Vassafor- Obsidian Codex(2012)

Vassafor- Obsidian Codex

For the weak, I have a message: get the fuck out.  Obsidian Codex is simply too much for you.

Those looking for an album which in any way caters to the casual or accommodates the uninitiated simply need not apply for this review or Obsidian Codex, the latest masterwork from New Zealand two piece Vassafor.  The long running project, which formed in 1997 but has had a very irregular release history, have crafted a masterpiece so thrilling and mesmerizing that working through it's incomparably dense facade becomes a journey in and of itself.  In fact, describing Obsidian Codex and it's 96 minute running time(you read that right) as a "journey" is about the best description I can formulate: Phil Kusabs and Ben Parker(known as VK and BP) take us on a musical adventure which features terrifying abominations, hellish landscapes and twisted black forests inundated with freezing snow, where moments of beauty and emotion are few but present, the driving force that keeps us on the path to this massive quest's ultimate conclusion.  It is in no way an easy album to enjoy; it will pummel and suffocate all who challenge it, and test the endurance of anyone foolish enough to take it lightly.  But it's also one of the most worthwhile musical experiences to be found in Extreme Metal of any genre.  Obsidian Codex is simply a masterpiece removed from needless classification beyond "awesome."

Stylistically, it's not hard to pick out the genres and artists which influenced Obsidian Codex, but everything here is put together in such a way that those influences feel like they are being transformed by Vassafor, molded and shaped into effective new tools for the song writing mechanism, beyond the well worn instruments that have been continuously reused for the same purpose again and again.  At the most "brass-tacks" level, Vassafor could be described as "Occult Blackened Death/Doom," but such a classification simply misses the mark that the band has set with this album.  The atmosphere is thick to the point of solidification, the creepiness of the compositions is so spine chilling that ice forms on the flesh and the unshakably somber moments, driven by smothered melodic leads and some deeply emotional compositions, brings about occasional moments of truly subdued beauty; a fallen angel, wings broken and flesh cleaved, laying amongst the ash and crying silver tears.  Of course, Obsidian Codex has plenty of good old brutal, bestial and even Thrash-y moments that reminds you that Mr. Kusabs has played with the likes of Blasphemy and Diocletain in his long musical career.  And you can note that all of these elements are right in the very first actual song on the album, "Rites of Ascension," and continue to appear throughout the album, culminating in the truly epic monster known as "Nemesis," which starts with a short but incredible woodwind intro(unsure of the exact instrument) which sets the tone for a 23 minute epic of unparallelled  proportions.

I've often complained about extremely long songs, and "Nemesis" certainly fits the bill of an incredibly elongated piece that runs the risk of going disastrously off the rails.  But that's the glory of "Nemesis" and the other epically long tracks on Obsidian Codex: they are perfectly fleshed out with a combination of ambiance and ideas that they never grow stale or lose the listeners interest.  Tracks dance between tempos and riffs with perfectly calculated brilliance, showing a level of song-writing which transcends what most artists could even hope to achieve.  "Sunya(Void  Paradox)" maintains a driving, aggressive rhythm throughout, showing a more take no prisoners approach to song writing that instigates furious bouts of relentless head-banging and stands in stark but effective contrast to the more Doom-y aspects of the record, while the aforementioned opening track "Rites of Ascension" features some truly horrific yet oddly haunting compositions which give off an unhinged and ritualistic intensity.  And the final real track, Makutu(Damned to the Deepest Depths)" starts off with a tribal, ritualistic drum pattern before morphing into an unholy fusion of Blasphemy and Portal.  And it ends with a slice of Sludge, yeah Sludge, which just adds icing to an already maggot ridden, gory cake of true nihilism All of these tracks are well over the 7 minute mark, yet never fail to entrance for a single moment.  It's almost stupefying.

I mentioned the albums 96 minute running time, and that will automatically create a barrier of entry for many.  Truth be told, I could see why a lot of people simply wouldn't like this album, or even hate it.  Obsidian Codex is one of those albums where the creative direction of the artist is encapsulated to the point where it offers no leeway to the listener, a "my way or the high way" style of song-writing which some will find dull, others obnoxious or even offensive.  Even the ambient tracks go for several minutes, and the album leans heavily on them to help intensify the already dense compositions.  And while the production is fairly accessible, especially by the standards set in this particular genre, and many of the riffs invitingly familiar to fans of bands like Diocletain, Antediluvian or Mitochondrion, Obsidian Codex is an album defined by excess and disregard for the listeners time or sanity.

Yet for all of Obsidian Codex's excesses, for all of it's density and disregard, its an album built mostly on accessible, inviting riffs and enjoyable variety.  Every track feels intertwined, yet all of them also feel distinct and unique when compared to each other.  And while this album was clearly meant to be experienced front to back in one single sitting, each of the actual musical tracks on Obsidian Codex stand on their own feet and can be enjoyed and replayed independently of each the whole album experience.  This is perhaps Obsidian Codex's greatest triumph, and a true rarity in this particular genre, where the whole album experience is the rule and playability is more often than not the exception.

I hesitate to use the word "perfection" here, but in many ways Obsidian Codex is the perfect album: 

perfect in it's atmospheric and thematic presentation, perfect in it's execution and musical competency, perfect in it's song-writing and production.  Obsidian Codex is the ultimate realization of a single musical vision being shared by two musicians who are working as a single, cohesive creative force.  It's an absolutely stunning album, one whose flaws are so few and far between that mentioning them is simply pointless beyond the need to be typed here; hyperbole be damned, Obsidian Codex is unlike anything I have ever heard.

Rating: 10/10

Wreck and Reference- No Youth(2012)

 

Wreck and Reference- No Youth

Deconstructive, ethereal, dripping with a noxious mix of disgust and listlessness, No Youth is this years sound-track of total defeat.  The California twosome of Wreck and Reference have been rolling on a pretty big hype machine since their demo Black Cassette, but No Youth is a different monster entirely.  It heralds the arrival of one of Extreme Music's new titans while exemplifying the limitless potential of a project devoid of barriers, genres and fear.  No Youth is a Universe of sound that expands beyond the horizon into reaches of the void that have rarely, if ever, been tread.  I don't want to use too much hyperbole: No Youth is a triumph of an album and easily one of the best records released this year and this decade, but in and of itself it might not reach the truly hallowed lands of immortality.  What makes No Youth so completely fascinating is the aforementioned formlessness of the album and the fearlessness of the song-writing.  No idea was too big or intimidating for the band, yet the album remains focused, controlled and melancholic. No Youth is the ultimate piece of cathartic expression and flawless craftsmanship.

It's utterly amazing to think that No Youth is an entirely electronic album, considering the massive drone and deluge of static and feedback that comes whirling and whipping from the speakers.  If we are moving into a future of purely electronic music, then No Youth may be a defining release, though the bombastic, explosive drumming on the record keeps it grounded in the real and tangible.  The percussion here is massive and powerful, thundering across the tracks and keeping the often dream-like compositions drowned in hopeless reality.  "Nausea," easily my favorite track on the record, is a perfect example: a slow, Drone intro gives way to an almost oil-and-water mix of slow, ethereal Swans-esque madness driven by thundering Darkthrone-style blast beats.  I can honestly say I have never heard such a dynamic combination of sounds before, and No Youth is over-flowing with these odd, exhilarating moments.

If there is any obvious influence on No Youth and Wreck and Reference in general, it has to be the Swans.  "If" being the key word, but there are a handful of similarities: the utter hopelessness of the vocals and lyrics and the mostly short, concise tracks that still drip atmosphere and anger were both trademarks of Michael Gira's signature project, and both elements are featured prominently on No Youth.  But so is the deluge of static-y, dense Drone/Doom, and at times Wreck and Reference effectively mix both, such as on "Cannot," which dances between somber, dark spoken word poetry to soul-siophoning Doom.  Once again, everything meshes so flawlessly that this seemingly awkward approach to songwriting feels completely natural and focused.  The atmosphere of self-hatred and melancholy remains wholly intact, no matter how ferocious of defeated the music gets.

No Youth is a damn difficult album to talk about: it's easy to heap praise on it, yet tough to pin down  Genre classifications are very hard to come by listening to No Youth, and trying to prepare a listener for the experience is near impossible.  No Youth is an album that just kind of has to be experienced, and the outcome of the experience will be colored by the one who lives it.  No doubt some will find all the sopping wet depression and self-inflicted damage as overkill, or even a bit silly.  Others will be touched deeply by it, and relate with the hopelessness and cathartic intensity of the album.  I can say unequivocally that No Youth is not for everyone.  It's not accessible, rarely melodic and never fun.

It all comes down to craftsmanship and creativity.  Some have one, some have the other and a rare few albums have both.  No Youth clearly has both.  The natural barrier of entry in how dark and defeated the moans and tones No Youth features leads to tough sailing even for the heartened and curious.  No doubt some will be unable to make it into the deeper layers of No Youth.  I can't say that I blame them.  But for the most masochistic, driven listeners among us, No Youth is a can't miss album.  It's an album that doesn't even feel like it ever had any boundaries in the first place, guided only by an unseen hand which dutifully orchestrates the madness and sorrow into a handful of notes and lyrics that evoke a sickened spirit of humanity.

Rating: 10/10

Anhedonist- Netherwards(2012)

 Anhedonist- Netherwards

Simplistic, bland and mostly forgettable, Anhedonist's debut LP Netherwards is classic genre pandering done with as little heart, energy or creativity as the Seattle, Washington based band could apply to the process.  I could easily imagine the entire album being written in a single day: just listen to a lot of Funebrarum and Mournful Congregation and do something that sounds kind of like that while cracking open cheap domestics in the storage room/practice space.  And that is exactly what Netherwards is: Funebrarum meets Mournful Congregation.  No doubt some of you are salivating at the very idea, but it's much, much more disastrous then it sounds.

Throughout my time with Netherwards, when I was not falling into a coma like state of sheer boredom, I found myself repeating the same thing over and over again: If you are going to write songs over nine minutes in length, make sure the songs have enough ideas to remain viable for such an idiotic run time.  Anhedonist are clearly seeking to combine the more layered, aggressive Death/Doom of a band such as Funebrarum(an obvious influence) with Funeral Doom.  But Netherwards merely ends up feeling like a pair of overly long, consciousness-obliterating-with-sheer-boredom Funebrarum B-sides, one half-way decent Funebrarum track with a much saner run-time of just over five minutes, and one of the worst, most pointless Funeral Doom tracks in history.  It's an endurance test of seemingly endless suck that goes on forever while feeling totally directionless and atmosphere free.  Netherwards does have a single thing going for it in that it at least sounds professional: the band don't miss any marks while playing the songs, and the production is appropriately heavy and static-choked.  But both of these things are not really strengths, since the simplicity of the song-writing makes these tracks easy enough to play in your sleep and the band are signed to Dark Descent records, a label with enough budget to make solid sounding albums.

Lets take the opening track "Saturnine" as an example: it begins with almost two minutes of mostly silence with some slight noise, before the opening riff kicks in with a bit of fury.  And there is nothing wrong with the opening riff, or in reality any of the riffs on the album: it's how everything is structured that makes Netherwards a chore.  "Saturnine" is largely undefined and hazy, yet somehow manages to be utterly predictable, while the repeated use of pinch harmonics also brings a chuckle.  The track feels all of it's utterly pointless nine minute and forty two seconds of running time, despite not really being written for it: the track essentially repeats the same idea back to back with a Funeral Doom intro, a bit of Incantation-like aggression and then some blatant diSEMBOWELMENT worshiping leads over the top of ultra-simplistic riffs that crawl along like a drunken zombie missing it's bottom half.  It feels like two tracks shoe-horned together into a single one, which seems to me the only explanation for why it is so painful.  Vocalist "V.B" is a competent enough Gallina impersonator, but little more, and his presence feels largely inconsequential to the actual songs: all of these tracks would have been equally unimpressive without him.

The following tracks, "Estrangement" and "Carne Liberatus" are stronger then the opening stinker, though barely.  "Estrangement" at least feels like a single track with a single vision: one of lifeless, colorless fields of sleep and tedium.  The track feels much, much longer than it's run time, and constantly seems on the verge of ending.  Only it never does: it's like a Judd Apatow movie, featuring dozens of climaxes before it actually finishes, and leaves you uncomfortably shifting in your seat waiting for the fucking thing to be over.  "Carne Liberatus" which I assume the band likely means as "Absolved Flesh" but could also be translated to "Free Steak"(I know that I am combining languages here, but I am trying to have some fun at the expense of this very joyless album) is better, but only because it ends before it becomes unlistenable.  It's heavy, slow and very Old-School sounding, so it panders well, but little else.

Then we come to "Inherent Opprobrium," which without any doubts is the single most boring track of 2012.  I have said before that Funeral Doom is not my favorite genre, but I do appreciate enough of the the genre's best practitioners to know tedium when I hear it: "Inherent Opprobrium" tedium incarnate.  At a soul-siphoning fifteen minutes and fourteen seconds, it goes absolutely nowhere.  Really.  The song is spends it's entire run time building up to something, but doesn't bother with any pay-off: no symphony of tortured voices, or cacophony of death knells.  No final tortured screams or sudden bursts of Death Metal aggression.  It just meanders between riffs and sections, and by the time we reach the ten minute point, the horrifying realization that the song isn't over hits like a sledgehammer to your skull... which might be a preferable outcome to actually finishing the song.  Perhaps this is the point of "Inherent Opprobrium," and Netherwards in general: to be punishing and unforgiving in it's boredom.  If I had even the slightest inclination that Netherwards was boring and lifeless on purpose, I might be kinder to the album.

No, what we have here instead in flavor of the month genre pandering at it's apex: the story of Death Metal in 2012.  Netherwards has all the disparate elements that bring together the various aspects of music in the modern-age: all the Old-School credibility one could ask for, with the lovely cover-art and clearly displayed Old-School influences without any of the timeless aspects that made those classics so wonderful to begin with.  Netherwards is an album designed specifically to sell lots of copies the moment it is released and generate lots of hype, but within two years be a completely forgotten piece of "oh yeah, I remember that album" trivia.  This is not art: it's a product, tricking listeners into thinking it's more than the sum of it's parts by playing up how "true" it is.  But by "true" what they mean is "genre re-hash money generator." 

Now, I am not saying that the band Anhedonist themselves are in it for the money: this is Death Metal after all, and there is a good chance that Netherwards is not making the band a single dime because of how brutal label contracts can be.  And I have no doubts that Anhedonist are making music they want to make because it's what they like and are passionate about: no doubt the guys in Anhedonist care about their music, because making Extreme Music of any kind is a labor of passion.  I also have no doubts that there are a lot of people who genuinely like this album(in fact, I know for a fact their are).  My point is that in today's modern scene, an album like Netherwards is the Death Metal equivalent of a movie like Transformers 2 or Avatar: digestible, simplistic, bland product that has all the parts of the real thing, designed to appeal to the masses, at the expense of more creative, inventive and challenging art that encompasses everything great about the medium.  Before 2005, an album like Netherwards would have been totally ignored.  Now, this is the Savior of the genre I love... apparently.

Rating: 2/10

The Curse Weekly Playlist: Supporting Nihilistic Noise

First off, thanks to DJ J. Fever AKA DJ Melodic One for his comment that inspired this. I had considered it before, but decided against it. Still, if people will check them out, I will make them.

I also want to introduce out new font: Lucida Grande. Pretty no?

Using the kick ass 8Tracks website(get to know it if you don't), I will be making weekly playlists of some of the underground Extreme Music(Metal, Punk, Noise) that I have been listening to over the previous week. They will be about 10 tracks give or take, and will all feature lesser known artists. The hope is to promote these acts as best I can, which was the whole point of this blog in the first place. If you like what you hear, then get out there and support these artists, whether it's buying their gear, heading out to their shows or just sharing kind words of encouragement.

Anyway, here is the link to the first playlist: Weekly Playlist #1

Tracklist:
1. GGUW - "Untitled" : Raw Atmospheric Black Metal from Germany, off the EP Gegen Gravitation und Willensfreiheit(2011)

2. Hordes - "Servile" : Metallic Hardcore from The United States, off the EP Abarognosis(2011)

3. Temple Nightside - "Incipit-Relinquished" : Atmospheric Black/Death from Australia, off the EP Prophecies of Malevolence(2011)

4. A Pregnant Light - "Impurity Flowing Upward" : Raw BlackCrust from The United States, off the LP A Feast of Clipped Wings(2011)

5. Nuclear Magick - "Nuclear Necromancy" : Bestial Black Metal/Sludge from Germany, off the demo Priests of the Bomb(2010)

6. Schattenvald - "Niedergang 1648: Eyn Raub von Flammen" : Raw Atmospheric Black Metal from Germany, off the LP II(2007)

7. Deathrite - "Claws" : Metallic Hardcore from Germany, off the EP Deathrite(2011)

8. Uzumaki - "An Engrossing Epitaph" : Technical Death Metal from The United States, off the LP Glossolalia(2012)

9. Ringing Bell - "With Positive Actuator To Project and To Retract" : Death/Doom from Denmark, off the demo Hospital Corners(2012)

10. Dressed in Streams - "The Breastplate Shines" : Raw Atmospheric Black Metal from The United States, off the LP Dressed in Streams(2011)

Stone Angels- Within the Witch(2011)

Stone Angels- Within the Witch

I really love that cover art.

It was certainly the first thing that stood out to me about Stone Angel's debut LP, Within the Witch. It looks like the dessicated corpse of Yggdrasil exploding from the Earth into a mass field of crucified victims who cry out in pain. It's also perfectly appropriate for the album: blackened and monolithic. Within the Witch does not do anything new or different then any other Sludge/Doom album ever released, but it does pack massive riffs and plenty of atmosphere into tight, heavy tracks.

Musically, Within the Witch is fairly standard yet highly competent Doom/Sludge in the vein of Thou, Burning Witch and Noothgrush, so there are not a whole lot of surprises here. Larger than life riffs, tortured screams and earth-shattering bass drive each song along fairly predictable paths, all performed well and with good energy. It's all fairly standard business as usual type stuff: "Bleeding Black" could easily be an EyeHateGod song with it's groovy riffs and thundering low end, while "Withdrawing the Jinn" has that classic New Orleans-metal charm to it... like EyeHateGod as well really. "White Noise, White Light" takes more from the Burning Witch/Thorr's Hammer style of Sludge/Doom, complete with that occult blackened edge and cavernous vocals.

Where Within the Witch stands out are during those moments of subdued bleakness. During the last few minutes of "White Noise, White Light," the listener is treated to a lovely piece of ambient noise; jarring feedback filters in the distant while a woman whispers indecipherable words, perhaps of evil, perhaps of sorrow. These moments are sadly rare during Within the Witch, and I can't help but hunger for more of them. There is a serious spark of creativity and adventurousness here: "Coffin Cross," by far the strongest track on the album, seethes with Blackened rage, ascending the well trodden paths the rest of the album follows and entering new and exciting territory. It's just too bad that Stone Angels didn't appear interested in following these moments over the entire album, instead choosing to give us lots of EyeHateGod stuff.

Not that there is anything wrong with that: I fucking love EyeHateGod, and even the most worship heavy moments of Within the Witch feel superior to most EyeHateGod worship bands out there today. Stone Angels are an extremely young band, having only formed in 2010 and already with a full-length under their belt. The talent and songwriting skill is here, and it peeks through often enough to give Within the Witch plenty of value. Within the Witch does not live up to this obvious talent, but it gives us a glimpse into a potentially grim future.

Rating: 7.5/10

Asphyx - Deathhammer(2012)

Asphyx- Deathhammer

Asphyx's new album, Deathhammer, is like a sledgehammer to the teeth, from the beginning to the end. From its apt cover art, where some heavily wounded and torn bloke unleashes Lovecraftain abominations and spirits to feast on our world, to the final track, that slowly burns you in scorching volcano-spit. Every song simply grabs you by your spine from the front and bashes you in rugged concrete until every bone is shattered and every organ is burst.

As soon as you enter the cruel timewastes, cryptic beasts introduce your face to a skull- splitting mace and a stampede greets every fiber of your being. Fast paced death metal supremacy fucks you into dust. Deathhammer(itallics needed) brings forth thrashy death riffs that maul you into submission, piss on you, and then bury you alive in some doomy moments. And then, you step onto a minefield. An epic sludge dirge that truly shows the opening of this unholy chasm of explosive rancor. A brilliant guitar tone that takes your feeble corpse and places it on the table of a sadistic killer, that slowly disembowels you while peeling off your flesh, with morbidity sparkling in his eyes. His blade eventually turns blunt, and he starts hitting your head with some more fast and typical death-doom madness.

"Der Landser" is another "dirge," remindful of that minefield. The brute stomps on you like a cockroach and then the flood fills every orifice you have with thick, sludgy filth. "We Doom You to Death" is probably the second best song on this album, that heavily reminds me of Last One on Earth. It has one or two basic riffs, but they're executed perfectly along the heavy drums and the raspy vocals. "Vespa Crabro" is a small stop before you face the igneous gem of the album: "As the Magma Mammoth Rises." A behemoth whose skin is made of perdition, his eyes ablaze and his breath fire. Hurling fireballs at your feeble form, it's truly the highlight of the album. It combines all the good stuff of this album; the thrash, the doom, and the death, and together cements it into a colossal beast that burns and annihilates everything with brutality.

In a non-metaphoric way, this album is genius. Combining excellent riffs and licks of Baayens with Bagchus' excellent simplistic (but powerful) drumming, Zuur's dense auricular "basscraft," and of course, Van Drunen's tortured and guttural voice is as memorable as it gets, this album is a death/doom masterpiece. The only flaw in this album is that it gets somewhat repetitive at times, but this is fucking Asphyx. That's part of the charm. It is a brilliant release and if you like your ears getting crushed by sonic artillery, this is your perfect place to be shelled into oblivion.

8.5/10

Doctorshopper- Degenerate Utopia(2012)

Doctorshopper- Degenerate Utopia

Can you believe the quality of the very deep underground scene? The sheer number of awesome demo's and tapes available is staggering. It's almost overwhelming really... maybe this is the feeling all these old-curmudgeon Metalfags have about the early 90's scenes...

Hailing from Los Angeles, Doctorshopper are just more proof that those decrying our modern scene as under-achieving are just cranky old men and thirteen year old's. A dug-fueled rage-er of Eyehategod, His Hero Is Gone and Darkthrone gone too far, Degenerate Utopia packs all the right parts into tight and heavy gutter hymns for the disenfranchised: "Cognitive Fog" blisters with Sludge-y Crust Punk bravado, while "Live Low And Prosper" drops the temperature of the room to "frostbitten" with it's raw moans before a little D-Beat kicks in near the end. Extended sections of feedback is an obvious crutch for transitional composition, but it's hard to find too much fault with the overall songwriting. Degenerate Utopia also hits all the marks lyrically, avoiding played out grimmness in favor of strong social commentary on such tracks as "Affordable Health Act" and "Recreational Emancipation," both of which reflect the hopelessness that many in this generation experience on a daily basis.

I find it difficult to progress beyond this point. Degenerate Utopia doesn't lend itself to paragraphs of explanation: it's brutally honest simplicity and skull-caving guitar tone do much of the talking for the albums twenty nine minute running time. This is not a bad thing, but it makes detailed compositional breakdowns difficult. With so much rage blasting at you from all directions, coming up with a phrase beyond "Hehehehe... evil" seems all but impossible. In the end, it all breaks down to this: Degenerate Utopia is a filthy slab of Blackened Sludge that will appeal to anyone who appreciates Extreme Music, and you should go ahead and get it.

Simplicity is pure fucking bliss.

Rating: 8/10

Wreck And Reference - Black Cassette (2011)

Note: This review was originally posted at Court In The Act, and any reference made to any facets of a blog is linked to that blog.

Due to technology, this EP (released on cassette – hence the name – through Music Ruins Lives) has been sitting in my inbox unnoticed for several months. For that, I apologize. From the name of the band, one might guess that they played post-something, and you’d be sort of right – the influence which jumps out instantly to me is Jesu, in the shimmering semi-industrial shoegazey sense. Jesu are always better on EPs due to their albums becoming boring over their full duration, and I suppose this is the same.

                                 

The aforementioned elements create quite a haunting ambient effect – but despite wholly miserable lyrics, the music is uplifting to some degree; consider the musical form of being haunted by a nice ghost who sings melodically rather than attempting to scare people. However, at times the raw production makes it somewhat difficult to discern individual melodies, particularly when notes used are chromatically close to each other. Although this rawness gives a warm feeling – like that of an LP – overall it probably strays far enough to slightly detract from the music. That said, it’s a cassette release, and therefore one should not expect outstanding production.

A point of particular similarity with Jesu in particular as opposed to many other practitioners of this kind of music is the choice to use something roughly resembling popular structure (verse-chorus-verse or variations thereon), particularly on the pleasing opener ‘All The Ships Have Been Abandoned’. The vocal approach, however, which is integral to the quality of the music, as many of the instrumental patterns are a little uninspired, is more similar to that utilised by SubRosa (although from my guess the vocalist here is male). Unfortunately, for the most part they sound a little frail – and in a way that is more weak than ‘woe is me’, something which is particularly evident when they are brought to the forefront of the music by quieter instrumentation.

Speaking of the instrumentation, the email from the band, as well as the label’s website, informed me that no guitars were used in the creation of this, which they are still calling ‘rock music’ (a tag that I would loosely agree with). To be honest, I really don’t see the point in bringing this to our attention. The timbre of one of the instruments used (presumably one of the synthesisers mentioned) sounds so much like an electric guitar (a matter that the mucky production aids little to clear up) that it may as well be one. I’m not criticizing the use of alternate instruments, more so the particular highlighting of this factor which has so little effect it ultimately amounts to little more than a gimmick.

An unusual, but effective, use is made of the juxtaposition of what, at the end of the day, is inherently catchy music (although one would struggle to call any of the motifs and melodies used strictly ‘poppy’, they lean that way at times) with industrial (we’re talking Throbbing Gristle, not Combichrist here) and noise elements in middle eight sections. This blends smoothly rather than clashes awkwardly as one would expect – a true success on their behalf, and something that’s not really been done before (no, Merzbeat doesn’t count).

There is a fine line to be trod between suffocating emotion and tedium in music, and Wreck And Reference manage to trample haphazardly on both sides of that line with roughly equal proportion. Where their style works, it moves towards ‘stunning’, but there are simply too many sections of the EP where I’m looking at the second hand on the clock to justify too much positivity about the good parts. The same feeling comes from some of the odd diversions they go on in the EP – they’re of decidedly mixed quality, and some leave a jarring effect and hamper the continuity of the individual piece or the EP as a whole.

A good last track on a release is probably more conducive to wishes to listen to it again than any other track – that last impression is a lasting one, and fortunately the closer here, ‘A Lament’, is the standout track. The drones and synths bring a shimmering quality to it, and the vocals come across as sufficiently strained to introduce some real heart-ripping emotion to it. This may be so, but many other sections of the EP go through the mind as though it were a sieve, and although this EP shows promise, and future Wreck And Reference releases could be something indeed, to those with a busy listening schedule it’s definitely one that can be passed on with no harm done.

Mournful Congregation- The Book of Kings(2011)

Mournful Congregation- The Book of Kings

I would be lying if I said that Funeral Doom was my favorite style of Doom. Sure, I love disEMBOWELMENT(the sounds precursor) and dig Thergothon, Evoken, Ahab, etc. But I am not particularly wild about the super slow, simplistic riffing and over-wrought atmosphere most Funeral Doom bands peddle. How so many bands can stretch three individual riffs over twenty minute songs is a mystery to me. And how unlucky for me that Mournful Congregation happen to be one of those bands.

The Book of Kings is well over an hour long, yet has no more than a dozen riffs sssssttttttrrrrreeeeettttcccchhhheeeeddd over it's incredible run-time. Your average Morbid Angel song has more riffs than this album, which is pretty impressive for both bands when you think about it. But who said it was about quantity? It's all about the quality right?

Right?

Much like the number of riffs, the quality here is lacking to say the least. Melodic intros lead into soft and... melodic riffs that crawl at a snails pace against the backdrop of bells and moans. Mournful Congregation have thrown musicianship and songwriting out the window here, and are putting all of their collective eggs into the "atmosphere" basket. The production is thick and inviting, and is by far the best part of The Book of Kings. It also helps that the pointless vocals are mostly lost underneath the strength of the guitars and the fuzz of the bass.

This is a war of attrition: how many minutes can you listen to the same riff, with the same melodic lead over the top of it, and the same bells in the background? I get the point of is all. The music is meant to hypnotize the listener, transfix them, until the fall into the waves of sound. Yet The Book of Kings failed to have anything close to this effect, and with so many superior alternatives abound in a genre not lacking in practitioners, it becomes increasingly hard to justify spending over an hour with this album. Where is the adventure? Where is the song-writing? The Book of Kings fails so miserably because instead of using the genre as a jumping post to greater ideas, it instead falls into Funeral Doom's biggest trap: incredible and relentless boredom.

Hardcore fans of Funeral Doom are sure to enjoy The Book of Kings. It follows every single genre convention to a T, never leaving the well trodden paths laid out by their forefathers in anyway. If that sounds incredibly boring to you, go ahead and just skip this one all together.

Rating: 3/10

Subrosa- No Help For The Mighty Ones(2011)

Subrosa- No Help For The Mighty Ones

Often, the joy of discovery is blunted by how much of what you end up discovering is recycled, carbon-copy genre worship with no new ideas and middling intensity. You search and search and search, but for all your effort come up with a few competent and enjoyable, but also pointless and forgettable, albums from bands who won't be part of your listening rotation a few weeks past their initial spins. However, from time to time, the endless search for something new, something powerful and substantial comes along that reaffirms your love for musical discovery. No Help For The Mighty Ones certainly had that effect on me. By taking the basic Doom/Sludge formula and turning it upside down while classing it up, Subrosa have created something incredibly somber, rich and emotional without ever coming off as corny or over-wrought.

Like the wails of a long lost lover roaring from the mist, No Help For The Mighty Ones immediately attacks the gut and twists it into all sorts of uncomfortable knots. The off-key, distant crooning of Rebecca Vernon and Sarah Pendleton hypnotizes you, while the shriek of electric violins jar you back into a cold, harsh reality. The guitars act in tandem with the rhythm section to create the fuzzy, ballsy and oddly warm backdrop for the violins to do their masterful work, rarely moving to the forefront. This might be a turn off for some, but Subrosa pull if off so masterfully it is hard to find any fault with it; the tracks meander on achingly from walls of symphonic noise to accessible Fuzz Rock to haunting, heart-string-tugging classical glory all in the same song. Try not to feel the pain on "Whipporwhill": emotional assaults are a very real part of No Help For The Mighty Ones.

This is an incredibly ballsy album, and considering that three-fifths of the band are quite literally without testicles, it becomes all the more impressive. It takes serious guts to have an a Capella English Folk song on your Doom/Sludge album, yet "House Carpenter" feels right at home on this album, a tale of lovelorn loss and demonic intervention that so beautifully exemplifies what makes this album such a triumph. All throughout the album, the listener comes face to face with truly fearless songwriting and powerful tones, both musical and emotional. No Help For The Mighty Ones is a once in a decade type album, one that should and hopefully will have a profound effect on the genre as a whole. These Utah sad saps have really touched on something here, something glorious, wonderful and real. Not to be missed.

Rating: 10/10

Encoffination- O' Hell, Shine In Thy Whited Sepulchres

Encoffination- O' Hell, Shine In Thy Whited Sepulchres

Lurching from the mist, each step a belabored and murderous endeavor, O'h Hell, Shine In Thy Whited Sepulchres is in no hurry. Much like Death itself slowly creeps upon us all, so too does this album, unabashedly fearless in its sheer slowness. And if a slow and painful Death is what you seek, than Encoffination are more than happy to provide it, so long as you don't ask many questions or have a preference on how you wish to die.

By the logo alone, one can assume Encoffination are influence greatly by Incantation, and sure enough you can find those mighty New Yorker's fingerprints all over this record, mostly in the mostly tremolo picked riffing style and Ghoat's guttural vocal attack. But among Incantation's obvious influence, one also finds Thergothon and to a lesser extent disEMBOWELMENT. So if you are imagining punishingly slow Incantation worship songs with the occasional use of things like bells, organs and ritualistic chanting and moaning, you have imagined O'h Hell, Shine In Thy Whited Sepulchres.

And that is all you can expect from it as well. Each track sounds pretty much the same as the other(which would have been fine if they did not have breaks between each song), with the only distinguishing factors being the use of other sounds. If not for the occasional bells or chants, each song would be mostly indistinguishable from each other, often following similar patterns(slow intro, a slight pick up in speed near the middle, a lurching outro). The album might be slow, but it falls into a rut quickly and never bothers trying to escape: like Death, Encoffination will never stop doing what they do... slowly.

O'h Hell, Shine In Thy Whited Sepulchres is a massive step up for Encoffination, a band I have never been crazy about. The production, and the album in general, absolutely demolishes the paper thin, bedroom kvlt shit-fest of Ritual Ascension Beyond Flesh, and at times the band can evoke some truly nasty atmosphere. But riff for riff, there is just not a lot going on here, and while the bands commitment to their sound is admirable, the lack of any unique ideas makes it hard to sit through this record multiple times. Death is coming for us all, slowly and surely, but in my time here on Earth, I don't imagine I will be spending too much of it with O'Hell, Shine In They Whited Sepulchres.

Rating: 7/10

Krypts- Krypts EP(2011)

Krypts- Krypts

As insane as it sounds, I really was not enthralled with Krypts 2009 demo Open the Crypt. You may not know me that well, so let me explain how insane this is. I love Death/Doom and I love Finnish Death Metal. I worship the mighty disEMBOWELMENT and place Finland only behind The United States as the best scene in Death Metal history. Open the Crypt should have been like injecting sweet, sweet eggnog(I FUCKING LOVE EGGNOG) right into my veins. But I just could not get into it: something about the whole demo seemed lacking. Compared to acts like Hooded Menace and the sadly defunct Ascended, Krypts had the look of a second fiddle bandwagon jumper in a Finnish scene loaded with talent.

Still, my blood oath to listen to anything from Finland behooved me to give Krypts new s/t EP a serious listen. Not that this was hard: Krypts has only two tracks, while clocking in at a solid 12 minutes. Not a major investment of time or effort, and Krypts was worth it: I found this solid little release a major step up from the listless, carbon-copy demo. Krypts continue to invoke the Old Gods of Death/Doom: Autopsy, disEMBOWELMENT, Thergothon, early Demigod. Dense and highly polluted with crushing riffs and coffin crushing vocals, Krypts is a solid foreshadowing of the future for the young Fins. Some impressive leads also evoke fond memories of Transcendence Into The Peripheral ,which is always a wonderfully dreadful feeling and one I have not had since Ascended's Temple of Dark Offerings EP.

There is not a whole lot more to say about such a short and very straightforward offering. I still do not consider Krypts one of the elite: not even close. Two solid tracks, neither of which bring anything new to the table, is not enough to convince me this band is the next Hooded Menace. But Krypts has at least given me a window of some understanding into the incredible fanboyism the band has evoked so far in such a short career.

Rating: 7/10

Altar of Plagues- Mammal(2011)

Altar of Plagues- Mammal

A full disclaimer: I am not really all that familiar with the whole "Blackgaze" or "Hipster Black Metal" or whatever the fuck it is called. Weakling and Wolves In The Throne Room are the only acts connected to this scene I have ever listened to(and very much enjoyed), and beyond the whole Hunter Hunt-Hendrix debacle that was impossible to ignore as it exploded across the internet at speeds that make celebrity sex tapes jealous, I was largely unfamiliar with the players. But this whole review blog thing kind of forces you to open up your musical world a bit, so I thought I would dive into the scene with an album that has been getting a lot of buzz, Mammal, from Ireland based Altar of Plagues. I really had no idea what to expect going in.

Color me impressed... and confused. Confused because I don't hear any Black Metal here.

Mammal consists of four tracks, and all are finely crafted, musically adventurous mixes of Doom, Sludge and Math Rock. The guitars have an eerily distant and dissonant quality; in fact, all the instruments sound slightly away from the listener, creating a unique effect of distance without being too soft or sounding terrible. All of the instruments are also expertly played, with a nice attention to detail that is greatly appreciated. There are also some wonderful, and often times beautiful, ambient sounds and noises that add to a dark, foreboding atmosphere.

None of this praise equates to Black Metal however, and I continue to struggle with this: I just don't hear any fucking Black Metal here. Not in the guitar tone or the riffs. Not in the drumming style, nor in the song composition. And certainly not in the vocals, which are more akin to the Post-Sludge screams of acts like Isis than Varg or Atilla. In fact, when listening to Altar of Plagues, I hear far more Isis than Emperor, and much more Neurosis than Burzum. This does not detract from the album in any real way, but leads me to question whether Black Metal suddenly left me behind and evolved into something completely different from what I understood it to be.

Mammal is not perfect. The first song, "Neptune is Dead" drags on near the end, and the vocals never elicit the level of emotion of depth that they seem to be attempting. By far my favorite track "When The Sun Drowns in the Ocean," features several female vocalist singing in a languages I don't recognize, while the yells of vocalist Dave Condon are absent. And while Mammal is certainly impressive and inventive, not all of the various ideas mesh or gel the way the band intended and some fall rather flat.

My confusion will persist for now, as Mammal is both very good and yet devoid of any discernible Black Metal aspects. The sheer vitriolic hate that some in the Black Metal community have for bands of this ilk is quite hilarious and alarming, but from my time with this album, may in fact be severely misplaced onto a band not deserving of it as well. Perhaps Altar of Plagues claimed some affiliation with Black Metal in the past, or toured with Liturgy or something. Regardless, as an inventive progressive Metal record, Mammal has the goods.

Rating: 8/10