Black metal

Some really good shit – Converge, J.A. Mäki, Haraamo, Hebosagil, Liturqy, Mount Eerie, Oneothrix Point Never, Negură Bunget, Linkopii, Martolea

Good music that’s been on the block lately. Last weeks have had an influx of really memorable tracks from a diverse landscape of genres and sounds.

Converge & Chelsea Wolfe – Coil (Bloodmoon I, 2021)

Chaotic hardcore group turned doom. Converge has flirted with doom on all their latest albums but now they did what some doom lovers dared to dream of, go all in. Coil is probably the most easily approachable track with astounding tension and soundworld.

On first listens of the beginning trinity of Bloodmoon I was almost on a fanatical religious zeal. Unfortunately the latter side of the album never reaches the aggressiveness of old Converge and lacks quite a lot of diversity. When Converge albums used to be fast paced with occasional slowness, now the album is about 90 % slowness and even the faster bits are mostly mid tempo. Good stuff nevertheless and hopefully a sign of things to come with more versatility abound on Bloodmoon II.

J.A. Mäki – Hauta meren äärellä (AAVAA, 2019)

J.A. Mäki is better known as the singer of the best Finnish live band and one of my all time favourites Radiopuhelimet. I can’t believe it took me over 2 years to check out his solo project. Hauta meren äärellä includes naturefeels and calm death atmospherics. Exquisitely gleaming humming background scenery and gripping lyrics. It is rare for a song to create such a nature experience.

Haraamo – Menettämisestä (Aikamatkustaja, 2021)

Sci-fi Finnish indiepoprock retrowave melancholics, with a bit of hardcore shouting. Didn’t realize someone could make stuff like this. This is no gimmick either, the album is a very strong debut.

Hebosagil – Tämä on nähty (2021)

Hang on with me for one more Finnish track. Hebosagil from the Finnish capital of noisy obscurerock, Oulu. What a killer track, Hebosagil is a master of all major trades, weirdness, heaviness and pop hooks. Can’t wait for them to release the new album Yössä (25.2.2022). I hope it will also have longer tracks and not just pop hook brilliance that Tämä on Nähty kindly provides.

Two copied recommendations from Hebosagil’s playlist

Liturqy – GOD OF LOVE (H.A.Q.Q., 2019)

Almost definitely one of the weirdest black metal bands you’ve heard. Chaotic, wall of sound, abrubt pauses, yet perky and melodic. Big kicks on first listen.

Mount Eerie – Waves (Ocean Roar, 2012)

Ever thought that rushing and roaring sound walls could sound incredibly beautiful? Well they can.

Oneothrix Point Never – Long Road Home (Magic Oneothrix Point Never, 2021)

Ever thought that glitching experimental electronic music can actually be quite pop and still good? Well it can. There is some magic in Oneothrix Point Never. No one else really crafts sounds like this and the cover art is at par with the music.

Negură Bunget – Toacă Din Cer (Zău, 2021)

Toacă (the Romanian version of a semantron, a percussion instrument often made of wood that is knocked on with hammers by Eastern Orthodox monks to summon others to prayer). Din Cer seems to mean “from the heaven” or “from the sky” (Google translated).

This posthumous Negură Bunget release is a fine eulogy. Their main man Negru passed already in 2017 but had recorded drum tracks and percussions for the third part of their “Transylvanian trilogy”. The tracks were otherwise completely unfinished but luckily rest of the band members finished this work some years later. Posthumous releases are often met with too much praise but in this case i feel Zău was met with too LITTLE praise. For me it’s their best release since Vîrstele pămîntului (2010), topping also the new Dordeduh release (Dordeduh consists of ex-Negură Bunget members).

Toacă Din Cer might be the best Negură Bunget track ever. It is grippingly emotive with chanting vocals, soul penetrating melodic riffs and angelic haunting backgrounds. I only wish the lyrics were available somewhere. The last piece from the heavens indeed.

Martolea – Răsăritul Lunii (Noaptea dihăniilor, 2010)

Martolea is a pretty unknown side project of a Negură Bunget. Much more stripped of instrumental layers. It has a lot of the same aesthetics present but executed almost solely with band instruments. Flute is one of the unexpected prime instruments. Pretty good.

Linkopii – 2005 (Lanteet, 2020)

Bare with me for one more Finnish rock track. Linkopii who I don’t know where they are from but considering I found them through Hebosagil their heart must be from the capital of Finnish obscurely gripping rock, Oulu. In all honesty, apparently Linkopii was formed in Helsinki and previously some of the members have lived in Jyväskylä.

At surface they may come off as one of your typical indie rock bands, but on further peek there’s much more. A lot of strong elements and a pretty original setup. Good songwriting, strong guitar lines with a bit of 70s aesthetics a la Jukka Nousiainen, suomirock, punk and some bursts of psychedelic rock and weirdness. Sure, sometimes they are annoyingly bright and positive, but when a band has multiple sides, not each of them has to be of your liking. 2005, which is my prime cut has strong lyrics too.

I didn’t even mention the touches that remind of Risto. The second track of the album Anniina could be the counterpart of Risto classic: Rakkaani, mennään Aasiaan.

The judging metalhead in me really tried to like them less but I can’t.

Great underappreciated albums – Anti, Adramelech, DIRTYCREED, The Moth Gatherer

Short reviews of a few albums I’ve listened in the past year that I think deserve a lot more recognizion. Including The Moth Gatherer – A Bright Celestial Light (post-metal), Anti – The Insignificance of Life (depressive black metal), Adramelech – Pure Doom Blood (oldschool Finnish death metal) and DIRTYCREED – Bleeding Isle (neofolk).

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Anti – The Insignificance of Life (2006)

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Thick hypnotic depressive black metal. Landscape in Minor may be one of the pinnacles of the whole genre. Unlike bands like Xasthur who have jewels but a huge amount of crap, Anti only released one album that is throughoutly solid.

Full album in youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E36jyxh4cdw

8+/10

Adramelech – Pure Doom Blood (1999)

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Adramelech, A-grade Finnish oldschool death metal band was always good but lived in the shade of its more known counterparts like Demigod, Convulse and Demilich. Probably because it took them until 1996 to release their first length album.

Demilich was technical and a bit silly, Convulse and Demigod dark oldschool death metal. Adramelech is a cross between pitch black oldschool Finnish death and a fair amount of technicality without the silliness. The backbone is the groove of drummer Jarkko Rantanen and lead guitar work. The drums have something similar to Ken Owen of Carcass who also was quite a strange death metal drummer. Abomination 459 and Centuries of Murder are usually my choices when picking up individual tracks.

Neither Psychostasia (1996) or Pure Doom Blood (1999) are flawless but I personally find them more varied, groovy and melodic than what Convulse and Demigod ever did.

P.S. Pure Doom was finally re-released in 2018 and is available as a physical and digital copy.

8/10

Listen or buy a digital album from bandcamp: https://narex.bandcamp.com/album/pure-blood-doom

DIRTYCREED – Bleeding Isle (2017)

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Chinese one man neofolk band finds a sweet atmospheric spot. Vocals are very limited dark whispering with broken English but it does not break the spell. If in doubt just listen to magical melodies on The Architect or Riverside. It’s hard to find something more beautiful than the main theme of The Architect. DIRTYCREED is just bursting with talent, a lot of stylish piano and violin arrangements with lush soundscapes.

The entirety is a bit overlong and starts to repeat itself but Bleeding Isle has scattered brilliant themes throughout. The near perfect acoustic guitar sound helps a ton too. The album is a grower, there’s a ton of layered melodies. Bleeding Isle is not a simple man and a guitar album that one would come to expect. It will for sure last time very well and might easily grow to be even better with time.

Listen or buy a digital album from bandcamp: https://pestproductions.bandcamp.com/album/bleeding-isle

8/10

The Moth Gatherer – A Bright Celestial Light (2013)

First impression of Swedish outfit The Moth Gatherer will forever be Cult of Luna. Even though The Moth Gatherer are an undeniably similar band, they skipped the early undynamic hardcore-sludge phase and went straight into the good bits. It’s refreshing to see apprentices taking notes and fine-tuning the craft of their idols. Dynamic, varied most of the best post-metal characteristics, including slow atmospheric sections that naturally lead to heavy riffs and memorable melodies are present.

There’s variation and pure groove in the riffs. Just listen to The Road of Gravel and Skulls or the crushing end of The Womb, The Woe, The Woman. Both tracks introduce a great riff in the beginning, and then do a whole lot in the middle section. Like wander in cinematic noir landscapes bringing in mind Callisto, there’s also a bit of gentle chord picking, small electronic parts and ominous riffing to end with a juiced up beginning riff.

The tracks usually lead to an end pinnacle, but The Moth Gatherer is still not as much as a build up band as some of its counterparts like Isis. There’s an ever present wave motion in the compositions that I’ve very much come to like in post-metal. Who needs choruses anyway?

P.S. Don’t try to search them from The Metal Archives, somehow they are not listed as metal. Probably because their 2015 album The Earth is the Sky and 2017 EP The Comfortable Low are post rockish. Great releases nevertheless. The Moth Gatherer has an extremely solid discography including a 2019 release Esoteric Oppression.

9/10

Ultha — The Inextricable Wandering – Music Quickies

Atmospheric black metal

There’s a lot of shining material but a bit too much inextricable musical wandering in the tracks. If Ultha could slightly condense their output, the entity would be better.

The ends of the last two tracks (We Only Speak in Darkness & I’m Afraid to Follow You There) are good examples of Ultha’s blissful high peaks after slow build-ups. With Knives to Your Heart is a great constantly pacing, very memorable 10 minute track. The Aviarist is the fiercest affair with a ton of battering tremolo melodies. The Inextricable Wandering is still a slight step up from Converging Sins (2016) even though there’s no one masterful track like The Night Took Her Right Before My Eyes.

The Inextricable Wandering is a solid entity even with its 66 minute length. It keeps the interest up surprisingly well as the best bits have been placed evenly. Very much looking forward the next evolution of this lot!

8/10

A Forest of Stars — Grave Mounds and Grave Mistakes – Music quickies

avant-garde black metal / atmospheric black metal

A Forest of Stars have for a few albums had a very solid footing in the ever-changing grounds of avant-garde where black metal is just one of the elements. It is kind of like atmospheric black metal yes, there’s double-bass and plenty of tremolo, but oh so much other textures as well. Grave Mounds and Grave Mistakes listens a lot like a poem with dramatic spoken word, crazy whirlwind-fast or almost cried vocals. The lyrics are rich and constantly puzzling.

As satisfying as Grave Mounds and Grave Mistakes is, some clearer vocal arrangements or lyrics that are more approachable would have been welcome additions. That being said, there’s something about music that makes one feel dumb that I enjoy. The madness and fierce and tasty bits in the compositions make up for whatever the album lacks in approachability.

The mellow sections often take a long time, making the album challenging but relaxing. This is black metal suitable for afternoon tea. But when A Forest of Stars are not mellowing about, the compositions are rich with plenty of surprises. There’s frenzied pummeling, symphonic keyboards, electronic bridges, quality female vocals and most importantly dramatic violin melodies! They really can use the violin in their favour.

Even if one would go so far to classify the lyrics as poetic art bullshit it is impossible to question the effectiveness of Precipice Pirouette or Decomposing Deity Dance Hall. Shut up and get in the ground! He said to himself knowingly.

8/10

Like Summer 2018 Music to Your Ears playlist + Music Quickies

Like usual in the summertime I have not looked out for that much new music but focused on… Just summer I guess. I dunno where it went. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been new tracks on my playlist. Not all of the chosen music is summery, in fact most isn’t. Instead of idiotic hip summer music, the playlist has plain really fucking good tracks.

Metals of summer 2018

At The Gates published their new album To Drink From The Night Itself in 2018. It’s a pretty good effort with some memorable tracks (To Drink From The Night Itself, In Nameless Sleep, The Mirror Black) but most of all it made me retry their previous album At War With Reality (2014). Somehow I had skipped it altogether and it proved to be a mistake, it’s an extremely solid melodic death metal album that only loses a bit of punch by the end. And I don’t get excited about melodic death metal easily. Circular Ruins has a grandiose last half, great chorus, lovely guitar harmonies and fierce vocals (even the Crawling Chaos from H.P. Lovecraft gets a mention), what’s not to like.

Slugdge – Spectral Burrows. Esoteric Malacology is probably my favourite album of 2018 so far. Cosmic progressive death metal with a gimmicky lyric theme, that does not reflect to the overall quality of the music. How the hell a band that sings about snails makes lyrics and music this good.

Magoth – Requiem Deus (Anti Terrestrial Black Metal, 2017). So, there’s these rare songs that starts with a chorus. Really untypical but you find them sometimes. Requiem Deus is one of those but on top of that, the chorus is instrumental! That’s even rarer I guess! The basis is a strong as shit tremolo melody. I bet a lot of black metal bands could have composed this tremolo but how the track is arranged brings so much more power to it.

Craft‘s 2018 album White Noise and Black Metal does not seem to be as strong as Void (2011), but Void was ridiculously good. Cosmic Sphere Falls is right there among the best tracks of Craft’s career. Summer and black metal baby.

Asunojokei – Spring of Passion (Awakening, 2018). Combining black metal, post-hardcore and Japanese anime music melodies. How can it not fail? Asunojokei’s compositions sound so logical that on paper they sound much more weird than what they actually sound!

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My Reflection – Homeland (single, 2018) Out of the blue My Reflection published the best song of their career. Extremely symphonic melodic metal with a graceful music video that was shot in a time span of one year to portray Finnish nature and the seasons. The track celebrates the 100th anniversary of Finland’s independence. Homeland should satisfy the fans of bands like Wintersun and Nightwish. The 2 minute intro already cuts the mustard and it warms my heart that the soaring female vocals are paired with strongly grunted, black metallish rasp and some good ol’ blast beating sections. I also just published a short article about the track: https://likemusictoyourears.com/2018/08/10/my-reflection-homeland-epic-symphonic-melodic-metal/

Leprous – Stuck (Malina, 2017). Leprous gig in Tuska was among the best of the festival. The band looks like school boys and at best sounds like jazz musicians doing their impression of catchy progressive metal. The weird drumming style and lots of rhythmic hooks have drawn me quite in to their style. The last 1.5 minutes of rhythmics on Stuck are such a bliss.

doomed Doomed – Our Gifts (6 Anti-Odes to Life, 2018). Death/doom. Strong album that might lack a bit of high-points but the overall quality makes up for it. Especially The Doors and Our Gifts are high class atmospheric death-doom tracks. Strangely the tacit and slow instrumental Layers (Ode To Life) has been playing in my head after waking up, I guess it’s beautiful enough. As a satisfyingly logical detail, it is also the 7th track of the record!

Meshuggah – By The Ton (Violent Sleep of Reason, 2016). Another high point of Tuska 2018. The rhythmic majesty combined with the supreme light-show at times induced a catharsis. For example the title track of the record had a super satisfying effect of white lights going down on rhythm and speed with huge downward slides of one of the central riffs (first appearing at 0:34). By focusing on the lights they brought a completely new visual rhythm element to the show. By The Ton is still my favourite track of the record.

Electronics of summer 2018

Slipdrive – Nova Byzantium a Thousand Spires of Light (River of Heaven OST, 2014). A complete random find from a soundtrack of a pen an paper roleplaying game I’ve never played and probably never will. The soundtrack is lovely sci-fi-game music-chillout-electro. Nova Byzantium and The Coming Renunciation seem to launch the listener straight into space.

Vector Lovers – Monologue (iPhonica, 2013). Music that sounds like you were on drugs. Sounds that seem to come from an other dimension in surprising relaxing symmetry. Such weird sensations and damn if I like it!

Glanko – Orvot (single, 2018). Glanko’s progressive sci-fi IDM or what the heck it is always activates my synapses. Chillout electronic track with really strong astral spacey vibes. Ideal for watching a spacestation move slowly with a small beam drive, multicoloured star rings and nebulas shining around it.

Finnish music of summer 2018 (sad list)

Paperi T – Muutos (Kaikki on hyvin, 2018). My mainstream sin. The flow and sound of Paperi-T’s vocals and the cunning punning lyrics are a joy to listen. Even though his darker compositions and lyrics seem to be in the past, when Paperi-T is at his darkest that’s when I enjoy him the most. One of those lyricists that makes you want to google what the hell he is singing about but can also surprise with straight-forward lines and stories. New album is quite uneven but has a really good starting trinity.

Best albums and tracks of 2017

The best albums of 2017 contains 60 albums that I listened enough to warrant them a place in this list. Scroll further down for the best tracks as a Spotify playlist and a few pickups that I missed in 2016. Hyperlinks lead to reviews.

Best albums of 2017

Near perfect (9+)

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Loss — Horizonless – funeral doom / deathdoom – Horizonless by Loss is a giant of a funeral doom album. It portrays a wide dispersal of moods, shifting between beautiful, crushing and ominous. The instrumentation and sounds are all top level, even the bass guitar comes to the fore time to time.
Horizonless seeped among the best albums of 2017 slowly. I dare to say this is my favourite doom release from the US since Morgion’s criminally underknown Cloaked by Ages, Crowned in Earth (2004).

Excellent (9)

Nyss — Princesse Terre (Three Studies of Silence and Death) – atmospheric black metal – Fantastic atmosphere, riffs and use of effective repetition. Climaxes, build-ups, some melodies, backing ambience. Absolute top tier atmospheric and hypnotic black metal.

Very good (9-)

Grave Pleasures — Motherblood – death rock / post-punk – Everything that Beastmilk, who later renamed themselves to Grave Pleasures did right in the first album Climax (2013) also comes in place on Motherblood. The blasphemous lyrics, deathrock and catchy pop hooks groove together elegantly again.
The album retains a strong base level through it’s length. Tracks like Joy Through Death dance between two worlds masterfully. It could be an eulogy or as well just a piece of dark humorous obscenity!

Hebosagil — Fortuna / Auta – noise rock / post-metal / hardcore punk – Bursting with melodies and aggression. I don’t think they’ve ever before had this many pop hooks. On the other hand, the 2nd track Auta still flirts with drone and noise rock with violently paranoid lyrics…

Good+ (8½)

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Septicflesh — Codex Omega – symphonic death metal

Woe — Hope Attrition – atmospheric black metal – biggest grower of the year.

Oranssi Pazuzu — Kevät / Värimyrsky – Psychedelic black metal / stoner doom – Pazuzu re-released their split with Candy Cane with the name Farmakologinen, it’s a 9+/10 album but also released a brand new great single. Värimyrsky is a welcome nod back to their old days.

Slægt — Domus Mysterium – black metal / heavy metal – I really liked the 2015 EP Beautiful and Damned so it’s really welcome to see they are as good a full-length band!

Wintersun — The Forest Seasons – symphonic metal /progressive metal / melodic metal – Wintersun’s The Forest Seasons might be the album that has split most opinions in 2017. It currently stands at 56 % in Metal Archives which cannot be based on music alone. For the musics in this music album are mostly solid as heck.
First three tracks (clocking over 40 minutes) are packed with memorable melodies, good songwriting and fine sounding symphonics. Wintersun is not a one trick pony solely based on power metal and melodeath. The album has a few aces up its sleeve. For example, most melodeath bands might not try their skills in black metal or melancholic doom.

Heptaedium — How Long Shall I Suffer Here? – electronic metal / breakcore / nintendocore / progressive metal

Glanko — Osmosi – Sci-fi IDM – Dark toned themes with sci-fi elements. Glanko has matured and found great melody lines to accompany beats more diverse than ever. Perfect music for reading sci-fi like Dan Simmonds Hyperion quartet! You can add / remove half a point depending if you are reading sci-fi or not!

Sun of The Sleepless — To The Elements – atmospheric black metal

Good+ (8+)

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Vallenfyre — Fear Those Who Fear Him – oldschool death metal with connections to Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride and Abhorrence. Not surprisingly, the best moments on Fear Those Who Fear Him are the slower doomier bits. The sound of the album is quite perfect for this kind of music altogether. Really powerful, far from crystal clear, yet not muddy at all. Piercing, rumbling and ferocious.

The Moth Gatherer — The Comfortable Low – post-metal / post-rock

Wear Your Wounds — WYW – slowcore / post-rock / shoegaze – side-project of Converge’s Jacob Bannon. The highs are really high if you’ve always digged the slower tracks of Converge. WYW strips down almost all heavy guitars and is quite a melancholic slowcore / post-rock / shoegaze album. Unsurprisingly the heaviest moments rank among the best.
There’s over 20 minutes of boring material in the midst of 63 minutes so I’m ranking it more for the good points than for the bad. Just skipping the last two tracks already makes it great. Still difficult to get into.

Ayreon — The Source (album 1) – progressive rock / musical

AlNamrood — Enkar – Middle Eastern blackened deaththrash – one of the biggest growers of the year, initially I did not even like Enkar it as it does not repeat the mystic and even majestic atmospheric tricks of their 2015 album Diaji Al Joor. Enkar is quite a punk album compared to Diaji but after over 10 listens the Middle Eastern instrumentation, nuances and straightforward fierce song-writing started to really feel like a tight package.

Good (8ish)

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Over the Voids… — Over The Voids – black metal

James Elkington — Wintres Woma – singer-songwriter / acoustic / folk – At best Elkington channels Nick Drake’s gentle guitar virtuosity. Fortunately he is not a one-trick pony but I admit I’m a sucker for the more complicated pickings.

Ulver — The Assassination of Julius Caesar – avant-garde synthpop / experimental

Converge — The Dusk In Us – metalcore / hardcore / post-hardcore

WÖYH! — KRTKRTK – progressive rock / children’s music for adults

Janne Westerlund — There’s a Passage – singer-songwriter / folk / acoustic / experimental

Au-Dessus — End of Chapter – atmospheric black metal / post-metal

The Faceless — In Becoming a Ghost – progressive death metal – Half really good (Digging The Grave, The Spiraling Void, Shake The Disease, I Am, half of Black Star), the rest is filler. Extra points from how the melodramatic intro sets up Digging the Grave. The jumpiest album start since Ghost of Perdition by Opeth!

Pryapisme — Diabolicus Felinae Pandemonium – Avant-garde metal / experimental metal

8-

Ochre — Beyond The Outer Loop – idm / downtempo / ambient

Troldhaugen — Idio+syncrasies – avant-garde metal / humour metal – Half funny, half annoying, half great. This is a true love it or hate it album, yet I am inbetween because the compositions are mostly great but vocals oft times annoyingly over freaky. The metalcore / crabcore influences aren’t that much of my liking either, some of the avant-garde elements are outrageously good and only a few outrageously annoying (the rap part of It’s Morphine Time, yet the chorus is a hilarious stadium rock sing-a-long). The album has hints of Crotchduster-like greatness. Bullseye track has the best track title of the year: I Ordered A Taxi Driver Not A Taxidermy.

Riitaoja — Täytettyjä lintuja – experimental indie rock / art rock / folk

Wvrm — Can You Hear The Wind Howl – grindcore / death metal – 10 minutes is just the right length for this kind of furious album. 6 tracks with a 3 minute doomy headbanger in the midst. Epic track length in their standards.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard — Flying Microtonal Banana – garage rock / psychedelic rock

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard — Gumboot Soup – garage rock / psychedelic rock – The rest of the 5 (!!!!!) albums they released this year I did not check properly yet. Quick check on Polygondwanaland sounds like another real quality effort. It’s concept would also be worth a mention. Here’s a great Youtube video sumup of their 5 album plan. King Gizzard is probably the most innovative rock band at the moment. Maybe one of the albums will match their 2016 album Nonagon Infinity.

Hanging Garden — I Am Become – atmospheric rock / doom metal – Blackout Whiteout was one of the biggest surprises of 2015, the first tastes of I am Become were great, yet it did not have the growth of the last album. The best bits Kouta and Our Dark Design are top class and the album does not really have bad sections either.

Lantern — II: Morphosis – new wave of Finnish oldschool dark death metal in the vein of Demigod and Convulse

7½

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Kardinaalit — Primus Culpa – experimental / rock / humour – Primus Culpa demo should be annoying but mostly it is actually funny. These guys also have some high class material in their soundcloud (also a lot of junk), eagerly awaiting if they piece their shit together out of humour terrains and develop their stronger tracks. At least 3-4 are already fully ready and would be a backbone of a very strong release

Enslaved — E – progressive metal / viking metal / black metal – possible grower

Eneferens — In The Hours Beneath – atmospheric rock / atmospheric black metal

Wolves in the Throne Room — Thrice Woven – atmospheric black metal

Fen — Winter – atmospheric black metal – possible grower

Vulture Industries — Stranger Times – progressive metal / avant-garde metal – The first three tracks of the album are really fucking good which is why it’s such a shame that the rest of the album is strangely mediocre to almost useless. Three other tracks do stand out a bit. Something Vile’s last half is driven by good lead guitars and heavy drum pounding, matching the beginning. Midnight Draws Near and Screaming Reflections do have great vocals and good dynamic going on but constantly slow paced pretty good compositions fail to resonate much after the beginning of the album does everything a few notches better.

Pillorian — Obsidian Arc – atmospheric black metal

7+

Ne Obliviscaris — Urn – progressive metal

KANASHIMI — INORI – depressive black metal / funeral doom / japanese pop influences – yes you read right, Scar of the heart is a bullseye of a track, a nicely unique dsbm sound. Then the one man project repeats it nearly all album long… Classic one man band problem really.

Havukruunu — Kelle surut soi – pagan black metal – hello Moonsorrow, these guys are pretty good in their own right too. Bullseye track: Kelle Surut Soi.

Inferno Requiem — Nüwa 女媧 – oldschool black metal / atmospheric black metal

Igorrr — Savage Sinusoid – avant-garde metal / breakcore / electronic

Skyclad — Forward Into The Past – folk metal / heavy metal – metal-observer’s review seemed to sum most of my thoughts. I just have to add the best track “Change Is Coming” is at part with almost any of their tracks and “State of The Union Now” a fresh reminder of their thrash past. Judging by the 2015 album Atom by Atom, Steve Ramsay might just leave his best tracks for his other project, Satan.

Myrkur — Maredit – black metal / indie rock / dream pop – fantastic beginning then the mediocre but well sung indie / dream pop elements come to the surface. Most of the metallish tracks are slow, doomy and boring. The blastbeating chaotic atmosphere appears too scarcely. Luckily there’s Gladiatrix.

Okay (7ish)

Falls of Rauros — Vigilance Perennial – atmospheric black metal

Planeetta 9 — Koivut – Finnish metal / rock / doom

Falaise — My Endless Immensity – blackgaze

Akercocke — Renaissance In Extremis – avant-garde metal / black metal – Possible grower, ~8 listens doesn’t seem to be enough

Alfahanne — Det Nya Svarta – post-punk / death rock – One track miracle Satans Verser, probably the best rock track of the year, there’s a good mellow post-punk atmosphere but Avgrundsgravitation and Det Nya Svarta are the only tracks that completely succeed in tension. Mitt mörkär är mörkäre än ditt is weirdly catchy, I can’t quite put my hand on it, if i like it or don’t. Same catchiness goes for Även an Hund Har Sin Dag. For a while I thought the album is great until it crashed down to mediocre. I admit I might like it more if I bothered to understand more of the lyrics.

Ayreon — The Source (album 2) – progressive rock / musical

Paradise Lost — Medusa – doom metal / death doom

Okay- (6½) aka class c black metal

Fleurety — The White Death – One track miracle The Ballad of The Copernicus, few ok tracks besides it (White Death, Future Day). Special credit to the worst riff of the year in the peculiarly, chosen single track Lament of the Optimist.

Ajattara — Lupaus – black metal – One track miracle Saatanan Sinetti, few good tracks besides it (Sinä, last half of Lupaus). Most lyrics a bit stupid: Pimeä, pimeä, kuolema, kuolema blah blah blah.. Special credit to stupidest choruses of the year in Ristinkirot and Machete. Too bad as Machete is musically quite a great headbanger.

Charnel Winds — Verschränkung – Avant-garde metal / black metal

Asagraum — Potestas Magicum Diaboli – black metal

Best tracks of 2017

Best tracks arranged to a playlist in quite random order. Playlist in text-pdf format + a few tracks that aren’t in Spotify: Best_tracks_of_2017

Bubbling under

Brilliant tracks just below the first category. Except on a good day…

2016 reprise

Bunch of interesting 2016 releases found too late

9ish

Downfall of Gaia — Atrophy – atmospheric black metal / post black metal

8½

W. Iivarinen — Melankolia – Finnish metal / rock

8ish

Blood Incantation — Starspawn – Progressive atmospheric death metal
Jpefmafia — Black Ben Carson – underground hiphop / experimental rap / trap
Cantique Lepreaux — Cendres Célestes – atmospheric black metal
Ultha — Converging Sins – atmospheric black metal / post-black metal
明日の叙景(Asunojokei) — 過誤の鳥 (A Bird in the Fault) – post-black metal/post-hardcore

7 to 8-

Khid — Ohi – experimental rap / trap
Baptism — V: The Devil’s Fire – black metal
Jpefmafia — The 2nd Amendment – underground hiphop / experimental rap / trap
Saor — Guardians – atmospheric folk / black metal
Radiopuhelimet — Saastan Kaipuu – melurock / finnish rock
Giraffe Tongue Orchestra — Broken Lines – alternative metal / alternative rock

2017 Music Quickies – Wear Your Wounds, Wvrm, Nyss, KANASHIMI, Glanko, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

Bunch of albums released in 2017 in quick and dirty reviews.

Wear Your Wounds — WYW

Side-project of Converge’s Jacob Bannon. If you’ve always digged the doomy and lengthier tracks with build up in Converge’s discography you need to check this out. The highs are really high and the lows are boring. WYW strips down almost all heavy guitars and a lot of times is quite a melancholic slowcore / post-rock / shoegaze album. Unsurprisingly the heaviest moments rank among the best. High points: Wear Your Wounds, Iron Rose, Best Cry Of Your Life, Fog.

There’s over 20 minutes of boring material in the midst of 63 minutes so I’m ranking it more for the good than for the bad. Difficult to get into and a possible grower. I am beginning to think the gigantic ups might rank it over Convege’s fine 2017 full-length The Dusk In Us.

Wvrm — Can You Hear The Wind Howl – grindcore / death metal

10 minutes is just the right length for this kind of furious album. 6 tracks with a 3 minute doomy headbanger in the midst. Epic track length in their standards.

Nyss — Princesse Terre (Three Studies of Silence and Death)

Contender for the best album of 2017. The start is a bit jarred, angelic ambient and voice clip (of Francis Bacon (artist)) suddenly turns into a raw riff. But the track soon gets better and more stellar as the atmosphere sets in place. And boy, does it get better by a ton.

Fantastic atmosphere, riffs and use of effective repetition. Climaxes, build-ups, some melodies, backing ambience. Absolute top tier atmospheric and hypnotic black metal. A good amount of airy elements without being post black metal.

The release is really cheap in Bandcamp, only 3.33 (plus taxes)! The bargain of the year. https://avantgardemusic.bandcamp.com/album/princesse-terre-three-studies-of-silence-and-death

KANASHIMI — INORI

Depressive black metal / funeral doom / japanese pop influences. Yes you read right, these elements actually fit together. Scar Of The Heart is a bullseye of a track, a nicely unique dsbm sound. Then the one man project repeats the sound nearly all album long… Classic one man band problem really. Fantastic cover art.
7+
https://pestproductions.bandcamp.com/album/inori

Glanko – Osmosi

Glanko’s first EP in 2012 was a very ready progressive IDM release. After that Glanko turned surprisingly dark-toned with a bunch of releases more inviting as background music (2014 Alset, 2016 Isometrik). I simply did not find much hooks from them. In 2015 the release 2244 included a great track and a few fantastic remixes. 2017 Sakugen single blew off with a friggingly catchy edm/idm hit. It was not a hit cause no one who could have made it a hit listened it.

2017 release Osmosi goes back to dark toned themes with sci-fi elements. This time Glanko has matured and found great melody lines to accompany beats more diverse than ever. Perfect music for reading sci-fi like Dan Simmonds Hyperion quartet! I think Glanko has finally found itself. Though I wouldn’t be against making an album of the elements in Sakugen. Fantastic release, unfitting cover art. Highpoints: Processo Interiore, Nictofilia, Argyria, Nube

8½
https://glanko.bandcamp.com/track/osmosi

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard — Flying Microtonal Banana

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard — Gumboot Soup

The beginning of Flying Microtonal Banana is repetitive and jammy psychedelic rock, even reminding of kraut rock. The latter part is more a regular weird garage rock / psychedelic rock album. Rather a midtempo one when the great Nonagon Infinity from 2016 had both high and mid tempo tracks. High points: Billabong Valley.

Gumboot Soup has a lot softer base sound. Beginner’s Luck is my favourite of the softer tracks. Muddy Water is a lovelily repetitive jammer. All Is Known could well be a Nonagon Infinity outtake and The Great Chain of Being is nearly a stoner doom track! The Wheel and Greenhouse Heat Death remind of Flying Microtonal Banana. Nicely diverse effort.

I’ve only punctured the 5 listen mark on both of these so not all high points, or points altogether, are clear yet.

2-King-Gizzard-and-The-Lizard-Wizard-CMW-Indie-Underground-Aaron-McMillan

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The rest of the 5 (!!!!!) albums they released this year I did not check properly yet.

Quick check on Polygondwanaland sounds like another real quality effort. It’s concept is worth a special mention. It was released with a statement “This album is FREE. Free as in, free. Free to download and if you wish, free to make copies. Make tapes, make CD’s, make records.” To date in discogs there’s 74 different releases! People have really taken care of the releasing process. Maybe you want to do it too? You are free to: http://kinggizzardandthelizardwizard.com/polygondwanaland/index.html

Here’s a great & entertaining sumup video of their 5 album plan by a Youtube channel Middle 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjjCW6_fuXU.

King Gizzard is probably the most innovative rock band at the moment. I’ll continue to check the other of their efforts, maybe one of them will match Nonagon Infinity.

Monumental Folkish & Folk metal playlist

1. Fleurety – Fragmenter av en Fortid disappeared from Spotify just a while ago, it will be added back when it comes back around. Full-length Min tid skal komme from 1995 is the real jewel of their discography. One of many “lost” metal releases that many consider a classic but most people have never heard about. It’s definitely a must checkup for fans of folkish metal.

1. Fleurety’s place was taken by Pillorian, the newly formed line-up of ex-Agalloch John Haughm. After Agalloch split into two pieces in 2016, the remaining three members went to form Khôrada that is due to release their first album. Pillorian‘s 2017 release Obsidian Arc starts with it’s brightest spots, By the Light of a Black Sun (+ Archaen Divinity) should sate most Agalloch fans.

2. Fen is not a band that I’ve tracked, even though it’s similarities to Agalloch have been known to me since their first full-length Malediction Fields in 2009. It is only lately that I gave a true chance to their unpolished first album and it unveiled a real jewel in Lashed by Storm. The weak clean vocals in the very end are it’s only grey spot. Fen’s 2017 release Winter materialized on my listening cycle; it does have some very atmospheric sections but its also really-frigging-long (75 minutes!). I would deem it very possible that a track from it appears to my playlists later on.

3.-4. As a humble praise, Wilderun‘s Sleep at the Edge of Earth might be my favourite metal release of past 5 years. It has a glorious quaternity Ash Memory (trinity has 3, quaternity 4, yeah i just looked it up from google…), from which 2 well fitting tracks were chosen. Hope and Shadow (II), and the The Faintest Echo (IV). The traces in the beginning of Hope and Shadow that clip in this collection are from the 1st track of the quaternity. Wilderun really took care to make it a logical entity which I then disturbed!

The Faintest Echo’s 3.20 monumental symphonic centerpiece and outro of the quaternity is a prime example why Wilderun’s output doesn’t pale in comparison with any symphonic and folk metal bands of today.

5. Tore Hund is by Ivar Bjørnson & Einar Selvik’s Skuggsjá. It is a project by Enslaved and Wardruna veterans, which may run below radar cause of it’s eccentric name that sounds like artsy folk music. Well um, it is kind of that actually, in a lot of ways Skuggsja sounds more like folk with metal elements than the other way around. Though even the folkier tracks often have a heavy backbone that owes to metal and makes these two elements come together naturally.

6. In Zuriaake‘s Afterimage of Autumn‘s most stunning moment, the chorus of 歸兮 / Return Journey Zuriaake seamlessly adds a traditional sounding Chinese tremolo melody to a slow doomy basis. Unfortunately I could not pick the name of this guitar like string instrument as the booklet is all in Chinese (except track titles). Zuriaake’s black metal focuses on entwining natural atmospherics, ambience with very overdriven guitars and depressive black metal vibe. I also reviewed them in the past (https://likemusictoyourears.com/2016/01/26/zuriaake-afterimage-of-autumn).

7. October Falls is an interesting beast for their first promo was metal but three of the first four official releases were acoustic guitar driven material with a lot of natural ambience. Since then they’ve mostly strolled on the metallic grounds, always with quality but rarely with something that really catches my ears. A Collapse of Faith Part III, from 2010 A Collapse of Faith must be their best track to date. I must admit however that I have spent way too little time in adjusting to 2013, The Plague of a Coming Age. That ought to be my next listen.

8. The noise / drone wall of Sol Invictus‘ English Murder‘s intro make it a significantly difficult piece. But I am not making these collections for layman listeners quick fix. The controversy and paradox of a folk track being actually heavier and darker than the following metal track make it a juicy addon.

9. Logically following Sol Invictus is Agalloch, who have listed Sol Invictus as one of their big influences. Agalloch is one of the very first metal bands that I got into and surely the first folkish metal band. Yet in their sound progressive elements, post-rock and melancholia are also ever present. Limbs 10 minute brilliance is started by deliciously annoyingly long 10 second note after which it goes all post-rock. Climbing to mountains, descending into valleys and drifting among the transparent mist.

I do appreciate a well timed and set up grunt, John Haughm’s 6.35 effort is one of the prime examples! “These boughs were said to be lost! Torn, unearthed and broken – IYRRRRRRRRRRRR”. What the fuck is he even singing about? There must be something to it as it inspires genuine sing-along grunting from yours truly. When it comes to grunting, Haughm is right up there with Thomas Gabriel Fischer.

10. Skyclad‘s past two albums haven’t been nearly as notable as most of their 12 full-lengths before them (many of them are masterpieces after all). I would only rate A Burnt Offering for the Bone Idol and No Daylights Not Heeltaps on level with the new albums. However, on In The… All Together from 2009 Skyclad formed possibly the best track of their career, The Well-Travelled Man. The vocalist Kevin Ridley is on fire, shouting half of the track. Lyrics and composition communicate perfectly into a folky, dramatic, upbeat, yet melancholic tune with a heart-wrenching ending. Wow.

Depression Overload – metal playlist

Funeral doom and depressive black metal is the bread and butter of this album (a playlist really, but I consider my playlists albums). It visits only a few other despairing terrains. This is no melancholy walk in the park as my previous playlists (Monumental funeral doom melancholy and Post-rock melancholia) but pure despair and depression. The darkness on the album is not sourced from incoherent extreme sewer sounds but tightly sounding bands that combine a great melodic sense with a feeling of hopelessness and misery.

1. It would not make sense to reveal all the cards in the beginning, so the beginning of the album is a light descent with some melodic funeral doom.

Shape of Despair is a band many of the melancholic melodic funeral doom bands model after. Their second album Angels of Distress (2001) is the biggest landmark yet strangely I seem to have picked tracks from their two newer ones in my playlists. Entwined in Misery is the best piece of their 2004 album Illusion’s play. It features hauntingly beautiful background keys that have lasted the touch of time extremely well. Pasi Koskinen’s growling kept getting deeper as Shape of Despair progressed in their career, peaking here. The new vocalist Henri Koivula (Throes of Dawn) does a tremendous job on their newest release, Monotony Fields (2015) as well.
All these years in absence
…forgiveness does not reveal itself…

…and emptiness falls before me…
And silences this life,

2. One of the best releases of 2015 Leviathan’s Scar Sighted is based on black metal but at it’s darkest it is pure nihilistic funeral doom. The title track is especially gloomy. The tortured screams and bright piano create a real contrast of depression and light.
Nil light reigns
Only tattered accusations
Paling to the comparison
Now utterly drained
And all wonder is banished
Life after life
Absorbing
Nothing

3. Evoken – Mournful Refusal. Evoken could be called a successor of nihilistic old school funeral bands like Esoteric, also having more in common with Thergothon and Skepticism than Shape of Despair. 2005 release Antithesis of Light (what a title!) benefits of its modern and crushingly heavy production. Hear also the dynamics, how beautifully Evoken has crafted a chorus with clean guitar and lovely bursty double bass drumming.
Waiting only prolongs the wanting
Living only prolongs the arriving
Death knows no regret of a mournful refusal

In sporadic tone, the composition of beauty
Turned grim and cold…

4. Lifelover (what a band name!), a lot of people loathe them and for a reason. Their sounds take some time to get used to, drum machine and quite amateuristic guitar sounds. Upon listening their masterpiece, Konkurs for the first time I thought: “Is this the masterpiece? Really?” But it’s a stunning grower with a soul that is very hard to find on any other release. The pitch-black humour in the depressive lyrics is the icing on the cake.

Stängt p.g.a Semester (closed because of semester) is an interlude unlike anything else on this album. A beautifully haunting acoustic track with despairing lyrics. One of the only instances were being forced to study ~8 years of Swedish in school has paid off.

På Svenska
Vem behöver glädjas åt sig själv
När vi kan skratta åt andra?
Vem behöver ha ett syfte
När det är urvattnat och saknar mening?
Vem behöver säga att “Jag mår bra”
När ändå ytan är det viktiga?Innan jag åkte, lämnade jag bomber,
Där ni känner er som mest trygga
Jag kommer inte tillbaka

English translation
Who needs to be happy about their selves
When we can laugh at others?
Who needs a purpose
When it’s all dried up and lacks meaning?
Who needs to say “I feel good”
When the surface is what counts?

Before I left, I planted bombs
Where you feel most secure
I won’t return

5. A lot of people thought it a dick move when a couple years ago Ghost Bath swindled in being a Chinese band, but turned out to be American. They said that was because they wanted to keep actual identities/location anonymous and for affection of Chinese culture.

Prejudice labelled aside Moonlover is a fine release but Happyhouse is the lethal injection Ghost Bath is at it’s best in prescribing. Happyhouse brings in mind the “Mental Central Dialog” themes of Lifelover. It’s bright melodies and incoherently painful screaming vocals clash together to create a feeling of an mental asylum. The melodies are a bit predictable but twisted a little obscure, perhaps wee bit out of tune and so fucking good, all this predictability is a strength. A downright shuddering tune.

6. Drudkh – Solitude. Yes it’s a great track and yes it’s pretty long with a lot of repetition, in the right mode Solitude becomes a very meditative track. Solitude is one of the only instances of more melancholic terrain than the rest of the tracks, it’s true potential lies in its slow and somber orchestral main melody.

Solitude’s lyrics are from a poem of an Ukrainian artist Taras Shevchenko (Thoughts of mine, О thoughts of mine, 1839). The familiar slavic dramatic melancholy is easy to discover.

Ukrainian
Журбою
Не накличу собі долі,
Коли так не маю.
Нехай злидні живуть три дні –
Я їх заховаю,
Заховаю змію люту
Коло свого серця,
Щоб вороги не бачили,
Як лихо сміється…
Нехай думка, як той ворон,
Літає та кряче,
А серденько соловейком
Щебече та плаче
Нишком – люди не побачать,
То й не засміються…
Не втирайте ж мої сльози,
Нехай собі ллються,
Чуже поле поливають
Щодня і щоночі,
Поки попи не засиплють
Чужим піском очі…

English translation
Never knew I joy, nor will it
Come to me if I
Grieve ’thout end…. Let grief be short-lived,
Let it snake-like lie
Coiled within my breast and hidden
From the evil sight
Of my foes…. And may its laughter
Reach them not…. By night
And by day my thoughts are ravens;
Let them croak while my
Heart, a songbird, trills and warbles,
While it softly sighs,
Sighs and moans with none to hear it
Or to taunt it … Pray,
Let me weep, and do not try to
Wipe my tears away.
Let them flow and flood the alien
Field till that a priest
Comes and covers me with alien
Earth…. Ah, me! No peace
Grief will bring me….

English translation by Irina Zheleznova taken from http://taras-shevchenko.infolike.net/t-shevchenko-tr-by-irina-zheleznova-poem-thoughts-of-mine-o-thoughts-of-mine.html) I cannot speak Ukrainian so the English and Ukrainian parts may not match exactly.

7. Moonsorrow – Kuolleiden Maa. Listen, Moonsorrow is not most known for their depressive black metal vibes. But on Kuolleiden Maa they are nothing else.

Finnish
Olen siellä mistä kaikki alkaa uudelleen
Missä valo ei värejä näytä
Kaikkialle levittäytyy tasainen niitty
Vain taivas ylläni vaalenee
Käy rauhaisena vierelläni tuuli
Itse silmäni suljen ja itken
Tänne jään, kaipuuta vailla
Rikotun henkeni veden virtaan annan

English translation
I am there where everything
starts and
Where the light shows no colours
An even meadow stretching everywhere
Only the sky above me growing lighter
A calm breeze is blowing beside me | I close my
eyes and weep | Here I
shall remain, without yearning | My broken spirit I shall give to the streaming
waters

Illustration from British Library free to use Flickr

Monumental metal 4 – Epixperimental playlist

Bring out the weird again, epic experimental tracks! This playlist features bands from experimental terrain that have a solid basis on metal.

1. Rudra‘s Illusory Enlightment is “Vedic” metal from Singapore. Vedic comes from their incorporation of Sanskrit Vedic literature, philosophy and ancient mantras (shlokas) to blackened death metal basis. They also encompass traditional Carnatic music to their compositions. Illusory Enlightment’s top moment is the compelling chanting chorus. See also the review of their album Brahmavidya: Immortal I here.

2. Jumalhämärä is one of the many bands in Finnish experimental black metal terrain that has gotten more attention in the past 10 years. Along with bands like Oranssi Pazuzu, Abyssion, Mörkö, Jumalhämärä is probably the weirdest of the bunch. The title track of their most accessible album Resignaatio is a rare catchy, almost punky, track and in their catalogue that makes it an abnormality. Its deep bass rumbling intro turns into naturally flowing structure, captivating Finnish lyrics with supremely hooking riffing and stylish use of upstrokes. You know what they released after Resignaatio? A drone pipe organ album. Really.

3. December Wolves is one of the many bands I found from Earache presents: Metal – A headbanger’s companion (2007). It is from the CD 2 – Grindcore, but especially CD 6 – Leftfield is a great listen (Cult of Luna, Callisto, Scorn, Godflesh, Akercocke, Crotchduster etc.). Desperately Seeking Satan could be called leftfield, though its roots are firmly in black metal. The heavy use of voice clips, nihilistic lyrics and programmed drums combining industrial with violent black metal guitars make their 2002 release Blasterpiece Theatre have a sound appearance unlike any other.

4. The Meads of Asphodel – Children of the Sunwheel Banner (part 2). You could say that Metatron, the vocalist of Meads of Asphodel takes making lyrics a bit seriously. Their webpage has about 100 pages of text per album about the lyrical themes. So you can imagine it surges pretty deep. It seems the web page is unfortunately down at the moment though.

Sunwheel banner obviously references to nazis. I am not even going into the stuff of them being “nazis” because they are a metal band that has an interest of the atrocities of the past + uses the word “jew”. Oh and one of the 10 labels that has released their music has apparently released an NSBM release, jeez.

Like in one of my previous playlists Monumental metal oddities, I placed “cousin” bands The Meads of Asphodel and Sigh after each other. They have enough eccentric material to use for a few playlists. Also, the keyboard solo in Children of the Sunwheel Banner is played by none else than the main man behind Sigh, Mirai Kawashima.

5. Sigh – A Messenger From Tomorrow (I. The Message – II. Foreboding – III. Doomsday). The most epic track in Sigh’s catalogue. Surprisingly also one of the lightest ones, based on strong orchestral melodies. The lesser amount of heavy distortion guitars does not mean the composition wouldn’t be huge though. A Messenger From Tomorrow only further proves the multifacetedness of Sigh as a monstrously diverse band.

6. Negură Bunget – Cunoașterea tăcută. Negura Bunget’s 2006 release Om is one of the highlights of 2000s black metal in both song-writing and originality. The introduction of Romanian traditional instruments, epic soundscapes, shamanistic repetitive passages, raw production and very oldschool black metal elements blew many a mind. Cunoașterea tăcută includes one of those clean melodies (at 3.00) that makes you wonder on what plane of being it was conceived. Oldschool black metal riffing accompanied with traditional instruments and high-flying folk singing with the catchiness of bubonic plague.

7. Ufomammut – Daemons. What a Monster riff to close up their 2015 release, Ecate. That is all that needs to be said really.