ALBUM REVIEW: Midnight, "Rebirth by Blasphemy

By: Richard Maw

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 24/01/2020

Label: Metal Blade Records

“Rebirth by Blasphemy” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). Fucking Speed & Darkness

2). Rebirth by Blasphemy

3). Escape The Grave

4). Cursed Possessions

5). Rising Scum

6). Raw Attack

7). Devil’s Excrement

8). Warning from the Reaper

9). The Sounds of Hell

10). You Can Drag me Through Fire

The Review:

Midnight, North America's Venomous Motorhead acolytes are back with this ten track panzer of an album. This is their fourth album and all is operating exactly as you would expect. From the first album proper in 2011, “Satanic Royalty”, it was obvious where Midnight were coming from, going to and what they intended to do on the way.

For those who don't know, this is Motorhead by way of Venom and any other down 'n' dirty rock 'n' roll acts you can name. I missed “Sweet Death and Ecstasy” in 2017, but I was in on the ground floor for both “Satanic Royalty” and “No Mercy For Mayhem”. This is closer to “Satanic Royalty” than “NMFM”. The rolling grooves are ever present and the Fast Eddie-esque leads of the title track let you know that the band's modus operandi has not changed one jot.

Indeed, the opener of “Fucking Speed and Darkness” reads like a manifesto. It's simple, really: if you like classic Motorhead and classic Venom, you will love this. You can pick any track and it represents the band; “Escape The Grave” is superb and Motorhead-ish, “Devil's Excrement” is excellent and Venom-like as is “Rising Scum”.

As a one man band in the studio, there is no real sense of any of this being sterile and over-produced (!) but there is some variety in tempos and riffs. Athenar has done a great job as a lone wolf musician as it sounds like a band playing in the studio- no mean feat. I prefer the more Motorhead-esque material- “Warning From The Reaper” is perhaps a good example- but there is absolutely nothing to dislike here.

Just as there are no bad tracks, there are no huge stand outs either- this is just a consistent and rock solid album. If “Satanic Royalty” had “You Can't Stop Steel” and “Rip This Hell”, while “No Mercy For Mayhem” had “Prowling Leather”, this album has ten tracks of uniformly high standard that will please fans of old and anyone new to the band who gets what they are about. If pushed, I might go with “The Sounds of Hell” or “Fucking Speed and Darkness” as the pick of the litter, but there are good arguments for any song here.

With a pleasingly 80s drum sound and rough and ready mix, this is simple blackened rock n roll. The closing “You Can Drag Me Through The Fire” is a slight departure from the blueprint with its longer intro, but really it's a case of business as usual once the track gets going. This is another good album from Midnight and one that will please the already committed violators or newcomers to the band's satanic rites.

“Rebirth by Blasphemy” is available HERE

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Tribulation - "Down Below"

By: Daniel Jackson

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 26/01/2018

Label: Century Media Records

I’ll stop short of calling this Tribulation’s defining masterpiece, if only because the band seem to keep outdoing themselves. For that same reason, it’s hard to imagine the band won’t have even more to show us as the years go by, and that’s a thrilling prospect.

‘Down Below’ CD//DD//LP track listing:

01. The Lament

02. Nightbound

03. Lady Death

04. Subterranea

05. Purgatorio

06. Cries From The Underworld

07. Lacrimosa

08. The World

09. Here Be Dragons

The Review:

By this point, most of you reading this are going to be familiar with the transformation Tribulation has undergone over the last decade or so. Beginning as a more traditional, yet unique and creative Swedish death metal band, and over time moving further and further into a lush, blackened goth metal kind of sound. That’s not exactly a common trajectory for a band, but then Tribulation isn’t a common band.

While I’m sure there are still people holding out hope for something closer to ‘The Horror’ or ‘The Formulas of Death’, 2015’s ‘The Children of the Night’ was a definitive clean break from the thrashy, progressive death metal of the band’s early years. The glowing reception with which the album was received by both critics and a large number of new and current fans of the band probably wouldn’t have dissuaded them from continuing on their current course.

All of that is to say that ‘Down Below’ is a further exploration of the sound Tribulation established with ‘Children of the Night’, leaning into the accessible nature of their previous album and further toying with the subjective boundaries each of us set as to what counts as metal vs. hard rock. In that sense a good comparison point might be a band like Ghost, even if the two are pretty different, stylistically. This correlation is particularly evident on “Subterranea”, with its subtle inclusion of classic heavy metal elements in the verse, and the theatrical nature of the song’s opening moments.

Tribulation’s current modus operandi is straddling the fence between commercial accessibility and the underground’s love of artistic indulgence and morose aesthetics. Johannes Andersson’s vocals—as decipherable as they may be—are still very much in a black metal vein, and will continue to limit the pace at which they can grow their fanbase. Looking at them purely as an artistic choice, it works for me, but I love vocals in that style to begin with. But it also means their ceiling will remain at a certain level.

Instrumentally and compositionally, it’s clear as day that the band is continuing to appeal to a larger audience, but Andersson’s vocals keep them tethered to their point of origin, and interviews the band has done in the past indicate that it’s a conscious choice. It’s a part of their identity that they value more than whatever potential growth might come from making a vocal change as drastic as their musical changes have been. The vocal situation illustrates that Tribulation is remarkably comfortable with who they are. Sure they could probably bring in a singer like Pelle Åhman (who I’ve been advocating for on twitter for a couple of years now), but then it wouldn’t be them. The songs are immediately catchy, the vocals are caustic and grim. That’s who Tribulation are.

Time has a funny way of proving statements like this next one wrong, but in this moment, ‘Down Below’ feels like an improved and stronger version of the vision they brought to life on ‘The Children of the Night’. This album is a refinement rather than another great leap forward, and I think that’s exactly what was needed. ‘The Children of the Night’ had the benefit of leaving an immediate impression because it was so different, and time has not been as kind to parts of that album because, in retrospect, the whole experience would have been much better served at forty minutes than at fifty-six. ‘Down Below’ is more concise, and the songs here are better realized and written, outside of the previous album’s opening pair of songs. I’ll stop short of calling this Tribulation’s defining masterpiece, if only because the band seem to keep outdoing themselves. For that same reason, it’s hard to imagine the band won’t have even more to show us as the years go by, and that’s a thrilling prospect.

‘Down Below’ is available a digitally here and on CD/LP here.

Band info: Official Site || Facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Satyricon - "Deep Calleth Upon Deep"

By: Daniel Jackson

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 22/09/2017

Label: Napalm Records

 ‘Deep Calleth Upon Deep’ is something of a spiritual successor to ‘Rebel Extravaganza’ in that the goal appears to have been to take an established sound and create the weirdest, artsiest version of it they could and there is evidence of a sweeping creative resurgence throughout the album as a whole.

‘Deep Calleth Upon Deep’ CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. Midnight Serpent

2. Blood Cracks Open The Ground

3. To Your Brethren In The Dark

4. Deep Calleth Upon Deep

5. The Ghost Of Rome

6. Dissonant

7. Black Wings And Withering Gloom

8. Burial Rite

The Review:

For most of you reading this; Satyricon requires no introduction. The band was among the most popular in Norwegian black metal dating back to the mid 90s. Opinions, as is often the case, vary as to where the band peaked creatively. For some, it’s their second wave black metal period from ‘Dark Medieval Times’ through “Nemesis Divina”. Others prefer the forward-thinking mania of ‘Rebel Extravaganza’ or the stripped down black n’ roll approach of the last 15 years.

For the purposes of this review, it’s worth pointing out that I believe their creative apex to be the period from ‘Dark Medieval Times’ through ‘Rebel Extravaganza’, with ‘Volcano’ being hit and miss, and everything since then being thoroughly middle of the road; accessible at the cost of any idea that might be exciting or interesting. While the band have never made a bad album, they’ve settled for “fine” for three straight albums, to the point that even the band themselves acknowledge that a change of direction was desperately needed. In the press materials for ‘Deep Calleth Upon Deep’, Satyr spoke to the need for the band to move on:

"Approaching this release, what I always kept in mind is that either this is the beginning of something new or it's gonna be my last record. If this is going to be the last, then it needs to be something special.”

If nothing else, it’s fair to say that this mindset has resulted in the band’s first truly exciting album in the last fifteen years. Contextually, ‘Deep Calleth Upon Deep’ is something of a spiritual successor to ‘Rebel Extravaganza’ in that the goal appears to have been to take an established sound and create the weirdest, artsiest version of it they could. “Rebel Extravaganza” mutated and distorted 2nd wave black metal into something wild and wholly unique. Here, Satyricon twists the much more plain style of the last decade-plus into a truly engaging black n’ roll freakout. In fact, calling ‘Deep Calleth Upon Deep’ “black n’ roll” feels like selling it short. While I may not have found the last several Satyricon albums all that interesting, they’d still cultivated their own unique sound, and each album was immediately identifiable as Satyricon. That identity remains intact here, despite forgoing the tropes and formula they’ve settled into over the years.

A sweeping creative resurgence is evident all throughout the album. Album opener “Midnight Serpent” runs a gauntlet of ideas, ranging from the conservatively black metal opening moments to the sprawling dissonant atmosphere of the song’s 2nd half. “The Ghost of Rome” is about as close as a black metal band has ever come to crafting their own version of late 60s psychedelic pop, or more recently, Queens of the Stone Age's “Another Love Song”.

The point is; it’s more evident than ever that Satyricon will never truly journey back to a conventional black metal sound. Waiting for bands to tap into whatever your perceived peak era for them might be is a recipe for disappointment. Some bands manage to pull it off, but they’re the exceptions. In Satyricon’s case, they’ve finally arrived at a new sound that’s as well-worth exploring as their early glory years. Progress for a band is a good thing, when it works. The road to this point wasn’t a smooth one, but they’ve gotten to where they need to be. They’re very different from the band we knew 20 years ago, but they’re every bit as interesting as they were back then.

‘Deep Calleth Upon Deep’ is available digitally here and on CD/LP here.

Band info: Facebook