Gospel Of The Horns - Ceremonial Conjuration

You can never go wrong with Gospel Of The Horns. If your ignorance still render you unaware of their presence, let me fill you in briefly. Gospel hail from Australia, where the black/thrash genre has reached its climax in efficiency and development, and frankly along with Destroyer 666, these vandals are the ones who brought black/thrash to a new level of ferocity and velocity, and thus, Gospel Of The Horns is an old act, one that has released numerous demos and EPs throughout the 90's, finally releasing their debut album ''A Call To Arms'' in 2002 and their sophomore in 2007. This EP is lengthwise a large fragment of an album, nearly twenty minutes, and if we go by a traditional sense, the band should be releasing another album this year, since there's a time space of five years in between each record, though judging by the fact that they've only completed half of the material required to muster an album, in profound agitation and melancholy, I must admit that I fear a full-length is more remote than you might think. This, of course, is my theory.

Nonetheless, I can still be quite content with eighteen minutes of heavily blasted, grinding vicious black/thrash, something that I'm an absolute sucker for. Mongrel's Cross,Warfare, Ketzer and Aura Noir already delivered their fair share of solid ruptures of frenetic black/thrash, carnal and bestial, and Gospel Of The Horns do not fail to deliver, either. You get plenty of variation throughout those eighteen minutes, more than you may expect if truth be told. You have ruinous, torrential outbursts of traumatizing bestial black/thrash, hammering its way through with a sordid obelisk of a guitar tone, a classy rhythm department offering some grooving chord attacks, typical blackened speed/thrash excursions, and even some more numbing mid-paced stuff reeking of oppression like on ''Awakening'', and in addition, the band has an excellent cover of Goatlord's magnificent ''The Fog'' which is basically a black metal-induced version  of Asphyx. The music is simple, though requiring plenty of stamina to churn out those wicked grooves and impetuous tremolos, but as always, the Horns manage bisect their way through the rotten and sore flesh covering your ear holes.

The tone really boasts that juicy, punchy strength that riffs possess. and especially on the cover of ''The Fog'', you can absolutely feel the tremulous contractions of the entwining chords, shaking and stomping, pretty much like an Asphyx record, only eviler. The listener gets a lot of pleasure from the vocals, too. Seriously, if you consider the riffs as over or predictable, then you may as well dub the vocals as vague, bleak plumes of dark smoke, which is pretty much what they are, harsh, eerie and raucous rasps - pretty much an even more venomous kind of your traditional black/thrash rasps. ''Ceremonial Conjuration'' is great, to say the least, built robustly, and it exposes its bombastic, frivolous assaults of grim black/thrash, with no improvement whatsoever in the originality department, which totally fine by me. It would be wrong to say that Gospel Of The Horns are making a come back because they never split up, but after a semi-hiatus of five years, let's just hope that they continue to rain prodigious thunder on us, without procrastinating the incursion.

Highlights:
Ceremonial Conjuration
Sorcery And Blood
Conquering Self

Rating: 85%

Primal Fear - Unbreakable

Since the beginning of their career, Primal Fear has always had the elements to make a great power metal band. From having a major player in the German heavy metal scene on bass (Mat Sinner), to making heavy use of harmonized guitars with glorious double bass sections underneath, Primal Fearwas on the right track. In fact, they even have a man who can clone Rob Halford on vocals; after all, if you can’t sound like Bruce Dickinson, why not go for Halford? But somehow their music didn’t quite captivate me all that much. There are great songs here or there, but in general, the albums were too long to sustain such an intense style of songwriting. This may have changed before “Unbreakable” (I’m a bit behind on my Primal Fear history), but it can be said that “Unbreakable” is the first album I've heard of the band’s that is really a classic.

“Unbreakable” starts off like any other Primal Fear album: fast, epic, and with guitars that soar like the eagle that dawns the cover. Luckily, however, the band does add some variety. There are plenty of moments that focus on a more straightforward heavy metal sound, not unlike what bands like HammerFall and Gamma Ray have done in recent years. Raging songs like “Bad Guys Wear Black” and “Blaze of Glory” hearken back to the huge riffs that Judas Priest unleashed on “Painkiller”. The classic Primal Fear sound returns with “And There Was Silence”, which is the absolute highlight of this record. The chorus is a majestic display of Ralf Scheepers’ vocal skills, and the guitar gives a similar magical atmosphere. One of the stranger tracks on “Unbreakable” is the extremely accessible “Metal Nation”. It is not often that a band this heavy would write such a happy track. It almost feels like it should be on a Freedom Call or Power Quest album. That’s not to say it’s bad; in fact, it is one of the more appealing songs, but if you think the term "flower metal" has any meaning, you probably won’t like it. In addition to this poppy track, there are two lighter songs on “Unbreakable”. “Where Angels Die” infuses slow, fantastic melodies with crunchy guitars in the background, while “Born Again” is the only true ballad on the album and once again is an opportunity for Ralf Scheepers to wow everyone with his singing.

Like in the past, Primal Fear has delivered an album of solid heavy metal. This time, however, they have combined crunchier guitars and a better vocal performance with much more inspired songwriting to deliver one of the best albums of the year. If this is any indication of what’s to come, Primal Fearwill be joining Helloween and Gamma Ray as one of the best German power metal bands!

Highlights
"And There Was Silence"
"Where Angels Die"
"Blaze of Glory"

Rating: 85%

Originally written for Skull Fracturing Metal Zine.

Antediluvian/Temple Nightside - Cogitating Vacuous

Antediluvian, though a relatively newly formed apparition are proving to be even more squamous and prolific than I would have imagined. Just a couple of months ago, they unleashed a introspective torrent of cavernous evil upon mankind alongside with fellow countrymen Adversarial, whom, also undeniably made Canada proud with their ultra-sophisticated brand of abysmal aberration and hellish brute force, and yet that ebbing, infinite tide of impiety does not seem to cease. Antediluvian's work on this two sided split is fairly short, but despite its brevity, I can't help but think the band's efforts nearly inordinate, as less than a year after the release of the darkened pillar of dissonance, ''Through The Cervix Of Hawaah'' they relinquish their ideas and already they have half the material to forge an album - one that I will most gladly embrace and worship.

On the other side of the split, we have an act that's even rawer than its split-mate, the Australian Temple Nightside. I can imagine that a number of people who heard about the blackened incandescence of ''Through The Cervix Of Hawaah'' are not quite well acquainted with Temple, which most probably because Profound Lore Records knew to grab the brighter bulbs in the batch (Mitochondrion, Antediluvian), but there's also a little gab caused by the band's overall discography. Temple released an excellent EP the previous year, though it was mostly shadowed by either more the more superior releases on its kind that exploded in the same time, or by the lack of advertisement, both of gaps which are about to be closed with this split. These primal black metal cavemen deliver crude and incessant torture, and while the total length of their sole track on this split is just a pinch longer than Antediluvian's material, it still manages to get the drool in your mouth dripping for another release.

Antediluvian are incredible as always, and flawless evil is an art that they've practiced and endeavored to achieve so many times that it literally comes spawning out from their veins in ghastly, diminishing rupture. The stance maintained on both the lauded full-length and the latter split with Adversarial was generally a trudging, indulgent one, mainly sticking to the monolithic aesthetics of doom to underpin the channeling, churning evil that was going on above, but on ''Cogitating Vacuous'', the Canadians embrace a less harrowing type of aggravating clawing torture, and produce relatively more dynamic excursions of festering, soupy tremolo density, the node wherein Incantation and other unholy specters join and collide, smothering. While it goes a mid-paced tempo for the most part of the song, the spiraling monster morphs into a profane doom-tinged chomp n' stomp during the finalizing minute, an absolutely tremendous simple riffs made atmospheric with a melancholic and utterly profane, nostalgic melody, still tinging in my ears. Temple Nightside are perhaps not so profound about exploring evil as Antediluvian, but their fiery, abrasive mutilation is an intriguing experience, too. The Australian duo firstly choose a primal and raw production for their music to go through, and they load up their artillery with necrotic, disseminating chords, switching from doom to war metal to Incantation mid-pace quicker than you can say ''Cogitating Vacuous''. The vocals are laden with obscurity and abrasive hate both, and the guttural deliveries exceed especially during the faster moments of shadowy brilliance.

The verdict here is obvious. The two abominations of blackened death metal once again fabricate material that ensure their grasp on evil, and while the main reason I got this split was because it featured an exclusive track from Antediluvian, Canada's finest in my opinion, (and I still think their part of the split was better) I can't deny that Australians killer black/death scene is growing more ominous and efficient with Temple. What else can I say about this split? It' everything I want in one, small package. The whole profusion is abstract, otherworldly, chthonic, surreal, and everything religion worked upon is now a mere gathering of rubble, picking up dust as a new, profane ritual starts blossoming as we speak. Go forth, the dark winds are uttering you name.

Highlights:
Communion With The Void
Somnambulent Of The Void

Rating: 88%

Chaos Inception - The Abrogation

I'm certainly not a fan of the brutal/technical death metal bands the scene is so prolific in, I've never been, and I've disdained the majority of such bands, except Suffocation's first two albums. The aesthetics of brutal/technical death metal bands sound nothing more than meager, frivolous assaults of  speedy contempt, flaunting off their musical proficiency by delivering ultimately exuberant barrages of meaningless noise and chords. Even though I highly dislike bands in this vein, particularly the mid-90's USDM scene, Chaos Inception create such a formula of malevolently bestirred early 90's USDM with  certain modern traits that I can'T help but enjoy its heinous, ruinous force. In every way possible, the band's moniker and the album title live up for their name, creating a chaotic oblivion of fiery, destructive power, making it nearly impossible to say no to its massive winds of devastation, and in addition, I was content that the band lyrical focus wasn't any thing gore-oriented.

Each song is as laconic as it can get, keeping the maelstrom of bullets quick, but extremely decisive, never crossing the four-minute boundary. The first track I heard, the title track seemed almost too fast for me. A burden of smothering, smearing tremolos danced around me feverishly, engulfing my flesh as if to consume it by eroding it with a numbing cluster of monstrous drum beats battering down  my bones, and a swirling whirlwind of tremolo laced sweep leads shredded me to mere scraps of flesh and bone - destructive annihilation. With everything crammed into a brief thirty-one minute length, the intensity seems like short trip, but exceedingly explosive all the same. Torrential  spirals of radiant tremolos and incising, mathematically-forged note patterns already form an intense grooving chaos, and as if that wasn't enough, the bullet storm exceeds with inhuman drum arrangements. Moreover, the tracks are linked together with links, and so the the energy jumps from one wagon to another without even giving the listener a second to breathe, colliding into each other, producing static, abrogating extermination.

The level of frenzied violence is probably the only thing the album has to offer, and frankly, it's the only thing I  came for. The vocals, are somewhat dominant over a less overt dark side of the spectrum, which can be interesting to channel alongside the riffs. Queerly, their delivery doesn't quite fit your classic USDM bill. They're low, almost down tuned, if I may be so bold, and over the matrix of frenetic artillery incursions, it's pretty hard to hear them, and sometimes, like on ''Black Blood Vortex'' they take on a sinister, snarly hue, wrenching out ultimately guttural and gnarl-inflected shrieks. As for the formula, I believe there's ''Altars Of Madness'' in the base of everything, but the bands continuation after that is not entirely predictable; there's some classic USDM worshiping, and some modern inclinations that bring the muscular dependency to power of course, but dissonant sound waves are also heard often as not, which makes me thing there's some sort of  thin cloth of Incantation underneath. ''The Abrogation'', is, obviously not entirely original an album, but its flurries, its violent tumult erupting abruptly - they all lead to the verdict that Chaos Inception planned something utterly disastrous and efficient, and while, as I said, this kind of death metal isn't really my cup of tea, I still enjoyed this quite a bit, even more than its influences, I must admit.

Highlights:
The Abrogation
Pazuzu Eternal
Phalanx (Tip Of The Spear)

Rating: 85%

Mortalicum - The Endtime Prophecy

Now, I'm exceedingly content with the bands Sweden is mustering today. There's a wide range of death metal barbarians whom precede to pen songs with the aesthetics of their primal countrymen and forefathers, a score of traditional heavy metal acts, who, actually don't even sound like throwbacks even though rehash the monumental, mournful tendencies of Mercyful Fate and Maiden, dozens of metal variants who all excel in their own territory, and finally, great number of heavy/doom bands, who, I think was born of the lower, more  down tuned and despairing branch of the already common heavy metal treeline, leading to a prodigious array of bands that amalgamate the semi-drowning tendencies of the Mercyful Fate worship with hunky, monolithic guitars, and drowsy, trudging dynamics. Mortalicum  are one these so called congealments, fusing heavy and doom together, and adding kicky rock n' roll spice to get things pumping.

Mortalicum are chiefly a hard-rocking heavy metal aspect, but their style is always reminiscent of some less ponderous doom, especially when the bands decides to travel by the light of mid-paced riffs. The hard rock element is really quite an interesting element to throw in because, there always seems to be grooving slam and unavoidable catchiness in the music, and with these bluesy overtones gulping up more than half of the album's brazen inclinations, much of the music is invigorated with a bright, gleaming flame, and thus, deep, suffocating doom sequences scarcely stomp. One other thing that boasts the eloquent propensity and efficiency of the record is the hefty tone. Well, it's not exactly as corpulent or dabbling as a funeral doom tone, but the band has worked out a sublime, bulky heft with semi-bluesy undertones and a strong 70's Black Sabbath vibe underpinning its monotony, so the tone works both as an indulgent implement and a somewhat ponderous narrator.

The riffs aside, there are obviously other things on this album that makes it as good as it is; the vocals being the most momentous. Henrik Högl's vocals are immense, even more megalithic than the guitar stream going under it, and he travels proficiently in high and low notes both, and especially in ''Ballad Of  Sorrowful Man'' he exceeds and raises the point of poignancy to a new, escalated level, aplomb and secure with talent and experience. ''The Endtime Prophecy'' has its flaws of course, one being the subtle repetitiveness of the riffs. Yes, even though they have a brisk and catchy efficiency, if you behold their anatomy they really have few traits worth praising, and even fewer that stand out. This, comes from the singular focus on the heft of the tone and the delivery of the highlighted vocals, and therefore the album becomes devoid of variation and proper punishment (though I doubt that was their purpose) through its potent, visceral guitar barrages. Ultimately, though, Mortalicum did a very solid job here, and fans of heavy metal, traditional doom or bluesy metal in general should give this a try for sure.

Highlights:
When Hell Freezes Over
Dark Night
Ballad Of A Sorrowful Man

Rating: 81%

Heavy Cross - Street Wolf

Because I had no acquaintance with the band, at first, I mistook the Finnish one-man-army for a punk-driven blackened heavy metal act, much like the latter excellence that Midnight is producing currently. Satanic Tyrant Werwolf's freshly blossomed project turned out to be a traditional NWOBHM band, one that that I can consider as just another mere fragment of the countless worshipers engulfing the scene today. Heavy Cross were lucky, however, as somehow they were found by the amazing Hell's Headbangers Records, a home that will no doubt affect their inclinations positively. That being said, Heavy Cross's style is pretty simple, just as you might expect, fabricating plain, gallop and chord driven progressions and meshing it with strong bluesy overtones, with the traditional flavor of Raven, Tygers Of Pan Tang, and old Maiden making up the very roots of the EP's zealously oriented formula.

I can closely relate Heavy Cross to another very latter and young band, Convent Guilt, though I've enjoyed the Aussie act's efforts more than this Finnish one, admittedly. The man behind the cross, Satanic Tyrant, is supposedly a veteran of the genre, one that at least has close familiarity with the genre's aesthetics, and he does project much of his fervor and well-hardened musicianship into the two songs that the EP has to offer, and thus, for eight minutes I can easily enjoy and bang my head to the light-weighted catchiness of the songs, but if the guy means to enlarge his congeal his material and form a larger whole,(which he probably does) than he'll need to do some improvements, some tweaks and he needs to fill in that open gash of emptiness with a few doses of divergence. The vocals on ''Street Wolf''' also remind me of Convent Guilt, preferring stay inside the firmly set boundaries instead of letting out uproarious emissions of high-pitched tone, which is something that I'm content with, but again, this renders the EP somewhat quelled, being devoid of the frenetic, evocative aura that it lacks badly.

The riffs are quite enjoyable nonetheless, mild, but hooking chug n' chords with sporadic tinges of melody inserted here and there. Much like many of the gimmicks today, Satanic Tyrant keep (or try to keep) the listener busy on strictly instrumental sections by narrating the riffs with simplistic melodies, without endeavoring much. There is a somber, melancholic, almost ballad-like sequence on the title track, which, I believe, was done to lengthen the track, and unnecessary deterrent, and I should also add that I enjoyed ''Red Light Woman'' more than the title track, mostly because its main riff is seriously catchy. Heavy Cross's efforts will not impress anyone, that's a surety, and albeit I'm not so zealous about forty minutes of this, I still can't deny that I've had a fun time giving this eight minute EP a listen. Frivolous stuff.

Highlight:
Red Light Woman

Rating: 75%

Gouge - Doomed To Death

Before I further criticize the band's tendencies, I must admit that for such a cheesy cover art, Gouge managed to gouge out a surprisingly heavily balanced and strictness-inflected session of regurgitating, gore-obsessed old school death/grind. These Norwegians are completely new to the scene (although the duo are also currently focusing on a relatively more seasoned black/thrash act named Condor) yet they were quite potent whilst conflating the sheer unbridled aggression of Terrorizer with early Death, some Repulsion and even speckles of the culminating brutal thrash excursions of the late 80's-early 90's, and their burden of skills is raised to an even higher state and augmented as they sign to Hell's Headbangers Records. I am no hardcore grindcore fan, as I've only accepted the furious attacks of the bands aforementioned along with perhaps a few more, yet I can't help but get caught up in the frivolous, adventurous but strictly gore-riddled inflammatory conflagrations that these wild Norwegians can produce, and throughout it's eleven minute brevity I enjoyed myself more often than I had expected.

Gouge boasts a terrific metallic, sordid and chubby guitar tone that's engulfing; and the tone is frankly the main meat underpinning the engrossing barrage of riffs. Most bands who explore the same territory as Gouge are, as I stated above, generally repetitive and dessicated to me, going on and on with blatant ramparts of continuous chord barrages, and Gouge does not, of course, completely deviate from this rule, but the ruinous incursions are now eked out with queerly refreshing melody patterns, and the bulbous tone obviously helps too. The deviation is also crucial in between the songs. Gouge creates songs with relatively awkward structures, preferring to blast out immense chord and tremolo sequences which divide among themselves, and the vocals are somewhat subtle and alien to the devouring mix of the album. They appear rarely, and instead of barking out their guts out, they use deep, almost spine-chilling growls to blend with the frenetic ruptures, a job well done.

The purpose is clear; complete and utter destruction. Gouge have long sought this ideology and they are doing their best to produce formulas that are varied, but still parallel to the idea. The gore-riddled theme is a passive attribute, the way I see it, a festering disease of necrotic flavor, a carnal and abominating diseas that works well with all the riffs, and besides that, and the to-the-point grindcore exhalations, Gouge bloody the listener with further obstructive brute attacks, shattering by inserting bludgeoning mid-paced thrash chugs and stomps, sometimes even laced with the doom-laden specters of Autopsy's most primal forms. The title tracks is my favorite and probably the best example of fruitful combinations of death, thrash and grind. With it's scrofulous gatherings amalgamated, Gouge captures the main essence of their to-be-improved formula, and although the EP wasn't a flawless one, it's certainly a much more repugnant and punishing delivery than the majority of the nostalgic death/grind acts roaming the scenes today. 

Highlights:

Doomed To Death

Ritual Of Gore

Rating: 82%

Ketzer - Endzeit Metropolis

Germany's Ketzer carved a deep hole into the old school metal underground with their 2007 debut, ''Satan's Boundaries Unchained'', a frenetic, percussive blackened thrash assault that no doubt gouged its way through countless of generic gimmicks rehashing the genre, and I was more than content to see that after four years the band finally bestirred a violent mesh of black and thrash, though there was one hindrance that surprised me. Bewildered and dazzled my the immense tiding I received, I could apprehend the thought of the band delivering something relatively different sound. The band indeed makes some changes in their bestial sound that was redolent of Destroyer 666, Desaster, Impaled Nazarene, Nocturnal Graves, Usurper, Aura Noir and the like, though they make these certain changes without inaugurating a whole new formula, but still, I should inform you that the band's tendencies have now evacuated the wholly demented aura that they had embraced and clasped on the previous record, omitting a certain measure of the primal, destructive aesthetics and churning the remainders of the corpulent bestiality with a healthy boast of semi-melodic black metal, in the very vein of Dissection, Sacramentum, Watain.

I myself had problems facing the more sophisticated material the band gouged out because I certainly did not see it coming, but giving the album more than a few spins helps a lot. Admittedly I would have preferred the wild, frantic and blast beta-oriented sound of Ketzer, because that was certainly what they excelled in, but then again, I'm still not sure if they could spurt out evil black/speed/thrashing mayhem on par with the previous release, and thus, I've come to enjoy their newly forged sound almost as much as their previous, primal material, therefore leading me the unavoidable question; can this band top what they've done before if they continue to pursue relentless perfection with their newly acquainted style? We will have time to ponder the question as the band is still fresh out of the oven, with heaps of unmolested attention waiting to be embroidered and released but for now, I think it's best that I get to the main point. Attaining a more melodic and sophisticated sound may put off a some of the band's early audience, but no way are Ketzer loosing the efficiency that they had. ''Endzeit Metropolis'' is just as lively and somewhat diverse, and in addition they mix it with the residue of the detracted sound of the debut, forming a vicious, flesh-ripping assault with voluptuous, almost lamenting inclinations. With a richer and more mature-sounding bar set for the band, Ketzer envelops the listener in atmospheric and catchy percussion in a less truculent matter, delivering a mighty fine brand of black/thrash.

''Endzeit Metropolis'' is also entertaining because it doesn't deliberately lean towards repetition and certain songs like ''He Who Stands Before The Row'' offers majestic quadrants of ebbing, desolate black metal tides and attains a much more creative and drowning sound than you can imagine. The near-two-minute distorted complex of ''Farewell'' is also amazing, albeit not so lengthy, a chthonic emission that is both astute and brazen, and ephemeral paean of mourning and isolation. However deep the lamenting gash is, the album somehow does nor fail to inject a subtle vigor into the music, and tracks which are energetically driven from the start are overflowing with melodious dynamics. Tracks like ''Collector Of Worlds'' or ''The Fever's Tide'' are some of the most aggressive and alluring black/thrash incursions you'll met with, songs that have well mastered the band's newly blossoming art together with the earlier aesthetics. All in all, ''Endezeit Metropolis'' is another win for Ketzer, and these German's are well on they're way to black/thrashing brilliance.

Highlights:
Collector Of Worlds
The Fever's Tide
A Requiem For Beauty 

Rating: 87%