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The Great Metal Year of 2012: Top 10 albums

The List

Blut Aus Nord – 777 – Cosmosophy (BaN – Epitome XIV)

One of the most important bands in black metal today, BaN finally ushered in an age of black metal that is now visible as an admirable bunch of bands attempting to innovate and experiment within the framework of the genre. But the reason why this band remains at the apex is that it does not recognize a framework. Cosmosophy, like most great music, is the culmination of a personal vision, namely a thematic exploration which is the 777 trilogy. As cosmic as it is visceral, and as grand as it is subtle, I refrained from reviewing an album to which I could not do proper justice given time constraints. Beware of trip-hop moments and other unexpected elements.

Deathspell Omega – Drought (EP) (DsO – Salowe Vision)

This won’t be the only EP in the list. My review for it can be found in the review section. Another black metal act that continues to evolve and consolidate its sound on every release, Drought received much less attention than it should have. A perfect monsoon release for us in the Indian subcontinent.

Eryn Non Dae. – Meliora (END. – Hidden Lotus)

Solid composition, a bleak and modern sound and a mature melodic structure has made this a treat to listen to. Another criminally underrated band, read my review for a slightly premature impression which should in spite of it’s hasty concoction convince the reader to give it a shot.

Kayo Dot – Gamma Knife (Kayo Dot – Ocellated God)

To quote the most interesting man in the world, Kayo Dot aren’t always metal, but when they are, you still can’t say for sure. Gamma Knife is a mix of heavy-as-fuck riffing, free jazz saxophone solos and certain indescribable moments that can only stem from the recesses of Toby Driver’s mind. This was released independently on bandcamp where it is available as an online stream in its entirety. Do pleasure yourself.

Spawn of Possession – Incurso (SoP – Apparition)

Though lacking the inhuman consistency of the band’s masterpiece and undoubtedly the pinnacle of technical death (or for me, any) metal Noctambulant, Incurso has its moments. And those moments will haunt you for quite some time. Be it Bryssling’s painfully exact technique, Muenzner’s impressive soloing or Erlend’s slap-happy bass (Rondum should’ve stuck to drums, Schonstrom is great but doesn’t come close), songs like Bodiless Sleeper, The Evangelist and the beyond-epic Apparition are way ahead of their time. With the promise of composing for a full orchestra on the next record by Bryssling, I would really like to see a band that can come anywhere close to such a full and cerebral sound.

Krallice – Years Past Matter (Krallice – Years Past Matter)

Krallice have always received mixed reactions, ranging from ‘oh-so-kvlt’ to ‘boringly repetitive’. Bridging this divide with a release that had song names as bad as the music is good (the song titles are all composed of the letter I, all capital), Mick Barr, Colin Marston and Lev Weinstein have created an aural juggernaut. This isn’t black metal anymore. Seeming more and more like Mick Barr’s chaotic vision of formative tremolo picked madness that is Orthrelm, Krallice have tempered aggression with structure, and a modern attack with traditional sensibilities, all of which makes it an incredibly dense record.

Bosse-de-Nage – III (Bosee-de-Nage – Cells)

I was drawn to this band initially upon seeing their track titles for the previous album – Marie Pisses Upon The Count, Van Gogh Cooks His Hands… something charming about the way they seemed to be going about this whole S&M thing. This album forgoes theatrics for pure musicianship and has given them a rightful place of their own on the borders of metal, if not within the capital where the junta congregates and worships its ageing and irrelevant Gods.

Amenra – Mass V (Amenra – Boden)

Sometimes, the painfully slow can be palpably exquisite. Amenra isn’t that well known a name in metal perhaps, but definitely one of the towering giants of the sludge scene. Returning after four long years to release a full length with just four songs to the fans’ initial disappointment, the intensity and merciless doom-tempo sonic attack spanked the living fuck out of doubters, and added new members to the ‘Church of Ra’.

Solar Deity – The Darkness of Being (Solar Deity – Towards The Horizon)

Initially ambivalent to this sneakily experimental approach to black metal, this was a grower. A major one. Though by no means a perfect release, this is the kind of egoistic output that merits attention and not impatient refusal, though it will stand its ground irrespective of what ensues. ‘Towards The Horizon’ is one of the best things I’ve heard in Indian rock music this year. The bassline kills it br0.

Gorod –  A Perfect Absolution (Gorod – Birds of Sulphur)

Smart, quick and ruthless, this album is a cornucopia of demented melodic riffing. You cannot possibly ignore the unrelenting grooves, the effortlessly executed sweeps and the insanely catchy melodic lines acting as strong and stable leitmotifs. Tech death done right. Are you listening, progenitor of Autotheism?

Honourable mentions:

Limit Zero – Graveyard Constellations (managed to impress highly in spite of personal bias against djent while reviewing, must be really fucking good)

Nachtmystium – Silencing Machine (managed to finally release an album I really liked)

Ihsahn – Eremita, Enslaved – RIITIIR, Gojira – Explosia (I haven’t listened to these enough)

Ishaan Kumar’s Apocalypse List: Top 10 Metal Albums of 2012

OK, so the world hasn’t ended, which only means that there will be more metallicious albums in the coming years. This year had its fair share of hits and misses, with quite a few letdowns and surprisingly, not a single power metal album I heard managed to enthrall me enough to make it to my top 10. Maybe I haven’t heard enough, who knows. However, here is my list. Again, I haven’t heard every album released this year so this list may not be to your agreement, and that’s absolutely fine.


10. Circus Maximus- Nine (Progressive Metal|Norway):  Four years since their 2nd epic release ‘Isolate’, Circus Maximus released a more emotive album this year. The riffs are less fiery and more brooding and plaintive, and the the entire album is one beautiful thought-provoking piece of music. Vocalist Michael Erikson continues his great run of high-pitch control and the music is a lot more calculated, to the point where the very heavy Dream Theater influence clearly shines through. A perfect balance of heavy and soft music, mixed together in one great homogenous release.

Track Pick: Burn After Reading

circusMaximus-nine

 

9. Marduk- Serpent Sermon (Black Metal|Sweden):  Mortuus leads the hate charge yet again on this sonic fist to the face. The tremolo lightning raids are there, interspersed intermittently with haunting chordplay and the beats are a lot more varied than any previous release by the band, ranging from blasts, to the D-beat to even slow waltzes. The music is well structured and crafted, creating pockets of light only to accentuate the overall darkness surrounding them. Forward Panzer Division!!

Track Pick: Coram Satanae

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8. Swallow the Sun- Emerald Forest and the Blackbird (Melodic Doom Metal|Finland):  After a not-so-great 4th album that shares its name with a piece of teeny-bopper fantasy literature, these Finnish masters of Gothic Doom have made a bit of a comeback with this haunting new album, based on a Finnish bedtime story. While this release is less replete with heavy palm-mutes, the soundscapes the band creates with tremolo/arpeggio harmonies and chords is just masterful work. The mood of the music changes smoothly from hope to despair and back to hope, covering all the other emotions in between. The vocals have a greater presence of clean singing and they fit perfectly like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Lastly, any band that can make Anette Olzen sound good (she guests on ‘Cathedral Walls’) gets a tip of the hat from me.

Track Pick: Labyrinth of London (Horror part IV)

Swallow The Sun - Emerald Forest And The Blackbird

 

7. Hour of Penance- Sedition (Death Metal|Italy):  Fast and abrasive, chaotic yet structured…that’s how Hour of Penance’s music can be summed up. The band’s mantra of music at the speed of light continues on this album. None of the magic has been lost. The vocals are more powerful than ever, the drums just slaughter everything in the path of the beats and the riffwork is akin to the beauty that a Jackson Pollock painting exudes. A proverbial jackhammer to the head, in a really glorious way.

Track Pick: Deprave to Redeem

HourOfPenance-Seditioncover

 

6. Destruction- Spiritual Genocide (Thrash Metal|Germany):  2 albums in consecutive years and both are awesome pieces of music? How? Only this deadle pioneering trio of teutonic thrash can answer the question. A groovier approach to their music, yet the band hasn’t compromised relentless aggression. This album is everything you love about Destruction and more. And a song with Tom Angelripper as guest vocalist can only sound even better than a regular one. If anything at all, the band sounds fresher than they ever have in terms of music.

Track Pick: Legacy of the Past

 destruction-spiritualGenocide

 

5. Aeon- Aeons Black (Death Metal|Sweden):  Bludgeoning riffs with sadistic growls that are tied in with masterfully hate-filled songwriting, Aeon’s sermons of anti-Christianity continue on this tasty album. No worries of dumbing down music here, the structured chaos has only been taken a notch higher. If you want a truly delicious serving of heavy riffs and groovy-yet-relentless blast beats, this is the band for you.

Track Pick: I Wish You Death

 aeon-aeonsBlack

 

4. Enslaved- RIITIIR (Progressive Metal|Norway):  Soothingly powerful is how I would describe Enslaved’s music. This album is no less. Creatively written ambient sequences pepper the otherwise fast and abrasive extreme parts and yet both fit right into the same context. Keyboard player Herbrand has been given more clean singing opportunity and he has used it to the fullest. Every song on this album is an anthem.

Track Pick: Roots of the Mountain

 enslaved-riitiir

 

3. Wintersun- Time I (Melodic Death/Folk Metal|Finland):  8 years is a long time to wait for a new album. And to make the fans believe its releasing that year, every year of those 8, only to delay it further is even worse. But when it finally releases and is everything you hoped for and more, it is a celestial feeling. And this very celestial feeling is captured by the musical charms of Jari Maenppaa. The album is one gigantic song, one can say, being an ambient and haunting experiences that transports you to a land of frost and snow, where time itself stands still, only to let it pass on this album itself. All I ask for now, is some more ‘Time’.

Track Pick: Time

 Wintersun-TIME-I-Cover-front-small

 

2. Mors Principium Est- …And Death Said Live (Melodic Death Metal|Finland):  5 years is not a very short waiting time either for a new album. For Finland’s melodic death metal saviours Mors Principium Est, this album being released is a feat of its own. After having almost disbanded, the band has stuck to their belief in their music and have releases this masterpiece of an album. The formula is the same at its core, just a new form of it. The riffwork is melodic yet aggressive and unbridled, the vocals are well-maintained growls and the drums are a delectable set of varying tempos. The haunting keys and added sound programming add another epic dimension to the music. A truly fitting name for a band who’s name itself means ‘Death is the Beginning’.

Track Pick: Birth of the Starchild

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1. Carach Angren- Where the Corpses Sink Forever (Symphonic Black Metal|The Netherlands):  Never has such ingenuity in songwriting resulted in such creative music as this Dutch trio have generated. With their minds set on telling spectral stories, this new album is a concept within a concept. A story of 7 ghosts of war being plagued by immoral ends ravage a World War II executioner as he gets ready to execute 7 soldiers. Each song is a horrifying story of war schizophrenia. The band’s music is homogenously amorphous, with each song written as a symphony. Vocalist/guitarist Seregor’s emotive shrieks echo despair and anger like no other band, Ardek’s haunting keys and symphonic strains are married perfectly to the stringwork and Namtar’s crafty drums march on with groovy, intelligent and shape-shifting grace. One of the most creative forces in metal ever, there is a really bright future that lies ahead for this paranormal powerhouse.

Track Pick: Bitte Totet Mich

 carachAngren-WTCSF

GIR 2010: New Delhi- A Metallic Kick in the Nuts

So I flew back to New Delhi from Singapore on 17th December purely so I would make it in time for GIR 2010. There was no way I would be missing this one as it had not one,not two,not even three but FOUR international metal acts playing. And after having seen Chthonic and Exodus live in disappointingly tiny indoor stadia in Singapore, I was raring to get back to the open air.

The gig on the 1st day, 18th December, was scheduled for 4:30 PM. Unfortunately, the Redbull Bedroom Jam winners Colossal Figures never turned up and the soundcheck for the other bands seemed to be a whole concert on its own. So finally, at quarter to 6, Demonic Resurrection took the stage. They began with the usual intro from ‘Spirit of the Mystic Mountains’ that went into the rest of the song. From the start, the PA seemed to be cranked up to extremely high levels and there were frequent instances of peak buzzing on the speakers which took away some of the beauty of DR’s music. They then went on to play 4 more songs: ‘Bound by Blood,Fire and Stone’,’The Unrelenting Surge of Vengeance’,’Apocalyptic Dawn’ and ‘Frozen Portait’. The keyboards seemed to play hide and seek with the PA system and Daniel Rego’s guitar seemed to dampen the sound of Sahil Makhija’s guitar slightly. All in all, great energy, great original music but bad sound management. Also, Sahil Makhija didn’t seem to be having a great day with the clean vocals either.

Enter long soundcheck break. Up next: Norway’s Purified in Blood. I was a bit surprised about a black metal nation throwing up a metalcore band from the start. As soon as their set began, I realized they were no different from any adrenaline-drenched American counterpart. Their music relied almost entirely on breakdowns. There was almost no hint of a melodic riff nor any attempt at actually exploring the scale spectrum. The vocals were highly generic ‘wet-growls’ (for want of a better description), the bass seemed to be the focus of attention and they seemed to be content with the crowd hearing just one out of 2 guitars. I was told that there are actually 2 vocalists in the band and immediately I thought that it would have been a much more enjoyable set if number two had shown up as well. And then of course the evil show organizers told the band they had time for 1 more song which left a dejected vocalist Hallgeir Skretting Enoksen bidding for 5 more. In the end they got to play 2 more. Oh well, all the kids seemed to be happy to mosh to them so…

Up next were British progressive metal act Teserract (no I refuse to say ‘djent’). I had a very high expectation from these guys and they did not fail to impress. They harmonized clean,reverb-drenched guitar riffs with low-end,palm muted crunches, occasionally playing the pre-recorded clean overlay as well. Bass player Amos Williams was an experimental genius, playing slap-picks during clean sections at times, going the tremolo distance at some other times and always had an expression of complete sexual harmony with his instrument. Vocalist Dan Tompkins was just perfect with his alto strains and held notes, as well as the screams. Also, the vocal processing was really good with the reverbs and echoes ringing perfectly and blending right into the next clean guitar riff. During the set Dan also displayed his essential Hindi dictionary skills by chanting ‘behnchod,madarchod’. The band played the ‘Concealing Fate’ EP in its entirety and were definitely the first all-round awesome performance of the night.

And lastly, the main reason why I came to GIR. Though I have heard little by Enslaved, I loved what I had heard. And they were true Vikings that night as well. Grutle commanded the crowd with such power that I felt like a civvie in Asgard. The band played mostly material from their latest album ‘Axioma Ethica Odini’, which was all progressive-laced black metal with haunting keyboard ambiences as well as beautiful clean vocal strains. Their choices of rhythm and scale well extremely Nordic-inspired but were played in a very Tool-inspired style of chord slides and strums, laced with their own trademark tremolo barrages as well of course. There were few generic blast beats and more groove-laced yet commandeering polyrhythms. Also in their setlist was the now familiar almost-doom metal song ‘Isa’. All in all, Enslaved ended the night in the most epic way possible.

I returned for day 2 a bit late so I ended up missing first act Digital Suicide. I was in time for blues/alt-rock act October from New Delhi. They played a very tight set and were also surprisingly harmonic with their guitars, something that I have yet to hear from other Indian bands in the same rock genre. While their choice of beats and tunes itself was quite generic, they managed to play an energetic set thanks to their experimental,tremolo-laced style of riffing.They also released their debut album ‘Defeat the Question’ at GIR. Vocally they were quite sound but nothing special or new added to the table.

Up next were Guwahati’s Lucid Recess. They played a set of progressive rock songs full of blues and jazz influences and also bordering dangerously on metal , especially thanks to the use of a drop B-tuned 4-string bass. Their songwriting was powerful and emotionally heavy and seemed to keep a bunch of Assamese supporters quite happy and chirpy at any rate. They ended with a song that was dedicated to a friend from IQ Cannibals who had passed away the day before. The song itself ‘Save Me’, was quite an opus, clocking at at least 7 minutes.

One of the more anticipated acts of the evening, Undying Inc, took stage next. Another band with a recent album release (‘Aggressive World Dynasty’), the band was full of energy and confidence. Vocalist Shashank’s scream-growl interplays were brilliantly dramatized with emotive hand gestures, guitarist Biswarup was doing his regular solo headbanging therapy session while bass player Reuben was calmly punding away at the low end. In fact, the most interesting aspect of it was how instantaneously the moshing began as SOON as the music began. No time lag, nothing. Shashank’s control over the crowd rewarded the band with 2 very well-orchestrated walls of death during ‘Membraneous’. Unfortunately, the mic levels were so bad that they cut the highs and mids off, leaving a well-sustained scream sound like a bit more than a mew. But overall, it was a brilliantly done progressive groove/death metal show.

And finally, the band that everyone had waited for for all those performances over the 2 days, Swedish progressive metal giants Meshuggah (notice that I still refuse to say ‘djent’). Their performance was heavy, well-coordinated, brilliantly sound managed and QUICK. They wasted little time in crowd banter and just raced through the first 3 songs (one of them being the mega-ejaculator,poly-rhythm ode ‘Bleed’). Personally though, I found most of the songwriting to be extremely monotonous. They seemed to follow the same scale structure and order in each song barring ‘Bleed’. The hallmark though was percussion brain surgeon Tomas Haake, belting out those calculus-killer beats calmly behind his drum kit. Vocalist Jens Kidman had the crowd practically at his fingertips. After a brief 5 seconds of silence after finishing a certain song the title of which I am not sure of: “Delhi, do you know what just happened? Silence happened….and that definitely does not belong here. Silence is something that belongs to the library, or when you’re in the toilet, taking a shit and reading a book or something”. They ended the set with a well-timed ‘beep beep beepbeep beepbeep’ intro to ‘Future Breed Machine’ and then all the lovely hordes went back to their homes. All in all, I had a great time at GIR 2010 and I hope its a similar mega-lineup for next year. Calling Kalmah would be very nice of them.

Meshuggah join elite line up of bands for GIR 2010

Swedish Extreme Metal giants Meshuggah join this year’s increasingly popular line up for The Great Indian Rock Festival. They will be playing along side Norwegian bands and Purified and Enslaved,and Tesseract from the UK. The intensity has certainly gone up a notch with their inclusion as everyone waits for this spectacle, so make sure you don’t miss it!

TesseracT And Enslaved In India This December.

Enslaved and Tesseract have both declared on their official Facebook pages that they will be performing in India this December for Great Indian Rock(GIR)!!! We haven’t seen the bands confirming it on any other pages like myspace/twitter, so it doesn’t seem like a totally done deal as of now. 1807