This Week in Metal, 2022 Week 36

This post collects the reviews posted to Instagram for the week. They cover mostly metal, but other genres might be considered. Blog exclusive reviews from other writers are featured, as well.

Scuttlegoat's Curmudgeonly Critiques

Barn - Habitat

Genre: Progressive Death Metal

Label: Independent

The more I review albums, the more confused I get as to why bands feel the need to be so indulgent in their songwriting. I notice again and again that the better album usually is the one that is trimmer and more focused. Why would a band work harder, make their album longer and practice all these often complicated and technical sections only to make their album flow worse and become a chore? Barn certainly cannot contain their enthusiasm either. Habitat is 77 minutes of progressive death metal. While there is lots of instrumental creativity on display, I can't help but feel that the album would play better were it stripped down to its most essential parts.

While Barn luckily do not play completely linear, as they revisit sections within songs, it shows that the songs that are more focused are the strongest. Second track "Amouratic Mass" shows a clear understanding of how the song is supposed to progress and furthermore has an arc of excitement to it - the end of the song does feel like a climax to the whole thing. Other tracks, especially the longest ones, do not have this climatic feel, which leaves some sections feeling more like asides as opposed to necessary developments. Still, there is obviously much to like. While the material is similarly paced for most of it, there are differences in feeling with often surprising transitions and the musicians involved have a sense of curiosity about their instruments, especially in regards to technique. The album suffers, mostly, from comparison to acts who are better at constructing albums rather than individual moments. With some more focus, Barn could reach smilar quality as Devoid of Thought or maybe even Blood Incantation.

Rating: 5/10

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暗狱戮尸 (The Dark Prison Massacre) - Triple Insanity

Genre: Slam

Label: Amputated Vein Records

For most genres, bands coming from countries with microscopic scenes can sometimes be a turn-off. The expertise is often just not there and even when it is, bands rarely find unique takes on the genres they are playing. Music from the brutal death metal, slam or grindcore scene might be the only genres to defy this expectation with regularity. Extreme caveman shit from countries particularly in east asia seems to deliver surprisingly often, be it as a guilty pleasure or an actually good effort. 暗狱戮尸 are somewhere inbetween these two extremes with an odd concoction of slam, chinese folk instrumentation and oddball nu metal influences that shouldn't work but just does.

While 暗狱戮尸 seem to take their subject matter seriously - the track titles and the album cover suggest something socially conscious, even if I have no way to confirm this because of the language barrier - their music has a sense of humor to it that goes beyond shoving an absurd amount of samples into the album. The aforementioned nu metal elements are, of course, hard to take seriously but 暗狱戮尸 sell them to the listener with a conviction and murderous groove that completely makes me forget how horrid this type of music can be in any other context. The cringe barrier is never quite broken, even if I worried about it during some moments - a tightrope walk that 暗狱戮尸 manage with ease. Not to mention that these are some of the nastiest pig squeals I've heard in a while. I have but two small criticisms: One, I would have preferred a dumber snare. This isn't high brow material and some high impact pong would make it hit even harder. Secondly, while I enjoy the alternative interpretation of "Ghost Island Dalits", it is a bit too similar to the original version to have a place in the album proper and would have been better as a bonus track. Otherwise: This slams. Check it out.

Rating: high 6, low 7/10

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Metalligatorrr's Additional Album Assesments

Bloodbath - "Survival of the Sickest"

Genre: Death Metal

Label: Napalm Records

Bloodbath have gone through a few incarnations in the Nick Holmes era, starting out with a doomy sound on Grand Morbid Funeral to make their new vocalist comfortable before trying on some black metal influences on The Arrow of Satan is Drawn. "Survival of the Sickest" (yes, in quotation marks) sees them turning back to a death metal sound so pure that they sound like one of the OSDM Entombed clones. This is surprising as one thing that defined early Bloodbath was that even if they were operating with next to no innovation, they were still writing killer songs that put them ahead of the pack. I could still sort of hear the same band on Grand Morbid Funeral but what now remains sounds creatively bereft in the one thing they had going for them.

It should be said that the musicians here sound like they have tons of energy. If this is by the mix making them sound massive or if it's because the riffs are somewhat potent, I couldn't tell you. But high energy alone does not a good album make. The riffs seem to be the point here, however, as it seems that very little thought have gone to where the songs start and end up. "Carved" calls back to fan favorite song "Eaten", but whereas Peter Tägtgren's lyrics and vocals were creatively disgusting and sung with conviction there seems to be a particular inability for Holmes to take the campiness seriously enough. It feels like a parody of a band that didn't take itself seriously in the first place. While I love Holmes' work with Paradise Lost, this feels too much like he's taking a vacation from the effort he displays with his main band. Unfortunately, the other musicians follows suit with a lot of the material blending together into a single tone rather than an album.

It's enlightening that when the band for a moment throw Holmes a bone on "To Die" by throwing in a death doom section complete with Paradise Lost riffs he suddenly shines and handles the material with grace. A glimpse of what could have been had they played to the strengths of this lineup. Something they still avoid doing.

Rating: 4/10

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An Abstract Illusion - Woe

Genre: Progressive Death Metal

Label: Willowtip Records

What struck me first as I put on An Abstract Illusion is that they seem to want to be both Fallujah and Opeth at the same time. The material has this constant reliance on one guitar being higher pitched to create a sense of tragic beauty and shrill tension. It's meant to make the songs sound atmospheric while the breakdowns into subdued calmer moments add contrast. What actually happens on this release is that the shrill guitar is overused and ever present in the mix. The songs are dramatic and try to build in waves but utterly fail to do so. This is evident in that I at first thought that track two ("Slaves") and track three ("Tear Down This Holy Mountain") were the same song. Together they take up 19 minutes without any standout moments in a surprising feat of overindulgence. With songwriting this uniform you better have a good flow and point to the album but An Abstract Illusion just seem to be one of those bands that only have one mode of writing that they repeat ad nauseam.

"Prosperity" bookends the first half of the album with a calm breakdown that breaks out in a riff that shows just how uniform what came before has been. It builds towards the end of the track but the chugging nature of this riff does nothing to dispel the uniformity of the writing. The absolute nadir of the album comes with "Blomsterkrans" (Crown of Flowers) which features a cheesy piano melody with a spoken word section about how depressing reality is. It's lazy, clichéd in its expression and childishly weepy in the worst way. Near the end, 14 minute track "In The Heavens Above, You Will Become A Monster" starts out strong with varied playing that shows some promise of what this band could be if they spent more time refining their songwriting. But as you'd expect from a song this long, the track once again goes into a meandering "atmospheric" mode at its midpoint with only clean sung vocals to grab hold of. I can hear the ideas behind the writing here but you could easily cut this song in half to make it be more effective.

Closing things off, the last song features some more reliance on chugging and another calm breakdown where the vocalist tries as hard as he can to mimic Åkerfeldt. These last two songs carry some potential but are overlong and feel like an EP tacked on a stylistically different album. It hurts me having to give out such a low score to something in one of my favorite genres but the problems here are impossible to ignore.

Rating: 3/10

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Eldritch Abbot's Egregious Evaluations

Blackbraid - Blackbraid I

Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal

Label: Independent

Blackbraid is a black metal act with Native American themes and atmosphere, done by soloist Sgah'gahsowáh. One thing I want to give Blackbraid credit for right off the bat is that it is tightly edited at just about 37 minutes on six tracks. It is also pretty atmospheric, including a few passages with Native American musical elements such as flutes, percussion and more tribalistic composition in general. Everything is well played, the vocals are pretty captivating and the mix sounds clear and dynamic.

I do have a few criticisms here, mostly related to personal taste. Some of the longer tracks, for example "Barefoot Ghost Dance on Bloodsoaked Soil" feels a tiny bit too long, where I would have preferred more and shorter songs. Apart from that, I feel like the Native American theme could have been more present in the album. How to do that without it turning into an unintentional caricature and playing into stereotypes, I do not know. The Native American folk passages do make the album stand out in a great way, so I would like to have seen more of them, as they would have given this album more atmosphere and differentiate it further from a standard black metal feel.

In the end, I think that what Blackbraid has created here is well-made, even though I might not listen to the album again for a long time. If you are into atmospheric black metal, I would certainly recommend checking out Blackbraid and I will be sure to check out their next album, because Sgah'gahsowáh is clearly talented.

Rating: 6/10