Reviews: SYK, Gjenferd, Warlord, Red Rot (Reviews By Mark Young, Rich Piva, Matt Bladen & GC)

SYK - eartHFlesh (Season Of Mist) [Mark Young]

SYK has just dropped what I consider to be one of the albums of the year.

Seriously.

This is next-level extreme metal that demands your attention, and in return, they will reward you with 8 songs that are god-tier in execution.

I Am The Beast starts, chord stabs gradually building in volume as a powerful vocal announces the coming of what is initially expected to be a full-on onslaught. Wrong footed, SYK go for an arrangement that reminds of Perfect Strangers, that measured drum beat that is carried until changing gear, upping the bpm and attack. 

I Am The Beast is a perfect example of what SYK like to do, not staying within one arena when multiple will do. The final act has some of those ‘bendy’ guitar parts (you will know exactly what I mean when you hear them) and some supreme drumming that keeps that energy going. 

It’s not quite a scorching opener, but it’s a statement for what is to come next, with Where I Am Going There Is No Light starts at a rapid rate. Content to let the drums do the heavy lifting, they push and pull the riffs into unconventional shapes which only solidifies that they are no normal/standard extreme metal act. The track rises and falls but never stops. It grabs and doesn’t let go, there is a power on display here as well as an intelligence that can hit with heavy riffs and melodic fills that just fit so well together. 

I’ll Haunt You In Your Dreams is mint, Similar in arrangement to Where…but has more of this stomping attack to it. The bottom-end chug on this is fantastic to hear, so when they deploy the cleaner lines, they cut through like a knife. The constant here is Stefano Ferrian, the vocals set at that sweet spot in the mix, combining with Federico Leone’s drums to devastating effect. The guitar tone is just the cherry here, possessing clarity without losing any heaviness.

Earthflesh comes in and you think this should have been the lead track, It’s monstrous, speeding up, backing off, and those bendy chords dropping like fire, capturing everything they have done in one package, it has it all. I’m glad that they didn’t start with this one because starting with this would have thrown out that natural flow we have.

And then they drop The Sermon. If side A ended on a high, then side B starts with a relentless juggernaut. Chiming chords, that combination of duh-duh riffs, and elastic guitar lines that result in a raising of the bar. There is a solo break around 2.20 onwards which I am convinced set the fire alarms off in the studio. The following riff build that comes is just royal. Absolutely royal. Its heavy, but so smart with it. The trouble with this is that I am running out of words to describe how good it is. 

The Cross comes in and just flays your ears from your head. It’s the shortest song here yet you don’t feel cheated by this. If anything, it is a welcome break to catch a breath before the dual beating from For To Themselves I Left Them and The Passing. The former is this lumbering, dizzying beast with those Chug-chug stabs working against the drums in an off-kilter way. 

The Latter, employing Dalila Kayros to the same great effect as on I Am The Beast... as this stop-start riff/drum pattern hits. The guitars continue this, the drums decide to go elsewhere, throwing little fills here and there, not standing still, not content to just offer a simple beat. It grinds and grinds until the joint vocals kick in and they change it up again. In amongst this grinding motion, they tear up the bpm’s to shake it up again for the final time.

And that’s it done. Album of the year material.

I didn’t expect this to be as good as it is. I honestly didn’t. You have to give it your full attention and it will repay you with a colossus of a release. Its an album that you will go back to again and again and find something new. It balances light and dark, extreme heaviness with the most subtle of melodic touches. It is a classic. You just don’t know it yet. 10/10

Gjenferd - Gjenferd (Apollon Records) [Rich Piva]

If you have read my reviews before you will know that I am a sucker for organ in my rock. You would also know that if you label your band something along the lines of “70s Rock” you are going to the top of the promo pile for this reviewer. 

Well, the debut record from Bergen, Norway’s Gjenferd has both going for it, but that doesn’t always guarantee a quality end product, especially that 70s label, given all of the crap I have experienced with bands who think they have captured that sound only to sound like a generic, built in a lab, straight ahead, radio friendly, “rock” band. Rest assured dear reader, because the debut record from Gjenferd nails both, and is a contender for my album of the year.  Yeah, it is that good. 

You get a nice mixture of 70s hard and psych rock with some stoner rock leanings on the six tracks from Gjenferd, with the Hammond organ, crunchy riffs, and killer vocals leading the way. High Octane opens us up, and I love the interaction between the organ and the guitar.  The drum work is fantastic and give me an organ solo any day and I will be happy. Pair it with a killer guitar solo and you get one of the tracks of the year. 

Starless comes at you with a slower pace to start with the band getting their psych on with this one. The vocal harmonies are great and the guitar/organ team continues to bring the awesome. The spacy middle of this track is the highlight, or is it when the pace really picks up and the organ solo blows you away? I will let you decide, but both parts are just great. Burning Soil opens with an acoustic and flute pairing, until we get all 70s prog, reminding me of the perfect new record from Tarot. There could be no higher complement from me in 2024. Look out when the guitar solo kicks in. 

A trippy bassline starts off Restless Nights and leads to a nice heavy riff to accompany the psych-ed out vocals in what is the most “out there” track amongst the six on the self-titled debut. Beneath The Wave would have been a hit in 1975 and is the most straight-ahead song on Gjenferd, with some trippy lyrics and super catchy bridge with great harmonies and of course the organ and guitar teamwork. The seven-plus minute closer, All That Remains Is Haze is not just a great song title. This one has it all, even a bit of a funky feel during parts.  This is some epic 70s style heavy proggy psych rock executed flawlessly in 2024. 

Gjenferd have incorporated two of my favourite things in rock music perfectly into their self-titled debut record. First, the 70s influences translate perfectly into these six songs and second, the lead organ paired with killer guitar work, both combining for some of my favourite sounds I have heard in a long time.  Gjenferd have an album of the year contender and a record that all lovers of rock music, especially those who dig rock leaning on the best generation for music as influence, the most. 10/10

Warlord - Free Spirit Soar (High Roller Records) [Matt Bladen]

Formed back in 1981 by drummer Mark Zonder and guitarist William J Tsamis, Warlord are one the USA’s cult heavy metal bands. Having released records in the 80’s and then again in the 2000’s after a reunion, Tsamis passed away in 2021 at the age of 60. Their last studio record was in 2013, but Pitch Black Records arranged a multi band tribute to Tsamis which put the name Warlord back onto the collective lips of the metal community. 

Zonder took a break from drumming for everyone and alongside singer Giles Lavery recorded Free Spirit Soar last year. Of course like with Riot (V) or Savage Oath/Sentry (Manilla Road) they have to pay homage to their founders, keeping the musical style similar to what was established back then but with modern frills. 

In fact much of this album is made up of songs Tsamis was working on at the time of his death, they used modern technology to salvage some of his demos, meaning that the musical tracks were written by Tsamis but its guitarist Eric Juris that’s the one shredding up a storm. 

Jimmy Waldo (synth/keys) and Phillip Byone (bass) are the other current members of Warlord as Giles Laverty wrote all the vocals and melodies, with the exception of two tracks which were fully formed Lordian Guard tracks (Tsamis’ solo project ostensibly) that have been made into Warlord songs, continuing the tradition that's started with 2002's Rising Out Of The Ashes. Some of the songs you might recognise as they have appeared in some form on certain reissues and as bonus tracks, but this boasts to be the first album that has nearly all vocal tracks with two exceptions. 

Free Spirit Soar pieces together a lot of left over music to carry on the Warlord name, but does so well. 7/10

Red Rot - Borders Of Mania (Hammerheart Records) [GC]

Forming form the ashes of Ephel Duath AKA the seventh best Italian rock band of all time (not my words Michael, the words of Ultimate Guitar Magazine) Red Rot have been labelled as a mix of Voivod, Morbid Angel and Converge mixing rock/metal/death/metal and sludge it seems there is going to be a lot going on here and its down to me to make some sense of it all.

It all starts with Delusion which has a weird mix of styles all melded together, you get a sort of black metal drum beat with and doomy death metal guitar and there is then some sort of breakdowns midway through and it all sounds a bit confusing and difficult to grasp, Agony Untold doesn’t do much to clear up the confusion I am feeling, and for an added layer of nonsense there are some clean vocals that sound like they were added in for a laugh at the last minute? False Memory has a grandiose introduction with some sweeping death doom guitars but again once the main body of the song kicks in it all sounds a bit too messy for me until towards the end there is a bit more of a solid structure. 

Homo Sapiens Imago Dei is just over 2 minutes long and has probably the most structure so far and is a short, decent blast of death metal, but there’s more of those clean vocals again and I’m not sure why they are included as they sound so out of place, Messianic Alteration leans heavily on the sludge and combines this with some epic death metal and this time the clean vocals do work with the song. 

Its another shorter song so feels like one of the more coherent tracks on the album, much like Inner Voice which is another scathing and vicious slice of death metal with a little edge of black metal to really add some spice but ultimately it sort of just runs out of steam at the end of the song somehow??

Overlord ramps up the atmospheric death metal side of things and nicely re-introduces the doom back into proceedings with a slow, crawling, and uncomfortable feeling track that also throws in some more black metal edged parts towards the end and shows when a bit of attention is honed into a song these guys really can pull out some half decent stuff. 

Not In Control then jolts you back into life with the customary blasting death metal that manages to mix in a melody and the black metal precision to good effect which carries forward into Crainioscopy and is more proof that when they concentrate on one thing they are more than capable of writing some devastating music and not confuse everything but, I really wish they would leave out the clean vocals as 90% of the time I hate them and they do not work in the scope of the song. 

Endless Ravine, and Vindication both sound ok and carry on the flow of the album well but don’t really stand out over anything else, Self Harm Scars does offer that Converge sounding blizzard of noise and is probably all very meaning full and deep, but I have sort of lost interest now and feel that this album is at least 3 songs too long. 

Misericordie does nothing to convince me otherwise its slow, drawn out and honestly does nothing for me. Sun is a weird mix of buzzing noises, vocals and bits of guitars that is mercifully under 2 minutes which feeds directly into final track Affliction and Relief which is a continuation of the boresome noise/vocal mix and is probably not a completely shocking end but is ultimately a bit of a boring one!

So, this started off confusing, got a little bit better in the middle and then totally fizzled out at the end, I never truly found much that I fully loved and most of it was just sort of, ok? It felt way too drawn out and 15 songs was just too much for me and I just got bored, maybe I missed something, I don’t know? but I really doubt I would ever really recommend this to anyone or ever feel the urge to want to listen to it again, take from that what you will?! 4/10