Krallice - Dimensional Bleedthrough (2009) Review

 

 Hands and knees grasping earth 

My first interaction with Krallice was right in the middle of my adolescent years and exactly at the time when my perception of black metal was taking form. Hence, looking at a band with colored contemporary art, a rounded logo and an arguably anti-frostbitten sound was a challenge to the traditionalist establishment on hold of the genre, which still didn't stop me from exploring the band when the self-titled album (2008) and Dimensional Bleedthrough (2009) were released. 

Impetuous Ritual - Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence (2009)

For long-time listeners of alternative music that pushes towards the extreme, there might be a few instances when an artist comes around, chops up your confidence and shuts you down for a bit. Meaning that, as much death metal as you can ever listen, you'll never be ready for the monstrous entity that is Impetuous Ritual. And that's just one example.

The band originates from Australia and shares members with Portal (not sure which was first), and if you aren't already frightened, you should be. In a way, Portal is actually easier to decipher than this, even though that's not a metric for anything. 

Their debut Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence is so primitive and mad, with a dissonant, hypnotic atmosphere and exerting so much hatred, that going into a regular death metal album afterwards feels like trying cider after having ten shots of whiskey in a row.

The production is murky as hell, and the whole album is plain hell. Awesome riffs rise from the swamp every now and then, and bear-like vocals makes you question if these are humans or not, but not in the cute manner that it just sounds brutal. It is legitimately unsettling.

While it's a given you won't understand shit, the lyrics of the record are perfect. After you bury your head in the dirt, the music is too, and after climbing the learning curve that's required for Impetuous Ritual to make sense, this is one of the realest reasons why death metal is worth it as an art.

If you scratch it down to its singular foundational point, that's what all this probably sounds and feels like. Bestial, in slow or fast pace, as cold and desperate as an eternity in isolation. 

I admit I haven't listened to their later stuff as much as I should, but I have done so with this, and maybe I gotta take one album per five years not to turn into Di Caprio in Shutter Island. If you like this, probably no one likes you. In Flames and Soilwork come with better social stamps, but hey, the path you choose.

Yet deliverance is decay

Yob - The Great Cessation (2009) Review

I recently went through Yob's 2014 masterpiece Clearing the Path to Ascend, several times on repeat throughout an evening while socializing with friends. In a sense, the balance in this band's body of work is unparalleled, the sound grows all around the speakers and becomes addictive to the extent you'll not notice yourself nodding after some time of listening. And while the elements employed are, to the purest, a well known combination of sludge / doom and post-metal, I can't think of many other artists that can touch the stars with flawless material, through hypnotic atmosphere and overwhelming talent. Yob's break in 2005 until 2009 feels to me -since I have no clue what actually happened to them during these years- as if this musical bull took a break only to empower and build momentum by focusing on a target, lowering its head and scratching the dust below. And that target was the whole underground scene, heck any subgenre around metal that dares to take it slow. 

The Great Cessation starts off with with one of the best tracks they have ever written, "Burning the Altar". The quintessence of crushing guitar lines, Mike Scheidt's vocal range is absolutely insane in whatever sound he chooses to make, from the screams to the growls or the cleans, it's structurally interesting and totally, totally heavy. The rest of the record doesn't stray from that path either, by going through tracks like "Silence of Heaven" or "Breathing from the Shallows" you can't help but feel the weight of the world in your shoulders, and there are no human words to describe the majesty of that 20 minute, self-titled track at the end. The 2017 reissue of the album featured a couple of more tracks, from which I particularly liked "Pain Like Sugar" for the hefty melodies, but as a whole each time I listen to this release I feel it has something more to give me. Very few records actually deserve a 10 out of 10, and in the case of Yob, it's even hard to choose which one from their discography would earn it. This is the definition of perfection.

Listen to The Great Cessation:

Disma - The Vault of Membros (Demo, 2009) Review

Origin: New Jersey, US
Genre: Death Metal
Album: The Vault of Membros
Label: Independent

I found out about Disma from their full length in 2011 and it was the reason I decided to search more about this band, and the fact that it seemed like my ears enjoyed apocalyptic, unearthly death metal even more than it's straightforward form. The band's debut release is this demo and it was released in 2009, containing three tracks and seventeen minutes of music in total.

The band's sound is thick, heavy and agressive in a way that not many bands achieve, giving away the feeling of bands like Dead Congregation and Funebrarum. Despite being a demo, it has a fairly legit production and the sound is drilling into the ears, bleeding it's way to pleasure as the first riffs unfold in "Lost in the Burial Fog", all great signs for a newcomer band that it was back then.

Getting drawn in their atmosphere, each track has plenty of deep melodies, with the touches of doom / death present at times (i.e. in the second track "The Vault of Membros" which also has an awesome bass introduction) that of course remind a darker side of Autopsy, while the changes are accurate and the musicianship is quite solid, with breathing growls, blasting drums and powerful riffs, as well as a couple of solos.

Disma show their intentions right away it they're not to impress with technicality or win a fanbase of the modern sound. They play a kind of spotless old school death metal, which should have made the anticipation of their massive Towards the Megalith hard enough. All three tracks would be used in the full length and the band stated their place with confidence after this really good demo.

DAMAGE: [8.25/10]

Beherit - Engram (2009) Review

Album | Engram
Country | Finland
Genre | Black Metal
Label | Spinefarm Records

| Spirit of heroine |

The majority of the black metal scene today is familiar with the wagon of Beherit and their followers, mainly for their significant contribution in black-death metal and their early album Drawing Down the Moon, which was "cult" and raw but really not much more. After their two albums of electronic music, they vanished so that they would return many years later as a force of primitive brutality. Engram is a reminder of the roots of genre, simple as can be, noisy and faithfully anti-religious, in the vein of no other than Beherit themselves.

What makes this album a lot different than their early material is not the music but the production, which is a lot clearer and thicker than what you might be used to. As a pure black metal album, the guitars' cutting sound and the raspy schrieks are dominant in it's entirety, while the drums are a bit lower in volume. Some samples of church bells are used in "Pagan Moon" and there is an introduction where Holocausto confesses "because, I just fucking hate this world" in the beginning of the first song, just for the listener to feel more comfortable.

I think the sound of Engram is a lot better than the sloppy first album, try not to choke on your black metal bullet belts on that comment and learn to appreciate the profits of a solid studio for once. I'm glad they finally cleaned their instruments and got out of the attic, at least in terms of sound. The music is at the same level as it has always been, only that this time the compositions are too repetitive. They are more repetitive than your average black metal record, revolving around a simple riff or two, both fast (in the tracks "Suck My Blood" and "All In Satan" and middle / sludgy (in the track "Demon Advance") paced.

Even though the band has not improved or changed it's style very much, I seem to enjoy Engram more than anything else I have listened by them so far. It's straightforward and simplistic for it's own good, a solid representation of what Beherit do best with the proper production and character. It exerts enough hatred and doesn't put too much philosophical pressure behind it, making it great just to sit back and enjoy. You can even share a listen with a couple of friends, how about that.

Havohej - Kembatinan Premaster (2009) Review

Havohej "Kembatinan Premaster"
Summer 2009, Hells Headbangers Records

Havohej (Jehovah backwards... Isn't that satanic enough or what) claimed the USBM scene of the early 90s when they released a milestone album "Dethrone the Son of God" in 1993, which is considered one of the most significant records of black metal, it helped the creation of the genre and influenced a lot of bands around. Their blood brothers Profanatica were missing a full length release until 2007, despite being around since 1990, and after they got back on track with their first ever album "Profanatitas De Domonatia", it worked for the second son as well. Havohej released their second full length 16 years after their debut titled "Kembatinan Premaster", and the fans were expecting it with anxiety and desire.

The band is Paul Ledney's project, who is a member of Profanatica, and was a co-founder and drummer of Incantation as well, so he knows his stuff and is pretty experienced. In the early 90s, he became famous for his photos as a nun or naked, as well as the sacrilegious lyrics against God and Christianity in general. After all these years, with such and accepted and promising full length album, the bar was too high already and with two EPs "Tungkat Blood Wand" and "Hornbook Seytan", he gave the world an idea of what was to come. I didn't want to believe it, but something did go horribly wrong. I ignored the signs of disappointment that described these two EPs and aimed straight for this full length when it was released, to get the whole picture.

Paul has changed his prow to a different direction, which is peculiar at a first listen. There are several noise and dark ambient elements in the music that almost describe half the album, the titles of the tracks have changed into industrial-esque ones (i.e. Melancholike) and the whole sound is different. The interesting riffs of the first records, that defined the album's power, are gone. There is no guitar structure at all, instead there is a continuous noisy background glitch that keeps screeching in every song with the same sound. I assume this was done on purpose and was meant to be something primitive and innovative, which to a certain extent is, but in the end, it's just an exhausting buzz inside your head. All these machine noises are down-tuned and distorted to an amount where the clear drum sound is there alone. I can see how he attempted to create a really dark album with minimal and crooked sounds, in a way that it's not exactly black metal anymore, but something else, as noisy and evil, but it didn't work out. The structure of the album is random and the songs jump from part to part without any consistency, meaning that the dark ambient/noise elements with the drumming/vocals/guitar hush (whatever that is anyway) have not been mixed well.

"Kembatinan Premaster" has 8 tracks and lasts 34 minutes and there are tracks that climb up to 7 or 10 minutes in length. That's unusual for this band, which would not surpass 3 minutes of each song in the past, but that has also changed in the name of experimentation. There are some fast songs that remind the early era like Pious Breath, Hatefull Unto God and the opening track, but I feel like the guitar is missing and I can't withstand to listen to them for more than one time. Hopefully, Ledney's vocals have remained unharmed and their sinister sound does add something, the little it can add when the rest of the instruments are not in its favor. There is regular drumming, with fast and middle and slow paced moments, even though he has reduced the variety into the basic drum pattern, probably on purpose again but does sound repetitive and boring. Even the ambient tracks, like the ending of Pious Breath (which is exactly the same as the intro in Melancholike... What was that, a copy-paste sample in Ableton?), the intro of Hatefull to God or the outro, have nothing special at all to offer to the listener. They are pretty much nothing. If you have noticed the wrong spellings of half of the words in the song titles, i did notice it myself and i clearly don't get the reason behind them, they just look hilarious to me.

I'm not comparing the two albums since they are different in many ways. This is not a failure because it is not as good as "Dethrone the Son of God", it is a failure because it fails in production and in composition and that's why I believe it will really appeal to a few people after all. Paul Ledney has a deranged mind and he used it to create a weird album with immense darkness, but he just released a deranged album with little music in it. I can't recommend this to anyone, even though I think 1 out of 20 people will like it for some reason, and if I should really recommend a track for a taste, that would be the 7 minute Bloud Of The Word. It is the only track that has noise samples worth listening to and it is bearable for its length.

Track listing:
1. Kembatinan Premaster
2. Pious Breath
3. Bloud and Souls
4. Melancholike
5. Bloud of the Word
6. Sundowning (Destroie Men and Beasts with Lookes)
7. Hatefull unto God
8. Homerica Medicatio

DAMAGE: 2.5/10

Lustre - Welcome Winter (EP, 2009) Review

Lustre "Welcome Winter"
Late winter 2009, De Tenebrarum Principio
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"Welcome Winter" was the first material i ever listened by Lustre, right before their debut full length "Night Spirit". The EP and the album were both released in 2009 with a difference of 7 months, and not much had changed in their music after all. This release seems like a shorter, about half the size, record which keeps the same aesthetic as "Night Spirit" and could easily be contained in it.

The structure of the album is familiar, since there are two tracks named Part 1 and part 2, exactly like in the full length. The only difference this time, is that the total length climbs not higher than 20 minutes, granting the two compositions with 10 minutes each, making the EP significantly shorter and less boring. The music itself is keyboard driven and builds a quiescent atmosphere with the buzzy guitars and the synth melodies, with incomprehensible screaming vocals that sound like strong wind during a freezing night. As the title states, the record is a manifestation of winter, the coldest and most inhospital season of the year.

The first part of the release is one of my favourite Lustre songs, just because i always sink into the introduction melody, which is to me, one of the best Nachtzeit has composed. With slightly more ambient parts and a couple of added changes throughout the song, he has created music exactly as his earlier full album, but just a little richer. The fact that both tracks are shorter avoids the tremendous monotony that was present before, and makes, just a little more pleasant. The role of the drums has been neglected, they are low in volume, more like background beats, similar to the ones of the heart, with seldom any tempo changes.

The second part is of the same weight as the first, with a very nice part during the last two minutes. As thought tangling as the music is, it has a tiny share of hope, driven out from nostalgia and melancholy. If it could depict winter, the listener would be in a warm, wooden house in a forest, nice a stone fireplace, protected from the wrath of nature, instead of being out exposed to it. This EP is the sibling of the first full length "Night Spirit", at the same pace and feeling, challenging the elements with its patience to unfold.

Track listing:
1. Part 1
2. Part 2

DAMAGE: 7.25/10

Lustre - Night Spirit (2009) Review

Lustre "Night Spirit"
Spring 2009, De Tenebrarum Principio

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Some years ago, when i was strongly into the DSBM scene with a purpose to find all the decent bands out there, i stumbled upon Lustre, a band that was complimented by the majority of the fans around the genre, and by the time, this was the only full length they had released. It is a project by the Swede Nachtzeit, who has also be involved in Hypothermia, a respectively more famous act.

"Night Spirit" contains two repetitive and monotonous 20 minute tracks, named Part 1 and Part 2. As Lustre focuses heavily on the atmosphere of the album, the tracks are composed with hardly any variations, aiming to wring the listener into the nothingness. Each song consists of regular, slow drumming, a simple riff or two, which goes on for the whole length, a mourning keyboard and some hissing vocals that appear and disappear inside the tracks. A couple of minutes are enough for each song to give you the idea of what's going to be playing for the next 20 minutes so it will probably mean something to the people that admire such a style, like myself. I don't really care about the repetitiveness here, it produces a droning calmness with ounces of despairs via the vocals and it's not difficult to approach, due to the neatness and simplicity of the instrumentation.

The first song starts of with a guitar line that has a hollow sound, creating an awesome background standard. In the frontline of the song lies the keyboard melody, which is funereal, yet hopeful, and pretty much stands out by itself. The screaming whispers of Nachtzeit come along to demonstrate Lustre's music at its full potential, and that lasts about 14 minutes, when a synth-only part comes in and keeps going until the end. The second song has a more "living" riff, which is more distinguishable in a way. These new 20 minutes follow the same pattern as the first part of the album, but i have to say i enjoyed this one a little bit more, because it gripped me more. Despite it's plain and simple playing style, "Night Spirit" has a significant level of uniqueness, which derives from the vocals and the keys in the songs. Monotony is not even a negative factor.

Even though it has the level of sorrow and depression i want in these albums, it didn't fully captivate me and i feel that if i was to listen to the album alone, without anything else to do or think, i would, at some point, get sleepy. Maybe that was what the band was going for anyway and for a first attempt, it is a promising album.

Track listing:
1. Part 1
2. Part 2

DAMAGE: 7.0/10

Caedes Cruenta - ΣΚΙΕΣ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΩΝ (2009) Review

Caedes Cruenta "ΣΚΙΕΣ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΩΝ"

2009, Whisper of Death Records

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I remember, i first saw this band on Metal Archives and there was nothing available by them anywhere around the nets, so i waited until someone graces the community with a personal rip. Yet, as that day seemed like it was never going to arrive, i decided to hunt down a physical copy, but the album was everywhere by the time i actually got my hands on it. Caedes Cruenta (meaning massacre in latin) have released one full length only during their 10 year carreer and if you wonder what the title means, its Greek for "Shadows of Demons".

The band is praising Scandinavian roots with heavily influenced songs from the second wave, with early Darkthrone/Gorgoroth riffs and sound. The vocals, along with the music, reminded me of Satanic Warmaster as well, at some parts, even though this one has a cleaner production in general. Yet, they maintain a personal approach to their music and they don't exactly fall into the trap of being  clones of other bands. It is a scourge of the early days of Greek black metal combined with Norwegian riffology and melodies,  keeping the ideas simple and straightforward. Lyrically, they are not stepping into unexplored areas and they ensure a standard quality with simple anti-religious and hateful lyrics, delivering an honest and notable message that all blacksters, to some extent, share. There are some clean chanting vocals and lyrics in native Greek in the self-titled song, which is quite pleasing and interesting to hear (even though i generally dislike songs in Greek).

The album lacks power at some bits like the vocals and the drums, which is a common problem in primitive black metal. Here, the drum work sounds a bit empty and weak as a whole, but still it doesn't ruin the riff-driven result. Timing a total of almost 40 minutes, it is an easy to listen album for the nostalgics of the early black metal scene like myself. There is little experimentation and a person who would like to listen to this should know that it's the real thing with no extra characteristics or anything. As a whole, it is not a groundbreaking album, but not a piece of trash either.

Track listing:
1. The Path where the Dark Legion Dwells
2. Eosphorus
3. Maccabre Sacrifices beneath the Hollowed Graves
4. Cold Eternal Night
5. Through the Forest of Wolf's Possession
6. ΣΚΙΕΣ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΩΝ (Skies Daimonon)
7. Religion of Blasphemy
8. Into the Ashes of the Unforgotten Woods

DAMAGE: 6.0/10

Embrace of Thorns - Atonement Ritual (2009) Review

Embrace of Thorns "Atonement Ritual"

Spring 2009, Nuclear War Now! Productions

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Embrace of Thorns are infamous in the greek underground scene. Their macabre way of story telling can hardly be called an attraction, but for those who have worm ears, the band is a delight. Continuing from where they left in 2007, they come back two years later with a second full length album that contains the basic ingredients for dirty old school death, and more.

One of the bands that has a pact with the nineties and the underground, they have sworn to lurk around the shadows, not the spotlights of musical success. The influences from bands like Proclamation, Bolt Thrower and Incantation are easy to spot, even though this band has inserted ambient parts and variations more than usual, giving them some points of uniqueness. The cover art is coloured in blood, blasphemic, and weirdly artistic, in its own way. The content is strongly anti-religious if you look at it closely, it describes the music of the band.

The album consists of thirteen songs that clock 34 minutes all together. Apart from the intros/outros and the interludes, each track last around two or three minutes, a satisfying length for the painful noise they're displaying here. The sound of the album serves the compositions, since its chaotic and relentless, exactly as it should be. They followed the advice of their old school death idols and did not demonstrate a hell of a craftmanship in the studio. The production and mixing are simple, lacking tricks, straightforward filthy. They do not rest with this great production, instead they put effort on each song of the album, either it is a slow-paced torture tool like "Venom in Veins" or "Perished In Mortal Agony", or a fast-paced one like "Perdition Hammer" and "Hymn to Triumph". "Tombs Of The Desecrated Zealots" is also a standout track, for its amazing intro.

You have been warned about what you're going to listen to if you decide to dig into this band. The fans of the genre will absolutely love it, as its memorable and devoted to the scene.

DAMAGE: 7.0/10

Neun Welten - Destrunken (2009)

Neun Welten "Destrunken"

Autumn 2009, Prophecy Productions

Listening Needs

Physical Needs

In Ulver's second full length album "Kveldssanger", there is a song called Naturmystikk, which can be translated as mystic nature. They were trying to create an acoustic folk instrumentation of nature itself, and they seem to have inspired many bands since then. Neun Welten is a dark folk/neofolk group that delivers that exact kind of music. From the name (nine worlds of the Nordic mythology) one can understand that their influences and the concept they deal with in the band.

"Destrunken" is the second full length album after 2006 "Vergessene Pfade". The magnificent illustration of the artwork has been drawn by Fursy Teyssier of Les Discrets, an artist i personally adore when it comes to artworks or animated videos. I can't think of a better fitting cover for this album, its warm, serene, a bit grievous, almost describes the music by itself. The whole booklet is based on this worn out brown colour with great drawings around it.

Here, we have a combination of post-rock and the clean parts of atmospheric black metal, executed under a folk aesthetic. Take Agalloch or Ulver, unplug them and add more piano lines, violin, clarinet, harp. I have read in interviews that the guys' first intentions were to make something like the acoustic form of black metal, but as more members joined, they followed a folkloric and melancholic road, it was exactly the feeling i got listening to it. The compositions are well crafted and they provoke a feeling of euphoria and calmness, with a touch of sorrow, which makes it even more artistic and enjoyable. The acoustic guitars create a very warm atmosphere, and they cooperate perfectly with the rest of the instruments in every song. There are also some female/male clean vocals in German, a characteristic i rarely like in songs, that has beaten the odds here, since they are wonderful whatsoever.

Standout tracks for me are Destrunken II, Jarknez and Schein, even though each one is special. If you are fond of tranquil sounds once in a while, give this album a listen with your eyes closed. Nature lovers will appreciate it very much too.

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DAMAGE: [7.75/10]

Suicide Silence - No Time To Bleed (2009)

Country: USA
Genre: Deathcore
Label: Century Media Records
Quality: CD-Rip 320kbps
Website: Facebook / Myspace

They changed from the first record to the second, this is a more complete work, shows how the bandmembers have finally found a way to compose all together. It approaches death metal but keeps some deathcore elements, the sound is approaching the unique SS sound even more this time, it has memorable songs and it is recognizable.

The album has the sound quality of modern deathcore but several parts contain a death metal intensity, these fast riffs with the ripping vocals are what made that band special. I know quite a lot of people hate them, but i don't really care, this band was a talented one of our decade, whereas the listeners liked it. Its my favourite release by them by the way, i like the concept and the general vibe it has.