Pyrrhon - Running Out of Skin (EP) [2016]

In an alternative universe, I could have actually enjoyed records like The Mother of Virtues or Vermiis, records by two bands which pop up on occasion in my reviews since I entertain the prospect of teasing their most avid followers and acolytes by readdressing how artificially elevated they seem to be, especially when compared the bee knee's of the technical/avantgarde death metal spectrum, Canada's masterful Gorguts. That said, Pyrrhon's Growth Without End EP which came out last year was a refreshing coat of paint that fractured their immensely busybody stream of waxed, alienating notes and chord fusions into something more in tune with my ears, even though it still retained its caustic freakishness. Come 2016, I was excited to get my hands on their latest opus, Running Out of Skin, which turned out to be something less of an opus and rather a flimsy filler that obeyed the law of its titular maxim more than anything. Crafty and deracinating as these gentleman are in their approach, there is a level of versatility on this EP that I simply found unnerving, spin after spin.

And unnerving not in the most positive sense. Firstly, Pyrrhon are beyond doubt inaccessible, a feat they've already proven wit 2014's Mother of Virtues, but while complexity is certainly a characteristic, the real asset of their craft the cauterizing, unfazed attack of the guitars, the insomniac lying wait behind the thickset of instruments. Nevertheless, one reason for me abjuring this 16-minute EP is not it's dense focus on intricacy and avowed inaccessibility; it's the band's inability to employ little else that cultivates captivating musical experience. Let's take a look. ''Statistic Singular'', the opener and longest track here, broils with tense, discordant chords that weave into each other in a seeming mess, a characteristic choppy, bass-driven rhythm guitar driving a grotesque sort of groove beat while the lead guitars mingles with the fringes of utter ear-razing frippery: the intended effect IS alienation, but I'm too busy either scratching my head over what the hell is happening or waiting for a hook to give a damn about their skill. I profess: I do enjoy the simpler, plainer things in life, but the track absolutely lacks any momentum to engross anyone to a satisfying degree. As the same rule sadly applies to the rest of the disc, the quartet has apparently invested more time in attempting to emulate the philosophy of their half-sober practice sessions that actually filing any sensible flourish into the music.

But hell, if you're still pleading 'that's the whole point of the music, to sound dissonant'', be my guest. The guitar tone is unruly and boring, not a major deviation from the industrial grind of their previous records but nonetheless a degree more downtrodden, sharp high-end notes cutting at your eardrums like tiny bacteria with rusted, nail-sized cleavers hacking away in unkempt bliss.I actually enjoyed the vocals on here, though, perhaps the only single attribute that preserved some of that vile, cantankerous timbre I so loved on their previous outings - thankfully some things never change. There's something to be understood here if the best song on the whole disc is a cover of Death's ''Crystal Mountain'', surprisingly well applied into the individual, splenetic science which Pyrrhon has constructed on its own, - complete with both thicker and raspier variations on Schuldiner's voice plus tingling, cyborgian lead sections - and that's Running Out of Skin feels more like a piece of audio commitment fit for donation to poverty-stricken heshers in need, and even then I imagine a good many people wouldn't waste much tine before dumping it into the CD heap. Certainly not a 'terrible' effort by any means, but I felt that in between the dense interplay of meaningless notes and riffs some more substance would have been added, something which I hope the band will seek out to improve on their next full-length. That ''Crystal Mountain'' though.

Highlights:
Statistic Singular

Rating: 52%

Night Demon - Curse of the Damned [2015]

Since everything from rainbow filtering to tasteless 'malcore' music is being practiced these days with utmost diligence, it would be impossible for me to argue against the resurgence of NWOBHM throwbacks, which has, along with the emergent superstars of rehashing from other genres of metal have created a small scene of their own. I can hardly find anything wrong with this; since I'm equally gratified to see legends from the olden days like Satan and raven uproot the foundations of modern heavy/speed metal with stunning comeback records as I am seeing newer groups like Iron Dogs, Hessian and Trial rise to the pulpit and proclaim these awesome, refreshing records which manage to retain identity and diversity without staving off the fundamental core of the 80's. California's Night Demon are not exactly on the same list as some of their more potent peers, especially when it comes to originality, and in fact their self-titled EP was not much more than a fun blast of modernized Angel Witch and Judas Priest, calcified in its obsession, but their debut is such a great, if frivolous, pastry of early 80's speed/heavy aesthetics that I'm willing to forgive whatever faults were made in the past.

Granted, those faults weren't many with their self-titled EP, since that was jumpy, Americanized misadventure in NWOBHM which could hardly be accused of anything except perhaps perusing its source material too deeply, and to be sure, their debut doesn't seem like a far cry from that familiar path, with cheesy 80's-inspired horror flick and youthful attitude, This is basically a parade for fans of anything from Exciter and Anvil to Maiden and Raven, from Razor and Running Wild to Abattoir and Angel Witch, or even newish acts like White Wizard and Enforcer. The 'heavy metal' palette offered here is pretty sparse, so the sound has a wide spectrum of appeal, simplistic barrages of speed metal and bluesy chords smitten with an occasionally heavier pantry of thrash-y discord and mid-paced chug fares a la Exodus and Agent Steel, and bear in mind that Night Demon are never melodic or intricate enough to earn themselves a seal of approval from the department of technical guitar work: so the riffs don't mirror the gyrating, harmonious minimalism of Iron Dogs, since the production is a fairly granular from any point, with tracks like the title track plodding on with some more mid-paced, rhythmic sways instead of a directly dynamic, effusive Iron Mainde-esque parade of whizzing melodies and lightweight chords. In fact, in the sense that ''Curse of the Damned'' feels more thrash-based than your regular NWOBHM outfit (think early Priest, Jaguar, early Satan, etc.) I might add that Night Demon aren't performing the strictly 'purest' brand of heavy metal. But who the hell cares, right? All the convoluted scholarly blather aside, the Californians kick ass on many levels here. ''Killer'', ''Screams in the Night'' and ''Heavy Metal Heat'' are all blazing metaltastic anthems (the last one being my favorite) loaded with unabashed, peppy riff-work that's never as coarse as, say, Piledriver, but never quite 'clean' either.

Sure, you may say that the tracks on this record feel too modern compared to their roots, especially with ample production values and Brent Woodward's vibrant vocals, but the again everyone's cashing in on the production game nowadays, since audibility is far too alluring to refuse, and while a tortured, punkish scream could as well have been supplanted on some of the songs, I can't say I'm in protest of the guy's voice. However, it's not that the back-to-basics riffing coupled with the loud production doesn't create a caveat. There are 1-2 humdingers across the record, but overall I did expect a stronger array of riffs from Californians that would have complemented the airiness of the record well; in fact as a restless dreamer and formulator of imaginary case-scenarios I envisioned that ''Curse of the Damned'' could have ousted a further dozen records in similarity had it displayed some more guitar acrobatics or impressive leads like on that spectacular album Satan bequeathed us with back in 2013, and sometimes the band will lag into this Sabbathian doom groove that doesn't always comply with its naturally gritty aesthetics. This is still old school, folks. To be frank, bands like Hessian or Order of the Solar Temple are practicing heavy metal with a closer adherence to the genre's early 80's and late 70's template than Night Demon, and while everything doesn't fall perfectly here, I did enjoy this album, especially some of its dirtier tracks just as much as Rob Halford enjoys a fast ride on his motorbike, so if you're ever in the craving for nostalgia, but with a modern face, look no further.

Highlights:
Heavy Metal Heat
Screams in the Night
Livin' Danger

Rating: 75%

Pyrrhon - Growth Without End (EP) [2015]

I could never feign to hide my affliction with most bands nowadays practicing the more modern, and more some reason more enticing ordeals of death metal, like those of Ulcerate, most post-2000 Immolation, Wormed, Fleshgod Apocalypse, or even the New York quartet Pyrrhon until this point in their career (although I have enjoyed perhaps a handful of releases in the medium) simply because much of this technically-infused, dissonant death metal feels as gratifying and appealing to me as a basket full of camel dung, and not even the pasty kind of dung, at that. That Pyrrhon underwent some inexplicable epiphany after their lukewarm ''The Mother of Virtues'', which was likewise greeted with praise and hype, seems unreasonable to me, since their latest EP ''Growth Without End'' does not seem like a huge deviation from the cancerous and bowels-out jingle of its predecessor, yet it simultaneously surprises me that the four piece could jump so far in between two chronologically very close recordings, ripping open the entrails of quality and fastidiously backing down from the oversize proportions of the full-length into a sort of formulaic greatness that translates into memorability and good song-writing, not unlike the recent EP by Ketha which I enjoyed so much.

Granted, Pyrrhon still panders to the same audience as before, but if anything with this EP they've gained new listeners, myself included. For sure, I never thought ''The Mother of Virtues'' quite felt like a godawful abortion the same way some other albums in the field did, but it's also safe to assume it will never pique my attention the way this EP did. Imagine those placid, germ-ridden excesses of afterbirth trimmed and truncated carefully, refined and polished until the work at hand still resembles the fetid grotesqueness of the initial product, but far clearer around edges, sans the overloaded carton covering that was weighing both itself and the listener's attention span down: that's ''Growth Without End''. The EP unfolds with ''Cancer Mantra'' and the band wastes no time getting to the fucking point, exploding with bombastic, wacky chords and disjointed rhythmic sways that sound unlike anything I've quite heard before, laden with dark, chaotic deliciousness. This isn't exactly the industrial and eccentric parade I discovered on Ketha's latest EP, because each musician is keeping his instrument closely intact, with little room for experimentation. That said, so much is going on here that I find it difficult not to dub this experimental. The guitars are absolutely preposterous and monstrous, and giving them props would be insulting because they've loaded the EP with so many unhinged, jagged riffs within just 15 minutes that it's nothing short of outstanding, but their discordance and the odd harmonies produced are also excellent in shaping the atmosphere, so much, in fact, that I'd easily equate pretty much any of the 5 brief songs here to a Deathspell Omega under the influence of Gorguts or Ulcerate.

The drums are absolutely ballistic, unpredictable, but at the same time sporadic so you're getting more of a great jazzy vibe rather than a pointless clangor of cymbals, toms and snares. The vocals, of course, deserve a mention here, since they can seamlessly shift between deep Immolation-esque growls and more rampant punk/hardcore inflections, like on ''Cancer Mantra'', to a timbre that lies in between the two, some underlying inherent evil seeping through the clot of a complex, mercurial cellular expanse, which, like the unpredictable instrumentation keeps changing, resurfacing and morphing as though in a rehearsal. Seriously, ''Growth Without End'' is not for the weak. The strength of the songs lie in their brevity, with the longest track (''Turing's Revenge'') being about 4 and a half minutes, and the shortest two, at 2 minutes and 1 and a half  minute respectively, being so concise that I couldn't help filter them through my unsuspecting auditory system over and over until my ears were in tatters. Everything here is so damn acrobatic and yet muscular that it leaves nothing behind. Sure, I could have supplanted some of the completely disorganized chord swells like those toward the end of ''Turing's Revenge'' for something equally captivating and energized as the other songs on the EP, but I'm more than willing to forgive a few stains on a 15-minute listen that already struck home far and wide, destroying my expectations. So much, in fact, that now I'm willing to give their full-length a second chance. Even the lyrics are pure gold, concerning various subjects, from history to mental deterioration, and they help tie up ''Growth Without End'' into the perfect cradle of malice to which belongs, fostered by oozing depravity and cancerous carbuncles, until, I hope, they all implode and give birth to something of even greater stature. Well done.

Highlights:
Cancer Mantra
Forget Yourself
The Mass

Rating: 85%

Gruesome - Savage Land [2015]

What's the best way to respond to morbid gimmicks? More gimmicks! Despite the fact that so many old school death metal acts keep falling under the same dome of generic, tactless ordure, member of Exhumed and Dekapitator Matt Harvey insistently pushes forward in the imitation game, with the most affably like-sounding album I've heard in years. Indeed, it doesn't pain me when I see a huge old school resurgence budding to counterfeit the more modern, busy-bodied splurge of technical death metal bands, especially when masters of like Death, Pestilence, Autopsy, Exhumed, Carcass and Morbid Angel are put into exhibition through fresher production qualities, but the downpour of this musical carnality has long lost its initial gloss of delectable, grotesque beauty embodied via some of the foremost contenders of the new wave of old school death metal, and coming across one band which actually heralds something more than the dry worship of the early 90's has become an eerie process. Unfortunately, Gruesome does not quantify as the insurgent savior in this case of cannibalistic banality, and in fact their debut ''Savage Land'' goes beyond even the rudiments of worship: a literal copycat of what Chuck Schuldiner formulated in 1988.

Everything, from the campy, gore-induced cover art to the precise tones of Harvey's inflection, scream ''Leprosy''. While I would have found the opaque, spidery lattices of guitar riffs redolent of a typical OSDM revival offering, ''Savage Land'' has an instant and unwavering appeal to the exact motifs and carnal leftovers that was granted to us with Death's 1988 magnum opus, sprawling tremolos still tinged with the primal expressionism of late 80's/early 90's thrash metal, and the album is so devoted to its source material that it exhorts the kind of semi-technical for which Chuck was renowned for with inseparable mastery, fleshing out the layers of contusion and antiquated morbidity in the way which Schuldiner would have done. It's almost as if Chuck has been brought back from the dead, with his infected 1988 timbre (before he began to focus on raspier growls) and decided to give his fans one last tour de force. Gruesome certainly know to relish the exact period on which they based the album on: ''Savage Land'' denies both the even more primitive evil of ''Scream Bloody Gore'' and the more technical, polished aestheticism of Schuldiner's later efforts and sometimes undesirable flirtations with melody. If anything this is a potent, convincing tribute to everything the great man dedicated his life for. Yet despite the putrescence of it all, ''Savage Land'' brims with a robust production and crisp tenet uncommon for ''Leprosy'', owing to the obvious gulf of 27 years in between records, and the formulaic intensity reaches new heights with the pummeling vividness of the kit. It does grant the album a greater impetus for the grooves which marginally separates it from ''Leprosy'', including some fairly cool fills here and there, but I certainly wouldn't substitute it for  Hoglan's sinister beats and organic texture which made the album such an instrumental part of my cognitive death metal compendium.

That being said, there are few other moments here worth mentioning. Notably the leads, which are, like everything else, derivatives of Chuck's uncanny leads and crepuscular harmonies, are somewhat improved if we had to take this album as a replica of ''Leprosy'', with songs like the title track and ''Trapped in Hell'' featuring some catchy, if spurious solo work that I found to be a major distinction point between this album and the other (if it can be called a 'major' distinction.). But otherwise there are whammy bars and imprecisely concocted leads aplenty here, like on the fast, molesting ''Psychic Twin'' with not much depth to them. On a funnier note, the band parodies the song ''Open Casket'' with its corresponding tune ''Closed Casket'', and there's even a a cover of ''Land of no Return''... in case, well, you needed more Death for your listening pleasures. It's certainly a more brutal offering than ''Leprosy'' courtesy of modern production values, but the skin tingling, blood-curdling pleasure of the latter, it's indisputable ability to resurrect the dead and pile rotting bodies on top of one another until you're body withers away cold and numb, is amiss. Gruesome are either unaware of the fundamental fact that ''Leprosy'' happened once, and will never happen again, or they're just parodying the record, which at this rate of devotion and accuracy, seems unlikely. And while no death metal would be devoid of its influence, copy pasting is just downright weird as a musical practice. A cool, fierce record that certainly fits the bill if you're into the early Floridian scene, but unlikely to elicit more than a few listen from me.

Highlights:
Hideous 
Gangrene
Trapped in Hell

Rating: 67%

Perdition Temple - The Tempter's Victorious [2015]

Armed with the cutlery of ungodly riffs and production values that hearken back to the mid-early 90's, Perdition Temple is another band who channels the vainglory of Angelcorpse, Morbid Angel, Impiety and the like. More than adhering to the now antiquated cavern-core aesthetics of Antediluvian, Motichondrion, Impetuous Ritual or Vasaeleth, there's a more dynamic sound to be sought here and one that can definitely garner some attention. I'd been hesitant enough to dismiss the recent EP, ''Sovereign of the Desolate'', of this Florida five-piece, but the sophomore ensures that any mistakes made in the past (i.e. laziness/trepidation) have a chance of being redeemed through the musical purgatory which they have to offer, and while I do think my actions can be partially justified with the blandness of the band's initial image of pentagrams and blazing temples, there's some truth saying that no matter what, you can't judge a book by its cover, especially if it's Angelcorpse on hold.

That being said, ''The Tempter's Victorious'' is not necessarily the superb splash of profane originality you were probably betting on, but it's still superlatively more distinguished and dynamic than at least a handful of other albums you'll hear of its quotient. Acrobatic and unholy, the riffs are flung endlessly, like charred limbs and body bits being catapulted from the crenelations of some darkly fortress, with beautifully gnarly, serpentine tremolos crawling apace, and while this record does not sound as devastating as anything derived from Angelcorpse's body work, there's a certain, infinitesimal creep to it which I've frankly grown very fond, such that it might easily appeal to fans of a more broad circulation of contemporary death metal a la Putrevore, or if you like your death metal really old school, Funebre, Morpheus Descends or even Demilich. The overgrowth of the death metal portion of this record makes you crave some of the black metal that was promised by the esteemed Metal Archives tag, but in truth the only thing 'black' about this is Impurath's sepelean rasp which adds a rather enjoyable contrast to the seeming transparency of the riffs... and that's fact, because the guitars are hardly doused in any sort of reverb or overripe thickness, which even makes the album strangely technical.

You can even hear plodding, almost psychedelic bass lines grooving behind the systematic tremolo patterns which usually sound like they were ripped out of the cortex of some technical death metal piece and then run through the bowels of Baphomet. Chaos galore. The drumming is spot on, though it largely doesn't stay out of the norm's of this style. Tracks like title track and ''Extinction Synagogue'' are paragons of the album's unmitigated force, sprawling panoplies of black/thrashing and intensity in case you needed any more, and ''Chambers of Predation'' has a great set of chug-oriented riffs which I quite enjoy; ''The Tempter's Victorious'' is clearly not a far shout any Morbid Angel or Angelcorpse record, but its capacity to disturb and penalize are realized well, with suitably heretical apparel to make a name for themselves in the underground. 8 tracks prepared to drill your mind with manic fervor. In the end, the tempter is victorious, and its victory lap revolves around the pillars of a crumbling church, where hopefully, an inquisitive reader would be interested enough to exhume this disc from the debris afterwards, and indulging in all morbid and malicious details it keeps within. Not a terrific record, but as solid as they'll fucking come.

Highlights:
The Tempter's Victorious
Extinction Synagogue
Chambers of Predation

Rating: 75%

Incinerate - Eradicating Terrestrial Species [2015]

The breeding ground for uncouth 90's death metal has grown more popular than it was during its heyday as a myriad outfits continue their mechanized, bloody advance to claiming their testators' legacy (i.e. Suffocation, Cryptopsy, Morbid Angel, etc.) but fruitfulness in such endeavors has rarely been the case. In other words, enter the dialectic of Incinerate third record ''Eradicating Terrestrial Species'', and the testy death metal listener will instantly realize that he/she has already run the gamut of the band's cadaverous gestalt of brutal/technical death metal, with almost zero new tricks to satisfy the culinary appetite which one may have hoped ravish. Playing like a manic, defunct tutorial for disfiguring ugly extra-terrestrials, this international cooperation leaves much to be desired, (Dave Rotten and Rogga Johansson created some of the most ill-bred sonic abuses of recent history with ''Macabre Kingdom'' in 2012, and we all know what a blast that was) but less to be acquired...

Comatose Music has had the honor of governing such depraved and bombastic retro-90's death metal acts like Incinerate, though the department's been generally running low on originality. Incinerate plucks at the strings of Hate Eternal, Cryptopsy, Suffocation, Florida obscures Brutality and Disincarnate and Immolation more than the cavern-core worship bands these days usually vie for, and even the production values have been altered somewhat to patch in with that gruesome production of the 90's. Before I gone on to scold how much this record lacks proper clinical galvanization, let me point out that the 90's mechanics are perfectly in place, and the riffs are densely punishing enough to come close to the aforementioned groups, with dredged up technical punishment and furious tremolos delivering most of the album's fundamental butchery, and treacly chugs gulping away at the listener's ear with systematic tension and ugliness.The drums contain enough fills and frenetic double-bass convolution to sound tantalizing, at least to an extent; add to that a metallic, grinding base line and everything seems in place to become the bonafide tech-death offering of the year, but the tracks are so interchangeable that it feels like musical equivalent of dull paint job.

I frankly enjoyed the overt presentation of gore, religion and science-fiction tropes, but aside from the few cheesy film sequences sandwiched in between or before some of the tunes, the concepts did nothing for the theatricality of the album. Incinerate is constantly technical, but they obdurately lack the quality to modify themselves throughout the record. Jesse Watson's vocals are the typical growls you were expecting, providing little anguish or trauma. They go excessively deep sometimes, and the cavernous lows mixed with the unsavory technicality generate something of a Demilich current, but once again, pleasure is stifled. Perhaps my favorite track here was ''The Berzerker'', which sounds characteristically similar to all the other tracks but has a intro featuring Shelley's poem ''Ozymandias'' as the only moment which was elevated to auditory limelight in the entire song. This is 30 minutes of unscathed brutality that feels long enough after the first spin. Evocative? I doubt it. Pure calculated ordure, and a fine piece to listen while you're raging over your maths project, I imagine. Yet this scarcely pushes the imaginative expanse of anyone's mind, and I certainly enjoyed some of the surgical guitar work and intensity, I won't hesitate to say Incinerate's got a better compendium of cult horror/sci-fi films than masterful riffs.

Highlights:
Fucking the Rotten Nun
The Bezerker
From Distant Worlds

Rating: 50%

Crypt Sermon - Out of the Garden [2015]

Given the jaded state of doom metal, it's impressive enough that we're given the chance to hear bands like Crypt Sermon, who, without betraying their subscription to primal masters such as Saint Vitus or Candlemass, can almost seamlessly bring a great, exuberant servicing of doom, delectably packaged. It's pasty enough that these guys are on Dark Descent Record' roster - one of the premier 'traditional' metal labels you'll find today - but the medieval imagery and 11th century mysticism of this whole album gave me such a worthwhile hard on that I realized I might not have been this excited about a new album for a considerable time, let alone the doom genre. A great big 'fuck you' to the flocks of floundering sludge and heaving doom metal bands who are on to making a buck out sheer heaviness and songwriting conundrums, ''Out of Garden'' is a real treat to say the least, an entertaining jousting tournament that appeals to both the bright color palette of the album, as well as its shadier counterpart.

I knew I would love this album the moment I heard ''Heavy Riders'', easily one of the catchiest and most excellent pieces of medieval heavy metal anthems in existence, if there ever were any. The song unbuckles with cavorting, cryptic (har har) riffs that draw heavily on Candlemass, with great, jumpy oriental melodies sandwiched in between the heavy, mid-paced chord progressions as well a superb thrash metal chug, and the verse is just so damn catchy that it seems like the perfect nighttime tune to accompany a group D&D nerds playing by an archaic furnace:

It's a cruel world huddled 'round the fries
Sharpening our swords and our spears
Hopin' and prayin' and the holy men are sayin'
There's nothing to fear

But that merely emerges as the fastest song out of the album (and my favorite). There's not a huge pool of influences that these guys borrow from, and aside from the usual suspects, this is genuinely original doom metal that's equally epic in its choral sections as it is hauntingly foreboding during the majority of its glorious run-time. The guitars, despite some inherent constraint in the riffcrafting department, exercise a varied slew of riffs from standardized, trudging crawls to more melodic or harmonious progressions like on ''Byzantium'' that eke out a lot of doom metal's traditional redundancy.

The vocals retain an aspiring balance between frenetic over-the-top banshee howls a la Atlantean Kodex - though Crypt Sermon is far more somber and ominous than the latter to plod on a continually epic, atmospheric vein - and a more controlled inflection, though they are always great and prominent. ''Will of the Ancients'' mates the uncannily creepy melody of the rhythm guitars with his effortless voxing - needless to say, I'm a fan. In retrospect I would have appreciated the use organs or keyboards more frequently if at all, but only because the whole album is crammed with so many good riffs and memorable moments that ambiance seems like only thing amiss... But even that is partially fulfilled with ''Into the Holy of Holies'' which not only rocks with swaying, leaden doom riffs but an excellent, atmospheric chorus above the vocals. A truly 'holy' piece, and not to mention that it has just one of the many guitar solos which hold more instrumental oomph than half a dozen sleazy doom/sludge acts combined. I enjoyed the drums as well, thanks to a more-prominent-than-usual sound and a loudness that punctuated the riffs nicely. 

Even the songs have managed to truncate themselves in suitably small portions, (with only one song running at 8 minutes) finding some magical solution to one of the biggest problems I whine about in metal music: length. As always, I'm not going to hold back the fact that not all the riffs were mesmerizing or had the same level goosebump-givability, and despite the variation it became somewhat clear that the riffs that were in circulation were more or less the same, but with songs like ''Heavy Riders'' or ''Will of the Ancient Call'' I can hardly call that a major gripe. In fact, I found myself enthralled by the sheer static and gloomy quality of the serpentine guitar riffs at least half the time. Unarguably, there were some tedious moments, who doesn't have them nowadays? This is obviously not a particularly fastidious boxing of doom metal, but it is pure and proud, and it proves that traditional doom stringer has still a number of jewels in its treasure trove, and so long as gnarled, medieval, Gothic fanaticism persists we'll never really run out of good bands... What else can I tell you? The music speaks for its self. Grab your shield and lance; mount up. And hell, if these guys merely stepped out of the garden with their debut, who knows what they'll be walking into on the sophomore?

Highlights:

Heavy Riders

Out of the Garden

Will of the Ancient Call

Rating: 85%

Volahn - Aq'Ab'Al' [2015]

From the obscure label Crepusculo Negro comes the indefinite answer to the inquiry: what would it sound like if the Mayans or Aztecs played black metal? My response: pretty fucking cool. I'll go right at it that the album cover was the single initial selling point for me, a beautifully vivid and colorful depiction of a bunch of natives in leopard skins and queer bird feathers on their gigantic headpieces, working on their sacred task of priestly sacrifice. The mastermind behind the music - one Eduardo ''Volahn'' Ramirez - is in alignment with an impressive series of bands, most of them being his solo projects. Out of his characteristically USBM-styled side projects, Volahn retains something of a greater understanding of cultural identity and sounds which native South Americans would enjoy, perhaps stemming out from his moody American tribulations into something with greater uniqueness. Certainly, I would not have thought that I would have fallen for this album beyond the pretty cover art, but as it turns out ''Aq'Ab'Al'' is of the better black metal albums I've heard in recent times.

The guitars are fuzzy and crepuscular, ringing with far less distortion and far less echo than you'd expect. I love the fact that ''Aq'Ab'Al'' is a ''riff'' album, with plenty of fuzzy, if somewhat indistinct, chord lines guiding the harrowing vocal lines, upped by arrays of dizzying, gritty chords that should remind one the USBM act Odz Manouk, which in many other ways has a similar sound to Volahn. The essential philosophy here is to blast out these tangy chord progressions almost all the time, with enough variation, atmospheric ups and downs and vocal haunts to keep the listener going through tracks like the impressive 13-minute ''Najtir Ichik''. The melodious moments are perfect when rippling with the vocalists echoing howls, allowing for brief if sublime moments of unfrazed atmospheric excellence that have an Austere feel to it. But of course if the album merely stopped there and got stuck far its egocentric, Darkthrone/USBM worshiping ass, it wouldn't really be deserving of some accolades, would it? The one personal point which captivated me best was the looming, lo-fi synthesizers playing out in the background. You could relate the synths to anything - from Emperor to Samael to the more recent and obscure Australian outfit Naxzul - but songs like ''Bonampak'' employ synthesizers in a such a manner that they make their presence briefly noticed before fading back into the swirling mix.

Volahn isn't merely paying tribute to the Aztecs and Incas in concept here. While much of the aesthetics hold more appeal to the USBM and/or Norse Black metal listener, there is that laudatory arrangement of enchanting Spanish guitar interludes, tribal instruments in between songs, and a lot more straight, albeit technically imbued riffing going on than most other acts of this sort. Eduardo likes to play by the lower frets, so naturally much of the grandeur and mushy goodness of lower end guitar tones disappear, but one can certainly not complain when it's being executed in such a skillful manner. This stuff doesn't go to the level of, say, ''In the Nightside Eclipse'', mind you, but you're definitely going to have grisly kick out of them. That said, the slew of weird and twitchy melodies are hardly followed up by corresponding ambient effects or equally overwhelming keyboard upsurges, which might have been superb, but supposedly stress hot RAW the guy is.

If you can bear through riff-centric, rarely post-metalized, harrowing black metal, this is definitely the thing for you. As said, the incorporation of so many variants of black metal, including some Necromantia from the Greek scene who has enamored this petty reviewer with two sacred albums (which is probably why I came to like this album) in the early 90's, makes the music almost as rich as the cover which holds the entry to its ancient, prosaic gate, but the album is not still not intricate of emotionally gripping as it needs to make its nearly 60-minute run time entirely worthwhile. As is the prevailing problem with black metal, they could have winnowed some of the less impressive chord progressions and substituted them with suitably deeper breaks into consternation - or just leave trimmed like that. ''Quetzalcoatl'' was probably my favorite piece from this record: an 8-minute display of sheer harrowing finesse, memorable pace transitions, and swerving leads, but most of the tracks still held out in the end. Finally, my synthesizer fetish could have achieved greater satisfaction if they'd stuck out more prominently here, but I guess that's for another day. It's not everyday that you have a band of natives playing guitars and double-bass drums in your promo box, so whether your tastes lie in Darkthrone, Gris, Watain, USBM, or just plain sacrificial heart-eating frenzy, this one's for you. Dig in.

Highlights:
Quetzalcoatl
Bonampak
Koyopa

Rating: 77%

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%

Horrendous - Ecdysis [2014]

Ever get the feeling that death metal bands are running out of titles? Me neither. As ''Ecdysis'' plainly suggests, it's purpose is to implement the evolutionary step that Horrendous, who with 2012's ''The Chills'' literally perked up goosebumps on my spine, like all of its counterparts, wants to take. The age is brave one, and novelty almost always, even if unwittingly, finds its way to some kind of success. That said, Horrendous didn't necessarily used innovation as a method to boost its way to the top records of 2012 when ''The Chills'' kicked more unkempt bottoms than most records that year. Its leprous voracity and atmospheric beauty was a surefire way to revitalize the gradually diminishing foray of old school death metal, but in reality, once you dig into it, putting aside the splendidly ominous atmosphere and olfactory goodness that it somehow projected behind a miraculous slew of riffage, ''The Chills'' is sheer bones and rotten flesh. So then is ''Ecdysis'' some sort of mega-transition? The ''Heartwork'' of Horrendous? Not necessarily. What seems to be the case here is the same kind of semi-evolutionary phase that bands like Morbus Chron and Tribulation aspired to with their most recent offerings.

For starters, Horrendous is a lot cleaner with their performance here; more manic, controlled and accessibly modern in contrast to the cavernous kaleidoscope of antiquity that was the main motif on the previous record. Yes, modernization does equate for a wider audience and perhaps a sharper overall sound, yet even during some of the stronger tracks I felt that clarity did not compensate for the lack of atmosphere, instead heralding an odd, even experimental approach with multitudinous progressive metal predilections. If it makes you feel any better, even the bass has risen from the primordial ooze into something that's incredibly audible in contrast. It's interesting enough to see a band of such primitive origin evolve from its putrid miasma into something far more accessible, yet, as said, this brings a few problems on the table. The absurdly implemented piecemeal conventions that engulf the record reduce the album's level grit to one far below its predecessor, and the focal point of old school death metal - the undying axiom - which is basically the maxim of ''if it's broke don't fix it'', seems to have dissipated to ''if it's broke, then shed some skin''. Hence ecdysis.

Don't me wrong, folks, Horrendous is still throwing huge, gnarly hooks, but there is an intense infatuation with melody and progressive elements that churns and diverts the music away from its previous state of gory putrescence. There are some unbelievably melodic and beautiful solos here, often leads that crawl discreetly into the hibernating core of the record, strings of somber, yet graceful melodies twisting and swerving up and down the guitar board, redolent of some mid 90's English death/doom powerhouse. If all of my prior implications didn't get through, get this: if you think ''The Chills'' was brooding, wait until you hear ''Ecdysis''. There is an odd disparity here because it seems almost uncertain what direction they are taking with the mournful overtone that they're harboring. On one hand, you have majestic, even epic, melodic death/doom paradigms like the ending, ''Titan'' which resonate with the lovely, hauntingly elegiac tone of the vocalist's torturous growls and a set of backup choruses, and on the other you have absolutely devastating, flesh-ripping beaters like ''Weeping Relic'' that smash through your skull with the sublime grit of the chainsaw guitar tone. Though the overall sound is indubitably dolorous, Horrendous challenges the boundaries of pain and agony by expanding their style to the widest net possible. This is a brazen, even obsequiously openminded gesture in the face of thousands of Swedeath and Autopsy drones who stalk the market shallowly, and it is a pleasing result considering it is what Morbus Chron and Tribulation did, being two revivalist death metal giants themselves.

There are some truly great tracks here. The opener, ''The Stranger'' may seem like a run-down attempt at combining death/doom, Swedish death metal and melodic death metal, but towards the end it grows to bountifully full of riffs and reckless abandon that it even compensates for its lengthy run time. Every track, no matter how dedicated to the art of tearing limb from limb, serves as a paean to mood and versatility in style, eventually burgeoning into something despondent. Even the flashy 2-minute rock n' roll throwback ''WHen The Walls Fell'' is cool. There are still tremolos, or semi-technical guitar twists here and there, even an occasional thrashy exuberance, like on ''Heaven's Deceit'', but it's apparent that the band has shaken off most of its leaves of the olden arts. If anything, Horrendous is still a huge fucking Pestilence fan. That much is evident from the maniacal, Martin Van Drunnen vocals that pervade the record, or even the kinetic melodies gyrating throughout, but it's almost as if there is a transition in influence from ''Consuming Impulse'' and ''Malleus Maleficarum'' era Pestilence to Pestilence a la ''Testimony of the Ancients'' or ''Spheres''. In the end, ''Ecdysis'' becomes quite a mercurial album. It's difficult for me to imply stuff directly, but in essence, I have done my best to some it up. My gripe was that I simply didn't feel the sort of brilliant, carnal tenacity that was displayed on ''The Chills''. Maybe that was the perfect caterpillar, and ''Ecdysis'' the crossover record, the butterfly slowly, but not yet surely, breaking free of its cocoon, waiting to emerge into the perfect butterfly. If that is the case, folks, then we may have something even better than ''The Chills'' in store. Let the little hatch.

Highlights:
The Stranger
Weeping Relic
Nepenthe
Titan

Rating: 80%

Fallujah - The Flesh Prevails [2014]

It's a shame that absurd math-metal and deathcore hyper-guitar playing ceased to be the prerogative of a chosen few and has now turned into this overripe leitmotif that everyone seems to carelessly abuse. Translation: the technical death metal universe, like all the other sub-genres, is threatened by a lack of originality and excessive boorishness. It's become so hard to find a band with genuine, enduring appeal that one's hopes can disintegrate withing mere hours of internet and archive browsing. The statement can be true within various degrees in accordance to your personal level of pessimism, but that seems to be the big story in today's metal market nonetheless. We are fortunate enough to bands like Fallujah whose intrusion with ''The Flesh Prevails'' was more than just delightful, but simultaneously upraising to the genre at large. ''The Flesh Prevails'' is my first experience with the Californians, and while it has garnered a surprising amount of attention by topping its apparently less impressive predecessor ''The Harvest Wombs'', for me the record has proven to be an un-fucking-believable celebration of how much good music can fill our wazoos with streaming pleasure.

There is no pretension. Fallujah may have the undivided attentions of Cynic, Necrophagist, Decapitated and the like, but in essence it is certainly much more than the sum of its parts. While Fallujah takes obvious joy is dishing out some more simplistic, clinical chug-fests, the overriding motif certainly seems to be the jazzy melodiousness guitars that sparkle and swerve to and fro across every corner of the record with stupendous, opiate ease. Fallujah is ''technical'' enough to compete any of the fierce contenders in the field, namely Decrepit Birth, Spawn of Possession or even Cynic who takes the jazz-fusion element and molds it with the metal components to form something slightly more than a simple accompaniment, but the way the technicality is served is beautiful, even delectable. This translates into plenty of whizzing and zipping guitar notes bouncing along airily, but what serves only as a meager way to decorate bulkier riffing works as the main drive on this record. The guitars almost never feel left out at some point in the record like a bagatelle, like the way they're usually treated.

The superb sophistication of the guitars and their melodic superiority can perhaps only be matched by the timeless feat of the percussion department, with the drums beating and pummeling fresh, invigorating rhythms in a manner that balances the use of double-bass drums and more dexterous fills. But while that complement falls short of serving the drums real justice, what hits me over and over again with this record is how damnably progressive it's nature is. It would perhaps have fared better with the general build of the record if certain atmospheric chord breaks could be excluded, and the rhythm section does in general support a heavy, bludgeoning bevy of riffs that could really fit Suffocation or Cryptopsy just as well, and the guttural vocals (also excellent) are no-brainers, but fuck, there is unquestionably a good deal of progressive aspects to be found on this album. Hell, even some of the atmospheric break-downs (I do hate to call them that) or chorus sequences reek of progressive metal, infused with indescribably beautiful, though perhaps a tad zippy, hyper-math-metal sections which sound like trippy 8-bit mixes. Sure even with the inscrutable care by which the technicality is exerted, the riffs may rarely sound somewhat dull, but in exchange from being robbed senseless of your wits by a hallucinatory jazz/metal congregate that hardly seems to be a con.

The creative expanse of ''The Flesh Prevails'', and moreover, that of Fallujah, is so huge and copiously stocked with hidden booty that it feels like nearly anything could fit the album in general. It's one of those records which omits most creative deterrents and leaves itself to fall freely into the promised land. Think organs, keyboards, synthesizers or even minor orchestras moving through the currents. Yet, what makes this album even more daunting for the dismal purist is the clean voxes of both female and male vocalists that exude their influence during the aural moments where the band decides to take a concise break; elegant and beautiful, I found them to be oddly fitting to the album. And what one song would I use to define the album? ''Chemical Cave'', the one single track which conjures a myriad of images that could just be the birth place of the record had it been given to us humans by some strange alien race, in addition to being my favorite tune in the whole album. That said, ''Levitation'' and ''Sapphire'' are both stunners, crystal coves of ass-kicking, jazzy hashish, and even the experimental instrumental ''Alone With You'', a track that would arouse even the most open-minded metal aficionado, was a spectral triumph as far as I'm concerned. So with as much of the record as I could amass into one humble review, there's no reason for me to reevaluate my verdict. Folks, buy this record, and listen to it till your ears start spurting fucking rainbows.

Highlights:
Sapphire
Chemical Cave
Starlit Path
Allure

Rating: 92%

Ghoulgotha - Prophetic Oration of Self [2014] (EP)

Though it is often the unreasonable and obnoxious longevity of songs that puts off a listener, I can assure you that exuding length and substituting it with truncated versions of the same gestalt will not always assure a rise in quality. Exhibit no. 8762: Ghoulgotha. The Californian quartet, after assembling a demo, have once again tilted their heads downward into the caverns and skull-filled fissures of pre-1994 death metal in an EP, complete with all its gory, downtrodden aesthetics. In today's metal world where even the most memorable records are merely ephemeral epitaphs that last longer than a couple of months in the minds of a ravenous audience, I certainly cannot understand the urgency to manufacture more and more of the same kind, and the penchant to release demos and EPs as rapidly as a factory popping out a thousand drones a minute. People don't seem to be well-acquainted with the term ''generic'', which is funny because it's precisely what they're doing. But enough small talk, you'll just have to make the decision yourself after hearing the EP...

''Prophetic Oration of Self'' (yet another airy and philosophic title for a musical effort that seems to exemplify the daily actions of an average neanderthal) is just two tracks across, with the title track and opener clocking at a surprising (or should I not be surprised?) 9 minutes and the conclusion piece at a meager 4 minutes. Granted, it takes no genius to weed through the skulls and bones and point out the major culprits behind this morbid bulwark. Ghoulgotha overlay elements of doom and death, so you'll be hearing a ton of Incantation, Autopsy, Winter and Cianide, and although this seems like a reconciliation for the absence of dull, mechanic Swedeath grinders in the style of a more ubiquitously embraced Entombed, Unleashed or Grave, the music itself is nothing if not monotonous, even monomaniacal in its singular pursuit of morbid, ominous and bantering drudgery.  I try hard not to call it dull, but more often than not that seems to be the outcome of the huge, meaty guitars and their trudging pace. The pacing does vary of course. Sometimes the band will just melt into a more straightforward onslaught of bulging tremolos with double-bass drums and snare-cymbal abuse galore. Yes, the EP is not all drudgery; even if the entire 13 minutes of run time seem to be completely devoid of any expansive characteristics - despite trying oh so very hard to create a genuinely moody atmosphere - there are a few moments, like the first forty seconds or so of the opener, which are relatively satisfying feasts of rotten flesh and blood among the decaying whole, if not like emeralds in a sea of zircons.

What is perhaps peculiar but necessarily entertaining about Ghoulgotha's take on death/doom in the ghastly melody staccatos which they spray randomly across the two songs. The eerie, dissonant thrill that two worn guitars harmonizing with each other is coupled with a set of gnarly, low vocals that would have fit any other band of this sort just fine. Now let's get to the point. Ghoulgotha is no way near being a maverick in the genre, with so many outfits already practicing and perfecting the Incantation-brand old school death metal, let alone being iconoclasts. As far as morals go, the big lesson I learned was that cavemen don't make good orators, although their kind seems to populate the profession in particular, but that's for another day. What comes out as appreciation for this record is my admiration for how wholeheartedly and endearing the band elopes its music, aping or not. As slipshod a performance this may have been, there is no disparity between the band members, nor any idiotic elitism, so really, what more could old schoolers ask for? This is just one piece of a flotilla of thousands, bound to be marooned at sea, so just blast out the damn thing and be over with it.


Highlights:
Prophetic Oration of Self

Rating: 60%

Funereal Presence - The Archer Takes Aim [2014]

Though the underground force of black metal has stayed truer to its humble origins than some of its more mainstream forebears such as Enslaved, Borknagar or Blut Aus Nord, (not to demean those bands, mind you) the genre at large has still witnessed and fell under the spell of some dark, delicate and subcutaneous transformation, wherein bands like the excellent, opaque Negative Plane have emerged as forerunners. Despite the myriad bands popping out of the woodwork, it can be very difficult to come across an album like ''Stained Glass Revelations'', a record whose finesse in antiquity and shamanistic black metal witchery was so vivid and entrancing that it possibly set a new course for the genre to run on. That aside, though great black metal has had no shortage, it is perhaps natural for us to expect similar craftsmanship to emerge from side projects involving Negative Plane's members, rather than a new formation entirely. Hence, enter Funereal Presence.

The big picture in ''The Archer Takes Aim'' is a deliciously darkly, lugubrious mix of traditional black metal and spidery psychedelia redolent of Negative Plane. The small picture: you're basically fucked. Really, there is little to dislike about this record. We're talking merely 4 tunes here, so naturally some comparison to funeral doom bands is inevitable, but Funereal Presence crams so much sophistication and opalescent, opulent beauty into the tracks that it's difficult to turn down any one of them. All told, the band borrows its main traits from Negative Plane, but the avid black metal listener will here bits of Venom, Rotting Christ, Celtic Frost, early primal Teutonic black/thrash a la Sodom and Kreator, and even tidbits of the Swedish obscures Head of the Demon who probably put out the greatest single doom record of 2012. That aside, there's no formulaic simplicity in describing what these guys really sound like. The opener, and my personal favorite, ''The Tower Falls'' is this terrific, apocalyptic track which not only heightens the album to its apotheosis of dynamics but also manages to insert more varied material into the first 6 minutes alone than entire albums can manage in 40-plus minutes. The texture is pallid and dark, yet you'd be surprised to hear that there's more breathing space than any average black metal record, giving the guitars a diaphanous yet accessible tone, and the guitars divide within themselves into grittier chord progressions not unheard of by any listener of extreme metal, and cavernous, echoing melodies that reek of 60's psychedelia - material enough to make you sit upright and hark with attention.

Of course, the vocals, complement of Bestial, do not fail to acclimatize to the instruments. His rasps are controlled, but haunting nonetheless as shrill accompaniments to the witchery of the guitars, but what I really loved about the vocal propensity of the record was the inclusion of almost heavenly clean vocals that jump on arbitrarily, my favorite being, once more, the chorus of the excellent ''The Tower Falls''. ''The Archer Takes Aim'' is not multitudinous in its sophistication, nor is it a classic, a milestone in 21st century grimness, but it's such a great, original piece that I found myself spinning more than expected, and it certainly creates a mesmerizing contrast to the banality of the majority of outfits in the same field. You could take it as a third offering by the cult Negative Plane, but, again, the material here sticks out on its own making it an enduring piece that would comfort you during many a moody winter night. The one big gripe I could hold against the record is that during 12-16 minute monoliths, the amount of riffing, no matter how entangling the atmosphere, lacked some continuity: some truncation would have been preferred. Nonetheless, ''The Archer Takes Aim'' still proves to be a highly apt contestant. Many a shaft shall be loosed.

Highlights:
The Tower Falls
Gestalt Des Endes

Rating: 85%

Howls of Ebb - Vigils of the 3rd Eye [2014]

While its easy enough to acquire fresh daemonic goodness from today's extreme metal market without much trouble, a good many bands are often in lacking in any essence and won't endure your headphones for long. And while death metal has taken its form from a monstrous, brutal manifestation of thrash metal into a much more flatulent and subterranean form of music with the recent of convulsions of acts such as Antediluvian, Father Befouled, Dead Congregation and so forth, I rarely felt that any retro death metal act had the discomforting aesthetic put to good use. Maybe the genre's so suffused and crammed and that there's literally no more space for inserting new ideas? That may be so, but there are still groups out there who think otherwise. Some may have methodically adapted death metal merely as a current to express more expansive musical ideals, while some, adamant, have clung to the genre as a child grips his mother. I'm honestly not sure which category Howls of Ebb fit in; the band is both keen to reap the tumult and morbid appeal of death metal circa 1989-1993 and simultaneously capable of injecting fresh if not utterly novel sounds into the mix.

The first thing you want to know about ''Vigils of the 3rd Eye'': it's packed and unnerving. But that's not to say it's inaccessible. In fact despite the meticulously plotted semi-technical death metal riffing, pestilent, deep growls and the almost avantgarde oddity certain moments have, the album is strangely enjoyable, clear, and memorable. And what ''Vigils...'' essentially is a salutation to death metal in some of its bleakest modes, a creeping, granular assault of spasmodic black/death with so many queer anecdotes attached at random ends that at times it really does feel like an avantgarde death metal album, which is its beauty. This is some thrilling music, with features that wouldn't quite fit any of the band's antecedents... I doubt that Demilich's ''Nespithe'' didn't have a significant influence of the band members, but even so, the sporadic quality of the riffs, structures and veins make the album such an odd ball that it would be difficult to pinpoint direct influences. Perhaps Autopsy could have played some part, and early Death, and even some peculiar underground gems like Timeghoul which, in my humble opinion, aren't excavated enough when the topic is death metal, but there ends the line.

And even when we apprehend a certain portion of the riffs, a certain percentage still remains rather inhumated, as if refused to be dug up by human hands. Howls of Ebb basically use a lot of speedy, uncanny tremolo sequences, which, in turns, can be wild fun with their ambiguous trajectories, but there are also broader moments where chords stalk the listener like lean, stern demon statues gaping at tides of anguished human souls which would ultimately serve as nourishment. Yes, the album is that evil. And the fact the guitars balance the terror and profanity with almost comical, jiving riffs makes the fear penetrate doubly fast; and as if that wasn't fucking enough, you've got a myriad sequences where the band's ''limbonic'' tendencies seem to afloat a opiate sequence of emptiness with twinging chords being strummed lightly in the background, resonating. I mean fuck. This is the kind of stuff that's so nightmarish and cunning that would follow you into your dreams the way evil clowns follow little kids. There's a fairly important if not completely relevant worshiping of doom metal here, noticeable in some of the longer tracks like ''Illucid Illuminati of the Dark'' or ''Of Heel, Cyst and Lung'', - whose titles are devilishly ludicrous enough to give a few preliminary goosebumps - but you'd be glad to know that the band retain speed for the majority of the record.

In the end, if we take guitarist and frontman zEleFthANd's background and previous infatuation with groups bands such as Trillion Red or King Carnage, or the fact that the guy's been in the business of creating creepy, multi-dimensional death metal since the early 90's, it's not so shocking that he eventually converted enough material into a credible album. And, yeah, ''Vigils of the 3rd Eye'' is not perfect; like most records it has its flaws. For instance, I did find redundancy and repetition to be kicking during certain tracks, and sometimes the whole plot of stalling the listener before the big explosion got a bit trite, but the eventual achievement is ghastly and superb. Even the drums and the bass, which suffer some setbacks due to the sheer satanic panache and swerving shrewdness of the guitars, were nigh over excellent; and I'm not even mentioning the additional synthesizer effects that only enhance the gloom. Howls of Ebb mightn't have produced an all rounder here, but in terms of evilness, this is the best thing I've listened to since Cultes Des Ghoules' horrifying ''Henbane'', in 2013. Start making your reservations, folks, because hell's bound to be packed within the next month.

Highlights:
Martian Terrors, Limbonic Limbs
The Arc. The Vine. The Blight.
Vigils of the 3rd Eye

Rating: 87,5%

Witch In Her Tomb - Maleficus Malecifarum [2013]

I'm sure that Witch In Her Tomb's eponymous demo back in 2012 blew off a good deal of ears off, even if it was neglected in mainstream metal communities; and continuing to retain the ''cult'', or ''bedroom black metal'' style that they readily enveloped in their demo, the Illinois act released their debut EP, ''Malecifus Maleficarum''. The demo was just bliss: walls of pure grinding, searing buzz, aching with incoherent barks and even punk-like inclinations, occasionally giving way to atmospheric ambient effects to focus on the sheer depravity of the music. It was a concoction of early Scandinavian black metal aesthetics, namely early Burzum, Ragnarok or Darkthrone, and rawer parchments that were somewhat inclined towards their national precursors, unremitting walls of sound that could configure an image of both decadent modernity and primordial motives; something quite frankly not unheard of in our wretched 21st century. What precedes is a sound and limited set of styles delivered through a very similar wall of underproduced buzz, punching through a briefer 7 minute EP.

Granted, anyone who gave early Darkthrone a fair amount of listens won't find anything excruciating about the music here; and in fact I thought the band lost some of the edgy, unremitting currents of sheer force on their demo. Much of the influences have, to be sure, been kept in store with the same amount of diligence and the same level of worship, but there's a certain lassitude to the three songs which, I think, emanates from a reduced reliance on punk. The guitar is thick and pungent, incapable of being counter-smothered by the drums, charging through the dilapidated production with sheer atrocity and visceral accuracy; but the drums are a bit out of focus, giving very little room physical malignity of the EP. And who wouldn't be, in that density! Like most raw black metal drums beats, they lack essence and touch, just a simple tool for keeping the incursion fueled. And although I liked the vocals, they too were somewhat stale; just meager practices in guttural wretchedness. There are a few moments where the riffs draw to more fascinating, and emotionally more inviting moments, such as in ''IX'', where the guitars spring forth a twang of scattering tremolos, and, for once, keeping their pace below the usual standard.

As you may well expect, there's nothing overly florid here, just a handful of slim-picked riffs that shower the listener in cascades of mourn, agony and relentless contempt. There are besides the one aforementioned, one or two moments which felt particularly memorable like the concluding serenades that accompanied the last seconds of the final track, as if drawing the curtains of some ceremonious festivity in some elaborately agonizing way. To be sure, Witch In Her Tomb, is in full command of the base black metal aesthetics, maybe even more so from many of its peers. There are acts which possess a fondness for the same vituperative, vilifying languor of black metal at its rawest, and while Witch In her Tomb can still outshine, in grimness, several of these acts, the use of black metal as an implication for desolation, depravity, depression and calamity, nightmares and unimaginable despairs is one practice which has been held in such frequency over the last decade that this Illinois obscure cannot hope to beat them in one simply-purveyed attack. Imagine, if you can bear it, the tactile mourn and sense of obfuscated despair that bands like Leviathan, Xasthur or Inquisition can implement, and in such acuity! This is not to say that I'm comparing a falconet to a modern aerial bombardment; but Witch certainly needs to step up its game if it wants to compete with any of these harbringers of depression. For a frivolity, ''Maleficus Meleficarum'' is a fine listen, one that ought to dust off your ears upon immediate impact, but as I was kind of hoping the band could expand its retinue with the following release, I was disappointed by the simplicity of the EP. Nonetheless, any raw or depressive black metal connoisseur should give this a listen. It is, after all, free.

Highlights
IX
X

Rating: 70%

Free download at bandcamp: Maleficus Maleficarum

Old Witch - Come Mourning Come [2013]

In general, though staunch cultists possess an almost inexplicable reverence for them, I don't tend to take great pleasure in indulging myself in self-released, lo-fi recordings - at least no modern ones. The reason being, especially in the medium of black or death metal, that bands prefer to sacrifice both their production values and the separate quality of their riffing for the sake of longer, swelling compositions that are only relevant to enjoyment in the long-run. Such recordings often fail to evoke, despite clearly straining to, a sense of darkness, despair and atmospheric repercussions, and simply bore the listener to the point of giving up hope. I was definitely glad when the two-piece US obscures Old Witch bantered about in no such manner. Their sole album and sole release ''Come Mourning Come'' just jutted out of nowhere, in a nearly unbelievable turn of fortune, and acquainted itself with me entirely by chance. It's not that the duo can entirely elude the pitfalls of stagnation and meandering, nor are they employing an utterly novel kind of black metal here; but through a vituperative slew of melancholy and force-fed doom, arcane atmospherics and an eloquent infatuation with their USBM roots, they can easily sell any avid fan of nostalgic, moody black metal.

Old Witch's formula is nothing new: rigid guitars lumbering in a droning soniscape of rustic bliss, wonderfully dark and evocative synthesizers that should immediately remind one of Ihsahn's work on Emperor's masterful debut, or Samael's equally brilliant ''Passage''; but beyond these there is both a techo-induced propensity and a slightly more pungent raving for a Gothic, almost romantic atmosphere. Take ''The Leaves Fall In Autumn'' for instance; four and a half minutes of eloquent drudgery, conjuring images of rustic glazes at night and falling leaves, gradually fading into grey hues - continually tempered by an ever-present drudge of electronic fuzz. Old Witch are doubtless interested in suffering, mourn, nightsky revelations and brooding epochs, and it shows. It's clear that these thematic preferences have led to changes in their music. They seem more inclined to deliver such sorrowful waves of nostalgia and pain through sludgy black/doom passages rather than the much more uncircumcised assails of their US counterparts; and hell, I love the subtle balances between their rhythm and their omnipresent ambient effects. These effects vary in size and shape; from pouncing synthesizers in the fashion of Emperor to doleful choirs, to fading serenades orchestral work. They enrich the banality of the thrashing doom riffs and leave much more the imagination of the listener through the passages created. Even as a frequent scoffer of the modern black metal lyric, I found myself in some profound involvement with the almost poetic song-writing capacity of these newcomers:

forests fall black
and cower at the wolves howl
breaking cold
across the frost and snow
all the stars in the night sky
shiver in their vast dome
lofty beyond all human consciousness

curse the hunter's cry
curse merciless eyes
never virgin pure
spirit born in ice

follow the path of the stars
under forest eves
o'er mountains and dark streams
through sleeping villages
where folk lie in dreams

Of course, it's not just the drudge that makes ''Come Mourning Come'' a crowning triumph. The blistering aspersions of ''God Ov Wolves'', ''This Land Has Been Cursed'' and the opener ''Funeral Rain'' are apt practitioners of speed and raw black metal, so now you know the guitars still effective in sizable expanse of the record. Old Witch are never rapid - they consistently sustain themselves - but they sure as hell could play the speed game if they wanted to.

Perhaps not an immediate contender to the year's finest releases, ''Come Mourning Come'' is, considering the frailty of its origin, still a damn good record, blissful in its adherence to atmosphere and doom. The bizarrely entertaining contrast they create through the use of synthesizers against bashing guitar chugs makes for an interesting, if not entirely original listen. I still did feel that certain parts were too elongated to apply the full effect of brevity, and the guitar passages could certainly have used some spice (the atmospherics were perfect, though), but among so many groups rigidly seated in their cavern-core fantasies, Old Witch brings, and successfully too, an extent of realism and a clear understanding of the monotone; that it should be used correctly rather than excessively. It's not directly relevant to the interests of any single band, because its myriad influences are presented in a way that had undergone sufficient assimilation to scatter most of the obvious, but any lurker in the dark eager to take on a good mix of Emperor or other Norwegian or Swedish purveyors and well-drugged drone should get their hands on this. That is, if the physical copy is out yet.

Highlights:
God ov Wolves
Funeral Rain
The Frost and the Tyrant

Rating: 82,5%

Autolatry - Native [2013]

Even after so many stupendous releases, new artists continue to expand their retinues upon US and progressive black metal, and it pleases me greatly to discover acts that can masterfully convert the eerie, swooning delicacy of USBM into a progressive account. Autolatry is something of a novelty to me, having them exhumed them from a superfluity of releases last year, when their self-released EP ''Of The Land'' came out, and I was fairly intrigued and certainly taken by the young Connecticut five-piece, a brazen presentation of chilling, agonized black metal played and composed with surprisingly convenient professionalism. With their sophomore, Autolatry do not back down a single step from their formidable professionalism that was so prevalent on the EP, and now cast a wider net with a brilliant intake of numerous influence ranging from European progressive, to USBM, to even jazz, and after a couple of spins which failed to quench my desire to take in more, I was more than impressed, but dazzled by the quality of the music I heard, and without a shadow of a doubt, ''Native'' is bound to go down as one of 2013's best records, maybe even the very best.

I don't know what urged the quintet to so voraciously continue to explore the breadths and intricacies of their sound; perhaps they were not quite as content with ''Of The Land'' that they saw an excellent output as their only consolation and salvation from the miseries of having released a ''bad'' album, but I was frankly very pleased with the EP, so if that was a tasty bacon ''Native'' has to be a fucking triple griller with mustard and barbecue sauce leaking out of its crusty granular exterior, so damn delicious that you simply can't have enough of it. The ambiguous praise aside, ''Native'' truly deserves countless accolades. You can't the influence of 21st century Enslaved on Autolatry, because it's probably the most prominent, visible attribution of the record, with stipples of Borknagar and Klabautamann, but that's obviously not say the only thing these guys have achieved is to process the aforementioned bands' music through little differentiation. Autolatry, from the moment the album initiates with the perilous ''Colony'', sprays the listener with agony, mourn and grief. It's just incredible. Graceful, swerving and discordant guitars delivering a galvanizing burden of torture and lament - and what's more is that this isn't merely as inaudible as some acts out there who cream their production with obnoxious fuzz and batter the listener with relentless excursions of primal second wave black metal. ''Native'' definitely has roots deep in Norway, but the overall sound is indubitably modern and more obsessed with newer acts, and that distinction compels me even more, really.

The riffs are perhaps not too extraordinary, but you can't deny them their doleful complexity, nor the technical prowess of the guitarists Dave Kaminsky and Joe Makuch, who sometimes even project psychedelic tremolos intertwined with steady, stoic drumming. I do admit that there a few rare moments where the dissonant arrangements banter the listener for a little too long, especially when the vocals are no where to be seen, but the rest is blissful, proficient streams of melancholy, and certain chorus sequences I found so memorable that I had to hum them all day in my head to keep myself from going insane. Autolatry's technical capabilities are admirably efficient, but their real strength lies in the way they collect all the solemn, miserable waves of emotion of the steady verse sections, coagulate all the liquid mood, and all of a sudden tauten the rope by gushing with a bombard of mourn, which I found to be best executed on ''Pale Dishonor'', when the cleaner vocals kick in, shortly followed by an almost apocalyptic breakdown, all hell breaking fucking loose, as if the walls around you collapsed  after failing to withstand the sheer, stark ray of shearing pain. The vocals, are your rather basic USBM vocals, but they don't detract the quality at all, they simply keep the record afloat, piercing snares which echo through the Necrophagist-esque guitar structures, fluctuating the listener into a hypnotic plateau of originality.

''Setting of the Sun'' is a great piece, a gorgeous acoustic medley, with soothing saxophone leads, swirling around the acoustic guitar passages, and a totally alien track in the album had it not been for the same production level and the same sense of emotional stillness that the rest of the harsher music conveyed and contained. The band usually assists the broader tremolo and chord sequences with beautiful, jazzy solos that mutter delight with every note, simply more material for them to prove their durability and proficiency. Autolatry may not be the most inventive black metal to come by in the last few years, but they certainly exceed a good many in that department, playing with feeling as well as skill, and their lyrical focus in interesting too, although they're not obsessed with trees and lakes, they just use it as a compass to guide their musical inclinations, and the cover is one of the most colorful ones I've seen all year (trust me, I've seen some really good covers this year). There were, undoubtedly, some flaws on ''Native'', like the recurring usage of certain chords and the distilled quality of the verses which, as said, lasted more than they should have, but if they can spike them up with some musical quips and embellishments, they can come of without a dent with their third album. In the end, though, ''Native'' is spot fucking on, making me ripple with excitement and agony every time I listen to it. Don't miss this.

Highlights:
Colony
Pale Dishonor
Waning Moon
Setting of the Sun

Rating: 92%

Night Demon - Night Demon [2012]

Night Demon's entry into my extensive compendium of speed/heavy acts to emerge in the 21st century is nothing of a seminal event, but I was nonetheless content, having discovered another band with a solid release to kill a good many minutes. Formed in 2011, our information on the band is fairly limited, with their sole material being their eponymous EP released last year, and my awareness of the band began when I received a promo of the EP that had been reissued by the traditional heavy/doom imprint Shadow Kingdom Records. The Californians offer nothing more than genre-standard heavy metal enmeshed with a dose of speed, imbued with a strong, refined production quality that renders the four brief tracks found on this EP so robust. ''Night Demon'' is composed of roughly equal proportions of Maiden, Priest, Angel Witch, Raven and Saxon, and maintains its muscular exposition sturdily throughout the entirety of the EP without blundering, but it only does so by swaying along the safer borders of traditional heavy metal.

For one, I was actually more absorbed by the cover art and the conceptual preferences more than the music itself, even though I did sometimes lose myself in the wicked, swirling youth of the headbang-friendly riffs. I don't know why, but I certainly found this fantasy-induced concept to be overly attractive, maybe because it explored a somewhat nostalgic and lightweight margin of swords, sorcery, and, obviously, demons, each song delving into a slightly different subdivision of the concept, for instance, ''The Chalice'' had a more medieval, religious vibe to it, with the exception of ''Ancient Evil'' which purely pervaded the listener with Lovecraftian images. That said, there is a surprising amount of variation between each track, with each track, like the lyrical choices, focusing on marginally different breed of garden variety heavy metal. The sound as a whole is professional however, with little or not flaws in the presentation department, and in truth, while this may not be a paragon of speed/heavy metal, I loved the rumbling twists and turns of the guitars with melody swooshing by every now and then, and the entire webbing of riffs was surprisingly complex, brazen, and certainly very catchy.

While this may be for the most part a devout homage to the aforementioned gods, and even Motorhead taking into account the bluesy rage of the guitars and pummeling blasts of the snare on the first and fianl tracks, I did occasionally taste a sprinkling of power metal in its archetypal forms, something redolent of early Fates Warning and Jag Panzer. The vocals are blunt and powerful, nothing overly special, however, when they collide with the backup vocals to harmonize a truly harmonic piece of sound that I thoroughly enjoy is created. Night Demon certainly performed well on this EP, especially since it's their debut offering, but I do think that solely being staunch stalwarts of the art won't quite make them experts in this particular field of heavy metal. There were some subtler, heavier moments that arose with minute precaution into something of a more epic deliverance, like on the chorus of ''The Chalice'' (which I adored), but the Californians need to strew together many more strings to render the web truly inventive and titillating. Night Demon resonate like a faster answer to  their fellow countrymen Visigoth; it's coherent, consistent and quite seamless in its presentation, but lacks an inner essence. Otherwise, it's simple, awesome music for purists. Hail.

Highlights:
Ancient Evil
The Chalice

Rating: 72%

Bone Sickness - Alone In The Grave [2013]

The fact that the album art, song names and album title (not to mention the band's name itself) reek of cloudy, repetitive old school death metal may put off even the most zealous of listeners, but for those of you who are still tedious about giving this a listen: don't worry because Bone Sickness make for a surprisingly entertaining death/grind feast. Certainly, the OSDM revivalists today can be broadly aggregated into two groups; the bulging, murky ones whose heads are deep in an unmitigated avidity of Incantation, and the more bombastic groups who mainly emerge from Sweden, portraying the chainsaws and gnawed bone necklaces exactly the way their Swedish forefathers had envisioned in the late 80's. Of course, there is lesser margin in between these two coarse classifications - bands who drool over the sloppy connotations of Autopsy, Obituary and  similar horror-worshiping gods of death. Bone Sickness' formula adheres with the latter, with some additional influences that should gather Repulsion and Napalm Death fans under a gory, corpse-strewn banner.

The fact that we're not getting direct vibrations of Entombed, Grave and Dismember is pleasing notion, but it's not like the band is reinventing the wheel here. On the contrary, Bone Sickness' aesthetic facets lean directly towards the less frequently rehashed riffing patterns of the bands listed above, which makes for only a slightly more fresh listen. But despite the odds, I was impressed by the fairly diverse range of dynamics here; the band can braise simple chugging patterns with utterly dilapidated production values to churn out something messy, and, with the added clamor of the spiking drums, something sicker and catchier than you'd expect. I think the real treat here was not the range of riffing - we've all heard a good many of those sloppy, carnal ruptures - but the band's ability to shift so easily in between tempos, and providing the ultimate gate feast that's robust enough to draw the attention of even the most unwilling of listener. Take ''Alone in Grave'', for instance; the tune begins with rumbling death/doom trudge heavy enough to shake your bowels, and then promptly dives into mid-paced territory, followed by a razor-sharp flurry of flailing bones and limps and frivolous leads, and finally settling back to the turtle pace it had started with.

The lyrics and themes are nothing out of the ordinary, vivid images of gore, violence and ghastly tales from the grave that rock with such a staunch and monstrous attack of riffs that I'm almost reminded of Entombed/Nihilist. In addition to the doom-trodden preferences, Bone Sickness also deliver a chock load of punches with infectious, yet crunchy thrash momentum (''Tied To The Stake''), or completely straightforward grindcore impulses redolent of ''Horrified'', ''Horror Of The Zombies'' and ''Impulse To Destroy'' (''Strange Obsession''), but with tracks no longer than 3 and a half minutes, you'll get the idea anyway. Unfortunately, I felt a little uncomfortable about the length of the material with just seven tracks ranging at 18 minutes. Last but not least, the vocal inflections that constantly shifted from bulbous Chris Barnes gutturals with the occasional nasty barks to throatier Van Drunnen-esque screams were no way near terrific, but I would consider them to be an unwanted aspect, either. ''Alone In The Grave'' can be therefore more closely associated with a newer string of bands like Black Jesus, Abysme or Gruesome Stuff Relish rather than directly being associated with the aforementioned gods of death and grind. It's certainly not without its flaws, but it's still something relatively fresher than the stuff we're smothered by these days.

Highlights:
Paranoid Delusions
Alone In The Grave
Death and Dismemberment

Rating: 76%