Borealis - Illusions (AFM) [Matt Bladen]
Did you like the most recent Evergrey album? Great you're going to bloody love this! I've been championing this Canadian progressive/power metal band since the beginning of this publication and it looks like I won't have to stop any time soon. Their fifth album is again a truly wonderful listening experience, for fans of Evergrey especially you'll hear all the dramatic synth and orchestral that happen between the riffs and make that band so epic sounding. It’s hard to explain but when you listen to it you’ll know what I mean. Since their 2008 debut every album has been a refinement to the last, from the power metal influences of Fall From Grace to the wider soundscapes of 2018’s The Offering, Borealis are maturing in front of our very eyes, bringing the more symphonic and darker tone on their 2018 record. Illusions is a follow up to this and continues the story from The Offering but at a later date, reflecting on those events and how they have affected the future.
I hate to labour a point but there’s so much Evergrey influence here it’s hard not to. Much of this due to the addition of Vikram Shankar to compose all the orchestral and synths, many of you may know him from the project Silent Skies with Tom S Englund. So there is a great connectivity between it all that a geek like me enjoys. To the album itself though and with these top notch strings and electronics the music better be good. Of course it is! Produced by the band and engineered/mixed by drummer Sean Dowell, Illusions bounds out of the speakers with the magnificent Ashes Turn To Rain, a driving rocker with those swelling strings it’s a big heavy number to get the record off to a great start. Aiden Watkinson (Bass) and Sean Dowell (Drums) getting it going with their impressive rhythm work, from here things only get better, Pray For Water taking your breath away with the interplay between all of the band members, though Matt Marinelli’s impassioned vocals send shivers down your spine as he chugs away on the guitar with Ken Fobert.
Following this though they slow things down and the duet with Lynsey Ward, Burning Tears, benefits from a deft touch and Shankar’s ear for emotion. The whole band get heavier on Believer which has some grooving prog metal riffs and smoking solos, the emotion pouring out again on Face Of Reality which builds from some massive choruses to yet more scintillating guitar work, leading into the swashbuckling Bury Me Alive, the album culminates with the 11 minute epic The Phantom Silence which is steeped in majesty, closing the record fantastically ending yet another brilliant album from this Canadian band. Illusions is every bit as good as its predecessor so it will score the same, utter perfection. 10/10
Bloodbath: Survival Of The Sickest (Napalm Records) [Erick Willand]
Bloodbath, for the uninitiated, are a Swedish death metal supergroup composed of some of the genre's sickest, most horror infused minds. Fronted now by Paradise Lost’s own “Old” Nick Holmes (an Englishman) accompanied by the crunchy yet swaggering guitars of Anders Nystrom and new guy Lik’s Tomas ‘Plytet’ Åkvik, with the thundering end handled by Jonas Renkse on bass and Martin Axenrot on drums.
This is Bloodbath’s 6th gore drenched ritual offering since forming in 1998 and it is everything I was hoping for and then some. The opening track, Zombie Inferno is a ripping speed driven ride of pure death metal fun. Fading in with a riff that builds to a smashing drum rhythm followed by the lyrics fading in with “fuck…fuck...FUCK! Nowhere to run!” and then you’re in it. A legendary opening line if I’ve ever heard one. I have to admit, I’m a sucker for a good zombie track and this just hits right. On to more undead fun of course with Putrefying Corpse, a proper punisher that slams nicely into track 3, Dead Parade. I can smell the rotting flesh from here as this slow rolling burner comes crunching forward with a lurching menace, by the second listen I’m singing along, and there’s always extra points for that. Malignant Maggot Therapy is the unrelenting death metal soundtrack to a gory old Trauma movie and I’m here for it. The opening riffing is just blistering.
Next comes Carved, track 5 respectfully. This beast of track features guest vocals by Gorguts own Luc Lemay and is one of the highlights on Survival Of The Sickest. The chorus will be a fan favorite at shows for sure and deservedly so. Born Infernal wastes no time and blasts in with pummeling quickness, swirling guitar riffage and another memorable chorus line. When Old Nick growls out “release the hounds!” you feel it, honestly highlight moment of the album for me. To Die slips in as Born Infernal fades out with symbol crashes and thunderous drums. Have to take a second and say that the drum work on this whole album is fantastic and a stand out element of the release. To Die is a fun, rolicking song and reminds me of some leftover slab of meat that’s been forgotten in the basement freezer of some run down butcher shop.
Did you like the most recent Evergrey album? Great you're going to bloody love this! I've been championing this Canadian progressive/power metal band since the beginning of this publication and it looks like I won't have to stop any time soon. Their fifth album is again a truly wonderful listening experience, for fans of Evergrey especially you'll hear all the dramatic synth and orchestral that happen between the riffs and make that band so epic sounding. It’s hard to explain but when you listen to it you’ll know what I mean. Since their 2008 debut every album has been a refinement to the last, from the power metal influences of Fall From Grace to the wider soundscapes of 2018’s The Offering, Borealis are maturing in front of our very eyes, bringing the more symphonic and darker tone on their 2018 record. Illusions is a follow up to this and continues the story from The Offering but at a later date, reflecting on those events and how they have affected the future.
I hate to labour a point but there’s so much Evergrey influence here it’s hard not to. Much of this due to the addition of Vikram Shankar to compose all the orchestral and synths, many of you may know him from the project Silent Skies with Tom S Englund. So there is a great connectivity between it all that a geek like me enjoys. To the album itself though and with these top notch strings and electronics the music better be good. Of course it is! Produced by the band and engineered/mixed by drummer Sean Dowell, Illusions bounds out of the speakers with the magnificent Ashes Turn To Rain, a driving rocker with those swelling strings it’s a big heavy number to get the record off to a great start. Aiden Watkinson (Bass) and Sean Dowell (Drums) getting it going with their impressive rhythm work, from here things only get better, Pray For Water taking your breath away with the interplay between all of the band members, though Matt Marinelli’s impassioned vocals send shivers down your spine as he chugs away on the guitar with Ken Fobert.
Following this though they slow things down and the duet with Lynsey Ward, Burning Tears, benefits from a deft touch and Shankar’s ear for emotion. The whole band get heavier on Believer which has some grooving prog metal riffs and smoking solos, the emotion pouring out again on Face Of Reality which builds from some massive choruses to yet more scintillating guitar work, leading into the swashbuckling Bury Me Alive, the album culminates with the 11 minute epic The Phantom Silence which is steeped in majesty, closing the record fantastically ending yet another brilliant album from this Canadian band. Illusions is every bit as good as its predecessor so it will score the same, utter perfection. 10/10
Bloodbath: Survival Of The Sickest (Napalm Records) [Erick Willand]
Bloodbath, for the uninitiated, are a Swedish death metal supergroup composed of some of the genre's sickest, most horror infused minds. Fronted now by Paradise Lost’s own “Old” Nick Holmes (an Englishman) accompanied by the crunchy yet swaggering guitars of Anders Nystrom and new guy Lik’s Tomas ‘Plytet’ Åkvik, with the thundering end handled by Jonas Renkse on bass and Martin Axenrot on drums.
This is Bloodbath’s 6th gore drenched ritual offering since forming in 1998 and it is everything I was hoping for and then some. The opening track, Zombie Inferno is a ripping speed driven ride of pure death metal fun. Fading in with a riff that builds to a smashing drum rhythm followed by the lyrics fading in with “fuck…fuck...FUCK! Nowhere to run!” and then you’re in it. A legendary opening line if I’ve ever heard one. I have to admit, I’m a sucker for a good zombie track and this just hits right. On to more undead fun of course with Putrefying Corpse, a proper punisher that slams nicely into track 3, Dead Parade. I can smell the rotting flesh from here as this slow rolling burner comes crunching forward with a lurching menace, by the second listen I’m singing along, and there’s always extra points for that. Malignant Maggot Therapy is the unrelenting death metal soundtrack to a gory old Trauma movie and I’m here for it. The opening riffing is just blistering.
Next comes Carved, track 5 respectfully. This beast of track features guest vocals by Gorguts own Luc Lemay and is one of the highlights on Survival Of The Sickest. The chorus will be a fan favorite at shows for sure and deservedly so. Born Infernal wastes no time and blasts in with pummeling quickness, swirling guitar riffage and another memorable chorus line. When Old Nick growls out “release the hounds!” you feel it, honestly highlight moment of the album for me. To Die slips in as Born Infernal fades out with symbol crashes and thunderous drums. Have to take a second and say that the drum work on this whole album is fantastic and a stand out element of the release. To Die is a fun, rolicking song and reminds me of some leftover slab of meat that’s been forgotten in the basement freezer of some run down butcher shop.
However this is where I start to fade a bit, To Die, Affliction Of Extinction, Tales Of Melting Flesh and Envirocide all somewhat bleed together with some minor highlights hidden within each track. The four are not bad songs, not by a long shot, just less for the old memory to latch on to, maybe a little phoned in. Which brings me to No God Before Me, the final track. Slow like a heavy doomed thing, placing this at the end of the album was the correct decision. Bloodbath enjoys showing off influences once in a while and this track feels that way. I enjoyed it but I can also see how it might feel out of place comparative to the rest of the album.
Overall Survival Of The Sickest is Bloodbath returning to earlier zombie infested forests to hunt anew and that comes through strong on the first half here. Zombie Inferno is just plain fun, so is Carved, Tales Of Melting Flesh and Born Infernal. I feel like the last two tracks, Envirocide and No God Before Me, could have been left for an EP later in the year and that would have made the album feel quicker and tighter. As usual I have to mention cover art, especially this time as the cover is done by the legendary artist Wes Benscoter and fits the vibe perfectly with its weirdly colored undead advancing forward despite insect infestation and decaying parts. Classic. Survival Of The Sickest lands at 7/10.
Overall Survival Of The Sickest is Bloodbath returning to earlier zombie infested forests to hunt anew and that comes through strong on the first half here. Zombie Inferno is just plain fun, so is Carved, Tales Of Melting Flesh and Born Infernal. I feel like the last two tracks, Envirocide and No God Before Me, could have been left for an EP later in the year and that would have made the album feel quicker and tighter. As usual I have to mention cover art, especially this time as the cover is done by the legendary artist Wes Benscoter and fits the vibe perfectly with its weirdly colored undead advancing forward despite insect infestation and decaying parts. Classic. Survival Of The Sickest lands at 7/10.
Sun Voyager - Sun Voyager (Ripple Music) [David Karpel]
There’s a famous announcement made at Woodstock in 1969: “To get back to the warning… That the brown acid that is circulating around us isn't too good. It is suggested that you stay away from that. Of course it's your own trip. So be my guest, but please be advised that there is a warning on that one, ok?” I only have a few words or so to get through to you the tangential significance of this incident in relation to the new self-titled Sun Voyager album, a raging slab of greasy garage psych on Ripple Music–whose catalog of great rock and metal releases becomes ever more varied in sounds and textures–so let’s get on with it.
Woodstock marked the crumbling end of the facade of free-love 60s hippie-dom. Something else altogether was already happening in garages and warehouses and storage units around the US and elsewhere that reflected the dark underbelly of the disillusioned reality going on in the streets: gutsy, messed up, horny, crass noise makers sweating their hearts out riffing fuzztones and laying down wall-cracking tracks of rock and roll fuck-all gold that until recently most of us had not known of. That is, until Lance Barresi, along with Daniel Hall’s RidingEasy Records, started putting out the Brown Acid compilations, a series of collections of lost tunes from the “comedown” era.
Sun Voyager recalls not only the sound, but the darkness as well, the sense of rock and roll as something true and urgent, that speaks not only to the times but to the people, to their hearts and their groins, which is a wholly appropriate course for our current age of crumbling illusions–as is the band’s urgency and reckless abandon. Awash in walls of fuzz, wah, and reverb, with bass lines pulling roots through the garage floor, a steadily pounding backbeat, and riffing that spins like a Catherine wheel, Sun Voyager’s songs provide hooks and psych break downs, bleary crescendos, and almost buried melodies–and they will move you. It’s not 1969, of course, but there’s plenty of bad trips to go around. Sun Voyager, like those garage bands of the comedown era, seem determined to rock the hell out of these times nonetheless, with greasy riffs, slinging sweat, and utter relentlessness.
The opening track, God Is Dead II, picks up where 2018’s Seismic Vibrations left off, that last feedback cutting out only to let the drums kick back in leading the charge into sustained fuzzed out high energy riffing. The vocals are almost drowned in reverb but the harmonies pull through. Run For You rejoins with a relentlessly steady, dirty backbeat and waves of fuzzed thumping bass lines and riffs. A singular guitar line acts like a thread being undone in the middle of all the bashing chaos. The chaos is coming apart–but no–they keep it together with keys and those ominous buried vocals that keep drawing your attention. A lyric comes through the mire: “the beast is ready to feast.” Shouts over an organ, flashing symbol taps (are those bells?), the walls can’t hold, the chorus of chaos keeps chaos in the bounds of song and it is glorious indeed. The single Some Strange offers a bottomless cup of, yes, more fuzz, pysch effects, sneering vocals, those hypnotic pinwheel guitars, and glorious simple truths: “C’mon let’s ride, oh, c’mon.” This is a rock and roll fever dream.
Rip The Sky gets doomier: “you keep burning all the trees… the ground has been polluted while I’m flying so high.” This over a smashing undeniable beat and a frothy bass line that girds everything, everything, everything. In To Hell We Ride, another spectacular single, we see “fire on the hill” and it’s pretty amazing after all this dancing, headbanging, and sweating that we have the wherewithal to see anything at this point. Emphasizing the point, Feeling Alright slams into you with that driving beat, swirling guitars, chunky riffs glistening with fuzz, and harmonized vocals. The chorus welcomes a breakdown, almost gets clean, feels breathy after all that’s preceded, the organ polishing the floor, the vocals stretched. But the garage is a hot box, everyone’s swaying.
There’s a famous announcement made at Woodstock in 1969: “To get back to the warning… That the brown acid that is circulating around us isn't too good. It is suggested that you stay away from that. Of course it's your own trip. So be my guest, but please be advised that there is a warning on that one, ok?” I only have a few words or so to get through to you the tangential significance of this incident in relation to the new self-titled Sun Voyager album, a raging slab of greasy garage psych on Ripple Music–whose catalog of great rock and metal releases becomes ever more varied in sounds and textures–so let’s get on with it.
Woodstock marked the crumbling end of the facade of free-love 60s hippie-dom. Something else altogether was already happening in garages and warehouses and storage units around the US and elsewhere that reflected the dark underbelly of the disillusioned reality going on in the streets: gutsy, messed up, horny, crass noise makers sweating their hearts out riffing fuzztones and laying down wall-cracking tracks of rock and roll fuck-all gold that until recently most of us had not known of. That is, until Lance Barresi, along with Daniel Hall’s RidingEasy Records, started putting out the Brown Acid compilations, a series of collections of lost tunes from the “comedown” era.
Sun Voyager recalls not only the sound, but the darkness as well, the sense of rock and roll as something true and urgent, that speaks not only to the times but to the people, to their hearts and their groins, which is a wholly appropriate course for our current age of crumbling illusions–as is the band’s urgency and reckless abandon. Awash in walls of fuzz, wah, and reverb, with bass lines pulling roots through the garage floor, a steadily pounding backbeat, and riffing that spins like a Catherine wheel, Sun Voyager’s songs provide hooks and psych break downs, bleary crescendos, and almost buried melodies–and they will move you. It’s not 1969, of course, but there’s plenty of bad trips to go around. Sun Voyager, like those garage bands of the comedown era, seem determined to rock the hell out of these times nonetheless, with greasy riffs, slinging sweat, and utter relentlessness.
The opening track, God Is Dead II, picks up where 2018’s Seismic Vibrations left off, that last feedback cutting out only to let the drums kick back in leading the charge into sustained fuzzed out high energy riffing. The vocals are almost drowned in reverb but the harmonies pull through. Run For You rejoins with a relentlessly steady, dirty backbeat and waves of fuzzed thumping bass lines and riffs. A singular guitar line acts like a thread being undone in the middle of all the bashing chaos. The chaos is coming apart–but no–they keep it together with keys and those ominous buried vocals that keep drawing your attention. A lyric comes through the mire: “the beast is ready to feast.” Shouts over an organ, flashing symbol taps (are those bells?), the walls can’t hold, the chorus of chaos keeps chaos in the bounds of song and it is glorious indeed. The single Some Strange offers a bottomless cup of, yes, more fuzz, pysch effects, sneering vocals, those hypnotic pinwheel guitars, and glorious simple truths: “C’mon let’s ride, oh, c’mon.” This is a rock and roll fever dream.
Rip The Sky gets doomier: “you keep burning all the trees… the ground has been polluted while I’m flying so high.” This over a smashing undeniable beat and a frothy bass line that girds everything, everything, everything. In To Hell We Ride, another spectacular single, we see “fire on the hill” and it’s pretty amazing after all this dancing, headbanging, and sweating that we have the wherewithal to see anything at this point. Emphasizing the point, Feeling Alright slams into you with that driving beat, swirling guitars, chunky riffs glistening with fuzz, and harmonized vocals. The chorus welcomes a breakdown, almost gets clean, feels breathy after all that’s preceded, the organ polishing the floor, the vocals stretched. But the garage is a hot box, everyone’s swaying.
There’s a subtle change in the organ, in the drums, the pace picks up, and… there it is, the fuzz clears, there’s something almost pure, and then full-on fuzzwall again with the chorus now shouted from the bottom of a well until the swirling guitars come back with the blurry af backbeat driving away as wild as it came in. The Vision closes the party with an attitude of “if it ain’t broke, play it harder” Slower in pace, the smashing fuzz pies don’t get any softer. With this new album, through all the fuzz there is to fuzz, Sun Voyager makes a loud af and clear statement. Do yourself a favor and take this trip: get in the car, turn it up, and chase the sun. 8/10
Ritual Dictates - No Great Loss (Artoffact Records) [James Jackson]
I’m not quite sure where to place this, the sophomore album from Ritual Dictates. The background of the band stands firmly within death metal and thrash as the two members were originally in Revocation and 3 Inches Of Blood. Tracks on this album however lend themselves to a few different genres with varying degrees of success. Upon first listen to tracks Burn The Widow, Goth & Exhausted and Aqua Tofana the general feeling I get is that of Ghost and whether that’s a good or bad thing is entirely up to you, personally I like them - I didn’t initially but something drew me back in and I’ve been a fan since; unfortunately for me there’s not much to draw me in again with what this album has to offer.
Ritual Dictates - No Great Loss (Artoffact Records) [James Jackson]
I’m not quite sure where to place this, the sophomore album from Ritual Dictates. The background of the band stands firmly within death metal and thrash as the two members were originally in Revocation and 3 Inches Of Blood. Tracks on this album however lend themselves to a few different genres with varying degrees of success. Upon first listen to tracks Burn The Widow, Goth & Exhausted and Aqua Tofana the general feeling I get is that of Ghost and whether that’s a good or bad thing is entirely up to you, personally I like them - I didn’t initially but something drew me back in and I’ve been a fan since; unfortunately for me there’s not much to draw me in again with what this album has to offer.
My Solitude and Autumn Song are somber affairs with a good dose of goth rock for the former and more of a doom inspired slab of melancholy for the latter, adding a different vocal style to Autumn Song would have made it a stand out a bit more for me and offered something to really emphasize that doom metal influence. Album closer Succumbing To The Ravages Of Age sounds like it could be a fun track but lyrically comes across as an homage to the Beatles When I’m Sixty-Four.. but far less appealing, which is a shame because musically it has a lot going for it. Out of curiosity I gave their previous album a listen and anyone who was a fan of that will be sorely disappointed if they were hoping for more of the same, for where Give Into Despair released in 2020 is steeped in the death metal/thrash of the bands former lives, this years No Great Loss is more of a nod to goth rock and Ghost with the occasional dip into the darkness of doom. 5/10.