Album Review: Combichrist - The Venom In The Mouth Of God

Today, class, we’re going to use an exceptionally nerdy analogy to help define what Combichrist’s new album The Venom In The Mouth Of God both is and isn’t.  Bear with us - the analogy is painfully arcane, but works in the context of dealing with an industrial record.

In recent years, electronic music has become pervasive in the mainstream as well as on the fringes - both in the sense that digital programming and electronic sounds are being incorporated into compositions at an increased rate, and that in some cases, electronic entities themselves are writing the music (see the current controversy with AI artists breaking through the country music charts.)  With that comes a sense that the music should be brighter, springier, more energetic, as electronics so often take us into higher registers and up-tempo beats.

Here’s where the analogy starts - there is a sense that electronic music is a late-era Gundam - agile, accurate, festooned in bright colors and blazing across the sky at a nigh-unbelieveable rate.  Combichrist, by virtue of being an industrial band from back before the proliferation and ready access of electronica, is a lumbering OmniMech; a seventy-five ton Mad Cat (or Timber Wolf,) of teeth and forward-facing visceral power, painted in unforgiving gunmetal gray. 

Ever since the band composed the soundtrack for the video game DmC: Devil May Cry, there’s been a theory that the band has slowly moved more toward metal and away from the straight industrial they cut their teeth on.  The culmination of this was 2024’s excellent CMBCRST, which one writer on these pages named the Album of the Year.

The Venom In The Mouth of God, slams the gears into reverse, and takes the band back to thundering basics.  It is not until halfway into the album with “Rise” that the band even hints at the metal that forged so much of the three albums before (we remain convinced that it was coded into the Geneva Convention and Vatican II that every industrial band has to write a song called “Rise” or “Risen” or “Rise Up” or some such.)  

While those metal hammers get dropped now and again, that’s not really what The Venom… is about.  The album wants to be sparse and haunting and deadly, a brooding monster with a fission core that threatens with every ponderous stride and shadow of presence.  While the songs at the outset prove the attempt, it’s in the back half where the record really flashes its jagged fangs.

No song on the album more proves Combichrist’s (and ideaman Andy LaPlegua’s) skill at composing in this vein than the questionably mature “S.T.F.U.” (not just a John Cena maneuver anymore!) This is one of those rare songs that shouldn’t work, but does - it is, ironically, kind of a strange cousin of Fear Factory’s ill-conceived “Back The Fuck Up” from 2001, a stream-of-consciousness quasi-rap that has no business being as well assembled or catchy as it is.

It sets the stage for the rest of the album, where, as odd as this sounds, Combichrist composes a series of beat poems on steroids, with LaPlegua as the cybernetic Allen Ginsberg.  Again, should this work?  Maybe not, but listen to the venomous undercurrent of “The Way We Want To Be Seen,” and try to find a crack in the armor.  LaPlegua has always had this in him; the ability to set introspective missives on personal anguish and impermanence to a cinematic beat (thinking of “Bottle of Pain” from One Fire,) but he really takes the chains off for this album and leans into the style.

What the listener takes away from The Venom In The Mouth Of God, will really come down to what side of Combichrist is preferred.  Those who exclusively believe the band’s best material has been in the their last three albums may well find this a harder journey, where those who lament the band ever straying from their roots will rejoice.  Either way, the fact remains that the album’s final eight songs will take the listener on a journey of steel and fire and discontent, with nary a beam saber in sight.

Album Review: Krystal System - "Da Punch"

We’re all familiar with the axiomatic mixing of ingredients into some greater whole.  The most common refrain used to illustrate this concept is “you got peanut butter in my chocolate!  You got chocolate in my peanut butter!”

Now, take that as a basic principle, and add in rainbow sprinkles and a cherry, and you get something musically akin to Krystal System’s new LP Da Punch.

Like a musically self-aware Voltron, the French electro-metal duo (which hardly seems like enough of an epithet to encapsulate what the band displays, but that’s what they call themselves) folds in pieces of a veritable panoply of genres to make something new.  Pop punk, old-school industrial, electronic, rock, and even a taste of those big, atmospheric Fear Factory ballads all blend into a sugary album of ear candy that’s hard not to smile at.  And, oh by the way, half the songs are in French.

Certain constants of music remain immutable.  One of them is the intrinsic appeal of the descending scale.  Every band and every genre has played with it, from the haunting tones of Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused,” to the thumping bravado of DMX’s “X Gon’ Give It To Ya.”  Right from the beginning of “Someday,” Krystal System dives into that same pool, filtering it through distortion and airier vocals than either of those other two examples, creating a song that buzzes with venom, particularly as it moves into the thunderous pre-chorus and ultimately into the catharsis of the chorus.  Never mind the hints of alternative that color the margins.

Not to be outdone for versatility, Da Punch then moves into “Eclats Rouges” (“red flashes,” for the uninitiated,) which, with apologies to the band for saying so, is a pop punk song with a singalong chorus that just happens to have some electronic overtones.

Step by step, Krystal System moves from form to form, and without warning, the next two songs take us through a loving tour of KMFDM records from the early ‘90s.  We’re taken on a journey of both the pure industrial drive of “Iryna’s song” (think “Rip the System,”) and then the proto-industrial metal of “Neon Cage” (akin to the entire Nihil album,) right down to the machine-gun drum machine sample.

One last highlight - “Soleil Noir”...well, it’s gonna sound odd, but the best descriptor of this song is that it sounds like the Pixies covered the boss battle music from the old Raiden video game series.  In French.  Yeah, that makes no sense.  But trust us, for all that your instincts are saying that can’t work, this song is, as the kids say, a bop.

There are several bands who have been lauded on these pages for their ability to stretch the definitions of genre or outright exceed them by reaching for disparate elements and flexing their adaptability.  Where Krystal System and Da Punch differ from those bands is that they reach outside those boundaries, but rather than adapt to the form, they make the form adapt to them, cramming and mangling other styles into their own existing idiom until the machine hums with life.

It should be noted that even on an album such as this, creativity in this mold can only be stretched so far - and while Krystal System accomplishes a hell of a lot on this record, the songs we didn’t discuss here are fine, but are permutations of the twists and turns already mentioned.  Which is in no way a knock, more of a note for accuracy’s sake.

Da Punch is one of the finest albums to come out this year, hands down.  It is energetic, explosive, exploratory, expansive, and a bunch of other adjectives that don’t start with the letter ‘e.’  It’s hard not to get caught up in the infectiousness of the beats and the groove.

Album Review: Cage Fight - "Exuvia"

Occasionally in this line of work, it’s difficult to explain why an album grabs attention.  Such is the case with Cage Fight’s new album Exuvia.  It’s an explosive record with a comfortable balance of hooks and brutality, and while that seems like an overly simple explanation for why the record is worthy of discussion…that’s more or less the crux of it.

Chris and I talk a great deal here about how one of the ways to stand out in a choked and overcrowded musical sphere is to do something familiar really well, and that’s the camp Cage Fight calls into.  Is there anything on Exuvia that makes the listener say ‘holy crap, I’ve never heard that before’?  No, not really.  Instead, the album offers a clever collection of established pieces - thrashy riffs, the relentless cadence of death metal bordering on grindcore, and big, thumping breakdowns like we’re used to hearing from Knocked Loose or Alien Weaponry.

Skip on down to the anthemic “Pick Your Fighter,” and you’ll hear what we’re talking about.  Sure, there’s a metal-on-metal crunch to the drawn-out second half of the song, but the big chorus that lends itself to crowds cheering along ties the piece back together.  It’s a similar phenomenon to Arch Enemy or the best works of Destrage, that no matter how far the band may go down the rabbit hole, there’s always a comeback hook to put it all back in sync.

Now, the differences between those two bands and Cage Fight are myriad, but the principal one is that while those bands strayed into other, sometimes abstract musical concepts, Cage Fight, when they venture into the unknown, defaults to being heavier than they were a minute ago.  ‘Heavier’ is the only word in metal that gets used more than ‘darker,’ to the point where both words have been rendered meaningless, but it applies here.  “Un Bon Souvenir,” is the perfect example.  There’s a melodic chorus (a rarity on the album, with clean vocals and everything,) but just when it seems like the track might get mired in melodrama, here comes the big 2/4-time breakdown to drag the track into the mud.  Which in this case is a compliment.

As the title track rolls around, it would be easy to think Cage Fight has shown all their cards, but this song brings another to the fore - suddenly, Exuvia becomes a melodic death metal record.  Where did this come from?  Who knows, and who cares, the song works, and provides an important and attention-grabbing change of pace just as the album was otherwise starting to lose its head of steam.

For all that, there is a ceiling to Exuvia. As stated earlier, what Cage Fight is trading on is the ability to be really good at the familiar; as with everything, there are levels to it.  To make a poor comparison - Cage Fight is really good at this music, but they are not, for example, as good at what they’re doing as Graveyard is at making blues rock.

In the end, what Exuvia really represents is a summer fling.  It’s a great, listenable record with many high moments and some unique puzzle pieces that fit together in interesting ways.  It’s an album that the listener will have fun with over the next few months, but by the time the leaves start to turn, attention may divert elsewhere.

Album Review: Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell - "The Trouble With The Shovell"

Lingering guilt. That’s what this review is about.

Way back in 2012, an editorial was written on the forerunner of this website, detailing the ten best albums of that year.  That editorial listed Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s album Don’t Hear it…Fear It! as the best album of the year.  On a list that included some all-time luminary albums such as The Sword’s Apocryphon, Cancer Bats’ Dead Set on Living and Graveyard’s Lights Out.

And there was nothing wrong with Don’t Hear It…Fear it!...but there is no way on this blue earth that it was the album of the year over some of the heavyweights listed above.  The mistake was immediate and irreparable.

So, each time The Shovell decides to release new music, the same guilty party that made that mistake devotes time and energy to the new record, to see if something can be gleaned from The Shovell’s progression that makes the guilt sting just a little less.

And so the exercise repeats, as the band stands to release their fifth full length album, “The Trouble with the Shovell.”

It’s…fine.  It’s an enjoyable record.  There are some great moments at the end, like “Blue Mountain Dust,” which evokes memories of the band’s best song, “Don’t Hear it…Fear It!” (not to be confused with the album of the same name,) and “Another Greasy Spoon,” which as the title suggests, is classic blues sleaze rock in its best and final form.  

Really, the whole record is a dirty, grimy rock experience, which fits well into what the idiom of The Shovell has always been, lo, these eighteen years.  Just pop on album opener “Laughing Gravy,” and be reminded of the same kind of mood that allowed Black Sabbath to open Master of Reality with “Sweet Leaf.”

The difference is, Master of Reality is so much more than that opening track, evolving into “Children of the Grave” and ultimately into the enduring classic “Into the Void.”  By contrast The Trouble With the Shovell never really moves past “Laughing Gravy” to become something more.  So, if you like the first track, you’ll like most of what follows.  And if you don’t, well…

There is the brief moment of “Kind Boy” which bops along with something almost akin to the upbeat tempos of classic southern rock, and that’s a fun interlude as The Shovell channels their inner Golden Earring.  As far as versatility goes, that’s about all that’s on offer, though.

The guilt remains.

Album Review: Tardigrade Inferno - Hush

Hmm.  Here we are, faced with Tardigrade Inferno’s new record Hush, their third full-length since their debut effort in 2019.  And while we are normally loathe to compare albums by different artists directly, it’s hard not to look back a week in time at Rob Zombie’s The Great Satan and remark: “this is what that should have been.”

Such a casual comparison is patently lazy, but it paints the necessary framework of how Hush should be viewed.  Tardigrade Inferno describe themselves as ‘dark cabaret metal,’ and while metal needs another subgenre like it needs a second coming of nu-metal, the epithet is essentially correct.  

By now the reader has put the pieces together - Tardigrade Inferno, originally hailing from St. Petersburg, Russia, have conjured the kind of dark carnival that Rob Zombie blazed the path for with such aplomb some twenty-five-plus years ago (and yes, I am purposefully ignoring the Insane Clown Posse, thankyouverymuch.)

Where TI (which we’ll abbreviate from here forward,) advances the cause is in their dedication to crafting an image within the music.  It’s more rare than ever to listen to a new record, particularly in the digital age without the benefit of liner notes, and feel swept into the proceedings in a tangible way; but close your eyes and it’s easy from the first strains of “The Final Show,” the album’s introductory cut, to feel the harrowing sunset over the abandoned amusement park, that ethereal transition as bright day gives way to the machinations of haunted night, and the hidden, clanking mechanics of the monsters of the midway (not to be confused with the Chicago Bears,) come rusting to life.

An overly dramatic description? Sure.  But also the point.  That’s the kind of twisted, tormented reality that TI presents with skill and conviction, the kind of the layered scenery it deliriously and thoroughly chews on with a broken-glass smile, daring you take the journey alongside.

The linchpin of the entire proceeding is vocalist Darya Rorria, who can vacillate skillfully between teasing laugh and brooding terror as easily as she breathes.  She tempts like a siren, appealing to your inner evils with a saccharine sweetness that entices and disarms, even as she openly sings about cannibalism on tracks like “Goor.”  

There’s an inherent sultriness to both Rorria’s performance and the rhythmic, heavy undulations of the music as a whole that separates TI’s brand of dark metal from their contemporaries.  It’s a rare intersection of roads when a band can be both as menacingly descriptive as Slayer, as literally brooding as Type O Negative and as playfully dangerous as 6:33, but that’s where Hush lands. (For Deep Purple fans out there, you’re going to be disappointed - there is no cover of DP’s 1968 classic of the same name.  Though TI should absolutely give it a shot.)

Which is not to say that TI sounds quite like any of those three in whole - rather, their music takes on, at the risk of being redundant, the affect of a dark cabaret, something like an adult version of the mysterious carnival from Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. Whether the long-nailed threat of a faux whimsical tune like “Deadly Fairytales,” or the out-and-out, fiery adrenaline of “Hide’n’Seek” or the title track, Hush comes at the listener with a lot of different attractions to lure every taste.

For all the subtle variations in style, there is a thematic consistency to Hush that ties the entire effort together - it attempts to give a window to the demons within, a catharsis to all the greedy, less-than-socially-acceptable thoughts we’ve ever had.  And with Rorria at the helm, blood and darkness and evil never sounded so sexy.  Or, with apologies to classic romps like “Dragula,” so fun.

A small splash of cold water - there are gaps in the proceedings.  Cuts like “Dead Fish Smile” and “I.C.D.” get lost in their own message and founder about too much, subtracting from the album’s overall flow.  There’s nobility in the attempt of these songs, but the band leans hard into their heavier side for them both, and it subtracts from their demonstrable versatility.  And “Goor,” well…as fun as it is, it is about cannibalism or something like it, so that’ll be a tougher pill for listeners who prefer something slightly more metaphoric.

That said - it’s been a long time since there was a metal album that drew the listener into its world like this - that so successfully captured the imagination and took the beholder out of their own reality and into the one the band creates.  If music is an escapist activity designed to make us either channel our troubles or forget them, then Tardigrade Inferno’s Hush is a pure example of that escapism.

Album Review: Lost Society - Hell Is A State Of Mind

Let this be an object lesson to everyone in the music sphere - artists, labels, editorialists, promoters, fans, everyone.  Gather ‘round, kids, it’s story time.

When Lost Society debuted in 2013 with Fast Loud Death, it was easy to see the band’s appeal - a throwback thrash band capable of putting out a lot of wattage, who understood the genre and its essential aspects.  The album was enjoyable for what it was, but mostly functioned as a promise of music to come.

The band followed that up with Terror Hungry the subsequent year, and it was much more of the same - good, solid, back-to-basics thrash.  Fun, fast, talented; but not revolutionary or genre-breaking in a significant way.  Lost Society was another thrash band living in the shadow of the legacy of Lazarus A.D, and the brief but stratospheric rise of Power Trip.

It was easy back then to tacitly nod and say ‘well, that’s what they are.’

Here at BGM, we talk a lot about the evolution of artists - how to ride the nearly impossible balance of sounding like yourself, but not being stale within that sound.  Few artists even attempt to make alterations mid-career, and the bands who have achieved it in the metal sphere are luminary and few - Metallica (for good or ill,) Iron Maiden, Anthrax (during the Bush era)...without wasting undo time ruminating on it, those are the ones who come to mind.

Lost Society has defied the odds.  Not just an evolution, but a complete re-invention.

And so we come to their new record, Hell Is A State of Mind, and for those who left the band behind as settled law after their initial run, make sure to come back and try them again.  Somewhere between 2014 and 2026, the band went back into the lab and cooked up an entirely new affect.  Their new brand is still metal, surely, but more melodic, more accessible, borrows more from rock, and does a superior job of creating a feeling than all their thrash grasping ever did.

To go back into their catalogue now is to see the steps - 2020’s self-released No Absolution, and then 2022’s If The Sky Came Down show the birth pangs of the re-invention, but what they really do is speak to the six-year (and probably more,) meandering, experimental journey to get to the point of this new record in 2026.

First point first - that is not to say that Lost Society is no longer a thrash band.  Halfway down the record is “Kill the Light,” and even with the big chorus and the brittle melody, Lost Society leaves no doubt in the chugging riff that this is still a band who can get down with a buzzsaw guitar and a headbanging anthem.  That’s only the first half, though - the back half of the tune is something else entirely - an anthemic power romp with keyboards, chorused vocals and something approaching stringed instruments.  Thrash, sure, but something indelibly more.

This kind of melding synthesis is present throughout Hell Is A State of Mind, including on what may be the album’s best cut. “Synthetic.”  The band pulls every string they can think of and weaves them together into something dramatic, heavy and dire.  It’s as unique and enjoyable an amalgam of sounds as ideas as any metal band has released in recent years.

That’s the key here - the blending of elements into a greater whole - and the title track, placed last on the record, is the culmination of all nine songs that have come before.  It’s a thrash version of something that would sound at home capping off a Lord of the Lost album, with all the gravitas and rafter-rocking that comes with that comparison.

Okay, there will be a camp out there that says “doesn’t this kinda sound like Avenged Sevenfold?”  And that’s not without merit.  The counter to that, though, is 1) is that so terrible? And 2) never mind the heavy use of synth orchestrals that A7X has never truly dipped their toe in, the undercurrent of true thrash chops that Lost Society brings to bear and builds this album on, gives it an edge, a grit that few other modern, melodic bands can readily compare to.

Not every song on the album is perfect, that goes practically without saying - but there’s an awful lot of admirable songcraft here, as it seems every second or third song makes the listener go ‘huh, didn’t see that coming.’ And when a band can do that, can make the listener guess at what’s next when they’re already more than a dozen years into their career, that’s cause for celebration.  Let that be the object lesson - never assume you know all that a band can be.

Album Review: Rob Zombie - "The Great Satan"

Okay, deep breath…I think what we’re about to engage in is an earnest exercise in damning with faint praise.  Here goes.

Much like the collaborative work of John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, there’s an untouchable trinity of Rob Zombie musical efforts - Astro-Creep 2000 with White Zombie, Hellbilly Deluxe, and The Sinister Urge.  Not before, and not since, has anyone produced music that sounds quite like those three, and it’s a niche that the market has been failing to fill ever since, with apologies to the early works of Rob’s brother Spider and Powerman 5000, and if we’re being generous The Sickness. (Sidebar: The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China and Escape From New York, for those trying to wrack their brains.)

Then for a while, Zombie kind of wandered in the woods musically.  In his defense, he was embarking on a bankable film career, and how much creative juice does a person really have at any one time?  Anyway, what we got in the interim was the up-and-down (mostly down) Educated Horses (though I adore the excellent The Scorpion Sleeps.) The various and sundry albums that followed are numerous and immemorable.

And so we get to The Great Satan, Zombie’s newest offering.  It pulses with promise - the cover art is a needed throwback to the days of some of Rob’s best imagery, the  carnival-turned-twisted-pop-art that’s worked well for him for so long.  The early singles and accompanying videos promised a balance between Rob’s bombastic costumes of the past and the overdriven punk rock that propelled him to superstardom.  If Zombie needed a comeback, and if it was ever in the cards, The Great Satan held the most concerted promise of it.

There are…glimpses…of Zombie’s great potential on the record.  “Heathen Days” is the first cut that seems like it could have come from the same universe that produced “Superbeast.” Would that the mix were more guitar-forward, as the riff is simple but hooking, and leads into the chorus with an aggressive bite that deserves more space amidst the trademark Zombie morass.

“Out of Sight” is a virile rock romp that comes across like the logical evolution of where Zombie’s sound could have (and evidently did,) go after 1998.  The track is a little more muted than the explosiveness Zombie so often exhibits, but the changing beats and descending scales only serve to make the chorus pop all the more.

Then at the end we get served “Unclean Animals,” and there’s a song like this on all Zombie records - think “Blood, Milk and Sky” or “Return of the Phantom Stranger” or “House of 1000 Corpses,” or “Lords of Salem,” and you’re on the right track.  It’s big, it’s brooding, it’s dark, it shambles along with re-mixed vocals and appropriate dread.  It does the job.

Maybe that’s the real takeaway here - The Great Satan does the job.  That’s about it.  It has some pitfalls - for only having twelve real songs (there are some throwaway interludes, as one is wont to do,) and for having none that are longer than 3:46, the record feels too long.  Whether that’s because it simply runs out of gas, or because there’s a thematic and aural similarity between many of the tracks is to be determined, but it drags in the back half.  Also, no one would ever say Zombie was a particularly erudite lyricist (“Demonoid Phenomenon / Get It Out / Get it On”)  but he had a way of creating a bizarre, fun, otherworldly vision that seemed spooky but attractive.  If there was ever any nuance there, it’s been replaced on this record by Zombie’s heavy reliance on profanity, and as we all know, profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker.

Again, back to where we started - damning with faint praise.  This could be Zombie’s best album since The Sinister Urge, certainly on par with Educated Horses, but as discussed, that’s a low hurdle to clear.  Only “Heathen Days” rings with the kind of energy that demands to be listened to again and again.  The Great Satan can’t consistently carry the energy and aggressiveness that Rob is, or was, capable of, and while it’s not a terrible record that reminds of Zombie’s halcyon days, it’s also a disappointing one, because it reminds of Zombie’s halcyon days.

Album Review: Hoaxed - "Death Knocks"

It takes a minute.  Do that thing that’s so hard to do in our modern society of up-to-the-minute shitposting and instant gratification and new, uniquely unfulfilling content around every rhythmic click of the second hand.  

Be patient.

That’s how you’ll get the most out of Portland’s Hoaxed and their new album Death Knocks.  Don’t look for the big bang, the rumbling earthquake, the thundering catharsis.  There’s a certain kneejerk desire to compare Hoaxed to, say, Royal Thunder, and while there are similarities, that comparison is a misstep.  Hoaxed wins by playing the long game.  This is, if it can be said, low-fi dark rock beats for the discerning ear.

Instead, listen for the quiet, defeated desperation of Kat Keo’s vocals, the slow burn, the simmering boil that the album employs again and again.  Be patient.  It’ll come.  Give the record two complete listens.  Three.  Six.  Close your eyes, ignore the distractions.  Put your phone away and get lost in the swirling sea of the record as it takes the first three songs to build to the crescendo of the fourth, “The Fallen.”  You read that right - it takes more than ten minutes and three songs of clever layering, brooding harmony and slowly building might to get to the album’s first release point.  

There’s an interlude called “Looking Glass” (sadly, not a cover of the sublimely excellent song of the same name by Cave of Swimmers, which I bring up only because I would ADORE it if Hoaxed sank their fangs into it and came up with their version,) and even that interlude is crafted and thoughtful and an inexorable piece of the whole.  It’s haunting and cinematic and tangentially reminiscent of the work Goblin did for Dario Argento in the late ‘70s (watch Suspiria.  Thank me later.)

All that, all that just to get to the album’s best song, “Dead Ringer.”  The cut rolls out with an Iommi-ian riff, and then bridges into something dark and staccato and threatening, until the chorus erupts into a strained, chaotic singalong.  It’s one of the few choruses on the album that does so, which makes it stand out all the more.  If you’ll pardon the vernacular, it’s so damn cool.  Hoaxed shows us a glimpse of their power in a way that would make last year’s darling Year of the Cobra look at each other and say “maybe we need a guitarist.”

There are no bad songs on Death Knocks. No wasted space.  If there is a criticism that’s fair to levy at all, it’s what we discussed in the opening part of this piece - the listener must be patient with Death Knocks.  It’s not going to explode out of the speakers at you.  That’s not how it’s designed, not what the band is going for, and not what Keo’s vocals are meant for.  There are calculated moments of power, like “Dead Ringer,” “Kill Switch,” or the outro of “Where the Seas Fall Silent,” but Hoaxed purposefully doesn’t show that hand all the time.  If you’re looking for an adrenaline fix in your rock, best move along.

If you have the patience and the right ear for it, though, Death Knocks is a deeply rewarding album that should have something novel and enjoyable to offer for fans of all the bands we’ve already mentioned, plus Blood Ceremony, Type O Negative, Ghost, Nim Vind, and you get the idea.  

But be patient.  Close your eyes.  Breathe in your nose, out through your mouth, and wait for the music to come to you.  It will.

Album Review: Cold Steel - "Discipline and Punish"

It took a few runs to get this to open up, but once Cold Steel’s new full-length Discipline and Punish unraveled, there’s a lot here to like.  It just needs to be viewed through the proper lens.

The Tampa-based thrashers (are they thrashers?) are trying to fuse a few different brands of metal into a single mix, and at first it sounds messy, but ultimately that may be the point.  The album doesn’t take long to get there, either - album opener “No Escape” starts with a thunderous, Crowbar groove, and then moves into a second phase that is pure Pro-Pain, and then back again.  The big thumping riff is devilishly simple in construction, but that’s what makes it so effective.  We talk a lot here about the necessity of empty space in riffs, and this one leaves plenty of breathing room between thuds.

Then “Protocol” starts, and now we’ve moved into that modern thrash space that everyone has tried to emulate since Power Trip, with varying success (coincidence? Arthur Rizk produced this record, who also used to produce Power Trip.)  Cold Steel does a pretty good job of following the blueprint for what thrash needs to sound like to be captivating in the 21st century (Dead Heat take notice.)

It’s only a little father down in “Blacksmith of Damnation” that we start to see different influences creep into the proceedings.  The verses of this song are one thing, but it’s the first minute and the spaces in between where, if you listen right, you can hear a Fear Factory song (back when they were good,) trying to break out, just with a different production style.

The middle third of the album plods along without any particular comment.  Cold Steel doesn’t deviate a lot from the boilerplate in that section, and it drags a little, much like the middle third of Lazarus A.D’s classic The Onslaught, but without the same level of pure talent on display to carry the songs.

Don’t lose heart, though - stick with it for the last three tracks.  Beginning with “Fever Dreaming,” something magical happens, and for all the sound and fury of the album’s introductory third, it’s the ending flourish which makes it a special record.

“Fever Dreaming” is a…thrash…ballad?  None of those descriptors feel like they should be in the same sentence together, but it works.  The ragged vocals of Jose Menendez shouldn’t work in concert with the oversized, dramatic riffs and backing…keys, synth, chorus, whatever that is...but they do.  There’s a depth here that’s charming and infectious in its own way.

This is all followed by the thrash-rap (not a typo) “Smoking Mirrors,” which may secretly be the album’s best song.  It is, at worst, it’s most creative.  If fans of Alien Weaponry squint hard enough, they may see some of the same seeds in the way this song is constructed relative to the Māori band.  Again, should this work?  Who knows?  But it does, and it’s a lot of fun.

And we finish with “The Coldest Death,” which is back to form for the way most of the songs are written, but adds some end-of-album flourish with some of the lessons learned from “Fever Dreaming,” and a tingly guitar tone not entirely foreign to the sound of “Hallowed Be Thy Name,” a classic album closer.

If there is a fault of Discipline and Punish, it’s that 1) the title of the album is a little redundant, and 2) of all the influences and similarities in sound we’ve discussed above, the band isn’t quite as luminary at those same things as the names that were dropped.  What’s in Cold Steel’s favor, though, is that they are 1) very young and 2) the fact that they’ve blended those elements already speaks to the accomplishment of both this album, and future endeavors.