Tag: Frost

September 28, 2017 2017, Black Metal, Satyricon 2 Comments

Satyricon’s Spiritual Delving: The ‘Deep Calleth Upon Deep’ Review

The last time we really heard from the Satyricon camp in a big way, it was some bleak news that had nothing to do with black metal, black n’ roll, or however you might describe their post 2002 musical output. Frontman and guitarist Satyr (Sigurd Wongraven) announced on Instagram on October 5th, 2015 that upon being rushed to the hospital after feeling extremely ill, doctors found a brain tumor that while Satyr described as “most likely” benign, still managed to rattle myself and I’m sure many others who read the statement. I remember we discussed it on the MSRcast around then, and then everyone just kinda held their breath to see what would happen. I began following Satyr’s Instagram feed because of that post, and was encouraged to see his upbeat, positive nature in regards to his new found condition and how he seemed to just be forging ahead with life in general. He has one of the most intriguing Instagram feeds of any metal musician out there, particularly in the black metal realm where the majority of the big names are fairly reclusive when it comes to social media (understandably). Satyr’s feed is startlingly candid, featuring photos of his family life, his kids, a lot of his work in relation to his wine making (hosting wine tasting dinners in super fancy Norwegian restaurants… seriously), artistic pictures of some incredible looking meals, and generally devoid of most of the grim and brutal things you’d normally associate with the guy who penned Nemesis Divina. He replies to comments frequently, and has been open with his current medical status, which is thankfully fine, though he says he’ll have to be on alert for any signs of that changing.

 

What he took away from that intensely frightening personal experience was a sense of urgency, about life in general but also about his art. It was reflected in his statement in the press release for the album,

“Approaching this release, what I always kept in mind is that either this is the beginning of something new or it’s gonna be my last record. If this is going to be the last, then it needs to be something special. If there are more records, then I’d better make sure that this is so different from the last one that it feels like a new beginning. I think it’s really, really dark, very spiritual and filled with confidence and energy.”

– Satyr

I don’t usually quote from press releases in my album reviews, but this one is pertinent to fully understanding where Satyr is coming from as a songwriter on Deep Calleth Upon Deep. And of course before delving into this album, we should talk about where we all stand as fans or critics of the two major divisions of Satyricon’s career. Personally I love it all, but I came in at the end of their classic black metal era, that run from Dark Medieval Times through The Shadowthrone and their masterpiece Nemesis Divina. Their modern era, which arguably started with 1999’s Rebel Extravaganza (some would say 2002’s Volcano) has its share of detractors, particularly when singles like “Fuel For Hatred” and “K.I.N.G.” moved into a far more simplified musical direction, with shorter and more to the point songwriting built around catchy riffs and hooky choruses. But the band’s success increased throughout this latter era, and they released some of their best work as well —- to my ears anyway. I do understand some folks longing for a band like Satyricon to release something in their classic style again, with their Norwegian-ness and inherent second wave pedigree. But I’d argue that Satyricon have forged a sonic identity unique to themselves in their pursuit of a simpler, more direct songwriting approach. Its not new anymore, they’ve been in this milieu for just under two decades now, and they’ve released a handful of albums in its vein, but its unmistakably Satyricon’s.

 

On their previous album, the self-titled Satyricon in 2013, I wrote that the band was attempting to try something new and fresh, to shake off the black n’ roll tag they had been shackled with, describing its sound as “…the sound of black metal’s moods, tones, and temperament, but purposefully stripped of its surface aggression.” It was an intriguing shake up of their sound, one that was regarded with dismay by quite a large part of their audience, even the ones that had gotten on board during the Now, Diabolical and The Age of Nero eras. What I hope for those of you who were thrown off by that last album’s strange sonic deconstruction of the band’s black metal sound is that you’ve had enough time to digest it properly and appreciate some of its more abstract aspects. I emphasize this because even though four long years separate it and Deep Calleth Upon Deep, and even though this album is truly the beginning of something new for the band, they’ve continued that album’s exploration of a more muted sound (slightly less this time), as well as carrying over a penchant for atmospherics that they gained from that experience. In many ways Deep Calleth is a kaleidoscope of an album, its various turns featuring glimpses of the full spectrum of their career, from classicist black metal grandeur to grim, punchy black n’ roll, set to a backdrop of haunting atmospheric touches that often transcend mere keyboard studio trickery. Now I know what you’re thinking… Pigeon, you’re telling me this is the start of a new, fresh Satyricon yet you’re telling me they’re continuing the sound of their last album, which I loathed? Yes, and that’s seemingly a contradiction, but this is a band talented enough to make it work.

 

I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say this is the best Satyricon album start to finish since Nemesis Divina. its just absolutely captivated me and held me in thrall since I first started listening to it weeks ago. To say its shocked me is an understatement, because although I always expect to enjoy most of a new Satyricon album (being a fan of the band), what I’m hearing on this album is the sound of a songwriter delivering his most inspired, most meaningful material —- perhaps ever. These songs are filled with imagery recalling nature, particularly in its wild, untamed, and primitive state, and the effect is spellbinding. There’s a spirituality to Deep Calleth Upon Deep that has eluded previous Satyricon albums. This comes through in the lyrics straightaway, as on the album opener “Midnight Serpent”, where Satyr barks in that inimitable grimness, “From soul to soul—I speak to you / God of no gods—I’m slave of none / I pledge to fight—your cause is mine”. The song lays out the underlying theme of the album, which Satyr remarked in that same press release I quoted before that the album was thematically about the essence of appreciating art itself. The very title of the album is in reference to this, that the creator digs deep within to create, and if the listener wants to truly appreciate that art, they have to dig deep within themselves as well. That may sound sanctimonious to some, but to me its the very root of what it takes to be a metal fan. And Satyr is writing with an eye towards his mortality as well, which adds gravitas and urgency to his spoken word lyric later in the song, “Face of morbidity / spotted through the keyhole / Unlocked by the persecuted / who wants nothing but the sunlit meadows”. When he barks a few bars later, “Let another song reverberate”, you know he means it like nothing else.

 

Its the first salvo in a barrage of excellent, inspired songs, the next being the uptempo “Blood Cracks Open The Ground”, where we get to hear our first example of how the sound from their previous album has carried over yet not dominated on these new songs. The band employs space between instruments, wide and airy as production technique to work as a counterbalance to the song’s heavy riffing and rumbling, thunderous percussion. I know that this particular approach to production and mixing must aggravate those who are used to Satyricon’s dense, crushing wall of sound that adorned albums like Now, Diabolical but I do feel it has a purpose. The guitars here are highly melodic, full of twisting, spiraling patterns that are center stage, not running into slabs of brutal rhythm guitars and having to fight for space in the mix. The result is an unorthodox way to perceive black metal, as not a furious assault on your ears, but a focused, concentrated effort —- and you’ll know what I mean at the 3:20 mark, where Satyr hones in over a particularly ominous chord progression with “Ravens flee / Pitch black”, the combination of the two resulting in a truly unsettling but addictive moment. The production (more precisely, the mixing) on this song and indeed throughout the album is best characterized as warm, open, and spacious. Instruments are given room to breath individually, even down to the basslines, and I think that’s on purpose. Nothing is able to hide under blankets of riffs in Satyricon’s new sonic world.

 

Those aforementioned sonic attributes are central to the triumph of “To Your Brethren In The Dark”, a slow-dance tempo meditation built on open chord sequences that ascend and descend like that skeleton you always knew was walking up and down your staircase at night when you were a kid (oh is that just me??). This is normally the kind of song that should irritate me, a slow moving dirge when I really want the album to be kicking off into high gear around track number three, but I’ve loved this upon first listen. I can’t explain why, but there’s something immensely satisfying about its construction —- the lead guitar motif that first appears at 1:26 is so beautifully wrought and evocative in itself that I want to grab hold of it like a corgi puppy. The patient rhythmic structure at work here is a coordinated effort between those open chord figures and Satyr’s most reigned in, yet still tension-filled vocal performance. His lyrics here are spectacular, perhaps his best ever amidst a career full of praise-worthy work, this time writing them with an eye towards poetic structure and rhythmic meter and the symmetry of it all. My favorite stanza is in the middle, “October sky, October leafs / and the silence, of nightfall / pass the torch to your brethren in the dark”, that last line serving as the song’s echoing refrain, a beautiful image that can sit at the center of the album’s thematic core. What an incredible song.

 

I’ll refrain from going on at length about every single song because I know I’ll be writing about this album again, but the rest of the record is just as spectacular. The early lead single was the title track, and it hits even harder within context of the album, being one of the most slyly hooky songs of the year. The background vocals by tenor Hakon Kornstad add an extra dimension to the soundscape here, as well as on “The Ghost of Rome” —- his contributions sounding more like the grief stricken wailing of some old-world woman at a funeral pyre. And I have a specific fondness for some of the riffs in specific passages of “Burial Rite”, particularly around the 3:27 mark when things get monstrously heavy after a section that was almost loose enough to be called jazz, a wild juxtaposition. Songs like “Dissonant” and “Black Wings and Withering Gloom” are fierce and fiery enough to prevent this album from leaning towards the slower end of the spectrum. Its a far more aggressive affair overall than Satyricon, despite continuing for the most part in that album’s sonic palette production/mix wise. That might be a stumbling block for some, but its worth trying to push past. It sounds borderline trite to say this, but Satyr’s brush with mortality has seemingly given him a focus that we’ve never heard from him. These songs have a clarity about them lyrically and musically, with a sense of vitality that is palpable. In a year where black metal has been unusually quiet, Deep Calleth Upon Deep is a cannon shot from the Norwegian wilderness that its old veterans still have the mastery of this dark art.

 

September 17, 2013 2013, Black Metal, Satyricon 2 Comments

Black Metal Pariah: Satyricon and their Polarizing New Album

Its highly unlikely that any of us would have been able to predict that the quietly touted new sound of Satyricon would sound exactly like what we’re hearing on their newly released eighth album. When the band announced a lengthy hiatus after completing the touring cycle for 2008’s “The Age of Nero”, they walked away saying that a comeback would have to include a revamp of their sound, which was essentially a silent way of saying that they had taken their straight ahead, black n’ roll style of the past decade as far as it could go. Upon reading that statement I found myself wondering, well, where could they take their sound? Its either go back to their roots by bringing back the symphonic elements of the Nemesis Divina era and perhaps mix it with slight touches of black n’ roll, or go off into some totally random avant-garde offshoot ala Ihsahn and perhaps “treat” us to bewildering saxophone laden weirdness. The thing with black metal is that when you really boil it down to its component parts to attempt to merge it with other non-black metal elements, there’s not a lot left out there that hasn’t been done. And maybe I’m just reading into something that was never there, but I felt that when Satyricon made that pre-hiatus declaration, they were speaking in reference to black metal as a whole, and not just the sound of Satyricon.

 

The new sound of Satyricon is perhaps the most radical, mind bending, and just plain strange expansion of the black metal mold since the arrival of Alcest’s Souvenirs d’un autre monde. I’ve listened to this album many times now, and I think I’ve finally settled on a reasonable way to describe it in one sentence: This is the sound of black metal’s moods, tones, and temperament, but purposefully stripped of its surface aggression. Gone is the buzz-saw, feral, raw guitar attack of their past three records; and Satyr’s vocals are no longer upfront, but now mixed in further back alongside the instrumentation. The logical response to hearing such a description would be to ask, “Well, why did they strip away the surface aggression?” This is the most intriguing question surrounding this record, which by the way I think is addictive and captivating for that simple reason alone — I’m relishing the challenge of trying to figure this record out. In the meantime, I’ve realized that its drawn me in with some really powerful, gripping songwriting that’s hidden behind the sheer “softness” of the recording.

 

And when I describe the album with a term like that, I suppose I had better really explain what I mean. This is proving to be the most difficult album I’ve ever had to write a review for, because I believe I understand what Satyricon are trying to attempt to capture here, but I’m finding it difficult to spell it out in words. I’ll give it a shot here: If you can look at older Satyricon as symphonic driven black metal, and recent Satyricon as a raw, unadorned, black n’ roll reaction against that, then new Satyricon exists not in between those polarities, but outside of it —- looking in. Their musical shift from their earlier sound to their recent sound was a process of addition by subtraction. Their new sound then, is born not from further addition or subtraction of black metal musical elements, but by simply rewriting the equation with new elements altogether, some black metal, and some just plain musical. The most distinct element is a noticeable sense of softness that comes not only from an organic, warm analog production, but from the liberal manipulations of space in relation to instrumentation.

 

Take for example the first non-intro track on Satyricon, “Tro Og Kraft”, an almost Sabbath-esque paced song that has no guitar riffs… just a relatively simplistic guitar figure repeated as the driving melody line. Meanwhile underneath we get Frost’s typical double kick intensity, yet the rest of his percussion is kept very spare, simple, and determinedly non-complex. This results in a surprising amount of space, shockingly so… because we’re so used to hearing black metal as a condensed form of music no matter how its adorned. The results come to our seasoned black metal listener minds as something acutely softer than what black metal “should be”. Yet at the same time we can’t deny that this does sound like black metal in its tones, its expressions, and there’s a pervasively dark melancholic vibe throughout the song. I wrote in an another article some thoughts on “Our World, It Rumbles Tonight”, being the first track released from the album, and weeks later, its still as powerful to me. Here again, the band inverts the idea of a black metal musical arrangement in the chorus by choosing a muted choral vocal instead of symphonic dressing, and purposefully slows down the chorus from its rock steady verses to better conjure a sense of solemnity and awe during the refrain. The result is a track that is full of texture and space, and moments of purposeful quietude.

 

Then there is the album’s strangest, most non-traditional styled track yet, “Phoenix”, a delicate, almost rock-like song with guest vocals from Norway’s Sivert Høyem, a vocalist who brings to mind a mix of Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy with HIM’s Ville Valo. The tone is kept sombre and melancholic, and sustaining guitars that ring out provide a bed of soft melodicism that is strikingly unusual for black metal. This is rightfully the most talked about song on the album, and as such has become the focal point for those who love and hate the record as a whole. There’s no denying its a departure for the band, but only in purely sonic terms, as the mood the song evokes is one that corresponds to the rest of the album. And even when the band gets close to approximating their traditional black metal stylings, such as on “Walker Upon the Wind”, and “Nekrohaven”, they sidestep the expected approach by shedding tropes like riffage in favor of more open chord sustains and the use of simple guitar figures as drivers of melody. In “Nekrohaven”, they finally open up the playbook to riffs a bit more and unleash one that recalls the best moments of their Now, Diabolical era, except there is a laid-back feel to the tempo and aggression of this song than anything on that feral album. This isn’t a bad thing by the way, as it proves to be the catchiest song the band has done in years, and oddly enough the happiest sounding as well.

 

As I wrote before, I could not have ever imagined a Satyricon album sounding anything like this. And when I begin to shift my analysis from what makes this album sound this particular way to why the band intended on it sounding this way, I think about the possibility that perhaps Satyr and Frost have gotten to a point where black metal tropes sound predictable and boring. Its a suggestion that is bound to inspire some vitriol, and perhaps its why the band has avoided commenting on it directly as of yet. But if its true and my suspicions are vindicated, then I’ll understand how they could have gotten there. At some point in all of our metal loving lives, we’ve gotten to points where loudness and heaviness are no longer all that we need to sustain us. As listeners we are free to shift to and from as our moods see fit in order to placate our musical wants, but I imagine its far more difficult to do anything about it if you’re an artist known for working in that medium of aggression.

 

Its been suggested recently that black metal’s rebellion to almost everything had only one remaining frontier, namely —- itself. Many bands have been examples of this new rebellion, in the form of merging together shoegaze and ambient influences with the black metal aesthetic (to varying results). Satyr and Frost’s Satyricon did not authentically have that stylistic option, and as a result they have responded to their vision of a post-Satyricon Satyricon by deconstructing the very medium of aggression itself. Its a decision that has angered many admirers, but we shouldn’t be surprised by that fact at all. This is perhaps the most divisive black metal band in the history of the genre, spawning doubters and flat out haters with every album release. That they inspire such fanatical, extreme opinion is a mark of their success —- no matter how mad people get, they will always come back to listen to whats next. Satyricon is a milestone not only for the band, but for Norwegian black metal as a whole. The style has been manipulated, poked and prodded outside of its ancestral home, but this is the first time that it has looked inwards to revitalize itself.

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6PiB4O1tzM&w=420&h=315]

 

August 8, 2013 2013, Satyricon 8 Comments

Satyricon Returns: First Listen of “Our World, It Rumbles Tonight”

They certainly took their time with this. Its been five years since Satyricon’s last studio album, the spotty but generally good The Age of Nero. For two albums (two and a halfish if you count Volcano and its charting single “Fuel For Hatred”), Satyricon explored a style that could adequately be described as black metal meets rock, a simplification of an already slightly streamlined approach they began to take with 1999’s Rebel Extravaganza. Over the course of these, let’s face it, far more accessible albums, the band’s popularity grew and grew, and they even seemed to work up an arguable masterpiece with 2006’s Now Diabolical. Of course, there were people that hated everything about this era of the band, and inevitably when promotional photos began to show a short haired Satyr —- well that was probably the last straw for those on the fence. For those of us who happened to enjoy the era, I think we could pretty much agree on one thing, that the band had gone as far as they could with their current sound, and it was time for something new. Its rare when a band and its fans agree on change, but when the band finished their last touring cycle they vowed to take an extended break to recharge themselves, as well as to re-imagine their sound itself.

 

There’s a leak, and its on YouTube and other places (for now) of a track entitled “Our World, It Rumbles Tonight” from Satyricon’s upcoming self-titled album (seriously what is it with bands and self-titled albums this year? Stop being lazy and create a title!). I’ll confess, when I saw this being passed around on Facebook, I fully realized the amount of anticipation I’ve had building up for this album. I was pumped up, and all my goofy pious talk about waiting until I could hear the album in its entirety immediately dissipated. I’ve been listening on repeat non-stop for a few hours now, most likely ruining this track for future playthroughs but screw it —- its been five freaking years since I’ve gotten new Satyricon music! This was after all one of my top five most anticipated albums for 2013, and I’m doing my best not to put the cart before the horse or some other similar saying, but I’ll just throw this out there: If the rest of the new album is like this, then its going to be fantastic.

 

This is just one track, so its unfair to describe the new sound of Satyricon in this small write up, but there does seem to be a mix of familiar and unfamiliar elements going on here. The production is as crisp and professional as their more recent work, the guitars are upfront and riffing is kept relatively clear and simple, Satyr’s vocal lines are quick and forceful, and Frost is of course pounding directly in our temples with furious double kick. All that stuff reminds me of elements from their past few albums, however there does however seem to be a call back to the wide open, expansive arrangements that touched classic albums like Nemesis Divina. Except that instead of epic, sweeping strings, I’m hearing what sounds like a muted choral vocal that sets in to support the songs beautifully bleak chorus. Here Satyr croaks out “My world, crumbles”, and drawn out, wild guitar chords left to sustain paint a dark, yet vivid soundscape. Its a thrilling, addictive chorus. There definitely seems to be something fresh happening here, I just can’t put my finger on it. I want to say that I’m hearing moments of the wide open expansiveness of some of the more lengthy cuts off Volcano mixed with the pop-smarts of Now, Diabolical but that would be oversimplifying things, and well, it’d just be inadequate.

 

Take a listen yourself:

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQR_Jb8W7yQ&w=560&h=315]

 

January 19, 2013 2013, Black Metal, Darkthrone, Edguy, Melo-Death, Omnium Gatherum, Power Metal, Queensryche, Satyricon 7 Comments

The Metal Pigeon’s Five Most Anticipated Albums of 2013

Killer metal tends to come in waves that ebb and flow. For example from 2010 through 2012 one could not begin to stem the tide of awesome new releases being dished out every single month. This prolific three year stretch of metallic goodness was particularly noticeable when juxtaposed next to the comparative drought metal seemed to go through from 2006-2009 (hey, at least to me anyway). So the question of the moment has to be whether or not 2013 can maintain this high velocity level we’ve gotten used to from metal artists worldwide, spanning all sub genres. We won’t know until the year’s over but the tentative 2013 release schedules that are being compiled and posted on metal sites all over are promising to say the least. Here are my personal top five most anticipated metal releases of this new year!

 

 

1. Queensrÿche – TBA:

Just to clarify, I’m referring to the Todd LaTorre fronted, real Queensrÿche that has within its ranks founding members Michael Wilton, Scott Rockenfield, and Eddie Jackson. The abortion that is Geoff Tate’s Queensrÿche can go die a slow, miserable, dinner-theater death. Why is this my most anticipated release of the year? Well my Queensrÿche fandom runs way back in my metal loving infancy, they were among some of the first bands to really make me appreciate music on a far more complex level, as well as being a musical cornerstone for a type of sound that I love to this day. They were one of my gateway bands in other words, and to see the deterioration that they had to go through in their post-Chris DeGarmo era at the hands of the woeful Tate and Yoko Tate has been more than a man can bear. When they finally gave him the boot in April of 2012 and soon afterwards debuted their newly recruited vocalist, LaTorre from Crimson Glory, I felt that one of my old favorites had been given a new lease on life. The recorded live clips of their recent string of shows have been nothing short of fantastic and grin inducing, and the talk of what this new album is supposed to be has me cautiously optimistic. I’m hopeful that these guys will make good on their promise to release a prog-metal album in the vein of what Queensrÿche fans have long hungered for.

 

 

2. Avantasia – The Mystery of Time:

Maybe the least surprising factoid for many of you who read this blog often is that I’m a fairly huge power metal fan. When I was first exploring metal that was off the American mainstream radar I briefly shunned power metal, sticking to death and melodic death metal with inborn stubbornness. But I loosened up when three power metal titans punched me in the face with releases from the late 90s, namely, Blind Guardian, Iced Earth, and Edguy. The latter of which contained one of the sub genre’s truly fantastic personalities: Edguy’s mercurial frontman, Tobias Sammet, was a vivid, loud, and zany character — but also one of the most accomplished and prolific songwriters that metal had ever seen. In a span of three years, 1998 to 2001, he knocked out of the ballpark three power metal classics with Edguy’s Vain Glory Opera, Theater of Salvation, and Mandrake.

 

The fact that he was folding into that same time frame a pair of classic records with his solo project Avantasia’s The Metal Opera Pt I & II was not only an incredible feat, but also the defining moment for the sub genre in what was a watershed period of excellent releases that began in the mid-nineties and would span well over a decade. It was a great time to be a fan of this style of metal. When he brought the project back in 2008 and onwards with a trio of releases and a new line-up, I felt like Sammet was forging a new path within power metal itself by mixing traditional elements with AOR, hard rock, and even pop. Sure there were catcalls and criticisms from naysayers who felt he was straying too far from the sub genre’s trademark elements, but to his credit, he insisted on making the records that he wanted to hear. This new album then, due out in March, is yet another resurrection of the Avantasia project, and Sammet is assembling another interesting cast of guest vocalists and musicians that I hope will live up to the exciting musical legacy already established with the previous releases.

 

But here’s the real talk about Sammet, regardless of how much he tries to deny it, its becoming clear that Avantasia has supplanted Edguy as his primary focus. When your solo project starts to outgun your main band’s albums in terms of songwriting quality, scale, ambition, and record sales, its obvious where you’re subconsciously or consciously putting forth most of your efforts. And I guess I’m fine with that. No disrespect to the fellows in Edguy, but I suppose I’m more of a fan of Tobias Sammet and his songwriting than anything else, no matter what project its in. It’ll be interesting to see the futures of both projects.

 

 

 

3. Darkthrone – The Underground Resistance:

I know its not just myself that feels this way, but generally speaking, I think I enjoy listening to the latter day, more recent Darkthrone albums than their earlier ones. Sacrilege? To many yes. But here’s the thing, there’s only so many times I can listen to A Blaze in the Northern Sky and Transilvanian Hunger without feeling like I’m spinning my wheels a bit. Those were the records that I’d see references in metal magazines lists of essential black metal listening, the ones name dropped by so many bands, and the ones that its generally believed that a metal fan needs to devour in order to understand the complete picture of black metal.

 

Hey, that was all fine with me — if a bit studious, but there is such a thing as over listening to an album (still can’t really listen to those Emperor albums anymore). Darkthrone made an abrupt stylistic shift to a punky, crusty, thrashy black metal blend with 2003’s Hate Them and never really looked back. This approach has progressed to a more and more non-traditional sound, culminating in what might be one of their best records to date, 2010’s Circle the Wagons. Clean singing in Darkthrone songs? Clean(er) production on a Darkthrone album? What the hell was going on right? If all else failed it was worth it simply to see the internet black metal crybabies go berserk on the Metal Archives and black metal blogs everywhere. But I loved that record, and enjoyed the four that preceded it (yes I’m even including The Cult Is Alive with its critic-baiting, rage-inducing “Too Old, Too Cold”). If the teaser that’s out for the new album is any indication — where the vocals take on a near Mercyful Fate-esque quality — troo kvlt fans will be even more pissed off and I’ll be even more pleased. Good stuff.

 

 

 

4. Satyricon – TBA:

It has been just under four and a half years since Satyr and Frost released any new music together. That is considered a rather long time in metal, a genre where Wintersun’s eight year delay of Time I was considered a long enough period to deem Jari Mäenpää as Axl Rose’s Finnish cousin. Unlike those two guys, who aim to be perfectionists much to their own detriment, Satyr had a decent enough reason to call time on his name sake band. Quite simply, he realized that he’d run the band’s sound as far as it would go, and was staring at a wall. It was time to go back to the drawing board and reconfigure the sound of Satyricon for the future.

 

The exciting part for us fans is that we really have no idea what this could mean. Few could predict the black n’ roll turn that these guys took with “Fuel For Hatred”, and really I’ve seen no one even take a stab in the dark at what the new stuff will sound like. The band is keeping mums the word as well, but we’ll all have some shreds of answers come late March when they take the stage at the Inferno Festival where its promised that they’ll debut several new songs live. I’m sure there are loads of people who have become disinterested in anything these guys have done since Rebel Extravaganza, despite their soaring popularity through the past decade. Again, like Darkthrone, I found myself enjoying black n’ roll Satyricon simply for what it was, in this case entertaining and catchy as hell metal. But if you were one of those disgruntled former fans, well here’s your chance to give the band another shot with a new album due this year that is expected to be the start of a new era of Satyricon.

 

 

 

5. Omnium Gatherum – Beyond:

These guys were a slow burn for me, as I took up an infatuation with Insomnium and Moonsorrow first and Omnium had to take the backseat for awhile. Choosing to ignore the odd subtext of that sentence, I’ll just move on and say that New World Shadows was my selling point on the band. What a great freaking album. I’ll have to admit that my listening experience with the band is so far limited only to the albums with Jukka Pelkonen on vocals, and I’ve no idea about anything done with the old singer. I’m okay with that right now, as I’m slowly becoming a Pelkonen fanboy. He might be one of the most versatile and expressive vocalists doing harsh/gutteral vocals in the metal scene as a whole. Musically not only does it feel like these guys are original in style and sound, but that originality extends to their songwriting as well, where standard pop structures are discarded in favor of more complex arrangements.

 

The new album, Beyond, will be the first of my most anticipated to be released this year, and the band have released a new song well ahead of the album’s expected release date of late February, and it can be heard here. It seems like the standard pre-album release cut strategy, issuing the most obviously catchy song first, but time will tell on that. I’m digging it, and it seems like they’ve gotten into more of the almost near power metal guitar sounds that they were exploring on New World Shadows. By the way, I wonder if anyone has passed a copy of that album to someone in In Flames? It’s seemingly the type of thing that those guys have been blindly trying to strive for with their recent clumsy, half-baked stabs at modernizing melodic death metal.

 

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