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.

Like most of Mithras’s music, the two new tracks are veritable riff storms that should humble any aspiring guitarist. Their sound reminds me a lot of technical death metal masters Necrophagist, except Mithras’s riffs and use of harmonies give their music a slightly more melodic tinge. Both bands do seem to prefer their death metal to sound borderline robotic, with crunchy, rapid-fire guitars dominating the sound and machine-like drums lurking in the background.

The opener ‘Time Never Lasts’ starts off slow and subdued but builds in intensity to a bludgeoning conclusion, and features a nice slab of Mithras’s signature spacey, reverby lead work in the second half of the song. ‘Inside the Godmind’ starts off with a cool Twilight Zone-like riff before launching into a blisteringly intense riff-fest. The band serves up a slow, grinding section in the middle before spewing forth another storm of brutality to close the track. And while I’m not big into live recordings, Mithras’s selections on this EP at least give you an idea of how ridiculous these guys must be in the flesh - the incredible musicianship and mind-blowing speed of the songs performed shows that there is little drop off when porting the music to a live environment. True fans who are rabid for some new Mithras material will find themselves at least temporarily satisfied with this release.

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.

Tracks like ‘Where We Believe’ and opener ‘We Are Gathering Dust’ are the backbone of Falloch’s debut, mixing striking clean vocals with the bright, driving style of the guitars. The album’s inviting blend of styles - post-rock influences, breathtaking female vocals, soft keyboard passages - all help to make Where Distant Spirits Remain a very complete and captivating listen, especially for a debut. Each song is a journey by itself, whether it’s one of the album’s heavier offerings or a softer interlude like ‘Horizons’. The maturity of songwriting these guys really impresses me - they seem to know exactly when to punch you in the face and when to scale things back for a more melodic
passage.

Extol’s final album The Blueprint Dives is probably the closest thing to Falloch musically that I’ve heard, minus that band’s progressive leanings and complex sense of rhythm. Like Extol, Falloch employs a clean vocal styles that borders on being whiny at times, sometimes sounding almost Linkin Park-like without being annoying (yes, that’s possible). It took one or two listens to get used to, but actually the vocals lend themselves well to the melodic style of this band, and while they may not be the band’s strong point they certainly are a critical part of Falloch’s overall sound. Falloch does include a lot more atmospheric effects like keyboards than Extol does, giving their
music a much more expansive, evocative quality.

Where Distant Spirits Remain has more than enough going for it to make it one of the better albums I’ve heard this year. Falloch have managed to combine a mellow, atmospheric approach with powerful metal riffing, crafting an album that’s emotional and heavy but also intoxicatingly melodic and addictive. If your taste is anything like mine I urge you to check it out.

» Buy Where Distant Spirits Remain from Amazon.com

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.

Instead of All The Waters’s relatively short, structured tracks, Nothing Passes is composed of an intro and three lengthy, wandering compositions. Each track is different, but all are infused with an oppressive, creeping ambience which only increases the tense, apocalyptic atmosphere. The Body’s trademark screams and choir effects make appearances, but vast ambient sections provide a welcome contrast that was lacking on the band’s last release. Presumably the more measured, ambient textures were Braveyoung’s contribution, and they certainly prove to be an essential part of this release.

The last track ‘The Vision’ is worth a mention. Instead of the dense, atmospheric doom that makes up the majority of the album, the final track is almost like a Southern hymn, consisting of a chorus of female vocals and little else. It shocks one’s sensibilities a bit at first, but fortunately its stark structure and eerie lyrics fit very well with the feel of the rest of the album, in fact helping to shape the overall vision and mood of this release. Risks like this can often make or break an album, and in this case the last track is what really helps to set the album apart. Whether you agree or not, Nothing Passes is guaranteed to be a memorable release.

» Buy Nothing Passes from Amazon.com

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.

A sore point for a lot of fans, myself included, is the sudden emergence of clean vocals in Forgotten Tomb’s sound. Their use ranges from slightly inappropriate to downright cringe-worthy, and unfortunately on Under Saturn Retrograde they show up in nearly every track. Metal fans wouldn’t be metal fans without some tolerance for unusual vocal styles, and I wouldn’t have a problem if the vocals were the only issue, but musically I didn’t find most of the tracks on the album to be especially memorable either. Aside from more straightforward, blackened tracks like ‘Reject Existence’ and ‘Downshift’, ‘Joyless’ had a sweet riff or two and the ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ cover wasn’t bad, but the other tracks didn’t really add much to the album.

The only real bright spot for me was the opener ‘Reject Existence,’ which served as a reminder of what Forgotten Tomb can be when they feel like it. The blackened tapestry of Herr Morbid’s scathing vocals and sinister riffing is every bit as dark as any of the band’s earlier material, but the track is also infectiously catchy, boring into your consciousness in the same way that Satyricon and Katatonia’s newer music does. ‘Downshift’ is similar, but doesn’t carry quite the same weight.

So while some of Forgotten Tomb’s newer stuff is the perfect example of Patrick Bateman’s phrase “more commercial and therefore more satisfying in a narrower way,” a lot of the new material is simply forgettable, and even worse I feel it dilutes and cheapens what the Forgotten Tomb name means and symbolizes. I don’t have a problem with musicians experimenting and evolving, but Forgotten Tomb’s musical evolution is taking them so far from the bitter, plague-infested world they once occupied that it’s hard to treat them as the same band.

» Buy Under Saturn Retrograde from Amazon.com

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.

The first couple tracks of the album are easily the standouts, and Förfall’s sparse atmosphere is best expressed here. Pretty much everything is very simple and stripped down, with the padded guitar tone weaving slowly shifting melodies over a backdrop of muted drums. The vocals on the album are what really set Förfall apart, taking the form of a distant, anguished scream that blends with the music and the visuals to bring the album cover’s primitive forest dwelling to life in the listener’s mind. One can also hear tidbits of Svarti Loghin’s sound in some of the melodic lines, so fans of that band will probably take to this project quite easily. This is unmistakably raw black metal, but instead of pummeling the listener with a lo-fi tremolo attack like a lot of bands, Srodek uses stripped down production to craft a more primal, exquisite listening experience.

Förfall’s quality takes a bit of a dive over the second half of the album, which is definitely a shame, but honestly an album like this that’s focused mainly on atmospheric effect doesn’t benefit from a great deal of variation, and I imagine it’s a huge challenge to craft songs that all sound pretty similar but still maintain a level of interest over the course of an album. The fact that Förfall delivers a couple really great tracks is enough for me to recommend that black metal fans at least give it a few spins.

» Buy Förfall from Amazon.com

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.

The album begins with a few tracks of basic atmospheric black riffing, but almost immediately the vocals come in and drop a sonic H-bomb on everything. The singer uses a sleepy singing style that doesn’t fit with the music, and doesn’t really seem like it would fit with any music, and he keeps it up for pretty much the duration of the album. It’s too bad because while the initial songs sound fairly typical of the genre, the band’s stripped down production and slightly unconventional riffing is at least interesting, sounding not too far off from bands like Whirling or LIK. The band really starts to experiment a bit later in the album: ‘One Day’ is close to trip-hop, and ‘Fan The Flames’ opens with a riff that’s closer to classic rock than black metal. Unfortunately even when the music gets really unique the vocals bitch slap you back into a state of annoyance and prevent you from enjoying everything the rest of the band does.

I’m not really sure what these guys were thinking with this album, but it’s definitely not what I expected at all. The one positive I can see from Closing A Circle is that at least Isolation is willing to experiment, and perhaps in another album or two these guys will manage to craft a unique and captivating sound. In the meantime though, I’d say skip this one.

» Buy Closing A Circle from Amazon.com

I’m a little late to the party with these guys, having only just recently picked up a copy of Vilosophe, but I’m still bummed out that we won’t be seeing any more official Manes releases. The band’s avant garde metal approach is starting to see more and more imitators in today’s scene, but none have been quite up to the same level as Manes’s concoctions on albums like Vilosophe and View. Very cool and classy of these guys to give the fans some last pseudo-releases to chew on.

» Manes Official Blog

From the press release:

The event is open to those 18 and older and will be held the first week of October in Northern California, about an hour north of San Fransisco on a 5 acre private retreat. This retreat is amazing and offers seclusion, various class/performance spaces, lounge areas, hot tubs, an inground pool, billiards, hiking trails and much more. We will be close to nearby stores, shopping, restaurants, wineries, a casino and many other attractions.

This is not only a chance for you to learn from some of the best drummers available, but a chance to hang out with them for a week! You will be eating with the instructors, racing go-karts and doing other fun activities with them, and pretty much getting to know them over the course of the event. You will not only walk away with what you have learned, but with some new friends in the drumming world and what is bound to be one of the best experiences of your life. Not to mention, all of this will be filmed for a DVD!

Kind of makes me wish I was good enough at drums to go to this. It’s not cheap obviously, but how many times are you gonna get to do something like this?

Check out the press release page for details on how to sign up:

» Sick Drummer Camp

Icelandic metallers Sòlstafir have set a title and release date for their new album, which will come out later this fall. The follow-up to 2009’s Kold will be called Svartir Sandar and should come out on October 18th in the US.

Sòlstafir also recently joined Season of Mist, which means that their album should be much easier to get a hold of this time around. That’s great news for fans in the US, since Kold was next to impossible to find in the states.

I’m pretty excited about the prospect of a new album from these guys, since Kold was one of my top two or three albums from ‘09. You can follow the band on Facebook to keep up with the latest news about the album.