Whispered - Shogunate Macabre

Premature Ejapulation

Years ago, I stumbled across Whispered.  The idea of a band taking the Children of Bodom/Ensiferum hybrid style, making it heavier, and injecting the folk influences with traditional Japanese melodies/instruments just sounds like the kind of thing that was invented with the sole purpose of appealing to my insanely specific and fringe-stupid eccentricities.  Really, how does that not sound like the most awesome thing ever?  Over the top ridiculousness, crazy soloing, and pompous bombast with an Oriental flavor?  God damn I'm getting hard just typing it out, it's so beautiful.  So of course, you can imagine my disappointment when Thousand Swords wound up being completely forgettable.  I feel like this is a style that, while not impossible to fuck up, is at least close to impossible to make boring.  There are so many untapped wells of inspiration that could be unleashed within such a concept, and yet these Finns just relied on the same tired old tropes we've been hearing for over a decade at this point.

Well now, four years later, they've finally gotten around to releasing a followup, 2014's Shogunate Macabre.  And frankly, this is exactly as awesome as I had hoped Thousand Swords was going to be.

I can't stress enough how fluently melodic and simultaneously intense the album is, abusing hyperfast blasting and frenzied shamisen runs at every turn.  Tracks like "Jikiniki", "Fallen Amaterasu", and "Unrestrained" showcase this the best, being uncontrollable bursts of energy, loaded with more hooks than your dad's tackle box.  Part of me feels like they overuse the technique where the guitars ride on an extremely fast, single note tremolo while the drums blast at sextuple time underneath haunting choirs, but they pull it off so well every single time that it happens that I really just can't fault the band for doing it so often.  It's like the slow, epic bridge in every single Gamma Ray song ever or that super slick drum pattern that Melechesh uses so frequently, it's just a nice little trademark of the band as far as I'm concerned.  Add those unrelentingly pummeling moments with oodles and oodles twangy melodies and ballistically precise melodeath/power riffs and Hatebreeder-style leads, and you've got a recipe for sublimity.

One thing that this nailed over its predecessor is doubtlessly the pacing.  Thousand Swords was spaced out with a lot of very long songs with very little happening within them, and as a whole the entire album felt bloated and unnecessary.  Shogunate Macabre fixes this by compacting the songs into much more manageable lengths, almost entirely devoid of any pointless noodling (though that still does unfortunately rear it's head at times, like the completely out-of-left-field saxophone solo in "Kappa").  The more concise structure lends itself to much more memorable songs, since the hooks are more efficiently sprinkled throughout each song instead of struggling through long periods of nothing to find them.  The way the album is organized, with three fast songs, three mid paced songs, and one more fast one before the epic closer, has a lot of potential to go horribly awry with how cut-and-separate it is, but it manages to instead keep the album flowing with a natural current.  It feels like an organic adventure as opposed to a collection of tunes (which isn't inherently good or bad, mind you).  The slower songs inject some interesting bits from time to time, like the aforementioned sax solo or the frequent clean vocals in "One Man's Burden", though I can't say the songs are improved too horribly much due to their inclusion.  I won't say they're meandering or unnecessary, just that the faster songs with huge doses of melody and ridiculously catchy leads and hooks are far more fun to listen to, is all.

Granted, I realize I'm drooling over this because I meet a very specific set of requirements for this album to have this effect on me.  I'm willing to bet most metal fans don't whack off to a soundtrack of Victory Songs and They Will Return while playing Samurai Warriors and spending the free time trying to understand Kiba's ridiculous accent in order to warble along with any given Gargoyle song.  I realize I'm a strange guy who loves the sound of Japanese traditionalism and the notoriously noob-friendly territory of melodic death/power metal like Bodom, Kalmah, Skyfire, and such.  So really, your mileage my vary, but for me, in regards to my personal eccentricities, this is the kind of album I've been silently praying for for years.  Shogunate Macabre delivered on the promise that Thousand Swords skimped on, and I couldn't be happier for that.


RATING - 89%

Lost Horizon - A Flame to the Ground Beneath

Sam Jewkowsky

This is another one I don't think I'll ever fully understand.  Lost Horizon, once upon a time, was probably the most hyped power metal band in the universe (at least on the corners of the internet I frequent), and they're still cited as one of the few examples of great Europower from people who can't stand Europower.  Now I, as a noted Europower fanatic (stop lying to yourselves and embrace Rhapsody and Nightwish already, dammit), this filled me with conflicted anticipations.  On one hand, surely they must be one of the most impressive bands in the style if they can transcend fandoms so seamlessly, but on the other hand, there must be something wholly different about them that makes them so easily removed from their geographical scene.  After nearly a decade of listening to this album roughly once a year, I think I can finally speechify my feelings towards Lost Horizon.

They rule, they suck, they're middle of the road, and most of all, they're disappointing.

Honestly, I still struggle to give a concrete answer as to how I view them from a qualitative standpoint.  I think there's a ton of potential at play, and there are some stunningly brilliant moments thrown around from time to time, but there are also long stretches where I find myself checking how much time is left in the song because it's just starting to bore me so much.  The band tends to be both awesome and lame at the same time, and at the end of the day I think the most poignant phrase I can use to describe them is "wasted potential" or "high-quality disappointment".

I know I have a habit of letting hype taint my views of a band, but I'm not even letting that in when discussing Lost Horizon.  They're so disappointing to me because Daniel Heiman is, without a doubt, one of the most talented vocalists I've heard in all of power metal.  Seriously, I don't think I've ever heard a more sublime balance of power, control, and range.  There are guys who have some qualities but lack others, like Joacim Cans of Hammerfall who is magnificently controlled, but wimpy as shit and sports what seems to be a half octave range, or Jens Carlsson of Persuader who sports a fairly impressive range and enough power to provide electricity to a small village, but sometimes flays wildly around like he's just lost himself entirely (in this case I don't view it as a bad thing, but from a technical sense it's not as impressive as Heiman).  Heiman is incredibly strong and incredibly clean at the same time, punctuating his performance with eardrum bursting high notes surprisingly tastefully.  He also uses his voice as a third guitar for many moments, notably "Highlander", where he has several moments of choreographed flourishes where his voice is carrying a melody that most other bands would logically use a guitar for.  I seriously cannot stress enough how impressive he is as a vocalist and how tastefully he showcases his talents.

This is such a bloody shame because the rest of the band is about as by-the-numbers and dull as you can imagine.  This band gets a lot of love from non-Europower fans for odd reasons like "they're Europower without the faggotry" or "they're just better, obviously", when really this is about as gay as any random Italian flower metal band.  I don't know what qualifies as the "gay" elements in the style, but there's no lack of major scale melodies, huge synths, soaring vocal melodies, double bass, catchy choruses, it's all here.  The only difference is that all of it is dialed back to the point of tedium.  The band takes the idea of Swedish/German flower metal and just saps all of the batshit insanity out of it.  There are no booming symphonics, only subtle keys.  There are no obscenely poppy or catchy numbers, just moments where you'll catch yourself subtly nodding your head or tapping your foot.  There are no grand sweeping choruses, only simple melodies that, while effective, just kind of happen at a pedestrian pace and never do much to grab the listener.

But BH! You've basically just described German speed metal, which you always say is your favorite niche scene!

Yeah, kinda, except not at all.  Flower metal is usually just the foundation of that early speed metal I love so much with dozens of layers of sugary fun on top.  Constant double bass, huge melodies and bombastic orchestrations.  The problem is that Lost Horizon doesn't have those superfluous elements, nor do they even have that base.  They're not fast, they're not over the top, and they're not ridiculous or fun.

But BH!  That just sounds like USPM then, since it's based more on riffing prowess than melodies or vocals!

And oddly enough, USPM fans really seem to flock to Lost Horizon.  I can kind of understand why, since (while guitar/synth melodies aren't completely absent  (check something like "Think Not Forever")), the guitars seem to take a rhythmic focus most of the time.  If you take the goddamned immaculate vocals out of the equation, you're left with almost nothing of interest.  The rhythmic showcase is dull as shit because there are almost no interesting riffs to be heard.  This is why I can't fathom the USPM fans adoring A Flame to the Ground Beneath so much.  Blue collar USPM bands like Omen, Jag Panzer, Helstar, Manilla Road, and others are just loaded with neck breaking and creative riffage.  Whenever the pace picks up to a higher tempo, Lost Horizon just does the generic flower metal thing of just simple chord progressions with a ton of palm muting, and whenever it's at a more mid pace (which the band seems to be most comfortable with), it's just dull chugging or uninteresting meandering.  I feel like the band themselves understood that Heiman was the main draw here, and so nearly everything they do is simply a backdrop for his vocal acrobatics.  There is pretty much only one thing I can give the band credit for outside of the obviously brilliant frontman, and that's that the solos are insanely good.  When the guitarists decide to just let loose, holy crap they can really melt faces. 

I keep comparing Lost Horizon to scenes they're not really a part of, but the reason for that is that they come off to me like they're trying to play one style with the vision of another at times.  It's hard to tell which is leading which, but it comes off as kind of awkward.  Are they trying to take the over the top bombast of Europower and filter it through the more sophisticated lens of USPM?  Or are they taking the simplistic, down-to-earth attitude of USPM and putting it through the more grand scope of Europower?  It feels like both at times, and it just comes off as a worst of both worlds.  And really, the only reason I'm trying to compare the two styles is because of where the band's popularity stems from.  The real scene they fit into perfectly is the northern European prog/power scene, with bands like Tad Morose, Morgana Lefay, and Pagan's Mind.  Granted, I don't really like any of those bands all that much for the same reason I find myself so conflicted with Lost Horizon.  Musically, they just bore the crap out of me.  A Flame to the Ground Beneath is loaded with great moments that all involve one member, and the rest of the band does next to nothing interesting or worthwhile.  There are a whopping six real songs that aren't ambient interludes, and half of them are 8 minutes or more.  They're structured creatively and Heiman is entertaining as always, but they just drag on for what seems like forever, and whenever it's at an instrumental section I just find myself yawning, waiting for the singer to come back.

That's the biggest problem with A Flame to the Ground Beneath to me.  It's focused on things like "maturity" and "songwriting", and I'm putting those words in "air quotes" because they so frequently seem like codewords for "boring" and "not at all entertaining".  Maturity is paying your mortgage on time and reading the newspaper every morning over coffee, having fun is spending all of your money on beer and samurai swords and reading fantasy novels before leaving to go join your friends for an all night session of "let's see who can climb this tree and jump into the lake with the most backflips".  I know what I'd rather do, is all I'm saying.  It's no different here, the songs are presented as something like a "thinking man's metal" but it just comes off sloppy and trite until Heiman shows up and wails like a banshee.  The problem is that so much of the album's running time is taken up by mid paced banality, with no instrumental segments seeming to try to break out of the greater whole of mediocrity.  There are moments of great songwriting, like the chorus of "Lost in the Depths of Me" or the final stretch of "Highlander", but on the whole it just feels like filler in between the vocal showcase.  Honestly, all of the most cliche parts (when the band goes for a more straightfoward section with double bass and big melodies) are all the highest points of the album.  This is a band that could benefit from being more predictable and typical.  Honestly, if they embraced the ideals of sugary, over-the-top flower metal, they could easily reign as a top tier band.  I get that fun wasn't really the aim of the band, but this isn't fun to listen to.  There's no sense of entertainment from the vast majority of the album.  Something like, I dunno, The Crimson Idol isn't fun at all, but it's rewarding in some capacity.  A Flame to the Ground Beneath is not rewarding in any way apart from the one obvious element that I can't stop fawning over.

I've been struggling to quantify exactly what percentage rating I'd give this album, and it's really because the good parts are extraordinarily good, but the majority of the album is just not worth listening to.  This was initially going to be part of my Jerking the Circle series (back when it was supposed to be seven reviews in seven days, before I got impatient), but I really can't bring myself to bestow the series title onto this because I kinda like it in a way.  If you took Heiman out of the equation, and replaced him with literally any other vocalist, this would score unbelievably low.  Like 20 or 30 percent.  But that's where the draw of the album comes into play, because he is so damn good that he makes the unbearably dull instrumentals and uninteresting songwriting just seem like a goddamn masterpiece.  But since he is the frontman, there is at least a small amount of enjoyment to be gleaned from the album.  I really, really wish he could find a more energetic and entertaining band to front, because he deserves to be in front of something that can actually get your blood pumping.  So in the end, a score in the fifties will have to suffice.  It's not a negative score, because this isn't a bad album, but it's not really worth recommending apart from the experience of just sitting in awe of Heiman's voice.


RATING - 55%

Lvcifyre - Svn Eater

Reviews like this don't just happen

Oh lord... here it comes again... I can feel it.  This rumbling, this warm, distant cacophony from deep within my gut.  It's becoming a frequent thing, especially over the last several years.  Perhaps it's the enhanced amount of fiber in my diet, or maybe it's simply a new routine I've been working myself into.  But regardless, this feeling is unmistakable.  I try fighting it, but the buzz grows louder with every passing moment.  I hear the dim rememberings of voices past and present in the darkest cockles of my subconsciousness.  "Dude, just go", "You won't regret it, seriously!", "I can tell, this one is going to be different", "Bill, I just shit myself".  Eventually, I can't fight it any longer, as the buildup has been immense.

I run to the bathroom.

Initially, the slow churning and grinding was moving along at a rather deliberate pace.  It felt as if the demons inside were preparing for their assault moreso than actually carrying it out.  Maybe it was a bluff?  Maybe there was no such violent attack planned in the first place? It felt like an eternity, I sat there, jaw agape, neck straining, waiting for something, anything to materialize.  All I could hear and feel were the distant rumblings of an all-too-familiar entity; a slowly awakening beast, sleepily pawing at the light at the end of the tunnel, trying to remember why it was even awakened in the first place.

It took slightly over nine minutes of drawn out, rumbling foreboding.  I felt the walls begin to bow outwards, and I knew it was time to put down my Gameboy and brace myself.  The Volcano Badge would have to wait, for I had my own Vesuvian catastrophe to worry about.  I curl my toes and and clench my fists, bracing myself for the inevitable supernova.  And sure enough, it delivered.  The initial eruption of burning malice was nothing short of inhumane.  It is a pain of the most middingly pleasurable kind.  The kind of thing I would not subject myself to frequently, but when it happens on its own, I gladly endure it, for I know the spoils are usually worth the struggle.  This blackened wretch of filth wasn't doing much to stand out from the other floods of vitriolic scorn that I find has become ever so prevalent as of late, but it was proving itself formidable nonetheless.  This violent purge was based in the death of all things, as if the very essence of life was pouring out of me.

Like most experiences of this nature, what lasted was a forty to fifty minute expunging of bubbling vehemence.  Despite the upfront nature of the beast, it (like most of these nasty things) feels to be off in the distance when in progress.  Despite the fact that the pummeling ferocity of the experience might cause me to grab the edge of the toilet seat for support while my skin flushes and all strength drains away in a maelstrom of fiery hatred from within the confines of my own bowels, it all feels to be emanating from a distant cavern in which I have zero plans of spelunking.  In a way it's almost frustrating because at no point in this expulsion did the pace ever change after the initial crescendo.  A fifty minute plateau of virulent sadism ends up being a rather unfulfilling sequence of events when there is so little time to breathe between the suffocating atmosphere of malice.  From the beginning to the end, you could have taken any snippet of this whole ordeal and played it back to me, and I'd've never been able to tell you how far along in the torturous endeavor I was.  I would take a minor courtesy flush every once in a while, but it's only a temporary reprieve from the demonic malediction.

And of course, when it all was over, I felt unsatisfied.  Color began to return to my cheeks and feeling to my fingers, but after the cleanup, there was no story to be told.  Yes, I'm well aware I'm telling you this story now, but this has become such a frequent occurrence that this really could have been any one of the dozens of other times I've sat through such an experience.  I mean, it's not something I dislike.  The beefy tones of utter demolition as they resonate off the porcelain are satisfying in that they rarely sound like there is no greater passion behind the push, and the far-off ululating of the demon at the forefront of this almost always sounds like something to be feared, but the utter indifference to the ideas of pacing and thematic variation within the vast annals of my lower intestine just end up being overwhelmingly dull.  At the end of the day, all I can really say is that I took a really big poop.  The poop wasn't more impressive than any of the other big poops I find myself experiencing, and it's quite a decent poop, but it's a poop I've pooped many times before, and if nothing else, maybe eating some Cap'n Crunch Oops All Berries to the stew some more vibrancy in hue would be welcome.

And I just wrote an entire review comparing Lvcifyre and the Dark Descent Records/OSDM Revival scene to taking a really nasty shit.  What have you done with your day?


RATING - 70%

Strapping Young Lad - City

I'm so fucking sick of all you sick, stupid people

January 18th, 2007

This is a special date for me.  Not only because I was sixteen years old and didn't have a single goddamn thing to stress over (being an adult sucks, best headbutt the sidewalk while you can, kids), but because I was stressing out anyways.  At this point in time, I was fighting some really rough undiagnosed depression/anxiety problems and struggling with an uncontrollable temper.  Basically I was any given stupid teenager, but I couldn't deal with any problems very well, no matter how small.  Everyday life was just impossibly difficult for me, each little misstep would result in me dwelling on it for days and just self flagellating myself in retaliation.  Every single day was just another exercise in trying to fight through legitimate mental issues via sheer willpower, convincing myself that these things I was experiencing were normal and that I was weak for struggling with it.  I was also experiencing those oh-so-embarrassing initial pangs of young love (not anything sweet or romantic of course, it was obviously more of the Arsis variety).  Poor choices and pathetic musings, that's basically how you can sum up all of my memories of high school.  But in the middle of all this existential self-loathing, there was this particular date.  The reason it's so important to me is because it was on this day that I published one of my very first reviews on MA.  It was a terrible review, but the standards were lower back then and I pretty much just emulated some (who am I kidding, just one) of the more popular reviewers on the site, so it got through.  And until today, it has sat there, a relic of a time passed and a grim reminder that even the most gloriously talented and sexy of us can have odd missteps early on.

That review was for City, by Strapping Young Lad.  I'm revisiting this because there is honestly maybe only one other album I can think of that deserves absolutely all of my effort in the scope of reviewing.  City is one of the most monumentally important albums of my adolescence and young adulthood, and the only way to really understand/share that opinion is to be or to have been in such a low, pitiful state of mind that it connects on an emotional level for you.  This connects for me, simple as that.

Of all the metal musicians out there, I truly believe that Devin Townsend is likely the most genuine one out there.  From his songwriting, to his lyrics, his vocals, and his guitar playing, everything about him just oozes out pure emotion and complete open heartedness.  He's a manic-depressive, bipolar, drug addicted madman who just happens to be a musical genius at the same time.  All of his numerous projects are basically just him coping with his erratic emotions and uncontrollable swings between euphoria and malaise through his music.  I know he's a polarizing figure for his low brow humor, self indulgent prog epics, juvenile lyrics, and countless other quibbles people have with him, but I really don't think anybody can make a case for him being phony.  Nobody bares their soul quite as often and quite as fervently as Devin.  You know the kind of records where a band or artist will go on about how emotional and personal it was for them to write and perform the songs?  An album like, say, Here, My Dear by Marvin Gaye or World Coming Down by Type O Negative.  Devin Townsend has released that album twenty fucking times.  That kind of down to earth openness is just an amazing thing for a songwriter to have, and Devin makes full use of it with every outing.

And with City, the emotion he is expressing is pure, unbridled frustration.  And believe me, if you've ever struggled with the same shit he has (like I have), you can relate to this in one of the most uncomfortable ways possible.  It's like a musical manifestation of The Catcher in the Rye.  Most young men can see a lot of themselves in Holden Caulfield, and it doesn't paint a very pretty picture.  City here is just the audial manifestation of mental illness and genuine anger.  At no point is the band putting on airs about their attitude, Devin is 1000% behind the themes here, he is feeling this shit just as much as we are hearing it.  Those who have been in that place will understand it, and that's what makes it so special.

Sometimes, when fighting against depression, bipolarity, heartbreak, loss, or whatever, one can find it immeasurably difficult to control their emotions, including anger, and that's what this album revels in from the get go.  From the very opening of "Velvet Kevorkian", we are thrust into the pit that is Devin's uncontrollable frustration with... well, pretty much everything.  "Fuck sleep, fuck all of you".  One thing this album gets a lot of shit for is the absolutely obscene levels of childish profanity.  If you don't want to hear a grown man scream the F word about seventy five times in a half hour, I totally understand.  But to me, it works marvelously because I've been there and it makes complete sense.  I've certainly had those days where I fight the urge to strike everyone near me with a tire iron and instead vent my frustration by running outside and screaming FUUUUUUUUUUCK so loud and so long that I see stars.  I'm a fairly grandiloquent dude, but sometimes the most succinct way you can express yourself is just a string of monosyllabic profanity rivaling any Rob Zombie script.

Another thing people seem to misinterpret about depression is just how erratic it can be.  The whole romanticized take on it you'll see in a lot of fiction/crappy death/doom (days in darkness, drinking wine and writing poetry by candlelight, the whole world a dreary shade of grey) just isn't accurate.  Sure, there are moments of such times, but at any given time you could be happy and carefree as well.  Sometimes you'll become aware of where you are and you can genuinely want to make a change for the better before eventually succumbing to self-doubt and general fuckery.  That's what "All Hail the New Flesh" represents.  It's actually a very optimistic song.  It rides along at a fast pace and the intro builds to a blisteringly chaotic cacophony of blasting and straight up death metal riffage before breaking into one of Devin's trademark screams.  I love these because (especially given the context of this album) they never come off as merely a style of vocal.  Nay, they're the sound of him just genuinely belting out with everything he has.  This first one is one of the most heartfelt on the album, and at the same time one of the least frustrated.  The entire theme of this first real song seems to be the point where one would realize "Wow.  I'm mad at the world and all, but I see that I put myself here and I desperately need to improve myself", and then not even halfway through the song you can just feel how this newfound optimism starts eroding and eventually giving way to that ever present frustration with the world around you.  There's a feeling of cognitive dissonance, as the music gets lighter and lighter while the lyrics get more and more pessimistic.  I'll see you pricks in HELL.

As the album goes on and on, it continues to explore, both sonically and thematically, different stages and flavors of these various mental illnesses.  The unbridled fury of "Underneath the Waves", the pure frantic self loathing of "Detox", the hopelessness of "Spirituality", City runs the gamut in terms of the emotional scope of depression, everything from the lethargic futility to the passionate hatred.  The middle stretch of the album (from "Oh My Fucking God" to "Home Nucleonics") is probably the strongest segment, likely because it's the most furious and uncompromising.  The lyrics of all these show that, while he's frustratedly lashing out at the world around him, Devin still acknowledges that most of his hatred is for himself, and that's something that I can relate to.  The music represents this as well.

I realize I've gone this far and only vaguely touched on what the music even really sounds like, but part of that is because the music itself isn't necessarily what makes City so special to me.  In order to really dig in to what makes the album so effective, you really need to step away from the music and look at the more peripheral aspects.  But with that in mind, the music contained herein is very good.  The band gets a lot of shit for basically being faster, heavier nu metal, which is a demonstrably bullshit argument.  "AAA" is really the only offender for such a thing, riding on a low, very groovy riff and vocal pattern.  Even then, it works much better than most funk-infused nu metal for the simple fact that the main riff is, while simple, very ear catching and well written.  Like most everything else on the album, there are no frills involved.  It's a very stripped down groove metal song with a lot of swearing, and so it gets mistaken for a nu metal song frequently.  One listen to a song like "Home Nucleonics" or "Underneath the Waves" should quickly dispel such a notion, since they're nothing less than industrial infused death/thrash metal with the rare sample.  I feel like death/thrash is a bit of a misnomer, but I really can't think of what else to describe it as.  I mean, that bridge of "Oh My Fucking God" is pure death metal chaos with an unnaturally trebly guitar tone, and the main riff of "Detox" is just... goddammit I don't know.  It's this bizarre, nebulous style that I suppose is just least-inaccurately described as death/thrash.  Those industrial samples are also a brilliant touch, with the manic glitching and third party monologues representing very well how difficult it can be to control yourself during these times of horror and loathing. One minute you're trying to focus on your world history test, then the next thing you know you just hear a faint click in the back of your mind and suddenly all you can do is ball up your fists and do everything in your power not to spear tackle whoever Annabelle Gobelcocque (your one and only for realsies twoo wuv) is crushing on at the moment and pound him into cowboy sauce.  That was an every day occurrence for the 16 year old BastardHead.

"THIIIIIS IIIIIS OOOOONLYYY *HIGH SCHOOL BULLSHIT*"

Man, if you haven't been here, you're not going to understand why this is a top 10 all time album for me.  City needs to connect on that special emotional level in order to fully realize its potential.  And the weirdest part is that, deep down, I really want to hate this album.  I want to hear the juvenile blitzkrieg of obscenities and scoff at how childish it is.  I want to hear the themes and frustration with petty bullshit and turn up my nose at how something so pointless can make somebody so pissed off that he has to write an entire album about it.  I want, more than anything in the world, to be able to not relate to this album.  The fact that I can still listen to this album, seven years after I wrote my first review for it, and still feel like it communicates with my inner demons so perfectly, the fact that it syncs up so well with my own psychoses, the fact that the journey of steely optimism quickly turned furious self loathing quickly turned into hopeless futility still resonates so strongly within myself that every time I spin the album I find myself revisiting all of my worst memories... all of this.... all of this adds up to tell me that I'm still not over my own problems.  To not relate to City any longer, to me, is to succeed in growing past my issues.  When I have control over my anger, my depression, anxiety, and just my life and emotions in general, that is when I will have made the steps towards making myself happy that I so desperately need.  When I can't listen to "Detox" or "Home Nucleonics" and feel my blood start to churn with the burning familiarity of a dozen high school rage-induced burnouts, that is when I will finally have overcome my mental roadblocks that keep me pinned down in this rodent infested pit that I've dug for myself.

I have no ending for this review, much like how this album doesn't really have an ending either.  Just like how "Spirituality" offers no climax, no closure, or anything of the sort, this review will just putter out just like how those of us who can connect with this album do at the end of every cycle.  It's just the album running out of anger, and instead closing on a denouement of  hopelessness, lying down to sleep, still mentally swinging at apparitions while your arms are too tired to actually throw any more punches.  Perfect symbolism, like always.

I can't make y'all understand this if you don't already, so it's time to give it a rest.  Goodnight, I love you.


RATING - 98%

BH AWARDS 2013 AND THE OTHER USUAL SHIT

Well kids, 2013 has come to pass.  Was it a good year?  Sure.  The way I see it, the best albums this year, are better than the best albums last year (excepting Sigh, who released one of the greatest metal albums in the past twenty years), but overall 2012 was stronger.  Basically, 2012 was Imaginations from the Other Side, 2013 was Nightfall in Middle-Earth.  So for the sake of consistency, I've decided to cement my yearly lists with 13 entrants, though I found myself not leaving off any albums I felt were entirely worthy (unlike last year where it physically hurt me to leave off Stormrider).   The only rules I have for this list are A) No EPs; full lengths only (which excludes the fabulous Astral Sabbat from Jess and the Ancient Ones (it would have ranked fifth or sixth, had I included it)) and B) metal only (to an extent).  I realize one of these isn't really a metal album, but it's undeniably heavy and I found myself really enjoying it, so it truly does deserve a place (this rule excludes Common Courtesy from A Day to Remember, because fuck you that is an awesome album).  With that out of the way, let's just get a move on.  I want to get this list over with so I can go back to shotgunning bottles of NyQuil.

THE 13 BEST ALBUMS OF 2013

13: Exhumed - Necrocracy
Right out of the gate we just have an absolute monster of an album.  I sang my praises for their previous record, but in all honesty only a couple songs REALLY grabbed me and made me hurt innocent bystanders.  This one, oddly enough, has less songs that really stand out, but overall the entire album is just one plateau of intensity and violence from start to finish.  It's structured a little less chaotically, the songs are a little less unhinged, but the maturity of sound, for once, actually sounds like a band trying harder instead of getting more boring.  They'll never reach the dizzying heights of Slaughtercult again, but for a more mature reimagining of that album, Necrocracy is exactly what it should be.

12: Suffocation - Pinnacle of Bedlam
This one had me worried.  Just like Exhumed up there, this was a veteran band taking a different approach to a tried-and-true formula.  Unlike the awkward Blood Oath, this one worked marvelously.  I know it's going to sound cliche since Culross is behind the kit once again, but this is basically the full length interpretation of Despise the Sun I've been craving for years now.  Pinnacle of Bedlam shows a simpler Suffocation, with less twisting morbidity and more straightforward violence.  Yeah it's a little overproduced and yeah the cover is pretty cliche by modern standards, but the music contained is the most punishing Suffo's managed since the reunion.

11: Monolithe - Monolithe IV
Like I recently mentioned, funeral doom is a treacherous genre because it's so simple in theory and execution, but at the same time so easily mediocre as a result.  Monolithe present a very specialized and themed brand of the style, with every album just being one monumentally long and gargantuan track, and unlike most funeral doom bands, Monolithe is very busy and riff centric.  Monolithe IV is no exception, launching out of the gate with a twenty minute buildup and worthy climax.  All riffs all the time.  It's strange for the style, but Monolithe shows how excellent it can be when done right.

10: Eyeconoclast - Drones of the Awakening
The spiritual successor to Deathrace King, thirteen years later.  The Crown is goddamn awesome, but they've never topped that magnum opus.  Enter this Italian mostlydeath/kindathrash monstrosity, which follows the same idea, but with a huge helping of that Italian tech death flavor I love so much.  It's no coincidence that some members of Hour of Penance can be found here, one of my absolute favorite salad shooter tech death bands and a constant contender on these lists I do.  It reminds me a lot of fellow countrymen, Natron, who sadly haven't released an album of new material since 2009.  Eyeconoclast helps fill that void.

9: The Browning - Hypernova
And here stands that controversial pick I mentioned earlier.  Yeah, it isn't metal, so logically I shouldn't have included it since I mentioned this year was metal only, but that rule was really just to keep A Day to Remember off the list since you buttholes would probably hang me for ranking it higher than Monolithe.  Everything wrong with Burn This World has essentially been fixed.  The atmosphere from the self titled independent debut is still conspicuously absent, but the simplicity of its predecessor has been refined to more ear catching tunes, and even some more variety within the songs themselves (check out "Breaking Point").  Really, this is the album The Browning should have released as their major label debut, because this sounds like what Burn This World should have been.

8: Iron Reagan - Worse than Dead
ONE TWO THREE FOUR.  God damn, this one is a ripper.  Twenty five straight minutes of unrelenting, vicious crossover thrash, more on the hardcore punk side most of the time.  Really, it wasn't a very good year for thrash overall (the next highest album besides this one would be Manifest Decimation, and that's like twenty or thirty places down, and it's got a huge hardcore influence as well).  This is a side project of members of Municipal Waste and Darkest Hour, and it shows.  If you don't like MW, you won't like this.  If you do, you'll be glad to hear the best thing they've touched since Hazardous Mutation.  This is really the point in the list where we stop touching on "great albums" and more on "best albums".  This point last year was around spot number 16 or 17.

7: Light Bringer - Scenes of Infinity
This pick could also be seen as controversial, but that's only if you're afraid of yourself.  A super kawaii bombastic power metal band from Japan?  You bet your ass I'm on that shit.  What this basically sounds like is a super poppy, super cute Nightwish, with much better vocals than Annette and some absolutely absurd instrumentals.  The amount of ridiculous basslines are just off the charts, it's almost Hibria level.  Power metal of the highest order, and it deserves a lot more love and a lot less dismissive handwaves as weeaboo shite.  Granted, it is exactly that, but it completely fucking rules and "Venus" is currently the greatest song ever written.  Non-negotiable.

6: The Black Dahlia Murder - Everblack
These guys have been on a pretty consistent "good album, meh album" flip flopping since their inception (though Deflorate did admittedly have two of their best tracks ("Black Valor" and "I Will Return")), so I wasn't too excited for Everblack.  Amazingly, it blew me away by managing to be the band's best album since Nocturnal, and potentially their best ever.  There are so many tracks that are destined to be classics within their catalogue.  "In Hell Is Where She Waits for Me", "Map of Scars", "Every Rope a Noose", "Raped in Hatred by Vines of Thorn", it's just a melodic death metal classic all around.  The amped up meloblack influence is another contributing factor.  It just fucking rules.

5: Battle Beast - Battle Beast
Now, when I'd learned that these fun loving Finns had ousted the fat girl with Messiah Marcolin hair and replaced her with a pretty young blonde, I was pretty skeptical.  Nitte Valo was great as the frontwoman, and Noora Louhimo had some enormous shoes to fill.  Amazingly, she does a fantastic job and contributes to an album that actually ends up better than the debut.  The choruses are more anthemic, the fast songs are more fun, the epic songs are more grandiose, just everything has been dialed up to eleven.  The new girl even has a very similar Doro styled screech that made Steel stand out so much.  It's a simple, balls to the wall heavy metal album and there's nothing more I could logically ask it to be.  It does what it does better than everybody else.  Fans of 80s Priest should take heed.

4: Enforcer - Death by Fire
Look, I'm not a huge Enforcer fan because I love how original they are, I'm not deluded.  I know they just reuse ideas that better bands championed thirty years ago, but fuck they just do it so well.  Death by Fire here is unbelievably fun, simple, and aggressive.  If Metallica and Motley Crue had learned to get along in 1983, Death by Fire is the kind of album that could have resulted from such a collaboration at such a point in time.  This is really just Diamonds with a shot in the arm, it's old school trad metal with no pretenses.  It's just bare knuckle, meat and potatoes fun.  This has no epic touches like Battle Beast up there, but it doesn't need any.  This just takes the Mercyful Fate route and wastes no time pummeling you with riff after riff after melody after hook after chorus.  It's amazing.

3: Protest the Hero - Volition
Yeah yeah this isn't metal either shut your fucking face.  Whatever hodgepodge of mathcore, metalcore, prog, whateverthefuck you want to call them, Protest does it better than any other band in the genre.  What makes Volition so special, apart from simply being their best album so far (and that's saying a lot), is the background behind it.  The fact that it's fully fan-funded, the fact that nearly every track features guest vocals by fans, the part in "Animal Bones" where they pretty much explicitly thank the fans for being so wonderful, featuring all of them in that moment, and then throwing back to "Sequoia Throne" from Fortress...  This is an album for the fans, and really, it's by the fans as well, and it's better than any amount of studio financing could have inspired them to be.  We made this happen, and they made it worth our while.

2: Gotsu Totsu Kotsu - Legend of Shadow
I called this one early and it wound up sticking.  One theme I'm sure you've noticed this year for me is simplicity.  I've loved the most simple albums the most.  Fuck complexity, fuck extreme technicality, just give me some awesome music with superbly written songs.  That's what GTK manages here, this is probably the most organic death metal album written since the early 90s.   Every moment is so fluid, every segment feels so goddamn natural, it's basically a barely choreographed jam session that happened to result in a bunch of awesome songs.  The vocals sound like Agamo angrily hurling fire and boulders down upon his Polynesian worshippers, and the slap bass is both overdone and completely tasteful.  This is exactly what you'd imagine if Bolt Thrower had been Japanese.

And the winner is...

1: Tengger Cavalry - Black Steed/The Expedition
This is kiiiiiinda cheating, since Tengger Cavalry released two albums this year, but really and truly it's just the same album twice.  Normally I'd call something like this an underhanded cash grab, but I'd be lying if I said that The Expedition isn't the best album I've heard all year.  It's getting the nod above Black Steed because that album was basically just a glorified EP with two tracks from the previous Sunesu Cavalry disc from Cavalry Folk.  The Expedition on the other hand, is that same EP, with two new tracks, and the two bonus tracks being from the acoustic/ambient Mantra disc from that previous two-disc album.  The calming atmospheric songs add a brilliant denouement to an intense, galloping riff fiesta.  I don't even know what to call this.  It's folk metal, sure, but that gives one the

impression of something silly like Korpiklaani.  The metal bits are some nebulous mix of trad/black/death/trash/everything metal.  It's like Melechesh in that it's very hard to define, but the folk elements are very, very strong.  Horsehead fiddles and dombras galore, complete with (and I'm so glad somebody finally managed to make this sound awesome in the context of a metal album) Mongolian throat singing.  This is basically what would happen if I had any talent and had attempted to write an album based off the Dynasty Warriors games I've been so hopelessly addicted to for the last decade.  I'd love to keep gushing but it'll just turn into a regular old review if I did, so I'll have to rein it in here.  Congratulations, Tengger Cavalry, you've earned the prestigious (yes it is, shut up) BH Award for Album of the Year 2013.

While we're here...

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Jess and the Ancient Ones - Astral Sabbat: Like I mentioned, this would have easily ranked very high if I ever allowed myself to rank EPs on my final list.  JATAO shows once again why they're the reigning kings of this recent trend of psychedelic occult doom rock bands.  The climax of "More than Living" is one of the greatest things ever.

A Day to Remember - Common Courtesy: Fuck you guys, I love this band.  They're basically one part Yellowcard, one part Killswitch Engage, and this latest album (finally released amongst years of delays and label fuckery) has proven why I find them so worthwhile.  The songs are all well written and catchy, and unlike the last album, the light and heavy sides of the band are blended marvelously instead of being entirely separated between songs.  Another one that would have ranked on the list if I had allowed myself to include it.

Children of Bodom - Halo of Blood: This is the album we Bodom fans have been hoping for since 2005.  It's unspeakably refreshing to hear the band putting so much effort into their music again, after spending the better part of the last decade coasting on how good their previous albums were.  The power metal side is amped up again, the solos are back to being as ridiculous and self indulgent as they were before, it's just the successor to Hate Crew Deathroll that I've been waiting for since I was a teenager.

Motorhead - Aftershock: Man you know exactly what this sounds like.  That means you also know how awesome it is.  Lemmy's health has been deteriorating lately, and with the passing of greats like Peter Steele and Dio in these past few years, I've been kinda bracing myself for the inevitable.  If this ends up being his swansong, it'll be a worthy one.

Gamma Ray - Masters of Confusion: Another great EP.  I don't like how there are really only two new songs (thus making this the most needlessly padded single in history), but those two new songs are very, very good.  It's a welcome surprise after the last two albums of uninspired, pilfered nonsense.  There's still some noticeable plagiarism ("Empire of the Undead" just straight up bases itself around the main riff of "Hit the Lights"), which is lame, but the spirit of the band is so high that it overpowers the deja vu, just like on Majesty eight years ago.

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Diamond Plate - Pulse: Man how can one band have consecutive releases on my disappointments list?  Shouldn't my hopes have not been high this time?  Especially after how little I liked the last album and how bitter I was about the ousting of co-founding member Paul Baloff?  Everything that made this band so great back when they were starting is pretty much wholly gone.  I predict the next album to be a completely faceless prog album that nobody except total nerds care about.  RIP DP, you used to be my shining light.

Hibria - Silent Revenge: BOOOOOOOORING.  This band just can't stay consistent for the life of them.  It seems like every odd numbered album is going to rule and every even numbered one is gonna be faceless and lame.  Maybe this is why Brazil is probably my least favorite major country when it comes to power metal.

Hail of Bullets - III: The Rommel Chronicles: This is honestly my first Hail of Bullets album, and after years of hype I've heard about the band, I just can't fathom it based on this album.  I swear nothing interesting happens, and it's a bummer because I was prepared to love this.  I guess I just have to admit that I'm a spineless dweeb and I'm not really much of a fan of anything van Drunen seems to be involved in.  Hopefully the rest of their discography is great, because this just does absolutely nothing for me.

Skeletonwitch - Serpents Unleashed: Ehhhh, I dunno.  I have a raging boner for Beyond the Permafrost and Forever Abomination, but this one just doesn't do much for me.  It feels like a band going through the motions most of the time.  It's just not nearly as memorable as those previous two albums are, and it ends up on a plane of slightly-above-mediocre with Breathing the Fire.  Mayhap they should just stick to coloring their album covers green?

Manilla Road - Mysterium: For as much shit as I give this band, I do genuinely want to like them.  The Deluge is a great album and it showcases how the band can make their quirkiness work, but Mysterium here is just completely devoid of the magic of the aforementioned record.  The solos still rule, and the ballad is great, but I still hate Shelton's voice and most of the riffs are really tired, boring, plodfests.  It's disappointing because the hype was huge and I actually bought into it.  This band really needs to retire, Shelton is in his fucking sixties.  He could be Tom Araya's father.

Chorniy Nimb - Vlada Temryavy: This is just some completely random, woefully obscure Ukranian band, but they're billed as "symphonic thrash".  I've been wanting to hear that for so long, aaaaand the album just ends up being a really dull thrash-by-numbers album with no urgency and terrible MIDI strings every few minutes.  I'll just wait for some other band that doesn't suck to give the style a try.

Now, last year I had enough horrible albums to crank out a second list of the ten worst albums of the year, but really, this year had less clearly offensively horrible stinkers, and just a slew of extremely boring, faceless, not-worth-caring-about dreck.  So instead I'm just going to shorten it to five, because you know how impossible it would be for me to NOT be an asshole to people who put a lot of hard work into their art.

THE 5 WORST ALBUMS OF 2013

5: Turisas - Turisas2013

Apparently the only thing worse than an offensively bad Turisas is an offensively boring one.  This is bad.  It's very bad, but even then nothing happens in it.  Just... how is that possible?  To be the two things I hate the most in a bad album (both shitty AND boring) is almost a feat in itself.  Just fuck this album and fuck this stupid band.

4: Metal - Proving Our Mettle

I'm not even going to talk about this one.  You know exactly what it sounds like already.

3: Giant X - I
GRRAAAAAH FUCK THIS

2: Humanity's Last Breath - Humanity's Last Breath
FUCK THIS TOO FUCK THIS STUPID DJENTY CORESHIT AND FUCK YOU TOO

1: Saruman - Whatever his shitty album was called
I DON'T FUCKING CARE ABOUT COUNT DOOKU'S SHITTY FUCKING ALBUM IT'S THE SAME AS HIS FIRST ONE JUST REMIXED TERRIBLY AND EVERYBODY PRETENDS TO LIKE IT BECAUSE HE'S GOT ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE AND THE OTHER ON A BANANA PEEL JUST FUCK FUCK COCK SHIT WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF

 *pops Prozac like they're Skittles*

And there we have it, my fourth annual year-end list published on Lair of the Bastard.  I'm actually a bit shocked to see I've stuck with this for so long now, but I'm glad I have.  You guys are all wonderful, beautiful people.  Despite the staggeringly high quality of the top five or so albums here, here's to hoping 2014 gives us even more great music on the whole!  See y'all as we go!

Tyranny - Tides of Awakening

An album for the mentally ill

Remember back in my review for The Crimson Idol where I mentioned that when I'm feeling blue, I tend to just listen to depressing music to wallow in for a time?  And do you also remember my review for The Day It All Came Down where I basically wrote a really roundabout suicide note and framed it around a review?  Well I'm in that kind of mood again.  And since I don't drink or beat my children, I purge my negativity and cope with sadness by writing reviews about depressing metal albums and covering them with swaths of esoteric imagery.  The culprit today?  The ever absorbent Tides of Awakening, the only album from Finnish undertakers, Tyranny.

As far as I know, this is the first funeral doom album I've ever reviewed (depends on if you count Year of No Light I suppose), and one of the reasons I've always held off on writing about this genre, despite liking it plenty, is because I feel like once I write one, I'll have written them all.  It's a good style, no doubt, and it's all about mood and atmosphere as opposed to riffing or melodies or something, like most of the high octane music I listen to.  But the problem with the genre as a whole is that you can use the same four words to describe every album, and then just fluctuate how well each band handles every element.  We know it's gonna be atmospheric, we know it's gonna be slow, we know it's gonna be based in doom/death, we know the vocals are going to be distant and deep, the only new information I can provide is whether or not each of these elements are handled competently on whichever album I'm talking about.

As far as I'm concerned, Tyranny handles everything marvelously.  And yet, at the same time, I don't even really know what it is that they do at all.  I mean, I can gather that there are Lovecraftian themes, but I don't give a shit.  I hear they take big heaps of influence from genre progenitors like Thergothon and Skepticism, but I couldn't care less about that if I tried.  All that really matters to me, and all that should matter to you, is that Tides of Awakening is monumentally heavy, and completely suffocating in its unbelievably oppressive atmosphere.

The songs themselves don't do much to differentiate themselves from one another, but once again that's not really the point.  "Coalescent of the Inhumane Awareness" has a really haunting lead melody, but that lead melody doesn't sound all that different from the rest of the melodies to be found, so I wouldn't feel right singling it out like I just did, but I'm a hypocrite in the throes of crippling depression rambling about depressing music.  The point is that when it comes to the actual musical aspects, this is exactly what you'd expect.  Glacial pace doom/death riffs underneath layered backing synths and melancholic, haunting lead guitar.  What I love about this guitar is that it doesn't ever come off like a guitar normally would, it instead manifests as this completely different entity; a completely abstract spirit that sends down gentle coos of reassuring warmth that get twisted into demonic abominations by the time they reach your ears.  It's both pleasant and unnerving at the same time, and it works towards the overwhelming atmosphere in ways I previously couldn't imagine.

It's really the atmosphere that makes this album work.  If I'm being totally honest, it's the only element that I can even recall or appreciate about it in most instances.  Here I am giving a high score to an album that I'll fully admit to not even knowing the track names for (and there are only fuckin' five of them), but it's because this doesn't stick with you for the same reason something from a more energetic genre will.  I'm never going to hear a part in any given funeral doom album that makes me go "Whoa shit, that was awesome, what track was that?" like I would with an album in pretty much any other genre.  That's a characteristic of funeral doom as a whole to me, and Tides of Awakening just exemplifies it.  From start to finish, this is basically one monstrous plateau of misery and helplessness.  Sure, each song builds and climaxes appropriately, but at no point does the music take me anywhere other than the loneliest place imaginable.  It's basically just one huge, hour long experience where you just sit at the bottom of the ocean while the weight of all the water pushes down upon you, and you struggle for air for a short while before understanding the cosmic futility of your perseverance, and then simply waiting to lose consciousness underneath all the pressure.  The entire experience is just one long funeral dirge, wherein you spend all of the time alternating between reflecting upon the mistakes you made and then cursing yourself for allowing it all to end with those loose ends still hanging.  I can't even call this a "journey" like I tend to when trying to be vague and metaphorical with my description, because it's very static.  At no point do I feel like my story is progressing, I'm just sitting here, being pummeled ever so slowly by the increasing weight of each wave. 

See, I feel like the metal album that most accurately sums up the frustration of bipolarity, depression, anxiety, and most other self-crippling mental illnesses of the sort is City by Strapping Young Lad.  Hell, there are even other albums within this very genre that I'm sure deal with much more emotional themes than whatever dystopian ballyhoo Tyranny drones on and on about here, but the general mood is almost perfect for what this kind of lethargic self loathing represents.  When you're in a spot where the entire world is grey, and every attempt to move forward is met with your own body resisting you, sapping your will to even bother trying to improve yourself since you know that swimming ten feet upwards isn't going to get you out of that ocean, Tides of Awakening is the album that is playing in your mind.  It's just dirge after dirge after dirge, reminding you that you are worthless and weak and will never get ahead as long as every time you look upward, you're met with miles of crystal clear water.  You can see the surface, but my friend, you are not getting there.  The vocalist may be deeply roaring about Yog Sothoth's pubic lice for all I know, but in my mind it's just the disgruntled bellows of my subconscious reminding me of all the mistakes I've made in my life and why I'll never see better days. 

I can't keep doing this, all I can do is constantly compare the album to like being trapped under an ocean and then hamfistedly relate my own psychoses to it.  Most people who suffer from these same issue (the sads and the mads) can understand where I'm coming from, and can likely relate to the album in this way as well.  It's atmospherically debilitating and as emotionally weighty as a metaphoric iceberg.  The four traditional songs are crushing and monumental, and the ambient outro is reflective and moderately horrifying.  It's the extracurricular aspects of the album that makes Tides of Awakening so effective to me.  It's the fact that beyond all the suffocating atmosphere, there's a vivid image of myself drowning in my own misery.  Everything is overwhelming and I, personally, drown every time I experience it.  This is an album (and admittely, a review) for me, not for you.  This works because I can relate the smothering atmosphere to my own fears, it works because I react to certain stimuli the way that I do.  If you don't share these same problems, then this just simply isn't going to connect with you on the same emotional plane that it does for me.


RATING - 91%

Heavatar - Opus I: All My Kingdoms

The Ballad of Diarrhea Girl

Let's talk about my sex life for a minute.

*chorus of uncontrollable laughter*

Yeah yeah, the mental image you're currently conjuring of me touching any part of a woman with my tongue is either repulsive or hysterical, depending on how low your self esteem is, but like most other men in the world, I have a wiener and I like when other people touch it.  The point is, a couple years ago, there was this girl I really, really liked.  My friends know her as Diarrhea Girl (if you want to know the story behind that moniker, feel free to preorder my first book, Poor Decisions, Worse Timing: The Collected Tales of an Unfortunately Hilarious Doofus), and in the realm of purely physical looks, she was... decent.  Most of the time, you could describe her as cute and that was about the extent of it.  She had an illuminating smile, but she tended to present herself as frumpy.  She didn't take much pride in her appearance, she looked like she belonged in a yogurt commercial about 90% of the time.  Sweatpants, hoodie, hair tied up, no makeup, you know the deal.  There were other things about her that made her irresistible to me, but based on pure physicality, she was never going to be cast as the woman in the red dress in The Matrix.  Most of the time.  On occasion, and I only saw this firsthand a few times, she would "get all purty" as she would call it.  Man, when she put effort into looking good, she would just blow me away.  All the greatness I knew she hid underneath the layers of her constant laundry day outfits would just smack me in the proverbial jaw with the force of one of those Punkin Chunkin torsion machines.  Our relationship may have ended on a bizarre, diarrhea scented note, but that's one of the biggest memories I have of her, just how stunning she could look on the extraordinarily rare occasion she would make an attempt.

Apart from simply wanting to plant the visual of me wrestling with my libido through a smog of fecal vapor inside your subconsciousness, this relates to the album at hand because Heavatar is an exercise in painstaking averageness punctuated sporadically with moments of gorgeous brilliance.  This band's existence initially got my blood pumping purely because I'm one of the weird guys who really likes Van Canto beyond the gimmick.  Yeah, their covers are almost always the best songs on any given album (with the exception of Tribe of Force, a legitimately excellent power metal album all the way through), but I find the songwriting to be pretty solid and the arrangements to be interesting at the very least.  Despite this, I've never actively found myself seeking out any of the member's other projects, so hearing lead "guitarist", Stefan Schmidt, behind the mic as a lead vocalist was a sweet prospect for me.  Heavatar is presented as a super group of sorts, although that's pretty misleading considering the rest of the band consists of some dude who played in the pre-Van Canto band, Fading Starlight, the most inconsequential member of Powerwolf, and Jorg Michael, who was awesome in the 80s and 90s with Avenger/Rage, Running Wild, Grave Digger, and others, but hasn't done anything worthwhile in roughly two decades (unless you like Stratovarius, in which case I can safely assume you suck at music).

The band sets the stage in grand fashion, "prophetically" (read: naively) subtitling their first album Opus I, but I must admit that the opening track, "Replica", does an excellent job of conveying the epic attitude the band is aiming for.  It's a very operatic and bombastic tune, devoid of some of the typical power metal crutches like googols of orchestrations, but still retaining the over the top choirs and gesticulating-inducing chorus.  This is the kind of power metal that I just eat up.  It's huge and magniloquent and shows absolutely no shame or restraint, packed to the gills with swagger and machismo.  It's unbelievably catchy and at the same time very meaty and heavy with a healthy twist of neoclassical guitar lines; the kind of power metal that people who hate power metal can enjoy, not unlike a not-quite-as-punishing Persuader or a less boring Morgana Lefay.

But after that?  Be prepared for a host of completely unremarkable, pedestrian, uninspiring, paint-by-numbers power metal.  It's hugely disappointing because "Replica" shows how intricate and entertaining the band can be, but after that they all just kinda sit back and mechanically churn out very bland and faceless songs for most of the rest of the album.  Tracks like "Elysium at Dawn" and "Long Way Home" just happen with utterly zero consequence.  Schmidt has a really neat voice, being deeper and rougher than most singers the genre is so saturated with, but he rarely puts it to good use.  In fact, it's best when being complemented by the choirs, which shows that the band could probably stand to be a little more cliche for the sake of some more entertaining songs.  This ties into my opening because All My Kingdoms isn't bad, but it's pretty unremarkable if not for the cool frontman.  Basically it has a great smile, but the other wonders that surface from time to time are largely hidden by very plain clothing.  I mean really, the title track is completely forgettable, which makes me wonder why on Earth it's even the title track at all.  Shouldn't the song you name your album after be... I dunno, special in some way?  No?  Just a fully unremarkable power metal tune with nothing interesting in it?

I'm being sort of mean here, because despite "Replica" being far and away the best song, there are other good moments.  "Luna! Luna!" is a pretty great song on the whole as well, and the chorus and pre-chorus of "The Look Above" are very exciting and evocative (particularly that "We are running faster!" part), but otherwise there's almost nothing to be found that could raise the seasoned power metal fan's pulse.  Lots of low chugging and soaring choirs, but they're rarely put to good use.  I can guarantee you the band has probably made comments in interviews like "We have great chemistry, the songs came together very easily, they almost wrote themselves, yadda yadda", and I totally believe that, because if a song could hypothetically write itself, it'd probably sound like "Born to Fly".  It's just not exciting, it feels like the band didn't challenge themselves at all and just wrote a bunch of very safe, surefire tunes and called it a day.  With moments like the choruses of "Replica" and "Luna! Luna!", it's pretty clear that the talent contained within the band is very capable of meshing together and crafting some very memorable songs, but it just... never does.

At one point, All My Kingdoms was actually in my Top 13 for the year, but the more I listen to it, the less passionate it feels and the more faceless it becomes.  This still gets a good score because, as I said, it isn't a bad album, not by any stretch of the imagination, but on the strength of songs like "Replica", I could compare the band to heavyweights like Blind Guardian or Kamelot, but with the rest of the album it just kinda falls into an echelon slightly above bands like Power Theory and Torian.  I guess it's worth a listen, the Mattie Jensens of the world will lap this up if nothing else, but for me, it's a very average album on the whole.  Just like Diarrhea Girl, it's cute, but generally nothing you'll dream about inseminating in the bathroom of a classy restaurant (except of course for the rare occasions where it takes pride in its natural gift and presents itself as such).

Also, the closing track, "To the Metal", is goddamn stupid.  It's clearly about how metal is taken too seriously and we all need to remember to have fun with it, which is a message I champion frequently (hence my vocal love of Powerwolf), but it's presented in a very blisteringly stupid way, being largely a solo campfire type song with Schmidt yelling like a goon.  It's cool to be self aware, but just because you know you're making a joke doesn't mean you're allowed to be shitty.


RATING - 67%

Running Wild - Resilient

Just... ugh

Honestly, I can't think of a more blundered finale to an epic saga in the history of storytelling.  I know that's an altered quote from Spoony's review for Ultima IX, but the fact that he isn't a Running Wild fan shows that he doesn't understand true disappointment as far as I'm concerned.  I mean yeah, Ultima IX is a hackneyed rush job that cornholed what roughly ten or eleven previous games had spent building up and was shit out to meet a hard deadline and failed to live up to all the promise the series had built and whatnot, but that's different than what Rolf has done here.  Rolf had a legendary band, with a legacy nearly unmatched in the annals of metal history.  Running Wild's first eight albums are all considered essential listening by most fans of the band and genre, with some people like me even thinking they were damn near untouchable even further than that (I personally think they were great through Victory), and they were starting to stumble with age.  The Brotherhood flipflops between good fun to snore inducing vomit, and the less said about Rogues en Vogue, the better.  But after a few years of silence, Rolf had decided to hang up his ceremonial robes and bow out gracefully.  He gathered his band and performed one last time, with a set list in part chosen by fans, in front of thousands of boozed up and screaming fans at the biggest metal festival in Germany.  It was an emotional departure, and a great swansong for a great band.

And then Peter Jordan happened.

Look, I know this is Rolf's baby, I know everything that's happened since the very first days of Granite Heart in the mid 70s has been at the behest of Rock'n'Rolf, but ever since Peter Jordan showed up, things went from "bad" to "unbearable".  Rolf's obsession is 70s and 80s cock rock has never been a secret, he openly dedicated "Kiss of Death" from The Rivalry to KISS, and there have always been big hard rock songs from as far back as Port Royal, but they were never the focus until near the end, they never became ubiquitous until the last two albums before the initial disbanding.  And I feel like Rolf's favorite yes-man probably had a pretty big hand in convincing him to resurrect the Running Wild name.  Because let's face it, Running Wild, Toxic Taste, and Giant X have all been the same fucking band for the past eight years now.  Rolf doesn't want to do Running Wild anymore, he doesn't want to write another Blazon Stone or Death or Glory, no matter how badly we fans want such a thing.  Clearly, he's into stadium oriented buttrock, because that's what he keeps writing, and that's all he's been writing ever since Jordan started leeching off the man like the world's most heartbreaking parasite.  The thing that sets this apart from Ultima IX is that Shadowmaker and Resilient weren't rushed or compromised, these albums are what the creator really wants to do.  It's clear that Rolf has poured his heart into these tracks, and that makes the fact that they sound so unbelievably lazy and half-baked all the more heartbreaking.

On one hand, it's pretty neat to see Rolf being so productive again, releasing three albums in the span of little over a year and a half (because let's face it, Giant X is just Running Wild and vice versa, with the same shitty members, same shitty production, and same shitty buttrock songs), but clearly the man is running on a renewed fuel, his passion for music definitively reignited.  It's just sad because he isn't writing Running Wild music anymore, and if he'd've just stuck with Giant X, I wouldn't be so profoundly offended by these last handful of albums he's released under the Running Wild name.  I passed on reviewing Shadowmaker when it was new because there really wasn't anything to say about it.  It was an offensive trainwreck of lame buttrock songs with only a couple tunes worth hearing.  "Piece of the Action" was a decent Billy Idol song and "I Am Who I Am" at least sounded like a Running Wild song (albeit a rather uninspired b-side from The Brotherhood), but that's really all there was amidst a mire of bad "Me & the Boys" type songs.  So how does Resilient differ?

Well, it's a lot less overtly arena rock I suppose, but it's still pretty weak.  There's no outright offensive songs like "Me & the Boys", but it's pretty much an entire album full of "Black Shadow"s and "Riding on the Tide"s.  It sounds more like Running Wild than the rest of the Giant X albums he's been releasing lately, but they're not very good Running Wild songs.  It's an album that starts with filler, continues with filler, and nearly ends with filler.  It'd be like if Pile of Skulls opened with "Roaring Thunder", and then had no other songs until "Treasure Island".  Resilient is full of songs that sound like worse versions of better songs, but the songs they're emulating were always among the weakest on any given album.  It's basically an album consisting of "Raging Fire", "Evilution", "Fight the Fire of Hate", "Land of Ice", "Lonewolf", "Man on the Moon", "Unation", and "Into the Fire".  If that list of filler songs meant nothing to you, then I'm afraid we can't be friends.

At the very least, I can give this album some credit for its energy.  It feels like this should have been released first instead of Shadowmaker.  That album didn't sound like a man resurrecting his legendary metal band due to a renewed passion for the music, it sounded more like a tired old codger trying to desperately relive his glory days.  Granted, Resilient still sounds like that, but it just feels more genuine.  Unlike its predecessor, this doesn't start feeling tired and obligatory until the last handful of songs, everything from the opening to "Run Riot" at least sounds like Rolf had a smile on his face while writing and recording the songs.  They're fun and upbeat, if nothing else.  Now, they're not very good, mind you, but they do at least feel like they were written by a man who wanted to write them.  There are a couple highlights, I will admit.  I can't justify why, but I really like "Run Riot", it's probably the most familiar sounding song on the album, in the sense that it wouldn't have been out of place on an album like Victory (fuck you, that album rules, if you can't dig "Tsar", "Timeriders" or especially "The Hussar", then you are dead to me).  It offers a sense of cozy nostalgia, a warmth of familiarity that I gladly welcome.  And "Adventure Highway" isn't bad either, though not entirely striking.

I feel like the reason a song like "Adventure Highway" or "Fireheart" can stand out on this album is because the rest of the running time is so goddamn samey and uninteresting that anything approaching catchy is instantly caught in your mind.  "Down to the Wire" and "Crystal Gold" are 100000% forgettable and completely unnecessary, and it has a lot to do with the very formulaic writing.  Almost every song on the album sits comfortably around the four and a half minute mark, and they're all structured in a nearly identical and conventional pop structuring.  Every single song is verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-solo-chorus-fin.  It never deviates, it's as bad as All That Remains or Kajagoogoo.  That's not to say that Running Wild was always adventurous with their songwriting, but they never felt as paint-by-numbers tedious as they do here, and it really drags down what could logically be a lighthearted and fun hard rock album.  Rolf even does that fucking thing he always does on "Desert Rose" and "Down to the Wire".  You know what thing I'm talking about.  It just sounds like he's going through the motions for most of the album, even if he's having fun with these motions for the first time in nearly a decade.

The production woes of the past are just as present here as they always have been.  It was never completely clear to me until Shadowmaker, but Rolf's voice needs reverb.  In this pristine, controlled environment, his signature snarling croon becomes the sound of a laughably arthritic old man trying to prolapse a hot dog out of himself.  I'm not kidding when I say the final vocal flourish in the title track sounds damn near identical to the sound I make when wrestling with an unusually resilient poop.  The guitar sound is strangely robotic as well, sounding almost industrial with how tinny and hollow it sounds.  It doesn't sound like a guitar as much as it sounds like a really unconvincing MIDI patch, and when you couple that with Angelo Sasso's mechanically dull drum performance, you get a pretty disingenuous sounding record.  Man, now that I think about it, if you don't believe the rumor of his death in 2007, Angelo Sasso is the longest tenured member Running Wild has ever had.  Isn't that just the saddest fucking thing since Old Yeller?

But throughout all this, I've been noticeably ignoring one track in particular, the signature closing epic, "Bloody Island".  Like every fan worth his salt, I recognize the brilliance in a track like "Treasure Island".  The long buildup, the instantly memorable chorus, the extended soloing section in the middle, the legendary hooks and melodies, there's practically nothing wrong with that song, and it's rightfully regarded as one of the band's best songs nearly universally.  They've never quite captured the same lightning in a bottle again, with "Genesis" and "The Ballad of William Kidd" both being great songs, but not quite on the same echelon as the godlike "Treasure Island", and "The Ghost" and "Dracula" (yeah yeah, I like that song too) both being serviceable and not complete embarrassments, with the only epic of theirs actually falling to utter shit being "The War", from the already snakebitten Rogues en Vogue.  So how does "Bloody Island" stack up against such a pedigree?  Fairly well, actually.  It is without a doubt the best song to be found on Resilient, and easily the most "Running Wild-y" song featured here.  It's pretty much a direct carbon copy of "Treasure Island", but it's almost unspeakably welcome on an album as dull and devoid of that legendary flash like this one.  The main melody is straight out of the Blazon Stone era, the chorus is closer to The Brotherhood, but it's one of the good songs from that album at the very least.  This is what the fans wanted to hear, this is what we wanted.  Even if it wasn't quite as good as the late 80s and early 90s, we wanted to hear Rolf put his effort into doing what he does best: epic, classy melodies and strong, barbed hooks.  I know that's exactly why I criticize an album like Death Magnetic, but really, Rolf has clearly defined his strengths in the past, and what he's been doing for the past decade is little more than a self indulgent vanity project.  It's nice to see him doing what he loves, because he has earned it, but a little throwback like this shows that he isn't completely sapped out of his former magic, he just... doesn't want to do it anymore.

In a way, this is actually a more disappointing than Shadowmaker, because while that album was bad and boring, Resilient is bad, but even more boring and yet somehow shows some flashes of Rolf's former magic, something that was conspicuously absent on the previous album.  Resilient is better, don't get me wrong, but at this point it may just be Stockholm Syndrome.  Despite the slight step up in quality, this is still bad, still boring, still bland, and still disappointing.  It's better than Shadowmaker, but do you know what's better than winning a silver medal at the Special Olympics?  Not being retarded.


RATING - 30%