Credit: Jack Venables
About ten or so years ago, Caligula’s Horse were a plucky young prog metal band from Brisbane, sharing the stage with equally obscure names: Voyager, for example. Now, six albums down they’ve been around the world and back and ready to set loose their latest and greatest body of work to date: Charcoal Grace.
Once upon a time, album sales were the main source of income for a band so they could make even more on merch: now the merch is where money is made with album sales (or plays) coming a distant second. In fact, album sales has become merch - if you want physical media you have to pay 20x the going price for renting it on Spotify (per month, on average). Represses and reprints are the reserve of the boomer-beloved; Rod Stewart, Steely Dan, Dire Straits. If a band issues 100 copies of a digipak on Bandcamp and you find out through a mate’s blog a year after the fact, those copies are resting inside homes from Mumbai to Melbourne and all places in between and not yours. You missed out, son.
In fact, some people buy the LP or CD just to have - not as a useful conveyance for music playback. A friend I worked with on a project said he only “buys the CD to have in his collection” and never even plays it. CDs and LPs have become a curio more than a necessity. A piece of bragging rights to climb higher atop their peers on the mountain of cool. Me? Well, I’m just stubborn. That, and I just love holding something that’s intangible. It makes more sense in my head.
Playmaker Media (2022)
Is there any wonder metalheads love synthwave? In the mid-2000s when extreme power metal band DragonForce burst on to the scene, it wasn’t uncommon to see their albums on ravers and EDM-heads (is that a thing?) iPods. If both camps gathered together protest style, we’d both be chanting: What do we want? Processed sounds! When do we want it? All the time!
Though metalheads and ravers seem like natural enemies, they’ve got way more in common than not. During that brief mid-2000s crossover, metalheads wouldn’t be out of place at a Venetian Snares or Infected Mushroom gig. Fast beats, twisted melodies, and large looming riffs - it’s what’s for dinner at both households.
The rise of the New Retro Wave of 80s synthpop has also led to a mini-revival of darker, metal-inspired EDM and psytrance referred to as “darksynth” or “metalsynth.” One of the original purveyors, Klayton of Celldweller fame is still producing great albums in this vein under new moniker Scandroid as well as releasing music by fellow travellers under his FiXT label.
Now comes French solo artist Dav Dralleon on second album Kthullu which is cybernetically augmented metal; as if people with robotic arms and legs were playing this hard and fast in a studio on the moon, to get even more hits in thanks to relaxed gravity. That’s exactly what we get: planet-sized riffs, glitched out robot synth lines, and blast beats big enough to wipe out the sun. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Threeman Recordings (2019)
Dr. Thomas von Wachenfeldt, Ph.D is an associate professor of musiciology at Umea University and part-time registered metal badass. Lucky for Tommy, his last name is more metal that mine could ever hope to be. Every riff and lick has a sense of polish; nothing out of place, everything balanced in perfect measure. Opener Spirits of the Dead is flailing drums and double-time riffs carved up by tasty, flowing leads as if Thor himself was loosing his blonde locks to the winds of Midgard.
Dr. Wachenfeldt is a master of deception - everything feels straightforward enough but like a serene duck atop a pond, the legs underneath are paddling like fury. As for his “interpretation” of black metal, it sits somewhere between Behemoth before Nergal did it for the ‘gram and Dimmu Borgir just went…well, weird. It’s creative, too Ut opens with a skull-crushing bass solo (gasp!) and drips in antipathy like blood does from ceilings. After someone has EXPLODED. Probably. It’s kind of like the prelude to Megadeth’s Rust in Peace…Polaris except the foreboding never really stops. If you like the extreme end of metal, give this one a spin. You won’t be disappointed. If only every music snob made music this good…
Century Media (2023)
Insomnium may not have invented Scandinavian sadboi melodeath, but they sure perfected it. Some ungenerous folk might say it hit a peak on 2005’s Above the Weeping World. Sloughing off their In Flames meets Children of Bodom by way of Sentenced tag around that time, their sombre, introspective brand of melodic death survived the 2010s wilderness and beyond with some solid yet middling albums. I mean, shit, I still bought them. Don’t listen to them much, though.
Anno 1696 is a concept about the black death, Christianity, and paganism and they play it like an epic musical, to a point. Opening with twinkling folk guitars, they segue into their trademark low-to-high note before blasting us in the face with blastbeats and fiery vocal attack. They’re trying to capture moods here, and they pretty much nail it. Bringing in throat-shredder Sakis Tolis (Rotting Christ, Thou Art Lord) for centrepiece death march White Christ is sort of like letting the devil off his leash to menace the track. Then heavenly voices decend from on high through a guitar hero-led Godforsaken; it’s all rather dramatic and engrossing.
Tracks like Lilian and Starless Paths are classic Insomnium fare; hard riffing led along by melancholy leads, lamenting loss and what could have been. Since In Flames have long vacated the acoustic crown, Insomnium more than fill out the rump on the beginning of Witch Hunter and “ballad” (of sorts) The Unrest which treads that Opeth line without going over into full 70s paisley and shag hair carpet territory (there’s a mellotron, though!) Nine albums down, they’re still making compelling melodeath. Only a handful of bands can lay claim to that.
Avantgarde Music/Noisebringer Records (2023)
Yes friends - that’s not a “P” (or an R, in cyrillic…this is getting confusing) that’s a Þ - the long-forgotten Old English by way of Norse “thorn” pronounced “th”. So it’s not LEE-pah, it’s more like LEE-tha. You know, like the mythic river of forgetfulness. The sweet balm of blessing. Wait, that’s the wrong band. Anyway…
Leiþa makes vocal noises that occasionally resemble German, which automatically makes everything sound 1000% more evil. Sitting in the pocket of the PR-invented genre “atmo-black” (atmospheric black metal) which is supposed to signal more Agalloch than Anaal Nathrakh, so what the fuck would I know. It has its fair share of blast beats and guitars filling the fringes of the soundscape in a sweeping, epic vein, though it sounds way more “traditional” than ambient or whatever. Songs like Abgang and a waltz-like 3/4 time catch the ear way more often. Though it doesn’t pick up bear skins and torches like your average Saor or Primordial yet they don’t slip into neon-trimmed techno-suits ala Shade Empire or …And Oceans. It’s a constant tension between organic and technological elements, which makes the listen all the more intriguing.
Transcending Obscurity (2019)
India’s fastest growing extreme metal label has one secret of success: they don’t sign shit bands. Nearly every TO band on their roster have been one of quality; and the generous free downloads they give out with every physical release just means you get even more music to fall in love with. Oh, and their crazy UV gloss digipacks look fucking incredible. Their vinyl even more so. Also, label owner Kanal Choksi runs a stray animal shelter out of the TO offices. What a guy!
Back to UK’s Warcrab. A band that has a badass/dumbass name depending on how you look at it. Though on flrst blush these UK gloomsters are pure Sabbath worshippers, especially with languid Iommi-like leads scuzzing through monster tracks like In The Arms of Armageddon; but there’s more than meets your sacred ears. First proper track Halo of Flies looms large with a sturdy death n’ roll sound not too far removed from Edge of Sanity or Entombed, then they’ll slow it right down like we’re sloshing through a bayou on Abyssal Mausoleum, which fits into that cross-eyed, pickle-brained Eyehategod or Crowbar mould. Freewheeling jams are even thrown in (Unfurling Wings of Damnation) and it doesn’t take much to imagine thick reeds of green smoke curling around fretboards. With three guitarists in the mix, there’s new sonic nuggets to be unearthed on every listen. A monumental effort - can’t wait for their new album to drop within the month.
Prosthetic Records (2023)
“Cinematic” - I suppose that word is overused in the same way “epic” is - but what is it about cinematic that people actually mean? Adam Sandler movies are released in a cinema. There they are, all flat lighting and boring locations. What I think people are trying to convey is the overwhelming force a cinematic experience can bring - expansive views, the translation of a titanic vision into moving pictures three times the size of our bodies. We are engulfed, immersed, mesmerised. Of Golden Verse is possessed of those qualities, even as drums march through Royal, dervish like as it pulses and speeds towards a near-carnal explosion of rage and melody. That’s hard to do in heavy metal; make it erotic insofar it touches at the core of our subliminal urges instead of our conscious desires. There are cues from all over prog and metaldom here, songs like Senescence’s minimal synths and yearning vocals recalling Agent Fresco, jazz-like riffs abounding like Soen by way of Katatonia. It hangs on with claws in your skin and refuses to let go, like any masterful album should. If you’re sleeping on these guys, wake the fuck up.
After over two decades reliance on public transport, cars are absolutely worth the cost. I can jump in at a moments’ notice and get somewhere in comfort. No more braving the cold and wet, the late and farty, the cancelled and never rescheduled. Fuck PT, fuck it to the moon. Anyway, here’s where my tunes come in:
Cosmic Key Creations/Transcending Records (2022)
If someone told you that just after Yorkie down-in-the-dumps Paradise Lost released Gothic and before the lads in Anathema wrote Eternity they both did a collab with My Dying Bride during the Turn Loose The Swans sessions, you’d call them a god damn liar, and rightly so. Enter Enchantment, which is such a pitch perfect blend of the OG Peaceville Three circa 1992-93 it has you believing that it really is a long-lost supergroup cut. Death/doom still lives on in smouldering pockets of depressed resistance, about that blighted Norf. If things went only shades different, we’d have an honourary Peaceville Fourth. You’d even swear that the singer was the bastard child of PD’s Nick Holmes and MDB’s Aaron Stainthorpe. Did I end up buying more MDB records to fill out my collection after this? I’ll never tell.
Blood Harvest (2020)
A pickup from the recent Into The Fall death metal festival, Cryptic Shift are either on heavy drugs or heavy doses of Robert Heinlein. Either way, their tripped out, spacefaring technical death metal cribs from all over the weird and wonderful musical spectrum. Funky lines aren’t shy, nor are Atheist or Gorguts style jazz fusion passages. It’s all wrapped up in a bleeding crimson guttural growling bow. Cryptic Shift, if they were Canadian and chill, would probably be akin to Rush. They are not akin to Rush.
This also came with a second disc of offcuts and snippets, which was really weird, therefore taking up two slots in the stacker.
Independent (2022)
The Black Dahlia Murder lives! Wow, what a contradiction in terms. Swedish slightly melo, highly death peddlers Carnosus, if you didn’t know any better sound like that Phoenix arising out of the ashes of the dearly departed TBDM (RIP Trevor Strnad), wound tight around all the good bits of metal - headbang-worthy riffage, noodly weedlies at the top end of frets, and guttural grumbles heralding the end of all creation. If TBDM never come back (and really, let’s leave the legacy of Strnad to the Gods) Carnosus are inheritors of their own infinihility. I don’t know how to pronounce that either.
Riot! Entertainment/Prime Cuts Music (2009)
I’d be one to venture that the Scandinavian sadboi melodic death movement’s heyday started with Insomnium releasing Above the Weeping World and ended after Omnium Gatherum’s New World Shadows, with these Aussie parallel imports releasing a very, very good - but not quite great - entry into the pantheon in 2009. Pensive, longing acoustics are plucked throughout alongside frosty piano lines. Plunging riffs dive right into the heart of snow-capped darkness. It isn’t boilerplate Scandi-sadboi, but it doesn’t stray too much from the formula that’s served so many of their contemporaries (the forementioned, Kalmah, Mors Principium Est, In Mourning) so well. The twists come thick and the turns are tricky enough to discover new ones on repeat listens. If this is one surefire route to drinking out of a shoe in downtown Gothenburg in front of black clad Swedes, I really can’t judge.
Relapse Records (2018)
Another pickup from Into the Fall festival, Deutschland’s Obscura are one of those technical death metal bands that are too fast for rational thought to parse - you definitely heard it but your brain didn’t. It isn’t all just fast shouties and 22/7 time signatures, though. Rattling off robotic laments (Emergent Evolution), travelling to the epic side of death metal town (Ethereal Skies) and even trying their hand at resurrecting the good ship Opeth (The Seventh Aeon, one track before punisher The Conjuration. Cheeky!) Though all the band except leader Steffen Kummerer would leave to form ahem, Obsidious, who released the biggest fuck you to Steffen last year with Iconic, because it was.
“The universe is change, life is what our thoughts make it.”
