Spirit Adrift - Forge Your Future EP (Century Media Records) [Matt Bladen]
Spirit Adrift is not just a band they are an obsession for band leader Nate Garrett. He has been on a mission to make Spirit Adrift his personal vehicle to once again make heavy metal the force it was back in the late-80's early 90's where bands like Ozzy and Metallica were at their creative and commercial peak. Spirit Adrift take a trad metal sound with touches of doom and hard rock and focus it into something that has broad appeal. Garrett, along with drummer Marcus Bryant have been the two longest serving members and since the bands creation in 2015, each album/EP has brought Spirit Adrift more kudos and seen them climb the ranks of the metal scene resulting in their most recent offering Enlightened In Eternity being widely regarded as their best yet.
Much like Haunt's Trevor William Church, Garrett doesn't rest on his laurels, only a year removed from their previous full length the obvious lure of being a multi-instrumentalist in a pandemic has meant that Garrett and Bryant have brought Forge Your Future a three track EP, that continues with the journey started back in 2015 in the same broad musical scope as Enlightened In Eternity. Three songs of fist pumping classic metal that will keep the creative engine of Spirit Adrift purring until some shows or a new album. A place filler but an entertaining one. 7/10
The Slow Death - Siege (Transcending Obscurity Records) [Paul Scoble]
The Slow Death have been making huge and very heavy music since 2007. The five piece, which is made up of Stuart Prickett on Guitar and Keyboards, Mandy Andresen on Vocals and Keyboards, Yonn McLaughlin on Drums, Dan Garcia on Bass and Gamaliel on Vocals, have made 3 albums before Siege; a self titled debut in 2008, II in 2012 and Ark in 2015. The Slow Death, as the name suggests, have a style that touches on Death/Doom, Funeral Doom and Progressive Doom, it’s all mainly slow, heavy and very melancholy. The band have 2 singers in Gamaliel on harsh vocals, and Mandy Andresen who has a beautiful, ethereal clean singing voice, which is often layered, and when it is the vocals sound breathtaking. Gamaliel’s voice is deep and harsh, but apart from a few sections they aren’t particularly aggressive, there is a softness to how they are delivered. This makes the vocals fit beautifully with the music, which although heavy, isn’t that aggressive.
The album is split into just four songs ranging in size from ten minutes on final track Ascent Of The Flames, up to the longest track; Pestilence, which is twenty one seconds shy of twenty minutes. The large song length is in keeping with the style of music; I doubt a 3 minute Funeral Doom or Death Doom track would work, and fits well with the bands style. It opens with Tyranny, which starts soft and clean. before heavier riffs and an Organ are added. Mandy Andresen comes in with some beautiful ethereal vocals, which after a short time are layered to become melancholically stunning. Harsh vocals from Gamaliel come in and the song feels a little bit more driving and purposeful, there is a mournful guitar solo before another clean section and then the song builds in size and intensity for for a big ending.
Second track Famine is very soft and quiet initially, before the track gets bigger and more expansive with some very emotive clean vocals from Mandy Andresen. The song then takes a turn towards the harsher, faster and more aggressive. This is one of the places where Gamaliel’s vocals have an aggressive aspect to them, the tempo picks up and at one point there is even a galloping tempo riff that is tempered by softer and very sad guitar harmonies, before the gallop fast riffs return briefly before going off again. The track then goes into beautifully mournful guitar harmonies that I found reminiscent of the band Warning until a sad piano takes the song to its end. Longest track Pestilence is also the saddest track, its intro feels like a dirge, and is a little introspective. The track is very slow and has a funeral doom feel most of the way through. The track vacillates between this funeral doom style of slow and heavy riffs, and clean and very soft music. Vocally both clean and harsh vocals are used, in a couple of places they duet, which works far better than I would have imagined. The track is brought to an end by a graceful and elegant guitar melody lead.
The album closes with the track Ascent Of The Flames, the shortest track on the album. The song opens with slow and melancholy guitar harmonies, before going into a harsh and nasty part that is closer to death metal, in this part the vocals are quite aggressive again. The harshness of the music is dropped for more funeral doom style riffs until the track goes into a softer section with clean guitars that is coupled with harsh vocals in a way that I’d of thought shouldn’t work, but does really well. The rest of the track is made up of those beautiful Warning like harmonies until the song slowly fades away.
Siege is a stunning album. The feeling of sadness and melancholy is in every note or drum beat. Mandy Andresen’s vocals are so good, beautiful, powerful and nuanced and when they are layered they are just breathtaking. Gamaliel’s vocals fit brilliantly well, he has given a performance that is considered and refined, by not going over the top he has served the album rather than showing off. Musically this is a breathtaking album, as huge and melancholy Doom albums go, this is bordering on perfection. The tone of the album is sad and melancholy and in places mournful, but the act of listening to this album is deeply cathartic, it’s a sad journey, but I feel better and purged of negative emotion after listening to it. If you are looking for something sad but beautiful, this is the album you are looking for. 9/10
Summoner’s Circle - Chaos Vector (Blood Blast Distrubution) [Paul Scoble]
Knoxville, Tennessee based band Summoner's Circle have been making huge noises since 2015. The six piece, made up of Blind on Vocals, Gog on Lead Guitar, Azra on Guitar, Y’takt on Bass, Hex on Keyboards and Invictus on Drums, have released 2 albums and an EP since 2015; Become None in 2019, Tome in 2018 and the band's debut EP, First Summoning, was released in 2015. Summoner’s Circle have a fairly distinctive style, it’s a mix of Death Metal (Progressive), Black Metal (Symphonic) and Doom Metal (Progressive and Blackened), I have seen their sound described as theatrical metal and as epic metal, and there is a certain amount of truth in both descriptions as the music is definitely Epic and there is a clear theatricality to how the band do things. The bands sound is very modern, the guitars have a nice crunch to them, the drums are tight and technical with some very impressive blasting on some of the more extreme parts, the Bass gives all this a very solid foundation and the Keyboards help to hold everything together, the production is bright with some nice separation of the instruments, so everything sounds great but without the production being obvious, impinging on the songs or distracting from the performances.
Title track Chaos Vector is a good example of their sound, the song opens with some fairly aggressive, tight riffs before going into a more measured and controlled verse section, the chorus is more aggressive and driving. The two different feels help to make this an interesting piece of progressive extreme metal, it’s fairly simple structurally but everything is so well done this just makes it direct and effective. Not all of the material on Chaos Vector is as simple as the title track, The Hierophants is a very interesting piece of work. The track feels most like Medieval Black Metal, the style of Black Metal that is closer to Greensleeves than Gorgoroth, the style probably best known from the band Obsequiae. There is a definite medieval flavour to most of the riffs and melodies, the track is full of neoclassicism and also features a dramatic and very fervent spoken word section that helps to add to all of the Theatrics.
Another interesting track is the song Apostasy. The song has a slightly different feel to a lot of the other material on the album. Most of the riffing on Chaos Vector is tight and technical, but on Apostasy the riffing is much looser and feels expansive and huge. The vocals have a different feel as well; they are still harsh vocals, but on this track there is a softer, less aggressive style that fits with the less aggressive riffing, as well as some added tunefulness. In some places the song manages to feel huge and wider than the sky, but at the same time there is a little bit of introversion to this track as well, which sounds counterintuitive but that is how it feels. The chorus is a bit more aggressive, but Apostasy as a whole is a little bit softer and more measured. At the other end of the spectrum are the blast beats that feature on this album, there aren’t many of them, but when they arrive they are very effective; probably because of their scarcity. The track where the blasts come through the most id the track Vessel. After a brooding clean intro the track builds to a big dramatic riff, the track then drops into a fast and aggressive blasting section that is very effective, the song then mixes Mid-paced and slow riffs with these sudden blast beats in a way that is very successful.
Chaos Vector is a very good album, all the tracks are very enjoyable and well written and played, but there is one track that has grown a little bit taller than it’s contemporaries, that track is Terminus Egress. The song opens with a soft intro which then has this tracks standout feature; Operatic Voices, in some places layered so this sounds closer to a choir. The song also features strings which give the track much more depth and weight. The track melds extreme metal and classical in a way that is so effective that this song soars. The only other artist I can think of that has managed to do this is Tom G Warrior on some of Celtic Frost’s material or on the album Triptykon released last year, Terminus Redux is definitely something special.
Chaos Vector is a great album. It’s varied, but the album never sounds like it was made by different artists, there is a coherence to all of the material so the album has loads of different sounds, but they are all unified by a similar feel. The album is packed with great melodies, wonderful riffs and vocal lines that you will be humming to distraction. There is a certain amount of pomp and theatricality that might make some Metal (particularly Black Metal) purists sneer however, all they are showing is how Poe Faced and Boring they are, luckily I’m not Poe Faced and Boring so I loved it, it’s so much fun. 8/10
Sonus Mortis - Past Lives (Self Released) [Matt Bladen]
We've reviewed two previous Sonus Mortis records and both were given positive reviews by Paul Hutchings and myself. So here we are again with yet another project from Kevin Byrne who is the only member of Sonus Mortis handling everything here. This one though, unlike the four previous records, moves away from symphonic death/doom style into a much pacier melodeath sound with Children Of Bodom a clear influence, the lashings of dual guitar melodies and anthemic choruses very much in the vein of Mr Laiho (R.I.P). It is extremely guitar based, the rhythms galloping at a breakneck pace, synths fleshing out the melodic phrasing, as a way for yet more lead breaks and solos.
Kevin really is a great composer and musician, it's difficult to imagine that everything on this record is done by one man, vocally he has upped his game with the growls sounding ravaged, while also bringing more clean tones. His guitar playing though is probably the best thing here tracks such as Dissident Fury is full of fluid clean guitars while the aggression ramps up on Become Static and The Devouring Design, it's the symphonic elements that really raise the game here, as they did when Byrne focussed on death/doom. Past Lives successfully adopts a different musical style, something that a lot of bands fail to do well. Where Kevin goes from here is anyone guess but on this evidence he can turn his hand to any genre. 7/10