Stretch your taste and take in the variety of this mixed week, offering fun, danger, sadness and a few cerebral challenges.
Austere – The Stillness of Dissolution
Genre: Gothic/black metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
As band names go, Austere have chosen a fitting one for the style of music they make. I was impressed with their 2024 effort “Beneath the Threshold”, and wouldn’t you know, they’re back with more just a year later. On this one they’ve flipped the black/gothic balance in favor of the latter, prioritizing atmosphere and mood over harshness and cold, guitar-led melody. It’s a subtler sound, perhaps too subtle. Even though theirs is not a particularly slow approach, the transitions are often very gradual, and not a heck of a lot of ground is covered during the course of a song, which is often in the 7-minute realm. Still, their mastery of the tone, achieving both melancholy and hopefulness, is just as strong as before. The clean-sung parts are performed with true emotional weight, highly fitting their slight shift in style. If you’re looking for dark gothic metal devoid of the kitsch-factor, this is absolutely recommended.
Highlight: “Redolent Foulness” and “Rusted Veins”
Battlesnake – Dawn Of The Exultants And The Hunt For The Shepherd
Genre: Heavy metal/hard rock
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Battlesnake is a zany Australian heavy metal project that’s now on their third full-length in as many years. It draws inspiration from 80s and 70s heavy metal, but drops most of the shred. It’s mostly mid-tempo, hard rock-rhythm, fairly light hearted stuff, taking on a lot of that cyber-punk synth tone that Ghost has been dipping into for their last two releases. It’s not exactly what you’d call heavy, but has some cool uses of guttural vocals that mesh very well with temporary tips into a darker mood. I would classify this as style over substance. There are a lot of fun antics going on, with short spoken-word interludes here and there, but the actual music is for the most part not all that innovative. Still, it bristles with charm and has enough highlights to keep you invested.
Highlight: “Murder Machine”
Bear Mace – Slaves Of The Wolf
Genre: Death/thrash metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Bow down to our werewolf overlords. It’s a neat thing when you can look at a ridiculous death metal cover and just go “yeah, why the hell not”. And be delighted when the music matches the visual expression perfectly. This is hard-hitting death thrash with a strong emphasis on the former of the two. The thrash mostly appears in the form of shredding and upbeat tempos, but the tone, vocals and low end are all dimly-lit, blood-dripping butcher’s work. Notably, it’s not obsessed with old-school style, which is a departure from the norm these days. It’s neither filthy, crusty, musty or grimy, nor is it in any way polished. It’s just punishing, riff-driven, headbanger-friendly bad-assery all the way.
Highlights: “The Iceman Cometh” and “Worthless Lives”
Dissonant Seepage – Dystopian Putrescence
Genre: Brutal death metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Slamming, brutal death metal has a fairly narrow purpose to fulfill, and often very little interest in doing anything apart from this. “Dystopian Putrescence” at least tries to play around a bit with its rhythms, and goes into some technical rhythm work now and then, while not overloading you with tropes.
Gaahls Wyrd – Braiding The Stories
Genre: Avant-garde black metal
Subjective rating: 4.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Rooted in the conventional, but presenting an extraordinary blossom on the splayed fingers of branches stretched wide through decades of growth, “Braiding the Stories” was always going to be a wide-reaching experience. In fact, it feels like a small universe of its own, where we travel down a spiraling, non-linear timeline, the progression being felt as both near-stationary floating, and stark sprints of riled-up panic. Comparing it to the style of Enslaved, this is more contrasting – managing both greater departures from, and closer visits to, the original, primitive Norwegian black metal sound. It’s not doom, it’s not gothic, and it’s not really folk. It’s primal, transcendent, dramatic and dark in a natural way.
Highlights: “Time and Timeless Timeline” and “Flowing Starlight”
Gruesome – Silent Echoes
Genre: Progressive death metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
In stark contrast to the Rivers of Nihil album last week, this is back-to-basics, old school prog death that will inevitably draw comparisons to Death. It goes very light on the low end, staying agile and precise, some times skipping into thrash and even a bit of adventurous classic heavy metal. It feels like style worship, and it probably is, but it’s a very specific sort of sound that you don’t hear all too often these days, even with the insatiable OSDM revival going on. To me it feels ever so slightly hollow, like the shape and technical approach came first, and the artistic intent was more of an afterthought, but for the absolute most part this doesn’t stop me from really enjoying it. The atmospheric intros are very cool, and the restlessness of the thing is energizing.
Highlights: “A Darkened Window” and “Shards”
HolyRoller – Rat King
Genre: Stoner/psychedelic metal/rock
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
This band caught my attention with 2022’s “Swimming Witches”, mostly due to the successful balance between desert crunch, mid-tempo stoner groove and restrainedly melodic vocals. “Rat King” feels a bit more sluggish, and could have used a bit more punch to the riffs. The vocals however, are as good, if not better than last time, adding a touch of the epic and a much-needed melodic dimension.
Highlight: “Rat King”
Katatonia – Nightmares As Extensions Of The Waking State
Genre: Progressive/gothic metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
This album feels like the natural continuation of 2023’s “Sky Void of Stars”, which doesn’t speak all that much to the band’s powers of innovation, but as styles go, it’s a very good one to keep exploring. Melodically, it’s just as strong, if not stronger, particularly in the slower, calmer sections. It’s definitely some of the most beautiful gothic doom I’ve ever heard. As a progressive album, it’s restrained, but the transitions employed in their most dynamic songs are silky smooth and completely organic. My biggest complaint is that they front load their most dramatic and heavy songs, leaving the last half fairly understated and soft. But as a balm for your ears and mind, there’s hardly anything better out there.
Highlights: “Wind of no Change” and “Thrice”
King Parrot – A Young Person’s Guide To
Genre: Grindcore/hardcore
Subjective rating: 4.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
This album feels like chugging gasoline and promptly pissing it onto a fire. It’s strutting with barbed wire bravado and reckless abandon, but instead of going in the murky, ultra-heavy direction of death metal, it pulls from hardcore and punk, making it agile and spiteful. There’s not a dull moment on here, but it doesn’t need to get chaotic or overly noisy in order to fulfill its purpose of shaking your brain to a paste. There’s tons of groove, the rhythms (although often hectic) are easy to follow, and combined with some killer riffs, it truly gets your heart pumping.
Highlights: “Fuck You And The Horse You Rode In On” and “Punish the Runt”
Ophiolatry – Serpent’s Verdict
Genre: Death metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
A speedy, mildly technical and modestly brutal Brazilian death metal project. Performance-wise it’s a bit one-dimensional, but they sneak a good number of tasty riffs in there. It is, however, far too long.
Orthodox – A Door Left Open
Genre: Hardcore/groove metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Returning after 2022-highlight “Learning to Dissolve”, Orthodox is back to punish your eardrums with distorted chugs. That album felt like a lost, early Machine Head album given the metallic hardcore treatment, and although this album goes a different way, there are certainly elements of the same style on “A Door Left Open”. But this time it’s almost entirely about the rhythms, leaving nearly all traces of melody behind, and going lighter on the groove. While there’s a lot of technically impressive twists and turns on here, almost tipping over into mathcore, a great deal of the character of the predecessor is lost, which is a shame. The savagery is still there, its’s just not quite as dynamic.
Highlight: “Keep Your Blessings”
Phase Transition – In Search of Being
Genre: Progressive metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Phase Transition is a Portuguese, female-fronted prog metal band that bring to mind the symphonic and melody-rich styles of several Finnish and Dutch greats. What this album isn’t though, is overproduced. It’s got a clean, fairly lean sound, not lacking fullness but also far from bloated. Granted, I would have liked a bit more force in the peaks, especially considering that the band isn’t at its best in the calmer sections. But the album is well balanced, and considering this is their first full-length, I see great potential for expansion. The violin solos are a very welcome touch.
Highlight: “The Other Side”
Refusal – Venomous Human Concept
Genre: Death metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Ah yes, any week with a bit of crunchy death metal is a good week in my book. This is the Finnish, grindcore-tinged kind, which makes it quite lively. Songwriting-wise it’s a bit clunky, not delivering the smoothest transitions or biggest highlights. But there’s plenty of buzzsaw riff goodness.
Volbeat – God Of Angels Trust
Genre: Heavy metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
This might be as close as we’ll ever get to an “evil” Volbeat album. There must have been some temptation for Michael Poulsen to pull the sound in the direction of his highly successful Asinhell death metal project, but, likely in an effort to clearly differentiate the two styles, it sounds like he’s held back. As a result, the heaviness on “God of Angels Trust” feels superficial, manifesting in a select few (decidedly badass) riffs. The rhythms feel largely uninspired, sometimes outright repetitive, and the melodies and choruses are very typically “Volbeat”. All that being said, there are a handful of real highlights, a few refreshing departures from the expected, and the rugged charm of the early records, which has only occasionally resurfaced in the years since, can be clearly felt.
Highlight: “Demonic Depression”
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 