The Metal Thread.

[Nattens Madrigal]

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Awesome posts and bands.

[Saiwalo]

[FilhoV]

Great taste

[Benyzero]

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

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Brooklyn, New York, based black metallers Mutilation Rites are a name that have been making somewhat of a buzz in some extreme metal and underground circles. Far from being a necessarily revolutionary band, Mutilation Rites’ sound has been predominantly old school based; being raw, frantic and evil sounding; but they have always felt genuine and backed up with quality.

With their latest and third release Chasm (Gilead Media/Argento), whilst again they may not be breaking the mould with their sound, they do show some leaps.

Chasm still has a primal, ferocious feel and doesn’t let up on pace, ultimately feeling like a pure black metal album still; but it also isn’t afraid to show some expanse and usher in some additional influences. ‘The Ominous Rituals’ for example is black metal at full throttle, the likes of ‘Pierced Larynx’ and the title track showcase hints at old school death metal, both in guitar tone and in its slight sense of groove, whilst lead single ‘Axiom Destroyer’ feels reminiscent of crust punk, additionally.

It is closing track ‘Putrid Decomposition’, whilst also maintaining continued blistering pace throughout, that also manages to show some signs of forward thinking, with changing patterns and riffs over a ten plus minute duration. At ten plus minutes, however, it adds to the album’s slight flaw in that it feels a little too drawn out. Far from being a bad album, however, on the contrary Chasm is a vicious and exhilarating blast throughout, yet it doesn’t always do quite enough to warrant its length.

For all the praise that we deservedly give to the boundary pushers of our world, sometimes the pure and primal just hits the spot. With some slight but recognisable revamping within their core sound, Mutilation Rites still maintain that classic vibe without sounding dated, and thus Chasm is their strongest album to date. A no-nonsense thrill ride that should appeal to plenty.

Source: http://www.ghostcultmag.com/album-re...media-argento/

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[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

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New York City is a strange dichotomy. Depending on who you ask, you’ll either get mental pictures of Broadway musicals, jazz concerts, the colorfully decorative Times Square, and shopping centers and skyscrapers within a stone’s throw of each other… or you’ll get a grim story of the rampant drug use and homelessness, its long history of violent crimes, and the hopelessness and gritty realities of its citizens that birthed the city’s rap, hardcore, and metal scenes. The thing is, either story would be correct. On their third full-length, Vile Luxury, Imperial Triumphant paints a vivid picture of their city’s duality: shimmering and powerful, yet simultaneously ugly and brutal. In doing so, they also crafted an album that’s the American equivalent to Voices‘ ode to their own home, 2014’s London.

Imperial Triumphant‘s last album, 2015’s Abyssal Gods, was a colossal headfuck of epic proportions, and found itself in my Top Ten(ish) of that year. Abyssal Gods, however, didn’t even begin to prepare me for the sudden curveballs and about-faces Vile Luxury pulled me through. Just like Imperial Triumphant lyrically and even visually pulls from their city’s lineage, the further dives into jazz (as made apparent on their Inceste EP from 2016) increase their separation from the throngs of bands ripping off Deathspell Omega. In truth, you can say they’ve pulled as much (if not more) influence from John Coltrane and Miles Davis as they have DsO and Gorguts. That fact becomes relevant as soon as “Swarming Opulence” kicks off, with horns blaring a dark, somber interlude, giving the album a sense of regal superiority before the band lurches forth, with Ilya’s trademark cavernous growls and angular riffs cutting around him while Kenny Grohowski blasts, barrels, and stops on a dime, taking what is already chaotic and propelling it all to unforeseen levels of batshit insanity.

As Vile Luxury progresses, the double-takes become borderline neck-snapping. “Gotham Luxe” plays off almost like a diseased waltz that would have fit Eyes Wide Shut‘s infamous group sex scene, being both lurid enough to gain one’s attention while being so depraved that you can’t help from looking away (but wanting to all the same). “Chernobyl Blues” starts off innocuously enough, with shimmery, shiny feedback, slowly played drums, Ilya growling quietly, but then devolves into blastbeats, razor-sharp riffing, and Ilya trading off growls while Bloody Panda‘s Yoshiko Ohara shrieks and screeches. Elsewhere, penultimate track “The Filth” misleads you into a sense of calm and closure, complete with Andromeda Anarchia’s operatic wailing, before pulling you further into the abyss.

Once again, Colin Marston’s production and mixing scores a home run for the band, somehow balancing the chaos with instrumental clarity. Newcomer Steve Blanco’s bass never once feels buried or muted, the horns blare with a crystal-like shine, and the drums retain their power throughout. Even more impressive is Imperial Triumphant‘s ability to build tension and drama. When “Chernobyl Blues” closes out, with Ohara’s screeches growing louder and more distorted, the band and Marston felt that “Cosmopolis” should have a few seconds of quiet immediately after. That feeling is akin to watching a horribly violent crime scene play out fully and watching it end abruptly with a false sense of calm before the insanity begins anew. It’s moments like this that kept me coming back for more. If there was a nitpick, closer “Luxury in Death” doesn’t quite hit the same notes the other seven songs hit, but that’s exactly that… a nitpick.

In a year that has honestly let me down on a musical level, Imperial Triumphant scored big with Vile Luxury. But truth be told, the year could have been rich in musical treasures, and Vile Luxury still would have dwarfed the fuck out of the vast majority of releases. Ugly yet regal, diseased yet extravagant, Vile Luxury unearths new gems on each successive replay. May Imperial Triumphant‘s reign of weirdness continue unabated.

Source: https://www.angrymetalguy.com/imperi...luxury-review/

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[arkas]

This is the music of heathens.

Just kidding, some of it is cool.

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

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Instead of surfing the experimental and psychedelic wave of black metal coming lately from Finland, Paara choose to look back upon the 1990s and early 2000s, especially upon bands like Emperor, Moonsorrow, and early Enslaved, spicing it in abundance with melodic overtones. Sure, it's a rehash of olden days we already heard, but is it a good rehash?

Paara constructed Riiti in a similar vein to their debut, Yön Olevainen Puoli, once again four tracks, but this time they took a risky approach and positioned the longest track, which is over 15 minutes in length, as the opener. Well, it worked on Eld and Dar De Duh, and it works here as well. "Viimeinen Virta" encompasses everything great about this record, even though it does lose just a bit of steam during the following two tracks, but it being a 40-minute-long record, one can barely notice. The closing track does an excellent job of ending the album on a high note, in a climatic fashion.

Rather than focusing on hazy atmospheres and grainy production, Paara focus more on the melodic side, occasionally spicing the riff stampede with guitar solos. While most of the album is guitar-centric as far as the instrumentation goes, occasional Emperor-esque synths do come into play. Leaving apart the instrumentation, Riiti's strongest quality is the vocal work, switching between three vocalists in different styles. Hahtezan's vocals are a new addition to Paara's sound that their debut lacked.

Constantly changing paces and vocal approaches to keep the album from getting stale, Paara bring into play both the classic razor-sharp tremolo picking, the already mentioned melodic solos, folkish tones, and atmospheric passages. While not pushing any boundaries, Riiti is beautifully crafted, it doesn't overstay its welcome, and it is varied enough not to feel like a cheap rehash.

Source: http://www.metalstorm.net/pub/review...eview_id=14467

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[Stratagos]

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

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In Homer’s Odyssey the Τάφιοι were a pirate-like, slave trading scourge of the Ionian sea. Euripides would later posit the seemingly mythical, debaucherous islands of Taphos as a collective description of the Echinades but today most agree Homer was referring to the beautiful (and more likely inhabited) island of Meganisi. Self-proclaimed descendants of Perseus through Taphius, the son of Poseidon and Hippothoë, the Taphians were written as savage warriors, opportunists, and their king a scheming tyrant. Myths of ruthless island warrior kings ordering slaughter of rival suitors, to gain position over Ithaca, set a reasonably appropriate tone for the furious blackened death metal of Danish death metal band Taphos‘ debut full-length ‘Come Ethereal Somberness’.

Formed between members/ex-members of Reverie, Alucarda and Sulphurous the project’s original sound was primarily influenced by the thrash-maddened obscurities of American and Finnish old school death metal. Less dramatic and melodious than Venenum, less frantically delivered than bands like Vorum and Verminous, Taphos‘ sound developed towards greater black metal influence with the release of their ‘Premonition’ EP in 2017. In fact those three tracks were taken directly from ‘Come Ethereal Somberness’ and did more than hint at the fiery blackened death metal attack of the album. I always hear massive influence from ‘The Nocturnal Silence’ on records like this but this time the attack of the record only halfway warrants the mention as much as contemporary artists. Riffs aplenty cake the innards of Taphos‘ debut with the war-like abandon of Degial, the inventive structures of Necrovation and an impressive uptick in black metal ‘attack’ that brings an incredible sense of modern atmospherics and ‘flow’ to the full listen without overshadowing their old school death metal aspect.

‘Come Ethereal Darkness’ is a generational mutant of many classic death metal influences and in attempting to describe it I felt some small amount of frustration with it’s amorphous nature. The adherence to senectuous ways transitions between the supportive catafalque of tremolo-picking a la ‘Gardens of Grief’ era At the Gates, brief chunks of Morbid Angel‘s ‘Gateways to Annihilation’ and the angular reprieve of Immolation‘s debut. The greater swinging-from-the-rafters blackness blurring the experience provides effective differentiation from Taphos‘ influences. The result is, for the sake of approximation, death metal relevant to and refined beyond Necrovation‘s ‘Breed Deadness Blood’. For any number of comparisons I could struggle with, the guitar work doesn’t feel hugely derivative so much as it resembles a modern tapestry of death metal fashioned in new ways from old cloth.

With a greater idea of where Taphos sit in the spectrum of the ancients and how they’ve evolved there is no question of good taste in terms of execution and style. I appreciate the blasphemic sound, the subtle and dynamic production, the brutal mixture of atmospherics and classicism is entirely alluring and re-spinnable. Where I lose sight of ‘Come Ethereal Somberness’ is in preview and outside of the momentous flow of the experience. Taken in pieces it is remarkable in sound and style but not entirely memorable throughout. As a whole this is more of a void-like journey and not precisely the instant gratification of their demo era. Yet I still found myself not wanting to be done with the full listen because the dark aura provided by the black metal guitar work frequently transcends timeworn delivery. My favorite example of this is “Ocular Blackness”, which comes across like “Ageless, Still I Am” if reinterpreted by Watain or similar. Captivating throughout but not adherent to my echoic memory.

It is an album that surely proves that strong death metal riffs and blackened atmospherics can collide in a tasteful way. The experience surges with alternating gusts of intensity and tribute alike and the only point of exhaustion with repeated listening comes from the growling tremolo riffs that anchor the performances. This is absolutely normal for this style of death metal and is less a complaint and more a nod to what sounds ultimately define it’s overall statement. ‘Come Ethereal Somberness’ is a boiling, seething experience and not a pushy thug-load of thrashed out old school death metal. With a great wealth of death metal releases to see light in festival season this year I’d suggest Taphos‘ debut as a ‘grower’ that demands some consideration without an instant accessible connection. For preview “Impending Peril” is a strong introduction to gauge interest but I think most folks will be hooked by the time “Ocular Blackness” finishes.

Source: http://grizzlybutts.com/2018/05/31/t...s-2018-review/

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