Tom Valcanis

24 July 2024

Blog

The Six Stacker - Cold Bones

Tom Valcanis

24 July 2024

Blog

It’s cold. It’s cold, yet I refuse to believe it. I strut around in t-shirt and jeans, a lone beanie to stop all my body heat from escaping. I don’t feel it, because the crushtor compound™ could be used for meat and perishable storage during winter and not break any OH&S laws. Also, gives me licence to blast music real loud. Here’s what’s been in my six stacker:

Vanishing Kids - Miracle of Death

I tend to buy anything Angry Metal Guy puts in a top whatever list, so this went into my shopping cart without a thought. Yeah, it’s doom, but not as we know it. The slow crawl of first track Spill the Dark walks a line between 70s Hammond-drenched stoner anthem and murder ballad, amplified by Nikki Drohomyreky’s trance-inducing vocals. It’s a throwback without being all tassled jackets and flares, a fresh take on a well-worn genre. I’d try to pin them down as doom metal, but that’s like pigeonholing Hammers of Misfortune, something I refuse to do. It’s a weird one, but a good ‘un.

Suldusk - Anthesis

After being blown away by their set prior to Katatonia this year (was it this year?) and sacrificing a meal or two to buy their prior album Lunar Falls, these Aussies knock it out of the gloomy moor with Anthesis. Plucking bits of the darker end of metal, neo-folk, and atmospherics, carried on the back of vocalist (and multi-instrumentalist) Emily Highfield’s sublime voice. It’s like the reincarnation of The Gathering rinsed in black, a majestic and ethereal follow-up to Green Carnation’s Light of Day, Day of Darkness in tone and musicianship. Album of the year contender, for sure.

Judas Priest - Invincible Shield

I’m going to cheat a bit since I already reviewed this:

Is Invincible Shield as earth-shattering as its predecessor? Not quite. Does it live up to their legendary canon? Absolutely. It’s proof positive you can teach an old God new tricks, and then some. Horns up, metalheads. Priest rides once again!

Spirit Adrift - Ghost at the Gallows

Nate Garrett has feet in two worlds - that of the leather vest and big fuck off mo’ wearing Spirit Adrift and the gory t-shirt clad three-day-growth crustiness of Gatecreeper. Spirit Adrift is definitely a throwback to late-70s big arena band rock n’ roll, a time mere seconds before Maiden, Priest, and Mötorhead would dominate stages and airwaves. It’s eminently listenable and groove-heavy, and it was stuck inside my six stacker for ages. When it came around again, I was all too pleased to hear Garrett and co. trade licks and bellow bear-like harmonies into a green, smokey void. Recommended.

Vorga - Beyond the Palest Star

Sci-fi? In my black metal? Where do I sign up? Exploring dark regions beyond where Vektor or Imperialist have ever gone, Vorga propels toward relatavistic speeds, that being their compositions are compelling no matter whether they’re death marches (Voideath), Dimmu Borgir style mini-symphonies (Magical Thinking) or straight up old school headbangers (The Cataclysm.) If metal survives into the age of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets, it would be illogical that musicianship of this quality wouldn’t be a prime directive on their 24th Century Spotifies.

Rotting Christ - Pro Xhristou

Rotting Christ, as far as I’m concerned is (groan) God tier black metal. Not much else comes close, and their latest platter Pro Xhristou was as eagerly awaited in the crushtor house like Christmas is in a spoiled kid’s. Rotting Christ have an innate talent for capturing the sublime within the depraved, grand choirs of damned souls lifting dirty, diabolical riffs to strike the cloisters of heaven itself. AMG hated it, but I think they doth protest too much; in a world of black metal clones, Rotting Christ at least stand on their own two feet like Colossus(ses) that bestrode the world. Can’t please everyone.

Tom Valcanis

7 June 2024

Blog

Second Look: Noumena - Absence

Tom Valcanis

7 June 2024

Blog

2004-2005 for melodic death heads was a bit uneven. Especially if you were splashing cash on imports (like I was, and still fucking am.) For the hardcore In Flames oldies, Soundtrack to Your Escape was relegated to "coaster tier" pretty damn quick, written off as trite cash-grabby garbage. Doomsday Machine by Arch Enemy was a decent effort, although lacking that grittier twin-lead panache that defined their barnstorming rise at the end of the last millenium. Dark Tranquillity hulked into heavier territory on Character, jettisoning much of the goth influence of the past three or so records - a great platter nonetheless. Fellow Swedes Darkane's Layers of Lies shored up the harder, more straightforward melodic death on offer, while Soilwork's Stabbing The Drama was flirting with metalcore, buying her drinks, and taking her home at the end of the night. Scar Symmetry debuted their sci-fi melodeath weirdness this year, too. Of course, Insomnium was fast racing into view with Since The Day It All Came Down, an impressive turn on folky melodic death, the template for the masterpiece that was to come.

So why did everyone seem to sleep on Finns Noumena and their second album Absence, possibly one of the best, if not the best melodic death releases of 2005? How on earth did they follow it up with something equally as impressive a year later (Anatomy of Life) and sweep themselves into obscurity for almost a decade after? Huh?

When End of the Century proudly struts its mammoth chops in the first thirty seconds or so of this incredible melodeath record, it's easy to think - "Ahh, the record In Flames SHOULD have made after Clayman." You'd be hard pressed to think this wasn't Colony or Clayman II, Anders Friden replaced by an hirsute, ursine Finn toiling in the darkness of lower registers. A jig-like folk melody dances through fields of big, clashing riffs before halting for a noodly lead break that, upon closer inspection, Bjorn Gelotte or Jesper Stromblad had absolutely nothing to do with.

Hear also the reverbed acoustic intro of Slain Memories, a near clone of In Flames’ Square Nothing, though after the intro it departs for a completely opposite destination, all sad female vocals instead of bloody knuckled riffs. It's so easy to write this off as In Flames forgery - and my brain desperately is clamouring for me to do it - but it stands idle in mute defiance. I will not talk shit about this song - nor the record. That's despite reviewers growing tired, so tired of the melodic death craze after a near decade in the sun.

MetalStorm.net said "While the whole Melodic/Gothenburg Death Metal craze seems to be wearing off, there are some bands attempting to achieve success playing such genre [sic.]. [It's] a great genre with many good assets, and many hindrances also, like the repetitiveness, lack of innovation, false creativity and many more, and what else you could expect from a genre that spawns hundreds of bands each year?

Nowadays I don't think there's a band that's going to reinvent Melodeath. It's a genre that reached its peak [...] Nowadays we have the leftovers of a genre that already gave the best of itself, one of the results of the cathartic act is Noumena." High praise indeed, considering.

Absence arrived about a year before Amorphis revamped itself with Eclipse. Bouncy Finnish folk melodies wouldn't become synonymous with Amorphis until that album dropped, at least from what I can remember. Didn’t stop Metal-Archives.com nerds from making the comparison, though. I might play Eclipse to some friends and chuck All Veiled somewhere in there and see if anyone notices.*

Second track Everlasting Ward pairs Maiden gallop and jaunty frostbitten melody and serves it up with a side of bowel-gurgling growls AND plaintive cleans. One has to wonder why Amorphis endured and these guys didn't. To make an outstanding album one (ideally) throws out the rulebook. These melodies wouldn't feel out of place on a cheese-filled power metal record. However they aren't worked to absolute death, but as a basis for constructing thoughtful, almost poignant songs around them. They even brought back female cleans, thought extinct after Dark Tranquillity’s Projector or In Flames Whoracle. Prey of the Tempter heaps every passe melodeath trope (low-end riffs, clean vocals, staccato rhythms, baroque-cribbed melodies) into a barrel until they’ve spun it clean of cliche. Then it comes out sounding a bit like Sentenced, which isn’t altogether a bad thing. They have this knack beginning with the familiar and taking you somewhere completely foreign by the start of the first verse, like another acoust-introed The Dream and The Escape. seething with the fury of Dark Tranquillity’s earlier thrashier fare.

On paper, this all sounds unoriginal and derivative. I promise you - in reality, it’s far greater than the sum of its parts. Although prices for the disc itself are eyewateringly astronomical, give this a “spin” on the streaming service of your choice. You’ll walk away changed.

*I have like one friend that would sit through an entire metal album with me, and he would definitely fucking notice.

Tom Valcanis

21 May 2024

Blog

The Six Stacker - In At The Death

Tom Valcanis

21 May 2024

Blog

All I can say is I am back on my bullshit and it feels so good. To me. The Winter months always see me stolen away from reality as four walls close in and my reluctance to venture outward becomes total. I’ve only got two more gigs in my calendar for the rest of the year, and it kinda suits me fine. Until someone I really want to see comes out, of course. Here’s what I have been playing to and from said gigs, and of course those unfamiliar doorways:

SVALBARD - THE WEIGHT OF THE MASK

Every time this made its way to the front of the queue, I was like “what is this hardcore mess” at first until I was swept away by the urgency of their trilling, abrasive guitars and yearning vocals, delivered by the inimitable Serena Cherry. As pretentious types try to classify them in a wanker’s Dewey Decimal System (post-hardcore? D-beat? post-black metal? Oh, fuck off) the weight of the mask can be felt, not quantified over its 44 near-perfect minutes. Can’t wait to see them live.

HOST - IX

When you wanna play synths, you gotta play synths. A weird and wonderful inversion of Violator producer Flood’s advice to Martin Gore about guitars applied to Greg Mackintosh and Nick Holmes’ darkwave project Host. So named after the ill-fated Paradise Lost album that tried to do the same thing and pissed everyone off. Darkwave is on the tin and it’s just what we get. We get Depeche Mode worship (Wretched Soul), true goffix d-floor hard shit (Tomorrow’s Sky) and Sisters of Mercy goth n’ roll (Hiding From Tomorrow) as well as a ink-drowned cover of I Ran, which is almost worth the price of admission. If you like 80s goth and Paradise Lost, it’s kind of a no brainer.

Sorcerer - Reign of the Reaper

I fucking love Sorcerer. They bill themselves as a doom band and they are, in that high fantasy Dio-era Black Sabbath way. It’s all pomp and pagentry, and they will bust out a face-melter solo (on top of another) without warning or care. With guitars led by Kristian Niemann (ex-Therion) and mighty baritone vox by Anders Engberg that haltlingly verges on Falconer level theatricality, Reign of the Reaper is a tight (47min) clutch of classic metal tracks amplified by gang chants and classic throwbacks to horns-up conceptions of evil. Awesome stuff.

While you’re here Kris, tell your brother to hook up with Daniel Flores and release another Minds Eye album, please?

Kvelertak - Endling

Norway’s Turbonergro by way of Mastodon-ic 70s throwback rock n’ roll powerhouse Kvelertak seem to have hit that metal band professionalism that deliver consistent, enjoyable records in a distinct style. Other workmanlike bands that come to mind that can churn out great albums time after time are Cancer Bats and perhaps Amorphis if we’re getting European on thine arses. Endling is a rollicking ol’ time, awash with trips down psychedelic lanes, gang vocals a-go-go (Likvoke), and tips o’ the hat to NWOBHM (Motsols). They can even take on punky drinking songs (Endling) and tripped out glam rock, like the Sweet on (more?) acid (Skoggangr). Get your groove on kid, we’re necking a fifth of Akvavit and moshing to some fuckin’ Kvelertak.

Tomb Mold - The Enduring Spirit

Chuck Schuldiner (RIP - Death, Control Denied) LIVES! Well, insofar that these Toronto trio are concerned, it’s pretty close to a resurrection. Wait a minute, a Canadian progressive trio… where have I heard such a thing before? No Rush, it’ll come to me. The uncanny valley these dudes live in breathe into existence on The Enduring Spirit, acting almost as a continuation of The Sound of Perseverence. Just listen to the embed below, for a taste. Even (relatively) straightforward tracks like Servants of Possiblility tangled with the splendour and wonder of death metal as an alternate musical universe. If you miss Chuck as much as any flesh ripping sonic torment patient, Tomb Mold are inheritors of that bold legacy.

Crypta - Shades of Sorrow

If the boys can’t do it, let these Brazilian wonder women do it for them. This is carnal, bloodthirsty THRASH encrusted in the fires of hell itself. DIzzying fret runs ala Morbid Angel and gale-force headbang riffery from the early archives of Slayer or Kreator dominate this record. Of course, there are some eerie nods to Obituary and Sepultura (because of course you should) in tracks like Agents of Chaos, beginning with distant chords piercing over lumbering, knotted chugs of merciless venom. Something like that. Get your headbang on, these gals are heading for prime time.