Reviews of metal albums released August 01 – August 07
As if sensing the slow retreat of daylight, black and darkened metal slither out of the growing shadows.
Aspen Sanctum – To Withhold The Need To Conquer
Genre: Atmospheric black metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Review: What’s this? Sunshine and warm, bright colors on a black metal album cover? More worryingly, the pleasantness extends to the music itself. Squealing feedback and blast beats transition into gentle melodies that flow along like a caressing summer breeze as you lie outstretched in the grass by the foot of a tree, half-shaded by the canopy. But every now and then the melancholy chill of a grey cloud blocking the sun’s rays makes you realize that the ambient temperature is, in fact, anything but balmy.
On their debut album, Michigan’s Aspen Sanctum have managed a sound that rekindles forgotten memories, weighed down by the crushing presence of finality, like death’s hand on your shoulder, reminding you that you can never go back to those lost moments in time. Vocals and instrumental heaviness skirt the border of atmospheric death metal on certain tracks, but maintain the hostile sharpness and shrill necessary to not drift off into a genre blend. They vary tempo and mood expertly, and grow and shrink the scale of the impact accordingly. Very close to the absolute ideal mix of beauty and contempt.
Highlights: “Without Illumination” and “The Mortal Trap”
Cancer Bats – Give Me Dirt
Genre: Hardcore/sludge metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Review: You generally know that you’re in for a rowdy good time with Canada’s Cancer Bats, and they’re not looking to change their reputation with “Give Me Dirt”. It’s punky hardcore with added sludge grit and massive hard rock riffs. Parts of it feels rebellious and youthful, while other parts have more of a carefree stoner vibe, with Sabbath-like doom riffs popping up here and there.
To me, it feels like they burn through most of their best ideas in the first half, leaving the march to the end a bit stale, but not lacking in energy. A fun and surprisingly varied album, if a bit front-loaded.
Highlight: “Stay Stuck”
Dymna Lotva – Vyraj
Genre: Black/doom metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Review: Dymna Lotva are a Belarusian band effectively exiled to Poland for their anti-totalitarian stance, which by itself makes them worthy of mentioning, at least in my book. They play a semi-depressive form of blackened doom, that also contains haunting beauty and mystic folk elements. It feels thoroughly solemn, as if addressing and invoking powers and sensations hidden behind a veil of dark unreality.
Personally I find my attention drifting in the slowest paced sections of the album, as they tend to get overly minimalistic, and somewhat repetitive in their melody patterns. I’m also not quite on board with some of the vocal performances, but there’s a lot of different flavors on offer. At times quite powerful, and confidently theatrical in a suitably restrained fashion.
Highlight: “Zory”
Electric Callboy – Tanzeid
Genre: Industrial/pop metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Review: Electric Callboy are one one of those bands, not unlike NanowaR of Steel, where the music videos are near-essential companions to the listening experience. I’m not gonna say that the comedy is lost without the visual hijinks, but it is certainly amplified by them. Jumping in at a random point, you could easily be forgiven for mistaking this for straight pop metal, completely missing its big, wriggling, tongue-produced cheek bulge. The comedy is strong with this one, but the music itself is also not bad.
Once you allow yourself to give in to the irreverence and parody of the thing and start bopping your head, it’s very hard to stop, as the album rarely slows down, and serves up some massive hits at regular intervals. I’m detracting some points for simply copy-pasting the Babymetal collab track “RATATATA” from the latter band’s “Metal Forth” album released almost exactly one year ago, and for fluffing up the runtime with no less than four remix tracks (and a cover), but apart from that it had me grinning like an idiot and banging my head all the way.
Highlight: “Elevator Operator”
Gravecrawler – Nidus
Genre: Death metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Review: If you splice together the crusty groove of Swedish OSDM with the nasty slams and gurgles of modern brutal death metal, do you end up completely repelling two major factions of the fan base, or combining them? This is apparently what Gravecrawler have set out to discover, and from what I can gather, they’ve achieved the most favorable of the two outcomes.
At its core this is quasi-melodic, morbid, doom-flirting riff carnage with distinct traces of black metal misanthropy. But it also knows how to stomp holes in the floor as a means of kicking the intensity up a notch, and it’s not overdone in the least. The tone, rhythms and vocal style offer surprising variation, elevating it beyond the bread-and-butter death metal caveman projects. There’s a surprising amount of flavors to be had, in addition to, and not at all distracting from, the simple pleasure of mighty, bone-crunching riffs.
Highlights: “Bogs of Torvus” and “Fetid Bloom”
Hulder – Verbolgen
Genre: Black metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Review: On the band’s third full-length, now-duo Hulder go close to full-on pitch black folk metal, but without much of the melody of a band like Blackbraid, and without losing track of the corpse-painted origins. This is the band flexing the character of their expression, adding more atmospheric and traditional music elements than before, weaving it all together and playing it at such an even flow that parts of it could be mistaken for doom.
Still, this is unmistakably grim, Scandi-inspired black metal, simply pulled in an entirely non-tacky pagan direction, and avoiding the typical Norse influences. It’s quality all the way, offering variation in its nuances rather than experimenting too much with rhythms or mood. Parts of the album might feel a bit flat if you’re not fully immersed, and not all of the rousing buildups feel quite as gripping to me as they probably should. But the conviction is sky high, and the sound distinct enough to mark the band as a truly outstanding player on the forest-dwelling, light-shunning scene.
Highlights: “In Blood and in Earth” and “…And We Shall Sing”
Saprovore – Numinous Abditory Deflagration
Genre: Avant-garde/industrial black/death metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Review: Normally, projects like this with obvious technical defects will earn a quick skip from me, but several things about Saprovore’s debut full-length kept my attention firmly fixed, as if it’s secreting the sonic equivalent of sticky slug slime. Trying to nail down the sound, I can describe it as half-psychedelic, half cinematic-melodic, wildly unconventional, avant-garde blackened death metal with seemingly random industrial-electronic elements. To some, it will no doubt be completely repulsive, but to me it’s utterly fascinating.
The unsettling atmosphere, the hostility, the sporadic demonic growls, the buried instrumentation, the insidious tone, it’s all part of what kept me invested from beginning to end, and made me ignore/accept the broken, artificial drums, lacking low end and relative aimlessness of the progression. Objectively I can’t quite so easily forgive these aspects, but if you’re in a curious mood, I highly recommend dipping your toes in this possibly bottomless pool of kaleidoscopic madness.
Highlights: “Threnody Pt. II (Exequial Dirge)” and “Sibilantum”
Spectr3 – A Procession of the Dead
Genre: Black metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Review: I’d easily forgive you for reading “Spectr3” and expecting hardcore, alternative metal or even hip-hop to come out of your speakers. But no, this is Spanish black metal, very much in the traditional, Norwegian style. The vocals are muted, the guitars washed out, and the rhythms primitive. Even so, there’s an eagerness and subtle melodic edge to it that sort of betrays its non-typical origins. To me, there’s still too little other than simple genre worship on this album, but fans (cvltists), will no doubt appreciate both its reliability and its distinctive nuances.
Highlight: “Phantom Drummer of Tedworth”
Temple of Dread – Dreadspawn Dominion
Genre: Death metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Review: Germany’s Temple of Dread are back once again to play no-frills, light-on-its-feet old school death metal. Production wise it’s a slight step up from 2024’s rock solid “God of the Godless”, offering a fuller and more defined sound. It might just be me, but the guys sound a bit more pissed off this time, like there’s an extra dose of venom behind the dry-snarled vocals and charging riffs. It reminds me of the last-ditch energy that made At the Gates’ final album so special, and while this album doesn’t quite make it to the same level, it shares more than a few stylistic traits with that of the Swedish legends.
Other than this, the band sound very much like themselves, which should please fans (as which I count myself). But it’s this sameness that also raises questions of just how much more they have to offer creatively. A lot of the rhythm approaches are quite similar, and the doomy horror tone is fairly uniform across the album. I had a great time with it simply because the spirit of the band’s revitalization of the classic sound is very much still alive, and sounds better than ever, although I wouldn’t have minded a bit more groove.
Highlight: “Dreadspawn Dominion”
Vertiginous – Incessant Affliction
Genre: Brutal death metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Review: It’s not very often I give a brutal death metal album a higher subjective rating than an objective one, but here we go. Vertiginous are an Indonesian duo now on their second full-length, but in terms of delivery and and the feeling of sheer mass behind the sonic punishment, they give the impression of well-honed experience. The thing steamrolls ahead on an apocalyptic scale, leveling cities and landscape features alike.
The main issue is that almost every single track either starts with or builds up to pretty much exactly the same rhythm pattern, and so you feel a bit like you’re having to weather a torrent of ping-chatter-thunder filler to get to the morsels of monstrous breakdowns or controlled riff sections. The result is unfortunately that the album’s memorability factor is close to non-existent, but it’s a dang good time while it’s going.
Highlights: “Engraved Loathing”
Xandria – Eclipse
Genre: Symphonic metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Review: For those unfamiliar, Xandria play mostly high-tempo, riff-centric symphonic metal with elements of folk, and a touch of aggression. The energy is great on “Eclipse”, and it sounds both epic and vibrant. It’s got tasty solos, fantastic vocals, decent rhythm variation and excellent production.
My main drawback is the severely unoriginal feel of the melodies. I was actually prepared to give the album a higher rating, but then I realized that the main melody line of “The Grand Delusion” is almost exactly the same as the one performed by Michael Bolton in The Lonely Island’s “Jack Sparrow”, and so my ability to take the whole thing seriously all but evaporated.
Highlight: “Eclipse”
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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