Soilwork – North American Infinity Tour 2013

by Brett Stevens on April 11, 2013

soilwork-the_living_infiniteModern metal-indie hybrid Soilwork heads out to the buses for a North American tour to support their latest album, The Living Infinite.

Known for their melodic approach to a rock-metal mashup, Soilwork appeal to many who like either modern metal or loud rock. This is the band’s ninth album, and their first double-disc release.

The Living Infinite shows the Swedish melodic metal-hybrid sextet at their most adroit, combining influences into a smoothly integrated package that offers consistency in entertaining variation.

You can catch this post-metal/metalcore act live at the following venues:

  • 3/14 – Albany, NY @ Bogie’s
  • 3/15 – New York, NY @ The Gramercy Theater
  • 3/16 – Hartford, CT @ Webster Theater
  • 3/17 – Montreal, QC – CANADA @ Petit Campus
  • 3/18 – Quebec City, QC – CANADA @ Dagobert
  • 3/19 – Ottawa, ON – CANADA @ Mavericks
  • 3/20 – Toronto, ON – CANADA @ The Opera House
  • 3/21 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Altar Bar
  • 3/22 – Cleveland, OH @ Peabody’s
  • 3/23 – Westland, MI @ Token Lounge
  • 3/24 – Milwaukee, WI @ The Rave
  • 3/25 – Joliet, IL @ Mojoes
  • 3/26 – Des Moines, IA @ Wooly’s
  • 3/27 – St. Paul, MN @ Station 4
  • 3/28 – Winnipeg, MB – CANADA @ Park Theatre
  • 3/29 – Regina, SK – CANADA @ The Exchange
  • 3/30 – Calgary, AB – CANADA @ Republik Nightclub
  • 3/31 – Edmonton, AB – CANADA @ Starlite Room
  • 4/01 – Prince George, B.C. – CANADA @ The Generator
  • 4/02 – Vancouver, B.C. – CANADA @ Rickshaw Theater
  • 4/03 – Seattle, WA @ El Corazon
  • 4/04 – Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theatre
  • 4/05 – San Francisco, CA @ Slim’s
  • 4/06 – Hollywood, CA @ Whisky A Go Go
  • 4/07 – Tempe, AZ @ Rocky Point Cantina
  • 4/08 – Tucson, AZ @ The Rock
  • 4/09 – Las Vegas, NV @ Las Vegas Country Saloon
  • 4/11 – Salt Lake City, UT @ In The Venue
  • 4/12 – Englewood, CO @ Gothic Theater
  • 4/13 – Kansas City, MO @ The Riot Room
  • 4/14 – St. Louis, MO @ The Firebird
  • 4/15 – Dallas, TX @ Trees
  • 4/16 – San Antonio, TX @ Backstage Live
  • 4/17 – Austin, TX @ Dirty Dog Bar
  • 4/18 – Abilene, TX @ Lucky Mule
  • 4/19 – Oklahoma City, OK @ The Chameleon Room
  • 4/20 – El Paso, TX @ Tricky Falls
  • 4/22 – Corpus Christi, TX @ House of Rock
  • 4/23 – McAllen, TX @ Geo’s
  • 4/24 – Houston, TX @ Scout Bar
  • 4/26 – St. Petersburg, FL @ State Theater
  • 4/27 – Jacksonville, FL @ Jack Rabbits
  • 4/28 – Charlotte, NC @ The Casbah @ Tremont Music Hall
  • 4/29 – Richmond, VA @ Kingdom
  • 4/30 – Baltimore, MD @ Soundstage
  • 5/01 – Teaneck, NJ @ Mexicali Live
  • 5/02 – Poughkeepsie, NY @ The Chance Theater
  • 5/03 – Buffalo, NY @ Broadway Joes
  • 5/04 – Columbus, OH @ Al Rosa Villa
  • 5/05 – London, ON – CANADA @ Music Hall
  • 5/06 – Syracuse, NY @ Station 58
  • 5/07 – Worcester, MA @ The Palladium

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Sinister – The Carnage Ending

by Brett Stevens on April 10, 2013

sinister-the_carnage_edingIf you can imagine a hybrid between older Grave and Centurian, you have the essence of the new Sinister, which like side project Houwitser specializes in fast, simple riff-fests that evoke ancient feelings of ornamented function like the spires of historical castles.

Like fellow high-speed metal legion Angelcorpse, the songs on this album rush forward with unrelenting speed and battery but slow down for moments of melody or artfully-suggested pauses, like a knight resting on the crest of a valley before battle. Many of these riffs will be familiar patterns, not just from death metal but types of melodies famous in other ages.

To keep that from being overwhelming, The Carnage Ending features many of the fast and aggressive chromatic riffs that build tension and heighten energy in the way they did on the first three albums. While this album is not as carefully put together as Cross the Styx, and has more redundancy among riff types, it maintains its memorable moments in a sea of high-energy blasting.

The Carnage Ending erupts from a pure old school death metal background and does a more than credible job of rendering itself. Some of the chaotic material on here seems offhand, but the songs have been trimmed back so that they are expressive and not disorganized. The result is hard-hitting, raging death metal from more than one former age.

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Summoning – Old Morning’s Dawn pre-order

by Brett Stevens on April 9, 2013

summoning-old_mornings_dawn-pre-orderTolkien ambient black metal project Summoning have unleashed their latest recording, Old Morning’s Dawn, via Napalm Records. The pre-order links are now active and the final product will be released June 27, 2013.

Napalm Records promises that “Despite the long break, the congenial duo Silenius and Protector did not stray an inch from their patch. Their distinctive melodies are the heart of all the songs on the latest longplayer, and bring the listeners directly into the fantastic world of Middle-Earth.”

Old Morning’s Dawn follows up on 2006’s Oath Bound, which united the epic spirit of power metal with the gentle melodic atmosphere and inner savagery of black metal, making the ideal soundtrack for medieval battle or spiritual occult warfare against the modern world.

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pre-order CD 12 EUR / pre-order DLP 23 EUR

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E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr – Kometenbahn

by Brett Stevens on April 8, 2013

e-musikgruppe_lux_ohr-kometenbahnThe most immediate comparisons E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr will attract are to Tangerine Dream and other “cosmic” bands of the 1970s, but while the technique of this trancelike electronic waveform fits that description, its composition reflects on something more like the “chill-out” albums of the middle 1980s.

Kometenbahn uses many of the same samples and sounds as old Tangerine Dream. The Moog keyboards intermix with the highly sequenced percussive synthesizer that keeps time, and lengthy and intricate guitar solos use the same distortion and tuning. Even the studio sound is very similar.

How E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr differs from the cosmic musicians however is in structure. This music is built more like the 1980s techno and chill-out albums, like the KLF’s album titled after the genre, than the 1970s bands. The electronic acts of the 1970s had a lot more in common with progressive rock, and so structured each song around either a set classical form, or as an adaptation to the content being expressed.

In contrast, more like the 80s material Kometenbah is composed in layers shaped around a central circular structure. This is not verse-chorus, but more linear, with the idea that one alternating pattern attracts others and then variations are made to those to tweak intensity and build up an experience of their atmosphere and immersion of mood.

This album offers powerful stuff to those who love ambient music. It is a feast of sounds, textures and rhythms. While it does not use the cosmic song forms of Tangerine Dream and friends, it produces a more contemporary atmosphere of suspension of disbelief and exploration of not a labyrinth, but deepening detail of an intensely ornate and beautiful object.

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Sinistrous Diabolous – Total Doom // Desecration

by Brett Stevens on April 6, 2013

sinistrous_diabolous-total_doom_desecrationSinistrous Diabolous creates funeral doom metal from the fragments of death metal. It uses the rapid strumming of slow chording that made Incantation so thunderous, merged with the abrupt tempo changes of Autopsy, and the mixed sounds and dynamic variation of Winter.

Total Doom // Desecration is as a result both shockingly absent of any of the trimmings of civilization or what we recognize as music, and also momentarily beautiful, like a ship emerging from the fog only to be lost again. Its primitive production and dark chromatic riffs enhance this sense of naturalism emerging against the hopeless mental muddle of humanity.

The atmosphere of murky ambiguity that enshrouds this album also grants it a resonant sense of purpose. Between power chorded riffs, interludes of pure sound or lighter instruments pervade, creating a sensation like slowly poling a raft through a dense swamp, looking for enemies.

Of note are the vocals, which deliberately abstract themselves into an uncivilized and primitive growl that calls alongside the music like a pack of dogs howling at a kill. Percussion fits the Autopsy model, being both alert and intense and knowing when to fade out into the drone.

Sinistrous Diabolous use heavy sustain not only on their guitars, but in the way riffs are sliced into these songs. Notes of doubt and ambiguity hang over every change, waiting for the song to roll over again and from the relentless ferment of its imagination, pull forth another riff.

While many doom albums come and go, and most either slide into the 1970s style or death-doom, this album cleanly integrates the last two decades of the variation in the latter styles, and comes up with something that is not only bone-crushingly weighty in sound and meaning, but also brings forth a beautiful melancholic isolation at sensing what has been lost.

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Hellbastard – Sons of Bitches EP

by Brett Stevens on April 5, 2013

hellbastard-sons_of_bitchesThe limitation of metal is that it has such a strong identity that it can easily become repetitive. The danger of going the opposite direction is that with no sense of identity music loses its own character in an effort to be open-minded.

Hellbastard hover on the lintel of that conundrum. Famous for their mid-1980s crustcore (and possibly for coining the name of that genre) the band detoured into metal on 1990’s Natural Order, but return here in a blur of distorted power chords and hoarse vocals.

The first four songs are relatively straightforward Amebix-style crust with interesting time changes. Vocals are searing and impressively aggressive. In addition to some ideas borrowed from rock, many riffs bear the stamp of middle-period Slayer.

Sons of Bitches mixes in the jaunty rhythms of late speed metal, conveyed mainly through the vocals but causing all of the music to be pulled by the catchy, repetitive chorus phrases. If you can imagine later Destruction fused with Pantera, embedded into a crust band, that’s the rough idea.

There are two outlier tracks. “We Had Evidence” starts a metal-styled instrumental that acquits itself quite well and then veers off into jazz fusion technique while recorded loudspeaker voices play in the background; then becomes a chanty metal-crust hybrid. Then “Throw the Petrol Bomb” comes on, which is some form of reggae lite with lyrics taunting the anger and frustration of political protesters.

The strength of this EP is its pure crust orientation. While the Slayer-style riffs give some power to the underlying material, the speed metal chant-vocals and assorted odds ‘n’ ends tossed in from rock and metal distract from the power of these songs. Perhaps on a full-length the band will focus more on its strength and slash out a slew of crust anthems.

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Absu North American Tour 2013

by Brett Stevens on April 4, 2013

absu-north-america-tour-2013

Many know Absu as the band that transitioned from mythological death metal to heavy-metal tinged black metal to finally a progressive, jazzy, and eclectic blend of metal, Celtic folk and psychedelic fusion styles.

According to percussionist/vocalist Proscriptor, “We’re attempting to divide the concerts into two sections: the first act will showcase songs spanning from our entire discography, as the second act will focus on Phase Two from the album Tara: The Cythrául Klan’s Scrutiny. For the past couple of years, many of ABSU’s followers have requested specified songs from this chapter of Tara, so it is our aspiration to give the people what they want.”

The tour covers North America in the blood of the righteous, and gives Absu a chance to show off their psychedelic rock-metal fusion trilogy: Absu, Abzu and the upcoming Apsu. As always, it is expected that the tour will showcase fantastic musicianship, chaotic pits and manic scrambling of residents for talisman artifacts of protection against the summoned evil.

  • 4/05/2013 Millcreek Tavern – Philadelphia, PA
  • 4/06/2013 Roger’s – Chesapeake, VA
  • 4/07/2013 Strange Matter – Richmond, VA
  • 4/08/2013 The Windup Space – Baltimore, MD
  • 4/09/2013 Middle East upstairs – Cambridge, MA
  • 4/10/2013 St. Vitus – Brooklyn, NY
  • 4/11/2013 St. Vitus – Brooklyn, NY
  • 4/12/2013 El N Gee – Hartford, CA
  • 4/13/2013 Theatre Plaza – Montreal, QC
  • 4/14/2013 L’Agitte – Quebec City, QC
  • 4/15/2013 Wreck Room – Toronto, ON
  • 4/16/2013 Ace of Cups – Columbus, OH
  • 4/17/2013 Mojoe’s – Joliet, IL
  • 4/18/2013 Rocco’s – Milwaukee, WI
  • 4/19/2013 Station 4 – St. Paul, MN
  • 4/20/2013 Zoo Cabaret – Winnipeg, MT
  • 4/22/2013 Dickens Pub – Calgary, AB
  • 4/24/2013 Biltmore Cabaret – Vancouver, BC
  • 4/25/2013 Highline – Seattle, WA
  • 4/26/2013 Ash Street Saloon – Portland, OR
  • 4/27/2013 Shinneybrook Creek Cabins @ Festum Carnis – Soda Springs, CA
  • 4/28/2013 DNA Lounge – San Francisco, CA
  • 4/30/2013 The Vex – Los Angeles, CA
  • 5/01/2013 Ruby Room – San Diego, CA
  • 5/02/2013 Rocky Point Cantina – Tempe, AZ
  • 5/04/2013 The Boiler Room – Dallas, TX

For more information, check the Absu web coven.

absu-sigil

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Hautakammio – Kukaan Ei Opasta Teitä Pimeässä

by Jon Wild on April 3, 2013

hautakammio-kukaan_ei_opasta_teita_pimeassaDuring the early days of black metal, it was acknowledged that punk had been a major musical influence on the genre. In particular, Discharge was cited as a foundation for seminal black metal band Hellhammer which later inspired a generation in the form of Celtic Frost.

The descendants of that heritage were the legendary Darkthrone, who fused punk energy, powerful riffs, and the searing bleakness of black metal into a musical maelstrom that had never before been heard.

Two decades later, Finland’s Hautakammio emerge with an even more intense attack. Sounding like a black metal crossover band, Hautakammio fuses the punk style with a black metal sound similar to Gorgoroth, producing a blistering aural assault. Riffs organically transition from dashing powerchord riffing to rapid tremolo picking while decidedly black metal vocals occupy the background.

Unlike Darkthrone however, Hautakammio does not sound greater than than the sum of its parts. While powerful music, it does not invoke a landscape of sound, remaining confined with linear production and direction. Nevertheless, this track is a solid composition with a unique take on a genre often stagnate.

For those interested in hearing more, the album Kukaan Ei Opasta Teitä Pimeässä will be released later this year through Darker than Black Records.

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Killing Joke – MMXII

by Brett Stevens on April 2, 2013

killing_joke-mmxiiStaying true to roots is difficult because as time goes on and learning increases, one must necessarily spread wings and soar to more ambitious ground. Killing Joke do both on MMXII, an album that showcases the style of their first album as interpreted through a more modern style and revisiting their influences.

Categorizing Killing Joke has never been easy. They sound like they should be an electronic music band, with spacious beats and future pop song structures, but then they add in guitar which sounds like a lighter version of Amebix, and a distinctly sweet-sour male vocal that gives the music an expansive mood and lightens the sometimes intense distortion on the guitars. They augment this with atmospheric keyboards and a throbbing, pulsing aggro-pop bass groove.

On MMXII, the band get closer to their roots in early electro and British techno pop, using melody to lead the otherwise unstoppable fusion of industrial, pop, punk and rock that they wrap into a final product that is both passionate and furious. While this is no way a metal band, Killing Joke has influenced a good many metal bands because it shares a similar mood: mythological, metaphorical, distanced from the human and yet emotional in the sense of someone watching a lovely mountainside burn in a drought.

As fierce critics of the modern life and its favorite crutches, Killing Joke also have a mood that is more punk than the most righteously self-proclaimed punk. This gives the music a surging quality, between a contemplative Britpop melancholy and harmony, and a driving rage during which the vocals distort to the edge of black or death metal territory. The result is an enclosing wall of sound that catches the listener in its emotion.

MMXII presents an amazingly consistent package. While songs are generally verse-chorus with strategic breaks, and cycle around to circular structures that repeat with changes, they are not consistent and each one has a different set of moods. Like actors playing a role in the drama of the album, each seems like a shard of the glass face reflecting the true experience of this album, which is both elaborate and brilliantly compelling.

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Monsterworks – Album of Man

by Brett Stevens on April 1, 2013

monsterworks-album_of_manThe job of a reviewer is to describe music, not judge it. Assessment ultimately becomes obvious from the context of expectation created by the reviewer which shows where all things must fit in the bigger pattern.

Monsterworks resembles a mixture of things and prefers to stay that way. The majority of the structural parts of songs are like Led Zeppelin mixed with Southern Rock and early doom metal, using metalcore style rasp vocals, so that most of what you hear is very guitar-rock styled heavy metal. This is a welcome change from the less organic metalcore of late.

If you like guitar playing that is bluesy, varied and emotional, this album will pique your interest. While the vocals rant, guitars hit all the right rhythms and then work in leads with the fills, slowly building up intensity until the song explodes in sound. If you can imagine Led Zeppelin and Ion Dissonance collaborating on a stoner doom album, this might be about it.

Monsterworks create very much in the 1970s style, and yet with its vocals and aesthetics, very much in the 2010s style as well. The result is both deeply engaged and like newer metal hybrids, incessant in its peak intensity, which can make it meld together indistinctly. It often detours into “different” arenas, like progressive rock, tech-deth, and straight up hardcore, as if a variety show.

Album of Man reforms the anti-technical side of post-metal and metalcore however by using the guitar as a voice of its own, and breaking up the strident extremity with old fashioned instrumentalism. This both brings rock and metal back to their core and renews the intensity of the vocals. By doing so, it takes newer metal to a better place and makes for a more satisfying listen.

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