Coroner - Dissonance Theory (2025)

I was as shocked as any when it was revealed that Coroner was doing a tour in the US and releasing a new album. Yes, I know they'd gotten back together some 15 years prior for some gigs, and kept a low profile since that point, with nothing much on the horizon, but I didn't think much would ever manifest from that reunion other than a capitalization on the nostalgia that their brilliant original run of albums evokes. You see, this was one of my favorite underground acts in the late 80s/early 90s, as I'm sure it was for many, music so bloody good that you felt smarter than everyone else for listening. You weren't, of course, but it was at least great to feel that way as puberty was budding and you were continuing to shape your musical tastes and interactions with all the other metalheads around you. And back then, there were many.

Punishment for Decadence and No More Color are two of the most perfect albums I own, for their dark and dingy lyrical content, stark and uniform cover imagery, and incredible power trio musicianship, in particular the baroque guitar wizardry of Tommy T. Baron, which stunned me with its scale-work and innovation. In fact, almost 40 years later, I can't think of many albums that can match them in that way. Sure, there are scores if not hundreds of other amazing guitarists who created their own niches, some I appreciate as much as Coroner, but his style was distinct. And with Ron barking and playing along formidably, and some great drumming from Marky, they were just so unstoppable. Granted, Mental Vortex took things to a more muffly, minimalist, accessible direction, still with some amazing guitar riffs spiking out here or there, and Grin was more experimental as Coroner aspired to adjust itself to the changing times around them, and also to progress rather than reproduced the perfection already achieved. Those were increasingly disappointing, but never bad, and still have standout moments I revisit.

I digress. So there was NO WAY Dissonance Theory was going to be on the level of Punishment or No More Color, and it's not, but I was nonetheless impressed with the lead single, and then even more so after I got a few spins through the album proper. This for me feels like an evolutionary stage that might have taken place between Mental Vortex and Grin, with the more groovy thrash and progressive, atmospheric ideas that were starting to dominate their compositions at that time. There are few of the brilliant guitar hysterics I would have given a limb to hear once more, but as a coherent, conceptual whole this album is smooth as butter, yet as brooding and dark thematically as any of their prior material apart from maybe R.I.P. which sounds like its being showered upon you from an antiquated European graveyard. There's an industrial, post-modern vibe to the material here, I'd aesthetically compare it to Kreator's Renewal, an album most people hated (that I love), but this is less depressive and a lot more atmospheric, and obviously has a much more fulfilling production.

Structurally, we've got a lot of simplistic riffing grooves, slathered in atmospheric guitars, and so well rhythmically measured that they immediately leave an emotional impact. The beats are throbbing and hammering along, giving it that industrial metal punch, soon joined by the chugging guitars in a tune like "Sacrificial Lamb" or "Cirsium Bound", which definitely feel as if they're modernized tracks from the cutting room floor of Mental Vortex. As the title would imply, there's plenty of dissonance here, like the intro to "Transparent Eye", or a lot of the chords they play to cap off the chugging guitar patterns, but there's also a warmth to a lot of the choruses and grooves, so Coroner is exploring a musical spectrum far wider than the cover art might hint at. I know I've read a lot of people citing that is nothing like Grin, but that isn't true whatsoever, a lot of those sorts of grooves are present here seem like they're muscled up versions of what have appeared there, only the overall weight of the album, the intrinsic ambience and melody helps flesh them out to a more memorable level.

But Coroner does still thrash where it needs to, as on "Renewal" or "Consequence". Tommy T. still has all the technical chops, you can hear them in spurts, but he chooses to relinquish them for the songs themselves, only writing what services their mood. The bass tone is swarthy and powerful, the new drummer Diego Rapacchietti fits right in with the sort of rigorous level of ability, and Ron sounds like he has been left in a cryochamber since the mid-90s, his vocals are still dark and simple barking, but have just the right level of reverb and effects on them to champion the emotional resonance that this album immerses you in. I daresay this is the most 'uplifting' Coroner album, which might not be for everyone, but while it might not hit the mechanical brilliance of the 1987-89 era, it's probably the best they've done outside of that. I've come away from this one super-satisfied, and eager to hear whatever they might create next.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.25/10]

https://coronerofficial.com/

Vígljós - Tome II: Ignis Sacer (2025)

Black metal has long since escaped from or expanded upon the thematic confines of Satanism and nihilism to embrace so lyrical ideas you might not expect, stemming from the mass migration towards nature themes which was present almost from its beginnings. Whether it's fictional, historical, personal or naturalist, there's an enormous range of topics out there from Tolkien to mining, sewage systems to the biographies of European dignitaries. So it's fascinating if not surprising that we've got a band revolved around classic apiculture (beekeeping), complete with some of the most unique stage costumes we've seen in awhile; not just more black masks over leather jackets, or religious vestments, this is more on the level of distinction achieved by a Grima or Portal.

Musically, they are a little more orthodox, raw and seething black metal slathered in higher pitched screaming that mirrors the more suicidal DSBM of years past, circa Silencer or Burzum but I'd have to argue that these are even more unhinged and wilder whenever they're not focused into a more traditional snarl. The riffing is rustic and airy. Sometimes a little more dissonant and frenzied like the buzzing of a plethora of their favorite flying insects, but usually it has a more spacious, countryside/mountainside appeal which the vocals then spew all over. The drumming is tinny and laid back for the most part, but that actually suits the compositions quite well, because the guitars do most of the hive-lifting. Often they will bust out into their own version of some old black metal groove ("Delusions of Grandeur") and I really like these riffs, they put their own atmospheric spin on things and I think it's that theme of these Medieval beekeepers and what world they should be surrounded in during their travails that informs the choices.

So we've got appeal here to anyone enjoying the modern masked Euro black metal bands from Gaerea to Mgla to Batuskha, depressive atmospheric BM like Austere from Australia, which used to give me a similar feel on their older material. The use of Mellotron here creates a little bit of dungeon synth theme on intros or threaded against the harsher black metal progressions, so I could also recommend this to anyone who likes it when bands blend all that together (Elffor), or the pastoral stuff (Grift, Saiva), the Medieval black metal that is so prominent out of France (Aorhlac, etc). It's a good listen, harsh enough for purists but also spacious and captivating and atmospheric, they don't just survive on their gimmick alone but back it up with music that feels appropriately thematic and cognizant of its genre, melodically detailed and rewarding across numerous listens. The vocals might be a hurdle for some, but again it's a choice that contributes to the transportation they offer to a world where men cultivate honey in thick robes and Medieval masks of wicker and straw.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10]

https://vigljos.bandcamp.com/

Versatile - Les litanies du vide (2025)

With a moniker like Versatile, I think you're setting yourself up for certain expectations. Possibly disappointment, if you wind up with a rather typical, commodified sound, or perhaps victory if you're using that branding as an inspiration to head out as far as possible into broad and wild musical amalgamations. I won't say that this debut Les litanies du vide quite achieves the latter, but they definitely mix it up enough to the point where you're never going to get bored headbanging along to their industrialized black metal mash-up. I would compare them to their countrymen Borgne, whose new album I recently covered, but whereas that group simply filters its more conventional black metal sound through some mechanical beats and atmospheric keys, this one does embrace the 'industrial' element a little more boldly.

Lots of grooves; choppy, churning rhythms that feel machine-like or robotic in nature, but then smothered in the atmosphere of the chants, sirens, and sinister, thick rasped vocals. I'd almost liken this to Fear Factory if they'd had more of a black metal foundation than a death metal one. Perhaps The Kovenant is  a better comparison, but despite having a similar set of crazy costumes, Versatile is a little less quirky, and they're delivery is equivalent to the harshest and most serious material of those Norwegians. This album is also soaked in this menacing, Gothic personality, with lots of organ sounds that make you feel as if you're in some haunted house cosplaying as an assembly line. They would be far on the heavier side of a lineup at some European fetish/Goth/industrial festival. There is a little bit more of a dated techno vibe here, too, which might seem cheesy, but this band never plays it for laughs. They even go straight EBM in places, like "Ieshara", but even that is taken dead serious, and for such reasons the record doesn't devolve into the sort of aural circus that you usually associate with bands using the masks, gas masks, contact lenses, prosthetics and all such dressings.

I give the band points for being quite catchy, and having these loud walls of chugging guitars, drums, deep rasps and synthesizers all crashing into one another with a solid level of coherence. There are moments on this album where the heavier instruments drop away and it feels like a horror soundtrack, and others where they embrace a slightly more dissonant industrial metal sound circa Godflesh, though the vocals and the melodic organs and such offer majorly different vibes. It's definitely a muscular debut, and while its acceptance will (as always) rely heavily on the particular preferences of the metal audience towards the adjacent genres on parade, there was undoubtedly a good deal of effort in its writing and recording. The 'black metal' here is largely through some of the vocals, so I think this one's headed more towards rivet-heads that like the noisier guitars and pounding drums, but if your listening habits are open to something like a more brutal, and yes, rhythmically versatile alternative to Neue Deutsche Härte, without the moody male vocals, then have at it.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10]

https://versatilemetal.bandcamp.com/

Borgne - Renaître de ses fanges (2025)

Of all the black metal bands out there that go relatively unnoticed, I think that Switzerland's duo Borgne might be one of the most worthy. 27 years of material, much of which is good, and has only gotten better with their infectious recent records like Y and Temps morts. Renaître de ses fanges does seem like a slight step backwards in quality to those, but all of the bands captivating mechanisms are retained for an experience that is overall rewarding. This is 'industrial' black metal, largely delivered through the beats, which are certainly caustic, cold and machine-like, but they're not layering in a lot of the clanking and whirring and techno instrumentation that defines a lot of other acts that hybridize the genres. Really, this is atmospheric and even traditional black metal with the programmed drums and just a few embellishments like spacey, ambient, slightly noisy passages, striking piano sounds, etc. It's not corpse-painted Ministry.

The production is pretty great, just like the last couple efforts, but with an added sheen of rawness, where everything simmers in its glorious, fell majesty. The tracks are almost all on the longer side, from 7-10 minutes, but I rarely felt like any inherent monotony outweighed the immersion. The guitars have a real noxious distortion to them which seems to hover around the chords like an aura of decay, but the melodic tremolo picked lines just blaze straight through, and Lady Kaos' keys settle just below them to create a constant, oppressive level of atmosphere without sapping away from the aggression of the guitars. Bornyhake's vocals are nothing too terribly unique for the genre, but they always sound like they're hovering over the brink. Some of the tunes have a blasted structure, others a more melancholic, mid-ranged flow like the closer "Royaumes de poussière et de cendre". There's still a little bit of a death metal subtext to some of the lower riffing patterns, but not as prominent as on the excellent "Swords of the Headless Angels" from 2021.

And that's pretty much the most negative thing I can say about this, it's just not as packed with hooks as the albums leading up to it. This combines a slightly more primal production with some chord patterns that feel a little rinsed and repeated, not only in the canon of Borgne themselves but black metal as a whole. Renaître de ses fanges is still an effective mood-inducer, you can almost feel like you can close your eyes to this and see the spectral cover figures drifting through an apocalyptic industrial bombed out urban landscape, and there are a few riff patterns in the depths of some of the tunes that are pretty glorious once they're rolled out. The balance of the ambiance to the aggression is also quite nice, I just think the metal progressions don't stand out to me nearly as well as some off Temps morts or Y. Still a pretty dependable effort, from a band I've kept in rotation since at least 2010's Entraves de l'âme, and one that's built itself an enduring legacy nearly as comprehensive as some of their French peers.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10]

https://borgne.bandcamp.com/

Borgne - Temps Morts (2021)

Industrial black metal acts of note are few and far between, and even when you do encounter them, they're not often the most clever hybrids between the two styles, usually focusing on some superficial elements of one of those constituent genres and then leaning into the other. Enter the creepy Swiss Borgne, a project of the ever prolific Bornyhake and keys player Lady Kaos; and while I cannot tell you that they are approaching this combination with the utmost nuance or uniqueness, their albums have become increasingly more entertaining experiences, peaking with ineffable Y, an album with which his latest, Temps Morts, pairs up quite well. A similar mix of aggressive programmed drumming, eerie tremolo picked notes, grisly vocals and eerie synthesizer atmospheres which is highly satisfying if you're the sort to close your eyes and imagine dystopian wreckage.

I'd actually say that this album is slightly more accessible than its predecessor, in that a lot of the guitar and synth lines seem more immediate to hook onto you, but don't mistake that for some sort of sellout, because this is still frightening and hostile. The beats here range from large, clanking splashes of dilapidated machinery to double bass or blast patterns that seem almost as if the guy is trolling us, only then to lay on the mesmerism through the immortally spooky guitar patterns in pieces like "Near the Bottomless Precipice I Stand" and "The Swords of the Headless Angels" (one of my favorite track titles this year). The atmosphere conjured up across this album is nothing short of revelatory, and while there does exist a fair degree of repetition, the music is so effective that it becomes a strength and not at all a weakness. Whether he's firing on pure industrial drum segues or even the more bouncy groove of "To Cut the Flesh and Feel Nothing but Stillness", there's an urgency and violence to this music that demands your respect, and I'm not sure there are many others out there doing it at this level...certainly this album hit me a lot harder than anything the comparable Aborym has done in many years.

To top that off, Temps Morts is enormous...73 minutes across nine tracks, and extremely consistent in the desolate mood it creates, which I have to say is a perfect fit to the bleak cover art of its industrial looking cathedral and nightmarish landscape. There are a few pauses in the aggression, like the softer piece "I Drown My Eyes Into the Broken Mirror" which relies more on piano lines, smaller scintillating synths and spectral whispered vocals rather than outright harsh rasps, but even there the album retains that sense of a consistently unsettling mood, and it's just another of the many surprises that will hook you throughout the album's considerable depths. Like those long cinematic experiences you patiently sit through because you realize you're getting more bang and quality for your bucks, Temps Morts is a pleasure to experience and then to revisit, even to read through lyrically, and though there's a lot of worthwhile material throughout their 20+ year back catalog, this is yet another of the most impressive albums the project has produced.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10]

https://www.borgne-blackmetal.com/

Cold Cell - The Greater Evil (2021)

There's a dichotomy on this latest Cold Cell album, on which I find the moments where they drift furthest away from the core considerations of their genre to be its most inspired, interesting and memorable, while a lot of the heavier elements end up feeling repetitive and less capable of putting me into a trance. That's not to say they are weak when they are piling on their largely mid-paced atmospheric black metal, which is likely the dominant force through much of the 49 minutes of material, but every time they drift in and out of some dream-like fugue, I am transported to a place that is more haunting and capable of getting under my skin in a shorter period of time. I think it's just a matter of the actual black metal riffing becoming a bit more commonplace and less able to offer the unexpected.

To be fair, they do balance out these two extremes at several points, but I found that overall my engagement with the material varied, and while we're not dealing with excessively bloated songwriting, most of these are around the 7-minute mark, which is long enough for the tides of tedium to begin to settle in if not to completely overtake you. But listen to that intro to "Scapegoat Season", with the guy singing in just an everyman's voice while the creepy, reverbed acoustic guitars and roiling ambience escalate, or "Open Wound" with the freaky swell of orchestration and desperate, open rasps, these sorts of things set up the band to just deliver an emotional juggernaut, and when it comes to the heavier riffs they just don't really honor the expectations. Sure, the pacing and the retained atmosphere do their job, and sometimes the vocals, when they're pitched at a more tortured intonation, but just as often you're getting these riff patterns that just sort of drone repeatedly and uninterestingly off into the distance.

I'm probably making it out to sound worse than it is, because by no means is this a bad or incompetent effort. In a few spots, it's outright transcendent. There's certainly a consistency to the graying, wasting mood of the album, and the sustained riffs over the busier but almost monotonous blasting backdrop, with its layered and eerie guitars. They set a mood and stick with that, so if you dream of black and white, decaying shores, or can imagine your own being disintegrating into snowy gray flecks in slow-motion, this is an appropriate score. I think, as it is presented, the album passes muster, but there were just a few parts where I thought they were going to absolutely crush my soul with some blazing riff or rhythmic pattern emerging form one of these lushly melancholic ambient-like passages and that just never really came about. But if you're into spacious, dissonant black metal with some surface similarities to the French scene circa Blut Aus Nord or Deathspell Omega, only not quite so twistedly adventurous or potentially explosive, then you could do much worse than to check out Cold Cell.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

https://cold-cell.bandcamp.com/

Borgne - Y (2020)

There aren't many metal musicians quite so prolific as Bornyhake, and what's more, despite being active in, or the full creative force behind about a dozen plus acts at a time, many of them are held to a reasonable level of nuance and quality. Borgne has always been one of his main projects, and in my estimation the most interesting of them, almost mirroring his countrymen Darkspace in the older albums that were given minimalist Roman numeral titles and songs that were enumerated rather than given titles, a choice that often challenges the listener to really dive deep into the audio aesthetics since no obvious picture will be painted for him/her beyond a basic cover artwork and cursory genre knowledge. Bornyhake dropped that tactic around his fourth full-length, but not the poignancy of his songwriting, since a lot of albums since that point in 2009 have gotten even better, with standouts including 2010's Entraves de l'âme, its successor, 2012's Royaume des ombres, and, well, this one right here, Y, his ninth album.

The style Borgne plays is dominantly industrial black metal, comparable to Darkspace or certain phases Blut Aus Nord; but not always quite as distant and bleak as the former, or as dissonant and bizarre as the latter. Y is a sensuous flood of programmed electronic drums, consistent patterns of tremolo picked notes, evil chords, and one of the best Swiss rasps we've ever heard. It certainly leans more on the side of pure black metal, with the exception that the backbeat isn't organic, and there are a lot of synthesizers provided for constant atmosphere by the group's second member Lady Kaos. On the whole, it's really quite simple, there are very few spaces on the album that aren't filled with just a thundering assault of rhythm, but then he'll splice in some breakdown parts which have more of a chugging industrial guitar, and drums patterns that seem more acclimated to that genre. Such a shift might seem cheesy or superficial if it weren't so damn serious, it's almost like a more muscular version of countrymen Samael's brilliant Passage album, but doesn't create its own language of sound quite as well as that, instead drawing from the two halves of its influences and merging them together in a memorable distribution and execution. Some tracks feature atmospheric segues before the surging, pounding aggression returns, but on either side of the contrast the album functions well.

I just love the simmering synthesizer lines that burn like some illegal rave held on a dock between giant steel shipping containers. There is certainly a broad, claustrophobic, urban deterioration here channeled through suicidal and drug-addled emotions. There's not a lot of subtlety despite all that's going on, from the occasional, melancholic melodic guitars that spire off into the nightscape in the bridge of "A Hypnotizing Perpetual Movement That Buries Me in Silence" or awesome wails that haunt "Qui serais-je si je ne le tentais pas?" The vocal arrangements are excellent, and he covers all manner of voices between wails, chants, whispers, snarls and growls of various levels that are probably one of the most intricately designed parts of the album. Even where the album goes more for a pure industrial motif as in the 9+ minute instrumental "Paraclesium", full of little electronic impulses, bleeps and bloops, the oppressive nature of the whole record does not permit your escape. And then he pulls off this climactic, 17 minute track "A Voice in the Land of Stars" which never once bores me throughout its surprising levels of climactic majesty delivered through walls of doomy riffing, shrill synthesizers and tinny percussion. Devastatingly effective album, if you've love entrepreneurs of this style like Red Harvest or Dodheimsgard, or the other Swiss bands I mentioned earlier, and somehow haven't heard Borgne, well you've just been given notice.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10]

https://www.borgne-blackmetal.com/

Samael - Hegemony (2017)

It's evident that the members of Samael and myself seem to agree on the Passage-era being the one most inspiring and interesting to revisit, and Hegemony is perhaps the greatest example of that since that 1996 opus dropped through Century Media. That's not to say I don't also enjoy their earlier, more primitive black metal records or the transitional Ceremony of Opposites, in fact I think those are the more influential by far; yet those machine-driven, poetic paeans to the cosmic which dominated their fourth album are forever my siren call when reaching over to their section of my CD rack. So I cannot at all blame them for attempting to rekindle that particular  style, which they've already done a few times, in particular on the more aggressive Above and its successor Lux Mundi, which for my money was the best Samael album of the 21st century...until now, although I'd argue that Hegemony is far more directly an homage to Passage than its predecessor was.

That's both a good and bad thing, because while Vorphalack and crew are clearly intent on dressing up and expanding those aesthetics, there are numerous moments here where you'll feel as if you're getting deja-vu for a synthesizer or guitar progression, drum pattern or fill that you've already heard two decades ago. For the most part, they're coming up with new chord patterns, which works out really well in a tune like "Red Planet" which is a new take on the warlike space opera of a "Jupiterian Vibe" which will have you marching in similar step. Most of the melody in modern Samael music is provided solely by the synthesizers, which have the same martial, striking, sweeping feel to them here as they cultivate both a militaristic and Eastern sheen. It's up to the beats, lower end guitars and Vorph's distinct, eternally accented snarls to provide the metallic bedrock, and they do so well, with a lore more cutting, kinetic passion to them than you'd hear out of comparable hybrids of industrial and metal aesthetics such as those of the Neue Deutsche Härte persuasion. I also have to praise the bass playing here, from new member Drop, who lays out these awesome, fat, rolling lines that support the clamorous, choppy majesty in tunes like "This World". While the drum programming has long been a point of contention for some fans, I think Xytras does another great job layering in thick enough and 'real enough' percussion pads without abandoning the martial and mechanical coldness.

The lyrics these days continue the themes of social consciousness and social unity that they first embarked on with Eternal, but they're also willing to spark up a little pseudo-controversy with a cut like "Black Supremacy", and if you've seen the video there you'll probably have seen a lot of the responses. Hint: it's not really about what you think it is. There are also some self-referential pieces like their namesake "Samael", or "Angel of Wrath", the former of which is like a giant socialist shout out to celebrate the band's following, and their message. It's a little heavy handed, but not as corny as, say, Reign of Light; and it wouldn't be the first time, since it does fit the band's modernist, corporate or empirical vision and minimalist visual branding which manifests in both the sleek packaging and fattened new logo variant (which I think is an improvement). Samael is just one of a kind, and while I can promise that those who have shunned everything they've released since 1994 will find no end here to pulling out their own hair and seeking sanctuary in the shadow of some inverted cross where no keyboard dares to tread, I readily admit to having enjoyed the hell out of this.

A couple nicks and dents here or there, a few songs not pulling their weight quite as much as others, but they even manage to transform "Helter Skelter" into something of their own, and the bonus track "Storm of Fire" is one of the coolest on the album. They also don't pull back too far on the heavy spectrum, for example "Black Supremacy" would have felt right at home on Above. Hegemony might not ultimately emit the level of timeless material that Passage was built from, but it certain does a fantastic job of capturing its ebullient, storming magnificence.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10] (light and force have a name)

https://www.samael.info/

Blakk Old Blood - Greed EP (2016)

The 'fuck you' growled out so nonchalantly near the end of "Seed of Greed" seems a bit of conscious trolling here, almost like the gents behind Blakk Old Blood were aware they had just delivered one of the most uneven and inconsistent experiences you were going to hear all year and were proud of it. But don't let that opening volley deceive you into believing that I loathed this Swiss black metal throwback completely, for when they play up to their strengths, they do a pretty bang-up job of resurrecting a carefree, cryptic black punk attitude worthy of trashing one of Satan's hotel rooms. After all, the rates might be cheap, but you don't get to leave. I'd be angry too.

There are four tracks here, but unfortunately only two which are bearable. Opener "Misanthrope" is quite good, a burgeoning, bloody black/thrasher in the vein of old Bathory, Hellhammer, early Mayhem, Impaled Nazarene, and most notably Nifelheim. Driven, simplistic, hellish momentum established through a gruesome, more guttural vocal timbre and a set of riffs that are infernally catchy no matter how many times you feel you've heard them before. The third tune, "Thou Are the Dragon" is a bit more of a blast piece using tremolo picked riffs redolent of antique black/death metal, but I loved the trappings, such as the fat and voluminous bass of the into. Sadly, these two particular songs only comprise about four minutes of material, which in of itself is fine, and suits their impish nature, but for the fact that the EP is finished off with an eight minute, dragged out bore of a tune in "Seed of Greed".  This piece alternates between two very simple riffing structures, monotonous chords and an attempt at a creeper, circular guitar line which falls flat after about two minutes, and has no business going on for as long as it does.

There simply aren't enough ideas there, and to top that off, it's void of any drum beats save for some very tinny, distant cadence which I frankly think I might have been hallucinating. The whole idea was to create this blasphemous, hypnotic escapism but it's simply too dry. The other track here is just a growled vocal mantra with a couple of voices that doesn't exactly add much to the proceedings, and so I'm left with a feeling that what I just experienced had plenty of untapped possibilities. Had all the cuts been worthy of "Misanthrope", I would be singing it's praises to the golden dawn, but as it stands, it just feels like an entertaining teaser with a bunch of other, inferior material tacked on. At their peak, Blakk Old Blood certainly lives up to their name, and has reserves of potential best channeled into 2-3 minute blackened speed/punk, but don't get too comfortable with structural variation to the degree that it becomes detrimental to the experience.

Verdict: Indifference [5.5/10]

http://www.clavisecretorvm.com/blakk.php

Defaced - Forging the Sanctuary (2015)

With an acquisition by Rising Nemesis Records out of Germany, Switzerland's Defaced have managed to carve out a stronger showing from themselves through their sophomore Forging the Sanctuary. Stylistically, it would be a stretch to call this a departure from the very average stockpile of inspiration its predecessor On the Frontline was supplied from, but they've fleshed out their individual riffing components enough that I had a better time in listening, and they overall come across as being a little more bloodthirsty, brutal, vicious, and capable of leaving an impact wherever they launch their artillery shells. We're not talking top flight death metal here which is likely to gather a lot of momentum in the heavily saturated scene in Europe where retro-death seems to reign supreme, but it's an improvement, and that's the first step towards anything...

Still a lot of standard blasting mechanics here, with an interchange between growls and higher scraping rasps circa the legends of Carcass, albeit with nowhere near as much carnal character (not even as much as Deicide, who would spit them out in conjunction to create their signature sound). One new thing I noticed was that in a tune like "Sower of Discord" or "Antithesis", they've incorporated a slight black metal approach with some of the dissonance chords they affix to the blasting segments, and these even extend further into some of the airier, atmospheric sequences (as in the same track). Note for note, I felt that there was just a lot more variety to what the band from the weirder pauses in the action that they include in "Rapture Through Bondage" and "Forging the Sanctuary" itself. The leads are far better designed than On the Frontline, to the point that some of them are even compelling, and the other melodic touches offer a little balance to the robust butchery they tend towards.

The death/thrash breakdowns are more explosive and exciting, and though the production of the guitars isn't much different than the first album, it just feels more incendiary and razor-sharp, capable of bleeding more from the listener's attention span. I also have to give props for the Dan Seagrave cover artwork, a good choice and a striking image that is one of the better he has created in years, with that elongated papal figure on its throne of gold and wretchedness. Granted, like so many death metal albums, the image is evocative and exotic and then the music is far less inventive or capable of manifesting aural escapism with the audience, but then Defaced doesn't really have the convenience of doing 'a new thing' like a lot of the bands were doing in the late 80s or 90s. As it stands, though, Forging the Sanctuary is superior to its predecessor in categories, and marks a young band making its ascent...how far is anyone's guess, but if they can continue to extricate more interesting melodies or atmospheric breaks from the banal punishment of their roots, they'll be on to something.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

http://www.defaced.ch/

Defaced - On the Frontline (2012)

The Swiss death metal scene arguably peaked with its most antiquated acts, some of whom were not exclusively death metal and have sowed their influence far and wide across numerous genres. But gone are the days of Hellhammer, Messiah, Coroner, and Celtic Frost, and since that time there seems to be a slight preference for black metal in the reason. Sure, a handful of brutal death metal bands have been signed up from the region, but few exhibit the sort of cultural distinction that most other European countries provide, and judging by what I hear on this first album by Defaced, that pattern is in no jeopardy of disruption.

To be fair, these guys (not to be confused with The Defaced of Sweden who performed a more groove/thrash metal style) draw upon some older influences than most arpeggio freaks and tech wankers eschew for their Suffocation/Necrophagist-born songwriting chops. I was hearing quite a lot of British death/grind influence, particularly the battering force of Napalm Death and the sort of everyman growling and presence of 90s Benediction, with some of the brickwork no-frills applied punishment of Danish veterans Panzerchrist or Dutchmen Houwitser. Very precise blast work balanced off against slower, Morbid Angel-chugging miasma with double bass. Cookie monster gutturals delivered against the snarling contrast of death and grind pioneers. A rich, churning guitar tone which doesn't ascribe to the Swedening and gives the album a production value well beyond your average unsigned act.

They vary up their pretty standard tremolo-picked phrases/blast progressions with a couple of leaden grooves circa Sepultura's style (without going anywhere near nu-land), but often lay into a pure grinding headache, or some slower death/thrash patterns that feel like meatier Slayer chugs. Not averse to leads, they often rely on bluesier basics gone wild than anything more caustic, atmospheric and unnerving which a lot of their influences thrived on. And this all sort of contributed to a mere lukewarm reaction I had to the tunes here. Once in a while you've got a tune like "Departure to Hell" where they focus on a few peppier death/thrash riffs which lean more towards the melodic death structures of mid-era At the Gates, or some truly punctual palm-muted breaks of a Fear Factory caliber, but as you can sort of tell reading through this, the band just never develops a distinct style of their own, molded strictly upon the trodden grounds of their forebears without making it feeling fresh, vibrant or even really nostalgic.

There are other bands like Coldworker that have done a better job of integrating all these old school pummeling death and grind inspirations into better riff fixtures, where On the Frontline simply seems substandard in its construction. By no means is it a bad album, and the members apply themselves to their instruments with concussive integrity, but there are few if any guitar riffs which stand out among the legions here and even the song titles feel a little blase and unoriginal. I mean..."Pleasure to Kill"? I'm not saying old bands have some inviolable right to the use of these words, but do a little homework at least. You probably don't want to name tunes after verified classics, especially when they don't even have a shadow of a prayer of living up to them.

Verdict: Indifference [5.75/10]

http://www.defaced.ch/

Xytras - Passage (1997)

I probably listened to the 'real' Passage so many times, and just so obsessively that first year it came out, that any reinterpretation, no matter how genuine, even from one of its composers himself, was due to fail for me...so great credit goes to the Xytras 'symphonic' alternate recording of Passage that it does not. I can be one of those sticklers when it comes to remakes or covers, in all forms of media, from novel/comic adaptations to film to re-recorded metal records and so forth, but the beauty of this was that it might have proven the reality, the 'official' version of these songs all along. Hold up a sec, and let me clarify that this is not anywhere NEAR as good as the metal version, with Vorph's growling poetics and the amazing guitar riffs and atmosphere that they all create in contrast...but if you're going to produce an instrumental rendition of a masterpiece, whether by elevator muzak or flutes or a Broadway show, then it should at least strive for this level of quality and consistency.

There are a few dissimilarities in track choice here, with a pair of tunes being translated instead from Exodus than Passage ("Tribes of Cain" and "Winter Solstice" replacing "Liquid Soul Dimension" and "Chosen Race"), and the entire shebang being performed with keyboards/synthesizers alone. That is correct: no drums, no vocals, no guitars, no bass lines, just Xytras performing the material as if it had always been intended as a neo-classical soundscape, a lost Castlevania soundtrack, something that works pretty well when you think of a pine-studded mountainside after darkness, just as well as the cosmic and philosophical overtures provided by the lyrics on Passage itself. At times Xy layers in a lot more of an orchestrated feel, generally in sync where that was created on the metal renditions, and others it focuses more on just the haunted castle pianos. Generally it's impossible for this to feel as moving and dramatic as the harder versions, but surprisingly in a tune like "Moonskin" ("Mondhaut") which was so piano driven in the first place, it tends to come across even more sweeping due to the selected pads giving it that bolder, operatic atmosphere. Xytras' playing is busy enough to serve as proxy to the missing guitars, but he actually doesn't embellish the material very much with added lines, something I actually regret as a missed opportunity...

The music does lose some of its darker edge, naturally due to the absence of the rest of the band, the loss of impact from those electronic drums, but a few cuts like "My Saviour" ("Mein Retter") do capture much of that same magic. Is it a little pretentious that the titles are all in German? I suspect that was part of the intent, since this is probably more serviceable to that Euro Goth/Goth metal scene that several of their post-Passage recordings catered towards, but it might have also been that Xy wanted to differentiate this even more from the album that more people were going to know. On the other hand, it's rather telling that this was pretty much the end of this experiment, and that when the band would branch out into ambient/electronic pastures in the future (Era One/Lesson in Magick #1) it would focus on original material initially written specifically for that. But on hearing this, you can definitely hear how Xytras formed the basis of composition for the heavier tunes, and if you love the songs as much as I do then at least part of you would be curious to hear how they turn out in another genre. Hell, I love this Samael album so much that I wouldn't mind hearing it in fucking MIDI...so, to summarize: not as good as that 'real' Passage, but if you enjoy lashing out at things as Simon Belmont, or sipping wine with your Lindt chocolates, it's at least amusing.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

Samael - Eternal (1999)

While Eternal is clearly a spiritual successor to Passage in terms of its spacey aesthetics, focused cover imagery and further progression towards electronics, it might also be viewed as one of the strangest evolutions in Swiss metal since the much maligned Cold Lake over a decade prior. It's unforgettable predecessor maintained a darker, frightening edge to it in spite of its fantastic riffing and general accessibility, but with this fifth full-length, Vorphalack, Xytras and company would go all happy on us. Pop some xstasy. In fact, it's generally better to think of this record as some sort of industrial universal space-dance music which just happens to retain a metal riffing and garbled, harsher vocal aesthetic than a proper metal recording (akin to The Kovenant's Animatronic without the corny Marilyn Manson band image), and absolute anathema for a chunk of the band's original audience who were stuck at Worship Him. 'No, fuck that man, this band lost it after the first rehearsal in 1987.' Ha!

But herein lies the catch. Despite Vorph's weird whispered and growled vocal lines through Eternal, which resemble pop and hip hop structures just as much as the gnarled, passionate black metal of his prior output...despite the increased importance of typified dance beats and synthesizer lines through which Xytras is attempting to bridge the classical and EBM fields....despite the fact that half the guitars on this album are merely low chugs or chords used to accent the beats...and despite the odd, raw production which would seem out of place for industrial/pop and was likely due to the band's novelty at blending these mediums, Eternal is a charming album. Yeah, it often feels like the band came up with the idea while enjoying a hot tub by starlight, in the Alps with some rich bankers' wives giggling over these artsy young studs they managed to wrangle, but there is this sentimental quality created through the contrast of choir synthesizers, reverberating electronic percussion, schmaltzy lounge organs/percussion (on a few tunes) and Vorph's 'Wait, we were recording that?', diabolic yet mouth-breathing presence that somehow transcends all the inherent flaws and musical faux-pas to produce something worthwhile...

Guitars. They're here, but divided into three camps. First: the aforementioned palm muting or syncopated chord phrases which are there to serve more or less in tandem with the other percussion (examples: the verses of "Ways" and "Us"), a technique you'd expect from a lot of industrial radio rock like Stabbing Westward or Rammstein. Second, and these are better, these floes of warmer and melodic chords, faster or slower, used to emotionally elevate many of the chorus vocals; they've got an alt rock feel to them, but definitely are one of the elements that were drafted forward from Passage. Lastly you've got a few living clever phrases like the creepy melody that comes into the verse in "Ailleurs" (or "The Cross"), and these are probably the most effective on the album, meaning I wish there were actually a few more. Missing are the brilliant, meticulous black/thrash progressions from the prior album, a blow that is felt by this listener, but in the end I can't rightly say that they would have worked with the overall feel and structure of the songwriting. Still, they hadn't voided the guitar as an instrument altogether, far from it, and the notes used here are at least more memorable than the two full-lengths to follow, even if their respective mixes put more emphasis on the riffs.

The synthesizers play an enormous role, largely through the choir pads which are used to give much of the album that cosmic, ethereal effect, like a seraph floating between planets with its glimmering sword out front. Probably a bit cliche, but Samael do them justice with simple but catchy patterns. In addition Xytras uses a lot of busier piano phrases which are amongst the most complex lines of notes on the album, and then they step even further outside with a mixture of 80s prog/New Age and cheesy techno-inspired sequences which occasionally sound like Tangerine Dream writing house music. It's all well and good for me, since I listen to a lot of that anyway, but others are just not going to be so welcoming of this stuff if their expectations were Blood Ceremony 2.0. They'll be even LESS welcoming of the weirder moments like in "Being" where the pianos get all saloon-bluesy with the goofy little electric guitar trills, or in "Radiant Star" where the organs make the intro feel like The Doors are about to stroll into a pastry shop on a Paris corner. I happen to love that song, the chorus is particularly timeless and emotional with Vorph's protracted growls, but it's pretty bizarre how they got from that point A to B and certainly was unique for 1999.

As for the beats, the more danceable nature of the writing definitely brings their artificial nature to the fore more so than Passage, an album that could have just as well been executed with a drummer, but lost no points for the slick programming. Usually they go big and industrial but there are a lot of subtleties here, electronic/pulse stuff hidden in both calmer moments and greater swells which does occasionally hover on glitch without the warping. Since they were at this time really into all the fire swinging cosmic carnival theatrics in their performances, there is definitely a bit of hippie drum circle aesthetic here, only it's represented electronically with some lighter percussion rather than the thundering of some tribal gathering. That said, when the band needs power, like the clashing accents to the chorus of "Together", they really come through, so despite the theoretical superiority this recording might have had with an actual human striking a kit, I don't have much of an issue that they chose to go this route again. Masmiseîm also sounds pretty electrified, with some bass lines that sound quite synthesized, but the simplistic grooves he metes out in tunes like "The Cross" are critical to contrast against that hovering nightscape of keyboard atmosphere.

Lastly, we come to the vocals, which are basically the whispers, semi-growls and rasps of the last album only seeming a little more laconic and poppy in their implementation. The guy's voice does have a hard time standing out against the more shining electronic aspects, and many could be forgiven for thinking the guy sounds absolutely goofy, but it's part of what gives the album it's sense of impossible charisma, since it runs contrary to most of what people love about a good pop or EBM band...a strong singer with an 80s penchant for choral melodies that engrave a tune into memory. Vorph's performance IS memorable, but incredibly flawed all the same, which was either a brilliant or stupid move depending on who you ask. A lot of the meters and ideas seem half-formed, but it is nice that he'll occasionally lay out a larger growl for balance. Lyrically, though, this further emphasis towards spiritual exploration and personal meanings, far removed from the evil occultism on their old material is a bit of a shock. The song titles are incredibly, efficiently Zen and the lyrics almost constantly attempt to uplift the listener with traces of Eastern mysticism and pacifistic enlightenment. It's almost as if they had a Darjeeling Limited moment somewhere between 1996-1998 when they were thinking how they'd follow up their masterpiece.

And that's about the best I can do, good readers. It's a unique album for sure, but one of those 'I'll allow you this one' deals for me, where I admired the band's transformation but wouldn't necessarily want to hear them try this again (which they sort of did, sadly). The first track "Year Zero" is pretty representative of the sound of the whole album, but it's actually the least interesting/memorable so I question its front placement when everything else is so much bloody catchier. That aside, I really liked the album. It's touching and heartfelt and all those sorts of things a Samael record probably shouldn't have ever been, but its combination of airy, raw production and its humanitarian, philosophical approach to industrial metal was one I really went for when the album released, and I still quite enjoyed it when listening to prepare for this review. Are the simplistic, repetition-focused lyrics meek? Sometimes, but just as often they're extravagant. Is it a disappointment after Passage? What wouldn't be? But if you're open to electronic influence, space raving on ski slopes, and listening to music that your girl/guyfriend might also dig on when you introduce it to them, then this might work for you. "Ailleurs", "Ways", "The Cross", "Infra Galaxia", "I", "Radiant Star"...all great songs... in fact only "Year Zero" is worth skipping.

There are no guilty pleasures.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10] (the move is fixed at the furthest point)

http://www.samael.info/Above/index.html

Bölzer - Soma EP (2014)

There must be quite some pressure on this Swiss duo, having raised many expectations with their previous 2013 Aura, which garnered loads of positive feedback (I am no exception) and even got them flown in for a Maryland Deathfest here in the States. With all that on their shoulders, you might expect them to buckle and break, the 'sophomore curse' take effect, not that it generally applies to the short form EP releases they seem compelled towards, but in lieu of something more substantial, it counts. Well, Soma is not as good as Aura. I'll say that up front, but with the caveat that I found the two tunes here a little uneven in their quality, with one matching the last batch of material and the other coming up slightly short.

Bölzer continues to mete out an atmospheric hybrid of black and death metal in equal proportions, the former coming through heavily in the vocals and a few of the faster riff progressions, which are often redolent of Immortal on the song "Steppes" to the point that tonally and structurally the pacing and plot of that particular cut wouldn't have seemed out of place on Sons of Northern Darkness. Now the death metal element is cut from the same cloth, some of the tremolo picked guitars definitely feel more like a morbid throwback the earlier era of that genre, and there are also numerous gutturals to support the KzR's standard rasp, but the distribution might marginally lean towards the black when you factor in the lack of much bottom end/bass to the recording (they perform as a two-piece), the lyrical themes and artwork. Either way, it's how they approach this union which makes it seem more unique and effective than most of their peers who engage in this same crossover space. The actual techniques have been stripped back to the genre's origins, but they don't approach songwriting with that same over-the-top blasting, furious war metal mentality I generally associate with black/death.

That said, I haven't really been able to get into "Steppes". I appreciate that the palm mute to tremolo Immortal-meets-Bolt Thrower riff phrases do give it that feel of a great bloodstarved host marching across that selfsame terrain, but it often too dry to stick to my ears, whereas the bulkier "Labyrinthine Graves" (almost 13 minutes long) brings in a lot more of the atmospherics and range that I loved on Aura. Pensive, thundering drums built off fills continue into a compelling, simple tremolo guitar line with an unusual depth, and they layer in a lot more of the grotesque layered growling/rasping vocals, including some good ol' Tom G. Warrior/Nocturno Culto grunts which function as a callback to that legendary countryman, and really elevate the song when accompanied by the lower chants around the 5:30 mark in the tune. Also the ambient finale to this second tune is stunning, cavernous but soothing tones resonating off the roof of some faint picking; it really tied the experience together and gave me a stronger emotional feedback than I would have expected to that point.

Stylistically, the two tunes are connected well enough, so the riffs from the first do flow naturally into the second. I simply felt as if something in the Bölzer formula was absent in the first that was then reinstated with "...Graves", and so my praise for this EP is heavier in the back, where Aura was really damn consistent throughout. This is good stuff, and I've listened to it a half dozen times, but mostly for those closing components. A larger issue with this group is that I feel like their style of writing might better lend itself to a full-length experience, 40 or 50 minutes in which the band can really thread their penchant for gradual development into some truly brilliant escapism. Here, once the goings really start to get good, it's over unless you loop back into one of the two tracks. Soma is ultimately a marginal disappointment if you go in listening for another revelation, but not the sort to give me pause as to their greater potential. Just an open/shut case of me not digging one track as much as the rest I've heard. Otherwise, it did transport me to that same nocturnal plain that they did last year.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10] 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/B%C3%96LZER/108657105834227

Samael - Solar Soul (2007)

While Samael wouldn't ultimately jump back on the horse for me until the angrier, 2009 effort Above, their seventh full-length 'heavy' album (discounting the experimental contractual filler Era One/Lesson in Magick #1) Solar Soul at least pulled out a little damage control for the stunningly mediocre Reign of Light. In other words, it was clear by this point that they had hit their nadir, swirled around the bottom of whatever bottle was indulging their respective identity crises, and decided to swim back up to the surface and take a few breaths. Once again, I really, really enjoyed this when I first came across it, but was obviously listening through rose-colored...ear. After a few months or so, I came to the decision that this was not in fact some savior of a record to reaffirm they could attain the brilliant level they were at in the mid 90s.

However, the songwriting chops here seem to hearken to their glory days, and there are actually a few tunes on this one which I'd include with any career-wide highlight reel. It's still quite a bit cheesy in the lyrical department, recycling the 'let's all hold hands together' globalist hippie garbage promoted so heavily on the prior few albums, almost like this band of former Swiss occultists had suddenly discovered Krishna, or tantra, or universal unitarianism, or whatever. But at least the music here serves up a serious beating when matched against the electroid detritus of Reign of Light and Era One... The guitars still bounce back and forth between the inspirational hooks and chords of earlier works and the vapid dumbell chugging of the most LCD industrial metal you can fathom, but there is far more effort placed in the context of harmonies and other melodic structures. It's a busier album than Eternal, for example, and I really like that the guitars were reasserting themselves as a riffing force rather than passive accompaniment to the beats and synthesizers. Remarkably, it still adheres to that sense of Romantic escapism which defined that album as so unique at the end of the 90s...

...to the point that I really feel like, if you stripped off its production and just analyzed how the songs played out, it's like an amalgamation of tracks that were left on the cutting room floor during both the Eternal and Reign of Light sessions, but with a refined production that itself is stronger than either. There are a couple dragging, lame tracks where they err on the electronic side a little too much (like "Western Ground" or the Rammstein-in-the-Orient vibes of "Quasar Waves") but they also beat you over the head a few times, foreshadowing the aggression level of Above ("On the Rise", or the chorus to "Valkyries'"). The synthesized horns smack of Reign of Light and Passage both, the vocals are largely in the style they had been since 1994, but once awhile they'd surprise me with a tune that follows in the 'spirit' of a precursor, but adds a new twist in the keyboard pads used, or the direct construction of the rhythm guitars. For instance, "Olympus" seems like a callback to "Jupiterian Vibe", but the guitars are nearly as interesting, more so than something like "Ave!", which isn't so compelling, or the prior decade's "Tribes of Cain" which was obviously a less inspired rehash they didn't want on Passage itself due to the redundancy it would create for the listener.

In the end, though, Solar Soul just doesn't go far enough into either a new direction or back into the past to really have made much of a difference. It thankfully and deservedly avoided the dumping on that Reign of Light took, but after perhaps a half dozen listens I recall shelving it and rarely having the interest in hearing it again when Passage, Ceremony of Opposites or Eternal were available to me. A tight album, which fixes some of that awkwardness which stunted its predecessor, and confirms to the more confused corner of their audience that they weren't going vocal electronica full-time (which a few folks might have feared when hearing Era One); and not unpleasant to listen to. In 2007, I might have ranked this a point or so higher, but time hasn't been the kindest in terms of keeping this set of songs moored in my memory banks, so it remains among their least visited albums in my collection, excepting the two before it. If nothing else, Samael seemed to be gaining ground again, instead of losing it, and the gradual incline in quality it hastened has since continued through Above and Lux Mundi.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10] (push aside yesterday)

http://www.samael.info/Above/index.html

Samael - Reign of Light (2004)

There was a brief window of time in which I had convinced myself that Reign of Light was a great follow-up to Eternal, Samael's first foray into a more uplifting, poppy and dare I say 'Romantic' sound which further distanced them from the occult roots of their primal, nasty black metal origins. Thankfully, I was deluded only for a few shorts months as the record began to almost immediately flake off its replay value, and then the forest was seen for its trees: Reign of Light is an attempt to take the ideas presented on Eternal to a more accessible level by ramping up the production standards (one of the few iffy traits of its predecessor), imbuing the music with a more overtly techno/EBM presence redolent of early 90s KMFDM, and, at least for the most part, dumbing down the lyrics and guitars to the point that they seem fixated on pandering to a Euro Goth metal crowd who was still willing to accept the band after they had long since begun to shed the underground black metal fans who represented their original audience.

I'm not going to say this is totally shit, because there are a few saving graces here or there that render it a pretty harmless effort, but when I look back over the Swiss band's career, this is the full-length I am least likely to ever reach for on my CD racks. In fact, I sold it a few years after it was released, when living space started to trump my completist/collector mentality. By and large, though, this is an album where the band had seemingly reached the creative end of their evolutionary cycle, morphing into something akin to a caricature of the albums preceding it, and having very little new on the table apart from the slightly unwelcome (or rather unsuccessful) endowment of cheap electronics and the attempts at exotic, Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian influence to some of the guitars and synth lines, prominent in tunes like "Telepath", which are structurally the highlights of the album but do suffer from some poor compositional choices and goofy lyrical delivery. And those are really the two major banes of Reign of Light as a whole: lots of mundane muted guitar passages representative of the second rate industrial metal of the 90s and the Neue Deutsche Härte dance metal that Germanic bands like Rammstein were capitalizing on. Samael was always predisposed to fail at such heights due to the snarled, strange vocals of Vorphalack, so it's almost pitiful to hear them try...

A lot of the tunes are meant to make you shake your ass at the club, which would be fine if they somehow stuck out to memory, but sadly that takes the form of transforming the glorious synth tones so resplendent on records like Eternal and the immortal Passage and then applying them to these pumping beats and vocal lines that occasionally seem so ridiculous that they fall out of meter when Vorph tries to wrap them around the drums and keys. A few songs here, like "As the Sun" are outright fucking embarrassing...like early 80s Olivia Newton John workout videos given a grimy EBM spin with the nihilistic rasping of the deranged Swiss man. I'm not necessarily averse to such contrasts, having played for awhile in an industrial/extreme metal hybrid band where I'd growl over late night radio house synthesizers or such, but those were usually tongue in cheek situations; whereas Samael is dead serious, seemingly unaware of how absurd they sound. You see, the reason why this record became such a quick 'sinker' is that it does actually have a few clever guitar riffs, at best recapturing that universal, unusual industrial metal warmth of Eternal, but when you break everything down, there are probably only 2-3 tracks worth sparing, if we could somehow change the lyrics...

Yeah they are pretty uneven here. I was willing to buy this newfound, smug, life-embracing happy happy Samael for one record, and one record only, but here it just becomes ridiculous on a cut like "On Earth" where they ramble off a long list of cities (presumably those where their fans reside) and attempt to bind the entire human race together in an orgy of sentiment. So, like that awful scene in the Matrix sequel where the Zionians were having a vast, multicultural passion-rave of release, all colors and ages of bodies roiling together in the sheen of aspirant supermodel sweat. Only the Fluke tune during that scene was far better than this song or really anything on this album. It's just fucking goofy, man...what happened to the "Jupiterian Vibe" or "Baphomet's Throne"!? I mean you know a band's running out of ideas when the lyrics consist of a series of 'shout outs', and there are all these other songs about 'our vibrations' and 'our souls' and how 'we keep growing' in our new world and all this other ambiguous philosophical pap that sends the hearts a-flutter, or in my case the heart a-shitter. Fuck, "Reign of Light" itself has some of the most cliche and excremental lyrics you'll ever see in posi-metal. Perfect for those who think Theater of Tragedy's electro hardpop records were anything more than catchy club rock (to be fair, those were really damn catchy...this is not, at least not often).

The cleanliness of the mix only serves to make Vorph sound even more goofy when singing a lot of these, whereas Eternal had the smokescreen of sounding a bit more raw and spacey, and Passage was brilliantly poetic, angry and humanistic. This is not a disc entirely void of its hooks, and I like a few of the guitar melodies as they appear in the bridge of "Moongate" or the "Jupiterian Vibe"-like "High Above", which alongside "Telepath" represent the trio of highlights here. The ethnic female vocals are put to sparse, decent use and the mix of programmed drums, multiple atmospheric levels of keyboards and guitars are very evenly balanced, but really even the best songs seem like retreads of the songs on the two albums before it, only friendlier for the whole family. Half the material is just as corny as the vocal-half of the Era One/Lessons in Magick #1 double-album which was released later by Century Media (but written around the same time as this material). And, really, if any of this sounds even remotely interesting, just go straight for its successor Solar Soul, which has a much harder hitting guitar presence alongside the vocals, but still features the same fancy for the exotic, Eastern synthesizer lines while feeling slightly less awkward overall.

Verdict: Indifference [5.5/10] (hungry for life again)

http://www.samael.info/Above/index.html

Samael - Era One/Lesson in Magick #1 (2006)

Era One/Lesson in Magick #1 might have come as a surprise to many unaware Samael fans, but it was not wholly unexpected from this sector. One need only peruse some of the various remixes and ambient filler tracks the Swiss had included on their EPs to know they were pretty big fans of electronica and orchestration both, and when you consider the direction the harder material had been taking through Eternal and Reign of Light, then it's hardly coming out of left field that they'd tackle not one, but two full length albums of pure electronica...not entirely EBM, not quite industrial, but sort of a Samael-pop if that makes any sense. But that's not exactly the story, because these albums were pitched a few years before even Reign of Light got out the door, so I smell some degree of contractual filler here, even if Xytras and Vorph were enthusiastic about these being released to their audience in an official capacity. They had, after all, been working on another label and would again for the next heavier disc Solar Soul.

So: two discs, distinct from one another in that the first, Era One, features Vorph's vocals and lyrics, and they're actually pretty good lyrics, far more in depth and interesting than most of what we had to suffer through on Reign of Light. They still fall into that ambiguous, humanist perspective, but the imagery conjured is more complex and compelling than the preachy, let's all hold hands minimalist pap they had been spouting for a few years. Musically, it's throbbing electronic mid-paced stuff which is not unlike Reign of Light sans any of the heavier guitars...they exist here in a cheesy, sampled capacity, but they're nothing more than a chord or harmonic used as percussive backdrop for the lightning rod synthesizer lines. I'd compare it to Theater of Tragedy (Musique, Assembly) without the ethereal, cute female vocals and walls of guitar. Vorph's vocals have a monotonous, dorky consistency to them here not unlike Raymond's lines, robotic and solemn like you'd hear from a bunch of German EBM/New Hardness industrial. It either works ("Night Ride") or does not work ("Universal Soul"), depending on how well the vocals and central pulse figure into the backing ambiance and cosmical electric atmosphere. Oftentimes, when Vorph is trying to sing cleanly in a higher pitch ("Voyage"), it just collapses into hilarity, a mentally challenged version of Tiamat's Johan Edlund in which the pronunciation gets in the way of taking it seriously...

In Summary: ecstasy popping Samael for Euro-ravers, after hours at ski lodges where one employee sneaks his manager's key to let a bunch of freaky friends in. The Samael guys, trying to distance themselves as far as possible from their 80s and 90s legacy of excellence, show up for a few drinks and to look smug and handsome among the younger attendees. Nocturnal Alp clubbing.

The experimentation works FAR BETTER on the second disc, Lesson in Magick #1 which should have been released under the Xytras name. This content moves at a generally consistent pace with the first half of the release, but it's got sweet, throbbing electro bass lines, glimmering cascades of ambient starfall and pulsing arpeggios that convey elegance, machinery and mystique in even measures. Basically it's Xytras doting on his Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel Jarre and Vangelis influences and adding a subtext of his considerable talents at beats and orchestration which made records like Passage and Eternal so delightful. A little of The Orb in here, too, and this stuff would make a solid score for a futuristic video game platformer/shooter. I like that there is a good balance of calm and intensity among these tracks. In fact, Lesson in Magick #1 is good enough that I half wish to throw out the first disc so that it doesn't stain the experience when I crack open the CD case...tunes like "Flying High", "Red Unction" and "One With Everything" are simple but well made excursions into that turn of that spiffy, turn of the century FutureVision. I could put this on when I'm playing Android: Netrunner or re-reading Neuromancer for the umpteenth time.

Post-Summary: If you can get this on the cheap, and you love some of the electronica influences I've ascribed to Xytras, then pick it up solely for the second disc. I can't imagine who the first half could appeal to except for some really confused EBM goths whose incursions into metal music go no further than Samael, Moonspell and Nightwish...and stand in denial that the Swiss had fallen off the deep end, not to re-emerge until their hard hitting 'comeback which is not a comeback' Above in the year 2009

Verdict: Summary Indifference [6/10], Constituent Horror [4/10] and Delight [8/10]

http://www.samael.info/Above/index.html

Samael - Exodus EP (1998)

Being that there was next to no possibility of topping Passage (then and forevermore, apparently), Samael did the next best thing by releasing outtakes from those recording sessions as their own short form product to tide the audience over until a real followup could be produced. Exodus arrived to little fanfare and has since not generated any, and it's not hard to tell why: the songs here, while obviously similar to Passage and belonging to that same fertile, lunar creative streak, would have really weakened the album and demoted it from being 100% memorable. That's not to say the stuff here is poorly written or executed, in fact most of the tunes are better than what they'd produce for the Reign of Light album, but they clearly lack the compelling hooks and glorious Xytras orchestration to match their peers.

Half of the material, however, is merely re-recorded and re-configured from the Ceremony of Opposites album, not to mention the Rebellion EP, which is ironic because that release itself also had some re-recordings. Essentially they've tried to clean up "Ceremony of Opposites" and "Son of Earth", "From Malkuth to Kether" and tacked on an instrumental track drawn from the "Static Journey" pieces. So the majority of Exodus is just a retread, and not a particularly necessary or good one. The only value here would come down to the three tracks that might have otherwise ended up on Passage. Of these, the titular "Exodus" has enough strength and originality to its riff-craft that it wouldn't have stunk up the full-length too much, but there are rhythmic cues in there that would have seemed redundant to other cuts like "Rain". Still, the organs sound fine, the rhythm guitars churn along with strong enough, memorable note progressions, and Vorph and the drum programming both deliver with the same strength as their masterpiece.

"Tribes of Cain" is not far behind, creating a warlike pacing to it that once again would have suffered on Passage due to its aesthetic proximity to "Jupiterian Vibe". Again, the guitars are not at all throwaways, and the organ tones really tap into that cosmic, mythic pulse, but it's just not a song which continues to replay itself through my memory time and time again. If I was desperate for an analog to the material I already owned, it would suffice. Lastly, "Winter Solstice"...and you will not be surprised that this is just too similar to another Passage tune to include it, in this case the brilliant "Moonskin" which haunts and delights me to this day. A calmer pace, synthesizer pianos driving much of the action while Vorphalack spews his seductive poetry. The lyrics are quite similar to "Moonskin" but nowhere near as beautiful, and musically it's not even a fraction as memorable. So this all really illustrates why these selections were wisely shelved and not included alongside their betters...until, of course, the EP would later be reissued on Passage itself (bad move) much like Rebellion was joined with Ceremony of Opposites...

If you have that version, well then I apologize, because surely this material tarnishes the perfect progression of that album's track list. Do try to ignore it, but captured in its own environment, this really isn't so bad. The first two songs are far more interesting than the rest, but at least it's not just a shit mCD single like they'd put out for some of their later albums.

Verdict: Indifference [5.75/10] (remember the gate you got in)

http://www.samael.info/Above/index.html

Samael - Rebellion EP (1995)

Rebellion is at the very least an interesting little median between Samael's strongest albums, a relic from a time when most bands still seemed to care about releasing short-form works that had some unique content and genuine value. At the time it was easily the most experimental and varied of their recordings, if only because they saw fit to really test the waters beyond metal with some of Xytras' evocative, ritualistic ambient music with beats (something they'd further extrapolate with Era One/Lessons in Magick #1). But I also remember this for its iconic serpentine yin-yang cover imagery and for having a few pretty decent, harder hitting tunes which mark that transition from Ceremony of Opposites to the sheer brilliance which lay just past it...

Of course, two of these are the re-recordings of older tunes, "After the Sepulture" and "Into the Pentagram", which I'm sure somehow infuriated someone, but strangely did not suffer from being given a Passage-like makeover with the upgraded production. Not that I have a huge problem with the original incarnations, but these are crafted well enough that I can't say I'd mind if the process was applied to a bunch of their other seminal material. The bass and vocal effects sound superb, the rhythm guitar tone meatier (ala Ceremony) and the melodies and atmosphere really ramped up. The other heavy piece here is "Rebellion" itself, a rousing piece which canters along with the same, menacing and grooving cadence present on Ceremony only with the synthesizers creating that cosmic mystique which so enamored me to the following album. I'll say it: when I first experienced the EP, that was my hands down favorite tune of the band's career up to its day, but I've since retrogressed to enjoying a few of its predecessors more ("Baphomet's Throne", "Black Trip", etc). Still, really dig some of the unexpected progressions in the keyboards, and it still sounds bad ass.

The EP is rounded out with a cover of Alice Cooper's "I Love the Dead" which is integrated rather well into the Samael sound. Hearing Vorphalack's goofy rasp hit the melody in the chorus is admittedly quite hilarious. That tune always reminded me of high school, but can you imagine showing up to Prom with this guy? Inverted crucifix in his cumberbun?! Lastly there are the two versions of "Static Journey", the first of which feels like an electrified Dead Can Dance, all martial bombast and synthetic industrial sounds used to convey an almost Predator-like threat that develops along an axis of clanking pipe-work and even a pulsing, inevitable techno beat. Basically this tune sets up the instrumental/alternate version of Passage, and the hidden version at the end of the disc features Vorph doing his best Laibach/Das Ich impression to boot. Again, a little unintentionally silly sounding, but still pretty excellent (the instrumental take in particular).

These days, this is conveniently attached to the 2001 CD reissue of Ceremony of Opposites, and I think aesthetically it matches up pretty well with the content of that full-length, but even in its original format this was not at all a waste of money for any Samael fan who was content to follow the group's gradual transformation. Considering the promotional detritus maxi-singles they'd put out for future efforts, this one had the courtesy of standing on its own two feet, even if one of those feet was re-recorded/cover material. I still break it out from time to time, though it's obviously wanting when compared to its immediate full-length neighbors.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (instinct is not the path of man)

http://www.samael.info/Above/index.html

Samael - Ceremony of Opposites (1994)

For quite a few folks I know, Ceremony of Opposites is the point at which first contact was made with the music of Samael, and thus it cultivates a level of nostalgia that subsequent recordings might not ever have been able to generate. I can't say I share this sentiment, but it is easily the first album they released upon which the Swiss had truly come up with a distinct sound. It's probably also where a lot of the heretic-burning 'underground or die' pundits also fell off the wagon, for even though the band had been pretty simple up to its manifestation, this was a whole new level of accessibility and base riffing which eschewed any notion of complexity or raw, obscure malevolence. But fuck if this wasn't/isn't unique! In fact, despite a few of the band's own impersonators, and perhaps Therion's more Gothic/death oriented Lepaca Kliffoth, I can't think of much else I've heard over the course of tens of thousands, decades worth of CDs, which is much the same...pieces, perhaps, but not in full.

It's undoubtedly controversial to purists that one might label this 'black metal' at all, but at the core of the experience, that is what manifests; it simply exists as a stark contrast to what many of the band's Scandinavian peers were generating with a shift to tremolo-picked riffing, technicality and speed (Emperor, Immortal, Enslaved, etc). Instead, this is plodding, moderately paced warlike black metal with a lot of grooving hooks and warmer melodic chord progressions, so simplistic that at several points, when first experiencing the album, I wondered why half the riffs hadn't been written before. Here you also get a little more priority placed on the synthesizer elements, which prior had served largely for intros, interludes and instrumentals but would ingrain themselves into one of the most fundamental pieces of the band's sound. Ceremony of Opposites certainly takes its cues from the sophomore Blood Ritual, and you can clearly hear how this serves as a prototype for the albums to follow, but it also really stands on its own as a sort of 'gateway drug' into the band's evolving style, not to mention a swan song for the stricter adherence to occult-based lyrics which dominated the earlier catalog. Not, not my favorite Samael, but as a runner up, it will more than suffice.

Songs trend towards shorter, pop and rock-length structures which maintain a steady procession of new and intriguing content, but at the same time wrap up the record tightly in 36 minutes. Almost are the songs are equally mesmerizing and yet have an interlinked quality about them that generates the same aesthetic of some pompous infernal army marching through a nocturnal battlefield with their chests puffed out, horns polished and sharpened and ghastly standards unfurled. We're still hearing a lot of those base thrash and death metal elements in the chord patterns, but the rhythm guitars just have this memorable flow to them ("Black Trip", "Celebration of the Fourth", etc) which grooves on the conscience. Don't be mistaken, as I mentioned earlier, it does show a further proclivity towards symphonic arrangements, but this is very much a guitar record, because without those unshakeable chords, wrought in a loud, simultaneously blunt and spiked distortion (like a morningstar of post- modernized Hellhammer tone), grinding up against Vorphalack's nihilistic barking, this would fall completely fat. There are a few tunes later on in the track listing where the guitars do seem to revert a little more towards the style of the earlier albums, and these represent the least compelling moments of the experience, but even there they have that chunky predisposition for throwing out a catchy death metal line ("To Our Martyrs" bridge).

The bass playing is also a titanic improvement over Blood Ritual and Worship Him, not because it's more technical or involved, but because of its thick, syrupy texture to it which becomes important in propelling the percussion and forging out its own path; even when the lines are super minimalistic accompaniment for the pulse of the kick drum. The beats in general are exceedingly bare, rock oriented with the added weight of a few double bass patterns and muscular fills, and frankly nothing more intense or busy would really fit this set of tunes, but strangely enough they're not as effective as the programmed stuff on the followup album. Probably because this relies just so heavily on the listener's attention to those guitars, but there are instances like "Baphomet's Throne" where they fit incredibly well with the sampled horns. Most of the synth lines here are actually divided between choirs and horns, so it maintains a marginal nod to the exotic Celtic Frost influence (To Mega Therion). I wouldn't say they were quite as developed as they'd become on the next pair of full length albums, nor as essential, and even mildly 'cheesy' in nature, but it adds just a crucial fraction of atmosphere which rounds Ceremony out as something 'greater' and/or 'deeper' than the debut.

The lyrics, on the other hand, are fucking brilliant when paired up against either of the prior records, with plenty of quotable lines for listeners who can relate to the band's narcissistic mysticism, night sky fascinating and occult devotion. They've saved the best of this for last. Passage does possess a few logical throwbacks to similar themes, but I found that more deeply poetic, personal and broadly appealing in terms of its flow of imagery. At any rate, this and that album represent the pinnacle of the prose, since they'd eventually start penning drivel which came off like they were supposed to be the metal version of the Universal Unitarian Church or some tripe. Here, you can just revel in the evil, the masquerading about in human skin, the blood red seductions and the greater picture of the encroaching endtimes embedded in Samael's collective imagination. "Black Trip", "Flagellation", "Celebration of the Fourth" and "Son of Earth" are all particularly poignant, but not one tune here really lags behind in this regard.

First two albums: great. This one: the first bonafide classic in their repertoire. Tightly balanced between eloquence and barbarity. Simple riffs masquing complicated themes. Hidden beneath every groove, every structure, every rough-shod synthesizer, a Dark Prince leering at the listener. Hail the Goddamn Devil. Roil with the Flesh and Earth. One last time, before the call of the Cosmos.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10] (there in I plunge)

http://www.samael.info/Above/index.html