Artist: Melvins Album: A Senile Animal Genre(s): Heavy Metal, Rock Subgenres(s): Doom Metal, Hardcore Punk, Sludge Metal, Stoner Rock Released: 2006 Length: 41 minutes Language(s): English Label(s): Ipecac Recordings
Track List:
01. The Talking Horse
02. Blood Witch
03. Civilized Worm
04. A History of Drunks
05. Rat Faced Granny
06. The Hawk
07. You’ve Never Been Right
08. A History of Bad Men
09. The Mechanical Bride
10. A Vast Filthy Prison
A Senile Animal is the 15th album by sludge metal pioneers Melvins. Playing alongside founding members Buzz Osborne (guitar) and Dale Crover (drums) are bassist Jared Warren and drummer Coady Willis of Big Business. Having 2 drummers might sound redundant or gimmicky even for a band that pioneered the unlikely fusion of hardcore punk and doom metal but any sense of doubt is buried deep under an avalanche of marinated distortion and mayhem.
All 4 band members share vocal duties but you’ll be hard pressed to single out who’s who with their uniformed ghoulish wails. Aside from the odd line, the lyrics are hard to make out even at the best of times. In a way that can only be pulled off in rock music, the lack of clarity here adds a certain murky charm to A Senile Animal.
The blend of hardcore punk and unassuming doom metal plods with the aesthetics of stoner rock rings true to the sludge metal sound. Most songs on A Senile Animal lean heavily in favour of the hardcore punk influences as well as the unique styling of the Melvins. The major change comes with the last 3 songs; A History of Bad Men, The Mechanical Bride and A Vast Filthy Prison. They are on average 6.5 minutes long (whereas most other songs are about 3 minutes) and the tempo all but dies so that the Melvins can let the doom metal inspiration ooze out.
Their flexible song-writing and genre-bending styles add a wealth of depth that is rounded off by how fluidly drummers Dale Crover and Coady Willis play together. The Melvins will give you a real tour de force on A Senile Animal that you won’t find anywhere else.
Artist: Ulver Album: Shadows of the Sun Genre(s): Ambient Subgenres(s): Ambient Released: 2007 Length: 40 minutes Language(s): English Label(s): The End Records, Jester Records
Track List:
01. Eos
02. All the Love
03. Like Music
04. Vigil
05. Shadows of the Sun
06. Let the Children Go
07. Solitude (Black Sabbath Cover)
08. Funebre
09. What Happened?
Shadows of the Sun is an ambient album by Ulver. By this point in their career, anyone familiar with Ulver should know that you can’t predict what direction they’ll take on their next album and to live up to their reputation, they followed up their noisiest album in about a decade (Blood Inside, 2005) with one of their softest albums to date.
Unlike the swirling keyboard sounds that are common to ambient music, Ulver utilises live instruments to make up the bulk of the album and go as far as including a theremin on Eos and Funebre while hiring a string quartet that appears on many of the songs. If sombreness could be personified by any musical work it would be Shadows of the Sun.
If you listen to Shadows of the Sun casually a lot of the music can blend into a long soundscape but if you pay attention you will hear thoughtful piano melodies and dramatic strings that make Shadows of the Sun an exceptionally cohesive, low key album perfect for the small hours. Kristoffer Rygg’s voice remains within the baritone range for most of Shadows of the Sun, which suits the theme of the album perfectly and happens to be one of his strongest performances with Ulver.
Ulver shakes off the hazy atmosphere by weaving glitchy noises and thudding percussion together on songs such as Like Music, a calm piano ballad that turns into an eerie dark ambient soundscape and Let the Children Go, which builds up to a dramatic martial industrial anthem with another appearance of the trumpet to avoid any accusations of monotony.
Another standout moment is the cover of Black Sabbath’s Solitude, which holds true to the original but Ulver manages to make it their own song by making the bass more prominent and replacing the flute with the trumpet. It holds the same feeling as the original and surprisingly, it fits in with the rest of Shadows of the Sun despite it being the only rhythm based song on the entire album.
The cover art for Shadows of the Sun is actually a good reflection of the album once you’ve heard it and although music doesn’t fit neatly into a single genre, ambient is the closest you will get given the texture heavy nature of the songs.
Shadows of the Sun is a creative set of soundscapes that continue to explore the prevalent melancholic themes Ulver revel in to create (and reinvent) their unique musical vision with.
Reverend Bizarre In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend Review
Artist: Reverend Bizarre Album: In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend Genre(s): Heavy Metal Subgenres(s): Doom Metal Released: 2002 Length: 74 minutes Language(s): English Label(s): Sinister Figure, Low Frequency Records (2003 rerelease), Spikefarm Records (2004 rerelease)
Track List:
01. Burn in Hell!
02. In the Rectory
03. The Hour of Death
04. Sodoma Sunrise
05. Doomsower
06. Cirith Ungol
In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend is the first full length album by Finnish doomsters Reverend Bizarre. They draw heavily from doom metal pioneers Candlemass and most of the songs you’ll hear are upwards of 10 minutes with the exceptions being Burn in Hell and Doomsower, the latter of which is followed up by Cirith Ungol, the 21 minute monolithic conclusion to In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend.
Reverend Bizarre have all of the hallmarks of the traditional doom metal sound; long songs with an atypical structure, sparse guitar plods, dramatic baritone singing, religious iconography and a guitar tone so thick that you can almost see it. Opener Burn in Hell has enough material to carry itself while establishing the consistent sound of Reverend Bizarre’s debut. Singer and bassist Sami Albert Hynninen (performing as Magister Albert) delivers one of the best lines of the album on this song, the spiteful “you bastards” that finishes the dirge.
Unfortunately by the time you get to The Hour of Death, you’ll find the songs start to lack variety and substance as Reverend Bizarre force themselves to drag out the slow, distorted passages beyond what most people would consider reasonable and it feels like they are doing it for the sake of it. Cirith Ungol embodies all of these negative traits despite having some tasteful throwbacks to Black Sabbath’s self-titled song and Iron Man.
Guitarist Kimi Karki (as Peter Vicar) and drummer Jari Pohjonen (as Earl of Void) kick the songs into gear between the guitar plods (as heard best on In the Rectory and Sodoma Sunrise) with some fantastic up-tempo guitar grooves, rapid drum fills and even an extended psychedelic guitar solo that will catch you off guard. The entirety of Doomsower is a curve ball in its own right. It is a brilliant hybrid of doom metal and stoner rock that is condensed into relatively short 5 minute blast. It shows exactly what the trio of Reverend Bizarre are capable of doing when they get straight to business without any of the filler material pointlessly jammed in there.
When Reverend Bizarre can be bothered to play with feeling they have some serious content to offer and if they followed this routine for the other songs it would have improve the experience tenfold. The dragged out passages don’t have the desired effect of building a foreboding atmosphere and will instead leave you cold after listening for long enough. While Reverend Bizarre have a genuine passion for creating doom metal, they prove to be too ambitious for themselves on In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend so sparing a few glowing moments, this is an album that should be reserved for doom metal fanatics.
Artist: Various Artists Album: Flowers Made of Snow Genre(s): Ambient, Folk, Industrial, Neoclassical, Noise Subgenres(s): Dark Ambient, Martial Industrial, Neoclassical, Neofolk, Power Electronics Released: 2004 Length: 55 minutes (CD 1), 63 minutes (CD 2) Language(s): English Label(s): Cold Meat Industries
Track List (CD 1):
01. Coph Nia – The Oath
02. The Protagonist – The Sick Rose
03. In Slaughter Natives – The Vulture
04. Olen’k – Season of Tears
05. All My Faith Lost – Sleep Now
06. The Last Hour – Into Empty Depth
07. Apatheia – Safehouse
08. Ataraxia – Incabala
09. Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio – Yesterday Brings But a Serpent of Ash
10. Hexperos – The Warm Whisper of the Wind
11. Sibelian – The Sin Eater
12. Sanctum – Lie Low
Flowers Made of Snow is a Various Artists compilation by the Cold Meat Industry label. Presented as a sampler of the labels current artists, the compilation covers ambient, folk, industrial and noise music across 2 CDs and 23 different artists. The first CD focuses largely on the more accessible side of Cold Meat Industry with a diverse set of neofolk, martial industrial and neoclassical songs.
The Oath by Coph Nia sets the tone with a dramatic spoken word performance. The lyrics act as a proclamation for Cold Meat Industries, which are seemingly the rejection of mainstream culture and more specifically the music associated with it. Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio is the only other martial industrial band featured on Flowers Made of Snow and while the subgenre is sadly underrepresented, together they show what can be offered in their brief but powerful presence.
There are 3 neoclassical nightmares courtesy of The Protagonist, In Slaughter Natives and The Last Hour. The only thing to be said for certain of the neoclassical songs is that the performers are not happy people. Between the hushed murmurs, haunting soprano wails, tense violins and bleak ambiance, you’ll feel as though you’ve found yourself in the middle of someone else’s misery in these emotive pieces.
Making up about half of the first CD is a set of groups playing neofolk music that at times sounds worlds apart from each other despite being under the same umbrella. All My Faith Lost and O’lenk play low key songs with female lead singers that don’t pull any punches. In contrast Hexperos follow suit until their song (The Warm Whisper of the Wind) is warped into another neoclassical nightmare akin to The Vulture by In Slaughter Natives.
Apatheia and Ataraxia both perform uncharacteristically lively songs that are like reimagining’s of medieval folk music. They both have catchy acoustic guitars and more upbeat singing styles (the latter of which sounds like a cross between chanting, yodelling and opera singing) that evens out some of the tension present in many of the other songs.
Sibelian takes influence from both the neoclassical and martial industrial camps for the 9 minute mini-epic The Sin Eater. Some elements of electronic music can be heard through the sound effects and (what sounds like programmed) drumming. This conceptually links to Lie Low by Sanctum, the final song on the first CD. It is a dissonant song belonging to the power electronics subgenre of noise music. It doesn’t fit in with the rest of the music found here and acts as a disturbingly unwelcome prelude to the second CD.
The first CD in the Flowers Made of Snow compilation does an excellent job of showcasing what Cold Meat Industries and the fringe genres of martial industrial, neoclassical and neofolk have to offer if you can stomach melancholic music in this diverse and ever twisting compilation.
Track List (CD 2):
01. Desiderii Marginis – Where I End and You Begin
02. Raison D’etre – Mouldering the Forlorn II
03. Atrium Carceri – Impaled Butterfly
04. Mz.412 – In Hoc Signe Vinces
05. Brighter Death Now – While You Sleep
06. IRM – My Mother
07. Deutsch Nepal – Of Parasites and Disguises
08. Nacht – Death Posture
09. Beyond Sensory Experience – The Trade
10. Sephiroth – Therasia
11. Skin Area – Choose Art… Not Life
The second CD of the Flowers Made of Snow compilation is in stark contrast to the first. It focuses exclusively on the subtle and the abrasive (and arguably hostile) side of Cold Meat Industries in the form of dark ambient and power electronics music.
It starts out harmless enough with Where I End and You Begin by Desiderii Marginis, a dark ambient song fused with soft guitar distortion and what sounds like the slow, distant groans of a didgeridoo. Raison D’etre and Atrium Carceri carry on the dark ambient themes and almost link together to create an interesting 3 part song.
Mz.412, Brighter Death Now and IRM are three noise groups that work together in the same way as the dark ambient trilogy do. Unfortunately these songs are on the opposite side of the musical spectrum and are grating enough to make blood ooze profusely from every orifice on your body. Thankfully Nacht and Skin Area are the only other 2 noise groups on the CD with Deutsch Nepal, Beyond Sensory Experience and Sephiroth stepping in between these seemingly unending harsh songs to offer some relief from the discomfort they cause.
You could just as easily sit in a cement mixer and get someone to bash it with crowbar to achieve the same headache inducing effect that you get from the noise songs. The only difference is that you wouldn’t need to put up with the artistic pretence to get one.
The coupling of these genres provides an excellent contrast in sound if nothing else. The dark ambient songs on the second CD of the Flowers Made of Snow compilation are certainly worth a listen if you have the patience for eerie soundscapes but the noise songs should be left well alone unless you are a masochist or hate yourself.
