~~~ 2014 ILM METAL POLL TRACKS & ALBUMS COUNTDOWN! ~~~ (Tracks top 30 first then Albums)

34 Kvelertak - Meir, 375 Points, 12 Votes
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/31/Meir_cover.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/5PAjZGAD8j0XZANLxJWulb
spotify:album:5PAjZGAD8j0XZANLxJWulb

http://www.deezer.com/album/6284707
#4 Revolver, #2 SPIN, #9 Pop Matters, #22 Stereogum, #19 Obelisk readers, #12 Stoner HiVe, #18 Metal Hammer, #37 Terrorizer

The Needle Drop review - http://youtu.be/6KelOf9JfaY

On their second album Meir (simply, "More"), Stavanger six-piece Kvelertak haven't exactly refined the kitchen sink formula that made their eponymous 2010 debut one of the most welcome surprises of recent years; rather, they've bottled it, destroyed the recipe and knocked back gallons of the stuff like Vikings at a post-pillage feast. The Norse wild-men have thrown together a whole bunch of influences - some heavy, some not so much - that really shouldn't gel as well as they end up doing here and magically turned them into brain-meltingly brilliant hard rock party anthems.

There are probably a dozen metal sub-genres represented in some capacity over the course of Meir's fifty minutes, and whilst you might expect black metal and stoner rock, or folk metal and hardcore punk to coexist about as happily as hungry dogs squabbling over a dropped steak sandwich, they actually end up playing very nicely together. All metallic life is here, from Slayer to GNR to Mastodon to Converge (whose guitarist Kurt Ballou produces), but there are also nods to more mainstream heavy rockers, both past (Thin Lizzy, Aerosmith, Meat Loaf) and present (Foo Fighters, Queens Of The Stone Age), Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac, Slade and melodic pop-punks NOFX, to name but a few. On paper it's a train wreck, a mess of contrasting ideas and opposing ideologies, but these guys make it work, belting out hoarse-throated Cookie Monster vocals and terrace-style group chants over three-part guitar harmonies, thrashy solos and a rhythm section that turns on a dime from grindcore blast beats to glam rock stomp and back again.

This is a band that seem genuinely unconcerned with stylistic boundaries, who would no doubt be just as happy opening for Dave Grohl's Sound City project as they would touring with more obvious contemporaries like Torche or Kylesa; what’s more, you can be sure they would end up converting every crowd into a rabid, rapturous mass of wild-eyed believers.
 
So, will Meir make Kvelertak one of the biggest metal bands on the planet? Unfortunately, I don't think so. Although it lacks the element of surprise that boosted the debut's stock, Meir is a better, stronger, more accessible record overall; however, while kudos is due to new paymasters Roadrunner for allowing the band to use the same producer and even the same cover artist (Baroness' John Baizley) as before, they might have missed a trick by not insisting they throw a few choruses into the mix for non-Scandinavian fans to scream along to. Are American frat-boys really going to flock to download an album by a band whose name they can't pronounce, whose lyrics they can't understand and whose artwork suggests some kind of Game Of Thrones-fantasy over the English-speaking likes of Darkthrone or close spiritual cousins Turbonegro? Unlikely, but will Kvelertak give a flying fart? Certainly not, and neither should we: it doesn't matter one bit whether they're singing about burning bridges or finding trolls under them, and if you’re going to choose a moniker that doubles up as a battle cry (it translates as “chokehold”), then who can blame them for going full Motorhead and recording a band anthem with the same name?

Besides, coming from a country where heavy metal is basically the music of the gods, Kvelertak are working for a higher power than the global marketplace, and as long as they keep coming up with this awesome AC/DC-meets-Kiss-meets-Metallica racket, with music that feels this vital, then I’d no sooner argue with them than I would with Odin himself. Nobody could question the fact that these guys mean it with every fibre of their being, and Meir is music to make Norway proud; a new majestic fanfare to welcome hog-riding warriors into Valhalla. - Michael Dix, The Quietus, http://thequietus.com/articles/11778-kvelertak-meir-review

that album is great, voted for it in the main poll

1st album everyone raved about but didnt seem to see much this time round despite positive reviews.

I got to see them play this year and realized how pointless the records are in comparison. They absolutely floored me live, and this album in particular seemed limp when I tried to listen to it afterwards.

33 Bardo Pond - Peace On Venus, 377 Points, 12 Votes

http://www.deezer.com/album/6929882

#50 Rock-A-Rolla
http://youtu.be/xCCriIuBC60

A shambolic, distortion-heavy masterpiecce

What a great record this is. Philadelphia’s Bardo Pond bring a molten mix of heavily distorted guitars and sludgy bass, swirl it with some tremulous, evocative vocals courtesy of frontwoman Isobel Sollenberger, then throw in a few bits of flute or violin for extra ambience and shake it all together. Tempos tend to be leaden, but this is far from doom metal—or any kind of metal. Bardo Pond comes off more like a somnambulant folk rock on acid, with the volume turned to 11 and the whole band stoned on cough syrup. It’s loud and awesome and unlike anything else you’re likely to hear this year, but avoid listening to it while operating heavy machinery, or you’re likely to wind up in a ditch somewhere.

Opening track “Kali Yuga Blues” features a fuzzy guitar line sounding something like Crazy Horse at its overdriven best, but without the forward-charging tempo that Neil Young’s band generally brings to the table. The rhythm shuffles forward, breaks off, hesitates, starts again, takes a detour for a while… all while Sollenberger’s wistful croon meanders in and out of the mix, making vague promises that “I think it’s gonna be different this time.” I have no idea what this song is about, and it really doesn’t matter: the band and vocalist gel perfectly, and the fact that the tune evokes almost uncontrollable waves of sadness is a testament to the singer’s abilities to make a great deal out of very little. At seven-and-a-half minutes, there’s plenty of room for the song to breathe and flow and run its course. When the flutes roll in at around the five-minute mark, contrasting with and complementing the insect-buzz guitar leads, it’s both surprising and utterly fitting. The whole thing is one of the best tunes of the year.
Happily, brilliant as this opening is, the rest of the album is able to hold its own, and a good thing too: with only five tracks ranging from five to 11 minutes, there’s no room for filler. “Taste” and “Fir” both expand on the template set by the opening track, but an even bigger standout is “Chance”. The penultimate tune here, “Chance” is noticeable for its acoustic guitar opening on an album which is otherwise unapologetically plugged in from start to finish, as well as its lack of vocals. As it happens, that acoustic picking is soon subsumed under layers of other sounds, including those Crazy Horse-ish guitars and a wistful flute air, but so engaging is the instrumental work that a listener might not even notice the lack of vocals the first few times around.

This is followed by the album’s final track, another 10-minute-plus number called “Before the Moon”, which brings the album full circle: processed vocals (featuring, I think, tape loops or reverse echo or something of the sort) and lots of straightforward, noisy guitar jamming over a tempo that always sounds on the verge of collapsing under its own weight. If the walking dead could dance, this is the music they would dance to.

Anyone interested in the future of rock and roll—or, hell, its present—should run out right now and listen to this album. People have been proclaiming the death of rock for quite some time, including in the pages of this very magazine, but Bardo Pond jams a joyous middle finger at such gloomy assertions. Rock and roll isn’t dead; it’s just morphing into something less familiar, something darker and more beautiful and strange. - David Maine, Pop Matters, http://www.popmatters.com/review/176814-bardo-pond-peace-on-venus/

today feels like rowlf day so far and he's not even here to comment

Kvelertak is an odd one, I was excited for it, enjoyed it a lot when it arrived, but enthusiasm just steadily declined as the year went on though I voted for it. Giving it a re-listen now it seems like maybe just a bit too much of it is in the same midtempo groove with sort of monotonous shouty vocals over the top.

No chat on the Bardo Pond? Ok...

32 Föllakzoid - II, 383 Points, 10 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/2S0HJXs.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/4oopTeOoJJNiUkc6AVjmAA
spotify:album:4oopTeOoJJNiUkc6AVjmAA

http://www.deezer.com/album/6332002

http://follakzoid.bandcamp.com/album/ii-2
http://youtu.be/q-nHP2Xerms

The persistence of krautrock's motorik rhythm into the twenty-first century – it's probably the only beat originating in rock not to have become dated – is matched only by the variety of uses that have been found for it. One way of thinking about the disparity of settings which have accommodated its insistent, mid-paced 4/4 is to consider how it can express both the experience of automated late-industrial modernity and atavistic impulses towards the cosmic and transcendental. For every musician who has found that Neu, Can and Kraftwerk established a means of representing the Ballardian jouissance stimulated by accelerating global homogenisation, there has been another who has manipulated their serene surge to create expansive, seemingly limitless sound-worlds.

Early krautrock evoked a geography of factory and motorway, of Corbusian glass and concrete, but artists such as Kyuss, Queens Of The Stone Age, Mark Lanegan and even early Sonic Youth have retooled its mirage of physical momentum for the desert. Chilean rockers Föllakzoid's self-titled first album made a few gestures towards Dusseldorf while retaining many of the conventions of more unreconstructed stoner metal, but II, their second record, represents an ambitious attempt to fully synthesise weighty boulder-and-cactus riffing with extreme repetition. The result is something which, first of all, sounds absolutely gargantuan – outside drone metal, it's hard to think of many recent guitar albums which have created such a sense of space beyond Shrinebuilder's eponymous debut and Skull Defekts' Peer Amid. II's second immediately impressive quality is its absolute conviction in repetition: by the closing track, 'Pulsar', Föllakzoid are almost trespassing upon the territory of minimal techno, where the only alterations are hairline shifts in intensity.

The ability to make music which balances the emphatic and the exquisite - merging unrepentant metallic force with the exquisite detailing of minimalism - is what marks this group out from other latter-day krautrock aficionados. Generally, bands are either too respectful of the template – consider some of Primal Scream and Death In Vegas's homage-pastiches – or too glib in their employment of it. By contrast, II comes across as the product of Neu! fans who can take exactly what they need from their heroes without suffocating their own exploratory impulses. 'Trees' is probably the album's highlight, thumping along the fraught boundary between control and disarray. At any given moment, it threatens to collapse into unctuous jamming, but a grim sense of purpose holds it all together, its texturised vocals and bells mainlined into the propulsive rhythmic vein. Opening track '9' is similarly structured, adding a whip-like lick as a way of urging momentum and wrapping a horizonless coda in washes of reverb and droning synth.

At its best, and the quality rarely drops here, II is the kind of record which can serve in its own right as a rebuke to pallid acoustic singer-songwritery and desireless indie pop. It has the spirited sonic tactility, the speaker-crushing heaviness of Fu Manchu or Melvins, but finds ways of commandeering these strengths for the manic futurology of krautrock. It will be interesting to see if, and how, Föllakzoid come off the autobahn next time around, but their current approach is serving them pretty well. - Joe Kennedy, The Quietus, http://thequietus.com/articles/13108-follakzoid-ii-review

need to send out the drugsamoneybatsignal

31 Satan - Life Sentence, 386 Points, 11 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/v6OO975.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/3sD31ov9XhOnJjQJhjjvpJ
spotify:album:3sD31ov9XhOnJjQJhjjvpJ

http://www.deezer.com/album/6510995

#46 Metal Hammer, #25 Terrorizer, #23 Stereogum
http://youtu.be/i5KETz-rqfg

Sorry metal devotees, it appears as if all the extremes have long been met. No one can get any faster, heavier, louder, doomier, thrashier, deadlier, darker, grosser, deathier, eviller, drunker, higher, more violent, more bearded, more obscure, more armored, more grindy, more porny, more hardcore, or more weird during an age when people don't even blink an eye when a band member walks out on stage wearing a dusty grandfather clock over his head. We've even seen bands that feature dogs and birds as vocalists, for Hell's sake. Maybe we'll all live to see a day when a band actually does invent a true diesel-powered guitar, but honestly, does it even matter that much anymore? Aren't we all fully desensitized at this point?

Just be heavy, be fast, or be whatever, and leave the pursuit of extremes to the past when such a thing carried a lot more weight.

That's really one of the huge benefits of being able to say you were alive and a part of the scene that managed to rankle to life at the onset of the 80s: witnessing first hand the hairtrigger shifts to new extremes that countless bands employed in hopes of challenging boundaries when boundaries were still plainly visible.

People today often laugh at the thought of literally getting spooked by an album, but by God, reading that infernal "We're possessed by all that is evil…" quote on the back of Welcome to Hell in '81 towered in its ability to make a kid feel a bit dangerous for having balls big enough to sneak it up to their room. Times were simpler, and you had to be louder, faster and more and more dramatic if you wanted to catch the attention of labels, magazines and any general ripper-at-large, particularly if your chops weren't quite up to snuff yet.

Clearly, most eyes and ears were pinned to the UK in the very early part of the decade, thanks to consistently durable output from New Wave prime movers such as Maiden, Priest, Saxon, Tygers of Pan Tang, et al, but things really started to kick up a notch by the time '83 rolled around and bands focused an increased attention toward strengthening speed, which is precisely where Newcastle's Satan entered the picture.

In a world that was quickly becoming infiltrated by an increased division of humdrum NWOBHM releases that attempted to ride the coat-tails of coat-tails, Satan delivered real chops to the table. And despite sporting the most damnable moniker possible (with a Christian cross "T"? WTF?), the band's lyrics and overall aesthetic had absolutely zilch to do with anything even remotely occult. But what they lacked in horrific hellfire wickedness, Satan more than made up for by helping to establish the essential building blocks for the quickly approaching melodic speed metal movement:

But just to give you an idea of how quickly things were moving back then, Kill 'em All, Melissa and Show No Mercy all dropped shortly after Court in the Act's release in June of '83, and the following short-list of bands also managed to crop up throughout that very same year: Bathory, Death, Fates Warning, Helloween, Master, Mayhem, Megadeth, Morbid Angel, Possessed and Sacrifice.

Pants were titanically shat back in '83.

Satan continued to kick out material throughout the 80s -- under their original moniker, and via the slightly shifted line-ups of Blind Fury and Pariah -- but bassist Graeme English and guitarist Steve Ramsey eventually bolted to form Skyclad with the help of Sabbat (UK) frontman, Martin Walkyier in 1990.

It wasn't until 2004's Wacken Festival that the band eventually reunited under the original Court in the Act line-up and decided to test the waters and see if anything was left in the tank in terms of brand new material.

Well hello there, Life Sentence.

There's clearly been no shortage of bands reuniting in hopes of re-riding this long wave of 80s metal appreciation we're currently enjoying. New bands continue to crop up to pay precise homage, and I recently counted a staggering FIFTEEN old-school NWOBHM bands outside of Saxon, Priest and Maiden that are still listed as 'active' in 2013. Last year delivered the first Angel Witch album in 27 years, and 2011 dropped the grand return of Hell with Human Remains, but I'd have to concede that Life Sentence outshines most everyone in terms of delivering a wholly enjoyable come-back album from start to finish.

First of all, feel free to judge this book by its cover. Is there any question that Eliran Kantor is one of the top three album artists in metal today?

Secondly, a quick tip of the hat is owed to a beautifully balanced production that gives equal attention to each member at nearly any given moment throughout these tunes. Ramsey and English have spent the better part of the last 20+ years further honing their fretting skills through Skyclad, but the rest of the crew has clearly been doing something to maintain this sort of skill level, and Dario Mollo's mix does a wonderful job of capturing all the raw, vital energy that intesifies the whole album.

By today's standards, Life Sentence stands far enough away from what most of our readers would consider extreme, it ain't even funny. But as I attempted to point out in that first paragraph many moons ago, experimenting with extremes holds a lot less significance during an age when you've got nuttiness such as a 107.3 The Wave soft rock band fronted by a Satanic pontiff competing for ears. Life Sentence doesn't need to challenge new grounds in order to garner attention because it's a superlative example of how fun, melodic, classic heavy metal is intended to sound; there's simply no need for exaggerated experimentation.

The album is split fairly evenly between songs that maintain a classic NWOBHM sound and ones that jack up the aggression/speed levels. Openers "Time to Die" and "Twenty Twenty Five", along with slightly darker offerings such as "Incantations" and "Personal Demons" gallop at a mid-paced clip and emphasize bright melody through impeccable soloing and infectious vocal hooks, while "Cenotaph", "Siege Mentality", "Testimony" and the superb title track all kick up the adrenaline just enough to draw blood and remind folks exactly why Satan was considered a key architect in the speed metal realm.

During a time when metal continues to stack limp reunions and feeble re-hashers up to the rafters, it's infinitely rewarding to come across a rekindling that sounds as if it was truly meant to be. Life Sentence finds Satan picking up squarely where they left off some 25+ years ago, and whether or not that equates to a necessary purchase for you depends entirely on what kind of a role dynamic, melodic and considerably satisfying old-school metal plays in your life. If that sounds great, get ready for one of 2013's top releases.

Welcome back, gents. - Michael Wuensch, Last Rites

not exactly an original bandname

Such a great record.

Too low for Life Sentence - what a fun rekkid. I love the Bardo Pond and am totally cool with voting for it and it placing in a 'Metal' poll. Yntra release pointed this direction and they've always jammed hard.

Just got out of a long meeting. Wow, two pure psych albums in a row. May be a result of the involvement of our peeps in Rolling Stoner/Psych/Freak/Doom/Sludge/Retro/Drone/Space Thread 2014: These Start at 11. I'd expected more stoner/doom like Brimstone Coven, Mountain Witch, Wounded Giant and Black Capricorn to be represented. I wouldn't even consider the Bardo Pond and Föllakzoid particularly heavy, but they are certainly great albums.

30. Jute Gyte - Discontinuities, 393 Points, 10 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/gheLbM3.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/1B9OtojrhSv0uihcH9vMez
spotify:album:1B9OtojrhSv0uihcH9vMez

http://jutegyte.bandcamp.com/ (Name Your Price!)
http://youtu.be/iG6U66TIxgo

The wildly outlandish Jute Gyte is an unquestionably unique musical project. With the occasional tremolo picked riffs and glass shards in the throat vocals, it is obvious that Jute Gyte has taken some cues from black metal. However, outside of these superficial aspects of “Discontinuities” there is no sense in trying to think of the album in terms of existing metal sub-genres. It is best to think of the project as extremely experimental. Jute Gyte takes melodies that are so unusual that they almost sound like accidents and layers them with seamless and oddly natural asymmetry. Think of how a flounder twists and flattens as it ages. The end result of Jute Gyte’s twisting asymmetry is alienating yet spectacular, while “Discontinuities” has its flaws, the album clearly illustrates how Jute Gyte is absolutely unforgettable.

Experimentation permeates every moment of “Discontinuities” in ways that are readily apparent yet deep seated. Dissonant waves of jangling jump out one after another, starkly assuring the listener that the full yet unfamiliar sounds will persist, instead of being used to contrast or highlight soothing melodies. Even the calmer and relatively sedate sections of music are still unsettling and weird. This may not sound like anything new on paper, but the use of a 24-tone guitar means that the album uses notes that typically are not used in Western music. To oversimplify, normally on a guitar you can play 12 different notes but this album uses a guitar that allows for 24.

Ultimately, this is just another tool that Jute Gyte uses to create uncomfortable soundscapes. Instead of making everything sound out of tune, the dizzying flurries of notes are jarring, but deliberate. This approach keeps the experimentation from sounding either haphazard or manufactured, and with such an important change to the guitar this success is vital. As past albums have shown, Jute Gyte does not need a 24-tone guitar to make off-kilter music. At its heart, “Discontinuities” is unusual because the overall approach to composition and melody immerse the listener into an alien world. So while Jute Gyte utilizes many tools like a 24-tone guitar or polyrhythms, which do influence the composition, the central focus is still on the music rather than how it was put together.

Despite the overwhelmingly dissonant nature of the music, the mood isn’t nearly as abrasive as one would expect. Outside of the shrieking violence in the vocals, there is a peculiar and even paradoxical calmness in the tone that supersedes the frenzied parts that make up the album. Most of the time this feels like a stalwart sense of direction that guides the notes along the way through all of the chaos and is perfected at the end of “The Haunting Sense...” This is also a key part of how enveloping waves of clashing notes can be. Infrequently however, this quasi-calmness sounds like the cold emotionless side effect of contrived musical ideas. Fortunately, “Discontinuities” mostly maintains a strong direction through the very same technique that helps create some of this paradox of calm chaos. This technique is the careful layering of melodies on top of one another to bury you deep in dissonance.

The typical path in music is to have many parts acting mostly together, as a flock of birds to create a whole, Jute Gyte instead favors more independent parts that coalesce to create a coherent whole. As a key part of this, melodies do not clearly stop and start together. Picture how the molecules of air inside of a jar are always moving around, yet that air never separates into chunks of its component elements. This speaks to the calmness in Jute Gyte’s chaos, as one melody drifts off into bizarre territory another melody is still pulsing or repeating. Each part is moving but the mix as a whole remains consistent. Look to how the persistent drums, plodding rhythm, and bass smooth out the angular melodies in “Supreme Fictions....” and “Acedia.” This is how there is such a sense of both change and stability and it makes the alienation fantastically alluring by forging its own sense of logic and structure.

Fleshed out and detailed with synths and a warm sinuous bass, “Discontinuities” also relies on them to round out the abrasive vocals and angular approach to the guitar and drums. The synthesizer in particular immediately drapes other instruments in its emotional color as when the eerie and light chords of “The Failure of Transmutation” sneak into the mix. Flourishes like this serve to keep the rough and jangling parts within the realm of the unsettling rather than creating more of a harsh atmosphere. Contrary to this, the drums feel bare and mathematical, yet follow the overall emotional intensity of the music enough to make their dryness fade away as an issue.

While the large majority of the focus is on the composition rather than underlying technique, there are times where the album fails on this point. Sometimes the album is overbearingly alienating when the sense of calmness stops being unsettling and starts getting tiresome. Undue repetition is the culprit here, but it is a repetition of patterns rather than particular riffs or notes. The more structural example of this is in “Romanticism Is Ultimately Fatal” where the intro’s predictably declining melody repeats and then later gives way to a chugging riff that similarly rises without going anywhere. Sounding like the musical equivalent of a staircase drawn by M. C. Escher, these parts and the title track “Discontinuities” unfortunately come across more like sketches practicing with a new tool (a 24-tone guitar) than complete pictures. Still, both songs are strong. “Romanticism....” has perhaps the most eerie melody of the album, which is beautifully reinforced by electronic flittering. The minimal instrumentation on “Discontinuities” serves as useful break from the chaotic music, even if it is far too long and repetitive. There, the quiet screaming noises that bookend the song are also an excellent and subtle detail.

With this radical level of experimentation, the degree to which the album feels natural rather than manufactured is impressive. Perhaps it is unsurprising then that Jute Gyte is a one man band, the work of Adam Kalmbach whose experimental tendencies have gone untempered by the compromises that often happen with collaborations. “Discontinuities” is daunting because of its strangeness, its hour long length, and a certain kind of majesty that isn’t immediately obvious or instantly rewarding. Still, the album has lasting power far beyond whatever novelty it provides. Although supremely strange, it is more importantly a great album because of how the immersive layering makes such an alienating experience one that is absolutely worth repeating.

Jute Gyte's expansive discography is available to download (and as far as I know every release is free) or purchase a physical copy of here: http://jutegyte.bandcamp.com/ - The Oak Conclave, http://theoakconclave.blogspot.com/2013/03/jute-gyte-discontinuities.html

Some of my friends are super obsessed with that satan album, which prompted me to revisit it and realize that they are absolutely right and it's goddamn awesome.

I'm glad that Satan album showed up because I was beginning to have no idea what's going on in this poll.

And while Satan's Court in the Act (1983) is certainly an important album, I think the new one is better!

Finding a super hi res version of that Jute Gyte cover to determine if he photoshopped himself into the mirror has proven disappointing.

29 Moss - Horrible Night, 401 Points, 11 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/m3bz6eU.jpg

http://open.spotify.com/album/0ZxSMA2RWUCh73yCFKzo7z
spotify:album:0ZxSMA2RWUCh73yCFKzo7z

http://mossdoom.bandcamp.com/album/horrible-night
http://youtu.be/WVaEsvJZwqo

It’s been five long years since Southampton, UK, doomers Moss debuted on Rise Above Records with their sophomore album, Sub Templum, and though the band issued a couple EPs and the Never Say Live live album since that release, they’ve been silent since 2010 and emerge now with a new outlook on the full-length Horrible Night. Still aligned to Rise Above, the trio of Olly Pearson (vocals), Dominic Finbow (guitar) and Chris Chantler (drums) have shifted away from the deathly influences that typified their many earlier works in favor of cleaner singing and a darkly psychedelic, cultish sprawl. Where Sub Templum was comprised of four tracks totaling nearly 74 minutes, Horrible Night is more efficient on the whole, clocking in at just over 54 with six tracks, none of which go much past 11. That’s quite a change from songs like “Gate III: Devils from the Outer Dark,” which closed the prior outing at an insurmountable 35:31, but the bigger shift is in Moss‘ actual aesthetic, which is more atmospheric than in the past and echoing its abysmal feel rather than bludgeoning with volume. In some ways, Horrible Night has more in common with latter-day Electric Wizard than did Sub Templum, which was produced by that band’s vocalist, Jus Oborn, but Moss show comparatively little of the same psychotic pop fascination. Songs here like “Dark Lady” and opener “Horrible Nights” have choruses that are memorable and engaging as much as this kind of feedback-drenched morass can be or wants to be, but they’re never rushing to get to them. Or to anywhere else, for that matter.

That’s one factor that Moss have kept consistent with their prior output — they are slow. Moss take ultra-thick plod and let it ride for however long they feel it needs to, and while one could easily consider Horrible Night an overall more manageable or accessible record than its predecessor, it’s hardly a comfortable listen. Weary, sluggish groove pervades the verse of “Horrible Nights” (note the ‘S’ at the end, where the title of the album is singular) as Pearson tops Finbow‘s guitar with Sabbathian lines, buried deep but still cutting through the mix, caked in reverb. I suppose compared to some of what Moss has done, this is fast, but put to the scale of most anything else, its lurching still qualifies as extreme — and it’s also probably the most accessible moment of the record — even as it moves into wailing guitar leads and malevolent screams in the second half, feedback setting a bed for chaos reminiscent of early The Wounded Kings at their bleakest or the first Cough full-length. If I’m comparing Moss, who’ve been around for over a decade, to bands getting their start, it’s because they essentially are. Horrible Night covers new ground for them, and even if on paper, their latest work shares elements they’ve used in the past, the reality of the situation makes for a much, much different listen, “Horrible Nights” even going so far as to return to its verse at the end, giving the second half’s chaos a sense of purpose and symmetry as the fadeout leads to the beginning of “The Bleeding Years,” even slower and more ill-meaning.

In terms of its verse, “The Bleeding Years” is less distinct — less catchy, relatively speaking — than “Horrible Nights” or “Dark Lady,” which follows, but at 7:05, it’s the shortest of the songs with vocals, and its largesse of riff covers a lot of ground. Chantler‘s drums hold together the meandering progression well, and as much as the first track telegraphed the new methodology of the band, the second shows Moss are still challenging the listener in their own way. “Dark Lady” — the longest cut at 11:04 — takes hold following a jarring outro guitar deconstruction, the two songs flowing one right into the next, and beings Horrible Night back to more grounded, structured material, its chorus of,

“Explain to me why your mind is so evil?
I think perhaps you’re possessed by the Devil
You’ve cast your spell of lies
There’s nothing left to do
Within this cell you’ve made
I’m looking back at you”

providing the album with its strongest and most resonant hook (not to mention a bit of classic heavy metal misogyny). Again though, Moss don’t oversell it, instead setting up a tortured, lumbering movement that gradually gives way to the full thrust of the rumble underscoring Pearson‘s emotive delivery of the lyrics above. Atmospherically and in its riff, “Dark Lady” holds fast to its initial ideas, and rightly so — it doesn’t need much more than the one riff to get its hypnotically repetitive point across — and as with the opener, a returning verse bookends a dead stop before “Dreams from the Depths” provides a dreary, droning interlude.

The break after “Dark Lady” is well positioned and long enough at 4:18 to signal a change from one movement of Horrible Night to another. A heartbeat comes on at the very end to announce the resurgence of riff that heralds “The Coral of Chaos,” Finbow riffing out layers of impenetrable misery while Pearson somehow manages to cut through. There’s continuity with the first and third track in “The Coral of Chaos,” but both it and the closer, “I Saw Them that Night,” are darker and (seemingly on purpose) less catchy. Finbow‘s guitar shows off a nasty lead tone in the midsection of “The Coral of Chaos,” but soon recedes to the lumbering downer riff from whence it came, setting up the feedback layered into the slowdown at the end that Pearson joins in the last minute. As the finale, “I Saw Them that Night” is a complement to the opener in its pacing, moving from beginning trudgery to a more insistent middle ground that, were it not for some of what Moss have already gotten up to on Horrible Night, would still qualify as plenty slow. Heading toward the eight-minute mark, the guitars swell in volume and feedback takes hold atop Chantler‘s crashing drums to give the record its finish in fallen-apart, noisy fashion. “I Saw Them that Night” may let go of some of the chorus-based momentum that the album built earlier on, but if Moss show anything with their third long-player, it’s that they’re not willing to be beholden even to their own norms, let alone anyone else’s. In its totality, Horrible Night is grim and wretchedly doomed — a work aurally more accessible than Sub Templum but no more compromising in its atmosphere or purpose — and for Moss, it signals a new beginning should they want to continue down this path. I hear little on these tracks that might dissuade them from doing so. - The Obelisk, http://theobelisk.net/obelisk/2013/04/04/moss-horrible-night-review/

not big on old school/NWOBHM at all but both Satan and Magic Circle really clicked with me in a way that stuff usually doesn't, Satan especially

Moss album is great. Proper singing has given them a new lease of life. It doesnt always work like that.

Rise Above releases have done well so far with Purson, Cathedral, Church Of Misery and Moss. Let's see how many of the rest make it - Age Of Taurus, Blood Ceremony, Hidden Masters, Horisont, Iron Man & Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats.

28 Inter Arma - Sky Burial, 408 Points, 12 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/7fuuwtD.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/7Kk3le5Td87Gx8vz8K1Yt0
spotify:album:7Kk3le5Td87Gx8vz8K1Yt0

http://www.deezer.com/album/6355167

#14 Decibel, #9 SPIN, #9 Stereogum, #11 Pitchfork

http://interarma.bandcamp.com/
Review - http://youtu.be/r66Ey2tKHvA

On the second full-length from Richmond, VA's heavy psychedelic alchemists Inter Arma, danger and apocalypse always loom nearby, casting long shadows over everything within sight. In these eight songs, the destroyer becomes the vaunted creator. Humankind sends the earth into a vortex of despair and decay. End-times gloom represents a lone currency of hope. The music is made to match, too, with salvos of rapid-fire black metal and plumes of foreboding instrumental drift lightning the lantern toward darkness.

Listening to Sky Burial, however, is one of the most exhilarating experiences you might hope to have with a record, largely because its creators sound so obviously intoxicated and energized by the possibilities of music itself. As these five multi-instrumentalists and experimenters work through creaking doom and obliterative marches, smoldering introductions and scowling grooves, the sense that they’re loving every moment of this is pervasive. They foreground their enthusiasm and counter the darkness with contagious élan. Appropriate for an album so obsessed by the beginnings that endings can bring, Sky Burial’s misanthropic heart is inspired enough to make one, well, happy.
At nearly 70 minutes, Sky Burial is a massive stylistic crucible where unlikely influences and aspirations bleed and blur into one another. Inter Arma represents a convergence of disparate traditions-- Led Zeppelin and Lightning Bolt, Pink Floyd and Pentangle, Immortal and Enslaved, Sleep and the Staple Singers. Though all these strains share the same space, Inter Arma never sounds claustrophobic, meaning they give each component its due before showing how it can cooperate with the next approach. Acoustic interludes in the midst of loud rock records, for instance, certainly aren’t novel ideas, but when Inter Arma push away from the amps and drop the howls, the acoustic instrumentals don’t function as mere sideshows. Lined with sighing steel guitar and sustained piano notes, the four-minute “The Long Road Home (Iron Gate)” shows similar development to the 10-minute epics that bookend it. Inter Arma opens its successor, “The Long Road”, with more than seven minutes of rising rock ’n’ roll action, reaching the It Still Moves-sized limits of My Morning Jacket before catapulting, without hesitation, into a malevolent Scandinavian-influenced blast. At one point, “Westward” flips from a patchwork of noise and grindcore into the sort of open-wheel blues metal you’d expect from millennial Allman descendants.

One could counter, of course, that being stoked on making music isn’t enough to make said music good. The teenager enlisting friends to join a basement rock band is certainly zealous, but that doesn’t mean their tunes are worthy of your time. But Inter Arma isn’t just ardent. Rather, these songs are both well designed and well executed. The ingenious “’sblood” rides the same riff and rhythm for most of its six minutes, while Mike Paparo shouts four repetitive lines about the limits of the earth. He breaks the lines into pairs, though, a device that the band uses to create a tripwire of tension as the audience awaits the conclusion. Opener “The Survival Fires” might be the band’s best dexterity showcase to date. Drummer and instrumental cleanup man T.J. Childers works through demanding patterns; he rolls into stuttering beats and lumbers into distended grooves. The guitars match the action, countering the central theme with grinding dissonance and sudden breakaways. In metal, this sort of spirit without the skills to match can be a missed opportunity, while the skills without the spirit can be worse still. Musically, Inter Arma is good enough to manage all of these sounds; emotionally, they are excited enough to make them work in one righteous exhortation.

Sky Burial will likely land as one of the year’s great breakthroughs for a heavy act, standing, at least in my mind, as the same sort of pay-attention proclamation as the Body’s All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood in 2010 or Pallbearer’s Sorrow and Extinction in 2012. That’s good news for Relapse Records, the venerable metal syndicate that picked up Inter Arma after their fine full-length debut, Sundown. But listening to Sky Burial, you get the sense that an escalation of notoriety won’t change Inter Arma so much. They are, after all, already making music that doesn’t make sense on paper. Segue the Southern rock instrumental into Second Wave black metal screech? Sure. Volley from tightly wound prog into swaggering stoner land? OK.

The root of Inter Arma’s creative success seems to be their delight in stubbornness, their willingness to indulge what they’d like to indulge, with no need to negotiate genre expectations. In this post-everything moment, where multiple sounds often arrive at once, it’s common for young musicians to exist as magpies, collecting stylistic scraps only to display them as their own piece. It is, however, much rarer for those results to seem so wholly synthesized, even as the individual parts don’t buckle under the weight of their accoutrements. Sky Burial does just that, brandishing erudition just enough to arrive at a crossroads of inspiration and innovation. - Grayson Currin, Pitchfork, http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17607-inter-arma-sky-burial/

i think of this as SeanWayneDoom

Wow! Bunch of stuff I voted for showed up!!

Sorry, I've been sleeping...

Pinkish Black, Earthless, Bardo Pond, Follakzoid, Jute Gyte!

27 Blood Ceremony - The Eldritch Dark, 416 Points, 12 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/WOrqwgt.jpg

http://open.spotify.com/album/3o25kjJMTqPRxB5b5Awk7C
spotify:album:3o25kjJMTqPRxB5b5Awk7C

http://www.deezer.com/album/6586516

#11 Obelisk readers, #33 Captain Beyond Zen, #47 Metal Hammer

http://youtu.be/mOYptfVSh0Y

It’s a sad fact that many have gone into orgasmic overload over the retro/occult rock of Ghost (and its come-to-the-Sabbath shtick) when really bands like Canada’s Blood Ceremony (and the sadly defunct the Devil’s Blood) deserve the most attention for awaking genuinely diabolic spirits. Blood Ceremony’s third full-length, The Eldritch Dark, is a magnificently bewitching ritual of archaic folk, vintage hard rock, and sinister psychedelia. The band’s previous albums, 2008’s Blood Ceremony and 2011’s Living With the Ancients, both showcased its spellbinding (black) magic, and The Eldritch Dark tells similarly dark tales of covens, sorcery, fiendish Victorian pacts, and deals with the Devil.

The Eldritch Dark is draped in ‘70s rock, flute flurries, and Hammer Horror keyboards, and while other retro-rockers make clearly calculated moves to capture antique occultist moods, Blood Ceremony simply oozes with a genuine love and deep appreciation of acts like Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull, Pentagram, and Pentangle. Alia O’Brien provides the vocals, organ and flute—three crucial elements that Blood Ceremony’s masses have been built upon—and her work here is the best it has ever been. Tracks such as “Witchwood”, “Goodbye Gemini”, and “The Magician” are mesmerizing, magical jams. They’re filled with Sean Kennedy’s gloriously fluid guitar lines, Lukas Gake’s rumbling bass (which adds the grim low-end), and drummer Michael Carrillo letting swing with the Bill Ward jazzy looseness. The Eldritch Dark is the perfect campfire/coven/smoky basement album to luxuriate in, its devilishly delightful and iniquitous melodies set to entrance. - Craig Hayes, Pop Matters, http://www.popmatters.com/review/173562-blood-ceremony-the-eldritch-dark/

Nice, 443 points for Jute Gyte

could have been more

Lol at that

26 Shining - One One One, 418 Points, 13 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/e3y7aEp.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/3wqqfR8LO2VhBEvmiJ7TJy
spotify:album:3wqqfR8LO2VhBEvmiJ7TJy

http://www.deezer.com/album/6518814

#4 Pop Matters, #33 Rock-A-Rolla, #36 Terrorizer
http://fkadsjfkladshfkjasdkfsdalfkjdkaslfdjsajfdweqeqwqeravadfvfda.bandcamp.com/album/one-one-one

With 2010’s career-defining Blackjazz, Norwegian band Shining (not to be confused with the Swedish depressive black metal outfit of the same name) held back from polishing the roughness that was always present around its sonic edges. Despite moving away from its origins as an acoustic jazz ensemble and into the realm of extreme metal over the latter part of the ‘00s, even when it went all-out crazy, there was a surprising restraint on the part of the musicians. Take the groove-riff saxophone of “The Red Room”, one of the highlights from 2007’s excellent Grindstone; on the album version, it sounds solid enough, but in its live iteration—captured with magnetic intensity on 2012’s Live Blackjazz—it becomes something else entirely. On Grindstone, “The Red Room” is a blueprint; live, it’s a full-out auditory assault. The saxophone playing of frontman extraordinaire Jørgen Munkeby is unreal in a live setting; he manages to get noises out of the saxophone one would imagine impossible. It sounds like he’s torturing the thing at times.

On Blackjazz, Shining let the unfettered energy of its live performances dominate the style, and the results were nothing short of revelatory. The all-hell-breaks-loose free jazz of “HEALTER SKELTER” is still to this day the emblematic depiction of this band’s MO: simultaneously controlled and unrestrained chaos. One of Shining’s best assets, Torstein Lofthus’ tempo-eschewing drumming, stood out on that track; though it seems as if he’s just pounding on toms without aim, close attention reveals that underneath whatever technics the rest of the band members are doing, he’s always keeping a steady pace underneath it all. This is a group that realizes the key fact of free jazz: it’s not about foregoing all musical reference points, but rather about letting the music go with the flow dictated by the interplay of the musicians. Amidst the crazed structure of “HEALTER SKELTER” there are still grooves and even hooks present. Those latter ingredients are also part of what made Blackjazz so vital; for all the genre-melding Shining is keen on doing, it’s still aware of the need to bring real hooks to the table. Weird though the lyrics to “Fisheye” are, it’s easy to get Munkeby’s screams of “ONE THREE SEVEN FIVE!” stuck in your head.

And, as it turns out, it’s the hook that has come to play the biggest part in the newest addition to the Shining discography, One One One. Having adopted the title “blackjazz” as the name of its style, these Norwegian provocateurs have taken the visceral sonic of Blackjazz and incorporated it into the framework of… the pop album. There are no gonzo instrumentals or covers of King Crimson on this LP; every song follows a basic verse/chorus structure, and the most distinct characteristic of this music is the emphasis on hooks and memorable choruses. This is made evident right from the gates being kicked open with “I Won’t Forget”, whose ingredients are not what one might expect from Shining. The single-note chug of the first verse recalls surf rock, and the riff in the bridge preceding Munkeby’s saxophone runs comes close to copping “Footloose”. (The former aspect is especially evident in One One One‘s uncharacteristically bright sleeve art, which Munkeby has stated is a tribute to the record’s being mixed in California.) It’s both disarming and unexpected; far be it from anyone to think that Shining is above tinkering with pop fundamentals, but for the guys who on their last record were meshing industrial with Enslaved-esque prog, the music of Kenny Loggins is probably not a “logical next step” in the progression of a style. But, then again, “logic” has an interesting definition in the universe of Shining.

Though One One One is not as definitive a work as Blackjazz, it’s as much a portrait of the kind of outfit Shining is. Pop is as believable as a point of exploration for the group now as trip-hop could be on a future work. A word like “boundaries” is a curiosity in the outfit’s lexicon. Like Lofthus’ shifting-yet-consistent rhythms, however, the band’s core style remains the same even through differing individual genre explorations. The industrial stomp of “The One Inside” has clear predecessors in Grindstone and especially Blackjazz. The “Sexy Sax Man” opening of “How Your Story Ends” hints at the off-kilter moments of In the Kingdom of Kitsch You Will Be a Monster. Along with these instances there are also more blatant echoes of past works on a few of the songs: “Blackjazz Rebels” and “The Hurting Game” contain explicit call-backs to “Fisheye”. The former continues its affinity for counting, and the latter copies the saxophone riff nearly note-for-note. Some press materials for this LP have listed it as part of a trilogy (with Blackjazz and Live Blackjazz comprising the first two parts), and in most cases such a characterization is correct. In the overall sound quality and mixing, One One One is not at all far from the evolution that Blackjazz captured; the main points of departure from that LP comes in how the songs themselves are structured. The record’s title is itself an indication of the listening experience: each piece stands on its own, though when put together in a cohesive whole you’ll get as unconventional a pop metal collection as you’re likely to hear all year.

This individualistic streak in One One One is not without its downsides. Shining have never been keen on ballads—or whatever might resemble one in its sonic—and while the consistently high energy of this LP makes it an incredibly fun experience (and at 35 minutes, not a very long one), some breather room would have been much appreciated. Stacking nine excellent verse/chorus tracks on top of each other often has the effect of drowning a few out, which occurs to a small extent here. The monster hooks easily rise to the top—“I Won’t Forget” and “Paint the Sky Black”, for example—but if listened to all the way through, this can be, ironically enough, too dense a thing.

But, of course, part of the reason why this is the case is the nature of Shining itself; even in its thirty-second interludes, it’s always cramming in as many ideas as could be fit into a single piece. Like any expert jazz combo, these guys are acutely aware that exploration for exploration’s sake is no virtue, a fact made quite evident by the concise and meticulously organized One One One. Following its last LP, Shining have risen to the forefront of the global metal scene, and this album is only further evidence of its unmatched creativity. A pop album for metal fans, a pop-metal album for jazz fans… however one looks at it, One One One is yet another work of brilliance by an exciting band at the top of its game. “I Won’t Forget”, indeed. - Brice Ezell, Pop Matters, http://www.popmatters.com/review/170414-shining-one-one-one/

Brilliant album

one imago needs to hear

Wasn't a big fan of the Shining. Felt way too monotonous to me.

now don't get me wrong I loved Blackjazz but turned this one off p quickly. maybe I shall give it one more try but I am not hopeful

This record did nothing for me at all. Grew to like Blackjazz but this leaves me cold.

HI! I missed the last two days of the rollout, plz recap it for me personally right now. thnx :P

deveykus placed :)

25 Vaura - The Missing, 419 Points, 14 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/K61FrGn.jpg
#44 Rock-A-Rolla, #30 Pitchfork

http://profoundlorerecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-missing
http://youtu.be/N8xNxetdvhM

I have been putting this review on hold for quite some time and I was actually hoping one of the other writers on the Ech(((o)))es and Dust team would pick this release for reviewing instead. Then I decided to give it a go myself after all as I feel this album deserves a review it being one of the most interesting releases for me this year, so here it is. The main reason I've been putting this of is probably the difficulty to describe the exact genre Vaura falls in. There are bits of black metal, post-punk, progressive metal and darkwave, and the band combines it all effortlessly.

When I first listened to their new release The Missing it completely hit me out of leftfield. Where the opening title track kicks off with fast gnarly guitar playing and high tempo drumming you’re thinking this is just another black metal release. Then it all slows down to big pounding drums and with vocals that hit you with a deep, baritone voice singing very clearly and the whole song takes a complete turn. This is good stuff and it definitely hooks you from the word go. The rest of the song jumps back and forth between these faster black metal and slower new wave elements. The second track ‘Incomplete Burning’ is what created the being hit out of leftfield element to me. Where you expect the band to continue on this fast, slightly different and contemporary black metal style, they completely turn around and offer the listener a mellower, very 80’s sounding new wave influenced dark piece of music.

When you look at Vaura’s line-up it actually comes as no surprise that this band mixed various musical genres and elements. With bassist Toby Driver from Kayo Dot and Maudlin Of The Well and guitarist Kevin Hufnagel from progressive death metal band Gorguts, Dysrhythmia and his interesting solo work you have some of the more genre boundaries pushing musicians in the world of heavy music genre in your team.

On The Missing they definitely incorporate a lot of older new wave and post-punk influences into their blend of at times blackish metal. ‘Mare of the Snake’ for example is one of the most 80’s sounding songs I’ve ever heard, the majority of the 80’s back catalogue included. Listen to that bass sound, the drum rhythm, the vocals, it reminds me of Depeche Mode in their best period. You’ll find yourself humming along with the chorus before you know it.

What really stands out for me is Josh Strawn’s vocals on this release. He sings beautifully and the echoey production again draw that 80’s new wave comparison. At times Josh sounds like David Gahan, at other times he has a more Ian Curtis feeling to his voice and the deeper, darker singing parts even draw parallels with The National’s Matt Berninger. It makes an interesting combination on the faster black metal and post-punk sounding tracks, although these are limited to the opening track and ‘The Fire’ as the rest of 10 tracks that make up The Missing are more slower, focussing on the darkwave elements.

There are a lot of old references I can think of the more I listen to The Missing. From the already mentioned Depeche Mode, Joy Division, The National, the lead guitar even has that The Edge sound to it, the way the higher chords are played over some nice delay. It is quite clear what these guys grew up listening to and perhaps still listen to. If Ian Curtis would be reincarnated and join a progressive black metal band, this is what it would sound like. Final track ‘Putting Flesh To Bone’ brings all the mentioned elements together, ending this album perfectly.
If you want something different or you grew up in the 80’s like I did, then I would totally recommend Vaura’s The Missing. This is another great release by Profound Lore Records’ vastly growing musical output, again demonstrating why this label is one of the most interesting smaller metal labels around at the moment. - Sander van den Driesche, Echoes & Dust, http://echoesanddust.com/2013/10/vaura-the-missing/

Hey, Vaura! Another one of mine!

some v interesting records today

NYCNative made a joke in the voting thread urging ppl to submit ballots lest his would wantonly skew the results; apparently that was really something to worry about w/r/t me

ok this shining record can srsly piss off now

Too low on Purson, that's all I got to say so far. Glad the Passaige de'French band placed. Loved that album, can't spell their name.

SHINING is OVER! I voted for the other Shining album nominated which was a totally different band that was really old skool black metal.

you're nuts

xp

Purson is great. A grand new player in the Lava Lamp Bullshit genre.

24 Jesu - Everyday I Get Closer To The Light, 436 Points, 14 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/E0sVCpF.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/0s2ndGf74oaPa8A1not3Sc
spotify:album:0s2ndGf74oaPa8A1not3Sc
http://www.deezer.com/album/6915157
#1 Rock-A-Rolla

http://jesu.bandcamp.com/album/everyday-i-get-closer-to-the-light-from-which-i-came
http://youtu.be/rxWEes8WZvo

Justin Broadrick brings a little light on a fantastic new album.

Justin Broadrick’s career can be seen as one long, slow comedown from the birth of punk. As a teenager, he played lightning-fast riffs and helped write the world’s shortest song (“You Suffer”) as part of Napalm Death, the pioneering grindcore band. After only a couple demos and one half of a full-length, Broadrick left ND and formed Godflesh, and for over a decade soldered jackhammer backbeats onto mid-tempo industrial guitar squalls, turning out a number of classic albums in the process. After that band’s dissolution, he moved on to Jesu, essentially a solo project at this point. After an EP that sounds an awful lot like Godflesh, Jesu released a self-titled album that essentially set the template for all that would follow: glacially-creeping drums, acoustic or programmed, knock out 4/4 patterns under riffs that almost strictly stick to the downbeats, CHUN CHUN CHUN CHUN, as a voice slathered in vocoder and delay sings along with piercing synth and piano lines.

For four-lengths and a good number of splits and EPs over the course of 10 years, Broadrick has almost never wavered in his commitment that Jesu must sound this particular way. Though he has increasingly inserted pieces of shoegaze, electronica, and even Depeche Mode-style pop, the question comes down to whether one likes a particular riff, or whether one doesn’t, because, frankly, you’re going to hear it. A lot.

Of course, there’s variation to be found in Jesu’s work, just as Godflesh evolved over time. Everyday I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came, Broadrick’s newest, is his poppiest, most beautiful, and, arguably, most satisfying collection since 2006, the year Conqueror, Sliver, and Lifeline, my three favorite Jesu releases, came out. “Comforter,” the second track, bears clear traces of Takk…-era Sigur Rós, with a glowing wall of voices running in reverse surmounted by sampled acoustic guitar and a clear, bouncing piano melody. Of course, the CHUN CHUN drops eventually, though in Everyday Broadrick seems to have traded in quarter notes for eighths, speeding up the songs slightly. In this way, it’s similar to “Clear Stream,” from Jesu’s split with Battle of Mice, both attempts at pop songs with clean harmonies and prominent vocals. For a man who made his name playing fast and ugly, Broadrick has come a long way.

Of course, this isn’t exactly news. His journey to the valley of slow riffs has possessed his entire career, and while countless acts before have blended harsh noise and stunning beauty, Broadrick always had a way of cramming one into the other. His thought process seemed to say, “You want heaviness and I want to write pop songs, so why don’t I just play both at the same time?” It turned out some great stuff, but almost felt sloppy, as if he wasn’t taking the time to properly integrate everything. The clearest example of this, Jesu, runs a little too long and can’t quite decide what it wants. In some ways, this is a positive, but viewed through the long arc of a career still very much alive, it feels more like a start, not an ideal in and of itself.

Everyday is a hell of a lot closer. Between the swooning guitar pings of “Everyday” and “Heartsick” with its Red House Painters vocal, it feels like a cohesive unit, a vision realized. Once again the album’s only performer, with the exception of string player Nicola Manzen, Broadrick has crafted five stunning pieces, each relating to the other but never the same. “The Great Leveller” unspools its 17 minutes wisely, beginning as a piano ballad marching to double-tracked snare drums, crashing into a sludgy pattern that splits the difference between Neurosis and Slowdive, and eventually decomposing at the half-way point before Broadrick’s heavily-modified voice jabs out into the mess, signaling that “there is no meaning” as Manzen’s rapturous strings swell. It’s possibly the most affecting piece of music that Broadrick has ever released, Jesu or otherwise. Symphonic without being melodramatic, it somehow feels huge and intimate in the same moment, in the same space. Where previous Jesu records would have pushed these dichotomies to their limit in the listener’s face, now they simply coexist.

Any listeners that enter at this point will have a large and confusing back catalog to enter if they want to hear anything else like Everyday from Jesu. But as much as it feels like another step towards that light, the album reflects the work that came before it. You have Conqueror’s pop, Jesu’s texture, Silver’s beauty, with a mix of the electronic experimentation that Broadrick has played around with on EPs and splits. If Jesu became slightly predictable over the years, this was partially due to its distinctiveness, born of a love of 80s pop that Broadrick’s imitators simply don’t have. Thankfully, Everyday innovates within that formula without corrupting it, and proves that the waters of his inspiration have yet to run dry. It’s a high mark in a career full of them. - Robert Rubsam, Pop Matters, http://www.popmatters.com/review/175457-jesu-everyday-i-get-closer-to-the-light-from-which-i-came/