Album Review: Megadeth - Th1rt3en

The toys have been thrown out of the pram, Ellefson has emptied his pockets, Mustaine has found God and now they’re back together, playing and recording music, and all is well in the world. Not only this, but the band are producing show-stopping performances once again, joyously bringing out more of their classic material for headline tours and rising to meet the challenge of playing their part on the Big Four circuit. A perfect time to be heading back into the studio you would think. Then, under pressure to deliver, they go and write an album called Th1rt3en (unlucky for some) and commission cover art that sees mascot Vic Rattlehead showing his back to you. Throw in all the furore kicked up by Mustaine’s gleeful comments about getting out of the band’s Roadrunner contract and the rumor mill is back up and churning away nicely.

I’ve always sworn blind that Megadeth’s peak was in the early 90s, so I was delighted to find that Th1rt3en recreates the same patterns that inhabit the albums from that era. For a start, Th1rt3en is less frenzied than Endgame. It’s hardly laid back, but it’s certainly less of a speed-fest and prefers to thrash out over a mid-paced rhythm, all the while tossing in strong flavors of power metal and rock n’ roll as it travels. The songs have tighter, catchier riffs that all point us directly towards each chorus, where Mustaine picks up the baton and runs in circles repeating the song-title until it lodges itself, irretrievably, in our brains.

Two songs in and I’m recalling parts of Rust In Peace‘s “Hangar 18″ in the key changes, the sharp tongue of Countdown To Extinction‘s “Architecture Of Aggression” and Youthanasia‘s “Reckoning Day” with its ripped chords. The build into the chaotic and brilliantly complex “Sudden Death” is classic, a spiralling solo and a thrilling, skidding riff that pans around your head. Following, “Public Enemy No. 1″ is all bluster and purpose with Mustaine intent on tattooing the four title words to your forehead. All this promise and yet, after a good few run-throughs, it all begins to sound a bit lacklustre. “Whose Life (Is It Anyways?)” turns out to be a limp-wristed shadow that falls apart when it drops the pounded beat (no word of a lie, it reminds me of David Lee Roth’s solo material), “Guns, Drugs & Money” wallows so long in its own filth that it simply forgets to evolve, and the mind-numbingly repetitious “Wrecker” manages to sound more Mötley Crüe than Megadeth.

There’s just so very little bite or sense of foreboding in a lot of this happy-go-lucky rock music they’ve created. Megadeth’s unbeatable sense of pervasive gloom and urgency of delivery is what defines them but save for a handful of tracks, it’s just not present. Their precious dark minor chords are suddenly thin on the ground and, “Millennium Of The Blind” excluded, even the fire of Mustaine’s famed political angst seems to have been extinguished. Who ever thought we’d hear Megadeth dishing out lyrics about life in the “Fast Lane” to a rock n roll backdrop, or hear them goading us with pop swill like “Black Swan”. Mustaine repeatedly offers up the most cumbersome of lyrics – “The soil is red now that you’re dead” from “Deadly Nightshade” or “Like a severed arm washed up on the shore, I just don’t think I can give anymore” from the title-track, and don’t get me started on the rhyming words that are shoehorned in during the chorus of “Public Enemy No. 1″. Johnny K, producer and major contributor, I’m looking at you.

Unfortunately, amidst the carnage caused by so much weak material dragging the album down, superb tracks like “Never Dead”, “New World Order”, “Millennium Of The Blind” and “13″ might just get missed. The former couple are driving, lurching, spitting demons with solos to absolutely die for, whilst the latter duo are heartfelt, colourful anthems. Amongst all the hubbub and flim-flam surrounding the band reaching the landmark of a 13th album, let these tracks not be overlooked. At the end of the day though, it does seem, rather than concentrate solely on delivering an album full of decent music, Megadeth, in some vain attempt to get their tracklisting up to the magic number 13, have gone and produced more filler than killer.

Also online (with samples) @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/megadeth-th1rt3en

Album Review: Uneven Structure - Februus

The remnants of dreamt images dissolve slowly, echoing gently as they depart. My eyes flick open as I “Awaken” to blinding bursts of fractured light. Blinking rapidly to clear my distorted vision I hear the muted tinkling of glass that woke me, before I see the shards falling to the ground. He is near, approaching fast. Bursting into the doorframe, he launches his attack.

This is the place where Uneven Structure’s debut, Februus, opens; the beginning of an emotive journey into sound. Everything from the sublimely cosmic album artwork (a bridge of distinctly alien design before a night’s sky spitting stars at an aurora borealis) to the cascading string-work and exploding snare shots screams its heart and soul at you. Another band to be pigeon-holed as “djent” and filed next to its brethren, or one with an individual voice? Just as this French sextet have tried hard not to become the former, it seems only fair that this review should not ape its kind. Please join me in thinking outside the box, back where I started, eyes closed, lost inside a stream of consciousness.

The rising panic I once felt is dying as the urging roars invigorate before they dissipate into a choir of harmonics beckoning me within. Startled, I realise the shattered pane of glass is whole once more. Heavy footsteps fall. The temperature drops; exhalations form clouds. “Frost” appears, growing like cracks across the mirrored surface of the glass and I stare into the reflection of an avalanche of snow, rhythmically tumbling and turning. The collapsing mountain swallows me whole and darkness falls as my ears fill, leaving behind a deep, syncopated boom; felt only as a numbing vibration.

Shapes form, thunder rumbles and I find myself cast adrift in space; rotating slowly; oblivious to either time passing or the presence of natural reflexive respiratory breathing. I gape open-mouthed as diamond-white galaxies and shape-shifting, intensely-coloured nebulae are revealed in all their luxuriant glory. This is “Exmersion” where space ripples from the pulsating heart of a red-hot sun. Solar flares fling themselves outwards, rebounding back as coronal loops; ejections that bring strong solar winds thrusting me backwards kicking and screaming. “Awe” hits and, with an explosive burst, I fall into a boiling ocean.

Sinking fast, I make out murky configurations in the deep. Vast, bellowing beasts are challenged by soothing siren song; a chiming, clanging wall of ethereal sound; a loose ambient wash that whirls to create vortices. The aural conflict creates rips in the current, pressures increase, water floods inside and the motion tears my body apart until there is nothing but a pointless and agonising “Limbo”. Vaguely perceptible, arrhythmic pops are all that remain to help me realise life goes on.

“Plenitude” kick-starts my heart with the beat of tribal drums and I see fire. Figures dance before me, snaking into impossible shapes, casting shadows. The cave walls flicker back in time causing the reflected phantoms to pulsate as the rhythm shrinks and swells. A smile splits my visage and I throw myself sharply into motion – what a “Finale”.

Okay. Open your eyes, you’re back in the room. My Spidey sense tells me you’d like an accompanying straight-up summary of my findings.

Well, many of you are going to be thrilled to hear that Uneven Structure inhabit the same ambient world that TesseracT and Chimp Spanner belong to but, instead of creating precise structures by filtering out any background thrum, they build upon it, wallowing deep in the extra dimension of spatial awareness that it offers, which brings them within jetpacking distance of both No Made Sense’s mile-wide layering and The Contortionist’s polyrhythmic heft. However, above all, the recklessly progressive scars they carve across their music helps define them as fearless, forward-thinking individuals. This is why you could do a lot worse than get lost in their music like I have.

Also online (with samples) @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/uneven-structure-februus

Album Review: Junius - Reports From The Threshold Of Death

You know how it is. You buy your paint, you roll it on your wall and, lo and behold, the pot runs out just before you finish. There’s a break in the colour; a hole. A small, but nagging hole. Your beautiful blood-red wall is left with a square millimetre of drab gray undercoat still showing. There’s no chance in hell you’re going back for a second pot so you cover it up with that poster you like; the one with the blonde, leggy tennis player scratching her bare backside. Still, you know the gap is there and it bugs the hell out of you.

Without me realising it, the same thing has happened to my music collection. I knew the gap was there but, frustratingly, I just didn’t know what the right colour to fill it was. Until now. Having missed out first time on their debut full-length, The Martydom Of A Catastrophist, I’m fresh to Junius but have quickly discovered their sombre, decadently expansive slow-pieces are satisfying that very hole.

Sophomore album Reports From The Threshold Of Death conceptually follows the journey of the soul after death and the echoing, gothic hallways, along which tracks like “Betray The Grave” and “Haunts For Love” sweep, evoke both the tortured spirit of darkwave and the malingering presence that inhabits doom metal. You could, for instance, namecheck both Joy Division and Neurosis, yet you’d struggle to properly qualify either due to this album’s pungent prog and post-rock overtones. Instead, it seems far more appropriate to think of Junius as a becalmed incarnation of either Cold Cave or 65daysofstatic, or a more decadent version of either Hammock or Explosions In The Sky.

And yet, the tracks on offer here rather flatter to deceive. The music swarms around your ears, but never quite manages to dig its heels in far enough. I kept expecting to have these glorious moments of introspection but the cyclical patterns never quite managed to drag me down deep into myself enough of the time. “Transcend The Ghost”, for instance, spins itself dizzy trying to go for something light and airy, but with vocalist/guitarist Joseph E. Martinez getting stuck on repeat, the track fires off its one trump card early and runs out of gas before it even gets going. The cadence and tone of each track quickly finds a rhythm and sticks all too rigidly too it and, as we all know, familiarity can breed contempt. Try spinning “All Shall Float” or “Dance In Blood” a few times and when you spot the simplistic design, you’ll begin to forget the initial tug of the chorus hook and crave greater variety.

May I recommend you close your eyes, ramp up the volume and lay waste to your sub-woofer, because the more you shut out the world, the more likely you are to realise just how spiritually effecting and deeply cathartic the music could potentially be when Junius’ songwriting finally matches their ambition. Follow these instructions and share a rare moment with me in the all-encompassing, hammering bottom-end and dying chords of “A Universe Without Stars” or the elegantly languid vocal and warbling synth which craftily conceal the sudden, yet glorious bass thrust of “Eidolon & Perispirit”. Boom, there goes my cochlea.

So Junius may not be exactly the correct band to fill my hole (just yet), but I’ve had such fun discovering what musical characteristics I need to be looking out for now that I look forward to discovering many more holes in the future.

Also online (with samples) at The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/junius-reports-from-the-threshold-of-death

EP Review: Enormicon - Storm Of Swords

Any band sporting a moniker like Enormicon, will always lead you to expect a pretty heavy sound to emerge when you hit play. Similar expectations will abound when the title of the first track of any album has such a devil-horning linguistic concoction like "Slaghammer". So when they feature in unison your hopes are for something pretty earth-shattering to emerge from your cans. So it is that I am disappointedly reporting the news that this isn't your day for wish fulfilment... yet. That "yet" is all important because behind the undoubtedly weak recording lies the potential for something monstrous to follow.

Tracks like the aforementioned "Slaghammer" and "Dark Forces" burn and boil, dragging forth insane lyrics, like only a band who smoke the strongest stuff can. The rhythmic qualities recall The Sword and the meaty tones and psycho lyrics are High On Fire-esque. "Pray For Death" and "The Gargantuan" reach down into a whole other dimension until the echoing stop-gaps enlarge and the psychedelia becomes more intense. There are elements of Mastodon and Hawkwind down here amongst the whispering fools, bending riffs and twisting, panic-stricken harmonies. The absurdly-titled "Fury Shall Know The Warmth Of Your Blood (Summoning The Enormicon)" with its dizzy-headed bludgeoning is, by comparison, absolutely ludicrous but it does prove just how far down the rabbit-hole Enormicon are willing to venture.

Now, I've tried but there's just no getting away from this. This EP contains the kind of snare sound that ruins a record. There you are listening to this rich, complex, driving and mind-expanding music and feeling it invade your every pore. Now imagine having your blissful, semi-lucid state exploded by the sounds of your beloved three-year old banging the shit out of the plastic toy kit you got him for Christmas. You'd throttle him, right? No, you'd buy him a full-on, ear-splitting tub-thumper because if he's anything like the kid on this EP, he's one talented son of a bitch ("Merciless Overlord Of Rhythm", indeed). The problem almost definitely lies with those weak-assed recording mics, that potting shed of a studio they've recorded in or, most likely, the individual twiddling the knobs whose idea of a hard-hitting drum tone is on a whole other planet to mine.

These thunderous Texans are just setting out, so it's hugely unfair to criticise too heavily. What they bring to the table is innovation, an instant grasp of complex song construction and a crafty knack for making their loony tunes accessible. This half-hour EP is a well-place stepping stone to, potentially, something really special.

Also online @ Metal Team UK = http://www.metalteamuk.net/oct11reviews/cdreviews-enormicon.htm

Album Review: Maylene & The Sons Of Disaster - IV

Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster are down with universal karma. The quintet have, after all, allied themselves to the identities of each of Ma Baker’s five sons; not to rain musical hell down upon us, but to set right some of the wrongs committed by those individuals; to re-align the karmic equilibrium by sending out good messages and vibes. Their third album, the imaginatively titled III, was a real trailblazer and they toured the backside off it. It was forceful enough to see them performing alongside such snarling collectives as Every Time I Die, In Flames and Killswitch Engage. I know this because it’s etched across my mind as one of the best gigs I’ll ever witness, and most notable because The Sons didn’t just hold their own that night, they went and jaw-droppingly blew the rest away.

Having now heard the surprisingly limp output of the predictably monikered IV, I doubt very much if they’ll continue to tour with similarly noisome company. Gone is the fantastically unhinged, disembodied element of Dallas Taylor’s howl and gone are the wild, rabble-rousing guitar leads. Also gone are the fun touches hidden within both II and III, leaving behind a joylessly bland, rock-by-numbers imprint. It’s fair to say the rigours of the aforementioned kinds of tours has meant that, since III, they have had a bit of a personnel transplant so maybe it’s not so surprising after all. So radical are the changes that only lead vocalist Taylor and guitarist Chad Huff (who only joined, himself, right before they recorded 2009′s III) remain in position.

The songs still swing with that indicatively Southern, swampy, blues rock swing that so marks the band out. However, they are now top-loaded with pop hooks, emotionless repetition, harmonies and unsettlingly weak melodies. Tracks like “Faith Healer (Bring Me Down)” and “Open Your Eyes” drift past on the air like wet farts; instead of being punchy, addictive pop, this is the kind of ineffectual mainstream twaddle that invites a quick switch of stations. I’m all for a good, well-written, hook-laden pop song so, by all means, bring your music to the masses if it has something new to say but please don’t water it down until so-little flavor remains.

There are moments of hope amongst all this doom and gloom. Opener “In Dead We Dream” reminds us what the band are capable of when they ramp it back up, “Cat’s Walk” pares down the mix to inject an unexpectedly punkish kick, “Drought Of ’85″, though dreadfully repetitious, allows you a moment to revel in the track’s change to acoustic and steel guitars, and “Killing Me Slow” has a crafty, black-key riff, pre-chorus, that duck-walks effectively into a fat-ass groove. Of course the bass is still reassuringly deep and strong and the album pacing is still pretty much spot on. Past that, it’s hard to find anything of merit. Slow-numbers “Come For You” and “Taking On Water” speak, unforgivably, from somewhere other than the heart and “Fate Games” and “Never Enough”, at under four minutes, offer nothing but filler. Considering the fresh personnel, I just don’t see how this can be. Listening closely, I get this strong feeling about IV that suggests, for whatever reason, this is now just a band going through the motions.

Poppier than ever and, despite their protestations to the opposite, preachier than ever (the less said about “Faith Healer” and “Off To The Laughing Place” the better), IV is the sound of Ma Bakers’ boys attempting to grow up. Sadly, they also appear to be growing out. Following the path most-trodden may lead to a pot of gold but on this evidence, as karma dictates, there will be no fans there to greet them when they claim their prize.

Also online @ The NewReview (with samples) = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/maylene-and-the-sons-of-disaster-iv