Following up on their two previous releases Peyote Smile (2011) and their eponymous album (2015). Dead Shed Jokers return with an album that is once again deeply personal and deals with some very important and at times raw topics such as chronicling mental health struggles, addiction, marital breakdown and then catharsis. It's a heady work that is reflected by the intelligent compositions of the band who are not shackled by any one genre. Recorded in just five days, live at Tim Hamill's Sonic One Studios in Llanelli, All The Seasons is a band who have taken their experimental sound to new heights by plundering new depths of their collective psyche. Phantom Pains has the swirling heavy riffs of Soundgarden (but early Soundgarden) the vocals of Hywel Davies hollering over the fuzzy riffs. It's a pretty emotional opening meaning that Feel Some More takes a more psych tone from the clean guitars and a Pearl Jam styled groove as the open chords wash over you.
Drumming and percussion is driven by Sean Mahoney who is a constant behind the kit while bass and guitars are shared between Kristian Evans, Nicky Bryant and Christopher Metters who provide the swaggering riffs on Dreams Of North Korea a trippy rock number that deals with addiction in the desert rock style of Kyuss. There's an immediacy to this album due to its recorded live nature, you can hear (and I know from experiences with the band) that these songs have been thrashed out live on stage so by the time they were ready to be put on tape they were perfectly formed. It's means that All The Seasons has a rawness to it but one built on a solid foundation of musicality. The title track itself is a introspective number that reminds me of Nick Cave at his most maudlin, building layers as it goes but keeping as a torchlight anthem that Cave does so well. The brilliant 764 is born of Houses Of The Holy where experimentation was king and it's has that 60's psychedelic bent as it drifts into a cymbal-led fade out.
You could pick out any of the 10 tracks on this album and understand why this album is so good, but it's together that the album works best, like all the best long players the entire album needs to be played in one sitting to get the full effect especially of tracks such as the You're A Thief, which has more layers than an onion along with some jangly guitars and even some bubbling Fender Rhodes, it culminates with freak out that is Enough Is As Good As A Feast, a definitive ending track that carries you to the end of your journey as the band just jam away. All The Seasons is a fabulous return from a band I've been following for a good long while now. Hopefully it will bring them into the wider conscious as they deserve big things. 10/10
Klone: Le Grand Voyage (Kscope)
French atmospheric rock band return with their first album since 2015's Here Comes The Sun. Once again the band focus on the more existential parts of life their guitarist Guillaume Bernard says that the album deals with such concepts as "What is the spirit? What is the matter? and those kinds of questions", it means that Klone's introspective soundscapes are able to delve deep into these ideas using the traditional rock instrumentation to broaden the scope beyond love, sex, beer etc. Philosophy plays a huge part in their lyrical content but it's at a level that anyone without a philosophy degree can understand it, these are the things that run through our heads all the time making them universal "why are we here, where are we from, where are we going" are all questions we ask every day on our own great journeys so it will resonate.
Klone have never been a straightforward band, they have always been firmly in the progressive, experimental and art-rock scene and as Yonder (the first single) begins the album they link their previous release and this one with their trademark moodiness, sounding part-Floyd part-Tool as the keening vocals, solitary guitar sound are matched by jazz piano and crushing down tuned riffs, it's got real light and shade which can be said of the whole album, benefitting from the brilliant production work it's a slow burning beginning to this album but one that sets the wanted tone, it's over 7 minutes of anthemic music that shifts it's feel between hope and despair which as an opening track is pretty special. On to the rest of the album and I wouldn't say it's more of the same as it isn't, there is an overarching 'sound' of the album with echoed clean guitars switching to heavy riffs showing the dexterity of Guillaume Bernard and Aldrick Guadagnino.
However the could not bring these guitar motions on tracks such as the very Tool sounding Keystone without the shamanic rhythm section of Jean Etienne Maillard's throbbing bass and Morgan Berthet's measured drumming. It's Matthieu Metzger and Yann Ligner that add an extra level though with Matthieu adding the samples and some Dark Side Of The Moon--style Sax to Indelible as Yann has a vocal that is filled with yearning captivating you from the outset. Klone are a brilliant act who balance the up and downbeat with music that really invites you to let it breathe, and album that requires multiple plays, Le Grand Voyage is near enough a masterpiece! 9/10
Liv Sin: Burning Sermons (Despotz Records) [Rich Oliver]
Burning Sermons is the new album from Swedish heavy metallers Liv Sin. It is the second album from the band who were formed by frontwoman Liv Jagrell following the dissolution of her previous band Sister Sin. Liv Sin combine traditional heavy metal with a harder edged modern metal sound resulting in songs that have plenty of hooks and melodies but plenty of bite and aggression with some pummelling riffs and rhythms. This is a winning combination on the whole resulting in anthemic and yet crunching songs such as Blood Moon Fever, War Antidote and Hope Begins To Fade (which features guest vocals from Bjorn “Speed” Strid of Soilwork and The Night Flight Orchestra fame).
The vocals from Liv Jagrell very much match the music with the perfect balance of melody and aggression though she does soften her voice when needed. Whilst this is a very enjoyable album it does start to get a bit repetitive around the halfway mark with most songs following a similar structure, sound and pace and I did find my attention starting to wander through towards the end my attention was firmly grabbed once again with the softer Ghost In The Dark and the balls out aggression of Dead Wind Intermezzo bringing some much needed variety. Burning Sermons is an enjoyable piece of hard hitting yet melodic metal though as mentioned above it does have a bit of a quality dip halfway through. 7/10
Deadthrone: Premonitions (Arising Empire) [Paul Scoble]
Deadthrone are a four piece based in Manchester. Initially I worried that the bands name was a derivation of Darkthrone, making this a fairly derivative TN Black Metal album. However, when I first saw the band title, I had no idea what sickening, disgusting evil Premonitions had in store for me; Deadthrone are a Metalcore band! Yes, you’re right, The Horror! As you can probably guess from that intro, I am not a Metalcore fan. As far as I am concerned, the suffix ‘CORE’ refers to Hardcore, so adding ‘CORE’ to the end of a genre denotes a hardcorey feel to the music as in :GrindCORE. It’s something that I would expect to have a punky feel or to have grown out of punk, as HardCORE did. But there is nothing punky about Metalcore (or Deathcore for that matter). To my ears Metalcore has always been a mix of Nu Metal music with Emo vocals, and that is not a combination that excites me. Once I realised that this was a metalcore album, I tried to give it a fair hearing, maybe this would be the album that converted me? No, not even close. This album is almost an explanation of why Metalcore is crap.
Firstly, let’s deal with the music. One of the major problems I’ve had over the years with Nu Metal is the lack of riffs. I’m sorry, but bouncing on one note is not a riff. Yes I know Meshuggah have done stuff like that, but they always have sooooo much more going on than just bouncing. Most of the tracks on this album have this lack of actual riffs, but the tracks Feel, Wide Awake and Stand Your Ground are particularly bad. The problem with this style is that is stops the songs from flowing, there's a distinct lack of syncopation which just makes this sound boring. When the rhythm isn’t bouncing on the same note the tracks tend to be incredibly soft and ballad like; there's no middle ground. The musicians playing on this album are clearly competent, there's some nice guitar work on the parts where they play more than one note. This overly simplistic approach is clearly something that is done by design, rather than due to a lack of talent.
The vocals are an issue as well (in many ways this album is a microcosm of the macro that is Metalcore). There are 2 styles on offer, either massively over emotional, saccharine sweet clean vocals, or ultra guttural harsh vocals. The overly emotional clean vocals are fairly vomit inducing, over the top, and have no range to the emotion put over. There's a sense of teenage angst, which I would have hoped the band had grown out of, and that stops the listener from taking this at all seriously. I could go through the album to find examples of where the clean vocals don’t work, but it’s pretty much every track. The guttural vocals are a problem throughout the album. At no point does the music get heavy or harsh enough to warrant this kind of vocals, so it just sounds wrong. A good example of this is the track Beacons which sounds a bit Djenty, in a clean way, but then has harsh vocals on it that sound totally incongruous.
I realise that my dislike of Metalcore has affected this review, feel free to take it with a very large pinch of salt. If you like Metalcore and overly emotional vocals and onenote chugging are your thing, then by all means dive in, but for me this is wank. 4/10
Deadthrone: Premonitions (Arising Empire) [Paul Scoble]
Deadthrone are a four piece based in Manchester. Initially I worried that the bands name was a derivation of Darkthrone, making this a fairly derivative TN Black Metal album. However, when I first saw the band title, I had no idea what sickening, disgusting evil Premonitions had in store for me; Deadthrone are a Metalcore band! Yes, you’re right, The Horror! As you can probably guess from that intro, I am not a Metalcore fan. As far as I am concerned, the suffix ‘CORE’ refers to Hardcore, so adding ‘CORE’ to the end of a genre denotes a hardcorey feel to the music as in :GrindCORE. It’s something that I would expect to have a punky feel or to have grown out of punk, as HardCORE did. But there is nothing punky about Metalcore (or Deathcore for that matter). To my ears Metalcore has always been a mix of Nu Metal music with Emo vocals, and that is not a combination that excites me. Once I realised that this was a metalcore album, I tried to give it a fair hearing, maybe this would be the album that converted me? No, not even close. This album is almost an explanation of why Metalcore is crap.
Firstly, let’s deal with the music. One of the major problems I’ve had over the years with Nu Metal is the lack of riffs. I’m sorry, but bouncing on one note is not a riff. Yes I know Meshuggah have done stuff like that, but they always have sooooo much more going on than just bouncing. Most of the tracks on this album have this lack of actual riffs, but the tracks Feel, Wide Awake and Stand Your Ground are particularly bad. The problem with this style is that is stops the songs from flowing, there's a distinct lack of syncopation which just makes this sound boring. When the rhythm isn’t bouncing on the same note the tracks tend to be incredibly soft and ballad like; there's no middle ground. The musicians playing on this album are clearly competent, there's some nice guitar work on the parts where they play more than one note. This overly simplistic approach is clearly something that is done by design, rather than due to a lack of talent.
The vocals are an issue as well (in many ways this album is a microcosm of the macro that is Metalcore). There are 2 styles on offer, either massively over emotional, saccharine sweet clean vocals, or ultra guttural harsh vocals. The overly emotional clean vocals are fairly vomit inducing, over the top, and have no range to the emotion put over. There's a sense of teenage angst, which I would have hoped the band had grown out of, and that stops the listener from taking this at all seriously. I could go through the album to find examples of where the clean vocals don’t work, but it’s pretty much every track. The guttural vocals are a problem throughout the album. At no point does the music get heavy or harsh enough to warrant this kind of vocals, so it just sounds wrong. A good example of this is the track Beacons which sounds a bit Djenty, in a clean way, but then has harsh vocals on it that sound totally incongruous.
I realise that my dislike of Metalcore has affected this review, feel free to take it with a very large pinch of salt. If you like Metalcore and overly emotional vocals and onenote chugging are your thing, then by all means dive in, but for me this is wank. 4/10
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