Fields of Elysium - Capax Universi

Butthole dissonance

I admit, my distaste towards the new Fields of Elysium EP, Capax Universi, may entirely be naught more than personal bias.  I've addressed before in previous reviews that I love metal when taken to some sort of extreme, like I'm some sort of audial thrillseeker who will relentlessly masturbate to whatever I'm listening to as long as it's shitnards bonkers in some way.  It's what I told myself when I started getting in to funeral doom and drone.  I liked Wormphlegm because they took the concept of slow, crushing, suffocating heaviness to an extreme that nobody else had at that point.  I liked Dragonforce because they cast the notion of restraint right into the ocean and spent six minutes engaging in dueling shred solos.  It all made sense until I really started to dissect bands like Brain Drill.  There was a divide in modern tech death, and I could never fully quantify what it was that separated the bands I liked from the bands I didn't.  Now, as the years have passed, I can point to records like Capax Universi and tell you exactly why they suck.

Basically what it is is that I've further refined my taste of extreme music.  I like my metal extreme and ridiculous, as long as it stays grounded in a cohesive set of ideas.  This makes it all make sense to me.  Dragonforce's first few albums are barely contained tap frenzies, but they're within the confines of a real song.  Wormphlegm is ridiculously slow and obnoxiously thick, but there's a greater idea at work, and a brutal atmosphere that most bands can never dream of touching.  Decrepit Birth has a stunning ear for melody, Children of Bodom's early albums were collections of fun tunes, even Duke Lion Fights the Terror!! is a concept album telling a story of some sort.  Every example of a band taking an idea to a crazy extreme that I actually like is still grounded in the idea of writing music that's enjoyable to listen to.  Bands that are over-the-top nuts that I don't like all sound like a collection of unrelated jazz exercises being played simultaneously.  Fields of Elysium has joined the ranks of Brain Drill, Beneath the Massacre, Rings of Saturn, and Viraemia.  The difference is that Fields of Elysium holds the distinction of reveling in dissonance far, far more than their peers.

There isn't one melodic line throughout this entire twentysomething minute endeavor, there isn't one note resembling any portion of a real riff, there's pretty much nothing to hook your attention and want to keep listening.  It honestly, actively annoys the hell out of me to listen to.  I'm finding myself reminded of what I wrote on Behold the Arctopus roughly three years ago, with the strong resemblance to Dillinger Escape Plan and the glorious lack of any kind of structure.  Capax Universi is essentially five pieces of freeform jazz as performed by Iniquity.  There are vocals that are surprisingly deep and powerful that would be much better suited for a much meatier band, but instead they are backed by constant short upsweeps that stop after ascending the scale once, wait a second, and then repeat the process in a different location.  This is how every minute of every song is constructed.  Short stop-start dissonant sweeps and drums that play rhythm like Kerry King plays solos.  Occasionally there's an acoustic passage with some tripped out synth in the background, but the stringed instruments are still doing their spider fingers thing so it doesn't do a whole lot to break up the monotony.  Basically just the vocals stop, the distortion turns off, and some backing swells are added but the rest of the band keeps playing the same shit they've been playing the whole time. 

This kind of music is incredibly fucking dull and Fields of Elysium has done nothing to change my perception of this particular niche in modern tech death.  Maybe I'm a square who sucks up to authority, but there needs to be at least some minute semblance of structure or else the entire album just falls apart in a mess of unrelated dweedledeedwoops and rakkatektektekteks that never coalesce into something thoughtful.  Perhaps the appeal in this style is the completely unrestrained nature and complete disregard of convention.  Maybe there's something daring to be said about a band who can write an album full of songs that don't share any overlapping notes yet still somehow sound exactly the same.  Is there a mad genius to be found underneath the frenzied mayhem?  Is there beauty in not confining music to any cell, allowing it to wander free across plains, uncaring where it goes or how it gets there, shunning all rigidity in favor of unadulterated, braless splendor?

No.  It's fucking stupid and it sounds like shit and you should be ashamed for liking it.  Get off my lawn!


RATING - 21%

Cemetery Lust - Screams of the Violated

Pleasure to ReKreate

I've gone on record before claiming my main problem with the black/thrash subgenre is that there's typically little more to it than just molesting Kreator over and over again, and I still stand by that.  The title of "black/thrash" is such an egregious misnomer for this niche sound that I really think that we as a metal community need to rename it.  How many of these bands actually have any semblance of black metal in their music?  There are raspy vocals and harsh production and the occasional blast beat here and there but for the most part this style is thrash through and through.  Bands like Witchaven, Black Fast, Hellcannon, Ketzer, and the subject of this review, Cemetery Lust, all exemplify this problem.  Screams of the Violated here is essentially the twelve quadrillionth reimagining of Kreator's seminal classic, Pleasure to Kill, and I knew this going in based entirely on the aesthetics of the album.  But with that said, this is still rather enjoyable for fans of the style, or fans of extreme metal in general.

Squid Nasty and Nasty Nate's riffing is exemplified pretty well by their own names: nasty and repetitive.  There's very little variety on display here, with all but one track, "Black Angels of Hell", consisting of almost nothing but lightning fast buzzsaw riffs that were already written twenty five years ago.  That said, the energy put in by the band coupled with the excellently raw production make these riffs sharp and vicious as opposed to dry and tired.  This type of sound is perfect for the style if you ask me, it's rough and dirty but no instrument is compromised due to poor recording.  This is going to shock you, surely, but the vocals are reminiscent of Mille Petrozza.  It sucks that I can't think of any point of comparison other than Kreator, but really, give this a listen and you'll understand.  This is Pleasure to Kill worship and little else.  The strange part about all of this is that it's good.

For real, this album is preposterously infectious.  Despite (or perhaps because of) the riffs being so cliche, they are instantly hooky and lasting.  This album doesn't have a whole lot working for it in terms of originality, obviously (I've compared this to Kreator... what, twenty seven times already?), but it makes up for it with energy and songwriting.  It's a cavalcade of cliches, but it's put together rather well.  Fans of pretty much any band I've named dropped here will find something to love.  The band dubs their style "Rape Thrash", which I was hoping to make jokes about, but the unoriginality sapped my joke-making ability and the sheer ferociousness simply broke my brain.  "Black Angels of Hell" is bookended by two slower, doomier segments, but the rest of the album is vicious to the core, with highlight tracks being "Resurrected Whore", "Night of the Creep", and "Perverted Aggressor".


RATING - 79%

Ensiferum - Unsung Heroes

Hold B to stop evolution!

*hums tune to "Stone Cold Metal"*

You're all humming it now too, aren't you?  That song is a very special one within Ensiferum's catalog because it shows that they can retain their trademark hooks and over-the-top theatrics while still trying something new.  The Old West style saloon feel of that song really makes it stand out as one of their best, with the whistles and piano and twanging banjos replacing the more traditional folk instruments and symphonic ensembles that the band normally utilizes.  It showed they can branch out from their comfort zone and make awesome, folksy power metal wherever they go, no matter how they try to do it.  While some of the experiments on the previous album, From Afar, didn't really work as well as they'd hoped, the effort was clearly there, and it signified the dawn of a new era within Ensiferum's history. 

And that is precisely what makes 2012's Unsung Heroes such a bloody kick in the nards.  This is a very, very lame and uninspired regression back to the Victory Songs era, and just plain reeks of the band phoning it in.  And when I say it goes back to Victory Songs, I really mean it goes back to the ideas of one track on that album, the ballad, "Wanderer".  That is my favorite Ensiferum album and I think "Wanderer" is a great track, but one of the reasons it is so good is because it's the only track of its kind on the album.  It stands as a unique look at the loneliness that these mythic warriors embarking on epic, world spanning quests that they normally write about really go through.  It's a look on the more melancholy side of adventuring, and the music reflects the tone of the lyrics.  It works great for what it is, a more restrained ode to our heroes.  The issue with Unsung Heroes is that nearly 80% of the album follows the formulas set by "Wanderer" and the various other slow songs on the first two albums.  If y'all don't remember, those have always been my least favorite aspects of the early albums.  The plodding ballady songs that dominate nearly half of the self titled and break the flow of the otherwise stellar Iron.  With Unsung Heroes, it's nearly the only kind of song on display.

I once again feel the need to point out the intro track, as I've noticed that my enjoyment of the album as a whole seems to be directly proportional to how much I like the signature folk intro track.  All the previous ones have carried a nice melody or a sense of foreboding or urgency, whereas "Symbols" here goes in one ear and out a nostril.  The pattern continues when "In My Sword I Trust" marches in.  This seems to be the fan favorite on the album, with even the numerous vocal detractors that they album has garnered claiming this to be the most in tune with the spirit of the band's previous works.  The chorus is a nice, rousing affair, I won't lie, and the solo is very flashy and entertaining, but otherwise it's a mid paced trot through a rather uninteresting area we've visited plenty of times before.  The main riff also reminds me of "Tie Your Mother Down" by Queen, which is pretty cool I guess, anything that reminds me of Queen is a winner in my book, but that's always been a pretty good signal of quality.  If the best things remind you of something better, it's a pretty good indication that what you're listening to probably doesn't have a whole lot of interesting things to say on their own.  And with tracks like "Last Breath", "Burning Leaves", "Unsung Heroes", and the two "Celestial Bond" songs in addition to that opening song, it just cements the problem with the album.  They all recall "Lost in Despair" or "Old Man" or "Eternal Wait" or "Tears" from previous albums.  Essentially, they hearken back to the half of their old dichotomy that always bored me shitless.  I can admit that the melodious female vocals in "Celestial Bond" are very pleasant and the male counterpart in "Star Queen" matches them in terms of smoothness, but the songs themselves just drag like an anchor behind a bicycle with no tires.

Basically what this album lacks is energy.  One thing you could never take away from the band was their dedication to the pomp and bombast that permeates all of their best songs.  Ensiferum was always on top of their game when cranking out high tempo rockers with very strikingly thick symphonics and Finnish folk melodies.  Even songs that featured slower, folkier parts would build into a victorious fanfare that made the slow parts worth it, as the payoff would be nothing with out it (See "Lai Lai Hei" and "Victory Song" for prime examples).  Everything would build and explode, or it would leave the gate in a sprint and not slow down until long after it had crossed the logical finish line.  Now with Unsung Heroes, we're treated to a host of dull sightseeing tours, with the band trolling along at a slow pace, occasionally pointing at things and saying "Isn't that pretty?".  It's lame, it's not fun, it's not even interesting, the lack of conviction really makes it feel like the band didn't give much of a shit when it came to this album.  It's a series of mainly inconsequential, low tempo dullards with nothing interesting happening inside, even if Markus Toivonen is finally getting more and more opportunities to sing.

Now this album isn't without its merits, there are a couple songs I have yet to mention.  "Pohjola" is also a midpaced track, but unlike the previous treks, this one has some bounce and energy to it.  The folky overtones complement the strong guitar work and actually manage to capture some of the lost fire that this album sorely lacks.  There's also a small segment of narration, and the narrator sounds like Christopher Lee.  I know I just said that it's bad when the good things remind you of something better, but there's a charm about hearing Saruman describe epic battles over bombastic power metal that I'll adore no matter who he's rambling over.  The 17 minute epic track, "Passion Proof Power" is also surprisingly well done after an album full of lifeless slumps, as it manages to build itself up to a fun climax on more than one occasion.  Essentially every idea the album toys with is fully realized within this closing epic, and if the energy and dedication that the band put into this track had been prominent throughout the previous 45 minutes, you'd be looking at a much more generous score at the bottom of the page here, even if it does end roughly five minutes after it should.  And then there's "Retribution Shall Be Mine", which is this album's answer to "Slayer of Light", "The New Dawn", and "Elusive Reaches".  It retains the bludgeoning aggression of those previous tracks, but fleshes it out amongst a much longer span of time and keeps the folk elements higher and the guitar with some much freer noodling.  The guitar soloing is actually a bit of an anomaly within Unsung Heroes actually, as it really stands out as a greater cog in the gears that make the album tick.  It was never a huge, prominent feature with Ensiferum previously, but it is here, and it's a nice touch that keeps the album listenable during the dull songs that take up so much of the time.

Essentially, there are only three tracks out of nine proper that contain anything enjoyable, and they're all in the latter half of the album.  It takes nearly 23 minutes before the first worthwhile track rears its head.  And the best track is honestly the bonus track, "Bamboleo".  It's a Gypsy Kings cover, whom I've never heard of, nor have I ever heard the original version of this song, but if I gave any less of a shit about that, I'd be taking one.  The song is presented in a straight up death metal fashion, chock full of blast beats and the harsh vocals consisting entirely of low death growls (which I honestly though Petri was always pretty good at pulling off), with a fun mariachi style chorus.  It's by far the most memorable track on the album, hands down, and even if you hate the song I find it hard to disagree with that.  At least something happens in it.

Unsung Heroes is easily the least interesting, and overall most disappointing Ensiferum album to date.  I don't blame the departure of Jari Maenpaa for this like so many others have been doing across the internet, as this has really always been Toivonen's band, and he fared very well for the first two albums with Petri.  I just think that the band as a whole is running out of ideas, as this entire album feels phoned-in and obligatory, as opposed to the band being excited about writing new songs they were proud of.  So yes, the popular opinion is right on the money here.  If you're new to the band, start with any of the first three albums, if you're an established fan, feel free to listen to this but be prepared for the album to finish with you scratching your head, wondering where Ensiferum went.


RATING - 44%

Ensiferum - From Afar

What?  ENSIFERUM is evolving!

Half naked Finns seems to be a very specific trope within the metal community, but there's no doubt that these drunken Scandinavians can usually churn out some excellent tunes.  Ensiferum is known for a unique blend of folk metal and power metal that many bands would come to rip off after their runaway success within the metal community.  The thing about this is that Ensiferum holds some strange intangible that bands like Northland can only dream to reach.  There's something about the way they write their songs, the way they approach their concepts, and the way the songs and concepts are executed.  I can't elucidate precisely what it is that they do differently than their contemporaries, but almost everything Ensiferum has churned out since their inception has been among the best in the genre.  They didn't get this popular by accident.

And that's what makes From Afar such a black sheep within their discography, it's not quite the same as what they'd previously given us.  Don't get me wrong, the bombast is still here, the infectious hooks, the singalong choruses, the high speed riffing with folky melodies layered overhead, everything that makes Ensiferum great is here in spades, but the way they've approached the songs on here is unlike anything prior.  See, I don't quite like this album as much as the two preceding it, but I certainly admire what the band was trying to do.  They did not want to rest on their laurels and mechanically turn out another product too similar to what the fans had come to expect from them at this point in their career.  Maybe perhaps they were trying to distance themselves from the shadow of Jari Maenpaa, which had been haunting them ever since Petri Lindroos took over guitar and lead vocal duties, since Victory Songs (the first Lindroos record) wasn't very different from Iron (the last Maenpaa record).  The fact of the matter is that From Afar stands out in their discography.

I'm sure some of you are picturing the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail with everybody urging me to just "Get ON with it!", but you really need to take a journey through the album to get the full effect of what's different, because despite being noticeable enough for me to feel it ends up hurting the album somewhat, it's mainly a series of subtle nuances and alien themes that make this album what it is.  I mean, the first hint that something is up here would be the fact that the traditional intro track is damn near longer than most goregrind splits.  They've been inching further and further along with each album in this regard, but this drops the hint that this going to be a more ambitious effort than the hard hitting straightfowardness that made Victory Songs such a hit with me.  It isn't long before that little inkling really makes itself known, as nary the third real track breaks the eleven minute mark.  Yes, this album contains the epic "Heathen Throne" saga, spanning three tracks (I consider "Tumman Virran Taa" to be a part of it, it's just an intro to the second part really) and breaking 23 minutes, over a third of the album's running time.  Both parts of the saga fit well enough with each other and there's no doubt that the band put a ton of thought and effort into this epic, but it really falls flat with me.  There are standout segments throughout the two, but as one cohesive whole it's just self congratulatory and bloated.  I was so, so pumped at the prospect of an Ensiferum song longer than most episodes of any given television show, and to its credit the song(s) never drag, but there isn't enough going on to fully warrant such a huge undertaking.

This theme of ambition and trying new things pervades the majority of the album, with mixed results.  The weird synth parts on "Twilight Tavern" stick out like a sore thumb and distract from an otherwise rousing, "One More Magic Potion"-esque number, whereas the American Western banjos and whilstles in "Stone Cold Metal" are among the highlights of the album.  Another new idea that I'm personally a huge fan of is that there's finally no misplaced ballady track.  "Smoking Ruins" is the closest thing to one you'll find here, consisting almost entirely of clean vocals, but it's still a jubilant, mid paced galloper with a sense of fist pumping adrenaline that can only induce a positive crowd reaction in a live setting.  I guess you could call it a sonic successor to "Wanderer" from the previous album, albeit with a bit more of a sense of urgency and magniloquence.  But that's it, even the token short, overly aggressive song in "Elusive Reaches" stands a bit above it's predecessors in "Slayer of Light" and "The New Dawn".

Ensiferum really kicked everything up a notch when writing and recording From Afar, and yet astute readers will probably notice that is is actually rated third out of all four albums I've reviewed of the band.  Despite the heaps of praise I have for the album, the evolution, and the idea behind the album, I can't help but feel like the band isn't playing to their strengths.  The best song to be found on here is "From Afar", and it sounds like it could have been on Victory Songs with no tweaking.  Essentially, the song that sounds the most like what they've already been doing for a decade is the most well written, most entertaining, and most memorable track on the album.  With that said, their experiments aren't entirely failures, because "Stone Cold Metal" is the easy runner up in terms of the album's best song.  I suppose their biggest hit in the score comes from the fact that I just don't like the "Heathen Throne" epic all that much.  It goes and goes and goes and takes up a huge amount of time on the album but they're the least memorable songs by a long shot.  They're essentially massively huge interludes with some entertaining parts thrown in here and there.  It's not worth it, there's a brilliant 6 song EP in here being bogged down by a bloated mess of too many ideas that just don't work very well.  The upside of the album is that Ensiferum knows that they need to change up their formula if they don't want to end up as culturally relevant as a penny-farthing within five years, as the folk metal boom seems to have passed.  They can't ride on their previous success forever, so they take risks and try new things instead of rehashing previous formulas over and over.  Such a thing can work, I have a whole host of Vader albums as proof, but Ensiferum is a more ambitious band then that.  They kind of stumbled a bit on this, but it's because they're crossing treacherous terrain, and the good news is that they still wound up in one piece at the end of it.


RATING - 79%

Overkill - The Killing Kind (and kind of their career as a whole I suppose)

This rant's been a long time comin'

Hands up, whose favorite Overkill album falls between 1993 and 2007?  What's that?  Zero of you?  You mean to tell me that between Horrorscope in 1991 and Ironbound in 2010, Overkill released fuck all in terms of worthwhile releases? They're regarded as thrash legends and one of the only bands to fly the flag of thrash throughout the dark ages of the 90s and early 00s despite not actually releasing anything of quality for nearly two decades, none of which during that period even being a fully thrash release in the first place? Well how does that make sense?

I've alluded to this a few times and I've ranted about it outside of my reviews before, but despite considering myself an Overkill fan, placing Ironbound on my year end list in 2010, and claiming Feel the Fire to be the most perfect thrash album ever written and in my personal top five albums of all time, Overkill does not deserve the legacy they have.  At all.  Now I realize that Iron Maiden had a streak of albums most fans seem to dismiss (I personally believe they haven't made a full worthwhile album since Fear of the Dark, and even then that album half sucks) and Black Sabbath has a lot of forgotten albums and Running Wild tapered off tragically at the end of their career, but these bands all blazed paths and become gods of their respective genres through marvelous consistency and stellar songwriting.  They were originals that took their respective fields by storm.  Overkill on the other hand is a product of the times.  Overkill blazed about as many trails as Warhammer. 

But Bastard!  “Sonic Reducer” was in their setlist back in 1979!  That was on Feel the Fire, and you just called that the best thrash album ever!

Suck out farts, you idiot Borisite.  Claiming Overkill as the first thrash band because they were playing a punk cover of a punk song that they tacked on to the end of their first album six years later makes as much sense as claiming Judas Priest used to play doom metal because Sad Wings of Destiny isn’t as fast as Defenders of the Faith.  Overkill gets the same revisionist apologies that Exodus get, with fans claiming they would be as famous as the Big Four if their respective debut albums had shipped just a bit sooner.  Maybe they had these songs written earlier than 1985, sure, of course they did, but using that same logic, do you really think Metallica wrote “Metal Militia” or Slayer wrote “The Antichrist” the morning before they entered their studios in 1983?  I get it, Overkill was one of the first, and I’m not denying that, but I am denying that thrash was great because of Overkill.  Overkill was great because of thrash. 

But Bastard!  They released tons of great albums all throughout their career!  Look at The Years of Decay and even new stuff like The Electric Age!

Hey Forced Naysayer, we agree on something here.  Overkill has plenty of classics, any thrash fan who doesn’t love the first five albums should have their opinion immediately invalidated.  But think about it, all of their good albums were released during the period when the thrash scene was at its peak worldwide.  Thrash fell out of favor, Overkill start playing shitty groove metal.  Thrash gets cool again, Overkill shits out a legitimately great album in Ironbound.  Was that really an accident?  You expect me to believe that they played the kind of music that was the most popular all throughout the 90s and 00s while thrashing during the 80s and 10s because that’s just what they were naturally writing?  Having Randy Blythe guest on Immortalis shortly after Lamb of God released the very popular Sacrament had nothing to do with trying desperately to stay relevant despite running out of ideas over a decade ago?  I’m not buying it.  It was safe and financially intelligent to release thrash again, so they shifted their way of thinking and writing back to a thrashier mindset as opposed to the dumb stomping groovy crap they’d been doing.

Now, I clearly have a deep seeded frustration for Overkill being given a free pass on writing 9 lame albums in a row, but surely they’re not all that bad.  Every band has a stinker or two or at the very least a slight dip in quality over a long career, hell I mentioned earlier that Running Wild, my favorite band, really went out with a whimper, so why do I still consider them legends?  Here, and I hate to admit this, it has almost everything to do with the fans and the hype around the band.  Not one single Running Wild fan considers The Brotherhood or Rogues en Vogue to be proof of the band’s supremacy, whereas Overkill fans readily fly the flag of “THEY WERE ALWAYS AWESOME”. 

But Bastard!  You have to take those albums for what they are!  You can’t hold them against the classics because they’re a different entity!  Look at those albums in their own respective microcosms!

Can it, you butthole.

Actually, I think I’ll do that, it’ll probably help prove my point.  Hell, I’ll even pick my favorite of this era, just to show that even the best they had to offer during this streak wasn’t even really worth that much.  So ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve waded through the previous 900 words without wanting to stab me in the gullet, I present to you, the third (and best) album in the bum streak, 1996’s The Killing Kind.

I’ll give this album props for cleaning up that horrawfully terribad production from W.F.O., and it even starts off on a somewhat promising note, with “Battle” being a highlight for many fans of the album.  Me personally, I think the track is overrated and silly.  I mean, the dorky BUGGADUGGADUGGADUN *boondoon* YEEEEH is just goddamn irritating.  The song also suffers from a problem that many of these songs suffer from, and that’s that they just don’t really go anywhere, there’s no climax.  They mainly follow a fairly simple structure but they don’t feel like they lead to anything worthwhile.  By the time you realize the song is over, you’re already a minute or two into the next track.  The riffing is also focused more on hard chugging as opposed to nuts-first thrashing that the band was so good at doing in the 80s.  I realize I can’t expect the band to do the same thing throughout their entire career, but the fact remains that they just aren’t nearly as good at this groovy, Pantera-y style they go for during this era.  They keep it heavy, no doubt about it (tracks like “Let Me Shut That for You” and “God-Like” prove that in spades), but the style they go for is just damn boring.

I suppose I’ll deviate from my normal reviewing style and be amateurish for a second, and blatantly split up some time to point out the good and bad songs on the album.  As previously hinted, “Let Me Shut That for You” is a fun, high energy track with a catchy main riff and chorus, though there is a long noodly section in the middle that I’m none too fond of, it still stands as a clear highlight of the album, melding the newer groove material perfectly with their ever prevalent punk attitude.  “God-Like”, while not quite as memorable, is another rip roaring thrasher that keeps the pace up and tries adding a fresh, mid-nineties flavor to the sound they were championing on Horrorscope.  “Feeding Frenzy” is by far the best track here, starting with a bluesy, Sabbath style bass jam before transitioning into insanely fun, high-octane thrash metal.  This is what Overkill is good at and needs to focus on more.  This is also the only instrumental track on the album, which raises the question that maybe Blitz himself could be to blame.  Honestly, no, he isn’t the problem.  His snarl, while distinctive and charismatic, reminds me of Zetro in the sense that he’s actually quite annoying when you sit and think about.  On its own, his voice can be headache inducing, but in the context of the band, it fits perfectly and I could neither imagine another frontman in Overkill nor him fronting any other band.  He’s crazy and unrestrained, and I can only imagine blood squirting out of his eyes during any given song.  His over-the-top and completely balls out style is one of the defining characteristics of Overkill’s sound (next to D.D. Verni’s “look at me I’m loud and important!” bass).  And here, Blitz once again proves why he’s one of the biggest draws of the band.  “Certifiable”, despite being one of the lame songs on the album, has some truly raw vocals from him, with his classic crescendo in the bridge culminating with one of my most heartfelt “MOTHERFUCKER”s I’ve heard outside of Samuel L. Jackson or Joe Pesci. 

So with Blitz in top form as always and the production cleaned up considerably from the nearly unlistenable pangy bassy mess that was W.F.O., that leaves the instrumental performances and the songwriting, and oh lord are these ever the culprits with why this album and era in Overkill’s career so damn dull.  I’ve used the word “dorky” to describe the verse of “Battle”, and I think it fits well with the verses in “Bold Faced Pagan Stomp” as well.  Allow me to elaborate on that, because I realize it’s an odd choice of word.  It reminds me of the little ditties I used to write when I had been playing bass for nary a few months.  And let me tell ya, there is nothing dorkier than a twelve year old version of me.  It’s just amateurish and reeks of veterans not trying very hard.  The vocal patterns in the latter track are weepingly hilarious to me.  I hate to continually quote sections of lyrics in the reviews I’ve been doing lately, and I realize this is probably a few lines too many to make my point, but you just have to see this to understand:

Come a kick kick in the dick kick,
Gonna make ya sick kick, suffer you that!
Come the blood spills, get ya kick thrills,
On a will kill?
Suffer you pain.

In a pac wac, got a two on one track,
On a hit n' run smack, suffer you that!
Not tho be the romp or the kick kick whap stomp
Stomp stomp stomp
Suffer you that!

What in the living hell did I just witness?  I understand Overkill were never bursting at the seams with poetic genius but Christ on a cracker that’s on the Five Finger Death Punch sub-level of lyrical ineptitude.  Reading those lines don’t do them justice, you have to hear the bouncy stop-start pattern in which they’re delivered over the slow, churning groove riff to get the full effect of how nonsensically dumb the whole thing is.  If “Bold Faced Pagan Stomp” wasn’t bookended by two of the only three tracks I like, I’d skip it every time and claim it was never written.  And you know the worst part about all this?  “Bold Faced Pagan Stomp” is, along with “Battle”, probably the least terrible of all the bad songs on the album.

A few of the songs are bad in the sense that they just don’t do anything.  “Cold Hard Fact” and “Certifiable” (despite having that memorable moment in the bridge) just go by with little consequence.  Even worse yet is “The Cleansing”, which I will go on record as saying sounds like a precursor to Godsmack.  Listen to that slow, brooding riff that the entire song rides on, listen to that droning, lame chorus, listen to just how uninspired and lazy that song is.  That outro with the low “Jesus, cleanse me…” feels like it goes on for three solid minutes.  That right there is another problem that plagues this album, the songs, despite sometimes just blurring by, all seem longer than they really are, if you can believe it.  The worst offenders of this phenomenon are the aforementioned “The Cleansing” and “Bold Faced Pagan Stomp”, the latter of which I could swear is eight minutes long.  And rounding out the album are the two “doomy” tracks, “Burn You Down/To Ashes” and “The Mourning After/Private Bleeding”, which continue the trademark of being dull lowlights while also being grating on the nerves. Both of these tracks spend a majority of their running time focusing on gloomy and droning passages while suddenly picking up near the end before collapsing back in on themselves.  Why they chose to put two similarly structured yet out of the ordinary for the band tracks on the same album is beyond me.  Maybe it’s just me, but they have always bored the shit out of me when the band tries these slower songs because they’re an energetic band, these slow and gloomy numbers have always just been entirely too dry for any semblance of entertainment.  It’s always baffled me that some fans actually prefer this side of Overkill.  I dunno guys, the angrier and punkier the better, this slower style just doesn’t work for a band with the kind of attitude that Overkill exudes. 

And that is the one thing I’ll concede willingly about The Killing Kind, and that is that the attitude of the band is still here in spades.  That’s always been one of the main draws of the band in the first place and another one of those defining characteristics that make them stand out in the crowded thrash scene.  Their New Jersey origins really shine through in their “We don’t care what you say, FUCK YOU” attitude, and even on these dumb and lazy songs that populate the album, that swagger is still there, and it still helps the album stand up and identify itself as an Overkill album.  It’s the only constant throughout this entire tragic 9 album streak that keeps the albums from being 100% worthless.  While there is a split during this era, with the band focusing on primarily low and groovy stuff for the first five albums and then picking up the pace and getting slightly thrashier (while retaining the heavy groove element) for the next four albums, they keep that perfect marriage of punk and metal in spirit.  Most crossover bands wish they could have the attitude as nailed down and concise as Overkill have it, and it’s that attitude that helps keep The Killing Kind at least mildly entertaining throughout its duration.

But even with that swagger and amount of fucks not given, the album ends up dull on the whole, with only one standout “great” track and a couple other decent ones bogged down in this boring, slimy mire.  Overkill is best when they’re at their most pissed off and aggressive, and it shines through with fast, angry, aggressive metal with a punk edge.  This slow, Pantera style, does not wreck my neck in any way, and that’s what Overkill does best.


RATING - 34%


Also, for added hilarity/embarrassment (and to prove that I DO indeed love Overkill), here is one of my senior pictures proving it.

YUK IT UP, ASSHOLES.

Children of Bodom - Relentless Reckless Forever

 Ballistic Venereal Sofa

Bodom is one of those bands that really got me to where I am today.  Back in 2003 they were practically the first band to utilize some semblance of harsh vocals that I enjoyed, and as such opened the doors for essentially the entirety of extreme metal for both me and legions of like minded kids who have surely become valuable additions to the metal scene.  I realize how over the top silly they are and how utterly devoid of integrity they've become, but there will always be a warm spot in the cold, shriveled, black stalactite that once existed as my heart for this merry band of naked, drunken Finns.  Ever since Are You Dead Yet? the band pretty much seemed to lay down and accept their fate as the cool thing for the stereotypical Hot Topic malldwellers, churning out uninspired and stupid(er) music at a slower pace than before.  And this, 2011's Relentless Reckless Forever, stands as the band's seventh full length, and probably the one with the least hype surrounding it since their inception.

But why?  For their immense popularity, it seemed strange that nobody seemed to bat an eyelash at the prospect of a new album.  Was Blooddrunk really received so poorly that all the enthusiasm had been sapped out of fans?  Was their steady decline over the last few albums becoming apparent even to the new fans introduced to them in the second phase of their career?  For my money, I'd say it probably had something to do with the fact that their (unfortunately) trademarked silly cover song this time around was going to be Eddie Murphy's "Party All the Time" and that the short teaser promo for the album featured a dull chugging riff and people kickflipping flaming skateboards.  Children of Bodom has become so absurdly disconnected with their original fanbase that it's almost on par with the likes of Metallica or Genesis at this point.  Musically they really haven't changed significantly since the beginning, it's the same distinctive melodic death/power metal mixture they helped make popular along with Kalmah, Skyfire, Norther and the like.  However, this fact doesn't change that the  music just feels different somehow.

Perhaps it's the spirit of the music itself.  Dating waaaaay back to the Inearthed days almost twenty years ago, back when Alexi Laiho actually was a little girl instead of just a grown man who looks like one, the band was fueled on raw emotion.  The music was more restrained back then, but the band was serious about its craft.  Through the years, even after becoming one of the most insane and over-the-top bands to gain popularity until Dragonforce became a household name, they kept their quality of songwriting very high.  Melodic power metal with bombastic keys and cartoonishly overdone leadwork, layered over a harsh, high pitched rasp belting out the most juvenile and underdeveloped lyrics imaginable.  And despite the inanity of the lyric work and the complete and utter lack of restraint, the musicianship was so high, the songs so catchy, and the performance so entertaining that the flaws seemed practically nonexistent.  Since those happy, happy times, the band has since started to add more and more melodeath elements to the leads and riffs, tuning down further and focusing more on chugging sections, with the once prominent keys being relegated primarily to the background.  Maybe it's easier for Janne to drink while performing with these newer songs and that's why he keeps it up, despite his talent being so above and beyond the level he's been playing at lately.  Relentless Reckless Forever just continues the direction they've been going.

And after three long paragraphs I realize I'm only just now actually touching on the album at hand, and maybe it's because the history lesson is necessary because, to borrow a Walkyierian pun, history lessens.  On its own, this album isn't anything special, but it isn't anything offensive either.  It's just there, doing its own thing, not really bothering anybody, but when you remember where the album came from and the pedigree behind it, it's just intensely disappointing.  I ragesploded really hard on Blooddrunk four years ago, but really in hindsight the album isn't anything worth getting bent out of shape about.  I could blame myself for being 17 years old and stupid and overreacting to a predictably disappointing album, but in reality the album was a lame and inconsequential release from a band that used to put out some of my favorite music fairly consistently in their prime.  It's basically the '90s Mercyful Fate in that regard.  And that's the same problem with Relentless Reckless Forever here, there's just nothing here.  It's by far the least aggressive output from the band, with the only highlights in that department being "Shovel Knockout" and "Northpole Throwdown".

Good lord, I guess I should address something that anybody who read that last sentence is surely thinking about, I don't have the slightest fucking clue what kind of mushrooms these guys were on when they thought of the lyrics and song titles for this album.  Lyrics were always an afterthought with Children of Bodom, with Alexi making up a majority of them on the spot in the studio.  The lyrics and vocals were never the highlights nor the focus of their music, so it was one of those things I kind of let slide because the high energy melodeath/power metal was so much fun.  But now that the songwriting has taken such a hefty downturn over the past seven years, I can't help but hold them accountable now.  It's just... my god.  Five year olds have put in more effort than this.  It's just lazy and dumb.  "Pussyfoot Miss Suicide", what does that even mean?  "Roundtrip to Hell and Back", we knew it was a round trip by virtue of the fact that you came back.  "Was It Worth It?", I dunno Bodom, you tell me.  Are the new fans and the money really worth your old fans and credibility?  You know what?  That was a silly question, credibility doesn't buy you a nice house.

As I've said a few times throughout this stream of consciousness garbling, the music isn't necessarily bad here, it's just dull.  "Pussyfoot Miss Suicide" rides on a catchy melodeath riff that stands well enough on its own that I don't feel the need to lament about the lack of keys on the track, the title track possesses one of the few moments of old school Bodom in the solos, and "Northpole Throwdown" is a welcome hearkening back to the balls out theatrics of the first few albums that made me fall in love with the band in the first place.  But with that said, I can't tell you a damn thing about "Ugly" or "Not My Funeral".  The entire album is this dull, grey slab with a couple of standout moments here and there.  There are a few lowlights with the primarily low melodeath riff based songs like "Cry of the Nihilist" and "Was It Worth It?", but overall the entire album tends to run into itself.  The band was always at their peak when they essentially just played frantic power metal with insane leads, so when they slow it down or focus on the newer melodeath qualities like they've been so fond of doing on the last three albums, the whole thing just seems to fall apart.  It's a shame too because their talent is still there, they're just entirely out of ideas at this point.  Perhaps it's time to put the band on hold for a time and focus on side projects or maybe just take some time off.  Go ice fishing or... sauna shopping or whatever the hell you do in Finland.  Maybe they're just burnt out and they need some time to recharge, I'd certainly recommend they try.

Also the "Party All the Time" cover can fuck itself with dynamite.  "Funny" covers are useless and only serve to remind old fans how vapid you've become.  Knock that shit off already.


RATING 40%

For Today - Breaker

Holy water swirlies, ahoy!

In my latest review for everybody's favorite lost symphonic brocore goons, Winds of Plague, I mentioned that I'm a pretty decent sized fan of Sioux City, Iowa's For Today.  Now, for some, this probably came as somewhat of a shock considering I'm such a refined beacon of extreme metal supremacy, one wouldn't necessarily assume by my chiseled good looks and flowing, Ross Dolan-esque locks that I have a taste for Christian tardcore.  Yet here I stand behind a band of extended earlobes clutching tightly to their rosaries while scolding me for getting boners.

Before I get to Breaker, allow me to address that the band is flawed on a conceptual level.  What I mean is that they aren't a band for the right reasons.  I realize the notion of correctness is a subjective concept, but when a band just up and admits in interviews that "we don't do this because we love music, we do this because we love God and we want to bring Him to everybody, to let everybody become one with Him" or something to that effect, I get a bad taste in my mouth.  By basically admitting that their music is nothing but a vehicle for their religious propaganda, they've rightly earned a fair bit of criticism by actual music fans from all sects of belief, because who the fuck does that?  Mercyful Fate had a grand ol' time singing about Satan and had a huge interest in the theological beliefs of satanism, but at the end of the day they were still there to make some great, ass kicking heavy metal and holy shit did they ever deliver.  Where For Today fails is that their music takes a back seat to their message, which admittedly earns them guaranteed fans (Christian metalcore runs rampant with the same circle-jerk back-patting that NSBM does, giving unearned praise to mediocre bands purely for having the "right" message) but harms the music at its core.

With all that said, Breaker is the album where it is harmed the least.  This IS just a vehicle, don't get me wrong, and while it isn't the '67 Corvette Stingray of Mercyful Fate, it's still akin to an '81 Pontiac Grand Prix with a ceiling that's falling off, bald tires, and a bum carburetor that's prone to stalling at odd times.  Yeah it's not the greatest thing out there but it's personal, it has character.  For Today writes functional music for the style, and it generally works well (there are some things about Ekklesia and Immortal that fail too hard for me though), and the whole package comes together the strongest on their 2010 effort, Breaker.  It's produced in a very typical, dry, metalcore way, but there isn't anything particularly wrong with it.  And if you really pick apart the songs, there's nothing entirely special about the way they're written.  They follow tried and true formulas, busting out the clean vocals and the breakdowns exactly when you expect them to, but there's an undefinable quality about the album itself that makes the unadventurousness seem bearable, even enjoyable at several moments.

For example, the first proper track, "Devastator", is probably my favorite metalcore song written in the last several years.  The buildup works magnificently, with the vocalist's strong declaration to Hell and how many wedgies he's going to give it, really feeling like a man possessed, pounding toms and a dissonant buzz perfectly complementing his anger and conviction, letting you know that some serious shit is about to go down.  And when it finally releases, it lives up to its own hype and just rips the place apart.  The middle section with the gang shouts of "TEAR IT TO THE GROUND!", culminating in a crushing breakdown pretty much sums up the entire album in a nutshell.  What this album undeniably does not lack, in any measure, no matter how prejudiced you are against the style or the ideology, is aggression.  For Today is fucking pissed about how many people have turned their backs on God, and how strong of an influence the Devil has in today's world, and on this album they just fucking explode.  Despite my earlier claims of the band clinging too tightly to their faith in order to write anything particularly creative, their passion seeps through in more than abundant enough quantities.  I feel the anger and frustration of the band, I feel how much they care for the greater good in the clean vocal passages, I feel how furious they are with the current state of affairs in the fast and technical sections, I feel how badly they want to punish who they perceive as wrongdoers in their... well, punishing breakdowns.  Tracks like "Seraphim" and "White Flag"  pull all of the qualities together in a frankly masterful fashion that I wish other non-musically motivated bands would take note of.  The extramusical qualities of the songs shine in a fashion nearly as strong as Strapping Young Lad's City, and that is one hell of a bold claim to make.

I can't ramble on forever since this, while being exceptionally passionate, is still metalcore.  Musically it's something you've heard a million times before and probably hated a million times harder than that.  But out of all those millions of things, nobody has really actually managed to make me buy in to what they were selling with quite as much conviction as For Today has.  The impressively technical percussion, the occasional melodic overtones, the skull stomping breakdowns, the emotional purity of the vocals, just everything comes together in a very well done whole.  The album suffers a bit from the running theme of whoever The Breaker is, as his poems serve as decent interludes and help split up the album into distinguishable acts, but the pieces themselves are kind of lame and passive.  Plus the album kind of peters out at the end, with the last set of proper songs being pretty inconsequential.  With all that said, and my admittedly bipolar praise/criticism of the album aside, if you ever find yourself with an itch for big, stupid brocore on a moral high horse, look no further than Breaker.


RATING - 77%

Winds of Plague - Against the World

Goddammit WoP I will fucking stab you

I'm reviewing this one pretty much out of a sense of obligation at this point, since Decimate the Weak was an easy target that I reviewed mainly to make jokes and point out that the band really did have potential underneath the horrendous earlobecore elements.  Fate then conspired to bestow a physical copy of The Great Stone War upon me, which blew my mind by actually turning out to be a pretty decent album.  So a year or so later I hear they've released yet another album, this one with almost no hype behind it (there was a ton of hooplah behind DtW (which sucked) and almost none behind TGSW (which was okay)), so I figured maybe they had continued to improve upon their symphonic melodeath style they were playing around with on the previous album. 

You don't have to pick up your socks this time, this is just as atrocious as you thought it'd be.

I hate to harp on aesthetics, but one look at this album really should have given me a hint to drop my expectations back down to where they were after reviewing the first album.  The samurai that adorned the first two shitty albums (but not the good one) is back on the cover, front and center like he's always been.  The title alone could have told me that this was going to be an almost comical trainwreck.  Against the World.  Man if that doesn't sound like the creed of a wannabe hardcore kid who got yelled at for not taking out the trash, then I don't know what is.  The title, the blue tint, the actual artwork, just everything is a throwback to where they were before, and to the surprise of nobody except me apparently, that's exactly what happened.

I'll be the first to admit that I can get behind some retarded, chest beating brocore of the worst variety.  I love For Today, and they're a bunch of really pushy Christians who pretty much just break down and yell about how you're a shitty person for being human.  What Winds of Plague offers is a bunch of pushy douchebags who just break down and yell about how they DON'T RESPECT YOU 'CAUSE YOU GOT NO RESPECT AND WE DON'T RESPECT PEOPLE WHO DON'T RESPECT, RESPECT?!  People like to tear into Pantera for this goofy kind of primitive tree trunk pissing, but Pantera has got absolutely nothing on Winds of Plague.  The lyrical content of almost every song here consists of how awesome the vocalist and his crew are and how everybody else is a bunch of wannabe pussies who should stay out of their way.  I can handle stupid lyrics and attitudes I don't agree with, but my Christ WoP has got to be the worst at this.  Cook's yelling has actually gotten worse, shedding any tinge of metalness he may have previously carried, now being even more into the hardcore camp than he was before, yelling like Jasta and just as unintimidatingly.

Musically, basically all of the metal elements have been stripped away completely, and even the keys (their sole defining feature, mind you) take so much of a back seat that Rosa Parks would have to squint to see them.  There are a few strong metallic parts in a couple spots (most notably the first minute or so of "Strength to Dominate"), but otherwise this is brocore to the bone.  "One for the Buther", "Drop the Match", "Refined in the Fire", and most hilariously "California" showcase this expertly.  Gang shouts, rapping, one note slamdowns, it's all here in abundance, almost entirely devoid of the occasional blast beat or light key section the band used to chuck at the listener occasionally.  They've basically stopped playing the flip flop game and finally settled on one style to focus on.  Before, the songs would be irritating due to the nonsensical hopping between hardcore, melodeath, symphonic metal, and deathcore, but now they've decided to eliminate that problem by focusing solely on hardcore, which is a shame because they really suck at hardcore.  I mean really, one listen to "Drop the Match" or "California" should give so many kids flashbacks to their nu metal days, and this is supposed to be their tough, kick ass statement to the world. 

What makes this album extra irritating in comparison to it's predecessors is that their trademark "boring middle of the album" is even more boring and nondescript than previous albums.  I can basically tell you nothing about any songs between "Refined in the Fire" and "California".  They all just kinda happen, there's almost no creativity or standout songwriting (good or bad) on any of the five or so tracks in the middle.  The only reason the album picks up at all near the end is because "California" is such a hilariously poor attempt at a tough brocore anthem.  Seriously, I hate to quote a section of lyrics again, but:

Put yo' haaaands up!
Reach fo' the sky!
Do what I say or let the bullets fly!

That's just... so fucking stupid.  I can barely wrap my brain around that, it's just so unabashedly dumb.  I don't even want to comment on it further.  Just... LOOK AT IT.  Look at that lunacy, that dipshittery, that fudscullery.  I have to make up words to describe how stupid that is.  That stanza needs a helmet, seriously.

Now, despite being uninspired and stupid tardcore that I've spent the last several paragraphs raging against, observant readers and adoring fans of mine have probably realized by now that I actually awarded Against the World a higher score than Decimate the Weak, which I've implied isn't as terrible.  The thing is that while the quality here is consistently low, it's actually a better effort in my eyes because Winds of Plague actually know what they want to do this time.  Flopping around like a fish out of water between three or four styles that just do not mesh makes for a very irritating listen.  This, on the other hand, is consistently bad nu metal/hardcore crap but at least it doesn't keep changing it's mind every three seconds like a fussy child.  Winds of Plague are a bunch of dickbag fucknards for getting my hopes up with a decent album facing the right direction before unleasing this tattooed bumcore monstrosity upon my naive, sensitive, and non-stretched earlobes.  Stop toying with me you monsters.


RATING - 22%

Dying Fetus - Reign Supreme

DYING FETUS

This will be yet another short one, but the reason behind that is just DYING FETUS.  My brain has pretty much been pummeled to a pulp here, Reign Supreme ranks as the band's best offering since Stop at Nothing nearly a decade ago.  DYING FETUS.  Just FUCKING.  DYING FETUS.

Years ago, my buddy went to a show Dying Fetus was playing, I don't even think they were the headliner, but when he came back, for about two weeks the only words out of his mouth were DYING FETUS.  He'd try to explain how crushing they were, but he'd get like three words into a sentence before just yelling FUCKING DYING FETUS.  He was a fan before, but after witnessing them live he just broke, and that's currently what's happening to me right here.  Just, everything is right with this album.  Despite having a few tracks being obviously stronger than others, ("From Womb to Waste", "Second Skin", "In the Trenches", and "Revisionist Past" are my favorites), there are no dull spots.  Old school fans of the band should love this, as the aggression has been kicked up to a notch not seen in nine years, and while they aren't as prominent as they used to be, there is no shortage of the signature chugging sections and hardcore influences.  There's more blasting and traditional death metal riffing this time around as opposed to just flip flopping between sweepydoodling and neanderthal stomps, though both of those traits are here in force.  Reign Supreme basically took me by complete surprise and grabbed me by the balls in a way I had not found sexual since... well since Cannibal Corpse released Torture a few months ago, but still.... FUCKING DYING FETUS.


RATING - 94%

Miasmal - Miasmal

THE BLAHGO

On one hand, I really shouldn't complain about a cool, by-the-numbers Swedeath worship band doing exactly what you expect them to do, but on the other hand there's just so little here to comment on that this will probably end up being one of my shorter reviews.  You can basically hear the album just by looking at it, cool OSDM worship band with a cool cover and on a reputable label for the niche, but really that speaks volumes for the creativity in play here.  That fabled Sunlight Studios buzzsaw tone and loads of d-beats plus loads of low growls, that's what you're getting, but you already knew that, so I suppose you're satisfied.

See, here's where I'm struggling.  It's incredibly difficult to write about a mediocre release, and that's why this is just a short blurb on LotB as opposed to a fuller, more fleshed out review that I'd also cross-post at MA.  If something is great, I can find tons of ways to express how hard I ejaculate rainbows when listening to it, and if it's really terrible I can pull endless silly analogies out of my ass comparing them to cuttlefish or something ridiculous.  Here it's just... blah.  It's typical and not very well executed or memorable.  It just... happens, I still can't name any standout parts and I've spun this several, several times.  The only thing that stands out at all are the leads and solos, which, to be fair, are all really, really goddamn good.  But that's the unfortunate part, that's really all there is to drool over.  The sound is good I guess, the riffs aren't really bad, nor are the rest of the musical aspects, but nothing sticks out as really good or bad.  And really and truly, that might actually be worst than sucking.


RATING - 44%