NEVERMORE: Dead Heart in a Dead World

Produced by Andy Sneap

Released: 2000

Nevermore toured Australian about a year before this album came out; in hindsight as much fun as that tour was with Warrel Dane and Jeff Loomis stage-diving every night and Dane drinking himself into oblivion at every opportunity, the entire jaunt may have been a bit more successful for them had they come out on the back on this monster. Dead Heart in the Dead World is an absolute modern metal classic, an album that helped define the genre into the 21st Century. Before this, Nevermore was just a good band that made good albums. Afterwards, they were legends.

Some still critique Dead Heart in a Dead World for being less technical and less diverse than previous albums, but in place of those aspects Nevermore became darker, heavier and catchier. This was Warrel Dane's best vocal performance to date and stripping back the line-up to a four piece helped tighten the songwriting and gave the band more direction. "Narcosynthesis" makes an impact immediately, driving, heavy and so inimitably catchy that the chorus sticks in your head long after the album is over. Loomis adopted the use of seven-string guitars for this recording, lending a nu-metal edge to the band's bottom end. This led to a backlash from purists opposed to anything even remotely resembling Korn (and this is far from that), but the band had not forgotten their old-school melodic metal riffing. This actually gave Nevermore a unique style yet one that was reminiscent of that other great Seattle progressive metal band: Queensrÿche.

As dark as that band could be however, nothing compared to Warrel Dane's bleak tales of the human condition. His lyrics are stark, humbling and depressing to the point where they would be almost impossible to listen to much less enjoy if the music that frames them wasn't so good. Jim Sheppard and Van Williams are solid of course but the real star is Loomis, whose mastery of the guitar became truly apparent on this album. If there is a criticism, it is that some of the riffs sound rather similar to each other here and there, but this is only a minor quibble that can be overlooked by the strength of the material. "The River Dragon is Come" is perhaps the highlight, with all the pieces working together perfectly but in truth there isn't a bad song here. Their version of "The Sound of Silence" boasts a true menace, "Insignificant" is utterly humbling, "The Heart Collector" sounds like emptiness.

Through the rejection of all religions, to a dedication to an incarcerated friend, to the smallness of humanity, Nevermore produced a stunning journey of emotional metal with Dead Heart in a Dead World. They have yet to make a bad album, but this one is a true masterpiece.

1. Narcosynthesis
2. We Disintegrate
3. Inside Four Walls
4. Evolution 169
5. The River Dragon Has Come
6. The Heart Collector
7. Engines of Hate
8. Sounds of Silence
9. Insignificant
10. Believe in Nothing
11. Dead Heart in a Dead World

Rating: 98%

NB: A lot of people seem to think that this album is called Dead Heart, in a Dead World with a comma, but the little comma-like serif on the toe of the t in the title is actually a quirk of the font and not a comma at all. Careful inspection of the rest of the booklet reveals the "comma" attached to every t, making "Narcosynt,hesis", "Evolut,ion 169", "T,he River Dragon has Come," etc. Therefore, it's not a comma. Stop it!

VARIOUS ARTISTS: Nativity in Black

Executive Producer: Bob Chiappardi
Released: 1994

These days it's easy to be cynical about so-called tribute albums. Different ones seem to crop up all the time for various reasons, from fund-raising to memorials to plain exploitation by a label or artist. It's also fair to say that almost all of them are worthless beyond a couple of songs of two, if that.

But not this one. The second volume that appeared a few years later may have been just a cynical promotional tool for Ozzfest, but this one had some effort put into it. Indeed, according to the booklet, Bob Chiappardi spent two years on this. This amount of dedication really shows, because Nativity in Black is one of the best albums of its kind. Apart from Faith No More's rather flippant live reading of "War Pigs" (a song that Mike Patton reportedly really didn't like), all of the artists here treat the material with a deep respect and for the most part their versions are solid re-interpretations rather than attempts at straight covers. It's hard to pick a bad one out of this bunch, in fact. Clear highlights though are the ridiculously heavy version of "Supernaut" from Al Jourgenson's 1000 Homo DJ's and Type O Negative's creepily Hammer House of Horror-like "Black Sabbath" that ends with an invocation to Satan. Corrosion of Conformity's deliriously good "Lord of This World" is also a clear stand-out and Sepultura make "Symptom of the Universe" sound like one of their own songs. Bruce Dickinson was teamed with a flash-in-the-pan American thrash band called Godspeed for "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" and made something special from it. Just as special though is track eight, a version of "The Wizard" by a conglomeration calling itself Bullring Brummies aka Geezer Butler, Bill Ward, Rob Halford, Wino from St. Vitus and Fight's guitarist Brian Tilse. That's a slice of metal history right there people, and with this being the only recording they ever did together it makes Nativity in Black that much more significant. Versions released out the US also include a version of "Solitude" by Cathedral that was obviously stuck on as an after thought, although the band themselves didn't think of it as one and considering how much like Sabbath Cathedral is for them to mess it up would have been unthinkable.

Tribute albums come and go, but the truly great ones leave a mark of their own. Nativity in Black is one of those. It might be difficult to find these days, but it's worth the effort.

1. Biohazard - After Forever


2. White Zombie - Children of the Grave


3. Megadeth - Paranoid


4. 1000 Homo DJ's - Supernaut


5. Ozzy Osbourne with Therapy? - Iron Man


6. Corrosion of Conformity - Lord of This World


7. Sepultura - Symptom of the Universe


8. Bullring Brummies - The Wizard


9. Bruce Dickinson with Godspeed - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath


10. Ugly Kid Joe - N.I.B.


11. Faith No More - War Pigs


12. Type O Negative - Black Sabbath


13. Cathedral - Solitude

Rating: 95%

CRIMSONFIRE: Crimsonfire

Released: 2005

Crimsonfire seems to be another one of those bands that has existed for years without really getting anywhere or doing anything. If this album is any indication, it isn't hard to see why. Despite having been around since 1998, they aren't a name that's too well known to many metal fans outside of Melbourne. After several years of gigging and songwriting, the band's self-titled debut album appeared without too much fanfare on US retro/melodic metal label Majestic Rock.

Crimsonfire contains ten tracks of European-style melodic power metal along very similar lines to bands like Sonata Arctica and Stratovarius, and as a local alternative to those two groups, one could really ask for none better. Crimsonfire's songs are well-played with a high degree of insidious melodies, and a lyrical obsession with fire, eternity and legendary realms. That ought to stir some level of interest among those who covet such things, but the truth of it is that Crimsonfire is a remarkably faceless offering. Outside of a couple of breathtaking screams from singer Louie Gorgievski, this album has very little in the way of highlights. Even after several listens, not much stands out. The material is on a par with anything the European hordes could come up with but, like many of them, Crimsonfire does very little with it. With a runing time of almost an hour, these should be at least one memorable or noteworthy moment on here, but there really isn't. There simply isn't one single fresh idea among any of the ten songs here.

Crimsonfire is merely a very good bunch of musicians playing incredibly generic music very well, but for a band trying to establish itself in an over-crowded marketplace, that just isn't good enough.

1. Eternal Days
2. A New Dawn
3. Reign in Fire
4. Morning of the Magicians
5. The Age of Aquarius
6. Empire of Fear
7. Darkside to Sanity
8. Region of Legends
9. Tears in a Greystorm
10. The Rising Sands

Rating: 40%

JUDAS PRIEST - Interview with KK Downing

OK, this isn't a review. But you don't get to interview one of the founding fathers of heavy metal very often. This was recorded tonight, over the speaker-phone function of my mobile phone. The signal from the phone just about cooked the tape I was using so it hard to transcribe everything he said. I think I got most of it though.

ME: Thank you for taking the time tonight, KK. Let's get straight to it: a huge double concept album is something that people would probably expect more from Dream Theater or even Iron Maiden, nor Judas Priest. What brought about the decision to do this, and why Nostradamus?

KK Downing: Well we're a band that's been around for a long time and there's been times when we've been really, really popular. But no matter what you do you will always find people will find something to criticise you for. We've done a lot of records now and we've always tried for consistency. Even after our comeback record Angel of Retribution there was people saying, "Where can Judas Priest go next? Where can they go from here?" You're always in a no-win situation when you're in a popular band. Even a band like AC/DC... They're a great band, but they're always being accused of making the same record over and over. So when people were saying, "What can Judas Priest do next?" We were like, "Well, what can we do next? What can we fuckin' do next? Let's do a double CD, triple vinyl, forty-eight page colour booklet, something we've never done before. Let's just show 'em!"

ME: Are you looking forward to visiting Australia again?

KK: Absolutely mate! We had an absolute blast the first time we came down with Ripper, so you know we wanted to come down and do the full show with Rob because we just knew that we owed it to the fans that have been following us for so many years.

ME: I notice from the shows you've done so far that you're doing a lot of different songs from when you were here last. It's almost a totally different set.

KK: Yeah, but we'll have to change it a little bit before we even get to Australia, because with the internet and everything now people know what you're playing. So as the record progresses - it's only come out this week - we might change some of the songs we're playing off that as well. But it's going to be loads of fun, really. I've just heard today that the tickets are getting along really well there and it's not for some time yet.

ME: Now you guys are veterans of some pretty big shows. I hope you can indulge me for a second because this might seem a little strange for someone to ask after so long but you're the first person I've ever spoke to who played at Live Aid. What was that like for you?

KK: Haha. Well that was a long time ago! We were actually recording I think, um, the Turbo album. We weren’t that far away. We were in the Bahamas. It sounds very nice, but we were just stuck in the studio. You know what I mean? So we just jumped on a plane and went up to Philadelphia and played our set, it was really a great day. But that was one of the greatest memories I can bring to the forefront, for sure.

ME: Getting back to the present now, you’re probably playing the biggest rooms we’ve got here. I assume that means we are going to get the full Judas Priest treatment?

KK: Yeah well I don’t know if the supports have been booked yet, but it will be a full-on Judas Priest show. It costs us a bit when we have to fly, but when we get together as Judas Priest, full strength, we spend all our money on making our show the best it can be you know. It might cost us thousands of dollars just to fly to South America to play six shows, but that’s what we do when we get together as a group. And that’s what we’ll do when we come down there as well.

ME: You’re actually doing the tour with Max Cavalera’s band.

KK: Oh well, that will be a good night of intense metal then, that’s for sure. We’ve just done some shows with Max in Europe, so we got to meet them. We played with them and Iced Earth and Airbourne, a really great band from down there. We got to meet those guys so it will be good to catch up with them again.

ME: So what more can you tell me about Nostradamus and where Judas Priest is likely to go from here?

KK: Well I’ll say this for Judas Priest. Like I said before, people have liked us. We’ve always tried to be consistent but even when you are consistent people will think differently about each thing you do. Like with Painkiller, that album that everybody now thinks is supposedly so great. It took years for that record to get to where people think of it now. It entered the Billboard chart at something like 65… Nostradamus, not even the first week, at #11. You know what I mean? Angel of Retribution, our last album, went in at #13. Painkiller was way down there. So was British Steel and so was Screaming for Vengeance… So sometimes it can take a while for an album to get to that level. The Nostradamus album, it is different. They talk about people’s attention spans being very short these days. But people still sit down and read a good book, watch a good movie, so why not sit down and hear a good album? This album really means what it is. Try to listen to it from the beginning to the end, because it is a full documentation of the life of Nostradamus. He was a figure from 500 years ago who is still very much talked about today. When we delved into the history of Nostradamus… we’ve done loads and loads of mini-movies if you like about the Painkiller, Metallion, Electric Eye… all those fictional things. We just applied that to a real historical figure. He was an alchemist and a doctor who lost his family in the plague, and he predicted the death of the king at the time which is what he was persecuted for. He was persecuted by the Church and sanctioned, but he was also a doctor who wanted to help people and I think he looked into the future so he could find ways to help others. I’m sure there was other major figures I suppose, like Adolf Hitler or Mussolini… warmongering ones, that we could have looked at, but we wanted a peace-seeker, a knowledge seeker. And I think that we might have had a lot in common with him because he was always looking for things, searching for meaning. I think that if he was with us now, if he was to come out on tour with us, we would probably find a lot of common ground in the way we have been treated by people and what we have tried to attain.

ME: I’m glad you mentioned that, because I was going to ask if you could see a similarity between Judas Priest and the life of Nostradamus in the way you have been sanctioned and accused of Satanism and such things?

KK: Yeah. Well we often say you can’t do right by doing wrong. He tried to help but he still got into trouble. The whole story is interesting. I didn’t know anything about what Nostradamus was really about other than what you normally hear. But we didn’t really touch on any of his prophecies. It was about his life. We certainly couldn’t think of a more ideal person with such a wide interest to people. It’s a good story.

[Some label dude broke in then and told me my 15 minutes was up. I still wanted to ask KK about those cheesy early videos where they pulled bank robberies with their guitars and danced around playing guitars that were on fire, and stuff, but alas... no time]

ME: Well thanks KK, I have to wrap it up now. Thank you for taking the time to chat with us this evening.

KK: Thank you Brian. Thank for the support with the site and everything. Tell all the fans it’s been a long time, but Judas Priest is coming!

So there you go - JUDAS PRIEST IS COMING!

NAPALM DEATH: Leaders Not Followers: Pt 2

Produced by Russ Russell
Released: 2004

If ever a phrase has suited a band, ‘leaders not followers’ suits Napalm Death like a glove. The originators of grindcore have bowed to none throughout their career but here once again, one of the world’s greatest ever extreme metal bands pays tribute to a long list of others that were also leaders in their field. From hardcore to thrash to death metal, the band has gathered 19 songs from 18 bands and given them the Napalm Death treatment: brutal, crushing and uncompromising.

Albums of covers can be dodgy affairs, especially when bands try to tackle material that doesn’t suit them, and many of them have cropped up over the years mainly as contract-fillers and a lot of them can be lousy. This one is not. It certainly helps that a lot of these songs could almost have come from Napalm’s own catalogue: ‘War’s No Fairytale’ by Discharge, for example, The Offenders’ incendiary ‘Face Down in the Dirt’ – one of the clear highlights here – or Anti-Cimex’ ‘Game of the Arseholes’ with its classic “Take your fucking cross and stick it up your arse!” line (one of their early bassists, Jim Whiteley, plays on the first and last of these). Other songs like Hellhammer’s ‘Messiah’, Kreator’s ‘Riot of Violence’ – one of the longest songs this band has ever recorded – and Sepultura’s ‘Troops of Doom’ could have been a stretch, but they’re not. Napalm Death handles them all with the respect they obviously hold for them, even Wehrmacht’s ‘Fright Night’, which seems impossibly melodic for this band.

As far as albums of covers go, this is one of the best. Leaders Not Followers: Pt 2 is ugly, savage and uniquely Napalm Death.

1. Lowlife
2. Face Down in the Dirt
3. Devastation
4. Messiah
5. Victims of a Bomb Raid
6. Fright Night
7. War's No Fairytale
8. Conform
9. Master
10. Fire Death Fate
11. Riot of Violence
12. Game of the Arseholes
13. Clangor of War
14. Dope Fiend
15. I'm Tired
16. Troops of Doom
17. Bedtime Story
18. Blind Justice
19. Hate, Fear and Power

Rating: 85%

NO RETURN: Machinery

Released: 2002

I knew very little about No Return when I first heard this album, and I still know very little about them. I know they are from Paris and have been around almost 20 years. Apparently they change their sound a bit with every release. That's about the limit of my knowledge, but from what I know I would say they’re an undiscovered treasure.

Machinery is a mixture of modern thrash and death metal and indsutrial metal like Fear Factory. Many bands were trying this around the same period this came out and failed to make it work, but with five previous and virtually unknown releases behind them, No Return had plenty of practice, all of which they poured into this release. This album hits like a freight train, a heavy and high speed collision of catchy melodies, savage, crunchy riffs and tight playing, resulting in a fast-paced, heavy and furious metal that with its inherently hook-laden songs holds a commercial edge without losing any of its power.

No Return’s sound recalls many schools of metal but rather than choosing one and running with it, this band mixes them all, and if you’ve ever wondered what that would sound like when done properly then Machinery is what you’ve been looking for. They use keyboards and samples too, but only to provide a little space and variation without overwhelming all the great metal aspects. This was by all accounts the first time they had added this element and it works rather well. I have no idea how their other albums compare, because they are all on small French label so finding them wouldn't be easy. I did enjoy this however so I am a bit curious as to what some of them might be like.

Machinery is a hidden gem that should have won more attention.

1. Machinery
2. The Recycler
3. Violator
4. Synthetic
5. Disillusion
6. Virus
7. Resurrection
8. Disease
9. Dynamo
10. The Last Act
11. Biomechanoid
12. Secret Face

Rating: 70%

MESSIAH'S KISS: Dragonheart

Released: 2007

Messiah's Kiss disappointed me with their previous album, Metal. From the cool retro-esque style they had cultivated on Prayer for the Dying, they had gone all plastic Euro-power metal on me. Perhaps I'm not the only one who thought they'd done the wrong thing with this move, because Dragonheart strikes a nice balance between both.

For every big, mid-paced HammerFall-style epic like "Babylon" and "Thunders of the Night", they chuck in a ball-tearing belter like "Nocturnal" to balance things out. Each time they go into a modern power-metal cheese direction with something like "Where the Falcons Cry" (which is almost as cringingly bad as it sounds), Messiah's Kiss then steps back to the forge to renew the glories of the old days. The title track sounds so much like Judas Priest with its overlapping high-pitched wails and rapid-fire vocal delivery of lyrics about steel, fire and Hell that I had to make sure I hadn't put Stained Class on by mistake. Ditto for "Steelrider", and the "Do it! Do it!" refrain from "Open Fire" couldn't possibly be a mere coincidence.

This was precisely the kind of stuff that I liked about Messiah's Kiss in the first place. Dragonheart is so gloriously metal, so shameless and bald-faced in its virtual plagiarism of Priest and Accept and so unashamed of what it is that it doesn't really matter that there's virtually no originality about it whatsoever. It's a melting-pot of old school influences that the band has worked into an almost-perfect homage of everything metal without it turning into a parody of itself. It's about ten minutes shorter than Metal was too, and that's also a bonus.

If they could just shake off the temptation to throw in a power metal song every now and then, they could give Primal Fear a good run for their money.

1. The Ancient Cries
2. Babylon
3. Where the Falcons Cry
4. Dragonheart
5. Thunder of the Night
6. Steelrider
7. City of Angels
8. Nocturnal
9. Northern Nights
10. Open Fire
11. The Ivory Gates

Rating: 72%

BLACK MAJESTY: Tomorrowland

Released: 2007

Three albums into their career and Black Majesty seems to have hit a wall. Their first album was truly awesome and the second almost equally as good, both containing certain hallmarks that made Black Majesty stand out a little from other acts of their kind. With Tomorrowland however, they seem to be slipping towards a safe, generic direction.

The first track, "Forever Damned", has that oh-so-typical European power metal sound about it and the production of the album overall only emphasises this feeling. There's also an inherent sameness about a lot of the material that stops this well short of being the triumphs that its predecessors were. The presence of an underdone cover in the middle of the track listing further underlines the apparent dimming of Black Majesty's creative spark.

Tomorrowland's first few songs suffer from sounding rather too much like standard Euro-power metal, without very much to make them particularly memorable. They float around inside your head but even after a few spins nothing really stands out. Considering how catchy their previous material is, this is rather a let down. Halfway through is "Soldier of Fortune", an obscure Deep Purple track from the ill-favoured Stormbringer album that seems to be here simply because it is obscure.

The guitar work however, is nothing short of stellar, especially on the last half of the album. Steve Janevski and Hanny Mohammed really know their way around a fretboard and the soloing in cuts like "Faces of War" and "Another Dawn" would stop a clock. Indeed, Tomorrowland really picks up about halfway through. From this point on, Black Majesty shifts up a gear with a little more inspiration in the songs and Gio Cavallere testing out his range, most notably on the closing song "Scars". Overall, though, Tomorrowland is something of a disappointment compared to previous efforts and Black Majesty needs to address their approach lest they become just another faceless power metal band like so many others.

1. Forever Damned
2. Into the Black
3. Evil in Your Eyes
4. Tomorrowland
5. Soldier of Fortune
6. Bleeding World
7. Faces of War
8. Wings to Fly
9. Another Dawn
10. Scars

Rating: 64%

SINERGY: Suicide by My Side

Released: 2002

Sinergy was one band that always seemed to know what metal was about and with a wealth of experience in groups from all over the Nordic states behind them they also knew how to do it. With Suicide by My Side, they really applied themselves and just lay to with a blistering assault of catchy, neck-snappin’ heavy metal. Leaving some of the campier and flouncier elements of their earlier efforts well and truly alone, Sinergy went for the jugular from the very first moment.

This was easily one of the best albums of pure metal of 2002, but has since become almost something of a forgotten classic as the years have rolled by without a follow-up. Suicide by My Side is edgier, heavier, faster and more aggressive than their previous output, and yet still piles on even more and better hooks and killer harmonies and melodies with the kind of incisive twin lead guitar attack some may have thought disappeared a decade before. This was where Alexei Laiho and Roope Latvala first teamed up as an axe team, and the chemistry was so good that Latvala joined Children of Bodom a few months later

Almost everything else was right with this album too, from Kimberly Goss’ amazing vocals delivering menace and melody in the one pint-sized package to the classic metal riffing and solid drum work like the Bay Area meeting the NWOBHM head-on and demolishing everything. ‘I Spit on Your Grave’ and ‘The Sin Trade’ open the piece with a flurry of blows that just keep coming and the awesome ‘Passage to the Fourth World’ is like a homage to the glory days gone by.

With all ten songs raging by in just on 38 minutes, you can flip it right back to the start and get nailed all over again in less time than it takes to listen to the second half of Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, and it's far more enjoyable too. Sinergy pretty much stalled after this when Laiho and Goss called it splitsville, but even if this had been the only album they did it would have been worth it.

1. I Spit on Your Grave
2. The Sin Trade
3. Violated
4. Me, Myself, My Enemy
5. Written in Stone
6. Nowhere for No One
7. Passage to the Fourth World
8. Shadow Island
9. Suicide by My Side
10. Remembrance

Rating: 86%

OPETH: Watershed

Produced by Mikael Åkerfeldt

Released: 2008

Opeth is one band who can do no wrong in my book. While there are those who yearn for the days of Blackwater Park or Still Life and still others who long for another Orchid, to me Opeth is one group that actually defines progressive, and that sort of rules out moving backwards. So while some can moan and complain, I'm quite happy to let Opeth get on with getting on.

Watershed appears in the aftermath of two key members of the band moving on, but like any group greater than the sum of its parts this hasn't seemed to have had much of an impact. Of course the chief component is Mikael Åkerfeldt, and he is still firmly in place, switching his vocal style with breathtaking skill and consumate ease as always.

The album opens with the acoustic, melancholia-drenched "Coil", probably to the consternation of many who would immediately think another Damnation was in store. In some ways that is correct, because Watershed continues the experimentation with 70s prog-rock that album explored but blends it with the classic Opeth sound. The end result is a mixture of blues-flavoured guitar licks, jazz rhythms, big pompous organs and bursts of crushing death metal interwoven with orchestral flourishes and acoustic interludes. The arrangements are also some of their most expansive ever. From "Coil", "Heir Apparent" builds into the heaviest and fastest track Opeth has created in some time, but it is also a dynamic one, slowly revealing its many facets from almost pure minimalism to thundering, hammering metal over the course of almost nine minutes. Later on, the grand and truly awesome "Hessian Peel" also bears the influence of the band's much heavier past while the sprawling "Hex Omega" is Opeth at their moodiest.

There are rare occasions where things sound a little more forced than we are used to hearing from Opeth, and this could be the legacy of Martin Lopez and Peter Lindgren's departures. These moment are fleeting however and really do little to detract from the overall vision which is, once again, epic and majestic and Watershed again shows that Opeth is one of metal's most important and interesting acts.

1. Coil
2. Heir Apparent
3. The Lotus Eater
4. Burden
5. Porcelain Heart
6. Hessian Peel
7. Hex Omega

Rating: 88%

METALLICA: St. Anger

Produced by Bob Rock

Released: 2003

With the spectre of another Metallica album looming, it's time to take a backward look at their last release, the Grammy-winning and starkly polarising St. Anger. I refused to even listen to a single track from this for more than two weeks after it was released. Only when my flatmate of the time brought home a CD-R copy he’d burned at work did I give it a spin, and I have to say I was actually rather surprised. It wasn't a return to their classic sound as clearly deluded early reviewers had suggested, but I knew it wouldn't be. And it wasn't anything like the trio of albums before it, which is sort of what I thought it would be like.

Metallica's shiny veneer was stripped off on this album to the point where it seems like Bob Rock did nothing at all. This resulted in a dirtier, rawer and more aggressive sound that made Metallica heavy again. Despite all of St. Anger's faults, that this is a heavy record can't be denied. But heaviness alone is not a be all and end all, especially for a band like Metallica and St. Anger is not so much a representation of a band at war with its demons, but of one who had lost to them. So the few good things about it are far outweighed by the bad. And the bad things are atrocious.

Apart from one key element I will touch on shortly, I actually like the production on St. Anger. For a band of Metallica's stature to use such raw, earthy tones was a brave thing to do and it did bring back a little of the edginess they possessed when Dave Mustaine was still on lead guitar. That's really the only thing I did like, though. Lars' decision that Metallica no longer needed guitar solos meant that Kirk Hammett no longer had anything to do except smoke cigars and dress up as a sleazy Mexican stereotype. He's never been anything more than adequate as a lead guitarist but his playing did add an extra element, even when he was driving the wah-wah pedal into overdrive. Without that, Metallica just isn't Metallica.

Then there is James Hetfield’s horribly inconsistent vocal delivery, a truly nerve-wracking experience as he goes from half-decent to pretty good to ordinary to worse, sometimes within seconds like some kind of reverse King Diamond. Lyrically, St. Anger is totally devoid of meaning, even going so far as reworking lines from older songs in an effort at either relevance or some way to show they were remembering the past. Either way, it failed. On top of this is the horror of all horrors: Ulrich's drum sound. Instead of leaving Hammett idling in the cigar bar, it should have been Lars in there. In a move that made even people who didn't know what they were talking about scream "The snare! The snare!", Metallica came up with the most annoying drum sound imaginable. It can't even be adequately described. It's just horrible.

Metallica finally reached their nadir with this, and it seems that even they have since realised it. Whatever Death Magnetic sounds like (and it's not looking good, with a stupid name like that), it has to be better than this.

1. Frantic
2. St. Anger
3. Some Kind of Monster
4. Dirty Window
5. Invisible Kid
6. My World
7. Shoot Me Again
8. Sweet Amber
9. The Unnamed Feeling
10. Purify
11. All Within My Hands

Rating: 38%

maudlin of the WELL: Bath/Leaving Your Body Map

Released: 2001

maudlin of the Well was a group that was able to take all of the various aspects of modern music and weave them into a fragile tapestry of sounds and textures. Bath and Leaving Your Body Map was a double-release from the amazing nine-piece band, whose style was perhaps best described by their own definition of "astral metal", a kind of progressive ambient doom death that at times came close to that of Opeth with shades of My Dying Bride and diISEMBOWELMENT, but also really unlike any of them.

As companion volumes that were released together, it would be nigh on impossible to review them separately, and as it is each of them flow into one another like the waters of two streams forging a river. The gentler strains of Bath build a complex and enchanting kaleidoscope of delicately interwoven techniques and sounds that takes the listener on the first part of a transcendental musical voyage of emotion and introspection. Leaving Your Body Map is darker and heavier, but not without its own ethereal moments and without ever once losing sight of maudlin of the Well's vision of incredible musical beauty.

Delicately balancing all of their instrumental and vocal parts, maudlin of the Well is one moment heavy and blasting with double-time double-kicks and grim vocals, and the next enchanting acoustic melancholia, easing through snatches of swing, jazz and melodic electric guitar and trancy instrumentals with symbols for names before stepping out into crushing extremity once again.

These are possibly two of the finest albums of progressive metal to have ever seen the light. maudlin of the Well was a truly innovative and amazing musical entity that fully explored every facet of their ingenuity with brilliant results. Shortly after these albums were released, about half the group formed Kayo Dot, a band that now contains only Toby Driver from this line-up, and has moved almost completely away from metal altogether.

Bath:

1. The Blue Ghost/Shedding Qliphoth
2. They Aren't All Beautiful
3. Heaven and Weak
4. Interlude
5. The Ferryman
6. Marid's Gift of Art
7. Girl With a Watering Can
8. Birth Pains of Astral Projection
9. Interlude
10. Geography

Leaving My Body Map:

1. Stones Of October's Sobbing
2. Gleam in Ranks
3. Bizarre Flowers/A Violent Mist
4. Interlude
5. The Curve That to an Angle Turn'd
6. Sleep is a Curse
7. Riseth He, the Numberless
8. Interlude
9. Monstrously Low Tide

Rating: 96%

ALCHEMIST: Embryonics

Released: 2005

With 28 tracks spread across two discs that encompass over two and a half hours of music, Embryonics is the perfect representation of a band with a musical scope and vision that exceeds virtually all boundaries. There really isn't any other band that sounds like Alchemist, from the intricate pot pourri of musical styles to the broadly interesting and thought-provoking lyrical sense, and this collection showcases eight years' worth of recordings that shaped this great act.

As usual for an Alchemist album, the first thing that catches your attention is the striking artwork of guitarist Roy Torkington, a vivid, psychedlic dreamscape that captures the feel of the music within. Inside, the booklet features a gallery of archival photographs and gig flyers going back to the demo days, plus extensive liner notes on every track penned by the band members themselves. Such immaculate and careful packaging holds the promise of great things within and Embryonics does not disappoint. With so many fine songs to choose from, the hardest part of compiling this collection must have been deciding which tracks would miss out, yet in the final wash-up there could be no better representation of the Alchemist back catalogue than the list that made the cut.

Embryonics includes six tracks from each of the band's first three albums, plus six demo tracks and their version of "Eve of the War" from the long-deleated and much sought after 1999 EP of the same name. The local release also features three live cuts as bonuses: the version of "Chinese Whispers" from the EP and work outs of "Yoni Kunda" and "Closed Chapter" from a Three Hours of Power radio episode in 1996. Opening with the Spiritech version of "Chinese Whispers", the track that remains to this day as perhaps the finest example of Alchemist's work, Embryonics shows the progression and development of their sound. From the raw but magical 1990 demo version of "Jar of Kingdom", the truly off-the-wall arty-prog of "Imagination Flower" and "Found" with Michelle Klemke's strangely keening vocals to the fully-developed ethereal journeys of "Staying Conscious" and "Spiritechnology", there isn't a single moment where Alchemist's reputation as one of the most interesting and creative metal bands of all is in doubt.

This is a geniunely essential release not just for fans of Australian metal but for anyone who enjoys truly progressive rock music.

Disc One:

1. Chinese Whispers
2. Abstraction
3. Unfocused
4. Enhancing Enigma
5. Dancing to Life
6. Brumal: A View from Pluto
7. Lunation
8. Staying Conscious
9. Shell
10. Garden of Eroticism
11. Jar of Kingdom
12. Paisley Bieurr
13. Yoni Kunda (live)
14. Closed Chapter (live)

Disc Two:

1. Eve of the War
2. Beyond Genesis
3. Yoni Kunda
4. Purple
5. Imagination Flower
6. Spiritechnology
7. Soul Return
8. Road to Ubar
9. Found
10. Clot
11. Worlds Within Worlds
12. My Animated Truth
13. Closed Chapter
14. Chinese Whispers (live)

Rating: 100%

DARKLORD: Symphony Satanikka

Produced by Darklord

Released: 2001

It took almost a decade for Adelaide’s utterly cult black metal entity Darklord to spew forth this iconoclastic abomination. Symphony Satanikka is almost one hour’s worth of evil and overwhelming extreme noise. These guys are the most full-on band you've ever seen. Stormbringer and Nekromancer look like walking hardware stores with more nail- and spike-encrusted armour than Immortal and Slayer circa 1985 put together and their song titles and lyrics advocate only the most dark and violent Satanic malevolence. Their rather progressive approach uses some great tricky arrangements that build into epic and complex songs that solidify their reputation as something out of the ordinary.

Unfortunately the absolutely minimalist production values work against them. Normal guitars didn’t tune low enough, so Darklord had specially designed dual-neck twelve string instruments built to provide a fearsome bottom end, but the production is so weak most of it just sounds like white noise with a drum beat. Even worse, the keyboards virtually drown everything whenever they are used. It sounds like the album wasn’t mastered at all (and with the budget these guys had, that's probably true), making things blurry and without definition. The vocals are great though, suitably grim, shrieking and evil, vomiting Satanic praises and maledictions against the Christian God in epic, sprawling tracks like the ten-minute ‘Our Father who Art in Hell’, opening monster ‘Infernal Nekromancy’ and ‘War in the Sky’. Similarly the lead guitar work is amazing, quite possibly amongst the best display of shredding in the genre.

These two aspects, coupled with Darklord’s strong songwriting, make Symphony Satanikka a worthy purchase, but with stronger production values this album would have levelled a city, because as it is, it often just sounds like a muddle of muffled guitars and clicky drums.

1. Infernal Necromancy
2. Blood of Angels
3. War in the Sky
4. Ritual Infanticide
5. Our Father Who Art in Hell
6. Killing in the Name of...
7. Destruction of the New Heaven
8. Crush the Holy Priest
9. I Summon Thee

Rating: 68%

LIONSHEART: Abyss

Released: 2004

For several years, Lionsheart was the vehicle for former Grim Reaper and Onslaught vocalist Steve Grimmett. He fronted different versions of this group since the early 90s but this is the only time I’ve heard them. If I was expecting something similar to Reaper or Onslaught, I would have been surprised to discover that Lionsheart actually sounds somewhat like a heavier version of Whitesnake. Indeed, comparisons with Whitesnake are somewhat easy to draw.

Abyss provides some good quality, well-written melodic heavy rock songs, with some metal injections courtesy of guitarist Ian Nash whose playing, while not as spectacular, is reminiscent of the teams David Coverdale had working for him in the mid-80s. Grimmett’s vocals aren’t too far removed from Coverdale’s either at times, like in the fast rocking opener ‘Screaming’ and in ‘How Long’ that appears towards the end. Overall, apart from the slower acoustic tracks like ‘I Need Love’ and ‘If You Cut Me’, Abyss really is quite an enjoyable hard rock record with some pretty catchy songs and is worthy of a few listens, even though it may not become a real firm favourite.

Fans of Grimmet and late 80s Whitesnake should really check this out.

1. Screaming
2. Nightmare
3. All I Got
4. I Need Love
5. How Can I Tell You
6. I'm Alive
7. Don't Waste My Time
8. If You Cut Me
9. Save Me
10. Witchcraft
11. How Long
12. Abyss

Rating: 75%

SCAR SYMMETRY: Holographic Universe

Released: June 20, 2008

I really liked Scar Symmetry's previous effort Pitch Black Progress so I was eager to see what their new album would bring. The metal press had already started falling over themselves in their praise of this new melodic death metal masterpiece, and while they aren't always correct, rarely have they been so wrong.

"The perfect symbiosis of melodies and death metal," chirped one. "An explosion of huge melodies and even bigger riffs," cried another. Both of these rags shall remain nameless but both of them should know better. If these reviewers are writing what they really believe and not just pandering to the whims of their advertising editors, then metal is going to hell in a handbasket.

For a start, Holographic Universe isn't death metal. It's melodic metal with some death metal growls. And while the melodies ARE huge, the problem is that they are all the same one! Don't even start me on the riffs, most of which are shapeless and totally formulaic. Sometimes they're not even whole riffs, just big half-chuggy things that some deathcore band left laying around some place. I'm not kidding. After making one of the better melodeath albums of 2006, Scar Symmetry has completely dropped the ball and made one of the most disappointing releases of 2008.

"Morphogenesis" gets things underway OK, like every lead-off track should, but foreshadows what the rest of Holographic Universe is going to sound like. Just like Soilwork, Scar Symmetry saves all the melody for the choruses, and then lays them on with a trowel. Christian Älvestam has perhaps the most harmonious clean vocal style in Swedish metal. It's like honey. I kept thinking they'd brought in a boy band to do this choruses; so saccharine they are, it's almost sickening. But the worst part is that he recycles the same melody in every single song. It's like he doesn't know how to sing another way. To top it off, there just aren't any hooks. In fact, these songs are so not-catchy that by the time I'd heard the entire album I had to go back and listen to what the first few songs sounded like because I'd almost forgotten!

Unlike some albums, Holographic Universe didn't get any better the second time around. This made me even more disappointed. If there is one redeeming feature, however, it is that in a genre where lead guitar is fast disappearing, Jonas Kjellgren and Per Nilsson really cut loose with some classic metal soloing that goes far beyond the hackneyed collection of trills and sweeps that pose for guitar solos these days. Even so, this isn't much of a recommendation, because the success of an album rides with the strength of its songs, and the songs here are weak.

"Timewave Zero" is just a lame pop song with some heavy bits. Other songs completely misfire and I found still others simply annoying. The totally misnamed "Fear Catalyst" started out like it was going to rip my head off, but Ävestam started up with his boyband routine within seconds, ruining everything! "Prism and Gate" sounded like it was heading in some interesting industrial direction for about a heartbeat, but then -- you guessed it -- that same goddamn melody line appeared. After a brief moment when I thought Scar Symmetry was going to get interesting again, they went straight back to what they'd been doing for the previous 35 minutes. Even the solo was predictable.

The title track offered a slim ray of hope. The first three minutes of this is the best part of the whole album: the synths and guitars working in perfect unison to build a heavy, epic-sounding, almost grand atmosphere, a really powerful section like the build up to the greatest climactic battle scene ever filmed. If the whole thing had been like this, Holographic Universe would have not just been the album of the year, it would have been one of the best metal albums ever. But then at precisely the three-minute mark that same poppy vocal line comes back, as if someone decided that one-third of the way into a nine-minute track was simply long enough to wait. The cool bit returned for a while as Kjellgren and Nilsson unleashed some monster soloing, but then after that the whole song just runs completely out of steam, a complete waste of four and a half minutes. Indeed, "Holographic Universe" seems to epitomise the failings of the entire album: so much promise but too few ideas.

If I was enough of a fan of this band to be crushed, I would be pulverised. Because I'm not, I don't care that much. There's plenty of other bands around. But there is a bunch of people out there who actually think this is pretty good, and that makes me very afraid indeed.

1. Morphogenesis
2. Timewave Zero
3. Quantumleaper
4. Artificial Sun Projection
5. The Missing Coordinates
6. Ghost Prototype I (Measurement of Thought)
7. Fear Catalyst
8. Trapezoid
9. Prism and Gate
10. Holographic Universe
11. The Three-Dimensional Shadow
12. Ghost Prototype II (Deus ex Machina)

Rating: 42%

THY ART IS MURDER: Infinite Death

Released: July 26, 2008

Maybe I'm just getting too old for this shit, but deathcore just leaves me cold. Take this EP from young Sydney five piece Thy Art is Murder for example. Open with a stabbing hardcore-style snare attack, play a technical death metal riff for one second, change to another riff for five seconds, fire off a short trilling burst of notes, go back to the technical death metal for a few seconds, then play a chugging breakdown. Repeat. For the next song, do exactly the same thing! Follow the formula four or five times and voila!, a deathcore EP.

"Infinite Death" is a pretty relentless collection of tracks that to an untrained ear are going to sound very much alike. The riffing pretty standard deathcore throughout and hardly changes from song to song; the arrangements and dynamics are fairly identical also, as if Thy Art is Murder wrote one song they liked so much they just changed it a little each time. There are a lot of albums around that can at first sound very samey and some -- Demanufacture by Fear Factory, for example, or City by Strapping Young Lad -- can be lauded as classics of their field. What distinguishes albums like those with an EP like this one is the presence of hooks and subtle melodies that only become apparent after a listen or two. "Infinite Death" lacks these to the point where only fleeting guitar solo in "Parasitic Autopsy" and the swirling trills of "Breeding Bacteria" do anything to differentiate them from each other.

The title track, however, is quite a stand-out, because while it essentially maintains the same structure as every other song, Thy Art is Murder does more with it. The main riff, while not much different to any of the others, has a solid, moshpit groove and an effective hook and they actually play it long enough for it to set, and the breakdown has a stumbling feel that makes it sound like it's being played backwards. It's also the longest song on the EP, allowing the band to cram the same number of ideas into it but spread them out a bit so they work more effectively.

Thy Art is Murder certainly has the chops to play this style of metal, but in the end "Infinite Death" is just too thoroughly generic and repetitive to appeal to more than their fans, and even they might get over it pretty quickly.

1. I'll Show You God
2. Whore to a Chainsaw
3. Parasitic Autopsy
4. Breeding Bacteria
5. Infinite Death

Rating: 48%

STEVE LUKATHER: Everchanging Times

Produced by Steve Lukather and Steve MacMillan

Released: 2008

Steve Lukather has probably played on more albums by more people than any other musician in recorded history. If that's a bit hard to believe, there's a discography page on his website that takes about half an hour to read. So it's pretty surprising that the man has ever been able to find time to record an album of his own. Everchanging Times is his fourth solo release, and now that he's called time on Toto, there may well be more. If this is any indication of what he still has in store, his fans should be far from disappointed that his main vehicle has been garaged for good.

At various points Everchanging Times evokes Falling in Between and even some bits of early Toto albums, but this is also very much Luke being Luke. The title track opens the album with a cool, slick rock vibe, just the sort of stylish playing you would expect from the man. It's pretty apparent right away that the music here is likely to go in just about any direction, and Lukather is certainly one guy who can pull this off. From rockier numbers like "New World" he can then give a polite nod to Steely Dan with the jazz-fusion of "Stab in the Back", then churn out a dirty groove for a funky run through John Sloman's "Jammin' With Jesus" complete with a snapping bass line from Leland Sklar and a big church organ sound.

Elsewhere, "Icebound" could indeed have slotted comfortably onto any Toto record and on the gloriously smouldering "Tell Me What You Want From Me" Lukather lets his oldest son Trevor chop out the riffs as he sprinkles tasty guitar runs over everything. There's no need to talk about the production. You know it's going to be one of the slickest, cleanest sounding things you've ever heard, and the guitar-playing is just peerless.

Everchanging Times did take a couple of spins to really appreciate, but it was well worth taking the time to let the hooks set. It might not get the critics talking, but Luke's devoted fanbase will love this.

1. Everchanging Times
2. The Letting Go
3. New World
4. Tell Me What You Want From Me
5. I Am
6. Jammin' With Jesus
7. Stab in the Back
8. Never Ending Nights
9. Icebound
10. How Many Zeros
11. The Truth

Rating: 85%

BRODEQUIN: Methods of Execution

Produced by Mike Bailey

Released: 2004

If you thought I had it in for power metal, wait until I get started on so-called "brutal" death metal. There are a ton of bands cluttering the well-trodden paths left by Suffocation and Cannibal Corpse, but some of them can throw a decent song and a catchy riff together now and then. Brodequin not only can’t do this, they don’t seem to care. I couldn't believe how one-dimensional and abysmally awful this album was, and I have since come to the conclusion that the only reason Methods of Execution ever got released is because the guitarist owns the label.

Every single track on this album is dedicated to a different form of cruelty, from the gallows to the griddle to disembowelment, but by far the worst and cruellest is the album itself. Brodequin is not only obsessed with methods of torture and execution, but with the idea of brutality for brutality's sake. Methods of Execution is nothing more than the endless repetition of the same mindless grinding without the slightest thought for variation of any sort, and the production is terribly, terribly bad, like the worst demo you've ever heard, but worse!

The album gets a few points for the lyrics. Well-written and morbidly interesting, they are also totally incomprehensible, vomited by such a ludicrously monotonous gurgle that makes you wonder why they even bothered. This is a very bad album.

1. Slaves to the Pyre
2. The Gridiron
3. The Red Theatre
4. Pressing to Plead
5. Tyburn Field
6. Durance Vile
7. Lingering Existence
8. Cast Into Torment
9. Verdrinken
10. Punishment Without Mercy
11. Method of Execution

Rating: 5%

NOTE: This review appears on Metal-Archives in a slightly different form under another one of my aliases. Of course, everyone else who reviewed it gave it 90% for "brutality" alone which just goes to show that you can play the same stupid riff for 40 minutes, record it under a wet blanket, and at least four other people will be as happy about it as you are.

HATESPHERE: Ballet of the Brute

Produced by Tommy Hansen, Jakob Bredahl and Hatesphere

Released: 2004

In the wake of The Haunted, bands of a similar nature started springing up all over the place at the beginning of the decade. Most weren't worth the effort of checking out, but there were a few that certainly knew how to do it. Hatesphere from Denmark was one of those, as their mightily impressive third album shows.

Ballet of the Brute is a formidable collection of brutal thrash that leaves others sprawling in the dust. ‘The Beginning and the End’ starts things ominously with a slow build up of heavy riffing and then ‘Deathtrip’ lets loose in a rampage that lasts less than two minutes. Infectious and heavy riffing is the order of the day for Hatesphere as they rage through killer tracks like ‘Vermin’ but the album actually gets better as it goes on, showing somewhat more diversity in the speed and vocal attack than The Haunted did on One Kill Wonder. ‘Downward to Nothing’ has a slight hardcore feel but the incredible thrash riffing and melodic lead guitars keep it from straying from the feel of the album. ‘What I See, I Despise’ is slower but none the less menacing, being one of the album highlights with Jakob Bredahl’s voice adopting a growlier aspect to contrast his harsher vocals in the faster songs. ‘Blankeyed’ is simply awesome and ‘500 Dead People’ combines the sinister slow riffing of ‘What I See…’ with outright speed to close the album with a blast.

The hidden cover of ‘Bark at the Moon’ is hilarious, but apart from that there isn’t a bad song on here: Ballet of the Brute is a minor thrash masterpiece from beginning to end.

1. The Beginning and the End
2. Deathtrip
3. Vermin
4. Downward to Nothing
5. Only the Strongest...
6. What I See I Despise
7. Last Cut, Last Heard
8. Warhead
9. Blankeyed
10. 500 Dead People
11. Bark at the Moon (hidden track)

Rating: 85%

ENTOMBED: Morning Star

Produced by Entombed
Released: 2001

After a short period where it looked like this band had doomed to the realms of musical history with a well-executed but ill-advised excursion into heavy rock, Entombed came storming back, first with the punked-out scream from the garage that was Uprising and then this. Morning Star.

This is an album from a band which has once and for all given up all thoughts of mainstream rock glory, stepped back and gone back to doing exactly what they are known for best. Blending the catchy death rock element of Wolverine Blues with the rawness of Uprising in twelve songs all themed in some way around Lucifer and the fall of the Angels (hence the album title), Entombed came up with perhaps some of their best songs ever here. Opener ‘Chief Rebel Angel' starts a little omniously with a slow bass/piano combo like some wallet-chain wearing pseudo-metal pretender band, but within seconds this is destroyed by a crushing old school metal attack that never lets up for the rest of the album. LG Petrov sounds pissed off like he hasn't sounded for a while and the way Alex Hellid and Uffe Cederlund throw riffs around it's like they woke up to find themselves back in 1993. ‘I For an Eye' has an Arise-era Sepultura feel about it and ‘About to Die' recalls Slayer at their height; this is unadulterated pure metal and could well be one of Entombed's finest moments.

This was a fantastic return to death metal form for one of the pioneers of the genre, but sadly also marked the last time Entombed would reach such heights.

1. Chief Rebel Angel
2. I For and Eye
3. Bringer of Light
4. Ensemble of the Restless
5. Out of Heaven
6. Young Man Nihilist
7. Year One Now
8. Fractures
9. When It Hits Home
10. City of Ghosts
11. About to Die
12. Mental Twin

Rating: 90%

DARK TRANQUILLITY: Character

Produced by Dark Tranquillity

Released: 2005

Coming three years after Damage Done re-established them as melodic death metal force, Character saw Dark Tranquillity making some considerable way to wresting the crown of the kings of their chosen style from contemporaries who had had it for so long, a crown that is, and has always been, rightfully theirs. Dark Tranquillity has been at it longer than anyone, and have always been more than one step ahead of their compatriots in their experimentations with keyboards, electronics and clean vocal melodies but their refusal to dumb-down their approach to its most basic and commercial form has meant they have never attained the status of more illustrious bands like In Flames and Soilwork.

Character continued this proudly uncompromising tradition and showed that Dark Tranquillity stoods at the pinnacle of their creative height. For this album, Dark Tranquillity went back to their classic sound from the Mind’s I period, but seamlessly added in the modern keyboard element from Damage Done, and it works brilliantly. “The New Build” opens the album perfectly with some instantly fearsome thrashy death metal injected with an insane sense of melody and a ferocious hook. So the scene is set for 45 minutes of tight, articulate melodic death metal that doesn’t forsake its ferocity and intensity for commerical mediocrity. Mikael Stanne gives a powerfully aggressive vocal performance throughout and Martin Brändström’s electronic elements are well woven into the songwriting fabric rather than existing merely for the sake of it.

Character is a brilliant example of modern Swedish death metal without wimping out at all.

1. The New Build
2. Through Smudged Lenses
3. Out of Nothing
4. The Endless Feed
5. Lost to Apathy
6. Mind Matters
7. One Thought
8. Dry Run
9. Am I 1?
10. Senses Tied
11. My Negation

Rating: 95%

THE DEAD: The Dead

Produced by The Dead

Released: 2007

The Dead is the continuation of a Queensland heritage, containing as it does guitarist Scott Edgar from the now-defunct Misery, one of the greatest Aussie death metal bands of all. It would be easy to suggest from a cursory listen that his new band is merely a resurrection of his old one, but this would be a mistake. That there are similarities cannot be denied but there are some idiosyncracies evident on this album that delineate these bands and it has to be said that The Dead come off as somewhat inferior.

Edgar and vocalist Michael Yee have been doing this sort of thing longer than almost anyone and there's no doubt they know what this is all about, and The Dead churns out enough solid, meat-and-potatoes death metal to keep any fan more than satisfied. The production tends to be a little demo-ish at times (rather like the artwork), but fits rather well with the band's unadorned style. The bass is surprisingly audible (perhaps because the bassist mixed this) but strangely toppy and thin while Edgar's guitar retains the huge sludgy sound he used in Misery and the drumming is mostly blastbeats. In the end however, The Dead falls a bit short. Apart from the last song, the earth-shaking and doom-laden "The Doomsayer" that more than any other track here evokes the shadow of Misery, there isn't really much in the way of a real stand-out and the material suffers a little from the rather cliched lyrical matter and cheesy titles like "Onslaughter" and "Raging Violence"; no matter how many times I see it, "They Eat Their Wounded" just strikes me as a silly thing to call a song and it makes me laugh out loud everytime. Lyrically The Dead doesn't really rise above the usual tales of serial killings, murder sprees and demonic invasions of so many other bands and at times they don't seem that well thought out: "a killing kind of war" suggest there's some other kind and "The dead are alive/Crucifixions burning inside them" appears to make no sense. The Dead is also very short: with nine songs it still only clocks in at just on half an hour, which is shorter than a Misery album and that's saying something.

The Dead is a competent album of unrelenting death metal, the kind you would expect from a couple of scene veterans, but there isn't that much to it and doesn't stand out at all from any of the hundreds of others like it.

1. Hunting Humans
2. Onslaughter
3. Raging Violence
4. Nameless Entity
5. The Dead
6. Drown in Sin
7. They Eat Their Wounded
8. A Killing Kind
9. The Doomsayer

Rating: 55%

...AND OCEANS: Allotropic/Metamorphic - Genesis of Dimorphism

Released: 2001

...And Oceans was never been a band to go for simple album titles, and this one has perhaps the the most contrived. Whatever it is supposed to mean, Am God, by which is it thankfully better known, is an interesting and diverse album of extreme blackened metal that was a logical progression from 1999's sublime The Symmetry of I - The Circle of O. Rarely were they known to shrink back from a little experimentation either, and this CD is no exception.

...And Oceans built grand, often epic songs using straight forward death metal riffs, grim vocals and frequent bursts of tumultuous black metal intensity, and this is certainly the case here. On this album however, it is the keyboards that are the real star of the show, providing a starkly futuristic feel in their spacey, otherworldliness that displays the kind of initiative that is missing from many other recent releases. At times they almost possess the character of deep trance techno, but it's only ever used to enhance ...And Oceans' otherwise aggressive sound and help to create the dramatic atmosphere oozing from tracks like ‘Postfuturistika' and ‘White Synthetic Noise'. That's with the exception of the last track, ‘New Model World', which actually is deep trance techno! This is of course caused all sorts of consternation and hand-wringing when the usual metal crowd got a load of it, with whining and whingeing about ...And Oceans going the way of Theatre of Tragedy, and while they did go further into the electronic area they never got close to being as lame as that band.

Am God is nothing less than a boldly experimental volume of progressive extreme metal and a frightfully good one at that.

1. Intelligence is Sexy
2. White Synthetic Noise
3. Tears Have No Name
4. Espirit de Corps
5. Odious & Devious
6. Of Devilish Tongues
7. Postfuturistika
8. TBA in a Silver Box
9. New Model World

Rating: 92%

ASTRIAAL: Renascent Misanthropy

Produced by Lachlan Mitchell and Astriaal

Released: 2003

A true renewal of hatred, this was the pinnacle to which Astriaal had been climbing gradually for a few years. Since their classic ‘Glories of the Nightsky’ demo, the band had been tuning their talents and tweaking their songwriting, making better and better recordings with each step of their journey. By the time this album was about to surface, Astriaal had become the most visible and highest-profile black metal band in Australia and one with a rare status and reputation that allowed them to play on virtually any metal bill with bands of any genre. Anyone who had followed their career had to realise that this album was going to be a good one. The only question was how good it would be.

Renascent Misanthropy is a work of sinister genius that put Astriaal far beyond the reach of other Australian acts in the same field and even well past many from other parts of the globe. This album is that good. Renascent Misanthropy is an almost perfect combination of violence and melody, technical playing, elaborate arrangements, catchy riffs and cold, scathing hate. It isn't particularly innovative from an originality point of view, but it did embody precisely how to create a work within the rigid framework of their chosen style. From merciless onslaughts like ‘Ritual Hate Construct’ and ‘Revere the Labyrinth’, Astriaal can then turn a deftly creative hand to summon a maliciously beautiful instrumental piece in the shape of ‘Acquisition of the Stars’ and follow that with a masterpiece of evil such as ‘Reaper of Dark Ages’ with a consummate ease that is almost frightening in itself. The songs are complex without becoming mindlessly self-indulgent and the production has been steered expertly to highlight every sound within the maelstrom and throughout Astriaal managed to create a sense of real menace without wandering into the realms of self-parody to which so many others have become ensnared.

This album is a total masterpiece, one of the best Australian metal albums ever.

1. The Funeral Procession
2. Ritual Hate Construct
3. Revere the Labyrinth
4. Glories to the Nightsky
5. Ode to Antiquity
6. Aborescence
7. Acquisition of the Stars
8. Reaper of Dark Ages
9. The Halls of Peridition

Rating: 98%

SOILWORK: A Predator's Portrait

Produced by Fredrik Nordström and Soilwork

Released: 2001

Their first release was a surprise and a revelation, the second cemented their reputation. With just two albums, Soilwork had showed themselves to be one of the very best of the plethora of melodic death metal bands to have emerged since the term was coined. They were young, they were talented and they knew how to make all the parts fit together. All they needed was another album to saw that they really were in for the long haul. A Predator's Portrait set that in stone.

Under the guiding hand of master producer Fredrik Nordström, A Predator's Portrait is instantly infectious from the very moment that "Bastard Chain" makes itself known. From start to end, this is nothing but a breakneck collection of hook-laden groove and catchy riffs, studded with blazing melody lines that in no way inhibit the insidious brutality that lies beneath. If anything it only serves to give Soilwork's music even more bite, an attack that is even more fleshed out with some subtle keyboards that work so well with the guitars that I didn't even really notice them until I'd listened a couple of times. Not only that, but esteemed friends like Mikael Åkerfeldt from Opeth singing on the title track and Freak Kitchen's Mattias Eklundh dropping a ripping solo into "Needlefeast" helped to make things even more special. The most obvious progression was that evidenced in Björn Strid's vocals. A Predator's Portrait marked the point where he began to experiment with clean, melodic singing, an aspect that would shape the follow-up album (the Devin Townsend-produced Natural Born Chaos) and eventually the entire sound of the band. Nevertheless, its presence here is part of what made the songs work so well.

A Predator's Portrait is nothing less than an excellent release of ferocious melodic death metal from a band that would never quite sound the same way again.

1. Bastard Chain
2. Like the Average Stalker
3. Needlefeast
4. Neurotica Rampage
5. The Analyst
6. Grand Failure Anthem
7. Structure Divine
8. Shadowchild
9. Final Fatal Force
10. A Predator's Portrait

Rating: 90%

MAMMAL: Mammal

Produced by Mammal

Released: 2006

Mammal is a band that has had people falling over them for the last couple of years, having quickly gone from the rehearsal room to full scale national tours in virtually a heartbeat. This EP certainly shows them to be an energetic and sometimes interesting band but also highlights a few of the lapses that can result when things seem to just come together so quickly. Mammal's vocalist is Ezekiel Ox whose previous band Full Scale was Australia's answer to the Deftones; their guitarist is Pete Williamson, whose previous gig was with Pete Murray's backing band. Such a disparate clash of backgrounds was only really going to go one way, and unsurprisingly Mammal sounds nothing like Pete Murray.

The EP opens with the funkified hard rock of "New Breed Judas". With its catchy grooves and syncopated vocal delivery, this reminds me of a band called Non Intentional Lifeform, a unit that must surely have been an early inspiration for Ox at least if not Williamson also. Indeed the entire CD has the whisperings of an influence from NiL's Uisce, which is obscure enough these days that this band's target audience has likely never even heard of it.

Overall, the band presents an energised mixture of punchy rock and funky groove with something of a progressive bent. When Mammal manages to pull this off they do it extremely well, as in the lead-off track and particularly the excellent closer, "Groove Junkie". The band's more progressive leanings become more apparent on this track, and although they perhaps draw rather a bit heavily from Tool for comfort it's still pretty convincing. "Hell Yeah" and "Think" however are rather less impressive, especially the latter's juvenile know-it-all ranting that detracts from the EP's more sophisticated aspects. This song might go off all right on-stage in front of a pumping crowd, but here it sounds as try-hard as that 50-year old bloke on Big Brother.

Mammal certainly deserve some of the hype they've been getting. Their style won't be to everyone's taste and on this EP they sound too much like their influences, but there's far worse bands you could be listening to.

1. New Breed Judas
2. Think
3. Hell Yeah
4. Inciting
5. Groove Junkie

Rating: 65%

NOCTIS: For Future's Past

Produced by Dan Mazzarol

Released: 2007

Perth has a deserved reputation among Australian metal critics for spawning great bands. It's also a rather incestuous scene where seemingly every notable band features a member of some other notable band. Both these observations prove true for Noctis. With musicians that have played or continue to play with groups including Vespers Descent, Pathogen, Chaos Divine, Psychonaut, Bereavement and Voyager, this young band already has a formidable amount of experience behind it and 'For Future's Past' bears this out.

With such a disparate list of bands in their collective resume (melodic death, groove, prog, black) it would be hard to pinpoint what Noctis might sound like if the cover art didn't give it away, and yes, this is expansive doom/death in the vein of 90s masters Katatonia and Amorphis with a hint of early Opeth thrown in for good measure. There's certainly no doubt that these guys knew where to look for influences. As a colleague has pointed out in his review of this EP, Noctis often sound rather too much like the bands they were inspired by, but this would only really be a major criticism if Noctis weren't any good. Because they are, you get the feeling that they will shake off their sound-alike aspects as they progress. So essentially, 'For Future's Past' is nothing original, but Noctis nails the sombre atmospherics and mournful darkness of their chosen field expertly, weaving in snatches of orchestration and delicate melodic vocals and making them work rather than adding them just for the sake of it. The EP seems to build to a climax too with the final track "The Meaning Dies Within" dominating the set with its extended running time and elaborate arrangement. No, it isn't breaking any new ground, but it's very good indeed.

My biggest hang-up is the apostrophe in the title because I can't figure out if it's a grammatical error or not, but I can't even let that annoy me as much as it should because the rest of it is so good.

1. Time
2. Remembrance of Death
3. Of Emptiness
4. Eternity's Worth
5. Nostalgia
6. The Meaning Dies Within

Rating: 82%

DREADNAUGHT: Body.Blood.Skin.Mind

Produced by Dreadnaught

Released: 1996

When people talk about Australian metal bands, for some reason Dreadnaught invariably gets overlooked. Just how much of an injustice this is becomes immediately apparent when the power and emotion of the band's first album is allowed to wash over you. My first experience of this was listening to a copy dubbed onto a cassette that was given to me by their late drummer Sudz; it was so different to so much of the metal I was listening to at the time that I at first didn't quite know what to make of it. But just as the first track creeps and builds under the swirling samples of the TV suicide of US politician Budd Dwyer, Body.Blood.Skin.Mind. took hold of me and now stands as one of my all-time favourites.

Dreadnaught's musical style on this album is far removed from the groove-laden dirty rock n roll they play these days; indeed they would sound like a totally different band if it weren't for the distinctive vocal presence of Greg Trull. From a truly enormous, powerful roar of frustration or rage to a threatening whisper or cry of despair, there are few other singers who exude such a wide range of emotions often in the space of a single song. The haunting "Flowers" is a case in point, a career stand-out for the band and the perfect showcase for Trull as his voice embodies the emotional battlefield of the lyrics. Throughout the album, however, the entire band simply shines, crafting a genius-like combination of early-90s alterna-metal with the progressive thrash of bands like Death only without the extended guitar solos. Here the guitars focus on measuring out melody while at the same time dredging up massively sludgy riffs like those in "Begotten Not Made" or at other times pacy driving metal like in "Harlequin". It really is difficult to pigeonhole Body.Blood.Skin.Mind into a comfortable genre because Dreadnaught makes use of so many of them. There are splashes of the groove rock they would adopt later, some of the industrial element borrowed from Trull's other band Discordia, melodic thrash and dark rock that hints vaguely at the likes of Tool, and all put together with a level of brilliance that remains under-rated even today.

The album is rounded out by "Return of the Astral Traction Bleeder", a 26-minute long ambient track of rumbling thunder and stormy weather that finishes with clashing riffing and rolling drums. Dreadnaught made a fantastic album here, the genius of which should remain overlooked by you no longer.

1. Dripping
2. Distant
3. Mindbend
4. Harlequin
5. Remote Control
6. Flowers
7. Twisted Prayer
8. Begotten Not Made
9. Return of the Astral Traction Bleeder

Rating: 95%