The self-titled fourth release from Russia’s Ea is a formidable slab of funeral doom. Comprised of one monumental track that clocks in at over 47 minutes, Ea nevertheless manages to hold my interest, which is a pretty impressive feat for such a lengthy composition. Ea takes a slightly different approach from bands like Esoteric, Ahab or Evoken, crafting doom that carries some muscle but doesn’t rely on crushing heaviness to be effective. Their compositions are more in line with those of bands like Skepticism, becoming more of a thinking man’s doom.

The first few minutes of the song are fairly bleak and dark, with some keyboards providing a hint of melody. It’s nothing spectacular, but Ea slowly introduces more aspects of their sound as the album unfolds. Things become more melodic with simple repeating motifs, and Ea keeps their use of vocals to a minimum, choosing to let the contemplative atmosphere of the music speak for itself. Towards the middle of the track we’re treated to a stark melody that’s exceptionally effective due to the contrast with the dreary riffing of the early part of the song. In fact some of Ea’s more melodic passages carry a mournful simplicity that evokes Katatonia’s earlier material on albums like Brave Murder Day or Discouraged Ones. Ea also varies their vocal attack between traditional doomy growls and some almost blackened screams, with the deeper growling being easily the more effective of the two styles.

Some scattered female vocals make an appearance in the latter half of the song, which slowly becomes more mellow and actually quite relaxing. Things start to drag a bit towards the end of the song, but that’s something that even the best doom bands are guilty of at times. The fact that I can listen to this album from start to finish without it becoming dull is enough to leave me impressed.

The Transylvanian Legacy Tour’s stop in Orange County ended up being a very memorable night in more ways than one. Not only did Romanian black metal legends Negură Bunget and their folk counterpart Din Brad deliver impressive sets, but the multitude of opening bands and the nifty two-stage setup at Malone’s Bar and Grill in Santa Ana resulted in a long and thoroughly ear-melting night of almost nonstop metal.

I missed a few of the early opening bands, but managed to catch Vesperian and P.D.P. as well as the tail end of Casket’s set. Despite playing a trendy, Meshuggah-like rhythmic style of metal - ‘djent’ I guess is what the kids are calling it these days - and relying heavily on eight and nine-string guitars, P.D.P. was probably the most entertaining of the three thanks to some amusing banter from their frontman and meaty riffing that managed to at least get the crowd’s attention. Casket and Vesperian both played pretty generic black metal, and Canada’s Eclipse Eternal honestly wasn’t too much more exciting, although they did deck themselves out in full corpse paint. They had some decent riffs and a few well-placed acoustic passages, but their vocalist was a bit over the top at times.

Din Brad’s recordings are not really my cup of tea, but I was curious how they would go over in a live setting. The band is made up of Negură Bunget members Negru, who handles percussion, and Inia Dinia who provides the vocals and keyboards. Inia’s vocals aren’t exceptional but they get the job done, and Negru’s drumming is generally extremely basic, doing little more than keeping the beat. Having someone to translate the Romanian lyrics probably would have greatly improved my appreciation for what Din Brad is trying to accomplish. Without knowing what Inia is singing, the music is so sparsely constructed that there isn’t too much for me to latch onto other than some occasional nice chord changes, but seeing the duo perform live does have a sort of mesmerizing effect and provided a nice prelude to Negură Bunget’s set.

After several hours Negură Bunget finally took the stage and quickly launched into what would end up being an exquisite performance spanning a surprising amount of their catalogue. The band honestly did a great job of duplicating the complexity and atmosphere of their music in a live setting. As one might expect, they mostly chose songs from Om and their previous full-length Vîrstele Pămîntului. Both ‘Cunoestera Tăcută’ and ‘Tesarul de Lumini’ were brilliant live, and seeing them performed just underlined for me how phenomenally talented former members Sol Faur and Hupogrammos are - some of the riffs and the interplay between the two guitar parts are absolutely mind-blowing. Dacia Hiperboreană from the Vîrstele Pămîntului album was excellent as well.

The band also had a few surprises ready for this tour, which is apparently their first on US soil. They broke out the folk instruments for a beautifully executed rendition of ‘Pămînt’, with the simple flute-driven melody providing a nice break from the intensity of Negură Bunget’s metal songs. In the opposite extreme, the band also added some muscle and aggression to their set with two of their heavier tracks: ‘Poartă de Dincolo’ from last year’s EP was incredible live, and the blistering encore ‘Blăznit’ from Zîrindu-să was a explosive way to finish off the night.

I’ll be seeing these guys again at Maryland Deathfest, which I’m now even more excited about. Whether or not they play the same set, it should be a great experience seeing them in a larger setting and with a larger audience, since there was a total of maybe 20 people at this show. No matter how you might feel about the band’s recent line-up changes and their newer material, Negură Bunget deliver in a live setting in a huge way, and theirs was definitely one of the more impressive performances I’ve seen recently.

This is a short EP from ambient black metal act Lustre from Sweden. Lustre is notable for having a sounds that’s about as devoid of metal as you can be without falling out of the genre entirely. Really the only semblance of traditional metal elements here is some very faint blackened vocals that are so well hidden they almost melt into the rest of the sound. The major appeal Lustre has for metal fans is the ambience itself, which is simplistic and primordial in a way that even pagan black metal can’t approach.

My previoius experience with these guys was through their 2010 full-length A Glimpse Of Glory, which was decent and served its purpose but was a bit tough to sit all the way through. Lustre’s sparse ambient approach I think works much better as an EP - something you can throw on for a short time to set the right mood. Of Strength And Solace’s four tracks are different enough to be distinct from one another, but also easily meld together to maintain a consistent atmosphere for the listener. Lustre also includes a couple sparse yet effective keyboard melodies, which gently embed themselves into your consciousness and deepen the overall effect of this EP. It’s brief, but also extremely enjoyable.

» Buy Of Strength and Solace from Amazon.com

Turkish one-man black metal project Yayla has emerged from seemingly nowhere in the last couple years, managing to quickly churn out three full-length releases. Despite coming from a place that’s not exactly known for producing quality metal bands, Yayla nevertheless are crafting some pretty impressive material if 2012’s Sathimasal is any indication.

Yayla’s approach on Sathimasal is atmoshperic, ambient black metal in its pureset form. We’re talking fuzzed out, hypnotic bursts of sound somewhat in the vein of bands like Velvet Cacoon or early I Shalt Become. It gets fairly repetitive in some places, but that’s the point isn’t it? Tracks like the opener ‘Fordreame Wonderlore’ settle into an oppressive groove of fuzzed out blackened riffing and then pummel you with it until your mind is engulfed by the bleak, discordant assault. Yayla mercifully provides a little variation over the course of the album, throwing in some nice keyboard sections in a few places and varying their sound between all-out ambient blackness and more melodic leads. Third track ‘Harvester; Modesty Of All Malevolence’ even throws in some almost post-rockish lead work towards the end.

The one minor flaw I found with this album lies in some rather questionable production issues. Over the last two tracks the bass becomes more audible, and it has such a weird tone that it almost sounds like the bass is playing a completely different song. Perhaps this is just the way the mix turned out, or maybe Yayla is so kvlt that they’re subtly punishing those of us with good enough speaker systems to notice the bass. Either way it’s sort of annoying but doesn’t detract too much from the album’s overall quality, and unless you’re using really good headphones or speakers you’re probably not going to notice anyway. Sathimasal is a great slab of ambient blackness from a very promising new artist.

Alcest has obviously gotten a lot of attention for helping to popularize the “blackgaze” sound that has become increasingly prevalent recently. Each of their past albums had its moments, but their newest offering Les Voyages De L’Âme is probably the first that I’ve actually truly enjoyed from start to finish. The songwriting is both more mature and more subdued, but the understated compositions help to bring the sound on this album back into the realm of traditional metal songwriting, which gives it a much more universal appeal. For me this is easily Alcest’s finest work to date.

Past Alcest releases placed a heavy emphasis on the post-rock and shoegaze elements of the band’s sound. Both Souvenirs d’un autre monde and Écailles de Lune were pretty heavy on the shoegaze and post-rock, and Écailles… in particular seemed much more experimental. On this latest album Alcest have dialed a lot of that down, and instead chosen to rely on acoustic guitar passages and Neige’s voice to create the usual ethereal atmosphere. The dreamy post-rock and shoegaze passages that sometimes dominated earlier releases are used more judiciously on Les Voyages De L’Âme, still contributing to the band’s overall sound but no longer being synonymous with it. This allows Alcest’s songwriting ability to really shine. The band’s penchant for stirring, guitar-driven melody is as strong as ever, and songs like ‘Là où naissent les couleurs nouvelles’ feature some of the strongest and most memorable riffing the band has ever produced.

I’m guessing that Alcest fans will be more than happy with this release, but it’s more stripped-down sound should help draw in more conservative fans that were turned off by the band’s earlier material. Songs like the powerful, guitar-driven ‘Là où naissent les couleurs nouvelles’ and the mellow opener ‘Autre Temps’ are accessible enough that any metal fan that can appreciate the lighter side of the genre should enjoy them, and the rest of the album helps to bridge the gap to some of Alcest’s more adventurous older work. “Les Voyages De L’Âme” is another great release from one of modern metal’s more intriguing bands.

» Buy Les Voyages de l’Âme from Amazon.com

Formed by members of Sweden’s now-defunct Breach, enigmatic entity Terra Tenebrosa takes a bold approach both with their music and with the visual presentation of the band itself. Their debut album The Tunnels is full of pictures of the band members clothed in creepy masks and shrouded in shadows. Fortunately, Terra Tenebrosa’s music is good enough to legitimize the creative costume choices, providing the perfect sonic backdrop to complement the uneasiness the band’s imagery creates.

The sound Terra Tenebrosa have crafted is definitely unique. Sort of an avant-garde sludge metal, their sound is almost like a mix of Dark Tribe and Blut Aus Nord without the black metal. The Tunnels displays impressive musical creativity, mixing numerous vocal styles and subtle ambience with very unorthodox guitar work. The drumming is sort of a controlled chaos and only adds to the confusion. The songs themselves range from fast-paced burners to lengthy plodding instrumentals - tracks like ‘Probing The Abyss’ are more riff-based, while others like ‘Guiding The Mist / Terraforming’ take longer to develop, layering on sound and gradually building. The album sounds almost primitive at times due to the pulsing, often-technical drumming and disturbingly unnatural vocals.

Probably my favorite thing about this album is that it manages to be both incredibly creepy and very musically interesting. There’s no pointless technical noodling here - Terra Tenebrosa clearly have a singular vision of the atmosphere they wanted to create with this album, and every one of the album’s crooked, bizarre riffs is completely focused toward that purpose. Terra Tenebrosa is a very ambitious project, and at least with this album the band has executed their vision perfectly.

» Buy The Tunnels album from Amazon.com

Pervertor is the second full-length of Chicago’s Lord Mantis, and it’s utterly monstrous. The ‘blackened sludge’ label they use to describe their music is more or less accurate, but it doesn’t come close to conveying the sickening heaviness of this release. If Converge and Neurosis combined to make some sort of twisted offspring, this is what it would sound like.

Pervertor is punishing and intense enough to please anyone who claims to be a fan of heavy music, but with Lord Mantis’s pedigree - the band is composed of current and former members of Nachtmystium, Indian and Avichi - it’s not a shock that the songwriting is top notch as well. Sludgy, driving riffs dominate most of the album and give Pervertor its mix of filthy heaviness and infectious, sludgy groove. There are also enough shards of melody to provide some variation and round out the songs. The blackened aspect of Lord Mantis’s sound comes mainly from the vocals, which use a harsh, screamed delivery and are distorted to sickening levels, adding a nice extra layer of perversity on top of the muddy, droning sound of the guitars. Take all that and combine it with crushing riffs like the bludgeoning opening of ‘Ritual Killer’ and you’ve got one hell of an album.

I wasn’t honestly expecting much out of this album when I put it on, having never really heard of these guys before, and obviously I was pretty pleasantly surprised. I think it just goes to show that no matter how specialized or picky you get about what you listen to in the metal genre there’s always room for another good, no-bullshit album of brutal heavy music. The bottom line is that Pervertor is an album I could throw on, crank up and go apeshit breaking things any day of the week, and if that’s not a good metal record than what is?

» Buy Pervertor from Amazon.com

Here are Musical Warfare’s favorites from 2011:

The Body & Braveyoung - Nothing Passes [Review]
Brutal Truth - Endtime
Dornenreich - Flammentriebe [Review]
Echtra - Paragate [Review]
Esoteric - Paragon of Dissonance
Falloch - Where Distant Spirits Remain [Review]
Fen - Epoch [Review]
Kvelertak - Kvelertak
Peste Noire - L’Order a l’Etat Pur
Smohalla - Resilience [Review]
Solstafir - Svartir Sandar
Terra Tenebrosa - The Tunnels
Thy Catafalque - Rengeteg
Ulcerate - Destroyers Of All

France’s Smohalla doesn’t get nearly as much attention as a lot of other French bands like Alcest or Deathspell Omega do, and it’s hard to think of a good reason why. It’s possible that it’s simply due a lack of exposure - even though the band has been releasing spits and EPs since 2006, Resilience is only the band’s first full-length. I think the reason goes even deeper however, and relates to the band’s music itself. I have trouble thinking of any band that even comes close to composing music the way Smohalla does, and perhaps the black metal populace just needs a little more time to digest and appreciate what these guys are doing.

Resilience is a startling realization of the sound Smohalla displayed glimpses of on their EPs. The album is dominated by their nebulous, moody style of post-black metal, with brilliantly layered guitars and arcane vocals complemented by some subtle keyboards. Smohalla has an almost classical style of composition, with the various instruments contributing equally to the melody and atmosphere rather than songs being driven by a single guitar or vocal line. Often the music builds dramatically with brooding guitar or keyboard lines, while other times the entire set of instruments are masterfully intertwined into haunting atmospheric passages. The vocals are probably my favorite aspect of Smohalla’s sound, as the band often uses harmonized clean vocals that give the music a very ancient, timeless quality.

Resilience isn’t particularly accessible at first due to Smohalla’s tendency to write songs that constantly shift and evolve, so there isn’t much for the listener to latch on to. Fortunately, as is often the case with albums like this, the end result is more than worth the effort. Arcturus is maybe the closest thing to compare these guys to, but with none of the off-kilter, playful element that Arcturus’s music includes. Smohalla’s sound is much deeper and more focused. I’m obviously one of those black metal fans that loves to hear something weird and different, and this is some of the best and most interesting material I’ve heard in a while.

Absu albums are sort of a mixed bag for me. I’m not really a huge fan of blackened thrash in general, but on the other hand there are so many things to like about these guys: the occult subject matter, great album cover art (the latest is by Polish artist Zbigniew Bielak), the fact that their drummer is also thier vocalist and lyricist, and seriously bad ass songtitles like ‘Earth Ripper’ and ‘Skyring in the Spirit Vision’. They’re one of those bands that I don’t go out of my way to listen to, but their releases usually contain at least a couple tracks that are undeniably awesome even to picky listeners like me.

The band’s latest release Abzu, the second part of a planned trilogy, is no different. The blistering opener ‘Earth Ripper’ has a little too much thrash in it for my tastes, but it nevertheless contains some killer technical riffing. ‘Circles of the Oath’ and ‘Abraxas Connexus’ are both superb and are easily the highlights of the album for me, while the rest of the album carries a similar intricate riffing style but doesn’t quite have the impact of those two tracks. The album itself is pretty short with only six tracks, but the closer is a fourteen-minute slab of chaos that pretty much makes up for the lack of length. I’m not going to attempt to rank this among Absu’s other work, but with the brilliant musicianship and blackened viciousness on this album I’m pretty sure it measures up.

» Buy Abzu from Amazon.com