Always nice to see a young death metal band start smart by releasing a four-song EP, this Philadelphia group releasing a couple of singles earlier this year then this impressive and solid piece of DM.
And it's refreshing, opener “Planned Obsolescence” starting things off very strong, the band adept at brutal death, grinding death, and a mid-tempo slog through Obituary's swamps. The production is spot-on for this sort of sound, and although I always want things to be a bit less clinical, you get the feeling these guys want perfection, and they want you to hear how every note and hit is exactly where it should be. So, fine, I'll buy it, just like I'll buy the title track's amazing grinding during big open riffs, “Artifice Hallucination”'s killer drum performance and breakneck groove, and “Fulminate”'s brutal death technicality.
Very impressive debut here, the musicianship is top-notch, the recording is great, the songs just diverse enough, man, the cover art is even cool. Existentia could easily extend this to a 10-song full-length and keep it interesting, no small feat for a band plying the brutal death trade in 2021.
Japan metal force Mary’s Blood return with their seventh full-length and follow-up to 2020’s covers album Re>Animator. Releasing a steady stream of music since their formation in 2009; they haven’t been afraid to divert from their power/speed metal sound. Their new self-titled effort again sprinkles in different influences and it yields mixed results that makes for a haphazard listen.
A symphonic intro (“Daybreak”) pushes into “Without A Crown” and the first noticeable difference is the downtuned guitars from Saki that feels like metalcore but Eye’s expressive vocals and Saki’s lightning soloing hit the mark and drive home a comfortable feeling. “Joker” dives into experimentation with sound effects and if it wasn’t for the bright vocals, someone might think it’s a Rob Zombie tune. “Umbrella” is a light ballad draped with symphonics and would fit snuggly in an anime, while “Let Me Out” is pure pop dressed as power metal with a repeating line of the title that does indeed stick in your head. “Hunger” is a curious tune with key effects supplanted by fast guitar work and melodic soloing. A strange tune and takes a few listens to get used to.
These diverse tracks are interspersed with the metal assaults. The ladies bring out the guns on “Blow Up Your Fire” that combines German power metal with thrash and “Be Myself” shines with a great chorus and guitar work by Saki. They hit their stride with the driving J-rock force of “Ignite” and the bass work of Rio and Mari’s fast and groovy drumming stand out as highlights. “Mad Lady” is pure speed metal with Eye’s vocals taken to a chaotic level as she strains herself with a memorable performance and “Starlight” finishes the album off with a catchy vocal hook at the beginning and Maki brings is with flourishing guitars and memorable leads that ends the proceedings on a high note.
A weird album to sift through, but nonetheless a solid entry to the Mary’s Blood discography. If new to the band – start with 2015’s Bloody Palace and go from there.
The pandemic threw a bit of a monkey wrench into the Germans' clockwork release schedule: basically every two years, a new studio effort. Luckily, the Midnight Ghost predecessor was the strongest Brainstorm platter in more than a decade (back to Liquid Monster, if you ask me) and while they couldn't completely capitalize on the good fortune, in terms of live appearances, the time off proved to be a two-pronged victory. One, it gave them "extra" time to write a worthy follow-up and people got to enjoy Midnight Ghost "longer" than they might have, normally, which seems to have earned the 30 year old outfit a new respect, at home, as well as on the global stage. About time!
Following the "Chamber 13" intro, "Where Ravens Fly" is a strong calling card (perhaps why it was an early video/single), announcing that Brainstorm mean business. A couple of local guests stars should see more eyes/ears focused in their direction. Teutonic mainstay Peavy Wagner (Rage) adds his gruff vocal counterpoint to the initial pre-release single/video "Escape The Silence" and Orden Ogan frontman Seeb Levermann contributes to one of the heavy hitters: "Turn Off The Light", as they recorded at his studio. Is there a better surname for a music producer, given all the knobs on the mixing desk? Seemingly lifting a slice off Judas Priest's Painkiller, said tune is a ripper and offers a short vocal duet between Andy B Franck and Seeb. Back-to-back beat down!
Throughout their discography, the band's bread & butter has been the clickety-clack mid-tempo traditional / power metal riff, with Franck's impressive vocals over top. There's plenty of the high caliber trademark Brainstorm herein, but Wall Of Skulls ups the ante, courtesy of the guitar tandem of Todde Ihlenfeld and Milan Loncaric, via a heavier/more brutal soundscape on the aforementioned, as well as "Stigmatized (Shadows Fall)", frenetic begun and constant drum bashing "My Dystopia" and galloping "Cold Embrace" (a bonus on the Limited Edition, which features a 13 song, live Blu-Ray from their streamed gig, earlier this year, where "Escape The Silence" was debuted). That's not to imply it's all speed, all the time. It's not and "Glory Disappears" is the heartfelt sing-along that goes down so well on the European festival circuit, even ending a cappella.
Longtime fans will certainly put Skulls at/near the top of the Best of 2021 lists. More importantly, those that previously overlooked (how?) the band, or felt they needed more crunch, should re-investigate ASAP.
Finnish death/grinders Galvanizer are back with their second full-length, and I love the vibe they're throwing down, caveman-ish DM but also with some grind smarts. The production is suitably ugly (love the snare sound, inconsistent and natural: beautiful), and the feeling behind this is very Earache '90, but the grindier side of that wonderful sound.
“Servants Of The Scourge”, for example, is some serious Harmony Corruption-era Napalm Death worship, and “The Inexorable” shows a good grasp of songwriting dynamics, proving there is more than initially meets the eye here. “Ground Above” is one d-beat away from launching into Terrorizer's “Dead Shall Rise”, which, of course, means it totally rules. Closer “Of Flesh Unknown” has the perfect come-down epic ending, closing the album off with a sense of, man, something just happened here. I love that the grind never gets too tech, or even too fast; nothing is blinding lightning speed or over-labyrinthine—everything is suitable to crush beers to, with more energy than your average Floridian DM platter thanks to the wild blasting throughout.
Man, it all sounds so simple yet Galvanizer have tapped into a sound here that you just don't actually hear that often in 2021, even if you listen to death metal and grindcore all day long. Prying Sight Of Imperception is the Terrorizer record that Terrorizer can never seem to make, which is a huge compliment for a band as young as this
Boise, Idaho's Ingrown are getting things done on their debut, Gun. That cover art reeks of early '00s old-dog thrash band reuniting, but the tunes are much better, the band hitting hard and fast right out of the gate on awesome opener “Bad Luck”. Love the washes of feedback, the thick production, the fast hardcore and metallic chaos.
The band lay down NYHC groove too, end result on songs like rager “Waste” being something somewhere between Wolverine Blues-era Entombed, Converge's more straight-up hardcore songs, His Hero Is Gone b-sides, and Sick of It All's most pit-inducing moments. And good lord is that hitting the spot right now, even when things almost get too meathead, they're just fucking perfect, because, hey, we're all a bit meathead at the end of the day, I suppose. I love how they don't waste time: when they drop into a breakdown groove in “Fool”, you kinda think things are gearing up for a big one, then the song just ends after they do it a couple times. I mean, cool, that works for me, why belabour things? The title track's sludge and feedback could find this band opening for Eyehategod just fine thank you very much, and “Snake Stomp” could find them opening for Biohazard... or Napalm Death.
Closer “Their Plan” is frantic and fast punk, a perfect way to end this off. So, look, everything works here, the band raging through a ton of songs in no time flat, Gun serving as a fantastic opening statement of intent for a band that is, really, kinda finding their own sound even if it's made up of a bunch of familiar (and awesome) ones.
What an absolute honor to be a part of this," begins guitarist Nita Strauss (Alice Cooper).
"Mikaela Mayer and I were band mates in our very first touring band together... all those stories you’ve heard me tell about the early days on the road, we were there in the trenches together! Mikaela went on to find combat sports and become a USA Olympian, the first female to headline a Top Rank Boxing ESPN main event, and an incredible, undefeated pro boxer.
Friday night (November 5) she takes on Maiva Hamadouche to unify the women’s title belts, and we have something EPIC planned for her walk out song.
Tune in to ESPN Friday night to watch this badass babe do what she does best. THANK YOU Mikaela and Top Rank Boxing for having me! I’ll hype em up… you knock em down."
Black Veil Brides offered up “Scarlett Cross” as the first taste of their impending sixth album, The Phantom Tomorrow, nearly a full year ago on November 13, 2020. Now, on October 29, 2021, the elaborate and intriguing concept album, based upon characters created by vocalist Andy Biersack, will finally be released via Sumerian Records.
“Truth be told, the record wasn’t complete when we released that single and video,” begins Andy. “We were in a position where we knew we couldn’t tour (because of the pandemic), and we were excited about where this record was going. We were in the finishing stages, but we still had some writing to do. We felt like, let’s get something out there and introduce this world that we’re building. Because now we have the course of this next year to further flesh it out and do additional music videos. And to get what we thought was a pretty detail-oriented vision across to our fans.”
The video for “Scarlet Cross” has been viewed over eight million times in just under a year on YouTube. “We feel extremely fortunate to be 11+ years into our career as a band that people know about. To still have that level of support, and people who are so dedicated… this tour that we’re on right now (in The United States), we’re playing bigger venues than we’ve ever played; it’s a pretty humbling experience to know that, regardless of anything else, the audience for the band has grown over the years.”
The lyric, “The world will stain us with a scarlet cross,” immediately brought Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel from 1850, The Scarlet Letter, to mind. “I was always really interested in the branding idea,” admits Andy. “There’s something about you that is innately and societally unclean, or different, or wrong, and making sure that everyone can see that, and how f*cked up and bizarre that is. But also, culturally, the way we are nowadays, there’s a point of pride in being different that didn’t exist when Hawthorne was writing that book. The idea that the things about us that are seen as less than or off-putting, are so much more celebrated now. I wanted to be able to speak to the idea that, regardless of what anybody else thinks, the person you are, the aspirations you have, and who you want to be, both from an interior and exterior perspective are the most important thing.”
It was a long time ago when that book was published, and the world has certainly changed since then. “Absolutely. In some ways for the better, and some ways worse. We live in a world right now where things are changing so quickly and evolving so rapidly. For me, as a lyricist, to try and take some moment that I’m seeing as the world unfolded into what it did over the course of 2020, and mirror it through the song, I think that is, as an artist on any level, something that you always aspire to be – a channel for things that you’re experiencing and turn them into escapism for people.”
Biersack is blending reality with a fictional element, by creating a concept and characters that are new to all of us. The Blackbird is depicted on the cover of the album, but who is this mysterious individual? “Well, in our story of the record, it’s not known. Within the context of the album, it’s about this kind of, almost a legend. This idea that there’s this character, that in death, someone who is innately flawed, or morally kind of ambiguous is… their penance in the afterlife is to be the savior of the people, kind of an unwilling savior. I always liked the idea of developing a story where a hero is not born of trying to right a wrong. But rather righting a wrong, or being a hero is something that you must do. And to learn to be empathetic. The whole idea is to try – for all of us – you try to be less of a piece of shit than you were the day before. For all of us, it’s a journey to try to be a better person. Inevitably, there are some people where that is not the case. But for most of us, we want to try to be a better person through life. So, I like the idea of making some sort of almost pseudo-religious parable about the idea of being good to one another, and the afterlife. As we go through the course of the comic book, we reveal that the character’s name is Dennis Kane. He’s this scientist who’s obsessed with his work, and is doing some questionable things, and doesn’t care who he hurts. Ultimately, he is killed for it and that has him become this character.” The Phantom Tomorrow comic book series, published under Incendium’s music-focused Opus imprint, “is going to be six issues, broken into like a trade paperback. There’s a Blackbird action figure, t-shirts, all kinds of goodies,” confirms Andy.
