Goretorture at Myspace

I wanted to like this album, I really did. I hoped that it would have the same sense of goofy fun that Arnocorps had and that Austrian Death Machine lacked. I mean, I love brutal death metal, so what could be better than a brutal death metal album where every song has an Arnold Schwarzenegger sample? Plenty, that’s what.

The production is absolutely abysmal, as if I was hearing a performance that went through YouTube levels of compression. Normally, I don’t put much emphasis on production, but this album is just insanely muddy. I could have looked past that if the material was good, but all aspects are mediocre at best. The vocals don’t really stand out much and aren’t especially good, the guitars are fairly generic, and the drum machine is so badly programmed that I had to double-check to make sure that Lars Ulrich hadn’t guested on some tracks. And the humorous samples don’t really add as much as I had hoped; one song has an excruciatingly long three-minute sample that takes up half of the track.

If you’re curious about what Mortician would sound sound like if they were obsessed with Arnold Schwarzenegger films instead of horror movies, you might want to check this out. Everyone else should stay far away.

Kruger at Myspace

Kruger are one of those special bands who at least at this stage in their career cannot be pigeonholed into any specific genre. Their unique sound contains elements of death metal, progressive metal and sludge metal, but cannot wholly fall within only one of those categories. Their one-of-a-kind brand of metal fuses the catharsis and melodic desolation found in such artists such as Cult of Luna, Isis and Baroness with the Stockholm death’n'roll sound of Entombed and Grave, topped off with a deeply progressive and innovative flavour that evokes the spirit of Mastodon and Gojira.

The songs on this album ebb and flow, with a fine example being the full frontal assault slowly dissipating into a post rock manor with the sombre low key passage in ‘Holy Fire’ before building up slowly and melodically into the bass heavy, Tool-like intro to the next track ‘Army of Lovers’. ‘Army of Lovers’ with its powerfully heavy yet catchy chorus is one of the two best tracks on this album, along with the opener ‘Ammunition Matters’, with its savage and furious and almost physical attack on the listener’s senses. Along with Knut and Nostromo, Kruger are proving that Switzerland is still a breeding ground for inventive yet crushingly heavy metal like it was in the days of Celtic Frost, Coroner, and Samael.

Opeth at Myspace

Okay, I know this is a horrendously boring album to review since everyone loves Opeth and probably already knows if they like their newest release, ‘Watershed’, or not. But I don’t, since I’ve avoided listening to it properly until just now.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Opeth. And I’m not one of those elitist Opeth fans who thinks that everything they released after ‘Still Life’ sucks, either. They sucked way before that (ho ho). It’s jut that ‘Ghost Reveries’ really disappointed me. It was too far removed from the Opeth I love. It was too proggy and it was too mellow and it was too crazy and it wasn’t grim at all. Mellotrons? Tribal drums? Fuck off.

Right, yeah, Watershed. What can I say? It’s more of the same, really. Lame. I can’t say I was really expecting them to drop the prog rock nonsense and kick Per out of the band, although it would’ve been nice.

It’s really hard writing a review like this, even when you’re like me and barely even mention the music. On the one hand, I’m glad that Mikael and co. have found commercial success and it’s good that they’re writing music they like. But on the other hand, what about the music I like? Opeth have built up a massive fanbase over the years, albeit mostly the last five, but there’s still some of us who loved Opeth when they were a blackened doomy progressive death metal band.

So here’s my suggestion. Let’s get the band members from Opeth’s glory years together – Peter Lindgren, Anders Nordin, and Johan DeFarfalla – and make a new band called ‘Oldpeth’, with Corpsegrinder on vocals or something. And they can write some awesome blackened doomy progressive death metal, and then I can be happy again, and life can continue to be worth living.

Until that day, I’m going to continue pretending Opeth split up in 2004. Who’s with me?

Neoandertals at Myspace

Neoandertals is a two-piece brutal death metal band from Estonia. And when I say brutal, I mean it. There aren’t any guitars to be found here; just drums, bass, and what have to be some of the most amazing vocals I’ve ever heard. Remember the first time you heard a death metal song and wondered how anyone could manage to sound so inhuman? That’s how I felt when I heard this, and I’m a grizzled veteran of death growls.

The musicianship is quite good; the bass is heavily distorted and downtuned, and the drums are all over the place; both instruments have a bit of a jazzy feel that suggests that these songs were mostly improvised. If this album has one weakness, it’s that the songs all sound quite similar due to the limitations of the two-piece format. However, this is mitigated by the fact that at less than half an hour, the album doesn’t wear out its welcome. Highly recommended for brutal death metal fans.

Emeth at Myspace

Emeth (which, according to Wikipedia, is Hebrew for “truth-seeker” and is the name of a devil-worshipping character from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe) are a death metal band just starting to dip their toes into more progressive, technical metal.  It’s no surprise, as their guitarists are total pros, and this album has some of the sickest metal drumming I’ve heard.

I usually don’t focus too much on drums, but it’s impossible not to notice them here.  There’s an assault of insanely fast beats throughout the album – seriously, this guy must have four arms and three feet!  If he’s not rocking the double-bass, he’s rolling on everything else; yet he always manages to back off to give a good riff a little breathing room.  (Usually, when a band constantly uses fast double-bass it drives me crazy because it’s intense but gets boring fast; this is some of the most tasteful double-bass I’ve heard.  Check out “Anochi Kofer” for an example of this.)

Everything else on the album falls into place – really, these guys are pros, and while the album isn’t especially brutal, it has some top-notch songs.  One of my favorite tracks is “Folly and Weakness”, which starts out as your standard chugger, but ends with some rockin’ harmonic flourishes, key changes, and even a switch to half the tempo that works so perfectly (and is used so sparingly) it puts every shitty hardcore breakdown to shame.  None of the (few) solos really stand out, but there are plenty of memorable riffs – and you’ll keep coming back for the insane drumming.