Record(s) o’ the Month – May 2024

By Steel Druhm

Summer is burning and the Olympics had a surprise Gojira sighting, sparking a minor Satanic panic in some quarters. 2024 continues to fly by at a crazy pace but it’s been a fairly sleepy year for metal without a wealth of killer releases to distract us from life’s cruel grind. May did have a decent haul of good moments though and we’re finally getting around to classifying and ranking them. Better late than never right? You shut up.

Ukranian death metal act Hell:on come to kill on Shaman, and they spice up their brutal death attack with ritualistic and folk elements, veering into the realm of Behemoth but sounding different enough to be their own altered beast. The extraneous elements are used smartly to flesh out typically ugly, uncompromising death metal tracks, giving them a unique character without ever letting things get too soft or strange. The end result is a truly murderous album that delivers the violence in interesting ways that demand repeat spins and focused attention. Mystical and monstrous rarely sounded this oppressive. Holdeneye summed it up thusly, “I can’t find one single thing to complain about on Shaman. It’s nearly a perfect album in my book, and it only gets better the more I listen.” Big stuff.

Runner(s) Up:

Warlord // Free Spirit Soar – Long, long ago, Warlord had the metal world buzzing over their debut EP Deliver Us. With future Fates Warning member Mark Zonder manning drums, the sharp, memorable take on classic metal garnered praise and featured at least one enduring hit that still gets covered by bands today. After that their career had numerous missteps and they ended up falling well short of their potential. This struggle bus history makes it all the more shocking that they managed to drop a truly great album in 2024 after the death of founding guitarist Bill Tsamis (Lordian Guard). With a revamped lineup, Mark Zonder and friends bring classic 80s metal thunder to the world on Free Spirit Soar and it’s brilliant. With a sound spanning Wytch Hazel, Atlantean Kodex, and Savage Grace, no stone is left unturned if a tasty 80s riff is hidden beneath. You end up with a classy, polished, endlessly hooky platter of regal throwback metal, and the best thing Warlord ever did. Talk about a comeback!

Aquilus // Bellum II – Atmo-sympho black metal act Aquilus have a proven track record of fusing metal and symphonic elements in a way that just works. The soundscapes certainly can be pretentious, but gripping atmospheres and ornate, beautiful compositions are forged, taking the best parts of black metal and giving them a classical makeover. Oppressive blackened tropes are paired with somber string and piano lines to create something that isn’t quite black metal but reeks of it nonetheless. This is chamber music for the insane, but it’s beautifully conceived and executed. As a gobsmacked El Cuervo gushed, “it’s so fucking good that I really can’t criticize it for taking itself so seriously. It’s the work of a master craftsman, immaculately composed, performed, and arranged into an ornate and beautiful example of human creativity. ” Fancy music for fancy folks.

#2024 #Aquilus #BellumII #FreeSpiritSoar #HellOn #RecordSOTheMonth #Shaman #Warlord

Aquilus – Bellum II Review

By El Cuervo

Aquilus occupies a place of special importance in my music collection. One or two exceptions aside, 2011’s Griseus and 2021’s Bellum I offer the best fusions of symphonic music and heavy metal that I’ve heard. Now in 2024 Bellum II completes the puzzle started by its predecessor. A gap of just 2.5 years, compared with 10 years, is far more digestible and strikes while the band remains fresh in my mind. The soloist sitting behind everything, Horace Rosenqvist, already felt like a master of his craft on the production of his first album, with the second just another iteration of that mastery. Can Bellum II match such stratospheric quality?

The opener called “By Tallow Noth”1 is an ideal, 2.5 minute microcosm of the whole thing. Subtle quietness gives way to a grand organ, gradually adorned with layers of strings and a muted choir. It’s a sobering, somber marker of the album’s tone. Rolling drums gradually louden before the first blackened whirlwind storms through the track, blending oppressive heaviness and shrieks with bold violins. The extraordinary, ornate composition belies a record incorporating black metal instrumentation – tremolo-picked guitars, blast beats, harsh vox – but which isn’t truly black metal. It’s undoubtedly crushingly heavy when required. The overall feel is a bit crunchier than previously thanks to a mix that weighs marginally more towards the guitars and drums. But Bellum II is first an orchestral album, prioritizing violin melodies over the chaos and a piano over the quietness.

It’s difficult to describe just how grandiose Bellum II is. It’s grand in ambition and grand in execution. It’s divided into eight tracks as you might expect from a typical metal release, but flows more like a symphony through multiple movements. It’s always satisfying to hear a movement return to the core melodic motifs after straying the path for sometimes minutes at a time. The tracks are circular, typically concluding somewhere close to where they began, but the intervening journey sets an exciting course across varied, undulating soundscapes. The music develops so quickly and so frequently, even across the softer moments, that it’s endlessly rewarding for close listening. By comparison, you sometimes hear records that are under-developed; the songwriting is basic, the transitions rudimentary. But seamless doesn’t begin to describe how Bellum II flows between its passages, even when those passages juxtapose savage shrieks with gentle acoustic guitars and violins. And its compositions are simply immaculate, morphing into whatever the song-writing demands at any given moment. The music is stuffed full of devastating dichotomies: elegance and savagery; serenity and chaos; airiness and crunch. Aquilus subtly and assuredly transitions through all of them.

Bellum II is structured around two mammoth-sized central tracks, with shorter ones fitting around these. The closing duo called “Amidst Soughing Tristesse” and “The Pillared Dark” are both at the softer, orchestral end of the album’s musical spectrum, and close things on a powerful, mournful note. They’re relatively sparse but pack an emotional punch. By contrast, “Nigh to Her Gloam” and “My Frost-Laden Vale” each feature nearly 17 minutes of densely compacted instrumentation and orchestrations, arranged into intricate, progressive song structures. Good though they are, there’s a lot going on. I’m forced to ask myself if they’re too much; maybe too changeable or too dramatic? My conclusion after repeated listens is that too much overstates any concern. But spending more time on fewer passages might enable these tracks to sink deeper because the music here is not quite as sticky as before. Aquilus is never anything less than great, but Bellum II may be a little less exceptional than the prior two releases.

My (uniquely?) British desire to relentlessly mock any type of sincerity – which sometimes gets me into trouble with non-Brits who take me too seriously2 – should mean that I hate Aquilus. Bellum II is just as self-important, and arguably pretentious, as every other release under this name. But it’s so fucking good that I really can’t criticize it for taking itself so seriously. It’s the work of a master craftsman, immaculately composed, performed and arranged into an ornate and beautiful example of human creativity. Is Bellum II as good as other Aquilus output? Maybe not. But it will still be better than almost everything else this year.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Northern Silence Productions
Websites: aquilus.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/aquilus
Releases Worldwide: May 3rd, 2024

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