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
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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.

Leprous - Melodies of Atonement (2024)

Country: Norway
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
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Former prog metallers and current prog rockers Leprous are back with their eighth album and it's another interesting mix of styles. As has been the case lately, it's driven mostly by keyboards and vocals, both courtesy of Einar Solberg; as such, there are points on the previous couple of albums where Leprous have almost seemed like a Solberg solo effort, with the rest of the band chiming in on occasion, usually for emphasis. That's occasionally the case here, especially as Silently Walking Along kicks off the album like a gothic new wave song, with warping pulses and a slow beat behind the brooding vocals.

However, as it runs on, it's more apparent that the other four band members, who have remained unchanged across four albums now, simply aren't going to let that happen. There's a playful bass from Simen Børven to kick off Like a Sunken Ship, with interesting percussion from Baard Kolstad. The bass is easily as important as the vocals and keyboards on Limbo, if not more so, because it's the driving force, and Kolstad enforces himself later in the song too, with rhythms that roll just as much as they punctuate. Faceless opens with bass again, this time very much in jazz mode, and yet again Kolstad eventually joins him.

Just in case you're wondering if there are any guitars here, I can happily point out that there are, courtesy of both Tor Oddmund Suhrke and Robin Ognedal, though I have no idea who's responsible at any particular point in time. Most obviously, these songs have an abiding tendency to bulk up at some point, even Silently Walking Alone doing that around the minute mark, when Solberg builds to a new level too. These are initially patient guitars, but then they turn experimental, as they do on a host of songs here, perhaps most notably on Starlight and Unfree My Soul, both with weirdly minimal picking. The more I repeat the album, the more I notice guitars where I didn't think they existed on my first time through.

For a progressive band, which they've remained even after suggestions on 2019's Pitfalls that they were aiming for a poppier sound, these escalations are becoming a little predictable, albeit not so far as to be a problem yet. Every song seems to start softly, with someone doing something quicky on at least one instrument, the vocals play along for a while and then a minute or two or three in, it bulks up quickly to something much heavier, shifting from rock to metal just like that and staying there until it's time to shift back again. It's all for contrast, of course, and it works.

Fortunately, there are enough variations on that theme to keep this feeling fresh. At points on I Hear the Sirens, Solberg's vocals shift into a recognisable Glenn Danzig roar, though, of course, he then escalates in pitch beyond levels Danzig can even dream about. Like a Sunken Ship's escalation feels angry; Solberg's vocals remain clean, for a while, but in front of jagged modern metal, then there are glimpses of harsh vocals too. Self-Satisfied Lullaby is keyboards and vocals for a couple of minutes, before the drums show up, and it returns to that for a while. The bass doesn't arrive until the four minute mark and the guitars wait a minute longer, even though the song is over at six and a half.

What doesn't happen as much are changes that don't involve that bulking up. These songs tend to establish their early sound, bulk up into something heavy, then drop back to the early sound again. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but only Faceless really stands out as doing something different. It starts out soft, like a smooth jazz song, bulks up a little slower with a subdued guitar telegraphing the escalation before it actually happens. It bulks up, then drops back down again to that jazzy mindset, albeit with a nuanced guitar solo, but somehow ends up morphing into what I can only describe as a triumphant chant.

All in all, I liked this album more than Pitfalls but not as much as 2021's Aphelion. What it does, it does well, and it's consistent enough to suggest that there aren't really high or low points, just a fifty minute slab of quality music, but it didn't surprise me much. Aphelion kept me much more on the hop and I appreciated that. So this is a good album that continues to grow after many listens, as a Leprous album should, but I don't think it reaches the heights of its predecessor.

Mathras - El poder de la mentira (2024)

Country: Argentina
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 9 Sep 2024
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This is the fourth album from Mathras, but they have a new vocalist since my review of their third, Sociedades secretas, back in 2019, so they sound a little different. He's Charly Coria and he's even more traditional than his predecessor, Ariel Varas, given the old school high screams he hurls out on a few songs here. Otherwise, it's relatively true to the style of its predecessor, with a few notes needed to explain the exceptions.

One of those is because the opening title track simply barrels along in a furious but controlled way that reminds, at full tilt, of Metallica's Fuel. It does calm down a little for verses but then shifts up to full gear in between. Coria can hit some notes and seems like a good fit already, but I was more focused on the tone and tempo, both courtesy of bassist Fernando Barreiro and drummer Sergio Marti. There's a palpable Metal Church feel here, a richness to the tone that screams melody and power combined. That rolls into La casa del dolor too, even though that doesn't approach similar speeds, and onward. It's a good feel.

There are ten tracks on offer this time for three quarters of an hour of running time and none of them approaches the title track for speed, even though Nuestra gran ciudad is fast and perky and the closer, Bajo las cenizas de un imperio opens like a playful thrash song, Barreiro's bass leading the way. Neither quite find the same high gear because this is always heavy metal not thrash, even at its fastest. At the other end of the spectrum, it plays with doom, often on the same tracks, such as the intro to Nuestra gran ciudad, but also at points on La casa del dolor and especially Lo que el tiempo dejo.

And so most of this sits in between those two extremes. As with their prior album, it often reminds of the traditional metal of the eighties, whether British or American, albeit with that beefier back end and obviously modern production. There's NWOBHM all over this like a rash, especially in the vocals and the guitarwork of Gustavo Ruben, who's reliable delivering simple riffs like the opening of Buenos tiempos or showing off on songs like Almas en la oscuridad and Nuestra gran ciudad. He gets a showcase piece here too in La creación (MLR), which sounds like another elegant intro until we realise it's an instrumental. He channels some Joe Satriani here.

It's telling that, even when he's being flash, he never touches on Eddie Van Halen, who was such a pivotal influence on the genre in the eighties. I'm presuming that's because Mathras don't have much interest in mainstream American metal of that era, focusing instead on traditional British metal like Black Sabbath and where NWOBHM took that, in the form of Raven or Diamond Head, along with more traditional American metal bands of the era, like Cirith Ungol or Manilla Road, and early doom pioneers like Pentagram. There's no partying going on, even on perkier songs. It proudly wears the genre's working class roots instead.

When they touch on mainstream metal, it's people like Ozzy Osbourne, like the beginning of the intro to Lo que el tiempo dejo. It's vocalisation over keyboards in the style of early solo Ozzy, then Ruben introduces some elegant guitar and everything grows into proto-doom, without ever quite leaving Ozzy—and no, I'm not just honing on the laughter halfway. This is the longest song here at a nudge past seven minutes, because nothing else makes it to five. That gives it the opportunity to play slower and heavier and that's a good sound for them. Less doomy songs simply feel the need to be done sooner, usually in four minute in change.

This isn't an album to knock your socks off, but it's a solid slab of traditional heavy metal. I like it a lot and, while the thrash fan in me is always going to gravitate to the barrelling along of El poder de la mentira, the doom fan in me appreciates the slower stuff too. It's hard to pick out favourite tracks, though I'd have to include the title track in that number, because it's easier to call out the moments that work best. The songs are consistent, without any of them letting the side down.

I like the NWOBHM touches on Liberacion and Almas en la oscuridad, along with the vocal reach on the former. There's a tasty riff on Buenos tiempos and a tasty solo that's all the better for Ruben not making it remotely flash. The perkiness of Nuestra gran ciudad works particularly well, even after a doomy intro and before fancy soloing. It has a neat ending too, just as Bajo las cenizas de un imperio has a neat beginning. There are a lot of moments here, which means that the entire album works very well as an easily repeated forty-five minute slab of music rather than a handful of standouts that would make a Greatest Hits album and a bunch of filler. That's old school too.

Nile - The Underworld Awaits Us All (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Brutal/Technical Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Aug 2024
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Here's the tenth album for Egyptian metallers Nile and pretty much everything I said about their ninth, Vile Necrotic Rites, holds here, except perhaps for the bits about diverse instrumentation. This is more traditional instrumentally and perhaps that's why it doesn't quite match that album, the unusual string sound on a delightful interlude called The Pentagrammathion of Nephren-Ka notwithstanding and whatever's going on in the coda to Under the Curse of the One God.

The most diverse element this time is vocal, with a whole slew of guest vocalists joining guitarist and lead singer Karl Sanders and the other members of the band who chime in occasionally with a backing vocal. Tellingly, many of these are female, though not from singers known for their work for other bands, and they don't usually sound typical for metal. It would be fairer to say that they sound like they've been borrowed from opera or musical theatre or jazz. A few are male and more expected for epic metal, on songs like True Gods of the Desert.

The unusual female vocals aren't frequent but they're always prominent when they happen and none of them feel like they ought to fit, even if they're all in time with what's unfolding around them. Of course, they do fit, even if the abiding impression is that they're being performed next door in another studio but someone opened an ill advised window so that they bleed through at the precisely perfect time. Then the window is closed again and they're gone.

The first arrives in Overlords of the Black Earth, as if an opera is determined to spring out of that black earth and the band are the titular overlords tasked with performing a ritual to stop it. I'm sure that's not what's happening in the lyrics, even if "we utter the words of power" does rather sound like opera. That returns on Under the Curse of the One God, even if it's just for a couple of lines, while the guitar is warping in fascinating fashion, and on Doctrine of Last Things, the title track and others.

I should call out this warping because it's a fascinating approach, most obviously on Overlords of the Black Earth but also to a lesser degree on a number of other songs. As if their sound wasn't already an intense thing, Nile have bulked up to a trio of guitarists: founder Sanders, plus Brian Kingsland, who was on Vile Necrotic Rites, and one of two new fish this year, Zach Jeter (the other is bassist Dan Vadim Von). I have no idea who's doing this warp guitar thing, but it's a wild and experimental idea that gives the firm impression that the rituals that Nile are performing are opening or closing portals with a quirky and esoteric effect.

Of course, it's still Nile and that means that it's uncompromisingly brutal but also very technical, so that there's never a dull moment. Stelae of Vultures is a powerful opener, but the second track simply erupts out of the gate and I wonder if those should have been swapped around, especially given that the second track is done and dusted in under four blistering minutes while the opener extends out to six and change. It does that appropriately, I should add; it just accordingly fails to have the same impact as the shorter, sharper shock after it.

By the way, I say "second track" so I don't have to keep saying Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes, a title so drawn out it even gets abbreviated in the lyrics. If my favourite songs are the ones with strange vocal additions and unusual effects and codas, like the triple whammy of Overlords of the Black Earth, Under the Curse of the One God and Doctrine of Last Things, I also keep coming back to the second track for the most blistering pace and impact anywhere on the album.

And, of course, along with everything else I said in my Vile Necrotic Rites review that holds true on this one, there's one statement that abides above them all. That's that I'm far less a fan of brutal death metal than I am most other extreme metal genres, but Nile are probably my favourite band to work overtly within that style. My biggest problem with brutal death metal is that much of it is unable to distinguish itself from the rest. Nile are the emphatic exception to that rule. I like this, just not quite as much as its predecessor.

Der Neue Planet - Schwerkraft für Anfänger (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Aug 2024
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This third album from Cologne's Der Neue Planet came to me as stoner rock, which is certainly one element of its sound, but it reaches a long way beyond it. The titles mostly suggest space rock, an obvious element from the opening synth drone. However, there's also plenty of post-rock in play, along with prog, psych, krautrock and other genres. At points, there are hints of surf music and a few soft backdrops that remind of lounge, for harder sounds in the foreground to contrast with.

I should explain those titles, because they're all in German, this being entirely instrumental music with no lyrics. The album title translates to Gravity for Beginners, which suggests that we're in the presence of those who might live without it but are coming to visit. That's not a bad way to look at the music within it.

The unwieldy Unendlicher Unwahrscheinlichkeitsdrive translates to Infinite Improbability Drive, a device in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which suggests that this track can and absolutely should go absolutely everywhere. It doesn't, perhaps inevitably, but it does go to a lot of different places. Instabile Weiße Zwerge meaning Unstable White Dwarfs, which is ironic as this piece has a section that's as close to traditional classic rock as anything else here. Galaktisch. Praktisch. Gut. or Galactic. Practical. Good. is less obvious in its intent, but it's a positive piece.

Phobos and Deimos, of course, are the moons of Mars, but they're brief interludes here that serve no other purpose because they're almost empty. If you listen to them in isolation you'll wonder as to where they were. Alpha Ursae Minoris is the star usually known as Polaris, the Pole Star or the North Star, a particularly useful star in navigation, at least in the northern hemisphere. That may suggest that it's the guide to this album, a notion backed up by the fact that it's at the very heart of it, being track four of seven, and the fact that it's the longest piece here at almost ten minutes. Does everything here appear in this one in microcosm? No, I don't think so, but it does seem to try.

That just leaves Lirum Larum Lapidarium, which isn't entirely Latin. A lapidarium is a repository of stones, usually with historical meaning, but I have no idea what the rest of the title means. Maybe that's why it's the most experimental piece here, starting out with soft, resonant acoustic guitar but ending as pure krautrock. All in all, these tracks make for quite the journey, but it isn't merely one journey, as so many psychedelic rock albums are, with each track continuing in the same vein as the rest; these are each individual pieces of music with individual goals, tones and moods.

While Unendlicher Unwahrscheinlichkeitsdrive ought to be the most varied, it may need to battle Alpha Ursae Minoris for that crown and everything else except the interludes might want a word too. It has the benefit of coming first to nail its claim into our skulls, though, and it's the one that delves into surf pop and soft psychedelia before finding some heavier stoner rock. Even though it plays light at points, it's Instabile Weiße Zwerge that feels like light is a motif. Sure, it builds too, as all of these songs do to various degrees, moving from soft to heavy or at least heavier, but it's positive in nature, as if these white dwarfs are still delivering light, however inconsistently.

Alpha Ursae Minoris takes that and runs with it. This is the one with the lounge-like backdrop for the pulsing bass and jagged riffs to dance all over. It's a delightful contrast, as if liquid is meeting rock, perhaps for the first time. Of course, the rock abides, however playful it gets and it gets very playful over nine minutes and change. Galaktisch. Praktisch. Gut. may well be my favourite piece of all, once again lighter early and heavier late, but even more so, reminding of west African highlife early and finding a sassy seventies hard rock groove in the second half.

There are many grooves on Lirum Larum Lapidarium, from the soft opening through arguably the most overt stoner rock, albeit with funky breaks, to the krautrock towards the end. It's maybe the least consistent in how it shifts between grooves, some of them layering tastily but others feeling more jagged and less effective. Sure, this stoner rock groove benefits from that keyboard groove being played over it, but that groove shifts to another without warning and we're taken aback.

I haven't heard Der Neue Planet before, but they have two prior albums out, Magrathea Erwacht, another Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy nod, and Area Fifty-Fun, from 2018 and 2022 respectively. It's abidingly clear that I should seek those out sharpish.

Moggs Motel - Moggs Motel (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 6 Sep 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

Given that Phil Mogg has fronted UFO for over half a century, it isn't surprising to find UFO within the sound of what I thought was his first solo album but may not be. It appears that it's the debut of a new band that he's fronting, Moggs Motel sans the apostrophe. It can't hurt that Neil Carter is the keyboardist and one of a pair of guitarists, a role he's served in a couple of stints with UFO, including now, if they're still officially together. I'm just happy that Mogg is still recording, given that he suffered a 2022 heart attack that prompted the cancellation of the final UFO tour.

He's recognisable here, of course, but he puts a bit more grit into his voice than I'm used to, so he ends up a little bluesier and dirtier and I like that a lot. It works well with the guitar tone and the driving nature of many of these songs. That starts with the opening track, Apple Pie, where he's more emphatic and almost vicious at points. It's not all about melody here, though that's present, of course; it's also about attitude, even when the song shifts into handclaps, when it gets sassier.

He's the only male vocalist here, I believe, but there's certainly a female voice in the background on a few tracks, one that sounds like it was born singing gospel. It's there on Sunny Side of Heaven, which is a driving rocker, but it returns on Princess Bride and especially Tinker Tailor, where things shift more into gospel without ever leaving rock behind, in ways reminiscent of Lynyrd Skynyrd on their 1991 album. It's not there throughout, though, which helps keep the album admirably varied.

The heaviest songs are the driving ones, especially Sunny Side of Heaven, but there's heaviness in the slower songs too, like Weather and Other People's Lives. I like Weather a lot, with its simple but effective riff, flamboyant guitar solo and relished vocal delivery from Mogg. More than anything, I like the sections where it drops out of the riff and does really interesting things. However, my favourite tracks are the ones that fit in between these two approaches and a lot of why comes down to the hooks.

I Thought I Knew You is more AC/DC than UFO in its riffing, but the latter is there in the melodies and the breakdowns. This is the first song that absolutely nails its chorus, Mogg falling into quite the effortless groove. The other one that manages it is Wrong House, which has a bizarre intro in Harry's Place, a minute long interlude that's clearly there to set a scene. It's driven by flute and it's certainly evocative but, as much as I like it, I'm not convinced it works to set up Wrong House. Tony Newton's excellent bassline does that much better.

The more Mogg finds those grooves, the more this reminds of UFO and it's never a long way away. While UFO could rock like nobody else, whether the lead guitarist was Michael Schenker or Vinnie Moore or any number of others in between, they were incredibly good at quiet moments too, not only in outright ballads, and that holds for Moggs Motel. Face of an Angel opens atmospherically in rain. Princess Bride gets elegant towards the end with some wonderful swells, elegance that's happy to roll right into the orchestration in Other People's Lives. Shane starts out with keyboards that are almost trying to mimic a harpsichord.

What's perhaps most telling is that, while I didn't have much trouble picking out some highlights, I Thought I Knew You and Wrong House standing out every time through and Apple Pie an emphatic opener however many times I run through the album, even with the heaviest song following right on its tail, everything else stands up to be counted too. There isn't a duff song here and there isn't an average one either, unless we question why Harry's Place is there. I liked this on the first listen but it didn't knock my socks off. Each further time through, it gets better and better until I really can't justify not including it on my highly recommended list for the year.

And that means an 8/10 rather than than a 9/10, because there are flaws if we look closely enough and, as I mentioned, it still doesn't blow me away. However, it's consistently strong across a dozen tracks, versatile enough for everything to delineate itself immediately and memorable enough to have me humming bars from it when I wander off to grab lunch. And, more than anything, it's the epitome of welcoming when I wander back. I've probably listened through a dozen times now and I haven't once felt the urge to even skip a single track. This is really good stuff and I hope Mogg will be healthy enough to tour in support of it.