Category Archives: EP Reviews

Avatarium – All I Want EP

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NB 3355-1 Gatefold LP (2014).indd

 

When it comes to going in blind on a release it can be the best or the worst of times for a listener, On the one hand you can discover an absolutely storming new band, or you might come across (as I have many times in the past) discover an album that could be vastly improved by sending the CD case out to the reviewer blank with nothing but an apology note and some chocolates.

All I Want (Nuclear Blast) by Swedish female fronted doom five piece Avatarium luckily falls into the first category. Its sweet yet substantial sound fills your ears with enough melody, crunchy drone and riff to keep even the most melodic rock or gnarly doom fan satisfied. The first two tracks are recorded in the studio, with the latter three recorded live, especially pack the punch all tracks hope to deliver on their first listens, with the album’s title track providing to be the highlight of the release with its soaring vocal line and clearly Sabbath influenced riffs.

It would be easy to make connects to the likes of Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult as touchstones for the band’s sound, which borrows heavily from the 60’s/ early 70’s early hard rock scene. But the album owes a great debt to the likes of Jefferson Airplane (certainly not Starship) especially in front women’s Jennie Ann Smith’s epic vocal range, she really has a great set of pipes on here and she shows it off throughout the five tracks on offer.

Overall, All I Want is a great EP from the group and shows a lot of promise in what is to come. The sweet mix of the almost Janis Joplin vocals and the low end of the 70s hard rock influenced doom under it makes a great pairing as they effortlessly work against each other, packing just enough low end and bottle to stop it from falling into the weak end of the spectrum.

 

7.0/10

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DAN O’BRIEN


Sepulchral Temple – Sepulchral Temple

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sepulchral temple - cover

Originally released last year on truer-than-thou label Iron Bonehead Productions on 12” vinyl, multi-national three-piece Sepulchral Temple evidently thought their debut self-titled EP hadn’t reached enough ears, so 2014 sees a CD release on Invictus Productions. Featuring new artwork along with a couple of rather pointless outro tracks tacked on after each song, this re-issue is still a welcome treat, for Sepulchral Temple is an act with lots of potential. Playing the kind of Incantation-worshipping, ancient sounding Death Metal popularised by the likes of Grave Miasma and Cruciamentum, the two lengthy tracks on Sepulchral Temple reveal more with each listen and have their own distinct identity.

First track ‘Salvific Dance’ begins with a weird, high-pitched lead melody, gut-wrenching screams and a sinister marching riff that draws the listener deep into the bowels of the temple before the pace and intensity dramatically increases. The tempo then varies from bone-rattling speed to doom-leaden crawl while the deranged vocals contribute to the overbearing atmosphere of Lovecraftian madness.

The self-titled second track is much more aggressive with its repetitive vocal lines and sinister marching riff giving proceedings a ceremonial feel. Imagine Dead Congregation and Necros Christos summoning an ancient, evil god in a filth-smeared shrine and you have an idea of what’s going on here.

While this kind of Death Metal is gaining in prominence with several bands popping up recently who are eager to demonstrate just how worn out their copies of Onward to Golgotha (Relapse) are, we shouldn’t complain for the grim atmosphere and sense of macabre dread lurking in these recordings are necessary to ensure that this genre remains extreme and underground. Sepulchral Temple may be a little late to the ceremony but they deserve their place at the altar all the same.

 

7.0/10

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JAMES CONWAY


Malefice – Gravitas

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Malefice

A few years back, Reading metallers Malefice were hailed as one of Britain’s greatest hopes to make waves; and with the patronage of some influential metal figures and a penchant for colossal grooves it was unsurprising. Fast forward to the present day and whilst some of their peers such as Sylosis and The Defiled have grown bigger and bigger, Malefice seemed to get left behind despite (or perhaps because of) their refusal to stagnate, their 2011 album Awaken The Tides (Metal Blade) especially being a slight curveball with a change of vocal delivery and a greater focus on melody.

Latest EP Gravitas is their first release since a brief hiatus that followed  2012’s Five (both Transcend) and finds them invigorated and back on full throttle. This is back to writing the same kind of grooves that once saw them spoken in the same breath as the likes of Devildriver, but at the same time is not just a back to basics effort. Throughout there are slight shades of a tech metal tone, reminiscent of Heart Of A Coward’s straight for the throat usage, keeping towards pit fodder rather than prog drifting. Their ace once again proves to be vocalist Dale Butler who sounds as passionate and genuinely pissed off as ever.

This may only be a brief four track EP, but for a returning band this is a great statement of intent, and evidence that they could still have the bright future that perhaps eluded them to this day.

A soaring return to one of Britain’s true juggernauts.

8.0/10

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CHRIS TIPPELL


Nader Sadek – The Malefic: Chapter III

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This is a curious proposition. With previous albums and now this EP release The Malefic: Chapter III (self-released), Nader Sadek is a death metal super-group which has seen a variety of members on its releases, all curated by its namesake, one Nader Sadek, who has worked as stage artist for the likes of Mayhem and Sunn O))).

On this latest reincarnation, the personnel includes Travis Ryan of Cattle Decapitation on vocals, Rune Eriksen (Mayhem), Martin Rygiel (formerly Decapitated) and Flo Mounier (of Cryptopsy fame). Following on from the album In The Flesh (Season Of Mist), which was an impressive slice of death metal if lacking in some cohesion and clear production, this latest EP does see some refining. The production here has a lot more clarity and precision without sounding sanitized, whilst musically it sounds a united and flowing piece, and more straightforward in nature. The vocal contributions of Ryan truly stand out, further showcasing his presence as one of death metal’s most versatile and powerful voices.

A crisp, impressive EP which will admittedly won’t turn the genre on its head but represents a good exhibition of the talents of those in its ranks. Not a world beater, but worth a listen.

6.0/10

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CHRIS TIPPELL


Carcass – Surgical Remission/Surplus Steel EP

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10 Jacket (Gatefold - One Pocket)

 

Carcass’ return to the metal arena has been an unbridled success, with their comeback album Surgical Steel earning plaudits by the entrails-filled bucket load, including, Ghost Cult’s own Album of the Year for 2013. Released due to demand from fans not in a position to purchase the multiple formats of the Surgical Steel release (and to be fair, no matter how good it is, why would you just for a couple of tracks), and comprising of the bonus tracks of the various formats from last years’ release, Surgical Remission/Surplus Steel (Nuclear Blast) is an EP to close the first, but hopefully by no means last, chapter of the return of Liverpool’s true best band.

I have an issue with bonus tracks. Not quite as big an issue as I have with spoilers, but a problem at least the size of the riff at the end of ‘Mount of Execution’. If a band doesn’t consider a song good enough to feature on the album proper, then why release it at all? And …Remission is clearly the poorer, unwelcome black sheep of the family of Surgical Steel. Whereas Steel has bite, purpose and intensity, even in its’ more melodic moments, with the exception of the thrashing and grinding last minute of ‘Intensive Battery Brooding’, an excellent shot in the arm of a section, Remission is ponderous.

‘A Wraith In The Apparatus’ starts well enough, with a trademark Bill Steer riff and Jeff Walker’s acidic delivery, but whereas Surgical Steel was scalpel sharp, ‘Wraith…’, ‘Battery’ and ‘Zochrot’ are, by comparison, like trying to cut through flesh and bone with a blunt butter knife. Decent enough songs, and distinctively Carcass, but pedestrian, lacking the pace, drive and quality of the album, and falling short of the very high standards Death Metal’s finest have set and live up to. ‘Livestock Marketplace’ is uninspired, with Walker’s normal venom neutered and distilled into a Dave Mustaine-esque whine, before a re-working of ‘Hellion’ tribute ‘1985’ concludes matters.

There’s nothing to worry about here, though, as the quality control process happened in the studio as these were the songs not graded sufficient pedigree butchery meat for the surgeons table, but this collection of leftovers makes for an EP that is surely for collectors only

 

6.0/10

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STEVE TOVEY


Inter Arma – The Cavern

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The epic single-track issue isn’t quite unique, but an uncommon level of creativity and musicianship is required to make the product entertaining and involving. Virginian quintet Inter Arma possesses an outrageous level of inventiveness and aptitude, and 45-minute opus The Cavern (Relapse) is certainly not shy of it.

The sheer gravity and fulminating power of much of the music here is oppressive yet it carries the weight easily, positively gambolling through more intricate moments whilst retaining intensity. A journey through the galaxies begins with eerie then soothing atmospherics, sparing acoustic and strings before the titanic, savage yet occasionally complex riff fires home and gradually introduces the plaintive hollers of Mike Paparo, delivered from atop Kilimanjaro. It’s a powerful flexing of muscle, the soundtrack to Atlas stirring after a deep sleep. That riff deals crushing blows, aided by TJ Childers’ mammoth drums, his sticks pulverising with the power of Thor’s hammer.

It would be simple to dismiss the early stages as the product of adventurous Conan wannabes but the magic of unfettered imagination shines through, not least with some staggering lead guitar play. Some fabulous intricacies at seventeen minutes lift the track to the heavens with the assistance of some SubRosa-like mournful strings, while Thin Lizzy-esque dual leads introduce the final third; a mournful howling pattern accompanying lush orchestration, the soaring beauty of Paparo’s clean vocals aided by Windhand‘s Dorthia Cottrell, all the while retaining the tracks unearthly power and superiority. It’s this blend of raw animal force, aching melody and immeasurable creativity which marks out this fantastic band. More duels bring a gloriously overblown 70s heavy prog passage to a pounding, crushing coda, a gradually slowing yet swelling reprise of the opening structures which is close to orgasmic.

This is an ambitious effort but Inter Arma haven’t merely managed to navigate it, they’ve ridden it into the skies upon Apollo’s chariot. Euphoric, moving and gut-wrenching, quite simply this is a piece of monumental greatness, a game-changer, and essential for all fans of low-end prog.

We should all pack up and go home now. Anything else will seem average after this.

10.0/10

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PAUL QUINN


Sodomized Cadaver – Vorarephilia

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There can’t be many people who don’t agree with the assertion that a band name is important. Our collective musical history is littered with band names that are brilliantly evocative (Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Emperor) as well as those where, if truth be known, they didn’t really try at all: Panic! At the Disco, Texas is the Reason, Cute is What We Aim For [and my personal favourite We Butter The Bread With Butter – Reviews Ed] all need to see me after school for a chat.

Of late, band names tend to give you an almost intuitive sense of what the music is going to sound like, and, let’s be fair, you know already that Sodomized Cadaver are going to be a death metal band, don’t you? Yes, you do and yes, they are. Sodomized Cadaver hail from Ebbw Vale in the South Wales valleys. Ebbw Vale is probably best known for two things – its steel and mining heritage and a tough and uncompromising rugby union team (famously known as The Steelmen after the town’s industrial history). Ebbw Vale is but one of many South Wales valleys towns where there often isn’t a lot to do, so forming a band can be a creative and positive outlet for many.  What Messrs Gavin Davies and Raymond Packer have created with this five track EP is straight out of the death metal box, albeit one dripping in gore and generally unpleasant  themes.

Calling your EP after a sexual predilection that fantasises you or your partner being eaten alive gives you a sense on where these valley boys are coming from and with song titles like ‘Cannibal Butcher’, ‘Torture’, and ‘Weapons of Mass Decomposition’ there might not be much room for creative manoeuvring, but at least you know where you stand and they know, rather all too well, what gets their audience salivating.

With influences that range across the often diverse palette of extreme music, there’s plenty of Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse dripping through the grooves as well as bits of Bolt Thrower and The Black Dahlia Murder. Someone is clearly in awe of Bill Steer’s guitar playing on Carcass records, too.

At one level you could be critical at the cartoon like imagery conjured up by Vorarephilia (SWEM) and wonder whether it is all a bit juvenile – we have been there and done this all before. However, another part of me wants to give these boys the benefit of the doubt as I sense a pretty black sense of humour running through all of this. For all the bludgeon and dismemberment, under all that flesh, gore and mutilated body parts I can’t shake the sense that there’s also a glint in their collective eye, a sense that they also know this is not for real and we should just go with the energetic and pulverizing flow that they have created. I bet they love their mums, too.

Visceral and intense, as these things need to be.

 

7.0/10

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MAT DAVIES


Arcturon – Expect Us

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Arcturon - Expect Us - Artwork

 

A release that serves both as a bridge from 2013’s An Old Storm Brewing and also as a celebration of the tenth anniversary of Arcturon, Expect Us (both Supreme Chaos) sees the Swiss melo-deathsters take a step further into the melodic.

Despite an ascending introductory riff that nods to NWOAHM, Expect Us has at its’ core a celebration of all things mid-90’s Century Media with the groove of Samael (Passages/Eternal era), the uptempo drive of Love and Death Sentenced and the gothic splashes of Irreligious Moonspell.

Opener ‘Treasure’ is the gold off the EP, with its cousins not coming up to the same level, lacking its spunk. Vocalist Aljosha Gasser’s gruff delivery suits the more uptempo kick off, snarling like Taneli Jarva, but is a clashing juxtaposition with the more reflective gothic tracks that follow; the two lines of Jonas Renske-style vocals that appear out of the blue on ‘A Restless Soul’ suit the sound of the rest of the EP much more, and it’s a shame they are only used once.

The other issue with Escape Us is that, while well played and boasting a production that recaptures the gothic warmth that Waldemar Sorychta used to excel at, little sticks in the mind as, ‘Treasure’ aside, this is a fairly lukewarm offering.

Happy 10th birthday, though, Arcturon. Hopefully decade #2 will see them find that missing something.

 

6.0/10

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STEVE TOVEY


Obscure Burial – Epiphany

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OB Epiphany cover

 

What are the advantages of re-releasing an obscure demo from 1989? Bringing more quality music to the awareness of people who will enjoy it should be the main answer, of course, but in a world where music is more accessible than it has ever been that argument is perhaps weaker than it once was, and most obscure demos will have been matched or surpassed since their release.

Historical importance, of course, is what really makes the unearthing of ancient treasures worthwhile – hearing the demo which inspired that scene, or influenced that band to change their style, or was the first time we heard Drummer X play a blast beat.  How valuable that kind of historical research really is to a modern listener, and to what extent it can cover the gaps in a rough production and sloppy playing, is entirely up to the listener to decide, but Metal has a history, and being aware of it seems a valid concern to most of us.

So, what if that obscure demo is actually a brand-new release from a young band?  The historical value argument vanishes altogether, leaving the quality of the music to stand-alone, often crippled by deliberately sloppy production values chosen by conscious aesthetic rather than economic necessity.  Obscure Burial are one of a number of young bands whose entire purpose in being is to sound like an under-produced South American rehearsal tape from twenty-five years ago.  They play raw, dirty Metal that straddles the point where Death, Thrash and Black Metals collide so vigorously that it could just as readily be described as any of them, and isn’t above sharing its bedroom with Punk either.

Epiphany (self-released) is a confident and well-realised snapshot of a band who clearly know exactly what they want to be – but when their target is to ape the limitations and boundaries of bands defunct long before they were born, it can be hard to be sure just how worthwhile that ambition really is.  If there’s a space in your collection for vintage Black/Death/Thrash That Never Was, you could certainly do worse – but does anyone really need that many Sarcofago albums?

5.0/10

 

RICHIE HR


Sloths – Twenty Years (EP)

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TwentyYearsCover

I love sloths. Slow, easy living, tree-hugging, cute in a strange kind of way…That’s not this Portland, Oregon, trio though – bristling with a fulminating, ireful energy, Sloths’ sludgy brutality is tempered by streams of post-hardcore lead guitar twisting through distortion, whilst diseased growls and Nate Sonenfield‘s Jeremy Bolm-like harrowing screams express previously unspeakable agonies. Indeed ‘Void’, the second offering of the three-track EP Twenty Years (Independent), is Touche Amore from the swamps, with downturned riffs waking a lazy, pensive build; Kyle Bates‘ agonised post leadwork and Sonenfield’s screams overtaken by a jagged, rumbling crescendo, the cavernous riffs causing mountains to shake.

The at times frenetic drumming and tortured roars driving the unhinged new-wave of closer ‘Passing’ are again moderated by those moody, chiming leads; the accompanying leaden force and delicious time changes the final urgency of an intriguing sound. Three tracks is not easy to judge the overall potential of a band but the signs here are really promising with the sounds and feelings of pain, hatred and unbearable sadness portrayed bitterly and beautifully.

These guys might not be as cuddly as the real thing, but they’re bloody impressive. The EP is free through bandcamp, but Twenty Years is well worth some of your hard-earned.

8.0/10

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PAUL QUINN