Tag Archives: Metal

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Wild Zombie Blast Guide

Unless I missed a memo over the last few years or so, metalcore doesn’t really appear to be a thing any more. Well, at least from the thrash-influenced perspective, as more and more bands pile on from the hardcore bandwagon, some even evolving into the visceral deathcore movement. Metal has left me jaded nowadays, as the trend seems to emphasise brutality in your music, in guitar tones and how much venom and vengeance you can saturate your lyrics with, bores me. In my personal opinion, there’s very little innovation any more, as clones after clones emerge and dump themselves on top of the landfill. So when metal bands that are flashier, play faster and hark back to a time when proficiency on your instrument was key, it opens a window on a stagnant genre climate.Germany’s Wild Zombie Blast Guide are no doubt obsessed with the living dead and modern society, but they reinvigorate that spirit of thrash metal that many recent bands seem to be ignoring. There’s some interesting ideas such as backing samples and the inclusion of a banjo in one song, but then they also trope into a few modern cliches such that sub-bass explosion that seems to be the equivalent of the Black Plague. Yet there’s a healthy camaraderie and optimism in their message, despite their subject matter. The switching of vocal styles between hardcore superstar, guttural death metal frontman and gang chants in the same song is also refreshing to hear, as highlighted by Birds Of Prey. In between tasteful electronic gasps for breath, some killer guitar chops and an anthemic chorus, the song is a testament to skill-based guitar-orientated music, played at such a pace, it could rattle spinal discs out of place. 2014’s Salute The Commander is a celebration of all that is good about metal, and is life-affirming to boot musically and mentally.

Salute The Commander and their 2012 self-titled debut can only be found on their Bandcamp page for a reasonable asking price.

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Vulture Industries

Circumstances make me wonder if opinion polls are ever conducted on whether the world needs more metal musicals. Currently the best example may be cult classic Repo! The Genetic Opera, certainly a polarising experience at the best of times however. The music itself was very well composed, especially for the sheer scale of original songs written for the score, but the lyrics at times, came over as unintentionally hilarious. Very few bands nail that balance between theatricality and musiciality perfectly, so when a new avant-garde metal band emerges onto the fray, attention spreads like wildfire. Enter Norway’s Vulture Industries. European metal circles are quickly cottoning onto their amalgamation of styles, instruments and notably the quirky vocal menagerie of frontman Bjørnar Nilssen. While most likely not conceived in that matter, each song written by Vulture Industries takes its place as a scene or chapter in a blackened, twisted storybook, exploring the depths of emotion and the human condition. Most recent venture, 2013’s The Tower is their most ambitious tale to date. Stretching beyond an hour in running time, this five piece have taken extra cues from symphonic metal, as well as enlisting the help of various session musicians and choruses along the way. Divine-Apalling is the second track in, and from the get-go takes you into the warped pantomime of a slightly Vaudevillian landscape. There’s so many well thought out touches in what becomes a carousel, or a carnivalesque waltz of joyous and melancholy tones, but amplified like only a metal band can realise. Vulture Industries have the inner workings of utter genius, and are creatively one of the most unique bands around right now. Take the stage, this applause is all yours.

Their three albums can be purchased on their own Bandcamp page as well as their website, whereas their earlier works and demos, are no longer in print. As usual, these can also be bought at most respectable music retailers too.

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Deadists

At least some point in your life, you may ask yourself the question: How is it that I’d like to die? No matter what state of mind you are in, it seems to be an intangiable fact that we as the human race, are oft fascinated by the realms of the morbid. After all, life does come to an end at some point. But say if for example, you are in a Swedish metal band from Gothenburg, and your music so happens to be very heavy, addled with enough riffs and raw power to haemorrage a tower block, you may ask yourself: Is death by sludge possible? Deadists would like think so, their waves of black tar swallowing you whole, whilst the crushing weight squeezes the air from your lungs. Meeting somewhere between doom and sludge, none of Time Without Light’s five tracks falls under the five minute mark., giving enough exposure in one sitting to completely pulverise your eardrums into dust. The full-out fuzz assault of Human Stain is a seemingly endless tide of meaty guitar grooves and highly intimidating barking, all the time while drums beat and bloody the faint of heart into a pulp. Deadists may play with an appetite for destruction, that much is clear, but the size and skill of which this fairly original brand of addictive sludge is performed, leaves little doubt that these gentlemen from Gothenburg are a wrecking crew capable of global domination.

Deadists are in a strange state, they haven’t died but are evolving in terms of sound and personnel, of which change hopefully bring new material with it. In any case, 2010’s Time Without Light can be found on their Bandcamp page for an absolute steal.

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Flesh Field

Crossover at times seems to be somewhat of a dirty word, only because bands can often transcend genres so much, that there simply isn’t a label or category to pigeonhole them into. No actual scientific research has gone into this, but it roughly gathers pace, and quietens down again shortly afterwards around the start of every decade. Not to say that some others don’t brew under the surface in between, but they seem rather few and far between. In the eyes of Colombus, Ohio’s Flesh Field however, their magnum opus came at the time Celldweller announced himself to the world and many an impressionable teenager with an internet connection (not to discredit his influence whatsoever, I am a big fan of his work for definite). Whereas Klayton can mask incredibly infectious pop songs in an electro-industrial facade, Flesh Field made a harsher, harder-edged discography for the darker side of the dancefloor. Smashing together an industrial attitude and a gothic aesthetic, with dark electro, sharpened metal guitar and pounding EBM, 2004’s Strain is a sprawling underground epic that sinks its talons deep and smothers listeners with a sinister embrace. The Collapse is excellence in its execution, the siren’s call elevating this stomper far beyond the realm of any shadow-shrouded industrial before it.

2004’s Strain is the only album available for purchase albeit rarely physically, but readily digitally. For any other of Flesh Field’s older material, you may need to do a little digging, but it exists out there.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Flesh-Field/1412567635664994?fref=ts

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A Swarm Of The Sun

Post rock, or post metal in whichever way you want to view this band’s music seems provoke three kinds of moods for me personally. A soundscape that aims to transcend space, a soundscape that plays with our emotions or a soundscape that represents some kind of darkness or doomsday scenario. A Swarm Of The Sun definitely falls into the latter category of these moods. The musical workload masterminded by two Swedish gentlemen, drags rock music kicking and screaming into a chasm, with a black sky onset. Characteristically of this genre, it’s appropriately grandiose, Refuge fitting its title of warning signs to come from the apocalypse. It sounds monumental, like the shifting between Earth’s tectonics. Little time is given to adjust to the scale of the guitar barrage that begins, and fills 2010 album Zenith’s running time, all the while with dulcet tones trying hush the oncoming threat. There are quieter moments, filled with the echoes of strings plucked, resonating beautifully, yet it still maintains that air of foreboding, skilfully executed by these two undeniably talented musicians. Darkness rarely sounds this alluring and judging by the quality of their two albums in an eight-year lifespan, it rarely receives this much adoration too.

2010’s Zenith, as well as this year’s The Rifts and 2007’s King Of Everything EP are all available from A Swarm Of The Sun’s Bandcamp page, all for a small fee.

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Maeth

Some of the best kinds of music ensnare you for a listening experience unlike any other. Pink Floyd. Mastodon. Ozric Tentacles, if you know of them, just to name a few. Minnesota’s Maeth take cues in what makes these three bands world class songwriters, yet are very much their own unique beast, with extra emphasis on the beast. What you’re getting is a progressive metal band that are unafraid to take their music above and beyond tired barriers. The entirety of 2012’s Horse Funeral EP is one song broken into five segments in which the title track here, goes on as much as a flight as the rest of the album. Starting in space almost, sludge mode engages for an impressive show of strength and a surprisingly catchy riff, colliding head on with excellent off-kilter drums. The soundscape is then hushed into a repetition of that riff, supported by a gentle touch of bass before an ethereal flute takes hold of the proceedings. See, progressive music doesn’t get that spiritual sounding nowadays, but these gentlemen can take it there or wherever they please, as their near-leagues below sea level depth is astounding. Maeth aren’t musicians, they’re dreamweavers. Whether that’s a psychedelic tour of space, or a terrifying avalanche solely to crush, they deserve to breach their cult status as one of progressive metal’s most exciting new bands.

The Horse Funeral EP was only the beginning. Please go check out their 2013 album Oceans Into Ashes on their Bandcamp, as it expands the groundwork covered here into a fully-fledged masterpiece.

https://www.facebook.com/MaethBand?fref=ts

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Devil May Care

It must take some tremendous display of strength to form a band over 15 years ago, and yet still maintain the drive to create music after reanimating a project that long ago. But Greece’s Devil May Care have done just that, blending an enthralling pot-pourri of progressive metal with a kick of stoner and sludge, even some post-rock flavours at times. Sial, the first track from their Hallowed EP is a glorious warzone, bathed in an inferno, narrated by crunching hard guitars, a methodical drum attack, some luscious harmonies to illustrate an air of tragedy and atmospherics to heighten that emotion, all encompassed in a rollercoaster of riffs. Their musicianship states a great case for audio-visual storytelling, and that it doesn’t necessarily need to be indulgent, with some, but not all of their recorded output only just poking the five minute mark. The best part is, they openly admit they make music for the enjoyment of it, a sentiment some people should take note of. Their bite-size bursts of encapsulating metal are a joy to digest, and if it takes 15 years to formulate these masterstrokes, the mind boggles at what’s next in store.

The Hallowed EP and Meridian EP are available on the band’s Bandcamp page for a small fee. That’s the Greek band, not the German one, just be sure. I have no idea if the German band are any good.

https://www.facebook.com/officialdevilmaycare?fref=ts