Phased are from Switzerland and play Psychedelic Doom Metal. This is their fifth album.
Phased are a familiar proposition in many ways. Taking the blueprint of a band like Electric Wizard, they proceed to play 44 minutes of music that’s similar enough to what we’re used to so that it’s instantly welcome, but with enough individuality to ensure that they’re not written off as a mere copy.
As with most things to do with music, this is subjective of course. For me, although this release has enough familiar markers from bands like Electric Wizard, Warhorse and, (to a lesser extent), Black Sabbath that it feels like an old friend, it also retains its own identity enough to be a worthy listen. In fact, if you cross Electric Wizard and Warhorse, you have a good idea of where Phased are coming from.
Understated, strangely-inhuman vocals act as just another instrument and can almost be overlooked as you get caught up in the riffs and confident melodies. Having said that, the overall impact of the songs would be lessened without them though.
The laid back, confident swagger of the Doom riffs and the general vibe of easy-going Space Rock is a beguiling combination. It’s hard not to like a band like this when they lock into a hypnotic groove.
So, will Phased do it for you, or have they missed their mark? Have a listen and see what you think.
Mammoth Storm are from Sweden. This is their début album and they play Doom.
Thick, heavy guitars, groove the size of tsunamis and colossal riffs? It can only be Mammoth Storm’s first album. This is heavy, ponderous Doom with a juicy Stoner streak running deep through it.
Charismatic vocals extend out over the songs, animated just above a drawl to provide focus and character to the gargantuan riffs and huge beats.
The guitars are a definite selling point of this music, as the heavy rhythms are meaty as Hell, while the more fragile leads almost have a Post-Metal transcendental quality to them. These are anchored in place by the more earthy guitars so that they remain firmly a part of the music.
The combination of the droning, repetitive nature of the rhythms and the exploratory, unbounded leads make for songs that form a soundscape of textures, writ large in Doom. The vocals cement the idea of a journey through this soundscape, guided by the album art and propelled endlessly forward by the understated-yet-essential drums.
Atmospheric layers are built with ease, immersing the listener in the moods and feelings that the band wish to evoke. It’s extremely effective; it’s easy to slip into these songs and lose yourself in the band’s emotive performance.
This is a substantial début in more ways than one, with the band creating a conceptual storyline to accompany the weighty music. At 55 minutes in length there is a lot of content here to enjoy.
I think this album is pretty much a must-get for any fan of Doom Metal. Check it out.
This is the third album from US Progressive Black Metal one-man group Terra Deep.
The music on this release is a complicated and sophisticated Progressive Metal feast that’s born out of the corrupted undergrowth of Black Metal’s fertile roots. Progressive and Post-Black Metal elements take control of proceedings quite early on, reinforced by a dark core of frozen steel.
Deep, unsettling growls, evil shrieks and powerful cleans all add a multitude of texture and feeling to music that successfully combines the cold malignance of Black Metal with the expansive, exploratory nature of Progressive music. This is further enhanced by elements of Doom/Depressive Black Metal that add a forlorn, lonesome sheen to some of the tracks. It all adds up to a multifaceted release full of quality music and songs that engage.
Richly textured tracks seem to bleed shades of pain and grim tidings, while still fostering a highly emotive side that connects with the listener in a visceral way. The songs are advanced exemplars of what can be done with a Black Metal base and a will to explore.
The production is solid and allows the music to hit the right balance between heaviness and nuance. It’s a good sound that satisfies and does justice to the differing parts and influences that make up Part of This World, Part of Another.
These five songs are impressively-realised affairs that speak of the experience and talent of the brains behind the outfit. He obviously has a coherent and well-rounded vision for Terra Deep and has the ability and skill to achieve it.
If you combine Opeth, Enslaved, Forgotten Tomb and Ihsahn then you’ll have a good idea of Terra Deep’s style.
There really is a lot here to offer the discerning Extreme Metal fan and I can’t really recommend this highly enough.
This is the second album from US Modern Metal band Devil You Know.
Featuring ex-members of such high-profile bands as Killswitch Engage, Divine Heresy, All Shall Perish and Bleeding Through, you know there’s a wealth of experience and talent behind this album before you even press play.
When you do press play, I like that there’s no messing around with pointless intros or anything like that; it’s straight into the double-bass led action, with plenty of heaviness and groove.
The singer is on fine form. Whether he was shouting at the top of his voice in Killswitch Engage or Blood Has Been Shed, he has always had a top-rate set of lungs. The majority of his work on They Bleed Red is angry and harsh shouting, although other variations are also used, as well as his clean singing voice.
The music is heavy and full of rhythmic Metal that also takes influences from both Metalcore’s beatdowns and the more extreme, faster side of Modern Metal. Although it’s all thoroughly modern and new-sounding, they still find the time to add in some more Classic Metal influences, including the odd guitar solo.
The production, as should be expected from a band like this, is huge and crushing. Bands like this need a strong sound as otherwise the power of some the riffs can easily be distilled. No such worry here, of course, and you can feel every guitar riff and drum beat.
They Bleed Red is a good combination of the more commercial side of Metal mixed with a heavier, more extreme sensibility. It’s too heavy and shouty to be as popular as a band like Killswitch Engage, but it’s got a commercial edge and songwriting-calibre that will see it snapped up by those who like some catchy songs with their heaviness.
Vreid are a Black Metal band from Norway and this is their seventh album.
Vreid play Melodic Black Metal that’s sharp and fast. They specialise in colourful, rich melodies that run through the Blackened music like a stream cutting through a mountain.
Vreid originally arose after the end of Windir, a band that I always loved. For some reason, I never got around to checking out Vreid before now, (partially through laziness/lack of opportunity, and partially as Windir were so damn good that it almost didn’t seem worth it. Odd reasoning I know…), and I sincerely regret this, as Sólverv, (and presumably the rest of their work), effectively carries on the spirit of what Windir were about. Oh how I’ve missed these elegant and distinctive atmospheric melodies! There’s a lesson here folks – always check out that band who, for whatever reason, you haven’t had the time or inclination to.
The rhythm guitars are full of energy and play with speed and groove with equal relish. The leads are frequent and highly textured, giving the band a superbly atmosphered collection of songs that are highly emotive and engaging. Subtle keyboards further enhance the tracks where necessary, adding another layer of feeling.
These songs are atmospheric in ways that it’s hard to express. It’s like the guitars have plugged into a primal wellspring of Blackened mood and ambience, lost since the rise of second wave Black Metal and found and kept safe by the band for their own special ministrations.
Of course it’s not all about the guitars, although these are a defining point of the music. The other instruments and the singer play their parts too. The bass and drums provide a framework for the guitars to work their magic, while the singer’s rasping screech adds a serrated edge to the flowing, melodic music.
It is with great regret that I mourn the lost years where I had the chance to follow up on the mighty Windir’s legacy and failed to do so. More fool me. From now on, Sólverv will be on heavy rotation.
Arcturus are a Norwegian Avant-Garde Progressive Black Metal band and this is their fifth album.
This legendary band finally make a return with their unique and charismatic take on Metal. This is 48 minutes of extravagance, style, class, eccentricity and outright esoteric musicality. The level of skill and talent involved in a release like this is staggering really, when compared with the average band. But then Arcturus have always been outliers.
This album is somewhat of a blend of their earlier and later work. It’s more accessible than the pure theatricality of La Masquerade Infernale, but less cautious than Sideshow Symphonies; the result is an album that takes the right amount of cues from both.
Arcturian is a perfectly judged melting pot of disparate influences that balances them all off against each other in a coherent-yet-varied way. From blast beats to orchestral oddness and everything in between, this is highly-textured and richly evocative music that’s not afraid to pile on the layers of atmosphere and feeling. The songs have depth, dynamics, pacing and personality.
As a focal point, we have the amazing voice of the singer. He has always been one of my favourite vocalists, no matter what band he has been playing in, and on Arcturian he excels in every way. Boasting one of the most distinctive and powerful voices in Metal, he complements the expansive and nuanced music with a strong presence and commanding performance. Hot stuff.
I’m extremely pleased to say that Arcturus’ first offering in a decade is a resounding success, at least with me it is. Music is highly subjective and a lot of people just won’t ‘get’ this, (more fool them), but for those that do, this heralds a wondrous homecoming. Arcturian is a return to form after their last album, (which was good, but lacking that something special that their other work had), and an album to listen to and absorb over and over again.
Vision of Disorder are a US Hardcore band. This is their sixth album.
Hardcore veterans Vision of Disorder return and from the off it’s riffs, riffs and more riffs as the singer snarls and the production crushes. I’ve been a huge fan of this band ever since their amazing Imprint album came out way back 1998. They’ve had some ups and downs over the years, but they’ve always delivered the goods in one form or another.
Razed to the Ground is what Vision of Disorder do best – a condensed explosion of violence and melody. These songs allow the listener to get wrapped up in pummelling grooves, high-energy riffs and a performance so pumped up it will tear your face off before it even realises what it’s done.
Ostensibly a band like Vision of Disorder should be a run-of-the-mill Metalcore band with no distinguishing features to set them apart from hordes of similar bands, except for their higher profile and length of service. In reality though, the atypical riffs, interesting melodies, Hardcore ferocity and pure passion that the band exude mean that they are very much greater than the sum of their parts.
These songs have catchines and hooks in spades. As well as all of the obvious, high-impact immediate stuff here, there’s also a deeper subtlety and nuance displayed on some of the tracks that merely adds to the album’s longevity.
I’ve always loved the singer’s voice. His screaming snarls sound like anger personified when he really lets rip, and his cleans always have a certain edge to them that made them stand out from most of the more commercial/weak sounding cleans used by a lot of their peers. He’s on top form again on this release and it seems he will never run out of steam. Here’s hoping.
This is a strong new album from these Hardcore stalwarts.
Moloch is a Ukrainian one-man Black Metal band. This is his latest album.
This is Old-School Black Metal that’s bookended by two Dark Ambient pieces, both of which are strangely effective.
The main feast is primitive, raw Black Metal that’s of the lo-fi persuasion and reminds of bands like Burzum and Xasthur. Elements of the Depressive Black Metal style rear their despondent heads on occasion, lending a painful edge to Moloch’s cold Black Metal.
These songs seem barely held together, but not because they are sloppily played or anything like that. The playing is in fact quite tight, but the style of Black Metal on Verwüstung has an inherently chaotic, tortured feel to it; it’s almost as if this has been created and released under extreme duress and some significant amount of pain.
The vocals howl, shriek and seemingly claw their way through the tracks with the sharpness of a sword. An impressive performance is given and I can only imagine the man was emotionally ruined near the end of the recording process. At least, it sounds that way.
Good variety and songwriting means that Verwüstung is an involving and engaging listen, with enough changes in speed and feeling to keep things interesting without becoming inconsistent.
With a recording that’s underground enough to be raw yet coherent enough to work well with the material, Verwüstung is a very satisfying album and a very strong listen.
Biopsy’s début EP Fractals of Derangement is a solid slab of USDM-style Brutal Death Metal that has enough ugly surgical scars to cause the staunchest of Death Metal fans to take note. Curious to learn more about them, I caught up with their vocalist in his operating theatre…
For those who are unfamiliar with your band – introduce yourself!
Hi, I’m Shomeresh, vocalist of the band. I’ll be answering your questions today, most of our opinions about the band and the industry are rather unanimous so I’m quite confident I can do justice to do this interview by myself. Well, let’s get into it.
We’re Biopsy, a brutal death metal band from Bombay. We started off as three teenagers with a passion for this genre of music and that eventually evolved into us jamming, then composing our own music and finally recording an EP.
Give us a bit of history to Biopsy
The three of us met back in 2010, Keshav (drums) and Akshay (guitars) were already jamming with each other a few others, I (Shomeresh – vocals) came into the picture a few months later and joined the lads for a jam session and we really seemed to connect on a musical level. We initially began covering and composing music as a death metal act but over the years our musical interests shifted towards brutal death metal. The sheer aggression, intensity and versatility of the genre is something that appealed to us and we then decided to stick with this genre and began composing several tracks out of which a few of them made the cut to what is now called ‘Fractals of Derangement’ our EP.
What are your influences?
Our musical influences come from a variety of genres. We love listening to music outside of just metal or even rock. So to answer this question I would like to say our influences come from the entire music eco-system as a whole, which would include genres like drum & bass, psychedelic trance, electro-house, rock, post-rock, classic rock, metal, funk, techno etc. Pretty much any track that sounds good, we don’t like limiting our musical tastes to the genre our band plays – that’s like restricting yourself from enjoying all this amazing talent out there. When it comes to Biopsy’s influences in particular, I’d say bands like Disgorge, Defeated Sanity, Gorgasm, Cephalotripsy, Dying Fetus, etc. helped us shape our sound into what it is today.
What are you listening to at the moment that you would like to recommend?
Well, I can’t speak for the rest of the guys on this one but personally I have been listening to a lot of hip-hop of late (best music for the drive to work), along with that I’ve always been a passionate lover of electronic music (psychedelic trance, electro-house, glitch, trap etc.) and metal of course. Among the metal bands on my current playlist, Betraying the Martyrs and Of Mice & Men are two bands that feature more often than not.
As this is your début EP, is there anything you would do differently if you had to do it all over again?
Not really, we’re really happy with how it sounds and the way it’s been accepted and appreciated by peers and professionals around the world. If anything we’d probably like to change my profile picture in the EP booklet, according to the guys I look like a queer ‘Persian prince’.
What’s your favourite song on your EP and why?
We each have different favourites, because each track has different levels of contribution from the various individuals in the band. My favourite would have to be ‘Surgical Symmetry’ as I deeply enjoy the extremely synchronised synergy between guitar and vocal lines throughout the track. There were several segments of the track where the vocal lines fit so well with the guitar lines that the three instantly knew we would never find a better alternative. It was one of those tracks where everything just seemed to come together, and we probably brainstormed the least on vocal, guitar and drum lines for this one and I love it when that happens, because otherwise you’re constantly second-guessing your decisions.
What are the subjects/themes of the songs?
The theme of the band is a deranged surgeon killing individuals who he deems unworthy of existence. People with contagious diseases or tainted characters. A quick read of the booklet in our EP case should explain this in elaborate detail.
Give us a bit of information on your songwriting process.
The song-writing process for this EP consisted of Keshav and Akshay sitting together and ironing out the instrumentals, then sending over the track to me after which we’d brainstorm on appropriate vocal lines which was followed by me penning down lyrics and selecting a good title for the song. Sounds really simple when I lay it out like this, but there are several complications that come up along the way which you have to deal with on the fly, but I suppose that’s the journey every set of artists go through while composing something as a group, there are always individual preferences and tastes it’s about how you can best accommodate everyone’s opinions without compromising on the integrity of the final output.
How do you see your songs/direction developing in the future?
A. Given the fact that we’re currently in different countries, I’m in UAE (Dubai), Akshay is in Michigan (USA) and Keshav is back home in India (Bombay) composing music is quite the challenge, but we plan to exchange stuff over the internet and try to put together a few more tracks then hit the studio and record another EP in the near future.
Thanks a lot for this great interview! We enjoyed it very much!
Dalla Nebbia are a Progressive Black Metal band from the US. This is their second album.
This is sophisticated Black Metal that incorporates elements of the Progressive and Atmospheric sub-styles into itself, as well as some Doom/Death elements here and there.
Featuring an added violinist on most of the tracks, this is expansive and exploratory music that may have a firm base in Black Metal but refuses to be constrained by its traditional trappings.
The band are clearly talented, imaginative and ambitious, which is a fine combination. Dalla Nebbia are the kind of band that brings influences from some of the best aspects of Emperor, Agalloch, Opeth, Arcturus, Windir and other similarly lofty bands together into one place and then makes them their own.
The songs have a high emotional content that seems to come naturally to the guitars. The tracks aren’t simple, straightforward affairs either, so this rich, emotive quality is even more impressive. Background synths and effects add a further layer to the variety of riffs and melodies used, with the intention of everything being to take the listener on a Blackened journey into the dark places of the world. With Dalla Nebbia as your guide, this is a trip worth taking.
Mainly propelled forwards with traditional Blackened screams; cleans, growls and other vocalisations also appear and reinforce the impression of a varied and interesting band who are happy to do things their own way.
This is a varied release that covers a lot of ground. It’s not something that can easily absorbed in one listen as there’s a lot going on here; each spin brings something else to your attention, and there’s a lot of quality content to notice on Felix Culpa.
Very impressive and very enjoyable. Make sure you look out for this one.
Phased are from Switzerland and play Psychedelic Doom Metal. This is their fifth album.
Wonderbox Metal 