Lifestream are a French Black Metal band and this is their début album.
Lifestream play their Black Metal in a dark and atmospheric style that recalls the Norwegian scene at its height, and Emperor in particular.
Well-written songs are powered by blast beats and bile. Twisted guitars and winding, atypical melodies are used frequently to create unexpected avenues of musical exploration.
Keyboards are used to add extra layers, but not overly so; they enhance the overall atmosphere of the songs without drawing needless attention to themselves.
The songs draw you in and enclose you in a shroud of darkness that you’re only too happy to be smothered by. This is an ambitious and atmospheric release from a promising new aspirant and Lifestream show that they have what it takes to play in the big leagues.
An album like this draws influence from the Norwegian style, as mentioned, but also contains enough quintessential elements of the French scene to be identifiable as such. Underground, occult and inscrutable; Lifestream have created an ambitious and impressive 53 minutes of supreme Black Metal art.
Daemonium are a Ukrainian Black Metal band and this is their début album.
Here we have a release full of savage Black Metal with a distinct Scandinavian quality and lots of evil feelings.
Evoking the spirit of bands like Marduk, Dark Funeral and Naglfar, as well as Dimmu Borgir and a taste of Emperor; Daemonium proceed to blast and pound their way through these songs like they really mean it.
This is somewhat of a nostalgia-inducing release for me as it takes me back to the late 90s period of Black Metal. This is no bad thing really, as Имя Мне Легион is produced, performed and delivered with real passion and bile.
The singer has a great, throaty rasp that is perfect for this style of music. He’s not adverse to going deeper too and his vocals never seem too far away from the action.
This album is packed full to the brim with Blackened, frosty melodies and razorblade riffing. Subtle keybaords lurk in the background adding extra flavour and their contribution shouldn’t be discounted.
I do enjoy this style of balls-to-the-wall occult Black Metal. The feeling of malevolent brutality and otherworldly sped-up hatred is a tough one to beat. The fact that it also comes wrapped up with an extra atmospheric element, thanks to the keyboards, is just a bonus.
Although the style is an old one, Daemonium play their Black Metal with such enthusiasm that it’s hard to be dismissive; plus the fact that they genuinely seem to know what they’re doing means they have written a really enjoyable album.
I’d definitely recommend this one for your further investigations.
This is the début album by US Doom Metal band Pendulous.
Pendulous play depressive Doom/Death that’s sorrowful and full of woe. The album title should be a dead giveaway; there’s no happiness here, just misery.
The vocals alternate between grim Death-growls and clean singing, depending on the needs of the song. The growls are ably done and are strongly performed, but it’s the clean vocals that stand out.
Emotive and dripping with melancholy; the singer’s voice acts as a focal point whenever it appears and also serves to characterise the album as a whole – expressive and lost to negativity.
The songs are expressive in their own right but the addition of a rather subtle cello is a wonderful enhancement to the band’s style.
The music just excretes melancholy from every musical pore. Although the band are suitably heavy it’s an emotional heaviness that really makes A Palpable Sense of Love & Loss so crushing.
The Doom/Death scene is quite a narrow one; too much either way and you’re playing a different style. The true way to set yourself apart is the emotional content of the music and how it resonates with the listener. Pendulous should have no worries in this regard and their album is a work of bleeding, regretful art.
Grenouer are a Russian band and this is their eighth album. They play a combination of Alternative Rock and Modern Metal.
Grenouer play the kind of stadium-friendly Modern Rock/Metal that seemed to set the world alight on a regular basis in the late 90s/early 00s.
This is a release that’s positively bursting with catchy melodies and hooks aplenty. Big grooves, bigger choruses and a tasty production mean that this album is extremely easy on the ear.
The songs are all well-recorded with everything sounding extremely professional. The singer has a great voice and keyboards and effects add extra layers to the band’s sound.
All of the songs are essentially Radio-Friendly Unit Shifters and this is easily digestible music that nonetheless makes a good impression.
Featuring elements of bands such as Filter, Mnemic, Stabbing Westward and Spineshank, Unwanted Today is highly melodic and full of hummable tunes.
If your tastes run to the more accessible and commercial side of loud music then you’ll probably appreciate what Grenouer are offering here.
Austerymn are a UK Death Metal band and this is their début album.
This may be a UK band but there’s a definite whiff of Sweden about them; it’s Old-School Swedish Death Metal in the familiar style and with a roaring sound.
I’ve said this before, but your tolerance for this sub-genre will essentially dictate your response to Austerymn. Had enough? Then move along. Can’t get enough? Lap this up.
This is such a faithful recreation of the classic style that you almost have to double-check who you’re actually listening to and what year it was released in.
Dark melodies that are a hallmark of the style are peeled off with ease and the crushing rhythms are equally effortless. The harsh, molten-metal vocals seem born for the music.
The songs on the album have a strictly no-frills approach and concentrate on being heavy while creating macabre atmospheres with the melodic guitars.
Fat chugging and aggressive drumming make for songs that have an edge to them and the general structuring of the tracks mean that they’re surprisingly memorable and enjoyable affairs.
If you can’t get enough of the sound espoused by the old days of Entombed, Dismember and the like, then Austerymn are here to sate your bloodlust.
Aezh Morvarc’h are a Black Metal band from France and this is their latest EP.
This is sharp and frosty Black Metal that carries a melodic edge with its raw delivery.
Dark screams and ghostly clean-chants populate the musical landscape and recall Mayhem at their esoteric best.
The songs have their atmospheric moments but for the most part it’s a grim assault that the band undertake. Melodic riffing softens the effect though and the inclusion of so many heroic-sounding cleans further distils the rawness factor. This is all a plus point as it gives the band their own character compared to countless other bands playing underground Black Metal.
The speed of the songs is enticing, but it’s the mystical melodies that really do the trick here.
Aezh Morvarc’h have taken their Classic Metal heritage seriously too, and Mare Humorum has more than its fair share of real Metal riffs mixed into the Black Metal. This is a welcome aspect of their style and combined with the clean vocals really gives the band an epic/heroic streak to their sound.
I enjoyed this. For a band that is ostensibly an underground Black Metal group, this release offers the listener something a little different.
Here they treat us to two tracks of ultra-heavy Doom that snarls and crushes yet also has a contemplative side.
The vocals are so serrated that this EP should come with a health warning. Their scathing assault is a reminder of how truly harsh screamed vocals can sound from the right singer.
The music is down-beat Doom which is slow enough to cast a grim shadow where it falls but energetic enough to keep a beat to. Although they specialise in the heavier side of Doom, the songs also carry a multitude of melodies through these tumultuous waters. Said melodies are largely low-key affairs content to hide just below the heavier rhythms, although this is not always the case.
The band’s more nuanced side manifests through these streaks of melodic colour and also through some Isis/Cult of Luna-esque Post-Metal moments.
The entire package is rounded off with a strong sound that accentuates all of the band’s strengths, leaving them free to pursue the music through to its logical conclusion.
Keeper have released a devastating calling card with their new EP, one that will surely, and rightfully, gain them many accolades.
A Secret Revealed are a German Post-Metal band and this is their début album.
This is emotive Post-Metal that has a good mix of upbeat misery and negative energies.
The Bleakness is an interesting listen as it combines a few different styles of Modern Metal into a coherent assault on happiness. Post-Metal, Modern Metal, Post-Hardcore and even the odd bit of Doom, Shoegaze and Extreme Metal all get incorporated into their overarching depressive aesthetic.
The vocals consist of impassioned screams that are very much in the blood-curdling, emotive Hardcore style.
The music is nicely varied and revolves around the central motif of the band which is ultimately one of bleakness, it seems, (hence the album title).
Although it’s largely a heavy affair, the band never go too far into ultra-heavy territory and instead use the guitars for maximum emotional content. This is backed up and reinforced by the expressive leads and melodies as well as the odd bit of orchestration here and there.
This is a band who are enjoying the freedom of Post-Metal by doing their own thing with contemporary Metal music. They have eschewed the Doom route that most Post-Metal takes and instead has chosen the road less travelled by bands like Deftones and Devil Sold His Soul, only more Metallic.
The Bleakness may be just that, but it’s also a triumph.
Third Ion have recently released their début album 13/8bit. Theirs is a brand of Progressive Metal that’s a little different form the norm and very enjoyable because of this. I downloaded the latest data on them…
For those who are unfamiliar with your band – introduce yourself!
Hey, I’m Justin Bender, guitarist/producer for Third Ion, a progressive metal band full of nutty space nerds.
Give us a bit of history to Third Ion
I’ve know our drummer Aaron for about 5 years, and we always talked about doing a project together. We live about 6 hour drive from each other, so it took a while for us to get our shit together and actually start a band. Now that we have though, it has been snowballing and we have a really good pace going on. I’ve known Mike for a few years too, and he was my bass player of choice, even before a single riff was recorded. I am still so thrilled he wanted to start a band with Aaron and I! Basically the band officially formed around this time last year, once we figured out who we were going to have sing, and Tyler has been a great fit!
What are your influences?
Mainly Dream Theater, Meshuggah, Alice In Chains, Tool, Opeth, Faith No More, Pantera, Saga, Toto, Satriani, Rush, Katatonia,
What are you listening to at the moment that you would like to recommend?
A band from my area, Sparky, just put out an album called #Humanimation and it is incredible. I love it, and I can’t stop listening to it. I’m not just saying it because they are my friends either! It is legitimately one of my favourite records right now.
What did you want to achieve with your album?
Our main goal was to write whatever came to mind, with a really “no rules” approach, and to incorporate musically, visually and lyrically whatever nerdy things interested us at the time. I didn’t have huge hopes of getting signed or anything, I just really wanted to make this music for the love of it. The fact we got a deal and it’s been getting a lot of attention is a total plus, though, and if people enjoy it that makes me very happy.
Are you happy with the end result?
Absolutely!! I am especially proud of the artwork, which was done by my best friend. We are almost done writing the second album as well, and a lot of it is recorded already too, so as happy as I am with the first album, I haven’t sat back and really enjoyed it as I dove right into album two.
How does your songwriting process work?
I’ll drive to Aaron’s studio for the week and we will record drums and guitars as we write the music. It’s a very cool and open way of working. Very expressive, I love it. Plus, he brings out all my best ideas. There’s just something about him that makes me come up with guitar parts I would never come up with on my own. He is the best writing partner I have ever had, bar none. Due to this process, there are a LOT of “first take” magic moments that ended up on the final mix. That seems to happen more and more as we write, as well.
On 13/8Bit we managed to write one song together (PDM) with Mike all in one room, but him being in Vancouver makes that much more difficult. For album two he has contributed a ton of great riffs, he emailed us a bunch of ideas, that we have used. So then after Aaron and I track in Winnipeg, we send Mike the stems of what we did and he does bass and keys and sends it back for me to mix. I write the lyrics and Tyler comes up with most of the melodies. I can just put words on paper and trust that he will come up with something I love. It’s a very easy operation, all in all.
How and why did you decided to incorporate a video games/chiptune influence in your music?
We all really love the 8bit and 16bit classics that we grew up playing. I think every one of us knows Megaman 2 like the backs of our hands. Metal bands sing about all kinds of things from dragons to demons to mutilation and horror, so really it feels like there are no rules. Which we dig, so we incorporated it simply because we felt like it.
What can you tell us about the lyrics?
That’s another one of those “nerdy thing because I just felt like it” kind of answers. As an artist, I’ve always felt more comfortable with my guitar than with words. I feel like I can say more with music than lyrics, and I never really aspired to be a lyricist. When I listen to music, I rarely even pay attention to the message, I get absorbed in the sound of it all. So, being like that, I just write what comes to me and what interests me. I covered black holes, sci fi particle weapons, video games and even some politics on the first record.
What’s your favourite song on the album and why?
I think maybe Zero Mass because it’s the first song we wrote, and the main heavy tech riff with the little keyboard stings is just so fuckin’ cool. I’ll always be very proud of that one.
How do you see your songs/direction developing in the future?
So far the next record has a lot more technical stuff, a lot more insane drum ideas. I plan to record more vocal harmonies, but maybe not, we’ll see how that plays out. We also want to do a concept record to cover the backstory of our mascot character “Dr. Zero” who is featured on the cover art. So, album three or four will be that album.
What’s next for Third Ion?
We have a few shows lined up for July but after that it’s just more work on album 2, and planning more shows for the end of the year, with hopes to tour more extensively in 2016.
This is the twelfth album from these Swedish Death Metal warriors.
Unleashed should need no introduction. Instrumental in birthing the Swedish Death Metal scene and sound, Unleashed’s place in Metal history is cemented.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Swedish Death Metal recently, as played by different bands all over the world. Now, however, it’s time to return to the source and pay homage to the kings.
Unleashed are on fine form here. Songs, aggression and Vikings are the themes of this album and Unleashed are at the top of their game.
The vocals are expressive and charismatic, managing to exemplify an older strain of Death Metal while remaining individual and as accessible as anything like this is going to be.
When listening to Dawn of the Nine it’s easy to be reminded of the debt that a whole raft of other bands owe Unleashed, and not just those that play Swedish Death Metal either.
Quality riffs abound on this release and there’s a good mixture of faster and slower tracks. Each song has its own personality and it’s always nice to hear an album where each track can be identified in it’s own right. There is no filler.
After all these years Unleashed know themselves perfectly and Dawn of the Nine is the kind of highly proficient and polished Death Metal release that you’d expect from such a veteran band.
But do you know what? Do you know what’s really important? The music itself. Legacy, expectations, reputation, etc. aside; all that matters, all that ever matters, is the music.
Unleashed deliver and Dawn of the Nine is a great listen. This is a band with a future, as well as a past.
Lifestream are a French Black Metal band and this is their début album.
Wonderbox Metal 