Time Signature I am god...

Genre: death-grind / brutal death metal

You will be forgiven if the didgeridoo-accompanied doom-foreboding spoken intro makes you think that you are in for some progressive doom metal. This is not the case, as Carnalation is an all out blasting brutal death metal act who emphasize speed to the degree that the album features severally insanely fast blastbeats that would definitely result in speed tickets if you played them on your stereo while racing down the highway.

While the blasting is perhaps a bit over the top, Carnalation show that they definitely are also good at writing strong riffs, and - in addition to the grindcore fury - there are actually a lot of heavy riff-based sections and a lot of cool thrashy, and even groovy at times, riffs on this album.

The musicianship is top notch and every note and beat is executed with great precision. The production is perhaps a bit polished, but that is okay, because it allows the listener to hear what is going on, and the blastbeat-sections do not drown in snare drum noise.

Fans of brutal death metal and death-grind should definitely check out this death attack of an album.

adg211288 Power Dive is the second album from German symphonic metal act Voices of Destiny. The style of the album more specifically draws on gothic metal and power metal with the dominantly symphonic sound, using the beauty and the beast vocal format. The album was released in 2012.

Now I consider symphonic metal to be one of my favourite styles of metal, especially the female fronted bands, but deep down I’m also highly critical of the genre, especially the female fronted bands. The reason? Repetition. There are not many bands that really manage to hold my attention now that I’ve got acquainted with a wide range of acts. In fact although I guess some may argue, I don’t think you can beat the big name acts of the style at their own game, and that’s exactly the problem with Voices of Destiny’s second album. It’s my first encounter with the band, and while I won’t go as far to say that it will be my last, the band is young and all and as they do show later in the album may have something surprising up their sleeves for the future, Power Dive isn’t an album that makes me want to revisit it in a hurry.

If you’ve heard Epica’s music then you’ll know kind of what to expect with Voices of Destiny, except what we have here comes across not so much an Epica clone act as a poor man’s version of them. The band’s best asset would have to be female vocalist Maike Holzmann, whose vocals are very typical of the style but that’s why she’s the band’s best asset. She’s just right for the style, it’s just everything else going on around her that typical lets her down badly for the majority of Power Dive. Her male counterpart Lukas Palme, who is also the keyboardist, is not a bad growler at all, but he just doesn’t put on a performance that really offsets Maike Holzmann’s performance. The symphonic keyboards don’t really add a lot to the music either in most of the tracks. You can hear them in the background having their odd moments, but there’s no epic fusion of heavy guitar riffs and classical music and when symphonic metal fails to be epic, unless it has other redeeming features, I typically just lose interest and sadly that’s just what has happened on Power Dive. It’s not really rare for me to be a bit disappointed in symphonic metal albums due to not really bringing anything new to the table, but many of them can end up still being solid albums. It is rare for me to be as disappointed though as I am with this one.

The reason for that is that the songs just aren’t memorable. The elements are there, but they just don’t come together. The title track in particular is just the most extremely boring symphonic metal song I think I’ve ever heard. Things pick up a bit after that, as a bit of power metal influence comes into play, but it takes until Dedication, which is the eighth of eleven tracks, until I really hear something that tells me that Voices of Destiny has potential within their field. I actually enjoyed this track a fair bit. An album that kept up this calibre may not have been groundbreaking or innovative but it at least would have been a solid addition to a symphonic metal fan’s collection. Unfortunately you probably don’t need to be told that if you have to wait until the eighth track to get a highlight then the album has serious problems.

But what’s this? That’s right after suddenly delivering the good eight tracks in Voices of Destiny surprise me and do in again straight away with Your Hands. It’s too a lesser degree certainly but after what I just about got used to pre-Dedication this is surprising to say the least. This was a reason for pointedly saying ‘mostly’ and ‘majority’ a couple of times in the earlier stages of this review. I find it totally flummoxing how an artist can get it wrong for so long during an album and then suddenly start delivering the goods this far in. Yeah you guessed it, they did it yet again with Red Winter's Snow I (Prophets Of Doom). Okay so it still kind of suffers with the issues outlined earlier in this review but at the end of the day this is damn solid symphonic metal, and ultimately that’s all I really demand of the genre. Innovation is very nice of course, but if a symphonic metal album can be made up of solid material with an epic sound then I’ll be a happy bunny.

It just makes me want to scream at the injustice of it all. Had the whole album been of the quality they suddenly pulled out of the hat we’d have been talking a recommendable release, but ultimately all Voices of Destiny proved with Power Dive is how inconsistent they are. It didn’t help that you could break the album up into sections such as ‘Cliché Intro Track’, ‘Really Boring Track’, ‘Okay Tracks’, ‘Great Tracks’ and ‘Just as Cliché Outro Track’. Really Voices of Destiny had enough material for a decent EP here, which it may as well be with so much filler within the album in one solid block. Even one more great track could have just about pushed Power Dive into purely average territory, since Maike Holzmann really does shine vocally, but with far more average to bad stuff outweighing the good stuff, I ultimately have to consider this a below average symphonic metal release.

4.3/10

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven(http://metaltube.freeforums.org))

UMUR "There Is Light (But It's Not For Me)" is the 10th full-length studio album by Danish death metal act Illdisposed. The album was released through Massacre Records in April 2011.

The music on the album is groove oriented death metal with plenty of melody. It´s not as such melodeath, but there are quite a few similarities between the music on this album and that genre. In addition to the heavy and mostly mid-paced death metal attack which is excecuted in a convincing way, the music also features synths and synth effects. Those elements provide the music with a contemporary sound that will probably appeal to those who enjoy their death metal with synth heavy edge. Bo Summer´s are deep and brutal but occasionally he also screams highter pitched notes. The latter style is not as prominent on "There Is Light (But It's Not For Me)" as it has been on some of the preceeding albums.

Illdisposed is a band that is impossible for me not to like. It´s not that the last couple of albums, including this one, have been revelations, but they are all professionally produced, well played and well composed. Most importantly though there is a brutal and groovy charm about the band´s core sound that just greatly appeals to me. I could have done without the synths which I personally find distracting and a bit generic, but I´m sure that´s an aquired taste, so I´ll try not to be too harsh with my rating because of that. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

Phonebook Eater 6/10

"Road Salt 2" is a definite improvement over the first chapter.

People change, even metalheads. Will Mikael Akerfeldt do Metal ever again? Will Cynic? Ulver? Pain Of Salvation? Every Progressive Metal related act seems, fortunately, to be more coherent with the term Progressive than Metal, so from album to album these bands tend to change in terms of sound. Pain Of Salvation's case is probably the least successful of all the Prog Metal bands going towards a softer direction. Their change hasn't brought as much enthusiasm among the Metal community as expected, especially with the release of the mediocre "Road Salt 1". A year after, the band releases "Road Salt 2", which is a definite improvement over that first experiment.

Musically "Road Salt 2" isn't a massive change from the first episode: rough produced Blues Rock, with fuzzy guitars and small hints of Progressive and Metal overall. RS2 contains however much more experimentation and variation: there aren't only guitars roaring, but also violins, piano (admittedly that too was included in RS1), horns, keyboards. Daniel Gildenlow proves once more on this album that he is one of the best vocalists of Modern Progressive: his voice is powerful, at times soothing and painful, others full of anger and despair. On this new LP he truly gives terrific performances all over the place, enough times to make him the star of the album.

Maybe its getting use to this sound, but many of the songs here tend to be quite enjoyable, memorable, and also quite deep in some moments, while in RS1 that couldn't be said for many tracks: tracks like "Softly She Cries" and "Mortar Grind", among the more powerful ones, deliver quite a bit of emotion, just as much as the softer moments like "Healing Now", possibly the most beautiful piece of the album, a folky tune that once again contains tons of heart. But then there are moments like "Conditioned", with it's very typical Bluesy riff, that simply feel banal and forgettable.

Overall, RS2 is a definite improvement over RS1, however, there are still a few flaws in the songwriting and, I must say, the production isn't getting any better. However, the musicians are still just as great, especially Gildenlow. RS2 might not appreciated by even the most die hard fans of the band, but overall, it seems to be a pretty enjoyable record

Warthur Lou Reed has crafted a masterful, finely-produced concept album which is inspired by the German expressionism of the inter-war period and updates those ideas for the modern day, backed by a competent backing band of highly capable musicians who expertly bring his ideas to life. That album is called "Berlin", he put it out in 1973 and it's really quite excellent.

Lulu, on the other hand, wow. A lot of words have been written, spoken, and yelled about Lulu from the point of view of it being a Metallica album - and as far as Metallica albums go, it's pretty poor - but I want to spend a little time to speak about it from the perspective of a Lou Reed fan. As I outline above, the album occupies territory which Lou has already covered, and covered more than adequately over the course of his solo career. The fact that he is choosing to revisit it with Metallica only shows how short on ideas the guy is these days. (His other most recent endeavour? Trying to put across the idea that the Metal Machine Music album was a serious artistic statement and touring with a trio playing similar noise. Sorry Lou, the noise rock bandwagon already left you in the dust.)

I love him for the contributions he made to proto-punk and glam back in the day, but the fact is that he just can't cut it as a lyricist or a singer any more. Putting him front of Metallica only makes these problems even more blindingly obvious than they already are.

UMUR "Dreamtime" is the debut full-length studio album by UK hard rock act The Cult. The album was released through Beggars Banquet in September 1984. The recording process was mared by a couple of issues as original producer Joe Julian left the project after having recorded the drums and new producer John Brand had to use the original drum tracks as drummer Nigel Preston was already at this point unreliable. Preston was notoriously known for his wild party life. He died of a heroin overdose in April 1992. "Dreamtime" was a relatively successful release in terms of sales numbers as it reached #21 in the UK charts and #1 in the UK indie chart.

The music on the album is a blend of hard rock and goth/indie rock with some new wave elements thrown in for good measure. Ian Astbury´s Jim Morrison-like voice is powerful and commanding. The rythm section sometimes recall the sound of acts like The Smiths and The Sisters of Mercy and the same can be said about some of the guitar riffs. Sometimes to a point where I almost expect Andrew Eldritch to start singing. Ultimately he of course doesn´t and Ian Astbury´s more expressive way of singing is what first and foremost provide the hard rock edge to this release. The Cult´s fascination with ethnic original cultures began on this album, and there are references to both Native American and Australian Aboriginal culture on the album (a theme they would further explore on subsequent releases).

"Dreamtime" is quite an enjoyable release by The Cult and tracks like "Horse Nation" and especially "Spiritwalker" show both promise and a hint of the direction the band would move in, in the following years. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.

Warthur Just like their fellow British death/doom pioneers My Dying Bride had on their The Angel and the Dark River, Paradise Lost's 1995 release sees them locked in on a Goth-doom trajectory, with sonorously intoned vocals and crunchy riffs. Paradise Lost retain a bit more of the death metal sound of their earlier albums this time, whereas at this point My Dying Bridge had more or less completely abandoned sludgy death guitar, but otherwise if you like the one band's experiments in mingling the atmosphere of gothic rock with the techniques of doom metal you'll like the other's. Between this one and Icon, I think I mildly prefer this one, though neither gets me especially enthusiastic.

Warthur Blind Guardian's Imaginations From the Other Side is a forceful power metal album of the sort we've all come to expect from Blind Guardian... and that, in a way, is part of the reason why I feel it's a rather middling release from them. The performances are decent enough, but they and the songwriting are all more or less exactly along the lines we expect from power metal these days. The end product is clearly a highly polished one - but it's polished to the point of sounding sterile and artificial to my ears, an exercise in setting out a blueprint for Dragonforce and a horde of other super-fast power metal bands in the coming years as opposed to a creation of something genuine and sincere.

Warthur The Angel and the Dark River is a refinement and purification of the Goth-doom approach My Dying Bride prototyped on Turn Loose the Swans. With the death metal influences leeched out, the band present a mixture of reasonably slow riffs (though not as slow or heavy as the sort of material stoner doom and traditional doom bands typically play) with lyrics intoned in a mournful voice. Neither this album or its predecessor really click with me, but I think this one comes a bit closer - having settled on a particular musical direction, the band go all-out to capture it and the desired atmosphere.

Warthur David Vincent's last album with Morbid Angel before a nearly decade-long hiatus features his best and most forceful vocals to date, and musically the band has the muscle and power to match him. At points, Domination is the heaviest of Morbid Angel's first four albums; the inclusion of keyboards for a couple of interludes and an outro does not change the fact that by and large the songs are focused on the sort of raw, primitive, and intense death metal with a doomy edge which Morbid Angel listeners know and love. I'm inclined to say it's the best of the band's albums, and it's certainly a worthy followup to Covenant.