New Music: Anaal Nathrakh - Desideratum

Album score: 4/5

Don’t let the “soundtrack to the apocalypse” tagline fool you; while Anaal Nathrakh’s mission statement is far from unique, its hybridized sound is something worth checking out. Anaal Nathrakh’s core members, Dave Hunt (vocals) and Mick Kenney (everything else), have been fine-tuning their craft for sixteen years now. In that time, they have covered ground from traditional misanthropic black metal to brutal death, industrial, grind, and noise. Desideratum, their eighth effort, is a densely layered piece of extreme metal that builds on the foundation of 2012’s Vanitas. Though its sound takes influence from the relentless assault of Emperor as much as the wordless screams of Converge, calling it particularly close to either would be somewhat misleading. At its heart, Desideratum is an album of sustained ferocity, and while works of its ilk can easily become exhausting, Anaal Nathrakh knows better than to simply bludgeon without mixing things up along the way.

New Music: Revocation - Deathless

Album Score: 8.5/10

Revocation has come a long way for a band once touted as a one-trick pony. Guitar virtuoso David Davidson is clearly still the focal point of the quartet, but his and drummer Phil Dubois-Coyne’s time studying jazz at Boston’s Berklee College of Music gives the band a veritable arsenal of songwriting techniques to play with. No album in the band’s career covers such sonic territory as Deathless, and few in any genre so effortlessly integrate unconventional songwriting techniques as Revocation does here. Each album that Revocation has so far put out has had a slightly different identity – breakthrough effort Existence Is Futile was balls-to-the-wall deathrash, while Chaos of Forms saw more experimentation in both melodic composition (“Harlot” and “Fractal Entity”) and song form (the inexorable build of highlight “Conjuring the Cataclysm”). Last year’s self-titled smoothed things out a little, but arguably lacked a dynamite single. Fortunately, Deathless fixes that and then some, with a great mix of no-frills thrash and powerhouse cuts that encompass the best Revocation has to offer.

New Music: Rings of Saturn - Lugal Ki En

Album Score: 6.5/10

Rings of Saturn have been a pretty polarizing band throughout their early career. The group began as one of those dreaded internet phenomenon, with a single song that spread virally and landed them a record contract within months, and they’re probably as notorious for a speed-doctoring controversy as they are for their hyperkinetic deathcore. Of course, there was never any substantial evidence that Rings of Saturn cheated by recording their debut at half-tempo, and their live performances have dispelled the notion that they can’t play it anyway. Now on their third LP, Rings of Saturn are starting to find a comfortable niche between mainstream death metal and the experiments of Cynic and Between the Buried and Me. While their brand of “aliencore” isn’t totally novel – Wormed, for one, have landed their spaceship here a few times – it’s also curious enough to deserve a few listens from the adventurous metal head.

Interview: At the Gates

At War With Reality drops October 28.

At the Gates is a metal band from Gothenberg, Sweden. It is largely credited, alongside In Flames and Dark Tranquility, with spearheading the melodic death metal movement of the late 1990's which would prove to be enormously influential on metal of the 21st century. The band's 1995 album Slaughter of the Soul has been hailed as a landmark for its stripped-down melodic attack and use of dual-guitar harmonies. At the Gates' members disbanded the next year, citing a desire to "go out on top" and pursue other musical endeavors. A 2007 tour proved enormously successful, culminating in a headlining performance at Wacken Festival in Germany, and led to further tours by the band. After nineteen years, At the Gates is finally ready to release its highly-anticipated followup to Slaughter of the Soul. The new record, At War With Reality, is set to be released worldwide this October.

Tomas Lindberg, singer for At the Gates since its inception, took some of his time to talk with MuzikDizcovery staff writer Alex Newton about the new record, life in At the Gates, and which new bands and albums he enjoys.

Interview: Cannibal Corpse

Cannibal Corpse is set to release its
thirteenth full-length album, A Skeletal
Domain, on September 16th.

Cannibal Corpse is a death metal band from New York. The quintet is known worldwide for macabre imagery, controversial lyrical content, and consistently top-notch death metal. Its albums Butchered at Birth and Tomb of the Mutilated have both sold over a million copies, while its latest albums Evisceration Plague (2009) and Torture (2012) reached #66 and #38 on the Billboard 200, respectively. Fresh off a tour of the United States and about to head to Australia and Japan, guitarist Rob Barrett lent us some time for some questions about the new album and life in the world's most infamous metal band.

New Music: Unisonic - Light of Dawn

Album Score: 7.0/10

Unisonic is a strange sort of reunion. Three of its five members are from Pink Cream 69, three have ties to Helloween, two have played in Krokus and Khymera, two more in Gamma Ray, and the last member in Asia and Gotthard. If that math doesn’t add up, it’s because these guys just seem to end up playing together no matter how many bands they join and leave. Still, singer Michael Kiske and guitarist Kai Hansen are head-and-shoulders above most anyone else in the German metal scene for their work in the aforementioned Helloween and Gamma Ray, and are likewise the focal point of Unisonic. Founded in 2009, the project released its eponymous debut in 2012 to generally positive – and often rave – reviews. Surprisingly, Unisonic’s bassist Dennis Ward emerged as its main songwriter, penning lyrics and/or music for the majority of the debut with occasional contributions from the rest of the band.

New Music: The Great Old Ones - Tekeli-li

Album Score: 9/10

Few bands get it absolutely right the first time – within the realm of black metal, Emperor, Celtic Frost, Ulver, and maybe Agalloch come to mind. So when The Great Old Ones turned in a solid debut in Al-Azif, prospects were good that the band’s next effort could be a breakthrough. Sure, There was the usual Weakling-worship and some songs stood our more than others, but Al-Azif had some exciting qualities to it, mostly revolving around the album’s sinister vibe and saturation with all things H.P. Lovecraft. It’s only been two years since then, but The Great Old Ones is already back for round two, and this time the band has taken everything that made its debut a good album and amplified them to make Tekeli-li an all-around superb one.

New Music: Thou - Heathen

Album Score: 8.5/10

Of all the extreme metal beasts wandering the musical underworld, black metal and doom metal are among the most fearsome and strange. From the darkest depths of the human psyche these creatures arose, boring their way towards the light from frostbitten forests and sweltering swamps. The latter gave us early doom mavens Exhorder and Eyehategod, but somewhere down the line Louisiana birthed some truly terrifying monsters like Thou. A quintet specializing in music designed to break souls, Thou has tempered its blackened doom for nine years through three albums and a menagerie of EPs and splits. At the core of Thou’s ideology is a distaste for societal constructs; an abhorrence of the artificial paradigms ruling our world. Heathen, then, is both a logical continuation – and the boldest chapter yet – of that treatise on humanity’s true face.

New Music: Gamma Ray - Empire of the Undead

Album Score: 7.0/10

Considering it was originally a side project, Gamma Ray has showed some remarkable staying power at the core of Europe’s power metal scene. It’s been almost twenty years since Gamma Ray released two of the genre’s defining albums in Land of the Free and Somewhere Out in Space, but the quartet is still alive and well in its fourth decade. The fact that fans were disappointed with 1999’s Powerplant – an album with no less than four classic songs, including the band’s opener and encore ever since – says a lot about how much respect the band has in the metal sphere. Lately, however, singer/guitarist Kai Hansen seems content to rest on his laurels, as the band’s last two albums have played things about as safely as possible. It’s been a full four years since To the Metal! raised concerns over whether Gamma Ray had anything left in the tank, between the album’s inconsistency and borderline plagiarism, so Empire of the Undead has some questions to answer.

Interview: Andi Deris of Helloween

Andi Deris is the vocalist for Helloween, an influential power metal band from Germany. He sang with Pink Cream 69 until he joined Helloween in 1993; he has since released thirteen albums with the group, including four gold-certified records. He recently recorded a solo album with his solo band The Bad Bankers entitled Million-Dollar Haircuts on Ten-Cent Heads. I spoke with him about a number of topics such as where the name The Bad Bankers came from, how he chooses what to play live and his favorite songs, his dream collaborations, getting thrown in jail, having his bus ransacked, and some memorable moments from Helloween’s recent world tour.

Retrospective: Giant Squid - Monster in the Creek

Album Score: 7.5/10

Way back in the Romantic era, there was a style of songwriting called the tone poem. Like a mini opera, the objective of a tone poem was to convey a story, image, or idea through music. It could be as simple or elaborate as the artist felt necessary, from short piano pieces to entire symphonies. By the 20th century, the tone poem had fallen out of favor with audiences, presumably due to evolution away from Romantic ideals and composers’ fascination with reinventing the basis of music theory. I mean…music as a means of expression? Using your imagination and your intellect at the same time? Who does that anymore?

New Music: Soreption - Engineering the Void

Album Score: 7.5/10

Death metal is a genre that presents a conundrum of sorts for new artists. In order to be considered a player, a band has to fulfill certain expectations: precise musicianship, guttural vocals, challenging tempos, complex and ever-changing riffs, incessant double-kick drumming, guitar-centric structures, and so forth. The problem with such standards is that they also portend a certain amount of conformity, and therefore a band must also find a way to stand out without violating these essential characteristics of death metal. Soreption is a rising group that finds itself on the fence between these paradigms – perhaps perfectly so, as Engineering the Void sticks to its tech death guns while striving for a voice of its own. Such is the luxury afforded to a group as fundamentally sound as this Swedish quartet as they balance impressive chops with intrepid songwriting on their sophomore effort.

New Music: Cynic - Kindly Bent to Free Us (With Stream)

Album Score: 6.0/10

If Kindly Bent to Free Us is your first impression of Cynic, then you’ll be in for a shock upon looking into this metal legend’s back catalogue. Paul Masvidal, Sean Malone, and Sean Reinert comprise Cynic’s core, and while they’ve left an indelible mark on extreme metal over the last quarter-century, Cynic has lately left its fan base divided, if not totally bewildered. Sure, the upbeat swing of “The Lion’s Roar” bears little face-value resemblance to cuts from the band’s classic 1993 album Focus, but in a weird way it seems like we should have seen this coming all along as shredded leads and death growls have steadily given way to ethereal atmospheres and intricately layered compositions. Thinking back, though, is the intro of “Kindly Bent to Free Us” really so far from that of “I’m But a Wave To”? For long-time followers, it seems high time to let go of our notions on what Cynic was and appreciate what it is, and has always been – a group of musicians willing to push the envelope of progressive music in any way possible. Unfortunately for Cynic, it seems to have taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way.

Concert Review: Amon Amarth, Enslaved, and Skeletonwitch

Amon Amarth is heavy metal’s version of life imitating art: twenty-two years in, the beardy Swedes are laying waste to music venues more vociferously than ever and solidifying their place in the pantheon of heavy metal. Last year’s uncompromising Deceiver of the Gods opened at #19 in the US charts, the highest death metal album by a band not based on a cartoon, and yet many fans argue that Amon Amarth isn’t even the most important band on its current tour. They have a point, too, because when a concert boasts a one-two punch of Amon Amarth and a black metal titan like Enslaved, it’s bound to be one hell of a night. At the House of Blues in Boston, the pillaging was in full force as native opener Skeletonwitch knocked down the gates on a stupendous evening of Odin worship, heraldry, and fist-pumping metal anthems.  

New Music: Ulver/Sunn O))) - Terrestrials

Album Score: 6.5/10

“Like some lost pilgrim stretching before the sun…” - Rygg

Kristoffer Rygg has certainly made his musical pilgrimages, from black metal allegedly recorded in a forest to haunting ambient-electronic opuses. It comes as little surprise, then, that his lifelong project – the enigmatic entity known as Ulver – would wander into the path of another avant-garde behemoth in Sunn O))). Both bands have basically done as they pleased since their inceptions, and though the latter duo has perhaps alienated as many as it has enthralled, rumors of a collaboration between such creative forces seized the attention of experimental music fans everywhere. Born of early-morning improvisations at Ulver’s studio in August 2008 and painstakingly honed in the years since, Terrestrials is the sort of album that dreams are made of – particularly the kind from which you wake up hyperventilating in a cold sweat.

New Music: Alaskan - Despair, Erosion, Loss

Album Score: 9/10

The mountain stands before me: glaciers wracked with black crevasses extend for miles before windswept ridges jut upwards at jagged angles. Something inside tells me to go back.“A sacrifice!” scream the violins, shrill strings that rise and writhe like harbingers of doom.The storm descends; I forge ever onwards. My footsteps ring against the frozen earth, faster and faster, into the mouth of the sky. An avalanche – the drums, thundering; resonant and sharp, an unstoppable force to carry me to the foot of the behemoth. I pass the point of no return; the falling snow is a deafening blanket. I look around and find nothing familiar but the sound of my own voice as it is carries down the slopes to disappear into some godforsaken chasm. “Beg for forgiveness!” the mountain demands, its voice harsh, merciless.Why undertake this journey? Why here, of all places, when I could be in sunny fields or sandy shores?

New Music: The Visit – Between Worlds

Album Score: 9/10

In an industry where everything seems to be trending towards the more complex – faster, louder, overhyped, overproduced – it takes an act of understated beauty to remind us what makes something truly memorable. The Visit takes this concept and runs with it. Hailing from Ottawa, Canada, The Visit consists solely of singer Heather Sita Black and cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne, who display stunning chemistry on their debut release, “Between Worlds.” Though containing only a single fourteen-minute song, it is, quite frankly, a tremendous opening statement from the duo. The piece traverses a number of peaks as it builds from a chamber-style lament to a progressive juggernaut and back with breathtaking ease.

New Music: Worms in Women and Cattle – Sick Road

Album Score: B+

“Worms in Women and Cattle.” It’s a name that sounds incredibly demeaning, but if you think about it, it’s true: there are worms in just about every living thing. It’s kind of scary and kind of creepy, but it’s also fascinating. Such is the Providence, RI quartet’s only release,Sick Road. Composed of nine bombastic black metal pieces from two to fifteen minutes long, the album conjures some of the most ghastly feelings possible. While the whole band sounds like they crawled out of a bog right before recording, the main culprit is Worms’ possessed frontwoman Pippi, whose ungodly shrieks are bound to give even the most hardened black metal enthusiasts goosebumps. Combine those with some hair-raising and unpredictable compositions, and you get a black metal album like  no other.

New Music: Skeletonwitch - Serpents Unleashed

Album Score: 8/10

Everyone knows that thrash is all about teh riffs, but what’s behind great riffage? If you’re going by Skeletonwitch’s latest effort, the answer is pure energy. With eleven songs clocking in at less than three minutes apiece, Serpents Unleashed is a dissertation on explosive songwriting from the Ohio blackened thrash veterans. Arguably the group’s most cohesive effort to date, the album meshes a variety of influences and styles while showcasing some of the strongest pieces in Skeletonwitch’s catalogue. Purists need not fret, though, for Serpents Unleashed leaves no doubt that it’s meant to get mosh pits moving and hearts racing in proper thrash metal fashion.

New Music: Indian - From All Purity

Album Score: 6.5/10

As a rule of thumb, when a band lists Waylon Jennings and Lynyrd Skynyrd as influences, you shouldn’t expect to hear funeral doom guitars and banshee screams. Apparently, Indian didn’t get that memo. The Illinois quartet’s fifth album From All Purity may not sound particularly Native American, but it’s not hard to imagine that it was born of a thirst for Fire Water and retribution as the band rips through six gritty tracks with the subtlety of a tomahawk. Riding the dirtiest guitar tone this side of Thou and a terrifying performance by vocalist Dylan O’Toole, From All Purity is, for better or for worse, as relentless and overstated as modern metal gets.