Until Death Overtakes Me - Interludium I: Funeral Path

A Walk Through Slow Death and Redemption.

This is the first part of a series of records that Belgium drone/doom artist Stijn van Cauter has released. These records are scattered throughout his many projects and all reflect a bit of that project's own spin on this "drone-series." This is one of the few that has less than a single song in this series.

The 2 tracks on this album are both over 20 minutes long. The opener, Funeral Dance, is just over 50 minutes long, while the second track, Marche Funebre, is close to 21 minutes. This can prove to be very off-putting due to the song lengths, but it's really up to the person whether they want to hear this album in full or in little bits, as this is more of an experience to be listened to in full.

This album, when comparing it to previous releases from Until Death Overtakes Me, is much more ritualistic. It is much more tranquil and sober sounding, bringing a different take to drone. While still maintaining the project's doom and drone sound, it brings a lot more emphasis on ambient and symphonic textures that have not been as embraced in the band's sound.

This opening 50 minute track may seem like a burden to listen straight through, but is actually much less intimidating when listening. While droning guitar or bass is present, it remains in the background to melancholic organs, synthesized phazers, and atmospheric keyboards. The occasional timpani keeps things a little on edge, coming in at what seems like random times. This keeps the track going for close over half the track. While the track is very minimal in it's sound, it has a very orchestral vibe to it; sounding very intricate and precise without really weaving it's way in and out of itself like a more symphonic album would. This feeling becomes more and more noticeable as the track passes the 30 minute mark.

The second track is carries on with the very orchestrally based sound of the previous track taking it's place up front in the sound. This occurs with a beautiful piano melody being right on top of the droning sound of the guitar or bass that rumbles on in the background. Stijn also introduces his talent for playing the electric violin about half way through the track, and perfectly suits the mood that the piano sets. As much as this is based in the doom and drone sound, the orchestration of the piano melody brings to mind either being inside of a church or some sort of movie score piece; it's very peaceful and angelic, in a way, and just brings something new to this album that the first track did not have.

This record, overall, is not very heavy on the electric instrumentation, but instead on piano and atmospherics. This breeds a mood that is very tranquil and unlike one found on any other drone record I've heard. While this record is still very overwhelming to take in, it is probably going to allow some deep thinking for those who do decide to listen to this record straight through.

Overall Score: 6.5

Highlights: Marche Funebre

Senmuth - Sekenenra

And We Bow Before His Greatness.

This is Senmuth's second record released this year. Unlike his previous release, "Chambers," this new record returns to his more ethnic industrial metal sound. This album is proves to be more of an enjoyable listen compared to some of his more ambient and industrial albums, but those sounds are still very much integrated into this album as they are when they are on their own.

This is an album that effectively mixes the more industrial tones and programmed drumming with more industrial and ambient soundscapes, while more ethnic features are constantly the main focus of the melodies. The guitars are add the heaviness to the record along with the heavier emphasis on the drums, while the actual ethno-industrial provide the "battle" vibe to each song. While this might sound odd written out, it is actually quite interesting to hear.

As metal as this album is, the more ethnic-ambient tracks show up quite early, within the second track, Hqa xAswt. This track displays a lot of the style that was found on "Chambers" but is not as drawn out as those tracks were. This track may represent different things to different people, for some it might be a cool atmospheric type of track, and that's all it is, while others might see it as a breather between opener Khemkhepra's Soothsaying and Under The Banners of Tetisheri.

Under The Banner of Tetisheri in particular is one of the heaviest songs on the album. This track realise more on heavy and epic sounding metal riffs over the more industrial elements of the band. This track also features some of the oddest vocals on this album, sounding almost strained to be performed.

Sekenenra Taa II is a track that starts off fairly slow, but soon moves into an epic sounding metal song. This track seems to sum up the album fairly well within an 8 minute track. The vocals on this song are a bit more tolerable because they still use the strained style, but more growls are used as well. Guitars seem to have an almost Fear Factory vibe to them, which differs from other tracks that had a bit more of a modern thrash sound.

Being the longest track on the album, Hor Ka-Em-Uaset seems very short in comparison to some of the earlier songs. This track moves into a kind of prog-vibe, with very heavy atmospherics and guitar riffs that move from more thrash based ones into doom territory. Vocally, Senmuth seems to have a style on this song that is reminiscent of Boss', from black metal band Root. The next track, Victory Stele follows within the same vain as the previous track with almost progressive sound to itself, this track features a beautiful piano melody underneath all of the heavy riffs that is just amazing.

The layering of this record's sound is probably one of Senmuth's greatest so far. The sound is crystal clear and yet richly layered and textured with different atmospheres and ethnic instrumentation that won't be heard on a first listen. All of this can occur underneath the outer coating of metal riffs, programmed drums, epic sounding synthe melodies, and rough vocals.

Overall, this is a decent listen except for a few blips here and there. If you can't really hear Dead Can Dance mixed with Aphex Twin and Neurosis, than this is probably not for you; but if you are than you'll be in for a real treat here. While not the greatest record, it proves to be at most points, an enjoyable listen.

Overall Score: 8

Highlights: Under The Banners of Tetisheri, Hor Ka-Em-Uaset, Victory Stele

Les Discrets - Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées

Waves of Joy and Sadness.

Les Discrets is a post-rock/shoegaze band from France. The expression of this band is contained and very focused sounding, never breaking away from soundscapes that it creates. This album creates a very dream-like atmosphere that comes from the shoegaze influence, but is still able to come up with some cool little moments here and there that are completely unique.

Les Discrets was founded by French musician and artist Fursy Teyssier. This project both differs and is similar to his other bands. Having played guitar in both Amesoeurs and Phest, both more black metal influenced projects, this album relates much more to post-rock and post-metal. Both those previous bands do also have their more shoegaze elements, especially the former, but still had a much more metal sound and background than Les Discrets does. But as oppose to those bands, although not much anymore, this band was founded on performing more acoustic based music.

The music on here, having been said before, is very dream-like and definitely showcases the shoegaze element. Having it's sound very much rooted in very ethereal sounding soundscapes allows on to experience a very trippy vibe while listening to this album. But, that's not to say that it doesn't come without it's little stylistic leanings into other forms of music.

The post-rock influence is felt strongly throughout the album, some parts sounding like Explosions In The Sky or God Is An Astronaut, but never losing it's originality. The band's origins in more acoustic music also comes out the most in the middle of the album in songs like Song For Mountain and Sur Les Quais, which both remain largely acoustic. These songs in perticular have an almost folky approach towards the melodies being played.

The band also possesses elements of more post-metal/post-black metal in their sound within a song like Les Feuilles De L'olivier or Effet De Nuit, which begin more in a black metal vain, the latter one being one of the most aggressive songs on the album. Other tracks like these never continue the whole song in a metal sound, but carry with them a bit more of an edge. Unlike his other bands though, black metal screams never enter the picture.

The entire album is done in French, vocally. Comparable to Fursy's other projects, but is also done in clean vocals, which differs from his more metal projects. His style of singing is much more confident sounding than his Amesoeurs counterpart, Neige, which brings a bit more of a accessibility to the band's sound.

This album is at it's best when the band in jamming more in their shoegaze and acoustic leanings, as oppose to their metal. While these two different sides of the band's sound adds diversity, the heavier side of the band never really sounds as good as when the band is performing on acoustic guitars with haunting atmospheres pervading the sound. These tracks seem to be the longer tracks as well, which carry with them a bit of a "progressive" sound, in some cases.

Overall, this is a fairly good album with some cool songs and soundscapes. This could easily be one of the best shoegaze influenced albums I heard in a while, other than Neige's projects, and shows a lot of potential for the future. This album will most likely not appeal to most metal fans, but those with a foot in the door of more experimental music should find something about this album appealing to them.

Overall Score: 8

Highlights: L'échappée, Song For Mountains, Sur Les Quais, Chanson D'automne, Une Matinée D'hiver

Alcest - Écailles De Lune

Daydream Me When You Sleep.

Alcest is a post-black metal/shoegaze band from France. Though the entire musical project and direction is under Neige, he has only recently gotten members to perform live with him. But Alcest is a band that has moved away from it's more traditional black metal roots into one of the most unique bands in the genre today.

Alcest utilizes the production aspect, occasional screams, and distorted guitar sound of black metal and mixes them together with the noisier sound, cleanly whispered-like vocals, and more strummed guitar parts from shoegaze music. While a lot of people might compared this to the work he's done in some of his other bands, Alcest is growing into one of the most formidable new bands to come out of the black metal scene. This comes out of the project's growing use of more progressive song structures and the instrumental passages that evoke a hazy use of Pink Floyd, My Bloody Valentine, and Burzum all melded together.

The title-track of this album is broken into 2 separate songs that each showcase a different side of Alcest's sound. While both songs top 9 minutes, the first part demonstrates the influence from more progressive rock and shoegaze music, being very dreamy and atmospheric; the second part is much more aggressive, with screamed vocals over heavy blackened doom guitar riffs. Both songs have very melodic guitar patterns that are used to bring that essence of progressive music into the sound fluidly and not sounding contrived.

Neige's vocals on this record are very symbolic and characteristic. The style in which he uses is very dependent on the sound of the music being played, during some of the more black metal parts or more melodic sections, he will use a blood curling scream, while during the moody and soft passages, he uses a very quiet and whispered type of singing. These are the two styles that are most present on the album, but he does change it up a few times. In the middle section of Percees De Lumiere, he uses some cool sounding harmonies to evoke a kind of Ulver-ish sound.

For the quality of the music on this record, it is pretty short, the entire album being just over 40 minutes. Due to the shortness in length, the music itself has a very seductive and addictive nature to it, having those qualities that just bring you back to it. This record contains subtle atmospheric textures that you don't catch on the first listen, and that, along with other things, will bring you back to this record.

Overall, this is a great record, and is highly recommended. The ambiguity of the band's sound makes it all the more unique, never really just punching you in the face as much as just talking to you. Alcest has expanded upon the elements that made his debut great, and mixed them with some of the more experimental natures of what he's explored on split albums with Les Discrets and Angmar. This comes as one of the greatest listens this year, not growing old fast. Check this record out.

Overall Score: 9.5

Highlights: Every Song Is A Highlight

Demon Hunter - The World Is A Thorn

A New Rebirth Into God.

Demon Hunter is a thrash/metalcore band from Washington. "TWIAT" is their fifth album and is the first after a major member change in the band. These new members seem to have infused more "metal" influence and adding a sharper edge to this band.

As just stated, this is the first album after the decision for founding member, guitarist Don Clark, brother of singer Ryan Clark, to leave the band to focus on his family. Before that, second guitarist Ethan Luck had decided to leave the band as well. These two deciding to leave allowed new guitarists Ryan Helm and Patrick Judge to join the band and introduce a more thrash metal approach to the songwriting and playing on "TWIAT."

Though being one of Demon Hunter's most aggressive albums, it still contains their trademark ballads. Songs like Driving Nails and Blood In The Tears provide the balance that the album needs from the heavier thrash oriented sound of "TWIAT." Blood In The Tears closes the album on a somber note, being very sorrowful and melancholic sounding compared to even Driving Nails, but with that said, it is also heavier than that track.

As with previous Demon Hunter records, guest vocalists are on present on this record. Three guests singers are utilized on different songs throughout the record, and may bring fans of these singers into Demon Hunter. Soilwork vocalist Bjorn "Speed" Strid guests on one of the most melodic tracks on the record, Collapsing, adding the pre-chorus. Ex-Scar Symmetry, present Miseration vocalist Christian Alvestam guests on Just Breathe, once again adding the pre-chorus, but provides a lower growl and his trade-mark clean singing to the mix. The final guest is Throwdown's Dave Peters, who provides some of his screams on Feel As Though You Could.

This album features some of Ryan Clark's best performances yet as a singer. Songs like the opener, Descending Upon Us, shows some of his best harmony singing on the record, while his most passionate singing is most definitely on Driving Nails delivers a very soulful performance. But his growls are not gone, songs like LifeWar and the title-track are some of the most aggressive Demon Hunter has ever produced.

Solos are a bit more present on "TWIAT" than previous records. This shows that the band is evolving somewhat into a more "metal" band. Breakdowns are sporadically used but never really bring that dun-dun dun-dun, feeling that other metalcore bands use.

Many people will say that this is not a "true" thrash metal album due to the use of very melodic songs and clean vocals, but that doesn't mean that this record was intended to be a "true" thrash record. The influence from the style is there, but never overpowers the style that Demon Hunter was founded upon. It's more appropriate to say that this is a more of a modern melodic death metal record.

Overall, this is a good, solid album that features a sound that fans of metalcore, melodic death metal, and even hardcore will enjoy. While it doesn't really introduce a lot that Demon Hunter hasn't done before, it improves upon those elements for a catchy record. This is not for everyone, but if you check it out, you'll probably find at least one song you like.

Overall Score: 8

Highlights: LifeWar, Collapsing, Driving Nails, The World Is A Thorn, Just Breathe, Blood In The Tears

The Bled - Heat Fetish

Raging Like A Fire Inside.

The Bled is a post-hardcore band from Arizona. They play a style that is a mix between The Dillinger Escape Plan and Refused; mixing elements of technical and fast playing with more screamed vocals. This gives them a different and more aggressive sound then most bands in the same genre.

After their previous record was released, the band decided to take a short hiatus. During this hiatus, 3 members of the band decided to leave. The Bled reformed with a new second guitar player, bassist, and drummer and wrote one their most aggressive records.

This record is sort of a return to the angrier sound of their earlier records. Combining technical guitar parts with heavy breakdowns and Deftones-styled vocals with a kind of spastic, Dillinger-esque, structures makes this an album that can be a bit of a task to listen to depending on the person. But the musicianship on this record is undoubtable when listening to a song like Devolver or Smoke Breaks, where speedy guitar riffs and rapid drumming patterns are the norm. One could easily call this band metalcore, but they're not as melodic as most of those bands are.

James Munoz sounds as angry as ever on here. Belting out some gut-wrenching screams that do compare in style to that of screamo a bit. But his expression moves beyond simple screams; utilizing hardcore chants, Deftones-like speaking parts, and cleaner singing vocals as well. This prevents the album from being an all out punch in the face.

This is a relatively short record, even if to some people it might seem long, being only around 40 minutes. Most of the songs on here rarely meet 4 minutes, while Mouthbreather is only over a minute and a half. Most of the longer songs break the constant aggression of most of the album, being slower, or more mid-paced, and experimenting a bit more with sounds, melodies, and atmospheres.
These longer songs feature more of a Deftones influence, as well as more mainstream rock and alternative music, but mixes it with the more crazy style of The Bled. Songs like Meet Me In The Bone Orchid features just as much singing as screaming and supports the more melodic sound the band's previous record. Other songs like Crowbait and Needs also showcase more singing but not as melodic a sound.

Overall, this is a fairly entertaining record when taking it for what it is. Nothing new is brought out on this record that you haven't heard the band do before, but reintroduces some of the more aggressive influences that were on earlier records that were lost on the previous album. Nothing spectacular, but nothing terrible.

Overall Score: 7.5

Highlights: Devolver, Smoke Breaks, Needs, Meet Me In The Bone Orchid, Crowbait, Crawling Home

In-Quest - Made Out of Negative Matter

The Future Sound of Decapitated.

In-Quest is a progressive death metal band from Belgium. Their claim to fame, sort of, was the album they did back in 2004, "Epileptic," with Aborted vocalist Sven de Caluwe. They have since replaced him with Miqe Lofberg, and their sound has evolved into a sound many fans of Decapitated will remember.

The sound on this album brings to mind the sound that Decapitated had on their most recent album, "Organic Hallucinosis." Miqe's vocals are similar in style to Covans and are used in a similar fashion. The music also combines elements of technical death metal and melodic death metal with Meshuggah influenced grooves. Similarities like these comprise the album, and make me think that this could have been the sound a listener would have found on the record that would have followed up "Organic Hallucinosis," had Vitek not died.

The Meshuggah influence is obvious in how the grooves are oriented with weird melodies placed over the rhythms. The second track, Mind Over Matter, showcases this with style with elements of more traditional death metal influence as well. While it is not the most original sound in the world, In-Quest does a good job at trying to get in some cool, odd grooves into their sound and make it sound like themselves more than most bands ripping off Meshuggah right now.

The vocals on this album, like already mentioned, have a similarity to that of Covan's style. The sound of the vocals is obviously different from that of Sven's more death metal oriented style, and is more hardcore-like sounding. They do feature some lower moments like in Thy Subatomic Collapse, but they usually stay within a more hardcore style.

Musically, guitarists Douglas Verhoeven and Valery Bottin create those catchy grooves and clean melodic parts to go over them. These guys are at the top of their game on this album, some of the solos are absolutely brilliant sounding, like on Ignition Sequence. On The Auxiliary Theory, some of the more progressive elements of the band come out in some cleaner guitar parts. Dysfunctional Inscapes is a short instrumental that also showcases some of these cleaner parts, this is also a track where drummer Gert Monden brings in some odder jazz rhythms into the mix.

Gert, as a drummer, does not quite have the same abilities as Vitek or Tomas Haake, but is still up there as a drummer who combines odd poly-rhythms with more technical death metal drumming double-bass. He switches time signatures flawlessly throughout songs, moving in sync with the guitars and bass. Another song that features some cool drumming patterns is Anomaly of A Tortured Mind, which is one of the slower and more atmospheric songs, but features parts that leave room for a lot of fills.

Overall, this is a good album, and showcases some of the best death metal this year. While not entirely original sounding, it's an album with a lot of memorable parts and cool grooves. All the musicians on here are all underrated and you should check these guys out if you like groovy death metal with some cool progressive and atmospheric parts.

Overall Score: 9.5

Highlights: Every Song Is A Highlight