New Shit

Overkill - 'Mean, Green, Killing Machine'

Great news, U.S. Thrash Titans Overkill have released a track from their upcoming album 'The Grinding Wheel', which is due out on February 10th via Nuclear Blast.

The song is a 7 minute thrash monster, classic Overkill and exactly what you want to hear from a legendary thrash band. Bring on the album!

Listen here

Breaking News

Nile in the recording studio

The U.S. Death metal band Nile have announced that they are currently in the recording studio, working on the follow up to the 2015 album 'What Should Not Be Unearthed'.

The band have said on their Facebook page "We are slaving away in the dungeon (studio) gearing up for our February and March USA tour with Overkill - Looking forward to getting back on the road!"

The album should be yet another slab of technical and brutal death metal what we have come to expect from the band. Bring it on guys!

EP Review

Call of the Void - 'AYFKM'

For those not yet ingrained into the veritable gash in human existence that is the sound created by Call Of The Void, this is a thoroughly thematic review of extreme music, and stamped with the authority of a group of people who understand that sometimes the book doesn't need throwing away, just re-writing to suit your own needs.

Grind is inherently extreme and aggressive music, so to describe a grind band is to describe the genre in general. Call Of The Void are as extreme and aggressive as you would expect when opening the tin, but, the key is what they do with the genre, the taste is in the juice these beans are baked in, not the beans themselves you understand, and that's why Call Of The Void are not a grind band.

Yes, they are extreme. Yes, they are aggressive. Yes, the drummer has had a few too many red bulls and spends some of his his time going batshit mental. But this is a band with far more punk/hardcore running through their veins than Napalm Death and a bucket of crust for every cup of Nasum in this sound.

That isn't to say there isn't a grind element to them of course. They will inevitably be compared to Pig Destroyer like every grind band is, and on first listen, that is understandable. But with every repeated listen of this bands material, you begin to hear more and more influences from the punk/hardcore world in the riffs than the grind in the drums. That's what makes this one damn interesting band.

The last we heard from Call Of The Void was on the rightly critically acclaimed Ageless in 2015, an album which was one of the best released in extreme music that year, and now here we are, at the arse end of 2016, and a new EP has turned up, just to wet out appetite for a new album. A bone fide cock tease to end the year.

'AYFKM' starts off with 'Get in the Van', three minutes of slow, brooding, moody riffs, before gathering pace with some straight up hardcore and excellent vocals for the end of the song, before heading into the 100 seconds of 'Are You Fucking Killing Me', a song which is almost catchy in its execution, relying on a handful of rolling and memorable riffs to keep moving.

'Throwing Bullets' gathers some steam, almost gang vocals and excellent drumming throughout has the adrenaline running when the song hits its climatic ending, the best song on the EP. The slow brooding, moody riffs are back during 'On and On', the song being instantly memorable for its headbanging rhythms before we hit the final song on this too short EP in 'Never Enough', with riffs swirling around and the bass really standing out more as the song grows, its an excellent ending to an enjoyable EP.

This EP is undoubtedly a step forward for the band, showcasing that they are so much more than another grind band, they have far more depth that that in their locker, and it is by far the best sounding release they have put out, with all the instruments being given room to breath which wasn't quite the case on the excellent 'Ageless', this really has raised the bar and expectations for the next album, and should stop lazy comparisons to other grind bands. Enjoyable, impressive and leaving people wanting more, all in all a damn fine day in the office for Call of the Void.

9\10

KC

Top Tracks - 'Throwing Bullets', 'Never Enough'

EP Review

Nine Inch Nails - 'Not The Actual Events'

Playing the part of Santa this year has been a certain Mr Michael Trent Reznor, announcing a new EP called 'Not The Actual Events' a week before Christmas, to be be released on December 23rd, just in time for us all to digest while wrapping up those New Rock boots and black eyeliner presents.

The EP actually came out a day earlier on the 22nd of December, and it's got as much Christmas spirit as an empty bottle of Buckfast and a bottle of pills.

NIN seem to have been treating us to unexpected gifts for ever now, ever since the split with Interscope in 2007, the band have released plenty of independent music, with lots of it available for free, and it's this approach again which Reznor has taken with the bands second EP.

Combining five tracks over 21 minutes, this EP touches on almost every aspect of what makes NIN great, while never quite hitting the heights which we come to expect from the band. But still, a free five track EP as an early Christmas present from the grandmasters of industrial is certainly nothing to be sniffed at.

The EP starts off with 'Branches/Bones', a short track less than two minutes longs which starts off with a simple drum beat and bass guitar riff, before massively overdriven guitars kick in playing the bass riff and layered vocals add more intensity to the riff. The whole thing is repeated before we move straight into 'Dear World'. This combines an electronic start sounding almost like the Chemical Brothers with lots of whispering vocals. As the track goes on, this sounds more and more like it could have been on 'The Fragile'. Utilising syncopated high hats on the drums throughout to counter the on beat electronics, and creates a real sense of ambivalence about the nature of the song. Is this electronic? Is this industrial? Does it matter? A signature NIN song.

'She's gone away' is a real terror of a song, channeling nasty Orwellian dystopian feelings with a pile of introspective and paranoid ramblings, with more layered vocals over a slow droning riff, this is six minutes of looking over your shoulder and feeling uncomfortable.

The pace is picked right up for the next song, a Pitchshifter style riff to start off 'The Idea of You' is mixed with a use of clean sounding keys which is again leaning towards sounding a little like The Fragile. There are more electronics in the breakdown middle eight of the song, yet again layered vocals in the mix, building up to a messy noisy clash of sounds almost collapsing all over the floor, before being held together by that Pitchshifter sounding riff again and ending suddenly. Throwing us into the final song on the EP, 'Burning Bright (Field of Fire)' is about as bright as your average industrial rock club, darkness is flowing right thought the middle of this song, bringing the feelings of reading '1984' alive in your ears, the clattering collapse of society is always on the surface of this song, combining moments of sheer futility and Jesu style soundscapes, this makes you hope for a full album of Trent Reznor produced hellish daunting music like this. It might not be popular, but it would be damn interesting.

And then the whole thing ends, a mix of electronics, overdriven guitars and hell, a really interesting EP, which creates more questions than answers, and makes you wonder what next for this proudly independent artist.

7/10

KC

Top Tracks - 'The Idea of You', 'Dear World'

Album of the Year - 1st Place

Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas - Mariner

And so we arrive, at the top of the tree, for the album which this writer considers the outstanding release of the year. Realistically, any one of the top 10 albums, in another year, could be considered the top dog, however, they have all fallen at the same time as a genuine line-in-the-sand moment in post-metal history.

Most people will have heard of Cult of Luna, the post-metal band from Sweden who arrived on the scene being predictably compared to Isis, "Mariner" is their seventh album release. Over the years they have often pushed into places other bands wouldn't have even thought of, never mind considered. The monumentally brilliant "Salvation" has for a long time been considered one of their greatest musical moment, but the band has grown in their art ever since, and now put together entire concepts, like the incredible "Eternal Kingdom" album in 2008 being accompanied by a supporting book, and audiobook and the conceptual "Vertikal" I & II, which pushed themes of industrial cities and machinery into the narrative. Cult of Luna have always looked at ways they could evolve, progress and mature their sound.

Now we have "Mariner", where Cult of Luna have again developed, this time by writing the album as a collaboration with Julie Christmas. The added dimension of female vocals on here means this is a Cult of Luna style you have never heard before.

Julie Christmas herself is by no means lacking in post-metal experience of course. The former Made Out of Babies vocalist has already got a impressive collection of recording, with the aforementioned band, post-metal supergroup Battle of Mice and a stirring solo album have all showed that she is a leading vocalist in the post-metal scene and a grand songwriter.

Adding someone as talented as Julie Christmas to a band as accomplished as Cult of Luna sounds like it's a sure-fire winner, but the sum of the parts is so much greater than the whole.

Between the seven musicians who have created this masterpiece, they have excogitated all the parts of post-metal and added a finely focused lens to the brew. Every single note sounds purposeful, every single riff memorable and every single word sung perfectly, be it Christmas' delicate soulful performance or the guttural roars, it all hits so purposefully.

"Mariner" is again a concept album, focused on space exploration, and the stratosphere is his big this album deserves to be. There have been some great albums released this year, and then there has been this. An album which could come to define post-metal. Phenomenal.

KC

Album Of The Year

1 - Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas - 'Mariner'
2 - Urfaust - 'Empty Space Meditation'
3 - Thrawsunblat - 'Metachthonia'
4 - Trap Them - 'Crown Feral'
5 - Cobalt - 'Slow Forever'
6 - Ihsahn - 'Arktis'
7 - Bossk - 'Audio Noir'
8 - Anaal Nathrakh - 'The Whole of the Law'
9 - Gojira - 'Magma'

10 - Boss Keloid - 'Herb Your Enthusiasm'

Album of the Year - 2nd Place

Urfaust - Empty Space Meditation

So, after 5 days of flu, Tonsillitis and the utterly disgusting Bronchitis, I am finally able to write without being sick, falling over (inner ear infection also, forgot that one), or generally wishing death would come and subside what my walking abortion of a life this week has become, so here I am.

And what a band to talk about for my first words back.

Urfaust, if you've never heard of them, are a Dutch ambient black metal band, a duo who's style creates an inescapable feeling of emptiness, hopelessness and bleakness at the future of you, me, this planet, and everything else in the universe. A desolate expression of despair and with no hint of any hope or redemption for any of us. It's everything you would ever want to hear from a black metal band.

The bands early material was mainly on the ambient side of the ambient black metal coin, but now on their fourth full length, not to mention a bag full of EPs, the coin is standing very much on its edge, and the band have put together the ambience and the hopelessness together to make a stunning record.

"Empty Space Meditation" is the stand out black metal album of the year by a distance, this is a piece of work which should bring a significant increase in attention to this outstanding duo from the Netherlands, everything on here, from the guttural throat singing, to the ambivalent atmosphere, the production, the progressive approach to building and constructing the songs is finely balanced on the knife edge of making you want to world to collapse, and thinking it already has.

Every time the album ends, you will listen to it again, you will stare at whatever is in front of you, and stare right through it, thinking about the meaning of the universe, and how pointless it is (so do not listen in work like I did, you will do nothing all day). This album pushes you to the edge time and time again, but has you desperate to come back for another hit of degradation. A stunning piece of art.

KC

Album Of The Year

2 - Urfaust - 'Empty Space Meditation'
3 - Thrawsunblat - 'Metachthonia'
4 - Trap Them - 'Crown Feral'
5 - Cobalt - 'Slow Forever'
6 - Ihsahn - 'Arktis'
7 - Bossk - 'Audio Noir'
8 - Anaal Nathrakh - 'The Whole of the Law'
9 - Gojira - 'Magma'

10 - Boss Keloid - 'Herb Your Enthusiasm'

Album of the Year - 5th Place

Cobalt - Slow Forever

Greeley, Colorado. Sounds like quite a nice place really. But in reality it must be a variable hell on earth, because it must take somewhere especially horrific to be able to create music like Cobalt have been doing so for the last 15 years. This Duo have made a career out of trawling the line between eerie, heinous and utterly horrific avant-guard metal vocals and basing the songs generally around massive sledgehammer riffs, Cobalt have been making a damn fine racket for our enjoyment.

Seven years since the water-mark setting "Gin" was released, we finally have the next instalment in "Slow Forever" released again on the always high quality Profound Lore label, the name of this album could easily be a reference to how long it feels like it's been since we last heard the band.

From the almost nine minute blood-curdling opener "Hunt The Buffalo" to the heart racing album ending in "Siege", the band never once refrain from this defining moment in their career. This is their magnum opus, and it will take something especially spectacular to surpass it. And that is something you wouldn't put past this band.

KC

Album Of The Year

5 - Cobalt - 'Slow Forever'
6 - Ihsahn - 'Arktis'
7 - Bossk - 'Audio Noir'
8 - Anaal Nathrakh - 'The Whole of the Law'
9 - Gojira - 'Magma'

10 - Boss Keloid - 'Herb Your Enthusiasm'

Album of the Year - 6th place

Ihsahn - Arktis

Vegard Sverre Tveitan, the artist commonly known as Ihsahn has ascended into such legendary status that practically anything he does would receive positive attention. The fact that everything he does turns to gold is also helpful of course.

The regularity with what Ihsahn puts out albums is comforting as we know we are never too far from hearing his experimental edge yet again.

Arktis is yet another step in the evolution of this captivating solo career, and its astounding how far the music had come since the impressive debut "The Adversary". Experimental, Progressive, what ever you want to call it, Arktis is a rewarding journey though a myriad of ideas and an abundance of talent. A magnificent production job putting the final garnish on to the album, it's another outstanding achievement from the most mesmerising of artist.

Album Of The Year

6 - Ihsahn - 'Arktis'
7 - Bossk - 'Audio Noir'
8 - Anaal Nathrakh - 'The Whole of the Law'
9 - Gojira - 'Magma'

10 - Boss Keloid - 'Herb Your Enthusiasm'

Album Review

Thrawsunblat - Metachthonia

This album was released a full 5 months ago, and at the time this writer was working on a blog completely unrelated to music in any way, so it slipped under my radar. Then last week, while reviewing one of the new release lists I check each Friday, this showed up.

Now I recognised the name due to being a massive Woods of Ypres fan, so decided to have a look at the album and when I realised that it wasn't actually a new release and was 5 months old, and had been put on the list by mistake, I decided I was including this as one of my album reviews this week none the less.

Thrawsunblat are a band who are closely linked to the aforementioned Woods of Ypres, thanks to the magnificent David Gold being a member until his untimely passing, and former Woods of Ypres members Brendan Hayter, Joel Violette and Rae Amitay also being in the band. David is no longer with us, but the other three are moving the band forward, with Joel on guitars and vocals, Brendan on Bass and Rae on Drums, as well as providing additional vocals at points.

Unsurprisingly, Thrawsunblat have a little of the melancholy that Woods of Ypres were famous for running through their veins, combining this with some black metal, some Swallow the Sun style atmospherics and a smattering of clean vocals throughout and they have a mixture which creates 10 minute epic extreme metal masterpieces, rolling through discordant and almost ancient chanting style vocals to melodies which sound like they were created from the roots of the Garden of Eden, Thrawsunblat piece together their interest and influences into a leviathan sized melodic black metal/folk metal album, bringing in the 6 tracks at a combined 58 minutes.

The album starts off with cellos, introducing us to some medium paced guitar before exploding into a combination of melodic thrashing and riffs swirling around the sky, before coming back to earth with more cellos and folk style vocals underpinning the galloping rhythms. Every time you think the song is coming to an end, the band rebuild like a city recovering from natural disaster, the  song is revived time and time again, each subsequent time building further and higher than the time before, continually becoming more epic as the song climaxes into a magnificent final ending. "Fires That Light the Earth" is a stunning beginning to the album.

"She Who Names the Stars" is reading from the same script and pulls you in close to its soaring richness, veering from agonising vocals to soaring and profound sections. Interspersed again with cellos and the layered guitars giving the song a more diverse substance, the song pulls at your heartstrings one moment before injecting you with adrenaline the next, forcing the sheer conviction in everything they are doing upon you. The folk style vocals are in full force on "Dead of Winter", beginning with a simple vocal section, the songs flares up into more swirling riffing and this time keeps its foot on your throats as they do so. This is a galloping black metal song touching the limits of what the genre can manage.

"Hypochthonic Remnants" is an overdriven  staccato laden piece with the outstanding guitar piece of the album right in the middle of the song, this is where the band really start to flex and show the buckets of talent they have, playing some majestic metal before we head into "Rivers of Underthought". Continuing everything we've heard so far, "Rivers of Underthought" throws in a hypnotic guitar solo and the best vocal performance on the album, moving to the softest moment of the album, subtle bass combining with clean guitar picking before instantly hitting the heaviest section of the album to finish off and take us to the album closer "In Mist We Walk". Almost 12 minutes of utterly bombastic black metal, hitting everything which has come so far on the album, controlling the rhythm and pace to really ensure maximum impact throughout all passages as they hit melodic, black metal and folk time and time again, the band are almost hedonistic in their pursuit of intensity and leave nothing in the bank as they go for broke one last time. Yet more spine tingling moments where the song seems to have ended before being taken on another, higher journey, continually washing over the painting they have made, to create something more impressive and abstract, yet startlingly familiar to everything you've heard, it's a suitably impressive ending to a monumental album.

10/10

KC

Top Tracks - "She Who Names the Stars", "Rivers of Underthought"

New Shit - Unearthly Trance

The excellent drone/sludge band from New York City Unearthly Trance have announced they will be releasing their first album in 7 years on February 24th. Called "Stalking The Ghost", it will be released by Relapse Records and will feature 8 new songs.

To say that this band has been missed is an understatement. Excitement is building for this release already.

Relapse Records have had this to say:
"An esoteric ritual of seismic doom, 'Stalking The Ghost' taps into the darkest realms of the occult over the course of seven tracks that reek of utter despair. Forming a balance between slow-churning maelstrom and spine-chilling harmony, wrapped beneath a blackened cloud of rumbling feedback, Unearthly Trance sounds more powerful and exploratory than ever before. Recorded at Menegroth/The Thousand Caves Studios by Colin Marston (Krallice, Gorguts, Panopticon) and featuring cover art by Orion Landau (Yob, Red Fang, Graves At Sea), 'Stalking The Ghost' restores misery to a gentrifying city."

Well then, can't really argue with that.

Track listing is as follows:
1. Into The Spiral
2. Dream State Arsenal
3. Sycthe
4. Famine
5. Lion Strength
6. Invisible Butchery
7. The Great Cauldron
8. In The Forests Keep


Listen to a new track right now here

Album of the year - 7th place 

Bossk - "Audio Noir"

Being a massive post-metal fan ever since I first heard Oceanic by Isis (band, not terrorist group) around 2002, this lead me on Neurosis, and later the outstanding Cult of Luna.

In search of top British bands playing this music, and around 2007 I discovered Bossk, thanks to a brilliant live performance. Shortly afterwards, they broke up, and they have disappeared from my consciousness ever since.

Until this year, when the brilliant Audio Noir landed, every bit as heavy, discordant and intense as the bands mentioned above, the debut album is a testament to the fight this band has had to receive the recognition they deserve, and hopefully, now they have been revived, they will get.

Album Of The Year

7 - Bossk - 'Audio Noir'
8 - Anaal Nathrakh - 'The Whole of the Law'
9 - Gojira - 'Magma'

10 - Boss Keloid - 'Herb Your Enthusiasm'

Album Review

Zao - The Well-Intentioned Virus

Zao are a band who are tarred with a number of things relating to their 11 album career, so let's get it all out in the open to start off with. Firstly, the big fuck off elephant in the room, that they are a Christian metal band. While this may have been true for a long period of the bands history, even calling themselves "Christ-centered hardcore" a long time ago and some of the members may indeed be Christians. But that was then, and this is now, and to tag them simply as Christian metal is to pigeonhole a band who have said that is no longer who they are and are much more than that.

Secondly, they are metalcore. Again, looking into the history of the band, it's hard to disagree that's what they were. They toured with metalcore bands, had incredibly metalcore song titles (see "To Think of You Is to Treasure an Absent Memory"), and well, played metalcore. Which isn't itself a bad thing, good metalcore is absolutely fantastic, but there were a million and one generic metalcore bands, so getting tarred with that particular brush was always concerning.

But ever since they worked with the magnificent Steve Albini on the quite frankly ludicrously good The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here they have been anything but generic, they have moved away from metalcore and are now just really fucking good. Pantera once released some of the most terrible power metal you could ever hear, but they evolved into so much more. Much like them, Zao have become a completely different beast.

After 11 albums and a handful of EPs, Zao have now decided to do away with dealing with record labels and released this on their own instead, called 'Observed/Observer'. It's a brave step for any band, but given the quality of the previous few releases from the band, confidence is obviously high in the Zao camp and this is a purposeful stride forward for the band.

For anyone not fully versed with the history of Zao, let's just say, they have had a few members. The band have no original members in the band anymore, but it's the long time duo of Scott Mellinger and Daniel Weyandt who have been the heart and sole of this band for a long time, and with long time guitarist Russ Cogdell back in the band, we have a classic line up of the band together for the album to do what Zao do best.

And that starts with clean guitar on the opening song "The Weeping Vessel", quickly breaking into a single massive riff, huge groove and double kick drum driving the album forward to a great start. The band sounds almost like Machine Head with a much more intense vocal performance. The title track then starts off with another massive riff, now sounding like Strapping Young Lad with a hangover and ready to kill someone, the song breaks into an incredible Gojira style riff before ending with some fantastic dual lead guitar at the end, a simply awesome tune.

"Broken Pact Blues" starts with an off kilter riff, then breaks into a spacey bass-led clean singing experience, the production on the album really shines here, outstanding clarity before we are thrown back to heavy riffing again. Zao really can write a simply monstrous riff. We continue into the next song, the magnificent "Jinba Ittai", which could be the best song on the album, sounding almost like Lamb of God, more impressive riffs and song writing shows off Zao really performing at their best. The riff at 1:20 of this song could be riff of the year.

After four heavy tracks, we finally get time to come up for breath with "Apocalypse", a slow building atmospheric song, with a wonderful vocal performance, the guitars sounds like Cult of Luna's recent output, the song builds into a climactic thunderstorm, almost imploding on itself before the album hits its second massive high point in "Xenophobe", a song which sounds like the best thing Mastodon have never written, it's frankly astounding how many riffs they have managed to fit into 3 minutes.

"Haunting Pools" is a mix of heavy and clean singing around another song with heavy Gojira influences, and this is what Zao are great at, you can hear the influences throughout this album, but at no point does it sound anything but strikingly original all the way. The most interesting song on the album is "Observed/Observer", with this being the name of the new label the band are self releasing the album on, its interesting to hear a song which would be perfect to play someone for them to hear as their first every Zao song, it has everything the band are good at, it's heavy, it has both clean and heavy vocals, a song waiting to be played on dance floors in metal clubs all around the world.

The album finished on a high note with the final two songs, "The Sun Orbits Around Flat Earth Witch Trials" is a typical heavy, riff led song, relying on excellent guitar and solid drumming, finishing with a pinched harmonic riff which Zakk Wylde would be proud to call his own, and the final song "I Leave You in Peace" is a  monument to everything we have heard on the album, this song is a monolith of the biggest monsters, continually building and evolving over 7 magnificent minutes.

This album is another step forward for a band who have never been afraid to do so, it combines both of their previous albums, the unquestionably brilliant The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here and the more restrained Awake? In exactly how you would hope.

Is this the best album Zao have released? Possibly, however they are a different band now to when they first arrived, so it's difficult to compare all the albums, what we can say with confidence, is that it is a wonderful album and deserves the attention of every metal fan you can find to tell them about it.

If I hadn't already written my album of the year list, this would have walked into the top 10 without a doubt

9/10

KC

Top Tracks - "A Well-Intentioned Virus", "Jinba Ittai", "Xenophobe"

Album of the year - 8th place

Anaal Nathrakh - 'The Whole of the Law'

Simply a band who always sound like the heaviest band you've ever heard, with every single album which comes out. Anaal Nathrakh have released 9 albums now, some of the most brilliantly constructed death/black/grind/pernicious metal ever heard, as well as some times putting out albums which have received criticism for moving in overly industrial circles or bringing the extremity down just a touch.

Well 'The Whole of the Law' simply cannot be criticised for the level of extremity on show, this is up to Spinal Tap numbers before making your eyes bleed, its Anaal Nathrakh at their best. Vicious, violent and creative, mixing sheer intensity with pure adrenaline to scare the shit out of anyone sitting next to you on a bus, this is how extreme metal should be done.

As oppressive as Mugabe regime, Anaal Nathrakh have always sounded like they are going to fucking kill you, and now, they have the song to prove it, in the stand out track on the album "We Will Fucking Kill You".

This is simply brilliant.

KC

Album Of The Year

8 - Anaal Nathrakh - 'The Whole of the Law'
9 - Gojira - 'Magma'

10 - Boss Keloid - 'Herb Your Enthusiasm'

New Shit - Sunn O)))

The prophets of the slowest doom imaginable Sunn O))) have released a kind of new song in "青木ヶ原 // 樹海 (Aokigahara // Jukai),".

This was actually first released as part of the Kannon album in late 2015. The song was available as a bonus 7" with the vinyl release for a limited time, but has now been put out digitally by the band and can be heard on the link below.

The song is exactly what you are expecting to hear, and if you are one of the converted, you will be in drone heaven. It's as uncomfortable as ride as always with Sunn O))) and a ride which is a great as their high quality performances always demand. A leviathan of drone

https://sunn.bandcamp.com/album/--2

Album of the year - 9th place

Gojira - Magma

Four years. Four long, barren, desolate Gojira-less years since L'Enfant Sauvage was released. Since we first heard the latest in a stream of masterpieces, and possibly their magnum opus. Oh sure, we had a couple of live releases in Les Enfants Sauvages and an exceptional split live EP with Kvelertak to bide the time. But when you heard something as magnificent as L'Enfant Sauvage then you become addicted to Gojira, and four years becomes a very long time.

Thankfully, the wait is over, and Magma is everything us addicts need. The Sixth studio album from them and a real beginning of evolution from the band. Still fundamentally brutal in its approach, Magma additionally incorporates an increase in clean vocals and a decrease in schizophrenic song arrangements and riffs, instead being replaced with a more controlled and direct approach to crushing your skull. The riffs are still fantastic, like always, but Magma is so streamlined it sounds almost contemporary to other metal bands. And this is in no way a criticism. Gojira have in the past created unbelievably epic music, however the song which garnered most attention on L'Enfant Sauvage was 'The Gift of Guilt', the most accessible song on the album.
Magma is a more considered and direct approach then Gojira have usually taken, and just as impressive from a true modern powerhouse of metal.

Album Of The Year

9 - Gojira - "Magma"

10 - Boss Keloid - "Herb Your Enthusiasm" 

Album of the year - 10th place

Boss Keloid - "Herb Your Enthusiasm" 

Being from the North West of England Boss Keloid is a band who I've been familiar with for quite some time, however the music on Herb Your Enthusiasm isn't something many people will be familiar with because the music here is quite different from anything in metal at the moment.

On the tin, it says Sludge. The fact that they are named after an Iron Monkey song just hammers that point home. But Ronseal this is not, and it does far more than what it says on the tin.

Sludge is the starting point, but this Wigan bunch have thrown in a bit of everything in metal as long as it's slow, and have more groove than Clutch could shake a stick at. This is music which doesn't move mountains, it makes them from being so heavy the world around them collapses. It sounds so much like tar filling your ear that you could discover new species of dinosaurs inside. A very special sophomore effort from the pie-barm bunch.

KC

New Shit

Sepultura - "I Am The Enemy"

Brazilian thrash and metal legends current incarnation have released the lead single from their upcoming new album Machine Messiah, which will be released on January 13th by Nuclear Blast Records, the third studio album they have released on the label.

Now, Sepultura are a band who have divided opinions in the metal world ever since a certain Cavalera left the band, however, if you put all feelings on that subject aside and simply listen to this song, you have to be impressed.

If this is anything to go by, the new album should be a hardcore influenced brutal monster, and I for one can't wait to listen to it.

Yes I'd love to see the classic line up together again, but this version can write some excellent stuff.

Listen here

Album review

Trap Them - Crown Feral

I discovered Trap Them only recently when I was scrolling though Facebook. A friend with similar music taste to myself shared a song of theirs from YouTube. I thought I'd give it a go, listened to the song they posted... totally blown away.

The track was 'Hellionaires' and the biggest compliment for this album is, the song which blew me away isn't even the best song on the album.

Trap Them is an especially brutal Grindcore band from Seattle, the best way to describe them is think The Red Cord playing Black Flag songs using Entombed instruments in a really really fucking bad mood. Now you're getting somewhere close.

Crown Feral is their fifth album, and the third for Prosthetic Records, who are becoming pretty special themselves at recognising talent and supporting it to reach glorious heights.

And feral is exactly what comes to mind after approximately 5 seconds when the first Ryan McKenney guttural scream reaches down your throat and punches you in the stomach. Trap Them have many strong points, but McKenney's vocals are just about top of them. Like Grady Avenell in Will Haven, the vocals hear really push up the intensity to a level almost uncomfortable to listen to. It's a magnificent performance throughout the album.

The rest of the band really have performed on the album too, the riffs are unstoppable, the drumming ferocious and the bass unrestrained.

The album kicks off with 'Kindred Dirt', a slow, brooding, cacophony of sound, before firing into the aforementioned 'Hellionaires', a magnificent 100 mph punch to the face which gets adrenaline running though every inch of the body. Firing more and more impressive riffs at you as the song goes on, before 'Prodigala' takes over and continues the explosion of riffs at lightning speed.

The violence doesn't let up, 'Luster Pendulums' pummels the listening into submission, 'Malengines Here, Where They Should Be' has the groove which Lamb of God left behind on 'Sacrament'. 'Speak Nigh' has more great riffs than most bands manage in a career.

'Twitching in the Auras' slows the pace right down, and is a frightening experience as you know that this is the calm before a murderous storm, and that's what it proves to be as they launch into the stand out song on the album, and maybe of 2016 in 'Revival Spines', three minutes of pure aggression and hostility to make even the most metal of listeners looking over their shoulder. This song is everything you could ever want in a metal song.
The album finishes off with a classic 2 minute Grind track in 'Stray of the Tongue' and a maelstrom of ideas and creativity in 'Phantom Air', before finishing off, putting on its coat and walking out the door just 31 minutes after walking in.

The whole thing is held together by a taintless production job by Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou, a man who knows exactly how to pull together all the sounds in this environment and allow them to breath in their own space for the listener to enjoy. Pure clarity, but consistently nasty sounding, there can't be many men in the world who could have done a better job producing this.

Trap Them have created a grindcore masterpiece, and a contender for album of the year in every end of year review. The undisputed kings of grind.

9/10

Top Tracks - Revival Spines, Hellionaires

Music Video

Anaal Nathrakh - We Will Fucking Kill You

Anaal Nathrakh, never ones to shy away from violence, have released a suitably tempestuous video for the song 'We Will Fucking Kill You'.

Now, given the not-so-subtle name of the song, you would expect to see an aggressive demeanour in the video, and you will not be disappointed. Unless of course, you are expecting the name of the song to be literal, and have been waiting for the Nathrakh guys to knock on your door since the magnificent 'The Whole of the Law' was released, in that case, keep waiting.

The rest of us can watch it here

Breaking News

Popular crazy haired hyphenate loving post-hardcore band, At-the Drive In have released their first new material since the critically acclaimed 'Relationship of Command' album way back in 2000!

As well as the new song they have announced that they will released a new album on Rise Records.

Fallaini haired Omar Rodriquez-Lopez will be co-producing with Rich Costly and the new song 'Governed by Contagions’ can be heard on the link below.

To this writers ears, it sounds fantastic, it has all the energy and electricity which 'Relationship of Command', well, commanded.

If this is any guide to go bye, the album is going to be worth the G'n'R style wait

See the video here

Download the track for free from here

Album Review

Metallica - Hardwired... To Self-Destruct

Do you remember that scene in 'I'm Alan Partridge'? The one where Alan is dancing around his caravan playing air bass to the Gary Numan song 'Music For Chameleons', looking all the world like a man who believes he is truly on the stage playing to literally tens of people.
Well, in 1999, in my bedroom, I was doing a more uncoordinated, and some how more embarrassing version of 'The Alan' as I listened to the first Metallica music I had owned, heard and enjoyed "...and justice for all".

A lack of understanding of the relatively new Napster and the world of file sharing combined with no friends having any of Metallica's music meant that my knowledge of 'tallica was stricken to the teenage calling card of Kerrang! And the hope that they might include a song on one of the compilations they sometimes gave away with the magazine (Lars giving away music for free? I did say I was lacking in file sharing knowledge).

The closest my local library's CD collection came was Megadeth's 'Cryptic Writings', and with a cover as bad as that, there was no way I was going to spend the 50p it cost to take it out for a week.
No, I was simply aware that a lot of people liked them, and the recently released 'Garage Inc' received heavy coverage in the aforementioned teenage rock bible.

So, a week after my birthday (16, a fully fledged adult in my eyes) and with £15 still burning a hole in my trackie bottoms, which I wished were a pair of DDs the cool skaters in Manchester Piccadilly wore, I was whisked away to Cheshire Oaks, Cheshire premier outlet retail park (resembling Alan Partridge again right now). Well, I say whisked, I mean my parents were going, and I had £15 so jumped in the car.

When I saw a large Virgin Music store in the park as we were leaving, I was in there as quick as Geoffrey Boycott claiming the action which he just saw, he had clearly predicted earlier in the day.
Browsing the metal section, I picked up 'Garage Inc'. £22. Devastated. I've already had an extra £2 off my dad to buy a bag of broken chocolates from the Cadbury store, there is more chance of Manchester having a 2 day summer than me getting another £7 while I have money in my pocket. Disappointed but determined, I rifle through the rest of the Metallica section.
An album with a black cover, £17.
An album with a load of crosses, £17.
An awesome looking album with what likes like fire made from water on the cover, £17.
Eureka, an album with a white cover and a women on the front, £14, within my budget, also, another one! This with a hammer and blood on the cover, £14. I've gone from nothing to buy, to a decision to make in mere seconds. Knowing I was expected back outside in 5 minutes, and a queue suggesting that the Virgin Music retail business is going to thrive well into the next century, I decide quickly on the white album, simply because the other one looks significantly lower budget (I wasn't right on much at this age, but this one I nailed).

Back in the car, with my new album in a red and black Virgin bag, I immediately started to struggle with the terrible clear sticky plastic security tag on the CD, being a serial nail biter, it causes me significantly more trouble that it should, eventually, resulting in me asking my mum for her keys.
Once opened, I start to read every word intently, hoping to absorb some of the music directly from the page, even finding out exactly which members of Metallica touring crew they specifically wanted to thank, and wondering who the hell this Burton guy is who wrote the lyrics to one of the songs but isn't in the band. After 20 minutes of furiously studying the booklet, car sickness takes hold, so away with the booklet, and I spend the rest of the journey staring out the window thinking that one day, I'm going to make a music video, which is just a camera looking out of a car window. Genius.

Once home, I place my spanking new CD into my 3 CD changer stereo system (yep, 3 CD changer. 3 whole albums in a single one foot squared box. Who could have imagined that) and spend approximately the next 3 weeks listening to nothing but Metallica at their furious best.

This was a big moment in my music history, I had met Metallica, and I had met them very well indeed.
The following months began a collection of Metallica CD's from saving my spends including Puppets, the black album and Load. Curiously not Garage Inc for quite a number of years, the £22 price tag obviously did a number on my subconscious.
Birth, School, Metallica, Death as the shirt says. I had now entered part 3.

Not all album reviews I write will have an intro this long. In fact, practically no one will have a foreword to the review such as this. But then, not all bands are Metallica.

So onto the review.


This is not simply Death Magnetic Part 2. How attractive it must have been to them to be able to stick to what they did last time, avoid all the St. Anger/Lulu hate and put out another solid album, receive moderate critical acclaim, sell a bucket load, and tour the world with the fanatical support lapping up every note they play.
But if death magnetic was Metallica finding their footing once again, then Hardwired... To Self-Destruct is Metallica striding confidently through the dust of the St.Anger/Lulu cloud of darkness which surrounded them.
Not that the album is a classic, or without its pitfalls, but we have been given an album which at worse is as good as Death Magnetic, but at its best, is Metallica. And that's the highest acclaim a metal band can receive.

The album starts off in a frenzy of Lars drumming and Hetfield riffs in the title track, and, slightly cringe worthy lyrics aside, sets off at a breakneck speed with the rapacity of the band attempting to exhaust the crowd in the obvious opening track of the live show during the forthcoming Hardwired tour.
Atlas, Rise! Throws a myriad of riffs at the listener, veering from classic sounding Metallica to classic sounding Iron Maiden seamlessly, and is an early high point on the album, including a cacophony of solos to entirely make us forget that they once released an album without a single solo on it.
Now That We're Dead thankfully slows the pace from breakneck speed, 21 years old most of the crowd are not anymore, and will need a breather while watching.
Moth into the Flame brings the pace back up, into another one of the album highlights, before we hit the first disappointing track on the album in Dream No More. Not that it is in itself a bad song, but compared to the songs before, the mid-paced plodding along feels much more Re-Load than anything else herein.
The disappointment is short lived however, as immediately we hit the stand out song on the album, impressive lead guitar throughout, coupled with Hetfield putting in one some of the best singing we never knew he could do, Halo of Fire weaves together all the best parts of Metallica into an unstoppable epic ending to CD1.
Phew.
CD2 kicks off in a strikingly similar style as CD1, with an impending drum lead riff to start things off, and the opening track Confusion doesn't disappoint, with the subject matter dealing with PTSD, they manage to get across the message in a suitably intense and uncomfortable six minutes, if there is one thing Metallica have always done well, it's translating emotions from war and conflict into their music.
ManUNkind takes us back to similar territory to Dream No More, another mid paced grinder which probably would have been a great track on a post album EP like Beyond Magnetic, however, surrounded by the quality on the album, feels disappointing. This doesn't last long however, as we are immediately catapulted back into quality with Here Comes Revenge, which is a 7 minute rolling adventure revolving around an excellent riff, and supported by a cast of great lyrics and vocals.
Am I Savage? Although disappointing that it isn't an ode to Macho Man Randy Savage, shows the other disappointing mid paced songs on the album how it's done. The riff has groove, the vocals are indeed Savage, and it's topped off with some fine lead guitar courtesy of Mr Hammett. This leads us into the outstanding final one-two punch of Murder One and Spit Out The Bone. Murder One spends almost 6 minutes building from its clean picking start to a barrel of fury, barely contained within the confines of your ear drums, which soon comes to an end as soon as Spit Out The Bone takes over. A pure thrash song, a riff at eye watering speed and gun shot drumming immediately send Metallica back 33 years to San Francisco, applying hair spray to their mullets and head banging along to the fastest riffs they could muster. Pure hook line on the chorus forces any thrash fan to have a Cheshire Cat sized grin on their face while listening. Even Robert Trujillo is allowed a moment to shine while the guitars cut out and he is left alone to keep the thrash train on the track. Some absolute classic Kirk Work and double kick drum finishes off the song, and the album, in a manic and marvellous style, with just enough time for one more ride around the chorus. A thoroughly enjoyable experience.

The "Deluxe" version comes with a bonus CD, with some interesting additions, a new version of Lords of Summer, which has been trimmed by over a minute from the original version we heard in 2014, and it sounds much better in this environment, not essential but a decent song. A medley of Rainbow covers, which is nice for the Dio fans in us (who wouldn't want to hear Metallica playing Stargazer?), a cover of deep purples When a Blind Man Cries which allows Hetfield to open his pipes as wide as he can, and an Iron Maiden cover of Remember Tomorrow, which feels especially appropriate given the amount of Maiden sounding riffs thought out the album.
The bonus CD finishes off with a selection of Live tracks, including another cover, the classic Diamond Head track Helpless we first heard on Garage Inc, the live songs are a nice addition, but it's nothing most Metallica fans haven't heard many times and will probably be consigned to being a listen-once-and-ignore bunch of songs, it's the studio tracks which really give the bonus disc some value here.

It's fair to say this is a good Metallica album. Is it a great album? No, it could have done with a little executive pruning of a couple of songs, and a single 8-10 track album would have been a fantastic release, the additional tracks which don't quite hit the high notes bring the album down a little, but it's still the best studio Metallica have released since the Black Album 25 years ago, even surpassing the surprisingly good Death Magnetic album. This album is everything you could have hoped for.
5 years between St.Anger and Death Magnetic. 6 years between Death Magnetic and Hardwired. Don't keep us waiting 7 years for the next album eh lads. And get bloody touring while you're at it.

Birth. School. Metallica. Death.

I'm still rocking part 3.

Rating - 8/10

KC