Wonderbox Metal

Villainy – Villainy II: Dim (Review)

Villainy are from the Netherlands and this, (as the name would suggest), is their second album. They play Metal.

Their début album was enjoyable Thrash Metal with a few added elements of styles like Crust, Black Metal and Celtic-Frost-esque Metal to make things more interesting than your average Thrash band. It demonstrated a group who were not content to be mediocre and were striving the be different.

Well, on Villainy II: Dim they’ve progressed even further. This new album is more ambitious than the first and their Thrash Metal core is further enhanced by Doom and Black Metal influences, more so than the first.

The songs have a lot of ideas, depth and real potential for lasting impact. Featuring a surprising amount of variety over the 12 tracks, this is well-written Metal that doesn’t allow the listener’s attention to wane or wander.

Albums like this are a complete package, and by that I mean it’s a very holistic release with every song having its own identity, but still snugly fitting together as a whole.

The charisma and character of the singer has been brought further to the fore, and he sounds more confident and proficient than ever. Backed up by music that’s also more self-assured and expansive, this release is very impressive.

A strong, beefy guitar sound adds to the band’s delivery and the songs sound vibrant and fresh. Even though there’s a definite whiff of the Old-School about Villainy they have managed to produce an album that still sounds contemporary and relevant.

There’s over an hour of music on this release and no filler in sight. It’s always pleasing to see tangible progress in a band’s development and Villainy II: Dim is an impressively realised transition from what they were to what they are now becoming. Only time will tell where this will lead them.

This one’s a must.

Disquiet – The Condemnation (Review)

This is the second album from Dutch Melodic Thrash/Death Metal band Disquiet.

Disquiet play a heavy and aggressive brand of Thrash Metal with a nice Death Metal edge to it that means the band keep things dark and intense.

With plenty of jagged riffs and Metal leads, this is an album that it’s easy to feel at home with.

The singer varies his delivery between growls, shouts and what I’ll call almost-sung vocals – they’re almost sung, but not quite. Yeah, yeah, it may not be a very fancy description, but it suffices, and the end result is an added emotive edge to the vocals when there needs to be one without going full-blown into Metalcore-style cleans, for the most part.

I really like the production on this album and the thickness of the guitars. Everything else sounds top-drawer too and overall The Condemnation sounds quite immense.

If this album gets some good exposure I can see it doing very well indeed. It has the right combination of underground brutality and integrity combined with a songwriting skill that should ideally see them reaching a larger audience than a lot of their peers.

Recommended.

Manipulation – Ecstasy (Review)

Manipulation are a Polish Death Metal band and this is their third album.

Manipulation play muscular Modern Death Metal with plenty of attack and some interesting twists to the standard formula.

Blast beats and chugging mid-paced carnage are the order of the day, but the band also throw in some unexpected atmospheric moments throughout, via the inclusion of melodic guitars, subtle keyboards, choral-like cleans, etc.

Add to this experimentalism some ultra-modern riffs and Deathcore influences and you have 44 minutes of engaging Extreme Metal, the likes of which Poland always seems to do so well.

The songs are well-written and, as mentioned previously, Manipulation aren’t afraid to experiment or try new things, which is great to hear. This edge of Progressive Metal is buried within their core sound, but really does add to their delivery. When these elements mix with blasting extremity or heavy grooves it all comes together very nicely indeed.

The vocalist has a passionate and dynamic growl that fits the music well, giving them the Death Metal anchoring they need as well as enough variety to move beyond this and into more emphatic territories.

Energetic brutality with a playful spin on the genre; this is really, really impressive.

Highly recommended.

For fans of Thy Art Is Murder, Aborted, All Shall Perish, Cryptopsy, Gorod, Molotov Solution, Whitechapel, etc.

Against the Plagues – Purified Through Devastation (Review)

Against the Plagues are a US Death Metal band and this is their third album.

Featuring a crushing and professional sound, Against the Plagues play Death Metal mixed with lashings of Melodic Black Metal.

Deep growls and higher screams are the singer’s weapons of choice, with both sounding feral and full of hatred.

The band manage to take the savagery of Death Metal and infuse it with the melodic poison of Black Metal’s dark soul. This mixture means that Purified Through Devastation contains a good deal of catchy and memorable content. It’s not all blasting and brutality, (although they’re quite adept at that too), and these songs have quite a bit of atmosphere when they want to. Think a combination of Immolation, Morbid Angel and The Kennedy Veil crossed with Dimmu Borgir.

The muscular sound backs up the innate strength of the songs and subtle keyboards add a nuanced juxtaposition against the bare brutality of the drums and aggressive riffs. Mood and feeling is created with melodic workouts and the band can get quite martial and epic in scope on occasion.

It’s a modern take on Blackened Death Metal that sees the band highlighting the glossier, state-of-the-art side of both genres, resulting in a well-polished album that is also very well crafted. The band clearly know what they do and do it well. As Extreme Metal goes in 2015, this is a definite winner in my book.

This is an album that spits venom and fire, one that I’m more than happy to visit again and again. I suggest you do too.

Moaning Silence – A World Afraid of Light (Review)

This is the début album from Greek Gothic/Atmospheric Metal band Moaning Silence.

Featuring the kind of sound that was making big waves late 90s/early 00s, Moaning Silence play it well and I haven’t heard too much like this of late.

Combining the drawn-out Gothic sorrow of My Dying Bride with elements of Anathema’s approach, Moaning Silence have created an album that pays homage to the emotive, expressive side of Metal. There’s also an Anathema cover included for good measure.

Both male and female vocals appear, with the male vocalist’s voice having a quality to it that’s somewhere between the singers of My Dying Bride and Sentenced, while the female singer has a liquid, silken quality to her voice that is quite enticing.

This kind of style has been done to death, of course, so whether you enjoy what Moaning Silence have to offer depends on where your saturation point is for this kind of thing. I’ve pretty much reached mine, but I can still appreciate that Moaning Silence do what they do well, and there are some nice ideas on this release that show a lot of promise for the future. In fact, I enjoy them at their most when they’re relaxing a bit and letting the atmosphere flow naturally, as in tracks like The Last Days of December, (which is also notable for its lovely guitar solo and Classic Rock vibe).

As a début album, there’s still a lot of work to do for the band; I think they need to find their own style a bit more and also tighten up both the writing and the sound. Having said that though, there’s still a lot to enjoy on A World Afraid of Light, and I do like that this isn’t the ostentatious, flashy, overly-commercial brand of Gothic Metal either; this is a more earthy, honest interpretation of the original style that birthed a thousand Lacuna Coils.

So, give them a listen and see what you think.

Favourite Track: On Fragile Wings. Just a damn good song.

A Dream of Poe – An Infinity Emerged (Review)

A Dream of Poe are from Portugal and play Doom Metal. This is their second album.

This is Traditional Doom Metal that’s rich of texture and hue, laced with a subtle Gothic influence and plenty of majestic melodies; think My Dying Bride-esque.

The singer has a charismatic voice with just the right amount of drama added to the performance. He adds a lot of colour and flavour to the tracks and acts as a focal point for the misery-drenched music.

The songs are long, drawn-out explorations of beauty and tragedy, coming across as chapters in an epic tale of loss and woe.

Subtle keyboards underscore the emotive themes while the guitars provide a bedrock for the evocative atmospheres to attach themselves to. The songs are slow, moody and full of dark feelings.

Each track takes its time to get where it’s going and there’s no impetus to make things hurry along; this is a very good thing as the relaxing pace of the music is quite hypnotic and it’s easy to just switch off and absorb this album.

This is 56 minutes of quality Metal. Highly recommended.

He Comes Later – Adam: The Decay (Review)

He Comes Later are an Italian Deathcore band and this is their second EP.

After a relatively epic intro track, the first song, Beneath My Skin, sets the tone for the EP and He Comes Later reveal themselves to be Deathcore with some extras that you don’t normally find in this style.

They have the requisite blasting drums and groove-heavy guitars that work with the deep growls and higher screams. There’s lots of uplifting parts too, as well as melodic leads to add texture. There’s also a lot more going on here as well.

The songs have some interesting ideas on them, such as the inclusion of clean vocals and orchestral/keyboard elements on some of the tracks. It adds an extra layer of interest and helps keep the attention. Deathcore is a sub-genre that very easily gets stale, fast, but He Comes Later have enough ideas to keep things sounding stimulating and relatively fresh. I also like that they incorporate a decent amount of speed and blasting, as too much Deathcore tends to stay in mid-paced, groove-heavy territory.

The band have quite an accomplished sound on Adam: The Decay and largely seem to know what they’re doing with the material. There are some good riffs on here and enough dynamics and energy to keep things interesting.

Well, I’ve enjoyed this more than I expected too; some nice Deathcore with plenty of bite and enough elements enhanced by other influences to make this a meaty and tasty release.

It will be very interesting to see how this band develop from here and what they do with their first full-length release. I’m hoping that they develop their more experimental and atmospheric side, while keeping their core brutality; if they can do this then their début album will be very good indeed.

For the moment though there’s still 27 minutes of music on this, which is more than enough to keep us occupied for the moment. Time to give it another listen, I feel.

The Rodeo Idiot Engine – Malaise (Review)

The Rodeo Idiot Engine are a Hardcore band from France. This is their third album.

After enjoying their previous work this is an album which was gratefully received and devoured hungrily.

This is a band that excel at fusing chaotic Hardcore’s violence with Post-Hardcore’s intricacies and Screamo’s passion. The atypical rhythms, nasty semi-melodies and absolutely caustic vocals are an aural treat for any fan of extremity.

I love this kind of modern, violent Hardcore and there are a lot of bands that do it well, with the king of the genre being the mighty Converge, of course. The challenge for any band playing in this sub-genre then, for me, is to do it in such a way that stays true to the foundations of the style while avoiding sounding like a Converge-clone, which is easier said than done.

Suffice to say, The Rodeo Idiot Engine avoid this easily, (otherwise I wouldn’t be having this discussion), and the music on Malaise is both of-the-genre and very much their own at the same time. Exploding out of the speakers with pure fury and venom, this is an album that is resolutely its own beast.

At 38 minutes in length with 9 tracks, this shows the band’s evolution to, (on average), longer songs and more-involved displays of songwriting. They still absolutely rip, tear and burn through the playing time with ease, but they now do it with greater complexity, inventiveness and moments of deeper reflection and introspection.

I’d also say that Malaise is darker than their previous work. Not that they were ever shining beacons of sunlight, mind. Full of emotive intensity and compelling rage, this is an album worth repeated visits.

So, three albums in and The Rodeo Idiot Engine have produced their best work yet.

Nice one guys!

Suppressive Fire – Bedlam (Review)

Suppressive Fire are a Death/Thrash Metal band from the US. This is their début album.

I receive a lot of music promos, and I have to decide whether I’m going to give them a listen with a view to reviewing them, or not. There are lot of different ways I do this, lots of informal and flexible rules that sometimes vary quite a lot depending on how I’m feeling, what time of day it is, etc. Sometimes though, as with Suppressive Fire’s début, it’s all about the album cover. Something about the cover of Bedlam is just so unashamedly Thrash Metal, but without any retro-cheese-nonsense, that I just had to listen to it.

So here we are. As it turns out, sometimes you can judge the proverbial book by its cover.

Suppressive Fire play aggressive Old-School Death/Thrash Metal with a Blackened edge to it that makes it a far more aggressive proposition than most.

The songs are ugly, gritty and full of barely-contained spite. It’s pretty much a 50/50 mix of Death and Thrash Metal which gives the band an energetic sound that comes out in the riffs and galloping/blasting drums.

Featuring a suitably Old-School sound, the album rockets along powered by chemical weapons and nuclear fear. The guitars are riff-heavy and there’s plenty of solos to sink your teeth into.

It’s a decent collection of songs that have a subtle catchiness to them that initially seems buried under the barbed assault of the delivery, which essentially increases the longevity of the album as the songs don’t become too-familiar, too quickly.

So slip on the riot gear and descend into Bedlam.

Rash Decision – Headstrung (Review)

Rash Decision are from the UK and play Crossover Thrash/Hardcore.

Picking up from where Seaside Resort to Violence left off, Headstrung features 17 minutes of up-tempo violence.

The songs are short, simple and take a hearty chomp out of the musical landscape. This is a band who aren’t concerned with the subtleties of things and just want to Thrash it out with short songs and immediate impact.

Shouted vocals with a Hardcore tilt to them are well-performed and his voice is nicely hoarse.

The band have a good energy to them and sound like they’d be really good live. On their last release I liked the inclusion of Thrash influences without a stupid retro/ironic-vibe and this remains true of Headstrung – these tracks know when to be Hardcore and know when to be Metal and pay due respect to both genres.

It’s brief, but satisfying. Check it out.

https://rashdecision.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/rashdecision/