New Band Watch: Nonsun
Jan 31For all you dwellers of doom out there, take some time to check out the new EP from Ukrainian sludge stalkers Nonsun. The music is thick, heavy, and all around crushing as it slowly burns its way through 48 minutes of textured doom. The EP, Good Old Evil, is available free through Bandcamp, and you can stream it below, so check it out and find the band on Facebook!Good Old Evil by...
Review: Fliptop Box – Anxiety’s Manifest
Jan 28Fliptob Box – Anxiety’s ManifestThe metal genre has been in a slight flux in the past few years, due mostly to the explosion of experimentation into sub styles and their various amalgamations that has taken place over the last decade. Because of that, we are not necessarily left with any real flagship styles that define the genre, and as a result new bands are left with a broad sandbox to play in when finding their own ‘sound’. Recently, that has resulted in the resurgence of several bygone era’s of music, especially including variants of stoner rock, progressive song structuring, and a healthy throwback scene for classic NWOBHM. Flying slightly more under the radar has been the alternative leanings of the 90’s post-punk sound, which is exactly where Greece’s Fliptop Box comes into the picture with their 2012 release of “Anxiety’s Manifest”.Album opener Lost is a good introduction for the release as a whole, showcasing nearly everything that will be offered throughout the listen. The backbone of the group’s style is the post-thrash guitar riffing that accentuates itself at times with melancholic chords and high-string leads between punchy rhythm playing. The vocals however, are the forefront of the songs on “Anxiety’s Manifest”, perhaps not sonically, but most definitely in presence and melody. They tend to spread into the background, soaring in their own realm of the mix, while still melding with the music’s chord progression. The singing is consistently melodic and carries a heavy dose of heartfelt emotion, never feeling forced or unnecessary, and they are delivered with a laid back introspectiveness that harkens directly to the shoegazing era of alternative rock, striking the same balance between sorrow and reprieve that the singers of that vein exemplified.The songs on this album vary themselves somewhat while staying firmly within the comfort zone of post-grunge melody and hard edge that the group has made for itself, ranging from the upbeat and punk-infused like Scarfaced God to the more mellow and thoughtful moments on songs like Wings and Close My Eyes, a song which stands as one of the more emotionally heartfelt on the album. Some moments even have a distinct crossover feel when the energy gets high enough. This variety does not venture too far though, not quite to the point of monotony, but it does prevent any sense of real exploration or experimentation outside of the formula. That formula however, is...
New Band Watch: Egality
Jan 13Check out some good ‘melting pot’ metal with Pennsylvania’s Egality and their newest independently released album, “Embryonic Aseity”. The sound is a mix of death metal, doom, sludge, and general experimentation. As always, if you’ve got a new, unsigned band or know of one that deserves some attention, let me know and I will always try to feature what I can on the site. Embryonic Aseity by Egality Find and connect with Egality on: Facebook MySpace...
Review: Aetherium Mors – Drenched In Victorious Blood
Jan 07Aetherium Mors – Drenched In Victorious BloodTo prove right off the bat they can bring the fire, the band opens their first release with Sons of Men, an angry scorcher of grinding metal and blackened vocals that eventually opens up into some dirge-like melodic death metal. The song is pretty vicious in delivery, making it a good opener that gets your attention with its in-your-face attack in order to sit you down for a fairly well varied blast of metal during the rest of the album. Picking up where Sons leaves off, Luciferian March creeps along in a down-tempo doom passages before lurching into ferocious pummelings that come fast and furious with an arsenal of biting death growls and drilling double kick. As aggressive as the music is though, there’s still room for melody, which is a big part of the songwriting. While it is not an overly predominant character, there is definitely enough of it there to keep the music from being a bland flavor of blackened death metal instead of the often dynamic and well rounded songs we get on the album.The vocals are primarily higher register death snarls with a distinctly black metal attitude, including the lyrical content which is your average satanic fair for the genre. Guitars provide the backdrop of menacing riffing while driving the melody when it comes around. It would be nice to hear them have a little more meat in the mix however, but the drums generally batter their way to the forefront of the sonic palette. It is actually the drums where the aforementioned flaws can be found. While the playing is generally solid and effective, oftentimes they can overshadow the dynamics of the underlying instrumentation by drowning them out. It is a common issue of aural aesthetics in death/black metal, where the incessant use of machine-gun snare and kick hits can become a tiresome and overbearing focal point in the mix, rather than the driving accentuator that it should be. Thankfully, this is not a glaring issue that makes itself apparent often on the album, instead it is only occasionally noticed as a minor but forgettable annoyance.The band works with a well developed toolset for a debut effort, and aside from a few somewhat minor flaws on the production side of things, the listener might assume that Drenched in Victorious Blood is a second or third release from a...
Review: Melencolia Estatica – Hel
Dec 20Melencolia Estatica – Hel Hel is the third effort put forth by Melencolia Estatica, the dark and brooding spawn of mastermind Climaxia, one of the foremost women in black metal today. On the album, she handles the duties of guitar, bass, and vocal direction, steering the path for a grand yet sombre album steeped in both bleakness and viciousness. The album is a concept piece, based off of Fritz Lang’s classic 1927 expressionist film Metropolis, and given the surrealist moodscapes of either work, you could easily join them for a single experience. After all, the movie was a silent picture, so adding some atmospheric black metal to the background as orchestration works quite well.Being a concept piece, the album as a whole flows more like a long single construct, rather than focus on conventional single tracks. This said, the affair is broken up into six parts (Hel I-VI), each haunting their own little corner of the album. The overall sound is a mix of bleak yet melodic atmospheric wonderings with soft ghost-like clean vocals, and fierce passages of blistering black metal infused heaviness. The blend is engaging, and really gives the album a nice flow if you were giving it the full listen. The sedated moments are creepy and alluring, and the evenly spread mix of lulling guitars, haunting vocals, and soft choral keys make for well textured pieces of mood music. When you come upon the harsh parts, they are fiery and vicious, topped with some fairly impressive growls and screams that sound downright baleful. The production sounds clean and modern when it needs to be but also lets the songs sound gritty when it’s called for, and for both the sake of the album’s mood and for a more traditional black metal sound, the mix is coated with a lush, airy reverb to good effect.Because of the album’s nature, you won’t find much for single tracks that really pop out as stand alone songs. It’s sort of an all-or-nothing piece that needs the sit down listen, and while that may endear it a little more to this reviewer, just know that it may not necessarily be the sort of thing you throw on your iPod for your shuffle mix. Also, while the songs, or ‘parts’ all sound good and feature the full range of the album’s soundscape, there’s not a great deal that makes them very unique...
