Soul Remnants - Plague of the Universe

CHUPWUUUAHLK

Sometime in 2009, I received an album in the mail.  This wasn't unusual, as I was writing for Metal Crypt at the time, and got plenty of promos, whether I asked for them or not.  I usually knew they were coming, or if I'd gotten one by surprise it'd also come with contact information so I could let the band know I received it and to link them the review when I was done.  That's what makes this particular album so strange.  It wasn't affiliated with any label that MC frequently dealt with (like Sevared or Metal Blade), the band hadn't requested anything from the site nor myself to my knowledge, and the package didn't come from the owner/webmaster of the site (usually he'd get piles of promos and then ship them out to reviewers).  This was... just kind of out of nowhere, with no contact information, from an address I didn't recognize.  This album, of course, was Plague of the Universe, by the unfairly obscure Massachusetts death metal outfit, Soul Remnants. 

Plague of the Universe has a couple things going for it that help set it apart from the legions of American death metal bands nowadays, and one of those is the fact that it has a pretty solid footing in that 1991 sound that Cannibal Corpse never left behind, with a very harsh, atonal thrash bent at times.  Instead of just going for all out brutality, over the top technicality, or a nasty, swampy atmosphere (the three most popular approaches to death metal nowadays, it seems), Soul Remnants never forgets that they're still writing music, and therefore each track comes off as its own self contained song, instead of a cog in a greater machine.  Both of these approaches are equally valid, but the ear catching collection of real songs seems to be a real rarity in death metal nowadays, with most albums being defined by an overarching feeling or theme.  That's not to say there's no theme to this here, as it's most certainly unified by infectious hooks in the riffs, a very powerful drum sound, and excellent, Ross Dolan-esque vocals.  Really, the vocals are a huge draw here, as they just sound like a roar from beyond hell itself.  Like the incredible Mads Haarlov, whom I always point to when examining great DM vocals, this sounds less like a man changing how his voice sounds, and more like he simply wasn't human in the first place.  The outro of "Rememberance" is a great example, with that massive "I SEE MY DESTINY" part.  Oh man that shit is just too cool.

Despite there being plenty of tracks that could be considered on the lengthy side, nothing here feels like it drags or was stretched out for the purpose of artificial padding.  The songs all flow very naturally, from one excellent proto-death riff to the next brutal tremolo section, everything has an inherent sense of melody that keeps it interesting throughout all the different twists and turns the record takes.  The melodies are surprisingly prevalent despite never being made the focus, and it just makes the record even more layered and interesting than it already is.  It's actually pretty difficult to assess each individual component that makes Soul Remnants tick, as no real member stands out as being leagues above the rest of the band (apart from possibly the vocals).  Soul Remnants work as one cohesive unit, just like the Boston Bruins (I'd like to make a joke about Boston losing the Cup to my Blackhawks, but I'd rather not rub it in (but just remember it only takes 17 seconds to prove who's the best, chumps!)). 

You know how I'm always throwing praise at Sectu for taking the idea of Immolation and making it more accessible?  Well Plague of the Universe takes the same idea and does it just as well.  There's pretty much nothing I don't like, and if there are any issues with the album, it's that I feel like the last couple songs start to lose identity a bit, but it's really only a small problem when compared to how great the other elements of the album are.  It all ranges from the fast and furious ("Chopwork") to the huge and triumphant ("Burning Reflection"), and it's all done extraordinarily well.  Definitely one of the better death metal bands out there nowadays, it's a shame they haven't released anything in about three and a half years.  I also learned while writing this review that the vocalist (Mitchell Fletcher) is married to Mallika Sundaramurthy, who most people recognize as the pretty face bellowing behind the mic for Abnormality, but what most people should recognize her for is the fact that she fronts not only one of the only three good bands on Sevared Records, but also potentially the most engaging and all around best BDM band around, releasing one of the best albums of last year with Contaminating the Hivemind.  Perhaps there's some idea sharing in the family?  I find it hard to believe that two of the best vocalists for two of the best bands in New England manage to live together and not rub off on one another.  Definitely one of the better surprises I've stumbled across throughout all my years of reviewing.

Sorry it took four years to actually review, guys!


RATING - 92%

Exmortus - Beyond the Fall of Time

#YGOD

SERIOUSLY?!  This album is... I dunno, it's a miracle.  I have no fucking clue how it managed to end up sucking as much as it does.  Really, if anybody remembers nearly five years ago, Exmortus's debut full length, In Hatred's Flame, landed a near perfect score from me.  It was such a delicious hodgepodge of over the top technicality and low brow catchiness.  It's was big, dumb, fast music for big, dumb, fast people like me, and I ate that shit up.  I've since gone back and revisited it, and you know what?  It's still fucking awesome.  Really, that debut pretty much perfectly showed what you could do by putting a new, modern spin on a few styles that were starting to get stale, and the songwriting was so stellar and the performance was so theatrical and bombastic, there wasn't a whole lot to complain about.  If you can go back and not rip shit apart to "Triumph By Fire" or "War Gods", you're dead inside.  Exmortus was seriously a defining band for me, a milestone in my life, and I rank the show where they headlined above Vektor and Diamond Plate in 2009 (before any of these bands sucked), three days before Christmas in the back room of a bar that resembled a subway tunnel as a top ten show for me, even if there was only like thirty people there.  The performances were all so exuberant and energetic, and none more so than Exmortus.  This was a band on fire, ready to destroy every goddamn thing in their path.

And then Beyond the Fall of Time happened.  I wish I could understand what the hell happened to everything during the time between the two records.  I'm not kidding when I say that not one aspect from the debut has been improved upon, and in fact they have all gotten worse.  The production and the vocals are the two most obvious, but the fiery leadwork and interesting songwriting are probably the two most important things to take a nosedive.  Really, apart from the intro to "Entombed with the Pharaohs" and the verse riff for "Black XIII", I don't see a whole lot to sneeze at.  The riffs aren't nearly as creative as they once were, and instead sound like a much less death metal influenced and much less intense version of Revocation as opposed to the passionate thrash/melodeath/Bodom style they used to exemplify.  I always rallied against them being lumped in with the whole rethrash scene along with Skeletonwitch and Vektor, but it's a bit harder to make that argument now.  A lot of the extraneous influences have been stripped away in favor of a more basic thrash sound this time around, and the songwriting suffers greatly as a result.  This is strange because I feel like Beyond the Fall of Time is meant to be a much more ambitious effort than its predecessor, what with there being three interlude tracks and four tracks over six minutes in length and all.  It's not often you see a band get less creative when it comes to tackling something with a bigger endgame in mind.  But yeah, it's mostly just a thrash album now, whereas before it'd be pretty misleading to simply refer to In Hatred's Flame as a thrash album.  It's pretty disappointing.

Every major problem with the album makes itself known within the first minute or so of "Kneel Before the Steel" (which the band has been trying hopelessly to turn into a catchphrase).  The production, instead of that full, beefy, and raw sound of the previous album has been replaced with a very plastic sounding botch-job.  What was once drenched in reverb and natural aggression hasn't been "cleaned up" as much as it's just been "fucked with".  Everything feels damp and muffled now, with the drums in particular sounding very wooden and dry.  The opening drum fills really make that apparent very early on, and the main riff just sounds really half hearted.  But when the vocals start... oh man what happened?  Despite seeing them live twice, I really do fail in the sense that I can't remember who handled a majority of the vocals, Conan or Balmore.  But seeing that Balmore has since left the band and Conan is the only one credited with vocals on this album shows that it must have been Balmore, because they sound completely different.  Instead of the deep roars of the past, we're presented with a much sillier sounding grunt most of the time, with these boundlessly stupid and ill-fitting falsettos thrown in occasionally.  This must be counted among the worst vocal shifts in metal history, because this new sound neither sounds good on its own, nor does it fit with the band's music in the first place.

If I have to give props anywhere, I can still at least say that while the leads and solos aren't as good as they could be, they're still pretty unrestrained and over-the-top, which is what I liked about them in the first place.  And while the vocal performance is pretty awful, I at least give it some credit for attempting to be more varied, and I suppose "Entombed with the Pharaohs" is decent enough to at least be a b-side from In Hatred's Flame.  I hate to pull the Torture Squad card and constantly compare everything this band does to one release, but it's so hard with that shadow looming overhead.  On its own, Beyond the Fall of Time is an ultimately forgettable technical thrash album with bad vocals and cool guitars, but as a followup to In Hatred's Flame, it's a complete, laughable failure.  There are flashes of the band's previous brilliance here and there, but it's almost always in the form of grey reimaginings of what we already know they can do better.  Maybe the new vocals are the biggest problem, or maybe it's the plasticky production, I'm not sure entirely.  The whole package is less than the sum of its parts, and really it's not worth seeking out.


RATING - 41%

Gargoyle - Kijuu

An experiment in criticism/Gargoyle fanboying

Now, Gargoyle has a very lengthy, fruitful, and illustrious history.  Pretty much every phase of their career is worth checking out, and even if I feel like some of them fall a bit flat (like Natural or Gaia), every album has at least one absolutely killer standout track (like fucking "Meditation").  But despite how important it probably is to understand Gargoyle's back catalog when it comes to dissecting any album in their career, I'm going to leave all that out for today.  No no, for today, we are simply going to focus on the band's sixteenth (!) full length album, 2013's Kijuu.  This review, so as to not scare off any curious readers, will treat Kijuu in its own little microcosm.  No other Gargoyle album exists, and I swear that after this sentence I will not namedrop another album from the band's past (but seriously newbies, check out Furebumi and Tsuki no Toge!).

One thing the Osakan warriors in Gargoyle have been able to prove here is their mastery of creating ear catching riffs that don't particularly sound like anybody else.  It's somewhat hard to explain, but you can feel that the band has a really distinct style of thrash riffing that sounds almost completely alien to what one would expect from a thrash band.  The prevalence of melody is completely over the top, and the riffs are much less straightforward than roughly 100% of their peers, taking on odd, herky jerky rhythms and bizarre note choices but fitting them into such a unique template in such a fitting way that there's really nothing to complain about.  Take something like "Yume Kajitsu" for example, as the verse riffs, while not necessarily weird, are certainly somewhat unorthodox, especially with the very prominent lead lines all over the place. That intrinsic melody that intertwines with the riffs that I usually attribute to something extraordinarily wanky like Arsis is on full display here, especially in tracks like "Face of Fate" and "SLA".  Most overtly though, Kijuu is catchy as shit.  Tracks like "SLA", "ABC", "Junketsu Sanctuary", and most prominently, "Kerberos" will bore their way into your skull and refuse to leave for days at a time.  Seriously, "Kerberos" manages to be the best and most memorable song on the album despite being the shortest song on display.  The hilarious accent only adds to the memorability.

OPAH DUH GATES ABU ELL!
KE-RU! BE-ROS!

They toy with a couple ideas here, like the fun, bouncy energy of "Sokonuke Jinsei Game" or the slower, more monolithic track in "Gudon", which doesn't do a whole lot for me.  If nothing else, it stands out for being the only song of it's kind on the album, with this huge, slow, grinding riffs over the crazy vocals.  Which, now that I think about it, really need to be highlighted here.  Kiba's vocals are one of a kind, with a really deep rattle coming from the back of his throat.  It's pretty hard to explain, but once you hear it, it'll be completely unmistakable for the rest of your life.  It's the low rattle that really helps give the band identity along with the stellar riffs.  It's impossible to describe riffs through text, but the very quick, sharp riffs on tracks like "Junketsu Sanctuary", "Inochi no Kizu", and especially "Kerberos" are among the best of the year thus far, and that's not to mention the great tremolo riffs in tracks like "Face of Fate" and "SHIT Shitto SHIT", the latter of which rides on a really groovy main riff for most of the time as well, alternating between that and near blast beats under fast palm muted tremolo thrashing.  There are absolutely wicked solos all over the place as well, since the ear for melody is so damn strong.  No matter how fast and wacky or deliberate and soulful the leads get, they almost always end up being very memorable and well written.  I can just keep throwing out examples until the cows come home, but Gargoyle's style is so difficult to describe that you truly do just need to hear it for yourself.

Kijuu's highlights are (for me) easily the mighty "Kerberos", the rip roaring thrash of "Inochi no Kizu", "The Gun", and "Junketsu Sanctuary", and the sheer embodiment of devil-may-care enthusiasm of "ABC".  This album is full of ideas, and while not all of them hit bullseye (the slower tracks in "Gudon" and "Yume Kajitsu" I can do without, and the chorus of "Face of Fate" is pretty crap), between the nardtard thrashing and the strange bounciness to be found throughout, there isn't a whole lot to dislike.  It's a very unique album, and there's pretty much nobody who sounds like Gargoyle anywhere else on the planet.  From their very distinct riffing sensibilities to the utterly inimitable vocals, they truly are one of a kind, and Kijuu shows that in spades.

(Okay, I have to cave and bring up the biggest flaw of the album is simply that it just isn't as creative as what the band is normally known for.  I said I wouldn't compare it against other albums, but Gargoyle pretty much defies description unless you're already familiar with the band.  In it's own little microcosm, Kijuu is fantastic, but when it comes to modern Gargoyle, you can do much better with Kisho or Kuromitten.  Even the best songs here like "Junketsu Sanctuary" remind me a lot of better songs from better albums, like "Amoeba Life" from Tenron.  The neat flourishes they used to revel in have all but been abandoned for a more stripped down approach ever since roughly Kemonomichi, and this is the first time where the songwriting (while as unique as ever) just simply isn't as up to par as the band can usually muster.  Kijuu certainly isn't worth skipping, as "Kerberos" is one of the better songs the band has written in a decade or so, but it's just simply underwhelming when compared to the previous three or four albums.)


RATING - 81%

Murder Made God - Irreverence

The world let out a resounding "meh"

Murder Made God...

I sat there with that potential opening line for like, two or three hours.  Irreverence here is so goddamn boring that there's just nothing to talk about.  It's tech death, that's all there is to it.  They used to be a wiggery slam band when they went by the name Human Rejection.  That's not very interesting because none of that influence can be found on this album, so it's moot point, who cares?  Not I, not you, not the tech death geeks nor the slam bogans, nobody.  This is a pointless, redundant album that nobody cares about and nobody should care about, that's basically the end of that.

Really, Murder Made God remind me a lot of Hour of Penance, just with more stop start parts.  Really, I may not have reviewed them to date, but I've been pretty vocal about how much of a raging Hour of Penance fanboy I can be, so at the very least that similarity makes the band tolerable.  I won't tardrage and start ripping people apart if they come on the radio (I live in a fantasy world where stuff like this plays on the radio), but I don't see myself listening to this very often once I finish this review.  And yeah, this is gonna be a really short one, because what really can you say about this?  It's really fast, it's really intense, the vocals are deep roars, the guitars chug at an inhumanly fast pace, and the drums are absurdly fast and technical.  There, that's all there is to say, what more do you want me to do?  I mean, there is a pretty cool riff in the chorus of "Aberrant Curse", but that's one of the few memorable moments.  Remember how I derided Cytotoxin for being good but utterly pointless?  Well yeah, I'm willing to bet that fans of Cytotoxin will flock to Murder Made God as well, because it's the same basic idea.  Hyperfast brutality with no original ideas. 

Now I know I can be a bit of an asshole when it comes to moderating the review queue at MA, and people can be upset when I reject a review for not being descriptive enough.  "The description is very vague and glossed over, and could describe any random [genre] band".  So I need to be a hypocrite here for a second and say that yes, this review could describe any random brutal tech death band, but the reason is because this sounds like any random brutal tech death band.  I mean, it's pretty decent, but I'm probably saying that because I love this particular style so much.  There's nothing to help this band stand apart from the legions of bands that sound exactly like this.  Super fast, not necessarily technical in the same sense as something like Decrepit Birth (it's not very weedly or noodly), but it's very riffy and pummeling, but it never really sticks with you.  It's cool when it's on and it doesn't exist when it's over.  I wish more bands could manage to make this style as memorable as others can (like the obvious one I keep mentioning or the first Fleshgod Apocalypse album).  Worth a look if you're a fan of the style, but it doesn't really have any staying power, unfortunately.


RATING - 54%

Lonewolf - Army of the Damned

Bumming Wild

Lonewolf is... uh, kind of a difficult band to critique.  I say this because these Frenchmen seem to be most renowned for one, and only one, thing.  They are probably the most blatant and shameless Running Wild clone on the face of the planet right now, with the only other real contenders being the (superior) Blazon Stone.  While the Swedes take influence from the early middle era of the legendary band (as if their name wasn't a big enough clue), Lonewolf here takes a window every so slightly more recent.  Basically instead of spanning the Death or Glory - Pile of Skulls era, they take the influence from the Pile of Skulls - The Rivalry era.  Considering I'm sure a raging RW fanboy, and since Rolf has been steadfastly dragging the band's name through the mud lately, I should be happy that a couple good worship acts are here to fill the void in my life, right?

Well, kinda.  It's certainly neat to hear a band take such obvious influence from one of the greatest metal bands to ever exist, but it's also exceedingly lame when they put absolutely no effort into putting their own spin on it.  Lonewolf is a carbon copy of Running Wild's sound on The Rivalry, and that's really about as deep as the description goes.  It's loaded with high tempo rockers with plenty of double bass, and most importantly those triumphant tremolo picked melodies all over the place.  That is really the most obvious element they've decided to just take and do nothing interesting with, but even the utter lack of creativity is softened somewhat by the simple awesomeness in these melodies.  Even when it's a totally redundant band ripping off a far greater band, those damn melodies will always manage to pump me up.  If there're any two things that really separate Lonewolf from Running Wild, it's the power metal influence and the vocals.  Yeah, Army of the Damned here may be a complete ripoff of mid-90s Running Wild, but it's a tad closer to power metal than my favorite Germans ever got.  So for that, we get a slightly quicker average tempo and a bit more double bass, but otherwise this is still among the most obvious worship bands this side of Warhammer.

The second biggest difference is the vocals, and holy shit they suck.  I wish I could describe them accurately, but it's just so hard to do with words.  They sound like that fucking HONK HONK laugh that Pee-wee Herman does, but with a French accent.  I'm sure that sounds hilarious, and at first it really does, but good lord does it wear thin quickly.  This is not the sound a lead vocalist should strive for, in any medium.  I guess as a background thing or in part of a group vocal, it sounds fine, but when it's the most prominent aspect of the album outside the melodious guitars, it's really grating and distracting.  It's a shame because the guitars are really good (in both the leads and those juicy, juicy melodies), but the vocalist just really needs to chase his next shot of whiskey with some drain cleaner.  There's a difference between a voice having grit and just sounding comically ridiculous.

This is another one I can't really go on at length about because I've already said everything there is to say twice.  It sounds like Running Wild with a terrible vocalist, quod erat demonstrandum.  The title track has a nice chorus and "Hellbent for Metal" is really catchy, but past that I really can't recommend for anybody other than Running Wild fanatics who really want some new music in that style to help assuage the pain of Shadowmaker.  Otherwise skip it, there's nothing to see here.


RATING - 40%

Power Trip - Manifest Decimation

Ripping and tearing

Crossover thrash does indeed have a pretty literal definition: "a mix of thrash metal and hardcore punk".  And yet with this fairly loose and open ended with a ton of theoretical wiggle room, a vast majority of the bands playing the style seem totally content to just be DRI or MOD with lyrics about partying, pizza, nachos, Ninja Turtles, yadda yadda you know the deal.  The legions of Municipal Waste clones really drag the entire scene down, and proclaiming yourself as a fan of the genre pretty much automatically pins you with the stigma of flat billed caps, sleeveless denim, skateboards, beer, and pubic lice.  That's why Power Trip here is so refreshing, because it actually is a pretty neat combo of thrash and hardcore, a pretty literal one we don't see very often. 

Coming off the doom/sludge/black/drone drenched roster of Southern Lord, these Texans come flying out of the gate with unbridled aggression, and a serious hardcore influence that makes their presence on the label not seem too crazy.  From the moment Manifest Decimation kicks into gear, it spends the the next half hour just pounding its way into your skull with a very dirty, gritty sound.  This isn't your typical party thrash that "crossover" usually makes you think of, this is fucking vicious.  A big part of this is the production job, which is just stellar.  Everything sounds huge, but it's not particularly clear.  It's very gritty and drenched in echo and reverb, like it's being played inside a tunnel.  The vocals are the most obvious example.  The production job actually does well in highlighting the aggression and sharpness of the riffs, so I see no reason to complain about it.  It's a little unorthodox, but so is a crossover thrash album with an average song length around four minutes.

As I mentioned, the old school hardcore influence is very prevalent, and mixes gorgeously with the highly prominent thrash.  The mark Black Flag left on this band is pretty goddamn huge, and it helps them stand out from the legions of simple Cross Examination types of bands in the scene.  Manifest Decimation takes one part Black Flag, one part Slayer, and one part Kreator, thereby creating some of the most outwardly ferocious music to be released this year.  It's dripping with vitriol, and throughout the entire runtime of the album, I find myself enjoying it.

There is one somewhat major problem.  Most of the songs... just, well aren't very memorable.  They're fun while they're on and provide an excellent soundtrack with which to beat your chest and punch strangers, but after spinning this roughly a dozen times, the only songs or riffs that really stick out to me in any way are "Manifest Decimation", "Power Trip", and "Hammer of Doubt".  So this is kind of a flash in the pan type album, but it's incredibly good for being one.  So overall, Power Trip still stands as a welcome breath of fresh air in a very stagnant scene that is in dire need of innovation.  The only really innovation the band makes it to bring in some more old school west coast hardcore influence than most bands, but it's still a nice change of pace, and the lengthy songs are also a neat spin on the usual template.  It may not stick with you, but it's worth a listen, if nothing else.


RATING - 75%

Daisuke Ishiwatari - BlazBlue in L.A. Vocal Edition

PREPARE FOR BANG!

Now this is a somewhat stranger one for me, but honestly, this gets a ton of playtime from me.  Daisuke Ishiwatari is best known for being the brains behind the popular Guilty Gear series of fighting games, wherein he wrote all of the music, designed the characters, and voiced the main antagonist.  A few years back, he but that series to rest and started up the new franchise, BlazBlue.  Now, I've always had an interest in Guilty Gear but never had an opportunity to play it, but I've been all up on BlazBlue's dick for a while now.  It's the most overtly Japanese thing I own, with characters including a loli with a giant magic wand and multiple personalities, a doctor with gigantic tits and a sentient six foot pole who is in love with an amorphous, black blob who is hell bent on eating everything, a catgirl with no face, no pants, and bright red panties who fondles and comments on every female character's boobs, an android girl with swords for wings and gold plated pubes, and my personal favorite, a half squirrel teenage girl with DDD cups and enough underboob to smother an entire family.  As much as I like ridiculous crap and overly technical fighting games that I'll never be good at (seriously, if you can do Arakune's 160 hit combo, you are either lying or you are a fucking freak), that actually isn't what initially drew me to the series.  No sir, it was the power metal soundtrack.  And while I definitely recommend checking out the original soundtracks for Calamity Trigger and Continuum Shift (including Extend, for the extra seventeen songs), for established fans, we have this neat little bonus album, BlazBlue in L.A. Vocal Edition.

All this really means is that eleven tracks from the previous soundtracks have been chosen and given vocal parts, that's all.  It's kind of a pointless cash grab, really, considering there's really no new music on display.  Nothing is rerecorded or rearranged or anything.  It's just the original tracks with a singer on top, belting out absurdly retarded and literal lyrics pertaining to the characters that each song represents.  That is without a doubt the worst part about the album, the completely mangled Engrish nonsense lyrics.  It shouldn't really matter in the long run, but that's really the entire point of the album at hand (to add vocals and lyrics to already written songs), it's kind of a huge problem.  Some of them I guess I can't be too mad at, like "Black Onslaught", because it did originally have terrible lyrics, they're just now sung by a much more competent singer. 

Oh yeah, there are three different singers here, all of varying degrees of quality.  First off we have the male vocalist with a super clean and nasally yet somehow still midranged voice who takes on tracks 1, 3, 8, 9, and 10, the male vocalist with some semblance of grit and energy who sadly only appears on tracks 2, 4, and 7, and lastly we have the female vocalist with a one octave range who tackles tracks 5 and 6.  The first male vocalist and the female vocalist duet track 11 together.  As I've alluded, that second vocalist is by far my favorite and is far better suited to the heavier tracks on display, so it's no surprise that "Gluttony Fang", "Susanoh", and "Black Onslaught" are the best tracks here.  Everything here is pretty uptempo power metal, but those three stand as the heaviest, with "Black Onslaught" just being a straight up melodeath song.  In fact, "Gluttony Fang" is by far the best track on the album period, as the riff at 0:17 is legitimately one of the better ones I've heard recently, and the completely awkward and ill fitting piano parts have been replaced with actual vocals.  I kind of wished they'd've done "Thin RED Line" for that same reason, though the strange cacophonous piano fits that track a bit more.

And while I'm whining about the track selection, "Rubble Song"?  Really?  Who listens to this high octane melodic power/melodeath soundtrack and says "Man, you know what would really hit the spot right now? A BALLAD!".  Get that shit out of here, son, it totally fucks up the flow of the album here.  Why couldn't they have chosen something like "Gale"?  At least that one is really upbeat and fun.  I should be in charge of this shit. 

But really, I'm nitpicking.  The new vocals don't really detract from anything, and most of the time add a fun new dimension to the songs fans already enjoy.  Sometimes the new melodies are really great, like "Under Heaven Destruction", while some others really suck, like "Awakening the Chaos".  In fact, that last one is the only song that really suffers from adding vocals, with the female vocals desperately lacking in range and just sounding horridly atonal in the most inappropriate spots, obscuring the incredibly engaging choirs of the original version.  That one dud aside, the rest of the album is very fun and cohesive, managing not to sound like a mere collection of tracks from a soundtrack and instead like a full album with just a bunch of guest singers.  There isn't a whole lot in the way of creativity, and the compositions are all structured pretty standardly, but it's well done enough to still be enjoyable.  Even with that said, I feel this is probably for fans of the games only, as most of these tracks won't mean much to non-fans (though I maintain that "Gluttony Fang" is a legitimately awesome track along with "Under Heaven Destruction", "Black Onslaught", and "Susanoh".  I'd definitely recommend starting with the original soundtracks, so as to get some great tunes that were left out of this compilation, like "Bullet Dance", "Thin RED Line", "Imperial Code", "Gale", and most importantly, the instrumental version of "Awakening the Chaos". 


RATING - 70%

Suffer the Wrath - Buried in Blood

Hammer PAOUWNDS, crushing BLAHOUWS

I have a thing for aesthetics and gimmicks, sorry, but I do.  That's not to say that a band full of dudes with beards and long hair blasting and growling about death and gore won't appeal to me, but a well executed gimmick can really tickle me in the right areas and do quite a service towards the initial exposure of your band.  You think I would have ever listened to something as awful as Winds of Plague if they didn't parade around the fact that they tried (though they failed) to implement epic keyboards into their otherwise brotarded deathcore?  Do you think GWAR (while thankfully also writing great music) would have nearly as huge of a fanbase as they do without their obnoxiously over-the-top stage show?  Fuck no, of course not.  One should always remember that the music is the number one most important aspect of a metal band, but to shy away from the theatrical side of heavy metal just does a great disservice to the inherently over-the-top nature of the music.  And that is where Suffer the Wrath comes in, because these dudes understand how to strike that sublime nexus between striking theatrics and punishing music.

This short, three song EP, Buried in Blood reminds me of the first Fleshgod Apocalypse album, which everybody should know is on its own plane of awesomeness.  Right from the get go, Buried in Blood lets loose with intricate, hyperspeed riffing and blisteringly quick percussion, backed by the hellish roar of the vocalist, and doesn't let up for the entire ten minutes of this tragically short excursion.  There is an inherent sense of melody vaguely running in the background the entire time, never bursting into the spotlight with blatant melodeath style leads, but just quietly plugging away in the background, naturally entwined with the riffing to give everything a very full, cohesive sound.  It's not the same execution as the complex melodic sensibilities of early Arsis or anything, but it's the same basic idea, which is to focus on the brutal but never fully lose the triumphant feeling that comes with the right melody in the background.  The fist pumping vocal hooks get this point across well, as this manages to be both unrelentingly brutal while also sounding like a rallying cry for an army laying siege to... well the entire planet.

But really, what were those theatrics I was talking about?  You see that dude on the cover there?  Yeah, that's the band's stage attire.  Samurai armor, Sauron helmets, and Kerry King gauntlets.  Quick, think of something more fucking awesome, I dare you.  Perhaps (most likely) it's just me, but the visuals of these generals of the encroaching dark army performing these wretched, twisted odes to decimation just adds an entirely new dimension to the music.  Buried in Blood is the audial equivalent to a senseless massacre in the way of utter domination, and I don't know about you, but I buy into what's being sold so much more when it's being sold by these imposing figures with ten foot spikes on their battle armor than a bunch of dudes named Steve who work part time at the pet store.

I wish there was more I could say, but there just isn't a whole lot of material here.  It isn't the most creative death metal on the planet, but it's serviceable and slathered in a stylish overcoat of gore of and the crushed skulls of the defeated.  I don't care if it's silly or juvenile, the stage gimmick here adds a lot to what would otherwise just be decently cool death metal, and I love it juuuuuust a little bit more for the extra effort put into the non-musical aspects.  Really, imagine a song like "Bones of my Enemies" from Usurper, now imagine it being played by Suffer the Wrath.  That already goddamn awesome track just got twice as goddamn awesome.

DRENCHED IN BLOOD


RATING - 84%

Gotsu Totsu Kotsu - Legend of Shadow

Future Drug, track 13

Bear with me folks, I'm just gonna gush for a few paragraphs here.

Gotsu Totsu Kotsu hails from the land of Ho-oh and Lugia, and they take great pride in their ancestral lineage.  I'm going to be honest, the cover art for Legend of Shadow is one of the first things that attracted me in the first place.  I can't explain it, but I adore that old style of Japanese art, and any band that utilizes it gets bonus points pretty much automatically (the initial reason I checked out Sigh in the first place wasn't because of the pretty saxophonist or because everybody was ejaculating over Hangman's Hymn at the time, it was because the cover for Infidel Art was just fucking awesome to me).  So yeah, it wasn't really my interest in Japanese metal nor my love of death metal that drew me towards GTK, but something as simple as their aesthetic choices and album art.  Fleshgod Apocalypse should take notes here.

Underneath the vibrancy of the cover art lies some of the most energetic, pulse-pounding death metal this side of Bolt Thrower.  Really, it took Legend of Shadow a mere three minutes to rocket itself into my top 5 albums of the year thus far.  The album starts off on a high note and just never falters afterwards.  One would really expect this to wear thin considering it's gargantuan running time of 75 minutes, but unlike fellow trio Krisiun's latest flop, The Great Execution, it never even comes close.  This is extraordinarily impressive considering that each song doesn't do a whole lot to throw curveballs at you within itself.  Many of them ride on two or three riffs for most of the duration, which is scary considering the average song length is like ten seconds shy of seven minutes.  But this is one of the biggest strengths of the band; their ability to take simple ideas and let them grow on their own.  Most of these tracks play out like very high tempo death metal jam sessions.  Instead of playing out like highly choreographed technical exercises like a huge contingent of death metal seems to do nowadays, it feels more like the band told each other what the general idea, tempo, and main riff of each song was, and then just kind of rode on it for a while while chucking in a couple solos and the occasional new section.  Legend of Shadow is a really "organic" album in this sense, and the old timey feeling and emotion that is poured into every song should really make the album impervious to the classic criticism of "there's no feeling, it's all just wankery, yadda yadda" that death metal can seem to attract at times.  The last track, "Fukeyo Kaze, Yobeyo Arashi" showcases this the most literally, as it really just feels like the bass jamming on a riff for a minute or two before the drums start complementing it and the guitar starts building a riff over it.  It doesn't even break into something that feels like it was rehearsed until the last minute and a half or so, the rest has a really laid back improv feel.

It also needs to be highlighted that Haruhisa Takahata has pretty much figured out exactly how to do everything right.  He's the vocalist and the bassist, and I feel it's no small coincidence that the vocals and bass are by far the two most interesting things on display.  Most longtime readers of mine have probably noticed that whenever I'm giving an example of top tier death metal vocals, I'm usually pointing to Mads Haarlov from Iniquity.  Takahata fucking nails what I love so much about Haarlov.  What comes out of his mouth is not a voice, nor a style of growling, it's simply the sound of a thousand demons condemning you to eternal damnation.  Seriously, these are some of the most hellish vocals I've heard in ages, they're so goddamn throaty and punishing.  The man is a beast, nothing less.  And his bass, oh lord his bass.  He plays like a death metal Flea, adding these slick flourishes of slap bass runs all over the place.  It feels like it could be gimmicky, especially since three songs come right out of the gate with a ridiculously fast slap bass part ("Harakiri", "Marishiten", and "Miburo no Ken"), but it's really not overdone in the context of the entire record.  Some tracks will go by without it ever rearing its head, others will just have it do it in the background, not at all hogging the limelight, while other times it'll even complement the frenetic fretboard fireworks of the guitar (like the end of "Fukushu no Syukushi").

Speaking of the guitar, the other two members of the band are great in their own right, but Gotsu Totsu Kotsu always comes together as one cohesive unit as opposed to three showboaters vying for the spotlight like you might expect judging by the bass's intensely flashy style.  One thing I really enjoy is that the drums are pretty much the opposite of what you'd expect for the genre.  Apart from one picosecond in the intro of the opening track and for a small bit during the drum solo that opens "Bushu no Kagerou", there is absolutely no blasting throughout the entire album.  Yeah, that's right, no blast beats, and no double bass above a relatively leisurely pace.  The percussion certainly takes a few cues from Bolt Thrower and Autopsy, that's for sure, but it injects it with a huge thrash presence.  Yeah, the thrash influence is very high on Legend of Shadow, but it'd be misleading to refer to the band as a death/thrash band despite the drums almost always being rooted in the hyperfast, German thrash style and the riffs sounding like they were written by Kreator but downtuned a few steps and covered in slime.  The feel here is 100% death metal, even when the other interesting little bits pop up.  Like the title track, "Kage no Densetsu" (thank you, Virtua Fighter and Legend of Mana for helping me translate that), rides on a riff that is decidedly rock n roll in flavor, but put through a death metal filter.  Pretty much everything about this album, even during the numerous high tempo segments, feels very laid back in its mentality, and that, to me, is the X factor with this album.

Everything feels very natural and organic, and despite how much I adore bands like Hour of Penance, I really can't slap that adjective onto many modern death metal albums.  Seriously, how many can match the sheer joyous feeling of victory in the outro of "Saigo no Rakujitsu"?  I'd wager next to none.  Gotsu Totsu Kotsu, with Legend of Shadow, aim for a fringe sound and nail it so decisively that I almost wish no other band even attempted to sound like them.  The whole idea of a death metal jam band with super high tempos, no blast beats, and slap bass sounds like a damn mad-libs exercise instead of a proper ensemble, but GTK have figured out how to make it work, and good lord I will not get off my knees about it.  I hate to hint at or give away my year end list as it grows and as the year goes on, but if this doesn't end up in my top 5 by year's end (most likely top 3, to be perfectly honest), I'll be utterly floored.


RATING - 96%

Cannibal Corpse - Gore Obsessed

TURTLEKILL TURTLEKILL TURTLEKILL TURTLEKILL

Okay, I'm definitely known to accentuate the negative, and there's no denying that I have a ton of fun tearing a bad album to shreds and that I love stirring up controversy and get an erection so hard that I could feasibly concuss a kitten with it whenever people talk about me or my writing.  It's just kind of what I'm good at, and I always criticize bands for not playing to their strengths, so what kind of hypocrite would I be if I didn't do the same thing?  But with that said, I personally feel I'm at my best when I'm being very positive (my personal favorites of my own are almost universally positive reviews), and so today I'm going to indulge everybody by putting an album up on a pedestal while berating everybody on the way up.  Yeah that's right, it's finally time for me to tackle Cannibal Corpse (just pretend I never reviewed Evisceration Plague four years ago).

I know it's odd to claim that what I'm damn sure is the most commercially successful and perpetually relevant death metal band of all time is underrated, but man you'd be amazed.  The metal underground seems to have this strange aversion to Cannibal at times, particularly the Corpsegrinder era (with a notable universal exception with Bloodthirst).

But BH, it all sounds the same!  They've been releasing the same album for twenty years now!  They were only good with Chris Barnes!

I'll never understand this fascination with deifying the Barnes era of the band.  Yeah, he was a much better lyricist than Alex and Paul (the two who have mostly taken over those duties since his departure), but as a vocalist he only managed to get through about an album and a half of the deep growl before just turning into this side-splittingly comical grumble on The Bleeding.  If nothing else, Corpsegrinder has managed to stay just as vicious and vitriolic as he always has been, even dating back to his time in Monstrosity.  And Gore Obsessed is no exception.  I love everything about Corpsegrinder, I love how he resembles a thumb, I love how he's one of the most recognizable faces of the band despite writing almost nothing since joining 18 years ago, I love how he sings as fast as a death metal version of Sean Killian, I love how his high vocals sound like a hardcore vocalist fucking a garbage disposal, I just love all of it.  He's pretty much the archetypical death metal frontman, and his vocal ability leaves nothing to be desired.  He gives it all in the studio and Gore Obsessed showcases his ability just as well as any other album, possibly even better than most.  In fact yeah, screw it, this album has the best vocal performance the band has ever given.  Seriously, the lows are more hellish than usual and the highs are more vicious than usual, Fisher really went above and beyond for this one, and while he has been incredible before and since, this one is pretty much the apex of his ability.

But of course, George is just one cog in the machine that is Cannibal, and the rest of the band is definitely at the top of their game here.  A wise man once posited this (and was largely ignored, like most geniuses in their time (though he wound up actually being a freakin' lunatic, so it's a wash)), but Cannibal Corpse really is the last bastion of that pure death metal sound from the early 90s.  After it had finally waded away from that primordial splooge of just being extraordinarily heavy thrash metal, around the time the guttural vocals became the norm and the blastbeat became less of a flair and more of a base; when song structures got more complex and melodies became darker and more twisted or just thrown out altogether in the name of atonal madness.  This is the exact moment that Cannibal has been relishing in since 1991.  Really, slap an old school production job on Torture and that release date could be 1993 and nobody would bat an eyelash.  They've never felt the need to drastically reinvent themselves, and they have been completely correct to not do such a thing.  They've struck gold in staying constantly relevant by helping to shape a seminal style of extreme metal and then waving that flag everywhere they go.  There's no need for them to take the Deicide route and start adding in neoclassical solos ala Necrophagist, or take heaps of influence from Devourment or something and just get super brutal and crushing.  No, they know what they're good at and they continually keep it fresh by simply just being incredibly talented songwriters.  That's not to say they haven't evolved, because any fan can tell that they clearly have.  With each new album, the compositions get slightly more developed, more well thought out, just a bit speedier, tighter, and more complex.  But even so, they keep themselves grounded in that style they helped found, and that alone makes them more interesting than the legions of DDR bands who just continually do the whole "Like Incantation, but... uh, Incantationier" thing a million times over.

All of that comes into play here on Gore Obsessed.  It'd be misleading to say "you know what this sounds like already", because that implies that Cannibal hasn't had a new idea in ages, but on the other hand, all the elements they've always employed are here in full force.  Paul's incredibly tight drumming with a deafeningly powerful sound pervades like always, and his performances are a huge part of the band's sound.  Really, his blasts may not be as impressively fast as somebody like Mauro Mercurio or any ridiculous tech death band, but they are almost infinitely more powerful.  And even so, he's still a very good death metal drummer and never feels like he's in over his head.  The accusations of him being the Lars Ulrich of death metal and complaints about him being too slow will always baffle me.  Not only are they demonstrably false (check "Pit of Zombies", "Drowning in Viscera", "Dormant Bodies Bursting", et cetera), but by that logic, Mike Smith, Steve Asheim, and Pete Sandoval are also terrible drummers because they don't play as fast as the dudes from Brain Drill or Decrepit Birth.  Pull your heads out of your asses, kids, Paul Mazurkiewicz is a damn fine drummer, and anybody else behind the kit would simply change the entire dynamic of the band.  His groove heavy style is just as important as Asheim's relentless blasting in Deicide.

On one hand, I feel like there aren't as many standout riffs here as there are on some other releases (especially ones that would come later, like "Purification by Fire" from Kill or "Demented Aggression" from Torture), but on the other hand, the cliche holds true where Gore Obsessed makes up for the relative lack of standout moments by just having potentially the tightest and most consistent collection of tracks the band has ever put together.  In a way, this is kind of a "back to basics" album, since little flourishes like Webster's ridiculous bass runs are all but absent here apart from the closing track, but the songwriting continued its upward progression around this time, so what we have are a collection of songs that are marginally thrashier than what they'd done for the decade prior, but still managed to get tighter and more complex in the process.  Really, something like "Pit of Zombies" or "Compelled to Lacerate" showcases this brilliantly.  It's simpler than the blisteringly complex Bloodthirst that preceeded it, but I almost feel that it's a better representation of what Cannibal stands for.  And even with that said, there are still neat little quirks like that backmasked intro to "Sanded Faceless" or the impressively lengthy screams in "Mutilation of the Cadaver" and "Hung and Bled".  Their trademark slow song this time around ("When Death Replaces Life"), is also potentially the best the band has ever released, even above classics like "Death Walking Terror" and "Festering in the Crypt".  And unlike those, it even builds to an exhilarating climax, and the whole song just gets faster and faster as it goes on.  Even the Metallica cover is incredibly fun.  They really just did everything with this album, and all of it hits bullseye.

Gore Obsessed may not be the apex of their career, but it's pretty goddamn close, and it's potentially my personal favorite from the band.  It's in the top three at the very least.  It may not have something as instantly recognizable like "Make a Sandwich", "Fucked with a Knife", "Hammer Smashed Face", "Skull Full of Maggots", "Death Walking Terror", "Pounded into Dust", or "Stripped, Raped, and Strangled", but the overall quality is freakin' astronomical, and if you can't lose your mind to "Savage Butchery", "Hatchet to the Head", or "Grotesque" at the very least, then I don't know what to say to you.  "Grotesque" is seriously a top ten all time song for the band, and it needs more love, most definitely.  That chugging part at the end of the verses when Corpsegrinder is just hollering TURTLEKILL TURTLEKILL over and over again?  Sublime!  This is easily one of Cannibal's best, and I'd genuinely recommend it as a starting point when looking to get into the Corpsegrinder era of the band.

If you don't like Cannibal Corpse, you don't get to pretend you like death metal.


RATING - 93%