A death and doom forward week, which makes it sound quite grim, but for its limited scope it’s actually pretty flavorful.
Ancestor Of Kaos – Animal Ritual
Genre: Black metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
An aggressive and slightly ramshackle black metal project originally from Cuba, you get the slight feeling that these are all songs that were created as they went. In that regard, they feel natural – genuinely spirited and loaded with rebellious energy. The problem is that they don’t always go anywhere satisfying, delivering highlights of maliciousness sort of at random. Still, when they get it right, it’s really worth listening to.
Ancient Death – Ego Dissolution
Genre: Progressive death metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
This isn’t your typical death metal experience. Although it’s loaded with old school riffs and that malevolent tone, it moves in a very different way. Elements of hardcore sometimes enter the rhythms, and it has a very open-minded approach to changing tempos and intensity, without really screaming “progressive”. Sometimes it slows things down completely into doom-like, even art-rock levels of melodic ease. Sometimes it’s full-on harsh-chaotic, sometimes it gets into heavy grooves and sometimes it skips unpredictably ahead on agile beats. It’s not extreme in its unconventionality, but does most things in its own way, like it’s mutated from a very recognizable shape into something more complex, while retaining most of its original aspects. It doesn’t feel pretentious at all, actually slightly understated all things considered. Dynamically and production wise it’s not perfect, but overall it’s a sound you are likely to remember and expect to keep developing.
Highlights: “Unspoken Oath” and “Ego Dissolution”
Anoxia – Revel In Sin
Genre: Death metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Aussie old school death metal (cause no one outside of deathcore wants to make modern death metal these days) that really delivers on bass and guitar tone, with perfectly rip-throat vocals to go with it. The rhythm work is not quite as tight as I would have liked, and the solos/squeals are a little underwhelming. But it’s a solid base on which to build.
Crypts Of Despair – We Belong In The Grave
Genre: Death metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Strike what I said in the last review, cause this is certainly not death metal of the old school variant. It pulls from brutal and slam, deathcore and has a bit of an atmospheric dimension as well. The riffs are of the mildly dissonant, moderately djent-y variant, the growls are very deep indeed, and the beats heavy, heavy, heavy. They’re going for an unnerving kind of mood on this record, definitely trying to overwhelm you just a smidge with the oppressive tone, but not really crossing over into anything chaotic or blackened.
Divide And Dissolve – Insatiable
Genre: Doom/experimental metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
This is a soundtrack that I think ought to be experienced in a small inside venue, completely in the dark, with the waves of bass-vibration being felt more than they are heard. It’s instrumental, experimental doom that feels like the machinations of the deep earth at work. It’s got a droning quality to a certain point, but it feels much more like a dark, sensory theatrical play than some sort of hypnotically repetitive, industrial thing. There are orchestral strings at work, as well as deep, beastly, ugly guitar, unrefined in just such a way that it feels like a massive being, or a force of nature. It moves slow, but it’s highly captivating, especially when it goes heavy, with the force of the riffs feeling like they might crumble the walls around you. As a detached listening experience, without the right context, its potential is not even halfway realized, and so it certainly demands full commitment from its listener. But it’s certainly utilizing the doom concept to its fullest in a distinct and rewarding way.
Highlights: “Provenance” and “Withholding”
Dormant Ordeal – Tooth And Nail
Genre: Death/black metal
Subjective rating: 4.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Dormant Ordeal are a Polish band that plays semi-technical, tonally blackened, austerely melodic death metal. This is not a project for people who like their DM raw and grimy, but as long as you’re looking for genuinely heavy, convincingly brutal extreme metal, it does a lot of things very right and very well. First of all, despite its jaw-clenched aggression, it’s impressively controlled and highly precise, without feeling like it’s being held on a leash. The melodies give it depth and reach, without deflating the force or disrupting the progression, because it’s so clearly well planned and integrated with the flow. The vocals have a very Nergal quality to them, and overall they do share more than just a trait or two with fellow Polish band Behemoth. But for the most part these are being utilized in a distinctly different way. This is not “fun” death metal, but it’s also far from so conceptually rigid that you can’t enjoy it on an individual song level. It’s tight, confident and engagingly varied.
Highlights: “Halo of Bones” and “Against the Dying of the Light”
Empyrean Sanctum – Detachment From Reality
Genre: Progressive metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
A wild, melodic prog project that seemingly likes to try out as many different rhythm approaches a possible. At its best it delivers epic, rewarding, relatively concise compositions, and at it’s worst it’s very disjointed.
Exterminatus – Echoes From A Distant Star Part 1
Genre: Technical death metal
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
This one lives out pretty much all the clichés of modern tech death that is to find, but that’s not to say that tech death nerds won’t find enjoyment in it. It’s busy and almost comically restless, melodic in a superficial sense, and, of course, technically well performed.
Lik – Necro
Genre: Death metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
This is groove-forward, tongue-in-cheek-brutal old school Swedish death metal for the pure enjoyment of it. Everything is stylistically spot on, from the hoarse, throat-rending vocals to the over-crunched guitars to the Sabbath-style-evil tone and the very moderately folk-derived melodies. It’s full of energy and sounds amazing, varying its tempo and rhythm approach more than enough to keep it interesting. Is it innovative in any way? Not really, but when you are this stylistically confident, it hardly matters. Bring on the resurrected corpses and let’s headbang till necks snap and heads tumble.
Highlights: “Morgue Rat” and “They”
Tigerleech – Bicephalous
Genre: Stoner/sludge metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
French sludgy stoner metal with punk and hardcore leanings. It’s got some really nice and crunchy riffs, but is much more interested in delving into off-kilter, lyric-centered mid-tempo sections of atmosphere and off-putting melody. The vocals are distinctly un-harmonious, which is not for me, but vibes with their unconventional type of expression.
Tribunal – In Penitence And Ruin
Genre: Doom/gothic metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Canadian dramatic doom metal driven by dual clean/harsh vocals, cello and darkly epic melody. In a few ways it feels like a morose mutation of Finnish atmospheric folk metal, like that of Insomnium. But despite some heavy riffing, a lot of the time this sounds like epic heavy metal with a gothic flair slowed down to a funeral procession pace. The problem with this is that not every part feels like it’s written to be slow, and so can get a bit unengaging from time to time, but it makes up for it with rewarding buildups that culminate with highlights of vocal performances and soaring instrumental performances. Style-wise it’s committed and consistent, drifting from mildly disharmonic melodic sections to sinister, crushing riff crawls.
Highlight: “A Wound Unhealing”
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 