Caladan Brood - Echoes of Battle (2013)

To properly cover Caladan Brood's epic debut album Echoes of Battle, it's important to first clear the elephant from the cage, because it's going to be said, and a thousand times: this is a band which sounds quite similar to Summoning. In aural architecture, theme, instrumentation, band makeup, and even the choice of cover artwork/framing, this Utah duo takes on an eerily familiar task to Austria's acclaimed partnership, and for many listeners this will immediately imbue a love/hate bias with what they've set out to accomplish. Granted, they're not the first nor the last to pursue this path. Acts like Kinstrife & Blood, Elffor, Rivendell and Munruthel have all explored a comparable sound, and to be truthful, Caladan Brood are one of the best of the batch, thanks to the cohesion and consistency of their vision and their capacity as songwriters to keep such bloated compositions from stagnating. Now, as I'm not one to hold a band's influences (even this overt) against it: 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery', they say, and the worst I could claim is that Shield Anvil and Mortal Sword have great fucking taste. If the songs are solid, I'm not about to lay into Exhumed too hard for sounding like Carcass, or Kingdom Come for spending too much time nosing about in the Led Zeppelin cookbook. After all, how many of today's most favored black hearts have drunk too closely from the well of Bathory, Burzum, Mayhem, Darkthrone or Dissection? Why not Summoning, one of the greatest bands in the world?

Now comes the part where I convince you of the differences between Caladan Brood and their spiritual mentors. The most obvious is in the fiction from which the Salt Lakers have drawn their inspiration. Rather than become the next in succession for the Tolkien throne, which has at this point been comprehensively covered by acts like Summoning and Blind Guardian, this duo delves into the grim and oft impenetrable shared universe of Steven Erikson and Ian C. Esselmont's Malazan Book of the Fallen; a sprawling, dark, ambitious, richly imagined series of novels which this reviewer just happens to be a major proponent for. I cannot stress enough how important it is that a band pulls its head out of the arse of tradition and decides to bypass the usual Tolkien, Howard, Moorcock and Jordan cultism for something more refreshing, and in this day and age, deserving. Not that I've got a problem with most of those authors, mind you. I've been reading them for decades, with no end in sight; but bring on the Glen Cook Black Company brutal death, or the Jeff VanderMeer Ambergris funereal myco-drone/doom, the China Miéville Bas-Lag Gothic grindcore, or the Joe Abercrombie-based battle metal. I've spent more hours immersed in Erikson's dense, textured, beautiful and harrowing prose than almost any other author the past five years, so it goes without saying that I share Caladan Brood's passion (even named for a central figure in several of the books), and that really: it's about goddamn time.

How well does the duo convey the atmosphere from the setting through their music? Lyrically, I would say that they're spot fucking on. Much of the prose takes an atmospheric approach to important scenes and battles from the books, giving the listener/reader a more bird's eye, descriptive view of the setting, but there are also some pretty specific excursions, like "A Voice Born of Stone and Dust" which is told from the perspective of the undead T'lann Imass, some of my favorite characters in the stories. As for the music itself, I must say I was marginally less invested, perhaps because my internalized ideas for a Malazan 'soundtrack' would be more dissonant, disparate, complex, and hopeless. For all intensive purposes, most of Echoes of Battle lives true to its name: hymns of fell majesty and long abandoned battles, and in Caladan Brood's defense, there are a whole lot of these through the saga. The turning and shaping of a world and its deities, ever in flux and opposition. Reader response to fiction is always subjective, and I'd say the duo has done at least as good of aesthetic interpretation job as, say, Peter Jackson and his Lord of the Rings films. The melodies through these songs often feel too evident and safe, where I would have just gone darker, darker, darker than Anomander Rake himself...more obfuscated, more atonal, and more unnerving.

But that's really just a matter of personal preference. Caladan Brood still manages to evoke some haunted and chilling moments through the very nature of their chosen medium. Long, drawn out compositions range from 9-15 minutes, driven by programmed, thunderous percussion slathered in trailing streams of sadness suffused through the tremolo picked guitar patterns. The general tempo is a solemn, marching pace that is fit for its introspective paeans to both loss and beauty, but there are opportunities where the speed of the songs is ramped up to provide a degree of variation. I get a bit of Moonsorrow in numerous of the band's note progressions. Keys are used to represent bright flutes, horns, and other orchestrated fixtures and cast the listener into that alternate-reality Dark Ages atmosphere of the fiction, but in truth, this is where Echoes of Battle most mirrors its Summoning influence (and a hint of later Graveland). The difference, I think, is that Caladan Brood don't flaunt that raw, unhinged undercurrent of the earlier efforts in the Austrian's backlog; this is produced easily on the level of Mortal Heroes Sing Thy Fame or Oath Bound; so there's a good balance to the emulation of the drums, string and wind instruments that keep them constant with the distortion of the guitars and the unhallowed rasp of the vocal. Where needed, though, like the bowels of "To Walk the Ashes of Death Empires", this all swells into a wonderful portrait of gleaming sadness. Shield and Sword are patient composers, and like the gradual ballast of an emotional film score, they count the moments and strike where its most effective.

One welcome deviation here from their most prominent influence is the decision to implement brooding, harmonious choirs that resonate like a deeper, baritone approximation of the Faroe Islands' folk metallers Týr, or a bit of Borknagar. These are rich in tone, well placed in tracks like "Wild Autumn Wind", and provide an important contrast to the central, crude rasp, which is itself effective but not exactly news in the wake of such an expansive, populous genre. I also have to hand it to them: the sense of escalation and the lack of tasteless, endless repetition really help fill out the spacious compositions, and as such the 70+ minutes of the album pass without much ennui setting in. Riff for riff though, I didn't find the metallic components of the songs to be constantly fantastic or engaging. Individual progressions fit the framework of the drums and orchestration very well, but when separated from the rhythmic skeleton they're more or less familiar to anyone whose been listening to European black metal for the past 20 years. It wouldn't kill them to write some catchier, creepier note sequences with as much proclivity to stagger the listener as Erikon's written page. Also, the bass just isn't much of a factor throughout the album...you can hear it bucking along below the other instruments, but it's more of a structural support than a strong feature.

Ultimately, though, Echoes of Battle really isn't about show, flashy, or immensely intricate guitar rhythms at the fore, but more of a correspondence of all its instruments into a saddening, symphonic mass, and in this Caladan Brood most certainly is a success. Mood music for mysterious magical warrens and mythical warfare. A pleasant and poignant listen fore to aft, with a lot of threads of semi-hypnotic melody that arrive at critical moments to help alleviate the listener from any sense of exhaustion from the album's substantial torrents of grandeur. Yeah, it sounds like Summoning (they don't hide the fact), but one must consider that it is merely the duo's debut album. Imperfect, perhaps, and I couldn't point out particular tunes that stand out far from the rest, or any that resonated deep with me for a lengthy period of time, but as a building block for future progression and experimentation, it's an admirable debut, and the subject of their affectations really cannot be beat when it comes to contemporary VLFN (very long fantasy novels) of the darker, deeply anthropological variety. Whether you enjoy the Erikson/Esselmont collective or you have a craving for fictional battle metal on a massive scale, Echoes of Battle is worth your time to pursue. Time which I've already wasted enough of here, so Forkrul over that major credit card. I had to insert a bad pun somewhere.

Verdict: Win [8/10] (the very land itself a barrow)

http://www.facebook.com/caladanbroodofficial

Visigoth - Final Spell EP (2012)

Salt Lake City is not the first place that comes to mind when one thinks of melodic heavy metal, so it's no shocker that Visigoth carry a more European feel to their songwriting on the Final Spell EP, a follow-up to their 2010 demo. In particular, as I was listening through its four tracks, I was picking up a distinctly Swedish vibe reminiscent of Dream Evil, HammerFall, Nocturnal Rites, The Storyteller or Heed. This is largely in part to the incredibly polished vocal production, but also the songwriting itself which relies heavy on traditional, simpler riffing patterns skirted with glorious threads of melody. The structure is certainly redolent of prototype power metal acts like Accept, Running Wild ("Call of the Road"), Judas Priest or the Dio solo records of the 90s, but the band is fortunate not to draw upon any one influence too closely, and their geographical placement incurs a sense of novelty.

The caveat is that Visigoth create a more modern aural context to their music than merely aping the decades past, and this is manifest primarily through the meat of the guitar tone. Most of the songs here are played at a mid gait, with lots of chugging balanced against the more melodic chords and lead lines; the band just settles into the rocking and lets Jake Rogers build atmosphere through the vocal textures, which are smooth and boldly mixed to the point that they almost drown out some of the guitars during the huge harmonies. What's amusing is that this is the same guy behind the black metal group Gallowbraid. He's obviously a long way from the retching and snarling we experienced there, but to his credit he's got a very seasoned, professional timbre that you'd expect from more storied singers. If I had any problems vocally, it had less to do with his ability and more to do with the lack of aggression. He doesn't scream, he doesn't necessarily wrench a lot of character from his chosen range; there are certainly emotions at work, and the chorus sequences are clear, accessible, and easy for crowds to sing along with, but I, for one, would not mind if he got a little angrier.

Otherwise, this is a pretty on-point demo. Visigoth knows its audience. All of the songs hover at around the same 5+ minute range, and the riffs are kept busy enough that they eschew the sense of ennui the standard, hard rock four note configurations that plague a lot of the lower-intensity heavy/power hybrids. Songs like "Final Spell" and "Creature of Desire" might seem slightly predictable, but they fill the space with speed metal licks, taut and effective leads, and the Rock'n'Rolf temerity of the rhythm guitars definitely makes me wish I were licensed to drive a motorcycle. I also like the moodier breakdowns with cleaner guitars which lent a Maiden-esque dynamic (as in "Final Spell"). The one track of the four I struggled with the most was "Seven Golden Ships". It opens with a large, chugging guitar passage but sort of peters out in intensity, until the burst of speed and melody in the bridge which is possibly one of the most sticky rhythms among the 22 minutes of material, but stylistically it remained consistent with its neighbors.

Lyrically, there might be of the few of the familiar post-Manowar cliches, but usually this is not a problem for most of the fan base of this genre, and who am I kidding? When you include lines like 'titanic war machine' I'm hardly one to complain. Some might scoff at the cover art, but I rather dig the simplicity, as a huge admirer of old sword & sorcery fiction and comic book art. No, probably the only serious setbacks for me was that it often felt a little too passive or paint-by-numbers, and the vocals were a fraction loud. I want this band to do unto me like the Germanic tribe it was name for did to the Roman troops at Adrianople, so it wouldn't hurt to ramp up the savagery, something that will undoubtedly manifest with the extended variation of a longer form recording. Beyond that, though, Final Spell is a coherent, neat sounding, and above all professional sampler with a fluid rhythm section, chops and melodies aplenty, and not so stuck in the trail of its influences that it can't pull its boots out of the muck and forge ahead on its own path.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

http://www.facebook.com/visigothofficial

SubRosa - No Help for the Mighty Ones (2011)

Few new artists have I heard in recent years with a configuration and concept quite so staggeringly beautiful as Salt Lake City's sludge angels SubRosa, and yet I feel that it's this very nature which often outpaces the band's ability to compose itself. Don't get me wrong: No Help for the Mighty Ones is a distinct, compelling album worth listening through whether you're a proponent for the doom, stoner and sludge genres or just someone seeking out crushing new sounds. But it's not some uniformly well written straw that broke the camel of quality's back, and it too often lulls into that age old mire of ennui that has plagued the niche for well over a decades as bands sacrifice strong structure for sheer heaviness and atmosphere.

In those two categories, SubRosa is a shoe-in for your attention. Dense, copious guitar tone drones on in simplistic, familiar patterns while airy, female vocals stretch across the surface of the tribal drumming and desolate glaze of the violins and sampled instruments. The opener "Borrowed Time Borrowed Eyes" is a joy to experience, a bastion of irreverent sadness that fully delivers on the quintet's unique promise. Catchy verses, catchy chorus, and a moderately cool bridge define what is clearly one of the best songs on the disc. But it's the longer pieces, like "Beneath the Crown" and "Stonecarver" where they start to slip. For instance, I don't really dig the harsher vocals where they are implemented. I realize the purpose, to create a whole 'beauty and the beast' contrast like so many Gothic/doom metal bands have done in the past, but I feel like the idea of the cleaner female vocals is strong and numbing enough that these are just not necessary.

Also, bigger does not always equate to 'better', so these fatter tracks bear the brunt of the album filler, or the riffs that don't quite affix themselves so lavishly to the vocal lines. For example, some of the guitar parts in "Attack on Golden Mountain" are just downright boring. If not for the atmospherics, and the collision of clean and harsh vocals, it'd be a truly monotonous slog. Much better are tunes like "Whippoorwill" with its drowning, stoner overtones or "The Inheritance" with its marriage of violins and wah-wah. The closer "Dark Country" is also quite essential and busier with guitars cycling in an almost bludgeoning, progressive fashion. But sadly, despite the strength of much of the material, there are a few gaping holes where it just doesn't work as well as I'd like it to. Also, the vocal-only traditional harmony piece "House Carpenter" is forgettable.

If No Help for the Mighty Ones had been condensed to just a few of the songs, perhaps as an EP with "Borrowed Time, Borrowed Eyes" and a handful of the others, it would have been one of the most revelatory experiences I had this year, but there's just not enough of the good stuff here to pass around the whole campfire. Two of the songs are culled from the Swans Trapped in Ice EP a few years back, and of these I would have left at least "Attack on Golden Mountain" off and replaced it with something shorter and better, then maybe trimmed down "Stonecarver" and left off the "House Carpenter" piece. As it stands, there's still enough here to recommend towards any prelate or adept of psychedelic hippie doom, especially if you're into other female fronted acts like Blood Ceremony, Jex Thoth or the new album from The Wounded Kings.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10] (clothe them, feed them, heal them)

http://www.myspace.com/subrosatheatre

Burn Your World - Burn Your World EP (2011)

Burn Your World is an emerging band on the Salt Lake City scene, playing a fairly unique combination of metal and hardcore which draws in influences from all over the spectrum: punk, thrash, death, grind and black metal can all clearly be heard below the coarse 'core bark of the vocals. There is a pretty predictable flux between the band's faster, go for the throat emotional outbursts and the breakdowns, and this is perhaps its most distinctly hardcore (or metalcore) characteristic; but what I really dug about these guys is how they implement the melodic or dissonant textures that occur naturally in blackened or melodic death straight into the verse rhythms, as if it could never occur otherwise.

They keep their tracks relatively short and to the point within the 2-4 minute range, which is more than acceptable for the genre, and they also exhibit a strong sense of control here, not as wild or off the hinge as something like my region's local heroes Converge, Backstabbers Inc. or Trap Them. Just a few riffs in each tune, and the transitions are almost always spotted a mile away, but this is not a style I approach for its complexity. I love the almost Bad Religion melodic fixture in the verse of "Vanished", and wish they'd have used more of this throughout the EP, but in their defense they're throwing down a lot of variation. "Suffering" sounds like a melodic death/thrash track throughout most of its playtime, and "It Was Arson" is more like a dour street core interspersed with moderate little blast sections and grooving breakdowns. A lot of older school punk and hardcore circa Minor Threat also looms in "Misanthropy", though the vocals are obviously far angrier.

If there were a few places Burn Your World could improve, it might be in the construction of the breakdowns and a few of the faster rhythms. For instance, even though "Vanished" begs for a mosh segment to follow up the faster verse, the chugging simplicity here is underwhelming. Same goes for some of the grittier thrash-core "It Was Arson" or the sluggish, choppy cuts in the middle of "Hollow Ground" (though in that last one, they at least apply a bit of melody to the chugging). None of them feel all that intense, and while this is likely to differ in the live setting, the spaces they appear on this recording feel often lacking or empty. That said, the production is pretty clean for a self-promoted release, and the mixture of styles could be unstoppable with just a bit more musical gestation between the constituents. This isn't the most consistent record, I'll admit, but the band's certainly authentic, and those who would welcome a more brutally fronted, metallic incarnation of, say, Avail might find something to enjoy here.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10]

http://www.facebook.com/burnyourworld

Nevertanezra - NTNR (2011)

Of all the metal genres, doom is perhaps the toughest nut to crack for an emerging artist. All too many of these withering weeds sprout forth into a garden of gray miasma, mistaking the inebriated slog of compositional ennui for crushing heaviness, and thus fail to wrest even one iota of misery from the listener. More than any other medium of extremity, each note simply counts more, each vocal line must be delivered with increased gravity, and the nuances of rhythm and atmosphere become all the greater. Utah's Nevertanezra seem to understand this concept very well, and thus each of the five cuts on their death/doom debut NTNR is a balance of tangible weight and pummeling sorrows which feels richer than duller, a capitalization upon minimalistic, crushing principles threaded with the grace of open and empty spaces.

Many names rushed to mind when listening through this stolid, 53:32 meditation on disaster and negativity. Not the least among them would be the earlier Peaceville works of Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride and Anathema, only with a rigidity redolent of Boston's Grief. However, they don't follow too closely in the footfalls of any one influence, and thus NTNR has a sense of freshness about it brought forth through its taut guitar tone and charismatic vocals. Former Avernus growler Rick McCoy adds a sneering suffix to many of his lines which exemplifies them from the monotonous backdrop of so many of this hybrid genre's peers, and the guitars seem so carefully wrought to provide variation when they might just have well droned on repeatedly to create the archetypal funeral doom aesthetic. On a debut album with three tracks that exceed the 12 minute mark ("In the Face of Despair" is over 17), this attention to detail is crucial.

To the band's credit, I never once found myself bordering on unconsciousness, from the chugging drawl of "To Suffocate" and its grazing miniature leads, to the charnel old school death rhythms that explode across the canvas of "Separation Anxiety", or the potent driving lead bridge in "The Fading". The band often segues into tranquil passages of lightly threaded guitars and smooth bass lines that create a volatile contrast with the more ominous, lurching architecture inherent in most of the material, but the effect this creates is nothing short of punishing polarity. Add to this a rich and authentic mix which feels as if it could be achieved just as easily in the rehearsal space or live setting than the studio, and you've got a careful concoction of tension and relief that will darken your day without hesitation. It might not be the most memorable of works in its field, lacking some of the incredibly somber and catchy guitar lines of those old Paradise Lost or Anathema records, but its well capable of absorbing the listener into a bevy of bludgeoning regrets, balled fists of leaden inertia blackening the eyes and ears of every witness to its artful ugliness.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10]

http://www.myspace.com/nevertanezra