Whorelord - Objectify This

This is weirdly awesome and I can’t pinpoint exactly why.  It’s brutal death metal with a big, big hardcore influence, but it manages to be awesome, a lot like Internal Bleeding if they were mildly interesting to listen to and could write good grooves.  There’s a really filthy, overdistorted guitar tone, half shouted/half growled vocals, and total devotion to the NY styles of both death metal and hardcore.  What a combination when it actually WORKS!

The vast majority of the material on this demo is upper midpaced, like the stuff you hear during the verses of your average NY hardcore track.  The rhythms are very clearly punk and hardcore inspired, and melodically they’re not far off either.  Breakdowns occasionally pop up like near the end of ‘I Didn’t Know You Wore Glasses’, but weirdly enough, the hardcore here seems to be a mixture of both new and old styles of the genre.  Were it not for the double bass, growling vocals, and death metal riff patterns, this could easily be NY hardcore.

I guess I love this just because it has such a feeling of bouncy rhythm to it.  It’s not quite ‘happy’, but it is very toughguy and makes you feel like fighting a skinhead.  It gets even weirder when skank-and-Obituary-riff sections pop up like halfway through ‘Scumhole’, and the demo is full of small surprises like that, fusing death metal and hardcore in unorthodox and cool ways.  You see?  It’s a mixture that CAN be done while retaining the purity of both genres AND managing to make kickass music at the same time.

If you don’t like hardcore you’ll hate this.  If you don’t like death metal there’s a good chance you’ll hate it.  But if the prospect of a perfect fusion of the two genres makes you want to snap this up, do so, because you will not be even remotely disappointed.

Tundra (Italy) - In Cold Dimness

I was never really able to get into this; it’s not musically bad but it never managed to grip me.  Tundra play somewhat raw black metal in the old, relatively traditional style with a lot of influence from Darkthrone circa ‘Under A Funeral Moon’ and the like, with a similar sense of morbid riffing and vocals that are quite similar to Nocturno Culto at times.  A little bit of Clandestine Blaze influence seems to be around to, though Tundra has more variation and quality than that band.  I don’t know, everything seems to be in place with this EP but there’s just some disconnect between CD and brain that I just can’t quite get past.

Tundra’s music is primarily composed of the tried and true combination of tremolo riffs and blast beats with the occasional slow passage tossed in for flavor.  Raspy, slightly nasal, super reverbed vocals lord over the music from way up high while the clatter of instruments sort of war with each other, with rickety drums fighting against very distorted guitar for dominance.  The riffs are generally good but not excellent, the only one I can consistently remember is that little tremolo piece a bit under halfway through ‘Christianity Has Failed’.  The song structures are very riff-based and there’s not a lot moving the tracks along except for the guitar; everything else is just sort of along for the ride.  I think I’d like this more with louder guitars; as it stands, they get sort of overrun by the drums, making some of the riffs less audible than they should be.  The slow and midpaced passages are reasonably written, but, again, fail to grab me as is necessary for me to really enjoy it.

I don’t know, maybe other people should give this a try and it’s just not for me.  I don’t particularly dislike Tundra, but on this EP at least I can’t find a lot of reason for me to listen to it.  It’s inoffensive while it’s on, but it doesn’t really interrupt me and make me listen either.  I’m probably just not grim enough, hell if I know.

Viral Load - Hillbilly Whore Hackin Revival

I can’t think of any really good excuses for this, it’s simply not very good.  The stuff on this EP sounds exactly like a bunch of fourth-rate Insidious Decrepancy songs with a bit of shoehorned ‘oldschool’ influence from bands like Suffocation.  It’s a totally unnecessary project, the sort of thing that sounds like a favor for a friend.  “Shawn, Shawn, let’s have a band together”, that sort of thing.  It may make for some great fun in your bedroom (as well as a slowly growing breed of resentment from the more talented party) but it makes for some really uninteresting music.  This is literally just low-quality Insidious Decrepancy with real drums and essentially nothing more.

Even the production sounds exactly like Insidious Decrepancy, with the same slightly synthetic guitar tone, same spacious drums and vocals, same everything, there’s no POINT to this project except for allowing Shawn to not have to consult a thesaurus while writing song titles.  A couple covers of classic bands are tossed at the end like a wad of tissues designed to distract from the fact that Viral Load’s music is entirely unremarkable and attempt to give it some personality through osmosis, but it doesn’t fucking work!  It’s Insidious Decrepancy made boring.  Technical guitars, technical drums, growly vocals, it all adds up to nothing but boredom on the part of the listener.  Shawn can and has done better.

Needless to say you can skip this one without trouble unless you desperately want to hear modern brutal death covers of songs that weren’t that good to begin with, or if your love for Insidious Decrepancy continues even when it slaps you around and fucks other women.

Sanctifier - Zi Dingir Kia Kanpa

Yes yes yes you’re oldschool but simply being oldschool and loving Cthulhu doesn’t quite make you Morbid Angel, nor does it make up for having really thin production which robs the compositions of the majesty you’re so desperately infusing them with.  This sounds like Nunslaughter trying to replicate Morbid Angel in a more ‘brutal’ style with somewhat predictable, atonal tremolo riffs popping up between midpaced sections.  It doesn’t totally fail; sometimes the band gets into a midpaced groove or tension-laced climb of gothic tremolo riffing that works, but overall it kind of feels like something the metal scene should be past by now.  It’s nostalgia without a huge amount of real content, just replication of styles of death metal that have been essentially gone for years now.

I like the relatively brutal and ugly vocals, and the way the bass occasionally pops out with a very rickety, primitive sound, but a lot of the riffs leave me cold and the song structures don’t go anywhere in particular, they don’t really have beginnings or conclusions, just a series of parts that abruptly ends when the band runs out of ideas.  I get the point of this: the objective of this music is to be oldschool and not much else, but what the hell am I supposed to say?  Good for them, they’ve managed to copy something in a more or less accurate way?  Congratulations, I’m still not interested in listening to your music when you can’t really write full songs and the portions thereof aren’t THAT interesting to begin with.  The ‘oldschool or die’ aesthetic is nice and all, but it would probably have more teeth if the music would sufficiently back it up in intensity.

Suffereign - Secreted Insanity

French brutal/technical death metal fairly well seated in the Origin style plus some more rhythmic variation.  It’s a bit more like ‘normal’ brutal death metal than Origin, with less propensity for long, unbroken streams of blast beats and tremolo riffs, with just a hint of Internal Suffering type chaos in the most intense moments, but overall it’s pretty lucid all the way through.  Riffing is tremolo based and sort of a combination of Origin’s vast, melodic ideas with the first few fret throb of newer Krisiun, occasionally slipping into a more traditional California BDM chug section that’s quickly shunted aside in favor of more tremolo.  Vocals are a James Lee grunt curiously absent of any high accompaniment, while the drums display a reasonably technical and brutal performance used to hold the fabric of the music together while the guitars go every which way; you basically know what this sounds like.

It lacks much in the way of atmosphere, caught somewhere between splatter, space, and abstract conceptualization, which is probably what holds this back from being really notable.  Similarly the band is caught between their tremolo and California-style crunch sections, but the technical performances and clear, professional songwriting makes up for it to a greater or lesser degree.  The super clean and sufficiently heavy production job makes up for any leftover disappointment.  There aren’t any surprises and it doesn’t unseat Origin from their particular mastery of this style, but they’re a quality second-string band that could give the more well known artists a run for their money as soon as they find a bit more of their personal sound that doesn’t involve geographical replication.

Srodek - En Hälsning Till Döden

Good new release here from Lokisson Records, otherwise known as ‘Aurvandil Outpost 1′.  Srodek is a one-man Swedish black metal project that plays a mixture of depressive and oldschool Darkthrone inspired styles of black metal, which ends up sounding a lot like many of the Mediterranean black metal artists out there today such as Morte Incandescente.  It’s cool stuff if not stirringly original, with good riffs and a decent grasp of varied, engaging songwriting throughout this debut CD.  A solid production job tops off the package, making it a good buy for anyone who digs underground black metal

The music has a peculiarly dungeony atmosphere like that of some of the better LLN artists, lended through a very resonant and spacious yet necessarily raw production job.  The ‘depressive’ influence is a bit misleading; this doesn’t feature the ‘I’m so sad’ riffing of something like Trist, but more a romantic, sardonic sound like that of some French artists.  They’re generally tremolo or quickly strummed in nature, so the rhythm in that department is fairly consistent; however, Srodek is more willing to rhythmically experiment in the (real, thankfully) drum department, which incorporates some interestingly subtle rhythms during the murky clean guitar driven sections, as well as adding a bit of cymbal play during skank beats.  The largest non-depressive influence here clearly seems to be early Darkthrone, like a blend between ‘A Blaze In The Northern Sky’ and ‘Transilvanian Hunger’, but with an ambient wall of Xasthuresque guitars instead of the more distinct riffing of that band.  It results in black metal that’s ambient in the melodic department but surprisingly active in rhythms, which isn’t something I’ve heard explored very much.  Looking forward to hearing more in this dimension.

It’s relatively simple but engaging music, not breaking down black metal walls but nudging them hard enough to be worth a look.  On top of the somewhat experimental elements is a strong songwriting standard with good riffcraft and interesting, dark structures on each track.  While Srodek is a bit scattered on his choice of aesthetic, I imagine that’ll coalesce sooner rather than later in his career.  Worth a look from the traditional black metal crowd.

Heidenblut - Freesenleed

Here’s another blind trade item I got a while back from a German friend.  Heidenblut is a rather obscure black/viking/folk metal band, but it probably doesn’t sound like what you’re imagining from that description, especially because it’s only accurate on about half the tracks, the other half of which are fairly straightforward, Norwegian derived BM.  It makes for a rather uneven listening experience, particularly when you randomly throw in a ten minute track based on simply, rockish drum machine rhythms and plaintive piano melody.  It’s not a bad album, but due to the excessive variation and strangely indefinite style, it ends up being more a curiosity piece than a frequent player.

Heidenblut seems to employ a drum machine, which contrasts strangely with the otherwise rather warm production.  A myriad of riffing styles are used, from late Bathory-style epic plodding to straight tremolo, and the melodic sense is equally varied with notes taken from, again, late Bathory, German folk metal, and the original Norwegian black metal artists.  Vocals are similarly varied, sometimes opting for harsh black metal style vocalizations and other times a declarative clean.  To be honest, nothing really seems wrong with the release; the song structures are fairly interesting despite their length, all the instruments are played well, the riffs generally seem good, etc.  It’s hard to criticize for any one reason.

But still, something seems… off about the music.  It’s weirdly hard to enjoy.  Maybe it’s the noisy production and guitar tone which tends to obscure the riffs, or maybe it’s the riffs themselves, but there’s something unsatisfying about the album as a whole.  I think the fact that the album as a whole is such a stilted listening experience is definitely part of it; it seriously lacks a coherent flow and feels more more like a compilation of one-off songs than a complete work.  There seems to be a disconnect between the songs and the listener; the gap isn’t bridged and you always feel detached from the decently-composed but weirdly sterile music.

I guess I just don’t get it, even though it’s something that should be gotten fairly easily.  If you’re interested in it, I guess you should give it a listen, but I can’t particularly recommend it.  There’s nothing wrong that I know of, but there’s definitely something that I can’t quantify that keeps this from being the experience it should.

Niden Div. 187 - Impergium/Towards Judgement

This is honestly one of the biggest semi-forgotten classics that black metal has ever turned out.  It’s majestic.  Somewhere between the oldschool aesthetic of Blasphemy and the ultra-binary, attacking nature of modern bands like Truppensturm lies Niden Div. 187, one of the few bands with which you can make an argument for ‘war metal’ being a legitimate stylistic description.  Such a moniker fits this music well, because it’s not JUST black metal- it goes a step further beyond that aesthetic, making it bleaker, more modern, and less indulgent in fantasy.  It doesn’t bring you to the world, it brings the world to you, but what makes it unique is that the world they’re bringing you is just black metal’s interpretation of the one we currently live in, simply made even more bleak, dark, and dangerous.  If you appreciate truly excellent metal of any style, you owe it to yourself to pick up this compilation of one of metal’s most needlessly overlooked bands (admittedly short) discography.

Niden Div. 187 just made music that’s exquisite on every level, from the simplest of sonic qualities to the most high-minded of concepts.  It’s very, very brutal and militaristic black metal, extremely straightforward in just about every way.  The band switches between hyperfast, Immortal-derived rolling blast beat configurations and lurching, funereal passages while guitars alternate between tremolo riffs of full atonality or fragile melody.  Vocals are an EXTREMELY high screech that disappears almost entirely in the hideous, thin wall of guitars.  The atmosphere is distinctly desolate and warlike; imagine a world where WWI never ended, just dragged on through the late 20th century with no end in sight.  This is the music of those trenches.  It’s unique among black metal in that it has none of the supernatural or occult atmosphere of most BM, and really feels extremely ‘realistic’ if that makes sense at all.  It’s unusual among black metal for more reasons you’d think of at first glance.

The production is smoky, cloudy and raw, and if you don’t like it (or at the very least can’t stomach it) you’re a pussy and probably shouldn’t be listening to metal in the first place.

There’s not a lot of wiggle room in liking this music.  You’ll respect the very minimal, warlike style of it or you won’t.  It is not lush and rich music; it’s extremely focused on its individual mood and texture.  It verges on black/grind at times due to its relative simplicity and ultra-focused presentation, and those into more traditional varieties of black metal may not enjoy this sort of thing.  If you like the sleek, black, modern atmosphere, though, I don’t think you’ll find it anywhere better than this.  Think of it as the pre-Aborym, only infinitely better.  I personally love this stuff and I’d say that it verges on mandatory for anyone who considers themselves particularly involved in black metal.

Nosferatos - Pandemonium

Oh those wacky Russians with their… music.  Which most of the time isn’t very good.  Nosferatos is one such fairly average band that no one’s heard of for good reason.  The five piece plays a thrashy, oldschool style of black/death metal with an electronic drum kit and… not much else that’s notable.  Russian bands often have a weird feel, like they’re approximately six years behind the curve as far as musical development goes, and though this was released in 2001, it totally sounds like something out of the mid-’90s.  But I guess if my country went through a total economic collapse I’d be a bit slower in progress too.

The production on this album is weird, sort of strained, like it’s a studio that’s trying to sound way better than it actually is, giving it all a very unnatural feel.  The music probably helps that, with the electronic drum kit perpetually clicking away, sounding totally unrealistic.  Anyway, it’s awkwardly written music in that ‘growing pains’ sound of the mid-’90s, with a lot of strange transitions and overly varied riffing which disrupts the flow of things.  There are thrash riffs, black metal riffs, and death metal riffs, but never a synthesized combination of any of them; it’s like the band decided that they needed riffs and came up with a bunch of stuff that sounds individually good but makes no goddamn sense at all when put together.

It seems the band is sometimes striving for an epic sound with some attempts at soaring riffs and atmospheric passages, but they don’t really seem to know what they’re doing.  That’s kind of the tone of the whole album though: a band that’s way too ambitious for their own good and attempting to put all of their ideas on a single CD instead of pacing themselves a bit.  The songs are oversaturated with content, feel like they take forever to finish, and actually manage to be less than the sum of their parts.  Occasionally it’s so weird that it works, giving it an otherworldly aura of brutality, but mostly it’s just a clumsy attempt at a fairly generic ‘extreme metal’ that lacks individual style or very good songwriting.

This is pretty forgettable music that you’ll likely never run across.  It reminds me of a failed version of Abhorred’s ‘Wallowing In Utter Chaos’ which was able to tie its varied influences together with a singular atmosphere.  This album is unable to do that; there’s just too much going on crafted by people who just aren’t talented enough to write this sort of thing and make it work.  You can pass on this.

Haemorrhage (Spain) - Emetic Cult

Ahhhh, Haemorrhage in their early days, before the punky death/grind of the mid-era and the modern death/grind of the newer stuff, there was… the oldschool death/grind of ‘Emetic Cult’ I guess.  It’s not like Haemorrhage ever drastically varied their style, they just changed what specific sort of death/grind they did, but anyway, this was their first album and it was a really good one.  I thought the punk influences on albums like ‘Anatomical Inferno’ were kind of cloying, and this is refreshingly restricted in that department, opting for the straightforward Carcass worship we all know and love.

If you know the old Carcass worship sound, you know what this.  Haemorrhage has been plugging away at the style for years and years and this is where it all began, with shaky blast beats, gurgling vocals, and deathy grindy punky riffs left and right.  It’s not dramatically developed music in any sense; the production is good but still amateurish, instrumental performances are off and on in quality, and the songwriting is catchy but far from stellar.  There’s the usual suspects of tremolo riffs versus those that are more or less chuggy or punky, the occasional d-beat, and a certain noisiness to everything going on.

The songwriting is good.  Haemorrhage probably stole 90% of the riffs on this album but it doesn’t really matter because they never claimed to be original.  The songs are catchy if not particularly memorable on their own and the spastic high/low/everywhere in between vocals are pretty cool.  If you were simply told what Haemorrhage sounds like, what you hear in your head would be this album: enthusiastic, unprofessional, and surprisingly good despite its amateurish aims.  It’s not the sort of music that will convert a power metal fan to the death/grind scene, but it’s a fun listen every once in a while.  Haemorrhage excels at making short, catchy songs, and this album has fourteen of them for your listening pleasure.

If you like Haemorrhage or Carcassy deathgrind, just buy it already.  Then again, if you’re in either of those audiences, you probably already own it.  By another copy of it anyway, I don’t know, get the hell away from me.