siLLy puPPy Chugging buzzsaw guitars, lo-fi production fuzziness, demonic vocal rasping piercing the wall of shadowy din with adrenalized rampages altering with creeping advances. These are the now well established attributes of Tobias Möckl’s one man band PAYSAGE D’HIVER which since 1998 has continued to deliver the sounds of a turbulent winter storm with no end. This Swiss soldier in the black metal army (as well as key member of Möckl’s other well known band, Darkspace), returns with another whopping blast of Arctic chill with his newest release DIE BERGE, the German words meaning “The Mountains” thus showcased on a dismal album cover of grainy black and white vagueness. Unleashing another ferocious attack of ambient atmospheric black metal some 26 years after the debut “Steineiche,” PAYSAGE D’HIVER is up to album #15 this time around and follows in the footsteps of the more modern releases with a sprawling running time of almost 103 minutes.

Despite the lengthy sojourn into the frigid icy sonic swells that rumble on for well over an hour, DIE BERGE features a mere 7 tracks with every single track but one hitting the 11-minute mark with the grandest of sprawlers coming first in the form of “Urgrund” which slinks past the 18-minute playing time. Now that’s a lot of jagged wintery downtuned distortion to soak in but somehow once again Mr Möckl showcases his knack to craft hostile frosty soundscapes that march on through lengthy processions like an intrepid journey into the unknown during the hostile shivery moments of winter delivered in a demeanor as chilling and inclement as the inhospitable apices of the Swiss Alps. Appearing as the sole contributor under the moniker Wintherr, his compositions on DIE BERGE emulate a nasty blizzard lambasting the peaks in musical form with oscillating swells of lo-fi distortion and the blurred distinction between treble and bass accompanied by the pacifying melodic touches of the atmospheric keyboard runs that so gracefully slink in and out of the treacherous soundscapes. Blastbeats and tranquilized drum percussion trades off with moments of a unifying bleakness as the bantering guitar and bass swells deliver maximum bombast.

While the world of black metal continues to splinter off in a great number of variations, PAYSAGE D’HIVER offers that respite into the world of darkened lo-fi grittiness that launched the Norwegian second wave black metal scene some 30 years ago and retains that general vibe which has become somewhat diluted and altered with the advent of more progressive and experimental black metal of the 21st century. DIE BERGE like the general PAYSAGE D’HIVER canon offers that much needed transcendental escape into a nightmarish and ominous journey into the turbulent black metal disarray that tames chaotic soundscapes into melodic almost post-metal like cyclical loops that rumble on for long segments of time yet somehow never seem to grow stale as the chugging riffs and hypnotic repetitive motifs slowly churn on for minutes on end. It’s very much the black metal equivalent to laying on the ground and simply watching the clouds drift by with subtle variations oozing out at glacial speeds. The album’s seven tracks may be lengthy but each forges its own identity despite deriving inspiration from the same playbook. Despite the simplicity of the melodic structure, the album is utterly mesmerizing and casts the perfect spell to allow the protracted paragons to perform their wintery magic.

Don’t expect any Alpine folk interpretations or experimental touches. PAYSAGE D’HIVER isn’t one to throw curveballs but rather delivers comfort metal of the frigid variety for those accustomed to the long drawn out processions into gelid wintery soundscapes that Wintherr has possibly become the most adept at crafting. DIE BERGE may not differ substantially from PAYSAGE D’HIVER’s long and well-established canon significantly but nevertheless this guy really knows how to keep the consistency in his work without falling from grace. Black metal is a fickle beast and can easily be slayed by too much regalia adornment. In the case of PAYSAGE D’HIVER it seems that keeping it simple without too much excess fluff has been the magic bullet that has propelled Wintherr and his project well into the 21st century with no signs of running out of gas. While i wouldn’t call DIE BERGE any sort of advancement in the established stylistic approach, i can say that Wintherr has delivered another wickedly delightful slice of chillingly frosty atmospheric black metal that keeps his legacy churning along.

siLLy puPPy After a lengthy hiatus that found a whopping elapse of 13 years since its last full length album, the mighty MITOCHRONDRION has resurrected itself from a self-imposed slumber and slithered out of its hibernation chambers to unleash the third installment of its brutal bantering discography. While the band dropped an EP in 2013 and a split in 2016 showing continued signs of life, unexpectedly and turbulently this Victoria, BC based band has unleashed a massive sprawling double disc release in 2024 in the form of VITRISEPTOME. Delivering another esoteric and mysterious album title, this word like its predecessors “Archaeaeon” and “Parasignosis” has emerged like a linguistic Frankenstein of the band’s own making. Breaking down into the logical components, VITRI- possibly refers to the legit “vitic” which means relating to, resembling or having the nature of glass. SEPT most likely signifies the number seven whereas the TOME part could possibly refer to a book or set of books of several volumes featured in a scholarly fashion. So logically perhaps a “Seven Volume Tome In Glass?”

Whatever the fuck it means, VITRISEPTOME is a behemoth of a musical monstrosity that features 17 ear shattering tracks that sprawl on to a whopping one hour and 25 minutes! That’s a tall order for a band that consistently delivers some of the most frightening and energetic displays of technical disso-death metal in the modern realms of the ever-expanding universe of extreme metal’s most popular nook. So what’s new with MITOCHONDRION you ask? Well, dare i say melody? This band’s past is one of murky nebulous swells of sound that conjure up demonic forces that deliver astral terror. In many ways the band returns with a sound that’s business as usual with the expected rampaging guitar riffs distorted to kingdom come accompanied by blitzkrieg percussion gymnastics in a crushing cacophony that blurs the distinction between black metal, death metal and the avant-garde. Also once again MITOCHONDRION delivers hefty doses of preternatural aural assaults bedecked with ample touches of Lovecraftian surrealism.

VITRISEPTOME may resemble its heritage in the aforementioned carry over elements that make MITOCHONDRION sound like no other however beneath the dissonant display of bantering freneticism, this album is quite different in many ways with the most prominent feature being that of a more melodic approach that is implemented by the higher register guitar licks that accompany the brutal bombast of the rampaging riffing. Also notable is the more cavernous texture of the production and mixing which offers a more Portal-like effect that offers moments of pure blackened noise as heard on the combo back of “[ ]” and the title track which sound like an avalanche of amplifiers generating a feedback explosion. While the previous albums offered a more surreal blurry bleeding over of the instrumentation, VITRISEPTOME on the other hand delivers a more distinguished separation of guitars, bass and other elements such as the various tonal textures offered by such unorthodoxies as the timpani, flute, bone horn and singing bowl. As far as the guitars are concerned there is more of an old school Morbid Angel feel on many track with that classic guitar squealing effect emerging from the din. But don’t let these small details fool you. This is MITOCHONDRION raging on in fine form!

Despite the hour and a half playing time i found myself able to take in the entire shebang in one sitting and that’s saying something these days when i find many albums are tediously too long for their own good. Something about MITOCHONDRION’s multi-faceted delivery system that keeps things sounding uniform in style yet diverse in how the details define the sum of the parts. It’s a demanding listening experience but unlike previous efforts that only offered the gloomiest and doomiest musical excursions to be had, VITRISEPTOME feels like it adds a ray of light to the chaotic disso-death battlefield of instrumentation with digestible chunks of melodic victory prognosticating a triumphant outcome despite a bleak and seemingly hopeless outcome. Once again MITOCHONDRION successfully conveys a strange metaphysical scenario that while nebulous in nature offers a wild emotional ride through the incessant swarm of sonic entropy. Personally i still prefer the band’s first two albums as this one is less consistent in its overall effect despite in many ways pretty much following in the footsteps of the previous albums. I’m a bit underwhelmed that the band didn’t deliver 13 years of innovation however despite those nitpicky quibbles i have to say that VITRISEPTOME is still a freakin’ awesome display of 21st century techy blackened disso-death. For me just a smidge inferior to the band’s past but this very well could grow on me over time indeed.

siLLy puPPy Forged in the frigid northwestern North American enclave of Victoria, British Columbia, the dissonant birth pangs of MITOCHONDRION were spawned in 2003 by vocalist / guitarist Shawn Haché and a few other musicians who would jump ship before the band released its first powerhouse of disso-tech death metal madness of a debut titled “Archaeaeon” which not only rocked the house with subsequent connecting vowels but launched the band into the filthy grime of the latest trend in the world of death metal that has only grown uglier and more brutal in recent years. The band continued with a new lineup emanating as a power quartet of Haché and noise makers extraordinaire bassist / guitarist Nick Yankchuk along with drum abuser in the first degree Karl Godard. Add bassist Sebastian Montesi and Victoria, BC, Canada would never be the same.

Three years later after delivering a lightning bolt on the world of technical death metal, MITOCHONDRION returned with its equally devastating delivery of deathened order and chaos with PARASIGNOSIS, a term which has no inherent dictionary meaning but rather seems to have been invented to signify the esoteric and mysteria that the musical flow supplicates from the listener as the bantering swells of sonic disassociation overwhelm the senses with impending awe and utter despair. A somewhat shorter affair then its predecessor, PARASIGNOSIS nevertheless unleashes a near hour’s run of ominously dissonant guitar riffs that are monstrous in scope as well as embracing a simplicity of an oscillating electrical current. Bantering bass lines bleed into the distorted brutality while pummeling percussive gymnastics engulf the senses like a maddened demonic lusus naturae.

While “Archaeaeon” displayed a martial rhythmic procession into an insinuated battlefield whether that exist in the physical 3D construct of reality or a supposed spiritual ethereal realm, PARASIGNOSIS on the other hand offers a more jagged and less tangible navigation through its nine tracks that wend and wind through various electrifying motifs and cranial crushing cadences flowing like an engorged raging torrent of liquid in a disastrous flood sweeping away anything or anyone that stands in its way. Once again the atmospheric backdrop adds a melodic less chaotic palette cleanser during the scant moments where the orotund uproar is quelled for a moment of respite which offer the sounds of the mandolin, bandoneon and John Cage inspired piano string avant-garde ending effects, all of which end the album’s run with “Kathenotheism” and “Untitled” which are allowed to craft an eerie hallucinogenic counterpart to the ferocity of the otherwise incessantly raging rapid enthusiast’s guide to the world of 21st century disso-death.

MITOCHONDRION’s delivery system which blurs the distinction between death metal, black metal and the 20th century classical experimentalist’s avant-weird in many ways follows in the footsteps of both Deathspell Omega and Portal supplying a swath of influences and packing it all into massive swells of undulating sonic chunks with a suffocating production value that could land it in the so-called caverncore section of the difficult listening music section. Despite the modern metal hybridization trend, the grumbling growls of Haché keep the overall effect leashed in the death metal camp while the eerie atmospheres and spidery guitar antics point more to the extreme metal outsider’s realm where avant-chaos mongers like Gorguts, Gigan and Ulcerate have risen like necromancer monstrosities from the depths of the underworld. Similarly to the band’s debut effort, PARASIGNOSIS flows eminently well from beginning to the end with an uninterrupted stream of consciousness that demands a focused attention span throughout its run.

On par with its lauded debut, MITOCHRONDRION brought forth a veritable slice of top tier disso-death with its sophomore release which kept the band a few steps away from the more accessible realms of the ever-expanding spectrum of the death metal universe but continued to pioneer its way into its own mind blowing area of this strange new arena in the genre where pummeling brutality, technical wizardry and spectral surrealism collude to craft a paranormal multidimensional horror show with a touch of Lovecraftian ingenuity. For my liking and my insatiable appetite for this strange new world of atmospheric metaphysical extreme metal, MITOCHONDRION delivered the energetic flow of its bioelectrical namesake with pizzaz and bravado on PARASIGNOSIS thus offering a one two punch of near perfection on its mere two album run that would cease with this for an extended hiatus.

siLLy puPPy Dissonant and psychedelic tech death metal is killin’ it in the 2020s with long established bands coming of age and blowing away the competition en masse. Long timers like Pyrrhon, Ulcerate and Mitochondrion are continuing to up their game with each subsequent release and newer bands like Blood Incantation are perfecting all these elements with amazing precision. You can add the Tampa based GIGAN to that list which started as far back as 2006 and has continued to pummel the world of extreme metal ever since. Having taken a whopping seven year hiatus this power trio has returned with founder Eric Hersemann (bass, guitar, synthesizer, theremin) along with decade long drummer Nate Cotton and growler-in-chief Jerry Kavouriaris who returns for his second album with the band. GIGAN is back with yet another multisyllabic album, ANOMALOUS ABSTRACTIGATE INFINITESSIMUS which melds the now established worlds of sci-fiction debauchery with the blitzkrieg wizardry of world class disso-death metal.

Named after the alien cyborg kaiju who first appeared in the 1972 film “Godzilla vs. Gigan,” this ultimate weapon of the M Space Hunter Nebula Aliens which was deployed to Earth to aid the alien invader’s conquest of the planet proves to be the perfect namesake for this technically infused band that worships the alter of brutality and dissonance. While not the first extreme metal band to delve into the world of Lovecraftian horror fiction and strange diabolical fantasy, GIGAN has practically perfected its idiosyncratic style of surreal convoluted compositional constructs fortified by unrelenting tempos, bantering abrasiveness and strange twisted concepts. The album opens with the 8-minute “Trans-Dimensional Crossing of the Alta-Tenuis” which explodes like a bomb on Hiroshima with the turbulent drumming cacophony of Nathan Cotton who delvers some of the most demanding and demonic tech death performances in the biz. Oscillating waves of dissonant guitar riffing assail the senses as the band delivers a chaotic brutality that was woefully missing on the previous album (at least at this magnitude).

“Ultra-Violet Shimmer and Permeating Infra-sound” doesn’t let up with an even more brutal decibel rampage as the guitar riffing and bass bantering become every more chaotic with ever more complex percussive clamor and freaky slide guitar effects while Kavouriasis’ vocal style becomes insane asylum material. While taking the brutality to the next level the wild synthesized atmospheric note slides adds a touch of surreality to the whole shebang all graced by the off-kilter production techniques that take things even further into the abstract world of surreality and mind-fuckery. The most bizarre track of all comes with “Emerging Sects of Dagonic Acolytes,” a 10-minute excursion into the a bizarre tightrope act between extreme death metal acrobatics coupled with psychedelic rock techniques and free improvisation abstruseness. While starting off as a somewhat “normal” GIGAN track, things start to get weirder and weirder to the point where you feel like you’ve totally lost your sanity and all connection to reality as the band goes down one of its most surreal rabbit hole escapades to date.

And the Lovecraftian surrealism doesn’t stop there. Each track delivers another powerful punch of erratic techy death metal with freaky guitar solos and convoluted riffing patterns. “Erratic Pulsitivity and Horror” is like the closest thing to a musical seizure i’ve ever experienced while “The Strange Harvest of the Baganoids” offers some of the strangest twanging jangle guitar chops ever experienced and features a strange time signature dynamic that makes you feel like you’re traveling through a turbulent asteroid belt on the Millennium Falcon. As the album closes with “Ominous Silhouettes Cast Across Gulfs of Time,” the band engages in another lengthy near 8-minute battle of chaos and order only this time with a more doomy introduction with plodding guitar stomps and ominous distortion but then the track breaks into a bifurcated effect of rampaging death metal along with the plodding effects, yet another wild surreal display of creative craftiness or should i say Lovecraftiness.

Wow! Mind blown!!!! While i still loved GIGAN’s approach on the previous “Undulating Waves of Rainbiotic Iridescence,” it seemed like the band was toning down the intensity a bit from its previous “Multi-Dimensional Fractal Sorcery And Super Science” so in effect ANOMALOUS ABSTRACTIGATE INFINITESSIMUS was a make or break type of album for me although i could never totally write this top band in my collection. As it turns out this fifth installment of the GIGAN universe is its best effort yet and combines the perfect combo punch of brutal bombastic techy death metal drenched in dissonant disdain coupled with the heady mind-altering effects of psychedelia and surrealism. The band has outdone itself with this one with each track standing out as a testament to its creative prowess taken to the next level and beyond. Yeah, baby! This is what 21st century death metal is all about! Two listens in and i’m ready to push play again, something the last album didn’t quite coax me into doing. I’ve been a fan of this band for over a decade now and i’m utterly thrilled beyond measure that not only has the band returned to its avant-garde unorthodoxies from its beginnings but has delivered them all in such a brutal excellence that totally caught me off guard. I think this band has been raised a few notches on my favorite extreme metal band list.

siLLy puPPy Following the trajectory of the Finnish psychedelic black metal band ORANSSI PAZUZU is like experiencing an Earth based band fall into a wormhole and accidentally tagging along for the ride. While starting out as a somewhat recognizable black metal band all the way back in 2009 with its debut “Muukalainen Puhuu,” ORANSSI PAZUZU incrementally left the gravitational pull of our host planet and has taken a bonafide space journey into a world of its own making. This eclectic quintet has returned after a four year hiatus with its latest effort MUUNTAUTUJA which translates into something like “Transformative” or “Shapeshifter” which is exactly what this idiosyncratic and eccentric band has clearly become.

MUUNTAUTUJA marks another step beyond the once established parameters of black metal and takes the band into a bizarre web of neo-psychedelia that finds electronic influences taking a much larger role in crafting strange futuristic soundscapes that offer wild otherworldly spaced out effects. While the black metal hasn’t been totally usurped by gurgling synthesizers, trip hop based beats and ominous industrial sounds, any traces of Scandinavian kvlt majesty have been set way down in the mix as to leave only distorted guitar distortion rumblings and the band’s classic raspy vocal style as a beacon of light that points to its origins. Something like a modern day Ulver that never jettisoned the black metal furor, ORANSSI PAZUZU has reached the middle of its wormhole journey with one of its strangest albums yet.

One of the most inventive black metal bands to have emerged in the 21st century, ORANSSI PAZUZU set off like a voyage on the Star Trek Voyager and has crafted a truly unique sound that never remains stationary from album to album. While the earlier albums showcased a post-metal-like procession with cyclical riffs that slowly ratcheted up to crescendoing uproar, the band has always teased in psychedelic embellishments that have indubitably initiated a completely new genre called space metal. By the time the band got to “Mestarin Kynsi” it was apparent that these Finns were heading to the stars without looking back and boldly going where no black metal band has gone before. And the best thing of all is that these talented musicians actually created interesting song structures that made you want to tune in rather than send them off on their mission.

This band has always reveled in juxtaposing the most polarized opposite musical genres together and making strange bedfellows sound like a predestined fit. MUUNTAUTUJA only ups the ante as it takes you on a transcendental musical excursion into an alternate universe where Blut Aus Nord and Portishead commingle in darkened corners with Death Grips and Philip Glass with a touch of Massive Attack, Ministry and Mad Capsule Markets. From the very first oscillating tones of “Bioalkemisti” it’s clear that MUUNTAUTUJA is a completely different beast than what came before and another incremental leap down the avant-garde rabbit hole with surreal musical motifs that shapeshift from one track to the next that sample from a cauldron where the disparate worlds of progressive rock, black metal, trip hop, 20th century classical and industrial rock have been simmering in an undisclosed locus in the midst of the vast Finnish forests.

Along with Dodheimsgard, Ulver, Ved Buens Ende and Ram-Zet, ORANSSI PAZUZU has become one of Scandinavia’s most forward thinking bands and with the closing “Vierivä usva” totally drifting off into space and leaving the metal mojo behind one can’t help but wonder if this band is going to pull an Ulver on us and completely jump into the world of avant-garde electronica. Wherever this inventive band leads many of us avant-metal nerds will surely follow as it is virtually guaranteed that this band will take you somewhere you never knew existed. While i personally found the previous album to be more of my liking, this one is definitely a wild ride into the world of cosmos metal that will leave you gasping for air as you drift beyond the limits our Earthly realms.

siLLy puPPy The Denver based BLOOD INCANTATION has wrested its way up to the top ranks of the world of technical death metal in the last decade through a meticulous melding approach of morphing the old school death metal magic of bands like Morbid Angel and Immolation with the retro space rock effects of 70s progressive rock, a trait that a few intrepid extreme metal pioneers like Opeth and Enslaved have been tinkering with for over two decades now. Finding itself at the right place at the right time just as the world of psychedelic death metal was poised to break through to the mainstream as the newest death metal strain to come of age, BLOOD INCANTATION was more than ready to slay the competition and declare themselves the kings of this adventurous hybridization that finds space rock cozily commingling with brutal death metal bombast laced with concepts of our suppressed history and science fiction (often proven to be science fact).

The band immediately made a splash with its 2016 debut “Starspawn” which showcased the band’s meaty metal hooks and technical wizardry but it wasn’t until 2019’s “Hidden History Of The Human Race” that the band really unleashed its true psychedelic potential with heady concepts wrapped up in psychedelic death metal splendor. The band while always technical in nature also proved to craft a mighty fine progressive metal album and the stage was set for this new extreme metal royalty to wear the crown. Despite the seeming certainty that BLOOD INCANTATION was in it for the long run, along comes the curveball release “Timewave Zero” in 2022 which found the band dropping all traces of metal music like a hot potato and rather totally rocketed off into space with a pure space ambient and progressive electronic style that took more inspiration from Berlin School giants like Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze. Had BLOOD INCANTATION gone the way of Leprous, Opeth or Ulver and completely shifted gears midstream?

It comes as great relief (as much as i love progressive electronic music) that BLOOD INCANTATION did nothing of the sort and rather was just allowing themselves to dabble in non-metal playgrounds while recharging their batteries for the next chapter of their metal mojo jounrey. Finally in 2024 we are treated to the newest installment of the BLOOD INCANTATION universe in the form of ABSOLUTE ELSEWHERE, a crafty conceptual sci-fi saga divided into two overarching 3 sections that are called tablets: “The Stargate” and “The Message.” While many were wondering if BLOOD INCANTATION had abandoned metal for the world of progressive electronic on “Timewave Zero,” it seems they were simply honing their chops to bedazzle their fans with an amazing fusion of their already masterful technical / progressive death metal with the more cosmic meanderings of 70s proggy space rock and Berlin School progressive electronic. Even Tangerine Dream member Thorsten Quaeschning appears for a cameo thus cementing this new development as a major leap in death metal ingenuity.

While such a collision of disparate musical worlds can result in a convoluted unconvincing disaster in the wrong hands, BLOOD INCANTATION has proven once again that this quintet of talented musicians can achieve the seemingly impossible on the same level as Opeth and Enslaved have done in the past. ABSOLUTE ELSEWHERE seems to have attained the perfect balance between the detached technical brutality of death metal and the more chilled excursions into the cosmos in the form of heady space rock. While the juxtaposition of these two seems rather dubious, somehow this band forges the perfect bridges to allow the disparate genres to trade off without a hitch. While “Hidden History Of The Human Race” was greatly praised and lauded as some sort of pinnacle of the style, i personally found the album to not flow as coherently as i had imagined however on ABSOLUTE ELSEWHERE the band seems to have ironed out all those peccadillos and forged a veritable masterpiece of progressive psychedelic death metal like no other. While Opeth has tackled both genres independently on different albums, BLOOD INCANTATION brings it all together in a most convincing way.

I think it goes without saying that psychedelic death metal has truly come of age and no better example exists than this latest BLOOD INCANTATION bombshell which produces a bountiful buffet of psychotropic bombast and kaleidoscopic calamity throughout ABSOLUTE ELSEWHERE’s six-track / 43-minute excursion into the realms of sci-fi fueled proggy death metal extraordinaire. Now if anyone told a hardened death metal fan back in the early 90s that someday a band would successfully meld the meaty metal bluster of Morbid Angel with the psychotropic expansiveness of Pink Floyd and the Berlin School scene, nobody could have imagined that such a thing was even possible but here in the calendar year 2024 BLOOD INCANTATION has taken such possibilities into the realms of plausibility with one of the most well-crated examples of psychedelic death metal to emerge. I think it goes without saying that BLOOD INCANTATION has not jumped the shark in any possible way but has only improved its unorthodox genre coalescing manyfold. For my liking there are no missteps on this one, no moments that seem out of place and even the production that links the various styles is impeccable. This is BLOOD INCANTATION’s finest moment yet!

siLLy puPPy While it’s tempting to think that most of the German rock bands of the early 70s were cranking out the kosmische sounds of Krautrock in the vein of Amon Duul II or Can, there existed in fact a few bands that weren’t seeking escapism but rather searching for speed and volume excesses. While some Kraut bands like Embryo favored jazz and others like Tangerine Dream dropped the rock altogether to craft the freakiest electronic sounds ever heard, others like Birth Control, Lucifer’s Friend and NIGHT SUN were going for the early heavy metal gusto, more infatuated by Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath than anything coming from the homeland. NIGHT SUN was formed in Mannheim in 1970 and only existed for three years as well as releasing only a single album yet the band’s lone offering MOURNIN’ is considered one of the heaviest rock albums to have emerged just after the world of proto-metal had been born.

While the Scorpions would become Germany’s biggest heavy metal band, in 1972 that band’s debut “Lonesome Crow” had one foot in the world of Krautrock and the other in heavier rock but NIGHT SUN on the other hand delivered one scorcher of an album that has gone down in history as one of metal’s most essential early contributors to inspiring the future sounds of thrash metal, power metal and even progressive metal for that matter. Like many bands of the day before the term metal had really become a true genre and the spirit of experimentation was en vogue, MOURNIN’ was more than an early precursor to the world of metal but also delivered an intriguing mix of 60s heavy psych, excursions of psychedelia and most of all labyrinthine progressive rock elements that made this band one of the earliest heavy prog bands that true embraced the wild complexities that the early 70s prog albums cranked out.

Despite delivering a scorching heavy rock album, the band was lucky enough to find Conny Planck in the producer’s seat who had famously worked with Faust, Kraftwerk, David Bowie and a gazillion other prominent acts of the era but despite that good fortune was utterly ignored suffering the same indignity that many a band experienced with lackluster record labels that had no clue how to market their products. Somewhat of a mix of Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Lucifer’s Friend, NIGHT SUN sounded like no other although it embraced the same organ driven heaviness that many heavier bands were embracing during the day. The band knew no limits though and through the nine tracks that mostly cranked out heavy guitar riffs still found a way to incorporate the bassoon and saxophone into the mix. The album starts out with the blitzkrieg delivery of “Plastic Shotgun” which features some of the fastest riffing and accompanying bass and drum action that the 70s had to offer.

The album meanders in the world of psychedelia with the near 8-minute “Got A Bone Of My Own” which despite offering a heady excursion into trippiness didn’t really fit in with the world of Krautrock as even during these more chilled moments the band was still based in bluesy rock that had moments of heavy guitar distortion, trippy echo effects and a heavy psych sound more in the vein of Jimi Hendrix than fellow countrymen Birth Control. One of the most prominent features of NIGHT SUN’s proggy heavy rock was the idiosyncratic vocal style of Bruno Schaab who sounded like a more ambitious Robert Plant with his brash bravado and nasal tone structures. The composiitons were heavily laced with many hairpin rhythmic shifts with extra tight guitar and organ interplay. The riffs are particularly bombastic and tracks like “Nightmare” offer a frenzied adrenalized speedfest which prognosticates the worlds of thrash and power metal styles that would emerge in the next decade.

NIGHT SUN’s sole contribution to the world of heavy 70s prog is a must for anyone seeking out the origins of metal and despite having a somewhat dated sound that perfectly exemplifies the zeitgeist of the era is a feast to the ears for those who love the early proto-metal sounds of blues rocks blasting in high decibels accompanied by rampaging tempos and touches of downtime with psychedelic time period freakiness. NIGHT SUN had its origins in the 60s band jazz band Take Five which never released any material but was popular on the Mannheim circuit. The last track on MOURNIN’ titled “Don’t Start Flying” offers a tribute to that band with clever saxophone and bassoon extras. While the band didn’t really craft a new sound per se as it exemplified the standard bluesy rock with distortion and speed turned up a few notches, NIGHT SUN nevertheless offered an excellent adventurous album within that framework and is now considered one of those lost gems of the 70s.

siLLy puPPy My current mantra has become “So much music, so little time” as the more i explore the vast universe of musical expressions that have been recorded i feel like the branches on the tree grow faster than i can count the leaves that have grown but such is the life of the intrepid seeker of sonic possibilities with yet another band that has eluded me for so long yet now am finally tackling only to find another veritable pool of talented that has escaped my radar. The Rochester, Minnesota act AMIENSUS has been churning out its unique style of progressive black metal since 2010 and has become one of those underground sensations where it takes the Enslaved post-Mardraum route of fusing raging black metal fury with the more nuanced compositional flair of modern progressive rock. This band has not exactly been prolific with only five albums under its belt since its 2012 debut “Restoration” but 2024 has been graced with not one but two new albums which most likely could’ve been released as a single double album but has become a two part set of albums instead.

Following in the footsteps of “Reclamation: Part 1” which was released in April is the second coming aptly titled RECLAMATION: PART 2 which came out in August. Shamefully i missed chapter one of this combo package separated by time but considering i find lyrics and concepts secondary to my musical exploration i decided to just take the plunge into the world of AMIENSUS and just check out the latest and what some consider the greatest of the AMIENSUS canon. Well, how’s it hold up? Remarkably well actually! This band has mastered the art of crafty dynamics which allows the brash bravado of black metal to sit peacefully in the same corner as dreamy atmospheric post-rock, clean vocal progressive metal majesty and moments of more “normal” symphonic metal that weave in sophisticated atmospheric constructs into the black ’n’ roll type of grooves that the band nurtures into thundering expressions of grandeur as the band explores the existential themes of philosophy, theology, psychology and mythological subject matter.

With a passionate exuberant musical display of instrumental competency and crafty compositional fortitude, AMIENSUS delivers a satisfying mix of black metal bombast with progressive constructs that allow the seven tracks of 38 1/2 to shine brightly with a rather satisfying black metal style alternating with moments of non-metal ambience whether it be post-rock, Middle Eastern inspirations or just more chilled moments of less frenetic progressive rock. The band has mastered the art of juggling all these elements without the feeling of being forced or stilted. In other words AMIENSUS crafts a continuity and consciousness flow that succeeds quite well in its approach as often these tightrope acts leads to a bumbling clunky musical procession that can often sound stilted and spurious. Probably better to think of AMIENSUS as a progressive metal band with black metal as its primary side sound rather than a black metal band per se as there are many moments where non-metal and just plain progressive metal styles dominate sometimes for entire tracks such as “The Distance.”

Considered AMIENSUS’ most versatile album of its career (although i can’t compare other albums as of yet), RECLAMATION: PART II may or may not provide the appropriate second half of the overarching double album concept but when taken alone as a sole experience it is indeed quite satisfying as a progressive black metal behemoth with uncompromising black metal aggression wrapped up in equally compelling atmospheric extravagance which is as vital an element to the overall AMIENSUS sound as the metal brashness. Of course kvlt purists will immediately diss this hybridization effect but for fans of modern Enslaved, Gris, Negura Bunget or Xanthochroid, this band will definitely appeal to your expansive sensibilities that incorporate black metal into a larger musical context. A lot to like with this one. Excellent black metal riffing that sometimes borders on death metal. Strong raspy vocals that sound like the perfect mix of prog and black metal. Nice interludes that offer breaks from the aggression and interesting atmospheric developments that independently exist beyond mere accent sounds. My first exposure to AMIENSUS was a great one and look forward to a deeper dive.

siLLy puPPy PYRRHON was one of the first dissonant technical death metal bands to catch the second wave after bands like Gorguts and Portal busted the doors wide open and bands like Gigan and Ulcerate soon followed. This New York City band formed in 2008 and has been haunting the extreme metal underground for well over a decade now since it first launched its debut EP “Fever Kingdoms” in 2010. Wow, what a difference a decade makes for this band’s development. I have never quite warmed up to this band due to the fact that after i picked up its second album “The Mother of Virtues” a few years back that i just wasn’t as blown away as i was with bands like Gigan, Portal, Mitochondrion or the king of disso-death itself Gorguts. After all the hubbub about its latest release EXHAUST however i decided to jump back on the PYRRHON bandwagon and give em another try.

Popular doesn’t always translate satisfyingly brilliant to my ears so with some intrepid hesitation i jumped right in and all i can say is WOW! These guys have clearly been practicing their little nut sacks off since i’ve last encountered them and the results have paid off handsomely. EXHAUST displays a massive leap in sharpening the band’s strongest attributes of clanging out discordant bombastic death metal riffage laced with all kinds of technically infused sidetracking and excursions into proggy labyrinthine excesses however this time around the band has honed its skills to create stronger song structures that ebb and flow in a more consistent manner all the while upping the game in their performances with faster razor-sharp guitar riffs and squeals and a frenetic yet precision controlled bantering of percussion and bass abuse. Vocalist Doug Moore also delivers a heightened sense of death metal mania that veers a bit into the world of grind influenced screams.

Many disso-death bands have tested the patience of their audiences in recent years with bloated albums that pummel your senses past an hour’s playing time which truly is exhausting for such intense uncompromising metal rampage. EXHAUST features ten tracks that comfortably sit at the 38 minute mark which is really the maximum playing time that can sustain most of our attention spans for music this wild and crazed without any moments of catching your breath. While the opening “Not Going To Mars” insinuates one of those classically orchestrated disso-death albums in the vein of Ad Nauseam the short intro quickly bursts into action with an incessant raging flow of blitzkrieg riffing and brutal unrelenting motif and cadence changes all wrapped up in the ugliest discordant harmonic combos possible. Basically the band has clawed its way up to the top ranks of disso-death royalty by displaying a massive leap in instrumental interplay infused with a fertile fecundity previous albums didn’t quite muster up.

This is extreme progressive technical death metal at its finest with a labyrinthine maze of twists and turns lashing out like a wounded dragon writhing about spewing fire as it perishes and taking down the town with it. The surge of creative fortitude lurking about in every abscessed disease ridden track of atonal angularity is simply off the charts making EXHAUST a very exhausting album indeed not because you struggle to stay away but rather the challenge of keeping up with the absolute terror emulating from this quartet of quality noise masters. The controlled use of dynamics, time signatures and tempo deviations take PYRRHON into the ranks of high quality progressive composers without sacrificing nary a nasty quality that makes this anarchic tumultuous stew of crazy crafty disso-death steeped in all the aggression and energetic outbursts that is humanly possible. By far the band’s effort to date and one of the top disso-death albums to emerge in the last few years although this entire branch of death metal has become the top dogs in keeping the tech death metal world vibrant and evolving into the next levels of despair and horrific ugliness. Great job guys!

siLLy puPPy American / Canadian band SUMAC has made quite a splash in the metal underground in the last ten years with its bizarre mix of post-metal, droning and free improvisation industrial feedback techniques. This project was founded in 2014 in Vashon, Washington by vocalist / guitarist Aaron Turner who has participated in a multitude of acts including Doolhof, Drawing Voices, Greymachine, The Hollomen, House of Low Culture, Isis, Jodis, Lotus Eaters, Mamiffer, Old Man Gloom, Ringfinger, Split Cranium, Summer of Seventeen, Thalassa, Twilight and Unionsuit and soon recruited drummer Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists, Cooked and Eaten, Erosion, Genghis Tron, Hard Feelings, Rotting Hills,, A Textbook Tragedy) and bassist Brian Cook (Botch, Onalaska, Roy, Russian Circles, These Arms Are Snakes).

Together this power trio has cruised through the last decade delivering a brash barrage of atmospheric sludge metal in the vein of Isis and other sludge legends however after the collaborative efforts with the Japanese free improv noise guru Keiji Haino, the band has turned to the more experimental, free form and avant-garde which began with 2018’s “Love Shadow” and has slowly ratcheted up the freak show ever since. The band’s latest effort THE HEALER may be about as therapeutic as sleeping on a bed of nails in a burning house yet features the band’s most extravagant journeys into the world of free form noise, feedback freakery and avant-garde extremism. With four tracks that ooze past the 76 minute playing time with the opening “World Of Light” and closing “The Stone’s Turn” hovering around the 25-minute mark, SUMAC has let its freak flag fly full staff in a relentless musical menagerie of sound.

Talk about a long arduous journey where every juncture is spring loaded with crazy sludgy feedback that reverberates to kingdom come and back, the band ventures into moments of hardcore, pure noise as well as death metal and drone metal static overload. Sounding something like a mix of Isis, Eyehategod, Maudlin of the Well, Russian Circles and well, 1960s AMM, this band unleashes a noisy complex labyrinthine procession through a never-ending series of musical motifs that morph into something completely different without losing the sludge metal tones and timbres that keep it firmly planted in that camp. Discordant chords and atonal guitar squeals flitter alongside irregularly timed percussive outbursts, bass bantering and moody growling vocals with a pageful misanthropic demeanor reminiscent of classic Iron Monkey or early Neurosis. This is not an album to experience casually as it will leave you agitated and on the edge of your seat as it wends and winds through volitive unpredictable terrain.

Listening to THE HEALER is a true test in devotion to a craft that is as idiosyncratic and eccentric as a convention of those who love to consume furniture foam. It’s a knotty ugly affair that excels in nurturing all the most ugly and grating elements of sludge metal and couples them with nebulous indecipherable compositional flow, yet this whole chaotic stew is appealing in its unappealing nature. Far from mindless improv, THE HEALER is constructed of chunks of ideas that sort of metamorphose into a new batch of ideas with some stitching together in the context of sludge metal and others dabbling in chaotic noise swirls and droning monotony. While it comes off as pure free improv, the album is actually laced with musicality not only in the chord progressions and cyclical post-metal looping effects but also through order of seemingly chaotic embellishments.

Overall SUMAC delivers the ultimate difficult music listening album with THE HEALER as it ventures into territory that few metal bands have dared tread. The sounds of extreme metal formatted into the stylistic approach of European free jazz, brutal harsh noise improv and sound collages is certainly a difficult pill to swallow especially at such an excessive playing time but even though such albums can come off as ridiculously convoluted and excessively avant-garde for its own sake, i have to say that because SUMAC are such seasoned pros they infuse a vast array of musicality woefully missing from many similar styled acts. While definitely not music you want to play at your wedding, SUMAC delivers all the goods and if you’re into the idea of Khanate meets a more extreme version of Maudlin of the Well then this one’s gonna rock your world!

siLLy puPPy The sludge metal scene may have had its origins in 80s California hardcore punk bands and 90s Seattle grunge but no other place has nurtured it into the gloomy ugly beast that it has become like Lousiana, USA. After all if it weren’t for bands like Eyehategod, Crowbar and Acid Bath the genre never would’ve blossomed into the gift that keeps on giving to the modern era. Must be the swamp gas wafting off those Louisiana bayous or something! While the Baton Rouge based THOU wasn’t exactly part of the original cajun country scene, the band sprang to life in 2005 and has been quite productive releasing numerous albums, splits and EPs and garnering a wider audience as time passes as it takes the unadulterated sounds of brutal sludge metal into the 2020s. The band is the perfect example of modern sludge metal with captivating covert art and a rampaging extremism not heard since bands like Iron Monkey, early Mastodon or Neurosis with their other New Orleans sludge bros included in that list as well.

The band has delivered one of its finest albums of its career in 2024 with its sixth full-length studio album UMBILICAL which has been garnering rave reviews as one of the best metal albums to have emerged in recent years and while such claims seem to be a dime a dozen in this diverse day of varying opinions and array of tastes, in the case of THOU’s latest effort all the brouhaha around the band’s newest album is actually well founded. Like many of the band’s albums, UMBILICAL has been released with a variety of album covers, three in this case with completely different cover art for the CD and vinyl and yet another for the digital downloads. Personally i prefer the band’s album covers that depict black and white scenes from war times and other historical despair from antiquity. Preferring to call themselves grunge rather than sludge metal (well Ok whatever!), UMBILICAL does indeed display more aspects of its ancestry than other sludge metal bands with Alice In Chains chugs, good old fashioned Nirvana inspired self-loathing and at times a rather Stone Temple Pilots simplicity.

But let’s get real here, despite nods to the past in the course of ten caustic distortion-drenched tracks, THOU is the epitome of doom metal infused sludge metal delivering all the misanthropic attributes of what makes the genre distinct, unique and reverberating into the extremities of guitar feedback. THOU is also one of the most angry sounding of the sludge metal world by far with Bryan Funck’s raging screamed vocals that give you a sore throat by merely listening. Add to that the exaggerated use of creepy slow tempos out of the Eyehategod playbook with the occasional more energetic outbursts of adrenalized speedy romps. It’s classic 90s sludge metal through and through but done so well that it makes you remember the days when sludge metal was pure and impregnated with that classic 90s annihilation and pure depressive extirpation. In the modern era where most sludge metal has hybridized with prog, post-rock or dark ambient sounds, THOU emphasizes sludge metal’s punk and grunge origins better than most.

Sure experimental metal and avant-garde forays are always nice evolutionary branches to explore as they create completely different mood settings in hitherto unexplored soundscape crafting but there’s something about unadulterated sludge metal that just resonates so wickedly well with the psyche as if it is the absolute panacea of a cathartic release of pent up rage that goes along with living in the modern world where absolutely everything seems dysfunctional and in decline. While many acts such as Cult of Luna, Intronaut and even Neurosis jumped off this bandwagon decades ago, THOU has continued to remain true to its sludge metal origins and in the process has garnered a slow and steady ascent as one of the guardians of the old school of sludge metal majesty. And it’s not hard to hear why on UMBILICAL as the band delivers one amp splitting guitar squeal after another with vocals so insanely intense as to qualify as scary.

Oh how THOU hath delivered a multitude of musical majesties yond resonates liketh a flame beckoning for an airy gust of inspiration the likes of which bloweth aught competition by the wayside. Rejoice in the beckoning quipping of the art of musical resonance yond captivated by the incessant floweth of the exquisite resonating sounds of sludge purity. Heavy denseness suffocating thy senses liketh a blackened tornado of souls in anguish in pure musical form yond hath been unleashed onto the world in the finest of art forms called UMBILICAL so finely constructed yond coequal Shakespeare himself wouldst tremble in awe at the sheer magnitude of the album upon us anon. For alloweth t beest writ yond the reveled anguish unveiling itself through the pyroclastic floweth of torturous textures and melancholic malaise shall reverberate in the most pleasing of ways as THOU hath polished its musical charm liketh the finest of silver in all of the kingdom.

siLLy puPPy As was the case with many promising bands smitten by their rock star heroes of the 60s and followed suit in the 70s, WARPIG was one of many talented bands that took its musical passion to the live circuit and quickly found a veritable following only to have the momentum crushed by the misfortunation of bad management, bankrupt labels and well just bad luck. This band which obviously derived its name from the famous Black Sabbath song was the brainchild of guitarist and vocalist Rick Donmoyer of Woodstock, Ontario after honing his chops in a number of bands including The Turbines, The Kingbees and Mass Destruction. Although formed as far back as 1968 after wooing fellow Mass Destruction members including bassist Terry Brett, keyboardist / guitarist Dana Snitch and drummer Terry Hook and spent many a night rehearsing in Donmoyer’s basement.

Having tightened their musical interplay as a band throughout Toronto pub scene, WARPIG built up a reputation as a fierce and charismatic band that built a sizable following and succeeded in capturing attention until one fateful night the label owner of Fonthill Records caught a show and immediately signed the band to his label in late 1968. While continuing to write its own original material and slowly shedding its reliance on cover songs, the band’s trajectory totally shifted in 1969 when Led Zeppelin engaged on their massive tour that took Canada by storm. The results infused up and coming bands like WARPIG with a sense of new energetic drive and vitality and the band was basically ready for primetime except for the fact they were forced to finance their own recording expenses.

The band finally hit the studio in 1970 and delivered a unique mix of sounds that took all the contemporary sounds of the era into consideration. With a range of sounds that mixed everything from organ driven Deep Purple and the bluesy rock proto-metal of Led Zeppelin along with surf rock, psychedelic sounds as well as a Black Sabbath trick or two, WARPIG proved to craft a diversity of sounds that made other local bands pale in comparison. The band’s sole album would have to wait a couple years for release due to the fact that the label Fonthill had been taken over by London Records in 1971 which renegotiated the contract and delayed the album’s actual release until 1972 well after the signature sound of the band’s recordings had quickly fallen out of fashion. And to make matters worse the band’s attempt to release a second followup was thwarted by the lack of proper management and utter neglect causing a loss of all momentum that ultimately forced WARPIG to call it quits.

That’s really too bad because WARPIG delivered the quintessential hard rock album of 1970 at the time when the psychedelic rock 60s was metamorphosing into the hard rock 70s but the band was a bit more sophisticated than the average heavy rocker of the era and proved to be able to craft more complex progressive compositions as well as capturing the perfect loose wire harder rock sounds like a less structured jam band tackling the triumvirate unification of Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and a touch of Sabbath along with the 60s hangover sounds of Cream and Hendrix. Add to that some forays into the world of classical Baroque and it’s actually quite admirable how experimental WARPIG really was in its musical palette as it fused the fiery passion of unhinged youthful rock with other moments of hi-brow sophistication. The band’s ability to shift from raucous rockers to soulful skillful efficacy were all the right ingredients for a world class 70s rock band to make it to the big time but fate would prove otherwise.

This is an album that didn’t appeal to me at first but as i’ve learned to tune into the zeitgeist of the timeline and accept that this is really a 1970 album that was simply delayed, my perception of this excellent album has shifted dramatically. From the feisty crowd pleasing rockers “Flaggit” and “Rock Star” to the doom-laden Sabbath inspired “Melody With Balls” or the classically infused “Advance AM” (that’s A-minor) and proggy “U.X.I.B.” the album has a lot to offer and best of all the tracks take you on a wild ride that sort of mixes it altogether for the crazed closer “The Moth” that tackles the world of heavy prog with foot-stomping rhythms accompanied by unorthodox time signatures and bouts of freakery. In the end i’ve grown to love this album a lot more than when it sounded like a dated relic from the past that i didn’t quite get yet.

siLLy puPPy The second stage of the triumvirate band evolution of the Flea On The Honey / FLEA / Etna saga found this Sicily turned Rome band from a 60s hangover heavy psych with prog dabbling band into a full-fledged progressive rock behemoth that once shortened its name to merely FLEA delivered a major evolutionary step in its development with its 1972 release TOPI O UOMINI which translates into English as “Mice Or Men.” In the matter of a year’s time FLEA had honed its chops considerably with an incessant flow of live performances including the Rome Villa Pamphili festival. With the release of TOPI O UOMINI, the band had undergone a number of changes by not only shortening its name but by abandoning the English language in favor of the more en vogue Italian prog feature of singing in the mother tongue. Likewise Antonio Marangolo who delivered frail and clunky lyrics on the “Flea On The Honey” debut sounded much more confident and polished as a vocalist in his native tongue after a year.

Despite all the changes, the basic style of a heavy psychedelic rock sound with a dominant guitar presence is still prevalent with an underpinning of jazz along with a few Mediterranean folk styles imported from the cousins’ native Sicily. Still present is the predominant use of heavy guitar grunge with influences from Cream, Steppenwolf, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Blue Cheer however the second half of the album with shorter tracks showcases a lighter side of the band’s persona with a more romantic slowed down more classic Italian prog sound however pretty much limited to the track “Sono Un Pesce” which serves as the ballad of the album with a strong Mediterranean jazz flavor and a rather bizarre chaotic ending. It’s one of the few moments where you can hear the acoustic guitar and presence of piano. The rest of the album pretty much follows other harder edged Italian heavy psych acts that incorporated their heavier style into the world of prog similar to early Italian bands like Procession, Il Rovescio della Medaglia or Garybaldi.

The album opens with the side swallowing A-side title track that features a suite of over 20 minutes in playing time. Starting with some intricate cymbal action and a rather subdued rhythm guitar, the track quickly picks up steam into a heavy psych explosiveness with Cream-like drumming and a powerful vocal performance of Antonio Marangolo. Clearly FLEA had gotten itself free from the “Honey” and was ready for primetime. The amazing thing about this sprawling track is that it never loses steam and keeps up the heavy drive for much of the track while dishing out a veritable assault of progressive rock workouts with time signature changes although there are a few moments of contrast with slower passages but despite these moments the guitars remain fully distorted and amplified and the hard rock ethos never strays far. The middle section could almost pass as modern stoner rock with its grungy effect and sort of slacker rock looseness however the band always maintains control and showcases its virtuosity once it picks up steam again. Perhaps the heaviest 20 minute track of the entire Italian prog scene!

The second side is just as hard hitting with “Amazzone A Piedi” mainlining the heavy psychedelic prog attack with an even faster tempo as well as cranking out even more proggy time signatures with a jazzy compositional song structure that prognosticates the band’s leap into the world of jazz fusion once it morphs into its third Etna phase of existence. The shortest track on board, this opener for the second side of the vinyl also showcases the band’s most sophisticated virtuosic playing with incessantly fast tempos coupled with unfathomably complex prog workouts all in the same musical context as the Hendrix inspired heavy bluesy psych rock that the title track delivered with gusto. The first downtime for some breathing room doesn’t arrive until the penultimate track “Sono Un Pesce” offers a bit of a ballad with a more traditional Italian prog sound of acoustic arpeggiated guitars, a more operatic vocal performance and a wider spectrum of tones and timbres from the piano, mandolin and harmonium.

The closing “L’Angelo Timido” begins with a short vocal harmony but quickly jumps into a Led Zeppelin inspired guitar frenzy only progressing through some seriously proggy twists and turns and provides a glimpse into an alternative universe where Led Zeppelin actually went prog! This heavy hitting closer ends with a bang leaving TOPI O UOMINI as one of the heaviest Italian prog albums of the entire 1970s. After coming from the previous album “Flea On The Honey” it’s almost hard to believe this is the same band as the musicianship had evolved severalfold in both the performance as well as the compositional camps. A noticeably jazzier infusion of musical ideas stuffed into the world of heavy psych making this a powerhouse of progressive heavy psych that was unlike anything else on the Italian prog scene even when compared to the other proto-metal leaning bands of the same timeline. After TOPI O UOMINI bassist Elio Volpini would leave the band to join L’Uovo di Colombo however the band would continue by replacing him with Fabio Pignatelli who after a very short stint would himself leave the band to form Cherry Five and then Goblin. After the sole L’Uovo di Colombo album was released Volpini would rejoin the band which would rebrand itself once again as Etna and jump into the world of jazz fusion. This is an excellent heavy prog album and an admirable second coming of this shapeshifting cast of musicians.

siLLy puPPy This band is probably better known for the fact that it released three albums under three different band names with each album radically different in style from the other than the music itself but nevertheless the triumvirate of FLEA ON THE HONEY / Flea / Etna is well known in small circles of lovers of 70s Italian progressive rock for this unusual evolution. Amazingly enough the three different bands featured the same lineup of the three cousins Antonio Marangolo (vocals, keyboards, flute, harmonica), Carlo Pennisi (guitar, mandolin, vocals) and and Agostino Marangolo (drums, percussion, vibraphone, vocals) who recruited Elio Volpini (bass, saxophone, guitar, vocals) to fill out the remaining band slot. Ironically the band members appeared under the nicknames Tony, Charlie, Nigel and Dustin on the first album that was entirely sung in English. The working theory is that the band’s label wanted to portray them as one of many English bands coming to Italy to find success.

Starting out as FLEA ON THE HONEY, the band formed in Sicily in 1971 and then quickly moved to Rome just in time to take part in the influential Viareggio Pop Festival which immediately got its music noticed by the RCA subsidiary label Delta. The band’s first album simply titled FLEA ON THE HONEY was a mix of early Italian progressive rock and late 60s heavy psych with an emphasis on guitar riffing and solos taking more influences from British bands such as Cream, Writing On The Wall and even The Jimi Hendrix Experience than the beat music that had been popular in Italy in the 1960s. With short and snappy songs more designed to produce pop hits than a prog album experience, FLEA ON THE HONEY came off as a fairly generic album of the early 1970s with melodic songs that featured the traditional rock arrangement of bass, drums and guitars with smaller roles dedicated to the flute, piano and organ.

The album featured a mixed quality with many of the tracks featuring stilted vocal performances of heavily accented English. The opening “Mother Mary” is the perfect example with rather frail lyrical deliveries and an out of place drum solo that belies the fact that the track was chosen to be released as the band’s first single. The track “Happy Killer” on the other hand showcases a more confident band that had mastered that early 70s rock sound with excellent guitar riffs and a much more confident vocal performance. The FLEA ON HONEY stage of the band’s existence was clearly in the realms of proto-prog which was prepping Italy for the massive leap of prog ingenuity that would sweep the nation the following year including by FLEA itself after the band shortened its name, went full on prog and switched its lyrical delivery to the Italian language.

While not the most essential release of the early Italian prog scene, FLEA ON THE HONEY nevertheless provides a much needed context of the evolution of this unbelievable band that changed its name three times with a radical stylistic shift with each album. That’s not even including the short break between the final two albums where Elio Volpini left to join L’Uovo di Colombo which released a sole album before his rejoining to take Etna into the world of jazz fusion. Overall an interesting artifact from the early Italian scene that was somewhat unique for delivering an appearance of being English with a sound to match however the quality of the album while not unpleasant is far from the sophistication they would achieve the following year on “Topi O Uomini” once they shortened their name to merely FLEA. Despite the clunky vocals and silly lyrics the musicians delivered some convincing pop rock with light prog touches on FLEA ON THE HONEY making it a pleasant but ultimately nonessential release.

siLLy puPPy Riding high off the smashing success of “In Rock” which propelled DEEP PURPLE into the realms of superstar status, the band became the hottest act in the UK and Europe and was obviously quite in demand for live performances and other promotional engagements which led to very little time in developing a proper follow up album that the record companies demanded with a cracking whip back in the day. During these busy times the strains of the band began to show with both Roger Glover and Jon Lord suffering physical ailments while Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Gillan butted heads about a great many things which would ultimately end the Mark I lineup shortly down the road.

Nevertheless the show must go on and DEEP PURPLE delivered the goods in 1971 with FIREBALL after releasing the non-album single “Strange Kind Of Woman” earlier in the year to keep the band in the public’s eye. While commercially successful and keeping the band relevant, FIREBALL was a major departure from what was heard on “In Rock” and while that album was instrumental in cementing DEEP PURPLE as one of the big three in the development of heavy metal, FIREBALL on the other hand found the band toning things down a bit looking more to the world of bluesy hard rock without the fiery bombast. Yet even though considered the inferior sibling sandwiched between the band’s two major powerhouses of its career, FIREBALL does have its charm and has its way of weaseling its way into your heart.

FIREBALL was released differently in the US and UK with the former featuring the single “Strange Kind Of Woman” and the UK version replacing it with “Demon’s Eye.” Like most early DEEP PURPLE albums, this one found a gussied up 25th anniversary edition with all the singles and non-album tracks as well as demos in abundance tacked on to the end. The album begins with the title track which is the closest thing to what was heard on “In Rock” and must have lulled the listener into a false sense of expectation as it featured the same heavy hitting drive with Ian Paice pummeling out his top dog drumming skills as one of classic rock’s most competent drummers. The catchy riffs and haunting organ backing by Jon Lord found the usual Blackmore guitar soloing trading off with Lord’s classical key contributions and the track remains the best known from the album.

However starting with the second track “No No No” things change quite a bit with a slowed down groove and a rather funky blues rock vibe that features slide guitar action and a rather repetitive verse / chorus / bridge type of song structure. While the album didn’t quite appeal to me at first with songs like this stymying my enjoyment factor, subsequent exposures have proven to find this one as well as the album to sink in on a deeper level. I am now hooked. On the original UK version “Demon Eyes” occupied the third position and likewise offers the same sort of groovy boogie rock with a heavy dose of organ bombast that likewise offers a palatable enough hook to eventually sink your teeth into.

The one turkey on the album is the head scratching country folk honky tonk rocker “Anyone’s Daughter” which sounds woefully out of place. An Ian Gillan penned lyric oriented track that unfortunately yields clunky lines such as “Why do i always get the kind of girl that i didn’t oughta get.” The track would be fine on an album by The Band but woefully out of place on a DEEP PURPLE album. Given it’s awkward middle section that rather breaks up the continuity of the album, it would’ve made much more sense to place either the single “Strange Kind Of Woman” or its superior B-side “I’m Alone” in its stead.

The second side is the most dynamic and most interesting as the band offers a more sophisticated approach that borders on proto-prog with the stellar counterpoint-rich “The Mule” that served as the perfect gateway for Ian Paice’s phenomenal drum solo on “Made In Japan.” The track features a unique atmospheric overlay while Blackmore delivers some nicely delivered guitar wizardry along with really cool tones. “Fools” is probably my favorite track on the album with its trippy psychedelic intro that hypnotizes you before bursting into the satisfying chord progression that constitutes the main song structure. This track finds al the musicians as well as Gillan’s vocals at top performance on FIREBALL. The closing “No One Came” is also a fascinating departure from anything DEEP PURPLE had released before with a simple riff acting as the backdrop for Gillan’s narrative vocal delivers to discuss the ironies of being a famous rock star in a band and all the contradictions that come with the package with yet again more stellar performances by the band members.

While tamer than “In Rock” and a bit more esoteric sounding than the more familiar “Machine Head,” FIREBALL is a strange little bedfellow next to its more famous counterparts that bookend it. Panned by the band itself as their weakest effort with the exception of Ian Gillan who is very fond of it, FIREBALL is one that started out mediocre for me but as i continued to listen to it consistently for a period of weeks it slowly unleashed its magic and once all comparisons between other albums dropped out of the big picture then suddenly i found myself loving this album a lot with the sole exception of “Anyone’s Daughter” which i always gleefully skip without looking back! While this album will always linger in the shadow of the band’s more popular albums, FIREBALL should have been titled “Curveball” because it delivers a totally different reaction than what your initial impressions are. It’s an excellent album that i’m grateful i persisted in cracking the code because now it’s one of my favorite DEEP PURPLE albums that i really can’t get enough of when i’m in the mood for early 70s hard rock.

siLLy puPPy Very few bands and artists thrill me to the point that i actually truly look forward to a new release but there are a few top dogs in my world that still give me that giddy euphoria that i felt as a teen utterly mesmerized by the majesty of their musical output. NILE is one of those top dogs and to my ears has never released a substandard album in its entire career although some albums are clearly stronger than others. This is a band that stridently strives for quality over sheer numbers so when i got word that a new release was hitting the scene in 2024, well, i just got the musical version of NILE fever! It’s been five years since “Vile Nilotic Rites,” which i personally loved but apparently didn’t quite resonate with the rest of the fanbase as strongly. The band’s newest attack of the senses comes from the pummelation overload of its tenth album THE UNDERWORLD AWAITS US ALL which adds a new member to the previous album’s quartet status. Guitarist Zach Jeter of lesser known bands like Doomsday Revival, Imperium, Lecherous Nocturne and Olkoth joins the team adding a whole new level of bombast to the team’s treacherous crocodile filled stream of sound.

The band is death metal royalty at this point in their career and has pretty much been so for well over two decades ago but like a handful of bands such as Enslaved, Incantation, Moonsorrow and Esoteric just to name a few seems to never run out of inspiration and a passion for delivering the highest caliber of metal in its retrospective field and even though NILE may dip a bit in overall quality from album to album, to my ears it’s always above average with an endless cornucopia of creativity sweeping the undercurrents of every brutally delivered guitar riff, bantering bass groove and guttural growl. Once again the band returns with what many are deeming the band’s best album in years however i find it simply to be yet another top notch feather in a well decorated cap. With the extra heft of a second guitarist, THE UNDERWORLD AWAITS US ALL unleashes a ridiculously full sound effect with dueling galloping guitar gymnastics and a frenetic beastly warlike percussive drive that has propelled George Kollias to the top of the heap for technical drummers in the modern world.

The album features 11 tracks that add up to about 53 1/2 minutes with the usual NILE characteristics of nerdy technically infused gnarled rhythms whizzing by like a blitzkrieg in Cairo with the occasional breaks into traditional Egyptian musical scales downtuned into an acoustic melancholy. To the uninitiated an incessant form of headache music that sounds like every other death metal migraine but to the fully indoctrinated into the cult of NILE, a massive upgrade in technique and expansiveness as the first five member album to appear since 2000’s “Black Seeds Of Vengeance.” The results is an even greater amplification of the sheer brutality the band has delivered since the beginning coupled with knotty labyrinthine riffing excursions and a slightly warped sense of reality through bizarre syncopated techniques and an unwavering weaving of a cross-section of contrapuntal anomalies. What sounds a bit new to my eras is that two guest vocalists add a bit of backing support from time to time which ushers NILE into the world of vocal harmonies albeit unpredictable where they will emerge and rather fleeting once they appear like a desert mirage.

Like every NILE release, the musicianship is top tier with razor-sharp guitar gymnastics leading the way supported by the most robust beefy bass bantering and technical drumming wizardry the world of technical death metal has to offer. Likewise Karl Sanders’ vocal growls sound as poignant as ever with the piercing precision of a hanged man delivering his last noose-necked utterances. The incessant flow is relentless which will please all the speed freaks out there who lament the fact bands like Ulcerate have slowed their frenetic death metal delivery system to a doomy dirge and other bands such as Gojira or Behemoth have ventured into the more commercial viabilities of catchy alternative metal based song structures. NILE remains true to its craft with an incessant dedication to the chaotic flow that it has always unleashed with a furor and even some 25 years after its earliest recordings still shows no signs of letting its foot off the gas.

While cries of treading water may come from many who find such rampaging attacks to be overweening and taxing on the ears, it should be remembered that such woes of despair emerge from those who can only handle death metal lite in all its watered down variations and that NILE is reserved for those who want their death metal to deliver the deathly goods without having to sweeten their caffeinated beverage into a trendy latte version of its former glory. I for one admire a band like NILE that forges ahead into the future fearlessly adhering to its Egyptian themed metal mania without compromising its basic principles of keeping death metal brutal and as friggin ugly and mangled as is possible. As with all NILE releases, the differences between the albums lie in the subtleties which for some may take a few spins to discern but to my ears this album is clearly different than what came before not just by the quintet status which gives the band a fuller more dynamic spectrum of sound but also in the musical motifs, clever cadences and use of clean vocal harmonies to add a touch of contrast. Pretty much every NILE is a winner in my book and this one is no better or worse than the majority of its canon. Simply another pleasing journey into the best of what brutal technical death metal has to offer and NILE is always a band that delivers.

siLLy puPPy One of the most popular and accomplished death metal bands to emerge from Chile, INANNA formed in Santiago in the year 2000 and slowly but surely emerged from the metal underground as one of South America’s most enduring contributions to extreme metal. Named after the ancient Mesopotamian goddess associated with war, sex, desire, fertility and power, INANNA indeed has delivered a powerful war-like style of modern death metal that found its own fertility in how it combined various strains of old school death metal with the more modern varieties of the genre and made something all their own.

Although the band has been around for a quarter of a century now, INANNA has only released three albums to date with the debut CONVERGING AGES being released in 2008. Like many death metal acts INANNA related a couple demos with one presciently titled “Ascend From The Underworld” which found them hitting the ground running on their fully developed 2008 masterwork. The band has gone through a few lineup changes but basically there is a pre-album lineup, the lineup of the first two albums and yet another for the band’s return from a hiatus that lasted ten years. On this release the band features Diego Itabaca (electric and acoustic guitars), Carlos Fuentes (electric and acoustic guitars), Max Neira (bass, lead vocals) and Felipa Zará (drums).

CONVERGING AGES is a powerful modern mix of death metal styles that have emerged since the genre debuted in the 1980s. Forged from the roots of the old school varieties that brought us the filth and grime of the raw underground 80s, INANNA used that as the template and crafted its own unique mix that adopted the progressive meanderings of Opeth and the progressive and space rock sounds of 70s progressive rock, similar to what Blood Incantation would unleash with its 2019 classic “Hidden History Of The Human Race.” Add to that the band infused moments of tech death into its tapestry while also finding just enough melodic death metal moments to keep it all accessible. The jangly guitar tones and timbres add a touch of disso-death and the long meandering jamming sessions add a touch of improvisation in the soloing. Add to that some veritable moments of downtime with acoustic passages that drift off to space and it’s fair to say that INANNA was quite innovative in taking death metal into the space age.

While compared most to Mexico’s The Chasm, to my ears INANNA sounds like the death metal equivalent to America’s Vektor with long progressive twists and turns and lengthy playtimes that allow unexpected musical developments to evolve. The softer touches specifically remind me of Vektor’s last album “Terminal Redux” however it should be remembered that INANNA released CONVERGING AGESS eight years prior making this Chilean band one of the pioneers of the entire space rock-tinged extreme metal camp. The Vektor companions also ring true with moments where the band sounds much more like a trash metal band with galloping riffs out of the Sadus playbook however you’re only a few growly vocal motifs away from bringing things back to the death metal camp. The musicians are well-seasoned and at the top of their game which couple with the creative fortitude displayed on CONVERGING AGES makes this debut a gem of the modern death metal world indeed.

INANNA delivers a near perfect progressive death metal extravaganza fueled by Lovecraftian themes, tales of Cthulhu and war-fueled historical references. What the band lacks in quantity of releases more than makes up for in the quality unleashed on each release. Rightfully considered one of if not the best metal album to emerge from Chile, INANNA somehow forged the connection to the world of the old school death metal variations without sounding retro and rather became an inspiration of how to retain some of the lost aspects that had been relinquished by many bands that forged ahead into the world of tech death which effectively created a rather distinct new genre in its own right. Somewhat of a latecomer to the rest of the world, INANNA has finally been discovered and finding its rightful place in the high ranks of top notch modern death metal.

siLLy puPPy While symphonic death metal hasn’t exactly cornered the market in one of extreme metal’s most popular subgenres, a few bands have managed to rise to the top of the death metal game and deliver some of the most brutal technically challenging death metal chops accompanied by the most unlikely accompaniments of symphonic classical arrangements. One of the biggest of the lot, FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE has been at it for nearly two decades and has consistently delivered some of the most demanding death metal there is to be experienced however like many bands that get stuck into a rut, even this band has been pretty much running off the template set out as far back as 2009 with its debut “Oracles” and has been pretty much cranking out variations of that general theme ever since.

Well nothing like a near death experience to shake things up a little bit and after the band’s 2019 release “Veneno,” band leader and bassist / vocalist Francesco Paoli suffered an extreme mountain climbing accident that nearly snuffed him out like a candle in a category 5 hurricane. Emerging five years later, the band returns with its sixth album OPERA which upon first glance of the dubious title makes you wonder if they’ve gone full on Therion and abandoned their brutal death metal familiarity for some kind of modern rendition of Jacopo Peri. Well after experiencing FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE’s latest offering, i’m relieved that it’s not the case at all and that the band has indeed delivered another crazy adrenaline fueled dose of quality death metal but not without some substantial changes.

With the same lineup as “Veneno” with the exception of bassist Paolo Rossi who has been replaced by, well who knows actually since no bassist is credited but i’d bet Francesco Paoli most likely delivered the goods. However drummer Eugene Ryabchenko joins the team as the latest percussive monstrosity that pummels your senses away for the album’s 43 minute plus run. Superficially OPERA retains all the classic FLESHGOD GOD hallmarks that make this band stand out even amongst the symphonic death metal niche’s competition however changes have occurred. Firstly this album has lost a lot of the overt complexity and progressive nature which has kept this band at arm’s length of the general death metal fanbase simply by crafting musical compositions so twisted and technical that only the most devoted can make heads or tails of the band’s modus operandi.

In effect, FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE has opted for a more accessible even poppier sound that is more akin to albums like “Communion” from Septicflesh rather than the inaccessible torturous realms of Gorguts or Death. With a greater role laid out for soprano vocalist Veronica Bordacchini, OPERA takes on a more melodic approach at times sounding a bit like Nightwish or Epica with a few neoclassical nods to bands like Angra or Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody Of Fire. Likewise not every track is a ballbuster blastbeat laden speedfest but offers a bit of slower downtime with tracks like “Matricide” escaping death metal altogether and entering something more akin to Therion’s symphonic metal approach on classic albums like “Theli.”

While the album’s balancing of past brutal death metal glories and the more accessible sounds of more streamlined melodic compositions works quite nicely, unfortunately the band ends the album with its first veritable ballad in the form of “Till Death Do Us Part” which features a saccharin piano based performance with Bordacchini in the forefront. While her vocals are suitable for the task at hand, the track itself reeks of a push for overt commercial glories and is the death metal equivalent of an AOR crossover moment. The short title track that follows basically continues in instrumental form but together add a rather underwhelming weak moment to an otherwise satisfying album’s run.

While i personally prefer the uncompromising brutality and proggy technical excesses of yore, i am also a fan of melodic extreme metal and i have to say that FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE has taken a leap of faith into this new realm and crafted a nice chunky slab of melodic symphonic death metal. Fans of Septicflesh, Aephanemer and Brymir will appreciate this the most but those who crave a bit more brutal type of Nightwish or Epica will find lots to love here as well. A new beginning for the new FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE where the album delivers a more accessible range of melodic touches without sacrificing its sheer audacious death metal bombast. Only the last two tracks drag this one down for me but i have to say that i was surprised that this band that has evaded melody like the plague has done a great job in tackling a completely new aspect of its symphonic death metal possibilities. Oh and supposedly this OPERA has a theme and all that but whatever!

siLLy puPPy Considered one of the early pioneers of crust punk and death metal, England’s DEVIATED INSTINCT formed in Norwich in 1984 and forged that early strain of noisy crust punk that infused heavier doses of thrash metal, death metal and heavy metal which now has retroactively earned the tagging of stenchcore. This band’s initial existence lasted from 1984 to 1991 but has reformed in 2007 and still active with only guitarist / vocalist Rob Middleton and bassist Steve Harvey as the only original members still rockin’ the house.

The band released a series of demos, splits and EPs before arriving at what’s considered its debut album ROCK ’N’ROLL CONFORMITY which at a running time of only about 29 minutes makes you wonder if it really an album after all but this is punk, baby so brevity is the name of the game. Despite the short running time the album features 12 tracks with each side of the vinyl sporting its own subtitle. Side A is known as the Windy Side whereas Side B is called Winston Side. The album was only once released on vinyl and remains one of those underground collectibles but can be found on CD as a part of the “Definitive Instinct” compilation released in 1990.

Following in the footsteps of early pioneers Amoebix and Discharge, DEVIATED INSTINCT delivered a more brutal and heavier form of crust punk which is now known as stenchcore. This is one of those truly underground filthy raw releases with a lo-fi production suitable for an early black metal release and all the irreverent grime and passion to match. This album delivers a thundering cacophonous roar of guitar din on full distortion mode while the bantering bass practically blurs into the mix. The riffing is somewhat rooted in thrash metal and although there is a crossover thrash effect going on, the overall presentation is much more rooted in the early crust punk sounds with the last track “Miniature Railways” even being a Discharge cover.

The song structures are very much derived from the anarcho-punk playbook however the delivery system is firing on full pistons with angsty riffing at death metal speed and a raging vocal style courtesy of Leggo that is very similar to some of the early thrash metal vocalists of the 1980s when the genre was less popular and more brutal in its approach. Some of the lightning fast guitar riffs are also right out of the early thrash metal world courtesy of speed addicted bands like Possessed or Sadus. The drumming however remains faithful to the world of punk rock and never demonstrates the same virtuosity as the guitar and bass which overall gives DEVIATED INSTINCT a very bizarre hybridizing sound that wasn’t so common in the 1980s quite yet as this ugly stepchild of crust punk was very much an underground sensation.

This is the kind of murky lo-fi metal that suits the underground so well. With no ambitions for crossover appeal, DEVIATED INSTINCT really delivered the goods with a no nonsense balls to the wall infusion of its metal / punk Frankenstein. This is an adrenaline ride all the way through with no breaks, no ballads and no time for anything cute and relaxing to emerge. This is an angry aggressive display of chaotic distortion and raw energetic angst delivered in top form. While those averse to lo-fi production of any kind will find this abysmal, it’s important to be reminded this this is indeed music for the abyss and in that regard it delivers quite well. I love the murky muddied tones and Leggo’s vocals are well above average in comparison to anything remotely considered crust punk of the day. A very strong effort from one of the UK’s most legendary underground noise acts of the 1980s.

siLLy puPPy Triumphant, epic and celebratory are three words that come to mind when describing MOONSORROW’s fifth album VERISÄKEET even though the album’s title translates into English as “Blood Verses.” Considered the pinnacle of the band’s career by some and one of the best Finnish metal albums of all time by others, VERISÄKEET was no doubt a major evolutionary development in the band’s sound and one that primarily jettisoned the Viking metal sensibilities of the previous “Kivenkantaja” and zeroed in on the Finnish folk music that the band had been implementing since its early albums that started with “Suden Uni.”

Heavily steeped in Norwegian black metal, VERISÄKEET features four lengthy 14-minute plus slabs of MOONSORROW’s epic heathen metal plus a final closing track of unplugged Finnish folk music showcasing the band’s more intimate side replete with nature recordings offering lengthy moments of non-musical contemplation. The band specifically didn’t want to copy its approach on “Kivenkantaja” therefore it focused on darker and harsher mood settings while increasing the use of the traditional instruments that had already become the band’s hallmark signature sound. Likewise even though penned entirely in the Finnish language and incomprehensible to many, the lyrics are more abstract and evoke a touch of surrealism.

The album’s approach is quite simple actually. The tracks open with simple folk melodies or in the case of the album itself nature field recordings and then joined in by rampaging black metal guitar riffing, bantering bass dynamics and blastbeats. Through the lengthy processions the melodic groove of the folk music remains dominant as one motif after the next offers new variations of folk musical fills that include the very un-metal instrumentation of the accordion, Jew’s harp, tin whistle and indigenously grown kantele, a traditionally played Finnish zither-like instrument that gives a Baltic mystic to the musical flow. Likewise the band employs the use of intricate vocal harmonics throughout as well as moments of acoustic guitar driven cooling off periods that offer an escape from the incessant distorted grunge effect of the cascading twin guitar riffing stomps.

Amazingly even though the songs themselves are based around rather simple folk tunes that could probably be whittled down to a mere five minutes of playing time, MOONSORROW showcases its compositional prowess on VERISÄKEET with its uncanny ability to eke out every possible variation through a series of free flowing cadences that extend to the 14 minute playing time with the penultimate “Jotenheim (Giant-Home)” meandering to the near 20-minute mark although the track does feature an unnecessarily long non-musical ending of nothing but nature recordings that do wear out their welcome. The first four tracks are all executed in the same manner, each with intricately designed folk melodies and accompanying varying effects however the closing “Kaiku (Echo)” features an unadulterated unplugged folk song that offers a taste of what the Finns do around campfires i presume!

Unless you’re totally adverse to the idea of folk metal in general, you can’t go wrong with VERISÄKEET as it demonstrates one of the purest and most refined examples of how black metal and ethnic folk musical styles can seamlessly blend into one cohesive wholeness. MOONSORROW had already proved its ability to craft such music beyond the usual drinking song adolescence into a more sophisticated epic approach that offered sweepingly beautiful soundscapes fortified with instantly addictive melodies and crushing metal heft. A triumphant peak of the band’s sound and one that would cement their style as the dominant one. An almost flawless album marred only by the extremely long moments of nature recordings that diminish the impact of the overall experience slightly. Nevertheless one of MOONSORROW’s finest moments for sure.

siLLy puPPy The second edition of the metallic neo-prog phase of PENDRAGON’s career, PURE followed the band’s previous album “Believe’s” sudden leap into a brave new musical world where the band’s classic beloved neo-prog sound had suddenly been infiltrated by screaming metallic fury which was not appreciated by the entire fanbase. The band stood resolute in its determined approach to evolve PENDRAGON’s sound into the new expanding frontiers of cross-pollinating musical genres while staying faithful to its neo-prog roots and continued on course with a new set of seven tracks as well as a new drummer in the form of Scott Higham who replaced long time member Fudge Smith.

Similarly structured to “Believe,” PURE features several shorter tracks, a few longer and a multi-suite midsection that showcases the band’s new found freedom in diversifying its explorations however PURE delves even further into the realms of progressive metal with more frequent excursions into raucous guitar riffing and heavy angsty tempo build ups. Laced with the same passional vocal performances of Nick Barrett and the band’s classic neo-prog arpeggiated guitar majesty, PENDRAGON jettisoned none of classic trademarks but rather simply turned their straw house into one of more durable bricks as if the band suddenly merged with Porcupine Tree as the metal is more in line with it’s chug heavy space prog than anything else.

“Indigo” starts off confidently in an upbeat mode as the album deftly balances the atmospheric keyboard swirlies of neo-prog with psychedelic guitar lead before bursting into a melodic rock explosiveness that PENDRAGON tames into a melodic circus act. Despite the heavy musical backdrop, Barrett’s vocals remain as tender and controlled as ever without ever jumping into any sort of metal vocal style. The near 15-minute track sets the tone for the entire album by not only showcasing a greater expansiveness into beefier rock performances but also a newfound creative touch in keyboard dexterity and sound effects without sacrificing the fundamental neo-prog touches that band had made its own. While “Believe” was only an occasional metal dabbler, PURE proves to incorporate a more aggressive guitar heft into almost every track with the following 9-minute “Eraserhead” following suit with the now established rotisserie effect of proggy metal, slowed down space rock and neo-prog underpinnings.

The three part “Comatose” which collectively adds up to about 17 minutes of the album’s 53 minute run features some of the most dynamic and dramatic moments starting with a retro PENDRAGON neo-prog sound of piano led vocal narrations with heavy synthesized atmospheres but proves itself a shapeshifter of varying musical motifs that slowly ratchet up the tension in suitable chord progressions, keyboard programming dynamics and thundering heavy metal uproar. Higham’s drum contributions are notable as it propels the more relaxed approach of yore into a more energetic rock proficiency with clever drum rolls and percussive ingenuity. Likewise these three tracks flow luxuriantly through various creative passages that allow all kinds of art rock possibilities to flutter in and out of the scene with the most outlandish resulting at the end of “I - View From The Seashore” which ends with a classical musical addition that would make Mozart proud.

“The Freak Show” follows the suite with another round of grungy metal heft accompanied by electric atmospheres and Pink Floydian space rock techniques cementing PURE as the heaviest overall album experience PENDRAGON had engaged in up to this point. The closing track “It’s Only Me’” is really the only track that seems a bit too saccharine for its own good with a guest harmonica performance and the least heavy track of the album. It feels a bit out of place amidst the ballsier tunes that precede but demonstrating that PENDRAGON has lost none of its melancholic balladry in the midst of turning up all the amps to full deciblage. While many simply write off the period from “Believe” to “Passion” as a bad turn for the band, if you accept these albums on their own terms they are cleverly crafted quite brilliantly actually with PURE being my favorite of the lot. While many are adverse to change i relish in it and find this unusual new rendition of PENDRAGON to be quite satisfying.

siLLy puPPy Depicting a garbage can lid on your debut album can never be a good idea really. I mean what is a music lover supposed to assume the contents of the package are inside, right?!!! Germany’s early prog scene was notorious for some of the most hideously ill-conceived album covers of the entire genre despite some of the most innovative bands emerging from its borders. ELOY of course is widely known as the band that was named after a futurist race of humans from the H.G. Wells book “Time Machine” (only there it was “Eloi”) and one of the most successful successors of the Pink Floyd space rock scene that continental Europe had to offer. So is this debut release really nothing more than rubbish? Many think so.

The band was founded in 1969 by guitarist Frank Bornemann who has kept the ELOY going for well over 50 years now with a huge array of members coming and going throughout the decades. Despite emerging alongside Germany’s Krautrock scene, ELOY was one of those bands that took a different path as they looked more towards the inspirations of the British scene rather than joining the fertile homegrown koschmische sounds that were emerging although still showing hints to its origins. Given the band was formed in Hannover, the same city which spawned The Scorpions, it’s rather interesting that while The Scorpions started out more as a krautrock band and then gravitated to the world of hard rock and heavy metal while ELOY began as the exact opposite originating as a hard rock band that then delved into the world of psychedelia.

ELOY’s self-titled debut album which was released in 1971 is the odd album out of the band’s substantial discography as it found the band the band hitting the scene as a heavy hitting bluesy hard rock band borrowed a lot from Black Sabbath, Atomic Rooster and even early Jethro Tull however even on this early offering ELOY was already employing moments that could be interpreted as psychedelic rock or Krautrock, it’s just that those moments were reserved only as opening moments or mid-song excursions rather than being teased out into lengthy psychedelic rock compositions. Nevertheless this album proved to be a testing ground where those secondary elements would soon become the dominant force. The band would quickly figure this out and emerge with its following album “Inside” as the fully gestated progressive space rock band that it is better known as.

While not unpleasant, ELOY’s debut unfortunately lacks identity and certainty as it seems to flail around throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. While the opening “Today” opens with a glimpse of its future space rock with a trippy Krautish intro but then jumps into a fiery display of hard rock guitar riffs that are obviously more inspired by Black Sabbath and fellow Hannover rockers Jane than Pink Floyd. While competent this early album pretty much is following in the footsteps of other bands rather than innovating and unfortunately Frank Bornemann’s somewhat limited vocal style doesn’t animate the heavier rock style very effectively. While the album pretty much follows in the opening track’s wake, there are a few notable exceptions. “Song Of A Parnanoid Soldier” features a style that would sound more like the future ELOY than what the rest of this album presented.

The second track “Something Yellow” which is the longest at over eight minutes showcases the band’s early prog characteristics with a piano based riff that jumps into energetic hard rock but then three quarters of the way through takes a sudden turn into the psychedelic with a slow burning guitar sequence before dissolving into an avant-garde extravaganza into free improvisational trippiness much like the most out there Krautrock bands would adopt. While the keyboards and synthesizers would become ELOY’s best friends in their atmosphere-soaked psychedelic rock of the future, on this debut such sounds are rarely implemented however the closing “Dillus Ready” does evoke a Uriah Heep or Deep Purple inspired organ based hard rock style. Bornemann’s vocal style seems to be inspired by Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson (although unconvincingly) for much of the album as he inflects his words in a similar manner.

ELOY’s debut isn’t as bad as many make it out to be as it delivers a competent slab of hard rocking heavy psych throughout its seven track run however at the same time the band sounds a little generic even by the standards of the early 70s when prog, heavy metal and other faster musical styles were diversifying. The album is rather uneven and unsure of itself as it drifts from one track to another as if it’s exploring options in how to proceed. Personally i’ve never been a huge ELOY fan at all mostly due to Bornemann’s vocals which i find unsatisfying in how they interact with the music but also because i feel ELOY borrowed too heavily from the psychedelic wellspring that Pink Floyd had been gestating since the mid-60s. The same exact dilemma is presented to me on ELOY’s debut as it is too derivative for my liking. It’s a perfectly listenable album and checks all the proper boxes for hard rock but compared to the British scene very much a second rate band at this point.

siLLy puPPy In the world of extreme metal bands seem to release EPs for a few reasons. One could be as flotsam and jetsam compiled from previous recording sessions that doesn’t fit well onto official album releases. Two could be a significant deviation from the band’s established style and three a chance to break in some new talent and see if they’re up to the task as replacements for former band members who jumped ship. All three cases seem to fit with GOROD’s so far one and only EP titled TRANSCENDENCE.

This five track EP was released between the albums “Process Of A New Decline” from 2009 and the 2012 album “A Perfect Absolution.” Its the first release with newbies vocalist Guillaume Martinot who replaced Julien Deyres and guitarist Nicolas Alberny who replaced Arnaud Pontacq. The EP features a remake of “Earth Pus” which first appeared on the band’s debut “Neurotripsicks” as well as a totally unrecognized acoustic flamenco version of it called “Earth Pus: Salvation.” Add to that another flamenco remake of “Blackout” from the band’s second album “Leading Vision” which is called “Blackout: Renewed Souls.”

Also included is a remake of Cynic’s “Textures” from their classic “Focus” album and last but not least is the 15 minute plus title track which is the only new track on the EP but substantially different than anything the band had cranked out at this time because it’s by far the most progressive track of the band’s career. However don’t let the length scare you away as the band lost none of its intensity and vibrant use of technical wizardry however it does wend and wind through slower passages as well as choppy prog fueled time signature frenzies.

Given the diverse nature of this album, it’s very much a collection of disparate tracks rather than a bonafide release but the title track alone could’ve served as an EP in its own right with the other four simply serving as bonus tracks except for the fact they are pretty damn good in their own right. While i’d hate to hear an album’s worth of cover songs, just one select cut from a stellar band works quite well here as it showcases the band’s metal inclinations beyond their established sound. Likewise the band flirted with flamenco on previous albums but only as a hidden backdrop that would reveal itself during the scant times when the metal bombast dropped out. Here it’s the whole enchilada and showcases the band’s ability to transverse the larger swath of guitar-oriented musical genres.

The epic title track also features some clean vocals which the band never really explored before this point in its career but the track is mostly choppy staccato-rich guitar riffing with the usual death metal accoutrements including the guttural growls however even on this one there are traces of flamenco rhythms and the progressive touches remind a bit of Opeth as well as Cynic and Atheist. The flamenco touches come to the forefront at the end of the track as the metal is dropped for a smooth ending. This one is easy to miss in the GOROD canon as it’s the band’s only EP thus far and up until now i’ve avoided it myself but that was a mistake as the EP is actually quite brilliantly executed and a nice little excursion from the band’s regularly scheduled program.

siLLy puPPy IRISH COFFEE was one of the few hard rock bands that emerged from the early 70s Belgian scene but packed a punch that was as caffeinated and intoxicating as its namesake. Formed in the West Flanders city of Aalst out of the ashes of a band called The Voodoo which got its start playing covers by bands like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Kinks, IRISH COFFEE crafted its own seamless fusion of its influences after it formed in 1970. The band delivered a rather crafty debut album in 1971 which happened to be its only release from its first run that lasted until 1975 when a car accident killed the drummer and seriously injured the bassist effectively ending the band.

While easily taken as an average organ driven hard rock band in the vein of Deep Purple or Atomic Rooster, IRISH COFFEE deceptively wove progressive elements into its soulful yet feisty performances that featured an exquisite sense of melody, an even more developed rhythmic drive and a top notch instrumental interplay of the musicians which included William Souffreau (vocals, guitar), Jean Van Der Schueren (lead guitar), Willy De Bisschop (bass), Paul Lambert (Hammond organ) and Hugo Verhoye (drums). This eponymously titled debut offered an interesting mix of early Led Zeppelin inspired bluesy rock along with the organ heavy rock of Deep Purple but also offered a bit of soulful heavy psych funk of Grand Funk Railroad along with the pop infused sensibilities of late 60s British acts like Gun.

While the album may sound a bit generic upon first encounter, this is one that sort of sneaks up on you like an internet cookie and beckons you to return. Once you sink your teeth into the intricacies beyond the instant ear wormy grooves and irresistible melodic hooks, the album reveals deeper idiosyncrasies that make the band stand out. First and foremost, the star of the show is clearly singer William Souffreau who was the chief songwriter along with lead guitarist Jean Van Der Schueren who also delivers some excellently tasteful guitar leads. Souffreau’s vocal prowess elevates the rather average musical style several notches as the groovy boogie rock style was fairly common for the day but something about a gifted vocalist that can really take an album experience up a few notches.

Another factor that offers a more complex approach than the average hard rock band is the drumming style of Hugo Verhoye which is fairly busy throughout the album’s run with amazingly complex drumming patterns that sort of seamlessly meld into the overall flow of the album’s musical style. The album stampedes into action with the heavy rocking “Can’t Take It” with its off-kilter drunken sailor boogie rock groove laced with a unique percussive drive and a ferocious guitar presence. William Souffreau immediately dominates the mood setting with his powerful soulful yet gruff vocal style while the Hammond organ slinks around in the backdrop. “The Beginning Of The End” slows things down a bit and offers a completely different style with a melodic groovy addictive guitar riff and a stronger organ presence more in the Deep Purple “Child In Time” territory. Souffreau shows off his vocal range with a passionate lyrical delivery that pretty much continues for the rest of the album.

“When Winter Comes” follows suit with the same style but “The Show (Part 1)” jumps into a high energy funk show with a super catchy groove and even more ear wormy sing-songy vocal harmony section. It sort of reminds me of the White Stripes’ “Icky Thump” which would follow decades later. This one in particular evokes a strong Grand Funk Railroad vibe. While “The Show (Part 2)” sort of insinuates a continuation in theme, the track is a bit different sounding more like the bluesy rock on Led Zeppelin’s debut however does feature a funky groove after the introductory moments. The rest of the album pretty much follows the playbook set up at this point and continues the vibrant flow of heavy percussion and bluesy guitar soloing over funk, blues and slightly progressive underpinnings all glazed over by the hefty Hammond organ use.

Although the band only released a sole album in its initial five year run, it did release a series of singles all the way up to 1974 just before Paul Lambert was killed in a car accident and Wim De Craene was permanently injured. The band reformed as Joystick briefly following the tragedy with new members but never released anything. Eventually this album would find a reissue with all the non-album singles as bonus tracks in the 90s and IRISH COFFEE even reformed in the 2000s with original members and a new lineup and has been active since 2013. While i would probably call this a second tier band in the world of organ-based hard rock from the 70s behind bands like Deep Purple, Atomic Rooster, Uriah Heep and even Qatermass, i would still consider the sole IRISH COFFEE release from the 70s an excellent slice of passionately delivered progressive hard rock that only becomes more addictive the more time you give it a listen.

siLLy puPPy Venezuelan guitarist FELIX MARTIN has been on the technical guitar music scene for almost 15 years now and still remains quite unique with his self-designed 12, 14 and 16-string guitars that he has perfected the art of finger tapping on. After studying at the Berklee School of Music in Boston and relocating to Los Angeles, MARTIN has been touring with other guitar wizards ranging from Bumblefoot (with Sons of Apollo) and Marty Friedman to Tony MacAlpine across the world. MARTIN has delivered a steady stream of nerdy instrumental albums since his debut “Bizarre Rejection” in 2010 and currently in 2024 he has released his latest power trio assault THE GATHERING.

For a guitar virtuoso MARTIN plays it cool and on the 10 tracks featured on THE GATHERING he definitely showcases his two-handed double-neck guitar tapping approaches with his collection of multi-stringed guitars and accompanying 10-strong basses but he integrates inspiration derived from progressive rock and metal along with medieval music, video game soundtracks, Japanese anime themes and an abundance of jittery math rock time signatures. Unlike other modern guitar gods such as Tosin Abasi who favor djent-fueled guitar heft, MARTIN offers a gentler approach making his music a bit more light and breezy despite the incessant flow of finger-tapping techniques permeating the album’s run.

Add to that MARTIN infuses his Latin musical roots into the mix and the entire album has a bit of the jazz fusion vibe that has been more prevalent on his previous albums. First and foremost MARTIN is dedicated to intriguing melodies and dynamic rhythmic drive with the virtuosity supporting the overarching theme, a trait lost on many virtuosos although that has been changing in the 21st century as gifted guitarists have found new musical avenues to incorporate their shredding skills into. Perhaps the most dynamic feature of MARTIN’s music is the fact that his 16 and 12-string guitars along with the 10-string basses offer a huge palette of sounds and technical possibilities. Add to that MARTIN uses two hands on two necks to craft contrapuntal guitar techniques, some of the most advanced technical wizardry possible.

Each track on the album includes its own artwork of an anime character that represents it as seen on the album cover art. While usually tucked into the world of progressive metal, THE GATHERING is less metallic than previous albums and offers a cleaner less distorted array of tones and timbres. The trio is flawless in its nerdy execution of the string attacks however i find the drummer to be the least interesting of the bunch as he basically only exists to maintain a steady beat with no outbursts of virtuosity in his own right although he doers offer some moments of interest. Even more exhilarating than hearing MARTIN play is to experience the visuals on his videos where you can marvel at the beefy excessively stringed guitars that he and bandmate Joan Torres double tap with amazing grace and ease.

Overall this like any MARTIN release is impressive on a technical level and even competent as far as painting interesting melodic developments and balancing the elements involved however even with all the attention focused on the songwriting with the finger tapping a secondary process, the album still comes off as a bit one-dimensional as the tracks don’t vary significantly enough from one another and by the time the album nears its final tracks the wow factor has diminished. While MARTIN has learned the discipline of toning things down and honing his skills into a greater sum of the parts, unfortunately the music isn’t diverse enough to maintain the interest of the listener for an album’s run but the craftsmanship is rather brilliant and the clean tones and timbres that MARTIN has eked out of his guitar army is quite pleasing indeed. Personally i prefer the faster tracks as the slower ones are a little too pandering to the non-techies but really there’s nothing horrible about this album other than a little monotony at times.

siLLy puPPy Approaching nearly 60 years together as a band, it’s true that only drummer Ian Paice has been with DEEP PURPLE for the band’s entire 56 year existence with other members coming and going over the decades but the band as a commercial entity has sold well over 100 million albums in its amazingly fruitful career not to mention an early innovator of hard rock and heavy metal. It’s hard to believe that these old timers now mostly in their 70s are still cranking out the same hard driving rock that they did in the 1970s but here we are in the year 2024 and band is releasing its 23rd studio album!

After the departure of long term guitarist Steve Morse who played with DEEP PURPLE from 1994-2022, the band sallied forth well into the 2020s with guitarist Simon McBride who has honed his bluesy hard rock skills in bands like Snakecharmer and Sweet Savage. Along with vocalist Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover, DEEP PURPLE is still 3/5 of its classic Mark II lineup and along with keyboardist Don Airey who has been cranking out his meanest organ playing skills 2002, the band is determined to keep going until every last member has taken his last breath.

=1 finds Bob Ezrin back in the producer’s seat who together with all the band members crafted 13 new tracks that evoke the spirit of classic DEEP PURPLE and delivered with a loose concept of the world rapidly becoming more and more complex. After the all cover song album of “Turning To Crime” one could easily assume that DEEP PURPLE was ready to call it quits but the band demonstrates that while not up to its peak as far as energetic performances are concerned, these seasoned veterans still have a knack for writing catchy hard rock tunes that find that perfect mix of boogie rock, bluesy guitar leads and organ bombast accompanied by Ian Gillan’s distinct vocal style which amazingly has held up quite well over the decades.

The album hits the ground running with the album’s opening “Show Me” which finds DEEP PURPLE in fine form for a bunch of guys now well past their prime. What the band lacks in its energetic drive that catapulted classic albums like “In Rock” and “Machine Head” to the top of the charts, the modern DEEP PURPLE rather compensates with emotive performances focused more on the melodic touches and the crafty soulful rendering of their classic sound brought to a new era. Unfortunately some of these slowed down versions of classic DEEP PURPLE are a little on the mopey side with the track “I’ll Catch You” falling into the dreaded AOR turf, something classic DEEP PURPLE never would’ve approached!

Overall this isn’t a bad batch of tracks by one of the most famous rock bands ever to have existed but it’s also a reminder that these guys’ best days are well behind them and now they are simply doing what they love in order to keep the old adage “use it or lose it” alive and well. DEEP PURPLE has definitely been a lot more interesting since 2013’s “Now What?” and in that regard the band continues to craft instantly catchy tracks that will appeal to any long time fans of classic PURPLE. While it’s hard to fault this album in any particular way it is hard not to compare them to their glory days when the combo pack attack of Jon Lord’s classically infused organ runs with Ritchie Blackmore’s neoclassical shredding were in full force.

This is a far cry from those days but nevertheless a pleasant slice of the band in its latest formation however it seems that the much younger McBride who is only in his 40s is kept on the leash and not allowed to crank out the serious energetic drive and guitar majesty that would kick this album’s energy level up a few notches with the exception of the excellent “Now You’re Talkin” which takes nine tracks to get to. While not bad, it’s also not going to go down in history as anything that stands out in the band’s canon but rather a testament to the band’s longevity and determination to sally forth no matter what obstacles lie in their path.

siLLy puPPy Influenced by the early technical death metal skills of Death, Pestilence, Atheist and Cynic, ILLOGIST was formed in the Alpine city of Aosta in the northwestern region of Italy in 1997 by guitarist Luca Minieri and original drummer Remy Curtaz and soon joined bassist Roberto Zeppa and then a few other members who came and went until the original duo were left the only ones standing. After recruiting bassist Emilio Dattolo and guitarist Diego Ambrosi, ILLOGICIST was ready to record its debut release SUBJECTED which saw the light of day in 2004 on the Crash Music, Inc label. Prepare yourself for a thrashy deathened brutal ride into oblivion!

It wouldn’t take long for Remy Curtaz to jump ship after recording SUBJECTED leaving only Luca Minieri as a founding member. After recruiting drummer Sergio Ponti, ILLOGICIST embarked on a massive tour of Italy and Europe and has become a staple in European technical death metal ever since. This is a band that means business and it all started with this very debut featured a bedazzling array of nine tracks that bantered and brutalized the senses of nearly 39 minutes of punishing pummelation and raucous riffing rage. This is one of those bands that has the need for speed and SUBJECTED will, well, subject you to a ceaseless blitzkrieg frenzy of some of the most demanding death metal the genre has to dish out.

The album starts with a short intro of a faint scream from the distance before bursting into a neoclassical style of progressive technical death metal that sounds like what you could expect if Necrophagist met Death and perhaps a more thundering galloping thrash metal band like early Sadus. As far as the technical death metal riffing is concerned, ILLOGICIST delvers a relentless procession of fast-tempo speedfests that offer a dizzying array of proggy time signature deviations and hairpin curves well beyond anything Death, Atheist or Pestilence ever dreamed of however Minieri’s raspy screamed vocals do evoke a rather pissed off Chuck Schuldiner having a very bad day! The insane infusion of crazy time-signature riffage though is off the charts with a never-ending chugging in glitch time with fluid frills and fills finding their way into the nooks and crannies of this speed freak’s wet dream come true.

While the guitar neck melting finger breaking distorted bombast of the riffs is the strongest suit going for ILLOGICIST on SUBJECTED, the screamed vocals actually carry profundity as this band eschews worship of Satan or horror, gore and blood but rather engages in the abstract existential quandaries of spirituality and philosophy. In other words, this is nerd metal through and through! Also mentionable is Curtaz’s drumming ferociousness as he is as relentless at pummeling his drum kit into oblivion as is the guitar and bass freneticism. For whatever reason Curtaz never performed with other bands after departing so perhaps he had some health issue or lost interest but he certainly delivered some of the most relentless demanding time precision drumming skills not too far from the virtuosity of percussive wizards such as Virgil Donati.

The twin guitar attacks really add a ferocity well beyond what a single axe could pull making this an unforgiving wild roller coaster ride on the top of a speed train. This is really as demanding as technical and progressive death metal really gets. If these guys played any faster it would be imperceptible and considered noise (although some might think that already!) For those well steeped in the knotty angular brutality of technical death metal and love the most relentless of the lot then ILLOGICIST actually delivers a rather logical slab of molten metal on full fueled adrenaline mode for an entire album’s run with SUBJECTED. While the lineup would never remain the same for long and ILLOGICIST would deliver two more albums before disappearing from the scene, this debut is a force to be reckoned with.

siLLy puPPy MESSAGE was an early German Krautrock band that was founded by bassist Horst Stachelhaus in 1968 in Düsseldorf. The band is mostly compared to Nektar for its two British members: Allan Murdoch (guitars) and Tommy McGuigan (sax and vocals) as well as appearing on the same label Bacillus which specialized in early German psychedelic bands. MESSAGE was a shapeshifting band with different career moves that unfortunately kept it from finding any particular success outside of its homeland unlike the more internationally successful Nektar. THE DAWN ANEW IS COMING is somewhat of anomaly in the band’s canon since it is more remembered for its darkened heavy rock second album “From Books And Dreams” before turning to a more chilled style of brassy jazz rock on future releases.

The band also suffered a unstable lineup throughout its existence that lasted up to 1981 after releasing seven albums. THE DAWN ANEW IS COMING is the only album to feature the lineup of Tom McGuigan (vocals, sax), Billy Tabbert (guitar, spinet, vocals), Allan Murdoch (guitar), Horst Stachelhaus (bass) and Gerhard Schaber (percussion, vocals) along with James Allan Freeman who added extra mellotron and vocals. While comparisons to Nektar may ring true on the second album, this debut is less psychedelic and rather delivers a mix of more energetic rock that alternates with slower folk inspired motifs with English Tom McGuigan’s vocals sounding a bit like Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson in the way he enunciate’s his lyrics. The composiitons are somewhat complex with intricate chord changes and unpredictable meanderings into lengthy jamming sessions especially on the 8 1/2 minute title track and the near 10-minute “Heaven Knows.”

While the opening “Changes” features some psychedelic elements, “When I’m Coming” and “Evil Faith And Charity” are more akin to more straight forward English hard rock. Despite being British dominated, THE DAWN ANEW IS COMING still evokes a sense of German Krautrock in its looser delivery system and heavy use of mellotron. Although lead singer Tom MCGuigan is a native English speaker, he still delivers somewhat of a faux broken accent of some kind however the British presence left an indelible mark on the band’s sound making it sound like a hybrid of some sort which it clearly was. While the music itself isn’t nearly as colorful as the beautiful album cover art work, the band was amazingly competent in its instrumental interplay and the album is an interesting collection of five tracks although the album is rather on the shorter side at only 33 1/2 minutes of playing time. Like many classic albums of the era, THE DAWN ANEW IS COMING features bonus tracks on various reissues.

While some could write off MESSAGE’s debut as a somewhat generic representation of hard driving rock from the early 1970s as it lacks an abidance of progressive elements at this stage, the performances are still rather unique and most importantly pleasant. Tom McGuigan delivers passionate performed vocals that sound rather unique and the album sounds like a strange chimeric beast that slipped in between the world of British organ-driven hard rock from the likes of Deep Purple, Black Widow and hints of Van der Graaf Generator along with the German sounds of early Eloy, Birth Control and Wind. The occasional saxophone embellishments further add a bizarre sense of lack of direction as the album does feel a bit scattered as it progresses from beginning to end but overall i find this to be a very addictive mix that is tied together by strong rhythms, brilliant melodic songwriting and bet of all McGuigan’s animated vocal style.

siLLy puPPy When thinking of one of the most eccentric frontmen in the entire history of rock music, your mind may gravitate towards Alice Cooper or Arthur Brown for their over-the-top stage performances and shock value horror rock appearances. Or perhaps the unhinged insane asylum escape antics of Jim Morrison or GG Allin. The freakishly outsider ethos of Tom Waits or Frank Zappa even? Well, the award may very go to one of the lesser known enigmas to haunt the progressive rock underground, namely Mr Doctor who bedazzled the world with his Italian-Slovenian band DEVIL DOLL. Enigmatic and mysteriously anonymous for decades, Mr Doctor only publicly revealed his legal name as Mario Panciera in 2008. With a penchant for the controversial and excessively theatrical, Mr Doctor’s eccentric behaviors included recording a debut album titled “Mark Of The Beast” in 1987 and only pressing a single copy retained by the good Dr himself which has remained utterly out of reach of his cult-based fanbase ever since.

Named after the 1964 British horror film, Mr Doctor delivered a musical experience every bit as frightening and strangely demented. Add to his unorthodox ways, the good Doctor started two totally different versions of DEVIL DOLL, one based in Venice, Italy and the other in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then Yugoslavia) however after Slovenia was invaded in 1991 the two bands were merged. And that’s not even getting to the music itself which featured Mr Doctor’s wildly articulated experimental vocal style accompanied by a strange mix of symphonic prog, modern classical, folk music, gothic rock, dark cabaret, neoclassical darkwave, heavy metal and a theatrical operatic delivery system more akin to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom Of The Opera” than anything out of the rock paradigm playbook. With an abundance of instrumentation, the effect is bold, pompous and filled to the brim with sounds from guitars, keyboards, violins, bass guitar, drums and even a harp and tuba.

The band DEVIL DOLL released five of its albums from 1989 to 1996 however it has been claimed that many more were recorded and never intended for release thus adding an extra layer of bizarre eccentricity to the mix. With albums that primarily feature album long tracks that take wild rides through various musical genres, DEVIL DOLL emerged as and remains one of the most unique musical forces ever to exist. The first album available to the public, DEVIL DOLL’s debut album, THE GIRL WHO WAS… DEATH itself found an unusual way of being released. Originally pressed into 500 copies, only 150 were handed out during a live performances and then afterwards the remaining 350 LPs were set aflame. Now how’s that for erratic, eccentric and perhaps even a tidbit wildly acentric?

With a musical theme based on the television series “The Prisoner,” THE GIRL WHO WAS… DEATH traversed through an ever-changing musical rotisseries of varying themes and melodies with captivating metaphorical lyrics and of course Mr Doctor’s erratic and oft jarring vocal performances. While the running time displays 66 minutes and 6 seconds, the sole title track is in reality closer to 39 minutes followed by 25 1/2 minutes of silence and then as a hidden closing surprise, a sampling and reinterpretation of the theme song from “The Prisoner” TV series. The title track opens with a dark gloomy piano run and spectral vocalizations from The Devil Chorus and then goes full on dramatic. Histrionic build ups and militant percussive drive revs up the tension with a thundering crescendo of an introduction before Mr Doctor begins his draconian vocal gymnastics that admittedly are an acquired taste.

Sounding something like a mix of King Diamond and Current 93’s David Tibet, Mr Doctor’s vocals are unlike any other and unfortunately a roadblock for many to delve into the world of DEVIL DOLL. Musically the album features alternating mood swings that engage in accompanied piano rolls to fully fueled heavy metal bombast. The most metal leaning of the DEVIL DOLL canon, THE GIRL WHO WAS… DEATH is the loudest, heaviest and delivers the greatest contrasts but even during the metal madness moments Mr Doctor delivers bizarrely processed vocal contributions which is exactly what you would not expect. Lush orchestrations contrast greatly with prog and metal moments and church organs with creepy liturgic harmonies courtesy of the Devil Choir burst in unexpectedly. Violins come and go and well the only thing to expect here is the unexpected.

DEVIL DOLL delivered some of the most demanding genre-bending works of the late 80s and 90s and even at this stage in 2024 remains utterly unique, unapologetically idiosyncratic and timeless in its unorthodox approach to just about everything it unleashes. Despite all these wild rides into the unknown though, the music is melodically accessible and logically composed. Like a classic opera of the ages, Mr Doctor wove a tapestry of intricately designed cadences and motifs fortified by an arsenal of instrumentation and legion of musicians and vocalists to support an overarching theme. While the proclivities to take everything into the world of extremities is rampant from beginning to end, the music is composed in a traditional classical manor while the time signatures and hairpin turns and musical curveballs are more out of the progressive rock paradigm.

No doubt about it. Mr Doctor really is one of the most oddball eccentricities of the rock universe and only a single exposure to any DEVIL DOLL album will easily convince you of that argument. I’ve been a fan of this bizarre musical act after i picked up “Sacrilegium” some years back but all five of the albums are of the finest quality with this debut being no exception. Beautifully designed and deliciously even devilishly executed, THE GIRL WHO WAS… DEATH is a top notch release with a feisty spirit that delivers the most far-reaching expressions of the musical universe where a whole cauldron of influences is pieced together in a wild array of eclecticism that comes off as epic, enigmatic and utterly mind blowing. While whacked out of his mind in so many ways, the good Dr is a mad musical genius unlike any other. Sure the 25 1/2 minutes of silence is ridiculous but hardly a blemish on an otherwise perfect album.

siLLy puPPy When it comes to insane batshit crazy avant-metal both Colin Marston and Mick Barr have cranked out some of the most unusual sounds that could still be tangibly connected to the metal universe. While their main gig KRALLICE seems to have become their stabilizing tour de force where they can exercise their experimental touches within some sort of traditional framework, this duo along with Lev Weinstein and Nick McMaster have also found a seemingly infinite number of directions to take this fearless intrepid band that lies in the murky bardo world between progressive, black and death metal. While the band took some time off in the 2010s so the members could engage in other projects, the 2020s have proven to be unusually prolific with the band releasing two albums in each year of 2022 and 2023.

Either the first or only album to emerge in 2024 is INORGANIC RITES, the 15th in the long and ever-changing canon of one of extreme metal’s most outrageously original acts of the 21st century. Following in the footsteps of last years disso-death fueled “Mass Cathexis 2 - The Kinetic Infinite” and the progressive space ambient fueled metal of “Porous Resonance Abyss” i wasn’t really sure what to expect but it seems that KRALLICE has opted for another dip into the world of progressively infused extreme metal with a heavy dose of progressive electronic and space ambient sounds to bring two distinct worlds together in a lethal dose of atmospheric metallic furor. With 10 tracks at over 66 minutes playing time, this is a lengthy beast that delivers all the expected trade marks of KRALLICE, namely knotty time signature rich progressive labyrinths of swirling sounds that erupt into black metal chaos as well as the deathened black metal vocal style that projects all the angst and gloomy despair you could hope for.

This time around though there is a LOT more focus on the synthesized parts with lengthy chunks of time dedicated to non-metal electronic space journeys that evoke classic Klaus Schulze and other Berlin School pioneers. While the band has always flaunted an atmospheric presence, on INORGANIC RITES they’ve taken it to the next level with entire tracks such as the 10 minute “Universe Ancestral Talisman” embarking on an astral plane journey complete unshackled from the lambast of blastbeats, tremolo guitar aggression and black metal dissonance. Fortified with trippy space ambient intros and intricately designed synthesized compositions that seem to overlap the metal constructs, INORGANIC RITES much of the time sounds like two separate albums played simultaneously only tailor made to overlap like a custom made sports jacket that fits in all those right places.

A strange and mondo bizarro album like pretty much any KRALLICE release has to offer, INORGANIC RITES takes the band’s progressive metal tendencies into overdrive and then fortifies it all with an almost orchestrated electronic layering effect. The results are electrifying and raising the bar in the limits of atmospheric accompaniments as often they are set so high as to become the dominant force. While the earlier tracks such as the early released “Flatlines Encircled Residue” seem to over-rely on the atmospheric touches as the primary focus, later tracks like “Fatestorm Sancturary” seem to get it right and allow the guitar, bass and percussive heft to rise to the top of the mix. The labyrinthine compositional structures are a bit hard to follow but they do unfold in a logical manner as they take the complexities of classic progressive rock and adapt them to the excesses of obnoxious extreme metal.

While this is considered black metal by some, there are moments where the band sounds more like Gorguts than anything in the black metal world but the vocal styles change it up offering even more diverse elements. While i could totally see the increased emphasis on the symphonic sounding space ambience as being annoying to some, in the crowded world of extreme metal it’s actually rather refreshing to hear something so dynamically different and not to worry extreme metalheads, KRALLICE loses none of its extreme metal intensity with all those brutal riffing sessions, moments of guitar squealing run amok and of course the bantering bass and drum furor. Fifteen albums later and KRALLICE seems like it’s just warming up and INORGANIC RITES shows the band still firing on all pistons.

siLLy puPPy HAIL SPIRIT NOIR is a band that never fails to surprise you where it’s going next. These Greek avant-gardeners have consistently thrown curve balls with each and every release beginning with their psychedelically infused black metal debut “Pneuma” back in 2012. It’s only been a mere 12 years since the band made its splash on the world of experimental metal and has since released a total of six albums now that the latest FOSSIL GARDENS has emerged in the summer of 2024. Somehow i totally missed the 2021 “Mannequins” but upon exploration it seems to be one of those bonus albums for true fans that actually care about how a metal band can construct a non-metal electronic album. Personally i find these albums to be hit and miss but occasional can offer some insight into the band’s overall thought process..

A divisive band to say the least HAIL SPIRIT NOIR is either one of those bands that clicks with you or on the contrary totally rubs you the wrong way. As with most intrepid musical explorers that break all the rules and introduce strange chimeras to an established genre that many have settled on a comfort zone within, this band fearlessly steers its craft into strange musical worlds that have hitherto never been aurally integrated into the egregore of the greater black metal fanbase. Nevertheless HAIL SPIRIT NOIR sallies forth into the great unknown and delivers another slice of progressive black metal with a heavy emphasis on symphonic touches. While “Eden In Reverse” eccentrically and eclectically delved into the farthest reaches of space rock infused progressive rock that skimped a bit on the metal, FOSSIL GARDENS makes a retrograde into its roots.

On FOSSIL GARDENS the team has once again reinstated the black metal aspects and given the fans what drew them to its unusual style in the first place albeit encased in a psychedelic haze within a proggy framework. Sounding more like the weirdest experiments of Dodheimsgard than Darkthrone, the black metal returns but in a sort of musical truce kinda way. The album surprisingly starts of with clean vocals and spacey synthesizer ambience which suggests HAIL SPIRIT NOIR has totally gone Ulver on us and abandoned all notions of being a metal band but after a sensual baritone tribute to classic Dead Can Dance, HAIL SPIRIT NOIR unleashes its pent up black metal sensibilities and offers a blastbeat driven and tremolo guitar rampage complete with raspy vocal rage however the atmosphere remains thick and frigid and rather dominant but nevertheless, black metal HAIL SPIRIT NOIR has arisen like a phoenix form the ashes.

The rest of the album follows suit however the black metal isn’t as angsty as the typical second waver. This album finds the metal more in chord stomping mode for much of the time along with those jangly dissonant strumming sessions joining in for contrast’s sake. Guitar sweeps place this squarely into the melodic black metal camp with the eerie ambient backdrops never renouncing their presence for a second. Raspy tirades trade off with haunting clean vocal excursions into surreal spacey soundscapes that keeps the band firmly in the black space metal camp. This is progressive metal after all with the black metal a mere ingredient in the larger picture, a bane to black metal purists while avant-garde experimentalists will rejoice at the band’s audacity to meander through labyrinthine passages that include as much dreamy ambient pop motifs as it does adrenaline outbursts of black metal fury.

For many this one will elude them as it is by no means a conventional album. While slightly less abstract and freakishly alienating as “Eden In Reverse,” FOSSIL GARDENS nevertheless is no return to the black’n’roll bouncy grooves of “Oi Magoi” or “Mayhem In Blue” but rather delivers a veritable dip into progressive rock territory that just happens to incorporate black metal as the evil step-sister that keeps it from falling into complete ambient space rock terrain. As far removed though as FOSSIL GARDENS is from classic “normal” black metal, the contrasts make this a dynamic listening experience much like the world of Ihsahn, Enslaved or other formerly black metal dominated acts that now have successfully hybridized their caustic angst with a more pacifying structured layout that offers a true musical majesty behind all the weirdness. While i prefer the previous “Eden In Reverse,” i have to say that FOSSIL GARDENS doesn’t disappoint at all and rubs me in the right way which makes my tail wag in delight. In other words, NOT what i was expecting but in a good way!

siLLy puPPy Formed in 1999 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and then relocating to Leipzig, Germany, DARKESTRAH has delivered a unique strain of folk-infused black metal that stood out from the very beginning given its unorthodox infusion of Central Asian influences taking the world of Pagan black metal into completely new territory. The band led by drummer Asbath has undergone a ridiculous amount of lineup changes in its quarter century existence yet continues to sally forth like Gengis Khan conquering half of the Eurasian continent. The current year 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of the band’s debut release “Sary Oy” which launched DARKESTRAH onto the world’s stage of inventive black metal bravely reinventing itself in the 21st century from its second wave parent stock and in this calendar year we find the band returning after eight years with its seventh release NOMAD. The band did drop the EP “Chong-Aryk” in 2021.

The band featured the same lineup as 2016’s “Turan” only with newbie Charuk (vocals, percussion) delivers the expected mix of pagan infused black metal with frosty atmospheric backdrops, rasping vocals from beneath the din and the band’s knack for infusing traditional Kyrgyz folk sounds into the fabric of the metallic furor. DARKESTRAH has always delivered lengthy trotting tracks that emulate the procession of transversing the vast mountainous terrain and steppes of Central Asia and in that regard little has changed on NOMAD which continues the expected endless trajectory of lightning fast guitar riffing, blastbeats and moments of clean guitar contrast. The album features seven new tracks with four of them eight minutes or more. Atmospheric intros fueled with Kyrgyz folk melodies strummed on traditional instruments set the mood before the black metal bombast sets in. Throat singing technique yield to demonic black metal extremities. Yep, the DARKESTRAH formula is alive and well after all this time.

“Journey Through The Blue Nothingness” opens the album with the expected non-metal folk sequence before “Kök-Oy” begins the atmospheric black metal journey. After eight years the band is noticeably less vibrant than on past releases with the metal aspects set a bit back below the atmospheric melancholy. Likewise newbie percussionist and vocalist Charuk doesn’t seem as dynamic as former vocalists Merkith and Oldhan. Also noticeably missing are all those interesting contrasts within the tracks with most of them plodding along for their extended periods of time which makes me wonder if DARKESTRAH has finally run out of steam after two decades on the scene. The compositions are noticeably less complex in construct with simple guitar stomps punctuating a frigid atmospheric presence. Likewise the tracks don’t differ from each other as much as i would’ve expected with the title track sounding a bit too close to its predecessor. Dynamics, tempos and contrasts seem to evaporated like a life-giving water source during a drought.

This is a trend i find many long timers picking up lately. Deemphasizing the black metal intensity and setting it behind the atmospheric backdrop which now almost seems like the forefront, a sound that cheapens the overall effect and diminishes the value of the atmospheric contributions in the first place by showcasing how simplistic they are and why they are SUPPOSED to be set back in the mix. Overall DARKESTRAH has delivered a decent new slice of its classic pagan black metal with folk flavors but everything that made the band stand out all these years as been tamped down to a mere trickle and in the end this album comes off as a bit generic and lackluster. Sure the folk elements are weaved into the fabric of the music and the procession of black metal military march processions carry on but any element of surprise is sorely missing. Really the thing that bugs me most about this newest DARKESTRAH release is how the metal has been set back in the mix. It just doesn’t work for me. Add to that a rather by the books delivery of compositions and i’m not feeling the magic that this band once dished out in abundance. Despite that quibble, NOMAD is not a bad release at all even if not to my liking.

siLLy puPPy One of the early oddities in the world of nascent death metal, the members of Austria’s DISHARMONIC ORCHESTRA couldn’t make up their minds if they wanted to form a death metal band or a grindcore one so in the true spirit of intrepid exploration, the original trio of guitarist / vocalist Patrick Kopf, drummer Martin Messer and guitarist Herald Bezdek did both and thus crafted a bizarre hybrid that featured the technical chops of death metal focused through a grindcore lens. With this lineup the band released a couple demos, two more EPs and then hit the road with Austria’s other early death metal noisemakers Pungeant Stench where they got noticed by Nuclear Blast Records. A record deal was scored.

By the time the band got around to its 1990 debut EXPOSITIONSPROPHYLAXE, Bezdek had been replaced by bassist Herwig Zamerik and the band had haunted their homeland with some of the most caustic expressions of grindcore meets death metal rawness that the world had seen up to that point. Also cited as an early example of technical death metal, EXPOSITIONSPROPHYLAXE featured 16 wildly unhinged tracks that was part Morbid Angel and part Napalm Death with guttural growls, guitar squeals and blastbeat frenzies pointing towards the former while pungent short blasts of skanky punk infused riffing kept the core elements in the forefront.

Adventurous theatrical embellishments such as the opening orchestral freakery “Introphylaxe” and the acoustic / synth touches that opened “Accelerated Evolution” showcase a trenchant avant-garde tendency, one that would permeate the band’s following releases. Strange bleed-ins of unrelated musical processions and other surprises pop up even on this more streamlined debut that is somewhat of an anomaly in the band’s original run from 1987-95. With weirdness at bay at least in the extremities found with the jazzier more Atheist inspired albums that followed, EXPOSITIONSPROPHYLAXE delivers a caustic no nonsense noise-fest that showcases a rhythmic raucousness that also offers a rather amusing propensity for surrealism and silliness as evidenced on track titles such as “Disappeared With Hermaphrodite Choirs” and “The Unequalled Visual Response Mechanism.”

As one of the pioneering forces of mutant metal DISHARMONIC ORCHESTRA found few receptive ears who were only getting used to the world of extreme metal while these pioneering trailblazers were already taking things to the next level and beyond. While the band would find a more receptive audience with its following albums once the metal universe had inculcated a veritable pool of avant-garde excesses, this debut tends to get overlooked in favor of those more outlandish examples of experimental freakery. While not the band’s peak effort, EXPOSITIONSPROPHYLAXE delivers satisfying energetic death metal meets grindcore performances that offer a consistent flow of deathened distortion with a touch of atonality with technically infused chops along with the random decor of experimentalism.

Overall i find this to be in an interesting debut although perhaps not to the death metal standards that 1990 had to offer but then again this isn’t a purist’s death metal album at all but rather an experimental hybridization of two of metal’s most extreme art forms of the era. What makes this release unique are the uses of subtle syncopation and other time signature deviations from the more established death metal acts of the time. Just enough small weird quirks to suggest this band was all about tackling the strange and wildly unknown that it would fully embrace on its next two albums before disbanding. Although this could be rightfully tagged as deathcore, that style evolved in a completely different direction than what DISHARMONIC ORCHESTRA presented on its debut EXPOSITIONSPROPHYLAXE. From what i’ve experienced, this one remains fairly unique and for that it holds a special charm.

siLLy puPPy Although Black Sabbath usually gets credit as the first heavy metal band to release an album in 1970, likewise Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin released what many call early metal the same year. While all three bands were extremely popular throughout their 70s run, it seems the speed kings Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin were more influential at first in spawning legions of imitators that would evolve their heavy metal styles into faster and more extreme expressions.

Only a handful of bands favored the Black Sabbath sound over the more traditional 80s heavy metal sound. Pentagram was one of the earliest doom metal bands following in Sabbath’s footsteps forming as far back as 1971 but still not releasing its first album until 1985. Clearly the speed freaks needed some time to take a chill pill and rediscover the occult lyric-rich slow plodding delicacies of the world of doom metal.

Although it would take another decade for doom metal to really take off, the 80s found a few intrepid Sabbath revivalists strutting their stuff. Witchfinder General, Trouble and Pentragram emerged as well as Candlemass’ epic doom metal classic “Epicus Doomicus Metallicus” in 1986 but even that would have to wait a few years before it would be accepted during an era where thrash metal and neoclassical soloing was still reigning supreme.

One of the early traditional doom metal bands to emerge from Potomac, Maryland was THE OBSESSED. Originally formed as early as 1976 only under the name Warhorse, the band played live for a number of years before changing its name in 1980 to a more doom metal friendly moniker and then continued to play the live circuit for another few years before finally releasing its first self-titled EP (some sources list this as being titled “Sodden Jackal 7”).

At this point the lineup was lead vocalist guitarist Scott Weinrich, bassist Mark Laue and drummer Ed Gulli but THE OBSESSED experienced many lineup changes before its debut full-length that premiered in 1990 not to mention later reformations. This EP only featured three tracks and went unheard during its initial release but found the band establishing themselves as one of the doom metal revivalists that would rekindle the lost potential of Sabbath inspired bands that had been usurped by the speed fueled forms of metal that dominated the 80s.

A lo-fi affair THE OBSESSED delivered three tracks that were somewhere in between the Sabbath inspired doom metal they would become more famous for and the speedier early metal expressions from bands of the era. While the opening “Iron & Stone” reminds a bit of Manilla Road, the shorter “Indestroy” definitely features a more Ozzy Osbourne nod in the vocal performance and although the speedy guitar riffing is closer to Venom than Candlemass, there’s still a doomy procession to it. “Sodden Jackal” on the other hand slows things down a bit and offers a veritable slice of early 80s doom metal that represents the band’s later output.

An interesting little early 80s early doom metal release even if its impossible to find now. Luckily the band’s first two EPs along with other odds and sods have been compiled into the “Incarnate” compilation. Despite remaining underground throughout the rest of the 80s the band broke up once before reforming and delivering three albums in the 90s including the lauded “The Church Witin” album from 1994. One of the lesser known bands in the early doom metal revivalist world but certainly one to check out.

siLLy puPPy Few albums can claim to have rewritten history but that's exactly what IN ROCK, the fourth album by the British progressive symphonic rock turned hard rock band DEEP PURPLE achieved with this landmark release from 1970. While the controversy preservers regarding the origins of heavy metal music, there's little doubt that IN ROCK played a pivotal role in ushering in the 1970s with a hefty infusion of energetic drive and virtuosic dexterity that took the harder arenas of rock to a completely new level. The leading up to the classic Mark II lineup of vocalist Ian Gillan, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, organist / keyboardist Jon Lord, bassist Roger Glover and drummer Ian Paice reads like a soap opera with new members snatched away from another band and the back stabbing act of forming a new lineup behind the backs of current members. Although deplorable in many ways, the tactics paid off and with the release of IN ROCK, the new lineup propelled DEEP PURPLE onto the world's stage and gave permission for bands to get hard and heavy in the 1970s with faster tempos, heavier distortion and an energetic drive that would morph into the world of heavy metal in the latter half of the decade.

Although DEEP PURPLE had formed all the way back in February of 1968, the band led by Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord was a bit aloof and missing some key ingredients in cementing a sound that made them stand out. While going through the proto-prog motions of crafting symphonic rock albums that followed in the footsteps of The Moody Blues, the Mark I era of DEEP PURPLE suffered from inconsistent songwriting, an over-reliance on cover songs and a noticeable lack of vitality that propelled them to the next level. As Blackmore and Glover conspired behind the backs of original members: singer Rod Evans and bassist Nick Simper to secretly replace them, after discovering a band called Episode Six commenced to seduce their singer and bassist over to the PURPLE side of the fence going as far as recording material with the new band members before telling the old ones they have been ousted. Long smitten with the organ infused psychedelic rock created by the US act Vanilla Fudge along with hearing Led Zepplein's debut that delivered bantering tracks like "Communication Breakdown," the band developed its own distinct brand of hard rock and proto-metal. Blackmore and Glover's plot to steer the band in a new direction ultimately proved to be a winning strategy.

After the drama played out and all was said and done, the new DEEP PURPLE emerged and found one of their missing ingredients, a competent songwriter in the form of Roger Glover. The newfound chemistry proved to be one of those magic moments and the band set out to start anew. IN ROCK was the perfect album to welcome the freewheeling 1970s in June of the first year after the 60s faded away. Following the recent groundbreaking albums from Led Zeppelin and early heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath, DEEP PURPLE delivered a complementary proto-metal style that rather than delving into the occult and demonic focused on fast tempo rhythms, tight-knit instrumental interplay, catchy guitar-driven grooves and a focuss on feisty soloing trade-offs courtesy of Ritchie Blackmore's electrifying guitar playing and Jon Lord's classical trained finger gymnastics turned up a few notches. The band forged seven distinct tracks that delivered an electrifying mix of heavy driving rock, gritty yet soulful vocal performances and a delivery system that offered instantly ear wormy hooks fortified with moments of progressive complexities. The recipe proved to be a major hit in the UK and remained high on the album charts for the next year. Ironically the band found success in the USA with their earlier albums but failed to make a dent with IN ROCK.

The new material was as much about improvisation as it was about crafting enduring compositions. "Speed King" for example was an attempt to emulate Jimi Hendrix's "Fire" but took on a life of its own. "Flight Of The Rat" likewise was based on the classic tune "Flight Of The Bumblebee" before morphing into a DEEP PURPLE original through endless rehearsals. The highlight of the album "Child In Time" began by borrowing the simple opening riff from It's A Beautiful Day's track "Bombay Calling" from its 1969 debut and likewise evolved into a completely different beast that would build upon the opening keyboard melody and turn it into a sizzling shredding jam session in the middle before resolving itself as it began. With new lyrics that took an anti-war stand in the time of the Vietnam conflict, the song evolved into a monstrosity that eventually became a de facto anthem for the anti-Communists in Eastern Europe. The track is really the highlight with dramatic crescendos that alternate between slow suspenseful vocal motifs and contrasted by thunderous displays of frenetic heaviness.

IN ROCK in effect played a part in a major evolution in the history of rock music that included inventive intros to songs such as the guitar and keyboard bombast that start the album off before the crushing assault of "Speed King" delivers a bouncy guitar riffing baseline that ushers in the band's unique rhythmic drive and accompanying keyboard counterpoints. The mix was irresistible and DEEP PURPLE had hit the big time and soon would become one of the biggest bands of the entire 70s and influential to a whole new breed of heavier rockers. Newbie Ian Gillan's vocal abilities proved to be the perfect match for the band's unique sound with a wide expressive range all the while providing that hard rock gruff that would develop into the more extreme expression of heavy metal down the road. Each track featured a distinct personality with varying riffs, organ fills, drumming techniques, unexpected elements and diverse dynamics however what tied the album together cohesively was the infectious stylistic approach that was delivered in a high-powered perfection. Jon Lord's extravagant keyboard wizardry added a completely new element to the standard rock paradigm that allowed the classical wankery of the past to integrate brilliant moments of contrast to the more boogie rock guitar riffing.

With an impressive repertoire of tracks that offered varying guitar riffing styles, instantly catchy melodic twists and feisty lively performances, IN ROCK really delivered the goods in giving the world of rock music the upgrade it needed to take the popular musical form into the 1970s and along with Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep and Black Sabbath, dominated the hard rock sector in the year 1970 and pointed the way to the next level of artistic integrity thus giving the world of rock and roll a much needed bridge from the giddy flower power hippie years to the more cynical years ahead. Not only DEEP PURPLE's finest moment but really one of the best albums ever made and although the band would become superstars and dominated the early 70s hard rock scene, these five musicians never quite rekindled the magic that was displayed on this album. It's true that some of the tracks take a little longer to warm up to. The first side of the album offers a more instant likability but repeated listening sessions have revealed that even what i once perceived as the "lesser" tracks such as "Living Wreck" and "Hard Lovin' Man" offer the same magic in a delayed fashion. In short, IN ROCK is one of the true rock masterpieces of the ages!

siLLy puPPy New Zealand’s ULCERATE was one of a few intrepid explorative death metal bands to follow in the footsteps of early pioneering disso-death acts such as Immolation and Gorguts and after forming in the year 2000 spawned its own ugly flavoring of unhinged technical death metal run amok replete with all the atonality and discordant excess a human aural system can absorb. The band has delivered a string of consistently high quality albums in its near quarter century existence and in recent years has risen to the top tiers of tech disso-death royalty. After abandoning the incessant brutal bombast of its 2007 debut “Of Fracture And Failure,” the band has taken a more nuanced approach by spicing up the death metal savagery with more expansive atmospheric elegance and also by dipping into other metal realms ranging from sludge metal to darkened elements borrowed from the black metal universe.

After a four year lull since the critically acclaimed “Stare Into Death And Be Still,” ULCERATE is back to inflict the most harrowing gastrointestinal damage with its latest release CUTTING THE THROAT OF GOD. While the title may be pandering to the black metal crowds, i ask myself if an omnipotent creator of the universe exists in a physical form and therefore would God have a throat? Existential quandaries aside, ULCERATE steadily but surely over its seven album run has incrementally refined its unique brand of aggressive disso-death into an art form all its own. This seventh album in the ULCERATE canon takes a deeper dip into the world of atmospheric sludge metal with a wider breadth of stylistic approaches that were hampered by the incessant brutality on previous works that hammered it all out with authoritative ease.

Existing as a stable power trio since the band’s 2009 release “Everything Is Fire,” ULCERATE has become a well-oiled machine where these three musicians have fused into one frightening force and on CUTTING THE THROAT OF GOD showcase the newly established attribute of restraint as heard on the opening nonchalant slow burner approach of “To Flow Through Ashen Hearts” which focuses less on speed and turns up the burner for atmospheric constructs from simmer to fully fueled. By delivering slowed down tempos, the band keeps things firmly planted in the ferocity of the death metal camp by offering exotic guitar riffs delivered by Michael Hoggard, the dissonant bass counterpoints of Paul Kelland and the bantering drumming gymnastics of Jamie Saint Merat. Kelland’s guttural growls have changed little and he ferociously enunciates every sacrilegious syllabic utterance with all the brash bravado that ULCERATE has infused into its technical cauldron of steaming hot disso-death from the beginning.

The album features seven brand spanking new tracks that discordantly reverberate with heavy distortion for nearly 58 minutes of suffocating darkness and despair. While the band’s trajectory has been incrementally slow-paced in its evolution, CUTTING THE THROAT OF GOD is noticeably different than its predecessor in that it feels less rampaging even from the 2020 release “Stare Into Death And Be Still.” The mix is distinguishable as well with more distinct tones and timbres oozing out of the delirious din that advances in tenacious tumult only with a more controlled impulse to leap into frenetic displays of brutal savagery. In fact this is probably the least barbaric sounding of the entire ULCERATE discography although despite the somewhat cooling off effect in terms of unbridled speed and incessant pummelation of the senses, CUTTING THE THROAT OF GOD by no means sounds like a wimpy rendition of a once great band. No way.

This latest discharge of dissonant din is merely shifting around the dynamics a bit and focusing a bit more on atmospheric diversions from the one-trick pony penchants of a larger swath of technical death metal bands out there. Speed freaks worry not for moments of letting the rabid pit bull off the leash do occur. While many are acclaiming this release as the best of the lot, personally i favor the heavier adrenalized speedfests of the past. With no disparaging criticism in the least against this new flavor of ULCERATE’s established sound, it would appear to me that the sudden interest in propelling ULCERATE to the top of the disso-death camp is more a result of the greater metal world finding a nice comfort zone in the more extreme expressions of death metal. To my insatiable ears though this one sounds a bit tame by weeding out the many of the progressive tendencies and ear-splitting bombast of the past in favor of a more streamlined post-metal continuity. While not my ultimate ULCERATE experience, there’s no denying that these guys have mastered the art of this gnarled nasty niche of extreme metal and even with these changes makes CUTTING THE THROAT OF GOD an excellent relevant smattering of modern disso-death.

siLLy puPPy By 1986 SWANS was starting to evolve past its origins out of the no wave scene that briefly took New York City by storm and was splintering off into new arenas of experimentalism. While many of these groups would simply just fade away after leaving their mark, SWANS was one of the few to continue on to the present day by constantly reinventing itself without losing that initial impetus of making bleak noisy minimalism. One of the first significant changes emerged on this short EP (some call it a single) titled TIME IS MONEY (BASTARD) / SEALED IN SKIN.

This marked the debut of Jarboe who had left the swamps of Louisiana to engage in the world of experimental rock and stage music in New York City. She had been a fan of SWANS since the “Filth” album and contacted Michael Gira who recognized the band needed to move past its origins and evolve into something completely new. This EP / single features three tracks. TIME IS MONEY finds the band jumping into the world of industrial rock in the vein of Come, early Big Black and Alien Sex Fiend only SWANS retained the bleakness and dread of its no wave albums “Filth” and “Cop.”

The second track SEALED IN SKIN features a slowed down return to the no wave form only less abrasive without the guitar distortion and grunge that made the first two albums so abrasive. This track finds Gira’s vocals sound like a moaning mummy as he monotonously bellows baritone vocals alongside a monotonous dirge-like motif that offers little variation from in terms of musicality. The EP / single ends with a remix of TIME IS MONEY (BASTARD) which features a beefed up percussion and more echoey guitar presence. Not as industrial sounding as the first track but offers a glimpse of what Alien Sex Fiend would adopt as its sound once it evolved out of its deathrock routine.

At this point Jarboe’s duties were limited to merely screaming on the album but it helped her establish a connection with the band that would allow her to expand her own musical talents and ideas into the world of SWANS. Of course this band, especially the earlier 80s releases are an acquired taste that many find too harsh, too monotonous or just too weird but personally i find the magic is in the hypnotic effect of the bleak tones and timbres, the mesmerizing rhythms and the simplistic procession of it all. It’s an entirely different way of perceiving music but one that ultimately works to a satisfying level for my ears. Gira did an excellent job of nudging SWANS along into new arenas and not just jumping headfirst into a new style completely. These songs never appeared on any SWANS album so you have to hunt these down separately but i personally find these as essential as any of the earliest caustic SWANS releases.

siLLy puPPy The year 1986 was the busiest year of SWANS’ existence as it was undergoing a transmogrifying event to emerge from the New York City no wave underground as a truly inventive source of musical bleakness. The year opened with its stand alone single “Time Is Money (Bastard) / Sealed in Skin” which introduced SWANS fans to a new fascination with industrial rock. The single also was the first appearance of Jarboe who while limited to mere screaming on this release, established a connection with the band that would significantly alter SWANS’ style up to her departure in 1997. Her contributions were essential for the next stage of SWANS which proved to expand their sound exponentially into various arenas of experimental rock.

It was also a fruitful time of rediscovery as the GREED / Holy Money recording sessions that lasted from June 1985 - January 1986 produced enough material to release not one but two albums in ’86 and then the year was topped off with a massive tour and the first SWANS live release “Public Castration Is a Good Ideal.” But wait! THere’s more! The band ended the year with yet another EP titled “A Screw.” It was the year of the dollar sign since every one of these releases featured a prominently artistic variation of the $ sign all of which signified the biggest changes in the entire history of the band’s long run as an established experimental rock act. Together these $ releases seemed to collectively express a total disdain for the world of power and wealth obtained through the financial fraud the world has been overtaken by.

GREED was the first album to emerge after the “Time Is Money” single and therefore the first album to feature Jarboe as a permanent member of the band only this time her backing vocals are more prominent than mere background screaming. Her wordless vocals provide a new form of instrumentation to add to the overall depressive atmosphere of GREED which found the band shedding its no wave origins and blossoming into a strange no wave / industrial rock hybrid. Fortified by two bassists and THREE drummers, GREED is percussion dominated powerhouse that finds SWANS moving on from the caustic guitar driven angst of the first two albums and instead finding a new form of depressive despair as its main emotional outlet.

Brilliantly continuing the essential aspects of no wave that avoid melodic motifs like the plague, GREED maintains that abstract detached feel of the first two albums only adds implied melodies carried out through atonality and dissonance. The plodding percussive drives make this album sound like a funeral procession and i wouldn’t be surprise if funeral doom metal was inspired by this stage of SWANS’ career. GREED is a rather bleak affair with seven tracks that add up to almost 38 minutes of nihilistic and ominous repetitive processions through some of the darkest musical tones and timbres you can experience. The album has been compared to a bizarre religious cult ritual soundtrack but i find it more like a form of oozing anarchy.

The opening “Fool” offers something completely new to the SWANS playbook, namely a demented piano that does indeed offer a somewhat melodic approach however this tactic restrains itself and allows the cyclical loops to let the dark atmospheres to play around. Gira’s vocals have moved on from raging angst to a more contemplative and depressive tone. His droning vocal style of yore actually sings on this opening track and thus the new SWANS is born however the opening track only ushers in the new era as the album continues in a similarly minimalist approach that the no wave years employed. The album also features samples, tape operations and other sound effects as well as Jarboe’s blood curdling baking vocals and the aforementioned piano parts.

The name of the game with GREED is pure dissonance and atonal counterpoints that all conspire to craft one disturbing melancholic march through complete musical alienation and sparseness. The incessant flow of percussive beats on steroids is punctuated by moments of silence, the abrasive guitar and bass lines that accompany and the contrapuntal effect of Gira’s downer vocal style along with Jarboe’s nails on the chalkboard vocal approach. The album is incessant in how it ratchets up the tension until the more caustic than thou grand finale “Money Is Flesh” which just pummels away with staccato tom drumming and atonal guitar freakery. This is true industrial bleakness bliss! This particular track sounds unique compared to the others as it has some sort of bellowing sample sound that wails away.

While many consider this period one of SWANS’ weakest, i have to say that i love this album quite a bit as it delves into some of the most barren soundscapes possible and yet finds ways to subtly offer some of the weirdest and strangest alienating results. While the angst had been channeled to despair, it makes a full comeback by the end of the album and it ends with a barren bang. So many adjectives can describe GREED: discouraging, bleak, dismal, gloomy, hopeless, dreary, sombre, raw, desolate, harsh, severe but most of all this album is tempestuous as it has an unresolved uneasiness about it that works so well! Obviously this sort of extremity is an acquired taste and i have no idea how i acquired it but if you accept what the band is going for on its own terms then you can’t deny that SWANS did an absolutely excellent job of conveying what it aimed for. You may not like it but you can’t deny that the results of its sweltering banter is not effective in what it sets out to achieve which i guess is engage is musical sado-masochism!

siLLy puPPy The year 1986 could be thought of as the pupa state for the transformation of SWANS from a noisy and even brutal no wave hardcore caterpillar to the experimental powerhouse butterfly that mixed gothic rock with post-punk, industrial rock, neofolk, post-rock and an endless supply of experimental touches all without ever totally jettisoning the no wave ethos that gave life to that short wave New York City movement in the late 70s and early 80s. This was the busiest year of SWANS’ long lasting career which resulted in the release of one non-album single that some consider an EP, the band’s first live album, another EP and two full album’s worth of material.

The “Greed” and HOLY MONEY sessions were fruitful and yielded two albums worth of material. The first studio album of 1986 was “Greed” which found the band slowly morphing from the caustic noisy no wave abrasiveness to a more diverse array of stylistic approaches that incorporated more instrumentation, focus on the atmospheres rather than brutality and the debut of vocalist Jarboe who would stick around for several albums and add a feminine touch to the testosterone fueled rage-fest that the no wave albums exuded with abundance. HOLY MONEY was basically the double album companion that was released a month after “Greed” and ratcheted up the band’s evolution a few more notches. This album was the first to find Jarboe contributing lead vocals on “You Need Me” as well as offering the first taste of acoustic moments such as on the near 8-minute track “Another You,” however even this track is noisy and dissonant as water is wet.

While still retaining the bleak dirge-like processions of “Greed,” HOLY MONEY also featured fleeting elements from the blues by adding select harmonica moments as well as allowing more contrapuntal elements to accrue for a greater atmospheric approach. While the opening “A Hanging” exhibits a throwback to the no wave era, “A Screw (Holy Money)” offers a more pure industrial rock approach only set to the doomy gloomy monotony that SWANS had made all its own. Michael Gira delivers a similar vocal approach to “Greed” with a dreadful downtuned moaning style that borders on mumbling and mimicking a mummy from some Hollywood film. In tandem all the elements on board keep the dissonant and atonalities humming along with jangly guitar chords sustaining over thunderous percussive and bass drives.

On many tracks it sounds like no wave style of SWANS has totally merged with some of the industrial rock bands of the 80s such as Foetus, Big Black, Helios Creed or even Einstürzende Neubauten. Far from accessible, the changes on HOLY MONEY compared to “Greed” are subtle and minor additions but nevertheless showcase a whole plethora of new approaches that would allow SWANS to emerge from its cocoon and emerge as the butterfly that it would become on the following “Children Of God” which found the band coming of age as a totally newly reincarnated act. Basically HOLY MONEY is a companion album to “Greed” and the two have since been released together albeit with track order differences. There is nothing on HOLY MONEY that will convert SWANS haters if the idea of caustic dissonant and molasses slow dirging processions aren’t your bailiwick.

This is some of the bleakest musical expressions ever to have emerged and SWANS had knack for delivering the goods in a way that kept the no wave detachment relevant all the while crafting a more post-rock generated delivery system. Personally i love this caustic stew of creative torture. It’s totally unique and even though these transition albums seem to be some of the least loved albums in the vast canon of the world of SWANS, i find them endearing and just as relevant as the no wave albums that proceed as well as the more ambitious art rock sounds that follow. A niche market for sure but for those who have acquired the taste, HOLY MONEY is a beastly delectable morsel of experimental industrial / no wave brilliance.

siLLy puPPy In SWANS’ busiest year ever, the band released two studio albums (“Greed,” “Holy Money”), one non-album single that some call an EP (“Time Is Money (Bastard) / Sealed in Skin“) which featured the debut appearance of Jarbie, one bonafide EP in the form of “A Screw” and its first live album with the catchy and non-cuddly title PUBLIC CASTRATION IS A GOOD IDEA. The year 1986 was one of reinvention of SWANS from a caustic industrial no wave band to an extraordinarily creative visionary act that somehow merged the worlds of gothic rock, post-punk, industrial, noise, neofolk and post-rock into one single artistic statement all without losing that thread of no wave detachment. This live album featured tracks from the “Greed” and “Holy Money” tour and showcases the band’s evolution during this transitional period.

PUBLIC CASTRATION IS A GOOD IDEA was recorded on the “Greed” and “Holy Money” tour from performances in London and Nottingham, England. While originally released as an indie bootleg, the recordings were approved by SWANS and thus officially became its first live album and self-released however it wouldn’t be until 1999 that the Thirsty Ear label would finally release the album on CD form. This one is a lengthy beast that despite featuring only eight tracks takes up 74 minutes of playing time. Like the albums, SWANS toured with a guitarist, bassist and THREE drummers! The percussive bombast at this stage in the SWANS sound was integral in crafting that bombastic dirge-like military march procession tension that allowed all the atonalities and dissonance to wreak its sonic havoc.

Michael Gira, the mastermind of SWANS also played occasional bass guitar as well as offered his bedeviled moaning techniques for delivering his bleak and gloomy lyrics but in the live setting he also implemented many of the samples and sound effects although for the most part PUBLIC CASTRATION IS A GOOD IDEA has a much more stripped down approach than the studio albums. While many bands just play their music much as it sounds on the albums, the music on this live album that features tracks from only the “Greed” and Holy Money” albums do exhibit enough differences to warrant making this excellent live recording an essential part of your SWANS canon. Although not substantially different than the studio recordings, enough variations make it an interesting listen however PUBLIC CASTRATION does feel more jarring through its atonalities and minimalism than the spruced up studio recordings.

These live versions are real sprawlers. For example the opening “Money Is Flesh” from the “Greed” album is only over 6 minutes on the studio album and on PUBLIC CASTRATION is doubled to over 12. Likewise “Fool” originally at 5 1/2 has been extended to over 8. The lengthy repetitive sequences give these live renditions and even gloomier and more depressive veneer than the studio tracks. Another main difference is that in the moments of silence between drums and quite time there’s also a use of the echo effect from the venues acoustical layout. Overall this live album will be of little interest to non-SWANS fans trying to acquire a taste for the band’s avant-garde extremism as this period and the earlier recordings crafted some of the most inaccessible and cacophonous din of the band’s career but served as a gateway to the more experiment arty albums that followed. While i’m not the hugest fan of live albums i really love some of the sounds they get from the echoey drumming and the overall torturous bleakness of it all. SWANS proves it was not limited to the studio on this release and made an excellent live act.

siLLy puPPy During the ambitious year of 1986, SWANS released the two studio albums “Greed” and “Holy Money” which led to a tour which spawned the bootleg turned bonafide live album “Public Castration Is A Good Idea” but the band also released two shorter EPs that some call singles in the form of “Time Is Money (Bastard) / Sealed in Skin” which featured the first appearance of Jarboe and at the end of the year released this three track EP titled A SCREW.

This one is basically a remix EP that features two different versions of the title track with programmed percussion, a more electro-industrial sound not too overly distant from bands like Skinny Puppy and a rather reggae / dub sort of syncopation. Less abrasive and less gloomy than the albums that preceded, A SCREW was the most “normal” sounding release by SWANS at the time.

The track “Blackmail” is completely different as it features the piano as the primary instrument with Jarboe on lead vocals and eschews all the industrial dance grooves and remains an ethereal Cocteau Twins / Dead Can Dance type of track only with the repetitive monotony that SWANS was delivering at this stage in its career. This one is actually a highly stripped down track with only Jarboe’s vocals (including her own background vocals) and the cyclical post-rock style of piano looping along with a creepy atmospheric backdrop. It sounds more like a snippet than an actual song.

This one is rather unnecessary as it’s the least compelling of any SWANS release of the 80s and these days these three tracks are simply added to the newer releases of “Holy Money” as bonus tracks therefore there is absolutely no need to track down this EP unless of course you are a completist and collector of all things SWANS. And these really sound like bonus tracks as there is nothing special going on here yet worthy of checking out and more than worthy as bonus tracks. This was the last release of 1986 before SWANS totally reinvented itself and debuted its new style of experimental rock with “Children Of God” the following year.

siLLy puPPy It’s amazing how some bands can stick together for decades trying to craft their music into a cohesive whole and never quite achieve what they intended and then there are rare cases where a band exists for less than a year, releases one album and crafts such a masterful work of art that it’s still sought after half a century after its initial release. Such is the case of the Dutch band CARGO that had its roots in the band September before experiencing a lineup change along with a moniker reboot. This short-lived band existed only in the year 1972, recorded a total of four tracks, released one self-titled album and then disappeared never to be heard from again.

All the three members of CARGO emerged from the ashes of the Amsterdam based September which released three heavy psych / Nederbeat singles in 1970-71 before changing things up a bit and crafting an album of heavy progressive rock that focused on extensive jams and intricate twin guitar attacks delivered by Jan De Hont and Ad de Hont in the vein of the Allman Brothers or Wishbone Ash. The band also featured bassist Willem de Vries and drummer Dennis Witbraat along with a few guest musicians. Although released on the Harvest label, CARGO’s sole release went completely unnoticed with zero promotion, zero airplay and absolutely no live performances to support the album. Basically the band recorded this one album and that was the end of it but the album has become one of those hot collectibles due to its scarcity and the quality of the hard rock performances here has kept CARGO relevant so many decades later.

The album features four tracks with the shortest, “Finding Out” being just over 5 minutes and the longest “Summerfair” carrying on for almost 16. Mostly instrumental with some vocal parts delivered by bassist Willem de Vries, the album is basically an album’s worth of long jamming sessions that feature tight rhythms and uncanny guitar weaving intricacies. The album is much more than about playing a simple tight rhythm though and overlaying it with dueling guitar workouts. The compositions themselves are much more developed and progressive than the Allman Brothers or Foghat or any of those famous 70s jam bands. While the rhythm section is often funk or blues based, the tracks allow for interesting breaks that offer contrasting musical motifs before the band jumps back into the jamming extravaganzas.

The album starts out with the instantly catchy “Sail Inside” that develops a strong guitar melody accompanied by a thumping bass groove and heavy percussion. The vocals fit in perfectly with the music and the track offers slower moments. This one sounds the most like the Allman Brothers style that displays an outstanding display of twin guitar build ups that allow the two guitarists to trade off in subtle ways. Given the near 11-minute playing time, the track has time to evolve and drift off into unforeseen territories. By far my favorite track of the album. The 8 1/2 minute “Cross Talking” follows and starts with a strong bass and drum groove before launching a more funkified guitar attack. The band is amazing in how it can start off with a rather simple idea and then incrementally ratchet up the tension and complexities throughout the track’s run. This track also showcases some of the most sizzling hot guitar soloing.

“Finding Out” is the shortest track and features the most demanding time signature outburst although the guitar is primarily funk based. It starts off as a call and response between the instruments and vocals and then develops into a feisty funk rock extravaganza. The closing behemoth “Summerfair” sails on for 15 1/2 minutes and runs the gamut of heavy Wishbone Ash inspired bluesy rock with twin guitar wizardry to feisty funk rock and chilled out vocal sections with delicate melodic developments that keep the track from becoming a mindless jam. Overall this is an amazing album and i’m not the biggest fan of jam bands that play on endlessly. CARGO mastered the art of variation throughout their four track album and even though the tracks seem like their unnecessarily lengthy, these skilled musicians delivered it all like seasoned pros. The vocals are pleasant, the rhythmic drives deliver the right amount of spunk at the right time and all the melodic touches are golden. This truly is a gem of the Dutch underground that has only become more popular as time goes on. Remastered versions feature all the demos and September singles.

siLLy puPPy INDIAN SUMMER was one of the many one and done prog acts to emerge in the late 60s and stick it out for a few years before disbanding. In its three year existence after forming in 1969 in Coventry, UK, the band released one self-titled album in 1971 on the Neon Records label which hosted other up and coming acts like Spring, Tonton Macoute and Raw Material. The band consisted of lead vocalist / keyboardist Bob Jackson, guitarist / vocalist Colin Williams, drummer Paul Hooper and bassist Malcolm Harker who all made their mark on the college and university circuit which caught the attention of Jim Simpson who was the manager of various bands including Black Sabbath and Bakerloo.

The band performed a lighter version of progressive heavy rock with a strong emphasis on keyboard runs much in the vein of Deep Purple and Uriah Heep but delivered its recipe of organ-fueled rock with more restraint. The album featured eight tracks that added up to almost 50 minutes of playing time which surely must have been the upper limits of playing time on vinyl LPs at the time. INDIAN SUMMER's sound was sort of the light and fluffy version of heavier rock with a gentle melodic approach that offered there standard guitar, bass and drum blues-based grooves of the day fortified with hefty keyboard excursions that sounded a bit more like a late 60s act than something that would've emerged in the year 1971 when the world of progressive rock was going gangbuster with inventive freewheeling experimentalism.

While the music doesn't stand out as anything spectacular for the day, Bob Jackson's vocals certainly sounded unique with a passionate display of wide ranges of singing styles and enunciating his lyrics in a certain way. While the musicians on board are all competent with moments of virtuosic display inserting themselves into the mix, the composiitons themselves were fairly average and not something that really gets my juices flowing in the same way that Deep Purple, Atomic Rooster or Uriah Heep were able to master so elegantly. INDIAN SUMMER sounds more like a Deep Purple lite and delivered a delicate touch to the whole organ dominated heavy rock thing. The compositions are decent but personally i'm not sure why this album is as revered as it is when so many far more dynamic bands existed at the same time.

It didn't take long for the band to start falling apart. After the release of this album in March of 1971, bassist Malcolm Harper left the band to take over his father's engineering firm and although ex-The Sorrows bassist Wez Price continued with the band on the touring circuit the band basically went broke and realized their day would never come and like many others of the same era basically left their mark with a single album and disappeared from the scene. Overall INDIAN SUMMER delivered a nice listenable album but just lacks that extra bite that a heavier rock band needs to animate the music. I know this has its fans and it's become one of those sought after obscurities from the early 70s but for my tastes this band just didn't have enough pizazz to keep the album mesmerizing from beginning to end but there are certainly exhilarating moments such as at the end of the track "Black Sunshine." If you like the delicate touch with only occasional outbursts of instrumental heft then this one is for you!

siLLy puPPy While many Italian prog bands from the 70s came and went leaving a single album behind as evidence that they even existed, the Torino based PROCESSION got a second chance after a turbulent lineup change that left only lead vocalist Gianfranco Gaza and guitarist Roby Munciguerra remaining from the band’s 1972 debut “Frontiera.” The band pretty much undertook a complete makeover on its second release FIABA leaving behind the blistering hard rock / proto-metal twin guitar bombast of the debut and transmogrified itself into a more conventional romantic symphonic folky prog band in the vein of a more symphonic version of Le Orme with scattered other influences creeping in.

With only one guitarist PROCESSION was joined by saxophone and flute player Maurizio Gianotti, new bassist Paolo D’Angelo and drummer Francesco "Froggio" Francica who had played with Raccomandata con Ricevuta di Ritorno. This sophomore effort also featured a few guest appearances from keyboardist Franco Fernandez, Ettore Vigo of Delirium and a vocal appearance from Circus 2000 singer Silvana Aliotta. Basically this was a a different band and only PROCESSION in name only as it even swapped out for the Fonit label. The sounds of FIABA are on the mellower side of things in stark contrast to the raucous uproar of the debut. This album is permeated by dreamy atmospheres, romantic vocal performances and lots of woodwinds and sax. Bass, guitar and drums become more sparse after the opening track.

FIABA features six tracks that add up to 34 1/2 minutes of playing time and shows how a band is trying to reinvent itself without latching onto any certain stylistic approach but rather seems to be looking elsewhere for inspiration. While the debut “Frontiera” exuded a confidence and effortless execution, on FIABA, the new PROCESSION seems unsure of itself and ends up playing it safe for the album’s run. The album begins decently with “Uomini Di Vento” which starts things off on an upbeat mode with heavy percussion and a funky guitar and bass groove with feisty guitar performances. This is as energetic as the album gets and nothing in comparison to the unhinged heavy metal performances on the debut. From here on the album tapers off and drifts through a series of symphonic prog performances as well as more folk oriented tracks culminating in the super mellow folk number “Il Volo Della Paura.”

While the album ends well with the more upbeat title track which offers some excellent flute performances, in the end the album feels like a a grab bag of ideas that never come to fruition in any particular way. Despite that the tracks are all very nicely performed and the compositions are intricately designed and worthy of exploration for hardcore Italian prog fans who can’t get enough of the folkier side of 70s Italian prog. For my liking this second coming is very much a decline in the band’s overall uniqueness and craftiness. It was a noble effort to reform, regroup and give it another shot just as the Italian prog craze was starting to cool off but didn’t quite pay off. Ultimately this album went completely unnoticed and the band would call it quits soon after however Roby Munciguerra obviously felt the band had a little life left in it and reformed in the 21st century with a completely new lineup and released the 2007 album “Esplorare.” This is a nice pleasant album no doubt but not one that gets my juices flowing.

siLLy puPPy Germany’s VANDEN PLAS was one of the pioneering progressive metal bands forming as far back as 1984 and joining the ranks of Dream Theater, Psychotic Waltz, Mekong Delta and a bunch of others in the 1990s by delivering some of the most cutting edge metal meets prog the decade had to offer. The band has weathered the storms for well over four decades now and even produced four rock operas. VANDEN PLAS’ prog metal creds are undeniable and yet somehow this band has remained just outside of my grasp. Although i’ve heard of them for years and even checked out an album or two, there was just something about them i found off-putting. Well, sometimes it’s unwise to sample the proper nectar before one is ready to glean the benefits and i figured it’s time to once again dip into the musical world of VANDEN PLAS since the band is obviously in no hurry to set up a retirement plan.

Although the band debuted in 1994 with its first release “Colour Temple,” the band has never been in a rush to pump out as much product as possible. The latest album THE EMPYREAN EQUATION OF THE LONG LOST THINGS is the band’s 12th album and it’s absolutely amazing that this band has pretty much kept the same lineup since its 1994 debut. The exception to this long lasting stability was broken when keyboardist Günter Werno departed in 2023 and for the first time VANDEN PLAS had to scout out some new talent to fill his shoes. The band found a suitable replacement with Italian born Alessandro Del Vecchio who has been well seasoned in a number of bands including Alex Beyrodt’s Voodoo Circle, Sunstorm and Silent Force. Given his prog rock / power metal / hard rock creds, a perfect candidate for VANDEN PLAS’ classic prog metal sound that seems to remain firmly planted in the 1990s.

While the world of progressive metal has evolved exponentially since the 90s and branched out into every possible direction conceivable, VANDEN PLAS has retained its ties to the early heavy metal and power metal roots that spawned the more progressive metal variations that emerged in the 1990s. The band features the same style of guitar riffing and accompanying solos, melancholic atmospheres, frenetic keyboard runs, high pitched vocals and the typical melodic and rhythmic drive that made the earliest variations of prog metal so endearing. Not much has changed in the VANDEN PLAS camp as the same formulaic approach as always has been implemented. THE EMPYREAN EQUATION OF THE LONG LOST THINGS features six tracks and adds up to the 55 minute plus mark. The tracks are mostly on the longer side with every track clocking in at over six minutes and the lengthiest grand finale “March Of The Saints” approaching the 16-minute mark.

The album starts off with the title track and showcases beautiful piano rolls and the classic build of tension that merges into the prog metal thunder the band is famous for. Andy Kuntz still delivers clean and confident vocal workouts and the band is by all means a well-oiled machine at this point in their career and newbie Del Vecchio seems to fit in like he’s been a member of the band since the beginning. The tracks are all well-crafted and deliver veritable slices of that old school prog metal stylistic approach that will remind you of classic Dream Theater, Fates Warning, Symphony X, Threshold, Pagan’s Mind, Shadow Gallery and a gazillion others. In that regard little has changed in the VANDEN PLAS sound and the band carries on as if the modern world doesn’t exist. For some that may be a nice comfort zone and for others it conveys a band that remains staunchly committed to a certain stylistic approach that refuses to branch out into new turf. Whatever the case, VANDEN PLAS’ latest offering delivers a veritable slice of classic prog metal but doesn’t really do much more. Even the 16-minute closing “March Of The Saints” doesn’t deviate from the overall established sound of the band in any way.

Upon listening to THE EMPYREAN EQUATION OF THE LONG LOST THINGS i’m reminded why VANDEN PLAS never really clicked with me. Sure they are a more than a competent band that delivers all the prog metal goods in fine form but the band lacks imagination and a creative spirit that animates the music to a higher level. This album is very anachronistic and may serve as a form of comfort food for those who have been alienated by the world of prog metal seeping into the caustic arenas of dissonant death metal, black metal and extremist hybrids and for that it is perfectly suitable however i just find this band to be a bit too generic for my liking. There is not a single bad track on this album and the performances are impeccable with every keyboard run, every guitar riff and every drum roll teased out to perfection but there is a very clinical feel to the album as if VANDEN PLAS engineers its music through a microscope rather than allowing an organic process to inspire and evolve its style. It’s sure to be a fan pleaser for those who expect a band to remain consistent but after three decades i would expect the band to have at least evolved a smidge. Decent album but comes off as prog metal by the numbers.

siLLy puPPy With its surprise hit self-titled debut release VANILLA FUDGE demonstrated its uncanny ability to carve up overexposed pop songs of the past and reconstruct them into a completely new coalescence of steaming hot late 1960s psychedelic rock. The band was riding high after the debut shot into the top 20 followed by a top 10 hit of The Supremes’ #1 chart topper “You Keep Me On” only a year after its heavy radio exposure. VANILLA FUDGE probably should have followed up the album with another reinterpretation of classic pop songs or then ventured into self-penned tracks that kept the growing fanbase’s attention but instead rocketed helter skelter into the world of avant-garde experimentalism with “The Beat Goes On.” While still maintaining enough momentum to sustain a top 20 album, the abstract songless nature of the album’s sound collage effect may have prognosticated the wonderful world of rock and roll moving on into a new intrepid era of complete freedom and unthinkable exploration but as a business move in the world of 60s pop music, not exactly a brilliant move.

The band shrugged it off and moved on quickly and in 1968 released not one but two albums. “The Beat Goes On” emerged early in February 1968 and although catching fans and critics off guard did give the quartet of Vince Martelli (vocals, guitar), Mark Stein (organ), Tim Bogert (bass) and Carmine Appice (drums) a new lease on life that propelled them beyond the status of being a mere cover band. By summer, VANILLA FUDGE released what many deem should’ve been their proper second album. On June 14, 1968 the band unleashed its third album RENAISSANCE, the first of which featured all original tracks and although two covers were employed, their choices were more suitable with the psychedelic acid rock that the band had developed as its primary expressive mode. Yes, the sound that VANILLA FUDGE made famous with clever reinterpretations of classic pop hits such as The Beatles’ “Eleanor RIgby” and Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” was back only this time with completely original self-penned cuts that propelled the band into the next arena of competency. VANILLA FUDGE was now a bonafide force of musical creativity to that the likes that the band had become a pioneering force in developing the earliest sounds of both progressive rock and the harder rock and heavy metal sounds that would dominate in the 1970s.

Opening with “The Sky Cried - When I Was a Boy,” RENAISSANCE reacquaints its listener with its innovative mix of fuzzy organ ponderosity along with the emphasis on heavier guitar, bass and drum playing. Also making a much needed reprise are all those intricately designed vocal harmonies that propelled VANILLA FUDGE’s music to a magical 60s psychedelic universe that had been gestating all throughout the previous two years. It becomes immediately clear that RENAISSANCE really does reflect its titular definition and signifies a rebirth in the band’s development. With all aspirations of pop hit stardom extinguished, VANILLA FUDGE instead evolved its distinct style into something much more - that being a veritable art rock band that embodied all the contemporary developments that were steeped in psychedelia, mystique and complexity. The album featured only seven tracks with the opening “The Sky Cried” and the closing cover of Donovan’s “The Season Of The Witch” both exceeding the seven-minute mark. RENAISSANCE also was a concept album thus showcasing on the rock’s paradigm of focusing on album long listening experience rather than the banality of short catchy singles to lure audiences in. The involvement of producer Shadow Martin helped sculpt the band’s new aspirations into a captivating adventurous musical performance.

While the tracks may have been unfamiliar, VANILLA FUDGE’s sound was back and firing on full pistons. The band retained its slow and steady pace of developing strong melodic constructs before unleashing its heavier display of instrumental virtuosity. RENAISSANCE also introduced a more cosmic feel to the band’s style which allowed brooding keyboard-induced atmospheres to seep into every motif and cadence like a leaky bottle of pancake syrup. The band was essentially carving out an early prototype of keyboard dominant rock that would become popularized by Deep Purple and Uriah Heep just a few years down the road. As the album continues with “Thoughts” and “Paradise,” the album delivers a mesmerizing display of ritualistic organ performances, fuzz guitar and rhythmic ingenuity of the bass and drums. Vocal harmonies are accompanied by varying variations including short spoken word narrations and more emotive outbursts.

RENAISSANCE is an amazingly adept and consistent album with the perfect 60s sounds that emerged from the very opening of the album to the excellent cover of Donovan’s “Seasons Of The Witch” which takes a rather straightforward pop song and transmogrifies it into a magical display of excess, a trait that would become the hallmark of all that progressive rock to come. The track also wove in interpolations of Essra Mowhawk’s “We Never Learn.” Mohawk was the first female member of Frank Zappa’s Mother of Invention” and was the writer of the track “The Spell That Comes After” thus displaying VANILLA FUDGE’s true intent of taking music into the true world of innovation and leaving behind their pop hit origins without hesitation. While stylistically perfect at this point and a totally satisfying display of acid rock, VANILLA FUDGE unknowingly created some of the most accomplished mix of proto-metal that would lead to bands like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple all the while crafting a proto-progressive sound that would quickly find its way around the world and reemerging as the explosive wellspring of creativity that would erupt the following year in 1969. Wow these guys came a long way from a mere cover band the year before! RENAISSANCE is a true classic of the 1960s.

siLLy puPPy VANILLA FUDGE only existed for a mere four years but in that short time developed an extraordinary wide range of expressing itself through its five album run that began with its psych-soaked renditions of classic pop songs and then followed by a leap of faith into the world of the avant-garde. After regaining traction, the band sallied forth delivered a solid masterpiece of 60s acid rock before going off the deep end and sputtering quickly into irrelevance as the sounds it nurtured into creation had been adopted and improved upon by an explosion of fertile talent that really took off in 1969.

NEAR THE BEGINNING was the band’s fourth album but in retrospect would’ve suitably been titled “Near The End” as the band’s momentum which peaked on “Renaissance” was clearly derailed leaving the band a victim of its own whims and shortcomings. One of the biggest developments in VANILLA FUDGE’s career was the fact that after three albums, the band decided to self-produce and take full creative control into its own hands. While on one side NEAR THE BEGINNING showcases the band’s developing taste for harder and heavier rock as showcased on the feisty opening cover of Jr. Walkter & The All Stars top 10 hit “Shotgun” however without a producer who served as an intervening force to keep the band focused, this fourth album emerged as an interesting but highly disheveled collection of tracks.

Clearly restless and ready to jump headfirst into the world of hard rock, NEAR THE BEGINNING opens with an adrenalized hard rock version of “Shotgun,” the 1965 hit single that peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and led the way for similar Motown artists to capture the soul market in the 1960s. An unlikely opening track to say the least, “Shotgun” succeeded in showing that VANILLA FUDGE was indeed a multi-faceted band that refused to be pigeonholed into any particular style of music but also displayed a complete disregard for the organ-fueled psychedelic magic that had come to full fruition on “Renaissance.” The six-minute track sounds woefully out of place as a VANILLA FUDGE remaking and basically sounds like one of those tracks you throw in as a bonus cut when finding extra tidbits for a re-issue of some sort.

The band surprisingly features two covers as the first tracks, the second being the hit “Some Velvet Morning” recorded by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. The band returns to its expected stylistic approach that featured a slowed down build up fortified with trippy organ runs and the accompanying guitar, bass and drum combo effect. Unlike the traditional symphonic pop style of the original, VANILLA FUDGE transmogrifies this classic song into a veritable slice of psychedelic acid rock which to be honest wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the the debut album as it takes the exact same approach topped off with the exquisitely divine vocal harmonies contrasted by the bombast of the crushing organ, guitar, bass and drum rock heftiness. In this process it leaves the song almost unrecognizable in comparison to the original, a knack VANILLA FUDGE was wise to continue since it appears that it was its greatest strength.

After eking out 7 1/2 minutes of a the classic Hazlewood / Sinatra pop hit, the track is followed by the Appice original “Where Is Happiness” which opens with some trippy avant-garde freakery with strange organ noises frenetically conjured from an unseen realm and slowly develops into a melodic musical score that sounds very much like a continuation of the previous track with the same lackadaisical build up, Mark Stein’s emotive and emphatically emphasized lyrical delivery and a slow build up as the guitar, bass and drum chomp at the bit to get on with the heavier action to come. That very action emerges as an energetic display of beefed up bass, sporadic jazzy drumming and a sizzling guitar soloing sequence with a tinge of Middle Eastern influences to exude an exoticism unheard of in the band’s usual repertoire. Probably one of the best songs of the band’s career actually.

The album’s second side is another head-scratcher curveball delivers by the band. It consists entire of the live recording “Break Song” which was performed at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The track pretty much just showcases the band’s ability to jam, improvise and engage in extended solos. Everyone gets a crack with some nice moments of guitar, others of bass and a rather droll drumming sequence that outstays its welcome. This track really seems pointless and drags down the entire album’s momentum, well what there was of it. Also the band jettisoned its trademark build up techniques as well as its vocal harmonizing. In fact this track exudes a sense of the generic and pretty much comes across as one of those type of “milk it for all its worth” performances of a typical 60s blues rock band that didn’t have the talent to inject anything innovative. This track unfortunately doesn’t highlight the VANILLA FUDGE sound but rather detracts considerably. A studio version was recorded but nixed in favor of this for some reason but personally i like the studio version better. It is featured on the remastered editions of the following album “Rock & Roll.”

Basically NEAR THE BEGINNING was a followup album that had just been thrown together without much care for an album experience. There are really only two interesting songs here and a decent if not outstanding Motown cover. The live track is listenable but not amazing or even remotely successful in delivering what you would expect from VANILLA FUDGE. It seems like the point of this album is to announce the band’s freedom from any controllers and that it just wants to do what it wants. Unfortunately that didn’t translate into a compelling album. In retrospect A NEW BEGINNING signified a transfer of the band’s innovation on the first three albums into a quick downfall that would give the baton to a new breed of rock musicians who would take the band’s unique approaches and gestate them into some of the most exiting and dynamic sounds of the 1970s. While seemingly the end, VANILLA FUDGE had one more album in them. While highly influential for so many VANILLA FUDGE was indeed “Near The End."

siLLy puPPy The last full year as a band, VANILLA FUDGE followed suit after releasing two albums in 1968 by once again releasing two more in the calendar year 1969 before the band ran out of steam and called it quits in early 1970. After a two year roller coaster ride that began with the surprise success of the band’s self-titled debut which propelled VANILLA FUDGE to the big boys’ league in the world of 1960s psychedelic rock, the band had derived a wide variety of styles to its repertoire and to its credit never really stagnated however the relentless push to constantly move on to the next thing yielded varying results.

The band ended its career with its fifth and final album ROCK & ROLL which emerged on 25 September 1969 and thus not only ending one of the most dynamic decades in the entire history of musical innovation but also the end of one of the bands that became an extremely influential force for the many other acts that would soon adopt its unique perspectives on merging the seemingly disparate worlds of soul music, pop and experimental psychedelia that would soon take on a greater role in morphing into hard rock and progressive rock. VANILLA FUDGE’s last offering featured a more streamlined approach after the rather scattered “Near The Beginning.”

One of the primary forces that whipped the band into being focused was by having a producer who could offer a perspective that a bunch of drifting musicians could realize on their own. ROCK & ROLL welcomed Adrian Barber who had worked his magic with The Velvet Underground and would eventually go on to usher Aerosmith into the limelight. His contributions forged ROCK & ROLL into another cohesive album’s worth of material that coexisted snuggly side by side and teased out all the brilliance that had put VANILLA FUDGE on the music map in the first place without all those annoying excesses that emerged when the band was left to its own devices on the self-produced “Near The Beginning.”

This final chapter once again saw a track listing of self-penned psychedelic rock tunes along with cover songs stripped of their hit making immediacy and given the proper psychotropic makeovers. ROCK & ROLL begins with the fiery “Need Love” sung by guitarist Vinnie Marteli and showcases what sounds to me like an early prototype of what Deep Purple would crank out the following year on its classic “In Rock” album. This feisty track mixes energetic blues guitar rock with the fuzzy organ and boogie-woogie piano rolls along with a sizzling rhythm section that finds bantering bass and drums rolls screaming that the band has successfully taken the genre of ROCK & ROLL into the world of hard rock and a sampling of proto-metal intensity.

“Lord Of The Country” follows and features some of the earliest examples of what i would call Queen. The soulful gospel rock track crafted by Mark Stein almost sounds like something that would fit in on Queen’s “The Night At The Opera.” The style only awaits Freddie Mercury to charismatically animate it to the next level. The first cover track, Carole King’s “I Can’t Make It Alone” is another soulful heavy psych reinterpretation that the band excelled at from its earliest origins. Tight vocal harmonies, skillful rhythm section and a reweaving of the melodic fabric to allow for another tasty treat of VANILLA FUDGE charm. “Street Walking Woman,” another Martelli sung track allows another band original to follow suit with the same soft / hard tradeoffs.

Another captivating song is the brilliant “Church Bells Of St. Martins” which features an army bugle i believe and military march drumming introducing the main song which goes on into folk and rock territory but once again highlighting the band’s evolution of its vocal harmonizing. Once again this sounds exactly like what Queen would build its career on throughout the 70s but once again Stein’s vocals don’t quite have that Freddie Mercury magic. It’s still a highlight of the album though as the arrangement is brilliant.

The near 9-minute “The Windmills Of Your Mind” is the other cover, this time a song written by Michel Legrand, Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman for the film score “The Thomas Crown Affair.” While originally sung by Noel Harrison, the track was covered by Dusty Springfield in the same year as this version in 1969 except her version found its way into the top 40 whereas VANILLA FUDGE was imploding and failed to capture much fanfare with this final release. This soulful interpretation pulled out all the usual VANILLA FUDGE punches and the band owned it much like it did with Donovan’s “Season Of The Witch” on its previous album. The original vinyl ended with the 1961 James Ray hit “If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody” sung by drummer Carmine Appice which the band teases into a soulful hard rock sensation. Some remastered versions also feature a studio version of “Break Song” which appeared in a side-long B-side on “Near The Beginning” only this version is far superior as it emphases the band’s strengths.

Given all the low ratings of ROCK & ROLL and almost ubiquitous panning by critics and reviewers alike, i was quite surprised to love this final offering from VANILLA FUDGE. This is one of the most focused album of its five album run and mixes all the things that made the band so unique. It retains the soulful covers turned heavy psych while emphasizing the newfound love for hard rock turned up a few notches. Likewise the band’s unique vocal harmony arrangements took a leap in ingenuity and clearly passed the baton on to Queen whereas the organ dominated hard rock in the vein of Grand Funk Railroad only more soulful was ripe to gift to Deep Purple for an upgrade. It’s a shame VANILLA FUDGE couldn’t develop its own creations into the next phase of rock and metal but it cannot be understated how influential this band was to the next generation of rockers that dominated the 70s. I personally love this album a lot and find it to be third in line after the masterpiece “Renaissance” and the crafty self-titled debut. A great way to go out and i’m surprised very few have taken notice.

siLLy puPPy Although emerging from the tiny nation state of Liechtenstein sandwiched between Austria and Switzerland, the gothic symphonic metal band ELIS found popularity all over the German speaking world and is unfortunately most remembers as the band that experienced the sudden collapse and premature death of its lead vocalist Sabine Dünser, an event which almost ended the band’s existence. Originally starting out as Erben der Schöpfung with keyboardist Oliver Falk, guitarist Pete Strait and vocalist Sabine Dünser, the band released its first single called “Elis” in 2001 as well as a couple albums before adding guitarist Jürgen Broger, drummer Frankie Keller and bassist Tom Saxer. It’s at this point the band pulled the ole switcheroo with its namesake and became ELIS.

Enjoying a healthy live circuit career, the band most famously performed at the Wave Gotik Treffen in Leipzig which got its unique take on gothic metal noticed by the German press. The band only existed for an eleven year run and put out four albums starting with this debut GOD’S SILENCE, DEVIL’S TEMPTATION which came out in 2003 on the Napalm Record label. The band’s name is associated with the poem “An den Knaben Elis” by Georg Trakl which was Sabina’s favorite poet. After the recording of this album the band found all over Europe and immediately captivated the audiences with its energetic gothic metal sound that mixed with symphonic backing and bought to life by Dünser’s captivating vocals.

In many ways ELIS sounds like a typical female fronted goth metal band only more in the symphonic realms of Xandria, Nightwish, After Forever or Epica only without any trace of the power metal aspects that symphonic metal usually employs. ELIS delivered a darker sound with strong melodic grooves led by the female vocals and occasional joined in by the beauty and beast effect of growly male vocals. This album is dominated by crunchy guitar riffing joined by a predominance of eerie atmospheric keyboard embellishments. Lyrics are mostly in English but the track “Sie Erfasst Mein Herz” is in German. The band does a good job at keeping its mood setting in the realms of the worth of gothic metal with the symphonic elements adding a certain expansion of the band’s style.

All in all GOD’S SILENCE, DEVIL’S TEMTATION is a decent slice of symphonic goth metal and pretty much a continuation of style that was delivered on the Urban der Schöpfung albums. The tracks are all melodically beautiful as are Dünser’s elegant soft sung vocals. Beautiful piano runs, turbulent atmospheric keyboard runs and twin guitar heft work together to keep the music from becoming too aggressive or too sugary pop sweet. The one downfall of the band is that it lacks a true originality and is clearly following in the footsteps of the aforementioned influences however ELIS pulled it all off fairly well with just enough differences to make this debut not sound like a total clone of bands like Epica. Overall a decent album although not one that exactly makes me want to run out and purchase it at any cost as this style of goth metal has showcased a multitude of similar variations throughout the decades. Nice to know a tiny nation like Liechtenstein has yielded some worthy bands to explore.

siLLy puPPy The island of Jersey’s NWOHM band LEGEND may not have reached legendary status but rather is one of those bands that has earned its creds over the long haul. One of the original NWOBHM bands that formed on the self-governing British Crown Dependency of Jersey off the coast of Normandy, France, LEGEND formed quietly in 1980 in its small island enclave of less than 120 square kilometers (47 square miles) and cranked out two highly developed and accomplished albums in the early 1980s before disbanding four years later and reforming in 2002. This band is not to be confused with the legions of other LEGENDS out there including the Connecticut based prog / metal hybrid band nor the other English band from Kent.

Also developing simultaneously as Iron Maiden, early Def Leppard, Saxon and all the famous bands that have become NWOBM royalty, LEGEND remained obscure in the underground although gained enough traction to support Thin Lizzy in its 1981 UK tour. The band released both this self-titled debut album as well as the following “Death In The Nursery” independently and the original lineup featured Mike Lezala on vocals, Peter Hasworth and Marco Morosino on guitars, Eggy Aubert on bass and drummer David Whitley. The band’s origins lay in an early band called Dr. Morris which featured Haworth on vocals and Whitley on drums. After securing the proper talent, band leader Peter Haworth wrote this first album of material which sounded quite differently than the regular NWOBHM sound.

Inspired as much by Black Sabbath as Led Zeppelin, Budgie, Jimi Hendrix and other 70s hard rock / heavy metal giants, LEGEND developed a less aggressive take on the NWOBHM with elements of the Sabbath inspired doom metal dominating large chunks of its soundscape. The guitar playing more resembled the Scorpions’ original guitarist Uli Jon Roth however the band’s musical style was all its own with a less operatic vocalist delivering lyrics about politics, humanity and other subjects outside the mainstream. LEGEND also had a darker overall sound style than Iron Maiden, Angel Witch and other bands that were dominating the scene although many similarities such as the twin guitar attacks, strong bass and drum grooves and classic power chord breakdowns.

The album featured seven tracks at a typical album’s run of over 42 minutes and showcased a clear display of talent that emerged from the small but vibrant Jersey metal scene. The beauty of this debut album is how diverse it is and although clearly one of those links between the hard rock 70s and NWOBHM 80s, LEGEND truly did stand out from the crowds with Lezala’s unique vocals sounding like no other as well as a greater emphasis on slower traditional doom metal grooves that alternate with the more upbeat NWOBHM styles. The sound on this low budget debut is as you would expect, namely raw and focused more on the compositions rather than any slick production tricks. The band excelled at what it performed and therefore must have been a captivating live act as it performed regularly for its small island population base.

Definitely one of those worthy from the vaults sort of bands that had the talent to take things much further but just out of the reach of developing anything larger despite some significant exposure on the Thin Lizzy tour. Strong songwriting, strong musicianship and a unique band sound that set them apart keeps LEGEND relevant some four decades later after its initial run. Its reformation in 2002 only continues to gain the band more attention with an album coming out as recently as 2013’s “The Dark Place.” LEGEND continues to record new material well into the 21st century but none is as compelling as this earliest raw recordings of the band’s first years. LEGEND’s debut album is definitely a nice addition to your NWOBHM collection once you’ve exhausted the usual suspects.