(Andy Synn highlights three more examples of home-grown heaviness from the UK)
I was originally intending to finish and publish this particular article last week, but issues at work, combined with covering for Islander here while he was off attending Ascension Festival, meant things fell behind schedule.
I even thought I might be able to get it finished over the weekend, only to spend Friday afternoon/evening having fun axe-throwing (and then drinking) to celebrate my friend Chris’s birthday, followed by a night of beers and whiskey with (most of) the band on Saturday, and then a day spent having drinks (and doughnuts) with some of my fiancé’s friends on Sunday… so that didn’t happen either.
Still, better late than never, right? And I promise it won’t be as long until the next edition (for which I’ve already got 2 out of 3 bands confirmed).
AKLASH – REINCARNATION
Last time we wrote at any length about Aklash was almost six years ago, when I selected their stunning second album, Where the Ocean Meets the Sky, as one of my “Critical Top Ten” of 2018.
And while a lot has changed for the group in the intervening years – hence the title of this, their third “proper” full-length (2021’s Horizon being a series of neo-classical reworkings of existing material) – it should please you to know that they remain one of the most talented and creative bands in the UK Black Metal scene.
Now, it’s probably worth pointing out that, overall, Reincarnation isn’t quite as consistently brilliant as its phenomenal predecessor – though there’s an argument that it is, perhaps, somehow even more ambitious – as it occasionally suffers from an oddly thin production (the end of “Communion With Ghosts” feels particularly weak) and a few odd pacing issues (“Sapphires and Garlic” is, to be polite, a waste of thirty-seven seconds)
But the highlights here – which include the opening title-track (which combines the band’s signature brand of electrifying blackened energy with an array of increasingly prominent Prog-Folk and Post-Punk influences) and gloriously melodic four-minute mini-epic “Babylon”, as well as the anthemic, Vreid-esque “Cossack”, with its soaring strings and scorching solo section, and the majestic melodrama of captivating (and incredibly catchy) closer “My Will Made Manifest” – are as outstanding as ever.
These four tracks in particular epitomise just how good – nay, great – Aklash can be when they’re firing on all cylinders, with the balancing (and blending) of visceral, snarling vocals and heroic, heart-wrenching cleans in particular being arguably even better this time around… which is not to downplay the absolutely excellent guitar work, intriguingly proggy bass lines, or impressively intense drumming by any means, as it’s eminently obvious that Reincarnation is a true group effort from one of the UK’s best bands.
PIJN – FROM LOW BEAMS OF HOPE
Here’s a fun fact for you – for a (very) short period of time I happened to share a label with poignantly proggy Post-Rock impresarios Pijn (and once even spent a very pleasant evening hanging out with them at a label event in the band’s home-town of Manchester… which just so happens to be where I grew up as well).
The only reason I mention this is because the group’s new album (released at the tail end of last month) looks to have come out on their own label, and not the one I’d expected – but while the group may not have the backing of that particular big (and increasingly notorious) name behind them any more, that hasn’t stopped them from producing what is, by some margin, the very best work of their career.
To be clear, From Low Beams of Hope isn’t a traditionally “heavy” album – not by our usual standards, anyway (though, if you’re the type who takes the site’s name a little too seriously you’ll find that this one actually does sit within our remit) – but it’s not afraid to go big or get loud, when it needs to (with the second half of the album, “On the Far Side of Mourning” and “A Thousand Tired Lives”, featuring some especially bold and bombastic moments).
That being said, it’s the subtleties of songwriting and nuanced instrumental layering – weaving together a rich variety of weeping, wandering strings, gorgeously gloomy guitar parts, simmering bass-lines and weighty drum work, as well as some occasional bursts of brassy melody and passages of brooding atmosphere – which really make this album such a special, and spellbinding, experience (one which flows, smoothly and seamlessly, from calm to catharsis, and back again, in each and every song).
It’s a slow-burner, that’s for sure, and one which requires (but also rewards) a bit of patience to unpack and uncover everything it has to offer over the course of just over forty-five minutes, but the overall experience is one which will, hopefully, resonate deeply with at least some of our readers.
TURIN – THE UNFORGIVING REALITY IN NOTHING
Whenever I’m tempted to complain about my own band being underrated/underappreciated as part of the UK scene (and we are, but that’s a whole other kettle of fish/can of worms) I can’t help but think about how many other great acts are even more underrated and under-exposed, with North West nihilists Turin (previously known as This Is Turin) being one of the best, and most brutally overlooked, bands out there.
I’ve got my fingers crossed, however, that this is going to change very soon, with the band’s new album – their first since signing to MNRK Heavy – set to drop this Friday, and hopefully exposing a much larger audience to the most distilled (and therefore most devastating) version of their Blackened Deathcore sound yet.
While many of the band’s primary touchstones are obvious – both Fit For An Autopsy and Black Tongue spring to mind when listening to tracks like “Abyssal” and “Reflections”, for example, while echoes of both Aborted (“The Unforgiving Reality in Nothing”) and Hour of Penance (“Envy”) abound – their new album mostly reminds me of Dark Sermon‘s massively overlooked 2015 opus The Oracle in the way it fuses its Death Metal influences and Deathcore impulses into something equal parts heavy and hooky and hellishly intense.
But whereas the latter album wound up being just a little ahead of its time to fully capitalise on its potential, The Unforgiving Reality in Nothing could well be hitting at precisely the right time – especially considering just how hard the blistering guitars, bludgeoning drums, and bombastic horror-score synths of “I Am the Truth” hit.
Sure, it’s not perfect – I appreciate the melodic shift on “Loss”, for example, but the actual melody itself is a little too familiar, and keyboard-heavy, Carnifex-esque closer “Our Reality in Nothing” ends up feeling somewhat anticlimactic (as well as oddly unfinished) in the wake of the far superior finale of the fantastic “Hopeless Solutions” – but it’s definitely got something, an unexplainable x-factor, which has kept me coming back to it again and again ever since the promo first hit my inbox.