Supuration - CU3E (2013)

Well before Blut Aus Nord and Deathspell Omega underwent their eclectic evolutions, France had always harbored a number of unusual extreme metal acts like the industrial-tinged Treponem Pal or the quirky progressive death/doom metallers Supuration. The latter of these very early adopted a unique approach to their niche which you would think more people might have appreciated over the years. The band's arguable cult classic The Cube (1993) never quite garnered the requisite attention to take them to the next level, and then they made an even more quirky transformation into S.U.P., an alter ego/separate project under which they've released most of their material thus far. Every so often, though, the 'brand' entity will revert back to Supuration, and they'll produce something along the lines of the debut, which leads us to CU3E, a sort of 'semi-sequel' to the original.

It's got the similar, minimalistic and abstract cover artwork (which even gives an infant passing nod to the band's 2003 sophomore Incubation), and that cheesy retrofuturistic logo font (though to be fair, it's better looking than their old, messy 'death metal' logo). I once had a friend describe Supuration as an alternative to late 80s Voivod with a guttural vocalist, and to be honest, it wasn't that far off the mark, but there's quite a lot happening in CU3E, even if it's not a technical or complex recording. The Frenchmen incorporate all manner of mathematical, discordant rhythms into driving beats, and then weave in all manner of sad and longing melodies redolent of doom or Gothic metal alongside the punchy death/thrashing of the guitars. As if Paradise Lost was composing its own Dimension Hatross. You get a very good balance of grooves and melodies, and in addition they implement some mid-register, nasally clean vocals alongside the blunt growl which is primarily responsible for tethering the band to the death metal genre. A lot of the guitars use these simple, staccato melodies to create a spatial feel to the material, and most of the riffing is concise and compartmental: which is, unfortunately, where I seemed to have lost most of my interest.

I admire this band's individuality, and always have, but its approach is not always synonymous with quality. Apart from a few predictable but emotional chord progressions, like that of "The Flight", the riffs are just not all that inspired, derived from fairly standard death/doom patterns with a little more uptempo pep than you'd find on some slower, crushing album. I guess I'm more partial to the glimmering, depressive open chords that they elicit on occasion, where the music takes on a more 'factory' like, semi-industrial sheen, but even there the note choices are somewhat less than stunning. Many of the rhythm tracks seem like they're interested in little more than seating the melodies, which are themselves not all that memorable. The same could be said for the vocals: after hearing a handful of the grunts, you've heard them all, and the cleans are merely present to add some contrast, or render them more avant-garde by the very virtue of their existence. Some of them are downright awkward, as in "The Incongruents" (I guess they are true to the title).

In terms of production, I think CU3E is actually decent. It's bright, percussive, and the guitars have just enough rip and coil on them to feel unique. The bass is voluminous, even if it rarely manifests in anything that deviates interestingly from the rhythm guitar, and the drums alternate between slower rock grooves or a more subdued mid-paced near-blast as in "Consumate". But in terms of musical architecture, this just doesn't feel as artsy, bizarre or 'experimental' as I would expect Supuration to be writing 20 whole years after The Cube, which remains their finest hour. Hell, I'd love to hear these guys flex themselves into something far more aggressive. Uncanny. Discordant. I realize that's not exactly their 'thing', but it'd be more appealing than this underwhelming, clinical, aesthetic tribute to the debut which doesn't strive for much more. A band as unique as Supuration will always have a place at my table, but I just wasn't feeling this selection of songs, either independently or as a closure to their longstanding trilogy.

Verdict: Indifference [5.5/10]

http://www.supuration.fr/albums/cu3e/

Slaughterday - Cosmic Horror DEMO (2013)

Slaughterday's demo elicited a mixed reaction from me. While the German duo seem particularly adept at presenting the listener with the crushing production and massive guttural vocals presence he or she would likely desire from this niche, more so than even many of their 'new old school death metal' peers, the actual songwriting is largely devoid of nuance and originality to the point that it is almost instantly vaporized from the memory. There are a few twists which help distance it from the lion's share of garden variety Left Hand Path, Like An Ever Flowing Stream worship which is really beginning to show its wear to this reviewer, but the incorporation of that obvious Swedish influenced rhythm guitar tone and the familiar propulsion of several of the riffing progressions can't really be ignored.
 
Cosmic Horror might look a little silly because of its crude cover, since they were obviously going for an all out nostalgia trip back when demos were alluringly imaginative and shoddily packaged, but once the first track "Abyss of Nameless Fear" erupts, it's no longer a laughing matter. This is loud, volatile, abrasive death metal set in the typical ancient 90s mold but dowsed up in the potential of what modern production aesthetics can bring to such archaic, simplistic material. This thing sounds every inch as rich and consuming as recent records by names like Asphyx or Hail of Bullets, which is impressive for a band at the demo stage (even though this particular demo is getting a release through F.D.A. Rekotz). The riffs sound like unused cattle bones and organs being ground up into feed or fertilizer, and the bass is just as churning and corpulent. The Nihilist/Entombed/Carnage comparisons immediately came to mind, but I'd say some of the chords used are also redolent of earlier Asphyx. Some of the riffs slow into a death/doom crawl, and in spots they will dress up the overpoweringly resilient chords with some melancholic melodies which recalled the British battle masters Bolt Thrower.

Drums reverberate just below the muscle of the rhythm guitar, which is actually fitting to the style. The vocals are like a hybrid of Karl Willetts, Chris Reifert and Martin van Drunen; deep and forceful but also leaving a trail of carnage in their sustain. These are all clear positives, and Slaughterday executes them almost as well as anyone else in this new generation of living tributes. But as far as the songwriting, it just wasn't there for me. Not once through the four tracks was I presented with any sort of surprise twist, and only a few of the melodies caught my ear in "Cult...", "Crawling in Secrecy", or "Abyss of Nameless Fear" (which is the most evil sounding and therefore the strongest among them). The grinding guitar tone does much to help dress up the riff selection, but otherwise it's somewhat underwhelming with the usual mix of doomed grooves, driving d beat uptempo swings, and caustic tremolo picking sequences. As a result, I felt these guys were better architects of sound than songs, and since I've heard simply too much of this style in the past 5-10 years, I was not overly impressed. If all you desire is more in this vein, then Cosmic Horror shouldn't disappoint you, but they'll either have to try something more interestingly structured, or at least come up with some truly killer hooks to leave much of an impact.

Verdict: Indifference [6.25/10]

http://www.facebook.com/slaughterdayofficial

Darkane - Demonic Art (2008)

“I feel I’ve reached a stand still in the creative process with Darkane and together we came to the decision to let fresh blood into the band for the upcoming fifth album. Darkane is constantly evolving and I'm sure that this ignition will be great for the band." Such was the official notice given by Andreas Sydow to the fans, on his departure. But I will posit that we all know the REAL reason Sydow stepped down: because there was no fucking way in hell the Swedes were ever going to write anything as good as Layers of Lies; and if Demonic Art is any indicator, then I must speak the truth! Well, it's not as if this was the shittiest followup possible, and there are a handful of exciting moments throughout, but for some reason the material here feels recycled, 'old hat' ideas that were taken out of the coat room just to maintain some stability in Darkane's continued existence.

The 'fresh blood' in this case was fellow scenester Jens Broman, who had appeared on a Construcdead album as well as in the supergroup The Defaced, which Darkane's guitar wizard Klas Ideberg. I dug his performance on that band's sophomore outing Karma in Black, which was a sort of hybrid of groove metal circa Machine Head or Pantera if given a kick injection by the local melodic Swedish death/thrash. He's actually a natural fit for the band, not only because of his prior association with the members, but by the fact that he can do slightly melodic hooks and gritty snarls, but I was quite shocked when I heard this that he was doing his best at a Sydow impersonation. Granted, Andreas himself was taking stylistic notes from the first album's vocalist, Lawrence Mackrory (who has now returned to the band), but here the gulf seems ever slighter. What I'm getting at, is that this is not really feeling like 'fresh blood' after all, but rather the same blood on the verge of congealing. He just doesn't add anything new to the sound, nor does he do such a manic and inspiring job as his predecessor, so Demonic Art's success is left up entirely to the rest of the band.

And they try. They really do. For every lumbering, vapid chugging groove in the foundation, they'll attempt some wavy guitar theatrics. Like Layers of Lies, the album isn't short on atmospheric segues like the synth intro to "Execution 44", or the warm, cozy acoustics and lead of the interlude "Wrong Grave". Much of the writing seems like a mash up of the prior two records, especially the slower Expanded Senses chugs, but this album is far more cleanly produced, and lacks some of that rumbling density. On the whole, it just fails to really convince anyone with its atmospheres, because they seem like uninteresting dressings for a series of thrashing riff progressions that are far from Darkane's best. And that is really why this album sits at the bottom of their barrel (without spilling out onto the floor): its comprised so largely of ideas from the first four, or Ideberg's other work in Terror 2000 or The Defaced. Which would be fine if the band could rifle out some emotionally charged, memorable chorus parts, or the infectious rhythm and lead guitars that thrust the last album into my playlist of perpetuity; but even at its most jerky or progressive, like "The Killing of I" or the warmer "Demigod", it falls short of leaving an impression...

Technically, this is no disservice to the futurist thrash the band had been exploring since the late 90s, but it feels like a step sideways and then in reverse. There's just nothing here like a "Secondary Effects", "Layers of Lies" or "Vision of Degradation" to get the blood flowing. The musicians all turn in dextrous and astute performances, and the cleaner production values (at least over Rusted Angel or Expanded Sense) mark it among their more accessible works, but it sort of reminds me of one of the 21st century Nevermore albums, in which there is such an intense, calculated effort that leads little quality emotional resonance to the songs. I don't really want to blame Broman, because he's doing what he can to fit into the band's history, but perhaps the Swedes might have tried something different and really evolved their sound...instead of half assing it. Demonic Art is sleek, professional, and busy enough to listen through a few times, but the well of compositions seemed to have dried up here. Best wait for another rainstorm before venturing out again.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10] (I might be limited in here)

http://www.darkane.com/

Witchburner - Bloodthirsty Eyes (2013)

Witchburner's the kind of band I've always really wanted to like more than I do; in no small part due to the sort of aesthetics they bring to the table, a very down to earth retrospective of what made the nastier side of speed and thrash metal so hellishly fresh in the mid through late 80s. Granted, they've only had a few full-lengths that were above average (in particular Incarnation of Evil was a standout), and none that were exemplary, but in a world where newer, comparable German bands like Ketzer, Nocturnal and Cruel Force are receiving solid underground recognition, I think it is important that this band, who formed in fucking 1992 and have seven albums under their belt, get a little more credit for always bringing that blackened, death-driven thrash and speed metal...

That said, the music Witchburner writes in of itself is not all that unique. Combine the crisp mid 80s Reign in Blood guitar tone with Possessed vocals, and season liberally with lyrical themes and imagery redolent of Venom, Piledriver, Sodom, Destruction, Kreator, Bulldozer, Infernal Majesty, and Hobbs' Angel of Death not to mention the elephant in the room I already hinted at. The Germans' quickened clips of high velocity old school reek of Hell Awaits or Reign in Blood, only they feel less explosive by virtue that we've already been exposed to similar for decades. I'd actually posit that a number of the note progressions here feel so generic and tired that they should have been left off the album entirely, like the descending tremolo pattern after 1:30 in "Path of the Sinner", brings nothing new to the table to the extent that it actually cracks the table in half with age. Throughout Bloodthirsty Eyes, the leads are usually the same atonal rabble that was so popular in the 80s, only none of them really scream out at you. Bass is pumping and deep, but the lines rarely do anything so interesting, and the drum beats are fairly stock, the one thing that might separate them from their forebears would be the more even double kick hammering.

Witchburner has a new vocalist here, one Pino Hecker, who replaces Metallic Mayhem with a set of Jeff Becera pipes. Seriously, if Jeff suddenly wanted to revert to bass, this guy could serve as a stand in for the original with ease. On the one hand, those who love the style will be ecstatic, but while I do like the way Hecker's inflection bludgeons and resonates over the brisk, flighty trails of the guitars, it does grow a fraction monotonous at times, and the more seclusive snarls and growls don't really compensate. But if the band had been composing some top notch material here, it would come together like napalm gel and an unsuspecting village. Sadly, that's just not the case. I've got a natural attraction to this style, which is slightly more death/ thrash than black/thrash, but though the songs here move along with an acceptable confidence, too few of the riffs stand out from the writhing mass. Addicts of acts like Deathhammer, Aura Noir, Antichrist and the three German bands I rattled off in the top paragraph would find themselves in familiar territory here, which is enough to provide a cursory, visceral enjoyment of the album, but little more. Not bad, but not as good as their last disc Demons (from 2010) or Incarnation of Evil.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

http://www.witchburner.de/

Darkane - Expanding Senses (2002)

2002 would bring about a reversion to a more atmospheric Darkane, which was both reminiscent of their Rusted Angel debut, and at the same, time, not exactly. This is a largely groove oriented disc which sees its ceaseless, muscular chugging embroidered with all manner of modern atmospherics like melodies, subtle orchestration, and it even goes as far as dabbling in some industrial machine noises. Expanded Senses was in a way symptomatic of the Swedish melodeath scene at large, in which all the major bands were attempting to strive towards modernity and stray from the formulas of the 90s. This same year, for instance, Soilwork and Dark Tranquillity hit what I'd consider to be their respective, creative summits (Natural Born Chaos and Damage Done), producing two of the finest works in this sub-genre, while In Flames was totally watering down its power-meets-death metal approach into something I could only describe as bouncy, pasteurized emo-death (Reroute to Remain)...

Compared to their more recognized countrymen, Expanded Senses was a slim evolution indeed, but it did swap some of the more acrobatic guitar work of its predecessors for thicker rhythm progressions over which Andreas Sydow's passionate vocals were better embedded than on Insanity. There are glaringly obvious throwbacks like "Violence from Within", in which the hasty, muted tremolo rhythm reeks of "July 1999" from the debut, while "Parasites of the Unexplained" might have fit snugly onto Insanity, but in general this is a lot of burgeoning, dense and simpler rhythm grooves like "Innocence Gone", "Imaginary Entity" or "Chaos vs. Order" (a personal favorite here). If you hate the overuse of the palm mute in your metal, then this is hardly an album to win you over, but to Darkane's great credit, even the most dumbed down material on this album is lent some texture by all the background happenings. Sydow's brash cleans bounce around in the mix like someone howling across a radar field, while Peter Wildoer lays down a foundation one could build a half dozen stories upon. It's very turbulent, bass-laden music which seeks to overpower the listener more than either of the earlier albums, but there's plenty enough subtlety if you're able to forgive its brickwalled crushing production and let it pummel the snot out of you.

It's certainly not all slower paced, and I'd actually estimate a good 50/50 split between its two polar tempo regions, but some of the best stuff here just lays you out with the combination of industrialized chugging and sampled symphonics. You can feel the down tuning of the guitars here so much more than the other albums, primarily because of their stalwart devotion to slugging you in the intestines and inducing a riot deep in your bowels. No acoustic choir present this time, though they do pull in Lawrence Mackrory to do a bit of a 'duet' with Sydow on "Chaos vs. Order". Always classy when a bands present and former members get along well enough to 'keep it in the family'. The leads throughout the disc serve only as impoverished hangers-on to the bludgeoning bourgeoisie of the rhythm guitar, but I found them tasteful enough to prove more memorable than any on Insanity. Sydow does a lot more melodic singing, and I'm still not positive that the right balance had been struck here for him, but certainly there is a lot more depth and weight to his performance than some of the duller lines populating the previous album.

Definitely not an album I 'loved', but I found it overall more catchy, its arrangements stronger than Insanity. As if the band took a breather, examined the direction it was headed, and decided to pull back a bit rather than letting Peter, Jorgen, Klas and Christofer just run absolutely fucking wild, a feat they are capable of at any given moment. Seriously, in terms of raw musicianship, I'd run these guys up against In Flames, At the Gates or Dark Tranquillity and feel quite confident in a huge bet. The level of ability is staggering (no wonder Wildoer recently made it so close to the Dream Theater drum seat); so it's just a matter of whether the songwriting brilliance can match the proficiency on any given day, any given album. Expanding Senses is not quite to the level of excellence of the debut, and very much overshadowed by what would follow (an album I find completely perfectly from its first to last second); but if you can, for 40 minutes, place yourself into its universe of pummeling, dynamic neo-thrash, then it's a positive experience. Also must mention that I loved the cover art on this one much more than the first two. Not sure that the music is quite so surreal or cerebral as what Thomas Ewerhard did there, but it contributes to the whole 'abused in an asylum' aesthetic the band had adopted since the turn of the century.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10] (the plague will not withdraw)

http://www.darkane.com/

Darkane - Insanity (2001)

Insanity is another of those albums I've mentally filed away for several years; a general lack of interest in my first few listens when I bought it culminated into an ensuing decade of indifference, broken only by a few occasional attempts to further penetrate its surface. After so rapidly and completely warming up to Rusted Angel, this was somewhat of a letdown, and I still feel the same, but perhaps Insanity is not an album one should write off so quickly, because it's not exactly lacking in the effort department, and the very least follows the footsteps of the debut. Today I greet this disc with an 'enthusiastic neutrality', in part because it introduced us to the band's next vocalist Andreas Sydow, and in part because it has a few buried gems further down the track list.

It's difficult to define exactly what makes the first record so special, and this one sub par, because they are more or less written in the same mold. Kinetic, modern thrash that dispenses the virility and vitality of melodic Swedish death metal over a framework of punching mid to faced paced riffs, chugging grooves, and chorus hooks that border upon accessibility without falling over the edge into that banal New England mall and radio targeted metalcore territory I so loathe. It's certainly not any less 'technical' than Rusted Angel, but there is less of that sense of dystopian, metropolitan waste. The production here is a fraction more straightforward, drier and punchier. Less of that drowned futurism evoked through the distortion, reverb and saturated vocals which permeated the debut with such an unforgettable atmosphere. This and Expanding Senses have more of a looney bin aesthetic coursing through them, as opposed to that overcast metropolitan nightscape which had so attracted me. The core structure is the same in terms of riffing variation and the heavy influence of classical music you can hear through the leads, or the intro and instrumental pieces with their strings and choirs, but most of the guitar progressions here just didn't connect to my emotional receptors as their predecessors.

The guitar tone is certainly decent, and thicker even, but I can't say I loved it as it was charging along unless the band were spiking the palm mutes with some clinical melodic picking. In truth, this is probably even more melodic than Rusted Angel due to the more broadly arranged cleaner vocals sequences as in "Emanation of Fear" where Sydow really draws out the syllables like a Swedish version of Fear Factory. The leads tend towards some reverb and flesh out the 'body' of the tracks, but a lot of them go right in one ear and out the opposite, and ultimately they so rarely manage to thrill solely with the rhythm guitars (critical for thrash as far as I'm concerned). There are a few lions among these lambs, like "Psychic Pain" with its immediately memorable thrash riffing, and a great chorus that wouldn't have been out of place on one of the first few Strapping Young Lad records. "The Perverted Beat" is another choice track, sort of a nice ancestor for the amazing "Secondary Effects" from Layers of Lies, but then neither of these tunes has arrived in the first 20 minutes of Insanity...and the only cut that excited me before that was probably "Third", the first metal piece after the strings, and that only for a few of the opening riffs and a half-decent chorus.

Drums are still quite prevalent in the mix, with crashes cutting straight through the walls of melody erupting through the choruses, and the bass playing is still quite good, with a bit more of a springy depth than Rusted Angel. The real story, of course, is Andreas Sydow, who steps into Lawrence Mackrory's position and attempts to do it some justice. He's certainly more of a focused front man on this record, but it's also a little subdued by comparison to some of his later insanity. I love the inherent passion and melody carried in both his cleans and rasps, but numerous of the intonations here just aren't written at a highly memorable level. The best is when he just goes ripshit, like in the "Third" verse, because even if he's not as impish and frenzied sounding as his predecessor, there's a lot more natural psychosis and menace to his barking. He's easily a fit for the position, and in fact my favorite Darkane vocalist, but this simply wasn't his strongest hour.

And that defines Insanity in a nutshell: acceptable, with a few tunes that rise above the din, but far from the band's best material. As a result, the album really didn't capitalize upon the momentum of Rusted Angel, and Darkane rather quickly transformed from a bright, shooting star to just another hazy glow on the firmament of Swedish extremity. Occasionally a sparkle or two, but you wouldn't use it for guidance if you were lost in the wilderness. Still, if you're a sucker for Soilwork circa A Predator's Portrait or Natural Born Chaos, or SYL's City, or Fear Factory's dichotomy of driving, forceful rhythm guitars and melodic climaxes, it might be something you'd want to check out. I'm not entirely sold on the album even to this day, but if asked five years ago I might have rated lower. It's not bad at all, but it stands alongside Demonic Art as a less inspired outing in an otherwise smashing catalog.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10] (treading on disconsolate faces)

http://www.darkane.com/

Deathchain - Ritual Death Metal (2013)

Though I can't speak highly of the Finns' proclivity towards posturing their genre with every new album title (this kind of thing stopped being funny a long time ago), it's not necessarily a false advertisement in terms of the sound Deathchain has been constantly cultivating and evolving. Or in the case of Ritual Death Metal, 'devolving', since they've once again mutated to explore another little corner of the death spectrum. Whereas the last album, a rather unexpectedly fantastic outing titled Death Gods, channeled a lot of bursting inspiration from veterans like Morbid Angel or Krisiun, this album definitely veers towards the old school trends of late, with some more primal songwriting aesthetics that are, like the title warns, meant to evoke a ritualistic, atmospheric vibe.

Not that it's a complete 180 degree turn from Death Gods, because the band's propensity for intense blast beats and other techniques is fully intact with tracks like "Seven Asakku Shadows" or "King Pazuzu". In fact, I'd hazard that the Finns are also experimenting with a blackened death hybrid quite often here, in the ways that the tremolo picked melodies play out during faster passages (again, "King Pazuzu"), but the best of the material on Ritual Death Metal is the more spacious, murky and evil paced fare like "Stele of the Vultures", which constructs a brooding mass of dense rhythm guitar while tweaked, malicious melodies wail off like fleeting specters from advancing daylight. The latter half of the record is loaded with atmospheric moments, from the cleaner guitars of "Tiamat's Eyes of Death" to the psychedelic haze that paves the road for "Like Worms Upon the Lands". The guitar tone is corpulent and gives the record a sensation of churning vats of stripped flesh, and there's a very natural inclination towards bass-heavy tones.

Unfortunately, where the last disc was so brimming with infernal energy and incendiary riffs that surprisingly grabbed for my attention (which was unusual, since many of their older death/thrash works did little to incite me), I felt that a lot of the rhythm guitar progressions throughout Ritual Death Metal were of the 'been there and done that variety'. Without the eerie, occasional wisps of melody that erupt, and the sheer intensity of the drumming, I'd probably have nodded off several times through the record. On a tonal level, there is enough variation and atmosphere to hold the attention, but if you break down the riff patterns they are usually pretty standard stuff. Also, I just didn't get into the vocals here. Not a whole lot different than on Death Gods, but they're hardly unique or sinister enough sounding to make up for a dearth of instrument in the music, and the more brooding cleans used during bridges or breakdowns (as in "Our Lady Under the Earth") aren't all that thrilling; nor are the blacker, rasped snarls, or Antti Bowman's additional growls, which are far less charming than they seemed in Demilich or Winterwolf.

I don't mean to give the impression that this is really a 'bad' album, because I think it's sure to thrill a cross section of nostalgic death metal fan and black/death 'banger; but most of the riffing felt superfluous or uninteresting, so I was left instead to focus on the layers of miasma and brutality of the album as a whole, and not many individual tunes stood out. Deathchain knows its influences, whether they be the Swedish and Finnish death pioneers of antiquity, or their Floridian counterparts, and you could see this effort as somewhat of a halfway mark between Morbid Angel and earlier Demigod (or Convulse), but with a roster like this one, with such enormous cumulative experience from many underground faves, I think I just expected some more of the content to stick with me after a few cycles through. There's a lot of brutal, black ichor coursing through the heart of this thing, but my own pulse never quickened as a result of hearing it.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10]

http://www.deathchain.com/

Darkane - Rusted Angel (1999)

Rusted Angel was an album I initially had some resistance towards, since it dropped at a time in which I was inundated by At the Gates worship here in the local scene. I couldn't walk ten feet to get a Slurpee at the mall without some ear-stretched metalcore teen asking if I'd heard 'this new band At the Gates', and like a lot of harder line metal heads who had survived the 80s and not gone over entirely to grunge and alt rock in the ensuing decade, I was sick of all the Johnny-come-lately wagoneering wiggas getting up in my grill with bands I had already been listening to for much of the decade. In retrospect, I must have felt 'threatened' by the popularity of my coveted Swedish metal, and I'm sure I wasn't the only person. In fact, looking around today at internet reactions and various conversations I've had at gigs, I'm POSITIVE that this is a mentality which seems to persist any time some hot new sound arrives. But the truth is, I was being an ornery, immature, jagged nutsack: At the Gates was a great band, Slaughter of the Soul was a great record, and as it turns out, so was Rusted Angel. Props to another local musician who urged me to reconsider the Darkane debut...else it might have taken me a lot longer to get around to it.

The At the Gates comparison is admittedly marginal here, perhaps even coincidental, because while the schizoid vocals of Lawrence Mackrory occasionally resemble a Lindberg snarl, and I have no question that Darkane benefited greatly from hype generated by the melodeath trinity of AtG, Dark Tranquillity and In Flames, the song structures and individual riffs are far more prescient of a 'future thrash' variety. And this is what ultimately won me over to Rusted Angel: its urbane, bleak and almost mechanical sense of modernity. It's like a group of Swedes took a bunch of their favorite Teutonic and Bay Area thrash records circa '86 to '90 over to a recycling factory, watched them crushed into a cube, and then through some miracle of modern technology, managed to listen to the results on an audio player. But it's even more than that: intersperse some clearly neo-classical influence in the guitar progressions, and interchange Mackrory's petulant rasping with some Burton Bell-esque, melodic choral overtures, and you've got one exhilarating dynamo of a debut that easily surpassed their countrymen Soilwork, who would go on to immediately eclipse this in popularity with their own debut Steelbath Suicide (as an aside, 'Speed' was actually singing with Darkane for a short time). While I do enjoy that other album as a frenetic, youthful and futuristic spin on Slaughter of the Soul, Rusted Angel was the better of the two, and brought far much more to the table...

One thing that will either make this or break this album for many listeners is how willing they are to adapt to its atmosphere. Darkane was not averse to heavily dowsing the guitars and vocals in distortion or effects that lent to its post-modern, nigh on apocalyptic environs, and measured against the athletic drumming of Peter Wildoer and the symphonics used as intros and interludes, it definitely develops this glassy, smoggy sensation of oppression. Like some dark, post-industrial dystopia in decay, hovering at the edge of eternal night, through which cybernetic young roughs wage turf wars, their chieftains howling at one another from occupied skyscrapers of glass and rusting steel as the 'soldiers' go at one another with flak cannons and motorcycle chains. West Side Story meets Shadowrunner. Dark City metal. Enter the Matrix, dudes. A battle on the edge of a tomorrow that may never come. Queue the acid rain. The lightning. At numerous points on the album I can picture Rick Deckard donning his fedora as he gazes apprehensively into the haze of smoking vid screens, neon advertised human organ cloning services, and cyborg dope dealers. Waitin' for Edward Olmos to give him a lift in his origami machine. The imagery this disc conjures truly stokes my cyberpunk-fueled imagination, but I can understand how some might find the thrashing and churning tone of the guitars a little too harsh and mechanical...

It DOES help that Darkane sports one of the best Swedish guitar duos out there, in Klas Ideberg and Christofer Malmström, both fine composers who imbue the low end, chugging thrash momentum with just enough of a harmonic, melodic weave that at no point does it every grow dull. They might not have been performing the most complex, technical death metal out there, but as far as the melodic thrash goes in the 90s, these guys were really at the cutting edge. I love the blistering glazes of wired melodies they evoke into tunes like "Chase for Existence". They introduce a lot of interesting fills at the end of the charging progressions which help enforce the aforementioned 'industrial' aesthetic in the writing, and though they would compose superior leads on future efforts (like Layer of Lies), they were already accomplished shredders here. But really, some of the speed picked thrashing patterns like the intro to "July 1999" simply have to be heard to be believed, and almost all the licks here simply scream 'THRASH IS NOT DEAD' into the electrified mist that drowns them. I won't even get into how brilliant the experimental instrumental "The Arcane Darkness" is... The bassist Jörgen Löfberg is also pretty skilled, managing to anchor the rhythm guitars with a tightly sprung, pumping tone that tirelessly plods on like a sewage sluice.

As great as the musicianship is all around, though, I think most would agree that this is the finest hour of  Lawrence Mackrory among the many records he's either sung or played bass on. The guy is a snarling, murmuring threat that sends the Defcon reeling. Like an impish cyber-successor to the splatter thrash inflection of  Blaine 'Fart' Cook (The Accused), and yet he's still capable of hitting those soaring, climactic chorus parts like over the thundering double bass in "A Wisdoms Breed". I'm not a 'jump da fuc up' sort of guy, at least I haven't been since Everlast was ordering me to do it, but when he hits a chorus like this I feel like entering a pole vault competition. They immediately escalate the aggression to something glorious and catchy without ever bordering on cheesy, and still keeping the atmosphere of the album dirty. What's more, they've actually managed to hire a chorus for pieces like the album intro; a lofty and ambitious move for an unknown death/thrash band on a debut album, wouldn't you say? But it works, this constant clash of both the old and the new, and I'd go beyond that to say it's inspirational. Why wasn't Rusted Angel one of the biggest records of its day? Probably because assholes like me wrote it off for a couple months too many...

I wouldn't call it perfect, and it's not the Swedes' masterpiece. That would come later, with an album that closely resembles this one but truly fleshes out the songwriting. There are a few riffs here or there that just don't inspire as much as their neighbors, and though I love all the manic vocal/axe effects bouncing around, there are moments where the drums will feel a little loud, or the mechanistic post-human atmosphere takes too much priority over the headbanging fervor. It definitely has more 'feeling' to it than fellow Swedes Meshuggah, who had put out a killer record some months prior in Chaosphere, but I feel as if the inherent harshness of Rusted Angel's reality could have used just a handful more of its memorable melodies and chorus climaxes to really balance itself out. That said, this is a pretty killer introduction to one of the better acts to hail from that Swedish explosion of the mid through late 90s, and still holds up rather well as I thrash out to it now. Dense, tense, destructive, dystopian and lyrically depressing, it's the Snow Crash of Swedish death thrash. Pizza delivery in 30 minutes or less, or the delivery guy gets whacked.

Verdict: Win [9/10] (suffering now has a face)

http://www.darkane.com/

Necrocurse - Grip of the Dead (2013)

If albums like Morbus Chron's Sleepers in the Rift, Necrovation's eponymous sophomore, and Tribulation's recent Formulas of Death are any indicator, 'tis the season of Swedish death metal ceasing its long spell of fucking around and paraphrasing its own 90s blueprints to the point of utter sterility and senility. While it doesn't go quite so far out on a skeletal limb as these other acts, and its membership hardly a rabble of newcomers to this scene, Necrocurse's full-length debut Grip of the Dead is yet another entry into the cemetery sweeps, a compact, crushing revision of its more overt influences into something digestible to the nostalgia hunter who seeks a little gruesome authenticity in his death and black metal. It interprets the fundamentals in its own way. I won't say it's thoroughly memorable or catchy, or as great as some of the works by several of its individual members, but I had some fun with it as a fiendish exhibition.

First off, if you don't enjoy Per 'Hellbutcher' Gustavsson, then fuck right the fuck off. If, on the other hand, you have found yourself drooling over his past works in Nifelheim, one of the more raw, wonderful and abusive acts in that whole European blackened thrash market, and wondered to yourself 'what if Per had gone on to front one of the formative Swedish death metal bands in the early 90s rather than walking the blacker path?' (which he sort of did for a brief time on stage with Treblinka). Grip of the Dead is the answer to that question, and it's an answer that stabs a pitchfork straight up your nethers while sipping blood from a goblet formed of a Christian's skull. Expect some of that old Sunlight guitar tone to be dripping in Hellbutcher's infernal inflection, and you've pretty much got the gist of what's happening with this one. The arrangement of the riffing is duly primitive, with a mixture of uptempo tremolo picked passages and slower, lodestone grooves, but I found that a lot of the actual note progressions were somehow more primitive and didn't just ape Entombed.

There were a few grooves which reminded me of Massive Killing Capacity era Dismember on their first three records, or Runemagick (a band that the Necrocurse rhythm section hails from), and the guitar tone is clearly meant to represent that period, but the inclusion of Per's vocals really transforms it into some even more nihilistic. Great examples include "Death Metal Rebels", "Speed to the Grave" or "Grip of the Dead" itself, which hammer along with a fiery if simplistic energy. The bass lines are fairly minimal, but provide a lot of low end depth that creates a hellish throne for the riffing and snarling. Beats are also held back from being too spiffy or indulgent in terms of their speed and fill work; instead, the kick drums are live and workmanlike, and there's a nice low din of crash to the cymbals and hi-hat which enforces the humble performance. A few doomed melodies will often erupt over a rhythm guitar, and the leads are efficaciously messy and molten, but not to the point where they feel as if their potential impact wasn't carefully planned.

It's not mind boggling. Nor is it science. Grip of the Dead is not an album about innovation or technicality whatsoever, it is simply clashing together the aesthetics of two parent genres to produce something repulsive and entertaining, with absolutely zero degree of pretentious intentions. It's also not perfect: there are times when I felt like the guitar progressions were a little too bare bones. Not necessarily too familiar, but just not constructed with enough compelling charisma that they can distract the ear away from Hellbutcher's snarls. A group whose roster hails from luminaries like Runemagick, Swordmaster, and Nifelheim could probably bring a lot more A-game to the table. But in of itself, the very idea of allowing Gustavsson to retch rancidly over some primitive, pummeling death metal is a brilliant one. There is a slice of the underground who will love this record just for its honesty and traditional values, but I think it could still be perfected with some stronger, eviller sounding chord progressions and dynamic writing.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

http://necrocurse.com/

Tribulation - The Formulas of Death (2013)

Endowed with what must be the year's most deliriously sarcastic album title, The Formulas of Death proves anything but. I'll be the the first to disagree with the prevailing notion I've encountered that Tribulation has somehow transformed from a prime example of the 'standard Swedish retro death' sound to something far more artistic, because even a cursory listen through their fantastic debut The Horror reveals a higher thrashing potency, with some of the most explosively entertaining leads in the field. Clearly this wasn't your typical, dime a dozen knockoff of Entombed or Dismember, thriving only on second rate D-beat death punk riffage and Clandestine production standards, but a truly memorable collection of songs that transcended the status quo. One of the better albums of 2009, in fact, which is saying a lot, since in my estimation, that was one of the most 'loaded' years of quality metal I can recount since the late 80s. Particularly in the more extreme categories.

With that said, The Formulas of Death is surely a major transformation for a band so early along its career trajectory. We are talking Darkthrone or Ulver proportions of disparity from debut to sophomore effort. I can recognize certain core characteristics that have been carried through from the one to the other: Johannes Andersson's treacherous, bloody barking vocal isn't a far cry from its original form, and the band's tendency to strafe the border between death and primeval thrash metal in both their groovier mid paced chops and the more rapid guitar runs is still pulsing through the music's veins. Yet the external, atmospheric shell crafted over the 76 minutes of material that is The Formulas of Death is so prevalent that it soaks itself deeper into the cell lining of the quartet's metallic entrails. Tribulation have essentially created a psychedelic, progressive death metal mirror universe in which they explore worldly occult themes across a variety of cultures and subjects, while ramping up their already impressive musicianship. In fact, thus far in 2013, I have not heard an album with so much ambition; so much instrumental proficiency. Not that the songs are the most technical, or polyrhythmic out there, as you might find in jazz-influenced brutal death metal or math metal shredding...

...but there is this immense sense of fulfillment, no shortage of ideas careening through this opus which will stand out to the ear of someone looking for metal that can balance riffing against atmosphere. The most obvious new ingredient to the Tribulation repertoire is the implementation of a myriad of cleaner guitars. Often they'll resemble 60s psychedelic folk, fit for a traipse across a maudlin meadowland with a slight complement of Eastern strings ("Vagina Dentata"). Elsewhere they are spry and spooky, to saturate the compositions with a tinge of occult horror ("When the Sky is Black With Devils"). The lion's share of the material is still driven by heavier guitars, but even there we get a considerable expansion of technique. Loads of droning, atonal ringing notes that drift out into a greenish/black mental fog. Muddier cleans. Dextrous clips of melodic picking sequences which sound like speed exercises being imbued into harder driving rhythms more redolent of their last album. In addition, the distortion levels have been dialed back for greater clarity. There is no shortage of guitar effects, but the rhythms are really clean and blunt, where they had a lot harsher hiss trailing behind them on The Horror.

The rhythm section here is like a dream. The bass lines are pendulous and polished, swaying and swaggering  into various grooves that evoke distant memories of dreamy prog rock or swirling pop records from the 70s and earlier. Then they'll turn right around and surge into the metal like a bong-ripping Steve Harris. Beats are incredibly well managed, and play a vital role in steering the versatility of the guitars. For example, a slow and steady cadence is used to set up the opener "Vagina Dentata" into a march-like piece reminiscent of what Metallica might have written in the 80s. The kick and snare are directly up front, and the fills and cymbal crashes constantly audible, which becomes even more obvious when they erupt into a more traditional blast sequence like in "Spell". Vocally, there is less evolution, but as you find yourself drifting through this 'cosm of nuance and nightmare, you'll hear some airier, eerie clean tones shimmering against the rhythms, like ghosts attempting to cross dimensions and faintly manifesting themselves from their natural incorporeality. There is always something waiting around every corner, under every eave...it's a busy and consistent arrangement.

It's definitely a difficult task to pinpoint shortcomings in such a lengthy work as this, but that's actually one of its few problems: The Formulas of Death feels overlong by a good 15-20 minutes. Not to say that it falls into a slump of needless repetition or runs short on imagination, but in listening straight through the track order, there were several points at which I felt I had reached some natural conclusion, only to have the next track kick into view. There are enough ideas here to fuel two or more albums from lesser bands, but not all the material is necessarily sticky beyond just its sense of novelty and refreshment. In listening, I felt almost as if I were salivating at some buffet table of tasty if not delicious fare, with a stomach that was already half fulls. Frankly, the harsh vocals and a lot of the heavier guitar progressions just weren't interesting or varied enough over the full 75-76 minutes to keep it entirely compelling. 'Busy' simply doesn't always translate into 'catchy'. The more I listened through, the more frustrated I became that a sizable portion of the music was more able and moody than memorable.

Lastly, though comparing this to The Horror is like comparing Dark Side of the Moon to a sole twelve-bar blues guitarist being rafted through a swamp, the debut was a more engaging and exhilarating burst of tunes with a lot of bite. You weren't coming away from tracks like "Beyond the Horror" or "Curse of Resurrection" without fang punctures on your neck in a best case scenario, tagged and bagged in the worst. Here, much of the dingy and adventurous atmosphere just does not feel as morbid or haunting as the album's occult themes would imply. I was creeped out a few times, but a lot of the riff progressions feel too consonant or ethereal to evoke the boogeyman. Don't get me wrong, this is ultimately an impressive, otherworldly album that will no doubt have people shitting themselves at its level of aesthetic vision and musicianship. Its sure to stun fans of progressive black metal and psychedelic doom just as much as it asserts new ideas into a stagnating spectrum of death metal nostalgia. Almost like a more complex and atmospheric response to last year's s/t sophomore from another Swedish band, Necrovation. Worth owning, or at the very least checking out, and overflowing with creativity; but once in a while the excess spillage dries out a little too quickly.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]

http://www.tribulation.se/