Album Review: Street Tombs - Existence is Corruption

This’ll be pretty quick.  Let’s not try to complicate this and make Street Tombs’ new album Existence Is Corruption something that it isn’t.

Have you ever enjoyed Goatwhore?  Or Venom?  Or Celtic Frost?  Or Darkthrone?  If you’re nodding your head vigorously (especially if your neck hurts while doing so,) you’ve come to the right place.

Listen, that might sound like an oversimplification, but really, Existence Is Corruption doesn’t need to be more than that.  There will always be a place in the crowded, gore-addled metal landscape for a band to remind us all of the days gone by in a fresh way, thumping out old-school death with a grimacing sneer and a bunch of stringy black hair and leather jackets.  It’s part of the collective musical DNA of the genre and appeals at the most primordial, instinctive level.

Especially when the artist crafting the tunes is so evidently good at it.  Street Tombs excels at knowing all the proper beats of how to write music in this vein, and the band is tight in their recitation.  It’s hard not to grin at the single “Deceptor,” which provides us with grim tones, yes, but also an accessible riff that’s easy to bop along to (as much as one can be said to ‘bop’ to music in this stripe.)  

Everywhere you turn, the record offers four-minute chunks of fun death metal, chugging along with broken-glass guitars and the usual growled missives about the futility of the human condition.  Real old-home-week kind of stuff, and that’s meant as a compliment. Best of all, unlike so many albums in this particular splinter, Existence is Corruption doesn’t sound like it was recorded in the back of a garbage truck.

(There is also, in all the guitar solos, just the barest hint of an East Bay Ray guitar tone, which sounds like it would be out of place, but works surprisingly well here.)

There is a…oneness…to the sound of the album.  Which is to say, in a blindfold test, it would be hard to identify one song from another, and the tone and pacing of the record never changes in a tangible fashion.  In a paradoxical way, that makes the record really fit for leaving on while doing office work (try it and see!) as it provides excellent, high-octane but not overbearing music to set your rhythm to.

As stated at the top though, don’t make this record something it doesn’t need to be.  Street Tombs knows what band they want to be.  They’ve recorded an(other) album that illustrates that point.  Relax and just enjoy the album for the simple joy of it.

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: Arch Enemy - "Blood Dynasty"

The truth is, there are not enough death metal bands that are making ‘fun’ death metal.  That’s a weird sentiment to express about the death metal genre, but it doesn’t make it any less true.  Arch Enemy makes fun death metal.  The band’s new album “Blood Dynasty” proves that, beyond all doubt.

There are critics and fans alike out there who are clinging to some bygone idea that Arch Enemy shouldn’t be making fun death metal - these are the last adherents to an older, less refined version of the band, but the truth of the matter is this - if the album “Root of All Evil,” which contained a series of re-imagined recordings from the band’s first three albums, served as the pivot point in the idiomatic expression of Arch Enemy, than the band has been this incarnation equally as long as they were that other one.  Frankly, this is the better half of their career (see also: similar arguments about Soilwork.)

The reason Arch Enemy remains so vital in this space is that they’ve never lost the sense of the big hook.  The band can be as heavy as they want, but there’s always a big, melodic, twin-guitared touchstone that makes each song distinct and memorable. 

Go no further than the opening cut “Dream Stealer,” which is as chaotic and hammering as one can imagine, but then out of nowhere comes this buzzsaw bridge riff that would sound right at home on “Painkiller,” into a huge melodic chorus, and then back under the waves into the miasma.

It’s not just that, though - Arch Enemy succeeds on “Blood Dynasty” by pulling from a lot of metal corners and folding them into a sound that’s still Arch Enemy.  Honestly, “March of the Miscreants” is not only an automatic singalong from the mosh pulpit, but might be the best Fear Factory song since “Slave Labor.”

Looking elsewhere, there’s a lot on “Blood Dynasty” that borrows heavily from the halcyon days of thrash.  “Don’t Look Down”? Thrash song.  “Paper Tiger”? Thrash song.  “Liars and Thieves”?  Thrash song.  Again, there are probably going to be detractors who claim that such deviations aren’t in the best interest of Arch Enemy, but the answer to that is simply to listen to the songs!  They’re fun in that way that thrash can motor along sounding like a tank rolling on old window cases.  This is what we mean when we talk about ‘fun’ death metal.  It can’t be all single-note musically, where everything is a slog and there’s no space to breathe.  Arch Enemy understands that.

Briefly, let’s draw attention to “Vivre Libre.”  Notable because it’s written in French, assuredly one of the native tongues of Quebecois vocalist Alissa White-Gluz, and that’s cool in and of itself.  There’s been some push recently by a small handful of bands to write the occasional song in their native language rather than the language of business, which is a trend that one hopes continues.  The song is perhaps more notable though, for featuring Alissa singing, rather than screaming or growling.  And she’s pretty good!

What do we really have here, then?  “Blood Dynasty” is a proto-thrash death metal record from veterans who understand what it takes to be successful and to survive for decades in the metal space.  It’s stuffed full of fast riffs, blistering solos and all the associated piss and vinegar one expects from music of this type.  And it’s fun.  That’s important, damn it.

Album Review: Necropanther - "Betrayal"

It’s taken a disproportionate amount of time to pen this review, in no small part because it’s been difficult to pin down what the real thoughts and reflections are about the album.  It was well within intent to have this done and dusted before the album’s release on March 3rd, and yet here we are, still without completely cogent ideas, but with enough to go on.

So, we’re just gonna start talking, and hopefully amidst the rambling sentiments there will be some themes that give a decent picture of what Necropanther’s “Betrayal” both is and isn’t.

For starters, this is thrash in the new millennium, borrowing heavily from death metal, both distant and recent, yet keeping the core of simple, accessible riffs that became the hallmark of thrash forty years ago.  

Stripping away the vocals from Necropanther, it’s easy to see a spiritual successor to the bright-but-brief phenomenon that was Power Trip.  Let’s drill down for a second into what is surely the album’s best song, “If You Can Count,” which ohbytheway, is representative of the climactic speech delivered by Cyrus in the most memorable scene in “The Warriors,” upon which the whole album is loosely based (and also upon the Greek myth that the film is in turn based on.)  Guitarist/vocalist Paul Anop noted that “Betrayal” is the first time he’s really allowed himself to stretch into solos, and the effect transforms Necropanther into something more than just another new age thrash/death band.  The solo he unleashes toward the end of the song is more rock than metal, more Van Halen than Slayer, and however brief it may be, in stands in stark juxtaposition to the rest of the song.  It serves as the perfect bridge into the twin guitar outro, which is again notable for its brevity.

Skipping ahead to “Revenants,” we encounter much of the same pattern.  Does anyone remember the 2010 album by As They Sleep, called “Dynasty”?  That was a middling record, but it was punctuated by one sublime, transcendent single, “Bedlam at the Nile.”  It took the better part of a week to figure out where the song construction of “Revenants” was familiar from, and finally there it was.  This new track by Necropanther inverts the formula, going with the grindy bit first, followed by the galloping riff, and then grinds back out, but the dance steps are similar.

As “Betrayal” proceeds it dips more and more into the death metal patterns of recent years, sounding at many points similar to Vaelmyst’s recent “Secrypts of the Egochasm.” We mention this only because the combination of these albums, and their combined utilization of melodic riffs and solos flayed out over the nailbed of frenetic drums, lends hope that perhaps the next wave of great American thrash/death is nigh.  Some years ago, it was believed that Lazarus AD might be the flagbearer for that march, and then Power Trip in their turn, but for reasons either confounding or heartbreaking, the wave crashed against the rocks and receded.  Hope springs eternal here.

“Betrayal” bears the hallmarks, intentional or accidental, of some other albums from relative yesteryear, like the aforementioned Lazarus AD’s “The Onslaught,” and even the barest hint of Prototype’s progressive metal “Catalyst.”  

And so it’s easy to recommend “Betrayal” as a satisfying and accomplished listen for all fans of either death or thrash, no matter the personal preferred stripe….and yet.

For all its accomplishment, both in technical merit and in so low a concept as simple enjoyability, there is a certain je ne sais quoi that holds the production back.  It’s almost as though the album is equal to the sum of its parts, no more and no less.  It is difficult to find the ‘ah-ha!’ moment that makes truly brilliant albums shine.

That said, and this in no way clears the muddied waters of this humble review, this review was published when it was simply so that it could be run reasonably near the album’s release.  Listening to “Betrayal” hasn’t stopped, and every subsequent pass yields some new find, some minor discovery, or at least paints the pictures in different relief.

There is no conclusion because there is not yet a firm conclusion.

Album Review: Whitechapel - "Mark of the Blade"

In the last decade, perhaps no American metal band, and certainly no American death(core) metal band has worked harder or more consistently than Whitechapel, who seems to constantly be embarked on some tour or another every week.  Their live show, to their credit, is tireless, always bringing the same energy, same passion, same assault every night on the stage.  Somewhere in there, the band finds time to release records.

 

Every time I see another Whitechapel record, there’s a pervasive thought that this is the one, that the band has finally produced an album that is cohesive and addictive and powerful.  These are the things that Whitechapel has long been capable of, but the delivery has always missed the bullseye by at least a little, seemingly concentrating on the third of those qualities and less so on the other two.  Each album seems to see the band get a little closer to breaking through, but they’ve yet to get there.  Hope springs eternal however, and so here we go again with “Mark of the Blade.”

 

Cutting directly to the heart of the matter, the story for this new record is different, but only in that it is a new permutation of the complication listed above.  The power is intact, but it is also pervasive, exploding out of every pore of every track of the record, including in places where the band might have been better served by a change of pace.  This hardly comes as a surprise, and fans will cry ‘well, what did you expect?’ and there’s legitimacy to that, but Whitechapel still possesses the talent to be more than this.

 

Listen to the middle section of “Elitist Ones.”  That break in the middle where the rhythm slows and the harsh sounds fade away?  That could have been the start of a truly captivating bridge, but instead, the pedal instantly goes back down to the metal and we’re thrashing about death throes again.  Capable for what it is, but an opportunity missed, surely.

 

Same goes for “Bring Me Home” the album’s requisite ‘slow’ song.  The softer vocals here are an unexpected change of pace, which makes one practically beg for a full-sail exploration of where this strait may lead, but it’s not to be, as the band, almost out of a sense of obligation, slams back into a concussion of a chorus, leaving the listener wondering what could have been.

 

Part of the complication with “Mark of the Blade” is that the signal-to-noise ratio is very much askew, washing the audience over and over again with distorted noise and pugilistic beats, relentless in repetition.  The guitar intro and subsequent riff of “Venomous” shows the promise of some artistic riffing, but is completely buried within the mix, lost in the noise of the smashing and banging.

 

Now, the bright side – if the listener is looking for death metal and/or death core in the usual sense, than this new record has everything you would want to hear.  Much in the pattern of Whitechapel’s history, this album sticks to the formula, executing all the tenets of their chosen idiom with flawless precision.  It’s heavy, it’s got riffs, it’s angry, it’s making a point and taking on social commentary, even going so far as to call out those with ‘elitist’ metal tastes.  So those checkmarks are all clicked off and present.  “A Killing Industry” is probably the record’s best moment, calling to mind those best days of death metal in the Napalm Death school, a combination of threatening guitars and volatile vocals that run way past the margins.

 

Still, the promise of Whitechapel seems to as yet remain unattained, dancing again just over the horizon, just far enough out of reach to be frustrating.  The moments of careful pacing on “__” represent another piece of the puzzle falling into place, so the progress is there, even if the promise is still slightly unfulfilled.

Album Review: Children of Bodom - "I Worship Chaos"

Children of Bodom has long since passed the point of necessary introductions, so the instant question for their new album “I Worship Chaos” becomes ‘what do we need to know?’  Well, here’s the rundown.  There’s one fundamental change to the band this time around, which is that rhythm man Roope Latvala is gone and was not replaced, which leaves leading idea man and axe magician Alexi Laiho alone in lifting the band’s heavy guitar weight.  So for the first time ever, we now see the Finnish metal masters as a four-piece, which means an altered workload for bassist Henkka Seppala and keyboardist Janne Wirman.

The record begins with the nominal helping of CoB’s powerful and characteristic flair.  “I Hurt” is both a certified earwig of a song with a big chorus and a great hook and also a thudding maul that relentlessly strikes the anvil time and again.  This kind of single has become part and parcel for the band, the kind of tunefully punishing anthem that has long served to distance CoB from the rest of the pack.

Not to be outdone, the album continues into “My Bodom (I am the Only One)” which is essentially a variation on the same song and also a stylistic throwback to the heady days of “Follow the Reaper.”  The song builds to a major crescendo on multiple points and accents Laiho’s underlying rhythm with a welcome heavy dose of Wirman’s keyboards, which is a tactic the band hasn’t utilized as much of in recent years.

Yet, what strikes most about “I Worship Chaos” is the way that long sections of the record…well, aren’t chaotic at all.  There’s a lot of new look from CoB this time around, a cadence that shifts slower and channels that speed into low-gear power.  Not necessarily in the headbanging capacity, but in the infectious simplicity of rock rhythms that allow these songs to be more than bite-sized chunks of accelerated death.  The band’s hand is steadier for this record, which not only shows some diversity in the band’s landscape, but also the confidence to take the risk.

Sure, it’s a more mature sound with greater deliberation and less purely virile frenzy, but that’s hardly something to note in the loss column.  “I Worship Chaos” wants you to hear and feel it beyond just letting it breeze by and pick you up in swirling winds.  It’s a new face for CoB, but not a bad one.  “Prayer  for the Afflicted” is a totally new face of the band, injecting something bordering on sentimentality into the usual metal proceedings.  In the intervening space, Laiho uses his talents to craft an artfully executed solo, which sacrifices his usual biting speed for a soulful, borderline inspiring presence.  It’s a change of pace and paradigm that requires a little getting used to, but the end product is one of the album’s better selections.

“I Worship Chaos” essentially works like a cosine wave, starting with the ferocity of “I Hurt” and dipping into the drama of “Prayer for the Afflicted” before coming back again.  There are fluctuations of both idioms on the album’s second half, as the title track pounds cement with galvanized fists, but then “All for Nothing” immediately takes us back to a more introspective place.  Nevertheless, the album concludes high on tempo and excitement with “Widdershins,” (which means essentially to go counterclockwise, but also sounds like the name of a Welsh rugby club.)  The finale’s outro is interestingly marked by a chain of punchy guitar chords played in repetition, sounding curiously like a hardcore anthem, but it still fits the overall picture of the album.

So for the first time we see Children of Bodom as a four piece, and the result is a record that is in many ways superior to the previous album “Halo of Blood.”  The measured pacing and deliberate delivery are both nice additions to the general deck of CoB and make for a more versatile experience that can adapt to different listening situations.  The band is no long simply a straight-ahead bullet train, and while they were great then (“Relentless, Reckless, Forever” is one of the all-time great records,) this new affect gives extra dimension and a greater array of possibilities down the line.