iNFeCTeD: crawlspace

Produced by iNFeCTeD and Andrew Wright

Released: 1994, re-issue October 2009

By rights, iNFeCTeD should have got much bigger than they did. Distinctively different from most of the rest of the Australian death metal scene at the time, they got a two-album deal with Thrust on the strength of a demo, played supports with everyone that mattered and even appeared at the Big Day Out. But their breakthrough never really came. Being from Perth at a time when even east coast bands found it tough to tour much and unable to consolidate a deal with Roadrunner, iNFeCTeD finally ground to halt in late 1996, leaving their recorded legacy to wallow in obscurity. It took me ages to find a copy of crawlspace, eventually tracking one down online a few years back. That's a terrible shame, but the hunt should be easier now because this seminal album was recently re-mastered and re-issued and if you missed it the first time, don't make the same mistake again.

Recorded in 1993 and released the following year (with the cover on the left), crawlspace sounds like few other domestic metal bands of the period. While Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse and Carcass were the terms of reference for most of the death metal brigade, iNFeCTeD were taking their cues from Godflesh and Fear Factory. The results may not have been wholly original, but they were certainly inspired and effective. Right away, "The Sleeper" let the listener know that they're about to hear something unconventional for the time, with a harsh, grinding guitar sound and an angry, snarling vocal.

With "Truthkill" the band sounds most like it is channeling the dark energy of Streetcleaner with its coarse, angular riffs and droning, distorted bass and the title track is reminiscent of something like "Martyr" or "Scumgrief" from Soul of New Machine. The chunky, chugging breakdown riff in the middle of "Once More" foreshadows the basic alterna-metal sound that would later flood the scene, but here Gareth Morris fills it up with clattering drums like an outbreak of sniper fire. Guitarist Matthew Jefferson throws up riffs that churn and stumble into each other and then scatters minimalistic, dissonant solos into random songs without bothering to lay down a rhythm track underneath, leaving James Campbell's bass to crash against them with a raw thud. Joe Kapiteyn's vocals are also a distinctively unique element of iNFeCTeD's sound, more of a hoarse, punkish bark like Justin Broadrick than anything approximating the Vincent-esque roaring growl other bands employ. Stylistically, this is a band way ahead of its time, and the re-mastered version, featuring a remix of "Assimilate" that displays their industrial pretentions, makes crawlspace sound like it was recorded in 2009, not 17 years ago.

crawlspace truly is an Australian death metal classic, relegated to forgotten realms no more. Seek it out.

1. The Sleeper
2. Rage Flower
3. Hole Inside
4. Truthkill
5. Crawlspace
6. Once More
7. Predetermined
8. Smother
9. Assimilate
10. Never
11. Assimilate (goldDust remix)

Rating: 92%

NAZXUL: Iconoclast

Released: July 2009

The dark masters of Australian black metal rise once more with the long-foretold Iconoclast. In spite of long bouts of inactivity, member changes and the tragic loss of their guitarist on the eve of the album's completion, this is everything that was promised it would be.

For those not familiar with the inner workings of the band, the booklet offers no insight. There's no recording credits, no member details, no liner notes of any kind, only lyrics, some iconography, and a dull photo of six hooded figures. Individual identity has no place in the ideology of Nazxul: the band is an entity unto itself. So it is then that despite half the band being replaced (some members more than once) since the monumental "Black Seed" EP, nothing about their vision has changed. Iconoclast takes up directly where that recording left off, a portentous, epic slab of soul-scarring symphonic black metal.

Over the decade since "Black Seed", this form of music has been gradually diluted through the auspices of Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir into realms of near-commercial acceptance, but Iconoclast is true to its name, pandering to no trend but its own. After the dark, ominous strings of "Apoptosis", Nazxul unleashes the hellish fury of "Dargon Dispitous", evoking the kind of cold, barbaric atmosphere of early Emperor. While the tremolo-picking sets-to with a fury, the drumming sets a steady, almost ponderous pace that builds an aestethic of epicness. The vocals are like curses, delivered in croaks and hoarse, icy near-whispers. Melody comes from the keyboards, massive and prominent, yet balanced, neither drowning the savage fury of the guitars nor surrending to them.

"Set in Array" marks the true flowering of Nazxul's symphonic intentions, enhancing its violence with string orchestration. In "Symbol of Night & Winter" the keys pull back a little from the chugging metal riffs until the grand "Oath (Fides Resurrectio)" enters the picture. A solemn and haunting track, "Oath" rolls out in slow majesty as a high point to stand alongside the inimitable "Vow of Vengeance", a masterpiece on a meisterwerk. The album closes with the sinister snarling vocal and surging riffs of "World Oblivion" as The Great Dragon finally arises and engulfs the universe, leaving only the dark atmospheric finale of "Threnody".

Iconoclast is a prodigious and oppressive album of lingering malevolence, the logical consummation of Nazxul's existence to this point.

1. Apoptosis
2. Dragon Dispitous
3. III
4. Black Wings
5. V
6. Iconoclast
7. I
8. Set in Array
9. II
10. Symbol of Night & Winter (Ancient Lords)
11. Oath (Fides Resurrectio)
12. Stain of Harrow
13. World Oblivion
14. Threnody

Rating: 96%

SADISTIK EXEKUTION: K.A.O.S.

Released: 1997

Yesterday I postulated that Portal could well be the purest manifestation of dissonant, inaccessible death metal, and if such a crown exists then it is from Sadistik Exekution from whom it has been wrested. The similarities are numerous, not the least of which is the apparent intention to be as extreme as possible with few or no thought to listenable sensibilities; the major difference is that Portal, despite wearing pieces of antique furniture as stage costumes and singing through gramophone horns, take themselves incredibly seriously. Sadistik Exekution has always known they were a circus. Their first two albums at least had some coherent material, but by the time of K.A.O.S. they had obviously decided that writing songs that were in any way memorable, catchy, subtle or even structured was simply not for them.

What they therefore released was 42 minutes of appropriately-titled mayhem. "Dejekta Infinitus" is a thoroughly exhausting holocaust of light-speed riffs and what can only be described as superhuman drumming. This is ridiculously, almost impossibly fast, as fast as or even faster than any grindcore in existence. And it goes for 5 and a half minutes! Over the top of this insane soundtrack, Rok shouts and slurs seemingly random words like a dangerously deranged drunk. After one track like this, most bands would shift gear or unleash some other kind of hell from their arsenal. On K.A.O.S., Sadistik Exekution has only one gear--overdrive. No sooner does the first track finish then Rok bellows "VI-OH-LENCE!" and the next one begins with almost no variation whatever. Dynamics account for precisely zero of this album's content and structure is almost as elusive; chaos is very much the essence of K.A.O.S., the sheer, unrestrained violence and unpredictable ethos of Reign in Blood but amplified a million times and with no restraint whatsoever.

So while K.A.O.S. succeeds in being extreme for its own sake, it fails for precisely the same reason. There's really no incentive to listen to any more than one track because that's enough to have heard everything that Sadistik Exekution is going to do on all the other songs. Unlike We are Death... Fukk You! and the seriously evil The Magus, the band does nothing more than play as fast as possible again and again and again. It's a neat trick and Rok's demented rantings are pure entertainment, but it does gets tiresome quickly.

1. Ultra Maximizer of Agony
2. Dejekta Infinitus
3. Volkanik Violence
4. Burning Blasphemy
5. Demon With Wings II
6. Voltage by Sadism
7. Horror Inferno
8. Sadistik Elektrokution
9. The Return of Proxima
10. Korpse on the Grave
11. Fukked Up and Buried

Rating: 35%

PORTAL: Swarth

Produced by Aphotic
Released: 2009

If the true essence of death metal is dissonance, inaccessibility and disharmonious noise terror beyond most limits of taste, then Brisbane's Portal is its purest embodiment. What this band does is not so much create music -- indeed, music is hardly a word to describe what they do -- but evoke an atmosphere of harrowing discomfort. If horror and disgust can be translated into a sonic form, then Portal is that medium.

With their third album, this group has at last refined their sound, if a noise that suggests an invasion by nightmares from another dimension can actually be refined, and the result is the best definition yet of Portal's objective, which appears to be to make the most unlistenable racket imaginable. On Seepia they sounded like a bunch of unhinged lunatics smashing up a music store; Outre was so distorted that it was as if it had been backmasked. If it's actually possible, Swarth stands somewhere in between: less murky and slightly less nihilistic. But make no mistake. This is still the cacophonous, unpredictable, deranged clamour that only Portal generates. The production distorts everything massively, especially the guitars to the expense of all else. The bass is minimalist to the point of non-existence except for an occasional throb in "Writhen" for example, where the circular miasma of guitar noise pauses for a second or two to actually generate something approximating riffs. Unaccentuated blastbeats thud along endlessly, but sound like they're being played on a kit comprising only an untuned snare and hi-hats that have been clamped shut. The Curator's vocals are surprisingly effective however, evil-sounding grunts and whispers that manage to rise above the furious din. The actual lyrics are indecipherable, but as they are most likely incomprehensible non-sequiturs cribbed from a drug-addled re-write of Lovecraft, this doesn't really matter.

Swarth is the most complete vision of Portal's goal so far. It's horrible to the point of abhorrence, awful beyond comprehension. It is essentially noise for the sake of it, a vile, wretched, meaningless noise that batters and batters for 40 minutes straight for no reason at all.

1. Swarth
2. Larvae
3. Illoomorpheme
4. The Sweyy
5. Writhen
6. Omenknow
7. Werships
8. Marityme

Rating: 20%

OVERKILL: Ironbound

Released: January 29, 2010

Overkill have never really made a bad record, and as the years go by and peers and contemporaries falter and disappear, these dudes just seem to get better. Their 2003 effort Killbox 13 is one of the best thrash albums of all and while Ironbound doesn't quite match it, it sure as shit makes a pretty good effort. Anything that starts off with a twisting and turning, eight minute neckbreaker like "The Green and Black" is going to have something going for it, and Ironbound delivers the consistency and merciless thrash metal madness that Overkill has always stood for--in spades.

In the three years since Immortalis Overkill has probably toured harder and more frequently than at any time in their past, and that energy has transferred straight onto plastic. While Ironbound has that thick, heavy and modern production that their past few effort have possessed, the songs have an immediacy and a vitality that one would expect from a bunch of guys half their age and if you didn't know better you would almost pick them for one of the better groups leading the New Wave of Thrash. Bobby Blitz still screeches like a demon, and the now-veteran pairing of Dave Linsk and Derek Tailer throw up a never-ending array of violent yet catchy riffs, then fire off blistering leads like the best in the business. Here and there, some of the riffs sound familiar or regurgitated--"Bring Me the Night" sounds like Metallica's cover of "Helpless"--and there isn't much that isn't played at breakneck speed, but that doesn't really matter. Overkill started out as a punk band, and so for them it has always been about feel and intensity before anything else, and Ironbound strays little from that time-honoured path.

Only the strangely commercial-sounding "Give a Little" varies the diet from the pounding, intense thrash metal that is otherwise stamped all over this album. Ironbound isn't even out yet, and it's already in the running for Best Thrash Album of 2010, if not one of the best metal releases overall. I shit you not.

1. The Green and Black
2. Ironbound
3. Bring Me the Night
4. The Goat is Your Soul
5. Give a Little
6. Endless War
7. The Head and Heart
8. In Vain
9. Killing for a Living
10. The SRC

Rating: 94%

DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT: Addicted

Produced by Devin Townsend

Released: November 21, 2009

DTP's album from earlier this year was something of an oddity, even for an artist like Devin Townsend, who once recorded a concept album based on a science fiction story he wrote when he was a child. Ki was so far removed from anything he's done before that it was almost hard to associate it with Devin Townsend. Frustratingly uneven, it was Devin throwing his fans a curveball just for the sake of it, but it did announce in no uncertain terms that he intended the Project to be a separate entity from his previous outlets.

So it is both strange and satisfying (and very Townsendian) that on Addicted, Devin has retraced his steps to his blustering metal days once again. You know you're back in familiar territory as "Addicted!" rises up like a colossos, crushing its way forward on an immense bank of guitar violence and manic vocals. Indeed, the opening third sounds like what Strapping Young Lad should have done instead of The New Black, but Townsend tempers the outrageous violence with undercurrents of groove, drum loops, danceable beats and insidious melodies. Then he brings out his secret weapon, The Gathering's Anneke van Giersbergen, who takes the vocal mantle for a good percentage of the album, including a reworked version of "Hyperdrive!" (from Ziltoid the Omniscient). The songwriting and style is more in-tune with his earlier solo releases like Ocean Machine and Infinity mixed with influences from the Wildhearts ("Resolve!"), disco (everything) and commercially-laced pop music ("Ih-ah"), not to mention a song about Bender from Futurama. van Giersbergen's vocals both compliment and are a foil to Townsend's, whose performance here ranks as perhaps his most diverse ever, which says a lot.

The inclusion of van Giersbergen on Addicted is a trump card that DTP plays strongly, but Townsend's constant experimentation with vastly different musical elements also helps to make this one of his better albums, and certainly the best since Alien. Devin Townsend is back. Be afraid.

1. Addicted!
2. Universe in a Ball!
3. Bend it Like Bender!
4. Supercrush!
5. Hyperdrive!
6. Resolve!
7. Ih-ah!
8. The Way Home!
9. Numbered!
10. Awake!

Rating: 89%

DENIED: ...When the Slate Becomes Diamonds

Released: June 2008

Anyone who's followed this blog closely will know just how much I love power metal, and Italian power metal in particular. Denied (or perhaps just singer Stefano Bottari, who's apparently the only person left in the band these days) obviously know this because ...When the Slate Becomes Diamonds seems to be sending up their country's ridiculously awful power metal scene. Just check out that cover. In case you can't see it very well, it's a dude in spiky armour smashing a guitar into the ground with so much force that diamonds are flying out. And they have a song called "Ride to the Land of the Machine Guns"! If that isn't the greatest power metal song-title of all time then I don't know what is. While some bands are clearly unintentional self-parodies with idiotic names it seems that Denied at least knows how silly this whole schtick really is and don't try to play it all that straight. After all, they do have a song about riding to a land full of machine guns that has one of the most rousing choruses in the history of bad heavy metal.

Musically, Denied tap the Maiden-crossed-with-Helloween Euro-power vein mercilessly until every song sounds pretty much alike and by the brilliantly-named "Before Then After Later" you've really heard everything this band is ever likely to do (and dragging out the last track for almost ten minutes is over-playing an already over-played hand beyond most limits of patience). Still, for a one-trick pony, Denied are amusing enough that you might listen to this album all the way through and even put it on again once in a while, even if it's just to blare it loudly in the background while you swill beer. It's dumb in a way that so many band pretend they're not, and because of this it's totally inoffensive and somewhat likeable. For a little while anyway.

1. The Dawn
2. When the Slate Becomes Diamonds
3. Denied
4. The Waste Remains and Kills
5. Ride to the Land of the Machine Guns
6. Before Then After Later
7. Horrorama
8. Quest for Deliverance
9. Circle of Fire
10. Bearers of the Slate

Rating: 40%

KATATONIA: Night is the New Day

Released: 2009

Virtually every review of one of this band's albums since Discouraged Ones talks about the shift from blackened doom to the gloomy alternative rock direction they have now long been in as if the writer is self-consciously trying to show everyone that they knew Katatonia back when Blakkheim and Lord Seth were in the band. Katatonia's musical divergence happened so long ago now that mentioning it is about as relevant as reminding everyone that Metallica was once a thrash band. Yet, despite having left the metal arena some time ago, Katatonia still harbours a massive and loyal fanbase dating back to that period because while their music is stylistically different, they still exist within the dark and moody world they inhabited back then.

For their own part, the band has claimed Night is the New Day to be heavier and more diverse than what they have done in the past, and in some respects that is true, especially with regards to the subtle use of keyboards that help to add another layer to their trademark atmosphere. But underneath the lush production and the somnambulent melodies, it's still the same Katatonia. Like previous albums in their catalogue, Night is the New Day is an exploration of the darkness and solitude of the human condition through a collection of gloomy, repetitive, trance-like dirges, this time peppered with sprinklings of trip-hop keys and drum loops. Anders Nyström drives the tunes with churning minor-key riffs and Jonas Renkse colours em with dark, obscure musings in a melodious voice that evokes comparisons with Steve Kilbey of The Church and, significantly, Mikael Åkerfeld.

More than once on Night is the New Day, Katatonia comes as close as anyone to sounding like Opeth -- a delicious irony when one considers how often Opeth were once accused of sounding like Katatonia. In "Idle Blood" Renkse sounds more like Åkerfeld than Åkerfeld does and the band manages to capture the same emotion as a song like "Bleak", but in less than half the time. It's really no accident that these two bands can be so alike considering their history and influences, but Katatonia plunges even further into abysses of gloom and despair and with the added effects and what could be Jonas Renkse's best vocal performance yet, Night is the New Day is another morose triumph.

1. Forsaker
2. The Longest Year
3. Idle Blood
4. Onward into Battle
5. Liberation
6. The Promise of Deceit
7. Nephilim
8. New Night
9. Inheritance
10. Day and then the Shade
11. Departer

Rating: 89%

AUSTRALIAN METAL AWARDS

The Forum, Moore Park


Saturday night The Forum in Sydney rolled out the red carpet for the biggest names in Australian metal music. Tuxedo'd luminaries and their glamorous partners courted the cameras as they took their places inside at tables they had paid $450 a ticket for, and a who's who of celebrities kept the crowd entertained with music and comedy.

Like fuck. Sure there was music, and certainly comedy (at the same time, in fact), but instead of the nightmare that would make Cliff Burton turn in his grave and Dimebag return from his and rip shit up, the Australian Metal Awards was mainly a bunch of hard-drinking male metalheads and a pleasingly high percentage of hot metal chicks (including a couple of pseudo-lipstick lesbians who seemed to have made it their mission to flirt with absolutely everyone) watching some bands while every now and then some guy grabbed a microphone and yelled a bunch of stuff no one could understand that was, in fact, the announcement of the night's prize winners. The rumoured appearance of Phil Anselmo never occurred, but Ugly Phil O'Neill turned up for a while and even watched one of the acts. The focus was meant to be the awards themselves, but to be honest the attraction for most was the first (and only) performance by Sadistik Exekution in 10 years. There was a lot of bands in between however, so that meant a lot of drinking at the nearby pub for a lot of people who only came to see the headliners; but that's not to say there wasn't quite a crowd watching the festivities.

The Awards were the labour of love for Matt Willis and Natalie Meisenhelter, who persisted with the idea in spite of all kinds of cynicism and criticism and while technical difficulties on the evening itself forced some last minute changes of plan, things seemed to go rather well from my end of the beer can. Having the award presentation in the roped-off VIP section on the top floor didn't really work though, as no one on the levels below could see or hear what was going on -- it just sounded like a dude yelling things. Also, with Andrew Haug from Triple J, Ugly Phil from MMM, the owner of Utopia and Riot!'s Chris Maric there at different times of the night, I would have thought they could have been utilised as guest presenters. An idea for next year, perhaps?

Bane of Isildur and Eyefear were on early; too early for this reviewer unfortunately, but I did arrive in time to see Geelong's Death Audio. These guys have done some bigger shows around Melbourne over the last year including a few supports with The Red Shore. They're confident and have a pretty talented bass player but while their version of generic metalcore is solidly played and performed it is, to be fair, also solidly generic. Literally dozens of bands are playing this style now and as good as they are, Death Audio don't do anything with it. After them was Five Star Prison Cell, a band I love to watch but can't listen to for longer than a song or two because their time-signature free, 100-riffs-in-two-minutes, zero-melody mathcore spazz-metal attack always threatens to make my brain explode. So I headed outside and caught up with a few people including the singer for one of my favourite ever bands who was already quite pissed indeed.

The next band on the bill were the night's big winners. Despite not even having a record out yet and no real profile outside of Sydney, the death metal band Ouroboros picked up three awards including Best Bassist, Best Drummer and Best Unsigned Band. So they certainly had a lot to prove tonight, especially to everyone who kept saying "What? This guy's better than Dave Haley?" (Haley himself probably doesn't care all that much). Whether such comments are fair or not is really a matter of opinion; Ouroboros are quite good, they have a lot of presence and some decent if not-quite-original songs (one of them sounded quite a lot like Mortal Sin's "Mayhemic Destruction"), but they have still have some way to go before they're headlining their own shows at the Gaelic. After them came Asecretdeath, whose screamo/post-metal/noisecore hybrid didn't seem to gel well at all with many and it seemed that quite a few punters ducked back to the Fox and Lion for a while before the place got filled up with trendies and hipsters.

Chaos Divine followed, the awesome Perth progressive quintet who picked up no less than five awards tonight. It was doubtful if too many people in the room had even heard of these guys before this show but quite a lot of them went away talking about them. And they weren't saying bad things. Rock, death metal and melodic progressive stylings, Chaos Divine blend it like the best of them and should be one of Australia's biggest metal bands before too much longer.

Finally, after a long, long break, the band that almost everyone was there to see -- younger fans who'd never seen them play, older fans who wanted to see them again and curious others who wanted to find out what the fuss was about -- finally came on. If Chaos Divine were the sublime, then Sadistik Exekution were the ridiculous. It may have been ten years since they've played last, but they haven't changed a bit, except that perhaps Rok gets crazier with age. Dave Slave has always billed himself as the mental one of the band (and that's saying a lot), but Rok was off the fucking planet tonight, crawling around on his knees and slapping himself constantly in the head while making spastic noises, ranting and raving, swearing and generally behaving in a totally unhinged fashion. Musically of course, they were as terrible as a band that proudly announces themselves as "the most fucked band in the world" could be, although there were some surprisingly coherent moments like the doomy opener. But they were hilarious. I could hardly stop laughing from the moment they began. Rok was so berzerk that it was difficult to pay attention to what the others were doing and it almost seemed as if the band was having the same trouble sometimes.

Reaction from punters was intriguing. "I can't believe I paid $45 to see this shit!" said one friend. "This is the worst band I've ever seen!" said another, then left. "Does he ever say anything else?" I was asked by one young metaller when Sad Ex had played yet another song where all the lyrics sounded like "Death! Fukk! Metal! Kill! Fukk! Death!" I only smiled. At the end, they played "The Magus" and finally seemed to actually click as a band instead of just four guys making a fuckload of noise. Rok went crazy and Kriss Hades slashed his guitar strings and then smashed the instrument to pieces. It was nuts. Outside afterwards, people didn't seem to know whether they had just seen a very strange band or a very strange circus when really, it was kinda both.

Some of the winners and a few of the bands left people aghast, but aside from the technical hitches the night seemed to be something of a success. Hopefully some of the cynics and critics can shut up now and help out in 2010. With the mountain of killer Australian metal releases that have come out in 2009, there should be more than just a few winners next year.

• Best Metal Fan/Web/Magazine: http://www.metalobsession.net/
• Most Popular Merchandise: Psycroptic
• Best Album Cover: Psycroptic - (Ob)servant
• Best Band Name: Psycroptic
• Best Film Clip: Psycroptic - "Initiate"
• Best Producer/Recording Engineer: Jarrod Hearman (Sing Sing Studios) - Chaos Divine, Avalon
• Best Drummer: Dave Horgan - Ouroboros
• Best Bass Player: Michael Conti - Ouroboros
• Best Keyboards Player: Chris Stevenson - The Eternal
• Best Regional Band: Alchemist
• Best Youth Band: Asphyxia
• Best Export: Psycroptic
• Best Live Band: Psycroptic
• Best Guitarist: Jimmy Lardner-Brown, Killrazer
• Best Vocalist: Dave Anderton, Chaos Divine
• Best New Band: Death Audio
• Song of the Year: Chaos Divine - "Refuse the Sickness"
• Best Unsigned Band: Ouroboros
• Best Album: Chaos Divine - Avalon
• Best Overall Band: Chaos Divine

BON JOVI: The Circle

Produced by John Shanks with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora

Released: Yesterday

I'm not sure what "the Circle" is, but it could be something to do with the direction that Bon Jovi has been travelling for a while now. Despite some odd excursions into country-rock and deconstructive acoustic experiments (which, it must be said, was actually a pretty interesting thing for this band to do), most of the Jovis output has been pretty formulaic and predictable since These Days (and how many of us can remember a single song off that?). Have a Nice Day was their best album in a long time even if most of the songs sounded surprisingly alike, probably because the emphasis was on the good-time rocking out that made Bon Jovi so huge in the first place. The Circle isn't as successful at recapturing that vibe, instead trammeling a path of laidback contemporary pop-rock along similar lines to that of Bounce.

The Circle is very typical modern Bon Jovi, a safe, formulaic collection of straight-forward radio rock and heart-string tuggers that broach the usual Joviesque subjects: love, yearning and heartbreak, and workaday tales of ordinary people. The first two tracks are standard Bon Jovi, a sure-fire upbeat lightweight rocker in "We Weren't Born to Follow" and then "When We Were Beautiful" the usual balladic workout that is also from the soundtrack to the somewhat self-indulgent DVD of the same name that comes with the limited edition version of the album. In "Work for the Working Man", Bon Jovi revisits "Livin' on a Prayer" briefly (even stealing his own song's bassline) as he courts his Springsteen muse, but in the end he winds up a little off-target. The anti-war song "Bullet" is something of a surprise with its liberal use of heavy (for Bon Jovi) and distorted guitar and one of the most explosive solos Richie Sambora has pulled off in a very, very long time. For the most part however, it's all pretty innocuous and predictable fare: midpaced light rockers offset with wistful ballads, little in the way of musical interludes to distract the attention from Jon's voice and lyrics that are either corny ("Fast Cars") or direct steals from the Beatles ("I had a girl we fell in love/Or should I say she had me") or dozens of his other songs.

Bon Jovi freaks will love this because they'll be getting exactly what they want (and being married to one, I know this to be true), but most others probably won't find The Circle to be that exciting. I do quite like "Bullet" though.

1. We Weren't Born to Follow
2. When We Were Beautiful
3. Work for the Working Man
4. Superman Tonight
5. Bullet
6. Thorn in My Side
7. Live Before You Die
8. Brokenpromiseland
9. Love's the Only Rule
10. Fast Cars
11. Happy Now
12. Learn to Love

Rating: 50%

EARTH: Fear of Tomorrow

Released: 2009

It seems like ages since I’ve heard much from Earth although they’ve toured with Dismember twice and never really gone away. I’d heard rumours of something new from them for a while and I’m glad to see that rumour has become fact in the shape of Fear of Tomorrow.

In the seven years since the last album, their sound hasn’t changed much despite most of the band having been replaced in the meantime. Essentially, they are still very much about playing classic Swedish-style melodic death metal as crushingly as possible. The biggest difference is that the keyboards have been integrated into the music more seamlessly than before, when Earth seemed to add breakdowns just to accommodate them.

The keys work best in the two more expansive tracks, “Gagged and Bound” and the brilliant “Don’t Look Back” that features the album’s best dynamics and some harmony backing vocals from Sarah Jezebel Deva of CoF and Therion fame. On the rest of Fear of Tomorrow, the guitars truly dominate. Every song is a feast of catchy melodic and heavy death metal riffs and harmonised guitar lines in the Gothenburg tradition. It has to be said, however, that apart from the songs previously mentioned, this is a bit lacking in diversity. “Tomorrow” and “Terrorized” are short and speedy with the latter closing in on grind intensity. Other songs vary the pace only a little between fast and faster and the band’s reliance on the standard galloping riff patterns of early In Flames and Dark Tranquillity makes a lot of the tracks sound rather alike. It takes a second or third listen before the subtleties and vagaries of different songs emerge; for example there is a sprinkling of solos which the band has made little use of until now. Still, the catchiness alone will carry the listener through much of the album’s blood-soaked tracks. The hooks are immense and everywhere. The songs drip with them, and the precision playing and expert production erase most of the feelings of sameiness quite quickly.

Earth is one of the few bands still actually playing the pure form of this style and do so extremely well, so Fear of Tomorrow will definitely have appeal to fans who yearn for the days of The Gallery or The Jester Race and “Don’t Look Back” is without doubt the finest thing they’ve done since “Prophecy and Destiny” off their debut.

1. Tomorrow
2. Gagged and Bound
3. Banner of Death
4. Land of the Dead
5. Terrorized
6. Morbid End
7. Visions of Blood
8. Don't Look Back
9. Bloody Carnival
10. Human Carnage - The Requiem
11. Balls to the Wall/Seeing Red
12. Damned Forevermore

Rating: 70%

IMMORTAL: All Shall Fall

Produced by Peter Tägtgren
Released: September 25



There’s little doubt that this is the most anticipated comeback album of the year, and there’s none but a few who could honestly say they’d be that disappointed by it. While Immortal may have been taking the piss out of themselves now for a long time, it’s also clear that they’ve always been deadly serious about the music itself. The evidence list for this begins with the daunting and impressive packaging of All Shall Fall that borrows from Beyond the Gates by Possessed (a band to whom all groups like this pay a debt) and continues with Demonaz’ detailed lyrics and the blasting soundtrack the band provides them.

In short, Immortal may look like cartoon characters with their crazy full-face make-up and ridiculous spiky attire, but they sound every bit like furious warrior demons at the vanguard of Hell’s legions. There’s a sophistication and a skill inherent in their ferocious dark black thrash attack that belies their clownish appearance and Peter Tägtgren’s production enhances the feeling of cold, methodical bitterness, the aesthetics of pure misanthropic destruction.
Indeed, the clinical sound is what helps give All Shall Fall its immense power, turning what would still be a good track like the riff-infested “The Rise of Darkness” into a thing of pure menace. There is unquestionably something of a groove apparent thanks to the audible thump of Appolyon’s bass and Immortal has also put a heavy emphasis on dynamics here too as the mid-paced sections contrast drastically with the speedier parts when Horgh gets steam up. The clean passages in the likes of “Norden on Fire” –the closest they get to their usual Bathory-worship—enhance the atmosphere of malevolence that only a nasal grunt like Abbath’s can help create. It should also be noted that his lead guitar work on here is possibly his best yet.

While All Shall Fall has its thrashier tracks, it also has its frosty epics, closing with the immense “Unearthly Kingdom”, a grim combination of slow, pounding riffs and sudden bursts of speed; it almost sounds sad, which seems like a strange thing to say about Immortal but it fits the bill here.

Not everyone will be happy, but All Shall Fall is a strong album that bridges some of the gaps between Immortal’s early style and their later phase without really changing anything very much. It’s not a total masterpiece, but it could hardly be described as just another comeback either.

1. All Shall Fall
2. The Rise of Darkness
3. Hordes to War
4. Norden on Fire
5. Arctic Swarm
6. Mount North
7. Unearthly Kingdom

Rating: 85%

W.A.S.P.: Babylon

Produced by Blackie Lawless
Released: October 12

You gotta hand it to Blackie Lawless. Few people could have foreseen his two-chord-wonder shock rock hack act W.A.S.P. lasting much beyond its first couple of albums, and even fewer could have predicted the way the band not only lasted, but grew and developed beyond the infantile buzz-saw-wearing, blood-drinking, offal-throwing and misogynistic torture shows. Yet, armed with a modicum of real talent and an ambition, vision and drive that befits his enormous ego, Lawless has kept the W.A.S.P. fire burning now for 27 years. And if anything represents that fire, it is this, his band's 14th studio album and quite simply the best thing W.A.S.P. has done since 1992.

Flame and fire abound throughout Babylon's tracklisting: "Babylon's Burning", "Burn", "Into the Fire", "Thunder Red", "Seas of Fire" -- all kind of appropriate given the album's apparent concept as visions of the Apocalypse -- and the music is similarly ablaze with loud and heavy riffing, towering solos and Blackie's mean and demented vocal roar. There's nothing here you wouldn't have heard before from W.A.S.P.. The lead track "Crazy" starts out almost exactly like "Wild Child", for example, but this has an energy, conviction and direction that the group has lacked for a long, long time. "Babylon's Burning" is simply fantastic heavy metal that is up there with anything that could be labelled W.A.S.P.'s best and "Seas of Fire" is also a ripper. I've never been fussed on Blackie's more balladic tracks (mainly because he basically can't sing) but "Into the Fire" is also something of a highlight. The Deep Purple cover that was left off the Dominator album fits better into this concept. Stripped of the pompy keys and the funky beats, W.A.S.P. reimagines "Burn" as an apocalyptic metal song and does it pretty well. They even round things out with a metallized Chuck Berry cover that turns out sounding a little like Motörhead.

W.A.S.P. has been more miss than hit over the past decade and a half, but Babylon shows that Blackie Lawless still has a really good album in him when he gets right down to it. If you've been disappointed by his last few efforts, this should more than make up for it.

1. Crazy
2. Live to Die Another Day
3. Babylon's Burning
4. Burn
5. Into the Fire
6. Thunder Red
7. Seas of Fire
8. Godless Run
9. Promised Land

Rating: 82%

ARCANE: Chronicles of the Waking Dream

Produced by Jesse Higginson and Arcane
Released: September 21

As unfair as it can be to accuse one band of sounding like another, sometimes there’s just no denying it. In the way that Airbourne sounds like AC/DC and ‘neath sounds like Opeth, Brisbane’s Arcane sounds like Pain of Salvation. Being compared so immediately with such a prominent band in their field can have its drawbacks, but really only if your interpretation is second-rate.

Therefore, Arcane don’t have too many problems, because here is an extremely well-played and well-crafted concept album of melodic progressive metal that would easily stand beside any other album by any better known band of their ilk. Indeed, if there’s a major difference between the two bands, it is that Arcane’s concept clicks much easier than those of PoS, and isn’t cluttered with that band’s odious pseudo-intellectualism. This isn’t to suggest that Arcane don’t make intelligent music; far from it. It’s more like a comparison between Umberto Eco and Richard Dawkins – one no less intelligent than the other, but one is far more readable.

One of the album’s best tricks is that it doesn’t include a lyric sheet, thereby forcing a greater level of concentration on the listener to follow the story of Acolyte Zero, a man obsessed with May 26. Such a theme is dark, of course and with their sweeping arrangements, Arcane match the music to the words. Their hour-long drama mixes in flute-like melody lines in rousing folk-metal sections such as during “The Malice” and, very late in the piece, throw up some clashing, truly heavy riffs in the latter half of “Asylum: Acolyte Zero” and each main movement is broken up with an interlude piece. The highlight is the majestic “Fading”, the twelve-minute centrepiece that represents Zero’s final tipping point. Arcane fills it with dark and luscious melodies and harmonising guitar and keys, a signature of their sound.

Like Voyager's album, Arcane’s Chronicles of the Waking Dream is clear proof that Australia’s progressive metal scene is the equal of that found anywhere.

1. Glimpse
2. The Seer
3. The Malice
4. The First Silent Year
5. Secret
6. Fading
7. The Second Silent Year
8. May 26
9. The Third Silent Year
10. Asylum: Acolyte Zero
11. Whisper

Rating: 87%

THE POOR: Round 1

Produced by The Poor & Greg Clarke
* Produced by The Poor, Greg Clarke & Billy Thorpe
Released: October 19

The last half of this year has seen a veritable plethora of bands reforming for some reason. While some have obviously been nostalgic one-off reunions (Sadistik Exekution, Nitocris, iNFeCTeD, Candy Harlots), others are clearly reformations (Tumbleweed, Segression) that intend to continue. The Poor falls into the second category, and before even playing any shows (not counting the tour they did with W.A.S.P. last year), they’ve already released the first of what is apparently going to be at least two new albums.

The Poor is a band whose initial success should probably never have happened in the first place, a hell-raising heavy drinking hard rock band who scored a hit single and album at a time when such things had been made redundant by grunge. Fifteen years on from that 18 months or so of near-stardom, The Poor’s second album is a rather uneven collection of songs that for the most part sound like cast-offs. It would be presumptuous to expect a band that gets back together after 8 years to sound the way they did when they split, of course, and The Poor do not.

The first two songs play around in the familiar, brash hard rocking territory of old, but as an old fan it feels like something is missing. As the albums progresses, it becomes clear what that is. The tracks on Round 1 aren’t bad, but they lack the memorable hooks and raw, rocking power The Poor once had. In places I’m reminded of Lump, Skenie and drummer Gavin Hansen’s post-The Poor outfit that played around with grunge and nu-metal. While Round 1 never gets that far into those areas, there is a feeling that The Poor has tried to modernise their style a bit, perhaps a strange thing to do when their original style is currently enjoying a new surge of popularity thanks to the likes of Airbourne.

Round 1 isn’t bad and it’s good to have a pure rock band like The Poor back, but it probably just isn’t the comeback album some will expect, or want. When they start playing live again, most of the crowd will only want to hear their old stuff, so it probably doesn’t really matter anyway.

1. Kill My Faith
2. Death of Me
3. Last Laugh
4. House*
5. No One's Home
6. Prisoner of Fools
7. Don't Know What You're Missing
8. Love Isn't on Again
9. Guardian Angel (demo)
10. Can't Feel a Thing (demo)
11. Goodbye (demo)

Rating: 62%

SUMMONUS: Summonus

Released: 2009

Track five of this EP is one of the finest representations of diabolus in musica since the first song of the first Black Sabbath album. The main riff of "Two Lane Blacktop" is resoundingly similar to Iommi's evocative original with a sinister ringing note like a death knell as it creeps, builds and creeps again along its nine and a half minute length. With this track, Summonus creates the very epitome of down-tempo metal, and their five-cut self-titled debut is like a crash course in sludge: a newcomer to the genre could use this as a primer but they could well come away wondering if the Devil himself had somehow had a hand in it.

At almost six minutes of repetitive, reverberating guitar, the instrumental "Saturnus" is admittedly just a little too long, but Summonus makes up for it immediately afterward with Rod Hunt's caustic vocals carving through the distorted-guitar rocking vibe of "Down on the Reeperbahn". This clearly marks Summonus as a kind of less-chaotic Eyehategod, perhaps something in the vein of Iron Monkey but without the tortured shrieks of Mike Williams or Johnny Morrow. Hunt's vocals are still unsettling, however, the same inimitable mixture of hardcore rasp and death metal screech that he brought to Sydney metal pioneers Persecution. This is certainly not easy listening, even for those who may have an idea of what to expect. The songs are thick with droning bass and jarring dissonance but equally fat with hook-laden if bone-rattling riffs, and the glacial pace also adds to the daunting and uneasy atmosphere of imminent doom.

At 32 minutes, it's only slightly shorter than Master of Reality, and in the annals of Australian extreme doom should be just as certifiably a classic.

1. (Intro) Summonus
2. Down on the Reeperbahn
3. Grey
4. Two Lane Blacktop
5. The Gallows

Rating: 88%

SLAYER AND MEGADETH LIVE IN SYDNEY

Hordern Pavilion, Sydney
October 8, 2009

With two of the greatest thrash bands of all time playing together here for the first time, it was pretty unsurprising that not only was this show sold out weeks ago but the line to get in stretched right around to the back of the venue and halfway down Driver Ave. So it was impossible to catch opening act Double Dragon, who got a twenty-minute warm up set, and in fact Megadeth had already begun by the time I made it inside.

The sound wasn't the greatest it could have been, but Megadeth didn't let this impede them as they ripped through a bunch of their best-known songs, having kicked off with "Set the World Afire" that somewhat appropriately set the place ablaze. Each new incarnation of Megadeth seems to reignite the band, and after pulling the strings with Jag Panzer for a decade, new guitarist Chris Broderick was setting about showing how he fit into the machine. The closing trade-offs of "Hangar 18" were a perfect way to do so and the crowd were treated to a tight set of favourites with only "Head Crusher" making the cut from new album Endgame. Indeed, that was the only concession to post-2000 material made for the whole set, as Dave Mustaine led his men through a choice set of cuts from the classics (oh, and Cryptic Writings), keeping both the energy levels and the shred factor high. Mustaine's voice wasn't always up to the task, but he's never been much of a singer and the rest of the band made up for it with a dynamic and engaging performance. "Tornado of Souls" and "Head Crusher" were killer and for the encore they worked "The Mechanix" into a medley with "Holy Wars" for a rousing climax to the set.

Slayer took the stage after a minimal changeover and were as omnious-looking as always. For some reason they opened with the title track to the new album, a song that's only been out for about a week and one that almost no one yet knew. Even had they known it, the mix was so uneven and awful that it didn't matter. A band of this stature playing in a room like this should not sound so diabolical: the guitars were unevenly matched, with Kerry King blowing Jeff Hanneman offstage, Tom Araya's vocals were buried and Dave Lombardo was louder than everyone. Once the glue that held Slayer together, tonight the drummer was part of what made them come unstuck. He was all over the place like the mix itself. And really, Slayer seemed to be just going through the motions. It was obviously more than enough for their fans, possibly the most fanatical in metal, but their uninspiring and uninspired newer songs only got in the way of the classic catalogue, and even they seemed half-arsed. By "Dead Skin Mask" they were starting to warm up like the jets of fire shooting from the lighting gantry but the set was two-thirds done by then. Something wasn't sitting well with the Slayer lads tonight, but leaving off the scream in "Angel of Death" could well have been a precursor to Araya's laryngitis vocal blow-out in Melbourne the next day when he could barely sing at all.

The Slayer nuts won't agree, of course, but Megadeth won the night.

Megadeth setlist:

1. Set the World Afire
2. Wake Up Dead
3. Hangar 18
4. Skin o' My Teeth
5. She-wolf
6. In My Darkest Hour
7. Devil's Island
8. Tornado of Souls
9. Head Crusher
10. Rattlehead
11. Symphony of Destruction
12. Peace Sells
13. Holy Wars/The Mechanix (encore)

Slayer setlist:

1. World Painted Blood
2. War Ensemble
3. Jihad
4. Born of Fire
5. Psycopathy Red
6. Mandatory Suicide
7. Chemical Warfare
8. Ghosts of War
9. Hate Worldwide
10. Disciple
11. Dead Skin Mask
12. Hell Awaits
13. Angel of Death
14. South of Heaven
15. Raining Blood

MEGADETH: Endgame

Produced by Dave Mustaine and Andy Sneap

Released: 2009

Tonight Sydney plays host to one of the best double bills of metal ever seen in this city as Megadeth and Slayer unleash their hell one after the other, so what better time than now to take a look at the latest album from the first of those bands? Megadeth was always the most technically gifted and perhaps the most honest of the Big Four --Dave Mustaine has made no secret of the fact that when his band went corporate in the mid-90s it really was at the behest of his label. All that seems like so long ago now (which is true), since over the last decade of new label, a split, a reformation, another new label and several shifts in the second guitar department, Mustaine has drawn closer and closer with each new release to the ultimate vision of technical thrash metal excellence that he achieved with Rust in Peace. Endgame probably isn't quite the masterpiece that album was, but it is the closest they've come so far.

Megadeth leaves you with no illusions about what to expect. The first track is a three minute shred battle between Mustaine and latest recruit Chris Broderick, formerly of Jag Panzer, one of the most shred-obsessed metal bands of all. From here they lock straight into "Time Day We Fight!", another blazing riff and shred fest that pretty well points the way for the entire album. While Mustaine has never completely disappointed in the guitar hero stakes (even his worst records are saved by some blistering fretwork), Endgame is positively ablaze with glorious soloing, probably outdoing even the Friedman-era albums in that respect, and that's saying a lot. For those who love Megadeth purely on those grounds, Endgame will certainly not disappoint.

On other levels too, Endgame succeeds. In general, the songwriting is up there with Mustaine's best. "Headcrusher" is one of the best thrash tracks to have surfaced this year without question, "Bodies" embraces old-school thrash with the chugga-chugga riffs of Countdown to Extinction and "Bite the Hand" and "The Right to Go Insane" are backed by a wicked groove. Lyrically, there's a few clunkers (I'm not particularly fussed on "44 Minutes", for example), but it's clear in tracks like "Endgame" and "How the Story Ends" that the Mustaine worldview is no less pessimistic than it's always been. By the same token, he can still find a place for a song about top-fuel dragsters; the balladesque "Hardest Part of Letting Go... Sealed With a Kiss" really jars the listener out of the experience however. It really seems out of place on an album otherwise crammed with scorching thrash.

This is Megadeth's best album since Rust in Peace. It remains to be seen if they can top it next time, but we can hope they will match it at least.

1. Dialectic Chaos
2. This Day We Fight!
3. 44 Minutes
4. 1,320º
5. Bite the Hand
6. Bodies
7. Endgame
8. The Hardest Part of Letting Go... Sealed With a Kiss
9. Head Crusher
10. How the Story Ends
11. The Right to Go Insane

Rating: 90%

PORCUPINE TREE: The Incident

Produced by Porcupine Tree
Released: September 2009

With The Incident, Porcupine Tree continue to their affirm their status as the pre-eminent progressive rock band in the world today. While their style continues to creep closer and closer into metal territory thanks to Steven Wilson's growing obsession with that genre's more experimental outfits like Opeth and Gojira, they remain a band with a style uniquely their own and one which refuses to be pinned down.


Porcupine Tree paint with a broad palatte and over the course of its 55 minutes the 14-part title track journeys through rock, folk, metal and industrial elements. This part of the album is an exploration of the modern media phenomonon of dehumanising traumatic events, a suite of tracks about the beginnings and endings that erupt from sudden and often violent life-changing events. Musically then, this first CD is like a modern reimagining of Pink Floyd's Animals album crossed with Hemispheres by Rush, blended with bombastic guitar outbursts and grooves borrowed from TOOL ("Occam's Razor", "Circle of Manias") occasional Reznor-ish electronic moments ("The Incident") and extended introspective passages like "The Seance" and the middle section of the 12-minute "Time Flies", a track that in itself represents a microcosm of the entire album. After erupting with explosions of guitar, the first part of the album closes with "I Drive the Hearse" drifting quietly away on rafts of synths and electric pianos. Throughout, Porcupine Tree ties everything together virtually seamlessly by relying on the power of Wilson's songwriting rather than overindulgent displays of their obviously vast musical ability, and while it's very apparent that "The Incident" is very much Wilson's project, he never overplays his hand, always allowing his fellow bandmates plenty of space to add their own individual touches.

The album's second CD contains four songs totally unrelated both of to "The Incident" and to each other, however they all share the same sense of weary foreboding. They also explore Porcupine Tree's heavier and (if that's possible) even darker side, particularly "Bonnie the Cat" with its menacing guitars and Wilson's equally threatening, whispered promise: "I know what will be". These tracks, while never approaching the same level of heaviness, to some degree do reflect Wilson's Opethian muse and prehaps foretell the coming of an even heavier and bleaker Porcupine Tree to come. Whatever the case, The Incident maintains the band's place at the forefront of intelligent rock music and easily matches it with the best releases of this year.

CD 1:

1. The Incident - i. Occam's Razor ii. The Blind House iii. Great Expectations iv. Kneel and Disconnect v. Drawing the Line vi. The Incident vii. Your Unpleasant Family viii. The Yellow Windows of the Evening Train ix. Time Flies x. Degree Zero of Liberty xi. Octane Twisted xii. The Seance xiii. Circle of Manias xiv. I Drive the Hearse

CD 2:

1. Flicker
2. Bonnie the Cat
3. Black Dahlia
4. Remember Me Lover

Rating: 95%

STEVE VAI: Where the Wild Things Are

Produced by Steve Vai
Released: 2009

Albums from shredders have been problematic for me in the past. As someone who isn't a guitar player, they often come across as little more than showing off with minimal substance and no real appeal to anyone other than aspiring guitarists; rudderless, ego-driven wankfests that boggle the mind with skill for a while until you realise the guy is really just playing scales backwards through an upside-down vocoder or something silly like that.

Having learned his craft from mentors and friends like Frank Zappa and Joe Satriani, Steve Vai is a very different proposition. With his vast array of stylistic ability and influences, Vai is an instrumentalist that even people who aren't flash guitarists can enjoy, a man who understands that the demonstration of ability is more than filling every space with as many notes as possible or showing off every trick you learned at guitar school at every available opportunity. Recorded live in Minneapolis in 2007, Where the Wild Things Are confirms Vai's status with a consummate virtuoso performance, ably supported and abetted by a superb five-piece band that includes members of prog groups like Dali's Dilemma and Mullmuzzler. A blend of cuts from his studio works -- mainly Real Illusions: Reflections -- and new tracks being played for the first time, the album tends to highlight Vai's blues and jazz-fusion sides. For outright shredding, there's the eleven-minute centrepiece "Freak Show Excess" but on "Fire Wall" he steps out with a heavy, bluesy shuffle featuring his smoky vocals and "Tender Surrender" shows a more lyrical side to his playing. Vai of course also lets the rest of his band to add their own instrumental prowess and when the entire sextet kicks in together they truly shine.

As engaging as the set is though, by the back half of Where the Wild Things Are, I did find my attention wandering a bit, but at 78 minutes, it is quite a long haul for most but the truly dedicated (and the DVD is longer still). Nevertheless, Steve Vai once again shows that rather than just being a flash guitar player, he is an outstanding and gifted musician and entertainer.

1. Paint Me Your Face
2. Now We Run
3. Oooo
4. Building the Church
5. Tender Surrender
6. Band Intros
7. Fire Wall
8. Freak Show Excess
9. Die to Live
10. All About Eve
11. Gary 7
12. Treasure Island
13. Angel Food
14. Taurus Bulba
15. Par Brahm

Rating: 85%

NUMBER ONE IN HEAVEN: The Heroes Who Died for Rock N Roll

by Jeremy Simmonds
Published by Penguin

I've been away for a couple of weeks, and returned to find a big mountain of new CDs waiting for me to listen to and review. Since I've yet had time to give them more than a cursory ear, today's post is a book review I did a couple of years ago for a massive title called Number One in Heaven. Jeremy Simmonds' enormous volume is an indispensible resource for anyone with an interest in rock and popular music as one of the main cultural phenomonons of the last half-century. In its 500-plus pages, Simmonds collects hundreds of rock obituaries, presenting them in an easy-to-find month-by-month format for every year between 1965 and the end of 2005 and in doing so creates an engrossingly readable, occasionally humourous and often sad book.

This weighty tome unveils a lot of the mystery and myths surrounding the passing of some of the world's greatest stars and gives column space to many, many lesser known ones. It also reveals which group boasts the most dead members (doo-wop vocal group The Inkspots, as it turns out, although Lynyrd Skynyrd and T-Rex must come close by now), which group lost the most members in one go (Reba McEntire's backing band, who lost seven at once in a plane crash in 1991), and plenty of strange co-incidences, bizarre suicides, accidental deaths and murders. He also includes small snapshots of people who came remarkably close to death but somehow survived, like Nikki Sixx' monumentally stupid double overdose and Rick Allen's limb-severing car smash. The end of each year's section also features a small round-up of other lesser-known figures. This allows Simmonds to include even lesser lights who would otherwise be completely forgotten, but it also reveals a strange and confusing omission that will be elaborated upon shortly.

Often books like this will gloss over or even completely ignore many of the those who have fallen in the metal world, but Simmonds (for the most part) doesn't forget them either. From this perspective, most of the bigger names are included: Dimebag, Cliff and Randy, of course, the Mayhem pair of Dead and Euronymous, plus Steamin' Steve Clark from Def Leppard, Cozy Powell, Randy Castillo, Razzle from Hanoi Rocks, Gary Driscoll from Rainbow, and Piggy from Voivod. Paul Samson, Paul Baloff, Rhett Forester from Riot, Megadeth's Gar Samuelson, Somnium from Finntroll, David Wayne from Metal Church and all three of Body Count's growing body count also get space. Savatage's Criss Oliva and Dave Pritchard from Armored Saint even get mentions.

Simmonds loses significant Brownie points, however, for the incomprehensible omission of Chuck Schuldiner. That such a highly influential character from the development of metal could be totally ignored in such an otherwise excellently researched and all-encompassing book seems not only inexcusable, but inexplicable, especially when he's thought to include Steve MacDonald from Gorguts, two members of Hallow's Eve, a bloke from a band called Doom that even I've never heard of and some guy who was in Blue Öyster Cult for about ten minutes in about 1971 and never recorded anything. Even if Simmonds knew very little about Chuck, a music journalist of his reputation should have at the very least known both who he was and that he'd died, and when. This is Number One in Heaven's unforgivable flaw, and the thing that stop this otherwise brilliant book from scoring the highest mark possible.

NB: There's an associated website address given in the introduction that the author has included for readers to suggest corrections, but when I tried it so I could prod him about Schuldiner, it didn't work.

Rating: 90%

BLACK ASYLUM: Anthem of Order

Produced by Darren Jenkins and Black Asylum

Released: 2009

Wyong lads Black Asylum have been moving pretty quickly to the fore of the scene in their local area since they kicked off about four years ago. Last weekend they warmed up the crowd for Cannibal Corpse and apparently did a sterling job and in the past they've opened for everyone from Alchemist and Psycroptic to Parkway Drive. 2008's full length Truths of the Blood suffered from a lack of direction and some songwriting lapses, but it was obvious there was a really good band hiding away in there.

So it is then that "Anthem of Order" shits on it royally. As decent as Truths was in spite of its inherent weaknesses, this EP almost sounds like it was made by a totally different band. Black Asylum has done everything right here. Instead of a full length that tries to be everything to everyone, this time they've picked a handful of tracks that show what they do best. And with production duties handled by the guy who was once the drummer for Australia's answer to Pantera, Black Asylum had a veritable expert around to help them crystallise their vision. That vision: modern groove-laden thrash.

"Smoke and Mirrors" gets things underway in precisely the right direction and things only continue to get better from there. "25 to Life" and "Face the Silence" take the opportunity to step up into near-death metal territory and "The Last Day" has an enormous bouncing groove that refuses to be pacified. Occasionally a glimmer of their influences shows through -- a riff here, a melody line there -- but it's never for long enough for Black Asylum to sound like anyone in particular. Thick, catchy riffs and grooves, a stomping rhythm section, sharp soloing and raspy vocals that can also effect a nice croon, "Anthem of Order" is a fine example of Aussie metal done right.

1. Smoke and Mirrors
2. 25 to Life
3. Face the Silence
4. The Last Day
5. Subtlety
6. Black as the Crow

Rating: 82%

RIVERSIDE: Anno Domini High Definition

Released: July 2009

A few years back I had the unpleasant experience of being exposed to Pain of Salvation's convoluted, bewildering and absurdly over-indulgent Be album, an indecipherable and unwieldly piece of shit that made me stop listening to anything remotely like it for quite some time (actually there is nothing remotely like it. It's like the Zardoz of prog). That was until I discovered Polish band Riverside. Essentially, they are all the stuff you love about prog, and nothing you hate. Like the equally wonderful Porcupine Tree, they restored my faith in this genre. Three albums later, not only do they continue to shine, they have created nothing short of a masterpiece.

It's really no coincidence that I mention Porcupine Tree, because this Warsaw quartet's music has distinct similarities to them as well as to Dream Theater, especially with respect to Michal Lapaj's keyboard sound and in Mariusz Duda they have a vocalist to rival Daniel Gildenlow. Since Lapaj joined after their first album, Riverside has been closing in on a more metallic style and Anno Domini High Definition certainly steers them in a heavier direction without compromising the various melodic, gloomy and atmospheric ambient elements they have used in the past.

"Hyperactive" floats in on a melancholy piano melody until marching drumbeats, swirly keys and an unmistakably metal guitar riff begins to fade in from about the 1:08 mark, soon afterwards joined by Duda's dark, warm vocals. Like the best prog, a dominant aspect of this song's sound is the Hammond organ and even later, in the eleven-minute "Left Out", Lapaj busts out into some surging, pompous breaks that recall the greatness of Deep Purple. "Driven to Destruction" is a little reminiscent of TOOL, with the main riff a slight variation of the one from "Forty Six and 2" and while distinctly more keyboard-driven, the song itself moves through the same kind of dark moodiness the American progsters explore. "Egoist Hedonist" is a composite piece made up of three movements, the swinging, upbeat middle segment of which is joined by a horns section; the last part is perhaps the album's most metal moment.

ADHD's final two tracks run well over ten minutes apiece with both Lapaj and guitarist Piotr Grudzinski turning in some eloquent and tasteful soloing and the band weaving all their influences into a cohesive and decidedly original sound. "Hybrid Times" is perhaps the high point with Duda's jazz-influenced bass break leading to a crashing crescendo of 70s pomp rock organ and metal guitars, followed a little later by trade-offs between Lapaj and Grudzinski that leads into a darker, atmospheric coda of voices and theremin.

Riverside has been seeking to bridge the gap between progressive rock and progressive metal for several years now and with ADHD they have at last achieved it. Their best album yet.

1. Hyperactive
2. Driven to Destruction
3. Egoist Hedonist
4. Left Out
5. Hybrid Times

Rating: 98%

ROLLERBALL: Submarine

Produced by Dave Talon, Luke Earthling and Jeff Lovejoy

Released: 2009

It'd been a long time since I'd heard anything from Rollerball, so to say that I was pleased to receive their new album is a bit of an understatement. Long time veterans of Australia's first wave of the retro rock movement, they seemed to have dropped off the map for a while after Oversize came out almost five years ago. I was looking forward to some of their fantastically heavy-riffing rock once again, and Submarine definitely did not disappoint.

When the title track ripped loose with the exact same riff as The Hanging Tree's "Free Ride" (one of the best songs by one of the best Sydney bands of the 90s) I just knew this was going to rule. Submarine is nothing less than a thoroughly enjoyable, truly rock-worthy collection of big groovy psychedelic stoner rock, acid blues and biker metal. The band's influences are all over this: "We Always Slide" steals part of its riff from Blue Öyster Cult's "Divine Wind" and elsewhere you can hear Kyuss, AC/DC, early Led Zeppelin and... is that Canned Heat in there somewhere? But this matters not. Because this is rock, raw and honest, where originality takes a backseat to honesty and heart. And this isn't just shameless regurgitation like Jet or the massively over-rated Wolfmother; listening to Submarine you realise how much of a shame it is that those two bands have been elevated to Aussie rock royalty while the Rollerballs of the world plug away in relative obscurity while doing pretty much the same thing only much better. Why do we need Jet when Rollerball can deliver punchy radio rock anthems like "B-Ray Boogie" and "Seasoar" and "Tame Existence" wanders around in 70s proto-prog wonderland like Wolfmother only dream they can. Dave Talon unleashes the sort of riffs that Malcolm Young or Jimmy Page would envy with a huge fat guitar tone that either of them would die for and Tenpin Bolan's versatile vocals shift gears through melodic croon to raw rocking blues growl to a falsetto without a stretch, and with "Never a Rodeo" they have concocted an immense stoner epic that Josh Homme would be proud to call his own.

Submarine is a fantastic rock album. If you like fantastic rock albums, you must have this.

1. Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
2. Submarine
3. Seasoar
4. Youth Ballad (Back to Hell)
5. Your Lullaby
6. We Always Slide
7. The Devil's Reprise
8. Run Aground
9. Tame Existence
10. B-Ray Boogie
11. Never A Rodeo

Rating: 98%

RAVAGE: The End of Tomorrow

Released: 2009

With an old-school name like Ravage and a wonderfully old-school cover by the legendary Ed Repka, The End of Tomorrow held a lot of promise. But by only halfway through the first track I was already disappointed. Halfway through the first track! Having kicked around on the Boston scene for 14 years and been championed by no less a figure than Metal Archives’ notoriously elitist Ultraboris (who helped them release a string of badly-recorded live albums, one of which was done instrumentally when their vocalist failed to show for the gig!), Ravage finally hit the jackpot with a signing to Metal Blade earlier this year. Frankly, I fail to see what the fuss is about. There’s a philosophy that suggests that in a market flooded by unremarkable, samey-sounding modern bands that anything retro must naturally be good simply because it is retro, but this is one album that proves such thinking is nothing but bullshit. There’s a reason why modern metal sounds the way it does, and that’s because if it sounded like Ravage no one would listen to it except guys in their 40s reminiscing about their first Diamond Head gig.

Despite the modern production which at least gives it some crunch, The End of Tomorrow is nothing more than a collection of second-rate, mid-paced, dated-sounding, uninteresting heavy metal. It reminds me of bands like Saxon, Raven or Anvil, but at their worst. Put simply, the band just never gets out of second gear. Al Ravage’s vocals are OK in that he can carry a tune, but the tunes don’t go anywhere and the only song that’s in any way memorable is a Judas Priest cover. Really, it isn’t hard to see why it’s taken Ravage so long to score a release on a recognised label, and if this is the best they can do it might a long, long time before they have another one.

1. The Halls of Madness
2. Reign Fall
3. Freedom Fighter
4. Damn Nation
5. The Shredder
6. Into the Shackles
7. In Shattered Dreams
8. The Nightmare's Hold: Pt 1
9. The Night Crawler
10. The Nightmare's Hold: Pt 2
11. Grapes of Wrath
12. The End of Tomorrow

Rating: 43%

VOYAGER: I Am the ReVolution

Released: September 25

Voyager have moved into more melodic territory with each subsequent release, and with I am the ReVolution, their third full-length release, they appear to be on the very brink of departing from the realms of metal and into other avenues of melodic rock. This new album seems to represent the same point in the band's development as A Fine Day to Exit did for Anathema--but with considerably more direction and focus in the songwriting department--or, perhaps even more accurately, where Paradise Lost went with One Second.

Without completely losing sight of their heritage as a metal band, there is an almost over-riding emphasis on the synth-pop element of their sound on this album. The shiny production certainly stresses the more melodic aspects ahead of the heavier ones and apart from some darker growling on a couple of tracks, Nephil's harmonious mid-range singing brings to mind those of sophisticated Euro-pop acts. Indeed, there were times when I am the ReVolution reminded me of no one more than Depeche Mode: the pop ballad "In My Arms" sounds so much like them I had to check to make sure it wasn't actually a cover. The brief interlude "Without a Sigh" is another Mode-esque moment and the title track that follows it sounds strangely like David Gahan doing guest vocals with Dream Theater.

The intriguing mix of styles and influences is introduced immediately on "Land of Lies" with Nephil's variously sung, whispered and growled vocals playing off against intermingling guitar melody lines and synth solos; this and "Total Existance Failure" (sic) with its more predominant riffing are perhaps the most "metal" songs on the whole album, and while there are metal aspects on almost all the songs, Voyager plays around with so many other styles that defining them as simply a metal band just doesn't seem right. "The Devil in Me" is simply fantastic symphonic rock with a hook in the chorus that Martin Gore would kill to write, and the same could almost be said for the likes of "On the Run from the World" and "Times Like These", all of which are virtually flawless examples of metal riffs combined with synth-pop. "Close Your Eyes" is a nice darker song that recalls late-90s Paradise Lost, and is a clear highlight with its extended atmospheric middle section and "Straight to the Other Side" is just so stupidly catchy you'll have trouble getting the lyrics "Why am I always feeling so dissatisfied?/Why am I always feeling like I'm not alive?" out of your head for days. Nephil adds even more texture on occasion with a darkened whisper in his native German.

I am the ReVolution is an almost perfect record of modern progressive melodic metal, pushing the boundaries of what truly defines the metal band by being completely unafraid of experimenting with totally different styles of music and making them all work together so well it just seems too easy.

1. Land of Lies
2. Common Ground
3. Lost
4. The Devil in Me
5. Close Your Eyes
6. Total Existance Failure
7. Straight to the Other Side
8. In My Arms
9. Times Like These
10. On the Run From the World
11. Without a Sigh
12. I am the ReVolution

Rating: 96%

NEXUS: The Paradise Complex

Produced by Geoff Eaton and Dan Grainger

Released: July 2009

Perth's isolation from the rest of Australia has always made exposure to its metal scene difficult, but this same isolation has also made it one of the most remarkable scenes around, one that seems to throw up a disproportionately high number of quality bands. Allegiance, iNFeCTeD, Samain, Karnivool, Voyager, Pathogen and Chaos Divine are just a few of those amongst the cream of the western crop of the last 20 years, and to that list can now be added Nexus.

This death metal four piece has created something that can only be described as a saga, a complete science fiction mythology that even has its own language. With the beginning of the story having being played out on the earlier "Eve of Destruction" EP, The Paradise Complex continues the narrative of Raethe, a starship commander who transforms into an omniscient super entity called LhaArn'dHrr. The elaborate storyline is played out both in the lyrics and as a short story included in the booklet, and accompanied by some fantastic modern technical death metal.

Because this is a concept piece, this plays more like a suite where each track flows into the next, yet each one is distinctive enough that it never becomes monotonous or even predictable. Nexus throw in quirky off-time passages and neck-breaking bursts of technical playing, laced with neat melody lines. Stylistically, the band moves between jazz-inflected mathcore moments and technical grind with plenty of pure death metal in the middle. Occasionally, they get just a little too tricky and sound like they've cut off a riff midway through, which can make it all a bit jarring. The lyrics are heavily detailed and delivered through a voice that is variously a roar and a growl, with some sections in the band's own invented language which reads and sounds like a real language, rather than just a bunch of gibberish. This is no small feat in itself, but Nexus is clearly a band that likes challenges and excels at them.

The Paradise Complex is an amazing album and without doubt one of the best metal releases of this year.

1. The Paradise Complex I: The Reckoning
2. Ultimate Knowledge
3. Genesis
4. The Paradise Complex II: The Reasoning
5. Twelve Minds
6. The War of Thought
7. The Paradise Complex III: The Reawakening
8. LhaArn'dHrr

Rating: 87%

DIVINE HERESY: Bringer of Plagues

Produced by Logan Mader and Lucas Banker

Released: 2009

It's certainly a little bit hard to know exactly what to make of Divine Heresy's latest album. With founder and main driving force Dino Cazares now apparently back with the band that made his name and the controversy that surrounded that sudden turn of events, Bringer of Plagues has virtually fallen by the wayside and should the legal wrangling enveloped around Fear Factory be sorted out in Cazares' favour this may well be the last we hear from Divine Heresy.

Few tears would likely be shed if that turns out to be the case, because while it isn't terrible by any means, Bringer of Plagues doesn't really set the world on fire. The vocals are an uninteresting blend of hardcore rasp and Linkin Park-like clean harmonies and a few of the songs are unremarkable. Indeed, the last one-third of the album is quite weak and of the rest only three really stand out.

Cazares lives up to his reputation as a fiendishly tight rhythm guitar player but as usual his repertoire of riffs is deceptively limited. The phrases he puts together are typically catchy and ripping, especially in the pretty decent opening track, "Facebreaker", but almost every other song is built around some variation of the same pattern. Of course, Dino is such a master at this that he gets away with it; his lead playing on the other hand leaves something to be desired. The few solos he throws about are like stuff even Kerry King would throw away, thin bursts of single-note repetition that sound like they were dropped in late to fill a hole. Tim Yeung's drumming, however, has a colour and swing to it that makes him shine, particularly in "Anarchaos" and the track that follows, "Monolithic Doomsday Devices", both of which --especially the first -- are clear highlights.

In most other respects, though, Bringer of Plagues is rather lacking. Except for "Anarchaos", there's very little of the groove that helped make early Fear Factory so special and Travis Neal's generic metalcore vocals are nothing more than average. This one may be good for a few listens, but anyone looking for something more than a few heavy riffs probably won't find much to hold their interest.

1. Facebreaker
2. The Battle of J. Casey
3. Undivine Prophecies (Intro)
4. Bringer of Plagues
5. Redefine
6. Anarchaos
7. Monolithic Doomsday Devices
8. Letter to Mother
9. Enemy Kill
10. Darkness Embedded
11. The End Begins

Rating: 58%