At The Seams - In Shadows Of Giants

Genre: All Of Them
Label: Unsigned (but not for long, I'd bet...)

No risk, no reward. Know risk, know reward.

It has been my experience in these past nine years of criticising other's work (when I couldn't hope to achieve anything even remotely cool if my life depended on it) that the more you blend genres together, the farther away from "pure" or "true" metal you are, the more you seem to get hated on. Especially here in Portland, where local metalheads like their sludge metal thick, their grind filthy and their black metal BLACK! Thankfully, bands like Titarius (purveyors of the truest "blender metal"), Stonecreep and Beyond The Red Horizon (R.I.P.) and their ilk, made it their mission to buck conventional metal trends in the area and gave us all something new to wrap our heads around. Now, in 2015 (since 2012), At The Seams is here to tear the Portland metal scene apart... stitch by stitch? That doesn't sound quite right....

The album's title, In Shadows Of Giants, might be alluding to all of the influences that At The Seams pulls from. It's a veritable orgy of styles and genres slamming together and birthing a litter of blended metal tracks. One minute, there are influences of DevilDriver's groovage that run into Immortal's neck breaking, blackened speed. A little bit of Hatebreed's hardcore bounce gives way to a Sodom-level thrash attack. And so on...

Vocalist Spencer Tyler leads the charge by bouncing back and forth from a scathing black metal rasp to a formidable roar that would give Randy Blythe's tempered pipes a run for their money. Not wanting to be left behind, the tandem guitar attack co-helmed by axe swingers Edward Kilpatrick and Kevin O'Leary, slash and destroy all within reach with an arsenal of slowed 'core chugs and rippin' thrash riffs. Dan Anderson's drum work runs a similar range in speed and ferocity and never seems to lose any of it's punch due to In Shadows Of Giants mastering. The same can thankfully be said about Brian Chilson's bombastic bass brutalization, since that's a layer that so many people tend to miss out on.

I'm a little peeved at In Shadows Of Giants meager six tracks/thirty-two minute run time. But I think we all are since this shit is like crack! I might even try to worm my way out of the 'burbs and into the big city to catch a live show soon. There should be a few coming up since apparently At The Seams are already working on their second release! Paint me motherfucking excited!

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Eye Of Solitude - Dear Insanity (EP)

Genre: Dark Ambient, Doom
Label: Kaotoxin Records

I was introduced to this band through Apoch (yeah! THAT Apoch from Apochs.net!) a couple of weeks ago and haven't been able to properly shake the memory of the intense ride that today's review subject sent me on. I mean, look at the band's name: Eye Of Solitude. It elicits thoughts of barren lands, emptiness and abandonment. The perfect moniker for the band responsible for the creation of Dear Insanity, a ballsy effort consisting of a single, forty-nine minute track that mixes a dark ambient base with segments of hammering doom.

The opening to Dear Insanity is pretty much how most dark ambient experiments begin: a spacey, airy mesh of static and dull tones. But after about a minute, the horizon expands and a wide open sound emerges out of nowhere. That airy atmosphere that you were settling into becomes progressively claustrophobic and the world begins to decay and crumble around you as the minutes pass by...

And then, at the 8:29 mark,  the walls of my tiny, fragile world were ripped open as the Earth began to shake and the sky boiled away to reveal a blood red infinity that loomed over me like the great perching Doomthulhu! Eye Of Solitude break away from the ambient drones and finally say 'Hello' to insanity! HEAVY chords slowly riff their way across the cosmically irradiated soundscape to the pounding of a post-apocalyptic beat. It's the soundtrack to the deathmarch of the mentally afflicted, at this point. (A congested conga line I would undoubtedly find myself in... oh well. At least the tunes are badass!)

Daniel Neagoe's vocals range from a barely audible whisper, to a very high in the mix clean, to a vicious shriek at strategic points during this EP. The mixing proves to be only slightly problematic once or twice and it mainly has to do with the vocals overpowering everything else. But that's just me pissin' on about nothing since the rest of the forty-eight some odd minutes are a flawless work of art.

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Machine Head - Bloodstone & Diamonds

Genre: Groove Metal, Thrash
Label: Nuclear Blast

Oooookay. Here we go. This is actually my very first experience with Machine Head, which is apparently eight albums in. I've heard a bit about them over the years. Some of it was good and some of it was hilariously bad. I don't really know what "Bloodstone & Diamonds" has in store for me, so let's just jump right in...

Wow. If you like getting beat to death with "the groove", this album (and probably most of their library) is for you. I'm no stranger to groove metal and would also consider myself a fan of the genre, so I was digging it for the first two tracks. But then I hit a bit of a wall due to Rob Flynn's vocals. Dude, come on. Nobody wants to hear you hyperventilate into the mic or use your sexytime whispers as a vocal style. His shouting is serviceable, but gets old way too fast for me.

Jarred MacEachern's backing vocals on the other hand hit all of the right notes and add accents where they're needed. If anything, I think he may have been underutilized in this aspect. His bass work is also a high point, with it being every bit as driving as Dave McClain's drumming. This is a duo I'd keep together for a while if I had my druthers.

The guitar work (both Rob's rhythm and Phil Demmel's leads) are engaging and can even be innovative at times (Ghosts Will Haunt My Bones and Eyes Of The Dead come to mind). Both guitarists seem to play well off of one another and help keep that groove going in the right direction. However, after a few listens, you'll start to notice that a couple of tracks sound similar and even kind of bleed into one another.

I can tell you that I'm a pretty big fan on U.K. avant garde, instrumental outfit, The Devil and their work with soundbites taken from the news that are used in place of a vocalist. The track, Imaginal Cells is reminiscent of this style and tickles me just right on my. "Ooooh! That's different!" spot. Instrumentally, it's par for the course for "Bloodstone & Diamonds", so don't get excited for it being too different, though.

In the end, I'm left thinking that Machine Head probably has better entries in their catalog than "Bloodstone & Diamonds" (and with a few recommendations, I might find them). It's a good listen if you need something to bang your head to for a track or two, but it manages to wear out it's welcome with it's repetition and needlessly long tracks.

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Anaal Nathrakh - Desideratum

Man, do these guys even need more attention? I remember just a few years ago when NOBODY outside of the UK had heard of the British duo of Sir Scream-A-Lot and Sir Fast-Play. But here we are, roughly eight years later and they're attached to Metal Blade Records and I saw more Anaal Nathrakh t-shirts at my last black metal show than any that were supporting a band that was actually there. Or is that a cultural norm that I'm only just now picking up on? Meh...

Anyhow, Anaal Nathrakh's eighth studio effort, Desideratum is a smooth and steady progression from 2012's Vanitas, complete with all of the bells and whistles you've come to expect from these British bastards. Up to and including; "how does he do that?" level screaming, "probably out of place the first time you heard it, but now it's grown on you" clean vocals, "Merlin enchanted your wrists and ankles with an endurance spell" drumming and "simply chaotic" string work.

On the newer side, there's a slightly heavier focus on some of the more electronic effects than in albums past. There is an occasional sample here and there ("What you call genocide, I call a days work." Deep Space 9 for the win!) and a little more "wub" than I'd really like to hear. But in all honesty, they make it work for them in a way I doubt that most other metal bands ever could without alienating their audience.

Other than that, there's no real innovation to speak of. I know that it's unfair to lay down an expectation of improvement on a band that consistently blows you away, but "blast beat, scream, riff, blast beat, scream, riff," ad nauseam to infinium can start to get stale to even the most dedicated of fans. Does that really hurt this album though? Not really. But it seemed unfair to not point that out.

Well, it seems that Anaal Nathrakh have built an asylum of sonic destruction, planted a garden, dug a shit ditch and rooted themselves in to stay, comfortable in their trademarked sound and unwilling to budge regardless of how much they make the neighborhood's windows rattle.

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