Looking Back 10 Years: 2006

In 2006 I was too busy gorging myself on Iron Maiden and Metallica to appreciate the material coming out at present.  I was that kid acting like the disgruntled old man, saying shit like, “all the good shit came out twenty years ago.”  While there’s not a thing wrong with loving some Iron Maiden and Metallica, it’s a shame I didn’t realize at the time that 2006 was one of the best years for music ever, and now that the decade has passed and we’re halfway through the next, I can say with conviction it was the best year for music post-turn of the century. 

 

I got to thinking about this because Metal Injection posted a list of albums celebrating their 10 year anniversary in 2016, which can be seen here.

Needless to say, the author left out a lot of albums that should’ve been on there, including: 

Giant Squid’s Metridium Fields
Wolves in the Throne Room’s Diadem of 12 Stars
Ahab’s Call of the Wretched Sea
OM’s Conference of the Birds

…Just to name some of my favorites from that year.  But he did mention the best two of 2006: Agalloch’s Ashes Against the Grain and Celtic Frost’s Monotheist, not just the two best albums of that year but two of the best albums – metal or non-metal – of all time.

 

 

While Celtic Frost went out in dramatic fashion by throwing down the gauntlet on just about every other extreme metal album ever written (which I touched on in my last blog), Agalloch carried on and has since grown from a place of well-regarded semi-obscurity to become one of the most beloved and influential metal acts of the new millennium. And they themselves picked up some influences along the way (Godspeed You! Black Emperor on Marrow of the Spirit), and have done what any metal band needs to do to be great: they have evolved.

Agalloch's guitarist and pianist, Don Anderson, touched on some of Agalloch's influences when asked in an interview about Agalloch attempting to expose listeners to a variety of types of music: 

"We really do want to expose our fans to different kinds of music, because we ourselves are very eclectic listeners. We’ve always been eclectic with our listening. In fact, when we wrote The Mantle, we weren’t listening to metal at all. We were very disenchanted with it. At that time, it was a very difficult time for metal. The only metal record I remember John and I listening to was Bathory‘s Hammerheart — that was a big influence. Otherwise, we were getting into singer/songwriters like Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, and other things like that. Of course, then there’s the neofolk scene: Death in June, Current 93, Sol Invictus, etc. That’s when we really started trying to adapt neofolk into our music. One of the other weird records was by a band called Sand — a record called The Dynamic Curve. John was getting into a lot of electronica like Autechre, Aphex Twin, and Boards of Canada. We were trying to bring all of those different influences in, because we were trying to expose our fans to all of those sorts of different music. It’s rewarding, but of course, we like to provoke!"

- Don Anderson, PhD
Heathen Harvest interview, July 19, 2015
 

Yes, Anderson has PhD in English and teaches at the University of Washington. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn he assists the typically credited lyricist, John Haughm, in the lyric writing process. The band's lyrics have always been very mystical and enchanting, often describing natural landscapes and old world emblems, without sacrificing devotion to even heavier subjects, like divinity.

I never heard any Autechre, Aphex Twin or Boards of Canada in Agalloch's music, but the folk influences are obviously there. The band used folk to establish its signature sound, and they did it right, in my opinion, without going completely over the top as some Finnish bands I'll refrain from naming have.  And we heard more Bathory influence later on, notably in Faustian Echoes, than perhaps anywhere else in Agalloch's catalog.    

Celtic Frost never wrote two albums that sounded the same, and neither has Agalloch.   But while Celtic Frost's change-ups tended to be more sporadic and unpredictable, Agalloch has taken a more linear evolution that feels more natural, kind of like Metallica did between Kill 'Em All and And Justice....  Each album is distinct in its sound but the artist is never in question.  And, importantly, (up to The Serpent & the Sphere) the evolution felt right. 

When Marrow of the Spirit came out in 2010 I felt a twinge of disappointment because it was so dramatically different than what's still Agalloch's best, Ashes Against the Grain, and this is even despite the fact that Marrow of the Spirit had the obvious influence of my favorite band throughout, especially on the album's standout track, "Black Lake Nidstång," and was thus stylistically at an advantage. But something about the heavy, polished emotion on Ashes Against the Grain, at a time when black metal and doom metal coincided less frequently, gives it standing above all Agalloch's other albums. I really think it might be the greatest metal album ever written. 
 
So what years were as good as 2006? It's a hard question. 

1970 - Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, Deep Purple’s Deep Purple In Rock
 
1971 - Led Zeppelin’s IV, Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality, Funkadelic's Maggot Brain, The Who's Who's Next
 
1973 - Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Black Sabbath’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, King Crimson’s Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy
 
It goes without saying that Black Sabbath released one great album after another between 1970 and 1975. 

1975 - Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Black Sabbath’s Sabotage, Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run
 
Then there was 1986, which raked in a ton of classic albums.

1999 was a great year too, with Immortal's At The Heart of Winter, Sigur Rós' Ágætis byrjun, Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada, Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile, etc.   

But I don't know if any of those years were as strong as 2006 was.  

Okay... maybe 1973 and 1975 were. 

 

Triptykon's Melana Chasmata

I’m a year late posting a review of this album, but it’s something I need to do.  I realized while perusing through this blog that I never wrote anything about Triptykon’s first album, either, which was one of the best albums released in 2010 (maybe the best – I still have a lot of trouble deciding which album was #1 that year), so I’ll try to make up for it here. 

I can't understate the influence Thomas Gabriel Fisher has had on me. And I know I'm hardly alone. Few bands have crafted a legacy as enduring as the mighty Celtic Frost, and few bands have ever evolved to the degree that Celtic Frost did between Morbid Tales and Monotheist. Morbid Tales embraced a radical style of experimentation in speed and groove that is widely credited as preeminently pioneering extreme metal (black metal in particular). To Mega Therion threw down the gauntlet not only on all the bands intent on gimmicking Sabbath style doom, but on all bands that dared to call themselves "heavy." How many albums have we heard that are thrash/doom? Into The Pandemonium, which, though great in its own right, demonstrated experimentation greater in extent than that of even To Mega Therion (yes, even hip-hop seeped its way in), but had neither the direction or energy of Morbid Tales or To Mega Therion. I think this album sent Celtic Frost in a direction that ultimately wrecked the band and propelled them into the dreaded 20 years that followed the release of Into The Pandemonium that I'd rather not talk about, because, you know, one has been over the Cold Lake fiasco time and time again and honestly it's just not worth going into anymore.

With that said, the linear evolution of the band left long and lasting lines of influence and ideas, and nested nearly all forms of crude, violent, crushing, aggressive (it’s hard to characterize Celtic Frost with just a few adjectives) music under one banner. With Monotheist, Celtic Frost discarded all the failed experiments, trimmed the fat, extrapolated the elements that originally made them so unique, and crafted an album that throned them once again on a precipice of excellence that few bands ever approach, and they did it by reinventing themselves with a style of music that to my knowledge didn't exist before 2006.  Doom metal had existed in various forms since 1970, but Monotheist birthed a different animal altogether.  It was as immense an album as I’ve ever heard, devastating in impact and awe inspiring in magnitude. I'm not sure there's any other instance in metal, or in music for that matter, of a band reemerging with such a vengeance after 20 years of mediocrity to nullify all doubt and lay claim to, in one word, greatness.

Celtic Frost's legacy was cemented when they broke up after the release of Monotheist. Few bands throw in the towel, or ride off into the sunset depending on the way you look at it, after dropping the best album of their career. The Beatles managed to do it with Abby Road, and Simon and Garfunkel did it with Bridge Over Troubled Water, and Bolt Thrower might’ve done it with Those Once Loyal.  Not taking into account single album artists, like Thergothon, Winter, Black Math Horseman, etc., because the real claim to abnormality, and thus distinction, is the production of something spectacular after the passage of so much time.  This is what few bands seem to be able to do.  It's far more common for bands to reach levels of excellence early on in their careers, that they find impossible to replicate after the passage of so much time, and in turn we see bands dilute their discographies with mediocre releases or worse.

In 2008 Thomas Gabriel Fisher and V. Santura formed Triptykon after the disbandment of Celtic Frost due to, and I'll quote Fisher, "the irresolvable, severe erosion of the personal basis so urgently required to collaborate within a band so unique, volatile, and ambitious." And in 2010 Triptykon released album #1: Eparistera Daimones, and to everyone's delight, and perhaps astonishment (considering the company in question had never released two albums in a row that sounded the same), it picked up more or less right where Monotheist left off. It continued in the direction of latter day Celtic Frost, being an aggressive, crushingly heavy slab of doom/death/extreme whatever it is. And Monotheist set a pretty high standard for heaviness, so the fact that Triptykon's debut was even comparable came as a joy to fans that yearned for more Monotheist style extreme metal. And it was apparent pretty quick. Eparistera Daimones' opener, "Goetia," was as devastating as any album opener I've ever heard. I think Fisher realized after Monotheist that he held the recipe for something truly special, and was determined to see it manifest again in a new form.  And with the creation of Triptykon he had unlimited creative license to do just that.

Eparistera Daimones was special. And Melana Chasmata is special. Melana Chasmata is also a continuation in the same direction, and the third album cooked with the Monotheist recipe, only tweeked a little. We have Santura's vocals to compliment Fisher's, which is an amazing addition considering the two go so well together. Fisher has the tyrannical, dark, twisted, barking voice and Santura has the raspy voice. They go hand in hand and add depth to the music. We also have more focus on guitar tone and less focus on riffs. The purpose of Triptykon's guitars are to establish tone and crush, whereas Monotheist was, while equally crushing, more riff filled. The riffs that are present on Melana Chasmata are catchy and heavy as hell. What I like most about this album is that, like its predecessor, it cannot be described by one, two, or maybe even three genres. It's not just pulverizing doom (although there's plenty of doom for doom lovers), because there are occasional bursts of traumatically brutal speed. It's not just death metal or black metal although there are stamps of both throughout.  Fisher is adept at taking all the vile tones of the different metal genres and throwing them together to create a unique package.

This album seems a little more personal than the last, too. There are very sorrowful harmonies, very mournful melodies, and it's even more emotionally depressing than either Monotheist or Eparistera Daimones, lyrically as well as musically, and maybe that's because the subject matter is a little less about Satan and dying gods coming into human flesh and more about how Fisher will never see his children smile and "Emily" - whoever she is. Fisher might've reached somewhere even deeper within himself to extract the content for this album. I don't know who Emily is, if she's a friend of Fisher's or someone he used to know or someone he never knew, but he chants her name over and over in "In The Sleep of Death" and the song is written as though he's crying out to her.

Emily, why don't you speak to me?
Can't you see, I'm not sleeping
Emily, why don't you reveal yourself?
Can't you feel my yearning
Emily, the rays of the golden sun
Touch your tender skin, your frozen skin
Emily, this gentle morning chill
Silenced a voice within, your voice within
Emily, you were the blood in my veins
Emily, why did you abandon me?
Emily, how long may this dismal moment last?
Here in this world was your life
Emily, how can I find serenity?
This is the very ground you walked upon

Then there’s the strange gothic poem he wrote that is “Waiting,” which is soft and creepy rather than brutal, and which some complain is filler music that serves as a weak closer.  But damn if I don’t like it.  I can listen to Simone Vollenweider’s chorus “dying” and “we are the same” for hours.  She has a haunting voice and her vocals add even further depth and levels of melancholy to the music (I’m glad Fisher has always been attracted to female vocals, yet heedful enough not to overuse them).  I wouldn’t want this album to end any other way.  The listener turns off the stereo looking inward, wondering what’s coming.  It has an effect similar to “Winter (Requiem)” on Monotheist, where there’s an ambiance that’s calming but brooding at the same time.   

These tracks are far cries from the prayer to Lord Satan that was "Goetia," or the call to worship that was "Synagoga Satanae," but the music doesn’t miss a beat. This album is as beautiful as it is ugly. It's very melancholic, dark, nihilistic. Writing music is Fisher's outlet the way writing books is Stephen King's. He'll keep doing it because it's his lifeline. If he stops there will be nothing left to keep him going. And as long as he's writing, I'll be listening. 

ARAKK's Self & Distance (demo)

There seems to be some confusion about the release date of this recording.  It was recorded in the summer and fall of 2013, and released in June 2014.  I noticed Metal Archives has it documented as a 2013 release.  That's incorrect.  It's a 2014 release.  It's also documented as a demo.  That may be correct, but it's unclear.  It's not a full-length, given the recording is just one 24-minute track, but it might be an EP.  It doesn't have the poor quality most demos do.  Either way, it's a recording that needs to be brought out into the open.  It has the potential to make some serious noise in the metal community.  This band has the potential to be the next big thing in funeral doom metal.

ARAKK hails from Copenhagen, Denmark, and consists of:

Jesper Christoffersen - Guitars/vocals
Kasper Ralsted Jensen - Guitars/vocals
Nicholas R. Tesla - Bass
Johan Trærup - Drums
Aske Øland Kjærgaard - Synth/programming

And on this recording we're fortunate enough to hear guest vocals by Ayo Krohn Mikkelsen.  Maybe she'll decide to join the band (and/or appear on future releases).  We can hope so at least.  

Self & Distance is a doom track to behold.  It has the painfully mournful and funereal riffs, calm, brooding atmospheric landscapes, hauntingly dreamy vocals (not dissimilar to the vocals of Sara Timms on Black Math Horseman's one and only record), crushing passages and building climaxes.  

From the 11:05 mark to 17:15 the pace really slows down and we hear a slow drum beat, an occasional guitar strum and the marvelously effective, almost chanted, whispering vocals of Ayo Krohn Mikkelsen.  The whispering at times sounds like its layered together as it builds.  The vocals come to a sudden halt and a soft, slow guitar melody follows before things get real heavy again.

 
 
Recommended to anyone who likes funeral doom and has the patience to sit through a 24-minute song that, despite its length, remains interesting and captivating throughout.  I'm already looking forward to ARAKK's first full length. 

   

Profetus' As All Seasons Die

...To Open The Passages in Dusk, for some reason or another, never grabbed my attention. I've got a copy of it on vinyl but I've never taken it out of the sleeve to put on the table. My listening time is valuable, and I don't like to spin records that don't affect me emotionally/psychologically, and that one just never did.  

It's a bummer because there's, in my opinion, not enough funeral doom to be heard, and when a band records funeral doom of Profetus' variety, with high production value, it's really a shame when it's monotonous (and no, not all funeral doom is monotonous, believe it or not).  Thankfully we have Mournful Congregation, Skepticism and Ahab to turn to when pickings get slim.  But it's still nice to get a different artist in the mix every once in a while.  Like Loss in 2011. And like Profetus in 2014.   

As All Seasons Die is an improvement over ...To Open the Passages in Dusk. It's the third full length from the funeral doom outfit from Tampere, Finland, where the snow lasts from late November to early April.  It's not nearly as lengthy.  It's thirty-six minutes instead of fifty-eight, so it doesn't drag on as long, and it feels like it's more crafted.  

Profetus' music is heavy, plodding and burdensome, but it's not of the impenetrable wall of sound variety like Evoken or The Call of the Wretched Sea/The Divinity of Oceans-era Ahab.  Profetus' music, while certainly heavy, has a rather serene aspect to it that isn't found in most doom metal.  It's mesmeric and immersive.  The listener is swept away in it and carried off to some far away place that isn't exactly inviting, nor uninviting, but arcane.  Most funeral doom is just doleful and depressing.  Profetus' is not.  It's more mysterious and introspective.  Forlorn, perhaps, and somber, but not 'I want to go kill myself' depressing.     

"The Rebirth of Sorrow," "Dead Are Our Leaves of Autumn" and the last five minutes of "The Dire Womb of Winter" are particularly mysterious and at times damn near spellbinding.  The solo in "Dead Are Our Leaves of Autumn" is very Mournful Congregation-esque (it reminds me a lot of the solo in "The Waterless Streams").  The spoken word chants add to the mystique.  I must say, I like the sparseness of death growls.  They're fine where they are, but the spoken vocals better compliment the album's atmosphere. 
      


 
This isn't an immaculate album, but parts of it are definitely worth listening to.  There is a chance it could win Best Funeral Doom Album of 2014, but it will have to beat out Concrescence of the Sophia and Skepticism's and Aldebaran's upcoming albums.  It's so rare for a funeral doom album to remain captivating throughout its entirety.  We have to select the parts we like and return to them over and over.  And I'm completely content doing this because the parts worth returning to are so, so good.

  

OM's Adviatic Songs

Adviatic Songs more or less picks up where God is Good left off. This is truly inspirational music. OM is another one of the Giant Squid's or Bloodiest's or SORNE's of the world... the music is just so different it's hard to put into words. Those familiar with OM know their music is classified as "Middle Eastern psychedelic doom metal," or something like that. It's similar in structure to "Tibetan and Byzantine chant," as Wikipedia points out (I'm not familiar with those genres of music so I can't confirm, but it sounds correct enough). "Om" is the Hindi symbol known for the natural vibration of the universe. OM is a very religious inspired band. They've written music that touches on religious and spiritual themes from Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism, and in the past they've explored the similarities between these religions. And here we have a picture of John the Baptist himself on the cover of the album - an important figure in many different faiths, especially Christianity - so it seems OM is still using interwoven themes, and on this record they seem to be predominantly Christian and Islamic. The lyrics... I'm going to try to dissect some of them (and the song titles), but they're so oblique they're borderline incomprehensible, kind of like Saturnalia Temple's lyrics except with religious connotations instead of occultist.

"Addis" is in Hindi, and not even in Sanskrit, but in the Pinyin equivalent of Sanskrit (I don't know what the name is for it in Hindi), so we'll skip over this track. I'll just say it opens with clean female chanting and we start to hear Indian tabla drums.

"State of Non-Return" seems to start at the beginning with Adam & Eve's expulsion from Eden which represents the start of man’s journey outside utopia and his induction into knowledge:
Light trickles through the adjunct worlds, the soul galleon prevails
Liberates in wisdom, to complete state of negation
The five roads subsumed by grace emancipates from dream

"Gethsemane" is the name of the garden in Jerusalem which is said in the gospels to be where Jesus and all his disciples (except Judas) spent their final hours before the Crucifixion. It was here where Jesus sweated drops of blood, and came to terms with his fate in conversation with God:
Nocodemus awaits in vigil weeping
The Arahat rising and the healing ghost descends
Lamentations cease enter rarefied light prevails
Nicodemus being the pharisee that showed favor to Jesus.  I'm unsure of the total lyrical relevance to the song title, but Lamentations cease enter rarefied light prevails seems to represent the lifting of anguish off the shoulders of Jesus by God. Jesus did after all pray to God to spare him of the suffering.

"Sinai" is of course where Moses was given the ten commandments. The lyrics from "Echoes," on Paramaecium's last album, read:
As I climb the long pathway of repentance, towards the peak of Sinai in the still dark hours of the morn, I yearn for the daylight which will tame my hesitations.
This more or less summarizes what comes to my mind when I think of Sinai. The mountain represents the end of trepidation, and the enlightenment to come.
Walk Melchizidek shrine descender
At Lebanon - priest ascending
And back toward Lebanon priest ascending
Melchizidek being the king during the Abraham narrative in the Book of Genesis. He must have climbed Sinai.

I don't have a clue what the lyrics in "Haqq-al-yaqin" mean, but I do know when you throw the song title into Google Translate it comes out as "the reality of certainty," which is the third degree of the classical Yaqeen Sufi doctrine. It's a three level hierarchy of human identity, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but identity: scholars, gnostics, and lovers. With the most latter being the most important. The Yaqeen (تيقب) phase of Suffism (صفي), and yes I actually typed those in on an Arabic keyboard using my mad Arabic skills, is an ascetic sect of Islam in which one can, as the head of the Shadhiliyah brotherhood basically said, "purify himself from inner filth by excluding his inner being from everyone but God and travel into the presence of the divine." In this phase - the last phase - the liberation cycle is finished. And the reality of certainty is where experience becomes the object of certainty. Knowledge is transferred into experience and vice versa, and it becomes revelatory to the one experiencing it.

As for the sound, I mentioned it's inspirational. That's kind of a disservice. It's hypnotic (in a different way than Black Math Horseman and Giant Squid and bands like that), embellishing, blissful, and transcendental. The use of cellos, flutes and tamburas have become integral parts of OM's sound. There are mantra-like incantations. The bass tone is unlike any other I've ever heard. There are moments on every great album that stand out... moments of not just greatness, but distinguished greatness. The cello/violin outro in "State of Non-Return" is that moment on this album, and one of 2012's finest moments. I can't recommend this album enough, just damn. Listen to it. This band truly brings spirituality to music, and if you let it his album will do absolutely incredible things for you.

Originally written for my 2012 End-of-Year List on MetalSetLists.com

Overmars' Born Again

Born Again is the 2007 follow up release to 2005's Affliction, Endocrine…Vertigo, and very different in structure. It's one massive track at 39:26 in length.

Envision a girl - the same one personified in Affliction, Endocrine…Vertigo who easily could have met her maker in the depths below. Only envision she didn't meet her maker and she's returned for another bout of possibly life-terminating exaltations. She's seeking adrenaline to prevent depression; balancing apprehension with ecstasy. This time she's free climbing a mountain - a cliff - and coming to a point where she can climb no further (what a mountain climber would refer to as a "crux"). It's a difficult place in the climb, where the climber, typically solo, must perform a set of moves in dynamic motion to move forward or grab a hold of what would otherwise be out of reach. The lyrics in the song are the thoughts running through the climber's head as she comes to terms with her situation and the possible fate that awaits her. I’m close to dying a thousand times, but this time I allowed myself to cry…. If she stays where she is her only possible fate is death. Or, she could confront her fears and continue to climb, and possibly save herself.

Arms in a cross, ready to absorb the shock.
I just know I can’t go lower.
There is no under.
Just me, myself and I.
And the will to stay or to climb.

Or… the lyrics could be symbolizing an unborn child's attempt to escape from the womb. Playing disturbing footage of stillbirths, among other things, on makeshift projection screens made of bed sheets at their live shows, Overmars has a strange fascination with parturition. In addition to an exhilarating stint of free climbing, the lyrics also describe metaphoric birth, which makes the footage relevant.

Seeing the plague’s face taking shape doesn’t scare me anymore.
Seeing the plague coming out of my wounds liberates me. Listen to the screams coming out of my wounds, free from the plague.
Listen to the screams coming out of the hole, holding the sound of joy and pleasure.
Listen to my screams announcing the birth of a new man.

The light is brighter from the dark. The latter is likely the band's intended meaning, but that's the beautiful thing about lyrics. You can interpret them as you wish. Avoiding sudden antenatal death syndrome, is a child born? Or has a mountain climber tamed her trepidations and transcended to start life anew in what could be interpreted as essentially a bizarre allegory?

The profuseness of exuberant emotion flowing from the vocal performance of Mrs. Marion Leclercq is perhaps, for its brief seven minute duration, unparalleled by any other female vocalist in all of metal. What she accomplishes here is nothing short of brilliant.  It might not even be correct to call it "singing," but it's sure passionate. The hate, the anger, the agitation, emanates from her and spews forth as if she's actually a subject in whatever situation she is portraying. Her screams are downright scary, and her cleans echo and reverberate as though she's crying out from the loneliest chambers of Hell, forced to face her fears and hoping someone will hear.  And we do!  We hear her loud and clear.  Here she is in Austria on Overmars' European tour in April of '06:

This isn't music you want to play in a car on a date (I know from experience). The first time listener's reaction to sitting though the opening ten minutes of this track is typically one of pure horror. Oddly, the climax comes near the beginning of the song instead of the end. 
 
The first fifteen minutes are the best of the track. Eerie electronic noises, growled and soaring vocals, and thick pounding riffs form a sound that's distinct and easily recognizable as Overmars'. As the track progresses it drones, and the despair becomes almost overwhelming. Of all the songs in this band's brief discography, this one is the heaviest. It's unabridged doom. It's one of the heaviest albums ever recorded, competing with the likes of Electric Wizard's Dopethrone, SunO)))'s ØØ Void, Godflesh's Streetcleaner, and EyeHateGod's Dopestick. Born Again is a giant monolith of crushing doom and relentless noise.  Walls of sound flatten listeners, who might be begging for death before the end. Or hemorrhaging one.


Originally written as a review for Sputnik Music:
http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/52223/Overmars-Born-Again/

Overmars' Affliction, Endocrine... Vertigo

There are certain phases, stages, and events in a metal listener's journey that will manage to forever fixate themselves deep in his mind... that he will remember for the rest of his life. The first time he was introduced to metal. The first time he heard his favorite band. The first time he heard his favorite album. Certain songs. Times he heard certain songs with certain people and shared a special moment with them. Certain songs or albums or bands he looked to for guidance, inspiration, or motivation during times when he had nowhere else to look. Times he was introduced to a new genre that hadn't before manifested itself in his mind, because he was completely unaware it even existed.

For me, this is the album that altered the standards by which I evaluate metal. It's the metal album that makes all the others slightly worse.

Why is that? To be honest, it's hard to put into words. This album doesn't scream musicianship. There are no really impressive solos on it. The drumming isn't overly impressive (but it is experimental). It's not technical. At first listen, in fact, thoughts are more along the lines of "what the hell am I listening to?," "this sounds like garbage," and "why would I listen to the rest of this album?" At least that's what I thought when I first listened to Obsolete. Granted, that was a few years ago, before I became really familiar with doom and sludge. But I still feel that to some extent. Every time I start the album a part of me wonders what it is about it that makes me want to continue listening to it. I also know that since I realized what a truly special record this is, I've held all other records in comparison to it. Hoping they'll be as unique, as diverse, as avant garde as this one. A few years later I've been tearing through metal albums left and right, and I haven't found one half as any of those things as this one.

Maybe it's the unorthodoxy. The non conventional - utterly non conventional - free approach Overmars takes towards crafting its songs. Maybe it's the fact that when "This is Rape" starts I swear I hear a doom breakdown (is that even possible?). Maybe it's the combination of influences and the diversity of soundscapes. Down-tuned sludge mixed with hardcore, post-metal, and industrial. But the real reason is, simply, this album is the most creepy, disturbing, impenetrable, oppressive work of art I've ever heard. The only other album that rivals it in that regard is Dragged Into Sunlight's Hatred For Mankind. It evokes feelings in me I can't even describe. "Obsolete" and "This is Rape" are barrages of oppressive musical assault that stomp your ****ing face in with a size 12 steel-toed boot. They're not without their twinges of down time, though. Such as the 4:50 mark in "This is Rape." The oppression momentarily subsides but something even more unsettling takes its place. A simple guitar melody, mid-tempo drumming and some electronic/industrial effects. It's not even depressing, it's just… strange, unsettling, something Trent Reznor would come up with. And that continues on until around 7:17, when a dirty distorted bass comes back in, balls-to-the-wall sludge resumes, and a sound sample becomes audible in the background which is impossible to really make out. And then, just when you're starting to feel that this terrible record is going to be nothing but pure ugliness and filth...

Destroy all dreamers who dream of the same thing more than once...

A most unexpected twist and alteration in sound. Suddenly all heaviness vanishes and what becomes audible is a gorgeous soft interlude with clean vocals that puts your mind at rest after the trauma of the first two tracks. "Destroy All Dreamers pt. I" leads perfectly into "Deux Measures de Solitude," which starts off softly with a catchy guitar hook and slowly, over the course of four or so minutes, builds through repetition and subtle additions into another heavy crushing assault. And voilá!, we're back to where "This is Rape" left off.

But the next track is truly one of the shining moments on this record. "Büccolision / (bis) The Mistaken One pt. II (Geography is Just a Symptom)" is one of the most scary, horrific, distressing songs ever. It's not sludge. It's not hardcore. It's not anything. It starts out with a slow piano passage, then we hear some slow sporadic guitar strumming, then a heavy distorted bass chord. The foundation for the entire song is piano. Overmars' contrasting of the beautiful with the dark is an exercise of expertise… they take what's traditionally considered a beautiful instrument and play it under a horrific display of chanting and screaming. A long ritualistic-like chant is spoken in French while - what sounds like - a helpless victim being the unfortunate subject in some horrific experiment or ritual is tortured and screams pleading cries of agony. The chanting and the screaming are just dubbed over each other. The chant is actually in French.

Standing in the shadow of this obtuse-angled mirror's reflection
Harvesting the seeds of our prettiest hangman, young girls in the prime of life galore
In our dreams of languor and love, on our lips, softly without the torturous sensation of filthiness
Optic through the hole where the iris huddles
Stares at its victim with heartbroken eyes, drunk with the stale smell of an undesirable strangeness
Of exocrine glands and unhealthy exudations
Which cherishes it aloud and carries it in its womb

The "vocalist," playing the part of the poor girl, who could easily be pictured as a victim tied to a stake in some sort of hellish ritual, is utterly convincing. Perhaps inspired by thoughts of being cut, stabbed and raped (or worse), the atmosphere her performance gives this song is unmatched on this album. This track personifies utter desperation, hopelessness, and depravity. The piano continues throughout, there are occasional distorted guitar chords, a rare strum of a distorted bass, and whatever else that isn't easily recognizable. It reaches a heart-pounding climax and it's assumed she's finally been finished off by her tormentor, bringing an end to her suffering. And then, it all fades out, and into...

Destroy all dreamers who don’t fondly kiss his lips and don’t embrace him...

"A Spermwhale's Quest" features Marion, the lead female vocalist, in what seems to be a song about drowning. Be what the writers intended as it may, imagery consists of a girl who has immersed herself underwater, and in doing so has found herself a little too deep, and possibly "gazing into the eyes of the reaper." Pressure is the only thing down here, reminding me how my strength is relative. There is no sound down here except for my heartbeat, pounding in my head. Static noise is used in this track throughout. The lyrics on this album are all around fantastic. As are all three vocalists. The vocals have incredible range - the prolonged death growls, the clean mid-ranged, the soft murmurs, and those that can't be described (like on "Destroy All Dreamers pt. II" and "From Love to Exhausting - the Story of This Intangible Thing Between Us"). There are recordings/sound samples thrown in randomly further back in the mix. You might find yourself realizing there's a woman screaming after she's already been at it twenty seconds. There's so much to listen for and concentrate on... it's that kind of record.

Destroy all dreamers who forget he holds us in his arms every morning...

The "Destroy All Dreamers" tracks (there are five of them throughout) are the most well executed interludes I've heard on any album that features interludes and makes them prominent. They don't detract from the album. They don't cost it momentum. They give some air to what could have been a very suffocating and linear record. Reminiscent of a handful of post-rock bands, albeit darker, they're the beauty in Overmars' continuous effort to balance the beauty and the ugliness. They also provide a running theme - something to come back to. Something for the listener to fasten onto and gain familiarity with. They are all simple, repetitive guitar melodies with soft soothing vocals - sometimes dual vocals. According to the band, the lyrics in these five tracks are a call against apathy. To dream is beautiful, but to live our dreams is much more beautiful. Stop dreaming, start acting, and let's re-appropriate our lives. And they use a metaphor to illustrate this with baby birds. Daily blood tastes so sweet in our awaken mouths. Even though technically birds don't have lips or arms, and both parent birds raise their young, the idea is that a father bird takes care of his offspring, and they should be thankful for that, because they wouldn't survive without him. He makes them strong and prepares them for the harsh world they'll eventually be cast into. It's a message not to be apathetic. Show gratitude and thankfulness to the people who take care of you. Don't take it for granted. These five songs are a gorgeous conveyance of that. And they're just as critical a component to this record as the long, violent, inundating onslaughts of doom.

"En Memoire des Faibles qui Ont Survecu a Darwin" and "From Love to Exhausting - The Story of This Intangible Thing Between Us" are respectively 13:01 and 9:24 in length, and monoliths of post-metal sludgy doomy goodness. As mentioned, there's nothing technical and nothing groundbreaking about these sludgefests. But they are Overmars' own. They are dense and difficult to digest, especially the former. "En Memoire des Faibles qui Ont Survecu a Darwin" is a heavy, chugging, crushing, overwhelming composition of magnificent artistic doom. At almost no point though is the chugging without some sense of melody. There are some very tasty riffs, and memorable bass lines here, and never underestimate Overmars' ability to spin things around and alter dynamics in a split second.

This album is dynamic not only in sound but in structure. It's diverse, and it's likely a lot of parts were improvisations. Overmars is experimental in nature. Attention is solicited until the end; you never know what you're going to be listening to next. Ideas are in abundance. This album shouldn't be recommend to those lacking familiarity with extreme metal, and specifically, sludge and doom. It's an exhausting experience, and immediately nearly indigestible. But with time, patience - a lot of patience - and willingness to let it grow on you, this can become one of the finest albums you've ever heard.

HIGHLIGHTS: "This is Rape," "Buccolision / (bis) The Mistaken One pt. II (Geography is Just a Symptom)," "A Spermwhale's Quest," "En Memoire des Faibles qui Ont Survecu a Darwin"



Originally written as a review for Sputnik Music:
http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/52200/Overmars-Affliction%2C-Endocrine...Vertigo/

Starkweather/Overmars (Split LP)

Firstly, this brief review is solely catered to Overmars' portion of the split. I'm mostly unfamiliar with Starkweather, but from what I've heard I'm not a fan, so I feel it most fair to write about the band here that I've grown to know and love - Overmars.

I was gleeful when I finally learned last year that Overmars was set to release new material. It had been four years since Born Again was released, and no real news in-between then and 2011 surfaced regarding plans about the band's future, new material, etc… their status was unknown and I assumed indefinite hiatus.

Then news of this split surfaced, which would entail 15-16 minutes of new Overmars material…

Overmars has written some of the neatest stuff in the doom metal department I've ever heard. Affliction, Endocrine…Vertigo in 2005 and Born Again in 2007, the latter being their last release save a for-the-most-part inconsequential split with Icos and a ten-minute EP they put out in 2008 on a 7" offering a different recording of "Büccolision" and a follow-up track.

The two tracks here by Overmars include "Solitary/Following the Sperm Whale (Once Again)" and "Last Sail Sinking," both of which, to my great delight, pick up right where Affliction left off. It's typical weird, experimental, avant-garde, doom/sludge Overmars. "Last Sail Sinking" features vocals from the brilliant female vocalist we heard in Born Again (Marion, also of Abronzious). I read prior to this release that she was no longer with the band but she's sure enough featured in this split. "Solitary/Following the Sperm Whale (Once Again)" begins with a somewhat unsettling sound sample. We hear a gentlemen uttering something undecipherable and some other noises and whistling along with it, along with a gentle guitar melody, then we hear a poor girl let out a shrill scream before everything goes quiet. Then the doom begins. It's quite crushing, and unmistakably Overmars'. The vocals are deep, harsh screams and growls. If there was such a thing as "doomcore," Overmars would have to be at the genre's forefront. The hardcore and post-metal influences are all in this, and it really brings out what sludge can be like with outside influences.

Dynamics are a critical element of Overmars' sound. Hard to soft, soft to hard. Soft melodic guitar tunes followed by heavy oppressive rifts. The only recognizable lyrics: "Sail and sink, on the altar of conviction, sail and sink, embracing an illusion, sail and sink, for the sake of salvation, waiting for death, something's running inside your veins," all sung by Marion, who has one of the most captivating voices and unique style of singing of any female vocalist I've heard in metal.

A full-length of this caliber material would be a 5-star record.

Starkweather/Overmars (Split LP) spinning 

HIGHLIGHTS: "Solitary - Following The Sperm Whale (Once Again)," "Last Sail Sinking"

*UPDATE: I just learned Overmars' two tracks were actually recorded years ago, probably between 2005 and 2007.  And it looks as though the band has either broken up, or stopped playing, indefinitely.  According to The Record Connection. 



Originally written as a review for Sputnik Music: 

http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/52181/Starkweather-and-Overmars-Starkweather-Overmars/ 

Ordog's Remorse

In Hungarian mythology, Ördög is a demonic creature that personifies the dark and evil aspects of the world, much like what Satan personifies in the Christian world. And that's definitely what Ordog (the band) tries to personify with their music. Ordog's biggest influence is life itself, as insignificant as it is. Aleksi Martikainen, Ordog's lead vocalist, said "my biggest influences are my own dark and twisted mind, and memories full of distress and misfortune." I think its safe to say misanthropy plays a critical role in Ordog's songwriting process, and is an integral part of their music.

Ordog hails from Finland - a cesspool for awesome music.

This is Ordog's third release. Crow and the Storm in 2006, and Life is too Short for Learning to Live in 2008 are its two predecessors. This is by far their longest release to date; at one hour and nine minutes in length, it beats their next longest release by twenty-three minutes.

In 2011 Mournful Congregation's The Book Of Kings had its brilliant moments, but overall I couldn't help dreading the enormous assemblies that laid before me, especially the title track. Ordog's Remorse doesn't have that problem, even though it's an enormous assembly itself, and because there's not that feeling of dread I feel it's a better album as a whole. There are a few select parts of The Book of Kings that will just knock you dead, but there was also a lot of "meh" on it as well. This record, while still containing a certain amount of "meh" (as almost any doom record will), is chock-full of deep riffs and rich atmosphere. There are many more minutes of material I'll be listening to over and over in the future on this record. It would certainly be out of place to call this symphonic doom, but there are keyboards and pianos present. Keyboards appear on "Shadowland" and "Boneyard Horizon" (which have two of the most memorable keyboard parts), not to play any prominent melody or anything, but to just put a floor on the atmosphere. A memorable piano part is played on "Betrayed," throughout the last half of the song. These things are never the sole focus of attention, or even the primary focus of attention, but they add a really nice, uncommon, layer to Ordog's doom. Contrasted with the slow, heavy riffing, it makes for some really emotional doom in a really unusual way.

The eerie keyboards and the hellish atmosphere will cause listeners to lose grasp on the world around them and drift into a much darker place. "Boneyard Horizon" embodies absolute loss of hope and positivity. The weight of pain, suffering, depression, and remorse seeps into the psyche and leaves the listener devoid of anything that might have once been uplifting.

"Meant to be an End" provides some relief with its soft melodies and brief piano passages, but only for 2:57 before it fades out and brings an end to this seventy minute pillar of remorse and despair. 
 

Originally written for my 2011 End-of-Year List on MetalSetLists.com and as a review for Sputnik Music:
http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/52150/Ordog-Remorse/

Saturnalia Temple's Aion of Drakon

"I do not claim to make good music. I do claim to make occult or dark magical music, much of it owing to the fact that this is my everyday dedication, just like some people watch TV every day (and if you're Gene Simmons there may be great songs also in that). Someone who is not into occultism or magical initiation at all could still possibly capture something of that nature, but then it would be coincidental, or aimed for entertainment. Nothing wrong with that. But I'm not trying to entertain an audience. To say that an audience is necessary for an artist is to me only true if you're coming from a superficial perspective where you only create to reach out to people and to gain something in return. If one has an occult, magical initiatory attitude, music, once created takes on an immanent nature and is in itself a great reward."
--Tommy Eriksson, Saturnalia Temple

Between Saturnalia Temple's Aion of Drakon, Black Oath's The Third Aeon, Bloodiest's Descent, and Loss' Despond, 2011 was ripe with debuts in the doom department. None more auratic than this one.

Saturnalia Temple is very occultist, which is manifest in both their lyrics and sound (if that's possible). If occultism could have an embodiment in sound, this would be it. They immediately remind you of Electric Wizard. Next they remind you of Black Sabbath. Now take those two influences and mix it with 70's psychedelic rock and you have an incredibly unique brand of stoner-doom. The riffs are fairly simple and they're played over and over, which might normally be a bad thing except these riffs are thick, fuzzy, and reminiscent of Tony Iommi's Sabbath-style riffs; they burn themselves into your mind. The drug-induced vocalist (which has to be the case... if Tommy Eriksson's not on drugs he's an even more brilliant vocalist than you'd originally think), who sounds surprisingly similar to Geddy Lee at times, is just incredible - the vocals complete the hypnotic/psychedelic/druggy sound of this album. Tommy's also a member of the Swedish magical order 'Dragon Rouge' and an occult writer. He published "Mörk Magi" in Swedish, released through Ouroboros Produktion in 1998, which presented the initiation path on the tree of knowledge, also known as Kliffot, and other subjects closely related to the dark draconian current. Simply, he's more than just a vocalist, he's a writer and a lyricist as well.

At times Aion of Drakon sounds like it's in slow-motion. Other times, like in "Fall," around the 4:19 mark, you get a decently fast psychedelic guitar solo that's just mind-numbingly effective. The psychedelic effects are scattered throughout the album and they allow the lengthy tracks to get some air. Saturnalia Temple takes a very free attitude towards songs. The music doesn't depend on technicality or dynamics or song structures, but rather heavy textured guitar sounds and atmosphere. The production is beautiful, the album is layered beautifully, and the result conveys ultimately exactly what it's supposed to - hypnotic, mesmerizing doom that echoes and invokes ancient magical powers from long forgotten places. "God is Two" and "Sitra Ahra Ruled Solitary Before the Creation" were inspired by the Qliphotic Qabalah (embodiment of evil in Jewish Mysticism). There's some serious thought and knowledge behind the music here, which just makes it all the better. When asked in an interview: "of all the written (and musical) knowledge from the past that has been lost, how much of it can be rediscovered? Can modern discoveries on the creation of the universe, scientific or otherwise, be reconciled with the old creation stories? How can we look into the Devil’s Eye again?," Saturnalia Temple responds "it is quite intriguing that the oldest creation story, the Indian, begins with a universal sound AUM (OM), and String Theory also talks about a sound vibration in creation. In Sanskrit this AUM is the sound of Creation, the sound of Destruction is HA. Quite suitable also in view of modern western language. Ha!"

For fans of Kyuss, Sleep, Electric Wizard, Back Sabbath, or even Om, this should come highly recommended. This was THE stoner doom/occultist album of 2011. It's a total mesmerizer.


Originally written for my 2011 End-of-Year List on MetalSetLists.com and as a review for Sputnik Music:
http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/52134/Saturnalia-Temple-Aion-of-Drakon/