Reviews: Der Weg Einer Freiheit, Sadhus, Bonzai, Kaisas (Paul S & Paul H)

German black metal band Der Weg Einer Freiheit have been going since 2009. The band have quite quietly produced several very good, critically well received albums in the last 10 years. The four piece have patiently developed a following through the aforementioned quality albums and with lots of touring and festival appearances. So now the band have reached a milestone in any bands development; the live album. Live albums can be a difficult thing to get right, how have these 4 Bavarians got on? Well, very well, is the short answer. As I said, live albums are difficult, and black metal live albums are even more tricky to get right, so how have Der Weg Einer Freiheit pulled this off. Firstly, they chose a gig in Berlin, not a home town gig, but the capital city of their home country, this has guaranteed a decent sized, and passionate audience. 

They have built on this by miking up the audience (I have heard other black metal live albums where this has not happened, and it sounds so weird getting to the end of a song and hearing silence), so this sounds like a vibrant live gig. The rest of the recording is done very well. All the instruments sound crisp and rich, the drums are powerful and this is all held together by a great mix, at times this is as good as a studio recording. The band is clearly very well rehearsed and is as tight as any band I have heard. The material on offer here is culled from right across the bands releases, we get material from Der Weg Einer Freiheit (2009), Unstille (2012), Stella (2009), and 2017’s Finisterre. There is a nice flow of material, the bands style which is blast beat heavy orthodox black metal, but with a nice melody lead over most of the material, giving the band a melodic type of brutality. Extreme, but beautifully tuneful. 

Personally the tracks Skepsis Part I and Skepsis Part 2 are my favourite, but it’s difficult to single out individual tracks when the quality is this good. Live In Berlin is a great live album, one of the best black metal live albums I’ve heard. If you are an existing fan of the band then this is essential, if you’ve never heard of them before, then this is a fantastic sampler of their work to date. Highly recommended. 8/10

Sadhus (The Smoking Community): Big Fish (Fuzz Inc Records) [Paul S]

Sadhus (The Smoking Community), who for the purposes of this review I will refer to as simply Sadhus, are an Athens based 4 piece. Big Fish is the band's second album coming 5 years after their first album The Smoking Community. The band play a brand of huge stoney sludge that is closer to smoker metal than hardcore. The first track Hyper Roller, quite frankly sounds exactly like its title. Huge, bouncy up tempo smoking sludge, masses of energy, with that head nodding rhythm that is so stoner metal. Flesh is slower than the track that preceded it, the opening riff is so Black Sabbathy. The song has a quieter, brooding sections that a very well juxtaposed with the huge and heavy tri-tone riffing. Longest track on the album Lazarus, also has a huge/heavy, quieter and brooding structure, but this time the huge and heavy is much more up tempo, and has a bit of a bounce to it. At points the heavier parts gets up to hardcore levels of intensity. 

Title track Big Fish starts slowly, but once it gets going is monolithically huge and heavy, really heavy, my god this is heavy! The track has a verse section that is very quiet, but is also menacing and nasty. After the huge heaviness of Big Fish, we then get Sobbing Children, which has a very bouncy intro, before going back to massive and heavy. The track then combines the two for a huge and heavy and bouncy and full of energy section, which is a neat trick if you can pull it off (and Sadhus pull it off very well). The album is brought to a close with the track I.P.S. which is slow and massively heavy, with very intense vocals. A fine way to finish a very good, heavy but with lots of drive and energy, album. Big Fish is a great piece of huge stoner sludge, well worth checking out, I’ve really enjoyed it, delightfully enjoyable way to destroy your neck muscles! 8/10

Bonzai: Seeds To Roots (Self Released) [Paul H]

Another stoner band, this time from Thessaloniki, Greece, with eight tracks spread over 50 minutes provides the Greeks with plenty of time to explore and expand their mind-bending tunes and they certainly do their best, with some crunching riffage. Heavy, doom riddled songs that promise to explode and crush you abound, such as the massive On Repeat, which lumbers through the first five minutes before accelerating for the line in fine style. Or the sinister Original Sin, which opens with a filthy fuzz infested riff and some space rock as it slowly expands to maximum intensity. The band are tight without losing that flexibility you demand from stoner bands. Giannis Omp’s depressed vocals match the mood of this album. Omp and Dimitris Paresis’s guitars ensure maximum damage. Chunky bass lines come via Matthew Omp whilst the steady drum beat of Nicko Ridi ensures stability. This is a solid release which sits comfortably in the upper levels of the Stoner league. 7/10

Kaisas: Martyria (Sleaszy Rider Records) [Paul S]

Kaisas are the band based around Greek guitarist Babis Kaisas. Kaisas is based in California, they have released two albums Unify in 2010 and Degitalize in 2014. The lineup of Kaisas has never been that fixed other than the eponymous Babis Kaisas. On this album he is joined by Gordon MacIntosh on vocals and Fotis Nestor Canister, with Babis playing all guitars and bass. The main style on the album is broadly hard rock, there are small nods to Def Leppard, Whitesnake and The Scorpions in the style presented here. First track Calling From Another World kicks things off in a fairly lacklustre way. The initial riff and gang vocals sound promising, but that promise is broken almost strait away. Once the song gets going the structure of the vocals don’t really work. The other thing wrong with the vocals is the fact that they are out of tune, which is a problem right across the album. The song just doesn’t hang together properly, there are issues with the timing being out, strange pauses which make this sound like a band that has been playing together for about 10 minutes. 

These are very basic errors, things that no band at the stage of recording and releasing music should be doing. Burning Wheels Of Fire has the same problems, rhythmic, structural, and vocally. The other strange thing on this album is the lack of bass. According to the info that came with this album, Babis plays guitar and bass, but I can’t hear the bass, anywhere. Bloody Red is fairly cliched, but does have a very tuneful melody lead. So they got something right! Unfortunately the rest of the song doesn’t match up, the chorus is badly sung and isn’t that inspiring. Cold Feelings has the same problems but this time the vocals are particularly awful. For Freedom is just as bad as you are expecting, hackneyed and plodding. Filthy Lying System is ok! Not a bad track, the rhythm has a bit more pace to it and the chorus is actually quite strong! Unfortunately, the good stuff couldn’t last. Can’t Fight In Dreams is awful, too slow, uninspired and the vocals are SO bad, the beginning of the song is a little like a ballad, so the terrible vocals really shine through; risible. Steaming has a faster tempo, which is better, but the vocals sound affected and the lyrics suggest the band own a rhyming dictionary. 

Meet Captain Death starts with a riff nicked from the opening of Operation Mindcrime By Queensryche, but it quickly goes wrong with bad structure, drumming and vocals. Whores Of Babylon has a better pace than most of the other tracks on here, but the track feels bitty; not all of the parts of this song feel like they fit together. The other problem is the rather horrible misogynistic lyrics, that are sung badly. Can’t Hide The Pain is a ballad. Do I need to describe how bad it is or can you guess? It’s abysmal. Heaven Denied is lacklustre with bad vocals (possibly the worst vocals on the album, and that’s pretty tough competition), not much of a surprise really. Final (thank god) track Modern Day Apocalypse has the same problems that all the rest of this album has, but add out of tune whistling to the now massive list of musical crimes that this band is guilty of. As you might have already picked up, this is a terrible album. 

There are odd bits that do work. Some of the guitar parts are ok, occasionally the pacing works and it feels like proper, driving hard rock. But these moments are few and far between, most of the time this album is awful. They need to sort the vocals out. I am aware that vocals can be down to personal taste, but there is no excuse for them being out of tune. The band need to either spend much longer over recording so they get good takes, or replace the vocalist. They could also rehearse more so the band feel tight, and don’t have all the pacing and structural problems that are all over this album. To be honest, I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort. Only to be bought as an act of charity. 3/10