Gorod - A Perfect Absolution

Gorod's A Perfect Absolution the fourth full-length entry into the ongoing saga of these French metallers' discography. After 2009's Process Of A New Decline I was pretty damn skeptical. That album failed me on several levels. I initially enjoyed it, blinded by the glistening, mechanized guitarwork. As I listened though, I grew bored and eventually found Process to be a dull, uninspired and overproduced album compared to their high-profile early material (Gorgasm to Neurotripsticks and Leading Vision). It was a big disappointment in a year of great music.

So then Gorod released A Perfect Absolution this past Monday, and after seeing the cover, many people cried foul. The bright colors and odd design made people wary of just how poor Gorod's last release was, and many approached A Perfect Absolution with skepticism.

I was included in that group, but I came out pleasantly surprised. On A Perfect Absolution we have a more mature Gorod that realizes the importance of rhythm. Bassist Benoit Claus is a fiend on this album with layered, heavily textured basslines that keep time with the melody. The low-frequencies are present in the mix, even though it is pretty clean overall. The fact the mixing is vastly improved is enough for me to enjoy it over the previous release, where the mixing was awful and the bass was all but inaudible.

Add in inventive neoclassical and jazz-influenced riffs and you have yourself a winner. That's exactly what Gorod do.

Guitarists Nicolas Alberny and Mathieu Pascal weave in and out of tracks like two ancient dragons entwining out of Asian myth. Their movements are precise, fluid, and often long-winded. Their riffs often reach beauteous breaks and apexes, like on "The Axe Of God" or "Elements And Spirit," and other times they find themselves furiously flailing around like on the headbanging closer "Tribute Of Blood."  There's a few clean vocals scattered throughout, like on "The Axe Of God," and I'm not entirely sure how I feel. They fit the progressive nature of the album at least. "5000 At The Funeral" is another track that makes use of progressive elements to further its long, fluid introduction. Other tracks like "Varangian Paradise" with its tropical interlude and "Elements And Spirit" with its jazziness make A Perfect Absolution feel quite progressive as opposed to their more technical earlier releases.

The concept behind all these interesting tracks is the story of a 10th century King Of Kiev who traveled to gather tribute from a neighboring people known as the Drevlians. They tied his limbs to trees, bent down, and released them causing him to be torn limb from limb. His wife took revenge in creative ways such as agreeing to a proposal to meet with the Drevlian ruler, after burying all his messenger's alive. All the high ranking members came to the feast and she had all 5,000 of them killed in the night. Then she forced the neighboring power to submit to her will, and afterwards ironically converted to Christianity. She became a saint for her actions. The cover image is supposed to be of her in some mystical fury-driven state, and I find it pretty fucking sweet despite the design being a little bizarre.

The production is a bit clean at times (during solos, which I guess is appropriate) and sometimes the sweeping in say "Birds Of Sulphur" feels a bit trite. Other than that I feel like Gorod have released a pseudo-return to form album with some really catchy riffs and a better understanding of their appeal. I find A Perfect Absolution  an impressive feat from a band that I nearly dismissed when their last album released.

8.0 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	Birds of Sulphur
2.	Sailing Into the Earth
3.	Elements and Spirit
4.	The Axe of God
5.	5000 at the Funeral
6.	Carved in the Wind
7.	Varangian Paradise
8.	Tribute of Blood

Unique Leader.

Spawn Of Possession - Incurso

Christian Münzner has been rather prolific in the past few years with Obscura and now Spawn Of Possession. Now if you read my earlier reviews of Spawn Of Possession, you'd understand that I found their debut Cabinet to be pretty fucking cool and the overproduced Noctambulant to be an impotent mess. I was hoping for Incurso to be like the debut but expected it to be even more superficial than Noctambulant. I was pleasantly surprised as the album is a pretty healthy medium between both previous releases, but with a more progressive-tinged aggression.

Progressive technical death metal is a subgenre that often falls to self-indulgence and needless guitar fondling. Spawn Of Possession fell to this long before the progressive elements began to shine through their music, and on Incurso these elements are realized and implemented quite well. "The Evangelist" is the first real teaser of this new style. Although the sweep-filled intro isn't necessary, the main riff is pretty memorable and crops up several times throughout the ten-minute track that evolves as it goes. The guitarwork is more melodious and flows better, but obviously this might make the album feel flimsy to some death metal purists. Unlike on Noctambulant though, I'm not offended by this as the improvements to songwriting and structuring make up for it.

There are some heavier tracks on Incurso to make up for the more flowery progressive tracks as well. "Servitude Of Souls" is by and far the heaviest track on the album with its pounding drums and addicting refrain. "Deus Avertat" is no slouch either with it's blend of fast-paced noodling and heavier riffing. Some of the initial tracks like "Where Angels Go Demons Follow" are really insipid though and actually made me feel a bit disappointed prior to listening to the rest of the album. However the musicianship throughout Incurso is, obviously, fantastic.

New Spawn member Erland Casperson (ex-Blood Red Throne) applies some highly talented bass playing to the mix with his varied fingerstyle techniques. I have a lot of respect for Casperson and his work with other bands like Decrepit Birth and Deeds Of Flesh as well as the aforementioned Blood Red Throne. His work on Incurso and in particular the tracks "Deus Avertat," "No Light Spared," and "The Evangelist" further reinforces my opinion of him as one of the best Norwegian bassists of the last decade.

Christian is no slouch either. He's a guitar monster and this album features his most potent chops to date, although once again the album is lacking in the brutality department. The mixing leaves for a weak if barely audible low-end, and the dry guitar tone is pretty irritating. It sounds a bit less overproduced than Noctambulant though, which spawned (pun intended) hordes of mindless clones. It just goes to show how lifeless music is so easy to compose and copy.

I can't say I enjoy the stupid symphonic tracks like the intro "Abodement" and the eight-minute progressive symphonic mess that is "Apparition" either. Symphonics in technical death metal are absolutely worthless and have no place amongst the flurry of ferocity that the music is supposed to embody. However they do attempt to merge these concepts on these two tracks just like they did on the intro and outro of Noctambulant. It's a failed attempt, but an attempt nonetheless.

I do like Incurso though. It's a good album that improves upon its predecessor while still retaining what made that album popular. The progressive elements fit this style of technical death metal perfectly, and it might be Christian's influence on the songwriting process that caused this change. Whatever the case, although it might not be as good as Cabinet or very original in general, Incurso is still a solid release.

7.25 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	Abodement
2.	Where Angels Go Demons Follow
3.	Bodiless Sleeper
4.	The Evangelist
5.	Servitude of Souls
6.	Deus Avertat
7.	Spiritual Deception
8.	No Light Spared
9.	Apparition

Obscura - Illegimitation

I've had the pleasure of meeting Christian Münzner and he's a pretty nice guy. A bit shy, especially about Obscura's earlier material. I actually asked him if I should pick up Retribution and he told me "No, get Cosmogenesis you don't want Retribution. We were shit back then." Well I already had bought Cosmogenesis, and although I wasn't the biggest fan of the band back then (or now), I liked them because their live performance was solid. They knew how to rile the crowd up, and their playing was precise and not overproduced as happens when you don't have all the studio effects miring everything up.

Personally I didn't enjoy Omnivium one bit. It barely felt like death metal if even extreme metal. Now come 2011 and they've released a compilation like all big name bands in metal seem to do, titled Illegimitation.

Generally compilations are pretty worthless to me. Taking a bunch of tracks everyone has heard before and pulling them together on an album to be marketed to fans as a new release is just a cheap way to make a buck. Obviously that isn't always the case and in particular I love when bands happen to re-record old tracks just for the compilation. Otherwise it just feels like a waste of time and money, although occasionally they'll include a few new tracks to tide over people like myself.

Obscura however, didn't.

Instead we've been given three "new" tracks. In fact they're covers of bands that may have had some sort of influence on Obscura at some point. One cover of Death, one of Atheist, and one of Cynic. Tracks one to four are from Obscura's demo (also titled Illegimitation). Funnily enough, "Fear" is pretty badass. I gotta say it sounds like a less polished, more bass-driven Obscura with a degree of heaviness that their later material seems to lack. Obviously as comes with these first four tracks being demo quality, they're significantly less polished than their recent output. The drumming is imprecise, the guitarwork is much more simple, and the basslines are more mid-paced and groovy. Everything seems to flow well in my opinion, although if you're a fan of Obscura you've heard these same tracks before.

Tracks five to seven are from a preproduction of Cosmogenesis, and I definitely like the sound on these more than that of the album. "Incarnated" sounds more aggressive and "Headworm" is pretty dense for an Obscura track with its chugging triplets. I mean there's nothing special about any of these tracks, but I guess if you wanted to hear how Obscura would sound without the studio overproducing everything they do, this is what it'd be like. The covers however are awful. I cannot stress how horrid the cover of Atheist's "Piece Of Time" is. The vocals are horrendous and there just seems to be some big disconnect between the band and the song. The "How Could I" (Cynic) cover is significantly better but it doesn't really make up for the Atheist cover. The Death cover is pretty passable as is everything Death did post-Human.

There's not much fluidity to the tracks on here and the theme seems to be "unreleased tracks," which is never a justifiable reason to create a compilation unless those unreleased tracks share a similar theme or style. Illegimitation doesn't really show this, with different members, production changes, and stylistic changes all making their appearance on Illegimitation. Oh well. It just further reinforces my opinion that compilations are worthless.

4.75 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	...And All Will Come to an End
2.	Crucified
3.	Fear
4.	Immanent Desaster
5.	Incarnated
6.	Open the Gates
7.	Headworm
8.	Flesh and the Power it Holds (Death cover)
9.	Piece of Time (Atheist cover)
10.	How Could I (Cynic cover)

Son Of Aurelius - The Farthest Reaches

I'm really busy as of late. I went to Boston with the girlfriend, grabbed All Pigs Must Die's EP on vinyl, heard about the vinyl repressing being done for Mitochondrion's Archaeaeon and promptly cried since I may not be able to afford the limited Gold Edition anytime soon since I've been spending so much money. I've also been extremely busy with schoolwork. I have three exams in difficult computer science and math classes coming up this week, and while I'm writing this I'm working on finishing a paper about a subject for my easy-mode PoliSci course that is so pointless to address since it's in discussions everywhere, everyday: gay marriage. I'm a page and a half in. Only five more to go and it's almost 1AM...

Anyway I present to you my new quickie format. One paragraph and a score for an album I've stumbled across and don't have time to properly review.

So the first of this series is melodic tech-prog metallers Son Of Aurelius on their debut The Farthest Reaches, with it's bright and flamboyant album cover. It does a great job of expressing the flowery music contained within. Here we have pretty stereotypical tech-prog performed by very young musicians - in other words it's every bit as colorful and zesty as the album cover. That's not really a means of bashing them as tech-prog isn't a simple genre to succeed in, and they deliver the goods when it comes to this subgenre. These guys clearly have talent and they display it copiously on tracks like "Facing The Gorgon," "The Fist, The Serpent," and "A Good Death." There's loads of soloing, plenty of arpeggios, and harmonized twin guitars not unlike many melodic death metal bands. There's not much in the way of brutality on The Farthest Reaches though, so don't go in expecting much there and the production and light guitars won't aggravate. Plus while nothing here is wholly original, it's all executed relatively well by a band that has plenty of time to improve their songwriting talents which are admittedly lacking at this stage but not offensively bad. Definitely a band to watch for in the tech-prog scene.

6.75 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	Mercy For Today
2.	Let Them Hate and Fear
3.	The Farthest Reaches
4.	Olympus is Forgotten
5.	Facing the Gorgon
6.	Pandora's Burden
7.	A Champion Reborn
8.	Mycordial Infarction
9.	The Calm
10.	A Good Death
11.	The First, the Serpent

Link removed at request of the band.

Cormorant - Dwellings

Cormorant's Dwellings was one of my favorite albums of 2011 as you could see on my top 25 list. The full cover art is also pretty sweet and captures the progressive, whimsical feel of the album.

 

I'm not normally a fan of progressive metal. I find the whining vocals and over-indulgent instrumentation and soloing to be dull and emotionally transparent. These guys are an exception, although I wouldn't go so far as to label them as purely progressive metal. They have elements of black metal and folk metal present in their sound as well, and Dwellings is anything but an album that can be pigeonholed in such a way.

Opener "The First Man" should be an obvious example of why Dwellings can't be easily labeled. The main riff is folk-ish, with a treble dominant sound, and it slowly progresses into a mid-paced jazz break halfway through the track. The whole album flows like the winding coils of a snake, undulating between black metal riffing, progressive melodies, all backed with a dense ethereal atmosphere. Slower tracks like "Funambulist" and "Unearthly Dreamings" dominate the soundscape with rich textures and solos that remain fluid. Cormorant never delves into self-indulgent wankery either. Even the mid-album instrumental "Confusion Of Tongues" avoids this while remaining a solid showcase of musicianship. The folk melodies resurface on"A Howling Dust" while "The Purest Land" has what is perhaps the most black metal influenced intro on Dwellings. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the variety is here if it's what you're looking for - and all of the different styles are implemented near flawlessly.

Speaking of flaws, there aren't many on Dwellings. The most blatant complaint I had is with the vocals. The cleans and monotone shouting work most of the time, but sometimes on tracks like "Junta" and the latter half of "The Purest Land" they get a bit grating. The production values are pretty stellar and every instrument is completely noticeable. Thanks to the huge amount of variety on here, Dwellings succeeds in being an atmospheric and emotionally compelling piece of progressive metal.

8.5 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	The First Man
2.	Funambulist
3.	Confusion of Tongues
4.	Junta
5.	The Purest Land
6.	A Howling Dust
7.	Unearthly Dreamings

Bandcamp (because the interbutts is dead)

Vektor - Outer Isolation

Merry Chrimbus kids! I hope you enjoyed your stocking stuffers. I decided to get you a new review.

Vektor. A band I've heard so much about yet listened to so little. I obviously need to get on that because Vektor is awesome and Outer Isolation kicks major ass.

Let me start by saying that I'm extremely fond of technicality in songwriting. If a band can play complex rhythms, intensely difficult riffs, and incorporate odd songwriting elements like atonality or serialism, there's a high chance I'm going to think they're awesome as long as they back it up with evocative progressions. This is what Vektor attempts to do on Outer Isolation, fit to the mold of thrash, not too different from what Anacrusis and Voivod were doing almost twenty years ago. My listening experience with those two bands is pretty minimal though, so Vektor sounds fresh and interesting.

As I mentioned, Vektor is pretty goddamn technical. There are jazz interludes and bridges like on "Venus Project," fret-melting solos like on nearly every goddamn track, even a few chromatic basslines, all with a ridiculous tempo. There's also a buttload of banshee screeches that make Tom Araya's squeal at the beginning of "Angel Of Death" seem pedestrian in comparison. "Tetrastructural Minds" starts with one which leads into one of the best and most catchy riffs on the album. "Dark Creations, Dead Creators" is an underrated thrash monster of a track and the title track wraps everything up in a spaceship-sized gift box and shoots it straight into orbit with one of the more jazz-influenced solos on the album.

Outer Isolation as a whole is a very cohesive album with a strong unifying theme. The production is almost geared towards a more progressive sound, with a dry, poppy bass tone. This contrasts with the more aggressive and thrashy Black Future, but it is also nice to see the band evolving in some direction rather than playing the same damn thing over and over. This album is definitely a hit with me.

8.75 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	Cosmic Cortex
2.	Echoless Chamber
3.	Dying World
4.	Tetrastructural Minds
5.	Venus Project
6.	Dark Creations, Dead Creators
7.	Fast Paced Society
8.	Outer Isolation

Unexpect - Fables Of the Sleepless Empire

This album screams cheese. If you enjoy this stuff then I don't know whether to be sorry for trashing it or sorry for you,

I've outgrown this stuff. I might've enjoyed this years ago, but Unexpect's Fables Of The Sleepless Empire is everything I absolutely hate about flamboyant, noodling "progressive" metal. The band's juvenile attempts at being "avant-garde" come off as half-baked and cheesy. Symphonic elements - violins, operatic female vocals, neo-classical guitars, and some of the most fruity keyboards this side of Cradle Of Filth - rule Fables Of The Sleepless Empire from beginning to end. There was a time where I thought Kalisia was tolerable, and Persefone was pretty badass, but now is not that time.

As long as you understand that, you can go ahead and dismiss (or applaud) the rest of this review.

Structurally speaking, most of these songs are actually fairly predictable in that they have different movements that build to a particular climax. That's about all they have going for themselves though. Otherwise you're subject to a forgettable and disorganized blur of arpeggiations emanating from both guitar and keyboard. Talented but trite female vocals really dampen the excitement offered by the flurry of instruments. Add some forced, high-pitched harsh vocals underneath the female lead and you have a recipe for me getting a headache. This headache peaked during the first half of noodle-synthfest "Mechanical Phoenix" and didn't go away until I walked away from my damn speakers.

Now that I think about it, my hatred for this album - piss poor songwriting aside - might be due to it not being "heavy." I've heard acoustic folk albums heavier than this. Atmospherically speaking Fables Of The Sleepless Empire falls flat on its face. Why? Because there isn't any atmosphere. Unexpect even manages to botch the atmosphere in longer tracks where they have time to build like "Unfed Pendulum," and did I just hear fucking palm-muting? Seriously that was some of the weakest palm-muting I've ever heard this side of newer Whitechapel. This is largely because of the no bass, ultra compressed production values present throughout the album. The snare sounds flat and the pillow bass drum is insanely aggravating. There's no escaping them either, except for when this shit stops spinning.

At least the musicians have a degree of talent. It's just a shame they decided to waste it on this pretentious, musically inept album.

3.5 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	Unsolved Ideas of a Distorted Guest
2.	Words
3.	Orange Vigilantes
4.	Mechanical Phoenix
5.	The Quantum Symphony
6.	Unfed Pendulum
7.	In the Mind of the Last Whale
8.	Silence this Parasite
9.	A Fading Stance
10.	When the Joyful Dead Are Dancing
11.	Until Yet a Few More Deaths Do Us Part

Virus - The Agent That Shapes The Desert

For the last thirty-one days of the year I'm planning to do a review on a 2011 album every day. It'll get me in the writing mood and serve as a break from studying for finals.

 

Tritones out the ass. That's what Norway's Virus' The Agent That Shapes The Desert sounds like. This agent is rhythmically jazzy and dissonant, with a pinch of metal. Although pretty much avant-garde rock, Virus has made quite the name for themselves in the metal scene as well. In this way they're kind of like Porcupine Tree after they assimilated a bunch of pretentious metalheads into their fanbase.

Except Virus is significantly better than slightly above-average progressive rock.

The Agent That Shapes The Desert is a very cohesive album. The instruments are all extremely bright, noticeable, and really pull you in. There's a degree of production here that's unprecedented in this kind of music, and it captures the atmosphere that the music is trying to convey perfectly, making it extremely memorable. Songs like "Chromium Sun" open with a galloping (no not triplets) bassline and keep the tritones and major-sevenths flowing. Others like "Continental Drift" manage this speed over slower chord progressions, creating a slow-moving, geologic feel to the music. The deep bassy distortion at the beginning of the latent track "Dead Cities Of Syria" is addicting and droning, and the song builds nicely on that strong foundation. All the songs are very well-crafted, and it really conveys the precambrian-mesopotamian theme of the album well.

Much to my dismay they had to ruin the fun and add in some of the more boring vocals I've heard this year to each and every track. They almost have an operatic-symphonic quality to them similar to other progressive rock or metal bands, and I always tend to find this style hit or miss. Sure sometimes it's fitting and you can hear the lyrics clearly, but the sheer enunciation of the vocals really kills the atmosphere. Had this been an instrumental avant-garde or even math rock album it probably would've been a bit more tolerable. There are some instances where I feel they work really well though - "Parched Rapids" comes to mind first. The song's innate dissonance and the good use of rests resonates with Czarl's off-kelter vocal approach.

If you're looking for well-written avant-garde rock with several degrees of jazz, metal, and progressive music in its sound, I wouldn't put it past The Agent That Shapes The Desert for it to be exactly what you're looking for.

7.5 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	The Agent That Shapes The Desert
2.	Continental Drift
3.	Chromium Sun
4.	Red Desert Sand
5.	Intermission: Furnace Creek
6.	Dead Cities Of Syria
7.	Where The Flame Resides
8.	Parched Rapids
9.	Call Of The Tuskers