Astral Sleep - We Are Already Living In The End Times (Saarni Records) [Paul Scoble]
Astral Sleep are a Helsinki based five piece. The band have been making music since 2004 and in that time have released 3 albums before We Are Already Living In The End Times. Their debut album Unawakening was released in 2008, second album came four years later with Visions, and another eight later in 2020 came the bands last album, Astral Doom Musick. The band is made up of Jaakko Oksanen on Bass, Rolle Heinonen on Guitars and keyboards, Markus Heinonen on Vocals and Guitars, Jari Pyörälä on Drums and Santeri Kangasmetsä on Lead Guitars.
Astral Sleep’s style is from all across the Doom spectrum, experimenting with lots of different styles of slow and heavy. From Death / Doom to Blackened Doom, through melancholy Doom into dissonant Doom Astral Sleep seem to like all of it. The vocals are a mix of fairly idiosyncratic clean vocals and harsh vocals that are deep and dense, Markus Heinonen seems to move from one to the other with ease. The songs themselves are long, and change a lot as Astral Sleep flit from one style of Doom to another, in a way that keeps the listener on their feet.
The album opens with the title track We Are Already Living In The End Of Times, which has a nasty, Blackened feel to the beginning, with lots of dissonance and Harsh Vocals, the song then drops into a clean passage that builds to a slow doomy riff with harsh vocals, this then goes into a nasty distorted dissonance section with clean vocals, before the song takes another turn towards very melancholy riffs and vocals, and after this we get another nasty Blackened Doom section with harsh vocals which takes us to the end of the song. As you can see, the material twists and turns, in places it feels as if the song is constantly changing and evolving, and to the most part this is a really good aspect of Astral Sleeps sound.
Torment In Existence has a feel closer to Death/Doom, or in places even Sludge. The second half of the song is far more melancholy and less heavy, with Cclean vocals and a really great melody lead. The Legacies is a mix of mid-paced and driving Doom, with harsh vocals and a much softer feel that is melodic and tuneful with clean vocals, the end of the song has a slower and heavier set of riffs that are very good, with clean vocals.
Time Is has a desolate feel to the beginning, with dark and brooding Blackened Doom, the song keeps this sense for most of the song despite the riffs changing a lot. Final track Status Of The Soul is slow and feels expansive and huge, the song is quite slow and has a great melody lead over a lot of the material. The song builds impressively, not getting faster, but by increasing in intensity, and drive. Right at the end the song drops to just the guitar and chanted vocals to take the song and album to its end.
Although this is a very good album there are a few issues. The clean vocals I have already described as idiosyncratic, I do not have a problem with, however in two or three places the vocals drop out of tune, its only in a few places but when it happens it is jarring and stops you from getting lost in the album. idiosincratyic vocals are fine, out of tune vocals are not. The other issue is the nature of the material changing a lot, in most of the album this is a great way to keep us interested, but in some places the changes happen too fast, and the songs loose coherence. There were also a few riffs I really liked that were there for 4 or 8 bars and then disappeared, several times I thought “Bring that riff back, I was enjoying it”.
We Are Already Living in The End Of Times, is a great album with a couple of issues. It’s a shame the issues were there as this is a really good album, and the issues are quite small. Most of this album is really well written, and played with great riffs, melodies and a great dark, dismal and melancholic feel. A very enjoyable piece of doom for those with an open mind. 7/10
Starting with some cinematic bass swells and the radio tuning in to gather our attention before the vocalist starts spitting bars in the verses before we start going in I Prevail styled mainstream sounding clean vocals in the choruses. The combination the original instrumentation and the unique sounding samples along side a slick the band providing a great introduction. Black Hearted beings with chimey glockenspiel sounds, the vocals comes back again with Eminem fury whilst being backed with some double kick and chugging pattern synchronised grooves whilst powerful chorus lines air out the wrong doers.
Lucifer Star Machine - Satanic Age (The Sign Records) [Simon Black]
I got to review this Hamburg based Punk ‘n’ Roll five piece’s previous album just as lockdown was starting to bite, which must have been a real kicker in the teeth with the band at the time on a new label and only having recently relocate from London to Germany. My review wasn’t a kicker, as I absolutely loved it, and its been one I’ve come back to in the intervening years, so I was rather delighted when this fifth opus from the band crossed my desk.
Once again, the band’s slightly edgier and more musically experimental take on Punk snorting Rock ‘N’ Roll in an honourable nod to both Motorhead but with the US melodies you might expect from The Misfits with a nice modern presentation works an absolute trick. This comes from a slightly darker place tonally than The Devil’s Breath, but then written as it was during the period of history we have all just shared that’s really no surprise, and to be honest there’s enough straight ahead Punk boogie in tracks like I Wanted Everything to stop this from feeling depressing, and the balance of light and dark is just right. The danger of music with such strong classic Rock and Punk influences is that it’s easy to sound dated, but there’s a thoroughly modern edge to this that’s going to tick boxes with young Metalheads, and to be fair there’s some damn fine bands of a similar age and appeal looking back at these old influences and realising why old farts like me go on about them so much.
Now normally this sort of style is all about the ‘wham-bang-thankyou-ma’am/sir/insert pronoun of choice here’ and out of here in short order, and let’s face it the modern youth’s inability to focus on anything longer than a few minutes doesn’t help. Although the songs mostly clock in under four minutes, there’s a lot of them, but Lucifer Star Machine manage to keep the pace going nicely of the forty-eight minutes they have to work with, which means there’s room for a little bit more musical flow, and some of the more traditional metal style harmonisation and lead/rhythm interplay on guitars on tracks like Censhorshipped than you would expect. Being able to flex genres whilst still keeping the feet where their influences speak from works well in this context, and its why this album works so well, because it doesn’t either shoot its load too soon or get boring. Definitely a strong follow-up, and this time hopefully we will get to see them on the road. 8/10
The St Pierre Snake Invasion - Galore (Church Road Records) [James Jackson]
Normally I’d like to listen to an album a few times in order for me to review it as fully and as honestly as I possibly can; sometimes once is more than enough for me to garner an opinion; when I started doing this I kind of swore to myself that I’d try to be as constructive as I could be in my critique but that’s not always easy, to the point - this is my opinion and should just be taken as such.
I’m going to begin with the positive feedback first as quite often it’s easier to flog the negative than it is to find and give praise.
Midas, second track on Galore, which sports a beautiful pink album cover for this, their third album; is a good song, it’s catchy with a vocal theme that has hints of Trent Reznor and that’s not where the NIN comparison ends for me on this track; this isn’t Industrial but there’s a sense and style to this track that does remind me of NIN; piano parts lay an eerie melody over a hypnotic drum beat and a fuzzy, subtle bass/guitar sound; it’s a great hook and a really well written track.
The St Pierre Snake Invasion are from Bristol, a five piece whose sound has Punk roots and in Alt Rock and that name is just great, I’d love to know where the inspiration for that came from. Unfortunately for me, that’s it. I’m not into it, there are some rather obscure and bizarre guitar riffs, offbeat drumming and time signatures that in all of my years have never been able to get into; there’s obviously an audience for this, the band have been around quite some time and aren’t the only ones playing this kind of music but I just can’t get into it.
And it’s a shame as I really did enjoy that one track, just a shame that I couldn’t find more to like; maybe there were more songs of a similar ilk on the album but of those I heard and honestly endured I can only say that I enjoyed the one. I’ve no doubt that somewhere this review may be completely off kilter for someone but for me it’s a no. 3/10.