Angry Metal Guy

Alcest // Les Voyages De L’Âme   
Rating: 3.0/5.0 — Sweet nothings.
Label: Prophecy Productions
Websites: alcest-music.com | facebook.com/alcest.official | myspace.com/alcestmusic
Release Dates: EU: 2012.01.09 | US: 01.21.2012 [01.06.2012 digitally]

Every once in a while the scene gets a hair up its ass and decides that something that is explicitly not metal is totally OK to love. So, in the 90s, when I was first cutting my teeth on the extreme metal scene, Anathema and Katatonia were both giving up their extreme pasts and putting out records that were much more akin to sort of depressing alt rock than anything they’d previously been doing. Then there’s black metal guys’ love of swirly keyboard soundscapes (such that it ends up on Metal Archives, despite them actually banning other bands that I—and most others—would consider metal). Well, since the release of Amesoeurs really broke this sound in 2009, this sort of post-black metal shoegaze stuff has becomes the scene’s favorite non-metal thing. And, really, the description of it by one reviewer I read really sums it up: “Black metal that pisses off the indie kids and indie rock that pisses off the black metal kids. Brilliant.” Continue reading

Dies Irae // Secret Veils of Passion
Rating: 1.0/5.0 — Cannot be unheard.
Label: Chaos Records
Websites: facebook.com/diesiraeonline | myspace.com/diesiraeonline
Release Dates: US: 01.09.2012 | EU:  Unknown

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.  Continue reading

Cynic // Carbon-Based Anatomy
Rating: 3.5/5.0 — Apparently Cynic entered the hanging-out-with-Ravi-Shankar-phase of their career.
Label: Seasons of Mist
Websites: cyniconline.com | facebook.com/cyniconline
Release Dates: US: 11.15.2011 | EU: 2011.11.11

Well, since the release of Traced in Air, I can’t think of a band that has higher expectations for their next full length than Cynic. Really, I don’t know a single non-Cynic fanboy among the reviewers that I frequently read, and this is because their two records are fantastic. The EP they released last year (Re-Traced) was a neat little foray into other styles and I really loved it. But I don’t think that anyone is quite ready for the band to stay in those other styles. Carbon-Based Anatomy is raising questions as to whether or not they will come back to the techy metal for which they’re supposed to be known. Continue reading

Loss // Despond
Rating: 4.0/5.0 — Perfect with a glum ‘n Coke
Label: Profound Lore Records
Websites: lossdoom.blogspot.com/
Release Date: US: 05.31.2011

Ever felt the need to sit amidst the shadows and brood darkly over lost loves, personal failures, lack of objectivity in music reviews and other existential mumbo jumbo? If so, I may have the perfect musical accompaniment for your days of shoegaze. Despond, the debut from Tennessee’s Loss, is one mammoth slab of remorseful, gloomy funeral doom/death that will harsh anyone’s mellow and kill any and all buzz. It’s snail paced, ponderous and crushingly heavy in that way only real doom can be. On the highway of metal music, this thing has its hazard lights flashing and moves slower than a senior citizen with cataracts and a bum hip. Now, I’m well aware that funeral doom isn’t for everyone. I myself rarely find the style compelling enough to sit through an album’s worth regardless of how well the band executes. For that very reason I was surprised by the impact Despond had on me. Not only did I enjoy listening to the entirety of Loss‘s mortuary muzak, but I kept going back for more and ultimately, it left me blown away. That either means they have something truly special going on or I have a brain tumor pressing on my music appreciation lobe. Either way, this is an weirdly addictive album full of gloom and despair with some unbelievably powerful emotions and atmosphere to it. Continue reading

Ulver // War of the Roses
Rating: 2.0/5.0 — Oh Nattens Madrigal where have you gone?
Label: KScope
Websites: jester-records.com/ulver | myspace.com/ulver1
Release Dates: EU: 2011.04.25 | US: 05.03.2011

Ulver is one of the greatest metal bands ever. If there were a “Big 4″ for 90s metal, Ulver would be one of them because those first three records, Bergtatt, Kveldssanger and Nattens Madrigal (for the uninitiated) are absolutely essential Norwegian black metal records (obviously Kveldssanger isn’t black metal per se, but it is still an awesome record). But, of course, that same experimental drive that pushed the band into black metal also pushed them out of it, and Garm has been very critical of the scene since leaving it. That said, Ulver is also like Katatonia or Anathema in that their post-(extreme) metal music has been widely accepted by metalheads largely because of the already existing cred. But I get the feeling that War of the Roses will try that patience. Continue reading

Anathema // We’re Here Because We’re Here
Rating: 4.0/5.0 — Masterfully done
Label: K-scope
Websites: anathema.ws | myspace.com/weareanathema
Release Dates: EU: 31.05.2010 | US: 05.31.2010

Where the hell does one even start with Anathema. The band has been in a state of flux for quite a while. The last thing they put out was Hindsight which, quite obviously, was not technically considered a standard release (despite it being my top record of 2008—a very dry year for metal in this Angry Metal Guy’s opinion). That means it’s been five years since A Natural Disaster an album that I found to be remarkably underwhelming, as it followed up one of the finest albums of the entire 2000s: A Fine Day to Exit. But it has, indeed, been 9 years since Anathema released a new album that I was super excited about. Everyone keeps asking “was 7 years worth it?” Well, for me it’s more like “was 9 years worth it?”

Yes. The answer is unequivocally yes. Now, it’s true that the band is never going to produce Judgement again, so get that out of your head right now. But what Anathema produces in 2010 is just as relevant and interesting as Judgement was in 1999 and A Fine Day to Exit was in 2001. “And what is that music,” you may ask. I’ll tell you: it’s melancholy, yet oddly positive, 60s and 70s influenced prog rock. With the strains of Pink Floyd, and The Beatles (but honestly, mainly Floyd and their ilk) floating around in the background Anathema breeds their own unique strain of ethereal, amorphous and gorgeous rock music.

The thing that stands out the most for me is that while older Anathema is very much a music of sorrow, We’re Here Because We’re Here is a music all its own. A music of Zen one could  say. In fact, there is a hippiesque patchouli stank to this album that is so strong I have to plug my ear-nose™. Someone has been reading Be Here Now and maybe smoking a bit too much ganj, but it’s a fascinating change, really. To see it develop from songs like “One Last Goodbye” and “Temporary Peace” into songs like “Angels Walk Among Us” that has lines like “Only you can heal your life / Only you can heal inside…” or “Presence” (which is basically an extension of the same song) which has a fascinating quote: “Life is not the opposite of death, death is the opposite of birth. Life is eternal.” Or how about the final strains of the album: “There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer / There is no disease that enough love cannot heal / No door that enough love will not open / No gulf that enough love will not bridge / And no wall that enough love will not throw down.” This is not your depressed teenage years’ Anathema, my friends.

The positivity aside, however, Anathema still produces some of the heaviest material on the early tracks of this album since Judgement—on the tracks “Thin Air” and “Summer Night Horizon”. These heavier moments offset a much more poppy and easily digestible Anathema than I think we’ve ever heard before. However, this record is also incredibly epic, or should I say, adventurous and interesting. Tracks like the closing 8 minute epic (see!) “Hindsight” make clear that the band has more to say and a beautiful vision filled with white light, oceans… (silhouettes standing in them.. wait a second this is starting to sound familiar!) and peace and love. They are now, as they ever have been, making the music of the heart and that is the reason that they continue to be admired among fans of heavy music and prog.

So for me, again, while this record might not be on the exact same par as Judgement or A Fine Day To Exit it is definitely still a fantastic album that is worth your listening, your time and your money. The songwriting continues to be compelling, the vocal performances are outstanding and need I mention that Steven Wilson did the mix? Probably not. Now hopefully it won’t be another 7 (or 9) years before Anathema puts out another record of this caliber. Every once in a while Angry Metal Guys need some Zen.

Pain of Salvation // Road Salt pt. 1 – Ivory
Rating: 5.0/5.0 — A stellar re-invention that should bring you to tears
Label: InsideOut
Websites: painofsalvation.com | myspace.com/painofsalvation
Release Dates: SE: 14.05.2010 | EU: 17.05.2010 | US: 06.08.2010

One would assume that an Angry Metal Guy wouldn’t be handing out high scores willy nilly, something I seriously try to avoid doing. But apparently 2010 is a year filled with really fantastic albums by bands doing the things that, as a reviewer, and more specifically, as a music-lover, I have trouble not totally falling for. Pain of Salvation has never been a band that I personally fell for. Scarsick, the band’s 2007 release, was a record that I had issues with and I’ve had some personal gripes about Daniel Gildenlöw’s vocals on the older material (specifically his wannabe Mike Patton rappy/talky vocals). But, that said, Pain of Salvation has long been the darling of the progressive rock and metal scene, with legions of fans who love their technical prowess and pop sensibility.

Road Salt, then, stands to be a great disappointment for a large number of fans who are looking for neo-progressive sensibilities. This is simply not the same band that put out The Perfect  Element (Part I). There is nothing on this record that should outright appeal to metal heads and fans of tech music. But there’s something else, and something that in my opinion places this album on a different plane than 99% of albums released this year, an emotional depth, beauty, fragility and, lastly, dirtiness that makes this album a fantastic journey and easily my favorite Pain of Salvation to date.

Road Salt is still a prog record, however, it’s just way more a 70s rock influenced album that places the band into the same arena as bands like Porcupine Tree, Anathema, Guilt Machine and their ilk. And when I say “70s rock influenced”, let me be totally clear: this is an album that is built to sound like it was recorded on analogue equipment in a room with brown shag carpeting, made by bearded men in bell bottoms who’d smoked a little bit too much hash. The guitar tone screams Hendrix, the vocal harmonies mimic the soul harmonies of folk musicians like Kris Kristofferson and the moog organ is something that you’ve heard a million times while digging through your dad’s record collection. Hell, even the build at the end of the first track “No Way”, sounds like it came off a Trettioåriga Kriget record. And there’s nary a technical wank solo to be found on this album. No, instead the album is based a lot around blues rock—a thing that this Angry Metal Guy hates with a total passion.

But from the opening notes of this album, I was moved emotionally in a way that I think no record has done almost ever. Gildenlöw’s vocal performance is perfect—it is emotionally evocative, huge and sweeping and amazing. His emotional performance reshapes good (or excellent) music into something that is epic and transformative. By bringing his prog and non-blues rock influenced sensibilities to the entire genre and then placing his vocal perfection over songs like “She Likes to Hide”, “Sisters”, “Linoleum” and probably the most evocative of  all the tracks on the album “Road Salt”, Gildenlöw and Pain of Salvation create a sound all their own in what is easily the most overdone genre in the history of mankind. Turning the sounds of 60s and 70s rock and blues into something unique in 2010 is a magical feat, honestly. I have trouble wrapping my mind around how it was done.

In the end, this is an album that should make your heart ache. There is a sadness that really permeates the album. And in an era when hard rock and metal is so incredibly impersonal, when every other record is faux hate and anger or clichéd nonsense, it is beyond refreshing to have band produce material that is so emotionally poignant and beautiful. On top of that, of course, is the fantastic production of this album, mixed with the superb quality of musicians involved in the whole production and you have the formula for what is easily one of the best albums of the year—and one of the best albums I have heard in a really, really long time.

Votum // Metafiction
Rating: 2.0/5.0 — Some good things, but largely forgettable
Label: Mystic (PL)
Websites: votumband.pl | myspace.com/votumband
Release Dates: PL: 19.11.2009 | Rest of the World: 03.21.2010

Poland’s progressive rock and metal scene has definitely been strong of late. In the last year I’ve discovered some really great bands, particularly Indukti and Riverside which have just blown me away from the Polish scene. Turns out Poland doesn’t have just black metal and death metal in their veins, but instead there are a good number of proggy dudes who really dig the new wave of prog that has been pushing its way into metal in the last decade. Votum‘s second album is another one of these Polish prog rock records that’s definitely influenced by neo-prog bands like Porcupine Tree, Opeth and Anathema. In 2008, Votum released their first album Time Must Have a Stop, which impressed some but left me cold. Metafiction is the next step in the band’s development, but still doesn’t impress.

Metafiction is an LP friendly 45 minutes of progressive rock that is really meant to appeal to fans of the aforementioned bands. And while it is an admirable attempt at creating the same kind of intelligent, interesting music as those other bands it doesn’t have the same kind of depth, originality and clean approach that the other bands do well. While Porcupine Tree, Opeth and Riverside all are able to walk the fine line between prog and pop music, which keeps the listener interested in their songs despite them being long sometimes, Votum has trouble with their songs feeling drawn out, simplistic and repetitive at times. On top of that, this record is remarkably weak vocally and especially lyrically. Vocalist Maciej Kosinski is remarkably talented, but his voice feels like it doesn’t fit the music at all. He sounds like he would be way more comfortable in a progressive metal band along the lines of Dream Theater than this post-rock kind of progressive rock. While this isn’t the end of the world, it’s sort of like rubbing cloth in the wrong direction. It just feels weird after a while.

I truly enjoyed several parts of several songs, but there wasn’t an entire song on the entire album that I found to be truly gripping. Instead, the tracks slip through one ear and out the other back into obscurity. The things that actually stand out for me are not the good, but instead the bad. The lyrics are not very good, seeming oddly trite and unpoetic at times, reaching their peak of bad with the final track “December 20th,” which is a poorly executed attempt at writing about synchronicity. The stuff that  really stands out in a good way is when these guys show off their metal influences, like at the beginning of “Glassy Essence” or in “Stranger than Fiction” which is easily the best song on the record. But unfortunately these things are too few and far between to keep things fresh.

This could be a case of sophomore slump, as this is the band’s second album. Or, I could entirely be missing the point as I’m really not a fan of Porcupine Tree, either, who Votum has quite a lot of similarities to. But really Metafiction is not the impressive display of musical and pop sensibilities that we have witnessed from other Polish prog bands over the last few years. Hopefully they’ll hit their stride with their third album, but this is probably one you can pass on and not be missing a whole heck of a lot.

My Dying Bride has really been around a long time and remained remarkably good for a band of its stature. And honestly, of the bands that came out around the same time (Anathema, Paradise Lost) from the same area, they really have stayed the most consistently heavy in their long tenure. But this change hasn’t necessarily kept them fresh. For Lies I Sire is an OK record, but in the grand scheme of things it is definitely disappointing by, what I consider to be, high My Dying Bride standards. The vocals are great, but the writing is really not very inspired and/or catchy. There are some higher moments—particularly the first two tracks, which are both quite strong. But by the time you reach “Death Triumphant” (the final song), this Angry Metal Guy was ready to listen to something else.

Wow. Things have been busy around here, honestly. One of the downsides of doing this for fun is that one makes no money doing it and has to come up with other ways to pull together an income. I’ve been trying to do that, plus, other things. Anyway, this is the stuff that I’ve been up to and listening to in my freetime (of which there is actually very little). In this time, however, I have pieced together a list that I would call the “best albums of the 2000s.” I don’t know if I’d actually call them the best, so much as the ones that have really stuck with me. As a guy who thinks that it was actually the mid/late 90s that were really the defining point in heavy metal for the modern era, and that what we’re dealing with is very much the outcome of this, this list was actually very difficult for me to produce.

1. Opeth // Ghost Reveries — This is always the toughest for me. Choose which Opeth record I think most defines the modern era. I finally always decide on GR, which incidentally I hated when it came out. But it totally grew on me after that and now it’s probably my favorite.
2. Katatonia // Last Fair Deal Gone Down — Again, this is tough. I love all of their modern stuff, but I think this is probably the most consistent of all their albums. Another defining record in my life, I think, too.
3. Turisas // The Varangian Way — I consistently come back to this record over and over. It pretty much represents everything that big, awesome extreme metal should be. I also think it was very much new. It combined much of that power metal and viking metal stuff that’s been threatening to merge for years into a cohesive whole.
4. Vintersorg // Visions from the Spiral Generator — Again, how do you really choose? I chose this one because I think the whole album is fantastic. But they’re all fantastic. It’s definitely between this one and Cosmic Genesis. I chose this one ’cause I love Digorgio and Mickelson’s performances.
5. Amon Amarth // Versus the World — Again a hard one to choose. But this record has some of the best tracks these guys ever wrote and some of the best melodic death metal ever.
6. Anathema // A Fine Day to Exit — This record is fucking tremendously written and perfect from first note to last note.
7. Amorphis // Eclipse — The rebirth of Amorphis is quite possibly one of the greatest things that happened in the two-thousandsies. This album, and the two that have followed since, are some of the finest metal records produced in the modern era.
8. Rhapsody // Power of the Dragonflame — Sets the bar for orchestrated, ridiculous over-the-top metal. They’ve never produced anything like it since, nor has anyone else for that matter.
9. Ihsahn // angL — I love Ihsahn’s solo stuff. It’s a perfect blend of extreme metal and prog. His writing is massively improved since being out of Emperor, in my opinion, but I’m sure there’s a black metal guy on this board who will shriek in horror at those words.
10. Shining // V:/ Halmstad — This record hooked me immediately and hasn’t let go.

You have absolutely no idea how difficult it is to write a list like that. And I do really like writing lists, I think it’s a good time. A game for me has always been top 5s or top 10s.