Tag Archives: Krokodil

The Official Ghost Cult Writers Albums of the Year Top 50: 50-41

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It’s hard to believe we’ve already reached the end of another year packed tighter than Joey de Maio’s loincloth with incredible genre-pushing, eardrum-violating, neckache-inducing metal. 

So we can begin to tell the story of a year which saw us give more top marks than any other year so far (and more 2’s and 3’s out of 10, too!), a year that left us inundated with so many great releases, we sought the opinions of our esteemed and respected writing team and we offer forth their albums of the year.  

The countdown to the Official Ghost Cult Magazine Album of the Year for 2014 has commenced. Please consume and enjoy the results of our 2014 Writers’ Poll. We hope it will introduce you to some of the incredible works of art you may have missed that we have had the immense pleasure of listening to and writing about this year.

In our first installment we bring you albums 50 through to 41.

 

 

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50. HARK – Crystalline (Season of Mist) 

Genre-bending aggression with doses of Doom, Prog, Psychedelia and Hardcore. Heavy as a very heavy thing.

 

 

 

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49. THE HAUNTED – Exit Wounds (Century Media)

“The album is filled with urgency and manages to be relentlessly heavy without compromising on those insanely catchy riffs. The Haunted have come back stronger than ever…  easily the band’s best effort a decade” DAN SWINHOE 9/10  Full review here

 

 

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48. THE WOUNDED KINGS – Consolamentum (Candlelight)

“Favouring lengthy yet subtly evolving guitar workouts that never lapse into repetitive dirge territory,The Wounded Kings go about working their dark, smoky magic with grim elegance… Simply put, The Wounded Kings are the quintessential English doom band “ JAMES CONWAY 8.5/10 Full review here

 

 

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47. SCHAMMASCH – Contradiction (Prosthetic)

“The quality of this album is obvious right from the beginning. Schammasch have created a record both challenging and endlessly refreshing, a truly remarkable sonic journey from beginning to end.” CAITLIN SMITH 9/10 Full review here

 

 

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46. AUTOPSY – Tourniquets, Hacksaws and Graves (Peaceville)

“Tourniquets… continues in gnarly, raw and near sludgy death metal vein, but maintains their run of high quality and in fact tops anything that has come from their return.” CHRIS TIPPELL 8/10 Full review here

 

 

 

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45. KROKODIL – Nachash (Spinefarm)

“With a heavy dose of Mastodon in its veins, Krokodil are a groove juggernaut that pummels all in its path with its three guitarists of fury” DAN O’BRIEN 9/10 Full review here

 

 

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44. INTER ARMA – The Cavern (Relapse)

“The sheer gravity and fulminating power of much of the music here is oppressive yet it carries the weight easily, this blend of raw animal force, aching melody and immeasurable creativity marks out this fantastic band” PAUL QUINN 10/10 Full review here

 

 

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43. DEVIL YOU KNOW – The Beauty of Destruction (Nuclear Blast)

“(with) all the promise of a powerhouse, and it delivers on all fronts. The songs are well-crafted, nicely developed and excellently executed.” LYNN JORDAN 9.5/10 APRIL ALBUM OF THE MONTH Full review here

 

 

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42.BLUES PILLS – Blues Pills (Nuclear Blast)

“…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” MAT DAVIES 9/10 Full review here

 

 

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41. ARTIFICIAL BRAIN – Labyrinth Constellation (Profound Lore)

“Technical death metal with sci-fi themes, brilliant, utterly amazing, breath-taking and challenging from the first to the last second.” TIAGO MOREIRA 9.5/10 Full review here

 

 

 

 

 

Compiled by Steve Tovey


Krokodil – Nachash

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For the past few months UK based riff lords Krokodil have been making all sort of headlines, most involving people referring to them as “Slipknot’s new bassist’s other band”, which is completely unjustified and harsh as it is hardly judging the band on its own merits. With all the coverage, the eyes of the metal world are on Krokodil as they prepare to unleash their debut album Nachash (Spinefarm) so it’s a very good thing that the album is rather bloody brilliant.

The band, which contains members from a menagerie of great British bands such as Cry For Silence,  Sikth, Gallows and of course the mighty A, as well as now Iowa’s own metal behemoth Slipknot, Krokodil sound like a well oiled riff making machine and from the sounds of Nachash the machine has been working overtime on this release.  With a heavy dose of Mastodon in its veins, Krokodil are a groove juggernaut that pummels all in its path with its three guitarists of fury, a decision that usually over complicates the material but in this case triples up the guitar tracks, like Helmet making it sound as heavy as a ten ton rhino that’s thinking of gaining a few pounds.

With a formula that blends groove based riffage with a later day Cancer Bats bounce and groove is a fantastic mix which keeps up the pace till the bitter end, this on top of the high quality production of the album which makes it sound colossal.  If the album does have a mild weakness it is that the vocals are a tiny bit one dimensional, the hardcore barks work well with the up tempo nature of the albums and work perfectly on the second track ‘Skin of The Earth’, but can come across as one note when the album gets into its final few tracks.

Overall, Nachash is a quality release from a band who deserve a lot more credit for their musical output and certainly do not deserve to be known simply as that other band with someone from Slipknot in, they’re not a DJ Starscream or Dirty Little Rabbits. As for this being the bands’ debut album, hopefully there will be even better to come from the band in the future, but for now Nachash is a cracking start to their career.  Its high tempo, riffy and most importantly contains quality throughout.

 

9.0/10

Krokodil on Facebook

 

DAN O’BRIEN

 


Bloodstock Festival 2014 Preview

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Following hot on the heels of the two big guns of the heavy metal festival season (Download and Sonisphere), the increasingly impressive Bloodstock, held in the lovely grounds of Catton Hall in Derbyshire, England looks set to have a glorious weekend, if its stellar line up of legends and contemporary metal is anything to go by.

 

Bloodstock has grown a fearsome reputation as the most metal of the metal festivals and this year’s line-up is no exception, covering all the bases you expect and some bases that you didn’t think needed covering but have been all the same. Anyway, everyone at Ghost Cult is getting hugely excited for what should be a very memorable few days.

 

Friday is packed to the gunnels with some choice options so it will definitely be a case of running between stages if you want to try and fit it all in: Krokodil, Rotting Christ and Winterfylleth are names worth marking on your clashfinder spreadsheet. There’s likely to be a lot of love and a lot of circle pits for Hatebreed; there won’t be many faces not adorning corpse paint for Dimmu Borgir but if you wanted to lay a bet, then the suffocating heaviness of Triptykon or the dirty, southern charms of Down are likely to slug it out for band of the day.

 

Saturday is likely to be none more black. There has been a near year-long salivating at the prospect of the return of black metal legends Emperor, who headline the Saturday night main stage with Ihsahn and co promising a blackened gallop through their classic opus In the Nightside Eclipse as well as plenty of other surprises. Unmissable, really. It’s not all about them though: Carcass are currently in rude health, Shining are likely to shake the hangover from you with ease but the prospect of seeing Crowbar pummel riff after glorious riff is likely to be worth the entrance fee alone. Elsewhere we will be checking out The King is Blind, The Mercy House and, hell yeah, HellYeah.

 

Thrash metal legends Megadeth get to close the festival on the Sunday but there is more than ample support from everyone’s favourite Vikings Amon Amarth, festival stalwarts Saxon and Graveyard are always worth 30 mins of your time. If you need more inspiration then you could do worse than checking out Northern Ireland’s Stormzone or the industrial influenced Avatar. Honestly, there’s piles more: it’s gonna to be a classic. See you in the circle pit or, given my advancing years, the seats near the bar.

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Buy Tickets To Bloodstock here!

Bloodstock on Facebook

 

WORDS BY MAT DAVIES