Crypt Sermon - The Ruins of Fading Light

I'll look into the eyes of the Devil

I've said it a hundred times before, but Dark Descent is a very frustrating label for me because they've done a tremendous amount of good for the underground scene and brought many a great band to prominence, but an overwhelming majority of their roster carries a very similar sound (that I semi-pejoratively refer to as "DDRcore") that just bores me.  It's the bands like Lvcifyre, Desolate Shrine, and Father Befouled that get to me, the ones that exemplify the label's signature sound, which can be reductively explained as simply "chaotic death metal".  And hey, I like chaotic death metal, but it seems to be a depressingly common thing with these bands that they load each album down with a million riffs with only a handful of them actually being any good.  The reason I keep tabs on the label and why I was so happy to start getting promos from them is because they don't always stick to that formula, and the general rule I've noticed is that the further from those types of bands they stray, the better each release is.  The stuff they've released from bands like Tyranny, House of Atreus, Craven Idol, and especially the subject of today's review, Crypt Sermon, range from excellent to incredible.  Crypt Sermon in particular really stands out for eschewing death metal entirely and focusing purely on sweeping, epic doom metal.

In hindsight, their debut album, Out of the Garden, was even better than my initially high praise, and I definitely fucked up by snubbing it from my best of the year list in 2015.  Four years later, they're finally returning with a followup, The Ruins of Fading Light, and holy shit I might like this one even more than the debut.

One thing that I think is notable about the band is that the five members have played in a combined six hundred bands throughout their careers, and yet none of them have seemed to ever touch doom metal outside of Crypt Sermon.  Their histories seem to almost exclusively touch on thrash, black, and death metal bands, with various members concurrently and formerly performing in bands like Trenchrot, Horrendous, Daeva, Coffin Dust, Ashencult, Ancient Flame, something that people actually thought to name fuckin' Pizza Face, and seemingly thousands more.  Hell, even the new bassist is the former bassist of fucking Vektor, a band so high speed and relentlessly technical that it's as absurd to think of him joining Crypt Sermon as it is to think of Dominic Lapointe joining Black Sabbath.  Maybe the Philly scene is just super incestuous and there are only twenty guys to choose from when forming any band, I dunno.  But despite all of the furious extremity of their respective backgrounds, almost none of that shines through in Crypt Sermon, and instead they craft sweeping tales in a very traditionalist epic doom sense, effortlessly channeling genre legends like Candlemass and Solitude Aeturnus. 

The Ruins of Fading Light is essentially just a continuation of what they were doing on the debut album with very few changes.  This is still absolutely massive doom metal with a devastating bass presence, but where these guys truly excel is in their dedication to crafting instantly memorable hooks.  Every single song is barbed with riffs and vocal melodies that are almost maddeningly infectious, rooting deep in your mind and refusing to let go.  They never bring the tempo above a brisk gallop (though you can argue that "The Last Templar" is close enough to being "fast"), but that sort of lively skippiness is exactly the same thing that made Candlemass so good in their prime, and even then they only go that route a little under half of the time, instead seeming more content to just dig their heels in and crush you with a sledgehammer.  More or less every song conveys the same idea, which you'd think would be boring for an album that runs nearly an hour long, but it's really not.  Even with most tracks averaging around seven minutes long, the songs are kept interesting thanks to some wild guitar soloing, excellent riffs, and catchy vocal lines.

These vocals need to be singled out as well.  While the album as a whole is consistently great and similar to their last outing, I think Brooks Wilson has had the greatest improvement in the intervening four years.  The lead single, "Key of Solomon", has been met with generally positive reception, but if there are any complaints, they've been centered around Wilson's vocals, and I just can't fathom why.  He has always sounded great, and I think he's even better here.  His cleaner vocals are very smooth, and the lower he goes the more he sounds like Rob Lowe, which is always a good thing.  I think what most people aren't jiving with though are his more hoarse vocals, which he utilizes very frequently throughout the album.  Frankly, I think those are even better than his more explicit cleans.  They're still clean, but they feel like the desperate scream of a man at the end of a blade.  When you take into account their frequent lyrical focus on turning away from and abandoning religion (something that they tend to kinda mask with overt Christian themes and song titles, but even the basest cursory examination of their lyrics shows that they invoke this imagery with a kind of perverse blasphemy) it makes them sound even more agonizing (in a positive way).  He sounds like a man who has been lied to his entire life and is expelling all of the slime he's internalized up to this point.  He's awesome, don't be a dork.

Probably my only complaint is that the album is structured oddly, featuring seven full songs (like the debut) but also including three instrumental interludes, two of which are positioned right next to each other on the tracklist.  This doesn't bother me too much though since everything flows together really well, to the point where the doubled up interlude frequently sneaks by as just one to my ears.  I'm struggling to think of what to say in terms of album highlights.  Not because there aren't any, but because they all deserve to be singled out.  "Key of Solomon" is actually the worst song on the album, and that's with the knowledge that "worst" in this sense is still at least on par with the median level of greatness on Out of the Garden, so the one track most of you have heard at this point isn't even close to the best this album has to offer, if you can believe that.  "The Last Templar" hits like a truck and earns its spot as the shortest song by also being the most consistently aggressive, "The Snake Handler" is a twisting epic that also finds a way to have like half of all the best riffs on the album, and the title track is an emotional catharsis steeped in downtrodden hopelessness.  But really, I'd be lying if I said the best track was anything other than "Christ is Dead", which distills every single thing I love about this band (and genre as a whole) into six concise minutes that seem to fly by in under two.  All of the emotion, the grandeur, the pounding riffage, the searing leads, everything is thrown into this one and given the most passionate performance these guys could possibly muster.  The real highlight is the chorus, which has been stuck in my head for weeks now.  Everything I said about Brooks up there was with this chorus in mind.  This is the sound of a man who has finally seen the truth of the world, and equal parts broken and furious, he shouts from the highest steeple, "We are lost and Christ is dead".  If every song was as good as this one, I would seriously put this in the running for album of the god damned decade.

While the rest of the album doesn't quite reach that peak, it does get damn close several times.  There's basically nothing I don't like about The Ruins of Fading Light, and I think this will be in serious contention for Album of the Year as of right now.  2019 is shaping up to be an awesome year, and one of the few in recent memory where death metal hasn't completely dominated my personal favorites.  Cleaner, more traditional styles like the epic doom of Crypt Sermon has been devastating this year.


RATING: 96%

Monasterium - Church of Bones

The dead are full of life

I've somehow never actually been called out on this, publicly or privately, but I've always noted a dissonance in one of my frequent talking points throughout my reviewing career.  I always say that great music doesn't need to be original, and yet I'm constantly giving clone bands shit for being inferior copies of the innovators they imitate.  Why bother listening to Encoffination when you can just listen to Incantation instead, ya know?  Most of my favorite metal bands are either very unique or are classic innovators of some kind.  70% of all metal bands ever can trace their roots back to Motorhead somehow, nobody on the planet sounds like Gotsu Totsu Kotsu, Running Wild spawned so many imitators that I lost count a decade ago, Blind Guardian absolutely perfected both early speed metal and overblown symphonic power metal, I've written fucking 22 reviews for Gargoyle and I still don't know anybody who sounds like them, et cetera ad nauseam.  Whenever I make the "you don't need to be original!" argument, it's always preceded by several paragraphs explaining why whichever band I'm talking about is an exception in one direction or the other.

So consider this a definitive refutation of that hypothetical callout, because Monasterium is 100% nothing more than a carbon copy of Candlemass, right down to Michał Strzelecki being a dead fucking ringer for Messiah Marcolin, and they absolutely fucking rule.

I feel like I don't even need to give this a real review based on that previous sentence, because if you're familiar with classic era Candlemass then you already know what this sounds like, but I can't help but gush over it anyway.  Church of Bones is very orthodox epic doom, with every single trope established on Epicus Doomicus Metallicus showcased in full force, from the huge, vibrato-filled clean tenor vocals to the stomping-yet-spirited riff mastery.  That's always been one of my favorite aspects of Candlemass's sound, and it's one that Monasterium recreates perfectly.  Despite doom metal being so codified by the dark and occult, these guys write riffs that are bursting with life.  There's no sense of dreariness or decay in this midpaced dirges, instead sounding like colorful, anthemic celebrations. The closest something sounds to being dark and uninviting is probably "Sleeping with the Dead", which really gives off the vibe of wandering in a long abandoned crypt, but otherwise none of these songs would sound out of place on Ancient Dreams.

Apparently at least a handful of the members also play in Evangelist, whom I have never heard but according to my sources are also a solid Candlemass clone, so everything checks out.  I brought up Strzelecki sounding exactly like Messiah earlier, and with that in mind I decided to see if he was in any other bands I might be familiar with, and saw that he was once a member of Sorcerer.  "Oh that makes total sense," I thought to myself, "I don't really remember much of that album that got a good amount of hype a while back but I also remember that being epic doom so I guess he's just playing to type."  But actually, it turns out he wasn't the singer, he played guitar, and it was a totally different band also named Sorcerer that actually played power metal.  That is so fucking wild.  It's like some new thrash band cropping up with a vocalist who sounds just like Tom Araya, who also happened to play in Evile but it was actually some different Evile from Brazil or something that actually played black metal and also he was the drummer.

Something that I think helps Church of Bones a lot is the fact that it strikes that perfect balance between having huge standouts while also being strong the whole way through.  No songs are truly filler here besides maybe "Liber Loagaeth", but even with all 45 minutes being strong from start to finish, tracks like the opening title track, "La Danse Macabre", "The Order of the Dragon", and "The Last Templar" still manage to stand out as exemplary.  The first and last songs are probably the biggest standouts of the bunch, with the title track being unfairly catchy and utilizing that awesome trick of simply playing huge powerchords while the vocals harmonize with them perfectly without straying off at all.  That "We are all like stones" part so perfectly reflects the "The battle of minds" chorus from "Mirror Mirror", it's breathtaking in how catchy and massive it sounds.  "The Last Templar" stands as the longest and most evocative track on the album, possessing the same immaculate ear for melody as the rest of the album, but it stands out a bit further for utilizing guest vocals courtesy of the vocalist of Forsaken, who provides the only outside influence on the album since he sounds more like a gravelly Rob Lowe than Messiah.  But even then Lowe spent three albums with Candlemass himself and is most well known for fronting Solitude Aeturnus, who also kicks immeasurable ass but is basically just "The American Candlemass".  Once again the chorus is stunning, and I haven't given them enough credit yet, but it also has probably my favorite guitar solo on the album.  These guys implement some of the most simple-yet-effective soaring leads I've heard in quite a while.  They're very late 70s/early 80s in execution and composition and I'm just completely in love with them.

I can't stress enough how ear catching and well written this album is.  Pretty much every single second is bursting with energy and every riff is stomping and expertly delivered.  Yeah it's impossible to shake the comparison to Candlemass since this is a blatant worship act, but like I outlined at the start, this is an example of such a thing working amazingly.  I'm just repeating myself at this point so I'll wrap it up here.  This is huge, enrapturing, and loaded with great riffs underneath powerful vocals.  What more could you really want out of an epic doom release?


RATING: 91%

Crestfallen Queen - Queen of Swords

Suicide Queen

This one was a bit of a surprise, considering most promotional materials I had seen kept on throwing out words like "progressive" and "psychedlic" and "rock" and whatnot.  This seems to be marketed as something similar to the wave of occult rock that blew up and promptly fizzled out a few years ago like Blood Ceremony and Year of the Goat.  There's nothing wrong with that style, I think both of those bands are fine and I've been very vocal about how much I fucking adored Jess and the Ancient Ones before they just went full hippie rock, so I was actually pretty excited to give Crestfallen Queen a spin.  Metalheads love retro throwbacks, and it'd be pretty fun to hear a throwback to a style that's barely as old as half of the shit in my refrigerator.

The difference between me and most promo reviewers is that I don't just lazily regurgitate high scores and barely switch up words from the promo blurbs and pass it off as anything resembling actual work.  I fuckin' tell it to ya straight.  And let me tell ya here, the word "rock" only barely applies here.  This is motherfucking heavy doom metal through and through and I'm kind of astounded that they aren't marketing this stronger for fans of actual metal. 

Queen of Swords does take a few minutes to really get going, with the pointless intro track going on for far too long and the following title track taking about a minute to really pick up, but once it does you just get clobbered with a skippy galloping riff that smacks more of Candlemass than anything else.  I mentioned Jess and the Ancient Ones up there, and that's really a good point of comparison for this.  The title track does indeed fall into the more psychedelic rock based trappings of its parent genre in the back half, but instead of the flittery "Jefferson Airplane except about witches this time" thing that was so popular back then, it feels more like JATAO binged on the first four Sabbath albums before entering the studio.  Of the six tracks on the album, only four of them are full songs instead of brief interludes, and I'll begrudgingly admit that most of them tend to take their sweet fucking time getting to the point, but the atmosphere is so sublime and well crafted that it's really kind of a minor nitpick.  Everything builds wonderfully and climaxes in an extraordinarily satisfying way.  It's a slow burn more than instant gratification, constantly ebbing and flowing between psyche rock and 70s doom metal that never stops being entertaining.  The vocals are a huge strong suit as well, modulating between soothing coos and rough Janis Joplin-esque hoarse groans, with even a few scattered flat out harsh vocals (check out "Lethean Bed").  They're a perfect complement to the agonizing instrumentals and just helps the whole thing wash over you in total despair.

Like with most things, the relatively succinct runtime helps things stay focused and prevents the longwinded songs from becoming a chore.  Only having four full songs that average around eight and a half minutes keeps the album digestible while still indulging in their undeniable skill of slow burning atmosphere.  And even then, one the occasions where they do let loose it just makes them hit all the more powerfully.  Seriously, that tumbling main riff of "Ghost Warriors" sounds like a meaner, sludgier take on "Children of the Grave" and who the fuck doesn't want to hear that?  Whether they're aiming for tripped out psychedelia or crawling, punishing doom metal, or even the sombre doomdeath of the final track Crestfallen Queen absolutely delivers.


RATING: 88%

Thronehammer - Usurper of the Oaken Throne

OUCH MY SKULL

I really expected to hate Thronehammer right out of the gate here.  It's well known that I don't like albums that are excruciatingly fucking long, and Usurper of the Oaken Throne sits at an offensive 78 minutes long, with the first three songs alone taking up almost 50 of those minutes.  It's also slow doom metal, which almost guarantees it'll be dull and repetitive the whole time and it'll make those 78 minutes feel like six hours.  I groaned as I loaded this one up for the first time.

As you can probably expect, this absolutely shattered my expectations.

Thronehammer is an international project, with the instrumentalists based out of Germany and the vocalist out of the UK, and while it is indeed slow, repetitive doom metal, it's presented in such a punishing, crushing way that I just felt my spine snap under the pressure the first time I heard this.  All three members are at the top of their games here, cranking out absolutely devastating riffs with powerful vocals carrying the listener through this gorgeous torture.  It's just dirge after dirge after dirge with no end in sight, riffs will repeat a hundred times in a row but it still feels like an almost Monolithe style bludgeoning where the lengthy runtimes are still dozens of different ideas at once.  It doesn't even feel really thin on riffs and ideas despite so few of them actually being on display.  It's just hypnotic and devastating and I love it.

Against my usual instincts, I'd even say that the best songs are the longest ones.  "Behind the Wall of Frost" and "Warhorn" take up nearly forty minutes on their own, but they're both the biggest and most oppressively destructive songs on display.  The pace never picks up at any point throughout Usurper of the Oaken Throne, but it doesn't really need to.  There are subtle synths in the background of the former track that help it sound even more massive than it already does, and the main riff repeats a trillion times but it's so simplistically cataclysmic that it never gets boring.  The latter track is similar in that regard, though it more overtly shifts through different moods and themes, but the monolithic pace and pounding riffs never let up.  This is metal that min/maxed for total demolition.  It's all heaviness and no speed (apart from the mid-paced climax of "Warhorn"), and for this type of glacial oppression that's exactly what I want.  It's not quite funeral doom, despite how much I'm playing up the overwhelming heaviness, but it's damn close to being equally as heavy as Tyranny.

That's really all there is to Thronehammer, just massive riffs with enough weight to shatter an elephant's spine delivered at a pace that would be torturous if the riffs themselves weren't so effective.  Between this and Smoulder, I'd say doom is having an incredibly strong 2019.  The only real flaw of the album is that it isn't as strong in the second half, but that's something that all lengthy albums face so I'm willing to consider that a me problem and figure I'd like it equally as much if the tracks were randomized.


RATING: 90%

Smoulder - Times of Obscene Evil and Wild Daring

Rizky Business

Promos almost always come with a press kit, which usually gives a little background about the band/release in order to drum up hype (other sites much more professional than I will paraphrase or copy paste these paragraphs, for example), and I'm gonna be real with you, I was sold on Smoulder from six words in their little blurb: "mixed and mastered by Arthur Rizk."

That's it, right there.  Album of the Year material already.

All of the other info didn't matter.  Oh the band is half based in Toronto and half in Chicago, that's cool I guess.  Sarah does reviews on Banger TV? Oh yeah I've seen the one where she tried to convince me that The Forest Seasons was good.  Arthur Rizk is behind the knobs?  Oh slap my ass and call me Barbara sign me the fuck up.  Rizk is the Scott Burns of our generation.  Just like how Burns was the first guy to really figure out how to produce death metal (a huge reason why Florida was such a mecca of death metal in the early 90s, considering that's where Morrisound Studios (where he worked) was located), Rizk seems to be the Wayne Gretzky of understanding how to reach a retro wall of sound with updated quality and a massive low end, constantly churning out metal that sounds like how 1984 would've sounded if current technology was available.  The amount of stellar releases over the last few years that have achieved a sound akin to standing in a packed house while a band cranks out at max volume all thanks to him is astounding.  An extremely short list of bands he's helped sound their best in recent years include Eternal Champion, Power Trip, Sumerlands, Pissgrave, Tomb Mold, Scorched, Gatekeeper, Uada, Outer Heaven, Crypt Sermon, Homewrecker, Inquisition, and Mammoth Grinder.  This dude just fucking gets it.  Everything he touches sounds immaculate without being sterilized like Andy Sneap or Neil Kernon, he's the premier metal producer right now and nobody can touch him.

So it's no surprise that Smoulder's debut, Times of Obscene Evil and Wild Daring, sounds like fucking Krakatoa.  This is probably most similar to Eternal Champion or Crypt Sermon out of the bands mentioned above, blending pulpy sword and sorcery high fantasy with sweeping epic doom, which is a combination that we have known for years is a perfect match for heavy metal.  These riffs are fucking mountainous, the drums sound like an avalanche, everything about this just sounds monumental.

They say that a chain can only be as strong as its weakest link, but I would argue that that's a bad analogy since Smoulder is proof that the stronger links can merely leak excess steel and as a result temper the weak link.  Yeah, Sarah isn't all that great of a vocalist in technical terms, but the music around her is so fucking strong that it doesn't really matter.  Her voice is lacking in both range and power, but with Shawn's monstrous riffing and Kevin's powerful drumming being the true carrying force of the music, it doesn't really want for any command.  From the pummeling barabarism of "Ilian of Garathorm", to the high speed whirlwind of "Bastard Steel", everything is proactive and destructive.  It's hard to play epic doom without drawing comparisons to Candlemass, and Smoulder is no exception here, which is great because they absolutely nail that sweeping, spiritual atmosphere that the Swedes commanded so deftly in their prime years, and they also take their lesson that rules are for fucking squares and confidently break from the dogmatic ethos of the genre, and are thus unafraid pick up the pace and infuse old school speed metal when the music calls for it. 

Another huge element that works to the band's benefit is the fact that they're clearly skilled at self editing.  It can be tempting, especially with low tempos and massive atmospheres, to stretch albums to nearly marathon length, but Times of Obscene Evil is very succinct, with only six songs clocking in at roughly 37 minutes, it doesn't overstay its welcome.  As a result there's nothing that can really be considered filler, every idea has a purpose and every riff has a target that it aims for and hits easily.  Only "Shadowy Sisterhood" kinda falls flat and doesn't do anything particularly memorable, but the sweeping atmosphere coupled with powerful riffage keeps the best tracks like "Ilian of Garathorm", "Black God's Kiss", and "The Sword Woman" at the top of the heap of modern doom.  I can't get enough of this album, everything about it just soars over the battlefield and drops fucking bombs on it.

So at the end of the day, Smoulder plays some of the most exciting and evocative epic doom of the modern era on their own, and the skilled hand of Rizk behind the controls only boosts them to an even higher plane of badassery.  At the end of the day I think that's the word I've been looking for all along, "badass".  Smoulder is fucking badass and nothing is holding them back from conquering the fucking world.  The pounding toms and savage riffs are so fucking primitive and barbaric, the songwriting is savage and weighty, the atmosphere is epic and eldritch, just damn near every single element of the music on Times of Obscene Evil hits bullseye and this is going to easily contend for the top spot for Album of the Year this year unless something else truly magical storms out of the gates and hogties this.  But with how muscular and brutish this is, I'm skeptical that anything can truly dominate this.


RATING: 92%

Cardinals Folly/Lucifer's Fall - split

The Witch, The

I don't often bother listening to splits, almost entirely because I'm lazy and pedantic and don't like how such multi band affairs wind up sorting in whatever media player I'm using, which is a dumb reason but I'm a dumb person so it checks out.  Anyway my inbox as been full of doom lately, which generally isn't my bag as much as the more overtly energetic and extreme ends of metal, but I've said a hundred times before that it can produce some of the best metal of all time when done correctly so I always give it a chance when it appears.

Thankfully, this split is a firm example of "done correctly", because all six tracks between both bands here are powerful and punishing.  Most importantly, both Cardinals Folly and Lucifer's Fall go the extra mile and remember that "tune low, play slow" isn't the beginning and end of what makes doom metal great.  Far too many bands just focus on those two facets of the ethos and wind up producing mega boring non-songs with nothing going on within them.  Sometimes they'll rip off Electric Wizard instead and add "six thousand layers of fuzz" to the mix, but for the most part the doom scene seems to be completely inundated with old souls who fail to capture the spirit of greats like Sabbath and Trouble simply because they forget that the genre lives and dies on great riffs far more than a rigid adherence to tempo and mood.

Cardinals Folly, thankfully, washes away my ingrained cynicism in the opening minutes of "Walvater Proclaimed!" by rocking out with a riff that hammers like the final nail in a crucifix.  Of the two bands on display, Cardinals Folly definitely plays more into their Finnish roots and emulates Reverend Bizarre to an almost insane degree.  The almost sermon-like baritone of the vocals guides the listener through slow, drudging, dirty riffs that call to mind their most obvious influence with aplomb.  Each of their three tracks is exceedingly moody, with a world-weary veil of apathetic malice.  If there's any flaw, it's that they emulate their obvious heroes a bit too much with "Sworn Through Odin's and Satan's Blood" getting dangerously close to breaching the ten minute mark.  It's not too horribly much of a problem because it stays heavy and menacing throughout, but it can start to wear on you in the last few minutes.

However, Lucifer's Fall stands a hair above as the better band on display.  Instead of the cold gloom of Finland, these guys hail from the scorching hellscape of Australia, and their cultural heritage shines through in being much filthier and booze-soaked.  They tend to keep the tempo a few ticks higher without ever really forgetting where they came from, so they take their slow pumping doom and give it a shot in the arm.  "The Gates of Hell" showcases some of their more traditional heavy metal leanings with some punishing aggression, but "Die Witch, Die" is generally slower and more pounding.  I think what truly sets them over the edge for me is Phil Howlett, whose voice carries this fucking gnarly, King Buzzo-esque chainsmoking rattle that adds a fuckload of grit to the music.  This is the kind of doom I just eat up.  It's raw and dangerous and just feels forbidden somehow, like you just stumbled into some blood orgy beneath a rank dive bar.  It's the same kind of dark occultism that makes Hour of 13 so great, but with a few more goatpriests, ashtrays, and whiskey shots.

So yeah, despite not really bringing a whole lot of new ideas to the table, Cardinals Folly and Lucifer's Fall have combined forces to deliver one of the best releases of the year so far, which is pretty impressive considering splits rarely seem to aspire to such a level.  But here we are with two great hates that hate great together, seamlessly blending their slightly different brands of occult taboo with heaps of excellent riffs and just damn well written songs.  Hail yourselves.


RATING: 89%

Candlemass - The Door to Doom

Stop putting "doom" in your album titles you cowards

I might be a rarity here, but when I heard that Candlemass was (again) abandoning their plans to become a live-only band and that they were reuniting with the vocalist who graced their legendary debut, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, I was... pretty much not at all hyped about it.  Let's be real here, Johan Langquist was incredible in 1986, but fuck guys it's been 32 years and he's done essentially fuck all since then.  He pops up every now and again to join Candlemass onstage but he's only ever sang Epicus songs with them when he does, he auditioned to join the band full time in the early 90s (it's easy to forget he was just a session guy they hired on the debut, though the band loved him back then and wanted him to join for real) and lost the gig to Thomas Vickstrom (and rightly, I should add, I've heard his demo of "At the Gallows End" from that era and he butchers it), and apart from his occasional appearances onstage to remind everybody that he sang "Solitude", I haven't seen much evidence that he's done a whole lot of singing at all in the decades since then.  Forgive me for being cynical, but we are currently neck deep in the era of nostalgia where every metal band that existed from 81-94 is getting the band back together for fests to play shit they wrote in their early twenties, and Leif is a savvy businessman who knows that he can maximize hype for himself by bringing back a nostalgic favorite and attaching it to the only band of his that anybody gives a shit about instead of fully moving on with one of his other projects or finally giving Mats Leven the chance he deserves.

And now that The Door to Doom is finally out, I feel somewhat vindicated, because this is exactly as uninspiring and average as I expected.

One thing I want to get out of the way right away is that Johan does sound very good.  I expected him to sound like what he is, a washed up fluke decades past his prime, but I'll eat a small bit of crow here and admit that he sounds excellent here.  Even if you totally ignore the surprise at the vigor in his voice for being a session guy who has been out of the scene for three decades, he sounds great on his own.  Instead of sounding worn out and lame like I expected, he sounds like any other good epic doom vocalist out there today.  He sounds weathered in a way that implies he's an old guard warrior who has put his time in and experienced everything he's singing about.  I wish his voice blended with the music a bit better, as he's mixed in such a way where he sounds like he's singing in a completely different studio and slapped on top of the band long after the fact, and his completely dry and reverb-less sheen is distracting in how much louder it is than the rest of the band, but he turns in a great performance nonetheless.  He may be lacking the range of previous vocalists, but if Candlemass is good at anything, it's landing iconic vocalists with loads of charisma, and I can safely say that Lanquist truly does deserve to be in the same conversation as Messiah and Lowe on that metric alone. 

But what truly drags the album down is just how workmanlike and uninspired the songs themselves are.  Leif has been on autopilot for a while now, basically cycling the same four or five songs on every single album since the reformation in 2004 between all of his projects.  He's basically doing what Rolf did with Running Wild, constantly releasing similar albums between several projects and only generating interest with the original band that made him famous in the first place.  The difference is that Toxic Taste and Giant X guided what Running Wild was doing, Candlemass has always been the one leading Krux and The Doomsday Kingdom.  What this really means is that Leif has gotten comfortable in his songwriting, and once again we've seen him release something only sort-of inspired and overall triumphantly average.  The Door to Doom is functionally identical to Psalms for the Dead or Death Magic Doom, further showcasing that the band really doesn't seem to be able to tap into whatever it was that made them so much larger than life in the classic era.  There's no splendor here, instead it's much more down to earth and rocking, which is fine on principle but can be disappointing when the riffs don't do much to excite you.  I can name the good parts, it's not hard.  The explosive riff on "Under the Ocean" absolutely demolishes, "House of Doom" has a very "Crystal Ball"-esque sense of demonic psychedelia, and "Astrolus - The Great Octopus" channels the best of Heaven and Hell's The Devil You Know with it's monolithic pace and heaviness (and no I'm not just making that connection because of Tony Iommi's guest appearance, though it certainly helps).  Everything else just kinda... happens.  "Death's Wheel" and "Black Trinity" are total non-songs that contribute absolutely nothing beyond pure banality, "The Omega Circle" feels longer than it is and the fadeout two thirds of the way through just feels excessive, "Bridge of the Blind" is a pointless quiet bridge that would've worked better if it was only a minute long and treated like an interlude, and "Splendor Demon Majesty" opens the album with a quicker pace but fails to grab you in the same way "If I Ever Die" or "Prophet" did on the previous albums.  And then that's it, five of the eight songs are just unnecessary.

The Devil You Know is a good point of comparison for me, because I was also totally underwhelmed with it on the whole and it's for mostly the same reason.  Heaven and Hell didn't utilize the members efficiently and didn't play to Dio's strengths because he's always worked best when there's a sense of magical wonder behind him.  The Door to Doom also plays against Candlemass's strengths by focusing less on the wide-eyed splendor and almost spiritual undercurrent of their classic era, instead focusing purely on heaviness and downtrodden Sabbathisms.  The dark psychedelia can work in certain contexts (see "House of Doom") but something like "Bridge of the Blind" or "The Omega Circle" just could've been approached in a different way that better encapsulated what made everybody fall in love with Candlemass in the first place.

Overall I don't necessarily dislike The Door to Doom, but it's a very average album.  Not quite mediocre, not quite enjoyable, just... there.  If this didn't have the legendary name attached to it, it would likely fly as a flavor of the month joy for doomheads before quickly fading away, and that's just disappointing.  Johan's surprisingly great vocals and "Under the Ocean" and "Astrolus" alone can't carry the album.  Maybe it's not fair, but this is just completely unexciting coming from a band that we all know is capable of writing some of the greatest metal albums of all time.  I think the hard pill we need to swallow is that the guys simply aren't capable of that anymore.  And that's just heartbreaking.


RATING: 58%

Wolf Counsel - Destination Void

Doom mood

Wading through the forgettable, pointless drudgery of the modern metal promo scene, something like Wolf Counsel is a nice break.  There's nothing about this that screams "AWESOME!!" but it's rather welcome to find a band that at least doesn't outright suck.

That's being somewhat mean, because Switzerland's Wolf Counsel is much better than the incredibly low bar of "not terrible", they're just not particularly innovative.  That's not necessarily a bad thing though, because competent music in an established style can be a great listen in almost any circumstance.  This here is indeed competent doom metal and I've been enjoying it a good amount.  It's no secret that doom isn't my usual stomping ground so forgive me for not having too many points of reference here, but Destination Void is very Sabbathian with an added dose of downtempo majesty.  I'd definitely hesitate to call this "epic doom metal" because it doesn't have nearly the amount of hands-to-the-sky splendor blended with crushing riffs of genre heavyweights like Candlemass or Solitude Aeturnus, but there's a very Grand Magus-ish sense of wonder here regardless.  It's very organic and earthy, with bone crunching heaviness in the guitar tone and drums that pound like a timpani, and as a result the overall product works very well.

The thing that keeps me from giving this a full-on endorsement is the fact that... well, there just simply aren't that many fantastic riffs to be found.  Doom is a genre that lives and dies on riffing prowess, and it's why Tony Iommi is rightfully recognized as the metal deity that he is.  A totally average album like Angush's Magna est vis Siugnah last year can still warrant repeat listens based entirely on how fucking rad the main riff of "Blessed Be the Beast" is, and Wolf Counsel never really reaches those heights.  They get close at times, for sure.  "Staring into Oblivion" has a few really good bangers in there, "Tomorrow Never Knows" is damn stunner, and the title track and "Nazarene" have some great moments in the guitar department as well, but Destination Void definitely rests on its laurels too much and leans way too heavily on simply banging out long, sustained chords without really constructing a meaty riff.  They tend to pick up the slack a bit with some excellent 70s style soloing and vocals that are functionally little more than a Phil Swanson impression but still complement the music really well, but the riffing deficiency is pretty notable until the last handful of tracks where they really pick up and start belting you across the back with Sabbathy goodness.

So while the album is definitely imperfect and can't truly be recommended for excellent soloing alone, it's still a nice, meaty slab of doom with enough of the genre's tropes to be a fun listen on occasion.  The consistently slow pace keeps the album cohesive but it tends to prevent any real peaks in energy, which would have been welcome without a doubt.  If nothing else, check out the last two tracks, that seems to be where the lion's share of great songwriting is hiding, the rest of it I could either take or leave, though admittedly most of the time I'd probably choose to take it despite the wanting riffery.


RATING: 72%

Dragonauta - CabraMacabra

Is Satan really a secret anymore?

The World Cup starts in a few days, and as an Amerocentric white boy who grew up with football and hockey, I know jack shit about soccer.  As such, I adopted a totally random National Team to support every four years when I was a kid, and that random country was Argentina.  In that spirit, let's take a look at an equally random Argentinian metal band.  Straight outta Buenos Aires, I present to you, Dragonauta.

I have no history with Dragonauta, I was only introduced to them last week.  In this last week, I've probably spun CabraMacabra twenty times.  This isn't something that should have set the world on fire back in 2006 and was unfairly forgotten or anything, but it's undeniably an addictive album, and I just can't help but go back to it quite frequently.  The best laconic review I can muster would be "The Melvins if they bought laced weed from Satan."  The genre tag on MA lists them as "Psychedelic Stoner/Doom Metal" but I'm not sure I'd agree with that on this album.  It's very sludgy, which tends to go hand in hand with stoner and doom metal, sure, but the pace tends to stay surprisingly high, taking the punky elements of sludge classics and replacing them more with straight ahead thrash metal.  I'd also say it's less "psychedelic" and more accurately "schizophrenic", as the band tends to take on an almost frenzied approach to everything, like they're just confused and angry and want to lash out at something.  As a result the music is simultaneously hazy and sluggish while being focused and ferocious.  There are some out-of-left-field progressive moments as well, with the first half of "Funeral magico" being a quiet, almost Pink Floydian section.  "Abducido" and "En el futuro ya no habra piedad" toy around with these sections as well but it's definitely most prominent on "Funeral magico". 

CabraMacabra tends to err away from the "Honey Bucket" style of sludge/thrash and lands closer to classic Sabbathian stoner metal as the album goes on (check out "Experienciar"), which is also pretty Melvins-y in its own right.  But honestly, the main reason I keep comparing this to those Seattle weirdos is because the vocalist here sounds like a methed out King Buzzo who is perpetually stubbing his toe and invoking Satan about it.  There's a culpable sense of malice absolutely smothering his voice, and it helps the music itself sound so much more evil than it would have with any other vocal style.  It definitely works better with the more manic first half of the album but it sounds awesome when the band gets doomier as well.  He really is the highlight for me.

If there's any real flaw with the album it's simply that it gets to be a bit much to get through in one sitting.  It's not a super long album, clocking in at 51 minutes, but with how in-your-face it is for most of the runtime it gets to be pretty exhausting, despite the variance in tempo and continuously high level of excitement.  The tracks tend to run together as the album grinds along, so the more ripping tracks like "Transmutado" and "Dioses del submundo" stand out more once it's over and you recall the album from memory.  Overall it's not really a big deal though, because on the whole it's a very dangerous and feral sounding album that spans across a few different subgenres and ties itself together with those completely insane vocals.  It's a fun romp, and I'll definitely be coming back to this.  After all, I haven't been able to stop listening to it for a week now, and that's a pretty rare quality for me nowadays.


RATING: 85%

QUICK HITS: King Woman - Created in the Image of Suffering

*groaning*

I'm not gonna call this Pallbearer style of "doomgaze" or whatever a plague on metal or a Trojan horse for lame hipsters who don't give a damn about the genre or anything, because if I don't like something it's pretty easy to simply not listen to it and I don't really care if people like things that I don't, but I will say with authority that this Pitchfork-approved go-nowhere nonsense is almost invariably terrible, and King Woman does nothing to dispel that prejudice.  I got this admittedly entirely on a whim because the cover art was super cool, but that's really all the band has going for it.  None of these riffs are compelling, the whole thing just drags and plods along with no sense of urgency, wonder, malice, mystery, or anything that doom needs to work.  This is all just... there.  There's apparently an interesting tale about how this band came about, with the vocalist leaving a shoegaze band and starting this metal band to lash back at the religious institutions of her youth, but if there's any true lingering hatred and frustration behind the band it is wholly drowned out by plodding riffs that elicit precisely zero emotion and some of the most lethargic, tranquilized vocals I've ever heard.  You know that (beautiful) meme where people find all the most absurd and surreal ways to remix "All Star" by Smash Mouth?  Well one of the best ones is where somebody remixes every note to be C.  Every vocal line, every chord, every bassline, it's all just this one continuous streak of the same monotone shit and it sounds like the audial representation of an anxiety attack.  That's what Created in the Image of Suffering reminds me of.  Kristina Esfandiari is just a flat out terrible vocalist.  She sounds like she's trying to record vocals in her bedroom without waking up her parents.  This kind of dreamy monotone can work for something more apocalyptic and creepy like Chelsea Wolfe, but this isn't that.  It just sounds like a really lame practice session for a bunch of kids, none of whom are any good at their instruments, and the person doing vocals doesn't actually have any real singing talent so she just drowns herself in reverb and hopes that covers it all up.  If you forced me to say something nice, I'd say "Utopia" has a pretty cool riff hidden under what I think is supposed to be the chorus, but it's insanely overshadowed by the insultingly bad vocals and multitude of weak ass riffs with pointless shoegazey clean guitars layered over them.  I'm willing to bet anything that this has a great rating on Pitchfork.

*checks*

*8.2/10*

HA! I'm good at this game.


RATING - 17%

Ningen-Isu - Kaijin Nijuu Mensou

Witty titles are beyond me

Ningen-Isu (named after the extremely disturbing story, The Human Chair (read the Junji Ito manga about it, if you hate sleeping)), has a long and illustrious career that's ended up all but invisible in the grand scheme of things outside of their home country.  This unfortunate invisibility has extended even to me, a fan of bands from Japan that eschew the stereotype of excessively overproduced flower metal and instead take more traditional and extreme forms of metal and twist them with that inimitable oriental flavor (Sigh and Gargoyle being the two most obvious culprits), and as such I'm only truly familiar with the three most recent albums; Shigan Raisan, Mandoro (my favorite of the bunch), and Burai Houjou (though this album has "Namahage", which is their best song of what I've heard).  So with that in mind, I decided to snag a completely random album from some other time in their career, and with that I ended up with 2000's Kaijin Nijuu Mensou.

The base idea of taking Black Sabbath and shifting everything 90 degrees counterclockwise is still the main idea here, with smatterings of 70s hard/prog rock and other assorted influences from all across the board, and it's just as great as their newer stuff.  Ningen-Isu is renowned for a stunning consistency in their work, and I'm starting to understand the praise, as these songs are all varied in their approach, while all focusing on a trench digging groove that bores its way into your psyche and refuses to leave.  Much like Manowar's debut (an obviously entirely different style of band and album), the assorted hard rock influences keep everything upbeat and creative, refusing to rely on the time tested tropes of trad/doom metal like this so easily could have done.  Tracks like "Keimusho Wa Ippai" and "Meitantei Toujou", and the title track have a very distinct 70's classic rock feel to them, while tracks like the absolutely stunning "Daidanen" and "Ashinagagumo" revel in the Vol. 4 era of Sabbathian psychedelic doom hypnosis, and there's even a few curveballs late with "Jigoku Fuukei" being a straight up blitzkrieg of thrash metal and "Tanoshii Natsuyasumi" starting off as a late 70's Judas Priest styled speed metal track before descending into some downright trancelike progressive doom.  The band is positively bursting with fresh ideas at every turn, and there's nothing that they seem to be uncomfortable with.  I feel like this is what truly happens when a band decides to put all of their influences into their music, no matter how diverse.  Instead of a slapdash tossed salad of random dickery, you get tons of creative, flowing, organic songs from all corners of your mind across a decades long career. 

I've heard Shinji Wajima, the guitarist and lead vocalist, described as the metal version of Master Roshi.  He's this tiny, frail, goofy old man who hides a monstrous, planet splitting power.  The riffs here may not be as skull splittingly heavy as Mandoro over a decade later, but there's a punishing weight held behind the more sinister riffs on display that showcase the latent destructive force he's clearly holding back.  Kaijin Nijuu Mensou is overall a very lighthearted and upbeat album, with songs that groove more than churn for most of the runtime, leaving a smile on your face instead of a menacing sneer, but it's clearly there, and quick explosions like "Jigoku Fuukei" and the pounding ritualism of "Yaneura no Neputa Matsuri" showcase this masterfully.  Wajima's vocals are crystal clean, with a strong presence that pushes its way to the front without snubbing the rest of the band, and the mid ranged croons and howls stand out as one of the identifying features of the band.  When you imagine old Japanese monks, this is the voice you're imagining voicing their hymns.  He sounds like a desperately passionate daimyo cooing down a mountainside while a small group of shirime follow him with instruments crafted out of a dying sakura tree, playing odes to something mystical that nobody truly understands. 

Despite my natural inclination towards faster, more energetic music, there is a simple beauty in simplicity that I absolutely adore, and I think that's why I have such respect for Ningen-Isu.  They revel in this focused and deliberate style of songwriting and riff crafting, and that's how the world ends up with riffs as beautiful as the main riff in "Hiruta Hakase no Hatsumei", potentially my favorite track.  It's four notes, just a simple pattern and simple progression, but it works unlike anything else.  It's a very Sabbathian riff that conjures up so much wild imagery that it should be taught at fucking Berklee.  Unfortunately, in a paradoxical twist, this simplicity is also the reason behind the album's sole downfall, that being the fact that two of the three long songs just feel like they take fucking forever to finish.  "Imomushi" rides on a very pleasant melody that's soothing to listen to, but wears thin before the final section of bouncy riffage, and despite being the most overtly heavy song on display, "Yaneura no Neputa Matsuri" just drags on and on.  Only "Daidanden" is spared for simply being written slightly better, I don't know how else to explain it (it helps that the bass groove is just the damn grooviest thing ever).  But that's really it, two songs that I think are a little bit too long, everything else is a wonderful experience that more people need to hear.  Despite the obvious parallels, I don't see myself ever giving this band the Gargoyle treatment (ie. just never shutting the fuck up about them), but they're a wonderful group of tight, skilled musicians that understand to keep things simple and focused, and the expert grooves and general joviality of Kaijin Nijuu Mensou make it a worthy listen for anybody of traditional styled metal and hard rock.


RATING - 88%

Crypt Sermon - Out of the Garden

Eating my hat

It's sort of well documented that I don't care much for doom.  This isn't anything personal towards the bands that play it, I just generally prefer faster, more energetic music.  Perhaps this is why I prefer the "epic doom" style over the traditional Sabbath worship.  Sure, Sabbath is one of the all time greats and you'll find me spinning their 70s material just as much as any self respecting metal fan, but bands that try to evoke that occult atmosphere based in heavy, bluesy metal riffs just rarely reach the intended effect, whereas the bands like Candlemass and Solitude Aeturnus reach for something far greater.  Crypt Sermon follows more in their footsteps than the whole occult psychedoomic "let's just try to be Coven" sound that's gotten so popular lately, and as a result they spend less time grounded in reality and more time amongst the clouds, looking down as the peasants till the fields and the nobles diddle kids.  There's a very ancient, regal sound to Out of the Garden that just commands respect from every corner.

Crypt Sermon's approach to metal here is very classy and respectable, and it carries itself like a revered crusader.  You grew up listening to legends of Crypt Sermon, and then when you finally see them, you just stand in starstruck awe.  The old adage of "tune low, play slow" doesn't hold much water here, though they do indeed do both of those things.  There's a lot of thought and care that went into crafting these songs, as nearly every riff feels like something that was sculpted out of hours and hours in a sweaty, hazy practice space.  Nothing feels like a jam that they just wound up noodling with and recording, nor does anything sound like it was written down on paper and then copied and practiced meticulously.  No, instead this all sounds very organic, like a mixture between the two.  Somebody thought of a riff and the band all worked together to tweak it to their pleasure.  As a result, every track is lovingly crafted with a healthy dose of twists and turns, with a beefy spine of weighty riffs.

The vocals are also fantastic as well, as it really needs to be with bands like this that are far more about substance than style.  There isn't any showboating to be found here (though I would argue that the main riff that comes about a minute and a half into "Into the Holy of Holies" is really flashy, based entirely on the fact that holy shit it's like the best riff I've heard all decade), and despite the skill of the clean, powerful vocals and the majestic riff writing and evocative guitar soloing, nobody tries to take center stage.  This works like the Boston Bruins when they're at their best.  There's no clear star on that team, everybody uses their talents as one cohesive team and creates something unstoppable.

I can't gush enough about how much I love "Into the Holy of Holies", which is basically a modern reimagining of the Solitude Aeturnus classic, "Seeds of the Desolate", but no other songs fall short of "great".  I find myself sort of mentally checking out during the stretch of songs preceding the obvious epic, but tracks like "Temple Doors", "Heavy Riders", and the title track all stand out as masterclasses in songwriting.  The riff writing is deceptively complex and the hauntingly huge vocals work together seamlessly.  I can't really go on forever about this because it can be pretty accurately summed up by saying "classic epic doom with a strong roots in the dirt", which admittedly is probably a dumb metaphor that only makes sense to me.  What I mean is that it takes the slow to mid paced lumbering-Ent riffs of Trouble and the soaring, majestic fretwork of Candlemass to create a very strong, wholly riff based experience, with the bonus intangibles of a mystical atmosphere layered over the top.  I can throw vague superlatives on this all day, but just know that this is meaty, beefy doom with a fantastic atmosphere on top, and that's all you need.  Plus, it's a Dark Descent release!  So maybe they should just stick to doom, since I'd take one Crypt Sermon over fifty Thantifaxaths.


RATING - 89%

JERKING THE CIRCLE Vol IV: Heaven and Hell - The Devil You Know

Yeah I can't think of a title

This is a review I've been both dreading and dying to write.  It's weird to think that this album five years old at this point and I could very well be writing this for people who weren't metal fans when it was released, so if you fall into that category, please make sure you understand: this was the absolute biggest fucking deal in the universe when it dropped in 2009.  Not only was there all the drama surrounding the band's mere name at the time (I saw this lineup twice and still steadfastly refer to them as "Black Sabbath concerts" and I'll never, ever, ever back down from that), but pretty much all four guys in the band had done precisely nothing of note in eons.  This situation would stick most bands under these circumstances as "has beens", and no matter how true that may have been, Dio and Iommi are special.  They're both grandfathers of heavy metal, elder statesmen of an entire genre of music that had grown so much since they were young.  I don't mean to leave Geezer out of the equation since he's a massive part of Sabbath's sound, and believe me when I say that he and Vinny were just as hyped up as the two main men, but the thought of Ronnie James Dio and Tony Iommi collaborating again for the first time in nearly two decades just sent generations of metal fans slipping off their chairs.

And this is where the deification stops from me, and where the inspiration for picking up the Jerking the Circle series again begins.  I'm sorry guys, The Devil You Know is lame and boring.

This is an album that's more... I dunno, inspirational or admirable than actually any good.  See, it was great to see these shambling geriatrics wheelchair themselves on stage and then just rock the fuck out like they were in their 30s again, and it was so refreshing to see that the classic icons of the genre still gave enough of a shit about the music they helped create to continue performing and writing it.  The problem lies in the fact that, barring the flukey Dehumanizer (which in itself is only half great anyway, but I'll explain that in time here), nobody in the band had really made anything worth listening to since the early 80s.  Dio started on an incredible streak, farting out classic albums left and right with Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and his solo band in the 70s and 80s, and Sabbath was phenomenal in the 70s before a slight dip and resurfacing in the early 80s when Dio joined the fold, but after The Mob Rules, they just turned to churning out dull, skippable albums that weird people will swear up and down are among their best (you will never, ever convince me that Tony Martin is better than Dio or that The Headless Cross is better than Sabbath Bloody Sabbath). 

Basically all that history lesson was meant for was to illustrate something that most people never seem to acknowledge; Iommi/Dio hadn't touched anything other than skippable crap for almost 25 solid years before The Devil You Know. So in all honesty, I really shouldn't have been surprised that this album does next to nothing for me.  It's almost 54 minutes long but it feels like it's almost two hours before the album ends.  Most of Tony's good riffs had been used up by The Mob Rules, and no matter how good he was in his prime, this is an everlasting testament to the fact that he's just not as creative or fresh with his songwriting as he used to be.  The album is inspirational in its attitude, but not in its execution, and as a result there are a whopping six plodding snoozefests to start the album off on the worst foot possible.  I can concede that "Bible Black" has a good chorus and the verse riff of "Double the Pain" manages to get the blood moving, and I adore the main riff to "Fear", but that's three riffs across six songs that elicit any emotion out of me other than overwhelming apathy.  That's a frickin' terrible batting average.  It's sort of like Sammy Sosa coming out of retirement and leading the league in strikeouts while everybody showers him in awards and adulation because once upon a time he was super good and now here he is doing that thing again (let's just pretend the cork and the steroids never happened for the sake of argument, I'm not good at baseball dammit).

I think the biggest problem stems from the fact that the album's single focus is skull squeezing heaviness, which it does admittedly achieve to an extent with an absolutely monstrous guitar tone, but it's overall ineffective because the riffs just never go anywhere.  It's so clearly the result of four old men gathering around and trying to be all wise and weathered and whatever other positive synonyms you can think of for "so old you can see through their skin", and it just comes off like there's no vigor anywhere to be found.  Like 85% of the album lumbers around at this leisurely lurch, like an ice giant out for a stroll.  There's so little energy here, songs like "Breaking Into Heaven" and "Rock and Roll Angel" meander around for upwards of seventy six minutes with no fire or passion behind them.  Almost the entire album is full of these dull chugging exercises that have to be unbelievably boring to play on stage.  I know what they're going for, this is supposed to be pure, oppressive doom metal, full of apocalyptic dread and bone shattering crunch, and I suppose they achieve that if you really think about it.

The problem with that is that that's not what Dio does.  Absolutely not, Dio has always been at his best when he's carrying a sense of wonder and grandeur.  Really, think of all the best songs he ever sang on.  "Man on the Silver Mountain", "Die Young", "Falling Off the Edge of the World", "The Last in Line", "Rainbow in the Dark", fuckin' "Stargazer", "Kill the King".  All of those songs have one thing in common, they feel like they're showing you something greater than yourself.  They all have this indescribable sense of magic surrounding them, and they're all  just these huge sounding songs with an almost childlike sense of wonder.  Precisely zero of the best Dio songs (barring the exception in "Heaven and Hell" (and I guess "Sign of the Southern Cross" is really popular too but personally it bores me) are slow and doomy.  None of them feel like a hungover titan sleepily pawing at his alarm clock like "Atom and Evil" does.  Dio doesn't do doom, and that's why the heavier Dio albums suck and the best song on Dehumanizer is "TV Crimes".  You know, the fast one.  He's woefully miscast in this role simply because he's essentially this ancient wizard at this point in time, but his voice was still as powerful as it was during his classic era.  He didn't need to tone down his performance, but the rest of the band did, and so Dio's always immaculate voice rides dull melodies over boring, go-nowhere plod riffs.

That's not to say the whole album is bad, it's just fundamentally flawed.  There are two uptempo songs to be found in "Eating the Cannibals" and "Neverwhere", and unsurprisingly they're the best songs on the album by a long shot.  That's what Dio does best, he requires some semblance of energy behind him in order for him to reach his full potential.  "Bible Black" may be heavy and dark, but it's not energetic, and that's why the vocals fall flat when put into the whole unit.  It's so sad to say but really every member of the band brings largely an inconsequential performance to the table.  Vinny Appice plays the most standard timekeeping beats imaginable with almost no fills to speak of, Geezer has very few of his famous runs (oddly enough, the two do get some brief moments of entertaining  showboating in the background during "Bible Black" and essentially nowhere else), Iommi pens a whopping seven or eight good riffs across ten songs, and Dio stands out purely because his voice is so recognizable.  If there was a different personnel behind this album, I feel like the metal fandom as a whole would give less than a single shit about it.  The songs themselves have moments of past brilliance scattered here and there but for the most part they're devoid of enjoyment, replaced instead with an abundance of fillery non-riffs that go nowhere.

Maybe I'm wrong for wishing this album is something that it wasn't, but to be fair, isn't that the reason we don't like... well, anything?  How many times are you caught telling yourself "Well this album does exactly what I want it to do, it ticks all the boxes, buuuuuut it's lame"?  Never.  That's why the only songs worth listening to are "Eating the Cannibals" and "Neverwhere" for the heightened pace and thus thicker groove, and "Bible Black" for just being the only song to really get the formula they're going for right.  I still recommend listening to it because it's a curious little oddity at the tail end of a couple legendary careers, and the swansong of one of metal's greatest faces, and also because everybody but me seems to love it so chances are you will too.  For me?  It just reinforces my belief that Dio/Iommi/Geezer all have about thirty solid years of forgettable crap going on right now as long as you grant an exception to Dehumanizer. 


RATING: 29%

Witch Mountain - Cauldron of the Wild

And then that little girl shocks The Rock

So earlier this week, I proposed a challenge to the lovable grizzly, Metantoine.  The deal came down to us both agreeing to step out of our comfort zones and review each other's preferred genres.  He stepped up to the plate and tackled Blood Dress's album, and since he held up his end of the bargain by reviewing a tech death album, I must defend my honor and review a mum doom album.  I figured I'd take on one that seems to get near-universal praise amongst a good chunk of the metal fandom, Witch Mountain's Cauldron of the Wild.

Final thought?  Eh, it's alright.

I feel like I should like this a lot more than I actually do, because despite not really being a doom fan, there is definitely a lot to like here.  Honestly, I feel like the main thing holding this back is one of the main reasons a lot of people really like the band in the first place, and that is the vocal performance of Uta Plotkin.  Now don't get me wrong, she is a very talented singer, and the actual sound of her voice is gorgeous, and she hits high notes with chutzpah.  Hell, even her lyrics are very good.  So what is there to complain about?  Really, I just don't think her voice gels with the music very well a lot of the time.  She seems like she's hitting notes too high for the music most of the time.  With guitars as deep and heavy as these, her voice should be a sweet contrast, but it just ends up distracting most of the time.  It's like they're singing in a different key.  It's hard to explain, but they just sound off most of the time.  Perhaps it's just a personal quibble, and most people will think I'm just hearing improperly because my head is planted so firmly up inside my own butthole, but it's really distracting to me and it knocks the album down a few pegs.

Vocals aside, Cauldron of the Wild is a resoundingly heavy album, full of suffocating atmosphere and slow, churning riffwork.  I realize "churning" is a really cliche word used to describe any riff that sounds even the slightest bit dark, but I feel like this is one of the better examples of such an adjective.  The extraordinarily slow riffs conjure up imagery of an old witch, glaring intently into a cauldron as she carefully and deliberately stirs the pot of odoriferous muck.  This is an album I "feel" more than I "listen to" in the sense that my preferred genres are typically very energetic and high tempo, so giving my full attention to something with the opposite endgame in mind leads to me taking on a very different perspective.  I feel like I'm lost in the woods while this is on, calm yet unsure.  None of the riffs sound urgent, but they all sound very deliberate, like they were crafted specifically to sound like you're being stalked.  It's a very dark and organic album, and I like that.

The atmosphere is fantastic, so it's a shame that the riffs are so inconsequential.  I mean, I understand this isn't really a riff based sound they're going for here, but still, there's almost nothing to grab you musically.  Cauldron of the Wild was definitely written with vocals and atmosphere in mind, and in that regard it succeeds.  But the greatest albums can strike a balance between the two ideals of atmosphere and engaging music (Don't Break the Oath, In Somniphobia, Sin After Sin, et cetera), whereas this here has pretty uninteresting music, accompanied by soaringly clean vocals and a great mood. "The Ballad of Lanky Rae" is probably the worst offender here, as the riffs there just kind of plod around and don't really go anywhere, whereas "Beekeeper" and "Shelter" (far and away the best songs) at least have a direction they're moving towards.  The vocals also seem to mesh the best on those two tracks, with their melodies being very striking and the lyrics very memorable.  "Shelter" in particular has a wonderfully powerful climax.  The two very long songs don't do a whole lot for me either, they just kind of go through the motions with nothing exciting happening in them.

And I realize I may just be the wrong demographic for this, but it seems like a lot of times the riffs are utterly inconsequential and don't have a lot going on behind them.  It's very slow, it's very deliberate, and while they create a great backdrop for the ballsy croon of Plotkin, they never do anything themselves that make me perk up and take notice.  I love the general feel of the album, but I find the music lacking, and I think the vocals are fantastic, but rarely fit with the music.  Basically the music itself needs some sort of overhaul for this to reach its full potential for me.  The good bits are good enough for me to give this a positive overall score, but the rest of the band really needs to catch up with the vocals.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled tech death and europower reviews!


RATING - 65%

Check out Metantoine's site! He may speak a funny, dead language and like a terrible hockey team, but he's a great writer in spite of that.