FMA Reviews: Plector: Punishment Day

Originally reviewed here.

This is apparently it for Plector. According to the promotional information, Plector will be no more after the release of this album. A lack of forward progression apparently led to the decision to end things for this band. So this, their second full-length, will also be their last.

Plector's sound is mostly thrash metal with the occasional death metal influence creeping in at times. The riffs have a lot of bottom end to them and are heavy and muscular. Coupled with the commanding and deep vocals, Plector has a meaty sound with a lot of crunch. This is Swedish thrash metal in the vein of Carnal Forge and early The Crown. It also has a very modern feel to it. This is not retro thrash metal.

The band seem to play music because they genuinely enjoy it. Tracks like "Postal" have something of a playful feel to them. As if this is a band made up of a couple of friends who just want to play to have a good time. There is nothing overly serious here, no real message to glean, just some guys having fun playing metal. There is something to be said for that. It is kind of a rare thing these days. There is not a lot musically that makes the band stand out. They are a fairly typical Swedish thrash metal band. There are some decent tracks and some good riffs, but it is not anything that has not been heard before.

Through the entire album, there is an air of finality. Plector knows that this is the last gasp for them and the final two tracks show that. Obviously the titles "The Ending" and "Devotion" betray some sense that the band is done after the last note has been played. This comes across through the music. "The Ending" is an instrumental track with a somewhat somber tone, even though it is hardly a soft song. "Devotion" is a tale from the band about how this is their life and it is coming to an end. The song ends abruptly and the sense of loss can be felt.

This is it for Plector, but it has been a fun ride.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 30

ARTIST:  Black Sabbath
ORIGIN:  Birmingham, England
TITLE:  Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
LABEL:  Warner Bros. Records
YEAR:  1973
GENRE:  Heavy Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "A National Acrobat"
NOTES:  For a long time this was my favorite Black Sabbath album.  It had some heavy tracks, but it also had some of the most ridiculously catchy songs in the band's history.  Notably "Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath", "A National Acrobat", "Sabbra Cadabra" and "Spiral Architect" are incredibly infectious, sing-along songs.  There is some filler here of course, but this is still one of my favorite releases from the band.

Flashback Song: Anthrax: "I am the Law"

This is the song that inspired my subtitle.  Yes the whole song is about Judge Dredd, not really a character I am well familiar with.  I have never read the comics and I have only seen parts of the Sylvester Stallone movie.  I do plan to check out the Karl Urban movie released this year.  But no, I am not greatly familiar with Judge Dredd.  That said, I do love Anthrax, especially the early stuff.  And "I am the Law" is one of my favorite Anthrax tracks, and a great subtitle for a metalhead lawyer.

Reader Submissions: Arkham Witch: Legions of the Deep

One thing that never fails to grab my attention for albums is Lovecraft-inspired artwork.  So of course the cover of the sophomore album from the U.K.'s Arkham Witch jumped out at me right away.  Of course the name Arkham Witch also contains a Lovecraft reference, as do several of the song titles.  So it was with great anticipation that I looked into this album.

Arkham Witch is a very traditional-sounding metal band combining 1980's style metal with doom metal.  Oftentimes, the band sounds like a cross between faster-paced Reverend Bizarre and Iron Butterfly.  Think about the Reverend Bizarre covering "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" and that's probably an accurate representation of Arkham Witch's style.

This is a very entertaining and varied album with a lot of highlights.  The album features some slower-paced and epic, plodding doom metal tracks (e.g. "David Lund"), some mid-paced, crunching stoner doom tracks (e.g. "Infernal Machine"), and some angrier, fast-paced tracks that border on thrash metal (e.g. "On a Horse Called Vengeance").  The variation in the individual tracks make this a highly interesting album.  It is never boring and captures and holds attention.  The album sounds like it would have made a terrific soundtrack to 1970's horror b-movies.  And yes that is a compliment.

The instrumentation is well-done, with a heavy, crunchy sound to the riffs.  The production is clear and allows all of the individual instruments to come out cleanly.  Arkham Witch does a terrific job of catching the sound and feel of heavy metal in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

The only complaint that I have is with some of the spoken vocal lines.  Particularly with the mostly forgettable "We're from Keighley".  The opening line in that track is regrettable and mars an otherwise highly impressive album.  But then I just rewind it to the rocking "On a Horse Called Vengeance" and all is forgiven.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 29

ARTIST:  Black Sabbath
ORIGIN:  Birmingham, England
TITLE:  Paranoid
LABEL:  Warner Bros. Records
YEAR:  1970
GENRE:  Heavy Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Electric Funeral"
NOTES:  This was my first actual full-length album by the original metal band, Black Sabbath.  This is the band's sophomore album and is arguably their biggest album from a popularity point of view.  It features "Paranoid", "Iron Man", and "War Pigs", three of the band's most well-known songs.  This was the album that really put Black Sabbath on the map.

Tyranny: Tides of Awakening

Well since it is unclear whether Catacombs will ever release another album of Lovecraftian-inspired funeral doom metal again, I was concerned about what to do.  Luckily I found Tyranny.  Tyranny specializes in Lovecraft-inspired funeral doom.  Sound familiar?  Tyranny is a little bit different than Catacombs of course. They are from Finland and there are two members in the band, whose roles are a little mysterious.

As I have stated in my review of the Catacombs album, I cannot imagine a more fitting style of music to accompany Lovecraftian imagery.  The album cover is what drew my attention to the band, and the song titles certainly helped.  The song titles read like Lovecraft, though are not direct references as far as I am aware.  "Coalescent of the Inhumane Awareness" and "In the Arcane Clasp of Unwritten Horrors" are two great examples.

Tyranny is made up of members of Wormphlegm (a band I will cover soon) and they play a style of funeral doom very similar to the aforementioned Catacombs, somewhat different than Wormphlegm.  The music is harsh and epic, with an incredibly powerful atmosphere.  It is slow and extremely heavy, obviously, as that is essentially what makes funeral doom.  The album is made up of four highly impressive longer songs and one moody instrumental at the very end.  The album is difficult to listen to as background, it demands attention and takes some time to absorb.  Again, this is typical of the genre.

This is not a vastly different album than other funeral doom releases, but it is always good to have some more Lovecraft-inspired funeral doom.  It creates an oppressive atmosphere and is uncomfortable to listen to, which is the sign of a good funeral doom album.  This is a good funeral doom album.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 28

ARTIST:  Danzig
ORIGIN:  Lodi, NJ (United States)
TITLE:  How the Gods Kill
LABEL:  Def American
YEAR:  1992
GENRE:  Heavy Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Left Hand Black"
NOTES:  Danzig is another band that I was familiar with due to my older brother.  He had the Thrall-Demonsweatlive EP and the live version of "Mother" was all over MTV for a while.  I picked this one up as my first album by the band mostly on the strength of "Dirty Black Summer".  I had also heard a live version of "Sistinas" on the aforementioned EP.  I love the H.R. Giger artwork, he is one of my favorite artists.

FMA Reviews: Skálmöld: Börn Loka

Originally reviewed here.

Well with the opening track on this one I was once again a little nervous that I was going to strongly dislike another album from Napalm Records. The first track is extremely cheesy and sounds like the kind of overly-wrought opening anthem that Manowar would put out. But just when I was getting prepared for some ridiculous Manowar-covering-Bathory ludicrousness, the opening of the second track started.

"Sleipnir" kicks things into high gear with a galloping riff and leads into the harsh vocal style. Everything is still kind of upbeat and sunny but at least it is not as over-the-top as the opening intro lead me to believe it would be. Of course then it went all happy and flowery again on the next track. Many of the rest of the songs continue with this more happy-sounding style.

I think the problem that I have here is that I was expecting Viking metal. This is much more akin to groups like Finntroll and Korpiklaani than it is to Einherjer, Enslaved, Thyrfing, or any of the other Viking hordes. This is much more a bouncy folk metal album with some thrash metal riffs thrown in than a serious and solemn viking metal album anchored in black metal coldness. There are a lot of keyboard melodies shining through along with some moments of almost choir-like group vocals in addition to the bounciness of the riffs. Not even the harsh vocals are able to convey enough darkness to overshadow the light.

Once I got past the issue with what kind of music this was, this was a very enjoyable release. My expectations may have been for something serious, but after that was over with I was able to let loose a little bit and revel in the music which the band clearly had a blast playing. Now I need a beer.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 27

ARTIST:  Black Sabbath
ORIGIN:  Birmingham, England
TITLE:  Greatest Hits
LABEL:  NEMS Enterprises
YEAR:  1977
GENRE:  Heavy Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Iron Man"
NOTES:  My first album with the original Black Sabbath lineup was a Greatest Hits package.  This has a lot of the big songs, such as "Iron Man", "Paranoid", "War Pigs", and of course "Black Sabbath".  So it was a decent introduction to the pioneering metal band.  I could have done without "Laguna Sunrise" and "Changes" personally, as I do not care as much for those tracks.  This was just a taste of the band though and I definitely had to get more.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 26

ARTIST:  Type O Negative
ORIGIN:  New York, NY (United States)
TITLE:  Bloody Kisses
LABEL:  Roadrunner Records
YEAR:  1993
GENRE:  Gothic Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Blood and Fire"
NOTES:  I bought this at the same time as the Black Sabbath album from yesterday and a Monster Magnet album that featured a naked woman on the cover.  On a church trip.  I had wanted to get the album for months but always avoided it because of the album cover and the introductory track of a woman moaning.  Yet I got it finally on a church trip.  It is still my favorite album by the band.

Top 10 New Thrash Metal Songs

Recently Lich King posted a question on Facebook asking users to name their top ten favorite songs from thrash metal bands that have formed since 2001.  Since I love thrash metal, I will list mine.  Youtube clips are after the jump.  Some of these are not pure thrash metal bands, with some black, death, or speed metal influence, but they will all lead to broken necks.

Goddammit Decibel

Today I picked up Decibel's Top 40 of 2012 issue.  I had a feeling I would have complaints.  Boy was I right.  I will not mention who took the top spot.  I will not reprint the list.  If you want to know, check it out.  Suffice to say I don't see eye to eye with Decibel about a lot of things, and their pick for the top spot is probably the biggest one.  I have tried listening to this band over and over again just trying to see the point and I can not.  I even tried to listen to this album earlier today and I still do not get it.  I certainly do not see making this album their top album of the year, their last album was album of the year if I recall and one of their albums was the magazine's album of the decade.  I don't get it.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 25

ARTIST:  Black Sabbath

ORIGIN:  Birmingham, England

TITLE:  Forbidden

LABEL:  I.R.S. Records

YEAR:  1995

GENRE:  Doom Metal/Heavy Metal

FAVORITE SONG:  "Shaking Off the Chains"

NOTES:  To date, this is the last full-length album of new material that Black Sabbath has released.  It features Tony Martin once more on vocals.  This however is not a terribly noteworthy album.  It only features Tony Iommi from the original lineup on it and features a guest appearance from Ice-T.  Yeah.  I actually bought this one on a church trip with a couple of other albums.  All of which had inappropriate album covers for when I bought them.

Interview with Cadaverous Condition

Last January, I was sent an album to review by the Austrian band Cadaverous Condition.  I was asked about the possibility of an interview at the time, but due to my own busy schedule was not really able to put one together.  Until now.  I sent some interview questions, dealing with the band's progression from death metal to death/neofolk hybrid and the scene in Austria, to founding member and vocalist Wolfgang Weiss.  After the jump, you can see the interview.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 24

ARTIST:  Megadeth
ORIGIN:  Los Angeles, CA (United States)
TITLE:  Rust in Peace
LABEL:  Capitol Records
YEAR:  1990
GENRE:  Thrash Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Tornado of Souls"
NOTES:  My favorite album by Megadeth, this is also one of my favorite albums of all time.  Top five even.  It is that good.  This is when it all came together with Megadeth, the speed and intensity is there, but it is melodic and quite frankly epic.  There are a ton of great songs on here, including live favorites "Holy Wars" and "Hangar 18", both of which were played at the concert I saw just this year.

Evoken: Atra Mors

I have listened to this album over and over again today, just taking in the sound.  It is an extremely intense album and definitely takes some time to fully absorb.  That is what I have been doing today.  This is my first experience with Evoken, and what an experience it is.  This is an incredibly dense and challenging album, but once absorbed it is definitely worth it.

Evoken is about as bleak and desolate as music gets.  Fitting for funeral doom of course.  But the somber tone that Evoken has mastered is incredibly dark even for the genre.  The songs are all long epics with an atmosphere of desolation and pain.  But it is the clean vocals and clean riffs that really capture the listener's attention.  Many funeral doom bands utilize a wall of sound, oppressive and intense, but Evoken are able to convey the same misery and hopelessness with even their cleaner moments, soulful wailing and acoustic melodies.

It is extremely difficult to talk about this album.  I am not going to waste space talking about why you should check this out.  It is an all-encompassing experience.  It is truly something that one has to pay full attention to and interpret for themselves.  This is an incredible album, quite possibly one of the best albums in the funeral doom genre.  A modern-day masterpiece.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 23

ARTIST:  Testament
ORIGIN:  Oakland, CA (United States)
TITLE:  Low
LABEL:  Atlantic Records
YEAR:  1994
GENRE:  Thrash Metal/Groove Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Legions (In Hiding)"
NOTES:  This was a very extreme album for me at the time.  Testament used a much more gruff vocal style than anything I was used to.  Nevertheless, this album really clicked for me.  I loved it from the first time I heard it.  "Low" had been played on the radio quite a bit which lead me to check out the album.  Testament was a favorite band of mine throughout high school and I even got to meet the band.  Unfortunately I was too young to see them in concert at the time.  Some day I will.

Corrosion of Conformity: Megalodon

Corrosion of Conformity did not waste much time following up their self-titled reunion album.  The band just this year released an album as a reformed trio made up of the three original members.  Pepper Keenan, quite possibly the driving force of the band over the previous fifteen years of the band's existence, is gone.  So the band's sound reverted to more of a sludgy hardcore, the sound that the band first rose to prominence with.

As I have previously mentioned Deliverance is where I got on board with Corrosion of Conformity.  As far as I am concerned, the band has never done better than that album before or since.  But I did enjoy some of their other work, including on their self-titled album released earlier this year.  So I did not really have any qualms about checking this one out.  Especially since it was free.

There are a couple of moments on this album where the band really does sound like Deliverance-era C.O.C.  "Feed On" and "The Megalodon" both really have that Southern metal swing to them.  The only thing missing on those tracks are the vocals of Keenan.  Not to say that the three members of C.O.C. (I honestly do not know enough about them to tell their vocals apart) are not fine vocalists, a couple of them anyway.  I just do not think they quite have the same charm.  Again, perhaps that is due to when I got into the band and I might have felt differently if I had gotten into them earlier.  Most of the songs on this EP would have fit in reasonably well on Deliverance, so I am definitely liking it, at least musically.  My only real complaint is with the vocals which do not grab me as much.

For a free EP, I am definitely not complaining.  This is a pretty good release from C.O.C. and is shockingly even better than the full-length from earlier.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 22

ARTIST:  Soundgarden
ORIGIN:  Seattle, WA (United States)
TITLE:  Superunknown
LABEL:  A&M Records
YEAR:  1994
GENRE:  Heavy Metal/Hard Rock/Grunge
FAVORITE SONG:  "My Wave"
NOTES:  I was getting into music when grunge was popular, but the two bands associated with the grunge scene that I loved most were Soundgarden and Alice in Chains.  And no, that is not revisionist history on my part trying to claim I never really liked grunge and only liked metal.  My older brother had albums by Nirvana and Pearl Jam and I recorded songs off those albums, but only certain songs and I never owned any albums by them, though I did have Bush and Candlebox.  I had Soundgarden and Alice in Chains though.  This album was huge when it was released.  It had at least five big songs, including "Black Hole Sun" and "Spoonman".

Ahab: The Giant

One look at the cover art of this release reveals that this is going to be a little bit different than Ahab's previous works.  Where the past two albums had stunning and realistic paintings for their covers, this one features more of a psychedelic and mythological artwork.  It just did not really look like the Ahab I had grown to love.

But it's not just the cover art that is different.  Ahab has changed things up in the sound department as well with this release.  Where the past two albums were morosely slow and monolithically heavy, this one has moments where it veers dangerously close to traditional doom metal and has a much cleaner overall tone.  It is still slow and heavy, but not in the same bleak way that their past albums were.  This is by no means a complete departure for the band, but there is enough of a change to make it quite obvious.

The album starts off with the very typical slow and haunting build.  Ahab has always used this.  But instead of a crushing riff immediately, the acoustic music continues on for awhile and the singing is done in sorrowful clean manner rather than the gruff roars done in the past.  That heavy riff does kick in eventually.  As do the deep vocals, but the cleaner parts are there to stay, popping up frequently throughout the album.  Ahab definitely focused their attention on adding some melodies to this one.  The riffs are cleaner as well as the vocals.

This album is not nearly as bleak as Ahab's previous works.  There is almost a glimmer of hopefulness with each track, something lacking on their other albums.  Oh it is still very funereal at times, just not as hopeless.  I do not want to give off the impression that I dislike this album.  I like it very much.  It just does not measure up to the other albums in my eyes.