Lacuna Coil - Sleepless Empire (2025)

Country: Italy
Style: Alternative Rock/Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 14 Feb 2025
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I ended my review of Lacuna Coil's 2019 album, Black Anima, by suggesting that I used to be a big fan back in their gothic metal days but their sound had shifted musically over the years to a point where it just wasn't for me any more. Well, I like this tenth album a lot more than that ninth, so maybe I was wrong about that. Most of its limitations are precisely the same as last time out but there are more instances where they break through them to do something more interesting.

As always, my favourite aspect of modern day Lacuna Coil is the clean vocal approach of Cristina Scabbia, which hearkens back to their gothic days more here than on Black Anima. She soars all over this album, perhaps most notably on Sleep Paralysis, the catch being that it's hard to focus on the music behind her. It's there but it's generally just a texture for her to soar over. It's like it unfolds in black and white but she soars in colour. It takes exactly the same role for Andrea Ferro, her male counterpart, but his harsh voice is always far less effective, weaker not through being bad but through being generic. It becomes just another texture for her to play against.

While Scabbia is enjoyable throughout, there are a few points that echo the intro to Venificium on the previous album by doing something much more diverse and interesting. The first arrives with Gravity, where Ferro joins Scabbia in a chant that sounds like it's in Latin and sounds rather like something that might have appeared on an early album. In Nomine Patris opens in a similar manner but with more of a pagan edge. That's only the beginning to why that song is easily my favourite here. Scabbia's melodic choices and a slower pace remind strongly of their early days, even if the instrumentation shifts inevitably away to their modern sound.

My least favourite aspect is the fact that the instrumentation is fundamentally bland across the majority of the songs, but here that serves well to highlight where that's not the case. There's a clear element of electronica on Oxygen and Scabbia's shout at the outset is manipulated. It has noticeable tempo shifts and an actual riff we can focus on. There's another of those, albeit in a more modern staccato style, on the closer, Never Dawn. Oxygen even drops away entirely at the three minute mark to leave Scabbia a capella. It's a good touch.

Gravity gets even more interesting. After that opening chant, there's even more electronica and there are strings in there too, albeit presumably generated by Marco Coti Zelati's synths rather than an actual string section. When the vocals kick in, they're sassy like nu metal taking on tribal music and it's both vocalists in duet. That tribal element is dotted over a few songs, whether in a vocal chant, most obviously on Never Dawn, or through more interesting synths. The same song sounds like it features a didgiridoo early on. I wasn't expecting that on a Lacuna Coil album.

There are two songs featuring guests, which often tends to mean standout songs, but not on this album. Hosting the Shadow features Randy Blythe of Lamb of God, another massively successful modern band that tend to leave me dry live or in the studio andthis song works that way. At least his nuanced harsh vocals demonstrate how limited Ferro is. It's almost mindboggling that he was a founder member of the band who carried all the vocal duties for two years before Scabbia was brought on board. Then again, back then they didn't sound like this. In the Mean Time adds Ash Costello from New Years Day, who I don't know and won't be checking out because of this.

Instead, I'll throw out another compliment I wasn't expecting to trawl out. As I mentioned earlier, it's always the vocals of Scabbia (and, to a lesser degree, Ferro) that drive Lacuna Coil's sound in their modern incarnation. Everything relies on Scabbia's melodies or the contrast that Ferro can bring to bear and the music is just a crunchy texture behind them rather than something that we can enjoy on its own merits. Because of all that, this becomes vocal music and there were plenty of tracks on Black Anima that felt like pop songs fed through a modern metal filter. That's really not the case here, which I'd see as a good thing. The only one that plays that way for me is I Wish You Were Dead, which could have been by any of the modern pop divas with a different filter.

So, as much as I've talked up limitations, I liked this a lot more than I did Black Anima. I gave that album a 6/10 and this easily deserves a 7/10, even from me, not remotely being part of the target audience for this band any more. In fact, I'd go further and say that I enjoyed it, even though I'm still acutely missing the gothic elements, solos and instrumental sections and guitars—this is so bass heavy that I only heard the guitars on a few tracks, Scarecrow best highlighting how Zelati's bass was doing the job of the guitar across most of the album. Now, let's see what my son thinks of it, because he's much more of a fan of Lacuna Coil's modern sound.

Sisters Doll - Scars (2025)

Country: Australia
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 24 Jan 2025
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Sisters Doll are new to me, but they've been around since 2010, starting out in Collie, Western Oz and now based in Melbourne. Technically, of course, they've been together since the youngest of the four musicians involved was born, given that they're a quartet of brothers, the Miletos. This is their third album, after Welcome to the Dollhouse in 2012 and All Dolled Up in 2017. Their own website calls them glam rock and there's some of that here but it looks far more overt on earlier releases, where the aesthetic you might expect for that genre is played up to.

Here, it starts out hard and heavy. Purgatory may well be the most elegant intro that I've heard thus far in 2025, acoustic Spanish guitar shifting up to electric rock with a tasty tone and it hints at what the first couple of songs proper deliver, a hard rock vibe with a guitar that clearly wants to get a little heavier than that. This pair, Climbing Out of Hell and Prisoner, are highlights right out of the gate, if maybe a little lighter than I expected. There's some Bryan Adams in the vocals of Brennan Mileto and the hooks are just as important as the riffs. The heaviness remains in the guitar, Austin Mileto searing through a strong solo in Climbing Out of Hell, as if he wants to play for Ozzy in the early eighties.

The hints at softness are only fleeting in these two songs, but they're more obvious in Change, a lighter song with a subtle guitar hook and an alternative rock level of fuzz. First Time follows suit but with a country twang to the guitar that leads into even lighter territory. It's as if Sisters Doll want to be categorised as a rock band pure and simple without any further qualifiers to that. It's in scope to drift into softer songs with pop sensibilities but also to escalate into heavier territory, especially when Austin Mileto wants to rock out. First Time is the epitome of this, starting out as more of a pop song but heavying up later on.

What's telling is that, while Climbing Out of Hell and Prisoner remain highlights and serve as my favourite songs here, there are other highlights still to come that don't play in their ballpark. I'd call out Don't Give Up on Us, a lighter but more urgent song with a bouncy rhythm and excellent hooks; United, an old school heavy metal anthem downshifted to a rock framework; and You Can't Bring Me Down, a punchy rock number with plenty of sass. This latter is the sort of rock song that Iron Maiden might heavy up on a B side, but I could easily hear a hair metal band covering it too.

None of these songs are particularly long, everything lasting three or four minutes until we get to the closer, which is six because it really wants to build. It's the title track and it opens with the first acoustic guitar intro since Purgatory, with strings to deepen it. It plays out for a while like a power ballad but escalates four minutes in to emphatic vocals and guitar. It's another string to a very impressive repertoire of sounds, with a blues ending here (You Can't Bring Me Down) and a sassy glam strut there (Take You Away), but a commercial yearning over yonder that goes as far as prominent hand claps (Kiss Me).

While I'm very happy with the range that Sisters Doll exhibit here, what I like the most is how the album runs a respectable three quarters of an hour without a single song lowering the quality. It would be fair to say that I like some of these songs a lot more than others, but I don't dislike any of them and I wouldn't call any of them filler. What I wonder is how they're changing over time, a song like Take You Away fitting the image I get from their bio but the others suggesting quite an impressive divergence from that niche. In other words, I rather want to listen to their earlier two albums to see where they came from but firmly expect that they wouldn't be as varied as Scars.

And that bodes well for the future, even if they're clearly not the most prolific band in the world and may well not be the most prolific band on their street in Melbourne. With the gap between albums increasing from five to eight years, I just hope we don't have to wait another eleven for a fourth album. Next week would be nice, of course, but 2027 to return to a five year average would work and give them a couple of years to promote this one on stage.

Dream Theater - Parasomnia (2025)

Country: USA
Style: Progressive Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 7 Feb 2025
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My youngest is ecstatic that drummer Mike Portnoy is back in Dream Theater, because he wasn't in the band when we saw them supporting Iron Maiden in 2010. His return coincides with a return to form and a return to a more emphatic mindset with stronger drums and heavier guitars. How much of that is his work and influence is open for debate, given that he only wrote one of the six songs. Guitarist John Petrucci, however, wrote three of them and vocalist James LaBrie the other two. Add an instrumental intro and a sample driven interlude and this is a generous seventy plus minute album that's surely the best and most authentic release Dream Theater have put out in a long time.

After that instrumental, In the Arms of Morpheus, which is enjoyably patient but inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, even at over five minutes, the opening single Night Terror sets the stage very well indeed. It's patient too, running a breath shy of ten minutes and covering a lot of ground in that time. By this point, we've come to expect long instrumental sections that provide various band members with showcase opportunities and, in between them, a vocal section or two that hopefully find and milk strong hooks. We don't get all those things as often as we'd like but it does happen. And it happens here.

The first two minutes of Night Terror are relatively basic for Dream Theater. There's a churn that reminds of Anthrax. Beware the walking dude, right? But then Portnoy plays a patented Portnoy run and we're firmly in business. The vocal sections are decent and the hooks good, but it's when the band starts to jam that things really comes alive. Petrucci doesn't show off too much on this one but does make his presence known. Portnoy has that early moment. Keyboard wizard Jordan Rudess gets plenty of solo time in the second half, one of which is a virtuoso moment. Petrucci is tasked with following it but it's his more sedate soaring that works best.

In short, it all works and that bodes very well for the rest of the album, which I'd say lives up to the challenge. The worst aspect is probably the half hearted attempt at a concept. This isn't a concept album in the traditional sense because these songs don't progress us through a story. However, it does have a concept, merely a thematic one in which the songs explore the same subject matter in different ways, namely the parasomnia of the title, or in less fancy language, the weird disruptive crap that happens in our sleep, like night terrors and an inability to tell if we're asleep or not.

The worst moments for me were the samples, not only in the interlude that's built on samples but within other songs. We're conditioned to see samples that last more than a moment as narrative material and that can work great on a true concept album. Just look at Operation: Mindcrime, an album that I'll come back to shortly. Here, though, there is no progression so the samples have to serve only as ambience, which they don't do when they take over a song like Midnight Messiah at the beginning, so we wonder if that's all we're going to get.

Fortunately it isn't and Midnight Messiah moves on to become an actual song. I particularly enjoy the chorus, when the pace ratchets up, the guitar is vibrant and the hook absolutely spot on. It's a sort of Deep Purple plays speed metal vibe like Space Truckin' with modern production values, but the verses are more sedate, as if a band with this amount of shared technical ability is choosing to play in slow motion.

And that goes double for Bend the Clock, the most atypical song here, which feels far more like a Queensrÿche concept album song (I told you I'd get back to Operation: Mindcrime) than a Dream Theater one. The whole album has been notably heavier but this piece tones all that down for seven minutes and change. Mostly I'd call that a bad thing but the saving grace is Petrucci's extended solo during the second half, which is the tastiest such anywhere on this album. It gets virtuosic towards the end—really, says, the sarcastic devil on my shoulder; on a Dream Theater album?—but it never loses its feel. Even at its most intricate, it builds on melody first and foremost. It's an utterly delightful solo.

But enough of what isn't typical. There's much here that is. A Broken Man starts that, getting all jazzy and sassy around the six minute mark. It's more complex and progressive, the solos there of course but with much more focus on structure and innovative songwriting. Dead Asleep follows in its wake at greater length and even more success, doing much in its eleven minutes. It starts out like an orchestral take on the Tiger Lillies with acoustic guitar, but grows into modern metal with much decoration by Judess's keyboards. It ends in a peaceful Mediterranean lull.

And, much later, after everything else, there's The Shadow Man Incident, the album's true epic, a nineteen minute workout that makes the nine, ten and eleven minute earlier pieces almost seem insubstantial. It may not be the best song here but it's the one that fans will gravitate towards, as it gives abundant opportunity to every band member to showcase their talents and they all have a lot of fun living up to that. It has a classical opening that reminds of Holst's Mars and escalates in wonderful style at seven minutes and change, but it's the instrumental section in the second half that takes it and this entire album home.

Welcome back, Mike Portnoy. With no disrespect to the highly capable Mike Mangini, who did the business for thirteen years, Dream Theater feels whole again.

Crazy Lixx - Thrill of the Bite (2025)

Country: Sweden
Style: Hard & Heavy
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 14 Feb 2024
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"We like it hard and we like it fast", sings Danny Rexon on the opener, Highway Hurricane, but this isn't extreme at all. This is old school hard rock/heavy metal with a strong focus on riffs and hooks, a lot heavier than when much the same band backs Chez Kane on her melodic rock albums. Oddly, I've reviewed two of those now but nothing by Crazy Lixx themselves, who have been around since 2002, so let's try to remediate that, or least start to do so.

The goal of Rexon and his fellow founding band members was to revisit the eighties and the glory days of glam metal. The band has evolved over time, with Rexon the only musician left from 2002, but they're still doing much the same thing, even if I wonder if they've moved away over time from the cheesier aspects of the genre. Highway Hurricane certainly has a glam metal flavour but it's a song structured like Saxon might structure a song, or even Vow Wow, who sang about a different Hurricane. Who Said Rock n' Roll Roll is Dead right after it has a Kiss vibe, with a great hook that extends beyond the chorus.

Where things could go horribly wrong is Little Miss Dangerous, because, while it follows up with a fresh great hook that extends beyond the chorus, it plays into the cheesier end of glam metal. It's more rooted in Hanoi Rocks or Poison and we cab easily imagine it, with a poppier outlook, played by a band of men dressed up to look like women, rather than the more masculine approach taken by this band on the cover of the album. I can even see the official video unfolding, with the band clumping together to stalk the camera during the midsection.

However, it doesn't go horribly wrong at all. It's an excellent song, with a catchy core hook firmly in the eighties style that refuses to leave your brain. However, on top of all the sassy moments, it has real meat to it with more Saxon-esque riffs, and it extends wonderfully to six minutes, leaving the last few for an emphatic build. Back in the day, there would, of course, be a three minute version intended for airplay, with a picture disc edition, and it would be a hit. Every song here is catchy but this one is earworm level of catchy. It's the best song here, with one exception.

What follows over this ten track album often mixes those two angles in very different ways.

There is a heavy side to everything, with strong and chunky eighties riffs, often in that Saxon style but sometimes in others, like Call of the Wild, which features AC/DC power chords and fretboard work, or Hunt for Danger, which sounds like solo Ozzy, from the Jake E. Lee era rather than earlier. Final Warning is so eighties that I could swear it's a cover. Sure, I can't place those vocal melodies right now or that opening guitar, which is probably the heaviest thing on this album, but they're acutely familiar.

However, there's also a light side to everything, every track pumped up with big glam hooks and a focus on melody that highlights why Crazy Lixx spend so much time playing with Chez Kane. Not all the melodies feel like pop melodies, as Midnight Rebels sometimes sounds like Skid Row covering Accept, but the other end of that spectrum is Run Run Wild, right before it, which could easily be a pop song with very different filters thrown on it. As it stands, it's more like Skid Row covering the Backstreet Boys. Or is it NSync? I can't tell the difference.

It's where those two sides collide best that Crazy Lixx shine brightest. I really ought to gravitate to the more traditionally hard rock songs like Highway Hurricane over the glam metal ones like Little Miss Dangerous. I do like the former but the latter becomes real highlight for me. It's simply done so well that it can't be ignored. My favourite track, though, is easily the closer, Stick It Out, which is Highway Hurricane done even better. Everything works in this song. The pace is up, the guitarwork is alive and the hooks are huge. It's a great six minute Y&T song in under four.

Crucially, everything here stands up to multiple listens. I may have my highlights and you may have different ones, because there's a clear love for an entire era here not just for certain bands, but I can't pick out a weak song for any reason. I guess that means that this is another 8/10 album.

Jinjer - Duél (2025)

Country: Ukraine
Style: Progressive Groove Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 7 Feb 2025
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I'm doomed to point this out every time I review anything with a predominant metalcore element but I've never been a fan of shouty hardcore vocals. They have a purpose and, when used properly, can meet that purpose, which is primarily to channel aggression. However, in almost all instances, they're an inherently limited vocal technique. If all you want to do is channel aggression, then you aren't very interesting. If you want to do more than that, then you need flexibility. And that's the reason I'm still reviewing Jinjer albums when I avoid most metalcore. They have plenty of that.

Well, OK, I missed their fourth album for some reason, which was 2021's Wallflowers, but the core point stands. And I'm back for their fifth after reviewing their third, Macro. Much of that flexibility comes from the astounding vocal talent of Tatiana Shmailyuk but I have to highlight Eugene Abdukhanov's five string bass too. It's a prominent instrument here, to the degree that often it seems like it's the lead string instrument rather than Roman Ibramkhalilov's downtuned guitar. It's right there at the front of every angry assault but it's also there in quieter moments, like the drop in the second half of Tantrum.

That's not to say that Ibramkhalilov has little to do. He's there throughout, of course, deepening the texture of this music; he merely doesn't get as many moments in the spotlight as your average metal guitarist might. There's some interesting guitarwork going on in Green Serpent, both early with vibrant accompaniment and late with a faux acoustic drop at the end. He gets a solo on Dark Bile, not a particularly expansive solo as they go but one nonetheless. Late in the album, he gets a thrash drive both late on Fast Draw and early on the title track, but also a moment of sassiness to bolster Shmailyuk's teasing clean voice at the beginning of Someone's Daughter.

And back to Shmailyuk. As so many YouTube reactors are finding, she can switch effortlessly from a clean melodic voice to a shouty metalcore voice that also contains a lot of growl. Now, she's wasn't the first female singer to tackle harsh vocals and she's hardly the only one doing it nowadays, but her harsh voice still stands alone. Most of those singers sound like they're female when they sing harsh and a few are indistinguishable from the male equivalent. Shmailyuk somehow sounds like she's male and female, as if she's singing both sides of a duet, especially on Hedonist. Some of that could be a production thing, but she does it live too.

As always, my favourite songs are the ones that really play with these two contrasting sounds and make them work together. For me, Tantrum and Rogue are decent early songs, the latter showing Jinjer's progressive side by playing with tempos, but Hedonist leaps out from between them to be the first highlight and Tumbleweed shows up next to be the second. It opens up doomy, but with a happier and quirkier mood in Shmailyuk's vocals, which are clean for half the song after staying in harsh mode for the whole of Rogue. Her harsh voice in the second half churns well with the music behind here, a sludgy growl rather than a standard shout.

They're both first half songs, as is Green Serpent, which plays nicely with emphasis, and they may remain my favourites. However, the second half doesn't feel lesser. It merely shines more through variety than a standout track or two. Dark Bile isn't Fast Draw and neither of them are Someone's Daughter or Duél. All of them play with the same components—that downtuned guitar and overt bass, those two utterly different vocal approaches—but they end up in different places that keep this album interesting in ways that most metalcore doesn't even dream of.

So Kafka is peaceful until it isn't and it finds its way home in a flurry of Ulasevich's drums and the angriest shout on the album. Dark Bile has a jauntiness to it and even a swing, just as Someone's Daughter has a sassiness to it. It reminded me early on of the YouTube reactor who compared her to Katy Perry during the opening section of Pisces only to have his expectations shattered as she shifted into harsh mode; she doesn't do that here until the second half. And Duél has a fascinating opening to make it feel deep even before it gets going. There's a lot in this song.

And so, once again I find myself enjoying a Jinjer album, even though I'm not a metalcore fan. I'm still listing them as progressive groove metal, because both those aspects constitute major parts of the Jinjer sound, but they're still metalcore to metalcore fans. To me, they show that the anger and aggression of metalcore can be preserved while diversifying the sound and stringing a series of varied tracks together across an album. That they don't truly sound like anyone except Jinjer is a bonus.

10 Slip - Tense Lip (2025)

Country: Canada
Style: Blues/Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 7 Feb 2025
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

This came to me as blues rock and that's not entirely unfair, being built on blues guitar, but it's not the primary genre I heard. What is depends on which track I'm listening to, because it spans quite a range, not all of it sitting on a straight musical line.

When it starts out with Dead Ain't Gonna Cry, it's heavy blues rock with a fuzzy guitar right out of stoner rock. It's heavy and raucous and surprisingly patient. The vocals in the second half build the live feel that we notice immediately in how hard the drums are being hit. That goes double for the end of the song, which is almost bludgeoning stoner rock. This continues into Cult but with far less intensity. The musicians are playing just as hard and the song is just as patient but it's slower and sparser stoner rock that's stripped down to almost garage rock levels. This counts as the bluesiest rock song on that album but it never cuts loose to jam.

If that gives you a pretty good idea of what 10 Slip sound like, the next few will surely shake that up considerably. 10 Split starts out like Nick Cave singing for a doom pop outfit, but it grows into a Red Hot Chili Peppers direction with plenty of punk attitude in the combatitive vocals during the second half. It's a greased up and dirty song that doesn't want to be clean and, while 10 Slip are a Canadian band, hailing from Sydney, Nova Scotia, there's an Australian feel here that extends far beyond Cave. There's some of Angry Anderson's confrontational attitude here, though the style doesn't come close to Rose Tattoo.

The most fascinating songs on the album come next. The Wall, all nine minutes of it, is rooted in a prog metal feel but filtered firmly away from metal, as if 10 Slip are Tool moonlighting as a stoner rock band covering new wave songs in weird time signatures. There's King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard here too, to keep that Aussie feel alive. I've never felt that Canadian and Australian music had much in common until now, but 10 Slip seem happy to be the causeway between them.

Then there's Shallow Waters, which is a story song, a deep vocal accompanied by a batch of power beats, maybe explaining that's why there's more Nick Cave here and even alt country. This one is happy to flaunt an outlaw flavour, refusing to kowtow to any genre's expectations, even alt rock, a sprawling genre that ultimately fits this best, whatever rich resonance the vocals find. The second half ramps up in intensity so that voice can leap into street preacher mode, underlining that Cave influence even more. And given all of that, it still has a real garage rock simplicity to it. It's quite the song.

I despise talking through albums in order, but this one seems to naturally fall that way: the pair of openers to set a particular expectation, 10 Split to shatter it, then The Wall and Shallow Waters to showcase just how diverse 10 Slip are with arguably the best and most memorable couple of songs on the album.

The remaining three don't need to be talked about in order, because they're simply another three songs to deepen that versatility, but I guess I might as well finish how I started, after pointing out that the vocals and guitars come courtesy of Brandon Hoban, while the other couple of musicians are Cameron Walker and Gregor MacDougall, even if I can't tell you who plays the heavy bass and who hits those drums like his life depends on it. Just check out his playing on Spore.

The final three are less notable tracks but they're still enjoyable. Mirrors goes back to stoner rock, but ups the ante into some agreable fast doom. Hallowed Ground, which is the single, is somehow the one song I never seem to write a note about. It's too deep to be truly mellow, but it works that way anyway and plays out slower and more melodically than anything else here, though it doesn't stay mellow all the way, that commanding Cave-esque shout of Hoban returning to lead into a sort of stoner rock knees up to finish. And then Spore, somehow the longest track here, even with The Wall lasting nine minutes, closes out like a stoner rock jam.

I believe this is a debut album, though 10 Slip did put out a five track EP in 2023 called Blackbeer'd that looks like something Alestorm might knock out, all pirates and booze. It's a strong album and I look forward to the next one.

Saor - Amidst the Ruins (2025)

Country: UK
Style: Atmospheric Folk/Black Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 7 Feb 2025
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | YouTube

This is the third Saor album that I've reviewed at Apocalypse Later, of the six that Andy Marshall has released thus far, and it's another subtle progression forward. It plays in a similar folk/black metal hybrid to Forgotten Paths and Origins, but continues the heavier approach of the latter. It also plays very well over almost an hour, with four tracks over ten minutes each and the short one still over eight, each of them benefitting from all that breathing space. What's new is a solid use of strings, a trio of violin, viola and cello on three tracks and another cello on a fourth.

Amidst the Ruins starts the album out as black metal. It's very melodic, especially once deliberate melodies are laid over the top, often using whistles or pipes, but still with that wall of sound and a vocal that's harsh but not unwelcoming. Gradually, though, folk elements make themselves more and more obvious, until a flute solo midway shifts all the way into cinematic soundtrack territory. That's only emphasised by the strings during the second half, this being the first of the three with violin, viola and cello, and the three fit together stylistically without being identical.

They continue into Echoes of the Ancient Land, which gets to its flute solo a lot sooner but works in much the same way. What it adds to the mix is a clean voice for Marshall which works well indeed, especially backed by that of Ella Zlotos, whose guest presence as both clean female vocalist and a variety of whistles and pipes, is very noticeable and welcome. It does ramp up to the black metal tempo at points, but it's mostly slower and more moody. And, for a while, Rebirth, closing out the album, is more of the same, following a similar approach to Amidst the Ruins.

However, it shifts more and more from black to folk and in a way that's not typical for Saor. These folk elements are all over the band's sound, so closely entwined with the black metal that it isn't removable. It's not a layer, it's a crucial half of their essence. However, I tend to hear it as setting, whether it feels cinematic or not. These folk elements put me into a place, like I'm outside in the bleak wild spaces of Scotland and the music is happening around me, but I'm only imagining that place rather than anything happening within it. It's a belonging feel.

The more Rebirth grows, the more it turns into a different sort of folk music, the sort that makes us want to move and dance. I don't feel alone in the elements any more because there's a piper leading me somewhere. This is hinted at from a couple of minutes in but it escalates at the eight and a half minute mark. My least favourite part to this song is a very prominent drum that grabs my attention away from the rest of the music every time through but maybe that's deliberate, to steal our focus and pass it on to that piper.

That leaves two other songs that sit in between Echoes of the Ancient Land and Rebirth and they are even more interesting in different ways.

Glen of Sorrow is the one that really works for me. The earlier songs are strong but this one stood out for me on a first listen and it's only elevated on repeats. Rather than launch in hard with black metal, it takes its time, starting out with slow, majestically echoing chords then adding an electric guitar. When it ramps up, there's a tasty layering of harsh and clean vocals. Midway, Zlotos starts to chant gloriously and it complements the music behind her. This is a different take on Saor, kind of like Dead Can Dance as folk/black metal, and it renders the sound a sticky one that won't leave my brain. It was still playing in my head during the next track.

And that's The Sylvan Embrace, which works too but I'm not as fond of it. It's a much calmer piece but with some ominous texture behind it. It's slower, largely acoustic and the vocals are generally delivered in whispers, as if recounting an ancient secret. Ironically, the strings are more obvious here where they're the work of Jo Quail's solo cello than on the near forty minutes of tracks that feature the trio of violin, viola and cello. It's an integral component that's impossible to ignore. It's a good track, but it's inherently a step or three down in intensity from everything else.

I almost went with a 7/10 again, even though this is surely my favourite of the three albums, but I eventually bumped it up to an 8/10. Saor are a better band than 7/10 suggests, even though that's still a solid rating in my system, enjoyable albums I have no hesitation in recommending. I merely can't seem to persuade myself to round up instead of down. Here, I think I need to round up. This has been on repeat for a couple of days now and I'm still enjoying it as much as ever, with three of five tracks marked down as highlights. I'm still waiting for that 9/10 album though. It's surely only a matter of time.

TFNRSH - Book of Circles (2025)

Country: Germany
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 17 Jan 2025
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This album is so easy to just fall into that it's acutely hard to review it. The basics are that TFNRSH are an entirely instrumental German psychedelic rock band who hail from Tübingen. That name is a short version of "tiefenrausch", which means "deep noise", but they play highly accessible psych on this, their second album. Their first was self-titled and came out in 2023. Across both, they write long pieces of music, two of the four tracks here over eleven minutes and the shortest over seven and a half. I've listened to this maybe a dozen times now and it encompasses me every time until I realise I haven't written any notes and have to start over again, not that that's a hardship.

My favourite track is the opener, Zemestån, which features a simple but effective build. It finds its mood quickly with synths then adds a simple echoing riff. The drums join the fray a minute into the piece but the riff doesn't expand for another thirty seconds and it always catches me out with its patience because I'm waiting for it every time. It's a glorious build, going full crunch two minutes in and milking that groove. There is a drop back at the four minute mark but that's also when the drums start to roll and the guitar gets jaunty. The patience of TFNRSH is palpable because this is all about groove. The solo doesn't show up until seven minutes in and even then takes a while to truly shift.

WRZL is more experimental, with an opening that's hard stoner rock but with space noises in the background and leaping into the foreground too. Then it mellows out for a while with a delightful liquid guitar from Sasan Bahreini. He gets a fantastic solo in the second half. He's the only name I see credited on guitar, but the closer, Ammoglÿd, which is much more mellow throughout, plays in like the intertwining of two melodious guitars. They're initially backed by rain with an occasional contribution from Stefan Wettengl's bass. Drummer Julius Watzl gets a break for almost half the piece.

That leaves the third and longest track, Zorn, which is my least favourite of the four, in part because it's even more patient than everything else, taking a long while to get anywhere. Initially, it's a slow set of peaceful synth drones behind a long spoken word section. It's in German, so I have no idea what's being said for four or five minutes. At least Watzl is there to provide a quirky beat that's a single thread of interest. Maybe if I understood the narration it would be stronger, but it feels like the least substantial piece even without factoring that in.

Now, when it does kick in, almost at the five minute mark, it kicks in with emphasis. That's surely the most vicious guitar yet and it aches to cut through something. After a further ninety seconds, it drops into something more akin to Zemestån but with a more playful and less regimented vibe, so there's definitely plenty in the piece to enjoy but we have to wait for the narrator to finish his spiel before we can get to it. It's the only part of this album that I feel warrants a fast forwarding through, even though I haven't done that yet. The drums are enough to keep me, I guess.

By the way, while the band is based in Germany, song titles like Zemestån and Ammoglÿd appear to be Latgalian, which is a Latvian language. I don't know if any or all of the band members moved from Latvia to Germany or not, but those titles mean Earthquake and Environment respectively. It's ironic, I guess, that they be my favourite two tracks, given that there's no language anywhere in them except the titles. Maybe Zorn means something in Latgalian. Maybe it doesn't.

Any which way, this is a strong and immersive album. I don't know that it does anything unusual or particularly noteworthy. It's just thoroughly enjoyable and I could easily listen to it another dozen times. However, I need to move onto other albums, so I'll have to leave it for now but I'll definitely be keeping my eyes open for a third album from TFNRSH in a couple of years time.