This isn’t DGR‘s annual year-end list. That might yet come. This is the final Part of his four-Part collection of reviews that we started rolling out earlier this week, focusing on 2023 albums we hadn’t managed to review before. You’ll find his full explanation for what he’s doing here at the beginning of Part I.
Psygnosis – Mercury
France’s Psygnosis have had a wild as hell career turn throughout the years, the prog-death metal band moving into near-multimedia project realms with their work on the great Human Be[ing] to becoming a completely instrumental band in the years following, inviting a cellist to become one of the main centerpieces of the band, and unleashing the album Neptune upon the world afterward in 2017.
It’s been a wild ride and continues to be, as September saw the band releasing another album in their current form through Season Of Mist. Mercury continues the group’s love of overlong songs and massive movements with constantly repeating motifs, and continues to put a big emphasis on just how much melody they can add via cello to their overall mix. In that sense, the band almost turn that instrument into a true vocalist at times when it isn’t bringing the main melodic line of each song right to the forefront.
That Psygnosis continue to prove capable of melding them together without sounding like the orchestra pit of a concert hall getting into a knock-down brawl with the metal band playing in the alleyway outside is equally stunning. That they do so for songs that regularly clear the ten-minute mark – introductory song “Optik-Out” for instance is twelve minutes of swirling guitar work and post-metal wandering to go alongside its hefty chug – shows that Psygnosis may truly have something great going, as weird as it is to describe the individual elements.
Mercury continues Psygnosis‘ trend of blending the bizarre and beautiful together as if it were a trivial thing anyone can do, and also keeping that heavy as hell element that has been a throughline for much of their career. It’s interesting that Psygnosis now have two very, very distinct arcs up to this point and their current incarnation is one that, going by the near-hour of music contained on Mercury, appears to be firing on all cylinders.
https://psygnosis.bandcamp.com/album/mercury
http://www.facebook.com/psygnosismusic
Vale Of Tears – Oxymora I
Fourteen years is a pretty long time between releases. Over the years as a site, through odd circumstance and weird twist of fate, we’ve premiered a lot of bands where the distance between releases is pretty fucking large. Still, anything over ten still provides a light sticker-shock, even when you commonly see numbers like that running across your own front page for premieres.
Often it feels like the group coming back – if they’re not picking up directly where they left off or returning to an earlier incarnation soundwise – is an entirely different group, and even more often that distance in time will turn the newest release into a relaunch of the band. It’s an unenviable and difficult position because now not only are you standing side by side with peers from the past but also running headfirst into the newest breed of musician out there – it’s a monster of a mission statement to have to make.
Hungary’s Vale Of Tears are taking one hell of a crack at it though with their return EP Oxymora I. Oxymora I is three songs clocking in at a stone’s throw over twelve minutes, placing the band somewhere between the gorgeous ice-covered fields of doom and melodeath hybrid that Century Media seems keen to traffick in, solid galloping melodeath proper and straightforward death metal that actually reminded quite a bit of the groove-laden hammering of an album like Volturyon‘s Xenogenesis back in 2020.
The wild spread across various melodeath genres for three songs is honestly due to how Oxymora I closes out, as the first two songs on this EP are rolling death metal tracks. They’ve got solid rhythms to them and “Antibiosis” in the opening slot is in that perfect lead-off single position. Vale Of Tears were aware of that opening song usually being the one responsible for grabbing people and shaking them around like a Pacific-rim earthquake and they use “Antibiosis” for that position. That’s the song where the pummeling death metal comparison for the band comes from. Vale Of Tears are like practicing boxers on that song, raining blow after blow into a punching bag. It’s three minutes of chugging, dumb fun with a melodic lead and guest vocal attack slammed in.
“The Loudest Silence” adds its own footsteps into the trail laid out by “Antibiosis”, though it’s more akin to the recognizable galloping hordes of warriors that have swept their way through metal in recent years. The movements of that song have some heft to them and you’d be forgiven for thinking Vale Of Tears was just a group of very large dudes launching sledgehammers in between rooms in a house they’re demoing, going off the way “The Loudest Silence” bolts its pieces together.
“Limited Freedom” is Vale Of Tears earning that gorgeous melodeath/doom hybrid tag. The melodic opening section of “Limited Freedom” is bound to catch you off guard when the first two songs of Oxymora I have favored bludgeoning tactics by comparison. Vale Of Tears make that one of the main parts of the song, returning to it enough that when combined with a brief synth line hit has “Limited Freedom” grabbing the much-vaunted “catchy at times” title. Vale Of Tears are almost a different group at times throughout that song.
Vale Of Tears were a good surprise after a lunchtime YouTube rabbit hole burrowing and you’d never guess that they had been quiet for so long going off the songs present here.
https://valeoftearshungary.bandcamp.com/album/oxymora-i
Θλίψις (Thlipsis) – Dawn Of Defiance
It goes without saying that Greece has an intensely strong black metal scene, even though it is one that feels like you need to make one step deeper into the musical world to find once you get situated with the surface level groups of the cold white north. There’s been a strong anarchist punk and ‘in defiance of authority’ bent that has been worming its way into that particular region’s output as of recent years and Θλίψις are the latest to join in that particular fray.
Dawn Of Defiance was released into the world in September, so this is another one of those that has been kicking its feet up in the ‘waiting on a write-up’ mental lounge for some time now. It’s actually surprising that this one doesn’t seem to be more widespread in our hallowed halls, though I did notice that the Θλίψις crew made it into a few of the user end-of-year write up lists, so clearly the Greek molotov launchers are reaching a solid crowd outside of our quiet corner.
Dawn Of Defiance shares a lot of DNA with groups like Sordid Dogs and Human Serpent, so if you’re the type to love an incredibly fiery and stealthily melodic form of black metal then look no further than Θλίψις‘s first full length. Seven songs – one of which was released last year as a single – comprise this effort for a solid thirty-three minutes of music. Θλίψις pull out everything they can think of within those seven songs, with most staying in a comfortable four-to-six-minute range, and one massive epic going well over seven.
Θλίψις keep things fast and blasty; you’re well within the black metal comfort zone here and the crew know what do on that front. Even without the blatantly up-front defiance of modern society bent at the forefront of the band, Θλίψις could have grabbed attention based on the strength of songs like “Eternal Sleep Of Agony” and “An Open Wound” on their own.
We’ve been prone to describing songs – and I’m the most guilty of it – as sounding like a musical knife fight, but the whole midsection of songs on Dawn Of Defiance could easily be put into that category. Ludicrously fast tempo at play, a drum kit being tossed through a patio window – not literally but you could hear the cacophony — and screeching vocal work is the very basis of Dawn Of Defiance, and that run from the previously mentioned “Eternal Sleep Of Agony” up to the ambitious-as-hell (and narrated in the opening) “The Night That Wolves Were Silent” is a murderously enjoyable experience. “Enemy At The Gates” at the end, making its second appearance from the band’s vaults, is a great bonus.
Since their 2021 founding, Θλίψις have clearly been on a serrated tear musically and the progression from three-song intro EP to single to full-length has had it so they’ve had something on offer for people looking for scorchers every year so far. Θλίψις is worthy of a look if they’ve dodged under your radar so far, and even though its taken fucking ages to finally get around to it, Dawn Of Defiance has proven to be a lean and relentless fighter so far.
https://thlipsis.bandcamp.com/album/dawn-of-defiance
https://www.facebook.com/thlipsis.bm