Album Review: Need – Orvam: A Song For Home

This third full-length album, following “The Wisdom Machine” and “Siamese God”, from the Greek quintet Need displays a complex grasp of 70s and contemporary prog metal. It comes spring-loaded with flighty melodic threads à la Dream Theater and Fates Warning. It consistently punches above its weight throwing in big hefty clumps of Nevermore-esque power rock and is never afraid to mine a rich seam of Tool-ian avant-garde quirks.

Opener “Lifeknot” emerges like some crazed dance robot before settling down into a steady switch-back between the half-time hush of the bitter verse and the lurching, rhythmic chorus. As you’d imagine with an album subtitle like “a song for home”, inevitably there is a sonic essence of the band’s homeland running throughout the music. That ethnic feel and tone comes through in spades on the 10-minute “Entheogen”, where we get a repeated and monotone mantra to chant back, middle-eastern guitar scales and instrumentation and a sashaying female top-end vocal piece.

Here, the multitude of layers from the foreground power of Jon V.’s emotive vocal, the interweaving shredded guitar work and the diverse soundscaped background are craftily-balanced, meaning these intial tracks are never overly-busy but varied enough to allow for a different focus on each listen.

The initial sections of “Symmetrape” threaten to break out into Rush or Journey at any point but Need quickly dispel any sense of a reclining into established AOR territory by throwing in a mind-blowing blast of stomp-heavy death-doom. It’s the most curious of tracks but rams home the point and beautifully focusses the mind on the screwy construction. The album soon establishes that theme and before-long the cutaways into lounge music, space-rock or funk piano begin to make a little more sense. Need seem able to integrate these niche segues with such ease, rarely lingering on them too long before returning to the spine of the track.

Critically, the album craves a key riff or vocal lick to really make Orvam stand out. “Construct” tries hardest of all by adding bite but neither that supreme wandering synth or repeated chorus line of “Time’s ticking away…” could be said to give this the necessary kick into the listener’s sub-conscious. Sadly, this almighty hour-long album also comes with an in-built tipping point. It appears when they break off for the off-putting, one-listen-only 3:26 spoken recording of existentialist psychobabble that constitutes “Hotel Oniro”.

That one piece alone will not make or break the album for you but the 18-minute title-track rock opera that follows may. Replete with vast orchestral flourishes and echoing the epic delivery of Turisas, it plods along at a doomy pace breathing heavy with a yawning vocal. It bristles, it slumps, it cracks us emotionally, it does the lot. Broken down into bite-size chunks, it would have been far more palatable and some sections will definitely strike a chord more than others.

Opening like a posessed demon and ending like the broken character art that adorns it, this monster of an album will grab you with its imaginative use of instrumentation and engaging stylistic skullduggery but, above all, its sheer honesty and range of emotional interplay. Think not of it as an album; think of it as a story, as a journey, as a song for home.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2014/03/need-orvam-a-song-for-home-trailblazer/

Album Review: Antlered Man – This Devil Is Them (New Heavy Sounds)

The PR blurb for London’s Antlered Man describe their new album as “dark” and “weird”. Though they might not be the most complimentary descriptors, they’re not a million miles off with that. You’d certainly have trouble boxing them up into a genre. For the sake of argument, let’s have a crack at “artsy punk/rap meets rock/sludge in an explosion of psychotic avant-garde posturing”. Yes, that’ll do.

After firing out their debut album, Giftes 1&2, last year the band wasted no time hitting the festivals and managed to squeeze in 15 last year. Fairly impressive when you consider the 100 other tour dates they managed in 2012. There’s a definite hint of the on-tour in-jokes in the theatrical writing style of this sophomore album – the song titles alone suggest that much.

They’ve definitely gone in heavier here with This Devil Is Them as the ludicrously-titled opening track, “The Ballad Of Hamhock Fullsleeve” attests. The lunatic fringe is properly out in force as something akin to Melvins meets Tool meets Tomahawk meets These Arms Are Snakes emerges like the thrashing, writhing, triple-headed, multi-tentacled behemoth it is. You try and pick which limb or mouth to focus on first out of that little lot. If the panic-stricken drum rolls and carefully-placed guitar pings don’t explode your noggin, then the gut-busting bass, twinkling chimes and unhinged vocal (which waits until well over 3 minutes to pitch in) undoubtedly will.

All too often Antlered Man ask too much of their listeners. No-one in his right mind could like the entirely dislikeable character of “Claude The Ideal Bloody Gentleman” with its dissolute, padded-out structure or the 2-minute skittish mania of “My Surname, My Cum” – a last-track “fuck you” to the listener that isn’t appreciated.

Elsewhere “GDZ” oozes along the soft buzz and fluorescent tonal mix of Torche, “Ian Will Break Again” bristles like Kongh whilst speed-rapping like Senser. “Phony Tough” settles down and flies true with a beautifully hewn groove which “Salute Da Calm” follows with an echo-laden acknowledgement to the shoegaze of Slowdive. Star of the show, however, must go to the stoned drone of “Audition Tapes For Hades” which, whilst obviously overstretching itself to reach the 10-minute mark, glows with an eerie menace as Damo Ezekiel-Holmes finds his true calling as a softly-spoken angel of death.

Lyrically, when a band is firing mucky, attention-seekers like “My surname, my cum” and “This practical genius-like yeast infection” it’s very easy to dislike them (though vocalist Damo does apologise with “Sorry sorry sorry, what a criminal last line / There’s a mean streak in me when these fuck-ups are mine!”). However, when they do pull out hooked doozies like “Sweetheart, I couldn’t protect you / No matter how hard I tried” or “Girls couldn’t hit us with a running jump, Gods couldn’t hit us with a death-defying stunt” they know to ram them home with concerted repetition.

On the plus side, the groove on this beast is vast when it settles down – the latter half of the album should please the sludge fiends amongst you. The first half will sit pretty with the punks. Most will agree, the odd burst of rapping is more for show than it is essentially integral to the music and a high degree of patience and diligent attention is required to fully comprehend their ADD-afflicted concept. With so much content packed into such a small space, like a boxer on amphetamines, it’s generally going to miss as many times as it hits.

Also online = http://www.avenoctum.com/2013/10/antlered-man-the-devil-is-them-new-heavy-sounds/