Critical Defiance – No Life Forms (2022)

I was really excited for this album after my experiences with Critical Defiance’s debut. Sure, an entire concept album about how you shouldn’t listen to Future Sound of London was a little out there, but if it thrashed, then who was I to complain?

Mercyful Fate – Don’t Break The Oath (1984)

Don’t Break The Oath takes me back. This was one of the first metal albums I actually sat down and listened to at the tail end of high school. Remember, I went to a Catholic school, so this one made me feel rebellious and slightly anxious, like they’d cast me into the pits of hell myself for listening to it! Of course, a couple years later I inserted it into my installation of Sonic Heroes (there was a tool for the PC port that let you change out the music), so maybe it lost that special hold over me? It’s still a classic album that’ll appeal to fans of the first Mercyful Fate LP, Danish nationalists, or really, anyone who’s got an appetite for traditional heavy metal. It’s also a much better take on the whole Satanic shock rock gimmick than, for instance, Venom. See – some of this stuff has a better shelf life!

If you listened to Melissa back in the day (or even as recently as earlier today), you’ll be well prepped for what Mercyful Fate brings to the table here. It’s fundamentally the same approach as before – prog-inflected heavy metal, with the soaring, theatrical (if admittedly goofy) vocals of King Diamond. Don’t Break The Oath refines the Mercyful Fate formula without changing much. The production changes are about as close as we get to a major change – everything’s treble-heavy by comparison to Melissa. It’s basically a higher budget approach – everything just sounds shinier. The instrumental performances are also more elaborate and tightly performed. The songwriting, though, benefits the most; while there’s no overextended epics like “Satan’s Fall” off the last album, the average track is longer and more elaborate, yet more cohesive at the same time. To be fair, these are just the kind of improvements you can get from an extra year of writing and performing, but they’re still appreciated.

I can say with confidence that this formula’s well suited to my tastes; perhaps even more so than when I first spun this album on account of my vocal attunement. For all the silliness of the Mercyful Fate formula, you’re still getting some nice, polished, and musically literate heavy metal. A lot of contemporary bands went for this approach as they established themselves. You could argue that they eventually stagnated (and you’d have a point), but this is also a kind of music you can pull out year after year and continue to appreciate even as your tastes evolve.

I’ve never really had the motivation to explore much beyond these early, definitive works by Mercyful Fate. Who knows if they’d hit the same? At the very least, these are a good time.

Highlights: “Nightmare”, “The Oath”, “Gypsy”, “Come To The Sabbath”

Venom – Welcome to Hell (1981)

Would it be rude of me to admit that on a day to day basis, I don’t really care that much about Venom? I’ll admit they were exceptionally influential; after all, they took the sounds their fellow New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands were working with, added a low fidelity shock rock aesthetic, and for their efforts became a crucial milestone in the development of more aggressive, extreme styles of metal. Far more aggressive, really – between this and the hardcore punk cross-pollination, the underground styles developed fast. It really is that simple, and that might be a problem in the long run.

Welcome to Hell is, for what it’s worth, pretty easy to describe. First, it’s got a low-fidelity, grindy production that sometimes changes from track to track (apparently this is little more than a glorified demo, but I’m guessing most recording studios in 1981 weren’t ready to handle this stuff). The instrumentation and songwriting is crude at best; songs here are loosely performed and written, and the overall effect is basically a bunch of drunk punks performing a set in a sympathetic bar. You could find this stuff by the boatload in the UK, but as previously stated, Venom brought in the satanic imagery and got some attention for it. It worked pretty well for a while, though they eventually had to figure out a new approach after a few albums of diminishing returns. That’s probably a story for another time.

Really, what we’ve got here is kind of a “dumb” album. It aims low, though it admittedly hits its targets (shock the press) without much difficulty. Let’s be clear, though; I’m not really designed for this sort of music. I didn’t get much punk rock in my diet as a kid outside of poppy fare like Green Day, and I quickly turned into the snooty classical kid once my piano lessons kicked in. If I’d had that background, maybe this would hit harder? Either way, it doesn’t. I’ve developed an occasional taste for simple, even “primitive” metal over the years, but when I do, it’s usually something that took the lessons Venom and/or their successors provided and built something new on their foundations. That’s not an option here! As it is, I haven’t got much interest in listening to this album for reasons other than historical enlightenment (and the batshit outtake that’s “Snots Shit”. Unless you’re particularly attuned to this first wave gutter-punk approach, you’ll probably end up looking for something else after a few listens.

Highlights: “Welcome to Hell”, “Witching Hour”, “Red Light Fever”

Jute Gyte – Ship of Theseus (2015)

We’re back to Jute Gyte! Though not in anything even resembling chronological order. I’ve yet to explore any of Jute Gyte’s 12-TET discography, so today we’ll be taking a listen to Ship of Theseus. To get it out of the way – as far as I know, this one’s too close in concept to the surrounding Jute Gyte to really illustrate the thought experiment it’s named after. Nothing wrong with that – there’s a lot of ground to explore even in this esoteric, abstract, and yet also nightmarish style. My impression, though, is that it’s even less accessible than our already difficult previous encounters with the project. At some point, though, you just need to dive in and give it a shot.

Not that the others aren’t, but to my understanding, the gimmick of Ship of Theseus is its approach to polyphony. Adam Kalbach likes to discuss the way he builds Jute Gyte’s songs in his liner notes, and here he repeatedly describes canons (take a melody and repeat it in several of your instruments, separated by a consistent duration and overlapping for extra !!!fun!!!) as the building block of these songs. “Grief of New Desire” is the tutorial case, swapping between close notes in octaves for an utterly ghastly effect. One other important element here is how slow this album can get. Ressentiment rarely dipped below a midpaced grind, but the tracks here have this strung out, desperate, impending-doom feel to them. Every dissonance rings out, and every note stacks upon the last. The effect is just horrifying.

Usually, I would struggle with such a hostile album. Perhaps I’d recoil as my brain struggled to find purchase (read: microtonality) for its music appreciation cognition. Perhaps I’d be open to listening occasionally, but would find listening all the way through beyond me. A funny thing happens here, though – if I sit down and listen to Ship of Theseus, I can attune to it in a way that I don’t for even the other Jute Gyte albums. It’s kind of invigorating. Maybe it’s because we get some brief respite from the noise and chaos in the form of frequent and surprisingly lengthy sparse interludes. More likely, though, it’s because Ship of Theseus wears its academia so proudly on its shoulders. At some point, I decide not to be so (consensually) horrified and deploy my analytical brain; I learn and delve. I think there’s a lot I still need to unlock in order to fully understand this one, but I’m happy to study.

I don’t know if I’d currently place this above my previous Jute Gyte listens, or even the other contender for the microtonal black metal throne I’ve listened to. Check back in a year, though – perhaps this one will eventually take the crown!

Highlights: “Forces of Self-Shedding”, “Grief of New Desire”, “Machinery That Renders Debt Infinite”

Re-Review: Sinister – Hate (1996)

I was, to put it bluntly, very bullish on this album when I first encountered it. The precision and sheer percussive intensity of Hate put me in… uh… fire and brimestone themed heaven. Yeah, let’s go with that. However, some interesting things happened in the intervening 11 years. First – I rarely saw mention of this band outside of the unsavory circles that recommended it to me. Then, my delve into the band’s discography petered out after listening to their debut (Cross the Styx). In theory, these shouldn’t mean much – nothing wrong with only enjoying part of a band’s discography, or enjoying an obscure band. But it got me thinking – this one’s probably ripe for a second look. Has Hate aged like fine cheese, or like moldy bread? Either way, I’m grabbing something to eat.

As for Hate? The first thing you should know is that it’s a very percussive, rhythm focused take on death metal. It’s well produced for 1996, with a distinctive grindy, bassy sound that’s harder to find these days. It’s got some melody to it, but it’s typically sparse, emphasizing monophonic riffs and varied percussion. In addition, it’s usually not too interested in standardized verse-chorus pop songwriting. The songs are mostly short to middling lengths (though it’s interesting that they lead with the 7-minute “Awaiting the Absu”), but they feel longer just by virtue of all the riffs they’ve been stuffed with. Now, riffs are the point of metal, but the key to Hate is that it’s all riffs. This has the potential to be a very dry style if you don’t have enough high quality riffs, but Sinister pulls this aspect off pretty well, so there’s definitely nothing to worry about.

The riffs and precision alone make for a solid foundation for an album. That’s the appraisal – Hate is solid. You just can’t go wrong with it, and you’ll have at least a B+ experience if you like this style. The corollary, though, is that Sinister on this album is like the kid in your class who doesn’t really push their boundaries and just coasts through school. All the teachers are lavishing their attention on the kids who went the extra mile on their end-of-term percussive death metal project. There’s plenty of examples of how to extend this style while retaining its spirit, even if for length reasons you limit your search to a subscene (let’s say… uh… …NYDM). Incantation pushed for atmosphere, while Immolation and Suffocation brought the creative riffs and a stronger sense of musical narrative. I think that’s ultimately why my attention wandered – 25+ years out from its release, “good” alone just doesn’t cut it… though it was still pretty fun while it lasted.

Highlights: “Embodiment of Chaos”, “Unseen Darkness”, “18th Century Hellfire”

Re-Review: The Berzerker – Dissimulate (2002)

There’s a couple of records I’ve attuned to over the years out of a vague sense that they’d scare the normies. The Berzerker is excellent for that – simple death metal/grindcore songs performed at maximum velocity with a tinge of industrial precision. A few blastbeats and growls are sufficient to fill their hearts with terror and mine with joy. Turns out that only goes so far. As a result, Dissimulate twenty years on has to rely entirely on its merits to keep my attention. That being said, I’ve still got an affinity for loud, fast, aggressive music, so perhaps this maximum speed limit monotone snare audition‘s got some life in it yet?

Dissimulate sets the mood nearly immediately – fifteen seconds separate you from the blasts of album opener “Disregard”. From there, the album is lightning fast, monotonal, and percussion-heavy to a fault – the electronic percussion (a human-performed electronic drumkit from one Gary Thomas, to my understanding) nearly drowns everything out other than the vocals. It’s definitely a velocity thing, since Dissimulate (reasonably) trends more intelligible in those accursed moments where the percussion slows down. But does that really matter? This isn’t a particularly complex album; there’s some tricky interplay between vocals and drums, and the actual riff length is longer than I’d expect, but ultimately Dissimulate plays things fast and lean. If you want more intricacy at these BPM, you’ll want to search somewhere else.

As for how I feel about it? Despite the march of time, I still get some pleasure from the idea of scaring the so-called normies with aggressive music. But I also enjoy the precision and violence that The Berzerker brings to the table here. That industrial flavor mixes in very nicely with what would otherwise be a pretty generic and limited deathgrind recording. That’s probably where Dissimulate fails in the long run, though. 34 minutes of constant aggression with little in the way of dynamics (outside of “more drum hits” and “not quite as many drum hits”) is a lot to ask for. After a while, everything just starts to mash together into noise. I want to say that the second half of this album is weaker than the first (fun cover of “Corporal Jigsore Quandary” aside), but the the overall similarities make it hard to actually tell. With that in mind, Dissimulate probably works better in the era of shuffled playlists, where you can interleave the perfect quantity of berzerking™ into your listening rotation of choice, or indeed trollishly surprise your non-metalhead friends with random blasts of violence. Just don’t do that too often, lest it cost you your comrades.

Highlights: “No One Wins”, “Death Reveals”, “Last Mistake”

Kayo Dot – Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike (2021)

Once in a blue moon, Kayo Dot releases an actual metal album. Choirs of the Eye was an understandable evolution of Toby Driver’s work in maudlin of the Well. Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, on the other hand, is what happens when you keep amping up the synthy, post-rock sounds of recent Kayo Dot material, until they have no choice but to be metal music! Definitely an interesting choice. Off the top of my head, I can’t really think of anyone who used this specific approach, but it certainly makes for a dark, doomy experience. That being said, Moss continues to deliver the avant-prog I’ve come to expect from Kayo Dot. It takes a while to digest it, but it’s worth it.

The key to understanding Moss, as previously stated, is recognizing how it continues the general compositional approach of Plastic House On Base Of Sky and Blasphemy. The tracks here would actually fit very well on those albums, if you swapped out the instrumentation and tossed the vocalist a cough drop (…less important for Blasphemy, admittedly). This one’s full of lengthy, meandering songs, and tempos are usually pretty low. Admittedly, there’s some major exceptions, culminating in the outright blasting of album closer “Epipsychidion”. In general, though, this is a master class in matching both your instrument palette and composition techniques to your overall production, as the dense instrumentation and chaotic song structures really help lock in that dark, cavernous, mysterious sound. This mostly takes precedence over aggression – when Moss goes down that path (which is occasional at most), it’s usually either because of the vocals – lots of midrange growls and shouts here, or the percussion. Still a good mood for Kayo Dot to have in their repertoire!

As a general rule, though, this is a difficult sound to pull off well, and one that takes some time for listeners to digest. This I know from experience! Outside the particularly consonant and outright pretty “Void in Virgo”, it took me a while for these songs to click with me. There’s just a lot that I needed to parse before I could understand the underlying logic and otherwise engage with these tracks on a level more nuanced than “cavernous nightmare metal”. That’s always a difficult balancing act, and it’s entirely possible to get too wrapped up in your aesthetic if you’re not careful. Kayo Dot has the benefit of decades of experience writing prog on their side, though, and at this point in their career, enough sense to know when to restrain themselves a bit. Moss is still great if you want to hear them pushing the limits of their sound, though.

Highlights: “The Knight Errant”, “Void in Virgo (The Nature of Sacrifice)”, “Get Out of the Tower”, “The Necklace”

Strapping Young Lad – Strapping Young Lad (2003)

Heads up – I am going to have facial feminization surgery tomorrow! Surgery and recovery from surgery is serious business. If it takes me a while to recover, I may very well have to skip a blogpost or two. No guarantees yet. Only time will tell how I proceed.

So… I think I like this one more than Devin Townsend does. It took me a while to get to it – my impetus was, surprisingly, hearing the guy perform “Aftermath” on one of his quarantine streams. Devy seems to have rejected a chunk of his early-mid 2000s material on some level, and I don’t blame him. Despite all the peaks, he struggled with substance abuse and bipolar disorder during that period. That being said, SYL is a full-throated return to the the aggression of its predecessors, and therefore something pretty far from the calmer, proggier sounds of Devy’s interrim solo work… with the partial exception of Physicist. Either way, you sometimes need a blast of incandescent rage, and this more than delivers.

SYL admittedly isn’t a 1:1 match to previous… uh… SYL. The first thing I notice is how the production’s changed. City in particular had a very distinctive sound – certainly very heavy and aggressive, but also cold, clinical, even industrial. This album, however, feels warmer, and perhaps a bit muddier than before. It feels more like a stereotypical extreme metal production, as vague as that can be. That being said, this one’s also more intricate than before. Despite the aggression levels remaining similar, there’s significantly more melody and chords throughout. It’s not equally distributed, but it definitely makes for a more complicated result than before. That’s sometimes a good thing! That being said, it’s not on the level of the next SYL album (Alien), and we’re also coming from an album that did great things with its more streamlined approach…

Ultimately, I did start this review implying that my opinion on SYL was favorable, and if I haven’t edited it out, you can probably guess where this is going. This album is a comfortable midpoint between one album I immediately took to (City) and another that took me a while to appreciate (Alien), and outside of a few obvious high points, I’m pretty sure it took an intermediate amount of time for me to appreciate the nuances here. We essentially have the same pitfalls as Alien did, even if not quite to the same extent. SYL splits the difference between being a simultaneous aural and compositional assault, while also ending up more repetitive at times. However, the infusion of more intricate writing into an extreme metal sound still works pretty well, even if it’s slightly less experienced this first (1.5th?) time. All the poppier writing Devy produced during the Strapping Young Lad hiatus paid off, resulting in a bunch of songs that balance their complexity surprisingly well. That alone makes this one worth a listen, and the historical context may very well enhance your appreciation of the rest of Devin’s discography!

Highlights: “Consequence”, “Aftermath”, “Devour”

Scythelord – Earth Boiling Dystopia (2021)

Super Ghostbusters this ain’t. Once upon a time, I came across the chaotic videos and streams of Vinesauce Joel (aka Vargskelethor), and I was hooked. Then I learned that Joel makes extreme metal, too! Scythelord is, by my appraisal, his “serious” project, if only in the sense that it doesn’t have obvious signs of comedy in its bloodstream. Instead, it’s death/thrash metal with a careful mix of intricate and bludgeoning musicianship. Definitely the kind of thing that piques my interest and can easily result in Bandcamp purchases, which brings us to today.

What does an internet comedian playing focused, intense thrash metal bring to the table? A lot of the typical trends I’ve heard in modern metal are here, which really just boils down to good production and otherwise high levels of studio polish. As a general rule, Scythelord sticks to their chosen lane for most of Earth Boiling Dystopia. Lots of monophonic writing here (for reference, that’s having one main melodic/riffing line without much in the way of harmony or counterpoint) – the band pulls off most of their complexity and songwriting tricks by throwing in lots of lengthy and dissonant riffs. Hope you like tritones! That being said, I don’t really have much to say about the instrumentation on Earth Boiling Dystopia – it’s fit to purpose, but while it’s more than technically proficient, it’s far from flashy. My guess is that how much you get out of this one comes down to how well the riffs connect with you.

Before we continue, I should preface this by saying that I only have so much passion for the clinical side of tech-thrash. You need strong dynamics, charismatic vocals, or plenty of consonant melody or something to really grab my attention. Otherwise, the best you’re going to get is probably along the lines of, “I recognize the craft and expertise on display here, but this isn’t a style that really speaks to me unless it’s particularly novel or it makes concessions to my musical interests.” Enter Earth Boiling Dystopia. There’s some neat ideas throughout, but it’s not the kind of music I’m going to instinctively reach for unless I’m really in both an abstract (even geometric) and thrashy mood. How often does that happen to me? For that matter, how often does that happen to you? Maybe that’s exactly what you’re looking for, though. People say there’s no accounting for taste, but Scythelord seems to serve up very specific flavors that you might just find hit the spot for you.

Highlights: “Equanimity”, “Rod of Asclepius”, “The Other”

Öxxö Xööx – Ÿ (2019)

By letter count alone, this is a less cumbersome album to review than Nämïdäë was. When you’re an English speaker who has to go out of her way to type accent marks, diacritics, and so forth, you’ll take any labor saving method you can get, even if it’s just down to Ÿ having a more concise name. Silliness aside, this one’s another shot of operatic, proggy, gothy doom metal with lyrics written in a constructed language. How often do you get that exact formula? Let’s get it out of the way – if you liked Öxxö Xööx’s previous album, you’re probably going to enjoy this one as well. I still think it’s delving into the how and why of that, though.

Perhaps the most important thing to note, though, is that Ÿ is a harsher, more abrasive take on the Öxxö Xööx sound than Nämïdäë was. It starts with a bassier, noisier production that’s particularly enhanced by the surprising addition of guitar synth via Victor Love of Master Boot Record fame! The previous album had a bit of western symphonic instrumentation throughout, but Ÿ de-emphasizes this in favor of its harshness, and ends up more strictly on the metaltronica side of the fence for its efforts. The compositions are also more dissonant and angular in its compositions than before. That’s not just the colossal amount of guitar harmonics and pinches; the song structures have been shifted in favor of abrupt changes and dissonant progressions, if admittedly not to the point of sound collage. Compare this one to Igorrr if you wish, but if we’re going for in-Serreverse analogies, you’ll want to pull out the more calculated Spirituality and Distortion.

Despite this, you’re still getting a lengthy (and CD-ROM straining) 78 minutes of prog out of Öxxö Xööx’s 3rd. I’m definitely interested in a more extreme-metal inflected variant of Öxxö Xööx, especially when it pulls similar (if admittedly not constant) metaltronica vibes to my own music. This also makes for better dynamics than even what Nämïdäë‘s contrasts were able to provide, that’s particularly important when you’re working at these scales That being said, it’s not an unambiguous improvement over the last album – the jarring transitions, lengthier songs, and occasional crutchy nature of the pinch harmonics make this a harder recording to ingest in large quantities. Overall, though, neither the boons or the flaws are potent enough to overcome the other. Given how much I’ve enjoyed Nämïdäë, an album that matches its quality while excelling at different disciplines is hardly a curse.

Highlights: “9C639”, “Köböl(D)”, “NS2”, “Döld”

Meshuggah – Nothing (2002/2006)

I’m going to focus primarily on the 2006 rerecorded version, since I have by far the most listening experience with it.

Nothing, in this case, is what a search for a full length review of this album on Invisible Blog would’ve returned, at least before this article goes out to the public. I’ve alluded to this album before, and with good reason – it represents a local optimum in Meshuggah’s discography where they first maxed out on sparse, minimalistic, near-ambient djent; they had to shift gears for a while after that. I also have a bit of a history with this album – its signature single (“Rational Gaze”) has been one of my preferred tracks for equalizing and breaking in new earbuds for over a decade. Those djents have to sound just right! And they do, as long as I don’t do something especially shortsighted like buying a 10 dollar pack of three separate headphones. That was a huge waste.

The key to Nothing, from my perspective, is that it’s a very exaggerated take on Meshuggah. As much as I plan to focus on the rerecorded version’s nuances, I’d be remiss not to at least mention the original’s sound, which was created by downtuning Meshuggah’s previous 7-string guitars to their limit. Compare to the rerecording’s 8-string guitars, but the key is that this one churns and grinds in a way that the already super-djenty previous Meshuggah albums didn’t. Nothing also retains the polyrhythmic approach approach of the band’s previous material (why would it not?), but it takes down the tempo in order to allow said polyrhythms to be more intricate than before… even though everything’s still fundamentally based around 4/4 time signatures. Those don’t go away any time soon, at least that I know of. Rhythm lovers and percussion students will still have a field day with this one.

At this point in my metal-listening career, I think the successes and pitfalls of Meshuggah on Nothing fundamentally match the other deliberately exaggerated recordings I’ve listened to over the years. This one’s exceptionally good at the small list of things it specializes in – chunky, midpaced, near-atonal riffing in complex polyrhythms, with the occasional splash of atmospheric jazz fusion inflected lead guitar to liven everything up. It’s more or less orthogonal to what I’m usually looking for in music – I enjoy melodic complexity, dense walls of sound, and intricate compositions, but this one’s sparse and repetitive even by Meshuggah standards! You’d think I’d recoil, but I can definitely respect the surgical precision of this one. I don’t know that I listen to it very often anymore (and there’s a lot of filler towards the middle in particular), but when I feel the urge, this yawning, shrieking void is there for me.

Highlights: “Stengah”, “Rational Gaze”, “Closed Eye Visuals”, “Nebulous”

Re-Review: Sacramentum – Far Away From The Sun (1996)

If you get me talking about black metal, similar to the way I have for the last few weeks, it’s probably only a matter of time until Far Away From The Sun comes up. About a year ago, I had to convey someone to a group hike in the Blue Hills, and I put this album on. In the process of discussing, I was able to gain a better understanding of how I engage with music and further hone my appreciation of this one in the process! Hopefully the point is clear – Far Away From The Sun is one of my all time favorites, and it’s an album that’s shaped my preferences as a metal listener.

A key point about me is that I like “deep listening” – the idea of paying close attention to the intricacies of music and discovering its secrets, appreciating how all the elements come together. Far Away From The Sun is all about its intricacy. In particular, it goes all in on polyphonic writing, which by my appraisal is fairly rare in extreme metal… maybe not as much in the proggy circles I seek to align with in my own work? I digress. To steal a metaphor from my childhood piano lessons, you should think of the guitars as analogous to a left and right hand. In the context of piano, each hand often ends up doing different things, but nothing stops a composer from having motifs shift from hand to hand, performing two separate but interlocking ideas at the same time, or even having the hands physically cross over each other! A lot of the rock derived genres of popular music end up with distinct rhythm and lead guitars, but Sacramentum handily avoids this. The end result gives us that intricate counterpoint, tends to complicate the rhythm riffs that do get performed, and furthermore results in plenty of big, colorful chords that also get my attention! Crack hitting the brain.

The rest of Far Away From The Sun contributes well to this aesthetic. First, it’s got a sufficiently clear production – maybe not the highest budget, and the guitars are deliberately immersed in heavy effects (chorusing, phasing, etc), but it’s enough to hear everything. Song structures here are, as a general rule, thorough-composed. Sacramentum does have an appetite for slow codas and a good amount of repetition, but the variety of song structures is also appreciated. The other instrumentation doesn’t really strike me as much as the superlative guitars, but it all fits nicely into a black metal package and gets the job done, so I’m more than happy.

The only regret I have regarding this album isn’t anything innate to itself, but that its successors don’t quite reach the same peaks. They’re admittedly interesting if you like seeing this sound taken in more of a Gothenburg/melodeath direction. Anyways, when your full length debut is this good, can you really complain?

Highlights: “Fog’s Kiss”, “Cries From A Restless Soul”, “Beyond All Horizons”

Blut Aus Nord – Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars (2009)

Okay, the black metal thing is fast becoming intentional, though the intentions of this writer, myself as I am, remain cryptic at best. That being said, I have had Blut Aus Nord on the mind a lot lately. I grabbed their superlative debut on vinyl recently, and the other handful of albums of theirs I’ve listened to have their own charms as well. No reason I shouldn’t also give this one a chance, right?

Memoria Vetusta II belongs to the same genre as its predecessor – a particularly consonant and melodic take on black metal. I’d go as far as to say that just like the original Memoria Vetusta, it favors approachable riffing and song structures over the more atmospheric and ambient Ultima Thulee. Which one you like more is up to personal tastes, though Memoria Vetusta I compares favorably to other black metal bands that’ve been seduced by the powers of melody. First major difference – BAN takes full advantage of the digital production revolution here, resulting in a much cleaner and even cold sound. I think this is a residual change from their “industrial” era; even if they’ve shaken off the nightmare, they’ve learned how to incorporate some of the harshness of their past into an otherwise more accessible sound. Outside the production, it’s hard to say how much the instrumentation is affected by this chill. Maybe it’s the occasional dissonant riff, a greater emphasis on unusual time signatures and rhythms?

As far as I can tell, Memoria Vetusta II is more complex than its predecessors, at least within the more traditional black metal side of BAN’s work. Songs are are lengthier than before, with a greater density of unique riffs, tempo changes, etc. If an increase in complexity was all it took to create new favorites on my end, then Memoria Vetusta II would blow past previous BAN recordings and earn my undying fandom. Unfortunately, the songwriting here is flawed; in their rush to show off their more technically advanced approach, BAN has written some haphazard and disjointed songs. Transitions between song sections are jarring at the best of times; the overall effect strikes me as chaotic and disorganized. I think this one might have the same problem as Codex Omega by Septicflesh – a veteran band used to receiving critical acclaim for the perceived sophistication of their music turns to excess, and ends up optimizing for surface complexity, losing some of their essence in the process. Ultima Thulee and Memoria Vetusta I were better at arranging their admittedly sparser palettes in a compelling fashion, and I wouldn’t be surprised if not having to deal with accumulated fame and acclaim helped a lot.

These last few passages feel particularly awkward given just how close I am to getting the next Planepacked album. I hope that if I become famous, I won’t let it go to my head and harm the quality of future creative projects! Maybe I need to work on my humble pie recipe…

Highlights: “Disciple’s Libration (Lost in the Nine Worlds)”, “…the Meditant (Dialogue with the Stars)”, “Antithesis of the Flesh (…and Then Arises a New Essence)”

Xazraug – Unsympathetic Empyrean (2020)

So when I’m not getting my face KicKed in, I seem to going through a black metal phase; perhaps even an atmospheric black metal phase! Enter this churning maelstrom of world music inflected black metal. I’m pretty sure this is another album I discovered through someone posting about it on trans metal Twitter… which is interesting because the band’s mastermind (Colin Marston) appears to be cisgender. Could it be that we don’t judge our music based solely on the gender identity of its creators? At the very least, Marston hasn’t had a public gender apotheosis that I’m aware of. Instead, he has a prolific career on the more technical side of extreme metal, ranging from a stint in Gorguts, to his role in Krallice (whom I really need to give a second chance, now that I’m hopefully less of a @#%*), to where I first learned of him in Behold… The Arctopus. At the very least, the guy’s band names are on point.

This one, even more than the other subgenre works I’ve been listening to, is all atmosphere, all the time, at all costs. It’s a potent mix, to be fair. The production is slightly degraded and muddy, though it’s obviously got nothing on your average Norwegian second wave black metal recording or similar. Still, this is an overall very dense and claustrophobic sound. There’s a lot of sampling in general, though vocals in particular – that’s where the “world music” angle shows itself. Whether it’s the Balinese kecak in “Grim and Unhallowed Entitlement” or the white voice (Eastern European folk singing) at the beginning of “Arboreal Detestation”, Unsympathetic Empyrean is drenched in song, which interestingly contrasts the otherwise instrumental nature of this project. Either way, it’s an unusual juxtaposition, though the metal side of this album is more than chaotic enough to be a good fit.

Chaos really is the key here. These are very lengthy songs that go through their fair amount of changes, but the actual logic by which new riffs, tempos, etc are introduced feels haphazard at best. To put it more succintly – Xazraug covers a lot of ground in their songs, but it’s not clear what the destination is supposed to be. There might be more that I could discern with further listening, since the gap between my first listen to Unsympathetic Empyrean and this review is on the shorter side, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s just a bunch of riffs stuck together! I don’t think that makes for a great shelf life.

As for whether that hypothesis will hold and Unsympathetic Empyrean will fade from my listening rotation once the novelty of its sonic formula fades? We’ll just have to see what happens.

Highlights: “Grim and Unhallowed Entitlement”, “Unsympathetic Empyrean”

Victory Over the Sun – Nowherer (2021)

Full disclosure – this album shares a producer with the next Planepacked album (Transactinides). That being said, this review probably would be identical if this wasn’t the case… though perhaps sans disclaimer?

Of all the albums I’ve been introduced to by Twitter, this one may be my favorite (though Arca and greyfleshtethered have also captivated me recently). But it’s quite literally microtonal metal music from a trans creator, so what do you expect? Victory Over the Sun‘s previous album wormed its way into my heart for the latter reason (despite its use of a 12 note scale), but this just ratchets up the intensity further. That being said, I should recommend caution, since an album being performed in a style you enjoy isn’t an ironclad guarantee that you’ll like it… but I listened to Nowherer repeatedly before deciding to write about it. I know how quickly this is going to descend into fangirling, so caveat lector, I guess.

The big thing about this album, at least from my perspective, is that it manages to make its microtonal approach sound familiar and accessible in a way that (at the very least) my other microtonal black metal fix doesn’t. My first guess was the choice of scale (17EDO) providing a good chunk of familiar sounding intervals, but Jute Gyte uses quarter tones – Adam Kalmbach could theoretically just use it to perform familiar, diatonic scale music in a humorous if pointless exercise. To elaborate on the Jute Gyte comparison, VotS writes more conventionally, with lots of recognizable and near-consonant melody (“Alveromancy” being a prime example) sweetening this package much like it did A Tessitura of Transfiguration. As much as I enjoy some abstract and particularly abrasive tracks, this album strikes a good balance between such experiments and providing a recognizable extreme metal experience, which is appreciated!

This really just ends up being the same type of success as VotS’s last album – good, solid songwriting that takes advantage of a well-defined palette of sounds. Nowherer, for what it’s worth, reads as significantly more aggressive than Tessitura. One key is the production, which is significantly louder and clearer than before. The tempos are reliably faster as well – where Tessitura was slow and moody, Nowherer churns like a maelstrom in a troubled sea, resplendent with blastbeats and another charismatic vocal performance from band mastermind Vivian Tylinska. The only thing that might be missing from this one is an overarching narrative and lyrical concept, but the poetic, even abstract libretto remains, even if the exact words aren’t easy to pick out…

Unsurprisingly, this is another album I highly recommend, and one that I’m sure the still very implausible cisgender alternate version of myself would enjoy as well. Not sure why this hypothetical person has to deal more with VotS than any of the other trans-fronted metal et al music, but whatever.

Highlights: “Alveromancy”, “Oscines” (…which is over half the album!)

Enslaved – Hordanes Land (1993)

You know, when I think about it, I’ve listened to a lot of Enslaved’s discography. My familiarity ends after 2003’s Below The Lights, but a good chunk of the stuff before that has earned my affections and repeated spins. Hordanes Land has the amusing honor of being the first album I ever purchased off Bandcamp – no matter what unspeakable brutalities Epic Games might inflict on it in the future, I’ll cherish that memory. Anyways, this is a primeval era for Enslaved – they were developing their signature “Viking” black metal sound, but what we get on this EP is a band that already knows what they want to do and has some idea of how to go about it. That being said, they’re not quite to their first stop yet.

This EP is archetypal old school Enslaved – extended and melodic black metal songs that strike a balance between aggression and ambience. It’s probably a result of the production, but this strikes me as more direct than Vikingligr veldi, yet gentler than Frost. Recent years have seen some remasters, but the essential character of the mix seems unchanged – degraded and rough around the edges, with loud vocals and percussion, but otherwise carefully balanced. It gets the point across, and black metal isn’t stereotypically supposed to be too shiny and professional sounding. I’d honestly describe most of the instrumental and production side of things as middle of the road for the early ’90s Norwegian sound – Hordanes Land and period Enslaved in general tread a narrow line between atavistic primitivism and a more elaborate approach.

Like its immediate successors, how much you get out of Hordanes Land is going to depend on your tastes for repetition in the name of atmosphere. There’s definite structure here, but this era of Enslaved sees them spend a long time on each of their musical ideas, so the actual idea density isn’t all that high. To be honest, things feel less architected and more haphazard than on later albums; I guess it’s to be expected when your budget and experience levels are limited. Enslaved would be quick to write and record songs that handled repetition more effectively and used more compelling ideas, for what it’s worth. But the end result at this point in their career is an EP that’s pleasant to listen to when it comes on, yet one that I’m not so likely to seek out of my own accord. Clementine and S2 get the final say more often than not.

If you’re interested in tracking the historical evolution of Enslaved, you’ll still need this one, but the rest of you might want to check out the full-lengths first.

Highlights: “Alfadr Odhinn”

PSUDOKU – Deep Space Psudokument (2017)

At the very least, Deep Space Psudokument is good for scaring the normies… though is that really an ideal I should be espousing this far into my journey as a metalhead? It does feel particularly manic and chaotic in a way that a lot of similarly intense works don’t, though – navigating through caustic soundscapes with effortless ease and returning home in a mere 25 minutes. To be fair, you can get a lot done in half an hour or less. Either way, this one immediately piqued my interest with its sheer audacity, and definitely pushes the buttons of my younger self, if not always my older mind, so it was certainly worth a look.

So PSUDOKU markets themselves as progressive grindcore. There’s a lot to unpack there; the velocities, vocals, and instrumentation are very much what I’d expect from a grindcore album, if one that’s admittedly more on the professionally produced and shiny end of the genre than its putrescent, DIY lo-fi depths. The other half is quite literally the prog – PSUDOKU purports to be inspired by ’70s progressive rock bands, which is kind of hilarious given the music historians’ narrative of punk rock (and their increasingly hardcore -> grindcore descendants) developing as a reaction to prog excesses. To my ears, it sounds like the specific ingredients PSUDOKU use come from the more challenging and avantgarde reaches of prog – your Captain Beefheart, your rock in opposition, your zeuhl… if you’ve ever listened to Ruins, this is pretty similar in concept. Either way, it’s an eclectic mix that in practice makes for longer songs, lots of time signature changes, and many other things that contribute to the overall challenging feel of Deep Space Psudokument.

As for whether or not you should allow this 25 minute assault into your brain? Clearly there’s been a lot of effort to prevent Deep Space Psudokument from becoming repetitive. Songs tend lightning fast and stick to the same guitar and distorted synthesizer sting palette throughout, so it’s up to the arrangements to keep things varied. In this case, PSUDOKU relies heavily on a critical mass of dissonant riffs to keep you off balance. My continued listening, though, revealed a key to the puzzle – a disproportionate mass of major key chords, sequenced into fast, often chromatic patterns with no real interest in conforming to conventional, consonant scales and key signatures. In other words, it’s an entire album of Kreator–style riffs. That’s amazing.

I guess the only real flaw or at least dislike I can identify here is that outside of a few slow sections, there’s not a lot of specific riffs that’ve burnt into my head. When I think of PSUDOKU, I have a tendency to think of this album as a monolith of noise. That being said, there’s clearly some meat to latch onto, if a burst of zeuhlcore or whatever we’re going to call it meets your needs.

Highlights: “KATASTROFALEjusteringer”, “ZpRNVphNtz”, “TODesprog_3000”

(I am very thankful for my OS clipboard.)

Arcturus – The Sham Mirrors (2002)

What exactly is Arcturus’s aesthetic? They seem to look to the stars, but not in the clearly sci-fi inflected way that someone like I would. I’ve decided, perhaps capriciously, to call The Sham Mirrors astrology metal. Not due to any specific references (though, to be honest, since I don’t really care what astrologers have to say I could easily miss such), but really more due to how the album is structured and written. For all intents and purposes, this is a continuation of La Masquerade Infernale‘s vaguely proggy, mostly symphonic, and electronica tinged metal sounds. We’re in the nebulous realm of post-black metal, folks! In their defense, the turn of the millennium was a time of fusion and creative flowering, and both of those are appreciated around here.

Anyways, The Sham Mirrors is a sleeker and very possibly sexier take on Arcturus than its predecessor… maybe not quite up to Perdition City levels, even if they’ve got the same trickster as integral band members. La Masquerade Infernale went all in on melodrama, and nowhere was that more prominent than in Kristofer Rygg’s vaguely operatic, deep vocals. It fit the style there, so his decision to favor higher, cleaner, beltier vocals is a big paradigm shift. This style is much easier for me to imitate, should I ever decide Planepacked ought to cover Arcturus! Outside the vocals, we have a more incisive and trebly production, which surprisingly isn’t always as clear as the predecessor. It does fit what strikes me as also a more aggressive album; one that more frequently dips into the icy reservoirs of extremity (culminating in “Radical Cut”, which features Ihsahn’s harshes and comes off as an arctic blast).

Compared to the sheer concept album-ness of La Masquerade Infernale, I’m not sure if The Sham Mirrors is as focused in terms of what it sets out to do. That being said, the music’s more than on point regardless. At its best, this album really does shine; it’s nice seeing a more aggressive Arcturus, one that pays occasional tribute to its roots while making sure to develop its themes properly (I’ve said it before; I am not a fan of Arcturus’s full length debut). I also have the vague sense that this one’s more consistent than La Masquerade Infernale, but that’s a subtle difference at best. Which one I end up reaching for probably depends more on my mood than any significant musicological differences; I wouldn’t be surprised if other listeners felt the same way. Either way, definitely worth your time and study.

Highlights: “Nightmare Heaven”, “Collapse Generation”, “Star Crossed”

Brutality – When The Sky Turns Black (1994)

The last I discussed Brutality, it was in reference to my struggle to get into the band, with the admitted exception of their well crafted if not particularly distinct debut. When the Sky Turns Black struck me, at first listen, as more of the same, for better or worse. Even the lineup is 80% the same (though one of the guitarists was replaced for reasons unknown to the likes of me). More versatile, jack of all trades death metal isn’t a bad thing by any measure, but the sheer acceptability of Brutality’s approach makes it harder by far to write meaningfully about than better or worse albums. A girl needs a challenge, though! [more?]

There’s clearly been some attempt to refine the Brutality sound here. This is most obvious in the mix; everything remains trebly for death metal, but there’s more bass here than there was on Screams of Anguish. I think this quite literally comes down to the bassist actually being subtly audible here, though any attempts Jeff Acres (who also handles vox) makes to differentiate his parts from those of the guitars have slipped past my ears. There aren’t much in the way of instrumental changes otherwise, though all the performances feel just a hair tighter and more intentional than before. I’m also under the impression that the riffs here are more dissonant than before, though Brutality is far from discarding the melodic touches they employed on the previous album. All of these changes, though, are very subtle; enough so that if I’m not paying a great deal of attention, I begin to question whether things have actually changed all that much.

Really, if you felt X way about Screams of Anguish, you’d expect to feel about the same about When The Sky Turns Black. That being said, it still feels like something‘s been lost – something that eludes me. Perhaps the songs are just that bit more haphazard? Perhaps some melodic prowess is missing? This could be one of those metal albums that consciously tries to imitate its predecessors, but loses some important part of itself in the process. I don’t really enjoy describing music as having that problem, especially since I’d rather be able to analyze what’s going on, and understand why I enjoy something less than I’d expect. Sometimes, though, the glove just fits, and I therefore can’t acquit. So it is with When The Sky Turns Black – maybe you’ll get some enjoyment out of it if your tastes are attuned to what it offers?

Highlights: “Race Defects”, “Electric Funeral”, “Screams of Anguish”

greyfleshtethered – The Dark Being (2021)

We’ve got a bit of a unicorn today on Invisible Blog, as it’s pretty rare for me to discover new metal music through my long-time interest in retrocomputing. Enter this album, which is somewhere between a tribute album to Sierra’s 1996 adventure game Lighthouse: The Dark Being and a cover album of said game’s soundtrack. It’s also yet another project from a trans musician, which needless to say fills me with all the hype, and in the process, gets the buzzword quotient for this album pretty high – the electronica tinged black metal helps as well. I feel like I’ve had very good luck with black metal and related genres as of late, so it’s good to try and figure out what everyone’s doing well.

The Dark Being takes the form of four extended compositions, with runtimes in about the right ballpark to justify a double vinyl pressing if the author ever sees fit. Formats aside, these songs are ambient and evolve gradually by sheer necessity. The production feels pretty standard for black metal – far clearer than the granddaddies of the genre, but very windswept, trebly, and harsh. Everything here is instrumental outside of some brief sampled speech in “Temple of the Ancient Machines”, which contributes to my sense that The Dark Being is more interested in depicting place and mood than giving us a narrative. The caveat here is that I haven’t played Lighthouse (I actually discovered the game and this album because I follow The Obscuritory). I do wonder if I’d get more story out of this if I were more familiar with the source content. Then again, the game apparently takes more after the worldbuilding-heavy approach Myst and similar, so maybe not?

Ambient music, whether black metal or not, is a challenging genre to pull off well. I’m happy to report that The Dark Being gets it right, at least to my preferences. In this case, I think it mostly comes down to the constant layer of electronic sound hanging over the tracks here, which makes everything denser and gives my ears more to dissect. That being said, even the metal side of the instrumentation has plenty to draw your attention, with its keen attention to melody and (in particular) the guitars’ attention to texture. Those tremolo riffs hit just right… digressions aside, this album definitely succeeds most in terms of composition. I don’t know how much of that’s due to the game’s composer (Brian Min), but no matter how collaborative The Dark Being is, the album nonetheless works wonders with its palette.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get to playing Lighthouse – I’m a busy girl, and I only have so much patience for older computer games at this point in my life. The game is available for sale on GOG, though – maybe give it a chance if this album inspires you?

Highlights: “Martin’s Roost”, “Temple of the Ancient Machines”