Checkout Counter: Cable

Cable is a long lost noisecore bands from the 90's that never quite got their due. They’ve had a minor influence on the noise scene, but didn’t seem to gain much popularity as many of the other bands in the genre had. Cable has broken up now, but Translation Loss Records has put out a best of/rare tracks album recently titled "Last Call" which includes a DVD.

Cable At Translation Loss Records

Album Review: Abigail Williams - “Legend”

The Black Dahlia Murder is a band who’s formula is becoming easy to rip off. All melodies and harmonies all the time, the drums moving between lots of blast beats between simpler bass-snare-bass-snare combinations, and the vocals usually being high mixed in with very low, sometimes harmonized harsh vocals. The Zimmermann Note did it, so did Summer’s End, and Abigail Williams has done it too. Or at least in their first 4 songs on their “Legend” EP.

Sure Abigail Williams throw a lot of keyboards in there as well as a few piano runs, some of which sounding pretty close to Children Of Bodom. They’ve got some chugga style breakdowns hidden by using a steady pulse of double bass. The song “Conqueror Worms” even has female clean sung vocals.

The most promising song on the EP is “Watchtower” because the band really stretches themselves into symphonic black metal and the vocalist stretches his vocals up higher to sound a heck of a lot more like Dani Filth. The guitar solo in the middle of the song has a strange harmony to it, very nasty and not very melodic. Unfortunately the whole sounds like a bunch of metalcore kids doing Cradle Of Filth.

The last song on the EP titled “Procession Of The Aeons” sounds a bit more promising with the majority of the song going for a much more raw black metal feel with the tremolo picked riffs with a few melodies and harmonies strung between. The feeling this time with the guitar melodies is much closer to Dark Tranquillity in their more modern Keyboard era.

One big hurdle “Legend” has is a lack of cohesiveness, as the differences between the songs are almost far enough apart to sound like they don’t belong together. The biggest problem though is lack of originality. While the concept of bringing several of their direct influences like Cradle Of Filth, Children Of Bodom, Dark Tranquillity and The Black Dahlia Murder with a touch of breakdowns sounds sort of nice, it’s to the point where they’re practically ripping those bands off. The last big thing to overcome is the already overcrowded area metal that’s melodic. I wade through melodies and harmonies all the time with these sorts of bands, and 3 out of the 4 bands mentioned as having portions that they sound directly akin to are based somehow in melody.

As I’ve mentioned before, the world of more glossy symphonic black metal taking cues from Cradle Of Filth and Dimmu Borgir seems to be one with lots of local bands, but no one band seems to have found any artistic exploration or success playing it.

When will I hear a metalcore band influenced by raw black metal? That sounds way more fun.

2.5/5

Abigail Williams
Abigail Williams At MySpace
Abigail Williams At Purevolume
Abigail Williams At Candlelight Records

Starkweather Prepares For New Album

Deep in the underground of the 90's there were some very notable bands in the genre of “noise”. One such influential band was Starkweather who were more on the hardcore or post-hardcore side of noise than metal.

Starkweather reformed not too long ago, sometime in 2004 or 2005 I believe, and then put out a new album in 2005 titled “Croatoan” which gained many positive critical reviews.

Currently the band is working on material for a new full-length and an EP.

Starkweather
Starkweather At MySpace
Starkweather At Candlelight Records

Retrospective: DevilDriver

The bane of many a “troo” metal fan due to the past membership that vocalist Dez Fafara held in nu-metal forerunners Coal Chamber, DevilDriver has shared the stage with many artists dubbed “troo” metal or “trve kvlt”. Many metal fans refuse to give DevilDriver even a hint of a chance to prove themselves musically, but the least biassed reviewers have pointed out that both DevilDriver albums have been pretty decent.

The first self-titled DevilDriver album came out in 2003 which was perfect timing. Nu-metal had begun falling in popularity by the time 2001 had rolled around and 2003 was a landmark year for new bands breaking out. The self-titled album was an amalgamation of groove metal, hardcore, thrash with little dashes of the 80's, death meta,l and black metal here and there.

“The Fury Of Our Makers Hard” came out in 2005, and saw many of those death metal and black metal influences hide under the surface in a more subtle fashion. Devildriver extended the standard song length from their previous album which was around 3 minutes to typically 4 minutes on “The Fury Of Our Makers Hand” by having bigger intros and bigger breaks between songs.

The DevilDriver albums aren’t without their drawbacks though. The lyrical content contains lots of cliched snappy one-liners, and some songs have titles being repeated as the chorus being phrases that make absolutely no sense. How many songs are needed to talk about how tough one can be going through hard times? The standard of verse/chorus/verse/chorus/break/chorus (or sometimes adding a last 3rd verse) also wears the listener down. It would be nice to hear those verses and choruses mixed up a bit. There’s also a lacking of really fast songs on both DevilDriver albums which sucks away some intensity, not to mention no real slow songs either. Since the tempo is typically mid-paced, hearing a lot of DevilDriver songs all at once starts to become plodding.

Fans tend to be sharply divided about DevilDriver in either a love or hate position. The people I know personally seem to feel this way, while personally I see DevilDriver as a pretty decent band.

DevilDriver
DevilDriver At Roadrunner Records

Album Review: Coldworker - “The Contaminated Void”

What was probably considered Sweden’s most famous grind band Nasum broke up when guitarist/vocalist and founding member Mieszko Talarczyk was killed in the tsunami disaster near the end of 2004. Two years later drummer Anders Jakobson formed a new band, that band being Coldworker.

Coldworker isn’t a continuation of Nasum, although it does contain some grind. Instead, Coldworker generally plays what sounds to my ears like something that would fit in with Polish death metal such as Vader and Lost Soul. There are some songs that have a lot more focus on old school grind with the power chords running up and down the guitar neck supported by blast beats and such, but these moments aren’t spread evenly throughout the entire album leaving lots of songs focussed more on death metal, and a few songs with more of a focus on grind playing with some Polish styled death metal riffs mixed in. The other tell-tale grind element that seems to be lacking are the huge tempo changes, as the songs tend to stick around the tempo they start with pretty often. That being said, the songs give a beatdown that generally sound alike to one another.

The biggest drawback is the short songs. Almost all of the songs on “The Contaminated Void” are in between 2 and 3 minutes. It is possible to give grind depth with short songs, although most bands would admit it’s a hard thing to do.

I must say “The Contaminated Void” by Coldworker is a slight disappointment considering the high standard Nasum set. While I wasn’t expecting Nasum part 2, I was expecting an album at the same high caliber of song writing that Nasum had. This is a first release, and Coldworker is probably trying to find their voice. Normally I don’t like to tell people that a certain band is a band to keep a close eye on, but with Coldworker I will admit I have an interest in what their next release will sound like.

3/5

Coldworker
Coldworker At MySpace
Coldworker At Relapse Records

The Locust Post New Song Online

I’m having difficulty putting into words what The Locust plays exactly, but it’s different that’s for sure. A new song from their upcoming album “New Erections” has been posted at their MySpace page here.

The Locust
The Locust At MySpace

DevilDriver Has Almost Finished Their New Album

The title of the next DevilDriver album will be “The Last Kind Words” which is due out on June 5th. So far they’re still working on getting art for the album. The band says there will be lots of guitar solos on “The Last Kind Words”.

When I compare the two DevilDriver albums that are already out, you can see the song lengths becoming longer, bigger intros, and the breaks getting larger. “The Fury Of Our Makers Hand” came off like a collection of tiny little micro-epic songs that reminded me a little bit of old Metallica. I hope they continue that direction.

DevilDriver
DevilDriver At Roadrunner Records

Checkout Counter - Morionor

Hailing from Atlanta Georgia, Morionor is a symphonic black metal band taking their most significant influence from Children Of Bodom and in general a lot of Finnish metal. The drums are especially loose at times (especially the bass drum) and the overall sound is highly derivative of Children Of Bodom. If Morionor was signed to a record label, perhaps some production (and a lot of practice) would help remedy the situation. Of course adding a lot more to the creative procress might help get them signed and gain interest.

Currently I’ve been seeing an uprising in symphonic black metal and a variant on symphonic black metal as metalcore from the US. With all these types of bands stirring in the underground there’s probably going to come a band to rise above the also rans of Dimmu Borgir/Cradle Of Filth clones.

As far as the race in raw US black metal vs. symphonic US black metal goes, raw black metal is winning. Many raw US black metal bands have gotten signed and have received underground support and it’s getting to the point where some of them are evolving past traditional black metal standards (Nachtmystium comes to mind). So while certain symphonic black metal bands are popular above the rest of black metal it is actually those people willing to play something more underground and become more creative who are gaining progress for their bands.

Morionor At MySpace

Retrospective: Baroness

This has got to be the easiest retrospective article I’ve done so far. Baroness has only 2 EPs out right now, each with only 3 songs. These are long songs mind you, and Baroness makes each one count.

I would describe the “First” EP as a young band taking a stab at finding themselves. The sound is sludgy and tuned down really REALLY low, as some of those guitars get a little out of tune sometimes. Unfortunately the effort isn’t quite focussed on what it wants to be. Sure it’s sludgy, but only as a product of how Baroness plays, not as a direct concept.


The “Second” EP is where Baroness really nails it. The whole thing has a doom/stoner rock vibe going. While the stoner rock variable looks to the 70's, the harsh vocals and very low tuned guitars as well as a stoner interpretation of breakdowns keep things very modern. The whole EP flows seamlessly from start to finish as each track flows into one another for a total of 20 minutes. The term doom can be misleading sometimes, as a genre known for being based around being slow there have been quite a few bands making some faster moments with some of those faster bits coming up on “Second”.

The future for the next Baroness release (which will hopefully be a full length) is looking bright.

Baroness

Anticipated Release: Baroness

One year is a long time to wait for a new release after an EP has been put out, which is why so many bands typically get a full length out after a first EP. Well, Baroness has put two EPs out, one in 2004 called “First” and one after that in 2005 called “Second”.

They’ve done a little bit of touring, the most notable one so far being with Torche.

We’ve barely got any info after that, the only thing we know so far is that Baroness is hoping to have something out in 2007, and that the effort will be produced by Phillip Cope from Kylesa.

Baroness

Ensiferum Post Info About New Album

This viking/folk melodic death metal band from Finland has made a lot of finishing touches for their upcoming album “Victory Songs” which is due February 21 through Spinefarm Records. You can view the artwork for it here, and you can view the artwork for the special edition that will include a bonus track and a bonus DVD here. Here is the track list:

01. Ad Victoriam
02. Blood Is the Prince of Glory
03. Deathbringer from the Sky
04. Ahti
05. One More Magic Potion
06. Wanderer
07. Raised by the Sword
08. The New Dawn
09. Victory Song

Ensiferum
Ensiferum At MySpace
Ensiferum At Spinefarm Records

Scarlet Breaks Up

Fitting in somewhere in the world of metalcore as more of an “art” band (because we at this website are suckers for all sorts of heavy music called “art”), Scarlet had a few releases on Ferret Records and had a tour lined up in April to head out with A Life Once Lost, Cephalic Carnage, Through The Eyes Of The Dead, and Cancer Bats. The main reason being cited for the breakup is the loss if the vocalist. Meanwhile, you can still see a video and download a few mp3s from the Ferret Records website and at Scarlets website.

Some of the former members have formed a new band called Coworker which you can check out here.

Scarlet
Scarlet At Ferret Music

Album Review: Immolation - “Dawn Of Possession” (Re-Released/Remastered)

There are lots of old-school death metal fans who think the best death metal is the earliest death metal. There are also death metal fans who think death metal should be done the right way or in other words with no interest in creativity. So there are lots of death metal fans who would say that Immolations first album all the way back in 1991 is perfect.

There are also people who consider death metal to be an acceptable form of music, and that’s it’s perfectly fine to have some death metal albums in their collection. With the world of extreme music changing rapidly under the surface, many new fans of extreme music in general are looking back in time, myself included.

It’s always weird listening to the earlier work of a band who took awhile to find their voice. While I had heard the band name Immolation a significant amount growing up gracing the pages of the metal magazines I read, I had never actually heard them until I heard the mp3 “Furthest From The Truth” offered on their spot on the Metal Blade web page. Then later I picked up their 2005 album “Harnessing Ruin”.

Immolation has always had a reputation for not making the same album twice, yet at the same time they have a very unique identifiable sound. It’s difficult to describe as a lot of bands already use odd time signatures and dissonant tones as part of their sonic identity. One thing that has remained constant even with their first album is an overall feeling of depression. Depression is an odd sensation to come upon with harsher death metal which is focussed a bit more on being fast and/or brutal.

Going back in time and listening to “Dawn Of Possession” you can hear a lot of moments that precipitate the signature sound of Immolation, and yet at the same time there’s a lot of standard death metal involved, such as simple speedily picked riffs. Something I was a bit surprised about was the lack standard blast beats, instead the drums come off a bit hardcore at times. “Dawn Of Possession” doesn’t quite hold up as well today even with the re-mastering job which probably takes a lot of the old jagged sound away and makes the production quality very tolerable. Those tremolo picked riffs sound even more generic after thousands of death metal bands have played similarly styled riffs. I will admit, the overall quality level only sounds slightly dated, fortunately its to the point where it transports you back in time.

Some old-school death metal bands who released their first albums around the time of 1989 to 1991 were able to set standards right out of the gate because they had a signature sound to start with, some of those being difficult to emulate, others so easy to clone you can pinpoint exactly where they got it from. Is “Dawn Of Possession” an essential death metal album? Well, it hasn’t appeared on any essential lists from any publications that I’ve read.

What Immolation has really done was to evolve over time to eventually create a unique sound.

3.5/5

Immolation
Immolation At MySpace
Immolation At Listenable Records
Immolation At Century Media

Cephalic Carnage Starts Recording New Album

For some reason I feel like there’s a huge cavalcade of albums expected from big artists for 2007. Cephalic Carnage can add themselves to the list of expected and highly anticipated albums for this year.

Since we here at Nile River give a bit of favor to artists who are creative, so bizarre art-grind that’s all over the place and generally weird is just our thing.

Cephalic Carnage is expecting to have their newest album out by May.

Cephalic Carnage
Cephalic Carnage At MySpace
Cephalic Carnage At Relapse Records

Neurosis Names New Album

“Given To The Rising” will be the title to the newly recorded Neurosis album scheduled for release in May.

Neurosis is considered to be the creator of their own genre with such titles for what they play sometimes being called “atmospheric hardcore”, “metalgaze” or sometimes considered a form of post-hardcore. Neurosis has been in a field by themselves for most of the 90's, but several notable bands have emerged with a heavy Neurosis influence such as Isis, Cult Of Luna, Minsk, and Burst.

Neurosis (Link currently not working)
Neurosis At MySpace
Neurosis At Relapse Records
Neurosis At Neurot Records

Underground Gem: Susperia - “Predominance” (2001)

Since I just got word that Susperia will be releasing a new album sometime soon, I figured this might be a good time to take a look at one of their old albums since a friend of mine recently picked up Susperias first release.

On our trip to Toronto, I stopped in a used CD store with a good friend of mine Rory. I sold some CDs while Rory got some CDs. Being the fan of Dimmu Borgir that he is, Rory has an interest in Susperia but a large problem has been the difficulty in obtaining their albums in Canada, which is why seeing “Predominance” show up in a used CD store is a little strange but at the same time rewarding.

Susperia has had a good reputation of mixing black metal and thrash, along with stretching those bounds out by doing such things as adding electronics every now and then, and a few odd moments of clean singing. “Predominance” helped to usher in a new era of metal in the new millennium by pushing black metal forward.

I believe that Tjodalv left Dimmu Borgir to focus more time on his family, which might explain why Susperia doesn’t play live too often. That would also explain the lack of promotion in North America.

Susperia
Susperia At Tabu Records

Susperia Post Album Art And Samples Online

Susperia is the band formed by former Dimmu Borgir drummer Tjodalv after his departure of the aforementioned band. Susperia has a new album coming up soon through Candlelight in North America and Tabu in Europe called “Cut In Stone”. The artwork for the new album seems to follow some of the same theme from their previous albums. You can view the art here. You can also here samples of “More” here and “The Clone” here.

I consider Susperia a mixture of black metal and thrash, although they stretch things creatively without leaving the realm of metal. The material I’ve heard from Susperia has been above average, as well as many of the reviews I’ve read for their albums making Susperia a highly recommended band with albums that are difficult to obtain in North America.

Susperia
Susperia At Tabu Records

Mayhem Post New Song Online

One of the longest lasting and classic black metal bands from Norway has placed a very raw sounding song titled “Anti” due to be released from their upcoming album “Ordo Ab Chao” here. The production seems raw in traditional black metal fashion, but I’m hoping it’s a rough mix as there are ways of making good “raw” production.

Mayhem
Season Of Mist Records

Checkout Counter: Quo Vadis

Since Nile River is situated in Canada, we like to show our support for Canadian bands. A friend of mine recently came upon Quebec band Quo Vadis (originally thought to be only a pizza chain). I was already familiar with the band, but for those of you who haven’t had a chance to hear them, they come right from the camp of technical death metal a genre right at home in Quebec.

Quo Vadis
Quo Vadis At MySpace

Underground Gem: Suffocation - “Effigy Of The Forgotten” (1991)

Ah yes, the first full length ever put out by Suffocation back in 1991. Awhile ago I tried ordering “Effigy Of The Forgotten” and “Pierced From Within” at the same time, but the CD store I was ordering from made a mistake and didn’t see the extended title “Effigy Of The Forgotten/Pierced From Within” which was a dual disc set offered by Roadrunner as a “2 from the vault” set.

Not long after I got “Pierced From Within” an album which many consider to be Suffocation’s best and a death metal classic. After that, I got the “2 from the vault” set and I was a little unhappy since I could’ve just gotten that set and not “Pierced From Within” all by itself. Since I accumulated all the Suffocation full-lengths and EPs after a period of time after getting that CD set I started thinking it would be cool to have the real thing and get rid of that 2 CD set.

It wasn’t as easy as I thought, because most of my methods to obtain CDs (the local CD store and my typical online stores didn’t have it either) so I had to order a used copy. Thankfully it hasn’t seen much action, and the CD itself is in great condition, although the insert has been used a bit..

Now that it’s in my possession, I can finally find out who wrote the lyrics and songs as well as who did which guitar solos.

Suffocation
Suffocation At MySpace
Suffocation At Relapse Records

Immolation Completes New Album

“Shadows In The Light” is the title of this brand new full length which will be coming out sometime in April though Century Media.

Here’s the track list:

01. Hate's Plague
02. Passion Kill
03. World Agony
04. Tarnished
05. The Weight of Devotion
06. Breathing The Dark
07. Deliverer of Evil
08. Shadows In The Light
09. Lying With Demons
10. Whispering Death

Considering the rise in popularity of death metal lately, the fact that Immolation has been around for a long time, they have a signature sound, and is on a good large record label if these guys wanted to quit their day jobs and focus on being in a touring band they could do it.

Immolation
Immolation Ay MySpace
Immolation At Century Media (Link Currently Not Working)
Century Media

Anticipated Release: Jesu

Former Godflesh mainman Justin Broadrick is preparing his second full length effort which is suggested to be out in February which will be titled “Conqueror”. Jesu must be hitting it off big time, because I’m having a hard time finding the debut EP Heartache and I tried to get my hands on the S/T full length on double vinyl without any luck.

I got my hands on the S/T album in 2004, and I was very impressed at how the sound fell somewhere between Godflesh, atmospheric hardcore, and a bit of drone as well. I’m still trying to get my hands on the “Silver” EP.

Right now Jesu has a full lineup with Justin Broadrick on vocals and guitar, Dermont Dalton on bass, and Ted Parsons on drums. On Jesu’s upcoming tour, Ted Parsons was unavailable, so Intronaut drummer Danny Walker will take his place.

Jesu At MySpace
Jesu At PureVolume

Checkout Counter: In The Face Of War

I’ve heard stuff like this before played by bands similar to Bleeding Kansas, and I was also reminded of Circle Takes The Square as well.

The guitars hop all over the place, with raw throaty screams from the vocalist. I’m sure this kind of “art music” has some connection to hardcore. It's a bit difficult to describe.

In The Face Of War
In The Face Of War At MySpace

New Sidebar - Upcoming Albums

I was saving a file for myself for upcoming albums when I thought that it would be a great idea for a portion of my website to be dedicated to just that. You’ll notice right under the links for news sites, you’ll see upcoming albums and when they’re due to come out. I’m still learning about HTML code, so it’s not perfect, I was a little limited to separating the text so it’s easier to read, but it’s a start.

Hate Eternal Sign To Metal Blade Records

This confirms the rumour I heard before that Hate Eternal had finished their contract with Earache.

The news also comes with the announcement that Hate Eternal is working on new material, and will be heading to Erik Rutans Mana Studios in June/July, hopefully for a 2007 release. The timing probably puts Hate Eternal out of the running for getting on Sounds Of The Underground but might just be in time for Ozzfest. Death metal is now bigger than ever thanks to the help and support of the metalcore crowd, and I would love to see a death metal band on Ozzfest, which Metal Blade has the power to do.

Considering how big Hate Eternal got off their last album, I’d love to see them on some big non-death metal tours doing more support slots. Another hope of mine is to hear more non-metal instruments like they did on “I, Monarch”, and also for a re-launched website, and better merch support.

Something else that needs to be done, Hate Eternal needs a new drummer. I’m hoping for Tony Laureano (formerly of Nile) as I’m a fan of his drumming, and his super-fast style would fit in perfectly.

Hate Eternal
Hate Eternal On MySpace

Album Review: I Killed The Prom Queen - “Music For The Recently Deceased”

One of the miracles of the internet is that people can now much more easily become exposed to different extreme musical scenes around the world. There has been a slight downside to this exposure, and it’s manifesting itself in the way we’re seeing an outpour of generic bands from places we wouldn’t always expect.

I had witnessed Parkway Drive hailing from Australia, and now we have equally American sounding I Killed The Prom Queen who plays something we’ve all heard before, melodic metalcore with clean sung choruses.

The main things that pop out at me are the production. Everything seems well recorded, but I Killed The Prom Queen sounds as though they’re a young band who’s pretty loose, but spent money on lots more studio time to do the takes over and over again so they sound tighter than they really are, and it shows. Despite their efforts, you can tell they haven’t spent enough time practising, not because they’re lazy, but because the band probably hasn’t been around for very long, and probably because the members haven’t been playing their instruments for very long. Of course, compared to a top tier local band, I Killed The Prom Queen would blow most of them away in both the departments of playing ability and song writing skill, but as it’s been observed before, great local bands have to be more than great to be a mediocre signed band.

When those clean sung choruses come along, they’re sung on key. What else can I say? As far as melodic metalcore with clean sung choruses goes, I Killed The Prom Queen didn’t screw up, of course, no cliche is left unturned either. Unearth should write a melodic metalcore how-to manual...

2/5

I Killed The Prom Queen (Link current not working)
I Killed The Prom Queen At MySpace
I Killed The Prom Queen At Metal Blade Records

Checkout Counter: Liferuiner

I’m not too familiar with a lot of metalcore bands from Ontario Canada (just The Gorgeous and Arise And Ruin). For the size and population of the province, there aren’t very many signed bands from Ontario.

The sound coming from Liferuiner seems to be so far mid-paced to slower songs focussed on lots and lots of breakdowns. Considering how many local bands in Ontario are looking to be the next Lamb Of Engaged Shadows, it’s nice to hear a lacking of Gothenburg inspired melodies.

The band just got signed to Tribunal Records, a label which has had a bad reputation for putting out generic second and third tier metalcore and emo/metal bands...

Liferuiner At MySpace

Album Review: Heaven Shall Burn - “Deaf To Our Prayers”

Considering how popular Entombed has been, and the reputation that Dismember has upheld, I was always surprised that we haven’t heard any metalcore influenced by old-school European death metal.

Now for a melodic metalcore band to take into account the evolution some old-school European death metal bands have gone through to become full fledged melodic death metal, the concept of adding more of an old-school European death metal influence is in a way a safer direction to go than to bring in some completely foreign element, while at the same time exploring some new territory.

Right out of the gate, Heaven Shall Burn comes out blazing a steady pulse of near-blast style beats that would fit perfectly with, you guessed it, old-school European Death Metal. I have to say, it comes off as a bit faster than usual. The guitar work features many tremolo picked styled riffs played in a somewhat slightly simpler than usual manner for the sake of being heavy. The dual guitar work then moves to riff supported melodies mixed in with dual guitar harmonies. There are some moments where a few of those harmonies could’ve been stolen right from some of the top tier melodic death metal giants. The distortion seems to take a bit of a stab at the classic “double distortion” of old. The distortion doesn’t quite reach those levels, but the guitar tone definitely comes off heavier than most metalcore bands. On top of all that, vocalist Marcus Bischoff seems to be doing his best Thomas Lindberg impression.

As strange as it sounds, hearing “Deaf To Our Prayers” actually gives me the feeling of being transported back in time as opposed to sounding dated, even with some of the breakdowns added. It’s especially strange because they aren’t attempting to sound like any specific moment in the history of melodic death metal, but instead bring in those times just before many old-school European death metal bands morphed into melodic death, all the way to the time when melodic death metal was considered to have reached its artistic peak.

Even with all the melodies and harmonies present, Heaven Shall Burn seems to have portrayed a sentiment on “Deaf To Our Prayers” that was the goal of many death metal bands in the 90's, attempting to make themselves faster and heavier with each passing.

3.5/5

Heaven Shall Burn
Heaven Shall Burn At MySpace
Heaven Shall Burn At Century Media

Suffocation Shown On The history Channel

A promotional spot on The History Channel for a new show called “The Dark Ages” has shown up here. It features Suffocation playing the song “Bind Torture Kill” from their latest self-titled album.

It’s too bad Suffocation wasn’t mentioned by name, that could’ve easily helped in promoting them a lot more. If Relapse Records or Suffocation played their cards right, they could’ve used the film shoot to make a new video.

Suffocation
Suffocation At MySpace
Suffocation At Relapse Records

Live And Well: The Attera Orbis Terrarum Tour Featuring Dark Funeral

This is Nile Rivers very first accounting of a live show. Rather than give a review, the intent here is more to tell a story of live shows.

It was a cold night as it always seems to be whenever we go to the Opera House in Toronto. It was January 13th where we witnessed the Attera Orbis Terrarum tour with Dark Funeral as the headliners, with Enslaved as direct support. Other tour support came from newcomers Abigail Williams, and a more regional band formerly on Galy Records, Eclipse Eternal opened the show.

A diverse audience was at the Opera House to get their own account of this live show. I feared that the audience might be dominated by a black-metal only crowd, as Toronto can be a bit polarized within their metal scene, but this turned out not to be the case.

Myself and a friend had witnessed the Canadian band (I believe they’re from Toronto) Eclipse Eternal give direct support to Behemoth in London, so we knew what to expect. Raw grim black metal with keyboards poured from Eclipse Eternal. The shaven head frontman adorned with spikes, bullet belts corpse paint croaked out songs most likely about evil and Satan. The crowd was into it, and erupted into a fury of moshing. But alas, the fury of Eclipse Eternals evil music has its downfalls as being simply executed properly. The rest of the band seems to have a slight bit of difficulty portraying some stage presence, and the vocalist carries most of their show. None the less, Eclipse Eternal is always entertaining when they’re there.

The crowd didn’t seem to be as entertained by Abigail Williams, although the audience did seem interested in at least hearing what they were all about. The band Abigail Williams has been described as some as an amalgamation of metalcore with Gothenburg and black metal influences. Indeed, the description seems apt, although the songs played seemed devoid of anything resembling a “chugga” metalcore style breakdown. The newness of the band seems apparent; Abigail Williams only got signed recently to Candlelight Records and will soon release their debut EP. They also seemed to lack some stage presence, with many of the band members standing still for the set. The vocalist did his best Dani Filth impression with many high shrieks, although he still seems to be learning how to move about on stage. The material present by Abigail Williams seemed to have been lacking, perhaps when they get to a point when they can release a full-length album they’ll be able to grow beyond the Gothenburg influence.

Dark Funeral headlined the show, and came onto the stage adorned in the grand tradition of black metal, with corpse paint and customized leather costumes. Many people find the corpse paint visual silly, but even though I’m not a black metal focussed fan, I found the visuals quite entertaining. The music erupted, with the blazing fast drums coming off as an earthquake. Vocalist Emperor Magus Caligula spit out a high pitched black metal rasp, and carefully dictated the words to the songs in quite a clear manner. The guitars for some reason though, seemed weak and garbled. I could swear at times it was as if the guitarists were playing through water.

The set from Dark Funeral went from super fast song to super fast song, with very few songs deviating from the insanely fast speeds. The reign of fury was unrelenting and never ceased. However, I found myself growing numb to the constant battery of unusually fast drums, it would’ve been nice to have heard more change-ups in tempo.

Dark Funeral felt very mature and confident on stage, but their shortcomings come from the fact that from their live show to their albums, Dark Funeral do their black metal in a purely standard way.

The most interest and biggest audience reaction came from Enslaved, who stole the show. Their strange evolution from and old school black metal band to the progressive influences that permeate their sound today came off very well in a live setting. Above the band, images were produced by a projector that reminded me of something a progressive band from the 70's might do. At one point during the show, the bassist/vocalist and one of the guitarists stood together to throw their axes from high to low in tandem.

Tours like this prove that black metal can be fun. Except maybe for some of those fans simply standing their with their arms crossed looking grim.

Pictures from this concert will be up soon!

Album Review: Scars Of Tomorrow - “The Failure In Drowning”

I can respect their work ethic, that’s for sure. From being almost complete touraholics, to reportedly being cool guys to hang out with to being able to put out an album every year since 2002, these guys (or pretty much the vocalist, since he’s the only original member left after all the lineup changes) are pretty much willing to do almost whatever it takes to become, uh, a touring metalcore band? I have to question whether or not they want to really hang with the big boys, because to be honest, based on results, if Scars Of Tomorrow want the same level of success as say Killswitch Engage or Poison The Well, but they haven’t come close to attaining it.

I’ve read lots of album reviews over the few years pretty much beating up on Scars Of Tomorrow for being derivative for just about all 5 of their albums. Heck, I gave their 2004 album “Rope Tied To The Trigger” a try, and every song sounded like they were trying to rip off the same Poison The Well song “Rings From Corona” 11 times, and not much has changed for “The Failure In Drowning”, with the exception of getting a new guitarist who can sing, which means we can now have sing-along style choruses.

I’ll do something different than write a standard “generic metalcore” bashing review, instead, I’ll offer some constructive critcism, which I hope in some way finds its way to Scars Of Tomorrow.

Scars Of Tomorrow, you’re work ethic is great! Keep that up! If you want to become as big as the other leaders in metalcore, you shouldn’t clone them, but instead create a sound so unique, people rip off Scars Of Tomorrow, and name your band as an influence. Really, I hope that you guys would put effort into such a creative left turn, that no one would see it coming. All the hard work and effort you guys are able to put forth, you should extend it to the song writing process. History has shown us that bands who “find their voice” and decided to do something different, and become leaders, that those bands rise to the top of their game.

Will my advice find its way to Scars Of Tomorrow or legions of metalcore also-rans? More than likely it won’t. The world is filled with generic bands who think that everything creative in music has already been created, until of course someone who’s willing to create makes something unique and overtakes the uncreative, and leaves them behind.

1.5/5

Scars Of Tomorrow
Scars Of Tomorrow At MySpace
Scars Of Tomorrow At Victory Records

Despised Icon Working On New Album

I knew that Despised Icon had reported previously that they would make a new album, and now their website says they already have the drums recorded. They’ve suggested that the drums on the next album will be faster than ever, which could bring the speed very close to a few of those ultra-fast drummers such as Tim Yeung, Tony Laureano, Derek Roddy, George Kolias, Reno Killerich, Nick Barker, Matte Modin or Hellhammer, to name a few.

I had a prediction at one time that there was soon going to be a deathcore band operating at the same speeds of the extremely fast death metal bands. I’ve heard certain bands work on becoming faster, but I suspected that sometime soon a deathcore band would reach those high levels of drumming speed. Perhaps Despised Icon will be the first to reach that point.

Despised Icon
Despised Icon At MySpace
Despised Icon At Century Media

Album Review: 36 Crazyfists - “Rest Inside The Flames”

I have the previous 36 Crazyfists album, and “A Snow Capped Romance” was a screamo album with a truly unique voice among many clones. The problem with the previous outing was while it stood out from it’s peers, only the first 3 songs were good, with the rest being filler.

This time around the band attempts to heavy things up, especially in department of chugga style breakdowns that have a lot of 2 guitar interplay. Unfortunately, 2 guitar interplay with chugga style breakdowns is an art mastered by Killswitch Engage. The Killswitch Engage comparisons only get worse in the song “Elysium” where Howard Jones adds lots of guest vocals.

The bands biggest strength is vocalist Brock Lindow, with his somewhat unique voice provides a slightly different take on singing instead of the typical emo whine. He stretches his clean vocal style even further in “We Cannot Deny” singing similar to The Tea Party. Of course, the album is filled with slightly more screamo style screaming than it is singing, but this time around, Brock seems a bit more focussed on proper diction and improved delivery, and unfortunately his scream sounds a little less unique.

The album has a few more faults. The song “The Great Descent” uses an effect on the guitar sort of resembling playing through water, and directly conjuring Korn in their heyday, and “Midnight Swim” seems almost full of screamo cliches, sing-along style choruses and even having a slight pop-punk feel, an obvious attempting at a single.

“Rest Inside The Flames” is stronger overall than “A Snow Capped Romance”, but at the same time trades in having just a few strong songs for that strength. What would you call an album that’s a way point between mostly filler and catchy songs?

3/5

36 Crazyfists
36 Crazyfists At MySpace

Album Review: Terror - “Always The Hard Way”

Terror has risen above many of their peers as being one of the most popular modern old-school hardcore bands. There are slightly modern touches, the most obvious being the use of breakdowns.

Right from the get go, you can hear the amount of conviction pouring off of Terror. Many of the good old subjects for hardcore bands to be angry about are present, right along with some slight variations. Many of the subjects deal with the hardcore scene, and how the scene has changed in it's quite storied lifetime by now. All the anger seems to be fuelling the top speed of the tempos as well, as these must be some of the fastest old school hardcore songs I’ve heard so far, and they do it without resorting to a steady pulse of bass hits, or blast beats.

The only real questionable track here is the hip hop track “Dibbs And Murs Check In”. Among a collection of well done hardcore songs, the track stands out like a sore thumb.

Normally most people would say that something simply done in such a well executed manner would only appeal to fans of the genre, but I’d wager a guess with all the emotion and intensity coming off Terror that they’ve already won over some new fans.

3.5/5

Terror
Terror At MySpace
Terror At Trustkill Records

Checkout Counter: Gabriel’s Path

Those of you who read my review for the latest Arsis album might recall that I stated that there are lots of melodic death metal bands in North America that are good enough to get signed, but aren’t. Gabriel’s Path are one such band playing high energy, slightly thrashy melodic death metal, with enough tightness, technical skill and song writing to rise far above their local counterparts. That being said, I think many North American melodic death metal bands will have a hard time even reaching Arsis, as Arsis has set the bar quite high, especially in a creative sense.

Actually, speaking of North American melodic death metal, can many of our readers think of many beyond Arsis?

Gabriel’s Path At MySpace

Album Review: Satyricon - “Now Diabolical”

I grew up in the 90's, where grunge and nu-metal reigned in popularity over underground music. I remember reading lots of guitar magazine articles where certain artists from said genres essentially gave out rules and guidelines on how to play, saying such things as “Whatever you do, don’t play a guitar solo unless the song absolutely, totally calls for it.”. Many of these artists viewed keeping things simple as an instant route to creativity, when instead they really ended up simply dumbing down the music to keep it all the same.

Now we live in a new decade, and many artists have gone completely in the opposite direction as an anti-thesis to the previous decade, and yet there are still artists who can ACTUALLY keep things simple and creative. I think in the world of extreme music, we’re fortunate enough to have a great many artists and bands who don’t feel the need to play every set standard of rules.

Satyricon takes the ideology of keeping it simple right from their direct influence, the great classic Celtic Frost, and actually looks back even further in time for some other influences to merge it with black metal. While the good old black metal standbys like the cold evil guitar tone and high raspy vocals are present, Satyricon doesn’t attempt to mire the music down with a wall of blast beats or tremolo picked chords, like so many of their “extreme” brethren have done. Instead, Satyricon chooses to create an ominous atmosphere with some of their slower songs, and truly shines when they drive the message home with a mid-paced march. Witness the clean guitar portions for “Delirium” that could be a black metal surf rock song, while “Now, Diabolical” and “K.I.N.G.” are catchy black metal rock n’ rollers. With the song “K.I.N.G.” being the shortest song of the album at 3 minutes, and it’s ease of availability on the internet, it’s almost the black metal equivalent of a single.

“Now, Diabolical” isn’t without its faults. The production doesn’t seem to add much heft or power to the instruments, taking it’s toll especially on the slightly weak sounding drums, and practically non-existent bass, and having so many slow to mid-paced songs can also be very plodding at times.

All factors taken into account, Satyricon is one of the very few old-school black metal bands from the second wave (late 80's/early 90's) who is not only still intact, still playing black metal, and having its members alive and free from the clutches of prison, and able to push the genre forward without having to add keyboards.

3.5/5

Satyricon
Satyricon At MySpace
Satyricon At Century Media (Link currently not working)
Satyricon At Roadrunner Records Austrailia

Album Review: Dark Funeral - “Attera Totus Sanctus”

I am but a casual listener of black metal as opposed to say a die-hard fan. So much of the same music comes my way that I’ve come to appreciate artists who are truly brave leaders that create something new and different. Dark Funeral are not those leaders.

Right from the start, Dark Funeral starts their first song with an avalanche of hyper-blast beats. We have the standard high pitched black metal rasp, as well as the speedily picked guitars with the cold, stark tone, all played in a decently produced environment. A promo sticker could easily say that “Attera Totus Sanctus” could be “An endless onslaught that simply won’t let up from start to finish.”, and how true that statement would be. The majority of the album is made up of fast songs that rarely slow down or let up. There are instances of course, but not many. The problem is though, after such a repeated beat down on the listener, one eventually becomes numb to it.

The music itself is completely standard, keyboardless black metal. The main differences with “Attera Totus Sanctus” is that the production is good instead of intentionally poor, and drummer Matte Modin operates at such high speeds.

Dark Funeral are confident Swedish veterans of black metal, but unfortunately, the result is excruciatingly derivative, and highly repetative.

2.5/5

Dark Funeral

E-Cards Posted Online For Car Bomb, Rwake, The End and Minsk

All the above mentioned bands are Relapse Records alumni, and of course all recommended as Relapse Records deals typically with "art" music. The End it’s a bit closer to myself, as they’re Canadian hailing from Missasauga. I saw them on tour with Dillinger Escape Plan, Read Yellow, and this might be surprising to hear, but Trivium was the opener for that show.

Car Bomb is a band I’ve been familiar with, long before they were signed to Relapse. I first became aware of their music under heavy recommendation from metalreview.com when Car Bomb had a demo reviewed there. A little bit later, I met the guitarist from the band handing out demos outside of the New England Metal and Hardcore festival in 2005. If you can believe it, the guitarist told me that the band was in fact not looking for a record label. Surprising considering the work ethic I had witnessed from the members of Car Bomb. The sampler they gave me was done very well, having a sticker on the front that looked similar to a Cadillac logo with their band name rather then the car name in its place.

Here are the links to those e-cards:

Car Bomb
The End
Minsk
Rwake

Hate Eternal Members Start New Band Called Gigan

Wow this is weird. The songs from their MySpace have a bit of a “jammed” out feel to them. It certainly fits into the world of extreme music, although I’m not sure that labelling Gigan death metal or grind is a proper description.

The Hate Eternal members in Gigan are Randy Piro playing guitar and vocals (who normally does vocals and bass in Hate Eternal) and Eric Hersemann on lead guitar. The band is rounded out by drummer Grover Norton.

I have to be honest that I don’t know the current status of Eric Hersemann in Hate Eternal. I know he was supposed to join the band as a second guitarist for touring, but the band remained only as a 3-piece afterwards.

You can hear some of those new Gigan songs here.

Gigan At MySpace

Negativa Post New Song Online

An extreme Canadian “supergroup” of sorts featuring members from Augury, Ion Dissonance and the famed Gorguts posted the song “Taedium Vitae” on their MySpace page. The band seems to have done exactly what they intended when the 2 former members of Gorguts, Steeve Hurdle (vocals/guitar) and Luc Lemay (vocals/guitar) formed Negativa, which was to get a similar sound to the famous Gorguts album “Obscura”.

The new song (which is 9 minutes long) can be heard at their MySpace page here.

Negativa
Negativa At MySpace
Prodisk Records

Album Review: Arsis - “United In Regret”

Melodic death metal is a hard genre to touch. As the popularity has grown, so to has the over saturation, and amount of mediocre rip-offs, clone bands, and of course we can’t forget what happened with melodic metalcore. The problem with so many melodic death metal bands has gotten to a point where extremely good local bands have surfaced playing melodic death metal that could’ve gotten signed to make middle-of-road, or half decent, or essentially mediocre albums. Will Swedish bands such as At The Gates, In Flames and Dark Tranquillity cease to be plagiarised?

Ever since their debut album, “A Celebration Of Guilt” in 2003, American band Arsis has been hailed as a saviour to the genre of melodic death metal. A hint of technical flare with often so many guitar runs, and slightly gloomier take on melodies as opposed to some of the almost sugary sweet melodies and harmonies of bands past. Not only those factors, but Arsis does something that so many American bands do that we often overlook: they made it heavier. The drumwork featured in Arsis is often a constant pummelling, with a preference for the often used “Smith blast”, the drum beat made famous by Suffocation. But that description only describes the debut album and EP “A Diamond For Disease” from Arsis. Even while standing head and shoulders above their peers with a signature sound, the band has still matured and progressed.

There aren’t a lot of bands who succeed at actually making their music heavier. Many view lightening up their sound as the only possible way to progress, whilst many other bands attempt to become heavier usually just results in better production or simply faster drums. The heavier attempt from Arsis was to go sideways and experiment with dissonant tones.

Perhaps we can benefit from the lessons taught to us by Arsis. Success in music isn’t so often just copying someone and hoping it goes off like a hit, instead a willingness to tour often and with diverse bands while putting effort into staying ahead of the generic pack creatively can pay off (and it usually works).

Arsis At MySpace
Arsis At Willowtip Records

Checkout Counter: Hellyeah

This band is comprised of members from Pantera, Nothingface and Mudvayne. The end result is something that would not normally appear here at Nile River, as it comes off as a bit nu-metallish at times. The vocals can be a bit rappish at times, especially since Chad Gray from Mudvayne is doing vocals. Those two gripes aside, Hellyeah has tons of groove, is very heavy (surprisingly), and played with intensity (surprisingly). Probably not the smartest lyrics in the world (the chorus lines can be a bit cliche, and the band name... and a song named after the band...) but overall very fun.

Hellyeah At MySpace

Taking A Look Back - Hatebreed - “Satisfaction Is The Death Of Desire” (1997)

When I was at the New England Metal And Hardcore Fest in 2005, I heard Scott Vogel in his band Terror tell the audience that he loved being able to share the stage that night with a band that influenced them: Hatebreed. I was slightly perplexed at first, as I was only familiar with Hatebreeds later discography which was much more riff oriented hardcore, whereas Terror has a much more old school chords up-and-down-the-fretboard old-school style hardcore with some modern touches. As it turns out, what I didn’t know was that Hatebreed had been growing in success and popularity long before their second full length “Perseverance”.

Many bands that get named as helping to start modern metalcore as we know it usually include Prayer For Cleansing, Shai Hulud and Poison The Well, although I think Lamb Of God, Shadows Fall and Killswitch Engage could be named as well. Almost all the aforementioned bands had some sort of significant release sometime between 1997 and 2000, the two earliest being Shai Hulud, and Hatebreed.

“Satisfaction Is The Death Of Desire” represents a way point between old-school hardcore and modern metallic hardcore as we know it today. Many hardcore bands throughout the 90's had in fact been striving to become heavier by cranking up the distortion, detuning their guitars little by little, and roughing up the vocals more and more. “Satisfaction Is The Death Of Desire” is the earliest hardcore album I’ve come by so far to make us of the breakdown. Not only was “Satisfaction The Death Of Desire” a well done hardcore album, it was also much heavier than its predecessors, and introduced such things as choruses and breaks played at half-tempo to get the audience moshing harder. Hatebreed probably wasn’t the first band to do this, but they were one of the most popular with a perfected formula before many other bands.

Comparing “Satisfaction Is The Death Of Desire” against “Perseverance” in 2002, one can see the progression from old-school hardcore styled power chords against sharper metallic riffs and slightly longer songs (from under a minute now to over 2 minutes) which add more depth. Then when comparing “Perseverance” to “The Rise Of Brutality” in 2003 the progress continued with songs varying much more in tempo (mostly mid-paced to now including faster and slower songs) and even a slight hint of melody at times. “The Rise Of Brutality” again featured longer songs often over 3 minutes. In a genre where proper execution is often valued over progress, this was a welcome thing to hear, as was hearing many other modern hardcore bands continue to make progress as well. This continuation of progress unfortunately makes the last Hatebreed album “Supremacy” in 2006 look a little sad, and almost a step backwards.

Everything being said, when talking about bands that influenced modern metalcore, Hatebreed should be at the top of the list, for one of the earliest, “Satisfaction Is The Death Of Desire”.

Hatebreed
Hatebreed At MySpace
Hatebreed At Roadrunner Records

Tartarean Desire Re-Launches Website

This website has had an extensive catalogue of bands pretty similar to what the BNR metal pages and the metal archives do. The main difference for that portion of the website is that there are several people adding bands (unlike BNR which is only one) and the users aren’t always too hung up on what’s “troo metal” or “trve cvlt” (which the metal archives can be sometimes). Tartarean also includes interviews, album reviews and news, making it a very encompassing and true “web magazine”, a title that Nile River hopes to achieve someday!

Tartarean Desire

Album Review: Witchery - “Don’t Fear The Reaper”

Almost right from the get go, I realised that the sonic output from “Don’t Fear The Reaper” sounds at times like a dead ringer for The Haunted’s “Made Me Do It”. Of course this isn’t surprising considering that the main songwriter is rhythm guitarist Patrik Jensen who made large writing contributions on The Haunted’s first two albums.

Late in 2006, “The Dead Eye” came out sounding like The Haunted was going through a midlife crisis, not knowing exactly what to play as long as their “experimentation” toyed with mainstream ideas. Hearing “Don’t Fear The Reaper” really makes up for it in a lot of ways, and yet one has to wonder since Patrik Jensen who seems to have such a signature sound in The Haunted didn’t get to contribute any songs to their last album.

It’s nice to hear the slight variations on evolved thrash in this modern era, since it is making a comeback. That being said, there are two problems with “Don’t Fear The Reaper”. The first is the lack of fast songs, as most of the album is a collection of mid-paced songs with a constant double bass rolling along, which at times drives the message home. The other problem of course is that many of us already have “Made Me Do It”.

3/5

Witchery At MySpace
Witchery At Century Media

Job For A Cowboy Post New Song

The famed band being the pioneering leader of deathcore (with only 1 EP!) has posted an unmixed and unmastered song on MySpace called “Embedded” which you can find here. Is it me, or can I hear a subtle influence of Morbid Angel on that new track? The track will appear on Job For A Cowboys new album titled “Genesis”.

Perhaps when they release their new album, they can have a video referencing Spongebob Squarepants.

Job For A Cowboy
Job For A Cowboy At MySpace
Job For A Cowboy At Purevolume
Job For A Cowboy At Metal Blade Records

Taking A Look Back: Dragonlord - “Rapture”

Back in 2001, Testament guitarist Eric Peterson release the first full-length from his black metal side project Dragonlord. The first thing I should probably say is that Dragonlord doesn’t play the “raw” style of black metal with intentionally poor production, or with distorted echoing vocals. Dragonlord instead draws heavily from Cradle Of Filth, especially in with the vocals. Eric Petersons vocals come close to the usually high rasp of Dani Filth himself, and many of the harsh vocals harmonies. With the exception of Dani Filth’s extremely high pitched eardrum ripping scream, Eric Peterson is almost dead ringer for Mr. Filth.

A few American styled thrash items are present on Dragonlord, such as the inclusion of some wood-shedding solos. The drums have a good low bass thump and a deep snare crack. The guitar sound is a very powerful heavy distortion as opposed to the cold, stark evil tone of most guitars in the world of black metal. Most of the black metal atmosphere here though is provided by the keyboards and vocals.

In 2001 there weren’t very bands at the time vying to take a shot at Cradle Of Filth (Wykked Wytch perhaps?). Now 5 years later there are quite a few more bands taking a stab at high-gloss symphonic black metal and attempting some hybrids as well. “Rapture” can provide an entertaining distraction from Cradle Of Filth at times, but the end result comes very close to Cradle Of Filth.

Dragonlord
Dragonlord At MySpace
Escapi Music