Planet Chaos is the fifth album from French progressive metallers Carcariass. A band I haven’t come across before, Carcariass play a nice mix of melodic death metal and progressive metal with some leanings into technical death metal as well. The musicianship on the album is absolutely brilliant with some astounding guitar work from Pascal Lanquetin and nifty drumming from Bertrand Simonin. The vocals by Jérôme Thomas whilst not mindblowing are perfectly functional and complementary to the music. The downside to Planet Chaos is its excessive length and the quality of the material just isn’t sufficient to justify the album’s 68 minute plus duration. The music is top quality and the performances phenomenal but the songwriting isn’t as refined with a lot of the album whilst sounding wonderful is merely forgettable. There are some brilliant moments such as the synth laden wonder of Star Implosion and the melodic death metal majesty of Letter From The Trenches. Overall whilst it has its flaws Planet Chaos still is a very enjoyable album. Well produced, meticulously performed but just overlong and excessive. 7/10
Stormburner: Shadow Rising (Pure Steel Records) [Manus Hopkins]
Shadow Rising by Stormburner… as is made evident by the title and the name of the band, this is a pretty straight-up heavy metal record. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, because straight-up heavy metal, when it’s done right, doesn’t need to be anything more. There are no weird fusions here, no attempts to make anything out of the ordinary fit in with this style. It’s just heavy metal, and it’s good. With song names like Metal In The Night and Demon Fire, pretty much any metal listener will know exactly what to expect, and no expectations will be subverted. But the combination of screeching vocals, galloping riffs and grooving drums has worked for decades, and while it’s exciting to see metal go in new directions, traditional heavy metal isn’t going away any time soon, nor should it. 7/10
The Curf: Among Others (Lychnopolis Records) [Manus Hopkins]
This stoner rock album isn’t an awfully boring or torturous listen, but at the same time, it’s hard to really get that excited about or into. There’s fine musicianship and decent song-writing, but these songs just lack a certain energy that makes them come off a little lackluster. This might be the right music for some more chill atmospheres, but it’s hard to imagine anyone being all that eager for a record like this to drop. All that being said, this still isn’t a bad album. There’s some cool guitar work on it, and parts that are actually pretty enjoyable if you go in without expectations. The Curf shouldn’t be written off—this is still a band with potential worth giving another show. 6/10
Upon doing my research for this review I saw that Gaslarm had quite a lengthy discography and so immediately assumed this was a long running band. Then I saw that the band formed in 2017 yet had a total of sixteen albums and two EP’s and confusion hit me. Then I saw that five of those albums including this one had been released this year. Then the alarm bells started ringing. Either Gaslarm has the most impressive work rate or they basically release any old shit. Unfortunately any old shit was the right answer.
Gaslarm isn’t really a band per se more of a one man project from Riff Lord aka Anders Lindeberg who is also guitarist in Age Of Nefarious and Excöriator. Riff Lord performs all instruments and vocals and whilst a very competent musician is an absolutely awful vocalist. Imagine a cross between Lips from Anvil and Cronos from Venom but absolutely tuneless and you have a summation of the vocals on this album. The songs themselves are either completely unremarkable or painfully awful with Know Who I Am has to be one of the worst songs I have heard this year. There is one decent song and it is an instrumental called The Race To Save Humanity. More like the race to save this album from complete failure. After eight songs which fail to inspire much if any hope the album finishes on an absolute butchering of Black Sabbath’s Children Of The Grave which was so awful I nearly switched it off.
Listening to Gaslarm was nearly one hour of my life I will never get back. I will award two points to the album - one for the competent level of musicianship especially the guitar playing and one to the stamina of Anders Lindberg for continually releasing material. I don’t know whether he is doing this for laughs or if he is genuinely serious about what he does but if Creation Myth is what his creative output is then please someone stop this man from recording albums. 2/10
Listening to Gaslarm was nearly one hour of my life I will never get back. I will award two points to the album - one for the competent level of musicianship especially the guitar playing and one to the stamina of Anders Lindberg for continually releasing material. I don’t know whether he is doing this for laughs or if he is genuinely serious about what he does but if Creation Myth is what his creative output is then please someone stop this man from recording albums. 2/10
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