Albums For 2012

This is the list of albums that im looking forward to this year. 2011 was a pretty crap year for the music i like so i can already tell 2012 is going to make up for it with all these albums either officially announced or hinted at by the bands.

1. Acid King - TBA
2. Electric Wizard – TBA
3. Drudkh – Eternal Turn of the Wheel
4. Wodensthrone – Curse (also seen it called The Storm...)
5. Winterfylleth - TBA
6. Abigail Williams – Becoming
7. Alcest – Les Voyages De L’ame
8. Wormed – TBA
9. Nachtmystium – Black Meddle Part 3
10. Immortal – TBA
11. Gorgoroth – TBA
12. Dragonforce – The Power Within
13. Earth – Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II
14. Ghost – TBA
15. Der Weg Einer Freiheit – TBA
16. Cathedral – The Last Spire
17. Witch Mountain – TBA
18. Sonata Arctica – TBA
19. Darkthrone - TBA
20. Burzum - Umskiptar
21. Stone Ship - TBA

Obviously a few of these have been released already but i wrote the list late last year. The new Abigail Williams had an awesome single but unfortunately the full album was extremely disappointing. Thats the second album in a row from them that has been a failure imo so i think its time for me to give up on them. Its a style that only WITTR can pull off. Alcest's new album is also out and its probably going to be at the top of my best of 2012 list for best albums. I've listened to Earth's Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II as well and i am pretty unimpressed with that as well. Part I is a great album but Part II just feels lazy.

Everything Else Part 1

Since this is an IMO list there are probably not going to be enough Death Metal, Brutal Death Metal, Experimaental Metal, Metalcore and Deathcore songs etc to have their own lists so im going to be posting all other genres not covered in the other posts here.

1. Wormed - Undeciphering The Inquantificability


2. The Agony Scene - My Dark Desire


3. Nachtmystium - Then Fires


4. The Agony Scene - The Darkest Red


5. Immolation - Majesty and Decay


6. Wormed - Uncoloured Plasma Orifices Transported


7. Nachtmystium - Assassins


8. The Agony Scene - Prey


9. Nachtmystium - Ghosts of Grace


10. The Agony Scene - Scapegoat

Ambient/Atmospheric/Depressive Black Metal Part 3

1. Imperium Dekadenz - Reich der fahlen Seelen


2. Paysage d'Hiver - Finsternis...


3. Urfaust - Der Zauberer


4. Drudkh - Eternal Turn of the Wheel


5. Wolves in the Throne Room - Ahrimanic Trance


6. Urfaust - Vom Gesicht und Rätsel


7. Weakling - This Entire Fucking Battlefield


8. Wolves in the Throne Room - Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog


9. Urfaust - Ein leeres Zauberspiel


10. Wolves in the Throne Room - Queen of the Borrowed Light

Doom/Funeral/Stoner/Drone Metal Part 3

2010 was a good year for Doom with a new Electric Wizard album and an Acid Witch album and EP. They all had excellent songs so this post is going to be a bit Electric Wizard and Acid Witch heavy.

1. Electric Wizard - Black Mass


2 Acid Witch - Midnight Mass (Intro to 2:18)


3. Boris - Flood 3


4. Acid Witch - Stoned To The Grave


5. Electric Wizard - Venus in Furs


6. Acid Witch - Metal Movie Marijuana Massacre Meltdown


7. Electric Wizard - Scorpio Curse


8. Acid Witch - Sabbath of the Undead


9. Jex Thoth - Seperated at Birth


10. Acid Witch - Swamp Spells


11. Electric Wizard - Patterns of Evil

Dimmu Borgir - Gateways Review

As this is just a single song I’m going to keep this short. It's obvious after a few listens that the departure/firing of Vortex and Mustis has had a profound effect on Dimmu's sound and I really like what I’m hearing. When I first heard the song I really didn't enjoy it. It sounded mediocre and the female vocals sounded like a confused gypsy witch that had wandered into the studio by accident. After a few more listens I started to understand what they were going for and if the rest of Abrahadabra is of the same quality as this song (hopefully higher since this song is still not perfect) then it definitely heralds a return to form for Dimmu Borgir, although the sound is not a return to their roots. The new sound is like In Sorte Diaboli minus all the cheesy wankery and false, insincere orchestration, mixed with Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia with the added depth of a full live orchestra. The song lost 10 points for the length (it was too short for my liking) and an extra 10 points for leaning too heavily on the orchestra at times and therefore the quality of the riffs suffer.

Score: 80%

Blood of Kingu - Sun in the House of the Scorpion Review

De Occulta Philosophia was an excellent piece of Black Metal that provided an excellent atmosphere and imagery. I was looking forward to more of the same when Sun In The House... was released but what I got was so much more. I would first like to mention the cover art used. It’s a creepy piece by Zdzislaw Beksinski (Leviathan has also used some of his artwork) called Wolf Walker and I think it fits the sound of the album perfectly.

As soon as the first full length track starts the first thing you notice is the difference in production. This album has a much cleaner, better produced sound. Much better than any Hate Forest or Drudkh release. The next thing you will notice is the vocals. While De Occulta predominately used shamanic droning vocals, Sun In The House continues with the shamanic vocals but also uses a lot more of the harsh vocals reminiscent of Hate Forest. It makes for a much more varied listening experience and I think the inclusion of his vocal style from Hate Forest and Drudkh was a great move.

The album is overall a more aggressive black metal album than De Occulta was. Where De Occulta had instrumental interludes between most of the songs which gave it a more atmospheric style, this album just has an Intro and an Outro (which are longer than the instrumentals on De Occulta), which I much prefer to the many instrumentals on the previous album. I don’t think that many instrumental interludes wouldn’t have worked well on this album. The songs tend to get straight into the thick of things and that many breaks would have interrupted the excellent flow of the album. The better production on this album gives it a much richer sound (which is very welcome as the thick sound of the previous album made it hard to listen to sometimes) and the guitar and drum work is much more technical than the slightly repetitive and simplistic sound, very like Drudkh, they had on De Occulta. The drums are also much more predominant.

This is one of the best albums of 2010, and one of Roman Saenko’s best pieces of work to date. I hope the new Drudkh will take a lot of the improvements that Blood of Kingu have added to their music. It has an excellent production, rich sound and catchy riffs that aren’t repeated throughout the album. It ends with a really cool cover of Beherits Gate of Nanna. It’s not a song I ever enjoyed before listening to this cover but the inclusion of droning shamanic vocals to the song makes it much more enjoyable. I recommend this album to every fan of black metal as it is an excellent solid album with bags of replay value.

Score: 95%

Drudkh - Handful of Stars Review

Since ive found myself submitting quite a few reviews for Metal Archives i thought i might as well post them here as well.

As soon as I saw the cover art for this album it became one of my “Most Looked Forward to Albums Of 2010”. The artwork has a really cool astral theme and this coupled with the name “Handful of Stars”, I was expecting something completely different for this album. At the least, I was sure the lyrics would be about space or astronomical themes, or more fantastical because of the Elf/Wizard like character on the cover. This is the main reason I didn’t immediately warm to this album. It was so different to what I was expecting that I was initially disappointed. But like many progressive albums, after 10 listens it grew on me immensely.

The first thing you will notice about the album is that the production is so much better than any other Drudkh release. It is clean and smooth and all the deliberate rawness is gone. The guitars and vocals are clearly audible which is a nice change from previous albums and the guitars are also less aggressive. The second thing you will notice is the music itself. It’s no longer straight up Atmospheric Black Metal. The template that has been used up until now for Drudkh has honestly been used to death by them. The change that subtly began with Microcosmos has come to fruition on Handful of Stars. The sound is a subtle amalgamation of post rock and black metal but it is still very recognisably Drudkh, with a bit of Dopamine (china) mixed in.

The post rock sounds may come as a shock to some but this album really grew on me. Enough to buy the leather book edition and rank it as my favourite Drudkh album so far. This is also an excellent album for people trying to get into the band that aren’t big fans of their rawer work. I dropped this album 5 points because the art didn’t match the music so it gave a false first impression and the lyrics also don’t match the art. It’s also a bit short at under 45 minutes although this is standard for a Drudkh album and hopefully the Slavonic Chronicles cd coming with the leather book edition will make up for this. So in conclusion, this album sounds like Drudkh has bought a fancy suit and had sex with post rock. And post rock was hot.

Score: 95%