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.
Scuttlegoats Curmudgeos Critiques
Conan - Evidence of Immortality
Genre: Stoner Doom Metal
Label: Napalm Records Handels GmbH
The most popular stoner doom bands all have different goals and preoccupations beyond being low, slow and very distorted. Take a band like Windhand, with pretty ethereal vocals and hypnotic repetition, or something like Electric Wizard's Dopethrone which always seemed to paint a post-apocalyptic stoner landscape as much as it was riffing or even the infectious broken desert jams of Church of Misery. Conan are a bit different. With a sound as percussive as a mallet, Conan are the most violent stoner doom can get without turning outright into sludge or some warped death doom. On the one hand, this turns into the risk of the sound being all there is - I couldn't hum you a Conan riff. But on the other hand, Conan presents lots of moment to moment enjoyment by the pure kinetic energy present in their sound.
It is this percussive energy that makes me regularly return to Conan, despite the fact that they have literally never blown me away. While Conan is playing, I feel like gently being braided into a pulp and there is a cathartic element to absolute focus on rhythm that Conan present. Evidence of Immortality feels maybe just a tad more abstract than the usual conan-fare, with phased out sounds making an appearance more than once and with final closer "Grief Sequence" approaching textural drone. With 50 minutes, there is likely room to trim some fat, but for a stoner doom album, this isn't the worst runtime, either. I feel that the closer (at 14 minutes), takes the drive out a little bit and it ends up feeling like sitting down to watch the credits for a movie that was so exciting that the sudden cut to credits feels maybe just a little bit unsatisfying. Still, I think this is another solid entry into Conan's discog and I can't wait for them to come around so I can get bludgeoned in a deceptively slow pit.
Rating: 7/10.
Fraser Edwards - The Reckoning
Genre: Instrumental Shred / Eurodance Country
Label: Independent
Fraser Edwards had been recommended to me as "instrumental Dragonforce" at some point. At the time, that sales pitch actually sounded very nice to me - don't I come to Dragonforce for the guitar theatrics anyway and could this maybe be more than a guilty pleasure - a completely normal pleasure, maybe? Unfortunately, I noticed that the interplay of a Dragonforce song with its dueling guitars, its constant push forward and the battle-ready song structures seem like they cannot be imitated. Fraser's songs are much shorter than the usual Dragonforce song and this should not be an issue - rather, a 31 minute runtime should be a plus. But after only a little while, it becomes pretty evident that Fraser has very little to say and those 31 minutes sound much longer than they should.
If I had to give a more accurate sales pitch than "Dragonforce but instrumental" I would probably call this album "Fraser Edwards plays variations on a Nyan Cat metal cover, also there is banjo added". The fatal issue with The Reckoning is that, while Fraser seems completely disinterested in anything but lead guitar - the rhythm sections are booth dull and kinda muddy - he doesn't have much range in the lead department, either. Sure, Fraser plays fast and he plays rather cleanly, and the bubblegum distortions he achieves with his whammy are entertaining, up to a point. But he plays the same chord progressions over and over and uses similar licks over them for the whole runtime. For the supposed western theme with aptly named songs like "The Heist", there really isn't anything distinguishing them from another. Technique isn't everything and Fraser would really do good if he brushed up on some harmony and maybe explored songwriting a little more. As it stands, The Reckoning feels like a guy bragging who really shouldn't.
Rating: 4/10.
Asunojokei - Island
Genre: Post Black Metal
Label: Independent
Usually, putting an anime girl on an album cover is a surefire way to make me either not want to listen or to only take the album in ironically. But with Asunojokei's newest, I actually found something aesthetically pleasing about the way the album cover presents itself. The arrangement presents something fluid and gentle and this is a perfect descriptor for the album itself. Asunojokei play a style of post black metal that is heavily influenced by indie and more traditional rock - a close comparison would be Deafheaven's Ordinary Corrupt Human Love or Møl's 2018 album Jord, which have a similar approach to infusing the post black metal with rock influences and a sense of energy.
Asunojokei makes no secret of its heritage, of course. The Japaneseness of the material is evident on every song. The guitar Solo on "Chimera", for example, does scream anime opening despite being rather beautiful in execution. Individual sections remind me of Japanese indie rock bands like The Pillows or the obvious post rock comparison: Envy, but I feel like Asunojokei are much more adventurous in regards to song structures, arrangement and production than those Japanese post rock stalwarts. Something that Asunojokei have what many other post black acts don't, beyond the je-ne-sais-quois of being japanese, is a sense of structure and progression both throughout the songs and the album itself. In this regard, Asunojokei even edge out Ordinary Corrupt Human Love for me, which had always seemed too much like a marathon with its extreme focus on linearity and trying to up the ante, intensity wise. Asunojokei even undercut the albums length by about 7 minutes, meaning it is paced better. And even while there is some bloat - Interlude "Gaze" while pretty and relaxing, adds very little - I can't help but feel this is the first post black album I truly enjoy in quite a while.
Rating: 7/10
Sonum - Visceral Void Entropy
Genre: Avantgarde Death Metal
Label: WormHoleDeath
The thing with the "avantgarde" in any genre of music is that there is (or rather, should be) an expectation of new ground being broken with each piece of art. By any realistic standard, this is impossible. Musicians don't have an endless supply of innovation; The artist that lacks any shape can not be considered an auteur with his own artistic and stylistic preoccupations. There is also the risk to cater to certain genre tropes too much - the dissonant kind of death metal is full of it by now. Sonum attempt to avoid both of these pitfalls. Their material often sounds natural, as if they have familiarity with the style but ultimately do what feels natural to them. In other moments, however, Sonum veer a little to closely to these genre conventions - or too far.
A good example of this is the opening samples, that made me think this would be more of an osdm record at first - plainly, the opening chords sound like a black and white horror movie score. I don't mind too much - I love that kind of stuff anyway, and on some level, it made the opening song hit even harder, because I did not quite expect the odd turns it would take. I am not quite sure how much of this is intentional - parts of the album do sound like other bands both from the osdm and avantgarde dm spectrum - but it is an interesting style of writing that produces some contrast beyond the usual dichtomies of clean/dirty, quiet/loud or nasty/pretty, that most bands go for. It would be a good move to make these choices a little bit more transparent and clear on future records. However, I can't be too upset about it. In the end, it's a band that fires out of all cylinders and flexes their creative muscles constantly. Particularly the drummer proves that creative choices, like a fucking reggeaton beat on "Feel Them Breathe", are worth more than any kind of technical wizardry.
Rating: 7/10.
Metalligatorrrs Additional Albums Assesments
Gjendød - I utakt med verden
Genre: Black Metal
Label: Hellthrasher Productions
Gjendød have always felt inscrutable yet intriguing to me. I listened to Krigsdøger a lot but ultimately couldn't quite crack it. It's one of those "there's something there" albums that I often tell myself to return to but inevitably forget. Well, I decided to give their new album I Utakt Med Verden ("out of sync with the world", if I've got my Norwegian down right) a go and found myself intrigued again, but in a more confused direction. This album slows things way down and the first thing that hits is a soft and full production. There's acoustic guitars used and a lot of the songs consist of folksy tunes coupled with black metal tremolos enveloping everything. Much like the album cover, there's contrast and depth in the sound.
Also like the album cover, the music sounds lost. None of the separate parts truly lead the songs and I struggle to hear what the band is going for on this release. There are times like in the song "Oppreising" where it seems the metal is going to take off but the song kind of just walks off and fades out. Is being lost in the woods the feeling they want to evoke? If so it sounds more like the strolling-between-the-trees-on-a-sunny-day kind, albeit with some dark thoughts hovering in the background.
I mostly enjoy the bass-heavy production and there are moments when songs do something to shake things up well, like the double kick section in "Mot Fred", but these moments are too far between. Once again these guys have managed to make me puzzled. I'm reminded of what Ulver tried to accomplish with Kveldssanger so many years ago and appreciate experiments in this vein. But I also feel like they need to bring a backpack for provisions next time they venture into the forest as this needs more meat on its bones.
Rating: 6/10
Tzompantli - Tlazcaltiliztli
Genre: Death Doom Metal
Label: 20 Buck Spin
Tzompantli (a rack used to display sculls) certainly picked a name evocative of their sound. The atmosphere is properly murky for death doom and the band uses a mix of sampled sounds (bird calls, distant howls etc) and tribal drums to get there. "Eltequi" in particular is an intriguing mood piece that mixes this with some droning guitars. Moments like these and the howls of the vocalist pull me into the atmosphere.
It's too bad, then, that the rest and majority of the material here consists of some of the most uninteresting death doom I've heard in a while. It might be usual fare from what I've heard from 20 Buck Spin's roster so far. The simplistic caveman nature of this kind of death doom probably has its charm but for me there's simply not enough ideas across the whole of the album to keep me interested. Just as things are about to wrap up in both "Ohtlatocopailcahualuztli" and "Tlamanalli" new ideas arrive with emotive riffs and threaten to make things enjoyable. But there the songs abruptly end having spent the majority of their runtime on their least interesting parts. Meanwhile "Eltequi" make me wonder what this band could do if they tried to fuse the styles better but I guess that's a question for next time.
Rating: 5/10
Heilung - Drif
Genre: Neofolk, World Music, Electroinc, Ambient
Label: Season of Mist
2019's Futha was a fascinating album that has stuck with me since it released. It presented a kind of bizarro alternative version to Dead Can Dance that focused a lot more on ancient Scandinavian and European culture. It mixed some very hypnotic rhythms from both drums and electronic music in a way that sounded unique. Throat singing, sung folk tales, borderline trip-hop, spoken word ambient with samples of war, frenzied screams - this album had a lot of tricks up its sleeves. It isn't surprising this band's hypnotic and ritualistic music has picked up fans among the metal crowd as much of what they do could be seen as being adjacent to metal. The only real drawback I could level against Futha was that it felt very long. To say that I had high expectations for a new Heilung album that could perhaps improve on this single point is putting it lightly.
High expectations are dangerous, as the material I find on Drif is a repetition of sorts of previous material. What strikes as soon as Drif starts playing is a vocal forward approach that sticks throughout the album. Not a deal-breaker usually but the way it's used on Drif bothers me. Whereas the material on Futha had some strong vocal hooks, the music was always well worked out and intriguing. It excelled at creating strong moods and using negative space to create atmosphere. The surrounding music on Drif sounds way more standard in a way that it seems written to only be there to support the vocals. At the midpoint stands the song "Keltentrauer" which repeats the spoken-word-and-war-samples from "Vapnatak" off Futha. Only it runs twice as long, thus diminishing its effect.
The singing is top notch again, especially that of Maria Franz. The problem on this release is the un-inventive material. What was once driving hypnotic rhythms have now become repetitive background music with a few exceptions. The vocal forward approach could have been interesting if the band had developed the concept more, but it's not like they were slouches on previous albums. I just get the feeling that this album was either rushed out or recorded alongside their work on the soundtrack of Hellblade 2, a video game yet to be released. It makes me sad to hear this bland kind of material from a great group like this. Just below an hour, I got the improvement I wanted from Futha while losing everything else I enjoyed. One step forward, thousands of years back.
Rating: 4/10
Soilwork - Övergivenheten
Genre: Schlagered Melodic Death Metal
Label: Nuclear Blast
Oh boy, Soilwork! Time to pen a hate piece of epic proportions whining about how they were never metal, amirite? Let's not. While I'd agree that Soilwork have more resembled a pop band playing melodic death metal for a larger part of their lifetime, I'd also say that this is for the better. See, my recent adventures of covering bland or formerly good melodeath bands has made me realise that very few of them know what they are good at and stick to that. Soilwork knows what they're good at: huge choruses with a little metal as contrast. I haven't paid much attention to them in years as these kind of bands are empty music calories to me. I might put it on when they release something new and I'd lie if I said I haven't enjoyed albums like Natural Born Chaos, Sworn to a Great Divide and Stabbing the Drama before. But it's never near list tier material.
Interesting enough, Soilwork seem to be at least partially aware of this divide in their own sound. The song "Electric Again" starts off like a proper melodeath song and features the lyrics "And it's hard to me/ What we used to be/ Like a ghost in me/ Whispering endlessly/ And you know I would/ If I only could/ Be electric/ Electric Again" then after a repeated chorus breaks down into a a synthetic violin melody and goes of in a rock based direction. Is this self-referential? Probably not but it's hard to not think about it when the band veers between their heavier (but softer by production) sound and a playful rock-ish sound. And playful is the word here as the songs on Övergivenheten (The Abandonment.....ness?) seem spirited and full of energy, the best one can hope to get from modern Soilwork. There's a groove and momentum to songs like "Vultures" that shoves those fast food calories straight into my ears. But there's also enough variety and small ideas that make my ears perk up. While I probably won't return to this album many times there's something positive to be said for that. And so I did, resigned to my impending label as a poseur.
Rating: 6/10
OMMMMMGGGG SOILWORK ARE DA BEST. ReL Talk bros DIS how real music SOUND lik. SO cool thees gais 'r usin their own language wahever it's is. I fought He HElo Effkt was gud butt WOW. Dis even maigt beat da neu In FLames album befor it ous. ALBUM OF DA YEAR uNtil tomarrow at da lest//// Edited by GIHGANTIC FUKING POSEUR XOXO (Holy Shit!)
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