The slowdown of the approaching Christmas season is beginning, but we’re far from out of quality releases still. This is a week for the dark and slightly eccentric.
Auriferous Flame – The Insurrectionists and The Caretakers
Genre: Black metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
This 3-track work of Greek epic black metal should, at less than 31 minutes, either be considered a short full-length or a long EP. Not that it feels incomplete, but I could easily see the experience stretching over twice the timeframe. This is the kind of sound that so vividly conjures up mental images that it feels strange not having the visuals of a full-blown theater performance to go with it. Even the production makes it feel like it’s coming from a large, elaborate stage, with ghoulish howls and moans resounding through dusty stone corridors, and the performances of the band/actors not really directed specifically at you, but aimed with the purpose of pulling the entire theatre into the same, haunted medieval setting from which they are drawing their inspiration. From a more grounded standpoint, this is crisp, atmosphere-rich black metal with a dark fantasy theme, sounding primitive in the best possible way, with plenty of conviction behind the performances, and being quite straight to the point when setting off into its stripped-down riff sections.
Highlight: “The Caretakers”
The Body – The Crying Out Of Things
Genre: Experimental/sludge metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
This is one of those records that will make you question whether your speakers and/or audio card just broke down in the middle of the listen. Set to heavy, droning beats, everything is intentionally distorted in various, noisy ways, and going in unpredictable directions, from hypnotic ambience to mechanical anger. It’s all dark, all ominous, all sounding like a malevolent spirit having taken over the controls of the Matrix and making everyone’s experience of it unbearable. There are some particularly badly distorted shriek-vocals employed liberally throughout the album (fans of the band might be used to it by now) that seriously mar the experience for me personally.
The Browning – Omni
Genre: Metalcore/electronic metal
Subjective rating: 2/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
If you take Turmion Kätilöt’s (for those who are familiar with those crazy Finns) brand of techno metal and suck every drop of fun out of it, then pump it up with some deathcore heft and metalcore-y melodic sensibilities, then you would get this. The playing is incredibly precise and surprisingly diverse, with some mild cyberpunk-y dystopian vibes to go with it.
Codespeaker – Scavenger
Genre: Sludge/atmospheric death/doom metal
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 2.5/5
Dark, mono-mood, sludge-like metal that transitions between cerebral atmosphere and death metal-like anger and brutality, just fairly sluggish, like it’s doing it all from its knees, never really managing to stand up fully.
Defences – Shadowlight
Genre: Alternative metal
Subjective rating: 1.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Aside from severely unimaginative, pop-oriented melodies and straightforward, stereotypically “modern metal” rhythm and instrumental tendencies that makes my skin crawl, this is well-produced and catchy alternative metal fronted by a highly talented vocalist.
Earthburner – Permanent Dawn
Genre: Grindcore/death metal
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Earthburner is a so-called “supergroup” of grind/death artists from various different bands, among them Sanguisugabogg. It’s got a murky-low-fi production, but for the most part the savagery of the riffs and ragged vocals shine through. It’s one-dimensional, but uncompromisingly style-faithful.
Impellitteri – War Machine
Genre: Heavy/power metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
A guitar-driven, shred-like project that’s all groove-laden Priest-like riffs and solos, with soaring vocals going on about very un-grounded things. It’s vibrant and energetic, but struggles to get down any memorable melodies.
Make Them Suffer – Make Them Suffer
Genre: Deathcore/metalcore
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
The problem I usually have with deathcore is that I find the riff- and rhythm approach formulaic, and if there are clean melodic sections, their main purpose seems to be to boost the album’s accessibility. Make Them Suffer do not commit these sins on this self-titled release. The riffs and beats work hard to achieve infectious grooves and to get into creative patterns that give the songs actual character. The melodic sections are compelling and finely woven in among the dominant heavy fabric, and the dual harsh/clean, male/female vocal approach brings so much life to the experience. A revolution in songwriting it is not, but if you’re into heavy metalcore and alternative metal, then you should dive in head first.
Highlight: “Weaponized”
Massacre – Necrolution
Genre: Death metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Take a look at that album cover and tell me it doesn’t seriously raise your expectations for this album. Alas, doing so would be a mistake, as myself I can testify. Sure, you’re getting a thick coating of that rowdy, grimy, old school Florida death metal, but compared to the current highlights of the genre, this stuff feels fairly complacent. There’s very little spark to this thing, and it coasts along on a sound and vibe that hasn’t really evolved in any way. Enjoyable, but not outstanding.
Molder – Catastrophic Reconfiguration
Genre: Death metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Yuck! Slowly immerse yourself in this pit of rotting offal and listen to the surprisingly active pulse of decomposition. If you don’t need your death metal to land like an artillery barrage, but care more about sinister grooves and being left with a feeling of needing to disinfect your ears, then you’ve come to the right place. Molder have fortified themselves on the shelf of mid-tempo, thrash-infused old school death metal. It’s like watching a cult splatter film – you never really know when it’s gonna completely goof out and when it’s gonna serve up the nastiest kill you’ve ever seen. That being said, this is not a surprising album in any real way – if you liked the band’s 2022 release “Engrossed in Decay”, you’re gonna bang your head to, and involuntarily grin at, the same kind of things on here. It’s the kind of album that might fly under the radar among the heavy hitters, but will offer you the same amount of entertainment. On a superficial listen, the rhythms may seem a little repetitive, and the riffs lacking a tad of bite, but these guys get up to so many different antics throughout that you really shouldn’t allow yourself to miss.
Highlight: “Masked in Mold”
Paragon – Metalation
Genre: Power/heavy metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 2.5/5
Power metal with hard-hitting bass and drums, and some fairly meaty riffing, giving the album a slightly menacing streak. However, it all builds to exactly the kind of old-school, simple, trying-to-soar choruses that you expect from fairly unimaginative veterans.
Paysage D’hiver – Die Berge
Genre: Ambient black/doom metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
The kind of black metal that sounds like it’s carried to you on the wind in the middle of a blizzard. It brings to mind old, dark fairy tales of malevolent creatures of the night, preying on the lost and weak in a desolate, cold landscape of long nights, and days bringing nothing but distant echoes and whispers of a hostile natural world that’s entirely beyond your control. This is a marathon of an album at 1 hr. 42 min. of runtime, with only one track lasting shorter than 10 minutes. It makes you feel extremely isolated and a bit disoriented, swept in who-knows-what direction by the constant surge of the music. It’s an experience of few, slow and nuanced changes, with the more direct, harsher black metal elements pushed way back and given the expected low-fi treatment. If you are not completely entranced by the long-form, atmospheric melodies, then large parts of this listen will feel torturously stretched and uneventful, but if you are in the mind to allow yourself to be, then this album will put you thoroughly under the spell.
Highlight: “Urgrund”
A Scar For The Wicked – Acolythus
Genre: Technical death metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Meaty-riffed and appropriately speedy tech death with a slight blackened and even gothic vibe, but nothing that takes the music in any particular directions. The band knows how to get into driving grooves, and, as you’d expect, demonstrate a high degree of instrumental control. But they don’t really succeed in delivering beyond the expected.
Sólstafir – Hin Helga Kvöl
Genre: Avant-garde folk rock/black metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Listening to this epoch of Sólstafir can be quite bewildering if you don’t know a thing or two about what to expect. And even then you’ll likely find yourself raising your eyebrows at the stylistic wrestling match taking place on this latest full-length. There’s nothing quite like it out there, but at this point they’re clearly so comfortable with it, that it makes you comfortable with it by extension. What it is, is slightly shoegazing folk rock and fairly sullen, blackened and doomy atmosphere that’s pulled in starkly different directions with the varying rhythms, moods and sense of urgency of each song. If each of these variants wasn’t delivered with such confidence and stylistic maturity, it might all simply fall apart, and some listeners might still find it too inconsistent. But as a piece of enjoyable musical art it stands firmly as a solid achievement.
Highlights: “Hin helga kvöl” and “Vor ás”
Suidakra – Darkanakrad
Genre: Melodic death/folk metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
For those not familiar with this veteran German band, they play Celtic-themed melodic death metal. To their credit, the folk-elements don’t come through in any overt, over-used fashion, rather living as a noticeable backdrop to the rather aggressive melodeath. The rhythms on this album are very heavy handed, to the point where they feel like they’re choking the grooves an getting stuck in unnecessary patterns, hampering the progression.
Tungsten – The Grand Inferno
Genre: Symphonic metal
Subjective rating: 2/5
Objective rating: 2.5/5
This has got to be one of the simplest rhythm approaches I’ve heard all year. It sounds like they started with a metronome… and then didn’t build on it in any way. They flirt with several modern riff- and melodic styles, sounding committed to none of them. It’s big, industrial symphonic metal that has no idea how to do anything else.
Witnesses – Joy
Genre: Progressive doom metal
Subjective rating: 2/5
Objective rating: 3/5
I’ll get it off my chest right away: My far and away biggest gripe with this album is the vocals. They are pushed to the very forefront of the mix, which is a bad fit, and, to my ears, simply do not harmonize well with the instrumental tone, in addition to being lacking in range. The rest of the music is a rollercoaster of intensity and rhythms, with some tender, exquisite melodies binding it all together.
Yoth Iria – Blazing Inferno
Genre: Melodic black metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
It seems Greece is showing the way for black metal this week. Yoth Iria is a relatively new project in the rough vein of Rotting Christ, in that they play folk- and death-infused melodic black metal with an appetite for dark drama. But while Rotting Christ has traveled far beyond their black metal roots in almost all but lyrical theme, Yoth Iria exists in a sphere that’s significantly closer to this source. If I was to put it concisely, they sound like a Hellenic version of Scandinavian bands like Kvaen and Wormwood, whose sound is heavily immersed in frigid, yet expansive folk melody, while retaining a sharp edge of shadowy hostility. Rising tall on a rich production and epic-toned solos, it is far from raw, and not to be taken quite as seriously as satanic banner-bearers like Behemoth, instead poised to deliver a music-oriented, blasphemous experience with a distinct flavor. And to this end they succeed remarkably well, combining infernal riff force with soaring tremolo, majestic rhythms and piercing vocals into a concise and engaging whole.
Highlights: “We Call Upon the Elements” and “In The Tongue of Birds”
As always, if you think I’m completely off on an observation, unfairly dissed your favorite band, or need to give an album another shot, why not pop a comment down below?
The Metal Dispatch 