Urskumug - Am Nodr (2006)

Latvian metal. The prospect is not one I tend to think about, and outside of a few noted acts like Skyforger and Neglected Fields, it's a rather barren field, at least in the perception of the international underground. Urskumug might just be the band to change that, because they possess a measured maturity and distinct flavor which, while not entirely relieved of comparisons to other, noted acts, is rapt and focused enough to cast some illusions of originality. The ever shifting lineup situation might have crippled the band's progress to this point (Krauklis being the one central, persistent force), but make no bones about it: Am Nord is a quality debut album worth the time of anyone into pagan metal void of many cliches.

No, you won't find regiments of would be minstrels fluttering their archaic stringed stupidity in the guise of a Renaissance fair gone tragically wrong, and aside from the haunting choral synth in the bridge of the title track, you're not going to encounter fairycore vocals. The experimentation here is limited to tribal, haughty percussion ("Am Nodr"), breathy but brief ambient samplings that prefix and append a number of tracks, industrial overlays, and a squelching apocalyptic intro ("2010"). The rest is progressive, writhing black metal loaded with riffs, and a clear influence from thrash and death metal. Several of the compositions ("Time of the Jackdaw", "Mother of Halfworld") are loaded with 6-7 minutes of twists and turns that, while never truly catchy, are nonetheless interesting, but my favorites here are "Talking to a Shaman's Son" with its tiny, loopy melodies that poke through the surging banks of razor-edged chords, and the oddly titled "----" which sounds like a caustic spin on primal melodic death metal. "Beowulf" is another moody, perplexing trip with loads of atmospheric content.

For such an unknown herald, the production on Am Nodr is quite excellent, especially in the steady guitars and the way the tribal and darkly brooding atmospheric elements hover just beyond the din of the driving drums. The vocals are nothing special, just the expected black metal slather, but they're loud and in charge and are never quite claimed by the eviscerated ennui of so many front men in this field. Clearly, Urskumug (whose name is taken from a character in Robert Holdstock's fantasy classic Mythago Wood) has something to offer us, even if there is much refinement to be done. I do feel like a band calling itself 'tribal' black metal should probably have a more even split of tribal and black elements, which here lean far more on the latter, but a serious, initial statement like this can only promise better things to come...I hope?

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

http://www.myspace.com/tribalblackmetal

Usurper - Divine Spiritual and Intellectual Development (1990)

It might be telling that the very best of the Dutch thrash bands were those that rapidly made the transition into a death/thrash hybrid, and then often into full on death metal. Pestilence, Thanatos, Dead Head all need no introduction, but there were very few bands that stuck with the initial genre and met any kind of success. Groups like Mandator are often cited as having some relevance, but I'd disagree there, as their efforts were naught but wishful mediocrity. For this reason, a band like Usurper is a pretty rare find, a group that actually started off as a death metal act (two of the members put out a demo as Sepulchral Death) and then evolved into a pure thrash act. Divine Spiritual and Intellectual Development was their only full-length before the band would become extinct and the mantle of Usurper would be passed in the underground consciousness to the better known Chicago band.

This Usurper, however, had a sound not unlike most of their contemporaries of the day, in particular Metallica, Metal Church, Possessed and Testament. I mention the last two primarily for the vocal comparison, because Patrick Harreman had a fairly similar, sinister voice to Jeff Becera on Beyond the Gates or The Eyes of Horror, or Chuck Billy on The Legacy and The New Order. The riffs, on the other hand, feel like a mix of inspiration from Kill 'Em All, The Dark and earlier Destruction albums. A pretty direct equivalent might be England's Xentrix. There's nothing particularly standout or unique about Usurper, and their compositional skills were average for the day, but they do draft a number of effective bridge burners here like "Egoistic Mind", "Insane Decisions", "Infest the Convent" and what might have been considered a 'controversial' piece for the time, "Behind Mandela's Mask". "The Room" takes on a more progressive taste, if only for its constant noodling, and there are a few average bits like "Diseased Reality", but it's pretty strong throughout.

What I actually enjoy the most about this album is the production, with its airy, powerful guitar tone and reverb-strong mixing. They give it a timeless draw, almost like Testament's divisive album The Ritual (my personal favorite), though Usurper is more directly thrash, with few nods to pure heavy metal that the Bay Area band would throw in there. The band rarely shows off anything beyond the basic riffage ("The Room" and a few other leads excepted), and if a fair criticism can be made, it's that they were simply not ambitious or catchy enough to ever land a chance against the better known European, Brazilian or US thrash bands. But despite its lack of overachieving personality, Divine Spiritual and Intellectual Development is quite likable, doesn't seem to age all that much, and is adequate when I'm seeking a pure late 80s thrash fix sans the ambition of their betters.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

Father Befouled - Morbid Destitution of Covenant (2010)

Father Befouled is another of the many bands in recent years who have devoted themselves to reaching straight back to the 90s, tearing out the essence of Incantation's charnel, atmospheric aesthetics, and bringing the style forward to a new era in which it poises as a fine counterbalance to the technical excess that has driven the genre far beyond the reach of many of its originators. Granted, they're better at this than most of their peers, and that's because they seem to take it quite seriously, as opposed to a joke or 'the thing to do' by broaching some bandwagon.

Father Befouled's members come from an interesting pool of sources. You've got Ghoat of USBM act Hills of Sefiroth on vocals and guitars, joined by his band mate Wayne Sarantopoulous from Festered and Encoffination on drums, whom you might recognize as 'Elektrokutioner', he of about 400 bands, almost single-handedly attempting to resurrect the primacy of early death metal into a modern empire. They're joined by an enigmatic guitarist 'Ghoul', and bassist J. Kohn of raw black shredders Prosanctus Inferi and Black Funeral. An eclectic range of experience here, but you can rest assured that all participants are committed to the vile pallor of authentic sound, the raw and cavernous pedigree required to make an album like Morbid Destitution of Covenant function. And it does.

Take for instance, the brief track "As Reverence Descends", really just an intro to "Paradise of Desecrated Nothingness", but astoundingly poignant as its doom-driven chords groan out across the ringing feedback at the climax. "Paradise..." itself continues to let the feedback soar, while a disgusting bitch of a slugging riff begins to stagger out into a morbid metroplex of wrenching horror. "His Divine Pestilence" is another horrid drudge, but the band does not merely play slow; they can thunder over you like an unholy approximation of Bolt Thrower and Incantation in "Testament of Unholy Essence", "Christless Mass" and "Sulfurous Majesty Above Man", and the Morbid Destitution of Covenant ultimately becomes a strident, dynamic sophomore that cements Father Befouled as one of the band's to be reckoned with in this movement.

Usually, the albums in these gentlemen participate are rough sounding at best, but I was taken aback at just how clean the mix here is. Almost all the atmosphere is delivered straight through the ruptured attendance of the guttural vocals, and the bludgeoning resonance of the guitar lines. You won't find funeral keys or other tricks infesting the songs to provide the underworld aesthetics, these are conjured directly through the death metal, and in this way the band truly succeeds as a direct medium to their idols. Father Befouled don't exactly create memorable riffing fare, but that's generally not the point of an album like this. It beats you down through the graveyard dirt to the catacombs belief, and sacrifices you upon a forgotten altar, a cure for sunshine, rainbows and ponies.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

http://www.fatherbefouled.com/

Unmoored - Kingdoms of Greed (2000)

If the cover to Unmoored's sophomore album Kingdoms of Greed seems familiar to you, that's because it's an inversion of Seagrave's cover for the Pestilence compilation Mind Reflections, which had already come out some years before. Sort of a strange choice, but there's at least an alternate, simpler cover, since someone else obviously made the connection. As for the music itself, it's a quite enormous step above Cimmerian in quality, but that step comes at the expense of an almost complete shift in tone and style to an aggressive strain of melodic death metal which is more At the Gates than a sodden impression of Entombed death & roll with melodies and Gothic bits sprinkled over the frosting.

Kingdoms of Greed comes firing out of the gates after a brief Poltergeist sample, with a wall of grinding force called "Feral Blaze". This essentially sounds like Slaughter of the Soul-era At the Gates material with a slightly grinding edge to it, and less memorable riffs. Still, it decimates the entire debut album in about 3.5 minutes, and it's followed by the even more impressive, scathing "Tellurian Crown", which carves out glorious melodies and technical, furious guitars into a grim mountain of force. Some of the clean vocals and rock grooves do creep their way back into this, but they're plotted out better in the song. "Self-Invoked" returns to the sheer ass-kicking of the first track, and "Torchbearer" even commits elements of melodic black metal to an ambitions 7 minutes which never really feels boring. "Milestone" and "Thrown Off the Scent" are both tight melodic death tunes, and there are also a pair of interesting breaks in the action, the tonal, progressive ballad "Final State Part II" which sounds like a poor man's Queensryche, and the more impressive, folksy medieval grace of "In the Dark Midst of Winter".

Christian Ävestam proves here that's he's so stuffed with talent that it's flowing out his ears, and even if Kingdoms of Greed is not perfect, and not Unmoored's finest hour, that extra effort is appreciated here. Some will probably argue that he was just jumping on the bandwagon of At the Gates, Eucharist and so forth, but clearly there is still enough of the personality he wanted to project upon the debut album Cimmerian, only here it's done right. I could skip the first of the ballad pieces, and a few of the songs don't measure up to others, but in all, this is an effective and cohesive assault of aggressive death that creates an immediate 180 in potential, and might thrill any who seek out the more obscure melodic death works of the late 90s.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10] (yesterdays may drown)

http://www.unmoored.com/

Unmoored - Cimmerian (1999)

It's almost too funny that the opening track on the Unmoored debut album is called "Trendmade Bitch", because it sounds quite like the initial death & roll offerings of bands like Entombed and Desultory, with a verse riff pretty close to "Eyemaster". That's not at all what I was expected when I saw the cover art, and might surprise fans who have only been exposed to their later, far greater album Indefinite Soul-Extension, but that's what we're getting here. To be fair though, Cimmerian was released a few years after its recording, and the band had roots in Gothic metal, so such a sound evolving here is a natural course, one that they would eventually develop into something superior.

The death & roll comparisons continue with "Now and Forever", which uses simple, grooving hooks until it can develop a moody, Gothic metal chorus in the bridge. I'm not adverse to the latter, but the getting there can be a little dull. Suddenly, "Down at Zero" explodes, faster and glazed with desperate, effective melodies, and offers some hope that the album might yet have some kick to it. "Blood By Tragedy" is a mess of clean chorus parts and unfortunate Korn or Godsmack-like schizoid chugs in the bridge, though there are a few decent riffs tucked in, and "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow" has a guitar part pretty similar to Metallica's "Shortest Straw" fueled by thick Entombed death-punk and a pretty bad breakdown groove riff. "Warsong" and "Solution 45" are entirely skippable, and "Final State" sees the band reverting entirely back to their early Goth roots, a morose piece with manly clean vocals, similar to Cemetery or Type O Negative, only bad...

It's not worth dwelling too hard on this album, because Christian Ävestam would go on to better things for himself in Incapacity, Miseration, Scar Symmetry, and Unmoored itself, but I'm not going to lie, it's a little lame even for a debut. There are very few riffs outside of "Down at Zero" that warrant attention, and the styles clash too openly here, as if Unmoored is not yet sure of itself and its direction. The mix is fairly weak for a Sunlight Studios job with Tomas Skosgberg, and the clean vocals are often embarrassing. Where it rocks & rolls, it fails to live up to the Entombed model. Sure, that band was starting to release some regretful material themselves by this time, but at least kick our butts like Wolverine Blues did. Instead, the album seems to revel in its own mediocrity, on a clearance rack somewhere between the melodeath explosion, death & roll meltdown, and Swedish Goth metal phenomena.

Verdict: Fail [4.5/10] (no use sowing what you cannot till)

http://www.unmoored.com/

Agalloch - Marrow of the Spirit (2010)

2006's Ashes Against the Grain nearly lost me. After being a huge fan of The Mantle and their previous efforts the new direction was off-putting for me, and I couldn't help but scratch my head. In 2008 they released The White EP and it was a curious but fantastic offering, though it was noted this was not in fact indicative of the band's main direction. It was a branching path off the main highway of their LPs, heavily acoustic and featuring several samples of the 1973 film The Wicker Man and a song taking lyrics from A.S.J. Tessimond's "Birch Tree."

After a sorrowful cello intro (Jackie Perez Gratz guesting, also lends a hand in "To Drown") to the sound of rain there is a thundering of drums and, lo, black metal! "Into the Painted Grey" kicks off with the band going full bore, then losing the drums and then slowly building back up to the first vocal passage. Haughm's vocals remain virtually unchanged thusfar, though this time there is a noticeable increase in energy right off the bat. Perhaps not enough to sway those that think Agalloch is the epitome of boring, treehugging excess, but an interesting change nonetheless. Their acoustic touches remain amongst the guitarwork, welcome after Ashes Against the Grain's focus otherwise, an experiment perhaps not suited for a band such as Agalloch. At least, not yet. There is a glorious interlude halfway through the aforementioned song, tribal drums and some simple yet lovely guitar work. The whole song is dark and yet possessing a hopeful quality, aural shafts of sunlight through storm clouds.

"The Watcher's Monolith" continues down their well-worn natural/spiritual black metal avenue, with folksy brushstrokes throughout, familiar but well done nonetheless. "Black Lake Nidstång" begins with crickets and other sounds of the night and more mournful sounds, though this time piano. Briefly, as if concluding the story of the previous song. Whispered vocals showcase the typical Agalloch songwriting, solid, befitting the music with their epic and sad tales. Though it is apparently not a guest singer, but there is a vocal section just after seven minutes in the song that impresses me with John Haughm's versatility. It is a yell positively dripping with emotion, the true definition of a 'cry', and text cannot do it justice. Nathan Carson of Witch Mountain lends his talents to a very cool extended synth interlude within the song. "Black Lake Nidstång" is easily the best track on the album and one of Agalloch's best.

I am torn when rating this album because I absolutely love it. It is refreshing, extremely satisfying, and intoxicating like a good beer. However, despite the steps more away from atmospheric folk and into metal to some degree, that folk quality is still there and inevitably will not resonate with some. If you are willing to give it a chance, by all means, do it. For those that are fans you are definitely in for a treat.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10]

http://www.agalloch.org/

Bloody Sign - Chaos Echoes (2010)

France's black and death metal acts are blossoming into a beautiful carnation for the lapel of metal. One of those that perhaps straddles both genres is Bloody Sign, an unquestionably talented three piece, the only question being when they might perhaps move from being pretty damn good to elite status much like countrymen Peste Noire and Yyrkoon.

There is some unorthodox technicality lurking in the drums and guitar work, furious occult discordance, speckled with calculated stops and even a hint of dark melody here and there. With the dense production and a heavily reverberated bass interlude thrown in for good measure, there is a punishing quality accompanied by a haunting airiness, for lack of a better word, that helps embellish the abyssal nature of the album.

The eldritch themes are bolstered by Hagend's raspy scream, occasionally joined with clean touches beneath the surface, and the maleficent thrum of his bass, an otherwordly delight. One of these is a dedicated bass interlude, with the guitar and drums each getting their own platform as well along with the intro and outro. However, if you were to remove these you would be left with essentially an EP in the album's duration. Not exactly worrisome considering one of the best metal albums did not top 30 minutes (you know the one, don't you?), however in some cases (such as this one) I can't help but want more.

Each track is solid, Morbid Angel influenced death metal with some black metal feel that is the backbone of Bloody Sign's sound. Not a br00tal type onslaught but nonetheless a lashing of violence and aggression. "Tongues of Shadows" and the outro are sure to please Mithras and Yyrkoon fans, tendrils of unlight reaching out to beckon you into a void of unimaginable terror.

Chaos Echoes is one of the more convincing death metal efforts I've heard in a relatively sparse year, most definitely worth a listen for those French aficionados and certainly another quality inclusion to the French catalogue.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10]

http://bloodysign.metalspirit.net/

Deathchain - Death Gods (2010)

I'll be the first to admit that I was not expecting much out of this album, as my reaction to all of the prior Deathchain output has been lukewarm at best. Great band name wasted on a fairly average attempt at death/thrash. However, it might be best not to think of Death Gods as anything other than sheer death metal, because it's clearly an amalgamation of acts like Morbid Angel, Krisiun, Nile and Behemoth, only more potent thanks to its truly dark tones. Considering what a great job Corpse did with last year's Winterwolf debut album (Deathchain actually started as Winterwolf for its first two demos, then split off into a separate entity), perhaps I should not have been so completely surprised by the quality here.

The guitars are not only enormous sounding, like bludgeons from beyond the grave, but the riffs that they spit forth are quite intense through "The Crawling Chaos", "Scimitar", "The Beyond" and the thick chugging force of "We Are Unearthed". They're not always the catchiest, and that is perhaps the one fact holding this record back from a perfect score, but you will nevertheless feel each hammering chord like it were being played upon your spine. Kassara's drums thunder across the opaque nexus created through the guttural vocals and weighted guitar lines, while the bass lies beneath as a fundamental leviathan. Each track is dynamic and interesting, with some variation from the herald of "Storming the Death Gods" through the smoldering maple syrup grooves of "Howling of the Blind". The band even manages to pull off a 12+ minute epic here, "Cthulhu Rising", without it growing tired through its highly varied sequences.

Sometimes, if you throw enough meat into the machine, you'll arrive at the perfect ground beef, and I'd be honored to spread Death Gods on any sandwich or pasta dish. The tones alone are enough to floor most listeners, but the Finns have seen fit to also include great music, and without directly biting off the trendier styles of the day: brutal US tech death, atmospheric Incantation worship or 90s Swedish fellatio. Deathchain might incorporate trace elements of all these and more, but they manage to emerge a force unto themselves, a fresh voice to welcome the end of all things, the crushing weight of an Elder God leaning gradually onto its prey so it can savor every moment of their asphyxiation and the breaking of their pathetic frames. It's about fucking time!

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]

http://www.deathchain.com/

Westering - Help a Body (2010)

Based on the strength of the opening track alone, I truly thought Westering was onto something with his debut Help a Body. Massive walls of guitar tone greet your imagination with a simple, yet hypnotic fiber, never ceasing to stream into the rear corners of your mind. It's almost like Nadja and The Angelic Process were taken over by an atmospheric black metal guru like Wrest, then given a decidedly darker spin and pitch. At least for the duration of "We Buried Him Preciously", I was in some remote paradise, mentally standing with a first person view of the album's cover art, while wafts of city wind blew down and threw me, disintegrating me through their collective germs and carried ghosts.

Then, a tonal ambient piece known as "Only Forever" breaks up the procession before "My Naked Hands", which sounds...almost exactly the same as "We Buried Him Preciously". Sure, the notes are different here, but their pattern is not nearly so breathtaking, even though the guitars continue to writhe in their melancholic grime. Then, there's another tonal ambient piece in "To Lurch and Fall", which heralds "And Old Confusion", a song even less inspiring than "My Naked Hands." Can you see the pattern of diminishing returns? Well, thankfully the creator, Bryan Thomas, intercepts this downward spiral with "I Soon Will Be Myself Again", which is the best sheer ambient track on the album, and "Gestures in the Dark", though samey sounding next to the other heavy tracks, is at least superior to everything since the opener. Another ambient track follows ("Vestiges"), and the ghastly, shimmering "White Haired", which once again offers only the most subtle variation on the formula.

Thus, Westering very quickly becomes a two trick pony. You've got the pure ambient side, which is for the most part nothing special, and then the sweltering volume and beloved feedback. The latter is by far the more interesting, if only Thomas could configure the notes with such love as he did in the opening track. Now, this album is meant to be a journey, and taken as one single, 40 minute body, you can hardly argue with its consistency, but the journey winds down all too quickly, the promise and beauty of the first six minutes soon mangled by repetition and filler. I adore the tones Thomas creates, and his minimalist approach is one I can certainly stand behind, but sometimes I require more than just sound itself to gauge my interest, and this project would benefit enormously from some more careful writing, and perhaps by merging the predictable ambient tracks into the larger, metallic discourse.

Verdict: Indifference [6.25/10]

http://www.myspace.com/westeringus

Bloodgut - Nekrologikum Evangelikum Pt I: Zombie Reign 2666 A.D. (2010)

Isn't everybody sick of zombies yet? Between all the video games, video game expansions, horror comedies, comic books, films, and TV adaptations of comic books (The Walking Dead), you'd think we as a collective species might have had it up to our sawed off shotguns with the shambling, all devouring dead. Granted, we're unlikely to ever be rid of the trend in death metal, since they provide no end of debasing, gore-drenched humor and a serious menace to anyone they can in their jaws. Rogga Johansson, he of the 50 or so Swedish death metal bands, has decided to put a futurist spin on the cliche, a concept album set centuries in the future where flesh eaters take on a religious importance, a domain of cannibal corpses that commit acts of sacrilege in the name of hunger.

Pretty heady for Rogga, I will admit, but when it comes right down to it, Bloodgut is just another in his endless expurgation of creativity, with a fuzzier tone than his better known bands like Paganizer, Ribspreader and Revolting. This is your basic old school death metal, and unfortunately it's not long on riffs, so what might have been a great and somewhat unique burst of imagination is sadly reduced to just another morbid, self-serving Swedish splatter platter forced to succeed on its vomit drenched atmosphere alone. You've got the primacy of an Autopsy or Repulsion here tearing through such tasteful numbers as "Priesteater", "Gutting a Nun" and the doomed gait of "In the Butcherhole", that last being one of the most wrenching and effective pieces on the album, but the really raw, live feel to Matte Fiebig's drums doesn't seem to hold up the guitar tone all that well, and the vocals rarely have the exciting inflection Johansson is capable of emitting.

When I saw the great cover art (by Hungary's Peter Sallai) and then realized this was some sort of far flung, cohesive concept, I was quite excited, as I have grown tired of the 'basics', which Rogga has obviously already mastered in Carve, Paganizer, Demiurg, and so many others. The contents of the Nekrologikum Evangelikum are rather underwhelming aside from the guitar tone (likely to spin a few heads), but judging that it's a 'Part I', I can assume we will be visited my the Bloodgut again in the near future, and I can only hope that the writing improves to match the crushing apocalyptic undead theme. As it stands, this is really only going to satisfy those deliberately seeking out the most primal, familiar riffs in death metal, and the few touches of atmosphere are just not enough to overcome its mundane delivery. Check out Putrevore, either Revolting album or the latest Demiurg for a better time than this.

Verdict: Indifference [6/10]

http://www.myspace.com/bloodgut