Kingcrown - Wake Up Call (ROAR! Rock Of Angels) [Simon Black]
Melodic power metallers Kingcrown have been quiet through lockdown, which is not surprising since their debut was released before the world went to hell in a hand cart … OK, one of the recent times when the world went to hell in a hand cart. Debut album’s need relentless toilet touring and gruelling support slots to get the word out and this was somewhat stunted by the pandemic, so to some extent this feels like they’re having to go through the motions again. To be honest I don’t think it’s going to be a problem for this French five piece as in the main these are experienced hands who’ve cut their chops and done their dues elsewhere.
The band hinges around brothers Joe (Vocals) and David (drums) Amore and with the rest of the line up all being different musicians from their 2019 debut, it’s effectively a new band anyway. There’s also a lot of experience in there and it shows in the writing and well-crafted delivery. Despite having a lot of power metal tropes and plenty of melodic hooks, this is also a really technically accomplished album, with some thundering and powerful delivery, particularly from some absolutely blistering shredding from guitarist Bob Saliba, whose fingers fly the frets like the man naturally sweats WD40 fluid. This is a very different beast from the debut, and it’s entirely because of the mix they have here of highly experienced players who can leverage a whole bunch of approaches and push the brothers a bit further than A Perfect World managed.
Joe Amore’s vocals are a bit of an unexpected treat too. He’s got the guttural roars, the clean and open harmonics but can also hit the high notes fairly effortlessly and I’m strongly reminded of Jorn Lande for the kind of stylistic variety that can be thrown at you in the course of any given track. They also know how to structure a song, with plenty of catchy anthemic choruses, thundering rhythms and beautifully fluid lead breaks to keep the ear well and truly wormed. I can hear a lot of traditional power tropes in there too, which given that this was produced and mixed by Helloween’s Roland Grapow is probably not surprising (and he also throws a few guest solos in for good measure) but it’s the unexpected technical flourishes and twists that stop this from straying into cookie-cutter Power territory. Refreshing, energetic and well-crafted this is head and shoulders above their debut. 8/10
Ouranos - Voir La Lumière (Sludgelord Records) [Paul Scoble]
Ouranos is a solo project from musician Silmar, ex-member of Iniquus, Synode and Wisdom Of Dust. Silmar began making music as Ouranos in 2016, releasing a demo entitled Les Visions Du Vide in 2018 and then a debut album one year later with Hiérophanies. Both the demo and the debut album were self-released, however album number two is being released on Sludgelord Records.
The style of music Ouranos play is based in black metal, with a healthy dose of doom added for extra heavy, this is then mixed with electronica to become something that is neither black metal or doom. The album is split into five long tracks, most of which feature all the elements you’d expect of heavy music, guitar, bass, drums and harsh vocals, but this is mixed with sounds you’d usually expect in electronic music, this does give some of it an industrial feel, but in many places it’s used more to temper the harshness of the more traditional ‘Metal’ elements. The album opens with Apnée, which opens with a very slow, heavy and fairly droney riffs, and has harsh vocals over it, the vocals are quite high in the mix, but it isn’t overbearing partly because the vocals are very good and work well with the music. A tremolo picked riff is added and the pacing starts to increase. This then drops into full on blasting black metal, with some very pleasing electronics. The song comes to an end by the Black Metal slowly fading and leaving us with just electronics, which themselves also fade.
Next track L’Écho again opens in a slow way, but this time its dramatic and driving with harsh vocals. The pace picks up, moving up to mid-paced, it feels as if the song is about to explode, which it then does into some savage black metal. As with the last song the black metal is layered with electronics to make a huge sound with massive amounts of energy to it. The song then drops down to just mellow drifting electronic noises, which slowly get darker in tone until harsh vocals are added. The song comes to its end with drums and a dissonant Guitar riff, which slowly fade. Next we get the song La Boussole, which has a slow dissonant opening that builds to a blast beat with layered Guitar riffs and electronics which is fairly reminiscent of Mare Cognitum. The song then goes into a slow, dissonant, nasty doom which takes the song to its end. Fourth track Fêlure is made up of slow and very doomy material. The first half is slow and very dissonant, drums are added increasing the complexity, but not increasing the tempo. The second half slows to a crawl with a dissonant, droney guitar solo that wails mournfully until the track slowly fades to silence.
So far so good, unfortunately the final track lets the rest of the album, which is excellent, down. This track, called Au Bout du Tunnel is more like a piece of harsh noise, that black or doom metal. A few electronic noises fade in for short while, then the track turns into a series of tones that are raising in pitch. As each tone gets close to its highest note it fades, to be replaced by the same tone, but at a lower register, so it feels to the listener that this is a tone that is constantly raising in pitch. After about a minute you realise that the tone cannot be constantly raising as it would have become ultra sonic by this point, and this is where you realise that this is layered identical tones that all raise a little bit, that are being looped.
Achachak - Planet Hashish (Dostava Zvuka) [Rich P]
You have a good idea what is coming when an album opens with a big bong hit. That is not saying that it is a bad thing, but you pretty much know if you are going to want to stick around when that is the first sound you hear on an album. Not that you should be surprised on an album called Planet Hashish, delivered to us by my newest stoner friends from Croatia, Achachak. This could go a couple of ways. First, it could be totally cliched stoners worshiping the green stuff offering something that has been done a million times before. Alternatively, it could be something fun and unique that is right up the alley for the stoner fans who love the groove but don’t need all the hokey lyrical weed worship. Let’s see where Planet Hashish lands.
The band hinges around brothers Joe (Vocals) and David (drums) Amore and with the rest of the line up all being different musicians from their 2019 debut, it’s effectively a new band anyway. There’s also a lot of experience in there and it shows in the writing and well-crafted delivery. Despite having a lot of power metal tropes and plenty of melodic hooks, this is also a really technically accomplished album, with some thundering and powerful delivery, particularly from some absolutely blistering shredding from guitarist Bob Saliba, whose fingers fly the frets like the man naturally sweats WD40 fluid. This is a very different beast from the debut, and it’s entirely because of the mix they have here of highly experienced players who can leverage a whole bunch of approaches and push the brothers a bit further than A Perfect World managed.
Joe Amore’s vocals are a bit of an unexpected treat too. He’s got the guttural roars, the clean and open harmonics but can also hit the high notes fairly effortlessly and I’m strongly reminded of Jorn Lande for the kind of stylistic variety that can be thrown at you in the course of any given track. They also know how to structure a song, with plenty of catchy anthemic choruses, thundering rhythms and beautifully fluid lead breaks to keep the ear well and truly wormed. I can hear a lot of traditional power tropes in there too, which given that this was produced and mixed by Helloween’s Roland Grapow is probably not surprising (and he also throws a few guest solos in for good measure) but it’s the unexpected technical flourishes and twists that stop this from straying into cookie-cutter Power territory. Refreshing, energetic and well-crafted this is head and shoulders above their debut. 8/10
Ouranos - Voir La Lumière (Sludgelord Records) [Paul Scoble]
Ouranos is a solo project from musician Silmar, ex-member of Iniquus, Synode and Wisdom Of Dust. Silmar began making music as Ouranos in 2016, releasing a demo entitled Les Visions Du Vide in 2018 and then a debut album one year later with Hiérophanies. Both the demo and the debut album were self-released, however album number two is being released on Sludgelord Records.
The style of music Ouranos play is based in black metal, with a healthy dose of doom added for extra heavy, this is then mixed with electronica to become something that is neither black metal or doom. The album is split into five long tracks, most of which feature all the elements you’d expect of heavy music, guitar, bass, drums and harsh vocals, but this is mixed with sounds you’d usually expect in electronic music, this does give some of it an industrial feel, but in many places it’s used more to temper the harshness of the more traditional ‘Metal’ elements. The album opens with Apnée, which opens with a very slow, heavy and fairly droney riffs, and has harsh vocals over it, the vocals are quite high in the mix, but it isn’t overbearing partly because the vocals are very good and work well with the music. A tremolo picked riff is added and the pacing starts to increase. This then drops into full on blasting black metal, with some very pleasing electronics. The song comes to an end by the Black Metal slowly fading and leaving us with just electronics, which themselves also fade.
Next track L’Écho again opens in a slow way, but this time its dramatic and driving with harsh vocals. The pace picks up, moving up to mid-paced, it feels as if the song is about to explode, which it then does into some savage black metal. As with the last song the black metal is layered with electronics to make a huge sound with massive amounts of energy to it. The song then drops down to just mellow drifting electronic noises, which slowly get darker in tone until harsh vocals are added. The song comes to its end with drums and a dissonant Guitar riff, which slowly fade. Next we get the song La Boussole, which has a slow dissonant opening that builds to a blast beat with layered Guitar riffs and electronics which is fairly reminiscent of Mare Cognitum. The song then goes into a slow, dissonant, nasty doom which takes the song to its end. Fourth track Fêlure is made up of slow and very doomy material. The first half is slow and very dissonant, drums are added increasing the complexity, but not increasing the tempo. The second half slows to a crawl with a dissonant, droney guitar solo that wails mournfully until the track slowly fades to silence.
So far so good, unfortunately the final track lets the rest of the album, which is excellent, down. This track, called Au Bout du Tunnel is more like a piece of harsh noise, that black or doom metal. A few electronic noises fade in for short while, then the track turns into a series of tones that are raising in pitch. As each tone gets close to its highest note it fades, to be replaced by the same tone, but at a lower register, so it feels to the listener that this is a tone that is constantly raising in pitch. After about a minute you realise that the tone cannot be constantly raising as it would have become ultra sonic by this point, and this is where you realise that this is layered identical tones that all raise a little bit, that are being looped.
So, Au Bout du Tunnel is a bit of aural illusion, once you realise this you go through a series of emotions, first it’s interesting and clever, then it starts to feel like an intro so you wait to see what happens, after about 5 minutes this starts to feel frustrating, then you realise that the track in question is nearly twelve minutes long and it becomes irritating, and you wait for it to finish, thinking “There must be more to this”, but there isn’t it’s the same loop for most of the track before it fades into electronic noises. As the album is 45 minutes long about a quarter of the run time is wasted on what is just a repeated short loop, which I hate to say it, feels like padding.
Voir La Lumière is three quarters of a great album, tracks 1 - 4 are a great mix of black and doom metal with some really interesting electronics that I think is genuinely innovative and original. Most of this album is beautifully dark and intriguing, but once you get to that last track all those dark atmospheres are ruined. As I said that last song feels like padding, and it’s such a shame, this is still a strong album, but with a track that fitted with the style on the opening 4 tracks, this could have been an amazing, important album, rather than being a missed opportunity. 7/10
Ancient Settlers – Our Last Eclipse (Crusader Records) [Matt Cook]
Oftentimes in melodic death metal, vocalists will sound brutish (Johan Hegg, Amon Amarth) or like sandpaper (Mikael Stanne, Dark Tranquillity). Frontman Antony Hämäläinen approaches the genre in a similar-albeit-subtle-at-times way, opting instead for a more raw, archaic delivery a la the legendary Obituary vocalist John Tardy who made a career off belting out vocals unlike anything ever heard before. Furthermore, Our Last Eclipse– Ancient Settlers’ Crusader Records debut – sees the band offer an immersive, drawn-out experience that gets progressively better with each listen.
Voir La Lumière is three quarters of a great album, tracks 1 - 4 are a great mix of black and doom metal with some really interesting electronics that I think is genuinely innovative and original. Most of this album is beautifully dark and intriguing, but once you get to that last track all those dark atmospheres are ruined. As I said that last song feels like padding, and it’s such a shame, this is still a strong album, but with a track that fitted with the style on the opening 4 tracks, this could have been an amazing, important album, rather than being a missed opportunity. 7/10
Ancient Settlers – Our Last Eclipse (Crusader Records) [Matt Cook]
Oftentimes in melodic death metal, vocalists will sound brutish (Johan Hegg, Amon Amarth) or like sandpaper (Mikael Stanne, Dark Tranquillity). Frontman Antony Hämäläinen approaches the genre in a similar-albeit-subtle-at-times way, opting instead for a more raw, archaic delivery a la the legendary Obituary vocalist John Tardy who made a career off belting out vocals unlike anything ever heard before. Furthermore, Our Last Eclipse– Ancient Settlers’ Crusader Records debut – sees the band offer an immersive, drawn-out experience that gets progressively better with each listen.
Oddly enough, the album pits death metal alongside a warm, welcoming guitar intro (Cerements) and simply enjoyable and fun vibes (Cast In Gold, Into The Depths I Rise) without sacrificing quality or heaviness. Hämäläinen doesn’t command attention 100 percent of the time. Rather, the vocals are sparse, allowing for the music to pick up the slack. Nothing feels rushed; nor does anything drag on like a limping Marathon runner. The length allows for a relaxing listen. Jotnar Magick is a durable example. Increasingly building up as the instruments collectively come to life, the singing is raspy as hell and the hook (both vocals and guitar) is catchy, powerful and strong. Library Of Tears clocks in at just under seven minutes and satisfyingly comes around full circle by the end.
Two of the later songs – Silent December, Memories– give Carlos Chiesa-Estomba and Emmy Reyes the chance to shine, finger-tapping and becoming lost in a cacophony of adept soloing. But they just had to include tacky chanting on Memories. I get it – songs written primarily for a live audience. But hearing it without the accompanying crowd makes it come off cheesier and easily could have been taken out without harming the record. In any event, Our Last Eclipse is a formidable release, presented by talented musicians. Never overly melodic or death-metal oriented, it’s a more approachable listen especially for the uninitiated. 7/10
Achachak - Planet Hashish (Dostava Zvuka) [Rich P]
You have a good idea what is coming when an album opens with a big bong hit. That is not saying that it is a bad thing, but you pretty much know if you are going to want to stick around when that is the first sound you hear on an album. Not that you should be surprised on an album called Planet Hashish, delivered to us by my newest stoner friends from Croatia, Achachak. This could go a couple of ways. First, it could be totally cliched stoners worshiping the green stuff offering something that has been done a million times before. Alternatively, it could be something fun and unique that is right up the alley for the stoner fans who love the groove but don’t need all the hokey lyrical weed worship. Let’s see where Planet Hashish lands.
Well, you get a bit of both, but much more of it is the latter. The title track kicks us off and despite the bong hit opening, the riffs are a plenty and sets the stage for a strong stoner rock record. You get high wizards and stuff like that, but you also get a killer groove that you find throughout the nine tracks on Planet Hashish. Breathe opens with some killer riffage as well and has a slow gallop to it that I totally dig. A chill, Kyuss-esque instrumental bridges over to Orange Moon, which may be my favorite track on the album. A crunchy riff fest with witches and wizards and that low voice belted out by Ante Kodžoman makes this the perfect track for any stoner playlist. The guitar work shines on Orange Moon as well.
Weed Wagon lyrically brings us closer to scenario one outlined above, but the opening riff makes up for it (so does the fun solo). Desert Eye is another stand out track that reminds me of a bunch of bands in the genre but not one that is a perfect match (for some reason musically I am hearing some Bleach era Nirvana and early Soundgarden, maybe I’m the one that’s high). The Hasheesh Eater is a super fun stoner track with some more of those killer riffs to continue that trend. The Fisherman’s F(r)iend wraps up this trip (and it is a trip, there is some concept album stuff going on here) with a slow burn, almost like their own Planet Caravan until the heavy kicks in to end the trip. A nice way to end the visit.
The latest from Achachak is fun and worth a listen for sure. Those of you who are bored with the weed worship records can overlook some of the lyrical content and enjoy the stoner grooves and killer riffs that Achachak is bringing here. Welcome to Planet Hashish indeed. Come and stay a while. Check this one out. 8/10