VREID – “V” (2011)

Best Bets: The Sound Of The River, Blood Eagle, Welcome To The Asylum

In Vreid‘s V (2011), I think I may have found The One. This album is so good that when I finished listening to it, I didn’t come away from it with a sense of satisfaction — on the contrary, I was livid with myself for not having discovered Vreid sooner. How could such wonders have escaped me? Okay, enough gushing, at least for now.

Black metal in general can be a little narrow, with dissonant guitars over formless drumbeats with a shrieking, incomprehensible vocal performance. Many metalheads love this kind of black metal; I am not one of them. V has a much more modern sound, not quite like the black metal of yore. The melodies are much clearer and Sture Dingsøyr’s vocals far more defined than those in your typical church-burning grim and kvlt Norwegian black metal band.

Another of the many, many aspects of V that I love is its momentum, even during lengthy or slow songs. Generally speaking, I only tolerate an album’s intro, at best. “Arche,” at almost seven minutes long, didn’t seem that promising, but it practically flew by. Vreid’s willingness to branch out undoubtedly contributes to their ability to keep things moving. At no point do they stagnate, and they’re obviously not afraid to switch up their style rhythmically or dynamically. Some bands make an effort to do the same, but the result is often a schizophrenic, cluttered mess. V is not quite that jarring. Each song has its ups and downs, its lights and its heavies, so it’s impossible for a listener to get bored.

Ironically, the lowest point of V comes from my favorite song on the album, “The Sound Of The River.” I hesitate to say anything negative about this one because I could listen to it for several hours a day on repeat, but admittedly it gets a little rambly in the middle and towards the end. That said, the almost haunting melody of the chorus and the tortured vocals more than make up for the song’s barely noticeable shortcomings. Not every song has to be technically perfect in order to rock socks off with maximal efficiency.

All of the songs on the album are good (which probably goes without saying at this point in the review), but “Welcome To The Asylum” also deserves its own mention, not only for its delightfully harsh criticism of Christianity, but also its incredibly evocative tone. When I hear it, I really feel like I’m being welcomed (more like dragged kicking and screaming) to an asylum. The constant drumbeat adds to the insanity, and disjointed riffs simulate the feeling of losing one’s mind quite well. Dingsøyr screams the lyrics and never lets up, so that even you can’t necessarily understand the anti-Christian lyrics, you still get a sense of anger and general unease. I love it!

I have no doubt in my mind that V will end up one of my top ten albums of the year, if not all time. What a wonderful introduction to a talented band.

Rating:

Tracklisting:
I. Arche
II. Blood Eagle
III. Wolverine Bastards
IV. The Sound Of The River
V. Fire On The Mountain
VI. The Others And The Look
VII. Slave
VIII. Welcome To The Asylum
IX. Then We Die

DEBAUCHERY – “Germany’s Next Death Metal” (2011)

Best Bets: School Shooter (picking the cover song seemed like too much of a cop-out)

I don’t like this album. I don’t like this album. I don’t like this album. I don’t like this album. I don’t like this album. I don’t like this album. I don’t like this album. I don’t like this album.

What’s that you say? You got my point the first time I said I didn’t like the album? Oh, well, duly noted.

Mind-numbing repetition is the name of the game in Debauchery‘s Germany’s Next Death Metal (2011). The worst offender on the album has got to be “Warmachines At War,” not only because the word “war” appears twice in the title alone, but also because the phrase “warmachines at war” makes a whopping 23 appearances in the song (“at war” by itself makes nine). To add insult to injury, the song begins with a chant of “warmachines at war” after “Zombie Equilibrium” ends with a chant of — you guessed it — “zombie equilibrium,” a phrase that is repeated 20 times throughout the song. I can’t quantify the repetition of the instrumental phrases as easily, but trust me when I say that they are just as grating.

That said, most of the music on Germany’s Next Death Metal (by the way, worst album title since St. Anger) is passable, if generic. None of the tunes really stick out, perhaps because the lyrics stick out so much. Debauchery appear to have a set formula when it comes to songwriting: pick an “edgy” title (for example, “Animal Holocaust” — you can’t see me, but I’m rolling my eyes), write the title four times to make a chorus, write the latter half of the title four times to make a refrain, throw in some unintelligible gibberish for the verses, and let the musicians do whatever they want. The result is bland, safe music and lyrics that feel like they’re being jackhammered into your skull, and not in a good way.

You know you’ve got a real stinker of an album when the bonus cover song is the least painful to listen to. Debauchery ably perform “School’s Out” (originally by Alice Cooper), but they add nothing new to their interpretation. Half the fun of listening to a cover is hearing how the band re-imagines the original song, especially when the original song’s genre differs from that of the band. Debauchery took “School’s Out,” threw some death metal growls on top of it, and called it a day. Ho hum. Still a good song though.

I have no reason to recommend this album to anyone. There are a million bands that do exactly what Debauchery do, only better. At best boring and at worst maddening, Germany’s Next Death Metal is a waste of your time.

Rating:

Tracklisting:
I. The Unbroken
II. Zombie Blitzkrieg
III. Warmachines At War
IV. Animal Holocaust
V. Bloodslaughter Onslaught
VI. Germany’s Next Death Metal
VII. School Shooter
VIII. Death Will Entertain
IX. Armed For Apocalypse
X. Genocider Overkill
XI. Killing Is Our Culture
XII. School’s Out (Bonus)

BLOODBOUND – “Unholy Cross” (2011)

Best Bets: In For The Kill, Together We Fight, The Dark Side Of Life

If I had to choose one word to describe Bloodbound‘s Unholy Cross (2011), I’d choose “quirky.” Where the Swedish metallers stick to some well-worn themes (war, death, brotherhood, etc.), they do so in the context of fantasy. I know what you’re thinking — Blind Guardian does the same thing. You’re right to think that, but there are a few key differences here. For one, Bloodbound are a single-genre band; there are no folk elements whatsoever in Unholy Cross. Secondly, Patrik Johansson’s vocals will not rupture your eardrums unless you turn your volume all the way up, in which case you’re pretty much asking for it.

When I heard the first track “Moria,” I thought the rest of the album would be a standard, cheesy but fun affair. There’s nothing innovative about it, but it works as a decent warmup. Most of the other tracks on the album have higher energy. I didn’t raise an eyebrow until I heard “The Ones We Left Behind,” a song Bloodbound ripped right out of Dragonforce‘s playbook. The lyrics in the chorus actually have “through fire and flames” in them! If you’re going to rip off an internationally known power metal band, at least sample one of their lesser-known songs! “Reflections Of Evil” doesn’t feature any Dragonforce lyrics, but it wouldn’t be out of place as a bonus track on Inhuman Rampage.

Though any one of these songs can and will get stuck in your head, the ones in the middle are the most interesting. I never thought I’d find myself singling out lyrical passages from a Swedish power metal album, but the vague allusions to the United States were impossible to ignore. “Together We Fight” features the lyrics “I pledge allegiance to goblins and heathens,” which wouldn’t have stuck out in my mind if the very next track didn’t have “Say, can you see from the dark side of life.” Ultimately, the rest of the album’s allusions are too general to draw any conclusions, but it’s still fun to think about.

Unlike a lot of power metal bands, Bloodbound keep the keyboard to an absolute minimum and allow the guitars the full spotlight. Brothers Tomas and Henrik Olsson go a little crazy (especially in “Message From Hell”), but their frenetic insanity never feels forced. When it all comes down, Unholy Cross is a strange, catchy, slightly cryptomnesiac (I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt with the Dragonforce stuff), delightful mix. It almost seems designed to go on a workout playlist, with its lukewarm intro, energetic middle, and “cooldown” ending. You could sit around your living room and enjoy it like I did, but this album was made to get your blood pumping.

Rating:

Tracklisting:
I. Moria
II. Drop The Bomb
III. The Ones We Left Behind
IV. Reflections Of Evil
V. In For The Kill
VI. Together We Fight
VII. The Dark Side Of Life
VIII. Brothers Of War
IX. Message From Hell
X. In The Dead Of Night
XI. Unholy Cross

PESTE NOIRE – “L’Ordure à l’État Pur” (2011)

Best Bets: La condi hu

Someone needs to tell all metal musicians everywhere that it’s okay to release 12- to 15-song albums, so it might as well be me. Writing 15-minute songs with three distinct themes when you could simply write three five-minute songs instead does not make you cool. I don’t care if all the classical music greats wrote masterpieces with several movements. You are not Brahms, you don’t have a full orchestra at your disposal (unless you’re Metallica), and the correlation between song length and song awesomeness is often inverse past then ten-minute mark. Peste Noire, I am talking to you.

Believe it or not, I don’t actually mind a long song or even two. Moonsorrow, known for their lengthy songs, are one of my favorite bands. Even Vreid have been known to throw in a couple of eight-minute tracks on an otherwise short album. What separates Moonsorrow and Vreid from Peste Noire is quality. I don’t ever want to feel conscious of a song’s length, whether it’s long or short; rather, I want either not to notice the length at all or to be shocked when the song goes by so quickly. With a song like “J’avais rêvé du Nord,” almost as long as an episode of an average American sitcom, it’s impossible to avoid that “just waiting for it to end” listening stage.

Unsurprisingly, the least offensive song on the album is one of the shortest. Clocking in at a merciful nine minutes, “La condi hu” is actually a fun listen. Peste Noire definitely saved the best for last with this one. For once, I didn’t find myself desperately watching the scrollbar inch (more like “millimeter,” considering such obscenely lengthy tracks) along. If “La condi hu” had started the album off, it would have set such high expectations that the rest of the album would have been more of a disappointment than it already is. The execution is fairly no-nonsense, and unlike some of the other songs, doesn’t resort to gimmickry in the form of shoehorned-in traditional elements (“Casse, Pêches, Fractures et Traditions”) or whining female vocal interludes (“J’avais”).

When Peste Noire keep things simple, the result is downright pleasant in its brutality. If they could only chop some of these songs up into more manageable pieces and learn to incorporate themes instead of pasting them in, they might end up releasing an album worth listening to. Maybe next time.

Rating:

Tracklist:
I. Casse, Pêches, Fractures et Traditions
II. Cochon Carotte et les soeurs Crotte
III. J’avais rêvé du Nord
IV. Sale Famine von Valfoutre
V. La condi hu