Album Review: Avatar - Black Waltz

Oozing pumping melodeath from every pore, Sweden’s Avatar are now on their fourth album and yet they are a band who have, up until now, slipped right through my fingers. Naturally, I was disappointed to discover they aren’t blue-skinned Na’vi from the planet Pandora but, having scanned the album title and proto-gothic freak on the cover, neither do they sound anything like Insane Clown Posse or the craptacular My Chemical Romance. In fact, there is a band that springs to mind when you add the album’s industrial overtones to their proclivity for thick black-make up, uniforms and all things Big Top, and that band is Rammstein. Now, that is a hard act to follow.

“All Is Lost” and “Torn Apart” kick off Black Waltz with the kind of rhythmic hammering you’d associate with a powerful steam locomotive haring down the rails. Sure, those metronomic drums fire up a sweet blazing trail, but it’s frontman Johannes Eckerström, in the engine cab, stoking those fires. Scouring his lungs for more and more power, he’s like a psychotic version of Randy Blythe (Lamb Of God).

With elements of Swedish compatriots The Haunted, Deathstars and Soilwork and, from across the border, Danish rockers, Hatesphere and Mnemic, they pile on the slick production and rip into their songs following a verse-chorus-verse pattern that brushes aside any overcomplicated sequencing or wild flights of fancy. Everything they’ve got is shoved whole-heartedly into the churning drum and bass, bottom-end groove. Tracks like “Blod” and “Smells Like A Freakshow” whack up the metal and, in doing so, become their fist-pumping anthems, whilst the nifty little riffs in “Paint Me Red” and “Torn Apart” add an addictive edge to spice up the deal.

With their simplistic construction and fondness for repetition, some of the tracks eke past the five-minute mark and, consequently, tend to turn a little sour – another case of over-egging a pretty straight-forward pudding. In the main, though, things are kept fast, fiery and attention-grabbing and the band have plenty of tricks up their sleeve to keep the album cannily varied.

“In Napalm” picks up a gothic bent as the band unite to deliver a whispered verse and accompanying chanted chorus, whilst the title-track goes even darker, riding snare rolls and walking us through a stageful of power-on, power-off, slow-quick theatrics (you have to check out the video, featuring circus act Hellzapoppin’, to really understand what’s going on here). Then, Avatar don a ten-gallon, chaps and chinks for “Let It Burn” and, from somewhere, find a dirty-ass blues groove and ride that buckin’ bronco for all it’s worth.There’s a few sticky moments, such as the 30 seconds of “In Napalm”s build that starts so quietly as to almost make it dead air, or the irksome twinkly chorus that kills the momentum of “One Touch”. Oh, and the near-as-dammit 10-minute, suck-it-up, harmonica-littered utter lunacy of “Use Your Tongue” wants bagging and tagging and throwing into a padded room. We’ll take it though for that killer line of “Good morning, good morning, good morning, rise and shine, rise and shine, rise and shine!”

I’m delighted to report, Black Waltz is a bit of a nutbar. The content seemingly rebounds off genres like a helpless pinball, but when it hits a bumper cap, it hits that cap with everything it’s got and that kind of commitment to the cause is a rare commodity. Yep, it’s a bit of a beast, so don’t be surprised to find Avatar breaking the machine with this one. Heck, they may not have anything like the wanton desire for destruction that Rammstein have, but you still wouldn’t want to be trapped in the same room as them. Hold on to your hats!

Also online @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/avatar-black-waltz

Album Review: Betraying The Martyrs - Breathe In Life

Melodeathcore. Is that even a genre? Well, it goes some way to describing what you can expect from the French sextet Betraying The Martyrs. It has to be said the prospect of this debut album has aroused a sizeable amount of interest with fans of modern metal slavering at the prospect of them building on the promise of their stunning EP 'The Hurt, The Divine, The Light'. Since then, though, a change of personnel with new vocalist Aaron Matts and guitarist Lucas D'angelo stepping in has led to a real colossus being born. This is music that will tear you apart with startlingly fresh-sounding bursts of power and then turn round and somehow soothe your frazzled senses by firing familiarity at you.

Their sound sticks a big dirty finger in the same holes that Winds Of Plague and Hope For The Dying, have been plugging of late; that whole sweeping symphonics meets hearty, visceral attack vibe. Being a Christian band, their music also comes with the inevitable well-meant messages which, depending on how observant you are, may either inspire or disaffect you. If it gives the band a passionate focus to really lay into their component parts, then you can always look to that as being the positive in such shenanigans. Passion in performance being, after all, the key to really making the biggest impact.

Their intro blusters in like the soundtrack to some blood-lusting, historical war movie. Symphonic strings, rippling piano arpeggios, fearsome chanting and drum-rolls all round. It stirs the blood and sets the scene for the onslaught of 'Martyrs' which blasts forth our first glimpse of Matts' gigantic death vocal, crammed with the most fulsome of lows. It grasps and shoves our heads into stirring ivory-key builds and emotion-soaked clean vocal which, upon first inspection, appears anything but out of place. There's an extra dimension which comes grunting spasmodically through in the technical guitar parts; parts that echo the djenty qualities of bands like Periphery and TesseracT. It's a repeating pattern that is only added to by the addictive hooks - the soulful choruses and flamboyant mini-beatdowns - in 'Man Made Disaster' and 'Because Of You'.

Now... have you ever wondered what atmospheric metal dubstep might sound like? Check out 'Liberate Me Ex Inferis'. It drags you in with a big industrial swirling, reminiscent of something Jean-Michel Jarre might produce, then rapidly transforms into a vast beast inhaling and exhaling through a gas mask. It's one scary-arsed sound but even this is out-mentalled by the crashing track that follows. 'Leave It All Behind' crushes and drives itself into steep climbs before stalling to loop and spin crazily out of control. It's a bone fide lunatic and it should come with an optional straitjacket.

Track after track the band dig at your senses, sinking their instruments of torture into flesh time and time again. Not taking the somewhat suspect wholly-clean soft rock number, 'Azalee', (yes, a soft rock number) into account, the band's only real weakness is at the points where the softer, heartfelt vocal parts step out from knitting together the dark and the light. These moments come when the music dips and they step forward. These are also the moments where their rise and fall begins to sound quite similar in construct from track-to-track. When they're in there with the bottom-end pit-worthy powerhousing (on tracks like 'Life Is Precious') there isn't a problem but, when they aren't (for instance, 'Leave It All Behind'), they sound repetitious and far less addictive than they should be. They become without doubt the focus (the parts that unite the crowd; the singalong; the fists-to-the-sky moments) so that's where the songwriting needs to step up another notch for future albums. Other than that, I'm just... well... speechless.

Also online @ MTUK = http://www.metalteamuk.net/aug11reviews/cdreviews-betraying.htm