Avantasia - Moonglow

E/N

My relationship with Avantasia is... complicated to say the least.  I feel like the original impetus of the project, the Metal Opera double feature, was a bit too ambitious for its own good, producing a lot of overlong and forgettable tracks, but it justified its existence with some incredible songs like "Final Sacrifice" and the untouchable classic "The Seven Angels". Tobi declared his one-off project to be complete and moved back on to Edguy, but apparently his love of way-too-huge epics and inability to stop shmoozing with his heroes was too much to suppress, and before long Avantasia returned with the Lost in Space EPs leading up to The Scarecrow.  From then until 2016, you couldn't fucking pay me to care.  Avantasia became one of the most frustrating bands in the world, constantly sucking up all of Tobi's attention, leading Edguy to atrophy in neglect (though I was never huge on them either but at least they tended to know what they wanted to do), belching out bloated albums loaded with gazillion minute epics that put me to sleep, obvious Meat Loaf ripoffs, weak ballads, pompous, overblown grandiosity that amounted to nothing, I just didn't want to sit through it anymore.  Avantasia is even my go-to example when I talk about why power metal as a whole has become a frustrating genre, because there are still classic tracks being pumped out left and right, but few fully great albums nowadays.  You might have to sit through an hour of "The Toy Master" just to get one "Devil in the Belfry".

And then, somehow, Tobi captured lightning in a bottle in 2016, and unleashed Ghostlights onto unsuspecting listeners.  I don't even know why I bothered giving it a chance, I had hated the previous four albums and intended to never listen to this bloated nonsense again, but there was some magnetic pull around it.  Maybe I always thought they truly had potential underneath all the pomp and pretentiousness, I dunno, the point is that with Ghostlights they finally delivered.  All of the tropes of Avantasia were there but it all just... worked for once.  Yeah "Seduction of Decay" is a sluggish bore and "Isle of Evermore" is one of the most insignificant non-ballads ever written, but "Master of the Pendulum", "Unchain the Light", "Babylon Vampyres", "Let the Storm Descend Upon You", and the title track were all unquestionably top-tier power metal supremacy, stage-musical wannabes be damned, it was a great album. 

Anyway, all of that buildup leads us to 2019, and the first Avantasia album I had ever looked forward to, Moonglow.  Does it act as a worthy followup to that 2016 opus?  Or is it an entirely new approach that fully breaks it away from its titanic predecessor?  Well like always, Tobi chose what was behind Door #3 and did both and neither, with the added factor of reintroducing all of the problems that kept me away from the band for a decade. 

I think part of the problem here is that, and I'm saying this with no evidence whatsoever, I realize, I think Tobi's ego is growing out of control.  Avantasia is a real hit now, charting in several countries, embarking on megatours with 3+ hour sets, they're a big deal now.  The issue here is that Tobi is and has always been the least interesting part of Avantasia, and I don't think he's quite realized that yet.  His name is still officially in the logo, as if he's some vaunted Stephen Spielberg-esque figure whose name deserves equal real estate with the actual title of the project, and the last two albums now (the two most commercially successful ones if I'm remembering correctly) open with tracks with him as the sole singer.  It feels like he has to get out front somehow and remind everybody that this is his baby.  It doesn't matter that his nasally snarl pales in comparison to the full voiced brilliance of collaborators like Russell Allen or the omnipresent Jorn Lande, Tobi needs to be the one to have center stage at all times.  He's like a more intrusive DJ Khaled of metal who elbows his way into the limelight at every turn simply because he has famous friends.  His endless quest for quasi-mainstream success has finally paid off, and now he can't even prevent himself from literally dressing up like a ringmaster.  Just sit back and let Hansi sing you fucking nerd.

Anyway, enough metashit, I've gone on far too long.  The point of this whole diatribe is that Moonglow is back to the old problem Avantasia suffered for so long, it's just bloated and full of itself and just not very spectacular.  Granted, there's some residual greatness left over from the previous stunner, but there's a pretty huge stretch near the end of the album where very little of interest happens.  Tracks like "Starlight" and "Lavender" feel like pure filler songs, though they are at least sorta fun and kinetic.  They are at the very least actual power metal songs instead of the fluffy Bon Jovi shit he loaded The Scarecrow with.  Geoff Tate finds himself on weak songs again as well, with "Invincible" being the token terrible ballad that Tobi can't seem to stay away from, and "Alchemy" being a weird thing with chuggy strings and a sluggish pace with two minutes of ideas stretched out to seven and a half.  And fuck don't even get me started on the baffling idea to close the album on a cover of fucking "Maniac".  Tobi lost his mind years ago and here's yet another example as to what that means.

But I think overall I'm leaving with a positive impression of the album, despite the overwhelming disappointment.  The disappointment stems almost entirely from how great Ghostlights was.  If that album had never happened, this could well be Avantasia's best album.  The nearly ten minute solo-Tobi faux epic of "Ghost in the Moon" aside, Moonglow does an excellent job of putting its best foot forward.  "Ghost in the Moon" is too long and thin for its own good, but it does have an incredibly rousing chorus that sets the stage for a huge journey, and for the next few tracks the album truly delivers on that promise.  "Book of Shallows" follows and it's potentially the heaviest song Avantasia has ever penned, thanks in part to Mille Petrozza showing up out of nowhere and snarling all over a legitimate thrash riff from left field.  That section aside, the track is a fantastic testament to what makes power metal such an entertaining genre when it's at its best.  Finally landing Hansi Kursch, a vocalist he's clearly wanted since the beginning, is a huge boon to this track and album as a whole, since both of his appearances are easy highlights.  Hearing his bellowing croon on "Book of Shallows" plastered a cartoonish grin on my face, and the mere addition of his voice makes the Blind Guardianisms of the song that much more prominent.  It's fast and heavy, and most importantly it's larger than life and just fuckin' huge and fun.  What a day for a pastel dream, it just works.  It's almost the perfect representation of what Avantasia can be at its best.

I say "almost" because the actual perfect representation is a mere two tracks later with "The Raven Child".  This is exactly the type of song that Tobi is always trying to write and only occasionally succeeding at.  This is the huge multi part epic that guides the listener through a moving journey of several different themes and ideas, all of which connect.  This is what "Ghost in the Moon" should've been, and the utilization of two of the best singers he's ever wrangled into the project (the usual suspect of Jorn Lande and the white whale of Hansi Kursch) only works to the track's advantage.  It's generally midpaced and epic as hell, there's an extended quiet section in the middle that acts as a fantastic buffer for the sheer grandiosity of the first and third movements, the multilayered choirs build into this massive explosion of high octane beauty in the climax, the whole thing is just phenomenal.  This very well could be the best Avantasia track to date.  Yes, even above the astounding "The Seven Angels". 

And just since I've touched on almost every track at this point, I'll also throw out the remaining good tracks.  "Moonglow" stands as the song I've easily listened to the most, despite "The Raven Child" being what I'd consider the best one.  The title tracks is much more succinct and easy to listen to, and it's just all around an incredible pop rock track that deserves all of the mainstream success that Avantasia has been soaking up in recent years.  Easily one of the best choruses Tobi has ever penned, and I have to give him kudos for finally utilizing the token female guest vocalist on something that isn't a shitty ballad.  "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" is basically just a double-length "Starlight" but it works better, even if it does drag a bit with the lengthy runtime.  And just to round it all out, "Requiem for a Dream" is another astounding tune, a high speed attack with frantic bass leads and pummeling percussion.  I've never been a Michael Kiske fan but the two altos here help the track soar high above it's grounded ferocity. 

So that covers all of it, I don't usually name every single track on an album in a review but Moonglow is so ambitious and such a mixed bag that I can't really avoid it.  There are more good songs on the whole, and the best songs are some of the best the band ever wrote, no doubt about it.  But the thing that keeps me from truly recommending this is that the bad songs are just so indicative of everything that made Avantasia unbearable for a decade.  Moonglow falls back on a lot of the old tricks that Ghostlights so deftly avoided.  Tobi has shown that he's fully capable of writing excellent epics, even when they're as self indulgent as physically possible.  But he's also shown that he's fully capable of forgetting to make the base of the songs underneath all of the pomp and circumstance worthwhile on their own.  At least this time you don't have to sit through an hour of boring bullshit before you hit the good songs, but you still need to wait almost eleven minutes before a single more talented guest shows up, it's still structured in a weird way where it starts and ends on a whimper, it still has a five track stretch of mostly dead air, there's still way too much going on while simultaneously being completely uninteresting, et cetera.  To use an old LiveJournal term (and show my age a bit), this is a very good example of "E/N".  Everything / Nothing.  It's a million words that means everything to the writer and nothing to the reader.  I almost revived my cringey old series of When Pompousness Takes Control, but I decided against it because I do still think this is on the positive end of the spectrum on the whole and some of the best songs are the most overblown and overdone, but I do still think Tobi is at his best when he just gets back to basics and stops trying to make every song "Paradise by the Dashboard Light".


RATING: 61%

Swim to Drown - Fortress

God please kill me

People like me (read: people who are ensconced in the underground and hang out with metal nerds on the daily) don't realize something about the state of music today.  Namely we've successfully insulated ourselves from the "real world" outside of our little sphere of whatever metal we love.  Goats n' Gasmasks war metal, thesaurus aping brutality, high flying fantasy metal, shamelessly retro throwbacks, whatever it is you're into, you're probably into something like that if you're here and reading this.  I had a bit of a wakeup call a year or so ago when curiosity struck me and I started wading into the "new metal tracks" type playlists on Spotify, and I was struck with a stunning revelation.

All those "false metal" things that internet nerds used to be all up in arms about fifteen years ago like nu metal and metalcore?  Yeah, it's all still going incredibly strong, with a healthy scene populated by a zillion bands I've never heard of that have 30k+ Facebook likes with oolongs of middle school kids bumping this shit at full volume.  Crazy right?!  Turns out that "metal" is still a nebulous term that people have different definitions for, and the definitions that MA has been diligently (and correctly) excluding for almost two decades now is still around and kicking with no resistance.  Who knew?

I bring that up because imagine my shock when I came across Swim to Drown's Fortress in my latest promo batch.  I figured based entirely on the album cover and title that this would be more weepy death/doom since I've been getting a surprising amount of that, but no!  Swim to Drown is some horrifying bastard hybrid of Meshuggah and Limp Bizkit, complete with bouncy djent rhythms, turntables, and nasally rapping.  I like loads of stupid shit, don't get me wrong, but this is almost insulting to my intelligence in how brain dead and idiotic this is.

Fortress is the musical equivalent of a rubber chicken.  This whole stupid thing is loaded with dorky "comedy" that usually manifests in random videogame samples, vocals that sound like the quack that Ryo-kun frequently squawks out at the end of Maximum the Hormone tracks, and funky basslines that could have potential if they weren't surrounded exclusively by Z-grade rapping and bwongdong non-riffs.  Maximum the Hormone is a great band that utilizes loads of nu metal influences, but they surround them with fantastic hooks and huge explosions of manic aggression.  They're much more System of a Down than Korn, is what I mean.  Swim to Drown takes most of their influence from those fucking awful late 90s/early 00s nu metal bands that populated themselves with snapbacks and fratboys as opposed to tryhard edgelords in halloween costumes (Slipknot and Mudvayne at least had a few genuinely good songs, even if they were on accident).  It's the wimpy sentimentality of Linkin Park with the feckless bravado of Limp Bizkit, festooned in riffs that sound like ballsacks that conjure up Korn without the angst.  Some of you may recall I gave a very mixed review to Crossfaith like six years ago, and what it was about them that kind of entranced me was how it was dumb poppy metalcore with incongruous bass drops and dance beats that was clearly drying to capitalize on the dubstep craze of the time, but I couldn't help but kind of enjoy some of the songs for how unabashedly lighthearted and goofy they were.  They were catchy pop songs with dance beats and occasional chug riffs, but for as stupid as they were, they were at least sometimes put together in such a way where the obvious trendhopping sounded like a genuine attempt to write something engaging and fun.

Swim to Drown?  Fuck no, this is smooth-brained numbskullery of the lowest kind.  There's nothing fun here, this is just an album of aggressively moronic, low-brow, solid-skulled nimrod anthems.  I try to stay off my high horse whenever I can because I like a lot of pea-brained goofiness, but Fortress is too much even at my drunkest.  I know because I tried!


RATING: 4%

Vale of Pnath - Accursed

Lovecraft references are always a plus as well

A little while ago, I negatively reviewed a new tech death "supergroup", Equipoise.  That particular review actually drew some attention when the band themselves posted it on their Facebook page.  I wasn't "brigaded" per se since pretty much none of them actually commented here or tried to track down my personal info or anything, but I did watch from afar as a few dozen people took turns dunking on me for not liking a tech death album for being too techy, ragging on my crack about it having "no hooks", joking about how "hearing the bass" must be a negative for me, "he must've wanted nu metal", et cetera et cetera.  It's all good, I've been doing this for like twelve years now so I'm quite used to people thinking I'm an idiot, but I can't help but feel like a lot of those guys kinda missed the point of what I was saying (as if Origin's Antithesis isn't hooky as fuck while being simultaneously maximum overtech).

So to contrast, here's a tech death album that's loaded with technicality, has a loud and active bassist, and, most importantly, is crammed with hooks and absolutely kicks ass as a result.  And for an added bonus, Vale of Pnath here is even one of the bands connected to Equipoise's hugely impressive pedigree as well (granted it's only through the vocalist, who isn't featured on this EP, but the connection is there nonetheless).

The biggest difference between Demiurgus and Accursed here is that the former was a group of seven extremely talented guys who felt like they were playing three different songs at once, all desperately trying to out-solo each other with neverending musical pyrotechnics on an hour long whirlwind nightmare.  The latter, on the other hand, is equally mindbending in its technicality, but it's constructed in a way where everything coalesces into a pummeling tour-de-force with some real semblance of restraint and nuance.  Not every single attosecond is crammed with four simultaneous guitar solos.  Instead, Vale of Pnath builds upon a foundation of hyperspeed riffs with scorching, diabolical atmosphere, and the fretboard theatrics and panging bass are window dressing accentuating the building blocks of great music. 

There's an almost black metally undercurrent on Accursed, presenting itself as an exceedingly atmospheric record with a shitload of tremolo melodies and blast beats, with lots of subtle synths and industrial grinding.  Oftentimes the metal portions of the songs will drop out entirely for a few seconds to give the listener some time to breathe and for the atmosphere to settle across the landscape before thunderous riffage crashes through the tension and decimates everything within earshot.  The focus here is on these devastating riffs and the indomitable adrenaline that fuels them, to the point that the band never feels like they're showing off.  You want to know what hooks sound like in tech death?  They sound like the "Black Dahlia Murder on meth" spasticity of the title track, or the caustic chugging quasi-breakdowns that pepper "Skin Turned Soil", or the straightfoward bludgeoning sections of "Spectre of Bone", hell even the smatterings of djent in between the Neuraxis-styled ferocity in "Obsidian Realm" are fucking spine shattering.  These are what hooks in tech death sound like, they sound like the moments that don't completely eschew the second half of their nomenclature.  Overwhelming technicality is fine, but if it isn't grounded or broken up with punishing beatdowns of savage barbarism, it's going to wind up being a mess of weedling frivolousness.

Granted, Accursed isn't a perfect release.  It does most things right, for sure.  The riffs are destructive and the atmosphere is sublime, but it's undeniably pretty samey.  There are only five full songs that aren't interludes on this EP, and the first three all sound pretty identical to one another ("Skin Turned Soil" and "Accursed" even have the exact same runtime), and while "Obsidian Realm" and "Spectre of Bone" are a bit more dynamic in presentation, they act more as a worthwhile climax after a consistent-yet-samey start.  Regardless, this is a fantastic EP worth any fan of the style's time. 


RATING: 85%

Athanasia - The Order of the Silver Compass

I don't know shit about Trinitarianism vs Arianism

The Order of the Silver Compass has allegedly been in the works for well over a decade, which is impressive considering it sounds like it was written in a week.  The information around the internet about the band that I've been able to scrape together hypes Athanasia up as a power trio consisting of "Members of Five Finger Death Punch, Sebastian Bach, and Joey Jordison's Murderdolls", which is so fucking hilariously misleading that it might as well be straight up false advertising.  Not only is that not appealing considering all three of those groups suck, but it feels like they're going out of their way to tie big names to a band that has precisely none of them.  Joey Jordison and Sebastian Bach aren't anywhere near Athanasia, they're just thrown in because the drummer has played for both Murderdolls and Bach's terrible solo band (and Wednesday 13, who has a sizeable fanbase but Blabbermouth readers don't like 'em so they get swept under the rug).  The guitarist/vocalist/main man here is the one who brings FFDP into the picture, which is a terrible, terrible band of bootlicking hacks who exclusively write Nickelback songs with double bass sometimes, but Caleb Bingham here was only in the band for a few months when they first started out, and was out of the band before they even released their first album.  Since then he had a few stints in Zonaria but never actually managed to appear on an album, and he played in Ascension, a shitty band that nobody liked, and from there is where he pulled the third member of Athanasia, the no-name bassist who only ever played in Ascension previously.

So we're starting off with the wewest of lads here, a power trio of nobodies doing their best to cull as much undeserved clout as possible by playing Six Degrees of Corey Taylor with their respective careers.  This wouldn't really matter all that much if the music was great and transcended their crappy pedigree of popular-but-bad bands in their past, but The Order of the Silver Compass doesn't really do that.  It's better than the sum of its parts, that's true, but not by much, and not enough to be worth recommending.

Musically, what Athanasia puts forward is melodeath that tries to straddle the line between the more aggressive origins of the style with the more alternative stylings of the most popular bands in the style, but they lose their balance pretty quickly and land pretty cleanly on the side of the equation that's much more on the side of post-Soundtrack to Your Escape era In Flames than something like Slaughter of the Soul.  There are occasionally djenty tones in the low chugs behind the clean choruses as well, but they're not as pronounced as you may think.  The end result is something that sounds like a cross between Soilwork and 90s-era Megadeth, clearly focusing entirely on listenable hooks as opposed to pummeling aggression.  That's fine in theory, not everybody has to take the same approach to metal, but this comes off as very safe as a result.  There are a handful of chuggy breakdowns backed by harsh vocals, and the title track actually deigns to pick up the pace during the verses, but for the most part this is very easy-on-the-ears radio metal that would fit quite snugly between Breaking Benjamin and Disturbed on alternative radio stations across Chicago. 

Disturbed is actually a great point of comparison, because I was pretty much stunned at how much the vocalist here channels David Draiman when his hits his upper register.  Compare "The silver cooompaaaass will seeeet you freeee-heeee" with "Ten thoooousand fists in the aaaaaii-HAAAIR".  I haven't listened to any Disturbed song since like 2005 or whatever but I can pretty safely remember that most of what Athanasia does on Order of the Silver Compass sounds like a slightly heavier Believe or Ten Thousand Fists, which in itself isn't all that dissimilar to what Five Finger Death Punch peddles when you think about it.  That's what the vast majority of the album sounds like.  It's that style of heavy rock that flirts with metal quite liberally and even crosses over here and there, but really it appeals much more to listeners that don't want to listen to anything too extreme because then they'll complain about not understanding the vocals.  On one hand I can readily admit that this kind of music just isn't for me, but on the other hand I can also recognize that despite being a project that Caleb has been trying to release for over a decade, there really isn't much here that sounds like it's been refined or looked over all that much during those years.  About the one and only thing I can unequivocally say is great with no caveat is the soloing, which is really where my Megadeth comparison comes from.  Most of these leads are great, going more for a soaring epic mood than actual shredding, but that approach works really well with this more mellow and digestible form of metal.  It's more Youthanasia than Rust in Peace in that regard, but it works because the riffs and general song structure err towards that mid 90s era as well.  But by that same token, that's also the only area where FFDP isn't a fucking joke as well.  Granted these guys handle it much more efficiently than the idiotic "everybody step back and shine a spotlight on the guitarist" approach that FFDP takes and every one of these good solos sounds pretty much the same, but I'll concede that they're good regardless.

So the shadow of Five Finger Death Punch is pretty hard to shake here, and while I'll give the band some accolades for not being the cringey authoritarian-worshipping nimrods that FFDP are, Athanasia still finds themselves fighting many of the same criticisms.  The songs are uninteresting and unexciting, they're all very safe and radio friendly, the vocals are fine in terms of control but lack any real power, the riffs get heavy from time to time but are usually noticeably lacking in punch, et cetera et cetera.  I can dig poppy radio metal from time to time, it's well known how much I love Battle Beast and Powerwolf, but Athanasia doesn't do it for me at all.  The only moments that stand out are the title track for having a solid enough chorus and "White Horse" for being the token ballady song with an epic solo, but overall this leaves me very cold.  It might work for Q101 listeners since it sticks to a proven successful formula to the letter, but for me and the types of people who read this blog?  Hell nah, you don't want this.


RATING: 34%

PS: There's really nowhere to put this but holy shit I hate that album cover.  Just try to dissect it for a minute, what the fuck is going on there?  It's a total mess of layers and layers and layers of random symbols that all amount to nothing.  Fuck that overbusy techno-Pollock crap.

Temple of the Fuzz Witch - Temple of the Fuzz Witch

Prematurely ejaculate my fanatics...

I've mentioned a few times that doom metal can create some of the greatest metal albums of all time when the focus is zeroed in on writing excellent riffs, but too many bands take the ethos of "tune low, play slow" as incontrovertible doctrine with no room to explore.  And if you're the type of band to take a more stoner approach to the genre and take more influence from Electric Wizard or Sleep than St. Vitus or Pentagram, then your rigid adherence to the Four Sacred Words above is augmented by suffocating layers of fuzz as well, but that's all.  It's no surprise that Temple of the Fuzz Witch is firmly rooted in that latter dogma, and it's even less of a surprise that they're not particularly good either.

I'm willing to cut these guys some slack since it's not uncommon for a debut to be kinda shaky since a band could still be trying to find their footing, and the fact that most of these kids weren't even born yet when Come My Fanatics... came out means that their obviously amateur songwriting skills can be somewhat excused for simple inexperience as opposed to incompetence.  Unfortunately that doesn't change the fact that Temple of the Fuzz Witch's self titled debut here is exceedingly derivative and unexciting.  Every single riff and motif here can be traced back to Sleep's Holy Mountain or Dopethrone and that's about as far as any of the influence really goes.  It's unsurprisingly swamped in fuzz and distant, nasally vocals, strictly sticking to a grim, downtrodden pace that seemingly never peaks higher than 80bpm.  They flirt with longer songs here and there but nothing really goes full out with it and breaches the six minute window, so instead of being sprawling soundscapes of hazy nihilism, most of the songs come off as simply drawn out and repetitive.  I don't think it's fair to expect a Dopesmoker out of any new band, but even the tiniest hint of ambition would've been welcome here.

But no, instead we get completely unimaginative fuzztone worship and dreary, swaying riffs with no real atmosphere beyond "sounding like Electric Wizard".  I'll concede some decent riffing in "Bathsheba" and "The Glowing of Satan", but by the time "Infidel" rolls around I've just completely checked out and can't be fucked to care about the rest of what's going on here.  I think most people can understand a difference between "unoriginal" and "derivative".  Unoriginal metal isn't necessarily a problem, I like plenty of bands that don't bring anything new to the table because a lack of innovation can be easily made up for with confidence, performance, songwriting, pretty much anything.  Derivative metal, on the other hand, is just an explicit rehash of well worn tropes with no greater vision or ability beyond tracing old ideas and coloring inside the lines.  Temple of the Fuzz Witch is planted wholly in the derivative camp, and their entire existence is currently defined as a clone band.  Being inspired by Electric Wizard is one thing, being an Electric Wizard clone is another.  Nobody likes a clone band.


RATING: 33%

Cardinals Folly/Lucifer's Fall - split

The Witch, The

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

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

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

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

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


RATING: 89%

Iron Griffin - Curse of the Sky

Not Emperor sunglasses

One of the more infamous interviews in metal history is an interview from Rock Guerilla TV with Fenriz in 2005.  It featured a very obviously drunk Fenriz and a very obviously drunk interviewer with the worst hair on record, hanging out in his dingy studio apartment, surrounded by heaps of dirty laundry, making incredibly awkward conversation, all while Fenriz drops hilarious drunken nuggets of weirdness every few minutes.  "BIG sunglasses, not Emperor sunglasses, always big sunglasses, cool band", "You know Elvis on his belt bucket said T-C-B", "HOW MUCH PRIMITIVE CAN YOU GET??", the entire "Rock and Roll Gas Station" sequence, it's a fucking riot and I recommend everybody watch it twice.

But I bring it up because the very first question asked of him produces a very weird answer.  The interviewer asks what he's been listening to lately, and Fenriz answers "Boring thrash with really great vocals."  If you swapped out "thrash" with "trad metal", you'd have Iron Griffin to a T.

Iron Griffin is a two person operation, with Oskari Rasanen (drummer of Mausoleum Gate) doing a terrible job of playing every instrument, and Maija Tiljander absolutely kicking ass as the vocalist.  The gulf between the two members' talent is obvious from the second she first opens her mouth.  At first I just thought Curse of the Sky would be simply boring and weak trad revival of the Cruz del Sur variety (so very Slough Feg-ish with a lot of bounce in the gallops), because that's exactly how "Reign of Thunder" starts out.  It begins with incredibly toothless guitars, dully puttering out beginner-level power chords with absolutely no fire or gusto behind them.  But once the verse begins and Maija hits the second line and first showcases her masterful wailing vibrato, all of the sudden the music itself becomes insulting.  I can't stress enough how little actually happens during the thirty minute runtime of this debut.  It's astounding to me that somebody who so clearly has so little vision or ambition could want to take on what is essentially a solo project purely for the ability to have total control, because that's the only conceivable reason he'd be doing this.  He clearly isn't a very skilled guitarist, there is nothing interesting or aggressive or moody or atmospheric or anything that makes a bog standard riff anything other than bog standard.  Stale ass rhythms, unexciting chord progressions, weak tone, no cool leads, just not one god damned thing happens with the instruments on here and it blows me away that somebody could produce so little on instruments he's clearly not particularly skilled at playing and decide "Yeah this is ready to go to press."  It's all mid/slow paced gallops and dreary minor melodies that evoke little more than a disinterested yawn.  Even his backing vocals sound like he's barely trying, it's shameful.

And yet, Curse of the Sky isn't completely worthless, because god dammit I am in love with these vocals.  She reminds me a lot of Witch Mountain's original vocalist with how fucking clean and smooth her delivery is while still packing more power and bravado into each and every line than Manowar has managed across their last six albums in total.  She does a lot of wailing and oversinging but man I just don't care, she sounds like a Valkyrie with lungs six times the size of her whole body.  Check out the out-chorus on the title track, for as restrained and uninteresting the riffs are, she almost singlehandedly makes up for it with the wails of an extraordinarily desperate siren.  This is everything I didn't know I wanted and I can't praise it enough.  For every dumbass riff with no bite, there is at least one absolutely stunning vocal acrobatic to keep me from the stop button.

So just like how Fenriz can find Detente a worthwhile band based entirely on great vocals alone, I can almost say the same with Iron Griffin.  Unfortunately, the end result is me basically just wishing she was in a much better band, because this is duller than the back end of a spoon.  Curse of the Sky is very neutered and unexciting, with basically zero musical moments that stir my insides whatsoever, and as great as Maija's stentorian vibrancy is, she alone can't save this dishwater-bland nothing-album.  Believe me when I say this would easily score thirty points lower without her.


RATING: 39%

Musket Hawk - Upside of Sick

Gatling Pigeon

Even after several spins I'm not even entirely sure what this is or why I like it so much.  I feel a bit over my head talking about Revolver Duck considering this lays the sludge influence down super thick and my only real point of reference for that is Melvins since I never really bothered exploring the genre much further than that beyond a few scattered classic tracks here and there.  With that little knowledge of one of the bigger influences on Upside of Sick, I really shouldn't even be talking about something I clearly don't understand, and that's been my philosophy for a long time.

However, my philosophy is also "I know good/bad music when I hear it", and Tommy Goose very confidently falls on the "good" side of that equation.  In fact I'd go so far as to say that they've been one of the few truly excellent bands to pop up in my inbox all year.  The sludge metal here may be a major influence and that puts it pretty firmly outside of my wheelhouse, but the band really let the punk side of the sludge mixture shine, and the occasional blasts of grinding intensity make Upside of Sick something I can comprehend just enough to headbang myself into a coma.

This is a very short release, clocking in at just under 25 minutes, but it crams a whole shitload of riffs and hooks into that short time.  The opener, "Roidhead Swindler", pretty much showcases everything the band has to offer.  It crashes through the gate with some brutally doompaced sludge riffs, absolutely drowning in overwhelming distortion, before giving way to some raucous, filthy Discharge-styled hardcore, and from there in peppers in quasi-random blasts and squealing dissonance, all underneath heavily distorted screams and bellowing growls.  It sounds like I'm describing pretty much any extreme metal band, but trust me when I say that the punk attitude of the whole thing keeps it consistently vicious, regardless of whether they're going for the throat with hyperspeed noise attacks or hurling boulders at you with a more deliberate pace.  There's an inherent danger to Upside of Sick that acts as the intangible that keeps this from falling out of regular rotation while I slog through the other dozen mediocre albums I don't care to write about. 

I can't say too much about this considering it's succinctness, but Gun Bird came with a point to make and they're more than happy to make it and carry on quickly, leaving you a twisted, smouldering crater in their wake.  They're explosive and mean and that's all I really ask for out of a band this stupidly simple.  There aren't any flashy tricks because there doesn't need to be.  They show up, destroy, and leave. 


RATING: 84%

Marianas Rest - Ruins

I JUST realized the band name means "deep sleep"

If anybody has been following me for the 11+ years I've been reviewing metal, y'all have probably noticed I almost never touch on death/doom in any real capacity.  It's not because I hate the style, there's nothing inherently wrong with it really, it's just not my usual wheelhouse since I generally favor the angry over the weepy, and what is death/doom if not weepy?  Marianas Rest here knows how to weep the weepy weep way, but really they stand out a bit for carrying their moodiness in a way that tends to be overwhelming, feeling like you're drowning more than you're sitting in your room moping, and for that they definitely stand above the pack a bit.

I'm being facetious here, because despite the "melodic death/doom" tag they seem to carry with them, Ruins has way more in common with the style of melodeath that Insomnium got famous for pioneering.  This keeps the downtrodden gloominess of Swallow the Sun and My Dying Bride at the forefront, no doubt, but it shares equal real estate with the cavernous double bass and deep growls that Finns seem to be so good championing.  That also isn't really my preferred style but I can at least jam something like Stone's Reach or Above the Weeping World (hey there's that word again) an any given day instead of necessarily needing to be in an existential pit of despair for them to connect.  Marianas Rest is similar in that regard, because while being in the right depressive mood can certainly enhance the experience, it isn't a necessity.

It's unsurprising that I find the more kinetic tracks like "Unsinkable" to be more listenable on the whole, since that one most exemplifies that rolling double bass and oceanic riffwork beneath submerged melodies that I enjoy so much, but these guys do switch it up on occasion with more overtly slow and gloomy tracks like "The Defiant".  The vocals tend to stay in that deep Niilo Sevanen-esque roar that further adds to the doomy inundation of swelling melodies, but they also swap between a higher rasp akin to a Harakiri for the Sky-ish shout.  They're quite standard for the style, but it works to tie the whole package together, which is really all I can ask of them. 

The album's biggest asset is also it's biggest downfall, being that it's super consistent in its mood and delivery, despite the occasional tempo shifts, but while that creates a cohesive experience, it leaves little room for actual standouts.  Ruins sits at a plateau for its entire runtime and never really gets better or worse than the opening minutes of "Kairos".  I'm starting to run out of nautical adjectives, but invoking the deepest point of the earth known to man in their name is quite appropriate, because this is deep, heavy, and suffocating.  It'd be nice if there was some more overt creativity involved, because as of right now Marianas Rest doesn't do a whole lot to distinguish themselves from their influences, but they're good at what they do.  Ruins is definitely a worthwhile experience, but I won't begrudge you for getting halfway through and just switching to The Morning Never Came or Winter's Gate instead.  Because that's exactly what I did.


RATING: 75%

Frenzy - Blind Justice

Still don't care about the MCU thank you don't @ me

Wanna know the real reason I don't have any friends?  It's not because I'm an alcoholic or because I'm not entirely sure what a toothbrush is or because my King Diamond impression is terrible.  No, it's because I just flat out don't fuckin' care about superheroes.  I liked 'em as a kid, sure, but the last comic book/superhero movie I've seen in theaters was... I dunno, Spiderman 2 back in 2004?  The current glut of superhero mania has left me completely cold and apparently locked me out of all social functions for the past 15 years simply because I just can't bring myself to give a single shit about the latest colorful explosion of glittery Marvel puke all over every screen in the universe. 

So with that in mind, it was a no brainer for me to zero in on the debut Frenzy album, Blind Justice, when I got my latest batch of promos.  An obvious reference to Daredevil, presented with an album cover clearly designed to evoke memories of classic comic books, with song titles that are all obvious allusions to other comics?  Fuck yeah, I get to be smug and dunk on nerds for a few hundred words again.  Score!

Imagine my disappointment when Blind Justice actually wound up being... good.

Yeah I'm actually kinda mad that I like this, because all signs point to this being a low-effort snoozefest attempting to capitalize on a trend that apparently won't die, but dammit Frenzy is actually really damn solid.  On the surface this is just regular-ass heavy metal with no adventurous songwriting, but beneath that this is just... well, regular-ass heavy metal, but the safety in cliche manifests more as simple confidence in what they're doing with no frills or unnecessary window dressing.  I wish there was more to say about it, but there really isn't.  Frenzy just plays what has been nominally played out for decades but they do it with a lot of style and bravado that makes it akin to comfort food.

This is 80s to the bone, with songs spending about half the time in a double bass frenzy of the fastest that Judas Priest and Dokken had to offer, with the other half being more traditional mid paced stuff akin to Accept or Iron Maiden.  So their influences are all the most obvious bands you could imagine, but they play with a lot of style and sheer black-toothed attitude so it really doesn't matter.  The vocalist is clearly the highlight here, and it's for something that I haven't actually seen anybody else mention.  Namely, his higher register sounds just like Klaus Meine in his prime.  I may not be the biggest Scorpions fan in the world, but there's no denying that Klaus has got some fuckin' pipes on him, and Anthony Stephen here channels him brilliantly.  Check out "Save Me", it's absolutely undeniable.  The rest of the band is solid as well, with the guitarists keeping things entertaining enough, though only really stealing the show on the closer, "Shred or Die", which is about six and a half minutes long and I swear nine minutes of it are taken up by nutso soloing. 

So that's really all there is to this.  This is a short one because fuck dude, what do you want me to say?  It's solid heavy metal that we've all heard a million times before but it's energetic and raucous enough to be a fun listen on occasion.  I'd really love it if I went the rest of my life without encountering one more piece of media that shouts how awesome Batman is at me, but the confetti explosions of "Waiting on Your Call" and "Killing with a Smile" are cool enough for me to stomach it this time.  The more anthemic singalong like "Save Me", "We are the Future", and "Mad Ball" are fun and catchy, while the speedier assaults like "Blind Justice", "Velocity", and "Shred or Die" are a whirlwind of exciting cheese.  Blind Justice is nothing truly special, but it's certainly better than it has any right to be.


RATING: 79%