Horde Casket - Melted Together (2020)

I think brutal death metal has to be one of the most difficult, if not THE most difficult sub-genre from which to standout. There's such a mechanical demand for some of the musical tropes common to the niche, and bands like Horde Casket do their best to fill these in, and if I were judging simply by a checklist, then I'd stay they fill in or obliterate a whole lot of those boxes. Ridiculous blast beats are all over the place, as well as hyper chugging and dextrous little hand exercise riffs that must clearly tax the players' tendons after a rehearsal session or live set. The vocals are their normal mix of harsh guttural and harsher rasp, in the tradition of your Carcasses and Deicides, and the overall momentum of the album is utterly fucking relentless with a slightly noisy mix that is like to give you a headache if you're just not attuned to what you're normally going to get out of the genre.

The issue at hand is that, with all of the obvious physical temerity and extremity that they are pouring into this release, it almost entirely fails to stick. There might be a few tricks up their sleeves like the walls of wailing guitars they bleed over the thrust of "Nocturnal Transformation", or the broken chugs below the inhuman blasting of "Disease of the Deceased", but it's usually just business as usual from a band that has always hovered between average (Bloodfiends, Landscape of Cadavers) and decent (Xenopocalypse, Slab of Infinite Butchery). I like the frenzied pacing of the leads, they always give the music an added sense of death metal escapism, and if you like the choppy slamming rhythm guitars matched up against non-stop pounding drums, there will be moments for you to get your dance on. There are some really great growl placements here that resonate, but just not consistently, and across all departments, Horde Casket doesn't lag behind much of the competition, but this is assuming you only want the methodical brutal death metal...

I honestly think the band could slow down or de-escalate itself once in awhile to create a greater dynamic punch to it, maybe throw in a less discordant whipping lead guitar, or make a crunchy groove riff that is actually catchy, where the listeners will get hooked to the chord patterns. Like so much of the brutal death metal, this one looks so bad-ass with its cover art, song titles, the band's name has always been pretty cool, but I fear that this stuff has become so commonplace that it just lacks a genuinely evil punch due to its mathematical commitments. If you are mining the rosters of Sevared, Pathologically Explicit, New Standard Elite and Unique Leader and like most of what you hear, then Horde Casket is unquestionably worthy of your time, but this one didn't leave me with much to remember afterwards other than the bruises.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

https://hordecasket.bandcamp.com/

Machine Head - Bloodstone & Diamonds (2014)

Bloodstone & Diamonds is not an album that abandons all the common sense, critical praise and good will that Machine Head had suddenly developed with The Blackening and Unto the Locust, but it's a solid step backwards in terms of quality, somewhat of a 'dumbing down' that shows the band for whatever reason missed what they were doing beforehand. You've still got a few outbreaks of the more agile, thrash-inspired riffing and some exciting lead sequences, but this one goes for grooves and accessibility a little more than the albums leading to it, and some of the aforementioned faster breaks aren't really interesting. I think if I were to condense it all down to about 3-4 tracks you'd have a worthwhile followup to Unto the Locust, but it's padded out with some songs that don't exactly leave any impression on me.

The catchier tracks like "Now We Do" and "Killers & Kings" are wisely staggered on the frontside of the album, the former a groover reminiscent of Through the Ashes of Empires era but with the add-on of some symphonic strings, and the latter a a thrashing 90s-style pounder with a couple frilly little riffs in there to keep it feeling busy. I also dug the melody at the beginning of "Ghosts Will Haunt My Bones", but that one kind lapses into the nu metal with rock chorus stuff that I was never a fan of in this band's hands, even if Robb's voice sounds half-decent on the more atmospheric, emo moments where he's festooned with little melodies. After that I find it hard to remember much of anything... "Sail Into the Black" is a pretty atmospheric track with some creepy little piano sounds and an epic length to it that eventually surges into giant rolling double bass grooves, but I feel like the harder hitting parts don't live up to the beginning; and "Beneath the Silt" is another track with some potential even though it's got a dirty chuggy nu groove beneath it, I kind of like the psychedelic filtering on the vocals, and again he's got some good singing parts on that and deserves a little credit.

The instrumentation is fine, with another of the band's stronger drum showings when they hit those grooves, and a lot of subtle percussive builds during a lot of the atmospheric parts of which there are probably more here than any other Machine Head record. Bass sounds good, production on the guitars is just the perfect contrast of heaviness and melody, and while Flynn is still doing a lot of the Phil Anselmo style tough guy grunts and growls, he's clearly improved all around. I also think that lyrically this might be the peak for the group, the lines seem fairly well thought out compared to some of the garbage on the disc to follow. The last third of the album is partly a waste of time, with the soft ballad "Damage Inside", the throwaway sample track "Imaginal Cells", and the other songs back there doing a mix of the Korn-like nu metal vocals with a few thrash parts to try and smooth them out, but all told Bloodstone & Diamonds isn't a complete dropping of the ball, it's still much better than anything the band had put out prior to 2007, and if you were a fan of the two previous albums then you might have breathed a collective sigh of relief. Maybe for the last time...

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Rabid Beast - Rabid Beast EP (2020)

Rabid Beast is the metal passion project defined, a pairing of longtime thrash fans who have made their way in other styles, but could not forever resist the siren call of a prime inspiration, and thus decided to do something about it. In this case, it's the duo of Paul Gillis and Eric Bauer, who have played together before in Chicago's brutal Morgue Supplier, which might explain how they work in such lockstep across four of the most intense thrash tunes you're going to hear in 2020, and a pretty nifty cover to boot. The Rabid Beast EP presents us with around 24 minutes of what is sadly lacking in most of the re-thrash of the last few decades, or even the releases of many of the genre stalwarts, that is, the ability to sound and act absolutely psychotic and capture it on tape.

The foundation here is very meaty, mute-heavy, forceful thrashing which has a richness to it that reminds me slightly of another Chicago thrash act, the legendary ZnöWhite, in particular their criminally underrated 1998 album Act of God. But there are also traces of Devastation's Idolatry; or Destruction's muscular riffing, old and new, with a little bit of a clinical melodic edge ingrained in there that you might trace back to Release from Agony or Pestilence's death/thrash debut Malleus Maleficarum. Though the focus is on momentum and heaviness, there are some dynamic, textural, dissonant patterns which emerge from the more straightforward riffing to even remind me a bit of some of Voivod's later 80s experimentation. A lot of my favorite things, of course, and the riff set here is truly devastating, lots to hook you in tunes like "Decline into Disorder", "First Among Equals" and "Green Room is Red". I found the lead guitars a little less consistent, they're fast and furious, spastic and crazy, but while they really stood out in "Green Room is Red" or the great shredding in Infernal Majesty's "Overlord", I found them a bit flimsier in "Decline into Disorder" where they couldn't really match the intensity beneath.

In addition to that chopping, powerful rhythm guitar tone, the other standout here would be the vocal style of Mr. Gillis. Like in Morgue Supplier, or his other group Drug Honkey, he goes above and beyond to create something that is at once familiar and over-the-top unnerving. He uses both the force and frailty of intonation to manifest a tormented hybrid of splatter-thrash and Germanic precision, one that you can never get too comfortable with because he might hurl some crazy ass, unpredictable lines at you that go further out than even that description. The benefit here is that this is something YOU WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER. Cookie cutter thrash vokills from bands like Evile or Warbringer are competent enough, sure, but the reason I'm always going to turn towards a Rabid Beast, or Sweden's Antichrist, or Germany's Vulture instead, is because they sound absolutely sick today, they'll sound sick tomorrow, and they will sound sick in 20 years. It's the same reason vintage Tom Araya, Bruce Corbitt and Jeff Becerra still stand out now, they capitalize on and weaponize the flaws and imperfections of the human voice to create a sense of genuine danger.

The rhythm section here is as tight as necessary, and the lyrics range from thoughtful and relevant ("First Among Equals" or "Decline into Disorder") to outright hilarious ("Green Room is Red"). The cover track here is performed with more intensity than the original while managing to seamlessly absorb it into the Rabid Beast sound. Very little to criticize here, this is easily one of the better new thrash EPs I've heard this year alongside Voices by Belgium's Schizophrenia, vicious and sincere, and I highly recommend getting in on the ground for the whirlwind it will inevitably kick up.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]

https://rabidbeast.bandcamp.com/releases

Machine Head - Unto the Locust (2011)

Unto the Locust takes the thrashing energy and ambition that the Machine Head crew resurrected from their earlier years as musicians onto The Blackening, and then ramps up it a notch by armoring it with a more modern sensibility and an obvious increase in overall heaviness. I wouldn't stay that there is as great a stylistic disparity here as between the two albums before it, or between Through the Ashes of Empires and Supercharger, but this is far from a repeat of their 2007 surprise. Tempos, dynamics, and riff patterns are explored more interestingly, and I'd say that the thrash riffs in particular, on tunes like "I Am Hell (Sonata in C#)" and "Be Still and Know", are more nuanced and memorable than those from the previous album, even if it set a sort of standard to follow.

Most improved for me on this album would be the vocals, which are more often given multi tracks or harmonies that strengthen them far more than just listening to Robb's delivery before. This is most felt in the chorus parts to tunes like "Be Still and Know" which are genuinely catchy, but you'll often hear this being done on various verses, so the distribution keeps an added intensity throughout the lion's share of the 49 minutes of material. Though you're still hearing a couple of grooves here or there, Unto the Locus really strives to maintain an air of respectability, and I could honestly say this one might impress fans into groups like Nevermore or Savage Messiah, even if they've had no interest in anything Machine Head had gotten up to before. It's not terribly technical, but it's hard hitting, half-intelligent and interesting. Other little nuances I heard hear were similar to bands like the French groove juggernaut Gojira, at least in some of the vocal delivery and picking patterns, or even Strapping Young Lad in how the vocals carry or the post-modern thrash atmosphere. You can also clearly hear a huge melodic Swedish death metal influence on tunes like "This is the End", and it's honestly not unwelcome because it's performed with the surging testosterone that fuels a lot of the better efforts from a Soilwork or Dark Tranquillity.

This was the best drumming Dave McClain (ex-Sacred Reich) had done on any of the Machine Head albums during his tenure, thundering and muscular and definitely making as much a statement as almost anything else on the record. The bass is solid and gives the heaviness much of its weight, and the lead guitar supply on this is simply inexhaustible, it's the most melodic album they've put out, but without losing the ballast it desperately needs to keep its groove-oriented audience in their seats, or out of their seats, kicking each other on the rump and flailing their inebriated limbs about. There are a few weirder progressive experiments like "Darkness Within", and you can get the impression that they were expanding themselves to see what would stick, not succeeding 100% of the time, but as an album emerging upon the popular metal landscape of 2011 I think this is probably the one most suited to its times, with the most weaponry to help the band compete with their often far younger peers in the groove, thrash and metalcore niches.

The lyrics are still a sore point, especially on tracks like "Who We Are" or "This is the End" which have all the artistry and cliche parades of angry teens, but let's face it, the overwhelming of majority is like this and those who accepted and enjoyed Machine Head's earlier material are not going to care one way or the other. Hardly embarrassing, just showing little to no thought as the lyricist just pulls the most obvious and basic images from the mind to the page. Otherwise, this is the best album in the Machine Head catalog, or the most 'worthy', still hovering below greatness, but a galaxy beyond some of the turds they've committed to tape before it. Not that this is in any way some mandatory band to experience, but if we reduced their career down to The Blackening, Unto the Locust and Machine F**king Head Live, it wouldn't belong in a dumpster. Of course, that's not the whole story, that's not reality, but 2007-2012 was clearly their peak and I can't formulate too much negative to say about it.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - The Blackening (2007)

For all the ire I've cast upon Machine Head's recording history, there's no question that the band has been a successful venture, with plenty of profitable touring, media attention, and record sales, even well before Robb Flynn started letting a lot of sparks fly across his social media and interviews. Despite all the returns on investment, I'd like to pretend that, in the four years after Through the Ashes of Empires, when the band was throwing this album together, they came to realization that 'this was how it should always have been'. If The Blackening were the lead-in for the band's career, then it all might have made a lot more sense. I'm not saying this is a 'great' record, but it's certainly a decent one, brilliant by comparison to the long stretch of earsores the band had previously manifest. It's the first studio album that actually deserves even the hype wave they ever surfed in on.

It's evident immediately in "Clenching the Fists of Dissent" that a part of this turnaround is that Robb finally remembered he was a thrasher. In fact, he and Phil Demmel, who also plays here, were part of one of the greatest West Coast thrash albums ever crafted in Vio-lence's Eternal Nightmare, and you can clearly hear that sort of riffing influence being integrated up against the band's nu/groove stylings. Funny enough, when you throw in some neck-jerking, mid-to-fast paced thrash riffs before that moshpit focus group breakdown, it all feels more effective due to the powerful contrasts. I'm not saying that the band's lowbrow riffing fare suddenly becomes more interesting on its own, because there are plenty of effortless, lamentable grooves here, but The Blackening assaults you right up front with the competent upbeat thrash, walls of wailing leads and lots of other guitar atmospheres that dress up even its most mundane moments. That bridge riff feels a lot like something Metallica would have used on Master of Puppets if they were more into gang shouts, and there's just no questioning that this presentation is a more musically ambitious and rich experience regardless of what flaws it carries forward from their garbage daze.

Don't get me wrong here, this isn't a conscious fuck-you turnabout album which ignores the past; you're still getting a big chunk of Pantera worship, but I heard all manner of influences going into this one, from the Mike Muir-like 'emo' vocals of "Beautiful Morning", to the Tool-like structure of groove built into the verses of "Now I Lay Thee Down". You've still got a healthy heaping of those masculine radio rock chorus parts dominating the 'hard rock' channels since the mid-to-late 90s, but even there Flynn manages to string together some slightly more memorable lines and melodies than what you might expect from earlier records. His aggressive barks and roars are still heavily rooted in that whole Phil Anselmo/Skinlab/Pissing Razors style with a dash of generic metalcore angst, and they're for me one of the weaker parts of the album, outshined in almost every instance by the music itself, but I'd happily have this invade my earspace above nonsense like Supercharger or The Burning Red. The musicianship is by far the strongest they'd managed up to this point, and even though there are still a good percentage of pretty dull riffs that hold it back, you'll be surprised by some of the things that pop up.

A couple of the tracks are pretty long by their standards, such as "Clenching the Fists of Dissent" or "Wolves", but I'd say they actually offer enough dynamic range within these to pad them out without lapsing into boring repetition, and perhaps more importantly, that good old thrashing spirit just keeps rearing its head enough, as if its an anchor that's holding the entire process together, and at this point in their game they couldn't have chosen a better focus point. A lot of the lyrics are pretty weak, but at least they don't come off overly goofy in conjunction with terrible music. I also liked the cover art aesthetics, the stark simplicity of the logo font with some classic religious imagery, preferable to all of the choices they made prior to Through the Ashes of Empires at least. Now The Blackening is not an album I'd pick out of a lineup of other material in my thrash (or limited groove metal) library, but if someone were cranking this in the car I wouldn't cover my ears or make a stinky face, I can give some credit where it is due and if this was the sort of passion for the craft they had been meting out since 1994 then I'd never have had cause for complaint. But can they keep it up?

Verdict: Win [7/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Catharsis (2018)

While on some level Catharsis pretended to continue the increased level of musical proficiency and effectiveness Machine Head had begun to achieve with a few of the albums before it, on almost every other level it's a dumpster fire. When I first put this record in, I got the impression that it was some group of 14 year old metalcore kids who had picked up a copy of The Blackening and decided to pay it tribute along with with a little Killswitch Engage and maybe a handful of their favorite melodeath bands. The cover art looks exactly like something they would think of. The lyrics are beyond dumb, puerile translations of whatever Robb could look up on the news to become outraged that morning, and the music, while fast and often fairly adept in technicality alone, rings hollow on almost all fronts and is immediately forgettable. Whatever steps towards maturity and memorability the Californians had taken with their material starting the previous decade seemed to have now been sidelined for what is worth little more than soulless dreck. I bet Nuclear Blast was pretty thrilled when their lucrative new contract shat this one on their second outing.

For whatever reason, Machine Head seemed to bring back a little too much of the pure nu metal nonsense on cuts like the titular "Catharsis"? No matter how much you try to dress it up with that emotional soft pop side, once that groove comes out I feel like I'm stuck in a room full of dead air and ideas that were never that interesting the first time this band failed at them. The Pantera influence is also here in full force once again, and it's even funnier when they mix in their rap metal stuff as with the track "California Bleeding", one of the dumbest fucking songs I've heard while writing this blog, which no dirty rock & roll chorus is going to save. Other songs like "Triple Beam" are just dumb pandering grooves with bad hip hoppy verses and then tasteless early 00s alt rock chorus parts which the band must think is going to help them sell records. And maybe that's what happened, and I'm a grumpy old dude who is out of the loop, but personally I've never met anyone with a single positive thing to say about Catharsis. One other irritant here is that the band clearly had a hard on for the pop-infused hardcore & metalcore we were hearing out of both the US & UK 5-10 years ago, and you can tell by the light synth touches they throw into cuts like "Catharsis" and "Kaleidoscope". Say what you will about those bands, they pulled it off better than this one can.

Of course, Robb had to spread his bleeding & beaten wings a little further here with "Behind a Mask" or "Bastards", which sound like some dopey acoustic track Aaron Lewis of Staind would right...but what the latter grows into, some weird anthemic fusion of The Dropkick Murphys and the Beatles, in which Robb tries to embrace minorities into the Machine Head fanbase while dropping sarcastic slurs at them, is the sappiest 'what the fuck' moment I've probably heard from any of these high profile nu metal bands. 'NO NO NO, NO NO FUCK NO, NO NO NO!' Do you want a Machine F**king Head High Five for your pedestrian protest anthem? 'GET YOUR MIDDLE FINGERS IN THE AIR AND SING, THEY CAN'T IGNORE US ANYMORE.' Reading these lyrics makes me feel like I'm in the midst of the rave scene in that Matrix sequel, only with worse music and surrounded by a bunch of edgy caricatures of cartoon PSAs with their capes flapping around in Robb's posterior wind. I'm all for people expressing social and political opinions that they feel strongly about, don't get me wrong, but try to do it with a little tact and nuance rather than overt cliches, condescension and reductionist stereotypes that do nobody any good.

To be fair there are other themes here being tackled with more personal, less obnoxious lyrics, but even then you're guaranteed to have some extremely weak musical idea fouling up whatever rare catchy bit they might have accidentally stumbled upon. There is approximately one song here, "Heavy Lies the Crown", which would actually be a half-decent mid-paced Swedish melodeath tune if it didn't have Robb's vocals or lyrics anywhere near it. The production is fine, the boys can still play, but ultimately, Catharsis is just one goofy, convoluted mess that feels half Midlife Crisis and half I Wrote These Songs in My Garage While Inhaling Carbon Monoxide Because I'm Too High to Realize That I Left the Engine Running. It is, for my wallet, the worst Machine Head studio album, and I'd rather have all my body hair peeled off with masking tape while being forced to endure The Burning Red and Supercharger before ever listening to it again.

Verdict: Epic Fail [1.25/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Machine F**king Head live (2012)

Nearly a decade after Hellalive, and a not unreasonable amount of time to wait for a band thrust so far into the spotlight, Robb Flynn and his Machine Head released a slightly more elaborate follow-up live effort over 2 CDs. While its predecessor was no slouch at 80 minutes of content, this is over 100 and allows the band to draw upon a bigger pool of material, including some from the two albums before this, critical darlings in many circles, which had seriously increased the band's stock even among the disbelievers who justifiably loathed almost everything they had released up to that point. In fact this is quite up to date for the year it came out, devoting fully five of its 15 selections to tunes from 2011's Unto the Locust, an album that only had seven songs to begin with...

Add in the trifecta of "Beautiful Morning", "Aesthetics of Hate" and "Halo" from The Blackening and you have more than half of an experience which might skew well above the suck line. Burn My Eyes, the debut and least shitty of their first five albums, has a pair of tracks in "Old" and "Davidian" which grants a little more stabilization. I think Overkill kind of saturated the market on the ol' F-bomb emphasis with Fuck You and Then Some, but I'm sure some fraction of the Machine Head market does appreciate the stripped honesty of Machine F**king Head Live! Like if I'm getting off the late shift at the meatpacking plant the night before, sleeping in late and then starting my boozing early, you're damn right when Robb Flynn and friends enter the stage with pyrotechnical wizardry and lots of chugging I'm a holler "MACHINE FUCKING HEAD!" at the top of my lung capacity. To boot, this album was a slight surprise in how honestly it captured the group's sound, in a more raw form than I expected...without too much polish anywhere, lots of crowd noise that can occasionally even compete with the instruments, and a solid and substantial performance.

If you were at this performance and felt its energy and sincerity, you'd probably be aboard the train, at least for a couple hours, because they knock it out of the park. At least the UK fans at Manchester Central seemed to think so. The more metallic, musical material from the albums leading straight up to this glows in venue, with great dual harmonies, melodic chorus parts, thundering, precise drums, surging thrash breaks and a nice bass tone giving everything that much more punch. The leads as in "Be Still and Know" are a lot of fun here and the band sounds so much more on point than anything I've forced myself to endure through the 90s or earlier half of the 00s. Some form of professional and passionate equilibrium had been achieved through all its trials and tribulations and that reflects right back out through the product to the fans. As much as I don't like their bouncier nu metal material, just being in the presence of better tunes here almost makes it more tolerable, so I could listen through a jam like "The Blood, The Sweat, The Tears" or "Old" without needing to turn it off. Ultimately I think this is one of the top three Machine Head releases, and even though it's not one I'd ever personally break out with all of the gajillion options available to me by bands I tend to enjoy, I could fully understand why any would sing its praise. It crushes Hellalive both in the stronger selection of songs and the aural impact it leaves. They showed up, they gave a shit, they performed well, you got what you paid for, and for at least the couple years leading to this, they mattered.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Destruction - Born to Thrash (2020)

Destruction's live offerings have been a series of diminishing returns for me. The first, Live Without Sense, was excellent, one of my favorite live albums of the 80s, and one that I probably listened through just as much as any of their studio outings, at least for a few years after it came out. Later recordings like Alive Devastation and The Curse of the Antichrist - Live in Agony were nothing to necessarily scoff at, but comparatively didn't excite me enough to keep on revisiting them when I was instead in the grips of so much other new metal, or couldn't really be pulled away from their 2001 opus The Antichrist which to me is still marvelous. Born to Thrash is a pretty humble 10-tracker from a band that could just as easily produce a 2-3 disc set, but the idea I think is to get back to basics and so we've got material that was recorded at a single gig, the Party San 2019 fest from their home country, where I'd like to fantasize thrash metal is like the morning newspaper, only several Germans I've spoken to say that instead it's all bad techno and Volksmusik...you probably know more about that than I do, but please refrain from screaming with your keyboard until this review is done.

The track list is pretty well distributed between oldies that everyone in the audience will love ("Total Desaster", "Curse the Gods", "Mad Butcher", etc), a couple of their early 21st Century hard hitters, namely "Nailed to the Cross" and "Thrash Till Death" from my fave mentioned above, and then they give you some more current material in "Born to Perish" and "Betrayal" from their most recent studio album, Born to Perish, which was pretty good. It's a crowd pleaser set with just a few reminders that 'Hey we still exist and hit the studio fairly often!'; and when you're in front of a huge festival crowd you're going to go for maximum impact, which I think these choices pull off for the most part. Now, maybe coming at this record as a fan of 35 years who owns all the band's studio CDs other than the embarrassing Neo-Destruction years, I could make an argument that if I'm expected to plunk down $10-15 for this that I'd appreciate a more elaborate package, maybe getting the chance to hear a few discs worth of their lesser known tracks in the live setting would heat me up a little more, but that's not going to spin the wheels of commerce for most potential buyers or ping the label's green light.

This is the two-axe-attack Destruction with Mike and Damir delivering an appreciable crunch, and their dextrous playing and the spurious leads all sound pretty good, but perhaps not as beefy as I'd like, just a grade too low when sent up against the driving beats of skin veteran Randy Black. The bass thumps along well enough but I feel like it could also have come out in the mix just a little more for the perfect balance. Schmier's vocals still sound as uncouth and savage as he's always been known for, perhaps even a little wilder here than on some other performances I've heard, and that might or might not be the result of his aging pipes, but it still sounds like a thrash metal band ought ta be, and he has great stage presence even in audio-only form as he's introducing cuts like "Mad Butcher". The reverb and effects on his vocals are great, especially when he has to pitch out one of his screams, and they help it seem more psychotic and memorable. All in all, a very workmanlike, effortless set from guys that have been this so long that they should probably be able to juts plug amps into their veins and the songs would still play with no other instruments. It's a good live album, not trumping Live Without Sense, and not likely to draw me away from their studio work, but dependable.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

https://www.destruction.de/

Machine Head - The Black Procession EP (2011)

The Black Procession is a special issue 10" vinyl with three live tracks taken from the two studio albums before it, recording during their 2010 tour of the same name. One could probably forgive the scantness of its content, since like many Record Day releases, Machine Head probably just wanted to have something packaged up fresh for fans; a lot of these things are directly meant for the collectors' market, and here they chose to just sift through a couple tapes of their recent performances and make it easy. I do like how the cover artwork is consistent with The Blackening's classic, minimalist style, and two of the tracks are taken from the first of their albums I'd actually consider decent, but that's really all that I can say positive about the EP.

Though they don't sound terrible, the live mix here is a bit raw and suppressed, I felt like I was hearing it muffled through a tent at a festival...maybe if I was standing BEHIND the tent and they were on the other sides moshing it up with the crowd. You can still make out most of the instruments, but a lot of them just don't sound good. The vocals are not the best, but the backing vocals sound absolutely horrible. The leads are also kind of cheesy sounding and don't have the same impact that they do on the studio releases. Of the three tracks, "Bite the Bullet" probably comes off the most even, but since I don't like that song it's hardly some saving grace. And to be honest, the others don't do much justice to their own studio incarnations, so this is literally just some EP you'd want to file away in your record bin if you solely value its existence as a product that you can throw money at and add to another pile of similar products just to say you did.

And then when you end up having to switch houses, apartments, dorm rooms this all becomes a big fat burden to load up onto grandma's truck with all your rare wax and DJ equipment. That may or may not be true for you and your situation, but what is definitely true is this is a complete waste of time, even if it's just 17 minutes and change.

Verdict: Fail [2.25/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Autumn's Ashes - Eulogy EP (2020)

Autumn's Ashes is a collaboration between two New England musicians, Dan Saillant of Annihilus Mundi and Rick Lowell of Blacksoul Seraphim, backed by a host of guest musicians, and what I found most compelling about it is how it brings the strengths and versatility of those other projects into a broader sea of influence from which it draws its ideas. You've got a mix here of traditional, trudging Gothic metal riffing within some progressive death/doom structures, and then some graceful, mildly symphonic aesthetics which are created largely through the pianos. The band is not above incorporating some minimalist acoustics for atmosphere, shifting between a number of vocal styles, or adding in some proper lead guitars for yet another potential dimension to their sound.

Musically, I thought the material was consistent, with moody, driving guitars that gave me the impression I was living in these bleak, natural landscapes like the one depicted through the cover art;  maybe a gleam of sunlight off the frost or lake-ice surrounding me, in a way reminiscent of groups like the mighty Amorphis during their Elegy-and-beyond era, or Draconian, or perhaps Anathema during their sparser, acoustic moments. The pianos pile on a lot of melody to the steady guitars of "Vanished", which has a nice pickup pace for the lead and bridge, and "Reason" is a 9 minute progressive doom beast which had a few hints of Dutch death metallers Phlebotomized, where you couldn't exactly guess what was coming around any corner, and were once again treated with an eerie effect in how the spectral pianos interact with the low end guitars. The mix is fairly decent for something essentially demo-level, at the very least you can hear the bass, drums, guitars, keys and vocals distinctly from one another even if it overall comes across a little murky. I had mixed feelings on the instrumental pieces. "Down the Road" was pleasant with its pianos and synth pads, but I don't think it set up "Vanished" quite well enough, whereas the resilient organ piece "Up the Stream" was well done but perhaps a little too brazen for its placement on the EP.

Vocally, I think Eulogy has its share of ups and downs. The gutturals are fantastic, with a lot of punch and ugliness to them that sounds awesome when the guitars are chugging along below. Haydee Irizarry of Boston's Aversed provides some silky, cleaner vocals to the closing track "Shutter" and they created a hazy, compelling contrast to the heaviness. It's the clean male vocals on "Vanished" and "Reason" that I wasn't entirely sold on. I like the crooning, desolate style they're going for, reminiscent of groups like Yearning, and some lines are delivered better than others, but occasionally they felt like they lacked confidence. There were points in "Reason" where they got a little awkward, especially where the higher pitched screams came in behind them, or how some of the trailing off at the end of the verse lines wavered in fluidity. "Vanished" fares better overall, but considering that these two tracks were the first metallic one-two combo on the album, that might be an area to flesh out better for future releases, with more power and presence.

I've said it before, but Gothic doom and death is all too rare in my neck of the woods, so it's a treat to hear a band like this or Blacksoul Seraphim giving it a go. Autumn's Ashes has a lot of potential, especially as a conduit for the autumnal or wintry nostalgia I have for this place in a metal context. There's a strong arsenal of weaponry built in here with the drums, gutturals, guitars and pianos. The intro and interlude pieces are fine, but don't really add much to the proper heavy material, and the melodic vocals are something to work on, but otherwise this is some solid ground to build off.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

https://autumnsashes.bandcamp.com/releases