Angry Metal Guy

Crowbar // Sever the Wicked Hand
Rating: 3.0/5.0 — Sharp
Label: Century Media
Websites: myspace.com/crowbar
Release Dates: Out Now Worldwide!

So I’m super unqualified to review this record because I a) don’t like sludge and b) have never listened to Crowbar before this moment. Sure, I’m sure I should have heard them, but I gotta be honest with you—I’ve been sort of busy. There are plenty of scenes that have developed since the 1990s and the slow, southern rock post-thrash stuff has never been my thing. Name bands from south of the Mason-Dixie line and I probably don’t like them unless they’re Kris Kristofferson. Always hated Down, didn’t think Corrosion of Conformity was terribly special (and this one’ll really burn your ass), I never liked Pantera or its postbellum incarnations. (Oh and I don’t like Black Label Society because they want to be a southern band even though Zakk Wylde is from fucking NEW JERSEY.) Given all of that, then, I was pretty fucking stoked that listening to this record wasn’t torture! In fact, it was really enjoyable. Let me regale you with the tale. Continue reading

Artas // Riotology
Rating: 2.0/5.0 — I’ll be dropping this class
Label: Napalm Records
Websites: myspace.com/artasmetal
Release Dates: EU: 28.01.2011 | US: 02.08.2011

Well, I’m not sure what I did to end up on the Angry Metal Guy’s Official Shit List™.  However, his  assigning me both the new Lazarus A.D. and Artas albums proves I’m on it bigtime. I can just picture AMG up there on his throne all high and mighty, laughing as he contemptuously sneers, “let him eat metalcore.” Steel Druhm does not like being on the Shit List and Steel Druhm will have his wengeance! Anyway, Riotology is the second album by Austrian metalcore/quasi-thrash bandwagon jumpers Artas. Up until now their claim to fame was a wildly ill-conceived cover of Coolio‘s “Gangsta’s Paradise” which ended up being funnier than Weird Al Yankovic‘s “Amish Paradise.” Now with Riotology they can truthfully claim recording two average metalcore albums. Hey, congrats guys! As soon as I saw the album cover which looks like a screen shot from the Assassin’s Creed video games I should have known where this was heading. The second clue I was in trouble was the band’s prominently displayed claim that they play “modern metal.” Apparently that’s record industry speak for tired metalcore by bands that yearn to be At the Gates and In Flames with poppier, radio-friendly choruses.  Because I am merciful, I will now implore you all to leave this review and save yourselves. I can’t go with you however, for I must write on. Continue reading

Lazarus A.D. // Black Rivers Flow
Rating: 1.5/5.0 — Somebody shit in the river
Label: Metal Blade Records
Websites: lazarusad.com | myspace.com/lazarus1
Release Dates: EU: 01.28.2011 | US: 02.01.2011

There are plenty of myths that sane folks know to be false like Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and honest politicians. However, one should never count the sophomore slump among those fairy tales and urban legends, for it is very real and very painful to behold. Exhibit A for 2011 is Lazarus A.D. who had a decent if not remarkable debut with 2009′s The Onslaught. Many seemed to lump them in with the retro-thrash revival and while there was some Exodus aping to be sure, they always sounded more metalcore-ish to my ears. Although I hate metalcore like I hate taxes, there was enough aggression, energy and nods to the old school throughout The Onslaught to make it semi-palatable and I didn’t totally hate it. Well, there is simply no digesting their second platter Black Rivers Flow, as Lazarus A.D. have firmly embraced their inner mall kid and all things Shadow’s Fall and the result is a veritable black river of crappy, overused grooves, tough guy posturing and general mediocrity. Continue reading

Saeculum Obscurum // Into the Depths of Oblivion
Rating: 3.0/5.0 — Has promise.
Label: Thunderblast Records
Websites: myspace.com/saeculumobscurum
Release Dates: EU: 14.01.2011 | US: 01.14.2011 [Digital]

As you can tell, my resolution for 2011 was to review more obscure and underground music that no one has ever heard of. I want you to know that this means that I am reviewing like everything I get, if it’s possible, and really I’ve had some good luck and some really fucking horrendously terrible luck. I’m going to say that Saeculum Obscurum falls on the good side of the luck barrier. I figured with a name that means “The Dark Age” and a logo by the mighty artist and logo magnate Christophe, this one deserved a fair shake at least. Continue reading

It’s hard to make this kind of broad list, I just want to say that from the get-go. How do you do this? Do you choose your favorites, or do you choose the genre defining records? Because saying, for example, that some of the following records are really genre defining wouldn’t be true. On the other hand, these are the records that when I go back and look at the 2000s I think of pretty immediately as some of the best stuff and the things that I keep coming back to.

But the 2000s have been an interesting time for metal in a lot of ways. One of the things that happened was that death metal and death metal-influenced music really hit the mainstream in a lot of ways. For the first time since the 1980s there were larger groups of young people who really started getting into metal and there is an entire generation of musicians who have been influenced by the heavy metal of the 80s and the underground of the 1990s (particularly black and death metal). While I believe that metal is on the ebb again (in a popular music sense) and will once again retreat underground to lick its wounds and come up with something fascinating, interesting and new, the 2000s have been a great time to be a fan of the genre.

This list is going to take a lot of hits. I can already hear some of them, and some of them will come out of left field. But, as usual, I refuse to apologize for my taste. The focus on “magazine metal” bands will probably irritate some, and others will argue that my choices from one genre or another aren’t representative of the best of that genre during the period (specifically death metal in this case). But when I look back on the last 9 years, these are the ones that stand out. And trust me, there’s some stuff that I wish I could get on there, but I didn’t include an honorable mentions section since I expanded the list to 15. But there are some amazing records (Moonsorrow‘s Hävitetty, Anata‘s Under a Stone with No Inscription and The Conductor’s Departure, Agalloch‘s The Mantle, Turisas‘ The Varangian Way, Necrophagist‘s Epitaph, Ásmegin‘s Hin Vordende Sod & Sø, Absu‘s Tara, Rhapsody‘s Power of the Dragonflame, Anathema‘s A Fine Day to Exit, Nile‘s Black Seeds of Vengeance, Otyg‘s Sagovindars Boning, Obscura‘s Cosmogenesis, Watain‘s Sworn to the Dark, Akercocke‘s Antichrist, Enslaved‘s Below the Lights are just a few of my major oversights) that came out during this period that haven’t ended up on this list and I’m aware of that.

Anyway, I hope you find this list enjoyable, shocking, provocative and maybe even dead on. Backwards this time…

Continue reading

Cataract // Killing the Eternal
Rating: 2.5/3.0 – Above average metalcore = Average thrash
Label: Metal Blade
Websites: cataract.cc | myspace.com/cataract
Release Dates: EU: 24.09.2010 | US: No date found…

What the hell is THIS? A metal-core band I actually like? Impossible! Well, like may be too strong a word here but Killing the Eternal, the sixth album by Swiss metal-core mavens Cataract is much less annoying and cringe inducing than most of the metal-core I’ve been subjected to over time. Perhaps this caught me in a rare moment of good humor or maybe Cataract have learned over their long existence that their bread is buttered on the death/thrash side of things. One thing is for certain, Cataract manage to avoid many trappings of the classic “core” sound that I find so irritating and as a result, this is a fairly tolerable, and at times, even enjoyable album. Continue reading

Evergreen Terrace - Almost Home
Rating: 2.0/5.0 – Band is tight, heard it so many times before.
Label: Metal Blade (EU | USA)
Website: myspace.com/evergreenterrace
Release Dates: US: 9.29.2009 | EU: 25.09.2009

Almost Home is a record that was influenced by how much everything sucks right now, according to the band.  It’s a bit of a dissertation on America in 2009, with a shitty economic situation, how hard it’s been to keep the band going in this kind of situation and so forth.  Honestly, I don’t hear it.  But that’s what the band says.  What I hear is a highly melodic and poppy hardcore band doing the same things that bands of this type have been doing for years.  It’s unfortunate, really, because they’ve got an alright sound—but things don’t stick.

Instead, Almost Home is a dissertation on the trend that is metalcore, and how something that was so fresh 7 years ago can sound so formulaic and boring these days.  Evergreen Terrace doesn’t fit into your standard box, though.  They don’t sound like Killswitch Engage or Unearth.  Instead they sound like Blink 182 or Green Day mixed with a hardcore band that has some metal influences.  The music is generally catchy, fun to listen to and energetic, but it leaves no trace.  To speak more metaphorically Evergreen Terrace is like water poured on your skin; it feels good at the time, but then it dries and goes away and you forget all about it because it leaves no mark.

For the die hards who love metalcore still, I suggest the band, but I also say that it’s nothing you haven’t heard before.  What made metalcore so impressive and good in the beginning was that it was edgy, new and interesting.  Records like The Stings of Conscience introduced an In Flames-esque technicality and melodiousness to the raw energy that hardcore had a monopoly on. But the breakdown has gone stale (not that it was terribly interesting in the first place), the songs have become predictable and the vocals and choruses on this album lack the edge and excitement that once characterized the scene.

Of course, the album has catchy moments and good choruses.  They’re signed to Metal Blade (and they’re not an 80s thrash imitation) so that means that they’re a professional quality band—of course they’ve got some talent.  And frankly, the album isn’t hard to listen to or torturous (except for the stupid hardcore talking…), I just know that if I ever were to purchase it, it would sit on my shelf and never leave it after the initial listen.

Note: This was the first interview I did, and it wasn’t really my best.  I found this dude to be not exactly stoked about doing an interview.  My guess is that they drew straws and he got stuck with it.  Taken from Unchain the Underground, from when I wrote for them.

For many, the name UNEARTH is synonymous with everything they like about metal-core; hardcore breakdowns mixed in among technical, melodic guitar lines, topped by sometimes-political, sometimes-personal screaming that’s always lined with angst. Having always been a metal kid, I’d never really given any of these “Luke Skywalker” types who “sound like AT THE GATES” any credence until I heard UNEARTH.  So, of course, I was thrilled at the chance to sit down with Ken Susi over a beer and have a quick chat before their show in Minneapolis (w/TERROR, BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, and REMEMBERING NEVER). Here’s a bit of that conversation.

So why did you choose to work with Adam D. [KILLSWITCH ENGAGE] on the new record?

Ken: He’s my best friend, and we’ve done all our other albums with him, so we just decided to keep it together.

Why did you choose to sign with Metal Blade as opposed to staying with a more hardcore label?

Ken: The hardcore label wasn’t really working out for us, we were hitting roofs and basically we couldn’t stay there because we were bigger than the label. Nothing against Eulogy in any way, shape or form, but we needed more promotion, we need more money to do recording in order to make it sound well [sic] and to be an established band. So we decided to take the next step, there were other labels that wanted to sign us but we chose Metal Blade because it was an honest deal and those guys have always been cool.  We could’ve shot higher and been on Road Runner or whatever, but we didn’t want people stepping into our music and telling us what to do.

Ok, cool.  Personally I think that The Oncoming Storm has a much cleaner production than your last two, at least your last full length The Stings of Conscience…

Ken: It’s more time, it’s more time in the studio. We spent a month on that album, versus four or five days on Stings.   So, you can tell by that.

Do you think the more technical aspects, the more “Metal” aspects of your music, the sweeping, the solos, etc., are going to isolate your more Hardcore fan base?

Ken: No, not in any way, shape or form, because we’ve always integrated it tastefully into our music.   We’ve kept the happy medium between the two, we are a metal band, but we are a hardcore band, there’s no separating the two.  We’re a true metalcore band, kids who like hardcore will like us, and kids who like metal will like us as well.

You do clean vocals on this record, don’t you?

Ken: Yeah.

Why did you choose to include them?

Ken: The parts called for it. There’s a couple parts that called for some parts, and we’re not afraid to do stuff like that.  It’s not like we’re trying to mold or shape our music to be anything mainstream or anything like that, it’s just like the CAVE IN approach, if the part calls for a good clean part, then we’re going to do it.

Right on!  So then why did you choose to re-record Endless?

Ken: Because it was only on an EP, and that song needed to be on an album so that the world could hear it.

So as far as your sound goes, you’ve got kind of that AT THE GATES, IN FLAMES, Swedish Death sound. Do you think you’ve gone over better in the US, where the sound is more of a new thing, a commodity, or in Europe where the sound has been around a lot longer?

Ken: The sound has been pretty big in the US for quite a while now but as far as Europe goes, it’s working out on both spectrums, I mean, we’re doing well in both markets.  I think if anything this is becoming a new style, a new form of music, the way we integrate IRON MAIDEN parts with the CROWBAR stuff, we don’t really worry about specific points of our music, we’re taking the big picture and throwing it out there.   Some people will be like, “Oh, you sound like HATEBREED at parts,” and then someone will be like “Oh, well you sound like IN FLAMES, or AT THE GATES, or IRON MAIDEN.”  It’s like “Well, that’s cool, those are our influences” but we’re going for that other type of thing, and that’s the UNEARTH sound.

Why do you think this sound is taking off, why do you think it appeals to people?

Ken: The style that we’ve been doing for the past six years is unique, not many people have done the IRON MAIDEN meets hardcore stuff, a lot of kids have jocked us throughout the years, which is OK, but, I mean it’s time for the band who started doing that kind of stuff to start progressing and make things happen.

Alright, cool. So now, onto politics!   The new record obviously has a political undertone to it…

Ken: Yeah.

So how influential have the war in Iraq and the Patriot Act been on the lyrics?

Ken: I mean, the war in Iraq, we’ve got friends and people who are being shipped off to war.  In the band there are dudes that are pro-Bush and there are dudes that are against Bush.  It’s not really like the band came together and said “Oh, we believe in this and we believe in that.” It’s not like we’ve had any of these in depth conversations about it.  But what we do is that we understand this one general thing, that the world in general, not Iraq, not Afghanistan and all these other places that we’re invading or that people are invading every day.. it’s just that we’re adamant about people in general, and the way that society and humans act in this time, y’know, in this period of time and even in the past.

History, basically, is one of those things that foretells the future and after WWII, after we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki people should’ve understood that war is an awful thing and that we should stay away from this and shy away from it, but it seems like it’s been on hiatus for a few years and now it’s all back, like, everything is escalating, everything’s happening.  Countries need to get together and people need to get together in order to sort out their differences, because education is.. I mean, we’re very educated people, the world is very educated, not all places, but people should know better and work out their differences.   If we don’t, we’re all going to be fucking wiped off, so, the way we see it is, y’know, it’s not about like, this war or that war, or the right or wrong war, it’s about people in general starting within their families, raising their kids right, being home, spreading it throughout their community, and have their community start to spread it elsewhere.   The more positive means of living and culture, or whatever, is excellent .  That’s what’s going to prosper, that’s what’s going to make the world a great place.

So, did you pick up the new SONATA ARCTICA record Winterheart’s Guild?

Ken: I love SONATA ARCTICA, they’re fucking amazing!

Yeah, they should’ve been on Ozzfest.  Speaking of which, who were you most excited to play with on Ozzfest?

Ken: Um, I was most excited to play on the same bill as JUDAS PRIEST and OZZY and BLACK SABBATH, because they’re main influences in my life.

Did you hear about the thing with DIMMU where they were kicked off the air for calling saying that anyone talking shit about Rob Halford being gay was “Fucking Bullshit?”

Ken: Well, I never heard about it, but I can say that dude is brutal as fuck and whether he’s sucking someone’s dick or eating a pussy, I could care less.  He’s a good dude, he’s a great singer, and he’s inspired a lot of people. So, y’know, race, or sexual orientation has nothing to do with metal or hardcore music in general, music is a feeling, music is an emotion, it’s not race or sex.

Kris Kross will make you…

Have you seen any changes in your success since going on Ozzfest?

Ken: No, we’re still broke-ass motherfuckers.  [laughter] We still play the same show we’ve played the last six years.

You were forced to shut down a show earlier on this tour because of ‘too many fights that broke out’ during TERROR’s set. What happened?

Ken: Oh, it was just a riot.   It happens. Yeah, it was just fights and shit like that, we didn’t have to shut it down, the club shut it down, the police shut it down, so, you roll with the punches.  Y’know, there’s a ton of shows where people have gotten stabbed or hurt, y’know, it happens.   It’s part of heavy and aggressive music.

Righto, cool man, thanks for the interview, and good luck tonight dude.

Ken: Cool, thanks man.