Issue # 79
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| Pure stone. Scatter shots interplay with sparse kicks accenting sub melodies living at the edge of the lace up. |
| Gots what it takes and more. Flooding bass subs, on point timing, smooth flow pushing chops sliding gracefully through poetic verse & phrase. Lyrically it compels an affinity with experience on the streets but holds aloft a kind of knowing ruse. Like what is said is meant, take the lesson as you will. |
| Build for expression and airplay. Hint of a scene, something personal, fades out before solid confessions but the reggae base remains strong. The number itself floats in memory clauses for the full delivery. It's up to the dj's. |
| Classic NWBHM type stylings. Strong melodies with power metal undertow. Slightly operatic singing. Leads, good ones at that, every song. Standouts are the title song which rocks righteously. I am The Hammer, which is somewhat more cliché with the gallops & alpha male lyrics. Still, like most here, it can have it’s moments, chance given or taken, regardless of intent. Heathen Kings proudly fly the heavy metal horns! |
| Quanitified and compressed, Fausto still rings pure with metal in it's blood, and a melody in it's soul. While emotive numbers like Cocina de Bruja will tire after many listens, more starting sublime & going hard numbers such En el Cielo gain weight over time. |
| Flyovers (A Wandering Stream Of Wind), funeral scenes. Workings man's death metal. Production and sound is excellent and clear. Mostly mid tempo but it will rage up and blast a bit (Infinite Sea Of Nothingness) but mostly marching and blazing the homes of thy enemy, if only in spirit. |
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I heard the beaver tail against the log, the guttoral sounds of burtal death, and immediately thought like bad rap this was gonna be forgettable. A few minutes in I'm laughing amy ass off at how killer it is. Blasting metal switching gears often, a time or two too much yet mostly for modern grindcore it was pretty lateral. Sometime they'd slow down and grind, or attempt too and I'd long for the spastic typewritter and it'd not, generally, be too long still she come about. A buncha times I was wondering if it'd progress byond the grindcre and a few times it didn't, which was still good, basically. When it did work though, it was heaven or hell, depending on how you look at it. |
| A bit shy of 40 minutes of metal royalty in music. Machine guns, tanks, the sounds of war. Figuratively. There seems to be no lyric sheets sent in so I'll take it from what I could decipher, that it's full of all the vile evil things one can think of. What I did hear has been said before; here, it is sang well. The music, though not ground breaking is powerful and strong. Containing all the riffage and writ any great songwriter and above ample composuer can muster. It has a few places a thrashing solum woulda been served better with something other, but it's good execution wise whatever curves this band likes to throw in. The excellent musianship and top notch songwriting makes for great black metal. The kind you know about. The kind you want. Altumtenebris is the band. |
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Thrashing beasts from hell bring fire and destruction. A few times some key stabs strike but it's pretty much death metal to the core!\
Songs such as The Black Priests of Taiferâ (Clerics of the Old Blood) combine all the elements of progression, melodic and blast metal. So throughout there's a bit of something for everyone. It's when they lock thrash though, when they truly impress. Touches of transitional majestry reign strong too, like on Nightbloom MMXXIII, which would be "singles material" if that existed here. |
| Trippy in countenance on a glide scope. Stembridge plays with insertion but stays above the din, just barely at times, as the spinners fly & the hypervisor heats up. You can see the glow a mile away. Dubbed drop steps reverberate off the hallowed walls of the chidren of the sun, personified, modified, modernized. Then, the robots go silent. |
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Pogoing through sandpits uncovering vipers who strike madly in time to the punk rock beat has stuff all tied up & thrown down to the throbbing masses below. Satisfying as that may be, one must be ready to pay the piper come the stunted rave ups some ending in a mutiny of co-defiance. Crazy is as crazy does, preheat your oven if needed, or not. via GIRLSVILLE
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| Usual fashion of the knockoff on the obvious. Single though has a bit of charger modified 2 finger salutes. Raptor head remover, stalled metro groover. A sure fire mover, best imbued with shots of pure lightnin. |
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At this point you can excuse Uncle Al for running out of ideas. Many will say that happened with Ministry a long time ago. While I don't know if I agree with that sentiment, but here in the Spring of 2024 it's a given fact. It's not even that it's tha same shit done over for the hundreth time, but rather the bland execution of it overall. Yeah we get it America is a wasteland of wanton, but yes indeed Ministry has been covering that since way before the millenium changeover. It's not even that the subject matter is propagated nothingness. It's that Ministry, whomever in addition to Al Jourgensen happens to be in the band, can't do a helluva lot better. As in actually trying. The first two cuts into the album exemplify this. Both songs are plodding less than mid-temp blandness, like something cut from Scarecrow but nowhere near that level of music, lyric or creativity. Just does not capture any kind of groove worth keeping. Things pick up and almost get interesting with 'Just stop oil". I say almost, because after a couple of minutes it's just phoning it in on repeat as something meaning to pass as a guitar solo comes across as not trying too hard but rather not trying at all. More Ministry cliches arrive with "Goddamn White Trash". The sample matching with the music in the chorus, along with the horns and pick-up called-in loops mean little to nothing. Same thing with the entire album, mostly. Things want to take off with numbers like "New Religion" or "TV Song 1/6 Edition", the later taking issue with the January 6th riots in Washington, nothing seems to fly very high, if at all. Another mid-tempo stumble along is actually one of the best songs on the record, "It's Not Pretty" lives up to it's name, but it does offer a little bit more, and I mean very little, creativity above a repeat of yesteryear's past glories. I guess we should be glad we get anything new from Ministry, though new is not what I'd call this. Seems to be a placeholder to use as an excuse to do concerts. That's going on a lot today with older bands, since no one sells albums anymore. Not that anyone would be buying shit like this anyways. |
| Truly a headtrip worthy of the infernal space. The deep darkness with prevades stays firm throughout as we switch betwen soundtrack, funeral grind, psychedelic lurch & brutal death metal. Yes kids, you CAN have it all!. |
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Traditional Black metal with somewhat of a French twist; being that blackened metal has it's distinctive flavors where it comes from but overall ingredients that define the genre. In this Alkhemia tends to be pure. The symphonic and sychedelic influences bear witness here, as the band speaks to the ancients and the novices in training. There is but one way, and how it all ends, black metal. Behold! Guitars, A.S.A (Azziard, Redsphere, ex The Negation...) - Bass, Marbas (Malcuidant, Nirnaeth, Lord Ketil...) - Guitars and Alex Josien - Drums. |
| She ain't playin' wit' yo ass. With French Montanta & Fivio Foreign in tow they come to fuck yer shit up Word. |
| The drone & the bell. The far off sounds of shelling. War. Anticosmic Ceremony is what they're calling it. When you're not out on the killing fields or in the cemetary, the metal is good. It'll change gears into almost meadering thrash sometimes. Perhaps on purpose to throw you off into another scene, cause it seems to be such a way; that sentiment lasts throughout. |
| Bass bumpin slow grind with the fit pit spits by Diddy as it's hand rolled gars and brandy kick backs, with an eye out the widnow looking for tha man. Though paranoia in the game can be a bitch, it's part of a well known, tried and trued playbook. Diddy ends the piece last verse with one of his trademark shouts as Giggs double tells you to take it as these black king gods of rap & hip hop roll on down the road. |
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A few avenues of achievement here and a bit of wandering about. Thrashing aound on "ALHAZRED" becomes standarized top tier thrash on "Incendiary Prayer". This in part turns into more blackened death metal via "The Resurrectionist, which also throws more progression in there. Split times and weaving strikes proliferate on "Thousand Faced Moon". Lyrics wise the aforehand all run from black magic to total destruction. While seemingly standarized metal fare Olkoth makes these things personal, which is an ironic type of saving grace, with vocals being strong delivery wise just not enough to knock you down. Blast beat reigns supreme on "To Eat Of The Lotus" which flames out against the run of the mill metallic (as opposed to hardcore, punk or progressive) thrash going down over the top. Lead break through keeps the song from falling too flat, and the grind following said lead is a nice touch as well. "Eidolon in the Flames" just tries too hard and in doing such is one of the weaker songs on the album. "Lords Of the Kali Yuga" gets bogged down in mids creativity wise, though overall the song approached blaster status. Here too the lead acts as partial savior. It's also a major strong point on "At the Eye of Chaos", which outside of the vocal parts, music wise is a powerful song, mixing all the elements the band has to offer. |
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