If you’re a fan of melodic rock you will probably be already aware of FM, but if not, they’re a British band founded in 1984. Over 10 years of support slots with big names providing highly polished AOR, they somehow didn’t progress to the major leagues and were very underrated. Despite line-up changes and a 12 year split they have been back in the saddle since 2007 and seen a bit of a renaissance, touring festivals and releasing albums, including 2019’s live offering The Italian Job. They’re now often popping up at festivals such as Download and Graspop on the bill with the likes of Foreigner, Journey and Whitesnake and were, until recent events, due to be touring as headliners in their own right.
Fast forward to 2020 and the bands 12th Album – Synchronized. Historically FM have inevitably been compared to their American counterparts and genre cousins, Journey, Foreigner and REO Speedwagon et al, which on a musical level they can certainly hold their own next to. There is no escaping those similarities any time soon either. Synchronized doesn’t stray too far from the comparisons either, but why would you. This album provides a huge slice of highly polished Americana bordering on country rock in places (Best Of Times, Ghost Of You) which could come straight out of the new crop of Nashville compilations. Very occasionally the songs do slip back to their 80’s haydays with ‘of the era’ keyboards and multi layered vocals straight out of the Foreigner playbook (Change For The Better, Walk Through The Fire) but when they get a bit more adventurous the songs are as good as anything currently out there in the genre.
Much like their website, the production and playing on the album is of the very highest quality, Steve Overland’s vocals are on absolute top form – particularly on tracks like Pray or Ready For Me and the album oozes the class that you’d expect from a tight knit, long- standing group of talented musicians like FM, who totally get what melodic rock fans want and deliver it in spades. With fewer and fewer bands delivering this brand of AOR, maybe now it’s finally FM’s time to fulfil their destiny and be appreciated for who they are. 9/10
Voodoo Gods: The Divinity Of Blood (Reaper Entertainment Europe) [Paul Hutchings]
Formed in 2001, originally as Shrunken Head, Voodoo Gods is a collective of artists which most notably features the death metal vocals of George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fischer as well as the screaming rage of Seth Van De Loo who famously stood in for Glen Benton of Deicide in 2007 when Benton refused to travel to Europe at the last minute [source: metal-archives.com]. Alongside the vocal department comes the duel guitars of Jacek Hiro and Victor Smolski, bassist Jean Bandu and founder member [alongside Van De Loo] Alex Voodoo [Alex Von Poschinger] on drums. The Divinity Of Blood is the follow up to 2014’s Anticipation For Blood Levelled In Darkness.
With a line-up that promises death and thrash metal, the explosive Rise Of The Antichrist which savagely opens the album is no surprise and lays down a high level of power and punishment that whets the death metal appetite. The beautiful calming section of Flamenco guitar work in the middle of the delightfully titled From Necromancy To Paraphilia provides and unexpected yet pleasant alternative. Elsewhere this album does what you’d expect. Fischer isn’t likely to break with form and his guttural roars at low level contrast with the venomous rasps of Van De Loo. Plenty of pulverising blast beats, jagged riffing and punishing aggression but The Divinity Of Blood is tempered at times by the random but welcome acoustic breakdowns.
It’s the guitar work that takes centre stage for much of the album, duelling solos compete across the ferocity of Rise Of The Antichrist whilst the gentler passages such as the intro to Serenade Of Hate soon defer to the muscular approach and death vocals. There is balance and variation across the album. The track Forever! for example, starts as a standard heavy metal foundation overlaid with speedier riffing and Van De Loo’s rasping delivery but breaks down to an almost jazz frisson in the middle whilst Isa that follows is straight down the line thundering brutality. The Divinity Of Blood is a solid and enjoyable release which may not achieve full acceptance with Corpse fans due to its less straight in-your-face approach. It’s still a thick slab well worthy of a listen. 7/10
Illumishade: Eclyptic - Wake Of Shadows (Self Released) [Alex Swift]
Symphonic metal is a genre I have a natural camaraderie with. It requires the musician to get into the mind of an orchestral composer, and that can lead to some of the most unique and ambitious ideas the genre has ever witnessed. That’s not to say symphonic music can't be generic – hell, just listen to any of Within Temptations recent work, to disprove that assumption – yet most artists that embrace the style (them included), tend to utilize a wide range of influences in their writing, creating bombastic if verbose compositions. If you know anything about me, there tends to be a key factor leading me to give great reviews, so in theory, I should love Wake Of Shadows. Right?
Well, look, while I certainly appreciate everything these musicians are trying t bring to the table, by writing a piece which creates atmosphere, measuring out its grandiloquence into showstopping crescendos, I’m not quite sure they achieved that effect here. First of all, there's too much emphasis on luscious atmospherics as opposed to vast and towering compositions, which would work if they carried any real sense of emotion or tension. Rather, while I definitely admire the eloquent production and the commitment to try something different in a genre that often – let's face it – gets caught up in its own pretensions, leaving little room for nuance, both Passage Through The Clouds and The Calling Winds left me drowsy. I’m sad to say the piece didn’t get much better from there. Although you can get a sense from the pacing that illumishade understand the beats that have to go into an arrangement, the sparse instrumentation – both skill and palate wise – hinders any sense of uplift or impetus the record could have had. This is a trend that’s prevalent from Tales Of Time to the closer of Worlds End.
I don’t believe that the problem here lies in lack of ability – from a pure structure and artistry standpoint, some of the ideas here are absolutely fascinating. It’s the execution that drags the experience down. Obsessed with interludes, not having a rich enough guitar variation and writing songs which practice symposium, off the back of hard rock and death metal – makes for a deeply tiresome experience. I have no doubt that the next album or the one after that may see improvements, yet until then I remain far from impressed. 4/10
Pile Of Priests: Self-Titled (Extreme Metal Music) [Charlie Rogers & Dr Claire Hanley]
Pile Of Priests were not a band we were familiar with but having been told they were for fans of Death, Pestilence, and Cryptopsy, we jumped at the chance to review the new self-titled record. A curious mix of death and thrash metal, with melodic overtones, the band certainly looked good on paper. Given our high expectations; sadly, this was the most uninspiring album we’ve reviewed so far this year. First off we’re greeted with a somewhat superfluous piano-based introduction, which stands in stark contrast to The Aversion - a bouncy track filled with double-kicks, bright, energetic riffs, and growls reminiscent of Dark Tranquillity’s Mikael Stanne. This offering along with Bloodstained Citadel are the songs to write home about, which grab hold of the listener and display some semblance of momentum and drive. The latter shines above the rest of the material due to a mesmerising bassline; a real fretless wonder, which is otherwise buried for the majority of the album.
There are also flashes of brilliance during Death Of The Paragon and Exile Unto Divination (where the rhythmic intro really stands out) but these moments are anything but consistent. For the most part, the record chugs along, meandering from track to track. Entirely inoffensive but that’s the problem. A solid death metal record needs to have some grit about it in order for it to be memorable. This just doesn’t have the bite. It’s, dare we say, mediocre. This is likely due, in no small part, to the identity crisis of the material. Absolutely nothing wrong with instrumental interludes and switching things up in terms of vocal performance, providing it adds something to the overall product. The highs mid-way through Conjunction Of Souls and The Restitution seem incredibly out of place, like a fish in a kettle, and the latter being over 8 minutes long is entirely unnecessary.
A death/thrash metal record shouldn’t lure you into a vegetative state but unfortunately that is where we ended up. Given the standard of other new releases, the latest offering from Pile of Priests seriously pales in comparison. There is no place for a record of this standard in the current musical landscape. 4/10.
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