“It’s Pink Floyd turned up to fifty”, my mate said. I’d never heard Waters or Gilmour roar with the same ferocity as Steff, lead vocalist of Sheffield quartet Ba’al, but the band do display a level of progression and turn of pace that would fit in with the Prog legends’ template. The phenomenal power and blackened hostility of the music, however, leaves any such comparisons in the shade.Continue reading
Metallica continues the celebration of 30 years of their classic album …And Justice For All (Elektra). Watch them play this great version of the band playing ‘Blackened’ live in Detroit, Michigan on New Years’ Eve in 1999. Continue reading
Continuing to expand their brand into lifestyle categories, Metallica has partnered with master distiller extraordinaire Dave Pickerell to create Blackened, a unique blend of straight American whiskey available in select U.S. cities later this week and online. Links to purchase are below.Continue reading
To say that Brighton’s King Goat set themselves a high bar with début album Conduit (self-released) is like saying that Donald Trump is a wee bit controversial. To merely label them a Doom band is, similarly, doing the quintet a severe disservice: that début was laced with emotional vocals, choirs overlaying evocative bridges, and light, textured instrumentalism. It was a tour de force precious few expected.Continue reading
Metallica‘s North American leg of the “Worldwired Tour” is well underway, and last night they brought the best set list so far to Uniondale, New York. Continue reading
Metallica wrapped up their 2016 with an “intimate” Bay Area show two weeks ago in Oakland, and now they’ve shared an official recap of the gig. Continue reading
Those aware of the vicious nastiness of Birmingham UK’s Fukpig will be more than familiar with key member and ex-Anaal Nathrakh live bassist Paul Kenney. Five years ago, Kenney began Occult Doom outfit Kroh as a duet, and has resurrected it to stunning, electrifying effect with second album Altars (Devizes Records).Continue reading
So, to recap: evil Chicago entity Lord Mantis spawns from three-quarters of Blackened Sludge quartet Indian. In 2014 the band split spectacularly with troubled yet horrifically effective vocalist Charlie Fell: upon which the parent band folds and becomes the new incarnation of the progeny, Indian vocalist Dylan O’Toole assuming the role of the heinous rasp. Moreover, since the recording of new EP Nice Teeth Whore (New Density), guitarist Scott Shellhamer and bassist Will Lindsay have also departed, with Alletta Ergun moving in.
Got all that? The debris from the Fell departure has finally settled and it’s now time to see if the Mantis can silence those who doubt the credibility of the band without him. Initially Nice Teeth Whore seems something of a return to the excellent days of sophomore album Pervertor (Candlelight Records): the slurring, quickened Black boom of ‘SIG Safer’ swelling to a final crescendo and highlighting O’Toole’s hostile bark, spearing the mind yet missing that sense of ‘serial killer’ depravity Fell exudes so effortlessly.
The title track runs at a more familiar and ominous, Doom-laden pace: the sheer violent malevolence of O’Toole’s delivery complementing Bill Bumgardner’s colossal drums; the switch between rumbling riffs, shimmering Blackened passages and some wonderfully emotive yet spiked leadwork utterly compelling. It’s this reined-in brutality, desperately attempting to break free yet unable to escape from the choke-hold, that is the essence of both bands and leaves the listener fraught, nerve-shredded and exhausted in a blissful fashion
Bumgardner’s drums are again to the fore in ‘Semblances’, pummeling their way through a savage, sawing chorus from which screams resonate and slice the skin. It’s the languid, funereal hostility of ‘Final Division’, however, where the heady days of this terrifying outfit truly return: vocals so oppressive as to clog up the throat; a hateful, slow-burning intensity crawling lazily through the gut, leaving hungry leeches in its wake.
The warm, beefy production and undercurrents of howling leads may steal a little menace, but make no mistake: Lord Mantis are back to their punishing best. Let’s now hope that some stability can allow this febrile ferocity to fester…
8.0/10
PAUL QUINN
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It’s possible to believe that the boys of Virginian powerhouse Inter Arma gave themselves an impossible mountain to climb, given the superlative-exhausting greatness of 2014’s single-track opus The Cavern (Relapse Records). The hubbub generated in anticipation of new album Paradise Gallows (Relapse Records) shows the rapidly gained reputation the band’s output has gathered, and it’s an excitement that proves well-founded.
From the mournful acoustic beauty of opener ‘Nomini’, expanding to some incredibly affecting dual lead soloing which reappears alongside heartbreaking piano to devastating effect in the molten melodies of ‘Potomac’, it’s obvious that the unit’s collective desire to elicit emotion with powerful statements is still impossible to contain. TJ Childers’ gargantuan drumming is also to the fore and it is this, combined with growling riffs and Mike Paparo’s spacey, resonant roars, that governs the monstrous first shot in earnest ‘An Archer in the Emptiness’.
The echoing might carry into the following ‘Transfiguration’ and the chaotic, punishing Prog of the aptly named ‘Violent Constellations’: the quickened passages still implosive, the coruscating roars rebounding across the ages. Indeed, it seems the band now has more in common with the so-called ‘Caveman Doom’ of Conan than their Blackened roots, yet there’s a sense of grandeur and invention that the Liverpudlians can only dream of; a storytelling wonder which makes its lengthy tracks breeze by. The opening riffs of the future classic ‘Primordial Wound’, staccato yet oscillating and crushing, create a wall of sound, whilst Paparo’s fearful chants dwarf those of Charlton Heston’s Moses, hollering from atop Mount Sinai. ‘The Summer Drones’, meanwhile, still trampled by the footsteps of a colossus, sees a Jim Morrison-esque clean vocal soar through the skies on the back of monolithic, pregnant rhythms which grow with a fulminating tension, the middle section a dream of rampant Doors-like atmospheres yet crashing with the brutal euphoria of the Gods at war.
The title track begins with lazy Lounge airs, the undeniably sinister feel coated in a relaxed warmth. So the explosion is unexpected when it should be anything but, whilst still retaining torch-song sensibilities and more of that exquisite, Floydesque solo work easing the path of the pummeling body. Closer ‘Where the Earth Meets the Sky’ returns to the ethereal yet powerful beauty, a tragic Country lament given magnificence by echoing harmonies and that mesmerising strength, here sparing yet marvellously effective.
It’s evident that The Cavern set the template for Inter Arma’s future. Their Black elements almost gone, save the frequent obsidian rasps, the band nevertheless stand apart in making such epic-sounding, ferocious yet moving music; in turn reaffirming their status as one of the Metal scene’s most important outfits. That impossible mountain? Scaled, and some.
9.0/10.0
PAUL QUINN
I first saw Croydon bludgers Slabdragger three years ago and, having been completely flattened by their bone-crunching resonance, immediately bought first album Regress (Holy Roar Records). Despite it being good, I subsequently felt they were a band to be witnessed rather than merely heard.That all changes here. Sophomore long-player Rise of the Dawncrusher (Holy Roar Records) is a mammoth, sprawling journey through the black holes of the cosmos, an achievement all the more amazing given the setbacks the band has suffered in recent years. The musical twangs of opener ‘Mercenary Blues’ carry enough portent to warn of the forthcoming walls of forest-levelling sound and, despite the melodic hollers of Yusuf Tary and Jim Threader, the ensuing riff grabs your soul and sticks it in a blender. Stoner-Sludge in tone and feel yet Psychedelic in its warping terror, the difference here is the wonderfully enlivening, Progressive nature of the linking passages: versatile verses with vocal switches between Blackened screams and guttural roars, still underpinned by the cavernous yet occasionally cascading stellar pathway.
Whatever Slabdragger had before, the ability to flick such a heavy pattern through the chords has multiplied their appeal tenfold. With four of the five tracks here easily surpassing the ten-minute mark, the listener is in for the long haul, yet will not for a second feel dragged along. The elongated coda of ‘…Blues’ possesses an electrifying emotion that rips apart the fabric of the template; while the segue into the bulldozing, YOB-tinged ‘Evacuate!’ pulverises the ears and introduces a rampant, occasionally nasty Jazz-infused groove. Severin Black’s drum pattern following the ominous intro of ‘Shrine of Debauchery’ is simple yet potent, hauling Tary’s terrifying bassline in its wake and setting the tone for the claustrophobia of the swelling, pulsating body.
And this is merely halfway in. The album’s last two tracks cover 33 minutes and crush so comprehensively they create a vacuum, riding and bouncing off planets as they travel along. The beauty of this second slab of vinyl is the paradoxical compatibility between its extremes: the implosive power of ‘Dawncrusher Rising’s opening gambit begins so steadily, growing almost unnoticeably to a gravestone-cracking rut whilst remaining compelling, hypnotic, masterful. The monstrous Blues of closer ‘Implosion Rites’, meanwhile, is Cream slowed to a crawl and delivered by Zeus, Poseidon and Hades: the slowed rhythms fulminating and muscular, the harmonised vocals Ozzy-esque yet resplendent, the pedal effects gradually halting the earth’s rotation.
Quite simply, and to retain the mythical analogy, this is Atlas: utterly despondent, pissed off with his fate, and deciding to fling the planets around after a few beers and a reefer. Rise of the Dawncrusher is fucking incredible, an unmissable masterpiece of both its genre and its times.
9.5/10.0
PAUL QUINN
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