Mini Reviews From Around the Bowl (12/5/24)
Small reviews, small brains, big opinions
HILD – Thrash På Svenska
Black Lion Records | October 4th, 2024
One might expect a bog-standard thrash album with a title like Thrash På Svenska (“Thrash in Sweden”), but the music within is anything but one-note. In fact, there are swarms of notes—the concoction of thrash, hardcore punk, folk, and black metal flies by with the speed of a hurled spear, with few tracks broaching the 3-minute mark. The clicky production works surprisingly well with the slew of brutal d-beats and vocalist Lars Broddesson’s meaty, bass-heavy vocals filling in the lower registers. His performance, sung wholly in Swedish, adds an extra layer of nuance to the album, though it may prove polarizing.
The cadence of his delivery—whether intentional or built into a language I know little about—is quite chaotic, with short, barked phrases interspersed with all manner of whispers, shrieks, and in the case of highlight track “Kvinnokroppen Krälande,” a haunting wail that stretches his larynx to the limit. From rock ‘n roll swagger (“Framåt!!!”) to the aforementioned track’s avant-garde structure, there’s lots to digest and not much time to make sense of everything during a single listen. All the more reason to dive back in from the start and receive another thrashing! -Roldy
Burnt Lodge – Intergenerational Anamnesis
Independent | November 2nd, 2024
As Thanksgiving approaches and false stories of friendly pilgrims appear, it’s the perfect time to listen to some Indigenous heavy metal. On their second LP, solo black metal project Burnt Lodge takes on the history of colonial California with a particular eye to the suffering and resilience of native peoples. Rather than a detached textbook approach, Intergenerational Anamnesis’s 6 tracks craft an intimate narrative embedded in ancestral memory and trauma. Songs like “Imprisonment of the Matriarchs” and “The Horsebreakers of Pasheeknga” effortlessly interweave past and present, melancholy and anger, resulting in an album that is both internally reflective and externally assertive. While the album’s narrative may be set on the west coast of North America, the project was initially based in New Zealand, and the themes addressed touch on issues relevant worldwide. If you don’t have this band on your radar, change that now. -Professor Guanaco
Concrete Winds – Self-Titled
Sepulchral Voice Records | August 30th, 2024
It’s gas to think back to when Concrete Winds were a new, off-shoot band emerging from the ashes of Vorum. Now on their third full-length, Concrete Winds have eclipsed their predecessor in both reputation and ferocity. Their latest self-titled record is an unrepentantly brickwalled record – dynamics are put against the wall and shot. Despite this the band continue their work of putting out albums with surprisingly dense songwriting for just how intense and frenzied the tracks are. How a track like Infernal Repeater uses its mid-song break to pace itself before exploding into these tense, sweeping arpeggios, or how Permanent Dissonance slows down to emphasise these triplet drum blasts and descending guitar riffs that feel like panicked thrashing in quicksand.
Listening to the record is a war of attrition – despite its relatively brisk runtime its sound is so flattened and uncompromising that it’s a properly fatiguing listen at times. I say that as a positive, though, since music this intense should be draining, should be an assault. In many ways it has the spirit and tenacity of a lot of war metal records but sounds more directly informed by death metal songwriting. A major highlight of the year for its deft blending of harshness and solid composition. -Aaron
Cold Cave – Passion Depression
Heartworm Press | October 15th, 2024
Their second album following a decade-long hiatus in full-length material, Passion Depression sees Cold Cave in a suitably more lethargic, detached mood. A marked improvement over return record Fate In Seven Lessons, the first half of Passion Depression can often nonetheless feel underwritten, leaking anaesthesia even in its stronger moments. Paired with the typical rigidity of their composition, it can sometimes be a very passive listening experience – lacking the immediate earworm quality of Cherish The Light Years or the off-kilter, head-throbbing distortion of their very early material. This is deliberate, of course – attempting to evoke a depressive state – but its first half is often too light and noncommittal to really tap into that sound.
Its second half is much stronger – Siren Song and Everlasting are back-to-back highlights that lean into the distinctly mechanical, static synthpop sound they’ve been honing for a decade now. Holy Road is perhaps the best track – more reminiscent of something you’d find on their Cremations compilation, while still retaining the – deliberately – dynamically static writing of their modern material. It’s an album whose music feels chained to a sequencer in a way that doesn’t benefit the record thematically or sonically – the rigidity of their sound feels less novel following a decade of 80s synthpop revivalism – but like all of Cold Cave’s material, it grows on you like nothing else. A solid record, in man ways its what Fate In Seven Seasons should have been. -Aaron
Fellowship – The Skies Above Eternity
Scarlet Records | November 22nd, 2024
I really wish I liked this album more than I do; by all metrics it is excellent, arguably to the point that the best power metal album of the year. My problem is that the singer’s voice grates against my ears for reasons that I cannot fully articulate. To be clear, he’s a great singer, both technically proficient and wonderfully emotive, but the timbre of his voice doesn’t click with me for whatever reason.
Personal skill issue aside, Fellowship is everything I want out of power metal and then some. They take a J-power approach to the genre, marrying the aggressive riff-oriented style of the Americas to the cheesy bombast of European power metal acts with great success. The music itself is both punchy and uplifting, thematically entwined with lyrics about pushing through and rising above adversity. It’s presented in a way that feels more personal and down-to-earth than much of the typical “call to arms” power metal fare, and for that reason people who don’t normally jive with the genre might connect with this. In case I haven’t made it obvious, I’m recommending everyone gives this a listen despite my own issue with the vocals- it really is just that good. -Spear
