Album Review: My Minds Mine - Passengers of the Void

What I like to chew

In my experience bands that reform give a bit of a mixed experience. Often the band manages to play their old material better than back in the day but on the other hand the new material tends to be weaker. Sure some bands return better than ever but this is a rather rare occurrence. Luckily for us My Minds Mine is one of those rare exceptions, not only is Passengers of the Void the best grindcore release I've heard this year(I admit 2018 has not been an amazing year for grind and such), it is also a career best. Considering how good their older material is this is definitely a feat to be proud of.

The first thing that becomes apparent while listening to this album is that they've gone for a more Napalm Deathesque style. This gives us a style they have not really done before under either the My Minds Mine name as well as under the Blood I Bleed moniker. This is because they have this early 90's Napalm Death groove. One can still hear the impact Heresy had on this band but this factor is definitely lessened compared with their older material. There is nothing really surprising or innovative about this record but it just nails this style of grindcore. This is not the first time they released a flawless grindcore album, as everyone into grindcore should know, but for Passengers they added some of that ingredient X in this mix and that is what makes it a career best.

This album is mandatory for everyone into grindcore. Passengers goes beyond delivering everything a grindcore album should in this day and age. I first listened to this record while on the way to a Turkish indie folk/rock gig and this album just ruined the first 15 minutes of that gig. It was like my mind was stuck in My Minds Mine mode even though the gig I was attending was more than fine. So just watch out what you do after listening to this it might ruin it for you too.
Final score: 91/100

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Album Review: Pharaoh Overlord - Zero

Neu! The Pharaoh of Meadow Eyes presents its latest Circle

There are so many ways in which music can be crazy. Some music is extremely technical or complicated in terms of song structures, some music is just crazy in the sense of being incredibly energetic and some music is mind bending like one is listening to acid in aural form. There is another form of crazy music that kind of gets overlooked nowadays because so much has been done already and that is the willingness to go wild with experimentation. You might say “You mean stuff like Zeal & Ardor, Jute Gyte or Liturgy?” and I say “Nay, they might be experimental but they are not insane, Pharaoh Overlord's Zero however is insane”.

There is a very simple reason why Zero is insane, on this album we have some classic Neu! styled kraut meets space rock but Antti Boman of Demilich does all of the vocals. When I first heard about Zero I expected Antti to actually sing normally but the only vocals you will hear on Zero are his infamous burps. At first it seems like a joke. Surely no sane person into music would want to have such vocals over something that sounds like Neu! ? Well even during my first listen I realized that they actually pull off this crazy idea very successfully. While I guess this is also a testament to how Antti is at his job but I think they implemented his vocals very well from a production and mixing stand point, they've softened up how he sounds so it fits in very well with the rest of the music. I also think Antti adopted a slightly different approach to his style for Zero. He comes over a bit as an alien crooner and got this spoken word feel to it as well.

Enough talking about the vocals as there is so much else going on. The rest of the music like I said earlier is mostly based on the Neu! side of kraut rock. Lots of repetitive drum patterns and song structures that slowly change and morph. The kraut rock factor gets boosted by the legendary Hans Joachim Irmler of Faust fame. I assume that he plays most of the synths we hear on this record. The synths alternate between playing more melodically and going for a more spacey approach. The guitars are somewhat more space rock than kraut rock based and there are some heavier parts that reference metal from a space rock perspective. Instrumentally speaking this is one of the finest displays in the wider psychedelic rock world I've heard in the last couple years. They might superficially play something well established but yet clearly very succesfully made it their own.

Who would have thought that an album which features kraut rock meets Antti Boman would not only turn out well but even end up being one of the very best records of 2018. It makes me wonder if they made Jochim listen to Nespithe and if he realized that in its own way it is just as out there as Faust was back in the day. Maybe we will see a Faust / Demilich collaboration in the future? After hearing this excellent album I definitely would like to hear it. Meanwhile I'm sure Pharaoh Overlord as well as that other band Circle will continue to create music of a very high level.   

Final score: 94/100

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Album Review: Slow Worm - The Inverse Ascent

Climb into the self

Doom metal is a rather tricky genre in our current age. There are many bands that think just being slow and having a thick sound is enough obviously this approach delivers very meagre results. Yet it seems that many people in the scene just eat it all up. In fact it sometimes seems that save for a few exceptions the less adventurous and more monotonous a band the more popular they get. Personally I find this kind of frustrating and disappointing. Hence before I listened to The Inverse Ascent I was kind of sceptic. Luckily for me it turned out to be a much more interesting and dynamic record than I expected.

Slow Worm take elements from various different styles of doom. There are some parts that remind me of a less boring Warning but also parts that remind me of Reverend Bizarre and Candlemass. There are some brief references to black metal with some brief passages of black metal style shrieks but most notably the faster final part of the third track. According to what I've read many associate the clean parts throughout this album with shoegaze and post-rock but to me they mostly remind me of Disembowelment. Just listen to the way the vocals and clean guitars are combined on the third track. I have to say that this album is not nearly as dynamic as Transcendence. They manage to structure everything they have quite successfully into a coherent whole that save for the aforementioned fast part on the third track stays down tempo.

What I like is that it actually is a fairly short album. There are 3 real doom metal tracks and the final track is an ambient outro giving us a total runtime of just under 40 minutes. They really seem to have focused on only using their best ideas and while I would not say that their ideas are world class this approach does make sure that they get the most out of themselves. The vocals however strike me as an acquired taste. I do like them because I think they have character but I can definitely imagine that some people could consider it a weak point

I think I can best summarize this album as effective. It's ideas are not good enough to turn this album into a classic but because they get the most out of every element it ends up being a quite enjoyable listen with enough character to stand out from the crowd.
Final score: 79/100

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Album Review: Extinction of Mankind - Storm of Resentment

Malodorous Kernel

Startled I definitely was earlier this year. Extinction of Mankind was just about to start playing but then I found out that they are not a household name within the crust punk scene. I was talking excitedly about EoM with a friend just before their gig and he just said “Uh but to be honest I do not know em” and that is friend is more than a little familiar with crust punk. I looked around and noticed that he was not the only one. So I guess I have to introduce them first. Extinction of Mankind play metallic crust with a death metal edge. They have ties with DooM, Napalm Death and quite a few other bands. They have been around since 92 and they have released a fair number of records and mostly have stuck to the same style since day one.

Core to their sound is the slower kind of crust in the style of Amebix, Hellshock and Sacrilege. They took the most metallic riffs from these bands and coupled it with a drummer that likes classic Motörhead a lot. So while this album is still mostly crust punk, this album also manages to be fairly metallic in a death metal sense. For death metal standards however this album is kind of sparse. This style of music is more about fury than throwing as many riffs as possible at the listener and I would say Extinction of Mankind succeeded at creating a very angry record. This album just contains so much deeply ingrained anger. This is also the appeal of this style of music. However as this is a rather narrow style a band has to be fairly exceptional to produce 40 minutes plus of top rate material. Sadly this is were the band falls just short. Some tracks just are not as energising and powerful. The weaker tracks are still pretty decent but they do drag the album down a bit.

If they had cut the run time on this album to about 30 minutes, I think it would be an even better listen. There is just a bit too much not quite filler. However Storm is in my opinion also their best album since their debut. Most songs on this record are just so angry and powerful that the songs that are just entertaining are not even close to being a real stain on the experience.
Final score: 85/100

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Album Review: Hyperdontia - Abhorrence Veil

Downfall of the Engulfed

One thing that I really like about the current era of death metal is that like never before international collaborations have emerged. With current technology and the fact that metal musicians have better paying jobs now than they did 30 years ago crossing borders has become so easy. Hyperdontia is a perfect example of this. In Hyperdontia the currently booming(relatively speaking of course) Danish and Istanbul death metal scenes meet. Oh and for the record I am reviewing the version of the EP with 3 tracks.

On this first EP Hypderontia quickly show us what they are about. Vocals directly inspired by Antti Boman. Riffs inspired by Mortal Throne of Nazarene and to touch it all of some sprinklings from Dead Congregation and Autopsy. Many people will now get turned off by the fact that I name drop an Incantation album as there has been a constant outpouring of Incantation inspired black/death metal in the last few years. I agree there is way too much of that but I have to stress that all the boring clones tend to take too much from the first Incantation album. Mortal Throne is the album with all sorts of riffs that are actually reasonably high up on the fretboard and from those dynamic riffs Hypderdontia very much seems to have taken the most of their inspiration. This is especially prominent on the second track which bears the title Internal Incineration. The riff that starts at the 30 second mark just got one of the coolest progressions that I've heard in the last couple years. It almost overshadows the rest of the EP and even Incantation themselves haven't made a riff this good in a very long time. In my opinion it is definitely THE riff of 2017. What also sets them apart and does not make them a caverncore band is that their songs have plenty of shifts and dynamics. Some of the shifts feel Autopsyesque while the slower riffs themselves feel Pestilence inspired. Another thing is that the production on this EP is pretty clear, no cavern muck here. The only flaw I can find on this EP is that the snare sounds off but that is only a fairly minor nuisance.

I wonder if this EP was first made as a proof of concept, that they can create something worthwhile together before writing a complete album. If so in my opinion this goes considerably being just a proof of concept. They manage to create one of the best death metal releases of 2017. The album from 2018 is pretty much a success as well and I can tell you that their gig at Killtown that year was ace too. Thus hopefully this is the start of a long and fruitful collaboration, that we may receive many more releases of this quality level.
Final Score: 90/100

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Album review: Tragedy - Vengeance

Do you feel it, do you feel the hunger?

Usually in heavy music playing a melodic version of a genre implies watered down and ironically also fewer melodies and more often than not poor rehashed excuses as ideas. So many melodic (insert genre here) bands are monotonous unadventurous snooze fests. However there is one genre in which the opposite is true and that genre is crust punk. Melodic crust has more ideas, more melodies and is more adventurous than normal crust. Tragedy are the banner holders of melodic crust in the US with a global impact not only on the crust punk scene but also on various other scenes and genres. When I look at their discography I think among the gems they released Vengeance is their peak. Also FYI I do totally love classic straight forward crust like Disrupt and DooM etc but they have other strengths and I dare say melodic and non-melodic crust complement each other nicely

The basic formula of Tragedy seems like every other crust punk band out there. There is some Motörhead and of course classic crust, especially of the Swedish kind, and lastly a touch of heavy metal. However they take this basic formula and switch things up. Like for example on the track “The Day After” the melodies seem to be derived from mournful doom/death while usually a crust punk band would take the playing techniques from that genre instead. Their sense of melody and daring in subtle ways in terms of song writing and structures is what makes this album as good as it is. While the also excellent preceding band His Hero is Gone might show case wilder experimentation they had not yet mastered the art of writing a song on its own.

Okay Tragedy might not be the darkest, most brutal or heaviest crust punk band out there. I say that it is not necessary for a band in heavy music to go for the extremes. Okay sure extremes had to be pushed to get where we are today but that also expanded the borders within which a band with such a superb sense of melody and masters of song craft like Tragedy can flourish.
Final score: 95/100

Album Review: Liar - Invictus

A Congress of Rage and Fury

We all know the reputation of metalcore in the metal community. Justifiably it got a negative reputation. So many bands play something that is artistically shallow and watered down, so many bands just copy the then hot trend. The fans do not really help to improve the image either as they often seem to be too busy with themselves and what is going on right now instead of trying to grasp the music they like on a deeper level. I do dare to say that lately there has been somewhat of a rehabilitation with bands like Code Orange or Ken Mode leading the way. However artistically valid metalcore is not something new, all these new bands actually take influence from what metalcore used to be. One of the prime examples of what metalcore used to be is the classic H8000 scene from Belgium and one of the very best products from that scene is Invictus which Liar released in 97.

Right from the first second Liar unleashes a storm of rage on the listener. While the base riff style they play is thrashy Agnostic Front derived they go well beyond that fundament. With their wide palette of influences the band members manage to turn dissociative death metal riffs into something much more immediate and enraged. They manage to give hardcore riffs a melodic and rhythmic depth and even diversity previously pretty much unheard of in the hardcore community. On the 6^th track titled Natural Order they even manage to fit a riff with a clear black metal origin into a hardcore jacket. The album even closes with a track that is pretty much full on black metal. The super pissed off and excellent vocals lie in the hardcore camp. The drummer seems to come from a thrash metal background. This album truly is metal plus hardcore and all the better for it.

This album and the wider H8000 scene did eventually prove to be influential on what would happen to metalcore in the 00’s. Quite a few of those later bands took elements from this sound and combined it with lame rehashed At the Gates riffs. However you can’t blame it on this record because it simply is a classic that everyone into extreme metal and hardcore should at least listen to once. 
Final score 94/100

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Album review: Fall of Efrafa - Inlé

Nalant es lay Elil?

Why do we like music? There are many different reasons but it all boils down to one word, one concept: emotion. Emotion in heavy music can be many things from rage to happiness and even love. Yet whenever we talk about a piece of music causing an emotional response we always mean something different, something that touches a deeper part of us, something that brings up memories and associations to things we lost or are about to lose. Inlé is one of the very few special bittersweet pieces of music that curses and blesses me in this fashion. Right now as I am writing this review and of course listening to this album once again, I cannot help but look to my side and take in my dying cat. Soon he will be another memory the likes of which this album always brings back to me. It seems to me that it is very fitting that an album that makes me emotional like this is based on Watership Down. The movie was one of the very first pieces of art that truly hit me as well. Life, like this bands discography, truly seems to be cyclical.

Fall of Efrafa are one of the premier neocrust punk bands. Neocrust is a form of crust punk that takes classic crust and merges it with all sorts of other genres including black and sludge metal but also other genres such as post-rock and screamo. While not all neocrust bands actually combine these genres Fall of Efrafa, like a master painter, take from the entire neocrust palette and thus come to embody everything what neocrust can be in a single package. A very good example of this is the main riff in the track titled Fu Inlé they take the classic double striking a single chord pattern but slow it down. The drummer could arguably still play a d-beat over it but chooses not to and thus the band creates something akin to a crust punk wolf in sludge clothing. Another example is the main riff on The Burial, it is something like a slowed down version of a riff we could also find on a newer post-black record.

I can imagine someone after reading all of this that this is a very crowded and action packed record with loads of shifts and clashes but this is definitely not the case. The ideas build and transform quite slowly creating a record that is actually quite homogenous and not very accessible. It seems all too easy to merge genres, to ham-fistedly merge various elements and then become heralded as some kind of eclectic master piece. To me true eclecticism is what we have right here on Inlé. We see the merging of the fundamental elements of various genres and not just the superficial aesthetics in terms of sound and/or feel.

Now being eclectic like this on its own does not mean anything. However here is where I bring back what I said in the opening paragraph. Inlé is a masterpiece because all what I said earlier is in service of that one thing called emotion. From the samples out of the Watership Down film in the intro track to the liberal implementation of post-rock song structures to the mournful melodies the guitars always play. Every single element on this record is finely and precisely used to create an emotional tension that finely builds and releases some of its steam in order to build some more all the way on to the final track The Warren of Snares. When the last seven minutes of the record starts everything build up so far gets another final boost. The final crescendo is almost all consuming and the only thing it leaves in its wake is this sense of mourning and loss. It won’t be alright and this is not okay.

Final score: 99/100

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