Category: Nplmstn’s Reviews

Obituary – The End Complete

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Lame

While The End Complete may be an album that sold very well in its day, and is fondly remembered as one of the band’s better albums, to me it’s always listened like a pale imitation of the successes Obituary had before it. It’s the sound of a band running into a creative brick wall as they attempt to replicate their older albums with little success, resulting in a mediocre and redundant effort that signalled the start of an incredibly long barren stretch in the band’s discography. It’s a totally uninspired (and uninspiring) album that offers nothing to challenge the listener at all, whether they’ve heard their older albums or not.

The End Complete is very much a stylistic replica of Cause of Death, which is what holds this release back. While that certainly isn’t a bad formula to copy (though Slowly We Rot is the superior of their two genuine classics) the execution leaves something to be desired. The same style of Celtic Frost-inspired brutal, tense, atmospheric and mid-tempo death metal is attempted here, but the band does not have any fresh riffs to put into the songs or any new and interesting ideas or song structures to progress their formula, and what results are 9 inferior and redundant retreads of what the band had done before. The songs here never challenge or excite the listener by doing anything beyond alternating between boring mid-tempo riffs and slightly less boring faster riffs over and over; there are no curveballs here to speak of. None of the riffs are really ear-grabbing or interesting (certainly not nearly as much as past efforts) and the band can’t even get by on aggression alone as nothing is performed with much intensity or vigour. When the band speed up the music develops some kind of pulse but the mid-tempo drudgery that defines a lot of this makes the album very boring to listen to on the whole.

Quite amazingly, given that the preceding two albums are some of the most atmospheric OSDM albums ever recorded, this thing has no atmosphere to speak of – a consequence of the lacklustre material being delivered in a tired-sounding way. The band simply go through the motions here and deliver an uninspiring take on what should be a foolproof formula; even those who haven’t heard Cause of Death would find this to be a severely underwhelming and also-ran album. The production doesn’t help either, with everything sounding remarkably quiet and soft. There’s no low-end to the sound at all, the drums sound like plastic and have no real impact, which is a shame as the drum performance here isn’t bad; it just has to complement substantially inferior material. The guitars meanwhile sit in the middle of a lot of space with a tone that isn’t terribly thick or distorted. It makes the music sound more tired and stale than it already is, as well as even less heavy or intense than it could have been. The production woes combined with the lack of good material and performances makes for music that sounds very meek, which isn’t a word I’d ever thought would describe a death metal album. The only aspect that really holds up is John Tardy’s vocal performance; his distinctly disgusting, high-pitched puking growls that are splattered all over the music are as strong as they were before.

The End Complete is a creatively stagnant bore of an album that offers nothing to actively engage the listener. At best it is death metal-flavoured background noise, or something that sounds like the work of a third-rate Obituary clone. The band do nothing to further their sound here, it’s as if they tried to make this sound as mediocre and same-y as possible. Amazingly, their following album World Demise is a step up from this; at least something new was attempted there, even if it doesn’t always work – this meanwhile sits in their discography like Cause of Death‘s malnourished, deformed twin. There is nothing of interest here, move along.

Rating: 48%

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Extreme Noise Terror – Damage 381

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No longer cursed to crawl

Damage 381 is a ripper of an album, and it would be, given what it represents for the band. It features Barney Greenway, who had just been kicked out of Napalm Death due to his frustrations over the mid-tempo, grooving direction taken on Fear, Emptiness, Despair and Diatribes, a sound he had almost no part in (outside influence had impacted the musical direction.) Extreme Noise Terror’s then-former vocalist Phil Vane had been convinced to leave ENT and join ND, leaving the former with no vocalist. ENT had just come off of re-recording their debut for the third time so it’s safe to say they too felt frustrated with the direction of their music. Barney joined the fold and the result of this swap was an album clearly born out of a desire to rekindle a flame that had died out with time.

From start to finish, the band waste no time in delivering 33 or so minutes of absolutely blistering and explosive deathgrind. Every last song here is loaded with furious and fiery performances all around. Barney’s growls and grunts here are lower and heavier than what he did on any of Napalm Death’s groove albums, and his voice contrasts well with Dean Jones’ higher shouts, with the two frequently alternating throughout songs and both of them delivering very powerful and rapid-fire performances. The riffs here are an even mixture of death metal, hardcore punk and grindcore, in a similar stylistic mould to Utopia Banished or Harmony Corruption and the drumming is very active, consisting of numerous long stretches of blast beats and double bass as well as simpler, slower beats spiced up with many fills.

The band frequently mix it up in a song to produce something multi-faceted that keeps the listener on their toes and interested, with songs consisting of fast, blasting grind-inspired sections with up-tempo death metal material and slower, more grooving sections. Whatever the style, the music never fails to deliver great riffs and interesting, propulsive drumming. While the band doesn’t reinvent the wheel here, they really don’t need to as everything is so tightly and convincingly performed it manages to be fresh and interesting throughout – the album never fails to deliver intense and inspired performances as well as track after track of supremely heavy deathgrind, with no song or the album coming close to overstaying its welcome. The production is punchy and clear, with the sound accentuating the guitars and drums nicely and giving them the impact they need.

Sadly this union with Barney was not to last – Phil was booted from ND for not making the grade and Barney was asked to return to the band, but this wasn’t a fruitless situation. Aside from this album, which is the band’s finest hour, ND clearly started listening to Barney more on following albums as their music’s intensity increased, before leaving Earache with the turn of the millennium and shifting to a purer death/grind sound. As great as the legacy this situation had on ND’s music is, this album is honestly even better than a lot of what ND has done since then – do not skip this one out.

Rating: 90%

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Type O Negative – Slow, Deep and Hard

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Agony and ecstasy

Slow, Deep and Hard is an odd place for Type O Negative to start out, as it’s honestly not a whole lot like what would end up putting the band on the map. Rather, this listens more like the last Carnivore album – while there are certainly elements to the music here that weren’t present in Carnivore’s music (ones that would end up on Bloody Kisses) this still has a lot of influence from those old albums and the feel of it is certainly much more in line with them too. It isn’t so much a bridge between the two bands as even with these extra influences its closer to Carnivore than anything TON would put out, but in retrospect the indication of a new direction is certainly there.

Of the 6 actual compositions here, 5 of them are towering, mighty epics with multiple distinct sections to them. The simplest way to describe them are lengthy feedback-inflected doom metal numbers with thrash metal/crossover sections spliced in, along with strong goth overtones due to the presence of keyboards and more melodic riffing. Thrash was obviously the backbone of Carnivore’s sound, doom metal isn’t a foreign influence (several tracks across their catalogue played around with it) and even the rare acoustic break here doesn’t feel that dissimilar to the one in ‘Male Supremacy’, but with this release the thrash and doom (the latter sometimes spiced up with goth influence) are in equal parts the core of this album’s sound. It’s as if every element present in their sound beforehand has been extended out and turned up to 11; the occasional gloomy doom passage is now the bulk of each track, the thrash sections are even angrier and more blood-pumping than before and what few tender, melodic moments there were are now found at various key points throughout each song, with keyboards being there to help emphasise them.

Critical to this blend of ideas are the performances themselves, which are excellent. The drumming is unobtrusive but still creative and inventive, managing to keep the beat and throwing in a good few fills and double bass sections while not subtracting from the meat of the album; the guitars and vocals. The thrash riffs here don’t feel at all stale despite this album’s 1991 year of release because Carnivore were one of the progenitors of that NYHC-flavoured crossover thrash style; and indeed none of them would feel out of place on a Carnivore album, being lethally aggressive and memorable. The slower doom metal passages are great too; the more atonal moments such as those found in ‘Der Untermensch’ are heavy and oppressive, hitting as hard as the earliest sludge metal bands that were getting started around the time. The more melodic moments backed up with keyboards are a nice touch of variation and give the album a lot of character, and while the keys here aren’t as lush as they’d be on later albums Josh Silver still does a lot with a little. This is especially evident on ‘Unsuccessfully Coping…’ and ‘Prelude to Agony’, which both take on the larger-than-life quality of something like ‘Bloody Kisses’ at points especially combined with the vocal delivery, the latter having always been Carnivore’s and TON’s trump card. Pete’s vocals here are as captivating and distinctive as the always were and would be. He mixes up his hardcore punk-tinged bellowing during the thrash sections with more tonal work to fit the more melodic sections, and is backed up by gang vocals at various points to great effect (‘I know you’re fucking someone else!’ and ‘Waste! Of! Life!’ are truly legendary moments.) He even starts to incorporate goth-tinged bass-baritone singing that would become a staple of later TON albums, most notably on ‘Prelude to Agony’. His position here as a very flawed narrator is pulled off very well; he truly comes across like a troubled, deranged and sick person. Whatever style he shoots for he always manages to pull off with amazing conviction, and whatever emotion the lyrics are trying to convey he always delivers.

What really separates this from TON’s later albums is the general atmosphere, one that results from how well the band work as a unit and how evocative the music manages to be as a whole – even at its most goth rock-infused this doesn’t have any of the dry, dark, tongue-in-cheek goth vibes of Bloody Kisses or the romantic, lovey-dovey feel of October Rust. Instead, the vibe throughout is a really ugly and dark one, which ties into its concept of murdering one’s lover due to infidelity and then taking one’s own life out of guilt over the act. The feel is much more in line with Carnivore’s deliberately offensive schtick than anything that would follow and the sheer bitterness and hatred on display here is something to behold. The more keyboard-y sections recall those later TON albums a bit more, but the doom sections are crushing, droning and gloomy (and at times bring to mind World Coming Down) while the thrash sections are no-holds-barred bursts of anger. This atmosphere is a big part of why this album works as well as it does, as the songs here are honestly abrupt collisions of crossover/thrash and doom/goth with no real progression between them. Rather than coming across like an incoherent and jumbled mess however, the songs listen more like emotional roller-coasters full of twists and turns, ones that consistently keep the listener guessing as Pete tells his depraved tales of murder and suicide. The music shifts tone with the lyrics perfectly, with the murderous ‘Prelude to Agony’ being the darkest and most crushing song here and the final track ‘Gravitational Constant…’ being a slab of pure, morose goth/doom to fit its themes suicide ideation.

There are a couple of questionable outliers in the track list that are worth mentioning – ‘Glass Walls of Limbo (Dance Mix)’ is a little under 7 minutes of gloomy industrial noise which is underpinned by a singular metallic clattering beat while numerous layers of non-lyrical vocalisations and chants get worked into it. While it’s a pretty interesting mood piece it breaks up the flow of the album somewhat, and given that these sounds are nowhere else to be found on the album it listens like a strange stylistic detour that doesn’t lead to anything or advance the narrative of the album. ‘The Misinterpretation of Silence…’ meanwhile starts a long tradition of humorous interludes on TON albums, and it’s literally 64 seconds of silence. It’s hard to hate a blank canvas but there’s no joke here at all; it flat out did not need to be here. All this said however, this is still a timeless and one-of-a-kind debut that only Pete and the boys could have come up with. Any fan of metal should listen to this at least once; it’s truly one of the greatest and most unique albums in metal, and an amazing start for an amazing band.

Rating: 93%

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Type O Negative – Life Is Killing Me

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A fun old time

In common with every Type O Negative album, Life is Killing Me represents a major departure from what precedes it; a total 180 in fact. World Coming Down truly is depression captured flawlessly in auditory form, with it being comprised of nothing but dirge after dirge of sheer despair. It is also their most complex and most difficult to digest album, with a lot of the material being elaborate, wilfully ugly, and nightmarish. This meanwhile is a considerably more scaled back album, and while TON’s distinct personality and musical talent does shine through most of the time – admittedly very brightly at some points – what results is easily their weakest album (The Origin of the Feces is a joke, not an album.)

What brings this album down several notches is that as stated the material here is scaled back in every way imaginable; the scope, musical and lyrical depth, atmosphere and presentation of these songs are all toned down considerably. There is very little approaching outright doom metal here like World Coming Down, rather nearly all the material is very straightforward goth flavoured rock songs with some strong pop leanings like some of the tracks off Bloody Kisses or perhaps October Rust, though they typically do end up sounding a bit heavier than the latter album as they lack the same highly spacey, lush, reverb-laden production or as much of a keyboard presence. There are even a few tracks here (most notably ‘I Don’t Wanna Be Me’ and ‘I Like Goils’) that are remarkably punky and fast, these represent the most uniformly speedy songs the band would ever write barring the likes of ‘Kill All the White People’. These songs are altogether much more straightforward, shallow and predictable musically. The music isn’t particularly heavy or complex or atmospheric, it doesn’t challenge the listener and it doesn’t deliver anything too unique beyond Pete’s distinctive bass-baritone voice.

In general the entire album is very easy to listen to and digest; you can’t get lost in its atmosphere and it doesn’t throw many curveballs at the listener. All of the material here is perfectly good; this is about as fun and upbeat as the band’s music would get, even more so than ‘My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend’. This is a good pop metal album for sure, with something like ‘I Don’t Wanna Be Me’ or ‘Less than Zero (<0)’ being excellent examples of making this inferior formula work by simply being entertaining and exciting. There are a few songs here that do stand up to their older works however; absolutely massive songs like the very lush, keyboard-heavy and agonising ‘Anesthesia’ (a top 5 TON song), the moody and downtempo ‘Nettie’ or the doomy ‘The Dream is Dead’ are loaded with atmosphere and excellent riffs. They feature the best arrangement and usage of keyboards on the album, as well as deepest and most heartfelt lyrics here, which all goes a long way to giving them the atmosphere that is so lacking here. Sadly however, songs like these and the nostalgic ‘(We Were) Electrocute’ are the minority.

The issue is that for most of the album’s tracks, even compared to the most rocking or pop-leaning moments of past albums, there is a lack of the larger than life atmosphere and grand presentation of something like ‘Can’t Lose You’, let alone a ‘Black No. 1’ or ‘Love You to Death’. This is a first in TON’s discography; every album prior was dripping in atmosphere and genuinely sounded massive. Tracks here like ‘How Could She?’ or the title track are all fun and good while on, like everything else here thanks to the songwriting talent of the band and their ability to write a good hook, but as soon as they leave you find they don’t leave much of an impression. World Coming Down is a hammer blow to the heart, October Rust is enchanting and hauntingly beautiful, while this isn’t anything approaching that. The shallowness of the lyrics don’t help; not that the topics here can’t be relatable or poignant but instead of sensual romance or 11 minute dirges about self-loathing and suicide, it’s all fairly simple matters or otherwise not-that-serious takes on what could be deep topics (revenge, not wanting to be yourself, Pete’s deceased father.) A big part of TON’s music has been the lyrics, they are critical to setting the mood and atmosphere of the album and so with simple and shallow lyrics this album doesn’t have much emotional depth to it.

As a piece of entertainment, this is very good. In some ways it’s like Metallica; a restrained, less ambitious album that is mostly missing the spark of the classics that preceded it, but one that gets by on simple entertainment value of well-written, catchy songs. This is still more than worthwhile, as it is a nice listen with some real gems and it certainly won’t offend, but the band could definitely have tried harder as evidenced by how good the bright spots here are; they are good enough to go toe-to-toe with anything from their finest albums. The issue is that not a lot of the material stands up too well when thought about for a bit, as you realise it leaves you cold like nothing else in their catalogue. All this said, even with the music at its most shallow and simplistic this beats out a lot of other music out there; a true testament to the talent of this band.

Rating: 80%

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Bartushka – Hospodi

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Do not buy this

The title cannot be reiterated enough – even if you like the teaser material for this album, under no circumstances should you buy it from the label. It’s the work of a man who pulled the rug from underneath a genuine artist’s feet to make a cash-grab, and it should not be supported in any way. Bart here may have the legal basis for carrying on with the name, but that certainly doesn’t make him the honest actor in the drama surrounding this album. Should anyone think I’m being unfair by being prejudiced against this release for the drama and not solely focusing on the music, all I have to say is that bringing this external drama up is necessary in judging the album as it would not exist without the drama and like any album its contents have been affected by the context it was constructed in. It’s a lazy cash-grab that truly sounds like just that – it’s a cobbled together load of rubbish that bears no meaningful resemblance to anything approaching a Batushka album.

The common thread that runs throughout is that the material is entirely derivative, lacking any identity or memorability. There is not an original bone in this album’s body; its boldest idea is the mix of choral and harsh vocals, which are ripped off from Litourgiya. The guitarwork is taken from a few sources of inspiration – the astonishingly crappy groove riffs and chugs that pop up from time to time being one example. The unending tremolo throughout the songs makes a lot of the guitarwork here sound like cast off/riffless Nightbringer or Litourgiya material. There are also some references to less riffy symphonic black metal acts, and there are some thrashier riffs at points, most notably on the track ‘Utrenia’ but it’s mostly tremolo-heavy, riffless fluff. Overall Hospodi listens like the work of a coattail riding second-string band with no identity of its own that apes a bunch of different sounds, one of which happens to be Litourgiya. For the most part this doesn’t listen like a Batushka album at all, or a development from Litourgiya, though clearly the band is trying hard to evoke its atmosphere and aesthetics with some very surface-level and forced references to it musically.

Another common factor in the material is that it is almost entirely mid-paced. The band never really picks up the pace or slows down to a drudging crawl; they’re entirely content to sit at a very uniform ‘not really fast but not really slow’ tempo. By doing this the music is erased of any potential points of contrast – there is no chance for a crushing, doom-like passage or a much faster, blast-filled section here. Variation in tempo is not a must for good music but with music this shallow the last thing it needs is to have another layer of potential variation stripped from it. It makes the music even more flat than it would have been, as there is no attempt to alter the mood using the tempo.

Making matters worse is that the songwriting is abysmal. Many of the songs here feature big stretches devoted to building up to something, usually in the form of tremolo and chords atop of double bass and choral vocals borrowed from Litourgiya. The first problem with this is that these build-ups lead to absolutely nothing – in place of climaxes the band routinely delivers an anti-climax in the form of a weak groovy/chugging/slower riff or quiet sections with faint choral vocals and guitars ringing in the background. This has the effect of making the songs feel like parts of the cutting room floor stapled together in the same way over and over again, as opposed to pieces that were actually written as one from start to finish. The second is that the band simply cannot find a way to increase the intensity of their music beyond making it louder with more tremolo, more choral vocals, and more double bass. The music never actually feels more aggressive during these moments, and as a result the buildups that the band spend so much time doing don’t even feel like they’re building up to anything, they listen more like an idea stretched far past the point of being remotely fresh. Tracks will start and end at seemingly arbitrary points, as it feels as if there is no reason why something is happening within them. The tracks don’t build up to anything meaningful, they don’t end in a satisfying way and taken as a whole they don’t even flow properly or feel like a complete journey. This is just about every track on the album, with only ‘Powieczerje’ and ‘Polunosznica’ really feeling like they were written with any care or attention paid to them.

The uniform tempo and equally uniform (lack of) songwriting highlights the next big issue with the album, which is that it is unbelievably copy-paste and very short on ideas. Once you’ve heard one song here you’ve basically heard them all, as the band has nothing to offer beyond rejected Litourgiya non-riffs, Eastern Orthodox-inspired choral vocals, one style of black metal rasp and some utterly flat meandering passages that give way to anti-climactic points, all at one tempo. Ideas get drawn out to the point of becoming stale within songs as the band clearly have no idea how to develop these ideas, and across the album the same tropes get repeated over and over meaning that songs will bleed together as the album wears on and the listener’s mind wanders as they wait for a song to end. Needless to say the songs are far, far too long for how flat and musically bankrupt they really are, and just a few tracks in you’ll be reaching for the pause button. This kills the atmosphere the band spend so much time trying to evoke, and while listening you’ll struggle to feel anything from the music because nothing about its composition or substance is inspiring enough to do that.

This is a miserable failure of a release. It’s obvious when listening who the brains behind Litourgiya was – sure that release was flawed but the regression displayed here is stunning. What few ideas the music presents are inferior copies of other people’s work that then get drawn out to oblivion across every song and the album as a whole. On top of all of this, there is no reason for it to exist beyond cashing in on the clout of an idea that wasn’t Bart’s at all. If you want a new Batushka album, go and buy Панихида, and stay miles away from this, because it’s a waste of time for anybody who chooses to listen to it. This is nothing but an effortless cash-grab; a lazy work that was cobbled together to get another release with the Batushka name on it out of the door. It’s vapid, shallow, soulless and thoroughly devoid of anything interesting.

It’s an embarrassment.

Rating: 13%

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Deathspell Omega – Manifestations 2000 – 2001

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Re-opening the vault

Manifestations 2000-2001 was one of two compilations released by DsO back in 2008, along with Manifestations 2002. It is comprised of material previously released on a couple of splits and a V/A compilation from the early part of the ’00s, as the title suggests, with the songs coming from two distinct recording sessions. It’s an interesting look at the pre-Aspa phase of DsO’s career – a time before they had truly found their sound or any notability in the metal world at large – and despite being overshadowed by its more notable and consistent sibling, is still of note to fans as it is a neatly packaged collection of material that would otherwise be scattered across multiple obscure releases.

The music itself is very typical of this phase of DsO’s career, to the extent that this material could easily have fit onto Inquisitors of Satan. It draws heavily from the likes of Darkthrone (mostly Transilvanian Hunger) insofar as it relies on the generally speedy repetition of melodic riffs atop a straight-forward blast beat-driven drum performance, but the nods to thrash in some of the riffs and the alternation between these and more typical second-wave inspired material points to Gorgoroth as a notable influence too. The vocals are very redolent of these influences – Shaxul’s unchanging rasp lies somewhere between Nocturno Culto and Hat and fit the music well. There are a lot of high quality riffs and they’re strung together well, they don’t dwell in one place for too long with songs consistently pushing forward (which is needed when every song breaks the 6 minute mark) and the band does well to craft an atmosphere with such basic and well-worn tools, a testament to the quality of the music.

As stated these 6 tracks are from two recording sessions – the first two come from an early 2001 session while the last four come from an early 2000 recording session. This is relevant as there is a very clear divide between the two; not so much in style but in recording quality. The first two tracks feature a typically clear, cold sound with prominently mixed snares and a somewhat delay-heavy guitar tone – very reminiscent of a crisper, higher fidelity version of Inquisitors of Satan‘s sound as well as the sound on Pentagram. The latter four meanwhile feature lower fidelity, noisier production with clickier, thinner drums and similarly thinner, hazier guitars, though these tracks ultimately sound much cleaner than anything from Infernal Battles which came out a few months after their recording. The former plays more to the strengths of the music by giving it more punch and clarity, while the more atmospheric production of the latter 4 tracks makes them less effective by doing the opposite.

The basic problems here are the same with everything else the band were doing before Mikko Aspa joined the fold and Si Monumentum… came out, in that while the material is good it isn’t that remarkable in the end, with a distinct lack of identity and therefore memorability. It also suffers from the same curse those first two albums do, in that there’s not much reason to listen to it outside of historical curiosity. What followed this and related material set new standards for what could be achieved by the band and modern BM bands in general, making them immediately less relevant on a purely musical level. Another problem is that the compilation is incomplete; DsO’s side of their split with Clandestine Blaze from around the same time is nowhere to be found here, which is a pity as those tracks are also exclusive to that split and stylistically would fit right in with this crop of tracks.

Despite its incompleteness and derivative nature, it’s a solid collection of tracks – a worthwhile curio for fans of the band, but only if they actually enjoy the first phase of their career; those who don’t need not apply, obviously. Those who thoroughly enjoy either of their first two albums (especially Inquisitors) will find plenty to enjoy here, and for those who haven’t heard either of their first two albums this is worth a few listens to get a sense of where the band were coming from with SMRC. Not essential by any means, but good.

Rating: 65%

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Type O Negative – The Least Worst Of

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Hey, it could be worse

(Note: I am reviewing the unedited version of the album, which features ‘It’s Never Enough’ as track 4 and ‘Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity’ as its penultimate track, with the edited version swapping the latter for ‘Gravitational Constant: G = 6.67 x 10⁻⁸ cm⁻³ gm⁻¹ sec⁻²’ and dropping the former altogether. As this means the unedited version has more new material, this is the one I recommend.)

This compilation released about a year after World Coming Down is a bit of an odd beast, as far as compilations go. At best this sort of release compiles rarities such as demos, b-sides and outtakes and if pulled off correctly can function as unique albums in their own right; while at worst they have nothing new on them at all and instead present material that has already been heard before on past albums. The Least Worst Of straddles a line between the two, as it mostly offers up alternate versions of past material, with a few rarer or exclusive tracks in the mix as well.

A significant chunk of this album’s running time is devoted to edited versions of songs we’ve heard before, that have either been released as b-sides or are unique to this album. All of them are shortened radio edits, and they all suffer from the same problems. While most of these songs still function, retaining some of the atmosphere and getting the same basic ideas across, they lose a lot of the larger-than-life quality the originals had as they do not flow nearly as well, with transitions from section to section feeling much more abrupt and sections being omitted entirely. The edit of ‘Black No. 1’ in particular is truly terrible and entirely skip-worthy – it doesn’t flow or listen like a complete song at all, sounding more like various sections of different songs stapled together with no rhyme or reason. There’s also the matter of the remix of their version of ‘Cinnamon Girl’, which changes the song for the much worse. The drum machine used previously sounds much more like a sampled electronic kit now, and the guitars and vocals sound similarly processed and electronic due to being slathered in effects. The guitars cut out abruptly at points, particularly for the verses, but otherwise the song remains structurally unchanged. It’s an interesting edit but I feel like removing the spacey, atmospheric sounds of the original album does nothing to help the song at all.

This album only really falls into the best of formula on two occasions. Both versions feature a track from Slow, Deep and Hard as their penultimate song, and while both of these are great, we’ve heard these before. In addition, songs almost always work better in the context of the album from which they came, and as such there’s no real reason to listen to these tracks as presented here; they are inferior due to the context they are in. The other is a ‘remix’ of the track ‘My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend’ – I guess it is a remix but it barely qualifies as it is very nearly the same song; the only alteration I can hear is that the beat during the first few seconds of the song is removed, leaving only the organ before the drums come in anyway followed by the guitars. It’s otherwise identical to the original and therefore totally pointless for the same reasons that the songs from the debut are.

There are however, a few songs that are of more interest. The main draw for me on this album is the three World Coming Down session outtakes, as that is in my eyes one the greatest metal albums ever released. The songs in question are ‘It’s Never Enough’, ’12 Black Rainbows’ and the closer ‘Stay Out of My Dreams’. All are great representations of that album’s sound, with dreary and ugly stretches of riffing being broken up by occasional moments of sheer beauty, sparse but effective keys contributing to these and uniformly hopeless and negative lyrics. ’12 Black Rainbows’ is a shorter, catchier number with an explosive chorus that could have been a single, while the other two are more expansive and progressive tracks, combining crushing doom metal riffs with more atmospheric sections and frequent changes of pace – particularly in the case of ‘It’s Never Enough’, which contains thrashy up-tempo sections that hearken back to the days of Slow, Deep and Hard.

Also of note are two alternate takes of covers from earlier in the band’s career. ‘Hey Pete (Peter’s Ego Trip Version)’ is their version of the popular song ‘Hey Joe’, originally from The Origin of the Feces but without the faux live noise present on that album. The lyrics have been re-written lyrics to fit the theme of revenge against an unfaithful girlfriend present on Slow, Deep and Hard and its aforementioned ‘live’ counterpart. It’s been turned from a laid back psychedelic rocker into a gloomy doom metal number, as is befitting of the new lyrics. ‘Black Sabbath (From the Satanic Perspective)’ meanwhile is their take on Black Sabbath’s classic (originally from Nativity in Black and later on reissues of Bloody Kisses), albeit with lyrics that show the other side of the story told by the original. The song is a great deal heavier and slower than the original, bordering on funeral doom speeds during the verses, and Ozzy’s agonised singing has been replaced by Pete’s bass-baritone crooning. Both of these are great examples of covers, having been translated and built upon properly to turn the originals into different beasts entirely, ones that sound so natural and distinctly Type O Negative that they both could have been written by the band.

A heavily discounted purchase is recommended when seeking this album out. It is an incredibly mixed bag, coming out only slightly positive when factoring in the amount of inferior edits and redundant inclusions present. The radio edits are all inferior to the originals though they’re mostly alright and not entirely disposable, but barring the two covers and the three new originals everything else here is skipworthy or redundant. This album is by no means essential as a whole and it certainly is not a good introduction to the band’s career, but it does have some merit.

For what it’s worth, I do appreciate the good humour needed to put absolute silence on a best of compilation; that alone is worthy of a chuckle.

Rating: 55%

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Sepultura – Chaos A.D.

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Silence means death

For many, Chaos A.D. marks the beginning of the end for Sepultura – this highly divisive album is seen as their fall from grace and their first step into the pits they inhabit today. While sonically it did pave the way for the slop the band would put out after it, the transition made here is a successful one. On this album, Sepultura underwent a fairly drastic shift in sound to groove metal – obvious comparisons to Pantera can be made, with the riffs here being much simpler than on previous efforts. The band relies on texture, directness, percussive heaviness and simplicity for impact as opposed to an assault on the senses through speed and technicality. Max’s vocals always tended more towards shouting than growling but here he sounds higher pitched, a bit more monotone, consistently louder and more angry sounding. The soloing and drumming meanwhile is in fact more active and technical than on past efforts – in a similar fashion to Pantera the reduced technicality of the riffs means the soloing and drumming has been spiced up to provide more variation to the songs.

However, the feel of this album certainly isn’t merely that of a Pantera clone, as there is a distinct punk spirit running throughout the album, which manifests mainly in the focus of the music. The various songs here are much more stripped down in presentation than even something like ‘Walk’, with a lot more focus going towards big and simple messages and motifs within the songs, with anything else taking a back seat. The soloing for instance has been stripped of most of its melody, and as such they exist solely to serve the song by being a point of contrast within them for some variation. While there are a good few riffs in any given track of varying types, they are the principle motifs of the songs and exist to be as memorable as possible, with the band stripping them down to the bare minimum to make them and thus the songs as immediate and high-impact as possible. The drums exist to accentuate those riffs and give them impact by doubling up their percussive nature. The songs are built around verse-chorus song structures with very catchy, simple choruses usually consisting of just a few words, as well as simpler verses. The vocals are more straightforward too – they are there simply to relay the lyrics and as such are stripped of what little tonal variation they had. Everything exists solely to turn each song into an engaging and memorable vehicle for the band’s anger and their messages – it’s all been stripped down to the bare essentials.

Music this focused and stripped down requires a great deal of passion and creativity to get by, in a similar fashion to punk and alternative rock, and it is here where the band succeeds. They have a knack for making things stick by picking only the most memorable riffs to put in a song, as well as penning the most memorable lyrics (this album’s lyrics are full of earworms and quotables – this review’s title being one example.) The solos, while noisy, atonal and technical, never go overboard and start noodling or otherwise detracting from the focus of the songs. The drums are hit hard, and despite the simple nature of the music the drum performance is loaded with lots and lots of interesting fills (often influenced by tribal music) to back the riffs up. The guitars sound heavy, textured and thick, and the riffs are played with a great deal of conviction. The vocals too sound righteously angry, with Max making for a convincing, truly captivating frontman. It sounds as if he put his heart into the messages he is shouting forth which makes it much easier to take them seriously, and the general passion of the performances all around results in songs that feel very crucial, as if the band have to get their sounds out there. The band also does well to mix it up in songs too, with very few tracks ever stagnating on one idea for too long. There’s always a faster thrash/hardcore influenced section, breakdown, solo or some other contrasting section around the corner, with each part consistently bringing its own memorable ideas to the table (a riff, a set of lyrics, a drum pattern or another idea entirely.) For all the deliberate stripping down Sepultura’s music has undergone, most of these tracks are as energetic and dynamic as before and due to their simplicity have a much more immediate impact on the listener as the band waste no time in getting to the meat of a song’s ideas and messages.

The album mostly remains within the realm of hardcore/groove/thrash, with some songs leaning more towards one or two of the three. The opener, title track and most famous song here ‘Refuse/Resist’ is a perfect mission statement for the album as a whole. The song drips with a rebellious, angered spirit that translates into how furious and strong the performances are, with its mid-tempo verses and undeniable hook backed up by a set of fantastic groove riffs, before the band break into a speedy bridge as Andreas solos away like there’s no tomorrow. Tracks like ‘Territory’, ‘Nomad’ or ‘Amen’ go for more mid-tempo, crushing grooves while ‘Biotech is Godzilla’ is excellent and to-the-point crossover thrash song and tracks such as ‘Propaganda’ and ‘Manifest’ mix up faster and more mid-tempo sections. ‘We Who Are Not As Others’ in an interesting, mostly instrumental, piece that continuously builds up from a slow groove riff to the climax of the band shouting the title, with an increasingly frantic drum performance, strings and leads accenting the song nicely. The New Model Army cover is a successful translation of the song to the album’s style, creating a rather dark track that thematically fits in quite well and provides some variety to the album. Another interesting track is ‘Kaiowas’ – an acoustic jam with pounding tribal percussion that functions as a protest song of sorts, one that fits in perfectly with everything else here in spirit if not in style.

Whatever it may have represented for the band and metal as a whole, Chaos A.D. will remain as a truly remarkable milestone and one of the genre’s crown jewels for years to come. It’s an extremely creative, potent and cohesive blend of aggression, memorability and passion, one that remains virtually unrivalled in metal to this day. It’s not for everybody, but giving it a chance and allowing it to grow on you might just turn out to be very rewarding.

Rating: 90%

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Gruesome – Twisted Prayers

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Death metal’s Greta Van Fleet

The revival of old school death metal has, in a similar fashion to modern thrash, yielded a few gems in a sea of redundant, bland, toothless and copy-paste bands that offer nothing new at all, and Gruesome is perhaps the most notable and blatant example of how creatively bankrupt this wave can get. Their music isn’t an Encoffination-type ordeal, where the band fundamentally misunderstand what made their main point of reference appealing to begin with, but more a straight up facsimile of something that’s been heard before with absolutely no twist or spin on it to speak of. I can give it to the band that the baseline level of competency (songs that progress, tight playing, decent and clear production) has been met but that’s really about it as far as positives go.

Gruesome, for those who’ve never heard their music, is a carbon copy of early Death, put simply. They play a very thrash-influenced, very simple and highly riff-driven style of death metal. The longer songs and more frequent changes of pace within them point towards the band drawing more from Leprosy and Spiritual Healing, with the latter obviously being an inspiration for the thematic content of the lyrics and cover art. The problem with zeroing in on a singular inspiration here is that at no point do the band do anything to the basic template at all; this album is literally an inferior copy of those two albums (which really says something as Spiritual Healing is one of my least favourite Death albums) with no positive unique traits to it at all. Literally the only distinguishing features this has from either of those two Death albums are notably worse and less memorable riffs and production that strips the music of intensity, due to being more polished. Not helping matters is that Spiritual Healing has had another impact on the music, which is that the music itself isn’t as intense or savage as it could have been as to not remove focus from the somewhat more intelligent lyrics. This is the main problem with Spiritual Healing, and so on an album that is worse in every respect it is an even more notable problem. These flaws result in an album with longer songs that feel much, much longer than they actually are because the few basic ideas presented by them get stale in the first minute or two and were never played convincingly to begin with. The album is tired, dull, stale and boring and the only redeeming qualities it has beyond basic competency are the decayed remains of the work of a much better band.

There really is nothing else to say about the music, it’s that vanilla and plain. If all new music was as uninspired, worn-out and cliché as Gruesome’s work, there would be no reason to listen to new music at all as every genre would be a dead end that never challenges or intrigues the listener at all. Fortunately, Gruesome truly is an exceptional case, as there are very few bands out there that ride the coattails of larger acts as hard as they have done. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with drawing heavily from classic artists – some of the greatest modern albums in multiple genres would not exist without those kinds of influences – but zeroing in on one or two albums by one band and doing nothing with those influences at all, and not even trying to live up to them quality-wise? That is inexcusable, not only because it’s unbearably lazy but also because the end result of such a process sounds unbearably lazy. Even the earliest of Death clones, Massacre, were so far above this album I feel bad for comparing them to Gruesome, and at least the people behind From Beyond actually had a hand in the sound of early Death. If you want good music in this style, cut out the middleman and go straight to the source, as there is no reason to listen to this over any of the far superior albums that inspired it.

Rating: 25%

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Ulver – Nattens Madrigal – Aatte Hymne til Ulven i Manden

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Snore

It’s very obvious that Ulver haven’t wanted to play black metal for many years (having not played anything approaching it after this album, and having dropped it and Bergtatt from their live shows altogether), but honestly this album has me firmly believing that the band didn’t really want to play black metal even when they were playing it. It’s quite telling that this, their second and final metal album and the purest example of black metal in their catalogue, still stands as an album so fundamentally flawed that it listens almost like a parody of what was going on at the time. It’s also quite possibly the worst album of their entire career, even after more than 20 years since its release.

On this album, Ulver go for a very minimal and raw take on Norwegian black metal. It’s clear that Transilvanian Hunger was a point of reference; I’m aware this is a common comparison but it is common for a reason. The music is primarily built upon the basic repetition of just a few melodic black metal riffs (though this album is less droning and hypnotic than the Darkthrone album) atop an endless stream of blast beats and with an unchanging and serviceable (if unremarkable) black metal rasp. The riffs here are consistently good or even great: they are aggressive and memorable, and keep the energy of the music up as the band flow from one riff to the next – ‘I’ in particular has some truly stellar guitarwork throughout it. There are also some brief, tranquil acoustic breaks in a few of the tracks; Ulver had already proven themselves with this style on the previous two albums so they are the standout moments on the album. The drumming does get rather monotonous after a while (even Transilvanian Hunger had more going on in this department) and Garm sticking to harsh vocals when his singing is what made him stand out is a shame, but aside from this the substance of this album is up to scratch; these aren’t especially major flaws. However, where this falls down is that this is clearly music that requires atmosphere to be effective, and the sound of this album pretty much wrecks any chance of one being built.

Much has been made of this album’s production and with good reason – it is its most crippling flaw. For those who haven’t heard what it sounds like, it is under-produced to the point of ruining the listening experience. Every note of the music is buried under a layer of static and all but the treble frequencies have been removed entirely. Now, it’s clear that raw production would benefit the material but the way it’s been carried out here completely ruins the music. The material does not benefit from this sound; it doesn’t come across as primal or distant or cold due to the production, rather it goes against everything the band wanted to achieve here. It’s hard to tell if this is actually is a high-fidelity recording that was made raw after the fact but it listens like it; the rawness stands out as being incredibly forced and artificial as for all the implied hostility and darkness of the sound it does not make the music feel that way at all. Instead, the music sounds sterile and utterly passionless due to being so under-produced, which totally wrecks the atmosphere. As this is an album that is reliant on said atmosphere it pretty much kneecaps the music and renders it largely ineffective. Another problem is that the sound is so piercing that even after several years I still cannot listen to this at a reasonable volume with my headphones in, and frankly it’s still a grating chore to listen to even on my PC speakers. It is a uniquely horrible and unbearable listening experience as it is an unending stream of trebly riffing – not even power electronics, harsh noise or notably trebly metal albums like …and Justice for All prove to be this grating at a reasonable volume – the sound only furthers the disconnect I have with the music.

It’s no use warning people off this, any black metal fan has heard it at least once and they know if they like it or not, but Nattens Madrigal is truly one of the biggest ‘the emperor has no clothes’ metal albums for me. It’s the sound of a band throwing out what they’ve proven themselves to be good at (folk music and laid back melodic black metal) and instead forcing a sound they clearly did not have that much interest in to begin with, judging by the quality of this and how quickly they jumped ship from metal altogether. It has its redeeming qualities for sure but overall it is simply not good, and a colossal disappointment from a band that had delivered and would continue to deliver a lot of great material.

Rating: 35%

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