Necronomicon Ex Mortis - Silver Bullet (Unsigned/Independent) [Mark Young]
So, when this rascal landed, the first thing I did was watch Evil Dead 2, I’ve no idea why but I think it was some form of not so subliminal message caused by the band name. Checking online for some background, these Chicago natives look to some classic 80’s horror for inspiration and I am all for that. This is the second EP they have released, and it is just the thing for to bring your weekend to life. Or death. You get the picture.
Its urgent, frenetic with some absolute class riffing, solo breaks and those arrangements which suggests that they have absorbed some serious death metal in the run up to the release. Don’t let their tags on Bandcamp fool you into thinking that this is a joke. The music is deadly serious, and it is a sixteen minute barrage of extremely well put together metal. Which is just what we want.
We start with Crypt Of The Gorilla God which is replete with the sort of manic solos you expect to hear. It’s a brilliantly crafted slice of death metal no matter how the title sounds. It’s got that perpetual motion that even in the slower moments it doesn’t stall. The Swamp takes some cues from Iron Maiden but if they were on meth. Its fast, brutal and I absolutely love it. Like Crypt... it has that laser beam focus on building a great song and just flies past.
Cycle Of The Werewolf is a short, synths driven tribute to Stephen King (assumed) and acts as a circuit break before the last song, Silver Bullet comes flying in. This one has hallmarks of the Swedish sound in terms of the melodic approach but without that guitar tone. Of the three proper tracks, this is the best for me. It has that melodic riffing that works extremely well, solos that match and are suitably impressive. What I really like about this, and the others is that the guitar sound isn’t detuned. Everything is clear, and there is a clarity which really helps in you picking up the fantastic work they have done here.
So, when this rascal landed, the first thing I did was watch Evil Dead 2, I’ve no idea why but I think it was some form of not so subliminal message caused by the band name. Checking online for some background, these Chicago natives look to some classic 80’s horror for inspiration and I am all for that. This is the second EP they have released, and it is just the thing for to bring your weekend to life. Or death. You get the picture.
Its urgent, frenetic with some absolute class riffing, solo breaks and those arrangements which suggests that they have absorbed some serious death metal in the run up to the release. Don’t let their tags on Bandcamp fool you into thinking that this is a joke. The music is deadly serious, and it is a sixteen minute barrage of extremely well put together metal. Which is just what we want.
We start with Crypt Of The Gorilla God which is replete with the sort of manic solos you expect to hear. It’s a brilliantly crafted slice of death metal no matter how the title sounds. It’s got that perpetual motion that even in the slower moments it doesn’t stall. The Swamp takes some cues from Iron Maiden but if they were on meth. Its fast, brutal and I absolutely love it. Like Crypt... it has that laser beam focus on building a great song and just flies past.
Cycle Of The Werewolf is a short, synths driven tribute to Stephen King (assumed) and acts as a circuit break before the last song, Silver Bullet comes flying in. This one has hallmarks of the Swedish sound in terms of the melodic approach but without that guitar tone. Of the three proper tracks, this is the best for me. It has that melodic riffing that works extremely well, solos that match and are suitably impressive. What I really like about this, and the others is that the guitar sound isn’t detuned. Everything is clear, and there is a clarity which really helps in you picking up the fantastic work they have done here.
As EP’s its pitched just right in that it comes in and goes straight for the throat and doesn’t overstay its welcome. What will be interesting is to see what a full-length album will be like; can they sustain this level of quality for say ten songs? I’ll have to seek out their first release and compare, but for now this will satisfy those who love both death metal and 80’s horror. 7/10
Dead And Dripping play a fairly technical and brutal style of modern death metal. So tight riffs, technical solos, harsh vocals, fast blasting, crushingly slow and heavy sections, complex structures and lots and lots of aggression.
The guitar and bass work on the album is superb, really impressive rhythm guitar parts and even better solos. It says a lot about the technical aspects of the guitar playing that the instrumental track Hopeless Desire For Reprieve, which is clean guitar with a very technical and very beautiful soloing over the top, is one of the standout tracks. The bass guitar is aptly complex and impressive for technical death metal as well, whenever there is some space left in the mix by the guitars, the bass is putting down twiddly bits of low end nastiness that keeps everything moving along, and keeps everything interesting. The vocals are good too, harsh throughout and nicely guttural for that full on brutal death metal feel.
The guitar, bass and vocals are great, work really well, unfortunately the drumming isn’t quite of the same level. Clearly Evan Daniele is a talented guitarist and bass player, but his drumming lets this album down.
When I first listened to this album it reminded me of Immortal’s album Battles In The North. Its a completely different style of extreme metal to Dead And Dripping, but also has drumming that isn’t that great (Immortal did not have a drummer when the album was due to be recorded, so Abbath did the drums), there is clearly lots of effort gone in to them, but they aren’t that good. The drumming feels messy and in places feels quite tentative, but things really go wrong when things speed up and the material calls for blast beats. The beats on the blasts are much closer to a thrash beat so the blasting sections seem a little odd, in some parts feeling more like hardcore than death metal.
Blackened Cerebral Rifts feels like a huge missed opportunity. There are some great bits of guitar, bass and harsh vocals on this album, and some parts that could have absolutely soared, but it has been lost in bad drumming, and writing that is trying to take in to account the drumming limitation. I hope Evan can either start working with processed drums or with a session drummer so his talent with guitar and bass can shine through more than his issues with drumming. 6/10
Caskets - Reflections (Sharptone Records) [GC]
Hello again everyone, been away for a while and it’s time to get back into the swing of things, so without further ado today’s review is Reflections which is the second album from UK alt-metal types Caskets, let’s see what they are all about.
Leading us straight in with a nice vocal melody, opener Believe then attempts to create a big soaring track in the vein of the lighter side of latter day Architects and while its done well it just doesn’t really hit that hard it all feels like there is just another gear they could step into and really let go and the lyrics are a bit ‘’13 year old in his bedroom angry at his imaginary girlfriend’’, the vocals are good but they also manage to kind of grate when he goes high and its all just kind of just ok?
Dragging myself over the halfway point I am met with Six Feet Down which is yet another heavily electronic lead song with all hints of any guitars buried under electronic shit, drums, and vocals, the production on some of these songs is dreadful and really should have been scrutinized a lot more before releasing this album. Silhouettes takes a good minute to kick into life and when its does it does for all of 10 seconds before dropping back into a more dialed back sound that does not make you look forward to the rest of the song, it then drops in and out before thankfully ending.
I have re-read this review and it seems like I was very harsh on Caskets but unfortunately, all I heard was some passable emo tracks and some absolute boring dross in places, the ideas seem to be there but they just always trip up when trying to execute them, I imagine loads of people will love this album and won’t care what I think, good for them! I didn’t completely hate what I heard but I certainly won’t ever go back and listen to it again and that tells you everything you need to know about Reflections. 4/10
Dead And Dripping - Blackened Cerebral Rifts (Transcending Obscurity) [Paul Scoble]
Dead And Dripping is a project of multi-instrumentalist Evan Daniele. The project has been going since 2016, in that time Evan has released two albums previous to Blackened Cerebral Rifts; 2020’s Profane Verses Of Murderous Rhetoric, and Miasmic Eulogies Predicating An Eternal Nocturne in 2021. Evan Daniele plays all instruments and does the vocals as well.
Dead And Dripping play a fairly technical and brutal style of modern death metal. So tight riffs, technical solos, harsh vocals, fast blasting, crushingly slow and heavy sections, complex structures and lots and lots of aggression.
The guitar and bass work on the album is superb, really impressive rhythm guitar parts and even better solos. It says a lot about the technical aspects of the guitar playing that the instrumental track Hopeless Desire For Reprieve, which is clean guitar with a very technical and very beautiful soloing over the top, is one of the standout tracks. The bass guitar is aptly complex and impressive for technical death metal as well, whenever there is some space left in the mix by the guitars, the bass is putting down twiddly bits of low end nastiness that keeps everything moving along, and keeps everything interesting. The vocals are good too, harsh throughout and nicely guttural for that full on brutal death metal feel.
The guitar, bass and vocals are great, work really well, unfortunately the drumming isn’t quite of the same level. Clearly Evan Daniele is a talented guitarist and bass player, but his drumming lets this album down.
When I first listened to this album it reminded me of Immortal’s album Battles In The North. Its a completely different style of extreme metal to Dead And Dripping, but also has drumming that isn’t that great (Immortal did not have a drummer when the album was due to be recorded, so Abbath did the drums), there is clearly lots of effort gone in to them, but they aren’t that good. The drumming feels messy and in places feels quite tentative, but things really go wrong when things speed up and the material calls for blast beats. The beats on the blasts are much closer to a thrash beat so the blasting sections seem a little odd, in some parts feeling more like hardcore than death metal.
I also think this may have effected the writing, as the blasting sections are very short, and tend to drop back into breakdowns which have simpler drumming. This means the album seems to always be going into breakdowns that don’t really go anywhere, as there are very short, or no blast beat sections to explode out of the breakdowns. In some places the material feels convoluted and as if it is going in ever decreasing circles. The instrumental I mentioned earlier is very beautiful and technical, it also does not have any drumming. The issue with the drumming seems to be associated with fast sections so the slower parts tend to be the best. Kaleidoscopic Visions Of Porous Obsidian Eternities has the most slow and heavy sections and is probably the best track.
Blackened Cerebral Rifts feels like a huge missed opportunity. There are some great bits of guitar, bass and harsh vocals on this album, and some parts that could have absolutely soared, but it has been lost in bad drumming, and writing that is trying to take in to account the drumming limitation. I hope Evan can either start working with processed drums or with a session drummer so his talent with guitar and bass can shine through more than his issues with drumming. 6/10
Caskets - Reflections (Sharptone Records) [GC]
Hello again everyone, been away for a while and it’s time to get back into the swing of things, so without further ado today’s review is Reflections which is the second album from UK alt-metal types Caskets, let’s see what they are all about.
Leading us straight in with a nice vocal melody, opener Believe then attempts to create a big soaring track in the vein of the lighter side of latter day Architects and while its done well it just doesn’t really hit that hard it all feels like there is just another gear they could step into and really let go and the lyrics are a bit ‘’13 year old in his bedroom angry at his imaginary girlfriend’’, the vocals are good but they also manage to kind of grate when he goes high and its all just kind of just ok?
More Than Misery is a heavily atmospheric and electronic song that leans heavily on the vocals again and this time they actually do hit the right mark and carry everything along very well with a nice anthemic chorus that also throws in some good guitar work and the mix of ambience and a slightly heavier tone towards the end all work well to create a decent song and you only hope they keep this up, they sort of do on In The Silence because there isn’t too much different from previous songs which makes it feel like they have hit a rhythm but, I still also feel that there is still just that next level they need to go up to otherwise they will continue to keep creating decent songs but nothing that blows you away and then Too Late is upon us and its absolutely dreadful!
It sounds like the guitars have been turned down, the vocals have been turned all the way up and some electronics have been thrown in and it just sounds like an absolute shit show, I get halfway through and give up! By The Sound gets me to the halfway point and again does nothing to make me think anything on this album is likely to make me sit up and pay attention, its all more watered down electronic filled emo, one thing is for certain this album is not alt-rock, there is nothing alternative here its all by the numbers, safe, and frankly now just plain boring because everything just sounds exactly the same.
Dragging myself over the halfway point I am met with Six Feet Down which is yet another heavily electronic lead song with all hints of any guitars buried under electronic shit, drums, and vocals, the production on some of these songs is dreadful and really should have been scrutinized a lot more before releasing this album. Silhouettes takes a good minute to kick into life and when its does it does for all of 10 seconds before dropping back into a more dialed back sound that does not make you look forward to the rest of the song, it then drops in and out before thankfully ending.
Guiding Light then actually kind of gets it right, finally! This sounds like I imagined the rest of the album should, its mix of light and darkness finally hit the mark and don’t make you want to skip the track, of course, once again its VERY Architects-esque and if that’s your sort of thing I imagine you will probably already love this album! Hate Me is another passable track, they try and do the big heavy riff into big chorus and almost pull it off but while its ok it just does not really spark any feeling in me, so finally Better Way Out is here to close out the album and they try to do so in anthemic soaring fashion and once again, they aim high but just seem to keep falling short of Success.
I have re-read this review and it seems like I was very harsh on Caskets but unfortunately, all I heard was some passable emo tracks and some absolute boring dross in places, the ideas seem to be there but they just always trip up when trying to execute them, I imagine loads of people will love this album and won’t care what I think, good for them! I didn’t completely hate what I heard but I certainly won’t ever go back and listen to it again and that tells you everything you need to know about Reflections. 4/10
Sorrow – Death Of Sorrow (Xtreem Music) [Evil Spider]
I’m going to keep this short. Mainly because I don’t have a lot to say about this one. It honestly bored the arse off of me. It’s an album with a run time of just over 45 minutes but feels like a lifetime. It's the same tempo, the same riff, the same vocals over and over again, topped off with juvenile lyrical content straight out of the year 2000. I couldn’t listen to it all the way through in one sitting, and the first time that I came back to finish it off I noticed that there was a 9+ minute track which filled me with dread. I’m struggling to give this album a rating so I will be kind, but if this is the Death Of Sorrow, I will not mourn the band's demise. 2/10