Grave Upheaval- Grave Upheaval(2010)

Grave Upheaval- Grave Upheaval

Grave Upheaval is the side project of Ignis Fatuus and Omenus Fugue, the men behind Impetuous Ritual, and who also play in the legendary Portal.  A massive pedigree no doubt, but Grave Upheaval goes well beyond recognizable names.  It's not a project that needs to piggy back on the larger bands that have come before it.  Mainly because this, the project's self titled demo, is without a doubt the finest album this storied duo has produced.  From the first listen Grave Upheaval blew away any of the duo's previous material and entombed me in it's light-devouring darkness.  Ritualistic carnage devoid of any sympathy for the listener, Grave Upheaval is full contact inhumanity.

Grave Upheaval is not really a massively different project from Impetuous Ritual in terms of genre.  Both projects deal in Doom-laden Death Metal inspired by the New York Death Metal sound and the primitive East-Coast sounds of bands like Imprecation and Killing Addiction. But while Impetuous Ritual delve into chaotic and explosive compositions with a slightly more technical edge, Grave Upheaval are more sunken and sulfurous; a truly primitive and ancient evil that crawls from the Earth to wreak terrible works.  The music itself is fairly simplistic at the individual level, with lots of repetitive, Doom-y riffs and lumbering rhythms.  It sounds to me heavily inspired by Raw Black Metal with the heavy repetition and supreme focus on atmosphere over technical prowess, and the masterful duo pull it off perfectly.  The production and atmosphere is massive and thick; a swarm of plague-bearing insects that bathes you in disease.  The album personifies evil, and does so without any real cheesiness.

The focus of ritualism is what makes Grave Upheaval so powerful.  The drums thunder and blast across the empty expanse of the megalithic production while the demented vocals imitate the chanting, demonic rumblings of a mad witch doctor.  At any moment, it seems a portal straight to Hell will open up inside your head, the beckoning calls of Grave Upheaval drawing them closer and closer to the tender under-belly of your skull.

Being both genuine and skillfully performed, Grave Upheaval is one of the most impressive atmospheric achievements I have heard in Death Metal in a long time.  It attaches itself to the darkest, most primal emotions and draws them forward, drawing as many visceral head-bangs as well as more then a few moments of gloomy introspection.  It's Death Metal done right: nihilistic, genre-destroying madness.

Rating: 9/10

Odz Manouk- Odz Manouk(2010)

Odz Manouk- Odz Manouk

Twisted and raw, brimming with dissonance and shrouded in the mist, Odz Manouk reaches out to you from the ethereal and grabs you by the throat, forcing you to endure the chill of it's icy grip before twisting your neck and letting Death come for the remains. Wicked spirits accompany this song of demonic indoctrination, pulling themselves from the rotted sound waves and polluting the air with the memories of the dead. Odz Manouk beautifully channel the Old Spirits of Norwegian Second Wave Black Metal, but also display musical competence and an assimilation of the modern in their musty Black Metal sound. Fearless, atmospheric songwriting beautifully intertwines with the classic grimm aesthetic to form beautiful, skin-peeling storms of wrath. Simply put, Odz Manouk is as important of a Black Metal album to come from the US in a long, long time.

Everything about Odz Manouk is nothing short of perfect, from the songwriting to the production to the individual musical performances. Menacing and raw, the production of Odz Manouk is filthy with static and grime, but also even enough for every instrument to have a say in the song. The guitars frequently experiment with dissonant leads, which coupled with a perfectly distant and reverb drenched guitar tone, leads to some the creepiest atmospheres in Black Metal. I also adore the vocals and bass sound: the former choked with pus and malice, the latter pulsating and burrowing through the compositions like a worm digging eagerly downward toward an exposed corpse. Odz Manouk perfectly captures the feel and sound of Black Metal at it's most pure and excruciating.

Odz Manouk is also a beautifully written album, which perfectly mixes Mayhem, Horna and early Deathspell Omega into whirling abysses of hatred: "The Indisciplinarian" features a meaty main riff which brings to mind Burzum, sandwiching it between extended sections of atmospheric dissonance and raw screeching. "I Will Crush to Marrow This Crow of Ill" begins in a burst of Mayhem like mid-paced intensity, but slowly and surely devolves into a frost-bitten elegy of blades that turns the very air into a sea of ripping knives. The guitar work on Odz Manouk makes heavy use of repetition, but is unafraid to throw in dissonant or even melodic leads, like the distant, foggy whispers on "Mechanics of a Nightmare." All with the intent of creating a dark and foreboding sense of dread, a feeling of hopelessness before the void... and Odz Manouk captures that essence of darkness perfectly.

What perhaps is most impressive about Odz Manouk, aside from the veritable perfection of the sound and the musicianship, is the way everything looks and feels appropriate without ever being stale of generic. Odz Manouk is not a purely original album by any stretch, but it does as much as needed to feel unique. There is a definite creative vision and mission behind the tracks on Odz Manouk, outside of the popular "we want to sound like X band" that is far too widespread and overbearing in Extreme Metal today. It's easy to list the influences on Odz Manouk, but it never feels like the album is leaning on those influences and the fact that you really like those influences to use as a crutch; Odz Manouk stands on it's own.

American Black Metal is seeing a surge of amazingly talented young acts, but Odz Manouk might very well stand above almost all of them. High praise, but I struggle to find a more impressive example of both creativity and reverence than Odz Manouk. The dark arts and incantations this California one-piece wields are powerful indeed. Consider me bound and tethered to Odz Manouk's ancient crypt for all time... far worse curses exist among the shadows.

Rating: 10/10

Ives - Abandon (2010)

Ives - Abandon

Black metal has always had at least some peripheral relation to punk. Early bands like Ildjarn and Carpathian Forest used it, and when you think about it, the raw black metal style is very DIY. Still, from the past decade to the present, a much stronger surge of bands playing a black metal/punk mixture has arisen. Many of these bands have brought together the raw energy found in both punk and black metal, to vicious and often interesting ends. Florida's Ives are another recent band to try their hand at the black/punk mix, and Abandon is their second demo. It's a svelte 20 minutes with some interesting moments, though unfortunately more trite ones.

Opener “The Taste of Severity” starts with a God awful sound clip about cannibalism before breaking into some decent enough but very unsurprising black/punk. The music alternates between blackened punk chords backed by D-beat drumming and riffs that sound like Mayhem circa 1994. The vocalist growling “smear the blood on my face / taste the blood in my mouth” fails to have the emotional resonance they were going for.

From there, each track becomes longer than the last. Second track “Burning The Incense, Amanita Virosa” opens slowly and unfolds into a mix of black metal, crust punk and sludge. It's an interesting mix, like a black metal Dystopia, but the track quickly becomes more blackened Discharge worship, before switching to Mayhem/Darkthrone inspired black metal, and so on. 7 minutes in and one of the key problems with the demo becomes apparent: the music tends towards predictable shifts back and forth between riffs copped from classic Norwegian bands and Discharge inspired punk leading to unexciting ends.

The best parts of the demo occur in the last half. Part way through “Lost In The Pleasures Of Moonlight”, the music shifts into dark and droning chords which accompany a xylophone (!!!) before exploding into some absolutely fierce black/thrash riffing that blew me away, especially coming right after the down tempo bridge. Titular track “Abandon” provides interesting moments as well. Its dramatic opening displays vocal variance with some yelling taking the place of the standard black metal rasps that dominate the rest of demo. The song sadly turns into another back and forth between punk and riffs that sound like they wouldn't be out of place in Darkthrone's Under a Funeral Moon. Surprisingly though, Ives then does another bizarre 180 into unique territory when fiddle begins playing over melancholy black metal riffing before fading out (albeit somewhat sloppily) into an instrumental passage of folk consisting of acoustic guitars and haunting fiddle. The black metal comes back in, accompanied by excellent cymbal use. The fiddle stays present for the remainder of the track providing an incredibly enjoyable final minute before the demo ends.

Therein, though, lies another one of the problems. The unique moments are caught in a mire of ho-hum punk and black metal riffing jacked from early Norwegian BM records. The crust/sludge/black opening of “Burning The Incense”, the ambient bridge, creative use of xylophone and thrashy finish to “Lost In The Pleasures Of Moonlight” and the violin use, folk break and melancholy riffing in “Abandon” are excellent, but are caught between trite filler. Ives definitely shows promise on Abandon. They have the potential to pull together an interesting full length, either by making an eclectic album (similar to what Akitsa and Ash Pool have done) that tastefully displays their various ideas, or by bringing it all together into a more cohesive style. Either way, they'll need to root out the generic aspects of their song writing. I'd definitely be interested in a debut album from them, and Abandon has some wonderful moments, but as a whole it fails to thrill.

6.8/10

-Faulty

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