After a subdued couple of months to begin 2018, I’m happy to say that things have started to pick up as we close in on the end of the first quarter of the year. I think this slow beginning heralds yet another year of excellent music after the frenzy of 2017. I’ve discovered plenty of releases since the end-of-the-year rush and reevaluated a lot of albums I glazed over that would have upended my rankings had I know about them or devoted the time sooner, but that’s just the way these things go. So, in an effort to keep better track of all the music that comes my way, I’ve decided to forgo timely reviews and rank stand-out albums by quarter, with exceptions, here and there, for releases that demand a little more (if Necrophagist, Tool, or Vildhjarta dropped a record tomorrow, for instance, you could probably expect something a little sooner than June). So, here’s what’s caught my attention in 2018 (in order of release date): Vile Ones - Teeth Sooner than later, the American Metalcore Project will catch up with Scarlet, whose full-length Cult Classic has lived up to its tongue-in-cheek title in the years since its release (but let’s hope the country hasn’t caught up with its dystopian sci-fi narrative by then, because that would suck). Vile Ones and the 18-minute firebrand of Teeth is exactly what you think it is: Micah Kinard of Oh, Sleeper cutting loose over Scarlet’s spastic, shrapnel-bomb brand of mathcore, with hardly a clean-sung line in earshot leading to downright maniacal fare like “A Drink With ML Crassus,” “Pollack,” and “Mad Man.” There’s an artsiness to the EP that goes beyond the casual name-drops of artists and historical figures in the tracklist and puts a little more meat on Teeth’s bones; at times, it reminds me of the quasi-sophisticated freakishness Fear Before the March of Flames attempted on Art Damage; the scrappiness of The Chariot’s Long Live; or what Jon Spencer’s post-Scarlet band Spitfire did with Cult Classic’s older, broodier sibling Cult Fiction. Hamferð - Tamsins likamThere has been a lot more doom in my musical diet of late, but it’s into Hamferð’s gloomy fog-bank that I’ve found myself disappearing most often. Formed on the Faroe Islands off the coast of Norway, Hamferð (whose name “describes the epiphany of dead/missing seamen”) and Tamsins likam (which means “the body of mist”) are metal that reflects both a rich history of island folklore and the forlornness of living among rock and seaspray, under perpetually overcast skies. Tamsins likam isn’t necessarily any slower or darker than most doom metal I’ve come across, but it’s more refined and enigmatic, at times inching toward the literate prog of Opeth circa Still Life and Blackwater Park and underpinned by a depressing narrative involving a death, a downward spiral, and a suicide. That Hamferð and I don’t share a language doesn’t matter. The music conveys plenty. It’s the kind of performance that doesn’t just tug the heartstrings, but stretches them out,making it a difficult album to forget - also thanks, in part, to how it loops back into itself, underscoring the cyclical nature of its narrative and making chain-listens an imperative. I can honestly say I haven’t listened so impulsively to a doom record like this since The Inside Room by 40 Watt Sun; it helps helps that it clocks in at a breezy 43 minutes and that no song crosses over into truly exorbitant lengths. Erdve - VaijtomasVaijtomas is a black stain that doesn’t wipe off, and Erdve commit so wholly to their ideology of oppression that, by the time “Prievarta” oozes in, Erdve doesn’t sound like a band so much as a single organism, one that creeps around in the dark and screams at nothing, torturing itself like a denizen of one of Thomas Ligotti’s dilapidated nightmare universes. The leaden guitar tuning reminds me of The Psyke Project and other, similar sludge bands, sometimes of Celeste or AmenRa. The high-pitched screams juxtaposed against the band’s churning sludge, especially, sound as if they were scooped out of the belly of Misanthrope(s) or Mass III. But it’s easy to lose sight of Erdve’s simplified approach to the same depths these bands plumb, and how efficient they are at conjuring this acidic brand of misery thanks to that simplicity--half of “Apverktis” is just a couple of ringing chords, and they contain all the menace of a thundercloud that could sprout a tornado at any moment. It does. But it’s “Atraja” that steals the show, with an infectious groove that lies somewhere between Plebeian Grandstand and Black Sheep Wall. Its dissonant, repetitive riffing and crashing cymbals are almost upbeat, and this damning hint of optimism is maybe the best-realized manifestation of Erdve’s profound sonic nihilism. Rolo Tomassi - Time Will Die and Love Will Bury ItOur own Alex Brown gave Rolo Tomassi’s new record a pretty thorough shakedown; all I have to add is that, while they don’t fill the Dillinger Escape Plan-shaped hole in my musical universe (though I do have a pretty good feeling about that new The Armed record on the horizon), I’m glad I gave them another shot after the disappointment of Eternal Youth. In retrospect, that wasn’t the best place to start, as I had assumed of its exhaustive three-hour runtime; it doesn’t even hint at the spirit of Time Will Die..., which is dynamic, inventive, and even pushes a few boundaries in its quest for A Better Mathcore in under one hour, which that collection of demos, b-sides, and otherwise unaffiliated music couldn’t even begin to do. Because that’s Rolo Tomassi’s greatest strength: they write albums, making the pretty synthpop of “Towards Dawn” and “Aftermath” not only a novel way to begin a record in this genre, but potentially the greatest subversion of the “deceptively subdued introduction” since Metallica tropified it with “Battery.” The record veers from that to the sweepingly epic (“The Hollow Hour” is just one of the best songs I’ve heard this year) and to the complex and muscular (“Rituals,” “Whispers Among Us”) with a theatrical aplomb that’s never overbearing (although it does inch a bit close to that on “A Flood of Light” - sorry, didn’t change my life!) and always engaging. On “The Hollow Hour” and “Alma Mater,” it’s even kind of astounding. I haven't been able to put this one down. Slugdge - Esoteric MalacologyI never expected to fall so hard for a band that takes the slug for its muse. The alien, planet-conquering kind of slug, but the slug, nonetheless. But what seems like a gimmick melts away with the first monumental strains of “War Squids,” and around the martial stomp of “Salt Thrower,” I can almost understand Slugdge’s affinity for the little dudes. But what about them inspires the duo (!) to write such excellent metal? I suspect the answer to that question is a MacGuffin; after all, strictly speaking, Slugdge aren’t revolutionary. They’re just a couple of skilled musicians with an uncanny knack for songwriting and a love of slugs; a gooey, primary-colored, progressive death metal version of Arsis, in effect, but also the authors of “Slave Goo World” and “Limo Vincit Omnia” (which means something like “the mud wins”). The former song makes the very best use of the band’s secret weapon: deep, lugubrious, and sleazy singing, exactly the sort of voice you’d imagine would emerge from the slimy front-node of a sentient extraterrestrial slug. It’s antithetical to the Mikael Akerfeldts of the genre (although the growls across the record are similar, if a little wetter and meaner-spirited; sometimes it even sounds like Randy Blythe stepped in for a couple of verses!) and all the better for it. Drudkh - They Often See Dreams About the SpringThere are a cartful of jokes to be made about the nature-obsessed, agriculturally-inclined Drudkh getting stuck in a rut with their last few records, A Handful of Stars, The Eternal Turn of the Wheel, and A Furrow Cut Short, and then breaking free of it with the incredible comeback of They Often See Dreams About the Spring, but I’m not the one to make it. Drudkh seem pretty aware of the mess they made with those records, and some hesitancy creeps into this latest effort that both highlights and downplays the significance of this return to form. It’s a bit like Thrice Woven last year in that it’s a Drudkh record through-and-through, restoring all the old hallmarks of their sound that we haven’t since Microcosmos, over a decade ago: folksy melodies rendered in blast-and-tremolo instrumentation. It updates and integrates the tonal experiments they had so much trouble nailing down on Stars and Furrow; as an album, however, it gets in and out in a way that’s unusual for a band that historically prefers to take their time crafting and sustaining a mood. But this problem only arises at the very beginning and the very end. They Often See Dreams About the Spring is a shockingly consistent and elegant record, and the fact that it has a mood at all, and an engaging one at that, makes up for the turgidity of the last three records in an instant and opens a refreshing new chapter for Drudkh. Rivers of Nihil - Where Owls Know My NameIt took me longer to warm up to this record than to The Conscious Seed of Light or Monarchy, but now that I’ve settled in, I appreciate its occasionally forced growth spurts for what they are: necessary. Rivers of Nihil have always played more intelligently than their contemporaries in Fallujah, Black Crown Initiate, etc., even if they’re not as technically astute or possessed of the same production resources; they understand that the song comes first, and that that will carry them, but also that it’s hard to be original in metal. Where Owls Know My Name is a roomier, refined take on the mildly progressive, djent-flavored death metal of their last two records (and despite persistent use of the label by music journalists, there’s nothing tech about it), but what everyone’s talking about is the saxophone. Ever since Ihsahn demonstrated the instrument’s potential on After, I’ve thought it would make a worthy addition to the genre, and it’s great to see Rivers of Nihil picking up what he put down, even if the sax occasionally winds up no more than that: added, not integrated. The band’s not always sure what to do with it, and the arrival of the sax sometimes causes the rest of the band to neuter themselves into simple plucking and whooshy soundscapes. For some, these interruptions translate to pacing.” But you can’t fault them when they succeed, like on the glorious, heartrending “A Home,” “Subtle Change,” and title track. Moments like these makes up for any other deficiencies tenfold. Intercourse - Everything is Pornography When You’ve Got An ImaginationIntercourse are the scummy stuff that grows where Daughters, Coalesce, See You Next Tuesday, and some sweaty, salty sass band from the early ’00’s meet, and Everything Is Pornography… is a spontaneous, freehand blend of grind and hardcore that functions in two-minute spurts of activity with no endgame and a boozy, dogged energy; they couldn’t hide that they’re from New Haven, Connecticut if they tried. But Intercourse consider themselves MUSIC FOR ALIENS MADE BY MUTANTS according to their Bandcamp, and there’s probably no better or more succinct description of what this record sound like than that. This album taught me that I am a beta cuck and I have learned no lesson more valuable in 2018. Nightmarer - Cacophony of TerrorNightmarer was formed by alumni of War From A Harlots Mouth, The Ocean, and Gigan and is recommended for fans of Deathspell Omega, Portal, and Ulsect, so you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into until “Stahlwald” enters, and then you know. Cacophony of Terror is as apt a title as Chasm was for their debut EP (one of whose songs, “Ceremony of Control,” slots neatly into this album’s back half): it’s a brutalist skyscraper in the city of avant-garde death metal, an edifice of bolted Stygian riffs and precise, militaristic rhythms that buckles the earth around it and puts everything in shadow. This thing is a monster and there are no seams or zippers to suggest it’s anything but. It just lends itself to that kind of hyperbole; study the cover for a moment and you’ll see it depicts a bunch of skull blown into fragments, splinters of jawbone here and a bit of optic canal there, against a void of light. I doubt we’ll see artwork for any album more representative of the music than this for the rest of 2018. And, because Portal was mentioned, it must be said: Cacophony of Terror absolutely demolishes Ion. Will Haven - Muerte I've had a contentious relationship with Will Haven, finding most of their discography either frustrating or bland, with no median until Open the Mind to Discomfort. It made a promise the band have made good on in a spectacular way with Muerte, which sees them finally accepting what they are: a sludge band with a metalcore vocalist. Muerte moves like crude oil, profoundly bleak and single-minded in its intent to dwarf and then pulverize everything in its path with riffs big and ugly enough to put The Acacia Strain and Kowloon Walled City in the shade. But it’s a guest appearance that clarifies what Will Haven have become. Mike Scheidt of YOB lends his fluey, unsettling voice to “No Escape” in a way that should offer reprieve; he’s singing, not screaming, and yet it feels as if a trapdoor has opened and we’ve fallen into an even deeper cesspool than we imagined, surrounded by the slimy walls of “43” and “Unit K”; ahead, only the pyrotechnics of “El Sol” (which finds Stephen Carpenter of Deftones, long-time friends of Will Haven, in rare form; he crunches through a bevy of Meshuggah-worthy riffs like it’s nothing at all. Blowing off steam from the Gore sessions?). In the American Metalcore Project entry on Starkweather’s Cross Burner, I tossed off the term “Starkweathercore,” but there’s really no better descriptor for Muerte: it’s an album steeped in the virtues of that band’s early discography, and I couldn’t happier that I ignored my inclination to give up on Will Haven. Muerte leads the charge for metalcore in 2018, and if they continue in this vein, well - I want to be there for their Croatoan. -Brian L.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Metal LifestyleOwner Operator: Dakota Gochee Coming Soon:
|