Agalloch - The Serpent & the Sphere

Not being the type that keeps in close touch with their fans through frequent social media and website updates and interview appearances, Agalloch has proven to be a somewhat difficult band to follow. Their tours are always small and there is never a significant amount of effort put into promoting them. Yet their dedicated cult following that reaches all ends of the globe fills every venue that they perform in and spend time and money searching for their often times hard-to-find albums and merchandise. The announcement of their latest album appeared almost out of nowhere, with no prior teaser or warning. But woe, and behold, The Serpent & the Sphere appeared on shelves during the summer of last year, marking their second release through Profound Lore Records. This also continues the 4 year gap pattern in between releases (obviously the band takes their time in crafting their works of art), and in effect ending a very bothersome and impatient wait for myself since discovering them a year after they released The Marrow of the Spirit in 2010.

Due to the fact that they aren’t nearly as sporadic and seemingly lost like most progressive and experimental bands in the world appear to be, there will forever be endless opportunities for Agalloch to take their musical direction in without compromising any major aspects of what they have already established. Some progressive bands strive to do something completely new with each album; a risky, but bold step. When listening to each of Agalloch’s albums in order, you can hear the gradual turns their sound takes over the course of time. Pale Folklore being literally the raw blueprint of their sound, and after going in a much more folk-oriented direction with the two following albums, swing to the other end of their spectrum, their black metal side. The Marrow of the Spirit toned down the acoustic and folk stuff that had attracted all the hipsters and put much more emphasis on their actual metal side. More distorted guitars, more blast beats, but still having that beautiful melodic atmosphere. The Serpent & the Sphere basically takes that step even further, with more raw instrumentation that doesn’t get caught up in guitar and vocal effects.

The reason for this direction is a total mystery to me. Usually, when musicians start playing around with their guitar pedals too much, they get lost in it and rarely ever choose to turn back and go to their roots (aka Alcest). The vocals on this album (for the most part) seem to be totally void of any reverb or other effects, which makes it sound like a lot of the amateur underground local band demos and EPs I have in my collection. Not implying that it’s a bad thing, but it just sounds like the vocals from a low-budget EP. But regardless, it gels fairly well with the polished guitar distortion and soft drums. There’s also the increased use of whispered lyrics during softer parts that almost always grow into full-on screaming that’s then followed by the rest of the band picking up.

The Serpent & the Sphere is the first album by this band where I can hear the bass guitar at all times. Even when listening to it on shitty earbuds or laptop speakers, I can still hear the growl of the bass guitar strings vibrating against the frets. Agalloch is a black metal band, so production and sound quality isn’t going to be something that has a lot of time and effort invested in. But for some reason they had the bass guitar mixed in a very common way in which it basically blends in with the rhythm guitar and adds a massive lower end to it. But on this album, it’s totally separate. Once again, not sure why they felt that this was the album to do it on, but it’s nice to actually have an audible reminder that they have a bass guitarist. As far as what the bassist actually does is mostly just those Steve Harris-style triplets following the drums and base chords with the occasional sweep or walk that breaks away from the primary chord structure.

I know this is my first review in at least five months, so I apologize if my writing is a bit choppy and unorganized. If you haven’t seen it already, The Serpent & the Sphere is the fifth best album of 2014 according to my year in review list. What Agalloch will do next will remain a total mystery and, if the pattern continues, we won’t find out until 2018. But until then, I will be here, eagerly awaiting their next masterpiece. This album, obviously, gets 20/20. 

Melechesh - The Epigenesis

Melechesh is one of Israel’s biggest metal bands. If you’re a fan of Skeletonwitch or Goatwhore, I would HIGHLY recommend reading this review because you’re in for quite the thrash black treat. I discovered this record early this year through my favorite record label, Nuclear Blast. Having confidence that the label wouldn’t put out a poor record, I decided to give The Epigenesis a listen. Before I found this album, I was positive that Nile was the only Ancient Egyptian-themed extreme metal band, but obviously I was wrong. But unlike Nile, Melechesh doesn’t exactly put as much focus on the mythology part of their music. Melechesh has a wider range of topics that can go as far as having a science fiction view on Egyptian-based Satanism with songs like Grand Gathas of Baal Sin and Sacred Geometry As well as that, you can also find topics of anger towards the corrupt state of Israel and the Middle East in the lyrics. But I’m not really one that likes to pay attention to lyrical themes; it’s all about the music for me.

Melechesh implements more thrash metal into their music than most thrash black bands. Either that or they just took out the melodic and atmospheric aspect that comes with the black metal sound like Marduk and Behemoth have done. But UNLIKE Marduk and Behemoth, they haven’t filled up the hole where the melodic element used to be with speed and brutality; they just leave it barren and empty. Obviously taking a considerable amount of influence from Nile, you can hear those weird Egyptian harmonizations in the guitars every once in a while. Here’s the thing, remember that Nile is a brutal death band, not black metal, so those ambient chords aren’t played in the same fashion. Melechesh place those chords in the thrash metal section, where they’re played in a sort of 90’s hard rock styled progression.

Here’s another thing that will cause to refer me back to Nile: singing. Those Whom the Gods Detest was released one year before The Epigenesis, which means it was possibly during the writing process of the record. I know that Melechesh had some singing in the album before this one, but it’s not buried by the distorted guitars and black metal vocals like in that one. In Sacred Geometry, you get to hear singing that is very crisp and that is obviously wanted to be heard because it stands at the front of the line. There’s nothing wrong with the singing at all, but the sound of his voice doesn’t fit the music at all and actually distracts the listener (not good).

The overall song structure tends to fall apart towards the end of each song. It seems that the band had their creative juices flowing at full-blast for about 80-90% of every song, but then came to the point where they were out of ideas…but they forgot to cap-off the end of each track. In other words, the songs are fantastic but with weak endings. Here’s something that ALL good musicians know: the most important parts of ANY song is the BEGINNING and the END. If you have a weak song, but a very solid beginning and a memorable conclusion, it’ll make it MUCH harder for the listener (with the exception of critics like myself) to notice any negatives and much easier to forget the bad parts. It’s not covering up, but if there’s potential for fuck ups during songs when playing live, as long as the intro and the end of the song are as tight as a baby’s ass, it won’t sound NEARLY as bad.

The end of each song seems to just drag on and grow monotonous VERY quickly. Yes, I can hear that in many of the songs, the band takes a guitar riff from earlier in the song and simply plays it again at the end. But for me, in black metal, I like to hear a completely new section that was crafted specifically for the end of that particular song; it makes it sound like the band cares THAT much more about their music. But then again, sometimes it is in fact the best idea to go back to the intro riff or something like that at the end because it can still sound extremely epic (depending on the riff, of course).

There isn’t much that I can think of to say about the individual members. The drummer is fantastic and was obviously built to be a thrash metal drummer, the guitarists and bassist stay VERY tight with the drummer. The vocalist isn’t THE BEST black metal vocalist that I’ve ever heard, but he fits the music. His screams are pretty weak and have an emotionless and dry sound that doesn’t bring up the music to that extra height. Having some of the old-school thrash sound in the black metal base sounds like it could have been inspired by Goatwhore (for this album in particular). I would give this album 12/20 for being good and solid, but not completely satisfying. 

Ceremonial Castings - Immortal Black Art

Ceremonial Castings is probably my favorite black metal band ever right behind Xasthur and Darkthrone. I’ve been listening to them since they released their 2008 album and my friend dragged me to one of their concerts later that year when I was 15. Ever since watching their absolutely exemplifying performance and collecting all of their records, I’ve wondered day after day why these guys aren’t touring worldwide and aren’t having bands like Keep of Kalessin and Belphegor open for them. When I saw them, all of the opening acts were black metal unknowns that I can’t even remember today (I can name them off if I look at the tour poster in my room). But enough about me blah-blah-blahing about the band, this is my favorite album by them, Immortal Black Art.

The production quality on this album is actually very poor, but not nearly as bad as the two albums that came after this. But because this is black metal, the crappy production quality doesn’t even slightly obstruct my ability to enjoy this album. They’ve been (for some reason) listed as black death in some places, although that’s possibly somewhat true because the vocalist uses DEEP growls in several places, especially in their two most recent albums. So for those of you that are bothered by black metal with bad production quality, GET OVER IT.

There are only a handful of other black metal bands that I know of that are faster than Ceremonial Castings, and those bands are Dark Funeral, Keep of Kalessin, and Gorgoroth. That’s probably one of their most memorable characteristics, their unstoppable bombarding speed. Hopefully you aren’t someone that doesn’t enjoy the song Transylvanian Hunger by Darkthrone. But if you happen to be one of those people, the ninth track off this record consists of a cover of that song…but ten times faster. The two albums that were released after Immortal Black Art when into an almost completely experimental direction; much, much different from this album and the ones before it, so if you want one with more of a traditional, sped-up black metal sound without all of the experimental droning elements, this is what you want. Of course, not all of the songs have speeds that mow you down; there’s plenty of slower material. But the overall sound of this album is virtually barbaric and unrelenting fury.

I have a hard time hearing the bassist when listening to this record on my Zune (Microsoft’s version of the Ipod). But when I play this record on my computer and turn up the bass, I can hear a whole new colorful sound spectrum that was previously hidden under the dust. The vocalist’s black metal screams are some of the best I’ve ever heard and have always left me envious after listening to his voice.

As far as individual tracks go, Come Forth…Damnation has always been my favorite. This was the first song I heard by them and the song they opened with when I saw them. This track has a perfect blend of barbaric speed, extremely atmospheric and melodic keyboard layers, and tranquilizing black metal elements. In several parts during the song, the tempo goes down dramatically only to whip you back up high into the air. The title track is also one that I’ve always enjoyed. This is probably one of their first TRULY experimental tracks that reflect their more recent material. Immortal Black Art also breaks down the elements of black metal and experimental metal, modifies and transforms them, and puts them back together to produce an eight-minute song of beauty.

The last thing that I’d like to say is that this album cover is one of the best I’ve ever seen in my life. I know that “you shouldn’t judge it by it’s cover”, but come on, there’s some pretty awesome artwork out there in the metal world! And the cover for Immortal Black Art has always been one of my favorites. This is one of my favorite black metal albums EVER and I would recommend it to EVERYONE, even if they aren’t into extreme metal because I’m happy as long as people know who they are and have at least heard their music. This is one of the most underappreciated AMAZING metal bands and I can’t see how that’s possible. I would give this record a perfect score.

If you want a better look at the album cover, click here: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AqYHdZ78bL8/Taov5g4cupI/AAAAAAAAAnA/RKto2GXO144/s1600/ceremonialcastings.immortal.jpg

Throne of Molok - Impulsive Assault

The Italian progressive black metal band Throne of Molok is certainly one of the most progressive and unique black metal bands to release an album since Dimmu Borgir released For All Tid, where they fused Norwegian black metal with tons of orchestral and symphonic elements. A quick way to describe these guys’ music is that it’s 50% black metal, 44% industrial, and 6% metalcore. I’ve never heard a black metal band in my life that shoved in so much industrial sound into their music. I know there are other black metal bands that do that like Samael and Mysticum, but even they don’t put as much industrial music into their sound as much as Throne of Molok does. But remember, just progression alone doesn’t ensure that the record will be great; it has to be done well and sound good. And in the case of this album, IT SOUNDS GOOD!

The band is excellent at what they do, but unfortunately there aren’t any specific members of the band that stick out to me. I do think the vocalist has a very unique and crisp sound (which makes him lucky because they turned up the vocals really loud) and is even an excellent growler. The drummer’s style is extremely abstract and unfortunately doesn’t fit the music in some parts. The guitarists are fucking amazing, I’ll just say that right off the bat; if I HAD to choose my favorite musician, it would be the two guitarists. The song that really shows what the guitarists are capable of is my favorite song off the record, Nuclear Christ (I love that name!).

There are two basic types of industrial music that I’m familiar with. The first type is the slower, more electronic type of industrial played by groups like Angelspit. Then there’s the type of industrial music that I like most, which is the faster, more chaotic sound with fast computer-generated sounds alternating channels (making it even more chaotic). This is why I love Nuclear Christ so much, because you can hear in the intro that the two completely different types of music fit perfectly together like puzzle pieces. Although Nuclear Christ wasn’t the first song that I heard, Diverting Sea Levels (the opening track) shows that these guys are fucking METAL! The first song is also a great example of the metalcore-style breakdowns that they use occasionally on the record.

The unrelenting fury that is released by these cybergoth metalheads known as Throne of Molok is not going to be an experience that you’ll forget. This album obviously isn’t going to impress everyone because of how extremely unique and different it is from the rest of the metal world. The people that would have an easier time enjoying this record are the Samael fans (for obvious reasons). But even though I’m not a HUGE Samael fan (I only have one of their albums), this is a record that I LOVE and will NEVER forget. I also love the large amount of material contained in this album (15 songs). Being pretty much the most progressive and creative black metal record I’ve ever heard, Impulsive Assault earns my score of 18/20. I will be the first person to buy concert tickets when they come to Seattle.