Tom Valcanis

18 December 2023

Blog

The Six Stacker - Surrender

Tom Valcanis

18 December 2023

Blog

As a man, I have to know my limitations. Dirty Harry Callahan may have shot first and asked questions later, but in the heat of the moment knowing when to surrender ranks chief among one’s mental inventory for maintaining sanity.

Just like when a girlfriend says she’s leaving, a boss telling you’re let go, or you’re looking down at the shattered remains of your favourite mug, we’re faced with a near existential choice. At least for me, a fire spreads through my body, bracing itself for the inevitable. It is like ants crawling all over me, spitting lava. This would be my breaking point, my Room 101. Am I ready to fight the invincible?

Counter-attack is impossible. All salvos launched, all fighters scrambled, no reserves left. It’s done. Goodbye, sayonara, auf wiedersehen, farewell.

I can feel defeated, sure. Or I can choose to let it go. Once I accept and make peace that what has left will never return, it feels like I have emerged from an ocean’s tempest and rounded a patch of calm upon a warm salty bay. You can do everything right and still lose. That’s fine.

When I take to situations like this, I read Marcus Aurelius Meditations: “Here is a rule to remember, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not ‘This is misfortune,’ but ‘To bear this worthily is good fortune.’”

What’s this got to do with music? Fuck all. Then again, it’s my blog and not yours. Here’s what was stuck in my car for the last month and a bit:

Fires In The Distance - Air Not Meant For Us

I will never forget getting Above The Weeping World by Insomnium in the mail. It was a steal considering the heinous US dollar to Aussie conversion rate in 2005, and it was all thanks to The End Records mailorder. I remember unsleeving the jewel case, swinging it open, popping the disc in my cheap as shit Sanyo all-in-one boombox and slipping beefy Sony headphones over my head. It was full of melancholy, fire, and fantastic tones that drew one into their plaintive world of sorrow. It was a feeling I couldn’t put my finger on, but knew was incredible. Air Not Meant For Us brought that feeling of awe back to me once more.

Though hailing from the United States, there’s that pensive Scandinavian existentialism that can’t be shaken off. I mean, Agalloch were from the US and never suffered for it. To call this European or American is a disservice to just how haunting and beautiful it is. It does feel crushing, like a mighty weight pressing into one’s body such is the density of their riffs. Harbingers exemplifies the rapture and searing heat of their passion, accompanied by resplendent piano lines that even displace guitars at times. Bass is thick and resonant, often taking the lead when impacting the listener. As a chorus of angels circle from on high, one has to shake themselves back into the present such is the spell it casts over us. “I will never see daylight,” growler Craig Brettsprecher intones. “But I’ve seen enough!” Chills. This is just the first track, mind; each one is crafted with the same patience a sculptor has with his marble. Wisdom of the Falling Leaves uses rippling grand piano to establish motif as guitars come steamrolling in, leaden with bass tones that seems to go missing in melodeath.

They can do grandiose and sweeping Cinemascope metal (Crumbling Pillars of a Tranquil Mind) and churning, doom-style riffery and breathtaking leadwork (Adrift, Beneath the Listless Waves) just as well, which is inconcievable to me. Talking about Agalloch, Psalm of the Merciless gathers up those bleak emotions and casts them into molten steel, undercut by fluttering piano and solo guitar that rivals the virtuosos for hire. The rising tension and release of Idiopathic Despair is what makes death metal - or extreme metal - as a genre so compelling for misfits like us. Haunted by neo-baroqueisms that never veer into Children of Bodom silliness but more William Blake-ish introspection, Idiopathic Despair’s trailing off into the distance is the impetus for pushing play on the disc all over again. I mean, once is not enough and twice is a good start. Simply superb.

Serpent of Old - Ensemble Under The Dark Sun

Sometimes, the artwork on the front of an album matches the music found within. Turkey’s Serpent of Old is that kind of atmospheric death metal that stares down upon you like malevolent, merciless Emperor. There is pity in his face but none in his heart. His armies will crush, scorch, and destroy without feeling. It’s beyond duty, beyond fervour. Tempetuous and writhing guitars lance through this disc, putting you under its evil trance, touching the dark shadows of your heart. I wish I was joking; this evokes some pretty grim visions inside (but of course, I love every minute.)

Turmoil that churns throughout forty-two minutes is otherworldly, especially when they cross fields of flame to trudge through the steppes of doom, such is the ten-minute epic The Fall. Unsaturated Hunger and Esoteric Lust verges on the inquisitorial style of black metal, nightmarish and destructive without relent. Idiosyncrasy touches on the progged up Atheist or Gorguts style of death metal, gnarled timing and tumbling riffs crashing and exploding off one another. It’s not a disc for the feint of heart, but by Satan’s pitchfork is it compelling.

Wytch Hazel - IV: Sacrament

In the current age of music, nothing is “long awaited.” That’s because we’re stuffing our earholes with more content we could ever listen to in a lifetime every three weeks or so. English Jesus and linen robe aficionados Wytch Hazel had a cross to bear (boooooo) trying to follow up III: Pentecost record, one of the best retro-flavoured “metal” releases insofar it wasn’t complete wank and suck at the same time. Every arsehole under the sun will make out that it’s Thin Lizzy meets Wishbone Ash, which is more accurate than a Balkan baba telling you “that xena, she no goot for you” within three seconds of meeting her tanned, bottle blonde, horoscope-reading ass.

Single Angel of Light could be titled The Boys are Back In Town (and going to straight to Church) yet no one will dare say it’s a rip-off. Because it really isn’t. Just like Time and Doubt mash up Acca Dacca and Montrose, twinning and winning every guitar competition circa 1973. Organs blare as if Ken Hensley (Uriah Heep) himself possessed Deliver Us, a tambourine-shaking hippie fest, lilted by God-praising choruses and overlapped reverb-drenched guitars. Endless Battle might refer to who can do the best Blue Oyster Cult impression (versus Ghost, of course) and the 12-string acoustic driven Future is Gold will have burned out Fleetwood Mac wine uncles dancing in their chairs, regretting their life choices all over again. It’s an inspired and incredible album, though it falls just short of its immediate predecessor. That said, I’ll take this 70s metal throwback every day of the week and twice on Sunday (after mass, of course.)

Vanum - Ageless Fire

My bones ache knowing that in a couple of short weeks, 2019 will be five years away from us. It may as well be 20. New York’s Vanum play black metal, though it’s from the salt-of-the-earth spiritual kind, owing much the natural haunting moments of the world around us. I mean, doesn’t it freak you out that we walk atop the firmament from which we came and where we shall go? Some shit like that. Their sprawling soundscapes slot into that Primordial or Agalloch-like vein, especially on opening instrumental War and the title track. Themes build upon melodies toying with the “Viking” style of Bathory or Windir in Jaws of Rapture, as vocalist M. Rekevics seems to cry havoc down a crack-den hallway. Eternity is where the real majesty kicks in barreling down with a tinge of haughty pomp, like a medieval king reviewing his charges on horseback. Likewise in the Shakepearean Under the Banner of Death where our doomed souls charge unto the breach. It’s all elegantly put together and fans of earthy, epic black metal will be enthralled by the ear-cinematics Vanum seem to conjure up in this platter.

Creeping Death - Boundless Domain

If you are trying to reinvent old school death metal - don’t! Because we love that shit. The latest effort from these Dallas, TX natives injects enough variation into the OSDM “formula” cribbing bits of Bolt Thrower, Obituary, or even the proto-melodeath bands like Edge of Sanity or Dismember into a fresh and bloodthirsty monster. Opener and title track is a sampler for what’s to come as heavy languid grooves and high velocity slashes of guitar dominate before rolling out like hunter-killers into Intestinal Wrap, a homage to the gory 80s featuring none other than neck-beef enthusiast Corpsegrinder Fisher (Cannibal Corpse.) Creators Turned Into Prey is quintessential neck-snapper epic death metal, while tracks like Remants of the Old Gods touch on the experimentation of Death. It’s meat and potatoes delivered by Amazon and nutritionally balanced for modern lifestyles - but I double dare you not to join the mosh when a few of these baddies blare through the PA.

I keep missing one but I don’t know why? Weird.

Tom Valcanis

27 November 2023

Blog

The Six Stacker - Time Decorators, Inc.

Tom Valcanis

27 November 2023

Blog

One of my well worn lines when trying to pick up women online is that “music is how we decorate time,” which I think I stole from Arthur Koestler or someone much smarter than me. If they kind of swoon at that, then I’m in. Well, at least I think I am.

It’s cheap trickery, like a coin disappearing behind one’s ear. It also gets really, really fucking tedious hearing oneself say the same shit, over and over. Perhaps in the same way a band hears their signature tune played every night, an actor reciting the same monologue each performance. Or is it a comfort? An opportunity to make new memories within a familiar context? Isn’t that kind of what music is? A constant tug of war between nostalgia and novelty? I mean, Livin’ on a Prayer we complain about when Zoomers blast it across the PA at a pub for the seventeenth time. Yet, you’ll be god damned if you aren’t tapping your toes, reminded of some debauched night in a dim watering hole, a memory blurred by booze and the march of time. I mean, it’s why we keep our music on our shelves - for that far away land we call later.

Dreamgrave - Presentiment

This album was released in…2014??? What? How the hell did I miss this? Hungarian prog metal act Dreamgrave evaded the radar pretty hard if it took over a decade for me to cotton on. What begins as fairly innocuous Dream Theater worship in Black Spiral, helter-skelter time signatures and bottom-heavy synth wankery abundant, dissolves into an ethereal mist of death metal, avant-garde, and and experimental sounds that seemingly died after Pain of Salvation went all 70s for some reason. Memento Mori is all about that Scenes from a Memory jazz fusion guitar/organ/synth (fig)jam ish but gets more diffuse and ethereal as the album spins on. Hell, even the same song ends on a sparse hymnal accompanied by lonely grand piano.

The Last Drop Falls is balls-out heaviness and pinch harmonics which cements, at least in my brain, this is a metal band above all and not some art student self-love experiment. However, you can enthral any flavour of metalhead on this album by hitting shuffle. Middle Eastern sounds infuse this track like incense does your pothead mate’s couch; Orphaned Land comes to mind, especially in the more complicated sections. Then it segues into noir-like slow jazz. But it works, god damn it, it WORKS!

Hell, every track could be its own self-contained mini-album if you wanted to stretch your imagination that far. False Sense of Confidence takes on haughty Opeth and Dream Theater riffs and plays chess with them while seeing them fumble over what they think is checkers. Though, vocal entanglements between Domotor Gyimesi and Maria Molnar are the true stars of the show.

It’s not an over-the-top THIS IS A STORY ABOUT AN ELECTRIC CASTLE YOU STUPID DUMBASS Ayreon style of concept album. But there is a concept buried there, somewhere. Soprano cleans tempering guttural death growls through a tempest of riffs and arpeggiated leads in Presentiment (song) engender confusion and longing which, I was about to say hadn’t been this well articulated since Anathema’s Weather Systems, which was only two years old when this came out. Discovering back catalogue music is weird when you think about it. But worth it.

Gorod - The Orb

French tech death wizards Gorod waste zero time or fucks on mood building on The Orb, possibly their finest disc in their body of work so far. Chrematheism just bursts out your speakers on all fours, ripping and slashing at anything in its way. Flipping through the liner notes, a well of nostalgia springs eternal inside, as X-ray images of skulls and torture devices abound, reminding me of the days of late 90s minimalism as spearheaded by ex-Dark Tranquillity guitarist and graphic designer Niklas Sundin. This all occurs during a tripped-out solo exchange between Nicolas Alberny and Mathieu Pascal, a twin attack that the world will notice.

Oblique riffage and lines of guitar prowling and pouncing like crouched tigers is the order of the Orb, with the spectacular title track murmuring with synth and achieving an explosive full bloom with guitars blazing and vocals reaching stratospheric peaks, making for one of the best metal songs of the entire year. The hits keep coming in the dervish-like, Sepultura inspired Savitri, riffs firing bursts as natives dance around sacred bonfires. Old school meets tech death (Victory, Scale of Sorrows) more often than not; they even pull of an honest to goodness 3/4 waltz in the aptly named Waltz of Shades,

Gorod seemed to be overlooked during the rise of Gojira and djent in the early ‘10s - but sleep on them no more. This is S-tier stuff.

Voyager - Fearless In Love

This sentence is so brand new and foreign it may as well be in another language: Voyager, an Australian progressive metal band, represented our country at Eurovision this year.

Let that marinate around your brain for a second.

This band, who were slinging 80s style prog tunes in dingy bars about a decade ago and fighting for middle-orders on festival bills, were seen by millions of Europeans (and Australians, I suppose) “playing” (no live instruments allowed, as per EBU rules) single Promise. It’s a total Eurovision track too; staccato synths, OTT jump-around vocals, throbbing guitars, and big, bombastic choruses designed to stick to the innards of your skull for as long as possible. It works as a prog rock track as much as an old school pop track. One wonders why the collective talents of Voyager - notably songwriters Simone Dow and Danny Estrin - don’t just write hits for starlets and collect the cheques in perpetuity.

The thing is, people accusing Voyager of watering themselves down don’t really know Voyager, Jack: opener The Best Intentions is as heavy and melodic as they’ve ever been. Estrin’s sultry, sublime pipes floating like silk over crunchy guitars and sawtooth keytar synth is and always has been Voyager’s signature sound. Each track has its own character, its own texture. That’s why Voyager are the darlings of the prog scene and can also have a brief wonder ‘round the red-carpet of the pop world.

Voyager is doing success the Voyager way - get on board or don’t - but if you choose the latter, you’re definitely missing out.

Sepulchros - Vazio

Portugal’s Sepulchros just want to crush your soul into atoms. Vazio is four (technically six) tracks and thirty-seven minutes long and is a pure, untempered vein of doom metal oblivion. The eight-minute Marcha Funebre sounds like the ravens atop a wrought-iron cemetery gate, warning you off with their caws. If they were going for “what rotting from the outside in feels like,” they fucking nailed it.

Drenched in reverb, Magno Chaos could be the backing to a futuristic cyberpunk occult gathering, a melding of old and new. Their roiling, heaving sounds recalls Agalloch if they could get any more depressed (they couldn’t) and raw old school black metal threatening to decay into absolute entropy. It’s atmospheric, nigh-on-sludgy, dreary stuff. TO, you’ve signed another belter. Well, you know what I mean.

Ashen Horde - Antimony

Here’s a concept you definitely haven’t heard - an album delving into the Victorian-era murder of aristocrat lawyer Charles Bravo at his stately London mansion, the Priory. Did his wife do it? Or did he commit suicide by accident? Either way, it was death by Antimony, hence the title. (Oh, and Niklas Sundin did the cover art. Go figure.)

Each track looks at one suspect or character in the murder scene, with opener Summoning hashing out their statement of intent; doleful October Tide style riffs, leads that recall the opulence of Novembers Doom - then you’re pummelled with searing old school death metal double kick and quick-draw arpeggios. The Throes of Agony does its resolute best to snarl like a death metal beast afflicted with a side-case of prog chops. That’s only about two minutes in and I’m hooked like a kid on chocolate cake. Ashen Horde do their fair share of genre-hopping with next track The Consort thrashing things up not unlike their compatriots Nevermore (RIP) did way back when, albeit with gnarled death vocals. That wide-assed groove you’ll never find anywhere but here.

I think this is why I (and so many others) dig this disc so much; it has that US chugging, piercing axe-driven sound ala Nevermore but balances it with Euro-weirdness like Gojira or even swampy riffage with a passing familiarity to Mastodon. There’s so much going on beneath the surface - which also reminds me of oddball heavy trippers Martriden and experimental thrashers Trials. Their fresh approach to extremity is none more evident in highlights The Physician or The Courtesan. Just excise the last track, an unwelcome (and accidental) shitty cover of Knives by Therapy? and you have a nigh-on masterpiece.

Burial Hordes - Ruins

If I had been sleeping on Greek black metal gods Rotting Christ as long as I have Burial Hordes, I would have punched my Easter bougatsa in its creamy custard ass. It’s “blackened death metal” as far as the ear can hear. I mean if I stepped into a venue and this was playing, I’d expect battle-jacketed corpsepainted dudes with flying-Vs cementing themselves on stage. Though abrasive, In The Midst of A Vast Solitude does break itself down with half-time middle-8s and hails to Satan. Perish tears itself apart in its dissonance, making the most chaotic Ulcerate track look linear and bound by steel. Infinite Sea of Nothingness could make the case for its black-metallic nature, striding with that one and one-half time groove Rotting Christ or even Emperor made famous in the late 90s. Purgation and its falling-upward double-kicking cascade of arpeggiated hatred is another upside-down cross in the black metal box. But fuck me; if a black and death metalhead can’t see eye to eye on this being a top to toe banger, there’s no hope in the world. Ruins will fuck you up, and properly.

Tom Valcanis

2 November 2023

Blog

Second Look: In Flames - A Sense of Purpose

Tom Valcanis

2 November 2023

Blog

I have no idea why, being the stupid fucking purist I am for YE OLDE melodic death metal (DARK TRANQUILLITY FOREVER), A Sense of Purpose gets way more play time than something from, fuck, I dunno, Omnium Gatherum or Darkane from the same period. The 2008ish period was melodeath in its popularity death throes, too.

Up came the Ameri-thrash renaissance as Testament re-invigorated the withered scene with The Formation of Damnation (Skolnick returns!). Knotty djenty stuff was beginning to take hold around the collective snapped necks of metalheads worldwide - the release of Gojira’s The Way of All Flesh was heralded as a genre triumph, as was the first new material from progmaster generals Cynic since 1993’s landmark Focus album. So what gives?

Contemporary reviews picked up on the fact that metalcore is by and large derived from melodic death metal. Pitchfork (remember them?) in their haughty analysis actually made a bit of sense for once:

Though limited to standard minor tonalities, [In Flames] riffs and harmonies were exuberant and sometimes epic. Imitators quickly arose; the guitar harmonies of today's metalcore and emo owe much to In Flames.

No argument there. In Flames, if you had tape trading friends or cable modems worth a damn in the early 2000s, were the gateway drug into Killswitch Engage, Chimaira, Shadows Fall,

The Mirror’s Truth opens with a downtuned, strident riff - no licks to be heard in this bit, but you will notice machine drums. Thirty seconds in, a melodic break crashes through the wall. Perhaps this is our mama’s In Flames after all? Pummelling with melody, not rhythm, is the usual In Flames m.o. Just don’t tell the Americans.

The visuals in the music video are 100% American nu-metal analogue horror: misshapen dolls, pulsing, blood red colour grading, scratchy VHS glitches, and closeups of monitors with closeups of the band. In the visual realm, one does wonder who this was pitched at, considering the MTV TRL era is at least five years dead at this point.

Disconnected is definitely ya mama’s In Flames, especially in their usual double-clip form. Far from the romantic nihilism of Niklas Sundin’s lyrics (ex-Dark Tranquillity, Mitochondrial Sun, Laethora) on The Jester Race or Whoracle, the don’t bore us chorus has Anders Fridén lamenting “Oh, I feel like shit / but at least I feel something.” Profound. An acoustic-introed Sleepless Again, hinting at Clayman era riffage backed up by clean sawtooth synth. It even features a (gasp!) breakdown of sorts, which lasts all of three seconds. For some, that is an eternity.

Alias stomps in like it owns the place, synth “oohs” permeating languid, minor key chugging and melodic guitar lines. The chorus is stadium-sized and purpose built. Wave your hands in time and you’ll suddenly understand who (and what) it’s for. As Anders climbs to a crescendo at the peak of his pimply emotions, you can almost envisage him ripping open his trademark olive-drab army shirt to reveal his bare Swedish chest, not unlike ex-Thy Art Is Murder frontman CJ McMahon did for shits and giggles that one time.

On closer inspection, the rest of the album is fairly unremarkable. I’m The Highway is Disconnected in a different key (for the most part) and Delight and Angers a subtle rework of The Mirror’s Truth. Then again, who cares. It’s like episodes of Star Trek: Voyager on a rainy day - it’s not exactly mind food but it sure does feel good. This may have been intentional, according to a contemporary interview with then bassist Peter Iwers:

Jesper [Stromblad, guitars] and Bjorn [Gelotte, guitars], they come up with all the riffs, and then they show it to the rest of us and then we arrange most of it together. Then me and Dan [Svensson, drums] will come up with our own stuff. And Anders does –- when the music’s done, he does all his lyrics and vocal lines on top of that. And then we sit down — this time we did the pre-production in our own studio. And then we listen to the songs, and we may swap around, like the verse could be a chorus, because it’s just so good, we swap around the arrangement. Rather than before when everyone rehearsed and tried different ideas. We record the ideas, listen to it, swap around, and then record it again.

It would seem that In Flames during the Reroute era, instead of crafting songs from beginning to end instead embraced the non-linear digital present: songs are produced rather than written, chopped and changed, refined and polished. This is exactly what they didn’t want to make obvious on Sense, as Anders told Metal Obsession:

We were really trying to get a real animal feeling for it, you record on a digital media, but you want a bass drum to sound like a bass drum, and a snare to sound like a snare. And we worked really hard on the that part, with the individual sounds, wanting everything to feel alive and warm, I definitely hear that when I listen to the album, and I hope others do too.. a nice warm analogue feel to it.

Listening to the album on high-end equipment, he has a point. Compared to previous squeaky-clean noise floor records, Sense sounds a little grittier, less hollow. They stuck with producer Daniel Bergstrand for the third time running, too. He’s one of the crowning architects of the latter-day melodeath sound along with say, Fredrik Nordstrom or Andy Sneap. Bergstrand is also responsible for the sample-based “drumkit from hell” which rears its quantised head from time to time (for sure in the awful EDM remix of Alias.) It isn’t all Oreo-creme filler, though.

The Chosen Pessimist, their eight-minute emotional epic touching on the introspection of say, Katatonia or Daylight Dies but lands somewhere in Pantera territory (Anders does the shirt ripper crescendo thing, again) is such an audacious and indulgent experiment they never ever tried it since. Soilwork comes to mind in balls-to-the-wall thrasher Sober and Irrelevant, and their closer March to The Shore is a fitting coda; huge on gang vocals, riffs fit for circle pits, and solos crafted exclusively for standing at lips of stages as wind machines blow guitarist’s hair back. It’s a truly satisfying end. But for who?

Sputnik Music spake thus:

A Sense of Purpose is a step in the right direction for sure. In Flames managed to pull themselves out of the hole they put themselves into with their last two albums and are ready to progress onward musically.

As much as ye olde schoole love to shit on Reroute to Remain and Soundtrack to Your Escape, (and perhaps Come Clarity) they did still stick to a distinct In Flames identity. An identity muddied by production techniques best suited for disposable pop records and chart-climbers. As rocker and scholar Danko Jones once said, “every band wants to be the best band in the world” and what that means for each band is open to interpretation.

A Sense of Purpose isn’t a genre classic or even a classic for the band; but it is listenable, accessible, and comforting. In Flames by this point had nothing left to prove as Anders said at the time:

We are happy with the album, and really proud of it, like all the other albums, and as long as we keep feeling that, and they work out live, then it makes my day.

According to Lorna Shore’s Will Ramos, it changed his life. If it makes our day once in a while, who are we to judge?