The Sun’s Journey Through The Night - Worldless (Church Road Records) [Paul Scoble]
British Black Metal act The Suns Journey Through The Night have been putting out music for just over four years. The Sun’s Journey Through The Night was originally the project of a sole individual known as No One, as a one man band TSJTTN released three albums; Eternal Black Transmissions in 2020, and Crawling Nebula Of Dismal Light also in 2020 and Veiled Beneath The Shroud Of Grief And Misery in 2021.
In order to play live No One recruited some live members, that have now become full members of the band, and as such have been involved in writing and performing on this album. The new members are: Lune on guitars, Delmos on drums and Corvus on bass. No One does the vocals (I’d assume they also plays the keyboards as there are a fair amount on here, and no one else is credited with playing them) which are harsh, very aggressive and nasty throughout the album and are very effective .
The album is split into 6 songs, there is quite a lot of ambient passages, that feature synth swells, spoken word samples, whispering and soft chanting. Several of the tracks have extended Ambient sections, and one of the songs is an ambient track completely. This wasn’t a surprise as TSJTTN have released ambient tracks before now. The rest of the material is a fairly savage and aggressive style of black metal, with very insistent drumming, and in places a lot of dissonance.
The album opens with Abolishing Consciousness, which has a short Ambient intro before the song drops the audience into a savage maelstrom of blasting drums and nasty tremolo picked riffs. The song goes into slower, but more dissonant riffs, before building the intensity back for more insanely fast blasting. The song moves between these two sections until it finally ends with slow, dissonant and very heavy riffs.
Next comes the title track Worldless, which starts in a very dramatic way, before dropping the melodrama for same super fast and very dense blast beats with tremolo picked riffs. The blasting slows to mid-paced with a touch more melody until the dramatic riffs return. The fast, mid-paced and dramatic take turns before a great guitar solo, a quieter passage and a crushingly heavy riff slows to a crawl to take the song to it’s end.
Next up comes Void Walker. Void Walker has a long ambient introduction, before being obliterated by blasting black metal that quickly slows to a melodic mid-paced black metal riff. The song then goes into a section that feels fairly post black metal, this is then smashed to bits by an extremely nasty piece of black metal blasting before retuning to the mid-paced and post black metal riffing before the ambience returns to bring the song to a conclusion.
Grief, The Star is an ambient track, featuring synths and spoken word samples.
Flood Of Flames is another track that mixes black metal and ambience. The song starts with an Ambient section featuring clean guitar before blasting black metal crashes in. This time the black metal is infused with lots of keyboards making the whole thing sound huge, it’s a real Wall Of Sound sense, absolutely massive. This huge blasting is interrupted by a slow and heavy section, but returns to batter us, this then fades back into ambience for an extended outro to the song.
Worldless comes to an end with the track Orion. This also features keyboard heavy black metal, so the sound is immense, and is very fast and aggressive. The song takes a turn towards a slower and more dissonant sound for a while before an ambient section that is super minimal comes in. Orion then drops back in to the slow and dissonant before returning to blasting fast, savage black metal, and finally into a soft acoustic riff to end the song and the album.
Worldless is a great album. The black metal sections are really well done, aggressive with nasty riffs and very good, very aggressive drumming. The ambient sections are interesting, and help give the album a sense of Ebb And Flow. They always have a purpose, rather than just being a way of bulking up the runtime. The album has a lot of depth to it as well, I was noticing layers I wasn’t initially aware of days after I started listening to it. A very well put together and affecting album, highly recommended. 8/10
Blackning - Awakening Rage (Black Lion Records) [Zak Skane]
With their first collaboration with Swedish label Black Lion Records the Brazilian four piece thrash metal act have released their debut album Awakening Rage bringing thrash metal back to its prime.
Once we hear the sirens call we are intruded by guitar and tom driven grooves, with the guitar sound providing a Haunted influenced vibe before the singer Cleber displays some tender harsh vocals. Along side some whammy bar driven solos, frantic skank beats and punchy transitions the band are off to a flying start. After their smashing start the band descend into slayer inspired territory with Greed And Lies with it’s ride cymbal driven half time grooves, evil pedal note riffage and Troy Sanders (singer from Mastodon) sounding choruses. After the two furious entries into the album the band have made the controversial decision to plant an instrumental track Disfigured In Flesh which contains cynical cleans, death metal grinding guitars and smacking blast beats.
Lamb To The Slaughter brings some old styled riffage, laced with Decapitation styled technicality. Coming in with a gnarly dive bomb Never To Be Free comes in as one of the catchiest songs on the album with it’s thrashy and bouncy rhythms, grey whistle approved guitars riffs and the most catchy lyrics that Cleber has produced. Other highlights on the album is the hardcore driven Insanity Is Power with it’s bouncy drum beats, basic meat and potatoes riffs and chanty choruses that would please fans of the likes of Hatebreed and Crowbar. Unnamed Reality provides some classic 90’s metal fusion like dynamics with some breakbeats that you would hear from retro era Fear Factory and some clanking bass bridges. Their closer Lies That Blind brings in some classic Anthrax and Slayer thrash with demonic sounding lead harmonies and stamping skank beats.
This an excellent slab of thrash metal, through out the 11 tracks they have seemed to keep the genre interesting by pulling in other metal related sub genres such as groove metal, tech metal, death metal and hard core. Cleber Orsiolis politically charged lyrics are delivered with venom but poetic nuance, his and Zozi guitar tones has the right amount of classic thrashy goodness without it sounding dated all credit to Marcos Cerutti mix and mastering work especially with the bass and drums. For fans of The Haunted, Testament and Hatebreed 10/10.
When I received this week’s album to review I saw that it was described as Psychotic Death Grind, which gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect and AcidBrain didn’t let me down with latest offering - The Lust Murders.
This album does not break boundaries or throw any surprises your way in terms of originality but that’s not the intention here. This thing fucking stinks. It’s sweaty and dirty and leaves you feeling like you need to take a shower afterwards.
Once the intro finishes we’re thrust head-first into the slow and grimy riff of Limbless Fuckdoll and the stink just continues to grow as the album progresses. At times the guitar tone reminds me of early Bloodbath with the overall sound being quite similar to Sanguisugabogg, albeit without quite as much meat on the bone, but just as vicious nonetheless.
Eyeball Anal Beads and Cauterized Cunt are stand out song titles but none of these songs really stand apart from one another, which isn’t an issue, more just a side effect of the style.
The album closes with a cover of Slayer’s Dead Skin Mask which suits the style well, fits in with the album’s theme and gives us a sense of familiarity, a glimmer of hope at the end of a dirty, dirty tunnel.
If you’re in the mood to feel violated then I’d maybe suggest given this a listen.
It’s not for everyone. 6/10
James Rivera's Metal Wave - New Wave Gone Metal (Massacre Records) [Manos Sideris]
Singer James “Vampiro” Rivera, most known for his role as frontman of heavy metal band Helstar, releases his first solo outing in a very special and divisive way. New Wave Gone Metal released in July 28th is a compilation of covers from the golden era of new wave/electronic /gothic/punk rock.
James Rivera here is covering some classics from bands such as Sisters Of Mercy, Depeche Mode, Tears For Fears and others, giving them his own heavy metal interpretation. This seems to be a risky endeavor from the beginning. Most tracks have been engraved in our memory as classics and paved the way in their respective genres. I am not exactly sure as to how Rivera thought about this, but initially at least I was a bit positively anxious to hear it.
Black Celebration kicks off the record with audible production issues such as continuous volume drops and boosts (probably compressing problems), and a bad guitar sound. For the rest of the record, production returns to a tolerable level. I was surprised to hear Peter Gabriel’s Shock The Monkey as it’s an unusual choice for a cover.
The second half of the record contains songs such as Bela Lugosi Is Dead, The Killing Moon and Ramones' Pet Sematary. These seem to be the highest point of the record as some of them already contain the energy that you would find in typical heavy metal songs. The record ends with the track Rain by The Cult. In this track I couldn’t help but hearing some guitar and bass parts played not entirely on the rhythmic grid which actually threw me off a lot.
Some songs I knew and upon hearing them in Rivera’s way I was a bit disappointed and bored. Others I did not, and immediately after hearing Rivera’s version I checked the originals which I also liked better. Musicianship-wise to be honest I did not find something particularly memorable in this release. These classic melodies were delivered in a way that fails to impress so unfortunately this release flies low for me, but it was a tough job to begin with. 5/10
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