EXPERIMENTAL/POST METAL

I'd never heard of Genghis Tron before this album, and I can see why that might have been. They were initially active in the mid-2000s before taking a 13-year hiatus. I'd also never heard of the cybergrind genre, but it's a fitting name. It takes the aggression and energy of genres like mathcore and grindcore and pumps it through synthesizers galore. (Interesting sidenote: "mathcore" is considered a real word by MS Word, but "grindcore" is not.)

What this record almost reminds me of is Justice's debut album. Where ? is an electronic album with a significant hard rock/heavy metal substrate, Dream Weapon feels like it's coming from the other direction. It's definitely a metal album, but electronic music thoroughly imbues its DNA.

After a brief, spacey instrumental intro song, "Pyrocene" kicks things off strong. Pulsing synths and programmed drums set a steady tempo under dreamy, processed vocals. There's an infectious groove to this cut, and the anxiety of the verses contrasts wonderfully with the swelling majesty of the chorus.

Following this relatively restrained opener, the title track roars forth with full metallic fury. The drums are pummeling, and the guitars and synths mesh so well it can be tough to tell which sound is which instrument. The song's midsection lessens the intensity, opting instead to build texture and atmosphere atop a looping guitar line. The resolution to this in the song's final minute is both ethereal and incredibly heavy. "Desert Stairs" offers a much-welcomed breather after the preceding madness. This two-minute synthesizer meditation is a bit longer than it needs to be, but it doesn't hamper the album's flow.

A plinking synthesizer opens "Alone in the Heart of the Light". This is reminiscent of That 1 Guy's more electronic material. Around two minutes in, the drumkit joins, adding to the song's nervous energy. A synthesizer line which sounds like it could have been borrowed from a Jon Lord organ solo crops up, acting as a backdrop to an extended section of atmospheric build-up.

The 10-minute "Ritual Circle" is Dream Weapon's longest song. Another subdued, electronic section kicks this track off, and Genghis Tron again takes their time building things up. At no point does it feel like padding, though. Even after repeated listens, it all works excellently. By the song's midpoint, it's reached a state of harsh, buzzing agitation which effortlessly transitions to a mellower, krautrocky movement.

The first half of the instrumental "Single Black Point" is one of the more overtly metallic moments on the album. It opens with oddly-metered palm-muted guitars which harken back the band's more explicitly mathcore-y past. The drums get a chance to shine in this song's first half, tossing in all kinds of fills and rolls under the repetitive instrumentation.

"Great Mother" closes out Dream Weapon on a bang. Huge walls of guitar loom on this track, and it adds some nice oomph after the preceding mostly-electronic cuts.

Dream Weapon is a refreshingly different record, and it's introduced me to a new pico-genre to explore. The combination frenetic metal and lush electronics is an enthralling contrast, and I'm especially impressed by the pacing of this record. The songs flow well, and the order they're in makes a lot of sense.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2021/03/29/album-review-genghis-tron-dream-weapon/

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2020/11/30/odds-ends-november-30-2020/

Thy Catafalque is a one-man project based out of Hungary, and Naiv is this act's ninth full-length album. By the way, this is a catafalque; I'd never heard that word and needed to look it up. On it, sole full-time bandmember Tamás Kátai blends black metal, electronic elements, and Hungarian folk music into something distinctive.

"A bolyongás ideje" ("It's Time to Wander") opens the album with a charging, infectious rhythms. Harsh male vocals and clean female vocals harmonize to create an effect reminiscent of a vocoder, and the fact that this is sung in Hungarian adds a unique character.

The instrumental "Tsitsushka" has a misty, post-punk feel to its guitar tones, though the song soon enough veers out of metal territory altogether. There's an infectious slap-bass interlude complemented with a brass arrangement that segues into an unexpected series of jazzy solos. By the time we reach the song's end, synthesizer and saxophone are trading the lead over an anxious backing track.

That high-octane instrumental is followed by the quiet piano, flute, and synthesizer opening of "Embersólyom" ("Man-Falcon"). It's on this track where the folk elements of Thy Catafalque's music are most evident. Airy flute lines cut through big walls of distorted guitar, and multi-parted vocal arrangements contrast beautifully against the song's metallic backbone. Obvious folk motifs continue on "Számtalan színek" ("Countless Colors"). This brief instrumental gives the lead to a string arrangement and contains more textural shifts than would normally be anticipated in a song this short.

"A valóság kazamatái" ("The Dungeons of Reality") closes the first half of Naiv in a manner very similar to how it opened. After a brief synthesizer introduction, the song bursts forth into surprisingly catchy metal. The guitar soon cedes the spotlight to a speedy oud solo that fits right into this album's metallic sensibilities. The song's second half features an extended clean section that draws from post-rock and math rock, though it closes on a reprise of its opening fury.

Side 2 begins with "Kék madár (Négy kép)" ("Bluebird (Four Pictures)"), with a solitary, fluttering flute, followed by compressed strings. Tight, energetic drumming enters, pushing it along as the flute reenters with a speedy, lilting solo. This song's second half veers off into some of the most blatant electronic influences yet. Gentle synthesizers gradually bring this piece down from its energetic heights.

"Náput" ("Sun") continues with gentle quiet tones in its opening moments, but black metal?augmented by Wakemanesque synthesizer embellishments?soon takes over. Smooth female vocals once more add brilliant contrast with folk melodies.

"Vető" ("Sower") opens with the heaviest metal of the album. Apocalyptic blackened death metal weaves with more vocal folk melodies in its first couple minutes. The midsection of "Vető" once again ditches guitar altogether, with synthesizer and organ taking the lead in a jumpy, nearly danceable movement. Spare post-rock is visited briefly before closing out on a revisitation of the opening metal theme. "Szélvész" ("Tempest") is a fitting closer. It features all of Thy Catafalque's usual eclecticism while also being one of the most accessible songs on the whole album.

Naiv is a fantastic, unique record. The music is incredibly ambitious and packed with an impressive amount of ideas. Black metal, electronica, progressive rock, and Hungarian folk somehow fold together into a brilliant blend of unexpected influences. Despite the diversity of this album, it feels focused and well-structured. Never does the music drag or feel disjointed. Every twist and turn on Naiv has purpose.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2020/09/07/album-review-thy-catafalque-naiv/

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2020/09/14/odds-ends-september-14-2020/

What I really enjoy about this album is how truly technically efficient it all is from so many genres, kinda like Mr Bungle's Disco Volante, but with a higher focus on metal and amping up the craziness of it all. This album feels like an hour-long panic attack, bursting through several different seams that rarely, if ever, lets up, and the band plays this to their strengths. Lots of bouncy riffs that balance between tech death, to symphonic metal, to djent, etc and etc. with drum lines that batter you in the head. It really creates an enigmatic, and really fun experience similar to stuff from Others By No One, though that band is a lot younger than this group.

I also have to marvel at the vocals. I think it isn't how they sound and sing that makes me really like them, but how they just seem to keep up with this wild and frantic music that it all just seems so impressive to me. They range from angelic singing, to rough and crazy screams and growls, to stuff that kinda made me think David Tibet of Current 93 was singing on here. All of it is just fun to me, and I think what is found here is some high class experimental metal.

My one problem with this album, though, is that they seem to throw everything at the wall and hope it sticks with most, if not all of these songs. Most of the time it works really nicely, but other times I just think there is too much going on in one song that it over-stimulates me. This album definitely won't leave you bored, but, to me, cutting the madness a bit in some moments here and not trying new things too quickly can make this already entertaining album into a freak show masterpiece.

This album is not even close to being boring in the slightest. It is one of most fun metal records I have heard, and while I do think there is sometimes a bit too much, I think overall it all just works out as a highly invigorating record that any fan of more avant garde metal should look into.

It shouldn't be a secret that I love all of Tool's previous output, with their 2001 album, Lateralus, being among my all-time personal favorites. The long-running delays and recording difficulties since their last release had become a punchline among fans, with Tool's as-yet-unreleased fifth album being considered as imminent as Half-Life 3 or The Winds of Winter. But Fear Inoculum has finally arrived, 13 years after their previous release, 2006's 10,000 Days. Most reviews I've seen, as well as general online discourse I've observed, has tended toward rapturous praise. I'm not among those.

Yes, the songs are long and complex; and yes, the instrumentalism is weird and top-notch; and yes, Fear Inoculum sounds like a Tool record. However, it feels like Tool resting on their laurels. It feels like a computer program that listened to their albums and output a bland imitation. It feels like a Tool cover band that tried writing some originals.

Perhaps that was a little harsh. This album certainly isn't bad, and there is some genuinely fantastic music here. But overall, I'd classify this record as okay-but-boring. It feels really safe, like the band didn't want to take any real risks.

Fear Inoculum opens with its title track. The percussion is engaging, and Justin Chancellor's bass has its usual biting, echoing quality. But the guitar has a strange, groaning character which I can't say I'm wild about. Maynard's vocals feel weirdly thin and washed out, which is the last thing I would have expected. There are elements of a stronger song here, though. The last couple minutes are better, driven along by a more to-the-point riff and a strong solo. If they'd more aggressively taken a knife to it during the writing process and trimmed it down to six or seven minutes, instead of ten, perhaps it would have been more engaging.

I could repeat the preceding paragraph for most songs on this album: too long, too plodding, weak vocals, too much atmospheric buildup to a less-than-satisfying climax. The biggest sin of this album, even moreso than playing it "safe," is that it is boring outside of its handful of strong riffs. The weaker moments remind me of Mastodon's last album, in that it feels like an imitation of songs I've previously heard from the band.

(There are also a number of brief, instrumental interludes between the longer tracks. These are just bad and only annoy.)

"Chocolate Chip Trip" is not one of the better songs in Tool's discography, but it's the first point on this album where they sound like they were taking some risks. It's a weird instrumental consisting of just synths and drums, and it goes on for a minute longer than it should, but at least it's something different.

Fear Inoculum ends on a strong note, at least. The album closes on the stupidly-titled "7empest", which despite its title, is the best track on the album by a mile. The guitar snarls in a way that grabs you, and Maynard finally gets a chance to belt it out. The song's segments flow together seamlessly, and the aggression sounds genuine. This is what I had hoped for from the band. Recognizably Tool, but it sounds fresh and inventive with no wasted space. It is becoming of its 15-minute runtime, with no padding.

It's unfortunate that so much of Fear Inoculum wallows in middling ambiance and safe Tool-isms. Throughout their entire career, they've pushed the envelope, but their long-awaited comeback certainly is not worth the 13-year wait.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/09/16/album-review-tool-fear-inoculum/

Pure, this quartet's fourth full-length album (and their first since 2012), is one of the least overtly "proggy" records I've written about so far, but that doesn't take away from its ambition, experimentation, or adventurous spirit. The album is filled with insistent, tumultuous riffs the charge forward in strange rhythms and engaging structures.

Sludge riffage dominates the opening title track, with the occasional technical flourish. The bass in particular stands out: I love the chunky aggressiveness of their bassist's tone. It allows him to cut through the thick layers of guitar and harsh vocals and make his presence known. The song's midsection turns down the distortion for a moment before jumping back into more waves of hypnotic riffs.

"Mist", the second song, leads with a riff that would have been at home on an early Rush album. It's the shortest and most direct song on the album, but it isn't exactly straightforward. Between the off-kilter main theme, black metal influences, and extended instrumental sections, this is an impressive composition.

After the nonstop assault of "Mist", the lightly-distorted opening of "Confluence of Fire" is downright mellow in contrast. In cleaner moments like this one, based around a simple, repeated riff and heavy echo effects, the influence of space rock acts like Hawkwind are evident. The riff stays largely unchanged as the verses begin, but it becomes more metallic, and the drums pound and crash with renewed intensity.

"Embers" features some of the most obvious black metal influences on the album. The guitar line is chaotic, and the vocals are delivered in an especially hoarse shriek. However, the song's second half features something of a contrast. The music, while still roaring and metallic, feels more focused, and there's some surprisingly melodic soloing. Following this is "The Call", which features some Tool-like flavors in its ebb-and-flow dynamics and gradual build.

The closing song, "The Walk of Tired Death" opens with another (relatively) clean passage, but this one has an unusual jangling quality to it. Once Adrift kick off the bombast, the atmosphere has a unique quality. It's almost triumphant or glorious. It sounds as if the band are aiming to make majestic atmospheric sludge, and they succeed.

Pure is an immensely heavy album, but the band do more than just pummel you with distortion. The songs are smartly composed, with a skillful use of dynamics; the quieter moments make the heavy ones feel that much more powerful.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/06/16/album-review-adrift-pure/

So, with Baroness's recent ups-and-downs in mind, I approached this album somewhat cautiously. The singles were okay on the whole. Some were certainly better than others, but this is a long record, so I tried to keep an open mind.

The music itself is varied in its quality. The addition of guitarist/backup vocalist Gina Gleason works very well. Her backing vocals add a rich, new character to the music, and she and lead vocalist John Baizley sound great together.

"Seasons" is an engaging composition featuring some of Baroness's most ambitious writing yet, and "Tourniquet" has a strong melody and big chorus that carry it. "Cold-Blooded Angels" is one of the more ambitious songs on the album. It starts off fairly quiet, and there are some neat synthesizers thrown in around the two-minute mark. Baroness's experiments with keyboards have been few and far between, but I've liked them; I've long wished they'd do a fuller integration.

"Can Oscura" is my favorite song on the album. It's a wonky two-minute instrumental based around a weird, repetitious rhythm that has a strong krautrock inflection, albeit more metallic. It's topped with strange, warbling synths that work perfectly. "Borderlines" is also one of the stronger cuts, and the last minute has some neat instrumental experimentation. "Pale Sun" is an effective closer; it's one of the quieter songs on the album and ends Gold & Grey on a creepy, haunting note.

However, upon first listening to Gold & Grey, what immediately stood out is that this record sounds absolutely terrible. I'm not addressing the compositions?I'm talking about the mastering of this album. The actual sound of this album is complete and total [&*!#]. It is distractingly bad. The music clips terribly, and everything sounds compressed and washed-out. The guitars have a staticky buzz to them, and the drums come off as mushy in the moments where they're supposed to be most intense. I don't know what in the world they were thinking, but this is some of the worst sound production I have ever heard, especially on such a major release.

Despite there being quite a few decent-to-good songs on this album, there are also quite a few unimpressive and unnecessary ones. "Front Toward Enemy"  and "Broken Halo" both sound like generic, radio-friendly hard rock, full of bland riffs and unimaginative melodies. "Throw Me an Anchor" is so terribly mastered, I can barely make anything out other than the bass line. Everything else is too dry and buzzy to discern. The chorus is big and schlocky and ultimately fails to land.

"I'd Do Anything" and "Emmet: Radiating Light" are acoustic pieces. The former attempts to be gentle and intimate, while the latter aims to be creepy and foreboding. Both fall flat: the music is tedious, and the lyrics are trite.

This album is also full of interludes that add nothing. As an hour-long album, I can understand tossing in a couple rests to break things up and give the listener a breather. However, of the 17 songs on this album, five or six are interludes (depending on how you want to categorize "Can Oscura").  "Sevens" is a neat bit of synthy experimentation, but the others range from unnecessary to bad.

Gold & Grey is a bit of a split decision from me, purely focusing on the music. It has a lot of Yellow & Green-style balladry, sprawl, and radio rock; but it also contains Baroness's weirdest and most out-there music yet. I (overall) loved their integration of synthesizers, and their occasional integration of krautrock influences worked better than I would have imagined. I'd love to hear a consistently-krautrock-influenced sludge metal album. However, the mastering is so terrible that it detracts a lot from my enjoyment of this album. At moments, it was bad enough to remind me the worst hyper-kvlt, recorded-in-a-basement black metal I've ever heard.

Much like after Yellow & Green, I'm not sure what to expect from Baroness in the future. They seem unsure of where to go themselves, as evinced by the vacillations in songwriting style and quality. I could easily see them going either the pop-hard-rock direction or down the more experimental route. I just hope that they have better mastering on their next release. The audio quality probably knocked a lot off my final score.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/06/30/album-review-baroness-gold-grey/

Sulphur English continues a trend that was begun on Paradise Gallows. Their 2016 release was the first of theirs to feature clean vocals, and acoustic guitar was even given prominent placement at moments. Clean vocals are even more widespread on Sulphur English, and acoustic guitars continue to be given a large role in an increasing number of songs, offering a sharp contrast against the thundering, growling sludge riffs.

After the brief, ominous opening instrumental "Bumgardner", Sulphur English erupts into a storm of guttural vocals, bone-rattling guitars, and thunderous drums on "A Waxen Sea". The song "Citadel" plays like an encapsulation of Inter Arma's most aggressive tendencies. There are plodding doom riffs that lurch along with abyssal weight; there's technical shredding which almost borders on thrash metal at moments; and there are the soaring, twisting solos over deliberate rhythms.

"Howling Lands" is one of the more adventurous songs on the album. The instrumentation is minimal, consisting primarily of percussion with a rolling, tribal feel and sparse, squealing guitars. The stringed instruments in this song provide additional texture and allow the drums to be the lead instrument. "Stillness", the next track, shows Inter Arma continuing their experimental patterns. This song opens with an extended acoustic movement accompanied by haunting vocals and a David Gilmour-inspired guitar solo.

The two longest songs, "The Atavist's Meridian" and the title track, demonstrate the band's ambition as songwriters. The structures are complex and nonlinear, and many of the riffs show impressive technical skill.

Despite all this praise, I do have some serious reservations about Sulphur English. The biggest is that I am not wild about the production. Sludge metal is supposed to be, well, sludgy. Thick and nasty. But this comes off more like mud than sludge. It lacks a certain auditory chunkiness. The distortion loses its impact rather quickly, and that can cause some of the extended instrumental sections to become trying and tedious. It's a bit like aural oatmeal to me after a while.

The other issue is more a symptom of the limitations of a studio album. "Primordial Wound" is probably my least-favorite track off Paradise Gallows, utilizing a sluggish pace and austere riff. But when I saw them perform it live, I was blown away. There are a lot of moments like that on this album. I don't doubt they'd be fantastic and impressive in a live setting, but they lack a certain oomph as studio recordings.

Sulphur English demonstrates some impressive evolution out of Inter Arma. I think they're moving in a good direction, and I'm eager to hear what they put out next. But I do hope they give their production an adjustment and tighten up their songwriting.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/05/12/album-review-inter-arma-sulphur-english/

Here, however, Kekal have dialed back the electronic elements of their sound. Bloops and bleeps are saved for interludes and building texture and atmosphere. It's rare for synthesizers to take the spotlight for any extended period of time. This isn't some purely black metal shredfest, either. Yes, a lot of the metal here is extreme, but the band also mixes in gentler sounds, ample interludes, and surprisingly accessible moments.

The lyrics are highly political, as they always are with Kekal. The band addresses topics such as wealth inequality, religious hypocrisy, environmentalism, and anticapitalism. They're unsubtle as hell, so Kekal won't win any awards for wordsmanship, but that just means there's less room for ambiguity. If the point is for the listener to hear what they're saying, they've accomplished that goal.

The opening track, "Root of All Evil", is one of the best songs on the album. It starts with thunderous drums and crushing walls of guitar before transitioning to a slower, jazzier verse with heavily-phased vocals. The chorus is massive and ominous, an excellent choice for a song addressing the social ills of capitalism. The electronic interlude starts off awkwardly, but it recovers quickly. Warbling synths eventually give way to a twisting guitar solo before closing with a reprise of the heaviest part of the song's opening.

"Sanity Away from Sanity", the second track, is a better example of how Kekal fuse black metal with electronics. The song opens with synth loops, and the harsh, blastbeat-laden verses are supported with synthesizers that effortlessly glide over the chaos.

"The Many Faces of Your Face" offers perhaps the fullest integration of the two genres. The first two minutes see slashing guitar lines atop a drum loop with pulsing synths. The song's conclusion reverses this formula, with the metal elements coming to the fore and keys taking on a supporting role.

This wouldn't be a Kekal album with a seemingly out-of-place pop song. "Revealment" features a wave of distorted guitars throughout the song, and the middle eight is undeniably black metal. But this is not a metal song. It's a damn good pop song with a black metal interlude. This piece is an absolute earworm.

"Triple Evil", the album's penultimate track, is the weakest one here. It's a moody, atmospheric interlude. It's material like this which has frequently bogged down past Kekal records. It's a necessary palette cleanser, but it could have been shortened or given more focus.

"End of Hegemony" is a fantastic closer and in some ways acts as an encapsulation of the album as a whole. It careens from tremolo-picked riffs underpinned with honking synthesizers to polyrhythmic electronic breaks and back to metallic shredding at a moment's notice.

If you're a fan of weird, experimental, extreme metal; political music; or both, I cannot recommend this album enough. This was my personal favorite metal album of 2018.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/01/14/album-review-kekal-deeper-underground/