The Heavy Globe's AOTY list for 2022 - Part 1 - 20 to 16.

 

2022 has not been particularly rich in quality, but it was in quantity. I suppose the amount of releases each year follow some sort of exponential increase, which results of course to a more difficult process of discernement. Maybe this will make metal outlets relative to the scene again, or maybe it won't. Time will tell.

I think the recipe for metalheads is to follow the opposite direction. Expose yerselves to less music. I am reffering here to the diehards explorers of the underground. Those who listen to Sabbaton and consider their music to be of quality, will always remain in this state of mind.

That is not to say of course that mainsteam metal does not have its fair amount of quality releases. Lamb Of God, Slipknot, Rammstein, Korn, Machine Head released above average material this year, some better than others, but the essence of metal is in the underground and the list follows this simple rule.  

Having said that, lets dive into The Heavy Globe

20.  Negative Plane - The Pact...

Had I listened to this earlier it would be higher on the list. The reason of course is its obscure, occult aesthetic of black metal. Riffs that are sharp are replaced by heavy metal riffs in a rather distinct manner. Its like listening to some lost underground proto metal band  that is also time travellers and play something strange, otherworldy.

Bandcamp 

19.  Blackbraid - Blackbraid I

 

It is almost imperative to be a one man band in black metal today. In this sense it doesn't raise any eyebrows anymore, since there is a number of this type of bands that release excellent material. Blackbraid plays "Indigenous black metal from the solitude of the Adirondack wilderness" and it is well worth your time. 

Bandcamp

18.  Vital Spirit – Still As the Night, Cold As the Wind

 

Another indigenous black metal act, only this time they introduce themselves as "Saccharine black metal of the West". The guitars are excellent and the music feels massive, but, if someone finds the vocals off-putting it will be completely understandable. I would say they are too high on the mix, like an aggresive, hostile spirit flying above the lands.

Bandcamp

17. Epitaphe - II

 

It is releases like this that remind me of the main reason I listen mostly to extreme metal. Aesthetics. It is not just the riffs, or the extremity of the vocals and I stopped reading lyrics a long time ago. What grabs me is the union of all this different intruments, along with the production into one massive entity that feels organic, real. This way, listening to an album becomes an experience. Epitaphe play death metal that is thicc and heavy and massive.

Bandcamp

16. Spiritworld - Deathwestern

 

They will probably become mainstream at some point, if they aren't already. They combine country parts with thrash metal and crossover. Imagine Hatebreed/Slayer of the west. No need to overdo it. Simple, in yourface attitude. Fun.

Spotify

Read More

Venom Prison - Erebos

 

Venom Prison have a rather intriguing name. Why not “Venomous Prison.”? It may be a slight of the tongue or just a better pronunciation of the band’s name. On the other hand, it might be the expression of living circumstances, where life is experienced as a slow, corroding venom that paralyzes and kills one’s psyche.

I am under the impression that Venom Prison released Erebos under a loose concept and each song tells a story that deals with abuse, suffering, injustice, oppression, victimization, through the symbolic lenses of Greek Mythology.

All myths, and I include here the mythological stories of religions that have survived to this day, contain within them a narration of the experienced reality that we share, albeit under a symbolic use of language. This property of myths is what makes them such great stories. We can find meaning in them, even though our logic cannot fully grasp and explain.

In this sense, Erebos needs to be experienced and felt in a similar manner; A story that speaks both directly and indirectly about the experienced reality. Under the names and stories of the mythological creatures and deities that appear throughout the album we can find a story of oppression, misery, rage, fear, power, abuse, war. We can, moreover, get in touch with the personal experiences of the narrator more easily and feel compassion for them, even solidary rage and passion, and is exactly this unique property that has made metal music to be personal and communal at the same time.

In other words, Venom Prison succeed in creating both compelling compositions with great riffs and intense choruses and at the same time have lyrics that can be shouted and screamed and make the experience of the album more complete. I would assume, since I haven’t seen them perform, that they must have a rather captivating presence on stage.

These past years have been interesting and intense since communication through internet has started to shape our reality. One of the main positive attributes of this still forming reality is that voiceless people now have a voice and get in touch with other people with similar experiences and pursue connection and change. By making the world smaller and the distances almost nonexistent, we lost a sense of desire to connect but at the same time we gained the ability to inform ourselves in a more complete and multicolored way. Now, lyrics like:

“Trapped in a cycle of a manic mind hypnosis

Schizophrenia. Misdiagnosis.

Trapped in a cycle of a manic mind hypnosis

Who is to blame? The crimes contested.”

And their meaning is not to be met solely in the work of Michelle Foucault per se, but to the living person that is at the same time in another continent and next to us. The voicing concerns of abuse are not met only in art, but through it we may connect with individuals that have suffered like us.

Seeing the cover of the album, designed by Eliran Cantor, we can feel a sense of imminent danger and at the same time of solidarity between two women that have woken up inside a mass grave. The woman on top has a motherly concern in her eyes, showing us that she has been awake for quite some time and is aware of the circumstances, while the woman below just woke up in a horrible new reality and her scream is muffled by the more experienced and wiser woman, purely for her safety. Maybe we see here the fragmented personality of a woman in the aftermath of her abuse, waking up in a chaotic world called Erebos.

Hence, the music is chaotic, moving in multiple directions, creating complex compositions that accompany and bring to the surface the passionate performance of Larissa Stupar. But, what is made clear as the album progresses is that the themes cover a wider, far more terrifying reality than the personal experience. We are becoming part of a collective abuse forced down upon the people through means of state control.

Maybe the struggle that is presented in the cover and can be felt in the album is concluded in the lyrics of the final song:

“Seek justice or satisfy public desire?

State killing ritualised, ritualised.

Seek justice or satisfy public desire?

State force manifested.

Manifested.

Somewhere

Deep inside,

Empathy

Is still alive.”

Maybe the terrified young woman on the cover is our empathy and our humanity that has just woken up in a horrible reality. Only a question remains:

Seek justice or satisfy public desire?

Read More

What is new? Mid February 2022

 Eight Bells – The Well

 

There is a somewhat small group of doom metal bands that create a unique sound, combining brooding, heavy riffs and melodies with dreamy vocals. The first band that I remember gave me this feeling is Subrosa. Eight Bells move on the same sound, creating a vast soundscape filled with melancholy and desolation, but in a warm, familiar way. In their third full length, Eight Bells continue on the same road of doom metal expressionism, creating blurry visions of a life that is at the same time beautiful and tragic.

Legacy Of Ruin is going to be released on February 25 by Prophecy records.

 

Hangman’s Chair – Who wants to die old?

 

Hangman's Chair is a band that has gradually moved from a stoner sound in the beginning to the gothic/doom metal style that brings to mind Type O Negative. That is never a bad thing. The singer is not a baritone, like Peter Steele, but more etheric, more dreamy. The guitars are heavy and rhythmic, mixing a rock attitude with doom aesthetics. A loner was released via Nuclear Blast records on 11th February. Check their single: Who wants to die old, below:

Ibaraki – Akumu

 

Ibaraki is Matthew Kitchi Heafy’s project, were he collaborates with Ihsahn, Nergal and, I suppose, other guests to manifest a vision that is to be released on May 6^th by Nuclear Blast records.

Akumu is the second single released and it features Behemoth’s Nergal. This collaboration is more than the names themselves. It is a project that has been in the making for about a decade.

Listen to both singles below:

 

Immolation – Blooded

 

Immolation need no introduction. They are one of the best and most consistent bands in metal, having a very distinct sound, that anyone who is acquainted with, will immediately recognize. Nightmarish solos, heavy riffs that distort reality and turn them into a hellish landscape where the Christian mythos is being consumed by the rebellious nature of the fallen ones. Yes, Immolation have a massive, cosmic sound that can easily create hellish, world ending images.

Acts Of God is now released via Nuclear Blast records, and I cannot not mention the excellent work of artist Eliran Cantor for the cover of the album; an artist that is gradually creating a name in the heavy metal scene through his work and I encourage you to check his gallery over at his website.

 

 

Schizophrenia – Divine Immolation

The moment I saw the logo I thought of Sepultura. It is reminiscent of the band’s logo in the early thrash days, and Belgium’s Schizophrenia play aggressive thrash with some death metal into it, honoring their influences and the genre of thrash metal. Recollections Of The Insane is their debut album and it is released independently, so if you want to get ahold of it, you need to come directly in touch with the band; though I don’t believe they are going to be unsigned for a long time now, except if it is a conscious choice and have a D.I.Y. mentality for their craft. Whichever it is, Schizophrenia is a band to follow, since good things are going to come from them. Most likely, I will review their album in the coming weeks.

Véhémence - Au Blason Brûlé

 

Véhémence is a French black metal band that aims and achieves to play medieval black metal infused with melody, epicness and great black metal solos. Their sophomore album in 2019 did cause a stir in the underground waters of the scene and by listening to this sample, Ordalies is going to be equally great, if not better. Enjoy the song. Their third full length comes out on March 8^th by Antiq records.

 

Read More

Vorga - Striving Toward Oblivion

Beginning from the artwork and the title of the album, we get the primary idea of what we are getting into. Cosmic black metal, at least for me, is not easy to create, and the reason for that is simple. It can get stretched into ambience in favor of atmosphere and get lost in it, creating soundscapes that actually miss the point of cosmic black metal.

So, what is the point? The best way to convey the aesthetics of cosmic black metal is, for my part, analogy. Even though writing about music is like dancing for architecture, as Martin Mull puts it, the equivalent of cosmic bm is cosmic horror, either in movies or books, even in video games. The main and core concept behind cosmicism is the insignificance of humans in the universal, or cosmic, scale. It is built upon existential dread, nihilism, absurdism. It is, in other words, a subgenre of black metal that captures the human psyche in its darkest corners of existential crisis. Man is, and forever will be, subject to powers or gods, that are way beyond his perception and ability to comprehend in a way that is scaled within his cognition. It is, in the end, a vehicle of transporting his soul into the vast void of uncreation, where all that is created has been in a state of eternal consumption by the great unknown, the beasts that are behind the blackness of space, where time ceases to have meaning.

That is what Darkspace, Sphere and now, Vorga can capture with their music. Each of them, while having commonalities, attributed mainly to Darkspace, take their own galactic road and invite us to join them on a journey of awe, terror and grandiosity.

Striving Toward Oblivion manages to build upon black metal riffs, the well-known ‘railway riffs’ of tremolo picking, and a voice that is a little lower than the music in the mix, the sense of awe and swirling chaos that can entertain and, at the same time, fulfill the black metaller’s need to escape reality into a fantasy world.

What separates black metal, and to be honest all of heavy metal, from the rest of music, is its understanding of the need of the human psyche to imagine a world beyond the mundane and cruel reality. A world where beasts, gods, or lesser gods, dimensions and realms of possibilities exist simultaneously with ours, giving us a way to express ourselves and unload the negativity and toxicity through art that may be incomprehensible to most other people, but oh, so familiar and warm to us.

Have you ever noticed that metal can be extreme in a way that relaxes the senses? This is what Vorga achieve with their debut. They take us on a journey to the vast unknown, with swirling riffs and black metal melodies, a voice that is most likely a narration of the last minutes of humanity while on a journey to find a new world to exploit and destroy. Oblivion waits at the end of our journey, whether this happens in a few hundred years or millions of years. One day we shall be the stories of a future species with cognitive abilities greater than ours, where we will have a place in history similar to what dinosaurs have in ours. Until that time comes though, let us enjoy our striving toward oblivion.

Striving Toward Oblivion is released via Transcending Obscurity Records.

Read More

Abyssus - Death Revival

Beginning from the title alone, and after listening just the first few seconds of the first song, Metal of Death, it is made clear that this record is an homage to classic death metal of the late 80’s, early 90’s. What is also evident throughout the album is the high quality of the songs and a meaty production that takes us back to the early days of death metal. At the end, the feeling that stayed with me was that it is more than just a homage. It is indeed a death revival.

From the perspective of the creators, if I am not mistaken, death metal ought to be suffocating, aggressive, relentless, terrifying, based on great riffs and a growling voice that comes from the deepest of the deeps. I believe they had the goal of creating a death metal album that if released in 1991 would now be placed among the great death metal releases, along with Leprosy, Cause Of Death, From Beyond et al. and I also believe that they achieved their goal.

Starting from the cover art, made by Andreas Marschall, and moving to the music itself, everything seems to be in its proper place. The length of the album is just 33 minutes, but they are more than enough to enjoy riffs upon riffs and to growl along with Konstantinos Analytis about The Beast Within or our Uncertain Future. Genocide begins with the pontic lyra and it is made clear that this song is about the genocide of the Pontics by the Turks at the beginning of the 20^th century (I could mention here that I am of Pontic descend). The Witch, a less than 3 minutes song, manages to include everything necessary for a stomping death metal song. The album closes with the lengthier song, Where Wolves Are Out To Hunt, a slow paced death metal fog that gradually accelerates to mid paced where Analytis growls

They are coming for you

They are coming for you

Watch out!

Death Revival manages to be among the best releases of 2022, even if we are still at the beginning of the year. The quality of the music is top of the line and every metal fan that enjoys death metal will find here everything they want.

Death Revival was released from Transcending Obscurity records on the 21 of January. There are two things remaining now. Firstly, to see them perform their material on a show and secondly, to get my hands on the vinyl release.

Read More