Album Review: From Eden To Exile – Modern Disdain

With vast swathes of blustering labyrinthine riffing and warm, throaty vocals, this smacks of New Wave of American Heavy Metal yet brings it back home with a rich, thrashed-up thread running through its core.

From the off, “Gospel Untold” offers up a rich amalgamation of groove, death, power and thrash. The scattergun riffing, winding leads, focussed roars and battering drums scramble to get at you as if from every angle. Following close behind, the title-track pulls back a little from the storming pace but is no less impacting. Think Sylosis’ on top-form and you’ll get an idea of the crush that these guys’ can produce when they hit top gear. Liam Turland’s complex and virulent drum insanity deserves a special mention as he produces panicky rolls that come at you in waves, a crisp snare, punchy double-kick and supremely tight drops and change-ups. A ‘core-loving perfectionist might suggest that the breakdowns need to smack down harder and more often, but we’re splitting hairs here..

Tracks like “Victim” and “What You’ve Done” have the instant gratification that marks out bands like Lamb of God and All Shall Perish but also mimic the longer game and offered by the tech-minded – think Black Crown Initiate or Trigger The Bloodshed. The lyrics are intense and filthy enough to fire up a crowd – “I will not rest while you’re still alive / Don’t say a fucking word” (“Victim”) even comes complete with dropout and Randy Blythe-esque “whooooop”. Or perhaps you prefer the last line from “Sentiment”… “For safe keeping I will cut out your heart / I am living all my dreams”. That’s sick, man.

Over 36 rancid minutes, this Northampton quintet produce gem after gem, alternating their attack with either a co-ordinated bass and drum power move, or by firing up their range of winding, interwoven melodics. The track “From Eden To Exile”, stripped of complexity and not nearly as playful, is about the only thing that feels a little laboured. The rest is solid gold and, having seen them live, I can assure they bring just as much force and fire to the stage too. If you dig music that puts up a damned good fight, you’ve come to the right place.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2017/06/from-eden-to-exile-modern-disdain-attic/

Album Review: Black Crown Initiate – Selves We Cannot Forgive

Pennsylvania’s Black Crown Initiate, like all good Steelmen, know how to craft good metal. Bursting from the quintet’s take on progressive death metal, you can hear inspired work from such gargantuan sources as Meshuggah, Periphery and Between The Buried And Me. They employ a variety of vocal techniques and splash them across a canvas of technical heaviosity loaded with richly-layered atmospherics.

If their 2014 debut, The Wreckage Of Stars, was anything to go by, BCI enjoy leaving scars. This sophomore delves deep into the human psyche by laying bare Man’s history of inhumanity, terror, destruction and genocide. It explores such emotions as hatred, lust, self-loathing, pain, loss, hopelessness and sorrow. The suggested end game? A period of serious introspection and self-discovery resulting ultimately in suicidal self-sacrifice. You have been warned – it cuts deep this one.

It also marks a continued exploration of their sound as they delve into their bag of progressive tricks fishing out music with multiple structures and deft segues. The vocal hooks this time tend to come from resplendent cleans rather than explosive death roars and the shaping of the songwriting anchors the BCI ship on firmer, more familiar ground. Which, of course, is not to say it won’t challenge the listener – fans of their debut, in particular should expect the unexpected.

The natural drift of the album allows for their more intense songs to play out first, so you should cover up early. With “For Red Cloud” and “Belie The Machine” punching out mammoth staccato chugs and a barking death vocal they actually echo the majestic, extra-terrestrial battering that the Texan-Maryland trio Of Legends once supplied. The lyrical wordplay agonises to the point of melancholia and keeps on heading ever downwards. Barbarous, addictive rise-and-fall choruses fire home their arrows with pinpoint accuracy. For example, “Our god is full of sorrow / Our god is one of pain”, from the intensely experimental “Sorrowpsalm”, or the brightly-coloured chorus of “We will meet at beginning’s end and start again / Just in time for us to live, we’ll die again”, from “Again”.

These boys write proper songs, not just a jarring collection of words and music, and in a genre like death metal that is a rare thing to find. Naturally, that can be attributed to their technical metal leanings and the willingness to cross multiple genres to create beauty amid the brutality. It brings them more in line with bands like Monuments and The Contortionist, yet even these comparisons don’t do them justice. Take the title-track for example. It’s a simple design with a cyclical structure onto which you can latch. Yet within lies sequencing that progresses through a gentle opening swing of piano and string arpeggio with a matching euphoric vocal clean. The explosive rip into a porcine death growl then allows the bass to bubble to the fore to meet a cushioned power rock solo. It’s organic design is truly disconcerting when you consider each part separately.

They don’t always nail it and some tracks certainly require repeated plays just to unscramble your brain and make sense of the chaos. I mean, on what planet could you find strong hits of Sylosis’ shredding meeting BTBAM’s manic seguing (see “Transmit To Disconnect”) or Skyharbor’s lush choruses folding into the brutalising death of Annotations Of An Autopsy (“Matriarch”)?

Selves We Cannot Forgive feels like BCI’s first true step into the unknown. Here, they have engaged themselves fully in the songwriting process, carving themselves an individual sound by exploring the range of their own abilities. It should see them take ever more confident, inspirational steps as they look ever deeper into their own selves.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2016/07/black-crown-initiate-selves-we-cannot-forgive-spv/