Entry 435 - Pedestrian Deposit - Kithless

 

I came across Pedestrian Deposit a few weeks ago. They were described as a noise band that puts a high amount of effort into every single recording that is put out. I was intrigued by that statement as many noise artists output is... lacking in effort.

The album consists of two compositions, both having moments of beautiful musicality and also deranged sounds, scratches, and perverse tones that make me highly uncomfortable listening to them.  This is exactly what I am looking for within the noise genre.

Both tracks have a similar evolution to them. They both start out on the musical side with a cello playing whole notes that are allowed to fully decay into silence or ambient noise. As the songs progress the tracks become more and more littered with interfering sounds.

Side A consists of Drift Gently Down the Frigid Tides of Sleep. This track starts with a creek sound accompanied by the aforementioned cello lulling the listener into a sense of security. As the track begins to progress the feeling begins to shift to a more unsettling tone. Unusual sounds begin to bubble up underneath the stream and eventually near silence and uneasy breathing takes over. This further evolves to a more traditional noise feedback loop that fades in and out with the breathing. Before the entire track collapses in on itself and fades.

Like so much within the noise side of music this is hard to classify explicitly as music... it's much more an organized collection of songs that is meant to evoke deep feelings from within the listener. It's a wonderfully unique experience for each person who partakes in the album. My interpretation could be completely different from someone else's... I think I'm starting to get the appeal of noise.

Entry 434 - Samael - Eternal

 

Continuing my revising of albums I grew up with we come to Samael's Eternal. I got into the band with Passage and was blown away by its power and tasteful combination of electronics and metal. Eternal is the follow up and went further into the realm of electronics and further away from the world of metal.

I initially did not like Eternal at all. I thought it was too far removed form the style that I fell in love with. I didn't know it at the time but Samael had been changing styles significantly with every album to this point, I would only find this out a few hours later when I went to check out Ceremony of Opposites and was shocked how different it was... even more so with Blood Ritual.

Going back to Eternal, this album took quite some time to grow on me, eventually winning me over to the point where I enjoyed it for what it was. There is nothing like Rain or Juperterian Vibe on Eternal but the album was good enough for what it is... and that is where my opinion stayed for many many years.

I recently revisited the album and I have to say I was a bit mistaken on several aspects of the album. First off, the song Together is just as strong if not stronger than anything off Passage. Easily one of their best tracks.

Secondly, the album's leaning into the electronic elements is a huge strength. The album feels slightly less human in the production and more towards the synthetic side of things. Normally I would consider this a detractor to the sound, but the songs themselves lean into this.

The riffs are a bit more mechanical, yet still full of emotion and power. The drums in particular are slower paced but highly calculated and deliberate in their execution. The vocals... well Vorph tries.

The album does fail pretty spectacularly towards the end though. Both Being and Radiant Star... are not good songs. They are terrible. It's a shame the album goes out on such a low note, because overall this is another excellent step in the evolution that was Samael.

Entry 433 - Dimmu Borgir - Spiritual Black Dimentions

 

I've been wanting to revisit mid period Dimmu for a long time and tonight I finally said lets do it. I have fond memories of Spiritual Black Distentions from my younger years and wanted to see if the album held up as well as I hope it will.

Spiritual Black Dimentions was Dimmu Borgir's second album switching form Norwegian to English. The music also began to shift with the change in language as well. The first two albums have this slower more majestic feel to them with decent but not great production. Spiritual Black Distentions in particular feels highly polished and incredibly professional in its presentation and production.

All of that means nothing if the music doesn't hold up, and to start out the album is exceptionally strong. Reptile starts off aggressively with a great mix of keyboard melodies intertwining with guitar melodies, clean vocals intertwining between the more typical black vocals. The track is immediate and catches my attention definitely. One of the better tracks on the record.

Dimmu continue this formula with various rates of success throughout the rest of the album. There are moments scattered throughout the songs that are excellent. The graceful piano passage of United in Unhallowed Grace is one section that continuously will make me stop what I'm doing and nod in approval.

That said the album starts to drag a bit towards the middle, some of the songs are lacking that "it" factor that makes a song good. The Blazing Monoliths of Defiance while speedy really lacks a strong riff to carry it forward. Most of the Insight and the Catharsis drags on for far too long aimlessly. Arcane Lifeforce Mystiria is a poor choose for a closer and would be better left off the album.

Ironically the ending of The Insight and the Catharsis may be the high point of the album for me. Vortex's clean vocals come soaring in over a beautiful piano led atmospheric section. Breathtaking.

Dimmu's fourth album is not as good as I remember it. There are highlights, but also too many forgettable tracks. Hopefully Enthrone Darkness Triumphant is as good as I remember it.

Entry 432 - Teitanblood - Death

 

I've owned this album for quite a few years, listened once and then shelved it. I don't have any memories of it positive or negative. Like so many other things I've discovered over the course of writing on this blog this ended up being a mistake. There has been a killer release sitting right under my nose for years, and I've ignored it.

Over the past two days I've done nothing but listen to this beast of an album. The band has been showing me how noisy, disgusting, gangrene infested death metal is supposed to be made. Through seven songs and well over an hour playing time this duo from Spain really knows what the fuck they are doing.

Death is a nasty album. The production is murky, distorted, and difficult to pull individual instruments out of. This accomplishes two things: it makes the wall of sound/noise all the more an assault on all the senses at once, and it forces me to listen very closely if I want to hear anything other than the mass of distortion coming at me.

As expected with an album this long, the songs are long and go through several progressions. Individual riffs are not really the main focus of the band, it's more of one episode of the song to the next. More often than not I can't even tell what the the guitars are doing, it's just a complete mess of a riff - and the production hides the notes even more.

That said the chaos also is what draws me in more with the album, when I can't tell what is going on I want to listen closer. I want to dissect what is going on with the songs and try to get some kind of sense of what is happening. It doesn't always work, but the music keeps me curious enough that I keep coming back.

While I still prefer Seven Chalices to Death, their second album has revealed itself to be a monstrous mass of pulsing death. I think I'm going to have to revisit the Baneful Choir as well soon, hopefully that will have a similar effect.

#blackvinylgang

Entry 431 - Wormed - Planisphaerium

 Captain, our ship is off course.

What, how? What could bring us off course, our calculations were checked five times!

Sir there is an unexpected black hole that was previously undocumented that is drawing us off course.

Ensin bring me the Planispharium, there must be a mistake. The calculations are never wrong.

Sir, it's too late... we are about to go beyond the event horizon... we are entering a worm hole... we are being wormed!

Don't be ridiculous, nothing is that dense, nothing can possibly draw us into a black hole at these speeds. Unless... god almighty help us...


All puns aside, this is where it all started with Wormed, the debut album.... and man is it a monster. The black hole analogy is apt, this is about as dense and heavy as a black hole. The riffs are chunky as all fuck, the vocals are about as low and gutteral as you can get and still be called vocals... the rhythm section is immense and matches the riffs perfectly. This album works on an atomic level, and is a testament to how brutal the cold of space can be.

Wormed play brutal death metal, pure and simple. There is nothing else on earth that this could possibly be except that genre. The music is cold and calculated and completely uncompromising. The entire album is done in just under half an hour, and quite honestly this is a mercy to the listener. This is the kind of music you put on for short bursts to satiate a deep need to get anger or violence out in musical form.

Planisphaerium is a work by Ptolemy regarding the relation of stars to one another and Earth. As an album it consists of some of the finest brutal death metal to come out in the last twenty years. I would easily put this or many of Wormed's other releases against any of the other classics in the genre. It's not something I will listen to often, but when that need strikes there is almost no band better at filling the need than this.

Entry 430 - Protector 101 - Killbots

What a strange thing the mind is. You can listen to something one time and pass it off as utter junk and move on. Later in life you can revisit that same work and find it to be utterly fascinating.

In the coninuing series of "this used to be too noisy" we have the current exhibit: Protector 101. Killbots is a synthwave album, but it is unlike anything I have ever heard before within the genre. As alluded to previously much of the album is heavily influenced by noise and industrial.

The change is immediatly obvious, E.A.T.R. the first track is a heavy beast of a track. The main pulse driving the song forward is full of distortion and all sorts of muck and mire to dirty it up. As the song progresses so does the chaotic undertones, growing more and more feverish towards the climax of the song before everything dies out at the end.

It's not just that the song is noisy or that it takes influence from early industrial acts from the 80's... it marries this with the synth work that P101 is known for, and the marriage works exceptionally well here. The melody is there but muted, its drowned out by the beat and chaos going on underneath. You have to search for it, weed it out from the interferance. It's a visceral experiance trying to do this, and also exchillerating.

That's not to say that all the tracks are in this new harsher style. Artificial Consent is a pure synthwave track that offers a break from the heavily beat driven tracks of Figures and Hardware. Other breaks are found throughout the album, making this an exceptionally well paced record.

P101 hasn't released anything since Killbots in 2019 (to my knowledge) and that's a shame. Experimentation like this within the synthwave scene is pretty lacking, seeing something this raw and primitive get released is something I would love to see more of.

Entry 429 - Portal - Hagbulbia

 

My first venture into the chaos known as Hagbulbia was met with abject failure. My musical palette was not quite developed enough (or devolved enough, depending on how you look at it) to handle just how extreme the music - if you can even call it that - was.

Hagbulbia is the next step in Portal's evolution. In their never ending quest to make their music ever more inhuman they have ventured beyond the confines of metal and ventured directly into the maelstrom of noise. For many bands this would be a misstep, however for Portal this seems like just another album in their ever growing cacophony of insanity.

Hagbulbia on first listen, sounds like random static with The Curator yelling into the void at opportune moments. It is indeed a collection of static instead of riffs, a collection of pulses instead of drums, and noise instead of anything resembling music. For my first few listens I could not get past these huge barriers of entry and I shelved the album, it was simply too much.

I've tried to get back into the album for at least a dozen listens since... and failed. There is something worth listening to, but I  couldn't break through...

I don't know if it's all the noise I've been consuming lately, or if it clicked but there is something under the noise that is worth my time. It's not simply static and pain... well... it actually is but there are reasons for it. The torture that the music gives expresses a level of emotion and chaos that simply is not possible within the confines of the metal genre.

Under the static there are riffs, you have to really dig for them but they are there... or maybe its my mind playing tricks on me. Under the noise there are traces of structure hidden in the mire, they are extremely hard to find... but once my mind became acclimated to all the chaos the smaller details become more evident.

Hagulbia resembles when I first discovered extreme metal, it was too much for me at first but I found myself having this morbid curiosity about it. I'm finding that again with a new genre, one that is pushing me further than I ever could have thought before.

Entry 428 - Phlegein - Devotion

 

Phlegein are truly a rare breed. They play mid paced black metal with no frills, no gimmicks and no compromises. This is about as basic as you can get for black metal, and it's glorious.

Normally when black metal is this stripped down and basic I tend to not like it. I have the classics in the genre exactly for that reason. Somehow though, Devotion has replicated that same old school feel while still creating music compelling enough for me to keep it in my collection. That says a lot.

The riffs on Devotion are the main focus. They are simple, repeat quite a bit, and there is only a handful per song. Sometimes they are augmented by keyboards to add to the atmosphere, but more often than not this is a riff dominated album.

The production is quite a bit better than your average black metal release of this type. While normally this would be a detractor for me, the clarity works well for the sound that Phlegein have going here. It's not crystal clear and sparkly like a lot of big name production would have. It's just clear enough to make out all the instruments (including the bass). This allows me to focus on different instruments as the riffs swirl around repeating themselves for minutes on end.

Devotion came out a few years ago, but it sounds like it came out around 1998... right after the second wave really got going. They have a great sound on this record, and while I haven't heard anything else from them I am tempted to check out their other full lengths at some point.

Entry 427 - Miles Davis - A Tribute to Jack Johnson

I'll be the frist to admit that I'm not an expert on jazz by any means, even less so no jazz fusion. I just know what I like and what I don't, and Miles Davis' record A Tribute to Jack Johnson is absolutely something I like.

Consisting of two largely improvised compositions, A Tribute to Jack Johnson uses both traditional jazz instrumentation as one may expect, but also rock instrumentation as well. The main driver of the music is actually the guitar and not Miles' trumpet. When I first heard this album that part in itself was a bit of a shock... in fact there are sections where there is simply no trumpet playing for several minutes at a time.

A hinted before this is a jazz fusion album. It's jazz played in the style of rock and roll, or its rock and roll played in the style of jazz... whatever you prefer. I just know it's damn good.

Each side is seamless, going through seemingly countless changes in styles, riffs and instrumental leads. I particularly like the longer sections where the improvisations take place. On the second side there is a 7-8 minute period where the bass, guitar and drums all repeat the same riff and Miles is allowed to shine. In the same section a clarinet is used (played by Bennie Maupin) and it's a wonderful contrast between the two as they duel it out.

Sometimes I wish that I had chosen jazz as my main genre of music to get into. I was speaking with someone a few days ago where they went into the nuance of how every player in a good jazz band will know what is coming next. They don't have any music in front of them but they know the modes and as such can build off of each other, create something in nearly complete freedom.

This something from nothing mentality is something I have not seen done in other genres as well as it is in jazz. The fact that you can have an album like Jack Johnson created on as little structure as possible is just incredible.

Entry 426 - Parashi - Pilot's Salt

 I've been dreading this moment in my musical evolution. As conventional music gets more and more samey, unconventional music becomes more appealing. This cycle continues until the results are barely musical anymore... simply a collection of sounds... noise...

On Pilot's Salt, Parashi creates textured and multi layered soundscapes that can only be called noise. There is nothing musical, the is no melody, no modes, no meter, not really even any instruments... nothing. It's just sounds that are manipulated into various levels of feedback and distortion resulting in much more of an experience than a lasting memory of an album.

If you asked me what was on this album I could not tell you in musical terms. There are no riffs, no melodies, or anything concrete to point at to say "wow that really stood out!" No... Parashi has completely eschewed anything of the sort. In its place are... things...

Let's look at the final track for a moment, Concrete on the Rim of the Coffee Cup. For the first five minutes or so a single tone reverberates harshly over various soundscapes. This tone fades in and out and feed backs upon itself to the point where it hurts to listen to sometimes. Below it is a low rumble that is akin to lava boiling. Eventually the tone gives away to an oscillating tone that fades in and out and eventually dies in a pile of static.

Is this enjoyable? Probably not. Is this the kind of "music" that is appealing to me right at this moment. Hell yes it is.

Music is so much more than just a melody or a riff. At it's core it's an experience... a memory... a feeling. Parashi has seen this and distilled music down to its most basic form... to it's most pure essence: communication of raw emotion.

Entry 425 - Murcof - Martes/Utopia

 

What happens when you take a classical composer with a taste for minimalism and add in electronics and glitch elements.... you get Murcof on this album.

I only came across Murfof a few months ago, and he's been recording for over twenty years at this point. I really feel like I've been missing out on a lot of excellent music. Everything I have heard from him has been quite different, but consistently excellent.

Martes and Utopia are the first and second full length releases under the Murcof banner. The Vinyl release is a bit curious here as well, the track order has been vastly shuffled form the original releases and the remixes first found on Utopia have been excluded.

Martes is a collection of songs that originate in the classical music genre. There is tasteful sampling of minimalist instrumentals played with violins, pianos, and other instruments that have been around for many many years contorted to the will of Murcof. The resultant melodies and textures are the augmented by heavy use of glitching and some rather unique percussion.

The percussion in particular is quite interesting to me. Instead of using a standard kick/snare/symbol setup, Murcof has created rhythm using part of the glitch soundscape. What would pass as a pulse for the music often cuts through the air like a knife instead of laying a deep foundation through a low pulse. It borders on noise levels of fuckery, but I find it quite enthralling and is one of my main draws to the album.

Utopia on the other hand decreases the beats and focuses more on the glitch and classical elements. I'm not sure glitch is even the right word anymore, the tones used are so incredibly ear piercing that it feels more like noise. The second album is decidedly less musical and focuses more on pure emotion through dark ambience and minimalism alongside the noise.

The way that the album is split up actually works quite well for me. If I didn't know any better I would think that this is just one long album as everything works together despite the large shift in style with Utopia.

Entry 424 - Ethereal Shroud - They Became the Falling Ash

 

Three songs. One hour.

Any album that has songs of that length is really going to have to justify the time spent with each song. In my short time listening to They Became the Falling Ash, this does indeed seem to be the case.

Ethereal Shroud plays atmospheric black metal at a middling pace. While there are guitars present, they hardly feel like the main focus. They will add a melody throughout the song and be one of the focal points, but there is a lot going on in these songs... the guitars are just a singular part of the whole.

The same can be said about any one part of Ethereal Shrouds music. The effects, the vocals, drums, keyboards... they are all part of the greater whole. Each serves a purpose, to enrich the entirety of the music. It does this by a delicate balancing act of all the ingredients. The vocals for instance are mixed back of both the guitars and keyboards and have a vast amount of reverb on them. This makes them sound like they are being chanted from a great distance away or from another realm.

The keyboards similarly are seemingly back in the mix. They are there to add atmosphere, and when you pay attention they are playing wonderful chords and melodies. The same thing can be said about the guitars. They are mixed distantly, though a little less so than the rest of the instruments... everything though feels like it is coming from a far away land, not entirely of this plane of existence.

That's the beauty of this album. Everything is presented in such a way that no one element (except the guitars at points) call too much attention to themselves. The music washes over me and I let it whisk me away 20 minutes at a time. The fact that I've missed this album for so many years is a huge shame... but that has been rectified now.

(Quick side note, side B of the album states that the song is 10 minutes long. This is not the case, it incorporates the outro from the first song and the intro to the last song making the side of the LP >18 minutes long. This threw me for a huge loop at first until I figured this out)

Entry 423 - Cradle of Filth - Cruelty and the Beast

 

Where do I even start with an album like this? This is one of those albums that everyone of my friends was talking about when it first dropped in the late 90's. Cradle was one of the most important bands in getting people into extreme metal back then, and maybe still are. Their combination of black metal, gothic metal, and excellent sense of melody is a recipe to get extreme music as accessible as it can be.

I originally thought that this was a complete re-recording of Cruelty... fortunately I was wrong. This is a remix of the original album. It preserves the performances and the spirit of the original recordings. That is hugely important to me, as a rerecording of these classic riffs, drums and vocals would fall short no matter how spirited they were.

The main improvement here is the drums... my god were the click clacks of the base drum on the original release were so annoying. I got used to them eventually but I will never know what the band was thinking using those kind of triggers. Barker's performance is brilliant as one would expect, and now the drum sound matches the talent.

In terms of the rest of the music it's hard to say anything about this that hasn't already been said. The riffs are a brilliant combination of Iron Maiden harmonies, gothic influenced keyboards, and black metal. The band knows how to combine all of these individual components to create music that is incredibly catchy, yet harsh enough to be called extreme.

The way the guitars, keyboards, and vocals interlace with each other is so expertly done and crafted that it's hard for me to think of a better example than early Cradle. The one sticking point for so many people all those years ago was Dani's crazy vocals. They were so harsh and screechy that they turned people off. Now, 20+ years later they have become the central part of the band's sound.

Cradle is a band that has had ups and downs throughout their lengthy career at this point. With Cruelty though... this was one of the highest points of their career.

Entry 422 - Soilwork - The Chainheart Machiene

 

What a day to be alive. I've been looking for this album for y e a r s. I almost paid 100 Euro's for it a few years ago but wanted to wait for a repress. The repress is finally here and with it my Soilwork collection is complete.

This is peak Soilwork... this is peak melodic death metal. There are maybe 2-3 albums that I enjoy more in the genre than this one... and even then its a toss up. It simply does not get any better than this for melodeath.

What makes the album so special? Primarily the melodies and the intensity which they are played... and the riffs... my gawd the riffs are glorious. There isn't a single bad riff on here, and some of them are downright n a s t y.

Lets look at the third track Millionflame for an example of everything that is right with the album. The thing starts out with melodies that pay homage to an Iron Maiden dual guitar attack after changing into this thick ass riff that leads into the first riff. It sounds like it could be an awkward transition, but the band pull it off without a hitch. The song continues to twist and turn through riffs and speeds until we finally get to the solo section. Here the keyboards fill out an already thick wall of sound and let the guitars shine in ways that only this album can. Nearly perfection.

That is one of nine tracks, the other eight are just as good! The title track has an insane blasting chorus, Possessing the Angels rips through the listener with both its speed and melodies, the transition going into Spirits of the Future Sun is epic as fuck (tragically this has been chosen as the place to flip the record, I will never understand that). The list just keeps going on.

Soilwork haven't gotten close to the intensity or the consistency that this release had with any of this other albums. They have gotten close on a song or two (Spectrum of Eternity anyone?), but this THE shining example of what the band can do.

421 - Choir - Songs for a Tarnished World

 

The first time I really paid attention to this album I was under quite a bit of influence of alcohol. By the end of the album I had completely sobered up... I was trying to wrap my head around the sound that was coming out of my speakers.

Chior has created something quite wonderful with this album. The music borders on the razor thin line between noise, chaos, and convention. First and foremost, above all else, is the atmosphere. It is paramount over all things, and is the driving force of the entire album.

While all of the songs contain some level of musicality, the album flourishes when it is just barely controlled. More often than not there is great restraint shown on the composers part. The noise and the chaos are ever-present, but never do they go completely out of control and dominate all of the sounds on the album. There is always some sort of structure or containment keeping things in check... just barely.

The music itself is based in blackened/death metal played at doom speeds. That's not a true representation of what is going on within Songs for a Tarnished World though. The guitars will often play notes that can only be called dissonant... and there are layers upon layers of them. They build on each other and create that all suffocating atmosphere that never lets up.

Despite all the chaos, all the oppression, all the insanity... there are a few points where the album shows real melodies. They are few and far between but they stick out like a ray of light coming through the fiercest of storms. They act as small moments to ground the listener, which acts as a real strength for music like this.

The title is a bit disingenuous. These are not truly songs... more like experiences that the listener is to survive rather than sit back and take in. Whatever it is, the end result is fantastic.

Entry 420 - Shovel Knight Treasure Trove - Part 3 - Specter of Torment

 

It's been a while since I last listened to anything in this boxed set. It's been a while since I listened to any VGM at all. There are times when I just don't listen to a genre at all for a while and when I come back everything sounds so much fresher than before. Specter of Torment is a prime example of how good things sound after a proper break.

This album feels very much like the proper successor to the base game of Shovel Knight. So many of the melodies and themes are carried over to this release in remixed ways. The entire soundtrack is once again chip tunes and contains the same high energy of the base game. In short it's banger after banger.

I normally am a pretty hard sell when it comes to chip tunes. They really are not my thing most of the time, but like all good things there are exceptions... and the Shovel Knight series is one shining example of that. There are a few things that work in this series favor.

For one the music is active and engaging, it has nuance and intricacies that simply are not present in a lot of other chip tunes. The synthesizers are also not compressed at all, so we as the listener get the fully glory of the music as it was originally composed... not as heard through a hyper compressed version of an NES or Master System sound chip.

On top of all this the music transfers well into the soundtrack formula. So much of VGM simply does not flow well from track to track and it feels more like a collection of music rather than an actual album. This is avoided completely in the Shovel Knight games, these songs f l o w from one to another and it feels like an album... a journey.

This is one of the first times I've really sat down with the music from Specter of Torment. After spinning the record a few times I really should have done this sooner.

Entry 419 - Glacis - The World is a Little Lonlier Without You

 

I wake up in a place I do not recall. Everything feels so familiar but I have never been here before. A singular path lay ahead of me, it is shrouded in darkness and obscured by many obstacles. It is the only way that I can go.

As I traverse down this path the air gets heavier and it's harder to move. Something drives me forward though, maybe it's the thought of you. Whoever you are.

A piano plays in the distance, obscured by noise and regrets. I can't pinpoint its location but it seems like it is calling to me. Someone or something is becoming me towards it, welcoming me into this deep darkness with it.

The further I traverse the more obscured my vision becomes. The only thing driving me forward is this distant music. It is now all encompassing, it is everything to me.


As dramatic as all that sounds that is exactly my experience listening to The World is a Little Lonelier Without You. It's essentially an ambient driven piano concerto. The piano drives the music but it is not the only element. The ambient moments intertwine with the piano and create an atmosphere so complete that it feels like something is missing when the music stops.

Glacis has created an incredible bit of neo-classical ambient music with The World is a Little Lonelier Without You. I feel very fortunate that I have added this art to my collection.

Entry 418 - Scar Symmetry - Holographic Universe

 

We all have guilty pleasures, and Scar Symmetry was one of mine for the longest time. The first three albums in particular were my go to for pop influenced melodeath.

What makes it sound so much like pop sometimes? Is it the melodies? Yes, to some extent but they are very much in line with what you would expect from the genre as a whole. Is it the song structure? Again yes to some extent. For the vast majority of the album its verse/chorus/solo/verse/chorus or some variation thereof. But the main driving force here is the vocals.

Christian's clean vocals sound so stupidly squeaky clean that they could easily fit into a boy band or pop-punk band without blinking an eye. It's a bit much to get used to at first but man when they clicked for me they were an indispensable part of the music... and then there are his growls.

This is one of the few singers that makes me question if it's the same person. His cleans are what they are, but his growls border from nasty to downright filthy when he does his gutterals. These are not melodeath vocals... sometimes they border on brutal death metal/slam. It's so rare to have vocals like this in melodeath, and it's the single element that pushes them well above most of the competition.

Holographic Universe itself is a competent enough album. I find that I enjoy the last third of the album much more than the first two thirds. Starting with Prism and Gate the song writing takes a huge step up and the band becomes a bit less focused on melody and more on melodic brutality. Mix in a bit of progressive metal on the title track and you have a winner.

After Holographic Universe Christian would leave the band, and in doing so it killed my interest in following them further. That said Holographic Universe is still one of the album's I'll come back to over the years when I need some competent melodeath.

Entry 417 - Triptikon - Eparistera Daimones

 The words monolithic and massive are often applied to metal albums that are exceptionally heavy. There are times though where those words just don't seem like quite enough to describe how incredibly crushing an album is... Exhibit A for such an album is Tryptikon's debut album.

Calling this a debut is a bit disingenuous. This is essentially the second birth of Celtic Frost and the style that was conjured on Monothiest. While the two albums are quite similar in scope there are some notable differences, and Eparistera Daimones is more than capable of standing on its own.

Tryptikon is equal parts doom metal, noise, feedback, black metal, and a putrid pile of muck. The guitar tone that they managed to produce on this album is one of the most distinctive I've heard in many years. It's instantly recognizable by its harrowing low drone... and god damn is it effective.

The opener is one of my favorites off the album. It goes through several movements, each demonstrating a different side of the band. Starting with a few strummed chords on a semi distorted guitar it slowly builds into a powerful riff driven by a quick drum beat. Tom's vocals soon join in and they are filled with more venom than pretty much any other point in his career. From here it weaves in and out of crushing dissonance, feedback driven chants, layered vocals, and a lament to the lies of mankind.... its incredible.

The band largely stays in this feedback driven doom for most of the album ranging from slow to nearly thrash speeds in tempo. Towards the end of the album though the band begins to experiment a bit. Both Myopic Empire and My Pain show the band branching out in different directions. Myopic Empire features a piano throughout its playtime and My Pain hearkens back to the ambient experimentation of early Celtic Frost complete with female vocals.

When I heard that Tom had left Celtic Frost I was worried about the future of the band. Tryptikon has proven to be more than a suitable stand in for the legendary Swiss band... and Eparistera Daimones carries that legacy forward with abandon.

Entry 416 - Keep of Kalessin - Epistemology

 

I had pretty much lost all interest in this band after Reptilian. The Divine Land and Reptilian Majesty were both excellent songs but the other six songs were just not up to the standards that had been set by Armada.

A few years down the road I heard that Thebon left the band. While his vocals were sometimes good, they were often in a kind of hardcore shout that I felt clashed with the music. Obsidian Claw taking over the vocal duties was also another wrinkle I didn't know how it would end up. It was enough to get me to check out the new album Epistemology when it dropped.

Whatever I was expecting, it was not this. After a brief 1 minute intro The Spiritual Relief comes blasting in. Whatever energy was lost from the previous album was instantly regained on this track alone. Then the second surprise came in: clean vocals.

The Spiritual Relief is quite simply put one of the best songs that Keep of Kalessin have ever written. Its ten minutes long, has an urgency about it (mostly through Vyl's amazing performance on drums) that the band rarely has since the early days. The melodies are infectious, and the vocals... oh wow the vocals. This is a fully fledged high production black metal song with excellent clean vocals. They soar when they need to, get gritty when they need to, they fit the music perfectly.

Prior to Epistemology Keep of Kalessin had been losing urgency with every album since Armada. There were moments where the epic riffing would come in, but it was less and less as time went on. Epistemology brought that back. The album is filled with soaring melodies and large than life moments that make me stop what I'm doing and go "wow."

Every song on Epistemology has at least a moment where I feel the band is firing on all cylinders. Not every song is fantastic front to back, but there is more than enough here to definitively say: welcome back boys.

Entry 415 - Altars - Ascetic Reflection

 

It's always fun when you are trying to get into a new band. Going into this album I knew nothing about Altars except that they were from Australia and the hype sticker said for fans of Portal. Both of those are huge check marks for me, so into the collection it went.

As one might expect, Altars plays a highly dissonant and disjointed style of death metal. The riffs range from notes that don't belong together making ear piercing noises, to chugging riffs that sound like they were dug out of a a mire swirling with inhumanly grotesque creatures. All positives in my estimation.

The band's songs are a bit of an anomaly for me. I find that I tend to like the band when they are composing longer songs. Some of the shorter songs don't have idea's that are fully fleshed out and feel slightly incomplete to me. Especially the title track and Anhedonia. I'm not sure what is going on with these two tracks but they almost feel like filler tracks to me. They don't grab my attention and honestly unless I'm listening to them I could not remember a single riff.

To balance that out though Black Light Upon Us, Opening the Passage and Inauspicious Prayer are all incredibly well written songs. They have a sense of dynamics that is not present in other parts of the album. These slower, quieter parts I really think are integral to music like this, it helps create enough diversity in the album so that the more chaotic parts have more impact. If everything is chaotic all the time there is no point for the mind to rest if I'm trying to listen actively. These moments of respite are quite needed.

I still don't think I've fully digested this album at the point of this writing. Dissonant music does one of two things with me: it clicks instantly or it takes 10-20 listens for me to form a true opinion on it. I can firmly say that Altars is in the latter category. That said, I do keep coming back to this instead of discarding it...

Entry 414 - Equal Stones - Hands of a Murderer

 

It's so hard to do droning ambient well. So often the genre gets caught up in itself and it forgets to have any sort of interesting thing going on. Sometimes this leads to singular tones going on for dozens of minutes with little to no progression... that may be some people's thing, it is not mine. Equal stones almost falls into that trap, but somehow manages to create an album that avoids it entirely.

Hands of a Murderer sounds like it should be a violent album, filled with dark atmospheres and chilling moments. It is the opposite. This is a warm, synth pad driven piece of droning ambient. The individual tracks all have a similar structure to them. They each have a theme that repeats slowly throughout the course of the track, yet by the end of the track it sounds quite different than it did at the start.

How did that happen? I really am not sure, but when listening to these tracks over the course of the last few days the same thing happens. The track begins in one fashion and ends up in a very different place. Sometimes its easy to spot the shift, like on My Reflection is Empty. Most of the composition is a droning, melody-less ambient fog... however towards the end a piano comes in and drives the song to one of the most melodic sections in the entire album.

Other tracks like I Will Always Be There start with a repeating melody that slowly morphs over the 9 minute play time. By the end of the composition the atmosphere has changed from that of a clear day reflecting the sunlight in water to that of a dense fog that obscures anything that would lie within it. I'm not sure what type of transition I like more, but I do like the variety shown within the album.

Equal Stones is now two for two in interesting albums. I'm not sure which one I like more, and I still don't know if I like or dislike either of them. What I do know is that I find this style fascinating and it keeps me coming back for repeated listens. In my experience this is never a bad thing.

Entry 413 - Katatonia - Discouraged Ones

 

How long has it been since I heard this album? It has to be at least ten years... maybe more.

I remember when Discouraged Ones first released and I was incredibly disappointed with it. I did not like the change in direction for the band, and I thought the whole album was a mess. The songs all sounded the same to me and Jonas' voice just sounded lost and confused. I gave up on the album and completely ignored it for years. That was a mistake.

I revisited this album earlier this month and while my recollections of the songs were rather accurate my enjoyment of the album is much higher than it ever was in the past. Instead of a bored and tired band I hear a band that is experimenting. I hear way more Brave Murder Day in this album than I ever did in the past - listen to the opening riff to Retention and tell me that doesn't sound lifted directly off the previous album.

Jonas' voice, while it is fragile and raw it is far more dynamic than it ever was when he was growling. He does sound like he mumbling part of the lyrics, but I can get over that... it's a heartfelt performance and it lays the foundation for everything the band has done since.

The riffs themselves repeat much like the previous album did, but they are intermixed with clean guitar sections for most of the verses. Songs like Deadhouse are charged with emotion and catchy riffs that work their way into my mind and never leave. Is it a bit rough around the edges? You bet, but really that doesn't matter. This is an emotionally charged performance and the band quickly overcomes any instrumentational shortcomings with this energy. I mean if I can listen to black metal with shit production and sloppy performances why on earth would it bother me here when the music is as good as it is?

Discouraged Ones is a transition album. Katatonia were trying to find their sound, and while it took them a couple of albums to really define it, they found their heart with Discouraged Ones.

Entry 412 - Elijah Nang - Gaijin III: Rise of Jiro

 

A couple of weeks ago I saw that Mr. Nang had a few test presses up of the latest entry into his Gaijin series. I missed the Qrates order for the record so it was a no brainier to pick up a test press.

My relationship with lofi hip hop is pretty spotty. So much of the genre sounds the same that it's hard for me to justify adding any more into my collection. That said the Samurai Beatsmith continues to deliver interesting album after interesting album within the genre.

On Gaijin III, Mr. Nang explores a wide array of influences. The typical beat driven lofi songs are of course present, as are the incredibly well done east Asian influences that I've enjoyed so much from previous entries into the Gaijin series. The album also incorporates a heavy dose of jazz (complete with trumpet solos), some lounge music, and even some ambient and field recording thrown in for good measure. Hell, we even have some spoken word with the intro and a few of the interludes. There is so. much. here.

It's not just that the songs are consistently good throughout the album, it's how the pacing is handled. No two songs sound the same, and even though some may sound similar they are spaced out in such a way that the album never overstays its welcome. Each of the four sides plays like a self contained EP, and each has warranted multiple listens on the turntable today. I simply cannot get enough of this album.

The real beauty of the album though is on Side D. The final song, A Collision Course Between Two Kins, is one of the best closing songs I've heard in some time. It drops the beats in favor of a more melody and atmospheric approach. It brings a wonderful contrast to a majority of the album and feels like an incredibly fitting conclusion to an epic 80 minute journey.

Much like the other two Gaijin albums, Rise of Jiro will have a permanent place in my collection. Whenever I want to listen to lofi Elijah Nang is one of the first artists that comes to mind. There is no one else close to his level within this musical sphere.

Entry 411 - Slayer - Live: Decade of Agression

 

SLAYER!!!!!

Entry 410 - Celtic Frost - Morbid Tales

 

I've been thinking about this for the last few days and I don't know if I can think of a better EP than Morbid Tales. This is one of the most important releases in all of extreme metal... scratch that, this is one of the most important releases in metal. These thirty minutes helped define what would eventually become extreme metal.

On Morbid Tales, Celtic Frost play a rather unique style. The majority of the tracks are riff driven, with almost no melody - all rhythm approach to the songs. Topped off with Tom's gruff grunts this easily fits into the proto-death/first wave of black metal field.

The two first songs on both sides define what the band is all about. On side A you have Into the Crypt of Rays.... a scorcher of a track that has an odd staccato type rhythm to it. While the pauses in the riffs may seem a bit odd at first, after a listen or two they become an integral part of the sound, easily one of their best works.

Side B begins with Procession (Of the Wicked). This track is the polar opposite of Into the Crypt of Rays. It is slow, deliberate, and plodding. The chaotic and stop/start style of the opening track is completely gone here, everything feels like it's done with absolute intention.

While both tracks sound quite different from each other, they are both instantly recognizable as Celtic Frost due to the guitar tone and vocals. These are the glue that hold everything together.

There is also a third side to the band, that being the ambient/experimental side. The introduction (Human) is a voice clip repeating over and over until Into the Crypt of Rays explodes in. The main attraction to this style though is Dance Macabre. This is nothing short of a noise/dark ambient piece, consisting of random noises and notes from a violin as well as other atmospheric elements. It may very well be my favorite track on the album because it's so strange, yet fits so well.

Morbid Tales is only 30 minutes long, but in those 30 minutes this young band would create something that many would go on to try and emulate... but no one (not even themselves) would ever truly reach this level again.

Entry 409 - Wolvserpent - Pergeae Antahkarana

 

This past week I've been craving deep, complex atmospheres. Albums that go beyond the typical "evil" tones that most metal brings. In my attempt to find it in my collection I went back to a couple of records that I haven't listened to in a while. Wolvserpent's second album was one of those attempts.

The album starts off with a three minute field recording introduction, and this is exactly what I've been looking for. It's introspective, it's bleak... it feels like contemplating a life full of regrets, and it's absolutely stunning.

Unfortunately this is just the intro to the album. The first of four lengthy songs comes in and quickly reminded me that this was a metal album. The riffs are disgusting, the vocals are tortured, and the atmosphere is crushing... all good things on their own but it's not really what I was looking for at this particular moment.

Wolvserpent play a slow brooding blackened doom with a hugely oppressive atmosphere. There is quite a bit of droning within the riffs as well, they are allowed to exist for a while before the next one comes in.. not all the time, but there are lengthy sections where the band lets things devolve into feedback before strumming again, it helps with the noise and filth of the release.

Where the band starts to separate themselves from other blackened doom bands is what they do when there is not metal. For lengthy periods of the songs the metal stops and a violin plays over near silence. This... this is the reason I wanted to find this album and listen to it again. These sections are so emotionally charged... full of desolation and loneliness... its exactly what I was looking for.

So half of what I was trying to find is here... maybe a third over the course of the full album. There will be a day where I want blackened doom and these guys will fit the bill. There are other times where I need that incredibly bleak and complex atmosphere and these guys may be on that playlist as well.

Entry 408 - Morbid Angel - Gateways to Annihilation

 

I don't know if there is a more iconic death metal band than Morbid Angel. They probably didn't invent the genre, but it's arguable that Altars of Madness perfected it. Throughout their career they have had many different takes on genre... my favorite of those is Gateways of Annihilation.

Gateways knows that it is a brutal album, and knows it has nothing to prove. This attitude is felt strongly in the songwriting. These songs are diverse, exceedingly well written, and sound like little to no other death metal release I've heard.

Let's examine the true first song of the album - Summoning Redemption. This is the longest song on the album by several minutes and features a main riff that is slow and brooding by death metal standards. There isn't a single blast beat in the song, with Pete content to have a mid paced bass drum beat accented by toms and snare hits seemingly whenever he feels like it. All this while Steve's voice bellows out his demands to god. It's an immense track and a hell of a start to the album.

Summoning Redemption in many ways sets the tone for the album. There aren't many blast beats, the riffs are monolithic, and the atmosphere is crushing.

When it comes down to it, its the riffs that keep me coming back to this album. Not only are they heavy as all get out, they are heavy with intent. The album has atmosphere... it's like a glacier slowly moving across the landscape and flattening everything in its path. It's incredibly rare to have a pure death metal album that demonstrates the ability to show this type of focus and maturity... even less so throughout an entire album. Gateways does.

Morbid Angel's discography is incredibly hit and miss with me... but when it hits - like it does here... watch out. Because this band has it in them to write some of the best death metal ever created.

Entry 407 - Anaal Nathrakh - Eschaton

 

When it comes to metal, there are various degrees of extremity and how to achieve it. There are various directions a band can take to achieve extremity. You can try to play faster than anyone else, have harsher vocals than other bands, write more intense riffs, be more noise focused... etc. One band takes all these things and does them all at once. That band is Anaal Nathrakh.

Ever since their debut record Anaal Nathrakh have continued to push out some of the noisiest, most visceral black metal ever put to record. Eschaton is their third record and was a major step up from the somewhat disappointing Domine Non Es Dignus. I found the vocals in particular to be rather lacking on the sophomore release, especially after the insanity that was The Codex Necro.

Eschaton sees a bit of a return to the debut's vocal style with a few new twists thrown in. Clean vocals are now part of the vocal palate. The harsh vocals are more contained and controlled, yet still maintain that incredibly primal unyielding quality to them. While this does take away from the chaos and overall veracity, the end result is still quite an enjoyable listen.

The music itself has taken on a more verse/chorus style throughout most of the album. The verses feature the harsh vocals while the chorus will go into a soaring clean vocal delivery. It's not on every song, but I love it when the band stops for a quarter note rest then explodes into a blast beat laden clean vocal onslaught for a chorus (see Between Piss and Shit We Are Born as a prime example). The band know exactly how to bring the listener back from the chaos of the verses into a more familiar tone with the chorus.

Is it a bit more commercial? Probably. Is it a bit easier to listen to than Codex Necro? Hell yes it is. In the end though it's another wrinkle into the band that is Anaal Nathrakh, and a fine return to form from the second album.

Entry 406 - Belore - Artefacts

 

Folk black metal and me have a strained relationship. So many acts sound so incredibly similar, I tend to just go with my favorites and leave the rest of the genre to fend for itself. Every once in a while I'll take a risk on a new band, and a few years ago Belore was one of those bands.

On the debut Belore was a bit unpolished. Some of the songs didn't feel complete, or were lacking a certain something (a melody, a drumbeat, a climax etc.) that held the songs back just slightly. It was a decent enough album but it never did anything to establish itself above average.

A year later Artefacts was released and I didn't really give it a shot until a few weeks ago. While Belore still is not in the elite of the genre, Artefacts is a step up from the debut in nearly every way.

Over the course of six songs Belore tells six different stories. The songs range greatly from track to track. Artefacts of Power plays a hypnotic riff accompanied by high speed drumming and a flute playing a soulful melody over top throughout most of its run time. The following track The Fall of Endeor is unabashed Summoning worship... this is just one example of how much the project has expanded its sound.

The other major improvement is in the songwriting itself. The songs feel more cohesive than they ever did in the past, they have a definitive beginning, middle, and end... they know where they want to go and never meander too much on any one riff or section. Along side the better song structure, the melodies are just outright better. It doesn't matter if its the guitar, keyboards, or vocals directing... they are consistently well done and a few of them are downright excellent (see the keyboard in Moonstone for one example).

It's huge changes, and a very welcome ones. With these changes Belore certainly has me curious about where Aleevok will take their project next. Whatever it is I will be checking out much closer to release than I did with Artefacts.

Entry 405 - Cerebral Rot - Excretion of Mortality

 

File this one under another album I spun once when I got it and then let it sit for almost a year. Well today that changes.

Cerebral Rot play unapologetically old school death metal. Some death metal benefits from a highly polished and clean production, that is not the case here. These guys have opted for a downright nasty presentation of their album and it's an integral part of their sound. Mind you this is not a lofi production like you would hear in black metal, there is still plenty of heaviness to be had... its just muddy, filthy... really any other adjective you can think of to say d i r t y.

So they got the production right, that's a secondary facet to the main component: the riffs. Well that mostly get those right as well. These guys will often tow the line between death and death/doom with many of the riffs focusing on a slower and more overtly heavier delivery than most modern death metal bands do. That's not to say that they are full on doom/death, I think some songs may be - but overall the pace is just a bit too energetic to go full death/doom.

The riffs themselves range from slow drawn out chords with generous uses of pinch harmonics to a blast beat laden chaotic mess... and really anything in between. The riffs (when they are not going through one of their epileptic seizure type moments) tend to have a hypnotic repetition to them. They are very content to pummel the listener with the same hammer time and time again... and that's really what most of these riffs are, a bludgeoning tool to beat the listener into submission.

Cerebral Rot haven't been on my radar for a long time, but I've been needing to really give this album a proper listen. After taking my time within over the course of a few spins here I'm glad I went back to it and didn't sell it.

Entry 404 - Wushimi Complex - The Anon Database

 

I had the pleasure of speaking to both Wuso and Yoshimi about this release some years ago. It was fun picking their brains about what I thought was a collaborative release between the two artists... turns out it's actually a split.

Yoshimi wrote half the songs on Wushimi and Wuso wrote the other four. It's too far removed for me to remember who did what track, but it had me floored when I first found this out. The entire release sounds so cohesive that I never once thought that it was a split release.

The music on Wushimi Complex is beat driven dreampunk. The atmosphere is so thick it feels like a dense layer of smog while walking through a city street at night. The pace is restrained throughout, keeping with dreampunk's rather laid back tempos most of the time. The real star here though is the melodies and how they revisit themselves throughout the release.

The melodies are played on highly saturated instruments that sound similar to a neon lamp lighting up. Every single instrument and all the sound design here is meant to sound man made; made by computers. No element of nature or acoustic instrumentation can be found within any of the songs within the album.

It's this sound design that helps maintain the focus of the album throughout. There are basically two types of song structures on the album. If I remember correctly it was Yoshimi's tracks that had that ABA formula for half the songs while Wuso's songs had a more linear format. Both work well within and neither get old throughout the rather short runtime.

To my knowledge this is the only collab that happened with Yoshimi and Wuso. Both of these artists are well known within the dreampunk genre, and this release shows why.

Entry 403 - Nekroi Theoi - Dead Gods

 

I picked this one up at the recommendation of the dudes over at @meteor_gem again. I knew nothing about this one going in, only that it was an interesting take on brutal death metal/slam. I'll tell you one thing, those dudes at that shop know what they are talking about.

Right off the bat the album does not sound anything like death metal in any form. It's more like a black metal intro, with brooding guitars, ominous spoken/sung vocals, and a slow build up that is more atmospheric than anything I've ever heard out of the aforementioned genres. I wondered if I had the right album at first... then the first real song starts.

The atmospheric elements are quickly dropped for a semi-technical opening riff that is undoubtedly brutal death metal. As the song continues it slows down... and it slams... it slams hard. What I initially thought were the gutturals ended up being the mid's of the album... during the first real slam... now those are the gutturals.

The album continues to surprise me though... after that first slam the atmospheric elements return. The distortion is gone from the guitars and a much deeper and richer clean guitar tone is adopted. Semi-dissonant chords are played as the song builds into it's second phase. This again is undeniably death metal but its much more complex and has more in common with dissonant bands than a brutal slam band.

To say that the surprises end there is not true... these songs are long... very long. Three of the nine tracks are over 10 minutes in length. While the slam is present in each of them its counter balanced by the more interesting dissonant and and atmospheric parts...

The slam is just a part of the overall sound that Nekroi Theoi bring to the table, I find myself drawn in by their constant twists and turns. I wasn't sure what I thought of this at first but after a few listens... damn this is pretty good. There are so many things going on here, but nothing sounds out of place...you never know where these guys will end up after they start a new song. In short this is a fascinating album.