However, Mike asserts himself a lot more on this album than I recall previously. He does this by cranking out solos all over the album that feel like they will never end. There is no problem with the solos themselves but he is clearly overdoing it to the point where it almost feels like they were trying to pad the album out more than anything. They also brought in Vinnie Moore, Gary Holt and Jeff Waters to do some guest solos in the songs “D.evolution” and “U.rge”. When they stop oversoloing they do just fine but after awhile this seems like a guitar based wankfest and I simply cannot abide a good song being ruined by a band member playing as if to say, “Look what I can do!” It’s largely the same record they’ve been making since All Hell Breaks Loose and that doesn’t bother me in the least, Mike just needs to lay off the guitar for a bit and let the album breathe on its own.

Sadly they fell into one trap that gets a lot of bands. Sothis is simply trying to do way too much on this album. The drums never stop blazing and the guitars are a blur of death with the keyboards also trying to elbow their way into the songs. Add to this some of the most vicious raspy vocals you will hear this side of Jens Ryden, (another reason they remind me of Naglfar here), and you get a lot of good things going without nearly enough room for them to happen. This is probably why my favorite song is “Obsidian Throne.” It’s rather slow for them and pretty heavy. Think “Goddess of Sodomy” by Dark Funeral with more keyboards. Overall it’s still a fairly fast song with a lot going on but they take enough off that it can breathe on its own.

I like that I can accuse a band of trying too hard or having too many ideas but that doesn’t mean that this is a great record. However it does give me hope for their next full length because they should be able to figure out where to tone it down and where to ramp it up instead of keeping the album on 11 the whole time.

Altars also like to switch things up a lot with the tempo and it can sound a bit clumsy. There is good and bad here, I would probably lean towards more good. I don’t think the songs themselves are fatally flawed in any way, but the mix is terrible. The pinching can get slightly grating but I’m pretty sure a better mix would fix that too. It doesn’t stop me from loving Gojira. The vocals also contribute to this as they are for the most part standard guttural death vocals which combine with this mix to form what can only be described as a sonic mire. It’s a solid enough debut effort; it just needs some polish in the mixing room next time.

The vocals are very similar to the vicious rasp of Ihsahn and the leads seem to pay heavy tribute to him and Samoth. The keyboards however give this a somewhat different feel in that they seem to invoke Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk more. It’s odd to say this but in combining parts of those two Emperor albums they manage to stand apart from them though the influence is obvious. They combine the faster passages with well timed ambient slowdowns to a devastating effect. The faster passages are also notable as they are to my recollections devoid of blast beats. I like the fact that they aren’t trying to rely on any one element of the music overpowering the rest of the songs. They know they have quite a bit to offer on all fronts and go with it. This is a smart move by a smart band. There is also the fact this album can’t really be taken in all at once. I liked it the first time I heard it but wasn’t crazy for it, but the more I hear it the better it gets. They also like to combine random spoken passages that scare the hell out of me. Is this an innovative record no, but a damn good one that keeps getting better with every listen.

Don’t get too excited, there’s no “Open Face Surgery” on this album.  As for what’s going on with the guitar I really can’t tell you as it’s buried in the mix.  I can make out bits and pieces when the material is on the slow side but when they put the hammer down the album turns into an indecipherable miasma.  However I give them credit, not too many bands set out to make a record that sounds like it was recorded underwater

The second half of the album however is what really catches my ear as they seemed to be trying to make Altars of Madness II. The vocals also remind me of a more guttural Dave Vincent circa Covenant. I guess you could tell by the fact that I own the Angel Corpse discography that sounding like early Morbid Angel is never going to make me angry. The album clocks in at a mere 34 minutes, which is probably a good thing as I could see myself getting bored with it beyond that. That said if you want a new album that sounds old you could do much worse than this.

Combine catchy melodies with a nice bottom heavy production and the vocals of Steve Brooks, who reminds me of Bruce Falkinburg of The Hidden Hand, with a twinge of Danko Jones and you get a deadly combination. This is heavy and aggressive while also being rather friendly to the ears. This is a hard album for me to quantify, especially since whenever I try to write about it the end comes way too fast. In fact the song Healer might be a high point because it might be as close as music gets to a metal Rocket from the Crypt.

It’s not the most crushing album by any stretch but it’s a damned fine rock ‘n’ roll album for those who still appreciate this art form. However while the album is rather fast on the whole they like to slow it down near the end. The last two songs are all rather long for Torche and rather heavy. The high point for me is probably the song “Fat Waves”, not just because it rocks mightily, but also because it actually has some length to it. I love a good rocker but at the same time it’s a little unsatisfying when said rocker borders on grind.

Unfortunately all post-metal means to me is that everything is soft and ambient. There is no threat of heaviness to be found in most of the post-metal landscape. That said Demians has a tendency to keep things acoustic, or at the very least the music is rather soft. I would say that this is almost a compilation of all of Opeth’s lighter passages stapled together, with the occasional outburst of heaviness. He does this a bit too much reminding me of the last few Isis albums which frankly bore the hell out of me. I think that’s my big problem with this album to be honest, there is no pain here. I keep waiting for it to get heavy and it steadfastly refuses. The lyrics are also lacking any real emotional punch which leads to this being rather dry for me. That’s my big problem, it’s not that this is bad musically, it just fails to connect with me on any level. The music itself is very well done, it’s just not particularly my cup of tea.

Lemmy as per his usual self defines gruff on the mic while his bass weighs many tons. This is accentuated by a crushing production that seems to think that you shouldn’t even have to turn the volume on to get deafened. Phil Campbell is his usual excellent self, dropping nice chunky riffs all over the place. The songs themselves cruise along at the usual Motorhead pace, sometimes getting rather fast but they don’t spend too much time in the slow lane. They also continue the blues explorations that really started up on Inferno with “Whorehouse Blues”. They really need to make a whole album of pure blues cuts. I know next to nothing about the blues, I just know when Motorhead break out the blues riffs you end up with great songs. It also breaks up the album a bit from the usual Motorheadly goodness. I don’t mind it really, but it’s nice to switch things up just to keep everyone guessing. They get into this on the song “One Short Life.” They also get into this quite a bit on the song “English Rose.” This is probably their bluesiest album that I can recall. It still sounds like Motorhead to be sure, however listening to these guys do an album of John Lee Hooker covers might be just the coolest thing ever.

They still bring the heaviness, especially on the song “Heroes”, which is the slow bruiser of the album. Of course it’s devoted to war and the carnage that follows. However I could listen to Motorhead war songs all day long, given how many they’ve put out I probably wouldn’t even listen to the same one twice. That said if you don’t love Motorhead already this album probably isn’t going to convert you unless you want something with more blues to it. Oddly enough the song with the least amount of discernible blues to it is the song “The One to Sing the Blues.”

Stronghold of Men is probably an unnecessary record given the glut of bands that do this sort of thing a lot better but I still dig it. Every convention of the genre is found here, raspy but not quite death metal vocals, and plenty of Bay Area/German riffs. I have no pictures of the band but I assume they all wear bullet belts at all times. They even throw in the odd Tom Warrior grunt but to be honest this doesn’t stack up all that well compared to Municipal Waste, Toxic Holocaust, Fueled by Fire etc. This is a pretty short album too with eleven songs in thirty-six minutes. They only really have one song that they recorded eleven times, but you get the point. I like the many solos throughout, though they aren’t a technical masterpiece, but they do fit the material quite well.

That said, The Batallion have plenty of blueprints to draw this album from. This would probably get hammered by just about anyone else but I am a sucker for thrash so I’m giving them a pass here. It’s not an incredible or original album, but I liked it. Then again I’m the addictive type who must have all of anything he likes, this includes thrash metal. Unless you have this personality defect you should probably stay away from this.

The keyboardist is much more restrained than the guitarists, although that possibly the emptiest praise I have ever given someone because when he does make his presence known I end up wishing he hadn’t. The bassist and drummer are pretty good at keeping the songs somewhat grounded while everyone else is off wandering aimlessly. However they get mixed down sufficiently that they have no chance of holding this album together. Combine this with the fact that the songs all tend to feel overlong, especially the last song “Negative Two-Thirds”, which is eleven and a half minutes long, and you get a mess of a record. If any of these songs went anywhere I would probably be more interested but sadly these guys seem to prefer the sound of their own instruments to making actual music.

Mimo Moberg, who is The Man from the Moon, handles everything on this album and it is my opinion that he needs some outside help. The music rips off a lot of good older bands, there is also some Judas Priest and later Tiamat in here, sadly it gets undermined by his really weak vocals. He vacillates between a mild drone and some flat out whining, neither of which benefits the album by any stretch. Combine this with a lot of softer material, that is occasionally drenched in the most awful of keyboards and you have a disaster captured forever on plastic. I honestly have no idea why Black Mark wasted their time with this cock-rock resurrection. This only comes off even worse given that before this I was listening to Jailbreak by Thin Lizzy. The contrast in my head just makes it worse for Mimo. Now if you don’t mind I’m going drink heavily and put on some real rock. Thin Lizzy, I’ll come running back to you after this abortion.

Imagine your average by the numbers 8th generation Gothenberg band and combine them with vocals that alternate between Speed Strid and really weak clean singing. Combine this with lyrics that Poison wouldn’t have been able to pull off with a straight face and the keyboards of Children of Bodom at their worst and you have something that is almost totally unlistenable. I knew I was in trouble when I saw the band name; it is rarely a good sign when a band name is also a complete sentence.

These guys like to chug a lot, in order to try and pass for heavy, however I see through their game quite easily. The song “Move Your Body” is the apex of awful as it had death growls, hand claps, techno beats and good Swedish shredding. The word clusterfuck doesn’t do this justice. Honestly guys just pick a game plan. Are you a mediocre melodic death metal band or are you glam rock? Stop trying to combine the two, it only agitates me, and not in a good way. Perhaps the best way to describe this would be The Darkness trying to make a numetal album. However the vocals are utterly unmemorable unlike The Darkness who you can’t forget no matter how many Newcastles you down in the attempt. There is nothing like trying to appeal to anyone who might have ever bought any kind of metal album and failing miserably. I am truly dumber and poorer for having heard this.

This was a very hard review for me, as I couldn’t listen to more than three or four songs at a time before I had to turn it off because I was going to kill myself just so I wouldn’t have to hear it anymore. I suppose if you like dumb fun metal this might be right up your alley but to me this is the definition of awful.

Erik Thomas hates me, that’s got to be the reason he sent me this one to review.

However the incessant noodling lacks any real teeth to it and simply seems to reek of playing for its own sake. The rhythm section is pretty solid, with a very good bass sound but the material just doesn’t register on any emotional level with me. The tempos are varying degrees of right in the middle, just so you can hear every last note they are able to play. This is probably a good thing or else you get into the silliness that is Dragonforce. The vocals are dry to me, a decent mid register clean singing. Again they aren’t bad but they do little to stand out. They try to get some teeth on the song “Deception”, however it later bogs down into a dueling solos contest and then the album loses me for the rest of its copious length. The excesses hit their zenith on the title track Triangular, which is an instrumental that last almost nine minutes. The “anything you can do I can do better” takes over the song in short order and renders the whole thing unlistenable.

Finally they cap it off with “Fragments”, which is nearly eleven minutes long, although that does go by a little faster than Triangular. If the song didn’t take way too long to get going it might even be decent but the ponderous intro renders me numb before they even get to the song. Sadly there is a lot of sound here but far too little fury.

The drumming is the requisite fast but danceable beat that all techno is based on combined with heavy guitars and lots of beeping. I checked but I was wrong about R2-D2 being the vocalist, but I’m sticking to my guns on that theory. They also use a lot of the heavy in the mix bass/guitar chug that all of these bands live off of. Ray Charles could see most of these riffs coming, and he’s dead. Add in some vocals that sound like a really watered down Jaz Coleman, with occasional rapping and you get Atrox. To be honest I wouldn’t mind this album so much if not for the constant beeping, which drives me up the wall in record time. I admit to having a short fuse but still this is impressive. I suppose I should congratulate them for introducing one new element instead going totally with the tried and true and five years outdated but I refuse.

Atrox manage to combine two of my pet hatreds into an album that should only be used during the act of extraordinary rendition. I really don’t get why albums such as this continue to come out as this trend is dead and all continuing it can do is damage the credibility of great underground labels like Season of Mist. I’ll give them a pass because no one is perfect but ye gods why would any label waste their time on this sort of hackery?

I will give them credit for having a great production that unleashes a pretty solid rhythm section, too bad they waste their time on this tripe. The drumming is pretty solid and in fact gets into something of an Igor Cavalera tribal thing here and there and the bass sound actually reminds me of Steve Digiorgio’s stint with Death, although this album is not nearly on that level. The vocals are a mixture of rapping and distorted screaming, with occasionally whiny clean vocals to break up the monotony. The guitar patterns are the usual jagged chugging you would expect of this sort of metal. Yeah, just the same few power chords over and over again ad infinitum. Of course they also include a slow trippy opening, just to make sure they got everything on the checklist.

Even with 2 bonus tracks Sideshow Freaks is  short album at forty-four minutes but somehow it takes an eternity to get through. I would go on but it would just be as repetitive as the guitars on this album. This album might have gone over better five to ten years ago when it first came out, but now, as a re-issue, it just sounds dated, in addition to being derivative and bad. Three strikes boys, get out.

All of the conventions are here, the semi-tough sounding vocals although there is some sensitivity here. That means that they employ some really weak clean singing. Multitracking the vocal doesn’t give them any teeth, no matter how many times you tell yourself this, nor does repetitious use of profanity. They have the usual heavy bass production and the 3 chugging guitar riffs that all albums of this ilk have run into the ground. I already knew what this album sounded like in totality before I was three songs in. They even have a song with the requisite chorus of “*insert verb here* the fuck up.” Revolutions are supposed to scare people,this album is so safe that it causes me to grind my teeth incessantly and demand to know why Gojira aren’t the biggest band on this godforsaken mudball. They switch gears a bit on the second half of the album when they break out a ballad and some more sensitive songs. By sensitive I mean they do a really good Nickelback impersonation.

Just avoid this late to the trend morass of mediocrity at all costs, that’s my advice. At least listen to Nickelback and some other random first-generation bad numetal band, the source of the awful. Why go for the eighth-hand version when you can hear the originals?

 This is fast, dirty, old-school Stockholm death metal in the vein of early Entombed, Dismember etc. This is the one failing this album has to be honest. In trying to stay true to the old days they got a production that is trying to sound like Tomas Skogsberg but doesn’t really come close. Instead of sounding dirty this just sound muddy, in fact it sounds somewhat like everything does when I wear earplugs. That aside the songs are quite good. They don’t get fancy or anything, this is just fast and raw death metal from the early years.

Ola Lindgren sounds just as good as he ever did, both on vocals and guitar. There isn’t much fanciness here; they just want to rip your face off at maximum velocity. The solos are the best part for the guitar because they can actually be heard, but they tend to be quite noisy and fast, which is how I tend to prefer them. The rhythm section gets a bit buried in the mix, then again just about everything does.

 In spite of the artificially bad production this is still a pretty solid record. It’s not their best but it’s worth searching through the mire for.

They are trying to be two bands at the same time, but instead of mixing both their old and new sound into a devastating hybrid this just comes off as clumsy and unsure of itself. The lyrics are Symphonies of Sickness, but the material is only slightly better than Swansong (a truly awful record I care not what anyone says in its defense). Somehow while trying to distance themselves from Carcass they ended up parroting their lowest point.

The production doesn’t help matters as the guitars are not thick enough for the nasty parts, thus undermining them. The drum sound is terrible as the ultra clicky bass drum is driving me up the wall. The bass is prominent in the mix but it seems too bouncy. Sven’s vocals are dead on, but one out of 5 isn’t nearly good enough. Eric Rachel’s cookie cutter production doesn’t help matters either, (It should have been called Tue Madsen’s greatest hits as produced by Eric Rachel, because this sounds exactly like one of Tue’s, and we all know all of his sound exactly alike.) It doesn’t really matter since it seems they went with Rachel as he’s worked with The Black Dahlia Murder. It’s his production that gives this album such an overpowering metalcore feel, combined with way too many breakdowns. This is odd because I thought he did fine with The Black Dahlia Murder, I guess he needs Brain Slagel over his shoulder the whole time.

When they want to get nasty it seems to be done on autopilot as there is just a storm of blasting or an overdose of pinch harmonics, which sounds like they’re trying to compensate for a lack of ideas. Maybe it’s just because they came back too soon after Slaughter and Apparatus but this just seems forced and bland. No two ways about it, this is a grievous misstep by a formerly great band.

 I decided to give them another chance though as I loved The Beyond so much. I have mixed emotions about this to be honest. While this is a heavier album than the last two, it is rather repetitive. They use the same signature riffs that appear on all four previous albums, backed by a heavy distorted bass and solid drumming. The start of the album is quite good but from there it just becomes rather ponderous. If you’re up for moments of great heaviness punctuated by extended portions of ambience or silence then this is really the album for you.

Sadly they have followed the same trend that Isis has for me in that I simply can’t get into them anymore. Thanks to the keyboard they add some rather bizarre sounds and instrumentation; the most notable would be the chimes in the song “Ghost Trail”. I note these because I cannot help it, I despise chimes. They also throw in three short interludes that don’t really qualify as songs but act as bridges between songs.

This is a decent album but they tread on the same ground again and again and it’s about as interesting as watching someone pacing.

They do like to slow down now and then, to draw out the suffering a bit before they go back to grinding your bones to powder. When they do slow down you hear a much underrated rhythm section that tends to get lost in the chaos when they go blast crazy. Helmuth sounds like he has been gargling with the very forces of Hell itself, vacillating between a low growl and a higher rasp. They remind me of a combination of Dissection meets Vader while hanging from the ceiling by its nipples. Sex is a big thing for these guys as you see in the glorious song titles “Bondage Goat Zombie” and “Sexdictator Lucifer”. (If a woman ever calls you this in bed guys, marry her or I will. She’s clearly a keeper.) This album is all about the agony and the ecstasy drawn from it. It works because by the time it ends I am in pain and yet I want more.

They were even nice enough to include a bonus DVD with some interesting stuff. It has the uncensored version of the “Bondage Goat Zombie” video, which if you like a woman in a gasmask and fetishized nun outfit you will love. There is some of the shooting of the video, which is just Helmuth on floor with a cat o nine tails and a spiked leather hood. There is rehearsal footage and even footage of them recording the album. To be honest I could have lived without those parts but more is better. The best parts of the live footage from a festival and a section devoted to the fans showing their love for Belphegor. Half of it seems to be their female fans in various states of exposure. I have no complaints about that. This would be a great deal if it just had the album, but the DVD is the icing on the cake. A very perverted and evil album.

Back to the album however. They start off with a brief acoustic song called “Coil”. It’s something of a misleading start to the album but it is quite good. Akerfeldt’s vocals are just amazing, and just for fun they brought in Nathalie Lorichs to make it a short duet. From there the album tries to destroy the listener with a pummeling that you don’t normally associate with these guys. It is not all fast and heavy by any stretch but when they do put the hammer down, bones shatter. When they do get mellow and ambient it’s almost a welcome respite from the assault.

The highlight of this album for me is the third song, “The Lotus Eaters”. It also proves conclusively that they have lost their minds once and for all. At the opening they combine Akerfeldt’s clean vocals with blastbeats. No one does that. Add to that possibly the funkiest metal bridge since “Angel of Death” to appear in a song and you have one for the ages. Amazingly it all works. They even manage to use quite a bit of keyboard and not turn me off. Ask my former employers how difficult this one is, they have many a tale to tell. The production is crystal clear without being sterile. There is great warmth to the sound of this album, while at the same time you know these guys are machines at their respective jobs. This is pure majesty right here. I don’t think I’m enough into this style of music to have this as my album of the year but I am amazed.

Similar to one of my favorites, Enslaved, they have really taken their own style and infused it with a lot of 70’s prog rock weirdness to devastating effect. I’m hoping as they get more out there they continue to get better, though I haven’t the faintest idea how they are topping this one.

There is plenty of the goth rock that Tiamat is well known for but there is more than depression to this album. Johan Edlund does not use his signature drone so much preferring a more venomous sounding anger. The best comparison would be A.A. Nemetheanga of Primordial, though he is not nearly that venomous. Then again who is? When he does stick to the clean singing he multitracks all of his vocals as opposed to the single track he used to use. I think he actually loses something because of this to be honest. For some reason his voice is not nearly as depressing when he multitracks the vocals. Then again this is not nearly as suicidal an album as their last few, so the multitracking doesn’t mess up the atmosphere of the album. His clean vocals also sound a bit deeper to me.

Then they threw another curveball in the song “Meliae” which almost qualifies as a country song to me. Just a well sung song with acoustic guitars. I’m not calling Johan Edlund the next Johnny Cash but this is good work to me. This album is pretty hard for these guys. However, there are plenty of slower moments just in case you still want a depressing drone. This is not death or black metal by any stretch but the newfound anger and venom on this record has impressed me quite a bit, I never thought they would go this route. It seems he spent the five years in between albums carefully planning a transition to a different sound while staying true to his vision of Tiamat.

Amanethes is simultaneously a radical departure for Tiamat and a natural progression. I just hope I don’t have to wait another five years for the next step.