Metal – Page 549 – Wonderbox Metal

Interview with Deathronation

Deathronation’s début album Hallow the Dead is a quality slab of Old-School Death Metal infused with a few extra elements to give their graveyard tunes a special mouldy sheen. Questions were asked, and answers were given…

Tell us all about Deathronation and where you came from

Deathronation, based in Nuremberg, south Germany, is now existing since 10 years and so far we released two demos and a split 7-Inch and played a lot of live-shows in that time. “Hallow the Dead” is our debut full-length album. For several reasons it took long time to record the album but finally it’s unleashed. All members of the band are long time metalheads and have been active in several bands for the last 20 years.

What are your influences?

Our influences are the 80’s and 90’s death metal bands like Morbid Angel, Deicide, Morgoth, Immolation, Death and so on. We grew up with these bands when we were 13, 14 years and we’re still very inspired by the old glory days of death metal.

What are you listening to at the moment that you would like to recommend?

I bought the début album of Sweden’s Vampire a couple of days ago and that’s an awesome album I would recommend for fans of Repugnant and Degial. True masterpiece with a great sound and good songs. A good trip to Sweden pre-death metal past is “Splatter Punx on Acid” of Swedish act “Black Uniforms”.

How did you decide on the style of Death Metal that you wanted to play – what appeals about the Old-School Death Metal sound?

As I mentioned in the beginning, we were always inspired by the old days of death metal and we wanted to play that style with that sound. We don’t like the modern overproduced sound where each single note has been edited by a pc. Use as less technical help as possible, that’s the way!

In my review I note that you have some Black//Thrash/Doom influences to your sound as well – would you agree with this?

Yes, you got the point in your review! We are big fans of the 80’s and 90’s thrash, black and doom scene. We still listen to many, nearly all styles of metal, so it’s nothing surprising for us, that the songs are maybe not consisting 100% of death metal riffs. As long as it’s heavy it can not be too wrong!

Where do you think you fit in with the wider Death Metal scene?

Well, I guess our musical style shows, that our roots and our destination is the old school style of Death Metal. But because of the different influences we are not limited to this special corner. I think our sound is also attractive for people from other genres of metal.

Do you have any goals for your album?

“Hallow the Dead” album is a marker from old times to the new things which will come. Many things change now. But most important for us is, that the music spreads around and people enjoy it as I did when I listened to the old death metal classics.

Is there anything on the album you’re not satisfied with?

Well of course there are some parts we’re not 100% satisfied with, but this turned out as it is and we can deal with it. Sometimes the mistakes can even make an album more real. We are very satisfied with the result at all, so some parts which are not perfectly in the way that they were meant to be, even turn out to have a kind of charm on their own.

Do you want to discuss any of the lyrics on the album and any themes/hidden meanings/etc. that might be there?

All lyrics are dealing with the topic of death, caducity, religion and related questions. We have no answers or solutions, but maybe some of the lyrics can inspire people who might be interested in essential questions like: “where do we come from?”, “where do we go to?”, “what is existence all about?”. Some lyrics are based on real events, others are charged with own imaginations and thoughts. “Deathchant Assyria” is about the rise and fall of the Assyrian empire and the rich heritage of cuneiform writings. “Spiritual Relief” is about the everlasting fight between enlightened rationality and religious views. “Ghostwhipper” is a fictive story which is about the fact that you might unleash powers which get out of your control. All lyrics have a short introduction where is more or less explained what the shit is all about. Well, be it for the album-title itself or the printed lyrics, there can be found some some grammatical experiments and we like to invent new words some times ha ha.

What’s your songwriting process?

Well sometimes one of us has a completely new song and we just modify it here and there. At other times we work together with different ideas of riffs and parts and try to create something everyone is satisfied with. Usually we are slow in writing songs but sometimes it goes very fast and and within a short time. So there’s no basic schedule at all.

How do you see your songs/direction developing in the future?

Well it’s not easy to say anything about the future, as the present is too dominating right now. Of course we will try to make new songs, more heavy, more doom, more direct, more up-tempo… well you see…a bit of everything. Most important is to create an album which is coherent and lets no questions open…

What does the future hold for Deathronation?

Nobody knows…

ART 238 – Atavism (Review)

ART 238 are from France and play Industrial Extreme Metal. This is their latest EP.

Here we have three tracks lasting almost 22 minutes in total that showcase the band’s harsh blend of Industrial sounds and Death/Black Metal know-how.

Usually when bands attempt to merge these two genres the result is some half-hearted Death Metal with keyboards on top. ART 238 don’t fall into this trap, as the Extreme Metal they play is actually extreme, and the Industrial influences seem coded into the band’s make-up at the genetic level and then hybridised with cybernetics to create this fascinating beast.

ART 238 manage to merge ultra-brutal blast beats with more atmospheric Industrial workouts in a way that recalls Aborym if they had gone the Death Metal route rather than the Black Metal one.

Another thing I really like about this EP is that the songs take the time to explore their surroundings, like they’re genuinely trying to find the best fit for their various component parts. In a feat of ingenuity the band manage to work with both sides of their sound expertly and incorporate them into an Industrial Extreme Metal whole.

It’s a musical framework that not many bands try, as most that do usually sound weak, incoherent or like some 80’s synth parody. ART 238 sidestep all of this by going straight for the jugular with their creative brand of urban Metal.

For fans of and mixing influences from – Aborym, Mithras, Red Harvest, Axis of Perdition, Blut Aus Nord, Ministry, Dødheimsgard, Kekal, Invertia, etc.

Highly enjoyable and highly recommended. This is the sound of a mechanised apocalypse.

Dust Sculptures – Far Above The Pines (Review)

Dust Sculptures is a US Post-Black Metal band consisting of one person – this is his second release.

An album like this would be a very impressive achievement even if it was the product of a full band, never mind that this is all from one person. The musicianship and songwriting is first rate.

This is a blend of Black Metal, Shoegaze, Progressive Rock and Post-Rock; the various elements are skilfully combined into this release so that you never quite know what exactly you’re going to get next, yet it all gels together and flows seamlessly from one part to the next, from one song to the next.

All of the genre/sub-genre tags above essentially let you know that this is an album that takes a Black Metal base and builds it into something more. The songs have real depth and lasting power. There is a lot of music to explore here and that feels like the essence of the album to me; an exploration through an unknown wilderness.

Soft, crooning clean vocals share space with tortured screams and Blackened agonies. Like the instruments the vocals are perfectly judged and performed flawlessly.

Shades of modern-day Anathema can be heard alongside Blackened parts. Post-Metal highs and Shoegaze wanderings rub shoulders with blast beats and dark melodies. Progressive keyboards and chaotic riffs work together to build sound structures greater than the sum of their parts.

It’s clear that a lot of care, love and attention has gone into the making of this album. Every last part of it has had a lavish amount of focus placed on it and this has resulted in an album that’s a true revelation.

This is for fans of expressive giants like Deafheaven, Enslaved, Wolves in the Throne Room, et al.

Albums like this don’t come along very often and when they do they spirit you away on a very special journey. Let Dust Sculptures be your guide.

This is one for the album of the year pile, methinks.

Get this.

Fistula – Vermin Prolificus (Review)

Fistula are from the US and play Sludge Metal. This is their sixth album.

Oh Mother Sludge! You have such sights to show us don’t you? Fistula are firm adherents to the cause and push Mother Sludge’s agenda as if their lives depended on it. And maybe they do, as Mother Sludge is fickle with her favours.

Fistula are a very prolific, (heh), band and it’s always a pleasure to hear Sludge played with passion and feeling like we have here. Sludge is such a rich sub-genre of Metal that it’s easy to make it your own but it’s also easy to fall by the wayside into sloppy Eyehategod worship.

Of course, all Sludge bands by the very nature of the style have some Eyehategod in their sound; as this is the basic template of Sludge what matters is what the band does with it. Do they follow the template strictly or do they make it their own?

Fistula have embraced their fuzz-soaked, feedback-drenched Southern roots but like all great purveyors of the style they have mutated and warped it to their own vicious desires. As such, Vermin Prolificus is an album that bears the weight of history on its hulking shoulders without even noticing it’s even there and the resulting noise-fest is a grim testimony to the love of all things filthy, dirty and downright heavy.

On Vermin Prolificus the band leave no fungus-covered stone unturned in their quest to uncover all of Mother Sludge’s mysteries. Slow, fast, heavy, ever-so-slightly-less-heavy…the band play it all with relish and pull all of it off very well indeed.

The songs have the instant appeal of a rotten landscape and the hidden depths of a foetid swamp. This is music to get buried in.

I love this kind of album especially when delivered by the desperate hands of true believers like Fistula. If you have even a passing interest in the Sludge style then this is a must.

Get down, get dirty and get Fistula.

Hegemone – Luminosity (Review)

Hegemone are from Poland and play Post-Black Metal. This is their début album.

With an album cover that promises mystery and rich rewards to those who reveal the music within, this is an album that doesn’t give up its secrets lightly. Even when they’re being overt there are hidden delights to be had here.

Luminosity is a sprawling album stretched across 6 tracks of dark Post-Black Metal with a good amount of Sludge thrown in for good effect.

The guitars sound like they’re coated in tar and the melodies are Blackened and deep. It’s a surprisingly heavy affair and the Sludge influence to their sound allows the band to get away with all sorts of mischief under its banner.

The vocals barks forth brutal noises over music that can be either harsh or beautiful depending on the mood of the band. The music itself may be capable of subtlety and nuance but his is a commanding presence that demands attention and floors all in front of him.

At times recalling second-wave Black Metal, at others recalling the darker side of Post-Metal in a Cult of Luna style; this is a heavier and Sludgier proposition than a lot of Post-Black Metal out there. Yes, they are perfectly capable of creating atmospheric and awe-inspiring musical soundscapes, (and they do), but they also like to make sure that the good old Darkthrone/Satyricon groove is felt to full effect when needed.

There are moments of unbridled creativity and flair displayed on these songs as well. Unexpected delights include appearances by a saxophone that don’t sound incongruous and rivals anything artists like Ihsahn have used.

This is a very accomplished, ambitious and rewarding listen. Hegemony have put together something special that they should be proud of.

This is a cold-hearted gem that’s just waiting to be discovered.

Circaic – False Prophetic Roads (Review)

Circaic are from the US and this is their début EP.

The band play Technical Melodic Death Metal.

The singer has a great voice – when he’s being aggressive he either slices things up with his razor sharp shrieks or utterly destroys with his deeper-than-Hell growls. The growling I especially like. And when he’s not being aggressive? Cleans are used and they sound good – no radio-friendly commercial-tainted cleans, just decent singing in a European style.

This is for fans of bands like At The Gates, Soilwork, In Flames, Darkane, etc. – this is the stylistic area of Metal we’re in only Circaic are a touch more extreme.

The music is melodic and intense, with lots of technicality and complexity marking them out from similar bands who might largely use more simplistic riffs.

Well-played guitars and rhythmic drums provide the basis for the varied vocals and the music is accentuated and enhanced by the sometimes-subtle, sometimes-overt keyboards. Indeed; the keyboards and the nature of the music in general sees the band courting Melodic Black Metal territory on many occasions.

This is a very accomplished release with mature songwriting and tracks that feel finished and substantial. The problem with this style is that it was ransacked for ideas years ago by Metalcore and has never quite recovered. Thankfully Circaic show no signs of this; there are no breakdowns, no posturing and no selling out; what we have here is Metal through and through and it’s a joy to hear.

I heartily recommend this. Listen loud and enjoy.

Pyre – Human Hecatomb (Review)

Pyre are from Russia and play Death Metal. This is their début album.

This is Old-School Death Metal with swagger, confidence and a feeling of grim determination mixed with a sense of graveyard fun.

The singer snarls and growls his way through the carnage and there’s more than a touch of Obituary about him.

Quality solos and playing all-round make for an enjoyable listen. The sound is balanced and the drums in particular sound quite satisfying. I also like that you can hear the bass. Hurrah for bass!

This is an album of good songs and good riffs; an album celebrating the time when songs were more important than how fast or how technical you could play.

Slow, mid-paced, fast; Human Hecatomb uses all tempos, speeds and paces well demonstrating Pyre’s good grasp of dynamics and songwriting.

A healthy Swedish Death Metal influence can be heard throughout this album, but it’s not an overbearing one and certainly not one that would give people who are sick of that particular sub-genre enough reason to avoid Pyre. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that there are very few reasons to avoid Pyre if you’re a fan of Classic Death Metal.

This really is great stuff. If you love Death Metal you’ll love Pyre.

Prayed and Betrayed – The Abundance of a Sickened Mind (Review)

Prayed and Betrayed are from Finland and this is their second EP.

With a striking cover that screams New-School, this is modern Melodic Death Metal with a healthy dose of heaviness.

The Abundance of a Sickened Mind has a very good recording that allows the band to sound punchy and fresh. This EP sounds confident and bold, which is what you want for this style of music.

There are three songs on this release and each of them boast a strong sound and a good grasp of melodics and songwriting. They’re quite good for instant gratification but also for a bit of longevity as the songs themselves are pretty decent and can last the course.

The melodic side of the band is constant but not overt, meaning that you don’t get swamped with overly-melodic riffs or sickly-sweet sounding passages. This is because the band offset it with a core of heaviness that relies on thick riffs that are rooted in modern Metal.

The combination of modern Metal rhythm guitars and more traditional Metal leads mean that Prayed and Betrayed have a foot in both camps; while this could in theory lead to a muddled identity in reality it works well with the band coming off as a firm hit rather than a floundering miss. In this sense I’d compare them to Dead Earth Politics who also effortlessly combine the old and the new into something fresh.

Prayed and Betrayed have created a very enjoyable calling card. Now all we need is a full album to really see what they’re truly capable of.

Unanswered – Heliosphere (Review)

Unanswered are from Poland and play Djent/Deathcore.

This is energetic and suitably face ripping in nature. It blasts out of the cage with a strong sound and no qualms about who it attacks.

I’m not a massive fan of Djent as I think it’s too easy to be mediocre, but this only has a sprinkling of Djent mixed with the Deathcore and it works for me.

The band have a nicely heavy sound and aren’t afraid to layer melodies over the heaviness, further distilling the Djent-isms and adding depth to what otherwise might be random riffs strung together.

These melodies have a Post-Metal quality to them that’s nice to hear when juxtaposed against the heavier, chunky riffs that make up the bedrock of the band’s output. Added electronics/keyboards further enhance their sound and it’s a credit to their songwriting that it all congeals together into a cohesive whole.

These songs have a good groove to them and there’s enough bite to satisfy. It’s distinctly non-commercial, with the main aim of the band to destroy what lies in their path.

The singer has a brutal set of lungs and shouts and growls himself hoarse as he keeps up with the rest of the music. Some semi-cleans appear on the last song and it seems that Unanswered have even more potential than we might have seen so far.

This has surprised me and I’m pleased to say it’s surpassed my expectations. Both Djent and Deathcore are much maligned in a lot of people’s minds, but Unanswered give a good account of themselves and it would be a shame if they were dismissed out of hand due to this.

Heliosphere is an enjoyable twelve and a half minutes of modern Heavy music and Unanswered are definitely one of the better bands to play this style.

Give them a listen and see if their immense groove and spectral soundscapes can impress you as it has done me.

Interview with Execration

Execration’s latest album Morbid Dimensions is an impressive, multi-faceted beast. After I’d picked myself back up off the floor, I scribbled down some hastily-scribed queries onto broken parchment and launched them into the ether. Somehow, somewhere, Cato Syversrud responded…

For those who are unfamiliar with your band – introduce yourself!

We’re four people from in and around Oslo, Norway playing metal of death. We focus on atmosphere and feeling over technical wankery, and share more in common with the bands of the eighties than most modern death metal bands. Still, we’re no retro-act, and we keep trying to take our music new places.

Give us a bit of history to Execration

Execration took its first steps in 2004. By 2006, we’d recorded our first EP, Language of the Dead. Immediately after that, Jonas joined on bass completing the band. After Jonas joined, we quickly wrote songs for our first album, Syndicate of Lethargy, which came out in 2008, over a year after it was recorded. In 2010 we did a split with fellow Oslo-area bands Lobotomized, Diskord, and Obliteration, called “Oslo We Rot”. In 2011, we released our celebrated second album, Odes of the Occult, and now we’re on the verge of releasing our latest album, Morbid Dimensions.

What are your influences?

Musically, I think we cover a lot of ground, as the four of us have our own tastes. I mean, we all share lots of bands in common that we all love, but each of us also have influences that the others don’t share. We all prefer things that sound “real”, things that have an edge and some dynamics to it, and that hasn’t been produced to a brickwalled piece of plastic. This means that we do enjoy quite a bit of vintage metal, but there’s also lots of cool new things coming out. Except for the metal stuff, there are of course bands in other genres as well, and I guess our tastes are less unified in this manner. Aside from other bands, we also find our influences in movies, and even to some degree other forms of art. These can inspire certain kinds of moods and atmospheres that we will try to incorporate into our music.

What are you listening to at the moment that you would like to recommend?

In the close future we will be sharing stage with Swedish Nifelheim at the Krater festival here in Oslo, so I’ve been playing their “Envoy of Lucifer” a lot recently. It’s really good stuff. Diskord’s newest EP has also gotten heavy rotation on all of our headsets, and I (Chris) have also spent some time with the latest Mastodon album. It’s not as great as they used to be, but it sure beat the previous one. Other than that bands like Bölzer, Twink, Circus 2000, Damian, Thorne, Old Razor, Sarcofago have been spinning a lot lately

What did you want to achieve with your new album?

We wanted the album to stand out in its own right, and to have an identity distinct from our other albums. This was a clear goal right from the beginning when we started writing the album, and to be honest, I think we’ve been pretty successful at this. We didn’t have in mind exactly how we would set this one apart, but we did have some ideas for moods and aspects of our music we felt we hadn’t explored fully on previous releases. As always, we also wanted the album to have a solid atmosphere, and not just be a riff-heavy metal album. On songs like Tribulation Shackles, this aspect has really been allowed to sit front and center, and on other tracks, it’s more subdued, integrated into otherwise intense and hectic songs.

Are you happy with how it turned out?

Quite so. Writing is a creative process, and the process itself has taken us places we couldn’t foresee upfront. It’s always exciting to be able to sit down and review the final product once it’s all over, and this time was no different. We’ve achieved our main goals, which was evolving our sound and evoking a deadly atmosphere.

What can you tell us about the lyrics?

We like to keep the lyrics on the obscure side. I will simply point you to the album title, the cover art and the overall feeling of the album, and let you make up the meaning of the songs for yourself.

Give us a bit of information on the songwriting process.

We always write as a group. Typically, people will show up at rehearsal with a riff or two, or maybe even a series of riffs stringed into a part. We will then work on what we have, and start looking to combine riffs into parts. In the early phases, we will even occasionally switch instruments when someone has an idea for something, and work like that to hash it out. Eventually these parts clump up into songs, and eventually the creativity shifts gears from writing new material to moulding the raw songs into more refined arrangements. This will include rearranging things, working with tempos and shifts, and the little details that separate OK songs from really great songs.

You have a very diverse and accomplished sound – how did you decide what you wanted to sound like in each part of the different songs?

We tend to think in songs more than in individual parts. So the individual parts exist to support the overall dynamics of the song. I don’t think there’s so much consideration of how we want to sound in this part and that part, it’s more how do we create good dynamics throughout the song. This plays into all the aspects of a song/part: tempo, keynote, mood, and so on.

Execration Band How do you see your songs/direction developing in the future?

Well, that’s for the future to tell. All we know is that the next set of songs won’t sound like missing out-takes from Morbid Dimensions – that’s the drive of Execration, creating something new. On the new album, we made some drastic changes to the guitar sound by using a completely different tuning than the previous album. This may not be a permanent change. We’ll see where life takes us.

What’s next for Execration?

The album is about to come out, so first up is playing a few gigs to support them. Next year we hope to make it to more places further away. We also plan to write new material shortly, but what will come of it is impossible to say at this point. Rest assured, you have not heard the last of Execration.

And nor would we want to.