Saturday Chart

1. Voivod—To the Death 84 (Alternative Tentacles) which I just reviewed at Hellbound.ca, as it happens.
2. Picnic at Hanging Rock (Criterion)
3. Tangerine Dream—Phaedra (Virgin)
4. Gary Numan—"Are 'Friends' Electric?"
5. Thinking Plague—In This Life (RER)

Saturday Chart

1. Vektor—Outer Isolation (Heavy Artillery Records)
2. Heart—Live on "Second Ending" 1976

3. Pallbearer—Demo 2010
4. Peter Hammill—"People You Were Going To"
5. Black Mountain—"Mary Lou" from the Year Zero Soundtrack

Saturday Chart

To kill some time before the rest of the family gets up, here's a list of what I've been into this week.

1. UFO—The Chrysalis Years (1973–1979)
2. Wolves in the Throne Room—Celestial Lineage

I have two projects that I need to finish, and both conclude with blurbs about Wolves in the Throne Room. At this point, does anyone want to read anything else about Wolves in the Throne Room? I'm not sure I do.

3. Astra—"Quake Meat" (advance track from The Black Chord)
4. Ancients—"Raise the Sun" (unmastered advance track from the new album)
5. Caravan—"Where But For Caravan Would I?"

Not the song in question...

A Difficult 2011, 20 to 16

I've already posted full reviews of each of these albums, so the blurbs are relatively short for this installment.

20. Abriosis—Tattered and Bound

Abriosis are the only other Canadian band to make this list. I had to give them a placing based on their ripping live set and this world-class album. Tattered and Bound is a masterclass in discordant, technical death metal. Old-school, raw metal of death got most of the press in 2011, but I’m always in the market for a few key tech-death albums every year. Abriosis cut through with clarity and precision. Attention, Willowtip!

19. Earth—Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I (Southern Lord)

For all their sprawl, the last few Earth albums were tightly wound. There was great discipline in their repetition and tempos. It was like watching a tightrope walker; balance and symmetry in action. On Angels of Darkness... they let go of all that and did not fall. The music often just hovers there as Dylan Carlson directs the band with a light touch on the guitar. Get ready for Angels of Darkness II very soon.

18. Led Bib—Bring Your Own (Cuneiform)

I love Led Bib’s brand of raucous, hard-hitting action jazz. It’s exciting to hear saxophones duking it out for supremacy as the rhythm section races away like Prost and Senna side by side, heading into turn one. The dynamics and live power of five crack musicians playing together delivers the kind of jolt that I don’t often get from rock records. I haven’t sampled much of Cuneiform’s jazz roster, but I’m glad I took a chance on Led Bib, first with 2009’s Sensible Shoes and now with this fantastic follow-up.

17. Nicklas Barker—El Ultimo Fin De Semana

The soundtrack album lives on. Nicklas Barker’s main band is Anekdoten, and he brings that band’s melancholy (and Mellotron) to this collection of instrumentals written for a Spanish thriller. Some rock soundtrack albums work well as rock albums, full stop, such as Pink Floyd’s More Soundtrack (appreciated here) or Air’s The Virgin Suicides. Those albums incorporated songs amidst the musical interludes, whereas this one doesn’t. Still, its eerie snippets of music form a nicely sustained mood piece. The opening theme of “Celestial Ghost” will get under your skin immediately.

16. Six Organs of Admittance—Asleep on the Floodplain (Drag City)

Ben Chasny turned in quite an intimate record this time around. Asleep on the Floodplain offers a number of solo guitar performances as well as forlorn ballads and a big, buzzing hypnotic thing (“S/Word and Leviathan”) that's either the product of inspired improvisation or a happy accident in the studio...maybe a bit of both. Chasny's understated virtuosity has never been more evident. I'll always be impressed by his ability to create such vivid pictures with simple elements.

A Difficult 2011, 25 to 21

2011 was an annoying year. Ignorance and pettiness thrived. Stephen Harper and his creepy, Crispin Gloverish grin wouldn't go away—came back stronger and more insipid than ever, in fact. Good people died, friends moved away, living got more expensive. Belligerence abounded: attack the CBC, attack the poor, attack anyone who dares fight to maintain a living wage. As long as we have the oil sands and a resilient real estate bubble, we're all right, Jack. Who needs a plan beyond that?

Musically, I didn’t try very hard to keep up in 2011. I sought out music that would provide more comfort than challenge. I’ve gotten more depressed and baffled by the idea of music as a free commodity. Being a metal fan insulates me from that reality somewhat. Metalheads still talk in terms of albums. Record labels and album art/packaging are still regarded as important. We’re all getting older, though, and these attitudes will get drowned out eventually. I'm bracing myself for the end by getting used to downloading more music. Bandcamp is a great resource for this, making it simple to sample, download, and pay for new music. I'm also trying to downsize the collection by ripping CDs to the computer and storing them away. Going alphabetically, I'm up to "F" and I've still got 800 GB of space left on this baby. I hope to have a few GB left to play with when I'm done. Or maybe my iMac's CD drive will have crapped out before then...

Anyway, here we go. I'll do a top 25 this time (in five installments), which represents the bulk of what I bought this year. There are a few stragglers and neglected items that I may mention once I'm done, if I have any brain left.

25. Gigan—Quasi Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes (Willowtip)

We’re in the deep end immediately with this vortex of cosmic tech death. Gigan attack their chosen genre with the barbarity of early Kataklysm and the dissonance of Voivod. Really, these Chicagoans should be honorary Canadians, such is their commitment to weird metal. Revisiting this after a few months, I’m struck by how catchy all the squeaks, screeches, and squalls are. Guitarist/composer Eric Hersemann’s pedal board is like another member of the band, such is its presence in the music—no signal goes unprocessed, it seems. When they played at the Biltmore this summer as part of the Grave tour, I got to stand unimpeded at the front of the stage while they did their thing. A good portion of the crowd, who’d been happily slamming to Pathology earlier, retreated to the bar. Their loss.

24. Barn Owl—Lost in the Glare (Thrill Jockey)

Barn Owl’s emanations are solemn and expansive, often catching that moment when the brightest sunlight casts the darkest shadows. Mysterious devices drone; guitars ring out, feed back, fall apart, and fade away. Although their music has a lot in common with Six Organs of Admittance and Earth, Barn Owl’s take on psychedelic Americana is more loosely structured and flits from mood to mood between tracks more readily. “The Darkest Night Since 1683” is a deep sea of power chords. “Midnight Tide” conjures visions of a distant desert caravan shimmering in the heat haze. Barn Owl sound like they want to be anywhere but here. Don’t we all from time to time?

23. 40 Watt Sun—The Inside Room (Metal Blade)

I had no problem connecting with The Inside Room on an emotional level. Patrick Walker’s voice and lyrics carry a longing that'll resonate with anyone who has squandered love or loved to no avail. The music’s plodding rhythms and sheets of distortion pound the sorrow right through your skin. This didn’t rate higher because I’m just now starting to shake off the impression that this short album is still overlong, and that none of the songs surpass the opening track, “Restless.” I can now hear that the album’s five tracks have some real depth—each has a lyric or chord progression that hits me hard—but I can sympathize with those who didn’t “get” this album. Many labeled it doom, probably because of Walker’s previous band Warning. In 40 Watt Sun’s case, the label is a bit misleading. Doom requires riffs, I think, and there aren’t any here. Instead, 40 Watt Sun fit alongside Jesu with their overamped, crawling melancholy, or (if you can imagine the distortion rolled off almost entirely) even bands like Codeine and Seam. However you want to categorize it, this was a brave debut.

22. Mitochondrion—Parasignosis (Profound Lore)

To outsiders, the Pacific Northwest must look like nothing but sea for sailing, mountains for skiing, and teeming with hip, multicultural urbanites, lululemoned and goretexed from Ugg boots to ponytail (both girls and guys). In reality, this region pulsates with murder, drugs, and a history of religious cults and intolerance. Not everyone came here for the sushi. Many came here with the desire to be left the hell alone to do what they wilt behind a curtain of rain and forest. I know nothing about Mitochondrion as people, but their twisted, murky death metal embodies the hermetic aspect of the Pacific Northwest. It does not budge from the mossy cave it occupies. It doesn’t react well to light, so it’s best just to stand back and experience its awesome rumblings from a safe distance.

21. Zombi—Escape Velocity (Relapse)

Zombi’s work had been getting increasingly symphonic up till Escape Velocity, which saw them retreating a bit, stripping the music down, focusing on rhythm and repetition. I thought it was an interesting diversion into Logan’s Run “Space Disco” territory, where future generations had feathered hair and wore polyester tunics. I was bummed to hear they stopped doing Laser Zeppelin at the Planetarium last weekend; Laser Zombi will never come to pass, I’m afraid.

Hierarchies—Magnitogorsk

I caught local duo Hierarchies at the Biltmore recently, performing a set (to far too few people) coaxed from various guitars, synths, and pedals. If it hadn’t been my first time seeing them, and if I hadn’t needed to get up close to see how they were creating this sound, I’d have laid back on one of the club’s plush benches and shut my eyes to soak it in. To label their music drone/ambient is too easy, and also unfair. Sure, the dynamic in these four tracks isn’t very jagged. I guess it’s droney. There’s no beats, no overt melody. Structure is defined by a track’s running length, or maybe a gradual shift in volume, as on the title track, where an overdriven hum rises over the course of four minutes, like a cluster of howling ghosts, before fading as previously buried spectral sounds swirl into the foreground. I don’t like the “ambient” part of the label, either, because it implies that the music isn’t designed to be listened to closely. Why would anyone spend time recording music that was meant to be ignored? Not these guys, obviously. There’s a lot of nuance and activity below the surface. Each track ripples like a pool of liquid electricity in an abandoned factory. What's most remarkable is how these sounds evoke the natural world while sounding like nothing out of nature. The effect is insistent and disquieting in its own subtle way.

This is called 2012...

As a facebook friend said, "In a hundred years it will be 2112!" I'll have popped my clogs long before everyone's holding the red star proudly high in hand, but I'll be there in spirit.

For 2012 I'm pledging to post more. I was really disappointed with my output here, especially when it came to show reviews. 2011 was a great year for gigs, but you wouldn't know it from the piss-poor 27 posts I wrote. I did manage to contribute a few things to Hellbound.ca, although not enough to enter their coveted (by me) tag cloud. It's been a while since I listed my "playing away" work, so here are my Hellbound reviews for 2011:

• I got to the Hammers of Misfortune show in December before Kyle Harcott did, so I contributed a blurb on opening band Mendozza to round out his excellent review.

• A review of COMM, by The Tangent. I hate the Internet as much as anyone, but this album's theme tested even my tolerance at first. I came to really enjoy the album, though.

• Reviewing an album twice is real hard, but I'm glad I made a second pass through Primordial's Redemption at the Puritan's Hand for Hellbound in November.

• I'd never checked out Polish proggers Riverside before, but after Sean Palmerston gave me the promo of Memories in My Head this summer, I gained a real appreciation for this classy EP.

• I was blown away by the onslaught of local talent at July's Riffs Not Riots show, so much so that I named it as my Metal Event of the Year for Hellbound. Kyle and I teamed up for a review. I think I met Ted Reckoning for the first time at this show. His awesome photographs grace our review.

• Blizaro was one of my favourite discoveries of 2011. Their loopy mix of proto-metal and Goblin inspired this review.

• I'm always eager to add to Hellbound's Vinyl Reviews, and I got an opportunity with Baptists' debut 7-inch. Nice to see the mighty Southern Lord Records snap up a local band.

• Zombi's Escape Velocity was minimal and trance-y, an interesting variation on their sound.

• France's CloverSeeds put out a catchy album that'd appeal to Pineapple Thief or Porcupine Tree fans, but they'd benefit from some lyrical translation help.

I'll start posting A Difficult 2011 very soon. In the meantime, please check out Hellbound's Top 20 Albums of 2011 here, here, here, and (finally) here.

Happy New Year!

He's dead, Jim.

David Gold, RIP

Last Thursday I checked my Twitter feed, same as I do every morning, to see the shocking, unbelievable news that David Gold of Woods of Ypres had been killed in a highway accident in Ontario the previous afternoon. He was 31.

It’s a cruel world. Achieving good things requires struggle and sacrifice. The bad stuff seemingly happens at random, arriving out of nowhere, immune to human intention. It’s sobering to realize that even someone like David couldn’t hold those dark forces back.

David achieved a hell of a lot with Woods of Ypres. Four self-released albums and several self-booked North American tours culminated in a contract with Earache Records. Their new album, Woods V: Grey Skies and Electric Light, was scheduled for a 2012 release. Now, his chance to promote his work and take the band to Europe (where they would have gone down a storm, I’m sure) is all gone, thanks to cruel fate.

I prefer to keep a degree of separation from the people whose work I write about, but that was difficult with David. We met through Unrestrained! magazine. Adrian Bromley was a big fan—I’ll always remember “The Energizer” playing me excerpts from Woods II over the phone, he was so excited about it. We put Woods of Ypres on the cover when Woods III: Deepest Roots and Darkest Blues came out. The issue featured an exceptional email interview with David (who was living in Korea at the time) by Tate Bengtson. Here at Difficult Music, writing about WoY albums was always a pleasure. David’s lyrics, loaded with soul-baring stanzas, Canadian references, and black humour, gave me plenty to ponder.

I introduced myself to David at Adrian’s memorial event in Toronto, which WoY headlined. When Woods tours started extending to the West Coast, we’d always say hi. Even though I’m not the most in-your-face person, he always remembered my name and would eagerly give me the lowdown on current and future Woods activities. He was a super nice guy and a superb spokesman for not just his band, but, as I witnessed at the 2009 Noctis Conference in Calgary, the Canadian music scene in general.

So, on the day of David’s memorial service, I wanted to send my condolences to David’s family and express my sorrow for the loss of such a fine, talented person.

Pink Floyd—Music From the Film More (EMI)

Until now, this was the only Waters-era Pink Floyd album I’ve never owned. I’d been looking for it for a few years, after realizing that my favourite Pink Floyd era was that fiendishly productive and exploratory period between Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Dark Side of the Moon. I managed to pick up their other soundtrack album, Obscured by Clouds, on LP, but finding a decent copy of More was difficult. The recent Pink Floyd reissue campaign couldn’t have come soon enough. Suddenly the Floyd were everywhere, even in London Drugs, which got me feeling nostalgic, seeing as I bought a lot of my music at London Drugs as a kid. KISS albums, mostly. London Drugs doesn’t need my help though, so I picked my shiny new copy of More at the soon-to-be-empty edifice of HMV Downtown.

When you open the mini-gatefold LP sleeve, you can see a lady’s boobs, which makes up for the fact that there are no bonus tracks. There’s also a nice booklet with lyrics and stills from the movie. That’s it. If there were liner notes, they might go something like this: Music From the Film More was recorded between A Saucerful of Secrets and Ummagumma at Abbey Road. Director Barbet Schroeder paid each member of Pink Floyd 600 pounds apiece to put in the eight days’ work that produced this music: 13 songs and assorted jams and fragments; their various lengths dictated by the film, which was pretty much complete by the time the band started recording. In his book Inside Out, Nick Mason recalls, “A lot of the moods of the film…were ideally suited to some of the rumblings, squeaks and sound textures we produced on a regular basis night after night.”

Side one has the best songs, written by Waters and mainly sung by Gilmour. They held on to a few of them after the album’s release, with numbers like “Green Is the Colour” and “Cymbaline” showing up on BBC Sessions and other live sets. Nowadays, “The Nile Song” may be the best-known song on the album, having been covered by Voivod, Melvins, and others. For Pink Floyd, it’s practically garage rock, and they wouldn’t record anything so brash until maybe “Young Lust” or “Not Now John.” My personal favourite, though, is the opening track, “Cirrus Minor,” a slightly sinister wisp of a song that presages Waters’ “Grantchester Meadows” with its acoustic guitar picking, sleepy vocal lines, and dubbed-in birdsong.

Side two focuses on atmospheres. “Main Theme” is effectively eerie, with the bass and drum interplay foreshadowing the minimalist drone of OM by a couple decades. “Dramatic Theme” closes the album with a similar jam, with Gilmour playing a more prominent role. “Quicksilver,” the longest piece, sounds like what Schroeder was probably after in the first place, resembling “A Saucerful of Secrets” without the narrative thrust. “Ibiza Bar” is a cool variant on “The Nile Song”’s groove. “More Blues” is exactly as advertised—a straight up blues jam. You have to take the bad with the good, though. Fans often name “Seamus” off Meddle as their least favourite Pink Floyd track, but I’d nominate David Gilmour’s “A Spanish Piece” from More as another low point.

It would take Pink Floyd a few more albums to fully merge their two strengths—the songs and the atmospheres—into an even stronger whole, but just hearing them dabbling in the studio, finding their way in the absence of Syd Barrett’s erratic vision, is fascinating enough.

YOB—Atma (Profound Lore)

2009’s The Great Cessation was a stern, angry album that signalled YOB’s tumultuous rebirth after a period of label-imposed strife for mainman Mike S. Although Atma is another forbidding record, the band sounds at relative peace. The songs don’t dip quite so deeply into the abyss and the riffs sing out a little more. While the “doom” tag fits, I think their music encompasses much more. To me, doom entails some connection to rock & roll and the blues—you know, Black Sabbath and stuff. YOB’s music doesn’t look backwards. It looks within. It’s grim and monolithic, residing closer to Neurosis than, say, Candlemass.

Mike S. is a one-man guitar army deploying an orchestrated barrage of tones. He’s one of the most accomplished and distinctive guitarists in metal. He can riff relentlessly, piling on variation after variation, as he does on the first seven minutes of “Before We Dreamed of Two” before a classic calm-before-the-storm section with guest Scott Kelly takes over. His guitar is also a punitive instrument, as on the title track, where imposing riffs lead to a long stretch of unaccompanied one-note palm muting from which the climactic riff erupts. The power coming off those tortured strings is intimidating.

There’s usually at least one song per YOB album that swings a bit, like “Quantum Mystic” from The Unreal Never Lived. It took a couple listens to pinpoint it on Atma. Opening track “Prepare the Ground” is the one, though. It swings inexorably; it's a testament to the band's discipline that they managed to hold back and avoid giving it more of a "boogie" feel. “Adrift in the Ocean”—my favourite song on the album—features the tranquil side of YOB, opening with two and a half minutes of atmospheric guitar picking before blasting off for 11 exhilarating minutes that blend crushing guitars and strong vocal melodies. Mike S. uses his upper register—a mutant Burke Shelley/Geddy Lee yowl that’s always been one of YOB’s most appealing elements to me—more than he has since Catharsis.

The production is hideous but effective. The guitars are smothered with pillows, while the drums are brittle and papery. It actually sounds better through earbuds than on my stereo at apartment volume. Cranking it to move some air would help, I’m sure. It’s got character though, and does not hinder the power of YOB one bit. As history has proved, nothing can stop this band. They possess enough inspiration and soul to prevail every time they head into the studio. The chorus of "Prepare the Ground" sums up their attitude (and it's a notion I need to apply to my own life): "Breathe in the power of no tomorrow."

The Unsupervised—Elevator

I’ve seen The Unsupervised more than any other band over the last few years. It’s always a treat heading downtown on a Saturday night, dodging all the wannabe Snookis and quasi-Situations on Granville Street, and ducking down an alleyway to find a quiet room in which to see The Unsupervised rip it up in the company of five or six other fans.

Of all Jeff Younger’s projects—I’ve reviewed The Nudger and Devil Loops here—he’s been pushing The Unsupervised the hardest of late. As well he should; they’re a pretty complete package—an irreverent jazz band that can get funky and complex/proggy. Their approach reminds me of Led Bib, albeit a little more polite; Canadian, if you will. This recording, made to accompany their summer tour, collects their prime material. Although you really need to see The Unsupervised live, Elevator is a nice souvenir, with six action-packed pieces that stand up effortlessly away from the stage.

Although he’s The Unsupervised’s composer/supervisor, guitarist Younger hangs back for the most part, letting the rhythm section (Ben Brown, drums; Russell Sholberg, bass) and horns (Kristian Naso, trumpet; Colin Maskell, sax) duke it out.
He does turn it up on “Sandalfoot,” a funky tune with some heavy (for jazz) powerchord breakdowns and riffs avec distortion. Overall, the songs swing between freewheeling sections and composed, disciplined passages. There are enough tight, syncopated unison parts to keep any math rocker on his/her toes. How the band keeps on top of it all I’ll never know, but then again I’m not as musically edumacated as them.

Each track highlights a different strength or aspect of The Unsupervised’s approach. “Inches” is a stellar showcase for drummer Ben Brown, giving him lots of space to flit around as the rest of the band provides commentary in the form of unison stabs and swells overtop. “Kornatta Glanke,” the longest track, opens abstractly with the rhythm section scrabbling around the attic before being displaced by whimpering horns, then Younger takes a solo turn, gradually leading the band into the main theme five minutes into the 10-minute piece. There’s a staccato ensemble section, a lengthy sax solo over churning 5/4 chords before it all comes home with a staccato reprise. It sums up everything The Unsupervised are about—a jazzy cornucopia of heady goodness.

Vreid with Kampfar, Necronomicon and Scythia, Sept. 5 at the Rickshaw Theatre

This show felt a little “off” from the start. The advertised door time was 7:00, so I showed up at 7:20. I could hear Scythia soundchecking inside, and the doors were closed. I joined the half dozen fans behind the velvet rope gating the entrance to wait out the delay. It’s never dull outside the Rickshaw—there was a steady parade of lost souls on the Downtown Eastside that night, and one panhandler accused me of being “full of the devil”—but on the whole I’d rather have been getting my kicks inside the venue.

One thing’s for sure—Scythia aren’t shy. The second they took the stage, they were hell bent on putting on a proper show. Couple their motley medieval garb with some bold, galloping folk metal and you’ve got the complete Scythia package. Even their merch people looked like they came off the floor of an SF/fantasy convention. Musically they had a lot going on besides the requisite metal trappings, including prominent keyboard lines and Morgan Zentner’s "Oboe of Death." Soundman be praised, all the elements fared well in the unforgiving live environment. They were a good deal more loose than on their pristine new album ...of Exile, but in the go-for-the-gusto excitement of the live setting, it’s understandable that they might push the tempos a little. When the song called for it, they could back off the pace and execute mellow, mellifluous sections with grace.

After Scythia, it was time to stick on some frowns and get serious. Quebec trio Necronomicon were quite a spectacle as well, with their post-apocalyptic grey leather, corpsepaint and windmilling hair. I remember they released an Egyptian-themed album years ago, just as Nile was getting big, which was unfortunate. I hadn’t heard anything from them since. This time they reminded me of Behemoth, providing a satisfying mix of DM and BM. They were quite tight, powered by jackhammering snare blasts. Although they presented a fierce, professional image, they weren’t really my thing overall.

I’ll admit that Kampfar came out and killed it from the get-go. Presentation-wise the Norwegians were free of embellishments—no costumes, face paint, and not much hair either, save for the vocalist, who directed all his energy at the meagre, increasingly frenetic, crowd. Foot up on the monitors, he pounded his thigh with his fist while the other hand held the mic between his blond curtains of hair. They reminded me of a more straightlaced Impaled Nazarene. I prefer songs with “parts” and solos and stuff, but I couldn’t deny the impact that their set made.

Kyle Harcott pronounced that Kampfar would be a hard act to follow. I held out hope for Vreid, but he was right. The crowd tapered off and the Norwegian quartet couldn’t win them back, which was too bad because I felt they had some interesting things going on musically. The white noise that passed as tone coming out of their amps did them no favours. If you're going to play black 'n' roll, just plug straight into a Marshall and have done with it. It also didn’t help that they played their most immediately appealing song, the one that could have gotten everyone on board, last. It just wasn’t their night, but Vreid slogged it out, frustrated at trying to generate a frenzy amongst the 50 or fans that were left. The empty space stretching in front of them must have been a demoralizing sight.

I’ve noted before that the Vancouver scene has been surprisingly supportive of touring metal shows lately, but this show was a definite exception. Maybe these bands didn’t have the profile or the audience to warrant such a large venue, or perhaps the Rickshaw’s new (and hard-won) liquor license hurt the attendance, now that the under-19s are shut out. I never had any problem with shows being all-ages, and if it gets people into the building and buying merch to help the bands, all the better. Let’s hope more people come out when Enslaved and Napalm Death hit town next month.

Abriosis—Tattered and Bound

I try to keep my ear to the ground and my finger on the pulse, but things still slip through. Case in point, local tech-death band Abriosis, whom I first read about in Cosmo Lee’s Decibel demo column. I made a mental note to check them out, then didn’t follow up. I am a fool. I finally had a chance to catch Abriosis earlier this summer at the Riffs Not Riots show, where they knocked me on my ass. I could not believe that these guys weren’t from Quebec, Canada’s home for Advanced Metal Studies. Afterwards, I looked them up online and found that they were offering this new album as a free download. It’s ridiculous to me that this world-class work of art is being given away, so I promise to buy a t-shirt or some physical product next time I see them, all right?

Abriosis fuse the avant-garde discord of Voivod with the breakneck, off-time thrash of Atheist, along with more modern death metal influences. They’re vicious but cerebral. They wield their technical abilities with wisdom and taste. Dissonant as they are, they’re not deliberately perverse with it. The song structures make sense and every song offers a few accessible riffs for the listener to cling to amidst the mayhem. “Repudiate the Lies” is especially catchy, and has the added attractions of a brief bass solo followed by a guitar workout that unleashes some serious Holdsworth shit.

What stands out for me is the care with which each member of Abriosis crafts interlocking parts. They don’t simply duplicate each other; each musician contributes something audibly distinct in creating this huge wall of metal. It’s especially gratifying to hear their screaming, growling vocalist (now ex-vocalist) synching his lyrics to the flow of the music instead of ranting distractingly overtop of everything. (I hope his replacement follows suit.) As my neighbour Luke said to me after seeing their set, the band clearly listens to each other. Nobody’s caught up in their own trip; they all rule as one.

This near-flawless debut full-length will definitely help them build an audience—their summer tour to Halifax and back couldn't have hurt either—and I hope they can link up and tour with some more established bands to take their lockstep brutality worldwide.

The Opium Cartel—Night Blooms (Termo)

After listening to the new White Willow track yesterday and seeing bandleader Jacob Holm-Lupo mentioning this "solo album of sorts" from 2009 in the accompanying interview, I decided that Night Blooms needed a proper review here. The timing is ideal in a seasonal sense, because it’s a perfect end-of-summer listen. Every clear, shining tone is tinged with melancholy. The Opium Cartel takes the timbres and instruments you’d hear on a White Willow album—especially the deftly plucked guitars and Lars Fredrick Froislie’s analog keyboard arsenal—and directs them towards an orchestral/indie rock style. The songs are more straightforward, avoiding the detours through dark instrumental passages that White Willow often takes. It’s breezy and mellow overall, and as detailed as the cover art.

Some of the more stern prog fans out there might blanch at the piano-driven duet of “Skinnydipping,” which captures the innocent, sensual pleasures of its title. If that doesn't appeal, then the languid strains of “By This River” (a Brian Eno cover from Before and After Science, a fantastic record I’ve just gotten into) certainly will, or perhaps “Three Sleepers,” a kind of lullaby/nursery rhyme given an elaborate arrangement, will impress. There's some bombast to be heard on "Beach House," which, after a quiet, Mellotron-swirled intro, enters heavier territory. Drummer Mattias Olsson (ex-Änglagård) hits particularly hard here.

Night Blooms highlights Holm-Lupo’s knack for crafting strong vocal lines and lyrics. He’s given his guest vocalists—including Rhys Marsh, Rachel Haden, Tim Bowness, and Sylvia Skjellestad—good material with which to work. "Honeybee" flirts with mainstream rock, describing an inappropriate, doomed romance that reminds me of some of Peter Hammill’s work, especially in the way it transitions from verses filled with specific names and details to choruses that make universal statements: “the things we do to ease our pain are the things that bring us down.” “Better Days Ahead” is like U2 forced through a Genesis and JG Ballard filter: spacey modern rock that strains to pierce a carbon-filled sky and see the stars, and sung with marvellous restraint by Rhys Marsh. Night Blooms is a wonderful album that deserves to step out of White Willow’s shadow and spend some time basking in the sunlight.


Better Days Ahead

The Opium Cartel | Myspace Music Videos

Nicklas Barker – El Último Fin De Semana

Reviewing a soundtrack is tricky because the music is meant to be part of a greater whole; not necessarily an experience unto itself. Without having seen the movie for which this music was made, I can’t comment on how it serves the visuals and storyline, which is the true criterion for a soundtrack’s success. However, as a prog head and fan of Anekdoten, Nicklas Barker’s primary band, I declare this music to be quite fantastic on its own.

It’s mostly hushed, eerie stuff. Given titles like “Night Ambience,” “Entering the Lost Village,” and “Confrontation/Doom,” I’d guess El Último… is a pretty creepy film. Barker—a guitarist in his main gig—piles on Mellotron, Hammond, and Theremin to create these ethereal snippets. An atmosphere of melancholy pervades everything; occupying a realm between Air and Morte Macabre (the beloved Anekdoten/Landberk collaborative one-off). Fans of vintage keyboard sounds will be in their element.

“Celestial Ghost” is the longest, most “rock” track on here. Once the drums and bass kick in beneath its hypnotic organ line, it’s clear that it’s descended from the Anekdoten family. “Chase/Purgatory” is structured like its title, starting with a driving rhythm just like one of Anekdoten’s peppier songs, then giving way to massed Mellotron choirs and buzzing synthesizers. Only the comparatively jaunty bossanova of “Beach Girls” pokes through the gloom—some light relief at the end of a series of little nightmares.

Primordial — Redemption at the Puritan's Hand (Metal Blade)

This is another masterpiece from Irish black/pagan stalwarts Primordial. You could argue that Opeth or Enslaved can stand alongside them in terms of consistency, although recent albums by both bands have plenty of detractors. I’ve never read anyone accusing Primordial of dropping a discographical turd. For me, Primordial’s main “problem” is their consistency—I don’t know if they have that one “Hall of Fame” album for the ages. Hence, I listen to each new album a lot then file it away till the next one (I’d hate to part with any of them, though). Maybe Redemption at the Puritan’s Hand will be the one. I have been playing it a lot lately. I’ve tried to get sick of it, but it refuses to get old for me.

When I get a new Primordial release, I worry that all the songs will fall into the same rhythmic rut. The rolling 6/8 feel is Primordial’s thing and I feel they’re a little too comfortable with it. I was happy to hear that they break out of it a couple times on Redemption… on “God’s Old Snake” and “The Puritan’s Hand.” “Lain With the Wolf” also stands out for its unique rhythm, a propulsive, ultra-fast triplet feel that I don’t think I’ve ever heard in a metal song before. It sounds like it was a difficult song to record. The drums are right on the edge, but they always come back to hit hard on the “one” with the help of the locked-in bass line. The song generates huge momentum, and by the time it charges into the final frenetic 90 seconds you’re feeling as exhausted as the band must have been laying it down.

Singer (as opposed to vocalist, note) A.A. Nemtheanga is as articulate and passionate as ever here. He made last year’s Blood Revolt album a genuinely moving experience, and his work on Redemption… proves he can still go for the throat and the heart. “Bloodied Yet Unbowed” is the kind of song you want played at your funeral; a grim hymn to defiance and an instant classic that I’m sure Primordial will be playing live for the rest of their career. You can’t write a line like “Raise a glass, raise hell” without expecting people to respond in kind!

Obscura, Septicflesh, and The Devin Townsend Project, June 28 at the Commodore

2011 marks my 25th year of going to the Commodore. My first show at this grande dame of local venues was Marillion on the Misplaced Childhood tour. It’s still a great hall, but with most metal shows happening at the less ritzy Rickshaw Theatre these days, my trips to the Commodore have become increasingly rare.

Going to a show solely to see the opening acts can be risky. I’ve been burned in the past with tour lineups getting reshuffled or smaller bands getting turned back at the border, leaving me holding a ticket for a different gig than I’d hoped to see. This gig, however, went off as planned. Seeing as the three bands opening for Children of Bodom constituted a sort of mini Progressive Nation tour, I couldn’t miss out.

A decent crowd of keeners arrived early to catch Obscura, who were the main draw for me. I’ve been digging their last two albums and their Necrophagist/Cynic/Death-style shred death. Opening with “Septuagint,” they put on a slick half-hour show. My favourite section of “Vortex Ominium” got spoiled by some guy who wanted to take my picture because I reminded him of some dude he knew. This has been happening to me a lot when I'm out by myself lately. Guess I just have one of those faces.

My friend Chris claims the seven-string guitar is “an asshole’s instrument,” but in Obscura’s skilled hands they are weapons for tech-death domination. Dedicating “Ocean Gateways” to all the real Morbid Angel fans (fans of the pre-Illud Divinum Insanus Morbid Angel, I presumed) was a nice touch, seeing as that track is pure “Where the Slime Live” worship. Like I said, this was a polished performance. I was especially impressed with how Steffen Kummerer fit most of his stage raps into the songs themselves. There was even an extended jam section at the end of the set. Of the three openers, Obscura came across as the most solid, traditional metal band. I’m a bigger fan than ever now.

I was a Septicflesh (or Septic Flesh) fan around the time of Esoptron and The Ophidian Wheel, but only caught up with their recent work with their latest, The Great Mass. Their stage setup was more elaborate than Obscura’s, with twin backdrops and some kind of alien dragonfly bauble on Spiros Antoniou’s mike stand. Their set was rousing, all right, but it didn’t quite do it for me. While the new album skilfully balances classical orchestrations and metal, in concert this translated to very prominent backing tracks to recreate the sound. As a result, Septicflesh came across as more of an act than a band. Antoniou is a bassist in the Tom Araya mold, playing the most basic parts only occasionally. (He still needed to retune after the second song!) The crowd loved them, but I got tired by the sixth exhortation to go “Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!” as the backing track churned away.

Wow, what a transformation Devin Townsend’s undergone. His Strapping Young Lad persona could be summed up in the “buy a t-shirt and eat a dick!” sort of remarks he’d fire off at the crowd. The crotchety, skulleted DT has been replaced by a gleaming superbeing who wants only to spread joy through his music. He mugged and gurned up a storm for an adoring crowd, introducing the band as the evening’s “nerd contingent” and ordering the tough guys in the pit to “get happy, man!” I don’t have the money or free time to keep up with DT’s output—Ocean Machine, Terria, and Synchestra are enough for me to ponder for a lifetime—so the setlist was a mystery. I think he opened with something from Ziltoid. After tuning down to B mid-set, the sound turned into a horrible pudding and I couldn’t discern what was happening at all. I blame extreme downtuning as much as the iPhone for impeding my enjoyment of live music. You can still make cool music in standard tuning, you know. But whatever my preferences, it was still a triumphant display. As the crowd hailed him as the hometown hero he is, he promised he’d be back this fall.

Having seen what I paid for, I headed out before Children of Bodom. Three pro bands and a good night’s sleep for 40 bucks—not a bad deal at all.

Happy Canada Day

It's been a cool, cloudy summer here, so it's been hard to get into the seasonal swing of things. Jazz Fest is on—I actually got a sunburn watching The Unsupervised in Gastown last Sunday—and it's now Canada Day. It's summer all right, but we're not really feeling it.

I've just been hanging out at home all morning spinning records and killing time before I head downtown this afternoon. I started the day with what I consider Canada's rock National Anthem:

and have now moved on—via many songs/albums too nasty to mention here—to Neil Young's Tonight's the Night.

hellbound.ca is running their traditional Canada Day special. This year we were asked to pick a favourite Canadian metal song, or metal song about Canada. Pretty much everybody went with the former, and as always the crew made some excellent, original choices. I found this a tough assignment. I originally did 200 words on Sacred Blade's "Of the Sun + Moon" (the title track of the album I reviewed here) before changing my mind and picking a song a little outside the metal box. I had to go with my heart on this one. Check out the feature and feel the hoser love.

The Gates of Slumber—The Wretch (Metal Blade/Rise Above)

With The Wretch, The Gates of Slumber have reached a new peak by trolling the depths of despondence. The Gates of Slumber are a doom metal institution by now, going from strength to strength with their no-nonsense lifer rock. The Wretch is especially free of frills. You won’t hear backup vocals, rhythm guitars or keyboards; only the sound of a trio trudging along a sorrowful path with their simple but devastating riffs.

The doldrums suit them. Guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon says as much in his liner notes: “We’ve made the ‘Conan Crushing Doom’ thing our niche…but in the end I think that our move from the fantastic to the personal was best for this album.” To say the least. Doom needs truth and it needs pain. It needs to point a finger. Chuck Eddy nailed it when he described Sabbath’s Paranoid as “extremely moral.” Honesty and moral righteousness underpin a lot of these songs, from “The Scourge ov Drunkenness” to “Coven of Cain” (an anti-coke tale) to the self-castigating title track.

Empty spaces dominate the album. Not just spaces between notes—tempos are generally slow, slow, slow—but in the arrangements. The guitar often drops out to let the rhythm section carry things. The light/shade structure of “Castle of the Devil” showcases the approach. The verses are in the gloomy folk-ballad mold of Sabbath’s “Solitude,” while the choruses erupt in power chords. Then comes a surprise in the form of a swinging solo break—with the drums striking up a minimal boogie, going it alone for a few bars—that’s about as jazzy as The Gates of Slumber are gonna get.

Simon delivers a great vocal performance that doesn’t shy away from vulnerability and melody. For a metal band, their arrangements are surprisingly sympathetic to vocals. “Day of Farewell,” for instance, is a genuinely affecting anti-life epic (“The fruit is bland/And the wine is dry/Why continue this lie?”) that ends with a one-note chug as Simon’s cries echo in the distance. The songs include the entire package—riffs, lyrics and melody—that more bands would do well to study. There’s a lot more to being heavy than crushing, downtuned sonics.

The Wretch is not an album that hit me immediately. I needed to play it through a few times to get in synch with its tempo and mood. Only then did I find myself getting stuck on it, discovering a new favourite track with each airing until the whole damn thing became indispensible.

Led Bib—Bring Your Own (Cuneiform)

To adapt a line from LA punk legends Fear, Led Bib’s alright if you like saxophones. Fortunately I do—I haven’t always, but I came around to them. As a staunch rockist, I regarded them as poisonous garnish (the sax on IQ’s Nomzamo in ’87 filled me with rage). All I needed to hear was saxophone being properly deployed. After Van der Graaf Generator opened the gateway, the sax and I were good to go. A bit of skronk is good for what ails ya.

Led Bib’s got two wild, battling saxophones capable of erecting walls of sound, then crashing right through them, raining blows down upon each other. The British quintet play jazz…of a sort. Their music marries the attack of rock with jazz’s freedom and exploration, which I admit reads like marketing copy, but that’s how I hear it. It’s two great tastes in one. The prominent Fender Rhodes tints everything with a bit of the’70s jazz-rock/Canterbury sound. It’s not ’70s-style fusion and it’s not techy like Zevious, for example.

They’ve made their own rules. They’re sometimes quite heavy, as on “Is That a Woodblock?”, where the bass growls away, or the menacing opening of “Little X”, one of the few tracks not composed by drummer Mark Holub. The tracks often start with an ultra-catchy head played at full-tilt. You can parp along with them, if you’re given to parping. But Led Bib don’t milk their themes; they get on with it. Where they’ll go after establishing the head is always open to question. On “Shapes and Sizes” the band races each other like a grid of F1 cars heading towards the first corner. They strike a more placid mood on the brief “Hollow Ponds,” or on the occasionally mournful “Winter.” Sometimes the whole endeavour collapses, and you’re left wondering how they’re going to claw themselves out of the pit they’ve fallen into, as on “Moth Dilemma.” But they always do.

Like their Mercury Prize-shortlisted Cuneiform debut Sensible Shoes, Bring Your Own brims with action and adventure. It’s a blast, in short. With duel-to-the-death saxes, great riffs, and crack musicianship in service of exciting, frequently weird, songs, what’s not to love? If you don’t like saxophones, well, grow up! You’re missing out on some stirring modern music.