Amorphis Archives - The Metal Pigeon

June 3, 2018 2018, Amorphis, At The Gates, Finland, Melo-Death 4 Comments

Scandinavian Summer: The Return of At The Gates and Amorphis

The two biggest releases in the month of May, I was of course wanting to give them an ample amount of listening time before writing anything and the busy nature of the month (including concerts and one out of town trip!) lent towards the drawn out time frame from their release date till now. I’m glad I waited because I was a little high on one and not so much on the other and its been interesting to see how an extra week or so has leveled off both of those opinions with different insights that came to me later on. With as high profile as these have been I feel like I took my eye off the rest of the release radar for this month and possibly June, so if anyone has any tips on what I should be paying attention to right now please drop me a recommendation in the comments!

Amorphis – Queen of Time:

I was surprised when Amorphis announced that a new album would be landing in our laps this summer, but quickly realized that its release date would fall just under three years since the September 2015 release of Under The Red Cloud, an album that was so magnificently brilliant it took hold of my album of the year spot. I think that album had so dominated my listening time for a good half a year after first hearing it that it made it feel like it was just released last year-ish. I put the album and indeed the band on a long break after seeing them live later in April 2017, something that needs doing after so intense a period of listening to an album you’re obsessing over along with the band’s entire back catalog as a side effect of that enthusiasm. I learned that lesson way back in the early aughts with Opeth and Blackwater Park, particularly considering how soon Deliverance and Damnation and even Ghost Reveries followed —- I couldn’t so much as look at an Opeth album cover for a good long while (a few years actually). That being said I feel like I had a healthy level of anticipation for this one, optimistic that it would be a good album (remember my Amorphis as the New England Patriots of Finnish metal comparison?… no? Dammit.), but a little skeptical that they’d be able to go the distance towards a masterpiece like they did last time around. I was right on the last part, Queen of Time is certainly nowhere near the level of inspired artistry we heard on Red Cloud, and it can rightly be described as a good, even very good album, but somehow something isn’t clicking with me here and I’m having a hard time figuring out what.

One thing is clear after all these many listens, that Amorphis is clearly running with open arms towards the highly melodic side of their sound that they expanded on Red Cloud. That means ample melodies, some bordering on what can perhaps be described as sugary or at the least a little sweet, a load of Tomi Joutsen’s clean vocals, and the bulk of the songs being set in a mid-tempo groove. On “Daughter of Hate” they even balance a ferocious melo-death attack with a laid back jazzy section replete with backbeat on the percussion and that recent mistress heard operating around various parts of Scandinavia, the saxophone. I alternate between being okay with it and other times being largely annoyed by its presence, and this is coming from someone who doesn’t mind the odd bit of sax (I grew up liking INXS for starters and then there’s its star role in Queensryche’s Promised Land to consider). More than that though, I couldn’t get into the almost twee sounding melody propelling “Message In The Amber”, unfortunate because its brutal middle section is entirely worth sitting through the rest of the song for. The placement of various sections within the song seem disjointed as well, lacking anything in the way of needed transitions or cues. This songwriting dysmorphia is also evidenced on “Grain of Sand”, where we hear some good ideas but nothing ever gels or coalesces into a greater whole. There’s something just generally frustrating about how songs like “Wrong Direction” and “The Golden Elk” turned out, because you get the feeling that they could have been excellent had they just locked in on a few things. I love the Arabic strings towards the end of the latter, but they came in far too late and probably should’ve been used more throughout the song, as they are now they strike me as an afterthought.

But more often than not, Amorphis flash that brilliance we’ve all fallen in love with, be it on the synth dressed “The Bee” with its lurching, punching Jousten growled verses that stomps and beats its chest emphatically. It’s status as the best song on the album might be challenged by “Heart of the Giant”, an energetic song with a surprising rhythmically structured chorus that seems to swoop in from out of nowhere. Similarly, “Pyres On the Coast” drives a rumbling buildup to a swiftly moving orchestral motif that arrives without warning but is compulsively re-listenable. And I’m of course a fan of the duet here featuring one Anneke van Giersbergen on “Amongst Stars”, although it does by virtue of her vocal tone skirt near that saccharine territory I was talking about before. She’s just such a great foil to Joutsen though that it hardly matters, particularly when the chorus she’s belting out is as lovely as this. The folky whistles on this song I believe might come from Eluveitie’s Chrigel Glanzmann which is a cool little detail, and the addition of them makes it sound like a lost track to van Giersbergen’s collaboration with Arjen in The Gentle Storm. This was a Santeri Kallio penned tune, a perfect example of his preferred songwriting approach with largely uptempo songs built around his bright, harmonious keyboard melodies. He and founding guitarist Esa Holopainen once again split the songwriting duties fairly evenly, with Holopainen’s contributions coming in on the heavier end (a distinction that really was magnified on Red Cloud). I could attempt to draw some kind of conclusion that it seems like my tastes fell more in line with Kallio’s songs on this album, but it was the other way around last time so I’m not sure if there’s anything to really learn from that.

What has become clear to me however is that I just don’t find this album as addictive as I was hoping for, to take that full on plunge back into Amorphis’ world once again. It reminds me so much of their 2013 Circle album in that light, where a few songs really stood out and I’d listen to them repeatedly, but the album itself was a trying experience. I think Queen of Time is a stronger album than that one, but only because they’re really running with this whole extreme melodicism thing which is right up my power metal street. I’m not getting down on the band as a result of this however, nor on myself; it was always going to be a tall order to follow up Red Cloud, and I knew that going in. And besides, who can tell what album is going to trigger that kind of intense reaction in any of us? For all I know someone may experience this album as their Amorphis masterpiece and think Red Cloud was a misstep (they’re wrong of course…). Going back to that Patriots analogy for a second, that team made it back to the Super Bowl yet again this past February and seemed likely to cruise to another championship, only to lose to the Eagles and their upstart second string quarterback Nick Foles. So close yet so far and all that. Its hard to win a title, just look at how challenging its been for Lebron James who’s only won 3 out of the how many trips to the NBA Finals? If there’s any band that can deliver another masterpiece at some point in the future its Amorphis, whose discography is void of anything I’d call bad or terrible. Each new album has at least yielded a small handful of classics to throw onto the old playlist, and that’s something to be grateful for as a fan (as a Rockets fan, trust me you gotta find small victories). I’ll be seeing the band live in October, and you better believe I’ll be all in at that show.

At The Gates – To Drink From The Night Itself:

This might seem stupidly arbitrary, but I had a good feeling about this newest At The Gates album when I saw the title. Look at it, it practically screams early-90s At The Gates pretension, cue The Red In The Sky Is Ours and With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness. When I was first getting introduced to melo-death, those album titles were thrown my way like life preservers by magazines, the scant metal websites around back then and the few metalheads I knew who were already in the know about such things. Those titles were mystical to me, just like Emperor’s Anthems to the Welkin At Dusk, or Darkthrone’s A Blaze In the Northern Sky. I love a lengthy, vague, somewhat mystical album title. Maybe this was me just grabbing for something to be excited about, because I was already on shaky ground confidence wise considering how non-existent my relationship to their 2014 comeback album At War With Reality has been since I first reviewed it. To put it bluntly, I don’t think I listened to it again after finishing writing that review, I just never felt the urge to go back to it. For the purposes of putting this new album in context, I did go back and give it a once over, and my feelings largely remained the same as what I put down in my original review —- there were some decent songs, a few really awesome riffs, and a whole lotta paint by numbers At The Gates… it was the sound of a band trying to sound like what it thought it was supposed to sound like to everyone else. It wouldn’t have been half as glaring had Carcass not had their own glorious return just a year prior with Surgical Steel, a record that was as confident, thoroughly of the moment, and also as forward looking as a comeback album could possibly be. It was such a phenomenal record that five years on Carcass have yet to follow it up, and though I’m sure that At The Gates were proud of At War With Reality, I’m glad they’re not letting it be the last word on a storied career.

On To Drink From The Night Itself, At The Gates once again return to the spirit of a band trying to explore the internal limits of their sound. This is an audience challenging album, often times working at tempos that aren’t the breakneck pace of most of At War With Reality or Slaughter of the Soul, some of the most intriguing songs finding other ways than solely speed to project intensity. Take “A Stare Bound In Stone”, an early album highlight where circular riff sequences create a sense of hypnosis, new guitarist Jonas Stålhammar and band vet Martin Larsson playing in mechanical lockstep. The abrupt mid-song lone guitar led drop-out begins a passage of waves and waves of tremolo infused riffing that crash down. My personal favorite is “Palace of Lepers”, particularly for its euphoric, syrupy sweet classic melo-death riff payoff around the three minute mark, and that they let it carry on through the fade out is a nice detail. I could see how a song like “Daggers of Black Haze” might strike some as too slow or meandering seeming, but I think the melody they’re coaxing in that primary riff motif is interesting in its own right, and again with the beautiful mid-song transition (this time at the 2:33 mark), a little classic Gothenburg Scandinavian folk in that acoustic sounding sequence. There’s a real sense of the band attempting to morph or shape the limits of the At The Gates stylistic boundaries, as on “The Colours of the Beast” which is unlike anything we’ve heard them attempt, a staggeringly powerful lumbering riff based monster that rattles the interior cabin of your car if you’re like me listening to it a near full blast.

Of course there’s the lone exception to all this new freshness, that being the title track turned music video, and I’ll say right up front that its a fun, adrenaline rocketing tune, the kind of thing that At The Gates is identified with. The only complaint might be that its a little too close to “Blinded By Fear”, as in really frigging close (that riff is just one or two minor adjustments from being a carbon copy —- guitarists help me out here!). The jarring dichotomy between it and the rest of the songs is precisely why the album speaks to the band’s growth here. The former is a slice of past glories more in keeping with At War With Reality, and everything else is a bit of a strange journey into unknown places with only the slightest of head nods to the ancient past of their first two albums. When I listen to “Labyrinth of Tombs” and its interweaving guitar motifs or “Seas of Starvation” with its rumbling bass riffing and epic, elegiac guitar fragments, I hear a side of the band that I’d never expected (the string section blast at the end of “The Mirror Black” being another whoa moment). I will say that there are some production issues going on here that crop up more in some songs than others, particularly with how muffled the drum sound seems to get whenever everything else is pouring on top of it. Tomas Lindberg, as fine of form in gravelly voice as he ever is also gets a little cramped in the mix, with guitars taking a bite out of his fierceness in some critical spots. I am surprised at just how little I noticed Anders Björler’s absence, with the new guy fitting in remarkably well, not surprising I guess given Anders comments on why he decided to leave in the first place. For the rest of the band, they’ve found their footing after a long reunion process, and it finally feels like they’re really, really back.

October 18, 2015 2015, Amorphis, Finland 8 Comments

Amorphis Make A Run At Immortality

I’d love to one day read an insider’s perspective on why and how Scandinavian metal bands simply seem to flourish longer and better than their non-Scandinavian counterparts. I’m sure the answer lies in a nexus somewhere between the role of music education in their primary schools, the ability to provide a collegiate/university level education for free, and the support of the government for arts programs that help subsidize musicians. Now of course, that’s all possible because of the relatively low population of those countries in question, but still, there’s something else elusive here that I’m unable to articulate. Is it simply those countries’ beautiful natural landscapes that provide a sustaining current of motivation and inspiration? I think all of those aspects could help to explain why Scandinavian musicians flourish longer, but what makes them flourish better is a mystery that there might not be a tangible explanation for.

See here we have Finland’s Amorphis, a band that shot out of the gate releasing a bonafide masterpiece in 1994’s Tales from the Thousand Lakes, just their second album. It was as influential as a death metal album could be, helping to forge the melodic death metal genre and even pioneering the usage of folk melody in metal. Then there was 2009’s Skyforger, their almost-a-masterpiece of the Tomi Joutsen era that I personally felt was a few more strong melodies and hooks away from really nailing it. Still, bands rarely deliver two truly excellent albums, let alone those separated by more than a decade, and it was proof that the band’s talent was enduring. But the albums before, in between, and after those have always been a little hit and miss. Take 2013’s Circle, a fairly good album, but one that eluded my year end best of list —- its flawless gem of a single however, one “Hopeless Days”, was one of the most addictive, sublime songs of that year. You could go back through all their albums and find a song or two that really stands out, those diamonds in the rough as it were. I suspect this is a band whose minimum talent level in songwriting and performing is pretty much a bulwark against their releasing something that’s awful from start to finish.

So its simultaneously surprising and not all that surprising that their twelfth and latest album, Under the Red Cloud, is their second truly flawless masterwork —- an album so beautiful, so full of rich melodies and thoughtful harmonies that flow under and over poetic, elegiac lyrics —- that it is threatening as a serious contender for the top spot on my album of the year list. What rational explanation is there for a band to release arguably its flat out best album more than twenty years into its career? Let’s see, its football season, baseball postseason, and the start of the NBA, so we’ll use a sports metaphor: Its extremely difficult to win a championship, for any team, no matter how good they usually are. Just ask the New England Patriots, who won three Super Bowls from 2001-2004, only to have to wait until this past February to earn their fourth title. The only logical thing a team can do is to build what they refer to as a “post-season contender”, that is a team that does well enough in the regular season to ensure a playoff berth. Again I’ll refer to the Patriots, who since installing the seemingly infallible Tom Brady at quarterback on 9/23/01 have only missed out on reaching the playoffs two seasons out of the past fourteen. That’s insane. Its also a rather unusually dead-on analogy for the success of this album.

There are arguably no bad Amorphis albums. This isn’t a band that does anything less than solid, good, or above average. They could be seen as the New England Patriots of Finnish metal (then again, there are a lot of consistently excellent Finnish metal bands out there, so we might need to utilize more team names if this analogy really gets going), a band that consistently delivers new albums that are worth our time and attention, even if they don’t always go the distance. Just like the Patriots and their amazing run of playoff berths in the past fourteen years, Amorphis have been a prolific entity as well, twelve albums in twenty odd years is a respectable clip for a modest metal band. They’ve also been through quite a few lineup changes throughout the years, just like the Patriots, who have only retained Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick all throughout their 2001-present day reign of terror. Fans of the Patriots know that as long as their team is good enough to earn a playoff berth, they might be able to “get hot” during the playoffs and “make a run” at getting to the Superbowl and winning the championship (for you non NFL followers, they made it back to the Super Bowl in 2007 and 2011, losing both times to the New York Giants). Similarly, Amorphis’ consistent stabs at unleashing another masterpiece to their name have yielded a stunning number of almost-there releases, all until this one —- this time, the band didn’t bow out of the playoffs, they got hot and made a run towards immortality. Consider Under the Red Cloud their Vince Lombardi trophy.

Where to begin… jeez, alright let’s just start at the very beginning. I’m in love with the charming, almost playful skip of the intro piano lines that like a conductor usher in warm bass notes, moody guitar figures, soft and hard cymbal crashes, and finally a skeleton of the melodic motif that anchors the album’s title track (also one of the first instances I can remember that a title track starts off an album). Its worth noting straight away just how much of a yin/yang thing guitarist Esa Holopainen and keyboardist Santeri Kallio have going as the band’s primary songwriters. They’ve been essentially splitting the songwriting duties since 2006’s Eclipse (perhaps before then too, but they only started noting individual member contributions on that album onwards), and they’ve collectively done a fine job, albeit with my tastes traditionally leaning more towards Holopainen’s mainline to that Finnish melancholy that I love so much. On the new album however, their differences in songwriting palettes work in perfect synergy, Kallio’s songs are uptempo, expansive, bright even, with accessible thru lines very apparently structured around keyboard forged melodies. Meanwhile, Holopainen’s songs are a little darker, the riffs more melo-death tight, with barreling forward rhythmic assaults that at certain moments blur the lines between melo-death and black metal. Their combined efforts have never before produced such a multifaceted, diverse body of work —- every song here has its own personality, its purpose and place.

Kallio’s opening title track is certainly gorgeous, but its his gem “Bad Blood” where he really hits a new apex in his songwriting. First there’s the inventiveness of the primary melody at work, itself a constantly shifting, cascading succession of notes that acts more as a motif (that word again!) rather than a hook line. It pops up for example in the intro to the song, then as a post-chorus coda, only to wind up as an understated guitar solo, finally to wind its way out as the song’s outro… a lot to ask of a simple, snake-like melody but it holds up to the all the duress. Underneath rhythm guitars slam down slabs of heaviness in punishing riffs to complement Joutsen’s intensely gritty doom-death vocals during the verses. Of course Joutsen being the gifted clean vocalist that he is treats us to one of his trademarked soaring deliveries during the chorus, an addictive ear-wormy vocal hook that has not left my mind since first hearing it. This might be one of the most compulsively headbanging songs of 2015, one that sees Amorphis reflecting the influence of last year’s Thousand Lakes 20th anniversary tour —- they simply haven’t sounded this brutal since the mid-nineties. Its also nice that Kallio’s more stridently melodic songs can still deliver the wood, that he and Holopainen haven’t simply settled into “I’ll write the poppier stuff and you write the more metal stuff” type of dynamic. A song like “Bad Blood” is proof that you can have crushing heaviness and pop accessibility merge together, it just takes skillful songwriting.

I’m not suggesting however that Holopainen himself isn’t capable of writing something anthemic or catchy (this is the guy who wrote “House of Sleep” and “Hopeless Days” after all), as he proves on the album’s second single “Sacrifice”. As a brief aside from discussing the album, if you haven’t seen the music video for this one, scroll all the way down this review and check it out immediately (placed on this page so you won’t go to YouTube and get baited by the suggested videos bar to the right, particularly the Halloween Whopper review, that’s a detour from which you’ll never come back). Its a rare example of a metal band getting a music video right, with inspired cinematography, an interesting concept divorced from the band’s performance footage —- which itself is tastefully done and not reliant on cheap gimmicks such as flamboyant pyrotechnics and assorted light show ephemera (all of which sadly enough, marred their video for “Death of A King”). Maybe having easy access to the Finnish countryside helps considerably too. As for the song itself, “Sacrifice” is built upon jets of Sentenced-ish major-minor key alternations, with a cinematic chorus that is built upon Joustsen’s strident vocal melody. Its classic Joutsen era Amorphis, and a vivid example of why their decision to continue outsourcing their lyrics to Finnish poet/artist Pekka Kainulainen is a smart one. Consider the chorus lyric: “Come when the sun has gone away / When the warmth has gone / Take what I will give you / Accept my sacrifice”. Credit to Joutsen for keeping his translation of Kainulainen as simple and elegant as possible.

Yes, that’s right, Kainulainen writes his lyrics for Amorphis in Finnish, as poems built around a concept the band has discussed with him or perhaps something of his own inspiration. Joutsen then takes the final finished versions and has to translate them into English, essentially deconstructing a poem and then reassembling it, all while working out vocal melodies at the same time. Joutsen introduced Kainulainen to the rest of the band for 2007’s Silent Waters, where he wrote the lyrics based upon a character from the Kalevala, and continued the Kalevala based theme through Skyforger and The Beginning of Times. For the Circle album, he offered up lyrics based on an original story concerning an outsider beset by doom from birth who relies on his internal spiritual strength to persevere and survive. This shift away from the Kalevala continues on Under the Red Cloud, this time without a concept at all, making this a rare collection of standalone songs —- the only loose connection being the album title, that all these songs reflect some ominous portent of the troubled state of the world today, of living under a red cloud. Regardless of the thematic nature of the lyrics or lack thereof, Kainulainen’s lyrics are full of concrete imagery, often placing the narrator or unnamed character in some kind of physical place, rarely relying on purely metaphysical ideas. He often references nature in its most clear and absolute terms by invoking natural objects or phenomena. Its a facet of his lyricism that informs everything, a sense of a sturdy hand, that you’re listening to words that could be recited by someone sitting around a flickering campfire telling you long remembered stories.

Its stunning then to realize that Amorphis write their music first, long before the completion of Kainulainen’s lyrics —- this means that when Joutsen receives them, he has to translate them to English all while keeping an ear open for vocal melody development. On one hand I suppose it could be relatively easier than it sounds, given that he has fleshed out songs and melodies to work with already, but what if the translation isn’t allowing for a string of consonants that will work with the established rhythm or piano or guitar melody? That would mean both he and the band go back to the drawing board, reconfigure parts of the music in order to make everything fit and sound as smooth and intuitive as we hear on the finished album. The thing is, if you’re using translations of lyrics, there’s only so far you can alter words or phrases before the ideas that Kainulainen posited in Finnish get lost in translation. I imagine Joutsen has some leeway but still has to ensure that the original spirit and intent is still intact, that when we hear such a visceral lyric such as “From a distance the crack of thunder / And the red cloud swallowed the sky”, it is as close to what the author intended as possible. Realizing the difficulty of that makes me appreciate all the scattered isolated moments where the music seems to shift in anticipation of a narrative or tonal shift in the lyrics, such as at the 2:16 mark on “The Four Wise Ones”, where a furious battery of melo-death riffs and often near black metal vocals from Joutsen give pause for breathy, soothing female vocals by Aleah Stanbridge. That’s her again on “White Night”, where her co-lead vocal is mesmerizing in its own right.

If “Bad Blood” and “Sacrifice” are my two ultimate favorites from an album full of wonderful songs, then “Tree of Life” is a very close third. Its the closest they’ve leaned towards pure folk-metal in a long time, and some may think that its flute melodies owe more to latter day bands of that style (which is not totally off base, Eluveitie’s Chrigel Glanzmann is all over the album providing flute and tin whistle, particularly on this song), but it sounds completely like Amorphis to me, with that rush of keyboards and guitars working in tandem in the small instrumental bridge that builds up to that explosive chorus —- what a beautiful melody. Joutsen’s melo-death vocals during the verses here are crisp and enunciated, almost like jagged peaks of a mountain, rising and falling with sharpness and precise angles. Holopainen’s lead guitars here are elegant, confident and full of emotion, and Tomi Koivursaari lays down awesome riff after awesome riff, and that’s not just on this song, but the whole album. These two shine like few guitar tandems in metal ever get to, check out their high water mark on “Death of a King” where they utilize sitar-like effects in sparse patterns as an accent to their conventional guitar tones, all arranged together in glorious open chord sequences that shimmer and pop. They sometimes selflessly pattern their runs to reinforce Kallio’s keyboards, such as on his dramatic, tension raising crescendos on “Enemy At the Gates”, an effect that practically amounts to a orchestra style wave of sound. And perhaps Jan Rechberger could tutor Nicko McBrain a bit in how to get creative with percussion patterns, fills and accents —- his work all across the album is mesmerizing.

Normally in reviews I tend to group together my discussion of the good stuff separate from my discussion of the not so good stuff, but its all good stuff here (to use the least colorful adjective imaginable). I was discussing this album with my MSRcast co-host Cary during our recording of a soon to be released episode and we both agreed that it seemed like Amorphis finally struck upon the perfect balance of utilizing Joutsen’s brusque, near-obsidian melo-death growls and his soaring, almost quasi-baritone like clean vocals. We also seemed of the same mindset in thinking that it just sounds like the melodies are flowing easier this time around, nothing on this album seems forced… perhaps another hint of influence from the Thousand Lakes anniversary tour, recalling those easy melodies of that distant classic and that era of the band in general. I think there’s some honest truth to that but to solely pin it on a nostalgic visitation of a prior era is misguided and inaccurate —- Under the Red Cloud is built upon its immediate predecessors, seemingly a distillation of only the purest elements that they’ve been brewing since Eclipse: gorgeous, Finnish-style melancholy in the form of crystalline melodies, a reinvigorated take on aggressive, extreme metal after a few albums of what was largely rock, and the daring to expand elements of their sound when needed. I’ll say it again, that front to finish, this might be the most fully realized and best album Amorphis has ever written and recorded, and I know I’m risking sacrilege at the very idea, but seriously, take a listen, a good long listen.

August 25, 2015 2015, Amorphis, Finland, Insomnium, Power Metal, Royal Hunt, Sentenced, The Darkness, Therion 14 Comments

Reviews Cluster Summertime Edition Pt 2!: Symphony X, Powerwolf, and More!

Back again with yet another Reviews Cluster, covering a sizable chunk of some of the noteworthy metal releases that have dropped in these broiling summer months. There are so many that I’m pretty sure I’ll need one more summertime edition of these things to get through everything I’ve had to listen to lately. Its not a bad problem to have, but it hasn’t made it easy to finish off the non-reviews pieces that I’ve also been working on. Some housekeeping for me and you then: Expect a string of non-reviews pieces next, stuff I’ve been working on for awhile and have consistently had to delay because of the flood of new releases. It may mean a delay on reviews for new albums for a bit (except for Iron Maiden’s upcoming The Book of Souls, which I anticipate having up shortly after its release), but eventually I’ll get around to having most of the major releases covered. Its been a grinder of a year for new music, with barely enough time to delve into the last batch of releases before another rolls in. I will admit that I’m excluding over half of the promos I’ve listened through and am only reviewing the ones that are of distinct interest to me for better or worse —- there’s a point when you can get burned out reviewing albums and I’m trying to avoid that. And canning the chatter…. now!

Symphony X – Underworld:

Some of you who happened to catch the dawn of this blog back in December of 2011 will remember something I wrote about just how long it took me to get into Symphony X. Long story short, it was years upon years, even after seeing the band live on their Paradise Lost tour, a block that was only cleared through their 2011 album Iconoclast. You might also remember that it was the album that topped my best of list that year (I’ve since retroactively amended that list in my mind, giving the top spot to Nightwish’s Imaginaerum and second to Insomnium’s One For Sorrow, dropping Iconoclast to number three —- but I won’t change the published list, it was a authentic snapshot of that time… anyway…!). For whatever reason, in 2011 I happened to be more receptive to the band’s classically infused take on prog-metal, and their infusion of a thrash metal attack on both Iconoclast and Paradise Lost was ultimately what led to me really being able to sink my teeth into those records. It was Iconoclast in particular that I felt was really inspired, a near-perfect fusion of visceral heaviness in the form of an aggressive rhythm section, razor sharp guitar wizardry from Michael Romeo and really terrific songwriting.

It was going to be an uphill battle for Underworld in that regard, but you’d figure that a four year gap between its predecessor would help its cause. Maybe it does a bit, because I honestly think its a good album, but it lacks the wall-to-wall hooks/microhooks that made Iconoclast such a joy to listen to. Don’t misread my meaning, because there certainly hooks to be found, and Russell Allen delivers yet another excellent performance in singing them —- being that rare prog-metal singer able to make accessible a nominally high learning curve subgenre of metal with his more hard rock inspired approach. It also features what has quickly become my favorite Symphony X song to date, the wide-open power ballad “Without You”. Its the kind of song that Allen is so adept at, with panoramic melodies that rocket skyward in the refrain and with enough iterations of the chorus throughout the song for him to lay on various inflections and changeups. If the guitars were chunkier you’d figure it was Allen guesting on an Avantasia song or perhaps a stray cut from an Allen/Lande album.

Unfortunately the rest of the album that seems to blend together, lacking songs with any real sense of identity or memorable moments. Some are better than others, such as “In My Darkest Hour” with its Whitesnake-ian chorus (I suppose the verses are a little Dave Mustaine-ish, to nod to the Megadeth reference… I doubt its intentional however). I do enjoy the swift transitions that separate each section of “Run With the Devil”, suddenly moving from mid-paced thrash metal to an AOR-tailored bridge only to finish with a strangely alt-rock chorus. Its a weird clunky track that actually manages to stand out. Everything else however is just there, and it took me a long time to figure out why so much of this album failed to affect me at all. I suspect its because the band has capitulated on the degree of the heavy thrashy-ness they doubled down upon for Paradise Lost and particularly on Iconoclast. Here they’ve decided to merge the heavy era of the past eight years with their lighter, proggy era before 2007, and in effect dulling the impact of the album a bit (for me). That they had moved towards a heavier direction was ultimately what pulled me in, and their distancing away from that is whats pushing me out.

The Takeaway: Far be it for me to slap a negative adjective on this album, because I’m sure a lot of longtime Symphony X fans will love it, and its certainly as well performed, recorded, and produced as you’d expect it to be. But I wonder if others who got into the band with either of the previous two albums are feeling the same way I am —- not entirely disappointed, just relatively disinterested.

Powerwolf – Blessed and Possessed:

I’ve never written about Powerwolf before, which is odd for this blog considering they are one of the bigger power metal bands across the pond in the recent years. They’re almost at a Sabaton level of popularity in their home country of Germany, with their previous album Preachers of the Night topping the German Media Control chart (a feat not even accomplished by Blind Guardian or Manowar yet, both bowing at number two). They are an interesting bunch to be sure, a power metal band that wears black-metal styled corpse paint (actually their aesthetic probably owes more to King Diamond than Euronymous but close enough), sings about werewolves and y’know… werewolf culture, oh and their music is the kind of hyper-polished take on power metal that’s tailor made for arenas and Euro summer metal fests. They write catchy songs, with absolute intention of sculpting memorable choruses with easy to sing a long lyrics set to keyboard led melodies. As a major fan of Sabaton, I should really enjoy them —- right?

I’ll be diplomatic, I like a small handful of Powerwolf songs, particularly when the band indulges their Twisted Sister pop influences such as on “We Are the Wild”, as good an original song you’ll find on Blessed and Possessed. Its cliche-laden lyrics could be talking about werewolves (I’m sure they are) but they also work in that ever so eighties metal trope of addressing their fans… especially those in attendance at the show that night. Its fist-pumpingly goofy stuff, and I’d be right there in the midst of it, grinning like an idiot and raising my fist in the air in rhythm, drunkenly mis-shouting the lyrics. There are quite a few rather great concert choruses spread across these eleven tracks, the problem is that often the verses fail to stack up in relation: I’m referring to songs like “Dead Until Dark”, “Sanctus Dominus”, and “Army Of The Night”. Enjoyable choruses all, but the build up to them is so pedestrian, and so interchangeable, with nothing in their verses or bridges to hold onto and remember.

When I listen to a band like Blind Guardian, Sonata Arctica, Falconer, or even Sabaton, those are bands whose songs are loaded with twists and turns, structural writing meant to ramp up emotion or tension, and unusual singular moments of brilliance never to be repeated. Its just a whole other level of songwriting that Powerwolf has yet to achieve, or perhaps is not interested in aspiring to. I don’t have a problem with the band wanting to be the AC/DC of power metal if that’s their thing, but its worth noting that beyond the classics I’ve found AC/DC often quite boring. The entirely separate hit against Blessed and Possessed is that the promo version I received was for the limited edition that comes with a staggering ten (10!!!!) cover songs of metal bands past and present. That I enjoyed them more than the actual album they were attached to was my first hint that I might never be a Powerwolf fanatic. The covers are pretty entertaining, with great takes on Savatage’s “Edge of Thorns” and Ozzy’s “Shot in the Dark” in particular. There’s not a lot of deviation from the originals, but Atilla Dorn seems to have a malleable enough voice to cover an array of his heroes.

The Takeaway: If you enjoyed anything they’ve done in the past, you’ll probably enjoy Blessed and Possessed, albeit with a feeling that you’ve been buying the same album over and over again. My advice to everyone else: Get on iTunes and download “We Are the Wild” and a handful of the covers on the bonus disc for your “Party Metal” playlist (I know you have one!).

Luciferian Light Orchestra – Luciferian Light Orchestra:

A few months ago Christofer Johnsson, the brain trust of Therion quietly released an album via a new side project of his called Luciferian Light Orchestra, a mysterious band that plays a deliberately 70s styled version of occult rock. In this case that means vintage sounding guitars and Hammond Organ aplenty with breathy, detached female vocals over the top. I describe the project as mysterious because Johnsson is the only listed member, credited with handling most of the music and contributing some backing vocals (can’t discern where though). Rumor has it that one of the lead female vocalists on board (I suspect there’s at least two lead vocalists, could totally be wrong about that) is Johnsson’s girlfriend Mina Karadzic. As for who else is on board? I have no idea, and have tried in vain to find out. One thing has been revealed however, that most of the alleged twenty plus collaborators on the album are members of the Dragon Rogue, a mystical order that will be familiar to fans of Therion — Its founder and spiritual leader, Thomas Karlsson, has been writing Therion’s lyrics since 1998.

The insular nature of the project and the secrecy that shadows its individual parts only fuel the air of mysticism that oozes out of the nine songs on this self-titled debut. Your first impression listening to the album will probably match the one I had, that these songs while relatively simple and poppy for Johnsson are still loaded with a ton of Therion-isms. This makes sense when I read off the band’s one page official website that “the band is performing songs that Christofer Johnsson has written over the years but thought were too retro sounding for Therion.” Well, that explains the Therion-isms then. Its their hook-laden pop appeal that is the far more interesting trait running through the album, that a song like “Church of Carmel” can stick with me for hours upon hours throughout the day… typically speaking Therion songs don’t tend to do that (not a slight, I just find that I enjoy them more via actual playback as opposed to memory). Seriously, its a hypnotic, seductive, and charming song with a hyper-memorable chorus that is shoehorning itself into the best songs of the year conversation.

The rest of the album is no slouch either. I love the bizarre, hypnotically stoned-vocal approach of “Taste the Blood of the Altar Wine”, with its Heart meets Black Sabbath dark, smoky riffs and Deep Purple organ soundscapes. I’m also quite partial to the awesome guitar work and abrupt motif-changes of “Venus In Flames”, a Therion-ism that will smack you in the face. There’s some fantastic female lead vocal work on that song, with a voice that conjures up an actual witchy Stevie Nicks (albeit with a deeper register). There’s also something delightfully campy about its lyrics, particularly during the ending chant/refrain of “We hail Sathanas, Venus – Lucifer”. Perhaps I’m committing a faux-pas in assuming that the lyrics are to be interpreted literally, maybe I’m missing a grander metaphor at work —- with a guy like Johnsson at the helm I wouldn’t be surprised. Its just hard to take a song titled “Sex With Demons” with its lyrics specifically discussing sexual lucid dreams of unholy creatures of the night any other way. Actually this interview with Johnsson explains a ton regarding the lyrics if you’re interested (apparently Karlsson also assisted in penning most of these lyrics as well).

I was a little late on getting to this album, a rare occurrence for me when considering it was new music from the guy who gave me Therion, one of my favorite bands of all time. I had been wondering what Johnsson was doing in between random tour legs… writing that much talked about opera for one, but a part of me suspected he might also be hedging his bets a bit and slowly working on a new regular Therion album just in case. He very well might be, but with a significant portion of his time having gone into the LCO project I guess its not as much as I hoped he would. Am I disappointed? Not really, because this side project has been far more enjoyable than I could have ever suspected (occult rock and 70s throwback rock isn’t really my thing), I find myself listening to the album quite a bit, in the car, on headphones when out for the morning walk. Its a fun, loose, lively rock album that while not the deeply intense, spiritual experience of a fine Therion album, is still entertaining and artistic in a strange, unique way.

The Takeaway: Give this one a shot, even if that just means checking out the “Church of Carmel” or “Taste the Blood of the Alter Wine” music videos on YouTube. Its a strong set of songs done in a style that is annoying when handled by lesser talents —- but this is the guy who brought you Therion. That being said, I suspect that this will largely be a hard pass for some of you, but for you others there might be a hidden gem awaiting.

The Darkness – Last of Our Kind:

I’ve gone full disclosure on this before when I listed a song from The Darkness’ 2012 album Hot Cakes on that year’s best songs list (“She’s Just a Girl Eddie” in case you were wondering, and it still holds up!). I’ve enjoyed this band since learning about them shortly after their debut album was released stateside back in 2003. Their mix of Def Leppard, AC/DC, and Queen hits a sweet spot for me that few hard rock bands have ever managed to post-2000. Regardless of what you’ve thought about their image, their over-the-top stage show and their often times silly lyrics, The Darkness are consummate songwriters first and foremost. And I’ve never personally believed that they were a parody band, because their songwriting suggests an honest love of their influences that shine through, and an earnest attitude towards bright major key melodies, harmonized vocals, and openly bared sentiment. Any interview with either Justin or Dan Hawkins should be enough to clue you in on their baked in authenticity as fans of rock n’ roll, and their sense of humor is derived from their inherent British-ness. Despite sharing a similarity in their band names and the year of their debut album’s arrival, The Darkness had nothing else in common with all those bands of the post-millenium garage rock revival (you know… The Strokes, The Vines, The Hives, The White Stripes, yawn, etc).

So their fourth album then, the aptly named Last of Our Kind, for certainly few bands are making music that sounds like this anymore, not even Def Leppard themselves. On the whole its an okay record, a bit more guitar-oriented than Hot Cakes (its closer to the debut in that regard), but that comes with its own drawbacks. What made Hot Cakes such a successful comeback album was its very honed in focus on making sure its choruses were shimmering and finely tuned for maximum memorability. That was an album loaded on catchy songs with sugar-pop hooks, largely vocal melody driven —- as a result the guitars took on more of a rear cockpit role and worked mainly to support them. On the new album the guitars are clearly the focus of attention, Justin and Dan trading off wild riffs and allowing their swirling, spiraling solos to be right up front. This is a facet most assuredly helped by Dan Hawkins serving as the album’s producer (a skill he honed during the band’s long hiatus) and defacto mix engineer. It works on the really simple, heavy attacks like “Barbarian” where the riff is the actual refrain, Justin’s vocals playing off it like a call and response. It works similarly well on the rather Cult-like “Open Fire”, with its gang-shouted chorus working as a breaker between verses rather than operating as a fully formed hook.

Where the increased emphasis on guitars tends to murky things up is on songs like “Roaring Waters”, where space that should be left for the development of a fully arcing chorus is shared with screaming guitar figures. Its not a bad song, but its not all that good either, nothing you want to come back for certainly… aren’t we listening to The Darkness for the don’t bore us get to the chorus mentality? If the chorus has nothing interesting to offer, what else are we left with? Again on “Mighty Wings”, the song is sabotaged by loading up layers of guitar wails over synth-based keyboard wash, leaving no space for vocals to maneuver. In this particular case though, I suspect its more that the song didn’t have much going on anyway… I tend to skip it whenever it pops up. On the utterly boring “Mudslide” (a name all too fitting for its sonic palette), we’re expected to enjoy a song built upon a riff so bereft of inspiration its hard to believe you’re not listening to a jam session at a rehearsal. This is all the undoing of what could’ve been a good album, that is a preponderance of songs built around the concept that the riff will be central to all things. Perhaps it was worth a try, but this is also why you use outside producers, to provide a sense of perspective about what you’re actually recording —- surely such a person would be able to tell the band what some random blogger is saying: “Your music works around vocal melodies, you’re not the Scorpions! Don’t fix it if it isn’t broken!”

Its in the more traditionally vocal led songs where the album really shines, such as on “Sarah O’ Sarah”, a sprightly, up-tempo tune with a charming brace of acoustic strumming and wonderfully endearing lyrics. It might be one of their all-time best songs, its lyrics purely in the Justin Hawkins trademark vein of bittersweet, “I’ll be patient, I’ll be strong / Until you see you’re wrong / Because I swallowed / Swallowed every lie you ever spat”. Later in the refrain, Hawkins flexes his creativity as a lyricist, “Sarah, oh Sarah / Make my heart burn / I’m lost within this labyrinth / Nowhere to turn”, which not only scores marks with me for the usage of labyrinth in perfect phonetic rhythm, but the imagery it inspires of a love-lorn fool unable to move on with his life. The power ballad “Conquerors” could be better, but I do enjoy its range of harmony vocals, with a point-counterpoint approach in it’s chorus. But its not as good as the title track, with its anthemic chorus and Thin Lizzy-esque guitar outro segue (the perfect order of things for this band). Its my second favorite tune on the record and perhaps the most archetypal moment on the album. I might normally dock a metal artist points for those, but I want familiarity in my hard rock bands.

The Takeaway: Toughie, but I’d recommend grabbing the title track and “Sarah O’ Sarah” off iTunes and leaving the rest behind. Do yourself a favor and grab a copy of Hot Cakes instead, or even the rather underrated second album One Way Ticket to Hell… and Back. Both are front to back hard rock classics to my ears, with nary a misstep —- the debut is great as well.

Royal Hunt – XIII: The Devil’s Dozen:

Like clockwork, another Royal Hunt album lands in our laps, this being the third with vocalist DC Cooper since their reunion on 2011’s Show Me How to Live. In keeping with modern era Royal Hunt, it sticks with the AOR blend of melodramatic hard rock mixed with classically infused power metal, though far more leaning towards the former than the latter. I’ve been viewing this AOR element as a way for songwriter/guitarist Andre Andersen to steer the ship back towards a more melodic meets progressive direction ala the classic original DC Cooper era in the mid-nineties that gave us masterpieces like Paradox. After Cooper left and John West took over the vocal helm, it really did seem like the band got heavier, a little more metallic in their sonic approach, but it affected the songwriting in a meandering, heavy on the prog kinda way. They were good albums and West was a solid replacement, but I missed Cooper as well as the sheer fun and hook laden sensibility his era provided.

I’ve been relatively satisfied with the DC Cooper era Mark II, except that sometimes the AOR elements are so overpowering that they soften the impact of what is still a power METAL band. Its relatively similar to what Silent Force has been going through recently, though not quite as dramatic. That’s not to suggest there aren’t convincingly heavy power metal songs here, because tunes like “How Do You Know and the absolutely epic “A Tear In The Rain” are every bit as aggressive and hard hitting as anything the band has ever done. I’m stressing this quality in regards to Royal Hunt not only because the injection of hard rock and AOR devices into traditional power metal has become something of an enduring yet overdone trend in the past decade, but because the rather distinctive style, sonic palette, and mood of Royal Hunt has typically demanded that the band walk that fine line between uplifting melodicism and dark, somber symphonics.

So when the band chooses to use a hard rock meter to pattern out a riff instead of relying on a classic power metal approach, as on “So Right So Wrong”, the results skew a little more towards pedestrian melodic metal rather than the gloriously pompous grandeur we’ve all grown to love and expect from Royal Hunt. Don’t get me wrong, its a good song, obviously catchy and well written, but I can imagine it being a little more intense, perhaps even a tad more uptempo. I’m talking about the kind of intensity heard on a song like “May You Never (Walk Alone)”, as classic a Royal Hunt tune I’ve heard in years. Rollicking tempos, furiously unrestrained percussion, and a grandiose, aggressive keyboard arrangement fuel the energy in this gem of a track, allowing Cooper to deliver his vocal like a wildman. Andersen is still as adept as ever at writing magnetic riffs paired with synth lines, such as on “Way Too Late”, a brooding juggernaut of an epic with an ascending chorus that sees Cooper hitting some high notes he rarely visits. The album tends to alternate these strong moments with weak ones, preventing one side from being dominant, but the overall effect is one of inconsistency.

The Takeaway: Royal Hunt die hards will snap this one up, as they should, but newcomers might do better with its two immediate DC Cooper fronted predecessors. Of course it must be reiterated that newcomers should have already picked up 1997’s classic Paradox. Its a seminal album in power metal history and Royal Hunt’s finest hour.

To Die For – Cult:

Ah the return of To/Die/For… I feel like its 2003 all over again! I’ve always had a soft spot for these Finns and their synth heavy blend of pop and gothic metal, with their predilection towards recording unusual covers (seriously they’ve done a handful… remember their take on Sandra’s “In The Heat of the Night”). They never quite reached the ranks of affection that I reserved for their countrymen in Sentenced (being that the two were stylistically similar to a degree), and later on Insomnium and Ghost Brigade. But their initial prolific run from 1999 to 2006 yielded some pretty good records with a few remarkable singles, and a some really fun gothic metal dressed takes on U2’s “New Year’s Day”, the Pet Shop Boys’ “Its a Sin”, the Scorpions’ “Passion Rules the Game” (respected their song choice here, but the execution was lacking), the Cutting Crew’s “(I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight”, and yet another (I Just) cover in their spin on Ozzy’s “(I Just) Want You”. Unlike those aforementioned bands of fellow Finnish countrymen, To/Die/For never really released a masterpiece of an album, always playing better as a singles band. I suppose it was what prevented me from really paying close attention to their activities throughout the years. After awhile I thought they had broken up, and it turns out they briefly did for a few months in 2009, but reunited and made a so-so album in 2011 called Samsara (had no idea!).

Throughout all these years the core of To/Die/For has remained intact, that being vocalist Jarno Peratalo and guitarist Juha-Pekka Sutela, the rest of the five piece lineup being filled out by relatively new members. I haven’t gotten a chance to listen to Samsara, but if the new album is any indication, then either Peratalo or Sutela or both have been listening to some of the grittier records by their fellow countrymen who are operating in a relatively similar style. On Cult, gone is the upfront presence of bright synth keyboards that characterized the band’s sound in the past —- instead, the guitars are murkier, darker-toned, more reliant on minor key melodies with long, modulating sustains on guitar. Now granted the latter is a fundamental characteristic of Finnish melodic metal (death or power metal), but do a side by side comparison of a To/Die/For oldie like “Hollow Heart” and the single from this album “In Black” and you’ll hear what I’m referring to. Modern To/Die/For owes more to post 2003 Amorphis, the last Ghost Brigade album, and those last two classic Sentenced albums than anything from a gothic rock milieu ala HIM (more fellow countrymen!).

Over at Angry Metal Guy, much of the discussion surrounded the seeming decline of Peratalo’s vocal talents, and indeed he does sound vastly different. His deep voiced clean vocals of the past now more resemble Poisonblack-era Ville Laihiala (really intense resemblance between the two voices here), and the change is a pretty good suspect for the musical shift towards a dirtier, darker, heavier style. This is the most metallic I’ve ever heard To/Die/For, and while it does tend to take away from their rather distinctive identity, it does yield some pretty good songs. Actually, I’m quite taken by the first three songs that open the album in a Finnish depressive salvo, from the aforementioned “In Black” to the furious, expansive melancholy of “Screaming Birds” (my personal favorite —- love the guitar solo from the 4:10-4:38 mark!), and the far more traditional (ie synth heavy) “Unknown III” which serves as a tribute to Tonmi Lillman (former To/Die/For, Lordi, and Sinergy drummer) with its raw, open-nerve ending lyrics: “Now you’re in the unknown / Your name’s written in stone / I just want you to know / You really had meaning / You know sometimes…. sometimes I still / Get wrapped up in the feeling / I don’t belong here”. Peratalo is joined on that refrain by a female vocalist named Linnea Kelin, who adds an subtle touch of additional pathos to an already emotive lyric.

There’s other good stuff too, “You” is a throwback to the band’s far more gothic rock drenched stylings of the past, despite Peratalo’s harsher vocals. And I love the direct simplicity of “Let It Bleed”, which might be setting some kind of record for the quickest launch into a song’s chorus in the history of metal (mere seconds). If anything its the two dirge-like ballads “Mere Dream” and the album closer “End of Tears” that fall flat, with no real discernible thru-melody to carry them while awash on a river of keyboard atmospherics. And in keeping with tradition, the band unloads another unusual cover tune, this time its a clunky take on Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up”, which was a snazzy dance-pop number in the 80s but one of those songs that didn’t really need a rock/metal makeover. Its really the first of their covers to fall completely on its face, and that it winds up in the middle of the album ruins an otherwise nicely flowing song selection. I guess overall I’m more at peace with Peratalo’s changing vocals than the folks over at Angry Metal Guy were, because it seems that both he and Sutela knew exactly how to compensate for that change and adjust their songwriting approach accordingly. What they lost in originality they made up for with some really terrific songs.

The Takeaway: Much better than you’d probably be expecting from a band only releasing their second album in nearly a decade. Maybe its just me and my unabashed love of Finnish melancholy (it certainly does seem to strike a chord within me) but this is a surprisingly strong set a songs with only a few blemishes to skip over. Worth the time to investigate.

December 16, 2013 2013, Amorphis, Black Metal, Blind Guardian, Blog related, Edguy, Falkenbach, Fenriz, Folk Metal, Insomnium, Lord, Melo-Death, Omnium Gatherum, Orphaned Land, Power Metal, Queensryche, Roy Khan, Sentenced, Serenity, Todd La Torre, Tyr 7 Comments

The Metal Pigeon’s Best of 2013 // Part One: The Songs

And farewell to another year that’s flown by too quickly. Of course that means its time for anyone and everyone in metal writing, print or digital, to indulge their egos a bit and draft up their end of year lists. Now most writers will never own up to it but I’m a rather shameless sort, and will freely admit that I love creating these lists. I put an inordinate amount of thought into drafting them and end up changing around the entries and numerical ordering countless times before I ever hit publish. Self-indulgent? Absolutely. But I also hope that people who in anyway remotely enjoy reading what I write will check out my lists as a way to get into bands or albums they’ve not heard before. That’s ultimately the most rewarding aspect of writing about music, expressing your enthusiasm and passion for something to others and hoping they’ll hear what you hear.

As you can see from the title, to make everything more readable, I’m separating the best songs and albums of 2013 into separate articles (the albums list is on it’s way soon). Of course, some bands will overlap on both lists, with undeniable crowning jewels from great records being represented, but doing this separate list for just songs alone allows for a spotlight to be shined on those songs that were gems on releases that may not have necessarily made the best albums of the year cut. Anyway to quote Marti DeBergi, “Enough of my yakking”!

The Metal Pigeon’s Best Songs of 2013:

1. Darkthrone – “Leave No Cross Unturned” (from the album The Underground Resistance)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0tsFqTulM8&w=560&h=315]

The extent to which this song towered over the rest of the tracks from Darkthrone’s excellent The Underground Resistance is such that whenever I think upon that album, the monstrous, cyclonic riff that anchors this battleship of a song is the ONLY thing that comes to mind. This song, more than any other released this year by anyone else epitomizes to me the pure, untarnished, unapologetic, hell bent for leather spirit of metal as I know it and have grown up loving. Its not just the King Diamond-esque vocals from Fenriz that encompass so much of this thirteen minute long epic, or the brutal series of incredible, bone shaking riffs one after another courtesy of Nocturno Culto seemingly on a mission to destroy, or the slammingly heavy midsection bridge at 4:24 —- its everything all together. I contend, with some expectation of hatred at the very idea, that this is Darkthrone’s heaviest song to date.

Its typical of Darthrone’s contrary spirit then that this song could only come now, many albums past Darkthrone’s turning of their backs on the traditional black metal sound. They’ve also moved on past the crust punk/black n’ roll they dabbled in for some years and have seemingly embraced traditional heavy metal. Gone too are the murky, muddled productions of past albums, replaced here by a crispness and clarity never before heard with Darkthrone music. There are some out there that speculate that these guys are taking the piss, purposefully trolling the black metal fans with their current musical incarnation. I reject those notions out of hand not only because the band have come across as rather earnest about their current direction in interviews, but simply because music that sounds this genuinely in love with heavy metal in all its ugly glory doesn’t know the meaning of irony.

2. Amorphis – “Hopeless Days” (from the album Circle)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdKt1aw4BK8&w=560&h=315]

The shining gem on Amorphis’ 2013 effort, “Hopeless Days” is everything you’d want in a song built in this particular style of depressive, melancholic metallic hard rock. There were quite a few good songs on that record, but none as powerful and churning with dramatic ache as this one. Powerful percussion ushers you along over a bed of building riffs that explode in a supremely catchy chorus all whilst elegantly tinkling piano plays underneath —- a subtle yet brilliant juxtaposition. Vocalist Tomi Joutsen delivers his best vocal and lyric during this emotionally stirring moment: “I was born a captive / A captive of the night / In between / Hopeless days”. Gotta love the scale climbing guitar lines that kick in during and after the solo —- Esa Holopainen might just be the most underrated guitarist coming out of Finland right now. When Sentenced called it a day in 2005, I was worried that my supply of this type of rock inflected metal would dry up, but there seems to be a strong contingent of bands working in the same medium, Amorphis amongst the best of them. My iTunes count says I’ve played this song alone 79 times while the rest of the album’s songs sit at 30-40 (sometimes I wonder if the iTunes play counts of writers from taste maker websites would really back up their best metal of the year lists). Play count 80 starting…NOW!

3. Orphaned Land – “All Is One” / “Brother” (from the album All Is One)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bds3FALcR7M&w=280&h=225]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsPb1-uPIic&w=280&h=225]

How can two songs take one spot? Because they are to me inseparable, both in my mind as representations of my favorite moments on Orphaned Land’s surprisingly great All Is One album, and as micro representations of the core of the band’s progression through simplification both musically and lyrically. With the title track serving as both the lead off single and first song on the album track listing proper, Orphaned Land in four minutes and thirty seconds crafted a brilliant, euphoria inducing epic that perfectly encompassed their spiritual ideology (agree or disagree with it). What makes the song truly effective however are not just the direct, declarative lyrics, or the artfully done Middle Eastern instrumentation —- but the band’s embrace of clear, anthemic melodies and hair raising choral vocals ala Blind Guardian during the chorus. The infusion of that particular kind of power metal element is new for the band, as is their shift to a leaner, more direct method of songwriting, a complete 180 from the complex progressive metal of their last two records.

These newly embraced principles work to possibly greater effect on “Brother”, where singer Kobi Farhi’s inspired lyrics threaten to overshadow some truly great music going on underneath. The lyrics, as widely discussed by now, are intended to be the words of Issac to his brother Ishmael. Its a gutsy song for an Israeli to write, let alone record and perform on stage, as it’s lyrics essentially serve as an extended metaphor of the relationship between Jews and Muslims, brother faiths of the same Abrahamic father. Its a heavyweight topic to tackle but here its done with elegance, subtle apologetic notes, and a passionate vocal courtesy of Farhi that registers as the album’s highlight moment. The beautiful guitar interplay of Yossi Sassi and Chen Balbus that is to be found all throughout this album is the band’s best to date, particularly during the instrumental section where the guitars kick into an almost Slash-esque mellow solo. The band delivered an incredible one-two punch with both of these songs, and managed to wrangle an old fan like me back into the fold.

4. Serenity – “Wings of Madness” (from the album War of Ages)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX5jsf3v9vw&w=560&h=315]

Serenity stunned me this year with their spectacular War of Ages album, and this inspired lead off track (and first single) was the highest among many high points to be found on the set. “Wings of Madness” is a complex, multifaceted masterpiece that twists and turns around the dramatic vocal duets of co-vocalists Georg Neuhauser and Clementine Delauney. The latter is the newest member of the band and the undeniable star on this particular song (and perhaps the entire album), her vocals equipped with both a light ethereal touch and a dark, rich, almost Lisa Gerrard-like quality that she can blend together at will. The song’s music video seems to suggest that the lyrics are about the infamous Countess Bathory and her blood bathing lifestyle (everyone’s got their thing). This is a band that directs its lyrical bent towards characterizations or accounts of historical figures, and as such, the quatrain in the chorus is unnervingly eerie and appropriate: “No sun is shining in your eyes / A shadow growing in disguise / I can’t stand the silence / Embracing you at night”. One of the many things I appreciate about Serenity is their commitment to a higher standard of lyricism than the power metal norm —- similar to what Roy Khan was instilling during his tenure in Kamelot.

5. Queensryche – “In This Light” (from the album Queensryche)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LGaEOP86Kc&w=560&h=315]

That Queensryche was able to find a viable, credible future sans Geoff Tate was in itself a remarkable feat, but their creation of an album that is worthy enough to stand alongside their first six bonafide classics is still mind-boggling. This year’s self-titled comeback record was full of the classic elements long missed from Queensryche releases, and the band found that new members like guitarist Parker Lundgren and of course, life-saver vocalist Todd LaTorre could contribute to the songwriting process from the word go. Truthfully speaking, while I enjoyed the album, I had to admit it did have an array of weaknesses mostly stemming from the album’s length, and some songs that could’ve used a few more minutes. “In This Light” however stands out as a pristine moment, a deftly penned stately rocker with a chorus that could’ve come from the band’s Empire era. I mentioned in my original review for the album that this song was “a sort of distant cousin to “Another Rainy Night” and “One and Only”. Its perhaps the most accessible song on the record, yet also the most thoughtful, its lyrics a reflective paean on despair and hope.” Its curious to me that they haven’t released this as a single yet.

6. Omnium Gatherum – “The Unknowing” (from the album Beyond)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsjHvaU5Aik&w=560&h=315]

These guys released a pretty solid record earlier this year with Beyond, but the highlight of the album was this singular gem, an arpeggio fueled, cinematic slice of melodic death metal nirvana. Not only is the guitar work stunning throughout in a general breathtaking sense, but they buoy a melody that is strangely melancholic and uplifting at the same time. Vocalist Jukka Pelkonen’s vocals here feature an extra degree of crisp clarity that is normally buried in his obsidian delivery (an acquired taste I admit). The Finns really have something going on right now with the amazing slate of fresh takes on melodic death metal that is very far removed from the now old-school Gothenburg scene in neighboring Sweden. Insomnium also released a fantastic new song this year that I reviewed earlier which will narrowly miss a placement on this list —- but its just more mounting evidence that both these promising torch bearers of modern melodic death metal have found a way to distance themselves from the negative associations that the original melo-death sound has unfortunately found with American metalcore.

7. Týr – “The Lay of Our Love” (from the album Valkyrja)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zd2rYcxXBM&w=560&h=315]

This was a bold, gutsy move for Týr, a band whose previous attempts at anything close to balladry were blanketed by singing in their native Faroese language, about subject matter that was really anyone’s guess. But Valkyrja is a thematic album about the role of the woman as Goddess and wife, in the life of a Viking warrior —- and to the band’s credit they are lyrically adventurous about it throughout. Not only are the lyrics in “The Lay of Our Love” essentially about a rather sentimental subject, in this case a pair of lovers sundered by impending death, but the music at work here is pure power balladry (I mean that in a good way!). I’m not sure whats my favorite part, the delicately plucked acoustic intro or the wild, passionate guitar solo mid-way through that ranks amongst the band’s best. Liv Kristine of Leaves Eyes fame is the lithe, delicate female voice you’re hearing, and her performance here is just immense. Its a shame that I seem to only be able to really appreciate her work when its in guest spots like these, but she contrasts well with Heri Joensen’s deep, soaring vocals. Týr should continue being brave with experiments like these if the payoffs are anything close to this.

8. Avantasia – “Saviour in the Clockwork” (from the album The Mystery of Time)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USkP6pT8UYI&w=560&h=315]

I pointed out in my review for Avantasia’s most recent album that in the past half decade Tobias Sammet has now released nearly double the amount of Avantasia releases in comparison to his main band Edguy. At some point, both of the projects were going to start blurring together stylistically due to having the same songwriter driving each, and as expected that is exactly what is happening with both of the newest Avantasia and Edguy releases. They’re still good albums, but at this point the only musical difference between both bands is the presence of guest vocalists in Avantasia, and you’ve gotta wonder if that will be enough in the long run. Of course, if you’re like me and just consider yourself more of a Tobias Sammet fan than a distinct fan of either one of his bands then you won’t really care all that much about such details as long as he keeps delivering the goods. Well, the bad news was that The Mystery of Time is the most uneven album in Avantasia’s now vast discography. The good news is that it did contain a handful of distinctive Sammet homeruns, including this awe-inspiring epic featuring vocals from Joe Lynn Turner, Biff Byford, and of course Michael Kiske. Its got all the elements a Sammet fan wants: thundering bombast, excellent songwriting, and lush vocal arrangements particularly in the group choir vocals during the chorus.

9. Falkenbach – “Eweroun” (from the album Asa)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA5nN65B_eg&w=560&h=315]

I consider it a good quality that this song conjures up the feeling of sitting by some intense campfire under the stars at midnight (… ah lets face it, I’m really thinking of Skyrim). Gone are the murky, lo-fi productions of past albums —- 2013 Falkenbach has taken a page from Darkthrone’s playbook: Sometimes the way to progress your sound forward is to fully capture it in a pristine form, not hide it under layers of hiss and microphones. Sole member and creator Vratyas Vakyas’s vocals are the selling point on “Eweroun” (translated as “Evermore”), his plaintive, spacious clean vocals ushering in the song with a vocal melody I can only describe as soothing. He sets this over a bed of warm muted riffing, simple percussion patterns, and chiming acoustic guitars. The hook is not a traditional chorus either, but simply an altered acoustic guitar figure. Vakyas apparently pens most of his lyrics in old Norse, and a look at the translation of the lyrics seems to suggest an allusion to the passage of time set against the backdrop of changing seasons. It all conjures up a rather spiritual feel, and its not much of a stretch to actually call it something close to spiritual folk metal.

10. Lord – “Digital Lies” (from the album Digital Lies)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR38tX6z6iI&w=560&h=315]

You may not have heard of Lord before, but many of you might remember Dungeon from Australia, the rather underrated power/trad metal band who in addition to building up a solid catalog of quality albums over the span of a decade also provided us with one of metal’s great covers in their take on Toto’s “Hold the Line”. Lord then is ex-Dungeon vocalist Tim Grose’s project born out of the ashes of his former band. They launched in 2003 and have done a few decent records now, but their 2013 release Digital Lies shows the band taking determined strides towards potential greatness. This title track from the effort is one jewel among many featured on the release that crackles with the kind of excitement that is harder and harder to find with newer power metal releases (and worryingly so at that). Over a rock steady bed of aggressive, pulsing bass and pounding riffs is a striking contrast between almost Alexi Laiho-ish vocals in the verse, and Grose’s wide open, soaring tenor in the chorus. He’s always been an excellent vocalist, displaying a heft and weight to power metal vocal delivery that is so often found lacking amongst the European ranks —- but his ability to switch it up here at will is even more impressive. Check out this song, and if you like it do yourself the favor of grabbing the album, its one of the better power metal records released this year.

June 8, 2013 2013, Amorphis, Arckanum, Austin Wintory, Black Metal, Melo-Death, Video Games 5 Comments

The A’s Have It: Amorphis, Arckanum, and Austin Wintory

I’ve been feeling a bit scatter brained lately. I’m blaming it on the always rude and unappreciated onset of the Houston summer, a tawdry mixture of Finnish sauna, exhaust fumes, and short tempers. You may remember last summer I ranted about this in one blog entry (I guess you’ll have to get used to it being a yearly thing), and I talked about how the shift in temperatures made me push away moody and melancholy music for something more upbeat and positive, like classic hard rock and trad metal, something you could loosely nod your head to as you drank a cold beverage outside as your forehead did a nice job of mimicking the condensation on your beer can. That was all well and good, a nice mental exercise to help make the passage of three to four nearly intolerable months, well, tolerable… and as ridiculous as it sounds, I’d been purposefully trying to listen to stuff like that recently, but I think its time to admit that its falling on (my) deaf ears.

The stuff that’s really been connecting with me lately is in fact wintery dark, morose, bleak, and of course melancholic — and I’ve just decided to be okay with that. Better to write about stuff that’s resonating with me for whatever reason than force feed everyone some half-hearted take on the NEW ANVIL RECORD! So, first off, the new Amorphis album, Circle, is really striking a chord with me in a big way, and the I’ll be honest, I was one of those people who thought Amorphis got better when current vocalist Tomi Joutsen joined the band on 2003’s Eclipse. Okay, I loved Tales From A Thousand Lakes and Elegy, but then began the band’s strange, murky, experimental era, and I simply couldn’t zero in on any of those records. When Joutsen debuted on the “House of Sleep” single, I felt the band got some fire back. Coupled with the fact that there was also stronger emphasis on more rock based songwriting, Joustsen’s ability to deliver incredible melodic and emotional vocals resulted in a far more comfortable fit than Pasi Koskinen’s vocals ever could.

On Circle, Amorphis follow up what has been a relatively consistent streak of good dark melodic hard rock/metal albums with a new collection of songs that border on great. There’s the absolutely crushingly heavy opener, “Shades of Grey”, which alternates Joutsen’s excellent screaming vocal laden verses with one of the album’s best choruses. Then there’s my personal favorite in “Hopeless Days”, a song which is built on undulating, shifting percussive rhythms that build up to a heavy, surging, and emotional chorus that’s underpinned by beautiful, tinkling piano. It’s an ear pleasing juxtaposition over which Joutsen delivers his best vocal to date, pouring out tons of emotion into the chorus lyric: “I was born a captive / A captive of the night / In between / Hopeless days”. This album finds the band at a songwriting high, delivering quite possibly the most well crafted songs in their long career. Its not just about songs being catchy or hook laden, there’s a real sense of artistry that abounds, whether in the flute bird calls in the blistering near black metal of “Nightbird’s Song”, or the dramatic guitar sweeps of “Narrowpath”, in which upbeat Celtic harmonies play alongside moody, downcast Finnish bleakness. Speaking of guitar, Esa Holopainen is on fire all over the album, dishing out beautiful solos, interludes, and really inspired lead harmonies.

Amorphis took me by surprise, not in that I don’t expect good work from them, but in that I’ve been listening to the album nonstop in a way that I haven’t since I heard Elegy. But if that was a surprise then I’d have to say my enthusiasm for the latest Arckanum offering, Fenris Kindir, is coming as a total shock. This is without a doubt, the best black metal out in 2013 (I know, I know… Darkthrone, but is The Underground Resistance really black metal?), as well as the most immersive listening experience of the year. For those who don’t know, Arckanum has been essentially a one man solo project of Johan Lahger, and he’s made a lengthy go it in releasing albums since the mid nineties. I’ll confess, I’ve been unmoved by this project for the most part, despite being exposed to the past few years of releases… and as is the usual way these things go, I have no explanation for why those previous albums didn’t affect me yet the new one does — but there you go. There’s nothing accessible or commercial about this recording, its pure blistering black metal done in a nod to an old school style, with very little in the way of vibrant melodies.

But it makes up for that with its sheer depth in ambient noise, all of which is purposeful in depicting the story of the mythological Odin-killing monsterous wolf. There’s distant tortured voices, a constant wash of feedback, and seemingly inhuman, guttural sounds all over the place. And really only just over half of the album is comprised of actual songs, the rest being a mix of intro/outro/interlude tracks, which may sound annoying, but everything blends into one another for an uninterrupted listening experience. Okay, maybe I’m throwing around the term “experience” too often for what is still at its core brutal and straightforward black metal. But there’s some rather good riffs on display and an overall intensity that is quite the perfect tonic for dealing with overheating summer induced rage. The best moment is on “Angrbða”, a relentlessly fast, brutal, and punishing slice of black metal that opens with an insane sounding tortured female voice shrieking in the distance… only to have (I’m assuming) the same crazed female come back in for a truly bizarre, yet appealing guest vocal midway through. Might be shortlisted for song of the year methinks.

Finally, something that was bound to happen… the first discussion of a non-metal-related album of music on The Metal Pigeon. Stick with me on this, because if you haven’t treated yourself to the sheer beauty and wonder that is composer Austin Wintory’s epic soundtrack for the PS3 downloadable gaming oddity called Journey, then you’re missing out on something really great. I actually don’t own a PS3, but thanks to YouTube I’ve been able to see the game played, and what I saw was a rather inspired and inventive take on merging gaming into pure visual/interactive art. It was IGN’s Game of the Year for 2012, a huge accomplishment for a small, independent developer overtaking such major heavyweights as Halo 4 for example. Well, I won’t launch into gaming talk here, but suffice it to say the very idea of Journey has a built in metal spirit — to me anyway. You wander alone at first, in this beautiful, desolate, epic landscape, always trying to get to this incredibly huge mountain that looms in the distance, and as you go through your “journey”, other players meet you in your world (or their world) and you can potentially aid one another onwards in your quest. Its an elegant visual metaphor for life, solitude, togetherness, and entropy.

Any soundtrack accompanying such an endeavor would have to be just as thoughtful, and trust me fellow metal fans, this stuff will be right up your street. Gorgeously swelling strings, solo cello and violin, brass and woodwinds and also some mighty thundering timpani led percussion. Its a dark, moody, and mysterious sounding work, and a complete one at that — you’ll find yourself listening to it uninterrupted from front to back. I wasn’t surprised to learn that it was the first video game soundtrack to ever be nominated for a Grammy Award (it lost out to Trent Reznor, of all people, who did the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo soundtrack). I’ve always been interested in games that have a relationship with metal, be it soundtrack wise or just in terms of feel. The PS2 game “Shadow of the Colossus” for example really was black metal personified into an epic game where you, a solitary hero named Wander had to venture out into a bleak, harsh, and desolate world to hunt down mighty giant “Colossi”, and defeat those mighty forces by yourself. Tell me that isn’t black metal. Journey then, in its own uniquely ambient way, as a game and soundtrack, seem to reflect some of the deeper virtues that I find within metal as an art. Life as an epic, mighty, yet ultimately doomed quest — its a bleak picture when regarding the destination, but the journey itself is the point, not the end. Didn’t Maiden once say something about not worrying about wasted years?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY0bUjF0YQ8?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noVkBJiDTAc?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypNgvc6c6Cc?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

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The A’s Have It: Amorphis, Arckanum, and Austin Wintory