Album Reviews

[binnie]

Sorry, I meant 'post' 499 on this page.

[ashstralia]

Sorry, I meant 'post' 499 on this page.

[binnie]

Overkill – The Electric Age

On album no. 247 Overkill have thrown caution to the wind and experimented with dubstep……… only kidding! ‘The Electric Age’ sounds pretty much like all Overkill records – and that’s a good thing. Like a Panzer division on warm up drill, it has quite an intro: wave upon wave of military tattoo drumming and guitar crunch eventually give way to ‘Come & Get It’s 6 minutes of riff-tastic-energy. Riff-riff-riff-riff-riff-riff-riff-solo-riff-riff-rifff…….you soon get the picture. And a sore neck.

It’s thrash metal the way it should be – fast, relentless and hard. It’s also perfectly balanced. Epic metallic behemoths like ‘Drop The Hammer’ are offset by the likes of the chorus heavy ‘Black Daze’ and ‘70s riffs of ‘Electric Rattlesnake’. But what impresses most is the passion. How can a band this old still sound as hungry and as vital as they do on ‘Old Wounds, New Scars’? Overkill have been smart enough to evolve with the times – not in the sense of changing their style, but in the approach to their craft. Updating through nuances – particularly Ron Lipnicki’s phenomenal drumming – and lavishing their sound with a production which thumps each drum into the listener’s chest serves Overkill well. They are finally close to sounding on record as furious as they always have live. If you don’t want to take on the entire world one at a time after the sheer bravura of ‘Save Yourself’ then your inner 14 year old has long since died.

It may be the case that Overkill could benefit from exercising a little more over their composition – there are still traces of the jam room here – but finesse and subtlety have never been something you look for in music like this: you want the histrionics, you hunger for them. And Overkill deliver. ‘The Electric Age’ steers a little more towards the anthemic than 2009’s epic ‘Ironbound’ and it, like its predecessor, is more than a worthy addition to any collection.

[binnie]

Wolfsbane – Save the World

It happens about halfway through ‘Blue Sky’, the opening tune on Wolfsbane’s first album in almost 20 years: you’re gone – smiling, jumping, bouncing around the room like a drunken reunion of old friends. The Howling Mad Shitheads are baaaaaack and boy does it feel good. HUGE choruses, power chords, screaming solos and a delivery which has bollocks by the truck load, Wolfsbane’s charm was always meat and potatoes metal served up by a bunch of misfits with their own distinctive ethos, humour and charisma. The autobiographical ‘Smoke And Red Light’ oozes defiance, whilst ‘Teacher’ is a pure dirty old man grin.

On the smooth ‘Who Are You Now?’ the sound is not quite as dirty as it was back in the day – it’s a little crisper, a little richer and Jase Edwards’s guitar finds reference points a little wider than the metallic palate – but this band was always unflinchingly honest in their approach to their craft, and attempting to simply replicate the sound of the early ‘90s wouldn’t be true to that. But during the more mature ‘Illusion Of Love’ you realize that NO-ONE sounds like this – Wolfsbane make a distinctive brew from the bric-a-brac of heavy metal. Oh, and if anyone doubts that Blaze Bayley can put a song across, they should check out ‘Starlight’ to see that he’s as convincing soft as he is hard.

If you don’t fall in love with songs as raucous as ‘Everybody’s Looking For Something Baby’ and ‘Did It For the Money’ then you really are mental. Wolfsbane may be the unluckiest band in metal – let’s hope that fate treats ‘em more kindly this time because the world needs more Howlin’ Mad Shitheads. I know I’ll hear better records this year, but I doubt I’ll encounter any that I enjoy more.

I can't quite explain how much I'm enjoying this album!

[binnie]

Black Moth – The Killing Jar

This debut album from British doomsters Black Moth is a charismatic spin on a familiar template, a way of saying something new with an old vocabulary. The sound alternates from pull pelt stoner rock (happy) to quakey doom (sad): both a variations of Sabbath and Blue Cheer, but BM also wrap these tunes in some late ‘60s rock and pop to add flavour, and you’ll hear The Byrds, Cream and even Barclay James Harvest through the walls of riffs which puts this record a cut above the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM of the doom pack. ‘The Articulate Dead’ is a Kyuss turbo-charged rumble, whilst’ Blackbirds Fall’ is a greay, tar black wall of doom you can hum – what more could anyone possible want? When they mix the bass drone wall of noise with quieter moments – as they do on ‘Banished But Blameless’ – this is a band who are truly colossal. Indeed, ‘Chicken Shit’ is seriously HEAVY shit.

Not everything here is a winner, for sure – ‘Spit Out Your Teeth’ and ‘Blind Faith’ are a little formless. But this is a startling debut nonetheless, and the sort of record you wish Queens of The Stone Age would make. The rhythm section of Dave Varmon and Dominic McCreedy really hangs back on these beats, and it makes the whole sounds sway like a galleon. But it’s the vocals of Harriot Bevin that really shine, teasing out those pop melodies to make this brand of doom irresistible. On ‘The Plague of Our Age’ BM sound like Jefferson Airplane being abused – if they can push their riff heavy sound into the wider sphere in future, they might deliver a classic.

One’s to watch.

[binnie]

From the vaults: The Cult – Beyond Good & Evil (2001)

The Cult were certainly hungry on album number 7. On opener ‘War (The Progress)’ they were are heavy and bombastic as they’d ever sounded – dinosaur riffs, a swampy groove and a supersonic chorus propelling a cacophony of noise skilfully welded together by Bob Rock’s production into something truly cavernous and primal, with so much space between the parts you could drive a truck through it. There are some seriously tasty tunes here: ‘The Saint’ has ‘Love’ melodies with ‘Electric’ power, and ‘My Bridges Burn’ has a melody that will kick your head in. ‘Speed of Light’ is the perfect fucked-up rock song, whilst ‘Breathe’ is a primordial quake, the sound of the earth opening up and howling. Most menacing of all is ‘American Gothic’: “eatin’ the cancer cells from the death machine’ croons Astbury over some scuzzy, discordant guitar warfare. On moments like this, you realise that The Cult really are unique in rock ‘n’ roll – one part psychedelica banshee shamen; one part nitro charged supersonic riff warlords.

There, however, some bumpy moments. ‘Take The Power’ is oddly characterless, the sound of any rock band, whilst ‘Ashes & Ghosts’ is messy and ‘Shape The Sky’ descends to the level of self parody. On ‘Nico’ they sound flat out old. But even when it falls flat, you could never accuse The Cult of being boring. ‘Beyond Good & Evil’ certainly deserves more attention that it gets, and contains many Cult gems. But it is only 60% of what they can do: this is The Cult on full power, and at their most primal – what it gains in grit it loses in grandeur, for much of the nuance, the effervescence is absent here.

[binnie]

From the vaults: Death Angel – Act III (1990)

Rarely has a band made metal fans scratch their manes more than Death Angel. After blasting onto the thrash metal scene with 1987’s ‘Ultra Violence’ – a flat out, stone cold, classic of a record – they threw in the curve ball to end all curve balls in ‘Frolic In The Park’. Many bands have not forgiven them to this day – but regardless of your aesthetic preferences, you have to have respect for a band who are prepared to march to the beat of their own drum when lucrative riches were obtainable on the obvious path. Some people accuse DA of not knowing who or what they wanted to be – I’ve always thought of them as a band who let their versatility get the better of them. What strikes you about album no. 3 – after the complexity, and quality – is the control of the compositions which is in evidence here.

‘Act III’ was a marriage of thrash and the progressive leanings they’d begun to flex on frolic. Here ‘A Room With A View’ – an acoustic led power ballad long before Metallic thought of it, and one which is oddly Rush-tinged in its melodies and the sombre grandeur of its outro solo – is balanced with ‘Stop’, an old skool thrash propelled with the crunchiest of riffs into warp drive. And yet, to these ears at least, it doesn’t feel cluttered or out of kilter. ‘Seemingly Endless Time’ is eerily reminiscent of ‘Persistence of Time’-era Anthrax (Mark Osegueda has always sounded like a grittier Joey Belladona), a montage of riffs with a hard rock tinge, whilst ‘Ex TC’ is both melodic AND heavy, and ‘The Organisation’ is really just a classic ‘80s metal album in the vein of Helix and Dio sped up.

What we have here are – for all the bumps – the roots of progressive metal. Alongside Heathen and – albeit in a much heavier and more pivotal way – Death and Cynic – Death Angel were pushing boundaries: 5 minute metal songs spiralling and glued together by juicy hooks and melodies which harness the power and tendencies towards the epic into something anthemic. Pushing boundaries can, of course, lead to strains – here ‘Discontinued’s funk-thrash is a mish mash of oddities, the way Maiden jamming with the Chili Peppers might sound, but it gives way to a beast of a song which sounds like Suicidal Tendencies style hardcore. You don’t have to like it to see that – at a time when thrash was dying, LA was dead and grunge was looming, ‘Act III’ was pushing the envelope.

The rough, aggressive edges of their earlier work may have been rounded off with some dazzling scope and complexity, but this is still some heavy shit. For anyone who thought this band couldn’t bring the metal any more: if ‘Disturbing The Peace’ doesn’t make you want to, well, disturb the peace, it’s time to cut your hair! ‘Act III’ recalls a time when HEAVY could still be uplifting and inspiring rather than mindlessly aggressive and wilfully angular. The metal traditionalists may write ‘Act III’ off as the cuckoo in ‘Ultra Violent’ nest, but when approached with an open mind it is packed with classic tunes, cutting melodies and dazzling musicianship.

Something of a lost mongrel of a classic.

[sadaist]

From the vaults: Death Angel – Act III (1990)

Something of a lost mongrel of a classic.

Fucking A! Thanks Binnie. I can't tell you guys how much I loved this album. Wore it the fuck out is what I did. RAWR!



Man, at 1:36 this motherfucker gets GROOOOOVIN!!!!!!

[SparkieD]

Fucking A! Thanks Binnie. I can't tell you guys how much I loved this album. Wore it the fuck out is what I did. RAWR!



Man, at 1:36 this motherfucker gets GROOOOOVIN!!!!!!

Man, I wore that fucker out too. I saw these guys back in November, and they are as fucking killer as ever \,,/

[binnie]

Grand Magus – The Hunt

That this record comes complete with a sow-on patch should tell you everything that you need to know about how Grand Magus sound: this is HEAVY FUCKING METAL baby!!!! And it’s glorious, glorious stuff. Big arrangements, huge sounds, and sweeping choruses, this is elevating stuff made from the simplest of ingredients and it almost commands you to bang your head.

Grand Magus will always be constrained by the fact that they made a modern classic. 2008’s frankly astounding ‘Iron Will’ was a record of such dazzling metallic brilliance – in which the tracks sounded like they’d been forged in Valhalla by the Metal Gods – that it would be impossible to emulate. On follow up ‘Hammers of The North’ (2010), it sounded like Grand Magus recognized that – a dull and oddly subdued affair, it left fans wondering where the spark had gone. The first thing to say about ‘The Hunt’ is that it is a blast back onto the right track. ‘Sword of the Ocean’ gallops on the hooves of death – heavy, heavy, heavy, it’s the sort of anthem Manowar would be proud of. This is the sort of stoner and doom tinged hues steeped in classic Heavy Metal lore – see ‘Valhalla Rising’, which is the aural equivalent of Munch’s ‘The Scream’. ‘Silver Moon’ is primordial, the image of something relentless, unstoppable and ceaseless in its power.

Sure, it’s not all great. ‘Storm King’ is patchy, whilst the Dioisms of ‘Starlight Slaughter’ is terribly meat ‘n’ potatoes – they’re not bad tunes by any means, but you know that Grand Magus can do better. And it’s when they push themselves that ‘The Hunt’ is most rewarding. The folk pretensions of ‘Son Of The Last Breath’ injects some much needed colour into the album’s relentless gun-metal grey, and the title-track’s balancing of acoustic tenderness with a sort of thunderous Sabbath maelstrom is epic stuff indeed. This may be no ‘Iron Will’, but its certainly a battle scarred, weather worn return to form.

[binnie]

Slash – Apocalyptic Love

The cover art tells you that they’ll be few surprises here – a top hat astride a snake entwined Les Paul announces that Slash is a man comfortable with his own iconic status, and happy to serve it up to his fans. And serve it up he does – 13 times over – in a batch of strident blues rock tunes. ‘Apocalyptic Love’ is less varied that Slash’s debut – perhaps unsurprisingly given the presence of only one singer this time out – but it is more focussed, and a little harder. It will certainly make you smile.

There is variation in the template, however, from the bombastic blues of ‘Bad Rain’ and ‘Hard & Fast’, the hook heavy modern rock of ‘No More Heroes’ (what a chorus!) to the downright middle aged ‘We Will Roam’. Each tune is crafted around a series of Myles Kennedy’s uncanny hooks, and on the likes of ‘One Last Time’ (which features a rapid skiffle riff and melodies a plenty), the serpentine ‘Standing In The Sun’ or the meat and potatoes hard rock mule kick of first single ‘You’re a Lie’ you can see just why Slash chose to work with Mr Vesatility. But it might – ironically – have been a somewhat limiting choice. Kennedy may be easy to work and collaborate with, but I’m not sure he’s Slash’s natural foil. He is unquestionably a great composer and in possession of a tremendous set of pipes, but there is very little danger about Kennedy – you get the sense that he’s more a thinker than a rock ‘n’ roll desperado, and Slash makes music for the neck down. Consequently, these tunes lose some of their bite, their kick, and you’d never guess that this was a solo record by the gunslinger of The Most Dangerous Band In The World, unless his silhouette instantly announced it.

There might not be anything here quite as dazzling as the Kennedy/Slash tunes on the debut disc – ‘Back To Cali’ and the frankly astonishing ‘Starlight’ – but they have served us up some gems nonetheless. ‘Halo’ is a demon stomp of a song, ‘Not For Me’ is outlaw torn blues, and ‘Anastasia’ is simply joyous: a stripper beat overlaid with dazzling geetar histrionics and fuelled by some of that menace lacking elsewhere on this disc – the central riff alone smacks of a guy who show you a video of him fucking your sister and then ask you what you thought. You hope that the future will bring more of this.

As it stands, what we have here is an enjoyable summer record which deserves to be played loud. But it might not light up the sky. In some quarters this disc is being hailed as the best thing Slash has done since G’N’R – it’s not. That accolade would have to go to the sheer bloody hedonism of the second Snakepit record, ‘Ain’t Like Grand’, a record which sounded like a bunch of crack-ridden outlaws kicking the shit out of some of the most unheralded rock ‘n’ roll tunes ever written, the sort of record that would ravish 17 groupies in a row and blow a load on their faces. This one would want to cuddle after – perhaps it’s an age thing.

[binnie]

From the vaults: Katatonia – Dance Of December Souls (1993)

Katatonia were a very, very different band at their inception. This is an epic record, a tortuous brand of extreme metal doused in gothic kisses. From the moment which the bludgeon of ‘Gateway of Bereavement’ kicks in, this is the aural equivalent of being drowned in the darkness of a cold, blackened being. There is little in common with the rest of the death metal scene here, Katatonia avoid the swirling hyperbole in favour of the crawling doom of Candlemass or early Paradise Lost. But they also, crucially, coupled that heaviness to operatic grandeur and sonorous melodies – ‘In Silence Enshrined’ is cavernous, a wall of thudding doom and cascading, triton riffs or eerie effervescence and nightmarish savergy. ‘Without God’ is holy fuuuuuuck bleak, and the 13 minute ‘Velvet Thorns (of Drynwhyl)’ speaks of a band overflowing with confidence and ambition, and one with control of their composition even at the point of excess. Yet, even though this debut was much more metallic that much of Katatonia’s subsequent work, the seeds of their progression were here too – the delicate goth of outro ‘Dancing December’ and beauty of ‘Elohim Meth’ anticipates the right turn Katatonia would take on ‘Brave Murder Day’.

Alongside fellow doomsters My Dying Bride, Katatonia are one of metal’s most relentlessly innovative and stubbornly self indulgent bands. If you are the sort of person who thinks that extreme metal is all about malovelent swirls and comic book evil, this blast of Wagnerian sweep of anguish will shock you. You may never want to listen to it again, but you’ll not be able to deny its power as a work of art.

[binnie]

Destruction – Day Of Reckoning.

They’re baaaaack. The third part of the German thrash triumvirate – the other two being Kreator and Sodom – Destruction have had perhaps the toughest career. After a handful of brutal thrash classic in the 80s, the 90s was a relative wilderness period for the band, who lacked a record company, and much of the 00s on Nuclear Blast seemed to be part of a process of regaining momentum. And it has culminated in this three piece thrash mayhem. Fast and Motorhead powerful, what compels you here is the CRUNCH of Mike Sifringer’s riffage. This is classic thrash dressed up in the sonic power of a modern production and – in a similar manner to Overkill or the rejuvenated Accept – it gives no quarter.

It also revels in the clichés. Lyrically, it’s all death and destruction; musically, powerchords, double bass drums, and speed freak riffs. Oh, and they have a song called ‘Armagedonizer’, which is easily the most metal song title ever. Fact. ‘Devil’s Advocate’ sounds a bit like the first Megadeth record, whilst ‘Sorcerer of Black Magic’ is like a latter day Testament. But that’s not to accuse Destruction of being derivative – there’s a very charismatic take on the thrash template, and one propelled by new drummer Vaaver’s ability to turn these song’s raw ingredients into something 25 times more powerful. There’s nothing you’ve not heard before, but it’s delivered on full kill mode with almost no scope for self indulgence.

[78/84 guy]

Slash – Apocalyptic Love

The cover art tells you that they’ll be few surprises here – a top hat astride a snake entwined Les Paul announces that Slash is a man comfortable with his own iconic status, and happy to serve it up to his fans. And serve it up he does – 13 times over – in a batch of strident blues rock tunes. ‘Apocalyptic Love’ is less varied that Slash’s debut – perhaps unsurprisingly given the presence of only one singer this time out – but it is more focussed, and a little harder. It will certainly make you smile.

There is variation in the template, however, from the bombastic blues of ‘Bad Rain’ and ‘Hard & Fast’, the hook heavy modern rock of ‘No More Heroes’ (what a chorus!) to the downright middle aged ‘We Will Roam’. Each tune is crafted around a series of Myles Kennedy’s uncanny hooks, and on the likes of ‘One Last Time’ (which features a rapid skiffle riff and melodies a plenty), the serpentine ‘Standing In The Sun’ or the meat and potatoes hard rock mule kick of first single ‘You’re a Lie’ you can see just why Slash chose to work with Mr Vesatility. But it might – ironically – have been a somewhat limiting choice. Kennedy may be easy to work and collaborate with, but I’m not sure he’s Slash’s natural foil. He is unquestionably a great composer and in possession of a tremendous set of pipes, but there is very little danger about Kennedy – you get the sense that he’s more a thinker than a rock ‘n’ roll desperado, and Slash makes music for the neck down. Consequently, these tunes lose some of their bite, their kick, and you’d never guess that this was a solo record by the gunslinger of The Most Dangerous Band In The World, unless his silhouette instantly announced it.

There might not be anything here quite as dazzling as the Kennedy/Slash tunes on the debut disc – ‘Back To Cali’ and the frankly astonishing ‘Starlight’ – but they have served us up some gems nonetheless. ‘Halo’ is a demon stomp of a song, ‘Not For Me’ is outlaw torn blues, and ‘Anastasia’ is simply joyous: a stripper beat overlaid with dazzling geetar histrionics and fuelled by some of that menace lacking elsewhere on this disc – the central riff alone smacks of a guy who show you a video of him fucking your sister and then ask you what you thought. You hope that the future will bring more of this.

As it stands, what we have here is an enjoyable summer record which deserves to be played loud. But it might not light up the sky. In some quarters this disc is being hailed as the best thing Slash has done since G’N’R – it’s not. That accolade would have to go to the sheer bloody hedonism of the second Snakepit record, ‘Ain’t Like Grand’, a record which sounded like a bunch of crack-ridden outlaws kicking the shit out of some of the most unheralded rock ‘n’ roll tunes ever written, the sort of record that would ravish 17 groupies in a row and blow a load on their faces. This one would want to cuddle after – perhaps it’s an age thing.

You hit it on the head. Ain't Life Grand is killer dirty rock & roll ! But this new album kicks ass. Straight up rock. Good stuff.

[binnie]

Cheers dude, glad you liked it!