Barús - Drowned

It's been a long time, a really long time, the Vitrun artwork seems to have burned in to the screen and the resolute inertia needs a jolt. The time in absentia was spent on a different geographical location, the place were I was born and then I had a moment of spotlight in the metal hemisphere. The days in solitude and contemplation fostered an new resolution a week before new year, I promised myself I won't impose my passions and creations on anyone. My joys are my own and no one has to suffer for it, I don't want anyone to pretend to like the things I like. You may call me mad, crazy, pathetic or pretentious, I don't mind for this is who I am. For you dear reader the take away here is you are reading this on your own free will and I thank you for that.    

Frank Zappa once said

 "The mainstream comes to you, but you have to go to the underground." 

I found Barús, yes I found them and I have to thank Angry Metal Guy comment section for that. It is not like they are the most underground or kvlt band around but I had to do some searching. I found their debut to be the best 2018 had to offer, now that's some statement I made there and there are going to be skeptics and to those I offer you a ride, hop on.

Drowned starts of the way I want all metal albums to start, no symphonic intro, no acoustic noodling and no samples whatsoever. Descry opens the album and brings us right into the action. Heavy layered and dense, the song grooves like Nothing era Meshuggah but with a much warmer guitar tone and a varied vocal attack. Tempos slow down, words are spoken and then behold the blast beats. A desperate wail and the opening riffs comes back in the outro and that riff can move mountains.     

Barús sounds like a grainy coarse Neurosis album build over a technical groove laden Meshuggah base with an Ulcerate's ear for visceral soundscapes hovering along with the ominous dirges and diverse vocals of Triptykon . The lines between the four bands are always blurred and the vocals cover low growls, wails, shrieks, clean singing and spoken words such as those that starts off Graze. The words "growing insight" gets more and more intense, the singer catches his breath and then all of a sudden the song Engorge breaks down into a Dillinger Escape Plan jazzy mellow noodling. In the song's outro an uplifting strummed chord progression (it almost sounds like Acquired Taste by Leprous) contrasts with the low palm muted chugs creating a tension release synergy, one of the most emotional and epic moments of the album.

The band understands how huge and intense they have become at this point and so comes the first interlude Amass. After the break Dissever starts off as their drummer makes the count and Barús grooves again, you can almost hear Triptykon's Aurorae in the spoken word section of the song. Vitiate is the blackest song of the album with blast beats, tremolo runs and an unhinged vocal delivery. The second interlude of the album Benumb unlike Amass is used to prepare you for the final two songs and it's fitting that those two are the strongest and the most intense of Drowned.

Perpetrate starts of like song The Exquisite Machinery of Torture by Meshuggah of the album Chaosphere with its doomy mechanical marching riff. From this point the album reaches a more melancholic introspective mode and you can feel the change in emotion. At its faster moments you can hear Ulcerate's Everything is Fire dissonant voicings and all of a sudden there is a breakdown that is unmistakably Opeth. The clean guitar melody evokes the kind of feel that only Opeth is capable of (listen to the second half of the song The Wilde Flowers of Sorcerers) at this moment Barús is more than the sum of their influences and everything collides into white noise at the song's finale.

Drowned ends like the way every great record should end, with a song that concludes and encapsulates the vision of the album. Forsake traverse all the sonic landscapes that the album covered so far in its 8 minute duration. Guitar solos makes an appearance for the first time and so is the Devin Townsend-esque clean singing that rises above the dense guitars and double bass rolls into an emotional zenith. The song fades away bringing the album to a solemn halt and what follows is a forlorn silence.

 
The heavy layering and the wall of sound production do support the album title and it does drowns you into the depths. However the mastering is on the Ulcerate side of things, its loud and compressed but not enough to cause fatigue and that has a lot to do with the album's phasing. The interludes appear just when they are needed and the songs never fixate to an idea. The grindy guitar tone (which almost sounds like the amazing This Ruined World by Trials) gives the riffs the necessary rawness and a sense of danger.

Drowned is the best metal album released in 2018, at least to me. It is a shame that most of the major metal sites and blogs have overlooked this debut by Barús. They are all going to regret this, I see a future where bands try hard to emulate this record's sound. They are French and we have seen a plethora of Deathspell Omega and Blut Aus Nord clones. 

I pat myself for having found this amazing record, it is the Ulcerate Meshuggah love child that I always dreamed about. Good things don't always come to you, you have to search for it and those that are right before your eyes and are apparent may not always be the best. 

LINKS FOR YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT

Neurosis   Meshuggah   Ulcerate   Triptykon   

The Dillinger Escape Plan   Leprous   Trials

Drowned Bandcamp

Carpe Noctem - Vitrun

Carpe Noctem - Latin for "seize the night"

Oh black metal ! Thou art comes in all forms and shapes, thou enchants and disquiet, thou redeems and desecrate and you ventured far away from your Scandinavian heritage. Carpe Noctem hails from a land brimming with blackened fury, Iceland and Vitrun is their second outing with their brand of black art. Their art revolves around dissonance and apocalyptic atmosphere, painting with their music a bleak desolate landscape that offers no hope. A year before a black metal record from Netherlands blew my mind, Kwintessens by Dodecahedron and Vitrum is the earthy sludgy counterpoint of the aforementioned record. They sit in a blackened throne between the primitive madness of the latest Infernal Coil record and the sate of the art calculated atonal chaos of Kwintessens. There is no sunshine and rainbows here.   

They sing and scream in Icelandic, a tongue unknown to me. They chose to not to assuage their art in hopes of a more wider audience offered by English, that's bold but Google is our mutual friend and we translate. If the song titles are anything to go by Carpe Noctem is ambitious on Vitrun. They waste no time by giving us an intro track, Söngurinn sem ómar milli stjarnanna (The song that echoes between the stars) takes just 10 seconds to introduce the gravely growls of Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson. The song has tremolo picking melodic riffs that often ends with a wild whammy bar abuse and it almost calms down towards the end with one of the guitars playing chords while the other playing a trance like guitar solo.

Things start to get weird and disturbing from the next song Upplausn (Resolution) with one of the guitars giving Deathspell Omega-esque atonal chimes before the two guitars going for countermelodies in their riffing. At around midpoint Helgi Rafn Hróðmarsson goes for a tom heavy tribal drum pattern in a performance that almost rivals the latest Kriegsmaschine record. The atonal motif returns for one more lap with the tempo slowing down linearly to an explosion of reverbed spaced out guitars. Ambient noises of string scraping like those heard in Nihil Quam Vacuitas Ordinatum Est by the Italian band Ad Nauseam closes the song and that apparently isn't the only time we hear them in this record.

Og hofið fylltist af reyk (And the temple was filled with smoke) starts of in a doomy tempo and takes a good 3 minutes with it before going into a bouncy guitar lick. The two guitars make a short wild sprint at 5 minute mark before exploding into another tribal drumming and reverbed spooky guitars, you can almost smell the smoke rising from a pagan ritual. Hér hvílir bölvun (Here lies the curse) introduce clean guitars and cymbal flourishes and the disturbing string scraping, somewhere far away an orchestra is playing out of tune, clashing instruments one over the other. The song builds and builds to staccato chugs with squealing whammy infested guitars floating above. Hér hvílir bölvun leads to the shortest song of the album, the instrumental Úr beinum og brjóski (From bones and cartilage), with its clean guitar arpeggios, cinematic atmospherics and splashy cymbals the song build tension that is never resolved in its 4 minute duration.

It gets resolved however in an aggressive pounding of guitar and drums that introduce the final track the epic Sá sem slítur vængi flugunnar hefur náð hugljómun (The one who wears the wings have come to light). The most dissonant part of the album, the first few minutes is a clash of atonal melodies and intricate drum patterns and fills. The two guitarists Andri Þór Jóhannsson and Tómas Ísdal have souls of their own and if you are hearing this in your headphones you can hear the left ear and right ear guitars battling it out. At midpoint all of the chaos breaks down into cleanly plucked guitars and spacey whammy guitar squeals and from then on it all ends with the Ad Nauseam string scraping and synths building up tension that by now you are aware will never be resolved. The record ends and you are in disquietude

                     
I wish I could write about the lyrics, going by the song-titles the subject should interest me. They write about mythology, mysticism and the lyrics are esoteric in nature. In a venture like this the production is an instrument in itself. The record sounds amazing, it sounds organic and live especially the drums and unlike the Pyrrhon and the Imperial Triumphant records Vitrum is inviting. It draws the listener in and keeps him/her immersed in it.

I am a big fan of album artworks devoid of band logo and album title. The art is credited to Stephen Wilson who also did the cover of Drowned the debut album of French band Barús. The art and the music is so unified in its vision that I won't be surprised if Carpe Noctem rewrote the music from their initial demos to aurally paint Wilson's art.

This record and Firtan's Okeanos lies on top of my black metal album of the year list. Both records are completely different in its scope and execution yet both quenches my thirst. Black metal has indeed ventured far and away from its Scandinavian roots. It is now an art that deserves critical writing and that's just what happened here.

LINKS FOR YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT

Carpe Noctem   Dodecahedron   Infernal Coil

Kriegsmaschine   Ad Nauseam  

Vitrun  

      

Avenged Sevenfold - The Stage

I have long history with Avenged Sevenfold. Back in 2007 Electronic Arts released a game called Need for Speed: ProStreet, the game had a song called Almost Easy among others in its soundtrack. The song had a chorus which goes "Come back to me it's almost easy"  my teenage mind loved it, it was fast, heavy and it had a wicked guitar solo. It was my first introduction to heavy music of any kind, since then it had been quite a journey from hard rock to the bleak waters dissonant black metal.

Avenged Sevenfold is a band that doesn't like to stay at one place too long. They started off as a metalcore band and they were to be honest nothing special in a sea of similar New Wave of American Heavy Metal (NWOAHM) acts that combined At the Gates riffs with hardcore punk breakdowns. Things took a different and interesting turn with a release of City of Evil in the year 2005. They abandoned harsh vocals and adopted a more traditional hard rock and power metal aesthetics, people started noticing their talents especially lead guitarist Synyster Gates and drummer The Rev. They went even more preposterous with their self titled release two years later, an outlandish mix of hard rock, symphonic rock, Gothic, avant-garde metal and even country music. 

In a sad turn of events they lost their drummer and friend James "The Rev" Sullivan two years later. They as a consequence released a darker and somber record in Nightmare a year later with the help of former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy. The Rev was not just a drummer, he was one of their main songwriters and some of their most loved songs like Afterlife, A Little Piece of Heaven and Almost Easy were written entirely by him. With his loss the band lost their sense of wackiness and the follow up Hail to the King was so inspired by their idols that it eventually turned out to be their most uninspired work.

The band recruited Brooks Wackerman of Bad Religion on drums and surprised everyone when they released The Stage out of nowhere.

Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance

The Stage was released without any promotion whatsoever thus becoming the first heavy metal album to do so but the surprise part was the album itself. I have no reservations in saying this but The Stage is one of the greatest progressive metal record released this decade. It is a concept record about artificial intelligence taking over and mankind finding solace and humbleness in the infinite cosmos.

The band makes the statement of progressive intend right on the onset by opening the album with an 8 minute song. The title track shifts through various tempos and moods but M. Shadows brings the song right at home with a hooky poetic chorus with memorable lines like "Tell me a lie in a beautiful way I believe in answers just not today". In an attempt to add the color black to the metal platter they introduce blast beats and tremolo picking runs over the mournful verses of Fermi Paradox which also features a flanged out drum beats in its breakdown. Simulation amps up the drama with spoken word passages and sound samples and an overall chaotic song arrangements that gets even more insane when Synyster Gates and Brooks Wackerman battle out in a wild solo session. Horns and trumpets blare along with the riffs in the song Sunny Disposition in the record's most sinister moment and the same wind instruments give way to Shadow's euphoric "Dear radiation my sweet friend Let agents dance upon my nerves"

No matter how good you are with your instruments or how sprawling your composition is, you need hooks to anchor it down, all the songs here has at least one memorable vocal line. The band has gathered a loyal following over the years with their catchy fun and heavy compositions. Avenged Sevenfold knows their audience and has no plans in disappointing them, God Damn is the more aggressive and wilder cousin of Natural Born Killer of Nightmare with an opening start stop riff that appears again on Higher. Paradigm even goes back to their metalcore days with shadows delivering a scream at the chorus, breakdowns get even more weirder and intresting with the band's new found progressive leanings such as the one in Simulation.

M. Shadows and Johnny Christ

Avenged Sevenfold has never made secret of their love for Guns N' Roses, you can see their influence right to their use stage names and like their idols they too can pen a heart wrenching ballad. Every Avenged Sevenfold record has at least one, The Stage has two. Angles the most traditional of the two sees Shadows getting all emotional on the chorus

  "Mother wash the devil from my hands

Pray the Lord I have the strength to stand

Mother, tell me was it all a lie?

       Show me where the angels die"       

Gates goes all Slash in an equally emotive outro solo. Roman Sky on the other had is cinematic and sprawling in scope with string sessions and a clean guitar solo before going all pompous with the orchestras. It is really beautiful when Shadows sing these lines accompanied by the strings 

"Just before you go, tell us how the heavens flow 

Weightless evermore, as you walk beyond that door

Shine forever true" 

These emotional humane lyrics gets intertwined within the album having a man versus machine concept. Paradigm discusses plight of a man who lost his human self in an attempt to devoid himself of all defects of being a mortal (Engineer the wires to your brain, architect a code so you won't feel the pain... I stare at my reflection, have I lost that boy inside?). Artificial intelligence takeover becomes the subject of Creating God ("Devouring the very last invention man would ever need but exponential growth is a frightening thing, indeed")    

The song Higher discusses the possibility of leaving Earth with space travel as a way to escape the mess we created ("Came a million miles and the earth grows small as I lovingly leave it behind"). There are billions of stars in our galaxy that are similar to our Sun and there is a high probability of them having Earth like planets and at least some of them should have intelligent life that should have already visited us. There is no evidence for it whatsoever prompting the physics Enrico Fermi to ask "Where is everybody ?". This contradiction is popularly called "The Fermi Paradox" which forms the backdrop of the song Fermi Paradox.

         

Brooks Wackerman

The closer Exist needs a paragraph of its own, at 15 minutes and 41 seconds it is a song worthy to be named alongside the great prog rock epics. The song is the sonic representation of the big bang, with an explosive opening of dueling leads and intense drumming calming down slowly as the minutes pass by. The introduction of vocals represents the creation of Earth with Shadows crooning the words "Our truth is painted across the sky, in our reflection we learn to fly". The song ends with a monologue by American astrophysicists Neil deGrasse Tyson about how small and insignificant we are in the infinite span of the universe.

I am usually averse to science fiction themes on records, the widely acclaimed recent records by Vektor, Blood Incantation and Artificial Brain did nothing for me. I like my musical themes to hark back to the days of olde but the emotional warmth the band brought with their songwriting won me over. A lot of this has to do with the production. This could have been another of those loud sterile modern production cases considering the band's popularity instead what we get is a dynamic record that brims with life, the one that puts all the "loudness war" causalities to shame. As if a surprise release was not enough the band swims against the current by releasing a quite dynamic record. For all the hate the band receives for being "less metal" I wonder if any of our favorite extreme metal luminaries will be as daring.       

This is the longest post on this blog and the record deserves each and every word of it (Miss Guess What ?, thank you for your patience). It was a pleasant surprise when the band released this album on October 28, 2016, no one saw this coming. I remember waking up that day to this news and checking out iTunes to find the entire album available for purchase. 

This is Avenged Sevenfold's  best work so far and ask any A7X fan, they will tell you their follow up to The Stage will be nothing like The Stage. That's Avenged Sevenfold for you and this is the crux of my fandom.

All photos featured here are from their official website.

   

LINKS FOR YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT

Avenged Sevenfold   At the Gates   Guns N' Roses

Loudness War  

Tribulation - Down Below

Sounds we hear always paint a picture on our minds, music paints either the sun or the moon atop that landscape art. An album to me is an uncharted land waiting to be explored and whenever I walk through them it's either day or night. An album is not just a collection of songs the artist happened to write and record during the course of few months but an amalgamation of influences, personal reflections, artistic vision and evolution the band would like to project. They project these with their music, lyrics, album art, liner notes, band photos, music videos and even with their live shows. The records that you hear therefore caress more senses than the sense of hearing. Yours truly here therefore classify albums as "day albums" and "night albums".  

Day albums are the ones that sounds warm and lively, all the sludge, stoner, groove and trash metal albums fall into this category. The death metal bands having oriental influence like Behemoth and Nile conjures images of Arabian desserts and Egyptian gods, hence all of their albums are day albums. Songs of war, glory and majesty are day for those happen under the sun and that's how Amon Amrath, Bolt Thrower and Manowar got their albums tagged under day. Night albums on the other hand are cold and a bit achromic, most black metal albums fall into this and so does the Goth influenced. The "grim and evil" side of heavy metal are forever nocturnal and they always dwell under the light that never warms. It also helps when the band makes it clear with their album titles and artworks like the albums Nocturnal and Nightbringers by The Black Dahlia Murder or In the Nightside Eclipse by Emperor.       

Down Below by the Swedish band Tribulation is the quintessential night album. The band has been toying with the idea of night and its beings since moving away from their Swedish death metal roots to a more Gothic influenced in the album The Children of the Night. Three years later the idea becomes fully realized in the band's fourth record which almost sounds like The Cure playing death metal and that my friends is a compliment.

The Gothic subculture has its passionate romance, the ever present melancholy and the fetish towards the color black but Down Below is very much a death metal album. If it was just death metal then there is nothing new to hear or worthy to write about. It is all made clear in the second song Nightbound if you put the lyric in a different context.

"I remember, I remember who we are 

and the long night comes with grace" 

Yes the riffs do come with grace and every lick every note here is a thing of beauty and yes they do remember their death metal.

The album opens with The Lament, starting with moody clean guitars before going late 70s heavy metal with the riffing. However it's when we reach the chorus that we meet the band's cynosure. Adam Zaars and Jonathan Hultén writes truly infectious leads, when Johannes Andersson screams "Would we see you if you came to us?" it is the chorus lead riff that hooks you. The song Lady Death too spots a chorus lead that the band develops into a guitar solo and the same riff is used as a motif throughout the song.

Lacrimosa is Down Below at its heaviest with its double bass rolls and a more menacing tone with the guitar riffs and leads. It even features Gregorian chants and church bells in the middle giving the song a spooky Ghost vibe. The song ends with some cold piano notes and with it on a melancholic note. Pianos and syths comes in and out in the ominous sounding Cries from the Underworld, the song features a Pink Floydian  guitar solo at around the 2 minute mark and an ambient breakdown leading to even more Floydian solos.

Johannes Andersson vocals is the only thing that keeps the record in deathy realms, he sounds like a more restrained Mikael Stanne of Dark Tranquility. His bass work is praiseworthy as well, often taking part in the counterpoint with the two guitarist and he even does a bass solo in The Lament. The new drummer Oscar Leander brings an earthy jazzy fell to the songs with creative fills and patterns such as the tom filled drum parts in The World or the swinging beats in the middle of Lacrimosa.

It is hard not to miss the "lady" in the lyrics. Most the songs here refer to a particular women, even the artwork has a lady in it (right below the bird's neck). In The Lament the women is named Sophia

"But we mourn

We mourn the death of Sophia"

Lady Death describes her as "beautiful and severe, graceful yet fierce" and proclaims "In the depths of  your mystic darkness, I must die".  In the flowing song Subterranea, she who is

"Dolorous

Lifeless in her gaze

Blank reflection a memory merged with the haze

Rabid, in fervor"

brings the singer "Down below", "In eternities alone". Finally in the last song the epic Here Be Dragons the narrator warns the listener about her. The phrase "Here be dragons" refers to the old practice of drawing dragons or monsters on the uncharted areas of maps warning whoever that dares to pass through those lands and seas. The narrator "bowed and took her by the hand"  only to realize 

"Here be dragons

Here be death

Here be the sombre that have felt the Devil's breath"

The lady referred here can be literal or metaphorical but this small concept ties the album together and gives credence to the long lost art of hearing the album in one go.

It is really hard to listen to this on a sunny day, Down Below draws a picture of moonlit woods and a distant castle obscured by a shroud of fog. We walk through those twilight shadows and gets enchanted by the visuals the music paints. The albums has a very retro late 70s feel due to its guitar and drum tones, polished enough to highlight the instrumental flair. 

The record was released on January 26th and it took me months to finally write about it. It checks every box of what I like in heavy music, it's progressive, dark and emotionally heavy with some intricate guitar playing that gets better and better with every listen. It is nice to hear a band expanding their sound and incorporating their influences without losing their identity. Of all the bands that released music this year Tribulation's follow up to Down Below is the one I look forward to, we will never know where this evolution is going to take them.                 

Down Below is available for purchase on Century Media Records. 

LINKS FOR YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT

Tribulation   The Cure   Ghost   Pink Floyd

       Dark Tranquility   Gothic Rock        

Shining - VII: Född Förlorare

Depressive suicidal black metal, now that's three malicious adjectives to our beloved genre of music. This sub sub sub genre of heavy metal's existence always intrigued me. Why would a band release music that glorify suicide and self-harm which if taken seriously has the potential to eliminate their own fan-base ? Why are the artists behind such spiteful music still living ? Those were just two rhetorical questions, we all know it is just an artistic expression no matter how hard they try.

My first introduction to depressive suicidal black metal was the Finnish band Totalselfhatred  with their debut self-titled release. The lyrics were despondent as advertised in the band name and the desolate atmosphere the album conjured won me over. In my quest for more hopeless music I stumbled upon the Swedish band Shining and to my joy and surprise they sounded like Opeth of My Arms, Your Hearse era.

 "...Take a long good look at yourself 

because maybe Shining isn't really your thing...."

That's what Niklas Kvarforth the founder, vocalist and the songwriter of the band said among other things in the 2 minute long speech that opens Shining's fourth album The Eerie Cold. Kvarforth goes the distance to send his misanthropic message across but he also goes the same distance to make the music progressive and Född Förlorare is Shining at its progressive best. 

The album also features guests contributions from Swedish metal luminaries like Erik Danielsson of Watain, Christopher Amott of Arch Enemy and Håkan Hemlin of Nordman.

Förtvivlan, min arvedel (Despair, My Inheritance) opens with a girl singing a verse of the song You Are My Sunshine and that's as happy the album gets. Förtvivlan has a background synth melody floating among the riffs like the song Dunkelheit by Burzum and then there is the acoustic breakdown in the middle. Shining knows the importance of dynamics, Kvarforth knows that when every thing is heavy nothing really is. He complements the heavy extreme side of the band with somber interludes and all the songs here has those moments. Acoustic guitar arpeggios, violins and mellotrons introduce Tiden Läker Inga Sår (Time Heals No Wounds) making the transition into harsh vocals and heavy guitar riffs even more stark. The song features Erik Danielsson providing his trademark rasps on the most black metal moment of the album.

Shining is known for featuring bombastic in your face guitar solos especially for a black metal band. Människa o'avskyvärda människa (Man, Oh Despicable Man) features two of those, one by their own Peter Huss and the other by Christopher Amott. The solos are introduced after some mellow string sections and guitar arpeggios with Kvarforth screaming their names when their solo begins. Amott unleashes a wicked solo, shredding his guitar into oblivion and for a moment Född Förlorare almost becomes Yngwie Malmsteen's Arpeggios from Hell. However my favorite solo is on Tillsammans är vi allt (Together We are Everything), it's perfectly phrased starting off with some beautifully executed melodic twin leads and then into absolute shred-fest, it complements the song perfectly almost being the extension of Kvarforth's anguish.

Tillsammans also has a Gothic rock feel helped by Håkan Hemlin singing the chorus whose lyrics in isolation tell a romantic tale.

"För utan mig är du ingenting, är du ingenting 

Och utan dig är jag ingenting 

              Men tillsammans är vi allt"             

(Because without me you're nothing, you're nothing 

And without you I'm nothing 

But together we are everything)

If you know Swedish or if you looked up for the translated lyrics like me, you'll know it's about man having substance issues which can be a metaphor for romantic love. The song ends the way it started, the piano melody bleeds into the opening notes of I Nattens Timma (In the Hour of Night).

I Nattens Timma is my favorite of the album, which is odd because the song is a cover devoid of any metal influence. The song is beautiful nonetheless, it's the kind of song that you long for when you are alone, it has a solemn comforting feel and of course a gorgeous solo in the middle.

Kvarforth gets all personal in the last song Fff  which is dedicated to his mother who died from a heart attack a year before recording the album. The words Fff stands for Från födseln förlorad, Swedish for "lost since birth". In the song he curses his parents for creating a life. Kvarforth proclaims his life as "ett misstag som aldrig borde få ha hänt (a mistake that should never have happened)". When the album ends with a warm chord of a mellotron, I am happy that it happened.   
          

Niklas Kvarforth

All of this hate and anguish wouldn't have worked if not for the vocals of Niklas Kvarforth. There is a reason why I included him on my 7 greatest harsh vocals of metal list. His ardour for what he believes (however flawed that may be) and the vehemence with which he screams may give some second thoughts to some feeble minds but his adherence to quality song-craft makes his music worth living for. Things cannot get anymore paradoxical than that, depressive suicidal black metal band Shining gives another reason for you to live.

Shining released their tenth album earlier this year  X – Varg Utan Flock, an album that mirrors their masterpiece V - Halmstad released 10 years ago. In the last song Mot Aokigahara Kvarforth says

"I was born December 1983 and I died December 2017" 

The album was recorded in December 2017. I know what you are thinking. As I said before, it is just an artistic expression.

   

LINKS FOR YOUR ENLIGHTMENT

Shining   Totalselfhatred   Opeth   Yngwie Malmsteen 

Arch Enemy   Burzum

X – Varg Utan Flock

Infernal Coil - Within a World Forgotten

Back in the year 1983 Slayer released their debut titled Show No Mercy and that record had a song called Evil Has No Boundaries. Only an iconic band can come up with such a great song title, a title that epitomize the brand Slayer perfectly. There are still people out there that associate the words "heavy metal" with the word "evil" and I don't think such notions are going to change, it's been almost 50 years since the first Black Sabbath record after all. Lets just yield to them, just for today, just for this review and shout "Heavy Metal Has No Boundaries" and that's an answer in 5 words why I love this genre of music more than anything. The ever-shifting ever-evolving boundaries of heavy metal just got a little wider with this release by Infernal Coil.

Their sound is definitely not from a "world forgotten", dissonance is the new djent and we have a plethora of Ulcerate-esque death metal bands and Deathspell Omega-esque black metal bands to ensure that the nightmare never dies when we wake up from the trance. If you have ever watched any of their live shows, "a world forgotten" to them is the primitive ways of yore. The dissonance in their sound is not used as a cutting edge musical device instead their sound is dissonant as a consequence of them embracing "music" before music as we know it existed. In one word the sound is primitive. 

This record conjures almost the same atmosphere as the last Desolate Shrine record Deliverance From The Godless Void.  If that 2017 release had some doom influence then this one has grindcore in its arsenal, if that one had a bit of modern day Behemoth in its feel then this one mirrors Portal in its execution. In either case both does the same to the listener, which is an unhinged attack of fury.

The fury here is omnipresent, the first three songs offers no respite. It's only in the fourth song 49 Suns where the band offers some silence, even that "silence" puts you in disquietude if you listen closely.  There is always some synths present in the mix which shows itself whenever the wall of sound show some cracks and ambient noises creep in and out at random. Dissonant guitar feedbacks pierce through the mix and so is some women's screams or maybe both are the same, both are unsettling. Continuum Cruciatus features church bells and some agonizing screams towards the end which bleeds to the next track Crusher of the Seed.         
   

Bodies Set to Ashen Death is the closest the band get to the familiar riff based approach to death metal. The song has an ominous crawling opening riff which also closes the song giving it a sense of structure or dare I say a trace of accessibility and then there is a breakdown in the middle, a well executed drop in tempo with spoken word samples and whispered vocals over a doomy 3 note clean guitar riff. In Silent Vengeance, the final song of the album takes its time to introduce itself, with the opening synths building up the tension. There is constant tempo changes, mood shifts even a distant female voices and from what I can infer detuned violins popping out. It all ends with sounds of wind blowing almost the same way Bathory used to end their albums in their viking metal era.

This album is grower, with each listen you discover more intricate details and that has a lot to do with the album's production. The production has a charming low-fi feel, never letting any instrument to stand out by surrounding them with a shroud of cobwebs. It invites the listener to invest more and every time they are rewarded. Make no mistake this is no early second wave black metal production, there is a well defined bottom end with the kick drum having a real punch especially in slower tempos.

I wish I could write something about the lyrics. I traveled to the nook and cranny of the world wide web and found nothing. If the song titles are anything to go by then it it is obvious that this is no fairy-tale and I suspect the lyrics to be as malignant as the music. In any case those vocals are hard to decipher even with a lyric sheet (like their band logo), that most probably was the idea, so no complaints from me.  

The big question is "Why should you listen to it ?". Listening to music such as these is not going to win you any chicks if that's your sole ambition in life. In a world that make judgments based on first impressions and that craves for instant satisfaction a band like Infernal Coil stands no chance.  People and art with depth and substance takes time to show its true colors. This record took time to reveal itself, I gave it the time it deserved, found its true colors and I paint those in 881 words for you. Now you know, let your choice be wise.

This is the most obscure band covered on this blog as of now. The blog is sailing on uncharted waters towards bleak horizons. As I've mentioned above Evil Has No Boundaries, me neither.

LINKS FOR YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT

Infernal Coil   Slayer   Ulcerate   Desolate Shrine

Behemoth   Portal   Bathory

            Within a World Forgotten           

Alice In Chains - Jar of Flies

Alice in wonderland, is there really a thing called wonderland ? One of those childhood illusions that that they paint assuring your infant minds that everything is gonna be alright. In the novel the girl Alice falls into a rabbit hole that leads to a fantasy world, but in life we are woken up to a world of sorrows and sadness and in this world Alice is in chains. Alice in Chains was with me for a long time but the sheer genius behind the name dawned upon me today. We are blinded when everything happens the way we want them to be but when storms rattles the sails we suddenly begin think how deep the ocean could be. Today is a sad day and I don't want the sorrow to be wasted on tears, lets do something more productive, let me wax lyrical about one of the most mournful and bizarre pieces of music ever recorded.  

Alice in Chains is one of the 'big four' bands to emerge from the Seattle grunge scene the other three being Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. In the late 1980s rock music was dominated by glam metal in the mainstream and trash metal in the underground. Glam metal celebrated rockstars, sex and flashy aesthetics, it was the ultimate escapism, the evolutionary end of an alpha male and this was forced and consumed by the public, it was wonderland all over again. You cannot however hold back the darkest side to your souls, no matter how hard you fake your smile through it, no matter how many times you listen to Pour your Sugar on Me. Grunge represented that angst in us, the contempt for this world and its illusions and when Nirvana's Nevermind sold 30 million copies it only reaffirmed that I was not and will never be alone. 

Alice in Chains was the heaviest of the four, the most heavy metal influenced and the most psychedelic. The band was back in studio after their successful Dirt album, it was sad days for the band for they were thrown out of their home for failing to pay the rents. They took their acoustic guitars to the studio just to see what might happen. What happened was something beautiful and melancholic.

Jar of Flies is predominantly an acoustic album, the band's most expansive work even though it was not meant to be. Gone are the Tony Iommi riffing and the rumbling bass and in came Led Zeppelin guitar arpeggios, Pink Floydyan aural landscapes, violins and harmonica. What remains however is the dual vocal harmonies of  Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell and that pretty much defined the core Alice in Chains sound. The band experiments with various sounds from the wah pedal drenched Rotten Apple to the violins and strings of I Stay Away, the ominous guitar strains of Whale & Wasp to the harmonica of Don't Follow and each of these songs are backed by some gorgeous guitar strummings. However it's the song Nutshell that inspired this article, that opening riff is probably the saddest set of notes played on the guitar and the lyrics that open the song are equally desolate.

"We chase misprinted lies 

We face the path of time 

And yet I fight 

And yet I fight 

This battle all alone 

No one to cry to 

No place to call home"

It is one of those songs that you long for in times like these and the song has probably the best solo Jerry Cantrell has ever written. There is a glimmer of hope as we hear the opening chords of the next song I Stay Away and that shimmer of happiness comes to a halt in the pre-chorus. No Excuses is the happiest of the lot, a song written by Cantrell about Staley.

"Yeah, it's fine 

We'll walk down the line 

Leave our rain, 

a cold trade for warm sunshine 

You my friend 

I will defend 

and if we change, well I

love you anyway"

Jar of Flies was a commercial success as well. It became the first EP to top the billboard charts and for a long time it was the only EP to do so. All of these was ironic in the sense the music was not meant to be released. Alice in Chains went on to release one more record in the year 1995 and in the year 2002 their front-man and one of the most iconic voices of rock Layne Staley passed away. The band reformed and bounced back with a new singer and released Black Gives Way to Blue in the year 2009. Their latest release Rainier Fog came last August and it is at least to me an album of the year contender.

Layne Staley (1967-2002)

There are two ways of contemplating this post, the most inspired writing ever done in this blog or the most uninspired one. The former because I am channeling my most visceral feeling for an album that has traces of those and the later because haven't heard more than two songs of this album prior to writing this piece. In either case it doesn't matter for no one is going to read this other than the one to whom I will send "Guess What?" as soon as I finish writing. Obscurity has its own advantages and I am (mis)using it to the fullest.

It's been finally out of me, Maiden Priest has become a shoulder to cry on, which is more than I thought this blog will become. When it is out of the system you levitate and I float in despondent air.

LINKS FOR YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT

Alice in Chains   Grunge   Nirvana   Pearl Jam   Soundgarden

Glam Metal   Layne Staley

         Rainier Fog          

Psycroptic - Psycroptic

This had to happen, a review of a self titled release. When I started this blog I knew this was coming but not in my wildest dream that I thought it would be an Australian technical death metal album. Self titled releases are like losing virginity, it happens only once in a lifetime and likewise a self titled release happens once in a band's career (unless the band's name is Killswitch Engage). The are couple of reasons why a band decides to name their album after themselves. In some cases it is their debut, they need instant publicity and they don't want fans to have an iota of doubt on who the creates of the masterpiece are (Black Sabbath, Aerosmith, Van Halen). A self titled release may suggest a significant change to the band's sound, a reinvention of their image which may lead to commercial success (Metallica) or public outcry (Suicide Silence) and in some cases it is just pure laziness to think about a name that would appear on the cover (Avenged Sevenfold). Then there are bands, veterans in their craft who wants to remind all of you who they are late into their career and Psycroptic by Psycroptic is one of those cases.              

Who are they? Six months back I would have shown a blank face to that question but my quest for all things heavy and brutal eventually led me to these Australians, 'led me' won't be too honest lets just say 'found them on the way'. They are a technical death metal band formed by brothers Joe Haley and Dave Haley playing guitars and drums respectively and their current lineup gets completed by Jason Peppait on vocals and Todd Stern handling bass.

The band has only one guitarist which is a rarity in the sub-genre and like other single guitar technical bands like Decapitated and Dying Fetus the band has the almighty riff as the focal point. What this means to you dear reader is that the band avoids neoclassical sweep picking scale exercises, pretentious symphonic arrangements and fretless bass shredding. Psycroptic was always a guitar centric band and this album is no different, each of its nine songs are adorned with technical and intricate riffs and each of those are unmistakably Psycroptic.

     
Joe Haley's riffs are long, winding and diverse, Sentence of Immortality and Endless Wandering features melodic tremolo picking riffs while the opening of Setting the Skies Ablaze hark back to the glory days of trash metal. Then there are serpentine Opethian riffs in songs like Cold and Ideals That Wont Surrender and like the Swedish maestros Joe layers the riff with acoustic guitars playing the same pattern, you can hear the sound of his fingers moving up and down the fretboard. The opening minute of Cold is pure Ghost Reveries era Opeth, that main riff after the acoustic intro is one of the greatest in the genre, its both melodic and technical at the same time. These little intricacies give the album an organic earthy feel something that is abstained in the sub-genre they are classified under. The brothers after playing for years together knows what they are going for and their chemistry has led to some of the best guitar drums interplay death metal has ever seen. Dave Haley knows the exact drum pattern to complement his brother's riffs even the fills follow the guitar notes.

For all the instrumental dexterity and songwriting excellence it's the vocals that one associate in characterizing a band's sound. Jason Peppait replaced probably the most versatile death metal singer of all time. Matthew Chalk can traverse death grunts, shrieks and gurgles in a single verse and he had the chops to match Joe Haley's riffs. The second Psycroptic album The Specter of the Ancients was roughly a battle between Joe Haley's riffs and Chalk's vocals.

Jason sounds nothing like a death metal vocalist and I love his vocals for that very reason. His vocals in this record is a cross between Mark Osegueda of Death Angel and Tom Araya of Slayer. You can almost hear Tom Araya screaming 'God hates us all' in the song The World Discarded and he almost go whisper talking in the opening verse of Sentence of Immortality like the song Vacuity by Gojira. His lyrics are thoughtful with socio-political undertones dealing with topics that are very much relatable which is refreshing considering the usual suspects of technical death metal are aliens, space travel and artificial intelligence. He even pens poetry in the opening verse of Ideals That Won't Surrender 

"In this forest of dreams a light passes through

a brooding cold wind blowing through the trees

of these ravenous ravines, the fog so thick" 

  Joe Haley

Psycroptic may not be the best modern technical death metal band around and this record is definitely not their best but I love their approach towards the genre. In a genre marked by showmanship and pompous song arrangements, here is band that plays striped down death metal with enough instrumental flair to challenge the best of their competitors.

This album also is a winner on a production stand point, the guitar tone sound beafy and organic with the perfect level of distortion and the drums sound natural, the album sounds a lot like Gojira's 2012 release L'Enfant Sauvage and that itself sets them apart from the default sterile technical death metal production. Well I do have complaints, the bass guitar could have been more present in the mix and the artwork looks like it belongs to a Mastodon album, too much psychedelia.

They have a new album coming up titled As the Kingdom Drowns on November 9th and it is one of my most anticipated metal releases this year along with albums by Beyond Creation, Behemoth and Bloodbath. Lets see where it ranks up in the inevitable Maiden Priest album of the year list. 

LINKS FOR YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT

Psycroptic   Decapitated   Dying Fetus   Opeth   Gojira

Death Angel   Slayer

As the Kingdom Drowns

The 7 Greatest Harsh Vocals of Heavy Metal

Maiden Priest has been on an autopilot mode for the past few weeks, giving out album reviews after album reviews the site has become as predictable as the direction Cannibal Corpse is going to take in writing their next album. Let me break down this humdrum and write about something that I always wanted to write. Who doesn't love a list ?, When I was a newbie in metal I used to type phrases like "The greatest doom metal albums" on Google and there it came before me a plethora of suggestions and opinions, that was how I discovered good music in those days and I still do the same to defend my tastes in music. Here I present to you the seven greatest screamers or growlers that ever caressed my ears.

To be completely honest with you I hated harsh vocals, I never saw the appeal of singing in a way that would make the lyrics indecipherable. The furthest I could go was the half singing half screaming of trash metal bands like Megadeth and Slayer. My appetite for heavier music was not satisfied by the trash metal bands, so I searched deeper and gradually that primal urge to scream at the things we hate became the voice of the music I hear.

The greatest of them all is the one pictured above, Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth and I am going to make that revelation on the onset because you know I am an Opeth fanboy if you have ever read this blog. 

7. Ihsahn 

The front-man of the greatest black metal band ever should be on this list. Like most others on the list he too can sing but it is his unique throaty shriek that makes him on of the best metal singers around. On Emperor's first release In the Nightside Eclipse he sounded like every other black metal singers at the time but on Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk Ihsahn screamed like a man possessed. His conviction and his tone set him apart from the other black metal singers of the era, his vocals raged through the record like a horsemen rampaging through the battlefield. The fact that Emperor always had the best black metal lyrics also helped his cause in being on this list.

His solo output is no slouch either, using his impressive clean singing to further accentuate his shriek, check out the song Unhealer from the album angL wherein he duets with Åkerfeldt on the chorus to see the contrasting styles of the two great vocalists. Ihsahn's greatest harsh vocal performance can be heard in the song Contaminate Me by the band Leprous, that song is an absolute monster and to truly experience the intensity of his voice check out this performance he did with Leprous.    

6. Niklas Kvarforth

If you are the founder and the creative force of a band that plays in the genre called depressive suicidal black metal then you got to have vocals to match for it and Kavarforth has that in spades. His vocals are as miserable as his lyrics for Shining and unlike the other vocalists in this list his vocals are raw and untreated in the records. There is no double tracking or excessive reverb to make the voice sound huge, it's just pure angst and self destruction and he often denounce a good vocal phrasing lest it affects the emotion he wants to instill on you.

V - Halmstad  houses the best Kvarforth vocals put to tape. His vocals on the mid section of the song Besvikelsens dystra monotoni is probably the most impassioned harsh vocals I've heard and I almost feel sorry for his vocal chords, almost because he wants all of us to die. The band Shining is paradoxical in a sense, they play suicidal black metal but their music is worth living for. 

For all the hatred and pain in his voice, Kavarforth can sing a lullaby. I was pleasantly surprised when I heard I Nattens Timma from the VII - Född förlorare album, that was one of the most soothing 4 minutes I've ever heard.   
   

5. Randy Blythe

Lamb of God was the band that introduced me to the harsh vocals, they made me understand the need for such vocalizations to channel the aggression and heaviness of a modern metal band. The band would have been another run of the mill "new wave of American heavy metal" band had the band been fronted by a lesser vocalist. Blythe's vocals, charisma and stage presence made Lamb of God the leader of the scene.

I always consider Lamb of God to be a trash metal influenced instrumentalists with a hardcore punk influenced vocalist.  Blythe had the attitude and the down to earth social awareness of the hardcore punk scene, that along with his vocal ability made him a beast in front of a mic.

Randy Blythe can jump from a low growl to a shriek in a second and no Lamb of God record exemplifies this more than their sixth record Wrath. Reclamation is probably the most underrated Lamb of God song ever, that song has a clear Gojira influence and Blythe gives his all out, from spoken word to low grunts to ear splitting screams, Reclamation is a tour de force in unclean vocal performance. Check it out yourselves if you are still not convinced.  
       

4. Dave Hunt

Anaal Nathrakh is the most atrocious and psychotic band I've heard and those superlatives almost describes what Dave Hunt is all about.

If you recall, some of the most terrifying horror movies have this tag line "based on a true story" and that is exactly how I feel towards his vocals. His screams sound so genuine that it is hard to imagine he is not undergoing torture while recording his vocals. I am not exaggerating things, those vocals are insane and the whole Anaal Nathrak production aesthetics make them even more morbid.

Things get incongruous when he starts to sing, his clean vocal range can put most power metal singers to shame and of late he does King Diamond-esque falsetto singing on songs. This is not a list glorifying singing ability but I have to mention this for there are many out there who believes that screamers scream because they can't sing.

If you want to enjoy Dave Hunt's vocals in all its misanthropic glory I would suggest listning to the album The Whole of Law, that record houses my favorite Anaal Nathrakh song of all time Of Horror,  And the Black Shawls. Listen to the song at your own risk.

3. Chuck Schuldiner

The godfather of death metal, the one who started it all. Chuck Schuldiner with his band Death pioneered a brand of music what we now call death metal, he realized how heavy and brutal it can be when one growls on Slayer songs. He is in the list not because he is a pioneer and hence should be respected, he is in the list because there are not many out there who can rival the passion in his vocals.

Chuck's vocals became higher in pitch and more decipherable with every Death release, the music became more progressive and the lyrics philosophical. He wants his lyrics to be heard and understood, when Chuck screams the words "When beauty shows its ugly face, just be prepared" the conviction in his voice lets you know that it's a warning.

Schuldiner vocal phrasings were precise and slow, allowing enough time for the words to sink into you. He never sacrificed intensity in sounding decipherable and he always had the best lyrics in death metal. The best Death album is always a question for debate among fans as each one them are death metal classics but for me Symbolic is the quintessential Death album, one of the few perfect albums I've heard.

Chuck Schuldiner passed away in the year 2001 due to cancer and he is probably the musician I miss the most.

2. Mikael Stanne

Dark Tranquility is best band to come out of the Gothenburg melodic death metal scene and unlike their peers the band continues to put out acclaimed albums 25 years after their formation. Since the beginning of the new millennium the band has been going for a cold sterile melancholic sound and Stanne's vocals provide warmth and a deathy edge to the music.

Mikael Stanne's harsh vocals are more refined and musical than other death metal singers, always controlled in his delivery and rhythmic in vocal phrasing. His growls show strains of emotion and they are more nuanced than it sounds at first listen and these traits are vital in Dark Tranquility's occasional foray into goth rock.

It won't be fair if I don't write about his baritone singing voice since it has become a huge part of the band's sound. His singing is just gorgeous, so much so that I don't mind Dark Tranquility releasing a Katatonia-esque record.

Dark Tranquility is the band I would recommend someone trying to get into death vox, you cannot go wrong with Fiction or Projector. Check out the song Misery's Crown to know what Stanne is all about.     

1. Mikael Åkerfeldt

I was curious about Opeth, the band was hyped to mars and beyond and Mikael Åkerfeldt's vocals were compared to both angels and demons. In those days Pink Floyd and Porcupine Tree battled to be on my playlist and when I saw Opeth being classified as progressive death metal on Wikipedia, I was intrigued. I did what I usually do in those situation, I asked Google "greatest Opeth songs" and someone suggested The Drapery Falls and I've been a fan since then.   

Those growls where out of this world, it was bizarrely atmospheric and enveloping. Mikael stretches the words and its syllables longer than most death metal vocalists and that along with the reverb and multi-tracking makes his growls dense and thick. His tone is reminiscent of  David Vincent of Morbid Angel fame, a deep throaty growl that is brutal but decipherable enough. 

Let us not forget his works for Bloodbath, Edge of  Sanity, Katatonia and Ayreaon, his vocals for the first Bloodbath album is as caustic as the album's guitar tone, reminding everyone of his death metal credentials despite Opeth's progressive leanings. There was collective disappointment among fans when Åkerfeldt abandoned death vocals in Opeth's tenth outing Heritage and since then they have made two more records in the same vein. Well I have grown on to love and respect the band's new direction but deep inside it hurts knowing that we won't hear his growls on a studio record again.

The best Mikael Åkerfeldt harsh vocal performance can be found in Opeth's My Arms, Your Hearse, Still Live and Blackwater Park but since this is a list celebrating unclean vocals alone, I recommend you to check out Weak Aside from the Bloodbath EP Unblessing the Purity.


Honorable Mentions  

Phil Anselmo - The fromer Pantera front-man is probably the most influential metal singer of the  modern era.

Daniel Rostén - Marduk always had the best black metal singers and Mortuus is the best among them.

Greg Puciato - An insanely talented vocalist for the insanely talented The Dillinger Escape Plan.

Oliver Rae Aleron - The Archspire vocalist is probably the only singer who can match a death metal drummer in terms of speed.