Tribulation – Sub Rosa In Æternum (Century Media Records) [Liam Williams]Swedish goth rockers Tribulation are back with their 7th album
Sub Rosa In Æternum. 9 spooktacular tracks, very fitting for this particular time of year. They blend elements of modern gothic rock with some more 80’s inspired sounds from bands like The Cure and Sisters Of Mercy, with a bit of a heavier, grittier sound. Not quite death metal but you can definitely hear the influence. If these tracks were faster and a bit heavier then they’d be stepping into death metal territory. But, with that being said, this is a really great album to add to your Halloween playlist!
The album starts with
The Unrelenting Choir, a short intro song which begins with some very haunting synth before the guitars come in and the drums slowly start building up. There’s some really nice sinister sounding clean vocals while the song continues to build up.
Next up we have
Tainted Skies which starts off with a little frantic bass riff before the full band comes in and things get groovy. There’s a good mix of clean and harsh vocals. I really like the choruses. The guitar work in particular follows the vocals really well. I love the guitar solos, especially the second one which almost has a bit of a surf rock feel to it.
Saturn Coming Down has a great little groovy, spooky guitar riff before the first verse comes in. The chorus is a little bit cheesy sounding but it works quite well and doesn’t ruin my enjoyment of the track.
The next track
Hungry Waters reminds me of
Fascination Street by The Cure. It’s a bit calmer and groovier than the last couple of tracks. I really enjoyed the drums in this song. They’re not particularly complicated but they’re fun to listen to. There’s a couple of great little guitar solos before a piano/guitar part before the bridge which also sounds really good.
Drink The Love Of God is a little bit faster and heavier and there’s a key change for the guitar solo which works quite well. Murder in Red has a very 80’s goth sound to it. The intro gives me Stranger Things theme vibes. I love the duel guitars in the solo.
Moving on to the last few tracks,
Time The Vivid Ore goes back to a bit of a heavier more guitar driven sound. There’s a great build-up to the climax of the song.
Reaping Song is a bit slower and calmer again. It features a nice little synth solo before a very gritty, dirty sounding guitar solo. Finally we have
Poison Pages, the longest track on the album, lasting just over 6 minutes. Again it has quite an 80’s goth sound when the band kicks in. There’s a nice guitar lead into the outro before a droning synth lingers on until the song fades to an end.
I really enjoyed listening to this album, especially on Halloween. The mix is a little rough around the edges in some parts but for the most part you can hear everything pretty clearly. The vocals are good but maybe could have done with a little more work. I think the clean vocal parts were done a little bit better than the harsher vocals but that’s just a little nit-pick. The guitars are really good, nice groovy bass and drums. Like I said, groovy but spooky!
9/10
Deaf Lizard - The Last Odyssey (Electric Valley Records) [Rich Piva]Oldenburg, Germany’s Deaf Lizard play a nice mix of hard rock/stoner/psych with an edge, and have done so for the past five years, giving us some very cool heaviness along the way. This continues with their new record,
The Last Odyssey, which like so many bands putting out music in 2024 came out of a creative time during the pandemic and also like so many other bands in 2024 may have released their best and most realized work yet.
A heavy psych leaning instrumental opens up the record and leads us to
The Devil’s Show, which starts off sounding like Monolord for the first two minutes until the tempo picks up and the angry vocals and extra fuzz kicks in.
City Of Life is up next, a nice little ripper with a stoner rock via punk feel to it to go with a cool melody for quite the earworm effect. Great song
. Independent Terror makes you think we are about to doom it up until the cool guitar fuzz kicks in with a nasty riff, reminding me of Nebula.
In their bio they mention Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs and I don’t have a better description for the next track,
Lady In Black, except that to me it has a NYC post hardcore feel to it as well. The highlight of the record is the eight minute psych opus
Ape’s Odyssey which takes you on quite the trip lead by all those swirling guitars, while keeping their heavy. Speaking of swirling guitars, the closer,
The Veil, leans way into the psych side of things, creating a killer and mind-bending last fifteen minutes where
The Last Odyssey shines brightest.
The Last Odyssey is a dark trip yet somehow a fun album that hits all the right chords when it comes to a nice blend of stoner and psych with punk leanings. Deaf Lizard are a very cool band and are even cooler after the release of
The Last Odyssey.
8/10KLOGR - Fractured Realities (Noble Demon) [Mark Young]KLOGR return after a 7-year hiatus, a hiatus that was caused by excessive touring and of course the Pandemic which as we know drove a bus through the plans of just about every band going. Noted as a Progressive Alt-rock/metal outfit which is a combination that doesn’t sit to well with me. I think that when a band suggests using rock and metal in the same breath it seems that neither one is served correctly. Add that this is a concept album and let’s say that my expectations are not too high. If I’m starting off on a fairly negative tack, well I’m being honest with you from the off. You might dig this genre and if so great.
So having listened to it, there is nothing here to change my outlook on it. It’s a collection of songs that sound good, mixing in the use of electronica amongst the riffola which follow a pre-determined route that sees the traditional verse-chorus-verse arrangement. It delivered earnestly, but as I feared it sits in that zone where the rock leanings are preferred over metal meaning that when they do amp it up it feels a bit safe and clean.
Songs come and go, without a sense that you listening to something different than the one came before or after. It feels like it is something that could be slightly out of time, at least to me. But you can see that within their songs they are trying to build them so that they are delivered in a quick order and to be fair there is some satisfying riff work on this. The songs have one eye on being played live, that much is certain and its entirely likely that live, with a crowd giving it back to them then I think you would see a grittier band who are more likely to take risks.
6/10Cryptic Brood - Necrotic Flesh Bacteria (War Anthem Records) [GC]
There is a lot of nonsense written to describe death metal releases and the PR for Cryptic Brood’s latest release Necrotic Flesh Bacteria is an absolute world class muddle of nonsense and hilarity, from what I can make out this is their third album and that is about all I can make out from it!?
It doesn’t really start out very well with Acid Fumes which starts off with some sloppy doom metal that then gets taken over by some messily played death metal, the problem is that all the separate parts sound like they don’t know what the other is doing, its sounds like is has been mixed weirdly and also sounds like it was recorded in a dustbin, Digging Through Skin has a bit more energy and has a hardcore punk feel mixed in but the varying styles on the song make everything sound confusing and badly timed.
I’m all for clever time signatures and songs veering off on a tangent but here it just doesn’t work at all but the same has can’t really be said about Oozing Pox because here they put a grindcore influence and it’s probably the best thing so far on the album and the way its thrown in and then mixed with a the more doomy approach finally works and the sections mix almost seamlessly together, they still sound a bit sloppy in places but I guess I am just going to have to get used to that.
Viscid Fluid is a slow and heavily doom influenced track and because of this it feels about 2 minutes too long, the drawn out riffs struggle to fill the song and you quickly lose any interest in finding out if they will all the way to the end as frankly it’s just boring, Hallucinogen Poison is a completely pointless track for 2:30 it’s just more boring droning death metal doom but then the final 10 or so seconds has a little blast of grindcore out of nowhere which does end the track on a high but also makes you wish the song was actually only 10 seconds long.
The Pile Of Flesh Is Served continues with the slow and monotonous drone and throws in little blasty bits here and there to try and keep you awake and interested but ultimately fails because the slow bits are just so grating and played pretty poorly as everything sounds like its fighting to be heard before everything else and its not in a good, chaotic type of way its more like a back to the practice room and sort it out sort of way.
Realm Of Rot is just more of the same and honestly I just want to really just give up now, this sort of annoyance in my reviews is usually saved for Br00tal death metal as that’s the lowest form of DM but this is annoying me just as much if not more as its trying its hardest to be extreme and just failing so miserably its draining any fun out of trying to listen to it, so now we get to the title track and what really should be the statement piece of the album Necrotic Flesh Bacteria.
It’s the longest track so far and does precisely nothing to change my mind that this album has any redeeming qualities at all, it drags its heels for 5:31 and just huffs and puffs for the whole run time without delivering that killer blow you may expect thankfully Reeking Pitted Innards is the last track and while I want to say they end on a high and redeem themselves, it will come as no surprise that they do nothing of the sort and just create a slow, lumbering boring mess of a track that really sums up this whole album experience.
So baring a couple of short bits that were just ok, it has to be said that unfortunately for Cryptic Brood Necrotic Flesh Bacteria is probably the most boring album I have listened to all year, it lacks a focus and is just so messy that I never really enjoyed anything I heard. The lack of drive and intensity is a real shame and just makes for a disappointing and very boring listen. There may be an audience for this type of doomy death metal somewhere but unfortunately, it is not me. 2/10
