Record(s) o’ the Month – July 2024

By Angry Metal Guy

The middle of summer is rarely the best time for the metal release schedule. While there have been some notable July releases over the years, it seems like labels tend to fit their highest-profile releases into the Autumn. Still, for July of 2024, there was a slate of solid recommendations from the staff and readers, making this one of those months when it’s both good and hard to be the king. It’s been tough to choose, honestly. So rather than wasting your time crafting a long, comical intro, I’m just going to cut right to the chase.

Wormed released its fourth full-length entitled Omegon [Bandcamp], the first in eight long years, on July 5th from Season of Mist. In response, our Maddog wrote an epic that lifted my experience of Omegon even further. Omegon and its review share a feature in that they are both exceptional art. What differentiates them, however, is that Wormed’s long break finds the Spaniards having honed their unique brand of technical, chaotic, and deeply brutal death metal into something particularly caustic and effective. Both chaotic and gripping, Omegon assaults the senses and excites the imagination. And aside from any individual component in the music, Omegon succeeds, as Maddog explained, “because it flows so well, allowing its headbangability persist even through its stupefying time signature changes. Wormed’s irresistible blend of Stone Age brutality and Space Age technicality launches them into the ranks of Gorod, Archspire, and Revocation, despite sounding worlds apart from those bands. Throughout its 41 minutes, the spectacle of Omegon holds you rapt.”

Runner(s) Up:

Octoploid // Beyond the Aeons [July 5, 2024 | Reigning Phoenix Music]1 — Every time I write an Amorphis review, I comment on how nobody sounds like Amorphis except Amorphis (er, and Barren Earth). Well, I guess we need to add another band to that list: Octoploid. The reason why is obvious, written by bassist Olli-Pekka Laine, Beyond the Aeons has the characteristic sound he’s dragged with him wherever he goes. His particular tendencies—that psychedelic vibe from Elegy-era Amorphis mixed with an energetic melodic death metal that rests comfortably in 6/8 swings—make Beyond the Aeons both immediately recognizable and an addictive listen. With instantly memorable melodies, a host of guest appearances, and a 38-minute run-time perfectly suited for the music, Octoploid’s debut is an instant success and most definitely in my running for end-of-year considerations. Kenstrosity, who weirdly underrated something and doesn’t appear to know who Olli-Pekka Laine is, was still “unreasonably excited by Octoploid’s debut” because “it represents a side of the melodic and progressive death metal scenes that I don’t hear often, and I want so much more.” Should I tell him about classic Amorphis or nah?

Assemble the Chariots // Unyielding Night [July 22, 2024 | Seek & Strike Records | Bandcamp] — Back when deathcore was just tough guys who challenged me to fights in the comment section because I don’t like run-in-place breakdowns, it was easy to know what the genre was and it was fairly easy to ignore. Assemble the Chariots is apparently a deathcore band, but I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t read it. To these Olde Metal Guy ears, they sound mostly like a mashup of Fleshgod Apocalypse, [(Luca) Turilli(’s) / Lione] Rhapsody [of Fire], and ’90s symphonic black metal. And yeah, I guess there are enough chug riffs, the drums sound heavily replaced, and the production is a brickwalled nightmare. Still, none of that stuff is enough to stop me from fully embracing the bombastic majesty that is Unyielding Night, which marks Assemble the Chariots’ debut platter. The unreasonably productive Dear Hollow is on the same page as me.2 He summarized it well when he wrote: “Subtlety is not a priority in Unyielding Night, and Assemble the Chariots offers an album whose intensity and pomp align impressively with the grandiosity of the tragedy of Aquilegia. As such, it’s long, over-the-top, constantly intense, and likely too much for some listeners. However, Unyielding Night is a powerful, energetic bombast that tastefully includes deathcore’s signature brutality without diving headlong into stagnation. Assemble the Chariots is something special.”

Seth // La France des Maudits [July 14, 2024 | Season of Mist | Bandcamp] — Seth’s La France des Maudits should help cement the band as a defining force in black metal, delivering an album that surpasses even their 2021 comeback La Morsure du Christ. With a blend of fierce trem-picked riffs, dynamic vocals, and rich atmospheres Seth captures both the rage and sorrow of revolution. The album’s intricate layers of melody and powerful emotional range elevate it beyond a standard black metal album, weaving themes of defiance with melancholic introspection. Seth masterfully balances aggression with poignant beauty, creating an experience that feels cinematic in its scope and affecting in its intensity. Every element, from the dramatic chorals to the blistering guitars, contributes to a soundscape that is both expansive and clear. From this fawning enthusiasm, you can tell that Thus Spoke was the unbridled lover of black metal behind this review. And it was obvious by the end of it, that she would go to the barricades for Seth when she declared: “Experience for yourself the phoenix-like rise in all its vitriolic, pathos-soaked glory, and join the revolution. ‘Tous, Marchons sur le monde!’” I can only imagine that got her landed on some watchlist. But she wasn’t wrong that La France des Maudits is worthy of our attention!

#2024 #AssembleTheChariots #BeyondTheAeons #Blog #Jul24 #LaFranceDesMaudits #Octoploid #Omegon #RecordSOTheMonth #SeasonOfMistRecords #Seth #UnyieldingNight #Wormed

Assemble the Chariots – Unyielding Night Review

By Dear Hollow

Although Unyielding Night is the first full-length of Finland’s Assemble the Chariots, they have long felt more veteran than their peers. Releasing a string of EPs that transition from djenty deathcore to an early progenitor of blackened deathcore, Unyielding Night is as epic a debut as they come. Simultaneously conjuring a future of an interdimensional war among the stars with the age-old philosophy of heroism and plight, it is an album devoted to all things bombastic and cinematic. Soaring symphonic soundscapes, blazing riffs, and relentless percussion combine with an original story, it tells the tragedy of the cursed planet Aquilegia against a mysterious solar system-consuming hive-mind entity called the Evermurk – excelling in lore and mythology. Unyielding Night is a blackened deathcore album and a damn good one at that: one whose attack is effective and future is tantalizing.

Unyielding Night is the first installment of the act’s planned Ephemeral Trilogy, and Assemble the Chariots’ waste no time abusing breakneck tempos and soaring atmospheres. While the trend too often, in line with Lorna Shore’s influence, has been to copy-and-paste symphonic Dimmu Borgir-esque keys atop milquetoast deathcore,1 Assemble the Chariots walks the way of Ovid’s Withering and Mental Cruelty in its relentlessness. A penchant for riffs, a blazing intensity reminiscent of Fleshgod Apocalypse, a futuristic vision akin to Mechina, and songwriting that somehow manages to balance all of it are all features of this behemoth. Featuring a boundary-pushing fusion of the traditional and the futuristic, the epic and the dismal – Assemble the Chariots offers a journey that balances the visceral and the punishing.

While Assemble the Chariots does profess deathcore, don’t expect the antics of the low-and-slow brutalizers of decades past. Unyielding Night is absolutely relentless and caustic, tempo abusing and unabated in its bombast; even its more placid spoken word-focused interludes crescendos into insanity are noteworthy. A lethal combination, symphonic overlays contrast mightily with riffs galore, as opener “Departure,” “As Was Seen By Augurers,” and “Empress” move fluidly between cutthroat riffs and shifting moods of hope and devastation, while the darker “Reavers March” and “Equinox” match the more morose and dread-inducing subjects. Power metal’s more decadent theatricality makes appearances in the warbling tenor of “Emancipation” and the Kamelot-esque choirs of “Galactic Order” and “Keeper of the Stars” offer a more ghostly appeal. The most blackened moments occur in the tremolo and shrieking of “Empress” and “Galactic Order,” which add a neatly blasphemous and evocative dimension to the album. While inevitably Unyielding Night will conjure similarities to darker deathcore acts like Lorna Shore or Shadow of Intent, Assemble the Chariots simmers and shimmers with energy and fury.

Notably, for as high-brow and potentially alienating as this science fiction/fantasy story and its grand length are, Assemble the Chariots does an excellent job of balancing atmosphere with accessibility. The neck-snapping grooves of “Admorean Monolith” and “Keeper of the Stars” offer necessary tactical grounding on such a relentless attack in their relatively straightforward riff-centric rhythm-based address, while the chill-inducing shreds of “Evermurk” and “Empress” are easily climaxes of intensity, ensuring that Unyielding Night’s baseline of blazing has breath to grow and crescendo. Smartly composed, the album is structured with the natural dynamics of a plot, reflecting the intriguing lore that undergirds each movement and the moods reflecting the tragedy or hope contained therein. Furthermore, while lyrics growled or shrieked by vocalist Onni Holmström tell the story explicitly, they are partnered with the instrumentals, just as accountable for storytelling.

Subtlety is not a priority in Unyielding Night, and Assemble the Chariots offers an album whose intensity and pomp align impressively with the grandiosity of the tragedy of Aquilegia. As such, it’s long, it’s over-the-top, and it’s constantly intense, and likely too much for some listeners. Those nostalgic for the knuckle-dragging Hot Topic “djunzzz” eras of Chelsea Grin or Suicide Silence will also be disappointed. However, Unyielding Night is a powerful, energetic bombast that tastefully includes deathcore’s signature brutality without diving headlong into stagnation – nearly the exact opposite. The tragedy of the planet Aqualegia is told in a rich tapestry of color and emotion, and I eagerly await the next installments. Assemble the Chariots is something special.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: N/A | Format Reviewed: STREAM
Label: Seek & Strike Records
Websites: assemblethechariots.bandcamp.com | assemblethechariots.com | facebook.com/assemblethechariots
Releases Worldwide: July 22nd, 2024

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