This is not a casual record. Drofnosura is a colossal, mutated beast from Toronto, and their sophomore album, Ritual Of Split Tongues, is a 63-minute slab of pure, abrasive violence designed to grind planets together. This is the sound of Blackened Sludge filtered through a dense progressive lens, and it demands you clear your schedule for the full submission.
Forget easy labels. This band took Sludge, Doom, Black, and Post-Metal and finely ground them into a singular, unsettling texture. The music operates at the speed of geological pressure, with instrumentation so heavy it seems to bend the air. The long tracks aren't lazy; they are meditative, transcendent acts of endurance, a colossal shapeshifting entity that leaves an undeniable, hideous mark on the listener.
The sonic landscape is defined by its constant, overwhelming duality. The album is built on enormous friction. the Canadian trio excels at taking elements that should be incompatible, dissonant black metal structures, groovy sludge riffs, and long post-metal passages and making them merge into something monstrously cohesive. The sheer technical ambition of these compositions is terrifying, yet they never sacrifice the raw, emotional weight.
The journey begins with the deceptive six-minute burst of Selection Of A Corpse, quickly showing the crushing weight they wield before pulling you into the album's core. But the title track, The Ritual Of Split Tongues, is the central event: a 15-minute marathon that uses dense dissonance and swirling, hypnotic riffs to drag you into the mire.
The drumming here is intricate and punishing, pushing complex rhythms beneath the wall of sound. The vocals are utterly crucial: twisted croons and blackened screams that haunt your damned soul for eternity. This is the music of profound, system-wide death screams, all diverse, yet merged into one cosmic cry of pain.
Where Drofnosura truly elevates the experience is in its thematic commitment. Tracks like the ten-minute Kapala Kriya, a reference to a Hindu cremation ritual, move with a funerary slowness, building atmospheric dread through sustained dissonance and minimalist vocal lines. This is not anger; it's the inexorable, suffocating weight of finality. It gives way to the ritualistic interlude ἐγείρω, a moment of eerie, synthetic stillness that functions as the album’s black heart, setting the stage for the final descent.
The ensuing track, The Well Of Seven Heads, delivers wave after wave of colossal weight and sinister melodic undertones. The doom-laden riff that eventually crashes in is utterly colossal and capable of flattening an entire forest. The song morphs into something frenzied but never relinquishes any of the previous darkness. It's almost impossible to escape the shadow that pumps through the veins of this record.
The cycle of agony finally closes with Desounen, a colossal, 15-minute finale. This closing statement proves the band is just as adept at crafting overwhelming, immersive soundscapes as they are at delivering raw brutality. It finds that bleak, psychedelic groove and rides it to the finish, leaving the listener submerged in the hypnotic sludge. Ritual of Split Tongues is an astounding album where multiple influences converge to create music that's at once expansive, stirring, and dissonant. 9/10
Electric High - Free To Go (Apollon Records) [Simon Black]
Norway’s Electric High have come a long way in a remarkably short time. Like many old school Rock ‘n’ Rollers, a prodigious rate of output is a keystone of what drives this engine. Some bands take years to gestate a good LP, and shortening the album cycle to less than four years can have terminal consequences if it’s only half baked, but this sort of traditional Rock seems to be able to effortlessly crank the handle, with the added advantage that should a hasty misfire get out into the wild, the follow-up tends to be breathing down its neck very rapidly and can quickly supersede any negative impact of its hasty predecessor. Bands like AC/DC and Aerosmith in they heyday generally released something new every year, and although it’s only record number 2, Electric High seems to be charting a similar course.
Incidentally those two big names can be clearly heard as musical influences, along with a whole smorgasbord or Hard Rock sounds from the 70’s and 80’s positively dripping from this band. That said there’s a lot more going on than a straight 4/4 groove. Listen closely and it rapidly becomes clear that the musical precision lurking under the riffin’ groove is a lot more complex than a first skim would seem to indicate. Just check out the time switches and complex interplayed fills that litter this piece – it’s Rock ‘n’ Roll, but these guys could easily handle the complexity of Prog, but that’s not what they are about. It adds an edge, and a completely different one from the sort of dangerous edginess that Rock ‘n’ Roll bands normally aim for. This is unusual because there’s only one guitarist and bassist in the mix.
With two lead vocalists however, something new is added. They alternate taking different registers, but can harmonise cleanly or down and dirtily interchangeably, and it’s not the sort of thing you expect in the genre. OK, there’s a thousand R’n’R acts with multiple vocal lines in play, but usually they’re coming from the instrumentalists and supporting a single lead vocalist, but PV Staff and Olav Iversen not only manage traditional vocal approaches, but deliver these hugely effective and complex cacophonic vocal lines with the added advantage that there are also at least two string slingers able to add some backing lines as well. It’s almost choral, but without losing the Hard Rock feel.
Then there’s the songs…
From the opening bars of the catchy as hell Thick As Thieves, it’s clear that these boys now how to graft an earworm or two. Or in this case ten, as this disk has a lot of earworms in it. Given the pedigree of all of them, as experienced players with a whole roster of different acts in their respective histories’ it’s perhaps not surprising, but as I’ve hinted above they do it in an alarmingly unusual and effective way that’s both traditional and original, which in the world of Hard Rock is no mean feat in the 75 years that have passed since DJ Alan Freed first coined the term.
Every one of the three singles they have released so far could act as the everyman hook that would get stations like Planet Rock playing them to death and I can see them doing well at the likes of Steelhouse. This bizarre fusion of the technical and straight Hard Rockin’ really works, because even the non-anthemic fist punchers work in a standalone way, and I am left rather gobsmacked that something so clearly old school can sound so new and fresh. 9/10
Ptolemea - Kali (Raging Planet Records) [Rich Piva]
Ptolemea is the first band I have reviewed from Luxembourg. Now that we have that bit of trivia out of the way, let’s go ahead and talk about album number two from the project that is a vehicle for singer/songwriter Priscila Da Costa’s material, Kali, which is a gigantic burst of sound and colour for which you will have no choice to pay attention to, whether you want to our not.
What do I mean by that? Kali has so much going on that it is impossible not to stop and listen closely to all of the controlled chaos that Ptolemea brings across these nine songs. The vocals are multi layered, there is a wall of sound that pairs nicely with Da Costa’s vocals, and there is a heavy aspect happening as well. The description in the promo folder where I grabbed Kali is labeled “Atmospheric Doom Rock”, which fits pretty perfectly.
There is a (mostly) controlled chaos to the songs, like on the opener, Kura, but barely, as it feels like it could go off the rails at any time. There is so much going on it can be hard to fully concentrate on what’s happening. Piano makes an appearance on Breathe, which is a really, really big sounding song that features Da Costa’s huge voice. I could see how fans of Messa would dig a track like Blue Moon, which is really heavy on the atmosphere part of the description.
I like how Luta opens with a quiet acoustic guitar that builds and gives me Florence And The Machine vibes. I also enjoy the violin on Guilhotina. The closing title track is one of my favourites, as it encapsulates all that this record brings to the table with its atmosphere, vocals, and Ptolemea’s version of heavy. The record does drag a bit in the middle and stays a bit too much to the formula, but the highlights on the record shine bright.
Priscila Da Costa is obviously mega talented and has a big vision for Ptolemea, which is mostly achieved here on the band’s second record. There is a lot going on here, but give it a shot, even if it is in smaller doses to start. Huge sounding stuff with a ton of potential. 7/10
ODC - Twisted Love (BLKIIBLK) [Matt Bladen]
ODC are a French band that who combine alt metal, nu-metal, electronics and more, they call themselves the "soundtrack of a hybrid generation" a polished record of very modern sounds that doesn't confined to any sort of boundaries.
The band expressing themselves through music that involves many many genres throughout 10 tracks which includes a cover of Despechá by 'genre bending' Spanish pop star Rosalía, although done in a very modern metal sound. Celia Do is a brilliant vocalist, versatile and powerful, able to wrap her voice around her all the various styles featured on this record.
Celia is not just a singer, she's also a producer teaming up with bassist/rapper MX MNK, Raphaël a guitarist who prefers the heavy groove of 8-string guitar and drummer Hector with a background in death metal, so these clashes of styles and influences all play a part in the broad scope of ODC's music.
Strong links to the music of the early 2000's (Nu-metal etc) and the early 2010's (Djent), Twisted Love is modern hybrid metal record with themes of defiance and resilience in the songs that cement ODC as ones to watch. 7/10
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