Be'lakor: Of Breath and Bone (2012)

Grayish Tranquillity

Review by Metallattorney. He is the law.

Apparently "Be'lakor" is the name of a demon in the Warhammer series. I will admit to not knowing a damn thing about Warhammer, or any other table top/RPG game for that matter. I could not tell you the difference between Warhammer and Dungeons & Dragons. It is just not something I have ever known about. What I do know is heavy metal. And I know what I like.

Be'lakor is a melodeath band in the vein of mid-era Dark Tranquillity. Oddly they are from Australia, which is kind of bizarre for a band of this style. I would have assumed Be'lakor hailed from Sweden or Finland or some other country in that area. Australia is not really known for its melodeath.

Denouncement Pyre: Almighty Arcanum (2013)

Australia Will Destroy You and Everyone You Love

Review by Metallattorney. He is the law.

Those who have been following me for awhile probably know that I am a big fan of the Australian extreme metal scene. You know the one, the bestial thrash/black/death mix that come to be referred to as the "war metal" scene. That scene had started to lose its lustre over the last several years but there are signs that there may be a revitalization at work lately. Groups like Denouncement Pyre, Vomitor, Black Jesus, and Mongrel's Cross have all emerged in a major way over the last few years. Though Denouncement Pyre and Vomitor have been around for quite awhile, Denouncement Pyre since 2003 and Vomitor since 1999, they have really gotten notice recently. These are likely the bands that are leading the Australian extreme metal scene for years to come.

If anything, this sophomore full-length from the Aussie crushers is an improvement over their debut release. This is mostly due to the improvement in the production quality. Their last album was murky, and while it sounded good for the type of chaotic metal that was on that disc, it is nice to hear that they have cleaned things up a little bit without going too far and sounding sterile. This is just about right where it should be for a raw black/death/thrash metal album.

Vomitor: The Escalation (2012)

Australia: Dangerously Awesome Still

Review by Metallattorney. He is the law.

Vomitor is yet another filthy and dirty band blending extreme metal styles from Australia. The band is made up of members who have spent time in Bestial Warlust, Gospel of the Horns, Portal and others, demonstrating the ever-fluctuating nature of extreme metal in Australia. So right away, you know this is going to be some nasty stuff. And with a name like Vomitor, you can pretty much bet that they will be about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the groin.

Vomitor makes a lot of noise. So much that listening to them is likely to net you a disturbing the peace charge. That would be a Misdemeanor III in Nebraska, punishable by up to 90 days in jail or a $500.00 fine or both. Sorry, lawyer moment there.

Portal: Vexovoid (2013)

Kilter

If you have never heard Portal, I can no more explain their sound to you than I can explain the sensation of a mouthful of worms to a man with no head. He cannot apprehend the writhing, the filth, the otherworldly horror. He can’t hear my words, nor can he understand anything without a mind.

For those who have heard Portal, you need only know two things about Vexovoid. They are contradictory, but simultaneously true. It does not represent a change of direction, yet it is also a huge departure. This is a Portal record, through and through, operating on the same kind of inscrutable alien logic as Swarth, The Sweyy, and The End Mills. And, like every other album they’ve released, it is better than the one that preceded it.

Black Jesus: Black Jesus Saves (Demo 2010)

Australia: Awesome but Deadly

Review by Metallattorney. He is the law.

Some of the absolute filthiest, most depraved metal in the world has been coming from Australia for the last couple of decades. There must be some reason for it. Perhaps it is because every single animal on the godforsaken island is constantly trying to kill people. Even the koalas should be feared. With death at every turn, it is bound to have an effect on the psyches of the people. Which has to be the reason that there are so many ungodly extreme metal bands to come from the continent/country/island thingy.

In 2010, Aussies Black Jesus released their demo in cassette form only. Hell's Headbangers did what it typically does and found some nasty demo, feeling that it deserved a wider release, and re-released it on vinyl. That is just one of the many reasons why I like the label so much, their undying devotion to the metal underground.

Bestial Warlust: Satan's Fist (Demo 1996)

Australia is Terrifyingly Awesome

Review by Metallattorney. He is the law.

Have I mentioned that I love the Australian "war metal" scene? I am sure it's come up before at some point or another. Well Hell's Headbangers loves it too and the label has been one of my principal sources for finding releases by these bands. The ones that they have not released new have at least been reissued. That is the case with this one.

Bestial Warlust is one of the founding bands of the scene. They recorded two terrific albums in the mid 1990's that were nonetheless plagued by terrible production. But their sound on those albums was taken by a number of other Australian bands and improved upon. Without Bestial Warlust, we likely would not have had Deströyer 666, Gospel of the Horns, Abominator, or many of the other terrific bands to come out of the land down under with the same bestial apocalyptic sound.

Dark Americana Briefs, Part 3

I keep on listening to more and more of what I call dark Americana. I wrote these brief reviews before my brother died, but the music speaks to me now more than ever. Raise a glass to pain.

The Builders and the Butchers: Dead Reckoning (2010)
4 out of 5 stars

After wading through dozens of unknown entities without any discernible connection to metal or punk, I finally found one that was really worthy of attention. The Builders and the Butchers is a folk-rock band that sound like a combination of Man's Gin and 16 Horsepower, fronted by Eddie Vedder. It's catchy, mostly dark (drug themes, etc.) and has the right Americana vibe that I'm always looking for, with a laundry list of different instruments all making an appearance. The search has been worth it, and will continue. Check out Dead Reckoning.



Tangentially, why would you have a laundry list? You wash the dirty ones.

Buy Dead Reckoning

Mongrel's Cross: The Sins of Aquarius (2012)

More Aussie Brutality

Guest review by Metallattorney. He is the law.

Kicking things off with some evil-sounding keyboard melody that sounds like it would be found in a 1970's horror movie, Mongrel's Cross definitely know how to set the atmosphere for their own brand of bestial brutality. The fact that this is just the band's debut full-length is shocking. The band sound like seasoned veterans of the Australian scene.

Yes the Australian scene. Mongrel's Cross bear a sonic resemblance to groups like Gospel of the Horns, Destroyer 666, Denouncement Pyre, and Atomizer. So right away, this band is definitely up my alley.

Serious Beak: Huxwhukw (2011)

Djent?

I really wasn't going to listen to Serious Beak's Huxwhukw. Mostly, that's because their band name is a little on the dumb side. But a combination of factors changed my mind. Awesome cover art, obscure mythology, and pay-what-you-want price were some. More importantly, one of the band members called me a fuckwit, but he did it in such a way so that it left doubt as to whether it was really intended as an insult. (I appreciate cleverness, even at my own expense.)

The band is an instrumental group combining elements of Intronaut, Devin Townsend, and Animals as Leaders, among others. Based on that sentence alone, you can probably decide whether you'll like this, but the latter comparison bears further explanation.

Germ: Wish (2012)

Weird

Germ is a weird one. Wish combines all manner of synthesized sounds: electronica, ambient, synth-pop, the strings and choirs of Viking metal, and the first few seconds of every Steve Miller song. It adds drums, occasional guitars, and clean or unearthly vocals to create a sound you've surely never heard before. Think Ace of Base getting in touch with their Swedish roots and then torturing Attila Csihar. When they throw in the occasional straight-up heavy metal lead, comparisons to the soundtrack of an 80's action movie present themselves.

Last I checked, though, 80's action movies soundtracks and Ace of Base don't have blast beats and bloodcurdling screams.

Psycroptic: The Inherited Repression (2012)

Tasmanian Devils Deliver Again

Reviews of technical death metal albums usually include a lot of criticisms. It's too sterile. It's just wankery, without any real songwriting. They can play their instruments, but they can't make you feel anything.

Similarly, reviews of bands from out-of-the-way places usually say something along the lines of, "If they were from (London, New York, Oslo, etc.) then no one would care."

Psycroptic, of course, is a technical death metal band. They are from the ass end of the world, in Tasmania, better known for the Looney Tunes character Taz than anything else. And yet, none of those criticisms can possibly be leveled at them.

Wölfe: I (Demo 2011)

Clearing the Docket

Wölfe is a band out of Melbourne, Australia. Their demo was released as a cassette, although I'm not quite sure how you're supposed to get a copy since the band takes pains to point out they have no web site, Facebook, or MySpace. But they have been kind enough to allow free downloads (link below), and I think you might want to do that.

The demo is 15 minutes of what the band calls "grinding blackened filth", which is about as honest and complete an assessment as you really need. Each song is blisteringly fast, raw, and pissed-off like a koala on eucalyptus withdrawal.

Metal Briefs: "Unblack" Metal

Christian Black Metal

I love black metal. Today, thankfully, it seems to be the most forward-thinking and flexible subgenre within metal. This is definitely a good thing. If it means I can have Botanist and Cobalt, then I will tolerate the existence of Liturgy.

But it hasn't always been that way. And in some corners it's still not that way. There are those who have a very narrow conception of what black metal is. I could bear that narrow-mindedness if it stuck to the music itself, but it goes into ideology as well. I have repeatedly harped on the stupidity of drawing musical genre lines based on non-musical characteristics. You may as well kick a band out of the black metal club if they don't wear corpse paint, or if they're from the wrong part of the world, or if they don't have the right logo.

This is not to say that Official Black Metal Ideology is an extremely narrow field. In fact, the genre nazis will accept just about any ideology within black metal, from neo-Nazism to paganism to theistic Satanism to atheism. There is only one exception: To them, you can't be black metal if you follow one of the Abrahamic religions. In this case, your Metal Archives genre will almost never be listed as black metal, but instead as "black" metal (with quotes) or unblack metal.

Well, let the genre nazis be butthurt. I'm going to talk about Christian black metal.

Horde: Hellig Usvart (1994)

Satanism--at least as it's found in black metal--is a parody of Christianity. The symbolism, lyrical content, and even the music are all in many ways Christian traditions turned on their heads (in some cases quite literally). Horde took that, and then righted it. Hellig Usvart (said to be the first "unblack" metal album) is a parody of a parody, as titles like "Invert the Inverted Cross" demonstrate. Musically, it's pure Norwegian style black metal, with fantastic (and gorgeous-sounding) drums and the occasional tasteful synth. Thematically, it was taken as a deep insult by the black metal community. In a sense, it's more black metal than thou, designed to insult them on their own terms and show that not everyone takes them seriously. As a result, it's said that some people demanded to know who was behind the project (it was an Australian) and death threats were supposedly made. That could just be the label trying to generate controversy, but in any case the album stands on its own in terms of quality. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Mournful Congregation: The Book of Kings (2011)

Review

I really like funeral doom. When it's done right, that is. The trouble is determining which albums are good, and which are bad. There are quite a few bad ones out there, because it's not difficult to play, and a band can get by without offering any real substance. And since it takes so long to listen to it, it's tough to decide whether it's any good just by listening to a song. That makes reviews very important. The trouble is, it's also tough to write a review of a funeral doom album.

I picked up Mournful Congregation's The Book of Kings based on a strong recommendation from Josh Haun, who named it co-album-of-the-year. He also noted the difficulty of reviewing this kind of album, stating "I feel as if my meager skills as a wordsmith are completely incapable of describing such a masterful recording". But I too will attempt it.

Rituals of the Oak: Come Taste the Doom (2012)

Review

I’m not sure why people have a problem with female-fronted traditional doom. If there’s any metal genre that could use a feminine counterpoint, it’s trad-doom. While metal usually has plenty of notes and a huge wall of sound, effectively choking out anything but the most powerful of true “singing” voices, the sparse compositions of doom allow the female voice room to breathe. Sure, in some cases using a woman is barely better than a gimmick, but there are those bands that know exactly how to make it work.

Rituals of the Oak has it all figured out on Come Taste the Doom. Here, the Aussie quartet offers up five tracks of pure doom metal, fronted by an effective feminine voice. Sabine Hamad-Linfoot has an earthy husk that perfectly fits the druidic impression given by their band name and lyrics. Think a mellowed-out Uta Plotkin (Witch Mountain). Or Jinx Dawson (Coven) if she wasn’t so damned goofy. Hamad-Linfoot’s delivery is simple and understated, but she conveys emotion and crescendos nicely when needed. Most importantly, her voice is well-controlled and beautifully enchanting.

Atlas of Metal: Australia

This is the eighth installment in the Atlas of Metal series. Three of the previous countries have larger populations than Australia--Argentina, Algeria, and Afghanistan. But odds are, you probably couldn't name any metal bands from those countries without looking them up. Not so for Australia, which has a long-standing relationship with the genre going all the way back to the arguably metal AC/DC, formed in 1973.

Metal Archives lists a whopping 1,481 metal bands in Australia. That's only about 200 more than Argentina, but Argentina has almost twice as many people. That means that Australia is twice as metal by volume. (And hey, they are a major exporter of iron ore.)

Since the scene in Australia doesn't really need to be discovered, per se, I thought I'd just share a few of my favorites. I personally don't care for AC/DC and haven't listened to them since high school, but there's plenty more where that came from.

Portal is my favorite band of the country. They are definitely not for everyone. Please don't take this the wrong way, but it sounds like it was composed by a pissed-off autistic genius. It has somewhat of an obscure ritualistic quality to it, it's not concerned with making friends, and it has a brilliant sort of hidden logic behind it all.

Metal Briefs: Bandcamp, Part 2

The Crust Punk Edition

I recently mentioned that I don't know anything about crust punk, but that Acephalix had piqued my interest. So, I thought there was no better (i.e., cheaper) way to educate myself about the genre than to get some free or pay-what-you-want albums off Bandcamp. In order, let's check out Australia, Austria, and California.

Space Bong: The Passion of the Crust (2007)

Space Bong mostly identifies itself as a stoner doom band, but you're not going to find any of that on their first release, The Passion of the Crust. At times you get sloppy, almost grind-like metallic punk, and other times they slow it down for some heaviness (check out the 8 minute closer). Most of the songs are short, and all but one start off with a healthy dose of feedback. This could appeal to metalheads who like it sloppy and angry, but the wide variety of punk vocals--including the dreaded gang vocals--could be a deal-breaker. I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Metal Briefs: Bandcamp, Part 1

There are a lot of free or pay-what-you-want albums out there on Bandcamp, and a whole lot of them are garbage. But you know what? There are some hidden gems. So I've been slogging through them. Hopefully, I can save you some time.

Fiends at Feast: Shadows of Extinction (2011)

If you follow That's How Kids Die, there's no chance you missed some love for California blackened death metallers Fiends at Feast. This is aggressive, raw, and catchy. They throw in some Spanish acoustic stuff and what I think is cello, and put a lot of emphasis on the bass on the B-side, "Revelations ov Chaos". My only complaint is that I have to turn the volume way up to hear it. I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. What's available on their Bandcamp isn't technically the whole EP, which consists of five tracks, so consider this a review of the two-song single. They say the EP is available from them, but the Bandcamp doesn't explain how.

After-School Special: "Swarth"

I got to pick my son up from day care today. He selected Portal's Swarth as the "daddy music" for the ride home. After the first couple notes, his face lit up, and he exclaimed, "This is a good one!"



He has excellent taste.

StarGazer: A Great Work of Ages (2010)

Review

Australia has proven to be an innovative source for metal in recent years, likely due to its extreme isolation prior to the age of the Internet. And when you consider that bandwidth wasn't really adequate for easy trade of music until about 2004, it's been isolated for a long time. Suddenly, it became exposed to a much broader spectrum of metal all at once, leading to the creation of some interesting sounds that have little regard for the normal "rules" of genre boundaries.

StarGazer is one of those genre-smashing bands. Sharing two members with avant-garde death metallers Portal, they actually bear little in common with that band aside from being extreme metal innovators.

Because they don't follow the rules, they're labeled avant-garde, but there's nothing avant-garde about the music in an objective sense. To describe their style as succinctly as possible, I would call it blackened heavy metal. Many of the riffs could have been pulled from Judas Priest or Iron Maiden (or even some of the better parts of Van Halen--see "The Morbid Slither, the Sinner Slough"). But they take those riffs and combine them with slower death growls (as you might find in funeral doom), black metal rasps, tremolo picking, and blast beats, while keeping some of the pinch harmonics and "raunchy" guitar embellishments of traditional heavy metal. There are even a few parts that you would probably call death metal or doom metal (see "Passing Stone - into the Greater Sun" for examples of both).

The resemblance to Maiden is even stronger when you consider the fantastic bass playing. It is fully audible throughout, and rarely tracks the guitar. There are some sections where the bass takes the lead, as on the solo in "Pypes of Psychosomatis".

The pace changes often to keep things interesting, leaning more toward the fast, and as with Portal there are brief tempo shifts and fast/slow/fast riffs. The riffs are memorable, and they create complete songs full of anticipation and release, and it's truly unlike anything else out there.



The Verdict: It's as if the sudden exposure to two decades of extreme metal gave them a completely different outlook. Most of the world sees black metal as a thing that grew from thrash, but StarGazer has taken the things that make black metal black and applied them to pure heavy metal, to make a unique and interesting beast. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.