God Dethroned - The Judas Paradox (2024)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Black/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 6 Sep 2024
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I didn't dislike God Dethroned's eleventh album, 2020's Illuminati, but it didn't have many edges to it. I called it "extreme metal that you can take home for tea with your mother". This twelfth starts out in the same vein, The Judas Paradox slow and patient with easily intelligible lyrics and nothing particularly extreme, but Rat Kingdom ramps up the tempo and adds some of those edges. I really like its stop and start mindset that gives it some serious punch and the blackened flavour that has been missing so often lately is very much there. It's still my favourite song on the album, but there are some other surprises in store that elevate it a little over its predecessor.

My biggest problem with The Judas Paradox is how slow most of it is. There's no requirement for a death metal album to be fast; just go back and listen to some of the groundbreaking albums from back in the day; there's a lot of ground in between, say, the debut Autopsy and the debut Cannibal Corpse. There's no requirement for a black metal album to be fast either, given how many genres it's cohabiting with nowadays. However, we do tend to expect black/death to be fast and this often isn't, starting with that very patient opener.

Rat Kingdom changes that, bringing in blastbeats, barrelling riffs and frantic melodies. There are points where it doesn't feel particularly extreme, but plenty where it does. The Hanged Man sits somewhere in between the two, returning us to lyrics about Judas but with fast drums behind the slower, melodic riffing. Black Heart is more elegant, ditching the edges but keeping the drums, in a song that starts out as full doom with chiming bells and atmosphere. And so it goes, songs often heavy metal as much as anything more extreme, however harsh those intelligible vocals happen to be, but speeding up again every time we notice.

It's fair to say that I wanted a lot more of this album to be fast and, when it was fast, to be faster. I ended up listening far more than I expected to, because of a crazy week, and I found that I became very comfortable with it. And that's a real double edged sword when it comes to extreme metal, a return to that "extreme metal that you can take home for tea with your mother" quandary. From one side, comfortable means that they're doing something that's easy to get to know and become friends with. I made friends with this album after a couple of times through.

However, comfortable also means that it's inherently not that extreme. Every time I get to Hubris Anorexia seven tracks in, which blisters right out of the gate, I feel shocked, as if a nun just farted. Broken Bloodlines opens in a similar way three tracks later, with a real punch, even if that becomes quickly defused by what's layered over it. Even when it gets extreme for a moment, that moment passes soon enough, whether replaced or defused.

Getting to know an album like an old friend, though, means that the details pop. The Hanged Man elevates because of the guitar solo in the middle. Kashmir Princess elevates because of the section deep into its second half that drifts unexpectedly into psychedelic rock. I wasn't expecting that just as I wasn't expecting the drop to mellow midway through Hubris Anorexia. Hailing Death elevates because of how catchy it is, even though the riffs and hooks aren't particular complex. There are a few subtleties in apparent down moments too that are more complex and just as enjoyable.

And so God Dethroned seem determined to make their hybrid of black and death metal just about as accessible as they can get without losing the tag of extreme metal. Like its predecessor, it's the epitome of unoffensive, a cute puppy of an extreme metal album that may end up serving best as a gateway into extremity. There are eleven tracks here, some of which aren't extreme at all and a few of which go there at points. However, the vocals are always intelligible, even though they stay harsh throughout, and every aspect of the music is fundamentally built on melody.

Maybe you can test this out on an unwary nibling who's open for a new musical experience. If they turn out to be good with The Judas Paradox, try Hailing Death on them. If they're good with that too, then move up to Broken Bloodlines. If they're good with all eleven, up to and including Hubris Anorexia, then they're ready to move up a grade and you have a real exploration to plan.

Eyes - Auto-Magic (2024)

Country: Sweden
Style: Melodic/Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 6 Sep 2024
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This came to me labelled as melodic rock but Soldier of Love opens up the album as clear hard rock with thoughts about crossing that border into heavy metal. Its has a confident barrelling pace and it continues to shift wonderfully throughout its five minutes. Mysterious Ways is slower, moving to melodic rock, but the drums still have quite the punch to them; they're not fast but they're high in the mix. Until the End of Time has some glam to its opening, before it moves back to melodic rock and that's most of the variety we're going to find on this album. Or so I thought after one listen.

I should add that five minutes seems to be an important threshold for Eyes. Almost everything on this album runs between five and five and a half minutes, except Innocent Dreamer that runs ten seconds longer and Don't Stop the Night that's done in only four minutes and change. That's long for melodic rock, where songs tend to be those three golden minutes that radio stations would be happy to play before moving onto something else. These songs are all driven by melody and beat, most obviously through Peter Andersson's voice, but they stretch notably past that sweet spot for radio.

Soldier of Love is my highlight, but it's also the only overt hard rock song here in a sea of melodic rock with a prominent beat. The only other song that shifts like this one is What Money Can't Buy, with a nice slide riff. It's not as heavy, but it's growing on me fast. The guitars, courtesy of Joakim Sandberg, remind of a Deep Purple tone, possibly in part because the keyboards back it so closely. There's some Tank here at points too, though never quite that heavy. Like the opener, this would have played very well on the Friday Rock Show back in the mid-eighties.

I'm not sure who else is in the band, nowadays, because I can't find that information, but on their debut album in 2021, Perfect Vision 20/20, Andersson was the only member who wasn't formerly in Aces High. At least I think so. I'm seeing so many different details that often shuffle names around that I'm not sure who's who any more. Maybe this is Aces High, merely renamed to Eyes for some reason, like maybe they got mistaken for an Iron Maiden tribute band too often. If so, then Aces High released three albums that I'm aware of, going back to the nineties. Eyes have added two to that count.

Whoever's in the band and whatever its history, this album is capable stuff. Soldier of Love caught my attention immediately but nothing else followed suit, so I wondered if I should move on to find a different album to review. I stuck with it, though, and What Money Can't Buy enforced itself on a second listen. Then other songs started to make their presence known too and, the longer I listen, the more I like this album. Sure, I'd have liked it more if more songs had matched those two in use of power, but they're all growers and that's not a bad thing. The title track built next with its sassy riff and then the laid back Sailing Ships Across the Ocean with its tasty guitar solo. And so on.

Maybe one reason why it wasn't more immediate for me is because so much of it is fundamentally simple. Innocent Dreamer has a simple but effective riff. Any Way You Dream has an even simpler riff that's arguably even more effective. On a first listen, there was nothing I hadn't heard before. On a second or a third, they got under my skin because they're just performed so well. There's not a flash moment in their bones. Nobody's showing off. Nobody's stealing the spotlight, even in the guitar solos. That tends to mean that few moments leap out for special attention. I didn't end up with a lot of written notes after a first time through.

What gradually manifests is the realisation that these guys know precisely what they're doing and what they're doing is exactly what they need to be doing at any particular moment in time. All this eventually reminded me of comic book artists, like Will Eisner, who started out as cartoonists. They don't draw a lot of lines, which tends to makes their work seem simplistic, but they're experienced enough and skilled enough to draw exactly the right line in exactly the right place, so the resulting effect is huge. In music, Bad Company would be the epitome of that. All Bad Company have on this band is the fact that I know a lot of their stuff by heart. Eyes are still new on me.

And so I found myself listening again and again and again, each time playing better than the last. After a first listen, I was thinking about a 6/10. After a second, I realised that I should up that to a 7/10. After a third, there was no doubt. After half a dozen times through, I'm singing along with a song like Through the Night that hadn't grabbed me before and so I'm wondering about whether an 8/10 would be warranted. It's not all melodic rock now. It's neat tone in Auto-Magic. It's bounce in Through the Night. It's laid back elegance in Sailing Ships Across the Ocean. It's apparently the gift that keeps on giving. So, yeah, an 8/10 and a magnetic one because I don't want to move on.

Blitzkrieg - Blitzkrieg (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 6 Sep 2024
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Given how many NWOBHM-era bands have been reforming and releasing new material, I shouldn't be surprised to see Blitzkrieg added to that list. They were formed back in 1979 as Split Image, but renamed to Blitzkrieg a year later when Brian Ross joined on vocals. They released just one single before splitting up, but up and coming legends Metallica covered its B-side, also called Blitzkrieg, on their first Garage Days Revisited release, along with Diamond Head's Am I Evil? on the flipside of their Creeping Death single. And so Blitzkrieg reformed, released an album, split up, reformed, split up, reformed, knocked out three albums, split up, reformed and seem to mean it this time.

This is their sixth album since that reformation in 2001, though only Ross remains from that point or indeed any other before it, and their first since 2018's Judge Not! It's roughly what you expect from a NWOBHM band, though I do resist labelling 2024 releases that way because it was as much a point in time as a sound. 21st century production aside, You Won't Take Me Alive sounds like it's a song that could easily have been on a 1980 NWOBHM album, but nowadays it's just heavy metal. It's a powerful opener, with elegant guitarwork and clean resonant vocals, plus a drop in intensity midway that's very tasty.

Much of this is Brian Ross, whose vocal style is gloriously out of fashion but nonetheless precisely right for this sort of music. He doesn't scream (except for a rare exception like the one that closes Dragon's Eye), he doesn't growl and he doesn't shriek. He dishes out clean vocals that we can hear and easily understand and often includes a point in his lyrics. That's most notable here in If I Told You, flavoured by its opening sample, sparse riff and plodding bass to be a song about conspiracy theories, JFK, 9/11, Area 51 and the rest. If I told you, I'd have to kill you. However, his resonance is what makes his voice special. The only overt comparison I'd give is to Danny Foxx of Blood Money, who never made it out of the eighties, but he sang faster and with more urgency.

However, it's not all Brian Ross. The rhythm section of Liam Ferguson on bass and Matt Graham on drums, is rock solid, and the guitars sometimes have just as much voice as Ross. There are a couple of them here and I don't know which guitarist delivers which riff or which solo, but I get the feeling that they divvy them up. Certainly there are duelling guitar solos that suggest that both play lead at least at that point. They establish themselves early with the buzzsaw guitar that starts out You Won't Take Me Alive and seem to be simpatico whatever genre they move into, whether it's speed metal midway through Dragon's Eye, power metal on much of the rest of it or neoclassical shred in quite a few solos.

It's weird to suggest that one of those guitarists is Alan Ross, not because he's the son of Brian, a scenario with plenty of precedent nowadays, but because he's had the longest tenure in the band after his father, having joined as late as 2012, thirty-two years after Split Image became Blitzkrieg. Surprisingly, he's also the current vocalist in Tysondog, though I now realise that he didn't sing on their most recent album, Midnight, which I reviewed a couple of years ago, as that was their prior singer, the late John Carruthers. Ross's cohort here is Nick Jennison, the most recent arrival who joined in 2020.

And so this line-up, as recent as it is in context, seems like solid and strong bedrock for the albums to come. Ross is just as good as he's always been behind the mike, bestowing appropriate gravitas on these songs, even duetting acrobatically with himself on the suitably titled Vertigo. Jennison and Ross Jr. are a real highlight for me, bringing some consistent bite with their guitar tone. They can clearly play, as their solos ably demonstrate, especially the duelling ones. If they can conjure a set of more memorable riffs on the next album, they'll be unstoppable. And they're all backed up by a highly reliable rhythm section in Ferguson and Graham, who do the job without ever seeming to stretch themselves.

So what this comes down to is how memorable it's going to end up. I enjoyed all nine tracks, but I'm not sure how many are going to stay with me for long. You Won't Take Me Alive stays the standout from the very outset. That one's memorable. Otherwise it's moments that are memorable rather than complete songs. The frantic section midway through Dragon's Eye is one. The vocal approach in Vertigo is another. The drop late in of Above the Law fits that too, with acoustic guitar and flute but crunchy guitar punctuation and Ross remaining powerful throughout. There's also the hook to I am His Voice; the way they include the Halloween theme in their homage to that film, The Night He Came Home; and the epic opening to the operatic closer, On Olympus High - Aphrodite's Kiss. None of these songs are bad, but it's these moments that are special.

Mostly, I think what I wanted out of this album is something that Blitzkrieg don't want to provide, namely a little more speed. They have all the power they need, across the board, and they have a few moments of pace that are the moments that this material comes alive. More of those and I'd like it a lot more than I do already. Either way, it's good to see Blitzkrieg putting out new material and I look forward to their next album. Why this one was self-titled, I don't know. It's strong but it isn't a career-defining release.

Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers - I Love You Too (2024)

Country: Australia
Style: Alternative
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Sep 2024
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I'm always on the lookout for what's coming out from down under and here's a gloriously named band who I'm listing as alternative but play a cross of pop and rock with a garage rock mindset and sometimes a punk urgency too. Their first album, released last year, was called I Love You, so this is naturally I Love You Too. I don't think I'm quite ready to declare unconditional love for them yet but this is bright and engaging and agreeably varied. It's very easy to listen to and its energy has an agreeably positive effect on the day.

That begins with I Used to Be Fun, which opens up the album with a perky form of energy, but it's Treat Me Better which really elevates the album. In fact, while I could (and will) pick out a host of favourite tracks, this one sits above them all. It starts out calmer but builds with serious effect in immaculate fashion. I love how this one bulks up and shrinks down again. It's a more imaginative song than the opener and it plays with some neat contrasts. The guitar tone as it bulks up is very tasty too, courtesy of Scarlett McKahey.

The bad news is that nothing else here matches Treat Me Better. The good news is that nothing is particularly interested in trying because the other songs have other things to do. The heaviest is a forty second track called Cayenne Pepper which rather hilariously, is artificially bulked up. Twenty seconds of it constitutes a slice of studio reality. The second half is a blitzkrieg of a punk song. The lightest is Your House My House, which is entirely unplugged, mixing vocals and acoustic guitar. If that gives a particular impression, I should add that the vocals sound like everybody in the band is harmonising together and the guitar is almost hiding in the background.

As you might imagine, songs like that rely on their melodies and hooks and, quite frankly, so does everything here. That holds for a pop rock song like I Love You, which is infuriatingly catchy with a kick to it. It holds for the songs that find and milk their grooves, like Backseat Driver, I Don't Want It and Kissy Kissy. The latter especially reaches a big singalong at the end, which somehow works even though some of those singing appear to be cracking up at the same time. And it holds for the odd tracks, like Never Saw It Coming, which is soft enough to feature strings, acoustic guitar and yet more harmonising. The lyrics are more visceral and the contrast is impressive.

The lead vocalist is Anna Ryan, whose Aussie accent shines through even when she's singing. It's a flavour for these songs that's unmistakable on a bunch of them, especially Backseat Driver and I Don't Want It. She also handles rhythm guitar, but McKahey handles lead. She's the primary way that these songs get different tones, hulking up for the powerful songs, coating everything in grit and grunge or finding a melodious chiming tone that almost reminds of surf music on mid-power songs and either dropping into acoustic mode or vanishing entirely on the softer poppier tracks.

That leaves Jaida Stephenson on bass and Neve van Boxsel on drums. As the rhythm section, they aren't there to do anything flash but the former manages it anyway on a few tracks. There's some wonderful prominent basswork on Backseat Driver and I Don't Want It. Everyone joins in on songs that need communal vocals and I believe van Boxsel occasionally sings lead as well. It always feels redundant to call out how a band works together because, of course, everyone in the line-up plays a part. However, there are bands dominated by vocals and others dominated by guitars. Here, it's very much a team effort; nobody dominates because everybody shares the spotlight throughout.

With acknowledgement to a couple of guest groups, Softcult and the Linda Lindas, who guest on a track each, I'll cheesily riff on the title of the final song, We Thought It Would Be a Good Time But It Was a Bad Time. It might have been for the singer or the character she's portraying in that song but it isn't for us. This is a good time album. Even at its grungiest, it's a happy album and would be even if there weren't so many glimpses of how much fun the band were having when they recorded it. It's not just the first half of Cayenne Pepper or the laughter in Kissy Kissy, it's all over the place, starting with the end of the opener. These are riot grrls with more than one meaning to riot. And this is a good time.

Flotsam and Jetsam - I am the Weapon (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Heavy/Thrash Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 13 Sep 2024
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I bought Flotsam and Jetsam's debut album on original release in 1986 but I hadn't moved to their home town of Phoenix by then; I was on the other side of the pond listening in my bedroom in rural Yorkshire. Given that I've been in Phoenix for twenty years now, it's about time I caught them live and I finally did so earlier this year. They were as good as I'd hoped they would be, given that they were touring on the back of two of the best albums of their career, The End of Chaos and Blood in the Water. This is probably the least of the three, but it's still a damn good album worthy of being on my Highly Recommended List for the year. I've played it a lot today and it's as fresh as it was on a first listen.

My primary note is that it's less thrashy than usual, continuing in the vein of Blood on the Water in combining thrash with power metal and good old fashioned heavy metal. Gates of Hell blisters out of the, well, gate, courtesy of some frantic drumming from Ken Mary, but it doesn't show up until seven tracks in and, when it does, it makes us realise a lot of what came before it wasn't remotely as fast. Cold Steel Lights blisters early too, so the band are still willing to get fast, but they tend to slow down a little to bolster the melodies and hooks.

As I pointed out in my review of Blood on the Water, the obvious influences here are to bands like Iron Maiden and Queensrÿche, with occasional nods to bands a generation further back. There's a lot of seventies on Beneath the Shadows, where the bluesy bounce of the riffs reminds of ZZ Top's La Grange and the chorus builds like Deep Purple. Sure, it finds some Pantera guitar moments late but it's a look further back than usual for the Flots. By comparison, Maiden are everywhere here, most effectively on Burned My Bridges and Beneath the Shadows.

Those two are among my highlights this time out, along with Cold Steel Lights and it probably isn't a coincidence that these three have the most successful hooks. The verses are memorably melodic and the choruses are even catchier. They all build emphatically well too, reaching powerful grooves that take them home, usually with impressive use of backing vocals to deepen them further. Back in April, my highlight from their live set was The Walls, from Blood in the Water, even above all the classics I've been wanting to hear live for almost four decades. These unfold in the same vein.

That means that, while I'm an old school speed metal nut and prefer my thrash metal to be as fast as possible, I apparently appreciate the hooks that Eric A.K. hurls out even more and he has plenty of those here. It might seem like a gimme, but he dominates this album. Usually, I'm just as caught up in the guitarwork on Flots albums, but I found myself focusing on the vocals more this time out. And that's even though Michael Gilbert and Steve Conley deliver the goods yet again. They do just as much that's worthy on Cold Steel Lights as Eric A.K. but it's that melodic vocal line that's what I keep following. He channels some Ronnie James Dio on this one and that's no bad thing.

Given that I'm raving about yet another Flots album, I should explain why I think this is a little less than its two predecessors. One reason is that a couple of songs feel a little weaker this time out, a problem that didn't manifest on either The End of Chaos or Blood in the Water. I'm not as fond of Primal or Running Through the Fire. I'm not as sold on the bounciness of Kings of the Underworld either, with Eric A.K. spitting out words rhythmically on the beat, almost like an old school rapper, even if he sings rather than raps.

Another reason is that I kept hearing moments of other songs, which was occasionally distracting. It probably doesn't help that it started on the opener, A New Kind of Hero. Was that a nod to a riff in Anthrax's Madhouse? Was that a vocal progression from Whitesnake's Still of the Night? It's still a powerhouse of a song, exactly the sort of thing that should open a Flots album, and it closes wonderfully too. They always knew how to end songs, which many bonds never quite figure out. But those moments are there every time I repeat. There are similar moments on Primal and the title track that sound eerily familiar, even if I can't place them yet.

With acknowledgement to The Head of the Snake and Black Wings, which continue to grow on me with repeat listens, I'd call this another strong album from the Flots. It's a bit slower than The End of Chaos but just as melodic as Blood in the Water. It's a little less consistent than either, but even the worst songs aren't bad; they're just not up to the admirably high standard they're working to these days. It's an 8/10 release for sure and I'm looking forward to hearing a few of these songs in a live environment. However, I gave Blood in the Water one of my rare 9/10s and I find I can't do that this time.

Tusmørke - Dawn of Oberon (2024)

Country: Norway
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
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It might sound like a Christmas album for a few moments, but this is a neat melding of a number of seventies rock styles. Initially, the most obvious influence on the eighteen minute opening title track is Jethro Tull, not only because of the prominent flute; it's there in the structure and the vocals too. That evolves though, because it's not just folk prog. As it shifts into a long instrumental section, it also shifts into more neoprog territory, especially through the keyboards, and when it truly comes alive about eleven minutes in with a palpable middle eastern flavour, it's revelling in psych.

Contrary to the reputation of prog, Dawn of Oberon is a song that suddenly becomes difficult not to dance to. It's a decent song before this point, but it's absolutely glorious after it. It still feels lofi, as if it was recorded on a four track, but it's jaunty and beyond engaging. It practically reaches out to drag us out of our seats and feel the music instead of just hearing it. It continues to evolve from there too, venturing into space rock. Not for the last time on this album there's some Hawkwind in the sound too. If you ever wanted to hear Tull and Hawkwind jamming together, this may be as close as you'll ever get, even if the Tull half of that partnership gets the final word.

It's always an ambitious statement to kick off any album with a side long epic, but it works here. It means that we're under no false impressions about what we're getting into with Tusmørke (which is the Norwegian for twilight). Nothing else here is remotely that long and some of it takes a very different tack indeed, but it grounds us in what the band do: primarily folk prog but with journeys into psych and space rock. If we dig that long opener, we're going to like the rest of this album and, I presume, we'll enjoy much of their back catalogue. They were founded back in 1994 as Les Fleurs du Mal, became Tusmørke in 2009 and have knocked out a steady stream of albums since then. This is their eleventh overall and their fourth in four years.

Nothing else here touches the opener, but all six tracks feature something worthy of note. Born to Be Mild, as you might expect, dips into Steppenwolf at points, and remains firmly in that combo of folk prog and space rock, atmosphere swirling around everything like we're listening to light that reflects off a revolving disco mirrorball. Dwarven Lord is notably laid back, kicking off with lounge elements in the folk prog. When it escalates, it does so with the subtle warp they used on Born to Be Mild and further space rock touches. What ties dwarven lords and fairy queens to the chirping of synths, I have no idea, but it's a heady mix nonetheless.

Tusmørke sing in English on most of this album, Midsommernattsdrøm excepted, but it looks like that's a relatively recent thing and earlier albums are more likely to be in Norwegian. The singer goes by Benediktator and, like many singers who perform in multiple languages, he's just a little more effective in what I presume is his first. However, had I not known that the band hailed from Norway, I'd have assumed from his diction and intonation that he was a native English speaker. I'd call out the post production on the vocals here too, as they're manipulated midway through to be reminiscent of what bands like Gong were doing back in the day.

Oddly, Midsommernattsdrøm feels a little long at eight minutes while Dawn of Oberon doesn't at eighteen. Maybe that's due to its lazy feel, aided by ambient sounds like chirping birds or buzzing flies and the way the notes draw out more and more as the song runs on, as against something in an ostensibly similar vein like Pink Floyd's Grantchester Meadows. Even though there are obvious comparisons, the two sound totally different. People View does something similar, but with much more of a happy tone. It's not that Midsommernattsdrøm is sad, but People View is a celebration song, even when it's slow.

And that leaves Troll Male, which has a dreamy sound to it and uses a similar vocal punctuation in its later sections to, of all things, I Only Have Eyes for You. Now, we can talk about bands like Tull and Hawkwind and a whole bunch of Canterbury groups, but who had money on the Flamingos as a Tusmørke influence? It's at once the most jarring thing on this album, oddly so given all the space rock synths and some of the more experimental moments on this track and others, yet something that completely fits with the rest of the album.

I think it fundamentally plays to the sense of weirdness that Tusmørke are happy to adopt to make their particular hybrid of folk, prog and psych work. Folk is tradition and psych is subversion, so it's easy to see a clash, even though they fit together much easier than that. Prog just makes it all the more interesting musically whichever way that happens and the more imagination that goes into that, the better. Tusmørke are full of imagination, one reason why the Canterbury sound seems to be a fair comparison. I've often struggled with Canterbury bands because they dive too far off the deep end without any idea where they're going to end up, but that's not the case here.

In fact, I think what I like about this the most is that Tusmørke know exactly where they plan to go and use that imagination to get there. I haven't heard their previous ten albums so can't comment on how well this fits alongside them, but it's strong stuff that makes we want to explore further.

Wintersun - Time II (2024)

Country: Finland
Style: Epic Symphonic Folk Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
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This album is called Time II and time turns out, rather ironically, to be clearly the most important word to apply to it. That's partly to do with the music on it. The intro, Fields of Snow, is very much an intro but it's a substantial one, reaching the four minute mark, even though it's synth-driven Asian folk music. At the other end of the album, the metal on the closing song, Silver Leaves, ends ten minutes in, drifting into the same sort of folky music for a minute or so before becoming just ambience, chimes blowing gently in the wind and snow for another two minutes and change. It's a zenlike approach to wrapping up an album, letting us feel its theme without music getting in the way. We sit back and just exist for that time.

Some listeners will no doubt see all that as too much, Jari Mäenpää getting indulgent like this is his Tales from the Topographic Oceans, where time doesn't matter any more, just his artistry. He plays into the other reason that time is important here too, namely that he used unfathomable amounts of it to get this album to the point of release. This actually outdoes Chinese Democracy on that front, which is patently ridiculous, given that Time II serves as the second half of Time an insane distance from the first half. So, let's dive into that, even though I wasn't aware of any of it during that, well, time.

As far as I can tell, Wintersun recorded the bulk of Time in 2006 as a double album, having already written the songs for both halves, and the rest was in the can within twelve months. However, the release continued to be delayed, with some of Mäenpää's explanations making sense but others not so much. Eventually, the first half of the album saw release in 2012 as Time I, six years on, and mixing of the second half began shortly afterwards. However, after raising half a million euros in crowdfunding, it still took him a dozen more years to actually release the second half as Time II, a third and later album, The Forest Seasons, being released in between in 2017.

There are fans who are leaving 0% ratings for Time II, not on the basis of the music, however they choose to justify it, but because of how they felt Mäenpää treated them. I'm not going to do that and wouldn't even had I been along for that ride, but, even coming in fresh here, I have to ask one important question. However good or bad this album is, does it justify eighteen years of work and I have to say that it doesn't, even though I enjoyed it immensely. This is a really good album and I will happily seek out the first half to see how it plays alongside it. However, is it eighteen years in the making good? No, it isn't.

But back to the music. The first obvious note to make is that it's not a concept album, as far as I'm aware, but it clearly follows a classical Asian theme. The intro plays into the beautiful imagery on the cover, of a cherry tree in such a Japanese pose that I ought to call it sakura. It sounds just like a piece of classical folk music, played on traditional instruments like kotos, pipas and shamisens, but not so much that I would believe that's the case. It all sounds like synths to me, as pleasant as they are and as majestically as they build.

That Japanese theme continues thorughout the four songs proper, all of them highly substantial and three of them over ten minutes in length. All of them feature Japanese melodies at points in and amongst the metal, playing into their epic nature. Sometimes, those melodies even reach the vocals and the guitarwork, rather than being reserved for drops out of the intensity of the metal into calmer folk sections. The Way of the Fire drops twice for contrast, once during the midsection for some tasty guitarwork, and again later in the song, with those faux Japanese instruments set against a choral backdrop. The interlude between One with the Shadows and Storm features the guitar ably impersonating a pipa, or maybe a biwa if it's meant to be exclusively Japanese.

I liked The Way of the Fire immediately. Not unusually for Wintersun, it sets up quietly and folkily, then launches into high gear just like that. Frantic drums build a wall of sound with orchestration over the top, though the guitar struggling to emerge but not quite making it. Harsh vocals turn into clean vocals, with the latter used more across the album as a whole, and the chorus is tasty. I always see Wintersun listed as symphonic death metal and that's never rang true to me. This isn't death metal to me at all, more like epic metal. It sprawls majestically with that symphonic flavour.

The guitar solos on One with the Shadows are even more neoclassical than on its predecessor and that remains a common element throughout too. As much as I like those two songs, though, what leapt out to me was the craftsmanship on Storm. As I understand it, this is the only piece here that doesn't have an equivalent on Time I but it's my favourite piece. The ambience of storm samples in earlier songs is more overt still here, as if that storm is building. There's a very cool moment soon into the second half when everything drops away, as if we've entered the eye, and, of course, it all ends with storm samples and that elegant Japanese folk flavour, moving into Silver Leaves, which is the album's closer.

I enjoyed this a huge amount. I relish in the instrumental parts here, the calmer ones as much as the frantic ones, especially how the Asian, very possibly purely Japanese, flavour is woven closely into the metal. If I had to describe it, it's symphonic epic folk metal, which is unwieldy but fairer in my eyes than death metal ever was. I like that two songs get frantic, moving capably into extreme metal, but two remain more sedate, still metal but without that extreme prefix. I even like how it plays with time, down to that zenlike ending, though I can certainly see why many wouldn't.

And so this is an easy 8/10 for me. I've listened through a few times and it feels as strong as ever it was on the first time through. I'll happily seek out Time I to compare. I see that fans seem split on which half is the better, but only those enraged by Mäenpää's antics over the past eighteen years are avoiding the suggestion that they go well together. Maybe time—there it is again—will blend the two closer together, rather than seem, as they do today, to be anchored in different eras.

Nighthawk - Vampire Blues (2024)

Country: Sweden
Style: Hard/Glam Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook

While I may well have heard something from this album on Chris Franklin's stellar Raised on Rock radio show, I came into it blind labelled as melodic rock and found it quite the hard rock discovery. In fact, the opener is called Hard Rock Fever and it rolls along like Kickstart Your Heart but with a sleazier tone that reminds of earlier Crüe albums and a powerful lead vocal. Given the overt ties to glam metal, I took that vocal to be male but it's quite clearly female on Generation Now, just a raucous voice in the tradition of Stevie Lange or Joanna Dean. It turns out to be Linnea Vikström from Thundermother and Nighthawk is a sort of supergroup.

The original idea belonged to Robert Majd (the bassist in Captain Black Beard, who I've definitely heard on Raised on Rock; he's also on the first Fans of the Dark album), during the COVID-19 pandemic, so that he could play guitar for a change and work with a variety of different musicians. It clearly proved to be such a valuable experience that he's continued it. This is their third album and a fourth is apparently already recorded. Their description of their sound is that these are "fast paced, spontaneous, action rock n roll songs", a far better take on this music than melodic rock. Sure, it's highly melodic, but I'd call this hard rock first and foremost, with melodic rock, glam rock, heavy metal and even punk aspects.

For a start, this is much faster paced than melodic rock tends to be, blistering along with attitude, not only coming from Vikström. They simply aren't hanging around on any of these songs, even on a Sam and Dave cover like Hold It Baby, which is bluesy and soulful. Everything is urgent, as if they have a gun to their collective heads to knock out all ten studio tracks in under half an hour or pay a serious price, like losing their souls or some such. I'm sure the use of "spontaneous" doesn't mean that they just walked into the studio, plugged in and plucked ten songs out of thin air, down to the lyrics, but the urgency of them suggests that we could believe it. And only two are covers.

I've mentioned the Sam and Dave cover, which wraps up the ten, with Danny Hynes from Weapon joining Vikström to perform it as a duet, and it's hinted at by the blues on The Pledge, which slows things down just a little a couple of songs earlier, at least for a while, without losing any urgency. The keyboardist is Richard Hamilton from the band Houston and he delivers plenty of wonderful seventies style organ, not for the first time on this album, though it's not as obvious on the other songs as it could easily have been, perhaps one reason this finds its place in time a little later.

The other cover is S.O.S. (Too Bad), a deep cut from Aerosmith's Get Your Wings album, now fifty years old. It's the most seventies song here, but it fits the Nighthawk style well, and just like Hold It Baby, it's set up by an original song situated before it, which is Living It Up. Introduced by Doc Brown from Back to the Future this time, it's full of Aerosmith style sass, but it seems to me that, their choice of cover aside, Nighthawk are more influenced by the Aerosmith of the eighties than their earlier form in the seventies.

That's echoed by other influences. Save the Love is another stormer, with a Rainbow vibe to it that comes from Graham Bonnet's era rather than Ronnie James Dio's. There's some Lost in Hollywood in this one, though it's in the riffs and flow rather than the vocals, because, of course, Vikström is a long way from both of them in style. She's closer to Kelly Johnson of Girlschool on a few of these songs and the band back her up. There's Girlschool on Turn the Night and The Pledge and even my standout favourite, Burning Ground, which almost feels like a Girlschool cover of a Fleetwood Mac song, given how every aspect just harmonises seamlessly together like something off Rumours.

I had a blast with this album, though I can't see the point of the hidden track at the end of the live version of Just Let Go that wraps it up, even if its manipulations loop nicely back into the opener. What shocks me is how quickly it's over, given that there are ten fully formed tracks before we get to that live bonus, but that's due to the urgency. These are all lean and mean songs that blister in and blister out again and, a bunch of sampled intros from movies aside, they have no intention of outstaying their welcome. Everything is urgent and that's why only Hold It Baby makes it to even the three market mark. The opener is done in under two and a half.

With two previous albums available, Midnight Hunter and Prowler, and that promised fourth just around the corner, I have a feeling it would be very easy indeed to just dive into their music as an energy shot on a regular basis. Sure, the line-up changes because it's less of a band and more of a project, but I have a feeling that won't matter. Or maybe it will. Does the sound vary across these albums? I think I need to find out.