Burning Saviours - Death (2018)

  

Burning Saviours is a name familiar to people following the doom metal scene and rightfully so. You don't simply name yourself after one of the best Pentagram songs and disappoint (or maybe you do, who knows, I am sure there are examples out there). To this day, now including their newest release simply titled: "Death", Burning Saviours have added another immaculate title to their excellent, A-level doom metal catalogue. A thirty-five minutes of brooding, lingering, godless doom perfection.

For those unfamiliar with the band, Burning Saviours hail from Örebro, Sweden, a place which has also blessed us with the famous hardrock/traditional doom suspects Witchcraft, as well as quite a few succesful stoner rock outfits, for those of you who care for a cheeky reference. I guess you could say the band is from the second wave of doom (or third, who ever can keep record of those things) and have been around long enough to have released, in their case, four full-length albums before "Death". As it turns out, I am a bit of a fossil myself as I remember listening to their self-titled album and thinking it sounded quite fresh. It was, of course, released in 2005 when such sound definitely seemed like some fresh breeze, before the so many clones emerged in the swampy waters of the Swedish scene. Surely hearing the warm analogue-reminscent guitar tone and Mikael Monks sounding oh-god-so-much like Bobby Liebling was quite the wow factor. Having that in mind, Burning Saviours haven't by any means changed directions drastically, still keeping the same nostalgic, proto-hardrock sound and analogue vibes with reference to those of us who dig us some seventees sound. I feel like the music has gotten heavier and heavier, though, to culminate into the lamentenius, bewildering, mystic goodness which is the record I am reviewing today.  

Let's take "Death" as more of a soundscape than just music. 'Draug' opens up the gates of the wretched land it has set in its own doomspace to walk you through the grim land of everything foul and distant, while fog-like miasmal substances in the air take your soul through this land to lead you on an epic journey of self-realisation and inevitable death.. and Oh, no! You can't see the end of it: "Death has come for you tonight!". Acoustic guitar leads the way, then punishing Sabbath riffage breaks in for some fast realisation that you have smelled the stench of death and have to run. The guitar is typical of traditional doom with more or less a repetitive mid-paced riffage which breaks in in all the right places to introduce some theatrical element while working in perfect unison with the clean vocals. The second track, 'Crusade of Evil' is the more upbeat, more rowdy battle-tune, which in doom often predisposes you and prepares you for historically-themed lyrics of templers, soldiers, etc. taking over some sort of mystic foreign land. Hell yeah, this horse-hoof thundering melody could be heavy metal but is still pained in the darker overtones of doom. After about four of five listens of the album I can say, hands down, the third track, 'Nothing After' is in my top 3 favourite tracks of the album, and favourite Burning Saviours songs ever, probably my favourite of all with the extremely well-executed lyrics that are presented to you as some sort of punishing sermon:  

"There is no Light to Carry you home!

You are about to Die Alone" .. " 

This is followed by the first longer solo of the album, to add for the perfectly-fitting increasing melancholy. 'Lamentations' is also more upbeat and hoarse vocally, with a classic doom riff, to set the mood for a contender for my favourite tune of the album, or maybe second favourite (will have to split places with 'Nothing After') - 'Death'. The vocals tell the convincing truth that some of us are always on the losing side, or maybe we are all on the losing side because 'no choice is given, you just have to go, the sky turns to grey' since the black winged creatures will take us all eventually. "Death" exits the album with true grace and perfection in the form of largely acoustically-led 'Silence' and 'Finally free', the dream-like tales of forgotten pasts or to be forgotten presents? Melodies that sound like minor-chorded final releases.

The only way I can describe Burning Saviours is: "Joy through Sadness".   

Listen and support: 

The Munsens - Abbey Rose (2016)

The Munsens are one of the last cool things since doom stopped being cool. Alright now, between me and you, doom has never been cool and that might as well be the best thing about it. No forced fans, no dressed up clowns as the ones you can find in your regular NWBHM festival. But around the end of 2014-2015 it gained quite a lot of attention, even from more mainstream metal magazines and not only. All of this hugely due to Electric Wizard's mainstream success. You start going to your typical classic metal festivals and find people in flares, talking about how great Reverend Bizarre are. What the hell was that, the zombie apocalypse finally unleashing? On one hand, that's good for the music - more fans, more people get inspired to create music and so on. However, this of course brought with itself a thousand female-fronted "retro" bands (now who will be the first to say I am sexist), cheesy vocals, mall chicks into fashion thinking they are super retro and posting more selfies on instagram than I could count. But hey, even that's fine with me, as long as there's a lot of good music out there. But guess what, everything in life is cyclic and the waters of doom got stuck in the swamp of unoriginality. Waiting for maybe a different time to return with full power?

The Munsens have the old breed. They play this slow, super slow, out of their gut wretched doom metal that I happened to treasure dearly. When you say to someone who is not a classic doom fan - this is "slow metal", in their head that usually means 'regular'. No. The Munsens are slower than that. Bad quality of music but good bad. And if you're reading this, you do probably know what I mean. No stupid polishes, everything is served raw. "Abbey rose"'s cover artwork is only black and white and so is the music behind it. The scenery it depicts reminds you of a London street where Jack the Ripper might show from around the corner and great you with his knife. These bleak sceneries somehow perfectly link with the down-tuned guitars and bass induced sound. No positive vibes, just the perfect recipe for a very nihilistic doom. This being in no way old school death, I was thinking that there are some similarities though, in the kind of taste this EP leaves in your mouth. The sound is very simple, in fact, a mediocre amateur musician like me can hear the riffs pretty accurately, masked by some thick delay and reverse. You could record this with your Blackstar and a pedal but that doesn't make it any bit less atmospheric. Would recommend it for fans of Windhand, Graves at Sea.

If you happen to have the first EPs too, I think in comparison Abbey Rose is even better. Already being a huge fan of "Weight of the night" and "Slave", I can easily tell that Abbey is catchy after only the first listen, while it takes some time for the first two EPs to grow on you. One idea less raw and garagy. Hands down, one of my top 3 releases for 2016.

https://themunsensnj.bandcamp.com/

Horseskull - Horseskull (2014)

In the valley of absolutely soul-drained, uninspired modern stoner/sludge bands, Horseskull shine like a corundum in a bowl of mud. There are three kinds of bands in my opinion. The first type, you hear them and at the time of the third second you know that the music is going to be complete piss. The second type - you listen to several songs and feel like they have something, maybe some potential to develop; and the third type of band just grabs you by the balls and you really don't need to hear much to know they will get you going. Horseskull were that king of band for me, from song number one I knew I was going to dig them, dig them hard.

Their style of metal can be described as greasy, low-tuned, angry badass solo-infused sludge, if you might like. The pace of the majority of the album is too fast to fit in your regular sludge metal description, but the vocal style and general delivery sound as pissed as the baby of Disrupt and Crowbar. The solo guitar won't get tired for a minute and you'd just be buried under a wave of awesomeness of soloing.  I am not kidding, the fuzz wizard is strong here. There are tiny acoustic bits here and there, but not too much and I'd say, exactly the appropriate amount to never make the record in general cheesy. I mean, cheese is as far from this band as your cat is from graduating from Harvard. The final punch is the last song that would delude you to be a desert trip and then bring you with a bang to reality. Class. The only problem with this album is that it is too short.

Alrightie, to sum this up, if you like your doom, sludge or whatever distorted heavy music low and cool and unstained from posers and retro dressed chicks and falcettos, here you go.

Autopsy - Macabre Eternal (2011)

I've been buried under the glistering summer heat, enjoying the calm spiritual death of my burning summer break of a chemistry student, being turned into a human craving for silence and sleep as a means of enjoying myself (that's also why university is not always the best idea). Then one day I woke up and passed around my Autopsy Severed Survival vinyl and thought 'maybe I should give it a spin'. Which proved a successful means of waking the beast from her eternal summer slumber. Then it lead to me listening to 'Macabre Eternal' as I remember how much I loved and praised it when it first came out. Oh, hooray, down-tuned guitars, ravaging soloing - a glimpse of clear air, finally!

What bums me most about death metal bands created in the new millennia is the way in which they decide to produce their records, absolutely minimalizing the human effort by using machines to do all their work. Don't get me wrong, I don't care whether you work more or less in the studio, I care about the final product, which is the music I am listening to and I definitely don't like my drumming crystal clear and my bass clean and shaved. Autopsy have definitely 'improved' a lot sound quality-wise from their early days. However, what is great sound and production in their case, does not ruin the spirit and smell of this package in the very least. You get straight, non cheesy and always as balled, down trodden death metal. Or maybe I should say 'doom death' if we're speaking about some of the songs. What's particularly enjoyable about this album is that is has everything your ears'd need - it has the fast, bludgeoning guitar solos, it has the doomier, slow-paced grim songs, it has everything and done in the finest way possible.

The songs themselves feel complete and actually contain some real meat - such diversity of riffs, astonishingly rude bass; when you have almost forgotten that bands used to record something in such a raw way - you get it - the bass is fucking there, it is audible! The most important ingredient in cooking your death metal. Then in the next song you get an acoustic guitar, a plethora of surprises and all of them are good. Just when you think you're hearing the beats of the dead in a slow and grim manner, the next songs throws you at a completely different situation - suddenly you'd be floating in the rives of the underworld hearing a serene chorus. God, I love this album, in its longest and shortest tracks, just the same.

When I am listening to this album I feel like I hold a diamond that I could put in a secret vault and get it out when I really need it. There are very few bands in the world that would produce something with such a high quality these days. It's as if I am listening to the Repulsion demos again but with a much more enjoyable sound and it's not a hundred years ago. There are some albums - whatever you say, you won't to them justice until you finally hear the material and this is one of them.

Dread Sovereign - Pray to the devil in man (2013)

What is this? For a starter, some records should have a label mentioning with small but clear letters "danger of overexcitement". When I first heard that Primordial’s main man, Alan Averill is releasing a doom metal thing, it interested me but I let it somehow pass by my ears. Then “Pray to the devil in man” was released and it buried me six feet below sea level. There’s something cursed in the Irish extreme metal scene and I don’t know exactly what it is, but they manage to pull off some brilliant wretched metal. No generic crap. However, here I am not even touching the matter of mediocrity, this EP is really fucking good.

Consisting of 3 tracks, with an overall length a bit more than 20 minutes, it’s got no note that’s not at its place. I wish it were at least twice its duration and hope for a full-blooded release sometime soon. Musically, the EP is a mixture of the classiest parts of Primordial’s latter albums and mind crushing doom with a fairly good modern production, which fails at no time. In my opinion, the most impressive track is the third one; I feel they’ve left it for last to completely finish you. It’s basically 9-minute vocal cursing, which bursts at the end just to throw you a mile from where you were just sitting before the song began. Typical structure for a doom metal song, but I’m still excited like I hear something of that sort for a first time. And maybe in some ways I do, because how often do you hear ‘Primordial goes doom.’ The songs don’t vary greatly, speed being always mid slow. Personally, it reminds me of another favourite band from England, Gallow God. There’s something similar in the manner of tranquil and bleak delivery.

Don’t worry if Twilight of the God wasn’t your thing, this piece here is quite different. While Twilight of the God were okay, generic at best, “Pray to the devil in man” is class. Maybe it has something to do with my personal taste, but I think it’s among the best EPs I’ve heard in the recent months and damn, I listen to a lot of bands.

Jex Thoth - Blue Moon Rise (2013)

Some time ago, a bit after Jex Thoth's self-titled album was released, I was complaining to a friend that doom metal bands with female vocalists suck - well, you guessed right - that was before I actually heard Jex Thoth's actual recording. The first second my ears were touched by Jessica Bowen's voice I was mesmerised and all my previous doubt on the matter of female-fronted doom vanished into thin air. However, I have to correct myself - for Jex Thoth is not about doom as you would suppose - it's more of a fairy, folky hardrock messing with the doom from time to time rather then Conan-like sound of tectonic plates collision.

The s/t album from 2008 is a true masterpiece, there's no denying it. Start with the ultra mythical cover artwork and the moment you hear 'Nothing left to die' you know there's no joking here. Wherever you look it upon, it's a great album. It's not a secret for anyone that the best of this band is their lady's astonishing voice. Seriously, I've heard this and that, but nothing matches the mighty vocals and live performances of this woman, she knows perfectly well how to use her tools of the trade.

So, when you have released such a well-received and flawless album, what do you do to top it? I am not sure whether they have topped the s/t with Blood moon rise, but at least it's not bad in any way. The one thing that I think is obvious from the first listen is that it sounds a little more mellow-hearted. You can literally play songs like "Keep your weeds" to grandmother and she would find them enjoyable if she's not a sour granny.
On the other hand, there are songs like "The Devide" which stand out like a lot heavier and sour.
I like this album loads, because at one moment it sounds like a sweet forest lullaby, it would make you take a nap around the fallen autumn leaves, smell the pine spruce in the air and walk in peace, at other times it  is so much darker, from the lighted forest your enter the dark cave. Blood moon rise somehow managed to find the perfect balance. Not to mention that Jex's voice would easily be mistaken for the one of a forest priestess. Truth is, I am sure that if they exist, they sound like her.

The reason for which I mention the presence of doom metal in Jex Thoth's sophomore are songs like "The four of us are dying" and "Psyar". There are the characteristic grim moments and unlike bands like Jess and the ancient ones, the heaviness is not entirely lost. Also, while there are many fashionable bands these days in the like of Jex, the music here really lives in a world of its own. You just wouldn't mistake this record with the thousands of others female-fronted hardrock bands. Witchcraft's debut reminds me of this in a way, only that the folk influences here are even more massive.

If you loved the previous Jex Thoth, you would find the sophomore at least appealing. There's no need to dig in it with a thousand listens, it's potencial is revealed from the very beginning and starts to grow with every listen.

 

Note: FULL ALBUM.

Exhumator - Atrophy of feelings (Атрофия на чувствата)

Ексхуматор (Exhumator) is a fucking obscure band in every aspect that could ever be. This band hails from the underground of Bulgaria in the 90s and is the project of one man's crazy mind. It's a little difficult for me to label this band and album, but I can honestly say one thing - this album is damn sick. Start with the cover - a few stitches on an obviously wounded flesh. The concept of this whole creation is to sound evil and sick and it does.

To begin with, there are elements of thrash and black metal in this album, but in my opinion it comes nearest to death metal. The singing is not a typical growl, nor is it grunting, more likely some weird mumbling that at moments becomes very angry and fast, but never high pitched or screaming. It's average death metal singing and I would normally dig it and not put so much emphasis on it, but the production is so terrible that you can hardly hear distinguishable words. I know that death metal is not normally the genre in which you will hear clearly every word, but with a better production this could have been a lot more enjoyable. Take for example, Bolt Thrower, songs like "The IV Crusade" would never have been so rad if you couldn't hear Karl's words. I read once that he was a mediocre vocalist and it pains me even now when I think about it...

There are thousands of death metal albums that you could find lying around under the dust of time and you can ask me - why should I check out this specific album? Well, what makes it cooler than the average technical copy-paste death metal album is that in "Atrophy of feelings" there is some soul put into it. You can easily tell so by listening to the solos. Take for instance the opener track, there are some really perfect and touching guitar solos that cut off at some points of the song, but instead of sounding out of place or too artificial, the solos fit very well and sound more than great. What is more, the tape sounds fucking old and real, maybe because it was made with such a small budget and not professionally in a bright and swept off studio, I have no idea, but it sounds pretty authentic, which I believe is very important for this genre.

The guitar sound is really great and works in perfect harmony with the drums, there are occasional slow downs, almost doom-like, which makes the whole album sound so much gloomier and evil. The low tuning and basement feeling really makes me feel as if I'm not in my room, but in a rather darker and colder place. 

The lyrics are as brain fucked as one could expect. They concern happy and gay topics like crematoriums, the day on which one dies, deadly lands and abnormal places. On the "tape booklet" the dude behind the music can be seen pictured in a morgue so yeah, he really takes this shit seriously. The lyrics are not sick in the exactly Carcass morbid kind of way, but in certain aspects they're even worse, because mental collapse and the process of losing your soul might be just as depressing as picturing decomposing meat. I like this kind of art, it shows that not everything is roses and sunshine and something valuable can be made out of misery.

Of course, there are some things to be wanted. For instance, the drums sound pretty weak - not in skill, but in tone. The drumming and bass guitar should be more audible and as I already said - the vocals could be fixed a little. But all in all, I think that this is one stinky and awesome tape. 

Stangala - Boued Tousek Hag Traou Mat All (2011)

Stangala is this very strange stoner rock, trippy doom-like band from France. By saying 'strange' I really mean strange and the fact that I don't understand a single word from their songs makes them even weirder for me. These guys from France have decided to name their album and songs in Breton, which can cause a big confusion if you're a foreigner like me. Apart from my confusion, I think that singing in such a language creates a very intimate and magical atmosphere. The Celtic influence can be seen on the very awesome cover picturing the guys wearing robes in some hazy odd place. The colours used and the Celtic motives serve fantastically to present the music to someone who hears the band for a first time and actually this is how I decided to check these folks out.

The first song "Doom rock glazik" is this very catchy, almost disco hard rock *don't throw a stone at me* with its folk dancing atmosphere. I don't mean ''catchy'' in a bad mainstream way, it's just very pagan and rock'n'roll at the same time. You can almost picture a coven dancing around a smoking cauldron. "Al Lidou Esoterik An Dolmen Hud" is perfect mixture of some of Electric Wizard's most obscure instrumental songs. I'm not a big geek on gear, amps and all that, but the sound is just as vintage as in "House on the Borderland" from the EW/Reverend Bizarre split. The vocals are not as buried as in typical Wizard songs and the fact that the guy is singing in Breton really makes the songs on this album sound kinda strange and different. In some of the songs you can hear something like a pipe. The pipe and the vocals are what makes these guys stand out and in my opinion add an "exotic" feeling to the band. The pipe playing along with the guitar solos creates a really cool "high" effect.

There are heavier songs on the album, for example, "Langoliers" which has pretty heavy almost black metal pounding drums and one of the most stoner rock riffs on the record. The odd combination of a stoner riff and such strange drums creates a hazy feeling and makes this instrumental almost impossible to classify. There are also other weird songs on this album, like "Bigoudened an diaoul" with Queens of the Stone Age guitar sound and very slow stoned vocals. Some of the last songs on the album are also instrumentals with the common mushroom, psychedelic, crazy prolonged solo. There are these very doomy songs and the psychedelic feeling and then there are more stoner songs, which is very cool for it makes the album not boring at all. Let me be clear - by saying that the songs are doomy I mean doomy not DOOMy, not anything too heavy, slow or too distorted.

Indeed, I've heard hundreds of stoner and doom bands in the latest years and very few of them sound as weird as Stangala. I can't really explain why - may it be the unexpected mixture of sound, vocals and amps, but all these songs sound very different. Someone might find this as a downfall, because it makes the album not so "complete" but rather "mixed" and too diverse, but I think that's cool. The fact that I enjoy an album that is not written in English is also quite rare and speaks very well of these guys, it means that there's something more to the music since I can't be impressed with the lyrics and fully immersed in the idea behind the music.