Crowbar - Zero And Below (MNRK Heavy) [Paul Scoble]
Vio-Lence - Let The World Burn (Metal Blade Records) [Richard Oliver]
Anyone who has been into heavy music for more than a few years will be very aware of Crowbar. The New Orleans based band have been active since 1990. In the thirty two years the band has been going they are now onto album number twelve. Crowbar released their first album, Obedience Thru Suffering in 1991, and their last, The Serpent Only Lies in 2016, so this new album has been 6 years in the making, quite a long time for Crowbar.
So what have Kirk Windstein on vocals and guitar, Tommy Buckley on drums, Matthew Brunson on guitar and Shane Wesley on bass been up to since their last album? In a shock move for the fans, the band they have made an album of progressive free form Jazz! No, I’m joking of course, it sounds like Crowbar, all Crowbar albums sound like Crowbar. This may seem like a criticism, but it’s not; AC/DC and Motorhead both stuck to a formula, never moving too much from a sound that worked, and that hasn’t dampened my love for those bands.
The real question isn’t if this is groundbreaking or not (it isn’t), but if it’s a good Crowbar album, and on this Zero And Below scores very well. As we all know Crowbar play big, heavy and in places very sludgy doom, if you’ve heard them before you will instantly recognise the sound and style. The album opens with Fear Will Bind You, which kicks things off in a fine fashion, with a mix of fast, driving Hardcore influenced riffs and other sections that are very slow and very heavy.
Next up comes Her Evil Is Sacred which has a very heavy opening which introduces a slow, sleazy, song that slinks and slithers along. There is a return of the ridiculously heavy part from the beginning before the slithering returns and takes the song to its end. Confess To Nothing which is slow, measured and has a relentless feel to it, the chorus is slightly bigger than the verse section. The tempo doesn’t really change throughout which makes the song feel unrelenting and driving.
Chemical GODZ is a mid-paced, purposeful stomp of a song that slows down occasionally for tri-tone infused Sabbath style riffs. Denial Of The Truth has a slow and heavy intro, before the song drops down to just drums and vocals for a measured and introverted verse, the chorus adds some heavy guitars, before returning to the minimal sound of drums and vocals. The track picks up the pace and intensity for a fast ending. Bleeding From Every Hole, the shortest track on the album, is a mix of fast hardcore sections and slow and pounding heavy as fuck sections. Turns up, Kicks you in the bollocks and then runs away laughing. Its Always Worth The Gain is mid-paced staccato riffs, mixed with other mid-paced riffs that flow beautifully, there are some fantastic guitar harmonies and a very powerful ending.
Crush Negativity is a crushingly heavy beast of a song, some of the riffs flow really nicely and work very well with Kirks vocals (which are very good right through this album, but on this song they are the highlight), and some are more about pounding you into the ground, they are so heavy. The song comes to an end with blast of fast hardcore. Reanimating A Lie, is mid-paced and relentless, the song has an unstoppable feel with lots of energy, and a very slow and heavy end.
The album closes with the title track Zero And Below. Zero And Below is slow and slithery with some very dark harmonies and a tuneful and melodic end, a very pleasing way to end the song and album. Zero And Below is a great Crowbar album. If you are already a fan, then definitely jump straight in, this is a good one, enjoy it! If you have never heard Crowbar before, then this would be a great one to start with, it gives you a great introduction to Crowbar’s sound. Most of all, the material on Zero And Below will work very well live, and as that is Crowbars natural habitat, this bodes well for future Crowbar live sets! 8/10
Sabaton - The War To End All Wars (Nuclear Blast) [Simon Black]
Power metal is a genre that here in the UK has a fraction of the support that it has on the continent. Part of this is down to the fact that bands don’t put in the touring work early enough in their careers playing the UK toilet circuit and consequently the fan base they need doesn’t get the chance to build. The booking agents who have a stranglehold on the market don’t help, as once an act does start to get somewhere in Europe, they ask for telephone number fees for shows over here for a band that hasn’t put the ground work in. So consequently unless a band has broken the market by touring as part of a support slot package, we simply don’t get to see them here, save for the odd token London show - usually in a mid-week graveyard slot in a venue a fraction of the size of what they might be paying in France, or Germany. Sabaton have bucked this trend.
They put the work in early and a lot of people got to know them from the support slots they did with Dragonforce years back, meaning they were a safe booking bet for Bloodstock, who definitely took them to the next level and now Download is in on the act. They were on the point of an arena tour over here before the last dregs of Covid deferred it for a while, but the point is they put the work in and are a safe bet for a promoter. That’s why they are the band with the biggest selling Swedish metal album to date (Carolus Rex), along with the fact that live they really know how to deliver the goods. Given that on paper Sabaton are like many, many Euro power bands – they churn out consistently similar content every album cycle, there’s lots of thematic and story concepts on the subject of war and you know exactly what you are going to get each and every time.
The difference between Sabaton and the endless cookie-cutter bands is that the quality is so consistently catchy and of such high quality that it really doesn’t matter if it feels overly familiar. This is a band that not only know how to craft each and every melodic and hook-laden track in a way that you cannot help but tap along to, but they are also experts into weaving them into a fluid conceptual album arc in a way that doesn’t bore or lose the audience. Part of the longevity and the distinctiveness is the fact this band revolves around sole-surviving founder member Joakim Brodén. His gravelly voice is so very different from most of the high end screaming of many power metal bands for a start, and I think that’s part of the reason why they are so much bigger than many of their contemporaries.
Then there’s the fact that these boys really know how to craft a catchy track. There isn’t one song on here that doesn’t have that appeal, and ten albums of honing that skill have forged a band that manages to keep it sounding fresh and original each time. Then there’s the subject matter…This album is about the First World War and is the companion piece to 2019’s The Great War and listening to this album whilst a real war is unfolding around us is chilling to say the least. As I write this, Russia is busy bombing Ukraine back into the Stone Age on the grounds that if that lunatic Putin can’t have it, no-one can.
It will either turn you off of listening to this record completely, or in my case add a much deeper emotional wrench and some empathy for the poor bastards fighting for their lives, or being ordered to kill people they recently called their neighbours because they have no choice. That’s what makes Christmas Truce in particular so damned powerful. It’s about that moment when German and British soldiers stopped shooting on Christmas Day 1914, but it’s a moment the world is watching and waiting to happen again in the East right now. Either way, it’s also one of Sabaton’s finest moments and is them at their finely polished best. 10/10
This is a day that thrash metal maniacs across the globe never thought would happen - the release of new material from Bay Area cult thrashers Vio-Lence. The band originally split up in 1993 and apart from the odd reunion show here and there the odds were that the band were dead and over. That is until guitarist Phil Demmel resigned from his position with Machine Head and with vocalist Sean Killian having just recovered from kidney failure and a life saving transplant “this was the moment for the return of Vio-Lence”.
The band have returned with a short, sharp and thrashtastic five song E.P. titled Let The World Burn and it very much harks back to that classic Bay Area thrash sound with the band ripping it out like they did back in the day on 1988’s legendary Eternal Nightmare album and the bruising follow-up 1990’s Oppressing The Masses. It is pure old school thrash but seen through modern lenses and with a suitably heavy production and mix. Vio-Lence were always on the more violent and aggressive side of the thrash coin (hence the band's name) and the material on Let The World Burn is no exception. The bands long break and the intervening years have certainly not softened them from the bloodthirsty opener Flesh From Bone, the bludgeoning attack of Screaming Always, the crushing chug and shredding solos of Upon Their Cross, the pounding aggression of Gato Negro and the chaotic attack of the title track.
The line-up of the band is ⅗ the same as it was when the band originally split up with former Overkill guitarist Bobby Gustafson joining on guitars and former Fear Factory bassist Christian Olde Wolbers joining on bass. They join the already established trio of Phil Demmel on guitars, Perry Strickland on drums and Sean Killian on vocals. Sean has always had a polarising vocal style which some people hate but I have always enjoyed his unhinged snarl. His vocals are on a very slightly lower register than from the band's heyday but they still sound as effective as ever matched with the sheer aggression of the music. Sean has also written the lyrics for this release with the music written by Phil.
After a break of 29 years it’s safe to say that expectations are high for new music from Vio-Lence and it definitely delivers. With only five songs it is an E.P. that leaves you wanting more but a short and condensed release means that it is quality over quantity. With the band planning on regularly releasing new music and playing shows everywhere they can we definitely won’t be waiting long for our next dose of Bay Area thrash carnage. It’s safe to say welcome the fuck back Vio-Lence. 8/10
Endtime - Impending Doom (Heavy Psych Sounds Records) [David Karpel]
When the album cover is a ghastly poster for a horror movie, the tone is set. If that doesn’t grab the listener, the opening movie excerpt will: “With this knife do I draw out the blood, which is thy life!” So goes the start of Harbinger Of Disease, the dire first song on Impending Doom, a new album from Swedish band Endtime (formerly Saterniids) on Heavy Psych Sounds. Plucked from a scene of human sacrifice in the 1968 flick The Devil Rides Out, it perfectly reflects the atmosphere of these 5 explosive songs. Drums kick in along with the toll of a church bell and deliberate doom riffs crawl one limb at a time out of the ground with a snarl. Singer Christian Chatfield tears into the crunch sounding like a sluggish Steve Souza (Exodus), but ever more diabolical for the lack of speed, thrash, swing, or groove. With his slow-rip enunciation, he stretches each word not for melody but to match the trudge of the drums, bass, and guitars holding a steady--if pummeling--momentum.
This is the consistent formula through all 5 tracks. It stood out to me, the distinct lack of variety, but I’m pretty sure that’s also the point here. Horror, after all, is blunt af. And what’s a classic horror movie without the threat of a nuclear holocaust? Without mercy, ICBM blasts as harsh as the waves of sudden shame that come to us when we consider what we know about what kinds of evil humans are capable of doing to each other and everything else on the planet. In this sepulchral day and age, it is no wonder that doom not only persists, but thrives. Endtime let the atmospherics of cynical horror–of the fantastical and of the real–soak through their measured, lurching, riffs and Chatfield’s shredding vocal performance. The end of ICBM transitions well into insane They Live (Can a more doomy movie reference be any clearer?).
While the pace doesn’t pick up, synths and slow rolling drums erupt abruptly in tumbling walls of noise and sludge layered with mountain destroying riffs, evil synths, and those demonic barking vocals. Cities On Fire With The Burning Flesh Of Men (either a reference to a Dylan lyric or to a depiction of the punishment inflicted upon Sodom and Gomorrah or both) is an exploration of blithering rage. When the funeral keys start on Living Graves, the listener is well conditioned for the relentless riffage and time/space-continuum-tearing vocals cementing Endtime’s Impending Doom as the perfect soundtrack for modern misanthropy. 7/10