(written by Islander)
When I picked the name for this blog in 2009 it was partly a joke and partly dead serious. A joke, because I made clear from the outset that some of my favorite metal bands included singing in their music; serious, because at the time I was annoyed by a budding trend among metalcore bands I liked to substitute fairly lame singing for yelling and snarling.
In the ensuing years we’ve written about many bands who have included singers, but it’s fair to say that they’ve been in a minority. Speaking only for myself, I still generally prefer extreme vocals in metal, and it still takes a special singing voice to overcome the prejudice.
In the case of all four songs that I’ve bundled together today, I thought the exception was well-earned, although I’m not sure you would agree that “singing” is the correct way to describe the vocals in the fourth song. Of course, I think all four songs are infectious too. (If you’re new to this series, you can find all the other songs on the list via this link.)
SINISTRO
When Sinistro returned with their new album Vertice last year, they brought with them a new vocalist, Luxembourg native Priscila Da Costa, and some changes in sound — discussed in Andy Synn’s NCS review last August. They also created a great album, one that the afore-mentioned Andy put on his year-end list of Great Albums.
In the run-up to the album’s release we had the privilege of premiering a video and song from the album named “Elegia.” I thought it was remarkable, and still do. Its staying power earned it a place on the list, along with aspects of the song that sink it in people’s heads from the first listen — including the singing. I’ll excerpt what I wrote about it in the premiere feature:
“Elegia” does have an elegiac quality, but it continually ebbs and flows, rendering moods of yearning and resilience as well as torment and sorrow. It includes powerful thrusting and chugging rhythms that hit with visceral heaviness, but also vivid rocking beats. It also includes gentle glittering notes, swirling arpeggios, and wailing chords. It draws out agonies and abandonments, unfurls sweeping cascades of tragic grandeur, but also recalls beauty.
As expected, the vocals are transfixing. It’s a marvel to be carried low and high by Priscila‘s heart-felt and heart-rending voice as it reaches across her impressive range into spine-tingling elevations, interspersed with harmonies and conversational words. Her voice is never really subdued, because its emotional power is always affecting even when softer, but it really raises goosebumps when it hits the stratosphere, pouring everything out.
https://almamater.bandcamp.com/album/v-rtice
https://www.facebook.com/sinistroband/
MAN’S GIN
It was a very long wait for another Man’s Gin album since the release of Rebellion Hymns in 2013, but at last Erik Wunder returned last year with a new one, The Reprobate, accompanied by Charlie Fell and a big list of notable guests. Profound Lore released the record and described it as “a vagabond journey of desperation, despair, and dejection”.
“One Man Down” was the first advance song to emerge from the album, and it really put the hooks in me. I couldn’t overlook it in preparing this list. Here’s what I wrote after the first couple of listens:
[I]t turns out to be a slow build that escalates into remarkable intensity, and it’s also remarkably tough to get out of your head once you’ve heard it (well, that’s my guess about you, but a certainty in my case).
The dancing opening guitar melody rings and beckons as Wunder somberly chants the song’s title and the grim lyrics that follow. Just in time for the vocals to become a harsh cacophony, the song begins to hammer and blare, with the bass bruising the listener and those ringing notes growing more desperate and tormented.
Harmonized vocals enhance the song’s growing intensity even as it digs its hooks in deeper, and then begins to weave and become woozier even as the drums go off like a rapid exchange of gunfire in some urban canyon. The darkness and desperation in the music don’t relinquish their hold; if anything the experience becomes more expansive and vast. The bone-rocking grooves don’t relinquish their hold either — until the dismal and frightening spoken-word sample at the end.
https://profoundlorerecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-reprobate
https://www.facebook.com/mansginofficial
DEVON TOWNSEND
We didn’t manage to review Devin Townsend‘s latest album PowerNerd, and my general sense is that it didn’t generate quite as much enthusiasm among listeners as the stand-outs in his remarkable discography. But it still left me where I was before hearing it — a long-term fan who still gets a boggled mind when hearing what he’s capable of doing, even when he’s not blowing the top off people’s heads with surprises.
One song from the album captivated me, and still does, even though I acknowledge it’s more like red meat and potatoes for the HevyDevy faithful than something designed to break old molds and make new ones. Entitled “Jainism,” I assume it was named after an ancient Indian religion that emphasizes non-violence, compassion, and living a simple life.
It proved to be a dark and furious anthem that shows off DT‘s extraordinary voice in many of its changing manifestations — singing as well as screaming — and the lyrics are fantastic too, as you’ll see. That chorus is probably the biggest of many hooks in the song. The man is still a gem.
https://devintownsend.bandcamp.com/album/powernerd-24-bit-hd-audio
https://www.facebook.com/dvntownsend
YOVEL
This Greek band’s stunning 2024 album The Great Silence struck several chords with me. One was a lyrical chord, because the album’s themes focus on the current blinkered and broken condition of humanity, locked within and manipulated by screens and seemingly indifferent to war, destruction, poverty, and the mass displacement of people: “Gray people, tuned zombies full of guilt and doubt, capable of living only through and within successive notifications – in thousands of momentary stimuli. Until the next one.”
Those themes are reflected in all of the song’s powerful lyrics, including “Corpses On Leave,” the song from the album I decided to add to this list. The words aren’t easy reading, and the music isn’t easy listening. Both are intended to be provocative, to be furious, and to be a rallying cry.
It might not be a conventionally “catchy” song, but it packs a big punch, and its dark and dire melodies do worm their way in, as do the more gentle and elegant (but very sad) acoustic phases of the song. There’s singing in the song, though it’s raw rather than pretty, along with gritty, ravaging snarls that are even more raw (and somber spoken words).
I thought this was one of the best albums of last year, and “Corpses On Leave” is an example of why.
https://yovel.bandcamp.com/album/new-album-the-great-silence-2024
https://www.facebook.com/yovelband/