Though every song save the brief and very pretty "The Smoke-Filled Room" lands around the six- or seven-minute mark, there's something cozily modest in these Danish doomsters' sound. Maybe it's how they come off both low-budget and really bummed out, like the metal of yore. Whatever it is, Mik Mentor's self-described "stentorian narration and ars melancholia" about his ruined world manages to feel manly without feeling macho. And when they get fancy -- classic-rock soloing of "In the Shadow of the Gallows," medieval ornateness of crooned closer "Final Perfection" -- they get beautiful, too.
This uncordial Polish power-metal aims for an evil associated with more extreme subgenres. Frontwoman Marta Gabriel has piercingly powerful pipes and a penchant for declaimed operatics, but all the melody comes from the Lizzy-to-Maiden interplay of her and Andy Wave's guitars. Those parts happen often, but as randomly as everything else; even galloping blitzkriegs like "It's Your Omen" get lost in the clutter. The band also has a thing for fascist-rally gang yells and gimmicky intros (rattling chains, babies on fire.) But only the paganistic first and last tracks feel much like coherent songs.
A year and a decade after Chicago's mum-mouthed metalgazers debuted with a four-song EP, they make another one -- the main differences being that (1) there are no super long compositions this time out and (2) in 2001, new age post-rock metal seemed a potentially fresh take on the old loudness, whereas by 2012, let's just say it had been done a few times. Ataraxia/Taraxis starts chimey, spacey, fuguey and foghorny, then gets marginally heavier as it goes. Titles address freedom from worry, living life inconspicuously, eye inflammation and one "Parasite Colony" -- and perhaps the sounds do, too.
This trashy Chicago outfit has been around long enough to know how to get a groove on -- the rhythm section truly sleazes in places. And if they aim for a bar they'll never reach -- Chad Cherry doesn't have half the pipes of a young Axl Rose or Steven Tyler -- they come as close as, say, D Generation ever did. "Leonida" opens like Aerosmith's "Same Old Song and Dance," and "It Ain't Easy" does even better by tapping 'Smith's dark ballad side 'til the "hoochie coochie woman" stuff starts straining credibility. There are sugar-pop harmony hooks, too. And hand-clapping. And words about groupies.
Almost three decades since their last album, with only full-throated Dinah Cancer remaining from old days but with ex-Adolescent Frank Agnew's guitar riding so much surf you won't complain, L.A.'s Munsters-rock inventors shtick out the jams: 10 swinging goth'n'roll toons, schooled in the third X LP, first Beasties LP, cowpunk, disco-funk, witch-metal, Fred Schneider and sweet transvestites from Transylvania. A lovely instrumental sleepwalk lures you into a kinky road-race with a triumphant trumpet; numerology and demons figure in. But it might sound even funner at the beach than on Halloween.
California metal vets Sandy Sledge and Leone Leather's project might be daunting to re-create live. Maybe half of the tracks are mere interludes, under two minutes each: Spanish guitar solo, 28-second double-kick-drum attack, scary noises atop an off-kilter keyboard. Actual songs "A Taste of Night" and "One Glimpse" subject their respective Wiccan cackling and Doro/Vixen schmaltz to almost dubbish studio reverb; other numbers mix gonging bells and broken glass into abrasive guitar wank. There's also a very short, gentle ballad, climaxing in a spoken German seduction scene and Oktoberfest date.
Alexander von Wieding is just one guy in Hamburg: an artist of metal album covers by day. But he sure swings like a power trio here -- theoretically, like old-school ZZ Top, from grumbling vocals to butt-blues chug. Killdozer and Feedtime too, but heavier, not to mention waist-deep in a festering bog he can't shut up about: "Seven Slugs o' Mud," "The Mudhole Stomp," "Undead Waters," "Within Temples of Mold." He's also sure our homes will be invaded by amphibians and reptiles soon. And when he doubles the percussion (with tambourine, sounds like), his gutbucket groove dances even harder.
t's rare to encounter stoner-rockers as progged-out as these Parisians. Their album keeps going for 70 minutes, including a three-part something-or-other called "Vodun," and foreign sounds that seep out of the metal: placid psych sections; jazz-fusion time signatures; wah-wah spray warming into bluesy emotion; zoned crosstalk deep in the mix; seemingly a Deep Purple organ, though none is credited. Plus they swing like funky elephants when they want to. Maybe imagine early Monster Magnet (whose Ed Mundell takes a guest solo) crossed with the Doors-grunge pretensions of Days of the New?
Produced by Rick Rubin, La Futura opens with the best tune ZZ has unleashed since the D.O.R. remix of "Give It Up." Balancing the blues' no-frills earthiness and pop's adherence to novelty at all costs, "I Gotsa Get Paid" is a filthy-groove reworking of the Houston rap classic "25 Lighters" (an ode to slinging crack, of all things). The album doesn't contain another cut that's nearly as radical, yet there are several more fun jams, including the slowed-down "Tush" riffer "Consumption," a song that could be about sex or booze or drugs, or even capitalism itself when you get right down to it.
Finally critics' darlings after all these years (took them even longer than kindred soul Nick Cave), the ex-noise misanthropes pull out all stops: Two hours' worth of exotic instruments (bagpipes!) and indie cameos (Karen O!) in service of crawling, tintinnabulating, incrementally evolving clangs and monotone mantras. Some horror effects, some heaviness, some freak folk, some frying bacon or rain on a tin roof, lots of droning á la Krautrock but more rhythmically inert -- at least until the final 10 minutes, when tension's released and drum fireworks go up, in case you dozed off along the way.
The boogie lumberjacks' seventh album in 20 years has quite the booming bottom: It's clear the rhythm section's been studying AC/DC records and early Rick Rubin productions long before they close with a stiff-rapped, Anthrax-spoofy take on Run-D.M.C.'s "It's Tricky." They ham up Dr. Hook's still-hilarious "Cover of The Rolling Stone," too, adding an obligatory chainsaw solo. But up top, Jesse James Dupree's lecherous jibber-jabber mostly stays garbled -- give or take "Golden Spookytooth," which swipes so much from Aerosmith's "Lord of the Thighs" that Steve Tyler deserves a co-writing credit.
Crazy: A totally occult Brit doom metal band (complete with a "Black Mass") who sound like they got the idea from that live Black Oak Arkansas LP with the backwards Satanic masking! Terry Jones even drawls like Jim "Dandy" Mangrum, like he's got Skoal between his cheek and gums. The title cut starts out gurgling like 13th Floor Elevators, then turns into an eight-minute space-motorcycle ride: Hawkwind evolving into Motörhead. Five songs in 32 minutes, recorded in 1978 but left to rot in a root cellar for several decades. Even the big fat Sabbath riffage has a funky Southern boogie throb to it.
Manitoba's anarcho-pop-punk lifers sound metal now -- screamo, mainly, though with portentous doom and tricky thrash firming up the hardcore hopscotch and Bad Religion shouts. They open their first Occupy-era album powerfully, with the nearly six-minute "Note to Self," the longest cut by far in a set where several slams clock in under 120 seconds. Its staccato charge suggests a heavier Fugazi or the Ex, under despairing electoral buyer's remorse: "How does it make you feel to know that you voted for this?" Nothing else here touches it, but whatever they're complaining about sure stays urgent.
Between their lady bassist and (since departed) drummer from Fates Warning and thin-voiced singer who could pass for a moonlighting pop punk, this is not your typical U.K. prog-thrash band. Sometimes that's good; sometimes not. Keyboardist JJ's vocals turn intriguingly goth when they get nasal, but he's more inclined to bark with forced James Hetfield intensity; the guitars can moon gloomily or shred fancily or opt for weird Piggy-of-Voivod squeaks, and "Oblivion" sounds both triumphant and complex, as power ballads go. But more than these four songs in 24 minutes might be difficult to take.
These teen Brits seem equipped with chops to support their throwback pop-metal: "Lady of the Light" has a dynamic intro, and they're versatile enough to handle Black Crowes country funk, Free blooze or junior-varsity Zeppelin for a bar or two. "D***k, F**k, F***t" and "Road Rocket" are hard and speedy, there's exuberant Helix-type shouting, and the ballads are bearable. But sadly, every pocket the rhythm section finds has a hole to slip through. Memorable tunes might take a few more years seasoning. Meanwhile, somebody please introduce would-be Tyler-esque yelper Matt Jones to '70s Aerosmith.
