Category Archives: Album Reviews

Dust Bolt – Awake The Riot

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Dust Bolt Album Cover

 

1986 was a great year. Master Of Puppets, Pleasure To Kill,  Obsessed By Cruelty and  Reign In Blood were all released that year surely making it the finest hour for Thrash Metal as a genre. Germans Dust Bolt clearly agreed with this statement providing a faithful yet enjoyable romp on this sophomore release. Firmly caught between the vicious all-out war of Slayer with generous helping of Kreator heaviness, the band impress with some searing fretwork but snarling leads and breakneck tempos. Dust Bolt’s sound wins zero points for individuality but this a record made by guys who clearly play music for the joy of doing so.

‘Soul Erazor’ even has   reprising Tom Araya’s scream from the beginning of ‘The Antichrist’. It’s a faithful yet powerful take on a genre that has become somewhat stagnant in recent years save the likes of Evile, Gama Bomb and Municipal Waste.

The band experiment with song structures well enough too.  The two and a half minute blast of the title track shows Dust Bolt can write a moshpit terror but there are several over the four minute mark.

The guitar playing of Flo and singer Lenny has much to do with the band’s appeal, with the duo delivering ripping solos tempered with intricate harmonies on the headrush of ‘Living A Lie’.

Sure the album has few surprises and a couple of duffers like the formulaic ‘Eternal Waste’ dent the momentum. Finale ‘The Monotonous Distant Dream’ is a double edged sword. On one hand this seven minute epic which adds a delicious touch of menace and foreboding but placing it as the centrepiece of the record would have perhaps been of greater benefit rather than tagging it on at the end.

Sure this Bayern quartet may own much to their Teutonic forbearers but there is enough to have you believe there is better to come from these fellas.  A touching homage to the greats of the genre ‘Awake The Riot’ will have you hunting for those classic 80s records before you give this lot another spin.

 

6/10

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ROSS BAKER

 

 


The Dagger – The Dagger

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You’d be forgiven for thinking The Dagger, a band featuring former members of Grave and Dismember, might be a bit scuzzy. A bit riffy. A bit, denim-jackety. And, well, a bit Death Metally. You’d be forgiven, but you’d be very wrong. The Dagger (Century Media) swims in a different pool of influences to the past escapades of its protagonists, swinging its pants at Classic Rock and proto-NWOBHM with plenty of Deep Purple, Sin After Sin era Priest and The Who prevalent in the sound.

 

The first thing to note is the astonishing attention to detail. The Dagger doesn’t just reference these bands or that period, it has been painstakingly crafted to sound like it was recorded in the 70’s, finding those classic warm Fender guitar tones, that fuzzy bass groove and that thick Ian Paice pound and tickle on the skins. Vocalist Jani Kataja could well be singing on Very ‘eavy… Very ‘umble both in terms of his own delivery, but also in terms of the meticulously recreated rock sound playing around him.

 

But life is not all aesthetics, and while The Dagger has the tones, does it have the tunes? Opener ‘Ahead Of You All’ suggests so, as does the Mott The Hoople inspired ‘1978’ with its tales of weekend warriors and the Iommi worshipping Mob Rules of ‘Dogs Of Warning’. Elsewhere ‘Electric Dawn’ could have been one of the songs Iron Maiden left behind at the Ruskin Arms as they strode towards a recording contract, and ‘Call Of 9’ is all Blackmore stomp and swagger.

 

But for all the smiles it induces, for all that it is an enjoyable way to spend 45 minutes, you can’t but think that while the sounds can be replicated, for all the homage being paid, one thing that can’t be copied or magicked out of nowhere is greatness. Where are the distinctive, iconic riffs, and timeless choruses of the Purples, Rainbows, Mountains? The Dagger are a good band, losing the listener in a bygone age, but this album holds no ‘Speed King’, let alone a ‘Child In Time’. (Try and) sound like the true legends and you will invariable come off the worse for the comparison.

 

But, when the twin guitars bring in ‘Inside The Monolithic Dome’ like Saxon’s ‘Strangers In The Night’, or ‘The Dark Cloud’ dances like it belongs on a Di’Anno era Maiden album, The Dagger can be forgiven their indulgences in paying reverence to their forebears.

 

7.0/10.0

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STEVE TOVEY

 

 


The Drip – A Presentation Of Gruesome Poetics

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The Drip album cover

 

Making fun of a band’s name is the kind of lazy, empty journalism that I’d normally try to avoid, but sometimes the temptation is just too strong. I mean, seriously… Before a note of their music has been played, The Drip earn their place amongst Gloomy Grim, Mournful Gust and Imposer as the elite of Metal bands with names that are a lot less threatening than they’re probably meant to be – with the exception that I can at least understand how those names are meant to be scary.

 

So yeah, that’s out of the way… leaving, it has to be said, not that much to talk about. The Drip make their intentions clear with vicious opener ‘Catalyst’, at two minutes and twenty-six seconds, the single longest track on the record, and then don’t do anything to change. A Presentation Of Gruesome Poetics (Relapse) is six tracks, twelve minutes and a near-constant onslaught of blasting, scything riffs and angry shrieks.

 

If all Grindcore is about controlled chaos, The Drip definitely lean on the side of control. The frenzied, staggering lurches made famous by Napalm Death or Terrorizer are entirely absent here, their place taken by the kind of muscular, look-at-my-neck-muscles Metalcore breakdowns you’d expect from Hatebreed or Terror. They’re deployed well, and probably get a huge response live, but for those who prefer their Grind wilder, more destructive and untamed, it sounds a little cheap, and perhaps a little posed. This is music for flexing your muscles and ninja-kicking your mates in a circle, not raging against the injustice of a system that doesn’t work.

 

A perfectly solid release, then, and one that delivers exactly what it promises, but it’s hard to imagine anyone getting too excited about this. One imagines that it was released primarily to give them something to do while ripping up tiny squats and club venues – a task for which it is well suited.

 

6.0 / 10.0

The Drip on Facebook

 

 

RICHIE H-R

 


My Fictions – Stranger Songs

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Cramming a massive ten songs into under thirty minutes, My Fictions’s latest offering Stranger Songs (Top Shelf) is a short, sharp containment of chaos. Furious drumming and guitar work punctuate each track in the album as this four-piece race through the album with blistering speed. The album is unrelenting from beginning to end, stopping for only the briefest moments to transition between tracks before hurtling full throttle into the next song. Rooted in hardcore, the US band throw in progressive elements that push the edges of the genre out into new territories. This movement away from basic song structures allows this album to inject new life into a sometime stale genre. The songs twist in unexpected directions, carefully crafted to capture the listener.

 

Much of the album may have be filled with ceaselessly aggressive songs, however I didn’t find it conveyed any depth of emotion, often feeling like it was imitating rather than truly capturing. It was only the end of ‘Airport Song’ and sections of ‘Parking Lot’ that displayed any semblance of expression. Really this band has a lot to offer the scene, but this album is too polished, too pristine. The album is wrapped in a clean-cut production that simply destroys the rawness of the material and sugarcoats any bleakness the album tries to emulate. The work and the talent that has gone into this album is coursing through each track, but they have altogether tried too hard on this record scrubbing out the ultimately addictive rough edges on the sound.

 

5.0 / 10

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CAITLIN SMITH

 

 

 


Venowl – Patterns Of Failure

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Venowl album cover

 

Venowl must hate journalists. It’s the only explanation – why else would they put out music simultaneously this compelling and this hard to positively describe, if not to frustrate the people whose job it is to do exactly that. I really want you to know how great Patterns Of Failure (self-released) is, but I have no idea how to put it across in words. Those devious bastards.

 

Starting with the crudest genre-labels then, the three long tracks on Patterns Of Failure essay an abstract, deconstructed form of Sludge/Doom which borders on outright Noise. Feedback-drenched guitars, drums and piercing shrieked vocals are the core musical building blocks, but how they are deployed is unusual even within their niche genre. Rather than mashed together into a sprawling whole as you might expect, each track follows its own discrete journey from beginning to end, moving through often very intricate shapes while retaining the same punishing tempo and pitch-black tone.

Time, then, for Lazy Journalism trick #2 – comparisons. There are a fair few bands that can be meaningfully name-dropped here, but none are a perfect match; Wormphlegm playing Ehnahre songs, or Grave Upheaval watching snuff movies at Khanate’s house with a crate of ketamine? Sabazius if they squeezed all eleven hours of Descent Of Man into fifty-five minutes?

 

The very best Noise music, I was told once by a fan of the genre, is that which sounds entirely structured in its chaos – creating the impression not of pure randomness but of an order which is too arcane for the listener to easily engage with, but yet is clearly there. That’s perhaps the greatest quality of Patterns Of Failure, along with the fact that something is always “happening” in the music. It would be too easy for an album like this to sit on its hands recycling empty feedback and looking smug, but there’s a real depth to what Venowl achieve here – a depth which captivates even as it frustrates the ability to describe it.

 

Quite simply – every other tactic having failed – Patterns Of Failure is one of the most distinctively horrible things you’ll hear all year.

Venowl band

9.0/10.0

 

Venowl on Facebook

 

 

RICHIE H-R

 

 


Allegaeon – Elements Of The Infinite

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Despite their relatively short existence, Death Metallers Allegaeon have proven to be a more than efficient, if not spectacular, outfit. Their brand of melodic and technical death metal is far from being an original formulation, but previous albums such as 2012’s Formshifter showed the quintet from Fort Collins, Colorado, do possess real song-writing prowess and formidability.

 

Latest effort Elements Of The Infinite (Metal Blade) follows firmly on this same path of dogged reliability bar some very subtle differences as the band marginally up the aggression factor at the expense of some of the melody. Elements… also shows a little less of that all too familiar Gothenburg sound in its DNA. These changes are minute however and will not catch established fans off guard by any stretch of the imagination, as the core of their sound is still founded on melodic flourishes and precision.

 The continued persistence to their relatively strict formula is the album’s biggest drawback as EOTI  is lacking both in spark and imagination. It is clear that these guys have musical talent by the bucket load, but proceedings here are uninspired, especially compared to the gems that are its predecessors.

 

Despite some tinkering, Elements Of The Infinite sees Allegaeon firmly sat in their niche bracket and when compared to previous outings it is clear that these guys have a lot more to give. Unfortunately their latest offering is a bog-standard melodic death metal effort, which sadly bears the weight of unlived expectations.

 

6.0/10.0

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CHRIS TIPPELL

 


Blues Pills – Blues Pills

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Blues Pills - Blues Pills

 

Once in a while a record comes along that knocks you sideways. Once in a while a record comes along that isn’t just about flailing around like dying fish, furiously howling at the injustice of having to tidy your bedroom once in a while. Once in a while a record comes along that reaffirms your faith in the power of exemplary musicianship allied to great songs.

 

Readers, here is one of those records.

 

Blues Pills’ self-titled debut album arrives with such self-confidence and chutzpah that you could be forgiven that they had been ploughing this particular furrow of blues rock for decades and were at the peak of their career rather than at the start. Following two EPs released on Kadavar Records (in 2012 and 2013, respectively), a move to Nuclear Blast has seen the band deliver this first full length offering. And what an offering! Blues Pills is not so much the sound of a band stepping up to the plate, it is the sound of a band knocking it out of the proverbial park.

 

Blues Pills is a brilliant and, at times, sensational record. Right from the off with the throat- grabbing, blues-soaked power of ‘High Class Woman’ through the mellow, folk inspired ‘River’ to the heritage cap-doffin cover of ‘Gypsy’ and the rich, haunting coda of ‘Little Sun’, this is a record with depth and breadth, soul and humanity. Clearly a band in love with Cream and Jimi Hendrix, there is also more than a spoonful of lovin’ here for early Fleetwood Mac both in compositional style and lyrical prowess.

 

Lead vocalist Elin Larsson has done a terrific job here, simultaneously sounding haunted, passionate and heartfelt. However, all of the band turn in stellar performances, the thumping, soul packed bass-lines of Zack Anderson , the mellifluous drumming of Cory Berry or the patchouli oil soaked guitar licking of Dorian Sorriaux all add up to a heady brew that intoxicates as much as it invigorates.

 

What truly impresses though is that Blues Pills is more than the sum of its considerable parts. The band have succeeded in creating a record that you can easily and willingly immerse yourself in, a record that understands and curates its heritage and lineage but is fresh, contemporary and massively memorable.

 

This is the record that you’ll be recommending to your friends for months to come.

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9.0/10.0

Blues Pills on Facebook

 

MAT DAVIES

 


Expain – Just the Tip

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Canadian quintet Expain clearly don’t like genre confines. Their debut album, Just the Tip (Self-Released), takes all your thrash expectations and throws them out the window. Consisting of Daniel Brand (vocals), Eric Morrison & Pat Peeve (guitars), Nikko Whitworth (bass) and Ryan Idris (drums), Vancouver’s Expain bill themselves as “the perfect band for those lovers of shredding guitar solos, lightening-speed kick drums, bloodcurdling vocals and pant-pissing comedy.”

 

Clearly not bashful, the description isn’t far off. The band have taken elements of pretty much every extreme metal style going and put them in a blender, and the results are pretty unpredictable. There’s lots of jazzy interludes shoe-horned in, but mostly it’s just intricate high octane riffing and furious drumming. There’s too many jumps in style to really pin down Expain, but from the off it is clear that the band are technically very good.

 

Instrumental opener ‘Bacchus’ feed into the full throttle of ‘Aggression’s Progression’, a headlong charge of melodic shredding with Brand’s rasping screams over the top. ‘Phoenix Writhing’ and ‘Don’t Worry, The Worst Is Yet to Come’ continue the thrash/death/prog chaos with gusto. The melodic interlude of ‘The King’ and jazzier moments that intersperse seemingly at random show the band can change things up, but for the most part Expain are about wedging in as many riffs and solos as possible in as few songs as they can.

 

While the “everything and the kitchen sink” approach entertains to start with, it grows tiresome before long. Relentless riffs and endless song changes often merge into one, and while Brand’s range of growls and screams are impressive, it does all become grating after a while. There’s nothing wrong with the carnage of ‘Allegiance to Pain’ or the slower ‘Manatee,’ but with so many style and speed shifts in every song there’s little to offer after a few songs.

 

The band may not be a joke outfit but they have tried to throw in a bit of humour into what they do. It’s easy to have a childish smirk at the album title and the band don’t mind poking fun at metal tropes with some of the other song titles. ‘Eating a Beating Heart’ and ‘Headbang Your Head Off’ are good examples of this, though if the lyrics are meant to be funny the humour’s lost in translation.

 

With Just the Tip, Expain have shown they’ve got a sense of humour and are a bunch of really technically skilled musicians with a lot of ideas. However they’ve not shown how to write a memorable tune. Still, an impressive debut nonetheless.

 

6.0/10.0

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DAN SWINHOE

 

 


Overkill – White Devil Armory

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Overkill White Devil Armoury album cover

 

There are very few bands that are instantly recognisable and have their own “sound”. Even within the distinctive refrains of Thrash Metal, Overkill have always retained identity, honed and refined over 30 years. Yet when Nuclear Blast picked them up on a multi-album deal five years ago (the are on eOne in the USA) a few eyebrows were raised as, despite a W.F.O. (Atlantic) or From The Underground And Below (CMC), it had been over twenty years since the release of the bone fide classics of their canon, the seminal thrashmeister-pieces Feel The Fire, Taking Over, and Horrorscope (Megaforce).

 

Overkill started their recent run with Ironbound in 2009, an album that stands comfortably replete in hi-tops and leather jacket shoulder to shoulder with the best of the bands’ career. This was big dog reclaiming the yard stuff. Any concerns this return to form was a flash in the pan were quickly dispelled as the band, always a force live, backed up the acclaimed Ironbound tour by releasing its follow-up The Electric Age, which continued in the same vein. Overkill was more than back, and was more than flying.

 

White Devil Armory completes the hat-trick of belters, possibly outshining its two companions and proudly ranks among their stand-out releases. Alongside having two trademarks elements – DD Verni’s snarling metallic bass growl and Bobby ‘Blitz’ Ellsworth’s unmatched nasal spit – one of the key aspects to the East Coast thrashers’ sound has always been their ability to marry aggressive thrash with melody and to produce memorable anthems. From the opener, the gut-punch pummelling ‘Armorist’, to the closing epic chug of ‘In The Name’, that is what you get. Aggressive staccato riffs welded into memorable, powerful thrash tunes, tunes with the vibrancy and commitment of the bands earlier days, but the muscle and know-how of seasoned veterans. These guys know how to get it done, and the win is what matters.

 

Whether that’s pulling out a manic, catchy chorus in track three ‘Down To The Bone’ and dovetailing that with some choice ‘Use Your Head’ riffage, or reprising the punk/hardcore battery of ‘The SRC’ with the face-smashing ‘Pig’, the consistency and delivery is high-level throughout. The darker stomp of ‘Bitter Pill’, all channelled hammer-to-anvil, leads into stand-out rager ‘Where There’s Smoke…’, a heads-down-see-you-at-the-end opening that hurtles out of the blocks and runs headlong into a trademark Blitz snarl, before seguing into a grooving, juddering mid-section. Any fears of the album petering out are laid to rest by a closing trio of ‘King Of The Rat Bastards’, a classic Overkill slam-dunk mix of the hook and the heavy, the neck-snapping tightness of ‘It’s All Yours’ and finale ‘In The Name’, an Overkill closer in the tradition of an ‘Overkill II (The Nightmare Continues)’, bring matters to a conclusion with its studded-wristband-pumping call-and-answer.

 

White Devil Armory presents a band at the top of its game. Health issues seemingly long behind him, Blitz personifies this, producing a performance of vigour and confidence, nailing and owning as you’d expect. He brings to the table an assurance in delivery as he knows, even 30 years on, no one does it like he does. He is the boss. This asserted presence filters across and applies to all parties. Guitar twins Dave Linsk and Derek “The Skull” Tailer have partnered each other for over a decade now and with seamless self-assurance bring the riffs, the finger-flurrying solos and the structured melodic links. Elsewhere DD Verni shows off his skills, bass runs filtering through the mix at appropriate times, while Ron Lipnicki is the perfect backbone, punishing when needed, able to groove when required, but at all times driving everything, and releasing the reigns when it’s time for the powersurge.

 

It may be patronising to say, but to maintain this level of quality, consistency, force and vitality at their age and this deep into their career is testament (sic) to the professionalism and ability of all involved with Overkill, but above all to the passion within the band to keep producing the very best of thrash. Thrash may have come and gone and come back and gone again, with very few of their contemporaries surviving, but when Overkill decreed “We are strong, We will always be” back in 1987 (‘In Union We Stand’) they uttered a statement that sums up their career. This is no Indian summer; White Devil Armory is simply Overkill doing what Overkill do best.

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9.0/10.0

Overkill on Facebook

 

STEVE TOVEY

 


Wolvhammer – Clawing Into Black Sun

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It’s not often you find a black metal album you can dance to, but Wolvhammer seem to have produced a sound that does just that. Mixing up doses of black metal with rock sensibilities their music is both dissonant and hooky, meandering into post-metal territories on occasion. The different genres are blended seamlessly, forming an entity where each style is equal and nothing dominates the other.

 

Following on from 2011’s sophomore album, The Obsidian Plains, Clawing into Black Sun (both Profound Lore) may not be a change in style, but it is certainly a completely different beast. It lacks some of the raw aggression that was present in The Obsidian Plains, opting for a more refined approach to the style. The music centers much more heavily around the riffs, downplaying some of the heavy black metal influence from the previous release. The biggest difference however can be found in the vocals, losing some of the raw and harrowing edge.

 

While ‘Death Division’ and ‘The Desanctification’ drip with hatred, ‘Silver Key’ and title track ‘Clawing into Black Sun’ strip back the bleakness, replacing it with more groove-based riffing. Coming in at almost nine minutes long, it is the longest song and really stands out an album underpinned by a melodic edge where many of the tracks charge between rage and refinement. ‘A Light That Doesn’t Yield’ is a dark introspective; its’ melodies poignant and captivating backed by slow-moving harmonies underneath.

Wolvhammer have once again crafted an eloquent and addictive album evolving out the sound of previous work. While it lacks the sheer torment that Obsidian Plains encapsulated, for those that like their black metal polished, buffed and refined, this makes an essential addition to the record collection.

Wolvhammer band photos

8.0/10.0

Wolvhammer on Facebook

 

CAITLIN SMITH