Doom Metal

Ancestors – Suspended in Reflections & King Goat – Debt of Aeons – Dazzling Double Doom Quickie

Ancestors – Suspended in Reflections

Ancestors-Suspended-in-Reflections-cover It is not Ancestor, the Pre-Kalmah band but a plural Ancestors, an US doom band. Suspended in Reflections must be the prettiest album of the year. While it’s definitely not very extreme, it is unquestionably a doom record. Dazzlingly melodic and spacey, quite upbeat but still sadly solemn.

Ancestors song-writing department realized the godly chorus of Gone and repeat it thematically perfectly in the next track Through a Window. The Warm Glow is a perfect title to describe the sensation of the last track, this time there’s also some attitude in the vocals. One could ask, is this pop doom metal (yeah I just made up that genre), have they gone too far with the softness? However it may be to some, Suspended in Reflections is palpably damn well performed. It pulls some of my strings remarkably.

If only the lyrics where somewhere to be found or bought. Bands, add the digital booklets in Bandcamp and tell the customers please. Thanks. I will buy. A lot.

9/10

King Goat – Debt of Aeons

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It took a whole of 2 seconds for me to get the first goosebumps. Rapture‘s psychedelic jam is irresistible. King Goat is not supremely original but the riffs are always good and sometimes excellent. Compositions are not boring, the vocalist has a slightly mean and really well-sung output, reminds a bit Primordial’s Nemtheanga. Musically there’s something similar to The Wounded Kings.

King Goat is at their best when they slow down and let things mildly psychedelicate themselves and the riffs grow and alter from original setups. Alterations between heavier and quieter sections are nearly always excellent and delightfully common. The album breathes a lot. If only the melodic centerpiece of the title track Debt of Aeons had lasted longer. Still, it builds a mighty tension to the rest of the track. A very worthy title track

King Goat has had a good start in building themselves a solid discography, Debt of Aeons is their 2nd album, marginally better than Conduit (2016) (8/10 in my 2016 top list).

P.S. Conduit is a prime example on how to build a good album entity, 41 minutes with 26 minutes of solid leftover songs as bonus tracks. Instead of jamming them into 41 minute solid entity, making it too long, they were releases separately. Musicians, take note.

8/10

The Eternal – Waiting For The Endless Dawn

The-Eternal_Waiting-for-the-Endless-Dawn-500x500 The Doom is back! The Eternal’s debut The Sombre Light of Isolation (2004) clearly hailed to old doom greats but after the debut The Eternal gradually decreased doom influences and brought in more gothic metal and atmospheric rock. I’ve been checking the albums in-between 2004 and 2018 with interest but they’ve always seemed to be too light and straight-forward to stay in my listening cycle for long. The Eternal haven’t been afraid of taking a side-step or two in every album, the sounds in their discography are really quite varied. Mostly well produced and composed albums.

Waiting for the Endless Dawn (2018) finally brings back a lot of those old doom influences. Gone are the 4 minute tracks, instead 5/7 tracks clock over 10 minutes! What a change. The music is still far from brutal extremities, there’s plenty of gothic metal and atmospheric rock traits but with a lot of slow developing song-structures, brooding atmosphere, symphonic backgrounds and proper heavy riffs. Vocalist/mastermind Mark Kelson’s voice is a big part of the gothic feel. If Waiting for the Endless Dawn was an all growled record, the effect would be much doomier. Mark Kelson does have brilliant cleans and the occasional growling makes both vocal styles have more of an impact.

The Wound is the longest and lightest track. But also the track that made an impact the fastest. Especially the beginning reminds a lot of Pink Floyd gone melancholic atmospheric rock, slow but sweet. The Wound gradually develops into a melodic metal track with a multitude of different elements, actually quite hard to put into a single genre! My personal favourite is the mildly progressive rhythmic part around 13 minutes. If you’ve read any of my reviews you must have noticed that I’m a sucker for those rhythmic progressive parts. A real solid and fluent composition overall.

On some negative aspects

There’s a huge emotional load in choruses, sometimes they feel quite melodramatic; catchy but slightly annoying choruses of Rise from Agony and Don’t Believe Anymore (Icehouse cover) suffer from this trait. One repeat of the annoying pop hum/singalong “Don’t believe anymoh-hoh-hoo” would have been enough, thanks. It’s a shame because Don’t Believe Anymore has many of the strongest melodic themes in the album. A very ambient and minimal, subtly Pink Floydish intro and a bunch of good guitar harmonies and leads. It is loyal to the original Icehouse version (1984, Sidewalk). Very memorable composition by this Aussie band. In Lilac Dust has a memorable melodic theme too, but for no apparent reason I don’t like it.

The album is 74 minutes long which makes it a bit of a pain to listen in one go aka TOO-FUCKING-LONG. However, all the tracks seem to be justified of their length, I can understand the dilemma of cutting something out from the release. Because of that challenge, a 52 minute Like Music To Your Ears bootleg playlist of the album was released with the review! The tracks are balanced differently by cutting out two least impressive 10 minuters. See the end of the post for full album and the Like Music To Your Ears bootleg in Spotify.

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Positiveness

Waiting for the Endless Dawn is very rich in different elements without sounding forced. There must be a shitload of tracks in each of the songs. It brings a really dynamic overwhelming feel to the record, but the pieces also stick together naturally. Superb sounds.

A Cold Day to Face My Failure and I Lie in Wait are welcome darker doomy tracks. I Lie in Wait is in death-doomer in disguise with a soft-as-shit-gothic-rock-chorus I actually like (wow). Both have just excellent finales. A Cold Day to Face My Failure‘s lovely emotional finale has probably the best melodic theme of The Eternal’s career. I Lie in Wait on the other hand turns in a funeral doom tempo and then picks up double-bass, violins and a bit of black metallish rasp too. Ah, how dramatic! Ah, how symphonic! Perfectly placed cliche lyrics in the best chorus of the album, I Lie in Wait is a stunning entity with a very tangible emotional load.

I waited 14 years for The Eternal to embrace their doom roots and release this album… It is such a monster that I can imagine a year from now it can easily have grown to be better. Recommended for anyone with a soft spot for melancholic, slow and well-sung music.

8/10

The album in Spotify:

Like Music To Your Ears version (Rise From Agony is a bonus track):

Bandcamp: https://theeternal.bandcamp.com/album/waiting-for-the-endless-dawn

P.S. I love that their second single The Wound has a radio edit version of this 20 minute track. Radio edit has a ton of potential to play in your local radio channel as the track has been cut to a measly 10:37 :D. It still doesn’t beat Reverend Bizarre’s single Slave of Satan in 2005 though, it clocked 20:59.

Summoning – With Doom We Come – Music quickies

Summoning has drawn Lord of the Rings influences since the early 90s and does it without resorting to annoying cliches. Sure, the music is pompous, repetitive and doomy but in the right way. If one didn’t happen to know their themes come from Lord of the Rings, it couldn’t be guessed.

As they’ve been really deep in the mythos for a long time, there’s no artificial Merri and Pippin or Aragorn bullshit. But there is a feeling of vastness, glorious mountains and adventure. The slight casionism’s in keyboard sounds can propel some people away but to my delicate casio-ear it is not bad. I guess it helps that the compositions are really strong, unique and epic metal tracks. Monumental, one could say.

Tar-Calion draws middle-eastern influence, showing that they should continue to experiment with melodies. Carcharoth‘s main riff is pretty much the riff of the year. Night Fell Behind sports an extremely atmospheric piano melody with a great riff in a composition that keeps developing and adding new melodic layers. All of these three are in my top 2018 tracks. Silvertine and With Doom I Come are both also really easy to label as very good. That doesn’t leave much to not like in the album. One of the best albums of the year for sure.

9/10

Monumental metal 5 playlist

Once again some insanely good varied epic metal tracks packed into a one hour album-like entity.

1. Keep of Kalessin – Armada. One of my long time favourites from 2006. A perfect fusion of thrash metal, death metal and black metal really. The composer Arnt Obsidian shared a really interesting story about the creation of the track in his blog (https://arntobsidian.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-armada/):

The ARMADA title was decided on very early in the process and I had a vision of how the title track should sound. But when I was writing songs I always felt that “this is a cool song, but it’s not ARMADA!”. I remember thinking this for Crown of the kings, The Wealth of Darkness and The Black Uncharted. Until one special night at around 11pm, I took one chord and I felt goosebumps all over my body…..because in that moment, I knew that THIS was it. It was happening now! The best song I’ve ever written was about to manifest itself on my guitar! I then spent 8 hours writing the song. Without recording any of it. I just made the entire song in one go, with all the passes and details right there and then. And I remember calling my brother at 7am after I was finished, saying “I’ve done it! ARMADA is written!! And it’s fucking insane!!!”. Haha. I have never been more excited about a song and I remember this as something special because I’ve never written an entire song with all passes and details like that in one long session before or after. It was truly something unique and I also think that this song is something truly unique!

2.-3. Mountains Above the Sun by Vektor serves as an intro to Ultimate Artificer in their 2016 album Terminal Redux. I saw no reason not to do the same here. A monster of a theme, Progressive sci-fi thrash metal, lead to the biggest metal breakthrough album of 2016. What a headbanger Ultimate Artificer is. As the saying goes: Sci-fi or die!

4. When Anaal Nathrakh go doom, they go massive. When their usual chaotic tempos and vocals are matched with epic and heavy undertones, like in Drug-Fucking Abomination it creates a new kind of diversity. Just listen how epic as shit intro first transforms into screams of pain with a melancholic melody, and then into fierce ripping tempo. It’s almost funny how damn intense Anaal Nathrakh can get.

5. Murder, by Katatonia is part of their Brave Murder Day album (the track name is not Murder Day as is falsely tagged in Spotify). It’s almost comical how fitting it is for an album with that name to have three first tracks with the names, Brave, Murder and Day. Day is the most somber one and Murder a link between their old and new days. The first 13 seconds of repetive guitar chord are at first almost annoying, but after it becomes familiar, for me it is a promise that one of all time best melodic doom riffs is to follow.

Brave Murder Day (1996) is a great mixture of the rawness and doom of Dance of December Souls (1993) and their later clearer melancholic rock/metal sound. The main focus is still with the doom but the great lead melodies do not hurt at all. Also Mikael Åkerfeldt’s inspired vocal performance has to be taken into account. He was actually alerted to sing in the album in a really quick notice after Jonas Renkse lost his voice just before the recordings. And Åkerfeldt delivers!

6. One of the most underrated albums of 2016 Downfall of Gaia‘s Atrophy has a title track that deserves to go to metal history as a supreme accomplishment of melodic black metal. It is not often that a band from the backwoods of German black metal/sludge/hardcore scene comes to the fore with this much damn style. I mean this neverheard band has the guts to start with brilliant melody that leads to a fucking drum solo and to-die-for tremolo riff. And no, they aren’t progressive metal, just casually throwing a drum solo there. Blows my mind. If Downfall of Gaia manage to keep this strong base level up, they are bound to get a lot more notice in the next years.

And damn, that is not the only backwoods atmospheric German melodic black metal album in the masterclass of 2016. Ultha’s Converging Sings is also there.

7.-8. Downfall of Gaia shares some post-hardcore traits. Converge is a band that for many defines the mixture of hardcore punk, post-hardcore and metal. Precipe is an intro to All We Love We Leave Behind in their 2012 album. It sets the mood very well being a very atmospheric composition by nature.

All We Love We Leave Behind striked me first as a bit whiny even though the riffs and especially the rhythmics are really inspired. Later on I heard that the track is actually about the vocalist Jacob Bannon’s dogs. Sheesh, it transformed into heartbreaking at that very instant. The lines that I thought were such a fucking cliche actually started to work really well. Converge seems to keeps inventing the wheel again and again, their mixture of different genres is ever so fresh.

9. A bit before Hardcore punk band Converge mixed metal in, a hardcore band Neurosis abandoned hardcore punk and started playing slow weird music with hardcore elements. It could have been called post-hardcore (emo, anyone?) but instead it turned out post-metal. The second album of Neurosis from 1992, Souls At Zero is one of the first, if not the first post-metal albums of all time. Surprisingly it is arguably the best.

Souls at Zero is not as widely regarded a classic as most genre defining albums. It should be, post-metal has grown quite big in the 25 years since the making of Souls at Zero. I had heard a huge number of post-metal albums before I stumbled across Souls at Zero, but still Souls came on top of the whole pile. This very rarely happens to me, usually I find the genre defining albums to have been made better later (not a popular opinion I know). Souls at Zero is not a clinically clean album and has the hardcore rawness and energy being heavy and oppressive as shit at the same time. Sounding so damn inspired.

To Crawl Under One’s Skin starts with humming voice clips and obscure stuff turning into really memorable melodies and riffs. They may lack the later post-metal loudness war heaviness but have dynamics to die for. Bass booms in the front and a weird quite high-pitched but heavy riff chugs and meanders about. All the sudden at 2.47 the guitarist Scott Kelly or Steve van Till makes the guitars damn near cry with long bends. Followed by a drum-break and build up, I feel there is a term to it too. This kind of structural freeness defines a lot of post-metal. Free-flowing meandering compositions that wonder through different climaxes naturally, sometimes avoiding the peak and turning to different direction half-way.

Still, Souls at Zero is pretty damn different from any later post-metal albums. That might actually explain why it is not valued as high as I’d want, cause it’s still a part of a process but not the actual defining album. Why has no one else done post-metal like this? Damn. If someone has, feel obliged to send me that album’s name immediately.

10. Cult of Luna turned out to be arguably the biggest second wave post metal band (first album in 2001). Mainly because their discography is full of class. Though it also helps that they did not break up like Isis did. First albums of Cult of Luna are quite hardcore influenced as with so many of the biggest post-metal bands. Neurosis, Callisto, The Ocean and Isis for example.

Mariner from 2016 is listed as a collaboration in Metal-archives but it is actually a new album. 54 minutes and 5 tracks with a female singer Julie Christmas. A friend justly commented that he cannot imagine why Cult of Luna wouldn’t make this permanent. I agree, the female vocals complement the bit stale Cult of Luna signature male grunts so perfectly it adds A LOT to the music. The album Vertikal (2012) already grew a bit stale but this new element keeps the kettle boiling.

Julie Christmas is also not a pop singer. The hardcorish attitude vocals add a lot of scale especially when sometimes she sounds angelic, others like a 41 year old woman she is, but at times like a 14 year old teen. Boys, that is vocal talent.

The Wreck of S.S. Needle does not have play between female and male vocals that I feel they could try more in the future. It is a basic real quality, real atmospheric intro that leads into heavy riffing, electronic throbbing elements in the back, and later on a climax. Usually with post-metal the pinnacle of the track is a heavy as shit riff but here it’s the vocal performance of Julie Christmas. Cult of Luna hasn’t sounded so fresh since 2006.

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.

MonuMental Metal Collection I – From Progressive Metal to Doom

First playlist of the MonuMental Metal Collection series. Of all the half a dozen playlists already complete for this serie, this may be the strongest one.

The Origin Of Species and The Origin of God by The Ocean can really be counted as one 12 minute track. The first track is probably the worst on this playlist but still stunning. It also gives a good basis for the collection to grow better. The Origin of God contains some divine saxophone melodies with also interesting philosophical lyrical content

Apparition By Spawn of Possession unites technical death metal and symphonic elements in an unique fashion. Yeah I’m looking at you Fleshgod Apocalypse.

Grand Gathas of Baal Sin starts as black metal blaster but in the end turns to titanic rhythmic drumming with shamanistic chanting and some middle eastern stringwork. Simply extraordinary song by an extraordinary Israelian metal band Melechesh.

As Rome Burns‘s beginning is also very rhyhmic and the track develops to one of the strongest endings in metal history powered by gutwrenching shrieks and supremely powerfully delivered vocals by Alan Nemtheanga. It is a grower which should keep getting better for years to come.

Waiting For You took me a few years to realize. Originally I considered it a tad boring, but one day when walking on snowy roads the incredible relaxing tension of the first half opened up.

Synagoga Satanae by Celtic Frost is one of the heaviest tracks ever made full stop.

A lot of these tracks are growers that took me years to grasp fully. If you don’t seem to get them at the first go don’t worry, listen them 10 more times!

9bf574f152e095f29c0c83dc917880dd You can also find all playlists from playlists.net
http://playlists.net/epic-progressive-collection

Mona De Bo – Nekavējies, Šīs ir Spēles Ar Tevi

This latvian oddity is a different kind of beast to encounter, effortlessly combining post-rock, drone, metal, brass instruments and ambient with movielike atmospheres. Atmospherically somewhat resembles Noir by Callisto, but musically Nekavējies, Šīs ir Spēles Ar Tevi is much more experimental and drone.

Unlike many other droniacs the melodies here are almost uplifting even though the songs are usually very slow. Still the melodies rarely wander deep into melancholy or impenetrable heaviness. Playfully crooked, surprisingly soft under the surface; bursting with distortion. Often almost ambient.

Mona De Bo really does not spare the use of guitar-distortion, even the clean melodies are usually entwined with distortitive waves. Unlike Sunn O))) distortion is used with the guitar INSTEAD to replace the guitar. Wall-of-sounds are sparse on Nekavējies, Šīs ir Spēles Ar Tevi. It does not disguise itself behind 16 tons of guitarwall, a refreshing feat.

I even deeply adore the drone-ambience of Dejosim! that teethers on the verge of cracking for minutes but never pinnacles unlike Priekšpēdējais. With Mona De Bo it’s much more about the journey than about the destination. Just please ignore the cover art: a 70 year old hobo vomiting its entrails off.

9/10

The album is available for free listen and paid download on band’s bandcamp: http://monadebo.bandcamp.com/album/nekav-jies-s-ir-sp-les-ar-tevi

Mythological Cold Towers – The Vanished Pantheon

“Epic monumental doom metal”

The Vanished Pantheon was released in 2005 by a Finnish label Firedoom music. Even though it was definitely one of the best releases of 2005, it was perhaps too odd and distant for most Finns to understand. It stands as only the 3rd release of the Brazilian Mythological Cold Towers, found in 1994. Their first two releases were received with quite indifferent reviews. The first, Sphere of Nebaddon got more positive publicity, but for me the second, Remoti Meridiani Hymni is stronger of the two. However neither of the first two albums become even close to the 3rd release.

It seems Mythological Cold Towers really found themselves on The Vanished Pantheon. Massive doom metal accompanied with a feel of mythic remote civilizations, and old cultures getting grinded to the dust.

The gigantic atmosphere sometimes slips to being humorously overdramatic. But if you have a personality that can appreciate extremely dramatic compositions (à la Bal-Sagoth) you should find this a very interesting release. Quite raw and unpolished, yet very natural sounds fit Vanished Pantheon perfectly and give a lot of primeval power to the compositions. The sounds remind me of Keep Of Kalessin’s Kolossus, but unlike KOK, Mythological Cold Towers succeeds in having lots of strength and rage within a natural sound. Mythological Cold Towers already released their 4th album Immemorial in October on the German label Cyclone Empire. I sincerely hope that The Vanished Pantheon wasn’t just a one album miracle.

9/10