Smother Magazine
Punishing epic blackened doom metal from Portland quartet Trees, “Lights Bane” has a destiny for glacially shifting doom into a more spacial and visceral path. Smashing cymbals and pounding drums amid a humming distorted guitar and banshee screeches comprise the two epic tracks that make up this debut from one of Oregon’s most sincerely hypnotic crushers. Sick.
We all know what the Netherlands are famous for…orchestrated black doom metal of course! This intense and lo-fi abstract horror in “An Epiphanic Vomiting of Blood” sounds like the lost soundtrack that never was for horror movie “Susperia“. Ranging from panic-inducing blood-curdling howls and symphonic splatterfest scores, Gnaw Their Tongues have unleashed one of the most epicly disturbing and repulsive albums of abstract mania. Perhaps “Teeth that Leer Like Open Graves” tells it best with its confession from a mass murderer amid heavy decibels of distortion and insanity-driven crunch. If you’re looking for something demented to show how ungodly you are, this is fucking it.
Stirring orchestrated mayhem starts off this heavy metal album that is filled to the brim with pure adrenaline, melodic overtures, and tons of double bass kick drum insanity. Having worked on this saga for over a decade, Iced Earth’s Jon Schaffer has been laying the foundations for one of metal’s most epic concept albums. I always find it thrilling to hear an honest soap opera come to life via a rock opera/metal opera. “I Walk Alone” seems to be an opposing force to the band’s well known single “I Walk Among You” which pushed the group up to the top shining spotlight of metal music. Good stuff.
Vocalist Sabina Classen isn’t just another hot metal singer; she’s a class act that not only lights up the stage but sets it ablaze with her stirring vocals and stunning presence. Thrash metal has seen a revitalization lately in the metal community but bands like Holy Moses who have been around for nearly three decades never stopped to jump onto the latest trend or bandwagon. Tons of cymbal catches, harsh power chords, and harsh aggressive female vocals. The rhythm guitar takes a lesson or two from Kerry King (Slayer) and the abuse of the metal strings is daunting. A fitting title for an album that will kick you in the ass.
With an album title like that you just know you’re in for the ride of your life. SuidAkra doesn’t disappoint with pagan metal so intense you’ll get tattoo from their heated spears and swords. After 8 studio albums, and thirteen years (duh), this German metal outfit has seen their music grown from a hybrid of death metal and pagan folk metal into an ingenious toke of harmonies and sweeping guitar anthems. Included along with the album is a DVD of an astounding live set from the Wacken Open Air Festival, an acoustic concert, and several nice bonuses. Check out the trailer…
Racebannon has always been one of those influential bands that most of the newer kids to the scene haven’t acknowledged or heard of despite the fact that they easily were some of the very pioneers of chaotic post-metal and hardcore. Once again experimenting with the very notion of rock ‘n’ roll with a defiant lack of ‘breakdown’s and clichés, Racebannon returns after a four-year hiatus on their new label Southern Records with a release in “Acid or Blood” that shows up anything Mike Patton or Melt Banana could create. You didn’t think that new singer for Dillinger Escape Plan came up with his style all of his own do you? Well regardless, “Acid or Blood” shows off a band that is unafraid of doing something different on each and every release despite their fanbase. Often compared to the likes of Converge, Racebannon is so much more than that with a firm grip on abrasive, cerebral metal. Distortion-heavy guitars churn and curdle with bouts of noisy anarchy. Drum-wise, I rarely find a band more intriguing and inspiring—it’s not just a bunch of fills and time signature changes but they really use their percussion as an instrument all on its own. This is the most important heavy music release in 2008.
Listen to “Sister Fucker” [MP3]
I’ve been awaiting Asva’s follow-up for a while now. Am I disappointed? Not in the least. In fact “What You Don’t Know is Frontier” is a landmark album of vast psychedelic post-metal from a group so wrought with talent that it’s amazing that people in the metal community still have no idea who these cats are. Asva trudges through a bleak landscape of post-metal cursed with stoned-out guitar distortion, crunching mid’s, and stark harmonies. You know how there are those sample discs that you can use to test out your new expensive stereo system or home theatre outfit? “What You Don’t Know is Frontier” is the only album you’ll ever need to test your surround sound system and speakers. Blessed with the likes of Stuart Dahlquist, he of Burning Witch, Sunn 0))), and Goatsnake fame, as well as members of bands such as Earth, Mr. Bungle, and Burning Witch, this instrumental opus is speckled with faint heartaches, sinister sounding organs, and gut-wrenching guitar fuzz. Raw emotion captured and controlled by some of the brightest pinnacles of the heavy doom metal and stoner rock community. In a word, awesome.
Listen to “A Trap for Judges” [MP3]
Boston has become known as a scene of mavericks in the hardcore and chaotic metal circuits. Ehnahre further exemplifies this theory with their amazing debut record “The Man Closing Up” on Sound Devastation Records. Featuring multiple guitars and even a double bass, Ehnahre is chaotic death metal with elements of doom and experimental orchestral instrumentation dotting the album. Each song is riddled with brooding percussion that devastates with bone-crushing might. Tackling on the experimental scene with an abandonment of traditional song structures, the group seems poised to walk the distance in a similar limelight that previous mavericks Isis, Converge, and Neurosis previously journeyed through.
Recently I was astonish when my wife brought home a mixtape that featured The Dillinger Escape Plan’s cover of Massive Attack’s brooding bass-heavy “Angel”. Well that made me dig deep and find this resilient 2006 covers EP which featured a couple of DEP classics from the “Miss Machine” era as well as several very poignant remixes and stirring rehashings. After you finish off the sultry, sexy, and yet eerily dark and dank “Angel”, you are brandishing a double-edged sword in a cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Wish” off of their “Broken” EP–one of my personal favorites as Trent Reznor shows that he actually has the gritty balls to do something absolutely fucking insane with music and adrenaline at the same time. I love the breakdown which sounds like the singer gets almost bored of the line but forces it out anyway as well as the modem-esque synthetic distortion. One of the only good Soundgarden songs “Jesus Christ Pose” is re-touched as well (and brace yourself metal fanatics, it’s really ok, I promise) as a Justin Timberlake tune in “Like I Love You”. What you have here is something sick, twisted, violent, and yet essential and shows the influence that a chaotic experimental metal band could embrace.
Churning guitars rumble throughout “Quietly”, an aptly yet ironically named opus by the metal gods known as Mouth of the Architect. Stepping right up where Neurosis left off, Mouth of the Architect has grown into an algae-like substance of metal, that chews on the dark grit left behind and yet is critical to all of life’s survival. In the metal kingdom, the group is high up on the food chain with this new album easily set to set them far apart from the pack. Crushing guitars with landscape shifting distortion and effects are plotted along a course with thundering percussion and steamy atmospheres of psychedelic and never-meandering harmonies. Recorded by Chris Common whose resume includes highlights of Mastodon and These Arms are Snakes, “Quietly” is willing to go but not by its namesake and certainly not for a long, long time.