In this post, I collect my instagram reviews for the week for albums released in 2022. All my non-2022 reviews are gathered in a post as soon as a decent number has accumulated. I listen to mostly metal, but I do not limit myself to any genre.
Thos Ælla - Sempiternal Mobocracies
Genre: Black Metal / Melodeath
Label: I, Voidhanger
I, Voidhanger is usually the home of some of the most outre metal on bandcamp. Often, the albums will be high concept and pleasingly weird, but most times, the execution will not live up to the chosen concept. Thos Ælla, while being weird in some ways, doesn´t really fit the bill for what I, Voidhanger does. I would almost lovingly dub them 'Blackened Power Metal', but that also doesn´t quite describe it. 'Sempiternal Mobocracies' is filled to the brim with melodic leads and speedy licks that definetely remind me more of shreddy power metal than anything from the Meloblack or -death realm. They do however retain the sonic palette of the aforementioned genres and fully commit to a black rasp for its whole runtime.
Thos Ælla have lots of fun doing it, and that certainly connects with the listener, as well. There is just a lot of energy in their sound and the band can communicate that they actually do enjoy playing their instruments and the music that they are playing. Sure, they might spread their sound a little thin on almost 50 minutes and the intro is wholly unnecessary, but I guess that is just where the black metal part of the sound comes in. Overall, 'Sempiternal Mobocracies' just makes more sense than a lot of I, Voidhanger releases and is certainly much more easy to get into.
Rating: high 6/10.
Viogression - 3rd Stage of Decay
Genre: Death Metal
Label: Satanath Records
Viogression is a yet another silly band name. I would just making a portmanteau of two "evil words" your band name a recent trend, but as it turns out, Viogression are part of the old guard. Part of the small and obscure milwaukee scene, they apparently have some loose ties to the heavily underrated Morta Skuld. Similarly to Morta Skuld, they manage to sound absolutely old school in every way and yet are hard to place into a distinct movement of 90s old school death metal. The guitar tone is incredibly chunky, the material is as thrashy as it is groovy and they sport a vocalist whose closest comparison is likely a martin van Drunen, but nothing of it seems like a carbon copy of any other 90s DM act. Having laid dormant for so long - Viogression´s last release was in 1992 - Viogression seem like they idiosyncracies are frozen in time.
I am in fact curious about their past material, as '3rd Stage of Decay' is one of the strongest OSDM platters I was served all year. Especially the groovy slowdown of 'Caliginous Conflagration' keeps begging me to come back to the record. Sadly, there is one small issue with the record preventing me from going even higher in score: The length. '3rd Stage of Decay' is over 55 minutes long, and, as so often, the band stretches their creativity a bit thin on the album - especially considering that the closer 'Memory Ever After' is little more than a glorified intro. I hate that I have to keep repeating similar criticisms so much, but self-editing is still one of the biggest issues in extreme metal. With some trims, a 7 could have been in the cards for '3rd Stage of Decay'.
Rating: 6/10.
Rammstein - Zeit
Genre: Industrial Metal / Neue Deutsche Härte
Label: universal Music
I was worried when Rammstein announced this album. Usually Rammstein albums take multiple years and they´ve only gotten slower with the years. And I never minded that - Rammstein´s sound is simple and finding new things to do with it. And usually, that approach had treated them well; even the self-titled, which was horribly frontloaded, had some fantastic songs on it and never really went into uncomfortably bad territory. Lastly, there was a precedent for this behavior - 2005´s 'Rosenrot' which was rushed into stores to capitalise on the sudden international popularity of the band and what had been, so far, their worst album. 'Zeit' was rushed into production because Covid had prevented touring and a Till´s gotta eat. And it might actually be their worst album.
A lot of the elements on 'Zeit' reach the absolute nadir for the band. Till´s lyrics have never been so predictable, so fascinated with 'house/mouse' style rhymes and his delivery has never been so low effort. One could call the autotune experiments he does on his vocals ironic, but even here it just seems lazy. The guitars, when they even do play, do the most predictable stuff they could; often just following the vocal melody or recycling simple material from older albums that is both generic enough to fit under almost anything and barely qualifies as a riff. What I will give the album is that keyboarder flake goes hard on here and he actually seems like he cares, boasting some of his most interesting instrumentation to date and making good use of the space that his other musicians leave him. What is so frustrating about this is that even here, you can tell the band has an innate talent for songs, as single moments that recall the past glory pop up occasionally. In the end, I hope Rammstein take their time again and that this will not be their last album.
Rating: 4/10.
The Spirit - Of Clarity and Galactic Structures
Genre: (Progressive) Melodic Black Metal
Label: AOP Records
The Spirit´s 2020 record 'Cosmic Terror' had already made some waves, but I somehow never found the time to check it out. Maybe, as 'Of Clarity and Galactic Structures' would suggest, I should have. Meloblack can be a deterrant for me, as so often, it is either bland dissection-core or mindless scale runs in tremolo picking. The Spirit, however, have a unique style. While I wouldn´t go so far as to call them Blackened Death Metal, I would definetely say that there is a Death Metal influence. In particular, 'Of Clarity and Galactic Structures' recalls the writing quirks of a Chuck Schuldiner and the progressively tinted melodicism that would be a staple of the Band Death starting from their Mid Period.
Luckily, the band is more than just reskinned Death worship. The band seems to be aware of rhythmic engagement at all times and as a result of that, their songs never really drag. Opener 'of Clarity and Galactic Structures', for example, spends most of its >7 minute runtime exploring permutations of the same melodic motif, as so many meloblack bands do. But while all this melodic exploration is going on, the band transforms the song rhythmically as well, going in and out of odd rhythms fluently and never turning it into a progressive wankfest. The amalgam of Schuldinerisms and Meloblack with recognisable rhythmic structures gives the band the edge it needs to stick out from a genre that rarely does it for me.
Rating: 7/10
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