Vociferance - Abscission of Light (2010)

After reviewing ChaotH with Unexpect, I think I might do an album series dedicated wholly to metal bands that don't mix out the bass.  Seriously, just watch an episode of Metalocalypse.  The bass is always a joke - but maybe just because it's being played by Murderface.

Vociferance, making 22 feel too
old for metal since 2010.  Assholes.

Remember that blog full of free metal that brought Deadsquad?  Well, there's tons of good shit on there, one band of which is Rhode Island-based Vociferance.  Vociferance's debut album, Abscission of Light, is great technical death metal.  It's not overwhelmingly technical like a Beneath the Massacre album, but it's clever, and it tries some interesting, new stuff.  And, it makes good use of a tremolo bar, which I can never complain at.  Also, these motherfuckers were 18 and 19 when they recorded this shit, so every old person out there that wants to get in the metal scene that can't play this well yet (i.e. me), go sell your guitar on ebay.

Abscission of Light starts off with a minute and half intro that sounds like it's done with a $40 cassio keyboard, but it's not a bad effect, and it's got a bit of a middle eastern vibe to it.  Then with a nice bass slide, we're into a lovely metal intro to probably the most memorable song on the album, "The Wrath of Sutekh" (more Egyptian themes for you Nile fans), which is the track that uses that lovely whammy bar.  Lots of squealies, lots of chugga chuggas, and lots of short sweep breaks, showing the guitarists' prowess.  Fun shit.

Probably the funniest moment of the album, though, is towards the end of "Betrayal at Sea," the title of which already makes me think it's gonna be an Alestorm song.  The track plods along at a pleasant 7/4 most of the song, not too hard to bob your head to initially but much more aggro in the chorus line.  The song is just good until you hit about 2:45, when the lovely breakdown starts.  Now, I'm not a breakdown-holic like all the metalcore kids, but follow it for a minute and at 3:04, you have a lovely, weird, out of place modern jazz breakdown for like thirty seconds, leaving all the br00tal metal heads wondering how the fuck someone tricked them into listening to weird ass jazz.  Tell me that shit isn't awesome.

My biggest complaint with the album is that it drags on a bit.  Really, it's a pretty straightforward formula once they get into the meat of the song - chugga chugga chugga, sudden short sweep riff, repeat.  But if you get over that, there's some really interesting and experimental stuff.  Take, for example, the sweep riff at 0:48 in "In Chambers They Decay;" the guitarist is not just sweeping major and minor arpeggios, he's sweeping all sorts of weird fucking chords.  Combine that originality with the really clever chord progressions throughout different tracks that allow for an accessible melody line without losing the dissonance of good death metal, and you have a recipe for some badass metal.  They integrate their chugs with lots of tremolo picking, and have a nice layering of low death growls and high pitched, raspy barks, adding variety and making them sound nice and evil.

Honestly?  It's a fucking good album.  It's better than a lot of people out there with record deals (*cough Travis Barker cough*), and they recorded this shit themselves.  The producing is fantastic, the mix is better than most metal albums I've heard ever, you can hear the bass, and the songwriting is original.  AND, it was given away for free.  Fuck yeah, Vociferance, if you tour in SoCal, I'll be knocking bitches over in your pit all night.

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Unexpect - In a Flesh Aquarium (2006)

Yes, I know there's a newer album - yes, I know it is just as good, if not better.  I'm getting there.  But we gotta start here, because this is where I met Unexpect.

Do you know who Unexpect is?  They're weird.  If Gojira was progressive, then Unexpect is, well...post-progressive?  Regressive?  All I know is they're fucking weird, and that's the way we like them.

Unexpect: taking dark cabaret back from the
socially awkward goths since 1996

Hailing from the almighty technical extreme metal wonderland,  the great Canada, where the viciousness of the winters is rivaled only by the ferocity of their kindhearted acceptance of all people and genial nature, Unexpect is anything but your average extreme metal band.  Case and point: their bass player, who goes by ChaotH, plays a fucking NINE string bass.

That neck is as thick as his...Canadian accent.
What were you thinking?

In a Flesh Aquarium, their first full length studio album that wasn't self-released, is an exploration of how many non-cohesive elements can be crammed into a single album of chaos.  Slap bass, violin, operatic female vocals, clarinet, electronic noise - it's hard to find something that the band doesn't use.  And I know what you're thinking: "That sounds like they're just copying [insert orchestral power metal band here]."  NO.  Nightwish can't do this shit.  This isn't power metal.  This is circusy, evil, confusing genius.

The album starts with "Chromatic Chimera" (no, not THAT Chimaira), which honestly is a beautiful piano piece.  The melody is consistent and accessible until it hits a weird, out of place chromatic walk down (go figure) at 0:27, and then all hell breaks loose at 0:55 (that's where they lose power metal kids).  Then, at 1:05, the circus shows up.  It's weird at first, and takes a little to get used to, especially for people looking for something brutal, but you can't listen to Unexpect without a healthy dose of self-awareness and satire.  They KNOW they're ridiculous.

The best part is, if you stick with the album, you hear some pretty phenomenal musicians do some incredible things.  "Chromatic Chimera" sports a pleasant use of musical saw and constant, beautiful piano work, and "Desert Urbania" has one of my favorite guitar solos of all time starting at 5:44 - I can't even imagine the theory at work in the note choice for every one of his damn sweeps.  "Silence 01101071" acts as a filler track, but actually adds a totally different realm to the album, using electronic drums and dissonante violin to make you feel like your computer is gonna fuck you up.  And then, the climax of the album in all its weirdness: "Psychic Jugglers" begins with an epic string intro that makes every power metal band shit itself.  Seriously, we're talking marimba, strings, timpani, synth, death growls, chaotic shouting...honestly, when the intro ends at 0:55 you feel like you may have been possessed.

Self-portrait after the first
0:55 of "Psychic Jugglers"

So check it out.  A review of their newest album is coming, cause it's great too.  Unexpect deserves the title avant-garde, and you'll find that out.  I think their sound was best described by a friend of mine's mother: she complained that the sounded like hundreds of demons dancing around a fire.  You'll see.

Gojira - Terra Incognita (2001)

I'm making a habit of reviewing old albums, apparently.  So the review is 11 years late - well this album has been fucking brilliant for eleven years then.

If you haven't heard of Gojira, then let me let you in on a bit about them: Gojira is a French progressive death metal band whose themes center around environmentalism and saving the goddamn whales.  They're very heavily involved with Sea Shepherd, an organization founded to save the whales, and formerly had a ship named after them.  Now, I know what you're probably thinking - that doesn't sound br00tal at all.  Well you're wrong.  Very wrong.

Is that Vin Diesel?

Terra Incognita is HEAVY.  There's really no other word to describe it.  They don't have that chaotic, thrash-derived fury you hear in standard, run of the mill death metal, but they aren't slowing down too much to be considered a doom metal band either.  The group is distinctively death metal...but definitely progressive.  The guitars chug with the weight of a thousand bricks slamming incessantly into your face, and their screams vary from a guttural growl to that ripping, almost black metal scream.  They even throw some "clean" (albeit distressed) vocals in there for good measure.

But, honestly, the heaviness isn't what makes Gojira one of those bands that causes metalheads within a 10 mile radius to spontaneously start headbanging.  No, it's the cleanliness of the album and the song structure.  Case and point, take my favorite track from the album, and my favorite Gojira track of all time: "Lizard Skin."  Hear those guitar gallops at 1:20?  The kick isn't echoing those.  The drummer is running 16ths beneath the sixtuplet gallop rhythm of the lead and rhythm, which means in order for that rhythm not to get lost entirely, it needs to be clean as FUCK.  This is a testament to the guitarists' skill and sound choice, as their distortion is scooped enough to keep the chug and rip of the highs without sounding like a bad pop metalcore band.  But seriously.  Listen to any song, and what you'll hear is notes, all in the right fucking place.  Things aren't out of time, and if they are, like the tremolo line from "Blow Me Away (Niverse)," it's still not out of time - it's like that on purpose.

Woah, my bad Venetian Snares...just
put the baseball bat down...

The song structure of Terra Incognita is something to be amazed at as well.  They use pretty damn simple riffs.  If you're a competent guitarist with some decent tremolo chops, you can play every song on the album, but as you play each part by itself, you realize that every instrument needs the others to sound amazing.  Alone?  Annoying, simple, boring lines.  Together?  Masterpiece.  That's musicianship and songwriting, not some guy in his basement with a drum machine.

To top it off, Terra Incognita has something else going for it that us metalheads aren't used to: a terrifying, eerie message.  I'm not an environmentalist, but I can't help but wonder what Gojira is all worked up about when I listen to tracks like "1990 Quatrillions De Tonnes;" it's like something out of a nightmare, pretty, dark, clean electric lines with screams of dozens of people, apparently in pain as vocals.  Seriously, it's more terrifying than the most brutal Dying Fetus album I've heard.  If this is what dying whales sound like, I'm never eating another delicious, juicy whale steak ever again.

Farewell, my juicy, delicious
whale steak

Overall?  Check it out if you like prog.  Check it out if you like heavy shit.  But don't check it out if you're looking for the next Cryptopsy, cause you'll be disappointed - Terra Incognita is a patient album of tracks that take time to develop and carry something more than the instant gratification of blast beats and sweep-picked diminished chords.


And in case you want to know what I'm talking about, "1990 Quatrillions De Tonnes" will fuck you up here.

Emperor - IX Equilibrium (1999)

So I'm more of a death metal guy - the last three posts show that.  What can I say?  I prefer a chug that kicks me in the stomach and growls that sounds like a dragon burping.  Most black metal ends up sounding the same to me - a 14-year-old playing with his $45 keyboard set to "strings," guitarists constantly caught in the tremolo'd last note of a Who concert, a drummer who is legitimately having a seizure right now, and a cat being wrung out next to a microphone, all recorded with a cellphone and "mixed" in garageband.  I'm not hating on black metal - I love the shit.  I just gravitate towards death more than satan.

He just needs some corpse paint and he's good to go

That being said, Emperor holds a special place in my heart.  Is it because they were partially responsible for the church burnings that made Norwegian Black Metal such an iconic movement in metal history?  No.  Because their drummer Faust committed one of the most famous acts of violence in black metal history by murdering Magne Andreassen?  Hell no.  It's because of this fucking album.  


IX Equilibrium starts with my favorite song - "Curse You All Men" which intros with this horrendously terrifying high-pitched wail and jumps right into the catchiest lovely tremolo octave riff backed by just the most classic black metal drums played by Trym Torson (now with Abigail Williams, another black metal band that surprised the shit out of me).  The song has a lot of variety, jumping back and forth between actually pretty straightforward melody lines and just awesome, relatively atonal tremolo riff that just oozes evil.  There's also a healthy amount of synth backing in this track, although nothing compared to the rest of the album.  

Emperor, the black metal band with the perfect logo

This album may have thrown people for a loop when it was released; it's not much like other Emperor albums.  The production is excellent, which sets it apart from most black metal, and it uses a healthy amount of clean vocals, which is also relatively uncommon.  But the use of the corny synth and the constant, powerful scissor blasting with a clear ping ride on top of tremolo picked guitars makes this album unmistakeable: this is black metal, by black metal gods (or devils, whatever).  


There's a lot more development to this album than there had been to their last albums.  The clean production allows Emperor to take musical risks that simply aren't reasonable on a low-budget, lo-fi production budget, the biggest risk of which is that you can actually HEAR the different notes being played by the guitar.  But they really come through - you can't listen to the album without the unmistakable feeling of evil, and that's like the highest compliment you can give to a black metal band.  


So take it or leave it - it's definitely no Dying Fetus or Beneath the Massacre, but it's not supposed to be.  You might find something you like, like the sawblade sounding guitar in "The Warriors of Modern Death" or the ridiculous synth in "An Elegy of Icaros."  You can be fucking sure that Emperor will blast the shit out of you and leave you fetid and sagging like Travis Barker's tattooed shrimpdick.  

Dead Squad - Horror Vision (2009)

So a few years ago, a friend of mine decided that he was going to delete all the music he had gained through pirating in an expression of support to the musicians, and in a weekend, went from an iTunes library of something like 70GB to almost nothing.  I know, I thought he was crazy too, but I had to respect the man for choosing his stance and sticking to it.  Anyways, after he deleted all his copyrighted music, he started going through metal relapses and in desperation, found a website dedicated to posting free metal albums (with the permission of the artists).  It's called Death Metal Invasion, and it's in the link tab - check it out.

Proper Metal Logo: can't read it for shit.

Anyways, while he was digging around in this blog, he came across the album Horror Vision by Indonesia-based death metal band Dead Squad.  Now apparently, Indonesia has a pretty big underground metal scene.  I guess it makes sense that I wouldn't know a lot about it in California (hence, underground), and so we didn't think much about this album when we started listening.  But after a couple long drives to Amoeba Records in Hollywood listening to Horror Vision, I realized I really liked the album.  And I didn't just like it; I started comparing my other albums to it.  Because it's that good.

Horror Vision is a fast, brutal gem of an album; clocking in at just over a half hour, it's short, and it jams a whole lot of awesome shit into that short span of time.  The first track, "Pasukan Mati," begins with a massively dramatic and corny synth intro echoic of black metal, which would be too much if the synth showed up again before the last song, but it doesn't, so it's badass.  Then you're slammed into the song itself, characterized by a catchy tremolo-picked melody line that will get stuck in your head all day.

Remind anyone else of Pan's Labyrinth? 

Their drummer (I couldn't bring myself to fight through broken english band descriptions to figure out his name) really does a great job at following the guitar and basslines without losing brutality, and the guy has some decent chops at least - his blasts are fast and, more importantly, in time, which is more than we can say about Travis Barker.  The guitar lines are busy, harmonized, and alternate nicely between powerful chugs and badass lead riffs, with a speckling of technically impressive guitar solos.  The vocals have been the point of contest in other reviews I have read - the singer definitely lacks the guttural growl of most death metal, instead vying for a vocal style that sounds more similar to metalcore, a trait which I'm sure will turn many death metal fans away.  But, if you give it a chance, the vocal style really matches the musical style; despite lacking the guttural element of death growls, the vocals are still raspier and more harsh than, say, Chimaira's or August Burns Red's vocal styles (thank god).

Speaking of metalcore vocal styles, Horror Vision definitely has some hardcore influences.  The bands use of breakdowns is quite similar to those of many run-of-the-mill "[verb] the [noun]" metalcore bands, but what sets Dead Squad apart from metalcore in my book is their tasteful use of breakdowns.  They rarely slow down to the intensely slow drag common in metalcore breakdowns, and they use drastic tempo changes only to contrast with the speed and ferocity of the rest of the album.

There are a couple highlight of the album that stand out as particularly impressive.  "Manufaktur Replika Baptis" has a fun jazz breakdown in the first half of the song, which, while it isn't very good jazz, provides a nice contrast for the rest of the song.  And, "Dominasi Belati" has a great breakdown-ish section with pinch harmonics that will make your hair stand on end (and to those out there that have this misconception that pinch harmonics are "hardcore" and not metal: get your head out of your ass, listen to a fucking Nile song, and then go fuck yourself).

Overall?  Fun album.  Especially for something being given away for free.  And, this is comparing Dead Squad to other signed death metal names - compared to the recording quality and musical quality of most free metal, Horror Vision is a gem amongst asswipes.

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