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.

Leprous – Coal

I really do miss the name 'the pretentious nobody', I wish that name would hover above to constantly remind myself how pathetic my promises were. When I started out this blog I was pretentious enough to think that I would be able to write one article per week. I was delusional but tenacious enough to force myself to adhere to that promise I made and guess what ? I was fairly successful, it had to snap somewhere and it did last week. Priorities came begging for answers and procrastination became my friend, "tomorrow is the day" became the life's motto and that 'tomorrow' never came. There was however a silver lining, the In Absentia artwork adorned the blog for two weeks and that album do deserve two weeks of attention and for your jaded eyes I've made the artwork transition less jarring, blue became black and the paranoid face became a diamond skull. This bold and vaguely oppressive artwork emblazons the album Coal by the Norwegian progressive metal band Leprous.

The words Norway and metal has connotations of some nefarious events, add the word 'black' to complete the picture. In the early 1990's some Norwegian youths took the sound and lyrics of Venom and Bathory a bit too seriously, fueling their vitriol against organized religion and burning churches to send their point across. The second wave of black metal became more than a genre, it was their medium of hate, the pinnacle of rebellion and an escape to the primitive ways of yore. The youths grew in body and insight, they realized the fallacy of teenage wisdom and the limitations of black metal. Emperor released an album with the label "Emperor performs Sophisticated Black Metal Art exclusively"  and soon black metal became an all encompassing art form, their leader and the black metal second wave's most forward thinking musician Ihsahn broke up and broke away from Emperor and went solo. He needed a backing band and in came Leprous.

Leprous didn't have anything to do with the Norwegian black metal scene, they are not black metal by any stretch however Ihsahn's blessings helped them in gaining the recognition they deserve. Their 2011 release Bilateral was an excellent record, one of the most original and enjoyable albums I've heard in the progressive metal genre. The record was fun and colorful, for the most part it sounded like a band jamming out and having a good time. Coal is darker, it is bleak but strangely inviting and the Ihsahn influence is more than ever, Ihsahn released Das Seelenbrechen four months later and both the records casts shadows on each other.

We live in a post Nothing era, when Meshuggah dropped that time twisting masterpiece in the year 2002, poly-rhythms and syncopated chugs on a 7 string guitar became the arsenal for a modern progressive metal band. Leprous is very much a modern band and they do have those traits but they are from Norway, they have this Scandinavian melancholy in their blood and hence their music can touch souls despite a seemingly cold framework. Coal is not an easy listen and for some reason I find it as disturbing as the last Dodecahedron release, the later unnerves through dissonance and its extremity while Coal does the same though its songwriting approach. Foe lets you know what to expect with an odd drum pattern in 7/4 repeated throughout the song, that time signature in itself create a jarring mechanical like quality and then you have Einar Solberg's vocals floating above.

Repetition is one of the compositional tools that musicians use, in the wrong hands it can lead to utter boredom but when it is used well nothing can be more potent and this record is a perfect example. Chronic features a groovy distorted guitar riff that lasts almost two minutes with other instruments layering it up as the song moves on and the song's chorus repeats itself over and over in its last two minutes with the instrumentation becoming more and more chaotic. The song The Valley does its entire midsection on a syncopated djent riff and it becomes almost drone like when it gets coupled with Solberg's vocalizations with the vowel 'a'. The Valley goes into ethereal realms with the words

"visibly frail

easy to see

how to prevail

still there it lies

in rivers thin

down in disguise

in my valley within"

Einar Solberg's vocals often serves as an another instrument and his emotive singing and vocalizations elevates the compositions to be something more than just a set of ideas. The vocals often "riffs" along with the instruments, in the song Echo we can hear Einar singing over his own vocalized melody. The Cloak is the shortest song on the record and it is a strong contender for the title 'song of the decade', you may think I've gone too far with this encomium, hear the song yourself and you will know. The song is four minutes of perfection, the tense build and the final explosion releases emotions that are out of this world, it's breathtaking, ecstatic and sublime, again don't take my word, hear it.

Ihsahn guests on the last song Contaminate Me, the heaviest song on the record and he gives probably his best harsh vocal performance including that sick scream at 1:30 mark. The songs goes almost to a stop around half way mark giving way to an ambient section with industrial noises, violins and cymbal flourishes with Ihsahn going full Shining mode with some agonizing screams.   

Leprous went on to release two more records after this but they don't come close to the heights of Coal and Bilateral however they are now a popular band and are no longer under Ihsahn's shadow. Their latest record Malina was more progressive rock than progressive metal but then you don't expect a band like Leprous to make the same record twice, still an occasional foray in to heavy waters would have pleased the fanboy in me. 

Coal was a difficult listen for me and it still is but that is the reason why I love this record. The songs keep you in disquietude but you will stay till the end for the diamonds spilled on the coal, after all thats what the artwork says.

LINKS FOR YOUR ENLIGHTMENT

Leprous   Emperor   Ihsahn   Dodecahedron   Meshuggah

Progressive Metal   Djent