Fleshspoil – The Beginning of the End Review

By Tyme

Troy, New York’s Fleshspoil, may be new to the NYC metal scene,1 but its constituent members certainly are not. Vocalist and guitarist Jeff Andrews (The Final Sleep, Armor Column) and drummer Mike Van Dyne (The Final Sleep, ex-Arsis) have joined forces with Bay Area bassist Dan Saltzman (Illucinus) to wade into the crowded waters of the blackened death metal pool with their self-released debut album, The Beginning of the End. I wondered what Fleshspoil had in store, mainly what Andrews and Van Dyne, given their pedigree, would do to set themselves apart in a genre rife with stiff competition. Would this trio assemble and make The Empire City proud with The Beginning of the End, or, as their moniker might suggest, would they just plain stink?

Fleshspoil tosses progressive atmospherics, dashes of doom, darts of dissonance, and even some metalcore peppercorns into its death metal pot. With as much elusive consistency as The Final Sleep‘s Vessels of Grief, Andrews and Van Dyne have crafted another, albeit deathlier, sonic buffet. Representing a winding path of genres, The Beginning of the End sees crushing, Immolation-esque death metal mix with atmospheric lap-steel guitar and drum interludes (“Bleed Through This Life”) and softer, near post-metal riffs merge into Bleeding Through-like metalcore replete with shimmery clean choruses before ceding direction to a dissonantly black end (“Skies Turn to Graves”). Andrews’ ten tons of riffage serve the material well, and trading his mostly clean vocal delivery ala The Final Sleep for deathlier growls, shouts, and shrieks is a point in Fleshspoil‘s favor. Saltzman’s reserved bass work, a departure from the brutal death slams of his day job, combined with Van Dyne’s expert drumming, has no problem corralling all of The Beginning of the End‘s competing directions. Fleshspoil certainly isn’t afraid to stretch the boundaries of what’s possible, and when it works, it’s good, but it doesn’t always work.

Fleshspoil is at its best when weaving the apocalypse of their death metal with dissonance, melodicism, and progressive atmospheres. These elements are alive and well in the aforementioned “Bleed Through This Life,” which also contains some chaotic solo work courtesy of Kyle Chapman (Aethereus).2 Further success lies in the disso-chords and quirky time signatures of eponymous track “Fleshspoil,” which wanders into some atmospheric guitar and bass noodling, then trundles into a Paul Westerberg alt-rock passage that could have landed on the soundtrack to Singles. All this before ending with some mid-paced death metal riffs, screamed vocals, and marching order snares. Add the growls, shrieks, and Halford-esque cleans over the majestic doom-blackened deathliness of charred and chugging riffs on “A Frail Demise,” and The Beginning of the End finds Fleshspoil fine-tuned to decimate. If it were all within these veins, things would fare better.

I’m a fan of Fleshspoil‘s willingness to experiment, but not all results hit the mark. Time is not a factor as The Beginning of the End clocks in at a trim and tidy thirty-seven minutes. Overwrought transitions and wasted time hurt Fleshspoil the most. I found the pendulum-swinging transitions of “Skies Turn to Graves” too jarring, rendering the song more a distraction than a complementary piece of the whole. Throw in the under-developed, three-plus minute “Walking Dead” and the momentum-crushing boringness of album closer “Born Into Despair,” an alt-rock snoozer that fades in on some guitar-lite strumming and bass work and sustains shimmering guitars under shouts and clean vocals before mercifully fading out again with twenty seconds of vinyl scratches and pops. With this song, Fleshspoil completely took me out of the mood set by “A Frail Demise” and had me yawning rather than reaching for the play button again.

Fleshspoil‘s debut, The Beginning of the End, represents a promising entry into the NYC metal pantheon. Andrews’, Van Dyne’s, and Saltzman’s metal credentials are unquestioned. Fleshspoil has a lot of great ideas and the ability to execute its vision, as half of The Beginning of the End suggests. Leaving its softer sides for other projects and flexing its stronger, more progressive melodic death metal muscle should see Fleshspoil do good, even great things in the future. I will be waiting and watching to see what comes next.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320kbps mp3
Label: Self-Released
Websites: fleshspoilofficial.bandcamp.com | instagram.com/fleshspoil
Releases Worldwide: March 28th, 2025

#25 #2025 #AmericanMetal #Arsis #BlackMetal #BleedingThrough #DeathMetal #Fleshspoil #Immolation #Mar25 #MelodicDeathMetal #Review #SelfReleases #TheBeginningOfTheEnd #TheFinalSleep

À Terre – Embrasser La Nuit Review

By Thus Spoke

There’s nothing wrong with sticking to an established genre template, but it’s interesting when a band opts to mix things up. Bordeaux’s À Terre could be said to go a step further, claiming the musical DNA of their debut Embrasser La Nuit was guided by the provocative question, “Is making Cult Of Luna or Converge really that original these days?” As a sludge/post-metal ensemble, the group’s self-awareness about their debt to the big names, leads them, in Embrasser La Nuit, to sprinkle in a handful of other influences, mainly from the French rap and hip-hop scene.1 But the real question isn’t whether or not what À Terre have created makes for a novel take on post-metal or sludge. Instead, it’s a question of whether or not what they have created is good, regardless of its callbacks or imitations.

There is certainly an air of uniqueness about Embrasser La Nuit. A trap-beat-led, post-metal version of rap (“Tous Morts,”) is not something you hear often. But À Terre don’t settle into any one distinctive style so much as flick between them, and not unnaturally. Classic sludgy trudges marry well with the hardcore stompiness that rears its head on multiple occasions (“Paris sous les Tombes,” “L’Appel de la Nuit”). The post-metal leanings lend themselves by default to the passages of ambience (“ÂCÂB,” “Presque Morts,” “Nous Sommes la Nuit”), which itself pairs as easily with rap-style delivery as harsher rasps. Flashes of greatness come in the form of a cascading pattern of synths smartly woven into an escalating build (“ÂCÂB”), or an alarm-bell riff playing to the tune of a -core/sludge mash-up (“Paris sous la Tombes”). À Terre play their interpretations of these blended genres well, but as as the elements continue to brush shoulders with one another within songs, the energies give way to indistinctness. And there grows an uncomfortable sense that it all amounts to another less-than-memorable iteration of a subgenre’s core sound.

À Terre can write sludge and post-metal. They know how to craft some battering riff-rhythm patterns (“Paris sous les Tombes,” “Nous Sommes La Nuit”), throwing in some group, and layered vocals for that satisfying touch of aggression. Their atmospheric tendencies are also appropriately sombre, and chilling, particularly as they tend towards the stripped-back-to-slow build style that marks some of the best of post-metal’s traits (“ÂCÂB,” “Prophétie”). In reminding the listener of greats like Amenra, Cult of Luna, Isis, and more, passages—and by extension, tracks—gain familiarity and the halo of quality shines on them. Yet, when I hear the pained, atonal screams over minor synths and the tides of gritty chugging (“Prophétie,” “L’Appel de la Nuit”), it’s like hearing Amenra with 90% of the emotion stripped away. The gradual increases in tension and intensity that rise and fall (“ÂCÂB,” “Presque Morts”) are not unaffecting, but their impact is greatly softened by À Terre’s tendency to force, rush, or otherwise fail to properly capitalise on them. They are at best simply inserted, if still decent (“Prophétie”) and at worst, totally undeveloped (“Paris sous les Tombes,” “Presque Morts”). Likewise, the bite of the surrounding sludge feels relatively toothless thanks to the fact that the impatience that characterises the hardcore stylings infects even the stiller moments: off-the-cuff edginess bringing angsty riffage too soon, and ambience breaking sludge far too frequently and abruptly. What results are compositions lacking in conviction, possessing none of the rawness or introspection that they ought to, combining to form something awkwardly bland.

Embrasser La Nuit thus makes for a surprisingly uneventful listening experience; surprising, because everything is technically good, and yet somehow anaemic. The glimmers of brilliance are good only insofar as they are imitations, while the exceptions to the established formula in the form of ‘experimentation’ (“Tous Morts,” and, at a stretch, a more synth-heavy approach in spots across the record) are vastly too brief to create any meaningful intrigue or spice. Leaving individual tastes aside, this kind of music should never be boring, and in fairness, calling Embrasser La Nuit boring would be overly simplistic; it’s too uneven for that. There are stretches of atmospheric musing (“Prophétie”) and snappy boisterousness (“Paris sous les Tombes”) that are, in isolation, good. Their collection nonetheless leaves more than a little to be desired.

À Terre speak to the concept of originality, but ultimately, their debut does not suffer because it lacks it. It suffers because À Terre’s homages to genre mainstays fail to elicit the profoundly affecting responses in their audience that their incarnation demands. The music is a surface-level representation of its inspirations, with only glimpses of depth. With relatively little raw humanity, despite its literal components, and a lukewarm commitment to the true presence of its pugnacity and its magnitude, Embrasser La Nuit makes only the barest of impacts.

Rating: Disappointing
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: wav
Label: Self-Release
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: January 24th, 2025

#20 #2025 #ÀTerre #Amenra #CultOfLuna #EmbrasserLaNuit #FrenchMetal #Isis #Jan25 #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfReleases #SludgeMetal

Cave Sermon – Divine Laughter [Things You Might Have Missed 2024]

By Thus Spoke

When I finally heard Divine Laughter, it was closer to January 2025 than it was January this year, when Cave Sermon released it. This temporal technicality turned out to be trivial because its brilliance was immediately obvious. Divine Laughter traverses death, black, sludge, post, ambient, and more, exploring further, and committing harder to mania—as I later discovered—than debut Memory Spear, which I also devoured eagerly. There is primarily just one person behind Cave Sermon, Aussie musician Charlie Park, and until now, the project was instrumental. Miguel Méndez’ vocals—with an impressively versatile, unhinged, and savage performance—are a perfect accompaniment to what appears to be Cave Sermon’s signature abstract and interpretive compositional style, channeling a kind of musical stream of consciousness that must be experienced to be understood.

To say that Divine Laughter is affecting would be criminal understatement. The lyrics alone are touching in a sense totally devoid of sentimentality, reflecting a singularly modern capitalist loneliness, a hatred of human apathy, and a guilt in one’s complicity. But it is the truly magnificent way in which Parks tells (and Méndez narrates) this story musically which makes it so arresting. It feels, at its core, refreshingly and exhilaratingly organic; vibrant and smart and true. Reprises feel like the returning edges of a persistent thought, percussion is as often a tech-death texture as a sludgy battering ram (“Crystallised”), or a vague tap in a noisy void (“Birds and Machines in Brunswick,” “Divine Laughter”); barks pitch upwards into howls in sudden gasps of the realization of some depressing, mundane, and fearful reality (“Liquid Gold”). Quieter moments of almost folky naïveté brush up against acerbic sludginess, alien synth, and the pseudo-chaotically mixed nuts and bolts of razor-sharp death and black metal with a facile deftness I’ve not heard outside of Vicotnik’s work.1

With so few words, how can I convey Divine Laughter’s mania? Comparisons feel stale. The through lines, like paint in abstract art,2 play with and subvert the expected course of a given genre’s template. Energetic black(ened death)3 (“Beyond Recognition,” “The Paint of An Invader”) comes as a thrillingly uneven rain of vitriol. Angular, dissonant extremity tumbles into echoing industrialism, or dizzy ambience (“Beyond Recognition,” “Divine Laughter”); sludgy death remains off-kilter and wild, while charging prog-death rhythms stumble suddenly, (“Crystallised”) and spiraling solos precipitate turns to gazey post (“Liquid Gold”), and every other influence on display. Though there’s a rawness and frightfulness about the relentless transformations of guitar, vocals, and tempo, the use of synths and atmosphere, they remain surprisingly alluring thanks to the powerful emotions bubbling up in subtle resurgences of themes. A lot of this has to do with Méndez’ incredible vocal performance, another lot are these tangled, gorgeous compositions. There are so many of these beautiful, cathartic rises of yearning, urgent melody, and many of them come with the unforeseen force of involuntary emotional reaction (“Beyond Recognition,” “Liquid Gold,” “The Paint of An Invader”), though multiple listens show their edges were presaged.

The only potential stumbling block for Divine Laughter I can concede, is the noisy, sample-spliced “Birds and Machines in Brunswick.” Transitioning into the rather terrifying opening to “Divine Laughter” with its almost Portal-esque bellows, its five minutes stick out perhaps a little too much from the rest. It’s clear that this is an experiment, taking place in a transition period for Cave Sermon. Given the excellence of everything else about Divine Laughter, it is very easy to forgive this trifle. I can truly say that no album—at least in recent years—has so instantaneously affected me, smashing down the doors of my musical perception, and settling deep in my soul. Cave Sermon may have received shockingly little recognition so far,4 but they will no doubt soon be a name on the lips of many in whatever strange sphere of metal we find ourselves in.

Tracks to Check Out: Every one except “Birds and Machines in Brunswick” is mandatory listening.

#2024 #AustralianMetal #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeath #CaveSermon #DeathMetal #DivineLaughter #ExperimentalMetal #PostMetal #SelfReleases #Sludge #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed2024 #TYMHM

Witnesses – Joy Review

By Thus Spoke

Since their inception in 2016, New York’s Witnesses have been a fluid entity. A constantly shifting lineup, held together by sole permanent member and mastermind Greg Schwan, where a small collection of artists lend their voices and instrumental talents to the equally shifting sounds of each album—ambient, post-metal, and doom. Joy sees Witnesses—this time as a trio, with Simon Bibby (of Thy Listless Heart) providing vocals, and Angel Hernandez percussion—turn to doom. And doom is the purported heart of Witnesses, as they claim to take primary inspiration from the British early Peaceville era of the sound. But if their past is any indicator, it would be unwise to put Witnesses in a box, because Joy leans as heavily into prog and post as it does into anything else.

Joy is comprised of five songs (plus the short “Interlude”) mysteriously described as “deeply contradictory compositions about self-actualization.” Each named “Joy,” but with a different subtitle,1 they could effectively be seen as different interpretations of the titular emotion. Joy does not sound, in general, particularly joyful, but it is not gloomy and despairing like you might expect. It is variously introspective (“Like a River”), triumphant (“I See Everything”), and dramatic (“Safety in Me”) with a blunt, clean kind of openness to the compositions, hiding nothing, transitioning crisply, but not without grace. To my ears, the likeness that strikes most strongly is to Wilderun, albeit a more pared-down version, as Bibby’s croons launch themselves upwards alongside major-modulated blackened swooshes, pounding fills, and subtle flourishes of violin. At other times, however, the doom footprint stamps itself firmly before you in the string-accented, sweetly sad sways (“Like a River”), the drooping chords pulled out in downtempo dips (“The Endings”), and the very My Dying Bride-esque spoken word (“Beyond the Sound of My Voice”). These threads combine to form a unique concoction of bare emotions and increasingly ephemeral through-lines, harder to grasp than let slip by.

Two main attributes form Joy’s strength and downfall: raw emotionality and dynamism. The first is largely down to Bibby’s vocal performance, which is at turns wistfully melancholic (“Like a River”), and commanding (“I See Everything,” “Safety in Me”). But instrumentation also plays a significant role, in doomy weepiness (“Like a River,”), or more post-metal mournful meanderings (“I See Everything,” “Interlude”). The second is gained through the aggressive progressiveness of Witnesses’ compositional style, and the impeccable percussion of Angel Hernandez. Where the former is overt—the music moving relentlessly between assertive bombast and ethereal gentleness—the latter is insidiously omnipresent; electric with shifting energies. Yet, while the force of feeling can be resonant, it frequently approaches the abrasive as the cleans are so forceful as to nearly be shouted (“I See Everything,” “Safety in Me”), or dwells in the dreaded major key. These tendencies are made unpleasant not because intense cleans and major keys are bad in themselves,2 but because they are paired with an overly gymnastic approach to songwriting, where Witnesses leaps jarringly from one mood to another, tarring the brilliance of individual passages. The most blatant example, “The Endings,” transitions through silence between styles so disparate that it wasn’t until I began more active listening that I realized this wasn’t a new song. Equally discombobulating is the sudden pathos at the endings of “I See Everything,” and “Safety in Me,” where a short passage of gentle, mournful melody and singing comes abruptly from nowhere. But this proclivity is ubiquitous and ruins many genuine moments of beauty and poignancy. The group yanks bouncy exuberance out of plaintiveness; juxtaposing half-major, half-dissonant riffs with pared-back post-metal. They repeatedly lurch from a harmonizing serenade into uncomfortably flat intonation.

It is thus the two subtler elements of Joy’s feeling and flexibility that are to be praised: those beautiful melodic moments, and the brilliant drumming. The opening track “Like a River,” arguably presents the best of the former, and is arguably the best track on the album. When it comes to percussion, it is the many, elastic fills, tumbling rollovers, and vibrant use of cymbals that provide the majority of the album’s true feeling. The drums greatly benefitted from a production that puts them right near the front of the mix but tends to relegate the guitars to a background role, draining their potency and leaving little to distract listeners in the moments when the singing—also front and center—dominates the sound palate, overly zealous.

Witnesses lives up to their name; their music feels like the stories of varied voices, potent, but unharmonised. The gorgeous, deceptive simplicity of “Like a River” gives way to a record too emotionally and tonally scattershot to stick, and it’s an immense disappointment. Those with a high tolerance for whimsical, uneven prog may find much to appreciate, but for the rest of us, there’s not an overabundance of Joy to be had.

Rating: Disappointing
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Self-Released
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: November 8th, 2024

#20 #2024 #AmericanMetal #DoomMetal #Joy #MyDyingBride #Nov24 #PostMetal #ProgMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfReleases #Wilderun #Witnesses

Griefsoul – Extreme Northern Griefmetal Review

By Steel Druhm

Written By: Namesless_N00b_87

Extreme Northern Griefmetal, the debut full-length from Finnish melodic death metal project Griefsoul, is the result of measured evolution. The creation of solo artist Emppu Kinnaslampi, the Finn has spent the past four years carefully shaping his take on the infamous Finnish melo-death sound, drawing inspiration from the frigid, dark, and unforgiving Northern winters by partially writing, composing, and experimenting with his self-described and ambitiously titled “grief metal orchestra” from the confines of a snow-covered woodland cabin. Since its meteoric rise at the beginning of the new millennia, no other genre has arguably been more consistent than Finnish melo-death, using its tried-and-true formula of thrashy, power metal-influenced riffs and harmonies, coupled with atmospheric, soaring, orchestral refrains, to drive melancholic and melodic soundscapes. So, when Extreme Northern Griefmetal fell into my lap, I was eager to find out if Griefsoul could capture the raw power and intensity of the genre and possibly even deliver a fresh new take.

Griefsoul partially fulfills my hopes. Predictably, Extreme Northern Griefmetal is heavily steeped in the well-known stylings of genre legends like Children of Bodom, Mors Principium Est, and Norther, replete with the same combination of aggression and power, catchy lead-driven hooks and breakdowns, and epic symphonic propositions that one would expect. Kinnaslampi’s talent is obvious, not only in his virtuosity on the fretboard but with his varied vocal delivery, bouncing between an abrasive fry to a blackened rasp at will. Machine-driven drum arrangements that jump between relentless double bass (“Northern Cradle”), up-tempo gallops (“Vagary,” “Meant to Be Broken”), intermittent blasts (“Twilight Flame,” “Soulburial,” “The Melancholist”), and half-time slams (“Ends in Grief”), work overtime with the systematic bass to intensify the collection of Kinnaslampi’s impressive riffing and tasteful symphonic arrangements. These elements combine to create an accessible, albeit sterile and inconsistent, melo-death album that will appeal to a broad audience.

Kinnaslampi’s exceptional talent shines through in Extreme Northern Griefmetal. His ability to blend his instrumental prowess with majestic symphonic arrangements to create intricate, rich, and atmospheric compositions is striking. From the technical interplay in the bridge of “Heart of Eternal” or “Northern Cradle,” to neo-classical overtures in “Soulburial,” or the feudal sounds that anchor the chorus in “Vagary,” Kinnaslampi assures Griefsoul’s instrumentation of thrashy melodic riffs and melancholic synths dance elegantly or deconflict altogether. Kinnaslampi’s guitar performance itself is particularly impressive, with blistering tremolos (“Soulburial,” “Heart of Eternal”), extreme power riffs (“Twilight Flame,” “Northern Cradle,” “Made to Be Broken”), and technical melodic leads and hooks (“Twilight Flame,” “Soulburial,” “The Melancholist”) that provide the aggression and power I require for melo-death to hit. Top things off with a smattering of head-banging breakdowns and blood curdling screams (“Ends in Grief,” “The Melancholist”) for good measure, and all the ingredients are in place for Kinnaslampi’s “grief metal orchestra” to really shine.

Although Extreme Northern Griefmetal is a solid melo-death release, it fails to break new ground and Kinnaslampi’s songwriting could benefit from further refinement. The album’s eight tracks follow a repetitive approach of heavy verses, melodic choruses, and breakdowns that are as methodological as they are predictable. The album’s formula becomes clear as soon as the fading solo in “The Melancholist” ends, subsequently making the album’s second half difficult for me to fully engage with. Additionally, the harmonic that concludes “Soulburial,” or the short arpeggiated chord that closes “Meant to Be Broken” are awkward, evidencing Kinnaslampi’s songwriting could use more polish. Furthermore, Extreme Northern Griefmetal’s production compounds its monotony. The overly sterile and synthetic mix— while featuring plenty of bass— lacks dynamics and is dominated by high frequencies. The drums sound artificial and lifeless, lacking variation, heft or natural feel with lackluster fills and cymbals that sound like a static wash. Even the guitar tone sounds overly mechanical at times (”Meant to Be Broken,” “Northern Cradle,” “The Melancholist”), thereby undermining one of Extreme Northern Griefmetal’s primary strengths. A real band behind Kinnaslampi would have added a much-needed organic feel to Griefsoul’s sound.

Extreme Northern Griefmetal is a promising debut, showcasing Kinnaslampi’s talent for crafting atmospheric, powerful, and aggressive melo-death. Although the album delivers on many fronts, it ultimately falls short of the fresh approach I was hoping for with too much formulaic songwriting and uninspiring production. Nevertheless, Extreme Northern Griefmetal is an encouraging start for Griefsoul and all signs point to greater successes by Kinnaslampi in the future.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: NA | Format Reviewed: 24 Bit 44k WAV
Label: Self-Released
Websites: griefsoul.bandcamp.com | griefsoul.com
Releases Worldwide: October 10th, 2024

#25 #2024 #ExtremeNorthernGriefmetal #FinnishMetal #Griefsoul #MelodicDeathMetal #Oct24 #Review #Reviews #SelfReleases

Outer Graves – Terminal Limit Review

By Steel Druhm

It’s nearly October, which means it’s time to unpack the outerwear, and just in time, unheralded Wisconsin death crew Outer Graves drop an abrasive piece of outer space-themed death metal called Terminal Limit to chill your sunny disposition into a wintery pale. Their recipe is vintage death force-fed through a grind filter with touches of black metal madness crisping the edges. The result is uniformly caustic, savage, and chaotic, without a trace of melo or prog to be found. This indicates the experiment was at least a partial success and the brew master should be awarded a large hog and a flagon of the most vile beer cheese the Badger State has available. At a skinny 27 minutes, there may not be much meat on the gravebone, but what is here will fuck you up like a space chicken and stow you away bloody and bruised. Is this a good or a bad thing though?

The sound harnessed by Outer Graves is akin to an electrified power hammer set to “Smash the Poser” and left to run amok over a holiday weekend. Opener “Scavenger” sets a grueling pace with ragged, distorted guitars grinding your ears into ass-dust as Kate Coysh screams bloody murder with some of the most uncomfortable vocals you’ll hear this year. She sounds like she’s in the grips of a hefty demonic possession while also trying to shake off an Alpha strain of Covid, and at no point does she approach human. Battering ram grooves arrive to breech your ear gates and make off with your wax booty and everything feels excessive and over the top.1 You might not realize that “Scavenger” ends ” and “Hostile Anomaly” begins as they are so similar. It’s another skull-dusting dose of merciless, oppressive grooves, pounding toms-foolery, and wretched vocals and by the end, you’ll start to feel quite on edge.

The major weakness of Terminal Limit is that a listener is liable to reach their own terminal limit before the 26-minute mark. While “Distress Beacon” is a highlight where they dial things back, it’s around this time that I began to feel hemmed in and agitated by the record’s relentlessly one-note bone smash broth. Outer Graves has good elements, but the writing is so static and unidirectional that it gets tedious and oppressive (not in a good way). Taken in isolation, you can find strengths in individual cuts. “Seismic Scourge” is an absolute cesspool of slithering Incanto-lation riffs with suckers that bite. “Re-Entry” is one filthy, brutal groove stacked atop another and the whole thing feels unsafe. And the aforementioned “Distress Beacon” has a mid-paced feel that spotlights Kate Coysh’s truly insane vocals, which rip and rasp and sound like a rabid raccoon stuck in barbed wire. The fact that all the songs are in the 3-to-4-minute window is good, but given the toxic quality of the material, they could stand to pare songs back even more in the future.

If there’s one overriding reason to hear Terminal Limit, it’s for the unvarnished and savage performance by Kate Coysh. Her sick blackened death wails and roars are unpleasant and unsettling. They will likely be love or hate for most, and as impressed as I am with them, they do wear thin after a while. Zachary Muffett brings the death hammer down with plenty of jagged, ragged riffs and locks into mammoth grooves that test the will to endure. He’s good at bringing pandemonium to your brain waves, but more diversity in approach would be a great blessing. Ryan Shaw’s rumbling bass is a welcome presence when it comes forward and more of that would also be welcome.

Outer Graves are the new kids on the chopping block and they do enough good things on their Terminal Limit debut to get me interested in seeing how they evolve. That said, I likely won’t be spinning the album much in toto though I will grab the best lifeforms for my Soundtrack for the Alien Apocalypse playlist.2 Aural masochists may get more mileage out of this than me, finding something interesting in development here, but Terminal Limit needed extra time in the polishing vault.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: NA | Format Reviewed: Fucking Soundcloud!
Label: Independent
Websites: outergraves.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/people/outer-graves | instagram.com/outergravesofficial
Releases Worldwide: September 20th, 2024

#25 #2024 #AmericanMetal #DeathMetal #MorbidAngel #OuterGraves #Review #Reviews #SelfReleases #Sep24 #TerminalLimit

Eyes of the Oak – Neolithic Flint Dagger Review

By Steel Druhm

Written By: Nameless_N00b_90

One look at the cover of Neolithic Flint Dagger, the second album by Eyes of the Oak, and it should be no surprise that they play a mix of psychedelic doom, stoner rock, and traditional metal. That means fuzzy guitars, gruff cleans, and brief psychedelic passages of the kind that Pink Floyd plays on Dark Side of the Moon. These Swedes have previous experience in genres ranging from black metal to power metal, yet you’ll hear nary a trace of either on Neolithic Flint Dagger. Instead of high energy and soaring choruses, you’ll find an album with a mellow, laid-back sound that can sometimes pack a wallop. Is this a recipe for a good time, or does this drug-influenced concoction risk becoming overcooked?

Eyes of the Oak sounds like a mix between Somnuri and old-school Black Sabbath. Yet they are not as consistently high energy or heavy as Somnuri, and they’re not as exploratory or psychedelically weird as the classics. I found them most enjoyable when taking the heavier route, but their ability to blend styles adds a lot of depth to their overall sound. Guitarist Holger Thorsin, whose past work includes thrash (Chaosys) and black metal (Noctes) shows here that he has the chops to play any style. Drummer Hugo Thorsin (Noctes) shows off his work with an impressive intro on “Way Home.” Andreas Sjöström, who has experience on guitar with a couple of power metal bands (Wyvern, Diverge), contributes the necessary layers and rhythm that give the songs a little extra seasoning. Despite their disparate backgrounds, these musicians sound right at home playing stoner doom.

Whether Eyes of the Oak plays fast and heavy or takes it nice and slow, this album is fun. Opener “Cold Alchemy” is a heavy, rousing track that is sure to get your blood pumping, and it builds momentum for the first half of the album. “The Burning of Rome” is the other heavy hitter, combining wobbly guitars with a surprisingly bruising chorus. It’s the sort of song that will have you alternating between a gentle head sway and a forceful headbang. The mellower tracks, such as “Way Home” and “In the End,” reward patience and repeat listens, while “Night Visions” has a surprisingly catchy chorus. The variety within songs helps keep them fresh and enjoyable, even as most fall into the 5-6 minute range.

The second half of Neolithic Flint Dagger does suffer from uneven songwriting, however. Closer, “Offering to the Gods,” is the only song to extend past the six-minute mark, and while it does have some nice ideas, they are not developed enough to fill up the song’s nine-minute length. But the worst offender is “The Masters Hide.” This song doesn’t feel as cohesive as the other tracks, and the album’s vocal weaknesses are most pronounced here. Vocalist Andreas Sjöström does have a voice well-suited to the genre, and for the most part, he’s on point. However, his execution is inconsistent: sometimes flat, sometimes sleepy, sometimes talky.1 The promo materials for Eyes of the Oak say they recorded their debut album, The Stone Vortex, live in a studio. I wonder if they did the same here, and perhaps this approach puts a strain on Sjöström’s vocal cords.

Eyes of the Oak play a fun, accessible form of psychedelic rock mixed with stoner doom. From the giant glowing dagger on the album cover, you get the sense they don’t take themselves too seriously, and the album sounds like the band had fun recording it. It helps that they have some great ideas and capable musicians to carry out their vision. There may be a few kinks to work out, but I look forward to seeing how they develop their sound on future albums. So sit back, relax, and get high on… life? as you absorb the music of Neolithic Flint Dagger.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: X | Format Reviewed: Stream
Label: Self-Release
Websites: eyesoftheoak.bandcamp.com | eyesoftheoak.com
Releases Worldwide: August 23, 2024

#2024 #Aug24 #BlackSabbath #EyesOfTheOak #NeolithicFlintDagger #PinkFloyd #PsychedelicDoomMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfReleases #Somnuri #StonerDoom #SwedishMetal

The Mercury Impulse – Records of Human Behaviour Review

By Thus Spoke

Drone is an exceptionally difficult genre to analyse. By its very nature, it resists structure, memorability, and conciseness; its forms are indiscrete; monotony is a feature. Chicago duo The Mercury Impulse intensify and deepen this trait by channelling their drone through a noisy medium with a subtle undercurrent of dark ambient. Debut Records of Human Behaviour thus stands as a kind of mood music indifferent to musical norms and tangible emotions. A duo of musicians known for Wrekmeister Harmonies and BLOODYMINDED respectively, the pedigree behind The Mercury Impulse is one of harsh, uncompromisingly shrouded sound steeped in atmosphere. But here they take it to a whole new level, implementing compositional notions from ambient and post-metal worlds in a way that makes them almost unrecognisable as anything more tangible than amorphous smoke.

Records of Human Behaviour is so subtle that it’s hard to talk about, and hard even to listen to attentively. So hazy and indistinct throughout, that my partner thought I was listening to some trendy binaural white noise when he walked in on one occasion. So monotonous that it borders on the truly hypnotic (in the sense of being sleep-inducing). Relatively long track lengths, and a predisposition to recurring, simplistic patterns give the impression of infinity, only further enhanced by the extreme levels of ebbing, flowing feedback. An ideal backdrop for focusing at work perhaps; a nightmare to deliver your full attention to. Noise and drone aren’t typically known for being exciting, so I won’t use the “b”-word. Yet the album delivers so little in the way of anything that even my notes are sparse after many drawn-out, toneless listens.

This is not to say that there are zero things to praise here. Sometimes the quiescence provides a stage for beauty, as agonisingly soft chords of synth play a delicate, muffled refrain over a trembling, bassy ground (“Remanded to the Back of a Mirror,” “Infinite Repetition”). Sometimes also, the burr of omnipresent noise allows the spectres of dissonant notes to jab and ring to genuinely unsettling effect (“Keeping My Second Self Invisible,” “I Heard the Earth Falling”). And close listening at several points will be rewarded by a powerful sense of dread, (“Keeping…,” “Remanded…”) closer in its gut-clenching grip to dissonant death metal than anything in the realm of electronica. In this vein, one can see how cuts like “Primitive Instincts” with its clipped, inaudible voice samples, and aggressively cold and buzzing “Miles of Smouldering Trash” cleave closer to an extreme metal template in many respects. Inherently dense and suffocating, the music is brought to new depth by a relatively spacious master which deepens the already abyssal lows, and brightens albeit without sharpening into clarity the jarring, uncomfortable highs.

But despite its dark, painfully cool aesthetic, Records of Human Behaviour as a whole is a mass that swallows its distinctive passages and ultimately leaves an inappropriately light impact. “Keeping my Second Self Invisible” and “Primitive Instincts” are both unsettling, but while the former has just enough edge to be interesting, the latter is almost instantly grating. Other cuts prove themselves to be quite aptly titled as their immobility (even relative to their peers) is suffocatingly tedious (“Behind Dull Glass,” “Lessons Of Apathy”). It’s easier to view the album favourably if one imagines it to be the soundtrack to a modern psychological horror. Then at least the crescendoing waves of dissonant synth (“Remanded…” “Lessons of Apathy”) and flickering hums of feedback (“Keeping…,” “I Heard…”) could associate themselves with brutal revelations and creeping tension. As a drone album, this might even be a fairer way to assess it. But ultimately, the music does not come with an accompanying film.

Tolerance for drone varies widely, and appreciation for Records of Human Behaviour will extend about as far as one’s patience for its stubborn understatedness. When even the most interesting tracks (“Remanded to the Back of a Mirror” and “Infinite Repetition”) grow a little stale before their time, there’s little to motivate repeated listens. If you’re a massive fan of drone, or want something to help you sleep, give it a spin, but this probably won’t be creating any converts for the genre, eerie though it can be.

Rating: Mixed
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320kbps
Label: Self-Release
Website: Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: August 23rd, 2024

#25 #2024 #Ambient #AmericanMetal #Aug24 #Drone #Noise #NotMetal #RecordsOfHumanBehaviour #Review #Reviews #SelfReleases #TheMercuryImpulse

Fuckhammer – Scorched Earth Prophets Review

By Mark Z.

Ha, what a stupid name, I think to myself. Even I can tell they’re trying too hard with that one. I close my browser and go upstairs to get ready for bed. Fuckhammer. I hear the name in my head as I brush my teeth. That was weird, I think to myself. I go to work the next day, type something wrong, and start smashing the Backspace key. Hammering it, in fact. Like a Fuckhammer. Fuck, I think to myself. Get out of my head. I go home and eat chips in the kitchen while my wife cuts vegetables for dinner. The knife slips. “Fuck!” she says. “Hammer,” I whisper to myself. “What?” she asks. But I’m lost in my own head. Stop lying to yourself, Mark. You know what you have to do. And it’s true. I toss the chips on the counter, sprint to my laptop, and open the promo bin faster than a fifteen-year-old pulling up PornHub after his parents have left to run some errands. I have to claim Fuckhammer as my own. I NEED THE FUCKHAMMER.

Only, what I got wasn’t quite the nasty thrash-death-black mix I expected. Formed in 2011, this Irish quartet play a rancid concoction of sludge and death metal, complete with phlegmy rasps that sound like the vocalist is the kind of guy who eats his own scabs. Over the years, the group have put out a few minor releases and one prior album, 2013’s Fucked. With Scorched Earth Prophets, the group’s core sound has more or less stayed the same. Most of these twelve tracks are built on mid-paced rhythms and beefy, grunting riffs that carry plenty of Southern-style groove. Yet the band also throw in some odder stuff, with lots of these songs having those weird pseudo-dissonant notes that remind me of what a mid-2010s metalcore band might play right before a breakdown. “Impartial Agenda” also strays from the path, complementing its sludge-centric approach with creaky lead guitar that makes it sound like the band booked a cheap flight to the slums of New Orleans and never came home.

Fuckhammer do offer some decent stuff here. The opening almost-title-track “Scorched Earth Profits” works well enough with its chugging riffs and peppy rhythms. Likewise, “Hangman’s Fracture” has a quick guitar line that carries some odd Eastern flair, and closer “Irregularities” has a slow winding riff that staggers forward like a drunkard on Bourbon Street. The catchy chugs and brief black metal foray in “Passage to the Afterworld” are also pretty enjoyable, but the best song here is easily “Curse of the Crimson Altar.” The track unleashes plenty of groove, incorporates intriguing samples in which two guys talk about the occult, and unloads some big thumping stop-start riffs that are sure to get your gut flabs flopping.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot that stops me from getting excited about Fuckhammer. The vocals are suitably repulsive but grow monotonous, and many of these songs either pass by without note or don’t quite stick the landing. “Unmerciful Sisters,” for instance, sounds like the band wrote half a song and called it good, while “Vexillogical Fixation” feels like it ends too abruptly. While “Brain Turbulence” mixes things up with its crusty approach and faster tempo, moments like that still aren’t enough to blow your hair back. The real problem with Scorched Earth Prophets, though, is a lack of character. Fuckhammer certainly know how to build a decent song and write a catchy riff, but the group simply feel far too nondescript and safe, especially for the sound they seem to be going for. Music like this begs for an unrefined, no-fucks-given approach. Yet here, the performances are largely tight and polished, and the clean, boomy production carries none of the grit an album like this needs.

When I see a name like Fuckhammer, I want fucking FILTH. I want to feel like listening to them will give me an STD that hasn’t even been discovered yet. But rather than getting too dirty, Scorched Earth Prophets simply offers a decent little collection of twelve songs that are respectable but not remarkable. Fuckhammer seem like a cool bunch, and Scorched Earth Prophets is worth a listen for those interested in exploring the lands where death and sludge don’t differ. For the rest, maybe just stick to Eyehategod and bathtub liquor the next time you need your fix of filth.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 3 | Format Reviewed: V2 mp3
Label: Self-Released
Websites: fuckhammer.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/f666hammer
Releases Worldwide: August 9th, 2024

#25 #2024 #Aug24 #DeathMetal #Eyehategod #Fuckhammer #IrishMetal #Review #Reviews #ScorchedEarthProphets #SelfReleases #SludgeMetal