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3 Inches Of Blood -
Here Waits Thy Doom (Century Media) Review By
Steve Earles |
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I already liked 3 Inches of Blood prior to this release,
there was always a fine metal band in there, albeit one
being held back by a couple of factors. The first was
production, this problem has now being remedied by a fine
warm organic production by Jack Endino of High On Fire and
Soundgarden fame, that wouldn’t shame any of 3 Inches of
Blood’s 70s and 80s heroes like Armoured Saint and Rainbow
(If you don’t like Rainbow and Armoured Saint, how can you
call yourself a metal fan?). Secondly on this album the
fantastically named Cam Pipes is handling the vocals alone.
I have no-wish to bash 3 Inches of Blood’s now-departed
co-vocalist, and indeed, am sorry to hear he has |
problems with his voice. But the fact that these problems
were caused by his style of singing, just goes to prove that
it wasn’t the right style for 3 Inches of Blood.
Opening in fine style with Battles and Brotherhood, a
stirring true metal album. Rock In Hell is very 70s, and
let’s face it, there has to be rock in Hell! What will we
listen to when we get there otherwise (Hmm! Maybe Hell is
full of haircut bands). Silent Killer has a great Budgie
vibe, reminiscent of Breadfan. Fierce Defender shows off the
skills of drummer Ash Pearson, making his recording debut
here. The wonderful Preacher’s Daughter is a spiritual
descendent of both Venom’s Teacher’s Pet and Deep Purple’s
Farmer’s Daughter. Hey, where would metal be without some
naughty strumpets? (Now, we’re not PC here. As Nigel Tufnel
said: “What’s wrong with being sexy?”). Call of the Hammer
has the ferocity and precision of Painkiller-era Judas
Priest. Snake Fighter (an ode to Mr Plissken of Escape From
New York fame, perhaps?) shows a profound Mercyful Fate
influence. At the Foot of the Great Glacier takes us into
epic metal territory. All of Them Witches is the stand-out
track on the album, very inspired by Dio-era Sabbath, but
with their own distinct sound, fantastic true metal, and
with some nice Maiden-esque flourishes. After the short
Orchid-like 12:34, the album ends in spectacular style with
Execution Tank. Awesome stuff!
www.myspace.com/3iob |
www.3inchesofblood.com |
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Caliban - Say Hello To
Tragedy (Century Media) Review By Steve Earles |
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Modern metal bands tend to be either good or utterly dire,
hiding behind clichés and desperately trying to be relevant.
Thankfully, Germany’s Caliban are one of the good ones.
Marrying aggression with an impressive degree of music
skill. Opening track 24 Years is heartfelt and pulverising.
Caliban’s Revenge is strange and discordant, and shows a
band with a strong identity. End This Sickness shows a more
thrash-orientated groove. On Walk Like The Dead they play it
too safe, but there is definitely an audience for this type
of track. No One Is Safe takes is back to heavier territory,
as does Liar. The Degeneration Of Humanity is excellent.
Unleash Your Voice is again playing it safe a little. |
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But the closing trio of tracks, All I Gave, In The Name Of
Progression, Coma, are great. All in all, a decent album,
from a band, whose glory days are in front of them rather
than behind them.
www.calibanmetal.com |
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Cunt Scrape / Death
Fucking Cunt - Splitroast (Split) (Prime Cu(n)ts
Music) Review by James Young |
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With these band names, the level of maturity on display here
is clearly of a schoolboy who has just discovered what sex
is - what we have here is ‘Gashtronomic Gynecological
Grindcore’ versus ‘Extra Defective Chromozoal Tech Slam’.
Ahem. The tracks from these two Australian outfits are
vulgar, classless and riddled with stupid puns, but who am I
kidding? This is as brilliant as grind gets - pure
brutality, with it’s tongue firmly planted in (arse) cheek.
Dealing with Cuntscrape firstly, we have a pulverising blend
of brutality and parody. When these guys want to grind, they
cave your skull in with some outlandish speeds, but there
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some wonderful groovy moments, like in ‘Mayonnasian’ and
‘Uncle Nasty Fingers’. We have some black metal tremolo
woven into the silly ‘Dark Urinal’, and even a piss-take of
guess-who in ‘Finntrollop’, which could bizarrely pass as
the Finnish folkers themselves. Bizarrely, the production is
great - the guitars nasty-sounding, but oddly harmonious at
times.
Death Fucking Cunt are far less fun, although song titles
such as ‘Light Beer = Intense Queer’ might make you think
again. The difference is, there just isn’t enough room for
spoof amongst the absolutely brutal death grind. If we can
believe that there is a human drummer, which is extremely
difficult considering some of the speeds reached here, this
could rival The Berzerker in terms of record-breaking blast
speeds. In addition to the speed stakes, what we have here
is the extra element of crazy technicality, which brings a
whole new element of chaos and carnage to this half of the
album. It almost gets too much, but there are some nice
slamming riffs at certain points to let you recover and get
a grasp on reality, before being brought back into
migraine-territory.
Grind is clearly a thriving genre to still be producing such
excellent bands, and there is always womb for more of these
unique noise-mongers. It’s all as silly and over-the-top as
you can get, but who cares? Don’t be a pussy, check it out.
www.myspace.com/grindecologyst |
www.myspace.com/deathfuckingcunt |
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Empyrean - Quietus (Prime
Cuts) Review by Steve Green |
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The film score style intro had me thinking of Dimmu Borgir before 1st
track proper, From Whence The Mourning Came, kicked in... I say kicked
in, as this song has an intro all of its own as well, but after another
30 second wait, I was pretty accurate with my initial hunch. Although
the vocals are more like a Death Metal Dani Filth than Shagrath.
Brisbane's Empyrean aren't doing anything new, but what they do, they do
very well indeed. Daniel Tannett's piano and keyboard work, particularly
the former, are what help elevate the band a few rungs up the ladder,
simply because they add a new dimension to a very familiar theme. The
album, as a whole, has a wonderfully dark atmosphere and when
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you combine that with some of the inventive (and downright clever)
arrangements, you're onto a sure fire winner.
www.myspace.com/empyreanband
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GraVil - The Age of Corruption
(Bitter To The Core) Review by Steve Green |
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In an age of faceless downloads, it's nice to see an up and coming band
put some effort into the presentation of their work. Last year's EP,
Something Worth Chasing was very well presented and this time around,
the band, centred around UK vocalist, Gra and Scandinavian musician, Vil,
have done an even better job with the cd booklet and overall packaging.
Production wise, the band have progressed beyond recognition and
musically, there is a much better flow and feeling to their music. I'm
still stumped in terms of describing their music, (although I am
beginning to feel a shriek-free version of Cradle of Filth emerging from
the gloom) but in layman's terms, it's raspy English vocals clashing
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head on with the Scandinavian flair of the music and the
band are slowly, but surely, getting everything together. I
still don't think they are quite "there" yet, but with the
progression they've made in the past year, I'd say a debut
album in 12 months time could be a very interesting
proposition.
www.myspace.com/gravil
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Mass Obliteration - Fraticide
(Self Release) Review by Steve Green |
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Wow, this Italian four piece most certainly have the right name for their
band, as this tasty 4 tracker certainly obliterates everything in its
way. Once you look past the production, which is adequate, but nothing
special, this is a brutal, yet enjoyable kind of ride. The reason it
works is because in spite of the
punishing nature of their music, (which is brutal Death) Mass Obliteration weave just about the
right amount of melody into each song to make this listenable and they also include a
few clever time changes to keep this a fresh and interesting listen
throughout.
As a taster for a new band this extreme, 4 tracks is just about right
and this EP comes
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highly recommended.
www.myspace.com/massobliterationdeathmetal
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Nexus - The Paradise Complex (Self Release) Review by Steve Green |
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Nexus are a 4 piece band from Perth, Western Australia who play reasonably
complicated Progressive Death Metal. This fact isn't exactly startling
news, but when you consider that their vocalist, Dan Grainger, is also
their drummer and he plays his kit like a man possessed, you begin to
wonder how he manages to hold everything together in the live
environment. And as you've probably guessed by now, the level of
musicianship on this release is superb and although the production is a
little muddy, every instrument can be clearly heard and thankfully, the
complexity of the music doesn't detract from the song-writing, which is
also of a good standard. I'm not normally a fan of the stop-start,
twisting
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time changes employed by Nexus, but minor production values
aside, I cannot find a single fault with this release.
www.myspace.com/nexusmetal
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One Master - The Quiet
Eye Of Eternity (Peasant Magik) Review by Crin |
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Black Metal from USA. This is not too dissimilar to the epic
song arrangements of Kvist as the music here spits out a
veritable firestorm of fast minimalist Black metal levelled
at you with a controlled ferocity that is channelled though
a dark dense guitar sound. The husky vocal rasps weave their
excruciating utterances across this bleak, desperate
atmosphere. If you are familiar with the phrase TRUE Black
metal then this is as close as you can get. The sound is
driven by the thrum of the guitars and is very much set in
the USBM style, awash with distortion and menace. The cover
and inlay are typically two tone and reflect the music
therein. There are emotive slower sections that low like
tormented soundscapes, |
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mesmerizing your thoughts with reoccurring riffs [especially
on the track, The Wanderer]. It’s a simply arranged album
that crawls into your head and cements its repetitive
melodies with icy atmospheres and Hellbound vocals. Like
Graveland, the music maintains its embodiment throughout and
strives to do no more. So if you have thoughts of being
dragged though a quagmire of abominations and skinless
murderers who writhe in the agonies of perdition whilst your
anal lips are scorched by the magma of desolation, then this
album was made just for you.
www.myspace.com/onemastermetal |
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The Few Against Many -
Sot (Pulverised Records) review by Sam Thomas |
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Christian Älvestam has a lot of friends. Not in the Facebook
sense (although I bet he’s got quite a few of those as
well), but in the sense of actual, real mates who will join
in with him on recording a new album. The former Scar
Symmetry singer has rounded up shed loads of talent, for
both performance and writing lyrics, including a few of my
personal favourites (Mikael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity), Pär
Johansson (Satariel – the most beautiful voice ever) and
Jonas Renske (Katatonia)). The only real surprise is that
the production isn’t by Dan Swanö, but maybe he was on
holiday...
The resultant album is high-energy, incredibly catchy,
well-written and just plain brilliant. |
It’s pretty short (about 36 minutes) but it’s so
action-packed that I only noticed its length when I came to
review it. It’s very intense, rather like extremely dark,
bitter chocolate, leaving you with that feeling of “Wow,
fantastic” – but unlike the dark chocolate, I could
definitely go for another round of this immediately.
The cover art (Dan Seagrave) is quite stunning in a kind of
Halloween meets “Lord of the Rings” kind of a way (very
orange). All told, this has to be a contender for the debut
of the year. (Unless you want to be picky, because of the
experience of everyone behind it, of course.)
I must admit, I was so into this that it had completely
passed me by that the majority of the tracks were sung in
Swedish, but so what? This is so jam-packed with technical
brilliance that it’s really rather irrelevant. Technical
death metal with an element of prog? Absolutely first-rate.
www.pulverised.net |
www.myspace.com/thefewagainstmany |
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Uriah Heep -
Celebration (Ear Music) Review by Strawb
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‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ has been a tenet for
many years. It is now widely acknowledged that this medium
of the internet has overtaken the printed word as the most
potent means of communication available. That means that my
sitting in front of this keyboard enables power of a level
only previously available to those renowned for wearing
their underpants over their trousers. I am aware of this and
have never previously felt the need to invoke this power in
a lecturing fashion. [And for those of you who anticipate
the next word being ‘but’, here we go,] but I have had the
orange box strengthened and heightened and it is from here
that I begin. You, the Metalheads of the |
UK, take a right royal bollocking. The treatment of Uriah
Heep in their homeland is nothing short of a national
disgrace. Are you aware that they are mainly based in
Germany? That the majority of their tours are based around
continental Europe? The Band have had to do this to continue
their survival as we, as a nation, have consigned them to
the back burner. However, the release of this, their 22nd
studio album, on the occasion of their 40th year, presents
us with a chance to remedy this position.
My own preference of Uriah Heep is without doubt their early
work, probably the first eight albums would constitute the
absolute pinnacle of their work. But the other thirteen are
not lame by any means, and the recent Wake The Sleeper was
unmissable in its own right. Of the original band, there may
only be Mick Box remaining, but others of the current line
up have been there for over 20 years, and there has been
little change for the sake of it. And I know of no band
which has had two such talented vocalists as David Byron and
the current incumbent, Bernie Shaw.
On then to this Celebration of 40 years. Two new tracks
present themselves – Only Human and Corridors Of Madness. A
little like Sabbath did when releasing Psycho Man and
Selling My Soul on Reunion, the band have had to select
these tracks very carefully, they are after all being added
to what is in effect a greatest hits compilation. And they
are up to it, but with the talents of this band I would have
expected no other. A further twist has then been
implemented. In no way denigrating the efforts of the
previous band members, the tracks on this album have all
been recorded in the studio by the current line up. And they
are not just replications; those of us who covet the
precious things of the early albums will easily notice the
difference between them and what is presented here.
Brilliant. This will broaden the appeal, those like myself
with a collection will want to add to it, those new to the
band should buy this as a starting point, and those subject
of the ass-kicking at the beginning of this rant should
redress the balance by noting the release date of 26th
October and ensuring that this is the day when their
pre-ordered copy will arrive. See the bands website for the
full track listing and the purchasing options which are
available to you. This is the best album I have heard this
year, and you all deserve to share in it with me. Let us end
the travesty of Uriah Heep's previous treatment and show the
band what they are really worth to us by going out and
buying this one.
www.uriah-heep.com |
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