Album Reviews

[binnie]

No need to apologize - there's no problem with saying 'fuck' in this thread

[binnie]

Witchcraft – Legend (2012)

This is a band which sounds absolutely nothing like their name. You’re expecting black metal, right? Wrong. Over the course of 4 albums, this bunch of Swedish free-spirits have served up a tasty brew of garage rock, psychedelia, blues and proto metal which has its eyes firmly on the dial of 1967-70, a period when being heavy was an aspect of a band’s music rather than its sole purpose. So you’ll hear a bit of Blue Cheer and Atomic Rooster, but you’ll also hear The Byrds and Creedence, too. Imagine the Rival Sons without the American bombast and Californian teeth and you’re getting somewhere near. Alongside those American firebrands, Witchcraft sit at the forefront of a minor explosion of bands serving up rock music which evokes a period before it became a sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll cliché and still connected with recognizably purer emotions. Bands like Parlor Mob, Nighthorse, Firebird or fellow Swedes Graveyard, who remember that hedonism isn’t enough and that rock needs to be matched with some roll to elevate it the next plain.
In Witchcraft’s case, that roll has always come from blues, folk and prog and has always added a wistful element to their music that ultimately makes it more charismatic. Last album ‘The Alchemist’ (2012) was something of a modern classic as a result of incorporating all of those elements into one synthesis. ‘Legend’ is a much more straightforwardly rocking affair, more immediately riff based and demonstrating a slightly harder guitar tone than in the past, and although those expansive folk and blues leanings they are tempered by pure rock fury. Opener ‘Deconstruction’ is packed full of heavy-ass riffs and sickle-shaped licks from Tom Jondelius and Simon Solomon, and is the way that Down would sound if they’d formed in 1968. ‘An Alternative To Freedom’ would not have been out of place on the last couple of Soundgarden records, and matches that band’s remarkable capacity to sound colossal in 4 minutes. Elsewhere, Magnus Pelander’s vocals take centre-stage. Both ‘Flag Of Fate’ and ‘It’s Not Because Of You’ could light up the radio if given half the chance (and remind the world that The Killers are little more than an average band): the latter’s ruddy chorus and darkened melodies are captivating; whilst that latter has hooks that kill. By the time you arrive at 11 minute closer ‘Dead End’s’ charcoal-grey blues Armageddon, you are in the presence of a band in preaching mode, existing solely on its own terms and own timescales and not pandering to any perception of what rock music should be in 2013. Wailing, soaring and diving, Witchcraft’s songs rest upon the dynamic relationships they engender between fairly conventional rock DNA to produce something special.

And yet, you can’t help but feel that ‘Legend’ is a slight peg down from ‘Witchcraft’ or ‘The Alchemist’, that in becoming more straightforwardly hard rock they’ve let go of that element that made them unique in the first place. Still, with the possible exception of The Rival Sons, Witchcraft remain the best in the world at what they do. Graveyard may get more plaudits, but few can conjure magic quite like Witchcraft.

[binnie]

Bleed From Within – Uprising (2013)

British metal is flying at the moment. Whether it is bands that are truly inventive (djent leaders Tesseract, post-hardcore bruisers While She Sleeps and Heart Of A Coward) utterly divisive (Bring Me The Horizon), arena-rocking unit shifters (Bullet For My Valentine) or just flat out classy (Sacred Mother Tongue), the depth of talent is at a height its not been since the early 1980s. Scotland BFW have long been floating around the mid ranks of that scene (like thrasher Evile and Malefice). But, having put label woes and line-up changes behind them, on album number three they’ve announced their contention for the crown. Let’s be clear from the off: BFW are not breaking the mould here. The plaudits come perspiration rather than inspiration: this bruising, bullish modern metal that screams ‘people champion’. No frills, no self-indulgence, just foot-to-the floor metal. A British Devildriver, if you will, but with add metalcore breakdowns and extreme metal leanings.

Opener ‘Colony’ has the metalcore leanings of God Forbid or later-day Trivium. Awash with bouncy riffs, breakdowns, hooks and gang vocals which seemed designed to make it a live anthem, the blood-curdling fury of the delivery makes ‘Uprising’ infectious from the get-go. ‘It Lives in Me’ has more than a dash of Hatebreed about it, a bouncy aggressiveness made for circle pits. There’s plenty more to like, too. ‘Strive’ proves that aggressive music can be catchy (the guitar melodies a sweet sucker punch); whilst ‘Our Divide’ and ‘The War Around Us’ could give more established bands a run for their money – the latter also proves that the band can serve up a killer set of lyrics, and have something to say. What stands out in these songs is how much music is crammed into them: changing tempo and riff every 4 bars serves up a frenetic energy and keeps the listener hooked. It can be overwhelming in places, but for the most part the band’s focus steers things through.

‘Uprising’ is nothing you’ve not heard before – and you’ve heard it a lot if you’ve been listening to metal in the past 10 years – but it is a very good representation of metal’s mainstream in 2013, post-metalcore if you will. It’s certainly not as good as some of the hype would have you believe – parts of the media tipping ‘album of the year’ is both premature an unsubstantiated – but it is a hell of a record. They’re bound to kill it live.

[Dave's Bitch]

Are you still taking requests Binnie?

I have been crazy into The Quireboys the past week.What's your take on "A Bit Of What You Fancy"?

[binnie]

Might take me a while to get round to that one, but leave it with me

[binnie]

From the vaults: Trouble – Plastic Green Head (1995)

This is quite a gem of a record, albeit one which is a deviation from a classic band’s more celebrated sound. Trouble’s first two albums – ‘Psalm 9’ and ‘The Skull’ – played a significant part in the foundation of doom metal and are unquestionably classic records. As the ‘90s progressed, however, Trouble took on a sound which was closer to stoner in vibe, and often leaves diehards a little dis-satisfied. By ‘Plastic Green Head’ – album number 6 – that psychedelica/stoner vibe had merged with a meatier metallic approach to heaviness in a sound which is reminiscent of both Down and Pepper Keenan-era Corrosion of Conformity. The weight here is colossal. But it is also accessible, largely thanks to the band’s no nonsense approach to song-writing and the sheer melodic force of their hooks. Crunchy metal with groove, weight, stoner hits and thick, thick lashing of excitement – what more could anyone want?

The title-track kicks things off with a belting blues-kissed riff that could crush heaven with its weight. ‘The Eye’ is a hulking, swaying song with heaviness and bombast to spare, whilst ‘Another Day’ sounds like ‘Sabotage’ era Sabbath, an orgasmic rainbow of colour spasming over a core of darkness. No one sounds quite like this band. ‘Hear The Earth’ should have been a radio hit, the colour radiating from the guitar interweaving with the crunching heaviness of its heaviness to make a song both weighty and incessantly melodic. In Eric Wagner they have a grizzled voice and rawk croon with hooks that suck you into the band’s off little world. And in Bruce Franklin they have a chronically underrated riff writer (like Catherdral’s Gary Jennings, Franklin is something of a unheralded guitar genius of the Ockham’s razor style of riffing).

The record was recorded in difficult circumstances (self-financed following record-company woes) and was followed by an extended hiatus. In places, you can hear the cracks: whilst the macabre cover of Carol King’s ‘Porpoise Song’ is stirring stuff, the band’s take on The Beatles’s ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ is just plain odd (if somewhat prescient, given the uncertainty the band was facing). In 1995 this music was ahead of the curve. The best stoner music might have been made in the 1990s, but it was still a small-scale, underground scene. Certainly not nu metal, or post-grunge, or pop punk, these years were difficult ones for true metal bands and you can understand why Trouble folded (temporarily) after this record – but sometimes triumph comes out of adversity and the sheer riff-packed brilliance of this record is a triumph indeed. Not a classic band’s ‘classic’ sound, but a helluva ride nevertheless.

A black gem of an album.

[binnie]

From the vaults: Sodom – Agent Orange (1989)

Thrash was – originally, at least – an American form of metal, perhaps the point at which the US took over the ‘Heavy Metal’ mantle formulated by the UK in the ‘70s and ‘80s. We all know that the ‘Big 4’ of thrash (and some of their ‘smaller’ peers) delivered some genre-changing, life-fulfilling ode-to-the-riff packed albums in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. But what is often overlooked is that fact that Germany’s ‘Big Three’ (Sodom, Kreator and Destruction) served up their fair share of metallic goodness, too. If the debate regarding ‘best album’ for the Big 4 falls roundly between ‘Master Of Puppets’ and ‘Reign In Blood’ (it’s the former, by the way), for the ‘Big Three’ it comes down to Kreator’s delightfully evil ‘Pleasure To Kill’ and ‘Agent Orange’, the third album from Sodom. Most would opt for Kreator, a band who served up something heavier than just about anything conceivable in 1986. But for my money, ‘Agent Orange’ is the superior record – certainly not as fast, or as rabid, but the maturity of song-writing and delivery here makes for a record which is truly crushing in its hyper-fast Teutonic march and relentlessly tight. The German bands were always more brutal, and this is no exception. But ‘Agent Orange’ combined that organic savagery with the complexity of what the ‘Big 4’ were doing, and tempered it in places with some Celtic Frost style atmospherics. Far from gun-metal grey, the result is a band which paints in many shades of heaviness. The cement-mixer bass is high in the mix; the blood-curdling vocals are downright mean; Chris Witchhunter (RIP) hits the drums like an angry gorilla; and Frankie Blackfire’s riffs are utterly, utterly savage.

This album was light-years ahead of the band’s debut ‘Persecution Mania’ in terms of focus and precision. The title-track serves up pulverising riff after pulverising riff on a bedrock of Slayer-esque time-changes to amp up the energy. This is aggression of mesmerizing proportions, the sort of heaviness that owns you, and which has rarely been matched since. Quite how Tom Angelripper’s bark manages to chisel its way through the mountainface of metal is beyond me. Like all classic records, ‘Agent Orange’ combines variety with a unity of theme and purpose. Thus the mid-paced stomper ‘Remember The Fallen’ is distinct from the punk fury of ‘Incest’ (the nastiest song ever written?) but yet not apart from it or the greasy evilness of the Motorhead-esque ‘Ausgebombt’. ‘Magic Dragon’ features 3 or 4 riffs which most band’s spend a life-time never being able to match and builds and builds its power through a machine-gun like delivery of spitting rage and is outdone in the ‘my fucking neck hurts’ stakes only by ‘Tired & Red’, an epic which spans from punk to Maiden via a melodic interlude. Like a Metallica epic, it’s true beauty and the beast stuff. Sodom would certainly become better musicians in future years; and they would also become more comfortable with the concept of melody. But even as good as their records in the ‘00s have been, they’ve never come close to the sheer other-worldly vibrancy and vitality of ‘Agent Orange’.

What makes ‘Agent Orange’ such a joy almost a quarter of a century on is the unbridled fury it exhibits. The sound here is ‘Kill ‘em All’ raw, a hypnotic crunch of metal on metal guitars recorded on a small budget and capturing a certain type of power which bigger productions don’t possess. Easily a top 10 all-time thrash classic, this is a record which should be hailed in the same way as anything produced by Sodom’s American peers, a purchased by the same hairy teenage palms that lap up ‘Hell Awaits’ with such glee. Few records capture a time so aptly without becoming limited to it, but ‘Agent Orange’ is certainly one of them.

[binnie]

Clutch – Earth Rocker (2013)

Clutch are the rarest of things in 21st century heavy music: a genuinely good-time rock ‘n’ roll band that doesn’t ply their trade via shameless plagiarism of rock’s past. Fun is underrated in modern heavy music, but where it does occur it appears in two guises: 1) sounding an awful lot like Zeppelin and AC/DC; or 2) sounding like a Sunset Strip wannabe. Clutch do neither. They have always existed in their own little bubble, a shamanic brew of stoner, funk, blues and metal which is delivered with vibes, wit and charisma a-plenty. And it RAWKS!! ‘Earth Rocker’ is a simpler and more straight-forward affair than the band’s recent (and brilliant) albums ‘From Beale St. To Oblivion’ and ‘Strange Cousins From The West’. Here we get the foot-to-the-floor, in yer face bounce of early Clutch albums like ‘Pure Rock Fury’ and ‘Blast Tyrant’ – there’s far more crunchy stonerisms of Monster Magnet or Fu Manchu here than in recent years. The title-track is a funked up Govt. Mule jamming with Sly and the Family Stone; ‘Mr Freedom’ is sass with badass; whilst ‘D.C. Sound Attack’ is a chainsaw swamp-blues which shows that even when they serve up biting social criticism Clutch remain a fuck of a lot of fun. In a sense, however, itemising the songs cannot do a Clutch album justice. Perfectly balanced, and lacking in any fat, the variety of pace, tones and poppin’ rhythms makes for a classy album which exists to put the ooo in groove. Topped off by Neil Fallon’s idiosyncratic approach to lyric-writing – part preacher, part beat poet – the cool-meter just topped out.

One of a handful of bands who just seem categorically incapable of putting out a bad record, Clutch have yet to disappoint or fail to surprise. ‘Earth Rocker’ continues to serve up smiles. A truly great live – if you’ve seen ‘em, they’re in your top 10 – with another arsenal of songs that charge like a bull with its balls tied, Clutch are going to continue to go from strength to strength. The question is: will they ever secure an audience level which matches their level of critical acclaim?

Your ears will be smiling.

[TFM_Dale]

Clutch – Earth Rocker (2013)

Clutch are the rarest of things in 21st century heavy music: a genuinely good-time rock ‘n’ roll band that doesn’t ply their trade via shameless plagiarism of rock’s past. Fun is underrated in modern heavy music, but where it does occur it appears in two guises: 1) sounding an awful lot like Zeppelin and AC/DC; or 2) sounding like a Sunset Strip wannabe. Clutch do neither. They have always existed in their own little bubble, a shamanic brew of stoner, funk, blues and metal which is delivered with vibes, wit and charisma a-plenty. And it RAWKS!! ‘Earth Rocker’ is a simpler and more straight-forward affair than the band’s recent (and brilliant) albums ‘From Beale St. To Oblivion’ and ‘Strange Cousins From The West’. Here we get the foot-to-the-floor, in yer face bounce of early Clutch albums like ‘Pure Rock Fury’ and ‘Blast Tyrant’ – there’s far more crunchy stonerisms of Monster Magnet or Fu Manchu here than in recent years. The title-track is a funked up Govt. Mule jamming with Sly and the Family Stone; ‘Mr Freedom’ is sass with badass; whilst ‘D.C. Sound Attack’ is a chainsaw swamp-blues which shows that even when they serve up biting social criticism Clutch remain a fuck of a lot of fun. In a sense, however, itemising the songs cannot do a Clutch album justice. Perfectly balanced, and lacking in any fat, the variety of pace, tones and poppin’ rhythms makes for a classy album which exists to put the ooo in groove. Topped off by Neil Fallon’s idiosyncratic approach to lyric-writing – part preacher, part beat poet – the cool-meter just topped out.

One of a handful of bands who just seem categorically incapable of putting out a bad record, Clutch have yet to disappoint or fail to surprise. ‘Earth Rocker’ continues to serve up smiles. A truly great live – if you’ve seen ‘em, they’re in your top 10 – with another arsenal of songs that charge like a bull with its balls tied, Clutch are going to continue to go from strength to strength. The question is: will they ever secure an audience level which matches their level of critical acclaim?

Your ears will be smiling.

I haven't listened to a Clutch album since Blast Tyrant and need to get caught up, I liked it as I have all of their albums I have listened to but they got lost in the shuffle for me I suppose. Great review as always, I'll check it out.

[binnie]

Do check it out (and the other Clutch albums I mentioned in the review). Still one of the best bands in rock.

[Seshmeister]

No need to apologize - there's no problem with saying 'fuck' in this thread

It wasn't him it was the voices in his head.

[binnie]

Kveltertak – Meir (2013)

Kveltertak are an unholy behemoth of a band – and ‘Meir’ is the sort of album that you run out of superlatives for. We may not be halfway through 2013 yet, but when the ‘Best Of’ end of year lists are penned in December, I would be amazed if this evil blast of demented fun is not in the upper half of most critics’ polls. Describing Kveltertak’s sound is not easy. An amalgamation of metal, hardcore, stoner and prog, the band blends its influences through crazy arrangements and serves them up furiously. Like Mastodon or Baroness, they realize that metal doesn’t have to be relentlessly staccato (as it has been since thrash), and they harness their heaviness to some serious old-skool riffage and the duelling guitars of classic metal, and temper it all with the crusty aesthetics and frenetic energy of post-hardcore. And they don’t take life too seriously, either. Songs about Trepans (holes in the skull to release evil spirits), being on the run, a man condemned to walk the earth forever, tyrants and an inter-galactic killer delivered to earth on a meteor all combined the powerful sense of escapism which metal used to possess. Indeed, for all of their proficiency this is a band that wants to kick your ass, not kill you with complexity.

Picking out the highlights is a tough task. ‘Apenbaring’ is a morass of energy, bass-heavy rock ‘n’ roll with a punk sparkiness; ‘Spring Fra Livet’ is awash with killer riffs and loose licks, and passes from white noise to compelling rock ‘n’ roll in one swoop; ‘Evig Vanrar’ is the groove-punk of Every Time I Die slowed down and brawling; ‘Nekroksmos’ sounds like Motorhead being covered by a black metal band and serves up epic wave after epic wave of bison-balled blues riffs; and ‘Kveltertak’ is a metal anthem straight outta-1985, proving that for all their complexity, this is a band can kill it in straightforward mode, too. It will rip it live. You don’t even care that they’re singing in Norwegian – the effervescent sense of fun is so compelling it’ll suck you right into identifying with them. So, a metal band that is innovative without being pretentious; boulder shitting heavy but still infectious; and understands that fun almost always trumps ‘musical depth’ – with albums like this, metal really could move past that cloying sense of misty-eyed nostalgia for the ‘80s which often holds it back.

[binnie]

Killswitch Engage – Disarm The Descent (2013)

Let’s be honest: reunion records usually suck. Dripping in nostalgia, over-confidence and entitlement they usually fall somewhere between self-indulgence and self-parody. Sure, the last couple of years have seen some mighty fine ones – Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Vision of Disorder – but a general rule of thumb is that the bigger the band, the bigger the disappointment. And in the world of 21st century metal, few bands come bigger that KSE. Having ‘saved’ metal from its ‘nu’ doldrums in the early ‘00s with a debut record which – let’s be frank – punch metal’s collective head squarely in the nose and went on to spawn not only a subgenre – metalcore – but a 1000 copyists with a 1000 cliches (guttural vocals in the chorus/ clean in the chorus, breakdowns in every song), this is a band that actually MATTERED. And then the singer left. He (Jesse Leach) was replaced by an equally talented (if less intense) vocalists in the form of Howard Jones, and the band went on to release some killer material – namely ‘The End Of Heartache’. But as the ‘00s drifted into the ‘10s, KSE became, well, a little flabby. A little uninspired. There was nothing particularly bad about ‘As Daylight Dies’ or ‘Killswitch Engage’ (2009) they just didn’t have the vim of those older records. The hooks weren’t quite as hooky; the melodies didn’t soar in quite such an inspirational way; and the metal, it just wasn’t as livid. So they got their original singer back. And they made this.

Oh, and it fuckin’ RULES!!! It takes about 2 bars of opener ‘The Hell In Me’ to feel it. The precision riffage, the taut rhythms, and then a COLOSSAL chorus kicks in and it’s all over. Welcome back, fellas. We’ve missed you. What made KSE work is here in abundance: dexterous riffage and emotive vocals. They’re heavy, but they never go off the cliff; they’re extreme (ultra-fast in places, screamy in others) but they still put son-dynamics first; and they have more melody in the vocals than just about anyone in metal for the past 2 decades. Jesse Leach is on fire here – his delivery makes the melodies as heavy as they are infectious. And there is just no let-up. ‘The New Awakening’ is an anthem of defiance; ‘No End In Sight’ encapsulates the gleeful rebellion that makes metal great; and ‘The Call’ is warp-factor metal that still manages to be catchy. Sure, there are some predictable moments (‘All We Have’, ‘Turning Point’) but nothing is ever close to forgettable. Adam Dutkiewicz and Joel Stroetzel serve up a compact wall of riffage which remains understated and incredibly powerful, and even fly loose with some nifty solos in places, too. And those choruses, well it’s game over……

Critics might cry havoc that all KSE did was Americanize the Gotheburg sound that In Flames and Dark Tranquilty had been running with 5 years earlier, and they would be right. But that doesn’t diminish the calibre of the tunes this band delivers. ‘Disarm The Descent’ has not re-energized a living legend, it is also the perfect encapsulation of metal’s middleground in 2013. You’ll be singing it for weeks.

[binnie]

Neurosis – Honour Found In Decay (2012)

Describing Neurosis’s music to someone who hasn’t heard them is like trying to explain the big bang theory to a chimp. Indeed, trying to capture what – precisely – is devastatingly powerful about Neurosis in prose is ultimately an exercise in futility, a demonstration that words do have their limitations in trying to demarcate art or sound. It is safe to begin by saying the this band have never been an easy listen. Emerging from the hardcore scene in the mid ‘80s and blossoming into a fully-fledged art-rock band devoted to exploring existential questions and human fragility, Neurosis have always been a long way from the Foo Fighters. But for all the challenging nature of the music, it is truly devastating. Most bands produce sound. This band makes music that matters: in the same way that some authors write stories that you enjoy for the duration of the time it take to read them; and some are Dostoevsky.

‘Honour Found In Decay’ is a long way from the band’s most celebrated albums – the tortured heaviness and metallic tapestries of ‘Through Silver In Blood’ and ‘Enemy of the Sun’ are not replicated here. Indeed, the broader elements of the rock spectrum explored in Scott Kelly’s and Steve Von Till’s solo work have been fed back into the mix to produce a great complement of textures. You can hear Tom Waits and Nick Cave in the nuances, Captain Beefheart in the odours. Like the very best of prog-metal – Isis, Opeth, Oceansize, Mastodon – this is not a band that produces ‘songs’ in the verse-chorus-verse-chorus sense of the term. The songs here are more movement, dark tapestries of pieces of music woven together in a furious fashion. It is the easy with which the band moves from part to part – and with which they absorb their contradictory influences into one solid aesthetic – which staggers. Although the sound nothing like Killing Joke, the effect is similar: a wall of sound rich in texture and colour, and relentlessly hypnotic in the all-consuming pull of its groove. And – like Killing Joke – you could never call Neurosis’s music overtly ‘metallic’. But it IS primal, furious and repulsively heavy.

There is nothing here below excellent, but some moments have to be heard to be believed. The peaks and troughs of ‘At The Wall’ fuse into music that is utterly chilling, the band shifting from Leonard Cohen-esque darkness to doom metal monstrosity with breathless ease and locking the listener in the stare of something truly terrifying. Elsewhere, the tar-black groove of ‘My Heart For Deliverance’ is as ugly and affecting at one and the same time. Most prog sounds like it was made by nice, intelligent private school boys with an affection for whimsy – Neurosis sound like a collection of broken men locked into a darkened wood for several lifetimes. The sound as ever is organic even when the music is complex. As they’ve aged they’ve felt the need to play less and less, and the result is record full of songs which breathe and pulsate, scream and seethe in equal measure. Steve Albini’s unobtrusive production captures the rawness with a sparse delivering serving to make this band even rougher in their grandeur.

This is a record by one of the most innovative and elemental bands of the past two decades. It is demanding – exacting, even – but it will command your attention. And if it’s too much for you, well there’s always that Foo Fighter record…….

[Mr. Vengeance]

I take it Bin, that you do this stuff for a living? If not, you ought to.