Holy shite, this is a feisty and fiery one! One of the most successful “project” bands in recent memory, Goatwhore has come roaring back, filled with piss, bile and cayenne peppers on album five, Blood for the Master. This is nasty, blackened death/thrash from the most stagnant bayou of the Big Easy and it’s the musical equivalent of a gator attack. Featuring former members of Crowbar, Acid Bath and Nachtmystium, Goatwhore is professional, single-minded and out to punish mankind. Although they started as an American take on Norwegian black metal like Darkthrone, they’ve since settled into life as a drooling, chomping, black/death/thrash beast. While their past few albums have been a bit samey at times, they were always fun in a berserk, foaming at the mouth kinda way. Blood for the Master continues in the same direction as 2009′s Carving Out the Eyes of God but feels a bit more intense and well thought out. It hits like a nuclear howitzer from Hades with thirty-eight minutes of face melting ugliness and malevolent swagger. There are lots of  nods to the classic Bay Area thrash sound, some black n’ roll, classic death riffing and ice-cold, hyper-kinetic trem-abuse. What makes this so entertaining is the odd biker rock vibe Goatwhore manages to impart to the mach-speed chaos. Its hard to explain, but this sounds like black/death as done by a southern rock lovin, greasy biker gang and it works. While this ends up more of a thrash album than a black or death metal opus, it retains enough of an icy black heart to keep most frowners frowning happily (is that possible?). While it doesn’t differ much from what Skeletonwitch has done on the past few albums, its harder, meaner and way more convincing.

Of the ten tracks, nine blaze away with manic fury and seething hostility. “Collapse of Eternal Worth” gets the spiked ball rolling with an almost punk rock take on black metal that reminds me of the first Corrosion of Conformity album but with way more hate. The riffs are urgent and some are quite powerful. The vocals lurch from guttural death croaks to blackened rasps. “When Steel Meets Bone” is really a Bay Area thrash number with hints of vintage Exciter in the riffing and tempo. “An End to Nothing” borrows extensively from the Great Book of Slayer, including the frenzied,  whammy-intensive solos.

The most “black” of the tracks is the epic and evil “Judgment of the Bleeding Crown,” which sounds like top-notch Belphegor. The riffing locks in perfectly with the rolling drums and it sounds like an unstoppable juggernaut of doom. Likewise, “Beyond the Spell of Discontent” trots out some nicely frigid trem leads before settling into a straight thrash style. Only “In Deathless Tradition” stumbles and feels underwhelming with a more mid-pace grinding attack (it has a nifty solo).

Blood for the Master lives or dies by the strength of the axe mastery of Sammy Duet and fortunately, he’s up to the challenge. There are a lot of crisp, quality riffs here, of the black, death and thrash variety. His solos are also impressive and span several styles and approaches (my favorite coming at 2:15 during “Parasitic Scriptures of the Sacred Word”). Ben Falgoust’s vocals are diverse and mostly well done. Though he uses less of his pure black rasp this time, his death croaks are good and his screams sound genuinely painful (though he sounded better on earlier albums). I was very impressed with the drumming of Zack Simmons. The man can bash and crash and he really adds a lot of the fun to the mix.

Speaking of mix, the production by Erik Rutan (Hate Eternal) is a big factor in the success of Blood for the Master. The drum sound is huge and organic and the guitars sound pulverizing and unstoppable. This isn’t a trembly, tinny low-fi product by any means. Its got a huge low-end rumble and will shake you out of your socks with a wall of nasty sound.

Goatwhore isn’t re-writing any books on metal or doing anything unique, but their frantic, blitzkrieg approach to black/death is a winning recipe with loads of cajun awesome sauce. This is an blast of pure metal insanity and manages to be both extreme and memorable. Like having a rabid pitbull in your pants; its gonna get you moving and shaking. Get on the goat and ride…to glory!!

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Is lumbering, elephantine doom your thing? Well, it had better be if you plan on spending quality time with Rhode Island doom-sayers, Pilgrim. That’s because their Misery Wizard debut serves up six ginomous slices of crawling, droning, monolithic doom with all the subtlety of a steel cage wrestling match. Do you think Saint Vitus and Reverend Bizarre are slow? Pilgrim is slower. Think Cathedral has some huge sounding riffs? Pilgrim has bigger ones. In a doom pissing contest, these chaps are mellow yellow. To help explain their sound, I’ve compiled a short list of things that move faster than Pilgrim. These include: octogenarians with bad knees, glaciers, evolution and innovation in black metal. Yep, Pilgrim is mighty slow. For a power trio, they make a lot of racket and stay true to the old school style of Sabbath-infused dirgery. They aren’t innovative or particularly dynamic and at times, they can get rather tiresome and tedious, even for a doom fanboy like Steel Druhm. Because of that last factoid, Misery Wizard is an album intended only for tried-and-true doom-hounds who don’t suffer from the slightest trace of ADD [I'll be over here, looking at moss. - AMG]. If your mind tends to wander, or drone makes you snooze, skip this release, or patience you’ll lose (HA! I waxed poetic).

Almost instantly, you’ll hear a big Reverend Bizarre similarity in the lead riff on “Astaroth.” It’s huge and sloth-like and Pilgrim uses it  to beat you senseless, repeating it over and over until you’re curled up in a ball on the floor. Like most of the songs here, this one crawls along like a sleepy snail in Snail-ville, with just the riffs to keep you company. The vocals don’t come in til the halfway point and feel a bit like an afterthought. It’s a classic doom song and at about six minutes, it’s the perfect length and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Others, like the ten-minute-plus title track and the whooping thirteen minutes of “Forsaken Man,” require far more stamina and indulgence from the listener as Pilgrim shambles, rambles and meanders (slowly) across a largely barren and static musical landscape. There are few, if any, tempo shifts and its usually one molar-shaking riff after another, with a minimum of window dressing. “Quest” and “Adventurer” shake things up a bit with faster tempos and actual solos (though “Quest” only accelerates at the midway point), and after all the lethargic rumbling, the increased speed ends up making a real impact and these tracks are high points because of it.

The riffs generated by the Wizard (that’s his name!) are fairly doomtastic and steeped in old timey doom ethos. He knows how to craft a thunderous lead and use it as a weapon of mass destruction. While solos and showy fret-work clearly aren’t his bag, he does his doomy duty and delivers the gloomy goods in workmanlike fashion. Sadly, as a vocalist, he doesn’t do much to excite or impress. He has a rather monotone, chant/shout style which doesn’t add much to the material’s impact. He doesn’t hurt things, but doesn’t elevate them either. This issue is partially alleviated by the mix, which brings the guitars way upfront and submerges the vox into the background. Still, a better vocal performance would make the songs pop a bit more.

As good as some of this material is, Misery Wizard would have benefited from a bit more diversity in tempo and song dynamics. The long song lengths, paired with a single-minded devotion to super slow riff-play, wear the listener out when there’s no break or respite from the doom-o-thon. Even the best riffs can be overused and eventually beaten into the ground and that happens a bit too often here.

Misery Wizard is a good debut by some promising doomsters. If they progress as songwriters and the Wizard works on his vocal approach, I can see highly depressing things in their glum future. If you cotton to the slow-motion bludgeoning of Reverend Bizarre, Saint Vitus or YOB, this should be right up your alley. You might want to bring some coffee along on the journey though, just in case.

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Liberteer is the brainchild of one Matt Widener, who the more grind-minded among you might remember as the bassist for San Jose sickos Cretin. Cretin’s lone album, 2006’s Freakery, received high praise at the time, but they’ve been laying low since then while their singer goes through some changes. During his new-found free time, Widener has put together Liberteer on his own, playing all instruments on this album, including guitars, drums, and… banjo? [Hey, if Høst can do it, so can Widener - AMG]

Here’s where it gets interesting. [You had me at "banjo" - AMG] Throughout Better To Die On Your Feet… there are many passages incorporating horns, flutes, percussion, and yes, banjo. A gimmick, you say? Bullshit. I mean, if all those pagan metal bands can have folk instruments alongside drums and guitars, and Sepultura has been using Brazilian percussion for years, why wouldn’t an American, revolution-themed project make use of revolution-era American music?

Though, gimmick or not, it doesn’t really matter, because any doubters will be silenced (or instantly killed) by the opening shitkicker “Build No System.” The straightforward grind tracks on this album could level a house, but the orchestrated sections feel like charging into battle. What’s even cooler is that parts of the instrumental themes pop up repeatedly throughout the album, tying everything together nicely (and apparently the CD version comes with this handy chart! How awesome is that?) If Ken Burns had gotten Misery Index to score those Civil War documentaries, it would probably be kind of like this.

Of course, with any worthwhile grind record, the message is just as important as the music. So what exactly is the Liberteer manifesto? Does Widener want you to attend a local Occupy rally? Would he prefer that you buy your groceries locally instead of at Walmart? Let’s take a look at these lyrics (from the track “99 to 1”): “to be happy, god damn it, kill those who own property / to be happy, god damn it, cut the priests in two / and answer to no one, not even god above / for if real we’d need to kill him too”. Clearly, this dude is looking at the bigger picture. He demands complete freedom from any and all oppression, and he would like that freedom NOW, thank you very much. He’s also barking out these lyrics like Barney Greenway being chased by a pack of Rottweilers, which raises the intensity factor considerably.

My only possible gripe with this record is that each song leads directly into the next, essentially creating one 27-minute-long track. People complain enough about how all grind songs sound the same anyway, and attaching them together Human Centipede-style [Angry Metal Guy thanks you for the imagery - AMG] certainly doesn’t help. Then again, these tracks are all connected by repeated musical themes anyway, so laying them out this way does make sense.

Overall, this record is outstanding in a “what the fuck just happened?” sort of way. Whether you agree with Widener’s political views (or his liberal use of banjo), there is no denying that this is a pretty unique album, grind or otherwise. Widener has both tremendous musical abilities and strong political convictions, and the combination is devastating. So whether you’ve been holding out for that Napalm Death bluegrass album, or you just want something furious to listen to while the United States circles the drain, Liberteer might be just the thing for you.

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Oh man. Biohazard were one of those bands that really broke me into heavy music when I was just a tyke. While the band’s debut—which oddly enough was largely edited verbally—never did much for me, Urban Discipline, State of the World Address (I still have the version with the orange gel case somewhere), and the much maligned Mata Leao were all albums that dug into my 10 to 14 year old soul and left permanent impressions. Those records were tough, heavy slabs of machismo that with Type O Negative, Life of Agony and Sepultura paved the way towards the heavier side of tracks. Unfortunately, I grew away from these guys and—I’m going to be frank—their records really started going downhill in quality (turns out I *wasn’t* down for life). So, when I saw that the original lineup had reunited for a new record (before Evan Seinfeld left the band), I gotta say: I was interested in spite of myself.

Reborn in Defiance is just as self-conscious as I was conscious of the history and what it means that the original line-up of Biohazard was reuniting. The opening track of the album is all of the intros from their albums being rewound back to point zero—and when “Vengence Is Mine” burst out the gate with Evan’s characteristic hardcore scream and some fucking gang chants (“You think you know me? FUCK YOU!”)… I got chills. And a Bobby Hambel guitar solo to follow that up? It’s like shit hadn’t really changed at all. Except, well, that’s not really true if you let the record keep playing. What you find is a Biohazard that is maybe a bit older, a bit more jaded, a bit less hungry and really not as heavy (this isn’t to say that it’s not heavy).

While the band does still have balls-to-the-walls heavy and fast tracks like “Come Alive,” the aforementioned opener “Vengeance Is Mine,” “Skullcrusher” and “Never Give In,” there’s a softer, gentler and more melodious side that comes through on this album that I certainly don’t remember from their older material. Like on the final track “Season the Sky” or “You Were Wrong,” there’s a melancholy that permeates this album. Minor keys, dirty, icky guitar tones that reflect the blackness that older dudes see that maybe younger dudes don’t get. While Evan’s semi-rappy part over the beginning of “Vows of Redemption” puts a bit of a damper on the slide guitar work at the beginning of the track, it really stands out as something cool that the band never really tried before. It should be noted that “Vows of Redemption” has a melodious chorus, but one of the fucking crushingest riffs on the whole damned record.

Reborn in Defiance is really a tour de force of what sounds to me like post-Biohazard. It’s heavy, groove-laden with all the things that made Urban Discipline and State of the World Address great records in their own rights, but with a bit of a melancholic edge to it. I certainly have grown up a bit, myself, since being a huge fan of Biohazard. Time has moved me from the world of machismo and ballsy simplicity to more progressive tendencies and technical tastes. But Reborn in Defiance is still a damned good album, with some damned good material on it. While it’s a little on the long side (55 minutes) with Biohazard‘s not-so-inventive lyrics and that does kind of bring it down, there’s definitely something here.

If you dig heavy, groove-laden tracks and hardcore or were ever a Biohazard fan, I think it’s worth checking this record out. With Evan Seinfeld gone, it seems like this is going to be a one time deal, but Reborn in Defiance definitely taps into what made this band really special when they started out. It’s weird seeing them older and thinking of them as being sort of more melancholic than in your face—but that Brooklyn cocksure “HEY! FUCK YOU BUDDY!” swagger definitely still counts for something.

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And man, when I got this record I was fucking giddy. From the beginning it’s pretty much a non-stop, smash you in the face example of what makes tech death some of my favorite music in the world when done right. Subtly melodic, tracks like “Coexistence” hook you with guitar (and bass) carried melodies and virtuoso performances, while at the same time bringing around heaviness and brutality when needed. In that sense, it’s more comparable to Obscura‘s breakthrough record Cosmogenesis than most of the other tech death kin. There’s a melodic sense that often gets lost in Necrophagist or Spawn of Possession kind of work.

While the whole band is obviously very talented, you should know that the thing to watch for here is Beyond Creation‘s bassist Dominic Lapointe. This guy is a rare talent on the fretless bass and the way that bass is used here is even more in your face than on Cynic or Obscura‘s work. But while this rubs some people the wrong way, it definitely hits me right in the “OH FUCK YEAH” section of the brain. Watch out especially for the way it’s used in clean breakdowns like in “Coexistence,” or as a countermelody at the halfway point of huge epic “The Departed.” This is a sound I can’t get enough of.

I strongly recommend you head over to the band’s merch page and buy this thing directly. It’s ridiculously awesome.

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I’ve never been an Abigail Williams fan. Their debut was lackluster and derailed by metalcore underpinnings. In the Absence of Light had some actual potential but was far too generic. Needless to say, I had modest expectations as I sat down to examine their new album. Well, Steel Druhm was nearly knocked from his stately Chair of Metal Judgment [Metal Chair of Judgement? - AMG] by what he heard on Becoming. Gone are the tepid attempts to recycle left-over Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth riffs and horror movie symphonics. In their place is raw, shoegazey, post-rocky, contemplative blackness, loaded with doomy atmosphere, close in spirit to Wolves in the Throne Room and Agalloch, with elements of Aurvandil and Emperor mixed in. It’s a startlingly major change to be sure (even more so than their previous shift from black-core to Dimmu-worship), and proves there’s no wagon they won’t gleefully hop onto. Surprisingly though, their newest disingenuous switch works well and they may have found the style they can excel at. That is, if they can stop pursuing every new fad and trend (the technical term is “chasing their own fail”).

Long-winded opener “Ascension Sickness” immediately showcases Abigail‘s new wardrobe and stylish accessories. Beginning with gentle, sedate acoustics before roaring into blast n’ burn blackness, it’s a study in moods and shifting dynamics. Over the next eleven minutes, they treat you to some highly atmospheric punishment, with a strong undercurrent of melody and beauty that references the golden age of Emperor. Some of the riffs are quite interesting and I’m especially fond of the doomy, navel-gazing segment around 5:45 (peaking at 8:15 when the bells/chimes come in). Hell, they even toss in violin/cello accompaniment as things wind down. “Radiance” (and to a lesser extend, “Elestial”) channel Agalloch, especially in the way the songs build and flow, but they ultimately fail to capture Agalloch‘s innate magic and some moments just drag.

The big one-two punch comes with “Infinite Fields of Minds” and “Beyond the Veil,” both being huge set-pieces of atmospheric blackness that throw everything possible at the listener. “Infinite Fields” meanders between tranquil new-agey strumming and vicious blasting and does a good job of keeping things interesting. The sudden, out-of-place lurch into a vintage Mercyful Fate-like riff at 6:05 is the highpoint to my ears but the whole thing works and sounds like a grandiose nightmare. “Beyond the Veil” features tons of mood-drenched violin and soft, understated orchestral pieces that feel very chamber music-esque (especially at 8:11). This is all wrapped around morose but melodic guitar-work and some sporadic blasting. It’s a pretty diverse ditty.

Across the length of Becoming, Ken Sorceron and Ian Jekelis craft some of their best riffs to date as they blend hostile with morose. Ken’s vocals are more bleak and despondent this time and he sounds quite suicidal on most tracks. The biggest props are reserved for how the symphonics are incorporated. Instead of being cheap, throw-away theatrics, they use them much the same way Septic Flesh does. The orchestral instrumentation is at the core and they work outward from it and layer in the heavy stuff. It works.

The downsides (besides the obvious “ripping everybody off” and “we have no identity of our own” issues) include a tendency to repeat ideas a bit too much within each song and a chronic case of Metallica-itis (inability to self-edit). As interesting as “Beyond the Veil” is, seventeen minutes is about three minutes too much. The sound is somewhere between low-fi and legit. You can hear what’s going on but it has a raw, unrefined edge. It manages to feel somewhat chilly but something is missing sound-wise and I can’t figure out what. [Could it be dignity? - AMG]

Despite the good quality of the material here, the cynic in me still struggles to respect a band which so desperately leaps from one bandwagon to the next, blindly chasing some kind of “scene” acceptance. Their contemptible scramble from metalcore to Dimmu-core and now Throneroom-core, pretty much cements their reputation as pretenders sans integrity. However, I can’t argue with the results this time. Abigail is shoplifting from better stores these days and the latest stop on their front-runner tour is well executed. If they keep exploring this soundscape, they may find their own identity and grow into something kinda special. If not, there’s no telling where the winds of trend will take them next. Japanese anime pop? Lithuanian mountain-jazz? Nothing is sacred if they think its in vogue and the “new black.” You see, Abigail Williams is the most fickle of mistresses.

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1. Abigail Williams – In the Absence of Light Review
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Here’s something slightly different for us here at Angry Metal Guy Worldwide Industries. Vise Massacre is a Brooklyn-based hardcore/punk-thrash power trio and Expendable Humans is their debut full-length (a very short one at thirty-one minutes). Although it’s fairly thrashy and abrasive, there’s no mistaking that this is pure hardcore with similarities to vets of the past like Cryptic Slaughter, Cro-Mags and Sick of It All. It’s all short bursts of fast, chunky punk rage, with most songs (fourteen of em) clocking in at, or under, two minutes. There are some decent riffs scattered about and some really aggressive, herky-jerky, pissed-off material, but sadly, not much here really interests or grabs me in the slightest. Now, let’s be clear. I’m not anti-hardcore at all. In fact, I really like the bands mentioned above. This just feels entirely generic and flat to me, almost like paint-by-numbers angry punk. This somewhat surprised me, since these guys have a fair amount of underground buzz swirling around them.

As Expendable Humans streamrolls along, you get song after song like opener “Paralyzer,” with a big, low-end rumble, chugging, thick riffs and the heartily irate bellows of Rich Von Muller. It even has some vaguely blackened trem-riffing. “Bloodsucker” features some interesting, almost Voivoid-like stutter-step riffing and ”Hail to the Wicked” grinds along nastily like a tank.  The best moments IMHO come during ”Bloodsucker” and  ”Kill to Survive” (which has a vibe not unlike long forgotten thrashers At War). The big problem for me is so many of the songs are faceless and indistinguishable from each other. They rage noisily for two minutes and die, leaving absolutely nothing stuck in the musical memory banks. Of the lot, only about five tunes contain moments that peaked my interest and those did so only in the most modest ways.

A lot of my disconnect is attributable to the base style Vise Massacre employs, i.e. overly simplistic riffing and samey riff patterns. After a few songs, it starts to feel tedious and recycled. I can’t however, fault the vocals of Mr. Muller at all. He has the classic hardcore shout/roar down pat and spends most of the time sounding like he’s passing a large, sandpaper-coated marble through his urethra. Sometimes he reminds me of Gary Meskil (Pro-Pain) and even veers close to Tom Angelripper (Sodom) at times. He’s the bright spot to this hardcore onslaught and provides a lot of the charm the music itself often lacks. The mix is about what you’d expect from a New York hardcore album, bassy, heavy and thick. It sounds like a Big Apple street brawl without the taxi horns blaring in the background (though that would be pretty damn cool).

If you worship loud, angry, heavy hardcore, add a point or so. However, Steel Druhm just couldn’t get this thing to sink into his steely consciousness, despite numerous spins. In fact, this left such a light impression, it was a real challenge to adequately explain what I’d heard. It pains me to say it, but so far, 2012 isn’t tickling my metal bone (under my collarbone) as much as I expected. It’s still early though and Steel Druhm is ever the patient, optimistic metal miser. Now, get me some good promos before I fucking lose it!

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One of the simplest facts about Zebulon Pike is that they are a band based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After that, things become much more complicated, as they engage in a genre of music that can only be described as auditory mad science. Formed in 2002, every single one of their albums has been a brain-demolishing piece of experimentation: And Blood Was Passion in 2004, The Deafening Twilight in 2006, and Instransience in 2008. With each release, they have become more dense, more intelligent, more volatile. Space Is the Corpse of Time continues this progression, spiralling out in a universe of it’s own making.

Their band name comes from an American historical figure, an officer and an explorer after who also leant his name to Pike’s Peak in Colorado. This is extremely fitting for a band that goes about the process of writing an album as though they were launching an expedition. Listening to Space Is the Corpse of Time is an act of discovery, as if the band were feeling their way through a new musical landscape. Listening to to depth and sparkle of “Echoic Worlds” is like watching from spaceship windows as starts are born and galaxies accrue.

Space Is the Corpse of Time is incredibly complex and littered with musical references. In fact, it is possible to treat the listening experience as a game of spot-the-influence. A chugging riff here will evoke Meshuggah, then an eerie and caustic atmosphere will conjure Bloody Panda, and then the avant, anxiety-inducing drumming will call up YOB. Masters of skillful combinations, Zebulon Pike combine a classic rock aesthetic pioneered by bands like King Crimson with an experimental jazz spontaneity, prog rock complexity and Mike Patton-esque genre-defying energy. But with all the name-dropping, all the references that Zebulon Pike inspires, at the end of it they are, most of all, themselves. Their aesthetic is singular. They are a cyborg of a band, a plasma, marrying the organic and the electric, futuristic instrumentation with a very human heart. No matter how many times the nebulous “Powers of the Living” morphs into a new musical shape, it retains a curious, pensive emotional tone, like a touchstone.

There is much that sets Zebulon Pike apart from their peers, but a key component of the success of this album is the intelligence, the deliberateness with which they deploy various tones and techniques. Every tremulously clean tone and grating bit of feedback, every bit of blazing speed or anguished slowness is carefully chosen and incorporated at precisely the correct moment. There is a moment in “Spectrum Threshold” when a passage with sludgy guitars suddenly clears, gentles, and the entire piece transforms. There is something part science and part magic about this style of composition, a kind of alchemy that takes base elements and handles them just so, combines them at just the right time and in the right proportions and suddenly, somehow, there is an overflow of liquid gold.

Zebulon Pike should be way, way more famous than they are. A band of brilliant composers with an equal mastery of contemporary classical and heavy metal styles, they consistently crease genre-defying, brain-melting music that is as transcendent as it is pleasurable to listen to.  Give Space Is the Corpse of Time a listen, let it put down roots in your mind, and I promise you will not be disappointed.

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So, last year (also known as last week) we introduced this thing called the “Top Records We Wish We Could Unhear” and I’ve already gotten to my first nomination for the year of 2012. Dies Irae (no, not that one, the Mexican one) is apparently an old melodic death metal band that has remade itself in the image of “post-metal” (no, not that kind of post metal, the kind from 1999) and got themselves signed by Chaos Records, who otherwise have pretty good taste in bands. Secret Veils of Passion is, therefore, the first of the band’s new, updated versions of itself and it is a remarkable record to behold. But no, not that kind of remarkable. Think more like: I am remarking upon it. 

At its base, Secret Veils of Passion could actually be a really interesting and engaging record. It is obviously the work of dudes fluent in metal and moving away from it, so it is quite reminiscent of mid-era Katatonia or Anathema. Though, it should be noted, that at times the band is much heavier than anything the aforementioned bands ever did during their later careers. When Dies Irae goes into its melodic death metal moments, like on “Hate” or “For” this material is actually very good. There’s a thrashy Dark Tranquillity or Hypocrite vibe to the material that wakes up the slumbering desire for late-90s Swedish metal. The screams are raw and vicious, and while the guitar tone itself is remarkably kazoo-like, and the drums are obviously a drum machine, there is an appeal.

Even when the band wanders into other material, the music itself is not always predictable (or even very metal). The track “Fight”  actually reminds me of more traditional Mexican pop music I’ve heard before and “Sex” has an Alice In Chains vibe that works pretty well. In these areas, the band is obviously pulling themselves away and striking off into unfamiliar territory. This means that at times the guitar work, which has several remarkably deft shredding passages, sounds almost amateurish and off. But even then Dies Irae actually does well on a lot of these tracks, combining styles of music you wouldn’t expect to sound that great together into a dour cocktail of sadness and exhibitionistic depression.

All of that praise said, this record is entirely destroyed by one of the worst vocal performances I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Very few things can be said objectively when talking about music, but I can definitely tell you one thing: Dies Irae does not have a member of the band who can sing. And apparently they’re all fucking tone deaf, too, because the record was released. And it’s not just the overly dramatic and pompous, but remarkably amateurish delivery: it’s that they’re obviously out of key. On the aforementioned “Fight,” for example, the harmonies in the chorus are gratingly bad. They make my skin crawl. In the not pronounceable and stupidly entitled “E7en,” (Eh-seven-en?) the vocalist utters some of the ridiculously bad lyrics in what appears to be a melody… that is not actually in the same key as the guitars underneath him, if it’s in a key at all.

This entire record is one tragically bad vocal line after another and it kills me (and we’re not even talking about the lyrics). Because while I probably would have commented on the production and said “Wow, I like Katatonia a lot, too!” or I would have called the writer a pretentious naval gazer, this record should be much better than it is. I’m not sure if no one in his surroundings has told him he’s a bad singer, or what the hell the label is thinking that signed them—but this is just bad. This is not a matter of taste, either. Unless what you like is out of tune vocals… but then that’s a bit like enjoying necrophelia. Your thing, but you can’t really expect the rest of us to follow along with you, you know?

So, don’t, under any circumstances, check this record out. Save yourself the time and effort. And hopefully next time Dies Irae will find themselves a vocalist.

Related posts:

1. Anaal Nathrakh – Passion Review
2. Serenity Dies – Hacksawcracy Review
3. Things You Might Have Missed 2010: Vex – Thanatopsis

Immolation

Now, with 2012 right around the corner, we find ourselves at the behest of another punishment from these New York Death Metal old timers. This EP comes under the title Providence [is available for free here - AMG] and it contains five tracks that hardly add up to 19 minutes. The sheer intensity of Immolation’s death metal will hit you as soon as opening track “What They Bring” fires off. Of course the typical elements of their sound are still there and the stand out moments are, as usual, few. But that’s the beauty of Immolation because their albums have always had a feeling of coherence, despite what chaos or monotony a casual listener might imagine. Ending track “Swallow the Fear” is definitely my favorite track on Providence because of its very catchy riffing and because of Steve Shalaty’s unconventional drumming that we’ve come to anticipate ever since he claimed drumming duties in 2002.

Short, sharp and blistering guitar solos are also available on this blistering EP; check out those on the title track and the aforementioned “Swallow the Fear”. Front-man Ross Dolan delivers yet again some commanding vocals while his long time accomplice Robert Vigna shreds our faces to bits on his guitar; this is brutality at its finest. We’ve seen a confirmation of the collapse of Morbid Angel this year but Vader restored our hopes in the old guard and now Immolation comes out with this respect-demanding beast. Their 2007 effort Shadows In the Light may have divided fans a bit but they’ve completely rectified that with last year’s very well received Majesty and Decay and now they’ve put all doubt six feet below the ground with Providence.

Don’t leave 2011 without giving this badass record a few listens. After all, this is a year with revolutions in the middle-east, a tsunami in Japan, floods in Thailand, economic collapse in Europe and a volcano in Chilé which makes brutal death metal a most fitting addition.

Related posts:

1. Immolation – Majesty and Decay Review
2. Things You Might Have Missed in 2011: Winterus – In Carbon Mysticism
3. Things You Might Have Missed in 2011: Vektor – Outer Isolation