Usual Locations Part Two: Xanthochroid

Xanthochroid are a band who, according to the Holy Book of Armaments, have been around since 2005 but somehow managed to go without publishing a full album until last year. What they had been up to form inception to THAT album seems to have consisted of rehearsing a lot. Because their debut album does not sound like a debut album. On any level. For those who've been hungry of full blown epic orchestral Black Metal (that does not involve Dani Filth) since Emperor should have their thirst and hunger quenched and satisfied with this album. So far they've done one demo, one EP and one LP. I haven't heard the demo, though I would love to, but the EP is classy as classiful classy thing. But the album, have I mentioned already how effing good the album is? No, and did I mentioned that it's called Blessed He With Boils, because it is.

I first came across these guys when I was just browsing through a dark port filled with filth and metal bands where I have no business being at. To be honest I just noticed "USA" and "EPIC BLACK METAL", those together would usually put me off. I'm not a huge fan of black metal let alone EPIC BLACK METAL. But the cover I have to say was really really nice. Real piece of art. Most of the time black metal tends to be wrapped around frost and tundras, but these guys decided to go for swamps and bog.

So I thought I'd check them out and all the reviews I read were positive. Very positive indeed. So I thought I'd just listen. And it just absolutely blew me away. Musically it is great, but it wasn't just that. It was the scope they were going for and the grandeur! Both of which they achieved on a level that I had not really heard of since Emperor's Prometheus. What did or didn't help was how similar Ihsahns and Sam Meadors vocals are. Especially when he goes full In The Nightside Eclipse style. Musically they draw inspiration from Opeth, Emperor and Cradle of Filth. They take plenty of story telling tips(without the voice-over) from Bal-Sagoth. On their Bandcamp site they wrote:

We spent nearly a year in the studio; writing, recording, re-writing, re-recording every element of this album.
Not to mention the many years before that we spent writing the actual material; making sure every note served its purpose, every line complemented its counterpart, and every lyric fit properly with our story, because we wanted to create something special.

Well the plan worked. They definitely delivered on their promise because this is a tight package of evil black nuances that few bands are able to do. The ability of going from sombre acoustic to blistering blast beat black metal without losing momentum is just phenomenal. Yes there are moments which feel like they are slightly overstepping their talent boundaries but every time that happens they pull it off, with gusto and without too much pretense.

It starts of with an orchestral intro piece dramatically named Aquatic Deathgate Existence that leads nicely into a full blown orchestral black metal title song. Into a nice melancholic ballad called Winter's End. Followed by the riff fest of Long Live Our Lifeless King. Oh just listen to the whole album, it is worth it if you like your black metal and you miss the times when Dimmu Burger did good albums.



This is one of the best concept albums I've had the pleasure of listening to. One with one of the most coherent story, with a HUGE background as well. You can easily hear that as well in that they use the same common musical thread on the entire album. In between they also use a choir to narrate the story, as well as bringing some welcome relief from the constant onslaught of brick-wall black metal. There is easily enough ideas and themes here that could be separated for 3-4 further albums. Sam Meadors vocals provide an excellent focal point for (what could have so easily been nothing but chaos) the listener. When he's not shrieking like a drunken banshee, he croons like nobodies business. The way he manages to switch from croaking to clean, un-vilified singing is mesmerizing. If he ever jacked in metal and wanted to go solo with some un-adultered rock, I think he would be able to make a handsome living. Of course the drummer not only provides the rhythm grounding for all this potential chaos he also mixed and produced this phenomenal piece of work. He manages to keep the music sounding huge and crisp, without it being sterile.

Now. I have not mentioned the EP, Incultus, that came out before. I wish I had come across it before the LP, but ah well it can't be helped now. Apparently the story and the world they created with the story is first set out here. It is here were we are first introduced to the brothers Thanos and Ereptor in the world Etymos. Their struggle against each other and eventual betrayal. What is interesting to hear on this album are the plethora of guest vocalists that sort of flesh out the story a bit better then they do on Blessed He With Boils. Natacha Nielsen did the album cover on here as well and it is again a album cover of desolate beauty. It sets the scene of what to expect really well and if I had been browsing through HMV (RIP) I would have bought both purely on the strength of the album covers. The music is definitely rawer on here and there's more done with black metal riffs, less orchestral work and the use of cookie monster growls also adds an extra effect. In a good way. 


The talent pool that is floating in this band has extremely deep and I'm quite happy to float in it when my headphones are attached.

Unusual Locations... Part Deux.

Well this is the second part of this series. This is where I talk about bands from what could be called unusual locations, but that quite frankly isn't enough though as they have to be good as well. Being novel is one thing, being good is something completely different.






The first project/band (and the inspiration for making this sequel blog) that I want to talk about comes from a tiny island that I had to look up, as I was sure that the last time I heard it's name mentioned was in a fantasy book. But no, there it is. Tiny teeny weeny island, the size of a walnut. The island is Aruba, and the project is The Isle Project. Apparently this is just one guy with his guitar, keyboard and computer. For anyone who's listened to say Animals As Leaders will recognise the style. The album is entirely instrumental with lots of effects being used, guitar pedals galore, synthesizers and computer magic on display. There is a lot of Tosin Abasi worship going on here, the good thing being it's not a straight of rip-off but a rather well played tribute. The album New Perspective is also sounds like it could have been used for a First Person Shooter, or possibly a Real Time Strategy a la original Command & Conquer. It is safe to say that this album has made a big enough impression on me to look forward to the next one.

Now with a country that has 1.2 billion people that there would be more famous bands springing out, but no the most famous musician that I'm aware of from India is Ravi Shankar. And he was dull. Way dull. But these next two acts are not. While they do both come under the Metal Genre, they are as different metal bands as you can get.

Bhayanak Maut have been playing and entertaining the Indian masses for 10 years. The first time I came across them was on one of Metal Hammers excellent Global Metal compilations, I'm going to have to dig up that album again because there were some excellent bands on show there. Apparently they started out as a sort of a joke band, which quickly, evolved into a working band with a joke to play. Not only that but a really good working band with their tongue firmly in their cheek. The name translates as "Terrible Death". Currently, at least according to themselves, they are the biggest metal band in India. If there is anything I could describe them as Groove Metal with Metalcore vocals. Which usually is  a bad thing in my books, but these guys to seem to pull it off. They've only released one full album but on the flip side they've done 3 EP's, my personal favourite being Malignant. I would love to see these guys in a live setting, as I can imagine it being a sweaty, neck breaking session of fun, filth and frolics.

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The second band from India that I want to mention is Amogh Symphony. Lets get this straight right now. It's not a symphony. It's not even close to being a symphony, but if the dude who runs it ever decided to make a symphony I'd buy a ticket the minute he announces it. Now according to the Holy Book of Armaments, this band is classified as Progressive Death Metal. Which well, I do suppose could be true, but without the vocals it's pretty hard to classify it as such. But instrumentally Vishal owes a lot to Cynic and Atheist, in the sense that there's quite a bit of jazzy elements that both of those bands love to incorporate in their act but first and foremost there's the prog. The first album 'Abolishing The Obsolete System' is very much a solo project as it's just him with his guitars and a computer, no vocals. He does use some synthesized vocals that probably came with whatever music program he mixed it in. (I do wish I had at least a 1/10 of his guitar playing talent.) There's flamenco playing, some BollyPop with occasional orchestral touches. With the second album, 'The Quantum Hack Code',  he managed to hire a drummer that could keep up with him. And generally uses the same tricks as the first album, that is not to say that he's repeating himself. Dear Gods no, just that he consolidates what he did in the first album and adds more extravagant flourishes.  The Quanttam Hack Code is meant to be a concept album with interludes in between telling a story on how humankind is about to be annihilated in the far far away future. I sort of imagine that this album would be great as a soundtrack to System Shock 2. 

Picture South-Africa... lions roaming the savannahs, sun, sand, beaches, Morgan  Freeman as Nelson Mandela... so when you come across bands from this sun-ripened country that not only play metal, but metal of the variety that is more associated with ice, frost-bitten desolation, grimness and hypothermia. Not just one, but two! That's right. Two Black Metal bands. From South Africa. First up Warthane, they hail from a town called Alberton, but have since emigrated to Sweden. Though I would have thought that Norway would have been a better fit, but what hey. They've been around since 2004 and so far published 1 EP and 2 full albums. The only album I've heard is called Black Divine which came out in 2011, and it on show there is plenty of desperate black metal going on with what can only be said thrash riffs thrown in and death metal vocals. Straight from the get go you have a song that represents everything that they want to accomplish, buzzsaw guitars, blastbeats, shrieking, with the occasional operatic female singer piping in whenever the song calls for beauty. There's the iddly widdly guitar solo's. The barks. The fast drums. Yes, if I had to have a guess I would have said that these guys used to live next to Ihsahn and grew up with Varg.

Sean Gouws does have some great singing/guitar playing chops and I do hope that this is not the last we hear from him or Warthane. Don't get me wrong, it would be easy to dismiss these guys as gimmicks on the basis of the genre and where they come from, but that would foolish at best, stupid at worst. While people who don't like Black Metal already won't find anything to enjoy on here, those who already spent their minds eye and ears wallowing around tundras in animal skins will find plenty to enjoy.

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Then we have Crow Black Sky. And they hail from Cape Town. Though they do come under the umbrella term of Black Metal, they are a completely different beast from Warthane. Crow Black Sky manage to invoke the sounds of Emperor, Dimmu Borgir and early Cradle of Filth very easily. Specially the latter two. Crow Black Sky have got this expansive sound going on with orchestral flourishes here and there, piano being exuberantly and expertly played, emotions building up and up and then crumbling down. There's even an instrumental power ballad! And for a debut album they've really gone all out on their sound. The sound that they also bring across is quite nautical in nature. The singer doesn't stray much from the black metal croaking. Then there's this Danish Blue Cheese-fest of a music video, that uses all the hallmarks of Black Metal Manowar, and I love it for exactly those reasons. For a self produced and a completely DIY project this has the hallmarks of professionally done album. It will be interesting to see what they will do next.

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Lasting Impact: Sepultura - Roots

Man. Sepultura and me have some history. The first time I listened to this it had just come out and Radio 2(Think BBC1 mixed with BBC6) in Iceland played it in it's entirety. I was 13, and I was gobsmacked. This was up to that point, or at least until I heard The Chemical Wedding by Bruce Dickinson, the heaviest thing I had ever listened to. And it was on mainstream radio! The underlying political message has stayed with me ever since, and made me an even bigger socialist then my parents could(The other influence being Bill Hicks, but that's a discussion for another blog entry). Then there's the use of native instrumentations, which is peppered throughout the album and Native American singing in both Itsari and Canyon Jam.

I've previously written about an album of theirs, Roorback to be precise. But this time I want to write about an album that I think gets way to much flack for the most ridiculous reason. The main one being that it seems to be in to hate it, I suppose I could understand the reasons given. But then I listen to the album, and those reasons just seem, well stupid. First of all, it is very connected with the nu-metal movement, now I can sort of understand that reason. But nu-metal to be is more about rapping, hipping, hopping, generally raping of instruments and the like. But there is not one song here that is vaguely like that. Except maybe Ratamahatta. Then there's the fact that Jonathan Davis guests on LookAway, but so does Mike Patton! And everybody loves Faith No More. Ross Robinson produces it, now he was hired because Max Cavalera like his work on Korn's debut album, deservedly so. Korn's debut album is great and sounds great. It's got meat, it's muddy, it's got style that hadn't been replicated until Roots came out. Besides Ross also produced an album by Fear Factory, sound engineered WASP - Crimson Idol, and many many more(Oh and there is that one blip of Vanilla Ice, but everyone is allowed to make mistakes). The man knows how to get good sound from bands! Nu-metal seems to be just another label to throw at bands that the metal hipsters don't like without any foundation. It's a bit like when you hear old metalheads shouting "It wasn't published before the 90's so it's shit!".

Well fuck you old metalheads and metal hipsters.

Then of course there is the fact that this album sold millions of copies, and if there's one thing that metal hipsters(you'll find a lot of them on Metal Archives) hate, it's when bands reap from their hard work. One thing that their accused of is selling out because they don't sound like one of their old albums. Now this is an accusation I hate, it always seems like that bands are not allowed to expand on their sound. Yes, Beneath the Remains is a fantastic death metal album, Arise is a brilliant thrash metal album, Chaos AD is wonderful groove album, but Roots is just a brilliant metal album full stop. Some people like to say that they went all "groovy" on them with this one. This usually comes from the same people who love Pantera. They obviously didn't take their time and listened to Spit or Dictatorshit.

Andreas Kisser really does come into his own on this album, it is such a shame that he is not talked about more when the conversation of great guitarists comes up. Jasco is a fantastic finger picking tune by him.

Max's song-writing did reach maturation stage at this point, he definitely knows how to write anthems, but at the same time he also writes great straight up metal tunes. His lyrics could still do with some work, but generally he doesn't hold back and when he has a point he likes to hammer it in. In Roots Bloody Roots he sings:
Rain

Bring Me The Strength

Is Breeding Me This Way

To Get To Another Day

And All I Want To See

Set Us Free

Cut Throat:

You Promise This And Promise All

Deep Inside Nothing At All

In A War Of Filth And Greed

We Don't Need None Of This Shit

Both Igor and Paulo have their parts, Igor is one of the hardest hitting drummers around and also one of the most tribally rhythmic that I can think of(Scott Rockenfield being the another), and Paulo's fingers are fully exercised through the album when trying to follow both Igor and Andreas.

But then of course the event happened. Sepultura split. I'm not going to go into what or why it happened, but safe to say now we have two bands to enjoy. Even though it did take Sepultura couple of albums to get used to it.

In conclusion, I still listen to this album on a regular basis. Because it is good. It is without a doubt one of the major landmarks of Heavy Metal as we know it today.

Gateway Music: Disillusion - Back To Times of Splendor

Now everyone here I hope has heard of the term Gateway Drug, of course you have most of you have higher IQ then you duvet Tog number, so I won't explain it. Now here's another one, Gateway Music, the sort of music that opens your mind to other genres out there. For me there are so many that I've stopped counting, so I'll stick to the one I do know kicked down my prejudiced door of pure metal music.

Disillusions Back To Times of Splendor.


Prior to listening to this album, specifically the title song, I was very much into my metal with good melodic vocals. I had very little time for Thrash Metal, let alone Death Metal, and as for Black Metal. Forget it. I think I did try Opeth, but I just couldn't. Sepultura, was the lone exception. What had happened was that I was just browsing the internet and was on the lookout for a Heavy Metal Radio, couldn't really afford CD's and MP3 sales hadn't really caught on at that point. So I came across Snakenet Metal Radio, perfect! So I put it in the background and kept on browsing with a sleeping baby in the same room, so I couldn't have it to loud. Then this one song came on, unfortunately I sort of noticed it in the middle, with these gorgeous acoustic guitar and lovely voice singing, slowly building up to a fantastic crushing crescendo, then ebbing out again into a great guitar solo, again building towards an even more crushing pulverising crescendo of desperation and anger. Finishing of with death metal vocals, that I could understand! Double bass drums!! Synthesised violin section and choir!!! That song, Back To Times of Splendor. An epic rush of Progressive Death Metal running for 14 minutes. Fucking hell I had to get that CD.

When I finally got the album, with it's sweet melancholic album cover and well written lyrics. I was in hog heaven, and to imagine that it was 56 minutes, but only contained 6 songs, absolutely astounded me. And there were more things to amaze me. There was the contrast between light and darkness that I had not really heard before, until of course I discovered that Black Sabbath had used the same trick on several occasions. Though Disillusions ace in the hole was their singer. When I first heard that song, I assumed that there were at least 3 singers, how on Earth could all of those singing styles come from one vocal chord! But, yes to my surprise it was only one guy, who called himself Vurtox(Real name Andy Schmidt). Who also wrote all the songs. This man has talent by the overflow. He has got a very beautiful clean baritone when he just wants to sing, but his death metal vocals are also impressive and also understandable(which doesn't happen very often), then he croons, and yearns, pleads and begs with his vocals.

The album was published with generally glowing reviews, the average score on Metal Archives for example is 90%. But somehow this album managed to fly under the radar for so many many people. Which is a shame. And due to them publishing it with Metal Blade it's not on Spotify.

All the songs meld into each, and follow this one long thread of commonality. The panting at the end of Fall which starts Alone I Stand In Fires for example. Fall is the shortest song on the album clocking just under 5 minutes, but what a great song. One of the great examples that Power Metal doesn't have to suck. Alone I Stand in Fires is a song of desperation, and you can feel that desperation oozing out everywhere.

There is also the obligatory ballad called A Day By The Lake, which doesn't start out as a ballad at all. But the calmness it imbues at the end is so very very nice and out of character.

The crowning jewel is the last song, the very very epic The Sleep of Restless Hours, which like the title song and the first song, swings back and forth from light to darkness, from harsh vocals to pleading, from chaos to order and ends with the most exquisite riff.

Now what came out of this album is in fact that I started listening to more Progressive Death Metal, like Opeth. Vocals, while still important, weren't the focus any more. Or at least they stopped distracting my attention from the music. I don't think I would have started listening to bands like Agalloch, Aeternam, Be'Lakor, Enslaved, Testament or Negura Bunget, amongst so many others.

So thank you Vurtox. I am really really looking forward to your next album.

P.S.
Before anybody else says anything, yes I've listened to Gloria. And I love it.