These semi-symphonic Italians have many cheesy metal bases covered -- Megadeth-level thrash, Maiden-esque operatics, meaty commercial power metal, Queensryche pomp and circumstance complete with Geoff Tate-style emoting, an almost electro-pop Evanescence-y love-duet ballad ("All in a Moment") where a boy calls a girl "a thousand times a day." They even do a Middle Eastern-guitared cover of "The Look," by Roxette! Between anti-war sentiments and dainty adult-contemporary piano interludes, arrangements get interesting now and then, too -- for instance, when the buzzsaw guitar blows up "Future."
Not to be confused with either Boris' 2002 album with the same title or their Attention Please album released on the same 2011 day, this slab o' sludge opens with a lowdown monster-riffed downer-pounder called "Riot Sugar," then oozes from there: Sabbath chords wed to hardcore hoots and hollers, mournful funeral croons exploding rocketship-like into the stratosphere, modernized drag-race rock slowing to a standstill under kitschy "doo doo doo"s, maddeningly sluggish plod-metal disintegrating into the Radiohead ozone. To close, "Czechoslovakia" accelerates from classic doom to murderous thrash.
Dan McCafferty's screech flies higher after four decades than his disciple Axl Rose's did after four years. But with McCafferty and bassist Pete Agnew both turning 65 in 2011, aging's clearly on Nazareth's minds, and their more nostalgic cuts serve up a wistful autumnal swirl. The grizzled Scots get witty like a music hall ZZ Top, too, but they're still best when heavy: in an ominous dirge aimed at religious zealots, a cynical swipe at government in times of austerity, some epic metal about mental illness, and a mean-swinging, maybe rap-inspired bilingual boogie about gang war in the barrio.
These globe-trotting Seattlites pile up menacing tar-pit riffage for a bash that's equal parts System of a Down, Gogol Bordello and Rachid Taha, with maybe some Sepultura in the percussion. But give or take the dirge-turned-jig-metal "Sheitan" and the martial "Revolutionary Song Intro," tempos stay Eastern-European-wedding upbeat, often stampeding against the free-jazz sax skronk as vocal pitches switch deftly between high-wailing emotion and low-chanted slapstick about a self-medicated nation, a rich man's war, the falling sky and an antisocial coal-mine woman who can kick your butt.
Probably the least aggressive, most atmospheric music these Japanese iconoclasts have coughed up, Attention Please is mainly a vehicle for the sleepy, breathy, Bjork-y murmuring of guitarist Wata. She's always in the forefront, variously mixed atop billowing trance-tronics (title cut), flushed-toilet machine swirls ("See You Next Week") and reverberating lounge pulsations ("You"). Even the guitars tend toward shoegaze metal, though "Tokyo Wonder Land" punctuates its relaxation session with buzzsaw noise spurts and "Les Paul Custom '86" gets some blurry glam-punk gurgle going
These Brits know their way around a hook and a joke -- "KISS Tried To Kill Me" is almost too catchy and wacky for a metal band. But they are one, at least in the sense of intermittent knuckle-dragging heaviness (stoner-doomed "Mans Ruin," high-speed "What Goods a Rock Without a Roll"), Zep rips ("St Peter," "Si El Diablo") and distorted wank. There's also a memorable coed drinking duet, followed by a seven-minute epic that ends with a chain-gang spiritual: Enough winners to excuse the not-quite-superhuman vocals.
For contemporary metal, this is both protean and meaty stuff. Arrangements take surprising turns but don't outwear their welcome: Four (of nine) tracks clock in under three minutes. And the rhythmic throb often retains a whiff of the blues, a la certain nuclear-caveman thrash bands (Carnivore, early Voivod) from the mid-'80s. The vocals, nearly as tough to decipher when howling as when grunting, can be an Achilles Heel; too bad, since these Stockholmers' alleged obsession with mythical beasts is a new twist. But cuts like chugging closer "The Sword in the Stone" hook you regardless.
Replacing Jani Lane with ex-Lynch Mobber Robert Mason is kind of like booting Roth for Hagar: Secretly high-I.Q. humor, vocal subtlety and melodic invention make way for a more bull-in-china-shop approach. Rockaholic opens leering and riffy, rides some Bon Jovi cowboy-glam into the sunset, then alternates fast Ratt-haired rockers with Buckcherry-tawdry mid-tempo semi-ballads. Three songs wrestle with drug dependence; two -- the Billy Squier-ripping "Snake" and speedy, steely, legitimately metal closer "The Last Straw" -- lash out at a disreputable soul who may or may not be a former bandmate.
These turbulent Indiana noisemongers' second album operates on the portentous Bauhaus-goth end of Scratch Acid's feral mid-'80s post-hardcore, proto-grunge broheim rock. As slowly-I-turned nightmares go, it's an uncommonly hysterical one: thick, enveloping feedback drones powering dark metal (usually with eerie synth pulse attached) set to tempos that rarely slow into dirges. "Doppleganger" gurgles fast and frantic a la Suicide, and the set-concluding title cut squeaks open like some seasick surf clatter off Pere Ubu's Dub Housing, only to climax in a chorus of monks moaning in the catacombs.
Though Joakim Nilsson's high wail suggests Soundgarden's Chris Cornell with a Scandinavian accent, the concentric blues-psych these Swedes shift through on their sophomore set harks back to more distant ancestors -- from Cream boogie to Sabbath depresso-sludge to Thin Lizzy tapestry. The title track, one of two songs haunted by demons, swirls toward space Hawkwind-style in parts; "Longing," a gorgeous, cinematic instrumental, follows "Buying Truth (Tack & Forlat)," a quick, percussive chug with wooh-wooh vocal backup. Across the board, there's an earthiness rarely embraced in modern metal.
