Album Review: Earth Ship – Hollowed

Berlin’s Earth Ship are a band that crosses genres. Depending on your state of mind when you press play, you’ll hear something different each and every time.

Firing out two parts doom and one part southern metal, Earth Ship have managed to muster an album that collects, like music nerds, a vast range of their influences. Starting out with a driven, downbeat Alice In Chains vibe they steadily ramp up the pace and the power to peak at something equating to Kylesa’s whirlwind crush before bringing it back through thrash and blackened metal to settle back into a doomy groove.

Blasting off the wall of noise with a scowling bag of nails vocal, opener “Reduced To Ashes” melts an initially gutsy, visceral sound into a driven dual vocal that mimics the melancholic laments of the aforementioned Alice In Chains. At ts heart the jerking back-and-forth swinging rhythm is a simple structure by design, so it’s a surprise to find it repeating throughout the album. Following up, the title-track introduces itself as its tonal brother, attacking from a different angle with half-paced, down-tuned chugs creating an imposing force. This looser blueprint risks demoting it to mere filler but at least it warns you just how complex their constructive thought processes are.

Deeper in, the variation continues – morose, lush verses, driven with effortless power by twin vocals, melt into a roared death attack. Surrounding it they use an amalgam of High On Fire’s immense vocal grunt, Monster Magnet’s heady theatrics and Torche’s relentless cyclical riffing to shock and invigorate.

“Conjured” provides a wicked groove interspersed with harmonised vocal “aahs” and is both accessible and memorable. Then, diving into the abyss, “Monolith” offers up a suitably menacing, rumbling undercurrent with big blackened melancholic tones. Imposing its wrath upon the listener it echoes through to violating feedback. “In Fire’s Light” is even darker, heavier and throws ever more powerful hits. It also features the enigmatically repeating line “The sands of time are running low…”. Here, they sound like a beefed-up Purified In Blood.

Wading through, the succulent, thick layers envelop you. Whichever you choose to lock onto, be it the scrawling multiple-overlaid vocal, the demonic throat-scouring or the slow, persistent driven quality, you are always plugged in. And then there’s the moments when they revert to feeding in old school elements. One particular track that will give you a shit-eating grin is the thrashed-up “Castle Of Sorrow”. The fiery, metallic tang, of the thing throwing out curses in twin-speed attack with pillar-to-post riffage is a joy. Even the monotonous closer “The Edge Of Time” has value here with its long, weighty, sustained chord strikes and maddening Acid King-esque ethereal doom.

There are negatives to consider. These aren’t so much songs as they are a series of flavours. There is an over-reliance on sheer power when the variety of attack should be the star. With trigger points supplied by the guttural roared sections they do have a tendency to batter the eardrums a little too often. A solid wall of noise each time will only drive you in one direction. And the album does rely a little too much on needless party tricks. As an example, “Safeguard Of Death”‘s automaton vocal intoning instructions over and over will drive you nuts.

Earth Ship are essentially like getting all your favourite foods and putting them on a single plate. Consume each individual part carefully and you’ll love this experience. Mix them all up and it’ll taste like something you’d give to your dog.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2016/07/earth-ship-hollowed-napalm/

Album Review: Twinesuns – The Leaving

Being true to themselves is clearly of the utmost importance to a band like doom drone specialists Twinesuns. Check the first paragraph of their biography and you’ll find the following line screaming at you – “We wanted to break free from all these rules that dominate heavy music today”. It follows then that if you spin their record, The Leaving, you’ll notice a lack of drums or vocals, the structural irregularities in their songwriting, the lingering repetition and the error-strewn nature of their live eight-hour recording. Simply put, they are unafraid to scramble our noggins a little.

And scramble them they do. You’ll feel the insane levels of distortion and earth-shattering vibrations bursting from  “Thor” Ohne’s powered-up bass cabs impacting as a series of punches to the gut. Whilst C.’s baritone Telecaster and mournful E-bow do battle with wild feedback that will set your teeth on edge, you’ll hear a range of bleak effects, loops and tones that will have you on your knees, crushing invisible oranges in Twinesuns’ vast, post-apocalyptic wasteland. If you survive all that, there’s always guest moog-meister, Renzo, to finish you off.

No matter how original they may consider themselves they still follow the basics of the genre. They give it plenty of run-time to allow for their spine-tinglingly torpid pacing and throw in a mass of cyclical patterns to brand the riffs onto the listener’s memory banks. In fact, it is their slavish dependency upon these basics that ultimately mark them out as a less palatable alternative to their droning brethren.

With only five tracks to sift through, there is a surprisingly distinct lack of variety and ingenuity. Sporting naggingly over-simplified structures, the songwriting has a tendency to merely resort back to the same dominating and domineering gruntwork put in by the drop strings. The last two tracks, and in particular, the anomalous and uninspired 3-note repeater “Like My Father Before Me…”, play like two ends of the same infinity-bothering jam. On the plus side, the closer “Die Drie Gesichter Der Furcht” spreads its wings a little wider adding a new level of melancholic resonance with an earthy, throbbing pulse and an echoing, ethereal sawing that could only come from somewhere deep underground.

Certainly, the DIY spirit is kept alive here and fans of Sunn 0))), Earth, Sleep, Khanate, Eagle Twin and GYBE! should find some crumbs of comfort in their raw authenticity, robust core and grasp of the powerful concept that less is, so often, more.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2014/06/twinesuns-the-leaving-hummus-records/

EP Review: Ruins Of Earth - Misguided Lifeforms

Bravely attempting to combine moody melodeath with a dash of thrash and a hoard of hardcore, Ruins Of Earth bring us a whole world of pain. Hot on the heels of their first EP, 'Ashes Of The Ocean', this second collection offers plenty more ideas and asks a lot of intriguing questions.

They've recorded this bad boy themselves so it's no surprise to find that the production sounds a little odd. It's as if your next-door neighbour is trying to burst through your bedroom wall. He's trashing his kit whilst his gorilla has smashed a head-shaped hole, through which he delivers these filthy grunts. Cleanest of all is the scarred larynx of the second vocalist who hovers over you, yelling these brain-scrambling wails right in your earhole. Yes, odd, but interestingly powerful.

'Funeral' emerges from an electro-industrial squall to thrust forth a punchy, bass-packed groove. It screams and thunders its way through a thrashy, dipping spot of jagged deathcore and even throws in a shambolic gang-chant to try and hook you. The dark themes continue through the instrumental 'The Wait' which locks onto a swaying, two-chord hook and doesn't shift. It's missing something and I'd have loved them to expand on the thought rather than just cutting it off in its prime with the sound of rain on a tin roof.

'Becoming Inhuman' has a nifty, crawling riff underpinning it and plenty of Carnifex-cum-Sylosis battery layered over the top. It's by far the most effective track, grabbing on hard and pulling you backwards through falling masonry. There's even a spot of symphonic metal backing and a dark piano outro - the kind of elements that have recently surfaced with bands like Hope For The Dying and The Human Abstract. Now, comparisons like that show just how far Ruins Of Earth have to go to make the grade.

If only that mix, was cleaner and crisper, the switch between brutality and melody would be ten times more effective and they'd have a real slice of shock and awe to wave in the faces of their peers. It's being offered as a free download here so there's no excuse not to be checking it out - just don't pin all your hopes on finding those answers.

Also online @ MTUK = http://www.metalteamuk.net/june11reviews/cdreviews-ruinsof.htm

Album Review: The Sword - Gods Of The Earth

Beneath towering mountains a battle rages on as a mighty barbarian army trade blows with the Roman legions for ultimate supremacy of the land. In the midst of the fighting stand one band, The Sword, bashing merry hell out of their instruments. That’s the image I have whilst listening to ’Gods Of The Earth’. Perhaps I should lay off the sauce.

Stoner grooves and menacing doom metal chords drive this album as they did on their superb debut effort. Yet the echoing slightly-detached vocal of J.D. Cronise sounds cleaner, intense and more vital. In fact the same can be said of the guitars which aren’t quite as muddy as before. This is instantly noticeable from the opening salvo, ‘The Sundering’, which sets the scene with gentle plucking ballooning out into cantering hooves of guitar riff and steady pounding snare. This pushes through to ‘How Heavy This Axe’ with its epically mystic mutterings and pistoning riffs that grab you firmly by the balls and won‘t let go.

Then there’s a moment at the beginning of the bizarrely titled ‘Fire Lances The Ancient Hyperzephyrians’ where there’s a four-bar of filthy dirty, chugged guitar riff, which in the next four-bars wipes it’s feet and comes back cleaner. That’s when you really notice the extra ping in the strings. From here on the album rocks like a bastard. From somewhere the groove finds a more settled pattern and it starts sounding like an amalgam of High On Fire and Saviours - a band who they just happen to be touring the UK with over the next couple of months. ‘Mother, Maiden & Crone’ is glorious steel on steel, fist-in-face rock music at its best. I defy you to remain motionless through it. I see your head nodding there, indie-kid. We end on ‘White Sea’, an instrumental gem, with cannoning beefed-up guitars over exacting cymbal and snare combos. It’s a fine way to finish. In my reverie I see the last body fall and the valley battlefield become silent once more. Awesome.

Album Review: Thrice - The Alchemy Index, Vols. III & IV: Air & Earth

Here we have the much anticipated second installment of Thrice’s conceptual ‘The Alchemy Index’ recorded in the band’s own studio and engineered by guitarist Teppei Teranashi. “Although we wrote and recorded all four discs in the same time period, there was definitely a different approach to each one”, says singer Dustin Kensrue.

Starting with gently plucked guitar and softly spoken vocal ‘Broken Lungs’ brings to mind Funeral For A Friend’s recent sequence of downbeat releases. Yet it’s the hushed, wispy background noise of ‘A Song For Milly Michaelson’ that identifies these opening songs most effectively as the “Air” half of the album. There’s plenty of evidence that some sections have been pre-selected for inclusion with a finely-balanced dynamic structure obviously bent to include such intricate instrumentation. The drums remain fairly anonymous, happy to sit behind the star act of clean-cut guitars and soaring vocals.

“The Air disc is almost like a conglomeration of all four EP’s - it seems to be a bit more all over the place.” points out Teranishi. He turns his attention to the “Earth” disc explaining, “We knew that we wanted it very stripped down, with few electrified instruments or full drums. We recorded all of it in an empty wood room”. ‘Moving Mountains’ kicks off the “Earth” half and starts with echoed footsteps across this wooden floor as a raw banjo picks out a country jingle. Immediately a twangy generic vocal begins to jimmy out a rhythm but it‘s not upbeat enough to kick off a hoe-down. ‘Digging My Own Grave’ transports us to a saloon with jangling piano and a heartfelt song of love. ‘Child Of Dust’ brings proceedings to a close and is a sonnet composed by Kensrue, set to music, yet organised in the traditional English structure and rhythmic fashion. Humanity’s failings may be a fine subject matter to sing about, but I‘m sorry, in my disappointment I‘d dropped off to sleep by this point.

What is lacking here is one of Thrice’s trademark buccaneering, punchier tracks to inject some urgency, life and even bile. I understand why there isn’t one but it doesn’t make it okay to leave one out. The closest we get is the chorus of ‘Come All You Weary’ which is more of a hang-dog lament than a chance to bully-off. I’m sorry but this just doesn’t cut the mustard and serves notice of a move towards a band made weaker for being allowed to rattle off ambitious new ideas out in independent waters.