2015 POLL RESULTS COUNTDOWN - ILM Metal(ish) Albums of the Year

96 Nile - What Should Not Be Unearthed 163 Points, 5 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/9uvKcQN.jpg
https://open.spotify.com/album/3nAhv9fHO46dCEe7Xa0l3c
spotify:album:3nAhv9fHO46dCEe7Xa0l3c

http://www.angrymetalguy.com/nile-not-unearthed/

Angry Metal Guy hates this album. He hates it so much that he won’t even deign to put to paper how much he hates it; and thus has commanded me to do so in his stead. Given how bad At The Gate of Sethu was, I was sure it wouldn’t be difficult to do so but was nonetheless displeased. I was all for skipping What Should not be Unearthed, and going on my merry way pretending Nile broke up four years ago, but sometimes you bite ass, and sometimes your ass gets bit. After spending a few days in the crypts with this album, a few things have become clear: it’s still the Nile you know and probably have some sort of strong feeling for. The chromatic riffing, incessant double bass pounding, and ham-fistedly (or perhaps mouthedly) delivered lyrics about gods and pyramids and the afterlife and what have you all align; What Should not be Unearthed is anything but groundbreaking. But the band have cut back on the self-plagiarism and boring brutality that undermined the previous album and paid more attention to elements of their sound that set them apart from other bands.

This is the part of the review where I’d go about discussing the first few or strongest songs of the album. Sadly, I instead get to tell you that, much like the last Nile album, Unearthed is pretty barren of highs and lows. There’s really no killer single or flaming bag in the mix, just fifty minutes of guitar picks and George Kollias’ feet moving really fast, though rarely in unison.

What set Nile apart from their contemporaries (and the countless bands that somehow want to swipe their riffs) are their unmetered passages. Since Kollias can keep 64th notes coming with little punctuation for quite some time, the rest of the band, and by that I mean mostly Karl Sanders, are free to tremolo and riff abstractly for a while. At best, these are brief and work like an extended, full-band drum fill; they reels and pitch for a moment before locking back into a groove. There are a few of these full-band passages scattered across Unearthed and they’re actually pulled off pretty well, but far more frequent are moments when the guitars, drums, or most often, vocals slip past the others. The fluid feeling of this slip pairs excellently with Nile‘s style of riffing and drumming, and it’s well-capitalized on in songs like “Age of Famine” and “To Walk Forth From Flames Unscathed.”

Nile - What Should not be Unearthed 02

The problems arise when the songs aren’t spilling over themselves; the best days of Nile riffing seem to be behind us, and though there are a few good cuts in the album – like on “Evil To Cast Out Evil,” after a minute or so even that song loses its way, and even its cool bridge is too little, too late for the album. What Should Not Be Unearthed feels like a supercut of the mid-quality parts of previous Nile albums interspersed with the occasional tumbling, uncoordinated moment of intrigue. Add that to its typical production – little to no bass presence, shitty-sounding cymbals, and vocals that have never been top of the class, and you get an underwhelming piece of music.

I’d really love to hear another Nile album as good as Ithyphallic or Those Whom the Gods Detest or even a song half as good as “Lashed to the Slave Stick,” but between this and George Kollias‘ equally average release earlier this year, it looks like fans will have to sit through this uninspired, natron-stiffened version of Nile for a few more years. While I’m sure the band needed to write new material to make sure they weren’t dead, I’d have preferred this album stayed in the ground.

I had a Nile album once but got bored of it pretty quickly. Can't even remember which one, but it barely matters

did people really hate this album or just these guys?

I thought they were universally loved

I don't they're bad just a bit one-dimensional. There might be stuff out there that'd change my mind about them but probably not on this new one. I got the feeling it was a letdown for a lot of their fans.

i liked imperial triumphant but i felt like i wasn't in the right life-place to really dig it

maybe i just need some bigass speakers again

omg the twin guitar runs on "black psychedelia"

this album is perverse and wonderful

three-way-tie
93 Vastum - Hole Below 163 Points, 6 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/fzGRwxy.jpg
https://open.spotify.com/album/1TUhE6KUL6DPjlGbJU5jig
spotify:album:1TUhE6KUL6DPjlGbJU5jig

https://vastum.bandcamp.com/album/hole-below
Through the verbose horror of their first two LPs “Carnal Law” and “Patricidal Lust”, San Francisco’s Vastum sadistically carved a jagged dripping wound into an increasingly reductive American Death Metal scene. Arising again for their third full length album Vastum plumb the depths of internalized agony and degradation farther than ever on “Hole Below”.

Characterized by a deeply cavernous trudge through gut churning heaviness, “Hole Below” both bluntly crushes and rigorously shreds to conceive fully formed grotesqueries of debased brutality. Guitarist Leila Abdul-Rauf (along with Shelby Lermo) wields her axe with the experienced slice of masked executioner quartering savage riffs and twisting leads. The abhorrent vocal (and lyrical) morbidity traded by imposing frontman Daniel Butler and Abdul-Rauf continues to be the most formidable combination in Death Metal. The intimidating rhythm section of Luca Indrio and Adam Perry steer the war machine through the pooled blood and skull fragments scattered amidst the debauched iniquity of this peculiar hell.

Three albums in Vastum have honed their disturbed masochism into a sound manifestly their own and true to the core of the purest darkest Death Metal.

93 Locrian - Infinite Dissolution 163 Points, 6 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/2ovjtBH.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/7sJzVKKgyTfdhwpLLJuv0A

spotify:album:7sJzVKKgyTfdhwpLLJuv0A

https://locrian.bandcamp.com/album/infinite-dissolution

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20724-infinite-dissolution/
Locrian
Infinite Dissolution
Relapse; 2015
By Grayson Haver Currin; July 22, 2015

8.2

The more music Locrian create, the less sense the metallurgists seem to make: That is the implicit lesson of Infinite Dissolution, the most adventurous and accessible album the once-prohibitively esoteric band have ever made. During these nine tracks, they buoy black metal with kaleidoscopic guitar solos and punctuate cinematic three-piece suites with transfixing synthesizer serenades. Screamed anthems find and then finesse an unexpected threshold between post-metal and post-punk, while some of the band’s most grim vocals ever provide the friction against their most gorgeous and warm musical setting to date. With Infinite Dissolution, Locrian continue a series of impressionistic explorations devoted to apocalyptic apprehension—or "hymn[s] to the deluge," as they put it at one point here. Somehow, though, these soundtracks to oblivion come to feel redemptive and even empowering, like torches made only to work in the most extreme dark.

For half of their career, Locrian were a duo whose hard-shelled hybrids of harsh noise textures and heavy metal structures felt compelling but often stable. Terrence Hannum and André Foisy built bleak expanses of brutal sound, where considerations about technical and cultural obsolescence fought through sheets of dissonance and walls of distortion. Their recordings were aggressive and ruminative, less concerned with acute crescendos than cumulative atmosphere. But in 2010, for the album Crystal World, Locrian enlisted Steven Hess, a Chicago improviser with a long and impressive résumé of collaborative electronic abstraction. The moment was an oxbow: Locrian’s ideas crystallized around the skeleton of Hess’ drums, and their music began to take new shapes and gather sudden speed. Urgency and bravado entered their vocabulary. By the time Locrian issued their full-length Relapse debut, 2013’s Return to Annihilation, the trio were able to talk about the influence of Genesis and make music that offered up evidence.

Despite Locrian’s doomsday obsessions, Infinite Dissolution—much like the last five years of Locrian at large—depends upon a wide-eyed sense of musical wonder. Locrian’s evolution has hinged less on a refinement of their style and more on an expansion of it, so that new influences and impulses operate inside of their general roar. This spirit is obvious from the start of Infinite Dissolution, which exposes facets and folds of Locrian that never before seemed to exist. The brilliant opener "Arc of Extinction" begins like a Locrian creeper of not so long ago, with piercing noise and saturating tones shaping a broad drone. Powered by Hess, though, the song steadily escalates, moving from a slow-motion march into a sustained sprint of blast beats. Locrian have touched on black metal before, but here, they perfectly tuck it into their past. The speed animates the animosity. The tumult counters a guitar solo so bright it seems excised from a Rainbow record. The effect is both beautiful and frightening, much like the lyrics of death and rebirth that Hannum sends into the squall.

The brief poem at the center of "Arc of Extinction" highlights another crucial element of Locrian’s evolution, because you can barely hear Hannum. Instead, his words are massaged deep into the mix, so that they are part of a whole and not its obvious leading edge. Likewise, during the strangely triumphant "The Great Dying", the obvious vocal hook yields the foreground to the band, the chant becoming the de facto bass for a band without one. After a decade together, Hannum and Foisy have erased many of the boundaries between their electronics and electric guitars, their synthesizers and their manipulated shouts. During the dénouement of "KXL I", for instance, the strangled riff, static-caked vocals, and screeching circuits congeal into one righteous din, a single symphony of terror. Hess has not only learned their logic but also enhanced it. In the past, "Heavy Water" might have been a formless cloud of hazy effects and echoing glissandos, but he gives the record’s cold comedown a pulse and purpose. During Infinite Dissolution, Locrian make very involved music seem effortless, allowing the sound to support the emotion rather than overpower it. That’s what they’ve tried to do for a decade.

In their salad days, Locrian seemed to issue new music constantly. A stream of seven-inches, CD-Rs and cassettes arrived one after another, as though Hannum and Foisy had nowhere else to be for five years. But Hess joined the band, and Hannum split Chicago for Baltimore. The complicated schedule and the precipitously slower pace have been boons for Locrian. They have had time to incorporate new touchstones without letting them overrun the band, and they have had time to approach each additional layer with diligence. There is so much pressure to speed up as a band these days, to not give any bit of online notoriety an instant to disappear. But Locrian chose to slow down and create consecutive meticulous albums. They are isolated and involved worlds of sound—safe, as one song suggests, from our own "wreckage of a mighty dream."

http://thequietus.com/articles/18378-locrian-infinite-dissolution-review

Before hearing a single second of Infinite Dissolution, Locrian's incoming full-length and their second proper for Relapse, the record's striking cover art hints at the aesthetic permutations of a band that is no stranger to rigorous experimentation. The repurposed image of David Altmejd's 2008 work 'The Eye' renders the sculpture colossal, unnerving – an architecture of myriad surfaces and impossible angles that is both imposing and unnervingly alien. For a group who have, even during their most ecstatic moments, so intently peered into the subterranean void (visually evinced in the queasy landscapes of past releases like The Crystal World and Territories), it's a sign that their gaze has shifted skywards, to an emphatically more celestial one.

That's not to say Locrian have become less dour – Infinite Dissolution is, they state, a concept record about the 'inevitability of extinction', a sentiment that runs throughout the spare, hopeless lyrics – but the record's crystalline textures and dizzying sonic nuances are here dragged from smothering darkness into brilliant light. It's an excellent record, even if this shift arrives at the expense of certain aspects of their sound – the sprawling slow-builds and claustrophobic grimness – that has made them such a vital underground force for over a decade.

The Baltimore/Chicago three piece was formed by guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Andre Foisy and keyboardist/vocalist Terence Hannum in 2005 – drummer Steven Hess made his first appearance in 2010. They've always been more of a tonal noise/drone band than the black metal one they're often pinned as; that latter element manifesting itself most effectively as measured releases from the Swans-esque tension building and power electronics workouts that managed to be both harrowing and electrifying in their compositional detail. (And, unlike the head-razing BM/noise work of bands like Wold and Vegas Martyrs, frequently beautiful).

With Infinite Dissolution they build on the framework of 2013's Return To Annihilation, successfully melding those genres with prog, industrial and post-rock into a consistent and muscular whole (helped in no small part by Greg Norman's sterling production job). It's a work that, while being their most accessible to date, is still dense enough to reward patience and repeated listens.

Opener 'Arc Of Extinction' immediately lurches into a solid three minutes of noise, the guitar and synth merging as a refulgent wall of distortion undercut by Hess' spare, martial tom thuds. Hannum's eventual harrowed shrieking sounds as distant as ever (as if recorded from the opposite end of a chasmic oubliette); a brief precursor to the sudden tip into furious blasting, a simplistic descending chord structure and a harmonic lead spiralling off overhead. It's the most conventional black metal moment on the record, and one of its most thrilling.

'Dark Shales' is initially closer in sound to the 2011 cover of Popol Vuh's 'Dort Ist Der Weg' before seguing in to a melodic five minutes of Cascadian-tinted post-rock; while 'KXL I''s industrial shower and seething banks of sheet noise comprise Infinite Dissolution's most abject arc, an aesthetic emphasised by the near-poppyness of the track immediately proceeding it.

I was slightly taken aback by 'The Future Of Death' on first listens, with its mix of simplistic coldwave synths and a middle section not a million miles away from the cosmic post-hardcore of At The Drive In. Along with Erica Burgner-Hannum's jarring guest vocals in the closing passages of 'An Index Of Air', it's the album's only near misstep, a track uncomfortably close to conventional given Locrian's conceptual nous (albeit one that that I find myself warming to with each subsequent listen).

The forlorn string loop of 'KXL II' – wavering over a heady static crackle – is highly affecting for a glorified interlude, making way for the pensive fuzz of 'The Great Dying' and the eventual album peak of 'Heavy Water'. The latter builds on a glacial, oscillating wash of synth, overlaying a clean, circular guitar figure and more of Hannum's haunted shrieking. There's not much more to it – an insistent kick drum leading to a peak of modest volume before letting the track fade into itself again – but it's gorgeous, haunting stuff, further evoking a freezing astral plane in place of the sodden netherworld and urban wastelands that Locrian have inhabited until now. It's a lonely, exhilarating place to be.

93 KEN Mode - Success 163 Points, 6 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/rI4KFEm.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/4ASQ4v6gKIZkaNi9p4xdG1
spotify:album:4ASQ4v6gKIZkaNi9p4xdG1

https://kenmodesom.bandcamp.com/album/success

http://www.metalsucks.net/2015/06/04/ken-modes-success-a-good-record-if-not-a-good-metal-record/

f you’re looking for a good metal record, stop reading here.

There is nothing death/djent/stoner/thrash/metalcore about Success, the sixth album from the brotherly-led KEN Mode.

What Success does sound like is the strain of noisy post-punk and grunge that bubbled up in the late 80s. Loud bands with analog angst, little melody, and a bit of artistic pretension… and the kind of guys who probably fucking hated metal.

It’s an unusual but interesting turn for Mode, whose past offerings have veered more metallic hardcore than Touch & Go/AmRep. Engineered by Steve Albini (Nirvana, The Pixies, and, uh, Bush), Success is often tuneless, especially vocally. But if the warbles of David Yow or PiL-era John Lyndon entice you, you’re in for a treat.

In a way, the whole album is a series of outliers, small variations on a noisy, sarcastic dirge. “I would like to learn how to kill the nicest man in the world,” vocalist Jesse Matthewson spews in “These Tight Jeans,” getting a female callback in the album’s lone instance of melody. Violins prop up “The Owl,” while a fat bass line dominates “I Just Liked Fire.”

Then again, maybe it’s all a joke. Matthewson spews a line like “A day in southern Manitoba could not be more sublime” and you can almost hear the eye roll… except, in context, he might be serious. Hard to tell.

Kidding or not, Success uh, succeeds because it embraces its musical ambitions. It’s a lo-fi, imperfect album at odds with its metal neighbors, but one that invites more than a cursory listen. And props to the recent tide of bands, including Title Fight and Liturgy, who feel comfortable pivoting when their audience may not.

Don’t like it? Joke’s on you.

ok i think i'm gonna like all of these

All three are very good. Locrian I found overwhelming, but I enjoyed it if I took it in a couple of tracks at a time. KEN Mode's Success is the best album they've made to date.

Locrian just keep getting better in my view. Never got round to KENmode though I liked what I heard of their previous stuff.

Locrian is good, I can't really *love* this stuff but it's pretty impressive.

Ok Ken Mode sounds cool. I must check it out. Love the cover too.

Just don't read the Pitchfork review.

Not that I was going to but why not?

The writer makes a bunch of assumptions about their noise rock roots (as in he says Albini brought the roots with him) and then completely misses the humor of the record.

92 Kylesa - Exhausting Fire 164 Points, 5 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/RoBhUka.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/0KwYRP0sZMzRqBMpnwGEPE
spotify:album:0KwYRP0sZMzRqBMpnwGEPE

https://kylesasom.bandcamp.com/album/exhausting-fire

http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/09/album-review-kylesa-exhausting-fire/

Over the past decade, Kylesa has been one of the most consistent and visible bands on the stoner metal circuit. They rose from the same Georgia scene that spawned Mastodon, playing a brand of metallic hardcore punk before mellowing out in recent years. Shouted vocals, fast tempos, and angry, misanthropic lyrics have given way to melodic heavy psych and calmer vibes, and though Kylesa has jettisoned its old sound and lost favor in the crowd that once championed it, the band’s development into a stoner powerhouse always felt natural and organic. As artists, their clarity of vision took over, and with each album, the songs slowed and the structures tightened, effectively accentuating Kylesa’s finer assets: the spooky dual vocals of Laura Pleasants and Phillip Cope, the affected guitars, and the trippy atmospherics. A Kylesa album always sounds like a Kylesa album. It’s just a matter of where the band wants to take the recordings.

In this way, experimentation is encouraged. There are some bands we never want to change. We come to rely on the comfort of their consistency and the fulfillment of our expectations. But Kylesa is invincible. When they leave that comfort zone — like they did on their landmark records Static Tensions and Spiral Shadow, back when they moved away from punk — it’s still effective, if not more so. They’re on their A-game when exploring new territories.

That’s why Exhausting Fire works. On the outfit’s seventh album, Kylesa again reinvent themselves as a music box of stoner psych and alt metal dabbling. 2013’s Ultraviolet was a hesitant test run, a toe in the pool as opposed to the total submergence found here, as Kylesa surrender themselves to weirder songwriting tics, prismatic genre-blending, and spiritual concession. Opener “Crusher” does good on its name with dense blasts of sluggish feedback and a thick riff, but it’s the song’s second half that brings it home. The fuzz drops out, a polyrhythmic beat kicks in, and Pleasants’ vocals turn sensual, sounding more Mazzy Star than metal. These twists and turns work. On “Moving Day”, Cope sings in a goth croon while synths swell up and down, and it’s Cure as fuck. “Night Drive” is pure heavy pop with disarmingly earnest lyrics and passionate screams from Cope: “I don’t want to be on this night drive/ I would rather be anywhere else.”

Exhausting Fire is the band’s most experimental work to date, but that’s not to say it doesn’t riff out on occasion. “Shaping the Southern Sky”, while a little misleading toward the majority of the album’s content, is Kylesa’s most metal track since Spiral Shadow, guided by a chugging riff that would sound at home on a High on Fire album. Another highlight, “Blood Moon”, tries on a black metal aesthetic that works surprisingly well. The only weak tracks are the ones that are the most obviously Kylesa — straightforward, heavy — and the least imaginative (“Inward Debate”, “Lost and Confused”).

Kylesa doesn’t seem interested in being a big, bad Southern metal band, just like they never wanted to be a flashpoint for anger after getting over their early punk phase. Exhausting Fire has heart, both sonically and lyrically. It moves with confidence, content with its explorations, and it’s engaging because of it. Such an amorphous approach to heaviness is becoming more common in metal, an often rigidly traditional genre, and Kylesa continues to push those boundaries as forerunners of the post-metal movement.

Essential Tracks: “Crusher”, “Night Drive”, and “Blood Moon”

oh yeah the locrian record is impressive but takes so long to get where it's going

like i veer from thinking it's boring to thinking it's amazing every few minutes

7.4 from pitchfork
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21186-exhausting-fire/?

Kylesa have been experimenting with and expanding their sound for almost 15 years. They've kept moving, which is admirable, but when the Savannah, Ga., band started out, they were already unique: a crusty sludge-punk juggernaut that mixed shout-along male-female vocals into anthems that got your adrenaline going even if you weren't paying attention to what they were saying. As time went on, they added a second drummer, and replaced some of the sludge with pop. They mentioned Built to Spill as an influence, as well as early '90s alt rock and riot grrrl. Vocalist/guitarist Phillip Cope included Beach House and Sleepy Sun on a year-end list. The thing is, as much as they tweaked the metal formula, and copped to quieter listening habits, they still basically sounded the same: even on 2013’s chillier, darker, atmospherically expansive Ultraviolet, Kylesa barreled along like Kylesa, but in a slightly less interesting way.

Which is what makes their new, self-produced seventh album, Exhausting Fire, unique to the trio’s catalogue: On these 10 songs, Cope, guitarist/vocalist Laura Pleasants, and drummer Carl McGinley often sound like a different band entirely. The Cope-fronted “Moving Day” is a mid-tempo death rock song that fits nicely between Killing Joke and Christian Death on a mix tape, and stands out as one of my favorite individual songs of the year. Previously, when Kylesa weren't speeding along, they'd stall. When they got too ambitious, you'd wish they'd get back to packing basements. It's not that anything was offensive or embarrassing—it was just bland.

Here, they’ve sharpened their songwriting on tracks that don’t immediately sound like Kylesa, so you get a nice mix of the familiar fist-pumpers along with curious diversions that work. "Lost and Confused" goes from spaced-out mellow to fist-pumping shout-along, then elegantly keeps the pedal pressed to the floor until an atmospheric coda. It's a geat song, one that's inspired a lot of air drumming at my desk this week. Or the amped-up, smeary "Inward Debate", which shows them subtly working deeper psychedelia into the double-drumming. On the longest track, "Shaping the Southern Sky", the band drifts from rock 'n' roll boogie into a cavernous desert of Meat Puppets tumble weeds that builds, over 2 minutes, to a massive rock punch that's worth the wait. Importantly, on the previously mentioned “Moving Day”, you hear Kylesa crafting a legitimate hook, one that could close a John Hughes movie.

There's a lot that echoes the Pixies here, perhaps because on Exhausting, there’s more of a mix between the vocalists: Pleasants handled most of the singing on Ultraviolet, or at least Cope took a backseat, shouting choruses now and then. She has more range than Cope in a traditional sense, but her voice isn’t that compelling alone—you ultimately need his chanted intonations against her spacier tones to keep things interesting. When they both shout, it's golden; they do that a lot here. And, often when you think a song's boring (see: "Growing Roots"), the other singer joins in and saves the day.

Some can't be saved, which happens when you keep expanding. The first movement of opener "Crusher" feels like a hangover from Ultraviolet, and the nighttime psychedelia of “Falling” limps along for 4 minutes. More often than not, though, the center holds, and it makes Ultraviolet look like a scratchpad for what they ended up doing here: radically shaking up their formula—from the inside out—and coming back with compelling results.

91 Sigh - Graveward 164 Points, 7 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/LCwAetd.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/5HB5UIP3lFhhspoa8eRLVR
spotify:album:5HB5UIP3lFhhspoa8eRLVR

https://candlelightrecordsusa.bandcamp.com/album/graveward

The tenth studio album from Japanese noise/extreme metal merchants is an ambitious endeavor. Taking over two and a half years to write/record, each song had over 100 recording tracks exceeding 100GB of audio to select from in the final mixes. Features guest perfrmances from Matthew Heafy (Trivium), Fred Leclercq (Dragonforce), Niklas Kvarforth (Shining Sweden), Sakis Tolis (Rotting Christ), and Metatron (The Meads of Asphodel).

http://www.angrymetalguy.com/sigh-graveward-review/

There’s only one word that can encompass this specific cocktail of madness: Japan. Sigh are on their tenth trip around the turntable and still spin at 45, since there isn’t a faster option. Graveward is their attempt to penetrate the monolithic shadow cast by In Somniphobia, an album so fantastically strange that it was a sidestep even by the standards of a band that defines the term “avant-garde”. Will Graveward see them pulling an Opeth and venturing even further from their black metal roots, or is this going to be more of a Cryptopsy style return?

Did you like Scenes from Hell? If not, that’s ok, there are plenty of other shitty people in the world for you to hang out with. If you did, then I suggest that you open a new tab now and exchange some of your favorite type of currency for your very own Graveward. The symphonics and aggression of Scenes From Hell make their return here, but appear in concert with the moody strangeness of In Somniphobia, bubbling up in Sigh‘s churning glass, jagged, dangerous and as always, unabashedly bizarre. Unlike its predecessor, Graveward is metal through and through, each song a cancerous vertebra in the twisting spinal column of a black metal album that’s been through hell and come out stranger.

Sigh Graveward 03“Kaedit Nos Pestis” marks Sigh‘s territory right away, gushing out a stream of fetid liquid that steams when it hits the freshly turned soil. Deeply rooted in old-school black metal and power metal, the song snaps Graveward open with incredibly fun lyrics and bizarre singing that’s so cheesy it would stick out on a [Luca Turilli’s] Rhapsody [of Fire] album. “The Forlorn” is the album’s first mid-paced song, but it’s no less intense or weird than the three that precede it – just try not to sob out the line ‘I am not dead…’ with Mirai Kawashima. You can’t.

The first half of Graveward closes with “Molesters of My Soul,” which is best simulated by compressing a brass section into a two-by-four, sticking a bunch of nails into the wood and subsequently being smacked with that board at a steady 92 bpm. As stomping and mad as it is, the song also features one of the most interesting intros on the album, a twinkling music-box-like melody that I’m about half sure was stolen from the studio as In Flames was recording A Sense of Purpose. “The Casketburner” is another standout on the last half of the album, fun enough to go toe-to-toe with some of Revocation‘s latest material. There’s really not a bad song to be had here, which is what we’ve all come to expect from Sigh.

Despite this, Graveward dose have one big problem, and it’s a surprising one. The album often feels a little, well, predictable. The songs aren’t nearly as varied as those on In Somniphobia, but that wouldn’t be such a problem if Graveward didn’t feel like it was still running on its predecessor’s chassis. The same gags and sounds pop up in the same places that they did on In Somniphobia; “Kaedit Nos Pestis” features a hand-clapping track that’s quite similar to one from “The Transfiguration Fear Lucid Nightmare;” they bring out the saxophone in the same places as the album progresses, and there’s a definite U-shaped curve in speed across the length of the LP. On top of this, the choice to put “Dwellers in a Dream” after the seven-minute epic “A Messenger from Tomorrow” – which sounds like the S&M version of “One” if it was rewritten by madmen – is pretty questionable. I don’t think Graveward is too long (49 minutes is a great length and Sigh can get away with much more), “Dwellers in a Dream” isn’t the best way to close the album.

While it’s not quite the masterpiece that was In Somniphobia, Graveward is far from a blemish on Sigh‘s discography. It’s a great album despite its flaws, but it is a little bit worrying. There’s the lingering suggestion that Sigh are running out of ideas, and while one could hardly blame them, seeing as they’ve never hesitated to shove everything possible into their art, it makes me weary for the future of Japan’s most revered extreme metal export. Only time will tell whether they can make the turnaround, but even if we have to wait another three years, there’s always the back catalog to keep us company.

there was a new sigh record this year? jesus christ i was not paying attention

Kylesa are great live, but I have trouble getting into the albums. Rooting for them, maybe they'll nail it next time.

man this vastum record is my kind of gross

yay Locrian

(yay Vastum too but I still haven't heard this one, I'm sure it rules though)

Locrian is the one I've been enjoying the most so far. I kept meaning to check out the album this year.

90 Ahab - The Boats of the Glen Carrig 168 Points, 6 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/4mmyNcx.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/1qAXKudAta2w1BQQ3XOovA
spotify:album:1qAXKudAta2w1BQQ3XOovA

http://www.angrymetalguy.com/ahab-boats-glen-carrig-review/

Ahab has been the proud flag-bearer for funeral doom during the last ten years, with three full-length releases fleshing out a decade which has seen them achieve great popularity for such a niche genre. The AMG ranks are infested with attention-impaired sodomites who don’t understand the genre, but Steel Druhm deservedly credited their third album, The Giant, with a strong 3.5. The German whale-meisters maintain their trend towards nautical literature, this time drawing on William Hope Hodgson’s The Boats of the “Glen Carrig,” a survival-horror turned adventure tale. The creeping tension and monstrous beings provide fitting inspiration for the oppressive doom presented here, and Glen Carrig continues the musical developments made on The Giant.

As was the case with its predecessor, Glen Carrig is funeral doom but less dirgy and at a marginally less glacial pace. Indeed, “Like Red Foam (The Great Storm)” is the fastest song Ahab has written. They expand on the post-rock and progressive influences integrated into The Giant, with ambient passages and greater diversity from their core doom style. This dynamism is demonstrated as the album’s moves through phases of heaviness and subtlety uncharacteristic of an often-overpowering genre. There’s a greater mixture of instrumental and vocal textures in the Glen Carrig repertoire than ever previously, and it’s certainly an interesting listen which avoids the typical funeral doom caveat of musical homogeneity. All this is evident on the four long songs, omitting the comparatively short “ Like Red Foam.” A variety of guitar tones are used, as is the case with Christian Hector’s vocals. His growls are typically excellent but he exercises his cleaner tonsils here, accompanying the atmospheric quiet moments with somber and emotional chants.

Ahab The Boats of the Glen Carrig 02bUpholding the vocals are the riffs. Considering the relative pace of this album among its peers, the guitar work largely impresses in and of itself rather than just contributing to a wider atmosphere. They make a strong impact such as that at 3:37 of “The Thing that Made Search” and the opening lead on “Like Red Foam.” However, these riffs are strung quite thin when most tracks exceed ten minutes. There is a lack of melodic and technical development on the guitars as the songs progress, grinding promising work into banality. This isn’t a slight against the guitarists’ abilities, rather the song-writing. I enjoy a long song wherein a core lead is retained but evolves: this feels more progressive and cohesive than artificially extending a song by stitching together multiple riffs. However, only the highlight, “The Isle,” consistently demonstrates such development. “Like Red Foam” also updates an earlier riff at the 4:20 mark with an additional melody which heightens the mood.

If I’m harsh on this aspect of the song-writing it’s because Ahab has improved in another: these guys are increasingly utilizing more complex and compelling compositions. Each track has sections in which the harmonies pull together brvtality with melody, offering pleasing milestones as the listener advances through the length. The layering of guitar tracks providing rhythm, leads and shredding is great at the aforementioned moment in “Like Red Foam” and in the last four minutes of “The Weedmen,” to name two examples.

Ahab The Boats of the Glen Carrig 03

Referencing this layering of guitars, Ahab favors a large production job. Despite the huge sound intrinsic to the genre, the audio quality is quite clear, bypassing dirty or fuzzy productions preferred by others. The quiet moments almost glisten. I don’t mean this as a negative however, as the instrumentation is clear and strong in the heavy moments and delicate in the subtle ones. It may not be cvlt with such studio work but it’s powerful. My only complaint on this front is that guitar solos could be mixed better. I get that the clean shredding tone isn’t typically a part of funeral doom, but they’re almost superfluous since they’re so far back in the mix.

Overall, Glen Carrig is a strong marker of progression in Ahab‘s career. It continues from The Giant but has improved in the harmonies constructed and production utilized. The issue I take with the riffs does let it down, but this is a solid choice for doom aficionados. Journey into the unknown with these seafarers.

This is not metal at all, but Leila Abdul-Rauf of Vastum made one of my favorite late-night records of 2015:

https://leilaabdulrauf.bandcamp.com/album/insomnia

I've been meaning to check this one out (along with a billion other things)

89 Noisem - Blossoming Decay 169 Points, 4 Votes, One #1
http://i.imgur.com/rl3J8eA.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/2rJnUV48MZuQ22AdfgoAYq
spotify:album:2rJnUV48MZuQ22AdfgoAYq

https://a389recordings.bandcamp.com/album/blossoming-decay

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20603-blossoming-decay/

Noisem
Blossoming Decay
A389; 2015
By Brandon Stosuy; May 15, 2015

8.0

One of the first things people mention about the Baltimore metal band, Noisem, is their youth. This seems increasingly less important in the Internet age, when a 10-year-old can download the entire Carcass discography at the click of a button, and searching out obscure, far-flung scenes isn't as hard as it once was. We're living in a time when a novice can become an "expert" in a night, even if they don’t understand what begat what or comprehend the context. And that's why Noisem impressed people with 2013 debut, Agony Defined: Here we had guys between the ages of 15 and 20 coming off like folks twice their age, adroitly resurrecting the past.

Agony Defined, which blurred nine songs into 26 minutes, was exhilarating, a mix of old-school whammy bar-rich thrash and death metal with little bits of grind and punk thrown about. People were fair when they brought up Slayer and Napalm Death's Scum. As mentioned when I called it my 10th favorite metal album of 2013, it reminds me of the more extreme music that got me into metal as a kid, when I'd moved beyond the hair metal of my older sister and MTV and discovered speed and thrash at the pay-to-play venues in southern New Jersey. Their second album, Blossoming Decay, is burlier. The playing itself sturdier, faster, and more hulking.

Some of this could be due to the lineup change: bassist Yago Ventura is now handling guitar and vocalist Tyler Carnes' older brother, Billy, who also did the cover art, is on bass. (It's probably worth noting that the group now features two sets of brothers: the Carneses along with drummer Harley Phillips and his brother, guitarist Sebastian.) More likely, though, it's about getting more comfortable as songwriters and experimenters, hence the ambient cello pieces that start the first and second sides with an eerie, heavy drone. The blazing solos are still there, but the actual riffs pull as much of your attention this time. That, and the singing is freer, gnarlier, and more rabid—it's a nonstop vocal attack that comes off more punk and personal than Agony.

On Blossoming, Noisem have worked in larger doses of grind and death and punk; there's less time to take hold of the whammy. We get nine songs in 24 minutes, and that includes those cello pieces (which come off as soft, low-tech industrial ambiance) as well as the 4-minute "Cascade of Scars", which opens on a doom note, and momentarily brings to mind Converge. For such a short album, there's plenty of variation, like the floor-punching youth crew pulse in "1132", the catchy opener "Trail of Perturbation", the blistering shout-along in "Replant and Repress". This is a record that'll appeal to punk kids—and Trash Talk fans—as much as it'll blow the minds of metalheads.

In part, this is because, for all the technical prowess, there's a lot of heart on the record. In a recent Decibel feature, the Carnes brothers talked about their mother abandoning them at a young age, and being raised by their rock'n'roll-friendly father (who stole Billy a guitar to practice on when he was a kid). Tyler's mentioned being into Robert Smith's lyrics, and the words of Converge's Jacob Bannon—poetry, more or less. This album carries that kind of weight: flowers are reincarnated as shards (and, later tossed into the sea) and there are suicidal thoughts, sinking stomachs, lacerations, hazy memories. There's a lot of blood and more than a few knives. There's a general anxiety, along with a song called "Another Night Sleeping in the Cold", that resonates deeply when you know the singer's backstory.

This human element of Noisem is appealing. These are not songs about horror films, they're songs about the personal horrors of life and living. Which may be another reason that, as brief and rabid as these songs are, they stick with you. At the end of this cacophony, it's easy to want to listen all over again. And it's just as easy to be excited about how much these guys have already progressed in such a short time, and how much more music they have left to create.

(Multiple xps) Heyyyyy Nameless Coyote & Black Cilice right on top of each other :D

I liked what I heard of that Kylesa but I didnt get a chance to listen to much of it before the deadline. They're a band I've been wanting to check out for a while now anyways; from what I did hear though, the album slams way harder than you'd expect, given the lukewarm response everywhere

i intended to listen to the noisem record all year but did not, guess now's the time

just reached the end of the vastum record and i'm totally in love. kudos everybody

88 Amestigon - Thier 169 Points, 5 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/fvOX9UX.jpg

https://wtcproductions.bandcamp.com/album/thier

http://www.angrymetalguy.com/amestigon-thier-review/

Near the end of Disney’s Ratatouille there’s a climactic scene during which the harsh, scrupulous restaurant critic Anton Ego (personality modelled, clearly, after AMG’s staff) savours the best ratatouille he’s ever had. Overwhelmed by the tastes and flavors that transport him back to his childhood, he’s left altogether dumbfounded with his usual negativity utterly dismantled. In a way, that’s the effect Amestigon’s Thier had on me. But before I begin explaining why exactly this record is as good as it is, two questions linger: who are these guys and where have they come from? While the band members are shrouded by a veil of trve metal mystery, what we do know is that Amestigon is a long-lived, low-key Austrian outfit born out of the minds of legends of the black metal scene (Tharen and Thurisaz from Abigor), and at certain pointsincluded other distinguished musicians such as Silenius from Summoning. More of a project than a full-time band and having published only one album in 20 years (the good but unremarkable Sun of All Suns from 2010), I wouldn’t have bet on them to produce something that could very well end up being one of the best releases of the year.

But here we are. Thier is a near-perfectly crafted record combining all the finest stuff found in melodic black metal through the ages, both old school and modern. Think Dissection’s Somberlain and Naglfar’s Vittra but with a decidedly modern approach. While these throwbacks are obvious, they come natural to the band and don’t feel derivative. The subtly introduced traces of doom, post-metal, Agallochian progressiveness, and experimentalism (title track’s middle section) alongside magnificent riffs and grooves prove to be crucial tools the band uses in their exemplary songwriting, evoking some of Enslaved’s most accomplished works.

While malevolent in its message and approach, Thier unfurls like a beautiful album since Amestigon don’t resort to cynicism, abrasiveness, nor coarseness. Like a pool of the blackest water, threatening and frightening, a dive into it’s depths can feel strangely comforting all the same. This might be due to their sound which is full, warm, and welcoming; easy to absorb and be absorbed into right from the first listen. There’s none of the snobbery or intentional hermeticism associated with contemporary metal acts, even if the relative lengthiness might indicate so. A potential downfall – an hour of music distributed among four tracks spanning from 10 to 20 minutes – that the band turns in their favour by weaving well-thought out and interesting structures with transitions from “aggressive” to “subdued” and back, executed masterfully and with a wonderful sense of flow. All of that and exactly zero seconds of boredom or repetitiveness.

Amestigon Thier 02The opening “Demiurg” is the best track here and one of the best songs I’ve heard all year. The combination of ever-changing, melodic tremolos that lay bare an atmospheric, synth-underlined mood with growls and choral chanting is deeply touching; majestic, chilling, and empowering in a strange way. Whilst a midtempo song in general, there are bursts of speed and great solos rounding out everything. Possibly the only downside to this album emerges from the fact that the following three tracks, “358,” “Thier,” and “Hochpolung,” don’t quite reach the heights of “Demiurg.” Nonetheless, they’re exceptional on their own and rely on the same formula without actually sounding formulaic.

How Amestigon accomplish that task and how they manage to conceive so many memorable and catchy riffs, alternating between them while leading to perfectly timed buildups and spectacular releases, without ever weighting down on the listener remains a mystery. The guitarist(s) are clearly the stars here, but the vocals, drumming, and bass-playing are all of the highest calibre and are often accentuated by the compressed yet somehow very appropriate production. It’s especially the bass that feels crucial to the encompassing warmth, whether providing nuances and textures or having it’s own, meatier flesh. Finally, if it was not clear by now, there’s a severe lack of serious flaws here – and it’s not because I didn’t look for them.

The experience of discovering albums like this make the effort of sifting through piles and piles of mediocre releases feel worthwhile. Amestigon deserve exposure and heaps of praise. They even make me want to stop people on the street and yell about Thier to their faces. I hope the guys are aware what a great record they’ve created and I truly hope that there’s more from them to come.

i dug the noisem. not as immediate as their first but still rips.

exceeding 100GB of audio to select from in the final mixes

what a world

huh this ken mode record is v different for them. not sure how i feel about it but it's pretty funny

I just bought that Amestigon on bandcamp. It better be as good as that review says it is!

I just hope its not too BM for me (BradMetal) ;)

it's described as melodic black metal, so it's definitely not me. gonna check it out anyway

four songs that all break the 10 minute mark :|

not brootal enough for ya?

87 Nechochewn - Heart of Akamon 173 Points, 5 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/WStKs0Z.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/2IdlszcBmAoyBCVr2CsQfU
spotify:album:2IdlszcBmAoyBCVr2CsQfU

http://nechochwen.com/album/heart-of-akamon

Guest vocals on Lost on the Trail of the Setting Sun performed by Tanner Anderson. Band Logo and Turtle Effigy hand-drawn by Austin Lunn. Layout photography by Nechochwen and Pohonasin. Band photography by David Holden. Cover painting used with kind permission of The Wisconsin Historical Society Nechochwen is: Nechochwen – Vocals, Electric and acoustic guitars, Native American flute, Lalawas, Floor Tom Pohonasin – Drums, Bass, Backing vocals Pandel Collaros – Electric and acoustic guitars (live lineup)Amanda McCoy – Electric and acoustic guitars (live lineup)

http://www.ghostcultmag.com/album-review-nechochwen-heart-of-akamon-bindrune-eihwaz/

Nechochwen are classified as Folk Metal, but whereas most music in that genre is inspired by Celtic or Nordic heritage, this band finds its themes in Native American heritage. Heart of Akamon (Bindrune/Eihwaz) is their third record.

‘The Serpent Tradition’, the opening song of this album, immediately showcases the folk and the metal that are combined in this band. The acoustic guitars sound magical, and while the switch from heavy to soft was abrupt, the build back into heavy is very well done. The clean vocals are beautiful, as are the acoustic guitar pieces intermingled with the metal riffs, and there is a lot of variation. However, the end is once again rather abrupt.

The more acoustic-centred songs such as ‘The Impending Winter’, ‘October 6, 1813’, and the guitar section in ‘Traversing the Shades of Death’ are really well crafted and unique, while the metal sections and songs, such as ‘Skyhook’, are good but not truly remarkable.

The musical highlight of this album, however, is the instrumental ‘Kišelamakong’. It is a beautiful composition.

One point that this band could improve upon is cohesion. There is a bit too much of a split between folk and metal, and while ‘The Serpent Tradition’ for instance has sections where they blend together perfectly, this does not happen often or fluently enough on other parts of the album. Additionally, the switches between loud and gentle are at times too abrupt, while being very organic at other points. While each individual section is very good, the changes in speed in the introduction of ‘Škimota’ aren’t great. The addition of the drums helps keep the following variations together.

Finding a balance throughout the songs or even the entire album would make a massive difference. Still, there are a lot of excellent pieces of music and it is certainly an album worth listening to.

bandcamp chose the wrong day to suck

why is bandcamp sucking?

Maybe it's just me then but the streaming has been shit all day, plenty of tracks that just won't load at all.

Like, I could only listen to the firt track of Amestigon, and same for Nameless Coyote. Based on that single track Amestigon sounded like something worth investigating.

86 Intronaut - The Direction of Last Things 175 Points, 6 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/Q4qZP2V.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/2iGP3G8vZKRgcctwFMVLCp
spotify:album:2iGP3G8vZKRgcctwFMVLCp

http://www.angrymetalguy.com/intronaut-direction-last-things-review/

Intronaut is one of those bands that I always meant to get around to but never did. With lineups that include(d) members from bands such as Impaled, Exhumed, and Mouth of the Architect, most people know Intronaut even if they have never actually heard them. Having spent the last couple weeks with their near decade-long back-catalog, their debut (Void) stands out to me as perhaps their best release. Aggressive, progressive, and without the typical wankery found in prog metal, Void delivers a mix of impressive instrumentation, great detail, and a familiar harshness found in older Mastodon material. While the band expanded on their skills between Prehistoricisms and Habitual Levitations (Instilling Words with Tones), their focus shifted to a slower pace, cleaner vocals, and the incorporation of a post-metal tinge to their sound. Unfortunately, that’s where they lose me. Intronaut have always been good at what they do, but most of their work is right at the verge of being incredible without actually achieving it. However, 2015’s The Direction of Last Things finds the band reincorporating some of that Void aggression, while focusing on more memorable songwriting and a production that trumps all previous releases.

Opener “Fast Worms” begins in a hurry with a speedy lick that threatens to out-run most of the chuggers produced by Mastodon. After alternating between these frenzied riffs and the wide-open chorus, the song comes to a halt before returning to its former self via a smooth-talking Tool build and some reverberating The Ocean guitar melodies. The song ends with a dissonance that resists closure in order to setup The Ocean-meets-Mastodon follow-up “Digital Gerrymandering.” With a soothing chorus, some awesome bass work, and psychedelic guitar rhythms, this eight-minute ditty sets the progressive tone for the rest of the album. Direction feels more “progressive” than its predecessors and the tightness of the performances is mind-boggling (even more impressive considering it was mostly recorded live).

A majority of the album follows the same formula as “Digital Gerrymandering;” a hard-hitting riff straight out of the gates, well-placed harshes and cleans, memorable choruses, down-shifted interludes, and slow builds that eventually erupt into climatic returns to the track’s heavy riffage. “Sul Ponticello” opens with gigantic heaviness in the form of Tooling grooviness before flowering with large pedals of instrumentation and melody. Similar “massiveness” can be found on the title track and “The Unlikely Event of a Water Landing.” One of the better tracks on the album, the title track has some kickass crunch, a beautiful clean-guitar bit in its slower section, and the kind of climatic build that makes the song well worth the journey.

On the extreme ends of Direction, you will find the straightforward and crushing “The Pleasant Surprise” (which really is a pleasant surprise for those aching for some Intronaut bruising) and the long, meandering “The Unlikely Event of a Water Landing.” While the former is a great example of “short and sweet,” the latter overstays its welcome and feels a bit disjointed in execution. It has some good moments buried in its eight-minute length but I feel myself generally tuning out on repeat listens. Closer “City Hymnal” also suffers from lack of staying power even though it does a fine job of concluding Direction with a chorus of layered vocals and sweeping melodies.

Overall, The Direction of Last Things is a decent proggy platter. Though, I’m still partial to Void, this album takes the band to the next level in terms of creating memorable songs that show technicality and impressive musicianship. The heaviness employed is not exactly brutal or fast, but its presence helps give diversity to the music. Thankfully, Intronaut magnified all of this by hiring Devin Townsend on mixing duties. This decision was well worth the money as every instrument comes to life in the mix and the record is a truly dynamic listen. The direction of… well, Direction… works well for the band and with a bit of honing, I expect the next release will be something really special.