Album Review: Vattnet Viskar – Settler

Hailing from the American heartlands yet taking their name for the Swedish for “the water is whispering”, Vattnet Viskar have always been an innovative, multi-faceted band. On the one hand, their clear first love is for the more familial strains of second wave black metal with its speeding double-kick, cascading chords and vocal scowling. On the other, their nous for conjuring strong grooves and melancholic, progressive noodling allows for a deeper connection to the various outlying strains of the genre.

Spending months rather than weeks writing this latest effort allowed the band to really stretch themselves. Bassist Casey Aylward explains: “I think we had a lot of time in the studio to mess around with details and textures… we were diving into different territories a lot on this record”. This extra time taken meant they were keen to find a producer who could bring the most out of the wealth of this fresh-sounding material and so they searched out Sanford Parker (Yob, Twilight). He certainly seems to have given the music more colour than much of their previous material and has retained the visceral edge that so defines them.

Firing us into a squall of feedback, “Dawnlands” sets the pace with classic lines and dark portents before “Colony” picks up the baton and introduces a strident, battle-hardened groove to proceedings. Here, the lyrics begin to disintegrate into binary and the structure and pacing quick-steps between the track’s many facets. Like some bizarre, mutated combination of Lamb Of God’s “Straight For The Sun”, Isis’ “Wavering Radiant” and Steak Number Eight’s “Photonic”, the magical post-doom of “Yearn” settles into a memorable, cyclical riff accompanied by a roared vocal hook. It takes just these three tracks together for us to establish our place upon Settler‘s musical roundabout.

Like its neighbour, the accurately-titled “Glory” similarly takes its influence from the post-metal kinks of Isis, yet summons their more explosive side, piling raging power on top of Nicholas Thornbury’s maniacal, howled vocal. It pitches us straight into the slowly-emerging structure and hefty theatrics of the truly epic “Heirs”. It’s a track that whisks us from speeding metallic grunt to drifting melodics and barbarous, deathly grooves before finally cramming us into the closing dynamic oblivion of something truly special.

Most certainly there are weaknesses in the album, but these are confined to the odd disrupting stumble between segues and a failure to fully-integrate the faster, less accessible parts. The fans should be happy with the result but mere passers-by may find themselves alienated by the looser, more ragged hits of “Impact” and the title-track. What cannot be disputed is Vattnet Viskar’s desire to experiment. From the very first glance of that conflicted and emotionally-cutting front cover (a recreated photo of a beaming Christa McAuliffe training for NASA’s ill-fated 1986 Challenger mission) right through to Settler‘s closing combination of melody and feedback, the band are seeking to expand our minds and their own. They toy with a huge concept by applying varying degrees of pacing and atmospherics. The end result isn’t flawless but it is, ultimately, beguiling.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2015/06/vattnet-viskar-settler-century-media/

Album Review: Oceanwake – Sunless

Oceanwake are Luvia, Finland’s finest and purport to play “arctic experimental metal”. Sunless, their follow-up to debut Kingdom, proves this to be an intriguing amalgamation of Katatonia’s black doom, Enslaved’s dark heart and ISIS’ brooding post-metal.

From the off, there is an assault of haranguing aggression that very quickly collapses into extended lighter passages of soft, mournful melody. This heavy-soft approach is supported by atmospheric, echoing vocals that segue from a deep, barrel-chested roar into melodic, mournful wails. Both styles are presumably attempts to lock into the crush-to-croon vocal gymnastics of ISIS’ Aaron Turner and Bryant Clifford Meyer and both styles tickle the interest without wholly fulfilling such an imposing brief.

Undoubtedly, the band intend to live or die by “The Lay Of The Coming Storm” because, at 15 minutes and so lethargically paced, it’s quite a ball and chain to throw at the listener off the bat. Lurking beneath all these bleak, harmonic minors the album’s odd construction continues to drop drum parts and underscore the weightier passages with shimmering melodics.

The band do hit their stride as they grow into “Parhelion” and “Avanturine”. The former provides a Machine exhilaratingly crushing finish of growled lyrics, “All we are is dust / Scattered to the ocean”, and the latter provides a shot in the arm with a classy sequence of powerful riffing.

Having undergone a 13-month construction process from conception to post-production, with the band recording at the wonderfully named Chamber of Isolation & the JonneMusic Studio, all whilst under the watchful eye of Korpikaani frontman Jonne Järvelä, it is something of a surprise to find weaknesses in the production and frailities in the album’s sense of direction, pacing and flow.

This undemanding album does need its own space to shine but it still suffers from too many disparate structures and just not enough invention. Whilst their peers explore the extreme depths of tone and texture, Oceanwake carry their listener far more than they engage them. Undoubtedly, Sunless is a solid album but, taken at face value, you’d expect “arctic experimental metal” to chill you to your core.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2015/03/oceanwake-sunless-vicisolum/

Feature: For Fans Of

A collection of my contributions to Heavy Blog Is Heavy's new feature on other great alternatives to much-loved bands...

This week: ISIS

As a band of ISIS-worshipping Belgian teenagers, Steak Number Eight‘s early work showed guts, heft and plenty of misdirected angst, but in 2013 they released The Hutch and everything changed. The presence of Matt Bayles at the mixing desk should tick the first box for ISIS fans, yet it is the music that lies within that will seal the deal. There are luminescent flourishes hidden within thick sludge, patches of rich, thunderous guitar squall, slack-jawed vocals, rotational riffs and dark melodious washes to drown in. Constantly shifting, the band weave in new elements; layering up as they progress. The post-metal meandering of the sublime ‘Pilgrimage Of A Black Heart’ feeds the muscle of ‘Exile Of Our Marrow’ and, before you know it, they’re piling malcontent upon disillusionment; sharpening the visceral edges for ‘The Shrine’ and ‘Slumber’. These sudden, thrusting, sharp stabs finally relent to reveal a sonic wasteland for the masterful ‘Ashore’ and the brain flips once more. For a final trick, you will hear young men exercising phenomenal restraint to allow ‘Tearwalker”s one-key rolling maul of tones and textures to run every second of its nine-and-a-half minute course. If you loved ISIS, Stk8 might just floor you, literally.

Recommended Album: The Hutch

Next week: TBA

Album Review: Steny Lda – Beloe Bezmolvie

The infinite joys of throwing Russian track titles at Google Translate and watching it explode is tempered somewhat by the bleak, monosyllables that emerge from it. Lumps of wording like “Stern Wind”, “Ice Storm, Ball Above Earth”, “In Black Sun Rays” and “Endless Snowy Expanses, Illuminated Radiance, Eternally Cold Stars” still resonate despite their cumbersome quality.

It’s no surprise then to discover that the PR blurb professes this to be a thematic work exploring “the power of cold, its northern and Antarctic nature, and the grandeur of eternal winter”. That thought is drilled home by the album inlay of snapshots of sailors fighting raging seas and glacial locations. Obviously, it’s something of a disappointment then to discover the music feeling so luke-warm. The seemingly endless, subtly shifting synth backdrops are austere in tone but the string work is rich, plump and vibrant and the drums patter along at an untaxing, gentile pace.

Swimming in the same post-metal waters as bands like Russian Circles, Isis and Red Sparowes, Beloe Bezmolvie (or White Silence) opens up with “Fordevind”, a wave-battering crush that confusingly shares its space with calm waters and soft surf. There’s also something enigmatically graceful about the 11-minute “Ledjanoj Shtrom…”. From an opening, almost balletic, emotive riff to the 3-minute directionless, warbled ending the whole ensemble mimics the piece-by-piece joyful storytelling of Russian Circles when their theme demands that they be venturing into the dark, forbidding spaces of Cult Of Luna.
 
Wonderfully, just as you think the album has run adrift, the wreck breaks on these twin glacial outcrops – the blunt death metal of “Svincovo-Serye Oblaka…” and the doomy “Drejfujushhie V Tumane Ajsbergi…” Here, the beast finally roars and beneath all the clamouring, the crafty score finally reveals its blackened soul.

It’s intriguing that Sterny Lda seem to have no problem with emotion when it comes to dishing out the hard and fast tracks – “Beskrajnie Snezhyne…” and “Soprovtilenie…” are both songs that successfully kick up a storm. However, when they need to apply a more delicate touch to extract a different emotion they do struggle – You’d hope that conveying the psychological torment of the bleak and the endless wastelands of the Artic might be something to get your teeth into, yet “Holod Zemli” is frustratingly a somewhat toneless, sluggish and ultimately hollow attempt when compared alongside that of others.

Some good, some bad and something of a sheep in wolf’s clothing then, but ignore the theme, look deeper and you’ll still discover plenty to get your teeth into.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2014/09/steny-lda-beloe-bezmolvie-slowburn/

Album Review: Pet Slimmers Of The Year – Fragments Of Uniforms

What’s in a name? Having formed in 2008 you’d imagine that, had this Peterborough post-rock unit called themselves Fluvial or Miasma Theory [insert your own evocative sobriquet here], you’d imagine that they’d have been gracing a major label a lot sooner than January of this year. Instead, having consulted Schott’s Almanac “annual awards” section, they plumped for the odd, yet alerting moniker of Pet Slimmers Of The Year. It may not seem a fit match for their music, but it always guarantees a chuckle.

Formed from the ashes of prog-metallers A Thousand Fires, they have taken their time writing, touring and building contacts and now, with a little help from their producer, Devil Sold His Soul’s Jonny Renshaw, they feel finally ready to drop this immense debut album on us. It’s a work that combines the abundant colours and rich vastness of Pelican’s layering and the melancholic tones and industrial fervour of Russian Circles. This of course is all mere groundwork emotion when compared to the way that the music both leaps out of the speakers at you and yet also slips so deftly into your subconscious. Honestly, the album sounds more like finding the middle ground between the twin majesties of Isis and Junius. Time and again you’ll hear these behemoths emerging from the gloom like two ships drifting inexorably towards each other through dense fog.

Following the gentle echoing groundwork laid by “Arterias”, they ramp up the layering, establish a solid groove and throw in some Russian Circles-esque skiddy strings for “Gathering Half The Deep And Full Of Voices”. Next up, they establish their range. No sooner has “Tides” taken us floating up into the ether and offered a featherlight touch none to dissimilar to that exhausted by Devin’s Ghost, then they drop us down into the black, boiling ocean of “Mare Imbrium”. It is here amongst the crush of the waves where they find their artistic zenith. As menacing as the mid-section of The Ocean’s Pelagial, as visceral as Isis’ Wavering Radiant, the surges of power and dark purpose take us crashing through every trough and every peak.

As a mainly instrumental band, they do use vocals sparingly (on tracks 1, 5 and 8) and merely as a soft, emotion-soaked extra instrument and one can’t help but feel slight disappointment at a trick missed. Most certainly, you can only imagine the extra dimension that an Aaron Harris-type earth-splitting roar could add to the mix. Instead, they err on the side of shuffling their way through the songs which offers the worrying potential of finding themselves lost within the absolute swathe of post-everything miserabilists out there. “Days Since I Disappeared”, for instance, wallows too long in its own melancholia and comes within a raw scream from taking them down that well-traveled road. Of course, they seem quite capable of saving themselves from this potent threat by stirring in songs like “Churning Of The Sea Of Milk” (clearly the bastard son of Isis’ “Not In Rivers, But In Drops”) and “La Tormenta” (another riotous stormer with a strong early grip and a broken, edgy quality).

Although the flow of the album is exceptional, Pet Slimmers do need to find more variation from somewhere. They seem at their most comfortable when they are offering up pounding gristle to chew upon. It’s only in these heaviest moments that their music seems to come alive. In the long run though, this classy trio have still managed to produce something exciting and beguiling. Fragments Of Uniforms is a magnificent, mouthwatering long-player and I for one will be desperate to see how this all translates to the live arena.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2014/04/pet-slimmers-of-the-year-fragments-of-uniforms-candlelight/

Album Review: Inventions – Inventions

Sleep’s Jerusalem, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygene and, to a lesser extent, Pink Floyd‘s Dark Side Of The Moon and Ozric Tentacles’ Jurassic Shift. These are all albums whose tracks remain emotionally welded together, no matter how many attempts are made to pull them asunder. Those who harbour a strong passion for long-players of this ilk will glory in the birth of Inventions whose debut demands instantaneous full exposure.

Having previously stuck rigidly to their own bodies of work, there was always the fear that neither Explosions In The Sky‘s Mark T. Smith or Matthew Cooper, the sole member of Eluvium, sending audio tapes across the heart of the U.S., would bring a cohesive series of fresh sounds to the table and, to some extent, their music does touch base with their past bands. However, there can be no doubt that as a united force they have also revelled in the freedom this new project has granted them. Consequently, they have created an instrumental album of the most beautiful, minimalist, ambient rock music that resonates at a completely different frequency from all that has gone before.

Yawning into life, the aptly-titled “Echo Tropism” tugs gently at your sleeve; its soft flow pulling you into a sculptured world where joyous emotion soaks into the flora and resounds along currents that circulate around your still form. Drifting through the tracks, breathy vocalisations begin to create harmonics that rise through the richly-layered subsonics. The spartan, often crunching, percussive elements keep the whole locked into a central spine so that as the synthetic patterns stretch, in the main, they remain integrated and vital to the whole.

Softly throbbing industrial machinations thread their way through tracks like “Entity” and “Psychic Automation”, the former pitching a subversively robotic burble into a series of pressure-releasing industrial pistons that curse as they snort and hiss their disapproval. The one track that wincingly tries to break rank is the coiled snake and bustling city soundscape of “Sun Locations / Sun Coda” which, curiously, assimilates elements of trance music. Happily, the ambient post-rock of “Peacable Child” reasserts the flow by slotting a pitter-patter arpeggio beneath a warping synth to create rotational drag. The remarkable effect is not unlike rhythmically cupping and uncupping your ears. For an extra-sensory experience try closing your eyes - I was alarmed to discover a tank of slowly pulsing, bioluminescent jellyfish staring back at me.

Constantly shifting, there is an astonishing organic flow to the album and to force unwieldy terms like electronica or shoegaze upon this collection would seem crass. It does touch base with the genres at several points during its life-cycle, yet the focus remains rooted to the emotional impact it has. Flooded with the same warm tones that emerged from ISIS / Deftones collaborative project Palms’ debut and imbued with similar instrumental pressure points to those of The Ocean’s Pelagial and Uneven Structure’s Februus, this pulsating album positively glows. Make time for this single-sitting long-player and you will be rewarded.

Also online @ The Line Of Best Fit = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/reviews/albums/inventions-inventions-149597

Album Review: Palms – Palms

Rip out the gnarled beasties that lurked within ISIS, the howling, human cyclone that was Aaron Turner and the sudden, throaty wall-of-sound guitar that Michael Gallagher was capable of, and you’re left with a bit of a soft touch. However, throw in the unique, game-changing voice of Deftones’ Chino Moreno and suddenly you have an excitingly fresh, dynamic combo that offers the potential for something truly special. Early run-throughs of this, Palms’ self-titled debut, reveals that the heart of ISIS still beats on and within Jeff Caxide (bass), Aaron Harris (drums) and Bryant Clifford Meyer (keys and guitars) it appears to be beating more strongly than ever. The dark, brooding anger of their old band may be gone, but retention of emotion is still their raison d’être and this thing is flooded with it.

With everything kept in-house, right down to the production and mixing duties (handled by Harris), the overall tone is immediately familiar. ISIS’ burnt-out, skidding instrumentals meet Chino’s gorgeous croon head on and the end result, although being way more lush than expected, is littered with moments that remove your capacity for resisting emotion and motion – your heads will nod, your hair will stand on end and your spine will shiver.

Doing justice to the impact that “Future Warrior” has made on this reviewer is a tough ask. With its cogently circular verse, bridge and chorus, it is a creation that is about as tangibly close to being populist as these artists would ever dare travel, and yet it resists any of the finer trappings of the mainstream by remaining beyond the reach of those fashionistas with their prerequisite short-attention spans. God forbid they ever release a radio edit though – it could make and break them all at once. Chino’s vast vocal range, from deep, softly-whispered croaks to piercing, divergent, anguished howls, beautifully complements the warm, haunting tones and creamy textures of the strings and keys, lifting them from the warm, crystal-clear waters of their birthplace to the heavenly skies above.

The difference between the similarly luscious, soft-hearted tracks “Shortwave Radio” and “Tropics” and the rougher, electro edges of “Mission Sunset” is marked. The latter, dark of purpose, burns with a slowly-released reserve of buzzing energy and clanging melancholy. The first signs of imperfection crop up here as the vocal and backing do jar a little in places, almost like two pieces from different puzzles, wedged together. “Antarctic Handshake” isn’t faultless either and although it truly is suitably spartan and determinedly steady of pace, the tone remains unnvervingly warm as pastel vocals are brushed back and forth across a gentile, yet vibrant backdrop. At nigh on 10 minutes, it is mostly just filler, spending much of its running time warbling within its watery repose, rebounding back off its own walls and doesn’t age at all well.

It would be harsh to expect this debut release to be wholly organic, but it is an interesting novelty to discover the oddly digital, viscous quality that lurks within. As much as you loved Deftones gritty, subversive edge or ISIS’ heaviosity, this ambient-minded collective are, as Chino suggests on “Shortwave Radio”, just as capable of offering you both polar extremes – “Ascending you to Heaven whilst staring into Hell / You’re staring into Heaven, descending into Hell”.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2013/06/palms-palms-ipecac/

Album Stream: Hummune - Crafted In Darkness

If, like me, you've been lamenting the recent break-ups of the epic, progressive metal bands Isis, No Made Sense and Deftones, Hummune have just released their debut long-player with the potential to plug some of the gaps. Here's a full album stream for you to muse over, Crafted In Darkness. Have fun!



My bro, Aaron, has the review covered here: http://thenewreview.net/reviews/hummune-crafted-in-darkness

Album Review: No Made Sense - New Season/New Blues

Once in a while a band comes along and lays one on your chin from completely out of nowhere. In shock, you check up on them and find a band devoid of egos, with no mission statement, with no burning desire for you to join their MySpace, their Twitter feed or “like our Facebook page, FFS!” These are the bands that you usually end up treasuring more than most because they care what their music sounds like far more than what they look like whilst they’re doing it, and care more about enjoying themselves than making money or influencing people. Hold onto these moments because these are also the bands that can just as quickly slip through your fingers. No Made Sense are one of these bands. Their, quite frankly, stunning debut, The Epillanic Choragi, a darkly conceptual work loaded with cryptic titles, was released on Basick without fanfare a couple of years back, around the same time as bands from the same small city of Reading, UK, were releasing big-hitting, attention-smothered albums on big, noisy labels (specifically, Sylosis’ Conclusion Of An Age on Nuclear Blast and Malefice’s Dawn Of Reprisal on Metal Blade).

Now No Made Sense are back with New Season/New Blues, an album of individual tracks and ideas and, consequently, an album of many colours and tastes. They’ve recorded it live and the production is certainly a lot rougher, with gritty, piercing vocals and clanging strings that clamber over each other. It has resulted in a less-polished but heartier end result that places them closer to what they could capably produce live. Joe Battimelli’s bass, in particular, doesn’t so much boom as pop and spit whilst Leo Dennett’s guitar takes its opportunity to crunchily explore layer upon layer of trembling riffs and calloused, knotty chord repetitions.

Tracks like “No Gain From Seeking” and “I’ve Not Been”, in particular, show a move towards the more flamboyant psych-inflected rock of bands like Baroness, Muse and Porcupine Tree whilst “Lying On My Own” gives you a blast of that howling punkish fervour that These Arms Are Snakes were so famed for. It doesn’t mean the band haven’t lost their ability to dwell at the doomy post-metal altar of bands like Neurosis and Mastodon. Then, with songs like “Four” and “You Might As Well” they conjure up complex, soul-sucking vortices to prove they are still one of the few groups with the skill, patience and intelligence to fill the gaping hole that Isis ripped when they called time on their career.

There are more sides to this band than a dodecahedron. “Half Of The Wall” offers slowly decaying white noise sands and distant futuristic sounds of computer banks streaming data until both eventually crack and allow the opening duo of power chord and fuzzed-up bass that form “Silence” to break through their weakened binary security. This is a track that follows a similar pattern, with the same impact, to Russian Circles’ grooviest material (think “Station” multiplied by “Carpe”. Dennett fingers riffs, impelling them on, until they embed themselves into your synapses; until you find yourself helplessly spasming along to the music.

New Season/New Blues is the equivalent of slowly shovelling a pick n’ mix bag of candy in your mouth. Some flavors you’ll instantly adore, others you’ll discover are an acquired taste. One second your face will screw up as Dennett misanthropically softens his vocal to a half-spoken whispering (on “Down” and the opening of “You Might As Well”), the next, your cheeks will glow and a feeling of utter bliss will drop as the final riff of “No Gain From Seeking” boots up, and again when the band offer a trip back to the beauty of “Milachi’s Depths” (from their debut) for “Lying On My Own.” These are the moments in music that we live for and it’s what singles No Made Sense out as men of genius.

“Sleep” has the intensity of “Silence” but is a lot more open to frenzy. It is genuinely brilliant mayhem and it rocks my little world. The gradual increase in tempo until they are speeding towards a certain death seems somehow representative of their sudden and scarily well-concealed decision to go out with a bang. Yes, you heard right, the twist in the tail is that No Made Sense have casually released this gem of an album into the ether at the same time that they blogged this throwaway statement – “Also, you might not hear from us again for a while. Or maybe ever. So, thanks and stuff.” Dig a little deeper and it appears they all have different ideas on where they want to take their music, so you may be seeing their names attached to new projects very soon. Wherever, they choose to go, you can be sure good things will follow. No Made Sense might have remained resolutely underground but for those lucky few that know of their existence, if this really is the end, it’s been one hell of a thrilling ride.

The full album is now streaming and available for pay-what-you-want download here.

Also online @ The New Review = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/no-made-sense-new-season-new-blues

Album Review: Suma - Ashes

The anguished hellfire they summon forth for 'War On Drugs' prove they really can crack the earth open. No matter how many times you listen to what's on offer here, and there is well over an hour of sonic battery on display, you always seem to take away something new. It can, at times, seem utterly mesmeric, at others a complete chore. If Suma go easy on the see-saw structures, saving most for the playground of the practice room, and bring more complex crust-shattering tools to the studio they might just have the cojones to obliterate us all. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Full review = http://www.metalteamuk.net/july10reviews/cdreviews-suma.htm