Weekly album: Akercocke - Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone

Akercocke -Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone

2005 / Progressive Black/Death metal

1. Verdelet

2. Seduced

3. Shelter from the Sand

4. Eyes of the Dawn

5. Abbadonna, Dying in the Sun

6. Words That Go Unspoken

7. Intractable

8. Seraphs and Silence

9. The Penance

10. Lex Talionis

btcarey: Akercocke was a completely foreign band to me before being exposed to them for this Weekly Album. This left me with little, to no expectations for how the music would sound or what genre I was preparing for. Those of you familiar with Akercocke, can imagine my surprise after spinning their record of the first time. Coming out of it I was a bit disoriented to say the least. To the untrained ear Akercocke’s style can sound like a junction of different genres mashed together in one record. But after you understand the flow of the music and know what to expect Akercocke’s “Words that go Unspoken, Deeds that go Undone” shines as an exceptional album.

When researching Akercocke, most sources defined them as progressive blackened death metal. Personally, I think this branding is incredibly misleading (remember, I haven’t heard any of Akercocke’s material besides “Words that go Unspoken, Deeds that go Undone”). While there are few black metal moments throughout the album (one of my favorites being on the track “The Penance”), the album in its entirety is a split between death metal and progressive metal. If I had to compare them to anything, I would say they take a large amount of influence from Opeth (which is totally fine with me). Personally, the proggy parts are my favorite aspect of the album, especially on the final track “Lex Talionis”. It’s just a perfect, eerie yet beautiful conclusion to the album. Even though the awesome prog stuff somewhat shadows the heavier parts, there is some QUALITY DEATH METAL on this record (It even delves into the technical death realm on a few tracks).

Overall this is a great album. Check it out. Buy it. Steal it. Frame it. Whatever you have to do. This is a must for death metal and Opeth fans.

Favorite Song: Eyes of the Dawn

tp5170: Mixing different genres can result in something rather interesting if done right, and despite not doing a PERFECT job, I think that Akercocke was on the right track with the album ‘Words That Go Unspoken, Deed That Go Undone’.

The album is simply put a combination of progressive, death- and black metal elements, and the shear amount of variety displayed on this album always amazes me. It is also noteworthy that none of the elements is used as a gimmick implemented badly or as a trick that would only appear in half of the tracks or something like that, but instead most of the tracks actually have like two or three sides to them and time is given equally to the different genres they tried to mix. 

Of course not all of the different elements are equal or superb in quality; for example there are moments that simply end up feeling like an overly complicated mess and some of the death metal parts are pretty lackluster, but these things don’t bother me too much, because the general sound on the album is surprisingly enjoyable even with its flaws.

Out of Akercocke’s albums, this one has always struck me as the most engaging, and overall I’d say that the album is quite solid and that you can clearly hear that there were several interesting ideas used in composition of the album.

Kattroll: Based on the album cover, my first guess would be that the album would consist of some atmospheric jazz rather than metal music. The name of album is also a monster of its own kind, because in my opinion, the name should be something short and concise.

The music itself was a pleasant surprise: I've been told that I've been sort of picky about music lately, but I could actually say that I like this album, even though I really don't listen to this sort of stuff. The album doesn't depress and I'd be glad to listen to this diverse album. Usually, I steer clear of progressive elements, but on this album their use is quite moderate and well done. The same goes to the clean vocal parts. I could almost say that this album is the best unknown weekly album we've had to date. A huge plus for the beautiful outro.  

Moloch - Meine Ganze Hoffnung Stirbt

Moloch (Ukr) - Meine Ganze Hoffnung Stirbt

2011 / Dark Ambient, Piano Music

Moloch is another band I recently came across while exploring the vast world of Internet. I just couldn’t resist checking them out after seeing that artwork in their logo. (I mean just look at it.) 

But how about the album, is it any good? To summarize, yes it is! Actually to be honest, before listening to this album I wouldn’t have thought that an album mainly focused on ambient could strike me as this engaging, but it’s good that there are still some surprises left in the field of music. 

So basically every song on the album consists solely of ambient playing in the background and some piano parts played over it. The two components merge together quite nicely and as a result we get a pretty intense and sad atmosphere which resembles closely that of atmospheric black metal. Technically it’s quite simple, but it works surprisingly well as there still seems to be so much going on with the melodies, and the songs don’t end up dwelling too long in one place. 

The songs themselves are also not that long and they link together almost seamlessly so the album starts almost feeling like a single thirty minutes long track that keeps evolving after every couple of minutes. Personally I like this was of approach a lot and it seems to work really well with the album. 

I was pretty much amazed by the overall quality of the album and it kind of left me aching for more, so I am quite confident that I’ll be listening to some more Moloch in the near future.

Batushka - Litourgiya

Batushka - Litourgiya

2015 / Black metal, Doom metal

Mysticism has always been part of black metal and the interpretations of it usually differ from each other quite a lot. The mystic elements are not always present of course and on some albums the absence of these elements is one of the reasons they are dull. Also, some artists' views of the arcane element fail to evoke any sort of feelings  and some artists' executions of the element blow you away. Batushka definitely belongs to the latter group.

The identities of Batushka's musicians are still unknown, but that's only a visual element in their mysticism. The music itself, which is fantastic blend of black metal and doom metal elements, feels so mysterious, emotive and piercing. Even though at least some of Batushka's members are Polish, 'Litourgiya' always gives me Soviet era lo-fi vibes. Like a musical equivalent to the gloomy and melancholic Soviet produced cartoons. Somehow I link their production quality and especially their instrument tones to Soviet Union. These are not bad traits at all and in my opinion, for they are one of the largest factors in Batushka's sound's mysticism.

Quite many have praised Batushka's use of orthodox chants and I'll gladly join this crowd. Using orthodox chants isn't a new thing in black metal at all, but the usage is usually only a minor element. Batushka, on the other hand, uses the chants as a major element and it works wonderfully. Massive choir melodies on top of heavy doom and black metal riffs and parts that have focus on the chants show extraordinary songwriting skills and the chants aren't even the only reason for this. 'Litourgiya' is one of the most solid black metal albums I've heard and the album in its entirety has no weak points. When listening to 'Litourgiya' on vinyl, the coherence stays solid until the end. It's actually quite difficult to notice the moment when a track changes and that's actually an excellent thing in this case.

Black metal albums don't usually charm me instantly, but Batushka managed to succeed in that. I would go as far as to say that 'Litourgiya' might easily be the best black metal album released in 2015 and could be, even in 2010's.

Favourite track: 'Yekteníya 3'

Weekly album: Turbid North - Orogeny

Turbid North - Orogeny

2011 / Death metal, Sludge

1. Wolves

2. Rift

3. Bereavement

4. The Hunter

5. Stormblast

6. Between the Glacier and the Sea

7. Kodiak Pt.1

8. Kodiak Pt.2

9. Orogeny

10. Floating the Ionosphere

btcarey: Turbid North’s second album, “Orogeny”, is an album that will always have a place on my playlist. The root of my undying affection for the album stems from its relationship with my home, Alaska. Being such a small place (with regards to population, not area, Alaska is the largest state in the US by far, UP YOURS TEXAS!!), Alaska has a minuscule metal scene, primarily comprised of sub-par, screamo/metalcore bands (if you want an example check out “36 Crazyfists”). For most of my life I just assumed that Alaska’s metal scene was hopeless, that is, until the day I saw Turbid North. The band, originating from the small Alaskan town “North Pole” (I’m not even kidding, that’s actually a place), gave me a new hope for the scene and an Alaskan metal band I could be proud of.

Turbid North is the bastard child of Pink Floyd and Mastodon, raised by The Black Dahlia Murder. Orogeny is a complete blend of genres. In just one song, the music could include an Iron Maiden riff, transition to crushing doom, and finish off with a psychedelic outro. One drawback of all the stylistic transitions is that they are not always well executed, taking the listener a bit off guard and making the music sometimes hard to follow. But overall the music is well blended, giving you a diverse experience song by song.

Even though Turbid North isn’t made up of extraordinarily technical musicians they do a great job of coming up with dynamic, quality songs. One of my favorite examples of their musicianship is the instrumental “Floating the Ionosphere”. The song especially showcases the guitarist’s ability to write some awesome blues based solos and provides a perfect conclusion for the album.

So if you’re interested in something a little bit different and off-the-beaten-path check this album out.

Favorite Song: Between the Glacier and the Sea

Orostider: Turbid North was something I had never heard of before this, but I went to look at their bandcamp tags. 'Death metal' and 'doom metal' don't really tell anything about this album, because their vibe and sound go from Black Dahlia Murder to Baroness and onwards to a sort of fusion of the former two. That's an unusual but admirable range of elements.

The first songs fall into the Black Dahlia Murder-ish category and I had to actually check if the vocalist could be the same in both bands. Two different persons but almost exactly the same sort of high pitch voice. My comparison could be seen as mocking Turbid North, but I'm quite impressed by their material. What made the impression, was the shift from BDM to Baroness style sludge. The transition could have been smoother, but the unexpected change of the main element, just when you've gotten half-way through the album, leaves you sort of thoughtless so it's a bit hard to notice the roughness of the transition. 

In my opinion, the sludge infused songs beat the hell out of the rest of the songs, but all in all 'Orogeny' is a solid album, although not an excellent one. There were parts I really disliked, like the slow chugging in 'Hunter', but on the other hand, I really liked 'Between the Glacier and the Sea' and the sludgy two part song 'Kodiak.' 

How can an album with such a drastic change in sound halfway the album still sound so intact, even if there are, in my opinion, some integrity damaging elements?

Favourite song: 'Between the Glacier and the Sea.' 

tp5170: Now to be frank it’s quite rare for me to listen to death metal on my spare time and there are together only a handful of bands in the genre that I actively listen to. Orogeny didn’t quite make it to my list of worthwhile DM bands; not because I’d consider them bad, but because there has to something really special for offer to make me interested in the genre in general and unfortunately I didn’t find that special something on Turbid North. 

It sounds pretty silly, but I’d go as far as to say that I kind of liked everything on the album that wasn’t specifically death metal, because it seemed like there were plenty of other interesting elements to be found on the album, but as for the DM component, to me it simply felt like your average death metal racket and that pretty much killed the album for me. However, I found the not so traditional DM parts somewhat interesting and overall I think that the album seemed to keep getting better and more diverse as it progressed.

I can only imagine that if you actually are into the DM this album might be quite the jewel, because despite not personally liking the major DM aspect of it, it still sounded really polished and well balanced between the traditional DM, melodic- and doom(?) elements, - an interesting mix you don’t see that often and I’ll have to admit that on this album it worked surprisingly well.

Favourite song: 'Floating the Ionosphere'

Kattroll: The album begins with quite a technical part and I was afraid that the album would only consist of this kind of stuff. Even though the album's sound changes, the album, lasting for over an hour in its entirety, is quite pummeling the whole time. This sort of album maybe shouldn't be this long. 

What I liked the most, was the album's cover art. Freezing cold wintry landscape and horse corpse pecking crows are exactly the sort of stuff that do it for me. The colours are a bit too light in my opinion, but the coloured pencil -like print is really pretty. Pictures like this could be featured in the popular adult colouring books! 

Even though the album was okay, I probably won't come back to it. It was pretty exciting to hear Alaskan band's material, and sometimes the album reminded me of the Finnish Deathchain, which isn't a bad thing at all. 

Magrudergrind - II

Magrudergrind - II

2016 / Grindcore, Powerviolence

Magrudergrind's self-titled album, released in 2009, is easily one of favourite grindcore albums, so needless to say, I was quite hyped when 'II' was announced. Getting hyped is sometimes quite a bad idea because it mostly leads to disappointment, but this time, it didn't. Magrudergrind are back and with full force. 

Filthy, fierce and groovy grindcore, filled with tasty hooks and crushing slower parts, is the most accurate description of Magrudergrind's distinguishable take on grindcore I can come up with. An inexperienced listener could argue that they sound like any other grindcore band or that you can't really tell the songs apart from each other, but if grindcore is an old friend of yours, the catchy and clever hooks are easy to find. And if the hooks are not enough, the amount of energy pumped into the listener is enormous and should be enough of a reason to check both 'II' and the self-titled album.

Magrudergrind shows no signs of slowing down and if they plan to release quality albums rather seldom instead of releasing possibly mediocre albums every two years or so, I have nothing against it. 'II' may not be on par with the self-titled album due to some changes in production and songwriting. Both production and songwriting are excellent on 'II' but on self titled album they were even better. The self titled album's modern but raw production was one of best one's I've ever heard in grindcore and the all of the songs felt equally good. I'm not saying that 'II' has any low quality songs, but some of the songs are clearly more powerful than some. Still, an instant album of the year candidate. 

Saor - Roots

Saor - Roots

2013 / Atmospheric Folk/Black Metal

After daily listening to Saor’s “Roots” for the past week and a half, I feel completely blown away.  The first few minutes of the title track “Roots” initially had me a bit skeptical, employing generic, atmospheric black metal elements that can be found throughout the genre. But where most bands sink into that monotonous repetition, Saor forges ahead, creating an enormous sound, filled with a power and beauty I’ve never encountered in the genre before.

“Balance”, is the perfect word to sum up this album. The mix is done flawlessly. All instruments can be heard clearly and consistently, providing a huge spectrum of sounds. This balance especially compliments the use of folk instruments like the tin whistle and violin. Where these delicate instruments would otherwise be drowned out by the guitar and drums, they provide some of the strongest melodies and passages in the whole album. Nothing feels overused and while there is repetition, it doesn’t feel tedious.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the harsh vocals but they are done with a certain passion that definitely benefited the music. And even though it was only administered a few times, the use of clean vocals was very well done.

Overall, this is a great debut album and I would highly suggest it to fans of atmospheric black metal or folk metal.

Favorite Song: Carved in Stone

Weekly album: Saor - Aura

Saor - Aura

2014/ Atmospheric folk black metal

1. Children of Mist

2. Aura

3. The Awakening

4. Farewell

5. Pillars of the Earth

Kattroll: When I first got to know Saor, you could say it was love at first listen. Nowadays I have their hoodie, t-shirt and both of their albums: 'Aura' and 'Roots, of which the former is absolute favourite. In my opinion, 'Aura' is a wonderfully coherent album, whose songs fit together like a glove and without repeating the same. This was one of the reasons I chose this album, but I mainly chose this because, in my opinion, everyone should listen to this even once.   

Even though the album does the thing for me in every possible situation, my favourite moment with it was when I listened to it in a national park. The rain was lashing against my face, the duckboards were slippery and the Finnish swamp scape was so beautiful, yet so rough, like this album. As I arrived to the swamp, my thoughts were quite confusing, but after the album was over, my mood was airy and I felt great. Trying to achieve similar experience is recommended to everyone, if there's a chance to do so. 

Orostider: Scotland, the home of haggis, bagpipe and William Wallace, is also home to Saor, originally known as Àrsaidh. Saor is probably the biggest underground metal phenomenon from Scotland for years and their reputation as the jewel of atmospheric pagan black metal is not just hot air. With a wide range of elements from post-rock to black metal, Saor has definitely assured its place as one of the most interesting acts in Europe.

The opening track 'Children of the Mist' begins the track with a wicked pagan black metal part with a tin whistle main melody. 'Children of the Mist' gives only a slight hint of what's yet to come, even if the overall form of the music remains the same. One of the elements that makes 'Aura' one of the best pagan black metal(-ish) to date, is the variety and strength of the sweet folk influenced melodies. The absolutely top notch songwriting, where every section fits, might be one of the reasons why the melodies, and the album itself, sound so majestically powerful.

One of the uncommon traits of the album is its ability to transmit the enchanting atmosphere of Scotland's meadows to the listener without sounding cheesy or overdoing the folk influenced parts. It might be that 'Aura' doesn't fit every possible mood, but the scale of the moods it goes through is just magnificent. The scale goes from melancholy and longing to joy and pure spiritual strength and the smoothness of the transitions is first class. 

tp5170: I have been listening to Saor occasionally for a while now and in my opinion Aura is simply a charming album. In fact, Aura was initially such an engaging experience that I listened to the album so many times that eventually a hefty break from it was in order.

I think that Saor has in general a pretty interesting sound but what makes Aura such a big deal for me is the atmosphere that keeps evolving and changing throughout the songs, justifying the rather long track lengths.  I also have to emphasize the realization of the pagan / folk theme which works beautifully and gives the album a Scottish face.

But like pretty much any other atmospheric black metal album, I think that also Aura requires a certain type of mindset from the listener for it to really reach its full potential, but when it does there’s nothing quite like it in the folk section of the genre. 

btcarey: Saor’s sophomore album “Aura” is a brilliant follow-up to their 2013 release “Roots”. With “Roots” quickly becoming one of my top Atmospheric black / folk metal albums of the past few years, I was delighted to find that Saor continued down the trail they laid with this new addition. While there are some noticeable stylistic differences between the two records, “Aura” feels like a natural evolution for the band’s sound.

Saor continues to focus on folk instruments and melodies, yet there seems to be a bigger concentration on the guitar and drum parts. The mix is still very fitting for the attitude of the music, which is a bit more aggressive than previously. Unfortunately this slight modification negates from the subtleties and atmosphere perfected on the previous album. This aside, the riffs are much more powerful here then on “Roots”.  Even with this much heavier sound Saor is able to maintain their elegant folk passages with ease (especially on the track “Children of the Mist”).

This is a great stand-alone album that is somewhat shadowed by its extraordinary predecessor. “Aura” will leave new fans begging for more and veterans with a solid sequel to their beloved “Roots”.

Favorite Song: Children of the Mist

Black Funeral - Vukolak

Black Funeral - Vukolak

2010 / Black metal

This weekend I decided to continue my journey to check out Black Funeral and gave Vukolak, the latest full-length release of the band, a couple of spins. It appears that Vukolak is a pretty tough nut to crack and even after listening to the album multiple times, I am still hesitant to say anything about it. I mean it’s pretty clear that it’s one of band’s weaker albums (or at least from those that I have listened to), but with each new spin the album seemed at least a bit more enjoyable. 

The sound is about the same I have come to expect from the band; it’s essentially raw black metal, but what’s new on this album is the introduction of a chaotic aspect to the songwriting, which unfortunately works only half of the time and is ‘utilized’ almost excessively throughout the album. The song quality also seems quite inconsistent and the tracks don’t align as nicely as on the band’s previous albums. What surprised me positively are the couple instrumental/ambient tracks amid all the black metal stuff, which help in creating the obscure atmosphere for the album. 

I think there are multiple strong tracks on the album but the whole set could be way more balanced and engaging, but at the same time I am not convinced that I have yet understood the album fully, so I’ll most likely have to spin it a couple more times before I can make my mind about it.