(Andy Synn presents three more of his favourite home-grown heroes)
Well, here we are… it’s almost time for “List Week” (there might even be a little preview coming tomorrow).
But before we get there I wanted to sneak in one last edition of “The Best of British” to highlight three recently-released albums which are sure to tantalise your musical tastebuds.
ANTE-INFERNO – DEATH’S SOLILOQUY
While I am on record as having liked both Ante-Inferno‘s debut album, Fane, and its follow-up (2022’s Antediluvian Dreamscapes), I have to admit I never quite bought into all the hype around them… until now.
Death’s Soliloquy, you see is simply more creatively ambitious and more emotionally (and compositionally) complex – both in terms of its raw, heart-stopping intensity and its ragged, edge-of-your-seat energy – than anything the band have done before, leaning even harder into the Woe, Ultha and Wolves In The Throne Room comparisons yet also putting an even more distinct, almost DSBM-inspired, spin on Ante-Inferno‘s particular brand of bombastic blackened misery.
Equal parts heaving guitars and haunting atmospherics (without, in my opinion, falling afoul of the more predictable tricks and tropes associated with “Atmospheric Black Metal”) songs like driving opener “The Cavernous Blackness of Night” and its more restrained, but no less riveting, companion “Towards Apshyxiating Darkness” combine blistering belligerence and brooding desperation (especially in the vocals, which creak and crackle with both savagery and sorrow) in a way which feels, for want of a better word, significantly more real than many of the band’s more overtly Satanic/nihilistic peers.
The album’s appeal isn’t just cerebral, however, it’s physical and visceral too, with the likes of “Cold. Tenebrous. Evil” and “No Light till Life’s End” stripping the band’s down to its most ferocious, fundamental elements (with the former being arguably the heaviest, harshest track on the album, and the latter – which even includes some subtle, clean-sung embellishments – being by some measure the record’s hookiest, catchiest cut).
The pinnacle of the release, of course, is phenomenal fourteen-minute penultimate track “An Axe. A Broadsword. A Bullet”, which is easily the most ambitious thing the band have ever written, moving as it does from melodic to merciless, from moody to majestic (the song’s soul-stirring mid-section in particular finds the group pushing the dynamic extremes, both on the quietest, calmest and loudest, most cathartic, ends of the spectrum) and from grandiose to gloomy (especially right at the end, where its sombre finale transitions seamlessly into the mournful strains of “Thalassophobia”) as the song progresses.
So if you were a fan of the band before now, then prepare to be even more impressed by this one… and if you weren’t familiar with their work? Then you might just be about to discover your favourite new band.
EARTHBOUND – CHRONOS
Cards on the table, there’s definitely the potential for some bias here, as we recently played a few live shows with Earthbound (but, then, the reason we did the shows in the first place is because I was already a fan of the band’s music… for reasons you’re about to discover).
Sitting somewhere between Melodeath at its hookiest and Metalcore at its proggiest, the Hertfordshire quintet clearly owe a significant debt to the likes of Soilwork (some of the keenest, catchiest riff-work giving off some major Living Infinite vibes), Scar Symmetry (with the record’s shamelessly OTT closer giving off a less technical, but no less epic, vibe reminiscent of the latter’s Holographic Universe era) and latter-day Mercenary (“The Architect” in particular would fit in seamlessly with the band’s post-Sandager-era material).
Their not-so-secret weapon, however, is vocalist Tom Watson, whose absolutely stunning singing voice gives much of the material (especially early favourite “Change”) an almost Power Metal-ish sense of scale, yet wisely avoids the showboating extravagance so often associated with that style in favour of a more emotive, ‘core-ish catharsis which has also drawn favourable comparisons to the likes of Howard Jones, Bjorn Strid, and more.
It’s not perfect – some of the attempts to push things in a proggier, Ne Obliviscaris-esque direction can feel a little forced and formulaic when compared to the heart-on-sleeve heroics which dominate elsewhere – but the highlights more than make up for the occasional lull in the action.
Said highlights definitely include the previously mentioned “Change” (whose moody, saxophone-drenched mid-section is a highlight in and of itself), the high-energy riffs and spellbinding leads of “A Conversation With God”, and soaring early single “Flight”(which also features some brilliant bass and synth work), plus the addictive, fat-free thrills of “Transmission” and the captivating Prog-Power-Metal-core majesty of epic closer “Chasing the Wind”, but even the songs which don’t quite reach the same heights are still well worth listening to, and mark Earthbound out as a band with a very bright future ahead of them.
If I could/would offer one piece of unsolicited advice, it would be to place even more emphasis on Watson’s singing (I know, that’s a weird thing for a site with our name to be telling a band to do) and push the harsh vocals into more of a supporting role (“Chasing the Wind” being a perfect example)… after all, when you’ve got a voice that good in your band you want to push it to the forefront as much as you can!
WARPSTORMER – WARPSTORMER
Do you like riffs? Well then, the self-titled debut album from self-proclaimed Stoner Thrash crew Warpstormer has you covered (and then some).
Sure, the band are still a little in thrall to their influences – Mastodon and High On Fire being the obvious, big name inspirations, although there’s also some striking similarities to the likes of Black Royal and Khemmis in places too – but the proof of the pudding, as they say, is not in the ingredients but in the eating… and any fans of the above bands are going to absolutely eat this one up.
If there’s one complaint I have about this album – and, don’t worry, we’re getting it out of the way nice and early so we can get to the really good stuff – it’s that, as good as the first ten minutes or so are (“Oracle” is a riffy little rocker that serves as a solid, if not stunning, introduction to the band, and “Cursed, Cold” is a gutsy groover with some great vocal parts) it doesn’t truly get going until the seven-minute centrepiece, “Beyonder”, which sees the band really hitting their stride with a near-perfect mix of heaviness, hookiness, and progginess.
Things only get better from here, with the relentlessly riff-tastic “A Liar’s Crown” adding a dose of doomy weight (without sacrificing the album’s electrifying energy) and the swaggering stomp of “Fester” bringing in some more moody melody (the prominent, Mastodon-esque clean vocals – which have occasionally been hinted at elsewhere – in particular are a nice touch, and one I’d love to see the band play around with more in the future) to contrast with the increasingly crunchy riffage and meaty, muscular rhythms.
It all culminates in the fuzzed-up, doom-laden slow-burn of “The Edge of Time” whose haunting first half which wouldn’t sound a million miles out of place on the killer new Crypt Sermon album, in my opinion) eventually builds into a thrillingly thrashy mid-section – which finds the band cutting loose with the sort of reckless abandon which would make Matt Pike proud – before climaxing in crushingly heavy, gargantuanly gloomy finale that leaves you hungry for more (in the best possible way).
I’ll admit, maybe this review isn’t quite as effusive as some of the others out there you may have read, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to check out the album – I definitely do! – it’s more that I don’t think the band have fulfilled their true potential just yet… but they’re definitely well on the way towards doing so!