Abyssic Hate: Suicidal Emotions (2000)

One can already tell that this is not going to be the most uplifting album in the world.  From the band name to the album title to the album cover, it is clear that this Australian black metal band does not have a lot of positive things to say.  And sure enough, this is a style commonly referred to as depressive black metal. 

Abyssic Hate is a one-man project of Shane Rout, who has spent time in Australian metal luminaries such as Hecatomb and Deströyer 666, usually as a drummer.  It is somewhat surprising then that the drums are actually the least impressive part of this album.  In fact, despite the fact that Rout is a drummer, he made use of a drum machine on this release. 

But enough of the negative, this album blew me away.  I have had a little bit of difficulty getting into this style of black metal until I heard Leviathan.  If I had heard this album first, it may have been a significantly different story.  There is a lot going on in this release, even if it seems fairly simplistic on the surface.  The songs are quite lengthy, usually propelled by fairly minimalist riffs, much like Darkthrone's Transilvanian Hunger.  It is no surprise to know that the band's name comes from a Darkthrone song.  But beneath the riffs is some strangely compelling melodies reminiscent of groups like Joy Division and The Cure.  That is not to say that these elements are overpowering, but they exist in order to propel the emotional center of the album.  The biggest highlight is the opening riff of "Betrayed".  That was the moment that really captured my attention and the album refused to let go after that.

Fans of Xasthur, Leviathan and other depressive black metal absolutely MUST check this album out.  This should be a landmark in the style.  It is truly impressive.  Unfortunately it is the only full-length from Abyssic Hate and Rout has ended this project.  It would have been tough to top this album anyway.

Cemetery Urn: Barbaric Retribution (2018)

I am a big fan of Hells Headbangers Records.  Every few months or so, I go to their site and order a bunch of their new releases.  The label definitely has a typical sound, of sorts.  They tend to release works by bands that incorporate influences from death, black and thrash metal, along with a fair amount of punk influence.  This sound tends to grab my attention.  And so it was that I ended up grabbing this release.

The Australian band is decidedly more death metal in their approach, but it is a dark and grimy form of occult death metal that has much more in common with groups like Angelcorpse and their countrymen in Bestial Warlust and Abominator (which makes sense since the guitarist was in BOTH bands, and I wrote this before seeing that).  It is a thunderous and grotesque sound with skull-crushing riffs.  There is a ton of bottom end to the sound too, making the riffs sound dense and murky.  The vocals too are extreme, even for this form of metal.  They are deep and guttural with a swampy tone to them as well.  What results is a tremendously heavy album, in all the right ways.

If there is a problem with the release it is that the songs tend to run together a little bit and there is not often something that truly stands out.  Cemetery Urn seems more concerned with completely pummeling the listener than with writing something truly memorable.  And thus the band can kind of get lost among other bands that perform a similar style.

All that being said, this is a suitably punishing album for occult death metal.  Australia has once again delivered a quality extreme metal band.  The country is well-known for its extreme metal scene and Cemetery Urn is yet another example of that. 

Black Serpent: Shadowside Devilcosm (2017)

Black Serpent is an Australian band that is essentially a one-man project.  The primary band member Nightcraft Serpentaxe (may or may not be his real name) performs all of the vocals and guitar duties and brings in session drummers.  I picked up this album as a throw-in when I bought the Mythic album from yesterday.

I did not know much about this project before getting the album, but I figured an Australian black/death metal band is sure to be at least somewhat interesting.  That is the case here, although I would argue that the band is more of a death metal band that happens to be somewhat melodic a la Amon Amarth or Apophis.  Apophis is probably the best comparison I can draw here, not to say that this is as impressive as that band, but the music is very similar.  The listener is hit with a barrage of riffs and melodies that work to get the blood pumping.  The vocals are generally just grunted, but that can work out with certain bands.  It would be nice to have a little more variety in this one, but it is not really a problem.

This is a generally entertaining release, but it does not do enough to stand out.  It kind of lacks the memorable quality of similar bands, even though it holds attention while it is on.  Black Serpent is kind of an off-and-on project, having released two EPs in 2008 and then this one nine years later.  It is difficult to say when a new release may be coming.

Drowning the Light: An Alignment of Dead Stars (2009)

Ho-hum.  Another Drowning the Light review.  This is the last one for a little while at least.  For those who really enjoy the Drowning the Light reviews, I'm sorry.

Despite the name of this album, this is a surprisingly upbeat-sounding Drowning the Light.  That is not really a thing I could explain well, but it does seem to be true.  It starts off fairly normally, with the somber introduction "Distant Autumn Rain", but it quickly becomes clear that this is not any normal Drowning the Light release. 

Most of the songs feature faster-paced riffs and are performed in major chords.  This is unusual for this band.  Then there is "Drinking the Sacrament of Eternity (Revenge of the Impaler)" with its decidedly punk-sounding riff.  Seriously, there is not much difference between it and the riff to The Offspring's "The Kids Aren't Alright" and yes I did just reference The Offspring in a fucking Drowning the Light review.  Deal with it.

It is sort of amazing how a band like Drowning the Light, who releases SO much material manages to make each release stand out in its own way.  That is the sign of a truly talented band.  I do not how highly I would rank this album among the Drowning the Light releases I have heard.  It is certainly not higher than yesterday's album, but it is up there.

Drowning the Light: From the Abyss (2015)

It has been two whole days since I reviewed a Drowning the Light album.  It is about damn time I dust off another one.  Tracing Drowning the Light's evolution is a bit of a tricky thing, mostly due to the massive amount of releases the band has put out.  That is fairly common for a band that is so prolific.  But at some point, the band ceased being a simplistic Burzum clone and that shines through on this release. 

Part of what makes this particular release stand out, particularly among the couple of Drowning the Light releases I have reviewed on this blog, is the fact that at this point the band is not a one-man project.  Azgorh brought on an individual named Balam who chips in songwriting and plays the guitars.  Balam is a more accomplished guitarist than Azgorh, which shows in the increased quality of the leads and riffs, and the songs themselves have evolved to be more complex.  This is evident from the very beginning with the incredible opening riff to "Drink the Blood of the Sun (Varcolaci Awakens)". 

The band continues to use keyboard melodies effectively.  Those melodies give the sound a sort of medieval flavor that has long been a staple and leads to comparisons to early Satyricon and Summoning.  With the cavernous, dungeon-esque atmosphere and the keyboard melodies it is easy to see why the band has been called "medieval black metal".

Drowning the Light has evolved by leaps and bounds on this release.  I suspect the reasoning for it is the personnel changes, suddenly it is no longer dictated by just one person.  But what has resulted is a massively improved sound, and this is coming from someone that actually likes their previous offerings.  This is easily one of the best Drowning the Light albums, and that is really saying something.

Drowning the Light: To the End of Time (2007)

Today, I am back with another Drowning the Light album review.  Just like the subject of yesterday's post, this album was released in 2007.  It is actually the band's fourth full-length and was released just before yesterday's album.  But again, there are some profound differences between this album and the one from yesterday that makes it stand out.

This album may just be the most darkly romantic-sounding raw black metal album I have ever heard.  Now I do not want to make it sound like this makes it a happy album, very fucking far from it in fact.  It is an ugly kind of romance.  Dark, filthy and disgusting.  There are moments of light, of hope where Drowning the Light sounds like they are channeling The Cure through their much more emphatic Burzum influence, but then the darkness overtakes them, leaving with a shamble of broken hope.

The lyrics certainly follow along with this lack of hope.  Featuring song titles like "The Obscene Rite of Possession" and "Severing All Ties to this Mortal World", it is clear the songwriter is in a pretty dark place.  And of course the vocals themselves greatly contrast with the music, taking on a horrifically ugly rasp that is sheer madness compared with the relative levity of some of the music.

This is one of the more memorable Drowning the Light albums, taking on a tone that is unusual for the genre.  And for that, it is also one of the better ones, one I would recommend for someone interested in checking out the band.

Drowning the Light: Of Celtic Blood & Satanic Pride (2007)

I have covered Drowning the Light a few times on this blog, so I am not going to get too much into their history here.  I first heard about the band from watching Youtube videos of people talking about their music collections and one such Youtuber was a huge fan of the band.  I checked it out and became a big fan myself.  Drowning the Light is truly one of the better Burzum-influenced, raw black metal bands out there.

This release is the fifth full-length Drowning the Light album and came during a particularly prolific year for main-man Azgorh, as four of those full-lengths came out that same year.  He also released several demos and splits.  With that kind of output, it would be understandable, if not excuseable, for the quality of the album to be a little low.  That is not the case here however. 

This is not one of the absolute best Drowning the Light releases I have heard, but it is quite good nonetheless.  It is a bit more emotional with some darker melodies running through it and some much more somber moments.  It is not as furiously angry as some of the other works and can be quite spell-binding at times.  It is also one of the shorter full-length Drowning the Light albums, meaning that it does not overstay its welcome, which is a bit of a problem for some other groups in the genre. 

The production is not great on the album, with the drums a little too high in the mix.  This is a fairly normal thing for this type of black metal though so it is certainly not unexpected.  Still, I wonder what it would sound like a little cleaner.

This is yet another great release from Drowning the Light.  It is a bit more on the somber end of things, but that helps it stand out somewhat from the massive number of other releases from the band.  This is unlikely to be the first album I go to when I want to listen to them, but it won't be the last one either.

Deströyer 666: "The Dragon" (2002)

Okay, I am doing a weird thing here.  I am reviewing a single song.  Now the reason for that is that I reasonably picked up a newer physical format version of the absolute classic Cold Steel...for an Iron Age that had a bonus track added to the end.  I had not heard "The Dragon" before, but had some thoughts about its inclusion at the end of such a classic album.

First of all, my view on bonus material has evolved over the years.  I used to be all for it early on in my fandom because it was MORE material.  Over time though, I have found most bonus material superfluous and unnecessary.  Even moreso because it really disrupts the way that the album was supposed to be heard.  Instead of ending naturally and intentionally, there are new songs added on, many of which do not truly fit at the end of an album.  I figured I would try to look past that apprehension when approaching this new track.

The song itself is great, fitting in well with the band's sound on this album.  It sounds like a mix between "The Calling" and "Savage Pitch".  It would fit in well toward the end of the album, but "Shadow" is pretty much the perfect example of a closing track, so adding a song on to the end of the album like this takes away from the feeling of completion with "Shadow".  Personally, if they were going to add a bonus song, maybe it would have fit in well in the latter half of the album, but then it might have disrupted the flow of the album as I knew it.

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. 

Nazxul: Nazxul (1994)

Australia is one of my favorite countries for metal.  I have made no secret about that over the years.  Much of this is due to the blackened thrash metal scene often referred to as "war metal", but they have had some truly amazing traditional black metal as well.  One of these such bands is Nazxul, which is part of the "Ordo Ater Anguis" or "Order of the Black Serpent", a collection of bands that is basically Australia's answer to France's Les Légions Noires.  The Australian collective includes the amazing Drowning the Light, among many others.

This is the first recording by Nazxul, their 1994 demo which pre-dates their debut full-length by a year.  I picked it up after reading some opinions that it is one of the creepiest metal releases of all time and that it is by far the best output by Nazxul.  With that kind of a recommendation, of course I checked it out.

The demo is indeed creepy.  It is dark and eerie with a swampy guitar tone.  Featuring shadowy riffs and vampiric vocals, it is definitely one of the more sinister-sounding releases I have heard in some time.  The songs are fairly short and simple, but awash in occult atmosphere.  There are only four songs here and they are short, but that makes it a quick and enjoyable listen.

I definitely enjoyed this release.  It fits in well with all of my Drowning the Light albums, even though it sounds quite a bit different.  It is a worthy black metal demo that has unfortunately gone under the radar.

Faceless Burial: Grotesque Miscreation (2017)

This is Australian death metal band Faceless Burial's debut album.  And honestly, what drew me to it is the twisted creature on the cover.  I am going to say something pretty nerdy here, so here it goes.  This thing looks like one of the alien antagonists in Metroid Prime 2, the Ing I believe they were called.  The dark, twisted body on three legs.   So, with that, I decided to check it out.

Faceless Burial is listed on the Metal Archives as a black/death metal band, but I think that genre tag is incorrect.  I do not hear anything but death metal here.  Granted, the band's sound seems to pay tribute to several of the old school death metal sounds.  Take the unbridled aggression of Malevolent Creation, the occult atmosphere of Morbid Angel, the twisted weirdness of Immolation and the punishing violence of Sinister and that is a pretty close approximation of the band's sound.

For the most part, Faceless Burial's commitment to playing old school death metal results in a sound that is not exactly groundbreaking.  And for portions of the album, it just sort of drags on.  But there are definitely moments, such as the closing riff to "Black Ovulation" that really grab the attention of the listener. 

I enjoyed this album, but I would not say it is an essential release.  Faceless Burial seems to be still finding their individual sound.  This is still just a debut release.  It will be interesting to see where Faceless Burial goes from here.

Drowning the Light: Drowned (2004)

Over the last couple of years, my interest in black metal has skyrocketed.  I do not really have an explanation for it, it has just really been catching my attention so much more recently, particularly when it comes to raw black metal and pagan black metal (Drudkh, among others).  Those are two areas that I had very little interest in previously.  Drowning the Light falls into the former category.

I discovered Drowning the Light after seeing several people on Youtube raving about them.  I had not heard of them before.  Part of my interest in the band stems from my fascination with groups that have massive discographies.  Seeing people on Youtube talking about Drowning the Light's massive number of releases spoke to me, though I may not be trying to focus to a large degree on this band.  Fetid Zombie is my primary interest.  Still though, this is now the fifth release by Drowning the Light to find its way into my collection.

Drowned is Drowning the Light's debut album, and it honestly sounds like a debut.  There are a lot of ideas that do not seem quite fully formed and the production quality is absolutely atrocious.  It sounds like the album was recorded in a cave.  While the musicians were on the other side of the cave.  Underwater.  That is a big shame because the music that is here is actually quite good and shows what the band would eventually be capable of producing.  The band is primarily the product of just one man, Azgorh, and the occasional session musician.  On this release, Azgorh performs all of the instruments and the vocals.   

Musically, Drowning the Light sounds like a cross between Transilvanian Hunger-era Darkthrone, Det Som Engang Var-era Burzum, Les Legions Noires, and Xasthur thrown into a blender.  It is ultra lo-fi black metal with frequently repeating, simplistic riffs and a ton of dark atmosphere.  At times the music comes very close to depressive suicidal black metal, slowing things way down.  There's the Xasthur sound.  Vocals have never been a primary part of the Drowning the Light sound, and I am not even sure Azgorh is speaking words here.  Most of the time his vocals just sound like "Bleurgh" or "Rargh".  At times, the music sounds positively beautiful, in a dark and depressing kind of way.  This is most obvious in closing instrumental track "Suffering".

Ultimately, I probably would not recommend this album to people just diving into the dark world of Drowning the Light.  The production is a very difficult thing to get used to.  But the music is definitely up there with some of the band's best.  So at some point, going back to it would be worth it.  Just don't start here.

Atomizer: The War that Never Ended (2008)

Well this title is a little bit of a misnomer.  I assume the war that the title is referring to is the full-out assault on listeners Atomizer engaged in for a little over ten years.  Atomizer called it quits after their 2008 album Caustic Music for the Spiritually Bankrupt.  And what a ride it was.  This is a compilation album of a number of choice cuts from each of the band's albums, almost all of which I had previously heard.

Next to Deströyer 666, Atomizer was my favorite band in the Australian blackened thrash metal scene.  They were different.  The band's earlier material fit in well with the Aussie groups like D666, Destruktor, Gospel of the Horns and the like.  But Atomizer was not content to put out the same kind of blackened thrash metal as their earlier material forever.  They started to evolve, incorporating more straight-forward rock and punk elements and some impressively weird vocal stylings.  The result was a band that was not content to rest on its laurels and made some very interesting stylistic choices over the years, while not completely turning their backs on what got them there in the first place.

There is something sort of strange about a compilation of songs from a band that has received little to no radio play ever in their careers.  It cannot really be a Greatest Hits album, because the band had no hits.  I suppose you can argue that it is a "Best Of..." album.  I was kind of surprised this release even existed honestly.  I suppose if I were to consider pulling my favorite Atomizer songs for a compilation release, I would include many of the songs found here.  "When I Die, I Wanna Die Violently" is my personal favorite track from them, featuring everything that makes them stand out from other bands in their scene.  Particularly the kind of "campfire" vocals that the band used more and more later in time.  Others like "The Only Weapon of Choice" and "A Song to Swing To" are also essential Atomizer tracks.

I like the idea of this release, it is a decent way to get the better songs by Atomizer, but it just feels unnecessary.  Atomizer was never even close to a mainstream band.  Most people who are into them are just going to go out and get all of their albums.  It is kind of silly to have a compilation album of album cuts.  I could see a compilation of demo tracks or something like that a little better than this.  But hey, I still bought the damn thing, so whatever.

Hellbringer: Dominion of Darkness (2012)

Here we have another one of those very generous metal bands that have delivered something intangible to us.  Previously we have been brought War, Night and Dawn, among many other things over the years.  This band is perhaps less than generous though as all they have brought us is an eternal torment.  Hopefully their return policy is good or they don't mind re-gifting.

Hellbringer is an Australian band made up of a couple of brothers who were previously in a band called Forgery and did some live shows for Trench Hell, a group with whom I am quite familiar.  Based on that pedigree, I had a pretty decent idea of what I was in for when I picked up this album, and it would appear I was quite correct.  This is fast and dirty blackened thrash metal in the vein of the aforementioned Trench Hell as well as other Aussie groups like Destruktor and the latter work of the venerable Deströyer 666.  The riffs are fast and intense, showing an obvious influence from Venom, Slayer, early Sodom and early Kreator.

I would be lying if I said that this was a completely different take or a brand new sound.  There are of course dozens, if not hundreds, of bands out there that utilize the same influences and have come to the same sound.  But I don't care.  Hellbringer's songs are catchy as hell and I absolutely love listening to this album.  It helps that this particular style is a personal favorite of mine.

What Hellbringer lacks in originality, they make up for in aptitude.  This album is a ton of fun.  There are definitely some killer tracks on here, such as "Bell of the Antichrist" and "The Rites of Evil".  This is yet another in a long line of great blackened thrash from Australia. 

Psycroptic: As the Kingdom Drowns (2018)

This is another album that, had I heard it just a couple months before, would have likely made it very high on my top albums list, possibly even in the top five.  It is that good.  First off, there is the amazing cover art, which is one of my favorite album covers in a long time.  I need to find a t-shirt.  Then, of course, there is the music.

I have long been somewhat critical of technical death metal.  I like the genre generally.  There are some great bands in the genre, such as the mighty Suffocation of course.  It got to a point though where a lot of bands starting getting technical just to get technical, throwing in crazy riffs, sweeps and scales seemingly at random, and forgetting how to actually write songs. 

The Tasmanian devils in Psycroptic though were always an exception.  They used their technical abilities to supplement their strong songwriting.  I have been a fan since I first heard them over a decade ago, but somehow I missed out on their last couple of albums.  When I saw the cover art of this release, I had to grab it.  The album cover did not let me down either as this is actually the best album I have yet heard by the band.  There are a ton of riffs, which is to be expected, but the songs are generally short and compact with great hooks.  There is a bit of a melodic sensibility that had been missing present here, particularly in the vocals.  The harmonization in "We Were the Keepers" and "Beyond the Black" in particular really grab the listener.  Beyond that, I loved the almost speed metal riff in "Deadlands". 

This is a terrific album by a band who has really managed to live up to their potential.  It would have been very high on my top albums of 2018 list.  And I want that damn t-shirt.

Gospel of the Horns Box Set

Over the past year, I have picked up a number of box sets, whether complete or only partial.  The bands have ranged from incredibly obscure (Nuclear Death, Treblinka (who eventually became Tiamat)) to the more well-known, at least in metal circles (Primordial, Cirith Ungol, Possessed).  This one falls in the former category, though it is a band with whom I am well familiar.

As longtime readers of this blog know, and there may be a few of those still out there somewhere, I am a big fan of the Australian blackened thrash metal scene, often known as "war metal".  Gospel of the Horns fits in well with that scene and, as is common in these bands, features members who have played with Destroyer 666, among others.  Howitzer remains the only member of the band that has been a constant in the band's lineup, and he played drums for D666 on Unchain the Wolves. 

This is a mostly complete box set of the Gospel of the Horns material.  It consists of three tapes, and includes both of the band's full-length releases and one album features their 1998 and 2012 EPs.  The only other material out there is another EP and a couple of demos, so this comes close to being the complete Gospel of the Horns experience.  I previously owned both of the full-lengths, so only the two EPs on the first tape were new to me. 

One thing that becomes clear upon listening to all of the material in this set is that Gospel of the Horns has never changed their sound.  The earliest material still has the same thrash-infused black metal sound as any of the later material.  It is still delivered in a blistering crunch and Howitzer's vocals have always sounded like he is gargling with battery acid. 

I can not find any information about Gospel of the Horns breaking up, but they have not released anything new since the 2012 EP Ceremonial Conjuration, included herein.  If they have broken up, this is a relatively cheap and easy way to access all of their vital material.  It would be nice to see something else from them again though. 

*Image was taken from the Invictus website.

Innsmouth: The Departure of Shub-Niggurath (2009)

It is not very often I have been able to add the demo tapes of established bands that I listen to frequently.  The only real exceptions have been Dawn of Azazel and Goatwhore, until now.  Innsmouth is definitely not on the same level as the other two bands (and in fact Dawn of Azazel is also several notches below Goatwhore), but their 2014 full-length was my Album of the Year.  Unfortunately that turned out to be the band's only full-length as they split up shortly thereafter.

This demo tape finds the band in its infancy, and yet still features my personal favorite track from the 2014 Album of the Year, "Thrice Blessed Shub-Niggurath".  It is obvious that the band members are big fans of the works of H.P. Lovecraft based on the song and album titles, and their sound reflects that as well.  Between the cavernous vocals, otherworldly riffs, and creepy atmosphere, this band definitely nails the feel of Lovecraft's stories.

I did not know quite what to expect from Innsmouth's demo, but I came away very impressed.  There is really not much difference between this release and their full-length album.  All of the elements that I enjoyed in that album are present here.  It is a shame that the band did not stick around.  I could have done without the cover though with the anatomically correct (maybe?) satyr.

Ne Obliviscaris: Urn (2017)

Sometimes I like to take a chance on a band that I have no idea what to expect.  Sometimes that works out incredibly well.  Destroyer 666 is a very good example of this.  I picked up a CD in a used record store based entirely on once reading something vaguely positive about them.  And sometimes it backfires badly.  I can name a half dozen or so nu-metal bands, but the band that sticks out the most to me is Tribes of Neurot, a Neurosis side project that is a big reason why I still have not really checked out Neurosis.  And so here we have Ne Obliviscaris, a band whom I have never even heard of before deciding to check out this release.

Now, I am not the biggest progressive metal fan in the world.  It is a style that I enjoy a few bands (Opeth, Symphony X, Fates Warning, Queensryche), but typically do not go outside those parameters to check out other groups, unless I hear something extremely positive about a band.  I heard no such thing about Ne Obliviscaris.  But they may be able to join those other prog metal groups in terms of checking them out in the future because this album is amazing.

Ne Obliviscaris is an Australian band.  Now, Australia is not really well-known for melodic metal styles.  So this is another surprising aspect to the band.  The band features two singers, one a harsh vocalist, and the other a clean vocalist.  The clean vocalist also plays violin, which is featured prominently in the band's songs as well.  The songs are expertly crafted, with extremely beautiful sections countering harsher sections.  The vocalists play off each effectively as well, giving the band the ability to do pretty and ugly in alternating moments. 

This is absolutely a contender for the top albums list.  Every time I listen to it, I notice something I had not noticed before.  It is easily the most impressive melodic metal album of the year and is a lock to make it somewhere on my end of the year list.

Innsmouth: Consumed by Elder Sign (2014)

The works of H.P. Lovecraft have had a very long history of influence on metal.  Of course Metallica referenced his works in two early famous songs, "The Call of Ktulu" and "The Thing that Should Not Be".  Many groups have since tailored their music to create a sound worthy of the doom and gloom present in his stories.  Two subgenres have captured this feeling best.  One is funeral doom, lead by groups like Catacombs, Thergothon, and Tyranny.  The other is a form of primordial, occult death metal.  Innsmouth falls into the latter of these two subgenres.

With a name like Innsmouth and the title of the album here, you can probably guess that there are a lot of Lovecraftian references to be found herein.  You would be absolutely correct.  Song titles like "Thrice-Blessed Shub-Niggurath" and many of the lyrics also keep that going.

But along with the obvious lyrics and band name, the sound really conveys the hopelessness and foreboding doom of the Lovecraft stories.  The sound is otherworldly, dark and intense, with rumbling riffs and psychotic growling vocals.  There is a creepy atmosphere that carries throughout the entire album, which is conveyed the best through the use of audio effects such as those at the beginning of "Thrice-Blessed Sub-Niggurath".

The riffs in this release are not particularly ground-breaking.  They are not overly progressive or strange.  But they work incredibly well, particularly with the vocals.  The riffs are fairly repetitive, but that is definitely not a bad thing when they sound this good.

This album is definitely a contender for Album of the Year for me.  It is one of those death metal albums that just grab you and refuse to let go.  Definitely a must-hear.  

Gorefield: As Dawn Bleeds the Sky (2013)

Thought experiment time.  What would you expect a band named Gorefield to sound like?  You would probably think it would say it would be a death metal band.  You almost certainly would not expect a power/thrash metal band.  And yet here we are.  Australia's Gorefield is a thrash metal band with some power metal influences.  Not at all expected.

This release kicks off in an impressive fashion with a soft guitar melody building into some nice crunchy riffs.  The songs are melodic and powerful with catchy choruses and hooks, particularly on second track "Love Thy Enemy".  I found myself singing that chorus over and over while out feeding my wife's horses.

Gorefield does a very good job at switching up the tempos and melodies.  The band will play some faster, heavier riffs, then immediately drop into a slower gear with some softer moments.   "Playing with Fire" is definitely the biggest highlight on the album with the engaging opening bass riff that comes damn close to resembling funk.  A little unusual for thrash metal.  

The vocals are definitely interesting.  Much more power metal-influenced with a lot of emotion and some impressive harmonics.  It is a bit of a different take on thrash metal vocals.

I enjoyed this album quite a bit.  The songs are all very catchy.  This is not particularly brutal, heavy thrash.  It is much more appealing to people looking for something that is infectious and fun, not someone looking to break their necks headbanging.  And there is nothing wrong with that.  Ultimately, they would probably be better served re-naming themselves though.  Gorefield is a misleading name.