Soen - Tellurian [2014]

It might seem unrealistic considering how lowly it was received last year, but Soen's ''Tellurian'' manages to simultaneously break boundaries and stray from a shadow which was cast upon the band with its 2012 debut ''Cognitive''. The band had been blamed for being too much of a Tool drone, but the sheer memorability of this album and its vivid albeit contained ambition to debunk the band's formative curse as a clone band shines through almost perfectly, catapulting it into the very top of my end of the year list. Even for a guy who finds most progressive metal prosaically obsessed with inner complexities, I found new pleasures to be sought with this record. While there can be little doubt that the band's expose owes its greatness to the existence of heavy metal master bassist (Steve DiGorgio, with whom you should be familiar enough), Martin Lopez at the drums and Joel Ekelöf's haunting clean voice, its real quality lies in the fact that it's so good without actually being too divisive...

''Tellurian'' pushes the very limits of emotional conjuration through the power of Ekelöf's poignant tone and excellent performance and especially with the progressively melodious current running through the singular guitar work. There is a sound adherent to Tool - the fat guitar tone and semi-progressive touches flirting with the emotive atmosphere of the album - but the relative simplicity of the riffs strikes me as artfully powerful; and there's no lack of clean interludes either: the subtle, mournful accompaniment of the guitars is what makes songs like the beautiful ''The Words'' such majestically crafted pieces. That said, the drums are wonderfully percussive but in no way overdone, with some superb fills here and there, and the dynamics range of the record creeps rather momentously with its variation of rhythms, riffs and percussion. I love how Ekelöf's mystifying cleans contrast with the bulky outings of the guitar. And, let's admit it, while Ekelöf doesn't particularly enlarge the boundaries vocal performance, with one very akin to Mikael Akerfeldt's with Opeth's ''Pale Communion'', - especially with the multifarious acoustic and clean interludes and diving in and out of the songs - he does make this record an incredible joy to revisit countless times.

Perhaps the mastering could have handled with greater care, though. Indeed, much of Tellurian's dynamic qualities stem from its delicacy and moody swings from riff to riff, melancholia to overwhelming choruses, from dainty pieces to hard-hitting discharges - and the loudness of the record fails to do these aesthetics complete justice. The record seems confined, but it's so full potentials and fresh sounds - yet the guitars and drums in many respects are simply too loud. Still, there's much fun to be had. For one, the quartet masterfully craft exhaustively good choruses, bustling with beauty and atmospheric splendor. It might seem too much to ask for a progressive metal record, but Soen pull through marvelously. By substituting the mathematical intricacy of Dream Theater-turned-Cynic record, Soen transcend needless complexities and baffling convolutions into musical greatness and overcome technically leprous syllabic patterns. Sure, they may have been one or two occasions where the riffs felt repeated, but in general the vocal work is unbelievably varied (also thanks to arbitrary backing vocals) and the guitar riffs represent sufficient diversity in granular outbursts and melodious patterns to hook the uninterested listener.

And the groove! From the verse riff of ''Tabula Rasa'' with its 70's feel to the utter headbanging pleasure one would derive from ''Void'', ''Tellurian'' is abound with groovy, moody momentum.
Soen stop at nothing; employing a diverse range of pianos, symphonic sequences and other instruments especially during the slower sections of album and it's just phenomenal. They might be a little short on outings, but the album is so damn good that it might just as well transform Soen into a progressive metal act to whom I would pay lip service to - and that, folks, is not a regular occasion when it comes the genre in particular. There's not a track I didn't enjoy, from my first loves (''Tabula Rasa'' and ''Kuraman'') to the ballad and crowning track of the album (''The Words'') to ''Pluton'' to the almost avant-garde epic and finale ''The Others' Fall'', even though, all told, there may have been 3-4 minutes on the album that didn't completely overwhelm me. Understandably, ''Tellurian'' made it to few end of the year lists, possibly because it isn't extreme or directly appealing to a lot of people. Or fresh. But I would have to disagree. The unlikely contrast between the music and the grotesquely awesome cover art (A rhino having shish and curled up humans with chopsticks for fuck's sake!--something Japan's Sigh would have fancied, I imagine) is just a strange addition to the list of things I love about this album. It beckons with ebbing reverb of the final track, luring us inside it, one chopstick-full of listeners at a time.

Highlights:
Everything

Rating: 92%

Putrevore - Macabre Kingdom

Four years ago, the Swedish/Spanish death metal collaboration imploded their gory malevolence with the discharge of their sole release and debut album, ''Morphed From Deadbreath'' a much mighty suffusion of Incantation and cadaverous Swedish death metal, and despite its distinct prowess and immense effect upon deeply-intrigued listeners, the album did not draw half as much attention as some of the much more dominant retro death metal releases of the same time, such Dead Congregation's glorious disembowelment of evil, ''Graves Of The Archangels'', which no doubt led the upcoming pack of horrendous Incantation worshipers which would shortly envenom the world. Putrevore, on their debut, displayed a relatively fresh formula, a gory soup of rotten Swedish heft and imposing blood, and now, four years after the release of that swampy bulk of an death metal album, we're fed with the real deal, as Rogga Johannson and Dave Rotten, who are now proven veterans of the genre's differing varieties, present their AA material here, and we are enlightened with the fact that the debut was merely the starter meal, and the main dish has just arrived.

Admittedly, my first reaction to this was not at all positive. I didn't leave me flabbergast with its prowess and durability, and it was not what I had endeavored to hear after such a non-apprehensive process of excitement, but everything on the album seemed like tasteless hulk made up of brutal death metal and the subtle, depriving and compellingly evil aesthetics of ''Onward To Golgotha'', but it was the second, or perhaps the third listen which crammed hope into my ears, for the very moment that I realized and comprehended the album's brilliant succession and manifestation was the moment I learned to love it, and it was the moment I was sure the record would be the epitome of many, many retro death metal releases that would come afterwards, or that were already unleashed.

Macabre Kingdom lives up for its name, and that's just the least I can say about it. It's content is made obvious by the savvy album cover that enriches its course. Just think about it; the music on ''Macabre Kingdom'' perfectly fits the ghoulish fiend stalking its subtle minions whilst seated upon a fiendish, emaciated throne of gore, glazing at the undead which kneel before it. A truly gruesome and ghastly image of vividness, and moreover, the monolith that is ''Macabre Kingdom'' is still, so much more. There's a thick, almost charismatic enigma buried beneath the cylopean grooves and the elephantine grooves never cease to slam the listener with the embryonic excellence, stretched upon a base of carnal Floridian brutality, immense Bolt Thrower potency in heft and chomps, and a befouling, rotten contemplation of Incantation-esque everything, from tremolos, to bombastic bombards to swaggering ramparts. I still can't imagine how Rogga took his time to pen these compositions while dealing with a dozen more projects, and yet still elude boredom and add excessive competence and efficiency into the mix, making this the best effort he has ever worked on.

A hybrid on brutality and moist danger and thickness is one thing, evil another. In ''Macabre Kingdom'', you get all of that in one single compiled suitcase. In addition to its tremendous and substantial reservoir of riffs, and its unbridled hostility, the album can effortlessly display its love for cthtonic horror, as on ''The Mysteries Of The Worm Part 2'', which feels as if you're further dragged into a pitch-black void after the barbarous Part 1, and get swallowed by the band's darker tendencies, an emission of gore-laden shadow and cosmic miasma spiraling onto you as you descend further and further down a barren black hole. While the sporadic keyboard is trait specifically belonging to that track, there is a murkier blast of sound waves which evoke evil and raise the hairs on your back that support the album the whole time; the vocals. It's almost as if Dave Rotten reaches the subtlest tone he possesses and then spurts it out in a pernicious gurgle, and believe me, if the instrumental section of the album didn't hold them from exploding, the rafters would have shook, and the cavernous murmurs would have tinged in the core of your ears for hours. Dave Rotten's incredible delivery sounds rather like the product of a brutal rape by a demon, adding impious murkiness into Craig Pillard's already copious voice. Seriously, Dave Rotten sounds like Satan whispering through a hundred-and-fifty meter tunnel. And you're on the other side of it.

Flawless with its combination of brutality and wicked Incantation-esque creativity, ''Macabre Kingdom'' does not merely ''appease''. The underlying creativity and musicianship under its subtext of churning monstrosity is its prime tool and one that can outshine almost the entire race of retro death metal acts, and even a number of the genre's first-comers. This megalith is built upon total and immense doom and evil, and this single 35-minute rupture we received is only a mere flick of the giant's finger. Rogga and Dave's absolute climax is reached with this record and although I don't think this will cease to blow my ears for a very long time, I am still eagerly gathering my courage to face the extremities of a third primal obelisk. With ''Macabre Kingdom'' you will experience brutality, experience pain, experience primordial prowess, experience engulfing evil, with ''Macabre Kingdom'', you will experience immensity.

Highlights:
The Morbid Mass Of Swarming Entities
The Tentacles Through Time
The Mysteries Of The Worm Part 2
Beyond Human Comprehension 

Rating: 92%

Hyborian Steel-Blood, Steel And Glory

After dealing with waves of pervasive death and thrash metal bands, I thought I'd try something different. No doubt, Hyborian Steel provided me with such a thing. Hyborian combine the heroicism of power metal with the ridicolous jumpiness of heavy metal in order to form ''Epic Power Metal'', something which you don't see quite often. Indeed at first, ''Blood, Steel and Glory'' had an amazingly epic feel, roaming over the warfaric lyrics and atmosphere to add additional spunk. Repeatedly slitening to this record enables the listener to finally comprehend the atmopshere, and finally come to cunclusion that Hyborian Steel's style is also quite pervasive, but it's just so fun to toy with that one can simply not care.

The music reflects the lyrics quite excellently, providing both a heroic and barbaric sound for the listener to acquire. The vocals, which may seem irritative and annoying at first actually make up the key bases of the album, adding a tremendous backbone to the album, and thus not only allowing the riffs to sound epic, but also giving omnipotency to the music to increase effectiveness during accents. Most of the songs deal around more epic and comprehensible structures, covering the music with thick epicness and decorating the riffs with harmonically inclining lead sections. So many guitars gather around in the solos that the music turns into ''happy metal'' all of a sudden, the climax of epicness. Of course, nobody said that the music would be all cakes and lollipop. ''Acqilonian Battlecry'' leans slightly towards the more barbaric side of power metal, with its striking riffs, herpic breakdowns and thanks to the atmosphere which acts like a battle scene. But the real track that attains the barbaric sound is ''the Mountain Of Crom'', a vicious track it is, especially during its first half, the song purely concentrates on all things savage and warfaric about power metal. After some time, the spikes of savagery do melt down slightly, but I could only care. The band have also put a versatike cover of Cirith Ungol's ''War Eternal'', that just follows a very similar path as the band.

The vocals are annoying even though they are supportive, and that's all I can point out. The delivery of the music on ''Blood, Steel and Glory'' is magnificent, especially during the first few songs. If you are hunting for something different than the widespread sound of death, thrash and black, then I can't seem to understand why you wouldn't want this album. Safely combines power with heavy, supports the structure and accent at all times, provides an epic atmosphere and inserts in so much melody that sometimes I cease to comprehend the mash up of notes. A new wave of heavy metal bands are coming your way, and with bands such as Midnight and Hyborian Steel leading the front row, there's no stopping this contemptous wave of invading heavy metal monsters.

Highlights:
Aquilonian Battlecry
The Mountain of Crom
The Black Hand Of Set
(The Cirith Ungol cover is great too but not an original)

Rating: 83,5%