Happy Metal Boy

I came across Oh Hiroshima a year or so ago; it was a brief encounter and one that didn’t lure me into much revisiting. I had heard of them via the acclaim I had seen for their 2015 album  In Silence We Yearn , which I was relatively disappointed to find to conform so closely to the caricature of what post-rock’s critics lament about the genre’s current staleness. When I saw their new album here receiving a fair bit of hype for the immersiveness of its experience, I figured I’d give  In Silence We Yearn  another round both in preparation for this album and to see if I was missing something from that first run through. And honestly, I was disappointed to have gone in twice in search of some post-rock mastery amid a donation bag of the genre’s typicalities.  Oscillation , unfortunately, is hardly any different. There is perhaps a bit more guitar/bass oomph from time to time a la Russian Circles, but most of the album blends right in with the crop of post-rock of the p...

While I certainly enjoy the incorporation of harsh noise and dark ambient music into my metal, I must say I’m not as well-versed in those genres as if perhaps like to be. Yet I’ve long enjoyed Dominick Fernow’s Prurient, a solo dark/industrial noise project with which he has been quite prolific, and particularly his 2015 album under the project’s moniker, the occasionally metal-tinged  Frozen Niagara Falls . I reviewed his massive 2017 album, the nearly three-and-a-half-hour  Rainbow Mirror , which took an intentionally more measured and atmospheric approach compared to Fernow’s usual bend toward more aggressive abrasion on albums like  Unknown Rains  and  Frozen Niagara Falls . Despite the significantly mellower vibe of the album, I rather enjoy  Rainbow Mirror  and the focus on building ambiance more patiently through shifts of interesting textures of drones.  Garden of the Mutilated Paratroopers , though, takes Fernow and Prurient back to the ...

I can’t remember if Thy Art Is Murder are one of those bands that have gotten upset at being labeled a “deathcore band” like The Acacia Strain have. But if so, I can kind of see where they would be coming from, because their drip of hardcore elements into their brand of modern death metal isn’t really any more than Lamb of God’s into their brand of groove metal, and Lamb of God are only rarely associated with metalcore. But the band do still use these elements in ways that are often just like those used by “deathcore bands”. So on one hand, their music isn’t really bona fide deathcore like  The Cleansing  or  This Is Exile , but it likes to dabble in it, which they seem more open to doing on this album than their last, and for the better. When I reviewed their fourth album,  Dear Desolation , in 2017, I was largely underwhelmed by the rather typical and one-dimensional brand of death metal the band were trying to dress up with the occasional obvious cues taken fro...

Despite having heard Tomb Mold’s 2018 sophomore album,  Manor of Infinite Forms , thanks to a fair amount of hubbub within the metal underground, I didn’t end up writing anything about it last year. It didn’t really strike me as anything more than a gruff, Lovecraft-inspired slab of meaty, no-nonsense death metal. And it certainly is the kind of album that can get the job done, and I didn’t really have any complaints about its foundational components. But it didn’t stand out much beyond its efficient directness, and having already written about so much death metal, I felt I didn’t really have much worth saying about it. Yet just a year later, we have a successor, and the excitement surrounding Tomb Mold does not seem to be dying down. I missed the band’s debut album in 2017, and I didn’t write anything about their sophomore album last year. So as their train only seems to be picking up speed, I suppose it’s probably a good time now to speak up about their third album here,  P...

Torche have been a pivotal figure in the opening up of modern sludge/stoner doom to the melodic for the past several years. The Miami-based quartet have based their sound heavily upon the combination of the psychedelia of stoner rock and the thickness of  The Hunter -era Mastodon’s brand of melodic sludge. The band’s last album before this,  Restarter , found them refining even more the melodic aspect of their sound, only to go quiet in the creative ring until now. And now that they’re back the band have further honed their sound with their fifth full-length here,  Admission . Torche certainly put some meticulous work into this album to make it as varied and constantly engaging as possible. The band’s best moments on this album come from when they channel the most potent aspects of their sound into smart compositions focused on highlighting their improved versatility through intriguing psychedelic grooves or infectious riffs. The catchy southern rock riff of “Slide”, f...

I honestly found myself sufficiently put off by the advertising this album received that seemed to continuously find its way in front of me in either its most irritating form or while I was at my most irritable for some reason. It looked corny as fuck and artificially industry-planted, and being that I was only hearing about it from ads, from the label, I didn’t feel like giving it my time and attention, until I heard a few more murmurs about its intended ridiculousness and how well it worked with power metal from that angle in a slightly novel fashion. So when I gave in and found out that this project is masterminded by Alestorm’s Chris Bowes, it all made sense, and I’m glad at least that my looking into it revealed something I could enjoy at least for its context. As soon as its intentions became clear, I was prepared for a fun ride through exaggerations of many of power metal’s campy clichés and loveable cheesiness, and while this album and its absurd/tongue-in-cheek narrative ...

Despite the apparent hard-lined seriousness that many perceive at the surface of metal, so much of metal has been based in ridiculousness and in exaggerations of such that step past the border of seriousness and well into the comedic. Bands like Cannibal Corpse or Pissgrave might put forth vivid and convincing performances of gory musical violence, but it has always been the very gratuitousness of those kinds of performances that have made them, at their core, pretty silly (I like both these artists, and rated both of their respective most recent albums quite positively on here). Even as it gained worldwide popularity for a time that metalheads largely look at with disgust, hair metal’s absurd exaggeration of glam rock fashion and lifestyle could be described quite similarly; the same could be said even more of power metal’s unabashed indulgence in the most obnoxiously glorious supernatural/mythical fantasies (which I will get into more when I review Gloryhammer’s new album). Natu...

Gaahl has always been something of an enigma within the world of black metal, and not just for his openness about his homosexuality in a scene that has a notable handful of homophobes and neo-Nazis crawling throughout it willing to express varying degrees of hostility. His involvement in the legal debacle surrounding the rights the the Gorgoroth name arguably put him at odds with more within black metal’s industry than his sexuality or his laughable embodiment of black metal by the documentary “Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey” did. Regardless, the man has been an interesting figure in black metal and outside it, whether he be representing its insularity to outsiders in no-infamous interviews or in his foray into the world of high fashion. Gaahl’s ventures in and out of black metal brought him back to it after parting with Gorgoroth and subsequently with its offshoot, God Seed, and his longtime bandmate King ov Hell. Gaahl’s return to black metal finds him starting over with a clean slat...

Despite the Tolkien-derived name, I have never really been all that into Falls of Rauros. I’ve long found their brand of ambient black metal to be one of the least convincing representatives of the American scene’s indeed brimming catharsis. Yet Falls of Rauros have only ever briefly and inconsistently captured what so many of their contemporaries have been able to grasp, and unfortunately  Patterns in Mythology  isn’t really doing much to change up their compositional approach or their track record. While competent and experienced in the field, Falls of Rauros can’t seem to write effectively or convincingly intentionally, meandering through a series of inoffensive, yet seemingly indiscriminate musical sections that lack cohesiveness beyond their stylistic homogeneity. I don’t enjoy deriding this album by any means, but Falls of Rauros have been doing this for a long time now and it doesn’t seem like they have any sense of where they need to improve, if the desire to do so is...

Converge’s Jacob Bannon has long sought to fulfill his artistic drive beyond the domain of the pioneering metalcore band, be it through his commissioned visual art pieces for other bands, his curation through his Deathwish Inc. label, or more recently with his solo auditory/visual project, Wear Your Wounds. Inclined more toward soothing ambiance that can either stay at rest or build into more in contrast to Bannon’s other artistic ventures,  Rust on the Gates of Heaven  is driven mainly by spacy guitar echoes, tempered percussion, and even piano backing up Bannon’s clean vocals, but the ambiance does in some instances (such as the title track and “Rainbow Fades”) swell into post-metallic atmosphere, and sometimes that post-metal reaches deep into the genre’s heavier side. Songs like “Tomorrow’s Sorrow” and “Lurking Shadow”, showcase Bannon’s enveloping capabilities with a more stripped back approach with just some acoustic plucking and misty ambiance to back up his voice unti...

I went into this album quite like many others aware of the shadiness involved in its culmination, ready to hate it and deride Krysiuk for his leechcraft against Drabikowski and bastardization of the Batushka name and legacy. And I think a lot of people are letting the indeed disturbing context surrounding  Hospodi ’s release really influence their perception of the album, which I’m not saying they don’t have the right to take into account when listening to it and deciding whether or not to financially support the apparent thievery at play here. But I think most of the vehement disdain for Krysiuk’s version of Batushka would have you think he was just some random trickster who walked in and snatched the rights to the band name like a phantom from out of nowhere. It seems like a lot of people forget that he was indeed part of Batushka since 2015, and part of the highly acclaimed  Litourgiya ; even if Drabikowski was the driving artistic visionary, Krysiuk was there and very muc...

False are a six-piece from Minneapolis who have been at it for a few years now and even released a debut full-length back in 2015, but it was the artwork from the ever-mesmerizing Mariusz Lewandowski gracing the cover that lured me into their sophomore full-length here. And for that, I owe Lewandowski a big thank you because I am so glad I came upon this album. Portent is comprised of just four tracks (one of which is little more than an outro) of gloriously ethereal black metal that constructs its ascent into and down from the upper layers of the atmosphere through a mix of elements pulled from both classic symphonic black metal and contemporary American ambient black metal/blackgaze. As lengthy as the songs are, the band spend little time warming up to their fullest expression of anguish, and the band do well to smoothly carry their multifaceted sound through a compelling series of emotionally dynamic sections in which the rise and fall of the songs’ mood feels natural rather than c...