Fans of 2014’s excellent Promulgation of the Fall would have been hoping for more than just two tracks from these Greek death metallers this year but their new EP Sombre Doom satisfies with quality over quantity. Opening with a howling dead wind of feedback, the first track Redemptive Immolation is grave and doom-laden with a thick, dark atmosphere. After the oppressive opener, the up-tempo battering of Wind’s Bane comes as a relief but is still rich in ghostly gloom and haunting guitar. The songs and riffs aren’t the most original but Sombre Doom is all about the vibe and the execution: this reeks of rain, death, evil and graveyards. Proper death metal if you ask me, and one of the best EPs of the year.
As Obscene Entity power into the climatic riff of the track Insanity Binds, someone shouts the word “fuck”. Now, normally that kind of posturing would have me rolling my eyes, thinking of Lars Ulrich. But the particular moment at which it is exclaimed, after the band have just powered through a veritable maelstrom of death metal riffs before returning successfully to the song’s main riff, it comes across as totally genuine. Even triumphant. You find yourself totally behind them. Fuck!
I can’t think of a better way to illustrate the joy of Obscene Entity’s debut album Lamentia.
Loosely based around the theme of mental fragility, this intense and heartfelt album pulls you down a rabbit hole of tortured death metal. The album starts off with the Gojira-fronted-by-Jeff Walker assault of Planetary Devastation. It’s a good, solid opener but the album kicks into another gear as Hymns of the Faithless veers from a dizzy, swirling riff midway through the track into a groovy, stop-start breakdown. It’s the kind of stuff that makes you gurn like Phil Anselmo. Listen to this on the bus at your peril.
Obscene Entity – upgraded to a four-piece since Lamentia was completed
And from there on the album just seems to intensify, the band continually adding new elements and styles. The title track has a whirling dervish riff and ringing chords that bring to mind Emperor and Euphoric Vanity employs some guitar progginess in a wonderful Chuck Schuldiner vein. The twin vocals of guitarist Matt Adnett (also of Shrines) and bassist Calum Gibb keep things varied throughout: ranging from brute Behemoth growls to hoarse blackened snarls. But the top honours go to drummer Luke Braddick. For an album this vehement, it’s remarkably hooky and those hooks are powered and enhanced by Luke’s dynamic and tasteful playing. Throughout, the band plays a modern style but has a classic sensibility and chemistry: constantly reining themselves in, allowing space for all the parts to have maximum effect. This quality, aided by the powerfully clear production from Dan Abela, only adds to the album’s power and intensity.
There are a lot of approaches and influences on Lamentia and my only concern is that the band haven’t quite found their unique voice yet. But it’s never derivative and the prospect of the band developing and finding that voice on future releases is tantalising. But until then, there’s plenty to enjoy and gurn at in Lamentia. It’s unreconstructed death metal performed with remarkable skill, piss and vinegar. Expect to see this in my end-of-year Top Ten, it’s a fantastic debut. Fuck!
It’s the band’s first album but Shrines already has a lot to live up to. Vocalist and guitarist Sam Loynes is also a member of Voices who last year released London – not only the HMO Top Album of 2014 but also the best album to have happened so far this decade.
Shrines’ music is a different beast from Voices and even if their debut doesn’t quite pull itself out of London‘s shadow it shows considerable promise. Blackened tremolo guitars and deathly Morbid Angel riffing weaves seamlessly with spacey prog and Gojira-esque technicality to dreamy effect. The musicians handle the shifting flow of styles with aplomb: Daniel Blackmore’s precise drumming holds everything together while the guitars are crisp and tight. But the album is at its dreamiest with the clean, harmonised vocals of Loynes. They have a beautiful, tremulous and choral quality. While there are long instrumental passages and also gruffer vocals, it’s the clean vocal delivery on tracks like Ariadne’s Thread, The Drowned and the Saved and Broken Man that are the emotional heart of the album and the parts that resonate after listening and draw you back.
Sadly, the current economic climate meant the band could only afford one jacket
I’d have liked to have heard more of the clean vocals, but they do mix well with the growlier parts. It’s no obvious “nice bit/heavy bit” alternation; the whole album threads and winds through its various approaches subtly and magically. But the variation and my preference for the clean vocals does mean some songs are more affecting than others.
Rather like The Antichrist Imperium debut earlier in the year (also featuring Loynes), Shrines is one of the best things I’ve heard in 2015 but it’s not as startling or as fully-realised as London. But neither was Voices’ debut album. This is a strong and captivating debut and I’ll be very keen to hear what Shrines come up with next.
I have to declare my pro PaRtY-CaNnOn bias straight away. Ever since seeing the above poster online, I’ve felt an immense level of pride in these fellow Scots. But with the release of their debut full-length album Bong Hit Hospitalisation, the time has come for me to finally put my love of this band to the ultimate test: actually listening to their music.
It turns out that PaRtY-CaNnOn play ‘Party Slam Death Metal’. They are the greatest (and I’m guessing the only) practitioners of this musical genre. You couldn’t be blamed for thinking this is all some kind of piss-take but the Dunfermline…(ers? Dunfermlonians?) are smart enough to let their sense of fun infuse their music with a sense of personality and liveliness rather than letting it become a comedy record.
Bong Hit Hospitalisation (2015)
The production is fantastic, a great combination of technical and filthy with considerable heft and great separation between the instruments: the noodly bass and biscuit-tin drums are a joy. The band deliver at blasting speed alternated with seismic, lurching riffing and keep the album well-paced, continually catching you unaware with excellent and diverse moments like the cosmic Cynic-style bass solo in There’s a Reason You’re Single and the deft guitar solo that sees out Screech Even Sold His Body to Science. Stony Reddie’s alternately guttural and squealy vocals are powerful, varied and rhythmic enough to carry the songs without requiring any melody. And his delivery is often amusing too, like the pig-snorting climax of Interested Is Not the Word.
The main moments of mirth are kept to the inter-song samples but don’t interfere with or detract from the band’s main business of seriously brutal Death Metal. Quite the opposite: they only add to the sense of chaotic hedonism and even serve a useful function in helping to pace out the record and offer brief breathers from the carnage. And I had no idea you could do that with a grapefruit.
Bong Hit Hospitalisation is one of the most refreshing Extreme Metal albums I’ve heard in a good while. It’s surprisingly catchy and tons of fun, delivered by a band canny and talented enough to ensure there’s some serious substance underneath all the rib-tickling. I love hearing such genuinely extreme music performed with this kind of wit and personality and PaRtY-CaNnOn are one of my most pleasant discoveries of 2015. Them and the grapefruit thing.
Extreme Metal pioneers Venom waged war from the very depths of Hell, raging against the early-80s New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands they considered tame and the heroes that they felt had pulled their punches.
They combined the filth and fury of Punk and Motörhead with the larger-than-life images of KISS and Priest and the kind of Devilish allegiance that would have Sabbath crying “Please God help me!” Conrad, Tony and Jeff became the far more demonic-sounding Cronos, Abaddon and Mantas and their classic album cover set out their allegiance to Beelzebub in black and gold. And they had the sound to match their demonic image.
Another trip to the beach ruined
The band used demo sessions for the final album, signalling their primitive purity and honesty. Welcome to Hell sounded under-produced and unholy. The Motörhead influences are obvious, especially in the opening tracks Sons of Satan and Welcome to Hell, but the brio with which they mangle these rockers is thrillingly rudimentary. Cronos’ appropriately named “Bulldozer” bass piles over everything, Mantas peels off some fun wild solos and Abaddon’s caveman drumming tries to keep up. The sense of limits being pushed gives the performance a chaotic edge, especially during the lurching changes of pace. The debauchery of tracks like Poison and Red Light Fever is often criticized but really it all just adds to the shock factor and what’s the point of being one of the Great Horned One’s Legion if you can’t indulge in a bit of hellraising hedonism?
On Side 2 the band enter more original and scarier territory. Witching Hour is seminal proto-Thrash, Angel Dust is face-ripping and In League with Satan is addictively catchy while still sounding ominous and threatening. The band tightens their Metal grip as the album progresses and the most influential musical moments come from the record’s second half. Welcome to Hell has many elements of the Heavy music that preceded it and its fast pace, growled vocals and evil vibe can be heard in so much Metal that came after. But it remains unique and divisive. In fact, it’s a hellish maelstrom of just about everything I love about Heavy Metal while also embodying everything the genre is criticised for.
Venom’s raw, no-holds barred approach would prove to be massively influential on Thrash, Death and particularly Black Metal. Although Venom hadn’t gotten around to christening it yet, many key components of BM began here: particularly the occult, evil atmosphere and rotten production values but also the iconography, aliases and instrument descriptions (Bulldozer Bass, Chainsaw Guitars and Nuclear Warheads!)
But most importantly, Venom’s greatest legacy was their harder/faster/scarier mind-set which became the ethos of much of the Metal that followed. With Welcome to Hell Metal became Extreme and for that we should all praise Satan.
Swansong was released in 1996 after Extreme Metal pioneers Carcass had an unlikely stint as a major-label act in the US. With Columbia unwilling to release the album it was given back to the band and their UK indie label Earache to release, by which time the band had already split up (hence the title). The album met with a muted reception. While the diehard Metal underground felt it was too watered-down it was also way too extreme for mainstream acceptance.
This is Carcass’ “Rot n’ Roll” album. The groovy, stripped-down feel of the performance gives the album a Classic Rock vibe but the up-front delivery is defiantly Metallic with speaker-rattling production from Colin Richardson. Meaty and sophisticated guitar riffs are topped with deft, melodic solos and underpinned with a powerful bass sound. Ken Owen’s drumming is sublime and Jeff Walker’s exasperated snarl and nihilistic lyrics offer the album’s most extreme components. In many ways, the qualities Carcass exhibits on Swansong are very similar to those of Megadeth’s 90s output, albeit a Death Metal equivalent.
Carcass – (on left panel) Jeff Walker (v,b), Carlo Regadas (g), Ken Owens (d), Bill Steer (g)
Opener Keep on Rotting in the Free World’s rumination on the Western economy still sounds relevant and, as the seriously weighty guitars open up into the harmonised chorus riff, it’s a truly exciting way to kick off an album. Tomorrow Belongs to Nobody’s opening riff salvo is just about the best HM riffing you’ll ever hear and the arpeggios of Child’s Play offer the album’s uplifting lighter-waving moment.
However, Swansong suffers from a mid-album lull that it struggles to recover from, largely due to the lack of variation in tempo. The album regains its footing in the second half with Generation Hexed, Firm Hand and the Thin Lizzy-esque R**k the Vote standing out as album highlights.
Although flawed, Swansong’s enthralling blend of power and flair has a strong appeal. The combination of Classic Metal sensibility and grinding delivery make this an ideal starting point for anyone interested in exploring heavier terrain and there is enough depth to reward repeated listens. On the eve of their comeback album Surgical Steel there is no better time to revisit their great underdog album.
[Carcass – Tomorrow Belongs to Nobody]
The Swansong DualDisc edition. With Part 5 of “The Pathologist’s Report” on DVD and stickers!
HEAVY METAL OVERLOAD 
