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July 25, 2018

The Lion's Daughter - Future Cult

By Justin C.

I called The Lion's Daughter's last album, Existence Is Horror, "full-bore blackened sludge." Their newest, Future Cult, is built on the same foundation, but with a new twist: synths!

I will admit upfront that, because I am an old, I often equate heavy synths automatically with 80s music. Fair is fair, a lot of interesting things have been done since that time in terms of electronic music, but that tends to be my basic starting point. With that admission out of the way, I think The Lion's Daughter is definitely borrowing on a bit of 80s nostalgia here. A lot's been said about the slightly-modern-yet-still-retro soundtrack of the hit show Stranger Things. If you've seen that show, I dare you to listen to "Call the Midnight Animal" and NOT think of Eleven traveling to the upside-down to fight monsters. In fact, I think "Call the Midnight Animal" would make a better soundtrack to that show's boss battles, given the ferocity of the hardcore-blackened-prog-sludge that underlies the mean-sounding arcade game synth riff the song is built on.

For fans of the band's previous work, I think Future Cult could be a love-it-or-hate-it kind of album. I've seen a few grumblings about it being a "mix of synthwave and plodding hardcore." But even if this new layer to the band's sound isn't to everyone's taste, I think comments like that are overly dismissive. The band hasn't just slapped synths on top of the template from their last album. Basic sonic similarities aside, they've let some of these songs breathe a bit. "The Gown" mixes in a heavy dose of eerie atmosphere with a slower-burning doom feel. I'll admit that this doesn't always work--I think a couple of tracks, including "Grease Infant," fail to build up the necessary momentum for what the band's going for here.

A few missteps aside, though, this is still a tight album at 37 minutes, and if you dug the band's last album, you owe it to yourself to give this one a fair spin. If the band had just redone Existence Is Horror with the chords in a different order, we'd all be bored, but they've taken a somewhat-risky step out into potentially more interesting waters. I'll be curious to see if, down the road, we look back on this as a bit of a transitional album on the band's part, moving into a sonic area that they may not have fully under their control yet. But even so, I think this album still stands on its own as another solid entry in their discography.

July 21, 2018

Skeletonwitch - Devouring Radiant Light

By Calen Henry.

Skeletonwitch are my favorite blackened thrash band. No other has quite the same mix of caustic blackened riffs and vocals with a deep-seated sense of melody pervading this sound. Devouring Radiant Light is the band’s first full length in five years, and their first with Adam Clemens, after the dramatic departure of founding vocalist Chance Garnette. It sounds like a proper rebirth. The album art is the first clue. Skeletonwitch 1.0’s covers were always adorned with a fanged, antlered skull. It was their Eddie or Vic Rattlehead. Devouring Radiant Light eschews that for the first time. Instead, it’s a simple painting of a faceless hooded figure, wreathed in mist. It’s more Gothic, stately, and sinister than before, and perfectly reflects that change in musical style.

It’s not a reinvention, though. New vocalist Adam Clemens’ vocals are on point. He brings the same witch rasp as Garnette did, supported by the same lightning black-thrash attack juxtaposed against the supreme melodicism of the lead guitars and solos, peppered with chromatic and bluesy runs. In short, it’s Skeletonwitch, and it rips. But it does way more than just rip. It’s the most expansive, dynamic, and layered record in the band’s catalog. Most of the tracks have more elaborate compositions than before, with more time given to letting them build and flow. That can make the record seem less accessible than previous outings at first blush, but repeated listens reveal highly detailed songs that are more than mere riff collections. They flow in and out of classic Skeletonwitch with moments of legato lyrical guitar leads, clean vocals, and slow doomy builds. The centerpiece of this is, undeniably, the title track. Starting with a slow clean intro, it weaves through eight minutes of new and old ‘Witch, ending with a beautiful natural guitar harmonic passage.

The only black mark on the album is the production. Like Serpents Unleashed, it was produced by Kurt Ballou. He's a heavy hitter in “loud metal” production, and it's serviceable, but only just. Ballou is known for more straightforward loud bands, and Skeletonwitch have elegantly exited that group on Devouring Radiant Light. The music is more nuanced than Skeletonwitch has ever been before, and it really deserved a producer like Colin Marston, who knows how to bring out both the dirt and the detail of a metal band. The album succeeds in spite of the production, not because of it.

And the album is a complete success, musically. It's simply the best record in Skeletonwitch's catalog. It's everything one could have hoped for from Skeletonwitch 2.0: ripping blackened thrash at heart, but brought to a new level with the kind of experimentation the band never attempted before.

July 20, 2018

Khôrada - Salt

By Justin C.

Artwork by Cedric Wentworth.

Writing about a band like Khôrada is both a joy and, ironically, a truly difficult task. Lots of reviews talk about bands that "defy genre boundaries"--I'm sure I've personally said it before--but Khôrada makes me regret using that phrase to describe any band other than them. It's not that you'll hear some Jute Gyte weirdness or a metal band made up of only tuba players. You'll hear familiar bits of doom, black metal, sludge, and what we olds used to just call "rock and roll," but they're combined and performed so flawlessly that it almost seems like something completely new. Familiar and elusive at the same time.

Most people probably know the headlines on this one: Aaron John Gregory, vocalist and guitarist of Giant Squid, joins three former members of Agalloch: Don Anderson on guitar, Jason Walton on bass, and Aesop Dekker on drums. That will be the marketing pitch, anyway, and it's a smart way to get them a lot of attention. But if fans come looking for a bit of Agalloch Part II, they're going to be much disappointed, because this is not that. What they will find, though, is some truly brilliant, emotionally hefty music. No "new" band should be this good on their first outing, although of course these aren't 18-year-olds making their first record, either.

The debut album, Salt, is unapologetically about environmental collapse and possible extinction-level events for the human race. The opening track, "Edeste," has lyrics like

Nature is convinced
it's time for a sixth extinction event
before man has the chance
to gnaw her to the bone.

Nobody's hiding their lyrical intent here. "Water Rights" is also not coy about being a protest song about the Dakota Access Pipeline and Standing Rock protests:

When word comes down the pipe
from the biggest suit of all
to pillage their water rights
as the snow falls
Disregard their thirst.

Mixed in is a short but devastating portrait of a miscarriage ("Augustus") and a scene of a parent explaining to their child about man-made climate change ("Wave State").

Gregory's vocals are uniquely his own, although I often found myself jotting down comparisons to other singers--maybe a hint of Mark Kozelek at the end of "Edeste"? A little bit of Tom Waits's gruffness in "Water Rights"? But name-checking won't really help me describe his unique voice to you. There are a few snarls, but he mainly sticks to a mid-range clean that veers ever-so-close to over the top without ever actually going there. These lyrics could make for a schmaltz-fest in the wrong hands, but he manages heart-breaking emotional highs and lows in a powerful, straightforward way. The musicians meet him at his level, adding instrumentals that may be a bit cerebral at times, but never emotionally remote. This might be one of the few bands that truly deserves the label "progressive," not in the sense of a weird, technical wankfest or 70s throwback, but music that truly moves us and them forward at the same time.

I don't know what kind of reception this album will get. Some true metalheads might find it not enough, whereas it may still be too heavy for others. The words are topical and current, but on the other hand, this is a bad time (particularly in the U.S.) to express sincere environmental concerns without fact-less hordes shouting you down. But it's a truly special and remarkable album, so I hope it's heard and enjoyed as widely as possible.