Kwaidan - Make All The Hell of Dark Metal Bright (2013)

Band: Kwaidan
Country: Chicago, Illinois
Style: Dark Ambient/Drone
Label: Bathetic

Kwaidan is a band who I first covered last year in a rather short little review dedicated to the work of André Foisy. Since it was a live recording, it was sort of difficult to really get a vibe for what the trio was really going for at the time and I said that I would love to hear what they would do in a studio setting. Well, the time has come to finally tell you about what that band did in a studio.
While the debut live recording was dark and very ambient based, this album really expands that into something far more engaging. I know it can be rather hard to understand whenever I say that an ambient based record can be engaging because, if it's ambient and devoid of melody or rhythm, how can a listener really engage with it. Sure they can be absorbed with it and become hypnotized or entranced with it, but you can't really say that you are vibing off the record like you would a pop or rock based record. In many cases I say that ambient records can engage you, and while those record usually don't contain any sort of percussion instruments, it is possible to really interact with them, and this record is a prime example of an ambient based recording being fully engaging. Because of Foisy's tenure in Locrian, he obviously knows how to create drone based music that pushes boundaries and that can actually grab people who many otherwise not listen to drone based music - and even though I would primarily call this record ambient, it is certainly droning as well (God, I feel like I'm running around in circles here, so I'll stop rambling like this!).
The six tracks that make up this album is easily some of the best ambient-drone I've heard in a long time. The opening trio of tracks, which make up the Three Empty Rooms of Light and Space trilogy, really progress and flow into one another which I think is a great way to open up the album. While the opener and first part of the trilogy, Evening Bell is truly a spacious and low-key track, Gateless Gate picks things up with some interesting percussion playing and some really spacious guitar lines before settling back down on Ostension. In a way I'm inclined to mention post-rock because of the way the tracks manage to ascend and descend with such clarity and subtlety; and there were a couple of guitar lines that did bring to mind the build-ups that are found so often in post-rock groups. But this trio of tracks is far more pensive and reflective than any post-rock group I've ever heard. Even when things get louder, like when the drums begin to actually play rhythms, it's hard to say it ever moves past the realms of meditative calmness.
The last three tracks take things into a slightly more "accessible" direction, at least from my point of view. If such a thing could exist as an ambient ballad, it would be The Iceberg and Its Shadow on this record. I'd call it a ballad simply because of the more melancholic atmosphere that is used throughout the track. It's incredibly somber, even for the album, with piercing piano keys, spacey atmospherics, and some rather off-putting low-end drones dominating the three minutes it's available to be heard. The final two tracks are, in my opinion, two of the best tracks I've heard all year. The bleakness of Space As Support and the more uplifting (in a sense) of closer The Sound of This Bell really just encapsulate everything I want to hear from a record. That's not to discredit the rest of the album (or even any other album I've heard this year for that matter) but these two tracks give me exactly what I crave from music at this point in time. These two tracks manage to take me to the pits of despair and then bring me back up again within the course of about nineteen minutes, and by god if I don't want to just replay those two tracks over and over again!
So yeah, you should get by now that I thought this album was just amazing. It manages to cover a pretty wide spectrum of emotions and tones throughout it's six tracks and bring me to a place that I have not been taken to by another record, ever. It's great, and even though I wish that everyone would go out and listen to this album as soon as possible, I know that this sort of stuff is not for everyone. Fans of experimental music should definitely seek this one out though, one of the year's best.
Overall Score: 9.5
Highlights: Every Track Is A Highlight

Locrian - Return to Annihilation (2013)

Band: Locrian
Country: Chicago, Illinois
Style: Krautrock/Blackened Drone
Label: Relapse

It actually strikes me as odd how in the course of only a couple of years, the trio known as Locrian have become one of my favorite musical acts working today. In addition to that, it appears as though with every full-length they release, their popularity just grows (which is always a good thing). But even I was surprised when I heard that they were signed by Relapse Records.
When I heard The Crystal World back in 2010 I was not all that familiar with the worlds of noise or drone based music that also had elements coming from extreme music and so I wasn't quite sure what it was that I was hearing at the time. By the time The Clearing was released back in 2011, Locrian had developed quite nicely and in my mind their sound had evolved into something much less definable to a genre, and my ears had become far more accustomed to their sound at that point as well. Then there were the two collaborative albums they put out last year with self-titled Locrian & Christoph Heemann and the collaboration with Mamiffer, Bless Them Who Curse You. It was obvious the band was pushing their sound even further on both those albums, which could be seen on the collaborative EP they did with Horseback back in 2011 as well. Whether it happened to be the more ambient based sound of their work with Heemann, the more meditative work with Mamiffer, or the pushing of their blackened noise sound with Horseback, the trio was moving into a realm of even further genre unclassification (not a word but I'm sticking with it). When I heard the band was going to be embracing influences coming from 70s progressive rock on this album I was very interested to hear what they would do with it.
It doesn't really surprise me in the least that the first time I heard opener and lead single(?) Eternal Return I was thrown for a bit of a loop by it's short length and relatively upbeat nature. In comparison with the work of their last four full-lengths the track was relatively speaking closer to synth-pop/synth-rock than the blackened drone they had come to be so closely associated with. The rest of the album fortunately, or unfortunately - depending on how much you dug that track, digs further into that progressive rock and krautrock sound. While I'm certain that the band has embraced ideas from the likes of Genesis and King Crimson, this record came off as much more of a krautrock sound - though that's more likely due to the band's adaptation of the ideas more than an actual taking on of one style over another. For me groups like Can, Popol Vuh (who the band has covered before), Ash Ra Tempel, and Amon Düül II all over this record. The hypnotic drum patterns, the spacious guitar work, and the huge synth tones and drones just brought back the sounds of those groups, among others, but not in a bad way. Much like the band's cover of the Popol Vuh song Dort Ist Der Weg, on their single for Flingco Sound System back in 2011, the band certainly take on the sounds of those bands, but they are certainly not copying them.
Even though these songs are definitely more palatable than much of what is held in the group's back catalog, that does not mean it's easiest to absorb. The repetitive rhythms and chanted vocals are certainly less abstract but they lull you into a state where a song can just breeze by you and you don't even realize what you just heard. I found myself having to revisit tracks like A Visitation From The Wrath of Heaven and Panorama of Mirrors many times before I even got a handle on what the band was doing. The grooves would just lure me in and hook me and before I knew it the track was finished and I would be left wondering how eight minutes (in the case of the former track) had just past me by. That's not to say there aren't tracks that are gateways into the album. I found tracks like the aforementioned Eternal Return and even the the boisterous title-track to be the places I went to after the first listen through because they were much more immediately grabbing and, in a way, poppy. But obviously, with many more listens, those songs that are tougher to crack do become more revealing each time I listened to them.
So, the question remains, have Locrian topped themselves yet again? The answer, at least to me, is most definitely yes; and in my opinion that was no easy task seeing how much I loved their last handful of releases. Despite being signed to a bigger label than I think many ever imagined the band would be on (I'll admit to being one of those people) the band have not softened their sound but actually made it even more expansive. Definitely a must for this year and certainly among the best albums you'll hear all year.
Overall Score: 9.5
Highlights: Every Track Is A Highlight

Queens of The Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork (2013)

Band: Queens of The Stone Age
Country: Palm Desert, California
Style: Hard Rock/Psychedelic Rock
Label: Matador/Rekords Rekords

For as many really, really bad pop rock and alt. rock bands that are out there now being played on the radio, there is the occasional gem. Though it took me quite a while to really see the beauty, QoTSA is definitely one of those gems. A band that is always doing what they want and has never really conformed to the whole mainstream environment despite always being in the limelight to some degree, that is how I view QoTSA.
I guess one of the reasons why I love what QoTSA do is because despite them being known as a hard rock band who can play to hundreds of people, they are actually incredibly diverse. Listen to any of their albums and you will get a variety of different sonic ideas from straight-up rockers to somber ballads to sexy dance tracks to psychedelic desert rock and the occasional metallic track popping up, and just like their previous records, this album keeps in that vein. The first three tracks on this album should give you an idea what the rest of the album will bring to the table. Opener Keep Your Eyes Peeled is this odd psychedelic doom metal-ish track that just sort of plods along and is one of the heaviest things I've heard from the band despite being quite minimal in it's actual structure. That is then immediately followed by I Sat By The Ocean which is a nice up-tempo rocker that I could perfectly imagine the band playing on a beach somewhere in front of hundreds of kids on summer vacation. It has that poppy sort of sound that the band manage to infuse into their songs despite the main riff sounding like it came from an old blues tune. Then there's The Vampyre of Time and Memory which is one of those somber ballads I mentioned above. That's the first three tracks, the rest of the album keeps up with some nice diverse songs.
As much credit as I give the band for being diverse, I have to say that none of their albums, I feel, have been great from start to finish. There is usually a few tracks that are just sort of bland and don't do anything for me and unfortunately this album isn't any different in that regard. Now, it's obvious that there are some clear highlights, whether it's the doom-laden groove of the aforementioned opener, the shifting tones of desert rock-meets-dance rock of If I Had A Tail, and then the huge hard rock devil that is the album's first single My God Is The Sun. These are tracks that are big and the band know how to make their more poppy sensibilities work within their rougher exterior. They're fun songs with big choruses that just make you want to sing the choruses along with Josh Homme. On the lesser side of the spectrum are tracks like the three that close out the album. Now, I have certainly heard bad songs before, and these are far from those, but they just don't do much for me. There's some nice grooves and solos and piano playing, but it's nothing I haven't heard the band do better before.
Probably the biggest surprise to me was on tracks like Kalopsia, and to a lesser extent Fairweather Friends, where Homme's vocal delivery began to sound increasingly like Trent Reznor. Maybe it's just me, but I just thought that was sort of weird. It was like hearing Reznor sing on top of straight-up rock songs (which might be interesting). And this is coming from someone who has always admired Homme's rather diverse vocal style. Not bad, just an interesting trait I heard in the vocals that I didn't expect.
So, overall I think it's a solid enough record, but not without it's flaws. The first half of the album contains some of the best songwriting I've heard all year and definitely contains some of the catchiest songs as well. I know this review might be a bit more negative than some of the other ones out there, but maybe this is more like your opinion. Let me know what you think - as always.
Overall Score: 8
Highlights: Keep Your Eyes Peeled, If I Had A Tail, My God Is The Sun

Antigama - Meteor (2013)

Band: Antigama
Country: Warsaw, Poland
Style: Industrial Metal/Grindcore
Label: Selfmadegod

I've been aware of Antigama for a few years now, but were first introduced to them through the numerous glowing reviews of their 2009 album Warning. I, unfortunately, never got around to listening to that album - though I did go back and listen to both Discomfort and Zeroland for some reason or another. I was in sort of a grind mood recently so I decided to give this one a go.
Based simply on the cover art, I sort of anticipated that this wouldn't be the typical grindcore album, and I have to say that my intuition was actually right. Though to say this album isn't filled with a lot of blasting and grinding and all the things we've come to love about the genre would be incorrect. The majority of this album's running time is spent going through motions (but not in the bad way) that albums of this sort tend to do. The opening handful of tracks are really aggressive and direct songs that are certainly fun and have some quite enjoyable dissonant riffs scrunched in between all the grind. In that regard, it doesn't differ so much from the two albums I had actually bothered to listen to from the band that I mentioned above. These songs are direct and brutal, but as the album progresses, we do see another side beginning to emerge. This side shows a bit more of an industrial tone that I would say justifies my intuition.
I love grind as much as the next guy, but even I want bands to experiment and evolve in some fashion, and many grind bands don't really do that. Some bands can get away with not changing too much but merely improving on the traits they have developed over a long career, but even then, there are many bands that I find can do that all that well. In the case of Antigama, the band have appeared to embrace ideas from industrial and ambient music for this album, bringing in some really interesting tricks to this album. In terms of industrial influences, some tracks make more use of it than others, which is obvious, but I just thought that it was sort of cool how the band changed it up so the influence didn't come across as stale. Whether it's a more mechanical sounding riff or some space-age keyboards in the background or even some random effect that is just thrown in. They didn't let the influence get stale or sound too cheesy. Also, I just have to say that I love bands that are quirky and that weird ho-down moment in the middle of Fed By The Feeling just made me laugh and I loved it. It is also worth noting the instrumental "prog" track that is Turbulence that really threw me for a loop when I first heard it. It's without a doubt the track on the album that sticks out like a sore thumb with a spacy keyboard solo and a more mellow tone for the majority of it's running time.
So, overall I thought this was a fun little grindcore album with some cool ideas that really made it stand out from the many other records in the genre. Maybe grindcore purists might have a hard time getting into the more progressive ideas going on on here, but if you can deal with that, you'll be just fine. So, grindcore and death metal fans, do yourself a favor and give this album a listen.
Overall Score: 8
Highlights: Meteor, The Signal, Perfect Silence

Rotten Sound - Species At War EP (2013)

Band: Rotten Sound
Country: Vaasa, Finland
Style: Grindcore
Label: Season of Mist

There are very few grind bands that can consistently get right. For as much as I love groups like Napalm Death (who really aren't a grind band anymore) and Brutal Truth, I find that even they have been willing to experiment - which is never a bad thing. But sometimes all I want from a record is a swift kick in the nuts and a punch in the face.
That's where Rotten Sound come in. They are a band who never stop their quest in perfecting their grinding. Yes, some recordings are more crusty than others and some songs actually break the two minute mark, but in the case of this EP, which was released earlier this year, it's just a the perfect example of the metaphor I described above. Six songs with the entire release being under ten minutes. Frankly, this is the perfect way to wake up (which is what I am currently doing while writing and listening to this). It's just insane how good this band is at making songs this short and aggressive consistently grabbing. Most grind bands can pump out plenty of songs, but these Finnish men really get how to do grind and crust effectively. From the instantaneous bursts of Cause and The Game to the more dynamic(...?) The Solution the band have a formula for writing and releasing some killer, crusty, and brutal grind.
I wish I could write more about this record, but that's about it. This thing is killer, it's short, and it's fast, plus it doesn't overstay it's welcome. It's just the way I like to wake up in the morning - just don't drive with it playing cause you will get a ticket for speeding or something. Killer grind from one of it's modern masters.
Overall Score: 8
Highlights: The Solution, Salvation

Persefone - Spiritual Migration (2013)

Band: Persefone
Country: Andorra
Style: Progressive/Melodic Death Metal
Label: ViciSolum Productions

For all my waning interest in the whole melo-death genre, there are always bands that I return to, Persefone is one of those groups. Along with a handful of other bands, new or older, who happen to display a penchant for actually trying to try new things or exhibit great songwriting, Persefone has always done interesting things. This had to be one of the first melo-death albums I was actually excited to hear in a long time.
I think one of the reasons why Persefone is a band who I actually return to more than when they release a new album is simply down to their constant experimentation with their sound. While early records definitely demonstrated as much a love for the likes of Opeth and Katatonia as much as In Flames and Edge of Sanity their last record, and definitely this new one, has showcased a bigger progressive metal, and tech metal to a certain extent, influence. Similar lines of influence can now be traced back to Dream Theater and Cynic, and while that isn't wholly unique, the band retain their own personality when it comes to songwriting and their sense for dynamics. While most songs do tend to remain in a fairly aggressive state for the majority of their running times, the dynamics come into play more with how the band use their synth in the background and how those occasional cleaner moments are played. The band don't sound quite so much epic or atmospheric as much as they just create a tone through the synths and keyboards that is somewhere between the two points. Cleaner sections obviously provide a much needed breather from the more aggressive side of the band.
There's plenty of stop-start riffing that can come from modern metal bands, but I was actually impressed with how much the band relented from actually making that a fail-safe on here. When I listen to a lot of modern metal groups, whether they be tech metal or metalcore or melo-death or whatever, the stop-start riffing pattern has sort of become the go-to style of riffing when a band can't actually come up with a cool riff (I'm guilty of it myself) but it's so nice to hear a band that can actually craft riffs. In addition to that, as I mentioned above with the keyboards falling between that whole epic and atmospheric realm of things, they also never settle into the role of playing melodies for the guitars. I have developed such a distaste for bands who claim to be melodic and then have keyboards play all the melody while the guitar players simply chug away for minutes at a time. I'm not above chugging, but that doesn't make you a melodic metal band, it makes you a metalcore group who can't put in enough time to actually write guitar parts (or at least that's how my mind has come to see it). Keyboards on here, while predominantly placed in the background for the majority of the record, do have their time to shine, either through subtle little bells and whistles added to a section of a particular track, or through lead work. I also have to point out the variety of keyboard tones used on here which range from typical ambient textures to the more orchestral stuff and then the more electronic side of things which goes from actual electronic effects to sine/sawtooth keyboard solo stylings.
To return to the songwriting, it has to be said that this is easily the crowning jewel in the band's arsenal. For all the great guitar and synth work, the great and diverse drumming, crisp bass work, the nice dichotomy between the fierce screams/growls and more melancholic clean vocals, the band's songwriting is key to what has made them a band to be reckoned with. About half of this record is instrumental, and that, for many bands who are placed in the melo-death genre, can be a sign of lackluster songwriting material (since, let's be honest, how many melo-death bands actually go out on a limb and do instrumentals beyond intros, outros, or a short acoustic or electronic interlude). In the case of Persefone, they have definitely mastered their craft, as the majority of the instrumentals on here, the one-two pair that is the Consciousness saga sticking out in particular here, really stand up with some of the best stuff I've heard from the band, and from the prog-death/melo-death genre in years. Without the need of vocals, or simply resorting to solo-solo-solo formulas, the band produce two tracks that are really theatrical and expansive in style that only work to the album's advantage. Very few bands that have come from the background this one has have crafted such powerful tracks and have moved me in such a way.
Although I came into this album expecting good things, it far surpassed my expectations and really has become an album that I find myself returning to quite often. This is easily the best melo-death album I've heard in a long, long time - and I know I say something similar to that pretty much whenever I review albums from this style, but this one really sticks out. Definitely worth looking into (hell, go out and support this band however you can) if you enjoy progressive, melodic, and diverse sounding metal. I cannot highlight enough things about this record.
Overall Score: 9.5
Highlights: Every Track Is A Highlight

Funeralium - Deceived Idealism (2013)

Band: Funeralium
Country: Paris, France
Style: Funeral Doom Metal
Label: Weird Truth Productions

There is only so much one can write about the genre of funeral doom before things start to sound repetitive, so forgive me if this sounds a lot like a lot of other reviews. I remember first discovering the genre through and in the later stages of looking through it finding the group called Funeralium with one self-titled album and a demo (which I have not heard yet). Though the genre is far from having groups that fill it with ingenuity and unique ideas with every release, I was still interested to hear what this band would do.
Six tracks. Two of them under ten minutes, two of them over twenty. What are you in for when you press play on this double-album? Has anyone who's read this blog before heard the band Venowl based off of the several reviews I've given the band? If you have, you'll sort of know what to expect from this album. It's slow moving (I mean, really slow moving) and very bleak sounding. If you've heard a funeral doom record before, you know what to expect here. There's definitely a comparison between opener Blood, Phlegm and Vomit and what Venowl have done, and even closer to the band they site as an influence, Senthil. It has that very improvisational sort of tone where you have feedback in the background somehow creating an ambiance to the recording in addition to seemingly random screams from other members of the band. I don't want to say they're ripping off Senthil here, but that opening track just sounds really close to what that band did and what Venowl have been doing on their more funeral doom tracks. After that track though, you pretty much just fall into your typical funeral doom sounds though, for better or worse.
I guess what one could say Funeralium have on their peers is that they certainly don't try to dress up their albums in any sort of fancy production or use any tracks to make their albums sound better. I'd imagine the sound of these six songs on here will be pretty much how they'll sound live as well, except maybe less dank, because this album sounds dank. It has that sort of vibe where I almost imagine the band playing this, or recording it, in somebody's wet basement cellar with water dripping through the ceiling, light bulbs barely flickering on, metal shelves and containers littering the ground. Just very dark, very depressing, very funeral doom. Despite what the band say, this is a funeral doom album with the occasional black metal burst. At it's best, so a track like 21st Century Ineptia, the band manage to make both the droning doom sections, that could otherwise prove to be quite lifeless, the bursts of feedback, and the occasional burst of black metal tremolo picking join together into a well crafted piece of music that has it's ups and downs sonically. I have to say that during the climax of this song in particular, the band channel into something that is almost post-rock inspired. At it's worst, you have a track like Hang These Bastards, which is pretty standard funeral doom despite only being six minutes long. It doesn't bring anything new to the band beyond being one of the shortest tracks they have in their relatively short catalog now.
It has to be said that anyone who comes into a funeral doom record expecting to hear riffs obviously doesn't know what they're coming into because this record, despite what the intro of the title-track would have you believe, is not full of slow-paced riffs. Yes, that opening is perhaps the one and only except to this on the entire record. So, if that opening grabbed you, good, just don't believe that the rest of the album is quite as memorable as that intro. In fact, the rest of that track isn't even up to the intro - not in a bad way mind you, but in that nothing else during that title-track will likely stay with you beyond that opening riff. As the longest track on the entire disc, standing just over twenty-five minutes in length, it is probably the track on here that harks back to classic doom metal bands the most in it's use of guitar phrasing. For a band that has been all about doom and gloom up until now, this one song has the potential to breach out and actually bring in new people - as long as they realize the above statement.
So, overall, this is a solid enough album with enough to satisfy the average funeral doom listener and maybe the average doom listener as well. The song lengths do still make this album a bit daunting to listen straight through, but if you can get over that, then give this one a shot. Funeral doom solid enough to please any fan, what more could you want?
Overall Score: 8
Highlights: 21st Century Ineptia, Deceived Idealism