HATE ETERNAL: I, Monarch

Produced by Erik Rutan

Released: 2005

Hate Eternal’s strictly generic brand of brutal death metal is built primarily on blast beats and speed, but that shouldn’t give them an excuse to be just plain boring. After listening to I, Monarch I was left wondering if there’s a more over-rated and significantly less-inspired drummer in metal than Derek Roddy. Over the course of this album’s ten tracks, Roddy plays precisely the same beat, at precisely the same speed, over and over again with virtually no deviation whatsoever. Even when the band knocks the speed back a few cogs for something like the Morbid Angel-like mid-pace of the title track, Roddy can’t seem to do anything else but drop in the same monotonous, uninspired blasting he plays on every other track. The most frustrating thing is that I know Derek can do better than this, and so can Erik Rutan. Both of them have played in some of the greatest death metal bands of all, but on this album neither of them sound like they're really trying.

While it’s true that Hate Eternal has never really stretched themselves beyond the predictable and generic, on I, Monarch it's made so much worse mainly because of the drummer’s phoned-in performance. “The Plague of Humanity” and “The Victorious Reign” are reasonable stand-outs, but I, Monarch is about as uninteresting and ordinary as brutal death metal gets, and being able to play a blast beat for 42 minutes straight doesn’t make you a great drummer, just a fast one.

1. Two Demons


2. Behold Judas


3. The Victorious Reign


4. To Know Our Enemies


5. I, Monarch


6. Path to the Eternal Gods


7. The Plague of Humanity


8. It Is Our Will


9. Sons of Darkness


10. Faceless One

Rating: 14%

BLOOD DUSTER: Lyden Nå

Produced by Jason PC

Released: 2007

This album is like a Tourettes patient with ADHD stoned off their face. It's fast, loud, offensive, manic to the point of lunacy and then so mind-numbingly slow it has to speed up just to stop.

As if one volume of Blood Duster's patent insanity wasn't enough, Lyden Nå offers up three, each one showing a separate facet of the band's music. Even so, the first two parts are over in less time than it takes to listen to the average Arch Enemy album. Broaching subjects as diverse as crashing planes onto shithouse bands, face-ache cock-teasers on MySpace, taking drugs, and stomping around in piss, not to mention the odd swipe at emo and the trendy wankers who've ruined their beloved Northcote, volume one is Blood Duster's by-now trademark death rock. Enormous grooves are unleashed, Beltsy squeezes off some machine-gun like leads and they somehow manage to throw in a bagpipes player, Darryl Cotton from Zoot exhorting people to throw their drugs on stage and a guy tinkling away on a piano. The strange excursions into country aren't forgotten either, with Craig Westwood from DernRutlidge crooning away like a drunken cowboy on a track called "TheNightTheyBurnedOldEmoDown".

With some tracks barely longer than the time it takes to read their names, volume two is practically over before it begins. In the full-on percussive grind mode they cut their teeth on, Blood Duster rips through 16 bursts of noise, blastbeats and screaming in just 16 minutes and 11 seconds. This is the disc for the old school Duster fans, and with some of the samples running longer the actual music they accompany, they won't be disappointed.

Finally, there's "Slowandlongina", an immense mindfuck of a track that chugs away over the same slow-motion riff for 21 minutes. A secret code in Lyden Nå's packaging gives access to this brain-aching sludge monster via the Blood Duster website. Excruciating in its length and vast in its monotony, this is a beast that possibly only the most dedicated drone fan or the most royally wasted listener could truly appreciate. It's a pretty safe bet you won't be hearing them play this one live.

CD 1

1. Intro


2. Three Oh Seven Ohh


3. Pissstomper


4. TheKidsCanGetFucked


5. RockNRollJihad


6. BrokeAssBitch


7. MyspaceYourFace


8. AngryDragon


9. ILoveThePills


10. DusterDuster


11. TheNightTheyBurnedOldEmoDown

CD 2

1. TendonsSlicedForTransport


2. TheRichBreedFuckingCockheadChildrenWhoWillOneDayBeYourEmployer


3. TheWorldAndEveryoneInItDeservesToDie


4. RecreationalKilling


5. BetterStartASeedBank


6. ChildLabourEconomics


7. BarrelChockFullOfDeadCops


8. CzechItOutIGotSomeRules


9. Lustmord


10. OhMyMyraHindley


11. E55


12. RapedWithATyreIron


13. ISawYourDadSuckingOffAnotherDudesDad


14. OrgansForAProfit


15. StrungUpWithCockInHand


16. BalladOfHenryAndOtis

CD 3

1. Slowandlongina

Rating: 80%

AC/DC: Highway to Hell

Produced by Robert John "Mutt" Lange

Released: 1979

For a band that has often been accused of recording the same album over and over again, it's interesting that if you asked ten different people what their favourite AC/DC album is, you would likely get ten different answers. Highway to Hell is where the journey really started for me; this became a launching pad for experiments with increasingly heavier and faster music right throughout my life so far but if I had to pick my favourite albums of all then this one would be in the list.

Mutt Lange didn't really have to do much to tweak AC/DC's music by the time of this juggernaut, because here is a band at the very top of its game. The unstoppable Malcolm Young riff factory is in overdrive, churning out one memorable tune after the next and Bon Scott's ability as a lyricist are in full bloom. Instead, Lange nudges the sound itself, adding presence to the vocals and Phil Rudd's clod-simple but locked-in-tight drums. The result speaks for itself. Highway to Hell is a rock album of immense power that truly befits both its name and that of the band that made it.

Few bands ever typified the wild rock n' roll spirit the way AC/DC did and with "Highway to Hell" and "Get it Hot" AC/DC even outdo themselves in that regard. "If You Blood" and "Shot Down in Flames" are another pair of volcanic rockers and "Beating Around the Bush" is a high-speed boogie celebration. "Girl's Got Rhythm" is an explosive paean to a hard lovin' woman that, like its subject doesn't let you up for breath. The smouldering swagger of "Touch Too Much" contains possibly Bon's greatest lyric ("Her body a Venus, with arms") and in "Night Prowler" the boys lock in to a mean, slow groove to bring their most savage tale ever to sinister life, only for Bon, ever the joker, to burst out with Mork from Ork's "Shazbot!" as the song fades to a close. Bon Scott really was the ace in ACDC's sleeve and he proves it time and again all over this. His vocal delivery borders on the manic most of the time, but his crafty turn of phrase lets you know that every line is sung with a sparkle of mischief in his eye. Then of course there's Angus, whose lead breaks are always both timely and incendiary, the perfect foil for Bon's banshee wail.

Only "Love Hungry Man" lets the side down, a song so bad even the band disowned it, made even worse (if that's possible) by the profileration of killer tunes all around it. Twenty years ago this would have made this album lose more that 2 percentage points, but now it's on CD you can just skip it completely and never have to listen to it.

Apart from that, Highway to Hell isn't just a classic rock album, it is a quintessential addition to any serious music listener's collection.

1. Highway to Hell


2. Girls Got Rhythm


3. Walk All Over You


4. Touch Too Much


5. Beating Around the Bush


6. Shot Down in Flames


7. Get it Hot


8. If You Want Blood... You've Got It


9. Love Hungry Man


10. Night Prowler

Rating: 98%

MOONSORROW: Kivenkantaja

Produced by Moonsorrow
Released: 2003

This is about as close to perfect an album of pagan Viking metal can be. With this, their third album, Finland's Moonsorrow have made a truly epic record that can proudly stand alongside Bathory's legendary Hammerheart as a benchmark for all future work in this style.

Kivenkantaja is a sprawling but strikingly cohesive album that makes use of traditional folk instruments and choir singing without compromising the metal elements in any way. The album opens with the marathon 13-minute 'Raunioilla', a sweeping musical saga that sets the tone for the rest of the album perfectly. This track virtually strips away all traces of the black metal element found in earlier work in favour of a more epic, progressive metal feel, but the grimness returns almost immediately with the next song, 'Unohduksen Lapsi', and continues to make its presence felt throughout, mingled with snatches of folk music, accordian, choir arrangements and that most distinctive of instruments, the Hammond organ, that gives the album a touch of 70s progressive rock here and there. The keyboards are most apparent in the sprawling 'Jumalten Kaupunki', but wherever they are used they only further the conjuring of the album's grand, majestic atmosphere and sweeping vistas of glorious battles on snow-covered fields, victorious celebrations and a mighty, insurmountable pagan spirit.

1. Raunioilla


2. Unohduksen Lapsi


3. Jumalten Kaupunki


4. Kivenkantaja


5. Tuulen Tytär


6. Matkan Lopussa

Rating: 94%

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Born in the USA

Produced by Jon Landau, Bruce Springsteen, Chuck Plotkin, Steven van Zandt

Released: 1984

In order to review this incredible album I had to take myself back in time to my high school days. It's easy to appreciate Born in the USA when you're an adult a few years older than Springsteen was when he wrote and recorded it, but to get a really good idea of the impact this release had, you have to go back to a time when an average looking guy in his mid-30s suddenly became a pop idol that 14-year old girls were hanging poster of on their bedroom walls.

Bruce Springsteen had never been as well known in Australia as he was at home because his songs were so rooted in the American experience. But Born in the USA had such a successful pop formula that kids everywhere could get into the music without needing to know what the songs were about. School girls wanted to be on stage with The Boss like that chick in the video for "Dancing in the Dark" without even caring that it wasn't even actually about dancing.

There's almost no better start to any album than Springsteen's magnificant Specktorish triumph of the title track. The discordant, clanging synths punish the listener into submission as the urgent, ragged despair of the singer's delivery lets them know they are hearing a song for the ages even if most of them -- including parents and US Presidents -- would completely miss the point.

Born in the USA's themes are the same as those Springsteen had always followed but his introduction of synths and dance beats served to disguise the real meaning of the songs, although even the more obvious ones are still deceptive. The character in "Working on the Highway" turns out to be a member of a chain gang, and "My Hometown" is set up as a tribute but is actually exactly the opposite, a tale of shattered dreams and broken pride. Even so, Springsteen stills give his small town denizens a sense of hope in the exuberance of the beat and injects humour into tracks like "I'm Going Down" and "Glory Days".

Bruce Springsteen perfected his craft here and made stories of ordinary Americans into three and four minute sagas that even teenagers with no grasp on irony could enjoy. Without doubt, this is one of the best albums of all time

1. Born in the USA


2. Cover Me


3. Darlingotn County


4. Working on the Highway


5. Downbound Train


6. I'm on Fire


7. No Surrender


8. Bobby Jean


9. I'm Going Down


10. Glory Days


11. Dancing in the Dark


12. My Hometown

Rating: 100%

ALCHEMIST: Lunasphere

Produced by John Hresc and Alchemist

Released: 1995

"We do not die! We only change!"

With this exhortation begins what is one of the finest and most legendary Australian metal albums of all. Lunasphere remains the favourite Alchemist album for many fans and ten years on it still hasn't lost its appeal. This is where Alchemist's musical vision really began to come together, where the somewhat haphazard experimentation of Jar of Kingdom coalesced into a more coherent but still remarkably inventive form.

"Soul Return" begins this eclectic journey with two and a half minutes of flat-out grind that suddenly veers into expansive, atmospheric ambience for five minutes or more before swerving back to grind again. It sets the scene for the journey to come, one where seemingly incongruous musical elements interact in a surprisingly effective way. Alchemist is often compared to Neurosis but on both "Soul Return" and the album's crowning glory, "Garden of Eroticism", they sound like no one more than diSEMBOWELMENT, though perhaps somewhat less evil and with more Middle Eastern stylings. Indeed, while Nile are renown for their use of Egyptian themes, most of the time they use them as little more than window-dressing. Alchemist, on the other hand, actually work Middle Eastern motifs into their songs.

Lunasphere is awash with them, from mere sprinklings in the likes of "Unfocused" to the distinctly Middle Eastern flavour apparent in "Yoni Kunda", featuring the most tasteful use of the word "vagina" in any song ever written. These elements, the ethnic and the ethereal, weaved so effortlessly and effectively into the fabric of the sound, are what makes this band and this album such a special one. Without them, Lunasphere would have been just another grind album, albeit one with some remarkable lyrics.

Like the music, this also offers something different from a lyrical perspective. Even with grind as a musical base, you would have to suspect that a band using Eastern scales would incorporate some metaphysical philosophy into their songwriting. On Lunasphere, songs discuss reincarnation and spiritual rebirth, along with mysticising female genitalia in "Yoni Kunda" and "Garden of Eroticism" with made-up words like "salacrophobia" (a fear of marihuana, according to the band) and "testrodelia". Again like the music, Alchemist goes places lyrically where few others dare.

With its combination of diverse musical elements and esoteric lyrics, Lunasphere cemented Alchemist's place in Australian metal music and reaffirmed their reputation as a wildly creative and interesting act.

1. Soul Return


2. Lunation


3. Unfocused


4. Luminous


5. Clot


6. Yoni Kunda


7. My Animated Truth


8. Garden of Eroticism


9. Closed Chapter

Rating: 97%

JUDAS PRIEST: British Steel

Produced by Tom Allom

Released: 1980

There are some who would suggest that this album is over-rated, but for mine, this remains the pinnacle of Judas Priest's commercial recording period. While the albums either side of this were so-so and below average, and later ones were fairly good, this is where the band's commercial aspirations all come together. This is the album that made Judas Priest into superstars, with volley after volley of fast and catchy songs that were heavy enough to keep the headbangers happy, but slick enough for American radio airplay. While it remains best known as the home of the big hits "Breaking the Law" and "Living After Midnight", British Steel is much more than that, and almost every other song it contains is far superior to that pair of tunes.

British Steel begins with one of the fastest and most crushing tracks the band would ever write. "Rapid Fire" is about the best start to an album in recording history: an unmercifully heavy and speedy song for its time and a track so good that if it weren't for quality of the rest of the album it would have completely overwhelmed it. This sledgehammer-like opening was numbed when the Americans decided to release the album with "Breaking the Law" as the first song, but the remastered version has set all to rights again. "Metal Gods" is next, built on a stiff, staccato marching riff that sounds for all the world like an army of killer robots destroying humanity and then after the relatively lame "...Law" comes more savagery in the form of the appropriately named "Grinder". "United" is a pointless football chant that Priest was using to fill space on their albums back then and despite its legendary status "Living After Midnight" is the sort of light, throwaway metal that US hair bands would spew forth for the best part of the rest of the decade. "The Rage" is an angry track that has some nice bass work from Ian Hill, something that goes unnoticed most of the time and then "Steeler" winds up the album on the same speed metal note that "Rapid Fire" opens it. Perhaps it's because they're at the end of this album that these two tracks are so over-looked, but they both easily top almost everything that would come on the follow-up.

With British Steel, Judas Priest made an almost perfect commercial-flavoured metal album on only their second attempt, with most of the songs still standing the test of time. Had they failed here, they may well have never attained the god-like status that was to be theirs in the coming decade.

1. Rapid Fire


2. Metal Gods


3. Breaking the Law


4. Grinder


5. United


6. You Don't Have to be Old to be Wise


7. Living After Midnight


8. The Rage


9. Steeler

Rating: 96%

ZIMMER'S HOLE: When You Were Shouting at the Devil... We Were in League With Satan

Produced by Devin Townsend

Released: March 17, 2008

With so many metal bands coming off as unintentional parodies of themselves or of the music, deliberately contriving to be a parody metal band is a tricky thing to attempt. Cremator was one of the first, and were so good at it that many people didn't even realise they were taking the piss. In recent years bands like Metal Skool and Absolute Steel have made some pretty funny albums (the latter while pretending not to be parodic, which is clever in itself) and Crotchduster's Big Fat Box of Shit (that took off both metal and concept albums) made me laugh so much I almost killed myself several times when I foolishly listened to it while driving. Zimmer's Hole has been at the parody game longer than most, but for some reason they still can't quite pull it off.

Zimmer's Hole was founded by Jed Simon and Byron Stroud in the mid-90s, and the first thing you notice about this new album is that it doesn't sound that different from the other band they've been so well known for over the last decade: Strapping Young Lad. It doesn't really help that Devin Townsend handles production duties, because as fine a producer as he is, just about everything he touches ends up sounding like one of his bands to some degree. The fact that all four of the guys who play on this (Stroud, Simon, drum god Gene Hoglan and vocalist Chris Valagao) have all worked extensively with him over the years seems to have allowed Townsend to make When You Were Shouting at the Devil... sound like the Strapping Young Lad album he never got around to making. That means that primarily each song is built around fast, repetitive thrash riffs with high-pitched, manic vocals and a rigourous and thundering double-kick undercurrent. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, except that it runs out of steam pretty quicly. And there is humour here, but just not enough of it.

The title track does what it sets out to do, and that's poke fun at the whole Satanic thing that's made metal a laughing stock for a long time, but the real fun comes in the shape of "We Rule the Fucking Land". Unashamedly ripping off Metallica's "The Four Horsemen" with the main riff, there's also a "Die by my hand" lyric and Valagao throws out a vague Bruce Dickinson imitation. But it isn't quite convincing enough. Like Anal Cunt, any real laughs come from the song titles and not really the songs themselves; unlike them, Zimmer's Hole profess to be a serious band that makes actual music. A song called "Hair Doesn't Grow on Steel" should be hilarious, but it just isn't. "Fista Corpse" is mindless repetition of a lyric that wasn't that funny in the first place and most of the rest of the tracks hardly hold up as being as humourous as they're made out to be. As songs they're not too bad without being spectacular, but nothing really stands out as a particular highlight. Zimmer's biggest hurdle however is that they just sound too much like Strapping Young Lad, except without the songs that made SYL so incredible.

1. When You Were Shouting at the Devil... We Were in League With Satan
2. We Rule the Fucking Land
3. Flight of the Knight Bat
4. 1312
5. Devil's Mouth
6. The Vowel Song
7. Fista Corpse
8. Anonymous Esophagus
9. Alright
10. Hair Doesn't Grow on Steel
11. What's My Name... Evil!

Rating: 45%

CAVALERA CONSPIRACY: Inflikted

Produced by Max Cavalera
Released: March 25, 2008

Just over ten years ago Max Cavalera walked out on his brother and the band they started as impoverished teens in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Since then Igor has gone on to make some infuriatingly ordinary albums and his sibling some exasperatingly bombastic ones. Time seems to have served to heal the wounds that tore them asunder however, as they have now teamed up once more and with Soulfly's Marc Rizzo and Joe Duplantier from the insanely cool Gojira helping to spread the hate around Max and Igor present the Cavalera Conspiracy.

For those who have refused to accept anything the brothers have done since 1993, this could well be the album to fill in the great big hole in the CD collection that exists after Chaos AD. There is definitely more of the Sepultura than the Soulfly about Inflikted, a feeling that begins right away with the similarity the opening and title track has to "Slave New World"; if one were to sum this album up quite briefly, then suggesting something of a combination of the simplistic groove thrash of Chaos AD with the aggression of Arise might be a reasonable place to start. Teaming up together again after more than a decade certainly appears to have revitalised the Cavalera brothers and rekindled a spark for making metal again instead of the turgid, self-indulgent and odious volumes they've both been responsible for since the mid-1990s.

That said, with Inflikted they have lifted their game without really getting on top of it. After listening to the album only once I could barely remember a single thing about it except that "Heart of Darkness" sounded a bit like "Refuse/Resist" and "Black Ark" had some big pounding tribal rhythms but none of Soulfly's pomposity, although it is the track most closely related to much of that band's work. With repeated listenings however, Cavalera Conspiracy's merits become a little more apparent. "Hex", for example, is the fastest and most full-on thing these guys have done in absolute ages and "Terrorize" and particularly "Sanctuary" are really reminiscent of when Max and Igor had a raging fire in their bellies. "Bloodbrawl" is a clear highlight, kicking in with some raw, rabid thrash before moving into a huge, almost plodding groove that then becomes a tasteful acoustic coda which in turn fades to didgeridoo. In Soulfly guise, Max would overplay this aspect but the understated handling he gives it here actually makes it rather effective, especially as it immediately cuts to the urgent, punkish "Nevertrust". Other songs like "The Doom of All Fires" and the frustratingly generic "Ultra-Violent" don't quite hold up against the bulk of Inflikted however.

Despite some repetitious moments and a few songs that sound like Max is not-so-subtly pilfering from his own back-catalogue, Inflikted is something of a return to form for the former Sepultura pair, as if a decade or so of separation and a string of poorly received hardcore albums and overblown solo vehicles has revived the old passions. If only they could find a way to get the old band name back, this could well mark a promising new beginning.

1. Inflikted
2. Sanctuary
3. Terrorize
4. Black Ark
5. Ultra-Violent
6. Hex
7. The Doom of All Fires
8. Bloodbrawl
9. Nevertrust
10. Hearts of Darkness
11. Must Kill

Rating: 71%

FEAR FACTORY: Demanufacture

Produced by Colin Richardson

Released: 1995

Los Angeles isn't well known for producing really heavy bands but the sprawling City of Angels spewed forth just such an entity in the early 1990s. That entity was Fear Factory, a band that, with its very first album, had taken death metal in directions that it had not previously explored. With the second, they achieved perfection. On Demanufacture, Fear Factory did everything they had done on Soul of a New Machine, but better, bigger and with immense production. Mixing pounding, ridiculously tight death metal and the gloomy Gothic industrial elements of bands like Godflesh and Bauhaus into hook-ridden songs with the clinical sound that would stagger a Top 40 producer, Fear Factory created one of the best albums of the early 1990s and one that still remains an indomitable classic. Demanufacture is so good that even the band that made it has been unable to top it and the tide of imitators who followed haven't even come close.

The formula behind this album's success is almost absurdly straightforward: deceptively simple, repetitive and crushing riffs, catchy grooves, insidious melody and plain, old-fashioned decent songwriting. Combined with that is an injection of electronics and sustained passages of clean singing at a time when such a thing just wasn't done in the arena of death metal and Demanufacture had all the elements of a successful recipe.

The title track opens the album with a machine-gun riff that you would sacrifice your own offspring to write and right when you think there can't be another as killer as this one, Dino Cazares just keeps throwing them up like he's building another Berlin Wall. Only Malcolm Young and (maybe) Jon Shaffer could deliver so many variations on the same three phrasings and make all of them as mind-numbingly effective as those on this album. In the engine room behind Cazares ceaseless wall of guitars, Raymond Herrera lays down meticulously tight beats and upfront is the remarkable vocals of Burton C. Bell, ravenous hate machine one moment, choirboy the next. On top of that is the sharpness and clarity of the mix, and the cold, clinical keyboard contributions of Front Line Assembly's Rhys Fulber that gives Demanufacture its dehumanising atmosphere. Surmounting it all is a barrage of excellent, heavy and unrelentingly catchy songs: "Demanufacture", "Zero Signal", "Self-Bias Resistor", "Replica", all fired off one after the other like tactical nuclear warheads. There's a riff in "New Breed" that's so heavy it's like getting hit by a truck and the oft-overlooked "Body Hammer" is just as strong as the album's opening quartet. The consistency does drop a little after this with the next two songs, but then the all-conquering "Pisschrist" smashes everything in its path. Finally, Fear Factory offers some respite with the Bauhaus-inspired "A Therapy for Pain" closing on a less intense if somewhat bleaker note.

Demanufacture is the epitome of industrial death metal, a blueprint that was stained and marred by a myriad of pretenders since, but a statement in cybermetal perfection that may never be topped.

1. Demanufacture
2. Self Bias Resistor
3. Zero Signal
4. Replica
5. New Breed
6. Dog Day Sunrise
7. Body Hammer
8. Flashpoint
9. H-K (Hunter-Killer)
10. Pisschrist
11. A Therapy for Pain

Rating: 98%