With its image of a tank on the cover and song titles like ‘Battle of Smolensk,’ and ‘Unleash The Panzer Division,’ you’d figure that London’s Eastern Front would be pummeling you with an all-out warlike black metal assault right? Not exactly.

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I figured I should post my favorites from 2010 before we get too far into 2011. It’s kind of amusing looking back at my original list of 2010 albums I was looking forward to and seeing how few actually made the list.

Here are my absolute favorites from the year:

The Body - All The Waters Of The Earth Turned To Blood
At A Loss Records
[Review]


Svart - Förlorad
Frostscald Records
[Review]

Orphaned Land - The Neverending Way of ORwarriOR
Century Media


Locrian - The Crystal World
Self-Released
[Review]


Burzum - Belus
Byelobog Productions
[Review]


Imperium Dekadenz - Procella Vadens
Season Of Mist

Other albums I really enjoyed:

Todgelichter - Angst [Review]
Blood Of Kingu - Sun In The House Of The Scorpion [Review]
Deathspell Omega - Paracletus
Various Artists: Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer
Whirling - Faceless Phenomena
Agalloch - Marrow Of The Spirit
Intronaut - Valley Of Smoke
Manuscripts Don’t Burn - The Breathing House [Review]
October Falls - A Collapse Of Faith [Review]
October Tide - A Thin Shell [Review]
Watain - Lawless Darkness [Review]
Winterfylleth - The Mercian Sphere [Review]
Sorgeldom - Inner Receivings [Review]

Fen’s new album Epoch is the first in a while to completely blow me away. The band’s 2009 release The Malediction Fields left me mostly unimpressed, and I was expecting more of the same sleepy, anticlimactic songwriting on this album, but after the first couple tracks I spent the rest of the album’s duration staring blankly at my playlist in disbelief, wondering how this could be the same band. The music still has that dreamy, ethereal atmosphere thanks to Fen’s judicious use of keyboards and clean vocals, but musically this album is light-years ahead of its predecessor.

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Dimentianon’s Collapse The Void is one of those rare albums that completely destroyed what little expectations I had for it. These guys hail from New York and play a mix of black and death metal, having been operating under the name “The Forgotten” until recently. Black / death metal hybrid bands are usually not a good sign in my book, as a lot of them end up being bland and uninspired, but with Dimentianon’s music that’s definitely not the case. These guys grab you by the balls and don’t let go; it almost makes me wish I lived in New York so I could enjoy the satisfaction of having these guys as part of my local metal scene. They won’t be a secret for long.

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The area between Germany and Ukraine sometimes feels almost like a no-mans-land for metal, with even the few excellent bands from that area getting very little exposure. It’s really too bad, because most of the bands I’ve run across from the region happen to be quite excellent: Sear Bliss, Hellveto, Massemord, Furia, Sator Marte, Mgla, and most recently the pair of Polish black metal acts featured on this split, Infernal War and Kriegsmaschine.

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Here are some quick takes on a few of the albums we at Musical Warfare have been checking out lately.

Armagedda - I Am EP
2010, Nordvis Produktion
The four-song I Am EP showcases some material from Armagedda’s early career. For me it’s definitely not their best, but it’s not a throwaway release either. The creepy guitar sound and quietly menacing riffing the band has come to be known for are still intact on this recording, as are the grotesque rasped vocals of Graav. The tracks are quite varied: ‘I Am’ is more of a slow burner and ‘Cold Eon’ features a churning buzzsaw riff, while the other two tracks are more stripped-down but pretty solid as well. Compared to Armagedda’s later material, these songs are rawer and more punkish, but I Am’s sound is still suitably morbid. It’s definitely work a look for longtime fans and Swedish black metal enthusiasts.

11 As In Adversaries - The Full Intrepid Experience of Light
2010, ATMF
The Full Intrepid Experience of Light was apparently originally planned as the 4th Glorior Belli album, but the French black metal duo decided to release it under a new banner and save their fans a huge collective “WTF.” The sound these guys have crafted as 11 As In Adversaries bears really no resemblance to Glorior Belli or any of the members’ numerous other projects. It’s most easily described as avant-garde psychedelic rock, which is about as bizarre as it sounds. The songs heavily feature psychedelic elements, and the vocals are an Ozzy-like clean delivery, although some black metal screams also creep in occasionally. The music is interesting at times, but probably much of the creativity here is lost on me. It almost feels like I’m a victim of a prank on Glorior Belli’s part, but an extremely well-executed one. I feel like the crowd that would appreciate The Full Intrepid Experience of Light is about 180 degrees separated from the one that normally digs Glorior Belli’s output, but for those of you brave enough to check it out, expect the unexpected.

Lightning Swords Of Death - The Extra Dimensional Wound
2010, Metal Blade
Some reviewers have cast these guys as kind of an entry-level black metal band, but I disagree. To me, Lightning Swords of Death’s appeal lies in their ability to mix some black metal vileness into a very aggressive, down-tuned death metal approach to craft an extremely dark, brutal album that fits well with today’s modern metal scene. The Extra Dimensional Wound is not overly atmospheric, but the ugly, rough vocal sound and the black/death riffing helps differentiate Lightning Swords of Death from most bands today. There’s a little too much death metal influence in their sound for my tastes, but in potency of their sound these guys are spot on.

Khors - The Flames Of Eternity’s Decline/Cold
2010, Paragon Records
I tend of Khors’s Mysticism’s relation to black metal in the same way I think of Dark Tranquillity’s Projector as a melodic death metal album, which made checking out the band’s earlier efforts Cold and The Flames Of Eternity’s Decline on this compilation even more interesting. As you might expect, Khors’s earlier material is a bit faster and rawer, though it still contains the great melodic keyboard passages and overall mystical feel that made Mysticism so appealing. This is a great release for Khors fans, and with both early albums released together in one package, it’s a great value as well.

Valdur - Raven God Amongst Us
2010, Bloody Mountain Records
I’m not quite sure what it is that keeps Raven God Amongst Us from being more appealing. This California-based black metal group do a more than adequate job of imitating the typical Scandinavian black metal sound, with slithering tremolo-picked melodies and well-constructed songs propelled by blasting drums and hateful vocals. The riffs are good enough, but for some reason none of them really end up sticking. It could be that the production hides the guitars a bit too much, or just that you’ve heard music like this so many times before. Certainly as far as USBM bands go these guys are excellent, but for fans of the genre as a whole this album will be a bit underwhelming.

Abigail Williams - In The Absence Of Light
2010, Candlelight Records
The latest album from US black metal band Abigail Williams was actually better than I expected it to be, but I still see these guys as more of a gateway into heavier, more beastly acts than a member of the US black metal elite. That said, the guitar work on this album is impressive at times, with some nice guitar interplay and lots of brutal, thrashy riffing. Abigail Williams plays an expansive symphonic black metal style, and the production on this release is amazingly clear, so much so that In The Absence Of Light sounds more like a traditional heavy metal band that suddenly decided to play black metal. The production will probably be the biggest point of contention for hardcore genre elitists, because musically these guys are pretty tight.

I’ve never really been much of a fan of Watain - their older stuff struck me as decent orthodox-style black metal, but in my mind their music was always overshadowed by bands like Ondskapt and Deathspell Omega. As a result I’d kind of written them off, and wasn’t really expecting too much from the Swedes’ latest full length Lawless Darkness. Then after throwing it on one day and forgetting about it, I had one of those “Wait, what am I listening to again? This is actually pretty awesome!” moments, and figured I should probably give it a little more attention…

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Antimatter have finally released their long-anticipated two-disc retrospective collection Alternative Matter. With tracks from all phases of the band’s career, Alternative Matter features numerous live tracks, alternative versions of several songs, and some highly sought-after recordings. The first track, ‘Black Sun’ from the Lotus Eaters Dead Can Dance tribute album, is easily one of Antimatter’s better songs and is a great reason for die-hard fans to pick up this release. Several songs from the bands debut Savior are present in various forms, and Lights Out and Planetary Confinement are both also represented reasonably well, while Leaving Eden is mostly ignored.

One shortcoming of Alternative Matter for me personally is the lack of tracks with lead female vocals - I’ve never really been sold on Moss’s voice and always have preferred the band’s earlier songs like ‘Mr White,’ and ‘Line Of Fire’ which featured their assorted female singers. So if you’re like me then that’s something to consider. For any fan of the band though, the wealth of material here should be hard to pass up, since probably most of your favorite Antimatter tracks are present on this release in some shape or form. Sometimes when you’ve listened to a band so much that your enjoyment of their songs has faded, it’s nice to have slightly different versions to help rekindle your enthusiasm.

Check out some samples from Alternative Matter:

Former member Duncan Patterson’s new project Ion also recently released their second album Immaculada last May, and fans of Antimatter’s older material that haven’t checked these guys out might want to give Immaculada a listen. It’s more ethereal and folk-based than Antimatter’s material, and while Ion features some talented female vocalists, I found myself enjoying the instrumental offerings on the album a bit more. It’s nowhere near as melancholic as Antimatter’s compositions, but texturally the two projects are not that far apart.

Check out samples from Immaculada:

Sweden’s polyrhythmic metal juggernauts Meshuggah are apparently recording new material with the intention of releasing an album later this year. Check out this interview at MetalSucks for some tidbits on what the album might sound like.

Some highlights:

“song structure-wise and in terms of the length of the songs, it’s gonna be more like ‘Chaosphere’ or ‘ObZen’, where you have tracks that are anything from four to six minutes long, so it’s not gonna be some wild, experimental thing with crazy song lengths”

“There were a few tracks like ‘Bleed’ that have a very significant sound. But that album grew and was recorded in a way that we don’t really mean to do this album. It was very machine-like, with everything recorded to a click and being really anal about every single hit. That’s cool, and we’re not gonna make this one sloppy, but it’s about a different way of approaching it.”

“We’re going to try and step up the whole live show. What we want to create is a light show that is very intimately linked with the tracks, where you really put emphasis on making the whole audio/visual aspect a package that really knocks people off their feet. Whether we’re gonna go with screens and movie stuff or not I don’t know, but we’re definitely talking about bringing more light guys in.”

Meshuggah certainly has done a great job of putting out releases that are very distinct from one another, and it sounds like their new one will be no exception.

I’m also interested to see how their live show plans end up panning out. After all, it’s not like the Meshuggah live experience isn’t already plenty intense. I saw a few years ago where Germany’s The Ocean did something like what Tomas is describing, and it certainly added a new dimension to the experience. Granted, that was just a light show and no screens. I’m a bit on the fence about actual video imagery as part of live shows - it works decently for bands like Neurosis and Red Sparowes, but I’m not sure how it would go over with an aggressive band like Meshuggah.

Regardless of how things turn out, I’m pretty excited to see what the band ends up doing in 2011. Meshuggah’s releases in the past have certainly left me surprised and confused at times, but never disappointed.

Anyone else notice this?

The cover art of Diabolical’s album Ars Vitae…

…looks a lot like the artwork from Orcustus’s debut:

I’m not sure if they took the same source image and colored / retouched it for Diabolical’s album, or if it’s just an eerie coincidence. I definitely like Diabolical’s version better.

By the way, Diabolical’s Ars Vitae officially came out yesterday, so if you’re a fan of Swedish death metal you might want to check that out. It’s sort of a half live album and half new release, featuring four new tracks and nine live tracks, as well as a remastered version of one of their early EPs.