Reviews of metal albums released February 14 – February 20
This week offers plenty for both the thinker and the doer, with both devil may care bravado and carefully considered, devil-in-the-details craftmanship.
Abstracted – Hiraeth
Genre: Progressive extreme/death metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Review: Someone left the prog tap running while they went out shopping on this one. Apart from during some mellow buildups and choruses, your mind is hardly allowed a moment’s rest, as the riff and rhythm style, while tightly performed, seems almost petulantly unwilling to stick to any sort of cohesive pattern. If that’s how you like your prog, then great, this will likely tickle your brain in all the right ways. It’s a mix of death metal brutality and metalcore-ish emotion-tinged melody, with the clean vocals sounding a bit overstrained in parts.
Aeon Gods – Reborn To Light
Genre: Power metal
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Review: The sound of divine majesty, at least the fairly benevolent parts. This is polished, symphonic power metal that can get nice and riffy now and then, well performed, and otherwise reasonably sparkly-epic, and perhaps a tad too self-serious.
Atlas – Sunder
Genre: Melodic extreme metal/metalcore
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Review: Mighty Finnish metalcore mixed with modern, melodic extreme metal, moody to a near-gothic point and contrasting crashing highs of soaring aggression with melancholic-yet-pleasant calm. It’s beautifully produced, and exudes good energy, but the two extremes do sap some of the energy out of each other, and it’s overall a tad predictable.
Bizarrekult – Alt Som Finnes
Genre: Atmospheric black metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Review: Emotional, philosophical, sad-yet-hopeful black metal, steeped in melancholy melody and mastering the switches between classic, raspy harshness and vulnerable cleans. It’s the type of release that will have a bunch of reviewers and commenters going on about how it absolutely crippled them emotionally. And for those so inclined/prone, I can see this being quite impactful. It’s even-tempered, not particularly varied, but consistently well thought out.
Highlight: “Avmakt”
Coscradh – Carving The Causeway To The Otherworld
Genre: Black/death metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Review: This stuff sounds a bit like if the guys in Mayhem all got possessed by actual demons while in the recording studio. It’s very clearly evil as all hell, and just unhinged enough that you know they don’t want you to feel comfortable while listening to it. Vocals and riffs are drowned in the mix, the drums and bass are absolutely frantic, and the solos are ugly. It’s very much on the cusp of war metal, although not quite as punishing as the real heavyweights of that subgenre. Conceptually and in terms of how it feels it absolutely nails the objective of being an actual unnerving blackened death album, and it might have had even more of an impact if it didn’t sound like it’s about to shake itself apart half the time.
Highlight: “Adhradh Dé Ghoac”
Daidalos – Dante
Genre: Symphonic black metal
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Review: A Divine Comedy-themed spiral into the pits of hell, in expectedly bombastic fashion. It’s a dark, grand, well performed variant of symphonic black metal, that perhaps pulls a bit too much from power metal for its own good. It sounds good and has no massive faults, but also gets fairly simple and predictable in parts.
Domhain – In Perfect Stillness
Genre: Atmospheric black metal/shoegaze
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Review: This album feels like it’s exploring and expanding upon a hidden world of gloom that can only be found at dusk. It has a stone-faced black metal core, and does put out a decent amount of aggression, but first and foremost it’s a flowing, meditative experience that pulls you into a tastefully dramatic soundscape and envelops you in folk-like melody and restrainedly progressive buildups and rhythm shifts. At its best it’s highly immersive, but I do find that it drags a bit at times. In total though, I find myself wanting more at the end of the roughly 35 minute runtime, and am looking forward to the continuation of this highly promising debut.
Highlights: “Talamh Lom” and “My Tomb Beneath The Tide”
Exhumed – Red Asphalt
Genre: Death metal/grindcore
Subjective rating: 4.5/5
Objective rating: 4.5/5
Review: A gory death metal album about road accidents should carry some considerable speed, and Exhumed’s latest certainly does. Their fun-loving yet brutal brand of guts-wading, fairly shreddy old school morbidity does particularly well paired up with the impatience of grindcore. A lot of this is like getting Carcass with an axe and meat hammer instead of the array of scalpels, and it works perfectly for the high-tempo style they’re running with on “Red Asphalt”. The production is crisp and full, without an ounce of unnecessary fluff, and an improvement on 2022’s “To the Dead”, although that one did suit the more murky sound. This album just pulls, and pulls and pulls, showcasing an awe-inspiring range of vocal delivery, tempo control, groove, tonal nastiness and flirting with melody.
Highlights: “Shovelhead” and “Symphorophilia”
Incandescence – Hors Temps
Genre: Black metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Review: On the border of turning atmospheric, Canada’s Incandescence keep up the misanthropic pressure all the way throughout their fifth full-length, and still scores high on immersion. It’s a solemn, subtly layered kind of sound that minutely changes character through minor tweaks in tone and tempo, sounding sincere and well-planted in their thematic realm. It sounds nothing like its Scandinavian counterparts, yet the differences are far from forced. It’s a steady march into darkness, with a gale made up of last breaths meeting you head on. Parts of it feel somewhat like death doom, but it doesn’t linger in any one direction for too long.
Highlights: “L’Enfer existe” and “Marasma”
Lead Injector – Witching Attack
Genre: Black/thrash metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Review: This is all about groovy, simple blackened fun. With a direct, sharp and thin sound, this sets off on a gleeful joyride across the graveyard, tossing around solos and knocking over tombstones with a thrashing baseball bat. It delivers no real surprises, and no massive highlights, but is a good bit of fun.
Nazghor – A World Ablaze
Genre: Melodic black metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Review: Straight-to-the-point, crunchy-riff black metal that soars on bone-chilling winds of tremolo melody and straightforward rhythms and blast beats. To those who have heard a good deal of this kind of stuff, a fair bit of it will feel like re-used old tricks, but it’s effective and suits the style that they’re going for. It’s darkly epic and melancholy, as you’d hope for, and contrasts it with crisp aggression,
Highlight: “Bathe in Ashes”
Serpent Gates – The Veil Of Darkness
Genre: Heavy metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Review: Finnish, mildly gothic heavy metal with plenty of groove and mid-tempo shred. The Bruce Dickinson-reminiscent vocals are a highlight, and they’ve got their style nailed down nice and confidently. Apart from the highlights, of which there are several, there are a few fairly unremarkable tracks that don’t add much but a few cool riffs and solos, but the overall delivery is on point and entertaining.
Highlight: “Down The Cross”
Stam1na – Apnea
Genre: Progressive metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Review: Finnish Stam1na is just one of those bands that have somehow flown screaming past my radar in a moment of inattention. Actually, they’ve managed to do so 10 times, because this is in fact their 11th full-length album. Not being familiar with their discography, I’ll focus on what’s in front of me, which is thrashy prog metal, and the impressive part is that it sounds as experimental and whacky as you’d expect from a band that’s only just getting started. There are big contrasts in intensity – everything from rabid shredding and demonic snarls to soothing dips into pools of warm melodic bliss. And it all feels, somehow, both expertly controlled and organic, like they just came up with it on the fly, only nailing the cohesion thanks to massive talent and rock solid experience. Consider my attention well and fully captured.
Highlights: “Golem” and “Satiiri”
Sylosis – The New Flesh
Genre: Melodic/technical death/groove metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Review: I’ve been a Sylosis fan for some time, and this is probably the least like themselves I’ve ever hear them. Blistering technicality has always been at the forefront of what they do, tempered by a great melodic sense and a healthy portion of groove. These two aspect of their style have been given much stronger reign on this, their 7th full-length, and it’s, at least to me, leaning further towards metal- and deathcore than previously. Normally I would find this worrying, but so much of the thrashing signature style of the band is prominently intact that this feels more like flexing the borders of their expression. I’m not a fan of the ballad (!) that sort of just shows up on here, but other than this you’ll be swimming in infectious aggression delivered with commanding vocals and mind-blowingly tight instrumental performance.
Highlight: “The New Flesh” and “Spared From The Guillotine”
Zepter – Zepter
Genre: Heavy metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Review: Retro metal out of Austria, that hit perfectly on vibes and deliver plenty of gobble-up riffs. Melodically, it’s a bit more sketchy, and the vocal performance is really not for me. But if you just want to be transported back to the late 70s/early 80s, riding on a wave of enthusiasm, then dive right in.
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 