Malefice at Myspace (chugga chugga WEE!)

Malefice are getting quite big in the UK with the kids. That if anything else should tip you off that these guys aren’t going to appeal to most of you. Malefice specialise in the sound of metalcore circa 2003/2004 and if this record came out then I’d at least see what the hypes about. “Entities” takes Unearths poor structuring, As I lay Dying’s Melodic Death plagiarism, Lamb of Gods boneheaded good ol boy ambience and Chimaira’s 100% pure distilled shite-ness and turns them into something quite horrid. If you like those 4 bands you will probably like this, but if you hate them, well you’ll despise this.

I think subconsciously they took influence from Dragonforce as apart from the occasional curveball such as Howard Jones-esque clean vocals (which is as curveballs go is positively straight in this instance) the tracks are near enough exactly the same. They start off with a pseudo-melodic death intro go into a Lamb of God style verse, going into a  breakdown with some melodic leads over the tops of it style chorus and so forth. Now if it was A B A B it would be pretty awful in itself, but in-between those are the occasional half-arsed solo’s and a whole battalion of breakdowns. You have your Lamb of god breakdowns, your Chimaira breakdowns and occasionally just for variety some unusual and relatively unorthodox Unearth breakdowns.

The breakdowns usually last for between a third and a fourth of the songs length. Unless you are Earth Crisis you really can’t get away with that. There was a reason that Obituary and Grave only let the breakdowns on “Cause of Death” and “Into the Grave” respectively last for an exquisitely short period of the songs timespan. If Malefice cut the amount of breakdowns in their songs down, they would be horribly average instead of just horrible. If you want to play metalcore where you play endless breakdowns then play tough guy hardcore there’s a whole sub-genre of that sub-genre of a sub-genre dedicated to that. It just doesn’t work at all if for the remaining part of the songs timespan you play melodic death-lite you learned by osmosis from various metalcore outfits.

Put this together with some retarded tough guy lyrics that even Phil Anselmo would be ashamed of, and the gradual realisation that Malefice are so addicted to breakdowns that sometimes their verse guitar lines are basically incredibly fast breakdowns, then this is another sorry example of British metal gone wrong.

Blut Aus Nord at Myspace

In 2003 Blut Aus Nord released “The Work Which Transforms God” one of the most important black metal releases of this decade. With its icy and mechanical yet deeply occult and malevolent brand of industrial black metal they created a record that was perhaps as relevant to the 00’s as “A Blaze in the Northern sky” or “In the Nightside Eclipse” were to the 90’s. Their immediate follow up 2006’s “Mort” was an even more avant-garde step into the unknown and while it was more unique than “The Work Which Transforms God” it lacked that inhuman air of menace that made its predecessor the classic that it was.

2007’s “Odinist” is a move back towards Black Metal and ironically suffers from the exact opposite problem as “Mort”. Although the Black Metal on display is evil and foreboding to the vilest extremes it lacks the Industrial otherworldliness that made “The Work Which Transforms God” so unsettling and alien. It is a good album as even a flawed Blut Aus Nord record is better than 95% of the black metal records that have been realised in the past 12 months and indeed this decade but if you have had heard The Work Which Transforms God” then it frankly pales. It is still an extremely inventive and nonconformist Black Metal album that absolutely drips with a sinister and misanthropic ambience and is worth checking out. If you haven’t heard any Blut Aus Nord records to date however you would be advised to make The Work Which Transforms God” you’re starting point.

Aeon at Myspace

Aeon. They’re the first band alphabetically in my library,  and a damn good one. Rise to Dominate continues their brand of brutal death metal started on their EP, Dark Order, and first full-length, Bleeding the False. First of all, I have to single out the lyrics as one of the high points. They are incredibly anti-Christian and incredibly silly, but that’s why I love them. They do slip into Engrish at times (or whatever you call bad English spoken by Swedes), but the lyrics are already silly so it doesn’t matter a lot. Also, Tommy Dahlstrom’s vocals are easy to understand.

It’s amazing how this album can be so catchy and so brutal at the same time, as evidenced in songs such as “You Pray to Nothing” and “House of Greed” (I especially love the latter’s hook of “BURN! THE! CHURCH! DOWN!”). Musically, the band is excellent; the songs tend to sound a little samey, but I thought the drums really stood out, and the guitars have those jagged edges I love in metal. I’m also glad that the band has abandoned the filler intros that were on Bleeding the False. This is a great brutal death metal album, and I hope to hear more from these guys in the future.

Dio at Myspace

The trend of bands performing entire albums in concert seems to be pretty popular these days (I have Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung Live” and 2 out of 3 of Dream Theater’s “Official Bootleg” series), and Dio continues it with this 2-disc set where every song from “Holy Diver” is performed.

Dio’s voice has its ups and downs. He’s awfully hoarse on some songs on the first disc (the title track especially), but he’s awesome on others (especially when you remember he’s over 60. The band is in fine form throughout, with “Gypsy” and “Shame on the Night” containing drum and guitar solos, respectively, which are lengthy but remain interesting throughout. Disc 2 was my favorite part; it contains two songs from Dio’s sophomore effort “The Last in Line”, as well as covers from his stints with Rainbow and Black Sabbath. Another part I enjoyed was the end of the song “Gypsy” after the drum solo; a pre-recorded version of Holst’s “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” bursts out and the drummer plays along with it. It has to be one of the silliest moments in metal that I’ve ever experienced, but I love silliness in metal so it’s all fine with me. This wouldn’t be the best place to start with Dio (stick to the original Holy Diver for that), but fans of his work will enjoy this album.

The story of Amenti is one that is infamous at least in British Metal circles. This thread gives the full story, but for a shortened version the tale goes something like this: A UK band allegedly bankrolled by one of the members parents messes allegedly around a bunch of UK promoters but allegedly goes too far when they allegedly somehow got hold of the contract to book Destruction’s UK tour and allegedly messed it up. A furore erupted with allegations being made that this allegedly left wing band, had a member who was allegedly racist. The story allegedly climaxed with Amenti allegedly splitting up 3 of the 4 members allegedly forming a new band a day later with the same tour dates but with their identities obscured by new names and masks.

There’s a whole lot of ‘allegedly’ in there, and to be honest I doubt anyone will ever know the whole or exact truth about this affair. Then there’s the music. Amenti released one album entitled “Under the Dying Sun”. The music formula here is a mixture of Mid 90’s Slayer meets Stampin Ground during the time they crossed firmly from Hardcore into Metal with stylistic touches from Exodus, Hatebreed, Biohazard and Iron Maiden. The album maintains a solid and impressive sense of groove and the guitar work is above average if not amazing. The drums were seemingly recorded using the same techniques used with St Anger and then rerecorded using a fisher price junior tape recorder, but for that the drumming is quite diverse and impacts to a considerable degree on the overall sound. Singer Mike sounds like Randy Blythe if Randy Blythe could actually hold a note and this vocal approach works well with the material.

Overall this is what most reviewers would term “a promising if not stellar debut”. True, I doubt I would listen to it again out of choice and neither would most of you, but it would have gained them fans among more commercially minded metal fan whilst being good enough for the rest of us not to hate upon and until about 6 months ago in the UK there was a sizeable online buzz about them. That buzz was extinguished when allegations about their business models were made by various sources including former touring partner and thrash elder statesmen Schmier of Destruction.

From then their trajectory was firmly downwards as more and more allegations were made by quite a few different people. If they did do any of the things they were accused of doing then they threw everything they ever earned in their 2 years of operating away. It’s a pity as if they had stayed honest (first assuming of course that they were dishonest in the first place) they probably would have been a big a draw on the uk commercial metal circuit in a few years as Panic Cell and Raging Speedhorn are now. As it is, for right or wrong none of the members will be able to show their faces in the British metal scene for quite some time to come.