SUFFOCATION: Blood Oath

Produced by Joe Cincotta

Released: July 3

Since reconvening five years ago, Suffocation have weathered a storm of criticism from fans who have regarded their new style with some disappointment. For everyone merely glad to have them back, there's someone who finds their latest work unsatisfying and lacking the spark the elevated their earlier releases to the status of legendary. It's a very rare band that can maintain a level of consistency and brilliance throughout a career, and Suffocation is not one of those bands. Blood Oath is sure to polarise their fans just as much as Souls to Deny and Suffocation: if you loved those, you'll most likely enjoy this. If you didn't, you probably won't.

The thing that has marked Suffocation's current phase from their early period is the speed of the playing, and Blood Oath continues the slow-to-mid paced chug they've been doing since the reformation. The crushing, cascading slab-like riffs of the title track had me thinking at first that I was listening to a new Morbid Angel album and it was only Frank Mullens' vocals that let me know that, yes, this is indeed Suffocation. There's no question about the brutality of these tracks as the band grind along with murderous intent. Mullens' growl is low and sinister and his phrasing is typically clear and Terence Hobbs hits the mark with some no-nonsense soloing and surprisingly melodic moments, but there just aren't any clear highlights. It starts out OK but by about halfway through has just become little more than a background rumble with a snatch of a melody here or a chord progression there to keep you from forgetting all about it. Even at just on 41 minutes, Blood Oath seems too long as the sludgey pace and downright generic songwriting just makes it drag on and on.

Suffocation's reputation was built on a combination of innovation, technicality and sheer heaviness. As far as Blood Oath is concerned, one out of three simply isn't good enough. Their style has been aped, perfected and expanded by so many bands in the last twenty years that for them to stay ahead, Suffocation themselves need to do it better. Right now, that's just not happening.

1. Blood Oath
2. Dismal Dream
3. Pray for Forgiveness
4. Images of Purgatory
5. Cataclysmic Purification
6. Mental Hemorrhage
7. Come Hell or High Priest
8. Undeserving
9. Provoking the Disturbed
10. Marital Decimation

Rating: 68%

IRON MAIDEN: Flight 666 - The Original Soundtrack

Produced by Kevin Shirley
Released: May 25

Most of Iron Maiden’s live albums since Live After Death have been hit and miss affairs and all of them feature pretty much the same songs, so the cynical might ask why they’ve deemed it necessary to release yet another one. Of course, Maiden isn’t a band to let a marketing opportunity pass them by, so the soundtrack album to the Flight 666 documentary was always going to be on the cards. At 101 minutes, it’s far shorter than the bloated Rock in Rio set, clocking in at almost the same time as their legendary 1985 document.

Yes, this has the same old standards all the others do (“Number”, “Hills”, “Hallowed”, “Iron Maiden”, “The Trooper”), but also a ton of others that haven’t been featured live in a long time: “Moonchild” and the glorious “Revelations” among them. Each song was recorded in a different city, but to be honest it’s difficult to tell. Anyone who saw the film or actually went to one of the shows on the tour would testify that Iron Maiden were absolutely on fire every night they played, so it could just as easily have been culled from one or two performances. The sound is amazing, possibly the best of any of the band’s live recordings, flawlessly capturing the seemingly unlimited energy of a concert behemoth that few if any of the bands their age can match. Bruce Dickinson struggles to find his range here and there, especially in “Aces High” where he sounds just terrible, and he even defers to Adrian Smith a few times, but it’s otherwise hard to fault this.

Being more or less a modern re-imagining of the classic Live After Death it’s perhaps fitting that it’s almost as good, surpassing all the others that have come in between.

1. Aces High
2. 2 Minutes to Midnight
3. Revelations
4. The Trooper
5. Wasted Years
6. The Number of the Beast
7. Can I Play With Madness?
8. Rime of the Ancient Mariner
9. Powerslave
10. Heaven Can Wait
11. Run to the Hills
12. Fear of the Dark
13. Iron Maiden
14. Moonchild
15. The Clairvoyant
16. Hallowed be Thy Name

Rating: 85%

RAZOR OF OCCAM: Homage to Martyrs

Produced by Tore Stjerna

Released: 2009

After a couple of obscure EPs, this London-based quartet have now been afforded the opportunity to attack a wider audience with their first release on Metal Blade, and they don't waste the chance. Featuring two guys from Deströyer 666 and the original drummer from DragonForce, it's pretty obvious that this is going to be nothing less than relentless metal insanity. And it is.

Razor of Occam are as good as their name on Homage to Martryrs. Cutting straight through the bullshit, their assault begins immediately. No drawn out keyboard atmospherics, acoustic build-ups, horror movie samples or bells tolling. Just fast-as-fuck, neck-damaging blackened thrash metal from the moment it starts. Pete Hunt lays down a solid and unrelenting foundation of blasts and double-kicking for a just as merciless onslaught of crushing riffs, out of which Shrapnel fires a seemingly endless barrage of frantic guitar solos. The vocals are a clear, raspy scream occasionally joined by a low growl that aren't lost in the mix like a lot of music of this kind; the bass is indistinct yet does what's required, and that's to just give a little extra weight to the guitars as they thrash like hell.

Razor of Occam don't bring anything new to the game with this symphony of violence. Instead, they've stripped it down to its basest elements and taken it back to the primal, urgent noise it was in the beginning. These tracks may lack some of the overall catchiness and melody of D666, but they make up for it in pure intensity and old school thrash metal honesty.

1. Altar of Corruption
2. Bite of Dogmata
3. Day of Wrath
4. Heat of Battle
5. Immortal Code
6. Pattern on the Stone
7. Flame Bearers
8. Shadow of the Cross

Rating: 78%

PINK LIVE IN SYDNEY

If I only had one word to describe this show then I'm not sure I'd be able to find it. Spectacular? Amazing? Tremendous? None of those seem superlative enough by themselves. I'm quite sure I've never seen a concert like it, and after 28 years of concert-going and having seen everyone worth seeing from U2, Pink Floyd and the Stones to some crappy little indie band at a pub in Waterloo, that's saying a lot. In fact, this could have been the best show I've ever seen. I'm not quite sure what I expected. Pink's always struck me as an artist with real integrity and talent far beyond the usual plastic pop divas (like the one-hit rn'b "sensation" I got dragged along to see one night who nervously lip-synched three songs and slunk away like an embarassed school girl), but I certainly didn't expect this. As much as I love Napalm Death and Iron Maiden, I've never seen Barney Greenway or Bruce Dickinson sing while hanging upside down from a trapeze four storeys in the air, and probably never will. This feat alone puts Pink a long way out in front of just about any performer ever (there is, of course, an argument that those guys don't need to pull such stunts, which is true, but watching someone do it is still very, very cool).

More than half the crowd were women, which is starkly different from the 2/3 male audiences I'm used to seeing at metal shows, and ran the gamut from middle-aged mums to little girls to 18-25s wearing rub-on tattoos and short blond wigs. Warming them up for the main event was Sydney band Faker. Their New Wave-ish sub-XTC guitar pop is catchy enough to keep a good portion of the crowd entertained for a while, and they did seem to get a surprisingly long set; at least, it appeared to be quite long. I'm not sure whether Nathan Hudson is English or if he just uses an English accent as part of his band's Britpop schtick but if it is just an act then someone should punch him in the face. The keyboard/guitar player dude ponced around so much I thought he was going to whip out a keytar by the end of it; a couple of catchy tunes aside, Faker are a bit like a crappy New Order cover band, but shittier.

Not too long afterwards, with "Highway to Hell" cranking out over the screams from the crowd, the lady a stupendous amount of Australians are still clammering to see burst out of a trapdoor in the middle of the room. With her six-piece band kicking off into "Bad Influence", Pink whizzed through the air on a harness to a main stage decked out like the titular funhouse of her current album, festooned with carnival lights and with a big slide each side of her drummer. It would be easy for me to say this was an overhyped, all-show-and-no-go debacle, but it would also be very wrong. Only the most jaded curmudgeon could not have been entertained by this extravaganza. Pink is the real deal: pint-sized but larger than life, tough and tender, and there's an air of genuine honesty in whatever she does. Instead of just a randomly-ordered parade of hits, the Funhouse show is more like a musical in five acts. After the tough rock chick opening stanza, she shifted into a more seductive mode, writhing around on a couch to an almost industrialized version of "I Touch Myself" before getting all bold and brassy again with "So What".

Then the dancers and backing singers were gone as Ms Moore did "Family Portrait" accompanied only by the piano before she made herself even more vulnerable by attempting to play a guitar for "I Don't Believe You," making fun of her complete lack of ability and stopping a couple of times to ask her guitarist if she was "doing it right". A startling and thunderous version of "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You" ramped up the party atmosphere once again, during which all stops were pulled. With no more of a waver in her voice than if she were dancing around down below, Pink dangled and swung upside-down from a trapeze four storeys above the stage. Yep, Gene Simmons might fly up to the rafters, but he stands on a little platform once he's up there. Pink was being held head-down by her ankles, and singing better than dozens of her contemporaries do when they're standing still. The aerial tricks continued into the encore too when she finished off a rock version of "Get the Party Started" by bungee-jumping and closed the show by sailing above the audience dripping wet and wrapped in a huge pink ribbon.

This truly was a spectacular show. I'm not about to go out and carve "P!nk" into my flesh, start putting her music on repeat in the car or anything like that, but for a grisled old metalhead who went along to be with the wife and to see what all the fuss was about, I came away thinking I'd just seen one of the best shows ever. And that's pretty much what a concert should do.

Set list:

• Highway to Hell (intro)
• Bad Influence
• Just Like a Pill
• Who Knew
• Ave Mary A
• Don't Let Me Get Me
• I Touch Myself
• Please Don't Leave Me
• U + UR Hand
• Leave Me Alone (I'm Lonely)
• So What
• Family Portrait
• I Don't Believe You
• Crystal Ball
• Trouble
• Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You
• Sober
• Bohemian Rhapsody
• Funhouse
• Crazy
• Get the Party Started
• Glitter in the Air

PS: I should have mentioned this, but her band was killer. I tried to find out who they were but wasn't able to. The drummer was great and the lead guitarist is a monster.

EDGUY: Fucking With F***

Released: 2009

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Edguy live a couple of times now and they are always an extremely fun band. Even without the visual element of this album’s companion DVD, Fucking With F*** more than adequately demonstrates the good-time vibe of Edguy in concert.

Recorded in front of a rowdy Brazilian crowd in Sao Paolo, Fucking With F*** is 90 minutes of total melodic heavy rock and metal abandon. Both the band and the audience are having an insane time, and Tobias Sammet is pure entertainment. The sound quality is excellent and the track listing is a mixture of their more extended power metal songs like “Vain Glory Opera” and “Tears of a Mandrake” (extended out to 14 minutes with Sammet’s drawn-out band intro spiel) and rock-flavoured songs like “Lavatory Love Machine” and “Superheores”, which are actually better in a live reading than in the studio.

While this is pretty long at over an hour and a half (the CD thankfully leaves out Felix Bonhke’s drum solo), it never drags thanks to a well thought-out set list—even “Save Me” doesn’t cause the pace to drop much—and Sammet’s energy and natural ability as a frontman. When he divides the crowd in half for a sing-a-long in “Babylon” ala Live After Death he almost actually says “Scream for me, Brazil!”, it’s almost as if he’s paying his respects to a major influence on his style.

Live albums can sometimes be pretty dispensible, but Fucking With F*** is one that’s well worth having.

CD 1

1. Catch of the Century
2. Sacrifice
3. Babylon
4. Lavatory Love Machine
5. Vain Glory Opera
6. Land of the Miracle
7. Fucking With Fire (Hair Force One)

CD 2

1. Superheroes
2. Save Me
3. Tears of a Mandrake
4. Mysteria
5. Avantasia
6. King of Fools
7. Out of Control

Rating: 82%

THE RED SHORE: Lost Verses

Produced by Roman Koester

Released: May 2009

The Red Shore has moved in leaps and bounds in the past two years. Each of their releases has displayed a solid progression in technique and direction, and anyone who still wants to brand these guys as deathcore pretenders after hearing this album needs to take a good hard look at themselves.

Lost Verses is a collection of early tracks, re-recorded and reworked into the band’s current style, and that’s very much a modern technical death metal assault ablaze with razor-sharp guitars, mountains of groove and booming and pummelling drums. Even in their formative metalcore phase, The Red Shore always had something extra to offer, and here they add snatches of black metal-style keyboard melodies and tremolo picking to take their music into a new dimension. Unlike a lot of other current bands going for a technical approach, The Red Shore don’t try to step all over each other or fill every space with a sweep. Instead, they just get down to the business of brutality.

“The Valentine’s Day Massacre” opens the album with a keyboard surge and grim shriek worthy of Emperor before ripping atoms apart with death metal guitar violence. “Effigy of Death” and “Flesh Couture” – previously only ever played live – are immense slabs of head-pounding brutal force and on album stand-out “Knives and Wolves” they unload a loose, catchy moshpit groove that’s impossible to resist.

Guitarist Roman Koester’s production allows his band’s music room to breathe, giving the Lost Verses a vitality and immediacy a lot of current death metal lacks. The drums are huge, the guitars are ferocious and heavy and Jamie Hope’s diverse vocal onslaught is an impressive array of barks, shrieks, growls and roars that would rival those of Trevor Strnad from The Black Dahlia Murder. This is a bold statement in metal brutality from a band still yet to peak. Awesome.

1. The Valentine's Day Massacre
2. Sink or Swim
3. Flesh Couture
4. Knives and Wolves
5. Pulling Teeth
6. Effigy of Death
7. I Only Smile When You're Bleeding
8. Thy Devourer
9. When Doesn't Kill You

Rating: 90%

SAGA: The Human Condition

Released: May 2009

Prog veterans Saga almost made it during the 1980s, becoming massive superstars in Puerto Rico of all places before record company interference made them take an abrupt turn into pop territory that led to failure and a career that then plateaued for a while before all but conking out. Nonetheless, the band continues to plug away, and anyone with an ear for tasteful, melodic progressive rock should have at least one Saga album. For those who haven't really followed the career of this near-40 year old band, stylistically these guys fall somewhere in between that of Kansas and late-80s Rush. Or to put it another way, strip away the metallic guitars and epic arrangements from Dream Theater and Saga is what you get.

The Human Condition is their twentieth album, and kicks off with a throwback to the sci-fi inspired sound of their earliest work as meandering guitar lines meet up with robotic vocals low in the mix. "Step Inside" is heavier, with a pronounced Dream Theater-like vibe given emphasis by the vocals of newcomer Rob Moratti, whose style is markedly different from those of Michael Sadler and does indeed have a James LaBrie-esque quality. "Now is Now" and "Let it Go" have a similar DT feel, whereas the laidback MOR of "Hands of Time" could be from the Toto catalogue. The more progressive "Avalon" has some cool synth/guitar interplay and "Crown of Thorns" sounds almost angry, with Moratti adding a slight edge to his voice. On the pop-laced final track, "You Look Good to Me", Saga sound like no one more than a Collins-led Genesis, with an almost danceable hook. Throughout Ian Crichton and Jim Gilmour pull off some stunning work; Crichton's soloing in "Avalon" and particularly "Now is Now" is nothing short of amazing. Brian Doerner's somewhat pedestrian drumming lets the side down a little. The man is no Portnoy or Peart and isn't really a match for the virtuosity of Saga's other members.

In spite of that mild criticism, Saga has created a solid and enjoyable piece of melodic progressive rock with The Human Condition, an album that both sits alongside their extensive catalogue and marks something of a new beginning, a surprising move for a band with a majority of guys in their early sixties to make but one they've been able to pull off.

1. The Human Condition
2. Step Inside
3. Hands of Time
4. Avalon
5. A Number With a Name
6. Now is Now
7. Let it Go
8. Crown of Thorns
9. You Look Good to Me

Rating: 78%

DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT: Ki

Produced by Devin Townsend

Released: May 22

It was always expected that Devin Townsend would make a return to music. For Townsend to quit making music would be just as unlikely as Stephen King giving up writing or Adam Sandler changing his haircut, so it was never a case of if Dr Skinny would be back but when and what it would be like. Ki is merely the first part in a series of four albums that will all be starkly different from one another (the second of which is being recorded as I write), and is in itself far removed from anything Townsend has done before. The closest this comes to anything is Ocean Machine, but even that was intense and bombastic in comparison.

According to Townsend, Ki is something of an ode to sobriety and freedom from chemical dependence. The emphasis is on space and ambience, clean, lilting guitars, quiet vocals and laid-back jams that at times are barely even rock and infinitely distant from the crushing walls-of-sound thrown up by Strapping Yound Lad (Devy promises that the third album of this series, Devastation, will be his heaviest ever). There's very little distortion of any kind and the heaviest it gets is in the last half of "Distruptr" when Devin's voice becomes a growl and the chugging guitars take on a menacing tone. Otherwise, Ki is very much an exploration of progressive ambient rock, rather like a modern imaging of Pink Floyd's pre-Dark Side of the Moon era, but without the trippy psychedelia and self-indulgent sections. There is also a bluesier aspect to Townsend's playing, most evident in the smoky "Trainfire", a ricketty rock n roll number that one could almost picture being done by Elvis or Johnny Cash.

It's unlikely that anyone could have predicted that even Devin Townsend would make an album like this as it is such an off-the-wall departure even for him. While Ki is definitely an interesting release, it's not exactly a gripping one. At best, it's an unpredictable detour into early progressive rock and at worst a little directionless and boring (aspects which are, in essence, two sides of the same coin), but at the very least it is vastly different from the usual rock and metal fodder.

1. A Monday
2. Coast
3. Disruptr
4. Gato
5. Terminal
6. Heaven Send
7. Ain't Never Gonna Win...
8. Winter
9. Trainfire
10. Lady Helen
11. Ki
12. Quiet Riot
13. Demon League

Rating: 65%

HARDCORE SUPERSTAR: Beg For It

Released: June

Hardcore Superstar's Dreamin' in a Casket marked the final stop on the band's journey from punkish glam rock upstarts to genuine heavy metal hellraisers. It was a raucous volume of hard-hitting rock n roll that didn't let up from go to woah, brazen, aggressive, reckless and heavy. In short, it rocked like a motherfucker. So it was always going to be interesting to see how they would follow up such a rollicking piece of work.

In the end, it appears that Hardcore Superstar has gone for safety, because Beg For It is a rather more melodic and formulaic album than its predecessor. There's somewhat more predictability in its mixture of harder upbeat tracks, of which Casket had plenty, and slower melodic ones, of which the last album had none. Rock n roll swagger continues to abound and there's some truly fantastic guitar playing from new guitarist Vic Zino, who almost melts the fretboard a couple of time. But there is also less of the immediacy and urgency of delivery that made their last effort such a corker. It's noticeably less heavy too, marking a shift back toward the more rock direction they were taking on No Regrets. The title track has already become a charting hit for them in Sweden so it could be they are about to hit pay-dirt, but it's ironic that this is the heaviest track on the album.

Beg for It is still a pretty solid piece of work, but less of a force than the last couple. The spaghetti-western inspired intro track is a waste and there is fewer real highlights, although none of the songs are in any way bad either. In the wake of the heavy metal thunder that was Dreamin' in a Casket, Beg for It is rather less satisfying, but a pretty worthewhile listen all the same.

1. This Worm's for Ennio
2. Beg for It
3. Into Debauchery
4. Shades of Grey
5. Nervous Breakdown
6. Hope for a Normal Life
7. Dont Care 'bout Your Bad Behaviour
8. Remove My Brain
9. Spit it Out
10. Illegal Fun
11. Take 'em All Out
12. Innocent Boy

Rating: 72%

HEAVEN AND HELL: The Devil You Know

Produced by Ronnie James Dio, Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi

Released: May 5

Heaven and Hell is a band that has a lot to live up to. Almost 30 years ago this line-up (with Bill Ward in place of Vinny Appice) recorded one of the best heavy metal albums of all, completely revitalising the career of a band that was on the verge of being relegated to rock's history file. Even when these four elder statesmen of metal reconvened there was speculation a full album would ensue, and at last such a beast has emerged. The last time these guys got together the result was less than spectacular, hamstrung by clashing egos and old wounds, but that was long ago. Now, it seems like something that was just meant to be.

In some ways, The Devil You Know is an apt title for this album. When those gigantic riffs come crushing down and that golden voice comes in, it's like slipping into a comfortable pair of old shoes. Yet this is also darker, heavier and gloomier than anything these people have recorded in decades, and that's saying something. And perhaps because of this, I found this album to be a bit of a grower, expecting it to be more like Heaven and Hell. Instead, this is a thoroughly doom-laden volume, with very little of the upbeat rock aspects that came with the Dio-fronted Black Sabbath. Gone too are the themes of optimism and empowerment; Dio's lyrics were always strange but there was something uplifting about them. Here it sounds like he's woken up to a world where everything is black, and he's decided to leave off the analogies and present the darkness as it is. It's not until track seven, the oddly-titled "Eating the Cannibals", where the band breaks out of the slow, almost moribund trudge through the gloom they take from the moment the album begins. Because there's no obvious rock-out hits here like "Die Young" or "Neon Knights", it may take a couple of listens or more for The Devil You Know to sink its hooks in, but when it does it will become apparent just how powerful and pertinent this album is.

The Devil You Know is an ominous album, and very much one for its time. Like the first Black Sabbath releases, The Devil You Know is a mirror of the zeitgeist, a bell tolling doom in dark and troubled times. This is one of the year's best.

1. Atom and Evil
2. Fear
3. Bible Black
4. Double the Pain
5. Rock N Roll Angel
6. The Turn of the Screw
7. Eating the Cannibals
8. Follow the Tears
9. Neverwhere
10. Breaking into Heaven

Rating: 95%