Ostensibly a concept album about Jesus' stillborn but now quantum-leaping twin brother (not that you'd ever figure that out by listening, of course), De Vermis Mysteriis marks a respectably ferocious sixth installment for Oakland's now-venerable post-sludge/post-thrash institution. There's a musicianly instrumental that breaks levees; a musket-firing war-march closer; some big-boned, bog-drowned late-Motörhead roaring. And maybe the two strongest constructions – seven-minute lunch-bucket lurcher "Madness of an Architect" and wild-dog stomp "Romulus and Remus" -- open with buzzing white noise.
The eccentric prog-rockers open their sixth album with disjointed rhythms, guitar buzz intense enough to ignite an electric chair and Cedric Bixler-Zavala howling, "I am a landmine, so don't you step on me!" From there, electronic clamor, Omar Rodríguez-López's sizzling guitar, and new drummer Deantoni Parks' militaristic plods and machine-gun blasts spin like a manic merry-go-round thrown into a tornado. "The Malkin Jewel" showcases Rodríguez-López's reggae inclinations, but it may be the creep of slower grooves like "Aegis" and "Trinkets Pale of Moon" that truly makes your hair stand on end.
This Jersey unit's sixth album is, in most ways, typically stagger-stepped good cop/bad cop metalcore-tantrum fare -- they're fighting for survival in an overwhelming world, doncha know! What sets it apart somewhat are the two guitars, which show surprising melody and dynamics, sometimes bordering on psychedelic ("Scraping the Walls"), sometimes punkishly straightforward (the backstabbed rant "Overcome"), sometimes daintily pretty (openings of the title cut and "Awakening"). "A Few Good Men" even tails off into nifty helicopter sounds, and "Move On" is darn near expansive, as such stuff goes.
One of the most blatant European folk-metal hybrids to chart in the U.S., Helvetios is one long album: 17 tracks, including a spoken prologue and epilogue about life, death and art. It is also very schizophrenic, its personality split precipitously between competently grunted melodic death metal and Celtic jousting jigs that let in tin whistles, mandolins, hurdy-gurdies and bagpipes. In "Havoc," the reeling turns fast and jolly; more often, it's rather morose. "A Rose For Epona" and "Alesia" veer closer to Within Temptation-type, goth-diva unicorn-metal. Renaissance Faire, meet thy future.
Sweden's amelodic maestros of extreme graph-paper metal are still obsessed with getting convoluted in a claustrophobic room. Most calculus equations are barely discernible to untrained ears, but it's instructive that this set starts with its most difficult track: the cold, staccato, defiantly unchanging "I Am Colossus." From there, a window lets in some light, and guitars spurt in the crevices. The bone-cavity textures of "Marrow" beget the vertebrae-cracking "Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave It Motion," which begets the raging beehive "Swarm." By "The Last Vigil," calm has set in.
These mostly sixtysomething Londoners -- including guitar god Chris Spedding and Pretenders drummer Martin Chambers -- show pub-punk upstarts like Jim Jones Revue how it's done, with nasty but nimble boogiebilly chops in the tradition of Link Wray, The Yardbirds, Dr. Feelgood and recent Jace Everett. They're old enough to know how to temper heavy blues knuckle-dragging with jazz smoke and Sun Studios echo. "Selene Selene" is a tough noirish stomp, "American Slaves" a hard-swung shuffle about Western decline. Then they end with some Diddley-beat space-train hoodoo about the band.
They're still patient yoga masters when it comes to letting their psych-metal advance, retreat, well up and wig out -- five of six tracks surpass nine minutes, and the Hawkwind-ish space-jam finale lasts 19. But this L.A. quintet is pushing its sound harder these days. The doom in "Corryvreckan" attains a Neurosis-level density, and vocals are more prominent; "Running in Circles" even has proggy harmonies. More than ever, though, keyboards provide the dominant rhythmic voice, especially a candelabra-invoking cathedral organ that occasionally seems to quote "Funeral for a Friend" by Elton John.
There's no surf rock per se on this Vancouver neo-psych collective's constantly mode-switching and mostly new score to Joe G's dystopian 16-mm surf flick, though the tidal splashes opening garage-pop ditty "Modern Music" or the Morricone bit opening 13-minute droner "Bright Lights" come close. Beyond that, there's lotsa interstellar feedback, some Moroder-esque pulse, some low-cal indie vagueness, a pinch of Wiccan metal occultism, a few brief but weighty acid-rock eruptions. Plus, naturally, the occasional hippie chick telling you to abandon your possessions and follow her into infinity.
Like a proggier and more Slavic-toned version of '90s French noise'n'rollers Treponem Pal, these Armageddon-industrial folk-metal Ukrainians manage to employ synths in ways that bolster their music's organic heavy rock thrust. Weirdness and surprises emerge naturally: melancholy blues-goth guitar, rustic flute and keyboards (from lady member Anna Merkulova), new wave-y electro-piston and music-box effects, radio interceptions, Neue Deutsche Welle-like intonations, dialogues between elves at wit's end. The metal takes all sorts of intriguing twists and turns, but never loses its hearty thump.
"Excuse me, mister/ Excuse me, miss/ I got a problem/ I got a lot of 'em." These NorCal punks are plenty agitated on their Matador debut, mixing the classic agit-pop of Wire and Buzzcocks with the cerebral-yet-visceral hardcore of labelmates F*cked Up. Less brutal than their early stuff, Zoo is still a whiplash minefield of focused rage and deceptive calm, frontman Ross Farrar cycling between brattiness, bemusement and bewilderment. Quotable dude, too: "We have to give up the things we love sometimes" if you're feeling thoughtful, "I'm dyin'/ I'm dyin'/ I'm dyin'/ I'm dead" if you're not.
Repurposing a title from fellow past-prime Midwesterner Eminem, Al Jourgensen's latest lineup spends Ministry's first album in five years catching up with modern-day more-bark-than-bite metalcore. They open deriding ex-labels, ex-wives and ex-tax attorneys, then acknowledge heroin ("Freefall"), nod to Occupy Wall Street ("Kleptocracy," "99 Percenters"), submit a dorkily well-meaning democracy PSA ("Get Up Get Out 'n' Vote"), and remember a Ted Nugent title ("Weekend Warrior"). But they save their catchiest groove and clank (in the vaguely Alice Cooper-ish "Bloodlust") for the end.
Stretching three tracks over 35 minutes (the shortest, "Transylvanian Incantations," is only 3:40, which leaves an awful lot of room for the other two), this female-fronted French experimental doom-drone band unites several strains of late 20th century downtown Manhattan avant-garde (Swans, Meredith Monk, assorted minimalist composers) into a kind of dolmen-metal that takes turns working as new age relaxation music and a demon-screaming, window-crashing horror soundscape. They are fond of monastery chanting and white noise and extreme slow motion. You either get sucked in, or you don't.
