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.
Dutch goliaths Textures are rapidly building quite a reputation for quality songwriting. Following the instant success of debut album Polars
they have gone on to build quite the back catalogue. All that
culminated in their finest work-to-date, 2011’s polyrhythmic
genre-morphing Dualism. For their latest trick they are planning a conceptual diptych, album one being Phenotype and album two being Genotype with both surrounding the subject of genetics.
Let me just put on my Professor mortar board… Now, the “genotype”
concerns each organism’s core genetic structure, whilst the “phenotype”
concerns the morphology and development of the organism’s traits.
Essentially the two albums are a study of nature versus nurture. The
intention is for the musical structures on Phenotype to reappear within Genotype,
only adapted to display the music’s origins – an attempt to mimic an
aural version of genotype-phenotype mapping. Yes, it seems odd to
release them that way around then (the “after” picture before the
“before” picture), but there you go.
Heavier than Dualism, this sports a strong muscular base
that draws on pistoning drums, spasming drop-chord structures and a
thick, brutish death vocal roar. Echoing the immense wall of power
generated by bands like Periphery and Monuments, the whole construct
hammers its way into your ears, the driving rhythm rolls around in your
skull and once complete emerges with a slowly dissolving echo.
Opener “Oceans Collide” grips like a vice as it builds and builds to
an unbearable crush before abating like some of Uneven Structure’s more
noisome compositions. Similarly, “Shaping A Single Grain Of Sand” bucks
and brays like a mule, jerking from action to inaction, from clean to
roared vocal. The closing Meshuggah-styled breakdown even leaps out of
hold before it has had the chance to settle but gives vocalist Daniel De
Jongh a chance to give it absolutely everything. Which brings us to
“The Fourth Prime”. It concerns “the downfall of man” through
imperfections within those in control. It is riddled with brutish chugs
and zinging fingerwork and proves the switch of guitarist Joe Tal for
Jochem Jacobs will ultimately be a smooth transition. Halfway through,
the rumbling drop in pace reveals a vast, echoing cave of wonders which
ends up being the perfect place from which to launch a renewed aural
assault.
There are spots in some songs where the music begins to feel a little
overwrought – “Erosion” and “The Fourth Prime” being good examples. At
these moments proceedings become swamped by the multi-part construction;
the sheer desire of the band to fill every available space with an army
of intertwining riffs, leads and rhythms. It proves they are one
talented unit of players but sometimes less is more and here there is a
tendency for the natural flow to become stifled.
In a poppier, more melodious moment, “New Horizons” proves to be
catchier and a heck of a lot more colourful. As vibrant as a halogen
bulb, it glows like a deconstructed Killswitch Engage track. The subject
matter is all about self-improvement and rising above any perceived
limitation. Further relief from the thunder, can be found in “Zman” and
closer “Timeless”. The former is a gentile little number that sports a
sweetly-echoing, cyclical piano played by Uri Dijk. The latter provides
the glorious wash of clean vocals that we were waiting for. It takes the
joy of 2011’s “Reaching Home” and turns it into a mournful, emotional
ride that describes the curse of a faulty genetic blueprint. It tugs at
heartstrings, playing on our own perceived fears and failings with De
Jongh driving home the impacting lyric “I heard you crawling, carrying
your burden down the yearning hill”.
When all is said and done it’s not a faultless album. There are
oddities that initially catch you out, like the drumtrack “Meander”, but
even here there is much to draw strength from – it certainly serves as a
gentle reminder to Stef Brooks’ incredible percussive work that goes on
behind each track. The last album was a grower, and this will
inevitably also take longer to fully ingest and appreciate the full
impact of Textures’ constructions. No doubt, when all is said and done
we have the portent of Genotype to follow and that promises to fulfil so much of Phenotype‘s true potential.
Over their last three albums, post-proggers Intronaut have played
things fast and loose. They are known for lurking between the dark
polyrhythmic assault and vaulting angst of Periphery and the lighter,
jazzier tendencies of Between The Buried And Me, but with this latest
full-length they have tightened up the ship and worked hard to a create a
flow to their music.
It’s not unusual to find them stumbling over the gritty hardcore
edges that frequent the music of Monuments as they do for opener “Fast
Worms”. Its raging chorus sees vocalist Sacha Dunable dishing out roars
from behind a dark, powerful series of shreds. With the album constantly
returning to themes such as the lunacy that lurks within the modern
world, the capitulation of reason and the fragility of the human psyche,
they pick some rather tasty, suitably insane lyrics to match.
“The pieces fit together
Like so many arms and legs,
Lifeless, limbless, body rejects”.
“Digital Gerrymandering” follows up on this by laying out its
theatrics early with barking, downtuned strings – DJUN-DJUN DJUN. It’s
pure Periphery but the artistic flourishes soon melt into complex,
flowering structures of dots and splats. Riding around a strong central
core, the glowing pop-fusion tech of Intervals and the furious
stringwork of Animals As Leaders begins to break through. This abrupt
switch from driven fervour to jazz interlude is strange but not, in the
least, unwelcome.
The album’s weaker material hurts more when you consider the strong
stuff. “City Hymnal” is a particular irksome beast and offers little in
the way of direction – when you consider the album title, perhaps that’s
the point. In the same vein, munching its way into existence with a
literal NOM NOM NOM, “The Pleasant Surprise” is a one-dimensional scrawl
of strings which digs away at you with the repetitious lyric “Gaps in
the wall”.
Compare those two with the crushing title-track and “Sui Ponticello”.
The former comes embedded with the rough-housing djentisms and snarling
roars of Meshuggah all tipped into a maelstrom of double-kick and
scrawling guitars. It all eventually spills into a hushed bridge; the
aural equivalent of being torn apart by rip tides before being spat out
onto the tranquil safety of a warm, sun-soaked beach. The latter track,
the album highlight, bears a malevolent potency; a tapestry of rising
and falling arpeggios, overwrought with taped threats.
With Devin Townsend mixing the squeaky tight production, this was
never going to be an issue here. What irks are the peculiar structural
anomalies and sense that they really are heading back over familiar
territory. Blow me if they aren’t deconstructing here more than they are
bringing something fresh to the table.
I must admit it is a surprise to find them boxing themselves into
corners and not stamping their own mark on proceedings. It hasn’t
stopped them sporting a kaleidoscope of polyrhythms and tones – proof
that these LA boys are still brimming with promise. As for that flowing
music they were hoping to create, they aren’t quite there just yet.
There’s enough about The Direction Of Last Things though to prove one thing – surely it is just a matter of time before they crack the code and create a masterpiece.
1. Monuments - The Amanuensis (Century Media) The Amanuensis takes a burgeoning genre and raises the bar for the rest. Seriously, you’d be hard-pressed to find another modern progressive metal album that could match this for impact. The band have refined the array of techniques they displayed on debut Gnosis and added the vocal gymnastics of Chris Barretto to their line-up. It's not an exaggeration to say that he takes the album to a whole new level. Throughout “Origin Of Escape” and the epic “Quasimodo” he’s tearing out lumps from your lugholes by firing out elongated roars that he bends into long, base-to-peak crecendos. During “Horcrux” and “I, The Destroyer” he fishes out those bowel-loosening piq grunts of his and for the remainder he’s scraping the skies with a sweet, melodic drift that gently echoes and swirls around inside your skull. On this performance, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better fit for this infectious band. This is a completely, crushingly epic goliath of tech and groove; wall-shuddering, space-flooding both by design and in performance.
2. Servers - Leave With Us (Undergroove)
Some groups may mesh a couple of genres together to create something fresh and dynamic – Servers are an octopic rock band with a groping arm in every pie. They are the very definition of the band you simply cannot pigeonhole. Song by song, their chameleonic music takes in grunge, dark rock, screamo, sludge, cult metal, new wave, industrial and punk n’ roll. Their debut is an absolute behemoth spouting musical ear-worms that boast grit, melody and muscle. Tracks like "Universes And Supernovas" and "Run With The Foxes" come bursting at the seams with vast riffs and big, sparkly choruses that will aggressively weld themselves to your brain. When they cool their heels they produce stuff like the intensely gothic, Icicle Works-friendly comedown of ‘Claustrophobia‘. Welcome to your new favourite band.
3. Zodiac - Sonic Child (Napalm Records)
Straight out of left field this one. By opening with an intensely moving spoken passage telling of the utter joy of music, Zodiac grasp your attention and retain it from the first note to the last. The no-nonsense unencumbered groove that drives this album slackens and quickens to purpose but at every moment it pushes forward through the genres of blues, soul, country and rock n' roll. "Just Music" hauls some 70s kitsch out of the closet whilst "A Penny And A Dead Horse" digs out the good old boy slide guitar to suck you into a dizzying world of galloping horses and chain gangs. So leave your hang-ups at the door, come on in and just lose yourself, even if only "just for a little while".
4. Intervals - A Voice Within (Basick)
By making a sudden switch-up to a combination of rhythmic backline and glorious, moving vocal interplay, Intervals have produced a work of real joy, passion and pomp. Mike Semesky, now on lead vocal, craftily wraps his eye-popping, hugely emotive lyrics around the spasming instrumentation in such a way that you'll find them worming their way into your cortex. From the fast-slow pomp of "The Self Surrended" to the all-conquering "Atlas Hour", this album is undeniable proof of just how perceptive and unrestricted by the concept of genres, our modern metal bands have become.
5. Skyharbor - Guiding Lights (Basick)
Sounding smoother and sleeker whilst staying inventive and demanding, this latest model from Skyharbor takes the band away from their bumpier, grittier debut. Driven by the triumphant, emotion-soaked vocal of Daniel Tompkins, the album delves deep into the realms of post-rock and dream pop. Earworms like "Evolution" and "The Constant" suck you in, whilst the sheer beauty of "Halogen"s construction and the heart-rending pain that inhabits "Patience" will demand continuous repeats. The organic ebb and flow of the album ties neatly in with the themes of life, evolution and entropy. It is a work of art that will toy with your senses and reduce grown men to tears. This band are going places and Guiding Lights is proof that sharing their future journey will be something of a delight.
6. Cavorts - Got Your Brass (In At The Deep End Records)
Jumping on the screaming punk n' roll bandwagon, Cavorts have leaped from the shadows to produce an album with more conviction than Cancer Bats, more nous than Kvelertak and more punch than Feed The Rhino. They've achieved this by opening out the song structures and firing out more barbarous hooks and crushing riffs than you can shake a stick at. If tracks like "Wait On", "Put Down The Hammer" and "Save Some Things" don't have you forming invisible oranges and shouting the lyrics to the skies then there's something inherently wrong with you.
7. Animals As Leaders - The Joy Of Motion (Sumerian)
A step forward away from the inaccessible complexities of earlier albums, this perfectly-titled songbook still opens with music that's as manic as a warzone, where bullets are replaced by notes. There are strafed leads that descend into an absolute cacophony before abating into the most gloriously laid-back infectious moments of jazz, electro and post-rock. Within the space of two tracks you are taken from the Earl Klugh-esque, low-slung jazz guitar of "Another Year" to the addictive slap funk majesty of "Physical Education". If this were hooked up to a graphic equalizer it would create only the most achingly beautiful of shapes. There you have it... The Joy Of Motion.
8. Craang - To The Estimated Size Of The Universe (Pink Tank Records)
As a debut album, quite frankly TTESOTU is astounding. There have been plenty of releases of late riding the retro gravy train but this four-track concoction of space, stoner and psych is quite unlike anything that has come before. Yes, some of its content may bear a passing resemblance to Hawkwind, Zappa or Pink Floyd but it actually draws strength from far more contemporary sounds than these. Take “Butterfly” for example. It digs out the kind of sick, splattering riff that Fu Manchu or Orange Goblin might have conjured and rides it until it sinks so far into your consciousness that you cease to notice it any more. You can feel your own pulse begin to syncopate, realigning itself with the music to create a new cadence for you to live by. There is definitely no hiding from the enigmatic joy, passion and crushing presence that this album carries.
9. Evil Scarecrow - Galactic Hunt (Deadbox Records)
Music and humour are two beasts that can cause sparks when combined. There's the simple shits n' giggles kind - bands like Tenacious D and Psychostick - and there's the lunatic fringe featuring goliaths like Rammstein and Devin Townsend. Aligning themselves closer to the latter, Evil Scarecrow tackle everything from genetically-modified mutant-robot crabs and the brilliant concept of losing a priceless library book called "The Book Of Doom", to paying tribute to the interactive virtual-reality world that was late-80s kids TV gameshow Knightmare. With razor-sharp wit, a very special guest and now stunning production to boot, Galactic Hunt (say it fast) is proof of just how far they have come in their quest to find our funny bones.
10. Devin Townsend Project - Sky Blue (HevyDevy)
Bursting from the confines of Dev's Z2 package comes this utterly mind-blowing collaboration with Anneke Van Giersbergen. Sporting great diversity, at times, it wallows in sheer euphoric arena rock whilst at others it spasms into sections of electro, dance and pop. There's also the mind-blowing wrap-around sound of "The Universal Choir" to wallow in. What more could any fan of music want?
Others for your stocking:
11. Pet Slimmers Of The Year - Fragments Of Uniforms (Review)
12. Herod - They Were None (Review)
13. The Golden Grass - S/T (Review)
14. Jackson Firebird - Cock Rockin' (Review)
15. Inventions - S/T (Review)
16. Behemoth - The Satanist (Review)
17. Thomas Giles - Modern Noise (Review)
18. Alaya - Thrones (Review)
19. Mire - Inward / Outward (Review)
20. My Brother The Wind - Once There Was A Time When Space And Time Were One (Review)
Amanuensis – a term used over the years to mean such things as slave,
aide, scribe and secretary. Sure, it’s a bit of a mouthful but then
here’s an album that’s got the depth of flavour, good looks, emotional
pull and addictive qualities to back that hefty handle up.
This sophomore song-driven album has drawn inspiration from the themes and motifs that connected the dots of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas
novel and, if that wasn’t enough, it also taps into the mysterious
Samsara cycle. Guitarist John Browne has described the latter as “the
cyclical existence of life that we are all bound to.” Here he goes on to
mention that “Chris (Barretto, vocalist) has written an entire story
around the lyrics. Maybe that will see the light one day!” Intriguing
stuff.
Recorded in Wales, North America and England, the production has been
stripped back and recorded live, where possible, and it all comes
without triggers and without studio trickery. They’ve also refined that
same infectious, rhythmical, progressive groove that so marked out their
debut Gnosis. The immediacy of these techniques are there for
all to hear. These, of course, are features that are also being picked
up by more and more bands now, but it’s a concept that has been around
for far longer than Monuments. SikTh’s work has undoubtedly had an
influence, but Monuments’ guitarist John Browne, originally with one of
djent’s forefathers Fellsilent, is proof of that pedigree.
On the first listen, you’d swear the vocal layers on this thing are
infinite. Chris Barretto (ex-Periphery, Ever Forthright) debuts with the
band here and his experience and incredible vocal gymnastics lift the
album to a whole new level. Throughout “Origin Of Escape” and the epic
“Quasimodo” he’s tearing out lumps from your lugholes by firing out
elongated roars that he bends into long, base-to-peak crecendos. During
“Horcrux” and “I, The Destroyer” he fishes out those bowel-loosening piq
grunts of his and for the remainder he’s scraping the skies with a
sweet, melodic drift that gently echoes and swirls around inside your
skull. On this performance, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better fit
for this infectious band.
Playing Devil’s Advocate, you could perhaps find fault with the
start-stop end to “Quasimodo” or the powered-down, monastic chanting
that forms the soul-sucking closer “Samsara”. Both could be viewed as
rather crass stylistic affectations that the album could do without.
Also, the tight production does tend to crush the mix together a little
too thickly, so you may find that you have to hunt for the big riffs and
choral keystones. Certainly the feisty “This is the end of promises
made that were never meant to hurt / Forget what I say, I just want to
watch you burn!” of “I, The Creator” is a monster hook big enough to
keep anyone happy but you might be hard pushed to find another to match
it.
The stark reality though is that The Amanuensis takes a
burgeoning genre and raises the bar for the rest. Seriously, you’d be
hard-pressed to find another modern progressive metal album that could
match this for impact. “The Alchemist” is the star track here. It also
forms the central axis, directing the flow as it draws the rest of the
tracks inwards. It knits the whole concept together; driving with a
brutal force powerful enough to level cities yet retains the lightness
of touch to draw the eye time and again. There’s even a game-changer in
here in the form of “Jinn” with its majestic Eastern elements
wickedly-woven into the fabric of the music. This is a completely,
crushingly epic goliath of tech and groove; wall-shuddering,
space-flooding both by design and in performance.
