Angry Metal Guy

Fimbulthier // Arise
Rating: 1.0/5.0 – Fimbulful of awful
Label: Trollzorn
Websites: fimbulthier.de | myspace.com/fimbulthier
Release Dates: EU: 09.07.2010 | US: No available date

Into every reviewer’s lap, some crap will surely fall. Now, I can’t complain too much since I’ve had a pretty crap-free run so far as a scribe for the mighty and esteemed Angry Metal Guy. Sadly, that run has now come to a sudden and painful end with Arise, the second album from Germany’s Fimbulthier. I had never heard of these gents before but apparently their 2007 debut was some kind of viking/death metal hybrid, which by the looks of online reviews, didn’t exactly warm the cockles of the metal minded among us. Arise however, is about as viking as Pee Wee Herman in drag. No, seriously, maybe I misread the band description and it said Tricycling metal because there is nothing remotely close to viking metal here. What there is plenty of however, is awfulness and dreck. Continue reading

Ruined Soul // My Dying Day
Rating: 2.0/5.0 — So much potential here…
Label: Suicide Records
Websites: myspace.com/ruinedsoulswe
Release Dates: EU: 23.04.2010 | US: 05.04.2010 (?)

Ruined Soul is a one-man project firmly based in the Gothenburg scene. Johnny Johansson apparently missed the scene because of his age, but having learned from the best (and right in his backyard, as it were) he has produced a record that wouldn’t have been out of place in 1999, released alongside Colony by In Flames or Projector by Dark Tranquillity. With a whole slough of big named guests from the Swedish scene and one Andy La Roque as the prodcer, it’s hard to imagine how a record like this could go wrong. Right? .. Right!?

Even Angry Metal Guys feel a little guilt when they’re about to pan a DIY kid who missed out on the scene. The fundamental problems are probably already obvious from the introductory paragraph, but this is not the fault of Johnny Johansson himself, but instead his parents who birthed him a few years too late. The Gothenburg sound has been getting tired for years and as stated earlier this year with my review of Arise‘s new record, while this record still holds some appeal it’s hard to imagine ever really getting into it because the sound is something that I’ve heard so many times before. It’s Gothenburg thrash. It’s literally just a rehash of Colony and  Slaughter of the Soul with a little bit more black metal thrown in. Not even copping the tricks of the ultimate At The Gates ripoff artists The Black Dahlia Murder and adding more blast beats, this stuff is straight out of the book of Swedish death metal, as it were.

But we all loved this sound at one time! It’s not like there aren’t things going on here that are good, because there are. It’s obvious that Johansson has thrash metal running in his veins, and  he’s written some fantastic riffs and great melodies that are definitely reminiscent of the greats. It’s hard to listen to this album without nodding your head along with the mid-paced riffing and humming the guitar melodies. So, this record would still be pretty salvagable were it not for probably its greatest weakness: some of the most trite and ESL lyrics I’ve heard on a release for a long time. I recently made fun of Unleashed for their cheesy lyrics, but this takes it to a different level. While Unleashed is screaming about being Viking death metal, with the subtlety of a warhammer, Ruined Soul‘s lyrics just meander into the painfully cliché and cheesy territory.

Now normally I ignore lyrics if I don’t get a booklet, but there are things on here that I can’t help but hear because of the way it’s mixed and the way its screamed. Lyrics like “You are my only friend / my only friend until the end” from “Rewind” just make me cringe. The opening lyrics to the song “Rivers of Blood” are worthy of Joey DeMaio as well “The world isn’t what it used to be / It’s something in the air tonight / I’m standing in the eye of the storm / [inaudible] is heading this way” works out to about 3 cliché’s in just one verse. Not to mention the acts of closing one’s eyes until the bleed (I’m not actually sure how one even goes about doing that) and other just ridiculously cheeseball approaches, it’s just hard to take this record seriously. Like many musicians Johnny Johansson is probably a guitarist and musician first, lyricist second. But this is what producers should be for: where the hell was the person saying to him “Dude, that’s fucking cheesy as hell.” Nowhere, and so we get stuck with choruses like the one from the track “Bleeding”: “I hear your voice and words, my ears are bleeding / I see your razor eyes, my eyes are bleeding / I feel your touch, my skin is bleeding / I breathe your air, internal bleeding!”

There are really cool moments, hell, even the chorus from the cheesy “Bleeding” song actually has really great guitar melodies and a good feel. But for a band to really pull this off and make it convincing and worth the time of listeners and something that is going to pull in new listeners, they have to be amazing. Instead, despite the production, the guest musicians and the time and energy put into this album, we’re left with something that would’ve probably been pretty good if not for the lyrics (though, honestly, I liked Children of Bodom and their lyrics were just as retarded) in 1999. And that’s just not enough for this Angry Metal Guy anymore.

Arise // The Reckoning
Rating: 3.5/5.0 — Nostalgic and enjoyable
Label: Regain Records
Websites: ariseonline.com | myspace.com/ariseonline
Release Dates: EU: 22.03.2010 | US: 04.06.2010 [or out now?!?]

Arise was a little late on the uptake on the first go around of the Gothenburg sound—forming in 1996, but really getting their first demo out there in 1998 and getting signed about the time that all the death metal elitists I knew were already writing off the sound as “done”. However, unlike most of the bands from that era, they are still alive and kicking and putting out music of the style that was popular at the time. There’s some confusion about this record, which according to some sources came out last year, but it’s being promoted right now by Regain with a release date of the 22nd of March (which means it’s out now). It has, indeed, been a few years since Arise put out their last album, but even with the departure of two members, they don’t seem to have lost any steam.

Now don’t get me wrong, you could probably hum each of these tunes the first time through. If you’re even slightly familiar with the Gothenburg sound from the early/mid-1990s (Hypocrisy, Dark Tranquillity, In Flames, At The Gates) then you have heard this band before a bajillion times. You probably first heard it when the Swedes did it. Then you heard it again when the Americans did it. And now there are some Swedes doing it again, and showing that when done without breakdowns and hardcore screams it can still be a sound that’s engaging and fun to listen to.

The record starts off with a bang, bursting out the door with the track “Adrenaline Rush”, which clocks in at under 2 minutes long, and it’s really pretty much a thrash and headbang fest for the next 41 minutes and 20 seconds. Aside from the track “Pitch Black”, a borderline Meshuggah-esque mechnical metal kind of track, these tracks are all pretty much the kind of thing that you are familiar with from Slaughter of the Soul. But, while not novel, it certainly is well done. Particularly the title track, “The Reckoning” and the final track “End of Days” stood out for me.

Fans of melodeath should definitely check this record out. It could be slightly addictive to the right listener, I think, but if you’ve had your fill of the Gothenburg sound then this is probably a record you can skip. That said, these guys are really good at what they’re doing. The songwriting is concise and addictive and the feel is heavy and solid and hasn’t lost any of its original intensity, like some of the other originating bands (who we won’t mention here—but who know who they are!) from the Gothenburg scene. All-in-all this is a very good record, it just lacks the novelty that the metal scene craves to keep itself fresh.