Reviews of metal albums released February 28 – March 06
To hell with navel-gazing doom and gloom, most of the release highlights this week are out to make triumphant noise and cause a bit of a stir.
Axe Dragger – Axe Dragger
Genre: Heavy metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Review: On their self-titled debut, Axe Dragger combine mid-tempo, rugged-melodic heavy metal with hard rock cool and a bit of thrash riff-edge. This is a band that’s not lacking in character, offering plenty of tracks with strong individual personalities and an impressively versatile vocal performance. It’s not what I’d call silly, but it’s definitely feelgood in the sense that it invites you in to partake in a very specific kind of mood, radiating rock ‘n’ roll groove, pleasant melodies and antihero charm. Far from over the top, it actually feels a tad too laid back, lacking a bit of punch and urgency. Looking forward to more, perhaps with a slightly heavier foot on the gas pedal.
Highlight: “Give You the Rope”
Cogadh – Kingmaker
Genre: Black metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Review: A stripped back but not at all terribly produced black metal album out of Canada, with a hardcore spirit that’s particularly noticeable in the vocal approach. It hits like good garage rock, but also has a good deal of depth when it counts.
Desert Storm – Buried Under The Weight Of Reason
Genre: Stoner/sludge metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Review: Give heaviness a purpose, and suddenly it becomes a very versatile tool. England’s Desert Storm employ heaviness in mountainous heaps, well matched with rusty sludge vocals and tons of mid- to low-tempo groove. But these aren’t the sole features of their sonic landscape. Rather they are masses of rocky cliffs towering out of the ocean, for the waves to break on when the storm fronts hit. And the album offers up a wide range of weather patterns – from the tranquil to the tempestuous. In the end, it falls just short of feeling like a unified conceptual statement, but it’s still an awesomely heavy-hitting, engagingly dynamic experience that takes just as much time as it needs to kick ass and push enough buttons to leave a multi-layered impression.
Highlights: “Law Unto Myself” and “Woodsman”
Lost Society – Hell Is A State Of Mind
Genre: Heavy/nu metal/metalcore
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 2.5/5
Review: Finnish firecrackers Lost Society are back with more high-energy, symphonically boosted, catchy modern heavy metal crossed with Avenged Sevenfold/Bullet For My Valentine-style metalcore and groove-forward nu metal. Apart from a couple of highlights the material on here is mostly fairly predictable or suffering from an imbalance of weakly written parts sucking the momentum out of the fun ones.
Mega Colossus – Watch Out!
Genre: Heavy metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Review: Aside from the vocal style and kind of happy-go-lucky rhythms reminding me a whole lot of Weird Al, which makes it hard to shake the feeling of it being a parody, this is a kind of heavy metal album that mixes an adventurous tone and theme with very down to earth instrumentation and ironic lyrical and conceptual approach. There’s a decent amount of shredding, but nothing crazy, and the band seem more interested in crafting clever, well-flowing song structures, memorable choruses and restrained-yet-effective melody lines. It’s clean and stripped of unnecessary fluff, although perhaps feeling a bit too under control and reigned in.
Highlight: “Battlefront”
Miserere Luminis – Sidera
Genre: Atmospheric black metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Review: Like potent raw ingredients tapped directly from their natural sources, melodic beauty and hostile bitterness are joined with little restraint on Canadian band Miserere Luminis’ third full-length. The two sides clash as much as they mix and weave together in complex patterns. It sounds like a struggle for much of the duration, but not a chaotic or disturbing one. More like the organic conflict that goes into eventually finding equilibrium and achieving harmony in environments undergoing radical change. The dynamism and emotional depth on this album is truly profound, making it a must-listen for those in tune with this kind of harsh/atmospheric mix.
Highlight: “De cris & de cendres” and “Dans la voie de nos lumières”
Qwälen – Veri virtaa edelleen
Genre: Black metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Review: Finnish black metal that can’t quite seem to make up its mind about whether it wants to be fast and rowdy, massive and oppressive or sinister and atmospheric. It tries all of the above, and sometimes all of it together, with somewhat mixed results. Each of the individual approaches work for them, particularly the more primitive and punk-inspired one, and it’s not really a confused sounding album, but it would likely be stronger walking down a single path at a time.
Temple Of Void – The Crawl
Genre: Melodic death/doom metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Review: Here we’ve got another one of those bands playing the dangerous game of messing around with the formula that got them established. To be fair, 2022’s “Summoning the Slayer” was no straightforward death doom record either, but “The Crawl” sees Detroit’s Temple of Void not just loosening the stylistic belt a couple of notches but opening it all the way up in order to loop on a whole host of new and exciting accessories. What should be said is that in terms of riff- and vocal style, this is pretty much as classic death doom as it gets, and the guys keep laying into you hard and heavy all throughout the album. But it moves at distinctly different paces and mixes in various tones of melodies according to how the mood seems to strike it, taking on melodeath, goth, hard rock, epic doom, classic heavy metal, and other traits that liven up proceedings no end. It feels perhaps a bit under-planned and open-ended, leaving less of a solid statement and more of a collection of entertaining heaviness. But when it sounds as good as this, that’s more than fine with me.
Highlights: “Poison Icon” and “The Crawl”
Triumpher – Piercing the Heart of the World
Genre: Heavy/power metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Review: This is metal that forcibly marches you straight to the battlefield, spear in hand, by way of pure inspiration and rhythmic stimulation. Triumpher mixes the glorious, epic nature of power metal with the dark majesty of melodic black metal as fuel for its classic, gutsy heavy metal cavalry charge. On a casual listen it’ll probably sound like any run-of-the-mill bombastic, Manowar-esque thing, but invest just a bit of attention and you’ll start to pick up on the nuances and distinct characteristics that give it a strong personality. I had pretty much every track grow on me on the second listen, and even though I don’t find it as rousing or catchy as some of its peers, it’s full of conviction and not quite like anything else.
Highlight: “Destroyer”
Vreid – The Skies Turn Black
Genre: Melodic black metal/black ‘n’ roll
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Review: Not unlike the Temple of Void album also releasing this week, this is not the place to go for faithful adherence to classic genre conventions. While the old school black metal roots are very much intact and lovingly maintained, this boldly stretches even Vreid’s black ‘n’ roll-interpretation of the style past previous boundaries. The riff and snarl are both very much alive and furiously kicking, supported by frosty melodic bits, and are contrasted by clean, electronic and acoustic parts that feel like detours sparked by curiosity, into pockets of related musical realms. This stylistic fluidity works quite well for the most part, adding an element of unpredictability that breaks up the sometimes overly straightforward rock riffs and rhythms. A rich and varied listening experience for those who can tolerate a bit of fun and games mixed in with their nihilism.
Highlights: “From These Woods” and “A Second Death”
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?
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