Ancient Wind - The Chosen Slain

Genre: Blackened Thrash, Death Metal
Label: To The Head Records

Hailing from Glenwood Springs, Colorado, an aspiring hotbed of scathing molten metal mayhem, Ancient Wind bring the passion and the pain with their debut album, The Chosen Slain.

Here, Ancient Wind fuels a massive storm of deathened, blackened thrash with raw vocals, a hatred for all things "poser" and enough aggression to level a city. The meeting of these styles has led to the actualization of what, I believe, Feasting Amon Amarth would sound like... only a fuck-ton more thrashy and way better than I could of imagined!

Vocalist Roberto Inferno rips the mic to shreds with his battle ready roars and occasionally sounds like the man-mountain, Johan Hegg. So, no complaints here. Next, I have to mention Girth Brook's drumming. Kudos to you, sir. You managed to smoothly blend together genres that, while normally do blend well together, tend to leave lumps in the batter. Normally in a situation like this, you usually hear more of one influence than the other(s). Here, Mr. Brook manages to give equal time to three different styles.

As for the string section of Ancient Wind... fuck. Do I have to keep writing? I think you get how I feel about this band already. They fucking rule! If they were a Portland band, I'd be at their next show with a tray of my special brownies as an offering to their godliness... though, living in Colorado, they've probably had they're fair share of magical baked goods...

In summery, Ancient Wind out-metal some veterans of metal scene that are 15+ years their senior! Keep your bloodshot eyes on these guys! Easily recommended for those of you who are just straight tired of Skeletonwitch's even softening sound...

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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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The Beyond - FROSTBITEPANZERFUCK

The Beyond! Dollars to doughnuts, these guys are a Fulci inspired group and this album is a supernatural themed romp, complete with face eating tarantulas and Schweick the super corpse! I bet... wah, what? Frostbitepanzerfuck? Well, now I'm not sure what to expect from this Pennsylvanian quartet. Luckily, The Beyond set me straight seconds into the first track entitled, Roto-Cunt. It's basically a laundry list of things the missus and I get into once the wee ones are in bed (RE: anal rape, sadomasochism, oral creampies, goat sodomy... oh wait, that last one was from the next track).

It's also a bit of a tease. If you think the rest of the album is going to be a crusty, punk laden journey though the Gross Out Valley... well you're half right. The Beyond take the a hold of my expectations and violently rape the beejeezus out of them! Some songs have the humorous shit down to a science with a punk 'n' roll 'tude while others seem to be more along the blackened route by adding searing blackened screams and blistering black metal riffs into the mix.

Over and over again, I found myself trying to listen to other albums to review only to be dragged back to Frostbitepanzerfuck. Apparently The Beyond have something of a knack for writing subliminally catchy tunes. This became clear after I over analyzed why I couldn't get tracks like Attack Of the Zombie Brigade and Goat Sodomizer out of my head and came up with nothing. Leaving only literal mindfuckery as a possibility.

And for those of you that happen to be fans of that loveable shit smearing, piss drinking, cum spraying nutnob G.G. Allin, The Beyond offer up a tribute to him in the form of Cunt Sucking Animal. Filthy as fuck.

In short, Frostbitepanzerfuck is what would of happened if Anal Cunt and Dirty Rotten Imbeciles made Panzerfaust. So if that sounds like something that might get your white water churnin', then this is the filthy fucking album for you! However, if the thought of having your mind blown by awesome encrusted metal makes your dick shrivel... well then, I'm glad I don't know you personally.

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Dark Elite - Enter The Void (Cassette)

Thus one goes to the stars…(I haven’t read the Aeneid in ages.)

I’ve got to be honest here, I almost passed this one over without even listening to it until I noticed that Timo Honkanen was on guitar duty. His contributions to Battlelore are amazing, so I figured that would transfer over into this ep as well.

Listening to Enter The Void is like getting a guided tour of the cosmos, except that your tour shuttle crashes on a desolate planet and instead of Carl Sagan’s erudite voice narrating our journey, we have the aphotic melodies of Finnish metal outfit Dark Elite to show us the way from here to GRB 090423.

After starting things off with an intro that consists of a garbled transmission of death and doom, Dark Elite’s density pulls us in with the might of neutron star. They slam you about with a mix of scathing black metal, pummeling melodic death beats, and background ambient dissonance. For me, this five track EP is equal parts Winterthrall’s Nightmares For The Sleepless, Be’lakor’s Stone’s Reach, and Phelios’s Astral Unity (a MASSIVE compliment coming from me).

As I mentioned earlier, Timo Honkanen helms the guitar in this act. I am officially going on record and saying that I want to hear MORE of it. Coupled with Enrico Huovinen’s scorched blasting (again, I’m reminded of Winterthrall), Honkanen’s riffing paints a celestial portrait of a cold, vacuous sector of space were dark metal reigns!

As far as EPs go, this one is definitely one of the better offerings that has come my way in quite some time. Yeah, it’s a little on the short side (as all EPs are), but it gives me a good enough idea as to what to expect from this group when they decide to put out a full-length, hopefully sooner than later.

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Amiensus - Restoration

I'm going to go ahead and start this review off by saying that Joe Waller is a fucking genius. Everything the man touches turns to gold (making it precious METAL, through and through) and his new associative project, Amiensus, is no exception.

To me, very little is left to be discovered in the realm of black metal. It's been merged with doom, death, thrash, symphonic elements, psychedelia, progressive rock, etc....  All with significant impacts on the original genre. All becoming common place. The Amiensus collective must have sensed this disturbance in the metal ley lines and sought to restore what has gone awry with their own very personal brand of progressive black metal.

Restoration is an emotional ride through ancient icy woods that come alive when your back is turned. Song after song, you're pummeled by creatively-twisted arrangements that range from face-crushing death metal to soul-shredding black metal to...Gotye-ish indie rock? Trust me, when you hear it all mixed together it's a thing a unimaginable beauty.

You can tell that everyone involved with Amiensus has poured their hearts and souls into this recording. If you can't hear it in the shared vocal duties (easily some of the best vocal arrangements I've EVER heard are in this album), then you'll feel it by just letting Amiensus take over for about forty five minutes. It's time well spent, though I'm sure ninety minutes would have been a better estimate since you'll probably listen to this album back to back with itself.

I might be going too far in saying that Amiensus is going to be the next great Opethian experience, but I'm pretty sure that the complement is well worth the lumps I'm sure to receive for it.

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Nebrus - From The Black Ashes

And the Black Metal Gods (I’m sure there are at least two of them) have smiled upon my sorry ass once again!  I literally jumped for joy when I received this album in the mail and rushed straight home to throw it in my stereo. Long time readers may remember the dripping hard-ons that General Blaspheme and I have for this band. If you don’t and/or my vulgar appreciation for Nebrus is completely new to you, then all you really need to do is listen to just one song and you’ll understand where I’m coming from (and you’ll probably need a new change of underwear as well).

From The Black Ashes starts off strong with “Apocalypse”, a blistering ride through the beginning of the end. They tease you a bit with a break in the bleak with a momentary slow down in tempo that almost feels like everything is going to be okay. Like the world isn’t going to end in this horrible fashion that they’re describing… and suddenly, the sting of reaper’s scythe finds it’s mark on your soul! An awesome way to START your album, if you ask me.

From there, Nebrus just takes your expectations and runs off with them by taking all the vileness of black metal and merging it the finer points of doom metal. It’s like if you took Under The Sign Of The Black Mark and Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, broke them both in half and glued the two halves together to make the greatest mixture of black metal and doom metal that any metal mind ever dreamed of… assuming the breaking/gluing process was successful.

I’m happy to report that Noctuaria’s voice is just as ravaged and raw as ever, which keeps her high on my Favorite Black Metal Vocalist list right between Stefan Fiori and Lord Serpent. This time however, Mortifero duties pertained only to the drums, which are every bit as punishing as they were in Twilight Of Humanity. It’s the same with the guitars. Throughout From The Black Ashes, they are almost always sped up to your standard black metal speed riffs, but occasionally they break off into dreary doom hooks that are always laid in on just the right moments.

But the crowning jewel of From The Black Ashes has to be it’s closing track, “Banquet Of Oblivion”. Hearing Noctuaria scream, “I DON’T EXIST!"

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