Category Archives: Metal
Bereft – Leichenhaus (The End Records)
Bereft
Leichenhaus
The End Records
Links:
Holy feedback Batman, sludgecore has returned in the form of Bereft and doom hasn’t felt more celebratory.
This Los Angeles band closed the blinds and felt the icy Nordic metal seep through their influential veins only to bleed out guitar power of pure muscle. Slow and low is how they go and Leichenhaus is the result of a supergroup of sorts. First, a band family tree:
Sacha Dunable also plays in Intronaut and Graviton.
Derek Donley also plays in National Sunday Law and Graviton.
Charles Elliott also plays in Abysmal Dawn.
Derek Rydquist was the vocalist for The Faceless.
Leichenhaus is the group’s debut and what a punch in the face it is. What can be coined as the anti-Abscess, the band opens with amplifier connector feedback broken with the thunderous pounding of one chord after the other. Add pure guitar feedback and screeching to cloud your mind and “Corpse Flower” has you spiraling into the back of your mind. With eyes rolled back, this might be the best display of metal you will hear in the first quarter of the 21st Century.
And if that isn’t painful enough, the feedback comes at you like a tsunami. You expect it to be a transition to something fast and furious, but don’t expect “Mentality of the Inanimate” to be like that. The band moves like molasses just to make sure you feel every guttural cry from Rydquist’s raspy vocals being shredded up, spit out, and re-swallowed into a word.
The song ends as notes are stretched out into infinity and held there. It almost serves an ambient purpose as your mantra plays tricks on you and Berefts’ hellish demeanor becomes meditative.
Each song transcends into the other, all fighting for dominance. “Withered Efflorescence” shimmers from the copper of guitar strings ringing out, begging for adventure. And then the hammer drops, and I feel like I’m 16 all over again pounding my head to the deepest sludge metal that opens the earth and sucks you in. By the bridge, you realize, this is an epic journey into the abyss and creates a soundtrack to the end of days.
Leichenhaus (German for morgue or mortuary), takes the concept of metaphysics and through their music turns it all inside out. These are true tales from the darkside. For that, I raise two fingers to the sky and a big hell yes!
Amoral – Beneath (The End Records)
Amoral
Beneath
The End Records
Links:
The preposterous transition from growly death metal to melodic power metal will inevitably leave a devoted trail of desolation. Much to the chagrin of some within their loyal fan base, Finland’s Amoral is the tale of a band trying to move musically forward. Having never heard of Amoral until very recently; I can’t address these suspected transgressions but I can testify that Amoral’s new album Beneath is surprisingly stellar. Surprising because it is good? No. It is surprising because as impossible as this task was, for the most part, they pulled it off!
The album Beneath opens ironically enough with a full minute of fluctuating synth orchestral arrangement of its title track. Each violin and cello rake molds a pleasant atmosphere only to be literally shredded by grinding guitar dexterity. Simply put, this double-trouble guitar collaboration of Ben Varon and Masi Hukari IS Amoral. Their precision and elaborate skill on each and every single track is mind-boggling. To decipher each of their contributions all throughout Beneath would not only be beyond tedious but damn near inconceivable. On the tracks “Things Left Unsaid”, “Same Difference” and “Hours of Simplicity” for example, each guitarist shadows the menacing complex riffs, while each independently switch off for complementing thrashing solos between melodic verses. This formula is far from revolutionary with fellow genre artists Trivium and Iced Earth also using similar extraordinary talents to their potential. What Amoral lacks in creativity they make up in versatile style of execution.
The sound production of Beneath is phenomenal as well. A nice blend between punchy vocals, guitarist’s shreds and drummer symbol crashes; not one channel dominates the entire mix. One thing the production could not save was some vocals from Ari Koivunen. His vocal style is very similar to Klaus Meine, lead singer of Scorpions. A majority of tracks, his soaring vocals also contain a decadent swagger that borders a Glam-Rock influence. Segments of tracks, like “Things Left Unsaid” and “(Won’t Go) Home”, pay tribute/homage to Amoral’s roots with Ari channeling a weak death metal growl. It comes off as forced and finds no footing within the distinctive power metal dynamics of the album.
For a rebuilding process that started taking shape in 2009 with the album Show Your Colors, I think the results could’ve been disastrous. I would boldly claim Beneath should be applauded simply for abstaining mediocrity and succeeding with such lofty goals presented. Without knowing or following Amoral throughout the years, it is hard to predict the band’s intentions with an album like Beneath. If they are fueled by the progression of their craft rather than by the greed of commercial success; I say hold judgment and let them rock on.
Loincloth – Iron Balls Of Steel (Southern Lord)
Loincloth
Iron Balls Of Steel
(Southern Lord)
Link: MySpace Page
A band name like Loincloth accompanied by an album title such as Iron Balls of Steel, garners medieval images of gristly bearded wild men raping and pillaging to the ire of society. Ironically enough, that may be the inspiration of creation for the band itself. Formerly of Breadwinner (major influence of Lamb of God and others), guitarist Pen Rolling envisioned the band Loincloth with like-minded Southern metal heads who surveyed over their beloved genre and didn’t like what they saw. Growling vocals and extravagant leads were overshadowing the core of their music; The Riff. Loincloth has plenty of those to go around with Iron Balls of Steel.
The energy level is intense on opening track “Underwear Bomb” and never tapers down as the album bulldozes through each track. The production is nearly flawless as each instrument is represented nicely. The mix elaborates the conceptual percussion as the highlight but the treble of guitar and deep bass fuzz illuminates the barren framework. Imagine the sonic complexity of Mastodon and the riff-algebra of Meshuggah, minus vocals of course. Somewhere snuggled between those two pieces of bread, you get the slabs of meat that is Loincloth.
Each track never has a runtime longer than two minutes, as if being self-conscious that each jam would soon become redundant. Nothing differentiates each song from the next, distinction an appropriately placed vocalist and lead guitarist could easily provide. Without watching the tracks switch, you would never know you are listening to “Long Shadows”, “Angel Bait” or even “Stealing Pictures” from anything else. Loincloth are great musicians but reiterate once heralded techniques over and over throughout the sixteen tracks. Eventually and unfortunately, Iron Balls of Steel’s brash dissonance fades into the background.
Instrumentation of metal is a romantic, even if a simply misguided notion of purity for the genre. Never lacking the testicular fortitude its title emphatically boasts, nevertheless Iron Balls of Steel becomes stagnate as the album progresses. I’m all for the daunting instrumental concept of Loincloth but consistent creativity and execution must be paramount to stamp it a successful venture. The desire and passion presented is bold and far from pointless but Loincloth’s Iron Balls of Steel sounds like a promising band cutting their demo. All the while, posting ads on Craigslist and continuing that familiar disappointing search for the complimenting singer.
Sargon – In Contempt (Self-Released)
Sargon
In Contempt
Self-Released
Rating: 3.8 out of 5
Link: http://www.reverbnation.com/sargonextrememetal
Desert rock this is not, this Mesa, Arizona, fierce metal group belongs more to the howling edges of Gothenburg, Sweden than any Kyuss or Queens can procure.
In Contempt comes from the trenches of battlefields and war cries singed with the scent of extremism. The first thing that we hear on this album are machine gun fire. It trades off for machine gun-like drum rattles. It’s a proper call to arms for the fierce extreme speed metal that is to follow.
“The Hunger” does the same but in 2-2 time and spins like a whirlwind of wild Norse power like they were consumed by the ghost of At The Gates. Complimenting this is “Drown In Sorrow,” one of the great songs on the album. The brutal Abscess-like screaming breaks the silence and conjures up powerful Iron Maiden style guitar rhythms. It’s raucous. It’s intense and every bit as reveling.
“Attack” brings us back to the darkness of war. Not as fierce as the earlier songs, the metal changes to Crustcore when it comes time for the chorus.
The album continues to play in this randomized pattern with consistent chops and impressive solo precision. This is a band that has complete control and an edge on their recording. Hair and sweat will be flying with fury from beginning to end.
Praxis – Profanation (Preparation for a Coming Darkness) (Music Review)
Praxis
Profanation (Preparation for a Coming Darkness)
M.O.D.
Rating: 2.3 out of 5
Link: M.O.D. Technologies home page (currently inactive)
When this stuff was new (back in the early 90s, in the middle of the grunge revolution), Praxis was something of a revelation.
Keyboardist Bernie Worrell (Parliament-Funkadelic) was the mainstream anchor to a weird bunch of misfits that included famed producer Bill Laswell (Material), a session drummer who goes by the name “Brain,” and the enigmatic speed guitar virtuoso, Buckethead (who to this day performs wearing a featureless white mask and a bucket on his head). Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis) explored the space where speed metal, hip hop, and free jazz met. It was a skronky, sprawling mess of a record that was nevertheless able to captivate the adventurous listener.
By 2005, thirteen years later, the Praxis project had apparently run its course with the recording of Profanation: Preparation for a Coming Darkness. The core lineup of Lasswell, Worrell, Brain, and Buckethead, was on board. High profile guest vocalists (Iggy Pop, Serj Tankian, Killah Priest, and Mike Patton) were brought in to breathe fire into several of the songs. And then… nothing. It took three years for the record to see any sort of release, and when it did, it was in Japan only. Although by 2009 the record was available digitally in the US, it wasn’t until this year that Laswell himself was able to physically release the record here.
One of the rules of rock and roll is if a record’s release gets held up for more than a year, there’s a reason for it. And if it’s held up more than five years, that reason will be painfully apparent when you finally get a chance to listen to it.
Profanation is not an exception to that rule. It’s a sprawling mess of ideas and unfocused execution, made listeneable by the sheer talent of the guys in the room. Not surprisingly, the strongest tracks are the cluster featuring the high profile guest artists. “Furies” would fit in nicely on any latter-day Iggy Pop record, as he croons over Buckethead’s aptly crunchy licks. Killah Priest rhymes over a fairly traditional funky/jazzy hip hop track that sounds entirely out of place as an intro to Serj Tankian’s wailing “Sulfur and Cheese” — which itself sounds like nothing more than a System Of A Down studio outtake. And therein lies the main problem with this record: it very much sounds like it was recorded in the mid-aughts, and its datedness is a distraction. A listener’s tolerance for this sort of wankery depends to a great degree on the nostalgia associated with the time and place it was first experienced.
Profanation suggests a seven year gap (even a cognitive one) is a bit too much to overcome.
