Below - Upon a Pale Horse [2017]

Doom takes some skill to do right. So much of what goes around my ears traverses fledgling attempts at sucking the listener's emotional valves through sustained, meandering, heavy music for the sake of being heavy and morose, that I'm not surprised that the genre is so often berated for being 'slow'. Especially past a certain classic era which ended somewhere in the 90's, I find it difficult to counteract these enduring doom myths, but thankfully bands like Atlantean Kodex, Grand Magus and Crypt Sermon have proven to be persuasive arbiters of the best which their genre has to offer, combining the groove-laden moods of Candlemass, Count Raven or Pentagram which juicy, unbarred traditional heavy metal riffcraft, creating a riveting fusion of pace, melody and earthly sensation. Both the artwork and thematic plateau of Below's Upon a Pale Horse suggests something more in line with a King Diamond disc, but the assured quality and content is rather on a par with the aforementioned masters, something which only serves to further boost Sweden's retinue for streaming such excellent old-school metal from its bloodline.

To be frank, Below's effort here does not stack up an exceeding height to a body of already impressive recent heavy/doom offerings from bands I've already laid out, chiefly memorable among which I would cite the dazzling Crypt Sermon debut. The band gets the 'epic doom' tag from Metallum, a curious intimation with the original specters of the sub-genre, such as Candlemass, and one that I can't entirely agree with. The opener ''Disappearing into Nothing'' showcases a strong tact for tasteful riffing and harmonious, atmospheric choruses that explode with moving momentum; similarly, much of the rest of the songs follow such a course, whereby the sheer and dark Candlemass-esque pulsations are curtailed with a more pronounced proclivity for melancholy, injected through occasional arpeggios and low-ebb verses. All this, however, is not at all to detract from the band's capacity to churn out strong crafts of melody and musical narrative. There is also a fair bit variety in the pacing. ''Suffer in Silence'', my favorite from the album, begins with a harried diminished chord attack, and come chorus unveils with another killer, moving chorus the band seems to have such a knack for. ''The Coven'' could certainly have been a cover for Mercyful Fate, with its somber leads and Gothic vibe. Despite the evident comparisons, Below doesn't have the same saturnine weight as the Swedish legends Candlemass, because the compositions sail more elegant, albeit still convincingly poignant, waters, and the augmented fleshes of melody and harmony certainly serve as ear-catchers on the mast of the ship.

Vocalist Zeb is no virtuoso, but he does a fine job in reconstructing the Bruce Dickinson timber, sometimes sporting this grainy haughteur that's more reminiscent of some of Bruce's creepier moments, with the early Maiden records or as on some of his solo records, and the choruses and chants are nothing if not vibrant and memorable. Production is close to perfect: the drums cling on loosely but patiently in the background like sleepwalking candle-bearers in an abandoned attic, witnessing a sacrificial ceremony, the guitars, both while clean and distorted, hover with organic, if slightly sinister precision above the dim lights, - here's where the Candlemass comparisons really get their due - and the vocals, all told, are sufficiently resplendent to carry out the emotional wave of the record forward. The riffs never offer a copious endless variety of funereal meatiness, but as far as I'm concerned they're groovy and crushing enough to elude the caveat of 'bored metal' for the good +45 minute duration of the album. Tip to toe, I'm happy to say this is an accessible record, a fairly delectable 21st century yarn for Candlemass fans like myself, perhaps not the most forward thinking piece of music you're likely to hear in 2017, and certainly not an impregnable morass of lugubrious horror a la Esoteric or Skepticism, but a highly listenable, inspiring gauze of melodic doom nonetheless. Retro and maudlin, a luminous contender in a sea of colorless mourning.

Highlights:
Suffer in Silence
Disappearing into Nothing
The Coven

Rating: 77%

The Cream of the Crop: Arthalos Picks His Best of 2015

Overall I felt this was quite a strong terms of both quality and quantity across all genres of metal, but that has always been the case so I doubt 2015 surpassed annual mean scores by a great deal. In another sort of Murphy's Rule for yearly releases, the bulk of the quality was concentrated in the first and last couple of months, at least for me, and the pool of better releases in between was spread out a little more thinly. Still, that may also have to do with the fact that much of my own lack of research during these months was due to a combination of slight disinterest in and reluctance to pick up newer recordings at the time, which I managed to rectify somewhat by the end of the year. In terms of reviews I did start strong but my writing dwindled as lots of real life issues started filtering in, and unfortunately I had to conclude the year on a low-ish note in terms of reviews. Towards the end of the year I pushed to listen to as many new albums as possible, thus molding the current shape of my lists, but of course a good deal of albums went below my radars. I hope to make up as much as I can for those in the initial months of 2016.

Nonetheless, there was an excellent scree of releases all around, with France and Norway sticking out more than usual, beyond the usual suspects like USA and Sweden. France may not have made the top 20 cut, but it produced metric tons of great, caustic black and death metal in its national brew, fitting selections at a time when Deathspell Omega have remained idle for a good long while (seriously, new album better be in the work, guys). And Norway just trumped with an unprecedented triplet of gold from its three avantgarde mavericks Solefald, Arcturus and Dodheimsgard (though the latter did not make the cut) who assuredly produced enduring masterpieces to enrich the legacy of their discographies. But of course the Enslaved album, being more 'black metal' than its gonzo counterparts, perhaps one of the safer records they've done in the last decade, is also fantastic. 2015 is perhaps most surprising considering the wealth of releases that either belong to long-time masters (Sigh, Raven, Motorhead, Saxon, Solefald, Angra, Satan, Killing Joke, Enslaved, Arcturus, even Iron Maiden, etc.) or newer entrants and banner-carriers who had already won my heart from a few years hence (Horrendous, Sulphur Aeon, Tribulation, etc.).

As always, I avoided or just downright disliked many of these uber-hyped mainstream metal records, not to mention the mass of stoner/sludge material promulgated by media-friendly review sites and communities. But downsizing that pool in its entirety is also risky, as several of the year's best turned out to be some of the most 'overrated', like the Ghost or Enslaved records.

I have also compiled an extensive list of my 100 favorite releases, in non-hierarchical order, so as to provide a little more mileage on the density of worthwhile recordings for the year. You can take a look here

YouTube links have been embedded in the lists below.

Edit: After numerous listens the new Leprous record has earned my heart's fondness with exponentially high returns, hence acquiring a spot in the top 10. Pushed back the Katavasia album and replaced the Enforcer album with the new Nechochwen record.


Top 20 Metal Albums of 2015 ****

21) Lychgate - An Antidote for the Glass Pill (Blood Music)
20) Nechochwen - Heart of Akamon (Bindrune Recordings)
19) Crypt Sermon - Out of the Garden (Dark Descent Records)
18) Kontinuum - Kyrr (Candlelight Records)
17) Black Trip - Shadowline (Steamhammer)
16) Tribulation - Children of the Night (Century Media Records)
15) Ghost - Meliora (Loma Vista Recordings)
14) Sulphur Aeon - Gateway to the Antisphere (Imperium Productions)
13) Trial - Vessel (High Roller Records)
12) A Forest of Stars - Beware the Sword You Cannot See (Lupus Lounge)
11) Sadist - Hyaena (Scarlet Records)
10) Horrendous - Anareta (Dark Descent Records)
09) Soilwork - The Ride Majestic (Nuclear Blast Records)
08) Leprous - The Congregation (InsideOut Music)
07) Killing Joke - Pylon (Spinefarm Records)
06) Satan - Atom by Atom (Listenable Records)
05) Year of the Goat - The Unspeakable (Napalm Records)
04) Enslaved - In Times (Nuclear Blast Records)
03) Zierler - ESC (Vanity Music)
02) Arcturus - Arcturian (Prophecy Productions)
01) Solefald - World Metal. Kosmopolis Sud (Indie Recordings) ****


Top 10 Non-Metal Albums of 2015 **

10) Sammal - Myrskyvaroitus (Progressive Rock/Folk)
09) Julia Holter - Have You in My Wilderness (Dream Pop)
08) Grimes - Art Angels (Pop)
07) Grave Pleasures - Dreamcrash (Post-Punk/Goth)
06) Mew - +- (Progressive Pop/Rock)
05) Squarepusher - Damogen Furies (Electronic/IDM)
04) Purity Ring - Another Eternity (Pop)

03) John Carpenter - Lost Themes (Electronic)

02) Susanne Sundfør - Ten Love Songs (Synthpop)
01) Everything Everything - Get to Heaven (Progressive Pop/Rock) **

Honorable mentions:

Hot Chip - Why Make Sense? (Electronic/Synthpop)
Zombi - Shape Shift (Electronic)
Steven Wilson - Hand Cannot Erase (Progressive Rock)
Django Django - Born Under Saturn (Progressive/Indie Rock)
Carpenter Brut - Trilogy (Compilation) (Synthwave/Electronic)
Braids - Deep in the Iris (Indie Rock)
Knife City - Star Versus (EP) (8-Bit/Chiptune)

A little addendum on my non-metal choices. Of course my auditory leisure time generally circulates around the realms of metal, but these albums reflect part of my interests outside of those realms, and as you may have noticed this year supported a wealth of wonderful pop albums with scarcer electronic music, rounded by a selection of rock albums of varying style and contour. Every album on this list is compulsive and I enjoyed them immensely, but I have to say the Everything Everything album earned its plaudits by far, a record I listened to more than any other album, in any genre. That may be partially because the songs are fairly short, but I also found myself in entranced with the Brits' ability energize with song after song, amazing falsetto vocals, synthesizers and other electronic influences popping in - just fantastic. I cannot recommend it enough, even though it has some minor flaws. But the Susanne Sundfor record comes close, despite the simplicity of the compositions. The John Carpenter album of 'lost' film scores is also extremely noteworthy, and should come as no surprise for someone who adores the man's backlog of 80's horror flicks. The oddest ball of the bunch is arguably the Sammal record, which not only restored my faith in modern prog rock outfits but strengthens Finland's hand as one of leading conduits of 60's-70's worship. Points for Svart Records (which also released the new Seremonia album this year).


And Now... Listmania: A List of Lists * 

Of course during the course of over 4 years of blogging here, I've kept tabs on MANY blogs, and I've always had an inexplicable sympathy for fellow bloggers and reviewers alike. This year has been no exception. Therefore I've decided to make a compilation of all the notable year-end lists I could muster, since the idea is to make the music as widely known and accessible to people as possible. Granted, I may have my own little grudges about these lists, but rest assured it's nothing personal, in fact differentiation between choices is always welcome, so long as the list isn't a big, fat, cock-swallowing ape of Pitchfork's Top 10 albums of 2015. What follows is a comprehensive list of all the year-end lists I could find, although obviously with that excuse the curious reader is also encouraged to read through the other articles and reviews in the respective blogs. Some of the blogs I've linked can also be found on my blog roll column.

Autothrall's Execution Through Listification: The 2015 Edition -- The best of the best. His lists amaze me for their depth, range and also for the sheer fact that I tend to enjoy almost every record in the top 20-25 unanimously. There's also a very extensive bonus section comprised of top-lists for books, non-metal and various games. Simply mandatory for metal music nerds.

The AMG Staff Picks the Top Ten Records o’ 2015: There’s No Accounting for Anything Anymore -- I love AMG's brash, in-your-face attitude when it comes to reviewing, and I certainly feel most of the time that their high scores are justified, plus they seem to be seated in some kind of independent twilight zone between the 'poorer' bloggers such as myself and the more mainstream milieu of music reviewers, in their own social commune which is just awesome. The end of the year lists are always great and exuberant, with so many different staff members with different tastes. Be sure to check out the individual lists as well.

Skull Fracturing Metal's Top 30 of 2015 -- Perhaps a bit too high on modern power and traditional heavy metal but SFM has nonetheless been one of the very first blogs I've been acquainted with since my initiation and consequently I can't help but promote this list.

Listmania 2015 (No Clean Singing) -- These guys have a freaking open sale of awesome lists every year, from so many different users and with different labels that I can hardly keep track of all them. This is just a link to one of those individual lists, be sure them to give them all a decent look.

Arson Cafe: 2015 Dispirit -- Just a very well composed list that endures no truncation, leading up to 100 entries, all listed hierarchically. All sorts of meritorious extreme metal can be found here, as well some more modern metal records that should accord well with you if you have experimental tastes.

The 2015 End-of-Year List (Heavy Metal Spotlight) -- Just seeing the Slugdge album at #20 makes me happy. I dunno, man, it just does. Plus range and diversity run fairly wide with this list, An opportunistic mash of death, black, doom and traditional heavy with a good focus on the more 'old school' side of things.

Best Albums of 2015 (Metantoine's Magickal Realm) -- Basically your go-to blogspot (along with Slugdelord) when it comes to DOOM. All sorts of great, obscure, retro-related rock and metal here, and the list is pretty sweet to top it off. So much of a 70's stoner reprise in this blog that it practically begs a joint while you're browsing for music.

piotrekmax: Best metal albums of 2015 (Sputnik Music)

2015 End of the Year List (Ghoul's Crypt)

Finally, you can seek here an even larger compilation of RYM lists, if that's your thing, a great, long shelf of worthwhile lists with actual descriptive commentary and out of the ordinary pickings. That rounds the end-of-the-year craze for 2015. You have no excuse not to check out at least a few of these works. Now is a time for rest, which I believe I've earned, shortly before I get on the 2016 bandwagon. Praise Cthulhu and stay metal, my friends.

Seremonia - Kristalliarkki [2015]

It sometimes happens that a band on such a creative spree suddenly starts to slow down for unknown reasons, closing up their inventive faculties for a safer approach. That aside, Finland has always stood for me as a creative bastion of heavy metal, rearing an expanse of cultural marvels and oddities with frequent use of their native tongue even on records which distinctly appeal to the Westernized culture, and therefore I count myself lucky to have witnessed sundry acts like Seremonia which exemplify the kind of diverse metal tradition I talked about. Finland is an endless pool of awesome, whether your tastes lie in their murky, archaic old school death metal milieu spearheaded by bands such as Convulse, Demigod or Purtenance or the relatively more recent black metal of Horna, Sargeist and Beherit, each conjuring their unique tapestry of grimness, and Seremonia belongs to an arguably more 'hippy-centric' circle among these. Their album ''Ihminen'' was one of 2013's highlights, so I was naturally elated to find they'd released a fresh disc: coming back to what I said at the beginning of the paragraph, it's somewhat disappointing to hear that the Finns didn't exactly explode with the same bonafide panoply of ritualistic Black Sabbath psychedelia as before...

...but even though they've sacrificed some of their creativity I'd say ''Kristalliarkki'' (crystal sheet if Google translate is to be trusted) kicks ass, to say the least. For newcomers, this is a great surprise of 70's doom/rock with psychedelic influences from the same era, and the Sabbath influence obviously weighs heavily here, but there are also bits and pieces that reek of stoned Finnish mysticism and queer folk textures anointed with queer and jumpy keyboard sequences that sound quite unlike anything I've heard, except its predecessor. So you can be sure that the Finns don't dip every single riff, pattern or oomph-laden sound effect into the Black Sabbath sink, since every crevice of those morose 70's doom/stoner progressions are filtered with at least a minimal dose of 'cemetery hippy' elements, which is a term that the band uses define itself, not an inaccurate one at that. If anything, I've found the dazed 70's keyboards here more prominent than on the debut, and assuredly they have a killer handful of keyboard solos at their disposal, and perhaps than just the sheer abundance of keyboard and gummy synthesizer sequences I loved that individually they channel different emotions, ranging from the atmospheric dolor of ''Jokainen Askel'' to something jumpier.

The guitars are meatier, too, which could be a positive development depending on your point of view. They've evolved slightly from these metallic, almost tinny stoner/doom tones to something considerably fuzzier. The Finns still manage to bring a surprising variety and sparse palette of riffing on the table, be it a rambunctious twist of bluesy notes or a heavier chord, they all hit their stride. There might be a few brief windows of time where I was more fond of the overall aural presentation of the wet, cannabis-dosed graveyard than the actual riffs when one or two of them were sounding alike, but overall they sink in quite well with my ears, and in fact get tastier with each spin. Noora's vocals are just as great: I've never seen female vocalists as a caveat to heavy metal, and she's exceptionally unique with her folksy, but strangely sober voice, tailoring both the ritualistic odor of the album, and to be honest, with backing vocals, there are few parts on the album where she nearly sounds like a j-pop singer. ''Kristalliarkki'' is not all hippy metal fun time, though, which is why it's so appealing. Like ''Ihminen'', there's a dark Nordic phantasm which rules over the fuzz of the guitars, the atmosphere never quite leers out of its menacing disposition, and just about any part of the album is fit for the commencement of some cankered ritual ceremony, wearing robes and doused in dope smoke, demonstrating that the seeping influence of Black Sabbath can take twisted, unexpected forms with time.

Seremonia doesn't take many cues from post-Sabbath bands like Saint Vitus, Candlemass or Paul Chain, although anyone with genuine interest in doom or even newer doom/sludge bands promulgated so frequently by mainstream magazines and record labels which I usually tend to dislike can find something interesting here, and there are even visible distinctions between the gloomy psychedelia the Finns propagate and the more sodden sound of modern stoner/doom bands such as Conan or Solstice. A major improvement over the debut might be the abridged lengths of the songs, as the whole album is overall shorter than its predecessor. Seremonia is probably one of the most unique voices in doom metal you'll hear today. They might have cut down on some of the fundamental weirdness of their debut, and while I'd still prefer it to this album, they've managed to up their consistency with shorter tracks, balanced compositions and professional finesse, with the exception of the quirky and trippy ''Kristalliarkki I'' with its uncanny jazz leads and flute murmurs, as though a folksy anomaly out of an album by the Finns' psychedelic black metal countrymen Oranssi Pazuzu, full of enticing and murky drowsiness. I'm not going to go on and say ''Kristalliarkki'' is perfect, because it isn't. A good 15-20% of the album could have used better penning or a few escapist digressions to keep the listener in continual trance, but by the end of the record, between your lazy ass seated as you read this review and the myriad tombstones smeared with moss and half-burnt sheaves of cannabis, how many good doom metal bands exist to which you'd pay lip service to? That's what I thought. So without further ado, acquire this, and stop bitching about the Finnish lyrics.

Highlights:
Alfa ja Omega
Musta Liekki
Jokainen Askel

Rating: 80%

Malthusian - Below the Hengiform [2015] (EP)

During the steady flow of the last 5-6 years we've accumulated more amorphous or 'cavern-core' death metal then we'd care to listen to: Antediluvian, Ulcerate, Mitochondrion, Impetuous Ritual, Teitanblood and Vassafor are just a handful of the many that come to mind, and Ireland's Malthusian has showed no reluctance in joining ranks with these bands and the ungodly, otherwordly death metal which they've effectively articulated. The band's debut EP and first offering after a rather highly regarded demo speaks in the exact language as the aforementioned giants, with an appeal to the extra-dimensional chaos of Lovecraftian horror and cavernous din espoused by the country of the maple leaf in particular. Make no mistake: Malthusian come (or rather trudge) with a murky expose that promises something far below the straits of 'catchy', 'melodic' or 'assonant', and ensures a permanent place near the bedrock of your iPod, spewing forth lava and bile.

''Below the Hengiform'' is at once cataclysmic and bloated with a disgusting synthesis of impenetrable death/doom motifs and wallowing vortexes of black metal airiness. The Irishmen deserve some credit for begetting the same kind of oozing, cantankerous death metal as some of the peers, but with a few flourishes and twists here and there to render things more unique. To be sure, 'cavernous' seems like a wonderful way to describe the coitus of tempestuous guitars, dowsed in reverb and the overall atmosphere they so successfully forge, but Malthusian gape through a certain level of almost oriental accessibility, with their looming chords balancing more towards an ''Onward to Golgotha'' rather than an ''Obscura'', though fascinatingly enough they employ enough technical skill a and variety in certain riffs to give the squamous slipperiness of the riffs some level of containment. Rather than piercing straight into the helpless soma of listener, the riffs spew a continual discharge of ichor and pustular extravagance, coating, slowly but gradually, as though with incandescent bones and limbs dipped in grime and pus; yet even then there's a level of tension to be suffered through the parade of some more dissonant riffing which Ulcerate or Gorguts fans would appreciate, even though the larger portion of the record is decidedly more loyal to the recipes of the masters of the early 90's than anything.

So this is 'old school', if that's your game, though for either party Malthusian pose unanimous annihilation. The quality of the production certainly works in their favor. Unlike in many records, the drums are clearly audible here, and not only that but they incorporate an abusive percussion through a wealth of cymbals and demented blast beats that suit the matchless chaos of the riffs well. The vocals are arguably the most distinct part of the Ep. As a contrast to the low-end riffing and spelean dive bombs, vocalists PG, AC, and MB (yes, they've got three guys going vox!) implement a mix of denser growls and utterly nightmarish shrieks redolent of Deicide, through at least twice as unnerving. Unfortunately, ''Below the Hengiform'' isn't as viscid to the ear as it is within itself. There are 2-3 riffs which I was utterly engrossed by, like the verse riff on ''Slouching Equinox'', but since the music engenders more artsy atmospheric than anything else, it's probably a safe assumption to say that none of the material here really stands out as mesmerizing, even at its sheer, apocalyptic best. With compositions as long as 9 minutes and just 3 tracks, you're bound to be in some shortage of dynamics, though thankfully the final (and shortest) track ''Forms Without Vapor'' is shattering and memorable enough to stave off the banalities of the other two tunes with its lurching, grooving riff patterns and linear, raspy black metal vocal lines. So like all the bands hailing under the black/death banner, but without providing as colorful a flavor as some others, Malthusian requires immensely concentrated consumption, followed by regurgitation. And then repeat.

Highlights:
Form Becomes Vapor


Rating: 73%

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%

Chapel of Disease - The Mysterious Ways of Repetitive Art [2015]

Great album covers is always a major attraction for me, and are an equally good source of attraction for death and black metal bands who crave sounds of occult, doomed subterranean antiquity, but it's a shame half of the albums with great visual distinction merely gloss over the allure of their content. Chapel of Disease's 2012 debut ''Summoning Black Gods'' was fun exercise in old school death metal which went by the trajectory of Death, Pestilence, Sinister and some Autopsy, but was no real highlight in a year already stocked with excellent, creepy death metal offerings that ranged from Necrovation to Putrevore. It's a shame that most bands don't catch the gist of it in the first place. So you can bet I was a tad morose that the new album by the Germans wasn't much of a switch in color palettes, or equally ludicrous as the album title, but merely a minor readjustment of settings that prompts something of a psychedelic 70's feel into lurching old school death metal monotony.

Well, it isn't necessarily a monotony, because the Germans still do fairly good job at keeping some constancy and excitement throughout songs which go on for 6+ minutes, with insultingly enjoyable death/thrashing mania and accessibly searing guitar tones reaching back to early Pestilence. There's no denying that a sizable portion of this record dials all the way back to 1988, taking a huge slice of ''Malleus Maleficarum'' alongside it, with the rest channeling 1989-1993 at random and scraping off the 'old school' off everything from ''Human'' era Death, early Demolition Hammer to Morbid Angel, and this was one record which I felt the thrash was expressively more dominant than the death influence, particularly the fluid and blistering track ''Life is But a Burning Being'' which basically sounds like what Morbid Saint would have recorded on ''A Spectrum of Death'' if they'd been living under a stronger Teutonic influence with perhaps a dosage of Pink Floyd. Seriously, if there is any major step forward here from the debut, it's the odd psychedelia and melodic sentimentality interposed between the harsh, abrogating speed/thrash barrage and standardized old school death metal tremolos. There is a strong death/doom feel to the album that reverberates quite strongly as well, but while it makes for some good atmosphere the slower sections didn't always gel with the frantic death/thrash incursions. Despite that, the vocals, great as before, bark out like hell hounds in the night, leaving you dazed with a devilish take on Martin van Drunnen's legendary inflection.

The record is almost in conjunction with Horrendous' latest, ''Ecdysis'', which was a tour de force in the school of skin shedding and revitalization, albeit to a much larger degree than this one. The Germans are also embracing a veritable appreciation for oriental melodies, lead riffs and arbitrarily placed acoustic guitar sequences, which, though still inchoate, suggest a nice structural change which should be even  more pronounced on their third record. The ending track ''... of Repetitive Art'' is a ripping wall of semi-technical thrash riffs with haunting intro put in front of it, and resonates surprisingly well for a 10-minute monster. Again, aside from certain sequences, this album didn't made me raise my eyebrows. The drudging ''The Mysterious Ways...'' was all too boring and could as well have been replaced by an ambient sound of occult magicians high on some demoniac drug for all I care. So forget all that I said about good album covers and bad music. This is definitely a great album cover, and the music is solid, too. Maybe lacking in the visceral or aural pomp which I would seek for in 21st century old school death metal revival scheme perhaps, but nonetheless a highly listenable effort that could burgeon into something far more enthralling in the future.

Highlights:
Symbolic Realms
Life is But A Burning Life
The Dreaming of the Flame

Rating: 72,5%

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%

Avatarium - Avatarium [2013]

It comes as a surprise that seasoned musicians who showed their real flair with astonishing 80's masterpieces (in this case being Candlemass) can show similar if not equal proficiency with their resurrection as artists in the 21st century. Hence Avatarium. A five-piece from Sweden for which the legendary Lief Edling of Candlemass serves as the bassy powerhouse. All things considered, Avatarium's existence as band risen from the ashes of an old master, its hasty linkage with mainstream label Nuclear Blast, and the general outlook of its style make it terrible prone to suffer from becoming just another face in the crowd, another meager contemplation of modern doom metal which one could not help but adhere to sheer tripe. Yet the band almost masterfully steers away from such a detainment of skill. It refuses to be clouded with a lack of motivation, to be trod down by the rueful overtones that typical doom bands implement oh so recurrently, and their self-titled debut doesn't quite reinvent the wheel, it does manage to buy itself a parole from mediocrity.

Despite its relatively modern texture, I found this album to be one of the most fluent and enjoyable doom metal records I've heard in some time. The Candlemass influence is evident, even with some appreciation of early doom a la Witchfynder General and Black Sabbath, but the main story here is the percussive, and, most importantly, gothic sound put into the record that pervades into every square inch of the steady, concussive riffs that work their way to the listener's cranium like firm, gradual hammers slamming into a slab of half-molten steel, eventually creating a successful forgery. And what I mean by this is basically a more contemporaneous, forgiving approach to what Tiamat and its followers scraped up in the 90's as more personal, emotive alternative to the booming melodic death metal tradition of the time - not that this has to do a deal with the Swedes, but it's impossible not to make note of the soaring orchestral voluminousness of ''Moonhorse'', or the occasional acoustic interludes obtruding the crushing finesse of the grand, polished guitars. Indeed, in a firm elucidation of its desires and confrontations, ''Avatarium'' seems to encompass both traditional doom metal values with the inherent Candlemass sound, and a more accessible tone that belongs to its age.

Yet the band owes much of its awesome, crushing balance and clarity to the powerful, soaring female vocals of  Jennie-Ann Smith; but she in now way proves a hindrance for the record. In fact, the wonderful eloquence of her pitch is a terrific thing to behold not just because it helps excavate the band from strict simplicity to epic panache, but it also refuses to be a pretentiously maudlin in its delivery. yet the band simultaneously achieves the sort of poignant fragility that so many others flounder at. This album is not just a pointless bridge of riff upon megalithic riff, either; you can feel each pounding veracity of each chord, a sublime metallic resonance, but keep in mind that a progressive touch that's heavily redolent of early Dream Theater spikes the atmosphere with sufficient technicality and mournful psychedelia to push the pastoral dream even deeper into the listener's emotional sanitarium. The magnitude of the riffs, the patterns and the melody, intertwined with blatant but effective chorus tropes is amazing. And the lush, yet strangely moving aesthetic is only coupled with the fantastic imagery of the poetic lyrics, like the unforgettable title track, making each track really, really fucking count despite the sheer length.

And what about the flawless modern-goth doom/rock tune ''Boneflower''? Its simplistic mid-paced verse riff, married with the impeccable adroitness of the vocalist make it one of the most memorable tracks of the year, and I'm not even biased. It's, as it melodiously proclaims, ''a one way trip to the promised land''. True, not all the songs hold up with the same rambunctious delicacy, and being essentially a melding of slow, lurching power chords, the album does get a tad redundant at times, but who the hell can blame you? For fans of Tiamat, (both early and late) Lake of Tears or Katatonia, this a reckoning that ought not be missed, a minute wonder of elegiac strength that has the strange ability to elevate the youthful spirit of a ''Clouds'' fan as magically as a sorceress resurrecting the souls of the doleful. It's jam-packed with 80's Candlemass and 70's nostalgia (thanks to the stupendous keyboard work) and while still no maverick in a market loaded to the tits with anything that's utterly uncanny and audacious, its still holds up splendidly. Give yourself in, spin it, savor the elegance and spin it again.

Highlights:
Moonhorse
Avatarium
Bird of Prey
Boneflower

Rating: 85%

Solstice - Death's Crown Is Victory [2013]

Needless to say I'm not the biggest doom fan out there. As a genre with the potential to exfoliate any sort of eloquence or panache with the simplest of banalities, I often found doom too ''slow'' to be such a wildly invigorating trip as any other genre, and that's, I think, one of the more commonplace scoldings it gets from listeners. Again, while that doesn't mean I neglect everything doom, I find myself at a loss of interest in most cases. That is the continual Grand Magus albums, the slower bits and pieces of Agalloch, almost any kind of sludge/stoner doom throwback, and even some of the classics. Of course the genre has witnessed quite a few climaxes lately, (or so it's been said) following an unimaginable upsurge in its popularity, most of which I haven't been able to visit. When we come to Solstice, I realize that my previous criticisms should equal an acidic assault on the band's redundancy, but strangely enough, that is not the case. These UK veterans are tough, seasoned, well-established, and even though I have no history with them, I was rather taken by their newest EP, ''Death's Crown Is Victory''.

What does Solstice hold for a seeker of eccentricities such as I? For one, it's consistent. In basic terms, the EP is just two booming 9 minute songs, with two lesser instrumentals clustered around them. What's essentially a concoction of Sabbath, Witchfinder General, Pentagram and newer Swedish trends is played with great, tight musicianship, and doesn't falter for one second. Solstice is defined as epic doom metal, which, though more fitting for other practitioners of the style, seems like a worthy tag. The half-dolorous, half-vainglorious vocals stretch and burden the album with clarity and the overall atmosphere is generally warm except for rare saunters into darker territory. And that's not just it. Who could not drool over the simplistic chug-complex of the huge, sun-wreathed guitar chords and progressions that etch across the album? Sometimes the Brits puncture a few technicalities into the mix, with melodies and even occasional arpeggio sequences, like on the title track, but the guitars generally retain a set of riffs more fitting for the baritone of the vocals; and the drums are always there, cymbal and snare, battering against the currents of mourn and triumph. While Solstice doesn't dabble with any of the 60's/70's psychedelic rock phenomena that new bands keep interpreting into their sound these days, they keep the more eclectic strata of listeners awake with melodious twists and turns here and there, so you know the album isn't all doom n' gloom.

And doesn't ''Death's Crown Is Victory'' feel redundant at times? You bet. There are more than just a few sequences where the riffs were rather dulling, where the vocals weren't saturated with enough epic tenor to shake me and cause goosebumps to pop up on my arm, and the overall sound is nothing if not original - but so what? It could have used a few tweaks in the production as well, because the guitars were to brassy at times that they were choking the vocals, but, again, there's no huge loss here. It just feels like a cogent, ass-kicking album. The big story was that they weren't travelling at a snail's face, like their funeral doom peers, and they certainly weren't fucking around with pointless poignant interludes here and there; I simply thought the pacing was damn close to optimum in terms of doom. And while the block-like patterns didn't stir anything close to maternal grief or irreparable woe, it is a moving experience. A nice potent formula to brew every now and then when you're taking a long walk across the English pastoral.

Highlights:
I Am The Hunter
Death's Crown is Victory

Rating: 78%

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%

Ancient Crypts - Devoured by Serpents [2013] (Demo)

Given the obvious visual preferences of the band, Ancient Crypts is bound to erect a superfluity of speculations concerned with the band's lack of motivation, and these speculations will arise even before someone actually listens to the 22 minute tape, and hell, most of them will be accurate judgments, because this Chilean death metal horde is in no way giving birth to a new genre complete with all its technical and aural fulfillment, but that doesn't mean the group can't pack a punch with this ancient, decrepit sophomore demo. I would have hoped that, being in the same league with their ambitious label-mates Bolzer, ZOM, and Beyond, the Chileans could have embarked on something even only marginally different from a classic rehash, but the contrast between this, and creativity, is the virtual equal of the contrast between night and day. However, all is not in vain. Despite the sheer simplicity of their efforts and compositions, Ancient Crypts have somehow conjured a subterranean vortex of murk, complete with raw recording qualities, smashing, abusive riffing, and a one-time ticket to an abysmal land that's fairly frightening and vivid in its depiction of darkness and all things ominous.

This is actually some great stuff; the Chileans might not have tried too hard to tweak the aspects of the originality department, but they sure have some horrid, wrangling riff work ready at their disposal which they diversify in accordance with the varying tempo of the tunes, carnal, decomposed conformity that will make death/doom fans rejoice to enjoy altogether. It's easy to point at Ancient Crypts' influences, because whether you're an experienced OSDM connoisseur or some kid just newly starting to explore the beleaguered genre's fundamentals, ''Devoured By Serpents'' has some scary, tempestuous material hidden in its deathly vault that will easily make your bowels rumble with anticipation and enthusiasm. It's almost as if the Chileans just randomly snatched a handful of tags from a box of influential names, and proceeded to play by the rules of those acts. There's Finnish death metal aplenty, a ghastly exposition of Convulse, Demigod and even Abhorrence when you're listening to the more eerie variations of the blasting tremolo sequences, Incantation, which should be obvious by now, some Death circa 1987-1988, and an occasional admiration for death/doom acts in the vein of Winter (slightly less evil), Asphyx, Cianide, and less known Finnish obscures Rippikoulu. Some of my favorite moments include the mingling, tingling death/doom harmonies on the title track which sound like interpretations of early Autopsy, and the blasting, ruinous chord progressions of ''Between The Mortuary Remains''.

With such brevity and a mere lack of diversity there's not really much to say about Ancient Crypts. The demo is indubitably a bred of the previously mentioned acts in every possible way; the riffs, the drum patterns, the colossal, heaving density of the atmosphere, and the guttural snares of the vocalist, which, at faster picking moments resemble a somewhat bulbous version of your atypical death/grind barking. Yes, I did occasionally get a sense of repetition seething through wretched pits of the demo, and to be honest there are many other groups that are producing A+ material that tops this in so many ways, but the band's youth and eagerness negates utterly stark criticism. Besides, all those excellent OSDM acts that we venerate and adore today were, in fact, quite like these gentleman at some early point of their career. Thus, I can do no more but recommend this to fervent tape collectors - it hardly deviates from the norm but kicks copious asses while sticking to the safe route - so give them a chance and what do you know, one day, they might blossom into one of your doppelganger favorites.

Highlights:
Deep Into the Ancient Crypts
Devoured by Serpents

Rating: 75%

Krownn - Hyborian Age [2013] (Demo)

Considering my lack of history with both Italian metal and doom metal itself, I honestly wasn't tempted to approach Krownn's ''Hyborian Age'' demo (which, at first, I accidentally took for a proper full-length) with a sense of zeal when I first found it in my mail, partly because of a simple apprehension that suggested the band's offering would turn out to be an appalling experience. My knowledge and more importantly love for doom doesn't go very deep, and my knowledge of Italian doom bands make harsh stop at Paul Chain. However, my recent and pleasant experiences with other new traditional doom bands like The Gates Of Slumber somehow urged me to dive into the demo, and after only a couple of tracks, I must say that I became very content with what I heard. Krownn is marginally rougher around the edges as far the most traditional values of doom goes, with a small and fairly versatile range of influences sticking to band members' preferences of traditional doom masters, but all around, ''Hyborian Age'' still follows the ways of its precursors at trudging gaits.

As stated, ''Hyborian Age'' is, above all, a homage to such old school mavens as Candlemass, Pentagram or even Sabbath picked up at a much heavier tone. The riffs are mostly muscular and granular and tightly composed, with a variety of harmonies and twists used to grab the attention of a wider spectrum of listeners. The bulldozing simplicity and sheer primal power of the riffs have a wonderfully coherent, mystically ancient feel to them, as if they were spawning right out of the beguiling, spectral silhouette of cover art, and these churning, heavy stomps are so wondrous that they have a heavy tinge of stoner rock and doom, which just another representation of how wide a net these guys can cast. The vocalist ragged vocal style is both a thing of enigma and enjoyment for stoner fans. Especially in tracks like ''The Woodwose'', he plunge into a deep, unpredictable vocal inflection, which, infused with the titular riffing that rock in the open, sounds like the perfect stoner/doom tune to blast through the stereo on a drunken afternoon. The balance of the tone is incredible; it's stuck somewhere between a grimy, filth-doused old school inclination and another, more more overt and modern texture, ultimately brought forth in western-sounding theatre.

The rhythm is great, the punches accentuated through the heavy manifest of husky riffage, and the bass just plods on, bearing its bombastic tone with pride. ''At The Cromlech'' was probably my favorite piece here; a feast of both desolate and memorable traditional riffs intertwining with that of a more traditional facet, rumbling as the vocalist takes on a more cleaner, NWOBHM-esque toning. However, ''Stormborn'' has to be the most entrancing of all with over seven minutes of chugging and doom-y goodness, and fairly brief stop near the middle where the Italians literally transport you into this western ambiance of stoner/doom psychedelia with moody, resonating medleys of guitar work swaying gently between everything. We're also exposed to plenty of experimental touches on ''Stormborn'', revealing the band's penchant to rarely erupt into a more creative complex of music. Krownn got me where I wasn't expecting it at all. An unprecedented ambush of stupendous, creative traditional old school stoner/doom that rocks so much harder than all the rehashing drones that you'd be astounded. Surprisingly, despite having nearly 40 minutes of brilliant content, Krownn dubbed their debut release as a demo. Well, that just means we'll get something even better and more extensive when the full-length comes. I'll just leave you with your beer and stereo now.

Highlights:
At The Cromlech
For The Throne Of Fire
Stormborn

Rating: 86%

Ghost - Infesttisumam [2013]

Since releasing their debut album “Opus Eponymous” in 2010 there has been no bigger hype band than Ghost. Maybe it was because they were on a tour with Mastodon and Opeth (who, for some reason, are two of the biggest metal bands today), because they never revealed their identities, or because of their strange brand of occult rock. Regardless of how they got popular, the good news is that their debut was an enjoyable record. It definitely had quite a few metal leanings, and could probably best be described as Mercyful Fate meets Blue Oyster Cult. With “Infestissumam”, Ghostcontinues that trend, but definitely sound like a band that has bought into their own hype.

The second the record opens, you are hit with the sound of huge, ancient choirs. This is nothing new for Ghost, and it actually builds into something quite atmospheric in the intro; however, it would later be used again on other tracks to the record’s detriment. The choirs definitely fit Ghost’s image, but they really aren’t necessary beyond the great intro. Luckily, the first full song opens with one ofGhost’s hardest hitting riffs, before the guitars give way to Papa Emeritus’ ghastly vocals. In general, the songs on “Infestissumam” aren’t that different from the debut; there are hard rocking songs (“Per Aspera Ad Inferi”), as well as more simplistic tunes (“Body and Blood”). Where this record sometimes gets off track is in its use of strange melodies. For example, the single, “Secular Haze”, has a carnival feel to it, which is unnecessary and takes away from the rest of the song (it does however, have some great bass guitar work). Likewise, “Year Zero” has some moments that make you think that this band could really be doing something better. This is what I mean when I say they’ve bought into their own hype; they are emphasizing new and weird elements to the band in order to push their image into more mainstream territory. Granted, it seems to have worked, but the average metal fan is likely to be able to handle the strange combination of Ghost’s music and their aesthetic. Getting back to the music, the highlight is definitely “Jigolo Har Megiddo”, which has a stomping rhythm to it. The interplay of drums and guitars almost sounds like disco meets swing. It’s got a four-on-the-floor feel, but still has a jumpy, unrestrained character. The more experimental “Ghuleh / Zombie Queen” has its moments as well, but is more likely to be a grower. The remainder of the songs don’t stand out, but that works to Ghost’s favour as they’re simply enjoyable occult rock tunes.

“Infestissumam” is likely to be a conflicting record. Had the band stayed a bit more consistent and less experimental, I would certainly enjoy it more. With that said, they didn’t simply rehash their previous record. While I’m afraid of their likely future downfall, Ghost have created an enjoyable, albeit flawed follow-up.

Highlights
"Per Aspera Ad Inferi"
"Jigolo Har Megiddo"
"Body and Blood"

Final Rating
3.9/5 or 78%.

Written by Scott Dorfman

Originally written for Skull Fracturing Metal Zine.

Krypts - Unending Degradation [2013]

The first time I was introduced to Krypts, which was some time ago, when their 2009 demo ''Open The Crypt'' unexpectedly triggered the massing of a gigantic Finnish underground reserve for pungent, cave-dwelling old school death metal with blatantly gargantuan doom metal interpretations, and four years after the beginning of their chasm exploration, the Finns return with a hulking, and quite literally ''degraded'' debut full-length, which, from the eyes of current heavy metal enthusiasts, can only be regarded as an unashamed aping of an over-saturated cliche that  modern pundits such Disma, Funebrarum, Cruciamentum and Ignivomous have already amply exposed us to. Despite whatever gripe one would hold against this seemingly endless flood of hollow death metal, and yet another icon to represent its sheer trendiness, I personally did not find the redundancy of ''Unending Degradation'' to be a deteriorating aspect, and with some experience behind their monstrous, cavernous regime these Finns have certainly put together a record that channels both nostalgia and a somber, though not modern, emphasis on death metal that was popularized by the aforementioned groups.

''Unending Degradation'' commences as any other cavernous death metal band could, starting off with doomy motifs and then unfolding with all of the tenuous, tremulous riffs it bears inside its numbing 40 minute burden. Like their fellow label-mates Anhedonist, they can keep the listener intrigued throughout most of the deliverance time, through a sway of basic, yet monolithic chords by simply applying a chock load of reverb and further amplifying effects, though I believe their true nuance lies in their usage of melodious that entwine with the lumbering guitar patterns, all to create a perturbing atmosphere. And surprisingly, they accomplish most of their core aims. Perhaps their goal in using such melodiously resonant lines to flourish their simple patterns was to completely peeve the listener and pummel him/her into quieted submission, and if so, then they've failed for the most part, as even rookie ears would able to overcome the bludgeoning heft and atmospheric tendencies of this record, but again, they were probably just busy resuscitating the remnants of Funebrarum and Incantation on this one. Krypts seem almost completely devoted to death/doom, rather than the more occasional aggressive death metal motif, which could be a pro or con depending on your stance. They're just bashing the cavernous interiors of dismal caves and crevices with blunted clubs and hammers with the momentum of a drunken caveman, so don't expect to be fluctuated in between moments of complexity and intensity; but then again, you probably know what you're up against, right?

Bludgeon and resonance are the keys to Krypts. But even though they're entangled in this murky aesthetic that has reached its peek in popularity, Krypts don't send a banal wave of repeating, massive guitars to the listener, unlike many of their peers. Yes, I'm sure you're not going to find this the most fun experience you've had in years, a pendulous flood of megalithic guitars led by fiendish, low-register gutturals that like to dwell in the utmost depths of you local cave, and yes, I know they're somewhat taking a risk here now that the sub-genre has taken a route towards the redundant, but I think you'll still find yourself in  fairly good hands while listening to Krypts; they reek heavily of nostalgia, they're heavy as fuck, have a discordant appeal to them, and they'd sure as hell attract doom metal fans of the olden sort, so don't be a cunt, give this a try, you won't suffocate, I swear (that last notion may not be fully correct). Monstrous hymns galore.

Highlights:
Blessed Entwinement 
Dormacy Of The Ancients
The Black Smoke

Rating: 79%

Solothus - Ritual of the Horned Skull [Demo] [2013]

Last year I had the pleasure to carry the burden of Finnish death/doom monstrosities Solothus' ''Ritual Of The Horned Skull'' EP, and endeavor I felt was one of the better death/doom interpretations of the last 4-5 years with bustling, semi-cavernous index and busy, climatic riffs that were placed in sort of the milieu of primitive death/doom circa 1989-1994 and a more established, polished offering of the same sub-genre that was substantially upgraded and polished by late to mid 90's connoisseurs Runemagick, Paradise Lost, etc, and even more modern projects of melodious, cavern-dwelling disembowelment projects like Hooded Menace or Coffins - a certainly copious range of macabre influences that all have their places secured in a gnostic burial ground near the local cemetery. Yet, there will undoubtedly be a handful of scoffers, demanding to know what the Finns have to top their already prodigious predecessors which have spawned in the last 5 years or so. Yes, Solothus are nothing quite out of the ordinary, bearing minor contrast only thanks to their larger intake of Runemagick influences, but there's much more to this hillock of bones than the eye meets.

As I stated, Solothus' entire bevy of groove-laden riffs fall somewhere between the more ''epic'' and edgy facet of death/doom and the more grotesque, and veritable churning of melodic exhibitions delivered through a manifest of horrendous old school depictions. Solothus are simply fantastically authentic, equating the masterful measure of doom, gloom and harmony into one versatile, bone-laced package, with an unrelenting undercurrent of vulgarity seething underneath it all. There's an elephantine slurry; a punching, ghastly monster of a tone that splashes around wildly in accordance to the medium tempo of the bruising drums, and like on ''A Call To War'', the band injects minor dozes of clamorous, distorted chords which instantly render the orchestration a morbidly defiant serpentine, belching bile and vomit as it stampedes. The songs are all shrewdly arranged; they're not stretched into drudging funeral doom epics of over 7 minutes; they're kept at the optimum length of about 4-5 minutes, and Solothus are obviously more keen in conversing at mid-tempo gait than turtle-slowness. They also tend to stick to a lesser flock of riffs than many of their peers incline to do, supposedly to turn the whole experience into a more absorbing one, but Solothus exceed many of their counterparts in both quality and distribution, each song a successful homage to sweltering death and doom.

Simply put, the Finns are more enthralling than the majority of their cavern-dwelling peers, deeply punging into the macabre without weaving superfluous quantities of complexities while doing so, and simply keeping the listener at bay throughout 20 minutes by continuously craving similar but very enjoyable, grooving riffs. Undeniably, there could have been a tidbit of more variation to embody an even more gruesome manifest of horror, but I'm still hardly malcontent with my current reservoir. The first two songs, ''A Call To War'' and ''Throne Of Bones'' mostly represented what the band's savager ideas clustered around, but ''Embrace Of Cold'', and even more so, ''Darkness Gathers Here At Night'', were fully turning on the more melodious inflection on, and barely Gothic interpretations made tangible with the use of vibrant, fibrous collections of melody, so they're definitely heading for a more solemn and harmonious approach; something quite akin to Hooded Menace and what they achieved with their latest full-length. Well, these Finns have captured the true grooving essence of old school death/doom, a horrific congealment of bones and mourn, so a full-length will definitely be welcome.

Highlights:
Darkness Gathers Here At Night
Embrace The Cold
A Call To War

Rating: 83%

Asilo - Geografias/Wardance [Single]

Chugging out queer processions somewhere amid doom, drone, sludge and crust, I did not see Argentina's Asilo coming at me at all. Seriously, the moment I was contacted by the band and was not disappointed with what I heard from this two track single was the moment when hope and expectancy rose to a considerable level once again, and believe me, finding unknown modern gems underneath a bedrock of geniality is something worth being ecstatic about. Motions aside though, let's get on with the real deal here. Asilo, with whatever dwindled, grotesque murk they could muster present us with a third release, after two singles, and obviously the first release I've heard by them. This Argentinian quartet put the pedal to the drone to present with a lugubrious, almost nightmarish upheaval of dissonant bliss, something that fans of Hell, a rather recent blackened drone abomination will rather like.

The single has two songs, a total of nine minutes if you want to measure how long the lumbering inquisition will last. There's a weird twist though, the band has omitted the usage of electric guitars, and in the stead of the gushing voracity of the guitars, you have two bobbing, discomfiting bass lines, channeled and adorned with numerous effects and pedals to ravish the glory of the horrible atmosphere. They've distorted the basses in such a way that their excursions sound almost like clean, reverb-ridden electric guitar trudges, only a deal heavier by nature. Except the brevity, I really couldn't find anything wrong with the release. The opener ''Geografias'' introduces an introspective channel of hazy sludge and stoner/doom, while surpassing typical boundaries with a witty compulsion of monotonous drudgery, the terrific bass line always constant, and discordant, completely ear-gashing flutters of raw production pushing in and out of the aura; the second half of the song encloses the first chapter almost abruptly and indulges the listener in a completely new array of space-y sludge lumbers.

Wardance embraces the crust-like tendencies of the band to a far more diverse extent. The bass lines crawl along a punky passage while primordial ooze spews from their wretched rumbles, and the band completely switches to all-out-attack mode - screams radiating amid screams. The cathartic damage that the two tracks deal are so compulsive that the listener doesn't even mind the turbulence and aural disturbance, making the fluctuation seem completely viscous. And besides the terrific sludge/drone patrols that stalk you constantly throughout nine minutes, Manuel Platino arranges the analog devices and mechanical portions of the music expertly; not to mention his hellish, transient vocal deliveries. Asilo deserves praise for sure. Through the resonant, cave-riddled abyss they drive the listener through, despite the shortness of the experience, torture and pleasure at the same time is granted, guaranteed. In all, one daunting release may not suffice for such contemptuous, ravenous entities as I, but Asilo has built the essentials of a certain miserable grasp that helps it branch away from its fellow counterparts of drone and crust, and I'm overly excited about what torturous hymns they can churn out on their major craving, a planned full-length for 2013; an unavoidable opportunity for them to not only enrich their engrossed, barren content, but also to work out for an even more experimental expenditure on their disheveled aesthetics.

Highlights:
Geografias
Wardance

Rating: 82%

Ysengrin - To Endotaton

To me, the number of French bands that I have relative reverence for is very, very few. Even considering all the bands from the dawn of time as far as metal is concerned, there were only a couple of acts which were able to capture my attention, including the death/thrash massacre Massacra, and few more similar OSDM groups which proved somewhat emergent only during the early 90's, and other than that handful of crude extremes, there's only the current blossoming post/ambient black metal chorus that I eschew from listening, but had a sort of alarming impact on me. With members from the fascinating atmospheric black metal cogitation Darkenhold, Ysengrin, one of my more latter discoveries, completely varying from the fellow countrymen, have injected an addicting hermetic drug into my veins which I can't seem to cleanse myself of; the group formulates a mercurial enigma of death, black and doom, and even more surprising is that they don't deliberately eschew whatever archaic tendencies these three genres have, and throw them into their own, enigmatic concoction which boasts of some of the most refreshing, somber metal I've heard in a long while.

From the very start, ''To Endotaton'' constantly fabricates, intense, almost delusional majestic blackened death/doom, if you want to classify that simply. The entire album is a single, cavernous forty-minute journey into mysterious and occult harmony, the album's innumerable characteristics showing with color and epitomized pulchritude, and this constantly flowing tree of veins always keeps ample provisions of atmospheric deepness, adding a mesmerizing undertone to its eloquent furnace, burning with a calm but fervent fire. Eventually, due to the album's many faces, there will be many who will dub it something else, since, the listener is inflected by whatever attribute has an impact on him/her the most, but as a whole, ''To Endotaton'' incorporates so many different influences of distinct color and variation, that its spectrum eventually bursts and comes out a new, fresh monolith formed of the beautifully charred remains of its predecessors.

I'm glad the album eschews any sort of industrial/technical element that might come to mind, because such an experiment would have surely ruined the organic trance bestowed upon you that I drool so much about. The primary riffs are stationary black/doom progressions, advancing, sometimes, with a great atmospheric splendor, while sometimes simply punishing with  a more swerving complex: dirtier chugs and crispy patterns.  While a surge of mournful, misanthropic riffage struggles through a dense plume of lethargy and desolation, Ysengrin add plenty of revitalizing objects in between mourns to keep the pace active, and somehow fluent. I'm talking about crunchy thrash chugs and Bolt Thrower-esque mid-paced crushers coming in an eerie stampede, and on even rarer occasions you'll hear deliberate tremolo bashing, churning into the semi-epic aura with ease.

While the cavern-riddled utters of the vocalist will often be excluded from significance during the more rapid incursions, the tinging despair of the vocalists light gutturals will probably ignite fires of gripping tension and isolation in clean guitar- dominated sequences, where the Frenchman will present themselves as virtuoso of the dark Spanish lead guitar or simply haunting interludes. No matter how long the entire song is, through the band members' experience and savvy techniques, the tremendous hermetic strength the album holds, and delicately penned compositions, the entrancing archaic mystery that is ''To Endotaton'' exceeds. A highly, highly recommended aperture into morbid darkness. Good job I, Voidhanger, good job.

Highlight:
To Endotaton 

Rating: 90%

Of Spire And Throne - Vagary

Indeed, the sludge scene is a scene that has been much better familiarized by mainstream audiences than its legendary yet somehow degraded counterpart doom metal, but is comparing these two genres was ever the situation, I'd choose doom every single time. One of the prime reasons of my verdict, is a growing rumble of underground vibrations which find themselves hooked upon the lugubrious styles of doom, now broadening their spears and axes to dabble their material in even more primal succession than before, instead of keeping true to the traditional bloodline set by the masters Cathedral, or Candlemass. This fresh surge has revivicated the murky and ultimately dismal power of death/doom along with other provokers of sadistic and incomprehensible tyranny such as Antediluvian, Portal, Vasaeleth or Mitchondrion, who, although have certain differences, still aim to grasp that dark and drowning filth riddled subtext of torment, and these ghastly explorations continue for my latest discovery, Scotland's Of Spire And Throne, is the definition of monstrous death/doom.

Alongside my second death/doom favorite of the year, ''Serpentine Path'' by the infamous Serpentine Path, OSAT's ''Vagary'' has evoked a cunning sense of degraded mutilation and clawing, incessant yet drudging torture in me. These rank, befouled golem-fiends are actually a relatively new wave of bands. They do not intensify any of the olden death/doom masters in a way of ripping them off, but they bathe themselves in this tempestuous momentum some seek to find so often these days, creating Cylopean monoliths, swaggering slowly, painfully. Vagary exposes all the filthiest material they have and collapse in one single twenty-minute fall, and the earth around you literally quivers in response to this lurch. In such a drowning, asphyxiating cauldron it's merely impossible take a break through all that fog and plumes of dark dense smoke and breathe, which is pretty much the gold of the EP. The rhythms are immense, layered with exceedingly simple crunches and crushes, plodding along the elephantine obelisk, but every lurch is an all-encompassing spasm flushing through your thoughts and smoldering your brain - the perfect mind fucker.

The vocals are scarce, as they seldom jump into action and prefer abusing the rhythms from afar with distant gurgle growls, but the best thing is that they're laid down with a nice hint cavernous murkiness, a stupendous manifestation of evil. ''Vagary'' is simply excellent if you are into such mourning drudgery of doom and death, and even fleshier a treat for those who devour funeral death/doom combos emerging from the cthtonic debts. However, even though I am a huge sucker for death/doom darkness in the vein of Winter, I need to confide that the material here can be overly boring and far too monotonous for those of you who seek more vivacious experiments; but even so, I don't think many will manage to overcome the encompassing murk of this album, and albeit I don't love the drudgery here, I'm still going to show my support for this mischievous quartet and abominable creation. Keep it up.

Highlight:
Vagary

Rating: 80%

Ataraxy - Revelations Of The Ethereal

Spain has become, over the years, one of the more prominent old school death metal fields worldwide. There seems to be substantial bands popping out during tumultuous bull races, and some have especially proved to be quality acts, Morbid Flesh, Graveyard, Mass Burial and Necroven for example, (not to mention some of the ruling tyrants of war metal Teitanblood and proclamation), and its densely threaded web is only growing denser. The simple truth about Ataraxy is that the moment I was acquainted with them, I knew I would like them. How? The brilliantly drawn cover suggests a semi-epic surge of atmospheric convulsion, and so does the album title, bearing a charismatic and almost subconscious surge of infinity, thus the music produced is an almost exact copy of the album art itself.

I have to emphasize on the cover one last time because I really, really like it; it heavily resembles Horrendous' self titled album, or Necrovation's self titled record, taking on the same ephemeral hue, and moreover, the album feels as if you're floating over some immersing dense liquid, swooshing and fluttering slowly, steadily. The mesmerizing atmospheric beauty of Horrendous meets Asphyx and it ripens in cauldron of Finnish macabre, infusing into a sort of dark, somber orchestration. These Finnish tendencies of course know when to froth and blast into dominant outburst, and besides its doom laden outputs and crunchy Finnish overtone, Ataraxy has a brilliant subtext of heavy fucking Swedish death metal; which especially fascinating because until now, nearly the entire catalog of Swedeath gimmicks had a subtext of contrast, and even sometimes, no contrast to revitalize their artillery, but the Spanish prove to be crudely antithetic somehow, ending up as the caveman yet still managing to become the exemplary specimen.

The production is somewhat terrific. I don't why I actually felt awe-stricken about it, and I definitely prefer a dark, less radiant production qualities over semi-atmospheric ones, but the production on ''Revelations Of The Ethereal is cavernous yet cleansed of impurity, and it supports the heaving momentous burden of the drip-drop trudges linked together, becoming ultimately rich and quite engrossing. The band certainly loves starting tracks off with ominous drudgery, first heaving a hefty body out of the bed as if awakening from a thousand-year slumber, them focusing on a more dynamic sound, and eventually bursting into blazing tremolo incursions. And as if the artillery weren't sufficient to keep the ears pulsing and bleeding, we also have a collision of sounds reminiscent of a demon raping Martin van Drunen and Chuck Shuldiner both, something that I will pitifully dub as ''vocals''. Overall, this entire output is just short of excellence. If you ever want to free yourself from the merciless incarceration of these retro death metal bands, take a brief forty-four minute voyage upon this ghastly little boat and sail out to find the obscurities of life, set sail towards Ataraxy.

Highlights:
Ominous Putrefied Ground
Demons Of The Storm
Ceremonial Storm

Rating: 88%