Nevermore - Nevermore

Confessions of a Former Fanboy - Vol. I: Secret of the Ooze

Well folks, it’s been years, but it’s high time for another review series of mine. This time, across the next seven reviews, we’ll be learning about, dissecting, and overall critiquing the music of one of the bigger names in metal and the owner of one of the most rabid and headstrong fanbases on the planet. If you’re reading this at all, you already know that the band in question is the mightily dubious modern-progressive-groove-whirlygig metal band from the land of Starbucks and grunge, Nevermore. 

Before I get to the meat, I want to preface this with a quick explanation of the series title and my motivation behind this. When I was 12 years old, I heard my first Nevermore song (“I, Voyager” from Enemies of Reality, if you were curious), and was blown away. This was the perfect time for me to discover the band, as my nu metal phase had passed and I had gotten back into real metal, but I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around extreme metal and frankly couldn’t stand listening to anything too abrasive.  This was easy on the ears that couldn’t handle the cacophony of death or black metal, but was still heavy and undeniably metal while retaining melody and accessibility.  The main draw for me was actually Loomis’ solos. I was a young bassist but guitar theatrics always interested and impressed me, and it’s hard to deny the man’s skills. Everything fell into place at the perfect time, there was no other band I could have discovered at that time that could have interested me as much as Nevermore did.  From ages 12 through 16, Nevermore was always within the top 3 of my favorite bands, and many times claimed the top spot.  I won’t claim that my taste “improved” over time, but it certainly changed.  I really got into Mercyful Fate and other classics, Gamma Ray to help introduce me to power metal, Children of Bodom as a gateway to basically anything heavier than Death Angel, and others. My musical taste branched in so many directions that Nevermore ended up neglected and malnourished.  Now, several years later, I’ve gone back and revisited the band’s catalog.  The years and intrepid exploration of music coupled with my analytical experience as a once popular critic have forced me to see the band differently. Perhaps it’s all perspective, maybe the kids can see something that the jaded veterans can’t, but I’ve made the transition from one of those raving fanboys to one of those hard-to-impress cynics who made a name for himself by comparing Wolf to lasagna.  Since I’ve undergone this change, I feel I’m qualified to really detail the inner workings of the band as I have several years’ experience within the ranks of the surreally loyal fanboys.

Now, I won’t spend too much time delving into the history, since nobody reads the reviews to learn where the members grew up.  Therefore, I’ll just come right out and say this, Nevermore’s self titled debut is worlds different from what they have become known for.  Is this difference a positive or negative thing?  I suppose if you were introduced to the band through Dead Heart onwards, it’s a bad thing.  Apart from Loomis’s fiery leadwork, there is a much more simplistic approach to songwriting on this record.  The issue is that a lot of times the songwriting… well just plain blows.  Take the opener, “What Tomorrow Knows”.  The first track on your debut album, to me, should really define what your band is about and not only set the tone for the album, but the band itself. If Nevermore agrees with me, they give the impression that their band is all about driving one boring, not catchy, uninteresting riff into the ground for about six minutes longer than necessary.  Even when I considered myself a shameless promoter of the band, I never really “got” this song.  It just kind of happens, there are some guitars and vocals and some other noises but none of it means anything. 

This brings me to a point of contention amongst haters and a controversial topic in general whenever the band is discussed, Warrel Dane.  Fanboys are IN LOVE with Dane’s lyrics and seriously, this man is probably the most overrated lyricist on the planet.  He drifts in and out between laughably pretentious and bat shit crazy.  His metaphors are either painfully obvious and delivered with a subtlety akin to Scrubs or make absolutely no fucking sense.  Check the chorus for “Godmoney” for an example.

Send your money to Jesus Christ
Mail order your eternal life
Bend your mind, make you turn around
Don't believe it when they tell you
That even god needs money
God needs money from you

There really wasn’t a more eloquent way to put that?  For a band that seems to pride itself on intricacy and a fanbase that endlessly slobbers over the virtuosic ability of each and every member, that is painfully stupid.  I whole heartedly believe that Dane writes shitty poetry and then tries to tack it on to whatever song the real musicians are writing.  There are tons of times in where the vocals completely distract the listener with just how poorly they fit with the music underneath, but there are better examples later down the road, so I’ll save the remainder of this point for later.

All this blabbering about Dane has yet to even touch on his main contribution to the band, his actual voice.  As a fanboy, I loved it.  It was unique, it fit with the music, there was nobody like him, he dared to actually sing as opposed to scream at a time when all these different kinds of abrasive styles were taking the market by storm.  Now that I’ve grown up and listened to thousands more bands, I really have a hard time stomaching his incessant warbling.  I’ve heard claims that he was classically trained as an opera singer, but if that’s the case I understand completely why he ended up in a complicated groove band from the asshole of Seattle.  There are plenty of instances where an over the top vocalist has worked marvelously, Messiah Marcolin sounds (and looks) like he was kicked off of the Broadway rendition of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Ice for being too ridiculous, but find me a guy who thinks his work with Candlemass sucks and I’ll show you a guy who is in dire need of an ass kicking.  Mr. Dane here, on the other hand, is fucking annoying.  He always sounds like he’s projecting too hard, straining his voice, swapping between high and low registers at totally inappropriate times, and warbling out of key.  His work with Sanctuary shows that the man carries an absolutely killer falsetto, but it’s used so sparingly with Nevermore that he may as well have just said “Fuck it, I have one legitimate talent and I think it’d be awesome to squander it, just because I’m a douchebag”.  His performance on this debut is completely representative of everything to come.  The straying out of key, the bizarre and nonsensical fluctuations between stylings, and the straining/whining over either ridiculous and/or retarded lyrics, it’s all here.

Of the core group (Dane’s vocals, Loomis’s guitar, Sheppard’s bass, and William’s drumming), the former two get the most attention.  Dane for his inability to not raise my blood pressure, and Loomis for his fucking mindblowing guitar skills.  Seriously, he may look like the little girl from The Exorcist, but he is probably the most gifted guitarist in modern heavy metal.  His riffwork tends to fall flat about half the time, but give this guy a soloing section and tell him to have at it, and he’ll melt the faces off the Easter Island Heads.  He has a couple really noticeable sections here, particularly in “The Sanity Assassin” and “C.B.F.”.  I fully believe that this band is holding him back.  His solo project proved what he could do with a progressive metal premise and total control, and I really want to hear more of that.  Hearing him reduced to slightly complicated chugging patterns for the majority of a record is like Michael Romero playing in Machine Head, it’s fucking heartbreaking.

Fanboys call this album “diverse”, but I call it “disjointed”.  This is such a totally different style compared to what half the band did with Sanctuary beforehand.  Two words I’ve used a lot so far are “progressive” and “chugging”.  This surely brings one particularly popular Swedish band to mind, but let me assure you this sounds absolutely nothing like Meshuggah.  There is one thing that Nevermore is obsessed with that Meshuggah seems to be afraid to touch, and that is melody.  Many songs here kind of break down on themselves in order to cram a slower, half assed melodic section that barely fits with the rest of the song.  “Sea of Possibilities” is a great example.  The opening measures give the impression that it’s going to be a fast paced, thrash influenced piece reminiscent of the Sanctuary days, but by the time the chorus rolls around, it barely sounds like the same song anymore.  It turns into this slow, horrid attempt at being haunting and just ends up sounding stupid and ill fitting.  That songs stands as the closest they get to touching the brilliance of Refuge Denied, there’s a section near the end of “Timothy Leary” that carries a sweet USPM riff that could have been featured on the aforementioned album, but on the whole that song is a terrible exercise in meandering plod riffs, much like “What Tomorrow Knows”.  “The Sanity Assassin” and “The Hurting Words” stand as the two ballads, and while the former retains a slow pace, it manages to switch between a haunting acoustic verse and a legitimately crushing heavy section in the bridge that helps keep it interesting.  The latter on the other hand is an overlong, whiny, boring sack of clean guitars and awful lyrics.

Overall, it’s hard to rank their first outing as Nevermore amongst their later works.  This self titled album is really a wholly different beast in comparison to the progressivism and overindulgence their later records would come to exemplify.  On the whole though, it isn’t their worst, but it's close.  There are some truly terrible tracks here (“What Tomorrow Knows, “The Hurting Words”), but when they manage to hearken back to the Sanctuary days (“Sea of Possibilities”) or just focus on a nice groove (“Garden of Gray”), they aren’t all that bad.  Unfortunately, “aren’t all that bad” really isn’t “fantastically great”, and they spend most of the album sucking hardcore.  If somebody was looking to get into metal, progressive or otherwise, I’d never recommend this album. 

RATING - 44%

Rings of Saturn - Embryonic Anomaly

Can we agree to just forget about this, please?

I'm tempted to just copy and paste my Brain Drill review for a third time here (a trick that surprisingly not one single person called me on, shame on you all), but I'd rather not overdo one of my gimmicks like I'm so prone to doing.  But really, every problem I have with the merry band of Californian sodomites is amplified here to a level I thought unimaginable.  The technicality isn't even impressive at this point, it's so in your face and unabashed that there's nothing to marvel at anymore.  When every percussive instance is part of a blast beat and every guitar note is part of a breakdown or sweeping section, there's just nothing to impress anymore.  It's akin to an exploitation film beginning with an incestuous rape scene that climaxes with Bigfoot barging into the room and jerking off on a corpse before shitting on the victim and eating them both, but then the movie ends with the main character just being stabbed.  Sorry, a sword to the sternum isn't all that shocking when compared to the sheer insanity of the hypothetical opening scene, and that's what Embryonic Anomaly really is.  The first few seconds off the album feature intense sweeping and other assorted fretboard noodlings before degenerating into a cliche breakdown.  This formula repeats itself over and over and over and over again throughout the album and the only different element that gets introduced later is some lame keyboard effect that bangs out a chord or two occasionally.

The problem I touched on when reviewing Origin is present here to a degree, and that's that there is so much going on that it's hard to take it all in and really digest it.  The main problem is that Rings of Saturn throws exclusively piles of shit at you, so it's hard to even WANT to take it all in.  There are two things you're gonna get, excessive weedly weedly noises and ultra distorted chugdowns, and the band isn't very good at writing either.  The noodly parts aren't even Weedling as much as they are Beedrilling themselves into your brain and absolutely refusing to back off.  I bet the waveform looks like a brick wall.  There's no variety despite there being a bazillion different notes being played each track, there's no way to differentiate which song is which since each sweepy doodle, each breakdown, and even each occasionally real riff sounds exactly like each one that came before it.  I'm having trouble even describing this shit in detail because there aren't any details to analyze.  Everything is to be taken at face value, which isn't much to gawk at.

There are a few common praises that I just have to dispel here, both regarding the sound of the album.  One is how the pristine production for once completely adds to the album.  This is legitimately bullshit because the sound isn't all that clean.  Sure, it isn't muddy, but I don't have to be smothered in wet dirt to need a shower.  Does everybody remember the uproar that Death Magnetic caused with it's insanely compressed production?  The same fucking thing is here, 100% exactly the same.  There is audible clipping and horrid oversaturation throughout the whole deal, it's torture for the ears.  Even if the album was well written, I'd still have trouble listening to it because it's akin to having a brick shoved into your ear for 35 minutes.  The other issue I have is how this was heralded as being very "spacey", which is the descriptor that made me interested in checking the band out in the first place.  Let's get something straight, Space Invaders is NOT spacey.  A bunch of high pitched beeps and boops is not spacey in the least fucking bit, it sounds "electronic" or "technological" or "malfunctioning".  Space is a vast, infinitely desolate place, larger than any human mind can conceive and overwhelmingly devoid of life.  Fucking Wormphlegm is spacier than this and they sound like they're recording in the center of the Earth.  Even if you don't take the desolate approach to space and instead look at it as a majestic canvas which we can project our wildest imaginations upon, this is still an utter failure as it feels manufactured in every way.  Every bit of this noodly mess is completely calculated and meticulously designed to fit this ridiculous tech-deathcore template.  I know space and science seem to go hand in hand, but outer space is about as organic as you can get.  There is virtually nothing man made in the great expanse of nothingness, and yet people consistently associate this entirely unnatural and manufactured mess of an album with it.

Would you stare at a strobe light for 35 minutes straight?  If so, then Embryonic Anomaly is definitely for you.  It's just a flashy trick being done over and over again for the whole album and very rarely gets interesting.  Rings of Saturn disappoints the hell out of me because on a purely technical level, these kids have some real skills for their age (I think the guitarist only recently grew hair on his testicles or something).  It's just upsetting that their songwriting skills aren't nearly as mature and developed as their ability to move their fingers incredibly fast.  "Corpses Thrown Across the Sky" and "Final Abhorrent Dream" actually have pretty good riffs in the middle of them, and the beginning of "Seized and Devoured" sounds like I just beat a level in Sonic 2, but otherwise there's nothing of interest.  Lame, predictable music for the average, droolingly stupid tech death fan. 

RATING - 24%

Fleshgod Apocalypse - Agony

Fleshgod of Fire

Fleshgod Apocalypse is a strange breed.  They're insane tech death, no doubt, but they take the intensity factor and turn it up to 11 as opposed to widdly-widdlying the living hell out of listeners.  Yeah, their drummer knows basically one beat and then just make believes a drum solo whenever he isn't blasting, but riff wise they're basically peerless in their genre.  As if that wasn't enough to set them apart, they interspersed their mind bending insanity with classical passages on Oracles and introduced clean, operatic vocals on Mafia.  Now there is literally no metal band on the face of the earth that sounds exactly like them, and they've built a pretty considerable fanbase at this point.  After signing to Nuclear Blast Records, they were officially at the top of their game, poised to become one of the world's most popular and creative death metal bands, what else could they possibly do?  They could either take the Krisiun route and stick to what they know they're good at, or they could continue to introduce the classical elements in their music and continue to forge this new path.  I would have said the correct choice was the latter, but now that they've released Agony, I'm only half sure it was the proper choice.

You see, their image and aesthetics helped them stand out as much as their creative take on tech death, and since the first details released about an upcoming album are purely aesthetical, it's understandable that I prepare for the worst when the aesthetics take a nose dive.  The band's stage gimmick hasn't changed (described as "undead gentlemen" or "Akercocke got in a car wreck") but let's face it, the album art and new logo really, really suck.  Worse yet, was that upon the release of the cover, the band commented on its meaning by giving this very long winded description of what it symbolized when really it was an extremely verbose way of saying "Mankind has a dark side that they must learn to control".  No, really?  I thought the raggedy man bound in chains symbolized the Disney's dominance of children's animation in the 1990s.  Silly me.  Also, every track barring the intro and outro is titled "The [Word]", much like Dimmu Borgir's fantastically hated In Sorte Diaboli... not the best precedent to go off of.

So the band is pretentious and artwork has been dumbed down, doesn't necessarily mean the music is gonna suck, does it?  Of course not, but the music here finds itself balancing upon a slack wire several stories in the air between "awesome" and "terrible".  I'm really, honestly not sure if I like this album or not.  The metal portion of the music is largely unchanged.  The percussion is extraordinarily loud and furious, almost never slowing down for a more relaxed beat.  Even the slower songs, "The Egoism" and "The Forsaking", are slow by guitar only, as the drums continue to blast and double bass their way along.  The riffing style has also been left fairly intact, consisting of hyperfast tremolo chords or hyperfast chugging chords.  I don't think any note outside the aforementioned slower tracks are longer than an eighth note, and considering the speed at which the songs fly by, that's pretty impressive.  "The Oppression" and the album's lead single, "The Violation" are probably the fastest tracks on hand, and some of the most intense that Fleshgod has ever put to tape, which is saying a whole hell of a lot.  The intensity is overwhelming, but that's exactly what made Oracles such an enjoyable release.  And when it comes to solos and leads, this is actually a huge step up, as they're both prominent, melodic, and memorable every time one appears.  When one focuses on the traditional metallic instruments, this is every bit as incredible as the previous stuff.

But therein lies the problem with Agony, the actual metal is buried under layers upon layers upon layers of symphonic overtones.  The classical touches that would occasionally appear for a few brief moments in Mafia have been given center stage here.  There is literally about a ten second section in the middle of "The Betrayal" where there are no strings or horns blasting through the speakers, and after repeated listens that ten second section is still the only piece of pure metal I've managed to find on the record.  That isn't to say the symphonic stuff is BAD, per se, it's just such a strange mixture with the hyperspeed tech death insanity that lies beneath.  It doesn't help that the synths are by far the loudest thing in the mix.  It isn't even like it's going on in the background, it's right in your face like David Lee Roth's nuts.  I want to compare it to fellow Italians, Rhapsody of Fire, but with my favorite absurd flower metallers the keys are always carrying the melody or building and epic atmosphere.  If the keys aren't building atmosphere or accentuating the melodic themes, what exactly are they doing?  The correct answer is nothing.  That's right, the symphonics don't really ever do anything. They rarely carry a noticeable, repeating melody, and whenever they're playing solo they don't do anything to build atmosphere or introduce the song's main theme or anything. They always seem to just be there for the sake of it and that's really irritating. I'd like to think I'm a pretty creative person, but using the symphonics on their own and in conjunction with the death metal as a backdrop, I can't imagine a scene in my head. It doesn't paint a picture of inner struggle like the band seems to imply it should convey, the symphonics make it sound neither epic nor foreboding, and the blasty blasty weedly woo is just as in your face and intense as it was previously, so it just seems like there's an annoying, unrelated orchestra playing completely different themes and ideas next door to the recording studio.  There's no cohesion, it's rare that the riffs and synths relate to one another in any way, so there's always this disjointed something-or-other happening in the foreground.

Fleshgod introduced another new aspect to their ever distinguishing signature sound on last year's monolithic EP, and that's Paolo Rossi's clean, high pitched vocals.  There seems to be a split amongst fans regarding the quality of his voice, and I stand firmly on the bad side.  This dude has an awful voice for what the band is doing.  I understand it's supposed to be this classy operatic thing over the chaos below, but it's done so poorly that I can't help but loathe it here.  On Mafia his two choruses were interesting touches, and while he didn't really sound all that great, they worked fantastically in the context of the songs and really helped give the band an identity.  What the band did with that identity is the equivalent of a man realizing that he's gay, and then proceeding to wear exclusively neon pink, see-thru mesh shirts, assless chaps, and Elton John sunglasses.  They took this one identifying feature and sculpted their entire personality around it.  It's annoying when a person does it and it's no different when a band does the same.  Virtually every track features his hilariously bad falsettos, and not a one of them keeps him within a reasonable range.  He is always straining his voice to go much higher than it can go, and it makes me wonder why he even did it in the first place.  His first passage on "Thru Our Scars" has him stretch for at least one note he clearly can't reach, but the rest stays in a range where his voice is at least bearable.  "The Violation", "The Deceit", and "The Hypocrisy" all showcase wonderfully how much of his lesson he didn't learn, as his note choice is even worse on this album and is overfeatured to high hell.  The worst part about it is that the vocals are weak in the first place.  It's bad enough that there's almost no power behind the screeching when he ISN'T spreading his voice far too thin.  They really ought to have kept this particular trait relegated to a track or two, and not given it a starring role.

Despite all this negativity, I still kind of like this album.  It's insanely hard for me to judge, as there is certainly a lot wrong with it, and my favorite aspect (the intensity) is overpowered completely by their newfound love (the orchestra).  And yet, I can still feel the old Fleshgod underneath, and even though it's fighting against meandering symphonics, it still shines through to this fan.  I think the lesson learned here is the age old "everything in moderation, kids".  The adolescent band experimented with a few substances and found one they thought improved them, and then proceeded to go completely overboard and OD.  Perhaps future works will show whether this particular overdose killed them or not, but it definitely addled them.  The once thundering juggernaut is now chumming around scuzzy old apartments, hitting up passers by for change.  You got your fix, Fleshgod, not clean yourself up and get back to being a weekend warrior.  You've shown that too much is detrimental to your abilities.


RATING - 66%

Midterm Exam: The best and worst so far

Well the year is nearly halfway through, and several big name bands and a few underground heroes have churned out their releases in an attempt to blow listeners' minds everywhere.  Some have succeeded greatly while others have failed miserably.  As a critic, it is my job to present my belief as fact and prove to all of you the true merit of these albums.  Let's take a look at the good first:

A SELECTION OF THE GOOD

Autopsy - Macabre Eternal
Yeah, this is exactly what you were expecting.  And yes, it's just as awesome as you were expecting as well.  The sound isn't quite as murky and dirty as it was on Mental Funeral or Severed Survival, but these underground giants are back with a vengeance.  Monstrously crushing death metal that will surely make an appearance on several people's year end best of lists.

Christian Epidemic - Pusztítástan / Primordial Soul 
Maximalist symphonic black metal of the highest order.  This isn't really my area of expertise, but I really like this album for whatever reason.  I'm not very good at explaining why or even comparing it to anything since I'm usually hanging out with death and thrash bands.  Using my limited knowledge of the genre, I could say it sounds like Anthems era Emperor or newer Dimmu Borgir if they didn't suck.

Beyond Creation - The Aura
One of the best tech death releases so far.  A nice healthy mix of Necrophagist, Obscura, and a non shitty The Faceless.  Very brutal while also very proggy at the same time.  Melts brains and eyes with flashy showmanship and strangely solid songwriting.  There's a couple cliche style breakdowns but they fit very well here and don't end up being distractions like they do in so many otherwise cool albums.

Nervecell - Psychogenocide
Band and album name bring to mind some corny industrial metal ala Fear Factory but what you get is some really good death metal.  It has a technical edge but it doesn't stray into the cliche tech death territory and end up sounding like Origin or something.  It keeps the old school death metal ideal of riffs down while also showcasing their chops.  The last track also features the best build up and release of the year.

Bolero - Voyage from Vinland
Basically a less riffy and more epic Ensiferum.  Bolero blends the folk metal with power metal like the aforementioned Finns, but don't quite stand out as songwriters nearly as strong.  Regardless, I find myself constantly coming back to this album so it must be doing something right.  Ensiferum/Kalmah fans could check this out and walk away satisfied.

Demonical - Death Infernal
Beastly, beastly Swedish death metal in the vein of Dismember or Entombed.  I really find myself at a loss to describe this, as I've tried to review it a few times and just can't explain why it kicks so much ass.  I just know it does.  Listen or die, death metal album of the year so far.

The Project Hate MCMXCIX - Bleeding the New Apocalypse (Cum Victriciis In Manibus Armis)
The newest in a long line of creative, industrial death metal band The Project Hate (I hate the stupid number at the end).  I haven't heard any of the band's previous work, so I don't know how different this is (if at all), but the strange mix of groovy death metal, industrial samples, tripped out spacey interludes, and obnoxiously in-your-face operatic female vocals is a bizarre mix that it manages to work extremely well.  I suppose Mirrorthrone is a black metal version of this band, if that helps.

A SELECTION OF THE BAD/DISAPPOINTING

Miasmal - Miasmal

This has been getting a lot of praise lately, and I suppose I can understand why.  It's definitely old school with no pretenses of modern technicality that overwhelms most death metal nowadays, and it was released on the great Dark Descent label, which is a pretty good indicator of quality.  That said, I just don't see anything special here.  It isn't bad or anything, but it doesn't hold a candle against contemporaries like Demonical.  It just goes in one ear and out another, no lasting punch.

Deicide - To Hell with God

Have you ever heard a Deicide album before?  You have?  Well then carry on, this is nothing new.  The cycle is repeating itself here.  Deicide, Legion, and Serpents of the Light were great, and then they released a string of pedestrian, uninteresting, blasphemy by numbers death metal records.  The Stench of Redemption introduced new ideas and was a rush of fresh air, but now they're just doing it all over again, releasing boring tripe over and over.  What a shame, each individual member can do and has done better than this. At least the title track slays.

Deathraiser - Violent Aggression

This is by far, no contest, the most insanely blatant Kreator rip off I've ever heard in all of my years as a metalhead.  Check some of these song titles, "Command to Kill", "Terminal Disease", hell even the TITLE OF THE ALBUM would make any thrasher immediately expect a lackluster bunch of kids with no original ideas of their own.  The music backs up that assumption 100000%.  If you think Kreator would be awesome if they just ripped themselves off senselessly, go listen to Violent Revolution by (you guessed it) Kreator themselves.  Sooo shamelessly bad.

Breathless - Thrashumancy

Is it like against some sort of law for new thrash bands to even try anymore?  Every new thrash band has to have a similar logo, at least one song about how awesome thrash metal is, Ed Repka reject album art, and a staunch hatred of creativity.  This is yet another dull regurgitation of better bands from the past.  This one is at least a little more interesting than the awful Deathraiser album, but it's still lacking in any sort of creativity. 

Rise Against - Endgame

I think this is my first non-metal mention outside of my initial "Best of 2010" post, and I intended to keep this list metal exclusive, but this album is such a huge fall from the lofty heights of The Sufferer & the Witness that I just have to bring it up.  The aforementioned 2006 pop punk milestone had a little bit of everything the band was good at.  Mid paced, catchy poppy stuff, some more aggressive and high octane numbers, an acoustic track and even a throwback to their first two albums with "Bricks".  This album here is basically a bunch of half baked B-sides all borne from the same idea.  "Satellite" is basically the only track worth anything due to the unabashed catchiness reminiscent of their previous hit, "Savior".  Everything else is lame and uninspired.

Macabre - Grim Scary Tales

By far my biggest disappointment of the year.  Chicago death/grind/what-have-you stalwarts, Macabre, release an album roughly once a generation, so this was highly anticipated by fans.  Unfortunately, the opener "Locusta" completely rips face in the way only Macabre know how to do, and then we're treated to a band who blew its load and must putter through the rest of the album as a hollow shell of itself.  The trademark insanity and energy is almost entirely absent, and about 70% of the vocals are done in some bizarre baritone bard voice instead of the death growls and "LEMME DO IIIIT" Stuart shrieks the band is known for.  Killers throughout history, awesome concept, worst Macabe album.

Fractals - Paradox

I'm a bit out of the loop here so forgive me if I'm assuming incorrectly, but if this band isn't hugely popular, they soon will be.  Djent in the vein of Meshuggah, Periphery, and the like.  It's tailor made for the latest trend and somehow managed to get the "progressive" tag stuck onto it (despite sounding exactly like the front runners of the genre) so bonus intellectual cred there.  Basically this is just one of the noisier bands in the swelling djent ocean.  Oh yeah, and there's deathcore mixed in via breakdowns and vocals, as if the band wasn't irritating enough.

Hell - Human Remains

I'm gonna get stabbed for this one, so I'm gonna defend myself right out of the gate by saying this is less "worst" and more "disappointing".  The band has such an inspiring Cinderella story in the world of heavy metal, this is a triumph for the little guy with big dreams and bigger music to become noticed.  This really should be a victory for every aging headbanger.  Why don't I like it that much?  Well this suffers the same issue as the latest Accept and most other old school style heavy metal bands, it's just too fucking long.  Don't get me wrong, the songs are good, but there are just too damn many and too many of them are too long.  Interludes intrude before damn near every song and drag out between tracks.  For all the hype this got, it really fell flat of my expectations.  Worth a listen no doubt, but I'll rarely listen to it.

Mass Madness - Mass Madness

Well that was a thing that happened.  So utterly inconsequential it's actually offensive.  Nothing here ever... HAPPENS.  So dull, so little to say.  I don't understand how the band heard this and said "Yes, THIS will light the world on fire." and then released it expecting fanfare.  Not even the usual "OUR VOCALIST IS A HOT CHICK WHO GROWLS!!!" gimmick works here.

THE ABSOLUTE WORST ALBUM SO FAR

 Morbid Angel - Illud Divinum Insanus

Surprising absolutely nobody, Morbid Angel's ill advised foray into experimentation ranks as the worst release of the first half of the year.  The problem isn't THAT they experimented, but that they did it TERRIBLY.  The industrial bits are painfully amateurish and drawn out, the death metal tracks are boring and carry none of that patented Morbid insanity they usually carry with them (instead swapping it with lame simplicity), and even one bonafide nu metal track in "Radikult", which is by far the worst song I've heard in years.  I wouldn't even recommend this to Hitler.

THE ABSOLUTE BEST ALBUM SO FAR

Essence - Lost in Violence

My little rant on how lame modern thrash has become doesn't even come close to applying to these Danish maniacs.  I sense a strong Artillery influence here, but that could just be the shared heritage toying with my mind here. This is everything that Deathraiser isn't.  It's creative, it's memorable, it's intense, and well written.  This is devastating and heaps of fun to listen to (and not "fun" in the lame party/pizza/nachos/beer vein that a lot of retro thrash bands like to hark about).  Dynamic and lethal, Essence combines all that is good about thrash metal and presents it in a fresh, youthful way that doesn't reek of plagiarism and phoning in.  Definitely my favorite of the year thus far and will surely rank in my year end list.

Well that's where I stand on the first half of the year.  There were plenty of good releases I didn't touch on (Hibria, Portrait, Protest the Hero, Crucified Mortals, Iperyt, Neuraxis, Nader Sadek, Wormrot, Rhapsody of Fire, et cetera) that may grow on me and make my year end list.  But for now these are my recommendations to check out and avoid for the first half of the year.  Hope you've all enjoyed reading my rambling.  I'll be back in six months with the final judgment.

Warbringer - Waking into Nightmares

On the right track it seems...

Expectations weren't set particularly high for Warbringer's sophomore effort, Waking into Nightmares, in my camp.  War Without End was okay the first time, but held absolutely no lasting value and isn't even fun for a romp nearly three years later.  It happened, they got exposure, put on a killer live show and garnered a strong fanbase.  I'll be the first to admit, Warbringer puts on one hell of a show.  Their youthful enthusiasm for their craft is rivaled only be the mighty Diamond Plate, and it really shows when on stage (which is ALL THE DAMN TIME.  I swear they were on every remotely thrash tour for at least two and a half solid years).  It's just unfortunate that the studio effort fell flat in fully capturing that energy and in turn brought light on the unoriginal thrash that they actually played.

Every problem has been addressed with Waking into Nightmares.  The production has been cleaned up and presents one of the better (and most fitting) jobs in modern thrash, the songwriting is more interesting, the band seems more energetic, and everything on the whole just sounds more akin to their famous live show.   The energy is conveyed so well on this record that it can actually be difficult to fight the urge to get up and engage in sweaty man bumping when tracks like the ode to the aforementioned mosh pit, "Living in a Whirlwind", start shredding through your speakers.  Riff wise, they still aren't the freshest chips in the pantry, but they're the best flavor so it really isn't all that worrisome to indulge yourself regardless.  These kids still love the early borderline death metal thrash bands like Slayer and Demolition Hammer, and as such still continue to flatter them by consistently taking cues and borrowing ideas, but they're done in such a way that it's neither thievery nor laziness.  It also helps that they're lighter than the aforementioned bands, emulating them mostly through tempo and attitude.  Tracks like "Scorched Earth" and "Prey for Death" carry a more second-tier bay area vibe ala Testament or Exodus, while tracks like "Abandoned by Time" and "Shadow from the Tomb" fill themselves with double bass and riffs possibly taken straight from Reign in Blood b-sides.  The latter pairing actually ends up being a far better pairing simply because Warbringer is better at taking heaps of influence from Slayer than Testament in the riff department.  Now on the flipside, their leads and solos take much more melodic cues, akin to those of the very same second tier California acts whose riffs they aren't all that good at lifting. 

Earlier, I mentioned Demolition Hammer, a much smaller name in comparison to the other two bands I've mainly used for comparison, and one may be wondering where that comparison comes from.  Simply put, John Kevill must have had Tortured Existence on repeat outside of his crib as an infant, because he grew up to have a voice nearly indistinguishable from the one found on Demolition Hammer's first two records.  This isn't even close to a bad thing, considering the vicious snarl is just as awesome in 2009 as it was twenty years ago.  The hoarse barks work extremely well with the melodic Slayer mishmash underneath, and any other style of vocals would just feel out of place.  The songwriting itself is actually fairly diverse despite heavily taking every cue from a whole two different bands.  "Jackal", "Severed Reality", and "Forgotten Dead" are rip roaring thrash numbers that take an equal amount of prisoners as they do shit (hint: it's none), "Shadows from the Tomb", "Senseless Life" and "Abandoned by Time" really harken to Slayer's mid eighties heyday of brutality with an early proto-death edge, and there's even a mellowish instrumental interlude in "Nightmare Anatomy".

I'd say there's something for everybody here, but that isn't quite the truth.  Despite the surprising variety and overall energy, everything still basically boils down to this sounding like a super group with Kerry King writing the riffs, Alex Skolnik writing the solos, Dave Lombardo behind the kit, and Steve Reilly on the mic.  While that basically sounds like a dream band, it does tend to borrow a little too heavily from the source material.  On the whole though, these kids have their hearts in the right place and will probably continue to produce legit thrash metal long after this retro resurgence dies out.  Time will only tell if Waking into Nightmares was a fluke, but for now I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt and say they're just maturing and will continue to improve. 


RATING - 81%

BITE SIZED: Iperyt - No State of Grace

I have absolutely no idea how industrial black metal works or is supposed to sound, all I know is that whatever Iperyt put out last February is something to be reckoned with.  No State of Grace is just totally suffocating in its atmosphere and overwhelming in its brutality.  The production heavily favors the enraged vocals and computerized percussion, with the bass and guitars pushed to the background.  It works really well for what the album is trying to do, which is to just completely isolate the listener in a desolate wasteland of misanthropy and despair.  Everything about this is angry and vengeful, and the industrial overtones help hammer it home like none other.  The traditional misanthropy that just comes with the black metal territory works hand in hand with the dead mechanization and isolation of the industrial elements and they blend together so well that it's hard to call this more of one style.  I dunno, it's hard for me to really formulate the words behind why I like No State of Grace so much, which is why this is a short BS review instead of a full one like I was planning.  Just know it's great.

Diamond Plate releases teaster track for debut album

Check it here!!

Diamond Plate has released a track from their upcoming Album of the Year contender, Generation Why?  Check it out, rerecorded version of my personal favorite, "At the Mountains of Madness".  Whaddaya all think?  Still best thrash band of the decade?  Bitter disappointment?  Lukewarm?  Regardless, spread the word, this band is gonna take over the thrash world.

ONCE AGAIN, THE TRACK IS HERE, QUIT FUCKING AROUND AND LISTEN TO IT

BITE SIZED: All that Remains - ...For We Are Many

YOU ARE NOT STRUNG OUT, ALL THAT REMAINS.  STOP TRYING TO BE STRUNG OUT.  Really, this is a step up from the (to quote Shaq) horrawful Overcome, but they're still fucking up everything they are good at.  The ripping solos, the occasionally hardedged riff, catchy choruses, there are plenty of things All that Remains does just fine.  The problem lies in their unabashed blandness and formulaic songwriting.  Those particular problems still have yet to be addressed, and why should they?  They keep making money, they retain popularity, there's no reason for them to innovate.  As a music fan, that pisses me off, but that's business.  "Dead Wrong" is surprisingly very heavy and one of the better songs they've ever done, "Hold On" is a really light Strung Out ripoff but it's at least catchy and somewhat listenable, and the title track also kicks a surprising amount of ass reminiscent of "This Calling" from The Fall of Ideals.  The formulaic verse/chorus structure and vocal cliches have yet to leave but they're at least moving in the right direction.  Despite that, two good songs and one okay one out of twelve is pretty shitty.  This band could be so much more, but for now I'll stick with Blackhawks Over Los Angeles, and you might as well as well since All That Remains has been continually ripping off Strung Out while just adding harsh vocals and hoping nobody would notice for years now.

TOAD - Rotten Tide

Actually puts me at a loss for description

Rotten Tide makes me want to take a shower.  I don't mean that in the sense that "Well now that I'm covered in shit", but more "Holy hell that was dirty".  I'm not sure if it's the rough production or the rock influence, but both aspects only enhance the quality of the music to be found here.  This is an instance like Tiran where the dirt is also the main draw, although TOAD play something far detached from sleazy Motorhead worship.

Even though two of the tracks on Rotten Tide are pretty forgettable ("Pale Nimbus" and "Morning Disgust"), all five tracks are undeniably interesting in composition.  For example, the opening track, "Midnight Hunger", starts off with a slow and haunting lead line that gives the impression that we're in store for some old school mid paced black metal (the heavily distorted screams help my assumption).  It keeps along that same idea for about a minute and a half before smoothly shifting into a much more heavy metal influenced riff akin to Slough Feg's first album.  Around two minutes into the track, we're greeted with a straight up USPM riff in the vein of Jag Panzer or Omen.  All of this is smooth as well, it never once feels like a disjointed mishmash of styles.  Each song flows extremely well, and it really helps add cohesiveness to the strangeness of the music.  If I have any other complaint, it's that the percussion is fairly bland and the vocals are really monotonous in relation to how unique the music underneath them is.  It isn't all bad, they certainly fit well with everything and even have a few standout moments (The "Let chaos reign!" chant in "Necrophatic Vatican" for example), so I suppose there's no real reason for them to change.  There's also a distorted organ ala Deep Purple hidden somewhere in here but it's actually very hard to find.  The simplicity of some aspects coupled with the creativity of others works fairly well and actually adds to the rock n' roll aspect.

Overall TOAD and Rotten Tide surely earn my recommendation.  There are metallic aspects here in the aforementioned occasional riff and atmosphere, but the attitude of the band is actually a lot more rock n' roll than anything.  "Embody the Ghost" is my main example for that, but it's hard for me to actually put into words.  Just take a listen for yourself.  Very interesting black/heavy/rock mixture.

RATING - 80%

Swashbuckle - Crewed by the Damned

"Shut up your fucking bird"

Fergus Buttpump: "Hey BastardHead, I just found this awesome band you'll probably like."

BastardHead: "Sweet, what makes you think it's my thing?"

FB: "Well, what's your favorite band?"

BH: "Running Wild, everybody knows that"

FB: "Excellent, what's Running Wild sing about?"

BH: "Apart from the Masquerade through Victory albums when they had a loose concept series going, they tend to sing about stuff like literature and history, they have a strong interest in American history as well as evidenced by "White Buffalo" and "Little Big Horn" among others. They've touched on great historical figures like Napoleon, Lawrence of Arabia, and William Ki-"

FB: "THAT'S RIGHT! PIRATES!! RUNNING WILD SINGS ABOUT PIRATES AND SO DOES SWASHBUCKLE SO HERE TRY THEM OUT!"

People like Fergus should be caned and bands like Alestorm and the focus of this review, Swashbuckle, should stop being compared to a band that sounds nothing like them. We can all agree that pirates are awesome and really not all that horribly different in spirit from another one of metal's favorite lyrical subjects, Vikings, so there is nothing wrong with exploring this theme. It's a brutal, rough, nasty era of history well worth the metal treatment. What I don't understand is why so many metal bands can take other historical concepts like Vikings and the Crusades and create fantastic art to go along with it, while virtually nobody can handle pirates without delving into stupid Disney style "Yo ho ho!" gimmickry. I'm not going to let my annoyance with the constant misrepresentation sway my opinion negatively here, but I certainly will let the over reliance on a cheap gimmick, unmemorable songs, and Nightfall in Middle-Earth syndrome sway me.

The sad thing is that there is plenty of potential to be found on Crewed by the Damned, the Jersey boys here are actually really competent thrashers, specializing in a heavier-than-the-norm style of east coast thrash with lots of gang shouts and a penchant for melody akin to an angrier Anthrax with a monotonous quasi-death/thrash screamer as opposed to a melodic singer. Unfortunately, for all their natural skill, they suck horribly at writing anything worth remembering. Apart from the early Slayer inspired riff at :28 in "Upon the Spanish Main", the awesomely catchy chorus in "Drink Up" and the general feel of "Dead Men Tell No Tales", there isn't much to grab your attention. Basically every song goes in one ear and out the other, and this includes the interlude tracks scattered between damn near every song. Really, I complained about there being too many on Nightfall, but it's absolutely absurd here. Of the 18 tracks, only 8 of them contain any sort of metal song within them (the unspeakably stupid cover of the Spongebob Squarepants theme song doesn't count). That's roughly only 20 minutes of of metal on a 42 minute metal album. Literally over half of Crewed by the Damned is made up of folksy pirate melodies and stupid jokes. There's a two minute track dedicated to people yelling "YARR!", it would literally be amazing if I was joking right now (yes I know I used that line in my last review, it's more fitting here, sue me).

That's not to say that all of these folksy interludes are bad, but they just clutter up too much space. "Paradise Defined" carries a very nice melody and moves along quick enough, but "What a Ship Is" and "A Fool's Errand" just never fucking leave. I honestly wonder what they're doing here, they don't set any particular mood seeing as to how they clash so blatantly with the fast and aggressive thrash metal that constitutes the actual metal songs. Did the band just enjoy screwing around with acoustic instruments on the side and figured they could shoehorn a couple of their more nautical sounding ditties onto the album just so it wouldn't seem so short? Apart from padding the album length, the interludes serve no purpose whatsoever. Adding forgettable acoustic folk interludes to an album consisting of forgettable thrash tracks just makes the album forgettable in two different styles. Bottom line, Crewed by the Damned is stupid and forgettable. There are a few moments here and there that are okay and one track that actually manages to blend the thrash with the pirate sound instead of the two ideas taking separate spaces ("Drink Up"), but the rest is an unsalvageable mess of blandness that's as dry as toast and about as appetizing.

RATING - 33%