ALBUM REVIEW - Perfume - 'Cosmic Explorer'

Sometimes a man needs to take a little break from metal. Sometimes that break takes him a hard left into completely uncharted territory. Such is the position I found myself in semi-recently (around when I completed my first novel, Incarnate). That hard left took me into the realm of J-Pop, a genre I'd dabbled in before. And it wound up here, with the fifth Perfume album.



Now for those who are unfamiliar, or staring at the screen right now with an expression that says 'what is Maark smoking right now?', Perfume are a vocal group whose music is very much the opposite of my usual fare, involving choreography, light shows, and lots of studio production.

As with most of their albums, this disc starts with an instrumental piece which actually reminded me a lot of the Baby Metroid theme from Metroid II. Following this, the title track comes in, and it's surprisingly slow compared to the opening pieces of the rest of the band's discography. It actually signalled another slight directional shift when I first heard it, as most of their album have borne. The overall sound of this album is perhaps more mature than their earlier releases, and overall it works out pretty well (you can look at the sound of this disc as a fusion of JPN and Level3).

We move on through Miracle Worker and Next Stage With YOU, both relatively soft pieces, both with a focus on repeated vocal lines. FLASH bears more instrumental focus, though again the main catch is in the sublime vocal melodies.  I actually felt that STORY is a bit of a sore thumb - whilst the band have used discordance in songs before (and pretty successfully), the tonality on STORY feels more as though it belongs on a Prodigy album, with the odd marching cadence and aggressive, slightly off-key synths. Most of the other songs flow nicely into one another - my particular favourite being the late track Pick Me Up, which I would probably say epitomises where this band are at present.

There are flaws present, however. The production is foremost - there are moments where clipping is very evident on the vocal tracks (Cosmic Explorer and Miracle Worker spring to mind), and there are more vocal lines in English than on previous releases which leads to occasional mispronunciations (stage as stagey and refrain as... well, the predictable jumble of r and l happens, so let's leave it there). I'd guess that the increased crossover of language is actually in part due to the fact they're starting to break out of Asia, so we can overlook that.

The flaws don't really detract from the overall enjoyment of the album, however, and that's key. It's overall a very solid addition to their catalogue - not my favourite of their discs as of yet, but that's liable to change in the future. One slightly duff track and occasionally questionable production were the only issues I could really find to warrant marking it down, but it still gets an 8/10.

ALBUM REVIEW: Soilwork - "The Ride Majestic"

There are some bands who you can reliably expect to sound a certain way with a new release. Lamb of God, Iron Maiden, Rammstein, Neaera... Each has a core sound rarely deviated from. So it is for Soilwork, as they release disc number ten.

So, the real question comes down to this: Is the ride majestic? The answer is yes, yes it is. Shiny and chrome, and majestic. Here is an album that grabs you by the throat, pausing only briefly to allow you a breath before the mauling resumes. We have here harmonised dual leads (that undeniable Goteborg Sound), alternating gruff and melodic vocals, occasional keyboard flourishes, and the ever-ridiculous drumming of Dirk Verbeuren, the Nicest Guy in Metal.

A lot of bands try and claim that their new album is 'our most melodic' (see: more autotune) whilst simultaneously being 'our most brutal' (see: more breakdowns). So, for Soilwork to actually deliver on such a promise (whilst never explicitly stating it, to my knowledge) is impressive. The disc takes what they started on The Living Infinite, focuses it into 11 (13 on the special edition) songs, adds a liberal dash of A Predator's Portrait and Natural Born Chaos, and then sucks you into the maelstrom.

The title track is a pretty succint summation of the album; it has an insanely catchy lead hook and massive chorus, whilst never feeling trite. Speed is on fire, his vocals sounding better than ever on all fronts. Sylvain Coudret and David Andersson's guitar work is as ever an excellent continuation of the Soilwork sound, occasionally delving into somewhat calmer waters (Death in General, All Along Ehcoing Paths). We also have some intense brutality (Alight in the Aftermath, The Phantom) the latter of which is hearkening back to their Chainheart era material. It's very easily the band's most complete release, with no filler tracks, no wasted moments.

The main criticism we have to level here is that Sven Karlsson's keys are buried in the mix, for the most part. They come to the fore here and there, but it's much less pronounced that on the last few releases. Overall, it's a minor quibble however, and it doesn't necessarily hurt the flow of the songs at all.

This is easily a 10/10 effort, and I can foresee major rotation through my playlists for the next few months. Now for them to announce a UK tour, eh?

ALBUM REVIEW: Voices From The Fuselage - "Odyssey: The Destroyer of Worlds"

First review in a goodly number of months. Time for something a little bit more relaxed this time...



We should note that whilst various media outlets would have you believe that VFTF are somehow 'metalcore', they only rarely venture into metal territory. It's more apt to liken them to post rock / post metal. Odyssey is a disc I would most liken to Exit Ten's second disc, 'Give Me Infinity', and it will appeal to people looking to fill that Reading-shaped void in their lives.

The most obvious thing people will know about this band is Ashe, and most of those from his time in TesseracT. It shouldn't come as a surprise that his vocal work here is more of the same, although that can never be a criticism due to his voice being sublime (rumour has it Ashe is also doing a collaboration with Ben from Enochian Theory; this should excite you very much). It melds very well with the often sparse instrumentation, which for the most part is content to stay in the background supporting the vocal melodies.

That's not to say that the band as a whole don't have their moment - second track and lead single 'Inner Child' and the lengthy 'Meteorites' are rooted quite firmly in crunchy, downtuned guitars and aggressive rhythms. But this style of song is definitely in the minority on this disc; tracks such as 'Ortus' and 'Epicinium' are more prevalent by far.

Each song is well constructed with enough hooks to warrant repeat listens. I should also add that this album has the potential to be AOTY 2015 from this chap's point of view.

10/10

ALBUM REVIEW: The Agonist - 'Eye of Providence'

An album released after a core member change is always going to seem a difficult one, especially when the member being changed is one of the core elements of a band's sound. And that's exactly what The Agonist have gone through before releasing their new disc, 'Eye of Providence'.

Thankfully, any perceived difficulty in this change has been neatly blown away. They couldn't have done it better if they'd given such conceptions until the count of ten to get their ugly, yellow, no-good keister off of their property, before they pumped their guts full of lead (all right Johhny, I'm sorry, I'm goin'!). The band achieves this via a suite of thirteen songs, most of which hearken back to their second album, 'Lullabies For The Dormant Mind' (which for the record, you should own, and if you don't shame on you). There are also nods to their more progressive third disc, 'Prisoners'.

From an instrumental and production standpoint, the album certainly has an edge over the last release. My main complaint with Prisoners was that the drums sounded like mud when they got fast. Not this time. Every hit is clear and defined. Every note on the guitars comes clearly through a haze of biting distortion, whilst the bass is very much audible, biting and snapping in the mix. It's perhaps the most aggressive work of the band to date, though not quite so busy sonically as Lullabies is (keyboards and samples are notable by their general absence).

The vocals will be what most people focus on, as this is where the member change has happened - Alissa White-Gluz is now out, and Vicky Psarakis is in (though this is pretty old news, to be honest). The most notable difference is that Vicky's growls and screams have a throatier bite to them, perhaps being more rooted in traditional death metal vocals, and being somewhat lower in pitch overall. Her melodic passages are well constructed and catchy without the songs having to rely on them (as some bands are wont to do). The most notable difference is that her lyrics are relatively straightforward, in comparison to AWG's. This isn't necessarily a negative point, though, being that AWG's lyrics had always been, in essence, very complex poetry.

My criticisms come primarily from the tracklisting. The first nine tracks rip and tear like an enraged honey badger, and then we have a cluster of more gentle songs, interspersed with the album's heaviest track. It would have perhaps been a more even pace if the gentler numbers had been spaced more evenly through the album's hour-long runtime, but it's a very minor quibble overall. We may have a contender for album of the year 2015 already...

9.5/10

YEAR END LIST - ALBUMS 5-1

And now for my favourite picks of the year. Some surprises here for you, I don't doubt...

5 - Intervals - A Voice Within

Intervals were a band I was familiar with in the same vein as Chimpspanner or Pomegranate Tiger. Solid, serviceable instrudjent. And then they went and added a vocalist, and released this. Holy shit. So many people decried them for it, and so many people were just plain, straight up WRONG. The songwriting on this album is immaculate, the drumming of Anus Pastry is phenomenal (as is his ability to pull odd faces in photos), and the vocals. It's a shame that Semesky has already upped and left, that's for sure. Ephemeral is up there for my riff of the year, no doubt.

4 - Machine Head - Bloodstone & Diamonds

I had been prepared for this album to now make my year-end list. I had made my peace with it, and that peace was based on Unto the Locust being decent, but not great, And then Machine Head come out with this, and kerbstomp any doubt I had. More astounding is that they're 45, going on 50... Exceedingly strong songwriting coupled with a more experimental edge combine to form an album that is better than The Blackening. And yeah, I fuckin' said it.

3 - Fallujah - The Flesh Prevails

Surprised, Bren? It grew that much on me in FOUR DAYS. I hadn't thought much to this based on the tracks I'd heard off of it. Then some bearded sod called me out on it, and I listened to it in full. In the three days after it came, I had listened to it end-to-end seven times. The mixture of atmospheric spacey-ness and crushing death metal is compelling. It's what The Contortionist would have been had they been a death metal band.

2 - The Devin Townsend Project - Sky Blue

I never foresaw myself enjoying a pop album, but ostensibly, that's what this is. Twelve tracks of pop metal that runs the gamut between hard rock and shoegaze. We have a song that was influenced very overtly by chart r'n'b (and Dev acknowledges this with no qualms whatsoever). What people should accept is that, musically, Townsend is past metal. Long past it. And his current direction is one I would lend my axe to gladly. This is EASILY his best album yet.

1 - Black Crown Initiate - The Wreckage of Stars

Surprise fuckin' surprise, eh? Anyone who knows me will know this and Sky Blue duelled it out for my AOTY for a few months. This finally pipped Devin to the post, and that's no small feat at all, especially for the band's first full length release. The heavy, the ominous, the ambient and the unexpected collide with the force of comets to form something truly special. Perhaps this album should have been called Herman? Because it is the planet smasher. No album this year has warranted so many listens... And it only came out in September. And I only got the disc in October (thanks Customs, you fuckers).

Other honourable mentions: Sabaton - 'Heroes', In This Moment - 'Black Widow', Devil You Know - 'The Beauty of Destruction', Verse Vica - 'Endeavor', Bloodshot Dawn - 'Demons', Cormorant - 'Earth Diver', Wovenwar - 'Wovenwar'.

YEAR END LIST - ALBUMS 10-6

Yes indeed! It's that time again where I count down my top ten discs of the year. It would have been five, but 2014 was a very good year for music and five simply isn't enough.

10 - The Algorithm - Octopus4

It's rare for an album that can be described as instrumental to make it onto my list (it's not fully instrumental - there is a prolonged section of French rapping on 'Un Dernier Combat' and scattered vocal clips here and there on other tracks), but The Algorithm has managed to make it onto this year's. More focused than his last release, 2012's 'Polymorphic Code', as well as more organic and with a higher focus on melody and catchy songwriting,

9 - Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun

Some bemoan Mastodon for their current direction, deride that they have eschewed heaviness for songs that are more accessible. I quite enjoy their current progressive leanings. Once More 'Round the Sun continues along the same tangent that began with The Hunter, with a few tracks that hearken back to their material on Crack The Skye. 

8 - Nexilva - Eschatologies

This is the debut full length (at least, to my knowledge) from these guys, who I saw in April this year. Extremely rapid, technical riffs and machine gun drumming meet a dual-layered vocal delivery of throaty growls and shrieks, with just a smattering of keyboards to blacken things up a little. They're also possessed of one of the most terrifying bassists ever. Sweep picking a bass? Yup. Fucking scary. The only downside to the album is that the snare seems mixed far too low for all those blasts.

7 - Scar Symmetry - The Singularity, Part I: Neohumanity

With Death Jovi, you know what you're getting, by and large. Technical, widdly riffs, coupled with thundering bass, drums and a double vocal delivery. It's cheesy as fuck and they know it. And normally, pop-metal doesn't work. But when it;'s left to Per Nilsson, it works, and it works bloody well. Scar Symmetry will likely never return to the melodeath sound of their Alvestam years, but that's fine - the current direction fits them like a glove. Or a custom fleshlight.

6 - The Contortionist - Language

2014 was certainly the year in which I came to appreciate dreamy, spaced-out tunes, where sonic density and heaviness takes a back seat. The Contortionist certainly sound nothing like they did on Exoplanet, and to a lesser extent Intrinsic. Lessard's vocals are warmer than Carpenter's, which leads to a warmer sounding album than the previous two were, but one no less compelling for it. Walk through a row of trees in autumn and tell me this doesn't make sense.

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