Worm - Necropalace (Century Media) [Mark Young]Buckle up kids, Worm have dropped a truly essential album with Necropalace. It is an absolute barnstormer where the songs are just at an insane level of excellence.
Now I should back up a little and set the scene. This review slipped through the net a little and as result I got to it late. As a band, Worm, have been releasing music in one form or another since 2014.
Necropalace represents their 4th full length album in a period stretching from 2017 and I’ll be honest I hadn’t come across them until I sat down to prep for the review. Generally, I like to listen two or three times and then put pen to paper.
Pressing play, the intro track Gates To The Shadowzone started off and its ho-hum, instrumental but it had something different to it. The arrangement is all building guitars and over the top atmosphere which then transfers into Necropalace. Its here that the gloves are truly taken off.
It is a 10-minute masterwork where they hit you with an album’s worth of ideas in one shot. Its overwhelming as it is engaging and is basically everything you love about Black metal, wrapped up in one place. It goes from full tilt to crawling tempos, mixing the approach so that it never settles in one place and incredibly it works. Nothing is out of place, no idea off the table.
There is a solo that comes in around 8 minutes in that is sublime and mental at the same time. That seems to be at the core of this album, that combination of ideals. Love it. After this 1-2, they could have recorded a car alarm going off for 40 or so minutes and it wouldn’t have changed my feeling towards this album.
Luckily, they didn’t and then proceed to unleash god tier metal on us. Halls Of Weeping pulls that speed right back, going heavily into atmospheric realms instead. The thing here is the length of these songs. Halls is around 9 minutes long, and like Necropalace and the ones that follow forms a complete story in its own right. You can listen to the songs here in any order you like and it doesn’t alter how they land with you. Each is an exercise in how to do epic metal and I don’t think I’ve heard anyone get close to this.
It’s difficult to pick out stand-out moments here, because each song is a stand-out in its own right. The shorter songs – The Night Has Fangs and Blackheart (7 minutes each) still have more going on than the norm, and somehow, they make it work. Neither sounds rushed or over the top. Both have crushing rhythms and those mental lead breaks within. There is nothing that you can find fault with at all.
And then they bring out the bigger guns. They close out with Witchmoon – The Infernal Masquerade (ft Marty Friedman). Barely a minute on the clock and the first lead kicks in. Delicate arpeggios and choirs back up the guitars and its obvious that this is culmination of their efforts. Its pace is slightly restrained but it doesn’t feel slower because of this. If anything it gives it the room to breathe, bringing those themes together and mixing them into a heady brew.
It brings brutality, beauty and all points in between and shall become in my eyes the very definition of what epic looks like. Its not overblown, overwrought or any other overs you can think of. The lead work is fantastic, completely in keeping with this and the album as a whole. The duelling solos around 8 minutes in is just chef’s kiss, truly exceptional stuff.
Necropalace is the sort of music that you will come back to again and again. The instant attraction is there straight away, but this is not a shallow experience. If this isn’t still in your playlists come AOTY time in December, then there is something wrong with the world. You don’t have to love Black Metal to love this. You just need to love heavy metal. 10/10
Temple Balls - Temple Balls (Frontiers Music) [Matt Bladen]
It's still the worst name ever but I have to say Temple Balls play really fun hard rock. Coming from Finland, their self-titled record, their fifth overall, continues their journey as a band, they've been adapting their style over their previous albums and this one can be seen as a bit of reinvention, like all good self-titled records, though drawing from where they have come from to be the best version.
The band feel like they have finally nailed down how they want to sound as a band after four albums. Produced by Jona Tee, it's extremely slick in how it's delivered. Thumping electronics, bouncy rhythms, huge choruses, massive backing vocals, this is 80's AOR in the modern age, brimming with attitude, Temple Balls bristle with energy and confidence here.
Influences of Def Leppard, Bon Jovi and Foreigner (sax on We Are The Night) are all here, but so are the melodic metal and modern rock styles that are now present with many of the bands on the Frontiers roster.
Opening with Flashback Dynamite, you know its bloody good, music that is honed on stage and then written for it, this is good time rock n roll, ready to bounce along to and sing back with your full voice. There’s a sleazy swagger to Lethal Force, Tokyo Love meanwhile reminds me of fellow Finns Lordi with its warped sense of humour.
The playing is great, the tracks such as Hellbound and Chasing The Madness benefiting from the double guitar approach. The rhythm section boisterous on There Will Be Blood and heavy southern approach of We Are The Night. Vocally too there’s enough grit to melody ratio on The Path Within and the epic closer Living In A Nightmare.
Temple Balls still have a terrible name but their music is extremely anthemic melodic metal/rock, honed to near perfection, album number five collects everything that’s come before into their most definitive statement so far, fair warning you will be humming it for days to come. 8/10
Deathraw - Reduced To Ashes (Self Released) [Mark Young]
And now for some Bay Area Thrash by way of France, Deathraw bring their debut assault to bear with Reduced To Ashes. So, getting down to brass tacks, it’s 5 tracks of razor-sharp thrash that is as good as anything you would have heard outside of the Big Four.
It owes more to those bands that stayed within that tightly focused musical sphere for the whole of their careers, instead of those who moved beyond it. Musical trends come and go and like fashion ideas they do come back around again and thrash is no different.
The question is, does it have enough to garner interest when perceived rightly or wrongly as being simplistic when held up against other forms of metal. Well, you either love it or hate it. There isn’t any middle ground here, no meandering moments or acoustic guitars or lyrics with the word ‘baby’ in them (copyright to J Hetfield, Donnington, the 80’s).
It is aggressive, fast and like I mentioned earlier it can sit with the likes of Testament and Death Angel and their best material. Its played completely straight, it isn’t coming from an angle of humour they are deadly serious.
Wolves Assemble is proof of this intent. Spidery melody lines are its introduction and then its boom, here we go. It must be difficult in trying to find the right way to sing – the vocals have to sit within a certain range, possessing the right amount of grit.
Its about right on here but let’s face it you are here for the riffs and the leads. I can confirm that they are in place. The riffs are exactly what you expect, wrapped up tightly, palm-muted and dropped with venom.
Reduced To Ashes comes hot on the heels and keeps velocity in place, with a sumptuous lead break. From that perspective, Deathraw achieve what they need to and over the course of the remainder of the songs they remind you of this. They appreciate that they can’t use speed every time and bring The Last Testimony to the table.
Possessing a crawling tempo, it attacks in a different way using a core melodic line to allow the song to grow around it. Of course it also gives them a ton of space to drop a face melter of a solo. Job done.
For fans of thrash, well they should just eat this up. Riot, the penultimate track is a scorcher that takes the classic template of super tight riffing, multiple lead breaks, down picking and of course cymbal tapping. It has everything you would normally expect to hear, possibly over the course of one album but in one song, and if you wanted a jumping on track then I would say this.
Post Human (ft Ol Drake) would probably have words about that though. The final song here, it pails a little when compared against Riot, and for me I would have swapped them round, but no matter. Thankfully they haven’t dropped a ballad or an instrumental, it’s a face forward stomper that has another burner of a lead. It is an absolute corker.
And we are done, its 28 minutes of fast, aggressive material that should find a home with anyone who digs heavy metal. The question for some maybe that its considered to be old hat when placed side by side with modern metal.
Well, bands are still going back to Black Sabbath for inspiration, are they old hat? There is a glut of bands who use that super-dense sound with 7 or 8 strings to mask their ability. On this you can hear everything so those riffs have to be good, the leads have to be solid gold.
On balance, having the 5 tracks works in their favour. Long enough to make a mark on you, short enough so that it doesn’t overstay its welcome. The acid test will be a full album, can they sustain it over 40 or more minutes? I’d like to find out. 9/10
Austen Starr – I Am The Enemy (Frontiers Music) [Matt Bladen]
Having never been a teenage girl full of angst, in fact I’ve never been a girl or had angst to be honest, there are a lot of bands who have passed me by. The entire emo movement, most of pop punk and few others.
Now I read that Boston singer Austen Starr has been compared to bands such as The Warning and Halestorm, and while I can hear that, she reflects both bands at the early stages of their careers where the influence of Avril Lavigne, Paramore and Evanescence, all brought about a pop rock sound that was fit for radio, and has been adopted by artists like Oliva Rodrigo in recent years.
A lot of the nuance and maturity that Halestorm especially have now doesn’t manifest here, it’s a throwback to the pop punk/emo/alt rock anthems of the early 2000’s. If you’re from the UK, this is a record that has Kerrang TV and Scuzz TV all over it.
Now that being said, Austen Starr is a great singer and lyricist, she also has a majorly high profile and talented band behind her in guitarist Joel Hoekstra (Whitesnake/Revolution Saints/Trans-Siberian Orchestra), bassist/drummer Chris Collier (Mick Mars, Lita Ford), keyboardist Steve Ferlazzo (Avril Lavigne) along with Chloe Lowery (Trans-Siberian Orchestra) on backing vocals.
Raised in household where being a musician was frowned upon, she channelled her angst into her songwriting, being picked up by Frontiers and given a crack team of musicians this debut is the result of many years hard work, and if the result of many “emo karaoke nights” is your bag then you’ll be putting on the eyeliner and shouting along to punky the title track, head banging to
Effigy or getting into Paramore styled
Running Out Of Time.
If you’re expecting AOR or melodic rock from this Frontiers act, turn away now, however I guarantee there’s still an audience for this sort of angsty pop rocking, and Austen Starr has the potential to be huge.
7/10
