Reviews: Carrion Vael, Liminal Shroud, Aeir, By Torchlight (Reviews By GC, Matt Cook, Quinn Mattfeld & Matt Bladen)

Carrion Vael - Abhorrent Obsessions (Unique Leader Records) [GC]

Today I have been blessed with the new release from Midwest USA death metal band Carrion Vael, and when I say blessed, I really mean that!

It all starts with Wings Of Deliverance and its menacing intro does not prepare you for the unholy hell that is then unleashed all over your senses. The scattergun approach to vocals on offer from Travis Lawson Purcell is an absolute delight in the most disgusting way, with his mixing of black and death metal he styles shows a real dexterity and ability to keep you gripped and paying attention to every horrible thing he has to say, the next thing that grabbed me was the drums, Chris Smiley is a fucking machine! The double bass speed is sometimes inhuman, and the fills and blasts are just unreal! The string section of Alex Arford, Trent Limburg, and Ryan Kuder are an absolute unit also the riffs and technicality they show are truly impressive!

From the opening track through to The Devil In Me and the King Of Rhine you are never given a minute to catch your breath and the at the end of King Of Rhine they throw in a breakdown so heavy that you just have to stop everything you are doing and take it in. Now we get to award for best song title Kentucky Fried Strangulation and it’s just as savage as you would expect with some more stellar vocal work as its real highlight and the atmospheric middle section is a fucking beauty but, next comes the album highlight in the shape of Tithes Of Forbearance this is 5 minutes of pure death metal perfection and throws in some of the most unreal breakdowns and then at 3 minutes the first real shock of this album is upon us CLEAN VOCALS! I know, I know not what you would expect but they are so good and really highlight the depth that these guys have!! 

Next track Disturbia offers you another type of variation on the death metal theme and it is this type of mix is what will keep you coming back for more! The closing 1-2 of Malleus Maleficarum and The Paint Shop are brutally stunning, and the closing 2 minutes of the final track takes you out on the sort of high note I wasn’t expecting from this type of band! From the very start of Abhorrent Obsessions to the closing notes make no mistake this is an absolutely stunning album with intense moments of violent darkness mixed with passion and technical ability and the thing is I don’t think they have even peaked here there is so much potential to do even better things in the future and for these guys the sky really is the limit. I will be looking forward to the future of Carrion Vael and seriously cannot wait to see where they go next but for now, sit back, press play and prepare yourself for something truly special. 9/10

Liminal Shroud – All Virtues Ablaze (Willowtip Records) [Matt Cook]

A good drummer is like a good referee: you rarely notice them because they’re carrying out their responsibilities effectively and without mistakes. A great drummer forcefully guides the music with bombast and precision, injecting life into the band. Drew Davidson fits that bill to a ‘T’ on Liminal Shroud’s All Virtues Ablaze , steering the black-metal vessel through four songs that run 41 minutes without dragging on. On Hypoxic, Davidson lights the tempo…ablaze…allowing Aidan Crossley (guitar, vocals) and Rich Taylor (bass, vocals) to kick it into a higher, faster gear. Mists Along Florencia builds up progressively and Crossley harnesses the drum’s energy, ferociously feeding off it with solid screams.

Transmigration I – Pelagic Voids is astutely paced, and once again Davidson is at the forefront, conducting from behind the kit. Crossley’s textbook black metal wails and shouts is stamped all over the record, but All Virtues Ablaze is anything but a raw, makeshift affair as other BM acts tend to sound like. The Canadian trio spice it up, exploring tones and melodies that act as salt to a prime cut of raw meat. As prominent as Davidson’s role is, the other members are just as significant. It’s glaringly obvious everyone knows their role and it pays off in spades. Neither too complex nor dry, All Virtues Ablaze is the product of Davidson, Crossley and Taylor not only exhibiting a strong bond, but also an affinity for robust instrumentation. 7/10

Aeir - A Frith Befouled (Moment of Collapse Record) [Quinn Mattfeld]

Sludge is more often an adjective than a noun in modern metal. Gone are the days of unbridled nihilism lamenting the drudgery of the working-class existence of the late 80s and early 90s. We are instead offered sludge as an audio quality that might be included in a doom or prog metal album should we be so lucky. 

So, my evil, blackened, little heart grew 3 times the size when I read that AEIR was “a narrative-driven progressive sludge metal collective.” Take that prog metal! Now you’re the adjective to the big Sludgey main event! And when it comes to Sludge, AEIR is more than worthy of the title. 

While the Melvins gave birth to sludge in the industrial shitholes of the Pacific Northwest, the subgenre was perfected by bands like Crowbar and Acid Bath in the industrial shitholes of New Orleans. So, the setting for A Frith Befouled comes as something of a surprise from the imagined industrial shitholes of Feudal Europe. 

AEIR describes their subject as “an original allegorical tale of feudal misrule, proletarian dissent, Mesopotamian divinations, and the rampant molestation of sentient environs…” Man, oh MAN do I hate when someone molests my sentient environs! Beyond that impenetrable description, the deep and abiding sense of the ominous, crushing weight serfdom imposes upon humanity is immediately clear in the discordant strings that open the album, churning beneath a mechanised, percussive escalation on the appropriately titled Serfdom. We are offered only brief reprieve at the outset of A Frith Befouled, the album’s near 15-minute centrepiece that crushes and pummels the listener until well into the 10 minute mark, wherein AEIR parts the progressive curtain and allows for a haunting, redemptive, melody to emerge from so much oppressive darkness. 

The second single, Curia Regis floats onto the record like the soundtrack to the saddest Renaissance Faire in the history of the Universe before The Threshing Floor offers a synthesis of the band’s progressive and sludge-like? -ish? -esque? elements (See? It’s just not an adjective!) as an eight-plus minute post Metal build gives way to the glorious return of AEIR’s relentless, pummeling sludge.

Closing out the record is the utterly brutal Profaned Moira, another double-digit track that grinds the listener into dust with a chugging, ruthless rhythm and only releases us in the album’s final moments to spoken-word (or rather shrieked-word) poetry that serves as a bleak coda for A Frith Befouled.

I only wish the production had given the vocals a bit more EQ in the mix. 

They often sound too hollow for the collective weight of the overall track and at times distant, as if recorded from too far away. None of this is enough to detract from what is an absolutely stunning contribution to non-adjectival sludge metal. 8/10   

By Torchlight - A Nigh To Remember (Take Over Mars Records) [Matt Bladen]

Prog-Noir? Yeah I'm going to go with that. Thom Hall has been crafting progressive music for a while (2016) now, his previous work is conceptual, but this one takes everything further than ever before. 

Based on a noir crime story he penned based on a Private Detective on the trail of his wife's killer. So there's an intensely dramatic affair utilising many instruments, including piano and brass to give it the style of that 1920's noir soundtrack. Hall plays pretty much everything, though he has some guests on drums, and while musically he knows how to build a song, especially one around a theme, I just can't get past his vocals, which are just not appealing to my ears at all. 

Hall says that his influences are bands such as The Dear Hunter and Coheed And Cambria, both bands blessed with excellent vocalists, but for all of Thom's multi-instrumentalism, he is not a singer. Musically as well I think that this album doesn't really carry the excitement I want from it either as it relies a little too much on being dramatic and sticking to the noir soundtrack. Shame as usually concept records are up my alley but this one only kept my attention until about halfway through. 5/10