One of the few death metal bands I actually care about nowadays, the UK’s Mithras combines a intricate approach with delightfully otherworldly lead work that helps to separate them from the hordes of other ultra-technical acts out there. Having released their last full-length back in 2007, the band has apparently decided to break the silence with this short EP. Time Never Lasts consists of only two new tracks and three live recordings, but hey, at least it’s something.
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Falloch’s crushing debut album hasn’t left my rotation since I first heard it several weeks ago. Where Distant Spirits Remain is fresh, melodic and has just enough heaviness to keep you from feeling like a wimp after listening to it. In a lot of ways this album reminds me of Solstafir’s recent masterpeice Kold, with its clean vocal attack and subtle progressive leanings. In other ways these guys are reminiscent of bands like Anathema, Extol, or even bands like Fen, Agalloch and Alcest. Basically, if you like atmospheric, emotionally driven metal you’ll most certainly dig these guys.
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This is one of those collaborations that stands well on its own and transcends the individual styles of both bands. I knew what to expect from The Body after their crushing 2010 release All The Waters of the Earth Turn To Blood, but Braveyoung was a bit of a wildcard. The end result is not too far off from The Body’s sound on their previous release, but the music is tinged with a sinister undercurrent that helps these songs to seem more complete than the band’s usual material.
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Part of me was hoping that Forgotten Tomb’s latest album Under Saturn Retrograde would be at least a partial return to their older musical style, but I’m not really surprised with how it turned out. The new release follows the stylistic changes of 2007’s Negative Megalomania, gradually moving away from the band’s doomy black metal sound in favor of a more rock-based approach. These most recent two albums have been kind of a watered-down version of the Italian group’s once-potent depressive sound, occasionally flashing tempting glimpses of darkened brilliance but more often coming up short.
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Dort Ist Der Weg, the latest from Chicago’s enigmatic duo Locrian, maybe suffers a bit from being in the shadow of the band’s monolithic previous release The Crystal World, but it does provide another frightening glimpse into the band’s unique musical vocabulary.
The short EP consists of two tracks, the title track and another new one titled ‘Frozen in Ash.’ While the latter track basically sounds like a continuation of some of the band’s musical ideas from The Crystal World, the titular track ‘Dort Ist Der Weg,’ a cover of German krautrock act Popol Vuh, shows a new side of the band. We’re presented with a more stripped-down version of the band’s sound, but at the same time it’s a lot more musical and coherent, plodding along steadily while largely avoiding the creepy depths Locrian’s sound often reaches. The ghostly female vocals and slow crawl of the drums gives us a taste of what Locrian might sound like if they decided to limit themselves to a basic sludge sound. It’s not as immersive as their usual material, but interesting nonetheless.
‘Frozen In Ash’ reminds us why we keep coming back to this band in the first place. The seamless transitions between different textures and the brilliant contrast between harsh, alien soundscapes and soothing ambience is just as potent on this track as it was on The Crystal World, although some of its effectiveness is lost without the greater context that an album’s worth of music provides. If anything, this EP just whets our appetite for another full-length.
» Download ‘Dort Ist Der Weg’ for free from Epitonic
Swedish one-man project Srodek seemingly has all the elements in place: a mysterious foreign band name, a bleak winter scene adorning the cover of their album, and good connections, with mainman Jon Bäcklund aka Nekrofucker also doing session and live work for Svarti Loghin. With that kind of pedigree you’d expect this album to be at least decent, and for the most part it delivers. Förfall is a little inconsistent, but when the album is at its best it delivers a beautifully subtle take on black metal that evokes man’s solitary, primitive roots.
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Isolation’s newest release actually had me somewhat excited - with its serene cover art and the band’s recent split with Austere, I anticipated getting at least a few weeks’ worth of enjoyment out of this album. Unfortunately, Closing A Circle turned out to be the musical equivalent of suffering through Shia LaBoeuf’s performances in Transformers movies. Musically the album was odd but fundamentally enjoyable, but the powerfully repellant force of the singer’s monotone vocals makes sitting through the album’s 46 minutes pretty torturous.
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The monochromatic, colonial stylings of the cover art of Cognoscenti, Fidei Defensor’s first full-length, hint at a hideous blackened musical offering. In actuality though, the Canadian act’s sound is somewhat far from traditional black metal, instead presenting a surprisingly beautiful and melodic set of songs that should take listeners by surprise. It’s always a bit disconcerting when an album’s sound doesn’t match up with your expectations, but in this case Fidei Defensor’s style is good enough to make up for it.
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An increasing number of black metal bands seem to be moving away from the genre’s usual chaos and aggression in favor of a simpler, more primitive approach. The trend is especially evident in the recent group of bands cropping up in the Cascadian black metal scene, which aside from Wolves In The Throne Room also includes lesser-known artists like Skagos, Fauna, L’Acephale and Alda. Few bands exemplify this primitivism better than Fauna offshoot Echtra, whose new album Paragate is an expertly crafted canvas of sparse, dark and introspective music.
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Ukrainian pagan metal outfit Khors has always seemed like a bit of an enigma to me. Despite their heritage - founding members Khaoth and Khorus have played in Astrofaes, Nokturnal Mortum and Hate Forest, among others - these guys seem to be increasingly moving towards the softer side of the genre, especially on their latest release Return To Abandoned. The new album continues the style they displayed on 2008’s mysticism, featuring a keyboard-laden sound that’s heavy on the atmospherics. I felt like Mysticism’s primary appeal was its dichotomy of dark, guitar-driven riffing and the brighter impact of melodic soloing and acoustic passages. That contrast is still present on Return To Abandoned, but the softer elements have started to take on greater importance which seems to dilute the effectiveness of Khors’s sound a bit.
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