ALBUM REVIEW: The Phantom Carriage, "7-Year Epilogue"

By: Peter Morsellino

Album Type: Full Length 

Date Released: 14/08/2020 

Label: Throatruiner Records

 

“7 Year Epilogue” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). Free at Last 

2). Every Second Holds a Life

3). A Tribute to Those Who Stand Still 

4). Old Tales, New Thoughts

5). Deeper, Lower 

6). The Fate

7). One Last Time

The Review:

France's The Phantom Carriage return from an extended hiatus with the incredibly ambitious “7 Year Epilogue”. A melding of genres and emotions, The Phantom Carriage really get the chance to spread their wings and let the creative juices flow.

With notes running the gamut of black metal, hardcore, and screamo, The Phantom Carriage show off a bit of everything in a great big crust punk cauldron here. The styles flow in and out of each other seamlessly, allowing for unbroken concentration on the stories being told by each song.  I'm tempted to note a bit of a black gaze thing going on, but I think this group moves beyond that trend. The melding of the generally cold hardcore and black metal influences with a very emotional lilt creates an immediate connection with the listener. It grabs hold of you and refuses to let go.  I do not believe that I've ever heard such catchy melodic hooks on a crust punk album before.

The raw emotion found pushing the musical delivery is the real star of the show on this album. The band does an amazing job of conveying an aura of dread and despair.  Vocally, The Phantom Carriage features a wide range, all leading back into the emotive product. There's anger here, but also fear and pain. It's a well-rounded picture of the story that is being told. 

The Phantom Carriage have a winner on their hands with “7-Year Epilogue”. It checks all the boxes for this reviewer, being a heavy, emotionally robust piece. I say check this one out.

“7-Year Epilogue” is available HERE

 

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Leeched, “To Dull The Blades of Your Abuse”

By: Jeff Anderson

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 31/01/2020

Label: Prosthetic Records

“To Dull The Blades of Your Abuse” CD//DD//LP track listing:

01.) The Hound’s Jaw
02.) The Grey Tide
03.) I, Flatline
04.) Now It Ends
05.) Earth And Ash
06.) Famine At The Gates
07.) Praise Your Blades
08.) Burn With Me
09.) Let Me Die

The Review:

What can you say about a band whose actions cover it all and leave little left to sell you on? In only 3 years and some change, Manchester UK's metallic hardcore act Leeched have managed to not only land on the highly respected Prosthetic Records and headline tours but have also (now) released three records; each growing darker and more manic. With almost no time in between releases and touring while avoiding steering themselves into blandness, the band has ascended itself into the same ranks as similar genre-buddies Full of Hell, Nails, and Harm's Way and doing so in about a quarter of the time. Which shows that the band's work ethic matches the ferocity of the music. If you can believe that.

The previous releases from this band include 2017's 'Nothing Will Grow From The Rotten Ground' EP and their 2018 full length record 'You Took The Sun When You Left'. While never abandoning the sound they love, which has always been sort of a Slayer meets Converge with a bit of Crowbar thrown in, each album has built off of the last one and adding a dash of something new every time while growing angrier and becoming tighter as a group. Never once does it feel like they're repeating themselves. It's a continuance that proceeds to get better and more emotional. Or emotionless?

From the visceral lyrics, to the mountain shaking bass, to the brick wall of Kurt Ballou sounding guitars, and the drums crushing your windpipe, Leeched has returned, exceptionally fast as usual, and with even more hatred than before. If the lyrics don't make you feel it, the music for sure will. If you could describe the sound of an apocalyptic, Mad Max-esque, no hope or care for the future type setting, this new record would be it.

Their latest release 'To Dull The Blades of Your Abuse' (due out January 31st, 2020 on Prosthetic Records), is a nightmare. And I mean that in the best way possible. This album builds on their previous tightly executed mixture of hardcore, sludge, industrial, and old school straight-up heavy metal and somehow manages to make it even more bleak and disgusting. While definitely not shying away from their hardcore and grind elements on tracks like 'The Grey Tide', 'Earth and Ash', and 'Praise Your Blades', this album does trek into the sludge side of things more than they have before. Tracks like 'Now It Ends' and 'Let Me Die' showcase the low and slow sludge elements this band excels at. As well as sprinkling it in almost every track on this record to my excitement. It's more raw, nastier, and more upsetting than they've ever been before. It feels like this album is trying to harm you. It wants you to feel the pain it feels. And I absolutely love that. Once the music hits on the opening track 'The Hound's Jaw', it's filled with squeals and cries reminiscent of Pantera's 'Hellbound', followed by 36 minutes of a claustrophobic dragging through scum, which only ceases at the very end of 'Black Sun Ceremony' with a swan dive into the blackest depths of your own hell.

A standout track for me is 'Now It Ends' and if there has ever been a name that fits a song this is it. Nothing fancy, nothing overdone or overthought. Just a song that feels like despair and emptiness. This song to me feels like what a man spiraling out of control would hear in his head right at the end. All signs of sanity and happiness have slipped away and this is what rings in his head until he stops it by his own hand.

Leeched completely nailed it on this record. It's January and this is already going to be a competitor for top 10 lists in 2020 for heavy music. If you're looking for bleak, gross, ultra-heavy metallic/blackened hardcore then this record is it. Forever.
_____

'To Dull The Blades of Your Abuse' is available HERE:

Band info: facebook || bandcamp

REVIEW: The Secret, "Lux Tenebris" EP

By: Chris Bull

Album Type: EP

Date Released: 31/08/2018

Label: Southern Lord Recordings

“Lux Tenebris” is absolutely terrifying in its delivery and atmosphere, by the time the slower riff of “Cupio Dissolvi’ cascades into the ether, you’ll begin to wonder whether you’ve listened to an EP or been sacrificed to a dark entity.

“Lux Tenebris” DD//LP track listing:

1). Vertigo

2). The Sorrowful Void

3). Cupio Dissolvi

The Review:

Italians The Secret are a band that are difficult to pigeonhole. Equal parts blackened hardcore, sludgy crust and nihilistic grind, with a pinch of apocalyptic doom for good measure, they seem to get heavier...and indeed better, with each new release. So it comes as no surprise that ‘Lux Tenebris’ the new 3 track EP is a maelstrom of hell fire and fury.

From the slow build of 'Vertigo' with its evil melodies penetrating the methodical black magic ceremony within, it switches gears as it struggles to contain the raging beast that is 'The Sorrowful Void'. Absolutely terrifying in its delivery and atmosphere, the track takes no prisoners and the blastbeat halfway through is almost a respite from the oppressive nature of the music.

Closer ‘Cupio Dissolvi’ is probably the blackest and nastiest the band have ever sounded; the tremolo riffs, blasts and d-beats create a magnanimous and utterly filthy piece of music that stands out among this year’s releases. By the time the slower riff cascades into the ether, you’ll begin to wonder whether you’ve listened to an EP or been sacrificed to a dark entity.

“Lux Tenebris” is available here

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Ancst, "Ghosts of the Timeless Void"

By: Conor O’Dea

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 02/03/2018

Label: Lifeforce Records

Ancst have evolved, seemingly effortlessly, certainly gracefully, and sound more like themselves than ever - whatever inner telos they have been moving towards has been realized in this beautiful album

“Ghosts of the Timeless Void” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). Dying Embers
2). Shackles of Decency
3). Concrete Veins
4). Revelation of Deformity
5). Unmasking the Imposters
6). Of Gallows and Pyres
7). Quicksand
8). Republic of Hatred
9). Dysthymia
10). Sanctity
11). Self-Portrait

The Review:

Lex transitum per ignem, in honorem Molechi prohibens

Pure Fucking Hate. As album opening phrases go, this quote from 2017's “Life” is poignant, jarring, and certainly germane to the themes raised throughout Ancst's second full-length album, “Ghosts of the Timeless Void”. Where the film discusses the return of life-form responsible for an extinction avalanche on Martian soil, one cannot help but think that Ancst's object of antipathy may be more earthbound. And while we may speak of dying embers and pyres here, the fires of injustice-fueled rage are an abiding conflagration across the album - there are no coals cooling in the furnace of Ancst's anger, and the insatiable Moloch of capitalism continues to consume endless sacrifices.

The sound that this side of Ancst has been evolving towards, to my mind, first manifested on track two of the 2013 EP, “The Humane Condition”, which was partnered by the first release of their first ambient/drone work, “Lamenting a Dying World”. That track, “Entropie”, captures a sound that eloquently defines Ancst: polished but savage, graceful, commit and unrelenting. And they have been prolific: despite this being only their second full-length, 2017 saw the release of the superb “Furnace” EP as well as two top-notch splits, one with King Apathy, one with Depravation. This is not to ignore 2016's brilliant “Stormcaster”, the most fulsome interlocution of the soundscapes first explored in “Lamenting…”. Across the course of these releases, Ancst have entered the elite pantheon of 'do no wrong' bands for me: I always eagerly anticipate new music from them, no matter what the sonic angle. “Ghosts of the Timeless Void” is no exception.

It's interesting to compare LP openers here: “Moloch” is one of the most explosive album introits that I have ever heard - instantaneous teeth-kicking power unleashed from go. “Dying Embers” starts off considerably more restrained by comparison, even slow by Ancst's punishing pace-standards - until about the 1:00 mark - when everything explodes in dynamic fury. It almost feels like an inversion of the earlier structure in certain ways. This more thoughtful approach allows Ancst to marry the melodic, riff-dense elements of their approach to some mindful sophistication in terms of metrical and rhythmical variety. But it is never heavy-handed, never overly obvious, and at no point loses the plot of what makes Ancst a standout band that places them high in the melodic crust mythos. Poignant exemplars of this maturation are found throughout the album: in the opening riffs of “Quicksand”, in the death-inflected “Unmasking the Imposters”, in the epic “Republic of Hatred”, in the classic blackened tremolo work of “Sanctity”. “Dysthymia”, is the closest I have heard Ancst to creating what almost sounds like post-black/blackgaze ballad. Meaningless subgenre references aside, what I am trying to emphasize is that Ancst have evolved, seemingly effortlessly, certainly gracefully, and sound more like themselves than ever - whatever inner telos they have been moving towards has been realized in this beautiful album. Listen to it from start to finish and love it. I know I did.

“Ghosts of the Timeless Void” is available here

Band info: bandcamp || facebook