Lantlôs - Melting Sun (2014)

Although I had become decreasingly fond of Lantlôs over the course of Herbst's first three albums, Melting Sun is one of those records that offers me affirmation as to why I often stick with bands when I think they might have something hidden in there which has yet to surface. Granted, the last one I experienced (Agape) was more or less a creative coma of dull ideas. This project was by and large surfing on the trending wave of shoegaze oriented black metal expatriates, with nothing more to show for it than meeting the laws of supply & demand, to the point that Neige of the tragically overrated Alcest himself was involved, but it seems that after nearly a decade of gestation, Lantlôs has at long last settled into a comfort zone and begun to produce some quality assurance.

Disclaimer: this is so barely metal that I'd sooner just categorize it with the post, indie and space rock waves of the mid 90s, the black-tinted riffing progressions now a thing of the past, though you might pick out a few tremolo picked guitars or drudging chords which can frankly belong to a number of rock genres. But that's quite alright, because like its title hints, it provides this fulfilling, warm cycle of emotions which brings to mind Chicago abandon-rock darlings Hum from when they had a few singles 15-ish years ago, or perhaps more recognizably a few drop of Smashing Pumpkins' massive alterna-rock bleeding through. Solar flare drifts of brighter guitars careen across the vacuum of weighted chords, thick and juicy bass-lines pumping fresh blood through the glacial rhythmic veins which supply Melting Sun's circulation. Most of these tunes require a little patience for the payoff. Not to the point that they're truly time-consuming, and Herbst reins in the experience at around 40 minutes, but he takes his time in delivering the most heightened and passionate passages above the sailing, soothing strains of ambiance, progg-ish low-end lumps of bass and dreary yet uplifting vocals.

His voice is not exactly memorable, per se, but I think it fits the spaciousness of the music through some of the sustained passages; also helps 'ground' the songwriting aspirations with an everyman quality that sounds like any of your random middle aged neighbors going out to pick up the morning paper and then stopping to ponder a cloud, rainbow or some other unspeakable phenomena of the natural world. Gentler, ambient clean guitar passages and swelling backdrops ("Golden Mind" being a prime example) help round out some of the harder hitting, bulky guitar progressions, and Melting Sun never abandons its central ebb and flow of calm and crushing contrasts, star-tides radiated through the cosmos and soaked into the skins of the living. I would not deem this a massive stylistic departure from any of the previous records I've heard, but it seems handling all the instruments/vocals himself has resulted in more consistent, catchy fare that borders on poignancy, and while it's nothing intensely intellectual or amazing, I enjoyed listening to it...and coming from an individual who though the prior works were middling at best, I hope that means something.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10]

https://www.facebook.com/lantlos

De Arma - Lost, Alien & Forlorn (2013)

Providing the DNA evidence that a missing link exists between The Moody Blues, The Cult, Pink Floyd, and Katatonia, this is a Swedish/English collaboration between vocalist F. Allain of Fen, drummer J. Marklund of Sorgeldom and multi-instrumentalist A. Petterson of Lönndom, the last two having worked together numerous times before in projects like Stilla, Whirling and LIK, all of which are pretty interesting in their own right. To some extent, Lost, Alien & Forlorn suffers from a case of repetition and sameness which can grow tiresome after a few listens, but as a seed for something more creative down the line, it certainly got in a few shots of unbridled emotion and an almost numbing sense of bliss.

Basically this is driving, highly melodic doom metal (late 90s Katatonia, Daylight Dies, Rapture, etc) with a few black metal chord textures and rasped off-vocals that place it loosely into hybrid territory. The difference is that F. Allain is resurrecting that same swath of psychedelic terrain that a lot of dreamy British rockers explored in the 60s and 70s, and suffice to say yours truly does not encounter such a mixture every day. The chord progressions here are fairly commonplace, but layered so that the flow of the chords is almost always accompanied by some brighter notation, delivered either through a dissonant higher pitched chord or a sorrowful little melody. Hints of Fen, Sorgeldom and Whirling are clearly present, but I'd say this was an altogether different beast than the constituents' mainstays, though I felt that musically it did not break a lot of new ground. For one, the chord selections are hit or miss. They're always busy and emotional, but whether they tread a series of unbroken chords or a more syncopated punctuation, you're rarely being struck with an unexpected melody...

It's not all predictable though. For example, there are points like "Fires of Hope" where the metallic elements are dropped altogether to create a 90s British shoegazer/rock feel not unlike Catherine Wheel's dreamier outings, or the closer "Dislocated" where you hear some cleaner, spoken word vocals over a more directly post rock progression, but in general most of the tunes create a comparable mood. The bass lines are less than creative, Petterson obviously placing the brunt of his creativity into composing the rhythm guitars and melodies, but they bump along with blissful abandon nonetheless, and Marklund's drumming here is about as workmanlike and splashy as you would hope, considering that there's not a great deal of rhythmic diversity for him to work with. No, I feel like a lot of the real attention here is on Allain, and his harmonies are well enough rendered to distinguish De Arma from the pack, but not always the most elegant or tuneful. I will admit I actually thought the black rasped vocals throughout the record were entirely generic and in absolutely no circumstance did they ever deliver the climactic counterbalance intended...blandly structured.

But, hey, vocally they tried something different here, an evolutionary stopgap between Gilmore/Waters, Hayward and Jonas Renkse, with occasional deeper forays reminiscent of Kristian Wahlin's style in the Gothic metal band Diabolique. There would be a lot of potential if the supporting music were just a bit more interesting. I could probably count the compelling chord fixtures here on the fingers of one hand, but that's not to say it wasn't pleasant to listen through, and the 43 minutes weren't so tedious that it stretched out its welcome unbearably. Good ideas, they just need some sharpening, and ultimately De Arma might prove appealing to fans of acts as wide as the aforementioned melodic doom and depressive rock, to blackgaze acts (Alcest, An Autumn for Crippled Children), psychedelic prog, A Deeper Kind of Slumber-era Tiamat, maybe even a little pure Gothic rock like Sisters of Mercy.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

http://www.dearma.se/

Sólstafir - Svartir Sandar (2011)

It won't come as a shock to anyone that Iceland's Sólstafir have by this time severed almost all connections to their black metallic roots, seeking to further themselves in the psychedelic, airy post-rock that their gloomy masterwork Köld first manifest. Gone are the snarling, tremolo patterns and aggressive tendencies, and with their new double album Svartir Sandar, gone even is the absolute bleakness of that last album. Pretty much the entire core of the band remains, so it's not as if there were some disagreement and a few of the members suddenly hijacked the band's direction: this is the sound the band will likely continue until further stages of evolution have manifest. As for Svartir Sandar, the problem isn't so much that the music has taken a dip in quality, but that there's just a little too much of it, and not all of these creations are equally poignant or memorable.

There aren't enormous differences across the discs in content, and with a total of about 78-79 minutes of music, I'm wondering why they couldn't have just squeezed it onto one. Surely this would have proven less expensive? At any rate, the musical content is a lot like Köld: desperate swells of driving post-rock angst alternated with periods of spacey, open calm. Vocalist Aðalbjörn Tryggvason is mildly more intense this time out, with an angry bark to his style that reminds me of the shouting parts form the old Fugazi post-hardcore records. Simple, distorted bass lines create a substrate of leaden grooves while the guitars are dowsed in reverb or other effects and left to simmer and settle atmospherically, or escalate into explosions of shoegazing majesty as in the thundering bridge of "Ljós í Stormi" or the title cut. There are a handful of tracks which might seem 'excessive' in duration (10 minutes or more), but thankfully these don't drone on endlessly under any burden of monotony.

What saves the experience from ever growing stagnant is the amount of texture and variation on exhibition. While a number of guitar melodies and bass lines might utilized familiar sounding patterns, they are approached with such a beautiful, ailing breadth that they can't help but to feel fresh upon the ears. The band has incorporated some lofty, angelic female vocals on a number of tracks which are breathtaking, and there are also electronic beats and pianos (as in the song "Kukl") which feel resplendent against the music's snowy late afternoon glow. There aren't many moments on the album which would feel 'heavy' from a metal context, but that's not to say the band don't ramp up the intensity where it suits them; i.e. the screams cutting through "Þín Orð" or the jarring, accessible discord inclement to "Sjúki Skugginn"'s bad weather. There's also a bit of the Cult-like rock and roll aesthetic from the last record, but if feels more heavily confined to the second disc tracks like the instrumental finale "Draumfari".

All told, there's much to experience here, and what Sólstafir might lack for in the complexity of their earlier material they compensate for with volume and emotional contrast. That's not to say that Svartir Sandar feels as cohesive or astonishing as its predecessor: it runs on too long, and there are certainly moments in which the mind begins to wander AWAY from the soaring and soothing sonic landscapes and into thoughts of listening to something else instead (particularly true of longer pieces). The production is beautiful here, delivered with bruising clarity, and fans of Köld will not be heavily disappointed by the music or the lovely artwork panels. The album might also appeal to fanatics of other aerial post-rock acts, and should earn them due comparisons as a more 'rock-fueled' variant to their popular countrymen Sigur Rós.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

http://www.solstafir.net/

Fen - Epoch (2011)

England's Fen are having themselves quite a productive year, both with a 70 minute new full-length and a decent split with Sweden's De Arma (which I've also reviewed). But the question is, are they spreading themselves too thin? The Malediction Fields was a fine debut, one of the best executions of the black metal/post-rock melting pot that I'd yet heard, a deep and fulfilling journey through the natural environments of the band's homeland. Having now listened through its follow-up, Epoch, a number of times, I can say that they still have the magic, even if I'm not nearly so overwhelmed with atmosphere as I was when listening to the last album.

Epoch is laid out like a series of tides, an ebb and flow of tranquil synthesizers and ringing, psychedelic guitars that launch into moments of chaos and turmoil. You know it's coming, you simply need to paddle yourself out to the swell of the sea, and wait for the ride. The title track, and album opener, is almost all anticipation, rising to voluminous discourse but once, but the following "Ghosts of the Flood" utilizes a more traditional black metal structure, with blasted drums and driving guitars that feel like a tunnel of restless brine on an overcast day, your conscience drifting straight through, the spray alighting on your cheeks. There are calm segues here with clean vocals, and I found them to be more interesting musically than the heavier elements, but it does balance well. "Of Wilderness and Ruin" is more impressive yet, with demented, drawn out barks over a thick flow of melody, like Neurosis having a day at the beach.

Elsewhere, there is the glistening of "The Gibbet Elms", or the passive/aggression of "Half-Life Eternal", another case in which I feel the band's atmospheric post-rock elements do us more of a service than their explosions into viscera. "Carrier of Echoes" probably has the best guitar riffs, a warm flood of substance and emotion that fades into the background. But I also really got a lot out of "A Warning Solace", and the album ends on its highest note with the sullen majesty of "Ashbringer", in which I truly enjoy the collapse and shine of the keys. It's probably the most consistent piece on the album, or at least the best at the band's intended escalation and decay.

From a broad standpoint, Fen do have the emotional staying power to impress the growing scene of fans that enjoy the hybrid of these musical components, but I'll admit that I was just not that into their blackish metal elements here. When you dissect the guitar lines, these are usually the coordinates in which they're just not doing anything memorable. That said, I enjoy the tangible, thematic departure here, the setting and mood of the album. Where The Malediction Fields felt more repressed, boggy and cold like a still marsh, Epoch is more like the shoreline after a violent rain has spun through, even though the stylistic fundamentals remain similar. It will be interesting to see if the band can constantly give themselves this minute shot of renewal through each of their incarnations. At any rate, this is a good sophomore, if less revelatory than its elder sibling.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

http://www.myspace.com/fenband

Fen & De Arma - Towards the Shores of the End (2011)

Fen are gearing up for a big year in 2011, both with the release of their eagerly anticipated sophomore Epoch and this split with a newish band out of Sweden known as De Arma. If you had the good fortune to experience The Malediction Fields, then you know what to expect from the English upstarts: dense, meandering and melodic black/dark metal with post-whatever overtones, perfect to dream and drift along with. To that extent, De Arma makes for a great companion, as they perform with a similar, evocative atmosphere that differs primarily in the more rasped vocals and traditional streaming of black metal currents in the guitar lines.

Fen have gone even more accessible here than the debut album, and their half of the split consists of four well managed tracks. Moods of both gloom and the radiant sunlight piercing said gloom are conjured through "Soilbound"'s mix of spacious, ringing chords and synthesizer washes, whereas "Ageless Threnody" creates a more belligerent, slower pace, with the same mesmeric, glinting waves of keyboard colliding into the substrate of guitar and thick, anguished vocals. "Towards the Shores of the End" itself is another lengthy piece (all three of these have been 8+ minutes) which uses a bass flow and simple stringing to adapt a more progressive environment, and I found this to the best of these new compositions, with a style hopefully redolent of the forthcoming full-length. The band has also included an acoustic reprise to "Bereft", the final track on The Malediction Fields, and while there's not much to it, it sets up the 'passing of the torch' here rather well...

Which is snapped up De Arma in the more hurried, desperate "Crimson Waters Ebbing", a black metal blasted standard with shaky, clean vocals that soar into the treacherous rasp and a slew of dire, twisting melodies channeled alongside the cleaner guitars and nulling synth line. "Noemata" is perhaps my favorite track on this entire split, 9 minutes of melancholy cast through the same, simple process: roving, spacious guitar lines with driving drums and shining chords. "From Horizon to Oblivion" transforms from a charge of melodic black metal to a more mid-paced, haunting bridge sequence and back again, and I didn't appreciate it so much as their other two pieces, but it certainly fits.

At over 52 minutes, you're basically getting a full-length album, only shared. Fen alone has about 30 minutes of material here, substantial when you consider that they've written about 70 more for Epoch. The production for both bands is suitably vapid and repressed, really giving one the impression that he/she is outdoors witnessing some dour, natural process of decay or the rising of a sun over an unforgiving landscape. The music does its job in sending you to that other place that surrounds you every day, which you often fail to notice. That being said, the compositions are not entirely impressive, and I'd imagine that those outside of the black metal/post-rock (Alcest, Altar of Plagues, Wolves in the Throne Room, etc.) subset of fans will find it far from alluring. Towards the Shores of the End is a good release, showcasing two good bands, but there are no surprises here and nothing that makes you reflect for very long once the music ends. Despite their similarities, the bands would simply be better experienced on their own full-lengths.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

http://www.myspace.com/fenband
http://www.reverbnation.com/dearma

Sólstafir - Köld (2009)

Arguably the premier metal band from Iceland, Sólstafir have come quite a ways from their pagan black/Viking metal roots. So far that any resemblance between Köld and their earlier releases has become marginalized, or merely thematic. They retain the cold core of their sound, that into which the imagination carves endless white landscapes and blowing winds, but this is packaged into haunting, angst-fueled post-rock, or shall I say post-black metal, or who cares.

When the result is this beautiful, there is little cause for complaint.

Köld is an album of glowering peaks and depressive valleys, where the geologic blood of the band's homeland can clearly be heard to run through every selection of phrase and tone. Eight tracks, most of which check in above the 8 minute mark, create a compelling and thorough journey through the (deceptively) empty and pale spaces of the musicians' environment. Instrumental "78 Days in the Desert" swells as its layered, shoegazing chords and subtle yet thundering percussion strike out across the wastes. "Köld" is just a wall of power, chords cutting the ice and Aðalbjörn Tryggvason's wandering vocals begin their tortured poetic delights. "Pale Rider" is a more harmonic vision, yet shares many of the same qualities: the simple yet soaring guitars, and some of the most aggressive vocals on the album. "She Destroys Again" may begin with some simple, folk/blues guitars ringing in a glistening distortion, but it picks up quite nicely. "Necrologue" is a gloomy piece, with calmer vocals and a series of acoustic chords lavishing the omni-present, looming bass. "World Void of Souls" is instrumental post-rock save for some spoken word. "Love is the Devil (and I Am in Love)" has some nice gothic hard rock sensibilities, imagine if The Cult tried their hand at a more gothic Finnish metal sound successfully. The beautiful and tranquil "Goddess of the Ages" closes off the record lovingly.

I admire the production of the album because it perfectly captures the many layers of emotion, but maintains a raw edge (similar to previous albums). All instruments sound fantastic. The drums are suitably tinny; the guitars echo through the gray and white clouds of the arctic vista; the vocals are clear yet mysterious. And when it needs to, the bass thunders through.

You do not hear an album like this every day. Though their material has always hinted at distinction; Sólstafir have evolved into something truly unique with this. I've heard others describe this band as the 'metal' Sigur Ros, and with Köld you can actually, sort of feel this bond between sonic architecture and a climatic, geographic influence. Whatever compelled this sound, I do hope it continues, because this is a brilliant album, joyous and haunting and immortal. It is easily the finest hour yet for Sólstafir, and I'd heartily recommend this to any fand of post-rock, or mellow post-black metal, even though it's obviously much more...

Verdict: Epic Win [9.5/10]

http://www.myspace.com/solstafir

Isis - Not in Rivers, But in Drops EP (2008)

One of the more popular acts to originate in my neck of the woods, I've always had kind of mixed feelings on Isis. I thought their early material was plodding, boring, and extremely overrated metalcore. But I have enjoyed some of their later releases, their shift into a more experimental direction of post-rock and drone has opened up so many elements in their sound.

This new EP is a good example of the latter, and I'm happy to say I really enjoyed the title track. It's hooky, it flows so well together, from its dreamy opening to its rock out riffs and even the desolate growling which pops into the middle. There's also a live version of the track, which sounds okay but you'll be too engaged in the studio track to care. The other track here is a Thomas Dimuzio remix of "Holy Tears", and it too is a delight.

If you love Isis, you're in for a treat here. Both of the studio tracks are well worth hunting down and you'll listen to them repeatedly. Being not the biggest fan in the world, I still really enjoyed this. You also have to love that cover art, one of the most striking cover images I've seen in some time.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

http://www.isistheband.com