DOUBLE ALBUM REVIEW - THE DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT - Z²

Woah! Two albums in one go? I am being spoiled rotten here this time. And it's Devin Townsend to boot! Indeed! I suppose I should write this review with... a coffee to hand.

In case you don't know, Z2 is a double album, consisting half of a Devin Townsend Project album called 'Sky Blue' and the album for which the release is titled, 'Ziltoid 2' (subtitled as Dark Matters).

We shall commence with Sky Blue, then.



If you've listened to Addicted! and Epicloud, you'll know what's at hand here. What Devin himself would affectionately dub as 'big, dumb rock'. There's not a great deal of thinking required here, though that isn't to say that the songs aren't incredibly dense. The compositions are designed to have you nodding along, singing along, lending your voice to Dev's grandiose feel-good choir. For where once he may have been considered the Nasultan of Negativity during his Strapping Young Lad days, now he is the Primarch of Positivity.

For these compositions are incredibly life-affirming. 'Rejoice', the opener, is one of his strongest songs to date, and you wonder if he's hit the apex with the starter. But no, you know better, and sure enough, we follow with 'Fallout' which is another corker. 'Universal Flame' features some soaring choirs (oh, the choirs on this release have about two thousand odd people in them, by the way), but then we hit 'Warrior', which picks up where Supercrush left off with an utterly soaring chorus that will wedge itself into your brain like a Xenomorph's mini-mouth. The instrumental work is pretty straightforward, with some memorable riffs, but most of the hooks come from Big D's voice, and that of Anneke van Giersbergen (whose name you think is a mouthful until you try to pronounce RVP's surname). And it's sublime. How else can I describe it? This is sublime.

If I viewed Epicloud as the final nail in the coffin of SYL, Sky Blue is where we see it lowered into the ground. But don't be sad. Happy Devin is here to stay, and he'll cheer you up, and in the process we'll have a massive singalong. This is EASILY his best work to date.

10/10

Now... I feel like a bit of fun.



If you've heard Ziltoid The Omniscient, then you'll know what to expect here. Silliness by the boatload, tongue-in-cheek humour and a storyline strange enough to leave you hankering for coffee.

It's important not to bemoan Dark Matters for a general lack of songs that can be traditionally described as 'catchy' (save for perhaps Deathray). It has hooks, certainly, and these will burrow into your brain just as surely as a cerebral bore would, but it is first and foremost a radio play in the style of The War of The Worlds, and indeed bears some similarities to what TWoTW would have been like had Jeff Wayne decided to take copious amounts of acid and entirely rewrite the storyline.

We have guest appearances, too - The Walls of Jericho play Captain Spectacular, and Dominique Lenore Persi as the War Princess. There's also narration courtesy of Bill Courage, and the narration makes Dark Matters work. Where before Dev did 99% of the voices, now we have extra depth and flavour, and Courage's brilliant narrative work makes the whole thing come together. Musically it's again very solid, and much more sensible than the first one - after all, the instruments don't need to be wacky when you have dialogue like THIS.

So, as an album, this one needs to be listened to end to end, without interruption. Best fetch a coffee, then.

9/10

ALBUM REVIEW: Black Crown Initiate - "The Wreckage of Stars"

It's rare that a band's debut album stops you dead in your tracks, and rarer still for that debut to be an EP. Black Crown Initiate managed that with last year's 'Song of the Crippled Bull', which has been spun on my MP3 player at LEAST 40 times since I bought it in March of this year. I also went as far as to get the physical copy. Enter their first full length album, 'The Wreckage of Stars'.



In this disc we have a comprehensive summation of this band, what they play, and hints of what may yet come. In many ways they are the Steven Erikson of metal, creating multihued landscapes that are both igneous and nival at the same time, a dichotomy of crushing brutality and haunting melody that paints an essay on the human condition. The ten tracks are jammed with monstrous riffs that veer from impressive technicality to lurching grooves, jammy bass lines and rapid-fire blast beats. The songs are also catchy as fuck. Did I mention that death metal can be catchy as fuck? Well, there it is.

The first song also jams out something I've never encountered in metal; the sitar. 'A Great Mistake' is thoroughly ominous, abounding with brooding threats. Vocalist James Dorton's roar (his main register, alongside higher growls and some higher still screams) is low, but enunciated, and you get the sense that this song is a kaiju risen from the Pacific to lay waste to all of Tokyo. Guitarist Andy Thomas provides the sung vocals, and it's clear that his beard has consumed a thousand infants to sustain what he describes as his 'cherubic tenor'. It has to have done. The thing is massive.

'The Fractured One' and 'The Malignant' both take us through some meaty riffs and melodic passages, but then we hit 'The Human Lie Manifest', one of the heaviest cuts on the album, which is where your face will be fucked clean off. If but sinews remained, now there shall be nothing but white, polished bone. And then there's 'Withering Waves'. Holy shitballs, that chorus. The riff behind it is so simple, the vocal line so powerful and catchy. It's the sound of Caladan Brood unlimbering his hammer and striking the ground.

We do also get a near-instrumental in the title track, and then the last two tracks are comparatively calm affairs that wind you down, lowering you to the floor even as the blade is pulled from your chest. And just like that, it's over.

I've not stopped listening to this since my copy came. Five times in two days, end to end. I can't give an honest score to this either, because I feel that to do so would be disingenuous. So you'll have to make up your own mind here. Suffice to say this will receive a lot of attention from my ears over the coming months.

ALBUM REVIEW - Scar Symmetry - "The Singularity, Phase I: Neohumanity"

Time for another album review. It's been a while.

Up today: Death Jovi, with their newest album (and first of a THREE PART album cycle [holy shitballs]), 'Neohumanity'. I'll not use the full title as it's nearly as cumbersome as the title to SikTh's first disc is.



So, what's on play here? Well, more of the same, really. If you know Scar Symmetry's previous material, you'll know what to expect here. They have the same sort of consistency that Lamb of God have with their style, in that there is a defined sound, with dual lead harmonies, technical widdles, alternating gruff and clean vocals and rapid rhythms. There's also science fiction. Lots of science fiction.

The album's first tracks open up with the concept of the album laid out, and nearly immediately we can tell Per Nilsson has been listening to Chimpspanner (the opening riff to 'Neohuman' wouldn't sound amiss in Ortiz's 'Mobius' suite). Growler Roberth Karlsson is sounding like a bear who's gone and caught his ballsack in a trap (as per usual - it's a very angry growl indeed) whilst clean singer Lars Palmqvist has added what I can only describe as a haunting quality to his delivery again, which seemed absent on The Unseen Empire (2011), and the return of this is welcome indeed. Henrik Ohlsson's drumming is tight, fast and chaotic, and Kenneth Seil's criminally underrated bass abuse again provides a simultaneous lockstep and counterpoint to Per's melodies. For anyone to keep up with that man is impressive, but on a bass? Doubly so. Buy him a beer.

The lyrics are predictably corny, but that's fine, because Scar Symmetry embrace cheese in a way that only Swedes can (Sabaton, anyone?). The spoken word ending to the incredibly ominous 'The Cryonic Harvest' is cheddar in purest form, even down to the atypical not-quite-perfect English that Swedish bands so often give us, but that I see as a very endearing quality. The first single 'Limits to Infinity' is amazingly catchy with a sledgehammer breakdown.

You'd think eight tracks would be a bit of a gip, but no. We have Dream Theater song lengths on occasion here, and so the disc lasts for near on 45 minutes. It's not the first time Scar Symmetry have touched on Dream Theater stylings - I'm sure this is a coincidence, but check out the introduction to 'Ghost Prototype II' and 'The Count of Tuscany'. Both discs are also from the same year. Spooky. To return to topic, the increased song length on 'Neohuman' and 'Technocalyptic Cybergeddon' works very well, and provides a nice balance to the radio length tracks on offer.

The album presently scores at a solid 9/10, and only misses the ten by virtue of brevity. But it's one in three. I'm good to wait for the rest to come.