Velm: Földek (2013)

Some time ago I reviewed a split album between Hungarian black metal bands De Profundis and Velm.  Based on the genre descriptions, I assumed I would probably prefer De Profundis, but ended up finding myself much more taken with the music of the pagan black metal band Velm.  I recently found a seller that was selling both of Velm's full-length albums and jumped on them.

I had a pretty good idea of what to expect with Velm based on the split, which was really just a way to package demos from both bands together, so it was much more like two real releases than just a song by each band.  The full-length reinforced what I believed a full-length from Velm would be like. 

The first three songs of the album is mostly melodic, synth-driven pagan black metal.  Featuring lengthy passages and wandering riffs, with vampiric vocals, the music can be harsh, but is often beautiful at the same time.  The last three songs are instrumentals, primarily played by the keyboards and are more ambient in nature.  The best moments on the album though are the parts of the first three songs that combine the two disparate sounds, bringing black metal riffing together with the keyboards. 

Overall, I was fairly impressed with this release.  Velm does not reinvent the wheel here, and they sound like many other bands in the genre, but the music is competent.  As I said, the best moments are those when they bring their different sounds together.  If they could make an entire album of that, that would really be something.

Conan: Existential Void Guardian (2018)

Presumably Conan is named after the barbarian played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and less popularly by Jason Momoa in movies based on a character created by Robert E. Howard, and not the red-headed late night television host.  I am not sure what a band named after Conan O'Brien should sound like (probably not a metal band I suspect), but I do know what a band named after Conan the Barbarian should sound like.  And quite frankly, Conan (the band) absolutely delivers.

Conan's sound is a combination of sludge metal and stoner doom metal, two styles not frequently associated with the U.K.  These are two much more typically American styles, so it is somewhat odd finding a band from the U.K. playing these styles of metal, much less combining them into such a seemless and powerful sound.

The riffs are massive and mostly slower-paced.  The songs lumber along like a behemoth, only occasionally speeding up to a mid-paced gallop.  But the monolithic power of the riffs is ever-present.  But what is odd is that despite how slowly most of the songs are played, they are not terribly long.  The entire album is under 40 minutes in length.  And the songs are also for the most part very catchy. 

If there is a downside to the album, it is the vocals.  The vocals seem a little bit strained and are mostly delivered in a harsh yell.  They fit the music fairly well, but can become a little grating at times.

Conan has been around for some time at this point.  This is their fourth full-length, though it is the first one I have heard.  There are definitely times when this type of metal really speaks to me, and so it is likely that this will enter regular rotation, alongside groups like The Gates of Slumber and Trouble.

Ritual Necromancy: Disinterred Horror (2018)

Would you believe this band is from Portland, Oregon?  I have discussed a number of times here how much of a metal hotbed the Pacific Northwest city has become.  This is yet another example of an extremely high quality band from the city.

This album is one of those that grabbed me on the strength of the album cover.  I had never heard of the band before, but that cover catches the eye with its bizarre occult artwork.  That would be a pretty good description of the music as well.  Ritual Necromancy plays music whose influences can be traced to the grimy, otherworldly, evil-sounding death metal of groups like Immolation, Incantation, Angelcorpse and Morbid Angel. 

The sound here is absolutely massive with monolithic, bestial riffs and dark and evil atmosphere seeping through every opening.  It is extremely dark and evil, with the only glimpses of brightness coming through the shredding solos and occasional leads.  Otherwise it is completely murky and chaotic, the sound of a lumbering Great Old One rising from its eons-long slumber.  The vocals exhibit this well with their cavernous sounding deep guttural roar.  The songs are lengthy, but so well-crafted that they do not fail to keep attention.  The album is spell-binding, grabbing attention and refusing to let go for the duration of the runtime.

This album fits in well with some of the other similar groups I have previously covered like Dysphotic and Howls of Ebb.  There is something to be said for well-written occult death metal groups like this that sound utterly alien.  Portland just continues to churn out great metal bands.

Morbus Grave: Abomination (2019)

This is the third of the trio of death metal demos I picked up as a package deal from Redefining Darkness Records.

Morbus Grave is an Italian death metal band that has been the longest active of the three bands from this package.  They formed in 2012 and have released three demos and a split with Lurking Terror. 

After a short, eerie intro, this song kicks off into a fast-paced and energetic punky death metal song.  The band's sound seems rooted in the early Stockholm sound of groups like Dismember, Nihilist and Grave.  The first two songs are very fast, which makes it that much more shocking when the slowly grinding "The Horrible" comes on.  There are moments where that one picks up the pace, but it's general sound is much more in the vein of death/doom bands like Cianide than the aforementioned speed merchants. 

Morbus Grave is not the most interesting of the three bands from this short series, but they are decent enough.  They do not do anything new or groundbreaking, but it is highly competent old-school sounding death metal.  Nothing wrong with that.

Sculpted Horror: Festering Death (2018)

This is the second of a trio of new death metal demos from Redefining Darkness Records.

Technically, this is a reissue of Sculpted Horror's 2018 demo.  It contains an extra song "Bonewalker" which is an instrumental at the end of the release.  Sculpted Horror is an Athens, GA one-man death metal band that sounds Finnish. 

Sculpted Horror is clearly influenced heavily by groups like Demilich and Convulse.  The riffs are extremely murky and heavy with the kind of putrid, slimy sound that made the Finnish death metal scene so intriguing.  The vocals are also the kind of deep-throated croak utilized effectively by those groups.  This is a very quick four-song demo in which none of the songs last much longer than four minutes, just enough time to make some creepy, sepulchral noise and wrap up.  Let's just say that the release title is apt.

There are a number of very good one-man death metal bands, which seems like it would be a tough thing to pull off.  Sculpted Horror have done enough on this demo to make them one to watch.  This is a very impressive release.

Effigy: MCMXCII: Darkest Day (2019)

The next three posts will be a few demos from new death metal bands all released by Redefining Darkness Records.

Effigy is apparently not really a new band.  They formed initially in 1992 but did not release anything at the time.  The members went on to form the death metal band Abominant, who have released a number of albums and are still active, and Sarcoma, a short-lived thrash metal band.  This is their first demo.

The subject matter here is pretty dark.  Based on the title of the demo, it appears to be about World War II.  The music has a heart-wrenching solemnity that fits well with the subject matter.  Yes, this is unabashed death metal with an old school flair, but just because the music is heavy and punishing does not mean there is not some emotion underlying the whole thing.  The band's primary influence seems to be Death, and that band was masterful at conveying emotion through their brutality.  The same thing appears here.  Of particular note are the blazing leads and shredding solos present.

Hopefully Effigy will stick around this time, because this is an incredibly impressive demo.  It fits in well with the current death metal resurgence this year.

Bölzer: Aura (2013)

After being thoroughly impressed by Bölzer's only full-length to date, I figured I should at least take a look at some of their other material.  The aforementioned release is somewhat controversial among long-term fans of the band apparently as Bölzer went in more of a Mastodon-esque sound, which was not present in their earlier material.  This EP was released three years before and was Bölzer's second release overall, after a demo in 2012.

This is a short, three-song EP, though the run-time is not particularly short.  The sound on this release is not easy to categorize.  There are a lot of elements present, but it typically ranges somewhere between death, black and sludge metal.  The riffs are murky and incredibly heavy, but there is melody underlying everything.  Stranger still is how remarkably catchy and infectious the songs are.  There is a lot going on here and it takes a few listens to fully catch everything, but this is a rewarding listen.

Now, the question is whether this EP is better than Hero or not.  Honestly, I think it depends on what you are looking for.  Hero is significantly more melodic with catchier songs, and some almost sing-along choruses.  This release is significantly heavier and more chaotic.  So it comes down to personal choice.  Personally, I somewhat prefer Hero, but this one is damn close.

Gatecreeper, Exhumed, Necrot and Ungoliant in Omaha: November 21, 2019

A few weeks ago, it looked like I would not be able to attend this concert.  Originally I was scheduled for a shoplifting jury trial on November 22.  While I was not terribly concerned about needing to present much of a defense (there was actually virtually no evidence tying my client to the crime), I still did not much feel like getting home between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. before doing a jury trial.  But luckily the prosecutor eventually realized he had nothing and dismissed the case.  So, I got to spend the evening at the Lookout Lounge watching a bunch of death metal bands.

UNGOLIANT

Ungoliant is a black metal band from Omaha that I have seen once before.  I enjoyed them then and this time, I think they were even better.  The band had a new bassist, who appears to be very young.  The songs were all tight and powerful.  The band has been one of the better local bands I have seen in the last several years.  Unfortunately, they have very few releases (three demos) and none of them are very easy to find.  I have my eyes open.  A new release would be nice though.

NECROT

I have seen Necrot before as well.  They were one of the opening bands when I saw Suffocation and The Black Dahlia Murder.  I thoroughly enjoy everything I have heard from Necrot and the concert was no different.  They are an explosive band live, with a lot of energy and some dark and heavy riffwork.  Necrot's sound is more of an occult death metal band and their album from 2017 was in my top five albums of the year.  I am still waiting on a follow-up.

EXHUMED

I have never really been the biggest Exhumed fan.  Possibly because they do not really stand out from a bunch of other grindy gore-obsessed death metal bands.  A lot of their primary characteristics also describe groups like Aborted, Impaled and others.  I have a couple of their albums, but I always mix them up with Impaled in particular.  But, holy shit I will remember them now.  They were massively impressive live.  Their three vocalists play off each other quite well, with each one having a distinct style.  The band was also the most visually impressive of the night, using two television screens showing trailers of old school horror movie classics and also having a man dressed in bloody scrubs take the stage several times to spray fake blood, and generally pump up the crowd.  They played the most songs of the night and were probably the highlight of the show due to their energy and some terrific songs.  I will be paying more attention now.

GATECREEPER

After Exhumed's flurry of activity, Gatecreeper was a bit of a letdown.  Not to say they were bad, completely the opposite, they just could not keep up the energy level after Exhumed practically destroyed the place.  Gatecreeper's new album is one of the better albums of the year and they played a number of the best songs from the album.  They were impressive in their own way and the songs "Desperation" and "Flamethrower" in particular are ones which are absolutely crushing live.  Gatecreeper has been making some major noise in the metal underground and they absolutely deserve it, but based on the relative stage shows, I just feel like the wrong band played last.  

Vader: The Empire (2016)

What is there really new to say about Vader?  This is the Polish band's 14th studio album and they show absolutely no signs of letting up.  Vader has one of the most consistently great discographies in all of metal.  And yet they have never really achieved the kind of notoriety that some of their peers have.  In particular, Behemoth (who credit Vader as an influence) have blown past them in popularity.  But, metal is not really a popularity contest ultimately.

With the music being so consistently great, it really is hard to distinguish one Vader album from another in any meaningful way.  Vader has never really changed their sound.  They have always been an ultra-aggressive extreme metal band that blurs the line between thrash metal and death metal.  This particular album leans a bit more to the thrash metal side of things.  This album is more about the churning, frantic riffing and pounding rhythms than anything melodic or complex.  It is a bludgeoning tour de force of an album, one that fits in nicely with the Vader discography.

There really is not much to say about Vader.  They are consistently great and have yet to release a disappointing album.  This is a short burst of aggressive mayhem, a sound that Vader have perfected over their long careers.  People should be more aware of Vader.

Slayer in Omaha: November 18, 2019

When it was announced that Slayer would be doing their final tour this year and one of those dates happened to be in Omaha, it was a no-brainer that I had to go.  Slayer was one of the early extreme metal bands that started pulling me away from the mainstream nu-metal in the late 1990's and into true heavy metal.  I picked up Seasons in the Abyss late in high school, based mostly on the title track.  Ever since, I have been a big Slayer fan.  Slayer was accompanied by three other bands.

PHILIP H. ANSELMO AND THE ILLEGALS

Pantera's former lead singer sounds rejuvenated these days.  I was never quite sure about checking out his new band, but sort of enjoyed their tracks on the split I have with Warbeast.  For some reason I never got around to checking out anything else.  I was shocked though when they played at the concert.  All of their songs were Pantera classics, including some of their heavier tracks like "Fucking Hostile", "Mouth for War" and "Becoming".  I guess with neither Dimebag nor Vinnie Paul around any more, someone has to play the Pantera songs.  They were damn impressive.

MINISTRY

Seeing Ministry live is like being run over by a bulldozer.  The band is absolutely crushingly heavy with inhumanly precise riffs and drumming.  Coupled with the frequent usage of samples, they put up a massive wall of sound.  Of course they played a lot of their own classic songs.  "Just One Fix" is still my personal favorite, but they also played "Jesus Built My Hotrod" and "N.W.O.".  They were probably the loudest band of the night, which is not surprising.

PRIMUS

I have never really been a big Primus fan.  There are things I like about them, such as their oddball sense of humor and, of course, Les Claypool's absolutely incredible bass-playing.  But many of their songs are just kind of boring.  The first half of their set was filled with songs that seemed more conducive to a jam band than to a hard rock group.  The second half though featured a number of their better songs.  Songs like "Mr. Krinkle", "My Name is Mud" and "Jerry was a Racecar Driver" are the songs that I have always enjoyed by the band.  My wife showed up late to the concert after getting a flat tire on her way and showed up halfway through Primus's set.  She was surprisingly very impressed by the band.

SLAYER

Slayer's set ran the gamut from their entire discography, pulling songs from almost every single one of their albums.  Not usually one for much talk between songs, they basically bulldozed through their entire set without stopping for more than a few seconds at a time.  Almost all of the classics were played, including "Show No Mercy", "South of Heaven", "War Ensemble" and "Seasons in the Abyss".  They closed things out with the trifecta of "Raining Blood", "Dead Skin Mask" and "Angel of Death".  They sounded terrific.  Tom Araya's voice was up to par, somewhat surprisingly, since he did not sound that well the last time I saw Slayer.  Their set was pretty good, and I did enjoy it more than the last time I saw them.  That time they were touring in support of Repentless, a somewhat subpar Slayer album.  This time, it was all about the band's legacy and that legacy held up well.  Time will tell if this is really the end of Slayer, but if it is, it has been one wild ride.  

Mercyful Fate: Into the Unknown (1996)

The last couple of years I have made a concerted effort to start picking up some of the missing albums in my collection from Mercyful Fate and King Diamond.  The title track from this album was actually the first Mercyful Fate song I had ever heard.  It appeared on a Metal Blade compilation that I picked up some time in college.  At the time, I was not sure what I was hearing.  King's voice was unlike anything I had ever heard.  Eventually though, I got into it.  But it took a long time before I ventured past the landmark albums.  Which brings me to this album.

The mid 1990's were largely considered a bleak time for true heavy metal.  That was not true for Mercyful Fate, who reunited in 1993 after a nine-year hiatus in which King Diamond focused on his solo career.  His solo career did not end though, King managed to work with both bands simultaneously. 

Unlike many Mercyful Fate/King Diamond albums, this is not a concept album.  Rather, it is a collection of short horror stories, involving pirates, ghosts and of course some Lovecraft.  Musically, this is not one of the best Mercyful Fate albums, but it is still damn good.  Denner and Shermann throw out some damn good riffs and some amazing solos.  A lot of the songs are terrific with the kind of energy that the band rose to stardom playing.  The title track is the big highlight, but "The Uninvited Guest" and "Holy Water" also grab attention. 

Even a lesser Mercyful Fate album is still better than a lot of albums and that is definitely the case here.  This one does not hold up to Don't Break the Oath or Melissa, but it fits in well with some post-Abigail King Diamond albums.  It remains a great album from a great band.  So what if it is not quite as good as their classic albums.

Necrophobic: The Nocturnal Silence (1993)

I finally discovered Necrophobic last year with their eighth album Mark of the Necrogram.  That album made it into the top five of my top albums list.  Realizing that the band had been around for a long time, I decided I would go back and find out what I had been missing.

Being a Swedish black/death metal band, Necrophobic's music would appeal to fans of groups like Dissection, Naglfar, Nifelheim, Lord Belial and others.  I am a fan of all of those bands, so of course this appeals to me as well. 

The music is heavy, based more in thrash and death metal than black metal, at least at this time.  In fact, this is much more of a melodic death metal album played with thrash metal riffs a la early Amon Amarth than a black/death metal album.  The only black metal influences are the occasional tremolo riff and the vocal styling, which is delivered in more of a guttural rasp.  The other element that is clearly present throughout the release is the evil atmosphere.  Necrophobic take cues from groups like Slayer, Possessed and Morbid Angel, resulting in a very unsettling and evil-sounding album. 

This is Necrophobic's debut album and it was one hell of a debut.  The band fits in well with the titans of Swedish black/death metal that I listed above.  I am not sure how I missed out on Necrophobic all of these years, but I will definitely be working on changing that.

Tormentor: The 7th Day of the Doom (1987)

Black metal's roots are of course commonly associated with Norway, but the truth is that it has roots far deeper than that.  First wave black metal arose from a variety of places, such as the U.K. (Venom), Sweden (Bathory), Czechoslovakia (Master's Hammer and Root) and Denmark (Mercyful Fate).  Hungary's Tormentor was another first wave black metal band who had a major impact on the continued growth of the genre.

I was aware of Tormentor, mostly through the band's eponymous song, which has been covered by Dimmu Borgir and Slugathor (not to be confused with the Kreator song of the same name).  Tormentor's influence can be clearly heard in the works of Mayhem and other landmark bands in the black metal genre.  Tormentor's music is actually fairly complex, going through a number of musical sections, as opposed to the more simplistic sound of a lot of what black metal became.  This is especially true with songs like "Damned Grave", a nearly ten minute long instrumental.  And with the much more melodic sound, the band has more in common with Mercyful Fate than with Venom.  Sometimes the songs do drag on for a little too long, but by and large, this is a decent release.

One of the primary reasons that Tormentor is well-known, even if their music is not, is the presence of vocalist Attila Csihar.  Csihar of course replaced the deceased er, Dead in Mayhem and performs on the band's classic De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas.  Unfortunately, so much of what made him such a compelling voice on that release is not present here.  He has a gruff vocal style, but does not engage in any of the vocal acrobatics or the blood-curdling snarl that he had on the Mayhem release.  He is clearly still finding his voice here.

This is one of Tormentor's demos and it is clear that the band was still a work in progress at this point in their career.  This is probably not an essential release, with the exception of the song "Tormentor".  If interested in checking out Tormentor, I would recommend Anno Domini instead.  Not that this one is bad, but it is very rough and raw. 

The Mist: Phantasmagoria (1989)

Holy shit.  I passed this album over a few times recently because the cover art and the band name just did not quite grab me.  Sure, the art is good, but I have seen this same piece on some Lovecraft books I own and the Cause of Death album from Obituary.  So it just did not do much for me.  But finally, I decided to take a chance on it and I am definitely glad I did.

The Mist is a thrash metal band from Brazil that borders on the much more extreme side of things.  The band fit in well with the early works of Sepultura and Sarcófago.  The band piles on the riffs and drums and is absolutely relentless in their attack.  The riffs are not overly technical, but they hit hard and have a grimy, dirty sound to them that is rather common in the Brazilian extreme metal scene of the 1980's, and is oft-mimicked even today.  Every single song on this album should be a classic.  This is truly impressive extreme thrash metal.

The vocals call to mind early albums by Death.  The singer has the same kind of gruff, sepulchral rasp that Chuck Schuldiner used to great effect.  It is not a true death metal vocal style, but is anything but clean. 

I want to take a short time to talk about the bass.  Bass is often overlooked in metal, except for when it is truly exceptional (such as anything Steve DiGiorgio is in).  This is one of those exceptional cases.  The bass work is absolutely incredible.  It can always be heard and provides a rumbling backbone of the guitar riffs.  There are times it is doing something completely unexpected and the album is all the better for it.  The bass is truly the star of this album.

This album has a bit of a cult following to it and for damn good reason.  This is an exceptional thrash metal album from a scene that put out a number of them.  The Brazilian thrash metal scene has remained largely underground, with the exception of Sepultura, but it should be much better known.  This album fits right in with the giants of that scene.  It is a shame that The Mist did not last long.

Manilla Road: Open the Gates (1985)

Manilla Road has never received the attention they have deserved.  They remain one of the greatest bands that few have ever heard of.  They are easily one of the most underrated metal bands of all time.  They absolutely deserve to be held up next to groups like Iron Maiden among the legends of the genre.  They also own one of the most consistently great discographies in all of metal.  Simply put, they have never released a bad album.

Open the Gates was the band's fourth album, released two years after the mind-blowing Crystal Logic.  Describing the sound on this album is extremely difficult because Manilla Road is never content to go with just one sound.  The only true descriptive word that encompasses this entire album is epic.  It just feels huge.  And the best example is "The Ninth Wave" which is a slow-burning piece about preparing for warfare with thunderous drums and laidback, yet urgent vocals.  But the band immediately follows up with a fast-paced barn-burner like "Heavy Metal to the World".

I would be remiss if I did a review of a Manilla Road album without mentioning the amazing vocals of Mark Shelton.  Shelton is a terrific singer, whose gravelly voice fits the band's sound like a glove.  He has an impressive range as well, which he shows off in some of the more captivating moments on this release, such as his wailing chorus on "The Fires of Mars" and the insanely infectious "Road of Kings".  Unfortunately, Shelton died last year, and the band with him.

I am not really sure why Manilla Road never became better known.  Perhaps it was geography.  Wichita, Kansas has never been known as a metal hotbed.  And Manilla Road certainly broke the mold for metal bands of the time period.  The American metal scene was dominated by thrash metal and going towards the glam scene.  So groups like Manilla Road and Cirith Ungol, and even Trouble to a certain degree, who were slower-paced, were kind of glossed over.

This album should be legendary.  In certain metal circles, I believe it is, but there are far too few that know about it.  This is 1980's American metal at its absolute best.  It should not be missed.  Check out Manilla Road.  Now.

Haunt: If Icarus Could Fly (2019)

Moving away from death metal releases from 2019, here we have a good old traditional metal release from 2019.  I discussed Haunt not all that long ago with their 2019 EP Mosaic Vision.  The band has been very prolific already in their young careers, also releasing this full-length and two splits this year alone.  And, their 2020 full-length has already been announced (and I have it on pre-order). 

As much as I enjoyed the EP, I think this release is even better.  The riffs are a little harder-edged on this release than the previous one, without sacrificing any of the catchiness and infectious hooks.  The songs are aggressive, yet melodic with incendiary solos.  The vocals are dry, yet soar over the riffs.

This is something of a loose concept piece about Greek myths including that of Icarus.  I am sure most are familiar with that storyline.  Icarus and his father became trapped in the labyrinth with a minotaur and attempted to leave by building themselves wings out of wax and feathers.  They flew out of the labyrinth, but Icarus flew too close to the sun, melting the wax and his wings fell apart with Icarus plummeting to his death.  Of course the story of Icarus was also the subject of the Iron Maiden classic "Flight of Icarus". 

This is a damn good album.  It is one of the better traditional metal albums of the year and even surpasses the band's EP from this year.  I will be keeping up with Haunt in the future, which may prove difficult, as prolific as they are.

Nucleus: Entity (2019)

Now that Vektor has imploded, there is a distinct lack of bands who have taken the early works of Voivod and based their sound around it.  That is a shame as the first five Voivod albums are stone cold classics.  Nucleus is one such band, though to call their music primarily influenced by Voivod would be too simplistic, as the band is much more of a death metal band with other influences such as Demilich that shine through.

The Voivod influence can be felt through the off-kilter guitar melodies playing over the top of the rumbling bass and crushing drums.  It gives the music a very uneasy feeling and a little bit of the kind of sci-fi vibe that Voivod became renowned for.  There is also the progressive structures that the songs take.  There is nothing direct about this album.  Nucleus goes through a number of movements in each song and there are no choruses or hooks.

This Voivod influence is filtered through the much more chaotic death metal influences the band has.  I mentioned Demilich, and the Finnish death metal band's influence can be heard through the monolithic riffs.  Of course Demilich was a weird band as well without any real standard structure to their music, so that element can be discussed here too.

It is almost hard to recognize where one song ends and another begins here.  There are so many ideas thrown out in the first place, but the songs all blend seemlessly into each other.  The album requires multiple listens to full absorb, something else they share with the eclectic bands listed above.  There is a lot going on and it goes in a number of directions, but all of them lead into a killer album.

The theme of the last few days has been how many great death metal albums have been released in 2019.  Nucleus definitely joins that trend with this album.

Triumvir Foul: Urine of Abomination (2019)

To quote Cleveland Brown from Family Guy "Oh, that's NASTY".  Triumvir Foul is a death metal duo from Portland, Oregon (of course).  The band is made up of Cedentibus on drums and Ad Infinitum on everything else.  Those are probably not their real names.

After two full lengths in 2015 and 2017, this is the band's fourth release, a short EP to keep on top of releasing new music.  The release consists of four songs that are titled with Roman numerals, meaning that the release was meant to be consumed as a whole rather than a collection of songs.  The songs blend together seemlessly, none of them having a distinct sound, though it is not as if there is nothing compelling or interesting here either.

The band's sound is every bit as vile and disgusting as the album cover and title would suggest.  It is dark and murky with a barrage of pummeling drums and riffs that ooze out of the speakers.  It is dark and hateful music that is harsh and intense.  There is almost nothing pretty here.  The only real moments of levity are some surprisingly melodic guitar solos in a sea of otherwise atonal, crushing sound.  The album is short, the only thing merciful about the band's sound.

This is one of the creepier, grimier and most disgusting death metal releases I have heard in some time.  It is evil and disturbing.  I love it.

Superstition: The Anatomy of Unholy Transformation (2019)

Here is another of those great death metal albums from this year that I mentioned in yesterday's post.  Superstition is a very new band who released their first demo just last year.  That demo was covered in my demo roundup from last year and was my favorite demo of the year.  This is the band's first full-length album.

Superstition's music is rife with evil atmosphere and razor-sharp riffing.  My comparison to Morbid Angel when discussing the band's demo seems to be mostly accurate, though this is Morbid Angel worship from the time when Azagthoth and company were just crossing the line from thrash metal to death metal.  So there is a bit of Possessed in there as well.  The best example of this is the creepy intro and opening riff to "Spiritual Sunderance" which calls to mind "The Exorcist".  The album is raw and evil, two qualities that are obviously highly desired in death metal.  It is not overly-produced or slick-sounding, it is just chaotic and murky. 

Superstition have delivered on the promise of their demo.  Their first album is a terrific example of old-school-sounding death metal done right.  They do enough to keep the album from becoming a collection of standard tropes while still sounding very much like death metal when it was truly dangerous.

Tomb Mold: Planetary Clairvoyance (2019)

2019 has been an amazing year for death metal.  Honestly I could probably do an end of year Top 10 list just covering death metal bands.  New albums from Gatecreeper, Nucleus, Coffin Rot, Ossuarium, Superstition, Vltimas, Memoriam, Witch Vomit and Possessed would all likely be on the list.  I only named nine because this one from Tomb Mold would definitely be on it as well.  And that is not to count albums that I am waiting to receive from Fetid, Cerebral Rot, Vastum and Ossuary. 

Tomb Mold is a Canadian death metal band whose previous lyrical subject matter dealt mostly with the Dark Souls and Bloodborne series of games.  I personally have played Bloodborne and cannot make it past the second boss battle with Father Gascoigne because the game is fucking hard.  Tomb Mold has moved past this rather limiting subject matter on this release though and gone in more of a general horror direction.

The music is a little different than some of the bands listed above in that Tomb Mold is not overly concerned with being the most extreme, brutal or punishing band out there.  The music is certainly intense, but it is more of a murkier, oozing, grimy death metal.  The riffs all have incredibly meaty distortion adding to the overall menace of the album.  The songs are all well-crafted with multiple sections and the band is able to alternate between fast and intense to creepy and somber at the drop of a hat.  The band builds on the frightening sound with a number of atmospheric moments, such as the very odd "Phosphorene Ultimate" with its strange vocals and eerie guitar lines.

This album is the best one Tomb Mold has released to date.  As much as I enjoyed Manor of Infinite Forms, this album absolutely blows it out of the water.  2019 has been an amazing year for death metal and Tomb Mold's Planetary Clairvoyance is one of the biggest reasons why.

Magic Circle: Departed Souls (2019)

It has not been that long since I reviewed the Boston-based doom metal band Magic Circle's sophomore 2015 album Journey Blind.  I was fairly impressed with that album, finding the band's retro doom metal approach very impressive.  Unfortunately, I am just not as sold on this album.  Maybe it is a grower, but it has failed to grab me in the same way that the other album has.

The core sound of the band is still rooted in classic doom metal bands like Trouble and Pentagram.  The band though has a distinctive fuzzy, 1960's blues rock feel to their riffs.  The songs are generally a little slower-paced on this album.  I remarked in my review of the band's earlier album that my favorite songs were the ones that were a little faster-paced.  Unfortunately, there are very few such songs on this album, which kind of goes toward my general ambivalence.  The vocals are still probably the best element on the album, but there are not any songs like "The Damned Man" this time around to truly impress.

Magic Circle has also created a much more varied album this time around.  "A Day Will Dawn Without Nightmares" in particular sounds like the band has channeled Black Sabbath's "Planet Caravan" and Trouble's "Porpoise Song" and filtered those songs through Indian instrumentation.  It is an interesting song, but I am not sure how much I actually like it.

I want to be clear that I do not dislike this album.  I will still be giving it more chances because Magic Circle still has great talent.  I just liked the previous album better.  A lot of the elements that I liked so much on that album are not present here.  Still, there are some definite impressive elements here too.

Life of Agony: River Runs Red (1993)

Back in the mid 1990's, I picked up the album Ugly, Life of Agony's second release after reading a somewhat favorable review in some music magazine whose name escapes me at the moment.  The album became something of a soundtrack for my teen angst years, particularly with songs like "Unstable" (which spoke to me as I was dating a girl with some extreme health issues at the time) and "Damned if I Do".  Gradually as I grew up, the album was shoved aside and I did not listen to it for many years.  Life of Agony's music on that release seemed more in line with heavy alternative rock than metal.  Recently I pulled the album back out and listened to it and was surprised at the fact that I can clearly identify some very real sludge metal-type riffs.  The album actually sounds like a (much) lighter version of Crowbar than I remembered.

Unfortunately, the band's third album Soul Searching Sun never did much of anything for me.  I picked it up due to my feelings about the previous album and because I actually did like the song "Weeds", which was the album's first single.  Every other song was pretty much awful though.  The band went too far down the alternative rock road.  Even "Weeds" fit in much better with the alternative rock and grunge sound of the era than with anything metal.  I have not pulled this one back out. 

I kind of forgot about Life of Agony for many years and never really checked in with the band in subsequent years.  The band did not release another album until 2005.  I was surprised to learn that vocalist Keith Caputo came out as transexual in 2011 and began transitioning to female.  She now goes by the name Mina.  That was the first I heard from Life of Agony in a long time.  And then they sort of exited my consciousness again. 

Until just recently.  Somehow I heard something about how great the band's first album was.  I was never able to find it when I got into the band as it was out of print and these were the days before it was really easy to buy music on the internet.  I decided to give it a shot and I was shocked by what I heard.  This album is definitely a metal album.  At this time, Life of Agony's sound was a concoction of thrash metal, crossover and sludge metal.  There are times when the band really does sound like Crowbar.  There are others when the band's Brooklyn roots are laid bare and they sound like a combination of Carnivore, early Type O Negative and Biohazard.  For instance, any time the band uses gang vocals, the Carnivore/Type O Negative influence is clear.  "Method of Groove", with its half-rapped vocals, sounds like Biohazard.  In fact, I'm still shocked that Evan Seinfeld did not make a guest appearance on the track.

The teen angst is definitely still the primary lyrical theme on this album.  It appears to be something of a concept album, covering a particularly bad week in the life of a teenager.  The album is interspersed with tracks that feature the sound of the main character's horrible home life and often features him listening to progressively more depressing phone messages.  Prior to the events of the album, his friend died.  Then the first story track features his girlfriend leaves him.  Then he is fired from his job and told that he will not graduate as he is failing two courses.  Finally, his mother and father get into a massive fight and his mother is in the process of leaving when the main character apparently commits suicide.  It is pretty brutal.

From this point on, this will be the album I think of when I think of Life of Agony.  And this one, despite definitely being a product of its time, should be considered a landmark album in its rather small niche genre. 

Troll: Legend Master (2019)

Troll is yet another recent band to form in the metal hotbed that is Portland, Oregon. The band has been around for some time, but only released their debut album in 2016. After that album, some lineup unrest made the band's future murky. But the band was able to patch things up with their vocalist Rainbo, which is definitely a good thing for the band for reasons I will lay out.

This is Troll's second full-length, and my first experience with the band. Troll is a doom metal band with some stoner influences. The music is slow and mellow, for the most part. Troll has much more in common with groups like Pallbearer than My Dying Bride or Cathedral. Their sound is melancholic and melodic, but with something of an epic feel and lyrics dealing with fantasy themes. The music is decent, but it never really grabs the listener's attention. The musicianship is impressive, but ultimately, musically, there is nothing much here that has not been heard before.

But there is one element of this album that truly causes it to stand out above so many of the other doom metal bands out there. That is the vocals. Rainbo's voice is, quite simply, incredible. Sounding like some sort of mix between Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder, Rainbo croons along with the music and has an amazing range. There are times when his delivery is actually spine-tingling. His vocals take the album from being a good, but fairly standard album, to a memorable one.

If not for Rainbo's vocals, this album would probably be fairly forgettable. But the album stands out due to the incredible vocal performance. Rainbo is a vocalist to watch in the future. As for the rest of the band, I guess we will see.

Sins of the Damned: Striking the Bell of Death (2019)

Well, that name is a mouthful.  Not to be confused with gothic metal band The Sins of Thy Beloved, Sins of the Damned is a relatively new band out of Chile who plays tried and true speed metal with blackened metal vocals. 

The album starts off with some ominous bell-ringing, that most likely being the titular "Bell of Death".  It then kicks off into "They Fall and Never Rise Again", one of the better songs on the album.  Most of the song titles are a little lengthy, just like the album title and the band's name.  The songs are also a little long, with only two songs being less than five minutes, and one of those is the intro track (also the title track). 

The music is mostly fast-paced, as is normal in speed metal.  The band seems to take some major influence from the likes of Helloween, among other bands, playing traditional speed metal with a barrage of riffs and drums.  The high speed riffs often repeat ad nauseam and are mostly clean, stopping just short of edgier riffs that would take the music into thrash metal territory. 

The main element that distinguishes this band from so many other traditional-minded speed metal bands is the harsh vocals.  They often veer into black metal-style rasping and growling, adding a threatening tone to the otherwise mostly melodic metal.  It is a unique idea, somewhat similar to the blackened power metal of Satan's Host, but it never quite works as well.

This is an interesting album with some off-kilter elements, but it never quite comes together.  Granted, this is the band's debut album and there is plenty of time to flesh out the ideas.  This is a fun album to listen to, but it never really grabs the listener's attention as much as an album of this style should.

Sabbat: Evoke (1992)

Here we have the third out of three posts in a series about the first three albums by Japan's Sabbat, not to be confused with the U.K. Sabbat.  In a bizarre accident, I ended up reviewing these in a seemingly random order.  Well, I guess there was some semblance of an order, because if I had to rank them in order of favorite to least favorite, it would be Disembody, Envenom, then Evoke.

When I was first listening to this album in anticipation of writing a post about it, I felt that this album was decidedly weaker than the other two.  It was not that the songs were bad, it was just that they were a little too safe.  That may not have been the case at the time, but there are a lot of bands who play this general style of metal anymore.  The songs were fine, but just not particularly attention-grabbing.

And then the second half started.  Several songs grabbed my attention.  "Hellhouse (Kanashibari Pt. 3)" is the most dynamic song on the album.  The song builds up an impressive eerie atmosphere and features some spine-tingling clean vocals.  "The Curse of Phraoh" is obviously hilariously misspelled but the Egyptian-sounding riff definitely grabs the listener.  It does start out sounding like a cover of Iron Maiden's "Powerslave", but veers off quickly.  Finally, "Beyond the River" is absolutely terrific, with the best riff on the album and some infectious hooks.

This one is a little uneven, but still a good enough album.  I do not like it as much as the other two, even though "Beyond the River" is possibly one of my favorite songs I have heard from Sabbat yet.  It is still a great example of blackened thrash done right, it just fails to live up to some of the other work from Sabbat.

Sabbat: Envenom (1991)

This is the second in a series covering the reissues of the first three Sabbat albums.  I know, I am covering them in a weird and random order.  Yesterday, I covered the third album.  This one is their first full-length.

It is kind of hard to make any kind of argument about the band's growth when you are going backwards from the third album to the first.  Much of the music on this release is less-polished and raw.  In the review yesterday, I mentioned that they sounded like a grimier version of Venom.  The Venom comparison is even more apt here, particularly on songs like "Evil Nations" which would have fit in very well on Cronos and gang's album At War with Satan.  "Deathtemptation (Kanashibari Pt. 2)" is one of the strongest songs on the album, with a terrific riff and some of the best vocals on the entire release.  The noodling in the background of the choruses is particularly effective.  The entire song has an evil atmosphere to it, complemented by the gruff raspy vocals.

"Carcassvoice" is a really weird song.  It has a heavy punk vibe to it and features some bizarre double vocals.  One singer provides some lower-pitched growling snarls while the other pitches in with some much higher-register shrieking.  The two styles do not mix well at all and the song is kind of annoying during those parts.  It does get better as it goes on though, ditching those vocals for more of a surf-rock style groove.  The vocals are also the downfall of "Eviler", which is just a hilarious song title, but features more punkish shouting that just does not work well.  But these issues are just minor annoyances in an otherwise great album.

Sabbat released a damn impressive debut album that was just a sign of things to come for the band.  It is raw and intense, but the band never really moved away from this general sound.  They just continued to improve on it. 

Sabbat: Disembody (1993)

A few weeks back, I did a short series covering a bunch of the demo and EP reissues from the Japanese blackened thrash metal band Sabbat.  Well, several of their early full-lengths were also released.  I picked up three of those.

Disembody is Sabbat's third full-length album and finds the band in full force.  Much of the music finds Sabbat playing their grimier, more evil take on Venom (which is not exactly easy to pull off).  Most songs feature a barrage of riffs from the virtuoso guitarist Gezol.  His work toward the end of "Evoke the Evil" in particular is extremely impressive and dynamic, building up an evil atmosphere in the climax of the song.  Gezol's work here is reminiscent of early Mercyful Fate in that respect. 

There are a number of terrific songs on this album, but there are a couple that have really grabbed my attention.  "Metamorphosis" is one of the more interesting songs on the album.  It starts off slowly with some frantic and panicked clean vocals, leading into a breakdown and some crushing riffs before circling back to the agonized vocals.  The song is maddeningly intense.  "Satan's Serenade" is the other.  This song was not on the original version of the album, but does appear on my reissue.  It is driven by a classic heavy metal riff that is reminiscent of the NWOBHM. 

I have considered myself a fan of Sabbat since first hearing them, but have never really come close to listening to everything the band has released.  That is still true, but I have been able to get into their earlier material with this set of reissues.  The band has been prolific to say the least.  And now I am basically starting from the beginning.

Haunt: Mosaic Vision (2019)

The Fresno, California-based Haunt has been remarkably active since forming around 2017.  The band started as a solo project for Beastmaker vocalist/guitarist and Church Recordings founder Trevor William Church.  The label was also once the home of Dream Tröll, a band I have quickly developed an affinity for.  Haunt has so far released two full-length albums, two EPs, two splits and a single.  That is a lot of recordings for such a new band.  This release is one of the band's EPs, with just four songs on it.

I mentioned Dream Tröll in the previous paragraph and that is an adequate place to begin in describing Haunt's sound.  This is true, old school-sounding heavy metal with poppy melodies and extremely catchy choruses.  The music is a bit different than the other harder-edged material that I have heard from Haunt.  This is much more melodic.  The guitars are razor-sharp with blazing solos and wailing vocals.  Each of the songs on this EP is catchier than the last.

This is a fairly effective introduction to an impressive young band.  It is probably not their best release, as I said before most of their music is generally heavier than this release, but it is damn good in its own right.  I will be covering another one of Haunt's releases soon. 

Exciter: Long Live the Loud (1985)

Let's all go back to a simpler time.  When the only real concerns were making a few bucks to put gas in your cherried out Dodge Charger or Grand Am to take out your spandex-clad feathered-haired girlfriend.  This cassette was likely playing in the car at the time.  This is the perfect soundtrack for exceeding the speed limit while flying down the highway.

Canadian metal of the 1980's has really garnered a lot of nostalgia in recent years.  Part of that was likely due to the Anvil documentary of several years ago.  But there were better bands in the scene.  Exciter, named after a Judas Priest song, was one of the leading bands in the scene, releasing three classic albums from 1983 through 1985.  This was the third, and probably my favorite of the three.

As could be expected when a band names itself after a Judas Priest song, Priest and Iron Maiden seem to be the primary influences on Exciter's sound.  "Born to Die" would have easily fit on Priest's Defenders of the Faith while the beginning of "Wake Up Screaming" sounds a lot like Maiden's "Hallowed be Thy Name".  Most of the rest of the songs are made up of catchy-as-hell pure speed metal.  There are several terrific songs here, including the title track and "I am the Beast".

I missed out on this album the first time around (I was four after all), but there are several great metal albums being reissued all the time.  All three of the first Exciter albums have recently been reissued and I have been picking them up.  I have not ventured beyond the first three yet, but someday I may have to.  As I said, this is my favorite album by Exciter thus far.

Portal: Vexovoid (2013)

Portal remains perhaps the most difficult band to describe in all of metal.  Their music is so off-the-wall, so off-kilter that deciphering just what the hell is going on in the music is next to impossible.  And yet, their music is infectious, but not in a catchy way.  It is more of a horrific plague.  It is unsettling and disturbing, but it just works.  The band has released five albums now, and I have four of them.  They are quite simply, unlike anything else I have heard.

As I said, describing the music of Portal is next to impossible.  It is like describing a descent into madness.  It is pure auditory chaos.  There is no true structure to any of the songs.  Riffs come from nowhere.  The only constants are a deep, unsettling, primal feeling and a monolithic rumbling.  I am not even really sure I can compare any given Portal album to another.  There is nothing safe or truly musical going on.  The band play instruments in the most basic of terms and there is some resemblance to death metal, though it is far more experimental, almost to the point that it could be believed that the band improvises everything.  I am not certain they don't honestly. 

I am not sure reviewing anything by Portal really accomplishes anything.  I think the band is one that is best explored personally.  Some will love it and call it genius.  Others will call it pure trash and not at all musical.  They might both be right.  Portal is unlike any other band I have heard.  There are some groups, such as Ulcerate and Howls of Ebb, that seem to take some ideas from Portal, but even those are not as maddeningly chaotic as Portal.  I would love to see them live, just to see how the music translates in the live setting.  I will continue to pick up albums by the band, because I find them fascinating in an outsider art sort of way.