black metal / doom

How do you write about a record with a running time of 37 minutes – in only two songs?! You cannot look at the sequence of songs because, well, there are only two. Can you look at any really significant difference between them? No, not with German black metal masters Ultha, though you might say that “No Fire only Smoke” is the more experimental track of the duo because of its slow beginning with the voice-over sample. You might also argue that track two, “Constructs of Separation”, a 21-minute-monster infused with a lot of doom-moments, is a bit more melancholic and gloomy.


When Ultha and Vendetta Records broke the news for this release they also simultaneously said that this would be their pen-ultimate record (before an infinite hiatus), the last one being released at the band’s own Unholy Passion Festival in December. So, this release is the beginning of Ultha
preparing for their goodbye; is there a slight hint at that in the title of “Constructs of Separation”?
Well, if there is then it’s well-hidden in plain view.

As usual with this band you should not expect anything less than uncompromising artistry as they
are masters of their craft. There is hardly any modern black metal band that cannot make clever use of the double bass attacks and blastbeats, of harsh, distorted shredding and slowly winding clear motifs, yet there is hardly any modern black metal band that can match up to Ultha’s brilliance.

They got this Wagnerian moment working for themselves – just as cleverly as the (ideologically
discussion worthy) German composer of the 19th century they are able to hide a simply beautiful
guitar line inside of a lot of noise only to push it slowly towards the foreground where it then can
stand on its own and shine even brighter as it had to survive through all the “dirt and grind”. These are then the moments which make the listener feel heightened up to a point where he is as elated as that singular musical element. This ability to lift us up while still shredding along all the time is what makes this band stand out, makes the hair on our arms stand up, makes us wait for the final release at the beginning of December, and finally makes us wait for a comeback after
aforementioned hiatus. We could hardly wait with arms more open. 


​Thorsten

doom metal / stoner rock

Lord of the New Depression is an album released by American doom metal / stoner rock band Restless Spirit. A relatively concise effort, the record is forty minutes long, and has nine tracks: 1) Under Hellish Moon and Wailing Sky; 2) Less Than Human; 3) Lord of the New Depression; 4) Dominion; 5) 13 Devils; 6) Deep Fathom Hours; 7) Miserable Existence / Unrest; 8) Ripped From Me; 9) Young Graves; a very interesting record, with expressively somber, but cohesive harmonies, Lord of the New Depression departs from the ordinary elements of stoner rock, but the band successfully manages to conceive something more nefarious and sinister with the addition of dynamic doom metal components into their music. 

Despite their more macabre and sometimes lugubrious musical style, the sound of Restless Spirit has an abundant, horizontal and resonant vigor, that definitely incorporates the restless essence of their creative nature. With melodies that occasionally becomes stagnant, but concomitantly dehydrates its dispersive cosmogony over the shadows of its audacious dimensional tonalities, the abrasive strength of the group's imperiously aggressive sonorous virtuosity displays a dark vitality that — in the correct corner of its imponderable volatility — gradually conceives underneath the sensibilities of its expansive density a modest degree of experimentalism, whose diligently authorial creative propensities showcases a furious pattern, that unfortunately exasperates the possibilities of its remarkable dissolute layout within its own rhythmic peripheries. 

While Restless Spirit becomes gradually resented by the invisible restrictions of its own sonorous limitations, the band really works well within its modest and somewhat predictable structural conjuncture. As the sound becomes more homogeneous, the creative possibilities also decrease, but the cohesiveness of the style — to a certain extent — manages to preserve a hyperbolic restlessness into the essence of the music, that keeps the integrity and the exceptional consistence heard throughout the album.

So, while Lord of the New Depression is not a fantastic album, it manages to be a satisfying work, that reveals a band that displays an exceptional degree of technical excellence. Despite the fact that the band sounds too conventional for the most part, they occasionally unveil an audacious musical outlook, that can become in the future the prospective element for a more original and genuine work. But definitely, they are in a path of creative evolution, with potential to achieve promising results as their creative journey goes forward. 


Wagner

post metal / sludge / doom

What constitutes a heavy album? There are so many different ways to answer this, it's almost not worth asking, but still, whichever way you look at it, London noise mongers Torpor are heavy, I mean seriously heavy. They blend sludge, doom, drone and post-metal in a heady brew. Previous album From Nothing Comes Everything was recorded as a 4 piece, but the lead singer left after the album was released. After losing their lead singer, some bands would have called it a day, but  Torpor rolled up their sleeves, regrouped, spread the vocal duties amongst the remaining members and spawned their latest album Rhetoric of the Image.

Opener Benign Circle is a great way to kick things off with. A clean drum beat and strummed guitar riff lulls you into a false sense of security before the hammer drops and the song hits like planets colliding, it's an almost physical thing (and if you turn it up loud enough, it will be!) And you know what? It feels glorious. Then the whole thing collapses upon itself and the aforementioned beauty shines through with a sense of serenity, before crushing you again with a slab of granite-like sludge.

We get somewhat of a respite in the form of next song Two Heads on Gold. with it's rolling ominous drones. Hidden within the song is quite a beguiling melody hidden under the layers of aural miasma which become apparent when you give the song your full attention.

From there, we move onto next song Enigmatic Demand. A droning almost calming intro begins the song before hitting you with an absolute gut punch of sonic heaviness. Tortured vocals reminiscent of Aaron Turner at his most acerbic howl over monolithic noise dragged from the primordial swamp. It's as if the band have reached into themselves, dragged their darkest thoughts and energies and transferred it directly to their instruments. Yes it's suffocatingly intense and heavy, but it's this act of purging themselves which has produced something cathartic and cleansing. The dichotomy at the heart of this album is what makes it special.
 
From there, it's another shorter song Mouths Full of Water, Throats Full of Ice which is a surprisingly delicate number with gorgeous clean female vocals. It is a beautiful track and a real gem, it also gives the listener somewhat of a sonic palette cleanser. Then it's into final track Mourning the Real which is a real juggernaut of a track, slightly more experimental with longer ambient sequences which are particularly effective and do a great job of accentuating the bouts of sonic onslaught when they inevitably drop like an anvil. It's like an unstoppable black hole dragging everything in on itself, collapsing and condensing into a super dense nugget of weight. There is nothing rushed about this song, it's intricacies revealed to the inquisitive listener, yes it's bloody heavy, but also, it's beguilingly soothing, it's that dichotomy at play I mentioned earlier.

The band have taken the bones of their previous sound and refined it, improved upon their previous album in every way imaginable and produced a monument to monolithic grandeur. They have a firm grasp on dynamics and know the power of holding back until just the right moment to hit with an intense burst of noise, and the album is all the more powerful for it. The ambient sections are not just thrown in but have real thought, purpose and meaning. The whole album benefits from giving it your full attention as the layers slowly reveal themselves, it really benefits from repeated listens as all the nuances start to become apparent. There are moments of genuine beauty which are allowed to shine through like crepuscular rays of sunlight through an apocalyptic sky. Also, did I mention it's bloody heavy? If you like your music heavy and intelligent you owe it to yourself to listen to this album as it is glorious.
  

Simon

noise / dark ambient / experimental

bandcamp

electronic

dSound In Silence

progressive / metal / black metal

heavy metal / thrash metal

downtempo / electronic / post rock / shoegaze

facebook

psychedelic / doom

sludge / black metal

ambient / modern classical / experimental

bandcamp

drone / doom / noise / experimental

ambient / electronic

noise rock

stoner rock / grunge / alternative rock

facebook

​Serge

doom

It's always a pleasant surprise when you combine two things which on the surface should not work together, yet form some alchemical witchcraft and combine to produce something greater than the sum of their individual parts. Take chill and chocolate for example, both very nice things on their own, but combine them and magic happens to elevate this new substance to even greater heights. 
 
This happens sometimes in the music world. Truth be told, it's happening more and more often now bands seem to be disregarding genre tags with gleeful abandon and mashing all kinds of disparate sounds together to form sweet sweet music (but not always, sometimes it just sounds terrible, but that’s for another day). This wonderful alchemy I've been harping on about is exactly what I hear when listening to the new album by Milwaukee resident Keith D and his artistic outlet Arctic Sleep. The musical portions of the album were written side by side with his beloved cat Yoda , who sadly passed away whilst writing the lyrics to the album. Yoda's passing and Keith's dealing with this death are all over this album. The juxtaposition I talked about at the start of this review comes in the form of these two separate entities. The music is doomy and really quite heavy, whilst the lyrics are sweetly sung and uplifting. 
​
There is something very relaxing about this album, even though at times it strays into quite riff heavy doom music. I pick up some Junius vibes at times due to the aforementioned heavy music and soaring vocals, although the music here is more progressive doom than post metal though. Listen to the opening track 'Meadows' which covers everything which makes this album so good, the soaring vocals, the chugging riffs, both of which work so well together in a synergy as good as anything, say for example chili and chocolate.

When sitting down to review this album, I was going to break each track down individually and wax lyrical about it, there are times when this is a good approach and other times like in this instance, when it's just better to listen to the music instead. What I will say though is that this is Arctic Sleep's best album to date (which is saying something as they are all very good, you really should listen to the back catalogue) and if you like dense, moving and heavy music, then you owe it to yourself to give this a spin, you won’t regret it.



Simon 

sludge / doom

Aaron Turner of Isis was once asked to describe his band's genre of music, he didn't want to be pigeon holed so he replied “we play thinking mans metal”. Even though his band helped define a new genre of metal in Post-Metal, he did not want to be boxed into one style of music.

So, that laborious intro is my way of saying that new album 'Failure to Thrive' by Massachusetts band 'Cazador' could, on one hand be labelled 'post-metal' but on the other hand, this only serves as a touchstone, a launchpad if you will, into this rather exciting album.


Things start off as they normally do nowadays on any album with am intro of feedback noise, so far so good. Second song 'Skeleton Crew' is a different beast altogether. It's a slippery eel of a song, whenever you think you have a grasp of it, it slips and turns out of your grasp into different sonic directions. There are contemplative sections, punk sections, sludge metal twists and to complete this heady brew, a dash of hardcore. It's great. Really great.

The next song 'Children of Man' is a delicate sonic shower of noise which flows nicely into next track 'Kingdom' which starts of with the same delicate musings before exploding with sludgy murkiness, it's really rather good, in a mucky way (just how I like it!)

 Title track 'Failure to Thrive' flips the previous song on it;'s head and begins with some straight forward metal before flowing into a gorgeous post-rock-esque serene passage of clean guitars before slowly building up (or should that be down) into the gloom. The following 2 tracks again feel like one long song switching between the meditative styling of 'Edema' into the fierce hardcore leanings of 'Comey' The album ends with 'Sassafras' which encapsulates all which has gone before. 

I very much like this album and would recommend anyone in an interest in intelligent metal to check this out, there is enough here to pique anyone’s interest. Although if I do have one gripe with this album, it's that the vocals don't quite seem to have the weight that the music so richly deserves. They are not bad, far from it, they are very good, it's just that to my ears, they don't match the soaring heights reached by the rest of the band. Overall, this is an excellent album.


Simon

black metal / drone / doom  

An album to be released on June 7th by Tartarus Records, Steel Casket, forty-five minutes long, is the work of black metal experimental group Primitive Man. With only two tracks – Fear, that lasts almost twenty-five minutes, and A Life of Turmoil, that lasts almost twenty-two – this is a very solid, cohesive and meticulous work of art, much more inclined to minimalist and sinister tendencies, than to aggressiveness in general. With a style that is very distant of conventional and traditional black metal, Steel Casket is a record basically made of two lugubrious and frivolous anthems of darkness and despair, that reveals immediately a very authorial and genuine band with an enormous creative potential, that has no fear at all in being audacious, imaginative, inventive and overtly sinister, without any concern for formalities or common ground signatures.   

With rude and abrasive guitar lines that definitely conceives, revolves and duplicates a chaotic atmosphere of anguish and demise – using moderately some drone, dark ambient and experimental elements to create its nefarious and mordacious universe of desolate darkness and disturbed noise –, Primitive Man reveals itself a very technical and meticulous musical act, that combines perfectly the more atrocious aspects of their art with the creative methods of diligent experimentation and sordid minimalism.

Producing a very intense sound that can be exceedingly dreadful and saturated with a dying level of expectation, Steel Casket sounds as a perfect soundtrack for an horror movie; the perennial atmosphere of its disturbing darkness is a constant feature that resonates impeccably throughout the record, and its dreadful overtones surpasses the boundaries of all abominations conceived by the human sensibilities. Being basically a dark ambient record made on guitars, this is a very instigating and conspicuous work of macabre art, that will really make you feel as if you’re inside an horror movie, trapped in a dark cathedral at midnight, with a horrendous doom about to befall over you, with a fatal overcome. 

An exceedingly impeccable record, that captures with perfection exactly what the band proposes musically – to produce a sinister, lugubrious and exceedingly horrendous sound, that resonates the nefarious expectation of something terrible – you can really describe Steel Casket as a very competent and audacious state of the art work, that achieves its frightening purpose with an astounding degree of lucidity and professionalism. Never being repetitive nor monotonous, Primitive Man achieves with this album a formidable result, that will certainly please all enthusiasts of exotic, tempestuous, afflictive and dense dark experimental music, showcasing a level of proficiency and originality that only a handful of other bands are capable to replicate.  


Wagner

post rock / post metal

noise rock / jazz / experimental

doom / sludge

psychedelic / doom / stoner rock

ambient

house / techno / electronic

dark ambient

ambient / experimental

electronic / downtempo

bandcamp

heavy metal

black metal / death metal

ambient

Audiobulb

​Serge

stoner rock / doom

Strangers is an album released by a Bulgarian stoner / doom metal band, named Obsidian Sea, that definitely aggregates some interesting qualities to the genre, while maintaining their musical roots firmly established into its more conventional elements. With slow and extensive harmonies, and, above all, deeply corrosive and abrasive guitar lines, Strangers is an album that explores wisely – with a very fugacious degree of sagacity – the most pungent and traditional musical layers of stoner rock, subjugating with creatively organic and sensible strategies the most dilated and rapturous atmospheres conceived by their pragmatic method of dilution of sound, while concomitantly delivering their laborious melodic uneasiness with dynamic and elegant energetic proficiency.  

While there are no extravagant innovations on this record, the guitar lines and their expansive capacities are worked to define and conceive parallel universes of personal restlessness, that extends the creative perceptions of the genre to a more effective and salutary ground. With six tracks – 1) The Birth of Fear; 2) Every Heart Hides a Killer; 3) A Shore Without a Sea; 4) Strangers; 5) The Demolished Man; 6) The Play; – Strangers can be classified as a diligent and gracefully conceived album, sometimes almost poetic in the volatile paroxysm of its brilliance. Nevertheless, musically, to a minor degree the work resents itself of some limitations, though this fact, in a general evaluation, doesn’t do the album any significant harm. 

With some exceptional qualities that makes their style to be somewhat superior to other bands of the genre – especially on a technical level –, Obsidian Sea definitely proves a point with this album, displaying a talent and a creative musical disposition that deserves to be appreciated. While they have to work it out some minor structural limitations, their music is exotic and full of discreetly irreplaceable virtues, that revolves around a peculiar conjuncture of elements ostensibly aligned with an intuitive perception clearly entrenched to the genuine spirit of their artistry.   

Attractive, intense and filled with a gracefully ardent set of harmonies that work out the best the genre has to offer, Strangers is a very good album, that definitely delivers to its audience a marvelous degree of sensibility, that rejuvenates the quintessential elements of its own nature. While on the other hand you can’t expect too much from this album because there isn’t major innovations here, definitely Obsidian Sea has the competence, the abilities and the talent to please with a high degree of satisfaction the most inveterate enthusiasts of the genre. 


Wagner
 
 

metal

metal / death metal

facebook

progressive rock / experimental

psychedelic rock / doom

hard rock

progressive metal

psychedelic rock /  doom

sludge metal / doom

black metal

alternative rock / psychedelic / noise rock