Pentagram - Lightning in a Bottle (2025)

Country: USA
Style: Psychedelic Doom Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 31 Jan 2025
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It's great to hear Pentagram again and with such a strong return. This is their first studio album in ten years and they clearly want to Live Again, given how bouncy the opener of that title is. This is doom metal for sure, but it's also a lot of other things. There's a punk attitude to a lot of it. There are all sorts of nods back to the classic rock era, not only to the seventies and eighties but back to the sixties as well. Bobby Liebling is on vocals, as we expect, having apparently cleaned up his act personally—part of the band's absence was due to his jail sentence for elder abuse—but the rest of the band is brand new, everyone else having joined in 2024.

Live Again is a strong opener, but it's not my favourite track here for a number of reasons. One is a very memorable repeated section that's lifted from UFO's Lights Out, just instead of rolling on as Michael Schenker solos, the riff is given a way to stop and start again. I wasn't expecting that on a Pentagram album, but it shouldn't be that surprising. Their particular brand of doom was always a fluid thing, trawling in influences from all over the musical map. Another is the odd drop right at the end of the song, which doesn't work for me, unlike every other drop on the album.

I should note as an aside, given that it's absolutely not a third reason, that I also mishear one line of lyrics every time. "I'm walking the tightrope," sings Liebling. "Never gonna fall, like a cat with Maine Coon paws." It's a great line, but I could swear blind that he actually sings "like a cat with Maine Coon balls." Now, that subtle alteration really says the same thing, but in a very different way, one that arguably features far more attitude.

The first half is very strong, with guitarist Tony Reed delivering a good solo on Live Again and even better ones on In the Panic Room and Dull Pain. There are more on the second half, in I'll Certainly See You in Hell and Lightning in a Bottle, but they're sparser. Liebling is also on top form here, not least on Lady Heroin, the album's standout track, which feels acutely heartfelt. He isn't singing a set of lyrics here; he's pouring out his soul.

Lady Heroin is an unusual song, because it truly revolves around the vocal performance instead of a killer riff. I've never shot up with heroin, but I wonder if the songwriting mimics what Liebling is feeling when he does. Initially, the music barrels along behind him, led by Henry Vasquez's drums, like a nightmarish rotoscope. Later it drops into a mellow section, as if the fury has abated and an element of welcoming calm replaces it. Eventually, it finds a doomy grind, as if the calm is always a transitory thing and that's the catch to the whole thing. Liebling starts out channelling Ozzy, as he sometimes does, and that returns during the mellow section, but he moves beyond that into some sort of dark soul outpouring far more bleakly and honestly than Glenn Danzig ever managed.

Given that it's as much psychedelic or even progressive rock as it is doom metal, I should point out that there's plenty of psychedelic rock here. The delicious drop in In the Panic Room is right out of psychedelic rock and the one in I Spoke to Death isn't far from it. I adore this drop, though it's only one reason why this is my favourite song. The opening riff is the best one on the album for me and it does have competition. I appreciate Vasquez's patience too, because I expect him to kick in hard much sooner than he does and he catches me out every time. This is the most traditional Sabbath-esque the album gets and that's not a bad thing.

Talking of old school influences, the second half kicks off with I'll Certainly See You in Hell, which is even older. It reminds me just how long this band's been active, Liebling and Geof O'Keefe putting it together in 1971, while this grandfather of ten was busy being born. It's doom with a strong punk attitude and a drive that comes straight out of Love. Remember Seven and Seven Is? Love put that out in 1966 and it's still inspiring new songs almost sixty years later.

I don't find the second half as strong, but that's an exception, as is the title track, which is calm in the verses and jaunty in the chorus. The tempo picks up, of course, but it's another good one. And then there's the other real surprise for me, namely the closer, Walk the Sociopath. It's a very slow song, which might sound redundant for a doom metal album, but remember this is a lot of things as well as doom. It's shockingly slow, in comparison to the ten songs before it. It does pick up late and it's a very good song, but it feels like an odd and surprisingly isolated way to wrap up.

All in all, this is a strong return for Pentagram and I'm going to go with an 8/10 but only just. Some of it is clearly not up to the quality of the rest, not necessarily filler material but songs that aren't ever going to hit as hard as the others around them. The new fish are great, not just Vasquez and Reed but bass player Scooter Haslip too, whose playing is easily delineated in this excellent mix. A more surprising note perhaps is that Liebling sounds fantastic here, given how much he's been his own worst enemy for a long, long time (and one to others too, including former bandmates). Lady Heroin may be his finest single performance ever. So it's more like a 7.5/10 but I'm rounding up not down.

Terry Draper - Infinity (2025)

Country: Canada
Style: Psychedelic Pop
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 17 Jan 2025
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If you don't know the name, Terry Draper was the drummer in the Canadian psychedelic pop band Klaatu, who released five studio albums in the late seventies and early eighties but are probably best remembered today for Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft, famously covered by, of all people, the Carpenters. Since they split up, he's put out a lot of solo albums, at least one per year since 2016 until now. I gather that they tend to come out right before Christmas but this one that was aimed for last Christmas is a little late because of illness.

I also gather that while it isn't entirely new material, it isn't a typical set of re-recordings of hits from yesteryear. Some of it is indeed brand new, written and recorded for this album, but some of it's Draper revisiting old demos that have sat around for a while and then updating some of them with a new spark of creativity. Mostly, I don't know which is which, which says something about the consistency of his material, but The Best Blues, my highlight from a first listen, was written in 1976 and the closer, The Sea, goes back to 1973. In other words, not all this is new to Draper but it's new to us.

Klaatu were a psychedelic pop band who crossed the boundary into progressive rock and it's clear from moment one that Draper has continued in the same vein. There's a psychedelic pop flavour to the opening title track, almost a Strawberry Alarm Clock vibe once it gets past its atmospheric prog intro, but with a side of Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles that was also so prevalent with Klaatu. The rest of the album, which fills a generous hour with fifteen tracks, never drifts too far away from it. It Must Be the Weather is right there.

The heaviest song is probably Leavin Day, which starts out with gritty guitar like it always wanted to be a rock song and that's the tone they use. Of course, it's entirely appropriate, because it's no bubblegum pop song about a happy faily move to a dream house; it's a breakup song and that's a gimme topic for rock music. There's rock guitar on Teacher Teacher, which is clearly rock over pop, even though it's light and even trawls in Beethoven's Ode to Joy. It's Your Love is old time rock 'n' roll with adornments. Draper tries a little for an Elvis approach but not too much.

Most of the rest of the album sits in between those two not particularly distant extremes. There are singer songwriter songs here, not least the ballad Brother of Mine, which leads in with piano and voice and is anchored so firmly in the seventies that this is surely another old demo revisited. There's plenty of that on I Close My Eyes too, but with added orchestration. It's halfway between Cat Stevens and the Alan Parsons Project. Talking of influences and the Beatles always being high on that list, Last Chance to Disagree is a story song that sounds like Ringo Starr, unusually because Draper tends to be closer to Paul McCartney's vibe.

Even within a relatively narrow framework, Draper brings in some diverse elements. (How Do You) Make Love Stay almost has an artificial hip hop beat to it, unusual for a drummer. The Best Blues is psychedelic blues pop but it has lovely touches all over it, saxophone here, organ there and plenty of fuzz on the guitar to trawl in some very light stoner rock. The most unusual song here, though, is Ubuntu, which has an interesting ethnic opening. I know this African word because I'm writing this on a computer running Ubuntu Maté rather than Windows. As you might imagine, there are ethnic African moments all over this one, not least in the African chorus, but some of it sounds Jamaican too, which is less expected.

The other song I'll happily call out as a highlight is one that's dug its way into my head, much to my surprise. I fell for the groove in The Best Blues immediately and then appreciated its extra depths, but Dance the Dance got me before I realised it. I liked it, but this is an easy album to like. I didn't initially like it in the way I'd expect for a highlight, but I found myself singing it while I was writing film reviews, which surprised me until I realised that the more I play it, the better it gets. It has an old time feel to it, its lyrics cleverly talking about not just one dance but many of them, the music hinting at them as it goes until it ends up with carnival music. It's a deceptively simple song with a lot of depth.

So that's my first Terry Draper album. I've heard his work before in Klaatu, but never solo before. He's not a one man band, as there are apparently seventeen guest musicians here, many of them fellow alumni of Klaatu, but I have no idea who does what. I figure Draper does the majority of it, writing the songs and bringing different people in where he feels like they'd fit. There are lots of textures here that are easy to gloss over on a first listen but which gradually emerge on repeats, making it a rich album to get to know over time. And hey, if this is your thing, Draper has a notably deep back catalogue to explore.

Flint Knife Murder - Pretayug (2024)

Country: India
Style: Folk/Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 7 Sep 2024
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I like the idea of the website Metal Has No Borders, because that's one of my guiding principles at Apocalypse Later too, so I paid attention to their Best Folk Metal Album of the Year list. It included a trio of albums, Ryujin's self-titled in the bronze tier, Vorgrum's Summit of Dreams in silver and a third EP from Flint Knife Murder in the gold. That's an album from Japan, another from Argentina and an EP from Shillong in the Meghalaya province of India, so far to the northeast that it's past a majority of Bangladesh but not quite so far as About Us, in Wokha, Nagaland.

I don't know that I'd call this my folk metal release of the year because there are highly apparent limitations, but it's a fascinating EP and I'd love to hear more. For a start, it's both folk metal and death metal at the same time, so much so that I can't decide which way it went. It doesn't seem to be folk metal that's been crunched up into death and it doesn't seem to be death metal that's had a huge amount of folk elements overlaid. It feels like it's inherently both genres and both of them are integral to the sound. My favourite part comes at the very end of the opener, Nartiang, with a death metal crunch and a delightfully sticky beat, but a telling folk wail overlaid.

The beginning of Likai that follows comes close, sounding like a field recording of a folk melody in the jungle opening it up, then shifting into the guitars of death metal but the percussion of folk music. I have no idea what's being hit or what it's being hit with but it sounds glorious, with those riffs underneath it. There's a glorious combination of chant and heavy metal riff in Dharmapala, not for the first time. Angulimala opens with a wonderful riff and that folk percussion joins more traditional metal drums for a fascinating sound, that's like hand drums as a full kit. There's some sort of melodious lute halfway that I can't identify but which sounds glorious. The solo is excellent too, again somewhere between folk and heavy metal.

My problem with it is that the death metal angle, when it's isolated from the folk elements which happens occasionally, feels relatively routine. The riffs are good but they don't vary much and I'm not a big fan of the harsh vocals, whether they're death growl or hardcore shout or somewhere in between, because they fall into the common trap of working as texture but without intonation or much nuance. Fortunately, there are a lot of different styles of vocals here and such sections are never particularly long. There are folk chants, dark whispers, clean rock vocals, shouty vocals and harsh growls, each of which adds an element, as does the narrative element on Dharmapala.

I'm only seeing two names associated with Flint Knife Murder, though there may well be more at this point in their career. They formed in 2014, Siddharth Burea on vocals and guitar and Saptarshi Das on vocals and bass, but those are not the only instruments in play here, even if some of it was created digitally on synths. There are no credits for this EP at Metal Archives and it's not on their Bandcamp page. Angulimala is, presumably in an earlier version, but with nobody else listed. An earlier version of Likai is also on their Bandcamp with a guest vocal credited to Tiara Kharpuri.

I've listened to this rather a lot as I've chipped away at my book reviews for the month and I have to say that it's growing on me. It doesn't seem to work well as background but it rewards an active listener, because there are depths here that float past unnoticed if we're not paying attention. A couple of songs, Likai and Dharmapala I believe, feature some tasty bass runs that deserve kudos, but a lot of the nuance is in the songwriting. Dharmapala in particular has both a ritual element to it and a storytelling element.

Maybe that's why it's my favourite song here. It's slower and less overtly death but it does a huge amount with its seven and a half minutes. For something that fits so well as folk/death, there's a strong prog aspect to this one. I adore when the eighties heavy metal solo kicks in and it matches the deep ritual chanting perfectly. I have no idea what's going on but there's a movie's worth of something in this piece. The more I listen with serious focus, the more I find that each piece here has that to at least some degree.

I wonder when they'll get round to issuing a full album. They've put out EPs in 2020, 2021 and now 2024, so they're not without material. I guess it's just a matter of time. I'm looking forward to it.

The Night Flight Orchestra - Give Us the Moon (2025)

Country: Sweden
Style: Melodic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 31 Jan 2025
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Here's another Night Flight Orchestra album, my first that isn't an Aeromantic release. Is there a new concept here? There are certainly plenty of moments that play into the band taking a journey but, while they're obvious in the intro and in between tracks, I could never focus on lyrics enough to discover if it went deeper than that. Those linking pieces are very obvious, enough that I spent far longer on the thirty second intro, Final Call, than I should.

It's a stewardess asking the eight members of the band to attend their flight. That explains to me that David Andersson and Anna-Mia Bonde are gone from the previous release, Rasmus Ehrborn and Åsa Lundman joining in their stead on guitar and backing vocals respectively. It also reminds me that, even though I'm learning more and more about different languages by dealing with the increasingly international rock and metal genres, I still have more to pick up. I'm not shocked that lead vocalist Björn Strid's surname is pronounced Streed, but apparently that of drummer Jonas Källsbäck is pronounced Shellspeck. I therefore immediately apologise to all Swedes whose names I've inadvertently butchered in the past.

Anyway, the thirty seconds are up and off the band go to Tashkent, which is in Uzbekistan, but via a strange route. By the end of Stratus, they're in orbit. What sort of night flight is this?

Stratus leaps in hard as a bombastic melodic rock opener, with big keyboard power chords and the sort of hooks that Toto would employ. It's a strong song, which doesn't surprise because that's the sort of song that the Night Flight Orchestra churn out on a regular basis. However, it's also rather memorable, which is important because a lot of this material blends together for me. Tracks such as Shooting Velvet are enjoyable while I'm listening to them but, as soon as the next one kicks in, I struggle to remember what they sounded like.

That's only emphasised when the next song is as strong as Like the Beating of a Heart, the most obvious single on this album. Sure, it's almost five minutes long and it's a stadium rock belter that ought out to be done in three, but they're five good minutes. It has a wonderful intro that serves to grab anyone's attention and it stays wonderful throughout. What I find myself doing with Night Flight Orchestra songs is figuring out which ones stand out to that degree and continue to do so a few listens in. The album's inherently likeable and accessible and easy to enjoy. The question has to focus on what will stay in the mind afterwards.

On this album, that's mostly Like the Beating of a Heart and Miraculous. They feel like the purest melodic rock standards, the sort of songs that will be playing not merely in heavy rotation on rock radio stations today but also in heavy rotation on classic rock stations thirty years into the future. Maybe the title track fits with these too. It certainly has a powerful chorus. Maybe it doesn't quite match them.

I'd also add Cosmic Tide to the standout list for a different reason.

This is throwback melodic rock that combines eighties stadium rock with tinges of pop and seventies disco, so keyboards are king. Many of my favourite intros, hooks and other parts of songs revolve around the keyboards, which come courtesy of John Lönnmyr, whose other day job is in Croatian melodeath/groove metal band Act of Denial. He's on top form across this entire album, the intros to Like the Beating of a Heart and A Paris Point of View particularly impressive.

However, he takes a different approach on Cosmic Tide, which is to bolster a jangly guitar line with piano in a way that reminds of something Stevie Wonder might do. This one kicks in with drums, as if every rule in place on this album needs to be tweaked, then the guitar, then the piano, and then a particularly urgent pace. It all combines to tell me that, while this doesn't fit with the textbook melodic rock standouts, it's just as good and perhaps even better. It's easily my favourite song on the album.

I don't have a least favourite, but there are plenty of tracks that sit alongside Shooting Velvet as songs I enjoyed while they were playing but which I forgot again immediately. I've listened to this album a few times and every time through, it's like I'm hearing those tracks for the first time with exactly the same end result. The other songs that stand out are for other reasons, some as stupid as the chorus of Melbourne, May I? unfortunately sounding so much like Mother Mayi, that I found myself remembering Leslie Nielsen in Repossessed. A Paris Point of View finds a fast disco bounce, arguably for the first time on the album and Way to Spend the Night is extra bouncy too.

So take that how you will. The Night Flight Orchestra are very very good at what they do. They aim to fill an odd niche, a sort of New Wave of Stadium Rock with Disco that nobody was asking for but which is somehow inherently uplifting and enjoyable. This is a little more stadium rock than disco but it's more of the same and, if this is your thing, it'll take you to the moon. Even if it's scheduled for Tashkent.

Sotomonte - Decadence & Renaissance (2025)

Country: Spain
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 21 Oct 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

When I found Sotomonte, I was actually looking for Spanish language music, because I've found a few gems in end of year lists. However, while Sotomonte are indeed Spanish, hailing from Bilbao, the largest city in Basque country, they sing in English and their overt influences seem English or American. This is their second album of psychedelic rock and a Spanish language website I should read more from (in translation) lists it as the Best National Record of 2024. That website is called La Habitación 235. This list tells me that Spain might produce as much psych as Portugal, but I've only reviewed one of the top twenty bands before, Moura and then not for this album.

I liked this on a first listen, though the opener didn't particularly grab me, feeling over-repetitive. Ironically, it's titled The Nothing. It grew on a second listen, as did the whole album, and I can see myself spending a lot of time with this one, not just here in the office but elsewhere too. This may well play incredibly well on headphones in a dark room, where I can truly lose myself in it. Much of it seems to swirl to me, as if it's written in circles like a musical rotoscope. Gambit, the second song and the one that absolutely captured me, does that often, especially during the heavy jam within its second half. Much of What a Game to Play feels precisely that way too.

One of the joys of Gambit and, to a lesser degree, The Nothing, is that I can't place the pieces that Sotomonte used to construct it. There are moments that feel familiar and the result is obviously a folky psychedelia with heaviness added at points in a way that American proto-metal bands did in the early seventies, but only when the song needs it. It was The Beauty of Tomorrow where I heard clearer influences, as it unfolds like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull singing for the Grateful Dead. That combination of English and American influences may be why it's so elusive.

The fourth song may be called Blind Faith, but it doesn't feel like them. I heard some Bob Dylan in the vocals and chaotic west coast psych behind them. I love how chaotic these songs seem to get, because they aren't. The musicians, all six of them, are doing very deliberate things to interact in very deliberate ways. It's not chaos, but it can feel that way because it's so busy and what they're doing is unusual. It's harder to subconsciously deconstruct these songs and much easier to just let them wash over us.

If Blind Faith feels American, Montecristo/The Riddle feels English. It's almost John Lennon doing a guest slot on a Tyrannosaurus Rex song. Marc Bolan is all over this album, but ironically the song that most fits his early psychedelic style doesn't sound remotely like him singing. There are four musicians credited for vocals, all of which also play at least one other instrument, so I don't know who sings lead, but the names are all Spanish so I have no idea where at least one of them picked up a tinge of Liverpudlian accent. Maybe they listen to a lot of the Beatles.

I had no intention of running through these songs in order, but it's worked out like that. My Cross to Bear showcases some glorious seventies organ and the heavier aspect that manifests here and there coalesces into a Mountain vibe. Little Vilma gets all jiggy with it, literally, incorporating an obvious folk dance section that doesn't sound like it's played on a regular acoustic guitar, more of a mandolin. I can't resist the musical circles of What a Game to Play, almost mathematical in the Philip Glass fashion but drenched in folky psychedelia and with Wishbone Ash transitions. An outro, The Everything, as a bookend to The Nothing that kicked the album off, is over too quickly.

I liked this on a first listen but I liked it more on a second and loved it by the third. I have a feeling it's only going to get better and better with each further listen. That makes it accessible but deep and I'm still trying to figure out some of what they're doing after five or six listens. It's already an old friend and I'm pretty sure it's going to remain one for a long time. I only gave out a handful of 9/10s in 2024, albeit partly because I lost a good chunk of the year, but this deserves another one. It's going to be hard to move onto another album but, if I ever manage it, there's one preceding it, which is From Prayer to the Battlefield, released in 2021.

Grave Digger - Bone Collector (2025)

Country: Germany
Style: Heavy/Power Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 17 Jan 2025
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

This is Grave Digger's twenty-second album and, because they continue to knock out albums every couple of years, it's the third I've reviewed here at Apocalypse Later. In 2020, Fields of Blood was a decent heavy/power metal album that warranted a lot of comparisons to Sabaton. In 2022, Symbol of Eternity was notably less successful, its songs enjoyable but unable to stick in the mind. This is a strong return to form and also to a faster and grittier sound that's often more reminiscent of the days when they were a speed metal band. It's not just the tempo, it's a more jagged edge to these songs.

Certainly, Bone Collector and The Rich, the Poor, the Dying open up fast and heavy. They're sung in English, as we expect, but it wouldn't be remotely difficult to identify the band as German, even if we'd gone in completely blind. I wonder how much of this is because there's a new guitarist on this album, Tobias Kersting, who joined both Grave Digger and vocalist Chris Boltendahl's heavy metal side project, Chris Boltendahl's Steelhammer, in 2023. Not all the edge is in the guitars, but I think it may well have started there. If so, thank you, sir.

Both tracks pass the test that the majority of the songs on Symbol of Eternity failed, namely that they're memorable. The chorus on Bone Collector sticks in the brain and I love the line in The Rich, the Poor the Dying that wraps up its chorus: "Money for nothing and death for free." Kingdom of Skulls opens with a tasty bass run from Jens Becker. When the album slows down with The Devil's Serenade, it escalates the hooks at the same time so it all works out. This is a strong song, but it's also the one that warrants the most obvious Sabaton comparison. I didn't hear them much on the opening trio.

The comparisons here definitely highlight the shift in tone. Sabaton were all over Fields of Blood but they're not here. This is edgier and, even when it slows down to chug, it has the gritty edge of German thrash bands like Destruction. Killing My Pleasure opens with a riff that could have been borrowed from early Iron Maiden but it's played with Destruction grit. There's a Destruction riff on Riders of Doom, which isn't a Deathrow cover, even though it's a slower song that's content to chug along rather than let rip.

Mirror Hate is reminiscent of Accept, a band who rarely stay away for long in the sound of German power metal bands. Some songs have a Motörhead vibe to them, both in tone (Boltendahl's voice has a similar grit to Lemmy) and in structure, like Forever Evil and Buried Alive. Graveyard Kings has a chant aspect to it that reminds of Manowar, though it's laid over that notably German style chug.

Another crucial note here is that, whatever tempo these songs choose, the album keeps shifting inexorably forward and it's over before we expect it to be. It's of relatively typical length at three quarters of an hour, but it feels shorter because the songs tend to get right down to business then give way to the next without hanging around past their due dates. Occasionally there's some sort of extended intro, as on Made of Madness or Whispers of the Damned, but those songs feel even more frantic afterwards as if to compensate.

The only song that doesn't adhere to that mindset is the closer, Whispers of the Damned. It's not just that extended intro, it's the fact that it's trying to be an epic track rather than a quick punch. It's well over a minute longer than anything else here and two longer than anything but Riders of Doom. It feels stretched, not least through a narrative section in the second half. And this isn't a bad thing. It's a good song. It just doesn't follow the same mindset as the ten tracks preceding it and that's noticeable.

So this is a strong album, a return to form after the weaker Symbol to Eternity and up there with Fields of Blood in quality. While I'm going to rate it the same at 7/10, I'll happily say that I'm much fonder of it because of the increased pace and grit, especially on the first half of the album. If I'm forced to throw out a flaw, it's that it's top heavy. My three highlights all sit in the first four songs, so all safely in the first half, which I presume would end with Mirror of Hate six tracks in, with the two longer songs on the second half. That's not much of a flaw though. All in all, this is the best of the most recent three Grave Digger albums.

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja (2024)

Country: Finland
Style: Experimental Rock/Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 11 Oct 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

Muuntautuja means Transformed and I'm told that's what Oranssi Pazuzu, experimental Finnish musicians, are every time they release a new album. I have to take that as read because I've only heard one thus far, their fifth, 2020's Mestarin kynsi. Well, I've also heard and reviewed the 2019 collaboration with Dark Buddha Rising, which they called Waste of Space Orchestra, which is why I checked out Oranssi Pazuzu to start with. I gave the former a 9/10 and the latter an 8/10. I found it all fascinating stuff.

This sixth album is different again, moving a little further away from black metal and a little more into electronica, but it's still an unholy hybrid of multiple genres. Voitelu (Anointing) epitomises that mindset with such a bizarre merger of different music that, by the time a stomping riff shows up three and a half minutes in, it feels like we're listening to four different songs at the same time. It starts out with a punk vibe but one that's too regimented to be chaotic, more regulated into industrial. The vocals are pure black metal orc shriek. And then there's some delicate Philip Glass piano over the top. It's a heady mix but it's almost the definition of not for everyone.

Most of the rest is a lot easier to approach. The title track, for instance, mixes subtle dark drone with chirpy electronic glitch bleeps and what could easily be a hiphop beat. The vocals are heavily processed, a la Kraftwerk. "We are the weird Finnish Robots" Oranssi Pazuzu seem to be saying. It all grows behind them into a post-punk approach, becoming more chaotic halfway through, while resisting the temptation to veer into noise rock. There are no screams here. It all feels held back, moments sounding rather like the Prodigy.

Ikikäärme (Eternal Serpent) is accessible too, but it requires some patience, unfolding slowly and steadily over ten minutes. It starts out with tinkling piano and loose jazz, but with an overarching pulse looming in the air above it. The initial vocals are rich and ritual, as if they're trying to conjure something up. Later, perhaps they succeed because they become so tortured that they sometimes come close to being unrecognisable as vocals. Is that a voice or a weird distortion effect on a synthesiser? I find this one delightfully weird and would call it out as my favourite piece of music, followed closely by the closer, an instrumental called Vierivä usva (Rolling Mist) that rolls inexorably along like a conveyor belt into Hell.

Some of it could be considered accessible to alt rock fans who have a grounding in certain bands. For instance, the album opens up with Bioalkemisti (Bioalchemist), a tantalising rhythm exploding into a heavy grungy riff. Suddenly we're in Swans territory and, interestingly, we kind of stay there even when the intensity reaches black metal levels. The guitars and vocals clearly go there, but the rhythm maintains an industrial bludgeon. Valotus (Illumination) dives quickly into industrial territory, escalates into an intensity that's more crust punk than black metal and then ends in noise rock, emphatically the most raucous the album gets. It would be sheer chaos if it wasn't so rhythmic.

As you might imagine, each track here takes Oranssi Pazuzu into different territory, without ever losing a consistency of approach. This band are still creating soundscapes with an unusually broad palette. It's easy to draw a line back through musical history to new wave and post-punk, but that line isn't remotely straight. It diverts here, there and everywhere, adding textures from all sorts of different genres, from ambient and modern classical all the way through to black metal. What results is often fascinating.

While I'd personally favour Ikikäärme and Vierivä usva, Hautatuuli (Grave Wind) is the track that fascinates me the most. It's another more restrained piece, with more of that new wave vibe, but the vocals are extreme. They're not shrieked here so much as they're whispered in ominous fashion from under a rock somewhere. It's like the soundtrack to a short play written by goblins, with the lead character a supposedly enticing predator who can't avoid coming across dangerously repellent. Come here, little boy. It's not remotely safe under this rock.

I like this album, but I don't like it remotely as much as Mestarin Kynsi. Just from two albums, it's as if Oranssi Pazuzu are a journey rather than a destination and each album is a stop on the way. I have a feeling I'm going to find every stop fascinating but I'm not always going to want to get out and explore. Here, I'm staying on board, waiting to see where we end up next.

Avatarium - Between You, God, the Devil and the Dead (2025)

Country: Sweden
Style: Doom Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 24 Jan 2025
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I found Avatarium last time out, with their fifth album, Death, Where is Your Sting, which was my Album of the Month for December 2022 and one of only nine 9/10s for that year. The curse of the critic (or the DJ) is that we're so tied to the flow of the new that we can't go back to simply enjoy things the way we used to when we were just fans. However, I've absolutely gone back to this one. It's become an old friend now, that I've hauled out in all sorts of places. I've played a lot of pool to it at my son's house. A couple of the songs have lessened a bit over time but A Love Like Ours and Death, Where is Your Sting are as impactful to me now as they were on a stunned first listen. They live rent free in my head. They awe me.

And that's the other reason why I haven't sought out their first four albums yet. Sure, there's the fact that I simply don't have the luxury of time but I'm a little scared to find either that they don't have the same punch or, even worse, that they do. What if I found them at their peak and it's only down from here in either direction? What have I been doing with my life if they've been creating music this special since 2013 and I simply haven't noticed? What does that say about me? Well, it's time to knuckle down and tackle their new one. Did they strike gold twice running?

Well, no, they didn't, but this was still an excellent album on a first listen and, four or five times in, it's continuing to grow on me. Oddly, the killer track isn't right there at the beginning to kick it off. Long Black Waves and I See You Better in the Dark are really good doom rock songs, just not good enough to knock me out the way that the openers on the prior album did. Not that I could give you another one off the top of my head that matched it, but still. It was the third track here, My Hair is on Fire (But I'll Take Your Hand), that blew me away.

It starts out with simplistic piano from Marcus Jidell and the soft voice of Jennie-Ann Smith but in quintessential Avatarium fashion. You could have blindfolded me and asked me who it was and I'd have told you within ten seconds. Then it's an serious ramp up and I'm in absolute heaven. It's not quite A Love Like Ours, perhaps because it doesn't have its quirkiness, but it's the first song here to come close. Jidell and Smith take it home perfectly too. In between, there are some moments where I heard Supertramp and, if you're now imagining some of their classics translated into the doom rock genre, then you're welcome. I'm doing the same thing.

It was my first highlight and it remains my top pick, but there are a few serious growers here that are coming very close indeed. They didn't grab me on a first time through, maybe not on a second either, but the more I listen the better they get and the more I fall into them and lose myself.

"The heart wants what the heart wants", says Lovers Give a Kingdom to Each Other. What I think my heart wants is to stay in that song. It's only five minutes long but, every time I hear it, it takes my life over for what feels like half an hour. It's not that it drags, it's that it captivates me almost like a hypnotic spell and time slows down so I can attempt to grab it in return. I still haven't quite managed it but I'm willing to keep trying for as long as it takes. Somehow, it's a comfort zone of a song, while also being willing to torment. The tail of the song has a similar groove to a Fleetwood Mac song like The Chain, when they keep layering on emphasis but refuse to escalate.

Until Forever and Again has a similar effect, though it's easier to focus on it. The riff is golden and the guitar laid over it is even better. Smith hits some tasty escalations too and there's a gorgeous drop five minutes in. I adore Avatarium the most when they're doing something minimal like this but then crash back into doom with the sort of effortless transition that other bands would kill for. There's plenty of minimal in the title track, which closes things out this time, enough that we can hear a tiny recurrent squeak that could be something as minor as a microphone stand that needs oiling. This one teases its escalations and takes longer to deliver them, but they arrive. It isn't up there with my highlights yet, but it tells me that it may get there next.

Then again, anything might. Long Black Waves is the closest they get to Candlemass, their parent band of sorts, and there's some tasty guitar and textbook escalations. I See You Better in the Dark has a bluesy feel to it with plenty of hard rock. It could be a Pat Benatar song, of all things. Being with the Dead ramps up the guitar fuzz and stays in the doom rock style. Notes from Underground is the odd man out here because it's a relatively short instrumental, but the handheld percussion that kicks it off carries on audibly under the guitar and regular drums, even once it finds its way to a guitar solo and a heavier riff. Any one of them could grow.

So this is an 8/10 from me for now. It was a 7/10 on a first listen but it keeps growing and it's done that solidly enough and consistently enough to warrant an added point. It hasn't reached the 9/10 that its predecessor earned yet, but I'm interested to see if it'll get there. It doesn't seem like it's got the same peaks but it does feel like it's a little more consistent across the whole album. Let's revisit down the road.