Live 4 Metal - Reviews

Black September/ Ravenlord Darkstorm split cd (The Ritual Productions) Review by Crin
	Split cds are the life of the underground alongside those crackling vinyl’s and fuzzy cassettes. They are obscure, usually re-mastered demo material, and the product of labels that reside in bedrooms run by fans who will lose more money than they will make. The currency of the underground is generally trading from distro to distro , and that’s how the spread of new unseen music is achieved across the globe. That’s the way its always been, and without it there would be no music scene for the majority who seek there releases from pro labels and studio quality audio. I mention this fact to remind you how important it is to seek out releases like this as they are often better than the more renowned mainstream acts.
Here we have two bands, the first being the NS Black Metal one man blitzkrieg from Holland, Black September. The skinhead figure in fatigues revealing the correct imagery for such a release. Musically you would ascribed the sound to the melodic styles of Abigor, Graveland, and early Behemoth. This is good primitive pagan style Black Metal that transcends time. [Its like being in Eastern Europe in 1994] There is a Nazi style speech to affirm the bands inner philosophy, and the following blastbeat catapults the sound into a hacking virulence of frenzied guitars and barking vocals. The six tracks reflect two sides to the band, one controlled, the other chaotic. Ravenlord Darkstorm, from Poland, are visually your traditional corpse painted raw Black Metal aficionados. The nightmarish intro is unusual, strange and yet hypnotic. The following, Tribute to Bathory, [a fine title], is a collage of sonic vocals and mind bending guitars. Its like the mixing desk is doing its own thing. I couldn’t fathom any Bathory in the song at all. Quite bizarre. The next track is equally perplexing, but this is not in a negative way. The band seem to be creating a strain of Black Metal of their own making. Of the seven tracks it seems the last three are from a different session. Here we have a more tangible raw early Graveland style of thin hazy guitars and icy vocal snarls. The keyboard backing is a bit distant, yet adds certain warmth to the sound. The vocals alternate to Burzum like shrills, adding bleakness to the overall atmosphere. Overall a fine, interesting split cd of two bands you will probably hear no more about ever again. Wonderfully underground.

Hacksaw to the Throat - Wastelands (Doomed by Dawn Recordings) Review by Jesse Ketman
	By the time you read this, the brilliant young grind band Hacksaw to the Throat will have split up. Insanely unfortunate, as this is one of the most ambitious releases the genre has seen in quite some time, spiraling off into so many directions that to label it simply as grind would be a gross underestimation of the talent represented here. Apparently they disbanded in late 2007, and I’ve been dragging my feet on this review simply because it’s so long and complex it took me a long time to know what exactly to make of it. An easy comparison would be a fucked up grind-core Opeth, as many of the slower passages that break up the insanity are quite reminiscent of Damnation-era slowness and beauty. This is one fucking
long grind album, by the way, topping 70 minutes in what could be a first for the genre (and if not, than still quite a rarity), but there’s so much variety it’s definitely a journey more than a hindrance. Every song is strikingly unique, with 2 of the 9 on here topping the 10 minute mark, and never sinking below 5. I’m sad I’ll never be able to see this band (barring a hopeful reunion down the line), especially since they rep my home, the Bay Area of California, and have the chops to make it big if they so wished. My mind is swimming to come up with a better way to explain their music beyond adjectives like vast, brutal, dissonantly beautiful, and a being unto it’s own, but I really can’t, so that’ll have to do. Seriously though, if you like metal in any form, you should find something you like about this. Hacksaw to the Throat’s Wastelands is a genre-defying effort and a helluva way to go out. No matter what life holds for these guys later on down the line, they can always take it to heart that they made one fucking brilliant album. www.hacksawtothethroat.com

Kreator - At The Pulse of Kapitulation (SPV) Review by Marco Gaminara
	The year was 1992, I had just met some random dude when browsing through CD's at a store. Later that afternoon he rocked up at my house with a crate of vinyl and an immense knowledge of German Thrash Metal. Of all the bands that he played me in the ensuing months, Kreator was the only one I became enamoured with, and very much like in the "The Past And Now" Documentary on the DVD here, finding someone that had music and was willing to put it on to tape for you was the only way most South Africans managed to get to hear the music we listened to, especially in the late 80's and early 90's before CD's become easily accessible. This documentary all goes on to explain how important this gig was, not only musically but politically in 1990's East Berlin. I remember watching this video 16 years ago and from the black screen introduction, to the opening bars of "Some Pain Will Last", through the "Drum Solo" and to the waving and slapping of hands to the feedback of what was left of "Tormentor", I was transfixed again. Some things are just
meant to be this way, and an energetic live show is one of them. The third part of the DVD is the Kreator Horror Movie "Hallucinative Comas" containing the intro "At The Pulse Of Kapitulation" from which this DVD/CD set get their name. If you've not seen this, well all I can ask is why not and say that it's a great little 25 minute concept containing promo videos for "People Of The Lie", "Twisted Urges", "Coma Of Souls" and "Terror Zone", all held together by brief snippets of "Dr. Wagner Part I, II and III" which all wraps up in the final bloody music video. Granted it's not the whole of the "Hallucinative Comas" VHS release, but it far better than nothing, and hopefully one day they'll release the whole thing, but 'til then, this shall do. Oh and the fact that this Director's Cut is bloodier and more violent than the original is also a bonus. The CD part is "Live In East Berlin" and other than an abridged Drum Solo and with the longer between song exchanges trimmed, it's what you'll find on the DVD, albeit in stereo rather than surround sound. I've already listened to it three times this morning and could again quite easily, because how can you not enjoy hearing thousands of East Germans singing along to "Pleasure To Kill" and "Love Us Or Hate Us". So 'til next year when they release their new album, I guess I'll be listening to this and the rest of their back catalogue a couple times, cos it's been a while and I really think it's something I need to do. www.kreator-terrorzone.de \| www.spv.de

Lost Reality - What Remains (UK Division Records) Review by Steve Green
	Lost Reality's biog doesn't really tell me anything about the band. They seem to like entering battle of the band competitions in the native Italy, and they've received various types of media coverage, again in their homeland, but I've no idea what makes them tick. I suppose the biggest clue is that they once supported Clan of Xymox. Yes, Lost Reality are definitely going to appeal to those that prefer their music on the darker side, although the first few numbers do tend to lean towards "nice" and cannot really be considered for one of the more sinful genres. Perfect Passion is impossible to pin down and all that springs to mind is
the Dan Reed Network mixed with an obscure 80s Goth band! Is This Heaven reminds me of a brooding version of latter day Anathema, while Poison Kiss is the first steps of their descent into darkness and is filled with upbeat electronica and is a mixture of Euro Goth and lighter Industrial tendencies, with plenty of little production tricks flitting through the mix. And once they take the first steps, they then go the whole hog and "Goth out". And once they decide on which direction to take, the album becomes a much more consistent and a much better listen, with the dreamlike Invisibility being the highlight of a very solid debut. www.myspace.com/lostrealityspace

Pharaoh - Be Gone (Cruz Del Sur Music) By: Joe Florez
	Traditional metal heads Pharaoh are back with their third disc featuring Tim Aymer (ex-Controlled Denied). These guys have always been known for their passion of the past and blending it with the sounds of today, but “Speak To Me” adds something fresh to the scenario and that’s an overall sound of modernism. This is fantastic stuff! Sure, touches of the past are showcased here especially in the solo parts, but Tim’s voice is packed with emotion while the riffing has some staccato action and the rhythm section simply rocks out this song. It’s still mid-paced, but some additional life has been created here. Fans of the old sound should fear not a everything is intact when ’Dark New Life” pops up. Galloping
licks with more bite and an overall sound with more power makes for a fun ride to be on. Son of a bitch! These guys have managed to pull off another release jam packed with great music that incorporates Iron Maiden like influences while they manage to have a style all their own. Tim’s vocals are top notch here as he is capable of singing with a crooning voice and can hit the high notes successfully and the band once again bring their A game to the table. Fantastic solo action that will have your mouth watering and an overall sound that has power and ranging paces. The best part is that the boys step up their sound by including more modern sounds with their past for something that can be eaten up by everyone. An absolute homerun that deserves to be a hidden secret no longer. Why Pharaoh hasn’t received more exposure is beyond me. Hopefully this disc will do the trick. Can’t miss. www.cruzdelsurmusic.com \| www.solarflight.net

Pyorrhoea - Desire For Torment (Metal Mind) Review by Chris Davison
	So it would appear that Metal Mind are busy re-releasing albums from the recent past for general consumption in the west. Pyorrhoea (which is some kind of medical complaint centred around the teeth or creation of Pus, medical pedants), are a Polish death metal band, who at the time that this was recorded (2004), contained an almost entirely different line up than the current recording set. Principally of interest to metal fans I suspect will be the inclusion of Daray in an early pre-Vader role. As the name may suggest, this is pretty gory, unpleasant death metal. It's nasty, brutish and short (to paraphrase a great philosopher) and red in tooth and claw. This is death metal in
the most brutal of terms, with huge barrages of dense, blast-ridden music and throaty, hate-filled gruff vocals. The drumming, you may not be surprised to learn, is fantastic and sounds like an epileptic on a telegraph button sending a very fast message. The guitars and bass are sharp and meatily produced, though the hyper-speed pace means that even though the production is crystal clear, some of the detail in the compositions are lost to my ears. Lyrically, this is as unpleasantly misogynistic as anything in the genre, but without the saving grace of being darkly humorous like, say, our very own gore obsessed nutters, Gorerotted. Now, I'm not usually unduly concerned with the words out razor-throated poets choose to vomit forth, though the following passage: “Consume You - Fuck - Just Fuck - But First I'll defecate and spread my shit all over your corpseface” did have me wondering if the charmingly monikered “Analripper” has had the internet for even longer than I have; one thing's for sure, it seems to have ruined him for normal women! In the most knuckle dragging, br00tal traditions of the many hundreds of American extreme death metal bands, this is of course incredibly heavy stuff, at times verging in the grindcore on the basis of the incredible tempo and unrelenting assault. Quite like low rent horror movies however, once the appeal of the violence and gore has gone, there isn't going to be anything else to hold your attention. www.metalmind.com.pl/index.php?jezyk=en

The Eruptors - Bad Time To Be Having Good Time (Maniac Squat) Review by Metal Mark
	If one were making this album from scratch the recipe for it might read as follows. -Add one healthy dose of late 1970's punk rock -Stir some fuzzed out riffs -Blend in the crushing grooves of early Motorhead -Occasionally mix in some surf style guitar solos -Mash is some raw, manic vocals -Sprinkle with equally generous doses of humor and fun
-Pour into container and shake together until contents become rough yet instantly likable. -Break into 14 segments while making certain that all segments stay under 3 minutes and 10 seconds in length. ***Serve loud and enjoy! Fortunately The Eruptors seem to know these directions well enough that they probably don't even need to look at the recipe anymore. This album doesn't break any new ground, but it's fun and the chaotic approach pulled me in straight away. The album has a looney space opera type theme going throughout as well as we get some short spoken passages plus some sci-fi sound effects swirled in here and there. There have been some good albums so far in 2008, but a not great deal of truly fun albums. How this release begins to fill that gap, certainly worth checking out. www.myspace.com/eruptors

The Shiver - Inside (UK Division Records) Review by Steve Green
	Whilst cataloguing a huge pile of cds, I noted next to The Shiver "Female Vocals, like Lacuna Coil and The Gathering". And that really sums up this album, although this isn't in the same league as either band I've just mentioned. And that isn't being detrimental to the band. This is a collection of catchy songs which is very much in the vein of early Lacuna Coil, circa In A Reverie, the part of their career when I think they were at their most exciting. Here we find another female fronted Italian band, except that the this style has been (successfully) done before, so the slick style they've adopted doesn't come as a surprise. But, I'll give them their dues, this is a quality release and were it not for Lacuna
Coil and Evanescence having done all of this before, I'd be singing their praises a lot higher. I do have a couple of gripes, with my main complaint being that the songs tend to follow the same formula. Start off slow, often with a muffled production and then the song bursts into life and all is well with the world. But I'm sure the craft of writing better songs will come with time. Overall though, this is a promising debut and the band definitely have potential. It all depends on when the Gothic/Female fronted bubble decides to burst, on how far the band can go. www.myspace.com/theshiverband

Umoral - Umoral’ 7” Vinyl (Vendlus Records) Review by Crin
	Black Metal vinyl, you just can’t beat it.. This band may at first glance seem an obscure act and just another slab of plastic, and yet when you have a line up that boasts, Hellhammer [Mayhem], Teloch [ Orcustus/ Nidingr ] and the vocal terror of Zweizz, then a whole new perspective is gained. Norwegian Black Metal is having a revival at the moment which explains releases such as this. There is a great horde awaiting to rise from the ashes of the past. Before the stylus even reaches the plastic, we have a cover that shows a penis shafting some sluts arse, the inverted cross concealing the penetration. Side A, ‘Say you Love it’, blasts out of the grooves in a thick flurry of guitar fuzz and ear ripping vocal snarls. This is
pretty standard Black Metal, nothing dire, nothing exceptional. The flip side, This Is Not The Darkness You Paid For, is the stronger track of the two. There is a compelling melody to the arrangement that endears the chaotic sound to the ear. Harsh, yet strangely alluring, again it’s pretty run of the mill blasting Black Metal meets a Deathly buzzsaw kinda sound. The two tracks here do sound like Nidingr, probably due to Telochs guitar style. www.vendlus.com

Various Artists - Metalmania 2007 DVD (Metal Mind) Review by Steve Green
	It's that time of year again, time for the retrospective release of last years Metalmania Festival from Katowice in Poland. First up are a band who I've yet to see live, but am about to remedy that when the Paganfest hits the UK next month. I love Korpiklaani, but I'm not overly keen on the quality of the cuts included here. Tuli Kokko is a bit of a slow starter, which is then followed by the instrumental Pellonpekko. It's not until a rousing Wooden Pints that things seem to take off. I'm hoping for something a little better when I get to see them close up. Russian symphonic Black Metallers Crystal Abyss get a quick look-in with one song, before Darzamat get to play to a home crowd and are represented with a couple of numbers. Zyklon are a mass of swirling hair and even faster fingers, as the technical brutality of Underdog slays the crowd. It's here that you notice the quality of the lighting and even the editing moves up a few notches, and deservedly so. Rounding off their 3 song stint on the
DVD is a pulverizing version of Psyklon Aeon. Next up are a Glenn Benton free Vital Remains, and it's time for the skip button. Sorry, I know we have a couple of writers onboard that are fans, but this ain't for me. Entombed are obviously popular in Poland as the huge crowd go apeshit for When In Sodom, Carnage and the classic Revel In Flesh. And these three songs show that LG Petrov and co are still a potent force to be reckoned with. As are Destruction, a band I've never really taken the time to discover. I had an original cassette version of (I think) Live Without Sense back in the late 80s/early 90s, when I was crazy about Thrash, and a delve into their past maybe called for once again. Nailed To The Cross, Total Disaster and the seminal Bestial Invasion are all brilliantly executed and they've regained a fan on these performances. Apart from The Clansman, I was never a fan of the Blaze Bayley era of Iron Maiden, but I'll give the man his due, he's a great live performer. I saw him support Rose Tattoo a few years ago and was very impressed with his live show. Same goes for his slot on this DVD. I'm not blown away by his material, but as a singer/frontman, he's very good. Next up is Sepultura, a band that really need to call it a day. I've never been a fan of the Derrick Green fronted version and the three songs here, including Dead Embryonic Cells, incidentally, which the crowd go crazy for, do nothing to change my opinion on this once great band. Which leads us nicely to Paradise Lost, a band I fell out of love with after Icon, their last great album. Surprisingly, they only get one song, Say Just Words, which is just as well, as I only like the earlier material. Last band up are Testament, who get 5 songs. Testament are another band I never really got into in the 80s. I saw them on the Clash Of The Titans tour, back in, what, 1989? and they failed to move me that day, and the same can be said today. I can appreciate them for their skills as musicians, particularly the guitars, but we just aren't connecting. As always, Metal Mind like to ply you with extras so you'll definitely get value for money . On the DVD, you get the usual range of interviews, photos and band info, which in total, runs to over 3.1/2 hours of material. You also an 11 track cd featuring bands who performed on the side stage, this includes Tyr, Benediction and Root. So you certainly get plenty of entertainment for your money. www.metalmind.com.pl/index.php?jezyk=en

Witch - Paralyzed (TeePee) Review by Metal Mark
	One of my major problems with the 2006 self-titled debut from Vermont's Witch was that it was just too stripped down. I understand that they were trying very hard to lean more towards an authentic classic metal sound as opposed to falling under the "stoner rock" label. However in doing so their sound was a little thin and I got the impression that they were apprehensive about really dipping too far into being metal. Two years later and we get and the new album and it comes blaring on with "Eye" which has a real live in the studio vibe even if it's not. It's obvious that the band has become heavier and faster in their approach plus they seem far more comfortable with what they are doing here. The majority of the
album has that hazy, scratchy guitar sound and the deep pounding rhythms of early 1970's metal. The most obvious influences are the two usual suspects which of course are the legendary Black Sabbath and Pentagram, the masters of early, subtle doom. Now that's not too say that this album is a complete throwback to those early days of metal because they maintain some more modern sounds as well. A few tracks touch on 90's style rock and the vocals in general have a feel that isn't completely attached to early metal, yet it still works. Witch work upon a heavy off the cuff approach with a loose, spacey feel and the two sounds help to give the music an approach that offers some very different sounds, but somehow they work together. They also get some points for a rather smooth touch as several songs slide rather than feeling the need to try and clobber you with one big sludgy riff which is a trap that I think too many acts try. I think with this album that Witch pushed aside pretences and thinking so much about what they should and should not do. Instead it sounds very much like they opened up as just went at it. The results are a fairly honest album that's active and varied enough to appeal to most fans. www.myspace.com/witchofficial