Mindly Rotten - Proliferation Of Disaster

Brutal Death Metal is one tough fucker to get into. It's like if music was taken to every single limit possible for the result to still be musical. And that is not only what makes it interesting, but also makes it quite a hit-or-miss affair. There definitely is a formula to it, but it's so specific that one has to disfigure it completely so as to have music that is interesting. Which means that, while there might be some household names in the genre, such as Suffocation or Nile, the best that most bands might hope for is one fantastic album, where all the elements just come together, and a batch of unremarkable releases. And, right off the bat, everything about Proliferation of Disaster seemed to scream that Mindly Rotten had taken the wrongest turn among a large array of wrong turns somewhere along the way.

First of all, their debut, The Most Exquisite Agonies, was among the best albums of the genre because of the way it twisted it into a unique, conceptual listen, and making anything in a similar vein would be pointless. Second, this sophomore is from 2011, meaning that it took a suspicious 6 years to release, usually not a very good sign in Death Metal. Third, the band moved from their original headquarters in Colombia to Armenia, to sign to Russian label Coyote. Fourth, the new logo is more easily readable, and the album cover seems more fitting for a generic Deathcore album, unlike the badly drawn yet ominous one from their former record. Top that off with an intro consisting of unspectacular movie samples and you've got yourself a recipe for losing everyone's interest in the album. A shame really, since the "music" part of the album is pretty phenomenal.

This time around, Mindly Rotten have made the somewhat unorthodox move of leaving behind the "incomprehensibility" factor and worked on the "songwriting" and the "riffs" aspect, meanwhile leaving their personal touch to them. And the result is strange, to say the least. The songs here rely strongly on the use of huge contrasts, to create a form of Brutal Death Metal that is at the same time confusing and ultra-technical, but incredibly catchy as well. And what's more, they've managed to make some of the most violent music imaginable with the use of riffs cheerful enough to feature in DragonForce songs. And despite the chaotic nature of the songs, with some patience, one can easily capture the intricate dynamics present in each song. One obvious example of this is "Death's Fatal Flow", which also has the characteristic of coming to a climactic riff halfway through the song and becoming even more intense after that.

Proliferation Of Disaster starts out more restrained and logical, and becomes progressively more erratic and insane, intensifying itself until "Catastrophic Hecatomb (Collosal Destruction)". "Abysmal Delirium (Instrumental Reverie)" follows, with an evidently cheerful and congratulatory undertone, which is a perfectly satisfying ending to an album that leaves you feeling like you had just wrestled a missile-breathing gorillasaurus and won. The album ends with a new version of a song from their previous one, like as though the band wanted you to know how much they have evolved. And I have to say that it is quite a lot. This release may not be as textural or atmospheric or subtle as the debut, but it's definitely weirder, better written, and, well, better. They have improved on the unimprovable. You know those albums that every other album within a genre seems to be compared to? Well, this may one day become one of those.

Standout tracks:

Reign of Confussion (Unpredictable Perturbation)
Outside Forces (Shall Fragmented Beings)
Death's Fatal Flow
Engmatic Hallucinations (At the Edge of Chaos)

Amon Amarth - Twilight Of The Thunder God

I guess we all have a love-hate relationship with money. Yeah, there is the saying that money is the root of all evil, and probably if it weren't for the lust for money, Mr.Burns-in-human-form wouldn't have sued you for 250K€ that time he broke your window with a brick and got cut by a piece of glass. But on the other hand, holding some cash can apparently relieve pain, and it helps people convince other people to do things for them. Also, there are things that just work better if you throw a bunch of money at them, including some types of music. There seem to be these particular kinds of music that are, in essence, sort of okay-ish, really nothing special. They'll usually be easy to digest and catchy, sort of enjoyable, sort of unremarkable. But then you make all the instruments have an incredibly perfect sound, and the vanilla music becomes majestically incredible. Still easy to digest and catchy, but now every note seems like it is gently caressing your limbic system whilst offering it cookies, and everything just seems awesome and original and perfectly fitting.

And I have nothing against that way of making music. After all, I do like listening to things that are enjoyable. The approach may at times end up sounding like a bit of an insult to one's intelligence, but it's one of those insults that you awkwardly laugh at and pretend not to notice. Twilight of The Thunder God, though, takes this approach to its very limits. This being the only Amon Amarth album I have ever listened to, I cannot know for sure, but I take that these guys have found a winning formula and stuck to it. The 10 songs all blatantly use some variation of the classic/tired "Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Interlude-Chorus" structure that has consistently attacked music, and inspiration is rationed throughout them like if there were a global shortage of it. As for the sound itself, it's simple, no-bullshit, balls-to-the-wall, poppy Melodic Death Metal with the slightest tinge of atmosphere. To my surprise, it works. The simple and pretty standard guitar melodies are much more powerful than they are cheesy, and somehow I had no problems with the inbredly simplistic drumming or any of the sillier vocal passages (except maybe the outro on "The Hero". We got it, you're an evil man, now shut up.). And unlike most music I enjoy, I didn't need a lie down and something to stop the headache once I finished the album. In fact, I listened to it twice in a row without a hitch.

I wonder, though, if TotTG would have received the acclaim it has were it by some other band. I mean, it's an album that has no reason to exist, other than to include nicely written music magically turned awesome through the power of sound engineering. Other than the fact that it's fun and nice to listen to, it has no real redeeming features. It's easy to distinguish the songs, but none of them try to stand out in any way. The sound throughout this release does progress ever so slightly, but even that seems to fit safely within the template of "first bunch is heavier, second bunch is more introspective, last bunch is more epic and begins to be boring". I usually can't understand the people who rate albums track by track (okay, I did it ONCE, goddammit), but it seems pretty appropriate on this one.

There are so many things that you can do that don't include listening to Twilight of the Thunder God, like playing frisbee, eating a yogurt, reading a book, listening to inventive music... But then again, you can also listen to Twilight of the Thunder God. It's pretty good for what it is.

Standout tracks:

Twilight of the Thunder God
Where Is Your God?
Varyags of Miklagaard
Embrace of the Endless Ocean

Battles - Mirrored

(See post date)

Not too long ago, I noticed that the “indie” movement had suddenly exploded. Without warning, everyone, no matter what sex, chose to start looking like Gordon Freeman in a sweater and decided to start using the camera their grandma had thrown away, because it was too rusty and depressing, to make “warm” photos to post on Facebook. Everyone was selling their iPod to buy Beatles LPs, and everywhere people only talked of Vampire Weekend and Arcade Fire whilst making romanticist posts on Tumblr that managed to simultaneously sound insightful and naive. Grass went from poisonous green to unhealthy greenish-yellow. Skin went from spray-tanned orange to “radioactive meltdown” dirty-yellow. Glasses and facial hair expanded and lo-fi became all the rage. I think I ought to mention smoking pipe somewhere as well...

I myself didn't follow the movement much, and that applied to the indie music accordingly, as I furiously, relentlessly and tirelessly didn't follow the movement much, meaning that I know as much about it as Pluto knows about still being considered a planet (it probably never knew anyway, as planets tend to be pretty dumb, but I digress). Still, from what I do know about it, and I cannot stress enough that it's very little, the music seems to defend the notion of sounding very pleasant and pretty much ignoring most other things. Battles, on the other hand, fuse this notion with the intricacy and rhythmic candy of jazz and math rock as well as some experimental leanings to create a form of music that I can relate to much better than to any of those genres alone.

The tracks usually revolve around a few core ideas, adding and subtracting layers as they trod through their track length, and these layers are one of the main things Battles have going for them on this debut. The layers make some of the most fun and captivating arrangements I've heard yet, simultaneously spastic and restrained, bombarding you with information without ever becoming confusing, every musician providing space for the others to be creative but without ever turning into a mess. And on top of that, the occasional and incredible vocals, which make the second main thing Battles have going for them on this debut. The way the vocals are alternately controlling and being controlled of/by the surrounding music. And the sound of the vocals themselves is nothing short of brilliant. Their unstable nature, the way they randomly change in pitch, like if Tyondai Braxton had a Helium canister and a valve inside his lungs.

As for progression, the songs are constructed in a "building blocks" fashion, and that begins to really hurt the album toward the latter half. I'm not saying, though, that the material presented on the second half is in any way worse than the material on the first in terms of quality. It's just that the lack of dynamics that originates from the songwriting approach means that there is too little flow, meaning that as the songs become more introspective (yeah, right) and less energetic, the album becomes more tiring and seems to start falling apart. The core ideas are still there, though, and some of these will definitely stay with the listener forever, such as the last 3 minutes of "Rainbow", or the gigantic yet compressed soundscape on "Race : Out", and, like I said, they are what makes the album great.

The same things that could have ended up ruining Mirrored are what make me leave indie music as a last resort. The albums of the style that I have so far listened to are musical, but lacked anything that would make the music interesting on an intellectual level. It's like instead of containing songs, they contain "musical experiences", something to consume and discard and reconsume. For some moments in the album length it really seemed like Battles were falling into that trap too, but they have managed to escape the temptation, and the resulting work is a must hear for anyone who hasn't heard it yet.

Standout tracks:

Atlas
Ddiamondd
Leyendecker
Rainbow
Race : Out

Cranial Incisored - Rebuild:The Unfinished Interpretation Of Irrational Behavior

(09 Jul 2011)

It's really irritating from time to time to mainly enjoy experimental, extreme music, whilst having a small army of fucks that I don't give about more mainstream music. It was to be expected that as I listen to more music, talking about the topic would become easier over time. Unfortunately, it seems to be the other way around. I end up feeling like an asshole whenever I have to include bands like Mindly Rotten or Crimson Massacre just to get a point across and people start saying "yeah" in a "What the hell are you talking about?" kind of way. A simple solution would obviously be to develop a taste for Amon Amarth and Lamb of God, to start going crazy over everything Sumerian Records ever craps out and, of course, start giving a shit about Metal Hammer. On the other hand, though, I can continue to drown my suffering with awesome music instead. As long as stuff like Rebuild:The Unfinished Interpretation of Irrational Behavior is made, I'll stick to the latter option.

Until after a bunch of listens, this debut sounds very amateurish. There is nothing to remember after a casual listen and what is immediately noticeable sounds pretty tasteless and out of place at first. It's just so everywhere at the same time and incoherent and confusing that while one has to appreciate the musicianship, it's like they're shoving all that musicianship at once up your left nostril. Actually, this brings up a very common aspect among the less accessible music, which is the way that what keeps a listener away from the music at first is what makes the listener come back for more afterwards.

For some reason, the listener will go back to be ear-raped again, and again, and again, and this insistence will pay off. The songs will start making sense (sort of), the memorable parts will start to be audible, and one will start to be able to understand what each part is supposed to be. The samples and interludes will still sound dated, but when compared to the timelessness of the sonic assault these guys make, they just had to sound that way for one not to lose their sanity. As for the general sound Cranial Incisored present here, if you like Behold... the Arctopus but wish they were a little less coherent and think they need a yelping dog with throat cancer doing vocals (which makes it practically perfect for me), this is for you.

I could say that I wish Rebuild:The Unfinished Interpretation of Irrational Behavior were more well-known, or that it's massively underrated, but I believe I would be lying. This is the kind of music where enjoyment comes from understanding and learning, and not from the experience itself. The listener has to cooperate. It requires patience and perseverance, rendering it unfit for the casual audiophile or the unprepared. The album holds such a fragile balance of experimentation and quality that it's easy for one to not even notice the "quality" part. Therefore, this is a release that should be best kept obscure for the bold music explorer to discover and enjoy.

Standout tracks

Artificial Intelligence
Nervousness
Psychoanalysis Therapy of Sybil Isabel Dorsett
Unexplored Mind Content
Experimental Thoughts As Shocker Therapy

Ernula x Culian - here's something for none of us

(05 Jul 2011)

Here's something I was not expecting... Cheap beginning joke aside, I really wasn't expecting much from this album. Well, I had no idea what to expect, really. I have virtually no experience in electronic music beyond some Won James Won, some Aphex Twin and a bit of Pendulum. What I was least expecting, though, was to enjoy the album. In other words, I was expecting to listen to some absolute crap. Bizarre crap, but crap nevertheless. After listening to it a few times, I have a new esteem for the musicians on RYM.

The album starts out with an imperfect, uncertain, yet also determined sounding voice sample. Soon, we are also introduced to a simple drum beat that eventually begins to fit the sample, which successfully introduces the listener to the sound that the album will be offering, and this sound and the way it interacts with the music is what makes the album truly interesting. For most of its length, here's something for none of us, with its minimalistic and unrefined instrumentation provides a feeling like the music is creating itself rather than a creator of the music existing. If this album had good production values or a "full" sound, the songs just wouldn't work. As it is, though, it really sets the right atmosphere for the songs.

Still I feel this could have been much better. The album seems to be divided in two main parts: the first four songs, and the last three. Then, they are connected by "glitchout", which ends up not really connecting the halves, but making the album fall apart a little. The first four songs are like a creation of music out of chaos and void, eventually reaching a point of self destruction, leaving rest of the album with a desolate atmosphere. Therefore, "glitchout", to me, seems a little out of place, and really damages the flow of the album.

Otherwise, the strange idea of creation evoked by "ナナナ塊魂リミックス" and "ability of the selfish", the idea of destruction on "kuchi ya seieki karera no me ni wa watashi wa seikō no mesu inu" and "here's a 10 second song sampling some shitty anime you've probably never seen", and the way "beach" evokes an atmosphere of absolute desolation, abandonment and isolation, only emphasized by the contrasting "hypnotic" and the accentuating "limbo", make it an album definitely worth listening, maybe not for its musical ideas, but for the atmosphere the music implements. This will definitely be in my iPod for some time.

Standout tracks:

ナナナ塊魂リミックス
ability of the selfish
beach

Fleshgod Apocalypse - Oracles

(30 Jun 2011)

Wow... This album is sort of like finding out Santa doesn't exist, only three times worse. It's kind of heartbreaking to realize simultaneously that three things are not what they seem. First, it's my beloved Italian metal scene. Second, it's my beloved Candlelight. Third, it's my semi-beloved Willowtip. I thought that if one were to join the three, the result would be both original and professional. Sadly, this is possibly the most playing-safest Death Metal album I've ever heard, something to use as reference for studying the gimmicks and clichés of later noughties DM.

Fleshgod Apocalypse seem to have a pretty defined style, in which they mix influences of Suffocation, The Black Dahlia Murder and Necrophagist with some classical leanings, meanwhile succeeding in removing anything that made any of the former actually worth listening. The very deathcore sounding arppeggioed riffs and the "We're fucking tr00, no seriously" attitude become very annoying after the third track, and once they get to the classical lead with an "evilll" scale on "Requiem in Si Minore", my teeth begin to hurt from grinding so much. Even the song structures sound toned down so you can take in everything and headbang along to the fabricated songs. Despite being the best parts of the album, the classical interludes seem like they've merely been added to further cement the "No really, we're tr00" statement.

Don't get me wrong, I like the occasional "headbanging for the sake of headbanging" track as much as the other guy, and when employed well, it's really effective. Some riffs in some of the tracks are really catchy and well-executed, if not particularly creative. But as a whole this is just unmemorable in every single way. It has no creativity, no atmosphere, no actual texture and no fun at all. As a final insult, the album is plagued with one of the most piercing-in-a-bad-way guitar tones, drums that have stolen all the reverb from everything else in the record and possibly the most standard-sounding vocalist I've ever heard.

Oracles sounds like some musicians saw how poppy and well-established Death Metal acts are getting lauded and revered by the kids and seeing this decided to get a piece of that cake, by making the loudest, most poppiest, most easiest Technical Death Metal they could think of. If that was what they were trying to do, have they succeeded? Definitely. They even got signed to Nuclear Blast as proof of their success. On the other hand, I probably like St. Anger more than this.


Standout tracks:

Sophistic Demise
intro for "Embodied Deception"

King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crimson King

(23 Jun 2011)

Here's something I noticed. The more I listen to music, the more I wonder what everyone sees in The Velvet Underground & Nico that is so good. I'm not denying that it is a good album, but am I missing out on something important in the album for it to be treated like it had invented music or something? To me it sounds really dated and silly, a mush of close-to-genius and embarrassingly bad. Can music have evolved so much in two years for In The Court Of The Crimson King to still hold all of its charm and magic today while nowadays The Velvet Underground & Nico holds all of the charm and magic of a particularly beautiful screwdriver?

From the first bang of raw 1969 production on "21st Century Schizoid Man" to the final weirdness in "The Court Of The Crimson King" the album manages to maintain something that The Velvet Underground's debut greatly lacked, and that is consistency. You can tell these guys know what they're doing, and that they've put some work into making this as good as it can get. Everything from the simple yet dynamic structures, to the individual instruments, to the interplay between them sound like they were crafted to squeeze as much awesomeness as they could into each song. And even from an empty sounding production, they somehow managed to squeeze a strange, stringy atmosphere, and they somehow managed to make some parts of the album sound definitely epic. And the parts of the songs, the soundscapes, the layers, the way they managed to make simple acoustic guitar riffs magnificent, the way the vocals take at the same time the role of foreground and background. It all makes for a great listening experience and an increasingly large wall of text.

So, in short, within its own and its time's boundaries, "In The Court of The Crimson King" can be considered perfect. I can end this review at that. Bye now!


Oh, wait! I forgot the standout tracks.

Standout tracks:

21st Century Schizoid Man
I Talk to the Wind
The Court of the Crimson King


There. Bye now!











*grunt* You know what the problem with this album is? It's that it's easy on you. You listen to it once and by the end of the album you've already got quite a clear idea of how every song goes. It's just all too pleasant and easy to listen to. There's no need to "dismantle" or "understand" the songs. It's all there. The only thing that makes this concoction hold any sort of mystique to it is the dirty production. There are moments of musical brilliance, the album's made of moments of musical brilliance, but it's just stuck in this cage of a Rock Sound. In that aspect, I wish this album were more like The Velvet Underground & Nico. It just sounds too professional. I wish it could be more youthful, more daring, more insecure. It just lacks a bit of personality. Everything else is perfect, I just don't feel like listening to it all that often.

Void Of Silence - The Grave Of Civilization

(16 Jun 2011)

Over the years, Scandinavia has managed to establish itself as the go-to place for metal. It's like as though their entire history, climate conditions, topography, geography and culture was formulated by the gods to let these countries be the most \m/ place on Earth. A few years ago (read: a few months ago), I would have probably taken this fact for granted and blindly agreed. I mean, Scandinavia is fucking METAL because it's Scandinavia, right? With time, I started to realize that Scandinavian metal is not really so much better than other metal, as it's more accessible and catchier. Save for some notable exceptions, the scene there seems pretty stagnant and tired. In my humble opinion, the real European hotspots for metal right now would be France, to some extent Portugal, maybe Eastern Europe, England, and most of all Italy.

Even when I dislike the ending result, even when it is an absolute mess, it seems that bands in Italy can always manage to bring something new to the table. Void Of Silence, with their newest album The Grave of Civilization, are no exception. Here is a doom metal album that is not so much crushing or suffocating, as it is majestic and haunting. At first it sounded pretty weak and uncaptivating, but then its elements started coming together. The song structures that, on a first glance are really weak and make no sense, have a very good sense of organic progression to them, almost a narrative feel.

Meanwhile, the music manages to maintain a constant and very unique atmosphere. Never have I felt that an album name and cover have fit so seamlessly with the music. You can effortlessly see the ominously perfect white monuments, completely abandoned, left as a haunting mark on the landscape for all eternity, meanwhile you, watching, feeling a fear you cannot grasp, as you boil in the sun, yet cannot find the courage to enter the shade of the huge ancient structures erect before you. The imagery is perfectly transmitted by the music.

The album is not, though, without its flaws. I'm not referring to the vocals, which everyone seems to have a gripe with. There are some synth sounds that, if not cheesy, are just out of place, and I feel that overall the album lacks momentum, which is specially noticeable in the latter half.

Nevertheless, The Grave of Civilization could have failed in SO many ways. In fact, it could have been an absolute disaster. If not in the perfect balance presented, the synths could have ended up cheesifying the album beyond listenability, or just made the album feel empty if not so well placed. The vocals could have ended up really irritating, the slightly stale production could have ruined it, the songs could have been an absolute mess structurally. The whole album seems to pick up everything that is bad in Doom Metal and managed to make it all good, in the meantime hanging on to excellence by a thread. Even if you won't like it, it brings something new to the table, in that way that only Italian acts do.

Standout tracks:

The Grave of Civilization
Apt Epitaph

Isis - Panopticon

(05 Jun 2011)

By nature I find it really hard to agree with the mainstream opinion. Constantly do I find myself making presumptions of whether I'll like a band on whether their name sounds mainstream or whether they get mentioned a lot by "normal" people. I don't consider myself as being a hipster, but I have inevitably been compared to one. And no album had made my hipster gland flare up as much as Panopticon did. It just wouldn't stop getting praise from everyone, everywhere. It was sickening. I just wanted to listen to it and tell everyone "HA! You're wrong! Here's a tl;dr list of all the reasons why this album sucks." I mean, it was compared to classical music both on Pitchfork and on its excessively long Wikipedia page! Obviously, I had to give it a listen, to justify my bad review.

I was expecting something pleasant to listen to, spacey, but ultimately very bland. So I was quite surprised when I heard the opener "So Did We". Its atmosphere was completely different from anything I was expecting. The song did not sound grandiose at all. In fact, it sounded tiny, like if you're a satellite hovering over the hills and roads, and they look like slowly moving images.The same atmosphere holds on for the entirety of the album, and it's a very surprising and interesting new point of view.

At first I really disliked the perfectly crisp and clear production, but eventually it grew on me an I realized how some of its subtle touches really help the atmosphere. The songwriting is quite good, the not-as-mixed-down-as-people-say vocals coming in just the right moments to remind you of the human element in this album, and the songs themselves moving in waves, giving a lot of space to each instrument.

Sadly, the album is not without its faults. First of all, it makes me very boring when I describe it. Second, despite the way the subtle elements of the album all add up to one helluva (I added that in there so as not to make people doze off) listening experience, aside from the very nice soundscapes and nice changes in dynamics, well, there's not that much in the album. People might think "Wow! Now that's someone with a good taste in music" and you become a Respectful Person when you listen to it, but there is not much underlying structure, nor anything that will to make the songs any better after the first listen. As to its comparison to classical music? Well, if you consider sitting down in a comfortable chair with your eyes closed and making maestro-like hand motions listening to classical music, then yes. My conclusion is that Panopticon is a very good album, not an interesting one.

Standout tracks:

So Did We
In Fiction
Altered Course

Edenshade - The Lesson Betrayed

(28 May 2011)

There are some times when you write something, be it a review, a presentation, a song, a death threat, an essay, and it just doesn't seem to come together. There's something missing to it. The elements all there, but some sort of magic seems to be missing. You look at your work, and you say "I've just wasted fucking aeons on this crap?", before proceeding to throw a wooden chair at a wall and sitting down in emo position, meanwhile contemplating suicide. Yet, you can't realistically go back to square one and scrap everything you've done so far. It'll just have to do, and you feel mediocre and miserable. With The Lesson Betrayed, I get the impression that that's sort of what happened.

My first contact with Edenshade was in the form of "The Drop", and was I impressed! The song joined everything that was ever good about Alternative Metal with a pinch of Prog, and it sounded wonderful. What I later discovered was that the rest album was pretty much the same formula, and the result is disappointing. The Lesson Betrayed sounds alternately like the band are giving their best and like they just don't give a shit. Pretty much every song has at least one really good part, but every track also has at least one bad detail, which makes for a very frustrating listen. There is so much excellent stuff here! Why is it all mixed with crap that doesn't deserve a place in the album?!

Why do they have to make practically every single song in the album feature a structure of verses and choruses? Why is it always so easy to tell where the chorus is? Why do they also have to always have a guitar solo and a keyboard solo? WHY THE FUCK DO ALL THE KEYBOARD SOLOS SOUND THE SAME?! Speaking of "why the fuck", there are also completely misplaced piano parts and keyboard sounds in general, tempo changes that sometimes make no sense and sometimes are too predictable, an unnecessary "theme" chord porgression, and don't get me started on the spoken sections.

It's like Edenshade had started out with Not-so-Progressive Metal compositions, and then tried to justify their Progginess with elements that just don't fit the music. Admittedly, it would have been a REALLY boring sophomore without them, as it works both ways, but when the elements don't fit in, they stick out like a sore thumb with a sign on it reading "sore thumb". They tried to save the album, but it wasn't enough.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have all the good elements that were added to the album: There are the parts in Italian, which work surprisingly well, some pretty interesting work based around simple chord progressions, one fantastically organic, if not a little frustratingly unpredictable at times, production job that keeps you coming back for more, and some riffing that is at the same time headbangy and atmospheric.

What we're left with are two incredible songs, and a bunch of others that could be so much better but aren't. It is a mixture of unfulfilled potential and not very good ideas taken as far as they can go. It's still far better than the cover would suggest, though.

Standout tracks:

The Drop
Contemplate
As Water
Insect

Crimson Massacre - The Luster Of Pandemonium

(24 May 2011)

You know those albums that the first time you listen, you think "holy shipment, I love this", like as though it connects with you on some sort of level? Yeah, there's probably something wrong with you if that applies to Luster of Pandemonium. The first torturous listen of "Catalyst's Tongue" provided me with quite a lot of pompous laughs and pompous loss of hope for humanity when I read all the positive comments for it on Youtube. The hope for humanity was reduced even more when I found 5 star ratings for this abomination. Eventually I succumbed to curiosity and had to check out the whole album.

Did my opinion on the album change then? Not really. It was all a jumbled nonsense of thin guitars, uncomfortable drums, a weird vocalist and a nonexistent bassist, all playing hell knows what in the most compressed and overall awful production in the history of Technical Death Metal. Oh, and in the middle of it all, an 11 minute acoustic instrumental where nothing happens. If there was an album worthy of 0.5 on the face of the Earth, it was this one.

For some reason, though, I kept listening to it, giving it chance after chance to prove its worth. After all, there did seem to be the interesting 2 seconds here and there. And then I started noticing the patterns. There were riffs, and they were crap, but then they came together in patterns, in cycles. The sounds emanating from the headphones had no atmosphere, no musical value, just texture. Meanwhile, the structures are perfectly calculated, almost mathematical, repeating microriffs in different orders to move the songs forward and have them progress in a logical way. And then the melodies also started showing. It's a great feeling when you start making sense of what is an otherwise incomprehensible album.

I wish I could give this album 5. The first half is absolute perfection, and the whole album is some of the most artful metal I've ever heard. The problem is that the second half is just unremarkable in comparison. Still, The Luster Of Pandemonium is an album that is hard to get into but ultimately very rewarding if one is patient enough. Listen to it, listen again, again, again, wait...

Standout tracks:

Catalyst's Tongue
The Devourer
Epoch
The Hyperborean's Epitaph
Of Perverted Hope And Fragmented Suffering

Sceptic - Pathetic Being

(07 May 2011)

If a band or an artist gets an album out there, it's usually expected that they have at least the tiniest bit of talent. I mean, even stuff like Bring Me the Horizon has eventually (sort of) proven its worth, and even in their dark days, there was maybe a speck of potential. But these guys Sceptic, well, even at that they don't differ from the norm. All the musicians here are quite accomplished, and every now and then they will let out the odd interesting riff, or, if they're on a roll, the interesting bunch of riffs and/or transitions. But, for the most part, this is about as interesting as watching a larva transform before your eyes into a beautiful larva.

The best thing about Death Metal, in my opinion, is the way the songs just follow their own path without following a Mandatory Song Structure. Sceptic instead decided on this album to make it so that you can always tell what's coming next and EXACTLY when "next" will come. I think I can count on my fingers how many times I was genuinely surprised while listening to this. That may have been okay if the songs didn't just go on without any kind of dynamics, though. Instead, on Pathetic Being you sorta have the thrashier verse here, a headbangy part there, maybe an "unexpected" tempo and time signature change somewhere after the headbangy part, a nice melodic part where the same chord progression can once again be recycled, and of course, there are the mandatory \m/ !!!SOLOS!!! \m/, but all this stuff doesn't really make anything more exciting. As for the solos, well, they're on par with everything else, just probably harder to play. There was one or two really good ones, but that's pretty much it. You can sometimes almost feel the frustration of the bassist and the drummer, who really try to make the album worth it.

So, how do I feel about this sophomore release? I feel trolled. Just as the album is coming to an end, you come unto "Particles of Time", where all that was bad so far about the album works in favor of this one song to create one fantastic composition. And then, just as you think that maybe the album is not that bad after all, "Children's Eyes" comes in to reintroduce you to the sad truth. And still the drummer and the bassist try.

My verdict is that if you ever look up the word "stock" in a dictionary, this album's cover most probably won't be there. How predictable...

Standout tracks:

Intro
Incapable Rulers
Particles Of Time

Process Of Guilt - Erosion

(30 Apr 2011)

More and more do I get the impression that Portugal is too apathetic towards music. There's musical talent spread throughout the country like a cancer, stuff that could compete worldwide, stuff that could be considered venerable worldwide, would people for a second stop complaining about what they don't have and start giving the humblest fuck about the music scene here. How does a motherfucking COVER BAND get praise in a national talent contest by playing mediocre versions of music found in "1001 Rock Songs You Must Hear Before You Die" books, when we have bands like Process Of Guilt? So what that the cover band consists of 14 year-olds? It doesn't change the fact that they are insulting people who try to be more than a living jukebox with every time they play a badly constructed medley of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Sweet Child O' Mine", "Stairway to Heaven" and "Enter Sandman" to much applause and ignorant perfectly-white-teethed smiles.

Still, there's hope for a brighter future, with labels such as Major Label Industries releasing some very promising, forward-thinking-enough-for-evolution-but-accessible-enough-for-a-mainstream-audience music. This is another very good album by the label. Process Of Guilt is, in my opinion, the best band in Portugal as of now, and Erosion does not fail to impress, hitting the ground running with "Dust (The Circle Part I)", which is probably the best song in the album, before going through a series of ups and downs, never again to reach the utter perfection of the first track, but still maintaining a consistent level of quality.

"Dust" introduces us to the sound of the album, which is kind of like a blend of Doom Metal and Post-Metal that works really well to create a very atmospheric sound filled with emotion, all helped by an amazing organic production job. This is probably the warmest, most humid album I've heard yet. If you want huge guitars, cavernous drums, destructive bass and all that, look somewhere else. This is dark, damp and small in size. The album progresses through different moods, ranging from depression, determination, hopefulness, happiness, anger, as well as some others. Still, I prefer this album at its most mournful moments, as the others seem to me as quite generic.

Erosion is an accessible album that provides immediate gratification, but also manages to keep one interested after repeated listens. Hopefully albums like this can make people realize that music is alive and well. Still, it doesn't live up to its own potential. It had some divine moments, but they were mixed with a lot of negligible ones. I now love the band, though.

Standout tracks:

Dust (The Circle Part I)
Corrosion (The Circle Part III)
Abandon (The Circle Part V)
The Circle (Erosion Part I)

Mindly Rotten - The Most Exquisite Agonies

(27 Apr 2011)

*Generic paragraph of praise to Colombian Death Metal scene goes here*

Now that that's out of the way, time for the generic counterargument to start the review:

But the fact is that it's hard to tell CDM songs apart. From a superficial perspective, the only things that change are how extremely thin the guitars sound, how unintelligible the vocals are, and how much the snare sounds like the one from St. Anger. It's only with quite a lot of patience that someone will be able to penetrate the \m/trueness\m/ and find what's genuinely interesting. There is a lot of that genuine interestingness here on The Most Exquisite Agonies.

At first it seems an absolute mess, because it is. It's really difficult to tell when anything starts and anything ends, let alone know the structure of the songs. Everything goes in its own direction, VERY fast, and only at times is the idea of rhythm applicable. But that's one of the things that make this album so interesting in the first place: The music becomes so chaotic that there are hardly any musical characteristics left, just pure texture and atmosphere. And when some actual music comes through, it's fantastic and melds and changes the rest of the muck accordingly.

The way the album progresses also works in favor of this. The Most Exquisite Agonies starts out directionless and difficult, and then sort of peels layer by layer of noise, until by "Immersed On Chaos" the music becomes perceptible and beyond awesome. The sound doesn't change much throughout the album, just becomes more controlled. Sort of like if they were trying to hunt down a lion with a toothpick and succeeding. Then, here and there, the guitars start adding in some melody, some unexpected really brutal moments and the riffs hiding behind all the speed start getting interesting. The album starts having an impact.

This album takes some time to appreciate, but it's, intentionally or by accident, one of the most interesting to ever have been made. If you're looking for a quick fix of headbanging, go listen to something else. This is music to sit down with and listen carefully, as you feel your eyes opening wider in startlement, until they fall out of your sockets.

Standout tracks:

Immersed On Chaos
Old Iniquity
Mindly Rotten
Blood's Taste

Ulcerate - The Destroyers Of All

(17 Apr 2011)

I really don't understand the Internet sometimes. It seems that people are/have become really impatient when it comes to music, what with them rating and reviewing albums after a first listen. The result of this is predictable: unjustified extreme negativity towards albums that are actually really good. Do people fear to take their time with albums? I just don't understand it. I start to get the impression that people like being disappointed with albums, because sounding witty and all knowing is much easier when panning something. Take The King of Limbs, for example. I haven't heard it yet, but I remember once looking it up here on RYM and every single review on a whole page was giving the album 0.5 stars, and that was about a day or two after its Internet release. I read the reviews, and did I learn anything about the album? No. They were just the sort of things you'd write jokingly after listening to an album once, determined to give it a 0.5 rating because you hate fans of the artist.

The reason for this rant is the way people tend to judge bands' newer albums based on how their older ones were. This means that if a band releases one specially good album, people will judge all of their next albums by comparing them with that one really good album. It's a really easy and quick way to have an opinion on a release, but it is biased to the point that it can be ridiculously unfair. I think that is what happened with The Destroyers of All. It is a grower, yet people already started rating it about days after it was leaked/streamed/I have no idea what happened, and based their opinion by comparing it with the near-classic Everything Is Fire. This release is very different in approach, so the result was that people didn't appear to like it much. I say that, of the two, this is probably my favorite (I haven't listened to their debut yet).

With TDoA, Ulcerate have evolved a lot. The music is more atmospheric and textural, there are less riffs, but they're all keepers. The songwriting has had a huge improvement, there is a much better sense of pace and a much better balance. The problem I had with EiF is still here, in that the first two songs are quite forgettable, but after that, specially starting with "The Hollow Idols", this album just gets better and better. "Omens" is one of the most depressive and bleak pieces of music I've ever heard and is probably my favorite song by Ulcerate, even better than "Caecus", and "Cold Becoming" isn't far behind.

So, like I said, this evolves on the right aspects to make an album even better than an already fantastic one. Is it better because of the change in sound, though? Probably not. The sound pursued here gets quite boring after a while. What really makes it so good is the improvement in terms of songwriting. I think that if Ulcerate regress to the sound on their sophomore and join it with the sense of balance and excellent songwriting presented here, they will beget a masterpiece. For now, though, I'll wait for the masterpiece.

Standout tracks:

Cold Becoming
The Hollow Idols
Omens
The Destroyers Of All

Circles - Prelude

(17 Apr 2011)

Personally, I'm really uncertain about djent's future, more specifically, whether it has one. It seems to me that it's more a style of riffing to which there is a very fitting guitar sound, than an actual genre. Also, it's sort of like alternative metal, in the way that it's a "genre" that can be taken to virtually infinite places, yet the bands seem to tend to stick to the usual stuff. So far, this is the only djent band which has caught my interest.

Anyway, on JoL PRELUDE, Circles play an Alt-Metal fused with Djent that is much more commercial than what I'm comfortable with, but, like System of a Down or Atomship, they have no problem with mixing hooks and simple song structures with a lot of interesting details, as well as some very good dynamics. Overall, slightly cheesy and cliché, but at the same time very interesting throughout.

Standout tracks:

None. They're all great, but also have all got some big goofs.

PS: The vocalist sounds way too much like a prepubescent Trent Reznor

Mooseifer - Poastes

(11 Apr 2011)

I don't know much about Mooseifer, having found out about this album after a post about the shortest album ever released. I know this is his/her/its/their most popular release, and I expect that, at under a minute long, it wasn't released on a physical format. I guess the idea of "album under a minute long" can work if the material is memorable and actually feels like an album. Well, Poastes does feel like an album, in the sense that every song is a variation of the same theme and work to complete a whole. This has even got the dynamics of a proper album, with an opener, closer, the lot. The problem is that the stuff just isn't memorable enough.

The album starts off promising with the first 4 tracks making sense one being after another, but then everything starts falling apart, until by "Poastes 12" all sense of structure is gone and the noises just don't have any meaning anymore. The last quarter of the album is completely useless and just ceases to be enjoyable in anyway whatsoever.

Standout tracks:

Poastes 1
Poastes 5
Poastes 6
Poastes 8
Poastes 13
Poastes 14

The Golden Palominos - Dead Inside

(11 Apr 2011)

I generally don't pay much attention to the lyrics of songs. At least, I don't think that fantastic lyrics on an album can justify a good rating to said album if the music itself is not good too. Having said this, I can also say that Dead Inside would have been a pointless release if the music weren't so great.

The emphasis here is obviously on the lyrics. There is no singing, only a few instances of melody. Most of what is not lyrics in Dead Inside is mood. The voice remains relatively calm throughout the length of the release, but it's the sort of calm that makes you tense. It's judgmental, it's cynical, it's hiding frustration and fury beyond immense. The music that you hear in the background does not try to capture your attention. Sometimes something happens and catches you by surprise, but for the most part it just creates a nice contrast between the aggressive words and the soothing, sometimes ominous, industrial music.

This is a dark album. Very dark indeed. It only actually catches ground after "The Ambitions Are", though. After this opus, the songwriting becomes more spastic, the mood starts taking over, and the album becomes truly interesting.

Dead Inside could have been a classic, but it has some flow problems. A shame, really. I really like it....

Standout tracks:

The Ambitions Are
Drown
You Are Never Ready
Metal Eye
Thirst

Orthrelm - OV

(03 Apr 2011)

There are albums that, on a first listen, will bring in you an uncontrollable urge to give them a rating of -6.5. This is one of them. The first time listening to OV I thought that Orthrelm were trolling. It was a seemingly endless stream of the same riff over and over again. The people on Youtube who agreed with me were told to listen to the album again. What?! Listen to this crap again? Why would I do such a thing? It's not like I want to waste another 45 minutes of my life listening to a deranged alarm clock.

It goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on indefinitely, until it for no reason changes to another pattern to go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on in. And that's for a whole 20 minutes! Then, it becomes slightly less boring, but is still utterly pointless!

It just seemed to me that the album is too mechanical, too redundant, too unnecessarily, well, everything! It seemed that whatever originality this release had wouldn't save it. Still, I was once very bored, so I decided to listen to this again, and my opinion on the album changed completely. I started to listen to how unstable the patterns were. It was mechanical repetition with a human element. The fluctuations in the tempo, the fluctuations in the drumming dynamics, I am an incredibly pretentious snob who likes Pitchfork; it all added to the music. It just seemed throughout the song that it would just fall apart at any moment, and that made for a very tense listen. In fact, I think that I've never felt so tense listening to anything! You know that there will be a transition soon, but you don't know precisely when. It's frustrating.

Towards the end it becomes slightly predictable, but up until then, it is fantastic stuff. Incredibly good indeed. And not knowing when the changes occur still really freaks me out.

Standout tracks:

OV

Skindred - Babylon

(25 Mar 2011)

Is it just me, or is it really difficult to review Alternative Metal? I mean, here we have a genre that is basically an excuse to fool around with every single other and still sound generic. I'm not saying that all bands within the genre are generic, don't get me wrong. I've already found stuff that changed the way I look at music playing in this style, Skindred included. It's just that it has such an emphasis on single songs that, when you listen to an Alternative Metal album, it's hard to find truly interesting stuff.

Most bands in this genre have their own sound, which is good, but this sound is so restrictive that after 4-5 songs you can't take the predictability anymore. What's more, the artists can change between moods, but you'll be spending the time thinking "And here comes the chorus", and you'll usually be right. The result is one, maybe two outstanding songs per album and the rest doesn't get much of a reaction from the listener at all, apart from maybe the occasional grunt. I used to be cool with that, so when I first heard "Nobody", "Pressure", "Babylon" and "Bruises" four years ago, I was quick to label this band as one of the best and most originalest things ever.

Nowadays, I still think Skindred is quite a good band, and the easy to listen to, infectious style of Alternative Metal with Reggae they're playing on Babylon doesn't get old. Every song has a slightly different mood and works very well individually, but, like I said, as an album, this is nothing special. It starts out promising, is enjoyable if you don't pay much attention to it, but that's about it. It just bleeds the words "commercial" and "unambitious" throughout its runtime. And I know that ambition is practically considered a synonym for "pretentious" around these parts, but I like it. To add insult to injury, the last song also contains a hidden track, to further prove just how safe Skindred were playing here.

Still, this is a fun album.

Standout tracks:

Set It Off
Babylon
Together
Nobody

The Chasm - Procession To The Infraworld

(12 Mar 2011)

One interesting thing about Death Metal is just the devotion you need to give to an album of the genre to understand it, let alone truly like it. It's a kind of music in which you'll usually have to painstakingly analyze and reanalyze a song before you can appreciate it. On the one hand, it can be really frustrating when you just want a quick fix of music, but it's also quite rewarding in the end, when you already know a great song and still manage to discover new details every listen. It's a virtually neverending learning process and a challenging genre for both the musicians and the listeners. Speaking of challenging, here we have Procession To The Infraworld.

The overall sound of the album is like a more progressive, humble and subtle Close to a World Below (although it's probably more like the other way around, since this album is a year older). The guitars here would seem like a fairly uninteresting take on minor chords and arpeggios, until a more attentive listen proves the riffs to have some very interesting touches. These interesting touches, consequentially, give the album and the songs an atmosphere of isolation and darkness. As for the drumming, it's equally subtly creative.

The album starts fairly mild, becoming progressively more intense throughout the first three tracks, and spends the rest of the time being mostly mid-paced. My main problem with it is three songs: "At The Edge of The Nebula Mortis", "Fading..." and "Architects of Melancholic Apocalypse". No matter how many times I listen to them, I still end up feeling quite indifferent about them as songs. Some of their parts are very good, but the songs either make no sense structurally, or just have absolutely no element of surprise to them, I can't tell. They're like most classical music: enjoyable as the pleasant combination of sounds that it is, but nothing other than that.

In the end, I like Procession to the Infraworld, and, despite the frustrating wall of a learning curve, it is rewarding to enjoy it at least a bit. I can also understand why so many people love this release so much. Nevertheless, it's just a type of music I can't appreciate to the fullest.

Standout tracks:

Return Of The Banished
Cosmic Landscapes Of Sorrow
Storm Of Revelations

Mithras - Behind The Shadows Lie Madness

(06 Mar 2011)

Before I begin the review per se, I need to say that Worlds Beyond the Veil is an awesome album. So awesome in fact, that it just so happens to be my all-time favorite album as of writing this review. This means that the bar was set impossibly high for this album. I don't even know what made me fall in love with Mithras's sophomore to such an extent. I'll be the first to admit that the songs aren't really all that much better than your usual DM, and the riffing, while fun, is not much to write home about. Meanwhile, the production sounds like it was dropped as a baby, the same being applicable to the vocals and cover. So, actually, when analyzed, this third album actually possesses quite an advantage.

This album is far more mature, the songs are far better constructed, and the production, while not the best out there, is definitely a step in the right direction. Almost every riff that appears here is excellent, and the Mithras sound has also evolved just enough so that it still connects well with WBTV, while not sounding like a b-sides album, but like an extension of it instead. All my favorite Mithras songs are here, and every single one is worthy candidate. Also, with every listen, it grows onto me more and more. I can't even use the excuse that the album is boring, because it's far from being definable by that unspeakable and rating-saving word.

Nevertheless, I like the previous album far better, for some reason. It seems to me like its greatness is not actually due to the music, or even the fusion of all the elements that the album consists of, but due to something bigger. Somehow, Worlds Beyond The Veil seems to reach beyond what is contained in it. The music very enjoyable and spacey, but seems more like a vessel for something that fits into your conscience like a key into the right keyhole. No one is reading this. The final third of Behind The Shadows Lie Madness recaptures the magnificence of that other album, this time uniting it with the new maturity presented on BTSLM, and the result is as amazing as expected.

Overall, I can say that this album (predictably) does not reach the greatness of its predecessor, yet is also hundreds times better. I predict that, at this rate, the next one will be so impossibly good that it will create a portal into another dimension, and will have to be bashed and ridiculed and hated upon tirelessly so as to seal the portal, but we will all still know....

Standout tracks:

Under The Three Spheres
Behind The Shadows
The Twisted Tower
To Where The Sun Never Leaves
The Beacon Beckons / Thrown Upon The Waves

Bring Me The Horizon - There Is A Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is A Heaven, Let's Keep It A Secret

(05 Mar 2011)

There Is a Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is a Heaven, Let's Keep It a Secret (I won't call it "TIAHBMISITIAHLKIAS" because that is like some demented Scandinavian name) sounds like Kanye West trying to do a metal classic instead of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. In other words, you have the transcendentally fantastic production and added atmospheric synths, backing atmospheric vocals, backing atmospheric guitars and backing atmospheric [anything else] on the foreground, and then you have the same old Bring Me The Horizon being generic in new and innovative ways in the background.

The Yorkshire band definitely does its best to prove its worth with this release, and for the first half of the album, they were quite successful. I had decided to listen their single "It Never Ends" for shits and elitist giggles, until I quickly realized just how much they had improved. I didn't yet know what it was, but something had happened that made BMTH sound awesome and really accessible at the same time. There was some really strange atmosphere, some really interesting variation, and a orgasm-inducing production. I had, in under a minute, changed from a hater to an admirer. It definitely caught my interest enough to make listen to the whole album. I enjoyed most of it until "Alligator Blood", and that's where everything goes bad. The first half may be only slightly better than the second, but by then you realize that the songs all follow the same strict formula of old, and that what you had truly loved so far was the production. The production is magnificent.

Some songs don't follow that old formula, and some of them ended up as the best on the album, while others, more specifically "Memorial/Blessed With A Curse" ended up really bland. It seems that BMTH still can't decide whether they want to become a mature band, or want to stay superficial. The album basically consists of rather bland and uninteresting chugging with awesome things thrown on top. It's kind of like if Scary Movie had been done by Stanley Kubrick. Nevertheless, a great step forward for the band. Also, the production is magnificent.
Standout tracks:

Crucify Me
It Never Ends
Don't Go
Home Sweet Hole  -  (at about half the song, it sound like Oli yells "PAT YOUR DOG!". Just a lil' thing that may be slightly amusing)

Wormed - Planisphærium

(02 Mar 2011)

I've heard many things about this release, ranging from it being "Slam Death Metal for those who hate Slam Death Metal", to it being "absolute crap", to "once incredibly popular, but ultimately overrated". This meant that, on the one hand, I was expecting an absolute piece of crap, while on the other I was expecting an underrated overrated album (trust me, that does make sense). As I listened Planishpærium for the first time, I simultaneously awaited boredom and being pleasantly surprised. I was pleasantly surprised.

This is 25 minutes of extremely heavy, frantic, imaginative and fun Slam Death Metal with pretentious lyrics (and only rarely if ever do I criticize something based on its pretentiousness), but even the lyrics are forgivable since they're delivered in a virtually incomprehensible fashion. Wormed's music is an incredibly rhythmic and confusion shower of awesome riffs, with a few more "experimental" little details thrown in. It's also up there with Destroy Erase Improve and Organic Hallucinosis as one of the heaviest albums I know.

The listening experience is like zapping through channels, in the way that you might be able to link all the different sections of shows you've seen and in the fact that it is fun to zap through channels. Ultimately, you know that what you've just seen is random and makes no sense whatsoever in terms of plot, just like the songs here are loads of fun, but make no sense structurally. The songs do not develop at all what comes to dynamics: there are stops thrown in, but that's the only thing that breaks up this constant onslaught of riffs and vocalizations.

If you look variety, look away. There are a few little touches that go into more experimental territory, but they're just a little bit of icing on the cake. I was not supposed to like Planisphærium: it is extremely one-dimensional, makes no sense and has been previously been considered great by other sources. But, well, This debut is soaked with originality throughout, and, frankly, it deserves a good rating.

Standout tracks:

Tunnel Of Ions
Ylem
Pulses in Rhombus Forms

Disaffected - Vast

(21 Feb 2011)

For a very long time, I had been searching for music to listen to under the constant assumption that no good music ever comes out of Portugal. "The Horrent Damaskt" from Nigrium Nigrius Nigro is among my all-time favourite songs, but that was about it, until I listened to Disaffected's first and, so far, only album. This one album changed everything. After this, I began exploring the Portuguese music scene with a much more open mind and more enthusiasm, with some very good results too. As for Vast, it has been practically forgotten, and unjustly so.

I was quite reluctant to listen to this album at first. It had no energy. It was stale. It obviously had something there, but it seemed infinitely boring. I was trying my best to get into this album, but for a long time didn't have the patience to do so. I kept postponing the day I would finally try to make sense out of it. And once I finally forced myself to listening to the album and paying attention to it, it started to show its magnificence. I began to notice that the lack of oomph had let the band create a very unique atmosphere: unstable, ominous, insane, but with order. Sort of like a mature and determined Disharmonization.

Each song is unlike anything I have ever heard, despite the use of quite a lot of generic stuff throughout. Everything in the album is incredibly well thought out and the playing is restrained yet interesting. If you're expecting brutality and headbangz, though, look somewhere else, because you'll find this a huge disappointment. Progressive Death Metal it is, but only in the way that it can't realistically be labeled anything else. Vast is an album loyal to its name. The spectrum it encompasses is possibly the largest in metal, whilst maintaining cohesive.

This music is challenging. VERY challenging. This music is minimalistic, yet huge at the same time. This is an album that could have failed miserably but didn't. This is an album that is perfect because of all of its imperfections. This is an album that must be listened by everyone. When I first saw Falconsbane's 97% review of this on Encyclopedia Metallum, I thought it to be bullshit. Now, I understand the gleaming review.

Standout tracks:

The Praxis Of The Non-Being
Dreaming II
Dead Like My Dreams
Desire Me Not
...And Flesh Will Be My Bride