Predatory Void - Seven Keys To The Discomfort Of Being (Century Media) [Paul Scoble]
Predatory Void are a five piece based in Ghent, Flanders. The band is made up of five members of already established bands such as Amenra, Carnation, Oathbreaker, Cobra The Impaler and Cross Bridge. Other than the two singles so far released from the album Seven Keys To The Discomfort Of Being is the bands first release. Predatory Void is made up of Tim De Gieter on Bass, Vincent Verstrepen On Drums, Lennart Bossu on Guitars, Thijs de Cloedt on Guitars and Lina R On Vocals.
Predatory Voids style is a mix of Blackened Doom and Blackened Sludge, with a little bit of Grindcore added for good effect. The Blackened Doom side of the album is fairly extreme, closer to bands like Mizmor or Yith, although Predatory Void have definitely created their own sound with this album. The songs tend to change tempo and style quite a lot, most of the songs twist and turn with harsh transitions to keep the audience on their toes.
The album opens with Grovel a mix of big heavy Blackened Doom, blast beats that have a definite Grindcore feel to them, and a slow, toxic sludge style that is relentlessly aggressive. The song does have one short part with softer guitar and clean vocals, but this is all about blasting and slow aggression. Next comes (struggling..) which opens with slow and belligerent Blackened Doom, which drops into a blast beat, this quickly descends into dissonant Doom with clean vocals making an interesting juxtaposition between the sweet vocals and dissonance. The blasting and the sweet dissonance swap places a couple of times before the song goes into a very intense ending.
Endless Return To The Kingdom Of Sleep is a very busy song. It opens with a clean brooding riff and clean vocals before a huge and aggressive riff comes crashing in with Harsh Vocals, the clean Brooding riff reappears briefly before the song drops into alternating blast beats and very heavy Blackened Doom riff, the two styles take turns to kick your head in for a while before a clean ending. Seeds of Frustration is the only simple song on the album. It’s a blooding song that is mainly clean vocals and guitar. The song is dark, but very beautiful.
The Well Within is the shortest song on the album, a mix of slow and dissonant, again with sweet clean vocals, and blasting Black metal with very nasty harsh vocals. Next we get a very interesting song, Shedding Weathered Skin. Shedding Weathered Skin is big slow and very Heavy, in fact in my notes for this song I describe it as VVVVV Heavy. The song is crushingly weighty and has a tempo that stays the same, the song builds by becoming more and more intense and vehement as the song progresses. This gives the song a huge feeling of pressure, extreme weight and oppression, like being slowly kicked to death in a diving bell at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Seven Keys To The Discomfort Of Being comes to an end with the song Funerary Vision, the longest song on the album. Funerary Vision has a more expansive feel than the other material on the album. Most of the really aggressive elements are saved for the second half of the song, where we get several blast beat sections, a more minimal dissonant part, and some slow sludgy nastiness, the song comes to an end quietly with clean vocals, a great way to end the song and the album.
Seven Keys To The Discomfort Of Being, is a great album, it’s incredibly intense, breathtakingly savage and in places surprisingly beautiful. For a debut this is almost ridiculously accomplished, but then this band is new, but the members are not new to making music, they have a huge amount of accumulated experience. There must be something in the water in Ghent, the last time members of bands based in Ghent got together to form a side project we got Wiegedood, and they are one of the best Black Metal bands currently active; Seven Keys To The Discomfort Of Being has every bit as much promise as Wiegedood’s debut, so this bodes well for Predatory Void’s future. if you like incredibly intense extreme metal then this album is essential. 9/10
Margarita Witch Cult - Margarita Witch Cult (Heavy Psych Sounds) [Rich Piva]
Margarita Witch Cult are a new band from Birmingham,
UK who are lucky and awesome enough to have their debut record released on the
powerhouse label Heavy Psych Sounds, and oh boy is it excellent. MWC plays a
blend of stoner, proto, psych, and doom with excellent results, combining
Sabbath worship with more of your modern stoner, with bands like Green Lung,
Early Moods, and Hazemaze coming to mind as reference points. But the power
trio takes off those elements and influences and makes them their own, offering
up one of the most exciting debut albums of the year.
The opening track, Diabolical Influence, is
the perfect way to kick this off, with some serious proto vibes and killer
riff. MWC is catchy as hell too, with
this chorus stuck in my head throughout any given day. The Witchfinder Comes is
what made me think of Green Lung, that occult stoner doom that they have
perfected is on full display here. Be My Witch is my favorite track on the
record, with its catchy melody, and cool riff, this sounds like something that
could be on a Brown Acid comp and fit in perfectly. Annihilation opens like a
Motorhead track, this is their ripper, but instead of a deep bark you get that
cool, clean but fuzzy, higher pitched layered vocals that make MWC sound
unique. These guys never stop bringing the riffs, with tracks like Theme From
Cyclops and Aradia that show off their impressive guitar styling. More Green
Lung comparisons are inevitable with Lord Of The Flies, which is some serious
Sabbath worshiping doomy stoner rock. The closer, Sacrifice is the band showing
their ultra evil side accompanied by more killer riffing. Great stuff.
Along with Ripple Music, Heavy Psych Sounds have their figure on the pulse of the stoner/domo/proto scene, rarely missing with any of their releases. Taking a chance on a debut album with Margarita Witch Cult is a gamble for HPS that has paid off big time. This record is right in the wheelhouse of anyone who digs these styles and will for sure be on a whole bunch of year end lists. If you like the bands I mention above then this is a must listen for you. One of the debuts of the year for sure. 9/10
Oath Of Cranes - The Unsung Mantras (Klang Machine Records) [Richard Oliver]
Oath Of Cranes is an experimental doom metal band from Zürich, Switzerland which was formed a few years ago by former Celtic Frost drummer Franco Sesa to fulfil Franco’s vision of combining metal music with his passion for traditional eastern mantra chants and shamanic music. After several line up changes, years of experimenting and searching for the right way to represent this music the end result is the debut album from the band The Unsung Mantras.
The Unsung Mantras is a hefty double album with a running time of just over an hour and 47 minutes with a good chunk of the songs on the album being around the 8-10 minute mark with some exceeding that. The music offered up is a mix of doom and sludge metal with dark ambient and dissonant noise sounds with a heavy use of samples as well as chants and instruments from traditional shamanic heritage. These elements all help build and maintain the atmosphere that Franco has strived to achieve with this album but it does mean that the album and many of the songs are excessively long but without the strength of material to justify the length.
There are exceptions throughout with the first half of the album providing Ahamkara (Who’s That Ugly Face In The Mirror) which is one of the shorter songs and mixes mantra chants with some filthy doom riffing whilst Puja (Celebrate The Negation Of Hope) has a more progressive and expansive feel to it as well as an effective use of chants and horns adding to the atmosphere. On the second half we have the mournful tones of Tamas (Obfuscation Of The Third Eye) which is a far more sombre song and probably my favourite on the album whilst Maya Pt. 2 (To Cultivate Your Disillusions) is a caustic piece of crushing sludge metal.
There are lots of ideas at work on The Unsung Mantras and there are moments on the album I really enjoyed whilst there were also times where I was bored to tears. Quite simply the album is way too long and drawn out for its own good but those moments where the album peaks are vastly enjoyable with the peak of quality seeming to be at the midpoint of the album. This is definitely an experimental and ambitious metal album and props to the band for trying something different but on the whole it doesn’t quite work. The atmosphere and mood is there for the whole album but it just isn’t terribly interesting and there are many songs which should have been cut right down. 6/10
Grand Design - Rawk (GMR Music) [GC]
Normally I try and review the more extreme side of the releases we get sent as that is what I know best and feel most comfortable giving my opinion on, however this week there isn’t any of that available, so I have just picked something completely randomly and just hoped for the best?
I instantly regretted my decision. I should have known that an album called Rawk would be a total shit show. I almost missed most of the opener Tuff It Out because I was on the floor in fits of laughter, I just can’t believe this sort of 80’s hair metal throw back is still in demand in 2023 but it must be if there are still bands releasing it? Anyway, this song is shit so let’s move on very quickly to God Bless Rawk ‘n’ Roll which sound like Boston have tried to cover a subpar Bon Jovi track and it sounds just as horrible as you can imagine but the worst thing of all of it is this guy’s vocals there fucking hilarious and sound like they have been fed through a helium filter, truly horrific stuff!
Love Or A Fantasy is more of the same watered down 80’s hair metal but with a more ballad feel to it and although the guitarists clearly have some talent which shows in the solos, I just can’t help but think even if they released this in the peak of the 80’s they would still have been laughed off stage. Your Luv Is Driving Me Crazy is probably in contention for top 10 worst songs I have ever heard in my life and I don’t have the words to describe just how bad it is, I would say listen to it for yourself but I wouldn’t want you to put yourself through the punishment, total dogshit.
Desperate Heart is another painful and depressing ballad that just makes you want to smash you face against a brink wall to make it stop again you feel sorry for the guys on guitars because they show more skills on the solos than the rest of the band put together following on from that disaster we have the next insult in the shape of Dangerous Attraction which if you put another vocalist on it might sound one step above terrible but they cant so its sounds like yet another terrible 80’s pukefest.
I am somehow now past the hallway point and not sure how I have made it this far? But we soldier on, and I am now confronted with We Were Born To Rawk ‘n’ Roll that actually starts off with the best riff on the album so far and isn’t a bad song as such but then Captain Helium opens his mouth and it instantly becomes hilarious, piss poor lyrics are certainly his forte and these are some of his best so far! Anyway, this got so bad I skipped midway as I couldn’t take it anymore. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I now get the almost 6 minute long Carry On My Wind what the fuck does that even mean?
Anyway, there is a guest vocalist on this track, don’t care who it is but if he was the main vocalist this album might not be as shit, but he isn’t so it is! Give it All Up For Luv once again sounds a rejected Bon Jovi song and now I must admit I really have had enough, I sort of skip in and out of last 2 tracks Get Out & In The H.E.A.T Of The Night and they of course sound exactly like everything else that I have heard and offer absolutely nothing and aren’t about to save this absolute tragedy of an album.
This is easily the closest I have come to giving an album a zero, there have been times before that one song saved an album but on this there is not one song that stands out as a saving grace the only reason for an actual score is I can tell there is talent in the guitarists and they deserve so much more than this and I genuinely feel sorry for them as this is a fucking embarrassment of an album and the fact that labels still release this sort of garbage and there are people who still listen to it actually makes my head hurt. Let me be perfectly clear here: AVOID AT ALL COSTS. 1/10
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