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H.I.M.- Digital Versatile
Doom (Live At The Orpheum Theatre) (Sire Records)
By: Joe Florez |
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I have to admit, as huge of a H.I.M. fan that I am I didn’t
even see this one coming. This concert was shot on the Venus
Doom tour which happened this year in the U.S.A. for once
instead of Europe. I had read about the guys shooting for a
DVD, but wasn’t sure quite when this was going to happen. I
only stumbled on this as I was at a record store and saw it in
stock and said that I had to have it. The show begins with an
intro and showing the guys getting prepped back stage. The
footage begins in black and white and once Valo takes to the
stage, everyone goes into full swing with “Passion’s Killing
Floor” from their |
latest
Venus Doom. Don’t worry folks, the show swings into full
Technicolor after a few minutes for the remainder of the gig.
The song is performed to perfection just like on the disc.
Talk about heavy. This track is heavy. The guitars are D-tuned
and the boys rock out hard with this one. The romantic
melodies are there too, but the heaviness just absolutely
takes over here. Their U.S. debut hit “(Rip Out) The Wings Of
A Butterfly” follows suit, but don’t expect this one to sound
all poppy and slick like the disc cause this one too is loaded
with D Tuned riffs as well. From the opening riffs, the fans
go berserk. “Buried Alive By Love” takes an interesting twist.
This cut has always been about being fast and carried an
emphasis one being hard too. But unlike on the CD, there’s a
lot of atmospheric keyboard vibes on here that get kind of
spacey. It’s weird, but H.I.M. manage to make it
work out and the fans participation is filled with enthusiasm.
The cover version of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” which
propelled the band into worldwide fame sounds way different
from the original. It took me a few minutes to figure it out
after the opening bars. That’s the one thing I have to say
about this concert here. Don’t expect the band to sound like
their recordings because they keep their instruments all tuned
as their latest recording Venus Doom. And it makes all of
their hits sound darker and doomier. The bottom line here is
that this show rocks out from beginning to end with minimal
filler. Go to the band’s site for the track listing, but I
will say this. You get all the hits you have come to know and
love the band for and get 4 new songs from their latest. Since
being sober, Valo sounds and looks better than ever and his
only vice at this point is his cig’s. Love him or hate him,
but Linde remains an awesome guitarist managing to
successfully combine melody and heaviness into his repertoire.
Gas is one hell of a drummer who beats his skins into
submission. He pounds his kit as heavy as Ian Paice (Deep
Purple) and I say this with love. Everyone brings their A game
here and it show both visually and musically. You will get
used to their lower tuned instruments very quickly. Obviously,
skip the CD and just jump right into the DVD for obvious
reasons plus the fact that the show is 90 minutes as opposed
to 77 on the CD due to space reasons. A must have for all fans
and those that love to be tortured about romance. Extras
include a photo gallery with fans from all over. Quite
frankly, if I’m not in the photo with the band…who cares!
Video footage of a biggest fan contest. The fans obsession
with the band is beyond creepy and lastly you can watch an
interview with Valo waxing poetic on everything from a hotel
bedroom.
www.sirerecords.com |
www.heartagram.com |
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Krisiun - Southern Storm
(Century Media Records) By: Dave Schalek |
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“AssassiNation” was one of the top albums of 2006 and represents a band
firing on all cylinders. Simply put, Krisiun are at the top of their game
when it comes to all out death metal. Combine the brutality and all out
blasts with everything else that you could ask for; that is, musicianship,
songwriting, power, groove, you name it; Krisiun has it all in spades. To
me, the only question was whether “Southern Storm”, Krisiun’s latest
full-length on Century Media Records, would continue to keep Krisiun at
the top of the genre. It does.
Not much changes between “AssassiNation” and “Southern Storm”
and that’s just fucking fine with me. Thirteen songs (a cover
of “Refuse/ Resist” is included) of blasts, power, riffs |
and licks (Moyses Kolesne’s tremendous
skills are given some nice prominence with the Spanish guitar piece
entitled “Black Wind”), and catchy grooves continue Krisiun’s formula for
perfection. If you must try to draw a contrast between the two albums,
perhaps the only difference that I could find was more concentration on
groove with a bit more emphasis on a slower pace, rather than just an all
out assault. This is a minor difference, however, as Krisiun show no sign
of compromising on any level as “Southern Storm” just seethes with power.
That’s not surprising given that, once again, Andy Classen is the brains
behind the board, as he was for “AssassiNation” and “Conquerors of
Armageddon”, probably Krisiun’s two best albums. Add “Southern Storm” to
that pantheon, as, undoubtedly, this album will reside close to the top of
my 2008 top ten list, if not occupy the top position.
Other than that, what else is there to say? The only other item to add is
that Krisiun is one of the few bands that I will go see every time that
they hit Los Angeles as Krisiun is a mind altering experience in a live
setting (it’s hard to believe that you’re watching a trio). As for
“Southern Storm”, yep, you guessed it: buy or fucking die!
www.krisiun.com.br
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www.centurymedia.com |
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Memorioquia - Auradeutung
(Self-released) Review by Luke Goaman-Dodson |
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The debut album for this Australian dark ambient outfit, Auradeutung,
was written for a joint audio-visual exhibition with
photographer Sarah Ward, whose pieces form the album art to
this release. Neither the art nor the music are nearly as
horrific or demented as the promotional material makes out,
mostly capturing moods of understated menace and gloomy
melancholy, with the occasional violent power electronics
intrusion. Each track is an accompaniment to one of the
photographs, the sonic backdrop often directly reflecting the
physical elements that make up the artworks – for instance,
'The Light' is a very nice piece taken from inside a train
tunnel, and appropriately the companion track begins with |
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field recordings of trains going past; 'Last Stop', based
around a night-time scene showing a car parked outside a
crumbling house, opens with the muffled sounds of a frenzied
old man shouting and banging on a door, before shifting gears
into a relatively accessible moody acoustic segment. This
variety and narrative sensibility immediately sets this apart
from other works in this genre, and it's something I would
rather like to see done more often. This isn't metal by any
stretch of the imagination, but open-minded readers with a
taste for the outer reaches of ambient and industrial music
should find much to like in this release. Highly recommended.
www.myspace.com/memorioquia |
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Michael Vescera - A Sign
of Things to Come (Metal Heaven) Review by Dave
Baynham |
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Although Michael Vescera first recorded with Obsession and
made two albums with Japanese metal heroes Loudness, he is
probably most widely known for his work in the mid 1990’s with
Yngwie Malmsteen. Since then he sang on the Roland Grapow’s
underrated classic ‘Kaleidoscope’ and has recorded three MVP
(Michael Vescera Project) albums. For those unfamiliar with
him, Vescera has a classic metal voice in the silver tongued
screamer mould of Gillan or Halford.
This album slams in with the adrenaline rush of ‘Between
Heaven and Hell’, a track from the same stable as Yngwie’s
‘Crash and Burn’ or ‘Cross the line’. It finishes with ‘Thrill
of |
it all’ a rocked up baroque instrumental. That’s right, an
instrumental on a solo album by a vocalist. This is a pointer
to one of the main joys of this album, that it is more than
the sum of it’s parts. One reason I have been disappointed
with some recent Malmsteen is that often the tracks feel like
just a platform for a guitar solo. Here the guitars of Ango
Tasso and teenage wonder Joey Conception shred nicely, yet
have the advantage that it’s usually in the context of the
overall song rather than plastered all over it. There is a
diversity to this album, which benefits from the fact that
unlike some modern power metal it doesn’t just do one pace,
flat out speed. The medium pace ‘Something to Believe’ with a
guitar lick that reminded me of a classical piece by Vaughn
Williams is particularly effective. Similarly the lyrics vary
from the chest beating machismo of ‘Hands of Fate’ to the
passionate love ballad ‘(When You’re) Cryin’. As well as
vocals Michael Vescera also handles the production, which is
spot on.
If you like old school or neoclassical metal in the tradition
that goes from Deep Purple, via Rainbow to Yngwie and beyond,
then this is well worth a listen.
www.myspace.com/mikevescera |
www.metalheaven.net
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Sabaton - The Art Of War (Black Lodge) Review
by Steve Green |
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I've no idea who I was mixing Sabaton up with, but I was expecting some
form of brutal Death, when in fact I was pleasantly surprised by a wall of
keyboard heavy, catchy as hell Power Metal. From the off, this one is so
easy to get into with Ghost Division being a great way to draw the
listener in. Daniel Myhr's keyboards do tend to dominate, mainly on the
choruses, but this is completely cheese free and the melody lines are
completely infectious.
As this is a concept album, with the story being based on a military book
written by Chinese general Sun Tzu in 600 BC, the pace of the songs tends
to vary depending on how the story is being told. The best of the bunch
being the bombastic 40:1, which really |
| invigorates
the feeling of war. Concepts, bar those written by King
Diamond are generally lost on me, but I enjoyed following the
lyrics on this one and it added a great deal to the overall
listening experience. As far as the music and the vocals are
concerned, I also really liked what I was hearing. I was left
thinking of a combination of Ayreon, Rainbow circa Gates of Babylon, a healthy dollop
of traditional Power Metal and Therion and maybe Epica because of the
symphonic/bombastic nature of the choruses. But it doesn't really matter
who I, or any one else wants to compare this with, as all you need to know
is that is a seriously good piece of Traditional/Power Metal which is well
worth picking up. www.sabaton.net |
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| Sacrum - Darkstricken
(Metal Mind) review by Sam Thomas |
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Sacrum are a band from Gorlice, Poland , who’ve been around
since 1991, producing a couple of full length albums that
haven’t really made much impression on the metal scene. Their
third full lengther has been picked up by Metal Mind, which
alone is enough to stir my interest, given the quality of
bands in their stable.
Darkstricken, not surprisingly, is a dark, doomy affair, with
roots stretching into melodic death metal. Sacrum have been
compared to Opeth, Moonspell and Amorphis amongst others. As
all three feature on my top twenty band list, I was unsure
whether I’d be in for a real treat, or end up tearing my hair
out because they turned out to be nothing like any of |
these. In fact, it was rather better than even the hype had
suggested. You know how it is sometimes: you meet someone who
you immediately get on with, and then discover that you have
loads of things in common with? They’re your new best friend
from the moment you meet? Well, Darkstricken is the aural
equivalent of that. I can see elements of Moonspell,
especially in the vocals and the lyrical constructions (but I
also see echoes of The Old Dead Tree), Opeth for the great
switch between clean and distorted vocals (there’s a lovely
duet between clean and distorted vocals at one point) and
Amorphis for the utter darkness of it all. There’s also the
sound of Gothenburg (pick any one from In Flames, Dark
Tranquillity, At the Gates et al) and even doom laden
pronouncements which summon up a fleeting impression of The
Prophecy…
All in all, this sounds as though it should be a horrible
mess, but it isn’t at all. It’s a very, very good release
which I have delayed reviewing purely because I’ve been
enjoying listening to it so much. It’s also gone down very
well with the other residents (of the house, not the psycho
ward!) who’ve also seen many different influences at work.
Metal Mind are to be congratulated for picking this one up,
and Sacrum for producing a stunningly beautiful piece of
darkness. Another album that defies categorisation, other than
to say it’s so good that who cares what kind of music it is?
www.metalmind.com.pl/index.php?jezyk=en |
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Sammath Naur -
Self-Proclaimed Existence (Metal Mind) Review by
Jesse Ketman |
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Ordinarily, my initial intuition about any given album changes
and progresses with each subsequent listen. Happily for my
busy self, and also sadly (though more for the band than I, to
be sure), Sammath Naur turned out to be exactly what I
gathered it to be from the first to last moments of my time
with them. A slight twist on the modern black metal sound,
Sammath Naur is far more chaotic than your usual BM minimalist
drone, not to mention reliant on a lot of electronic noises to
presumably flesh out the futuristic feel of the whole project.
It all sounds quite merry (or grim, as the subject matter
dictates), but the execution here is, for me, so far from
enrapturing it took many tries just to get through the album |
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without my thoughts inevitably straying. It's not that the
execution is sloppy, it's just that, for me, the song
structures aren't interesting in the first place; it just
doesn't flow, if you catch my drift. It's like a poor man's Dimmu made a crossover project with new-era Samael, and the
result is just weird and boring. That being said, there will
certainly be a certain BM subculture that laps this up with
abandon, and as I priorly alluded to, they're certainly not
bad musicians. I just really crave more flow to my metal, and
the stilted performance inherent all the way through
Self-Proclaimed Existence makes it painfully obvious that
while I write this will be the last time this album shall ever
grace these ears. I'm always up for giving bands a shot in the
future, but for now, this is complete bargain bin black metal.
Some out there will drool for this technological chaos, but
I'm choosing to end my review with a strong BUYER BEWARE!!! Go
buy In Sorte Diaboli instead for some true, beautifully fluent
evil.
www.metalmind.com.pl/index.php?jezyk=en
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