Reviews: Komatsu, Omination, Tortured Demon, To Kill Achilles (JT Smith, Paul Hutchings, Matt Bladen & Alex Swift)

Komatsu: Rose Of Jericho (Heavy Psych Sounds) [JT Smith]

Rose Of Jericho from Eindhoven based Komatsu is the band's fourth offering, and is a slick, accomplished album showing off that the band has really hit their stride with this collection of songs. There are a lot of things about the album and the band’s overall sound that are supremely satisfying, but one of the first things we have to address is that guitar tone, which is just simply excellent. Fuzzy, but with enough clarity to give it a lovely, crunchy bite, it shows itself off from the album’s very first riff, the kickass opening and main bending riff of Stare Into The Dawn, and on the slightly predictable, (but no less enjoyable for it) slowdown ending of The Suit. It adds to the overall aural and sonic density of the album, which makes singer Mo Truijens' easy, lazy, Bowie-esque inflections really stand out. 

They’re a really nice touch, and it lets you know that you’re not listening to a Sludge-by-numbers™ album. That idea, that this is not a typical Sludge metal album is also showcased by Son Of Sam and by title track Rose Of Jericho. The former has a riff that wouldn’t be out of place on a Rival Sons album, lulling you into a false sense of security before hitting you with big crunchy stabs to remind you you’re listening to a very heavy band, and the latter being a meandering, jammy instrumental with an interesting, hypnotic bassline that morphs into a crushing, snarling beast from 1.50 onwards. It’s a bit of a gamble for a title track, but it pays off in spades.

Ending track Om is an absolutely thunderous, more traditionally sludgy offering with a dissonant, atonal riff to lead you into it, and smothered sounding vocals almost chanting in the background. It suddenly drops in intensity to a delicate, clean guitar line, with layers gradually building up as the storm gradually gathers for the song’s ending. When the drop hits, as you’ve been anticipating for about a minute and a half, it hits with a dive bomb and ‘thump,’ as the rest of the band re-erect the wall of noise. At certain points when you’re listening to a record, you can’t help but smile and say “...fuck yeah.” *This* is one of those moments. Rose Of Jericho is a really strong record with a lot of interesting ideas, proving that the band continue to deserve the plaudits and the rave reviews they’ve been thus far enjoying. It’s definitely worth your time, and worth several hours of repeated listens. 8/10

Omination: The New Golgotha Repvbliq (Hypnotic Dirge Records) [Paul Hutchings]

Sometimes you really must stand outside of that comfort zone and challenge your aural senses. With my preferences dipping into a good bit of doom, I didn’t think that Omination’s latest release would present too much difficulty. But then I checked the band’s history and the lights dimmed. Tunisian Apocalyptic Funeral Doom Metal loomed large. Omination’s debut album Followers Of The Apocalypse ran for over 90 minutes. The second full length The Whirlpool Of Ignorance, also released in 2018 contained a slightly easier 53 minutes … but it only comprised four songs. In 2020 their EP The Pale Horseman was one track. It lasted 26 minutes. Having established that I was in for the long haul, I settled down to experience the band for the first time. I think experience is the best word for Omination because it best describes what followed. 

Two tracks lasted over ten minutes whilst the title song clocked in at a massive 20 minutes. Huge swathes of church organs and soaring choirs battle with a thunderous bass drum as the album opened with the dramatic Crossing The Burning Wasteland. Vocals that appeared to blend Sakis Tolis and Nergal erupt into a storming fireball of rage. They surface and then continue on Apocalyptic Ignis Fatuus. If one song ever epitomised Apocalyptic Funeral Doom Metal, then this would be it. Harrowing, disturbing, stunning, and explosive all at the same time. The haunting echoing keyboards drift in a ghostly fashion, the choral effects and the huge organ chords combine with darkened guitar riffs to create an atmospheric concept impossible to ignore. Blasts of black metal surged out of the black, before the pace slows to the glacial pace that had preceded it. 

Over the next 70 minutes Omination slowly, and I mean slowly, crawl and blast their way through huge time changes, murderous mixing of styles, soaring melodies combined with huge banks of church organ, chanting, and pounding drums. There is no way to describe each track, but this whole experience is moving, emotional and almost spiritual in parts. There is no way to prepare for the sheer scale of the title track, which is strategically placed to anchor the whole album. It is a beast of a song, at 20 minutes long it moves with the pace of a Brachiosaurus herd until the final minutes when it speeds up with astonishing pace. Drenched with all the formerly described input, the cultural influences are rich and welcoming. 

And then there is a volley of blistering blast beats that last mere seconds, like a sudden hailstorm, before the tempo drops and solo notes ring out once more. At no time during this album does anything feel comfortable. The riffs are abrasive, the atmospheric feel tingling the skin and bewitching in equal measure. It’s a difficult listen, but the rewards are worth it. If you can tolerate the sheer intensity of this work, then absorbing oneself into The New Golgotha Repvbliq is an amazing and wondrously blackened experience. 8/10

Tortured Demon: In Desperation's Grip (Self Released)

Hey you kids! Stop making all that racket! Words that really anyone that reads or writes for this blog would never say but you can just imagine such words being shouted by old people at this, disgustingly young band. I mean their average age is 15 years old so it's no wonder that they cite influences as Machine Head, Trivium, Children Of Bodom and Slipknot but the Oldham band are certainly not a kid band, they are a very tight, focused riff machine that have already won a M2TM Heat in Manchester and already have supports booked with Xentrix and Badgerfest for whenever these gigs happen. 

They had an entire year if gigs booked for 2020 but obviously with the pandemic their focus shifted towards recording this debut full length record, which has already been picked up by Spiritual Beast records in Asia. Made up of Jacob Parkinson (vocals/guitar), Freddie Meaden (bass) and Joe Parkinson (drums). They call themselves 'thrashcore' and they really live up to that post-millennial style of American heavy metal, from the opening atmospherics of In Desperation's Grip through The Invasion which has the sort of melodic chant along sound that Trivium have mastered, as Usurper has a Nu-Metal groove to it. 

There's a lot of seriously heavy music here with these young musicians tracks such as the epic final song My Terror brings you a death metal styled rip snorter that shifts into a monsterous slow moving heaviness. Now it's not perfect the clean vocals aren't that great on Sufferers Of The New Plague but mostly this debut record is seriously good. The future of metal seems to be in good hands! 8/10

To Kill Achilles’: Something To Remember Me By (Arising Empire) [Alex Swift]

Music that deals in sorrow and misery has long been seen as the most uplifting, yet treads a fine balance between poignant and disrespectful to the emotions or experiences that the songs claim to represent. To aim to capture joy and fail, can leave the listener cold, or at worst make them feel patronized. Yet to try and fail to capture that feeling of turbulent inner grief and sorrow, either because you can’t truly replicate them in song or because you have never experienced those sensations yourself is an entirely different kind of failing, which can quite often enter serious ethical territory. When I read the description to Something To Remember Me By, I became nervous. Put simply, the concept record tells the story of a year in the life of a man who wakes up on his twenty fifth birthday to begin a year which leads him to take his own life, on his 26th birthday. 

Each song represents a month in the year. Influenced in part by personal circumstance from each of the band members, the messaging emphasises that ‘without support, even the strongest of people can be driven to contemplate taking their own lives’. And look, despite the noble intentions, I went into this record terrified of how oversimplified the piece was shaping up to be, and how the concept could commit what I see as the sin of robbing the affected character of any agency or sense of individuality. And yeah, as someone who’s recently turned 26 and is finding the reality we currently occupy increasingly hard by virtue of having my routines and support networks ripped out from beneath my feet, the assertion laid out in the albums written content that “contained within, is the solution” felt particularly galling.

In terms of the records lyrical content, the experience presents itself as a harrowing ‘suicide note’ and the story is entirely told from the perspective of a character recalling their hardships and struggles, on the edge of ending their own life. Moments in the vein of "Oh God, I’ve Never Felt This Low" merge sentimental atmospherics with relentless rhythms and violent if strangely distant vocals, aimed at emphasising our characters sense of alienation. I’m not claiming it’s not possible to carry this style off with grace and eloquence. Look to an act like Svalbard or Touche Amore who capture in vivid detail the sound of existential dread. On Luna Et Altum we are presented with images of someone looking in the mirror and not seeing themselves, or being pushed away by the tide. 

And while I can appreciate this record for being detailed and immersive both through its lyricism and the instrumental soundscapes, I don’t find myself connecting in the same way as I do to a Lament or a When I Die Will I Get Better. By structuring the narrative and the character arc in a way which leaves little space for interpretation, we are left with a story of someone who is not in control of their own life, and who has no chance to fight off the anxieties of aging or a lack of direction in life.

The underlying message presented from start to finish appears to be “don’t let anyone you know end up where the character does”. Despite that, the piece gives us no reason to believe there are any alternatives. In choosing to write the lyrics from the young man’s perspective and then still failing to present him as anything other than an actor in a play struggling forward towards a doomed finale, we get no chance to see what messages we should be applying to our own lives. On Venom, where our character finally decides to commit suicide, he asks “So let me ask you what's worse, to live in fear from the bite of the snake, or to present your hand, watch its fangs pierce your skin, and know in that moment, that you'll never be scared again”. 

True, from a truly technical perspective this record could be interpreted as excellent and I do understand why many have praised the mercurial and impassioned playing, which seems to rise and fall in a way which understands the torrential nature of emotion. Still, for the most part the lucid nature and the inability to tie the compositions up into satisfying progressions, speaks volumes about the problems which permeate Something To Remember Me By. Like that lyric implies, if there is no future and no hope of anything ever getting better, than why continue to look for hope? Aren’t we all just notes in a dissonant song, destined for nothing except to one day fade away?

Presuming that this is the message on display here, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, regardless of what the true intention might have been, the#n I have no reason not to see its core ideas as incredibly dismissive towards the experiences of me, and many other people with mental health difficulties. I only hope that those struggling through the kind of experiences like the ones alluded to here, one day feel like they have enough control over their lives, to chart a different course, out of the shadows of hopelessness. 4/10