The most interesting releases of the week!
Intense Indifference is the second full-length release from the Swedish death metallers Vittra, released independently. The band plays melodeath with a heavy enough thrash dose that it’s not always clear what the dominant genre is. Vittra runs on energy and gripping melodies, and boils away everything else almost immediately.
A little less than halfway through the opening track, you can clearly make out the vocalist scream out “Motherfucker, let’s GO!”, which is apparently part of the chorus. This moment is immediately preceded and followed by a series of catchy, bouncy, immediately gripping riffs and vocal grunts that would be ridiculous if they weren’t done in perfect earnestness. The only thing keeping pace with the drum solos is the guitar solos. After the whirlwind opener, Vittra keep the fire up, giving the listener a series of melodeath songs that live and soar by sheer pizzaz. Intense Indifference finishes with a cover of “Piece By Piece” that sounds more ridiculous than the original. This is raw, unhinged melodeath that should make At The Gates proud.
Communion In Anguish was released on Profound Lore Records. Tithe play dissonant death metal with a focus on layered, claustrophobic sounds. When the guitars switch to a new note in the riff, the change in tone comes across as more important than the melodic line. Same with the drums: Blast beats are used primarily to fill the space more fully than the sparser patterns. With a sonic approach like Tithe‘s the bass line is most noticeable in absence. When the bass drops, it suddenly feels like a piece of the foundation is gone and that the too-small house is about to collapse down on you. The vocals alternative between a hardcore-tinged aggressive shout, a more traditional death metal growl, and everything in between.
The downside of the style of music is that it’s difficult to make songs that are immediately, recognizably distinct. While this gives the listener something to chew on for repeat listens, it can be a barrier to entry. Tithe solve this issue partially by keeping the album relatively short, and partially by…well, not caring. This is dense, dissonant music. While it requires multiple listens to pick apart the nuance, Communion In Anguish contains enough moments to bite into as an album, enough great riffs and satisfying payoffs, that I didn’t care too much about the lack of distinguishing features between songs and felt that repeat listens were enjoyable enough without the deeper dive into the songs.
Ascension was released on Nuclear Blast. As this is approximately Paradise Lost‘s millionth full-length release, I approached the album with low expectations. This style has never agreed too much with me and this album is over an hour long. Still, always worth listening to masters in case there’s something new there. I don’t know if I’m just in a different place than the last time I put on Paradise Lost or if the band has changed it up, but Ascension is a good time.
While Ascension remains thoroughly a doom metal album, Paradise Lost have given their tracks a bit of a kick. The riffs are excellent, the solos emotive and musical while remaining technically impressive, and the drums consistently push the tracks forward when they need to. For an album of this size, there’s surprisingly little bloat. This is the first Paradise Lost album that I’ve actually enjoyed, and maybe it’s worth re-listening to the older stuff.
Borderland was released on Reigning Phoenix Music. If you’ve listened to the band at any time for the past twenty years, you know what you’ll find: The best choruses in the business, surrounded with riffs that range from surpassing them to sabotaging them, songs that use stripped-down structure to maintain artistic flare, and performances that are entertaining at worst and jaw-dropping at best. When everything comes together for Amorphis, no one else does melodic metal better. At the other end, there’s Halo and Borderland. Merely excellent.
Amorphis‘s floor means that these tracks will be stuck in my head for only the rest of the year rather than the rest of the decade. The various elements don’t really hang together the way they do at the band’s best. The growling vocals feel a bit odd, and the songs sound more like jammed together elements than natural progressions. In other words, the effort is audible. Despite this, Borderland will undoubtably end up being one of my most listened to albums by the end of the year, and it is absolutely worth checking out. While Amorphis haven’t quite matched Queen of Time here, they have made a shockingly strong release that has grown on me after each listen.
The Seeing House is Irk‘s second full-length, released on Nefarious Industries. Irk plays experimental rock and they want you to know it. Hardcore forms the foundation of The Seeing House. Every other influence tries to get away from it. There’s a heavy rhythmic focus on The Seeing House, with melodies, instrumentation, and at times the concept of tone taking second place to avoiding the beat. And while it’s not like Pierre Boulez would have found Irk down his alley, listening to The Seeing House gives a genuinely strange feeling.
The most surprising aspect of this album is how cohesive it sounds. Irk dives down some quite different alleys, which is not a surprise from an experimental noise rock group. But all the songs sound like they belong together, and the more frantic trash fires don’t satisfy as well without the more-sparsely-orchestrated counterweights. And while I definitely haven’t listened to The Seeing House enough to feel like I understand all that the album is doing, I do find listening satisfying, like getting lost with no cell service in a scenic area with no deadline.
Antegnosis, released on Everlasting Spew, is death metal for people who think that recording in a studio is selling out. Occulsed‘s second full length sounds as nasty as any death metal I’ve heard this year, with a production seemingly inteded to drive away anyone who hasn’t ruined their taste by listening to too much Bog Body.
This style of gunk absolutely, positively, needs well-written riffs, and thankfully Occulsed have them. Paradoxically, this style of death metal is the most likely to collapse into a heap of nothing if the songwriting isn’t as precise as possible. Antegnosis contains songs worthy of the sound. The second track “Palingenesis” is a great example. While the intro contains some energetic soloing, the song slowly and intentionally devolves from a cavernous riff that reprises after the first verse into a passage that begins to dissolve the concept of a riff through repetition and a slight throttling of energy and tone. Then everything comes back to remind the listener what has been missing before an abrupt end. None of the changes are abrupt, all are easy to miss, all result in a song that goes off the rails just enough to sound unfamiliar. While Occulsed definitely aren’t for everyone, they’re doing something different, and doing it with intrigue and focus.
