Blackberry Smoke - You Hear Georgia (Thirty Tigers) [Matt Bladen]
The band that has always rallied against what a person from the South is supposed to be like, on their seventh studio album they are actively aiming at these often overly stereotypical ideal of rednecks and racists. You Hear Georgia is both a title and a mission statement, letting the listener experience what Blackberry Smoke consider to be Georgia, intelligent, whitty, heartfelt lyricism and boogie-infused Southern rock, but without the Southern Crosses of their contemporaries and influences. So then what is the sound of Georgia? Well Blackberry Smoke have been refining and redefining this for 20 odd years now and on You Hear Georgia is Blackberry Smoke immersing themselves in their newfound arena rock credentials.
Well what they've done on this record is bring things back to their country roots, most of the songs from this record are in the more laid-back country sound, from the slide-driven, acoustic picking Old Enough To Know to the rockier numbers such as All Rise Again which features bluesman Warren Haynes (Gov't Mule/The Allman Brothers) while Lonesome For A Livin' has country singer Jamey Johnson contributing vocals. It does unfortunately languish a little too long in these laid back vibes, forgetting about the rock part of their Southern rock genre tag. This will no doubt appease those who have been on board with the band since The Whippoorwill and have seen them grow into the arena titans they are now, but there's not as much rock to this roll as I would have liked. 7/10
Arizona’s Flotsam And Jetsam have earned the reputation as “the most underrated metal band on the planet”. That can certainly be said to be true as apart from being celebrated by old school thrash aficionados, Flotsam And Jetsam are more known for who used to be in the band rather than the material they have been putting out since 1986. The band have been in a purple patch of late with 2016’s self-titled album and 2019’s The End Of Chaos being heralded as spectacular returns to form for the band. With their 14th album Blood In The Water the purple patch very much continues and as guitarist Michael Gilbert states “It’s angry, it’s aggressive, and our emotions pour out all over this album”. It’s very much impossible to argue with this statement as Blood In The Water proves to be one of the very best albums the band has produced.
Flotsam And Jetsam have a sound that sits somewhere between thrash metal and US power metal being highly melodic yet bristling with rage and aggression. This is most evident in the opening trio of songs which is some of the strongest material the band has ever produced. The opening title track positively bursts out of the gate with a thrashing rage and certainly will have people sitting up and paying attention. Burn The Sky and Brace For Impact keep up the momentum being high energy, high octane and highly melodic songs with ridiculous amounts of catchiness going on. The Walls proves to be another highlight with its greater emphasis on power metal leanings and another earworm of a chorus whilst Grey Dragon is a speedy neck wrecker guaranteed to get any self respecting metalhead working those neck muscles. The energy and intensity throughout the album is staggering with only Cry For The Dead providing any sort of respite with its acoustic opening and slower pace but it still bristles with energy and has a solid emotional core as its heart. Instead of fizzling out towards the end the band save one of the best songs until last with the power thrashing goodness of Seven Seconds ‘Til The End Of The World bringing things to a close.
“With everything that’s happened in the world, the friends we lost this last year, and not being able to perform or tour… you hear all of that in our music” states Michael Gilbert and that fury and frustration boils over in the performances with everyone putting in absolutely killer performances. The riffs rage, the bass rumbles and the drums absolutely destroy and of course fronting this arsenal is the mighty Eric A.K. whose powerhouse vocals lay everything to waste in their path. Eric has a vocal style that is highly melodic but bristling at the seams with anger, outrage and emotion.
Blood In The Water is a phenomenal album and sees the band at the height of their powers. It is without doubt their best album since 1988’s No Place For Disgrace and should have all metalheads who have managed to bypass this band thinking why the fuck haven’t I heard these guys before? Blood In The Water should be the album that finally shows the world what Flotsam And Jetsam are all about instead of being “that band that Jason Newsted used to play in”. A serious contender for album of the year. Not bad for a band that has been going for nearly 40 years. 9/10
Worm Shepherd - In The Wake Ov Sòl (Unique Leader Records) [Paul Scoble]
Worm Shepherd formed and self released their first album last year, these guys do not take their time. The album is now being released on a record label. The band, based in Connecticut, feature Devin “Omen” Duarte on Vocals, Brandon “Agares” Cooper on Guitar, Ryan “Nephilim” Ibarra on Guitars and Leo “Oryx” McClain on Drums. Worm Shepherd describe their sound as Blackened Deathcore. If I’m being honest I’ve never been a fan of Deathcore, to me it sounds like Death Metal with all the good bits taken out; everything with speed, flow or energy removed in favour of slow, plodding and staccato boredom. So, I was very interested to see how ‘Blackening’ Deathcore would effect the worst style of music to ever carry the name Metal. After all, at the moment my favourite genre is Blackened Doom, and I’ve always been a fan of Blackened Death Metal, so, maybe adding some Blackened elements to Deathcore would help me to appreciate and enjoy Deathcore?
Oh, how wrong I was. Turns out adding elements of Black Metal to another Metal sub-genre just makes that genre more concentrated; Blackened Doom is heavier, Blackened Death Metal is more savage and intense, Blackened Deathcore is far more catastrophically god fucking awful than just plain old fucking awful Deathcore. I should explain why this is so spectacularly dire. What Worm Shepherd have done is combine plain old fucking awful Deathcore with a particularly rubbish, turn of the century form of Symphonic Black Metal, the style that Dimmu Borgir or Cradle Of Filth were playing circa 1999 / 2000. In many ways a shorthand description of this album would be that it sounds like Cradle Of Filth playing Deathcore, I’m starting to feel nauseous just reading that. Musically this has all the problems that Deathcore has; there is no flow, the band bounce on one chord in a rhythmic way instead of actual writing riffs. It feels like the songs go nowhere, any fast or flowing elements almost immediately disappear to be replaced with staccato 1 chord non-riffs.
The fact that the mix is terrible doesn’t help matters; The Guitars are so low I can barely hear them, the keyboards (of which there are a lot) come next and are louder than the guitars, on top of that are the very Impressive and very loud Drums (the drumming is impressive, but as the songs go nowhere, technical ability cannot save this), and over the top of all that is the worst part of this album; the vocals. A lot of the material on this album sounds like Vocals and Drums really loud and in your face, some keyboards being played badly in the house next-door, and a couple of guitars crying because they are in the next county so no-one can hear them. Another issue with sound that this album has is how processed everything sounds, everything is synthetic, this feels as far from organic as it is possible to get.
I’ve already mentioned how bad the vocals are, so I should explain and justify my opinion. Vocalist Devin “Omen” Duarte has two different voices on this album; a low and harsh ‘Death Metal’ voice and a very shrill and harsh ‘Black Metal’ voice. The Death Metal voice is ok, not amazing but not terrible either, the Black Metal voice, however, is terrible. Its ridiculously shrill and high register, like a toddler doing harsh vocals. The other issue with the vocals is that Duarte uses ‘Pig Squealing’ as one of his main vocal styles, I’m not a fan of Pig Squealing at the best of times, but this is extremely bad pig squealing in both of his vocal registers. The shrill ‘Black Metal’ voice sounds weird and ridiculous, in a couple of places he manages to sound like a Mouth Harp (which would be appropriate for folk Black Metal, but not for ultra processed Symphonic Black Metal), the first time I heard it I laughed out loud (then realised I was going to have to listen to the whole album several times, and stopped laughing).
If anything the ‘Death Metal’ voice is even worse when Pig Squealing is used. There are places where the lower register voice is squealing and it sounds as if Duarte is eating, as if he is attempting Pig Squealing with his mouth full, sometimes it’s as if he is trying to eat his own lips. Again, this is pretty funny until you realise the band is serious about this. Vocals that sound like bodily functions are hilarious for one verse and chorus, but for an entire album it’s exhaustingly crap. The band would have had better vocals if they had just recorded themselves having diarrhoea.
This version of the album has an extra track called Chasm Dweller, which sounds like an attempt at a Ballad with clean vocals that are just as bad as you are imagining them to be. In The Wake Ov Sòl is a terrible album. Usually when I write a bad review I try to find something about the album to be positive about, so I can end the review by suggesting the band take their sound towards that element to improve their sound, but in this case I can’t. Nothing on this album should be saved, the only way to improve this is for Worm Shepherd is to shut the fuck up and go away. I can’t find any redeeming feature of this album, even the bands name is stupid (I know it’s a reference to Jesus referring to himself as a ‘Shepherd Of Men’, the band are saying that Christians are worms. However, when I saw the name I immediately thought of the band being ‘Worm Shepherds’ with tiny shepherds crooks, protecting their worm flocks from packs of Starlings or groups of Anglers looking for bait). 2/10
Holosade – Anastasis (Cherry Red Records) [Paul Hutchings]
The first album since 1988’s Hell House, Thrashers Holosade return to a burgeoning UK thrash scene and do their best to muscle back into the action. For those who haven’t done their history, Holosade burst out of Darlington in 1985, releasing several demos before the aforementioned debut record. Having split in 1991, the band reformed in various guises but have been active more consistently since 2011. At long last the veteran thrash machine returns with the current line up comprising Phillip De Sade on vocals, guitarists Paul Trotter and Adam Ironside, Huw Hopkins on bass and drummer Adam Sayer. This is very much a marmite album, with the vocals of De Sade the defining factor. His Mustaine-esque drawl doesn’t always work with the searing guitar lead breaks and relentless drive of the engine room. There is a strain on the delivery which doesn’t sit that comfortably despite the huge efforts of the rest of the band.
It’s not that De Sade can’t hit a note, because he certainly can but there is a challenge delivering the lyrics in a manner that matches the music. If you can overcome the vocals, and I repeat that they just don’t work for me, others might have no problem, then Anastasis is a fast and furious thrasher which musically is rock solid. The dual guitar work is slick and fiery, whilst the drumming is punishingly accurate and provides the engine room from which the band feed. Tracks such as Through The Eyes Of Wrath and the weighty Detonation To Oblivion stand out as the two epics here whilst the opener 7 Seconds and the pumping Rise are also songs to move to. Whether Holosade can challenge the plethora of new and hungry thrash bands or jostle shoulder to shoulder with the vibrant old school (Elimination, Virus, Trapped in Purgatory, Solitary etc) is debatable. Anastasis is decent listening, but for me not quite the triumphant victory parade. 7/10
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