Angry Metal Guy

Lake of Tears // Illwill
Rating: 3.5/5.0 — Genre polyamory for you and me
Label: AFM Records
Websites: lakeoftears.net | myspace.com/thelakeoftears
Release Dates:  EU: 2011.04.29 | US: 06.14.2011

In the Whack-A-Mole game that is genre pigeonholing, Lake of Tears pop up all over the board, defying you to anticipate their next move. These Swedes have been around a very long time and have always defied easy answers as to what style they actually play. Generally described as gothic metal, they’ve wandered between psychedelic doom, goth-rock, quasi-thrash and pseudo-death over the years. Each album had its own unique flavor and approach while always keeping the distinctive LoT sound. Here on Illwill, their eighth album, they keep the guessing game alive and deliver a strange mix of styles but it all hangs together somehow and works well. With parallels to Paradise Lost, Cemetary, Charon and Type O Negative to name a few, they run all over the place but its always dark in tone and plenty melodic. Continue reading

Shadows’ Grey // Bonjour Tristesse
Rating: 1.5/5.0 — If you love the Twilight series, you’ll love this!
Label: Twilight-Vertrieb
Websites: myspace.com/shadowsgreyband
Release Dates: EU: 21.01.2011 | US: 01.21.2011 (digitally)

You know, if you read this blog all the time you’d probably be getting the impression that I hate female fronted bands who are doing sort of the gothy thing. But that’s not true. It’s actually something I really enjoy when it’s done right! I have no issues with gothic metal, I don’t find the sort of dramatic, over-the-top stuff to be a turn off really. It just needs to be done well, something that it is serially not. And there are varying levels of ‘not done well,’ but let’s say that Shadows’ Grey—the German band formerly known as Scargod who had one EP in 2007—is one degree of the idea. Continue reading

Silent Stream of Godless Elegy // Návaz
Rating: 2.5/5.0 — A case of missing x factor…
Label: Season of Mist
Websites: myspace.com/ssoge
Release Dates: EU: 17.01.2011 | US: 02.08.2011

The world of music is so big and this Angry Metal Guy is really so very, very small. This is my excuse for having never listened to Silent Stream of Godless Elegy before receiving this record from Season of Mist. And really, I think I probably should have at least checked them out before. Having formed in 1995 they’ve been playing a variety of folky, doomy metal that, to be honst, I’m surprised wasn’t picked up by Napalm Records back in the day when they were on their kick of picking up every female fronted band ever. But I digress [What? Me digress? - AMG]. Continue reading

Nightfall // Astron Black and the Thirty Tyrants
Rating: 4.0/5.0 — Like the house band at an asylum; it gets strange.
Label: Metal Blade
Websites: nightfallstar.com | myspace.com/nightfallgr
Release Dates: Out Now Worldwide! (August, 31st)

Now here’s a bird of a different color and what an odd duck it is! Astron Black and the Thirty Tyrants (a grand title) is the eighth platter from long running Greek black/death/doom/gothic/kitchensink act Nightfall. Along with their better known contemporaries Rotting Christ and Septic Flesh, these Spartans have evolved, devolved and transmogrified into different animals over their long existence and their current incarnation is very interesting indeed. Although they defy easy categorization, the focus lies somewhere between black and gothic metal but with traces of everything else tossed in with reckless abandon. The end product is at times confusing, pretty damn cool and not really like anything else out there right now. Continue reading

Dark Tranquillity // We Are the Void
Rating: 3.5/5.0 — Dark and brooding, very good but with some miscues
Label: Century Media
Websites: darktranquillity.com | myspace.com/dtofficial
Release Dates: EU: 01.03.2010 | US: 03.09.2010

Dark Tranquillity is a living legend. Don’t kid yourselves: they’re a band that has managed to maintain their credibility in a scene where many of the bands that have stayed around have lost that credibility (see: In Flames). They have consistently put out good records, even into their less progressive era, that excite their fanbase and and attract new fans with their catchy melodies, creative arrangements and the energy of their music. There are, however, two sides to Dark Tranquillity‘s music. The first is a fast, heavy melodic style of thrashy death metal that has long been associated with them and the Gothenburg death metal scene. The second, and the part that has long appealed to us personally, is the blackness and dark emotional content that borders on gothic metal. We Are the Void embodies both of these sides and may be the darkest album the band has produced since the much-maligned Projector.

On a structural level We are the Void is quite similar to Fiction. The production is thick and loud, with the drums moved into the higher, tinny range in order to facilitate hearing them. There is a certain lifelessness that’s been on both of these last two records that I don’t like very much. However, the tones on this record are better than on Fiction, even if they don’t live up to the production on Damage Done and Character. The tracks are generally more chuggy with the keyboard creeping in heavier than ever on this album—thickening up the choruses on  nearly every track and being used to great effect in nearly every song. On top of that, the melodious, harmonized Iron Maiden meets Slayer kind of guitar work has lessened over the years and is even less visible on We Are the Void than on any previous record.  Instead, this style has been replaced instead by breakdowns and stop time riffs like the introduction to “The Fatalist” or the main riff from “The Grand Accusation”. The songs are generally slower across the board and lacking the blast beats that were also more common on previous releases.

We Are the Void does not need the trappings of old Dark Tranquillity tracks to be good, however. Instead, where it differentiates itself is in the dark, almost gothic approach to the tracks that we haven’t heard from the band since Projector. I don’t think we’ve heard as much of Mikael Stanne’s clean vocals, a beautiful baritone tone that fits the darker, slower music very well, as much since Projector—which was unfortunately ripped to shreds by the band’s more elitist fans in the late 90s. But it is these dark, Moonspellesque tracks like “Her Silent Language”, “The Grandest Accusation” and “Iridium” where the band feels fresh, honest and where the real energy is to be found. The final crescendo of “Iridium” only being outdone by the dour, haunting “Arkhangelsk” which borders on Dimmu Borgir or Borknagar territory on the chorus with its use of keyboards and gothic dissonance.

Bringing it all together, We Are the Void is a record that starts out weak, but gets stronger and stronger by the end; reaching its emotional peak on the track “Iridium” and leaving the listener desirous of more. Unlike previous DT albums, which are always fun to listen to because the guitar work and the speedy pace, this record hooked us with its emotional content and feel—which unfortunately cheapened some of the faster tracks and made them feel out of place. This isn’t entirely the case, there are some fantastic faster and more technical parts as well, like the introduction to “In My Absense” and the bridge of “Her Silent Language”, that are more reminiscent of times gone by, but there is a sense that the band maybe just needs to back off that sound for a while to recharge those batteries and put out music that really shows off that inner void that Stanne is screaming about.

Rotting Christ // Aealo
Rating: 3.5/5.0 — Solid record
Label: Season of Mist
Websites: rotting-christ.com | myspace.com/rottingchristabyss
Release Dates: EU: 15.02.2010 | US: 23.02.2010

There aren’t many bands that can claim something that Rotting Christ can claim: they have more buzz around the band now than they have ever had—and this is their 10th album. Now the hardcore, or the old school fans, will claim that they’re not nearly as good as they were “back in the day,” but I think the band has done a lot of development since the “old days” and really planted themselves firmly on the border of modern, mainstream metal. I mean, even their label is calling them just “dark metal” now, though I think there are some things that still hold them in the black metal category. Aealo is the follow up to the band’s 2007 masterpiece Theogonia, a record which lit their fanbase aflame and which saw the band broadening their appeal to new fans all over the world. It is fair to say that Rotting Christ has continued on the heels of Theogonia with Aealo, because the majority of the stylistic themes which ran through the previous album and made it great remain.

To start with, however, Aealo differs itself from Theogonia in several ways: firstly, these holdover elements are ever-present now, showing up in almost every track. The feeling that the band is trying to coin a “signature sound” based on the success of Theogonia wouldn’t be an unfair criticism from my listening to it. However, the hypnotic groove and style that these guys put forward—never technically showy, but always groovy and heavy (and it is probably scorching live)—work to hook the listener in and keep them listening. I found myself continually raising the volume, too, because the louder it got the better it got. Aealo is a record that is meant to be experienced and listened to in a sort of submersive kind of listening experience, I think. Heavy, simple and something that you feel through your body and not think too hard about. In that sense, it is a strong success.

The tracks, despite being groovy and hypnotic are not boring, just think of it as atmosphere in a very epic sense. The whole album is littered with solid tracks, “Demonen Vrosis” is a fantastic song with some of the creepiest vocals I’ve ever heard on a metal record, for example. The track “Dub-sag-ka-te”, probably the fastest song on the record, has a solid rhythm that hooks you into it and brings you back to it again and again. This contrast of the oddly creepy sounding “ethnic” vocals and the hypnotic metal definitely gives this album a different atmosphere than previous albums. Aealo also contained a cool surprise for me (I probably should’ve read the bio first), which was that the vocalist from Primordial does a guest appearance on the track “Thou Art Lord”. This was a definite win for the band and for fans of Primordial and while not the strongest track on the album, it definitely created a peak.

I think what’s going to end up being the focus of a lot of dissent is the female vocals and the final track “Orders from the Dead”. Both of these things can be hard to take at times, they don’t have the same kind of inherent beauty that existed on Theogonia. Instead, they don’t offset the feel of the metal with beauty, but enhance it with disharmony and contrast. I think this works perfectly and I think the poetry of “Orders from the Dead” is amazing and I am glad that the band used that track as the final piece on the album. It makes a pretty impressive statement and shows that Rotting Christ are thinking outside the box—something that speaks well to the future of a band on their 10th full length album.

This record is solid, definitely. While I don’t think it can compete with the genius of Theogonia or the more dynamic nature of Sanctos Diavolos, Aealo still differentiates itself from the pack. The only major complaint that I have is that I think the record is able to get a little stale towards the end because of the stylistic approach. While the band uses dynamics well, the songs are a bit interchangeable, but at the same time the record is a smart 50 minutes long—including the extended poem at the end, which is the perfect ending for the album and which also means that it’s about perfect length and I never managed to really get bored with it. How this album will play in the long run is definitely up in the air, but for fans of atmospheric black metal, darker metal bands like Moonspell and older Rotting Christ, this record is definitely worth a listen at least.