Sleepwalker: Skopofoboexoskelett
Out 4th August on Sentient Ruin
Embourgeoisment continues apace. Another edict from the arthouse descends to mark extreme metal’s homework, finding its imagination wanting. Metalheads are once again told to get on board with a concoction of noise rock, jazz, and spiced up guitar leads lifted from blandist pseudo intellectual dad rockers in chief Pink Floyd lest we be seen as unadventurous. Don’t let the gatekeepers get you, be sure to down this month’s warm mush of circular musical esoterica, pay no heed to the doubts of a critical ear, it’s important we be seen as willing participants in coffeehouse intellectualism giving itself another handjob at metal’s expense. Were it not for a handful of riffs and the pretence of a combative stance toward the listener this album would not even have landed on the desks of metal’s criterati. And whilst not entirely without value, the cross section of prog rock offcuts, meandering saxophone (unless you’re Necromantia, just stop, for the love all that is holy, deploying this godforsaken instrument into your undercooked attempts at metallic avant-gardism), safe melodic narratives disguised as something more interesting by misplaced tempo changes and overly eager textural swaps, hints of regional folk music, all have their true value and appeal stripped back for the sake of satisfying a dire need to impress an audience of performative listeners pursuing fandom as a replacement for having a personality, who renege on any desire to nurture sincerely held opinions for fear of not getting the latest sonic “take”. Leave this one for the lepidopterists. The sincerely artistically curious may look elsewhere.
Ancient Torment/Haxen: The Howling Gale (split)
Out 4th August on Eternal Hate
Ancient Torment bear all the hallmarks of a post hardcore band trying their hand at Nordic black metal. On balance they put on a far more convincing performance in this regard than many of a similar pedigree. The tracks are if anything overly focused, presenting a linearity that at times feels like travelling down a long, straight, flat, featureless road. Black metal’s prized sparsity is revised into a lesser stasis that looks an awful lot like…nothing. Harmonic flourishes, although welcome, do little to advance the cause of forward motion through variety. And tempo changes, when they do occur, adopt a loose swing of post 1990 rockist irony, lifting us completely out of the winter metal experience. Vocals, whilst making a show of animalistic fury, are perhaps too liberal with their stylistic traverses to illuminate what the artistic intent was meant to be here. Conversely, Haxen create if anything an even more constricted space in which to conduct the business of frigid black metal. But a tighter approach to mid paced blast-beats, more single minded vocals, and an all round willingness to commit to the high drama of the moment – however ridiculous this makes one seem – culminates in a satisfying if limited rendering of modestly melodic black metal.
Cystic: Palace of Shadows
Out 11th August on Chaos Records
Autopsy worship meets fragmented telegrams from hardcore punk via overly emotive vocals and a surprisingly unpolished production. Despite the underwhelming directness of the overall package, bringing it in line with standard bargain basement OSDM fodder, Cystic do offer accents of dissonant intrigue and idiosyncratic melodic flourishes, brightening an otherwise familiar landscape. Tracks like ‘Palace of Shadows and Blood’ offer a vulnerable reinterpretation of drab Asphyxian inevitability, following an elegant chronology of opening theme, development section, and recapitulation. Such features of ‘Palace of Shadows’ indicate minds with at least one eye on composition, as opposed to the usual focus grouped vibe affirmation in line with the latest market trends we’ve come to expect from 90% of contemporary death metal.
Cales: Chants of Steel
Out 18th August on Edged Circle
Latest work from inceptional Czech metal legend Blackosh sees a wider release on Edged Circle this year. With fingerprints left on the likes of Entrails, Nifelheim, Master’s Hammer, and of course Root, the Cales solo project makes for an interesting window into the authentic creative drive behind this gun for hire. His solo albums take the form of a state-of-the-union address as much as creative expression. Blackosh has always sat within the folk/Viking/heavy metal oeuvre of an older school of metal, kindred to Quorthon more than arson black metal. Given that, it’s no surprise that a hard rock domesticity haunts the periphery, alongside rich melodic content informed by a warrior biker creed, unafraid of cheese, revelry, or simple unbridled joy sitting happily alongside considered soundscapes of Viking era Bathory. ‘Chants of Steel’ embodies many of these features. Unashamedly silly, but a silliness concealing sophisticated and at times oddly sincere ballads of epic heavy metal. Master riffcraft blends classic rock via the filter of Motorhead, tastefully melodic thrash, epic heavy metal, and liminal proto black metal, coalescing into a work untroubled by the need to establish a balance of emotion or pace. An unapologetic work of eccentric trad metal theatre.
Transgressor: Beyond Oblivion
Out 24th August on Me Saco Un Ojo/Sewer Rot/Unholy Domain
Japanese death metal has a singular interest in horror. A unique distillation of violence, gloom, and drunken despair toying at the borders of absurdity, a kind of mutated acceptance at the loss of sense, morality, or catharsis expressed through any traditional cadence. Transgressor, despite their rather route-one approach to this national pastime, embody the impetus through a kind of warped take on death/doom, one that toys with classic heavy metal melodicism more than is common for their Western counterparts, but they use this as a contextualising device to bring their surrealist drives into sharper relief. A playful rhythmic bounce helps to further bring this uncanny brew to bear, just on the edge of familiarity but refusing to capitulate to any settled normalcy. At one end, chunky groove riffs are besieged by sluggish tempos and guttural vocals, at the other sits an uncomfortably bright package of lead guitar fanfare, each pulling the otherwise rather direct thematic intent of this EP apart. Solid if dull death metal is wrought into atmospheric complexity by clever use of contrast and a left of centre delivery that should be apparent to anyone well versed in boilerplate death metal’s self image.
Of Darkness: Misse Tridentina
Out 25th August on Personal Records
Funeral doom outfit featuring members of Teitanblood, and very much in the spirit of the latter takes a rather reductive approach to the process of composition. Extreme metal – whether fast and chaotic or slow and tortured – is recast as a vehicle for sound design. The barest rudiments of metal are fashioned into a uniform template put in service of eccentric expressions of what I imagine these musicians take to be the horrific. The result is utter stasis disguised as opulence. A merry-go-round of tired melodrama, laboured discordance, random accents of piano and string flourishes allowing these musicians to appropriate classical music’s cultural capital (a norm in itself that needs interrogating), and overcooked attempts at gravitas. Of Darkness do make a show of linear progression, ‘Dies Irae’ and ‘Eis Requiem, Eis Requiem Sempiternam’ (even the faux Latin is irksome) make a show of accommodating some activity, but honestly it would have been better not to have bothered. Even by the standards of funeral doom the forward motion established by an extended crescendo or tedious finale takes too long in the resolving to be worth our engagement. Unlike the explicit avant-gardism of early Abruptum – the most obvious ancestor of ‘Misse Tridentina’ – the fact that Of Darkness attempt and fail to create tectonically slow waves of teleological motion indicates that they are either capable of something more sophisticated but lazily refuse to do so for the sake of pushing that much needed content into the world, or else trying to marshal their abilities to something beyond the superficial but not up to the task. Either way the artefact we the listener must contend with is categorially inferior to Abruptum’s approach of singular, monolithic slabs of incoherent drone and batteries of aural torture. Leave this album to those who see in extreme metal nothing but a vehicle for obnoxious posturing, vapid flamboyance wearing the clothes of poetry.
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