Death – Page 9 – Wonderbox Metal

Stigmata – The Ascetic Paradox (Review)

Stigmata are from Sri Lanka and this is their fourth album. They play Heavy Metal.

Wow, okay, so here we have a bit of everything from Death to Nevermore to Iron Maiden. The band play technical and involving music that’s as varied as the influences suggest, all within the overarching template of Heavy Metal.

At 58 minutes in length, and touching on a wide-range of Heavy Metal bases, there’s a lot going on here.

It’s clear that the band are Hellishly talented and have grand ambitions for their art. Frequent musical sidesteps are taken so that you never quite know what’s just around the corner. Some of the playing on this release is jaw-dropping.

Full of grand melodies and even grander ambition, The Ascetic Paradox is a wild ride through various corners of Heavy Metal’s map, paying tribute to the greats while also spinning the threads of the Metal fates to their own ends.

The vocals are equally as varied, taking in everything from shouts, slithering screams, cleans to air-raid siren howls.

The production is a little uneven in places – I could do with the guitars feeling a little fuller and larger, but it doesn’t spoil the songs, just doesn’t let them reach their full potential I feel.

This is very impressive, but I feel would benefit from being re-recorded and tightened up in a few places. Don’t let this put you off though as Stigmata have produced an album that wins more than it doesn’t.

A flawed masterpiece.

Voros – Diseased Deity (Review)

Voros are a Death Metal band from Australia and this is their début album.

If heavy Death Metal with good riffs and pacing is your thing then look no further. Voros feature a thorough approach to Death Metal that sees them take the Classic style and infuse it with a modern energy.

Believe it or not, but Diseased Deity covers a lot of bases; Death, Thrash, Progressive, Technical and Modern Metal are all thrown into the blender and feed into this Death Metal feast.

The vocals are savage shouts full of anger and hatred which seem to lash out of the music like diseased barbs. The singer has a touch of the Meshuggah about him, giving his voice a different edge to that of the normal Death Metal vocalist.

The songs are well-written and see the band showing off what they do, whether it’s riff-hungry, mid-paced Thrashing, faster complexity or blasting destruction.

I like the combination of older and modern influences that give this a feel of Lamb of God and Gojira conspiring together to cover Morbid Angel, Death and Immolation tracks. It’s a really good way to approach this album; modern fire with tried-and-tested Old-School steel. On Diseased Deity it all comes together perfectly and the songs are an interesting, varied and engaging vision of what the band want to achieve.

The various influences work together very well to produce an album that takes from several different styles, with the band having enough skill and talent to make it all their own. Diseased Deity is very impressive and these songs have both immediate appeal and longevity of delivery.

This is a great find. I recommend you get hold of this immediately.

Antlion – The Prescient (Review)

Antlion are a Canadian Technical Death Metal band and this is their début album.

Antlion’s brand of Death Metal incorporates some Jazzy, Progressive and Death-style elements into their Technical Death Metal broth and it tastes good. It’s a modern take on the genre and is somewhat of a mix of bands like Gorod and Between the Buried and Me’s quirky extremity, mixed with a classic essence of Death and just the barest touch of Djent.

The music is highly accomplished, featuring enough style and time-changes to satisfy anyone’s craving for challenging music. This is coupled with a wider Progressive sensibility that stops the music from going off the rails completely, but only just.

Liquid leads and fluid guitars fracture into spiky riffs and jagged melodies at a moment’s notice. The merging of the two disparate Progressive Technical Metal worlds that bands like Between the Buried and Me and Death inhabit is a stroke of genius and it’s a joy to hear the modern and the Old-School share space in this way.

The singer’s voice mainly consists of sharp, shrieking screams and aggressive growls. His performance fits the music and it’s nicely rabid the entire way through.

For all of their seeming-randomness, these are tightly controlled songs that have a surprising emotive content and even catchiness in places, both of which are unexpected for a band of this ilk.

This is an impressive release, especially for a début. I would love for this band to develop their Progressive side in the future, but at the same time keeping the inherent unpredictability of their Technical side. This would probably mean songs that average about 10 minutes in length each, but I’m happy with that. As it is though, The Prescient is a very involving slab of Technical/Progressive Death Metal with loads of content and a nasty bite.

Highly recommended.

Contrarian – Polemic (Review)

Contrarian are a Progressive Death Metal band from the US. This is their début album.

Just take a look at the album cover – there’s a lot going on and this translates to the music on Polemic too. Contrarian play distinctly atypical Progressive/Technical Death Metal. It’s not your standard fare. which we are eternally grateful for. As a soundtrack to space battles, it works.

Elements of Death, Atheist and Cynic can be heard, as well as more modern influences. All of this is held together by a first-rate vocalist whose growls can only be described as monstrous.

The music twists and turns, taking the listener down all manner of interesting avenues before seemingly changing direction on a whim, returning to where it left off only to find that it’s not the same place after all.

So the band can play, that much is clear; you would expect no less considering the pedigree of some of the members, (Nile being the most notable). Interestingly though, even through all of the technicality and forensic playing they still somehow manage to fashion this chaotic landscape into a collection of songs.

There’s a good helping of otherworldly melodies and distorted atmospherics included in the mix too. These are a welcome addition to the band’s music, helping to create an additional sense of depth and longevity to the tracks. There are frequent calmer sections peppered throughout, as if the band are allowing themselves small moments of respite and self-reflection to replenish themselves for what’s to come.

In the final analysis, it all results in a highly-textured release that is a very enjoyable listen.

Highly recommended.

Insanity – Visions of Apocalypse (Review)

Insanity are a Death Metal band from the US. This is their second album.

Featuring a sharp Old-School sound, Insanity’s brand of Death Metal is from a much older era, harking back to the 80s period. Death are a clear influence, (pre-Progressive Death Metal), and Insanity are equally as sharp in their delivery. Add this to a simpler, more straight-forward Death Metal style, à la early-Deicide, and you have honest songs that hit the spot more often than not.

Shining leads and solos make frequent grabs for the limelight and the drummer keeps a machine-like performance going throughout.

There’s decent variation within their musical framework and the songwriting concentrates on songs first and foremost. The combination of simple riffs with more-complicated solos, leads and guitar parts makes for a compelling listen. There’s also a slight Thrash Metal influence which means that Visions of Apocalypse has a lot to offer the listener.

The singer’s voice is somewhere between a scream and a growl, nailing down the feeling of Classic Death Metal in my mind.

This is a really satisfying album that I’ve enjoyed more than I expected to; a convincing display of Classic Death Metal in 2015 from a band who were around and active when it was all originally happening. In hindsight, how could this album be anything other than a victory?

Gorod – A Maze of Recycled Creeds (Review)

Gorod are a Death Metal band from France and this is their fifth album.

The band play Technical Death Metal and play it pretty damn well. Over the course of their existence they have built up a rightfully-deserved reputation for quality and on this latest release it’s easy to see why.

Gorod have always been fond of atypical, unusual, Jazz-inflected riffs and on A Maze of Recycled Creeds there seems to be even more of these than usual, which, if you’re familiar with Gorod at all, is only ever a good thing.

Another, (one of many), good things about Gorod is their inclusion of a Progressive Metal element to their music, which allows the band to lock into some astoundingly good sections as the album tears along, mindful of not letting slip any moment for greatness. This is Technical Death Metal that values songs and recognises the need for good atmosphere and feeling among the Jazz/Funk craziness and experimental brutality.

All of the instruments are shockingly well-played and Gorod are one of those seemingly-rare bands that know not only how to use a bass guitar but also that you must be able to actually hear it for it to be truly utilised correctly.

Vocally the singer has a charismatic growl that’s largely blunt and ugly, yet still seemingly refined when compared to a lot of Death Metal vocalists. His voice is put to good use throughout the songs and he has enough variety in his delivery to keep interest while still having a consistency that helps anchor the music’s more extravagant tendencies.

This is a very impressive album from a talented band. The songs are well-written and performed by veterans who are at the height of their game. If you take bands as diverse as Gorguts, Between the Buried and Me, Soilent Green, Death and The Faceless, mash them all up and condense them into 46 minutes of controlled mayhem, you’ll end up with A Maze of Recycled Creeds.

Priceless.

The Ritual Aura – Laniakea (Review)

This is the début album from Australian Technical Death Metallers The Ritual Aura.

This is sci-fi themed Death Metal that takes the listener on a brutal and dizzying journey that may only last 26 minutes but is definitely worth the effort.

After an ominous piano intro, the first song Ectoplasm starts and it’s clear we’re in for a world of extreme technicality.

The Ritual Aura excel at combining hyperspeed wizardry with blazing melody and brutal inflections. Elements of bands such as Death and Necrophagist can be heard in their sound, as well as a much more modern style, such as can be found being played by bands like Rings of Saturn, The Faceless and Infant Annihilator.

This is imaginative music that takes its sci-fi theme and creatively incorporates this into the melodies, creating some quite unusual electronica/games-soundtrack-esque sounds that manage to avoid everything that’s usually wrong with bands when they try to do something like this. It sounds like a natural extension of the chaotic-yet-melodic music without sullying it with words like “novel” or “gimmick”.

Although it’s the music that is the central focal point here, the band would not be as enjoyable if they didn’t have vocals. The singer uses surgical growls and unhinged, savage screams. Although not as colourful as the music, (the human voice just isn’t capable), he does a great job of anchoring everything in place and providing a brutal linchpin while the music is off exploring unknown heights and realms. Clean vocals make a very brief appearance on Erased in the Purge, and these are a welcome addition to the mayhem.

Laniakea is short and to the point, resulting in an album that doesn’t outstay its welcome. In fact, I’m more than happy to have this around again to blow the cobwebs off the competition. There’s an energy level and an excitement factor to this music that makes a lot of more generic bands sound quite stale by comparison.

Great stuff. I can’t recommend this highly enough.

Corpse Garden – Entheogen (Review)

This is the second album from Costa Rican Death Metallers Corpse Garden.

Dark and brutal, Corpse Garden deliver 62 minutes of blistering and intelligent Death Metal on Entheogen. This is intricate Death Metal with a good dollop of the Technical and Progressive sub-styles incorporated into their sound.

Guttural vocals are growled out from the shadows and all manner of other vocalisations accompany them, although the deep grunts are the main focus.

The music is complex and savage, with all of the instruments having a major part to play, even the oft-forgotten bass. I love it when the bass is used intelligently and as its own instrument, rather than just for the sake of having a bassist, as most band seem to do. On Entheogen, it adds a lot to the music.

The longer-than-normal length of the songs allows the band to really spread their wings and include some good ideas in the music. The tracks feature a mix of simple riffs and melodies alongside much more complex playing; this combination of both gives the songs great power as there are moments when straightforward chugging guitars are the best choice, moments when complicated Death-esque Progressive/Technical sections are the order of the day, and yet other moments when the band go all atmospheric with added synths and other sounds.

For all of this creativity though they still remember the importance of a good song. The tracks on this album all revolve around this, preventing the Technical Death Metal elements from becoming too overpowering or detrimental to their cause.

Corpse Garden are clearly an ambitious band, as Entheogen is not your standard, run-of-the-mill brutal blaster. There’s a lot more going on here than the average Death Metal band attempt and this is entirely to Corpse Garden’s credit.

This is a garden that I heartily recommend spending some time visiting.

De Profundis – Kingdom of the Blind (Review)

This is the fourth album from UK Death Metallers De Profundis.

After 2014’s EP teaser Frequencies, (two tracks of which make an appearance on Kingdom of the Blind), this album fleshes out their Progressive/Technical Death Metal sound to a fuller 52 minutes.

The band continue with their technical Death-worship and have created an album that’s a comprehensive overview of their Death Metal worldview. Like their heroes, De Profundis make sure that the song is never lost within the technical framework and have the talent necessary to play such ambitious music. Like the wonderful Execration, they are doing their best to keep the spirit of Death alive while putting infusing the style with their own personality and spin.

De Profundis like their songs technical and involving, with plenty of syncopation and off-kilter ideas amidst the blast beats. The songs are all around the 5-minute mark, or longer, giving the band ample time to show off what they can do. The performance levels are high and the entire package is very accomplished. I must also mention the bass, especially; I really like what the bassist contributes to these songs.

The deep vocals are like thunder claps and punctuate the songs like bruises. These help to provide a different identity for the band than if they had opted for higher, more Death-esque vocals, and act as a blunt counterpoint to the sharpness of the music.

Kingdom of the Blind is an impressive release from a band who are not content to be average.

Highly recommended.

Immortal Bird – Empress/Abscess (Review)

Immortal Bird are an interesting Death Metal band from the US. This is their début album.

This is not a typical Death Metal album. In fact it’s only Death Metal in the loosest sense really. Elements of Black Metal’s darkness and Grind’s chaos infuse it like diseases, while the brutal core only gets stronger and stronger due to these infections.

The singer has an absolutely scathing voice and her vocals seem to lash out of the venomous music like angry barbs.

The songs are an extremely impressive collection of styles and sub-genres. Fusing the atypical Death Metal of Gorguts, the emotive Grind of Cloud Rat, the Hardcore fury and aural inventiveness of Converge, the classic-style aura of Death and the Blackened taint of Ludicra – this is a real merging of different aspects of Extreme Metal, underpinned by a Death Metal core, resulting in an album that really is an incredibly impressive release.

As well as having a certain soft spot for some well-worn and classic genres/sub-genres, I also absolutely love it when you encounter a band that are doing something a bit different. Immortal Bird are the perfect kind of band for this, and I love that they throw so many Extreme Metal influences into their melting pot. The important thing, though, is that they’re doing it extremely well. This release is well-realised and sounds completely natural and unforced. The songs are just that well-written.

These tracks have it all, from blasting to angularity to atmosphere to melody to high-energy. For all the extremity on display here they still manage to throw in some hooks and the entire thing is actually very memorable, quite quickly.

This is the kind of music that causes you to take a sharp intake of breath and say to yourself, “holy shit”.

What more is there to say? You absolutely need Immortal Bird in your life.

This is going in my end of year list, make no mistake.