Suffering so you don't have to!
Not every day we get a Kiwi band, and not every day we get one that dares to have lyrics in te reo Māori. As someone who spends life jumping between languages (it comes with my business and colorful family members), Alien Weaponry is a band that walks a thin line between Djent, Heavy Metal, and MeloDeath. Honestly, it’s hard to pin it down, but in Te Rā, it seems clear to me that the band aims to conquer the Metal masses. But does it succeed? Let’s find out!
You look at Cercle du Chêne‘s Récits d’Automne et de Chasse art and think, “Oh, this must sound lovely and cute—it’ll remind me of my happy days watching Disney movies.” However, a seasoned reviewer like me sees this art and thinks, “Oh no! This is probably going to sound like Watership Down and have a lot of talking because it’s French Black Metal, and they have to let us know it’s French, you know?” Still, I was curious to see what this strange mix of Dungeon Synth and Black Metal had to offer. I mean, we tend to not even listen to these kinds of albums at MER, but sometimes, the underdogs deserve a chance in life.
Vicky
I’m just curious—does anyone remember Cancer? No, not the gut-wrenching illness, but the far less awful (and actually pleasant) band. I’m counting on the fact that you probably do… and I’m also counting on you at least politely nodding while reading this article before searching Encyclopaedia Metallum to find out what the deal with Cancer is. Now that you’ve returned, I can mention why I brought up those Death Metal titans: the group’s drummer, Gabriel Valcázar, is a member of Dissocia. Of course, he isn’t the only one. Dissocia also features vocalist, guitarist, bassist, and synthesist Daniel R. Flys, known for his work with Persefone, Eternal Storm, and others. On the epilogue, “Out of Slumber”, you may even hear the skilled violinist Paul R. Flys.
The other writers at MER Industries will have you believing that I’m all about Power Metal and old-fashioned Prog Metal, despite evidence like this and this to prove otherwise. However, I’ll admit it’s fun to joke about those styles. That said, sometimes a band comes along that makes me question my prejudices and encourages me to be more open-minded. Such is the case with Severed Angel’s When Eternity Ends. An album that promises traditional Prog Metal without making me feel like I’m betraying my Metalhead roots—but does it deliver? Stay with me!
I discovered Wombbath the way many of us have gotten into old-school Swedish Death Metal in this digital age—through a Bandcamp sale! I checked out a few of their albums and decided they were worth a shot. Needless to say, Wombbath is a pinnacle of consistency. To me, all its albums sit at least at a solid 3.5/5.0. However, there are only so many times you can pull off the chainsaw trick before it chops your arms off. And Beyond the Abyss is here to prove that the band can keep juggling familiar sounds without losing a limb.
Vicky & Metalcatto
Oh, hi! You’ve caught me in the middle of something again, but this time I’m not alone—our newest crew member, Vicky, is helping me make sense of the works you people send me. It’s not easy to swim through the mud to find the hidden gems. Often, they’re still filthy and need a lot of cleaning. However, today is different; we’ve got bands that you could say are consolidated in style and sound, which makes our suffering less severe. Let’s go!
It’s been a week full of high-profile releases. So much so that sometimes you lose perspective of what really matters—fami, the underground releases that, with sweat and tears, are trying to give us something different in this valley of darkness we call the world. Serpent Rider might have an angry name, The Ichor of Chimaera might have Black Metal-style art, but that doesn’t mean it can’t surprise us. In fact, I’d bet this is going to punch us all in the liver unexpectedly.
Vicky
We are in April 2005, and After Forever gave birth to a new band about three years prior. They called themselves Sahara Dust, and then they changed their name to Epica. In 2005, the world witnessed the birth of Dark Tranquillity’s Character, HammerFall’s Chapter V: Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken, Kamelot’s The Black Halo, Galneryus’s Advance to the Fall, and Metalium’s Demons of Insanity – Chapter Five, to name a few. In the non-Metal world, astronomers discovered the dwarf planet Eris (one of the largest dwarf planets in our solar system), YouTube was born, and Yahoo! was the most popular website out there… Good times. Well, those good times would come to an end in August, with the devastation brought by Hurricane Katrina, but that is a bit irrelevant to the Epica masterpiece I want to review.
It’s been a while since we covered anything coming from animal-loving labels like Transcending Obscurity. So, I went to my collapsed email box and found an album with a cool and Lovecraft-like cover from la France! Of course, I had to give it a go. Skaphos is a Blackened Death Metal band. As a style that many have tried and failed to master, it’s a complex balance between the fury and sorrow of both genres, but Cult of Uzura aims to defy these expectations, and I’m okay with that. In fact, as long as it doesn’t just blast from beginning to end, that’ll be enough for me!
Any of you who have been following the blog for the last year know two things: a) I hate nostalgia, and b) I believe the 80s are overrated in every artistic aspect. This is why Lordi’s Limited Deadition had such a hard task convincing me to even give it a chance. Besides, this is the only Metal band that won Eurovision decades ago, so with a mix of admiration and repulsion, I recalled that the point of being a reviewer is to explore horrors we never thought we’d encounter—to leave the comfort of my sauna and see what we’re up against next.
Metal Eclipse Reviews 