MORBID ANGEL: Illud Divinum Insanus

Produced by Trey Azagthoth
Released: June 2011

It’s quite possible that Illud Divinum Insanus is one of the most anticipated death metal releases for some time, next to the new Decapitated set. And it’s equally likely that it will also rank as one of the most disappointing albums in the annals of metal. Indeed, it’s already begun. It isn’t even out yet and there is already at least one Facebook group mourning the passing of Morbid Angel. For many people, this is the band that not only perfected death metal, but defines it. Yet in less than an hour, Trey Azagthoth and David Vincent have taken that legacy and tossed it away like the photo of an ex-girlfriend smeared with shit.

Terrible Latin aside, Illud begins ominously enough, with the portentous, Mussorgsky-like “Omni Potens” full of drum fills, dark-sounding strings and chanting. But after such an epic build up, the whole thing falls immediately flat with six and a half minutes of totally misguided, half-arsed industrialised bullshit like a bad Front Line Assembly cover band fucking the Genitorturers and coming up with Marilyn Manson, but worse. Like the time Dave Rotten decided that the world really needed a remixed Avulsed album, “Too Extreme!” fails on every level, including the title, which is more like something Devin Townsend would call a song.

And there’s worse to come. “Radikult” is just terrible urban hip-hop that Trey probably found on the backseat of a cab after Rob Zombie had deliberately left it there. But even that pales in awfulness compared to “Destructos Vs. the Earth/Attack”, something else you’d expect more from Townsend, but only if he woke up one day without any talent. It’s too stupid even for him. And lame. Really, really lame.

The thing is that there are Morbid Angel tracks here. Both “Nevermore” and “Beauty Meets Beast”, stupid title aside, are as ferocious and filled with those typical Azagthoth slab-riffs as anything they’ve done in the past, and “Blades of Baal” has a killer breakdown groove. The real shame is that the first-mentioned pair of songs come in way too late, at eight and nine respectively, to be any real saving grace. Most of the band’s fans will probably have thrown it across the room in disgust by then, and the rest will still be picking themselves up off the floor from the fits of laughter induced by the idiotic “Destructos” and its ridiculous “Marching! We are marching! Destructos are marching on Man!” refrain like something out of an Ed Wood film written by a nine year old. Even the songs that aren’t poor attempts at cross-genre pollution are not very good: “I am Morbid” and “10 More Dead” wouldn’t have even been good enough to be on Heretic. And saddest of all, David Vincent’s voice has gone from sounding like a haunted tomb opening to the generic, unscary growl of the denizens he once inspired.

Some are already calling this the St. Anger of death metal, but that’s not accurate. St. Anger was the sound of a band trying to hold something together as their world went to pieces. Illud Divinum Insanus is that of a band crashing spectacularly and not even realising, and unlike Metallica, Morbid Angel don’t even have the rigours of immense fame to blame. Metallica spent three albums and more than a decade on devolving their sound; Morbid Angel has done it in one stroke, for no apparent reason.

Morbid Angel really only has one option now. They need to call the next album Just Kidding and come out with the most evil-sounding record of all time. But they won’t, because it sounds like they just don’t care.

1. Omni Poten
2. Too Extreme!
3. Existo Vulgoré
4. Blades for Baal5. I Am Morbid
6. 10 More Dead
7. Destructos Vs. Earth/Attack
8. Nevermore
9. Beauty Meets Beast
10. Radikult
11. Profundis - Mea Culpa

Rating: 25%

DEAD CITY RUINS: Midnight Killer

Released: May 2011

According to their bio, Melbourne's Dead City Ruins sound like a "hard rock mixture of Black Sabbath and Alice in Chains", which would be true if either of those groups sounded like AC/DC.
As it is, this album shows these rock n roll bastards to rock out with the same sort of gusto as Sydney's similarly-named and equally rock-as-fuck motherfuckers Hell City Glamours. Midnight Killer is basically eight tracks of blazing, hard n' fast rock 'n roll of the good old fashioned no-bullshit kind. "Where You Gonna Run" kicks things off with an impossibly catchy riff that actually recalls early 80s The Angels and from that moment the Ruins offer up a continuous feast of hooky choruses and kick ass songs.

The riff in "Damn My Eyes" is a killer; indeed it's hard to find one that isn't. The appropriately-named "Blues" is a nice slow burner toward total rock mayhem and drummer Drewsy gives "Highway Girl" a unbeatable pop swing. Vocalist Jake has an archetypal untrained wail that puts every song on the limit of control. Mix in a duck's arse tight rhythm section and Tommy's sharp lead guitar breaks and you can't go wrong. Dead City Ruins are the real deal. They rock, they rock hard, and Midnight Killer is a ripper.

1. Where You Gonna Run
2. Damn My Eyes
3. My Lai Massacre
4. Midnight Killer
5. Blues
6. Go to War
7. Highway Girl
8. Fallen

Rating: 80%

BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME: The Parallax: The Sleep Dialogues

Produced by David Bottrill and BTBAMReleased: April 2011
Strap yourselves in. That’s what it should say on the cover of every Between the Buried and Me release, and on this new EP it should be bolded and underlined. "The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues" is the opening chapter of what is promised to be a two-part suite of their idiosyncratic uber-cerebral metal, and if you’ve been on one of their journeys before then you know that this is going to be some ride.

Teaming up with mega-producer David Bottrill – who’s worked with no lesser names than TOOL, Muse and Dream Theater – has helped pull together the various strands of BTBAM’s divergent influences and proclivities to make these three immense tracks rather more seamless than the occasionally too-contrived The Great Misdirect. The complicated twists and turns, genre- and mood-shifts and sweeping arrangements do, of course, remain and there’s no real telling where the band is likely to go as the EP unfolds over a mere thirty minutes. It certainly isn’t casual listening lyrically either, as the deep and elaborate concept of interconnected dream-lives is possibly even more complex than the music. With regards to that, the band is at the top of their game and appear to be pushing each other towards new heights of virtuosity every couple of minutes.

It’s probably just as well BTBAM has decided to make "The Parallax" only the first part of a larger concept, because after about half an hour of this, your head might explode.

1. Specular Reflection
2. Augment of Rebirth
3. Lunar Wilderness

Rating: 85%

HEAVEN THE AXE: Sex, Chugs & Rock n Roll

Released: May 2011

Readers who recognise the names Manticore, Damaged and Abramelin will know them as three of the most extreme Australian metal bands of all. So the idea of members of each of those bands teaming up together would certainly be an intriguing one for those of us who remember or have ever been exposed to their brutality. And that's why Heaven the Axe is probably not the band you would expect them to play in.

Formed in Wagga Wagga as a straight-up rock band by Steve Watts and Phoebe Pinnock, after the pair moved to Melbourne Watts linked up with old buddies from the metal scene there and gradually moulded Heaven the Axe into a much heavier band. Sex, Chugs & Rock n'Roll is the result of that tinkering, nine tracks of explosive, sexy heavy rock.

Pinnock is a brazenly honest songwriter and her lyrics range from the angry ("Enemy") to the heartfelt ("Unconditional Love") to cheeky fun like "So Nirvana" in which she likens the local hoon hottie to the classic Nirvana line-up like a naive, coquettish schoolgirl. This song is HtA at their poppiest and shows their clear commercial potential. The ballad "Unconditional Love" has an almost Kasey Chambers vibe until it starts to really rock out about the two minute mark and the question has to be asked: Why isn't this song all over the radio? Elsewhere, Sex, Chugs & Rock n Roll is sheer rock heaven, but with a ferociously metal guitar sound and incredible heaviness that could only come from guys who used to play in death metal bands. Indeed, at times it seems like Pinnock's chirpy albeit powerful voice is almost too pop for the savagery of the rest of the band, and yet it just clicks.

Despite its poppy hooks, Sex, Chugs & Rock n Roll is probably too heavy to become a chart hit but it should become a solid favourite for those who like rock, because that's what it does.

1. Enemy
2. Masochist
3. Electric Wire
4. So Nirvana
5. (GI-intro)
6. Glue
7. Get Your Devil to Do It
8. Unconditional Love
9. Tails to You
 
Rating: 70%

DEMONAZ: March of the Norse

Released: April 1 2011

You would only have to have an inkling of who Demonaz is to know what this album is going to sound like, and you would not be far off. Obviously no longer content with just being a lyricist, the erstwhile Immortal man has teamed up with Ice Dale and Armagedda from I (for whom Demonaz also wrote lyrics) for his own solo debut.


It only takes a few seconds to dispel any remote fears that Demonaz would use this as a platform to expand his horizons, and with a title like March of the Norse that was hardly to be expected. This is as cold and as frost-bitten as any of those classic Immortal albums, evoking images of warriors trudging through snow, bending their backs against blizzards as they wind their way through wintered forests and icy peaks. Yes, to some degree, March of the Norse is very much like Immortal with Demonaz singing, with its frigid atmosphere and its lyrical obsession with snow, woodlands, mountains and battle. But what this really sounds like is Bathory, or, perhaps more accurately, Bathory with some added Motorhead and Venom. Demonaz’ vocal has a distinctly Quorthon-like aspect about it and the music borrows from the same catalogue, although this is no mere copy. Guitarist Ice Dale is of course a member of Enslaved, so he brings a deft sense of melody to the table as well as some undorned but effective soloing that adds some sparkle.

If there’s one criticism, it’s that it all sounds very much the same, like one big long epic song broken into smaller pieces. At just on 40 minutes, it’s both short and catchy enough that this doesn’t become a problem, but it does leave one feeling that Demonaz may have been playing a little bit too safe. Regardless, this is a fine way for him to return from the shadows.

1. Northern Hymn
2. All Blackened Sky
3. March of the Norse
4. A Son of the Sword
5. Where Gods Once Rode
6. Under the Great Fires
7. Over the Mountains
8. Ode to Battle
9. Legend of Fire and Ice

Rating: 72%

SIRENIA: The Enigma of Life

Produced by Morten Veland

Released: 2011

Sirenia came about when Morten Veland split from Tristania at their creative height, just over a decade ago. He quickly asserted himself with a couple of Gothic metal masterpieces, At Sixes and Sevens and An Elixir for Existence. Since then, he hasn't really lived up to expectations.


The Enigma of Life is Sirenia's fifth album, and the second with vocalist Ailyn but it isn't close to the standard of even The 13th Floor, of which this actually sounds like a half-baked copy. The songwriting is lazy and predictable to the point where every track is virtually indistinguishable from the one before and after. Ailyn's vocal style starts and ends with a sweet, syrupy chirp with no variation whatsoever. Veland adds some lame growls and phoned-in cleans and tries to vary things by chucking in some choir parts he found laying around the studio after Therion had left, but this just makes it worse. The riffs are so soft and so lazy they make Lacuna Coil's look varied and technical and the poppy keyboard tone is just very, very annoying.

This is a staggeringly ordinary album that defines the word "generic". It's boring, uninteresting, uninventive, tepid, hollow and flat, and should be avoided at all costs.

1. The End of it All
2. Fallen Angel
3. All My Dreams
4. This Darkness
5. The Twilight in Your Eyes
6. Winter Land
7. A Seaside Serenade
8. Darkened Days to Come
9. Coming Down
10. This Lonely Lake
11. Fading Star
12. The Enigma of Life

Rating: 25%

GAY PARIS: The Skeleton's Problematic Granddaughter

Produced by Dave Hammer
Released: April 2011

Imagine, if you can, what it would be like if Clutch got together with Chrome Division and then invited Tom Waits and Hank Williams III over for a jam. Not only would whatever town they were in run out of alcohol, but the result might sound something like this.


The Skeleton's Problematic Granddaughter is the debut release for Gay Paris, a four piece who could be quite adequately described as not wholly conventional. The nine tracks here are the result of breeding a truly gnarled and ugly, swamp-dwelling rock beast with sludgy blues, roots, psychobilly and outlaw country. If that wasn't enough, the songs are linked by a barely coherent theme entangled in gloriously insane poetry. "Pregnant pervert ghost quiver sweetheart, quaint rooms on a negligee street/Dereliction, you're a homeless rose on a brimstone teat" HW Monks barks in a ragged, broken growl, invoking frankly bizarre metaphors and innuendo throughout the band's exploration of the titular character's life. It would all mean nothing if the songs weren't actually good though, and they are, riddled with infectious hooks and grooves so catchy the album is over before you know it. Just check out "House Fire in the Origami District" for not only some genuine rock-out goodness but songtitle of the year, or "Soliloquy from Ether Station" for some bluegrass Gospel music if it was made in Hell.

It may take a few listens to really appreciate what Gay Paris has done here, but this is a stellar recording from a very different band. Those looking for some really unexpected hard rock music should put this on the top of their list.

1. Turns Out You're Not a Cowgirl After All
2. Deadrie Fell's Dog Park Blues
3. Future Wolf and the Gay Parisian Milk Incident
4. House Fire in the Origami District
5. And Lo! She Beheld the Pale Surgeon
6. The Black Tooth Supper Club
7. My First Wife? She Was a Fox Queen
8. Soliloquy from Ether Station
9. Skyship of the Contrabandistor

Rating: 75%

PUSHKING: The World as We Love It

Produced by Fabrizio Grossi
Released: February 2011

[The scene opens on a rehearsal space somewhere in Russia. Five guys who define the term "ageing rocker" are sitting around the room]


Roman Nevelev: Hey Koha, we've been playing these bad 80s power ballads for years and we are still not rock stars! What to do?


[Konstantin "Koha"Shustarev puts down his crack pipe]


Koha: I know! I will write list of people to sing and play on album, then I shall ring Rock Headquarters in America. They will help us. [writes list]


Dmitriy Losev: [reads list] Steve Vai? Nuno Bettencourt? Billy Gibbons? Joe Bona-fucking-massa? What do I play on album now?


Koha: Hahah. You funny.


[Cut to Rock Headquarters. The phone rings]


Keri Kelli: Yo, Rock Headquarters! Hiya, Koha. The album is called what? You wanna do what? Well... um... send me the list and I'll see if they're available.


[Tears list off fax. Walks back to phone, reading]


Kelli: ...Graham Bonnet ...Alice ...Paul Stanley. Wow, really? ...Glenn and Joe ...JLT


[He looks up and sees Steve Vai.]


Kelli: Hey Steve, you wanna play on a song called "My Reflections on Seeing the 'Schindler's List' Movie"?


Steve Vai: Are you making fun of me?


[Sometime later, backstage at a venue somewhere. Billy Gibbons answers the phone]


Billy Gibbons: Oh yeah guys, yes I got the song. I can do it now if you like. I'll just sing into the phone. How will that be? A solo too? [deep sigh] OK. What? Two songs!


[A glamorous bedroom. A girl in a bikini walks over to the bed with a phone. Paul Stanley looks up from counting a huge pile of money]


Paul Stanley: Sure, I'm not doing anything! Yes, of course I love the song. The money's been wired to my account, yes?

None of this probably happened, but I'd like to think that it did, because that would make this at least as awesome as Spinal Tap. In fact, Pushking is what Spinal Tap would be if they were a real band, came from Russia, and wrote diabolical melodic rock power ballads. And sucked. Really, really sucked.

The World as We Love It features some of the worst melodic rock songs I've ever heard. There's nothing about them that's good. They aren't even so-bad-they're-good. They're just fucking atrocious. Even the performances by some of the greatest names in rock - Alice Cooper, Paul Stanley, Billy motherfucking Gibbons - are poor, like they were all embarassed to be part of it but couldn't say no because Russian Mafia guys were holding their families hostage. There's really no other way to explain it. I mean just look at this list of guests: Nuno Bettencourt. Steve Lukather. Joe Bonnamassa. Joe Lynn Turner. Jeff Scott Soto. Dan McCafferty. John Lawton. And none of them can save it. Not even Glenn Hughes!

This album is so bad it made me wish I was listening to Limp Bizkit instead. I would have been less ashamed if I'd been caught masturbating outside a school.

1. Intro
2. Nightrider
3. It''ll be OK
4. Troubled Love
5. Stranger's Song
6. Cut the Wire
7. My Reflections After Seeing the 'Schindler's List' Movie
8. God Made Us Free
9. Why Don't You?
10. I Believe
11. Tonight
12. Private Own
13. Open Letter to God
14. Nature's Child
15. I Love You
16. Head Shooter
17. Heroin
18. My Simple Song
19. Kukarracha

Rating: 10%

SEGRESSION: Never Dead

Produced by Chris Rand
Released: April 2011

When Segression slipped off the radar almost a decade ago they were still at the top of their game. While their self-titled album had come in for some pretty heavy criticism, they were still touring strongly and remained highly popular. Like the sorely-missed Alchemist (what is the story there?), they just sort of stopped. Perhaps because they never came to an inglorious and ignominious end like so many others, when they returned last year to tour with Fozzy there were as many people there to see them as there was for the headliner. Since then anticipation has been high for the release of this new album. At least one review has already called it the best Australian metal album ever, and while I'm not about to go that far, it is certainly not a disappointment for those Segression fans who've been waiting nine years for a new release.


Never Dead is by far the most diverse and consistent album this band has yet made. Unlike previous albums, which occasionally steered a course rather too close to their influences, on Never Dead Segression answers to no one. Really, this doesn't sound much like any other band that's around at the moment. More than anything they've done before, Segression defines what they are with this release. It still bears the band's hallmarks and the distinctive riffing style, the squeal of pinch harmonics and Chris Rand's idiosyncratic vocal delivery will definitely please the fans.

One of the major criticisms levelled at Segression in the past was their stylistic shift from the aggressive Machine Head-style thrash bristling with guitar solos to the chugging, breakdown-laden style of later on. On Never Dead the band has embraced both aspects of their past and turned them into a cohesive whole. The riff-heavy "Blood Lace Black Day" takes the lead strongly and is it apparent that soloing is very much a part of Segression’s oeuvre once more. Timely injections of lead guitar serve to add an element of venom to Segression's already spiteful sound in tracks like "The Wishing Well", "Gaspipe" (that hearkens back to the L.I.A. days) and the epic and heavy "L.T.P.C.". Later, in "Let Me Be Me" Rand drops some hard rhyming over the extended breakdown on a track that recalls the Smile album. Then out of nowhere they thrown in a complete surprise, slipping in the two-part, Zakk Wylde-like "Reality Playroom" that sounds like nothing they've ever done before and on the infectious "Candleneck" they hit on something that stands apart from most of the metal currently circulating.

Never Dead isn’t just a comeback. It’s more like a mission statement, and that mission is to play what they play on their own terms, just like before. Old fans, take note: Segression is back. New fans, take the same note.

1. Blood Lace Black Day
2. Never Dead
3. Hero Anthem
4. The Wishing Well
5. Gaspipe
6. Reality Playground Pt. 1
7. Reality Playground Pt. 2
8. L.T.P.C.
9. Let Me Be Me
10. Candleneck
11. Shattering of a Dream
12. Misery

Rating: 85%

CLAGG: Lord of the Deep

Produced by Clagg and Jason PC
Released: 2011

There's few things I like better than a good doom record, and Melbourne veterans Clagg know how to make really good doom records. With the first pressing sold out, Obsidian Records has re-released this in a slightly variant configuration, and fans of epic-scale riff thunder should rejoice. Lord of the Deep is like a vast submarine behemoth slowing uncoiling itself from the bottom of the sea and rising inexorably toward the surface, intent on crushing everything it finds, rather like the monstrocity detailed in Boyd Potts' typically disturbed artwork.


To give you some idea of the scope of this recording, its six songs sprawl across 67 minutes. The enormous opener "Carrion" takes almost five minutes to build up into its signature riff; at the six minute mark it shifts a gear into a nice mid-paced groove, then changes pace again further on as it spreads it murky tendrils across more than quarter of an hour of ultimate doom. "Lord of the Deep" emerges next, with a minute of feedbacking guitars then making way for a thunderous rumble that slows down so much into the third minute that it makes diSEMBOWELMENT sound like a speed metal band, and at the halfway mark it gets more glacial still. The word "epic" could have been invented to describe this track. "Buried" with its dirty guitars ups the tempo slighty, but it's still long enough for light from the Sun to reach the earth's surface before its over. And as huge as the riffs are in these songs, it's possible that "Devour the Sun" is even more immense as it too slowly grinds out over a ten-minute period. This new version concludes with a faithful cover of Iron Monkey's "Big Loader" that fits right in to Clagg's monstrously sludgy vision.

Lord of the Deep is an evil-sounding, gradually-unfurling picture of musical enormity, the perfect accompaniment to a gloomy afternoon rolling into a stormy evening.

1. Carrion
2. Lord of the Deep - i. They Dream Fire ii. At the Rising of the Storm
3. Buried
4. The Harvest
5. Devour the Sun
6. Big Loader

Rating: 90%