Norselaw -

Genre: Heavy Metal, Speed Metal, Fucking Metal
Label: Unsigned

Man, who would have thought that buying an album based entirely on pity would yield such positive results? Allow me to explain:

Norselaw himself apparently had a dispute with his then employer that ended with his (in my opinion, wrongful) termination. Having only recently lost my job due to similar but completely different circumstances, I decide to toss my fellow warrior a bone and bought one of his albums. He 'suggested Serpent In The Circling Sea' as it would play to my tastes... how this metal marauder knew such a thing is still a mystery to me, but goddamn, was he ever right!

'Serpent In The Circling' Sea features a plethora of headbanging highlights from beginning to end. Norselaw's mastery of the art of the shred, for one. Where on Earth did this guy learn to wield a guitar in such a manner? My guess is he transferred whatever skills he learned as an axe swinging viking from hundreds of years ago to his new modern day "axe". Or at the very least, he's The Doof Warrior from Mad Max... hmmm...

Up next on the docket, we have the vocals. Let's get the clean vocals out of the way; they're rough. Not bad by a long shot, but they could definitely use some refining. As for his bellowing, fuck man, if he shouted at me to, "Get out of the way," in that tone, I'd be in the next state over before he could finish his command. Motherfucker is scary.

Have I mention lyrical content yet? Norselaw pulls his imagery from everyday political strife ("fat blue line guarded by swiiiiine!"), to Conan The Barbarian to H.P. fucking Lovecraft. And speaking of Lovecraft, Fungi From Yuggoth is one of the best tracks on the album, not only due to the ever-presence of the Old Ones, but because of Jamie Lannister's energetic drumming. Guy lets his fucking hair down and says, "fuck your ability to ever hear anything ever again!" and proceeds to rupture the eardrums of anyone within range in a berserk barrage of percussive power!

If you walk away from this review and can only manage to remember one thing, make it this: Norselaw is law. These guys fucking rule!

Yen Pox - Between The Horizon And The Abyss

Genre: Dark Ambient
Label: Malignant Records

Having been a rabid fan of Yen Pox's Blood Music (the 2010 two disc re-issue to be precise), you could easily say that I was more than a little excited to find Between The Horizon And The Abyss in my mailbox. The damnedable duo of dark ambient is back in my library and ready to make the missus second guess coming to bed with me (Phelios, Yen Pox and False Mirror are regulars in my nightly rotation and she happens to find them, "scary").

Between The Horizon And The Abyss starts off like just about every other dark ambient record you've ever heard; low rumble droning that gives way to small crackling noises and eventually syths and yadda yadda yadda. If you're a fan of dark ambient/noise/drone/blech, you know the drill... wait, did a ping pong match break out during the recording of Cold Summer Sun? What the hell is that and why does it sound out of place, yet it feels like it fits right in as if it were guided by some kind of auditory feng shui?

The point is, Yen Pox takes what you thought you understood about this genre and the abilities of the various instruments therein and tears down the veil to reveal an infinitely expanding universe of sonic possibility and impossibility. It's goddamned crazy, man.

I don't think that I can make my admiration for this project any clearer than that, but I'll just hammer the point home here in case you missed it: Yen Pox are fucking geniuses. Just shoot the next Yen Pox albums into my veins...

Yen Pox On FaceBook

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...

Ancient Wind On Facebook

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!

At The Seams On Facebook

Xibalba - Tierra Y Libertad

Genre: Hardcore, Death Metal
Label: Southern Lord

Xibalba is a band, nay, an experience that nobody prepared me for. I assumed from the name that I was going to be thrown into the razor lined maw of a savage black metal band akin to Sarcofago or maybe an old fashioned Sepultura-like deal. I was right about the savagery, but I missed the genres by a bit and underestimated to which degree I'd be brutalized by the Pomona, California based hardcore act. Within the first minute of the first track, 'Enemigo', I found myself compulsed to message my friends, going, "Oh my God, dude! Xibalba! XIBALBA!!!", like I were advertising for a horror flick in the 1950's. (Minus the, "dude!" part, I guess.)

The assault, hereon in to be known as Tierra Y Libertad, begins with a bloodthirsty growl. The kind of growl that is usually the last thing someone hears when they're pissing off a fucking lion! And then... the drums. Like some sort of futuristic, concussive machine gun that fires sonic booms made of giant fists, they pummeled and bludgeoned and beat and (get it? They're fucking brutal) bloodied the absolutely hell out of me! This vicious attack didn't relent until the forth track ('Pausa', a minute and a half long breather).  The guitars chug and chunk up and down the heavy riff spectrum, undoubtedly breaking the notably sturdy measuring instrument in the process.

I can't stress enough just how brutal every aspect of this album is. And not in that "br00tal" or whatever kind of way you might assume. I wasn't entirely wrong with the Sarcafago comparison earlier since I ended up thinking of them throughout this album. The spirit is there. That attitude. That intensity. That rage. It's all there. But in a fresh, new form that will stomp you just as dead. If you're going to walk away from this review, please let it be this: Xibalba and Tierra Y Libertad are more than worth your time if you consider yourself a fan of raging hardcore or intense music in any form. The concussion it inflicts is also worth it.

Xibalba On Facebook

Lord Dying - Poisoned Altars

Genre: Sludge Metal
Label: Relapse Records

Ah, Portland. Home to Voodoo Doughnuts, entitled bicyclists, The Roseland and far too many sludge/doom metal bands. Seriously, the city is crawling with them. I always figured that we'd be known as a thrash or speed metal town before anything else. Eh... at least, that was what I was thinking before I played Lord Dying's sophomore album, Poisoned Altars. Well, I still think that there are too many sludgey/doomy type bands in the area. Only now, I just really dig one more of them (the others being Deep Sea Vents, Red Fang, YOB and Agalloch... those all count, right?).

Poisoned Altars forces you to bang your fucking head (thankfully it allows you the option of wall or no wall) with it's HEAVY riff driven songs. So much so that I managed to work up a sweat while doing so. This may be the first album that gave me a fucking workout! That being said, the riffin' is definitely the strongest aspect of Poisoned Altars. Songs like, '(All Hopes Of A New Day)... Extinguished' and 'The Clearing At The End Of The Path' are prime examples of C. Evans lead guitar work and vocalist E. Olsen's rhythm guitar work. His vocals are also nothing to sneeze at. Yeah, they're not anything you probably can't do yourself, but this just fucking sells it! Olsen stays steady with a gruff bellow for most of the album, but occasionally he breaks off into a raspier vocal that isn't quite singing or shouting. (I dunno, you tell me what I'm supposed to call it...)

I'm not trying to sell the rest of Lord Dying short here. Rob Shaffer's drumming is fun and at times can even be a little on the experimental side of wild and crazy. Now, I'm not sure if it was my head phones of if it's the mixing, but I had one hell of a time isolating the bass. However, from what I can tell, it's right were it needs to be. (Kinda the lot of the bassist, eh?) It really sucks that I couldn't make it out since I assume that it's on par with the rest of Lord Dying's sound and is just as deserving of this praise.

I highly recommend Poisoned Altars to anyone who digs their sludge on the lighter side of serious, heavy on the heavy and less than zero fucks given about it. Lord Dying bathes in the puddle of muck that is thier genre and ends up leaving it sludgier than they found it!

Lord Dying on Facebook

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.

Eye Of Solitude on Facebook