Callous Hands, the Midlands based metal band known for their relentless aggression and uncompromising sound, has unleashed their latest offering upon the metal scene. Titled Trapped In Animated Flesh, this album is a visceral and intense auditory experience that solidifies the band's reputation as a force to be reckoned with. Through its powerful instrumentation, thought-provoking lyrics, and impressive songwriting, Callous Hands delivers an album that is sure to captivate both longtime fans and newcomers alike.
From the very first track, The Cycle Remains it becomes clear that Callous Hands means business. The album opens with a deceptive calmness that soon blasts into a crushing wave of guitar riffs and thunderous drums, setting the tone for the relentless assault to come. The production is top-notch, allowing each instrument to shine and giving the album a polished yet raw sound. The guitar work throughout the album is particularly impressive, with blistering solos and intricate melodic passages that showcase the band's technical prowess.
One standout track on the album for me is The Great Unknown, which combines relentless aggression with atmospheric elements to create a haunting and captivating listening experience. The song features a dynamic interplay between punishing blast beats and slower, doom-laden sections, demonstrating the band's ability to craft diverse and engaging compositions. The melodic hooks in the chorus are infectiously catchy, leaving a lasting impression.
Another highlight is the epic closing track, Fractured Wounds. The song weaves through various moods and tempos, from thunderous aggression to moments of haunting beauty, creating a beautifully chaotic maelstrom of sound. It is a fitting end to an album that relentlessly pushes boundaries.
Trapped In Animated Flesh is a solid EP that establishes the band as an up and coming force on the UK Metal scene. 8/10
Weite - Assemblage (Stickman Records) [David Karpel]
Based in Berlin, Weite brings together two members of Elder, Nicholas DiSalvo and Michael Risberg, with collaborators Inwer Boysen (High Fighter) and Ben Lubin (Lawns). Their instrumental debut, Assemblage, born out of a one-off challenge to write and record an album in a week, is an exemplary musical experience that fuses genres – psych from the 60s and 70s, kraut rock, and jazz – and, if you go with it, it may stretch your mind for the duration. Building riff upon riff expanding from a cemented groove, these songs ultimately express a passion for music, for making music for the sake of music. For the most part, concentrated, meditative movements scaffold, strip down, turn another direction, clarify, take off again, and ultimately return or end someplace new.
Each song is a fresh trip, and the album as a whole plays like a series of discoveries. While I don’t have the ability to tap into the magic of the kind of collaboration that happens with a band playing and live recording new songs, the pieces on Assemblage have that rare ability to express that mystical connection and let the listener become a voyeur to the experience. Spanning 40 minutes through four songs, the tunes include keys, a glockenspiel, and the basic guitar, bass, and drum combination in addition to some overdubbed tracks and effects. Kicking it off with a nine and a half minute journey, the appropriately titled Neuland traverses musical avenues further expounded upon in the following three tracks.
A chill riff builds a groove that’s tight and breathy at once. As if gliding over a glassy body of water, a guitar weaves lines that tug at your attentive ears. Notes stretch, movements transition, time signatures change, and different instruments bring sounds forward and then retreat to let another replace it. At nine and a half minutes, Neuland is just a half minute longer than the second track, Entzündet. Opening with Pink Floyd-like psychedelic waves of melodies, there’s an almost immediate sense of building to something. Repetitive verses and expansive riffs mix in slow and jazzy parts that enhance the suspense until the song rages into a tripped out, dust-riding, wild and fuzzy jam for the second half of the song. While the next track, Rope, might be just over half the length of the first two tracks, it certainly doesn’t feel that way when you’re listening to it.
A deep af groove with tones that remind me of 90s post rock, Rope incorporates what sounds like disco and funk beats, a distinctly folksy Americana acoustic movement halfway through, and then returns to the original, opening groove. The final track, Murmuration, is the longest at 14 and a half minutes. It’s here, especially in the last movements of the song, where the live sound is most especially appreciated. There’s a sense of controlled chaos in the layering of the song, with the amped up guitars teetering on an edge of an abyss in the later parts of the tune. No longer a one-off project, Weite is officially a band now. If Assemblage gives us any indication of what’s to come in future recordings, we rejoice. 8/10
Winterstorm - Everfrost (AFM Records) [Matt Bladen]
The Germans have quite a corner of the market when it comes to power metal, since 2008 Winterstorm have been a band who have been playing the style of power metal favoured by Orden Ogan and Gamma Ray, thrashy guitars, folky keys and grizzled vocals. Everfrost is their fifth album and continues their traditional German power metal sound, though they also take some cues from Falconer (who were Swedish, I know don't write in). Circle Of Greed comes with a catchy chorus and lots of piano, the continuation on Future Times, breaking into Teutonic chugging.
The Phoenix Died (Remember) is a folksy track with an electronic pulse and Elina Siirala of Leaves’ Eyes dueting with Winterstorm vocalist Alexander Schirmer, while the title track is a thrashy gallop as Final Journey features the growls of Robse Martin Dahn (ex-Equilibrium. There’s diversity on this album meaning that things don’t grow stale, there’s also a lot of pace, the slower more melodic parts used to create atmosphere, no big wailing ballads, it’s a conceptual record so there’s themes within the songs about extinction and exploration for financial gain, wrapped up in some fist pumping German heavy metal.
Written and produced by guitarist Michael Liewald, Everfrost is a muscular power metal record from this five piece. 7/10
Tortured - Genetically Engineered Monstrosity (Comatose Music) [Zak Skane]
From the eerie sound bite the band storms in with Franks scalpel sharp precise blast beats which cut through the mix with surgical accuracy whilst Alex and Oscars guitars on this album are equipped with bludgeoning low tunings which would crush and mangle any listener that dares to prick their ears to the chaotic compositions. Flo's vocals are delivered with barbaric rage, which would please the great vocalist of this great genre such as Chris Barnes, George Fisher (Cannibal Corpse) and David Vincent (Morbid Angel).
Tortured - Genetically Engineered Monstrosity (Comatose Music) [Zak Skane]
From the eerie sound bite the band storms in with Franks scalpel sharp precise blast beats which cut through the mix with surgical accuracy whilst Alex and Oscars guitars on this album are equipped with bludgeoning low tunings which would crush and mangle any listener that dares to prick their ears to the chaotic compositions. Flo's vocals are delivered with barbaric rage, which would please the great vocalist of this great genre such as Chris Barnes, George Fisher (Cannibal Corpse) and David Vincent (Morbid Angel).
The opening track Bathing In Pus and the title track Genetically Engineered Monstrosity shows how far the band push their instruments capability with the furious fret board runs zooming at full speed whilst still luring in the bowl rumbling depths whereas Frank and Flo carries these songs with murderous aggression. Barbaric Impalement pushes Alex’s baselines to act like a second lead guitar whilst accompanying Alex's soaring guitar work. Other highlights from this album are the crushing grooves of Raised by Punishment and Mushed Up which shows the band combining selective rhythms that burst out like machine gun rounds whilst still carrying their intense machine precision blast beats.
If you like your brutal death metal as grotesque as its imagery this is the band for you. Through the bludgeoning low tuned guitar riffs, machine accurate blast beats and ravenous low pitched death growls this album takes the listener to the front row seat of a snuff film of their choice. 7/10.
If you like your brutal death metal as grotesque as its imagery this is the band for you. Through the bludgeoning low tuned guitar riffs, machine accurate blast beats and ravenous low pitched death growls this album takes the listener to the front row seat of a snuff film of their choice. 7/10.
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