Album Review: Ahab - The Boats of the Glen Carrig

Album Score: A-

Ahab is a band as steeped in maritime mythos as any you are likely to find. Since its first saliferous demos, the quartet has evolved its sound from an otherworldly dirge to a more recognizable combination of largo riffs and ominous atmosphere. The Boats of the Glen Carrig is another step forward for the band after 2012’s The Giant saw the boldest incorporation of clean singing and dual-guitar interplay into its sound, more akin to mid-era My Dying Bride than to Ahab's debut, The Call of the Wretched Sea. “Deliverance” and “Antarctica (The Polymorphess)” showcased a willingness to let songs breathe and grow, and the result was as beautiful as it was hair-raising. Here, opener “The Isle” adds another luminous moment with its pre-climactic break before transitioning seamlessly into thundering growls. Despite the group’s continued use of inhumanly-deep vocals, Ahab is a band whose appeal often lies in the subtler moments of its craft. “I think,” frontman Droste even observes, “we've made some non-doom fans along the way."

Album Review: Unisonic - Light of Dawn

Album Score: B

Unisonic is a strange sort of reunion. Three of its five members are from Pink Cream 69, three have ties to Helloween, two have played in Krokus and Khymera, two more in Gamma Ray, and the last member in Asia and Gotthard. If that math doesn’t add up, it’s because these guys just seem to end up playing together no matter how many bands they join and leave. Still, singer Michael Kiske and guitarist Kai Hansen are head-and-shoulders above most anyone else in the German metal scene for their work in the aforementioned Helloween and Gamma Ray, and are likewise the focal point of Unisonic. Founded in 2009, the project released its eponymous debut in 2012 to generally positive – and often rave – reviews. Surprisingly, Unisonic’s bassist Dennis Ward emerged as its main songwriter, penning lyrics and/or music for the majority of the debut with occasional contributions from the rest of the band.

Album Review: The Great Old Ones – Tekeli-li

Album Score: A

Few bands get it absolutely right the first time – within the realm of black metal, Emperor, Celtic Frost, Ulver, and maybe Agalloch come to mind. So when The Great Old Ones turned in a solid debut in Al Azif, prospects were good that the band’s next effort could be a breakthrough. Sure, there was the usual Weakling-worship and some songs stood out more than others, but Al Azif had some exciting qualities to it, mostly revolving around the album’s sinister vibe and saturation with all things H.P. Lovecraft. It’s only been two years since then, but The Great Old Ones is already back for round two, and this time the band has taken everything that made its debut a good album and amplified them to make Tekeli-li an all-around superb one.

Album Review: Thou - Heathen

Album Score: B+

Of all the extreme metal beasts wandering the musical underworld, black metal and doom metal are among the most fearsome and strange. From the darkest depths of the human psyche these creatures arose, boring their way towards the light from frostbitten forests and sweltering swamps. The latter gave us early doom mavens Exhorder and Eyehategod, but somewhere down the line Louisiana birthed some truly terrifying monsters like Thou. A quintet specializing in music designed to break souls, Thou has tempered its blackened doom for nine years through three albums and a menagerie of EPs and splits. At the core of Thou’s ideology is a distaste for societal constructs; an abhorrence of the artificial paradigms ruling our world. Heathen, then, is both a logical continuation – and the boldest chapter yet – of that treatise on humanity’s true face.

Album Review: Gamma Ray - Empire of the Undead

Album Score: B-

Considering it was originally a side project, Gamma Ray has showed some remarkable staying power at the core of Europe’s power metal scene. It’s been almost twenty years since Gamma Ray released two of the genre’s defining albums in Land of the Free and Somewhere Out in Space, but the quartet is still alive and well in its fourth decade. The fact that fans were disappointed with 1999’s Powerplant – an album with no less than four classic songs, including the band’s opener and encore ever since – says a lot about how much respect the band has in the metal sphere. Lately, however, singer/guitarist Kai Hansen seems content to rest on his laurels, as the band’s last two albums have played things about as safely as possible. It’s been a full four years since To the Metal! raised concerns over whether Gamma Ray had anything left in the tank, between the album’s inconsistency and borderline plagiarism, so Empire of the Undead has some questions to answer.

Interview: Andi Deris of Helloween

Andi Deris is the vocalist for Helloween, an influential power metal band from Germany. He sang with Pink Cream 69 until he joined Helloween in 1993; he has since released thirteen albums with the group, including four gold-certified records. He recently recorded a solo album with his solo band The Bad Bankers entitled Million-Dollar Haircuts on Ten-Cent Heads. I spoke with him about a number of topics such as where the name The Bad Bankers came from, how he chooses what to play live and his favorite songs, his dream collaborations, getting thrown in jail, having his bus ransacked, and some memorable moments from Helloween’s recent world tour.

Album Review: Soreption - Engineering the Void

Album Score: B+

Death metal is a genre that presents a conundrum of sorts for new artists. In order to be considered a player, a band has to fulfill certain expectations: precise musicianship, guttural vocals, challenging tempos, complex and ever-changing riffs, incessant double-kick drumming, guitar-centric structures, and so forth. The problem with such standards is that they also portend a certain amount of conformity, and therefore a band must also find a way to stand out without violating these essential characteristics of death metal. Soreption is a rising group that finds itself on the fence between these paradigms – perhaps perfectly so, as Engineering the Void sticks to its tech death guns while striving for a voice of its own. Such is the luxury afforded to a group as fundamentally sound as this Swedish quartet as they balance impressive chops with intrepid songwriting on their sophomore effort.

Album Review: Cynic - Kindly Bent to Free Us

Album Score: C

Cynic is a band that defies explanation. If Kindly Bent to Free Us is your first impression of the group, then you’ll be in for a shock upon looking into this progressive juggernaut’s back catalogue. Paul Masvidal, Sean Malone, and Sean Reinert comprise Cynic’s core, and while they’ve left an indelible mark on extreme metal over the last quarter-century, Cynic has lately become a total enigma. Sure, the upbeat swing of “The Lion’s Roar” bears little face-value resemblance to cuts from the band’s classic 1993 album Focus, but in a weird way it seems like we should have seen this coming all along. Gone are the shredded leads and the death growls, and in their place have risen ethereal atmospheres and intricately layered compositions. Then again, is the intro of “Kindly Bent to Free Us” really so far from that of “I’m But a Wave To”? Regardless, it seems like it’s time to let go of our notions on what Cynic was and start appreciating what it is, and has always been – a group of musicians willing to try anything and everything so long as it has an intrepid soul and thoughtful arrangement.

Concert Review: Amon Amarth, Enslaved, and Skeletonwitch

Amon Amarth is heavy metal’s version of life imitating art: twenty-two years in, the beardy Swedes are laying waste to music venues more vociferously than ever and solidifying their place in the pantheon of heavy metal. Last year’s uncompromising Deceiver of the Gods opened at #19 in the US charts, the highest death metal album by a band not based on a cartoon, and yet many fans argue that Amon Amarth isn’t even the most important band on its current tour. They have a point, too, because when a concert boasts a one-two punch of Amon Amarth and a black metal titan like Enslaved, it’s bound to be one hell of a night. At the House of Blues in Boston, the pillaging was in full force as native opener Skeletonwitch knocked down the gates on a stupendous evening of Odin worship, heraldry, and fist-pumping metal anthems.

Album Review: Ulver/Sunn O))) - Terrestrials

Album Score: B

“Like some lost pilgrim stretching before the sun…” - Rygg

Kristoffer Rygg has certainly made his musical pilgrimages, from black metal allegedly recorded in a forest to haunting ambient-electronic opuses. It comes as little surprise, then, that his lifelong project – the enigmatic entity known as Ulver – would wander into the path of another avant-garde behemoth in Sunn O))). Both bands have basically done as they pleased since their inceptions, and though the latter duo has perhaps alienated as many as it has enthralled, rumors of a collaboration between such creative forces seized the attention of experimental music fans everywhere. Born of early-morning improvisations at Ulver’s studio in August 2008 and painstakingly honed in the years since, Terrestrials is the sort of album that dreams are made of – particularly the kind from which you wake up hyperventilating in a cold sweat.

Album Review: Alaskan - Erosion, Despair, Loss

Album Score: A-

The mountain stands before me: glaciers wracked with black crevasses extend for miles before windswept ridges jut upwards at jagged angles. Something inside tells me to go back.“A sacrifice!” scream the violins, shrill strings that rise and writhe like harbingers of doom.The storm descends; I forge ever onwards. My footsteps ring against the frozen earth, faster and faster, into the mouth of the sky. An avalanche – the drums, thundering; resonant and sharp, an unstoppable force to carry me to the foot of the behemoth. I pass the point of no return; the falling snow is a deafening blanket. I look around and find nothing familiar but the sound of my own voice as it is carries down the slopes to disappear into some godforsaken chasm. “Beg for forgiveness!” the mountain demands, its voice harsh, merciless.Why undertake this journey? Why here, of all places, when I could be in sunny fields or sandy shores?

Album Review: The Visit – Between Worlds

Album Score: A

In an industry where everything seems to be trending towards the more complex – faster, louder, overhyped, overproduced – it takes an act of understated beauty to remind us what makes something truly memorable. The Visit takes this concept and runs with it. Hailing from Ottawa, Canada, The Visit consists solely of singer Heather Sita Black and cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne, who display stunning chemistry on their debut release, “Between Worlds.” Though containing only a single fourteen-minute song, it is, quite frankly, a tremendous opening statement from the duo. The piece traverses a number of peaks as it builds from a chamber-style lament to a progressive juggernaut and back with breathtaking ease.

Album Review: Worms in Women and Cattle – Sick Road

Album Score: A-

“Worms in Women and Cattle.” It’s a name that sounds incredibly demeaning, but if you think about it, it’s true: there are worms in just about every living thing. It’s kind of scary and kind of creepy, but it’s also fascinating. Such is the Providence, RI quartet’s only release,Sick Road. Composed of nine bombastic black metal pieces from two to fifteen minutes long, the album conjures some of the most ghastly feelings possible. While the whole band sounds like they crawled out of a bog right before recording, the main culprit is Worms’ possessed frontwoman Pippi Zornoza, whose ungodly shrieks are bound to give even the most hardened black metal enthusiasts goosebumps. Combine those with some hair-raising and unpredictable compositions, and you get a black metal album like no other.

Album Review: Skeletonwitch - Serpents Unleashed

Album Score: B+

Everyone knows that thrash is all about teh riffs, but what’s behind great riffage? If you’re going by Skeletonwitch’s latest effort, the answer is pure energy. With eleven songs clocking in at less than three minutes apiece, Serpents Unleashed is a dissertation on explosive songwriting from the Ohio blackened thrash veterans. Arguably the group’s most cohesive effort to date, the album meshes a variety of influences and styles while showcasing some of the strongest pieces in Skeletonwitch’s catalogue. Purists need not fret, though, for Serpents Unleashed leaves no doubt that it’s meant to get mosh pits moving and hearts racing in proper thrash metal fashion.

Album Review: Indian - From All Purity

Album Score: C+

As a rule of thumb, when a band lists Waylon Jennings and Lynyrd Skynyrd as influences, you shouldn’t expect to hear funeral doom guitars and banshee screams. Apparently, Indian didn’t get that memo. The Illinois quartet’s fifth album From All Purity may not sound particularly Native American, but it’s not hard to imagine that it was born of a thirst for Fire Water and retribution as the band rips through six gritty tracks with the subtlety of a tomahawk. Riding the dirtiest guitar tone this side of Thou and a terrifying performance by vocalist Dylan O’Toole, From All Purity is, for better or for worse, as relentless and overstated as modern metal gets.

Alex Newton's Top 50 of 2013

1. The Ocean – Pelagial

In the wake of The Ocean’s polarizing duo Heliocentric and Anthropocentric, their next album was bound to be a make-or-break affair. With Pelagial, however, those fears about the Ocean’s future can finally be laid to rest. Based around the very cool concept of descending through the ocean, Pelagial feels more natural than anything else by the new lineup. Songwriter and guitarist Robin Staps’ original idea was to start with a clean, ambient “surface” feel and move steadily towards a “distorted and abrasive sound for the doomy depth-passages at the end of the album”. Indeed, the serene major-chord piano of “Epipelagic” sets a tone unlike anything in The Ocean’s catalogue, despite seascape sounds that otherwise whisper of Fluxion’s opener, “Nazca”.

Album Review: Terra Tenebrosa - The Purging

Album Score: A-

There’s something about three dudes in black capes and demon masks that just never gets old. It really should, but it doesn’t as long as they've got the music to back it up. In stark contrast to Swedish compatriot Ghost’s tongue-in-cheek doctrine, Terra Tenebrosa legitimately gives the creeps with its genre-defying attack and macabre imagery. The trio came together in 2009 from the ashes of post-hardcore outfit Breach and delivered a promising debut, but it’s on their sophomore effort that they’ve laid claim to territory all their own. Full of distorted chants and screams, paranoia-inducing machine noises, and all sorts of other bizarre sounds, The Purging is a tour de force in unsettling songcraft.

Album Review: Secrets of the Sky - To Sail Black Waters

Album Score: B+

At its best, doom metal is all about atmosphere – not the kind you get from diminished-chord synths and primeval recording quality, but the way an album changes your outlook on the world around you. Ominous becomes welcoming. Bright colors become offensive. Cold becomes invigorating. Drowning sounds like a beautiful way to go when the time comes, and to that end, Secrets of the Sky’s debut is a positively suffocating slab of blackened doom. Hovering somewhere between My Dying Bride’s tortured overtures and Agalloch’s mellifluous black metal, To Sail Black Waters moves like a powerful beast – never at more than a crawl, but with tremendous momentum and poise.

Artist of the Day: Rorcal

Key Release: Világvége (2013)

"You have no idea what to expect."

It’s the sort of line a band throws on packaging to dare you to buy its album. Nine times out of ten, the ploy works (and it’s exactly that, a ploy), but it’s that other ten percent in which the real meat of modern metal lies. That’s where the chimeras of heavy music dwell – the fearless bands with nothing to lose. It's where the visionaries come from, bands like Mastodon and Opeth who are now household names for their ingenuity and steadfastness. That's where Rorcal is clawing its way up from, and for a beast like Rorcal, every road from here on is the one not taken.

If you haven’t heard of Rorcal, you’re in the overwhelming majority. The quartet was birthed in Geneva in 2006, and made a name for itself by pounding the local scene in support of cult heroes like Knut, Red Sparrowes, and Wolves in the Throne Room. The outfit’s early sound owed much to its hardcore contemporaries, but by the time Myrra, Mordvynn, Marayaa dropped in 2008, Rorcal was waist-deep in doom and sludge metal. In the band’s eloquent words, “Somewhere between Drone, Doom and Black metal, let yourself go into the bowels of the whale.”

Artist of the Day: Death

Key Release: Symbolic (1995)

There may have been earlier death metal bands (Possessed is often credited with being the first), but none shaped the genre with way the aptly-named Death did. The brainchild of guitarist Chuck Schuldiner, Death released its debut Scream Bloody Gore in 1986 to the shock and awe of fans who previously had thought they knew “heavy.” Full of horror-themed lyrics and sporting gruesome cover art, Death’s first three albums (Scream Bloody Gore, Leprosy, and Spiritual Healing) laid the blueprint for bands like Morbid Angel and Deicide who would take the genre to new popular heights.