Mantic Ritual at Myspace

Mantic Ritual’s Executioner is an example of the thrash revival being done right. Although it’s never too original, the riffs, leads and songwriting are strong as hell, resulting in an album that’s strong all the way through, and Mantic Ritual don’t make the same mistake as Blood Tsunami and make sure that the songs are actually heavy; there’s no over-melodic frippery here.

Executioner is a re-recording of an album recorded under the band’s previous name, Meltdown. I haven’t heard the original version, so I can’t comment on it, but the production on this is excellent throughout. Dan Wetmore’s vocals are excellent; at times, he appears to be invoking Kill ‘Em All-era James Hetfield in his delivery, but he mixes it up enough so he doesn’t feel like a total clone. The solos and riffs are also excellent; the album’s only real weakness is the rhythm section. The bass is barely audible and the drumming is especially weak; it just sounds repetitive, dull, and overly mechanical most of the time.

Still, despite that one major fault, this is a fine album and a worthy successor to the original wave of thrash bands. If only the rest of the movement was this strong…

Heaven and Hell at Myspace

It’s really a shame that this didn’t come out under the Black Sabbath name. Oh, I know how Ozzy, Bill and Geezer forced Iommi to sign a contract saying that the name couldn’t be used without the participation of all four original members, and how this was justified due to Iommi’s dragging the name through the mud during the late 80′s and early 90′s, but this is a quality release, arguably better than any of the “real” Sabbath albums with Dio (it’s certainly better than the the mediocre-as-hell Dehumanizer).

That said, The Devil You Know doesn’t really have a sound that’s much different from the other Dio Sabbath albums, but it’s really, really good despite its lack of innovation. Dio sounds amazing for a senior citizen (would that all vocalists could sound this good this late into their careers), Iommi’s riffs are as good as ever, and the rhythm section is solid throughout. There’s even a little bit of synthesizer that’s used sparingly but effectively.

The album’s tone is also remarkably consistent- it’s completely dark, with no silly excursions into other moods like the Ozzy-era songs “Planet Caravan” or “Changes.” It’s also fairly slow-paced throughout (but not in a boring way). This leads to a few songs sounding awfully similar, but it’s not quite as much of a fault as it might sound. The lyrics are sometimes pretty cheesy, but they don’t really stick out a lot when the music is this grim. All in all, this is an excellent album and a more than worthy addition to the Sabbath catalog, even if it is technically apocrypha. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who changed their MP3 tags to “Black Sabbath” for this album at all.

Blood Tsunami at Myspace

Blood Tsunami’s sophomore effort is caught between two extremes. On one hand, the songwriting  is perfectly fine; they know how to write good riffs and the musicianship is excellent. The only truly poorly-written song in my opinion was the 13-minute instrumental Eceladus Rising, which has some good parts but just felt aimless overall. Unfortunately, the guitars just aren’t heavy enough for this material to work fully; for most of the album, there’s a distinct lack of the oomph that thrash metal needs to succeed. Instead of playing their songs in a brutally heavy style, the guitarists just glide along like a poorly animated CGI monster that’s far too agile for its size; there’s little sense of weight to these songs, however well constructed they are.

Compounding the problem is that the vocalist sings in a style that suits death metal more than Blood Tsunami’s brand of melo-thrash (and the backing vocals are even harsher). The contrast between the relatively light, melodic riffs and the growling vocals hurts the material greatly. That said, Grand Feast of Vultures is far from being a horrible album; it’s tightly played and never bogs down in repetition. It’s just that its limitations are highly disappointing and could be easily remedied.

Church of Misery at Myspace

Japan’s Church of Misery have offered up another solid album of groovy stoner doom metal  with Houses of the Unholy. The first thing that I should mention is that while this is a fine album, it’s not innovative by any stretch of the imagination, with the songwriting based firmly in the 1970′s. However, the Church do a great job within those confines. The band’s lyrics are all about serial killers, much like the band Macabre, but the similarities end there, as there’s little of Macabre’s grim humor in these lyrics. I have to commend vocalist Yoshiaki Negishi; he chooses to downplay his Japanese accent (not that I have anything against them), and does it extremely well; I never once would have suspected this band was Japanese if I listened to this release blind. His delivery is raspy without straying far from the style of 70′s metal vocalists.

The songs are frequently lengthy (five of the album’s eight cuts are more than seven and a half minutes long), so the grooves have plenty of room to breathe. The musicianship is fine but really takes a back seat to the hypnotic chord sequences; doom metal is more about the songwriting and riffs than technical skills. Fans of 70′s metal and hard rock would do well to check this out.

Ulcerate at Myspace

Ulcerate hails from New Zealand, and have sent out an awesome slab of death metal that balances both technical and brutal aspects incredibly well; “Everything is Fire” truly combines the best of both worlds while not sacrificing songwriting at the altars of either subgenre. All eight of its songs are over five minutes, but none feel overlong Instead of relying on blast beats or just showing off how fast they can play, Ulcerate were smart enough to include some slightly slower and quieter (but still brutal) sections. These do a great job of making sure the record doesn’t bog down in monotony like some other tech-death bands (Origin, anyone?)

The vocals aren’t bad at all, but they’re not quite as good as the instrumental backing, as they tend to sound a bit samey after a while, with a bit too much yelling and not enough guttural growling. I also didn’t like the fact that the guitars drowned out the bass and (to a lesser extent) the drums most of the time, but I don’t really have any other complaints. This is an essential death metal release and one of the best of 2009 to date.

Chainsaw at Myspace

Note to self: Don’t get an album solely because it contains a cover of a band you like. This goes double if that band is Spinal Tap.

First of all, this is the Chainsaw from Holland, not any of the seven other bands listed on Metal-archives with that name. (There are also no less than 20 bands named Armageddon, and those are just the ones who managed to spell it correctly.) Chainsaw plays thrash metal that just doesn’t distinguish itself from the crowd. The playing isn’t offensive or anything, it’s just pedestrian (with a few exceptions, such as godawful drumming on a few tracks and a few guitar solos which sound like the notes were chosen at random).

The lyrics try to be amusing and even socially relevant at times, but they just sound like a middle schooler trying to sound edgy. For example, here’s a verse from “Hand of God,” a song about plastic surgery:

I’ll cut you up I like it tight
I’ll lift your breasts because they just don’t look right
Your legs are fat I’ll suck them slim
I’ll re-create you until you look divine

I understand that English isn’t these guys’ first language, but I can’t ignore lyrics like this when the vocals are this lame. The singer sounds little better than some guy they brought in off of the street. Sometimes, he sounds like he’s just trying too hard to sound silly (admittedly, this might be because a Dutch accent just sounds weird to me for a thrash metal vocalist). And what about that cover that caused me to pick this up? Well, Spinal Tap’s “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” sounds lame when played by Chainsaw, although at least they didn’t go the obvious route and cover the Ramones’ “Chain Saw.”

“Metal Missionary” isn’t offensively bad; it’s just not very good and only worth picking up if you’re a really die-hard thrash fan.

Kalisia at Myspace

Despite the fact that the French progressive death metal band Kalisia was founded in 1994, Cybion, released earlier this year, is their debut. With choral vocals and the heavy use of keyboards, I felt that this album is best looked at from the perspective of progressive metal than death metal. When I want to hear death metal, I want something sickening and I want something brutal; this doesn’t deliver on either count, despite the frequent use of harsh vocals. It’s just too melodic to be a really great example of death metal.

Cybion is considerably better as a progressive metal album, but it still has its flaws. It’s supposed to be some sort of sci-fi concept album, but I never really understood it (the fact that many of the vocals are growled didn’t help). It also seems more than a little derivative of Ayreon, what with the multiple singers, squelchy synthesizers and Arjen Anthony-Lucassen himself appearing on one track. It’s messy and overlong, but there are lots of interesting musical passages so it evens out fairly well in the end. I can’t recommend Cybion to death metal fanatics, but prog metal fans should like it. I think it’s decent for a first effort, but I’ll probably never listen to it again.

Dol Theeta at Myspace

Dol Theeta is Thanasis Lightbridge’s second project. His first, Dol Ammad, was unique among metal bands in that it employed a 14-member choir and relied heavily on electronics. Dol Theeta is different, as it lacks a choir and is quite a bit more laid-back than either of the Dol Ammad albums. And there’s the rub- to me, this seems more like a straight-up electronica album with a few metal influences than a metal album. While Dol Ammad straddled the line between “metal” and “not metal”, the choir and epic nature of their songs at least reflected metal aesthetics; the metallic content on “The Universe Expands” is limited to the occasional guitar solo. It’s not a bad electronica album by any means, and open-minded metal fans might enjoy it, but metal purists will want to pass this one up.

Heaps of Dead at Myspace

This is the debut release from Heaps of Dead, an Ontario-based quintet that plays brutal death metal. “Deceased, Dismembered, and Left to Decay” starts off fairly well; the first few tracks are fairly simplistic, but they’re effective despite their simplicity. They reminded me a bit of early Six Feet Under (I know they’re a controversial band, but I enjoyed their first few albums a lot.) The singer does a pretty good job with both high-pitched screaming and death growls. I got the impression that Heaps of Dead was a young band that needed improvement, but had lots of potential.

Unfortunately, starting on track four, a new vocal style rears its ugly head- horrible “BREEE!” pig-squealing. I don’t know what possessed them to incorporate this  awful style, but it just doesn’t work one bit, and should have been left out entirely. These vocals rarely take center stage, but they’re horrible enough that they ruin the tracks where they’re used, and completely ruin what could have been a decent album. Aside from that, I really liked the use of samples from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. If the singer quits the horrible pig-squealing/toad-croaking vocals, Heaps of Dead could be a band to watch in the future. If he keeps using them, though, not even wild horses could get me to listen to this band again.

Giant Squid at Myspace

Giant Squid’s second album is similar in style to the first, with layers of keyboards and cellos supplementing the more traditional metal instruments, although they’re just that, supplements, rarely taking over completely. The album just oozes with atmosphere, both in the metallic sections and quieter passages, and the unusual instrumentation is a big factor. Both male and female vocals are utilized, and I greatly preferred the latter; there’s something about the male singer’s voice I find a bit irritating. When he sings high, his voice has an annoying nasally quality to it, and when he tries to sound gravelly, the result is just cheesy. This doesn’t come close to ruining the album, however. Most of the songs have subtitles which are the scientific names of sea life; I’m not sure what that fact is supposed to mean.

My favorite track on the album was one which stuck out as being atypical- “Throwing a Donner Party at Sea” isn’t a stereotypically slow doom metal song, as it clips along at a nice pace. I also liked the song’s use of harsh backing vocals, which is fairly unusual for this band. Another standout track was “Mormon Island;” I enjoyed its near-ambient use of the piano. If there’s one thing I didn’t like about this album, it’s that it lacks an extra-long track like the title track on Metridium Fields; I loved that song and its extremely repetitive but undeniably hypnotic groove. All in all, though, it’s a worthy second effort, and it’s well worth checking out.