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
Mortuous - Upon Desolation
Genre: Death / Doom Metal
Label: Carbonized Records
Release Date: 16-9-2022
I hate that the "Pizza" analogy has already been claimed by the re-thrash movement. I think the term is more apt for OSDM: Like pizza, the chances are high it is fast food but even if it's bad, it's also kinda good. Furthermore, OSDM comes in many shapes and sizes just like pizza, which can be topped with a multitude of things. OSDM can take many shapes and accept many flavors; speeds, harmonic choices and melodic ideas. It even allows different production choices, much more so than thrash. Similar to the different crust types of pizza, perhaps? Alas, pizza has been chosen as the metaphor of choice for thrash. Us old school deathheads might just have to settle on lasagna.
Mortuous are a death/doom troupe. Like many of those modern acts, it has at least a subtle Finnish bent. At the same time, Mortuous riffs - sometimes pretty hard, too. Particularly the end of "Burning Still..." is stank face inducing, which is incidentally where the band dials the Finnishness to 11 with their off-kilter riffing and their twangy guitar tone. Mortuous settle on a relatively clean sound, with the possible exception of the vocals which are a bubbling, fuzzy mass and impossible to decipher. Just how the doctor ordered. As many other death doom acts now, the band also has the occasional dirgelike crawl that originally got coined by Incantation. Mortuous make a little more effort to stand apart from the pack though with how they arrange these sections. Furthermore, the band features a violin on two tracks that comes completely without being telegraphed, but fits the material like a glove. It helps a lot to just have a little "aha-moment" to further structure an album and make it more listenable. I once went to an Italian restaurant and ordered some lasagna, which turned out to have a dash of cinnamon in it. Maybe lasagna is alright, after all.
Rating: (high) 6 / (low) 7/10
Sumerlands - Dreamkiller
Genre: Heavy Metal / AOR
Label: Relapse Records
Release Date: 16-9-2022
During that incredibly short but magical timeframe when all the pizza thrashers and Entombedcore kids suddenly decided that trad metal and USPM was the new thing to like, Sumerlands were there. Their self-titled debut was one of the better albums of that specific movement (often dubbed the new Wave of American Traditional Metal). Unfortunately, it never quite set my world on fire as it seemed to do for some other people. Now armed with a new singer, Dreamkiller shows the band make an attempt to infuse their style with nostalgia tinged 80s rock. In my opinion, this means the band hones in on their worst tendencies and abandons a lot of what made them enjoyable before.
The band is certainly committed to their "more 80s than the 80s" approach. The vocals particularly are drenched in a phasing effect at all times that becomes grating partway into the first song and never becomes anything but a nuisance. The effect seems to get even stronger on particular sections, occasionally - a bad faith reading would be that this is in fact just the autotune distorting when the singer misses a note and that the phaser was just applied to hide this fact. I can't decisively say, of course but this would be pretty emblematic for the production of the record as a whole. The album is squeaky clean in most ways, but makes very deliberate and noticeable production choices that does not serve the material at all. Furthermore, the writing is not only mostly unengaging, but inconsistent: Synthesizers come in and out but never play for particularly long, highlighting some sections but not with much of a logic to it. Did the band realise how bland this material was and tried to give it some more zazz after the fact? Fundamentally, a record cannot survive on nostalgia alone and there is not a nostalgia knob that can be turned to 11, either.
Rating: 4/10
Reeking Aura - Blood and Bonemeal
Genre: Death Metal
Label: Profound Lore
Release Date: 29-7-2022
I had missed Reeking Aura when it was released. I wasn't too interested in it, as I had suspected the band to sound very similar to Artificial Brain, as both bands feature vocalist Will Smith and are on Profound Lore. I had enjoyed Artificial Brain quite a bit when it released, but had cooled on it quickly after I had written my review. My distaste of that album is partly ideological, as I wish that bands who seek to innovate death metal would do so with the genre itself in mind instead of constantly seeking to co-opt the aesthetics of other genres - in most cases black metal. Not an easy feat: Death metal has a strong sonic identity and working within its bounds can be immensely limiting. Even the movements who have found ways to innovate without leaving the genre have started to develop their own tropes and ultimately become less progressive. On the surface, Reeking Aura aren't as immediately progressive or innovative. But they do so with the essence of death metal in mind, and that's why I connect with them more.
Similar to the lasagna OSDM acts, Reeking Aura draw on different inspirations from the history of death metal to concoct a sound that is traditional but yet feels not too derivative. On Blood and Bonemeal, the cavernous tremolos of Incantation (the OSDM movements favorite band, as it sometimes seems) mix with the brutal death metal affect of vocalist Will Smith and the horror inspired atmospheres often found in death doom. Added to this is an unobtrusive sense of atmosphere that I have rarely seen on death metal albums. This is achieved without the usual bag of tricks. The band seems to know what emotional content their melody and harmony conjures. Reeking Aura feel true to their name: As all good death metal, they are all engulfing. Dirty, sickly...but with a penchant for riffs and some good old aggression.
Rating: 7/10
Metalligatorrr's Additional Album Assesments
Gaerea - Mirage
Genre: Black Metal Smoothie
Label: Seasons of Mist
Release Date: 23-9-2022
Gaerea know what they're doing when naming their third album Mirage. Just like their identities, they've made a career out of music that is completely faceless. In short, If you like this band you will like this album. If not... well let's get to that. Mirage sees the band step up the aggression in their sound a bit. I might as well commend them for this as they seem to have discovered that they can use contrast to make their songs a bit more distinct. There are calmer sections as well as spots where some aggressive and urgent riffs make my ears perk up a bit. Sadly, that's where my compliments end.
Gaerea's modus operandi has always been to make music that sounds very dramatic with a lead riff that is supposed to carry the songs. Depending on what camp you're in the drums will either be majestically pounding or ear-numbingly boring blasting, the songs atmospheric and mystic or shallow with melodramatic guitar playing. While the drummer should be commended for actually using a few drum patterns this time around, the core of the problem with this band's work remains: the songwriting. Mirage has more of an ebb and flow than previous efforts but the songs themselves still build up to very little. Not all songs are like this on the album. "Arson", for example, holds a rare build to an actual climax. But most of the songs stop at just building themselves out of existence. There are almost no payoffs. This is like listening to house or techno where a rhythm repeats over and over till the song is done.
You can make a case for music like this where the song subtly changes over time but if this is what Gaerea are going for they do it in the laziest of ways, using tropes upon tropes of black metal that has been done better by other bands. The musicians sound like they can hold their own, the sound is massive on the album but it is all in service to music that is likely to be forgotten quickly. Gaerea are the perfect example of the score I've chosen to deal out here: bland music that you forget after it stops playing, without its own identity. Subtract points as you see fit if you're as tired of hearing music like this as I am.
Rating: 5/10