Album Review: Enslaved – E

With a discography to die for, our favourite black metal innovators, Enslaved, are back and they have something new hiding up their wizard sleeves. Here, on their fourteenth long-player, they exercise their love for the Norse god of War, Odin, and they sem hell-bent on honouring his notorious wanderlust.

For their opener, “Storm Son”, the band usher us gently onto their battlefield with a series of emotive sound effects, before launching into eleven minutes of weaving sinuous guitar riffery that rides over abrasive blackened hilltops and down into soft, richly-decorated auditory valleys. It’s a track that burns with originality, is excitingly honest and heart-breakingly beautiful in its organic design.

The game is clearly afoot but they aren’t playing ball and quickly settle back into playing something approximating their more traditional sound for “The River’s Mouth”. New keyboardist and clean vocalist Håkon Vinje really rises to the fore in this tumbling, galloping song providing a wonderfully soothing, yet catchy ethereal chorus and a craftily woven mesh of warm synth.

With the prog-heavy, distorted organ sounds of “Sacred Horse” and the eerily psychedelic wash of “Axis Of The World” dragging us once again through the mill, you begin to get a sense of this new manic force driving the ideas machine. It is clear that Vinje has played a major role in the creation of this scattergun collection of sonic thrusts.

The band wrap things up with “Hiindsiight” proving to be the moody, doom-laden moment to release the saxophone solos of Kjetil Møster. As he lets forth a torrent of apocalyptic squeals and sharp blasts it becomes clear that we are once more in the grip of another masterful work from these legendary Norwegians. Even if it struggles to reach the insane emotional peaks of Riitiir or the ferocious black metal crush of Eld, it still slots easily into their increasingly unsurpassable back catalogue.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2017/10/enslaved-e-nuclear-blast/

Album Review: Meshuggah – Koloss (Nuclear Blast)

As a late arrival at the Meshuggah table I find, at times, that I can be driven nuts by their overbearing attack and often flat, uneven grind. Their music may be bulging with slap-in-the-face aggression, something that is overwhelmingly exciting when witnessed live, but it’s a feature that requires a little more craft when brought to bear on an album. Too many times, all for the sake of an addictive hook, stand-out riff or crafty lyric, they seem to allow tracks to be dragged down into the deep. It’s here in these submerged waters that I lose them, only hearing the sound of repetitious, over-familiarity echoing from undefined sources coming from somewhere above the waterline.

For a band that’s birthed a whole genre of wannabes I’m clearly in the minority here. It’s exactly this level of adoration that adds extra pressure to each Meshuggah offering as they strive to stay ahead of the game. One glance at seventh long-player Koloss shows they aren’t afraid of going the extra mile to please. I mean, just look at that album art. It’s all a bit reminiscent of some of Tool’s more-innovative covers with its mind-bending 3D digital rendering. Stare too long at the image and your brain begins to hurt. That took Luminokaya Lab a whole nine months to create so could feasibly contain the entire World Wide Web within its multitude of brassy squiggles! So, if Koloss can cause pain on a visual level, how does the album stack up sonically?

Well, “I Am Colossus” is typically pin-point accurate and easily as deeply-furrowed as Nothing’s “Stengah”. As an opening track, it’s a beast. Instantly, they concentrate on one rumbling chord and ping it repeatedly you, loading everything into the steady, syncopated rhythm whilst Jens Kidman meshes his monotone, scorched earth vocal to it. Meshuggah are sending out a clear message of intent. “Palm-mute this, you mothers… JUN… JUN… JUN… JUN… JUN JUN…”. The guts of it are so deep that when the guitars let loose, the strings are dropped so low, you need to strain to hear the changes. It’s skull-crushingly heavy.

“The Demon’s Name Is Surveillance” is a speed-freak, light on its feet next to the elephantine “I Am Colossus”. The whirling vortex created by the continuous double-kick of Tomas Haake drills ever downwards. He’s back with more pummelling crush for “Swarm” which will make your skin creep. Behind the thunder drums, the crawling guitars go batshit mental to recreate the sound of a billion insects screaming out of the sky to poison and devour you. You won’t forget this one in a hurry, already a future classic, and as such it eats Machine Head’s recent insectivorous offering, “Locust”, for breakfast.

These are the kind of tracks we expect from Meshuggah; it’s when you dig deeper that you begin to find their mixed bag of tricks. There’s the Primussian slapped funk of “Don’t Look Down” which gets a harder, dirtier make-over for “Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave It Motion.” Check out that spiralling solo and those semi-distant atmospherics on the former, or that trippy, warbling guitar on the latter and tell me these psychos don’t pay attention to their surroundings.

“Behind The Sun” finds them stretching each note, grinding them into a murky wall of sound, generating a backdrop that sounds as complex as their cover appears. The band appear to be sucking up a doom/black metal quality to go with their vindictive death metal patter and they save some of that primordial darkness for “Demiurge”. However, be warned, this one’s a real howler of a track if you’re seeking a similar spark. It’s so lacking in charm you may as well listen to the sound of your own heartbeat through a stethoscope for six minutes instead.

And that’s Koloss in a nutshell. For every blinder, you get a duffer. So, whilst “Marrow” lurches and energises with its pinged guitar slaps overwhelming alongside clean, scrambling solos and fuzzball chugs, you get the bafflingly, mighty attack of “The Hurt That Finds You”. With tightened snare and bags of crunch, it’s a song so sharp it hurts and yet it’s all for nothing when it seems the destination is Nowheresville.
Judging it from afar, it’s easy to spot the dirge-like hammering and prolonged sections of extreme technicality of Nothing running through Koloss, and yet the band still find time for the kind of dark, mesmeric groove and changes of tempo that you’d associate more readily with obZen. And yet, there’s something new here; something infinitely more enigmatic; a dangerous edge bordering on a barren, post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Whether that is something that will inspire their legion of admirers remains to be seen but, considering how the metal scene has so easily fallen back in love with mood-metal, I can’t see it hurting them.

There, and I didn’t use the D-word… not even once.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2012/03/meshuggah-koloss-nuclear-blast/

Album Review: Graveyard - Hisingen Blues

Looking back through their history it’s not too difficult to find how Graveyard’s roots are buried with Norrsken, the same Swedish doom/stoner band that Witchcraft emerged from. While the latter formed in 2000, it wasn’t until 2006, and a failed project, that the remainder of the group finally came up with a formula that they all truly believed in. Two years later they had released their debut self-titled album and the few who were lucky enough to hear its sultry blues affectations began telling their friends. Now look at ‘em. A Nuclear Blast band (as they have aptly pointed out “a label that’s founded by old school tape traders”) seemingly with the world at their feet.

So how then can a band generating so much interest, basically just be rehashing a music form we long-thought was dead. How can it be that this stone-cold groove of theirs, which a whole generation before us got down to, is suddenly so popular again? Because now it’s no longer so niche. Our heads have been slowly turned by a modern collection of retro-minded bands breathing new life into dusty lungs, reworking vintage riffs, tweaking knobs to recreate the muddy production of their forbears. Graveyard just happen to be digging up more historical material than others, speeding along a path made that much wider by bands who’ve merely scratched the surface.

By recording Hisingen Blues completely on analog, the Swedes have been able to bring back to life that stripped-back, cotton-wool-muffled 70s vibe that their first album soaked itself so well in. You’ll hear in there the influence of bands like Zeppelin, Cream, Joplin, Hendrix and Sabbath as well as connections to modern-day outfits like The Warlocks, The Black Keys, Buckcherry and Quest For Fire and, to an extent, even elements of Wolfmother and Kings Of Leon.

Like with their debut, it’s easy to lock into the conducting force of lead singer Joakim Nilsson. He has such an impressive range that you’ll hear him swinging through the forest canopy, as he switches effortlessly into Led Zep mode, to deliver a Robert Plant-esque wailing for the pounding opener, “Ain’t Fit To Live Here”, before dipping down into the dense undergrowth, to burble around a heavy-lidded recreation of Cream’s Eric Clapton for the supremely laconic “Uncomfortably Numb” – the title being a crystal clear nod to Pink Floyd. That’s not forgetting, of course, “No Good, Mr. Holden” where he gives us all a real head-trip with a section of psychedelic reverse-track warbling – the conspiracy theorists among us will be loving it now they have something new to play with.

A warning: too long spent listening to the murky meanderings of “Longing” whilst staring at that glorious cover art and you’ll end up right inside that fearsome-looking swamp, floating on that gnarled, precarious log, along with the band. It has to be said that both the song and the artwork are incredibly evocative. Immediately, I get strong whiffs of Sergio Leone’s work from the former and, from the latter, snapshots of creepy flicks like The Deerhunter or Predator. The artist Ulf Lundén apparently created his effect by taking photos of the band up against a green screen. They reveal that a couple of weeks later, he showed them what he had done – “We were astonished by his work, a perfectionist indeed; rich with details, swamp/jungle feeling, weirdness and a lurking evil feel to it.”

Moving on, there are hints of Steppenwolf and that bulldozing rhythm of theirs on “Buying Truth (Tack Och Förlåt)” whilst “RSS” will get you fervently nodding along with it’s gentle criss-crossing of Cream and Blue Cheer’s swinging blues. Here, the dense layering of the sludge-spattered guitars – pinpoint accurate; the resounding rumble of the drums – wonderfully mesmeric. The ultimate nostalgia trip, though, is delivered with “The Siren” which wears its flowers, flares and giant collar with nothing but pride – you’ll either find yourself drifting into another dimension of bliss, or doubling-up in fits of laughter. Either way, it’ll floor you. What we have here is music you can seriously grow to love; a solid body of work that is guaranteed to remind you of your father’s record collection like no other band can – and now I’ve suddenly led out that hulking pink elephant from the corner of the room, it’s up to you whether you choose to acknowledge that as fact or not.

Also online @ The New Review = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/graveyard-hisingen-blues