May 24

This day in history:

• 1798 – The Irish Rebellion of 1798 led by the United Irishmen against British rule begins.
• 1981 – Ecuadorian president Jaime Roldós Aguilera, his wife, and his presidential committee die in an aircraft accident while travelling from Quito to Zapotillo minutes after the president gave a famous speech regarding the 24 de mayo anniversary of the Battle of Pichincha.
• 1982 – Liberation of Khorramshahr: Iranians recapture of the port city of Khorramshahr from the Iraqis during the Iran–Iraq War.
• 2019 – Twenty-two students die in a fire in Surat (India).

Births:

• 1938 – Tommy Chong, Canadian-American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
• 15 BC – Germanicus, Roman general (d. 19)
• 1990 – Joey Logano, American race car driver

Deaths:

• 2006 – Henry Bumstead, American art director and production designer (b. 1915)
• 1792 – George Brydges Rodney, 1st Baron Rodney, English admiral and politician, 16th Governor of Newfoundland (b. 1718)
• 2012 – Klaas Carel Faber, Dutch-German SS officer (b. 1922)

Holidays:

• Lubiri Memorial Day (Buganda)
• *Saints Cyril and Methodius Day (Eastern Orthodox Church, Julian Calendar) and its related observance:*
• Bermuda Day (Bermuda), celebrated on the nearest weekday if May 24 falls on the weekend.

Random Article of the day:

Mitosis

'It's terrorism' — Russia launches one of the heaviest strikes on Kyiv during full-scale war

https://kyivindependent.com/explosions-reported-in-kyiv-amid-russian-drone-attack/

#WarOfAggression #Europa #Ukraine #May24 #army #terrorism #Kyiv #war #Russia #WarCriminal #occupiers #defenders
#перемогаYкраїни

Russia-Ukraine war: Frontline update as of May 24

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russia-ukraine-war-frontline-update-as-of-1748066976.html

#WarOfAggression #Europa #Ukraine #May24 #army #update #Frontline #war #Russia #WarCriminal #occupiers #defenders
#перемогаYкраїни

My kid’s bedtime is 8:30pm but it’s still too bright outside to play with sparklers.

Guess we’re staying up til 10 tonight 😩

#victoriaday #may24 #toronto #parenting #dadlife

Stuck in the Filter: May 2024’s Angry Misses

By Kenstrosity

I thought the onset of summer would mean a total solar beatdown. Instead, it’s brought the rain. Absolutely chucking down rain. But, if you thought that bad weather leads to mercy from me, you’re dead wrong. In fact, I pushed my minions even harder to dredge up as many waterlogged nuggets of notable ore from our perpetually overtaxed filtration system.

And so, as my “staff,” who are definitely paid (don’t look into it) dry off in the industrial-grade wind tunnel, allow me to introduce May’s Filter entries for a public I truly don’t care about at all (don’t look into it). BEHOLD!

Iceberg’s Divisive Defenstrations

Cobra The Impaler // Karma Collision [May 24th, 2024 – Listenable Records]

Belgium’s Cobra The Impaler bill themselves as carrying the torch of classic-era Mastodon, a band hitting so many spectrums of metal comparing one’s music to theirs is a much safer bet than not. Led by primary songwriter and ex-Aborted guitarist Tace DC, the band sit somewhere in the murky grey between progressive and technical modern metal. The aforementioned Mastodon worship is strong here—especially in opener “Magnetic Hex”—although the crystal clean production by Jens Borgren really prevents the use of the term “sludge.” Elsewhere there are prog-metal moments of Virus/Vector-era Haken (“Karma Collision,” “The Fountain”) and some of the relentless, drums-in-front compositions of Gojira (“Karma Collision,” “The Assassins of the Vision”). Vocalist Manuel Remmerie’s also has his work cut out for him, delivering plenty of admirable cleans in both high and low registers alongside full-throated screams and somewhat less effective pitched growls. The instrumental performances here are top-notch, professional in the verse/chorus sections, and continuously—sometimes outstandingly—creative in the free-form bridges. There is some tightening to be done with the accessibility of the choruses—they fall flat against the superior instrumental sections— but there are moments of brilliance and a ton of potential in this five-piece.

Capstan // The Mosaic [May 24th, 2024 – Fearless Records]

Anyone who’s plugged into the post-hardcore scene should know that Florida’s Capstan transcend the—rightfully deserved—vitriol thrown at the style. I don’t think any Fearless band has ever been reviewed here, but Capstan’s latest opus The Mosaic deserves a shoutout to whomever hasn’t run screaming from these halls. Led by vocalist Anthony DeMario—sure to be a divisive figure with his unapologetic pop punk cleans—the band has continuously augmented their Warped-core sound with the mathy guitar noodlings of Chon or Polyphia, and an impressive triple vocalist attack for thick, elaborate harmonies. This album, clocking in at over an hour, doesn’t pull any punches, showcasing trip-hop, breakdown-laced numbers (“Bete Noire”), full throated anthems about self-loathing and heartbreak (“Misery Scene”) and even lighter, crooning ballads (“What Can I Say”). Synergy and professionalism are where the band shine; everything has is slickly produced and the performances—especially those vocals—are whip-smart. Plenty of editing could have been done, but you can tell how much fun the band is having. Anyone with a passing interest or nostalgia for 2000’s post-hardcore should check this out. Plus their drummer plays with traditional grip, and watching a jazz guy slam out breakdowns is pretty rad in my book.

GardensTale’s Dose of Decay

Strychnos // Armageddon Patronage [May 17th, 2024 – Dark Descent Records]

I don’t always check out albums that set the comment section and/or Discord abuzz, but when I do, it rarely results in anything less than interesting. Case in point, the bottomless evil of Strychnos, a Danish outfit that struggled to get off the ground in the early 00’s, eked out a single EP in the 10’s, and suddenly started shitting out heaving platters of malicious black/death since the pandemic. Armageddon Patronage is the second full-length off their new production line, and it brings every horseman along for its deadly ride. War is embodied by the lethal double feature that starts the charge, with swelling riffs battering the unjust to fertilizer. The unflinching and unfeeling brutality of Famine seethes from “Choking Salvation,” and out the beaks of “Pale Black Birds” pours Pestilence with slavering enthusiasm. Frontman Martin Leth Anderson, who also handles bass for Undergang, employs a bellowing growl that encapsulates hopelessness and suffering, and the excellent, malevolent riffs usher an effective aura of utter destruction. Death, however, comes not at the end, but during the doom-laden centerpiece, the despondent “Endless Void Dimension” with its atmospheric Gregorian chanting. I have no qualms becoming a patron to this spiteful chunk of armageddon.

Dear Hollow’s Shtanky Shwamp of Shrieks

Saidan // Visual Kill: The Blossoming of Psychotic Depravity [May 24th, 2024 – Self-Released]

Saidan do things a little differently. The Nashville duo’s themes rooted in Japanese folklore and the formidable and mysterious yokai in particular, combined with a relentlessly riffy and punk-driven tour-de-force of black metal proportions are always food for thought in the act’s brief and formidable history. Seamlessly transitioning between punk chord progressions and bouncy drums to blastbeats and kvlt tremolo to groovy riffs and rhythms, anchored by Splatterpvnk’s ripping vocals, it never shies away from punishment. However, interwoven with this assault is a distinctly melodic undercurrent that brightens the progressions and gives purpose and a sense of fun – a hyper-melodic black metal act would be jealous. You won’t be able to shake the grooves of “Desecration of a Lustful Illusion,” the symphonic black intensity of “Genocidal Bloodfiend” and “Veins of the Wicked” hit you like a cyclone, and the classic thrash solos and anime-theme-song vibe of “Sick Abducted Purity,” “Visual Kill,” and “Switchblade Paradise” are guaranteed to get your head banging – plus, the interlude “seraphic lullaby” and instrumental closer “suffer” ain’t half bad. Visual Kill is like if Powerglove wrote a black metal album that you could actually take seriously, backed up with the technicality, songwriting chops, and sheer unbridled energy to make it work.

Parfaxitas // Weaver of the Black Moon [May 31st, 2024 – Terratur Possessions]

The minds behind Parfaxitas should need little introduction, although the moniker will likely not ring any bells. Representing three separate scenes and their respective contributions to black metal lore, two American stringsmen from acts Merihem, Suffering Hour, and Manetherean, Icelandic drummer B.E. from Almyrkvi, Sinmara, Slidhr, and Wormlust, and Norwegian vocalist K.R. From Whoredom Rife collide. Weaver of the Black Moon combines the blueprint of second-wave Norwegian black with the obsidian dissonance of Icelandic, and the experimental edge of American acts, making it a tour-de-force of both vicious sound and tortured atmosphere. Dissonance rains down like acid, a backdrop, and shroud of otherworldly sounds that shimmer and crunch in ways that recall both the winding passages of Suffering Hour and the psychedelic rawness of Wormlust simultaneously. Hammered by vicious blastbeats and guided by tortured barks, the guitar and meandering fluid bass guide listeners from untouchable intensity (“Thou Shalt Worship No Other”) to haunting and hypnotic atmosphere (“Ravens of Dispersion”) – stealing the show. Parfaxitas features a whole lot of firepower, culminating in epic closer “Fields of Nightmares,” a crescendo of punishing and otherworldly proportions.

Aseitas // Eden Trough [May 30th, 2024 – Total Dissonance Worship]

After Aseitas’ formidable 2020 album False Peace, which narrowly missed my AOTY’s, the Portland trio is back with another album – which could easily be classified as an EP in its tidy thirty-minute runtime. Eden Trough condenses the lofty and decadent ambition of its predecessor for an album devoted to complete takedown in winding riffs, punishing death metal, and ravaging vocals. From the thick and punishing signature shifts of “Libertine Captor” and “Alabaster Bones,” complete with shifting riffs and a liminal sense of melody, to the more droning and haunting “Break the Neck of Every Beautiful Thing,” to the epic and cosmic psychedelia of ten-minute centerpiece “Tiamat,” Aseitas’ shows its tantalizing and gradual progression to an echelon of indispensable in the world of dissonant death. Offering influences of convulsive mathcore, mammoth post-metal, and unhinged yet intensely calculated technicality, Eden Trough is a must-listen for the long-time fan, as well as proffering a snapshot to the curious of what makes Aseitas so special to begin with.

Dolphin Whisperer’s Progalicious Ponderings

Azure // Fym [May 23rd, 2024 – Self Release]

Are you way into high fantasy and exuberant, progressive albums that reflect that sentiment? If so, look no further than Azure’s third opus, Fym, which over its runtime recounts the tales of a mystical fox’s journey in a frightening and whimsical world. Normally I wouldn’t think twice about an album with such a storybook concept.1 But between Chris Sampson’s vocal navigations that ring as hyper-tenor and dolphin-like (“The Lavender Fox”)2 as they do sullen and heart-wrenching (“Kingdom of Ice and Light,” “Moonrise”), and Galen Stapley’s mystical fretboard wizardry that marries funk chords, soundtrack melodies, and dance-able shred, Azure packs too much sunshine in their prog for me to ignore. And at almost eighty minutes, they pack a lot of it too. However, each run through Fym’s pages finds a new rumbling bass bounce to propel a hop, a new vocal run to twirl my tongue (with notes that I couldn’t possibly hit), or a synthfully sinful refrain to stain my brain matter with happy juice—”The Azdinist // Den of Dawns” or “Agentic State” unite these ideas best—it’s truly a hard album to put down. Combining just about every era of Genesis with the acrobatics of Dream Theater, the play and ambition of the earliest of Pain of Salvation theatrics, and healthy dose of modern bastardizations (check the autotune/pitchshifting on “Doppelgänger”), Azure has made a mighty statement with Fym that I’m still digesting. And with as many inventive synth patches, harmonic vocal layers, and cinematic builds as this rainbow dose of prog pushes, it’ll be quite some time before I’ve made up my mind about it all. So I’ll continue in pieces. Or all at once. Whatever time allows because Fym is just that much fun.

PreHistoric Animals // Finding Love in Strange Places [May 16th, 2024 – Dutch Music Works]

And here we are with, what’s that, another prog concept album? This one’s a little less terrestrial though, featuring healthy infusions of a futuristic space drama and heavy-hitting synthwave doots and bounces. Over the course of their past couple works, PreHistoric Animals has found an ease in comfortable exploration with their King’s X-like tendency to grip with a barbed verse melody or chorus explosion, layered tastefully with harmonic vocal accompaniment and groove-heavy riffs. But, despite that comparison, it’s clear from the opening synth pulse of “The City of My Dreams” and “Living in a World of Bliss” that an electronic and hooky identity that’s caught between Toto and Yes imbues the edges of refrains that stick like honey to vocalist Stefan Altzar’s easy-on-the-ears narrative. Finding Love in Strange Places can get bogged down a touch in its word-driven nature, though, especially on the various interludes and certain longer tracks like “Unbreakable” and “Nothing Has Changed but Everything Is Different.” None of that fluff ever truly interrupts Finding Love’s heartbeat rhythms, which hold a steady if highly syncopated simplicity and form a hi-hat charming vessel that keeps the head nodding in progressive pomp. Oh, and it helps that guitarists Altzar and Daniel Magdic (ex-Pain of Salvation) have studied the slow-burn solo nature of greats like David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) and Brian May (Queen), with tasteful legato and searing ascensions aiding in earned crescendo at Finding Love’s best moments (“Living in a World of Bliss,” “The Secret of Goodness”). Having reliably churned out confident and catchy works every other years since 2018, PreHistoric Animals fly relatively low in the flock of modern prog, but these space-bound Swedes have earned a likely lifelong aquatic fan at this stage of their growing career. Give Love a chance!

Matrass // Cathedrals [May 17th, 2024 – La Tangente Label]

And, last but not least from my assortment, Matrass hails from France to bring you Cathedrals, which is… yes, you guessed it, another prog concept album! If you’re worried about another album of the synthtastic and 80s prog-themed variety, though, don’t fret about what Matrass brings to the table. Playing closer to post than progressive waters, Cathedrals flitters about dreamy, lounge jazz guitar passages before crushing down with Cult of Luna riffs and Tesseract-inspired, low-end atmospherics. But most important to the groove and cinematic lilt that defines Cathedrals is the methods by which vocalist Clémentine Browne navigates jangling verses with gentle croons and accented, rhythmic spoken word before frying down with screeching and hissing fervor against heavy chord crushes. That talent for establishing and reinforcing mood lands idiosyncratic in the realm of post acts, so her exact methods may not fit the bill for all fans of the rise-and-fall aesthetic the genre offers. And though Matrass remains largely iterative of this mood through its hour-long run, it’s that successful idea of atmosphere that allows peak tracks “Shreds,” “Adrift” (which features Browne on saxophone instead), and “Cathedrals” to conjure such powerful and drifting thoughts in my head. And when you’re in its valleys? Matrass still maintains a textural backdrop that spells high potential for this young act.

Saunders’ Sulfuric Stash

Desolus // System Shock [March 10th, 2024 – Hells Headbangers]

Who’s up for some explosive, throwback thrashy goodness? Although hailing from the States, Desolus take plenty of inspiration from classic German trash titans Kreator, Destruction and Sodom. Throw in classic Dark Angel vibes, a heavy, modern edge and crunchy production job, and the band’s debut System Shock ticks all the boxes for a thrashing great time. This shit is seriously jacked with unhinged, old-school aggression, spitfire riffs and stampeding percussion propelling the album’s ten speed-driven assaults. An utterly deranged, ’80s underground-inspired vocal performance adds further steel-plated authenticity to a retro-minded sound that manages to sound fresh and inspired. Aside from rare moments of slower melodic nuance on the otherwise blistering “Sea of Fire,” and the aptly titled “Interlude” providing a handy breather, Desolus crank speed and intensity to the max, rarely breaking from their relentless stride. The opening one-two salvo of “System Shock” and bonkers lunacy of “From Man to Machine” set a savage tone and gritty platform from which Desolus launch assault after assault of high-octane thrash mania. “Cures of the Technomancer” is an absolute riff beast with groove and speed for days, while “The Invasion Begins” deftly puts you in a false sense of bouncy melodic security before jamming the afterburners into a typically ferocious attack. Exuberant, nasty stuff.

Terminal Nation // Echoes of the Devil’s Den [May 3rd, 2024 – 20 Buck Spin]

The second album from Pittsburgh bruisers Terminal Nation hits with sledgehammer force, obliterating any semblance of subtlety in favor of an extra beefy, in-your-face hybrid of death metal and hardcore. Echoes of the Devil’s Den features a searing, politically charged and seriously pissed-off bite. High-profile guest vocal slots seamlessly blend into the vicious attack, including strong turns from Integrity‘s Dwid Hellion (“Release the Serpents”), Killswitch Engage‘s Jesse Leach (“Merchants of Bloodshed”) and Nails frontman Todd Jones. Jones features on “Written by the Victor,” a vicious tune that harnesses thick, neck-wrecking grooves and punishing, doom-laden death grooves. The album’s hardcore influence and political slant may turn off certain listeners, but those who don’t mind some hardcore in their death stew should find plenty to like here. The gritty, muscular exterior features nods to Bolt Thrower and All Shall Perish, while the weighty, mid-paced crush, chunky riffs and breakdowns are balanced by tasteful melodic counterpoints and livelier bursts of speed (“Dying Alive”). Not all works; the provocative, anti-police song “No Reform (New Age Slave Patrol)” musically has its moments; however, the heavy-handed lyrical approach sticks out like a sore thumb. Nevertheless, Echoes of the Devil’s Den swings and slugs you more often than it misses.

Steel Druhm’s Sewer Tarts

The Troops of Doom // A Mass to the Grotesque [May 31, 2024 – Alma Mater Records]

For their sophomore outing, Brazilian death-thrashers The Troops of Doom took their vintage Sepultura-esque sound and juiced it up considerably from what we heard on 2022s Antichrist Reborn. A Mass to the Grotesque still sounds a bunch like classic Sepultura but it’s much more refined, developed and expanded in scope. Yet it’s still a frenzied, thrashing assault full of lyrics about evil, demons, and all things anti-Christian. It sounds like something that should have dropped in as the 80s thrash wave started mutating into proto-death, and that is a beloved era of music for yours Steely. Songs like “Chapels of the Unholy” and “Dawn of Mephisto” sit right on the bleeding edge of thrash and early death, with Slayer-tastic riffs colliding with early examples of death grooves. What makes this so entertaining is how the band reaches outside of the Sepultura homage bubble to drag in new elements to expand their sound. Some songs feel slightly progressive (“Denied Divinity”) while elsewhere they shoehorn epic doom into the massive “Psalm 7:8 – God of Bizarre.” The straight-up riffbeasts are my favorites though, with “The Imposter King” being a big, fat, sweaty highlight. While these cats are always going to get compared to classic Sepultura, they made real efforts here to stake out their own identity. This is a wild, testosterone-fueled ride featuring the maximum allowable Satan, and I support that.

#20BuckSpin #2024 #AMassToTheGrotesque #Aborted #AllShallPerish #AlmaMaterRecords #Almyrkvi #AmericanMetal #ArmageddonPatronage #Aseitas #Azure #BelgianMetal #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BoltThrower #Capstan #Cathedrals #CHON #CobraTheImpaler #CultOfLuna #DanishMetal #DarkAngel #DarkDescentRecords #DeathMetal #Desolus #Destruction #DissonantDeathMetal #DreamTheater #DutchMusicWorks #EchoesOfTheDevilSDen #EdenTrough #FearlessRecords #FindingLoveInStrangePlaces #FrenchMetal #Fym #Genesis #GermanMetal #Gojira #Haken #Hardcore #HellsHeadbangers #Integrity #InternationalMetal #KarmaCollision #KillswitchEngage #KingsX #Kreator #LaTangenteLabel #ListenableRecords #Manetherean #Mastodon #Matrass #May24 #MelodicBlackMetal #Merihem #Nails #PainOfSalvation #Parfaxitas #PinkFloyd #Polyphia #PostHardcore #Powerglove #PreHistoricAnimals #ProgressiveMetal #Punk #Queen #Review #Reviews #Saidan #SelfReleased #Sinmara #Slidhr #Sodom #Strychnos #SufferingHour #SwedishMetal #SystemShock #TechnicalDeathMetal #TechnicalMetal #TerminalNation #TerraturPossessions #TesseracT #TheMosaic #TheTroopsOfDoom #TotalDissonanceWorship #UKMetal #Undergang #USMetal #VisualKillTheBlossomingOfPsychoticDepravity #WeaverOfTheBlackMoon #WhoredomeRife #Wormlust #Yes

Locusts and Honey – Teach Me to Live That I Dread the Grave As Little As My Bed Review

By Dear Hollow

Although professing the inclusion of funeral doom, black metal, and dark ambient, Teach Me to Live That I Dread the Grave As Little As My Bed is a gentle album. Locusts and Honey gently ebbs and flows along well-defined lines of expectations set by patiently unwinding epics like Bell Witch’s Mirror Reaper and Black Boned Angel’s The End in devastating, torturously slow and mammoth riffs, colossal percussion, and vocals from Hell. However, like these albums, there is a core of light, a glimmer of humanity that shines through the vicious and viscous. Locusts and Honey takes inspiration from the well-preserved sacrificial bog bodies of Denmark and Ireland – the macabre – and finds lessons of a life well lived – the light.

UK duo Locusts and Honey is comprised of instrumentalist Tomás Robertson of black metal acts Gergesenes, Nargothrond, and Urne Buriall, and vocalist Stephen Murray of sludge metal quartet Hooden. While influence from black and sludge can be felt, Locusts and Honey blurs the lines between funeral doom and drone in its debut, mountainous dirges pushed to a crackling breaking point, not unlike the noise in BIG|BRAVE’s latest meditation. While rooted in 90s doom styles in Corrupted, Winter, and Esoteric, black metal’s trademark rawness in acts like Darkthrone or Strid offers a scathing overtone to the slow-motion beatdown, depicting cinematic landscapes of dark ambient artists or composers like William Basinski and Henryk Górecki. While Teach Me to Live That I May Dread the Grave As Little As My Bed is far from perfect in its top-heavy design and noisy drone impenetrability, its meditative and melodic qualities make it a promising listen.

It may feel counterintuitive to praise a drone/funeral doom album for its brevity, but Locusts and Honey clocks in just over twenty-eight minutes for their debut.1 Described as one song broken into six movements, the centerpiece is its second “Leathern Cord,” whose mountainous waves greet lamenting melodies that inject a burning tension with a patience that makes its twelve-minute runtime satisfying and evocative. Meanwhile, “Beauty and Atrocity” and “Confraternities of the Cord” embrace peaceful melodies alongside sprawling dense atmospherics, while closer “Damnation of Memoriae” serves as a final look back at the dead in its dark ambient emphasis and diminished chord progression. “Traitor to Love” is the closest to a black metal attack, its dense drone giving a convincing caricature of black metal tremolo picking and blastbeats. Murray’s formidable vocals range from sinister shrieks to hellish growls, shining in “Leathern Cord” and “Traitor to Love,” although the guitar remains the focus throughout. Like any good drone record, Locusts and Honey focuses on utter saturation and poignant evocation, although the effective incorporation of gentle melody is noteworthy.

Although the album is billed as a single song, its movements feel a bit uneven. Although bookended by ambient pieces, Locusts and Honey’s use of “Leathern Cord” as the album climax puts every following track in its shadow. Intro “Surfeit of Lampreys” does a fine albeit brief job of building the suspense, but “Confraternities of the Cord” reiterates its motifs in a slightly more melodic fashion in a significantly shorter runtime – begging the question as to why it’s considered distinct from the main event. While “Beauty and Atrocity” is a better and more honed version of the melodic and “Traitor to Love” maintains its own more blackened identity, each track following “Leathern Cord” never quite lives up. Because of the drone tag, like BIG|BRAVE’s A Chaos of Flowers, the guitar tone that Robertson utilizes is absolutely noisy and inaccessible, and its effectiveness depends on the listener, as it regularly drowns out Murray’s otherwise vicious vocal performance.

Locusts and Honey’s wordsy debut blessedly lets the music do the talking for the dead. Surprisingly more positive than its source material suggests, its dual emphasis on mammoth riffs and tense melody inject more memorable moments than much of contemporary drone/funeral doom offerings. While it remains top-heavy with easy highlight “Leathern Cord” right out of the gates, it nonetheless offers complete and absurdly heavy saturation in ways sure to satisfy. While obscenely devastating and as dark as you expect, Teach Me to Live That I Dread the Grave as Little as My Bed incorporates melody and gentleness in a concise package that hints at greatness to come.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Hypaethral Records
Website: locustsandhoney.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: May 24th, 2024

#2024 #30 #AmbientNoise #BellWitch #BigBrave #BlackBonedAngel #BlackMetal #Corrupted #DarkAmbient #Darkthrone #DroneMetal #Esoteric #FuneralDoomMetal #Gergesenes #HenrykGórecki #Hooden #HypaethralRecords #LocustsAndHoney #May24 #Nargothrond #Noise #Review #Reviews #Strid #TeachMeToLiveThatIDreadTheGraveAsLittleAsMyBed #UKMetal #UrneBuriall #WilliamBasinski #Winter

Look to Windward – The Last Scattering Surface Review

By sentynel

One of the greatest feelings as a reviewer is rolling the dice on a completely unknown band and discovering they’re amazing. But you have to play to win, and I totally failed to pick up any reviews by bands I didn’t already know last year. I resolved to do better this year. There’s no magic formula I’ve found to identifying great promos, so I tend to skim the promo submissions queue and wait for things to catch my eye for whatever reason. Look to Windward immediately stood out. Prog with a name that might be an Iain M Banks reference?1 Perfect. And they’ve been around as a studio collaboration since 2009 and this is their third album, so they ought to have found their groove.

The Last Scattering Surface pretty much immediately hits a lot of prog staples. The songwriting is varied, with changeable moods, complex song structure, and a multi-track movement. The riffs recall, say, Haken in their rhythms and chunkiness (“Why Ask?,” “The Condition”). The use of paired male and female vocals meanwhile reminds me of Anathema, particularly in the way they trade phrases or segments (“Relic,” “Earth Overture”). There are several different vocalists on the album, and this and the writing also bring shades of Ayreon at times too (“Dance of the Futile”). There are references to older prog as well, in the synths on “Dance of the Futile” or the guitar solo in “Theia Arrived One Fateful Day.” These things are tropes for a reason and generally work well.

The problem with tropes, though, is the lingering sense of déjà vu that pervades the entire album. While I never get the sense that a particular section is directly lifted from another band, I spend a significant proportion of it with that itch of “ooh this really reminds me of something” that I can’t quite put my finger on. I also find that the writing doesn’t ever quite deliver emotional impact. Consequently, I find myself zoning out on The Last Scattering Surface a lot. It’s rarely as ear-wormy or even memorable. Even the more interesting bits don’t stick as well as they should (“Why Ask?”). Many sections of the album slip by with nary a mark left—I still couldn’t tell you a thing about tracks like “River Mercury” or “Spin.”

Many of the highlights are down to vocalist Emily Rice, who has a great voice and stylistic range and elevates everything she appears on. “Theia Arrived One Fateful Day” is a particularly strong example. The guitar work is always strong technically, and there are some great riffs here (“The Condition,” “Dance of the Futile”). It also sounds good, especially for something self-produced, with a nice DR9 master and plenty of space for all the moving parts. On the downside, there are occasional issues with the male vocals. There’s moments that are slightly charmingly rough-and-ready in a way that again reminds me of some early prog (“Why Ask?”), but also some moments where they just sound a little strained (“Relic,” other bits of “Why Ask?”). And the programmed drums are… there.

Despite its issues, there’s a lot to like on The Last Scattering Surface. Its best moments find talented musicians playing interesting music, with a good balance of the weird, the complex and the poppy. There are strong foundations and flashes of greatness, and perhaps with a clearer vision it could hit those more consistently. But in hewing too close to prog tradition, Look to Windward lose their own voice and my attention, and that’s a shame.

Rating: Mixed
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: FLAC
Label: Self-Released
Websites: looktowindwardmusic.com | looktowindward.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: May 31st, 2024

#25 #2024 #Anathema #Ayreon #Haken #LookToWindward #May24 #NewZealandMetal #ProgressiveMetal #ProgressiveRock #Review #Reviews #SelfReleased #TheLastScatteringSurface