Reports from the Underground: April 2020 prog reviewed (part 2)

Khôra – Timaeus (Germany)
Style: Blackened Death / Atmo-black (mixed vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal-Archives page
Review by: Chris

This has really been a year of me listening to a lot of Blackened/Disso-death styled albums, and for the most part it’s been a pretty good year in that respect. Khôra has jumped onto the pile of good experiences with Timaeus. If I remember my philosophy well I believe Timaeus is a Plato reference about the world being created or something, so I’ve assumed that is what this album is about.

The album starts extremely ambient with “Aether” which gets across the ‘Gods are gonna create the world now’ vibe pretty well. The album then leads you into “Noceo” which is where the blackened vocals and instrumentation really starts hitting with higher stringed dissonant chords and creaky vocals. I found the drums a bit loud once we got to this song, but I feel that might just be that they are not quite as far back as usual on a blackened record. “Noceo” also introduces some symphonic elements to the mix. Typically I find these kinds of string symphonic touches pretty annoying and mainly layered to just have strings, but I found these to be pretty well arranged and actually adding to the atmosphere. Too many bands’ orchestration elements are put forward too much and become cheapened, but thankfully these seemed to sit exactly where they should. Similarly Timaeus has enough sprinklings of some Avant stylings that I could really get behind as they were not overused in any way. At first listen I found some of the odd vocal touches and choices in “Harvesting Stars” a bit off putting, but on subsequent listens I found myself enjoying them quite a lot.

Timaeus succeeds most with pacing and understanding the state of the listener I think. I found most changes to songs very well hinted at and reached, while the placement of heavy and light parts seemed to fit exactly where my ears were in terms of fatigue of anticipation. It was also pretty refreshing to see an album in this genre space with no song spanning more than 5 minutes. All the songs knew when they had espoused their ideas and served their purpose, and Khôra did a great job terminating them at those times. Production wise I thought the album could do a bit better, as there seemed to be a few times some slightly strange production artifacts popped up. Additionally, the more straightforward black-metal songs efforts such as “De Vetus Ad Novum” didn’t grab as much and made me feel like a not quite as good Behemoth. The charm of Timaeus overall was its willingness to go pretty much anywhere and do a pretty good job at it.

Recommended tracks: Noceo, Harvesting Stars, The Occultation of Time
Recommended for fans of: Dimmu Borgir, Ved Buens Ende, Behemoth
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Sugar Horse – DRUGS (UK) [EP]
Style: Doomgaze/Post (mixed vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | RYM page
Review by: Tyler

I’m a creature of habit. I love routine and traditions, I always have. I like getting my favorite thing at restaurants instead of trying something new. I take the same way to work every day. Heck, I’ve been using the same brand shampoo for most of my adult life. But, one of my favorite traditions that I have, a little inside joke with myself if you will, is that I will always give a band with the word ‘horse’ in its name a try. It’s a really funny word! And one that I always give a fair shot when I see a new-to-me band that has it.  And I’m real glad I did it this time; DRUGS by Sugar Horse, is not only my favorite new combination of words, but a surprisingly solid EP.

Mixing elements of sludge, doom, and post rock/gaze, DRUGS really grabbed me. From the absolutely crushing vocals and riffing on the title track, to the more gazey parts of “Pity Party” and “Richard Branson in the Sky With Diamonds”, there is a lot to dig into. What really brought my eyebrows to an officially raised position was the band’s sense of phrasing and timing. The previously mentioned song named for Richard Branson is a great example. The song weaves in and out around of both the heavy sludge elements, to quieter, more atmospheric ideas, while never losing its identity. There is a driving drum and synth groove that ties the whole song together until it crescendos to a triumphant post-y ending that mixes all of the styles together. 

The surprises don’t stop there either. “When September Rain” the very next song really dives into the atmospherics and even plays with sing along elements. Mixing a huge amount of vocal layering, washy guitars, and bombastic drums. I admit, it feels like a lot, because it is. Eventually everything starts crunching together, it’s not as smooth as I would like it to be. And since this song is so major and triumphant, the effect was a little lost on me. The final song “DogEgg” will likely be the most divisive song on the EP. It is certainly the most abrasive song of the bunch. Bringing in lots of squealy, feedback guitars ala Converge that don’t let up until the song is done. If anything, it was even more jarring than the shoegaze elements, simply because up until that point, we were in that realm for several songs.

There isn’t too much more to say on this album that the album really doesn’t say itself. It’s a quick listen that really works with the different genres attempted. Just goes to show that if you give every horse a chance, eventually, one of them gives you something as good as DRUGS.

Recommended tracks: Pity Party, When September Rain
Recommended for fans of: Converge, Code Orange, looking at stars and thinking how small you are
Final verdict: 8.5/10

Hallowed Butchery – Deathsongs from the Hymnal of the Church of the Final Pilgrimage (US-ME)
Style: Doom (mixed vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Review by: Tyler

Ugh.

Maybe it’s because I am burned out on doom and sludge as of late (a lot of it finds its way to the site), or maybe I’m learning that some aspects of the style aren’t for me, but BOY HOWDY what a slog of a record this thing is. I’m not big on funeral doom as it is, but there was something about Deathsongs that put me to sleep every single time I tried to listen to it. It is happening now as I type this.

I didn’t find anything inventive or particularly interesting at all through this entire release. There are big dumb guitars, big scary vocals that sound like they are waaaaaay over there, drums, synth. You know, doom metal stuff. I will say that there were certainly aspects that I was not expecting. A fair amount of spoken word and clean singing the vocals which were very welcome, because otherwise, all of those elements were pretty annoying with how they were used. The synths are usually either playing square or sawtooth waves (I don’t know which one, I didn’t do well on that test) that got pretty grating after too long. The intros and outros of a good portion of the songs could have stood to lose a few repeats of parts. 

The only thing that I really appreciated on the album was the very last song. It is all acoustic guitars, synths that aren’t too much and some horns join in as well. It was really the only part of the album that caught my attention enough to feel like finishing it. Otherwise, it’s par for the course. There is not much else to say for this. It’s doom, it’s sludge, it is what it is. There’s probably something more interesting for you to listen to this week.

Recommended tracks: On the Altar
Recommended for fans of: Any type of sludge or doom (this is not as good as the stuff you like)
Final verdict: 2.5/10

Thin – Dawn (US-NY)
Style: Mathgrind (harsh vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | RYM page
Review by: Josh

grindcore review speedrun, any%

Big, dissonant riffs. Driving basslines. Incomprehensible, noisy vocals. Loud drums. Country interlude. Good release.

Alright, getting serious here, there’s just not as much to talk about with grindcore. Bands tend to opt for shorter tracks instead of long, sonic journeys, and Thin is no exception. Here, exempting the aforementioned country interlude, it’s mostly iteration on a certain style, and for what it is, it’s done quite well. Each track is remarkably coherent, even the shortest ones. “The God Damn Plane Has Crashed Into the Mountain” is just twelve seconds long, yet it feels like a complete idea. There isn’t much stylistic variance, but for what the tracks are, they’re good.

Thin’s core sound is one that should feel familiar for any mathcore listener: odd time signatures, snarling, harsh vocals, and more dissonance than you can shake a stick at. Their take on it is well-executed, though nothing innovative. Instrumentally competent with occasional moments of greatness, but never dull ones. They occasionally flirt with more melodic styles, along with noise and electronics on the final track, but at its core, this is mathgrind through and through. For a fifteen-minute-long album, though, this is good enough, and if you’ve got a quarter of an hour to spare, you won’t regret putting on Dawn.

Recommended tracks: It’s fifteen minutes long, just listen to it
Recommended for fans of: meth., early The Dillinger Escape Plan
Final verdict: 7/10

(0) – SkamHan (Denmark)
Style: Black (harsh vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Metal-Archives page
Review by: Josh

This album’s a bit like putting a fresh-out-of-cooking school chef in a Michelin-starred restaurant and telling him to make something. Sure, it’ll come out pretty good in the end, but pondering what could’ve been done by someone with more experience gets one thinking.

If you dissect this album into its component parts, you’ve got something fantastic in your hands. The riffs are absolutely phenomenal, some of the best I’ve heard in months for sure. The band’s no prude about this either, serving up some of the album’s finest right from the first minute of track one. From there on, everything just works. Following an intense tremolo-picked section, (0) barrel into an incredibly heavy verse that manages to continually one-up itself. The vocals are solid, nothing to write home about, but the way that the track progresses gets one hooked right in. It ends pretty abruptly, lots of momentum still conserved. What’s next? A slow burner. Then another fast one, then a slow burner. Then another fast one again, then… take a wild guess. Close with a seven-minute-long ambient track that goes nowhere.

The bipolar structuring of this album stifles its progression, leading its individually great songs to feel weaker when viewed as a whole. On top of this, the album is riddled with small flaws that individually are near-inconsequential, but compounded on each other weaken the listening experience substantially. Sometimes the harmonies sound a bit off. Sometimes a section goes on for too long. Sometimes the mixing makes a heavy riff hit weaker than it could’ve. I could go on. It’s death by a thousand cuts in musical form, though this doesn’t damage the listening experience that much. Just enough to get you to wonder how it’d be like if these were spotted and fixed.

And it sucks, because there’s so much going on in this album that’s just plain cool. The second track, the name of which my keyboard doesn’t dare to type, has this atmospheric hammer-on riff the likes of which I’ve almost never heard before. It sounds like the guitar is struggling to breathe, and that’s rad as hell, to be honest. During the experimental, ambient part in “Rod Glorie”, the background guitar has this insane, noisy tone that really serves to ramp up the tension more than anything else. Also, I’ve mentioned it before, but the first few minutes of track one go harder than anything I’ve heard in a long time. There are no shortage of awesome moments on SkamHan.

(0), you’re all phenomenal musicians. Please get a better producer.

Recommended tracks: Tyndere end Hud, Sortfugl, SkamHan
Recommended for fans of: Slugdge, In the Woods, early and mid era Enslaved
Final verdict: 7/10

Bâ’a – Deus Qui Non Mentitur (France)
Style: Black (harsh vocals, some spoken word)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Metal-Archives page
Review by: Chris

The idea of the anonymous band is a cool concept which seems to be something much easier to achieve these days than in years past. I open with that statement because as far as I can find Bâ’a is a completely anonymous band, which really helps shape the way the music is perceived. I don’t know Latin so I threw this title into a translation app and got (roughly) “God who never lies”. From that I kind of ran with a certain headspace for the album that will become more clear as I continue.

This album is remarkably frantic even for a genre whose cornerstones tend to be blasts and tremolo guitars. This feeling stems from the way the vocals are delivered, which exist in stark contrast to their peers in the genre. Not completely unlike the vocals in, say, Nero Di Marte, the vocalist at times feels almost like they are providing you with a passionate sermon with the ebb between full screams and moving spoken word passages.. Passionate screams and furious growls describe the full range the vocalist produces in this work. Instrumentally this album feels despairing and murky most of the time, though there are brief moments of melodic clarity to allow the listener to peek their head out of the water. There are some really nice piano hits in “Titan”, and the field recordings put into “Des Profondeurs je crie” really gave a moment of peace in the chaos. In the slower sections where the drums take a break from blasting away, the soundscape is really allowed to open up and swallow you with how massive and encompassing the guitars feel.

But I have to go back to what really makes Deus Qui Non Mentitur work and really hammer it over and over: the vocals in this are so, so, much more interesting and charismatic than pretty much any other Black Metal album I’ve listened to in recent memory. While the instrumentation is excellent and well delivered, the vocals are really the workhorse of making this album feel unique. I will say as some critique that some of the transitions tonally may seem a bit stiff at times or jarring but once you get into the new section you definitely hand wave it and get lost again in the wide cavern of sound. Lastly I just want to say this album continues the trend of bands making really concise connected sub 40 minute releases and knowing it out of the park.

Recommended tracks: Titan, Procession (but it’s really four songs with an intro/outro, I really recommend just going for the whole things)
Recommended for fans of: Nero Di Marte (for the vocal performance/style), Negura Bunget, A Forest of Stars (sorta)
Final verdict: 7.5/10