a career erecting around themselves. From the moment I first heard them, this was a band that didn’t necessarily wear direct influences on their sleeves, only the general gist of those influences. That they sound more relatable to other German metal bands of all subgenres than say Maiden or Priest or Metallica is a testament to the way they’ve carved out a sonic niche of their own. Frank reminds me more of Mille Petrozza, Rage’s Peavy Wagner and a touch of Hansi Kursch than anything, but even those three singers combined aren’t an accurate representation of his vocals. I can’t believe that I’m getting to say this about his work on Midnight Ghost, but its thrilling to declare that he’s never sounded better. Brainstorm knows what they’re about, and their artistic success depends almost entirely on Frank’s inimitable talents, and its thrilling as a fan to hear them unexpectedly deliver an album this confident and masterful so late in the game. Far from comfort food, this is a meal at that really expensive steakhouse you’ve been waiting and saving for. One of the best albums of the year – write it down.

Amaranthe – Helix:

I won’t even pretend that I wasn’t highly curious about the state of Amaranthe circa 2018 in their post Joacim Lundberg state. Lundberg if you didn’t remember (or preferred not to… you haters) was one of the Swedish sextet’s founding vocalists, their clean male vocalist who had as equally big a hand in the songwriting as guitarist Olof Morck and fellow vocalist Elize Ryd. I first started listening to Amaranthe’s debut out of sheer curiosity in 2011 because you simply could not avoid hearing mention of this band that was cooking up this crazy melo-death/power metal/ pop mash-up. What became clear to me as I veered from somewhat agahst/mildly curious to rather appreciative of their frankly audacious metallic pop, was that Lundberg was a central figure in the formulation of their sound. He described his own contribution to the band’s sound as “melodic Bon Jovi type vocals” and he crafted vocal melodies in that vein that were able to both contrast and complement Ryd’s sugary pop voice. At times he would sing alongside her, in effect providing co-lead vocals that lent a needed earthiness to the melody, while he also had moments where his solo lead vocals would color however briefly the band’s sound with gritty hard rock energy. Of course the band’s two harsh vocal screamers in Andreas Solveström and since 2013 Henrik Englund Wilhelmsson were the melo-death element when Morck’s Soilwork-esque straight to the point riffing was taken into account. It all somehow largely worked, almost improbably so, a kaleidoscope of sound that was difficult to classify yet appealing beyond reason, particularly on 2014’s Massive Addictive.

That balance of elements that made everything gel together was disrupted when Lundberg’s role was gradually diminished on 2016’s Maximalism, the result being a sound that leaned too far in the pop direction and resulted in an album that was oddly disconnected, a jumble of random ideas. In my review for that record, which was written after Lundberg had already left the band, I predicted that his departure would be a huge blow for Amaranthe. When Lundberg resurfaced soon after in Cyhra with ex-In Flames guitarist Jesper Stromblad, their debut was loaded with the same kind of quality vocal melody writing that characterized Lundberg’s work in Amaranthe. It was a fun, strong, and ear-wormy album in a way that was in keeping with Lundberg’s desire to marry those aforementioned Bon Jovi type vocals to melo-death guitars. I mention that because it helps to put into context Amaranthe’s attempt to retreat into the style of the first two and a half (ish) albums, and why that attempt feels unfocused and often empty. That’s not to say that Helix isn’t at times successful, because a song like “Countdown” is every bit the satisfying merger of electro-pop and fuzzy metallic guitars into a direct, focused chorus that is packed as tight as a fun-sized Snickers. And Ryd reaches something approaching inspired on “Dream”, a song that borrows from the tempo and temperature of the quasi-power ballad “Burn With Me” from Massive Addictive, her vocals shining in a duet with new co-vocalist Nils Molin (who’s also in Dynazty, if that name was ringing a bell). Molin is a safe but misguided choice for the band, and that’s not a criticism of Molin as a vocalist, because he’s clearly a talented singer and his work in Dynazty is far better a showcase than what he delivers on Helix. The problem is that his style is all wrong for this band, far more suited to the soaring power metal of his other band and lacking anything resembling an actual rock voice that Lundberg provided.

But elsewhere on the album, its honestly hard to come up with anything resembling a successful example of why I started listening to this band in the first place. Things feel off all over the place —- the lead single “365” is a half baked version of “That Song” from Maximalism, and as controversial as the latter was upon its release, at least it had something interesting going for it with its Queen inspired stomp. With “365” the rhythmic strut never materializes, the vocal melody isn’t nearly as hooky as it should be, and everything just feels like a mess. Similarly unfocused is “Inferno”, which attempts to recreate the sound of the band’s first two albums, but again there’s not enough strength in the vocal melody to make it worth basing a song around it. Molin sticks out in a particularly bad way here, just this out of place voice singing an unconvincing lyric. And look I know, even when Lundgren was in the band Amaranthe’s lyrics hardly ever made sense, but his voice somehow sold what he was singing regardless. The intro verses for songs like the title track and “Breakthrough Starshot” really illustrate why Molin seems so out of place, when he’s forced to sing lyrics that are at best abstractions when he’s used to delivering relatively more literate lyrics in Dynazty. This might improve with his next album with the band, but I get the sense that he doesn’t quite know how to tackle these lyrics, how to get emotionally invested in them and in turn where to place inflection points.

Lets not glide past “Breakthrough Starshot” either, this being the sequel that the awful “Electroheart” never needed but we’re unfortunately getting. Its actually miles better than that atrocity ever was, with an actual memorable hook that will reverberate throughout your brain all day. When fellow metal critics sharpen their knives for this band, its because of songs like this, where for some reason Wilhelmsson is screaming out the lyric “My expectation is the accelerated / Another journey to the breakthrough starshot” —- just, WHAT NOW?! Ryd’s vocal interjection in the hook via her “yeah yeah’s” reminds me of something I’d have heard from a Britney Spears single in the late 90s (and probably did), but that’s not the kind of pop Ryd should be evoking within the context of Amaranthe, who owe more to Euro-pop and EDM than American bubblegum dreck. Perhaps more awful than “…Starshot” however is the weirdly titled “GG6”, where Wilhelmsson takes the lead and delivers the most maddeningly non-nonsensical lyrics you’ll ever hear, complete with a baffling barrage of profanity that just comes across as lazy and dumb. Everything else on the album is just meh, ho-hum paint by numbers attempts at landing a chorus worth remembering; “Iconic” gets the closest but its still lukewarm, and the ballad “Unified” is where we feel Lundberg’s absence the most. Morck is a talented musician and songwriter, but its more clear than ever that Lundberg was the brainchild behind making the band’s vocal melodies work. They’ve lost the magic ingredient that made their weird metallic amalgam work, and that’s probably going to be news to many who think of Ryd or Morck as the heart and soul of this band.

Wolfheart – Constellation of the Black Light:

Wolfheart’s Tuomas Saukkonen has been releasing records at perhaps a nearly unrivaled clip since his Before the Dawn days from the early aughts onwards, at times with various side projects popping up throughout various years. There have been years where he’s released more than one album, and only two years since 2003 where he hasn’t released anything (2005 and 2014, although during the latter he did chair the producer’s role for a Rain of Acid record). That kind of staggering level of artistic productivity has yielded somewhere in the range of 15-16 complete albums and a host of EPs and splits/singles. I got introduced to him through his Black Sun Aeon melodic doom project, and soon after stumbled onto the fact that said project was already over and he’d forged a new band in Wolfheart, who are already at album number four since their inception in 2013. One of the things my MSRcast co-host and I had been raving about last year was the band’s brilliant release Tyhjyys, which was one of the host of folk-metal gems that 2017 unearthed in a nascent revitalization of that subgenre. I shouldn’t have been surprised that we’d get a follow-up so quickly in little over a year, given Saukkonen’s track record, but its still stunning to consider the turnaround time given just how different Constellation of the Black Light is from its predecessor.

Whereas Tyhjyys was a diverse album, full of songs with slower, more moody, shifting tempos and a utilization of silence and space that made songs like “The Flood” so hypnotic, Black Light sees Wolfheart making the leap into a more wintry, primal, furious style of blackened melodic death metal. I know its going to be an on the nose comparison for many reasons, but its their equivalent to Insomnium’s surprisingly aggressive epic Winter’s Gate. This is a level of aggression that Saukkonen has dabbled in before in brief glimpses and the occasional full song, but here he keeps it as his primary weapon, with only shades of Tyhjyys folkiness and quietude used as accents. The opening track epic “Everlasting Fall” uses a mix of both in its intro passages, but erupts into one of the more violent explosions I’ve heard Saukkonen unleash, propelled along by Joonas Kauppinen’s unrelenting blast beats. The song’s emotional pulse is heard in Olli Savolainen’s keyboards, producing a backdrop of sound that is more Porcupine Tree dreamscape than anything owing to orchestral impulses. I can hear a guitar in there mirroring what the keyboards are doing, and I think I caught sight of that two Saturdays ago in October when I caught Wolfheart live on their tour with Mors Principium Est and headliners Carach Angren. Its a ten minute opening piece, which isn’t shocking in this kind of metal anymore, but it is new for Wolfheart, their longest song to date though it certainly doesn’t feel like it. And its actually the most representative song on the record at that, showcasing the range that they’ll explore throughout the rest of the album and preparing us for the neck-snapping brutality that follows on “Breakwater”.

Its might seem surprising at first if you saw the Napalm Records backed lush music video for “Breakwater” being ushered out as the first single for this album, because this is as uncompromising a black metal attack as Wolfheart have concocted. Wildly spiraling tremolo riffing, blast beats, all with Saukkonen veering between death metal brutality and a blackened rasp in his vocal approach. Its not exactly the kind of insta-catchy single that Napalm is known for having its bands release first, but then they must have known what they were getting into before signing the band. This is Wolfheart’s first release for the growing “major” metal label, a sign that they’re moving up in the world a touch, and have the budget required to fly to Iceland with a small film crew and drones to shoot what is a spectacular looking Skyrim tribute. Things will make sense around the time Saukkonen first stumbles upon the waterfall in the video, when the song downshifts into something moodily mid-tempo, yet still shifting and undulating with its melodic guitar lines, ala Insomnium once again. Its on the far more subdued “The Saw” where we finally get a taste of that old Wolfheart sound, with its stop start riff sequences, thick vocal layers and a major key melodicism pouring through the lead guitar melody. I have detected a little impatience on my part when sitting through “Defender”, which isn’t a bad song by any means, being a straightforward melo-death affair, with a head-nodding worthy riff progression, but its lacking in impacts and surprises. It would’ve been the start of a lopsided album were it not for the rejuvenating ability of “Warfare” and the following “Valkyrie” to close out the album.

Those concluding two songs might actually be one long song, because they feel connected in sound and spirit. The latter has one of the more satisfying opening riffs, a percussive rhythmic piece that is the kind of battle call that a band like Suidakra likes to use quite often. That everything suddenly ends on a lone piano delivering a dirge-like melodic fragment is classic Finnish metal to a tee, from not only a melo-death perspective but also from legends like Sentenced, a Finnish calling card if you will. This is a quality, deep dive worthy album that was released at the perfect time because there’s just something extra special about hearing this kind of wintry music during the first breaths of autumn in the air. I got a big dose of cold Finland this past month, seeing no less than five bands from the country within that time frame. The Carach/Mors/Wolfheart gig was everything a great show in a dingy venue could be, shortcuts and all: The bands were traveling light on that tour, packed into one tour bus with notable cuts to band lineups to save on money. Wolfheart ran keyboards through a laptop, Mors ran their absent bassist through another laptop, and well of course Carach Angren could hardly afford to bring a string quartet with them so they too used the laptop. For all I knew it was the same one. That didn’t matter, and Wolfheart were as intense and crushing onstage as this album would have you believe, and well received for a band on their first North American trek. I was a little surprised that they didn’t play anything off Tyhjyys, leaning on two songs apiece from every other album including the new one. The hope is that with Napalm’s promotional engine supporting them, they’ll find their way back here on another few supporting tours. I’ll be there for sure.

Conception – re:conception:

I usually don’t review individual songs or single releases, with few exceptions, and Conception’s first new music in what, twenty-one friggin years certainly qualifies. Their EP is coming out in a few weeks and this single has two pieces of music that will be on that release and one exclusive track, “Feather Moves”. I’ll talk more about the songs at length on the review for the EP in the future but I just wanted to chime in here to talk about the stunning realization that we’re hearing Roy Khan’s vocals once again. Most of you have read that piece I did on Khan many years ago about the giant hole he was leaving behind not only in Kamelot but in progressive / power metal in general with his at the time retirement. The nature of his departure from Kamelot, the cryptic statement he released at the time —- everything really pointed towards a permanent exit, and I just couldn’t help but be a little selfish about it, thinking of all the great lyrics and vocal melodies we were being denied. When news broke that he was heard (literally) in a Norwegian rehearsal studio jamming with his former Conception bandmates, the classic lineup at that, I may or may not have gone into full on denial mode. But with April’s Pledgemusic campaign announcement, everything was confirmed and so was the utter joy at not having to watch another year tick by where Khan’s talents were being utilized.

He simply sounds excellent on these two songs (one instrumental, yeah… I know), his voice rich and full of that ability to inflect incredible amounts of emotion in a single phrase. To Conception’s credit, they’re really picking up where they left off on Flow, with heavily rhythmic, undulating (I sure love that word lately it seems) riff progressions and impassioned songwriting. Tore Østby is shredding all over the place, with little interjections and micro-solos to fill in the vocal gaps, and the rhythm section of bassist Ingar Amlien and drummer Arve Heimdal playing in unconventional, groove oriented, almost poly-rhythmic patterns. But wisely, Khan is left to direct traffic with his vocal melodies, singularly able to shift the tone of a song from dark and stormy to angelic and uplifting as we get to hear on the chorus to “Grand Again”. There’s a filter on his voice in select moments on this song, nothing that’s distracting, in fact it actually adds to the song but I would like to hear something on the EP that really sees him cut loose. His range does not appear to be diminished in the slightest, I’d even say he sounds close to Ghost Opera era Kamelot here. Hopefully the time off did him good in that regard, to lay off the heavy touring and simply rest his vocal chords. There’s folks voicing concerns about the future of Tommy Karevik’s own golden pipes due to Kamelot’s touring schedule, but I think that’s a long way off, being that he’s almost a decade under Khan in age. There’s a morality tale here for career bands, to reconsider making a living from being on the road and go the semi-professional route like our guy Tuomas Saukkonen from Wolfheart. At the end of the day, its about an artistic legacy right?

March 28, 2017 2017, Death Metal, Melo-Death, Power Metal, reviews 2 Comments

The Bounty of Spring! New Music March!

mpavat The bounty of spring indeed, because this month I’ve found myself going through at least eight new releases, a few of which aren’t listed in the reviews below but might be up later sometime. Some of these are also late February releases that I had overlooked that month or simply thought were coming out in March (or more accurately, I didn’t get around to listening to until recently). There’s a lot to get to and I’ve tried to keep things short and concise for you and me both, so we’ll apply that to this preamble too. Begin!

Wolfheart – Tyhjyys:

On the latest episode of the MSRcast, listen to my cohost Cary and I collectively slap our foreheads in bafflement at not knowing that Wolfheart was the newest project from Tuomas Saukkonen. I did have vague stirrings that I had remembered the band name somewhere, but laziness compelled me not to do a simple Google search on it (or I got distracted by Twitter, both likely culprits). Saukkonen is the restless spirit behind Black Sun Aeon (an MSRcast favorite), Before the Dawn, Dawn of Solace, and the short lived RoutaSielu melo-death project. He’s the Chris Black type (he of High Spirits, Dawnbringer, and Pharaoh fame), the kind of musician who operates under a project/band name until he feels its run its course, upon which he creates a new moniker, and begins to record under that for however long he feels its inspiration. These projects have been different enough musically to warrant such divisions, though they are almost always cooked up in a Finnish broth of blackened doom along with melodic death metal structures. Whereas Black Sun Aeon was a very Finnish extreme take on gothic metal, Saukkonen leans in an altogether new direction here, more towards the progressive simplicity of latter day Enslaved. Its a natural fit because one of his trademarks is his clever and engaging use of minimalism as a guide in his songwriting, allowing for the usage of empty space to create tension and to amplify heavier passages.

Case in point is the single “The Flood”, an acoustic led epic that recalls mid-period Opeth for its delicate patterns and understated minor key melodicism. I love a track that’s so confident in its overall strength that it allows for moments of sparsely adorned quietude where the drums are the dominating instrument, helped by Joonas Kauppinen’s jazz-inflected fills (check 2:04 – 2:26). That aforementioned Enslaved influence can’t help but be heard on a cut like “Boneyard”, whose main riff is a mish-mash of tremolo picking and modern day prog-metal, book ending a chorus that’s elevated by a bed of forceful keyboard atmospherics. Wolfheart’s keyboard usage is multi-faceted, not only serving as quasi-orchestral arrangements at times, but as purposefully artificial in tone as on “The Rift”, to conjure up a complementary melody to the rhythm guitar riff that brings to mind Omnium Gatherum and Insomnium (not bad touchstones to have). Unlike those fellow Finnish artists however, who occasionally swim in tones that can be described as warm, or summery (as in the honeyed melodies of One For Sorrow), Wolfheart choose to work with decidedly wintry sounds. That’s not a bad thing because they have the songwriting chops to keep it interesting, but for folks who can’t handle an overload of that stuff, it could act as a stumbling block. That being said there’s not a weak track on this album, and with only seven songs (excluding one rather well written instrumental intro) they could hardly afford one.

The Takeaway: Modern day Enslaved meets Blackwater era Opeth while being bear hugged by Metallica-esque accessibility. Worth a shot for extreme metal neophytes and old hands alike.

Evocation – The Shadow Archetype:

Evocation aren’t exactly the most known name in death metal, despite existing in some spirit or another since 1991(!). There were demos and more demos in those early days, then a sudden implosion that halted any activity for years upon years. This halt in momentum prevented their ascent to the region defining status of their fellow Swedish death metal peers in Entombed, Dismember, Grave, and Unleashed. They eventually returned in 2007 with their long overdue debut album Tales From the Tomb, and went on to release three more between then and 2012. They were largely built upon that expected SDM template of buzzsaw guitars and dirty riffs, albeit with hellish vocals caught between a melo-death scream and something far more guttural. Eschewing any guest appearance by the cookie monster, Evocation presented a far more accessible take on this style of death metal, something later co-opted by Grave on their excellent Endless Procession of Souls. But its been five years since then, and while that gap of time might have frustrated anyone who felt like the band was a bit on a roll, those were four relatively uneven albums, with 2010’s Apocalypse being the only one I ever go back to. So I’m happy to report that the break has been beneficial for Evocation, with The Shadow Archetype easily being the best, most confident album of their career. If there’s any justice in the metal world, everyone will recognize this and perhaps even those in the non-metal worlds will give it the Gorguts Colored Sands treatment.

This is an addictive, refreshingly simple and direct re-imagining of the Evocation sound, a distillation of the band’s strengths into a cohesive, brutally effective death metal tonic. The sonics here are deep, raw, and dirty yet recorded with unbelievably wide dynamic range and instrument separation —- take the opener “Condemned to the Grave”, where ominous lead guitar motifs cleanly glide over riffs that hit you with the force of a monster truck smashing over junkyard cars. If you’re getting hints of At the Gates and The Haunted at moments, such as on “Modus Operandi”, you’re not hearing things. I suspect that the band deliberately kept reinforced the Gothenburg influence they’d picked up through the years and use it as a way to explore further melodicism within their traditionally straight ahead Swedish death metal approach (“Survival of the Sickest” being a prime example of the latter). This helps to explain the acoustic instrumental “Blind Obedience“, the most Gothenburg/Jesper Stromblad-ian thing they’ve ever attempted. I can’t pick a favorite track here, because this is a flawless album from start to finish, but I’ll give a special nod to “Children of Stone” for its mix of complex songwriting and structure held in check by ferocious guitar riffs that practically slam their way into action during transitions from verse to chorus and back again. What a song, what an album.

The Takeaway: A must listen to for 2017, one of the early contenders for the album of the year list.

Immolation – Atonement:

Immolation have always been a unique specimen among modern American death metal bands, and to be more precise, from their hometown New York death metal scene at that. They certainly don’t sound like any of the NYDM bands I’ve heard, especially not the ones approved by those few dudes at local death metal shows around Houston and Texas in general sporting those silly NYDM brotherhood patches on their ripped jean jacket vests. I’ve idly wondered if those guys would consider Immolation false metal based on how far they stick out from other bands from the region (transcended more like), but never had a real inclination to strike up a conversation with any of them. Probably for the better. I don’t think I’ve ever discussed Immolation on the blog before because I didn’t actually pen a review for 2013’s Kingdom of Conspiracy, feeling a little blah about that album in general (I’ll be revisiting it soon to see if that’s changed); but I was a huge fan of their 2010 masterpiece, Majesty and Decay. That’s in my top five death metal albums of all time, an astonishing album of brutal death metal that was more oppressive in spirit than in overwhelming walls of sound, a key to its success. It would always be a difficult benchmark to top, and I wonder if that’s something that was on the band’s collective conscience this time around, four years after Kingdom of Conspiracy.

On Atonement, the first thing I noticed before playing the album was the cover art, purposefully more colorful and vivid than their past three releases (including the 2011 Scion A/V presents Providence EP), as well as the reintroduction of their old school logo. I went in expecting some reversion to an older school sound, bracing to hear evidence of the band I once enjoyed purposefully packed away from sight and sound. That turns out to not be the case, and I’m at a loss to explain the cosmetic changes surrounding the album because Atonement is still Immolation fully engaged in their modern mode. That is, death metal written with intelligence, thought, and attention to detail. There’s still an oppressive atmosphere pervading everything, but the instrumentation is still clearly defined, with space and breathing room allowed for everything even during the most intense and hectic passages. A true highlight here is “The Power of Gods”, which features a cleverly written ascending scale pattern that both serves as a hook and a motif at the same time. Equally impressive is the title track, with its deft intro riff pattern repeated throughout as a moving anchor tethering strains of furious, roiling chaotic noise in all directions. There’s musical curiosities as well, such as the bizarre guitar figures that adorn “Thrown to the Fire”, almost treading into non-sludgy sludge-doom territory (if that makes any sense!). Vocalist Ross Dolan is on fine form throughout, but he always is, an ageless wonder in the world of brutal death metal, of particular note is his menacing energy on “When the Jackals Come”, delivering its eponymous lyrics with enough clarity so there’s no mistaking his meaning. Yikes.

The Takeaway: A return to form, if not a confusing way to go about it. No its not as awesome as Majesty and Decay, but few albums are… if you’re new to the band, I highly recommend starting there and then moving to this.

bloodboundwod_zpsqsygakq1 Bloodbound – War of Dragons:

I’ve never been able to get my head around Bloodbound, mostly because they can’t seem to do the same themselves, so thoroughly schizophrenic have they been over the course of their career. So here’s where I have to use caution, because I do love that a band like Bloodbound exists because its 2017 and we need all the new blood (no pun!) we can get to keep this beloved subgenre going. But good grief, they’ve really taken a turn for the worse here and have succumbed to a rather disheartening recent trend within power metal to amplify the style’s most egregious tendencies to the max. I’m thinking about those purposefully silly bands like Gloryhammer and Twilight Force, because there’s no way songs titled “Tears of a Dragonheart” and “Dragons are Forever” can be excused as anything else. I’m not anti-dragon, but that’s just goddamned silly (edit – this might be the most ridiculous sentence I’ve ever written). Are you kidding me with this stuff Bloodbound? I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, because as alluded to above, these guys have been all over the place stylistically and thematically since their debut album. Yet the lineup on War of Dragons is still three-fifths of the band that recorded the truly inspired Tabula Rasa…so what happened?

Well line-up changes happened first of all, with the 2010 exit of vocalist Urban Breed bringing in current vocalist Patrik Selleby. Lost in that transition was not only Breed’s rather unique aggressive mid-range vocal approach, but his innate talent as a songwriter, writing his own lyrics and vocal melodies during his time in Tad Morose and bringing that talent to his two Bloodbound albums as well. Selleby is a far more conventional power metal voice, a good one at that with an impressive upper register, but he’s far more dependent on predictable power metal vocal patterns. Its hard to figure out if he’s the reason for the band’s increasingly simplified songwriting formula over the course of these past three albums but I’d equally point the finger at Bloodbounds three remaining original members. As a forgiving power metal fan, I can’t shake the feeling that these guys are looking for a straight shot to the most accessibility the subgenre can provide, and that means following whatever route that currently seems to be working for others. Only that can explain the increase in Gloryhammer-esque hamminess that characterizes War of Dragons on a lyrical level, and also the co-opting of Sabaton styled keyboard lines that mirror the vocal melody. That works for Sabaton because its part of their organic, original sound —- and the hamminess works for Gloryhammer because of their overall package. Bloodbound has no identity of their own anymore, and maybe the loss of Breed’s signature lyrical depth and intelligent vocal melody design on Tabulsa Rasa suggests they never did.

The Takeaway: The McDonalds of power metal then.

Mors Principium Est – Embers of a Dying World:

The lesser noticed little brother of Finnish melodic death metal (relative to Insomnium and Omnium Gatherum that is), Mors Principium Est are now on album number six, which is not remarkable in its own right except to suggest that they’ve had plenty of time to direct their sound in a more focused, organic direction. That actually is the feeling I’ve gotten from Embers of a Dying World, that the band is still in love with the Gothenburg template (nothing inherently wrong with that), but has this time around stumbled upon a way to incorporate more of a Finnish approach to their melo-death. That doesn’t mean they’re copying their brothers, but this is the most noticeably different sounding album in their discography, owing to Gothic-tinged keyboard arrangements, mournful melodies set to slower tempos in places, as well as the surprising inclusion of an actual ballad here in “Death Is The Beginning”. Its a bold experiment, one that I’m surprised they haven’t tried earlier, and here they include female vocals for the first time that I can remember, and it works really well. Check out “The Drowning” for a vivid example of just how much the band is stretching into unfamiliar territory —- a slightly below mid-tempo synth groove with Queensryche meets melo-death lead guitar drapery with playfully subtle tempo accelerations in the glide-in and out of its addictive chorus. This isn’t the Mors we once knew, yet they still sound like themselves, a challenge for any band to achieve.

This expansion of their palette I believe is a direct result of guitarist Andy Gillion’s gradually increasing songwriting influence since he joined up in 2011. His first two albums with the band displayed flashes of this transforming influence, but here he fully blossoms, and it seems that longtime vocalist Ville Viljanen and bassist Teemu Heinola are happy to let him take most of the songwriting reins. Its an odd quirk that its taken a British guitarist to coax out more of a Finnish sound from Mors, but Gillion brings a brashness, a boldness that the band has needed both musically and personality wise. Case in point, check out his tour diary for the band’s stay on this year’s 70000 Tons cruise; he’s an outgoing, upbeat, and playful personality. This is all just idle speculation, but he seems to have loosened up the band in general, and I can hear this affect Viljanen on Embers more than anyone, his performances here are the best of his career. He’s been one of the best melo-death voices for a long time, possessing that perfect condensed scream-growl vocal, but on new songs like “Apprentice of Death” and “Into the Dark”, he tries new approaches, invoking more of a blackened Satyr vibe. Its a subtle change, but it suits him and helps those two songs breathe. The whole band is breathing easier on Embers in fact, this is one of the nicer surprises this year.

The Takeaway: This may be up for vicious debate, but this is certainly my favorite Mors Principium Est album, so full of unexpected twists and turns yet not sounding like they’ve transformed into anyone else.

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